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Your “belief” that Geisbert, who was HEAD OF THE ELECTRON MICROSCOPY LAB at Detrick, is somehow a buffoon who had never looked at a bacteria sample before in his life under an electron microscope is only matched by your stupefying combination of ignorance and arrogance.

You are once again distorting things because your arguments cannot stand up to the actual facts. And you try to make it look like a personal attack, when what I'm saying is nothing of the kind.

#1. The title of Chapter 15 in my book is "To Err Is Human." To believe that Geisbert is incapable of making a mistake when the FACTS show he clearly made a mistake is stupid beyond belief.

#2. A couple weeks after that mistake was made, when things had become a bit more clear, General Parker went before a Congressional committee and talked about the mistakes they made:

On the afternoon of 15 October, USAMRIID received samples from the FBI and the Capitol Police, which included letters addressed to Senator Daschle. The initial observation of the material in one of the letters, performed under biosafety level 3 containment conditions, revealed a fine, light tan powder that was easily dispersed into the air. Preliminary laboratory results including polymerase chain reaction and fluorescent antibody stain indicated Bacillus anthracis spores. USAMRIID reported to the FBI on the afternoon of the 15th the preliminary results indicating that the material was anthrax spores. Further, one of our technicians/scientists made a statement that this material grossly had some attributes consistent with “weaponized” anthrax. On the evening of 15 October, USAMRIID completed the initial battery of confirmatory tests verifying positive results for anthrax. This additional information was relayed to the FBI that evening and was subsequently re-iterated to the FBI and others in an interagency conference call the morning of 16 October. At that time, USAMRIID revisited the term “weaponized” and decided the terms “professionally done” and “energetic” as more appropriate descriptions in lieu of any real familiarity with weaponized materials.

General Parker clearly states that the people at USAMRIID who looked at the Daschle spores on the 15th (Geisbert and Jahrling) had NO "real familiarity with weaponized materials." Therefore, they wouldn't know weaponized materials from something "professionally done."

And that somehow he managed to find the very same spores that he accidentally “fried” the next day at AFIP,

When you don't distort the facts, you get them wrong.

Geisbert did not go to AFIP until the 25th of October, TEN DAYS after he first examined the spores under a TEM.

The day before going to AFIP, on the 24th of October, Peter Jahrling went to a meeting at the White House. At that meeting, he showed around the images of the spores oozing "goop." The FBI asked that the spores be further examined for "signature" metals and elements. The day after that request by the FBI, Geisbert took spores killed with radiation to AFIP. He prepared the sample before leaving USAMRIID. Preston describes it this way:

Tom Geisbert drove his beat-up station wagon to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, in Northeast Washington, carrying a whiff of sterilized dry Daschle anthrax mounted on a special cassette."

The spores Geisbert took to AFIP were NOT the same spores he looked at under the TEM. You just endlessly get the facts WRONG. And when you aren't getting them wrong, you're distorting them.

No one saw any "goop" at AFIP. They used the EDX to look for things which were "OTHERWISE UNSEEN."

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

I keep forgetting to mention that there are images on the Internet of spores oozing "goop". Here's one of them:

Notice there is also "splatty stuff" in the background. And the stuff oozing out the the spore could be called "fried egg gunk." But, if you really want to know what "fried egg gunk" looks like, check out this picture:

I discussed these pictures with the photographer, and he did NOT use any silica on the spores or the bacteria. (There's a chapter about that discussion in my book.) He didn't know what the "goop" or "fried egg gunk" was. It's just something that appeared when he took really close-up shots (i.e., when the electron beam really heated up the spores and bacteria).

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

AFIP announced that silica was found and that it’s purpose was as a key component of the weapon’s aerosol properties.

On November 5, 2002 Alibek and Meselson published a letter in the Washington Post:

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxundermicroscope.html
Source: Washington Post, November 5, 2002.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Anthrax Under The Microscope

The Oct. 28 front-page article “FBI’s Theory on Anthrax Is Doubted” reported that silica enabled anthrax spores sent through the mail last fall to become airborne. The article quoted unnamed sources as saying that the spores had been formulated with a product called fumed silica, which, under an electron microscope, “would look like cotton balls strung together into strands that branch out in every direction.”

Both of us have examined electron micrographs of the material in the anthrax letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, but we saw no evidence of such balls or strands. In July 1980, the Journal of Bacteriology reported an “unexpectedly high concentration of silicon” to be naturally present in the outer spore coat of bacillus cereus, a close relative of bacillus anthracis. Is it possible that the unnamed sources misinterpreted silicon naturally concentrated in spore coats as something that was artificially added?

Until knowledgeable government investigators announce their results, statements attributed to anonymous sources or from persons who have not examined the actual evidence should be greeted with caution.

MATTHEW MESELSON

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

KEN ALIBEK

Center for Biodefense

George Mason University

Manassas

Then, around 1 week later (coincidence?), AFIP published a Newsletter that provided Meselson and Alibek PRECISELY what they asked for. “Knowledgeable government investigators” did indeed announce their results. The information cannot come from a more solid source.
However, Meselson and Alibek chose to ignore the announcement that they specifically demanded. It almost reminds me of the old saying - “be careful what you ask for - you might just get it”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attack
The AFIP lab deputy director, Florabel Mullick, said “This [silica] was a key component. Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize. Significantly, we noted the absence of aluminum with the silica. This combination had previously been found in anthrax produced by Iraq.”

Meselson not only failed to acknowledge the announcement - he even misled a reporter for C&E News several years later - stating that AFIP released a spectrum showing only a silicon peak. AFIP only released ONE spectrum - that spectrum is the silica reference spectrum they used to prove that the additive in the Daschle anthrax really was silica. This is standard EDX protocol - you measure a standard versus an unknown. The ratio of the Si and O peaks have to be the same - also the ENERGY of the Si peak is slightly shifted in silica - compared to Si in the pure element Si.
Later on it was revealed that as well as silica, polymerized glass was also present - but polymerized glass can have a EDX spectrum very similar to silica, and another technique like FTIR or Raman scattering would nail it down.

Beecher’s paper stands discredited today.