Maybe it couldn't have been Ivins' anthrax

[nancylebov]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789293570011775.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries&nn=2

Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.

Information released by the FBI over the past seven years indicates a product of exceptional quality. The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled.

What's more, they were also tailored to make them potentially more dangerous. According to a FBI news release from November 2001, the particles were coated by a "product not seen previously to be used in this fashion before." Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.

Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.

Aside from being reminded that I really don't know enough about anthrax and anthrax production to have an educated opinion about the case, does that last bit make any sense? Wouldn't a charge on the particles dissipate while the letters were in transit?

Link from The Agitator.

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying "to reverse engineer" (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?"

This is a stunningly stupid argument. If somebody drives a golf ball down a fairway, I'd need incredible skill to drive a second golf ball and have it land right on top of the first one -- but that implies nothing whatsoever about the first guy's skill level.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Now, if you look at the latest from Glenn Greenwald and Digby and other sources out there, it looks as if Ivins was the New Stephen Hatfill, possibly selected for the role because he was too flaky to put up as good a fight as Hatfill did to maintain his reputation.

Malice, or incompetence trying deperately to veil its shortcomings--you be the judge!

[landley.livejournal.com]

> Wouldn't a charge on the particles dissipate while the letters were in
> transit?

Not if the silica layer was doped with a small amount of some negative ion like chlorine or some such. It would naturally form and keep its own charge from static electricity, assuming it didn't find something positive to bond with.

Rob