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Lake claims that weaponized anthrax spores (and weaponized simulants) are NOT coated with silica.

I don't claim it. I state it as a FACT. No one who examined or viewed the anthrax spores mailed to the two senators in 2001 saw any coating on the spores.

The idea of coating spores to make them more "flyable" is absolute and total nonsense. It's beyond that. It's ridiculous and absurd. It's just plain STUPID. As "Biodefense student" said, coating spores makes them HEAVIER, and therefore LESS FLYABLE.

Silica is not used to COAT spores. It's MIXED WITH SPORES as a drying agent to keep the spores from absorbing moisture. If spores absorb moisture, they'll clump, just the way your instant coffee crystals will clump if you leave the jar open and they absorb moisture from the air.

His claims are based on what he was told by Ken Alibek.

My statements are based upon SCIENCE. I interviewed Dr. Alibek, Bill Patrick, Matthew Meselson and many others to understand the SCIENCE of spores and bioweapons. It was clear that some irresponsible reporters were ignoring the scientists who would know the facts - microbiologists specifically - and instead were going to "scientists" who would be totally ignorant on the subject of spores, like chemists and pharmacists, to find the "experts" who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

Of course that doesn’t deter Lake from his conspiracy theories.

TrebleRebel believes that if microbiologists agree about microbiology and agree that the chemists and pharmacists are wrong about the microbiology of coating spores, then it must be a conspiracy.

He doesn't like being called a "conspiracy theorist" and claims he doesn't see any conspiracy when he rants endlessly that the FBI is covering up the facts about a "supersophisticated" coating, when he claims that Meselson and Alibek are in on the plot to mislead the American people, when he claims that Doug Beecher is lying, etc.

TrebleRebel spins everything to support his beliefs. He cites a book which shows pictures of coated spores which PROVE that coating spores is ridiculous, but he sees those pictures as some kind of proof that spores are coated when turned into bioweapons. Obviously, the pictures were intended to INSTRUCT first responders and others what coated spores would look like, so they won't make the same mistakes that were made with the anthrax in the Daschle letter and FALSELY ASSUME there was a coating even though no coating was visible to ANYONE. The pictures in the book show that such a "coating" would be clearly visible to EVERYONE.

Just look at these pictures: Could anyone possibly look at those spores and miss the fact that they are coated? Could anyone believe that spores coated in such a way would be more "flyable" than pure spores which have been flying around and killing people for thousands of years?

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

Your argument that coated spores are heavier and therefore cannot fly is, of course, absurd.

Coated spores stay as single spores, even if they have a slightly larger mass than uncoated spores. Uncoated spores clump together into heavy clusters of many spores which cannot fly - they also stick to surfaces and cannot re-aerosolize.

This link makes things rather easy to understand:

http://www.lfg.techfak.uni-erlangen.de/Personen/Ehemalige/MLinsenbuehler/Forschung.html

The coated lactose particles, although having a very slightly higher mass than the uncoated lactose particles, have smaller average particle diameters, and thus have far superior aerosol properties.

Lake usually refuses to answer these simple questions:

(1) Out of the two samples at the link above, which lactose sample is heavier (a) Figure 5, pure uncoated lactose particles or (b) Figure 7, lactose particles coated with silica nanoparticles.

and

(2) Out of the two samples at the link above, which lactose sample will most easily aerosolize (a) Figure 5, pure uncoated lactose particles or (b) Figure 7, lactose particles coated with silica nanoparticles.

The answer, of course, is that (b) the coated lactose particles are heavier but will nevertheless have far superior aerosol properties since they will not clump with other lactose particles or stick to other surfaces.

At this point Lake usually has a hissy fit and starts ranting and raving about conspiracy theories - which I’m sure he’s just about to entertain us with now.

“No one who examined or viewed the anthrax spores mailed to the two senators in 2001 saw any coating on the spores.”

Apart from the people that saw a coating that is.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001136-2,00.html
Last week officials went public with a more detailed profile of the bacterium being studied at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. It is highly concentrated and pure. The material’s light, fine texture and a brown ring around each spore suggest an additive had been introduced to prevent clumping.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0144,smith2,29664,6.html

The New York Times revealed in hushed tone that one unnamed expert said the floaty anthrax spores were surrounded by a brown ring, observable by microscope.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/fbisecretlyrecreate.html
Investigators and experts have said the spores in the Daschle and Leahy letters were uniformly between 1 and 3 microns in size, and were coated with fine particles of frothy silica glass.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/sophisticatedstrainanthrax.html

Government sources tell NEWSWEEK that the secret new analysis shows anthrax found in a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy was ground to a microscopic fineness not achieved by U.S. biological-weapons experts. The Leahy anthrax — mailed in an envelope that was recovered unopened from a Washington post office last November — also was coated with a chemical compound unknown to experts who have worked in the field for years; the coating matches no known anthrax samples ever recovered from biological-weapons producers anywhere in the world, including Iraq and the former Soviet Union. The combination of the intense milling of the bacteria and the unusual coating produced an anthrax powder so fine and fluffy that individually coated anthrax spores were found in the Leahy envelope, something that U.S. bioweapons experts had never seen.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxpowdernotroutine.html

Extensive lab tests of the anthrax powder have revealed new details about how the powder was made, including the identity of a chemical used to coat the trillions of microscopic spores to keep them from clumping together.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/unusualcoating.html

Scientists have found a new chemical in the coating on the anthrax spores mailed to journalists and politicians last fall, a high-ranking government official said Wednesday.