In his Acknowledgements, Beecher acknowledges assistance from a whole host of people who would have had experience with the actual attack anthrax.
Only a true conspiracy theorist would believe that Beecher could lie in such an article and all those other people would silently go along with it.
Nobody went along with it. The likely explanation for the article is the following. Beecher originally submitted an article to the journal that did not contain these sentences concerning additives. The article was reviewed by Meselson after it was reviewed by the FBI and allowed to go out.
Meselson then persuaded Beecher to add these comments. The FBI did NOT re-review the altered article.
Then the $hit hit the fan. Suddenly Beecher’s article became headline news. The FBI had to react. They reacted by issuing a wishy-washy, meaningless statement covering everyone’s butts. And they gagged Beecher from further comment.
Yes, that’s what I said.
He talked to other people.
You said he was involved in the forensic examination of the product. He wasn’t. So I was merely correcting your inadvertent misstatement.
You may remember that I’m the one that went out of my way to get the statement and give it to you.
He did not say anything in those two sentences I disagree with. Indeed, my reason for getting it and distributing it was to point TrebleRebel to the fact that the presence of hydrophobic silica and polymerized glass is described in a commercially available patent issued by the fellow with the phone number the FBI suspects of being involved in the anthrax mailngs. Yes, it so happens that the inventors are leading anthrax experts from Russia and the US. But like Ken has always said, sometimes genius lies in making a sophisticated product using a relatively simple method.
Doug sent a copy of the article with the phrase “with compliments” which is FBI code for “You go, guy!”