Letters to the Editor
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Resisted by the White House?
"commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare."
Resisted by the White House? Did they resist the theory or resist being seen pushing it?
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How do you know statement C is "unquestionably" false?
Glenn:
Great column. But you wrote that the below statement, by ABC News, was "completely...demonstrably and unquestionably" false:
"Only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."
How do you know this is false? To disprove it, don’t you have to prove that either (a) other countries have used Bentonite to produce biological weapons or (b) Iraq hasn’t done that?
Thanks.
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Late night CNN...
During the whole Anthrax debacle, I happened to watch CNN late at night. A female reporter talked about the results (preliminary?) of an army investigation that suggested that the anthrax was stemmed from an American strain. This news floored me, since this actually seemed to refute Iraq connection. The next day and the following days, I kept watching CNN and other news sources to find out more about these findings. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. As if the report never happened. To bad I did not record it (how could I have know?)
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The question of purity
The question of purity is more troubling than the question of additives. Let me expain. To produce anthrax bacillus, one must culture the bacteria on live host cells. This implies a sophisticated process involving what biotechnology professionals refer to as a "bioreactor" or three dimensional culture apparatus as opposed to typical two dimensional culture ( dish or flask ) used in most laboratories.
A small bioreactor takes a major biotech facility to support and operate. In this case, the bioreactor would contain a number of components. The culture media, or food, the host cells, the anthrax bacillus, and the spores themselves which were the final product of the procedure. The spores themselves may have been only 1/1000 of the culture volume, or maybe even 1/1,000,000 of the total culture volume. In any case, to produce grams of purified spores, the production facility would have been the size of a campus, not a basement in order to produce enough to fill multiple envelopes with visible amounts ( grams ). That is why most scientists feel that the lone perpetrator hypothesis is not viable. We are looking for a pharmaceutical company or a government lab ( campus ). Since the strain involved was identified via DNA analysis, there are not many alternatives to the above analysis. We know the biological requirements of the bacillus.
Additionally, separating the spores from the culture involved many rounds of centerfuge purification. This itself implies that the perpetrators had a large lead time and in fact knew that the 9/11 attack was coming, possibly years before it happened. For some inexplicable reason, they continued purifying the spores long after the highest purity ever achieved had been reached. This was certainly not “fun in the basement” for some psycho, and the FBI has either been misled or is intentionally misleading the press.
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Glenn
You are relying on unnamed sources to debunk unnamed sources. If you are using Lake instead of Beecher, you need to point to your source. Telling me to do your research is quite a thin argument. I gave you a named source who may be misquoted or may be lying, but it is a named source.
Lake has done some excellent work on this subject, but he is only as good as his sources. Lake made his name debunking nude celebrity fakes (the lord's work as far as I am concerned) but he is not an authority outside of his excellent research skills. His research should be quoted not his opinion. I understand the desire to rely on a report that there were no additives at all because it makes your point without having to worry about the actual details. The problem is that the claim is unsourced and it seriously diminishes your criticism of ABC's use of anonymous sources.
It is a big hole in an otherwise excellent post.
William C. Patrick's quote does not address additives and the contradictory statement about the gray area between "requires sophisticated equipment" but not "weapons grade" is merely an opinion that is not backed up by any scientific testing.
To repeat my rather simple point. You are relying on unnamed sources to debunk unnamed sources.
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I read Lake's argument...
...against the presence of silica. This whole thing has the smell of one conspiracy theorist going after another conspiracy theorist. Lake is either arguing that the Dugway team is incompetent, or that they are conspiring to create a weaponization lie out in the press. They (Dugway) seem to be the group in the Army that still does CBW research, and they apparently know techniques for which William Patrick is out of date.
Lots of what Lake says doesn't make good sense. His real argument is that Meselson and Abilek say there are no coatings, and he believes them.
Here is what he says of former weapons inspector Spertzel:
"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."
In other words, Richard Spertzel not only hasn't seen the anthrax and doesn't know how to purify anthrax, it would take him a year to figure out how to make such a thing with the help of a staff.
That is most definitely not how I would have interpreted what Spertzel said, he said he was among 4 or 5 people who could create the specimen, not that he didn't know how to purify anthrax.
Here is what he says about the polymerized glass:
So, according to Jacobsen, the polymerized glass was used to bind the previously found silica to the spores - a technology which would be like putting each spore inside a tiny glass bottle. (Or putting each particle of silica in a tiny glass bottle and somehow fixing them evenly across the surface of the spore.) And he believes this was done without killing every single spore, and the tiny glass bottle wouldn't prevent the spore from germinating.
He also says Jacobsen made up the explanation of polymerized glass being sol-gel.
I don't know whether sol-gel solutions deposited on spores help adhere clay particles or not. I just know that the above paragraph reeks of lack of understanding. I spent a year looking at aerosol gels for a completely different reason, and they don't correspond to Lake's characterization at all. I don't know what Jacobsen might or might not have made up, but the above paragraph is weird.
Please understand. I find the claims of Iraqi involvement made by ABC as loopy as I find the idea that polymerized glass is little bottles. ABC was engaged in rumor and fear mongering, Glenn's original charge. But I also find this Ed Lake vs. Guy Matsumoto thing to be strange. It's a surrogate Abilek vs. Dugway fight, I'd stay out of it.
On a different note: It seems to be a dark conspiracy that a government lab would be researching offensive biological weapons. Both sides of this conspiracy theory battle believe that, both Lake and Matsumoto (wow! look at those defunct labs!). Am I the only one who begs to differ? And if so, why?