Thoughts
and Comments
by Ed Lake
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, March 9, 2014, thru Saturday, March 15,
2014
March 11, 2014 - Yesterday afternoon, I received a large
envelope in the mail containing a response to a Freedom Of Information
Act (FOIA) request I'd sent to the FBI on October 9, 2013.
The request was for "Amerithrax search warrant findings related to AMI
building anthrax contamination." I wanted to see if there was any
way I could shut up the Anthrax Truthers who endlessly argue that Bob
Stevens was killed by anthrax in a package sent to
Jennifer Lopez c/o the Sun magazine, a package that was opened by Bobby
Bender and
examined by Bob Stevens. The facts say their beliefs are FALSE.
I think it was the first time I'd ever received a response to an FOIA
request in
paper form. So, I had to use my scanner and some pdf software
found HERE to combine the
9 sheets of paper into a
single pdf document. Click HERE
to view the results.
Since I did the scan in black-and-white (B&W) and created the pdf
file from the B&W images, I couldn't highlight anything in
yellow. Instead, I outlined in black the paragraphs I found
to be
most interesting, and I put a large numeral beside the eight paragraphs
I considered to be of particular interest.
The first paragraph of interest is on page 2. It's marked with
a large "1" and it says:
(2) Source of anthrax release not found.
The entries and evidence collection failed to locate a unique source
that might be deemed responsible for the inhalation anthrax in AMI
employees Robert Stevens and [redacted, but undoubtedly Ernesto Blanco].
So, they didn't find the actual letter that contained the
anthrax. We already knew that, of course, but the report makes it
"official."
The paragraph on page 3 which I marked with a large "2" clearly refers
to the letter opened by Stephanie Dailey, even though her name is
redacted. The paragraph says:
The
amounts and distribution of anthrax are deemed suggestive that she is accurate in her accounting of
her having opened a letter containing a suspicious white powder, which
may have been anthrax.
The paragraph marked with a "3" begins with these two sentences:
The
following observations suggest that a letter may have been opened in
the room in which [Dailey] worked. [Large redacted section]
throughout the building generally produced zero to several B. anthracis
colonies, while samples in [Dailey's] work area produced greater than
twenty.
The paragraph marked with a "4" is worth displaying in its entirety:
The
entire area surrounding the desk of Robert Stevens (the index case) was
not significantly contaminated on exposed desk surfaces, carpet or
inside of drawers.
That would seem to confirm that the J-Lo
letter, which Robert Stevens
reportedly examined at his desk, was NOT the letter that
contained the anthrax that killed him.
Paragraph "5" describes how Stephanie Dailey opened the letter which
was addressed to AMI (more likely to The National Enquirer) but
to no
specific person at AMI. Such letters are routinely discarded
after
checking the contents. However, a white
powder fell out of this one. Dailey cleaned herself off and
then
discarded the
letter. Later, she tested positive for exposure to anthrax.
Paragraph "6" says Dailey had been absent from the AMI building from
September 8 through September 21, 2001, because she was on
vacation. And "It seems
reasonable to conclude that Stevens was exposed to anthrax spores" after Dailey
opened the powder-filled letter upon returning from
vacation. Paragraph "7" says, an alternative scenario could
be that Stevens was somehow exposed to spores that had escaped the
anthrax letter before it was
opened by Stephanie Dailey.
Paragraph "8" just says "The mail room was heavily contaminated" and
the mail room was likely the source from which other areas of the
building were
contaminated.
There is no mention of
the J-Lo letter in the report.
That's probably because there is no evidence to suggest the J-Lo letter
had anything to do with anything. The evidence clearly says the
J-Lo
letter did NOT
contain anthrax, since the J-Lo letter was opened on the third floor,
which was not significantly contaminated. Bobby Benson, the
person who
opened it, did not
test positive for exposure to anthrax. The only reason the J-Lo
letter is even an issue is because the people who opened the J-Lo
letter and inspected the powder inside changed their minds about what
it contained. Initially they believed that the powder was what it
looked and smelled like: laundry detergent. But, after it was
learned
that anthrax had been mailed to AMI, they
changed their minds and told the
National Enquirer and the
CDC that the powder could have
been anthrax.
That's one reason why the FBI went back into the AMI building to do
further testing to see if it could be determined where the anthrax
letter was opened. The evidence says it was opened by Stephanie
Dailey
at her desk in the mailroom on the first floor.
The evidence indicates that the powder in the J-Lo letter was what
everyone originally thought it was: laundry
detergent. But, because the CDC reported that there were two
letters sent to AMI that contained "powders," and because some people
at AMI changed their minds about what they thought they saw in the J-Lo
letter, some Anthrax Truthers
have argued for over a decade that the J-Lo letter contained the
anthrax
powder that killed Bob Stevens, regardless
of what the facts and evidence say.
March 10, 2014 - This morning on
Lew Weinstein's blog I see two pages (pages 25 and 26) which appear to be from the full Peter
Jahrling deposition in the Maureen Stevens vs
USA lawsuit. There's no real explanation for why Lew or
"DXer" chose to show those two pages, other than that the pages hint
that security was lax at USAMRIID prior to the anthrax attacks. I
also see a
comment from "DXer" who wrote yesterday:
I have been having problems
uploading and haven’t uploaded this Jahrling Deposition. Now when I’ve
tried uploading to Dropbox it’s not readable. I must be doing something
wrong.
Looking at my copy of
the docket for the Stevens lawsuit, I see that I provided a file of excerpts from the Peter Jahrling
deposition years ago. It's a file I obtained via PACER, not via any kind of FOIA
request. The 8-page file is mostly introduction and
conclusion. It only has 2 pages of meaningful testimony, pages 66
and 67. But, those two pages contain some interesting statements
from Dr. Jahrling. On page 66 Jahrling explains why, although he
doesn't understand anything about the contents of flask RMR-1029,
he believes the attack powders originated with that flask:
A.
I mean again I don't know. I just know what I read but I've heard very
compelling argumentsfrom the FBI, openly presented, that, you know, my understanding is that the
fingerprint was that the contents of that flask was actually a mixture.
It wasn't pure anthrax or maybe it was pure anthrax but they were
different strengths of anthrax, anyway. So somebody who had the
original A-strain of anthrax would not have come up with something that
had the exact composition that was both in the flask and spores. That's pretty close to a frigging
smoking gun as far as I'm concerned. Okay?
And on page 67 he adds:
So,
you know, and I've always maintained that just because it came from
that flask didn't, doesn't mean that Bruce Ivins did it. But, you know,
if you combine the
circumstantial evidence and all of that with that flask I think if it
had gone to a jury trial he would have been convicted. That's
just my speculation.
Q. Okay. Now, let
me ask you about the flask. Do you know -- and again I know you're
focused on virology but do you know or were you aware of the existence
of that flask in Dr. Ivins' laboratory?
A. I was not aware
of it. I had no idea what went on in that laboratory until, you know,
after the whole FBI thing unfolded. I didn't know their -- you know, my
understanding is that that flask was kind of topped off on a regular
basis with spores that were produced at Dugway, dumped in there.
So, although Dr. Jahrling
doesn't know whether Bruce
Ivins was guilty or not, he believes Ivins would have been convicted if he'd
have gone to trial, because there was enough circumstantial evidence to
convict him. That's different from the statements by most others
who provided depositions to that trial.
Yesterday, "DXer" ordered me
to upload the full Jahrling
deposition. He didn't say what punishment he'd dole out if I
failed to do as ordered, but if there isn't anything in the full
deposition that is more interesting than what is in the excerpt I
already have, then I see no reason to put the full deposition in this
site. Or maybe "DXer" just ordered me to do it because he
can't figure out how to upload the full deposition himself.
March 9, 2014 (B) - The blogger
known as "DXer" and "Anonymous" is issuing orders again on my interactive blog.
He doesn't say, however, what will happen if I do not obey his
orders. Here's his
latest post:
Ed, you serve no purpose to
me unless you do what I say as I'm not interested in your First Grader
theory.
You will obtain the Peter Jahrling civil deposition and then you will
upload it.
I will obtain the civil deposition by the government's expert, Reynolds
M. Salerno, and then you also will upload that. Thanks.
If I see a copy of Peter Jahrling's deposition somewhere, I might provide the link along with
some comments about how it shows Jahrling knows little or nothing about
the criminal case against Bruce Ivins. But, I'm definitely going
to pass on providing a link to Mr. Salerno's deposition. He has
nothing of interest to say about the case against Ivins. He was
only a witness in the Maureen Stevens vs USA
lawsuit. Plus, I'm just going to ignore that deposition
because I don't like being ordered to do things. And, I want to
see if "DXer/Anonymous" will revert to issuing threats if I don't do as
he orders.
March 9, 2014 (A) - Yesterday morning, I found eight emails
in my inbox from "DXer" a.k.a. "Anonymous." The first email asked
me to do something I'd already done back on March 4. He wanted me
to add the Arthur Friedlander and Susan Welkos depositions to my
"collection" of depositions in the Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit.
Then, in the next email, he supplied me with part of the Jay
Arrison deposition to add to my copy of
the docket for the Stevens v USA lawsuit. I did that,
even though there wasn't much of interest in it. Jay Arrison was
(and probably still is) a security officer at USAMRIID. The
highlighting on that deposition was presumably done by Maureen Stevens'
lawyer, Richard Schuler. I was tempted to (but didn't) delete all
his highlighting in order to highlight the only passage in the entire
deposition that I saw which seemed of even remote
interest -- this exchange from page 77:
Q.
Ultimately, his [Bruce Ivins'] access was restricted, I guess,
to one -- one or all of the five containment laboratories, after
October of '01, correct?
A.
Particular time frame?
Q.
Yeah. What was the time
frame?
A.
Probably late 2008, I believe.
Q.
Okay. And what was your role in that, if any?
A.
Cut his access off. My
understanding was that Dr. Worsham recommended that his access be
restricted or removed, and we did so.
Q.
And Dr. Worsham, what was her position at the time?
A.
Might have been the acting chief of bacteriology at the time, or
at least his supervisor.
Q.
When you say cut his access off, what, physically, what steps
did you take to do that?
A.
Just go to the computer and, you know,
The
only reason that
passage is of very minor interest is because the incident that caused
Ivins to be banned from all the labs at USAMRIID actually occurred on
March 18, 2008, not in "late 2008" as Arrison recalls. Ivins was
dead in "late 2008." Plus,
that part of the deposition makes it seem like Dr. Worsham was doing
something negative toward Bruce Ivins. In reality, if you know
the whole story, Dr. Worsham
didn't simply get Ivins' lab access "restricted," she also saved Ivins
from getting fired. Here's what it says on page 309 of my book "A
Crime Unlike Any Other":
The next day, on March 18, Ivins accidentally broke a flask of Sterne
anthrax. Then, instead of reporting the accident to a safety officer as
regulations required, he simply cleaned the spill and his lab clothes
with bleach. And, then he went home to wash and dry his pants before
returning to work.
It wasn't long before he was
called into Colonel Korch's office and reprimanded. Korch was furious
that Ivins failed to follow existing protocols and wanted to terminate
Ivins' employment at USAMRIID on the spot. But, Pat Worsham interceded
on Ivins' behalf and saved his
job. Instead of being fired, Ivins was told that he could no longer
work in any lab at USAMRIID for the remainder of his employment --
until his retirement in September.
That evening, Ivins wrote Mara Linscott an email filled with
hopelessness and self-pity: It said, in part:
I'm
sorry you have abandoned me. You were the one person I knew I could
bare my soul to and tell everything to, and now you have abandoned me.
You have put me on your dark list ... I lose my connections. I lose my
years. I lose my health. I lose my ability to think. I lose my friends.
What do I have left but eternity?
On the 19th, Ivins evidently took another one of his days
off, since he was home when his wife returned from work at 2 in the
afternoon. He was unconscious and unresponsive, but still
breathing,
when she called 911. Her training as a registered nurse enabled her to
make a diagnosis, and she advised the dispatcher that she believed he'd
probably taken too many Valium tablets and possibly mixed them with
alcohol. He'd been very depressed lately and was on antidepressants,
but she didn't see any suicide note anywhere.
|
The
rest of the emails from "DXer/Anonymous" included images of some
meaningless and irrelevant pages from the deposition of Reynolds M.
Salerno, who was a Sandia National Laboratories security expert behind
a 2002 report on security at USAMRIID, and there were also some ravings
from
"Dxer/Anonymous's" about his hopes to get some videos of the
depositions and some
photograph exhibits. Evidently, the more meaningless and
irrelevant material he has, the more he believes he knows about the Amerithrax case and
the
evidence. Presumably, he feels that if he has a bigger pile of
meaningless crap than anyone else,
then that means he knows more
than anyone else.
Most puzzling of all in yesterday's emails, was a request for me
to fix an error on my web site. But, as usual, "DXer/Anonymous"
couldn't or wouldn't explain what error he was talking about or why it
was an error. That's probably because a person has to
really understand what they mean before they can explain what they
mean.
But, I suppose I should be grateful. If "DXer/Anonymous" hadn't
sent me those
on-topic emails, this morning I would probably have written some kind
of off-topic
comment about Bitcoins,
a very complicated
subject which make me wonder just how many people in this world are
totally nuts.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, March 2, 2014, thru Saturday, March 8,
2014
March 7, 2014 - According to one
on-line source, the General Accountability Office's (GAO's) review
of the
Amerithrax investigation will be released "sometime this summer."
I suspect that probably means somewhere around mid-September and the
13th anniversary of
the first attack, which would be at the very end of
summer. But,
hopefully, I'll be wrong on that and the report will be released much
earlier.
When the report is released,
I suspect it will be very dry
reading. There are already a number of GAO reports available that
relate to the anthrax attacks of 2001:
GAO-03-787T:Published:
May 19, 2003. Publicly Released: May 19, 2003
If
these GAO reports are any gauge, the Amerithrax review will use some
very long paragraphs to make recommendations for improvement.
But, the report below may turn out to be the best gauge. It's
from before 9/11, and it
seems to be a GAO review of the FBI's International Terrorism
program as
requested by members of Congress:
Basically, it says that because there was so much redacted information
in the documents made available by the FBI, the GAO was unable to
determine if the FBI infringed on anyone's First Amendment rights when
the FBI investigated suspicious activity, or even if the FBI had a
"reasonable basis" for monitoring such activities.
That's probably going to be a complaint in the Amerithrax review,
too. But, even if the GAO had problems with redacted FBI reports,
just having the whole subject re-hashed should provide us with some
interesting reading.
March 5, 2014 - Today
is exactly three weeks since I
sent a literary agent a query letter about my new sci-fi novel.
I received no response. Their web site said that if I didn't
receive a response within 3 weeks, that would mean they aren't
interested. In anticipation of that, yesterday afternoon I sent
out
another query to another agent.
During the rest of the month of March, I plan to send out one query
letter per
week. (However, when it comes doing anything related to my writing, I
rarely do what I plan.)
Last week, I did a Google search for the scientific concept of
"anti-time" that I use in the novel. I thought it was a term
I
created. To my stunned surprise, I found it's a concept used in
episodes of "Dr. Who" and "Star Trek," and it has been discussed at
length as a theory
put forth by physicist Richard Feynman. So, I suppose it's
possible that one of those sources planted the idea in my brain many
years ago, and I simply forgot where I heard the term. Both "Dr.
Who" and
"Star Trek" viewed "anti-time" as a destructive
force. Dr. Feynman viewed it as a not-fully-understood theory
that could explain some observable phenomena related to particle
physics.
In Chapter 5 of my novel, I have a top physicist explain everything in
a couple pages, relating the phenomenon to the structure of the
universe instead of to particle physics. Strangely, the
explanation it doesn't appear to conflict with anything Dr. Feynman
said.
Best of all, it doesn't appear to have ever been the basis for a
sci-fi novel before. And, what I wrote has nothing to do with the
"Dr. Who"
and "Star Trek" story lines.
I don't suppose it would make much difference if twenty years ago some
other novelist used the same scientific concept. It would still
be a different story told in a different way. But, it made me
wonder if I should explain things differently in my query letters.
In the query letter I sent out three weeks ago, I tried to focus on the
characters in the novel,
instead of the science and the plot. But, since "anti-time" is not a new idea, I decided I should
probably mention the concept
in the query
letter I sent out yesterday,
instead of just waiting for the agent to discover it if or when he
reads
the novel.
No matter what I write in the query letter, I'm certain there would be
a much better way of writing it. But, I just have to do the best
I can.
And, meanwhile, I'm going to really really
try to get moving on the sequel to my "anti-time" sci-fi novel.
March 4, 2014 - Yesterday afternoon,
I once again read through the deposition of Patricia Worsham in the
Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit. This time, since I was reading
the full version I received from the DOJ on Saturday, I could highlight
passages and make notes in the pdf file. I previously wrote a
lengthy
comment about Dr. Worsham's deposition in my January 16 comment, so there's
no point in repeating any of that here. But, I did notice
some additional things. For example, I noticed that Dr. Worsham
didn't agree with lawyer Richard Schuler's wildly mistaken belief that
the FBI and DOJ stated in the Amerithrax Investigation Summary report
that the attack spores
were dried in a lyophilizer. There is this exchange on page 33:
Q.
And the lyopholizer that is mentioned in the FBI's report, they
indicate that it's either called a lyopholizer or a speed vac, and that is something that's necessary in
order to dry the anthrax into a powder form, correct? And that's the
position they take, right?
A. I think
there are other methods of drying things that we don't have
expertise in. A speed vac is not the same thing as a lyopholizer.
A lyopholizer tends to process larger amount. A speed vac is a small
piece of equipment that would sit on the bench top that you would use
to dry down very small quantities of things.
There are some other interesting passages I didn't fully notice on the
first read. And, I saw quite a bit worth highlighting on the 4
pages (22 thru 25) that were mistakenly dropped from the
version on Lew Weinstein's blog that I'd read
previously. For example, an argument over whether Ivins
"developed" or "prepared" the contents of flask RMR-1029 continues and
gets pretty funny on pages 22 and 23:
Q.
Now, was the RMR 1029 -- I had said developed; you were a little
bit more precise, I guess, but Dr. Ivins did ultimately develop the
concentration that was known as RMR 1029, correct?
A.
I would still say he prepared it.
Q.
Prepared it. Okay.
A.
"Development" implies more -- it's just different,
scientifically.
Q.
I agree. So he prepared it.
A.
Um-hmm.
Q.
It was a preparation that he developed, let me put it that way,
maybe.
A.
It was a preparation he prepared.
And, while most others accept the scientific evidence that flask
RMR-1029 provided the source material for the attack powders, Dr.
Worsham isn't convinced. On page 25 there is this exchange:
Q.
All right. Now, I want to kind of go down through some of the
points that you made. You said
that you did not agree with the science that the RMR 1029 is the source
of the murder weapon?
A.
I don't -- I have not seen enough science to be convinced of
that.
The biggest impression I got from going through
the deposition a second time while also highlighting passages was that
Dr. Worsham has some very
strong opinions. I can see why Dr. Ivins once called her the
"Queen of the Universe." I just wish there was some way to get
her opinions on the way the facts
say that Ivins made the anthrax powders instead of meaningless
views about screwball beliefs that the attack spores were made in
flasks or fermentors, were dried with a lyophilizer, and were
weaponized with silica.
I also think it's time to produce a list of all the Maureen Stevens vs
USA depositions that have been recently added to this web site.
Here's the list:
Deposition of Dr.
Jeffrey Adamovicz (Ivins' co-worker at USAMRIID)
Deposition of Dr. Gerard
P. Andrews (head of Bacteriology at USAMRIID in 2001)
Deposition of Colonel
William Byrne (head of Bateriology at USAMRIID prior to 2001)
Deposition of Dr. Edward M.
Eitzen (head of USAMRIID in 2001)
Deposition of Dr.
Arthur M. Friedlander (head of Bacteriology at USAMRIID pre 1999)
Deposition of Kristie M.
Friend (Dr. Bruce Ivins' assistant in Sept. 2001)
Deposition of Stephen
Little (Dr. Bruce Ivins' co-worker/assistant in Sept. 2001)
Deposition of Dr. Susan
Welkos (Dr. Bruce Ivins' co-worker in Sept. 2001)
Deposition of Dr. Patricia
Worsham (Dr. Bruce Ivins' department head in Sept. 2001)
The above list has also
been added to the top of my copy of the Docket for the Maureen Stevens
vs USA lawsuit. Click HERE for
that. That should make it easier to find as this comment drifts
into history.
March 3, 2014 (B) - If you are
interested, I've also uploaded my highlighted copy of the Gerard
Andrews deposition. Just click HERE
to access it. It should be easier to read than the
3-part version with missing pages used on Lew Weinstein's blog.
(BTW, if you do not like my highlighting, you should be able to get rid
of it by just clicking on the highlighted section and deleting
it. Only the highlighting will be deleted.)
March 3, 2014 (A) - Another
one of the pdf files I received from the DOJ on Saturday regarding the
Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit is the Stephen Little deposition.
Click HERE to access my
highlighted and annotated copy. Although Mr. Little and Dr. Ivins
were at about the same level in the hierarchy at USAMRIID, Mr. Little
was acting as Dr. Ivins' assistant at the time of the anthrax attacks -
although Mr. Little couldn't go into Suite B3 or any other "hot
suite." (See pages 18 and 19 of his deposition for an
explanation of why. Also see my January 17 comment where I
examined the
version of the Little depostion created by the folks on Lew Weinstein's
blog.)
Looking at the new version of the Little deposition this morning, I see
that it also says that the anthrax letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle
was first opened at USAMRIID in Suite AR-1. On page 39 there's
this exchange between lawyer Richard Schuler and Mr. Little:
Q.
Do you know who opened the envelope?
A.
Dr. Zell. That's what I heard. I was not there.
Q.
You were not there, okay. I understand. What about the
contamination event that took place in April of '02?
A.
May I finish for the --
Q.
Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.
A.
-- the first story that I've heard?
Q.
Absolutely.
A.
Is that Bruce was concerned that an envelope with possible
anthrax spores was opened theoretically on the cold side, in AR-1, with a technician that
was in the room. He, from what I understand -- again it's all
secondhand -- he made an inquiry as to possible contamination for where
Christy worked in the office where he shared with her. He asked to do a
survey. And I understand it was denied. He went ahead and did it
and he got reprimanded for it. But apparently --
The only floorplan I've
ever found of Building 1425 can be viewed HERE.
Below is the floorplan from that source with the key suites identified:
I
also identified what should be Room AR105 within Suite AR1. The
room in Suite B3 where the passbox was located (B304) is identified
with the letters "PB." Ivins' office is marked "19." And
Suite AA3 in the Animal Assessment Division is where I understand the
Diagnostic Systems Division and the lab Dr. Ezzell normally used were
located. (He's referred to as "Dr. Zell" in the quote above - a
stenographer error.)
I don't suppose it makes any difference if the Daschle letter was
opened in Suite AA3 or Suite AR1, but it makes one wonder why they used
room AR-105. Because it was a vacant lab? That's my guess.
One thing from the Kristie Friend deposition I failed to mention
yesterday is that - before the anthrax attacks - the scientists at
USAMRIID evidently had the attitude that if a suspicious substance was
untested, it was considered to be relatively safe. Here's what it says on
page 33 of the Kristie Friend
deposition:
When they receive samples, they're
considered diagnostic specimens until they're confirmed positive for
any agent that we work with at USAMRIID. So basically there was
no harm in bringing it to that area, or so we thought at that point in
time, because a diagnostic specimen is nothing other than diagnostic
until you confirm it.
That is evidently why they opened the Daschle letter in a BSL-2
lab. It was considered safe until proven otherwise, and any old
vacant BSL-2 lab could be used. I seriously doubt they still have
that attitude at USAMRIID today.
March 2, 2014 - Yesterday,
I received a DVD in the
mail. It was in response to the FOIA request I sent to the
Department of Justice, and it contained the Kristie Friend deposition -
among others. Kristie Friend was Dr. Bruce Ivins' lab assistant
at the time
of
the anthrax attacks of 2001. And, unlike Stephen Little, she
actually
worked in Suite B3 and in
Room B-313 with Dr. Ivins. The depositions are, of course, in PDF
format. However, unlike most of the depositions previously
provided via
Lew
Weinstein's blog, these can be scanned for meaningful words, you can
highlight passages, and you can easily copy and paste passages from
them.
This morning I noted it appears that "DXer" on Lew Weinstein's blog
also received
a copy of that same deposition in the same scannable, highlightable
format. Click HERE
to view the copy they put on the Dropbox.com site.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon reading the Friend deposition.
I did a massive
amount of highlighting, since there is a lot of very interesting
material in
the deposition. Click HERE
for my highlighted and annotated version of the Kristie Friend
deposition.
Unfortunately, while the Friend deposition can be fascinating reading
in parts, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly
newsworthy or unexpected in it. Like the other depositions from
Bruce Ivins'
co-workers, Kristie Friend doesn't believe Ivins was the anthrax
killer. Her main
reason? She doesn't think Ivins could have used the lyophilizer
the way she believes the FBI
said it was used to create the spores (see
pages 87 & 88). Plus (page 107) she doesn't believe Bruce
Ivins "had
it in him," even though (on page 109) she says she's aware of the
psychiatric reports on Ivins' homicidal tendencies. And, thirdly,
(on page 110) she says she thinks a lot of the "unexplained" time the
FBI says Ivins was
in his lab in the evenings and on weekends was really just time spent
changing clothes and taking showers as part of the entry and exit
process.
Because
Friend actually worked in Suite B3 with Ivins and helped with animal
tests, I was particularly interested to see if she would mention the
rabbit experiments that "DXer"
endlessly rants about. She doesn't really mention any
specific experiment, but on pages 71 and 72 she commented on how rare
it was for anyone to work
overtime:
Q. Did
you -- and I know -- when you worked there, did you work, like, normal
working hours, eight to four or nine to five?
A.
I worked 7:45 to 4:30.
Q.
And did you have occasion to have to come at night to do anything in
the evening?
A.
Very, very rarely.
Q.
What about the other members on
the team, Kristie Friend -- that's you. What about Dr. Ivins, did he
ever have to come in in the evening?
A.
I think he
sometimes would come in to prepare, like if we were going to have a
large challenge, aerosol challenge. Normally we would start this very
early in the morning. He
would come in the night before to prepare the spores, and then we would
come in very early to heat-shock them to get them ready to go, but that
was on a very infrequent basis.
Q.
Can you give any idea of an interval?
A.
How often? Or for how long he would be there?
Q.
No, the intervals when these types of things happened.
A.
We had aerosol challenges maybe
two or three times a year, big aerosol challenges with either rabbits
or non-human primates.
Q.
Okay.
A.
So maybe twice a year, if that.
Q.
And that might necessitate him coming in one night the night before?
A.
Yes.
Q.
Not to spend several night[s] or the weekend before.
A.
No.
Note that she does not
mention any actual work Ivins would do with the animals. She says
nothing about monitoring animals. She only mentions tasks
involving preparing the spores
to be used in the animal tests. And, since she was Bruce Ivins'
assistant, it seems she would be intimately involved in any animal
tests he did. In fact, she would likely perform the more menial
tasks, like monitoring the animals.
She also says on pages 70, 72, 73 and 77 she knew nothing about flask
RMR-1029 and never even recalls seeing it anywhere.
The information in this deposition (and others) is somewhat distorted
by the fact that Maureen Stevens' lawyer, Richard Schuler, doesn't
appear to understand the evidence against Bruce Ivins, either. In
the
Kristie Friend deposition it is very clear that Mr. Schuler believed
the US government stated somewhere in the
Amerithrax Investigative Summary Report that the attack spores were
dried
with a lyophilizer. (It says no such thing.) Mr. Schuler
asked this question on page 86:
Q.
And I know that you are a lab technician, but to your knowledge -- and
if you don't have the knowledge to answer a question like this, just
tell me so -- do you think that there was -- you know, the
FBI, their conclusions in
the published report was that there was a
lyophilizer used and a speed vac to dry the anthrax at USAMRIID. Do
you have enough knowledge to know whether that's something that could
have been done with that equipment there?
And he asked this question on page 87:
Q. What
I was asking was, based on your knowledge and from having read the
FBI report, where they assert that the equipment used was at
USAMRIID, there was a
lyophilizer and a speed vac that was used to dry the liquid
anthrax and turn it into powder, do you think that was
possible
to do with the equipment that you were aware of that was there?
A.
No.
It was made very clear by the DOJ in the Amerithrax Investigative
Summary that the lyophilizer was just one of the ways
that the spores could have been dried. Here are some quotes from
the Summary Report:
Page
15: This drying procedure would have required either the type of laboratory
equipment, such as a lyophilizer or speed-vac system, that was present
in each of the 15 labs, or
considerable time and space to air-dry.
Page
30: Drying anthrax spores requires either a sophisticated drying
machine called a lyophilizer, a speed-vac, or a great deal of time and space to
let the spores air-dry – that is, to allow the water to evaporate – in
the lab.
Page
38: Dr. Ivins gave conflicting statements over time
regarding whether he knew how to use a lyophilizer – a sophisticated
drying machine that may
have been used to dry the spores used in the mailings.
I can understand why
Truthers
would distort the facts and try to argue that the lyophilizer could not have been used, but it's
strange to have a lawyer
in a related case argue that a lyophilizer WAS the specific drying
method that was used, when the DOJ said no such thing. But, maybe
it relates to the
McClatchy news
stories which said something similar. But that was the result
of an
error
in a document filed in the
Stevens vs USA lawsuit, not about something stated in the Amerithrax
Investigative Summary.
The Kristie Friend deposition also contains a lot of information about
other aspects of the case against Bruce Ivins. Friend makes it
very
clear on pages 78, 79 and 80 that Ivins liked to play practical
jokes
on other people, but he could get very upset when anyone played a
practical joke on him. Starting on the bottom of page 81
and into
page 82 there is this exchange between Mr. Schuler and Kristie Friend:
Q.
Okay. All right. So those incidents that you mentioned were two
incidents that you -- where you saw him really mad?
A.
Um-hmm.
Q.
Because somebody tried to play a practical joke on him?
A.
That's correct.
Q.
Any other incidents that you recall?
A.
I wouldn't call it mad, but he would get -- he did not like the New York Yankees
baseball team,
and there were several people in the division at that time who were
Yankees fans, and so there was a broom that would go around between
when they lost or won, and Bruce would place it when the Yankees lost,
and when the Yankees won, the same broom would come back to Bruce's
office. And I wouldn't call him mad, but you could see he was agitated
by it. He didn't like it. So it was okay for him to do, but it wasn't
okay for other people to do back to him.
Q.
So he could play practical jokes, but he didn't like practical jokes
being played on him, basically.
A.
Yeah, I would say that's a fair statement.
Note that the fact that Ivins did not like the New York Yankees is
confirmed. That relates to the
"FNY"
hidden message in the media letter.
And on page 104 and 105 there's this discussion of emails sent between
Ivins and Mara Linscott that seems to confirm a lot of things:
Q.
There have been some emails that have been produced and reference in
the FBI report that were fairly lengthy, and in your observation while
you were working with him in fairly close quarters, did you see him
spending a lot of time sending emails?
A.
Yes.
Q.
And how much time, if you can quantify it, would you estimate that he
would spend on this type of activity?
A.
Well, specifically e-mailing Mara?
Q.
Yes.
A.
Several times a day.
Q.
Okay.
A.
If he would think of something or
if someone -- not just in our office, but within the division -- would
mention something that would spark something in him, he would want to
get in the computer and email her right away. They used to play
Scrabble every day at lunch, and we continued to play Scrabble at lunch
kind of frequently until it kind of died off, so things like that,
Bruce would miss, so I know he
used to send her encrypted emails
like you would have to fill in what the word is, like she was playing
Scrabble from far away. So sometimes that would take some time to
come
up with that.
Q.
Oh, sure. Did you ever in your
own mind think that this is a little bit unusual here that he's
spending so much personal time during the workday sending these
personal messages?
A.
Yeah, I thought it was odd.
Q.
And did it ever rise to the level where you mentioned it to anybody?
A.
No.
So, it's once again confirmed that sending encrypted messages as
something Dr. Ivins liked to do. And he was obsessed with Mara
Linscott.
The deposition also contains a lot of information about the
unauthorized swabbings done by Bruce Ivins, and particularly the
swabbing he did of Kristie Friend's desk. It was VERY
embarrassing to
Kristie, and she was very upset that Ivins would do such a thing, tell
other people about what he'd found, and never tell her. When
asked if
there was anything inaccurate in what Ivins said, Kristie responded (on
page 101):
A. The only
other thing that I find interesting was that my desk was dirtier than
he and Pat's. Bruce's was the filthiest desk anywhere in the institute,
so I found that kind of odd. Other than that, no.
One very confusing statement in the deposition is on page 29 and
relates to where the anthrax letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle was
first examined at USAMRIID:
A. I
was not the original person who opened the letter. I was present in the
laboratory when the original letter was opened.
Q.
What laboratory was it opened in?
A.
AR 105.
Q.
Where is AR 105?
A. In the middle of part of
USAMRIID, AR, there is no designation, unfortunately, for AR, it's just
AR 105. That was the primary laboratory that the special
pathogen sample test lab used.
Q.
Was that building 1425?
A.
Yes, sir.
If she's referring to Room 105 in Suite
AR1, that could be described as being "in the middle part of
USAMRIID (according to the floor plan).
But, it's in the Animal Resources
Division. It's my
understanding that the letter was opened in the Diagnostic Systems
Division, which was in Suite AA3 of the Animal Assessment Division. Room 105 in Suite AA1 could also be
described as being "in the middle part of USAMRIID." We know all
the testing of the samples later was done in the Animal Assessment
Division, because the hallways there were eventually filled with boxes
of
evidence. But, there's just not enough information to figure out
exactly to which room she is referring.
I could go on and on.
But, in spite of all that Kristie Friend knew about Dr. Bruce Ivins,
she still
could not visualize him as being the anthrax killer.
One can only wonder what any of his supporters would say if it was
explained to them in
detail exactly how Ivins most
likely created the anthrax powders. The steps involved are nothing like what they imagined was
done. Would seeing how easy
it was for Ivins to create the attacks spores change any
minds?
Probably not. Most people just cannot believe that someone they
knew
could be a mass murderer. Even when presented with concrete and
undeniable proof
they
still cannot believe it. It isn't because they don't believe the
evidence, it's because they cannot believe that something like that
could be true and they wouldn't have realized it or noticed
anything.
It is a blow to their own images of themselves.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, February 23, 2014, thru Saturday, March 1,
2014
February 28, 2014 - I've been
informed that it may be a couple more weeks before the Kristie M.
Friend deposition in the Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit will be
released. A few pages of it are available on Lew Weinstein's blog
HERE.
Kristie M. Friend, of course, was Dr. Bruce Ivins' assistant at the
time of the anthrax attacks. And, unlike Stephen Little, who also
assisted Ivins at that time, Friend was able to work inside Suite B3. And she
probably worked inside Room B-313 with Ivins.
Reading the few pages of her deposition that are available, I kept
wondering about a single word in this section from pages 23 and 24:
Q.
Okay. All right. Now, you told us the level of work you
did, but let me go back to the beginning, when you started, and you
said it took eight months before you could get into the hot suites.
A.
Correct.
Q.
For that eight-month period, what did you do?
A.
I read a lot of standard operating procedures; I assisted in doing some
inventory of the lab notebooks that were in the office, just to kind of
quantify what was there. I would make table of contents in front
of each notebook so that if people had to go through them, you would
know what was on each page, could easily find something if you were
looking for it.
I was
able to do basic lab research in the biosafety level 2 lab, which was
Bacteriology 5, so I would grow
media
that they would use in the hot suites, that they could take in and use.
That's primarily what I did up until that point.
I looked up the term "grow media" via Google and found some examples
where "grow" was the last word in one sentence and "media" was the
first word in the next sentence. Plus, I found a few instances
where "grow media" was used where "growth media" seemed to be what
was meant. But no where did I find anything about growing media.
To make certain I wasn't misunderstanding something, I checked various
web sites HERE,
HERE,
HERE
and elsewhere, and I confirmed that you do not "grow" media. You
MIX or PREPARE media. It seems that either Kristie Friend
misspoke, or the stenographer misheard. Moreover, I it's my
understanding that Bacteriology Suite 5 was where
plates and flasks where filled with the growth media that was mixed and
prepared there. Since there's nothing infectious or dangerous
about growth media, it could be prepared in a BSL-2 area like Suite
B5. The
prepared plates and flasks would then be taken into a BSL-3
"hot suites" to be innoculated with a bacteria such as "liquid anthrax"
spores. And the anthrax would be grown in a BSL-3 area.
On Lew's site, however, "DXer" had a
different interpretation:
I understand Kristie to be
saying that before her security clearance, she grew the new Ames grown in Biolevel
2, not Biolevel 3. It was then brought into the BL-3 and used in
experiments.
That makes no sense
whatsoever, and is undoubtedly wrong and untrue. But,
interestingly, no one corrected him.
Then, three
minutes later, he wrote something else that didn't seem to be true:
Most people didn’t know
that prior to 9/11, liquid anthrax was a biolevel-2 pathogen.
I suspect that most
people don't know that because it
isn't true. I seriously doubt that growing anthrax spores
in shaking flasks could be done in a BSL-2 lab anywhere. Nor
could you purify spores in a centrifuge in a BSL-2 lab. But, it
appears you could
inject a mouse with anthrax
in a BSL-2 lab and house that mouse in that BSL-2 lab (although
USAMRIID would always do that in a BSL-3 lab). It had nothing to
do with "liquid anthrax." It had to do with the fact that the
spores would be inside the syringe until they were inside the
animal. And, inside the animal the anthrax would take the form of
living bacteria, not spores. So, you could also take blood
samples from the mouse and examine those samples under a microscope in
a BSL-2 lab, since the samples would involve living bacteria, not spores.
Then, the animal would be disposed of by incineration as soon as it was
dead. So, at no time would any large amounts of "liquid anthrax"
(spores or living bacteria) ever be exposed to the atmosphere inside
the lab.
It would be nice to have my understanding confirmed. If it's
wrong, I suspect I'll be quickly told how and why it is wrong.
But, if it's right, I probably won't hear anything.
February 27, 2014 - Yesterday, it
appears that someone at IP address 122.154.46.155 made 5,359 attempts
to find a way to hack into my web site. The IP address tracks
back to 490/1
Petchakaserm Road in Hadyai, Songkhla Provence, Thailand. In the
bar graph below, those attempts show as a green bar for "hits" on Feb.
26:
The "hits" began at
21:32:17 and ended at 22:08:03, hitting at a rate of nearly two access
attempts per second.
As you can see from the above graph, something very similar occurred on
Feb. 14. However, the IP address for those approximately 4,000 or
so "hits" was 46.32.227.2, which traces back to the town of Derby,
which is not far from Nottingham, in central England. Yet, both
"attacks" contain the URL http://www.google.com/humans.txt
within the log entries. So, I can see there's some kind of
connection between the two "attacks. But, I don't think they have
anything to do with Google.
Looking around the Internet, I found a web site HERE
which is attempting to analyze the problem. They refer to it as "Massive
PHP RFI scans," which means
nothing to me. According to a web site HERE, "PHP is a popular general-purpose
scripting language that is especially suited to web development."
And, another web site HERE
says "RFI" means "Remote File Inclusion." It also says that the
"popular security reconnaisance tool Skipfish" is being used
for these attacks.
Here's the explanation they provide:
“Specifically, we have seen
an increase in the number of attempts at Remote File Inclusion (RFI).
An RFI vulnerability is created when a site accepts a URL from another
domain and loads its contents within the site. This can happen when a
site owner wants content from one site to be displayed in their own
site, but doesn’t validate which URL is allowed to load,” said Akamai’s
Patrick Laverty.
“If a malicious URL can be
loaded into a site, an attacker can trick a user into believing they
are using a valid and trusted site. The site visitor may then
inadvertently give sensitive and personal information to the attacker.”
The attackers look for RFI
injection points by testing the websites with the string
“www.google.com/humans.txt or www.google.com/humans.txt%00,” text files
usually available with developer information.
Other web sites HERE and HERE
provide more information about this type of attack, including a way to
block them (temporarily). A web site HERE
even includes a graph showing which countries most of the attacks come
from. Here's that graph:
It's all very interesting in a boring
sort of way. So, what should I do about this? They're not
trying to break into my
computer. They're trying to break into my host's computer. My host
is located in Huntsville, Alabama. So, what I'll do is tell them
about it. They can tell me if I need to put the blocking code
into my web site software or not. For me, it's just another distraction
temporarily keeping me from getting started on a new novel.
February 25, 2014 - Sometimes the
Anthrax Truthers go so far off the rails that all anyone can do is just
shake their head in amazement. The latest screwball thread on Lew
Weinstein's blog is titled "10
questions related to USAMRIID’s secret dried aerosol project … all
previously asked on this blog … that the GAO report should have
answered … except there is no GAO report!" However,
"questions" #2, #7 and #9 aren't questions. They are just
blog thread titles. And, the Truthers do not seem to understand
that they are talking about TWO different "dried aerosol" studies: one
study only involved DEAD
spores (see my December 8, 2010
(C) comment), and according to this document (from HERE),
the other study "never got off the ground":
The Truthers do not seem to understand that none of their questions
make much sense. For example, here's question #5:
5. Who did this dried
aerosol study at USAMRIID?
John Ezzell did the
study with DEAD
spores. The other study never got off the ground. So, no one
did it. What's so difficult to understand about that? Yet,
the Truthers just ramble on and on, asking crazy, meaningless questions
about things that never happened. Who was involved in something
that never happened? Where did the things that never happened
happen? It's just plain lunacy.
February 23, 2014 (B) - I just
completed reading the Dr.
Russell Bryne deposition in the Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit and
noticed that it also has missing pages. Pages 90 to 93 are
missing. Like the others with missing pages, it appears to be
unintentional.
For me, the most
interesting parts of the Bryne deposition are his comments about the
apparent purpose for sending out the anthrax letters:
Q. You mentioned earlier
something that I want to ask you about that -- back in -- prior to
2001, this type of research was sort of a backwater and there wasn't a
lot of, I guess, funding devoted to it, but you said it changed at some
point. What that after 2001 and the ---
A. Oh, yeah,
yeah. Somebody sent a
letter through to build a research empire based upon biowarfare,
because it worked spectacularly.
Q. What makes
you say that?
A. I mean, look at
the buildings. Look at the money. There are a lot of people
in this now. So, I mean, there's a whole new building,
right? And the new center is going to be built. They're --
we were the -- budgets, when I arrived there in '93, '94 and '95, they
just kept getting smaller and smaller. So ... But it's a much
larger industry now than it was.
He seems to be saying
that, if the purpose for the sending out the anthrax letters was to get
funding for more anthrax
research, the plan worked "spectacularly."
As far as whether or not he believes Bruce Ivins could have made the
anthrax powders, his beliefs are the same as many others who knew
Ivins. He does not
think Ivins could have done it, because he believes Ivins didn't have
the equipment
to weaponize spores, and because he believes Ivins' co-workers at
USAMRIID would have noticed
what he was doing. Same old, same old.
February 23, 2014 (A) - Hmm. This morning, Lew Weinstein's
blog is filled with inexplicable and irrational rants. Two
examples:
The second example
includes what Lew Weinstein says is the most likely answer:
The FBI knows who did it (not Dr.
Ivins) but is covering up
the actual perpetrators, for undisclosed reasons
Evidently, that is the
conspiracy theory plot for the novel Mr. Weinstein wrote and continues
to promote. Mr. Weinstein's fictional theory seems to be
somewhat in conflict with DXer's real belief that devious, pesky
Muslim extremists were behind the attacks, and the FBI just seems
incapable of
seeing the "Truth" that DXer sees.
Another new thread on Weinstein's blog includes a link to the deposition
by Dr. Russell Byrne in the Maureen Stevens vs USA
lawsuit. Dr. Byrne was head of the Bacteriology Division at
USAMRIID before Dr. Gerard Andrews took over in January
2000. Skimming through the deposition, it seems of most
value in clarifying who worked where and what the hierarchy was at
USAMRIID. At the bottom of page 13 it says that the Bacteriology
Division was split into two parts, one part occupied the Bacteriology
section of Building 1425 and the other part occupied Building
1412. Dr. Dave Waag was head of the part of the Bacteriology
Division that was in Building 1412. Dr. Waag's equivalents in
Building 1425 were Sue Welkos, Patricia Worsham and Bruce Ivins.
They all worked for Dr. Byrne.
I haven't yet finished reading that deposition. It seems to
contain a lot of squabbling between the lawyers that goes on for page
after page.
Yesterday, I skimmed through the
deposition of Dr. Edward Eitzen in the Maureen Stevens vs USA
lawsuit. Dr. Eitzen was head of USAMRIID at the time of the
anthrax attacks. His deposition is a little different from the
other depositions I've seen so far in that on page 134 Dr. Eitzen
accepts the conclusion that Ivins could
have been the anthrax mailer. Or, more accurately, he
says, "I don't know."
And, on page 195 and into page 196 there's this unusual exchange:
Q. Now, you
mentioned earlier in a question to counsel that you had not reason to
suspect Dr. Ivins of these attacks while you were at USAMRIID. In
fact, you didn't appreciate the fact that he might have been the
anthrax mailer until much later; is that an accurate statement?
A.
Specifically, I mentioned to you that I thought the spring of 2002
contamination incident was odd and wondered what the, the reason for
that was, and that's why we, we started an investigation. So,
other than that incident, I had no reason to -- I had no knowledge or
any reason to suspect him as the perpetrator.
Q. In spite of
that incident, Dr. Ivins was still allowed to continue to work with
anthrax until 2008; isn't that correct?
A. As far as I
know.
Q. And one of
the reasons you had no reason ---
A. And he was
under investigation by the FBI prior to that. Also the FBI
apparently never noted -- notified the current authorities at Fort
Detrick of that fact.
Q. That's
obviously correct. You also
had no reason to suspect Dr. Ivins because the head of your SIP failed
to request records from Dr. Heller, which would have shown Dr. Ivins was a homicidal maniac;
isn't that correct, sir?
A. I don't know
that I can answer that.
Although it's a very tedious read, the
deposition by Dr. Gerard Andrews in the Maureen Stevens vs USA lawsuit
also contains a few interesting tidbits.
In the
first part of the deposition, Dr. Andrews describes the hierarchy
at USAMRIID at the time of the anthrax attacks. On page 12 it
says that, in January 2000 Dr. Andrews became head of the Bacteriology
Division (replacing Dr. Byrne). His assistant chief was Jeffrey
Adamovicz.
Dr. Andrews reported to Dr. Edward Eitzen, who was head of
USAMRIID.
On page 16 it says there were 45 people in the Bacteriology Division.
On page 18 it says that under Dr. Andrews were the Senior Principal
Investigators, which were also considered to be Department
Chiefs. Here's what the deposition says at the bottom of page 18
and into page 19:
Q.
Okay. Did you have an individual by the name of Bruce Ivins that
worked in the department at that time?
A.
Yes, I did.
Q.
And what was his position?
A.
He was a senior principal investigator.
Q.
Who was his boss?
A.
I was. And, if I wasn't available, he would report to Jeff
Adamovicz.
Q.
Who -- who were the other senior principal investigators, if there were
any, that were on the same level as Dr. Ivins?
A.
I would say Pat Worsham, Sue Welkos, Tim Hoover, Dave Waag, Steve
Little.
On page 21 he adds: "Hank Heine was also a senior investigator,
too. I should -- I should mention his name as well.
Unfortunately, Dr.
Andrews doesn't explain
how Bruce Ivins came to be "demoted" to work under Patricia Worsham
just prior to the attacks. But, at the bottom of page 64 and into
page 65 it says this about Pat Worsham on November 21, 2001:
Q. And
what was her position at USAMRIID at the time?
A.
She was senior PI. And she
would also be acting division chief if myself and/or Jeff Adamovicz was
out of the office at the time.
So, she would be Ivins' boss
when Andrews and Adamovicz weren't around.
And, on page 97 in the
second part of the deposition, the issue of one of Ivins' alleged
motives for the
attacks is brought up. Shortly before the attacks, Ivins told
people his life's work with
anthrax was coming to an end because he was going to be transferred to
work
with glanders. In the deposition, Dr. Andrews is asked if it was
true that Ivins going
to be transferred to work on glanders because the anthrax program was
coming to an end. Dr. Andrews responded:
A. No.
Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, the -- let me address this
issue about glanders. This was -- this is at the end of my tenure
at USAMRIID. And we
actually had a -- kind of offsite retreat, Pat Worsham, Jeff Adamovicz
and myself. And we were talking about putting Bruce on glanders
in the light of the fact that the next-generation anthrax vaccine was
proceeding to advanced development in 2005.
Dr. Andrews then rambled
on and
on about how the vaccine program was not
coming to an end. But that wasn't really the question. The
question was whether Ivins had
reason
to believe he was going to be transferred off of working with
anthrax and into working with glanders. So, Maureen Stevens'
lawyer asks the question in a different way:
Q. My
question, focusing back in 2001 -- I just want to be clear about your
answer. Are you saying you
just don't remember at that time
whether he was being considered for a transfer to glanders research or
--
A. Yeah, I don't remember.
And -- and if it was going to be -- if it
-- hypothetically if -- I mean, if there was a transfer, it would
actually just -- it would be participating in the glanders program.
So, one of Ivins' motives for the attacks is more or less confirmed.
And, for a mentally unstable person like Ivins, it's easy to see he
would have
reacted to learning that Andrews, Adamovicz and Pat Worsham
had been discussing
transferring him to work on glanders. It's not difficult to
imagine how anyone - particularly Ivins - would react to learning that
a woman who was supposed to be at the same level as he, who was younger
than he and who had less experience than he, was discussing having him
transferred to a different field of study and putting an end to his
life's work. She'd be taking
over all that Ivins had worked on all of his professional career.
Other than those sections, the deposition is mostly "same old, same
old." Dr. Andrews doesn't believe Ivins could have made the
anthrax powders because Dr. Andrews mistakenly assumes the spores would have been
made from
scratch in shaking flasks - which Ivins wouldn't have had time to
do. Plus, of course, Dr. Andrews is firm in his clearly mistaken belief that the attack
spores were weaponized with silicon. He rationalizes all
sorts of ways weaponization with silicon could have been done and still
confused the experts at Sandia (and everyone else who worked with the
FBI) into thinking the silicon got into the
spores via a natural process.
Dr. Andrews' logic about "weaponization" (and the logic from other
Truthers) can be easily shown to be total nonsense. All he
needs to do is try answer a few questions:
1. If the silicon was added
deliberately, why didn't all
the spores in the letters have the silicon in the spore coats?
Why did only 65 to 75% have the silicon?
2. If the silicon
was added after purification,
why did the "unpurified" spores in the media letters also include
silicon in their spore coats in similar proportions?
3. If the silicon was added to "weaponize" the finished spores,
why did spores that were still inside the mother bacteria already have
silicon in their spore coats?
4. If the
silicon was from a "weaponization" process that Ivins didn't know how
to perform, how come 6% of the spores Ivins created for flask RMR-1030
contained silicon in their spore coats?
The depositions were taken for the Maureen
Stevens vs USA lawsuit. That lawsuit was NOT
trying to find the "truth" about the anthrax attacks. Mrs.
Stevens' lawyers were trying to show that the US government was
negligent and failed to maintain control of dangerous pathogens
government employees
worked with at USAMRIID. Thus, the US government was responsible
for allowing
those dangerous pathogens to be used to kill Robert Stevens.
Because the objective was not to
show Ivins' guilt, the depositions do not include the
right questions to find the answers needed to resolve the issue of
whether Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins was the anthrax killer or not. In
fact, proving that Ivins was
the anthrax killer would have hurt
the Stevens' case, since the government could then argue that it was
NOT
negligent, because there's just no feasible or foolproof way to stop an angry individual from secretly
committing a crime for personal
motives.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, February 16, 2014, thru Saturday, February 22,
2014
February 21, 2014 - Lew Weinstein's
blog has now provided working links to the 3-part Dr. Gerard
Andrews
deposition in the Maureen Stevens v USA lawsuit. Just click HERE.
But, that page has the parts in scrambled order, and there are some
missing pages. File #1 is actually Part 2, file #2 is actually part 3, and file #3 is actually Part 1. So,
for you convenience, you can use these direct links to the correctly
numbered parts:
Click HERE
for Part 1 (pages 1 thru 69).
Click HERE
for Part 2 (pages 70 thru 133).
Click HERE
for Part 3 (pages 138 thru 188) and a letter to the requester).
Note
that pages 134 thru 137 are missing. It doesn't seem to be a
critical error. At that point, they seem be discussing the
contamination incident that occurred around April 2002, when a shaking
flask leaked. I'll know more when I have a chance to
read the entire deposition.
The other links they provided are to the same versions of the
depositions I discussed in my
January 16 and January 17 comments. On Jan. 16, I discussed the
Patricia Worsham deposition, which is missing pages 22 thru
25. And on January 17, I discussed the
Stephen Little deposition, which has the first page upside-down and
is missing page 10.
February 20, 2014 - Someone on Lew Weinstein's
blog has made the Jeffrey Adamovicz deposition in the Maureen
Stevens vs USA lawsuit available. It can be accessed by clicking HERE
and then downloading it to your own computer.
I just finished reading it. Mostly, it's just "same-old same-old"
in that it is just an opinion from someone who has a wildly incorrect
view of how the anthrax attack spores were made. On page 71 of
the
deposition, it's clear Dr. Adamovicz firmly
believes that silicon was added to the spores to make them
aerolsolize more easily. Interestingly, however, on page 77 he's
asked if someone at USAMRIID could have made the spores if no silicon
had been added. Here's that part of the deposition:
Since there was no silicon deliberately or artificially added to the
attack spores, Dr. Adamovicz confirms
that someone at USAMRIID could have made it.
He also argues on pages 78 through 81 that it would it would not have
been
possible to make the attack spores via the shaking flasks technique in
a week. He says it would have taken "six to twelve
months." However, since the
facts say that Ivins grew the spores on discarded Petri dishes he kept in a
biosafety bag
in his lab, it's irrelevant how long it would have taken to grow the
spores in shaking flasks. It just shows that Dr. Adamovicz was
making false assumptions about how the spores were made.
But, perhaps the most interesting parts of the deposition are his
explanations for why he believes that flask RMR-1029 was originally
stored in Building 1412. On page 90 he says, "I don't know when
it was physically moved over to building 1425, but there in theory --
one could surmise that it could have been as little as a day, but it
could have been as long as almost two years."
So, he has no clue. On pages 92 and 93 he explains that he's just
guessing
that it was stored in building 1412 at one time, because there's a copy of the RMR-1029 form
that shows it was stored in Building 1412, and there's a revised
version of the form that says it was stored in Building 1425.
The FBI, of course, has Ivins' statement that, while they had planned
to store flask RMR-1029 in Building 1412, it was never
actually stored there And the FBI would also have the testimony
of the
co-workers who assisted Ivins in creating the contents of flask
RMR-1029.
The only reason it is even an issue is because, if the flask was stored in Building 1412 at one
time, then a lot more scientists would have had access to it. And
the blame for allowing the attacks to happen could be spread around a
lot more. It wouldn't fall so heavily on the scientists who had
access to Suites B3 and B4 in Building 1425.
February 19, 2014 - After doing
more research on literary agents, I find that the agent I queried is
one of the top agents for selling sci-fi novels. So, I'm
going to wait the full three weeks he recommends before I try someone
else. Meanwhile, I've worked on my query letter to improve it for
the next time. And, I've completed doing my federal and state
income taxes. So, unless I can find something worth mentioning
regarding the anthrax attacks of 2001, I'm going to start working on a
sequel to my sci-fi novel.
February 18, 2014 - This is way off
topic, but every morning I check NASA's picture of the
day web site. A few days ago this picture of the night sky
over Thailand appeared:
Click HERE
for a much larger version, and click HERE for NASA's
description of the picture. It shows the Milky Way across
the
center. The planet Venus is below the Milky Way at the left
center. The fuzzy blue spot above and to the
right of center is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French
Guiana. And, just to the
right of that plum is a meteor streak. All in one picture.
February 17, 2014 - Jeeze!
There's a major blizzard going on outside. Snow, wind, visibility
about half a block. That's another
factor I suppose I need to consider while waiting for a literary agent
to respond to my query letter: the weather in New York City.
All the agents on my query list have their offices in New York
City. And, NYC has also been getting a lot of snow lately.
Do literary agents go to
their offices if the weather is cold and snowy? I assume
so. But is it a valid assumption? I have no clue as to what
the daily routine of a literary agent is like. I assume they
spend most of their time on the phone, which they can do from
home. They can also read books and respond to emails at
home. The only thing they can't do at home is to have lunch with
publishers. But do publishers and agents go out to lunch together
when the
weather is cold and snowy? Somehow, I can't imagine it.
Doing research on the Internet this morning to kill some time, I found
an agent in New Jersey who writes about her daily routine. Click HERE to view her
blog. She makes no mention of snow. But her entry for today
begins this way:
Slowly but surely
working my way through all the manuscripts in my "To Read" folder.
There's a web site about
a day in the life of a literary agent in California HERE.
It says:
If you’re an unpubbed
writer, you might be dismayed that reading
incoming queries is the bottom of the priority list. I do
need to keep up with them because I don’t want to miss a potentially
great writer sitting in my slush pile. And yet, if I’m swamped with current
clients, I’m less able to pay attention to all those potential new
clients.
And there's a web site about a week in the life of a British literary
agent HERE.
This research helps me to understand the job of a literary agent, but
it doesn't help me get through the agonizing process of waiting for an
agent to respond to my query letter.
February 16, 2014 (B) - GOD,
I HATE
SITTING AROUND WAITING FOR LITERARY AGENTS TO RESPOND TO MY QUERY
LETTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It wouldn't be so bad if I
had
some arguments going with some Anthrax
Truthers. But the Truthers all seem to have gone
away. No one has posted to my interactive blog
since February 7th, over a week ago. And, (except for the Anthrax
Truther I wrote about in this
morning's (A) comment) I don't see them
posting anything elsewhere that's worth mentioning here.
I've been occupying some of my time doing research on literary
agents. There's a lot of good information on about them on the
Internet.
A web site HERE
lists some agents who are looking for science fiction
novels. Another site HERE seems to
focus mainly on "fantasy" novels, but when you click on the links
you'll
find that many of them like science fiction, too. I'm not sure
why fantasy and science fiction are so often linked, since, to me,
they're nothing alike. Science fiction generally has a basis in good
science. Fantasy has nothing to do with science. It's
usually about
magic, witchcraft, mysticism and the occult.
A spent half a day yesterday going through all those agent web sites to
create a
file of notes and links for 24 of them to add to the three I'd
researched previously. I ranked them (more or less) in the order
that I'll send them query letters.
Nearly all the 27 agents say that because of the volume of queries they
receive,
it
will take three or four weeks for them to respond. (Some say "up
to 8 weeks.") And they all
seem to want to be the only
agent who is currently being queried
about a book.
In theory, that would mean sending out one query a month until you get
a bite. And, since most do not reply at all unless they are interested,
they could have rejected your query on the first day, and you end up
just waiting a full month for nothing. It would also take 2 years
to go through the list, if no one responded.
In reality, I think agents are mostly concerned about reading a
manuscript, becoming very enthusiastic about it, responding to the
author's query to say they would definitely like to
represent it, and then learning
that the author has already hired a different agent to represent
it.
For the author, it's a different kind of problem: The author could have
an agent who is reading the manuscript, and therefore he has to tell a
second agent that the manuscript is not available because another agent
is reading it. And this upsets the second agent. Then the
first agent
to read the manuscript might decide it is not something he wants to
represent, so he turns it down. And now the author may not be
able to go to
the second agent who wanted to represent it, because the author has
angered that agent.
I can see that it's not a good idea to have more than one agent at a
time reading
the manuscript.
But how bad would it be if you tell an agent that another agent is
currently reading the manuscript, and therefore the second agent will
have to wait? (Some smaller agencies don't demand exclusivity,
but all the
top agents do.) In theory, you can contact the first agent
and advise him that a second agent wants to read the manuscript.
The agent can then either demand exclusivity until he makes a decision,
or he can say it's okay as long as the second agent understands the
first agent has first dibs.
But, it's best if you don't have to put an agent in that
position. And, the only way around that is to keep the number of
outstanding queries to an absolute minimum. However, the absolute
minimum of one query per month just doesn't seem realistic.
So, it's a problem with no perfect solution. And no matter how
you look at it, it's probably going to involve a lot of waiting.
The
solution recommended by writers is that you start working on a new
novel, instead of just pacing the floor or sitting around waiting for
an agent to respond.
I am knocking around dialog
ideas for a sequel to
the sci-fi novel I just wrote.
It might even begin exactly where the first book leaves off. I
just need to think of a totally different kind of problem for the three
main characters to resolve.
I suppose I could also work on my income taxes. I keep telling
myself
that's what I should be doing right now, but then I do something
else.
No self control. Maybe I'll just eat some cookies and watch
a movie.
February
16, 2014 (A) - Part of my routine when I turn on my computer
each morning is to do a
Google search for "anthrax" and "2001." When I did that this
morning, up popped an article by Brandon Martinez from "Press TV,"
which is an Iranian news web
site. It was interesting to see a lot of very common
"Anthrax Truther" comments being repeated by a this new "Anthrax
Truther." Example:
There was no evidence tying Ivins to
the anthrax letters and he had no conceivable motive. The FBI
launched an intense campaign of innuendo against Ivins in an effort to
convict him in the court of public opinion. Ivins allegedly committed
suicide while in a Maryland hospital just before he was set to be
indicted and stand trial. How convenient.
Ivins worked at a US
bio-weapons facility called USAMRIID in Fort Detrick, Maryland. This is
where the FBI claims the anthrax used in the attacks originated. Since there is no evidence that Ivins
was involved in the anthrax mailings, there is likewise no reason to
believe the FBI’s claim that the anthrax spores used in the letters
originated from that facility.
Brandon Martinez blames
Israel, of course. That's undoubtedly why PressTV.ir posted the
commentary. And, like all Anthrax Truthers, Martinez has no proof
to support his beliefs. He just doesn't believe the mountain of proof that
shows he's wrong, and he seems totally
ignorant of the case against Bruce Ivins. Only his beliefs
are important. So, to him, the solidity of his beliefs means he's
right. Just like all Anthrax Truthers.
(I'm not going to provide a
link to the article. It's just anti-Israel propaganda. But,
if you really want to read it, you can use the Google link to find it.)
|
|
