Absolutely. That was Ed’s theory in telling the FBI I was a terrorist. He said I thought of myself as a hero. Well, when I learned the reason the FDA was not recalling soft drinks that my lab showed had high levels of benzene, and found out that the FDA Commissioner Crawford had always known about it, had $62,000 in Pepsi stock and $78,000 in the food lunch company stock (which had not been disclosed, and he had previously been the industry’s chief advisor while advising the grocery manufacturer’s association), you can imagine it makes you want to do something heroic.
The FDA Commissioner resigned by email to everyone in his office Friday morning after I emailed him Wednesday afternoon (after getting his email from someone at Justice). But these facts never came out. He pled to two misdemeanors and no connections were drawn or explanation given as to why he resigned so precipitously. The US Attorney’s Office, politically minded, did not require that these facts come out in the allocution. ( Jeff Taylor the US Attorney used to be the advisor for Gonzalez.)
So I’m telling the DC US Attorney’s Office, put things in order on Monday at 9 a.m. and be very forthright about all issues. Your science on the mixed strains and inverted plasmid is very sound. Don’t screw that up by sloppy shoe leather work and new investigators and agents. Big picture, it has been the compartmentalization that has been part of the problem just as Lambert said it would be. If Director Mueller had just required a proper leak investigation in 2002, there would not have been the continued leaks by Seikaly in 2003. (His daughter now represents anthrax weapons suspect Ali Al-Timimi bono). So put your house in order ASAP because there are those, conservatives and liberals alike, who are activist on the issue of good and honest government. And if there are Special Agents who want to profile people because they want to save the world, screw them. Or at least let me take them out to lunch.
It’s called self-actualization in Maslow’s hierachy.
Returning to the merits, what was the biological pathogen that it is claimed in an anonymous leak that Aafia Siddiqui wanted to use in poisoning former Presidents? Are the US Al Qaeda operatives she has named to authorities getting a bit nervous?
The FBI PR machine is now prepared to roll out this piece of equipment — a SpeedVac — in urging that Ivins was the culprit. Battle stations, everyone.
August 8, 2008
Ex-colleague questions government’s case against anthrax suspect
By ANDREW SCHOTZ (andrews@herald-mail.com
http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=200518&format=html
Ivins’ alleged use of a lyophilizer to make powdered anthrax. Ulrich said Ivins signed out a SpeedVac, but not a lyophilizer, which is too large to fit in a containment hood, or secure protective area.
She said it would take about an hour to dry one milliliter of wet anthrax spores in one vial in a SpeedVac. It would have been impossible for Ivins to have dried more than a liter, which would have been required for the amount of anthrax sent in the letters, in the time frame they were mailed, Ulrich said.
Ulrich was a principal investigator in the diagnostic systems division at USAMRIID.