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.
The microbial vac is a US-Army funded device that existed in prototype at the time that concentrated anthrax samples by a factor of 10 (to a trillion spores) while sequentially filtering the sample. It can only be used for weaponization on a small scale, its inventor tells me. Here is a video explaining the advantages of the Speed Vac which the US DOJ mistakenly thinks was used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hvJOZCCm_M