Yes for #110.
And pay special attention to the link in point #3 in Nass’s post!
(Spertzel)
(I don’t think this important WSJ article has been posted)
Discussion of Douglas J. Beecher 2006 Anthrax paper
August 12, 2008
The suicide of Bruce Ivins and press conference of Jeffrey Taylor pinning the 2001 anthrax attacks on Ivins from Ft. Detrick Md including the letters to Daschle and Leahy has brought up issues relating to whether the original anthrax in the Senate letters was weaponized or required special procedures to make not available to Ivins.
The issues are
Was the anthrax in the Senate letters of 1 trillion spores per gram?
Is that purity achievable by Ivins with the equipment he had?
Was the Senate anthrax also weaponized in additional ways beyond purity?
This could include silica aditives.
This could include some means to make it more “energetic” i.e. to repel instead of clump.
Did the aerosolization observed in the Senate letters require some anti-clumping mechanism beyond just purity?
The Beecher FBI article claimed no special powder was needed beyond purification to 1 trillion spores per gram. It also claimed this was not itself such a great feat.
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/72/8/5304
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, August 2006, p. 5304-5310, Vol. 72, No. 8
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.00940-06
Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores{dagger}
Douglas J. Beecher*
FBI Laboratory, Hazardous Materials Response Unit, 2501 Investigation Parkway, Quantico, Virginia 22135
Received 20 April 2006/ Accepted 22 May 2006
The article is about the search of the Senate letters, mail system, buildings, etc. for anthrax. Its not about lab science on anthrax and its properties. “To Identify Mail ” is the purpose of the analysis and what he did.
Note from part of the abstract:
The discovery of a letter intentionally filled with dried Bacillus anthracis spores in the office of a United States senator prompted the collection and quarantine of all mail in congressional buildings. This mail was subsequently searched for additional intentionally contaminated letters.
Conclusion
This paper shows that there was successful integration of microbiological methodology with law enforcement and hazmat objectives and procedures.
It was not a paper about lab science by the FBI about the properties of producing an aerosol of anthrax or the aerosol produced at the Senate.
Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents (6). However, a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone (3, 6, 12; J. Kelly, Washington Times, 21 October 2003; G. Gugliotta and G. Matsumoto, The Washington Post, 28 October 2002). 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.
No lab results from analyzing the spores was given, nor does it appear it happened for this paper. Its not a secret lab analysis with limited disclosure. Its a paper about collecting the letters that were contaminated.
He now argues for his opinion or hypothesis by citing the following
Purification of spores may exacerbate their dissemination to some extent by removing adhesive contaminants and maximizing the spore concentration. However, even in a crude state, dried microbial agents have long been considered especially hazardous. Experiments mimicking laboratory accidents have demonstrated that simply breaking vials of lyophilized bacterial cultures creates concentrated and persistent aerosols (4, 8). The potential for propagating disease with crude lyophilized material is illustrated by an outbreak of 24 cases of Venezuelan equine encephalitis throughout three floors of a Moscow virology institute. These infections were caused when vials containing dried infected mouse brain were accidentally broken on a stairwell landing and were spread by air currents and foot traffic (11).
This is his basis for the claim of no weaponization in the Senate anthrax.
He claims the purification in the Senate letters was nothing special. This also is pure assertion.
Particles aerosolized from purified powdered spores consist either of individual spores or aggregates of individual spores. The great majority of particles are generally the smallest particles in the population (2), which are single spores in spore powders. This is reflected in the count distribution, which should have a mode of roughly 1 to 2 µm. This size distribution phenomenon has practical safety implications. In essence, even if most of a spore powder is bound in relatively few large particles, some fraction is composed of particles that are precisely in the size range that is most hazardous for transmission of disease by inhalation. For perspective, a crudely ground preparation consisting of only 1 to 10% loose individual spores by mass would contain 1010 to 1011 loose individual spores in 1 g, considering that moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 1012 spores per g (1).
“moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 1012 spores per g ” i.e. 1 trillion spores per gram. Others describe this as close to the theoretical maximum and difficult to obtain. The former head of the US anthrax weapons program was expecting 1/20th of this purity.
We have the following questions
Could Ivins have prepared 1 trillion spores per gram pure anthrax from liquid anthrax in his lab?
Could he have escaped detection?
Is there a way to tell if the anthrax used in the letters came from anthrax powder prepared at Dugway instead of the Ivins beaker by methods used at Ft. Detrick?
Do they really know the Senate anthrax came from the Ivins flask at Ft. Detrick?
Based on what?
Is anthrax of purity 1 trillion spores per gram pure enough to aerosol as much as the Senate anthrax did without any anti-clumping means used in addition?
Wasn’t this approach what was tried and failed earlier?
==
http://cryptome.org/anthrax-powder.htm
In December 2002, the FBI decided to test whether a high-grade anthrax powder resembling the one mailed to the Senate could be made on a small budget, and without silica. To do this job, the bureau called upon Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground, a desolate Army test range in southwestern Utah. By February 2003, the scientists at Dugway had finished their work. According to military sources with firsthand knowledge of this effort, the resulting powder “flew like penguins.” The experiment had failed. (Penguins can’t fly.)
Military sources say that Dugway washed and centrifuged the material four times to create a pure spore preparation, then dried it by solvent extraction and azeotropic distillation —a process developed by the U.S. Chemical Corps at Fort Detrick in the late 1950s. It is not a simple method, but someone familiar with it might be able to jury-rig a lab to get the job done. As recently as 1996, Bill Patrick says he taught scientists at Dugway how to do this.
The FBI-Dugway effort produced a coarse powder. The spores—some dried under an infrared lamp and the others airdried —stuck together in little cakes, according to military sources, and then were sieved through “a fine steel mesh.” The resulting powder was placed into test tubes. When FBI officials arrived at Dugway to examine the results, a Dugway scientist shook one of the tubes. Unlike the electrostatically charged Senate anthrax spores that floated freely, the Dugway spores fell to the bottom of the test tube and stayed there. “That tells you the particles were too big,” says Spertzel. “It confirms what I’ve been saying all along: To make a good powder, you need an additive.”
==
Mr. Patrick postulated that the concentration of anthrax would be 50 billion spores per gram. ”This assumes a dried powder of moderate ability to generate into an aerosol when the envelope is opened,” he wrote.
In his report, Mr. Patrick said the American program had achieved a concentration of one trillion spores per gram — what scientists today say is near the theoretical limit of how many of the microscopic spheres can be packed into a tiny space.
Today, no terrorist or scientific maverick is known to have published anything that comes close to describing how to make concentrated anthrax powders. Timothy W. Tobiason, a habitué of gun shows who sells a self-published cookbook on how to make germ weapons, including ”mail delivered” anthrax, sketches out only the most rudimentary steps.
Experts judge Mr. Tobiason’s recipes as flawed in spots and at best capable of producing only low-quality anthrax. His book deals mostly with the production of wet anthrax, though it does suggest a way to grind clusters of dried anthrax into microscopic pieces, which can settle into the lungs.
It is unclear if any foreign nation has achieved high anthrax concentrations. The United States suspects that more than a dozen countries are clandestinely studying biological weapons, with anthrax among the top agents.
Ken Alibek, a former top official in the Soviet germ weapons program who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, a consulting company in Manassas, Va., said that it was routinely possible to create dry anthrax that contained 100 billion spores per gram and that, with some effort, 500 billion was possible.
Thus the US and Soviet expert disagree with the FBI article that 1 trillion spores per gram is easy.
“considering that moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 10 to the 12 spores per g” i.e. 1 trillion per gram.
Moderately purified anthrax is 1 trillion per gram according to FBI guy. But according to others, 1 trillion per gram is “what scientists today say is near the theoretical limit of how many of the microscopic spheres can be packed into a tiny space.” So the FBI guy says 1 trillion per gram is moderately purified. The scientists say that 1 trillion per gram is almost theoretical purity, i.e. its not moderately pure, its almost absolutely pure.
This casts doubt on the FBI article from 2006 on the claims it makes of this type. Its really an article about the decontamination process and letter identification process. Its not an article about analyzing the spores. Its really about finding the Leahy letter unopened. The Daschle letter was opened by staff. The Leahy letter was found unopened by the FBI. The Beecher article is not about analyzing spores in the Senate letters or the science of anthrax. The Beecher letter would better be titled, my finding the unopened Leahy letter out of many letters unopened after the Daschle letter was opened and the Senate office building shut down.
However, it appears the FBI took these statements made off hand in the report on the discovery of the unopened Leahy letter as being based on some secret lab experiments on anthrax done by the FBI. There was no such basis for this Beecher paper. It was about his discovery of the unopened Leahy letter.
The title says it all:
Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores{dagger}
This is a paper about identifying mail contaminated with anthrax and his big career discovery of the Leahy letter unopened. Leahy’s staff didn’t discover the Leahy letter, Beecher and the FBI did.