Thoughts
and Comments
by Ed Lake
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, August 29,
2010, thru Saturday, September 4, 2010
August 29, 2010 - The plan has been
that, as soon as the move to my new apartment was
completed, I was going to start seriously thinking about writing a new
book about
the anthrax attacks of 2001. And, I have been thinking about
it. I'm thinking about it as I write these words.
I've been thinking about it for a long time.
Back on March 10, I started assembling an outline for the new
book. But, that was before
I began going through the 2,720 pages of
supplementary documents from the Amerithrax investigation. It
was also before I started putting together the Bruce Ivins Timeline. It was also
a few days before I put together a supplemental page called "The Errors That Snared Dr. Bruce Ivins."
A few days after that, I discovered that Bruce Ivins had "taken the fifth" when asked about a
person's name. Weeks later, I created my supplemental page about "Bruce Ivins' Consciousness of Guilt."
But, more importantly, I had created the outline 2 months before I
created the Hatfill Timeline
supplemental page which suddenly caused me to fully realize that
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg had, in effect, organized a lynch mob to go after Dr. Hatfill
and accuse him of a crime he didn't commit. And, the FBI was
trying to stop
the lynch mob. But, today, the FBI is almost universally accused
of being responsible for
trying to lynch Dr. Hatfill, and the actual, undeniable, thoroughly documented facts are totally ignored!
And it wasn't until just two weeks
ago that I put together
the information about The Media & Iowa
State University and discovered that the ISU brouhaha was simply a media feeding frenzy that was
evidently started over a silly mistake,
and it had absolutely nothing
to do with the FBI's investigation.
When I look at the March 10 outline now, it only shows me how much I've
learned in the past five and a half months. In metaphorical
terms, on March 10, I was planning to build a house from a pile of
bricks with no mortar for holding the bricks together. During the
past 5½ months I believe I found the mortar.
Now, I've got the mortar and
the bricks, but what I need is an architectural design -- i.e., a new
outline. How do I put all these "bricks" together to make a
solid, sturdy, comfortable house in which to live. I.e., how do I
put all these pieces of information together in a way that is easy to
understand and enjoyable to read?
The biggest problem is that a lot of things were happening all at
once. In the fall of 2001, for example, the FBI was just starting
its investigation, which necessarily included pursuing a lot of false
leads. But one of the
leads found in the very first days of the investigation would
eventually lead directly to
the anthrax killer. Meanwhile, the media was going off in all
directions, using sources instead of facts, reporting beliefs as facts
and confusing everyone. And, while that was happening, Dr. Ivins
was learning that he'd made key mistakes, and he was trying to correct
or negate those mistakes, while at the same time he was attempting to
mislead the investigation.
I can't do as they do in the movies. I can't cut from a scene
where a scientist assisting the FBI is examinng the DNA of the bacteria
that killed Bob Stevens along side a catalog of Ames strain
information, to a scene where a reporter is listening to a source tell
him something which he then misinterprets as he writes down his notes,
to a scene where Bruce Ivins is frantically looking through newspapers
for information about how many people were dying from the anthrax he'd
put in the letters believing that no one would be seriously
harmed. I don't have those kinds of details, and it is extremely unlikely that any two key
events happened at the same instant
as is so easily and often depicted in the movies. Plus, I'm
writing words, so I can't take advantage of the fact that "a picture is
worth a thousand words."
So, I've got to organize the information in a totally different way.
And I need to decide how much I'll write about my own methods.
The book has to be about what happened before and after the anthrax
attacks of 2001. It can't be a book about how I gathered
information and tried to figure things out.
I'm somewhat surprised that there haven't already been a bunch of new
books published about the anthrax attacks, written by people who were
directly or indirectly involved. I know of one that is being
written by someone only peripherally involved. There was also
talk of a reporter writing a book about Dr. Hatfill, but I wouldn't be
a bit surprised if that didn't turn out to be a very bad idea by a reporter who
seemed to rely too much on what his sources told him and not enough on
solid, confirmed facts.
That may be the problem. It was easier to write a book about the
anthrax attacks when anyone's theory could be valid and there were very
few solid facts which needed to be understood and explained. It's
a lot more difficult to write a book using a collection of facts when
there may be
solid facts which say that your personal collection of facts is
blatantly misleading and missing important, critical details.
Mark Twain once
said, "It ain't what you know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld probably said it best, almost poetically:
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know
we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some
things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown
unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
There's a point where a writer/analyst has to stop worrying that there
might be things he doesn't
know that he doesn't know (unknown unknowns), and he
has to start writing
about and evaluating things he knows for
certain (known knowns) and
things he knows he
doesn't know (known unknowns).
That point passed when I started this comment this morning.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, August 22,
2010, thru Saturday, August 28, 2010
August 27, 2010 - Just in case
someone cares, yesterday I finished moving out of my old
apartment. I've still got a lot of unpacking and rearranging to
do in my new apartment, but it shouldn't take as much of my time as the
actual move. So, I can once again go back to focusing on
anthrax related matters for at least a few hours per day.
August 24, 2010 (B) - Hmm.
There were 67 responses to Professor Fish's opinion piece when I
started writing my (A) comment this morning, and there were 74 when I
finished about an hour later. Now, about six hours later, there
are 241 comments. And they've stopped accepting comments,
possibly because they appear to be endless and repetitious, but more
likely because some supervising editor decided 241 was enough and
he/she had to head home.
There are a few comments about the anthrax case: #68 is a lengthy
comment by Ike Solem (a regular on some forums I watch), and he provides a whole array of mistaken
beliefs that he claims dispute the government's position; #77 mentions the "weaponized anthrax; "
#112 says "the ultra pure anthrax was weapons grade;" and #115 is Ike
Solem again, cutting and pasting the same comment he made earlier in
the day, just in case some ignorant weakling who is being duped
by the government wasn't persuaded by
the first posting of his list of arguments.
August 24, 2010 (A) - Someone who
read
my comment on Sunday just advised me of a New York Times opinion piece
titled "Truth
and Conspiracy in the Catskills." It's by Professor Stanley
Fish, and it's about "The
Truth Gathering" meeting that took place in Livingston Manor, NY,
on August 14 and 15. "The Truth," in this context, of course, is
the claim that "the government" was behind 9/11 and we are all being
manipulated like puppets by the "ruling class" a.k.a. "elites."
Barry Kissin was there to present his views about the anthrax attacks,
of course. Fish describes Kissin as the "resident rabble-rouser who harangued the
audience with the sins of elites who deliberately killed 3,000 of their
own citizens and bullied 'beleaguered countries' like North Korea and
Iran."
While I generally agree with Professor Fish's comments in the article,
until I see
some solid data I disagree with his belief that the "Truthers" are
"left-wing conspiracy theorists." That doesn't fit the facts as
I've gathered them. Prof. Fish seems to be doing the same thing
the "Truthers" are doing: he's making a judgment without first
examining all the data. Here are several of the reader comments
on this subject:
Comment #8 says,
Truthers come in all shades
of radical politics, left and right, and their beliefs are as varied as
they are extreme
Comment #35:
"Truthers" are most
certainly not "left-wing" in essence
Comment #65:
I'm not sure why Mr. Fish
calls the Truthers "left-wing," as anti-government conspiracy theorists
tend to be right-wing, which is also supported by the demographic
make-up [of the meeting] (95% white, 90% male).
The 74 (as of this
moment) comments are probably more interesting than the opinion piece
itself. They seem to
show a lot of familiar patterns. There are numerous serious
misunderstandings that seem to be the result of some image seen on 9/11
or some basic misunderstanding of physics.
For example, reader comment #19 talks about a "miniscule hole" in the
side of the Pentagon and asks, "what of the fact that the aircraft left
only one single piece -just one, mind you- of wreckage?"
#24 also asks, "why is there such a small amount of damage"?
#46 says, "the
lack of bona fide airplane debris in the pentagon site also leaves more
questions than answers."
Some of these concerns seem to be matters of perception. The
Pentagon is a BIG building, and the hole made in the side the building
by the jet liner was very large.
But the hole is small compared to
the size of the building. All the parts of the aircraft
were there, mostly inside the hole. Only a few pieces of debris
were outside. It seems that in many people's minds, that just
isn't right. There should have more debris outside. It's a
misunderstanding about mass and speed and inertia. I recall
seeing photos of other aircraft accidents, situations where the plane
hit the ground going straight down at high speed. It was hard to
believe how small the impact area was and how little debris there was
around the hole. But, though initially "hard to believe," it made
perfect sense when the laws of physics were also factored in.
The same with the comments about why the Twin Towers collapsed straight
down instead of toppling over like a child's pile of wooden blocks or
some brick chimney. I recall seeing TV images of a building
demolition project where the exposives didn't go off as planned and the
structure seemed in danger of toppling over. But, it
didn't. Instead, the remaining beams on the first floor all bent
in unison and the building dropped down about ten or twenty feet from
its original position, but still upright and still largely
intact.
Besides, there's a straight-forward answer for why the Twin Tower
bulidings collapsed they way they did: due to a design decision, there
was nothing solid holding up the floors between the outer frame and the
elevator columns. So, when beams melted and a floor fell upon the
floor below, and then both of those floors fell on the floor below
them, it became an unstoppable cascade effect. The Twin Towers
collapsed from the inside
first.
I could probably go on and on, but the point seems to be that a lot of
people draw a conclusion from one piece of evidence and never look for
additional data. As I commented on Sunday, as soon as they've
drawn a conclusion, from that point on they only believe "evidence"
that supports their initial conclusion - even if the "evidence" is just
rumor and theory.
And each and every one of
them is ready to
fight with any means at their disposal any competitor who attempts to
dominate the herd with counter
claims.
August 22, 2010 - Last week,
I had what might be called "an epiphany."
A question that has been really bugging me for nine years was suddenly fully
answered. Things that never really quite made sense
before, immediately made complete and total
sense. And the explanation was so obvious and straightforward
that I had no doubt that it was the right answer. I just never
made the connection before. I never viewed things from that
particular angle.
As usual, I was
arguing with someone who simply could not believe that Bruce Ivins
mailed
the anthrax letters. And, as with so many other similar
discussions I've had in the past nine years, it was clear to me that no
amount of
evidence could ever persuade her. As far as she is concerned,
if there's any possiblity of
some other
explanation for any item of
evidence against Ivins, then it is possible the whole case against
Ivins is just
a big mess of mistakes. I don't know who she thinks sent the
anthrax letters. She's never offered any
evidence to support a case against an alternative suspect.
Instead, her arguments are totally about flaws that she can imagine in the FBI's case.
I've had countless similar discussions with countless other people over
the years, although usually it's clear that most of them have
alternative suspects. Yet, they very
rarely argue the evidence. They never argue how their evidence is better than the FBI's evidence
against Dr. Ivins. They usually only argue that the FBI's case
against Bruce Ivins is not sufficient
to get a conviction, therefore he must
be innocent. (The exceptions are True Believers who
argue that
they have the evidence, but
non-believers are closed-minded and unwilling or incapable of seeing it
as evidence.)
That kind reasoning
never made any sense to me. A lack of evidence does NOT mean a
person is innocent. It only means that person cannot be proven guilty in a court of
law. Many guilty people go free due to the lack of evidence
proving their guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.
Then, last week I
happened to read an article in the August 16,
2010 issue of
Newsweek titled "The
Limits of Reason" The article is subtitled "Why evolution may favor
irrationality." It says,
Reason is supposed to be
the
highest achievement of the human mind, and the route to knowledge and
wise decisions. But as psychologists have been documenting since the
1960s, humans are really, really bad
at reasoning.
...
An idea sweeping through the ranks of philosophers and cognitive
scientists suggests why this is so. The
reason we succumb to
confirmation bias, why we are blind to counterexamples, and why we fall
short of Cartesian logic in so many other ways is that these lapses
have a purpose: they help us “devise and evaluate arguments that are
intended to persuade other people,” says psychologist Hugo
Mercier of
the University of Pennsylvania. Failures
of logic, he and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber of the Institut
Jean Nicod in Paris propose, are in
fact effective ploys to win arguments.
Of course! How could I not have realized that before!? When
a person's motivation is to win an argument, it becomes a matter of "survival of
the fittest," and
the survivor is the person who wins the argument, which is not
necessarily the person with the best logic and reasoning. It's
why nerds do not get into arguments with jocks.
The Newsweek article suggests that, to the vast
majority of humans, arguing isn't about seeking the truth, it's about overcoming opposing views.
It's a competition.
And humans are very
competitive creatures.
We see it all the time - particularly during election time. Those
who can persuade others by
ridiculing the opposing side get elected. Those who can win
arguments by appealing to human emotions get elected. Those who
can win
arguments by preying upon fears get elected. Even charisma is
better than logic and reasoning when the battle is in the political
arena. Luckily for us, charisma isn't an exclusive attribute of
people who are incapable of logic and reasoning.
No one sees
themself as being incapable of logic and reasoning, however. From
a conspiracy theorist's point of view, there is a form of "reasoning" behind
their
belief in massive conspiracies or a belief that their next door
neighbor
sent the anthrax letters. The Newsweek article calls it
"motivated reasoning." If someone
starts out
with a strong belief or suspicion, they are motivated to look harder
for flaws in any
argument that
doesn't support the conclusion they prefer.
In arguments over the anthrax case, conspiracy
theorists prey on fears that the government is some kind of gigantic,
evil cabal run by sinister politicians who are only out to control your
mind and take away your stuff. They claim the anthrax attacks
were some evil plot to help start an unnecessary war or some kind of
crazy plot to test bioweapons on innocent Americans. And tens of
thousands of people may have helped, possibly even your next door
neighbor. The logic may be idiotic, but logic isn't what is
important when persuading people, basic emotions are the more important
factor.
I've probably said a dozen times on this
web site that the primary
tactic used by True Believers is persistence.
There's no way to change their minds, so, they'll still be arguing
their beliefs long after everyone who opposes them has given up and
gone home. And, they will view that as a victory for their
cause. It may be a "scorched earth" victory. They didn't
persuade anyone. The others just walked way. But, in the
area of
"survival of the fittest," the "fittest" can also be those who are
still standing
and who are still ready to fight even after everyone else has
quit. They view the others as weaklings who cannot stand up and
fight for what they believe -- and, in the "survival of the fittest,"
weaklings are automatically wrong, regardless of what their weaknesses
are.
Those who prefer logic and reasoning may end up sitting on
hill tops
and sulking because no one will listen to them.
Or they might start a blog.
Faulty thinking
impedes the human search for the truth, but it advances
arguments.
If your goal is to win an argument, truth may be your mortal
enemy.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, August 15,
2010, thru Saturday, August 21, 2010
August 19, 2010 - While pondering a
very interesting Newsweek article that's going to require a lot more
careful thinking before I can write a comment about it (I expect to be
done
by Sunday), I stumbled upon a different Newsweek article of more basic
interest. It's also from Newsweek's August 16 issue. The
article is titled "Take
this blog and shove it,"and it seems like the author may have been
reading this web site. The article begins with this:
In the history of the web,
last spring may figure as a tipping point. That’s when Wikipedia, “the free
encyclopedia that anyone can edit”—a site that grew from 100,000
articles in 2003 to more than 15 million today—began to falter as a
social movement. Thousands of
volunteer editors, the loyal Wikipedians who actually write,
fact-check, and update all those articles, logged off—many for good.
For the first time, more contributors appeared to be dropping out than
joining up.
Since I recently "tossed
in
the towel" in my efforts to update the Wikipedia
article about the anthrax attacks of 2001, it's certainly something
to which I can relate. Whether or not I've logged off "for
good" remains to be seen, but that seems to be the way things
are looking. Here's more from the Newsweek article:
There’s no shortage of
theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is
virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a
tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But
such
explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human
nature: most
people simply don’t want to work for free.
It wasn't working for
free that bothered me. I have no problem with donating time to
the "common good." After all, I've spent a lot of time (i.e.
work) updating the information on this
web site,
and I certainly don't get paid for doing it. In fact, it costs me
money to do it. But, there's one big difference between putting
research information on this web site and putting research on
Wikipedia. On
this web site, no
one is going to override what I write and replace it with something
that suits their own personal beliefs. The problem on Wikipedia
is the working for free and having those "aggressive
editors" distort the "tangle of anti-vandalism rules" to prevent solid
facts from being used on Wikipedia and having your hard work negated by people
who prefer their own beliefs to
the facts.
Why do so many Wikipedia editors prefer their own beliefs, instead of
the actual facts about the anthrax attacks of 2001? That's the
subject of the other Newsweek article that I'm still thinking about.
August 15, 2010 - I spent much of
the past week moving my library to my new apartment. As
part of the process,
I've also been getting rid of old books that I don't need or want
anymore. I'll still have between 1,000 and 1,100 books left after
the move.
I've hauled roughly 30 plastic shopping bags
full of books to Goodwill, including nearly all the paperback novels I
had acquired years ago when I made it a regular practice to check out
every advertised book sale within 20 miles. At an average of
about 12 books per shopping bag, that means I gave away
roughly 360 books. Counting the books I kept,
that also means I had
to make approximately 1,400 decisions.
Deciding which books to keep was usually easy. If it was a
general reference book, or if it had to do with science, psychology,
writing, criminology, forensics, anthrax, the Civil War, WWII, general
history or the military, I kept it. Even deciding what to throw
away was occasionally easy: Will I ever get around to reading Norman
Mailer's autobiography? Probably not. A biography of Gary
Cooper? No. George Lucas's autobiography?
No. So, into a bag for Goodwill they went. Same with
biographies of
President Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt and George C. Marshall.
Some decisions were less easy: Will I ever find a need for all those
books about the Watergate investigation I bought and read in the late
1970s? I
once found it extremely
interesting how each person involved saw the situation from a very different point of view:
Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Magruder. But, now I can't see that
I'll ever need to do any more research about that subject. There
are just too many more recent events of far more interest to me.
And I need the shelf space more than I need those books. So, into
the bags those books went.
(I just weighed a "typical" bag of books. Exactly 10
pounds. That means I've hauled about 300 pounds of books to
Goodwill.
I've got two more bags ready to go. But, that should be the last
of them.)
Also on the subject of books, last week I read an interesting article
in the August 8, 2010 issue of Newsweek titled "Who
Needs a Publisher?" It contains this very interesting
paragraph:
Until recently, reviewers
and
booksellers looked down on self-published authors the way Anna Wintour
scorns Dress Barn. Now new writers and established authors alike are
increasingly taking publishing into their own hands, and the publishing
establishment is paying attention. According to a recent Bowker report, the market for “nontraditional books”
in the United States grew by more than 750,000 new titles in 2009—a
181 percent increase over 2008. Five of the top 100
bestsellers in the Kindle store—which now produces more sales than
Amazon’s hardcover list—are currently self-published.
I don't know why I never looked into turning my book "Analyzing the
Anthrax Attacks" into a Kindle
book, but I didn't. That's a mistake I don't expect to make when
it comes time to publish my next book on the subject. In fact,
writing those
words caused me to spend a few minutes checking out how books are put
on Kindle, and I'm
now wondering if I shouldn't get the current version onto it.
But, I think it's going to require either some research or some
hand-holding by
someone who has already done it. The Q&A
pages seem to indicate that it's a very easy process -- almost too easy. It looks
like something I could set up all by myself in about 15 minutes at no
cost to me. But, that can't be right. I'll try to find some
time this week to
look into it. (Another interesting Newsweek article
titled "Books
vs E-Books" gives additional information about the change in how
books
are bought and read.)
There were also some other "books" in my closets that required
decisions. I had several early drafts of my anthrax book in
3-ring binders. The binders went to Goodwill. The thousands
of
sheets of computer paper went into a dumpster. I have plenty
copies of the
final version that was printed and self-published.
I once wrote a novel based upon a true story of high-adventure that
took place from
November 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942. It involved a flight around
the world in a Pan Am flying boat at a time when World War II was
raging. Years ago, an agent was interested, but he couldn't get
any
publisher
interested. So, I had lots of copies that were returned by the
publishers. They went into
the dumpster. I just saved one copy for myself. I have
other books that I wrote long ago, but which never got any publisher
interested. I'll have to decide what to do with them. Do I
save paper copies, or do I save only the digital copies in my
computer? Decisions, decisions. The copies of my
screenplays were easy decisions. I saved one paper copy, and
the other paper copies went into the dumpster. (I wonder how my
WWII book would sell via Kindle. I've got to learn more about selling
books via Kindle.)
Meanwhile, on the subject of anthrax, I notice that people are once
again changing the Wikipedia
article about the
anthrax attacks of 2001 to include or emphasize their favorite subjects.
On Friday, someone at IP address 216.195.203.66
extracted the information about the
Chile anthrax letter from the section about "Other letters reported
in the media" and turned it into a
section all by itself. The explanation: " Yes, it was
"actual anthrax," but it was just a trace, it was a different strain,
and it harmed no one. Yet, for some reason, several editors feel
the Chile anthrax letter is so important that it needs a section all by
itself. It was a
section by itself before I combined it into the
section about letters that weren't related to the attacks. Others
had even tried to get rid of it altogether. Now it's back to the
way it was in May. The IP address belongs to something or someone
at 1180 Avenue of
the Americas in New York City.
Also on Friday, someone who calls himself JoshNYC
added a new section titled "Anthrax
archive destroyed," which evidently relates to his
favorite conspiracy theory: why
the anthrax archive at Iowa State University was destroyed. The
addition uses a November 9, 2001 article from The New York Times as its
only source -- just as if nothing new has been learned in the past nine
years. The Times article uses journalistic theories which we now
know had
nothing to do with reality. In fact, it now appears the FBI went
straight to Ft. Detrick, and it was only
the
media reporters who were bumbling around in the dark as they
misinterpreted
data and went on a wild goose chase to Ames, Iowa. The addition
to Wikipedia prompted me to create a new supplemental page to this web
site. It's a "work in progress" about "The
Media and Iowa State University." Currently, it's just my
July
25 comment with some added notes.
JoshNYC also added another
new section titled "Evidence
of 9/11 link to anthrax" which resurrects the old idea that al
Qaeda was somehow behind the attacks. The three sources he uses
are actually a single article from the March
23, 2002 issue of the New York Times. He just links to the
same article three times.
JoshNYC also created a new
section he calls "False
report of Bentonite." He used information that was previously part of
the section titled "Controversy over coatings
and additives," which is now only about silicon and silica
theories. So, that change might have been a good idea.
All the Wikipedia editors I had been arguing with a couple weeks ago
went
silent the day after
I threw in the towel. There's been no discussion
since then.
On Wednesday of this coming week (August 18), my computer gets moved to
my new apartment. That's when the cable guy arrives to set up the
new connections. Busy busy busy. I'll also be
switching my phone from AT&T to my cable company.
Decisions,
decisions, decisions.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, August 8,
2010, thru Saturday, August 14, 2010
August 8, 2010 - On Thursday, I threw in the towel and
stopped trying to edit and improve the Wikipedia
article about the anthrax attacks of 2001. I just don't have
the time to participate in all the debating. I needed to get on
with my move to my new apartment, and when I'm done with that, I still
plan to try to write a new book about the anthrax attacks.
In one of my final
postings to the
discussion page, I described what they were doing as "bull in a
china shop
editing." The other Wikipedia editors evidently felt they were
"improving" the article by
smashing (i.e., deleting) important information, and I would have to go
in
and try to put the pieces back together. The problem was,
while
it might take another editor only a second to blindly delete
something, it could
take
me hours to find the
original sources and write new text in order to put things back
together -- and, at the same time, I'd have to explain on the
discussion page
why
the deleted information was important, explaining it in a way that
wouldn't generate more endless arguments, and explaining it in a way
that
wouldn't offend the editor who brainlessly
made the deletion.
Worst of all, if I tried to rush my own edits, I could easily make
mistakes, which I'd then have to spend even more time to correct. And my
mistakes would give the other Wikipedia editors ammunition to justify
further
deletions and modifications. It all became an exercise in
futility. It
wasn't worth the time and effort.
But, while I'm not going to be debating edits to the Wikipedia
article on Wikipedia's discussion pages for awhile, that doesn't mean I
won't be
checking the article and the discussions from time to time to see if
something interesting as been
posted. On Friday, something interesting was posted. Someone found the
"BIO Personal" message that Bruce Ivins forwarded to a former
colleague in July of 2000. The message was mentioned on page 59
of the
FBI's Summary Report as one part of the circumstantial evidence
case against
Dr. Ivins:
In addition, on
July 27, 2000, Dr. Ivins forwarded an e-mail to Former Colleague #1
which began “Biopersonals: I have single-stranded too long! Lonely
ATGCATG would like to pair up with congenial TACGTAG,” along with a
note “this is some cute humor for anyone who has ever had anything to
do with biochemistry or molecular biology..”(41)
Footnote 41 says:
(41) This e-mail
was notable not because of any particular meaning ascribed to those
specific nucleic acids, but rather because it demonstrated Dr. Ivins’s
familiarity with DNA, specifically As, Ts, Cs, and Gs.
In a
discussion on the Wikipedia talk page, a link was provided to the 'BIO
personals" message
Dr. Ivins had forwarded and commented upon. The message is in a
"scijokes" section of a biology web site and begins this way:
From: nathan
BIO Personals
I've been single-stranded too long! Lonely ATGCATG would like to pair up
with congenial TACGTAC.
Menage a trois! Ligand seeks two receptors into binding and mutual
phosphorylation. Let's get together and transduce some signals.
Some dates have called me a promotor. Others have referred to me as a real
operator. Personally, I think I'm just a cute piece of DNA who is still
looking for that special transcription factor to help me unwind.
Highly sensitive, orally active small molecule seeks stable well-structured
receptor who knows size isn't everything.
There must be a rational way to meet a date! I'm tired of hanging out in
those molecular diversity bars, hoping to randomly bump into the right
peptide. I want a molecule that will fit right into my active site and
really turn me on. I'll send you my crystal structure if you send me
yours!
Gene therapy graduate. After years of producing nothing but gibberish, I've
shed my exons and am ready to express my introns. All I need is a cute
vector to introduce me to the right host.
[more]
It seems to be a terrific example of "geek" humor, since it turns
complex, arcane, scientific terminology into a story that only another
"geek" would be likely to appreciate -- a story about a "lonely
ATGCATG" seeking true love.
In the Wikipedia discussion, the
consensus of personal opinions among the other editors appears to be
that this item of
circumstantial evidence
wasn't really evidence against Ivins. Indications are that those
Wikipedia editors
don't
believe that any
circumstantial evidence is real
evidence. In that same discussion, I tried to explain that most criminal cases that go to
trial are circumstantial evidence
cases, but there was no sign that anyone paid any attention to
what I wrote.
One Wikipedia editor dismissed the FBI's circumstantial
evidence this way:
The only thing that seems
clear
upon a close reading of the source is that he [Ivins] was fascinated by
and
familiar with such codes, as were
some of his colleagues, and that the FBI summary report merely
points out two instances which demonstrate Ivins' general familiarity
with such codes, a general
familiarity which some of his colleagues quite clearly shared with him.
It's a very good example of Wikipedia editors replacing good
circumstantial
evidence with
uninformed opinion. The editor assumes
that because Ivins forwarded the message to Former Colleague #1, that
must mean that Former
Colleague #1 shared with Ivins "a general familiarity"
with such
codes. However, the evidence indicates it is far more likely
that it was another
example of Ivins being a lonely, mentally disturbed "geek" who used
what he considered to be
"cute humor" to try to ingratiate himself with a woman who really
wasn't interested.
On page 41, the
FBI Summary Report says this about Former Colleague #1:
Former Colleague
#1, with whom he would become increasingly obsessed, left the lab in
the summer of 1999.
And page 42:
In e-mails sent in
2000 to Former Colleague #1 and Former Colleague #2, two women on whom
he was admittedly fixated and reliant, he expressed concerns about
“delusional” thoughts he was having and feared that he was becoming
increasingly mentally disturbed.
Page 43:
Those e-mails, in
which he treated Former Colleague #1 and Former Colleague #2 as close
confidantes about his mental health problems, contrasted with other
e-mails, such as the one he sent to Former Colleague #1 on October 27,
1999, in which he expressed feelings that Former Colleague #2 had
betrayed him
Pages 44 and 45 discuss Ivins sending emails to Former Colleague #1,
telling her about his mental problems. The one below is probably
the most significant item on those pages, because it took place 6 months before the anthrax attacks:
On March 4, 2001,
he sent an e-mail to Former Colleague #1 revealing that:
The [therapist] I saw before I went into
group wanted to get me put in jail.
So, Former Colleague #1 wasn't exact an
intimate
buddy of Ivins' who enjoyed sharing mutual interests. The
footnote at the
bottom of page 46
says this about how she viewed Dr. Ivins' emails:
Over the course of
her first few years after she left USAMRIID, Former Colleague #1 was inundated with
e-mails from Dr. Ivins, literally hundreds and hundreds of them, many
of extraordinary length and detail. As she stated in numerous
interviews, she frequently did not reply to those e-mails for days, and
when she did it was often in a cursory fashion.
I can see how a Wikipedia editor who is unfamiliar with the Amerithrax
investigation might conjure up a theory
that Ivins sent the "BIO personal" email to Former Colleague #1 because
she shared an interest in such "jokes," and therefore the FBI's
evidence must be just another theory. However, the facts seem to
show that only Ivins had the
fascination with manipulating such codes, and there's no reason to
believe that anyone else at USAMRIID shared that fascination.
Furthermore, at the top of page 64 in the FBI's Summary Report, there
is this
information about what happened when Dr. Ivins tried to share his
enjoyment of "Gödel, Escher, Bach"
with a fellow scientist:
"it
turns out that Dr. Ivins gave a copy of
this book [Gödel,
Escher, Bach]
to another scientist in the fall of 2006, telling the scientist that it
was a great book, and later expressing disappointment that the
scientist never read it, even asking the scientist to give it back to
him, demonstrating that this is not a book he would casually throw
away."
On Wikipedia, however, another editor added another opinion
about the evidence:
By
the way, Gödel, Escher, Bach won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. So
it's also rather unsurprising
that Ivins was in possession of the book.
It may not be surprising to someone whose inclination might be to
dispute all circumstantial evidence, because he doesn't view it as real evidence, but in a court of
law it is real evidence, because
all
the items of circumstantial evidence are combined and viewed
together as "the case against Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins."
Dr. Ivins'
interest in the codes described in "Gödel, Escher, Bach"
help create a very solid
case. And, the discussion about it on
Wikipedia
shows it to be one of many examples where
Wikipedia editors "synthesized" their own
conclusions in violation of Wikipedia rules. I tried to
put a stop to such things by creating a
discussion section about the Wikipedia rule against synthesizing,
where I carefully explained the rule. But, it accomplished
absolutely
nothing.
So, I'm just going to watch how the Wikipedia anthrax
article is modified over the next few months. Maybe sometime in
the future I'll get back into a mood where I'll want to do more
windmill
tilting -- but not right now.
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