Posted on 11/30/2010 9:43:41 AM PST by EdLake
WASHINGTON -- The FBI may have closed its Amerithax case against Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins nine months ago, but some experts are not willing to let the issue die quite so easily.
A group of about 25 scientists, professors, writers, terrorism experts and more convened Monday afternoon to discuss the particulars of the investigation and to debate who the real perpetrator may have been.
(Excerpt) Read more at fredericknewspost.com ...
Don’t forget the BTWC, though. Both Drs. Hatfill and Ivins were against it, I believe.
LOL... More like the FBI never recovered from J. Edgar Hoover...
It goes back to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention in July, where the U.S. government walked out because they didn't want inspections.
Then, the next thing that happens is that letters get mailed containing anthrax that was traced back to a U.S. Army facility at Ft. Detrick.
She contacted people she knew, and Hatfill's name came up. He had worked at Ft. Detrick, and he had been featured in some article about how bioweapons can be cooked up at home. They didn't say Hatfill was the culprit, they just said he was the "most likely" person to be the culprit.
There's more HERE.
This is my last message until tomorrow morning.
Nope...Not behind the attacks. All he had to do was put them in the mailbox.
Irvins has not been arrested and they have no proof he did this! I don’t find anything Brokaw says is truth! He kinda like Obama!
I meant to say that I don’t believe that Ivans did this! I believe the anthrax attack was done by the ‘terrorist that were killed on 9-11! Of course you can’t get the FBI to believe the obvious! It took them almost 10 years to realize that the terrorist attack in 1993 was preceded the death of the Conservative Jewish guy in New York!
I suspect that the anthrax attacks were part of the 9/11 attacks.
They were too close in time to 9/11 and I don’t believe in coincidences.
If the Ames strain was in Canada or Sweden then it was in Russia and Iraq. Biologists ship each other bacterial strains all the time.
Also, Atta was seeking out crop dusters. If he was trying to get a crop duster he probably already had something to put in one, right?
I knew Bruce Ivins. I have absolutely no reason to believe that he was behind any of this—he was a nice, friendly man.
I’ve always thought that the FBI zeroed in on him for much the same reason they initially zeroed in on Steven Hatfill—they need a scapegoat. They don’t like to spend years on a case and never find a suspect. And now that Ivins can no longer defend himself, it’s perfect for them, they can close the case.
Agreed. But my point was "why Hatfill and not Ivins?"
She contacted people she knew, and Hatfill's name came up. He had worked at Ft. Detrick, and he had been featured in some article about how bioweapons can be cooked up at home.
So it looks like it was just that he was the first one to fit some assumptions and suspicions...and she stuck with it.
IIRC, she claimed never to have fingered him by name, yet she did claim at one point to have pushed the FBI.
What's she up to these days...any idea?
Is it possible that he didn’t think anyone would be killed—that they would get Cipro and be fine, since there were warnings enclosed and it wasn’t known that the stuff could permeate the envelopes?
Some of the "evidence" against him was awfully shaky. For instance, the FBI released emails in 2008 in which Ivins describes being treated for mental problems--nevermind the fact that anyone hounded by the FBI the way he was might develop some mental problems. Another piece of "evidence" is that he was working late laboratory hours. Oh, heaven forbid that a scientist work late in the lab, it MUST be a sign that they're up to no good (says sarcastically the person who, as a grad student, often worked til 10 pm or later, and came in on weekends and holidays as well).
I’m a scientist. I looked right past those bits of the FBI report without even considering them. :-)
It wasn't a "coincidence." Ivins evidently wanted to warn America of the danger that al Qaeda could launch a bioweapons attack next. So, he sent the anthrax to the media in letters that looked like they were written by Muslim terrorists. It's his reaction to 9/11, not a "coincidence."
"If the Ames strain was in Canada or Sweden then it was in Russia and Iraq. Biologists ship each other bacterial strains all the time."
The Ames strain was in Canada and Sweden, but only 2 labs in the U.S. had the Ames strain that contained the same mutations that were in the anthrax letters. So, the attack anthrax couldn't have come from those samples in Canada or Sweden.
Ivins prepared a special batch of 30 trillion anthrax spores to use in tests at Ft. Detrick. He thought those spores were untraceable and identical to samples that the USDA gave to anyone who asked for samples. But, Ivins was wrong. Those 30 trillion spores contained mutations that identified Ivins' flask RMR-1029 as the unique source for the attack anthrax.
"Also, Atta was seeking out crop dusters. If he was trying to get a crop duster he probably already had something to put in one, right?"
Yes, and what he was thinking about putting in them was GASOLINE. He looked into ways to put extra tanks of gas in the back of the plane. He was evidently planning to use the crop dusters as flying bombs, to fly into buildings somewhere. Then they got a better idea - to hijack airliners and use them instead.
Spreading anthrax via a crop duster is possible, but you'd need HUGE amounts of anthrax. There's no evidence that they had such amounts or any capability of making such amounts. The letters contained less than 3 grams of anthrax spores in total. There are 28 grams to an ounce.
I see T n’ A.
That just means you're biased.
Ivins had mental problems. One of his psychiatrists felt he should have been put in jail BEFORE the anthrax attacks.
He broke into a sorority and stole a secret book and then tried to sell the book back to them. He had fixations with that sorority.
He expressed thoughts of killing people in emails he sent under false names.
He was a diagnosed sociopath. That means he was very skillful at fooling people into thinking he was a nice guy when he was actually manipulating them to do what he wanted them to do.
The FBI didn't zero in on Dr. Hatfill. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg got the media to focus in on Hatfill, and she got some staffers for some Senators to DEMAND that the FBI investigate Hatfill. Newspapers were accusing the FBI of covering up for Hatfill. It was only after eight months of that kind of pressure that the FBI finally did a search of Hatfill's apartment, and suddenly they were described in the media as being the cause of all of the interest in Hatfill and everyone forgot about what went on during the previous eight months.
She was in her 70's when the anthrax attacks occurred. That means she's in her 80's now. What do people in their 80's usually do? If she's still working, she's teaching at a college in upstate New York.
I think she focused on Hatfill because he was a flamboyant character, a blow-hard, and there were rumors that he worked for the CIA in Africa, where there was a major anthrax outbreak at one time - when Hatfill was in Africa.
Rosbenberg never apologized to Hatfill. She stated that, if Hatfill was innocent, then it's the FBI's fault for investigating him, not hers.
Actually, on Monday at a seminar in Washington that is the subject of this thread, someone who worked at Ft. Detrick with Ivins, Dr. John Ezzell, said it was possible that Ivins was the anthrax mailer.
And according to Dina Temple-Raston, an NPR reporter who lectures on the case, "All his co-workers think Ivins did it”.
:-)
And it makes sense there are twice as many T's as A's, right?
By the way, don't bother going here. False advertising.
Bob Stevens died in Florida on October 5, 2001, it was late on Friday afternoon. We were all still reeling from 9-11-01.
October 6 and 7 was the weekend and there was a small article in USA Today but it was the weekend edition and few get that.
October 8 it was in USA today and Iowa State then attempted to get permission to destroy their collection of anthrax.
Go ahead, call the FBI and see who you get and what they say. It is a bureau of layered authority and they never got a direct answer just like anyone else who calls them. So on October 10, 11 and 12, the professors who had been there for many years then destroyed ONE OF THE TWO collections of anthrax on the campus.
What they destroyed was the historical collection that was kept at the veterinary school. It was just that....a collection close to 100 vials with very old stuff in them.
But if you understand the pathogen you will know that it can be teased to life with a little time and effort.
Why would this institution quickly destroy what they knew the feds would eventually figure out that they needed to look at who had what?????
What did they know and when did they know it?
You can fill in the blanks by reading Lew Weinstein’s blog under “Marcia's Story”.
Beyond that, here is another nugget.
From the beginning of time anthrax has been named for the black coal-like lesion that it always was. It was a dry sore that did NOT HURT and did not drip.
The sores from the mailings were runny, dripped a lot and still DID NOT HURT. It was just a little different.
If you read the scientific papers there is evidence that there is some variation in the mailed samples....i.e....two kinds. One with a fluted edge and one without.
A fluted edge is created when excess water runs down the sides of the colony after being turned over in the counting process. This kind would make a running sore.
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