Posted on 12/08/2001 8:39:37 PM PST by Nogbad
Static Electricity Present in Anthrax Letters Made Spores Cling, May Have Saved Lives
John J. Fialka and Gary Fields
Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal
(Mark Schoofs contributed to this article)
03 December, 2001
Washington-
Investigators say
the person behind the anthrax attacks got many details right
but may have missed a crucial one.
They suspect the perpetrator failed to remove static electricity
from the powder containing the deadly spores.
According to scientists who have made anthrax for use in weapons
in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union,
the presence of an electrostatic charge may have saved American lives.
While some of the charged particles can still become airborne-
where they are the most deadly-
much of the material tends to cling to surfaces.
Investigators going through 600 plastic garbage bags
loaded with congressional mail
found about 23,000 microscopic anthrax spores
clinging to the inside of the bag
containing an anthrax-filled letter sent to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy.
The sticking tendency may have made cross-contamination of mail more likely,
according to one senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official
involved in the investigation,
because the spores would have been prone to attach themselves
to envelopes and surfaces.
However, the spores would be less likely to float.
“Electrostatically charged materials are very hard to disseminate.”
explained Bill Patrick, a scientist
who helped develop anthrax-loaded weapons for the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s.
While Mr. Patrick said he hasn’t personally seen samples of anthrax
sent in a letter to another senator, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,
a scientist working on the investigation, he said, has described it to him.
“It’s purified like our material and it has a small particle size,
just as we did, but it has an electrostatic charge,” he said.
The charge must be removed with a secret combination of chemicals,
he said, to make effective biological weapons.
Otherwise, “some of it can still get up in the air,” he said,
“but it’s not predictable.”
Some scientists cautioned
that the electrostatic charge in the powder could have grown as it was handled.
Richard Flagan, a professor of chemical engineering
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena
whose specialty is aerosols
said the mail-sorter machines could conceivably have transferred an electric charge
by jostling the letters containing the powder.
An FBI official said
agents have been checking the backgrounds and histories of people
working at military-level labs
who might have the capability of producing the kind of anthrax
found in the letter.
The probe includes private labs that might work with the military.
Investigators are looking at the backgrounds of current employees
and the whereabouts and backgrounds of past employees.
They are also asking research facilities and universities
about security and whether any of their anthrax has been stolen
in recent weeks and months.
The U.S. biological-weapons program was disbanded by President Nixon in 1969,
but it became an issue last month as investigators discovered
that the Ames strain of anthrax-
the strain found in most of the recent cases-
later used by the U.S. in defensive military experiments,
was held in a few government and university laboratories.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist
who heads a biological-weapons working group
for the Federation of American Scientists,
asserted the anthrax used in the letters
“was almost certainly derived from the U.S. weapons program.”
That, she said, would narrow the search down to a few individuals.
“She is flat wrong,” Mr. Patrick said.
David R. Franz,
who headed the defense-related biological-research program for the Army
at Fort Detrick, Md., between 1987 and 1998, said
the defensive experiments the Army
conducted with the Ames anthrax
used the bacteria in a liquid slurry
and not in the powdered form.
During that period, he said,
the U.S. obtained information from a British military research laboratory
that did experiments with Ames anthrax in the powdered form.
So the “lone UnaMailer”-theory is gone,
the “stolen from the US military lab”-theory is gone
what’s left??
Didn't know that FAS was the source of the "had to have been U.S. MIL Anthrax" statement. FAS is a gathering place of for leftist "scientists" (and people who think they are scientists) with grudges against the US Govt., especially DoD and DoE (anti-nuke paranoia is their reason for existing.) I wouldn't believe anything that they say.
I bet the Al Queda pukes bought some Anthrax production plans on the black market that was missing the critical details about how to remove the static charge from the spores.
It would be interesting to compare this lack of static removal technique with the Iraq, China and Russia versions of Anthrax.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist who heads a biological-weapons working group for the Federation of American Scientists, asserted the anthrax used in the letters “was almost certainly derived from the U.S. weapons program.” That, she said, would narrow the search down to a few individuals.Noted.“She is flat wrong,” Mr. Patrick said.
The spin?...Don't be so quick to rule out the bad seed in the gov'mit after all payday is every two weeks, this was military grade stuff, so think about it... our gov'mit wouldn't do that?... Ask the 2700 dead at Pearl Harbor.
The terrorists weren't trying to kill large numbers,
they could have killed thousands had they wanted
with the same amount of anthrax.
Haven't you worked that one out yet?? Duh!!
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