Posted on 12/06/2001 5:34:13 PM PST by Medium Rare
I re-call something from AK but darned if I remember. Did you check the anthrax thread? Many posters are caching the data there.
An Arkansas-China-Iraq connection?
That would be quite unexpected.
Now we get some real information.
Thanks!
It is as many of us predicted although Al Gore would have been no different. My bigget disappointment has been "Janet" Ashcroft.
Just a couple of things here. Detrick did share Ames with Porton Down, but Iraq didn't receive *any* anthrax from Porton Down (or from anywhere in the UK) after the mid-eighties. We can rule out universities and private labs as being the source of the the spores, and the strain. It may be possible the strain was acquired from a private or universtiy lab, but I doubt it.
"It was a primitive process, but it was a workable process. I would say that they are not highly trained professionals," Alibek said of whoever sent the anthrax letters.
When Ken Alibek talks, people should listen. He is talking about the means of delivery, and people who actually mailed the letters, not the people who produced the spores.
As far as the China-Iraq connection -- it's an interesting speculation, but I don't think China is involved in this.
More irrelevant facts?
The plot thickens.
As for Porton Down, in 1998 Iraq made a specific request for the Ames strain. Britain says that request was denied. However, this was during the timeframe that Fuad el Hibri was in charge there (current CEO at Bioport in Michigan)and Fuad admitted he had authorized shipment of anthrax to Saudi Arabia and other "friendly countries" in the near east.
I was not saying there was a China/Iraq connection although that's an inference one could draw. What I was trying to show was that security was as lax at Pine Bluffs Redstone Arsenal as it was (and still is)at the other ten "secret" labs the U.S. has.
Who knows whose hands anthrax may have fallen into after it left Pine Bluffs? That's anyone's guess.
I don't think you're right. Here is the full quote from the AP dispatch.
"It was a primitive process, but a workable process," Alibek said of the anthrax. He said he has reviewed photographs of some of the anthrax mailed to the news media and to politicians.
The other quote from AP is, "I would say preliminarily that they are not very highly trained professionals." Alibek said of whoever sent the anthrax letters. "It could be homegrown or foreign, I cannot answer this question."
I do listen when people who claim to be experts talk. Believing is another thing entirely. Either Alibek made a big mistake in trying to base his opinions on photographs rather than microsopic or spectrographic analysis, or he was dissembling.
You believe whatever you want to believe.
Intriguing.
Bump.
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