Posted on 02/15/2011 9:20:12 AM PST by Justice Department
A panel of prominent scientists is casting new doubt on scientific evidence that was a key part of the FBI's case against Bruce E. Ivins, the deceased Army scientist accused of carrying out the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.
The National Research Council, in a report issued Tuesday, questioned the link between a flask of anthrax bacteria in Ivins's lab at Fort Detrick, Md., and the anthrax-infested letters that killed five people and sickened 17 others.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ivins was the perfect defendant from a prosecutor’s point of view.
DHS is mad at the FBI. Look for more alphabet soup wars in the press.
Many years ago, I visited DC. There was a DC cop there. An Embassy had just been robbed and DC Police were told to bug out.
The cop said "The FBI probably spends more time shredding than they actually spend on solving a case."
Many years ago, I visited DC and met a DC cop at a bar. An Embassy had just been robbed and DC Police were told to bug out.
The cop said "The FBI probably spends more time shredding than they actually spend on solving a case."
“”The FBI probably spends more time shredding than they actually spend on solving a case.”
Like the evidence from OKC< if it didn’t fit the prosecution case , it was gone.
Apparently nobody saw anything at Geary Lake.
No lake too large to drain..........
“This shows what we’ve been saying all along: that it was all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever,’’ said Paul Kemp, a lawyer who represented Ivins in negotiations with federal prosecutors who were preparing to charge him before his death. Kemp called for congressional hearings into the investigation.”
“This shows what we’ve been saying all along: that it was all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever,’’ said Paul Kemp, a lawyer who represented Ivins in negotiations with federal prosecutors who were preparing to charge him before his death. Kemp called for congressional hearings into the investigation.”
Could be a case like that of the Atlanta Olympic bombing where Janet Reno's FBI falsely fingered the completely innocent Richard A. Jewell who died at 44.
FBI Faulted For Overstating Science In Anthrax Case
“A group of independent scientists convened by the National Academies of Sciences has concluded in a report released Tuesday that scientific evidence alone is not enough to prove that Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks that killed five people in 2001.”
Anthrax letters: Was Bruce Ivins hounded to death?
Published: April 22, 2010
FBI behind the anthrax curve
Published: March. 13, 2004
Public Briefing of National Research Council Review of Science in FBI’s Anthrax Case
Ping
ping
It is impossible to demonstrate that it all came out of one flask.
The case isn't over and the Islamofascists still have the stuff on hand.
Richard Jewell a former security guard who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, died Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007
Steven Hatfill - the FBI designated Hatfill as a "person of interest" in its anthrax letters probe. During their investigation, feds tailed him 24 hours a day, leaked his name to the media, and an FBI automobile accidentally ran over his foot. Hatfill later filed a lawsuit against John Ashcroft and the New York Times. The suit against the Times was dismissed, and the federal government settled with Hatfill by paying him $5.8 million in June 2008.
"Nothing in the academy report directly refutes the conclusion of what was by most estimates the most expensive and manpower-intensive criminal investigation in American history."
The panel did not totally disagree with any FBI findings, they just stated that the findings could not be scientifically conclusive because there was too much random chance involved. There was a possibility that the four mutations could have spontaneously appeared somewhere else, somewhere that the FBI knew nothing about. And they would not speculate on what the odds of such a happening were.
The panel didn't dispute that flask RMR-1029 was the parent of the attack spores, they said the FBI "overstated" their finding that flask RMR-1029 was the parent of the attack anthrax spores. The panel just said it couldn't be 100% scientifically proven.
They didn't look at any of the police work which determined Bruce Ivins to be the killer. They could only say that the science couldn't conclusively state anything.
It's scientists being scientists. If something cannot be conclusively proven, then it cannot be conclusively proven, even though the odds might be a quadrillion to one.
Several people in the audience asked the panel to make their findings clear to the public by using statistics or by giving the odds of some alternative explanation being correct, but the scientists just said they weren't statisticians, so that wasn't their job.
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 15, 2011
WASHINGTON A review of the Federal Bureau of Investigations scientific work on the investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001 concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist whom the investigators blamed for the attacks...
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