New Scientific Evidence Emerges In Anthrax Case 216
sciencehabit writes "A Science Magazine investigation uses clues from a key document unveiled last week to reconstruct the trail that led the FBI to Bruce Ivins. Among the revelations: Anthrax fingerprinting was not critical to the investigation, as many reports have suggested. Rather, brute-force genetic sequencing, with the help of the J. Craig Venter Institute, helped crack the case. New potential motivations by Ivins are also revealed."
Was Ivins in Princeton? (Score:3, Interesting)
A glaring omission, meanwhile, is any evidence placing Ivins in Princeton, New Jersey, on any of the days the envelopes could have been mailed from there.
Personally, I don't see that as such a big deal. I'll assume that there's no evidence that he wasn't in Princeton on those days. Lots of criminals have been caught by credit card receipts from gas stations, but those stories have gotten lots of press over the years. Ivins was at least as smart as Lisa Nowak, who planned her crime attempt meticulously. Sure, people laughed about her using adult diapers, but I'll bet there weren't any photos taken of her at rest stops. I'd bet he not only paid cash for his gasoline, he probably checked the driving distance and his car's MPG, and bought exactly the amount used on the trip.
Re:How about..... (Score:5, Interesting)
You say: Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected.
But just below your post another /.ter mentions another article [salon.com] which says:
"The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
I hear this claim not the first time, and there should be plenty of physical evidence to support this claim if it's true (such as receipts for Cipro retained at pharmacies.) And if this is true then the attacks were expected, and the "right people" were advised to act ahead of time.
Case not cracked (Score:4, Interesting)
Forgive me if I don't believe it (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering the avalanche of bullshit the Justice Department has been spewing out (and/or failing to remember) during this administration, I honestly don't know why they're bothering to make a case. I'm not going to bother reading anything about this story because I'm pretty sure its just going to be more of the same.
I was cynical before, but at this point I don't even bother reading the news.
Re:Was Ivins in Princeton? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Idiots who run Slashdot at it again (Score:1, Interesting)
Yup, whoever posted this /. summary was in a hurry. There is absolutely no news about any breakthroughs in discerning Ivins' possible motivations.
As far as I'm concerned, the single most convincing piece of evidence against Ivins was that he committed suicide as the Feds were moving in (after they settled with Hatfill). Was he being harassed? Sure, but he was apparently a prickly fellow who wouldn't have shrunk from a confrontation that he felt he could or should win. After all, he just saw Steven Hatfill vindicated and becoming wealthy after undergoing more than a year of similar harassment.
Some other convincing arguments, other than that he had the means and opportunity, and that the analysis showed that he *could* have done it:
1) He sought mental health counseling several years back, and at least one shrink thought he was psychotic
2) He was uncooperative with the early investigation, providing unuseable samples
3) He had a history of weird, vengeful behavior, especially the sorority bit.
4) His brother did not think it was implausible that he could have done it
Paranoia or logic? (Score:5, Interesting)
How does an anti-terrorist bioweapons expert in the service of US military turn to a domestic terrorist right after terrorists attacked USA, and decide to launch a terrorist attack of his own?
All within one week, creating his own strain of anthrax, getting the stuff needed for manufacturing it and mailing it, all without leaving any evidence? Or was Ivins prepared to carry out the anthrax attacks even before 9-11 took place?
It is apparent that people with GOP connections received warnings and went on Cipro before any of the anthrax letters were even mailed.
Ivins was also a part of the investigation team, which would be standard CIA procedure, if this was a CIA op. (This is why FBI agents and coroners are used for assassinations inside USA, because they can be used to coverup the crimes.) Ivins would also likely have been easy to talk into the op since he was a rabid arab hater and neocon, as well as easy to blackmail later to take the blame, since he had a wife and 2 kids.
A lone person just doesn't spontaneously feel motivated to join al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against their own nation, especially if they work for the US military anti-terrorim team, even if their invention were to get more use.
This Salon guy has lots more discrepancies in the official story:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
It is clear to me that FBI is covering up one of the GOP's illegal Casus Belli operations for Iraq war. You can keep your head in the sand, while calling others paranoid, but it won't make you any more secure.
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been following this on an excellent site [blogspot.com] of Dr. Meryl Nass - highly recommended. Also, might suggest anyone to read this article [ucla.edu].
Thanks for your excellent post.
Re:Do you want to discuss SCIENCE? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah true, but demolitions are not done with just one explosion 75% of the way up the building. There IS a lot of air inside, but there are also supports running all the way up.
I'm NOT saying that it was a controlled demolition, only that I'm not sure it wasn't. I am not an expert (or even a knowledgeable layman) and I'm not taking my seat-of-the-pants feeling as a real analysis. I don't consider us (to include myself) capable of really addressing the question here, partly because one of the options leads us off into a never-never land where we have to ask who did the demolition.
I'm not a 9-11 truther, and despite my misanthropy and cynicism I just can't believe that any group of any size could have the buildings professionally demolished and then successfully cover it up. But it looked weird as hell, and I don't believe that the official version is all that credible. I just don't see that running planes into the buildings that far up would make the entire buildings collapse into their own footprints. But the alternative is too weird to contemplate as well, so...
No one questioning death by Tylenol? (Score:3, Interesting)
This article [emedicine.com] provides an excellent discussion of the time line of deterioration and eventual death that results comes from Tylenol poisoning.
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny that.
American culture has a dull and relatively uneventful history of conspiracies, but a long and rich history of angry loners trying to kill public figures.
Oddly enough, people always suspect conspiracies whenever something bad happens and rarely seem to find the angry loner theory plausible.
Re:No one questioning death by Tylenol? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Tylenol typically causes a horrible, drawn-out death that takes two to three weeks. The impression given by the media is that he tossed down a bottle of Tylenol, grabbed his throat and keeled over."
Dying from liver toxicity sucks. But he took tylenol with codeine. Enough codeine tends to suppress breathing (Codeine: toxic dose about 240 mg). Typical doses of codeine are 15 to 60mg with a maximum of 360mg per 24 hours. Not breathing for a period, say over 10 minutes, will tend to result in death.
If you have tylenol with codeine, you probably have enough to overdose.
They can't place him there because he wasn't there (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't place him there because he couldn't have been there [firedoglake.com]. According to the FBI's warrants, etc. the letters were mailed from a specific box in Princeton, NJ after 5 pm on September 17, 2001. Ivins was out of the office in Frederick VA earlier in the day (after coming in briefly in the morning), but was back before 5 pm for a meeting. There is no indication that they have cracked his alibi from 5 on sufficiently to allow him to make the round trip during the time window.
Unless they have a real whopper saved up (he hired his secret twin brother to sleep with his wife that night?) Bruce Ivins could not have done it alone. Which (right on the tail of the Hatfill fiasco and the Siegelman fiasco and all the rest) might lead a reasonable person to wonder if he was involved at all.
--MarkusQ
P.S. The best way I've heard of salvaging their case would be if Ivins drove up in the daytime (he might just barely have had time) and asked someone to mail the letters for him. If they had this (presumably innocent foil) in witness protection or something they might actually have a better case than they've shown. But in any case he would have needed an accomplice of some sort.
Not enough evidence is public (Score:3, Interesting)
It is certainly possible that enough evidence has been collected to nail Ivins. However, the evidence so far produced is far, far from convincing, especially the explanation of the TIGR data. It does seem like they've used a relatively small number of markers to identify the strain. If these markers are SNPs, then there is a fairly non-trivial chance that parallel mutations could cause false positives and that further mutations on the original strain could cause false negatives. And by what criteria did they choose only 4 of the mutations they successfully found? Even if they are less common mutations, there is abundant evidence that mutations of all kinds (duplications, deletions, even inversions) can happen rather frequently. But with no information, we're left wondering.
The interpretation of polymorphism data through ad hoc statistics compounded with arbitrary ascertainment bias could potentially allow the FBI to implicate anyone. If they were malicious (or trying to perform some CYA) they could even choose which markers to use and whatever hand-wavy analyses they wanted to implicate particular strains. Perhaps the research is completely above-board and is rigorous and implicates Ivins beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm very much open to that possibility. However, two things give me pause. First, the sketchy details we have concerning the data render them highly suspect. Specifically, if I'm to take literally everything I've read as being the essence of the most convincing evidence the FBI has, then I'd have to say they don't have a scientific case. (Convincing a credulous jury is another issue. See Simpson, O.J.) Secondly, the way they present the evidence is highly suspect. As one commenter suggested, what does the shoddy description of the details of the case tell us about the FBI's understanding of the relevant issues? As a scientist, I can say that I'm underwhelmed by their ability to communicate basic ideas.
Whether this is the FBI being secretive and leaving out key details or this is just incompetence, I can't tell. In either event, the cloudy picture currently painted in the public sphere is so suspect as to make anyone who knows anything about population variation to hear loud alarm bells regarding this case.
Is there anything you wouldn't believe? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-there-anything-you-wouldnt-believe.html [blogspot.com]
I'm sorry, but I can't help mulling over the preposterousness of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. The anthrax attack was made with state-of-the-art - let me correct myself, beyond-state-of-the-art - weaponized anthrax. The Russians couldn't have made it, the Chinese couldn't have made it, hell, even the Iraqis (ha!) couldn't have made it. Only one tiny group of people in the world could have made it, a handful of scientists at . . . Fort Detrick. I hate to even bring it up, but developing this expertise is completely illegal under treaties signed and ratified by the American government. The main point is that the manufacturing process needed to make this stuff was beyond the ability of anyone other than a tiny number of American scientists, and Bruce Ivins wasn't one of them.
The case against Ivins is based entirely on (questionable) DNA analysis which is said to prove that he had custody of a flask of the base anthrax material from which the weaponized powder was made. How do we get from anthrax spores to weaponized powder? According to the FBI, Ivins made it all by himself in his spare time at night.
Ivins was an immunologist. He worked on vaccines. He had neither the expertise - remember, it is beyond-state-of-the-art - nor the equipment to turn the spores into weaponized anthrax. It is as if he was trained as an accountant and the FBI told us his night-time hobby was brain surgery. Or better, manufacturing gasoline out of crude oil in the oil refinery he built in his lab, without anybody noticing. Or better, manufacturing gasoline out of crude oil in the oil refinery he built in his lab, using beyond-state-of-the-art refining techniques developed over years of experimentation, without anybody noticing.
And yet, we're told he must have done it, as he had custody of the flask. Others, some of whom were part of a team that actually had made beyond-state-of-the-art weaponized anthrax based on years of (illegal) experiments using the most sophisticated equipment and techniques, also had access to the contents of the flask, but they have been 'ruled out'. Somehow Ivins, without training in the right field, the proper equipment, years of (illegal) experiments, and a team of scientists, turned the contents of his flask into beyond-state-of-the-art weaponized anthrax in his spare time at night without anybody noticing. On top of this, he did it without getting any of the notoriously hard-to-contain spores on himself or his car or his home. If you believe this, is there anything you wouldn't believe? I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:1, Interesting)
These facts are not consistent with the FBI's seeming desire to close this case based upon Ivins being the sole culprit.
From all I've read, all they had was a *very* weak circumstantial case. They're damn eager to close it, and the MSM isn't mentioning all the red flags that went up.
I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but I was suspicious the minute the news broke -- the first article I read mentioned that he didn't get an autopsy. WTF??? A suspect in an extremely high profile and politically embarassing terrorism case commits suicide, and no one wants an autopsy to make sure there wasn't foul play involved?
And the more I read, the worse it looks. The "psychiatrist" who declared him unstable is actually a counsellor without even a bachelor's degree, and her request for a restraining order against him looks like it's packed with inside information from the FBI.
I smell a rotten fish. Even over the stench that surrounds Washington these days.
Oh please !! (Score:4, Interesting)
Bruce Ivans wasn't the anthrax mailer. He wasn't even a right wing nut job. He was just who the FBI got the "crack". FBI agents aren't that bright, they just assume anyone who cracks is guilty.
Anyway, read the FBIs story about how he mailed the letters. They claim he drove to Princeton, mailed the letters, and returned to work. He was seen at work that same day at 5pm. However, this story blatantly contradicts the fact that the letters were post marked the following day! How can he have mailed them well before 5pm but have the letters postmarked the following day?
In fact they have given no evidence pointing to Bruce Ivins except for the fact that he committed suicide. Btw, the FBI is also classifying the letter blaming that egyptian guy as a mere coincidence, despite the fact that this letter was mailed first. I'm not sure if the FBI knows who the anthrax mailer was, but it's crystal clear that they don't want to know who blamed the egyptian guy.
Re:Is there anything you wouldn't believe? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not a biologist so I can't comment directly on the necessary skill sets.
What makes me question this story is that neither the US whose bioweapons program shut down in the 72 nor Russians who had an active bio-weapons program through the '90s with dozens, if not hundreds, of scientists working full time, with virtually unlimited funding, were able to produce a weapon of this quality.
The way I see it either a lone researcher on his own, working in a government lab, has enough time to figure out how to create a bio-weapon - without anyone asking questions (remember the best evidence they have is that it was our anthrax,) or we have an active bio-weapons program (in violation of international treaties) that people can surreptitiously remove material from, or Ivins didn't work alone.
It MAY be possible that the state of the art has evolved sufficiently since overt weapons programs were disbanded that a single scientist can now create a bioweapon. This, however doesn't bring much comfort once you consider the consequences.
All three possible scenarios are alarming, especially since the FBI seems content to close the case.
trail of evidence .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bruce Edwards Ivins (the Anthrax suspect) aka Jimmy Flathead aka
jimmyflathead@yahoo.com
From: jimmyflathead@yahoo.com (jimmyflathead)
NNTP-Posting-Host: p-903.newsdawg.com
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.literature/msg/d305ab96c3af13b9?hl=en [google.co.uk]
p-903.newsdawg.com = 64.209.5.103
-------
OrgName: Global Crossing
OrgID: GBLX
Address: 14605 South 50th Street
City: Phoenix
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85044-6471
Country: US
NetRange: 64.208.0.0 - 64.209.127.255
-------
Global Crossing [NSA-affiliated IP ranges]
Phoenix AZ US
64.208.0.0 - 64.209.127.255
64.210.0.0 - 64.210.127.255
64.211.0.0 - 64.211.223.255
64.212.0.0 - 64.215.255.255
Re:Is there anything you wouldn't believe? (Score:4, Interesting)
>could not "weaponize" the anthrax (WTF does that even mean anyway?)
In this context, what it means is managing to take Bacillus anthracis growing in culture, getting it to form spores, extracting those spores in a way that they're still viable, drying them, physically separating them into a homogenous fine powder (called 'milling') and in this particular case, apparently then uniformly coating the powdered bits with a hydrophilic silica that had an associated surface electric charge.
Above taken from this wall street journal article [wsj.com] (which says these weren't physically milled but were particularized in some other way.)
There's a *lot* of work involved in making these samples, and it requires access to large amounts of very high-tech equipment, stuff that a microbiologist who is making vaccines doesn't have. The equipment doesn't exist anywhere outside of the old US bioweapons labs at Fort Dettrick, according to multiple other people [salon.com].