* Was the sample that Dr. Ivins says he was told was from Iraq — but wasn’t — actually from the dried aerosol project that had been launched at USAMRIID unbeknownst to Dr. Ivins? Who brought it to him? Where did it come from?
Posted by DXer on December 14, 2011
******
******
******
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
In his forthcoming book, R. Scott Decker addresses Iraq. Had he played a role while at the Federal Hazardous Response Unit, in developing the Iraq sample Ivins was asked to look at?
Manuscript excerpt:
“I spent seven years as a field agent. Then a new opportunity came up. The FBI’s Laboratory Division had formed a Hazardous Materials Response Unit with openings for agents who had backgrounds in biology, chemistry, and medicine. A position in the new unit would be a promotion. It would also give me the chance to apply my science training and expand into a different kind of investigative work.
That was 1997. The FBI created the Hazmat Unit because of a growing concern that the country was unprepared for large-scale terrorism. The 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 people and hospitalized nearly 1,000 others, were still in the news. Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone—about the threat posed by highly infectious and deadly Ebola virus, with no known treatments or cures—caused a big stir on Capitol Hill. (President Clinton allegedly read Preston’s follow-up biological thriller, The Cobra Event, in one night.) After a top Iraqi General—also son-in-law to Saddam Hussein—defected, the extent of Iraq’s anthrax weaponization became known. It confirmed a biological attack by Iraq was viable. Near the end of the year, Secretary of Defense William Cohen made a notable TV appearance, holding up a five-pound bag of sugar and saying that if Hussein spread this amount of anthrax over DC, it would kill half the population.
The bureau gave its new Hazmat Unit a broad mission. We would develop and validate procedures for responding to crime scenes created by weapons of mass destruction. Once at a scene, we would collect and preserve evidence contaminated with biological or chemical warfare agents or fallout from an improvised radiological device. As a new member with a biology background, I anticipated evaluating screening tests for bacteria and viruses and developing protocols for keeping microorganisms alive while getting them to a laboratory. At the time, I had no idea that the procedures and solutions we would develop would become central to one of the largest terrorism investigations in US history.”
DXer said
[I]n August 1995 Iraq
admitted to a major BW programme
under which it had produced huge quantities of anthrax and
botulinum toxin, but implausibly denied it had ever considered
weaponisation … In the last few days Iraq has admitted to
UNSCOM that agent was produced at additional sites, fieldtesting
of weapons took place in 1989, and that bombs and
missile warheads were filled with anthrax and botulinum toxin in
December 1990 … Many questions remain on the BW
programme; Iraq has not, for example admitted any work on
plague.”95
204. After Lt Gen Kamil’s defection, concerns …
64. In his annual State of the Union speech on 29 January 2002,
President Bush described the regimes in North Korea and Iran as
“sponsors of terrorism”.18 He added that Iraq had continued to:
“… flaunt its hostility towards America and to support terror … The
Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and
nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has
already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own
citizens … This is a regime that agreed to international inspections
– then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has
something to hide from the civilized world.”
DXer said
“It was such obvious bullshit’: The Rock writer shocked film may have inspired false WMD intelligence
David Weisberg, who co-wrote 1996 thriller which Chilcot inquiry suspected to be source for crucial yet false details about Iraq’s nerve gas resource, says he was dismayed experts didn’t realise green balls of gas were fabrication
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/it-was-such-obvious-bullshit-the-rock-writer-shocked-film-may-have-inspired-false-wmd-intelligence
DXer said
Was this sample really from the dried aerosol project being secretly done at USAMRIID? Who brought it to him? What happened to it?