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CIDRAP NewsFBI conclusions in anthrax probe meet skepticism
Robert Roos * News Editor
Aug 15, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) recently revealed conclusion that the late anthrax researcher Dr. Bruce Ivins committed the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 has been greeted with skepticism by many in the scientific community. ...
However, the document doesn't explain exactly how the eight isolates were linked to the anthrax Ivins had, other than having the same four mutations, nor does it give any details on the mutations or how they were identified. That bothers Dr. C. J. Peters, a veteran virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who worked at USAMRIID from 1977 until 1990 and had considerable contact with Ivins there. "I want to see the data. I want to see the valid scientific links made," Peters told CIDRAP News. He said forensic microbiology, unlike the use of human DNA in crime investigation, is a new area that has undergone little scientific scrutiny or testing in court cases. "I just think it's a really unsatisfying conclusion," Peters said of the FBI claims. "I don't deny that Ivins might be the guy, and given his alleged psychiatric history, I would believe it even, but I don't see any evidence that really ties it down." Referring to the four mutations reported by the FBI, he said, "They're talking about a substrain of the Ames strain. Well, where did that substrain arise? It arose during the preparation of the Ames strain. If Bruce Ivins propagated it and got this strain, and someone else propagated it, how do we know they didn't get the same substrain?" ...
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, PhD, who has closely followed the anthrax investigation and has criticized the FBI's efforts in the past, told CIDRAP News via e-mail, "Even if the evidence is perfect, it is not incriminatory because something like 100 others also had access to the same stock." Rosenberg, a former cancer researcher and retired professor of natural sciences at the State University of New York at Purchase, added, "Record-keeping was not reliable at USAMRIID. If the FBI could really eliminate all the others of the 100, how come it took so long to 'eliminate' Hatfill and focus on Ivins?"
News reports based on the FBI information released last week said Ivins worked with lyophilizers, or freeze-drying devices, which can convert anthrax to powder form. However, Peters said it wasn't clear to him whether Ivins ever worked with powdered anthrax. In Peters' time at USAMRIID, anthrax preparations used to "challenge" animals in vaccine tests always involved liquid aerosols, not powders. "The fact that he's the guy who made the materials to challenge the animals has absolutely nothing to do with making the powder," Peters said.
Various press reports early in the investigation indicated that the mailed anthrax was a highly sophisticated preparation; Rosenberg traced some of these in an article titled "Gaps in the FBI's Anthrax Case," which she circulated through an e-mail forum of the Geneva-based Bio-Weapons Prevention Project. For example, in 2002 the FBI asked the Department of Defense's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to try to reproduce or "reverse engineer" the mailed anthrax. Close to a year later, in 2003, an FBI official acknowledged that this effort had failed, which convinced the agency that the culprit had special expertise, according to Rosenberg. Richard Spertzel, former head of the biological weapons section of the UN Special Commission and a member of the Iraq Survey Group, added support for this view in an Aug 5 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. He said information released by the FBI over the years pointed to "a product of exceptional quality," with particles just 1.3 to 3 microns in diameter. "Apparently the spores were coated with a polyglass, which tightly bound hydrophilic silca to each particle," Spertzel wrote. "That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time." ...
Read more:
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/anthrax/news/aug1508anthrax.html
No shit, Sherlock!
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