* Kenneth Dillon … 7 main flaws in the FBI’s Amerithrax Investigation
Posted by DXer on April 4, 2010
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The FBI’s case against Dr. Bruce Ivins has been demonstrated to be bogus. Someone should be held accountable for either failure to solve the case or covering up the true perpetrators. What really happened? I offer one fictional scenario in my novel CASE CLOSED, judged by many readers, including one highly respected official in the U.S. Intelligence Community, as “quite plausible.”
Dr. Bruce Ivins
Kenneth Dillon, taking the point of view of a defense attorney, writes that there are 7 main flaws in the FBI’s Amerithrax Investigative Summary (I have paraphrased) …
- The FBI claims it has direct evidence, but it has nothing but circumstantial evidence.
- The FBI claims that Ivins spent extra hours in the “hot suites” at USAMRIID, but his calendar shows legitimate reasons to be there and the FBI has withheld Ivins’ handwritten notes from those nights.
- The FBI claims Ivins had the equipment and skills to prepare the attack anthrax, but other opinions differ and the FBI offers no proof that Ivins actually did so.
- The FBI points to Ivins’ behavior in the year before his suicide as indicative of his state of mind 7 years before; this is not persuasive. The use of Jean Duley as a credible witness is not credible.
- The FBI’s claims regarding the language of the letters and a secret genetic code are fanciful.
- The FBI claims, but offers no proof, that the preparer of the anthrax and the mailer were the same person.
- The FBI claims that Ivins displayed a guilty conscience, which could equally have been a fear of being wrongly accused.
Read Mr. Dillon’s entire argument at … http://scientiapress.com/findings/ivins.htm
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
“My country didn’t do this to me,” he is quick to point out. ‘A bloated, incompetent bureaucracy and a broken press did.”
“The Wrong Man,” in The Atlantic, at 56.
DXer said
“The government was convinced that all the circumstantial evidence pointing to Hatfill had to amount to something.
IT DIDN’T.”
“The Wrong Man,” in The Atlantic, p. 56.
DXer said
David Freed states:
“Ivins had been the sole custodian of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores…”
The phrase “sole custodian” is meaningless when the DOJ says 377 people had access to it including many more at other locations. Would Mr. Freed be the sole custodian of a coffee cup in the coffee room to which 377 people had access?
Mr. Freed states:
“He had been unable to provide a good explanation for the many late nights he’d put in his lab, working alone, just before the attacks.”
To the contrary, the documentary evidence establishes a good explanation — notwithstanding the FBI’s mischaracterization and failure to provide the contemporaneous handwritten lab notes — or Ivins first interviews (and polygraphed answers).
Mr. Freed mentions that “Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas” omitting the part of the email making clear he had just heard that reported on the news (see Washington Times Gertz column).
DXer said
The DARPA-funded researchers at GMU, where Ali Al-Timimi shared a suite with the leading anthrax expert and former deputy USAMRIID Commander, did their work with virulent Ames in Frederick, Maryland.
See, e.g., “Systemic cytokine response in murine anthrax” Serguei G. Popov 1 *, Taissia G. Popova 1 , Edith Grene 1 , Francis Klotz 1 , Jennifer Cardwell 1 , Chris Bradburne 1 , Yusuf Jama 1 , Matthew Maland 2 , Jay Wells 2 , Aysegul Nalca 2 , Tom Voss 2 , Charles Bailey 3 and Ken Alibek 1,3
1 Advanced Biosystems Inc., Manassas, VA 20110, USA.
2 Southern Research Institute, Frederick, MD, USA.
3 George Mason University Center for Biodefense, Manassas, VA 20110, USA.
The article notes that “All experiments with Ames strain were carried out in the BSL-3 facility of Southern Research Institute, Frederick, MD. This work was supported in part by grants from the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, USA.”
DARPA, for example, funded the research at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA that received virulent Ames from Southern Research Institute when it expected that the ship of “dead” anthrax. On June 10th, Childrens Hospital Oakland (California) announced that a shipment of “dead” anthrax sent to it by the Southern Research Institute (Frederick, Maryland location) in fact contained live bacteria. This error is reported to have resulted in the exposure of 5 to 7 laboratory workers to the bacteria. Believing that the anthrax was “killed”, the workers handled the live agent with inadequate personal and environmental biosafety precautions.
The “Sunshine Project”, in reviewing the incident, provides a link to a 26 slide presentation by Dr. Thomas Voss, Director of SRI’s Homeland Security Division (established late 2001). This presentation was made on May 24th 2002 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham at a meeting in which university officials discussed biodefense research and weighed the possibility of entering a bid to construct a BSL-4 National Biocontainment Laboratory. They did not bid. The presentation provides substantial details about SRI programs and facilities, including its clients (DARPA, USAMRIID, USAMRMC, USAF, DTRA, NIAID, etc.), construction of new aerosol facilities, and desire to construct a BSL-4 facility.
The Sunshine Project analysis as corroborating authority notes the January 2004 article published by SRI and Childrens’ Hospital authors in Immunology and Medical Microbiology (FEMS Immunology and Medical Microbiology 40 (2004) 231-237) which indicates that the particularly virulent Ames strain of anthrax was utilized in this research. This article also indicates that the research was partially funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Sunshine Project notes: “SRI advertises its involvement in classified research on biological weapons agents leading one to wonder if other mishaps have occured that have not been publicized due to secrecy.”
DXer said
“Security Clearance
Southern Research maintains a facility security clearance through Secret, and all staff members working in the chemical and biological defense areas have Secret clearances as well.”
See: http://www.nbcindustrygroup.com/soutres.htm
DXer said
Link: “Southern Research Institute, Homeland Security Division”
Presentation by Dr. Thomas Voss, 24 May 2002, Birmingham, AL (2.5 mb, PDF format)
Click to access voss.pdf
DXer said
In Defense of the Environment: Homeland Security and Protection
Friday, 9:00 – 11:50am
Presented by:
…
Dr. Tom Voss will cover his role, and that of Southern Research Institute’s, in the anthrax microbiology and biological agent characterizations for the U.S. Postal Service.
DXer said
“Authors thank … personnel of the Homeland Security Division of Southern Research Institute, Frederick, MD, for carrying out experiments with virulent B. anthracis strain ….”
DXer said
The focus of the ongoing investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is on the vendor, Southern Research Institute (SRI), which shipped the B. anthracis from its facility in Frederick, Md., about 3 months ago. “What happened there in this heat process that failed to kill the bacteria?” August asked. “What checks and balances do they have, and how did it pass through that?”
Thomas Voss, vice president of the Homeland Security and Emerging Infectious Disease Research Division at SRI, told The Scientist that his company tested the B. anthracis it shipped by trying to grow the material in a culture medium for 48 hours. The culture didn’t grow, so SRI concluded that it was totally inactivated.
Petru said that when the samples arrived in the Oakland lab, workers there also tried to grow it in culture for 48 hours but failed, so they too concluded it was dead. When asked how material that had twice been tested as inactivated 3 months ago could now be alive, Voss said, “This is biology. It doesn’t always work they way you expect it to work every time. You want to validate these procedures as fully as you possibly can, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” to see if they are sensitive enough to ensure inactivity.
Voss said the sample sent to the Oakland lab is the only heat-inactivated B. anthracis sample SRI has ever shipped to any lab. The bacteria can also be killed with formaldehyde, UV light, and gamma radiation, he said. While Petru said the Oakland lab had only received one shipment, Voss said, “We’ve done two [shipments to the Oakland lab]. The ones we’ve done with these folks are probably the only ones we’ve done with Bacillus anthracis that’s been heat killed. Outside of that, that’s all.”
Petru speculated that the SRI material is a heat-resistant mutant strain of B. anthracis: “If the material was properly processed, I think you have to presume it must be mutant, because heat didn’t kill it, that’s how you define it, right?” Voss said no one knows at this point.
Although both SRI and the Oakland lab cultured the shipment of B. anthracis, the Oakland lab did not subculture it by taking a sample of the first culture and transferring it to a fresh culture dish. Voss said he doubts SRI subcultured it either, although he has not yet verified that fact. With some bacteria, subculturing is important because it won’t grow otherwise, according to a prominent bioterrorism researcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his organization competes with SRI. “We didn’t subculture it prior to inoculating it,” Petru said. “If we had, perhaps we would have discovered that.”
Both August and Voss said the incident illustrates the heightened awareness and cooperation among government agencies fostered by the federal government’s efforts to strengthen the US public health system in the wake of September 11. August said that from the time his department was notified, it inspected the lab, wrote a report, and held a press conference in a little more than 24 hours. “I’ve been with the department for about 16 years,” he said. Of the cooperation among CDC, SRI, and state and local authorities, he said, “You wouldn’t have seen that 3 years ago.”
Richard Ebright, a professor at Rutgers University, said he thinks the extraordinary increases in the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases budget, which is sponsoring the Oakland anthrax research, make accidents like this much more likely than they were before. “I think events like this are inevitable with the expansion of effort in this area,” Ebright said. “I think that additional accidents of all flavors and descriptions as well as deliberate releases are inevitable with this expansion.”
DXer said
PR Newswire
May 4, 2000, Thursday
HADRON Subsidiary Awarded $3.3 Million Biodefense Contract by DARPA
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 4
Hadron, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: HDRN) today announced that one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries has been awarded a $3.3 million, one-year contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Hadron’s subsidiaries, Avenue Technologies, Inc. and Advanced Biosystems, Inc., will perform the biodefense research programs under this contract. The scientific and medical research will consist of several related programs regarding the development of rapid-acting broad-spectrum protection against biological threat agents. Southern Research Institute, a well known research organization … is a subcontractor on this program.
“We are pleased to be working with DARPA to provide proof of concept of certain innovative medical concepts regarding protection against biological threat agents,” said Dr. Ken Alibek, Hadron’s Chief Scientist and President of Advanced Biosystems. “There are many novel approaches to biological weapons defense that I believe may provide superior protection than those methods currently in use,” Dr. Alibek continued. “We hope this program is just the beginning of new, innovative research, funded by government agencies and the private sector, to develop new prophylactic means and treatments for a broad spectrum of infectious diseases,” he concluded.
DXer said
The strain they sent out live that they thought was dead was the Ames strain.
6/12/2004
The Oakland Tribune
Possible anthrax exposure concerns experts
Oakland lab workers were exposed to the bacterium
By Rebecca Vesely and Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
***
Up until about five years ago, anthrax research was an extremely small field. Only about 10 to 15 researchers in the United States were working on it, including Dr. Martin Hugh-Jones, a foremost expert on anthrax at Louisiana State University.
Now there’s unbelievable sums of money in it so everyone can discover all the pleasures of homeland security paperwork, Hugh-Jones said.
Developing an anthrax vaccine is a popular area of research. Give me a name of an institute and they’re working on it, he said.
Richard Ebright, a microbiology professor and biosafety officer at Rutgers University, said the Oakland incident exposes loopholes in the regulation of the rapidly growing biodefense industry.
Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Congress and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tightened laws and regulations governing the handling of select agents, the three categories of microorganisms thought to pose the greatest threat of use in terrorism and warfare.
But in two revisions, the CDC removed inactivated agent and avirulent or vaccine strains from the select agent list, in effect exempting them from all regulation. Inactivated Bacillus anthracis, such as Oakland’s researchers expected, are subject to none of the registration, security, shipping or biosafety rules of select agents.
This is a gap in regulation, Ebright said. This incident shows that material that is purportedly inactivated can have viable, recoverable agent. And because there are no regulations, no paper trail, this is a gap through which malicious organizations could obtain select agents without a paper trail and perhaps with serious safety incidents.
There are 350 entities nationwide that can handle live anthrax. Yet it’s unclear how many labs are, like Children’s Oakland, working with the dead agent.
Meanwhile, the federal government has poured funds into bioterror research. The federal budget for biodefense research is $2.4 billion this year. Of that, about $1 billion is at the National Institutes of Health.
Under the NIH umbrella, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which partly funded the Children’s Oakland anthrax research, increased its funding for bioterror after 2001. Previously, it accounted for a minuscule portion of the institute’s budget. After 2001, biodefense research accounted for one-third of all NIAID research funding.
The Oakland institute also had a research grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the venture capital research arm of the Pentagon.
It’s a double-edged sword, said the Monterey Institute’s Tucker. There’s a greater risk of accidental or deliberate diversions of these agents and yet you have more people working in these important areas. It needs to be thought through better.
The state Department of Health Services, which is tasked with the public’s health, knows little about what is going on in labs such as Children’s Oakland.
There’s no legal requirement to report [to the state– whether a lab is working with an agent like anthrax, said state Department of Health Services spokesman Ken August. That is regulated under the select agent rules of the CDC.
Officials at the CDC were not available Friday for comment.
Dr. Thomas Voss, Southern Research Institute’s vice president for homeland security and infectious diseases, said a review of the mistake is focused on the biology of what happened.
We’re running the whole gamut, from inactivation to quality control, Voss said. We’re seeing if we can replicate this in the lab.
According to Southern Research Institute, the Oakland researchers asked that the bacteria be killed by heat treatment in boiling water. Standard inactivation techniques include gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light and autoclaving, or pressurized steam treatment, followed by filtering with a fine nylon mesh to block the escape of whole, live spores.
Hot water alone was unlikely to kill anthrax spores, other experts said.
Sporiform bacteria are incredibly hardy and able to withstand extremes of temperatures and live more than a century in soil.
That’s not a good way to kill anthrax, said a veteran anthrax researcher, who asked for anonymity because of work with the institutions involved. I just can’t believe that putting it in a hot water bath for any time is going to kill these things at all.
Voss said that using the hot water method is not unusual and strict protocols and testing are followed. He said it’s possible that the agent appeared to be dead but was not, and after spending three months in a closet in Oakland, some of the live bacteria remained.
Several anthrax experts discounted that theory.
Things like this don’t happen except under a full moon while wearing a pointy black hat and conjuring spells, Hugh-Jones said.
Dead is dead, said Rutger’s Ebright, and science knows no means to revive the dead.
The fallout for SRI could be severe.
If it is what it appears to be, it represents an institutional and a regulatory failure, the anthrax expert said. I would expect SRI to catch an incredible amount of heat and perhaps be closed down for awhile.
The CDC is launching a full investigation into Southern Research.
Rutger’s Ebright says the historical figures are poor indicators of future safety, because of lax requirements to report lab infections before 2001 and because U.S. biodefense research has exploded.
The scale of this enterprise has increased by a factor of 30 in dollars, people and facilities, he said. This has been accompanied by a decrease in the level of experience. These (biodefense labs) are being opened by investigators who have no track record or experience with select agents, in institutions that have no track record or experience with those agents.
DXer said
City company still probing anthrax shipment errors
by Robert Schroeder
Staff Writer
Maryland Gazette Newspapers
June 17, 2004
A Frederick research institute that mistakenly sent live anthrax bacteria to a California laboratory in March is continuing to investigate how the mishap occurred, a company spokeswoman said this week.
***
But as late as Tuesday, a spokeswoman for SRI said the company was still reviewing internal documents and investigating the incident.
She also said it was too early to determine what preventative steps needed to be taken to ensure that a similar incident does not happen again.
“I can’t tell you how we’ll prevent it because we’re not sure exactly what happened,” spokeswoman Rhonda Jung said from the firm’s headquarters in Birmingham, Ala. “We’re still looking into everything.”
But since quality control tests indicated the cells were dead, Jung said, the box was not shipped “diagnostic or infectious” using a special shipping company.
Brookmyer also said it is possible that the bacteria may have been changed after leaving Frederick.
Shortly after reports of the incident appeared, a Fort Detrick spokeswoman notified local media that Detrick was not responsible for the shipping accident.
“Fort Detrick was not involved in the shipment,” Eileen C. Mitchell, the executive officer of the U.S. Army Garrison at Detrick, wrote to reporters. She said that some media mentioned and showed images of the installation in their reports about the anthrax shipment.
DXer said
The DARPA-funded researchers at GMU with whom Ali Al-Timimi shared a suite did work with virulent Ames at Southern Research Institute in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Ivins’ close confidante Patricia Fellows worked there after she left Ft. Detrick and her work there with Bruce. She managed the BL-3 lab at Southern Research Institute.
PR Newswire February 19, 2003 Wednesday, Southern Research Institute Names New Homeland Security and Infectious Disease Research Program Leaders; Staff Growing to Meet Increased Demand for Critical Research (Patricia Fellows joins Southern Research Institute in Frederick as a Research Scientist and manager of the Frederick BSL-3 laboratory.)
DXer said
October 25, 2001 Thursday
SHOW: Hardball with Chris Matthews (8:00 PM ET) – CNBC
Dr. David Franz of the Southern Research Institute discusses quality of anthrax
ANCHORS: CHRIS MATTHEWS
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:
Dr. David Franz is the vice president of chemical and biological defenses at the Southern Research Institute. Dr. Franz was also the commander at the Army’s germ defense lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Dr. Franz, big question, what kind of anthrax was in the Tom Daschle letter?
Dr. DAVID FRANZ (Southern Research Institute): Well, I guess it’s been announced today, Chris, that it was the Ames strain, which is interesting. But I think even more important than the strain involved is the formulation. And I think it’s–the information that we will learn and are learning about the formulation that will help us eventually find the–the people that sent those letters.
MATTHEWS: Is this the quality or the strain, rather–not the strain, is it the intensity or the highly developed type of anthrax that could only be produced by a state like Iraq or the former Soviet Union or the United States?
Dr. FRANZ: Well, good people disagree on that question. I believe that as long as we see it in small quantities it could be produced by a small group in a relatively primitive lab. The critical point, however, is that they would have to know exactly what they’re doing. They would need more than a recipe. They would need to understand this and they’d really be craftsmen.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you a question. It’s been my hunch for days now that some angry person, perhaps living in the New Jersey area, who has been an employee of a major pharmaceutical company that may work with aerosol sprays for underarm deo–underarm deodorants or whatever. Would that kind of an engineer have the capability–just because he didn’t like the country, didn’t like liberals or media people–to produce this kind of anthrax and put it in an envelope?
Dr. FRANZ: I think he’d have to learn a lot more than just what he knew from working with underarm aerosol sprays. Those are chemicals, and here we’re dealing with living things. We’re dealing with a spore that you’ve got to keep alive and you’ve got to deal with the–the biological and physical characteristics of these organisms that you don’t have to deal with when you’re dealing with chemicals.
MATTHEWS: What is your hunch about the narrowing down of this state? Is there any way that you can narrow it down? The Washington Post, they had a story that said it could have been Iraqi, Russian or American. And then it said, ‘It’s probably not Iraqi or Russian.’ Can you go that far in profiling where this came from?
Dr. FRANZ: No, I don’t think I can because I’ve–I’ve just heard what the media has reported. We know that the US–the old US program, pre-’69, and the Soviet program and the Iraqis all use slightly different recipes and slightly different methods to produce their dried anthrax spores. So there may be some clues there with regard to at least where the individual may have learned the technology or read about it or–or been trained in some way. But I don’t have enough information to answer that question.
MATTHEWS: Well, David, maybe you do know this one. It’s the scary question. I want to put it in the right context. But if somebody can do what they did in these letters, put in this highly dangerous anthrax into letters that’s so dangerous it can kill people who even came in the room near it, what else can they do with that same level of anthrax?
Dr. FRANZ: Well, I think they’ve done the easiest thing. It’s pretty safe for them to drop a letter in a distant mailbox and have it sent to a city. It would be significantly more difficult for them to disseminate it themselves using some kind of a device. And when they try to do that, they’ve got to deal with weather. They’ve got to deal with meteorology. And that was always the–the biggest hurdle in–in offensive programs.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Dr. FRANZ: Even after you’ve produced a quality product that’s lethal, you’ve got to deal with meteorology.
MATTHEWS: Great. Thank you very much, Dr. David Franz.
Up next, can the United States capture Osama bin Laden? We’ll ask bin Laden profiler Jerrold Post and Simon Reeve, author of a new book about bin Laden called “The New Jackals.” You’re watching HARDBALL.
Secretary DONALD RUMSFELD: I suspect it’s easier to change the Taliban leadership over time than necessarily to simultaneously or before the fact find a specific person.
DXer said
The New York Times
October 21, 2001 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition – Final
The Nation: Buggy;
Preparing America for the Reality of Germ Warfare
BYLINE: By WILLIAM J. BROAD
***
Paradoxically, the apparently high grade of at least some of the dry anthrax powders also helps, said Dr. David R. Franz, former commander of the Army’s germ-defense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., and now vice president for chemical and biological defense at the Southern Research Institute, an arm of the University of Alabama.
Dr. Franz and other experts in biological arms said federal investigators are likely to glean more clues about the origins of advanced powders than crude ones, especially since they’ve all been found to be the same strain.
“It’s sophisticated science, but it can be done,” said Ken Alibek, a former Soviet germ warrior who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, Inc., a biodefense consulting company in Manassas, Va.
Last week, federal scientists examining the anthrax tentatively concluded that the type is a domestic strain that bears no resemblance to the strains Russia and Iraq turned into biological weapons. They stressed, however, that the clues in no way rule out foreign work since the identified strain is available overseas.
The scientists said the anthrax used in the attacks is similar to a highly virulent type known as the Ames strain, which was discovered in Iowa in 1980 (not in the 1950’s as is sometimes reported). Reputedly, it is even more dangerous that the type the American military used.
Looking at other characteristics of the anthrax powder — the size of the particles, their shape, whether they have been damaged or deformed by milling, whether they carry a static charge that makes them stick together, whether chemical additives are present — will tell investigators volumes about the terrorists.
“WITH a crude preparation, there would be a large number of places to look for suspects,” said Dr. Franz. An advanced one, he said, “narrows the field.”
Dr. Alibek said that the federal investigation, if done correctly, will yield huge insights into the perpetrators of the crimes.
“Much information could be derived form these powders,” he said, including serious clues about terrorist skills and origins.
“We need,” he said, “to establish a completely new kind of science.” The bad news is that the letter attacks are small stuff compared to possible future threats, experts on biological weapons warn. At some point the issue may not be mass disruption but mass destruction.
DXer said
OCTOBER 25, 2001 Thursday CITY-D EDITION
Anthrax clues reportedly fail to point to hijackers;
The FBI director said he could not see a link, though
some officials speculate that there is one conspiracy.
BYLINE: Steve Goldstein INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. A01
“But these attacks were clearly meant to terrorize a country already on the edge,” he said.
Some White House officials and Capitol Hill lawmakers say there appears to be a link between the anthrax scare and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network.
“There is a suspicion that this is connected to international terrorists,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, adding that a link with the Sept. 11 attacks has been “the operating suspicion of the White House for a considerable period of time.”
Investigators say they have found no connection between the Sept. 11 plot and the anthrax mailings.
Three weeks ago tomorrow, Robert
***
Connecting the anthrax attacks to the Sept. 11 attacks might aid investigators, who have developed strong leads and information on the hijackers. But such a connection could heighten fears in the United States about the range of weapons available to the terrorists and their willingness to use them.
The probe is focused on the “personality” of the pathogen and the origin of the mailings.
Testing has revealed that the strains of the anthrax found in Florida, Washington and New York are indistinguishable.
***
One investigator, who asked not to be named, said that forensic scientists were now trying to identify a chemical coating applied to the anthrax spores that made them “slippery” and easy to disperse in the air.
“There is no delay going on – this is a very hard job,” the investigator said.
Meanwhile, the former head of the U.S. bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick, Md., said yesterday that the Sept. 18 postmark was a strong indicator of a “professional” perpetrator.
“Since the first letter went out seven days after Sept. 11, there’s no way someone could start from scratch and prepare a product in that time, especially the quality of the material found” in the letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, said David R. Franz. “So someone has to have already prepared the stuff or have access to prepared stuff.
“This is tipping me in the direction of professionals or someone who really knew what they were doing,” said Franz, head of the biological and chemical defense division of the Southern Research Institute.
DXer said
The Associated Press
June 10, 2004, Thursday, BC cycle
Researchers in California unaware they were working with live anthrax
BYLINE: By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
At least six researchers may have been exposed to deadly anthrax after a shipping foul up led them to believe they were working with dead rather than live bacteria, officials said Thursday.
None of the researchers from Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute has shown signs of infection, and officials do not believe they were exposed, said hospital spokeswoman Bev Mikalonis. However, she said they were being treated with antibiotics as a precaution.
The researchers, who are attempting to develop an anthrax vaccine for children, thought they were working with dead bacteria until mice they were using in experiments began to die.
The researchers followed proper procedures while handling the anthrax shots, Mikalonis said. The liquid anthrax went directly from the syringes into lab mice, she said.
“We do not see a threat or a danger to anyone in the community,” said Dr. Richard Jackson, California’s public health officer. “This really has been very well-controlled.”
The anthrax arrived in Oakland from the Frederick, Md., laboratory of the Southern Research Institute about three months ago, Mikalonis said.
Thomas Voss, who is in charge of homeland security and emerging infectious diseases at Birmingham, Ala.-based SRI, said the company is investigating.
“We aren’t totally sure of the sequence of events,” he said.
Note: The article by the Children Hospital vaccine researchers acknowledged funding in part by DARPA.
DXer said
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:D0d39DRhlWQJ:web.mit.edu/ssp/bsl4/scenarios.html+%22Southern+Research+Institute%22+anthraxinvestigation&cd=24&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
The source of the virulent bacterium was the Southern Research Institute of Frederick, Maryland, an affiliate of Fort Detrick. This company maintains two “hot labs,” one in Frederick and another in Birmingham, Alabama. Thomas Voss, in charge of the company’s emerging infectious disease program, initially said that “We receive [select] agents on a routine basis. But on our end, we ship very infrequently. I don’t even recall shipping live agents.”
DXer said
You may have seen the graphics.
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AUOvQm3wQZPEZGY3bW44czRfMGZma2pmd2hu&hl=enc
Now can watch the official DXer anthem: “Anthrax, ham radio, and liquor.”
http://www.mtvmusic.com/artist/clutch/videos/407437/50000_unstoppable_watts
Airstreams tethered together like silver sleeping oxen
All the best locations are located on the margins
Suited for telescoping the interstellar scene
It’s a mean killer in the daylight, but that’s life for you and me
It’s a reliable source of information.
Fifty thousand unstoppable watts.
Anthrax, ham radio, and liquor.
What if I told you they been lying
About that double wide with water rights?
And now the town cars are back again!
They sold you some old line
About the greater good and sacrifice
Your friends from Langley are back again!
It’s a reliable source of information
Fifty thousand unstoppable watts.
Anthrax, ham radio, and liquor.
Coming at you live!
It’s just some people can only see the stars
In the reflection from big black cars.
It’s a reliable source of information
Fifty thousand unstoppable watts.
DXer said
Note, turning back to the Science article last month, one of the Advanced Biosystems experts tells me: “Go to Wal-Mart, buy a bottle of chip transparent (not white) glue, and play with it. Water works fine to wash it off your hands. With time the glued paper becomes yellow and the glue becomes a white silica powder. The process is fast upon slight acidification, so that the penetrated soluble silicate may be converted to insoluble silica.”
DXer said
The DARPA-funded researchers at GMU, where Ali Al-Timimi shared a suite with the leading anthrax expert and former deputy USAMRIID Commander, at one point did their work with virulent Ames in Frederick, Maryland.
See, e.g., “Systemic cytokine response in murine anthrax” Serguei G. Popov 1 *, Taissia G. Popova 1 , Edith Grene 1 , Francis Klotz 1 , Jennifer Cardwell 1 , Chris Bradburne 1 , Yusuf Jama 1 , Matthew Maland 2 , Jay Wells 2 , Aysegul Nalca 2 , Tom Voss 2 , Charles Bailey 3 and Ken Alibek 1,3
1 Advanced Biosystems Inc., Manassas, VA 20110, USA.
2 Southern Research Institute, Frederick, MD, USA.
3 George Mason University Center for Biodefense, Manassas, VA 20110, USA.
The article notes that “All experiments with Ames strain were carried out in the BSL-3 facility of Southern Research Institute, Frederick, MD. This work was supported in part by grants from the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, USA.”
DARPA, for example, funded the research at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA that received virulent Ames from Southern Research Institute when it expected that the ship of “dead” anthrax.
http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/sriibc.html
Childrens Hospital Oakland (California) announced that a shipment of “dead” anthrax sent to it by the Southern Research Institute (Frederick, Maryland location) in fact contained live bacteria. This error is reported to have resulted in the exposure of 5 to 7 laboratory workers to the bacteria. Believing that the anthrax was “killed”, the workers handled the live agent with inadequate personal and environmental biosafety precautions.
The “Sunshine Project”, in reviewing the incident, provided a link to a 26 slide presentation by Dr. Thomas Voss, Director of SRI’s Homeland Security Division). This presentation was made on May 24th 2002 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The presentation provides substantial details about SRI programs and facilities, including its clients (DARPA, USAMRIID, USAMRMC, USAF, DTRA, NIAID, etc.), construction of new aerosol facilities.
Link: “Southern Research Institute, Homeland Security Division”
Presentation by Dr. Thomas Voss, 24 May 2002, Birmingham, AL (2.5 mb, PDF format)
Click to access voss.pdf
The Sunshine Project analysis, as corroborating authority, notes the January 2004 article published by SRI and Childrens’ Hospital authors in Immunology and Medical Microbiology (FEMS Immunology and Medical Microbiology 40 (2004) 231-237) which indicates that the particularly virulent Ames strain of anthrax was utilized in this research. This article also indicates that the research was partially funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Sunshine Project notes: “SRI advertises its involvement in classified research on biological weapons agents leading one to wonder if other mishaps have occurred that have not been publicized due to secrecy.”
“Security Clearance
Southern Research maintains a facility security clearance through Secret, and all staff members working in the chemical and biological defense areas have Secret clearances as well.”
See: http://www.nbcindustrygroup.com/soutres.htm
My good friend was Vice President of Southern Research Institute for Chemical and Biological Defense at the time and is very forthcoming.
I have the highest confidence that he’ll give us — and would give Congress or an Inspector General — the full details of Ali Al-Timimi’s potential access to virulent Ames — just as he no doubt did James Burans.
Anonymous said
Below is a table detailing Dr Ivins calendar for the Guinea Pig project versus times in the hot suite in the evening that the FBI characterized as “unexplained”. It’s hardly unexplained – he followed his work schedule precisely.
No doubt others at Detrick had to check on the animals on the other evenings. That’s why, of course, the FBI have everyone at Detrick under gag order. We wouldn’t want these people coming forward and revealing that the FBI’s narrative is a complete fairy-tale, would we?
Calendar of Dr Bruce Ivins for Guinea Pig and Mouse active immunization project Evening (after 6pm) badge records for Dr Bruce Ivins in Building 1425 and Hot Suite B3
Date (2001) Calendar Entry Time in to Bldg 1425 Time out of 1425 Total Time in Hot Suite B3
Sunday September 2 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Monday September 3 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Tuesday September 4 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Wednesday September 5 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Thursday September 6 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Friday September 7 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Saturday September 8 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Sunday September 9 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Monday September 10 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Tuesday September 11 8:00pm Night Guinea pig & mouse check
Wednesday September 12
Thursday September 13
Friday September 14 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 8:54pm 12:22am 2 hours 15 minutes
Saturday September 15 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 8:05pm 11:59pm 2 hours 15 minutes
Sunday September 16 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 6:38pm 9:52pm 2 hours 15 minutes
Monday September 17
Tuesday September 18
Wednesday Septmber 19
Thursday September 20
Friday September 21
Saturday September 22
Sunday September 23 8:00am Trip to Covance in Denver, PA
Monday September 24
Tuesday September 25
Wednesday September 26
Thursday September 27
Friday September 28 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 7:16pm 10:59pm 1 hour 42 minutes
Saturday September 29 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 8:02pm 11:18pm 1 hour 20 minutes
Sunday September 30 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 9:53pm 12:04am 1 hour 18 minutes
Monday October 1 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 9:14pm 10:43pm 20 minutes
Tuesday October 2 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 7:24pm 9:39pm 23 minutes
Wednesday October 3 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 7:25pm 10:55pm 2 hours 59 minutes
Thursday Ocober 4 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 6:10pm 10:12pm 3 hours 33 minutes
Friday October 5 8:00pm Night Mouse Check 7:40pm 12:43am 3 hours 42 minutes
Saturday October 6
Sunday October 7
Monday October 8
Tuesday October 9 15 minutes
Wednesday October 10
Thursday October 11
Friday October 12
Saturday October 13
Sunday October 14 1 hour 26 minutes
Monday October 15
Tuesday October 16
Wednesday October 17
Thursday October 18
Friday October 19
Saturday October 20
Sunday October 21
Monday October 22
Tuesday October 23
Wednesday October 24
DXer said
In support of what Ike and Anonymous and/or Old Atlantic have been saying about the Daschle product,
page 3 of pdf file #847376 contains this:
“IVINS stated that the contents of the [Daschle] letter contained a powder that was unlike anything he had ever dealt with previously. Upon examination, the powder contained in the letter seemed to float easily in the air. IVINS was surprised by the fineness of the powder and stated that “it floated around inside the hood like dust in the sunlight.” Ivins stated that due to the ease at which the powder became airborne, USAMRIID personnel should have conducted testing within a laboratory that bore an overhead containment hood.”
And page 4 has this:
“IVINS disagreed with XXXXX processing of the Daschle letter in Room XXX as the BSL-2 laboratory was not adequate to contain aerosolized B.a. powder.”
I believe Ike quoted author Preston along these same lines.