Anthrax Sleuthing: Science aids a nettlesome FBI criminal probe

Chemical & Engineering News ^ | 12/4/2006 | Lois R. Ember

[Qwertrew]

ping

[oceanview]

so what's the deal here - it wasn't weaponized?

[cardinal4]

so what's the deal here - it wasn't weaponized?

Thats what they say, but the fact Beecher was allowed to publish that statement leads me to believe it was.

[Southack]

You know that an article is spinning when it mentions that Silicon was found in the anthrax, omits that oxygen was also found, and then claims that Silica (Silicon-Oxide)couldn't have been in the sample!

[Wonder Warthog]

"The EDS x-ray detector measures the number of emitted x-rays versus their energy. The energy of the x-ray is characteristic of the element from which the x-ray was emitted. A spectrum of the energy versus relative counts of the detected x-rays is obtained and evaluated for qualitative and quantitative determinations of the elements present in the sampled volume."

I fail to see how energy dispersive x-ray could tell the difference between silicon and silica, since it is an "element only" technique. Above quote is from a Thermo-Electron site describing EDS-x-ray.

[kinoxi]

On Oct. 5, NBC Nightly News reported: "Investigators tell NBC News that the water used to make [the anthrax spores] came from a northeastern U.S., not a foreign, source." Ebright says, "This information, if correct,...

This article reads more like a general dissent piece. ("if correct",?) It also seems to contain quite a bit of hearsay. The link to the source kept timing out as well.

[jpl]

My advice regarding the so-called "Amerithrax" investigation is not to believe anything official that you read about it. It's almost all propaganda and B.S.

[Strategerist]

so what's the deal here - it wasn't weaponized?

People that have carefully followed the actual news in this case and sorted through the chain of repeated BS have known for a long time it wasn't really "weaponized" - one problem is there's no actual DEFINITION of "weaponized."

[Shermy]

"Inexplicably, that silence was broken this August. Then, Douglas J. Beecher, a microbiologist in the FBI's hazardous materials response unit, published a paper in Applied & Environmental Microbiology, a well-respected but not well-known journal."

I saw it. It can be read as a plea to first responders not to treat anthrax casually if it isn't "weaponized." But who would treat it with anything but utter care? It was an odd paragraph with citation to the "individuals familiar" that the anthrax was simple to the Science article that said it was complex. Didn't make much sense, doesn't have to, but if one wants to believe it is disinfo it is to put into a scientific paper "proof" the anthrax was something Hatfill could have made.

"Beecher's peer-reviewed paper"

--Your honor, Defense Evidence #1 !!!

""The statement should have had a reference," says L. Nicholas Ornston, editor-in-chief of the microbiology journal. "An unsupported sentence being cited as fact is uncomfortable to me. Any statement in a scientific article should be supported by a reference or by documentation," he says."

It's much worse than that. It did have a reference, to the Science article. We weren't supposed to look so closely, it's peer-reviewed!!

""Sometimes scientists misspoke as well, as was the case with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. AFIP studied the anthrax powder from the Daschle letter using energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, and a top AFIP scientist, Florabell G. Mullick, reported the presence of silica in an AFIP newsletter. Yet, the spectrum AFIP released shows a peak for the element silicon, not silicon dioxide (silica)."

Does one "mispeak" in a paper? Did this reporter contact Ms. Mullck? Is silicon dioxide an element?

"Meselson alerted the FBI to a 1980 microbiology paper that reports finding silicon"

But what about silica??

""The explanation for mischaracterizing the attack material is really quite simple, one of the former government officials says. When the attacks occurred, "there was no systematic methodology in place to evaluate a biological powder forensically."

OK, then. Show us the photos. Let us "eyeball" it.

""Also in his paper, Beecher writes: "Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents." His citation for this statement is a 2003 article that investigative journalist Gary Matsumoto published in the news section of Science (302, 1492)."

Toldja!

""Meselson, who reviewed Beecher's article for the FBI,""

Hmm...

"A former top military scientist speaking on background because his current employer has government contracts, tells C&EN that he, too, "saw scanning electron micrographs" of the powder from the Daschle letter. "I saw only spores and almost no rubbish from the culture media." If the spores had been coated with silica, they would have looked like doughnuts with large sugar particles on them, he says. Instead, "the Daschle spores were clean doughnut holes with no sugars."

Atx looks like doughnuts?

""Ebright admits that the pool of persons with the required skills is large and many times "larger than the pool of persons with access to the [Ames] strain." Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Ames strain "was narrowly distributed," probably to "no more than a dozen, certainly no more than 20 laboratories" worldwide, he says."

Oh gosh, not this junk again.

""In November 2002, FBI Director Mueller announced that efforts were being made to "reverse engineer" the mailed anthrax."

If it's just pure spores, why is it "reverse engineered?"

[Strategerist]

The information and summary in this article is VERY similar to that on Ed Lake's http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com site.

Ed says he'll comment on it tomorrow.

[Peach]

Thanks for the ping. The media and Democrats hope we have amnesia or believe in coincidences. LOL


9/11 Hijacker sought treatment for red hands (anthrax).
October 11, 2001. Palm Beach Post.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/546116/posts

Tabloid Editor rented apartment to two 9/11 hijackers. The tabloid lost a worker to anthrax.
October 15, 2001. Miami Herald.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/548061/posts

Hijackers linked to anthrax.
October 15, 2001. St. Petersburg Times.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/101501/Worldandnation/Hijackers_linked_to_t.shtml

9/11 Hijackers treated for anthrax.
March 23, 2002. The New York Times.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/652000/posts

Remember Anthrax?
April 20, 2002. The Weekly Standard.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/669487/posts
9/24/01. ABC.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/531023/posts

Hijacker treated for anthrax.
May 9, 2002. The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/682921/posts

Atta tried to buy a cropduster.
June 6, 2002. ABC.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/695924/posts

Analysis of anthrax letters.
June 19, 2002. Instapundit.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/703075/posts?page=44#44

Freeper My Identity research on anthrax letters. Post #44.
6/20/02.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/703075/posts?page=44#44

The silica used in the anthrax attacks traced to Iraq.
October 28, 2002. The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28334-2002Oct27&notFound=true

Freeper Backhoe's list of links.
February 2, 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/838309/posts

Freeper Republican Strategist list of links.
February 24, 2003.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/850346/posts

Freeper polemikos list of links to investigations regarding anthrax.
December 26, 2003.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1047022/posts

Evidence Iraq behind anthrax attacks.
January 1, 2004. Accuracy in Media
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html

[Qwertrew]

Aw jeez..........

[Shermy]

"one problem is there's no actual DEFINITION of "weaponized.""

I think the problem came from descriptions of the spores themselves. Apparently very "pure" they were described as "advanced" and "weapons grade."

[Strategerist]

Tabloid Editor rented apartment to two 9/11 hijackers. The tabloid lost a worker to anthrax.

Couple things to note:

1) It wasn't the editor, it was his wife, who was a real estate agent who rented a LOT of apartments.

That the Hijackers trained and lived in Florida was reported in the news BEFORE the first anthrax letters were mailed, and it was entirely possible for the mailer to simply seek out the most well-known news organization in the area where the hijackers trained in order to make it look like there was a connection (and of course the letter to AMI was sent to an old, defunct address for the National Enquirer and had to be forwarded - likely the address was found off the internet.)

And of course all the 9/11 attackers were all dead before any letters were mailed anywhere, a pretty basic fact that I see people gloss over a lot.

[Peach]

And of course all the 9/11 attackers were all dead before any letters were mailed anywhere, a pretty basic fact that I see people gloss over a lot.

And the ease in which they could have handed off their letters to terrorist or sympathizers seems to be similarly overlooked.

And don't overlook that a few pharmacists and doctors came forward after 9/11 to say they treated some of the 9/11 hijackers for what they later came to realize was cutaneous anthrax. I just don't believe in that kind of coincidence, but some people find it quite easy to overlook that basic fact.

[jpl]

one problem is there's no actual DEFINITION of "weaponized."

There's no actual definition of the term "person of interest" either, but that doesn't stop law enforcement types from using it when it suits them.

Using terms without real meaning (or muddying definitions) is good for pushing agendas, and for deflecting accountability.

[Gritty]

Five years later—after the FBI had conducted more than 9,100 interviews and 67 searches and had issued 6,000 grand-jury subpoenas—the case remains unsolved...

Likely the reason this has reached a dead-end and the trail is ice cold is because the perpetrators got incinerated in the World Trade Center attack.

The letters were postmarked September 8th.

If some guy sitting at his computer sipping a cup of coffee can figure that out, why can't the Dick Tracy crowd at the FBI?

[Battle Axe]

Silicon dioxide is a compound.

Weaponized...???

Look at anthrax in it's raw state. Gobs of debris. So any attempt to clean it up could be construed as an attempt to weaponize it.

When you take away all the blood and gore and other animal debris from the raw anthrax, you get a product that will float in the air.

In the woolen mills, the carders are huge drums with teeth like velcro. They spin the drums and knock a lot of the debris off the spores, the spores float and one contracts wool sorter's disease. Inhalation anthrax.

What they are trying to do is align the wool fibers so that it can be spun into yarn, but the same process cleans the debris from the spores.

Arrggghhhh! Dr. Enbright is not so bright. He is assuming that the theft took place at the same location as the grow out and purification.

Not so!!!

There is also an omission on the travels of the sample taken from the Beefmaster heifer found under the windmill in Texas in 1981. The sample was sent to College Station Texas and then on to Ames, Iowa. From Ames, Iowa it was sent to USAMRIID. Would they keep a copy for their special, historical collection?? I would think yes.

On October 10, 11, 12, 2001, ISU destroyed this collection. There were two collections on the campus and only this one, the one kept in the vet school was destroyed.

Why?? What about this collection made it so evil that it had to be obliterated, along (supposedly) with all the records of what students had been given access.

The leader of the destruction was the same professor that had been the chair of the department years before. The same year I was there. The same year I saw two strange lesions on a couple from South America. The one in my class asked me to look at it. I'd never seen anything like it before. I can still see it in my mind.

[muawiyah]

It didn't need to be "weaponized". Passage through the USPS 010 operation would suffice ~ see Ken Abelik concerning that issue.

There are people who had US mail equipment available to develop the process. One source was Kuwait ~ when Saddam's people seized Kuwait city they hauled away the latest and greatest of postal processing equipment (recently purchased and installed by the Kuwait post office) to Baghdad.

I've always been very concerned about this particular aspect of Gulf War I because I knew some postal people taken away into captivity and probable death ~ along with their equipment.