"The FBI said Berry's homes and the summer house of his parents were searched by FBI agents investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others."
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 ...
"The FBI said Berry's homes and the summer house of his parents were searched by FBI agents investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others."
They IGNORED MY CLUE.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't pay me the REWARD MONEY.
I'm waiting for them to contact me ~ but apparently they are not at all confident of their final decision.
Yeah, the FBI said it was "definite" and they should have said it was "nearly definite."
The FBI didn't calculate the ODDS that all four mutations could have spontaneously appeared somewhere else. They just determined that the odds were extremely tiny.
To scientists, that's not good enough. They think like True Believers and Conspiracy theorists: If it isn't an absolute certainty, then anything is possible.
That may be true, but it is of no help in determining what actually happened.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2133539/posts
Ivins kept the one-liter flask of RMR-1029, but some 300 people within the Institute also had access to the flask, according to those familiar with operations there. Before 1999, the preparation was stored in a separate containment area, about 100 yards from the main building. At that time, “access was more vague, because the flask wasn’t under Ivins’ direct custodial control,” Andrews says.
Ivins also shared samples of RMR-1029 with researchers at other facilities.
“Another lab might take a couple of milliliters of that spore preparation and create a daughter preparation,” Andrews says. “How many [samples] Ivins gave out I have no idea, but he did it through official channels, and there is a chain of custody records that indicates which labs got RMR-1029 and how much of the material they got.”
It was those “daughter preps” that ultimately led Fraser-Liggett to Ivins’ flask. Her team at the Institute for Genomic Research began DNA sequencing of the spores in the four anthrax-loaded letters recovered after the 2001 attacks. The team spent two years analyzing 20 different samples of B. anthracis to create a group of tests capable of genetically fingering the distinctive variety of anthrax found in the letters.
They screened nearly 1,000 samples of B. anthracis collected from labs around the world. “The results identified only eight samples that contained all four of the genetic mutations,” she says. “Each of those could be traced back to this one flask at USARMRIID-RMR-1029.”
“I have complete confidence in the accuracy of our data,” Fraser-Liggett says, but she concedes it fails to prove Ivins is guilty.
The reward was for "information leading to the arrest and conviction" of the anthrax mailer.
A "clue" is unlikely to fit that requirement unless it's a "smoking gun" clue, like movies of Ivins mailing the letters.
And, technically, since Ivins was never convicted, there can be no reward - even if you had movies of him mailing the letters. But, some lawyer might take your case on a contingency basis.
CLUE?
So, I contacted FBI through the internet website set up to collect such information AND I talked to several different Postal Inspectors about the matter, and included written material.
What that meant was the individual who addressed the anthrax letters in a rather peculiar format actually looked at that publication as his guide.
Believe it or not the three addresses recovered were in an absolutely unique structure ~ so once you find the publication (not sold on news stands) you simply go to the publisher and find the distribution list.
You then match that distribution list against persons with some professional relationship with anthrax (production or research) and you know where to start.
FBI's approach took them an additional 7 years to get to Dr. Ivins. My clue, if even looked at, would have cut that 7 years out of the process to get them to the same dead end, but 7 years earlier!
At that time witnesses memories would have been fresher, custody records more complete, casual conversations with other potential targets still remembered, etc.
Since I am sure the FBI has not yet gotten the perp I can hold out for getting the reward once they make an arrest. There are at least 2 other FREEPERS who have targeted others who may well have had access to the exact same anthrax source when it had the 4 mutations they believed they found.
I don't believe FBI thinks they've solved the case.
I certainly wouldn't be writing any book about how Ivins is the definitive culprit.
I certainly wouldn't be writing any book about how Ivins is the definitive culprit.
You might not, but I certainly would.
In June of 2000, over a year before the anthrax attacks, Ivins planned to murder a former co-worker just because she went back to medical school. He couldn't cope with her leaving his lab.
That's the kind of nut that Ivins was. The anthrax attacks were just part of a long series of criminal acts - including burglaries and harassment of other women he knew.
And he did all of his crimes while working for the government.
Following National Academy Report, Holt Calls for Congressional Anthrax Commission
Tuesday, 15 February 2011 16:44
“NAS Report Makes Clear There Are Still Questions to be Answered and Still Lessons to be Learned”
(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today is reintroducing the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act, legislation that would establish a Congressional commission to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks and the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks. Holt is introducing the bill on the same day that the National Academy of Sciences issued its report raising questions about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) scientific conclusions in the “Amerithrax” case. He first introduced the legislation in September 2008.
“The NAS report makes clear there are still questions to be answered and still lessons to be learned about the FBI’s investigation into the attacks,” Holt said. “It would take a credulous person to believe the circumstantial evidence that the FBI used to draw its conclusions with such certainty. The FBI has not proven to me that this is an open and shut case. We still badly need a 9/11-style commission to determine how the attacks happened and whether we learned the lessons to prepare for another attack.”
The 11-member bipartisan commission would investigate the attacks, assess the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks, and make recommendations to the President and Congress on how the country can best prevent or respond to a future bioterror attack. Just as the 9/11 Commission looked not only at the attacks of that morning, but also at recommended changes in the structure of government agencies, screening methods, and Congressional oversight, an anthrax commission would look not only at the attacks, but also measures for prevention, detection, and investigation of any future bio-terrorism.
The commission would consider scientific, technical evidence as well as classified evidence the NAS did not examine.
The 2001 attacks evidently originated from a postal box in Holt’s Central New Jersey congressional district, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents. Holt has consistently raised questions about the federal investigation into the attacks.
“Too many questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government’s bungled response to the attacks,” Holt said. “A high level commission, like the 9/11 Commission, would be a start-to-finish examination of the many outstanding questions, and it would help American families know that the government is prepared to protect them and their children from future bioterrorism attacks.”
Following National Academy Report, Holt Calls for Congressional Anthrax Commission
Tuesday, 15 February 2011 16:44
“NAS Report Makes Clear There Are Still Questions to be Answered and Still Lessons to be Learned”
(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today is reintroducing the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act, legislation that would establish a Congressional commission to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks and the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks. Holt is introducing the bill on the same day that the National Academy of Sciences issued its report raising questions about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) scientific conclusions in the “Amerithrax” case. He first introduced the legislation in September 2008.
“The NAS report makes clear there are still questions to be answered and still lessons to be learned about the FBI’s investigation into the attacks,” Holt said. “It would take a credulous person to believe the circumstantial evidence that the FBI used to draw its conclusions with such certainty. The FBI has not proven to me that this is an open and shut case. We still badly need a 9/11-style commission to determine how the attacks happened and whether we learned the lessons to prepare for another attack.”
The 11-member bipartisan commission would investigate the attacks, assess the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks, and make recommendations to the President and Congress on how the country can best prevent or respond to a future bioterror attack. Just as the 9/11 Commission looked not only at the attacks of that morning, but also at recommended changes in the structure of government agencies, screening methods, and Congressional oversight, an anthrax commission would look not only at the attacks, but also measures for prevention, detection, and investigation of any future bio-terrorism.
The commission would consider scientific, technical evidence as well as classified evidence the NAS did not examine.
The 2001 attacks evidently originated from a postal box in Holt’s Central New Jersey congressional district, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents. Holt has consistently raised questions about the federal investigation into the attacks.
“Too many questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government’s bungled response to the attacks,” Holt said. “A high level commission, like the 9/11 Commission, would be a start-to-finish examination of the many outstanding questions, and it would help American families know that the government is prepared to protect them and their children from future bioterrorism attacks.”
ping
The GAO will be reviewing the case, too. They have been working on it for some time. They were just waiting for the NAS to finish before they began working on their conclusions.
CIDRAP news has an article titled "Anthrax expert says NRC report supports FBI" which contains these tidbits of information:
The National Research Council's (NRC's) report on the FBI's anthrax investigation amounts to a general endorsement of the agency's scientific approach, even though the NRC found that the purely scientific evidence on the source of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was not conclusive, a leading anthrax expert said today.
"I actually have been telling people this is a qualified endorsement of the science in the [FBI] investigation," Paul S. Keim, PhD, a Northern Arizona University microbiologist who helped the FBI investigate the anthrax attacks, told CIDRAP News. ......
Keim said the NRC panel is not saying the FBI was wrong, only that the scientific evidence wasn't as strong as the agency suggested. ....
Keim—who described himself as a friend of Ivins' who was surprised when the probe led to him—noted that some media headlines have said the NRC committee doubts the link to Ivins. "The committee isn't saying that. . . . All the major conclusions that the FBI came to, the committee said, 'Yeah, the evidence is consistent with that.'"
Sen. Leahy says 2001 anthrax case shouldn’t be closed
by Paul Tinder on February 17, 2011
In a reflection last month on his own experience as a would-be target of an assassin, Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said that he has never accepted the FBI’s decision to close the anthrax-laced letter case from 2001.
Leahy was one of the targets of the anthrax letters sent to him and then-Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) which caused the deaths of five people and caused 17 others to fall ill. Leahy’s comments come in light of the recent National Research Council’s report questioning the FBI’s allegation that Fort Detrick scientist Bruce E. Ivins was the culprit, the Washington Post reports.
Ivins committed suicide in July 2008 as he was about to be indicted, but his lawyer has continued to maintain his innocence.
“I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it,” Leahy said, according to the Washington Post. “I’ve expressed those concerns to the FBI and this report adds to those concerns.”
There have been several calls to form an independent commission to continue the investigation.
“Were there people who at the very least were accessories after the fact?” Leahy said, according to the Washington Post. “I think there were. Why would he send one to Tom Brokaw, to Tom Daschle, to me, to the man at the National Enquirer in Florida?
“They have to make their decisions; I have to make mine. In my mind, it’s not closed. Call it an old prosecutor’s instinct.”
http://www.bioprepwatch.com/news/233446-sen-leahy-says-2001-anthrax-case-shouldnt-be-closed
-Thoughts and Comments
by Ed Lake
Figures.
Ed wrote:
“According to The Washington Post, it was in June of 2000 that Ivins became a client of Comprehensive Counseling Associates, about 1-1/2 miles from where Ivins lived. The Post says:
He began weekly individual sessions with a licensed clinical professional counselor there. The counselor said she remembers him as precise and unfailingly polite, yet sometimes “very cold, without emotion.”
On his second or third visit, the counselor said, “he got bizarre.” Ivins talked of a young woman living somewhere in the Northeast and said he planned to drive to watch her play in a soccer game. “I think he was infatuated or thinking about getting involved,” recalled the counselor,”
___________________________________________________________
Tales of Addiction, Anxiety, Ranting
Scientist, Counselor Recount Recent Turmoil in Anthrax Suspect’s Life
“Before he died July 29 of a Tylenol overdose, Ivins, 62, had two inpatient stays at Maryland hospitals for detoxification and rehabilitation and attended two sets of therapy sessions with a counselor who eventually sought court protection from him.
Ivins had just returned from a four-week stay at a psychiatric hospital in Western Maryland in late May when he wrote the fellow scientist in recovery a calm, six-sentence e-mail. “I hope,” it said, “that both of us avoid relapsing into our previous substance abuse.” Since his death, Ivins’s long-term mental health and the psychological effects of the investigation have become increasingly prominent questions.
The counselor he saw for group therapy and biweekly individual sessions, who would eventually tell a judge that he was a “sociopathic, homicidal killer,” had a troubled past. Jean C. Duley, who worked until recent days for Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick, is licensed as an entry-level drug counselor and was, according to one of her mentors, allowed to work with clients only under supervision of a more-seasoned professional.
Shortly before she sought a “peace order” against Ivins, Duley had completed 90 days of home detention after a drunken-driving arrest in December, and she has acknowledged drug use in her past.
In a 1999 interview with The Washington Post, Duley described her background as a motorcycle gang member and a drug user. “Heroin. Cocaine. PCP,” said Duley, who then used the name Jean Wittman. “You name it, I did it.”
Both counselors worked for Comprehensive Counseling Associates, but the counselor from 2000 refused to deal with Ivins any further after she was forced to call the police because of his murder plot involving poison. We don't know her name, we only know what she told the Washington Post.
Jean Duley had only been working with Ivins for about six months in 2008 before he made his threats about killing his co-workers.
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