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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Yup, I just saw that, where the hours Ivins worked was. Commenter j.willow notices another:
The case seems to disappear the more it's examined. Take this for example:http://www.usdoj.gov/amerithrax/08-430SWAffidavit07524.pdf
There are plenty of misrepresentations and red herrings. But by far the worst is this one:
"Dr. Bruce Ivins .. has been the sole custodian of RMR-1029 since it was grown in 1997."
One page later:
"Of the sixteen domestic laboratories that had virulent RMR-1029..."
Either RMR-1029 was in sixteen known places in Sept 2001, or it was in one. Period.
In fact, the only interesting piece of evidence is the chart of Ivins late working sessions during September 2001. That's it.
-- jwillow
Now, how does that 16 into 1 work out?
@CargoCultThere's a massive difference between deciding to give up all of your personal identifiers in your own comment post, and attempting to 'out' someone by giving theirs.
I think you're way out of line.
I don't see how that follows. Jim White presents himself as an expert using his real name (I assume) and relates tales of himself working (as a lead scientist, no less) with nematodes and bacillus to seal his credentials, and then proceeds to flog the FBI and Justice talking points on Bruce Ivins, always presenting himself as an expert in his field here to explain things to the lowbrows.
A quick search of the research databases reveals one (and only one) Jim F. White has worded with nematodes and bacillus, and is also an employee of the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services, who are about to , in a month or so, give away a contract for anthrax vaccine to members of the very same public-private partnership that was originally the lead suspect in the worst bioterror attack ever on U.S. soil. If true, don't you think readers of this blog deserve to know about it?
Or, it could be that this person is impersonating the actual Jim F. White, in which case it would be doing him a favor to let him know. That is why I ASKED, right? Not declared. Haven't heard back yet...
Ike Solem
ike_solm@hotmail.com
Cargo Cult got ahead of himself. Oh well, gave me a couple of frissons, and for a few wonderful moments all was clear.
Now we're back in the murk. Gosh, his voice rang out like a clarion for scientific integrity! Unfortunately, he had his facts wrong.
Unless the stakes are being pushed higher. No, it's just a simple case of wrong identity combined with idealistic over-eagerness.
"I'm ignoring cargocult henceforth, belongs in the l.w.m. category." -- macgupta
Jim, he has a point. That "outing" was uncalled for. I would even add a third fellow here who jumped all over the "news".
I appreciate your efforts and I suspect many others do also.
"I'm ignoring cargocult henceforth, belongs in the l.w.m. category." -- macgupta
Jim, he has a point. That "outing" was uncalled for. I would even add a third fellow here who jumped all over the "news".
I appreciate your efforts and I suspect many others do also.
The walls are pulsating and everything looks like a kaleidoscope and there's a buzzing in my head like all those missing bees made a nest in my cranium. I'm gonna lie down so I don't hyperventilate and come back in a while when this is settled. I don't think it was my lunch, that was fine.
I would even add a third fellow here who jumped all over the "news
What can I say, heru, I'm a gossipy kind of old queen. You must admit, if true, it would have been sensational! Didn't Cargo Cult mention an especial avocation for scientific integrity or something. A guy like that will jump on a possible conflict-of-interest like an anthrax germ on a prize Holstein. (Biologists and such please feel free to substitute a better jump-on analogy)
Now I understand your compulsion to replace LWM as arbiter, but you are simply gonna have to wait until the next election.
You have my vote, if it's any comfort. LWM's getting a bit didactic, I think with you we could go the rest of the way.
See, heru, with my poor reading comprehension, it's gonna be hard to sleep until Jim White writes in and categorically says "I am not that person of whom he is speaking. I am a different person with a similiar name"
I think that's what his post says, but I'm not sure. He sure implies it.
I'll be fretting about it for days.
Very common name, indeed
My wife still laughs about the time they released the wrong Jim White from jail here where we live.
I never have that problem. The worst I've had has been some jerk name-jacking and posting stoopidity/crudity using my name over at Eschaton and a few other blogs. Fortunately, they've given up. But just that incident was enough to make my sweetie say I should use a pseudonym [maybe I am ...], so that such comments wouldn't be associated with me by anyone (customers, etc.) that might randomly Google me. Either that, or she thinks I'll get in trouble for my actual words. ;-)
Cheers,
First, there are two components to any bioweapon, the organism itself, and the delivery system.
In the case of the anthrax letters, the organism was a fairly normal strain of Bacillus anthracis, the Ames strain. It's unclear whether it was the strain isolated in Ames Iowa in the 1950s, or the strain isolated from a Texas cow in 1980, but that's the strain. There were no genetic alterations which could have made in vaccine-resistant, and there were no antibiotic resistance genes inserted either. The genetic identity of the strain immediately limited the source to around five labs.
The second component of a bioweapon is the delivery system, which includes the method of preparing the organism before loading into the bomb or unmanned aerial vehicle, say. Anthrax is normally a soil pathogen that infects hoofed animals, produces a toxin that kills the animal, grows and forms spores, and drains out into the soil.
To make a weapon, the anthrax must be grown, induced to form spores while in wet solution, then purified away from cell debris and media. The pure spores are clumpy flakes when dried, and to make them into a light powder, additives (silica and other classified things) must be added at some point using unknown and also classified methods. At that point, you have a light powder, that when released from a letter opened in one office, will contaminate the entire Senate building with spores.
So, when we say the anthrax was weaponized, what is meant is that the spores were purified and then treated in such a manner as to produce an aerosol-forming powder. Jim White claims this can easily be done, but that's not true, according to every biowarfare specialist willing to go on record (Richard Spertzel, for example). In fact, Jim White has repeatedly attempted (with rather nasty smears) to degrade Richard Spertzel's statements - and yet refuses to give any indication of what his own expert credentials are, or even what his real identity is.
To get back to practical matters: There is another kind of weaponization, genetic weaponization, which was NOT used - that means introducing antibiotic resistance genes into the pathogen.
Crazy but true - the Soviets did that repeatedly in their endless quest for improved bioweapons, and some of that work was repeated by Battelle and the Army Defense Intelligence Agency ("Project Jefferson").
As far as the spore treatment used, the FBI documents themselves confirm that silica, but not aluminum (i.e. bentonite) was present in the spore preparation. Notably, they do not reference the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology report which ruled out bentonite but did find silica.
So, if you take the five named labs and their close parnters, and ask, who had access to BOTH the Ames strain and to the spore weaponization procedure (and equipment), Fort Detrick actually falls off the list, along with several repository locations (Louisiana State, etc.).
The only ones remaining that seem plausible are where the FBI has not directed any attention - the Dugway Utah center where the CIA worked with Battelle on Project Clear Vision, and Battelle's West Jefferson Ohio lab, which, as I described previously, tried to claim that the anthrax powders were not high-tech or weaponized, as USAMRIID claimed.
In this case, the persecution of scientists at USMARIID might even have been a deliberate effort to keep them quiet about that, rather than any real attempt to find the actual culprits.
Ike Solem
ike_solm@hotmail.com
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