Anthrax spores don't match dead researcher's samples

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Anthrax spores don't match dead researcher's samples

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:59 pm

Anthrax spores don't match dead researcher's samples
John Byrne
Published: Thursday February 26, 2009

Poisonous anthrax that killed five Americans in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks doesn't match bacteria from a flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the researcher who committed suicide after being implicated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a scientist said.

Spores used in the deadly mailings ``share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in the flask linked to Bruce Ivins,'' wrote Roberta Kwok citing Joseph Michael, a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Michael analyzed letters sent to the New York Post and offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, and found a distinct "chemical signature" not present in the flask known as RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

``Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin,'' Kwok wrote. ``Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.''

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Anthrax_s ... _0226.html
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Postby Nordic » Thu Feb 26, 2009 8:36 pm

Gotta give that a kick.

I would love for the truth about this to come out.

Not that it ever will ..... but it would sure be nice if this thing blew up in their faces.
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Postby 2012 Countdown » Thu Feb 26, 2009 10:33 pm

Hey FBI?!? Who Put the Tin in Your Anthrax?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/ ... r-anthrax/


By: emptywheel Thursday February 26, 2009 5:18 am

Last we heard from the FBI's not-so-smoking gun in the anthrax case, USAMRIID admitted that they had no idea what kind of flasks of anthrax and other microbes its scientists had hidden around their labs, basically shredding the FBI's claim that the anthrax used in the attacks on Congress and the Press could only have come from Bruce Ivins' flask.

Now, we learn that the supposedly exact match between Ivins' anthrax and that used in the attacks was not so close. (h/t fatster)

At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.

Two cultures of the same anthrax strain grown using similar processes — one from Ivins' lab, the other from a US Army facility in Utah — showed the silicon-oxygen signature but did not contain tin or iron. Michael presented the analyses at the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

The chemical mismatch doesn't necessarily mean that deadly spores used in the attacks did not originate from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask, says Jason Bannan, a microbiologist and forensic examiner at the FBI's Chemical Biological Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The RMR-1029 culture was created in 1997, and the mailed spores could have been taken out of that flask and grown under different conditions, resulting in varying chemical contents. "It doesn't surprise me that it would be different," he says.

The data suggest that spores for the three letters were grown using the same process, says Michael. It is not clear how tin and iron made their way into the culture, he says. Bannan suggests that the growth medium may have contained iron and tin may have come from a water source.

There are a couple of reasons why this damages the FBI operative story implicating Ivins.

First, their chronology completely depends on Ivins' late night work in his own lab at Ft. Detrick and assumes he was working from the "smoking gun" flask directly. Yet if the anthrax shows traces of being taken out of the flask, then it makes the FBI claim of a direct connection between Ivins' flask and the anthrax used in the attack even more indirect. And clearly, if Ivins was working late in his lab the night before the anthrax was mailed, then he wasn't taking the anthrax out of the lab to process somewhere with tin in its water. Furthermore, in all the searches of Ivins' house and car, the FBI has never found any trace of anthrax spores--which is one of the reasons they posited that he worked on the anthrax in his lab.

And here's one more weird thing. The FBI claims to have narrowed which labs with Ames strain anthrax might have been the source of the anthrax by tying the anthrax to something in Eastern Seaboard water. Yet now, to explain how tin may have ended up in anthrax purportedly tied to Ivins, scientists are pointing to water--presumably elsewhere--as the source.

Well, I suppose we could just wait for the National Academy of Science to recreate the FBI's anthrax work to figure this all out, right? Apparently, though, they can't even get the contract right to start work.

The academy is still in the process of drawing up a contract with the FBI that lays out an agreement to perform the study, says NAS spokeswoman Christine Stencel.

I can't help but wonder whether the contracting process here resembles the one used when the NAS cooked up a paper supporting Cheney's killing of millions of fish in the Klamath basin (as reported by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker in the WaPo).

The thing to do, Cheney told Smith, was to get science on the side of the farmers. And the way to do that was to ask the National Academy of Sciences to scrutinize the work of the federal biologists who wanted to protect the fish.

Smith said he told Cheney that he thought that was a roll of the dice. Academy panels are independently appointed, receive no payment and must reach a conclusion that can withstand peer review.

"It worried me that these are individuals who are unreachable," Smith said of the academy members. But Cheney was firm, expressing no such concerns about the result. "He felt we had to match the science."

Smith also wasn't sure that the Klamath case -- "a small place in a small corner of the country" -- would meet the science academy's rigorous internal process for deciding what to study. Cheney took care of that. "He called them and said, 'Please look at this, it's important,'" Smith said. "Everyone just went flying at it."

William Kearney, a spokesman for the National Academies, said he was unaware of any direct contact from Cheney on the matter. The official request came from the Interior Department, he said.

It was Norton who announced the review, and it was Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove who traveled to Oregon in February 2002 to assure farmers that they had the administration's support. A month later, Cheney got what he wanted when the science academy delivered a preliminary report finding "no substantial scientific foundation" to justify withholding water from the farmers.

There was not enough clear evidence that proposed higher lake levels would benefit suckerfish, the report found. And it hypothesized that the practice of releasing warm lake water into the river during spawning season might do more harm than good to the coho, which thrive in lower temperatures. [Read the report.]

[snip]

The science academy panel, in its final report, acknowledged that its draft report was "controversial," but it stood by its conclusions. Instead of focusing on the irrigation spigot, it recommended broad and expensive changes to improve fish habitat. [Read the final report]

"The farmers were grateful for our decision, but we made the decision based on the scientific outcome," said the panel chairman, William Lewis, a biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It just so happened the outcome favored the farmers."

But J.B. Ruhl, another member of the panel and a Florida State University law professor who specializes in endangered species cases, said the Bureau of Reclamation went "too far," making judgments that were not backed up by the academy's draft report. "The approach they took was inviting criticism," Ruhl said, "and I didn't think it was supported by our recommendations." [my emphasis]

I wonder. Which of Cheney's minions is negotiating with the NAS to do this anthrax study. And will that person convince the NAS to ignore the tin in the anthrax?
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Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 26, 2009 10:36 pm

Posting here instead of separate thread:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/n ... x-coverup/

New York Times Complicit in FBI Anthrax Coverup
by Sheila Casey / February 26th, 2009


Back in 2001, just months after the anthrax attacks that killed five people, several articles came out in mainstream newspapers that pointed clearly to the CIA and Army as the most likely sources of the weaponized anthrax. Articles in The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Washington Post and New York Times laid out the facts that incriminated Battelle Memorial Labs in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army’s lab at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah as the only logical sources for the anthrax. These facts, as reported in 2001, include:

1. For over a decade, Army scientists at Dugway have been making weapons-grade anthrax that is “virtually identical” to the anthrax used in the attacks.

2. The anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was extremely concentrated, with a trillion spores per gram. The Dugway anthrax had a similar concentration.

3. The FBI was increasingly focused on US government bioweapons research programs as the source of the deadly anthrax.

4. Both the lab in Utah and the lab in Ohio received anthrax samples from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, although USAMRIID deals only with wet anthrax and ships it wet.

5. The investigation was focused on the Dugway anthrax, and Dugway was described as the only facility that was known to be weaponizing anthrax.

6. One FBI official said that the CIA’s anthrax was “the best lead we have at this point.”

7. Army officials said that Fort Detrick did not have the equipment for weaponizing anthrax.

The FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus on the labs in Utah and Ohio. Instead, after the death of Fort Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins in July 2008, the FBI attempted to make the case that Ivins was the murderer and all other suspects had been cleared of suspicion.

Since Ivins’ death, the media have, with very few exceptions, passively swallowed the line dispensed by the FBI, and have acted as little more than stenographers in parroting the hollow arguments presented by the FBI that Ivins is guilty.

On December 12, 2001, The Baltimore Sun published a seminal article by Scott Shane that clearly laid out just how strong the evidence was against the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Subtitled “Organisms made at a military laboratory in Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress,” Shane’s article also includes this eyebrow-raising line: “Scientists familiar with the anthrax program at Dugway described it to The Sun on the condition that they not be named.”

Apparently Shane has forgotten all that he reported seven years ago. Now with The New York Times, Shane’s latest piece, published January 4, 2009, raises troubling questions about the independence of The Times, and the memory hole that Shane must have used to shunt away all that he once knew about the case the FBI code-named Amerithrax.

Shane calls his 5,200-word article “the deepest look so far at the investigation.” Titled “Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect’s Troubled Life,” it is primarily a hatchet job on Bruce Ivins. Filled with innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations, the purpose of the article is clearly to solidify the perception that Ivins was the killer, and to pooh-pooh the widely held belief that the anthrax came from a CIA or military lab in Utah or Ohio.

Shane dismisses these beliefs breezily, stating: “The Times review found that the FBI had disproved the assertion, widespread among scientists who believe Dr. Ivins was innocent, that the anthrax might have come from military and intelligence research programs in Utah or Ohio.” Not a single piece of evidence is presented to back up this sweeping claim.

Halfway through his article, Shane springs another shocker on us. “By early 2004, FBI scientists had discovered that out of 60 domestic and foreign water samples, only water from Frederick, Maryland, had the same chemical signature as the water used to grow the mailed anthrax.”

Really? Do FBI scientists think that anthrax researchers go to the kitchen sink for the water they use to grow the anthrax? According to Wikipedia, biochemistry labs use only highly purified water, such as double-distilled. Distilled water is created by boiling water and collecting the steam. To obtain double-distilled water, the process is done twice, so that all impurities and minerals are removed. Distilled water has the same chemical signature, namely none, no matter where in the world it originates.

It is unprecedented to have a major development in a high profile case go unreported for a full five years. Not only has the FBI never before mentioned this so-called discovery about the signature of the water, but when they were specifically asked if anything could be learned from the water, they said no.

The question came up on August 18, 2008, when the FBI held a science briefing to follow up on the highly publicized August 6 press conference by DOJ attorney Jeff Taylor. The science briefing was hosted by Dr. Vahid Majidi, Assistant Director of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

Dr. Majidi was asked: “In your looking at the elemental and chemical properties, could you tell anything about the water that was used to filter this anthrax, and did that do you any good?”

Dr. Majidi replied: “No. No.”

Yet here we are, five months later, with Scott Shane telling us that the FBI has known since 2004 that the anthrax was grown near Fort Detrick, because of the chemical signature of the water.

Beyond these outrageous claims, Shane’s article is busy assassinating Bruce Ivins’ character. We have Nancy Haigwood saying of Ivins “he did it,” for no apparent reason other than she doesn’t like him and thinks he’s odd. She also thinks Ivins vandalized her house 27 years ago and impersonated her. No reason is given for why she believes these things.

Shane editorializes heavily. He charges that Ivins was “chipper” even as five people were dead or dying of anthrax inhalation, and was relishing his moment in the spotlight. No evidence is presented for how Shane reached these conclusions about Ivins.

Words Shane uses to describe Ivins (including quotes from others) are: corny, dour, scary, provocative, emotionally laden, thin-skinned, aggressive, goody two shoes, very sensitive, creepy, possessing an unnerving hubris, stressed, depressed, rude, sarcastic, nasty, devious, jumpy and agitated.

We find out that Ivins had been a nerdy, awkward teenager, was not popular in high school, and was still bitter about this.

He liked to eat a mixture of peas, yogurt and tuna for lunch and wore outdated bell-bottoms, practices that, according to Shane, got him labeled an “oddball.” The words odd, oddball or oddities appear five times in Shane’s article.

The final reference, regarding “a man whose oddities, for many people, made the FBI’s anthrax accusation more plausible,” tips Shane’s hand. His constant harping on Ivins oddness betrays the poverty of the FBI’s case, which Shane acknowledges has “yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch” that Ivins was the killer.

Fortunately for many of us, being odd is not a crime.

But was Ivins odd? The Frederick News Post published a letter from Amanda Lane on August 10, 2008 that includes: “I want to shout from the mountain tops that Bruce was the kind of man we look up to . . . He was a decorated scientist and the humblest of men who didn’t use his title as a status symbol. He picked up a mop or emptied the trash without a moment’s hesitation. If he thought you were having a bad day he would offer candy or a catchy tune to cheer you up. If someone had to stay late to accomplish a task, Bruce would work with you so that the task would get completed faster.

“He was not the greatest athlete, but he was the best cheerleader present at every game to support his friends. I will truly miss his good humor, as there are few people in life who measure up to this man. I hope that he knew how much joy he brought to my life and others around him. If I learned anything from Bruce, it was to enjoy life and to always smile. His friendship brightened so many lives. I hope that Americans will remember Bruce for the funny and compassionate person that he was, because that is all Bruce knew how to be.”

Although Shane does mention that Ivins’ colleagues cherished him, the implication is that they didn’t really know him, as “he hid from them a shadow side of mental illness, alcoholism, secret obsessions and hints of violence.”

The New York Times has published a hit piece, devoid of incriminating facts, more gossip than journalism. Shane’s article raises disturbing questions about the relationship between The New York Times and the US government. What happened to the FBI’s original focus on the CIA and Army labs? Who is behind the drive to pin the attacks on a dead man who possessed neither the means nor the motive to carry them out? And why is The Times acting as a PR arm for those with an agenda that has nothing to do with journalism?
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"Thrax vs Leah" in 8/2001 movie?!!

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:10 pm

Sheila Casey writes for the highly recommended
Rock Creek Free Press which began outing CIA media in their first issue-
http//:rockcreekfreepress.com/

...so she's pointing at specific indications of CIA media which is good-
"Shane’s article raises disturbing questions about the relationship between The New York Times and the US government."


...but known since the 1970s-

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
.....
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress.
.....


Released 8/10/01-
Image

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis_Jones

.....
...they reveal Thrax's plot to masquerade as the common cold while at the same time plotting to overheat Frank's body, killing him from the inside. Thrax is motivated by a desire to become the nastiest new virus, attempting to kill each new victim faster than the previous.
.....
Leah Estrogen, the mayor's secretary and Ozzy's love interest throughout the movie, discovers his work and alerts security. Thrax manages to evade them; taking Leah hostage, he escapes from the brain to the mouth.
......


Woa. "Leah" vs "Thrax" ????!!! Kinda like...
Senator Patrick Leahy who got anthrax in the mail just three months later. Hmm.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A9679C8B63
November 17, 2001
Investigators searching through unopened mail sent to Capitol Hill discovered another letter today that contained anthrax. The letter was addressed to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

The bureau said that the letter was postmarked on Oct. 9 in Trenton and that it was found this evening among the more than 250 barrels of unopened Congressional mail impounded after a letter containing anthrax spores was opened last month in the offices of Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader.

Investigators said a preliminary test of the envelope, which had not been irradiated to kill microbes, showed that it contained anthrax. A law enforcement official said the letter to Mr. Leahy, a Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had the same fictitious return address as the Daschle letter: ''4th Grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ.''

In a statement, the F.B.I. said the letter to Senator Leahy ''appears in every respect to be similar to other anthrax-laced letters'' received by Mr. Daschle, NBC News and The New York Post.

The other three letters were all mailed from Trenton, were handwritten in childlike block letters that tilted to the right and were dated Sept. 11, the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The date appeared in the three letters as 09-11-01.
.....


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/washi ... r=1&ref=us
.....
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a target of the anthrax letters of 2001, said Wednesday that he did not believe the F.B.I.’s contention that an Army scientist conducted the attacks alone.


Image

The 1999 movie, 'Enemy of the State,' revolved around the spook murder of a legislator standing in the way of a police-state surveillance bill.
Gosh, we were warned, Mr. Wellstone.
Last edited by Hugh Manatee Wins on Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:54 pm, edited 6 times in total.
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
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Postby mentalgongfu2 » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:20 pm

Hugh, you're good at reminding this forum that people wake up every day to the deep politics and conspiracies of the world, so maybe you could express that instead of essentially saying "I already knew that, and you should have, too." If shoulds and woulds were shrouds and woods, then we wouldn't learn anything we don't already know, would we? Things are the way they are, not the way they're 'supposed' to be.

"Shane’s article raises disturbing questions about the relationship between The New York Times and the US government."

Um, hel-lo. Known since the 1970s-
"When I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink Orange Drink!"
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:37 pm

mentalgongfu2 wrote:......
...so maybe you could express that instead of essentially saying "I already knew that, and you should have, too."
.....

Quite right. Amended.
Please see my edited-in additions, too. Hot stuff. "Thrax vs Leah" movie!
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:00 pm

In today's San Francisco Chronicle is a story about a murdered French national who local investigators declared a suicide.

The French government had to step in to the investigation and today we learned that, gosh, it wasn't a suicide after all!.
No, he didn't stab himself to death with no knife found behind a locked apartment door.

This absurdity (gross corruption and incompetence) combined with the continuing anthrax evidence cover-up was the reason Nationalist Propaganda Radio (NPR) did a show today on 'the inadequate training and financing of forensic labs.'

Gosh, they do try!
But sometimes it's just more important to lie and cover-up.
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Re: Anthrax spores don't match dead researcher's samples

Postby MinM » Wed May 27, 2015 9:45 pm

Image
Breaking: Anthrax Spores
May 27, 2015 Uncategorized anthrax, Dugway, Pentagon

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, said the suspected live anthrax samples were shipped from Dugway Proving Ground, an Army facility in Utah, using a commercial delivery service.

Pentagon says ' live anthrax ' inadvertently shipped across US

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/2 ... 54874.html

Warren said the government has confirmed one recipient, a laboratory in Maryland, received live spores. It is suspected, but not yet confirmed, that anthrax sent to labs in as many as eight other states also contained live spores, he said. Later he said an anthrax sample from the same batch at Dugway also was sent to a U.S. military laboratory at Osan air base in South Korea; no personnel there have shown signs of exposure, he said, and the sample was destroyed.

"There is no known risk to the general public, and there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection in potentially exposed lab workers," Warren said.

The anthrax samples were shipped from Dugway to government and commercial labs in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.

The Defense Department, acting "out of an abundance of caution," has halted "the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation," Warren said.

Contact with anthrax spores can cause severe illness.

Harben said one of the laboratories contacted the CDC to request "technical consultation." It was working as part of a Pentagon effort to develop a new diagnostic test to identify biological threats, she said.

More at the three links above.

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... ax-spores/

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9479
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Re: Anthrax spores don't match dead researcher's samples

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu May 28, 2015 10:13 am

Also: http://boingboing.net/2015/05/23/hackti ... h-fbi.html

Matthew DeHart, a veteran from a multi-generational military/intelligence family, ran a Tor hidden service server for his Wow guildies, members of his old army unit, and whistleblowers.

DeHart once discovered an unencrypted folder of damning documents on his server, which quickly disappeared and was replaced with an encrypted folder of the same size, with the same name. The unencrypted docs detailed an FBI investigation into some very dirty CIA tricks, possibly involving the still-unsolved slew of anthrax-laced letters sent to Congress in 2001. Not long after, DeHart was spooked by a visit from the FBI to one of his contacts, and he destroyed all potentially compromising storage associated with his server.

That's when things got weird.
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