Is this a “petty matter”?
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB61/
Meselson had finally came around to the view long held by the intelligence community when he published his final findings on the case in November 1994 in the journal Science.(9) Meselson was prepared to conclude that the cause of death was airborne anthrax spores released from a military installation, He also concluded the size of the release was between a few milligrams and a gram, leaving open the possibility it was the result of defensive biological warfare research, a conclusion contested by U.S. intelligence analysts, who argued the release must have involved pounds of anthrax, based on prior studies into the dispersal of biological agents. As Dr. William C. Patrick, the veteran of over 30 years as a biological weapons researcher at Fort Detrick, Maryland and expert on anthrax dispersal noted later, he and other experts “hooted” when Meselson presented his release estimates.(10) The U.S. intelligence position was also supported by Ken Alibek, who said Compound 19 was involved in the “industrial” production of anthrax. Regarding the actual cause of the release, information later obtained from people involved with the Soviet biological warfare effort revealed that the cause of the anthrax release in Sverdlovsk was the failure by maintenance personnel to replace a critical filter in a vent serving the anthrax production facility.
GMU Administration no doubt is concerned that consideration of the infiltration that occurred will prevent the regional BL-3 facility from being built.
But Assistant General Brian W. needs to understand that sometimes the way to best address a problem is to be proactive and get ahead of it by taking the lead in addressing it, acknowledging it etc.
A continued lack of forthrightness — if sanctioned in any way by the Administration as it has been up until now — could lead to critical information from being shared with the FBI.
To not answer basic questions relating to biosecurity on the campus in the past is the surest way to lose the facility that has been proposed.
So for him, for example, not have confirmed Ali’s room number to me was a mistake IMO. His reaction instead should have been to signal that the Administration was going to be gung-ho about ferreting out facts relating to any possible past infiltration.
Instead, for example, ATCC fired a highly qualified scientist, shortly after hiring the scientist, upon the complaint of lax security relating to ATCC facilities and inventory of pathogens.
Any facility targeted by Ayman Zawahiri would have been vulnerable. No one will blame GMU unless the original vulnerabilities are then coupled with continued defensiveness and obfuscation.
It’s never too late GMU to embrace the forthcoming approach to its own advantage.
Is GMU in an easy position? No. But it is never wrong to do the right thing. Never too late. In crisis management, when you find you can’t keep the lid on something, what you do is take it off the fire so it doesn’t boil over.
Better to have a red cell lay out the problem than for the public to learn of it as the result of Atef and Saif Adel’s and Ayman’s “Green Team” or “Greendale
School.”
You’ve heard the saying, “It’s never the crime, it’s the cover-up.”
Here, when the possible crime was by a third-party, and GMU would only have been the victim, the old maxium applies with special force.