Questions Surround WMD Hunt

CNN ^ | 6-18-03 | David Ensor

[cgk]

The rest of the info on Weberman I found is that he has written extensively on the conspiracy of the JFK assassination, and he once stole Dylan's garbage.

[cgk]

It looks like a reflection, as in the other pictures - reflecting the foil in the box... It matters because we've heard stories about plastic "Star of David"s being included in at least some of the envelopes.

Can you direct me to Ezell's description? I'd like to read it, and can't find it on the FBI site.

[jpl]

He's also affiliated with the JDO and Moderchai Levy and is so out there that New York Magazine once ranked him #12 on their list of "New York City's 15 Loopiest Residents".

I think the guy probably fried most of his brain back during his Dylan obsession days.

[cgk]

Thank you... I only know what the JDO is because their links aren't allowed on FR. I saw a post removed and the AM said "we don't want their trash here", so I looked it up to see what it was. ;)

[cgk]

Nevertheless, USAMRIID scientist John Ezzell spent three weeks going to meetings, visiting companies and consulting various experts before opening the spore-laden envelope sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy -- and even then he accidentally spilled some of the contents.

I guess that picture is missing!

[cgk]

Also, note the 100,000 figure is silly in that it relates to number of spores without taking into account means of their dispersion. As it was, even the Leahy product had some clumping of the product in the range of 40-100 microns

I heard the opposite about the Leahy letter, that actually it was similar, even higher quality than the Daschle letter. That the anthrax was more powerful with every letter discovered Anthrax:

4) But last fall's anthrax was milled mechanically, so it can't have come from Iraq, right?

We don't know that it was milled, really. Published reports conflict on this point, and those news accounts that do suggest the anthrax was milled invariably attribute the intelligence to federal investigators impressed by the super-granulated quality of the Leahy sample. In fact, evidently concerned that the Leahy letter might thus tend to confirm the Barbara Hatch Rosenberg conspiracy theory at its most rococo (i.e., that someone walked the anthrax straight out of a CIA lab), certain "government sources" have lately begun putting out word that the stuff was actually too good to be American. Two weeks ago, an item in Newsweek described a "secret new analysis" said to be circulating through high-level Washington, according to which analysis the Leahy letter's powder was "ground to a microscopic fineness not achieved by U.S. biological weapons experts." Researchers have found evidence of "intense milling," Newsweek explained: individual, free-floating anthracis spores, something our own government's scientists have "never seen" before.

But that's absurd. Individual, free-floating anthracis spores are what those scientists look at every day. And it's hardly a secret. During a December 15 Centers for Disease Control-sponsored conference on post-exposure prevention of inhalation anthrax--you can find the transcript on CDC's website--Dr. Louise Pitt of USAMRIID discussed in considerable detail how her colleagues at Ft. Detrick do their anthracis research. The spores, she said,

"are diluted to the desired concentration in sterile distilled water, water for injection. Our aerosols are extremely well characterized and defined. The particle size of the aerosol has a mass-meeting-aerosol diameter between .8 and 1.4 microns. That means that the aerosols that we are generating are basically single-spore aerosols. There's very, very little clumping of two spores. They are single-spore aerosols."

And remember, Ft. Detrick does not employ a mechanical milling process. Because, as it happens, people like Dr. Pitt have discovered much easier ways to make what our experts persist in calling the Leahy letter's "weapons-grade" anthrax: If they want it in a mist, they dilute the spores in water, as USAMRIID does. And if they want their anthrax dry, in a powder, they run it through what is essentially a very fancy flour sifter, a device commercially available throughout the world. This practice, too, has been specified in the open literature. A "Risk Assessment of Anthrax Threat Letters" published last year by Canada's Defence Research Establishment Suffield (DRES), for instance, was based on a bacterial specimen prepared in the "routine manner." Agar-grown cultures were dried into a "clumpy, undistinguished mess." And the mess was then filtered with a sifter, separating the largest chunks and leaving behind a final powder containing "a high proportion of singular spores."

Under a microscope, of course, singular spores, both milled and unmilled, look exactly the same.

Apparently it can also be explained following this theory:

Particle Size, it's a PDF file, page 3 includes pictures.

[Wright is right!]

This story has been repeated virtually verbatim every day for the past 2 weeks. How many more days are they planning to do so under the guise of "news?" And also note the passive voice in the headline -- "questions were raised." And once again, the critics have the field to themselves.

Michael