the first was that many people had (erroneously) concluded it was unsafe... many service personnel refused to be vaccinated and there was more than a decade of controversy about that and it's "alleged" links to Gulf War Syndrome.

Despite numerous studies showing it was safe ... this controversy continued.

Second, the old vaccine (that Ivins had helped develop, unlike the new vaccine Ivins was working on)

While effective in protecting against anthrax, the licensed vaccine schedule is not very efficient, involving a cumbersome six dose injection series. Typically, six injections are given over a period of 18 months in order to induce a protective immune system response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have undertaken a clinical trial to investigate more abbreviated vaccinations schedules for AVA.

Wikipedia -- anthrax vaccine

18 months to achieve immunity was much too long when contemplating a terrorist attack -- Ivins was working on a better vaccine.

from Vaccine A web site:

Gary Matsumoto, a journalist based in New York City, has reported from thirty-two different countries on five continents, covered two wars and five popular uprisings, and won ten journalism awards. He has been the London Bureau Manager and Chief Foreign Correspondent for NBC Radio News; a National Correspondent for NBC's Weekend Today Show and Senior Correspondent for the Fox News Channel. As a broadcaster, he has covered events ranging from the toppling of the Communist Party in Eastern Europe to Desert Storm, the Tiananmen Square massacre to the death of Princess Diana. He has written about the anthrax letter attacks for the Washington Post and Science magazine. His 1998 article in Vanity Fair was the first to draw the connection between the anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome.

Gary Masumoto blamed Ivins by name.

slate 2004 article on Masumoto/book: http://www.slate.com/id/2109808/

URL of September 2001 Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/116037/

The summer of 2001 was filled with alerts and reports of chatter. America was without the new vaccine Ivins and others were creating ... that's the theory.

Aha.

I truly didn't know where you were coming from Sean, and your last post clears it up for me.

Now I get it.

AnnieW -- I'm glad you now see how I am playing angle shots in this pool game. :) If one can motivate the Republican base to question the FBI case and demand a new honest investigation into the anthrax attacks, that's a good thing, in my book. And it's working -- even Free Republic, a neocon/Christian Zionist hangout, is ripping apart the FBI story. They've done the math, drawn the correct inferences, and realized that blaming one of the worst terrorist crimes in American history on a Christian evangelical is bad for their interests, to say the least.

On its Web site, Newsweek magazine reported that on Sept. 4 AMI received a "weird love letter to Jennifer Lopez" containing a "soapy" powder and a star of David, addressed to the singer-actress c/o The Sun tabloids.

That report is the only source of information concerning the date of receipt of the letter, or that it was addressed to Lopez specifically in care of the Sun.

Inside the Lopez letter was a "soapy, powdery substance" and a cheap Star of David charm, Sun employees confirmed. Knowledgeable sources told NewsMax.com that the letter, which Blanco had taken to the Sun, was opened by one of the editors in the absence of an editorial assistant who would have ordinarily opened it.

The editor looked at it and then tossed it into a wastepaper basket. Another Sun staffer, who NewsMax.com was told had a daughter who is a Lopez fan, retrieved it, found the contents amusing but of no interest to his daughter, and passed it around to other staff members, according to our sources.

The last person to touch the letter, they told NewsMax.com, was probably Bob Stevens.

At the time the AMI editorial director, Steve Coz told reporters that because his eyesight was faulty, Stevens held the envelope close to his face and probably inhaled the deadly spores. Stevens, or somebody else, threw the letter away. It was never recovered, leaving forever open the question of its being the source.

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc1.html

Could you guys tell me how to tell a lyophiliser from a food processor? I think my wife is up to something. Or maybe she's just cooking something special. She said we were going to have a new friend of hers over for dinner, Ann Thrax

Does "Thrax" sound like a Jewish name?

Your comments about Matsumoto are highly misleading an not even relevant. You claim that "Matsumoto named Ivins" - and cite this link: http://www.slate.com/id/2109808/

There is no mention of that whatsoever.

The real issue here is the anthrax letters - namely, the genetic identity of the anthrax strain (AMES) and the preparation of the spores (1 trillion spores per gram, 100% pure, coated with silica and something else (nano-silica?) - obviously, it could only have been the product of a high-tech state-run (or corporate-run) biowarfare lab, prepared by people who had experience in producing top secret weaponized spore powders. That expertise does NOT exist at Fort Detrick, but it does exist at Dugway Utah and West Jefferson Ohio, both managed by Battelle Memorial Institute.

Given that a subsidiary of Battelle, Battelle Ventures, is located only ~1.5 miles from where the anthrax spores were mailed in Princeton NJ, they seem like a far more likely suspect than Ivins - and their motive? Well, U.S. yearly biowarfare contracts to private corporations have increased 20-fold since before 9.18.2001 and 10.9.2001. That's a believable motive, isn't it?

Matsumoto's Science magazine article (28 Nov 2003) describing the spore preparation is what we should be talking about, not his investigations into the links between the anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome (1992), which is an entirely different story.

See http://cryptome.org/anthrax-powder.htm

Ike Solem

Is it assumed that the doctor loaded envelops in his lab for simple ease of vial access and evidence containment reasons - why dirty a second site that could turn up later.

If so how did he get loaded envelops out the door? Did he place them in a bag, briefcase, box or cooler – or simply walk out with porous letters hand and throw them on the seat of his car for the mad capped ride to NJ?

Did he wear gloves when putting the letters in the mailbox, or just scrub up with Ivory prior to snuggling into bed with the ms’s upon his return? And if gloves, where’d he toss ‘em, was there a garbage can close to the mail box and was it (they) swabbed?