Ivins handled anthrax spores: which are usually fairly large and made from a bunch of anthrax stuck together. Think of a bunch of balls stuck together...They are heavy, so tend to be in the soil, not in the air. Even those catching anthrax from hides usually only get skin or stomach anthrax (you inhale them, but they are so heavy they stop at the tongue and you swallow them).
To “weaponize” anthrax, you have to do something to keep the individual spores from clumping...in this case, silicon was used, or maybe not (the FBI screwed up the analysis)....
There are ways to do this, but it requires some skills that a doc used to working with spores to make vaccines wouldn’t have.
(grinding, added correct silica).
Yes, Ivins lab was contaminated with anthrax, but that was ordinary anthrax, not the weaponized one.
And the strain was a common strain found in many labs...heck, my Oklahoma patients joked they probably had some in their barnyards.
The original suspect, Hatfield, had worked with anthrax vaccine in Rhodesia at a time when a lot of elephants and cattle were dying of it. The FBI had a scenerio that he ground and mixed it working underwater so he wouldn’t catch it, but they never could find evidence on this, so they decided Ivins did it,
“There are ways to do this, but it requires some skills that a doc used to working with spores to make vaccines wouldn’t have (grinding, added correct silica). Yes, Ivins lab was contaminated with anthrax, but that was ordinary anthrax, not the weaponized one.”
Just because you may not have done it before doesnt mean you are incapable of doing it. Scientists pick up new skills all the time. All of the information needed to weaponize anthrax is in the published literature. The equipment for ball milling a crude spore prep into a fine powder is readily available in labs and can be bought in a hardware store. Likewise silica powder is easy to obtain. The source of the anthrax spores was Ivin’s flask. When asked for a sample, he gave a false one.