Some Fort Detrick Labs Closed

Federal agents are combing a number of laboratory suites at Fort Detrick in Frederick for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey says the labs have been closed since Friday at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, home to the Army's biological warfare defense program.

A law enforcement source tells The Associated Press that the activity is related to the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 in October of 2001.

FBI agents have frequently visited Fort Detrick since the
unsolved attacks amid speculation that the deadly spores or the person who sent them may have come from Fort Detrick.

Quote of the Month (chuckle):

"There are no 'biohackers' using genome data in basements."

Richard Ebright of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey

Babs is Back:
"This is the right decision, from the standpoints of both public health and security,"

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons expert at the State University of New York's Purchase

DATA SECURITY:
Report Upholds Public Access to Genetic Codes
David Malakoff

The possibility of bioterrorism shouldn't stop scientists from freely sharing genome data, concludes a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC).

The study, requested by the CIA and the National Science Foundation, says that limiting public access to genome data on potential bioweapons is impractical and would do more scientific harm than good.

The U.S. government typically requires all federally funded scientists to make their genome data public. Since scientists sequenced the first viral genome in 1975, they have released the genetic codes of more than 1100 viruses and 150 bacteria, including those of the dangerous pathogens that cause smallpox, anthrax, and the plague.

In the wake of the October 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks, however, some analysts have proposed restricting access to such data to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. They worried that would-be bioterrorists might draw upon the growing mountain of gene sequence data in public databases to engineer new bioweapons, such as unusually infectious viruses or toxic bacteria that resist drugs.

Academy panel wants genomes of potential bioweapons such as anthrax to remain public.

But "open access is essential if we are to maintain the progress needed to stay ahead of those who would attempt to cause harm," says Stanley Falkow, a microbiologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the new study (www.nap.edu/catalog/11087.html).

It is unlikely that raw sequence data would help bioterrorists develop superweapons, the NRC panel says, and locking away information would harm efforts to improve biodefenses and fight emerging diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome. Coming up with workable restrictions would be difficult, the panel adds. The genomes of many dangerous pathogens are already in the public domain, and there is little agreement on what kinds of information should be put off-limits.

If the government needs to keep genomic secrets, it says, it should use its long-standing authority to classify information.

The panel's approach sits well with several scientists concerned about biosecurity. "This is the right decision, from the standpoints of both public health and security," says Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons expert at the State University of New York's Purchase

College. "Stringent restriction would pose unacceptable costs," agrees molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "There are no 'biohackers' using genome data in basements."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5691/1692a

Re#238.....

Posted on 06/13/2004 7:51:37 AM PDT by Mitchell

Posted: June 4, 2004

Last year two hospital patients from different cities in Texas died of severe pneumonia that appeared to be caused by inhalation anthrax. Yet neither patient was infected with the bacterium that causes anthrax, Bacillus anthracis.

Instead, DNA tests indicated that both patients became infected by another species of bacteria that carried the lethal anthrax genes. The bacterium, called Bacillus cereus, typically causes mild food poisoning.

B. cereus from Louisiana patient (top) and B. anthracis. Both microbes have capsules that may protect them from a person's immune system.

When the Texas cases came to light, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, were sequencing the genome of a strain of B. cereus isolated from a man in Louisiana who, in 1994, developed severe anthrax-like symptoms.

The researchers now report that B. cereus can indeed carry lethal genes of the anthrax bacterium. The Texas and Louisiana patients were all metal workers and appeared to have inhaled the dangerous bacteria, although scientists do not know how.

Texas borders Louisana......whore houses? bars? conventions? masks? 'mutual' PRIVATE metal work/money? air-conditioners/freezers? boat/barge/ship work? whore/hotels' pillows? military projects?

Location,location,location......

????????

We've seen B. cereus-B. anthracis combinations come up in another connection too, in the Judith Miller New York Times article I posted above in #182, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175051/posts?page=182#182:

Breeding More Potent Anthrax In the 1990's, government officials also grew increasingly worried about the possibility that scientists could use the widely available techniques of gene-splicing to create even more deadly weapons. Those concerns deepened in 1995, when Russian scientists disclosed at a scientific conference in Britain that they had implanted genes from Bacillus cereus, an organism that causes food poisoning, into the anthrax microbe. The scientists said later that the experiments were peaceful; the two microbes can be found side-by-side in nature and, the Russians said, they wanted to see what happened if they cross-bred. A published account of the experiment, which appeared in a scientific journal in late 1997, alarmed the Pentagon, which had just decided to require that American soldiers be vaccinated against anthrax. According to the article, the new strain was resistant to Russia's anthrax vaccine, at least in hamsters. American officials tried to obtain a sample from Russia through a scientific exchange program to see whether the Russians had really created such a hybrid. The Americans also wanted to test whether the microbe could defeat the American vaccine, which is different from that used by Russia. Despite repeated promises, the bacteria were never provided. Eventually the C.I.A. drew up plans to replicate the strain, but intelligence officials said the agency hesitated because there was no specific report that an adversary was attempting to turn the superbug into a weapon. This year, officials said, the project was taken over by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Pentagon lawyers reviewed the proposal and said it complied with the treaty. Officials said the research would be part of Project Jefferson, yet another government effort to track the dangers posed by germ weapons. A spokesman for Defense Intelligence, Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks, declined comment. Asked about the precautions at Battelle, which is to create the enhanced anthrax, Commander Brooks said security was "entirely suitable for all work already conducted and planned for Project Jefferson."

So the Russians had combined B. cereus and B. anthracis genetically, and the CIA at least had plans to copy the idea, as of Sept. 4, 2001.

<< Is there any evidence of a connection among these incidents? >>

I don't know, but since TownCryer seems to think so, let's stipulate a connexion between some of these incidents and the 2001 anthrax letters, and see where it leads us.

If these are the same people, the first Question to ask is Why would they stop sending anthrax, swiching instead to other agents?

Anwser 1 - They have run out of anthrax/

Anwser 2 - The weaponisation method has been much less effective than they had expected, so they decided to try some different things/

Either Anwser 1 or Anwser 2 is possible. Anwser 2 gets some support from the dud anthrax attack around 24 February 2003 - click here and here.

Whether the Anwser to the Question is 1 or 2, they are sitting on a weaponisation method in search of an application. So they try one chemical agent after another, weaponise it with their method, and do a test mailing, to see which agents could be effectively weaponised via their method. The good thing is- So far none.

Disclaimer: This entire chaine of reasoning is contingent on the stipulated Assumption of a connexion between the 2001 anthrax letters and some of the chemical mailings. I know no strong argument for or against this Assumption.

Various developments...

People are talking about a forthcoming report from Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, on Iraq's WMD programs. The message appears to be: no stockpiles, most R&D programs frozen, but ready to be reactivated. Of course, I will be waiting to see what the report specifically says about anthrax. Before Saddam was captured, there was this peculiar report in a British paper:

"Two top Iraqi scientists, codenamed Charlie and Alpha, are helping the coalition to learn more about Iraq's anthrax programme, Kay said. The Iraqis had made shocking innovations in the milling and drying processes needed to weaponise anthrax. Almost every week there is a new discovery that boggles your mind, Kay said."

That's David Kay, Duelfer's predecessor. Are we ever going to hear more about these two scientists?

Follow that link and you will see another story about attempts to assassinate or intimidate Iraqi scientists who thought of cooperating with the coalition. And this was all just months after David Kelly was found "dead in the woods" on Iraq's Revolution Day. (According to a British diplomat, Kelly predicted this might happen to him if the war went ahead, and the diplomat "had thought Dr Kelly was talking about possible Iraqi vengeance".)

I've said repeatedly that I think Iraq was al Qaeda's chief sponsor, that this was known or suspected from the beginning, but that it's all supposed to be a big secret. Circumstantial evidence of Iraqi sponsorship can be found in the timing of attacks, in the background of the masterminds, and in the multitude of Iraq/AQ connections that have been reported. The evidence that the US government believed in a connection, under Clinton as well as under Bush, lies in the way that AQ attacks were invariably followed by attacks on Iraq. The evidence that the connection is supposed to be a secret? Those attacks on Iraq were never linked to AQ - usually WMD was the issue. The dodgy way in which some of the alleged Iraq/AQ connections have been rebutted might also count.

There was always the possibility that Duelfer's report would link the 2001 anthrax to Iraq - which would surely link Iraq to everything else, win the election, and discredit the Democrats on national security for a long time. But it looks like that won't happen. So, maybe it's my theorized cover-up in action. Or maybe they just don't have the proof, and never did.

In other news, I've learnt that there's a book out there which does touch on the 9/11-Coptic connection. It's by two "alternative historians", one of whom was born in Egypt. The big idea seems to be that the architecture and layout of many major Western cities contains Hermetic symbolism, due to the centuries-long political influence of Freemasonry. 9/11 turns out to be esoteric warfare, the attack of one secret society on another. My view is that "history as warfare between secret societies" overestimates the historical continuity of conspiratorial politics, and underestimates the significance of everything else. There are conspiratorial cliques in every age, and every civilization has recurring cultural motifs in its history, but I don't believe in secret societies with a stable ideology which last for centuries. Those institutions which do last for centuries undergo major shifts in character and direction.

Despite my misgivings about the book's general worldview, it does contain some useful information about the Egyptian and Jewish calendars, and about 9/11 anniversaries. Notably, it points out that the Wye II memorandum, signed on September 4, 1999 in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, was supposed to come into force a week later, on September 11, which happened to be both the Coptic and the Jewish New Year. (Remember that the date of Rosh Hashanah moves around, and fell on September 18 in 2001, the date on which the first anthrax letters were mailed.)

Wye II is therefore one in a string of events including: the ratification of Sadat's constitution for Egypt on September 11, 1971; the Camp David accords of September 17, 1978; the sectarian discord in Egypt of September 1981, which culminated in Sadat's assassination in October; and the Arafat-Rabin peace accord of September 13, 1993, 15 years after Camp David, negotiated at a time when Sadat's foreign minister, an Egyptian Christian, was UN Secretary-General.

So I find it quite plausible that in the course of the peace process, from the death of Nasser through to the present day, Egyptian Christians have played a major role in building a bridge between Arabs and Israelis, that peace initiatives have been scheduled for September because of the symbolism of the new year, and that the Islamists have interpreted all this as a Judeo-Christian conspiracy against Islam. Since the date of September 11 actually derives from the pagan pharaonic calendar, they could argue with some logic that the peace process is actually satanic paganism triumphant, even if the Coptics now use the date to celebrate the Christian martyrs of Diocletian, rather than the dawn rising of Sirius.

As I said, I don't want to overemphasize the idea of esoteric warfare. Basically, Jews and Egyptian Christians tried to make peace on September 11, and Egyptian Islamists like Atta and Zawahiri chose to make war in response. But I think the basic issues were political (Iraq, Palestine) and exoteric (whose God shall prevail) - it's not occult psychological warfare which only an adept can fathom. But these facts about Wye II and 1999 I think support the theory that 9/11 and the anthrax letters were, from al Qaeda's point-of-view, a symbolic attack on Judeo-Christian civilization, even while they also served the quite earthly strategic goals of al Qaeda's sponsors.

<< “UNTHINKABLE” >>

I say “UNTHINKABLE”, you say "UNTHINKABEL", let's call the whole thing off.

<< Did you not post something earlier alluding to being TGS? >>

I did not post any such thing, and I am not TGS. Neither Theodore G Shackley nor The Great Satan. Whichever you mean.

<< What’s in a name? Everybody has one. Some have several. >>

I have one real name and one screen name. However, people who live in row houses of glass should speak no evil.

<< Anyway, Happy Anniversary and Bon Voyage:) >>

I did not realise at 1st what you meant by Happy Anniversary. I looked at the date on your post- it read << 09/19/2004 12:02:04 AM EDT >>. The date 19 September meant nothing to me.

Then it struck me- You're in Calif, where the date was still yesterday, 18 September. Time zone difference. All day yesterday was 18 September and the date hadn't occurred to me.

BTW, in New J it would already have been 19 September. Didn't you set your clock to Eastern Time? Consistency, my man, consistency.

Quote of the Week:)

“Anytime you have something being mailed to someone with powder in it, it raises suspicion,” Pasquale said.

White powder causes scare at P. O.
by Donald Fink and Yasmin Hahn

EAGLE NEST — It isn’t cocaine, methamphetamine, anthrax, botulism or ricin (a poison that can be in the form of powder, mist or pellet). What the white, powdery substance found leaking from an envelope at Eagle Nest Post Office Wednesday, Sept. 8, actually is remains a mystery.

According to Margaret Romero, manager of marketing for the United States Post Office, last Wednesday afternoon Eagle Nest Postmaster Tese Quintana was collecting mail dropped through the slot and into the collection box.
When she was done, Quintana noticed fine white powder on her hands.

Romero said, “The postal service has a standard protocol we follow anytime we suspect a chemical or biological substance. Tese followed that protocol to the letter.”
Quintana identified where the powder was leaking from — a thin white envelope.

According to Raton Fire Chief David Pasquale, who responded to the scene with his hazardous materials team (HazMat) Thursday, the envelope was like a “greeting card” envelope and thin enough to hold up to the light and see the only thing it contained was the powder.

Quintana placed the letter in a plastic bag and put it in a segregated part of the post office, away from other mail.
She then notified the Postal Service Inspection Service, the law enforcement branch of the post office. Quintana also called the Angel Fire Police Department and her operational manager.

The Postal Service Inspection Service, out of Albuquerque, assigned inspector Diana Clevenger to Eagle Nest. Clevenger, who arrived in Eagle Nest Wednesday evening, advised Quintana to close the post office and go home.
Thursday morning Clevenger tested the powder to see if it was cocaine or methamphetamine. Both tests came up negative. The inspector then called the Raton Fire Department, a New Mexico HazMat regional response team, at about 11: 30 a.m.

First on scene Thursday morning, Chief Orlando Sandoval of Angel Fire Fire Department set up Incident Command and established a “Hot Zone” perimeter to keep everyone away and safe. Quintana and Clevenger were evacuated to a cordoned off area near the Eagle Nest Corner Market.
Angel Fire, Eagle Nest, and Colfax County District 6 Fire Departments offered backup and assistance. Raton HazMat showed up at about 1 p.m.

Pasquale said his team tests for “three primary biologicals — ricin, anthrax and botulism. All three came back negative.”

The Raton HazMat has already ordered a $70,000 piece of equipment, paid for with Homeland Security grants, that is able to determine what substances are but the equipment has not yet arrived.

“Since 9/11 and Homeland Security, all the orders are really backed up. We expect the machine to come in in a month or so,” Pasquale said.

Without that machine, Raton HazMat could only determine the powder is, “an unknown acidic substance that could have been potentially harmful to an individual.”

The letter was addressed to a woman in Hawaii. The postal inspector called the United States Postal Service in Hawaii and was told the woman had received letters containing similarly suspicious material in the past.

Pasquale said the envelope’s return address was “weird. The writing was bad. It looked like it had been written left-handed to make it hard to trace.”

He added, “Our HazMat is trained in evidence recovery. We keep a chain of custody of the material so there is a record of where the material is at all times.”

That could be important in a court case if inspectors eventually determine the powder is an illegal substance.
For now, the powder will remain with the postal inspector’s office in Albuquerque, which will handle any follow-up investigation.

Because the powder was not one of the primary three dangerous substances HazMat routinely tests for, Pasquale said, “It probably will not be high on the priority list.”
Pasquale said about 8 months ago, his unit was called out to the Springer Post Office to test a similar white substance found on some envelopes. In that instance, the substance turned out to be powdered milk. “We think something (a package) broke in transit and spilled in a mail bag.”

Pasquale said what makes the Eagle Nest incident more suspicious is that the envelope contained only the powder.
“Anytime you have something being mailed to someone with powder in it, it raises suspicion,” Pasquale said.
In terms of local response, Pasquale said, “It was perfect timing.” The Eagle Nest incident happened less than 2 weeks after members of all three local fire departments attended an operations level hazardous materials class in Angel Fire, taught by Chief Pasquale.

“The plan came together perfectly,” Pasquale said. Sandoval agreed, saying, “Everyone did exactly what they were trained to do.” Raton HazMat completed their tests, determining there was no danger from the powder, at about 4 p.m.

The envelope and powder will remain with the Postal Service Inspection Service pending future investigation."

I do so love small town reporting, chuck full of details one seldom sees in the mass market press.

And, on a more personal note, "People who live in gas houses shouldn't strike at unknowns"

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