""A clever high school student" could make such a preparation""
Coated or not, I don't think that's correct. It's still high-grade stuff.
As far as the silica in the mix, that blew in on the day, September 8, 2001, the terrorists filled the envelopes in a public park in Boca Raton, FL.
""A clever high school student" could make such a preparation""
And s/he probably would have attended a really good private school
in a town with a good university library.
Or was a strong early-adapter of using the Internet for looking up
terror devices/concoctions.
And the kid would probably get a free ride at Yale U., in the manner of
the Taliban admit.
Let's see: our clever HS student would need anthrax cultures, a supply of suitable medium,a freezer,a centrifuge,and,perhaps,a flash dryer or some form of bead mill.A glove box would be helpful,as would protective gear,air filtration.
What are we up to now ? $30-40,000 ?
consistent statements?
Dateline, November 2, 2002. One year after the attacks:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/fbisecretlyrecreate.html
FBI investigators and federal scientists have been secretly working for months to replicate the type of anthrax used in last year's deadly mail attacks, as part of a previously undisclosed strategy designed to determine precisely how the spores were manufactured, officials said yesterday.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who revealed the experiments in remarks to reporters here, said that using such "reverse engineering" could help investigators narrow the list of possible suspects.
"We're replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task," Mueller said. "We are going into new territory in some areas."
Dateline September 29, 2003, 2 years after attacks:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-29-anthrax_x.htm?POE=click-refer
WASHINGTON — Two years after the nation's deadly anthrax attacks, the FBI still has not been able to re-create the process the killer used to produce the substance sent through the U.S. mail, a top FBI official said Monday.
But Michael Mason, the new assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said testing has helped investigators "narrow" some aspects of the investigation and convinced them that the culprit has special expertise.
"We would not have that if reverse engineering had completely failed to provide us with any information or valuable leads," Mason said.
Dateline September 28, 2006, 5 years after attacks:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060929/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_anthrax_2
"The FBI and its partners in this investigation have never been under any misconceptions about the character of the anthrax used in the attacks," Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch wrote Holt on Thursday. "On the contrary, since the earliest months of this investigation, we have consulted with the world's foremost scientific experts on anthrax and relevant bio-forensic sciences, both inside and outside the FBI. While there may have been erroneous media reports about the character of the 2001 anthrax, the FBI's investigation has never been guided by such reports."
Correct. That flat out lie causes me to doubt everything else in the article. Saddam and al Queda remains the joint suspects to me.