“The whole story about “reverse engineering” was a crock.”
I think not. For starters, the Fox News obtained email explicitly says “Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material,”. To duplicate the letter material does not just imply reverse engineering - it states it as a fact.
It was announced by the director of the FBI himself in November 2002 that they were attempting to recreate the powder.
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=24286&ref=rellink
The bureau has been working for months to reconstruct the spores, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Nov. 1, according to The Washington Post. “We’re replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task,” the Post quoted Mueller as saying. “We are going into new territory in some areas,” he added.
So it is hardly a “crock” that the FBI were reverse engineering the powder.
Of course, we should remember that when Ed Lake reads the quote from Mueller “We’re replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured” he sees: “We’re not reverse engineering the powder, we’re just making preparations randomly and hoping one might match”
Actually, there’s no reason to get hung up on or focus on the phrase “reverse engineering.” They would want to create samples of powder in all the various ways in which it might have been made so that the results — the determination of the closest match — is meaningful. Here, it was found that the powder made by leading scientist Ken Alibek was closest. It was assumed by the person who had spoken with the email writer that Chuck Bailey knew what his colleague was doing. They were working under a contract using Delta Ames that they had obtained from NIH. There was a multi-million dollar DARPA grant funding the USAMRIID contract. Al-Timimi had access to the know-how pre-patent, pre-classification. See March 14, 2001 patent application. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey were not guilty of anything. The writer of the email, of course, only has the limited perspective of the forensics — what powder was said to be the closest match. It was Ken who years ago told me the FBI’s theory. Ed never even bothered to ask him who he understood the FBI to suspect.
Actually, there’s no reason to get hung up on or focus on the phrase “reverse engineering.” They would want to create samples of powder in all the various ways in which it might have been made so that the results — the determination of the closest match — is meaningful. Here, it was found that the powder made by leading scientist Ken Alibek was closest. It was assumed by the person who had spoken with the email writer that Chuck Bailey knew what his colleague was doing. They were working under a contract using Delta Ames that they had obtained from NIH. There was a multi-million dollar DARPA grant funding the USAMRIID contract. Al-Timimi had access to the know-how pre-patent, pre-classification. See March 14, 2001 patent application. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey were not guilty of anything. The writer of the email, of course, only has the limited perspective of the forensics — what powder was said to be the closest match. It was Ken who years ago told me the FBI’s theory. Ed never even bothered to ask him who he understood the FBI suspected.
Exactly.
"replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured" is NOT "reverse engineering."
"Back engineering implies that you know exactly what the material is and can replicate the material exactly, step by step."
For example: If someone invented a "better mousetrap" and you wanted to copy it and make money off of it for yourself, you would "reverse engineer" it as follows: (1) Buy one of the mousetraps. (2) Take it apart and study it, figure out exactly how it works. (3) Build (a.k.a. engineer) an assembly line that will make exact copies of it for your company.
There is no way to take apart a spore to figure out exactly how it was made.
Instead, you have to do as you say they did not do: just make preparations and hope one will match.
They have to do that for other reasons as well. That kind of work is required for forensic testimony in court. You can't just go into court and claim that, because you were able to make some spores that look very much like the attack spores, that you can prove that "Mr. X" made the spores. You have to prove that the spores could NOT have been made just as easily some other way that wouldn't involved "Mr. X."
If you reverse engineered that better mousetrap and created a new assembly line to make exact copies, there is no reason to believe that the assembly line you build is exactly the same the same as the assembly line that built the original.
If you can create a duplicate of a spore, that doesn't mean it was made the same way as the original.
You wrote:
the Fox News obtained email explicitly says “Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material,”. To duplicate the letter material does not just imply reverse engineering - it states it as a fact.
Exactly. Therefore, if that's what the guy who wrote that in the email believed, then he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
Instead of just mindlessly twisting facts to make them fit your beliefs, why not think a bit about the facts that have been made known about the attack anthrax?
Initially, it was believed that it was a "weaponized" and a very "sophisticated" powder. But that misunderstanding was the result of the fact that the people looking at it at USAMRIDD had never seen powdered anthrax before and didn't have a clue what was required to make it. Nor did people at AFIP. They were making assumptions and jumping to conclusions because, at the time, it appeared that America was under a bioweapons attack by terrorists and/or some foreign government.
Chapter 15 in my book is titled "To Err Is Human" and goes into great detail about the errors made at that time.
When things calmed down a bit, more information was gathered, and it was realized that things might be as bleak as they seemed, they realized that the powder in the Senate letters was rather "ordinary."
But, using an EDX, they had detected silicon and oxygen in the anthrax, which was very unusual since no one could see any additives in the powder. Research into scientific papers showed that this can happen as the result of "lab contamination."
Later, it appears that they also detected traces of a surfactant that no one could see, indicating that the wet spores had been treated before drying about the same way as when you do laundry and put a capful of "Snuggle" into your final rinse before putting your clothes into a dryer. It eliminates the static charge that results from quick drying with hot air.
So, if you want to "reverse engineer" the spores in the Senate letters, you have to create ordinary spores that contain the same kind of lab contamination and the same kind of traces of a surfactant as the attack spores.
How the hell do you do that?
If you can somehow recreate "lab contamination," how do you know it came about the same way as the original? How do you know there aren't a hundred ways the same "lab contamination" can occur?
If you can recreate the traces of surfactant, how do you know you did it the same way as the person who made the attack anthrax? All you are leaving behind are organic molecules on the surface of a spore that can come about in a variety of different ways.
So, there is NO WAY to "reverse engineer" the attack anthrax.
What they had to do was create anthrax (or simulant) powders in just about every way imaginable to see which one was closest to the attack anthrax. If they got something very close to the attack anthrax, they might then try refining the process to see if they can get even closer. IF they found a technique that created a virtually identical powder, then they would try to determine if a suspect had access to the same equipment, ingredients, etc.
A conspiracy theorist doesn't need to do any of this, of course. Just a mention that a powder was created at some point in time that was "the best duplication" of the attack anthrax, and that a scientist at USAMRIID once made it that way, is all the proof needed to point at USAMRIID as hiding a vast and totally illegal U.S. Government bioweapons manufacturing facility.