Letters to the Editor
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Saddam's real anthrax
I've blogged [deepblade.net/journal/2006/04/persistent-falsehoods-about-bioweapons.html] about the related topic of ABC & other media promotion of the "Winnebagos of Death" story concerning the mobile bioweapons labs, found to be complete fabrication by the notorious "Curveball."
Thanks to Glenn Greenwald here for making a significant contribution to the background for this:
Pres. Bush, Oct. 7, 2002 in Cincinnati: ...the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions....And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren't required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.
Apart from this inflammatory prevarication, the truth is Saddam once had virulent anthrax cultures--traced to deadly strains developed from cattle in Britain during the 1940s.
"forced to admit"-- What a joke! The people who ran Iraqgate in the 1980s knew full well!!
A fine piece of research on this topic by my contributor Geoff Holland is posted here: [deepblade.net/journal/2005/07/crucial-us-iraq-history-unearthed.html].
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The preferred terror weapon of the GOP base...
Anthrax Scare At Edward's Campaign Office 3 weeks ago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/03/15/anthrax-scare-at-edwards_n_43473.html
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W.T. Re Beatuy And Context
Actually, the Post article does a pretty decent job of going into the issue of context and perception. It's much more thoughtful and nuanced than their tyupical political reporting and analysis.
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LWM
Yes - Ed Lake, not Fox - fortunately, it's correct in the post.
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Uggggh...be very, very careful Glenn, thelastnametaken is right.
That the ABC/Ross reports are completely false is now beyond reasonable dispute. As Cernig noted several days ago, an FBI anthrax investigator, Douglas Beecher, published an August, 2006 article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology which expressly concluded that there were no additives found in the anthrax:
A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone (3, 6, 12; J. Kelly, Washington Times, 21 October 2003; G. Gugliotta and G. Matsumoto, The Washington Post, 28 October 2002).
The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.
That led The New York Times reporter covering the anthrax case, William Broad, to report as follows (full Times Select article here):
Seeking to clear up public confusion, an FBI official has reiterated the bureau's judgment that the anthrax in the letter attacks five years ago bore no special coatings to increase its deadliness and no hallmarks of a military weapon.
Sorry for the format of the quote, all your formatting disappears when copied.
thelastnametaken is right. Beecher's article is very oddly sourced, his reference to the scientists familiar with the sample who say it was just spores is to Gary Matsumoto's article in Science, which discusses the controversy, and pretty much sides with the pro-silica people.
It does so because government scientists from the Army who know how to weaponize anthrax to the state of the art were asked by the FBI to do so attempting to replicate a guy with lots of knowledge working in the basement, and failed -- because of clumping characteristics unlike the samples from the letters. Gary Matsumoto is double cited by Beecher in the part you quote, he is reference (6).
Beecher headed up a study on dispersion. What he really found was that non-weapons grade anthrax could contain enough small particles to allow a contaminating amount to become airborne, an argument for the danger of non-weapons grade anthrax. He enters the debate that Matsumoto talks about on the anti-silica side, but he never tested the specimens for silica, only for their dispersal rates. Someone else did those tests.
And you end up citing Broad's article in the NYT which has as its source Beecher. Broad thus cannot provide confirmation.
Bentonite is a source of the silica used to create the weapons grade version, so would be kaolin. The "lack of aluminum" cited for reasons for blaming Iraq is highly suspect, all bentonite contains aluminum. A really genuine question for the pro-bentonite group would be "Where did the bentonite come from?" since its composition varies. Bentonite from Wyoming would make an Iraqi connection pretty specious.
So Beecher is one side of a controversy, not a final source.
That is not to say ABC's coverage wasn't extremely strange, since the Iraq conclusion isn't clear WHATSOEVER even from the pro-silica side -- where would Iraq get Ames strain? If it required a weapons expert to make the stuff, wouldn't such an expert, who by the notes was trying to get Arab blame, know which clay to use to get it blamed on Arabs?
Anyone care to find the source of the sol-gel, the other ingredient needed? Could be homemade, but it is less commonly available than bentonite. Did the Iraqi's use it? Weapons guys from the "old days" didn't seem to know about it.
The whole thing stinks, and ABC was pretty far out of bounds.
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Glenn
If Beecher is at the center of the anthrax investigation, I am not sure why he is relying on an article written by an investigative journalist quoting unnamed sources.
I am familiar with Lake's work, but if you can find a source on his page that does not rely on Beecher or Matsumoto I would be grateful.
I agree that the bentonite claim is almost certainly false, but the question of silica has not been resolved in my mind. While silica has no bearing on the ABC report, using unnamed sources to knock it down certainly does.
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Sorry,
I meant thelastnamechosen, not thelastnametaken.
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thelastnamechosen/ondelette
I agree that the bentonite claim is almost certainly false, but the question of silica has not been resolved in my mind. While silica has no bearing on the ABC report, using unnamed sources to knock it down certainly does.
The Bush administraiton itself says that there was no bentonite every found in the anthrax. Beecher says it. Lake says it. Have you read Lake's analysis as to why? As I made clear, he was arguing that long BEFORE Beecher's article was published.
Let's be clear that there are two separate issues: (1) whether there was a bentonite additive in the anthrax; (2) whether there was some form of silica present.
There is no real dispute on (1) Every credible source that I know (including even the Bush administration, however you want to characterize them) says there was no bentonite. That is what the ABC report is about, and that -- regardless of (2) -- makes those reports false. Even Ross said on ABC, on November 1:
There are chemical additives in that anthrax including one called silica. That's not a trademark of any one country's weapons program, but it is known to be used by Iraq, Russia and the US in making a military style anthrax."
The presence of silica (as opposed to bentonite) no more points to Iraq than it points to Russia or a domestic source. So that's the issue I'm interested in for this post.
On issue (2), there are people -- led by Gary Matsumoto -- who claim that it was weaponized, with silica, etc. I find those sources to be lacking in credibility and agenda-driven. I find Lake's analysis (and he has a lengthy analysis tearing apart Matsumoto's November, 2003 article in Science) much better-documented and more persusaive (i.e., that there were no additives).
But since that's not relevant to the ABC report, I'm not going to go through all the reports and (as you requested) provide you with links (you can do that yourself - start here: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/Update-History2006.html#060125).
But clearly, Lake's analysis does NOT depend on Beecher's article AT ALL, since Lake argued in his book that "the attack anthrax did not contain any visible additives" in his book, published BEFORE Beecher's article was published.
Beecher is ONE source of many. He's relevant, not dispositive. But as I said, I find the voluminous evidence compiled and analyzed by Ed Lake, which I spent all weekend reading and which long pre-dates Beecher, to be persuasive on the question of whether there were additives and absolutely definitive on whether there was bentonite.