Posted on 08/07/2008 11:49:06 AM PDT by Shermy
WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001.
After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Lawyers for Dr. Ivins reasserted their late client’s innocence and criticized the government for presenting what they called “heaps of innuendo” that failed to link him directly to the crime and would never have to be tested in court. “It was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” said Paul F. Kemp, who represented the scientist for more than a year before his death on July 29 at age 62. “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”
The conflicting views of Dr. Ivins emerged in a day of emotional crosscurrents. At a morning memorial service at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., weeping Army scientists praised Dr. Ivins as a beloved colleague “known for his patience and enthusiasm for science,” as a written program put it. At the same time, at F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and bureau officials were explaining to survivors of the anthrax attacks and relatives of the five people who died why they believe Dr. Ivins was a mass murderer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
New York Times has the most circumspect article, twice noting the “100 scientists” angle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/us/19anthrax.html
F.B.I. Presents Anthrax Details but Says It Can’t Erase Doubts
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and NICHOLAS WADE
Published: August 18, 2008
...At a two-hour briefing for reporters, Dr. Majidi was joined by seven other leading scientists from inside and outside the bureau. They discussed in intricate detail the halting scientific path that led them from two main samples of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, to four genetic mutations unique to the samples, to 100 scientists in the United States who had access to that particular strain, and ultimately to Dr. Ivins...
The unusual presentation by the bureau on Monday was intended to quell those doubts, but some scientists remained skeptical. They said it would be months before they were able to evaluate fully the strength of the forensic evidence, and the new process used, in an independent setting...
But they said they believed that the anthrax was naturally fine enough to seep through the envelopes used in the attacks and that mail sorting equipment dispersed it into the air at several postal processing facilities. Two postal workers in Washington, D.C., were among those killed.
Investigators said a number of circumstantial factors, like Dr. Ivins’s unusual nighttime hours at his laboratory in the days before the anthrax letters were mailed, pointed to him as the killer. But the case relied largely on the scientific evidence that officials said had led them back to two one-liter flasks in his lab....
They also countered a principal scientific criticism of the investigation: that the spores had been weaponized with a special coating and therefore could not have been made by Dr. Ivins because he did not have the necessary equipment. This criticism is based on the presence of silica in the anthrax-laced attack letters. However, the F.B.I. scientists said that the silica had been imported naturally by the anthrax spores from their environment and that there was no evidence of weaponization...
...Eventually, 8 of the 1,000 strains were found to carry the four mutations, and 100 scientists had access to, or were associated with, the strains. All of these scientists were investigated. The “body of evidence,” officials said, pointed to Dr. Ivins...
The F.B.I. scientists said they had been able to reverse-engineer the production and properties of the attack spores, producing bacteria that flew into the air with ease. One person could have prepared the attack anthrax in three to seven days, with equipment available at Fort Detrick, a bureau expert said.
The F.B.I. had been unable to reproduce one feature of the attack spores — their high level of silica — but attributed that to natural variability.
Dr. Spertzel said the failure to reproduce the silica content “raises more questions.” But he added that if the F.B.I. was right and “an individual can make that kind of product, just by drying it, we are in deep trouble as a nation and a world.”....
At a two-hour briefing for reporters, Dr. Majidi was joined by seven other leading scientists from inside and outside the bureau. They discussed in intricate detail the halting scientific path that led them from two main samples of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, to four genetic mutations unique to the samples, to 100 scientists in the United States who had access to that particular strain, and ultimately to Dr. Ivins.
Over and over these articles say “silica,” not “silicon.”
So, where’s the study that has ever said it found “silica” in a spore?
BTW, big question — if the attack anthrax had naturally high level of “silicon”, did the FBI test the anthrax in Ivins’ flask to see if it also had the same?
I mean, I’m not a scientist, but such testing would seem to me essential.
“with equipment available at Fort Detrick, a bureau expert said.”
Big place.
Did Ivins himself have access to that equipment?
In a filing unsealed this Spring, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer explained that his client “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was a computational biologist who had worked in the building housing the “Center for Biodefense” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). He came to have an office 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy commander of USAMRIID. He was within 15 feet of the two men who had filed a patent in mid-March 2001 explaining how silica is used in the culture medium to overcome vander waals forces, thus permitting the concentration of the anthrax. It was supported by underlying biochemistry information not publicly available and there is no evidence that Bruce Ivins had access to the biochemistry information.
Dr. Al-Timimi’s counsel summarizes:
“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:
* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;
* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;
* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;
* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;
* was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]
* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;
* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;
* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and
* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***
The conversation with [Bin Laden’s sheik] Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. Al-Timimi called Dr. Hawali after the dinner with Kwon on September 16, 2001 and just two hours before he met with Kwon and Hassan for the last time on September 19, 2001.
[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.
[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]”
The letter by Al-Timimi’s counsel attached as an exhibit is equally meaty. An example of an additional detail is that in March 2002, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke with Dr. Al-Hawali (Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War”) about assisting Moussaoui in his defense.
The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor has pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill.
Who approved the destruction of the anthrax from Ivins flask after he had provided the sample?
In an e-mail forwarded by USAMRIID researcher Bruce Ivins to FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material.” “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same — his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!’”
FOX News reports:
“The FBI has narrowed its focus to ‘about four’ suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.
Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.”
Ali Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Charles Bailey. Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. While anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins was dwelling on the girls of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Ali Al-Timimi was preaching on the end of times and the inevitability of the clash of civlizations. He was in active contact with the sheik whose detention had been the express subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War. At GMU, Dr. Bailey would publish a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. The anthrax used in the anthrax mailings was traced to Bruce Ivins’ lab at USAMRIID, where Ivins, according to a former colleague, had done some work for DARPA that had included drying anthrax using a lyophilizer. Ali would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences. — the blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad. The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Al-Timimi. He was a graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high security clearance for work for the Navy in the late 1990s. The defense webpage reported that in 1996, for two months had worked for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card (who had been Secretary of Transportation in 1992-1993). As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the charity Islamic Assembly of North America.
The government claims that silica was detected and yet nowhere explains how it came to be present in the anthrax attack if not present in the anthrax found in Ivins’ flask. An unnamed FBI source reports that anthrax has a natural tendency to absorb silicon from its environment if it is present in the culture medium or water used to grow it. The government finds it notable that Ivins worked late on October 4 and October 5, even though it had just been announced that anthrax had been mailed. By all appearances, the investigators got the wrong man.
Pssst. We like it when government workers work late.
The FBI finally get’s it’s man. I wonder if this Ivins guy is also the one who designed the center fuel tank on flight 800? Ha! Two birds with one stone and we don’t even need one of those pesky trials. s/
LA Times version
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-anthrax19-2008aug19,0,7146651.story
WASHINGTON — Scientists behind the case against Bruce E. Ivins, who federal officials allege was solely responsible for the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, publicly described their work for the first time Monday and said the spores had originated from a flask linked by investigators to the deceased Army scientist.
In two briefings with reporters spanning nearly four hours, the scientists provided new and sometimes clarifying details about the extensive testing that led prosecutors to the brink of filing murder charges against Ivins, who died of a prescription-drug overdose July 29. The briefings were intended to more fully explain the evidence against Ivins and address concerns about the reliability of the government’s assertion that Ivins was the culprit.
...”I don’t think we’re ever going to put the suspicions to bed,” said Vahid Majidi, a chemist and assistant director of the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction unit. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll.” (Excuse me, but if anyone is spouting a “conspiracy theory” here, it’s the government)
Among the new details Monday was that, contrary to statements made over the years by other government officials, the mailed anthrax had not been coated with additives to “weaponize” it, or make it more deadly. Silicon was detected within the spores, said several of the eight scientists who met with reporters, but it occurred naturally, not as a result of weaponizing.
The silicon did not make the anthrax more buoyant when exposed to air, said James Burans, associate laboratory director of the National Bioforensic Analysis Center.
“The silicon would not have contributed to the fluid-like qualities of the anthrax powders,” he said. But loading the powder into envelopes, and their handling by the Postal Service, would have made it more electrostatically charged and difficult to contain, he said.
Burans also said that high-speed mail processing machinery could have crushed the powder more finely — evidenced by plumes that rose 30 feet above the floor at a postal annex in Washington.
On the other hand, he and the other scientists did not offer an exact explanation of how Ivins was able to prepare the fluffy, dry, powdered anthrax. Ivins, they said, could have used a lab-issue drier called a lyophylizer, but not necessarily.
...However it was done, said Majidi, “it would have been easy to make these samples at” Ft. Detrick, Md., home of the Army’s infectious diseases research facility.
...When the FBI sought scientific help in analyzing powder recovered from the mailings, it turned to USAMRIID — and to Ivins. Officials who addressed the media Monday acknowledged for the first time that Ivins had helped the FBI compose the “protocol” for early subpoenas that sought anthrax samples from USAMRIID scientists, including Ivins.
In February 2002, even before his subpoena arrived, Ivins submitted a sample that violated the protocol, the officials said. And because FBI officials concluded that the protocol violation would make Ivins’ sample inadmissible in court, the bureau destroyed it. In April 2002, Ivins gave the FBI a second sample, which did not match the RMR 1029 parent strain. (Um, I bet he didn’t violate the new protocol because he didn’t know it was established yet. So he sent the germs in the established form. And he sent the correct strain!)
...
Yeah, well, dead microbiologists tell no tales.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyID=78992
Scientists: FBI destroyed Ivins’ matching anthrax sample
Originally published August 19, 2008
By Justin M. Palk
News-Post Staff
WASHINGTON — Contrary to initial reports, Bruce Ivins did give investigators a sample of the anthrax the FBI has identified as the same type used in the attacks, but they destroyed it because it didn’t meet their standards for evidence.
FBI scientists released that information Monday in a briefing at FBI headquarters, where researchers who assisted in the investigation discussed the scientific process they used to track the anthrax used in the 2001 mailings back to Fort Detrick and Ivins.
...Ivins submitted two sets of samples to the FBI. The first, sent in February 2002, did not meet the standards the FBI had set for a library of samples it was building, said Vahid Majidi, assistant director of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The FBI destroyed that sample and Ivins submitted another set in April 2002.
Ivins’ first sample would have been scientifically valid but difficult to use as evidence in court because it was gathered in a different manner than the other samples in the library, said an FBI scientist who refused to identify himself at the briefing.
...In 2006, investigators went to Dr. Paul Keim, a Northern Arizona University biology professor who had been helping them identify the anthrax, and Keim gave them duplicates of all the anthrax samples, the unnamed FBI scientist said. Keim had kept his copy of Ivins’ February 2002 sample, and testing identified it as RMR-1029.
Chris Hassell, head of the FBI laboratory, said he couldn’t explain why Ivins would submit one sample of anthrax matching RMR-1029, then later submit a sample that did not match.
...Out of 1,070 samples gathered, eight matched the powder used in the mailings, Majidi said. All of them were from RMR-1029 or its descendant.
More than 100 people at two labs — USAMRIID and a lab officials refused to identify — had access to RMR-1029, Majidi said. Officials did not explain how they eliminated those other people from their investigation.
Anthrax suspect’s attorney chides FBI’s ‘evolving’ case
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1462645
WASHINGTON - While the FBI and federal prosecutors are confident the case against the sole suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks would have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, Bruce Ivins’ attorney says the government is not providing enough information to allow the public to judge for itself.
Attorney Paul Kemp tells WTOP the FBI and prosecutors are tweaking the case against Ivins in a way that wouldn’t be allowed in court.
“They get to control the flow of information and are doing so selectively and speculatively in a way that they’re trying to implicate Dr. Ivins.”
...Given the government’s ability to control evidence, Kemp doesn’t think Ivins will ever be judged fairly in the court of public opinion.
“I bet if you asked Steven Hatfill in 2002, ‘Is there any hope that your name will be restored?’ He would have said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Not when you have all the might and weight and finances of the federal government.’ If you asked him today, he’d say ‘My reputation still has not been restored, no matter what sum of money they agreed to pay me. My reputation is worth far more than any dollar amount that anybody could place on it.’ So, I’m not optimistic.”
...At times, the officials and scientists contradicted themselves, even down to the number of flasks containing the anthrax Ivins had. They eventually agreed it was one one-liter triangular flask capped with cheesecloth that linked Ivins to the attacks.
“Every day you can see this case evolving and it goes from, ‘He’s the only person who had access to the anthrax’ — to — ‘More than a 100 people had it, but we’re convinced he is the one that did it.’”
Are these people nuts!
There are 800,000 postal workers in the first line of being "survivors of the attacks".
The only "survivors" they've talked to were family members of those who actually contracted anthrax, or those who survived that contraction.
Virtually none of the people who were simply "exposed" were invited for special briefings or interviews. None of the downstream people who could have been, and probably were exposed, were interviewed.
The FBI is so full of it in this case.
I am absolutely astounded that the very first piece of HARD EVIDENCE the FBI got its hands on has been totally ignored. Instead they've come up with the strangest BullSh|+ explanations.
They're hiding something!
I don't believe them for a second, and I guarantee that they'll never demonstrate it to anyone.
How stupid does Majidi think we are?
“It’s like cooking a stew in your kitchen. It’s impossible to get the exact same taste twice in a row simply because of the variations of the material you add,” he said.
I mean - does he believe the element silicon sometimes spontaneously appears out of nowhere in the spore broth - perhaps from some nuclear reaction (I should point out the obvious - elements can only be created in nuclear reactions)?? Every component in the standard Detrick spore growth can be assayed for silicon content - is there any silicon there, yes or no? If so, how much? Could any quantities detected explain the amounts in the attack powders? It’s all just book-keeping - how many moles of silicon are there in the preparation materials - how many in the spore powder - analytical chemistry 101.
This gets worse - this needs to be written about. Any analytical chemist would immediately recognize Majidi is casting a fairytale of breathtaking audacity.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93728829&ft=1&f=1003
FBI Details Science Tying Ivins To Anthrax Mailings
by David Kestenbaum
Listen Now [3 min 56 sec] add to playlist
In Depth
Aug. 8, 2008Ivins’ Lawyer Rebuts DOJ Anthrax Allegations
Morning Edition, August 19, 2008 · Ever since its suspect in the anthrax attacks committed suicide, the FBI has been under pressure to convince the public and the scientific community that Army scientist Bruce Ivins really was behind the 2001 attacks.
The case against Ivins rests in part on a complex genetic technique. Scientists have been asking for more particulars so they can judge for themselves, and Monday, the FBI offered more details on the science it used.
FBI scientists spent more than two hours with reporters, doing their best to explain how DNA had led them to a vial of anthrax spores in Ivins’ lab. The story that emerged is this: Early on, investigators noticed something unusual about the spores sent through the mail — they were not all identical.
“The spore preparations in the envelope had a specific phenotypic variation. That means spores that looked physically different than neighbors,” said Vahid Majidi, assistant director of the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction directorate.
Tracing The Source
Majidi said it was like a bowl of blue M&Ms that had mixed in it a few that were brown or green or red. The fact that those were in there was like a fingerprint — potentially a way to trace the anthrax in the letters back to its source.
Investigators had collected more than 1,000 samples from labs in the United States and abroad. When they tested them, eight had the genetic fingerprint. The other samples didn’t match at all.
“What genetics allowed us to do was to determine that there are eight samples out there that exactly match the letters,” Majidi said. The investigations led them to RMR-1029, the name of a flask in Ivins’ custody, Majidi said.
The sample had been shared with other researchers, though, and investigators say at least one of the matching samples was at a different institution entirely. About 100 people had access to those spores, Majidi said.
Ivins’ lawyer said this shows the FBI’s case is weak, that scores of people had access to the same mixture of spores. Majidi responded that the FBI looked at those 100 people and ruled out everybody but Ivins.
‘Like Cooking A Stew’
Questions have also been raised about whether Ivins had the necessary tools in his lab to make the finely powdered spores found in some of the letters. Majidi says the answer is yes. Investigators were able to do it. The FBI says it would take one person working for three to seven days.
The only thing they were not able to reproduce was a silicon compound that showed up inside the spores used in the attacks. But Majidi said that isn’t surprising; it can be hard to duplicate someone’s recipe.
“It’s like cooking a stew in your kitchen. It’s impossible to get the exact same taste twice in a row simply because of the variations of the material you add,” he said.
Addressing Scientists’ Questions
Majidi said the FBI’s case is “very strong.” But when the FBI first began talking about the case, scientists had a lot of questions. One group even put out a list of points it wanted clarified.
Thomas Inglesby is deputy director of that group — the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“I have a lot of confidence in the abilities of the FBI, and they are proceeding earnestly in disclosing information and should be commended for that,” Inglesby said. “But given a case of this importance to the country, and given that this kind of science has never been used in a court of law before, it’s going to be important to present this scientific evidence to an independent expert review.”
Inglesby was not at the briefing Monday. But he says it sounds like some of his questions have been answered. He says the FBI should publish its work in a scientific journal. The FBI says it has done some of that already and more papers are in the works.
Saddam Hussein had available to him half a dozen multi-position letter mail sorting machines to test what happens. I think, in fact, any potential terrorist with the means would want to know what those machines can do to letters with anthrax or other bio-chemical warfare agents if ony to see how long they'd last in the system.
Saddam got the machines from the Kuwait postal system. I provided a briefing to Kuwait postal officials and employees regarding the "way" these machines impacted expected mail handling several years before they bought the machines.
I somehow doubt Dr. Ivins had the slightest idea of what would happen. On the other hand, all the envelopes were totally covered, end to end, with package sealing tape as if the attacker(s) knew what postal processing machinery would do to them ~
The FBI is keeping something very securet or they're all dumb as boards and we need a NEW federal investigative agency to replace them.
The only thing they were not able to reproduce was a silicon compound that showed up inside the spores used in the attacks.
So they DIDN'T truly reverse engineer the powder after all, and that part of the story was totally misleading.
Did the FBI's product ever fly like an eagle, or was it a big flock of penguins? Enquiring minds want to know.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/17245288/detail.html?rss=dc&psp=news
Ivins’ Attorney To Be Interviewed In Congressional Probe
POSTED: 3:15 pm EDT August 20, 2008
UPDATED: 6:11 pm EDT August 20, 2008
Committees in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are planning hearings on the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax mailings that killed five people in 2001.
Staff members for the congressional committees will begin pre-interviewing potential witnesses next week.
Among the people who will be questioned is the lawyer representing Dr. Bruce Ivins, the Fort Detrick, Md., scientist identified as the government’s top suspect.
...
vins’ attorney Paul Kemp told News4 by phone that he anticipates a lot of questions when he is interviewed about the FBI’s handling of the investigation.
“We’re being asked to accept their assertions without anything linking him to the mailings, linking him to the envelopes, linking him to going to the place where they have determined the letters appear to have been mailed from — namely a letter box in Princeton, N.J.,” Kemp said.
Kemp said more than 100 people had access to the anthrax strain in Ivins’ lab at Fort Detrick. The FBI said it interviewed those people and cleared everybody but Ivins. Kemp said his client wasn’t responsible for the anthrax attacks. He also questioned investigators’ methods.
“Handling of physical evidence is a huge issue that I’m certain they’re going to look into since they have now admitted that they’ve destroyed slides from the beaker in question that were supplied by Dr. Ivins back in February 2002,” Kemp said.
The FBI admitted earlier this week that FBI scientists had — but destroyed — the unique strain of anthrax used in the deadly 2001 attacks that years later would lead them to Ivins.
It was “slides”
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/anthrax/news/aug2008anthrax.html
FBI says it easily replicated anthrax used in attacks
Robert Roos * News Editor
Aug 20, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – The FBI, seeking to counter scientific skepticism on its investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, insisted this week that the anthrax powder could have been made by one person and contained no “intentional additives” to make it more dispersible.
...But in a statement presented at this week’s news conference, Majidi said, “There were no intentional additives combined with the Bacillus anthracis spores to make them any more dispersible.”” (Then, what are the accidental additives?)
According to a New York Times report on the press conference, FBI officials said investigators determined that the making of the powder was a relatively simple process of cleaning and drying anthrax spores. “FBI scientists easily reproduced it with gear that Ivins regularly used,” the article stated. (FBI scientists? What about Dugway?)
“”However, silicon was found in the mailed anthrax (as reported previously), and FBI officials conceded that the duplicate powder they made did not match the letter anthrax in that respect, according to reports by the Times and the Washington Post. FBI scientists said they concluded that the high level of silicon occurred naturally in the anthrax used in the attacks, the Times reported.””
(This is the biggest stumper for me. If the silicon was “natural”, it would be in the spores before they were processed. One theory, the silicon was “natural” to the specific substrain of Ames used in the attacks, but not in the substrain of Ames used in the manufacture. Or they used a different strain altogether that did not have silicon. This argument is premised that they did the processing in the years before the specific substrain of attack anthrax was discovered. But if this is the case, a bigger question arises... Did they test a sample from the jar seized at Detrick they claim was the parent? Did it show no silicon? If so, doesn’t this mean the silicon in the attack anthrax was imbued after removal from the flask? And if no such test was made, why not?)
The article is from CIDRAP
“Every component in the standard Detrick spore growth can be assayed for silicon content - is there any silicon there, yes or no? If so, how much?”
I see you have my thoughts, but more intelligently stated.
Do you believe the FBI did not test the stocks of anthrax at Detrick for silicon, including the culprit strain?
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