the "powder" could only have been prepared by a highly sophisticated national biowarfare infrastructure.
I take exception with that view and contend it could be down with FAR less sophistication than is claimed that it takes ...
Some time in an appropriately 'tumbler'/drier could render the spores smooth (de-burred) and dry, ready for the application of an anti-static agent (bought from a grocery store?) ...
International Herald Tribune, Sept. 5, 2001
Secret U.S. Project Simulates Terrorist Germ Factory
Judith Miller New York Times Service
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
CAMP 12, NEVADA TEST SITE, Nevada In a nondescript mustard-colored building that was once a military recreation hall and barbershop, the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities.
Adjacent to the pool tables, the shuffleboard and the bar stands a gleaming stainless steel cylinder, the 13-gallon (50-liter) fermenter in which germs can be cultivated.
The apparatus, which includes a latticework of pipes and other equipment, was made entirely with commercially available components bought from hardware stores and other suppliers for about $1 million, a pittance for a weapon that could deliver death on such a large scale.
The unit was built by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to contain the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Officials said that the project was intended to assess how hard it would be for a terrorist or rogue nation to assemble a germ factory.
The agency also wanted to determine if a small operation such as this one produced any telltale "signatures" - sounds, chemical emissions or patterns of operation that could help intelligence agencies find such plants.
"The project also showed us how relatively simple it would be for a terrorist to assemble such a facility without being detected," said Jay Davis, the former agency director who, with the Pentagon's permission, showed the secret plant to a Times reporter and a team from ABC News.
Officials stressed that the plant produced harmless biopesticides during test runs in 1999 and 2000 and never was used to make anthrax or any other lethal pathogen. Mr. Davis would not specify quantities but said that, if the output had been anthrax germs, it would have been enough to kill at least 10,000 people.
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UK Sunday Times, Oct. 21, 2001
The Invisible Enemy
The idea behind Project Bacchus, a secret experiment by the US Department of Defence, was simple. Here's a little money, said Pentagon chiefs to a team of scientists. Go and see if you can build a biological warfare factory. The catch was that they could use only materials bought on the open market.
The Pentagon chiefs did not tell Congress of their plan to create anthrax, or at least a harmless variant, in a way that would simulate how terrorists might covertly make the deadly bacterium. It just quietly doled out the money and let the scientists get on with it.
Operating as ordinary members of the public, the team set out in 1999 to build a small-scale laboratory in Nevada. A local hardware store supplied pipes and filters. A firm in Europe dispatched a 50-litre fermenter unit suitable for culturing germs. A Midwest company provided a milling machine capable of grinding dried material into powder.
As the scientists grew and refined their bugs, they aroused no suspicion. By summer last year they had produced 2lb of germ materials, including one that simulated anthrax, according to Jay Davis, the recent director of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency, the Pentagon unit that ran the experiment. No western intelligence agency had detected the operation, let alone attempted to stop it.
"The project had proven its point - a nation or bioterrorist with the requisite expertise could easily assemble an anthrax factory from off-the-shelf materials," said Judith Miller, co-author of a new book, Germs, on biological warfare.
"The results suggested that even with precious little money, a group of terrorists could build and operate a small-scale germ weapons plant."
Long aware that its enemies overseas had been working on biological weapons, the US had now proved that terrorists could be making deadly bugs even within its own borders.
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