Before the genetic analysis, all we knew was that it was the Ames strain and could have come from any number of labs around the world. But apparently the cost of sequencing a particular sample has come down a thousand fold between 2002 and now (I read an estimate of $500K to $500). Of course, the whole conclusion turns on the validity of the new techniques.
Do you think this is true? Do we know this from any other source but the FBI?
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there, since such a determination seems reasonable as an extrapolation of known science (I haven't read the technique they used, but I could see it being just an issue of comparing some minor mutation from a coding error showing up in both samples and nowhere else).
So let's assume that it did come from that lab. Now the question becomes, who in that lab who had access to anthrax would be the most likely suspect? Your choices include:
1. The alpha-male larger-than-life white guy (Hatfill).
2. The 62 year old Catholic pro-life democrat (Ivins).
3. The son of an Iraqi diplomat who happens to also be a convicted agent of al Qaeda (al Timimi).
Just to make it a bit more interesting, lets add in the fact that the FBI has distorted some evidence and made a number of false statements about two of these suspects, while completely ignoring the third (since he has foreign ties to Iraq, he must be innocent, because we know this was domestic terrorism because we profiled it that way).
Anyone with access to the flask in question could have provided an anthrax sample to an outside third party who would then conduct the attack.
There were numerous people with access to that flask.
>>>And that makes it overwhelmingly likely it was an inside job by a disgruntled federal employee and not AQ terrorism.
Saddam Hussein’s son had access to that lab,
You are soooooo wrong!
The spores came from other spores that were like them. They were not magically dreamed up by Ivins.
Original collection of genotype 62 spores was in 1981 in southern Texas under a windmill from a Beefmaster heifer that died of anthrax. The sample was collected by a vet named Whitford. He sent them to the diagnostic lab at College Station Texas for identification. College Station then sent them to Iowa State University, probably their diagnostic lab but could have been the vet school there. Everyone knew that ISU had a historically collection of anthrax.
From there the ISU folks sent it to Ft. Detrick to a Dr. Knudson who had requested that any particularly virulent samples be forwarded to him. They still have the wrapper and it shows an Ames, Iowa postmark.
There was, in 1981 and through the mid 1990’s a professor named Cheville. He worked part time in the diagnostic lab and part time in the vet school. Did he see to it that the sample was added to the historical collection?
There was a building north of campus with a bio-level three set of air cleaners on the NW quadrant. That was the USDA testing facility. They studied anthrax and mastitis in that building.
The vet school was a huge set of buildings along I-80. Lots of different labs in there. The historically collection was in the vet school and the working collection was at the USDA facility.
I was a grad student at Iowa State from Jan 1989 to April 1991. On November 29, 1990, the woman who sat across from me in class received a package with her address, but the name of a Pakistani from Faisalabad in her mailbox. Well she opened it before she realized it was not intended for her.
All this made her late to class and she made a big presentation of why she was late.
Within 48 hours both she and her husband had pimple like sores, each had one, that DID NOT HURT.....SHE SAID....IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I LOOK AT IT.
The next Monday the physician at the student health center told her it was a spider or bug bite.
I viewed her sore on Thursday.....exactly one week after she opened the package. And by the way, she took the package to the Pakistani and that made her even later to class. He told her he was glad to get it and was expecting it.
Then on December 14, while sitting in the waiting room, (I was sick too but with a bad root canal) I saw the husbands sore. Same sore. Same drip, drip, drip that Judith Miller states the mailed anthrax caused the postal workers.
Yes, I have been interviewed. They are ignoring my testimony just like they are ignoring the witnesses who saw rockets going up to TWA 800.
Fellow Freepers. I am going to get this to someone who can write it all down. Only one of the three Postal Inspectors wanted to believe me. But they were under tremendous pressure to find someone to hang this on. Five days after the first guy died, Iowa State University destroyed this historical collection and all the records of who had access.