www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/05/anthrax/index.html
But what has been revealed thus far -- through the standard ritual of selected Government leaks which the establishment media, with some exceptions, just mindlessly re-prints no matter how frivolous -- is creating the opposite impression. The FBI's coordinated leaking is making their claim to have solved the anthrax case appear quite dubious, in some instances laughably so.
New York Times article by Scott Shane and Nicholas Wade, which evinces very strong skepticism over the FBI's case thus far and discloses facts that create more grounds for skepticism. Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims. When you add on to that the magnitude of this case and the ample reasons for error and deceit -- it's the first lethal bioterrorism attack on the US, one which, according to the Government itself, originated at a US Government facility, perpetrated by a US Army scientist, that was then used by numerous factions inside the Government and out to ratchet up fear levels and falsely blame Iraq and/or Al Qaeda for the attacks and, thereafter, was blamed on someone who appears to have been completely innocent -- what minimally rational person would be willing to assume that the Government's uncorroborated, unexamined, untested claims are accurate?
today's Los Angeles Times, Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary wrote: Whether Ivins is conclusively shown to be the perpetrator, or whether he was an innocent man hounded by intrusive surveillance and public humiliation into suicide, questions about the FBI's performance are piling up. The bureau's horrific track record before 9/11, and its single-minded focus on Hatfill after the anthrax attacks, raises the suspicion that, in the dramatic events of last week, we are glimpsing yet another monumental screw-up, one fully worthy of the FBI's inglorious recent past.
collected evidence, I don't have a lot of confidence, and I think the burden is on them to satisfy me, and other members of Congress, that they've done this right. The case seems to me at this point to be circumstantial, and again, without briefings from the FBI, it would be presumptuous of me to say. And it would be presumptuous of people in Central New Jersey to breathe a sigh of relief and say: "They got the murderer. The people deserve better re-assurances than what they've been given. Those re-assurances simply aren't possible without a full-scale Congressional hearing or even an external Commission of the type that investigated the 9/11 attacks -- endowed with full subpoena power -- to examine all of the unresolved issues here, including the ABC/bentonite angle, a proposal which Rep.
this: The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said today. The bizarre link to the sorority may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of. Its primary purpose seems to be to make Ivins look creepy -- he harbored a decades-long obsession with a college sorority -- but at least one could argue it would be enough of a circumstantial link to be worth noting. But as it turns out, the leaked information wasn't even close to accurate.
updated AP story: The mailbox just off the campus of Princeton University where the letters were mailed sits about 100 yards away from where the college's Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property. Sorority members do not live there, and the Kappa chapter at Princeton does not provide a house for the women. That would be quite an unusual and bizarre way for such an obsessive interest to express itself -- he used a mailbox in proximity not to a sorority house, which doesn't even exist on that campus at all, but was merely near a storage room the sorority uses to store some material.
Graham said there was nothing to indicate that any of the sorority members had anything to do with Ivins. "Nothing odd went on," said Graham, an attorney and Kappa alumna. But even that pitifully thin reed was then reduced further still when that ever-vanishing leak made this appearance in this morning's New York Times article: Years ago, he had visited Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at universities in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, an obsession growing out of a romance with a sorority sister in his own college days at the University of Cincinnati -- although someone who knew him well said the last such visit was in 1981. Within less than 24 hours, we went from "a New Jersey mailbox used to send the anthrax was less than 100 yards away from a sorority for which Ivins harbored an intense life-long obsession" to "the mailbox was near a storage closet used by a sorority that Ivins used to frequent 27 years ago and by a specific chapter that Ivins appeared to have absolutely nothing to do with." And then there is the Hatfill-like leaking of scurrilous information about Ivins, including the fact that he had -- as the NYT put it today -- "a history of alcohol abuse, had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women." Leaving aside the fact that alcohol abuse and pornography consumption aren't exactly clues marking someone as the anthrax killer, how bad could his "alcohol abuse" have been if he continued to maintain Government clearance to work at a US Army facility with the nation's most dangerous pathogens?
that "revenues for the world pornography industry hit an estimated $97 billion in 2006, overshadowing the revenues of the top technology companies -- the likes of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! Bruce Ivins isn't the only American male surreptitiously using pornography, to understate the case drastically. The FBI's need to demonize Ivins as a creepy, porn-loving drunk suggests that their actual evidence is far from convincing.
today reports -- all based on anonymous leaks -- that "key to the probe" is the fact that Ivins "borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores" and that "the drying device, known as a lyophilizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to US senators and news organizations." The article further claims that "the device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md" But that appears to be completely false.
This is the method they described using: The efficacy of several human anthrax vaccine candidates comprised of different adjuvants together with Bacillus anthracis protective antigen (PA) was evaluated in guinea pigs challenged by an aerosol of virulent B anthracis spores. The most efficacious vaccines tested were formulated with PA plus monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) in a squalenel lecithin/Tween 80 emulsion (SLT) and PA plus the saponin QS-21. The PA+MPL in SLT vaccine, which was lyophilized and then reconstituted before use, demonstrated strong protective immunogenicity, even after storage for 2 years at 4C. The MPL component was required for maximum efficacy of the vaccine. Eliminating lyophilization of the vaccine did not diminish its protective efficacy. No significant alteration in efficacy was observed when PA was dialyzed against different buffers before preparation of vaccine. PA+MPL in SLT proved superior in efficacy to the licensed United States human anthrax vaccine in the guinea pig model. Clearly, Ivins' legitimate work researching anthrax vaccines entailed the use of a lyophilizer.
notes, "If you google 'lyophilize' and 'anthrax', most o...
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