ANTHRAX POWDER - STATE OF THE ART?

Science ^ | 11/27/2003 | Gary Matsumoto

[Sacajaweau]

I don't think Malvo knew SH** about anthrax and he didn't have to know anything, just trust Mohammed that that the penicillen would protect him. Muhammed would have had anthrax shots for Gulf War One and in fact, I think it was one of his gripes so he had some knowledge of it.

These two are so tight lipped about everything except what we saw visibly, I believe they planned on sacrificing themselves. They have that same stoic, almost catatonic expresssion as Atta.

There was a big bit on the spelling of Penicillen. However, I can't spell it right unless the bottle is in front of me. Someone did mention way back when that it was more of a spanish-like spelling and I don't know how close that would be to Jamaican.

[Sacajaweau]

I'm talking about Malvo/Muhammed as being the MAILERS ONLY. Interestingly, the profile said the perp would be familiar with New Jersey. Lo and behold, Mohammed purchases the car si miles from where the letters were mailed. Kinda like returning to the scene of the crime. Of all the car places in the states, he winds up there????????

[Calpernia]

Could that have been the hotel in Maine? I never heard from that woman again, did you Badabing?

[Calpernia]

Archived bookmarks expire in about an hour. Hope you can view this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a101017.htm

[Domestic Church]

No not Maine. It might have been near the outer banks of the Carolinas or the eastern shore of Virginia right after the anthrax letters when folks were hoarding/taking that expensive antibiotic and we were all bug eyed from reading FR. I think the source was a local or city paper. The canister/can (soda can or cleanser can?) had enough anthrax to kill large numbers of folks. Did anyone collect the anthrax threads into an ongoing thread (similar to freeper Flutters SARs masterpiece ?)

[Sacajaweau]

Another thing is that Malvo started at the Florida school in AUGUST, about the same time that the plans for 9-11 were confirmed by the flight schedule.

[Calpernia]

I was just scanning threads under an anthrax search. I didn't have enough info to narrow my search more. I wasn't here at FR then. I only joined a few months ago. I am going to scan more. Central/South eastern area interests me for a reason.

Be back after more searches.

[Calpernia]

http://www.wral.com/news/1039573/detail.html

Fayetteville Hotel Employees, Guests Given Cipro As Precaution

7:48 p.m. EST November 2, 2001

FAYETTEVILLE, NC -- Firefighters and Haz-Mat crews wrapped up their investigation Friday night at the StudioPlus Deluxe Studios, where a sealed container found in one of the hotel's restrooms tested positive for anthrax.

Haz-Mat teams did an initial test on the container, which was found around 9:30 a.m. by an employee, who then brought it to his manager.

It is unclear whether the initial test on the substance was negative, or whether it was invalid due to an error. Haz-Mat workers did two more screenings of the substance, though, and both of those field tests came back positive for anthrax.

"The screening for positive is only about 20-30 percent accurate," says Fayetteville public information officer Jason Brady, "but we're not taking any chances."

WRAL Health Team Physician Dr. Allen Mask says the field tests the crews probably used are sensitive, but not specific. The tests will react to lots of different bacteria, and is not designed to respond to any particular strain. Click here to learn more about these tests.

In contrast, the test being done on the material in the state lab is very specific. That test involves a culture. Scientists take the substance, place it in a petrie dish, grow it, and then examine the results. Those results are nearly 100 percent accurate and are expected within 72 hours.

Until those tests results are available, no one can be sure whether the substance was anthrax, so the 20 hotel employees and guests were taken Friday afternoon to the Honeycutt Recreation Center, where they were quarantined for more than three hours and then given four days' worth of Cipro, an antibiotic used to fight anthrax.

The health department also collected their names, phone numbers, and medical histories.

The visitors and workers were returned to the hotel, but will have to get the OK from authorities before they can collect their belongings. They will be put up in a local hotel while StudioPlus remains closed for the weekend, with its ventilation system turned off.

Firefighters in protective suits searched the hotel for evidence, including one of the guest rooms. The room was registered to some people of Middle Eastern descent, and officials are not saying whether those customers were possible targets of an attack or suspects.

Police officers and sniffing dogs searched the cars in the parking lot, as well.

Fayetteville police will be guarding the hotel around-the-clock until the test results come back.

Officials say even if the container did contain anthrax, it is not contagious and there is no cause for Fayetteville residents to panic.

[Calpernia]

Found the FR URL: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3be2fa710721.htm

[genefromjersey]

I read it. Now you KNOW there wasn't any 5 lbs of anthrax discovered !

[Calpernia]

***bows head in shame*** Actually I didn't know if that 5lb anthrax post was real or not. I was living in rural NC at the time of that article. I do believe that story/rumor was out before we had a satellite dish.

On the other hand, I find this interesting. That article Domestic Church had mentioned.

Robert Stevens, from The Sun? The first to die of Anthrax?

Do we know where he stayed on his business trip to NC? The containers found at that hotel in Fayetteville seem to coincide with Stevens trip there. What if that bathroom had a joining airvent to Stevens hotel room? Or something along those lines. If Stevens was on a business trip...it is NOT unlikely that he had a briefcase. Spores could have settled in an open briefcase. Papers brought back to The Sun could have contaminated his office. Maybe some papers were sent to the mailroom, that is how the mail clerk was exposed.

I'm looking to see if I can find an itinerary for stevens now.

[Sacajaweau]

I'm pretty sure it was a fishing trip which is why they were considering anthrax that occurs in nature. He called home complaining of stomach pains.

[Sacajaweau]

Please notice that the note said

WE have this anthrax

Reading a picture into it, someone is watching over the shoulder of the writer.

Because there are similarities between the anthrax letters and the sniper letters, I'm going back to look at the sniper letters so I can point them out.

[Calpernia]

>>>I'm pretty sure it was a fishing trip which is why they were considering anthrax that occurs in nature.

What do you mean fishing trip? Steven's source of Anthrax? The cans that were found at the hotel?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the link!

[TrebleRebel]

Very important stuff, should clear up any misconceptions or lies one final time. As someone mentioned in another thread, the tide is turning.

My name is Gary Matsumoto. I am the author of the Science magazine article published this week under the title: Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?

Over the past few days I have been alternately entertained and appalled by the emails of Mr. Ed Lake which have grown progressively more shrill with each passing day. Mr. Lake has been boorish and he is entitled to be a boor, but he has also been grotesquely inaccurate, and to the extent that he is trying to tell other people what to think on a matter of national security, he is obligated to make a minimal effort get his facts straight. As he seems to take that obligation lightly, I feel it is necessary to offer the following response.

The scientists who performed the electronmicroscopy and elemental analyses on the Senate anthrax powder have stated, on-the-record, that there was silica present;
Two of those scientists, Tom Geisbert and Peter Jahrling of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), saw silica nanoparticles on the Daschle anthrax spores that looked, as author Richard Preston described it in his book, The Demon in the Freezer, "like fried-egg gunk, dripping off the spores";
There are several detailed descriptions of these silica nanoparticles in Preston's book. Although Geisbert and Jahrling have not been allowed to communicate with anyone other than Preston, Fort Detrick spokesperson, Caree Vanderlinden, told me that USAMRIID does not dispute the facts in Preston's book;
The 2001 Canadian military study, which assessed the risk posed by anthrax spores delivered by mail, used the U.S. Army's anthrax simulant that I described in my article. The Bacillus globigii spores were coated in silica nanoparticles; they also appeared to be energetic (without passing through a sorting machine, which has been cited as a potential source of static electricity), swiftly disseminating through a simulated office space in less than two minutes. The BG spore's energetic behavior was prima facie evidence of an electrostatic charge. The spore concentration reported by the Canadians (1x10^11/gram or 100+ billion spores/gram) tells you that they received the Army's newest batch of simulant made by Chris Hansen. According to military sources, the Army's older batch of simulant contained a much lower spore concentration (1-5x10^9/gram or 1 to 5 billion spores/gram); the older simulant stock also contained silica;
Mr. Lake is correct in saying that the simulant used in the Canadian study, donated by Dugway Proving Ground and treated with silica , behaved like the Daschle anthrax powder;
Dr. Matthew Meselson of Harvard has previously stated that he did not see silica nanoparticles on the Daschle spores as I described them in an October 2002 Washington Post article co-wrotten with Guy Gugliotta. This hairsplitting distinction may offer one possible explanation for the discrepancy between the Geisbert/Jahrling accounts, and those of Meselson/Alibek. In the Post article, Guy and I described an individual particle of CAB-O-SIL (a fumed silica) at a magnification of 350,000x, which is several hundred thousand times greater than the magnification employed to view, and photograph, a cluster of spores. As it is the molecular structure of a silica nanoparticle that make it an ideal dispersing agent, Guy and I deemed it necessary to provide, in words, a close-up view. At 350,000x, one can discern the ultrastructure of a single silica nanoparticle, but the surface of a spore would be completely obscured--the scanning distance would be too close. So, unless Meselson/Alibek were viewing electronmicrographs at this extreme magnification, they would not see what I described;
Individual silica nanoparticles can look different from CAB-O-SIL; it depends on how they were processed. Individual silica nanoparticles can be as small as 5 nanometers in diameter (smaller than a polio virus); agglomerates can appear as Preston describes them, like the "splatty goop or gunk" of a fried egg white;

The presence of silica is not determined by the visual examination of electronmicrographs. It is a determination made with laboratory instruments such as the Thermo-Noran Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer used by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology to analyze the Daschle spores. This instrument is precise and generates unambiguous data; Other instruments, equally precise, would be used to determine the presence of a silane coupling agent;
As I reported in my article, various news organizations reported the presence of an unidentified substance in the Senate powder, in addition to silica. In her book, The Killer Strain, Washington Post correspondent Marilyn Thompson said "the silica also appeared to contain a chemical additive to aid in bonding." My reportage is consistent with these accounts, and advances this particular part of the story;
The possible presence of silicon atoms embedded in the internal structures of Bacillus spores is irrelevant when it comes to making an aerosol. To make a refined aerosol, an additive needs to be on the surface of a spore's outer envelope (the exosporium) to block adhesiveness due to van der Waals forces and the Coulombic fields surrounding various point charges on a particle. The spore's internal structures could be drenched in naturally-occurring silicon atoms (assuming that such atoms do occur naturally), and those atoms would not prevent clumping, or make a spore more"aerogenic." Untreated spores do not behave like the Senate material or the U.S. Army anthrax simulant. They behave like the coarse, non-energetic powder produced by Dugway Proving Ground's reverse engineering attempts earlier this year, which was made, allegedly at the FBI's specific request, without an additive.;
There is another critical difference between the X-Ray microanalysis data in the 1980 J. of Bact. paper that reported silicon in the cortex and spore coats of B. cereus spores and the energy dispersive X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy that detected silica on the surface of B. anthracis spores. The B. cereus spores were cryosectioned in order to detect elements inside of the bacilli. The J. of Bact. paper's "silicon map" shows the alleged location of the silicon atoms--"the cortex/coat." I have been told that the AFIP spectroscopy examined the surfaces of whole B. anthracis spores mailed to Senator Daschle.

In a separate email, Mr. Milton Leitenberg, argues that through syntactical contrivance I misled him, and others, into thinking that chemist, Dr. Stuart Jacobsen, was part of "the FBI reference group dealing with Amerithrax events." I respectfully disagree. I made no references whatsoever to this group in my article. Dr. Jacobsen was not a source for any information concerning the engineering specifications of the Senate powder, the U.S. Army simulant powder, or the dried anthrax made by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick prior to the cancellation of the U.S. biological warfare program. Dr. Jacobsen provided expert comment on the coating of small particles with silica nanoparticles and a coupling agent, which he was eminently qualified to do as he engineered coated particles during a project for the U.S. Defense Department.

As Leitenberg correctly states, I told him some time ago that I would not disclose information that reveals how to engineer an anthrax powder. I understand his concern, and I take this specific criticism of my article quite seriously. I do not believe, however, that I published anything resembling a blueprint for a BW aerosol. No one could go out and make a refined anthrax powder based on my Science article.

Finally, Mr. Leitenberg suggests that "the parameters listed by the JAMA authors were a generic description of "weapons grade," material and not a description of the Amerithrax samples." Again, I disagree. The authors of the JAMA paper clearly state that the "parameters" in question (i.e.., "high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping.") referred to material "such as that used in the 2001 attacks." In other words, those parameters did, in fact, describe the Senate powder. This interpretation is buttressed by the fact that at the time JAMA published this paper, May 2002, various government officials had already ascribed the above characteristics to the Senate powder in press conferences and other on-the-record briefings.

There is, in fact, no such thing as a "generic description" of weapons grade material, because no such material exists. The various anthrax weapons known to U.S. intelligence are heterogenous in composition and their characteristics. The specifications of the Senate powder, as I pointed out in my article, did not resemble the former U.S. weapon, which had a much lower spore concentration ... was lyophilized, milled and contained no additive. There are no known parameters for an Iraqi anthrax powder as no such powder has been discovered. Weapons inspectors have never recovered an Iraqi anthrax weapon, wet or dry. According to Dr. Richard Spertzel, UNSCOM inspectors have only found DNA from the Vollum 1B strain, but no samples from an actual weapon. In previous interviews that I have conducted with Dr. Ken Alibek, he said the anthrax powder produced by the former Soviet Union contained no electrostatic charge.

The Science article is the culmination of a year-long investigation. Several staff editors and correspondents reviewed it. The magazine also took the unusual step of having scientists critique the article, which is standard practice for peer-reviewed scientific papers, but not news articles. Five Ph.D. scientists who specialize in B. anthracis , biotechnology and molecular chemistry reviewed the article for publication. All endorsed the scientific content.

In general, I think it is a dubious practice to extrapolate occult meanings from an author's syntax, or to impute ulterior motives merely because an author reports facts that inconveniently skewer a pet theory. When in doubt, ask. The Science article is not a Dead Sea scroll. The authors, and his editors, are alive and willing to answer questions.

-Gary Matsumoto-

[aristeides]

That should blow them out of the water. I wonder if it will.

[Shermy]

Great post.

This hairsplitting distinction may offer one possible explanation for the discrepancy between the Geisbert/Jahrling accounts, and those of Meselson/Alibek.

Mr. Matsumoto graciously supplies an "out."

[Shermy]

That should blow them out of the water. I wonder if it will.

I bet so.

[genefromjersey]

Great response !!

Ed Lake is a nice guy, but seems to be assuming, because he owns a jack knife, he is competent to fence in the Olympics.

One of the reasons I dropped out of the discussion groups
was the degeneration of these groups into semantic excercises: how many anthrax spores can dance on the head of a press release , etc. - the written words of certain reporters being presented as "Tablets of the Law".

Ed did an excellent job on the geography of the mailings; but, like Meselsen attempting to deal with the reality of Soviet Biowarfare history, he seemed to get tangled in the web of homemade lab production ( as many of us did,thanks to the volumes of published dis-information .)

You may note I now speak of "dis-information", rather than mis-information. It's obvious (now !) a good deal of what has been published was fed to prominent writers to take them off the scent.

The anthrax used in the murders-by-mail was clearly produced in a sophisticated lab, using the very latest biowarfare methods.Only a few labs in the world are known (or strongly suspected) to have such facilities, and they are state-sponsored.

I realize the FBI - like all law enforcement agencies - likes to play its cards close to the vest; but I think the American people can handle a few simple truths. We have, after all,handled the barrage of lies !