The return of the "spore on the grassy knoll"...

[The Doctor]

JANUARY 25, 2010

The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved

By EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the public knew on July 29, 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...

Read the rest of the story here: Wall Street Journal

Unsolving the case...

April 2009 - "According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon."

April 2009 - September 2009 - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California could not replicate such a high silicon content in anthrax spores through any form of natural contamination. They could not even get within an order of magnitude of 1.4%.

September 2009 - "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."

I haven't been able to find anything from LLNL or NAS to verify Mr. Epstein's article. I did find a copy of a PowerPoint that LLNL scientists supposedly presented to the NAS; but I'm not sure I trust the source.

The slides do look genuine. And they do appear to indicate that LLNL could not replicate the silicon concentration in the anthrax even through immersion in a 100% SiO2 saturated solution...

[Combatengineer]

Originally Posted by The Doctor

Unsolving the case...

April 2009 - "According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon."

April 2009 - September 2009 - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California could not replicate such a high silicon content in anthrax spores through any form of natural contamination. They could not even get within an order of magnitude of 1.4%.

September 2009 - "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."

I haven't been able to find anything from LLNL or NAS to verify Mr. Epstein's article. I did find a copy of a PowerPoint that LLNL scientists supposedly presented to the NAS; but I'm not sure I trust the source.

The slides do look genuine. And they do appear to indicate that LLNL could not replicate the silicon concentration in the anthrax even through immersion in a 100% SiO2 saturated solution...

Doc,

I still find this site to be the best info on this subject:

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/

Scroll down to the Thoughts and Comments Section.

From the WSJ Art:

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.

Response:

The attack anthrax did NOT vaporize into an aerosol. No one was injured by opening the Daschle letter, and most of the spores inside the letter remained inside the letter. All of the Leahy powder that hadn't sifted out was recovered. Click HERE to view a picture of the Leahy powder. The Leahy letter may have been opened in a biosafety cabinet, but that wouldn't prevent "vaporization." Stephanie Dailey opened the AMI letter and suffered no ill effects.

There was nothing special about the attack anthrax other than it was dried in a way that allowed it to crumble easily. The repeated claim that Dr. Ivins couldn't have created it is absolute junk science nonsense

Article:

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 accidently 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.

Response:

The scientists at Lawrence Livermore did NOT do their work as a result of any request by the FBI. The work was funded by a Department of Homeland Security program to study microbial forensics. The work that was done was very limited in scope and proved very little regarding the anthrax attacks.

More:

What these tests inadvertently demonstrated is that the anthrax spores could not have been accidently contaminated by the nutrients in the media.


Just plain nonsense. The tests at Lawrence Livermore demonstrated no such thing. They just demonstrated that there were likely other factors involved in getting Bacillus bacteria to take in silicon for incorporation into spore coats.

I could go on and on, but I'd have to quote nearly the entire article, and The Wall Street Journal doesn't like me doing that.

Suffice to say: The Wall Street Journal opinion piece is the opinion of a VERY misinformed person.

[GCoyote]

So is that an artifact of the undocumented processes used to create the spores? Is it a deliberate addition to the attack mixture that the perp thought was needed?

[The Doctor]

Originally Posted by Combatengineer

Doc,

I still find this site to be the best info on this subject:

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/

Scroll down to the Thoughts and Comments Section.

From the WSJ Art:



Response:



Article:



Response:



More:

Sorry, John... But it's almost impossible to follow Mr. Lake through all of his ranting. Neither Epstein nor Lake are scientists. Without seeing the actual data, I have no idea who is telling the truth or accurately relating the science.

If the Leahy spores did contain 1.4% Si and LLNL couldn't replicate even a fraction of that using a 100% SiO2(aq) solution... The Si couldn't "have been accidentally absorbed by the spores from the water and nutrient in which they were grown."

Irrespective of whether or not the powder vaporized or whether it formed an aerosol (vapor and aerosols are two different things)... And irrespective of why LLNL was trying to replicate the Si concentration... The Si could not have gotten into the anthrax spores in the manner that the FBI dismissively assumed that it did.

That doesn't mean that it was weaponized... But if the Si content can't be replicated by any of the means available to Dr. Ivins... He could not have been guilty of the anthrax attacks.

[The Doctor]

Originally Posted by GCoyote

So is that an artifact of the undocumented processes used to create the spores? Is it a deliberate addition to the attack mixture that the perp thought was needed?

I don't think anyone knows. But I do think that the FBI is trying its best to make this case go away because they can't solve it.

[The Doctor]

The FBI did commission a study on the silicon content...

Expert: Anthrax spore coatings not unique
Originally published September 29, 2009


By Adam Behsudi
News-Post Staff

[...]

Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory... said it was clear the silicon in the spores occurred naturally and were not added to weaponize the bacteria. The same study of the RMR-1029, a flask of liquid Ames strain anthrax investigators think Ivins drew from to create the powder anthrax, did not contain silica, Michael said.

[...]

LINK

Michael used Scanning Electron and Scanning Transmission Electron microscopes to study the Daschle and Leahy spores and concluded that the silicon was naturally occurring... Even though the RMR-1029 contained no silicon.

Weber et al. of LLNL could not replicate the high silicon content by immersion in a 100% SiO2 saturated medium.

There is also an annoying tendency for silicon (Si) and silica (SiO2) to be used interchangeably in the articles and blogs about this subject.

[The Doctor]

I have found a press release from Sandia National Laboratories about their SEM work on the spores...

The spores had not been treated with silicon oxide (Si-O) nanoparticles that have been typically used as dispersal agents to make the substance more lethal. Figure 1b is an SEM image of a clump of spores from the letter sent to Senator Leahy where there is no extraneous material visible at these length scales. Further analyses of material from the letter sent to Senator Daschle show similar results. Detailed microanalysis, as shown in Figure 2, did indicate the presence of Si-O in the attack materials. However, it was associated with an internal structure of the spores, and was thus related to the growth method, rather than added post-sporulation for enhanced dispersion.



LINK

The spores are coated with a silicon-oxygen compound. This coating is part of the actual structure of the spore. So it had to be part of the sporulation process.

We can conclude that the Si-O was not the result of a post-sporulation addition of silica nanoparticles.

The spores in the RMR-1029 flask did not have this coating. So... How did the spores become coated with a Si-O compound?

[The Doctor]

The LLNL people looked at three possible explanations for the high Si-O content in the anthrax spore coatings: Passive, Adsorption and Precipitation...



They quickly eliminated passive and precipitation (the FBI assumption) and focussed on adsporption as the most likely mechanism.

They concluded that the Si-O coating could have been the result of chemical adsorption to precipitates of hydrous ferris oxide (HFO)...



But there is "significant uncertainty" at almost every step of this process.

In plain English... They don't know how the Si-O compound coated the anthrax spores.

This slide is also very interesting...



"Is silicon in spores the result of 'weaponization'?"

"Not the subject of our studies."

[Combatengineer]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...x-attacks.html

Genetic Basis for pointing to the Flask:

The FBI then obtained 1072 anthrax samples from the 18 labs it knew to have Ames

Science norrows it down to 8 cultures all at USAMRIID Police work narrows it down to RMR-1029.

Next the team developed highly sensitive tests to screen all 1072 samples for four of the mutations. Eight samples had all four. One came from a flask labelled RMR-1029 that Ivins was responsible for at USAMRIID. The other seven came from cultures taken from that flask, only one of which was not located at USAMRIID. So while these findings show the attack spores came from one of these cultures, the FBI has gone further in concluding the attack came directly from the RMR-1029 flask.

The Silicon was not in the RMR1029 flask. Ivins would have used a sample from this flask to grow his attack spores, he could not have used the flask it self, the amount used would have pinned him. So the Silcon would have been introduced in whatever environment that he grew the actual attack spores. From the same Researcher you quote.

Joseph Michael of the Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, used specialised electron microscopy to show that 75 per cent of the attack spores had incorporated silicon into their coats while growing (see image). As spores taken directly from RMR-1029 following the attacks had no silicon in their coats, and the other seven genetic matches had either none or a lower percentage, the attack spores must have been recultured before they were posted.
During this process, they would have shed their coats, multiplied, then turned back into spores. Was Ivins's level of expertise needed to turn these recultured spores into dry powder? "What I am hearing is that the spores in the letter were not special. It would not take a lot of time or equipment to make them," says Keim. Michael's images show the attack anthrax contained spore clumps, unlike professionally produced powders.

[The Doctor]

Originally Posted by Combatengineer

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...x-attacks.html

Genetic Basis for pointing to the Flask:



Science norrows it down to 8 cultures all at USAMRIID Police work narrows it down to RMR-1029.




The Silicon was not in the RMR1029 flask. Ivins would have used a sample from this flask to grow his attack spores, he could not have used the flask it self, the amount used would have pinned him. So the Silcon would have been introduced in whatever environment that he grew the actual attack spores. From the same Researcher you quote.

Right... But no one can figure out how the Si-O was incorporated into the spore coatings. LLNL's best estimate includes a lot of guess work.

LLNL eliminated the possibility that the Si-O was simply picked up from the growth medium.

The "science" says that the RMR-1029, the attacks spores and seven other cultures are all genetically linked.

Neither the science, nor the police work can explain the Si-O or the fact that at least one batch was "contaminated with B. subtilis"...

Questions Linger over Science behind Anthrax Letters

[...]

Despite that painstaking analysis and the unequivocal conclusions put forth by FBI officials, doubts linger over some matters that are mainly scientific as well as others that intersect with the broader thrust of the investigation.

[...]

USAMRIID held B. anthracis in aqueous suspensions, not as spores. Presumably, the spores sent via letters were produced in at least two separate batches, contaminated with B. subtilis at least once, but when and how remain unknown. "We don't know the process used," Bannan says. "We never found the equivalent B. subtilis at USAMRIID in any of the evidence that we had." Efforts to trace the source of that bacterial contaminant "didn't lead anywhere," adds Keim.

[...]

[S]ilicon was found within-not outside-the coat of spores used in the attacks, according to Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. About two-thirds of the spores contain that silicon "signature," he says. Attempts to grow fresh spores with silicon to determine whether it also would locate within the spore coat led to "variable" results, Bannan adds. "We don't understand why there is a varying degree of silicon from one batch to another."

[...]

American Society of Microbiology, Microbe Magazine

The FBI may be satisfied that the case is closed... But very few of the scientists who have been involved in the investigation agree.