If not Ivins ...(Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters)

fredericknewspost. ^ | August 29, 2008 | Katherine Heerbrandt

[Prunetacos]

When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it. Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --

[Prunetacos]

Remember Lucy and Tinkerbelle? "Wade's attorney tries to discredit bloodhounds' work HEARING: Lucy, Tinkerbelle tracked murder suspect's scent. According to Levy's filing, Tinkerbelle and Lucy's handlers Dennis Slavin and Bill Kift, were part of the misdirected investigation of Steven Hatfill, a government researcher wrongly implicated in 2001 anthrax letter mailings. Hatfill sued the government for hurting his reputation, winning a $5.82 million settlement. The attacks were later linked to Bruce Ivins, another researcher, who killed himself last month. Lucy and Tinkerbelle are specially-trained dogs from California who travel the country helping the FBI sniff out criminals. Investigators flew the bloodhounds and their handlers to Alaska roughly two weeks after Schloss went missing in early August 2007........." http://www.adn.com/crime/story/509628.html

[ZACKandPOOK]

What are Sarah Palin’s views of the anthrax mailings? What are Biden’s? What are McCain’s? What are Obama’s?

FurnaceZilla attacks Wasilla Alaska
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D0EL8ez7Pc

[Prunetacos]

[Prunetacos]

silica coating

Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer] echoes what is widely reported by reputable scientists. The anthrax in the mailings, he says, was “highly bred, weapons-grade ... with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that each particle repelled the other ... each particle no more than five microns.” Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax.

[Prunetacos]

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 Are the FBI Now Conducting a Real Investigation? After the enormously important disclosures made in Gary Matsumoto's article in Science Magazine entitled Anthrax Powder: State of the Art? there is now evidence that the FBI have begun ro realize that they can no longer pretend about the advanced nature of the anthrax powder sent to the senate.

[Prunetacos]

The Daschle anthrax had a distinct trait that made it a deadly product. It was coated with silica

With no coating (A) the particles clump together due to Van der Waals forces. These forces are very short range (a few nanometers) and they fall off in an extremely non-linear fashion as something like r^6, where r is the distance. This means that if particles are able to get close enough to each other to invoke these Van der Waals forces they may become bonded together almost irreversibly. Thus uncoated anthrax particles or spores would be much less likely to cause inhalational anthrax - since when they clump together they would be larger than the 5 microns minimum diameter necessary to become trapped inside lung alveoli.

However, when coated with silica (B), the particles of anthrax cannot physically get close enough together to invoke the short range Van der Waals forces. The anthrax spores will remain as separate entities - and thus be capable of lodging inside lung alveoli where they will find a favorable environment to become biologically active, producing lethal toxin in the process.

To summarize:
The Daschle anthrax had a distinct trait that made it a deadly product. It was coated with silica but it is unknown publicly what method was used to coat the Daschle anthrax with silica - nevertheless it is almost certain that the FBI know this. One of the puzzling questions is why the FBI commissioned Dugway to make anthrax samples using fairly crude equipment but without silica coatings. Not surprisingly none of these products were capable of producing primary aerosols - silica is essential for this.

Finally it is important to realize that such weaponized anthrax products cannot be engineered to be lethal from first principal design. In other words, I can’t simply deduce that a certain amount of silica will give me the most lethal product. The rubber hits the road when these anthrax particles are inhaled inside real lungs. The only way to develop a product that is lethal is to process scores of different formulations and test them on monkeys using a strict design of experiments approach. Once the most lethal formulations are discovered it can then be deduced what silica coating densities are the most favorable and the formulations can then be tweaked. Such a process would take years of development by a team of specialists and with state sponsorship

[Prunetacos]

Members of an EPA and United States Coast Guard cleanup crew prepare to enter the American Media Inc. office building in Boca Raton, Florida, where at least two people contracted anthrax through a deliberately contaminated letter mailed to the facility in October, 2001.

[EdLake]

The Daschle anthrax had a distinct trait that made it a deadly product. It was coated with silica

I don't know who you are trying to convince with this nonsense. The transcript of the August 18, 2008, roundtable scientific discussion is now available HERE

It is explained a dozen different ways in the discussion that the the attack spores were NOT coated with silica. And it was NOT necessary to have a silica coating on the spores for the spores to have the effect they did.

And we also have pictures of the attack anthrax HERE

The picture on the left shows a clump of spores with at least a thousand spores in it. NO silica. It's what was in the senate letters.

If you simply cannot believe the facts, you have a serious problem. But there is no need to tell me about it. I don't care.

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

[EdLake]

“Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer]

Norm Covert went to Chaplain School, not to MIT. He's a media guy. Do you really believe media people know more about science than scientists? If so, then you would undoubtedly accept the nonsense that a journalist wrote in Science magazine over what scientists say about that nonsense.

Ed at www.anthraxinvestigation.com

[ZACKandPOOK]

I’ve had it confirmed that this below was the technique. It used silicon dioxide or a siliconizing solution in the culture medium. See FBI WMD head and consulting scientists who have aerosolized anthrax using siliconizing solution.

“The micro-droplet technique combines cell cultures (micro-droplets) in a liquid media with hydrophobic silica (a sandlike substance), which coats the micro-droplets. The coating allows the micro-droplets to maintain a consistent shape that offers more surface area for replication.” Adequate aeration, another step in the replication process, is achieved through spaces between the silica-encapsulated droplets.

The major advantages of the micro-droplet technique over liquid fermentation and surface cultivation include the portability of the process, minimal power supply needs, and lack of requirement for a complex infrastructure for the process, Bailey explains.

http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/5545/

Biodefense Researchers Invent Process to Help Create Biofriendly Products

April 13, 2004

[ZACKandPOOK]

Someone implying he was Bruce Ivins created a YouTube account and one of his two comments concerned gouging the eye out of the mole (relating to an episode of the “mole”).

Was that Bruce?

Or is it an FBI or CIA honeytrap? (a website created for the purpose of capturing IPs of interest)

It is unusual that he used something so close to his real name given the standard is something totally fake. For example, beginning in 2006, he used Prunetacos.

http://www.youtube.com/bruceivi

[arthurus]

Ivins death is fortuitous in that it allows the FBI to “close” the case and to make all the allegations about Ivins that it wants as one “cannot libel the dead.” It also allows them to “establish” that the crime was committed by the politically correct sort of perpetrator- a lone nut- that has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. The most important thing is always that whatever the crime, it may not be understood as possibly perpetrated by any Moslem for any Islamic reason.

[ZACKandPOOK]

A number of states* retain the offense of blackening the memory of the dead in their criminal libel laws.

It is not true Ivins moved in down the block from Haigwood. He came first. He and his wife then moved to Frederick. Then Dr. Haigwood came. This was all readily knowable by the Associated Press though the most rudimentary checking of contemporaneous published reports. Thus, it is regrettable that there was no correction. While these criminal laws are rarely enforced (and would never be enforced against media just reporting in good faith on news of public interest), it nonetheless points to the interest that the FBI and press “get it right.”

See, e.g., Colo. Rev. State. Sec. 18-13-105 (1998) (making it a felony to “knowingly publish or disseminate, either by written instrument, sign, picture, or the like, any statement or object tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead);

Ga. Code Ann. Sec. 16-11-40 (1998) (same)

Idaho Code Sec. 18-4801 (1998) (same)

Nev. Rev. State Ann. Sec. 200.510 (Michie 1998) (same)

N.D. Cent. Code Sec. 12.1-15.01 (1995) (same)

12 Okla. St. Sec. 1441 (1995) (same)

Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. Sec. 73.001 (West 1998)

Utah Code Ann. Sec. 45-2-2 (1998)

[Prunetacos]

“It is unusual that he used something so close to his real name given the standard is something totally fake. For example, beginning in 2006, he used Prunetacos.”

Yipes!

[Prunetacos]

“Islamic reason”

Oxymoron?

[Prunetacos]

Re: ‘Gary Matsumoto’

Quotable Quotes:

“Tell Matsumoto to kiss my ass.”

“In the weeks immediately prior to the attacks, Dr. Ivins became aware that an investigative journalist who worked for NBC News had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on USAMRIID seeking detailed information from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory notebooks as they related to the AVA vaccine and the use of adjuvants. On August 28, 2001, Dr. Ivins appeared angry about the request providing the following response in an e-mail:

“Tell Matsumoto to kiss my ass. We’ve got better things to do than shine his shoes and pee on command. He’s gotten everything from me he will get.”

Bruce Ivins

[Prunetacos]

Matsumoto

Matsumoto: “Ivins created Gulf War Syndrome” - then, “Iraq’s anthrax has bentonite”

The lead search warrant affidavit deepens the questions about Matsumoto. Matsumoto fingered Ivins as the one who created

“Gulf War Syndrome”, which had Ivins very angry just three weeks before the anthrax attacks began. Within 60 days, Matsumoto is claming that Iraq’s anthrax has bentonite. What gives?

Before the warrant, here’s some of the public evidence:

1. Ivins was described by Dr. Nass in her 1999 report to Congress as “the leading anthrax vaccine researcher” at Fort Detrick.

2. Matsumoto blamed Ivins for causing Gulf War Syndrome with his work on the anthrax vaccine in the period prior to 2001.

3. After the anthrax attacks, Matsumoto joined ABC News’ Brian Ross and others in the bentonite story blaming Iraq on October 26.

4. Matsumoto backed off this story only slightly in another story on November 1, but continues to emphasize the Iraq connection.

5. During the run-up to war in October 2002, Matsumoto continued to point squarely at Iraq in his Washington Post article, while shifting from bentonite to silica as the additive in his Washington Post article.

6. In late 2003, Matsumoto wrote a big article for Science Magazine - still looking at Iraq - and claiming that the spores were coated with silica, which proved military engineering from an “industrial source”.

7. Ed Lake seriously criticized Matsumoto for ignoring the findings of Professor Matthew Meselson and former “bioweaponeer” Ken Alibek, who looked at the Daschle anthrax and said that there was NO coating of the spores.

8. Matsumoto didn’t consider what Meselson and Alibek had seen, relying solely on a graph from a spectrograph.

9. FBI forensic scientist Beecher’s article in 2006 named Matsumoto as the man who had it wrong that there was any coating with silica. This would indicate that almost any microbiologist could have done it, rather than military engineering by either Iraq or Dugway or Battelle. This marked a big shift in the FBI’s handling of the case, and I believe new chief investigators came into play at about the same time. (I do realize that Beecher was later criticized in the same journal for not adequately sourcing his statement). I’m still waiting to see real evidence of “coating”.

Now, the search warrant affidavit shows that Matsumoto was working with NBC in August, 2001, and that Ivins was furious at Matsumotio in August 28, 2001 for attempting to ferret out details about his vaccine work. Keep in mind that both ABC and NBC were two of the five media outlets known to have received anthrax in the first wave of mailings dated Sept. 18, 2001:

“Beginning shortly after the first Gulf War and through 2001, USAMRIID and Dr. Ivins was the focus of public criticism concerning their introduction of a squalene adjuvant (or additive) to the AVA anthrax vaccine, which was blamed for the Gulf War Syndrome. In 2000 and 2001, as evident by the e-mails above, that same anthrax vaccine was having problems in the production phase at Bioport, a private company in Michigan responsible for manufacturing the vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had suspended further production of Bioport, and the U.S. government, specifically the Department of Defense, was running out of approved lots of the vaccine. The situation placed pressure on select staff members at USAMRIID, including Dr. Ivins, who were part of the Anthrax Potency Integrated Product Team (IPT). The purpose of the IPT was to assist in the resolution of technical issues that was plaguing Bioport’s production of approved lots of the vaccines.

“In the weeks immediately prior to the attacks, Dr. Ivins became aware that an investigative journalist who worked for NBC News had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on USAMRIID seeking detailed information from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory notebooks as they related to the AVA vaccine and the use of adjuvants. On August 28, 2001, Dr. Ivins appeared angry about the request providing the following response in an e-mail: “Tell Matsumoto to kiss my ass. We’ve got better things to do than hsine his shoes and pee on command. He’s gotten everything from me he will get.”

In early 2002, shortly after the anthrax letter attacks, the FDA re-approved the AVA vaccine for human use, production at Bioport resumed, and anthrax research at USAMRIID continued without interruption. As mentioned previously, one of the anthrax letters postmarked on September 18, 2001 was addressed to Tom Brokaw, NBC News in New York. Dr. Ivins thereafter received “the highest honor given to Defense Department civilians at a Pentagon ceremony on March 14, 2003” for his work in “getting the anthrax vaccine back into production”.

Someone should get Matsumoto’s side of these stories - that date both before and after the crucial events of late 2001. You can see my analysis and sources (and my call to support Glenn) at my article in Truthout http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anthrax-attacks-sunlight-is-best-disinfectant

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[Prunetacos]

[Prunetacos]