[apokatastasis]

the appearance out of nowhere of anthrax many times more pure more concentrated and more refined than any ever known to have been produced previously by U.S. authorities

Well, the US program stopped in 1969, but the Soviet program continued at least until 1991. We know this because the deputy director, Ken Alibek, defected. They did absolutely crazy things, like loading ICBMs with the Black Death. So if I had to guess where the recipe for the 2001 anthrax was discovered, I'd say it was in the Soviet program or its post-Soviet successor.

[Allan]

So if I had to guess where the recipe for the 2001 anthrax was discovered
I'd say it was in the Soviet program
or its post-Soviet successor.

Using
of course
the virulent Ames strain.

No doubt you have learned
from TGS
(the younger)
*everybody*
just *everybody*
possesses the virulent Ames strain.

[John Faust]

So if I had to guess where the recipe for the 2001 anthrax was discovered, I'd say it was in the Soviet program or its post-Soviet successor.

Alibek cannot keep a secret. Wasn't it the author Richard Preston who said that Alibek told him the secret of cheap and easy anthrax weaponization? Whatever impelled Alibek to blab even part of such a secret, and to an *author*? Would it be surprising if Alibek had given hints to everybody and his kid sister?

So Alibek gave hints to people, maybe enough people that somebody picked up on the clues and was able to figure out the missing parts.

So, even if the 2001 recipe *was* derived from a Soviet recipe, that doesn't mean that Russians were behind the letters.

Aside from the recipe, whoever mailed the letters had physical access to something very close to the Fort Detrick substrain of virulent Ames.