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Archive Number 20100125.0281
Published Date 25-JAN-2010
Subject PRO/AH> Anthrax, human, 2001 - USA
ANTHRAX, HUMAN, 2001 - USA
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A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>
Date: 24 Jan 2010
Source: The Wall Street Journal [edited]
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011421223515284.html?m od=googlenews_wsj>
The anthrax attacks remain unsolved. The FBI disproved its main
theory about how the spores were weaponized.
The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the
public knew on 29 Jul 2008 with the death of Bruce Ivins, a senior
biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md. The cause of
death was an overdose of the painkiller Tylenol. No autopsy was
performed, and there was no suicide note.
Less than a week after his apparent suicide, the FBI declared Ivins
to have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the
person who mailed deadly anthrax spores to NBC, the New York Post,
and Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. These attacks killed 5
people, closed down a Senate office building, caused a national
panic, and nearly paralyzed the postal system.
The FBI's 6-year investigation was the largest inquest in its
history, involving 9000 interviews, 6000 subpoenas, and the
examination of tens of thousands of photocopiers, typewriters,
computers and mailboxes. Yet it failed to find a shred of evidence
that identified the anthrax killer or even a witness to the mailings.
With the help of a task force of scientists, it found a flask of
anthrax that closely matched through its genetic markers the anthrax
used in the attack.
This flask had been in the custody of Ivins, who had published no
fewer than 44 scientific papers over 3 decades as a microbiologist,
and who was working on developing vaccines against anthrax. As
custodian, he provided samples of it to other scientists at Fort
Detrick, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and other
facilities involved in anthrax research.
According to the FBI's reckoning, over 100 scientists had been given
access to it. Any of these scientists (or their co-workers) could
have stolen a minute quantity of this anthrax and, by mixing it into
a media of water and nutrients, used it to grow enough spores to
launch the anthrax attacks.
Consequently, Ivins, who was assisting the FBI with its
investigation, as well as all the scientists who had access to the
anthrax, became suspects in the investigation. They were intensely
questioned, given polygraph examinations, and played off against one
another in variations of the prisoner's dilemma game. Their labs,
computers, phones, homes and personal effects were scrutinized for
possible clues.
As the so-called Amerithrax investigation proceeded, the FBI ran into
frustrating dead ends, such as its relentless 5-year pursuit of
Steven Hatfill, which ended with an apology in 2007 and Mr. Hatfill
receiving a USD 5.8 million settlement from the U.S. government as
compensation. Another scientist, Perry Mikesell, became so stressed
by the FBI's games that he began to drink heavily and died of a heart
attack in October 2002.
Eventually, the FBI zeroed in on Ivins. Not only did he have access
to the anthrax, but FBI agents suspected he had subtly misled them
into their Hatfill fiasco. A search of his email turned up
pornography and bizarre emails which, though unrelated to anthrax,
suggested that he was a deeply disturbed individual.
The FBI turned the pressure up on him, isolating him at work and
forcing him to spend what little money he had on lawyers to defend
himself. He became increasingly stressed. His therapist reported that
Ivins seemed obsessed with the notion of revenge and even homicide.
Then came his suicide (which, as Eric Nadler and Bob Coen show in
their documentary "The Anthrax War," was one of 4 suicides among
American and British biowarfare researchers in past years).
Since Ivins's odd behavior closely fit the FBI's profile of the mad
scientist it had been hunting, his suicide provided an opportunity to
close the case. So it held a congressional briefing in which it all
but pronounced Ivins the anthrax killer. But there was still a vexing
problem: Silicon.
Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Through an
elaborate process, anthrax spores were coated with the substance to
prevent them from clinging together so as to create a lethal aerosol.
But since weaponization was banned by international treaties,
research anthrax no longer contains silicon, and the flask at Fort
Detrick contained none.
Yet the anthrax grown from it had silicon, according to the U.S.
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. This silicon explained why, when
the letters to Sens. Leahy and Daschle were opened, the anthrax
vaporized into an aerosol. If so, then somehow silicon was added to
the anthrax. But Ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, had
neither the set of skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax spores.
At a minimum, such a process would require highly specialized
equipment that did not exist in Ivins's lab or, for that matter,
anywhere at the Fort Detrick facility. As Richard Spertzel, a former
biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins, explained in a private
briefing on 7 Jan 2009, the lab didn't even deal with anthrax in
powdered form, adding, "I don't think there's anyone there who would
have the foggiest idea how to do it." So while Ivins's death provided
a convenient fall guy, the silicon content still needed to be explained.
The FBI's answer was that the anthrax contained only traces of
silicon, and those, it theorized, could have been accidentally
absorbed by the spores from the water and nutrient in which they were
grown. No such nutrients were ever found in Ivins's lab, or, for that
matter, did anyone ever see Ivins attempt to produce any unauthorized
anthrax (a process which would have involved him using scores of
flasks.) But since no one knew what nutrients had been used to grow
the attack anthrax, it was at least possible that they had traces of
silicon in them that accidentally contaminated the anthrax.
Natural contamination was an elegant theory that ran into problems
after Congressman Jerry Nadler pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller in
September 2008 to provide the House Judiciary Committee with a
missing piece of data: the precise percentage of silicon contained in
the anthrax used in the attacks.
The answer came 7 months later on 17 Apr 2009. According to the FBI
lab, 1.4 percent of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon. "This
is a shockingly high proportion," explained Stuart Jacobson, an
expert in small particle chemistry. "It is a number one would expect
from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any
conceivable accidental contamination."
Nevertheless, in an attempt to back up its theory, the FBI contracted
scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California to
conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidentally absorbed from a
media heavily laced with silicon. When the results were revealed to
the National Academy Of Science in September 2009, they effectively
blew the FBI's theory out of the water.
The Livermore scientists had tried 56 times to replicate the high
silicon content without any success. Even though they added
increasingly high amounts of silicon to the media, they never even
came close to the 1.4 percent in the attack anthrax. Most results
were an order of magnitude lower, with some as low as .001 percent.
What these tests inadvertently demonstrated is that the anthrax
spores could not have been accidentally contaminated by the nutrients
in the media. "If there is that much silicon, it had to have been
added," Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins's work at Fort
Detrick, wrote to me last month [December 2009]. He added that "the
silicon in the attack anthrax could have been added via a large
fermentor, which Battelle and other labs use, but we did not use a
fermentor to grow anthrax at USAMRIID ... [and] we did not have the
capability to add silicon compounds to anthrax spores."
If Ivins had neither the equipment nor skills to weaponize anthrax
with silicon, then some other party with access to the anthrax must
have done it. Even before these startling results, Sen. Leahy had
told Director Mueller, "I do not believe in any way, shape, or manner
that [Ivins] is the only person involved in this attack on Congress."
When I asked an FBI spokesman this month [January 2010] about the
Livermore findings, he said the FBI was not commenting on any
specifics of the case other than those discussed in the 2008 briefing
(which was about a year before Livermore disclosed its results). He
stated: "The Justice Department and the FBI continue working to
conclude the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks. We
anticipate closing the case in the near future."
So, even though the public may be under the impression that the
anthrax case had been closed in 2008, the FBI investigation is still
open, and, unless it can refute the Livermore findings on the
silicon, it is back to square one.
[Byline: Edward Jay Epstein]
--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>
[A search has been done to find the published research which is the
basis of Edward Epstein's article, but it has not been found. If
anyone has a reference to it, it would be gratefully received and
posted. This is not to doubt the scientific basis of this article,
just to provide the standard underpinnings.
Early on, we commented that there was a silicon disparity between the
letter fill and routine cultures. And after a vast amount of FBI
investigation and ancillary research, we are right back at the
beginning in ignorance of the identity of the perpetrator(s) of this
2001 event. But one might suggest that if the silicon content was a
surprise to the Lawrence Livermore researchers, it is also a surprise
to whoever grew up the material used in the letters. It is a
technical "fingerprint" of no insignificant value in eventually
tracing whoever is responsible, a brand on the perpetrators. Like
many others, I am convinced of the innocence of Bruce Ivins in this
matter. - Mod.MHJ]
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