“For instance, the Justice Department said earlier this month in unsealing court records against Dr. Ivins that he had tried to mislead investigators in 2002 by giving them an anthrax sample that did not appear to have come from his laboratory.
But F.B.I. officials acknowledged at the closed-door briefing, according to people who were there, that the sample Dr. Ivins gave them in 2002 did in fact come from the same strain used in the attacks, but, because of limitations in the bureau’s testing methods and Dr. Ivins’s failure to provide the sample in the format requested, the F.B.I. did not realize that it was a correct match until three years later.
In addition, people who were briefed by the F.B.I. said a batch of misprinted envelopes used in the anthrax attacks — another piece of evidence used to link Dr. Ivins to the attacks — could have been much more widely available than bureau officials had initially led them to believe.
F.B.I. Will Present Scientific Evidence in Anthrax Case to Counter Doubts
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/washington/16anthrax.html?ref=us
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: August 15, 2008
http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-labsecurity0816.artaug16,0,2049175.story?track=rss
Labs That Perform Bioterrorism Research Proliferating
By DAVE ALTIMARI | Courant Staff Writer
August 16, 2008
The number of individuals performing bioterrorism research on deadly pathogens across the country has jumped to nearly 15,000, and most of them are authorized to work with anthrax, federal records obtained by The Courant reveal.
The proliferation of labs working on vaccines for potential biological weapons — which started after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax mailings — has drawn heavy criticism from experts worried that too many people have access to dangerous materials.
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mong the concerns is that background checks conducted by the federal government before lab workers are allowed to work with substances such as anthrax aren’t thorough enough, said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior associate at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The criteria include that the individual have no convictions of a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding one year, not be a fugitive from justice or an illegal alien, and that the individual not have been dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Gronvall said there are other concerns in addition to inadequate background checks.
“Nobody is checking to see if people being approved to work with anthrax or other biological agents actually have the scientific skills to work with it,” Gronvall said.
Of the 399 institutions registered to work with biological agents, 234 are working with anthrax, the records show. Many of them are working with, or at least storing, the “Ames strain,” which was used in the anthrax mailings.
Martin Hugh-Jones, a professor at Louisiana State University, said obtaining permission to work with that strain has become almost like a status symbol for labs. LSU was one of 16 laboratories identified by the FBI as working with the Ames strain of anthrax before the letters were mailed.
Those labs were a mix of private companies that do work for the federal government, such as Battelle Memorial Institute, based in Columbus, Ohio, and universities, such as LSU and the University of Scranton.
One of the USDA-registered labs is on Plum Island in New York, 8 miles off Connecticut’s coast. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to upgrade the security level of the lab and the research conducted there, although the lab is likely to be moved from the island to some other location, most likely in Mississippi. Also in New England, Boston University is building a level 4 lab.
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