The FBI has closed the 2001 anthrax mailings investigation. The alleged preparer and mailer of the anthrax, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins, committed suicide before the FBI announced he was the sole perpetrator, so the case was never tried in court.
A group of experts (see agenda below) assembled by Kenneth Dillon at Scientia Press and UCLA-based researchers Dr. Peter Katona and Prof. Michael Intriligator, will discuss the investigation, the scientific aspects, the lessons learned, and the broader implications of the case. (Speaker bios are attached.)
Please RSVP, acceptances only, to Joseph R. McGhee at the IGCC Washington office: Phone (202) 974-6295; Fax (202) 974-6299; email: joseph.mcghee@ucdc.edu . For more on IGCC, see http://www-igcc.ucsd.edu.
******
PROGRAM:
1:00 pm: Registration, coffee and tea
1:30 pm: Introduction: Peter Katona, UCLA, Master of Ceremonies
1:50 pm: Panel I: The Investigation
- Moderator: Lewis Weinstein, author, Case Closed
- Ross Getman, author, Anthrax and al Qaeda
- Paul Kemp, attorney of Bruce Ivins
- Meryl Nass, Mount Desert Island Hospital, http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.co
- James Van de Velde, consultant on terrorism
3:30 pm: Break
3:45 pm: Panel II: Lessons Learned and Broader Implications
- Michael Intriligator, UCLA
- Peter Katona, UCLA
- Leonard Cole, Rutgers University, author, The Anthrax Letters
5:00 pm: End
SPEAKERS …
Leonard A. Cole is an expert on bioterrorism and terror medicine. He is an adjunct professor in the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. Trained in the health sciences and public policy, he holds a Ph.D in political science from Columbia University, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. Cole has written numerous articles for professional journals and general publications. He has lectured widely and made invited presentations to several government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Technology Assessment. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Terror: How Israel Has Coped and What America Can Learn (2007), Essentials of Terror Medicine (co-editor, 2009), and The Anthrax Letters (revised, 2009).
Kenneth J. Dillon is an historian and science writer. He has a Ph.D in history from Cornell University and teaches a course in European history as an adjunct at Marymount University. Dillon served 11 years as a foreign service officer, including as an intelligence analyst. He has also worked as a medical device entrepreneur and currently has a scientific publishing business. Dillon has written articles and books on history, science, and medicine; and he has made theoretical contributions in history and science. His articles on the anthrax mailings case are at www.scientiapress.com.
Ross Getman graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984 where he was a member of the Law Review. After working for Arnold & Porter, and Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C., and living in Arlington for 15 years, he returned to his roots in Upstate New York. In past years, in alliance with public interest groups and class action law firms, he advocated that soda should not be sold in public schools. Separately, he represented a soda industry whistleblower that forced numerous recalls internationally relating to soft drinks that contained benzene and forced the reformulation of drinks worldwide. Relying on industry lab testing, he caused recalls of bottled water in the Northeastern U.S. containing the carcinogen bromate. Getman has closely followed the Amerithrax investigation since December 2001 and has written Anthrax and Al Qaeda: Infiltration of US Biodefense. The Washington Post credited Getman with first publicly identifying the Pakistani scientist Rauf Ahmad with helping Ayman Zawahiri in his plan to develop anthrax as a weapon.
Michael D. Intriligator, Ph.D is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Professor of Political Science, Professor of Public Policy, and Co-Director of the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences at UCLA. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Milken Institute. He has taught economic theory, econometrics, mathematical economics, international relations, and health economics; and he has received several distinguished teaching awards. Intriligator is the author of more than 200 journal articles and other publications in economic theory and mathematical economics, econometrics, health economics, reform of the Russian economy, and strategy and arms control, his principal research fields. He has authored or edited many books in economics and international relations. Intriligator is Vice Chair of Economists for Peace & Security and past president of the Peace Science Society (International) and Western Economic Association International. Intriligator is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who in Economics. He co-teaches a terrorism seminar and has co-edited Countering Terrorism and WMD (2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (2010).
Peter Katona, MD is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Infectious Diseases. He has worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and for Apria Healthcare as the corporate medical director. Katona has been a consultant to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services on the development of an information management system geared toward biological terrorism preparedness (known as the Health Alert Network) and as medical consultant to the county Emergency Medical Services Agency. He is co-founder of Biological Threat Mitigation, a bio-terror consulting firm and has an active infectious disease practice at UCLA. Katona is co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD (2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (2010).
Paul F. Kemp, JD has practiced law in Maryland since 1974 and in the District of Columbia since 1976. Kemp is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He focuses his practice on litigation in the state and federal courts, primarily in the area of white-collar crime and general criminal practice. For white collar criminal defense, Kemp has been cited in The Best Lawyers in America; Maryland Super Lawyers “Top 50” Attorneys lists, and D.C. Super Lawyers “Top 50” Attorneys lists. In 2002, Washingtonian named Kemp one of its “Top Seventy Five Lawyers” in the Washington area. Prior to entering private practice, Kemp served as an Assistant State Public Defender with the Maryland Public Defender’s Office, an Assistant State Attorney with the Office of the Maryland Attorney General and Deputy Federal Public Defender, United States Department of Justice, District of Maryland. During the “Amerithrax” investigation, Kemp represented Bruce Ivins from May, 2007 until his death on July 29, 2008.
Meryl Nass, MD has a varied career practicing inpatient internal medicine, running an outpatient clinic for complex disorders, investigating epidemics, and blogging. She identified the world’s largest epidemic of anthrax (affecting over 10,000 Rhodesians in 1980) as a biological warfare event in 1992 based on careful analysis of its different features; diagnosed Cuba’s 1993 neuropathy epidemic as due to a combination of cyanide exposure and nutritional deficiency; investigated the safety and efficacy of anthrax vaccine; and has discussed both the scientific and investigative features of the anthrax letters case. Nass has testified before 3 Congressional committees and provided requested testimony to 4 additional hearings on bioterrorism, anthrax vaccine, and Gulf War Syndrome. Nass may be the only person who has consulted both for the Cuban Ministry of Health and the Director of National Intelligence. Her blog http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com is an important source for discussion of the anthrax case.
James Van de Velde, Ph.D., is a former White House Appointee for nuclear weapons arms control under President George H.W. Bush Sr., Lecturer of Political Science and residential college dean at Yale University, State Department foreign service officer and naval intelligence reserve officer. He was a fellow at the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control and at the US-Japan Program, Center for International, Harvard University. From 2003-2004, he volunteered for a Presidential recall (an active duty mobilization) and served as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for al-Qa`ida and biological weapons at the Joint Interagency Task Force for Counter Terrorism (JITF-CT), at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Van de Velde made two trips to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to interview an individual involved in al-Qa`ida interest in developing anthrax in Afghanistan.
Lewis M. Weinstein has had a career that included top management posts in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. Most recently, he was for 15 years the CEO of the Public Health Research Institute, an organization specializing in sophisticated infectious disease research. In 1980, he was candidate for U.S. Congress. Lew received an undergraduate degree in engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Since retiring in 2005, Lew has become a fulltime author. His third novel, CASE CLOSED, is about the 2001 anthrax attacks and the subsequent FBI investigation. His CASE CLOSED blog (https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/) has become one of the primary sources for information and discussion of the anthrax case. It is Lew’s view that the FBI has either not solved the case or is withholding crucial aspects of what really happened.
******
LMW COMMENT …
The FBI’s case against Dr. Ivins is clearly bogus: no evidence, no witnesses, an impossible timeline, science that proves innocence instead of guilt. So what really happened? And why?
I can imagine only 3 possible “actual” scenarios …
- The FBI has more evidence against Dr. Ivins but is, for some undisclosed reason, withholding that evidence … POSSIBLE BUT NOT SO LIKELY
- The FBI, despite the most expensive and extensive investigation in its history, has not solved the case and has no idea who prepared and mailed the anthrax letters that killed 5 Americans in 2001 … EVEN LESS LIKELY
- The FBI knows who did it (not Dr. Ivins) but is covering up the actual perpetrators, for undisclosed reasons … THE MOST LIKELY SCENARIO
The “fictional” scenario in my novel CASE CLOSED has been judged by many readers, including a highly respected official in the U.S. Intelligence Community, as perhaps more plausible than the FBI’s unproven assertions.
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 