December 31, 2005 - I'd hoped that my last comment for 2005 would include some details explaining the recent docket entry in the Hatfill v Foster et al lawsuit which states

RESPONSE TO THE GOVERNMENT'S LETTER DATED 12/15/2005. The government has sent me a letter after receiving the subpoenas addressed to various Government agencies...(Signed by Judge Colleen McMahon on 12/16/2005). "Copies Sent By Chambers". (mde, ) (Entered: 12/19/2005)

December 25, 2005 - The methodology of the conspiracy theorists who believe the attack anthrax spores were coated with silica became a bit more clear during the past week.

The Washington Post newspaper reporters promoting the conspiracy theory began with the false premise that the spores must have been coated with silica because AFIP detected silicon and oxygen in the Daschle anthrax.  That false premise fitted nicely with the idea that the anthrax came from an illegal bioweapons program being run by the Bush administration, which, of course would be covered up by a vast conspiracy. 

When bioweapons experts and microbiologists told them their basic premise was false and that there was no need to coat anthrax spores, the reporters simply went looking for "experts" who would tell them what they wanted to hear.  They found "experts" who knew nothing about bioweapons or microbiology or spores.  They found "experts" who knew only about coatings - primarily chemical engineers who routinely coat chemical substances.  The application of coatings to tiny particles is routine in the manufacturing of medicines.  Since chemical engineers know how to coat tiny particles of lactose (or phosphors), for example, the conspiracy theorists and their "experts" just falsely assumed the same technology could be applied to coating spores.

All they had to do was ignore the fact that a spore is a living entity.  It is not a chemical substance like lactose.  A spore can be killed if it isn't handled properly.

One reason for coating chemical substances like lactose is because van der Waals forces will cause the tiny lactose particles to bind together if they are not coated.  That will make it difficult to use the tiny particles of lactose in nasal and throat sprays. 

The reason lactose particles bind together is because lactose is a carbohydrate and "carbohydrates are polar molecules", i.e., "The geometry of atoms in polar molecules is such that one end of the molecule has a positive electrical charge and the other side has a negative charge."  So, like little magnets, particles made from such molecules will tend to stick together.  The same is true for "Electrically Charged Granular Matter."

Spores on the other hand are primarily made up of non-polar compounds.  "A non-polar molecule is one that the electrons are distributed more symmetrically and thus does not have an abundance of charges at the opposite sides. The charges all cancel out each other."  So, they do not tend to stick together in any significant way.  To get around that major difference, all the conspiracy theorists have to do is ignore science. 

NOTE: The two paragraphs above were modified on Jan. 12, 2006, to correct errors. 

They also ignore basic science when they imagine that coatings of fumed silica can be applied to spores in the same way they are applied to tiny particles of lactose.  With lactose, it's typically done by first suspending the polar lactose particles in a non-polar liquid -- such as liquid nitrogen -- to prevent the individual lactose particles from clumping before they can be coated.  This works well with lactose because lactose particles are solid spheres of chemical material.  Spores, on the other hand, are organic and have pores, which the spore uses to sense the environment to determine if the conditions are right for germination.  Liquid nitrogen would quickly get inside the spores through the pores, and when returned to room temperature, the liquid nitrogen would turn to a gas causing the spores to pop like popcorn!   And that's not all ...

The conspiracy theorists and their "experts" also ignore a basic scientific guideline:

Like dissolves like.  Polar solvents dissolve polar solutes and non-polar solvents dissolve non-polar solutes.

The best example of reporters using this conspiracy theory methodology was in The Washington Post's October 28, 2002, article "FBI's Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted".  Instead of talking with people who know about spores, like bioweapons experts or microbiologists, the reporters used as their "experts" 3 chemical engineers, a "pharmaceutical chemist", a manufacturer of spray dryers and a biologist who openly admitted he knew nothing about coating spores and would need a year and a team of technicians to help him figure out how to do it. 

Two actual bioweapons experts wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post telling them that the fictitious coatings described in the article would be easily seen, there were no such coatings, and advised: "statements attributed to anonymous sources or from persons who have not examined the actual evidence should be greeted with caution." 

But that didn't stop the conspiracy theorists.  A year later, one of the reporters behind the Washington Post article, Gary Matsumoto, wrote an article for the November 28, 2003, issue of Science magazine titled "Anthrax Powder -- State of the Art?"  In it he used the same tactics as he used previously.  He separated the "experts" into two "factions", one "faction" which knew about spores and bioweapons and another "faction" which believed Matsumoto's conspiracy theory.  Here's how the two "factions" are described:

One group, comprised mostly of microbiologists and molecular biologists, argues that this material could have been a do-it-yourself job, made by someone knowledgeable but with run-of-the-mill lab equipment on a modest budget. This contingent includes one well-known bioweaponeer, Ken Alibek, who defected from Russia to the United States in 1992. 

The other faction thinks that the powder mailed to the Senate (widely reported to be more refined than the one mailed to the TV networks in New York) was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology. This diverse group includes scientists who specialize in biodefense for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, private-sector scientists who make small particles for use in pharmaceutical powders, and an electronics researcher, chemist Stuart Jacobsen of Texas.

And that poses a question once asked by comic strip character Dilbert: "when did ignorance become a point of view?"

December 22, 2005 - I modified the content and format  of this "new" main page to be more compatible with the original main page and with the ongoing investigation.  I added a totally new Overview Section which explains why I couldn't continue with the original main page and lists the findings of my analysis with links to both main pages.  I deleted the Reviews Section from the new main page, replacing it with a link to the equivalent Supplemental Page.  I modified and changed the name of  Section 2 to be "'New' Information since Jan. 1, 2000", and I modified and changed the name of  Section 3 to be "Pending Events".

One purpose of these changes is to make certain that people who visit this site for the first time get the "overview" of the entire site and don't just see it as a small site about my book. 

December 19, 2005:  There have been some docket entries in the Hatfill v Foster lawsuit which I failed to notice because the clerk didn't change the "Date Of Last Filing" until today.  (I can check the "Date of Last Filing" for free, but it costs me 8 cents to actually look at new entries!)   Unfortunately, none of the documents are available via PACER.  The key docket entries are these:

no pleading may be amended after 01/27/06; 
all discovery must be completed on or before 09/30/06;
expert disclosures conforming with rule 26 must be made no later than 04/14/2006; 
a joint pre-trial order shall be submitted on or before 10/27/06.

(I blew another 8 cents checking for new entries in the Hatfill v Ashcroft lawsuit, but there haven't been any since the "Date of Last Filing" Dec. 7, 2005.) 

December 18, 2005 - Yesterday, I watched a TV program titled "Bioterror Alert" on the National Geographic Channel.  It was about the "big six" biological threats: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, botulism toxin and viral hemorrhagic fevers.  The subject of anthrax and the anthrax attacks of 2001 took up the first 12 or 15 minutes of the program.  Dr. Peter Jahrling of USAMRIID talked about the Daschle anthrax, saying:

What impressed us was the purity.   We saw nothing but spores, no vegetative material or debris or anything that would suggest this was crude material.  This was highly concentrated and purified anthrax spores.

Yet, some chemical engineers keep telling me this is impossible and that the spores would have to be coated with silica or some other substance for them to act that way.  One of them pointed out this comment from THIS LINK about "fine-grained particles":

the processing of fine-grained particles with diameters between 1 and 10 microns is complicated due to strong van-der-Waals attraction forces. With increasing fineness of the particles, the van-der-Waals-force between the particles increases in comparison to the gravity force. This effect causes the particles to agglomerate or to stick to surfaces. In order to improve the handling properties, the fine-grained particles (host-particles) are coated with various nano-particles (guest-particles).

the relative strength of van der Waals forces acting upon small particles, increases with decreasing particle size.  Thus, powders of very small particles with diameters of only some microns tend to clump and form aggregates.

NOTE added Dec. 19:  It's no coincidence that when the Washington Post wanted to promote a conspiracy theory about coatings on the attack spores with their Oct. 28, 2002, article "FBI's Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted" they didn't use any microbiologists, they relied upon 3 chemical engineers, a "pharmaceutical scientist", a manufacturer of spray dryers and a biologist who openly admitted he didn't know anything about anthrax spores.  Lesson: If you want to promote a theory about coatings on spores, you get experts who know about coatings, you don't go to experts who know about spores - because they'll tell you coating spores is nonsense.  End of added Note.

I discuss this argument on page156 of my book, but I leave it unresolved.  Subsequent research indicated to me that spores do not bind in any significant way because they are non-polar, and van der Waals forces apply primarily to polar substances.  But my research falls on deaf ears when talking with engineers.  They simply cite quotes from engineering text books or from articles like the ones above and suggest that all the microbiologists in the world are either mistaken or are part of some grand conspiracy involving the FBI, USAMRIID, top bioweapons experts and everyone in the world who disagrees with engineering facts about van der Waals forces.

It seems to me there MUST be some source which can permanently and authoritatively resolve this dispute.  Simple facts alone wouldn't be enough.  They'd have to be facts which specifically and scientifically address the subject of how van der Waals forces affect spores and why the effect on spores is different from (or the same as) the effect on other substances. Plus, the engineers I deal with would only be swayed by facts and authority.  They won't even listen to someone who doesn't have unimpeachable credentials. 

I can see from the activity logs that nearly every college and university in the world visits this site from time to time, so if anyone has anything that can help resolve this dispute, I'd certainly like to see it.

December 13, 2005 - This morning someone pointed out another theory about the anthrax attacks of 2001 which has been brought to the attention of the FBI by someone with impressive credentials.  The theory is evidently about a South African drug company and can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.  It was brought to my attention via a copy of a letter sent to the FBI two months ago which included this statement:

until the FBI's Amerithrax investigation examines seriously questions related to possible South African involvement, it will be woefully incomplete and blindered.

If they did not look into my story, then a defense lawyer would bring it up and send the trial into chaos.

Over the years, I've had at least two dozen people get upset with me because I don't believe their theories.  I imagine the FBI has had hundreds do the same.

December 12, 2005 - I'm frequently sent scientific papers written by scientists who fail to see that what they are writing about the anthrax case is totally ridiculous because they were misled by the Gary Matsumoto article in Science Magazine.  Today another such scientific paper was brought to my attention.  It's titled "Literatur Review and Parametric Study: Indoor Particle Resuspension by Human Activity" and was written by 4 engineers at Pennsylvania State University and someone from Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.  On the third page it says,

In a recent study (Matsumoto 2003), researchers found that anthrax used in the attacks against the US 2001 were intelligently weaponized by using a layer of silicon bumps around the anthrax spores. The addition of these silicon bumps reduced the particle adhesion forces, thereby increasing the chance of particle resuspension.

And who are these "researchers" who they believe "found that anthrax used in the attacks against the US 2001 were intelligently weaponized by using a layer of silicon bumps around the anthrax spores"?  Wouldn't they be surprised to learn that those "researchers" consist of one person who knows absolutely nothing about bioweapons and just made it all up to promote a conspiracy theory!?

Finding this and other articles that popped up in the past week reminds me of a recent (and hilarious) dispute over the article titled "2001 anthrax attacks" in Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit".  (Wikipedia has been in the news recently because of an article someone wrote as a lark which stated that John Seigenthaler Sr. was once "thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby."  The news articles are HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.)

A couple weeks ago, several of the people listed under "Amateur investigators and journalists" tried to alter what was said about them.  Mostly they wanted the text to be more flattering.  "Puffery" is the word used by the editors who removed the added material.  One of the "amateur investigators and journalists" then tried to get his entry removed, but the editors kept putting it back - without the "puffery".  Watching the entry get added, remove, added, removed, added over and over was hilarious.

Since I was looking at the article anyway, I checked the entry about me and made a different kind of change.  The entry said, 

Ed Lake operates the web site http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com, which contains most if not all of the published information relating to the case. 

Ed Lake operates the web site http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com, which contains hundreds of news articles and scientific reports, plus many legal documents concerning the incident.

December 11, 2005 - The discussions during the past week were mostly about the images which surfaced recently of spores coated with and embedded in fumed silica.

The images directly relate to a controversial article printed in The Washington Post on October 29, 2002, titled "FBI's Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted", which said:

A significant number of scientists and biological warfare experts are expressing skepticism about the FBI's view that a single disgruntled American scientist prepared the spores and mailed the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people last year.
...

Several sources agreed that the most likely way to build the coated spores would be to use the fine glass particles, known generically as "fumed silica" or "solid smoke," and mix them with the spores in a spray dryer. "I know of no other technique that might give you that finished product," Spertzel said.
...

Fumed silica grains are between 0.012 and 0.300 of a micron in size, and will readily adhere to the surface of any larger particle, such as an anthrax spore. Coated particles will easily disperse, because the grains act as tiny "ball bearings," enabling the larger bits to skid past one another.

Under an electron microscope, fumed silica would look like cotton balls strung together into strands that branch out in every direction. Their extremely small size gives them an aerodynamic quality, and their high surface area allows them to readily trap moisture, acting as a natural dessicant.
...

In spray drying, a technician mixes fumed silica and spores with water, then sprays the mist through a nozzle directly into a stream of superheated air shooting from a second nozzle into an enclosed chamber. The water evaporates instantly, leaving
spores and additive floating in space. 

"Surface tension will pull those little [silica] particles together onto the big one," said California Institute of Technology chemical engineer Richard Flagan. "You will end up with some degree of coating." 

Bioweapons experts Matthew Meselson and Ken Alibek pointed that fact out in their letter to the editor of The Washington Post dated November 5, 2002:

The Oct. 28 front-page article "FBI's Theory on Anthrax Is Doubted" reported that silica enabled anthrax spores sent through the mail last fall to become airborne. The article quoted unnamed sources as saying that the spores had been formulated with a product called fumed silica, which, under an electron microscope, "would look like cotton balls strung together into strands that branch out in every direction."

Both of us have examined electron micrographs of the material in the anthrax letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, but we saw no evidence of such balls or strands. In July 1980, the Journal of Bacteriology reported an "unexpectedly high concentration of silicon" to be naturally present in the outer spore coat of bacillus cereus, a close relative of bacillus anthracis. Is it possible that the unnamed sources misinterpreted silicon naturally concentrated in spore coats as something that was artificially added?

Until knowledgeable government investigators announce their results, statements attributed to anonymous sources or from persons who have not examined the actual evidence should be greeted with caution.

Plus there's an image of spores imbedded in fumed silica at the bottom of page 262 of "Microbial Forensics".

It seems inconceivable that a reporter would continue to believe the attack spores were coated even after top bioweapons experts said they saw no such coating, and after USAMRIID released a photo of a "reference sample of pure anthrax spores similar in character" to what was in the Daschle letter, and after General John S. Parker, the head of USAMRIID, told Congress this on October 31, 2001:

USAMRIID next began investigating the dry powder on 18 October by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).  This method revealed particle aggregates of varying sizes comprised solely of spores without a visible binding matrix.  The material seen under SEM ranged in size from single spores to aggregates of spores up to 100 microns or more.   The spores within the aggregate were uniform in appearance.  The aggregates had a propensity to pulverize. 

It also seems inconceivable that such nonsense articles would be mindlessly reprinted all over the world.  But they were.  Since such coatings would be visible to any expert looking at the spores under an electron microscope, the articles imply that there's a vast conspiracy to hide the fact that the spores were coated in some way, and people love conspiracy theories - no matter how preposterous those conspiracy theories are. 

As a result, it's clearly important to correct popular misconceptions when discussing the subject of microbial forensics in court.  If you don't, the popular misconceptions could be on the minds of jurors and affect their decisions.  The authors of "Microbial Forensics" did that with their pictures of coated spores.  They provide pictures which prosecutors can show to jurors to help prove that the media's reports about coatings on the attack anthrax are total fiction and should be ignored.

Forensics is about proving things in court.  Sometimes you can't prove what needs to be proven without first clearing up popular misconceptions generated by the media.

As I was writing the above comments, I began wondering why General Parker thought it was significant that the attack anthrax did NOT have a "visible binding matrix".

Researching the term, I found that a "binding matrix" is used to extract DNA, and the binding matrix consists of "silica beads that trap DNA".

So, it seems the absence of a "binding matrix" was viewed as significant to General Parker because it indicated that the detected silicon and oxygen (at the time thought to be silica) did not come from such a compound. They'd looked for silica particles and found none.

Plowing on further through articles mentioning "binding matrix", I stumbled upon a report produced for the Hazardous Materials Response Unit (HMRU) division of the FBI by  the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  The report can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Among other things, the report explains how they refine and dry pure spores using procedures which were known long before 9/11.  It says on page 4:

Purified spores (Figure 2) were freeze dried and stored at -20°C.  Reproducibly, a batch of twelve 2 x SG plates yielded ~200 mg of pure spores with a spore density of ~10¹² spores/g.

So, this report confirms what some experts have been saying for the past 4 years: Creating trillion-spore-per-gram concentrations is a routine lab procedure!

The authors of the Washington Post and Science Magazine articles either simply didn't bother to learn the differences between what was created via 1950s mass production techniques and what can be easily created in a lab - or they ignored those differences.  They were promoting a conspiracy theory, and when you are promoting a conspiracy theory, you ignore the facts which do not support that theory.

The same thing happened with the journalists who helped Barbara Hatch Rosenberg promote her conspiracy theory about the FBI covering up for Dr. Hatfill.

When I'd completed writing the above comments, I began wondering again about General Parker's testimony.  The quote I used was from this Opening Statement.  Was the actual testimony on-line somewhere.  As it turns out, it is.  It's HERE.  I don't think I've ever read it before, but it contains a lot of interesting material, particularly about the confusion over the meaning of the term "weaponization".   At one point, General Parker says,

The term ``weaponization'' has no real scientific or medical meaning

"Weaponized"' says more than we know.  What we really mean is that it is highly energetic and it can float around in the air.

Back in Febuary of 2003 I wrote a section titled "Weaponization is just a Buzz Word" for this web site.  Clearly it's still just a buzz word.  Few can agree on what it truly means. 

In discussions about the above comments, someone who continues to believe that the attack anthrax spores were coated pointed out an article titled "Silica grains detected in anthrax letter are tiny clues" which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle immediately after the testimony by General Parker.  Where did they get the idea that there were "silica grains" in the Daschle anthrax?  Neither the word "silica" nor the word "grains" appears anywhere in General Parker's testimony. Was it assumed because General Parker said they had detected "silica"?   General Parker certainly said nothing about "silica grains".  In fact, he suggested just the opposite when he said there was "no visible binding matrix".  And here's another statement from the Chronicle which appears to have come direct from the imagination of the reporter:

Yet the silica found in the Daschle letter, which contained a high concentration of anthrax spores and had a milled appearance, could account for its efficient spread.

There seems no end to the nonsense printed about the attack anthrax by the media.

December 7, 2005 - According to the Docket, a "Joint Report of Parties' Conference" was filed in the Hatfill v Foster lawsuit today.  It contains the plan for discovery (and possibly the planned trial date), but the document isn't available for downloading via the Net. 

December 5-7, 2005 - One of the people with whom I regularly discuss the anthrax attacks is Ross E. Getman, an attorney residing in New York State who maintains a web site which describes in great detail his belief that al Qaeda was behind the anthrax attacks.  Today (Monday) he updated his site with some interesting (but confusing) information about the route the Ames strain took between its discovery in Texas in 1980 and its use at the USAMRIID labs in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.  His new information can be accessed by clicking HERE.

NOTE added June 25, 2006: The information in this comment is contradicted by solid facts and is no longer considered valid.  See the entry for June 26, 2006.

The information actually comes from a woman who is also involved in our discussions and who was a student at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, around 1990.  She talked with Ross E. Getman because she also believes that al Qaeda was somehow behind the anthrax attacks of 2001.  I'll call her "Molly" to keep her anonymous.  Molly has been trying to get the FBI to address her beliefs for years.  Among other things, her beliefs relate to a package she received while she was a student at ISU and to something that she saw when visiting a student health center.  Here's how she suggested I should describe the incident:

Molly was contacted because she was a student at Iowa State University and had witnessed a strange incident that at the time she could not explain.  The incident involved a mis-delivered package and anthrax-like sores.   The sores that Molly saw [on a patient in a student health center] were not painful and dripped profusely.  For some time Molly thought that they were NOT anthrax, but then read GERMS by Judith Miller.  One quote peeked her interest.  It is a statement by Margano, one of the postal employees that had contracted cutaneous anthrax, saying that his sore "dripped, dripped, dripped like a faucet."

(1) They have no problem with the information being made public.  [Molly] expressly asked them and they assured her there was no problem in disclosing anything they told her.  So getting this fact straight will not impair the investigation.

(2)  There  are no cover-ups of any  kind.  Just continued investigation and the usual confidentiality of such an investigation.  They say a great deal of information is being kept from the public (but this #1 is not one of them).

(3) The Postal Inspectors report they are under intense pressure to solve the case.

The key fact Molly learned was that the Ames stain of anthrax apparently did not get shipped directly from Texas to Ft. Detrick in 1980 as is generally believed and as was reported in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Instead, two vials of what would be later become known as "the Ames stain" were first shipped to the USDA labs in Ames, Iowa.  A sample (one of the vials?) was then sent on to Ft. Detrick in response to a circulated request from Ft. Detrick asking for new samples of anthrax. NPR got it right when they reported:

[Mr. CONRAD EUGSTER (Director, Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, Texas A&M University] says they either sent it directly to Ft. Detrick or to the USDA in Ames, which sent it along. Either way, when it arrived at Ft. Detrick, the return address read `Ames.' From that point on, it was known as the Ames strain, even though it came from Texas.

We have responded to over 80 telephone calls from reporters and have had 7 television interviews dealing with inaccurate information regarding anthrax in Iowa. Our message is that there is no research underway and there are no stocks of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis (the causal bacterium of anthrax) stored in the College of Veterinary Medicine. There were cultures of historic interest - dried specimens dating from isolation in 1928 that had been maintained in the college over the years. After contacting appropriate authorities, these specimens were sterilized and incinerated.

The controversy over the "Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis" will not be resolved until appropriate authorities investigating these strains have released their information.

Scientific reports show that one "Ames strain" originated in 1980 (not the 1950s as indicated in early news reports). This strain appears to have been shipped from the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in 1980. USAMRIID researchers designated this strain as the "Ames strain" and supplied it to different labs in the U.S.

The National Veterinary Services Laboratories and other USDA laboratories in Ames have had outstanding and thorough security measures in place for the last decade, safety regulations that are more than adequate to deal with this level of biosecurity. Governor Vilsack's use of the Iowa Highway Patrol to strengthen the perimeter security in October was a measure of the dedication of the State of Iowa to the security of our animal health industry in Iowa. Legislators dealing with funding of the major reconstruction of USDA facilities in Ames, which is now underway, must be assured of the high level of security of these laboratories.

A lot of the confusion results from the fact that there are at least two labs storing anthrax samples in Ames, Iowa: the USDA lab (which has Ames and other strains) and the labs at the Iowa State University (which has other strains).  The USDA lab is the one which received the Ames and forwarded it to Ft. Detrick (it's location 3 on the map below).The ISU labs (location 1 on the map below) have no record of ever having any sample of the Ames strain. 

The fact that unwanted samples of bacteria were destroyed by ISU is a big part of many conspiracy theories. 

Whatever the reason for postal inspectors contacting Molly, this information shows (1) that the Ames strain went to Iowa but (2) it never went to Iowa State University where Molly was a student when she received the suspicious package. 

For those following the anthrax investigation, however, we now know that there is another possible source for the Ames.  Unless there's some way to firmly prove via the DNA that the attack anthrax didn't come from the USDA labs, those USDA labs are a "possible" source for the attack anthrax - even though the USDA says there have been no thefts from their facility.  And for those who believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks, that's just one more place where al Qaeda could have gotten it.

NOTE: The above entry has probably been modified about 10 times over 3 days as new information and corrections continued to come in.

December 4, 2005 - When I checked the Docket in the Hatfill v Ashcroft et al lawsuit yesterday, I found some new entries where the government requested more time to respond to Dr. Hatfill's amended lawsuit.  But, it also appears that Dr. Hatfill will be filing another amended version of his lawsuit sometime this week, so the government won't even have to respond to the first amended suit because they can just wait and respond to the next amended version.  In a "Stipulation" that was also filed, there was an agreement that Dr. Hatfill's lawyers could depose twenty "current and former government employees", but "Dr. Hatfill reserves the right to seek leave of the Court to take the deposition of additional government witnesses, in excess of the twenty agreed by this stipulation."  So, I guess it's an agreement unless Dr. Hatfill decides to go beyond twenty "for good cause". 

Evidently, the depositions of FBI agents and DOJ employees are turning out to be a cornucopia of great witnesses for Dr. Hatfill's side. 

I've been told that John Ashcroft will be deposed this week.

November 27, 2005 - During the past week I read sections of "Microbial Forensics", a book of scientific articles compiled and edited by Roger Breeze, Bruce Budowle and Steven Schutzer.  (Roger G. Breeze works for Centaur Science Group in Washington, DC.  Bruce Budowle is a senior scientist in the Laboratory Division of the FBI headquarters in Quantico, VA.  Steven E. Schutzer is a physician-scientist who works in the Department of Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey at Newark.)

While it's very heavy reading, and while only a few chapters in the book directly relate to the anthrax attacks of 2001, a careful reading will uncover key information about "weaponized" anthrax spores.  The first item of importance I noted was that van der Waals forces never mentioned in the book, a good indicator that those forces are of little or no importance when discussing spores in the context of microbial forensics.

There are a couple chapters about DNA forensics, but basically those chapters just indicate that the DNA of the anthrax powder by itself would be insufficient to identify a specific lab, much less a specific culprit behind the attacks of 2001.  What is needed to identify a lab and/or culprit is what is described in great detail in Chapter 13: "Non-DNA Methods for Biological Signatures".  Authored by 21 scientists, it says this on page 252: 

According to Webster's Dictionary, a signature is "a distinguishing or identifying mark."  Signatures are commonly used in the process of "attribution," defined by Webster's as the "process of ascribing (an event) to someone or something."  A common signature is our name signed at the bottom of a letter; retinal scans and palm prints are becoming more common.  This chapter is concerned with methods that can determine chemical or structural features of biological agent particles that are signatures of particular methods of growth and post-growth processing (often referred to as "weaponization").  The detection of these signatures in a sample of a bioweapon (BW) agent can aid the attribution effort by indicating the level of sophistication of the producer, his access to particular types of agent weaponization information, and the likelihood that he could produce - or has produced - the material at a significant scale, and by providing essential sample matching data for ascertaining a putative relationship with other samples obtained in other venues. In addition, it may be possible to identify at least some of the materials used in the manufacturing process, correlate them with reference materials that have known geographic or temperal provenance, and determine the date of manufacture of the agent within months or weeks.

Sample "weaponized" spore prepartions were evidently created by simulant vendors to see what the scientists could learn about the preparations by doing various tests utilizing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), Bio-Aerosol Mass Spectrometry (BAMS), Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectometry (ToF-SIMS), accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), etc. 

Slogging through the technical details can be fascinating, but, as a non-scientist, I have to be careful about getting and reporting mistaken impressions.   It says that SERS "has made it possible to acquire Raman spectra for single molecules."  If I understand this correctly, it means they might be able to (for example) distinguish one kind of glass particle from another and thus possibly identify the glass manufacturer in much the same way as police department forensic experts can now identify the manufacturer of a specific type of car tail-light glass found at the scene of a hit-and-run by going through a database of tail lights.  All that is needed is to develop the database (which is no small task).  If you have the database, a molecule-size particle of glass aborbed into the coating of a spore could possibly be traced back to the manufacturer of the piece of lab equipment the glass came from, which would in turn provide information about processes used to create the spore, etc.

On pages 262 and 263 they provide illustrations of 4 sample "weaponized" powders containing silica, including (a) spores mixed with silica particles, (b) spores imbedded in fumed silica, (c) individual spores coated with silica, and (d) a single spore coated with colloidal (spherical) silica particles.  Except for illustration (a), the preparations seem to show "weaponized" spores which would be almost totally worthless as a bioweapon. 

I don't know if the authors were deliberately trying to show how ridiculous it is to believe that the spores used in the attacks of 2001 were coated, but the pictures have that effect, since it would be totally impossible to fail to notice such coatings or additives when examining the attack spores.  Yet, due to inaccurate reporting and silly scientific articles, some people continue to believe the spores were coated even though in the past four years no one has actually claimed to have seen any coatings on the spores.

The scientific reason behind the preparation illustrations in Chapter 13 of "Microbial Forensics" was to show just a few of the preparations they analyzed.  The overall idea, apparently, was to analyze many such preparations and then to check with the suppliers to see how close each analysis was.   If they missed important things, they could then develop new techniques to find the things they missed when doing further tests.

They have the tools to do the job, and they have much of the expertise.  They just don't have formalized procedures and scientifically verified techniques which would hold up in court when prosecuting a bioterrorist.   That's what they're working to develop.  They sum it up this way:

Webster's defines "forensic" as "belonging to courts of judicature" and "used in legal procedings."  The ultimate goal of forensic sciences is to find evidence or information that will either incriminate or exclude a subject, enabling arguments in court that can prove to a reasonable degree of certainty that the crime was or was not committed by the accused.  As such, many signatures comprise a forensic study.  One signature alone is must often insufficient to convincingly prove guilt or innocence.  It is the great preponderance of evidence, rather than the "smoking gun," that most commonly convicts a criminal.

A couple points to remember: (1) There is no statute of limitations on murder, and (2) even though certain types of forensic evidence might not be useable in court at this time, it can still be used in an investigation to generate leads and to narrow down the list of suspects.

Meanwhile, someone pointed out that a recent book titled "No Place To Hide" by Robert O'Harrow contains some information which seems to verify what I say in my book about the reason Senators Leahy and Daschle were picked as targets for the second anthrax attack.  The book is all about how we are all under surveillance in many different ways during our normal everyday lives.  And it describes in great detail the debates over various provisions in the Patriot Act which were raging at the time the second batch of letters were mailed.  The book says on page 29:

On October 17, the capital was confronting a new threat: anthrax. It was contained in a letter mailed to Daschle, and no one knew how many people might have been exposed. Were there more letters? Were anthrax spores floating through the Capitol's ventilation system? Suddenly, it became more urgent than ever to get the Patriot Act to the president's desk.

November 20, 2005 - Looking over the amended complaint in the Hatfill v Ashcroft lawsuit, I see that two new defendants have been added: the current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Tracy Henke, a DOJ employee.   Shorter versions of most of the statements below were in the original, but the mention of Don Foster is new, so is the mention of Nicolas Kristof, and the key information in paragraph 30 is entirely new,  confirming what is in my book about the FBI being pressured to investigate Dr. Hatfill:

From pages 9 through 12:

25.  As time went by without any announcement of a breakthrough in the Amerithrax investigation, a number of armchair detectives began to advance their own theories about likely perpetrators.  Among these amateur investigators was Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a professor of Environmental Science at the State University of New York, at Purchase. 

...  Professor Rosenberg's "Possible Portrait of the Anthrax Perpetrator," which she published on the Internet, described Dr. Hatfill.

26.  Despite her best efforts to implicate Dr. Hatfill, Professor Rosenberg's suggestions initially fell on deaf ears at the FBI.  Her profile was crudely done and implausibly specific, and investigators knew there was no basis for many of her speculations.  In addition, FBI agents resented the unrealistic expectations she was creating for them in the public mind by spreading rumors that an arrest was imminent.  In February 2002, the FBI even took the unusual step of issuing a press release in reponse to Professor Rosenberg's public statements, in which the FBI stated that it had "interviewed hundreds of persons, in some instances more than once.  It is not accurate, however, that the FBI has identified a prime suspect in this case."

27.  In April 2002, Rosenberg met with another academic from New York whose expertise was even farther afield than her own: English Professor Donald Foster of Vassar College.  Professor Foster had also been submitting his theories to the FBI, where they were also falling on deaf ears.  Professor Foster's early submissions to the FBI had nothing to do with Dr. Hatfill, but he began to share Professor Rosenberg's suspicions and by April his submissions to the FBI implicated Dr. Hatfill.

28.  As the investigation wore on without an arrest, public cricicism of the FBI began to mount. On May 24, 2002, Nicolas Kristof wrote a column in The New York Times in which he criticized the FBI for its failure to solve the case.  In particular, Mr. Kristof criticized the FBI's failure to investigate "one middle-aged American who has worked for the United States military bio-defense program and had access to labs at Ft. Detrick, Md.  His anthrax vaccinations are up to date, he unquestionably had the ability to make first-rate anthrax, and he was upset at the United States government in the period preceding the anthrax attack."  Kristof later admitted in print that the person he was describing was Dr. Steven Hatfill.

29.  Meanwhile, Professor Rosenberg continued her efforts to finger Dr. Hatfill.  On June 18, 2002, Professor Rosenberg received an audience with members of the staffs of Senators Leahy and Daschle, the two senators to whom anthrax-laden letters were addressed.  Defendant Van Harp, then the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office out of which the Amerithrax investigation was based, also attended this meeting -- at the insistence of Senate staff.  In this meeting, Professor Rosenberg, who had no official authority, no investigative experience, and most significantly no access to the forensic tests conducted on the anthrax letters or the FBI's investigative file, made clear to the Daschle and Leahy staffs that her suspicions rested on Dr. Hatfill as the person most likely responsible for the mailings.

30.  Assistant Director Harp was openly skeptical of Rosenberg's claims during their meeting, so much so that a Senate staffer later instructed him to call Professor Rosenberg and apologize, which he did.  Harp and his superiors were anxious to placate the senators because at the time many senators had made it publicly known that they were displeased at how the FBI had handled terrorism investigations generally and the Amerithrax investigation in particular.  Some had remarked that it was time to think about revoking the FBI's responsibility in investigating domestic terrorism and to consider turning those responsibilities over to another government agency.

June 25, 2002: The First Search of Dr. Hatfill's Apartment
31.  Within a week of Professor Rosenberg's meetings on Capitol Hill, the FBI searched Dr. Hatfill's apartment under the white-hot glare of national press.

... According to one FBI agent on site at the time, the camera crews came from Washington and Baltimore, and arrived so quickly that it was obvious they had been tipped off in advance of the search by someone who knew that the FBI had planned a search for that day.

By leaking false and misleading information to the press (and in some cases by making false and misleading public statements), while withholding facts tending to show Dr. Hatfill's innocence, the Attorney General and his subordinates succeeded in using the news media to deflect congressional and media scrutiny of the FBI's competence and effectiveness in the fight against domestic terrorism.  They also misled an anxious public into thinking that the Attorney General and his subordinates were making progress in the investigation of the anthrax mailings.  The truth is that there has never been any credible evidence linking Dr. Hatfill to the anthrax mailings and investigators have made little or no progress toward identifying and apprehending the mailer(s).

At the bottom of page 18 the amended lawsuit begins describing why Tracy Henke is now on the list of defendants.   Alberto Gonzales is evidently now on the list because the nothing visible has been done to clear Dr. Hatfill.

On page 27 is says this about Newsweek's article about bloodhound "evidence" and what the testimony from Van Harp and others obtained during depositions showed about how Van Harp dealt with the media:

Defendant Harp willfully and intentionally confirmed these factual assertions in a telephone call with Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, telling her that the article contained "pretty accurate information."

FBI media representative Debra Weierman testified under oath that she herself, acting on orders, disclosed previously secret details about the search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on August 1, 2002, including the existence of a search warrant.  Defendant Harp has testified that he frequently confirmed information for reporters if they asked him, and that on the many occasions when he was asked by his superiors to do "backgrounders" for the press he felt himself at liberty to speak more broadly than he understood the rules to otherwise permit.

So, the amended complaint adds two new defendants, it makes it clear that Van Harp, Tracy Henke, Timothy Beres and Darrell Darnell are still being sued as individuals (which the government is actively protesting via motions) as well as in their "official capacities",  plus it provides additional details about how Dr. Hatfill's rights were violated, allegedly because the FBI was worried that it might lose its authority to investigate domestic terrorists.  Unfortunately the new document doesn't provide any new insights into the Amerithrax investigation.  The comment "investigators have made little or no progress toward identifying and apprehending the mailer(s)" is still just the viewpoint of outside lawyers with no actual access to Amerithrax files.

November 19, 2005 - Dr. Hatfill's amended lawsuit against John Ashcroft et al wasn't on line when I signed off last night, but it's on the Docket this morning.  It can be accessed by clicking HERE.  I'll read it over and make comments tomorrow.

There's still no word on what happened at the scheduling conference in the Hatfill v Foster lawsuit which was supposed to have taken place yesterday.

November 15, 2005 - I just noticed an entry in the Hatfill v Foster Court Docket calling for a scheduling conference on November 18, this coming Friday, which could be a scheduling conflict with Hatfill v Ashcroft, since that Docket says Dr. Hatfill should be submitting an amended lawsuit on or before that date. 

November 13, 2005 - While I found the book "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad (released in September of 2001), to be very informative and interesting reading, page 234 contains an error worthy of comment:

The March 17, 1998, speech was vintage Cohen, quoting the poets T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Seamus Heaney, as well as Sun-Tzu, the ancient Chinese military theorist.  [Secretary of Defense William S.] Cohen paraphrased Winston Churchill as he summed up the dangers of new biology, saying: "We can return to the Stone Age on the gleaming wings of science just as quickly as we can glide into the twenty-first century.  The defense secretary did make one error of scientific fact, asserting that a person could die from inhaling a single spore of anthrax.  In fact, the fatal dose is several thousand spores.

But was it?

While I was returning "Germs" to the library, I looked through the section on bioweapons and found a book titled "Biological Warfare - Opposing Viewpoints".  It contains an article dated October 18, 2001, by a scientist named Steven Milloy who operates a web site called JunkScience.com where he supposedly debunks "junk science".  The article is titled "The Threat of Anthrax Has Been Exaggerated" and says this:

Alarmists say, "One billionth of a gram [of anthrax], smaller than a speck of dust can kill."  But one anthrax spore, even thousands of spores will not kill anyone.

Wool sorters inhale 150 to 700 anthrax spores per hour continually without danger.  Laboratory studies indicate that about 10,000 spores are necessary to start an infection by inhalation.

And, if I tried hard enough, I could probably find dozens of newspaper articles and web pages which say that it takes thousands of spores to cause inhalation anthrax.  Here are a couple links:

And to get a fatal dose, each person would have to inhale roughly 5,000 to 10,000 spores deep into his lungs.

A lethal dose of anthrax is considered to be 10,000 spores

Today - ever since the Ottilie Lundgren case in Connecticut - it is believed that an elderly person or someone with a weakened immune system or other susceptibility to disease might be stricken down by just a few spores.  In reality, there is no reason to believe that a single spore couldn't kill someone who was particularly susceptible.

[Fort Detrick scientists] could have told the CDC officials that, over the years, the Army routinely used an LD50 of eight thousand to ten thousand inhaled spores to estimate standard doses on which to base munitions fill.  This extrapolation from animal research was never intended to convey a threshold below which an exposed individual was safe. Although very unlikely, even a single anthrax spore or a small number deposited in the lungs might successfully germinate and cause infection and death ..." 

The true facts have been around for a long time.  A May 1, 2002, report from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) says this:

Recently published extrapolations from primate data suggest that as few as 1 to 3 spores may be sufficient to cause infection.  The dose of spores that caused infection in any of the 11 patients with inhalation anthrax in 2001 could not be estimated although the 2 cases of fatal inhalation anthrax in New York City and Connecticut provoked speculation that the fatal dose, as least in some individuals, may be quite low.

The most widely accepted estimate of inhaled spores required to produce a lethal dose in 50 percent of the population is 8,000. However, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Center using “probit” models, estimate that only 98 inhaled spores may cause lethal infection in 10 percent of the population.

The total population of the United States is around 290 million.  Therefore, there are approximately 145 million Americans (50 percent of 290 million) who would have to inhale at least 8,000 spores before their immune systems would be overcome, and there are approximately 29 million Americans who could be killed if each inhaled just 98 anthax spores. 

The raw numbers seem to indicate that approximately 290,000 Americans have weak immune systems which would allow them to be felled by a single spore - assuming the spore was from a strain as virulent as Ames. 

Anyone doing research about the anthrax attacks of 2001 should be aware that there is a LOT of bad and incorrect information in books, scientific articles and on the Net.  If you want to be accurate, you can't just trust a source and parrot what they say, since "trusted sources" are sometimes wrong, too.  Very wrong.

There's only one way to be reasonably certain your facts are right: understand the facts.

November 9, 2005 - I obtained a .pdf copy of the Decision by Judge Colleen McMahon to allow the lawsuit filed by Dr. Hatfill against Don Foster, Conde Nast Publications, Vassar College and The Reader's Digest Association to go forward.  And I've also created an edited version of the Court Docket for that case. 

Judge McMahon's Decision is absolutely fascinating reading. 

Here are some of my favorite passages from the Judge McMahon's Decision:

I turn, then, to the real question raised by the defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss -- whether the articles in suit are capable of defamatory meaning. I conclude that they are.
...
only an unreasonable reader would conclude that the articles were merely reports about an official investigation.
...
since Hatfill has not been charged with any crime, the articles in suit cannot be described as accurate reports of charges of wrongdoing.
...
Simply couching such statements in terms of opinion does not dispel these implications; and the statement, "In my opinion Jones is a liar," can cause as much damage to reputation as the statement, "Jones is a liar."
...
The first question to be addressed is whether the Foster article that appeared [*22]  in Vanity Fair is capable of being fairly read to have a defamatory meaning. The answer is yes. The article can be read to impute the commission of the anthrax murders to Hatfill. It can also be read to assert that Hatfill is unfit to have the security clearance necessary to work in his chosen profession. Either is libelous per se.
...
Foster came up with these theories and conjectures, not in his role as a Vassar professor, but in his second life as a crime fighter. Early in the article, Foster explains that he lives a double life reminiscent of Indiana Jones.
...
The article chronicles the investigation that he (Foster) carried out -- mostly on his own and not in response to any request by the Government -- to try to figure out who the author of the anthrax letters might be. He stated, straightforwardly, that he had "decided to speak out" about his findings because "many of the questioned documents pertinent to the anthrax case have been zero-filed" -- i.e., put in the back of a file drawer and ignored.
...
Having identified Hatfill as a "suspect" in his own mind -- as well as a "person of interest" to the Government -- Foster reveals that the FBI first searched Hatfill's home exactly one week after a Dr. Barbara Rosenberg (a scientist who shared [*33]  Foster's conviction that "the perpetrator of the anthrax crimes was an American microbiologist, probably a government insider with experience in a U.S. military lab," VF at 195.) discussed the evidence "such as it was, hers and mine" with the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
...
Finally, Foster mentions again and again the link between Hatfill and Bill Patrick. Patrick and Hatfill are coupled throughout the article -- Hatfill is identified as Patrick's "protege" and his "sidekick," and the two are described as a "Batman and Robin team."
...
The foregoing synopsis of "The Message in the Anthrax" leaves no doubt that the article is capable of defamatory meaning. False allegations of criminal behavior and of unfitness to perform one's job are both libelous per se. The article can fairly be read to allege that (1) the evidence showed (at least to Foster's satisfaction) that Hatfill was the anthrax killer; and (2) Hatfill was not fit to hold a job that required clearance or dealt with sensitive biowarfare issues. If untrue, either allegation would be libelous per se.
...
Foster and Conde Nast argue that his article is no more than a report on, and a critique of, the FBI's investigation into the anthrax mailings. It is no such thing.
...
If Kristof's columns are capable of defamatory meaning under Virginia law (which the Fourth Circuit applied), then so is Foster's Vanity Fair article.
...
"The Message in the Anthrax" says everything that Kristof [*42]  wrote about Hatfill and then some.
...
All this leads to Foster's climactic comparison between Hatfill and the wrongly accused Richard Jewell -- a comparison that Foster dismisses by stating, based on the documents he purports to have examined in both cases, that "Hatfill is no Richard Jewell." That sentence can reasonably be read as imputing the anthrax mailings to Hatfill. Indeed, since it contrasts Hatfill with a man who was wrongly accused of a heinous crime that terrorized the public, it would be hard to read the sentence any other way.
...
Foster wrote his article to place before the public his hypothesis that Hatfill mailed the anthrax-laden envelopes, to marshal the evidence that led him (a private citizen) to that conclusion, and to criticize the FBI for not following up on his leads, for "zero-filing" his evidence and failing to reach his conclusion.
...
No reasonable reader could conclude that "The Message in the Anthrax" qualifies as a report of an official investigation.
...
Foster expresses the opinion that Hatfill is a liar, a rascal and "no Richard Jewell." In the context of the article, this last assertion is a flat out statement that Hatfill, unlike Jewell, is not wrongly [*51]  suspected of committing a heinous and highly publicized crime.
...
Furthermore, defendants conveniently ignore Hatfill's alternative basis for liability -- Foster's allegation that he is unfit to have security clearance or to work in the field of bioterrorism reseach. Foster's assertions on this [*52]  point are not hedged with any "In my opinions." Foster baldly states his defamatory conclusions.
...
I reject categorically the notion that the words used do not support the conclusion that defamatory implication was intended. At the end [*56]  of the article, Foster questions why a liar and a rascal like Hatfill was permitted to work in the sensitive and secretive biodefense industry, and overtly challenges his qualification for security clearance. This does more than imply that Hatfill was unfit to perform the work he was doing; it flat-out says so.  Foster's use of the Richard Jewell comparison, in the overall context of the article, is more than sufficient for me to conclude, as a matter of law, that Foster intended to imply that Hatfill was the anthrax murderer.

November 8, 2005 - Today's issue of the New York Law Journal reports that the lawsuit Dr. Hatfill filed against Don Foster and Vanity Fair Magazine will go forward:

Articles in Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest that pointed to a former Army bioweapons researcher as the perpetrator behind the 2001 mailings of anthrax that led to the deaths of five people are per se defamatory, a federal judge has ruled.

Southern District of New York Judge Colleen McMahon refused to dismiss claims brought against the magazines and author Donald Foster for his 2003 articles on Dr. Steven Hatfill of Virginia, a researcher in the field of hematology and emerging viral diseases. 

"The Message in the Anthrax," McMahon said, "does contain references to the fact that the FBI was conducting an investigation into the anthrax mailings that occurred in the autumn of 2001."

"And the article criticizes the FBI," she said. "But it does not take a literary forensicist to figure out that the focus of the article is Foster's investigation, not the FBI's. And to the extent the article is critical of the FBI, it is because the FBI has yet to reach Foster's conclusions about Hatfill."

In the end, she said, "No reasonable reader could conclude that 'The Message in the Anthrax' qualifies as a report of an official investigation."

Nor could the article be read as pure opinion under Virginia law. 

November 7, 2005 - Here are some additional comments about "weaponizing" spores by removing the static charge.  (See yesterday's comments for further details.) 

Passing hot, dry air over an object can cause the object to pick up a static charge.  Spray drying spores will give them a static charge, as will other drying or grinding processes.  Removing that static charge can be viewed as "weaponizing" the spores.

However, when you put a "Bounce" or "Snuggle" anti-static sheet into the dryer with your newly washed clothes, you are not "weaponizing" your clothes by eliminating the static charge drying would put into them.  There are also sprays which will reduced the static charge in clothes and on surfaces such as computer screens.  Obviously, There is no "weaponization" involved in such activities. 

The definition gets tricky when a manufacturer prepares dry Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) spores or Bacillus globigii (BG) spores to make insecticides.  If he removes the static charge, is he "weaponizing" the spores?  He hasn't created a weapon, since the spores are relatively harmless, and he's using them for good purposes.  But, if he prepared the spores to sell as an anthrax simulant to makers of testing equipment, he has simulated the creation of a weapon, so in that context he is "weaponizing" the Bt or BG.

The point is: While removing the static charge from anthrax spores can be considered to be "weaponizing" the spores, the techniques for removing such a static charge are not something only a professional bioweapons expert would know.  But removing the static charge is something else the culprit would have needed to know how to do, and removing the static charge is something else the culprit could not do without access to the right chemicals and/or equipment.

November 6, 2005 - While I feel reluctant to put up links to college papers and college course materials which parrot nonsense from Gary Matsumoto's November 28, 2003, article in Science Magazine, I don't have any problem with showing other kinds of links.

This is from The Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota and is dated July 30, 2004:

The anthrax spores used in the 2001 attack were electrostatically charged to make them more easily dispersible, and they were covered with polymerized glass and silica to prevent clumping.

But it isn't just the nonsense about coatings, it's also the nonsense about the spores being "electrostatically charged to make them more easily dispersible".  That is not only total nonsense, it is just the opposite of what is true.  The Science magazine article is a primary source for that, too:

The Senate anthrax spores carried like electrical charges, and some experts believe that they were added deliberately to aid dispersal. 

Investigators say whoever is behind the anthrax attacks may have missed a crucial deadly detail. They suspect the perpetrator failed to remove static electricity from the powder containing the deadly spores.

According to scientists who have made anthrax for use in weapons in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, the presence of an electrostatic charge may have saved American lives. While some of the charged particles can still become airborne -- where they are the most deadly -- much of the material tends to cling to surfaces.

Investigators going through 600 plastic garbage bags loaded with congressional mail found about 23,000 microscopic anthrax spores clinging to the inside of the bag containing an anthrax-filled letter sent to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy. The sticking tendency may have made cross-contamination of mail more likely, according to one senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official involved in the investigation, because the spores would have been prone to attach themselves to envelopes and surfaces.

However, the spores would be less likely to float. "Electrostatically charged materials are very hard to disseminate," explained Bill Patrick, a scientist who helped develop anthrax-loaded weapons for the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. While Mr. Patrick said he hasn't personally seen samples of anthrax sent in a letter to another senator, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a scientist working on the investigation, he said, has described it to him.

"It's purified like our material and it has a small particle size, just as we did, but it has an electrostatic charge," he said. The charge must be removed with a secret combination of chemicals, he said, to make effective biological weapons. Otherwise, "some of it can still get up in the air," he said, "but it's not predictable."

Some scientists cautioned that the electrostatic charge in the powder could have grown as it was handled. Richard Flagan, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena whose specialty is aerosols said the mail-sorter machines could conceivably have transferred an electric charge by jostling the letters containing the powder.

For the case of biological agents, there is also the possibility of weaponization -- engineering of the organism to improve its stability or other properties.  In general, weaponization begins with the growth of the agent (lag, log, and stationary phases each have unique properties mixed in with the culture media), then fermentation; centrifuging and separation; drying; milling for respirable particle size; additives to prevent aggregation and clumping, neutralize electrical charge, and increase survival in air; and microencapsulation for stability and viability.

The U.S. Army Center from Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine's Technical Guide 275 dated August 2003 contains the following paragraph on page A-5, and the last sentence gives another new definition "weaponized" which pertains directly to the attack anthrax and may be the current definition: 

According to Hinds (1999), while individual particles less than 10µm are not likely to be removed from surfaces by common forces, a thick layer of such particles may easily be dislodged in large (100 µm to 10 mm) chunks when blown or shaken from the surface (Ref. 92).  It should not be construed from the previous sentence that particles less than 10µm can not be reaerosolized by common forces, since we now know that it is not necessarily the case if the biological agent is weaponized.  For example, we now know that settled weaponized anthrax spores (about 1µm in physical diameter) can be aerosolized, as individual spores, as spore agglomerates, or when adhered to other particles (e.g. dust), particles sizes that, when inhaled, can penetrate and deposit into the thoracic and respirable regions of the respiratory tract (Ref. 157).   Anthrax spores may be weaponized by reducing the electrostatic charge in a fashion that makes them less able to stick together and therefore have less potential to agglomerate and make larger particles.

The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate secondary aerosolization of viable B anthracis spores under both quiescent and active office conditions. Understanding secondary aerosolization (reaerosolization) of B anthracis spores in building environments is essential for exposure assessment and risk evaluation following bioterrorism attacks. Such understanding will also guide cleanup strategies for readily dispersible bioaerosols.

That makes a lot of sense, since it explains how the culprit got the spores into the letters in the first place.  Putting statically charged spores into an envelope would be like putting smoke into the letter with the intention of having the smoke burst out and fill the room when the letter was opened.  (I asked one of the people involved with the Science article how he figured it was done, and his response was that the spores were injected into the sealed envelopes using a hypodermic needle.  When I pointed out to him that, because of the pharmaceutical fold, that can't be done without leaving a hole in the letter, and there are no holes in the letters which were found, he just stopped responding to my questions.)

The culprit evidently neutralized the static charge in the spores before putting them into the envelope.  That's always been assumed to a degree in spite of the newspaper stories which indicated otherwise, but now it seems an established fact.  And the act of neutralizing the static charge seems to be an act of "weaponizing" the spores -- according to the current definition. 

I suppose I should point out that the Science magazine article wasn't wrong about everything.  It did get at least one fact right: the American anthrax bioweapons of the 1950s "had no electrostatic charge".  And, in a posting to the Federation of American Scientists CBW forum on December 3, 2003, Gary Matsumoto made this noteworthy comment:

In previous interviews that I have conducted with Dr. Ken Alibek, he said the anthrax powder produced by the former Soviet Union contained no electrostatic charge.

And, even though the definition of "weaponized" seems to have changed, that won't stop the same people from continuing to believe that any time the word "weaponized" is used, it means to coat the spores with some science-fiction based coating of silica and polymerized glass (with resin used as "glue").

November 5, 2005 - According to today's Palm Beach Post, the FBI has asked to have a meeting next week with Maureen Stevens, the widow of Bob Stevens who died of inhalation anthrax in 2001.  Mrs Stevens didn't know what the meeting would be about, and the spokesperson for the FBI couldn't be reached for comment.  However the Palm Beach Post was evidently able to reach someone at the Department of Justice:

Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said he could not comment on the lawsuit or Stevens' allegation that government lawyers were preventing her from proceeding with her lawsuit through a series of legal delays.

"But the investigation is very much ongoing," Bresson said. "Certainly, we all wish it were a solved case. There have been cases in the past that took time, such as the Unabomber case, which lasted 17 years. We have to get it right when we go into a courtroom and prosecute. The facts and the law have to be on our side."

Meanwhile, the Sun-Sentinel says:

The Department of Justice earlier this week filed documents with a federal appeals court in Atlanta calling for Stevens' lawsuit to be thrown out as baseless and a threat to "an ongoing nationwide criminal investigation." The court has yet to rule.

The identities of key witnesses and potential additional defendants have been recently revealed to Dr. Hatfill through depositions and the limited amount of discovery obtained since the stay on discovery to Dr. Hatfill's Constitutional claims was lifted by the Court's resolution of the individual defendants' motion to dismiss on September 16, 2005.  Additional time is necessary to allow Dr. Hatfill and the defendants to coordinate depositions and to obtain critical discovery related to these individuals, so that Dr. Hatfill can properly assess any amendment to his Complaint and joinder of additional parties.

October 30, 2005 - During the past week, the reports of people in the White House twisting intelligence information prior to 9/11 in order to create support for the war they wanted against Iraq have led conspiracy theorists to raise their voices once again to suggest that the Bush Administration may also have sent the anthrax letters through the mails to generate support for their planned war against Iraq.  And the fact that Judith Miller is involved adds fuel to the fire.  The book Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad wrote about bioterrorism "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" was released on September 1, 2001, and put on Amazon.com on 9/11. 

Interestingly, "Germs" shows that staging a bioweapons "demonstration" to awaken America to the dangers of such weapons and/or to justify an attack upon Iraq has actually been done.   The book describes in detail a bioweapons demonstration staged for those exact purposes.  It happened during the Clinton administration, 5 years before the actual anthrax attacks of 2001.

On Saturday, November 15, 1997, President Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen, was preparing for an appearance the next day on the ABC Sunday news show "This Week".  The following quotes are from page 214 through 216 of "Germs": 

After admitting that he had lied about his germ programs, Saddam Hussein had refused to permit United Nations inspectors back into his country.  Cohen's immediate goal that weekend was to build public support for the administration's plans to bomb Iraq if Baghdad did not relent.  He also wanted to prepare the public for the anthrax vaccinations, which he planned to announce shortly.  In their conversations that Saturday, Cohen's aides were searching for a way to dramatize the biological threat.   ...

Cohen's aides wanted something more visual to drive the point home on national television. ...

The group decided that Secretary Cohen should hold up a bag of flour and give an estimate of how many people would die if an equivalent amount of dried anthrax bacillus were spread over the city.  ...

On Sunday morning [November 16, 1997], Bill Cohen unveiled his simulated weapon of mass destruction - a five pound bag of sugar.  "Anthrax," he said, stunning the normally loquacious Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts into momentary silence.  If Saddam Hussein spread this amount of anthrax over a city the size of, say, Washington, D.C., "it would destroy at least half the population of that city.

"One breath," he continued, "and you are likely to face death within five days."

Yes, a five-pound bag of anthrax bacillus spores could theoretically kill half of Washington's population - or about 300,000 people - but only if the atmospheric conditions for such an attack were perfect, the germs very potent, and the dispersal highly efficient.  If an attack occurred during a rainstorm or at midday in hot, sunny August, the germs might not harm anyone.  Some experts privately grumbled that Cohen had presented a worst-case casualty estimate to terrify Americans.

The secretary might have overstated the lethality of anthrax, but he had publicized a threat that had been largely ignored.

One cannot help but wonder what effect that demonstration may have had upon the person who actually sent the anthrax letters 5 years later.  If somehow he'd forgotten about it, and if the attacks of 9/11 didn't remind him, he could have been again reminded of the need to "awaken America" when the book "Germs" came out.  It's the type of book a scientist interested in bioweapons would definitely be first in line to buy and read. 

As a "demonstration," there's a big difference between holding up a bag of sugar on TV and asking people to imagine it's anthrax, versus actually sending anthrax through the mails. 

Could there have been a massive conspiracy by the Bush administration to perform such a demonstration?" Although it's certainly possible, it simply does not make sense when looking at the facts.  The strain used was Ames and it was quickly traced back to USAMRIID as the prime source.  Wouldn't the U.S. government have used the Vollum strain and mixed bentonite with it to give it Iraq's "signature"?

And there are bigger questions: Do conspiracy theorists really believe it is so easy to recruit scientists to commit illegal acts?  Even attempting to recruiting someone to commit a crime is illegal.  Do the conspiracy theorists believe all scientists will lie and help with a coverup when their crime causes the deaths of innocent Americans?  Do the conspiracy theorists assume that every scientist will be eager to go along with both the crime and the coverup?  If all scientists are not willing to go along, how many potential witnesses would the conspirators have to ask before they find someone agreeable?  And do the conspiracy theorists also believe that all those potential witnesses will keep quiet out of fear if they even think of opening their mouths the administration's secret band of black-hooded Ninja assassins will drop from black helicopters to kill them?

On the other hand, if the "demonstration" was thought up and executed by a scientist who had the anthrax, abilities and equipment available, then there would be no need to recruit anyone. 

It's the need to recruit assistance which makes it unlikely that some Bush administration official could have been been behind the crime.  They're all lawyers and politicians.  They didn't have the ability to do it by themselves - or even together. 

On the other hand, history is filled with examples of lone individuals who are incited into terrible actions by scary warnings or fear mongering they read in the papers, heard on the radio or saw on TV.  Since we don't want to believe that a lone person can kill a President, start a war, or cause the deaths of thousands, people always want to believe in some grand conspiracy, but solid evidence to support such beliefs is almost never there.
 

There's another paragraph in "Germs" which looks at the need for solid evidence from different angle.  It also relates to the Bush administration's desire to start a war with Iraq.

This paragraph from page 109 shows how "Scooter" Libby was thinking during the invasion of Iraq during the first Gulf War:

Within weeks of the invasion, the intelligence reports about Iraq's biological program came to the attention of more senior officials in the Pentagon.  One who felt particularly frustrated by the report's carefully hedged language was I. Lewis Libby, a trim, boyish lawyer and one of the Pentagon's top policy officials.  His job, as deputy to Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary for policy, was to think two or three steps ahead on the international chessboard.  Where was the next hot spot?  What could be done to head off trouble?  What were policy makers overlooking as they coped with the rush of day-to-day crises. To Libby, the words "probably" and "possibly" jumped out of the reports about Iraq's biological program.  He thought the analysis was cogent, as far as it went.  But it left open the most important questions about Iraq's intentions.  Libby knew the United States had few spies inside Saddam Hussein's secretive regime who could provide so-called real-time intelligence.  The reports on biological weapons drew largely on satellite photographs of suspect sites, snatches of intercepted telephone conversations, and interviews with Western businessmen who had sold equipment to Iraq.  Libby told colleagues that intelligence analysts had an unfortunate habit: if they did not see a report on something, they assumed it did not exist.  Or, as another veteran intelligence officer put it, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

if they did not see a report on something, they assumed it did not exist.

If an analyst doesn't see any evidence to support some possibility, he can't truly evaluate that possibility.  Contrary to Libby's beliefs, however, the analyst does not assume the possibility doesn't exist.  He just gives little or no weight to possibilities, theories and ideas which are not supported by evidence.   That's what intelligence analysis (and this site) is all about: Weighing evidence.  If an analyst has no evidence, he has nothing to weigh. 

An intelligence analyst only evaluates what the evidence says.  The purpose of such an analysis is to remove bias, conjecture, speculation and fears from one's thinking.  He lets the evidence speak for itself!  However, i also means you have to weigh evidence which may or many not be reliable, usually based upon the nature of the source or sources.  That's where things really get tricky, since a biased politician reading the analysis may put a lot more weight (or a lot less weight) on the word of a specific informant than an unbiased analyst.

A politician doesn't have to believe the analysis.  It's provided as a tool for decision making.  But, if he ignores the facts and decides to go with his personal beliefs, he should be prepared for the consequences if his beliefs are found to be wrong.

Examples of improperly weighing evidence in the anthrax investigation can be seen in the way conspiracy theorists evaluated their "evidence" to point the finger at Dr. Hatfill.  Initially he was believed to be a rogue CIA operative serving the policies of the Bush administration to discredit the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention.  Everything from the "CIA safe house" used to make the anthrax to being up-to-date on shots turned out to be simply idiotic rumors, speculation and false innuendo. They believed they knew the Bush adminstration's intentions, and they dug and dug until they found "evidence" which they felt supported their beliefs.  Since they needed the "evidence" to support what they wanted done, they never weighed the evidence to determine its reliablity. They put their biased beliefs on the same side of the scale as their "evidence" to get the results they wanted.

The problem with "facts" is that they do not always support what people believe.  The solution for some may be to hide the facts or attack the source of the facts, but as we are seeing, that's also a good way to start unnecessary wars, to destroy the lives of innocent people - and to end up in jail.

October 25, 2005 - A press release from Sandia Labs today has some interesting information about anthrax that I've never seen before.  The most interesting bit of information for me was this:

The most widely accepted estimate of inhaled spores required to produce a lethal dose in 50 percent of the population is 8,000. However, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Center using “probit” models, estimate that only 98 inhaled spores may cause lethal infection in 10 percent of the population.

The main thrust of the press release is about the reliability of detecting contamination:

The sampling team found that none of the sampling methods was very efficient.

The swab system collected 40 percent of the spores, leaving 60 percent behind. The wipes collected 28 percent, leaving 72 percent on the coupons.

The biggest surprise was that the vacuum method collected only 20 percent of the spores, leaving 80 percent on the surface.

“Before this study, the vacuum method was the most highly recommended sampling method by the CDC,” Brown says. “As the result of our study CDC no longer recommends that method.”

The study also showed that each collection method has its own detection limit. Through the swabbing technique, 125 spores must be present on the surface to obtain a positive culture. Five hundred spores must exist before a positive culture is observed in both the wiping and vacuuming methods. 

A contaminated facility cannot be guaranteed to be agent-free even after cleanup because it is impossible to prove the complete absence of an agent.

I went through the book looking for any new tidbit of information about the anthrax attacks or the science involved, but it seems too general to use for arguments. 

October 23, 2005 - During the past week I was bombarded by e-mails (all from one person) containing links to articles and papers which accept as fact the unscientific, made-up theories described in Gary Matsumoto's article in the November 28, 2003, issue of Science Magazine. 

Most disturbing were all the doctorial degree dissertations, student papers and even lecture notes which use that article as a source.  The Science article is purely political!  It dismisses all the facts and statements provided by actual bioweapons experts as simply "other viewpoints" and relies instead upon the totally made-up theory of a person who has absolutely no experience with bioweapons. 

It's tempting to post links to the dissertations and lecture notes, but I don't want to put anyone on the spot simply because they believed that what was written in an article in Science magazine by a politically motivated newspaper reporter must be true.

The current Sample.pdf on this site is still the chapter titled "To Err Is Human" from my book.   That chapter explains in detail how simple mistakes were made by scientists at USAMRIID and AFIP which led to the erroneous reports in the media about fictional additives and coatings on the spores.  This isn't just my opinion, General Parker of USAMRIID even testified before a congressional committee on October 31, 2001, where he acknowledged some of the mistakes and how they were made.  Plus, author Richard Preston was actually interviewing key USAMRIID personnel at the time the mistakes were made, and he says in his review of my book: 

Lake brings a wealth of detailed knowledge to his account, and he comes to provocative conclusions that not everyone will agree with.  He is highly critical of the media at times--sometimes critical of my book, The Demon in the Freezer--but so what, we in the media ought to be able to handle criticism just the way we dish it out, and I think Lake's work deserves to be taken very seriously.

The author does not have a political agenda; he is not a conspiracy theorist; and he sets out the facts in a clear and concise, highly readable narrative.  As a result, many of the concepts and conclusions set forth in other print media are shown to be wrong and based upon faulty analysis.  I have read many books on this subject, and this book is by far the most informative!

Meanwhile, I've changed the "Corrections and Confirmations" section of this web page to include some of the information I learned a few weeks ago about what the drawing of the letter R tells us about the person who wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.  I tried to get alternative explanations from people, but all they would say is that there could be some alternative explanation which proves what they believe, and I can't prove otherwise.  Instead of just letting this information fall off the main page of this site into "history", I decided to keept the information on the main page, because it could be a key to identifying the anthrax culprit.

Plus, during the past week I found an article on a "news source" which says that because the American stamp on the pre-stamped anthrax envelopes show a "blue-green" eagle, that somehow helps prove the letters were the work of Muslim terrorists, since a "green bird" is mentioned in writings expressing Muslim beliefs.   And of course, "Greendale School" has the word "green" in it and is further evidence of Muslim involvement.  The article is an interesting view into the mind of a True Believer who can twist any bit of information to "prove" what he believes.

Finally, the discussions during the last week also uncovered a couple sentences from the October 29, 2001, issue of Newsweek article where a technical problem with making anthrax bioweapons back in the Cold War days of the 1950s was described:

At Camp Detrick, America’s anthrax warriors grasped the need to aerosolize the germ. They produced some 5,000 anthrax bombs, but even the most effective released only 3 percent of its spores; the rest got blown into the ground or vaporized by the heat of detonation. 

October 20, 2005 - According to The Daily Record, The New York Times isn't likely to appeal to the Supreme Court to get the lower courts' decisions reversed. 

Gregg Leslie, legal defense director of Alexandria, Va.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said that not taking the case further up the legal ladder could be a good practical decision for the Times.

“The Supreme Court might not take the case, might not do anything for you if they take it, or might make bad law nationwide if they take it and decide against you,” he said.

Hatfill’s attorney, Thomas G. Connolly of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis in Washington, D.C., said his firm is litigating the case, in part, to make precedent. 

October 19, 2005 - The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that yesterday, in a 6-6 vote, a federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, allowed the lawsuit Dr. Hatfill filed against the New York Times to proceed.  So, unless there's a settlement, we should have a trial in this lawsuit - probably next year. 

Interestingly, a lot of people seem to be getting a totally backward idea of the ruling, probably because of headlines like this one: 

               Appeals court denies to rehear libel lawsuit against NY Times

And this one:

              Appeals court declines to rehear libel lawsuit against New York Times

The New York Times was doing the appealing this time, so it's the New York Times that lost the appeal.  Hatfill won his appeal; the NYT appealed that ruling and lost.

October 17, 2005 - According to the Court Docket for the Hatfill v Ashcroft lawsuit, on Friday, Dr. Hatfill's lawyers filed a opposition motion in response to a motion filed on September 30, 2005, by the government's lawyers to get a "more definite statement regarding the factual basis for the remaining due process claim, the nature of the equitable relief he seeks on that theory, and the identity of the parties against whom or which he seeks relief."  Whatever they're trying to accomplish with this legalese, it's clear in the motion filed on Friday that we're going to see some important changes to the lawsuit.  And we may learn some new facts.  The new motion says:

Dr. Hatfill hearby notifies the court that recent discovery has revealed the names of additional defendants whom Dr. Hatfill must name by November 5, 2005.  See Scheduling Order (Jun. 6, 2005).  Explaining the part these new defendants played in the scheme to smear Dr. Hatfill and his firing from Louisiana State University will necessarily require the inclusion of additional factual details in the Complaint, also drawn from discovery.