* Jim White: I remain unconvinced of the guilt of Bruce Ivins and strongly suspect a [non-USAMRIID] Defense Department, or a [non-USAMRIID] Defense Department-contracted source for the attack material.

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Jim White writes (2/25/10) …

• The Investigative Summary published by the FBI in closing the Amerithrax investigation into the anthrax attacks of 2001 is curiously silent on the presence of a second species of bacteria found in theNew York Post and Brokaw letters.
  • Clearly, if the FBI could have identified the strain of B. subtilis detected in the attack letters as available to Ivins, that finding would have played a prominent role in the Investigative Summary.
• I analyzed the available information about the amount of B. anthracis used in the attacks and found it highly unlikely that Ivins could have cultured the large amount of spores used in the attacks with the equipment and time he had available.
  • Much of the material in RMR-1029 was produced at Dugway.
  • On December 13, 2001, Judith Miller published an article in the New York Times, where she disclosed that “government officials have acknowledged that Army scientists in recent years have made anthrax in a powdered form that could be used as a weapon.” She further pointed out that this work occurred at Dugway in 1998. It should be noted that the anthrax produced at Dugway for Ivins that went into RMR-1029 was cultured in 1997.
• Given what we know about the scientific analysis of the spores used in the attacks, culturing the spores is much more likely to have occurred at Dugway or Batelle than in Ivins’ lab.
• I fail to see how the FBI has eliminated the possibility that the spores used in the attacks were cultured and dried at Dugway or Batelle, with the Dugway “demonstration” facility being the most likely because of its remote location and secret status.
• We may never know what really happened …  discerning what is true in the various leaked reports on anthrax culturing and processing technology at the facilities at Dugway and Batelle will be difficult without Congressional hearings conducted under oath and threat of prosecution for perjury.
• I remain unconvinced of the guilt of Bruce Ivins and strongly suspect a [non-USAMRIID] Defense Department, or a [non-USAMRIID] Defense Department-contracted source for the attack material.

Read the entire post at … http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/31691

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When I read about the FBI/DOJ press conference in August 2008, I was so upset by the lack of any real evidence against Dr. Ivins that, over the next 45 days, I wrote my novel to explain why  the FBI had failed to solve the anthrax murders. CASE CLOSED is of course a fiction, but it has been described by many readers, including one respected member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, as a quite plausible scenario .

* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

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