Posted on 03/03/2010 11:19:21 AM PST by Justice Department
TRENTON (AP) A New Jersey congressman is calling for a congressional investigation into the government's handling of a major anthrax investigation, which was closed last week.
U.S. Rep. Rush Holt believes the FBI botched the case from 2001, when anthrax-laced letters were sent from a mailbox in Princeton.
He also says the Postal Service and other agencies may not have learned the proper lessons from the attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17.
The FBI last month closed its investigation after concluding Army scientist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the attacks. Ivins killed himself in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at trentonian.com ...
A centrifuge is incapable of incubating anthrax spores. Fail.
1. Evidence: The letter left a trail of spores in postal facilities from Trenton to Florida, first going to the post office that had served the closed offices of the Enquirer, from where it was forward to AMI in Boca Raton.
2. Evidence: The strain of anthrax is identical to that used in the New York and Washington DC mailings.
3. Evidence: Stephanie Dailey remembers opening a letter that contained powder. She opens the mail addressed to the Enquirer.
4. Evidence: Stephanie Dailey tested positive for exposure to anthrax.
5. Evidence: The area around Stephanie Dailey's desk was the most contaminated area in the building.
6. Evidence: The building was thoroughly contaminated. The idea that this could have happened as a result of traces of anthrax on money is preposterous.
7. Evidence: Ernesto Blanco delivered the mail. He contracted anthrax.
8. Evidence: The letter that Stephanie Dailey opened arrived at the time a letter mailed together with the New York letters would have arrived.
Do you have any evidence at all to support your theory? Or do you feel that your beliefs are evidence and override all facts which dispute your beliefs?
You keep mentioning a Florida “letter,” but there wasn’t one.
Still isn’t. You are pretending that a letter exists that never did.
Weak.
A centrifuge isn't used to incubate bacteria. It's used to purify spores after the bacteria turn into spores.
Incubation of the bacteria is done either in a flask or in a Petri dish. It could have been done in a fermenter, but fermenters are only used for much larger quantities.
Neither petri dishes nor flasks will turn living bacteria into the dormant spores required for an inhalation attack.
Thus, you are missing the equipment to go from bacteria to spore.
I don't think it's a good idea for me to educate you on basic microbiology, but I'll respond just this one last time.
The growing bacteria in a Petri dish will continue to grow as long as they have food. When they run out of food, they'll form spores and become dormant until they detect the presence of food once again.
In fact, because Bacillus anthracis bacteria are incapable of movement, the bacteria in the middle of a colony will run out of food pretty quickly and form spores while the bacteria at the edge of the colony will continue to grow and reproduce.
When all the food is gone, every bacterium that was able to do so will have turned into a spore.
It all happens in a Petri dish in a couple days.
Click HERE for an illustration of this process which I created a few years ago.
"It is extremely difficult to use anthrax for germ warfare. First of all, it is very difficult to cause the bacterium to make the spores that have to be inhaled. Second, there are two type of anthrax spore powder: wet and dry. Only the dry type can travel far and wide and infect many people, and it is extremely difficult to make and keep the dry anthrax spores."
http://www.drmirkin.com/morehealth/9494.html
"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."" http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28334-2002Oct27?language=printer
"Just collecting this stuff is a trick," said Steven A. Lancos, executive vice president of Niro Inc., one of the leading manufacturers of spray dryers, viewed by several sources as the likeliest tool needed to weaponize the anthrax bacteria. "Even on a small scale, you still need containment. If you're going to do it right, it could cost millions of dollars."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28334-2002Oct27?language=printer
Going back to what people mistakenly believed in 2002 and ignoring all the information that has been learned in all the years since then is not a reasonable argument.
You could have saved a lot of trouble by simply admitting that Ivins didn’t have access to a spray dryer.
You're just grabbing at straws.
Inhalation anthrax is the reason to believe that a spray dryer was required, contrary to your uninformed rants and pleas to the contrary.
One hundred and twenty-four years ago, in 1876, Robert Koch published his findings about why people in wool sorting factories were dying of inhalation anthrax. His findings didn't have anything to do with spray dryers.
Less than 3 years ago, a man in England died of inhalation anthrax after handing dried animal hides.
In 2006, there was another case of inhalation anthrax involving a drum maker who lived in New York City. He survived.
Your arguments are becoming just plain silly.
Indeed. One person with extensive, prolonged, intimate contact with a contaminated hyde...4 years ago.
In contrast, weaponized anthrax is capable of infecting dozens of people in a single day.
The world isn't frightened of contaminated animal skins. Why? Because the transmission of anthrax from them is a low-odds event.
In contrast, spray-dried anthrax spores can cause national panic.
And until you find the spray dryer, you haven't found the anthrax terrorists.
The anthrax attacks didn't infect "dozens of people in a single day." They infected 21 people in a period of about three months. 5 of the 21 died. The first infection was on September 22, the last was on November 14, 2001.
They died because there was a LOT of spores were released in a NUMBER of places. It had nothing to do with any spray dryer. It had to do with the NUMBER OF SPORES released and NUMBER OF PLACES where the spores were released.
End of discussion.
The high infection rates have everything to do with a spray dryer weaponizing anthrax spores.
No spray dryer being found means that the anthrax terrorists haven’t been found.
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