Ed, have you seen the Alibek and Patrick supervised thesis? If you are in Madison, the University of Wisconsin at Madison would have the Alibek supervised thesis on ProQuest Dissertations for free. I would send it but these pdfs are too big to forward.
As for what I told Ken, I told him the AFIP report says that silica was detected.
You did not interview the EDX operator, who was highly experienced at detecting silica. Highly experienced in interpreting the distribution of silicon and oxygen. Your understanding arose at a time when Ken was not aware of the AFIP report.
Moreover, his point is that the presence or absence of silica is not determinative of whether it was state sponsored or not. Not determinative of whether it came from a state program or not. That seems a sound assumption, particularly given that they later publicly published the patent under which hydrophobic silica was used to concentrate biological agents, with the silica then removed by repeated centrifugation.
This proliferation of dual use technology is precisely the valid concerned so well expressed by Professor Boyle in his interview.
But let me encourage you to go get the PhD thesis on weaponization that Ken and Bill P. supervised. It explains why silica would have been used. It basically picks up where your drying idea leaves off and explains the alternative purpose as it relates to aerosolization. It explains that the technique was developed in the context of delivering drugs to the intended organs. Under this understanding, the feds would be looking not just for a spraydrying expert with experience in using silica to dry blend the product, but an expert in functional polymerization. They’d be looking for someone with parents proud of their son’s contribution to improving the delivery of pharmaceuticals. Given that IG had both such experts available to them — and some left over to spare — these differences in the forensic results has practical consequences.
I like to think of you and TrebleRebel as equally right.
TrebleRebel is not a microbiologist and not a spraydrying expert. And so his brilliance needs to be viewed through your common-sense show me approach.
But the common sense approach would be just to contact and Ken and confirm that I’m right that he no longer would dispute that the EDX correctly detected silica (and not merely silicon).
I don’t recall that you’ve addressed the electrostatic charge point. Now Professor Boyle mistakenly predicated his argument on the claim that the charge “had been removed.” Now, that was not true as explained by Alibek.
But the Livermore patent clearly contradicts you on the electrostatic charge. are you willing to accept it as authoritative expertise? If not, why not?
Ed, just to be clear, do you now credit the correctness and authority of the statement by the biological expert working for the Department of Energy says:
Weaponized B. anthracis spores in particular, are very small refined particles which are uniform in size and appearance (approximately 1 to 3 .mu.m in size), highly concentrated, ELECTROSTATICALLY CHARGED, and treated to reduce clumping. Due to their very small size and ability to remain airborne, weaponized B. anthracis spores are more likely to be inhaled and are thus considerably more lethal than unrefined spores. Furthermore, these spores have been shown to re-aerosolize with common office activities such as paper handling and foot traffic.
As an example, particles can include a coating that acts to separate them, RESULTING IN SPACING TOO LARGE FOR VAN DER WAALS FORCES to cause the particles to adhere and thus aggregate and deposit onto surfaces. Various contaminants are of a sufficiently small size (0.5-5 .mu.m) to lodge in the lung tissue, remain in the breathing zone and readily re-suspend
Weaponized B. anthracis spores in particular, are very small refined particles which are uniform in size and appearance (approximately 1 to 3 .mu.m in size), highly concentrated, ELECTROSTATICALLY CHARGED, and treated to reduce clumping.”
Beecher would not say that the spores were not weaponized. He merely says it is mistaken to assume that a state sponsored program is necessary. He wrote: “a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. The issue is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.”
The dual use technology at issue here is not akin to military weapon production. It is a publicly published patent relating to the concentration of biological agents.
Small-scale processing to maximize aerosolizability is by definition weaponization where you have the small particle size even though “not akin to military weapon production.” He’s just saying there was no sophisticated additive and that a state actor was not needed to make the anthrax. Silica is not a sophisticated additive. You mistakenly read Beecher to be support for the proposition that no silica was used. If he had meant to say that, he would have said that. If you don’t believe me, just ask Dr. Beecher. Whether dry blended or used in the culture medium, there is no reason to view it as akin to military weapons production.
Now it is has been reported that Professor Meselson added those two sentences. I don’t know one way or the other. But guess who peer-reviewed the article in the same journal in February 2007 by the Livermore woman and Dugway fellow?
Beecher wrote a nice note when he forwarded me the article that I gave to you. He said “With compliments.” But be gentle with Ed.
Your reasoning is just totally bizarre. Why would anyone CARE what Alibek believes about what AFIP said?
Is this some more of your thinking that if enough people believe in something, that somehow makes it true?
Everyone who viewed the Daschle anthrax under a SEM or who viewed SEM images of the powder has said it was "pure spores." They saw NO additives. The only person who saw any additives saw the "additives" HE himself had put into the anthrax.
Is that really so hard to understand? No one could see any additives, yet using an Energy Dispersive X-ray spectrometer (an instrument used to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals through characteristic wavelengths of X-ray light) the EDX found that there were elements in the spores that did not belong: The EDX detected the elements silicon and oxygen.
You can fantasize that the EDX operator at AFIP was able to tell without any doubt that the silicon and oxygen was in the form of silica, but the facts say otherwise.
Even though Gary Matsumoto was promoting a conspiracy theory in his article in Science Magazine, he did reveal that, in mid-2002, a laboratory analyzing the Senate anthrax spores for the FBI found "polymerized glass" in the attack anthrax. The article says,
The officials who received this briefing-- biowarfare specialists who work for the governments of two NATO countries-- said they had never heard of polymerized glass before.
So, why didn't the EDX operator at AFIP report on detecting polymerized glass in the Daschle anthrax? You seem to believe he knew exactly what form the silicon and oxygen was in. Can you be so certain that he didn't ASSUME that it was in the form of silica when it was actually in the form of polymerized glass? That's what the facts seem to indicate. And silica would be the natural assumption for everyone at that time.
"Polymerized glass" is just a way of saying manufactured glass, i.e., the trace elements of silicon and oxygen were found to have been combined into the molecular structure of manufactured glass, not silica.
In his article in Science magazine, Gary Matsumoto spun the finding to be some devious plot by the FBI to cover up the presence of silica:
By the fall of 2002, the awe-inspiring anthrax of the previous spring had morphed into something decidedly less fearsome. According to sources on Capitol Hill, FBI scientists now reported that there was "no additive" in the Senate anthrax at all. Alibek said he examined electron micrographs of the anthrax spores sent to Senator Daschle and saw no silica.
So, if the polymerized glass wasn't an additive and it wasn't visible, what what it? Answer: it was lab contamination.
Two scientific reports from 1980 showed that silicon had previously been detected in spores. At that time, no one bothered to figure out where it came from. They generally assumed it was some form of contamination from the glassware used to culture the bacteria or from some other equipment in the labs.
As a result of these findings, the whole new science of Microbial Forensics was formalized to examine sources of lab contamination and other factors to see what evidence could be provided in court. The FBI initiated the "working group" to formalize the science, and for the next TWO YEARS the Amerithrax investigation was pretty much on hold until the formalization could be completed. Then came more years as the science was used in labs around the world and facts and truths could be separated from non-facts and non-truths. A "database" of accumulated knowledge had to be built. The Supreme Court had stated that that was necessary before a new science could be used in court.
As part of that new science, books and papers were published which showed what spores coated with silica actually looked like. They looked nothing like what Matsumoto and Jacobsen fantasized in Matsumoto's article. The photos made it absolutely clear that the anthrax spores mailed in 2001 were NOT coated with silica. Whatever form the silicon and oxgyen was in, it was trace amounts absorbed into the natural surface of the spores, it was NOT a coating of any kind. And that's why no one could see any additives.
The facts are very clear here. Bringing up arguments about experiments or work done on simulants or test spores at this lab or that lab does not automatically mean that it has anything to do with the attack anthrax. If you want to understand what is going on, you have to FOCUS on the subject at hand and avoid going off into what people believe or what Joe Blow said to Sam Smith in Indonesia in 1974.