The only thing they were not able to reproduce was a silicon compound that showed up inside the spores used in the attacks.
So they DIDN'T truly reverse engineer the powder after all, and that part of the story was totally misleading.
Did the FBI's product ever fly like an eagle, or was it a big flock of penguins? Enquiring minds want to know.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/17245288/detail.html?rss=dc&psp=news
Ivins’ Attorney To Be Interviewed In Congressional Probe
POSTED: 3:15 pm EDT August 20, 2008
UPDATED: 6:11 pm EDT August 20, 2008
Committees in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are planning hearings on the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax mailings that killed five people in 2001.
Staff members for the congressional committees will begin pre-interviewing potential witnesses next week.
Among the people who will be questioned is the lawyer representing Dr. Bruce Ivins, the Fort Detrick, Md., scientist identified as the government’s top suspect.
...
vins’ attorney Paul Kemp told News4 by phone that he anticipates a lot of questions when he is interviewed about the FBI’s handling of the investigation.
“We’re being asked to accept their assertions without anything linking him to the mailings, linking him to the envelopes, linking him to going to the place where they have determined the letters appear to have been mailed from — namely a letter box in Princeton, N.J.,” Kemp said.
Kemp said more than 100 people had access to the anthrax strain in Ivins’ lab at Fort Detrick. The FBI said it interviewed those people and cleared everybody but Ivins. Kemp said his client wasn’t responsible for the anthrax attacks. He also questioned investigators’ methods.
“Handling of physical evidence is a huge issue that I’m certain they’re going to look into since they have now admitted that they’ve destroyed slides from the beaker in question that were supplied by Dr. Ivins back in February 2002,” Kemp said.
The FBI admitted earlier this week that FBI scientists had — but destroyed — the unique strain of anthrax used in the deadly 2001 attacks that years later would lead them to Ivins.
It was “slides”
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/anthrax/news/aug2008anthrax.html
FBI says it easily replicated anthrax used in attacks
Robert Roos * News Editor
Aug 20, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – The FBI, seeking to counter scientific skepticism on its investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, insisted this week that the anthrax powder could have been made by one person and contained no “intentional additives” to make it more dispersible.
...But in a statement presented at this week’s news conference, Majidi said, “There were no intentional additives combined with the Bacillus anthracis spores to make them any more dispersible.”” (Then, what are the accidental additives?)
According to a New York Times report on the press conference, FBI officials said investigators determined that the making of the powder was a relatively simple process of cleaning and drying anthrax spores. “FBI scientists easily reproduced it with gear that Ivins regularly used,” the article stated. (FBI scientists? What about Dugway?)
“”However, silicon was found in the mailed anthrax (as reported previously), and FBI officials conceded that the duplicate powder they made did not match the letter anthrax in that respect, according to reports by the Times and the Washington Post. FBI scientists said they concluded that the high level of silicon occurred naturally in the anthrax used in the attacks, the Times reported.””
(This is the biggest stumper for me. If the silicon was “natural”, it would be in the spores before they were processed. One theory, the silicon was “natural” to the specific substrain of Ames used in the attacks, but not in the substrain of Ames used in the manufacture. Or they used a different strain altogether that did not have silicon. This argument is premised that they did the processing in the years before the specific substrain of attack anthrax was discovered. But if this is the case, a bigger question arises... Did they test a sample from the jar seized at Detrick they claim was the parent? Did it show no silicon? If so, doesn’t this mean the silicon in the attack anthrax was imbued after removal from the flask? And if no such test was made, why not?)
The article is from CIDRAP