I think after they identified the particular type of anthrax strain involved...it came back to the front door of the US facility. Unless someone can show one of these guys giving the sample to the Muslim guys (which hasn’t been proved in any forum yet)...then we are stuck with a scenario which none of us like. It was our own people who did this to us.
I don’t yet agree on the entire scenario presented...and wait still for more details on Bruce Ivins. After the Hatfield episode...I am slow to believe in any quick solution. But the one fact that puzzles me is that that the brother hasn’t talked to this guy in years. I’ve seen cases like this...but it typically involved a total nutcase....which makes me wonder just how competent that Ivins was, and who vouched for his security clearance over the past decade. If he did represent a threat to co-workers...this is a insignificant indicator of a guy you simply cannot trust in such an environment.
Several years ago, at a US military contingency site...a Navy O-4 arrived and over a period of two months....was deemed a total nutcase. None of the officers would do anything about the guy. Finally, a senior AF enlisted guy started documenting the daily tirades and examples of this officer. After two weeks of collection...he handed it over to the local mental health clinic. They arrived the next day with two big guys and escorted the O-4 to a aircraft and he was flown to a stateside facility.
Most of us will just keep accepting deranged folks working with us, and never demanding action. At some point...we may all be fooling ourselves over our safety.
All that is required is that a sample leave the facility, and somehow get to the bad guys. Anthrax is pretty easy to smuggle, so espionage is a real possibility. The initial sample did not need to go to Al Queda, maybe to the Germans, to some “peace” group to Saddam to them.
We don't know what we don't know.
The Ames strain was distributed to many countries who in turn may have shared it with others in the interest of science; so the strain of virus isn’t that important. It is the way the spores were weaponized that is unique and only a few countries had the ability to do this (US, Russia, Iraq), so then we have to take into account the timeframe of the attacks and the attempt by the highjackers to rent/research cropdusters and the ability of Ivins to have opportunity to manufacture this weaponized version undetected in a Ft. Detrick lab while his co-workers came and went. Not saying it couldn’t happen but the timeframe of the 9/11 attacks, the letters’ written contents, and the report of a red-handed terrorist trying to get treatment at a pharmacy for what appeared to be cutaneous anthrax symptoms is just too great a coincidence to be quickly swept aside. This is what the FBI is attempting to do. Alot of scientists are quirky and combined with constant “inquiry” and tails from the FBI could push anyone over the edge- just ask Hatfill and Richard Jewell.