Posted on 08/18/2008 4:29:04 PM PDT by Shermy
FBI Assistant Director Vahid Majidi said Monday the initial anthrax sample that Ivins took from his Army lab in February 2002 and gave investigators did not meet court-ordered conditions for its preparation and collection.
In a briefing for reporters, Majidi said the sample kept at the FBI lab was destroyed because the bureau believed it might not have been allowed as evidence at trial.
"Looking at hindsight, obviously we would do things differently today," Majidi said.
He gave investigators a second sample of anthrax from his lab in April 2002 to comply with standards in a subpoena issued in the case. But that sample contained a different strain than what he submitted two months earlier in what prosecutors call an attempt to deceive or confuse investigators.
Majidi, who heads the FBI office in charge of investigating weapons of mass destruction, led a panel of government and private-sector scientists who detailed the scientific case against Ivins. They credited new ways of looking at the DNA of anthrax to whittle the list of labs and suspects who could have produced it. ... As part of the February 2002 subpoena, Ivins gave investigators two samples of the unique Ames anthrax strain known as RMR-1029 that he created in his lab. One went to the FBI lab, where it was destroyed. The other went to the lab of Dr. Paul Keim, a geneticist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz.
Keim still had his RMR-1029 sample in 2006 when the FBI realized it could match Ivins to two batches of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The anthrax letters killed five and sickened 17 after turning up on Capitol Hill, in newsrooms and postal facilities.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ping.
The brilliant criminal Ivins gave the correct strain to the FBI first, which normally would be the act of an innocent man,
but,
he foresaw that the FBI would need another sample in a different preparation, he made it with a different strain (supposedly), knowing this would not call more attention to himself, but cause the FBI to destroy the first sample, etc. etc.
Man, the guy’s was smarter than the Joker!
Gems from Daschle:
Daschle said the most compelling evidence to him is the odd, extended hours that the Army scientist kept shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. [sic-they began before]
“He had no real explanation for the significant increase,” Daschle said. “His only response was that he wanted to hang out there, which was not a very compelling reason.”
He said investigators ruled out the other people who had access to Ivins’ anthrax based on other information that was available.
“They had stiff alibis or ... they were not in a position to take the material for purposes of this kind,” Daschle said. “Each one had a specific disqualifying aspect.”
Let me address the silicon signature.
A key fact is that of the exosporium, which is a loose-fitting protein envelope surrounding about 7-10 spore coats that overlay the cortex, had traces of silicon. Calling on two of the same key cast members in his New York Times best-seller Hot Zone, the scientists who first identified the virus Ebola Reston, Richard Preston in 2002 provided a riveting account of Ft. Detrick’s initial microscopic examination of the mailed anthrax in Demon in the Freezer. The account was excerpted in The Sunday Times.
The exosporium is the spore’s outermost layer. What the Armed Force Institute of Pathology reported as silica was not dispersed inside of the B. anthracis spore coats and cortex under the exosporium. Ari Fleischer discusses the silica in the anthrax in his book Taking Heat. He reports that he had argued at length with ABC News over its story that the additive was bentonite (which arguably was characteristic of the Iraq program). He explained that from the start he had told ABC that it was silica, not bentonite, that had been detected. The suggestion that AFIP experts did not know the difference between silica and silcon is not well founded, and the scientist who performed the EDX specifically told the journalist that oxygen was also detected in ratios consistent with silicon dioxide. But for the purpose of analysis, let’s assume it was only silicon that was detected.
A PhD student supervised by Matthias Frank, a big star at Livermore in developing the biosensor, addressed these issues in 2004. Lawrence Livermore lab was tasked with combating the Bin Laden anthrax threat in 1998 and is steeped in biodetection, the subject of the PhD thesis. LLNL researchers have developed advanced technologies to rapidly detect the airborne release of biological threat agents. The student cites Gary Matsumoto’s Science article and says:
“In the case of anthrax, it is known that Van der Waals forces cause unprocessed spores to clump together. Large particles are not deposited efficiently in human lungs and also settle rapidly from the air. Both are undesirable properties if maximal lethality is desired. Silica powers and nanoparticles have long been used to prevent agent particles from coming close enough together for Van der Waals forces to become significant.” *** Military scientists have stated that the ‘weaponized’ anthrax letters sent to Senator Daschle’s office contained silica. In the Senate anthrax letter, there is also evidence that the bond between the silica nanoparticles and spores was further enhanced by the use of sol-gel or polymerized glass. Some believe that the spores may have even been electrostatically charged to aid their dispersal. At any rate, the end result of the processing was a powder far more potent than a simple combination of anthrax spores, cells and residual growth medium.”
A siliconizing solution in the growth medium serves the same function.
Former Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and Harvard biologist Matthew Meselson, however, have opined that there was no special silica coating observable in the Scanning Electron Microscope (”SEM”) images they saw. The presence of any silica, Drs. Meselson and Alibek say, may have come from the environment because of the special tendency of anthrax spore coats to attract silicon. (The lead FBI scientist Dwight Adams relied on the study provided the FBI by Meselson in briefing the Congress in November 2002.) Indeed, the silica or siliconizing solution may have been in the culture medium and then removed as described by a mid-March 2001 and related patent filed by researchers at Dr. Alibek’s Center for Biodefense at GMU. Dr. Alibek reports that, like Dr. William Patrick, he was also given a polygraph. In 2001, “I passed the polygraph; it was the toughest polygraph I ever had,” said Bill Patrick, the former head of the Product Development Division at Fort Detrick, said.
A scientist from the FBI Laboratory, Dr. Doug Beecher, in a July 2006 issue of “Applied and Environmental Microbiology” provided me a copy of his article that reports that:
“a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. The issue is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.”
The vague and ambiguous passage mere confirms Dr. Alibek’s point that a sophisticated product can result from a relatively simple method.
Harvard University Matthew Meselson reviewed the language in the FBI scientist’s article before publication. “The statement should have had a reference,” editor-in-chief of the microbiology journal told a trade periodical. “An unsupported sentence being cited as fact is uncomfortable to me. Any statement in a scientific article should be supported by a reference or by documentation.” The two passages, footnoted or not, essentially said what Dr. Alibek had been saying: “’[J]ust because you have a sophisticated product doesn’t mean the technique has to be sophisticated.’ “ Silica or a siliconizing solution in the culture medium would not be a sophisticated “additive” but would permit the agent to be concentrated.
In a Letter to the Editor in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Aug. 2007, p. 5074, titled “Unsupported Conclusions on the Bacillus anthracis Spores,” Kay A. Mereish, at the United Nations, reports:
“In a meeting I attended in September 2006, a presentation was made by a scientist who had worked on samples of anthrax collected from letters involved in the [anthrax letters] incident in October 2001; that scientist described the anthrax spore as uncoated but said it contained an additive that affected the spore’s electrical charges. (D. Small, CBRN Counter-Proliferation and Response, Paris, France, 18-20 September 2006; organized by SMi [www.smi-online.co.uk)”
Dr. Mereish tells me that her letter to the editor was not intended to agree or disagree with the FBI scientist. She merely notes that his two sentences that related to this issue of additive were not supported by the scientific experiment and data that he published. She relies on Dr. Small who made her statement based on her scientific research finding in connection with her work on the anthrax samples. Dr. Mereish’s letter, however, is another example where the use of “electrical charges” scientists as Dr. Patrick and Dr. Alibek are failing to distinguish between electrostatic charges and Van der Waals forces, thus resulting in some of the confusion in the press reports.
Kathryn Crockett, Ken Alibek’s assistant — was just a couple doors down from Ali Al-Timimi — addressed these issues in her 2006 thesis, “A historical analysis of Bacillus anthracis as a biological weapon and its application to the development of nonproliferation and defense strategies.” She expressed her special thanks to Dr. Ken Alibek and Dr. Bill Patrick. Dr. Patrick consulted with the FBI and so the FBI credits his expertise. “I don’t want to appear arrogant. I don’t think anyone knows more about anthrax powder in this country,” William Patrick told an interviewer. Dr. Alibek’s access to know-how, regarding anthrax weaponization, similarly, seems beyond reasonable dispute. Katie successfully defended the thesis before a panel that included USAMRIID head and Ames strain researcher Charles Bailey, Ali Al-Timimi’s other Department colleague. She says that scientists who analyzed the powder through viewing micrographs or actual contact are divided over the quality of the powder. She cites Gary Matsumoto’s “Science” article in summarizing the debate. She says the FBI has vacillated on silica. “Regarding the specific issue of weaponization,” Dr. Alibek’s assistant concluded in her PhD thesis, “according to several scientists at USAMRIID who examined the material, the powder created a significant cloud when agitated meaning that the adhesion of the particles had been reduced. Reducing the adhesion of the particles meant that the powder would fly better.” She explains that “The most common way to reduce electrostatic charge is to add a substance to the mixture, usually a silica based substance.”
On the issue of encapsulation, she reports that “many experts who examined the powder stated the spores were encapsulated. Encapsulation involves coating bacteria with a polymer which is usually done to protect fragile bacteria from harsh conditions such as extreme heat and pressure that occurs at the time of detonation (if in a bomb), as well as from moisture and ultraviolet light. The process was not originally developed for biological weapons purposes but rather to improve the delivery of various drugs to target organs or systems before they were destroyed by enzymes in the circulatory system” (citing Alibek and Crockett, 2005). “The US and Soviet Union, however, “ she explains, “used this technique in their biological weapons programs for pathogens that were not stable in aerosol form... Since spores have hardy shells that provide the same protection as encapsulation would, there is no need to cover them with a polymer.“ She explains that one “possible explanation is that the spore was in fact encapsulated but not for protective purpose. Encapsulation also reduces the need for milling when producing a dry formulation.” By reducing the need for milling, she means permits greater concentration of the biological agent. If the perpetrator was knowledgeable of the use of encapsulation for this purpose, then he or she may have employed it because sophisticated equipment was not at his disposal.”
One military scientist who has made anthrax simulants described the GMU patents as relating to an encapsulation technique which serves to increase the viability of a wide range of pathogens. More broadly, a DIA analyst once commented to me that the internal debate seemed relatively inconsequential given the circumstantial evidence — overlooked by so many people — that US-based supporters of Al Qaeda are responsible for the mailings. But then he did not know that Dr. Bruce Ivins was enraged that he had been accused of submitting a false sample. Question: Why would the FBI think Ivins submitted a false sample when their expert, Dr. Keim, reports that he simultaneously in February 2002 submitted a matching sample to the folks who were doing the genetic work? Moreover, why on earth would he use the strain for which he was the “go to” guy? And if he were responsible, why would he keep the strain in the same form?
Selected Sources:
Beecher, Douglas J., “Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores,” Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Aug. 2006, p. 5304-5310
Cliff, J. B., K. H. Jarman, N. B. Valentine, S. L. Golledge, D. J. Gaspar, D. S. Wunschel, and K. L. Wahl, “Differentiation of spores of Bacillus subtilis grown in different media by elemental characterization using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry,” Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 71:6524-6530 (2005)
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/11/6524?ijkey=8feb323b80876abedc9727959678c8b67e431489&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
J.B. Petro, and D.A Relman, “Understanding Threats to Scientific Openness, Science, December 12, 2003
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;302/5652/1898/DC1
Shoham, Dany & Jacobsen, Stuart “Technical Intelligence in Retrospect: 2001 Anthrax Letters Powder,” International Journal for Intelligence and Counterintelligence, October 2006
The FBI has shown incompetence before. I believe that they are trying for a record. How long has the FBI been investigating the anthrax problem? Have they done anything right so far? Sounds as if they wouldn’t have had a case against the latest victim of their accusations if he had stayed alive.
Let me address the relative difficulty of making the anthrax.
Before the anthrax mailings, in an interview in September 2000, Dr. Ken Alibek addressed whether Bin Laden could make a “Alibek-caliber” powdered anthrax. Dr. Alibek was a colleague of microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi. Al-Timimi was taught by Bin Laden’s sheik al-Hawali and actively communicating with him.
“HOMELAND DEFENSE: OK. Let’s say I’m an Usama bin Laden type individual. I have millions of dollars. Can I produce a high-quality “Ken Alibek-caliber” dry powdered anthrax?
KEN ALIBEK: In many cases it’s not likely. Of course, if you get hundreds of thousands of dollars and if you have a person who knows how to do this, you could make a highly effective biological weapon. But if you have a person with millions of dollars but has no idea how to do this, or someone with a bachelor’s degree in biology even, it’s not going to help. You need to have somebody with either practical knowledge or somebody with the right type of mind to do this. Unfortunately, this information is available now.
We just don’t understand that if your objective is to develop an effective biological weapon and to deploy it with an aerosol, all this information is available. It is a matter of time and effort in gathering this information. In many cases, it’s not necessarily the information that counts. It’s a matter of knowledge in microbiology and aerosol science and knowing how to build a more effective aerosol device. If you’ve got the money, and you’ve got the managerial skills to find the right people, the rest is just a matter of time.
***
HOMELAND DEFENSE: So the information is still in your head if you wanted to do this? If you wanted to go set up an offensive production capability, you could do it?
KEN ALIBEK: I have no such intentions.
HOMELAND DEFENSE: But the point is, you probably have that information. If terrorists get the right technical data, they can reduce their timetable, for example, shrinking it from three years to three months.
KEN ALIBEK: That is correct. But I don’t like it when someone says I can do this. I know I can do this, but I know I will never do this.
HOMELAND DEFENSE: Well, we’re very glad that you’re on our side now. On a different subject, is the U.S. government doing the right things now to protect the country?
KEN ALIBEK: For me, this is a most painful topic.”
[USAMRIID Major General John] Parker did disclose that the anthrax in question contained silica, a common substance found in sand and quartz. (But we can credit it was silicon because siliconizing solution serves the same purpose as silica in the culture medium). Another department colleague of Bin Laden’s sheik’s protege — Dr. Alibek’s co-director of the Center for Biodefense at GMU — told a reporter that the presence of silica is significant, but he declined to say why, citing national security concerns.
“I don’t think I want to give people — terrorists — any information to help them, said Dr. Charles Bailey, a scientist at Advanced Biosystems Inc. at George Mason University and former commander of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).”
The problem was that a microbiologist trained in computer science and actively communicating with Bin Laden’s sheik, according to NSA intercepts, was working just feet away from both famed Russian anthrax bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and Dr. Bailey. Bin Laden’s supporters already had potential access to the information.
Admittedly, Al-Timimi merely wanted to destroy Western Civilization. He was not known to use fake screen names on the internet or work late at his lab down the street from home after the country had been attacked.
These long posts are not relevant to the article. They only deter discussion of the article.
Let me turn to the issue of isotope ratios — revealing where the culture medium was grown.
The FBI scientists have been able to distinguish between water isotopes ratios in the anthrax. Brian Williams reports that investigators have told NBC that the water used to make the spores came from the Northeastern United States. Researchers have been able to establish that anthrax grown in water in the Northeastern United States is distinguishable from anthrax grown in water from the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. In one published anthrax study, researchers grew Bacillus subtilis, a harmless bacteria that resembles Bacillus anthracis, using local water from five different U.S. cities. The scientists were able to distinguish those grown in various cities. The method can be used to narrow the number of possible origins of the water based on the number of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes. Interviewer Kestenbaum said: “Ehleringer is now creating a map showing how the isotope ratios of water vary anthrax was grown, it may rule some places out.” A scientist explained the research in an NPR interview in 2004.
Ehleringer and his colleagues published a March 2007 article titled “Stable isotope ratios of tap water in the contiguous United States” in “Water Resources Research.” The study was funded by the “federal government.” The raw data survey results have been embargoed by the federal government.” (The agency would usually be identified). In other water isotope ratio studies the funding agency was identified as the CIA or whatever agency it was — it varied. Perhaps this March 2007 study was funded by the Department of Justice/Federal Bureau of Investigation and was done specifically for the purpose of laying the scientific groundwork of a prosecution in Amerithrax.
Separately, a press release announced in September 2003 that University of Maryland researchers have developed a technique to help the FBI track the origins of deadly anthrax spores by identifying the medium used to grow it. The FBI asked Maryland professor Catherine Fenselau to turn her mass spectrometry lab to the forensic task of sleuthing how bacillus spores, such as anthrax, are prepared. While the Utah scientist in this study was looking at the tap water, Helen W. Kreuzer-Martin, the Maryland scientist in a study published in April 2007 titled “Stable Isotope Ratios and the Forensic Analysis of Microorganisms,” was looking at the nutrients in the culture. The DOJ/FBI likely hopes to put all the data together with the more familiar reasons to suspect someone (means, motive, modus operandi and opportunity), and put on a case that to a moral certainty proves it was committed by the perp(s). Absent the scientific evidence, there perhaps is a lack of a “smoking gun.” Here, based on this new science, hopefully there is a smoking petri dish.
By looking at the oxygen, hydrogen and deuterium geospatial distribution, authorities can more precisely identify where the water came from. For example, the deuterium map might be relied upon to eliminate an ambiguity left by the range indicated by the oxygen and hydrogen maps.
Selected sources:
Bowen, G. J., J. R. Ehleringer, L. Chesson, E. Stange, and C. E. Cerling. 2007. “Stable isotope ratios of tap water in the contiguous USA,” Water Resour. Res. 43:W03419.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006WR005186.shtml
Horita, J., and A. A. Vass, “Stable-isotope fingerprints of biological agents as forensic tools,” J. Forensic Sci. 48:122-126 (2003)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=12570211&dopt=AbstractPlus
Kreuzer-Martin, H. W., L. A. Chesson, M. J. Lott, J. V. Dorigan, and J. R. Ehleringer, “Stable isotope ratios as a tool in microbial forensics. 2. Isotopic variation among different growth media as a tool for sourcing origins of bacterial cells or spores,” J. Forensic Sci. 49:961-967 (2004).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=15461095&dopt=AbstractPlus
Kreuzer-Martin, H. W., L. A. Chesson, M. J. Lott, and J. R. Ehleringer, “Stable isotope ratios as a tool in microbial forensics. 3. Effect of culturing on agar-containing growth media,” J. Forensic Sci. 50:1372-1379 (2005).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=16382831&dopt=AbstractPlus
Kreuzer-Martin, H. W., M. J. Lott, J. Dorigan, and J. R. Ehleringer, “Microbe forensics: oxygen and hydrogen stable isotope ratios in Bacillus subtilis cells and spores,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100:815-819 (2003).
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/3/815.abstract?ijkey=fab4cbbab441ba7dff87548c7f41866771a131bb&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Well, IMHO, the question that arises is: Did the FBI throw out the original sample from incompetence, or did they do it deliberately?
Maybe they threw it out because it didn’t match, so they wanted to get rid of it?
Lets return to the difficulty of making the anthrax.
In a March 31, 2003 public exchange sponsored by the Washington Post, in response to my written question submitted in advance, Ali Al-Timimi’s George Mason University colleague, Kenneth Alibek, said: “This anthrax wasn’t sophisticated, didn’t have coatings, had electric charge and many other things.” In other responses, he further explained: “There was no special need to add silica to this anthrax. Presence or absence of silica says nothing about whether it was state sponsored.”
US bioweaponeer William Patrick took time out from advising GMU grad students and gave it a 7 out of 10 -— calling it professionally done but not weapons grade. Perhaps that would be a B+ or even an A-. In an interview with CBS, William Patrick explained that he had been given a polygraph in June 2002 about the anthrax letters. He reports that “The FBI that they wanted me to become a part of their inner circle of—of experts, and that in order to become a part of that inner circle of technical experts, that I’d have to pass a polygraph test.” In fact, he has not been quoted since, as he often was in 2001. Thus, this was a good indication of what scientific information the FBI credits or at least that they credit his expertise.
On April 11, 2003, Scott Shane reported that reverse engineering “carried out at the Army’s biodefense center at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, raises the disquieting possibility that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups could create lethal bioweapons without scientific or financial help from a state.” Quoting one outside bioterrorism expert. “It shows you can have a fairly sophisticated product with fairly rudimentary methods.” At last report, the reverse engineering reportedly was not able to recreate the identical product. Lisa Bronson, deputy undersecretary of defense for technology security policy and proliferation, has said that commercially available equipment used to make powdered milk could be used to make powderized anthrax. A spray dryer is used in chemical and food processing to manufacture dried egg, powdered milk, animal feed, cake mixes, citrus juices, coffee, corn syrup, cream, creamers, dried eggs, potatoes, shortening, starch derivatives, tea, tomatoes, yeast, and — last but not least — yogurt. Washington State University also has an informative discussion on the web. Making dried milk is not rocket science and doesn’t require a PhD. But, if experience is any guide, Al Qaeda has PhD’s and even rocket scientists who are sympathetic to its cause (indeed, even the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb).
Here is a Q&A from a March 31, 2003 exchange with Kenneth Alibek, in response to a question I posed to him. (The month before 100 agents had come to Syracuse the same minute Ali Al-Timimi’s residence was searched, and so I was curious what the fuss was all about.)
“Q. Could someone expert in making dried milk make the product used in the Daschle and Leahy letters?
A. Let me answer in this way — yes, actually, it would be the same technique to make a powderized anthrax, but at the same time we shouldn’t overestimate the complexity of making it. My opinion is this — in order to make this powder there is no need to have sophisticated equipment. Such a small amount, keep in mind that the people who did could have very simple equipment and very simple procedures. There is no need for industrial equipment. It would be enough to have small equipment. But at the same time, when people talk about it being ‘weaponized’ — I can’t say it was that sophisticated. I saw the particles — they were the size of 40 microns. We can’t say anything about the quality of othis powder because we saw it after it had gone through mailing sorting machines which create very powerful pressure. There was no coating. What I saw on micrograph was no coating. It was natural spores and for some people they mistakenly thought it wasn’t. Some experts said there was [no] charge because it was fluffy and made a cloud when put on scale. This is another mistake. It did have charge.”
To find the missing spraydryer, perhaps the FBI merely needs to find and trace the steps of Al Qaeda’s expert yogurt or dried milk or animal feedstuffs or rice hull processor. Confounding things a bit, a couple years later, Dr. Alibek told me that he had come to think that it was made using a fluidized bed dryer rather than a spraydryer.
Or, if it wants, it can hang out on greek chat boards.
The mixed genotype and inverted plasmid points not to Ivins’ flask but a stream of 8 isolates to which a reported 100 known people had access.
Dr. Read, a scientist helping with the Amerithrax investigation in the DNA sequencing, long ago published the news that the anthrax was a 50/50% mixture of genotype 62 (Ames) and genotype 62 with an inversion on the plasmid. This would mean two distinct nucleic acids were detected in the sample. This means that some of the Ames had a segment of DNA that is inverted, or flipped, relative to the remainder of the plasmid. One expert advises me that no properly trained microbiologist would propagate or archive a mixture (I am unaware of why Dr. Ivins did but he probably had a reason). Standard microbiological procedure calls for isolation of single colonies - i.e., single, unmixed cells and their clonal, unmixed progeny — at each step. Inversions are not an uncommon class of mutational events, however. It would only be especially probative if it were a rare inversion and if samples were to be present among samples collected from laboratory archives. It turns out, thankfully, that there was a match — with 8 isolates that were collected to which 100 people were known to have access (and an unknown number of additional people).
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ chemical and biological arms control program, announced in December 2001. “I’m certain it’s someone connected with a government program, or who works in a laboratory connected with a government program,” she said. “The grapevine has it that the results of an experiment on genetic variation at certain locations suggest that this material was made in a very small batch, and that suggests that the material was not made in some old weapons program on a large scale,” she said, citing sources inside and outside the government. “All the available information is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the U.S. weaponization process,” wrote Rosenberg on a webpage.
In August 2007, scientists working on the FBI Amerithrax investigation wrote “Role of Law Enforcement Response and Microbial Forensics in Investigation of Bioterrorism” in the Croat Medical Journal. The FBI scientist’s article explained that there
“are a variety of genetic markers and methods that allow highly specific and accurate characterization of microbial diversity. For forensic purposes, assaying rapidly evolving markers enables better affiliation to recent common sources, while more stable markers provide better lineage-based evolutionary interpretations, such as strain and sub-strain definition. Since bacteria, viruses, and some fungi reproduce asexually, their genomes are considered to be clonal and portions of their genomes may be very stable and uninformative for distinguishing samples. Therefore, it may not be possible to identify the source of a sample by genetic analysis alone (as often is accomplished in human DNA identity testing). Since many microbial genomes have relatively short generation times, in an overnight culture, a single microbe could have reproduced its genome over a million times, increasing the chance of mutation that may be seen within the culture. Thus, some variation, and hence a forensic signature, may occur during asexual reproduction.”
The authors explained: “The forensic comparison of a genetic profile from a reference sample with that of an evidentiary sample can have three possible general outcomes: match or inclusion, exclusion, or inconclusive. With microbial genetic information, it is less likely to have a prescribed interpretation policy for what constitutes a match and what does not. Some questions may be difficult to answer unequivocally based on extant data. Uncertainty is greater than what is experienced for human DNA identity testing because of unknown diversity, limited databases, unknown manipulations, and limited genetic testing. However, the power of microbial forensic tools is increasing rapidly with ever advancing technology.”
Selected sources:
Budowle, B., M. D. Johnson, C. M. Fraser, T. J. Leighton, R. S. Murch, and R. Chakraborty. 2005. “Genetic analysis and attribution of microbial forensics evidence,” Crit. Rev. Microbiol. 31:233-254.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=16417203&dopt=AbstractPlus
Budowle B, Murch R, Chakraborty R., “Microbial forensics: the next forensic challenge,” Int J Legal Med. 119(6):317-30 (Nov 2005).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=15821943&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Budowle, B., S. E. Schutzer, M. S. Ascher, R. M. Atlas, J. P. Burans, R. Chakraborty, J. J. Dunn, C. M. Fraser, D. R. Franz, T. J. Leighton, S. A. Morse, R. S. Murch, J. Ravel, D. L. Rock, T. R.
Slezak, S. P. Velsko, A. C. Walsh, and R. A. Walters. “Toward a system of microbial forensics: from sample collection to interpretation of evidence,” Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 71:2209-2213 (2005).
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/5/2209?ijkey=11f63da16d84d14221469a04d0917d00b4ae7e74&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Budowle, B., S. E. Schutzer, A. Einseln, L. C. Kelley, A. C. Walsh, J. A. L. Smith, B. L. Marrone, J. Robertson, and J. Campos. Building microbial forensics as a response to bioterrorism. Science 301:1852-1853 (2003).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/301/5641/1852?ijkey=6c5eda5d0b0d4dec11807281f555d5087c756235&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Keim et al., “Microbial forensics: DNA fingerprinting of Bacillus anthracis (anthrax),” Analytical Chemistry, 2008 Jul; 80 (13): 4791-9
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ancham/80/i13/html/0708feature_keim.html
Legal admissibility:
Budowle B, Harmon R., “HIV legal precedent useful for microbial forensics,” Croat Med J. 46(4):514-21 (Aug 2005).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=16100753&ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
“Have they done anything right so far?”
Well, they’ve adjusted the “different strain” story.
First it was a “different sample”. Then Ivins’ lawyer said it was a misunderstanding on one side or the other about the “form” of the germs. Then Rep. Holt said that too, and it was the correct sample. Now it is said, yes, it was the first sample was a correct, but in the wrong form, but when in the right form the second time, the it was a sample from a different preparation.
Maybe the latter is correct. Why a different sample? A lab mistake? Ivins or the FBI? Were many there many different samples to be confused? We know here there are at least two. But they admit the first time Ivins was right. Is that a sign of guilt?
Meselson also opined that the yellow rain in Laos and Afghanistan that appeared when Soviet helicopters were in the area was just bee pollen - even when pictures and the severed head of a Russian soldier proved otherwise.
He gave investigators a second sample of anthrax from his lab in April 2002 to comply with standards in a subpoena issued in the case. But that sample contained a different strain than what he submitted two months earlier in what prosecutors call an attempt to deceive or confuse investigators.It is possible this strange quote is unique. I find similar in no article from today. It is possible this is a carry over from earlier stories, and the scientists said nothing about a "Second strain" today. Which makes it only worse. Still open.
Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking that sarcastically pretending that it is?
http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=5603993
The scientists noted that the anthrax used in the attacks had no additives on the anthrax spores, but that the mineral silica was present in the deadly substance.
Although the FBI was able to reverse-engineer anthrax similar to the anthrax used in the mailings, scientists have been unable to reproduce it with the silica.
The Anthrax Case: The Trail of the Spores
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
ScienceNOW Daily News
18 August 2008
Other scientific work done by materials researcher Joseph Michael at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, convinced the FBI that silicon had not been added to the anthrax in the letters. Although preliminary analysis done at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology had indicated the presence of silicon, transmission electron microscopy by Michael and his colleagues revealed that the silicon was contained inside the spores—a natural occurrence documented in previous research—rather than a coating intended to make the anthrax more easily dispersible.
Thank you for the ping.
He knew how to work the FBI, that is a fact.
Amazing what a collection of government employees can mess up.
They made a decision at the top to NOT DESTROY those containers for the purpose of stopping any further contamination of mail, or other facilities. Instead, they let the equipment circulate. Several deaths then happened that can be explained only through contact with mail that'd been in contact with contaminated postal equipment.
The FBI appears to be prepared to let several top executives at USPS get away with crimes a tad more serious than accidental homicide.
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