* DXer responds to USA Today’s comment that “the anthrax case has not been closed because the lead suspect committed suicide”

CASE CLOSED is a novel which answers the question “Why did the FBI fail to solve the 2001 anthrax case?” … click here to … buy CASE CLOSED by Lew Weinstein

Here’s what readers say about CASE CLOSED  …

“CASE CLOSED takes headline events and weaves a credible scenario around the anthrax scare and government departments working under the radar.”

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USA Today reports (10-6-09) …

“Although the anthrax case has not been closed because the lead suspect committed suicide, the FBI blames the attacks on a lone government scientist, Bruce Ivins of the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. The Ivins case showed that this is now something that an individual can do.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-10-05-biowatch-biological_N.htm

DXer comments …

Of course, if there were persuasive evidence Bruce Ivins was the processor and mailer, or involved at all, it would make it EASIER to close the case, not harder. All the evidence tends to establish is that his flask was the original source of the stream of isolates from which the attack anthrax could have been accessed.

To date, the most compelling data point relates to the method of concentrating anthrax using silica in the culture medium developed by the DARPA-funded researchers who shared a suite with Ali Al-Timimi, whose eminent defense counsel has said in a brief filed with the federal district court is an “anthrax weapons suspect.”

The Silicon Signature does not point to the method that Dugway was using in 2001. It points away from that method. Instead, aside from pointing to the confidential patent co-invented by Dr. Al-Timimi’s suitemates, it may point to the experiments Ivins and others were doing as part of vaccine research and, for example, the growth medium they used containing a high iron content. (Whether that was shared with or accessible by others has not yet been disclosed). Lab Notebook 4010 will reveal much because it will make plain the reason for the lesser Silicon Signature in flask 1030 (as distinguished from flask 1029).

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* USA Today reports on bioWatch technology to detect anthrax and other bioterror agents

CASE CLOSED is a novel which answers the question “Why did the FBI fail to solve the 2001 anthrax case?” … click here to … buy CASE CLOSED by Lew Weinstein

Here’s what readers say about CASE CLOSED  …

“Weinstein raises some very interesting and disturbing theories. CASE CLOSED is a great read, suspenseful and a real page turner. Please tell me it’s not true!”

“You will not want to stop reading … Lew Weinstein addresses the 2001 anthrax case with the pen of a highly skilled investigator.”

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bioWatch technology is operating in over 30 cities

Steve Sternberg writes in USA Today (10-6-09)

• As the anthrax attacks unfolded in 2001, the White House ordered Tom Slezak to Washington, D.C., to deploy experimental technology that scientists from Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had developed to protect athletes and spectators at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
• The detection system had never been put to a real-world test. Soon, the safety of many U.S. cities would depend on it.
• Today, eight years after the anthrax attacks, the system Slezak’s research team started, known as BioWatch, is quietly operating in more than 30 cities.
• In September 2005, BioWatch detected bacteria that cause tularemia — a known bioterror agent— on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during an anti-war demonstration that drew thousands of marchers. Further tests suggested the bacteria occurred naturally and was no threat, officials said then.
• “There’s a general feeling that anthrax will be the most likely agent of choice. It’s available in nature, it doesn’t require heavy science to manipulate, and it can be granulized into a form that makes it easier to disseminate” and inhaled.
• Another reason anthrax is appealing to bioterrorists, he says, is that it is difficult to detect. Anthrax detonates silently, without smoke or flame. Its spores are odorless and all but invisible. Like a deadly pollen, they can float on air.
• “We’re looking for aerosolized anthrax,” Hooks says. “That’s the No. 1 aerosolized biological risk agent.”
• Anthrax appears to be especially attractive to al-Qaeda, according to the WMD commission report. The terrorist network that orchestrated 9/11 had two biological stations in Qandahar, Afghanistan, that were unknown to Western intelligence services until U.S. troops found them in 2001, the report says.
• “It’s our information that the effort al-Qaeda started in Qandahar in the late ’90s has been relocated to Pakistan,” Graham says. “They’ve had eight years to regroup.”
• Graham says he can’t discuss whether other terrorist groups also are tinkering with anthrax or other bioweapons.
• Although the anthrax case has not been closed because the lead suspect committed suicide, the FBI blames the attacks on a lone government scientist, Bruce Ivins of the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.
• “The Ivins case showed that this is now something that an individual can do,” Kadlec says.

read the entire article at … http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-10-05-biowatch-biological_N.htm

for more about bioWatch … http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/biowatch.htm