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Physics of anthrax is beyond al-Qaida, Sandia Labs expert says
Albuquerqque Tribune ^ | 10/26/01 | By Sue Major Holmes

Posted on 10/26/2001 11:19:17 AM PDT by woofie

A bioweapons expert from Sandia National Laboratories says the anthrax-by-mail attacks suggest a degree of sophistication beyond the al-Qaida terrorist organization.

"Unless they bought it from Iraq or something, it's not likely to be al-Qaida," Alan Zelicoff said in an interview Thursday from Washington, D.C. What makes the current attacks different from anthrax outbreaks of the past is not the anthrax itself, but rather the way it has been dispersed, said Zelicoff, who joined Sandia 12 years ago and works for its Center for National Security and Arms Control.

The anthrax in the current attacks has been treated "with materials that make it float in the air. That's no mean trick; it's a hard thing to do," Zelicoff said. "It suggests a sophisticated program with a lot of expertise, not in biology . . . but in aerosol physics."

"That's the big cataclysmic shift," he said.

Ordinarily, anthrax spores would simply fall to the ground, which has kept the bacteria from being a widespread bioterrorism threat in the past.

The current attacks suggest "roomfuls of equipment, specialties in aerosol physics and lots of testing," Zelicoff said.

"It's a hard, hard, hard thing to do and way beyond the capacity" of groups such as the al-Qaida terrorist network or militia organizations, he said.

The United States considers Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaida, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

A story in Thursday's editions of The Washington Post quoted government sources as saying the anthrax that contaminated Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office might have been made in America. The story said the anthrax was treated with a chemical additive made only in the United States, the former Soviet Union and Iraq. It quoted an unnamed source as saying "the totality of the evidence in hand" suggests it was unlikely to have come from the former Soviet Union or Iraq.

However, Zelicoff - who stressed he has no information on the threats beyond what he has read in newspapers - said Iraq has the necessary sophistication, based on information released by a United Nations special commission that did weapons inspections in Iraq through much of the 1990s before Iraq closed its borders to inspections.

"They had the drying equipment; they had the milling equipment; they had the aerosol testing equipment, the expertise on staff in engineering and physics, to do this kind of work," he said.

Scientists at several medical labs around the country have spent days analyzing the bacteria from the attacks, but officials have said it's still unclear whether the mailed anthrax spores, which have caused illness in New York, Washington, Florida and New Jersey, all came from the same place.

There have been 13 cases of anthrax nationwide in the past few weeks, most with known connections to mail.

Zelicoff, whose area of expertise is early detection of large-scale dissemination of biological organisms, was in Washington on Thursday to brief Congress about monitoring for biological threats. The briefing was canceled because of the anthrax investigations.

"The truth about routine monitoring is we do not have it," Zelicoff said. "And that will be key if there's large-scale biological (threats) or someone, God forbid, uses a communicable disease such as smallpox or a new influenza strain."

America's public health system - the repository of information about diseases - is severely underused, he said. It's cumbersome for doctors to report disease information, and it's difficult for public health officials to analyze information when they're not getting enough data from doctors.

For example, one of the postal workers who died came in with flulike symptoms. But, Zelicoff said, there had not been a single case of flu reported in Washington since last winter.

"The doctors don't know that. They don't get routine information, not even to say there's not any flu, so they're not going think twice about dismissing" respiratory complaints, he said.

"It's easy to shrug someone off as having flulike symptoms. . . . But if someone is telling me there's not one single case of flu in Albuquerque, I'd think twice about a bad respiratory illness and not shrug it off as flu," said Zelicoff, a medical doctor.

New Mexico has a pilot program aimed at alerting public health experts to unusual cases or clusters of cases as soon as doctors become aware of them. The program currently operates only at University of New Mexico Hospital and at sites connected with Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces.

The system "gives data to public health officials in Santa Fe who are the experts. . . . They're good at looking at it and saying, We've seen this before, there's no need to worry,' or That's an unusual pattern, we need to start investigating,"he said.

Such a system made easy for doctors to use and widely operated would allow the nation to spot bioterrorism diseases, since they cause severe symptoms in people who ordinarily are healthy.

"It will capture those cases - not as the result of physicians - but because of patterns of unusual disease," Zelicoff said.


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To: Ratatoskr
But within the capacity of home-grown American "hate" groups? Which is it, folks?

Of course not. But whoever dispersed it, didn't have to make it themselves. It could have been stolen from an American laboratory. Although, if stolen in a large enough quanitity, we probably would know about it. And since they are saying that if would be difficult to reproduce, that brings us back to Iraq or the Russian black market.

21 posted on 10/26/2001 11:42:14 AM PDT by Attillathehon
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To: woofie
The current attacks suggest "roomfuls of equipment, specialties in aerosol
physics and lots of testing," Zelicoff said.


No, it couldn't be that three or four talented microbiologists, biochemical
engineers, and other former academics entranced by Osama could have possibly "thought outside
the box" and came up with a break-through.
Totally impossible.

I just love the doctrinaire tone of some PhDs.
"Well, we have lots of degrees and can barely do the job, therefore, someone else
without our credentials couldn't possibly do it."

This is the kind of thinking we heard from US military planners before the Japanese
Naval aviators suprised them with the Long Lance torpedo at Pearl Harbor.
(the gospel to that point was that a torpedo couldn't operate well in such shallow waters,
if I understand correctly)
22 posted on 10/26/2001 11:42:24 AM PDT by VOA
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To: woofie
Iraq, Czech Republic may be sources of anthrax

Czechs confirm Atta met with Prague-based Iraqi diplomat

23 posted on 10/26/2001 11:42:59 AM PDT by Senator Pardek
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To: woofie
Beware of all e-mails with an attachment called "SqueezePleeze.WPS" (e.g., White Powdery Substance) !!!
24 posted on 10/26/2001 11:46:09 AM PDT by GeekDejure
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To: VOA
As my uncle says, 'PhD stands for Piled High & Deep.'
25 posted on 10/26/2001 11:49:24 AM PDT by Free Vulcan
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To: Clive
"My gut feeling is that what is happening now is a field trial.

"The real one will be a massive distribution with mutated anthrax."

I agree except for the last part of your statement. I think they sent out a variety of trial compounds, variations on the same antrax base. That they did in fact use that scenario has been established, which leaves only the intent up to speculation. I think that having run their trials, they now know which formulation is the most effective, thanks to their selection of high-profile recipients, which guaranteed that they'd get the feedback they sought.

I expect them to hit again, and hard, but with the same compound that they determined to be the most effective. I don't think they'll use anything that's different from what they used in the successful trial, because 1) that would introduce an unknown variable into the formula, and 2) I doubt they've got mutated anthrax, which -- according to the pre-9/11 reports (IMO the only "untainted" information) -- can only come from the US, Russia, or the UK. Since they (again, according to pre-9/11 available information) used a type of anthrax that can only come from Iraq, their relationship to that country would exclude anything but the non-resistant weaponized spored.

Of course if they did have access to American or Russian anthrax, they'd in theory be able to hit us with a resistant strain, however, I think it's a stretch to think that they'd have the ability to obtain those strains, and if they did have them, I think they'd have used them in their trials, because of reason #1 above.

26 posted on 10/26/2001 11:49:32 AM PDT by Don Joe
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To: Silly
Helloooo out there ....anybody home ???// You...WE ...The United States ....leftist academia....all GROVEL to push foreign students into our most sensitive labs !!!!! Hello..... any body listening ???? Who is surprised that anybody including Al Quaeda operatives ( oops ...politically insensitive...I really meant poor little ole' AlQuaeda STUDENTS and FACULTY over here just a'longin for Democracy ) have anthrax dispersal technology ??/ We fawn and mumble and grovel to give them the whole damned store !!!! This is true...everyone in academia knows this....the university pampered just love to do ANYTHING for the foreigners if it is politically correct ( translate , the gubbimint then rewards them with big grants) or they have their hand stuck deep into some Chinese or Arab pocket.... Hello out there...come on in to academia and see for yourself ...
27 posted on 10/26/2001 11:52:12 AM PDT by chemainus
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To: Ratatoskr
The admin and the Clinton/Reno perverts ( most of the FBI) would love to pin it on Waco types......but given the MASSIVE giveaways everyday in the form of unscreened foreign nationals inside our labs and privy to EVERYTHING, at all hours of the night and day, unlimited access ; Al Quaeda could very easily manufacture high-dispersal spores inside the university/research lab environment right under academia's twisted nose......IMHO and observation !
28 posted on 10/26/2001 11:55:58 AM PDT by chemainus
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To: woofie
It's my understanding that it's also beyond Al-Queda's ability to build Boeing 757s too.
29 posted on 10/26/2001 11:57:29 AM PDT by Cyber Liberty
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To: Ozymandias Ghost
Fleishmann probably doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about spores and dispersal but he is almost right on this thing.... I don't see any need for a PhD.
30 posted on 10/26/2001 11:59:24 AM PDT by chemainus
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To: chemainus
Dang! Ease up a little on your punctuation and caps...I can hear you banging the snot out of that keyboard from all the way over here!
31 posted on 10/26/2001 12:01:02 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty
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To: Cyber Liberty
Then try listening.
32 posted on 10/26/2001 12:03:01 PM PDT by chemainus
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To: Clive
My gut feeling is that what is happening now is a field trial.
The real one will be a massive distribution with mutated anthrax.

Very ominous, I hope your not right but you probably are. I just hope they don't unleash something like an airborn ebola virus. Something like that could kill 100's of millions including a huge number in the mid-east. I'm sure that wouldn't matter to them though.If that happens we truly are on the edge of apocalypse.

33 posted on 10/26/2001 12:14:18 PM PDT by Brett66
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To: tallhappy
I think Al Qaeda, has proven that they are not cave-dwelling imbeciles, as much as we'd like to think. For such a well funded group, ANYTHING can be had for a nominal fee. It never pays to underestimate your adversaries. Or is this more disinformation for the immigrant population to e-mail home?
34 posted on 10/26/2001 12:16:21 PM PDT by Jaded
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To: chemainus
Huh?
35 posted on 10/26/2001 12:16:50 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty
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To: wjeanw
Just the parent group of most of these cells.
36 posted on 10/26/2001 12:18:05 PM PDT by Jaded
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To: Cyber Liberty
(-: Cheers friend ( no exclamation point )
37 posted on 10/26/2001 12:23:22 PM PDT by chemainus
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To: chemainus
Heh, heh, heh...

Cheers!

38 posted on 10/26/2001 12:24:20 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty
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To: woofie
We all keep asking the same question, namely , did the anthrax come from Iraq. Has anyone considered the simple solution. Mail it to Saddam with a note "Excuse me, but is this yours?"
39 posted on 10/26/2001 12:30:22 PM PDT by thusevertotyrants
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To: woofie
"Unless they bought it from Iraq or something,

Geeze! Thats what we've been saying this whole time!
40 posted on 10/26/2001 12:35:18 PM PDT by WyldKard
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