Anthrax: No Progress in Battle on Bioterror

Media presentations of the investigation into the anthrax-letter attacks that last fall killed five people and sickened over a dozen others have been driven by theories, speculation and intense political partisanship. That situation has arisen due to various political forces' desire to kidnap the case in order to cause the U.S. biodefense program to be shut down, and due to a paucity of reliable, hard knowledge. The human mind hates a vacuum and ignorance is a most hospitable host to rampant speculation. Thus do we find ourselves no better informed on the one-year anniversary of the attacks than we were at the time.

With the help of anonymous FBI profilers and activist academics such as Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the American media have been wed to the notion that a disgruntled, white male loner from within the U.S. biowarfare-defense program at USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases) in Maryland stole the anthrax bacteria, secretly did the lab work all by himself and carried out the attacks, perhaps to warn the public of the dangers of bioterrorism. Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Shane has dubbed this the "bioevangelist" theory.

The anthrax found in the letters was of the Ames strain, which originated in an infected cow in Texas in 1981. Until a 1997 federal law mandated strict controls and record-keeping for the scientific use and sharing of toxic substances, the Ames strain was passed around the world by scientists via mutual cooperation, with virtually no controls or oversight.

While it is possible that a small sample of the anthrax used in the attack was stolen from a U.S. bioweapons lab and then subsequently grown into larger quantities, it is much more likely that the perpetrator obtained the anthrax from any of a multitude of foreign sources.

Dr. Paul Keim, a Northern Arizona University professor of microbiology, performed an exhaustive genetic analysis on a sample of the attack anthrax, comparing it to the same analysis of Ames anthrax samples held at U.S. bioweapons-defense installations. In Dr. Keim's study, published in the May 9, 2002, edition of Science magazine, he concluded that his results were unable to shed any light on the source of the anthrax — other than to conclude that its original source was the same 1981 Texas cow that was the source of the Ames anthrax samples at U.S. biowarfare-defense installations.

The notion that a single, renegade scientist secretly could have created the weapon has been shot down by Dr. Richard O. Spertzel, the former head of the biology section of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq. On Sept. 18, in London's Financial Times, Dr. Spertzel argued, "I've heard nothing that has changed my mind." Spertzel is persuaded the anthrax attack involved active state support: "You could not possibly make that quality of product in a clandestine fashion. It's not the sort of thing you can do in your garage or in your basement."

While some experts maintain that it would be possible for a determined individual — even a talented bench technician — to produce high-quality anthrax with one trillion spores per gram, it seems extremely unlikely that this could be done without attracting attention. A lone bioweaponeer with the requisite knowledge and skills still would have extreme difficulty transferring the process to the type of setup that could be made in a basement or remote location.

And the cost would run into the millions. The specific equipment used to produce weaponized anthrax — through the various steps of initial bioreaction through weaponization by chemical treatment, proper spore-size control and drying — likely would run to several hundred thousand dollars. Add to that sum the required ancillary equipment, including scanning electron microscopes, not to mention the multimillion dollar infrastructure.

Substituting cheaper equipment for the tools normally used by a skilled scientist would cause serious problems of "process transfer." The preceding term commonly is used in the chemical and engineering community to describe taking a manufacturing process from one site and starting it up at another site, sometimes using different equipment. It almost would be impossible to repeat the original lab process and produce the same high-quality product with a homemade set-up without hundreds of trial-and-error tests. And when the first reasonable-looking, pure anthrax powder was produced, it would be essential to test it. This only can be done by sacrificing hundreds of Rhesus monkeys — an activity that is unlikely to go unnoticed by the neighbors.

If Drs. Keim and Spertzel are correct, the authorities have wasted precious time and resources on a wild goose chase. Hopefully, the lost time has not ensured the escape from detection of the anthrax terrorists.

Nicholas Stix is the associate editor of toogoodreports.com and has published articles in Insight, The American Enterprise and Middle American News.

Methinks they are as accurate as they were about the D.C. Sniper and are deceiving us for the same purposes!

Truth is, IMHO, they haven't got the slightest idea who is behind this. Their deception is to try to keep us from figguring that out.

Still waiting for someone to explain to me how this ham-handed episode in any way rated the designation "terror".

Since 9/11 everything rates that designation. At least now we finally know who was behind the Tylenol murders of two decades ago: Muslim terrorists.

Fresh from the profiling success of the experts in the DC sniper case, we need to committ criminal profiling to the dustbin of pseudo-science.

When it comes to terrorism the rule here is "there are no rules" That's why it's called terrorism, because it is not predictable.

Bump to that, but somehow I doubt we're rid of profilers and other pseudo-experts. News directors are addicted to them. The idea that there are simply some people who are intelligent observers and others who aren't, independent of phony "credentials," is alien to them.

... no understanding that anthrax is a naturally-occurring agent.

A couple years ago I heard a guy on talk radio, don't remember his name. He gave a detailed instruction on how to obtain anthrax spores by visiting certain north western states and finding the burial trenches of animals from an outbreak a hundred or thereabouts years ago. He said you could just sort of drill with a fence post digger type of thing and pull up enough spores to start a personal bioweapons factory. I have no idea if this is actually true. I would have expected som idiot to have tried it by now if it was, I suppose.

Anthrax: No Progress in Battle on Bioterror - Why?

There are two levels on which that question can be answered. On a superficial level, one observes that Operation Amerithrax is a showstring outfit staffed with knaves and fools (Ruby Ridge coverup artist Van Arp and Special Agent Bob "Joyce Chiang was kidnapped by Chinese white slavers" Roth), and that, early on, they were pointed at USAMRIID, where it was guaranteed they would never uncover anything remotely relevant to the anthrax.

On a deeper level, Operation Amerithrax hasn't made any progress because that is precisely its mission: not to make progress. There is nothing we can do right now to prevent the foreign power who weaponized the anthrax from using the same technology to kill millions of Americans. All the authorities can do is play for time. And that's exactly what they've been doing ever since the first case of inhalation anthrax in 25 years cropped up in Mohammed Atta's backyard. And the stall will continue for as long as necessary -- forever, if need be. Get used to it.

The "profiling" process, always a matter of guesswork and talent, produces endless hypothesis, and progresses to hopeless group-think. Look how absurd the recent "psycho-sniper" profiling became. Bureaucrats and news media chose the story they like best as if it were fact, circulate the story widely, and then are reinforced in their error when they hear the story as fact in the media and word of mouth. Any competing narrative is ignored. This used to be called a "circle-jerk", a most accurate metaphor.

So, that's what a "circle-jerk" is, LOL!

But a 15-year-old kid with a chemistry set couldn't do it . . . that's the point.

"That's not what I'm getting from all the reports."

Then I urge you to read...

FBI's Theory on Anthrax Is Doubted, from today's Washington Post.

This is the best-researched, most complete article on anthrax yet done by the mainstream media. It effectively addresses your questions.

If Drs. Keim and Spertzel are correct, the authorities have wasted precious time and resources on a wild goose chase.

The authorities seem to be doing quite a bit of that lately. Maybe the anthrax perp is driving a white van.

"Parts of the article you linked sound awfully similar to the one posted here."

Spertzel is quoted in both. And both cite some of the same concepts. But the Post offers a more technically detailed refutation of the "rogue scientist" theory.

Of course, they've the benefit of more space than Stix. And to see the mainstream media actually approach the anthrax story with some competence and an open mind is, you must admit, somewhat refreshing.

"...The anthrax found in the letters was of the Ames strain, which originated in an infected cow in Texas in 1981. Until a 1997 federal law mandated strict controls and record-keeping for the scientific use and sharing of toxic substances, the Ames strain was passed around the world by scientists via mutual cooperation, with virtually no controls or oversight.

While it is possible that a small sample of the anthrax used in the attack was stolen from a U.S. bioweapons lab and then subsequently grown into larger quantities, it is much more likely that the perpetrator obtained the anthrax from any of a multitude of foreign sources...."

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