* Senator Grassley asks the FBI to explain why it retracted a Justice Department filing (in the Stevens case) that Dr. Bruce Ivins lacked access in his lab to the “specialized equipment” needed to dry wet anthrax spores into airborne powder
Posted by DXer on September 3, 2011
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Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)
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from GREG GORDON, MIKE WISER AND STEPHEN ENGELBERG (McClatchy Newspapers, Frontline and ProPublica) … 9/2/11 …
- Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has asked the Justice Department to explain why its civil lawyers filed court papers questioning prosecutors’ conclusions that an Army researcher mailed the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001.
- Grassley is among several members of Congress who have been outspoken skeptics about the FBI’s conclusion
- In a letter this week to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller, Sen. Grassley said the department’s decision to quickly retract the contradictory filings “has produced a new set of questions regarding this unsolved crime.”
- The Justice Department’s civil lawyers said July 15 that Bruce Ivins lacked access in his lab to the “specialized equipment” needed to dry wet anthrax spores into airborne powder that could be easily inhaled.
- After hearing from the FBI and the department’s Criminal Division, the civil attorneys persuaded a federal judge in West Palm Beach, Fla., to permit 10 revisions to their position so it conformed with the FBI’s determination that Ivins did have equipment available to do the job.
- Grassley noted that two USAMRIID scientists, in sworn depositions in the suit, disputed the FBI’s conclusion that Ivins could have made the powder in his laboratory.
read the entire article at … http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/02/3117349/sen-grassley-asks-justice-department.html#ixzz1WqdUnVY5
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LMW COMMENT …
We welcome Senator Grassley back to this discussion. See also …
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
Hopefully, Senator Jeff Sessions, newly named as Mr. Trump’s pick for Attorney General, will pay heed to the thoughtful issues raised by his Judiciary Committee colleague Senator Grassley.
DXer said
I will keep reading and reviewing Dr. Vahid Majidi’s book. Where does he address this issue?
DXer said
While the FBI scientist and DARPA-funded researchers whose lab threw out Dr. Ivins February 2002 sample had a lyophilizer in their B3 lab, Dr. Ivins did not.
The US Attorney at the August 8, 2008 conference should not have falsely suggested that Dr. Ivins had access to the lyophilizer in the B3. Moreover, given that it was the FBI scientist who did not preserve the February 2002 submission, the speculation involving the submission and re-submission should not have been a cornerstone’s of the FBI’s case. Instead, the failure to preserve the evidence pointed to a conflict of interest that needed to be addressed. The conflict of interest was acute given the failure to submit a sample from the FBI’s scientist’s lab that had come from Flask 1029 and had been made into a dried powder.