In a nut shell, here is what happened:
(1) As part of the 9/11 false flag operation carried out by the criminal Bush-Cheney regime, "weaponized" anthrax was mailed to the US congress in order force the passage of the so-called "Patriot Act".
Apart from the absurd amount of evidence that 9/11 itself was an carried out by rogue elements of the US government, it has been obvious that the Anthrax Attacks were a false flag operation for at least two reasons:
( a ) DNA analysis of the Anthrax identified it as being US bioweapon (although, the Bush-Cheney tried to blame it on Iraq).
( b ) White House staff members started taking the anti-Anthrax anti-biotic "Cipro" on 9/11: http://www.judicialwatch.org/1967.shtml
(2) Having been caught red-handed, the Bush-Cheney directed the FBI to frame a bioweapons scientist at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) for the Anthrax Attacks. For whatever reason, the FBI decided to frame Steven Hatfill. The FBI harassed Hatfill mercilessly, and when he sued, the FBI settled for $5.8 million: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill
(3) Having failed to frame Hatfill, the FBI moved onto to its next victim, Dr. Bruce Ivins, whom apparently the FBI harassed to the point of suicide (although it is a little unclear how Dr. Ivins managed to acquire the drugs he used to kill himself because he was in a mental hospital). Despite that the fact that Dr. Ivins simply did not have access to the advanced weapons anthrax used in the attacks and had neither the skills, nor equipment not time to produce, the FBI, without any evidence, insists Dr. Ivins was the guilty party and acted alone: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789293570011775.html
This is, of course, despite the fact that the CIA has had a billion dollar anthrax program at the Battelle which apparently included a project that involved mailing it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/news...ive/1873368.stm
http://www.newswithviews.com/health_care/health_care1.htm
http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Battelle.shtml
Full Version: FBI Frames Dead Scientist For Anthrax Attacks
well lets see what's wrong with this picture...
1. Cipro, or Ciprofloxacin, is an antibiotic used to treat regular bacterial infections, not "prevent" an anthrax infection. Antibiotics are not used for preventing disease, vaccines are. If anything, they can be used after infection has spread to the body from being inhaled, and was approved for such treatment. However, taking an antibiotic BEFORE you get sick would never be approved by any physician (since it would have no effect).
Cipro is a general antibiotic, and other common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can treat anthrax (amoxicillin is actually used more to treat it).
http://www.forbes.com/2001/10/17/1017cipro.html
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/cipro.htm
2. DNA analysis of organism DNA is inaccurate, according your article from the Wall Street Journal.
The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.
So why would the FBI, who is chasing after a scientist suspected of producing weapons grade anthrax, say that a DNA analysis is "inaccurate". They even analyze the type of Antrax and go on to say:
In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.
After they discover it's a type of russian weapons-grade anthrax, they also go on to say it was made by the "Ames" strain, which is the most common strain in the world, parts of which would be found even here in the US, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and even in France's government projects. True, a single scientist may of been framed, but like the lack of evidence to convict him, the lack of evidence to say the CIA did it is equally as wrong.
1. Cipro, or Ciprofloxacin, is an antibiotic used to treat regular bacterial infections, not "prevent" an anthrax infection. Antibiotics are not used for preventing disease, vaccines are. If anything, they can be used after infection has spread to the body from being inhaled, and was approved for such treatment. However, taking an antibiotic BEFORE you get sick would never be approved by any physician (since it would have no effect).
Cipro is a general antibiotic, and other common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can treat anthrax (amoxicillin is actually used more to treat it).
http://www.forbes.com/2001/10/17/1017cipro.html
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/cipro.htm
2. DNA analysis of organism DNA is inaccurate, according your article from the Wall Street Journal.
The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.
So why would the FBI, who is chasing after a scientist suspected of producing weapons grade anthrax, say that a DNA analysis is "inaccurate". They even analyze the type of Antrax and go on to say:
In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.
After they discover it's a type of russian weapons-grade anthrax, they also go on to say it was made by the "Ames" strain, which is the most common strain in the world, parts of which would be found even here in the US, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and even in France's government projects. True, a single scientist may of been framed, but like the lack of evidence to convict him, the lack of evidence to say the CIA did it is equally as wrong.
You know anthrax is pretty useless as a weapon.
If you were to throw a teaspoon of 'pure' anthrax from the stage into a packed theatre, only a few people from the front few rows would become infected.
If you were to throw a teaspoon of 'pure' anthrax from the stage into a packed theatre, only a few people from the front few rows would become infected.
Hoestly I do feel sorry for the guy, I mean he did develop a good way to cure the infection when the Anthrax attack struck a couple of years back. I dunno, but, I probably would have done the same. When they want you dead you're as good as dead already, like they care about the fair and equal trial thing. Sucks to bein society these days.
See source page for hyper-linked references in this article: http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=172&a=7911
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:47:00
Anthrax Attack Was State-Sponsored Terror (But the State Was America)
By George Washington
(George Washington) -- The chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998 - who describes himself as one of the "four or five people in the whole country" who could make the type of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks - noted in testimony to Congress:
"I have maintained from the first de scri ptions of the material contained in the Daschle letter that the quality appeared to be such that it could be produced only by some group that was involved with a current or former state program in recent years. The level of knowledge, expertise, and experience required and the types of special equipment required to make such quality product takes time and experimentation to develop. Further, the nature of the finished dried product is such that safety equipment and facilities must be used to protect the individuals involved and to shield their clandestine activity from discovery."
Similarly, a manufacturer of specialized anthrax equipment said:
"You would need [a] chemist who is familiar with colloidal [fumed] silica, and a material science person to put it all together, and then some mechanical engineers to make this work . . . probably some containment people, if you don't want to kill anybody. You need half a dozen, I think, really smart people."
The U.N. biologist mentioned above also said that the equipment to make such high-tech anthrax does not exist at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. People who work at Fort Detrick have confirmed this. In other words, a lone scientist couldn't have done it without the support of a whole government laboratory. And Fort Detrick was not one such potential laboratory.
What Does the FBI Say?
Until 2006, the FBI seemed to support this conclusion, but then suddenly and inexplicably changed its mind. According to the New York Times, the FBI changed its mind and took the position that the anthrax was not high-tech -- and thus could have been produced by a "lone nut" -- based upon a single paper published by one of its scientists.
The new theory was shown to be unsupported by any evidence in a various scientific papers (see this and this). And even the editor of the journal in which the new FBI hypothesis was published later criticized the article:
"The statement should have had a reference. An unsupported sentence being cited as fact is uncomfortable to me. Any statement in a scientific article should be supported by a reference or by documentation."
In other words, the FBI scientist just made up the new claim that the anthrax was not so high-tech that it had to have been made by a government-sponsored bioweapons program.
So why did the FBI change its tune, based upon an unsupported statement by one of its scientists?
Well, if the evidence pointed to state-sponsored terror, ruled out states the U.S. government wanted to blame the attack on (such as Iraq), and actually pointed towards America as being the "state sponsor", the government might want to distract people from the true culprits, right? Especially given that producing weaponized anthrax violates laws to which the U.S. is a signatory, and could constitute war crimes, right?
Indeed, on September 4, 2001, the New York Times revealed that the government was going to produce a highly-potent anthrax strain at a military lab in Ohio.
And Dugway Proving Grounds had been producing high-grade, dry, weaponized anthrax for quite some time before the attacks, and had shipped Ames strain anthrax "back and forth" with Fort Detrick.
Since 16 labs and many hundreds of people had access to the exact strain of anthrax used in the attacks, a state-sponsored operation could have been set up almost anywhere in the U.S.
They needed a patsy to pin the attacks on and deflect the fact that this was a false flag operation which also implicated an illegal bioweapons program. The anthrax attack was a state-sponsored crime in search of a patsy.
And see this.
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:47:00
Anthrax Attack Was State-Sponsored Terror (But the State Was America)
By George Washington
(George Washington) -- The chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998 - who describes himself as one of the "four or five people in the whole country" who could make the type of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks - noted in testimony to Congress:
"I have maintained from the first de scri ptions of the material contained in the Daschle letter that the quality appeared to be such that it could be produced only by some group that was involved with a current or former state program in recent years. The level of knowledge, expertise, and experience required and the types of special equipment required to make such quality product takes time and experimentation to develop. Further, the nature of the finished dried product is such that safety equipment and facilities must be used to protect the individuals involved and to shield their clandestine activity from discovery."
Similarly, a manufacturer of specialized anthrax equipment said:
"You would need [a] chemist who is familiar with colloidal [fumed] silica, and a material science person to put it all together, and then some mechanical engineers to make this work . . . probably some containment people, if you don't want to kill anybody. You need half a dozen, I think, really smart people."
The U.N. biologist mentioned above also said that the equipment to make such high-tech anthrax does not exist at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. People who work at Fort Detrick have confirmed this. In other words, a lone scientist couldn't have done it without the support of a whole government laboratory. And Fort Detrick was not one such potential laboratory.
What Does the FBI Say?
Until 2006, the FBI seemed to support this conclusion, but then suddenly and inexplicably changed its mind. According to the New York Times, the FBI changed its mind and took the position that the anthrax was not high-tech -- and thus could have been produced by a "lone nut" -- based upon a single paper published by one of its scientists.
The new theory was shown to be unsupported by any evidence in a various scientific papers (see this and this). And even the editor of the journal in which the new FBI hypothesis was published later criticized the article:
"The statement should have had a reference. An unsupported sentence being cited as fact is uncomfortable to me. Any statement in a scientific article should be supported by a reference or by documentation."
In other words, the FBI scientist just made up the new claim that the anthrax was not so high-tech that it had to have been made by a government-sponsored bioweapons program.
So why did the FBI change its tune, based upon an unsupported statement by one of its scientists?
Well, if the evidence pointed to state-sponsored terror, ruled out states the U.S. government wanted to blame the attack on (such as Iraq), and actually pointed towards America as being the "state sponsor", the government might want to distract people from the true culprits, right? Especially given that producing weaponized anthrax violates laws to which the U.S. is a signatory, and could constitute war crimes, right?
Indeed, on September 4, 2001, the New York Times revealed that the government was going to produce a highly-potent anthrax strain at a military lab in Ohio.
And Dugway Proving Grounds had been producing high-grade, dry, weaponized anthrax for quite some time before the attacks, and had shipped Ames strain anthrax "back and forth" with Fort Detrick.
Since 16 labs and many hundreds of people had access to the exact strain of anthrax used in the attacks, a state-sponsored operation could have been set up almost anywhere in the U.S.
They needed a patsy to pin the attacks on and deflect the fact that this was a false flag operation which also implicated an illegal bioweapons program. The anthrax attack was a state-sponsored crime in search of a patsy.
And see this.
QUOTE(privatesnuffy @ Aug 12 2008, 03:07 AM) 
well lets see what's wrong with this picture...
Yes indeed, let's see what is wrong with this picture...
QUOTE
1. Cipro, or Ciprofloxacin, is an antibiotic used to treat regular bacterial infections, not "prevent" an anthrax infection. Antibiotics are not used for preventing disease, vaccines are. If anything, they can be used after infection has spread to the body from being inhaled, and was approved for such treatment. However, taking an antibiotic BEFORE you get sick would never be approved by any physician (since it would have no effect).
Cipro is a general antibiotic, and other common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can treat anthrax (amoxicillin is actually used more to treat it).
http://www.forbes.com/2001/10/17/1017cipro.html
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/cipro.htm
Cipro is a general antibiotic, and other common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can treat anthrax (amoxicillin is actually used more to treat it).
http://www.forbes.com/2001/10/17/1017cipro.html
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/cipro.htm
This is what the US Dept. of Health & Human Services (DHHS) had to say about Cipro in the aftermath of the Anthrax Attacks:
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2001pres/20011010a.html
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT ANTHRAX PREVENTION AND TREATMENT
October 10, 2001
Q: Is there an approved treatment for anthrax?
A: Yes. Three types of antiobiotics are approved for anthrax: ciprofloxacin, tetracyclines (including doxycycline), and penicillins. For people who have been exposed to anthrax but do not have symptoms, 60 days of one of these antibiotics is given to reduce the risk or progression of disease due to inhaled anthrax.
Q: Does the government have a plan in place to make Cipro available if there were mass exposure to anthrax?
A: Yes. Under emergency plans, the Federal government would ship appropriate antibiotics from its stockpile to wherever they are needed.
Note that Amoxicillin is not even mentioned by the DHHS.
Next, you make some absurd comments about Cipro not being able to prevent an anthrax infection. Anyone with a basic understanding of medicine knows that antibiotics can and are used as a prophylactic (i.e. to prevent an infection). The DHHS clearly states "antibiotics [are] given to reduce the risk ... of disease" above. Furthermore, Cipro is indicated for anthrax prophylaxis and indeed was used so in the aftermath of the Anthrax Attacks:
http://prod.hopkins-abxguide.org/diagnosis...&siteId=153
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7320/1017
Here is the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) guide for anthrax prophylaxis, again Cipro is at the top of the list: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/exposure/#drugs
Moreover, here is what the CDC has to say about Amoxicillin and anthrax: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/treatm...llinpatient.asp
Amoxicillin has not been approved by the FDA to use when treating people who have been exposed to anthrax.
More from the CDC, Amoxicillin is only indicated for Anthrax exposure in pregnant women and does not work against all anthrax strains while Cipro does: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/anthrax.htm
Ciprofloxacin works well to prevent anthrax and is not likely to cause major problems for the fetus. But, not enough studies have been done with pregnant women who have taken ciprofloxacin to say that there is no risk to the fetus. Doctors are more certain that amoxicillin is safe for the fetus, but amoxicillin may not always work against anthrax.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now lets review your assertions:
QUOTE
Cipro, or Ciprofloxacin, is an antibiotic used to treat regular bacterial infections, not "prevent" an anthrax infection.
Wrong.
QUOTE
Antibiotics are not used for preventing disease, vaccines are.
Absolutely wrong.
QUOTE
If anything, they can be used after infection has spread to the body from being inhaled, and was approved for such treatment.
Wrong.
QUOTE
However, taking an antibiotic BEFORE you get sick would never be approved by any physician (since it would have no effect).
Absurd.
QUOTE
Cipro is a general antibiotic, and other common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can treat anthrax (amoxicillin is actually used more to treat it).
No, Amoxicillin is not even approved by the FDA for anthrax treatment and does not work on resistant anthrax strains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now let's look at your score card. It looks like you are "zero for five" to me. I suppose we could assume the only problem here is that you are a medical ignoramus, but then we might expect you to just keep mouth shut on topics that you obviously know nothing about.
No, the real problem seems to be that you have been drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid served by the likes of FOX News. Unless you are here deliberately lying to people, the problem is your blind faith in America and its institutions like the FBI. Why don't you try thinking for yourself instead?
I will pick through part 2 later and we will see you do any better:
QUOTE
2. DNA analysis of organism DNA is inaccurate, according your article from the Wall Street Journal.
The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.
So why would the FBI, who is chasing after a scientist suspected of producing weapons grade anthrax, say that a DNA analysis is "inaccurate". They even analyze the type of Antrax and go on to say:
In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.
After they discover it's a type of russian weapons-grade anthrax, they also go on to say it was made by the "Ames" strain, which is the most common strain in the world, parts of which would be found even here in the US, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and even in France's government projects. True, a single scientist may of been framed, but like the lack of evidence to convict him, the lack of evidence to say the CIA did it is equally as wrong.
The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.
So why would the FBI, who is chasing after a scientist suspected of producing weapons grade anthrax, say that a DNA analysis is "inaccurate". They even analyze the type of Antrax and go on to say:
In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.
After they discover it's a type of russian weapons-grade anthrax, they also go on to say it was made by the "Ames" strain, which is the most common strain in the world, parts of which would be found even here in the US, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and even in France's government projects. True, a single scientist may of been framed, but like the lack of evidence to convict him, the lack of evidence to say the CIA did it is equally as wrong.
TLDR version: The FBI is investigating a dead guy with connections to a conspiracy. Agree?
This is still pretty funny, because while picking parts from the CDC and FDA about amoxicillin, you left out, yet again, gigantic flaws in your argument.
For instance, amoxicillin and penicillin are the same type of antibiotic, amoxicillin is a synthetic version that isn't affected as much by the stomach acid. So, whatever can be treated with penicillin most definately can be treated with amoxicillin.
Furthermore, you went on to say:
Of course, atleast you used a credible source, like the CDC, but yet again failed to read a whole sentence. Here's the whole thing, since you missed it.
Amoxicillin has not been approved by the FDA to use when treating people who have been exposed to anthrax. However, if test results show that the anthrax bacteria can be killed by penicillin antibiotics, the use of amoxicillin is recommended to prevent the development of anthrax disease in people who have been exposed to anthrax, when other antibiotics are not as safe to use such as with children and pregnant women.
So it can work, not just with children and pregnant women, but if the strain can be killed by pencillin/amoxicillin
Also, you go on to say that you can use cipro as a prophylactic. SURE! you can use anything as a prophylactic, but it's not guarenteed to work. Let me use on of your sources to prove you wrong again...
This is from BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7320/1017
Prophylactic treatment of anthrax with antibiotics
Indiscriminate use of antibiotics will lead to resistance in organisms
Well, all you would of had to do was read the title of your research to figure that out. It goes on to say:
In animal models, penicillin, ciprofloxacin, or doxycycline given 24 hours after exposure to a lethal aerosol provided significant protection against death, but combining antimicrobials with vaccination provided optimal protection.3 Currently oral ciprofloxacin is recommended after known exposure to spores. 1 2 Disease can present 50 days or more after exposure,1 so prophylaxis should continue for 60 days unless exposure has been excluded.
Also, the side effects of prophylactic treatment using cipro:
Using antimicrobials prophylactically could induce side effects in users and resistance in bacteria. Antimicrobials need to be used according to national guidelines after appropriate assessment of risk, 1 2 especially when such prolonged use is intended. Although generally safe, ciprofloxacin is associated with rupture of tendons and neuropsychiatric disorders, especially in elderly people.
You are right about the government stockpiling Cipro, but its for a variety of reasons. Cipro is a general anti-biotic, so it can be used against most harmful bacterial infections. I got it for a blood infection, and my g/f had it for a kidney infection. It's a pretty common thing, so the government should stockpile it. If Cipro is a "anthrax super-drug", than I guess you can consider advil a "brain tumor killer".
I found this funny too
"No, the real problem seems to be that you have been drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid served by the likes of FOX News. Unless you are here deliberately lying to people, the problem is your blind faith in America and its institutions like the FBI. Why don't you try thinking for yourself instead? "
lets see:
drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid - I didn't even know that flavor existed...does it taste like the grape or tropical blend?
the likes of FOX News - I hate that republican soap-box, i watch CNN or go online
Unless you are here deliberately lying to people - Unless your talking about yourself, i'm not. I use credible sources, you take snippets from wikipedias, wall street journals, and conspiracy theory sites. Reason I responded is because it stunk to high hell of BS. Even when you do use credible sources, you only use half of what they say, making it easy to debunk.
the problem is your blind faith in America and its institutions like the FBI - So i'm blind because I don't trust your psychotic babble (over the professional opinions of doctors, forensics, plain evidence)?
Why don't you try thinking for yourself instead? - Well thinking for yourself is great, and I do it a lot. They funny thing about it is its subjective. I'm sure if i wrote "BUSH IS THE GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER!" thread you'd tell me to "think for myself". Of course, if i did believe he was (i don't) than i would be thinking for myself. Just because I don't think like you doesn't mean I don't "think for myself". In fact, if I just accepted your "truth", or whatever you want to call that pile of nonsense, than i'd be just as bad as being the man who you say as "drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid served by the likes of FOX News." Think about it, it may hurt a bit.
So, take the tin foil hat off your head, don't worry, the government doesn't have a mind reader just yet. They can't decrypt your brainwaves, so come out from your mom's basement. It's alright, you'll be fine
BTW, i don't think JFK was shot by oswald, there's "thinking for yourself"
For instance, amoxicillin and penicillin are the same type of antibiotic, amoxicillin is a synthetic version that isn't affected as much by the stomach acid. So, whatever can be treated with penicillin most definately can be treated with amoxicillin.
Furthermore, you went on to say:
QUOTE(bofors @ Aug 12 2008, 03:56 PM)
Amoxicillin has not been approved by the FDA to use when treating people who have been exposed to anthrax.
Of course, atleast you used a credible source, like the CDC, but yet again failed to read a whole sentence. Here's the whole thing, since you missed it.
Amoxicillin has not been approved by the FDA to use when treating people who have been exposed to anthrax. However, if test results show that the anthrax bacteria can be killed by penicillin antibiotics, the use of amoxicillin is recommended to prevent the development of anthrax disease in people who have been exposed to anthrax, when other antibiotics are not as safe to use such as with children and pregnant women.
So it can work, not just with children and pregnant women, but if the strain can be killed by pencillin/amoxicillin
Also, you go on to say that you can use cipro as a prophylactic. SURE! you can use anything as a prophylactic, but it's not guarenteed to work. Let me use on of your sources to prove you wrong again...
This is from BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7320/1017
Prophylactic treatment of anthrax with antibiotics
Indiscriminate use of antibiotics will lead to resistance in organisms
Well, all you would of had to do was read the title of your research to figure that out. It goes on to say:
In animal models, penicillin, ciprofloxacin, or doxycycline given 24 hours after exposure to a lethal aerosol provided significant protection against death, but combining antimicrobials with vaccination provided optimal protection.3 Currently oral ciprofloxacin is recommended after known exposure to spores. 1 2 Disease can present 50 days or more after exposure,1 so prophylaxis should continue for 60 days unless exposure has been excluded.
Also, the side effects of prophylactic treatment using cipro:
Using antimicrobials prophylactically could induce side effects in users and resistance in bacteria. Antimicrobials need to be used according to national guidelines after appropriate assessment of risk, 1 2 especially when such prolonged use is intended. Although generally safe, ciprofloxacin is associated with rupture of tendons and neuropsychiatric disorders, especially in elderly people.
You are right about the government stockpiling Cipro, but its for a variety of reasons. Cipro is a general anti-biotic, so it can be used against most harmful bacterial infections. I got it for a blood infection, and my g/f had it for a kidney infection. It's a pretty common thing, so the government should stockpile it. If Cipro is a "anthrax super-drug", than I guess you can consider advil a "brain tumor killer".
I found this funny too
"No, the real problem seems to be that you have been drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid served by the likes of FOX News. Unless you are here deliberately lying to people, the problem is your blind faith in America and its institutions like the FBI. Why don't you try thinking for yourself instead? "
lets see:
drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid - I didn't even know that flavor existed...does it taste like the grape or tropical blend?
the likes of FOX News - I hate that republican soap-box, i watch CNN or go online
Unless you are here deliberately lying to people - Unless your talking about yourself, i'm not. I use credible sources, you take snippets from wikipedias, wall street journals, and conspiracy theory sites. Reason I responded is because it stunk to high hell of BS. Even when you do use credible sources, you only use half of what they say, making it easy to debunk.
the problem is your blind faith in America and its institutions like the FBI - So i'm blind because I don't trust your psychotic babble (over the professional opinions of doctors, forensics, plain evidence)?
Why don't you try thinking for yourself instead? - Well thinking for yourself is great, and I do it a lot. They funny thing about it is its subjective. I'm sure if i wrote "BUSH IS THE GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER!" thread you'd tell me to "think for myself". Of course, if i did believe he was (i don't) than i would be thinking for myself. Just because I don't think like you doesn't mean I don't "think for myself". In fact, if I just accepted your "truth", or whatever you want to call that pile of nonsense, than i'd be just as bad as being the man who you say as "drinking the neo-fascist Kool-Aid served by the likes of FOX News." Think about it, it may hurt a bit.
So, take the tin foil hat off your head, don't worry, the government doesn't have a mind reader just yet. They can't decrypt your brainwaves, so come out from your mom's basement. It's alright, you'll be fine
BTW, i don't think JFK was shot by oswald, there's "thinking for yourself"
August 27, 2008
White Powder and 007
Norman M. Covert
Frederick is the epicenter of those who would terrorize the nation with envelopes and little white powder, if one believes the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Count me among the naysayers, who number more than a roomful.
The government mobilized its team of Double-oh (uh-oh!) secret agents seven years ago to identify a villainous mad scientist, who, without genuine motive or opportunity, single handedly:
– Used a Bio-Containment Level Three lab suite at Fort Detrick’s U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), to develop a highly bred, weapons-grade strain of Bacillus anthracis (a scientific achievement not accomplished before, except perhaps in the biological warfare laboratories of the former Soviet Union).
– Manipulated this super bacillus with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that, when opened in the containment cabinet, each particle repelled others in a brilliant display.
– Ensured each particle was no more than five microns in size so that it would penetrate the fabric of a normal No. 10 paper envelope, a product sold by the U.S. Postal Service in the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, West Virginia and Central Maryland.
– Managed to remove the material from the laboratory with it already placed in at least one envelope, also likely encased in an impermeable container, which would be obscured from the security guard.
– Managed to avoid leaving any evidence on his clothing, his two automobiles and van, his house, garage, office and other personal items despite the extremely “dirty” potential of the dry agent.
– Managed, in a fashion unknown to the Department of Homeland Security and the “Double-Ohs,” to have the envelopes placed in a mailbox in Princeton, NJ, with a note in a handwriting that cannot be identified with any known person.
– Managed to obscure this cutting edge science from a host of colleagues for the entire development period – a major feat in itself!
– Simultaneously he managed to significantly improve an old anthrax vaccine to protect our troops during Operation Desert Storm; then was a key developer of the new recombinant DNA based anthrax vaccine that was undergoing efficacy trials at USAMRIID.
One would imagine that Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Ian Fleming’s ubiquitous villain, is the perpetrator of this almost perfect crime, not the latest unfortunate person postulated as the perpetrator of the “Amerithrax” attacks in October and November 2001.
Several “suspects” have been identified in the investigation and for each it has resulted in personal and professional ruin. Only Dr. Steven Hatfill has managed any compensation for the FBI’s bull-in-a-china-shop investigation – about $5.7 million of which his lawyers may realize the majority. Dr. Hatfill’s career is in ruins.
And now, the late Dr. Bruce Ivins, apparently dead of an overdose of medicine, is accused. The FBI says its “creative application” of science led it to identify the DNA of the culprit B. anthracis as being on a beaker in Dr. Ivins' lab. The evidence does not indicate what implicates Dr. Ivins, except that it was identified as “his” beaker in “his” lab.
Dr. Ivins and more than one hundred researchers, assistants, veterinarians and others have used the lab for its work on the vaccines. They dirtied the lab in analyzing the envelopes and contents, which had been mailed to the Florida editorial office of a weekly tabloid newspaper, NBC News in New York City and the office of Sen. Tom Daschle (D., SD) in Washington.
Scientists at Fort Detrick would love to get their hands on this scientific breakthrough. The FBI says it will ultimately publish peer reviewed papers on it. The bench work probably would constitute a boon to the team at Fort Detrick, which has labored since 1980 to develop an improved medical countermeasure against B. anthracis.
“Alas!” or, “Hark!” whatever the better exclamation, the arrival of envelopes containing “white powder” at Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign offices in Denver, CO, and Manchester, NH, last week sounded a familiar note.
The FBI’s hazardous materials team felt early on that the powder was not dangerous. No explanation was provided on how, when, or where the powder was analyzed. The Denver Post reported an inmate of the local jail was the culprit, saying he was a “regular threatening letter writer.”
It would seem certain that microbiologists at USAMRIID would be reluctant if asked to analyze either of these latest envelopes. “Perhaps” the envelopes came from the West Seventh Street Post Office in Frederick, and, too, consider the FBI has “creative application” of science.
Cinematic research verifies that just when James Bond is sure he’s liquidated Blofeld, the SPECTRE No. 1 pops up again.
Dr. Ivins is no fictional character and it’s certain that his death is probably another bad ending for flawed investigative work by the G-Men.
I’m sorry for Diane Ivins, the family and his colleagues.
http://thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=2747
Katherine Heerbrandt
If not Ivins ...
Originally published August 29, 2008
When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it.
Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --
In a recent letter to the FNP editor, Amanda Lane speaks for many who knew him: "I want to shout from the mountain tops that Bruce was the kind of man we look up to ... He was a decorated scientist and the humblest of men who didn't use his title as a status symbol. He picked up a mop or emptied the trash without a moment's hesitation. If he thought you were having a bad day he would offer candy or a catchy tune to cheer you up. If someone had to stay late to accomplish a task, Bruce would work with you so that the task would get completed faster."
Covert echoes what is widely reported by reputable scientists. The anthrax in the mailings, he says, was "highly bred, weapons-grade ... with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that each particle repelled the other ... each particle no more than five microns." Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax.
But if not Ivins, then who or what?
"It's the elephant in the room nobody's talking about," Kissin says.
Since Nixon terminated the offensive weapons program at Detrick in 1969, there has been only one corporation in our country that operates laboratories where anthrax is weaponized: Battelle Memorial Laboratories, the corporation that does the biolab work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.
In December 2001, FBI Director Mueller announced that the Battelle-operated labs in West Jefferson, Ohio and at Dugway had been "searched," and that there were NO suspects in those labs.
The FBI has not mentioned Battelle since.
New York Times science writer William Broad covered the subject in his 2002 book "Germs, Biological Weapons and America's Secret War." According to Broad, Projects Jefferson and Clear Vision, begun in the late '90s were ongoing secret anthrax weaponization projects. Project Clear Vision was managed by the CIA at the Battelle labs in West Jefferson, Ohio. Project Jefferson was managed by the DIA at the Battelle-operated labs at Dugway.
Kissin and writer Sheila Casey thread this information together in a recently published article in the Rock Creek Free Press, http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com/CreekV2No9-Web.pdf, to conclude that the case against Ivins is nothing but a flimsy cover-up of the secret workings of these anthrax weaponization projects.
How do Americans even begin to confront the reality that the only bioattack in our history came from an American military/intelligence lab? An attack we were told made the massive expansion of biolabs at Detrick and across the country necessary.
And guess who's been hired for $750 million to manage and operate the first new biolab facilities at Detrick that are about to open?
Battelle Memorial Laboratories.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/...m?StoryID=79410
White Powder and 007
Norman M. Covert
Frederick is the epicenter of those who would terrorize the nation with envelopes and little white powder, if one believes the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Count me among the naysayers, who number more than a roomful.
The government mobilized its team of Double-oh (uh-oh!) secret agents seven years ago to identify a villainous mad scientist, who, without genuine motive or opportunity, single handedly:
– Used a Bio-Containment Level Three lab suite at Fort Detrick’s U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), to develop a highly bred, weapons-grade strain of Bacillus anthracis (a scientific achievement not accomplished before, except perhaps in the biological warfare laboratories of the former Soviet Union).
– Manipulated this super bacillus with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that, when opened in the containment cabinet, each particle repelled others in a brilliant display.
– Ensured each particle was no more than five microns in size so that it would penetrate the fabric of a normal No. 10 paper envelope, a product sold by the U.S. Postal Service in the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, West Virginia and Central Maryland.
– Managed to remove the material from the laboratory with it already placed in at least one envelope, also likely encased in an impermeable container, which would be obscured from the security guard.
– Managed to avoid leaving any evidence on his clothing, his two automobiles and van, his house, garage, office and other personal items despite the extremely “dirty” potential of the dry agent.
– Managed, in a fashion unknown to the Department of Homeland Security and the “Double-Ohs,” to have the envelopes placed in a mailbox in Princeton, NJ, with a note in a handwriting that cannot be identified with any known person.
– Managed to obscure this cutting edge science from a host of colleagues for the entire development period – a major feat in itself!
– Simultaneously he managed to significantly improve an old anthrax vaccine to protect our troops during Operation Desert Storm; then was a key developer of the new recombinant DNA based anthrax vaccine that was undergoing efficacy trials at USAMRIID.
One would imagine that Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Ian Fleming’s ubiquitous villain, is the perpetrator of this almost perfect crime, not the latest unfortunate person postulated as the perpetrator of the “Amerithrax” attacks in October and November 2001.
Several “suspects” have been identified in the investigation and for each it has resulted in personal and professional ruin. Only Dr. Steven Hatfill has managed any compensation for the FBI’s bull-in-a-china-shop investigation – about $5.7 million of which his lawyers may realize the majority. Dr. Hatfill’s career is in ruins.
And now, the late Dr. Bruce Ivins, apparently dead of an overdose of medicine, is accused. The FBI says its “creative application” of science led it to identify the DNA of the culprit B. anthracis as being on a beaker in Dr. Ivins' lab. The evidence does not indicate what implicates Dr. Ivins, except that it was identified as “his” beaker in “his” lab.
Dr. Ivins and more than one hundred researchers, assistants, veterinarians and others have used the lab for its work on the vaccines. They dirtied the lab in analyzing the envelopes and contents, which had been mailed to the Florida editorial office of a weekly tabloid newspaper, NBC News in New York City and the office of Sen. Tom Daschle (D., SD) in Washington.
Scientists at Fort Detrick would love to get their hands on this scientific breakthrough. The FBI says it will ultimately publish peer reviewed papers on it. The bench work probably would constitute a boon to the team at Fort Detrick, which has labored since 1980 to develop an improved medical countermeasure against B. anthracis.
“Alas!” or, “Hark!” whatever the better exclamation, the arrival of envelopes containing “white powder” at Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign offices in Denver, CO, and Manchester, NH, last week sounded a familiar note.
The FBI’s hazardous materials team felt early on that the powder was not dangerous. No explanation was provided on how, when, or where the powder was analyzed. The Denver Post reported an inmate of the local jail was the culprit, saying he was a “regular threatening letter writer.”
It would seem certain that microbiologists at USAMRIID would be reluctant if asked to analyze either of these latest envelopes. “Perhaps” the envelopes came from the West Seventh Street Post Office in Frederick, and, too, consider the FBI has “creative application” of science.
Cinematic research verifies that just when James Bond is sure he’s liquidated Blofeld, the SPECTRE No. 1 pops up again.
Dr. Ivins is no fictional character and it’s certain that his death is probably another bad ending for flawed investigative work by the G-Men.
I’m sorry for Diane Ivins, the family and his colleagues.
http://thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=2747
Katherine Heerbrandt
If not Ivins ...
Originally published August 29, 2008
When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it.
Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --
In a recent letter to the FNP editor, Amanda Lane speaks for many who knew him: "I want to shout from the mountain tops that Bruce was the kind of man we look up to ... He was a decorated scientist and the humblest of men who didn't use his title as a status symbol. He picked up a mop or emptied the trash without a moment's hesitation. If he thought you were having a bad day he would offer candy or a catchy tune to cheer you up. If someone had to stay late to accomplish a task, Bruce would work with you so that the task would get completed faster."
Covert echoes what is widely reported by reputable scientists. The anthrax in the mailings, he says, was "highly bred, weapons-grade ... with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that each particle repelled the other ... each particle no more than five microns." Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax.
But if not Ivins, then who or what?
"It's the elephant in the room nobody's talking about," Kissin says.
Since Nixon terminated the offensive weapons program at Detrick in 1969, there has been only one corporation in our country that operates laboratories where anthrax is weaponized: Battelle Memorial Laboratories, the corporation that does the biolab work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.
In December 2001, FBI Director Mueller announced that the Battelle-operated labs in West Jefferson, Ohio and at Dugway had been "searched," and that there were NO suspects in those labs.
The FBI has not mentioned Battelle since.
New York Times science writer William Broad covered the subject in his 2002 book "Germs, Biological Weapons and America's Secret War." According to Broad, Projects Jefferson and Clear Vision, begun in the late '90s were ongoing secret anthrax weaponization projects. Project Clear Vision was managed by the CIA at the Battelle labs in West Jefferson, Ohio. Project Jefferson was managed by the DIA at the Battelle-operated labs at Dugway.
Kissin and writer Sheila Casey thread this information together in a recently published article in the Rock Creek Free Press, http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com/CreekV2No9-Web.pdf, to conclude that the case against Ivins is nothing but a flimsy cover-up of the secret workings of these anthrax weaponization projects.
How do Americans even begin to confront the reality that the only bioattack in our history came from an American military/intelligence lab? An attack we were told made the massive expansion of biolabs at Detrick and across the country necessary.
And guess who's been hired for $750 million to manage and operate the first new biolab facilities at Detrick that are about to open?
Battelle Memorial Laboratories.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/...m?StoryID=79410
NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” for Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. in Room 216 of the Senate Hart Office Building.
The Honorable Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Department of Justice
Washington, DC
http://911blogger.com/node/17797
FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug
Anthrax letters
By Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin
US Attorney Jeff Taylor was sweating on August 6, as he laid out his case against the late Dr. Bruce Ivins at a news conference-and with good reason. Anyone familiar with the case is well aware that Dr. Ivins was railroaded, and that the news conference was a flimsy web of lies.
Ivins had nothing to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks were almost certainly carried out by the only group that had the means to produce the highly weaponized anthrax in the letters: the CIA, its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute of West Jefferson, Ohio., and the Army at Dugway in Utah.
The DOJ-FBI frame-up of Ivins rests heavily upon the claim of new advances in genetic testing which supposedly prove that the killer anthrax could have come only from Ivins’ flask.
Jeff Taylor stated:
The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.
This is an outright lie. No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes. The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”
The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes. What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized. Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places. It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs.
The anthrax used in the attacks was beyond cutting edge. Donald A. Henderson, former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Science magazine: “It just didn’t have to be that good” to be lethal.
Why the killer anthrax was so deadly
1. Precisely sized particles-1.5 to 5 microns. Anything smaller is exhaled, anything larger tends to get caught either in the nose or in the cilia in the trachea.
2. Coated with silica. The silica acted as a buffer, preventing spores from adhering to one another. The silica on the attack anthrax rested on a thin layer of polymerized glass, which is a highly advanced technique for coating anthrax spores. To do this required a “spray dryer,” the cheapest of which sells for $50,000. The lyophilizer in Ivins’ lab is used to dry anthrax, but can NOT be used to coat the spores with silica. Ivins did not have a spray dryer.
3. Highly concentrated. The letter to Senator Daschle’s office contained two grams of anthrax, about the weight of a dime. Each gram contained a trillion pure spores of anthrax, or enough to kill 200 million people.
4. Electro-statically charged. The slight charge on each spore caused it to repel the other spores and spread out into the room after the envelope was opened.
It is these attributes of the anthrax-not its genetic heritage-which made it so unique and so lethal.
The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001
US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as “the murder weapon.” But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in the Baltimore Sun stated:
For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people.
The article refers to Dugway as “the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,” and also includes this:
Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.
The following day, The Washington Post echoed the Sun article:
An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.
On Dec 16, 2001, The Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that “Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,” also stating, “Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.”
On September 4, 2001, The New York Timest explained:
“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons … even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed … have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.”
These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.
“[T]he need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.”
Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.
The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.
Dr. Ivins was an immunologist; he had neither the knowledge nor the equipment to produce the silica-coated, electro-statically charged, 1.5 to 5 micron sized, one trillion spore per gram anthrax that was mailed to Senators Leahy and Daschle.
The DOJ has made much of the fact that Ivins worked 45 extra hours in September and October of 2001. Yet when the FBI attempted to reverse engineer the weaponized anthrax from the attacks, they admitted after a year of trying that they were unable to come up with a product as potent as that in the letters.
Scientists doubt FBI’s story
As far back as October 28, 2002, The Washington Post reported that bio-weapons experts were skeptical about the view that the anthrax in the letters could have come from a lone nut:
“In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel, former deputy commander of USAMRIID (the Army bio-defense facility at Detrick). “And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”
Writing in The New York Timest on Aug. 9, 2008, Gerry Andrews, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Wyoming, described the envelopes’ contents as “a startlingly refined weapons-grade anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” He continued: “It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope.”
Abundant evidence that Ivins is innocent
Ivins passed two polygraph tests and no link was made between his handwriting and that on the anthrax letters. Investigators were so frustrated at Ivins passing the polygraph tests that they searched his house for books or articles on how to fool a polygraph, but found none.
US Attorney Jeff Taylor stated that the investigators zeroed in on Ivins when they “conducted additional investigative steps,” and thus were “able to narrow the focus even further, exclude individuals, and that left us looking at Dr. Ivins.”
Those “additional investigative steps” were polygraph tests. Where passing a polygraph test was enough to exclude certain people, it did not exclude Ivins.
Ivins’ car, work locker, safe deposit box and house were thoroughly swabbed for anthrax spores multiple times over the space of years; not a single spore was found, although the killer anthrax was so highly weaponized that it behaved like a gas and was very difficult to contain.
None of the materials in the mailings were found at his house: not the tape, the envelopes, nor the pen used to write the letters. There isn’t one piece of evidence placing him in New Jersey at the time the letters were mailed: not a credit card receipt, restaurant receipt, nor a witness.
On August 3, 2008, Glen Greenwald wrote in Salon:
It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.”
Bruce Ivins: juggler, Red Cross volunteer, pianist
Jeff Taylor’s case against Ivins rests heavily on claims that Ivins was mentally ill. If Ivins was truly so unhinged, why was he allowed to work with toxic substances? His security clearance was never revoked.
Certainly a brilliant homicidal serial killer who is determined to avoid detection would immediately get rid of the Ames strain with the incriminating genotype in his flask, if he had used it to make weaponized powder and kill five people. Yet seven years later, the same genotype was still in Ivins’ lab!
The DOJ and FBI ask us to believe that Ivins launched the attacks because his vaccine research was not going well and he feared he might lose his job. It’s just not a plausible motivation.
In 2003, Ivins received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service-the highest award given to the Defense Department’s civilian employees. He had been a respected scientist at USAMRIID for 35 years and had a very secure job.
Ivins had been married for 33 years. He played keyboard at his local church, he was a member of the American Red Cross, an avid juggler and founder of the Frederick Jugglers. He also played keyboards in a Celtic band and would often compose and play songs for coworkers who were moving to new jobs.
The FBI focused on him as a probable fall guy in 2006, and for two years was all over him, repeatedly questioning him, searching his home, car and office, and confronting him and his family in public with accusations that he had “killed people.” His daughter was shown pictures of dead anthrax victims and told “your father did this.” His son was promised $2.5 million and a sports car of his choice if he would implicate his father in the anthrax attacks. Who among us would not resort to drink, or drugs, or fantasies of revenge under those circumstances?
Who had the expertise to weaponize anthrax?
William C. Patrick III, and Ken Alibek.
William Patrick was the originator of the first anthrax weaponization process. He has five patents on anthrax weaponization and wrote a paper in 1999 setting out exactly what an anthrax attack by mail would look like.
Patrick’s scenario is very similar to what actually happened in 2001. For example, he suggests no more than 2.5 grams of anthrax per envelope; the envelopes contained two grams. One footnote in his paper reveals “we now have the ability to purify to one trillion spores per gram.” William Patrick was a consultant to the CIA, Battelle, the Army, the DIA and the FBI on bio-weapons.
Ken Alibek headed up the Soviet bio-weapon programs until defecting to the USA in 1992. He brought with him the technology that was key in the anthrax attacks: using polymerized glass to attach silica to the anthrax spores. He worked for Battelle Memorial Institute in the late 90s.
These men had to have been instrumental in developing the technology used in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Who can control the FBI, DOJ and the media?
The significance of the railroading of the deceased Ivins cannot be overstated. This railroading is not a matter of incompetence. In detail after detail, the joint FBI-DOJ prosecution deliberately lies, evades and obfuscates in a desperate attempt to pin blame somewhere and close the case. (A transcript of the entire August 6 news conference is available on npr.org, titled “DOJ News Conference On Bruce Ivins.”)
US Attorney Jeff Taylor states at the news conference that the envelopes used in the attacks were “very likely sold at a post office in the Frederick, Md. area,” and that Ivins had a post office box there. This is another outright lie. Taylor’s own application for a search warrant stated:
…envelopes with printing defects, identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001, were collected from the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax, Virginia, and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in Maryland…
Taylor and his supervisors at DOJ must be hoping that no one will notice or care that they are blatantly lying about their evidence against Ivins.
Reading the transcript, it is striking how often Jeff Taylor and Joseph Persichini refuse to answer questions. They either refer reporters to the Department of Defense (which is not holding a news conference) or to the documents they have been given.
When asked when their all new, ground-breaking DNA research would be published, Taylor replies “I’m not going to comment on (that).” When asked a direct question about how many others were investigated other than Ivins, Taylor replies “I’m not going to get into the details.” Not only does he not get into the details, he doesn’t even give us the broad strokes. When asked how he can be so sure that there wasn’t another person involved, Taylor replies:
The evidence I described in my statement, and that I’ve described throughout this question-and-answer period, as I said, led us to conclude that Dr. Ivins is the person who committed this crime. We are confident, based on the evidence we have, that we could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In other words, he doesn’t answer.
Honest citizens must ask themselves: who are the FBI and DOJ protecting? Who has the ability to control and corrupt an investigation of this importance? And why, after sitting through a news conference that is obviously a hastily constructed web of lies, have so many journalists dutifully reported the story just as instructed by Jeff Taylor?
We no longer have a working government in the United States. What we have are functionaries in various departments-Congress, FBI, DOJ, CIA-who take their orders from the corporations who make vast sums of money waging war and selling vaccines. Their influence extends to the major media outlets who control the flow of information to the American people. We are increasingly enslaved, manipulated and murdered by these corporations, and very few of us seem to realize it.
Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Buzz Flash, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice. She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com Barry Kissin is an attorney/peace activist based in Frederick, MD, home of Fort Detrick.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17419#comment-196200
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” for Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. in Room 216 of the Senate Hart Office Building.
The Honorable Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Department of Justice
Washington, DC
http://911blogger.com/node/17797
FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug
Anthrax letters
By Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin
US Attorney Jeff Taylor was sweating on August 6, as he laid out his case against the late Dr. Bruce Ivins at a news conference-and with good reason. Anyone familiar with the case is well aware that Dr. Ivins was railroaded, and that the news conference was a flimsy web of lies.
Ivins had nothing to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks were almost certainly carried out by the only group that had the means to produce the highly weaponized anthrax in the letters: the CIA, its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute of West Jefferson, Ohio., and the Army at Dugway in Utah.
The DOJ-FBI frame-up of Ivins rests heavily upon the claim of new advances in genetic testing which supposedly prove that the killer anthrax could have come only from Ivins’ flask.
Jeff Taylor stated:
The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.
This is an outright lie. No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes. The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”
The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes. What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized. Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places. It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs.
The anthrax used in the attacks was beyond cutting edge. Donald A. Henderson, former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Science magazine: “It just didn’t have to be that good” to be lethal.
Why the killer anthrax was so deadly
1. Precisely sized particles-1.5 to 5 microns. Anything smaller is exhaled, anything larger tends to get caught either in the nose or in the cilia in the trachea.
2. Coated with silica. The silica acted as a buffer, preventing spores from adhering to one another. The silica on the attack anthrax rested on a thin layer of polymerized glass, which is a highly advanced technique for coating anthrax spores. To do this required a “spray dryer,” the cheapest of which sells for $50,000. The lyophilizer in Ivins’ lab is used to dry anthrax, but can NOT be used to coat the spores with silica. Ivins did not have a spray dryer.
3. Highly concentrated. The letter to Senator Daschle’s office contained two grams of anthrax, about the weight of a dime. Each gram contained a trillion pure spores of anthrax, or enough to kill 200 million people.
4. Electro-statically charged. The slight charge on each spore caused it to repel the other spores and spread out into the room after the envelope was opened.
It is these attributes of the anthrax-not its genetic heritage-which made it so unique and so lethal.
The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001
US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as “the murder weapon.” But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in the Baltimore Sun stated:
For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people.
The article refers to Dugway as “the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,” and also includes this:
Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.
The following day, The Washington Post echoed the Sun article:
An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.
On Dec 16, 2001, The Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that “Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,” also stating, “Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.”
On September 4, 2001, The New York Timest explained:
“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons … even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed … have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.”
These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.
“[T]he need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.”
Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.
The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.
Dr. Ivins was an immunologist; he had neither the knowledge nor the equipment to produce the silica-coated, electro-statically charged, 1.5 to 5 micron sized, one trillion spore per gram anthrax that was mailed to Senators Leahy and Daschle.
The DOJ has made much of the fact that Ivins worked 45 extra hours in September and October of 2001. Yet when the FBI attempted to reverse engineer the weaponized anthrax from the attacks, they admitted after a year of trying that they were unable to come up with a product as potent as that in the letters.
Scientists doubt FBI’s story
As far back as October 28, 2002, The Washington Post reported that bio-weapons experts were skeptical about the view that the anthrax in the letters could have come from a lone nut:
“In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel, former deputy commander of USAMRIID (the Army bio-defense facility at Detrick). “And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”
Writing in The New York Timest on Aug. 9, 2008, Gerry Andrews, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Wyoming, described the envelopes’ contents as “a startlingly refined weapons-grade anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” He continued: “It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope.”
Abundant evidence that Ivins is innocent
Ivins passed two polygraph tests and no link was made between his handwriting and that on the anthrax letters. Investigators were so frustrated at Ivins passing the polygraph tests that they searched his house for books or articles on how to fool a polygraph, but found none.
US Attorney Jeff Taylor stated that the investigators zeroed in on Ivins when they “conducted additional investigative steps,” and thus were “able to narrow the focus even further, exclude individuals, and that left us looking at Dr. Ivins.”
Those “additional investigative steps” were polygraph tests. Where passing a polygraph test was enough to exclude certain people, it did not exclude Ivins.
Ivins’ car, work locker, safe deposit box and house were thoroughly swabbed for anthrax spores multiple times over the space of years; not a single spore was found, although the killer anthrax was so highly weaponized that it behaved like a gas and was very difficult to contain.
None of the materials in the mailings were found at his house: not the tape, the envelopes, nor the pen used to write the letters. There isn’t one piece of evidence placing him in New Jersey at the time the letters were mailed: not a credit card receipt, restaurant receipt, nor a witness.
On August 3, 2008, Glen Greenwald wrote in Salon:
It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.”
Bruce Ivins: juggler, Red Cross volunteer, pianist
Jeff Taylor’s case against Ivins rests heavily on claims that Ivins was mentally ill. If Ivins was truly so unhinged, why was he allowed to work with toxic substances? His security clearance was never revoked.
Certainly a brilliant homicidal serial killer who is determined to avoid detection would immediately get rid of the Ames strain with the incriminating genotype in his flask, if he had used it to make weaponized powder and kill five people. Yet seven years later, the same genotype was still in Ivins’ lab!
The DOJ and FBI ask us to believe that Ivins launched the attacks because his vaccine research was not going well and he feared he might lose his job. It’s just not a plausible motivation.
In 2003, Ivins received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service-the highest award given to the Defense Department’s civilian employees. He had been a respected scientist at USAMRIID for 35 years and had a very secure job.
Ivins had been married for 33 years. He played keyboard at his local church, he was a member of the American Red Cross, an avid juggler and founder of the Frederick Jugglers. He also played keyboards in a Celtic band and would often compose and play songs for coworkers who were moving to new jobs.
The FBI focused on him as a probable fall guy in 2006, and for two years was all over him, repeatedly questioning him, searching his home, car and office, and confronting him and his family in public with accusations that he had “killed people.” His daughter was shown pictures of dead anthrax victims and told “your father did this.” His son was promised $2.5 million and a sports car of his choice if he would implicate his father in the anthrax attacks. Who among us would not resort to drink, or drugs, or fantasies of revenge under those circumstances?
Who had the expertise to weaponize anthrax?
William C. Patrick III, and Ken Alibek.
William Patrick was the originator of the first anthrax weaponization process. He has five patents on anthrax weaponization and wrote a paper in 1999 setting out exactly what an anthrax attack by mail would look like.
Patrick’s scenario is very similar to what actually happened in 2001. For example, he suggests no more than 2.5 grams of anthrax per envelope; the envelopes contained two grams. One footnote in his paper reveals “we now have the ability to purify to one trillion spores per gram.” William Patrick was a consultant to the CIA, Battelle, the Army, the DIA and the FBI on bio-weapons.
Ken Alibek headed up the Soviet bio-weapon programs until defecting to the USA in 1992. He brought with him the technology that was key in the anthrax attacks: using polymerized glass to attach silica to the anthrax spores. He worked for Battelle Memorial Institute in the late 90s.
These men had to have been instrumental in developing the technology used in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Who can control the FBI, DOJ and the media?
The significance of the railroading of the deceased Ivins cannot be overstated. This railroading is not a matter of incompetence. In detail after detail, the joint FBI-DOJ prosecution deliberately lies, evades and obfuscates in a desperate attempt to pin blame somewhere and close the case. (A transcript of the entire August 6 news conference is available on npr.org, titled “DOJ News Conference On Bruce Ivins.”)
US Attorney Jeff Taylor states at the news conference that the envelopes used in the attacks were “very likely sold at a post office in the Frederick, Md. area,” and that Ivins had a post office box there. This is another outright lie. Taylor’s own application for a search warrant stated:
…envelopes with printing defects, identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001, were collected from the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax, Virginia, and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in Maryland…
Taylor and his supervisors at DOJ must be hoping that no one will notice or care that they are blatantly lying about their evidence against Ivins.
Reading the transcript, it is striking how often Jeff Taylor and Joseph Persichini refuse to answer questions. They either refer reporters to the Department of Defense (which is not holding a news conference) or to the documents they have been given.
When asked when their all new, ground-breaking DNA research would be published, Taylor replies “I’m not going to comment on (that).” When asked a direct question about how many others were investigated other than Ivins, Taylor replies “I’m not going to get into the details.” Not only does he not get into the details, he doesn’t even give us the broad strokes. When asked how he can be so sure that there wasn’t another person involved, Taylor replies:
The evidence I described in my statement, and that I’ve described throughout this question-and-answer period, as I said, led us to conclude that Dr. Ivins is the person who committed this crime. We are confident, based on the evidence we have, that we could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In other words, he doesn’t answer.
Honest citizens must ask themselves: who are the FBI and DOJ protecting? Who has the ability to control and corrupt an investigation of this importance? And why, after sitting through a news conference that is obviously a hastily constructed web of lies, have so many journalists dutifully reported the story just as instructed by Jeff Taylor?
We no longer have a working government in the United States. What we have are functionaries in various departments-Congress, FBI, DOJ, CIA-who take their orders from the corporations who make vast sums of money waging war and selling vaccines. Their influence extends to the major media outlets who control the flow of information to the American people. We are increasingly enslaved, manipulated and murdered by these corporations, and very few of us seem to realize it.
Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Buzz Flash, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice. She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com Barry Kissin is an attorney/peace activist based in Frederick, MD, home of Fort Detrick.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17419#comment-196200
Bofors,
You seem like a nice guy who's heart is in the right place, but you baffle me.
I don't want to call you tin foil hat guy, but you have a conspiracy about everything that deals with the U.S. government. Are you part of that "the world is flat" forum? Because they also believe the U.S. government is in on it...
Sincerely,
A guy who cares, but not that much...
You seem like a nice guy who's heart is in the right place, but you baffle me.
I don't want to call you tin foil hat guy, but you have a conspiracy about everything that deals with the U.S. government. Are you part of that "the world is flat" forum? Because they also believe the U.S. government is in on it...
Sincerely,
A guy who cares, but not that much...
Whatever did happen to JonTheSavage?
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