New book about anthrax mailings

BattleAxe,

I’m kidding about Clarabelle, of course.

But here is what Tom Bunn said in late January 2002.

Dr. Tom Bunn, Chief of Diagnostic Bacteriology at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) lab in Ames, IA, on the same subject – “Many people were
concerned that someone had stolen this from us. Now we can say that they
couldn’t have stolen it from us, because we never had it.”

&tOne Anthrax Answer: Ames Strain Not From Iowa
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2002; Page A02

In four months, FBI agents and scientists have unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding the strain of anthrax used in last fall’s deadly attacks. The ;Ames strain” is now known to be highly virulent, resistant to many vaccines and a perennial favorite of military researchers and bioterrorists.

But here’s one thing the lethal bug is decidedly not: originally from Ames, Iowa.

New details emerging from the bacterium’s murky past suggest the Ames strain did not come from the sleepy Iowa college town of the same name, or from anywhere else in Iowa. It was a Texas strain, cultured from a Texas cow, federal officials now say.

How it came to be known internationally as the Ames strain is a story of confused labeling and mistaken identity in the Defense Department’s two-decade-old quest to find the perfect vaccine to protect troops against a near-perfect killer.

“It’s been a puzzle,” said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Tom Bunn, one of several officials of the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service who have been trying to sort out the strain’s origins since it was linked to the bioterrorism attacks in Florida, New York and Washington.

The Ames strain — one of 89 known genetic varieties of anthrax — was used in each of the attacks on U.S. Senate offices and Florida and New York media companies in September and October. To law enforcement officials, that suggests the attacker had a scientific background and, quite possibly, access to one of a small group of U.S. military research labs and contractors known to possess Ames.

The Army acquired the strain in 1981 as part of a national search for novel types of anthrax to use in testing vaccines. It had no name until 1985, when it was described in a scientific paper by researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md.

It was called “Ames” because the researchers believed the strain came from there: The shipping package bore a return address from the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories, an Ames lab that diagnoses illnesses in cattle, according to Gregory Knudson, a former USAMRIID scientist and a co-author of the article that identified the strain. The label stuck.

But in the weeks after the anthrax attacks, questions emerged about the strain’s origins. The Washington Post filed a request with the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act asking for details about the strain’s history. After an exhaustive search, USDA officials in Iowa could find nothing: no record of anthrax strains delivered to the Army, and no reports of anthrax outbreaks among Iowa cattle in the early 1980s.

“When we went back and checked, there was no record of a bacterial culture coming from a cow in Iowa in 1980-81,” said Bunn, chief of the USDA’s Diagnostic Bacteriology Laboratory. He added: “If the Army asked for something we would have given it to them.”

A search of long-forgotten Army documents finally resolved the mystery. The strain, it turns out, had come from Texas, which did experience anthrax outbreaks around 1980. The Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostics Laboratory at Texas A&M University isolated the microbe and shipped it to USAMRIID in May 1981.

The germs were mailed in a special container, identical to hundreds of others that the USDA supplies to veterinary labs around the country. The return address on the package: the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories, Ames, Iowa.

The terrorists going to a Florida clinic with skin anthrax was widely known at the time after 911.

It doesn’t take a Brain Surgeon or a Dermatologist to connect the dots.

I agree.

I just disagree with the author of the book that the FBI has not always aggressively pursued an AQ theory (simultaneous with a US biodefense insider theory).

Battle Axe,

Aren’t you correct that the inverted plasmid is important and highly probative evidence in proving Amerithrax? Consider the work done by the fellow who collected Ames on mutagenesis. And the work done by UNMC circa 2000. And then consider Ali Al-Timimi’s high security clearance for work for the Navy. The UNMC’s DNA vaccine research had caused it to expand to require experts in genomics. Ali’s field was genomics. Didn’t SRA International, Ali’s employer, work with the Navy in the Spring of 2001?

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ chemical and biological arms control program, announced in December 2001. “I’m certain it’s someone connected with a government program, or who works in a laboratory connected with a government program,” she said. “The grapevine has it that the results of an experiment on genetic variation at certain locations suggest that this material was made in a very small batch, and that suggests that the material was not made in some old weapons program on a large scale,” she said, citing sources inside and outside the government. “All the available information is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the U.S. weaponization process,” wrote Rosenberg on a webpage.

Wasn’t BHR correct? Just mistaken that it was Dr. Hatfill? And mistaken that the motive was to sound an alarm so as to increase spending?

Sources:

Elliott TB, Brook I, Harding RA, Bouhaouala SS, Peacock SJ, Knudson GB.

Radiation Medicine Department, Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Interactions and Countermeasures Research Team, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA.

[AFFRI is at UNMC]

Bacillus anthracis infection in irradiated mice: susceptibility, protection, and therapy.
Mil Med. 2002 Feb;167(2 Suppl):103-4. No abstract available.
PMID: 11873486 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

See also

Infect Immun. 1988 January; 56(1): 176-181

Transposon Tn916 mutagenesis in Bacillus anthracis.

B E Ivins, S L Welkos, G B Knudson and D J Leblanc
Division of Bacteriology, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Maryland.
__________
Photoreactivation of ultraviolet-irradiated, plasmid-bearing, and plasmid-free strains of Bacillus anthracis.

G B Knudson
ABSTRACT

The effects of toxin- and capsule-encoding plasmids on the kinetics of UV inactivation of various strains of Bacillus anthracis were investigated. Plasmids pXO1 and pXO2 had no effect on bacterial UV sensitivity or photoreactivation. Vegetative cells were capable of photoreactivation, but photo-induced repair of UV damage was absent in B. anthracis Sterne spores.

_________

Immunization against anthrax with aromatic compound-dependent (Aro-) mutants of Bacillus anthracis … - all 4 versions »
BE Ivins, SL Welkos, GB Knudson, SF Little - Infection and Immunity, 1990 - Am Soc Microbiol
Page 1. Vol. 58, No. 2 INFECTION AND IMMUNITY, Feb. 1990, p. 303-308 0019-9567/90/
020303-06$02.00/0 Immunization against Anthrax with Aromatic Compound-Dependent
(Aro-) Mutants of Bacillus anthracis and with Recombinant Strains ...
Cited by 47 - Related Articles - Web Search

I love the opening of the book.

That’s why I get so annoyed at Mr. Lake when he intentionally omits the 2007 BBC and AP articles about AQ allegedly having weaponized anthrax. (One case involved the Information Minister who had the powder in packets for mailing to government offiicals and another the Gitmo Kabul military commander who allegedly possessed anthrax upon his capture).

People should feel free to advocate whatever position they like but they should not put blinders on and fail to disclose material that, unless debunked, tends to support a contrary view.

My only disagreement with Colonel Larsen is that he assumes that the FBI has had blinders on rather than aggressively pursued all leads in a confidential national security investigation. What Mueller in 2005 said as to motive was:
Remember 911. Remember Oklahoma City.

And what Ashcroft said was that people misunderstand what the DOJ means when they use the word “domestic” — it in no way excludes highly educated supporters (in the US) of the militants.

Fitzgerald, from the FBI behavioral unit, in 2002 was wrong. But that was five years ago.

Our Own Worst Enemy
by Colonel Randall J. Larsen USAF (Ret)

http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/34/0446580430/chapter_excerpt25523.html

Introduction

Wrong Questions Produce Wrong Answers

JUST NINE DAYS AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACKS, TWO MEN AND A WOMAN CROSSED Pennsylvania Avenue and approached the northwest entrance to the White House. All three carried briefcases. Security was incredibly tight, and it took them nearly fifteen minutes to clear the metal, explosives, and radiological detectors, and a physical search of their bags. These were not regular times at the White House, and these were not regular guests.

Everything appeared normal, but a uniformed Secret Service agent asked one of the men why he had a surgical mask in his briefcase. The man replied, “Just for demonstration. You saw Mayor Rudy Giuliani wear one at Ground Zero, right?” The three were permitted to enter. They walked down two corridors and up two flights of stairs. After waiting for several minutes in a small room, Vice President Dick Cheney and several of his senior staff members walked into the room. In the same briefcase that contained the surgical mask, not more than ten feet from where the vice president was seated, was a test tube filled with weaponized Bacillus globigii. None of the security devices had detected it.

During that meeting, Vice President Cheney asked the question: “What does a biological weapon look like?”

I pulled the test tube from my briefcase and said, “Sir, it looks like this, and by the way, I did just carry this into your office.” I went on to explain that Bacillus globigii is harmless, but physically and even genetically it is nearly identical to Bacillus anthracis—the bacterium that causes anthrax. If you can make the former, you will have no difficulty making the latter.

Two weeks later, Dr. Tara O’Toole, the director of the Center for Biosecurity–University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and I walked into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to meet with the chief of indications and warning. While going through the security checkpoint, I noted the presence of a guard in full battledress uniform and armed with a machine gun (something not often seen at CIA Headquarters). After making eye contact with him, I took the test tube from one pocket, looked at it for a moment to make sure he could see it, and gently placed it in the other. The guard said nothing. Once again, a test tube of weaponized Bacillus globigii was carried into one of the most secure buildings in America.

Three weeks later, the office of Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, received an envelope filled with a far smaller quantity of weaponized and dangerous Bacillus anthracis. The young intern running the automatic letter-opening machine saw a fine mist of powder emerge from the envelope, and the Capitol Police were summoned. Later that day, all members of Congress and their staffs were evacuated from the Capitol Building and the six congressional office buildings. The Senate Hart Office Building, home to Tom Daschle and his staff, would remain closed for ninety days. It was contaminated with anthrax.

It would be easy to place the responsibility for the two earlier security lapses on the men and women entrusted with guarding the White House and CIA Headquarters. After all, if they can’t protect their own house, how can we expect them to protect ours? But centering the blame on these individuals is both unjust and inaccurate. The failure was not one of execution, but of education. This lack of education and understanding of homeland security is the root of our problems. The Secret Service agent saw the test tube in my briefcase, but he asked about the surgical mask. He asked the wrong question. He is not alone.

And his next passage by Colonel Larsen underlies why I disagree with my friends Dany Shoham and Stuart Jacobsen who argued in a journal article that it was AQ operationally, but that Iraq supplied the know-how.

“The number one problem of homeland security is that the majority of leaders in the public and private sectors, academics, self-appointed experts, and pundits rush to provide answers before they have properly constructed the questions. This is because they assume the questions have not changed. They are wrong. The questions have changed. The reason for these changes is not al Qaeda or 9/11; the reason is technology. Weapons formerly restricted to the arsenals of large industrialized nation-states are now within reach of small states and some nonstate actors.

In the twenty-first century, biotechnology will change our lives even more than nuclear technology did in the twentieth century. Thirty years ago we didn’t have to struggle with the ethical dilemmas of stem cell research and cloning or the threat of genetically engineered bioweapons. But change has not been limited to new types of weapons; it is the entire international environment that has changed.

When I use the term al Qaeda in this book, I am not limiting it to the terrorist group commanded by Osama bin Laden. I use it to describe a loose affiliation of fanatical Islamic terrorists. They go by many names: Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), Islamic Jihad (West Bank and Gaza), Al-Gama al-Islamiyya (Egypt), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami (Pakistan), and the Armed Islamic Group (Algeria). The State Department identifies two dozen Islamic terrorist organizations. Some operations are under the strict command and control of bin Laden, such as the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, and 9/11. Other operations, such as the attacks in Bali, Spain, and London, were planned and executed by al Qaeda affiliates. These affiliates endorse al Qaeda religious guidance that allows for the killing of innocents during a holy war. Their theory is that “true innocents” will go directly to heaven when killed in a jihad. (According to bin Laden, Americans can never be true innocents since our tax dollars pay for the war against al Qaeda.) Some of these affiliates receive training and even limited funding from al Qaeda, while others operate independently except for moral support and religious guidance.”

His comments about where AQ would build a bioweapon remind me of a story this week about where Mexican drug lords choose to grow marijuana (in the US):

Colonel Larsen writes:

“I understand many Americans’ frustration with our porous borders, but we need to spend our limited resources on solutions that will really work. There are ways to significantly reduce illegal immigration, but I guarantee you there is no way to prevent terrorists from smuggling a bioweapon into this country. Furthermore, al Qaeda training manuals available on the Internet state that it’s better to build weapons inside the country one plans to attack, rather than transport them across international borders. In virtually every al Qaeda attack, this is precisely what the terrorists did, whether in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Bali in October 2002, Morocco in May 2003, Turkey in December 2003, Spain in March 2004, or London in July 2005. That is why biodefense requires different solutions than those required to reduce illegal immigration.”

Who is Randall Larsen, you ask?

Two days after 9-11, when VP Cheney wanted a briefing on the threat of bio terrorism, he called Randy Larsen.

During the anthrax crisis of Oct 2001, Larry King needed an expert; he called Randy Larsen-6 nights in a row.

”America’s leading expert on homeland security!”, says Congressman Chris Cox, Chairman of House Homeland Security Committee.

In addition to a videotape based on the book “Our Own Worst Enemy,” he has an earlier video program titled “Bioterrorism: Myth or Reality?”

errata - Ansar al Islam was formed in December 2001, not December 2002 as I mistyped. (It was an amalgamation of different groups/splinters and put together by EIJ/IG leaders sent by Ayman Zawahiri — to include the blind sheik’s successor Taha.

But while I will be fascinated by any URL showing that someone in Germany gave Iraq Ames (and they did want it and covert and even over-the-counter acquisition not a hard thing to do), I haven’t see such support in the past.

Here’s what I think we have reason to credit about access to Ames. I’ll be thrilled to add a link re transfer to Iraq if it exists.

“As I worked through the letters, it became apparent that Fort Detrick was the best place for the FBI to begin looking for a suspect,” Dr Paul Keim, an anthrax expert at the University of Northern Arizona, was hired by the FBI to help with the investigation, told the Daily Mail [UK] in 2005. TIGR scientist Timothy Read who headed the project to sequence the anthrax used in the attacks said of the comparison of the anthrax that killed Bob Stevens to theanthrax held at USAMRIID “It is basically like looking for differences in identical twins.” Ari Fleischer had explained in December 2001, “The evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source. But again, this remains something that is not final nor totally conclusive yet.... I can’t give you the scientific reasons behind it, but you can assume they’re based on investigative and scientific means.... There’s a big difference between the source of it [the anthrax] and who sent it, because the two do not have to be tied.” Dr. Martin Hugh-Jones of Lousiana State University expressed skepticism that the FBI was up to the technical challenges: “When you can’t even find a refrigerator to keep the bug, that doesn’t say much for your chances of ever finding the one who mailed it.”

The Ames strain came from a cow in Texas in 1980. Texas veterinarian Mike Vickers sent a sample from a carcass in south Texas to the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab (”TVMDL”). A now-retired Dr. Howard Whitford, who isolated it from a carcass, forwarded it. When it arrived at Ft. Detrick, it bore a preprinted label from Agriculture Department’s National Veterinary Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. The mailing label resulted in the name “Ames” and some initial confusion among outside experts as to the history of the strain. It was forwarded pursuant to a request by Dr. Knudson of Ft. Detrick who had sought field strains of anthrax. Dr. Knudson at Ft. Detrick still had the correspondence from the time, to include even the mailing label. Published accounts say that it was just a mistaken use of the lab mailer and was sent from USAMRIID directly from Texas. In reality, based on what United States Postal Inspector, a member of the Amerithrax Task Force has said, perhaps it was first sent to Iowa. In contrast, a USDA spokesman has formally denied to me, after having the answer vetted by counterterrorism officials, having any indication that it was ever at Ames. He had previously noted that they may have had it without knowing it as the “Ames strain.”

A preliminary related question is: Did the Texas lab that first isolated it keep a sample? Dr. Howard Whitford, now retired to Montana, in response to a telephone inquiry, reports he may have sent it elsewhere. But as a general rule, most diagnostic labs have such a high a volume of samples — and they are the same for veterinary purposes — that samples would be routinely destroyed. The isolate likely was chosen to be sent to Ft. Detrick in the first place because the notes by the veterinarian, Dr. Vickers, indicate that it was particularly virulent, killing 30 cattle in a short time. He gave the example of one cow that had been healthy in the morning and then dead a few hours later.

As for the testing of lab isolates where the strain is known to be (and a copy of the strain can be obtained for testing), the genetic analysis of Dr. Keim, from Northern Arizona, had potentially promised to remove all doubt as to the source of the anthrax. Hope has long since faded according to press reports. A spokesman at the Institute for Genetic Research in Rockville, Md. provided the FBI with its first genetic road map for anthrax, has said that the differences identified by his team could not pinpoint the source. The Science article reporting the Keim and Reid genetic analysis does not address the testing done with respect to isolates from the vast majority of labs where Ames was known to be. 15 lab isolates remained to be tested.

The research is reported in Science. The analysis is directed to showing the similarity between various samples of Ames. The institutions known to have fully virulent B. anthracis Ames include USAMRIID, Naval Medical Research Center, Dugway in Utah, CDC, CAMR-Porton [in Great Britain], Battelle in Ohio, University of Northern Arizona (Keim), University of New Mexico, Louisiana State University (Hugh-Jones), and University of Scranton (DelVecchio). Alibek says Russia had Ames. Porton Down reportedly provided it to four unnamed researchers. (That, for example, is where Martin Hugh-Jones at LSU got it in the late 1990s). American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”) has written me to say that as a matter of policy, they will not address whether their patent repository (as distinguished from their online catalog) had virulent Ames prior to 9/11. They did not take the opportunity to deny it.

Anthrax that was destroyed at Iowa State University in early Fall 2001 had first been isolated as early as 1928. There were 100 or so vials of five or six strains.

By way of further background, there was no requirement to document transfers prior to 1997. One former USAMRIID-sponsored vaccine researcher at UMass, Dr. Curtis Thorne reports that samples used to be sent by ordinary mail. In 2001, his research on virulence of genetically altered anthrax strains was being built upon at the University of Texas (Houston) by Theresa Koehler under a grant from the CIA, the National Institutes of Health and others. The Ames strain, along with other strains, would be distributed not for nefarious purposes, but for veterinary and other research, to include use in challenging vaccines in development. “It’s critical to use a genetically complete strain of the [anthrax] bacterium in experiments involving virulence,” University of Texas (Houston) scientist Koehler has said.

“We just don’t know how many hands it went through before it got to the ultimate user,” explained Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and once a consultant to the government’s investigation. One expert, Dr. C.J. Peters, summarizes: “Knowing that this strain was originally isolated in the U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with where the weapon may have been prepared because, as I tried to make the point, these strains move around. A post doc in somebody’s laboratory could have taken this strain to another lab and it could have been taken overseas and it could have ended up absolutely anywhere. Tiny quantities of anthrax that you couldn’t see, that you couldn’t detect in an inventory can be used to propagate as much as you want. So that’s just not, in fact, very helpful.”

It’s naive to think that Al Qaeda could not have obtained Ames just because it tended to be in labs associated with the US military. As just one example, US Army Al Qaeda operative Sgt. Ali Mohammed accompanied Zawahiri in his travels in the US. (Ali Mohamed had been a major in the same unit of the Egyptian Army that produced Sadat’s assassin, Khaled Islambouli). Ali Al-Timimi was working in the building housing the Center for Biodefense funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”) and had access to the facilities at both the Center for Biodefense and the adjacent American Type Culture Collection. Michael Ray Stubbs was an HVAC system technician at Lawrence Livermore Lab with a high-level security clearance permitting access. That was where the effort to combat the perceived Bin Laden anthrax threat was launched in 1998. Aafia Siddiqui, who attended classes at a building with the virulent Vollum strain, later married a 9/11 plotter. The reality is that a lab technician, researcher, or other person similarly situated might simply have walked out of some lab that had it.

Among the documents found in Afghanistan in 2001, were letters and notes written in English by a scientist about his attempts to obtain an anthrax sample. One handwritten letter was on the letterhead of the Society for Applied Microbiology, the UK’s oldest microbiological society. The Society for Applied Microbiology of Bedford, UK, recognizes that “the development and exploitation of Applied Microbiology requires the maintenance and improvement of the microbiological resources in the UK, such as culture collections and other specialized facilities.”

Ft. Detrick sent its Ames strain to places like Porton Down in Great Britain and Suffield in Canada. Martin Hugh-Jones at Lousiana State University was sent the Ames strain in the late 1990s from Peter Turnbull at Porton Down. Jones says he traded anthrax strains like they were baseball cards. USAMRIID sent Ames to the lab at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff in March 2000. USAMRIID sent the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, an Albuquerque research institute, the strain in March 2001. Aberdeen Proving Ground built a Biolevel-3 facility sometime in 2001 and by 2002, according to one newspaper account, had 19 virulent strains of anthrax, including Ames.

Peter Turnbull, then at Porton Down, has said that Porton Down shared Ames with “very few” researchers whom he declined to name. Porton Down scientists previously acknowledged sharing the Ames strain with the agency’s public health branch, the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research (”CAMR”). CAMR officials also acknowledged distributing Ames to a small number of private researchers. Keim’s analysis was able to exclude at least one Porton Down isolate: The Washington Post in the spring of 2002 reported that “it is now indisputable the mailed microbes are direct descendants of the germs developed at Fort Detrick.” According the Post article, the sequencing has allowed Keim’s lab to rule out three sources of the anthrax, including one isolate from the British biodefense lab at Porton Down.

At Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. — where Al Qaeda sympathizer Aafia Siddiqui studied — research scientist Daniel Perlman ran into trouble with university administrators after conducting experiments after the anthrax attacks, upon being asked by a company to devise a diagnostic tool to detect anthrax contamination. He and a colleague revived a sample of anthrax from an old strain and created a nutrient on which pretty much only anthrax would thrive.” Upon hearing of the scientists’ study, Brandeis’ administration became alarmed that anthrax had been grown without university approval. It called in authorities, and it shut the biology building for a week to test for spores. Microbiologist Mahler advises me that she and Dr. Perlman used virulent Vollum, the strain used by the US Army before Ames.

In 2005, Dr. Michael V. Callahan, who worked for the Department of Defense at the time of his testimony, told the House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack of the Committee on Homeland Security: “the choice of the near-ubiquitous Ames strain, combined with the absence of forensic details in either the agent or the letters, indicate that the terrorist is scientifically informed, wary of detection and extremely dangerous.”

The strain referenced in documents on Khalid Mohammed’s computer seized in March 2003 was not Ames and perhaps not even virulent. It is reasonable to assume that the anthrax purchased from the North Korea supplier was not Ames (if that report of an early acquisition is credited). Thus, the question relevant to an Al Qaeda theory is what access to the US Army strain might have been accomplished by someone with 1) an organization supported by funds diverted from charities backing his play, and 2) a lot of educated and technically-trained Salafists who believe in his Islamist cause. Some possible sources include England, Canada, Russia (or former Soviet bloc country), the US Army, or a facility that obtained Ames from the US Army or other researcher who had it. Former UN Inspector Richard Spertzel thought that Iraq would likely have Ames — having first sought it in 1988 (and security being so lax at so many laboratories that had it). The strains Iraq included Sterne, A-3, two Vollum strains, and five other strains from the American Type Culture Collection. Russia reportedly had Ames and a senior Russian scientist was assisting Iraq. Dr. Alibek has explained that Russia had spies at Ft. Detrick, which explains why they tended to copy everything Ft. Detrick had done 6 months later. But it seems more likely that Al Qaeda simply got it directly from a western laboratory — given that Ayman had a trusted scientist attending conferences sponsored by Porton Down scheduling 10-day lab visit as early as 1999 and had the support of other scientists (such as GMU’s Al-Timimi) who did advanced research at US and UK universities. NBC once reported that the 16 labs known to have Ames had been winnowed to 4 that were a match.

Dr. Read, a scientist helping with the Amerithrax investigation in the DNA sequencing, long ago published the news that the anthrax was a 50/50% mixture of genotype 62 (Ames) and genotype 62 with an inversion on the plasmid. This would mean two distinct nucleic acids were detected in the sample. This means that some of the Ames had a segment of DNA that is inverted, or flipped, relative to the remainder of the plasmid. (No properly trained microbiologist would propagate or archive a mixture. Standard microbiological procedure calls for isolation of single colonies - i.e., single, unmixed cells and their clonal, unmixed progeny — at each step.) Inversions are not an uncommon class of mutational events, however. It would only be especially probative if it were a rare inversion and if samples were to be present among samples collected from laboratory archives. It is possible that the anthrax used is highly distinctive (pinpointing a single lab) and the authorities just don’t have that sample collected.

In March 2005, at a bioterrorism conference, French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin had claimed that al-Qaeda affiliates have produced biological and chemical weapons in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, which borders on Chechnya. The militants there had a connection and contact with Arab Chechen fighter Ibn Khattab. De Villepin told members of a bioterrorism conference in Lyons, France, that after the invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda cells moved to the Pankisi Gorge in order to continue their efforts. Russia claimed that the Pankisi Gorge in the former Soviet republic of Georgia was a haven for Chechen militants and international terrorists. Bin Laden’s confidante Ibn Khattab, who was killed by a poison letter in 2002, once said that wounded fighters and some international aid organizations were located there.

Chechnya lies 40 miles to the North. The Georgians say a six-man team of chemists was brewing poisons to be used on Westerners in Central Asia. Until late 2001, the Arab fighters reportedly were protected by high-ranking and corrupt officials and operated with impunity in the dense forests. The FSB has identified Islamic charities operating in Chechnya and elsewhere in the region to include Al-Haramain and Benevolence International Foundation historically associated with Al Qaeda’s aspiration to develop anthrax for use against US targets. The Benevolence International Foundation, a Chicago-based charity, provided financial support to the Chechen Islamists, according to a U.S. government affidavit filed in a Chicago court.

In September 2005, more than 60 deadly bacterial strains that were the legacy of the former Soviet Union’s biological weapons program were brought to the US from Baku, Azerbaijan as part of a joint program to combat bioterrorism. Copies of the strain were shipped aboard a U.S. military plane — on one of those not-so-secret secret missions announced the same week by the Associated Press. Arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware officials, analysis of the strains at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology began immediately. The shipment was pursuant to an agreement under which the US provided money for its security of the pathogens to prevent theft by bioterrorists. AP reported: “In exchange for the aid, Azerbaijan agreed to share copies of its strains with the United States, which could prove helpful in the event of future anthrax attacks similar to the mail contamination nearly four years ago in Washington and New York. Those cases remain unsolved.” Russia, in contrast, AP reported, “has declined to share its biological strains and has urged former Soviet republics not to share their pathogens.” Former Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek, however, has always said that Russia had Ames. Moreover, a former KGB spy master says that the Russians had a spy at Ft. Detrick who provided samples of all specimens by diplomatic pouch.

The strains were shipped in what looked like a large camping cooler — and it took a waiver by authorities to avoid going through the X-ray. An Army captain from the Walter Reed Institute of Research was waiting to bring the strains back to the United States. After the analysis by AFIP, the announcements by the FBI relating to Amerithrax, as reported by the press, began pointing to the fact that the Ames strain was more widely distributed than previously believed. In late October 2006, the Washington Post reported: “But the more the FBI investigated, the more ubiquitous the Ames strain seemed, appearing in labs around the world including nations of the former Soviet Union.” But the precise sourcing of the report is unclear. In May 2006, Scheuer also claimed that Ansar-al-Islam in Northern Iraq was experimenting with anthrax based on signals intelligence and human intelligence.

Thus, Zawahiri’s access to the Ames strain is still yet to be proved or disclosed, but there was no shortage of possibilities. Dr. Lorraine Hoffman, Iowa State University veterinary microbiologist, on the clearing up of the Ames strain confusion, summarized the issue of access to Ames nicely: “Whoever got it, got it from somewhere.”

I’m not sure a latex allergy would be so localized. Anyone with such an allergy, please advise.

I just did. I have a sensitivity to latex. I can use deproteinised latex gloves but not cheaper latex. The reaction is localized but I am at risk for a full blown systemic reaction if I do not watch exposure.

Very cool, armymarinemom!

TIB: Potential for Allergy to Natural Rubber Latex Gloves and ...
They can vary from localized redness and rash to nasal, sinus, and eye symptoms .....
www.osha.gov/dts/tib/tib_data/tib19990412.html

Latex Allergy
While the patient was in medical school, she noted occasional localized hives following use of latex gloves and, despite switching to “hypoallergenic” latex ...
www.aafp.org/afp/980101ap/reddy.html

Latex Allergy - Information for Health Professionals
localized skin rash or itching (generally on the hands); ...
www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/ indoors/food_safety/latex/latex.htm

Latex Allergies
It is a result of mechanical disruption of the skin due to the rubbing of gloves and accounts for the majority of latex-induced local skin rashes. ...
www.webmd.com/allergies/guide/latex-allergy-treatments -

According to published papers, the stuff that was mailed had a signature. All the anthrax in the letters was the same. They call it a mixture which goes against the grain of science. That has never been found anywhere else.

Now if you understand genetics, you can say that what was mailed was genotype 62 in a mixture of regular genotype 62 and a mutant with a 929 basepair inversion....(That is the signature) Now where to find this non-selective combination??

So far they have NOT been able to find this.

So the question remains: Did the perps steal the regular kind and then allow it to mutate while it was in their hands, or did they steal an already mutated batch, and the owner of that batch destroy the rest?

What we need to do is go to that place where it was all destroyed and start screening.

I haven't read the book, but it bothers me that in the interview, Randall says:

"...how many of them were aware that Mohammad Atta’s roommate had cutaneous anthrax...."

In fact, it's not known that Al Haznawi had anthrax. There has been some speculation to that effect -- educated speculation, by the emergency room doctor who treated him at the time, but after-the-fact speculation nonetheless.

When he overstates his case like this, it makes me doubt his accuracy in general.

Incidentally, around the time of the anthrax mailings, there were other cases of apparent spider bites and lung infections that some have speculated might have been undiagnosed anthrax, but, in the absence of proof, those people have not been placed on any list of victims of the anthrax mailings.

forensic analysis shows the anthrax was grown in the Northeastern United States

Would you be so kind as to provide some detail for that assertion. What means of qualitative and/or quantitative analysis were used?

Why did Atta look into getting a crop duster, do you think?

I bought that book.

There was some funny powder on the pages.

I believe it was based on the qualities that the water used in the media would leave. They know what each signature is.

When I worked in the lab, we used distilled water (ALWAYS!!!) when making the media. That was part of my job: replenish the stock of media. One would never use tap water.

So if it is true that you can trace where it was made by tracing the source of the water....then you have to say that the water used in the media was bottled somewhere in the N.E.

One — that’s a general answer to a different, but related, question. It doesn’t answer what method was used, nor what signature was the key, nor how strong a signature it was.

Two — dried spores, how much water do they have?

But with the collection destroyed, they can “never” prove that they didn’t have it.

I say they did. I was there. I know what I saw. And there are three Postal Inspection Agents who are keenly aware that I exist and are working on this.

I thought it would take time to find the guy in the vet school that mailed it out of there. It took me a year, but I now know where he is.

He is probably reading this right now!!

It has been 13 months since I found him, and I found him on the Internet thanks to a liberal university and another vet with an overgrown ego.

At that time, I said that it would take Special Ops a year to get into place and catch him with the goods.

Now the political situation in that country has deteriorated. Push has come to shove.

Notice that between WTC 93 and 9-11, there were no loud threats...we’re gonna get this done. Other than the one comment from Ranzi Yousef. (Casual remark while sitting on the airplane)

There has been no claim of responsibility....to me this really stands out....they are very happy to have us use vast resources to chase Hatfill. They will do it again, or at least try. The avenue may not be the mail. We sorta plugged that hole.

But there are still intricate political barriers to solving this.

And...am I right? Or did I see a duplicate theft?

BA