Posted on 10/04/2011 5:41:49 PM PDT by Battle Axe
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-anthrax-mystery-1005-20111005,0,982875.story
pinging
Yeah, I don’t buy the official version. The investigation was bungled from the beginning..
Didn’t the poor fellow the feds try to pin it on kill himself? Or was it a Fort Marcy Park-type suicide?
I’m sorry...I thought that this was free-republic and not the infowars website..sight....
“infowars website..sight”
I bet you haven’t done the slightest personal research into this issue.
the government paid out big bucks to the scientist that they falsely arrested.
Absolutely no conspiracy involved...Simply the usual government approach to test and evaluation...
I was a grad student at Iowa State University the Fall semester of 1990. Sitting across the table from me was a beautiful married woman from South America. This class only met on Thurs. So Thanksgiving was a benchmark. We didn't have class for two whole weeks. I was flunking that class, as I did not have the prerequisites.
This woman comes in the first Thursday after Thanksgiving on a run. She was out of breath and had a strange story. She had gotten the mail and there was a package in the mail. She opened it and found what she thought were seeds. But also a note in a language she did not recognize. She turned it over to look at the address and the dry ice fell out and shattered. It was addressed to a Pakistani, but it had her apartment number.
One week later she showed me an ugly black in the middle sore on her inner forearm. She said her husband had the same sore on his face and the Dr. at the student health center thought it was a spider or insect bite.
I was sick with something that made my neck and tongue swell up and I thought I had the same thing she had only inside my tongue. I did not. I had an infected root canal, but the Dr. gave me the same medicine as he gave her and it was even the same Dr. We compared prescription bottles in class.
After the anthrax mailings, I had this overwhelming feeling that I knew something about this. It suddenly dawned on me that the two sores (I saw the husbands sore in the waiting room of the student health center) that I had seen were anthrax, but not the typical ones.
The CDC reports of the skin lesions say they were not dry, but rather wet. Judith Miller writes in GERMS that Margano, a postal employee, had a sore that drip, drip, driped like a faucet. That is what I saw.
I spent the entire time the Beltway Snipers were at large going through the phone books from Iowa State looking for a connection of this unfortunate woman and a Pakistani.
And I found it. There was a Pakistani in her apartment complex with the 116 E address and her address was 161 E. Who ever mailed it was a transposer of numbers.
Then the big tip off was the fact that Iowa State destroyed their entire collection of anthrax a few days after it was announced that it was genotype 62. The men that were in charge of the destruction were the same people that were there in 1990 and were responsible for applying for a chemical to clean up anthrax. Only 4 places were ever awarded this chemical to clean it up. Iowa State was one. And the timing was perfect for there to be a spill when it was mailed and for the lab to flunk the state and federal mandated cleanliness tests. I could go on for a long time here, but..... yes I was interviewed. They know what I know, but I only convinced the one that was already believed it came from Iowa State.
He had been accused of being the anthrax mailer for some time and denied it, but when this panty thing came out he could not face the world anymore.
Gotta look at the timing to understand what he was thinking.
Others have questioned his use of Tylenol. I think it was what he had available.
We would all like to think it was just one guy and not the whole jihadist movement. But it just isn't so.
I’m still wondering too, and I am not much of a conspiracy theorist.
The doc they insist is the culprit had no expertise in “weaponizing” anthrax, and making the spores tiny enough to be useful as a bioweapon is not the same skill as one working to make a vaccine.
the symptoms you describe her having could be either skin anthrax or a spider bite.
But if it was anthrax, it was the ordinary heavy type spores of regular anthrax, not the weaponized type that is dangerous.
Regular anthrax spores are attracted to each other like a bunch of iron to a magnet. They are too heavy to get into the lung, but it can penetrate the skin or if you eat it, you could end up with GI anthrax. Luckily most spores, including the type in the Anthrax letters attack, are sensitive to common antibiotics.
To “weaponize” anthrax, you have to grind it up very tiny (similar to how they grind medicine for “powder” asthma inhalers). Then you have to treat the spores while tiny so they don’t reclump. Then you have to put them into the “delivery system”. And you have to do this in a way that doesn’t kill you or the others around you.
These “tiny” anthrax spores are small enough to get deep into the lung and is quickly fatal.
Luckily, the strain in the anthrax letter was not a “super germ” that does not get killed with ordinary antibiotics. It was an ordinary strain of the bug...the Ames strain...(used a lot of places including Baghdad to make ordinary anthrax vaccine).
The doctor accused who killed himself had access to this strain. There also were some big clumpy anthrax spores around his lab, suggesting he was a bit careless.
But no one has every shown he had access to the grinding machinery needed to weaponize the anthrax, or if he had the skill to use it.
and no, I don’t consider this a “conspiracy theory”. As a doc I wonder how and who did it...the one accused might indeed have done it, but they haven’t proved anything more than he was a bit weird.
I’m inclined to believe that the one guy who killed himself did it instead some of the insane theories that paranoid people believe...
And, there should be absolutely no doubt that Bruce Ivins sent the anthrax letters.
Ivins was fascinated with secret codes. He put a hidden message in the anthrax letters he sent to the media.
When he became afraid of getting caught, he was observed throwing away the book and the magazine he had used to develop the coded message in the media letters.
The hidden message in the media letters related to two of Ivins' colleagues, one by name (PAT) and the other by attacking her favorite city (FNY).
Ivins had used similar DNA-based coding in an email sent to a colleague.
The anthrax letters were placed in the mailbox nearest to the Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) office in Princeton, NJ. Ivins had an obsession with the KKG sorority.
Ivins used ZIP Code 08852 on the senate letters. That ZIP Code is for Monmouth Junction, NJ, where Ivins' family on his father's side came from. And, Monmouth College in Monmouth, IL, is where the KKG sorority was founded.
Ivins' father graduated from Princeton University, which was across the street from where the letters were mailed.
Ivins frequently drove long distances to mail things so they couldn't be traced back to him.
Ivins frequently drove long distances at night without the knowledge of his wife and family.
Ivins drove long distances to burglarize KKG sorority houses, stealing ritual books and coding materials.
Ivins repeatedly harassed KKG member Nancy Haigwood as a result of an obsession that lasted for thirty years. She told the FBI that Ivins was someone likely to have sent the anthrax letters.
Two of Ivins' psychiatrists believed he should never have been allowed to work with anthrax.
Ivins' first psychiatrist (from 1978 to 1979) immediately thought of Bruce Ivins as a possible suspect when she first read about the anthrax attacks.
Ivins' second psychiatrist (from February to May 2000), Dr. David Irwin, diasgnosed Ivins to be "homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions."
In June of 2000, Ivins told his psychiatric counselor that he planned to poison a "young woman" if she lost a soccer game. The counselor called the police, but no one knew who the young woman was.
Ivins had multiple motives for the attacks.
At the time of the mailings, Ivins believed that the Ames strain was used in labs all over the world and was totally untraceable. That's why he used it.
Ivins contracted an infection on his hand around the time of the attacks and failed to report it, although it was required that he report any infections.
The infection on Ivins hand was cured with the antibiotic the CDC recommends for anthrax.
Ivins had no alibi for the times of the mailings.
Ivins couldn't explain the long hours he worked in his BSL-3 lab at night and on weekends at the time the anthrax letters were being prepared.
The anthrax spores used in the attacks were not "weaponized" and could easily have been made by Bruce Ivins.
Ivins suggested to the CDC that Bob Stevens could have contracted inhalation anthrax from various natural sources, even though Ivins knew such sources couldn't give anyone inhalation anthrax.
In an email to a colleague written just days before the anthrax mailings, Ivins used terms similar to what were in the anthrax letters.
One target of the media mailing was The National Enquirer. Ivins wrote about the National Enquirer in emails before the attacks, and he had a stack of Enquirers in his office.
The anthrax letter sent to the National Enquirer used an obsolete address. The stacks of Enquirers in Ivins' office contained that obsolete address.
"Greendale School" was the second line of the return address on the senate letters, and Ivins had just donated money to a cause related to an incident at a Greendale School in Wisconsin.
The Greendale School incident in Wisconsin involved a 4th grader. The first line of the return address on the senate letters was: "4th Grade"
One of the targets of the senate mailing was Senator Daschle, who had been critical of the anthrax vaccine Ivins had helped develop.
Senator Leahy, the other target of the senate mailing, was concerned about the civil rights of Muslims being questioned after 9/11, and this upset Ivins.
On September 22, 2001, before the anthrax letters were found, Ivins joined the American Red Cross and mentioned his expertise in anthrax research (which he'd never mentioned before).
On September 26, 2001, before the anthrax letters were found, Ivins wrote to Mara Linscott, "You should feel good about having received anthrax shots."
Ivins controlled the flask that was the source of the spores used to grow the attack anthrax.
Ivins had all the necessary skills and equipment for making the attack anthrax.
Ivins tried to mislead the investigation by submitting a sample to the FBI from Flask RMR-1029 in February 2002 that was improperly prepared and could not be used as evidence.
The other samples Ivins prepared for the FBI in February 2002 were all properly prepared.
The replacement sample submitted in April of 2002 was apparently not from Flask RMR-1029. He falsified evidence.
In December of 2001, Ivins performed an unauthorized cleaning of areas where he may have left evidence behind. He destroyed evidence.
In April of 2002, Ivins performed a second unauthorized cleaning of areas where there may have been evidence. He again destroyed evidence.
Ivins lied about why he did the unauthorized cleanings. The areas he cleaned didn't match with his explanations.
In attempts to mislead the FBI, Ivins identified many of his colleagues as potential suspects in the case.
Ivins deleted all of his emails from 2001 from his work computer and claimed he didn't know how it happened. (Some of the emails were recovered from other computers.)
Ivins attempted to intimidate potential witnesses in the case.
In later years, Ivins said that, if he sent the anthrax letters, he didn't remember doing it.
Before his suicide, Ivins stated that he planned to murder his co-workers for what they'd done to him and go out in a "blaze of glory."
Ivins committed suicide so he wouldn't have to stand trial and be found guilty.
Your statement is contradictory. Do you see how?
Were they lying to me? I was trying to tell them the same thing.
Were they lying to me?"
I don't know. I would be only guessing. They could have been telling you what you wanted to hear in order to keep you talking. They could have been fishing for information about something else entirely. They could have been unaware of the actual source of the Ames strain and that it was never in Ames, Iowa. Or, you could have misinterpreted what they told you.
The question is: Why did they talk to you in the first place? The answer seems to be: (1) They wanted to find out what you knew about the people you mentioned, or (2) they wanted to figure out if you were dangerous, or (3) they were just following up on all possible leads and had no way of knowing whether you actually had something of value or not.
There is NO DOUBT that the Ames strain went directly from Texas to USAMRIID and never went to Iowa. We know who shipped it, we know where he shipped it, we know why he shipped it, we know who received it, and we know how the label was misinterpreted and gave the strain its name. And we have statements from people at Iowa State University and the USDA that they never heard of the "Ames Strain" until the media came around asking about it.
I was never privy to that kind of information and I told them so, but I also told them where they could look it up in the records of the lab. If they kept good records on who had access to what, and they should have, it would say.
Rest in Peace, Bob Stevens. He died ten years ago today.
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