* President Obama was well aware, in August 2008, that the FBI had failed to solve the anthrax case; did he change his mind less than a month later, when the FBI announced that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator?

President Obama (on July 16, 2008, during the presidential campaign), mentioned that the FBI had still failed to solve the 2001 anthrax attacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84sfDJgfNM

the mention begins about 9 min 20 seconds into the speech

LMW COMMENT … It would be fascinating to know if President Obama’s views changed with the FBI announcement less than one month later, in August 2008, that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, or if he shares the skepticism which has been robustly expressed on this blog and elsewhere. The FBI had stubbornly refused to brief the U.S. Senate when Obama was a Senator. Since becoming President, has he asked the FBI for the whole story, and if so, what have they told him?

NOTE: this YouTube video was found through … http://labs.google.com/gaudi … a really powerful tool which actually spots the reference to the second.

* The argument rages on, but there is considerable evidence and agreement on this blog that Dr. Bruce Ivins could not have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks as the FBI claimed in 2008, eight days after Dr. Ivins had committed suicide.

LMW …

Dr. Bruce Ivins

• There is a lively ongoing debate on scientific and investigative issues in this blog through the comments of Ike, DXer, Anonymous Scientist and others. The arguments are detailed and complex, but they do seem to agree on this …
  • the FBI’s contention that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks cannot be sustained by the evidence which, in all likelihood, the FBI knew when it charged Ivins (posthumously) and declared CASE CLOSED.
• The fact that the FBI has utterly refused to answer questions raised by scientists, journalists and members of Congress only increase the suspicion that the FBI is hiding some dark secrets in this case.

Ike writes …

• For the record, I think the thesis of Ed and DX and the FBI are all completely mistaken on basic scientific and technical grounds, let alone all the investigative issues.
• The only plausible “lone wolf” scenario involves threat or diversion of material created as part of a biological threat assessment program in a U.S. biodefense lab, and that really rules out anyone at Fort Detrick, as they hadno aerosol weaponization capacity.

LMW: Ike is saying it could not be Ivins.

DXer writes …

The Baltimore Examiner quotes Gerald P. Andrews, director of the bacteriology division and Ivins’ supervisor from 2000 to 2003: “Knowing the layout of the BSL-3 suite, the implication that Bruce (Ivins) could have whipped out [anthrax mixture] in a couple of weeks without detection is ridiculous.”

… for 10 envelopes, 100 preparations would be required to make all the mailed material at three to five days for each preparation,” he says. “Months of continuous spore preparation without doing any other work and avoiding detection? It’s ridiculous.”

One USAMRID researcher, speaking anonymously, told The Baltimore Examiner: “It would have been impossible for Ivins to have grown, purified and loaded the amount of material in the letters in just six days. It simply could not be done.”

LMW: DXer quotes Andrews and another USAMRIID researcher who say it simply could not have been Ivins.

DXer adds …

The anthrax attack samples did contain silicon and oxygen, the elements of silica. The silicon and oxygen were not located on the outside surface of the spores. They were on an internal structure. Dr. Michael has tested material from the flask that the FBI says the anthrax materials came from, the mailings came from, and Sandia found that there was no silicon signature in these spores.

LMW: Again pointing in some direction other than Ivins.

“Anonymous Scientist” writes …

When the FBI sought a search warrant from a judge to search Ivins’ home and Detrick they stated they were looking to find evidence including spores with a unique never-before-seen silicon signature.

The silicon found in the mailed spores is very significant. The FBI admit that 1.45% silicon was found in the Leahy spores. That’s a huge amount – higher than any amount that’s ever been seen before in spore preparations – even ones where silicon has been deliberately added (which Detrick never does).

But the FBI NEVER DID FIND SPORES LIKE THIS IN DETRICK.  And yet their official story today is that Ivins must have managed to make them – somehow.

LMW: If the FBI cannot explain how the silicon got into the attack anthrax, then they have to look beyond Detrick and beyond Ivins.

LMW: It seems incomprehensible to me that the FBI, with all of their resources and all of the manpower they put into the anthrax investigation, has come up with the feeble and unsupportable conclusion that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator. Something else, it seems to me, is going on here, since the FBI cannot be telling the whole truth.

I don’t know what actually happened, but I am a novelist, so I let my imagination develop a fictional scenario that many are finding quite plausible. CASE CLOSED presents that scenario, providing fictional answers to the very real questions that still plague the FBI’s not-yet-closed investigation.

You may purchase CASE CLOSED at amazon.com …

* purchase CASE CLOSED (paperback)