Thoughts
and Comments
by Ed Lake
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, December 1, 2013, thru Saturday, December 7,
2013
December 4, 2013 - I awoke this
morning feeling I really needed to read through my supplemental web
page about When and Where Ivins Made the
Anthrax Powers to see if anything needed to be changed as a result
of the discoveries made over the past few days proving that Bruce Ivins did NOT
check on the mice in Patricia Fellows' "Passive Mouse Experiment," as
"Anonymous" had been claiming. And
that Ivins most likely sneaked into the Animal Resources Division
corridor via the unmonitored door from Suite B5 in order to view Suite
B3 through the "crash door."
I made a few changes, including adding the data about what Ivins did on
Sept. 30, 2001.
I also feel that in my previous comments I should have provided a
floorplan for the Bacteriology Division and where the Animal Resources
corridor is located relative to Suite B3. The graphic below
provides that information. Click on it for a larger version.
If I had the time to do
this floorplan over again, I'd fix it to show that Ivins could not get
from the Bacteriology Division Corridor to the Animal Resources
Division Corridor via the corridors between Suites B2 & B3 and
between Suites B4 & B5. They were blocked off with steel
gates. Plus, I would have highlighted the door from Suite B5 into
the Animal Division Corridor which was NOT controlled by a key card,
nor was it a crash door that would sound alarms. Thus, Ivins
could use it to get into the AR corridor.
Why Ivins didn't use the same door to get into AR that he used to get
out (and which is right next to his office) is somewhat of a mystery,
but it can probably be safely assumed that either (1) his keycard
didn't allow him to enter that way, or (2) he felt he'd
leave no in-out log trail if he entered via the unmonitored Suite B5
door.
What the debates with "Anonymous" did for me during the past few days
is allow me to show solid PROOF
that Ivins was NOT checking on test mice during his "unexplained" hours
in Suite B3, and there is absolutely
NO reason to believe any rabbit experiments which were going on
at that time account for any of the "unexplained hours" either.
December 3, 2013
(B) - Ah!
While doing my regular workout on the treadmill at the health club
(a.k.a. "gym") this afternoon, all the major pieces for the concluding
events in my novel appeared to fall into place - plink, plink,
plink. I just need to lay things out on a chart or in an outline
to
make certain that I have the sequence of events straight.
Then, on my way home from the health club, I had a second "Aha!"
moment. I realized the most likely reason why Bruce Ivins
would repeatedly sneak into the Animal Resources (AR) Division hallway
through the door from Bacteriology Suite B5. I'd aways thought it
might have something to do with test animals that were kept
there. But, NO, that is not the
reason.
The most likely reason Bruce Ivins would sneak into the AR hallway was
because he could see into Suite B3 from there
through the window in the crash door. He could see if the
person checking on the mice (or any other animals) was still in Suite
B3.
The Animal Resources Division corridor is outside the "crash
door" which cannot be opened without setting off
alarms.
We don't know if all the lights are turned off when the Suite is
empty. But, it seems likely that the lights in the animal rooms
would be turned off when no one is in the rooms at night. So,
through the "crash door" window, Ivins could see if someone was in the
animal rooms, and probably anywhere else in Suite B3 all the way to the
change rooms.
Here again is Bruce Ivins' in-out log data for September 30, 2001:
Analyzed and explained:
9:53
- Ivins enters Building 1425
9:55 - Ivins enters the
Bacteriology Division Corridor
9:55 - Ivins enters the
Men's change room B301 to take off coat
9:56 - Ivins leaves the
Men's change room B301.
Ivins goes to Suite B5, which has no key
card reader.
Ivins
uses the back door of B5 to sneak into the AR corridor.
From
the AR corridor he looks through the crash door into Suite B3.
He
probably sees that Pat Fellows is still in B3
10:06 - Ivins leaves the
Animal Resource Division and probably goes to his office
10:34 - Ivins again enters
the Bacteriology Division Corridor.
Ivins again goes to B5, he again sneaks
into the AR corridor
Ivins
again looks into Suite B3. This time he sees no one is in B3
10:39 - Ivins leaves the AR
Division.
10:39 -
Ivins again enters the Bacteriology Division Corridor
10:40 -
Ivins enters the Men's change room B301
10:44 -
Ivins enters the airlock to get into the BSL-3 part of Suite B3 &
his lab
Ivins does work related to making anthrax
powders
12:02 -
Ivins leaves B3 (according to the FBI)
Interestingly, this "finding" was partly spawned by an argument that
"Anonymous" tried to start. He found a document HERE
which says that the mice were kept in room B-305. And he was
upset because I stated in my Sunday comment that the mice were "most likely in Room B-305 (or B-310) of
suite B3." He
promptly filed an FOIA request with USAMRIID to find some
additional proof that the mice were kept in B305 as he insists, and
there was absolutely no reason for me to even suggest that B-310 might
have been where the mice were housed. But, the only reason I
suggested it was because of what BRUCE IVINS reportedly told the FBI.
Page 26 in FBI pdf file #847443 HERE describes a look into Bacteriology Suite 3
(B3) that Ivins provided to some FBI agents in February 2003. It
says:
Ivins pointed out the B3
cold room as being on the right side of the hallway when looking through
the crash door, with a black box on the door. Room 308 is the
pass through to suite B4. The mouse animal
room is the third door down on the right when looking through the crash
door. The guinea pig room is across the hall with the cleaning
supplies for the suite located to the right of the door as the room is
entered."
As can be seen from the
floor plan above, when looking through the window in the "crash door,"
the first door on the right inside suite B3 is B-308 which connects to
Suite B4, as the FBI report says. The second door on the right is B-309
which was Pat Worsham's lab. The
third door on the right is B-310, which according to the FBI recalling
what Ivins told them, is the mouse
room.
So, maybe "Anonymous" can
argue that Ivins was lying
when he told the FBI agents that room B-310 was the mouse animal room,
and it's really B-305.
But, either way, it was the rant by "Anonymous" that reminded me that
people can see into Suite B3 from the Animal Resources corridor by
looking through the window in the crash door. And that seems to
be the best explanation for why Ivins sneaked into the AR corridor.
No beliefs. No opinions. Just evaluating the facts, ma'm.
Better interpretations of the facts are always welcome - if anyone has
any.
December
3, 2013 (A) - I didn't work on my
novel
at all yesterday -- except to do a lot of thinking about it. What
I have so far ends with setting up a confrontation between the
villain's henchmen and the FBI, ATF and the U.S. military in a farm
field outside of Washington, D.C. The idea was that the villain
would escape the confrontation and there would be a separate, final
confrontation between the villain and the heroes of the novel somewhere
within the city of Washington, D.C. But, now I'm seriously
thinking that both
confrontations
should take place inside Washington, D.C. It would be much more
dramatic. I just need to figure out how to make that work.
Meanwhile, as usual, I'm also arguing with "Anonymous" on my
interactive blog. Or, more accurately, I'm trying to get him
to argue intelligently
instead of constantly changing the subject and
throwing up "smoke screens" of meaningless documents.
I presented him with some solid facts,
which he is just ignoring.
I explained those facts in my Sunday comment, but maybe I should go
into more detail here about what those facts truly say and mean.
The best way
to do that might be to explain what the FACTS say for just one
particular day. I'll use September 30, 2001. Here is the
claim "Anonymous" made on November 30, 2013:
Under the Mice Protocol,
The Animals Were Challenged In B-305 (which is in Suite B3) ; Under This Protocol, Dr. Ivins Was In
The B3 Those Nights The AUSA And Investigators Mistakenly
Suggested He Had No Reason To Be In That Biolevel-3 Lab
Here are the times the mice were supposedly checked (obtained from Lew
Weinstein's blog HERE
which comes from page 3 of the pdf file for the original document HERE):
This information undeniably
shows that on Sunday, 30 Sept. the animals
(mice) were checked at 11:00, 11:30, 1500 (3 p.m.), and 2200 (10
p.m.)
The words "Morning," "Afternoon," and "Evening" are even written in the
right margin to make things clear.
And, here are
Ivins' complete Suite B3
in-out log data for that day (obtained HERE):
| 9/30/2001 |
21:55:58 |
Access
Granted |
In |
B301 IN/M |
IVINS, BRUCE E. |
| 9/30/2001 |
21:56:08 |
Access
Granted |
Out |
B301 OUT/M |
IVINS, BRUCE E. |
| 9/30/2001 |
22:40:19 |
Access
Granted |
In |
B301 IN/M |
IVINS, BRUCE E. |
| 9/30/2001 |
22:44:33 |
Access
Granted |
Normal |
B301 KEYPAD |
IVINS, BRUCE E. |
The
data undeniably says that Ivins entered the B301 Men's locker room at
21:55:58 (9:55 p.m.) and left less than a minute later. He again
entered the B301 Mens locker room at 22:40:19 (10:40 p.m.), changed
clothes and entered the airlock into the BSL-3 containment area of
Suite B3 four minutes later at 22:44:33. That Suite contains Room
B-305 where "Anonymous" says the mice were "challenged."
So, these FACTS indisputably say Ivins
was NOT in Suite B3 where the mice were reportedly challenged at ANY of the times the mice were
checked on Sept. 30. The same can be said for the days
prior and after.
These FACTS say, beyond any
reasonable doubt, that SOMEONE ELSE
(probably Ivins' assistant Patricia Fellows) was checking on the
mice. (It was HER study.)
If that isn't enough evidence, FBI file #847547,
page 55, provides Ivins in-out log data for all of building 1425 for all of
Sunday, September 30, 2001:
This data says Ivins entered the building at 9:53 PM. He then
entered
the corridor that runs along side all of the Bacteriology Division
Suites at 9:55 PM. The next in-out data is the same as previously
noted. Then the FBI log data says that after Ivins left the B301
men's
locker room at 9:56 PM, he evidently went to Suite B5 where there is a
door into the Animal Resources Division (AR) that doesn't have a key
card reader. It's opened by a key (that no one is supposed to
use).
That is the only way he could
EXIT the Animal Resources Division at 10:06 PM without first logging
that he had entered.
He exited into the Administrative Area and then about a half hour
later, at 10:34 PM he entered once again entered the corridor that
leads to the Bacteriology suites. And, again
he goes through Suite B5 into the Animal Resources Division and again exits into AR, this time at
10:39 PM. And within a minute he walks to the entrance
to the Bacteriology Division and enters that corridor. Then the
log
shows the same as the other log data, he entered men's locker room B301
at 10:40 and four minutes later went into the airlock to get into the
BSL-3 part of Suite B3. (He didn't leave until after
midnight.
Handwritten FBI notes on the log says Ivins "Exits @ 12:02 a.m." on
Oct. 1st.)
In my web page about Where and When Ivins
Made the Anthrax Powders
I have floor plans for Building 1425 and for Suite B3 which will
clarify what I stated above. I even have charts for August 20,
2001,
which show Ivins doing the same thing as he did on September 30, i.e.,
enter the Animal Resources area via the locked door from Suite B5.
The question now is: How can "Anonymous" continue to claim that Ivins
was checking on mice during the hours when he was in Suite B3, when the
FACTS undeniably show that
Bruce E. Ivins was NOT
in Suite B3 when the mice were being checked.
Moreover, how can "Anonymous" argue that Ivins was checking on rabbits
during this time? He cannot even present any evidence of when Ivins was checking on rabbits,
where the rabbits
were kept, or that Ivins did any
checking of the rabbits at all! All he has is an email
from October 5 (from
email
batch 35, page 20) which
shows that Ivins was somehow informed of the days when some of the rabbits died, and he
has Ivins' notebook
#4241
which shows on pages 16-20 that Ivins didn't
know and didn't record any
data of the times when the
rabbits
died. "Anonymous"merely believes
that Bruce Ivins was checking on rabbits during the time the FBI says
Ivins was making the anthrax powders. And, his beliefs are all he
needs to be absolutely certain of anything.
And, if anyone has solid evidence showing he is wrong, he'll change the
subject -- or he'll produce an endless stream of meaningless documents
with no explanation of what he is trying to prove, claim or argue.
December 1,
2013 - I've been trying to work on
my new
sci-fi novel, but I keep getting interrupted by "Anonymous" posting
rants to my
interactive blog. Right now, I'm on Chapter 26 of my
novel,
with 39,100 words written. So, the first version will probably
come out to be about 30 chapters and about 45,000 words. I'm at
the point
where I need to develop a good ending. But, first I feel a need
to
resolve some issues that "Anonymous" brought up last week.
Up until now, I've been trying to argue with "Anonymous" without
forcing him to explain his claims. As a result very little gets
resolved, because there's no way to know exactly what he's
claiming. For example, he's been using this chart from lab
notebook #4583 for years
to argue something:
"Anonymous's" version of this notebook chart is on a
thread on Lew Weinstein's blog that is dated June 3, 2011, with
this subject:
Dr. Ivins’ lab
notebook
establishes that there were lots of dead mice and dead rabbits on the precise
dates that the prosecutors and investigators speculate, without basis,
that Dr. Bruce Ivins was making a dried powder out of Flask 1029 — such
as the FBI anthrax expert had done in August 2000 at the request
of DARPA
His version of that page
shows
the words "Mouse" in the title and "Rabbit" in the right- most column
heading highlighted in blue. It appears that at that time it was believed by
"Anonymous" that the "rabbit" column represented the results of
checking on the rabbits that were undergoing vaccine challenges
during the first week of October 2001.
His comment
(posting as "DXer') on that same date only mentions rabbits. It
shows an email from Ivins dated October 5, 2001 (from email
batch 35, page 20), which says:
Group A – 24 rabbits (12 males, 12
females) get PA (50 ug)/Alhydrogel (0.5 mg)/PBS/0.02% formaldehyde at 0
weeks. Challenge (subcutaneous) at 6 weeks with about 100 LD50 Ames
spores.
Group B – 24 rabbits (12
males, 12 females) get PA (50 ug)/Alhydrogel (0.5 mg)/PBS/No
formaldehyde at 0 weeks. Challenge (subcutaneous) at 6 weeks with about
100 LD50 Ames spores.
Group C – 4 rabbits (2
males, 2 females) get PBS/Alhydrogel (0.5 mg) at 0 weeks. Challenge
(subcutaneous) at 6 weeks with about 100 LD50 Ames spores.
2) Results so far, 3 days after challenge:
Group Survived/Total
A – Vaccine plus formaldehyde 24/24 (no deaths)
B – Vaccine minus formaldehyde 16/24 (8 deaths)
C – Controls 0/4 (4 deaths)
But, now it appears that
the
chart only represents the results of tests done on
mice by someone other than
Ivins. Notebook #4583 was used
by Ivins and someone whose name is
redacted
on the cover and inside the notebook. (In a
comment on Lew Weinstein's blog today, "DXer" appears to claim that
person was Ivins' assistant Patricia Fellows, but his post is very
cryptic. The form
at the top of the thread indicates only the other person would
"monitor the animals.") In the notebook page prior to the chart
(page 2 of the
pdf file), there is a comment: "After discussing this with Bruce
Ivins, I've decided to repeat the experiment with some changes."
So,
it's clear that part of the notebook was not written by Ivins.
And the last line on that page says: "Results from the second passive mouse expt. are found on the
next page." The next page has the graph.
What I noticed when this chart was brought to my attention in 2011 was
that it appeared that Ivins was not
in Suite B3
during the times the animals were checked. I accepted the
implication from "DXer" that
the chart represented Ivins work with animals. Therefore, my
conclusion was that Ivins had to leave Suite B3 to check on the
animals.
But, now it appears that the chart represents the other person's checks on the
animals, and those animals were most likely in Room B-305 (or B-310) of
suite B3. So, it really says nothing
about what Ivins was doing. But it seems to say that the other
person was coming into Suite B3 at night to check on the
mice. Unfortunately, we don't have any in-out records for
when that other person entered B3 to check on the mice. We just
have this comment from page 34 of the Anthrax
Investigative Summary:
Building
1425: There were
14 people who had access to the hot suites where RMR-1029 was created
and stored in September and October 2001 – the relevant time period
leading up to the mailings. Except for Dr. Ivins, all of these
individuals visited the lab only during standard works hours, with a
few limited exceptions. Each
person who went into the lab at off-hours had legitimate and
demonstrable reasons to be in the hot suites at the times they were
there. None of these people was alone in the lab for the lengthy period
of time required to grow, harvest, purify, and dry the spores and to
load the letters under a protective hood. A comparison of the off-hours
of Dr. Ivins to those of these other researchers reinforces the
conclusion that Dr. Ivins’s hours were suspicious.
But, while I thought that Ivins'
in-out records showed him leaving Suite
B3 to check on the animals, it now appears that the in-out records show
that Ivins left Suite B3 (or made a point of not being
in Suite B3) whenever the other person was checking
on the
mice.
On my interactive blog I
posted this (corrected to eliminate references to
rabbits):
27 Sept. - Mouse
check at
1:30 p.m.
In-out log says Ivins left B3 at 12:03 p.m.
28 Sept. - Mouse check at 8:30 a.m.
In-out log says Ivins did not use keypad to enter B3 until 1:48 p.m.
29 Sept. - Mouse check at 11:30 a.m.
In-out logs says Ivins doesn't use keypad to enter B3 until 8:22 P.M.
29 Sept. - Mouse check at 10 p.m.
In-out logs say Ivins left B3 at 9:42 p.m.
30 Sept. - Mouse check at 11 and 11:30 a.m.
30 Sept. - Mouse check at 3 p.m.
30 Sept. - Mouse check at 10 pm.
In-out log says Ivins doesn't use keypad to enter B3 until 10:45 p.m.
01 Oct. - Mouse check at 8:30 a.m.
In-out logs say Ivins doesn't enter B3 until 8:40 a.m.
01 Oct. - Mouse check at 1:30 p.m.
In-out logs say Ivins left B3 at 12:30 p.m. and didn't return until
10:19 p.m.
02 Oct. - Mouse check at 1:30 p.m.
In-out logs say Ivins left B3 at 9:40 a.m. and returned at 2:34 p.m.
02 Oct. - Mouse check at 10 p.m.
In-out logs say Ivins left B3 at 8:29 p.m.
03 Oct. - Mouse check at 9 a.m.
In-out logs say Ivins didn't enter B3 until 10:50 a.m.
03 Oct. - Mouse check at 1:30 p.m.
In-out logs says Ivins left B3 at 11:42 a.m. and didn't reenter until
7:32 p.m.
04 Oct. - Mouse check at 1:30 p.m.
04 Oct. - Mouse check at 2:30 p.m.
In-out logs says Ivins entered the B3 area at 2:32 p.m.
05 Oct. - Mouse check at 10 a.m.
05 Oct. - Mouse check at 1:30 p.m.
In-out logs say Ivins first entered the B3 area at 1:35 p.m..
So, in every
instance from 27 September through 5 October, Ivins was NOT in Suite B3
when the mice were being checked. This clearly says the checking
on mice had nothing to do
with his unexplained overtime hours. But, more interestingly, it
poses the question: Why does it appear
that Ivins avoided being in B3
when the other person was checking on the mice? How many times are needed to
indicate it was not a coincidence?
We do not have the in-out logs for the other person, but they
would sure come in handy to resolve the question of how long it took a
person to
check on animals. "Anonymous"
endlessly and preposterously
claims that it would take two
hours.
He uses a comment Mara Linscott made to the FBI about how long it took
her when she
had to come in on a weekend
to check on animals. She seems to
have said it took two hours out of
her weekend to drive to USAMRIID, to go into the lab, to check
the animals, to shower and decontaminate, to leave the lab, and to get
back home
again. But, "Anonymous" interprets it to mean it ALWAYS took two
hours to check on test animals, even
if you are already working inside B3 where the animals are located.
If we had the in-out logs for the other person, we could see how long
he had to be in Suite B3 at night (and day) to check on the mice.
But,
I
don't really care enough to want to resolve the question by trying to
get that
information from USAMRIID via an FOIA request. (And I tend to
doubt
that they'd give it to me anyway, since the other person is an innocent
bystander and it would provide information about that innocent
bystander.)
"Anonymous" mostly argues that Ivins was tending to 52 rabbits in the
evenings during the first week of October 2001. But, he provides
NOTHING to PROVE that Ivins was doing anything
with rabbits that required overtime
during that week. He constantly refers to notebook
#4241 as if it proves something. But that notebook only has
question marks under the columns created to show the dates the rabbits
died (see pages 16-20).
He refers to a
protocol which says: "Ivins will help immunize and challenge the
rabbits." But who is he helping? Veterinarians?
Animal handlers? And why would anyone immunize animals at night?
Did veterinarians and animal handlers also enter Suite B3 at
night?
Did they do any of the work that "Anonymous" claims was all done by
Ivins?
And, all this is about checking on
animals around the time Ivins was preparing anthrax powders for the SECOND
mailing. It says absolutely
nothing at all about his unexplained time in his
lab
prior to the FIRST
mailing.
So, what is my point with all this? I guess my point is that I'm
tired
of arguing with "Anonymous." I've got a novel to write.
But,
I also
know that if I stop arguing, he'll claim it is because I have no valid
response to his claims. So, I'm just going to have to demand he
provide evidence and explanations of the evidence, instead of
constantly bringing up irrelevant matters which prove nothing.
The mouse chart proves NOTHING. Notebook #4241 proves
NOTHING. The
protocol for the rabbit challenges (#B01-11) proves
NOTHING. If he
believes any of those documents proves something, he's going to have to
explain WHAT it
proves and HOW it proves it.
That's the plan, anyway. The problem is: once in a great while,
"Anonymous" provides something interesting, like a link to a CIA
"Analysis Training Handbook" found HERE.
It looks very
interesting. But when will I
find time to read it?
A quick glance found this on page 9 of the pdf file (page 4 of the
handbook):
[A] Review [of a finding]
shouldn't take place in a vacuum.
When major differences
emerge and you feel your objectivity is being threatened, you
should
meet with the reviewer to justify
your conclusions.
You must be prepared
to discuss how you arrived at your judgment, what your evidence
is, and what alternative conclusions you rejected and why.
Try to understand the
logic in the reviewer's explanation of why he or she is challenging
your analysis.
That's the way I believe I do things. I lay out the facts and
explain how those facts caused me to arrived at a conclusion or
hypothesis. That certainly is NOT the way Anthrax Truther do
things. They cannot explain how they arrived at their
conclusion. The cannot explain what their evidence is or what it
means. They cannot explain why they reject alternative
conclusions. They do not try to understand the other's point of
view and why he or she is challenging the Anthrax Truther's analysis.
That's why they're called "Truthers." They know "the Truth," and
they cannot be bothered with explaining their reasoning to people who
challenge "the Truth" and thus must be too ignorant to understand or
even see "the Truth" that "Truthers" see.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, November 24, 2013, thru Saturday, November 30,
2013
November 26, 2013 - Damn! I
awoke this morning full of story ideas and anxious to get back to work
on my book. Then I saw there were 7
or 8 posts to my interactive blog by "Anonymous" (one appeared to
be a duplicate, and I deleted it), and later he sent me three emails. None said
anything of value, but I spent hours
digging through documents to see if I could find any point to them all,
other than that he believes that if there was work to be done, Ivins
must have done it during those "unexplained" hours Ivins spent in Suite
B3
when the DOJ (and the facts) says he was making anthrax powders.
The one FACT "Anonymous" argued that I could check out turned out to be
an error on his part that
he made before.
He wrote:
On October 4, 2001, at 9:57 P.M., a
time when the FBI speculates that Bruce Ivins was making a dried
powdered anthrax, he sent an email explaining he had been reading the
news on the internet; he offered a possible explanation about Mr.
Stevens’ illness identical to that accepted by the CDC regarding a
recent case of inhalation anthrax contracted in 2011 by another man
from Florida
And he provided a link
to Lew Weinstein's web site where there's a
thread that says the same thing. That thread is dated
November 7, 2011.
It's nonsense,
of course. According to my web
page on where and when Ivins made the anthrax powders, on October
4, 2001, at 9:57 P.M, Ivins was NOT in
his B3 Suite:
Date (2001)
(evenings only) |
Time in
Building 1425 |
Time in
Bacteriology
Division |
Time in
Suite B3 (approx) |
| October 4 |
6:10 - 6:55
7:22 - 10:12 |
6:19 - 6:55
7:23 - 9:34
10:07 - 10:12 |
6:21 - 6:55
7:25 - 9:24 |
According to the in-out logs, Ivins
went through the airlock in Suite B3 at 9:24 PM and (after probably
spending 10 minutes in the locker room) left the Bacteriology division
at 9:34 PM, but he did not leave the
building. Since he sent out an email at 9:57 PM, it can be safely
assumed that he was in his office using his computer there. The
logs also show that he re-entered the Bacteriology Division a 10:07 PM,
but he did not go through the airlock into Suite B3. So, he
apparently
only changed clothes in the locker room. Then, five minutes
later, he left the Bacteriology Divison and building 1425 at 10:12 PM.
And, if you check my (A)
comment for November 7, 2011, you'll see I explained the same error by Anthrax Truthers back
then. But,
"Anonymous" doesn't recall any evidence that disproves his
beliefs. He didn't correct the error. He just brings up the
same augument again as if he wasn't proved to be totally wrong two years ago.
And I've just wasted the entire
morning arguing with him about it!
November 24,
2013 - Last week provided no "news" of any kind
about the anthrax attacks of 2001. That's fully understandable,
since the attacks happened more than 12 years ago. But, last week
also showed me that there are some nearly forgotten things about the
case that need remembering.
Last week, "Anonymous" on
my interactive blog tried to make some kind of point about the
evening of September 25, 2001, when Bruce Ivins spent a few overtime
hours in his lab cleaning
ceiling light covers. "Anonymous" has been arguing
endlessly for over two years that Ivins had
totally valid reasons for
being in his lab at night (specifically to
tend to 52 rabbits being used in vaccine tests), and therefore the
claim by the FBI that
Ivins was spending that unaccounted-for time making anthrax powders is invalid.
During those two years, "Anonymous" hasn't been able to provide any meaningful evidence of any kind that Ivins spent any
significant evening or weekend time tending to rabbits instead of
making anthrax powders. Then, apparently without understanding
what he was talking about, last week he made a point that on the night
of Sept. 25th, Bruce Ivins had a
valid and documented reason for being in his lab at night, and
it
did NOT involve making anthrax powders.
Since he pays no attention to any facts which do not help him prove his
own theory, he neglected to notice that Ivins' work on the evening of
Sept. 25 helped to show that, while Ivins had good reason to work
overtime that
night, he also had no reason to be
making anthrax powders that night.
In my
web page about when and where Ivins made the anthrax powders, I
show that the night of the 25th stands out like a tree in a desert,
because it was between
mailings, when Ivins was waiting
for his first set of anthrax letters he'd mailed to have their effect:
The chart above illustrates that Ivins finished making the powders for
the media letters on the 16th of September. The facts say
that, on the night of
Monday, Sept. 17th Ivins drove to Princeton and mailed the
anthrax-filled letters
to Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, the New York Post and the
National Enquirer. So, he was NOT in his lab that night. He
was not
checking on rabbits. He was not
making anthrax powders.
And he had no reason to go into Suite B3 the next night, either. Or the
next. Or the next. Why? Because he was waiting to see what effect
the anthrax letters would have.
For ten days, he had no
reason to go
into his lab during off-hours -- except on the 25th, when his new boss
told him to clean up his lab.
He waited ten days to see
what kind of panic his first mailing would create. But,
there was absolutely nothing
in the news about any anthrax letters.
So, on Sept. 28th, the
chart shows he went to work on making a more refined powder to put into
a new set of anthrax
letters. The chart shows he finished that work on Oct. 5.
The facts say Ivins again drove to New Jersey and mailed the two
letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy on
the 6th or 7th. Then, according to the chart, he once again sat
around waiting for
the reaction to what he'd
done.
Because of the Columbus Day holiday, it took awhile for there to be any
reaction to the second mailing. While he waited, he had little or
no reason to go into his BSL-3 lab.
The chart shows it is absolutely clear that Ivins was NOT tending to any rabbits
in the evenings during either
waiting period.
If Ivins needed to work evenings to tend to the 52 rabbits during
"early October" as "Anonymous" endlessly claims, and that explains his
overtime hours. What explains the waiting periods after the mailings when Ivins did
NOT go into his lab? Why
didn't he need to tend to the rabbits during those periods?
The waiting periods
aren't part of the DOJ's case against Ivins. Only the
unexplained overtime hours are part of the evidence. "Anonymous"
claims that Ivins
was doing normal work during
that period. But, if
"Anonymous" claims that Ivins was
tending to rabbits during some vague period around that time, is it too
much to ask that he show us documentation
proving an
alternative explanation for what the above chart shows?
Why did
Ivins have to tend to the rabbits ONLY during the time the FBI (and the
chart) says he was making the anthrax powders, and why didn't Ivins have to tend to the rabbits
during the time the chart says Ivins was NOT
making powders, when Ivins was just waiting around for his anthrax
letters to be delivered and cause panic?
Clearly, "Anonymous" is going to believe what he wants to believe
regardless of what any facts say. And, anyone who won't help "Anonymous" find facts to
prove his beliefs
is just ignorant and uninformed and prefers to stay that way.
"Anonymous" knows "the truth." It's not his job to explain "the
truth" to others. If the others prefer to accept the mountain of
evidence provided by the FBI and the Department of Justice showing
Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer, well .... that just shows how
uncaring and ignorant some people can be. And, it appears
"Anonymous" is getting fed up with all the people who refuse to accept
his beliefs, since he
posted this yesterday on Lew Weinstein's blog:
The strain Al Qaeda was using
is still classifed and withheld.
I’m telling you — plain and
simple — that Al Qaeda was using the virulent Ames strain and there
cannot be continued delay in having that declassified and made known.
To let some government
bureaucrats hide that fact from the public just because they thought
they would get in trouble for negligently allowing the Fall 2001
anthrax mailings to occur is wrong.
FBI, CIA, USAMRIID, DIA,
DARPA, the Joint Chiefs — people are either part of the problem or part
of the solution.
On the merits of the cotton
candy “Ivins Theory,” Vahid Majidi and others are still actively
playing hide-the-ball.
For example, as recently as
September 2013, Vahid Majidi knowingly failed to correct themselves on
whether Dr. Ivins had reason to be in the lab.
After years of withholding
the documents relating to the 52 rabbits for years they now just
pretend not to know about them.
The issue is far too serious
to suffer fools gladly.
Declassify
and disclose the
strain that Al Qaeda was using NOW.
That appears to be a direct order from a True Believer.
And, since "DXer" (a.k.a. "Anonymous") understands nothing about logic or criminal
investigations, he would never understand why the FBI would not and should not release such information.
*
Now
for something off-topic: Yesterday, I decided to go back to the
old-fashioned way of doing things. (See my Nov. 6 comment.) I
removed the Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) from my kitchen and replaced
it with an old-fashioned 60-watt light bulb. It was either that or go
out and buy a "Bright From the Start" CFL. And, I have
about a dozen 60-watt bulbs stored in a closet, so there was no
justification for buying anything new.
I have no problem with the other CFLs that were installed in my
apartment as part of the scheme conjured up between my landlord and "Focus
On Energy," but the CFL they put in the kitchen ceiling light was
just too much of an
annoyance. There are just too many times that I would go into the
kitchen for just a second or two, and while there, I wanted more light
than the dim glow given off by a CFL during its initial warm
up period.
To get more light, I'd started turning on the chandelier over the
dining area table instead of
(and sometimes in addition to)
the kitchen ceiling light. The chandelier has FIVE
flame- shaped light bulbs (NOT-CFLs) in it.
There's nothing and no one forbidding
me from changing the bulb and going back to the old-fashioned
type. I pay for the electricity I use, so I'm the one losing
money (or gaining money by not using the chandelier). Truthers
can call me a "rebel against progress" or say I'm "stuck in the past,"
but I gave that particular CFL a two-week try, and it was more of an
annoyance than it was worth in energy savings. The other CFLs are
no problem. So, Truthers can also claim I'm "inconsistent."
Meanwhile,
in case anyone is interested, I'm on page 164 of my new
novel, with 34,300 words written so far. It's beginning to look
like the first draft won't reach 60,000 words. But, it's the
second draft where all the details are filled in. And, details
use lots of words.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, November 17, 2013, thru Saturday, November 23,
2013
November 22, 2013 - Since everyone
is remembering John F. Kennedy today, I suppose it's appropriate for
me to mention where I was when I learned that President Kennedy had
been shot. I was getting ready to work the midnight shift
at an airbase in
Northern Japan. I turned on the radio to listen to music while
getting dressed, and the Armed Forces Radio station was talking about
the shooting in Dallas.
I banged on the door of my sergeant's room. Through the door,
obviously still in bed, he asked what was wrong.
"President Kennedy has been shot," I told
him.
"So
what do you want me to do?" he asked.
I
thought for a second, then said, "Remember
who told you about it."
Someone in another room had heard me and
called, "Is he dead?"
"I don't know. I think so," I replied.
The radio was on when I got to the weather station. So everyone
there already knew about it. No one said much.
In town the next day, the Japanese people I knew treated me as if I'd
just lost a father or brother. They seemed more saddened by it
than most of the Americans I knew.
A few days later, I bought a copy of a Japanese magazine with a cover
story about the assassination. I think I still have it in a box
in some closet.
And that was about it. I don't think I ever mentioned any of that
to anyone before. But, it's now part of the record -- for as long
as Internet archives last.
I
should also mention that I actually saw JFK once. He was sitting
atop the back seat of a convertible as
he drove through the streets of Kansas City, MO, while compaigning
against Nixon. And, I actually saluted
Vice President Richard
Nixon when his plane landed at Chanute AFB, near Rantoul, Illinois a
month
or two earlier.
November 21, 2013 - These days, the
news on the Internet is really filled with articles about conspiracy
theories. Mostly they're about theories related to the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which occurred fifty years
ago tomorrow. A story in USA
Today is about a conspiracy theory that Lyndon Johnson was behind
the assassination. Another article on CNN.com has a video showing
the interview
Lee Harvey Oswald did with the media after the assassination. The
article I find most interesting is a
different
one on CNN.com. According to that article, author
Vincent Bugliosi claims that at one time or another,
doubters of the lone gunman theory "have accused 42 groups, 82
assassins and 214 people of being involved in the assassination."
That sounds about right to me.
The article also mentions a supposed "anti-conspiracy guy" named
Dave Perry who spends his time debunking
the skeptics and conspiracy theorists:
Perry, a 70-year-old
retired former insurance claims adjuster from Massachusetts, has
been digging through JFK assassination records since 1976 to address
those skeptics. ....
"I don't do the sexy stuff," Perry said. "I don't come out and say, 'I
know who the Grassy Knoll assassin is!' I'm the guy that goes into the
county records building and looks up deed records. Most people don't
get too wound up over that." .....
Perry guesses he spends a "couple hundred hours" each October and
November doing research and consulting. After all that, you can imagine
he's heard a lot of theories.
According to Perry, the
most popular JFK conspiracy theories are:
1. "LBJ had it done"
2. The "military industrial
complex" did it
3.
"The mob" did it
4. "Oswald acted alone as part of
an unknown conspiracy"
5. "The CIA did it"
Perry
evidently hasn't totally debunked #4. He still wonders about the
theory that the Russians had
something to do with the assassination, since Lee Harvey Oswald visited
the
Russian embassy in Mexico City a few weeks before the assassination.
Maybe he needs to spend more time trying to get conspiracy theorists to
explain their theories and less time trying to prove that vague
theories cannot possibly be true. How do you prove the Russians
were NOT involved? I wouldn't even try. I'd demand that the
conspiracy theoriests prove that the Russians WERE involved. And,
until they do so, I'll just consider it another unproved theory
believed by people who want to believe that there was some kind of
conspiracy or that the government is incompetent and can't perform any
kind of thorough investigation.
Another totally
unrelated story in the news that I find a lot more interesting than JFK conspiracy
theories is the one about the Boeing
Dreamlifter that landed
at the wrong airport in Kansas last night. The gigantic
aircraft ideally requires a runway at least 9,000 feet long to take
off, and it landed at an airport that has a runway only 6,100 feet
long. Here's a picture of a couple Boeing Dreamliners:
They've brought in a new
(presumably more experienced) crew, the plane is nearly empty of fuel,
and the weather conditions are good, so, they're going to try to take
off at noon today to fly the 8 miles to McConnell Air Force Base near
Witchita, where the Dreamlifter was supposed to have landed in the
first place.
The incident is of
particular interest to me because, one night many years ago, I was at
my weather observer desk in the tower at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base
near Kansas City, Missouri, when a plane that was supposed to be
landing there, landed instead at a Olathe Naval Air Station in Kansas,
about 25 miles away.
I vividly recall the tower operator speaking the plane's call sign and
asking,
"What is your location?"
"We
just touched down," the pilot answered.
"Not
at this airfield you didn't," the tower operator said.
By that time I was on my
feet and looking for the plane, too. The tower operator changed
frequencies and called the tower at Olathe. Yes, indeed, the
plane had landed there and they were trying to contact it. It was
all over in a matter of minutes. The plane took off again and
flew to Richards-Gebaur where they had some "esplaining to do".
UPDATE at 2:50 p.m.: According
to CNN, the Dreamlifter took off from the small airport this
afternoon without incident and landed a few minutes later at McConnell
AFB where it was originally supposed to land.
November 18, 2013 - On Saturday, I
set my DVR to record a made-for-TV movie called "The
Challenger Disaster" on the Science Channel. I watched it
last night. (There are reviews in The
New York Times, The
Washington Post, and The
Los Angeles Times. It's going to air again three times
tonight. This week's schedule is HERE.)
The movie was based upon Dr. Richard P. Feynman's book about his work
on the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster, "What Do You Care
What Other People Think?"
I thought it was a very good and very interesting
movie. It says a lot about using logic and reason to find the
answers to questions while ignoring opinions, beliefs and pressures all
around you. Plus, Dr. Feynman was a hero of mine.
Here
are some
of his more famous quotes that definitely apply to my arguments
with Anthrax Truthers:
It doesn't matter how beautiful your
theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree
with experiment, it's wrong.
The
first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the
easiest person to fool.
I
believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as
dumb as the next guy.
In
my library, I
have a hardback copy of his book about the Challenger disaster, which I
read years ago. But, I really
liked the
book he wrote earlier, "Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
I have a heavily underlined paperback copy in front of me as I'm
writing this. It's interesting that so much of it applies to
my
arguments with Anthrax Truthers, particularly when Dr. Feynman discussed what he learned while he was teaching
physics classes as a professor at Princeton. Here's a paragraph I underlined
on
page 23:
I
don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by
understanding; they learn by some other way -- by rote, or
something.
Their knowledge is so fragile!
From
page 192:
After a lot of investigation, I finally
figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't
know what anything meant.
From page 193:
So, you see, they could pass the
examinations, and "learn" all this stuff, and not know anything at all, except what
they had memorized.
And
from page 194:
One other thing I could never get them to do was to ask
questions. Finally, a student explained it to me: "If I ask you a
question about the lecture, afterwards everybody will be telling me,
'What are you wasting our time for in the class? We're trying to learn something. And you're
stopping him by asking a question'."
It was a kind of one-upmanship, where nobody knows what's going on, and
they'd put the other one down as if they did know. They all fake that
they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is
confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude,
acting as if it's not confusing at all, telling him that he's wasting
their time.
I explained how
useful it was to work together, to discuss the questions, to talk it
over, but they wouldn't do that either, because it would be losing face
if they had to ask someone else.
And from page 224:
I can't understand anything in general
unless I'm carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it
go. Some people think in the beginning that I'm kind of slow and
I don't understand the problem, because I ask a lot of those "dumb"
questions.
One great thing about this Internet Age is that if you want to listen
to Dr. Feynman's lectures or hear him speak on some topic, you can just
go to YouTube.com, do a search for "Richard P. Feynman"
and then spend hours listening to him talk about
how dumb he is
about certain subjects, about all the mistakes he's made in his
lifetime, and how he seems to view things from different angles that
most other people. Click HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE
for a few examples. And, it even appears that you can listen to his book "What Do You
Care What Other People Think?" by clicking HERE.
There are dozens of videos.
If only there were more than 24 hours in a day!
And if only there were some way to get Anthrax Truthers to understand
what Richard Feynman was saying about The
Pleasure of Finding Things Out, instead of doing as Truthers
always seem to do: Truthers start with a belief and then look only for
opinions and theories they can use to argue that their belief is
correct. Facts mean nothing. And anyone who disagrees with
them is simply assumed to be
wrong.
November 17,
2013 - Last week, I
spent way way way too
much time arguing with "Anonymous" on my
interactive blog. It's like arguing with my TV set.
"Anonymous" just endlessly spews out his beliefs and claims, and
nothing I say in response means anything to him. Worst of all, he
seems totally incapable of explaining
anything to support his claims. Like a TV, he just rambles on and
on and on and on and
on and on and on and on. His current favorite topic is how I am
imperfect
and how I sometimes make mistakes. When I point out his mistakes,
he
then changes the subject.
But, like a TV, sometimes he says something interesting. In
one post, he brought up an opinion poll I conducted in June 2002:
"ANTHRAX - Who did it?" The poll was conducted on the
"alt.true-crime" newsgroup. (The poll can be viewed by clicking HERE,
but you may have to click on the arrow inside a circle symbol
after
the word "authors" which provides "Topic Options," and one "topic
option" is "Expand All" which provides the best view of all the
responses and comments in the thread.)
Here is what I wrote to initiate the poll:
As far as I know, there has
never
been an opinion poll on who
Americans think MAILED the anthrax.
Who do you think MAILED the
anthrax?
1. An al Qaeda member?
2. An agent of Iraq?
3. A right wing American extremist group?
4. An American scientist acting alone?
5. The CIA?
6. Someone else?
If you are not an American,
please
mention your country in your
response.
The final tally:
1 vote for Michael Newton
(no
explanation of which Michael
Newton)
1 vote for the Roswell aliens
2 votes for Right Wing extremists
1 vote for "an Israeli national"
1 vote for Carl Rove
1 vote for Bill Clinton
2 votes for Al Qaeda
1 vote for my mother
3
votes
for an American scientist
1 vote for the band "anthrax"
1 vote for "a Republican researcher"
1 vote for "an anti-abortion terrorist"
1 vote for the CIA.
The "official" conclusion:
"on the Internet when
people
are asked for their opinion the vast majority prefer to just make wise
cracks."
Interestingly, one of the
votes
for "an American scientist" appears
to be a vote from "Anonymous" using
a different name: "Maurice." "Maurice's" vote incoherently
rambles on
and on and on the same way "Anonymous" does, and on the same
subjects. And, here is how "Maurice" phrased his vote as to who
mailed the anthrax letters:
A US scientist recruited by
Zawahiri in 1980 who then worked for the US Army where he obtained the
Ames strain, who had the means, motive and opportunity.
Presumably, "Maurice"
meant a
US scientist who worked for the US Army, not that Zawahiri worked for
the US Army in 1980. Some
quick research indicates that in 1980 Zawahiri was in Pakistan
meeting with Osama bin Laden. "Maurice" doesn't explain how
Zawahiri could have recruited a US Army scientist with access to the
Ames strain if Zawahiri was in Pakistan, but, then, nothing "Maurice" or "Anonymous" writes ever make
much sense. "Anonymous"
can only ask meaningless
questions. Answering
questions or explaining his claims seems to be a totally alien concept.
Last week, I created the cartoon below to start a discussion thread for
my blog on the subject
of reading versus understanding what is read.
The arguments with "Anonymous" prevented me from getting much done on
my new sci-fi novel, but I'm at a transition point in the book, and I
may need to pause to figure things out before I go much
further. The main characters are now in Washington D.C. and
ready to use their "gizmo" invention to help solve a major crime.
But, I
haven't settled on exactly what major terrorist crime they are going to
help solve. When I'm not arguing with "Anonymous," the old
brain is churning over options and ideas like crazy. And there's
always the possibility that the arguments with "Anonymous" might
suggest or somehow bring
about a good idea for the climactic events in the book.
BTW, in case anyone is interested, when I reached the 31% completed
point in reading "Across
China on Foot," I decided I needed a break from descriptions of the
grim life in China in 1910, and I started reading "Roughing
It" by Mark Twain, published in 1872. It begins with a stage
coach trip Twain, his brother and another passenger George Bemis took
from the Missouri frontier to Nevada in 1861, and it's
as funny as hell. (The cost for such a trip was $125 per person,
with a 25 lb. limit
on baggage per person. It also involved changing horses every ten
miles.) A couple snippets from "Roughing It":
I was armed to the teeth
with a
pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a
ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a
dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand.
and
He wore in his belt an old
original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a
"pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the
pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and
the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and
away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the
thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen"
in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless,
because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "If she didn't get
what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did.
She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and
fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the
owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy
it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon—the "Allen." Sometimes all
its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place
in all the region round about, but behind it.
Much of the time during the trip, Mark Twain, his brother and other
passengers had to lay
atop mail bags
that were being carried inside the stage coach because every other
storage place in and atop the
coach was already full of mail bags:
Whenever the stage stopped
to
change horses, we would wake up, and try to recollect where we were—and
succeed—and in a minute or two the stage would be off again, and we
likewise. We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there
with little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and
every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party
inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the
forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second
we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would
sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail- bags that
came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from the
tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would
grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow out
of my ribs!—can't you quit crowding?"
Reading "Roughing It" prompted me to check to see if "The Innocents Abroad"
was also available for free for my Kindle. It is. So, I
downloaded it. And so is "A
Tramp Abroad," which I've owned as a hardback for many years,
but never read. If or when I get to it, I'll have to decide if I
want to read the hardback version or the Kindle version. I never
expected to say this, but I'll probably read it on my Kindle.
Busy busy busy.
|
Updates
& Changes: Sunday, November 10, 2013, thru Saturday, November 16,
2013
November 14, 2013 - While I've been trying to focus on writing my new
sci-fi novel, the Anthrax Truther who calls himself "DXer" on Lew Weinstein's
blog has been posting numerous posts as "Anonymous" to my
interactive blog. For some unclear reason he has suddenly
started
to emphatically argue once again
that the so-called J-Lo letter sent to
Jennifer
Lopez c/o The Sun magazine in September 2001 contained anthrax.
The #1 basis for such a belief is the CDC
report from October 2002 which said,
The
index patient’s [Bob
Stevens'] infection most
likely occurred from inhalation of B. anthracis spores following a
primary aerosolization, i.e., spores released into the air after
opening a
spore-containing letter. This scenario is consistent with co-workers’
recollections that the index patient held a letter containing
powder
over his computer keyboard, as well as environmental samples showing
contamination
at his keyboard, an incoming-mail desk near his workspace, and his
mailroom
mailbox.
Perhaps the deluge of postings from "Anonymous" were caused by my Nov.
4 comment about sending an FOIA request to the FBI asking for the
findings from the FBI's search of the AMI building in August and
September 2002 so that I could counter what the CDC said was "most
likely" with what the FBI presumably says is "most likely."
But, yesterday "Anonymous" also added a different argument:
In a message HERE
"Anonymous" posted this:
The CDC documents explain
that the reason they knew there were two letters is because they took
different routes through the post offices.
In a message HERE
"Anonymous" posted this:
Ed Lake isn't even aware of
the CDC finding that the fact that there two letters was evidence by
its extensive sampling of the post offices showing two distinct trails.
Since his claims seem to be total nonsense, I asked "Anonymous" for the
source for such findings by the CDC. Where did the CDC say that?
He wouldn't tell me. Instead, he ridiculed me for not knowing
where to find the those "findings."
As far as I can tell, the CDC never said any such thing. The
claim appears to be the result of screwball
interpretations by Anthrax Truthers of a chart produced by the
CDC which shows that post office samplings indicate that the anthrax
letter to AMI could have taken either of two routes between Palm Beach
and Boca Raton. Here's the chart (click on it to view a much
larger version):
In the lower left quarter the chart shows that anthrax spores were
found at the Blue Lake, FL, post office, which could indicate the anthrax letter
went from West Palm Beach to Blue Lake and then to Boca Raton. Or, the
Blue Lake post office could have simply handled mail bags or letters
that were cross-contaminated
with anthrax. That same part of the chart also shows that
anthrax spores were found at the Green Acres, FL, and Lake Worth, FL, post offices,
which could indicate that the
anthrax letter went from West Palm Beach through Green Acres, through
Lake Worth and then to Boca Raton. Or, the
Green Acres Post office and the Lake Worth post office could have
simply handled mail bags or letters that were cross-contaminated with anthrax.
In no way does the chart show
that there were two letters, much less prove such a thing. But
Anthrax Truthers have apparently been interpreting the chart that way.
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to get an Anthrax Truther to
explain himself. They seem to know explanations can expose their
lack of logic and lack of facts.
However, yesterday, someone posting as "Anonymous" (probably "DXer,"
but possibly someone else posting as "Anonymous"), provided a link to
something very interesting on the CDC's web site. It's an
incomplete "Review
of Fall 2001 anthrax attacks" by physicist Dr. Wm. Robert
Johnston, last modified on 17 March 2005. "Anonymous"
also provided a link to a 28 September 2007 updated version on Johnston's
own web site. Johnston's incomplete report was cited by
the CDC and the National Academies on page 192 of their October 2006
report titled "Respiratory
Diseases Research Program." Here is the information from Dr.
Johnston used by the CDC:
In 2001, seven anthrax-contaminated letters
(investigators recovered four and presumed
three others) sent
through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) killed five people
and infected at least17 others with inhalational or cutaneous
anthrax (A6-45)
"Seven
anthrax-contaminated letters" would NOT include the J-Lo letter, since
the J-Lo letter would make eight in total and four that were not found.
To avoid any incorrect interpretation, Dr. Johnston's report contains
this table:
Table 2: Known and
presumed anthrax letters
| letter |
date mailed |
date recovered |
target |
resulting cases (by CDC #) |
| 1 |
9/18/01 |
not
recovered |
AMI,
FL |
4,
8 |
5 |
| 2 |
9/18/01 |
(9/20/01) |
NBC, NY |
2, 6 |
| 3 |
9/18/01 |
not recovered |
ABC, NY |
7 |
| 4 |
9/18/01 |
not recovered |
CBS, NY |
9 |
| 5 |
9/18/01 |
(9/22/01) |
NY Post, NY |
1, 18, 20 |
| 6 |
10/9/01 |
10/15/01 |
Daschle, DC |
13, 14, 15, 16 |
10, 11, 12 |
| 7 |
10/9/01 |
11/16/01 |
Leahy, DC |
19, 22 |
| unknown |
3, 17, 21 |
So, according to
the CDC and Dr. Johnston, there was only ONE anthrax letter sent to
AMI. It was "not recovered." It infected Ernesto Blanco
(#4) and Bob Stevens (#8). Furthermore, the CDC's chart shows the
anthrax letter sent to Florida was transported by truck and left a
trail of anthrax spores through numerous post offices. The chart
shows that the letter was first sent to the National Enquirer at an
obsolete address in Lantana, FL, and then forwarded from there to the
Enquirer's new address at the AMI building in Boca Raton.
The one anthrax letter sent
to Florida was mailed on
9/18/01, which means it could not
possibly have been the J-Lo letter which was opened at AMI the
next day, 9/19/01.
The anthrax letter that killed Bob Stevens was addressed to the
National Enquirer in Lantana, while eye
witnesses say the J-Lo letter was addressed to Jennifer Lopez, c/o
the Sun magazine at the AMI address in Boca Raton, FL. There's no
logical reason for the J-Lo letter addressed to the Sun to have been
misdirected to Lantana.
This information comes via an October 2006 CDC report, which should
supersede any CDC report from October 2002.
By any measure, this should put an end to any claim that the CDC still says there were two anthrax
letters set to Florida and that the J-Lo letter was one of them.
But, I suspect the Anthrax Truthers will disagree because they believe
they "know" the "truth" even if the facts say that what they believe is total nonsense.
November 13, 2013 - Discussions with
an Anthrax Truther on my
interactive blog have found some additional "evidence" helping to
prove that Bob Stevens was killed by anthrax spores in the letter
opened by Stephanie Dailey on Sept. 25, 2001, and NOT by exposure to the
so-called "J-Lo letter" opened by Bobby
Bender on Sept. 19:
1. The normal period beween
exposure to anthrax spores and the onset of symptoms of infection is 7
days or less.
2.
The older a person is, the more susceptible the person seems to be to anthrax. Bob Stevens was
63.
3. On Sept. 19, Bob Stevens held the J-Lo letter up to his face
and sniffed it, which would have been a massive
exposure, IF
the letter contained anthrax.
4. 63-year-old Stevens started to show symptoms of anthrax
exposure eleven days after he
sniffed the J-Lo letter. That makes it extremely unlikely that his
sniffing the J-Lo letter caused his exposure.
5. Stevens started to show symptoms of anthrax exposure five days after he could have been
exposed to a few spores from the anthrax in the letter Stephanie Dailey
opened. That is well within any "normal" period between exposure
and onset of symptoms.
6. Ernesto Blanco was 73 years old in 2001. Three or four
days between his exposure to the letter opened by Stephanie Dailey and
the onset of symptoms would be "normal." Nine days between a
supposed exposure to the J-Lo letter and his onset of symptoms would be
extraordinary and almost illogical.
I just modified my web page about the J-Lo letter to show
that an eleven day period between exposure and the onset of symptoms
for a 63-year-old man who was massively
exposed to Ames anthrax spores is
extremely unlikely - almost illogical.
November 12, 2013 - Someone just
sent me a link to a 7¼ minute YouTube video about the anthrax
attacks of 2001 that was taken from a Travel Channel program called
"Mysteries of the Museum." Click HERE to view
it. Click HERE to
view a shorter version (3 mins.) on the Travel Channel's web site.
The YouTube version is most interesting because it appears to contain some new information and it contains a significant
error. The "new" information (which may or may not be true) is
that the CDC didn't find anthrax on Bob Stevens keyboard while the CDC
was taking swabs in the AMI building, they put the keyboard into a
shipping container, shipped it to the CDC, and the anthrax was
found while checking the keyboard inside a CDC lab.
The error is a statement that the 3:20 mark where the narrator says
"the man's keyboard is covered in microscopic anthrax spores."
The
facts say that only 2 of 21 samples taken from Bob Stevens' work
area tested positive for anthrax. News
reports say that "only a single spore was found on the keyboard.
" Another news report HERE
says the same thing.
Interestingly, the shorter video doesn't mention anything about sending
the keyboard to the CDC for testing.
Unfortunately, this doesn't solve anything about the J-Lo letter and whether or not it
contained anthrax. But, it makes me hope all the more that the
FBI will respond to my FOIA request and provide me with a copy of
their report on the search warrant tests they did within the AMI
building a year after the CDC did their tests. I'd certainly like
to have something official
that clears up whether or not the J-Lo letter contained anthrax.
The FACTS say the letter did NOT contain anthrax. But no one in
authority has officially said
the J-Lo letter didn't (or most likely didn't) contain anthrax.
Anthrax Truthers don't care about facts. They just want someone's
OPINION. And currently they rely upon the CDC's OPINION that
The index patient’s [Bob
Stevens'] infection most
likely occurred from inhalation of B. anthracis spores following
a primary aerosolization, i.e., spores released into the air after
opening a spore-containing letter. This scenario is consistent with
co-workers’ recollections that the index patient held a letter
containing powder over his computer keyboard, as well as environmental
samples showing contamination at his keyboard, an incoming-mail desk
near his workspace, and his mailroom mailbox.
If we had two
"authorities" saying opposite things, then it might be easier to get
Anthrax Truthers to look at the actual FACTS instead of just using an opinion they agree with as their
prime argument.
November 10, 2013 (B) - An Anthrax
Truther on my
interactive blog has actually done some research and found SOLID FACTS
which answer a question I asked in my November 9 comment:
When Mr. Ross writes
that "the perpetrator [of the anthrax attacks of 2001] was never
found," is he just ignorant
of the facts? Or doesn't he believe
the facts?
The answer is (drum
roll, please!): Mr. Sherwood Ross was just ignorant of the facts. And so
was I when I wrote my Nov. 9 comment.
The Truther on my blog did some research and found that the Sherwood
Ross article was
actually written for the July/August, 2007, issue of The
Humanist magazine, almost exactly one year before Ivins was identified as the
anthrax killer. So, at that time, Mr. Ross would have been justifiably ignorant
of Bruce Ivins' role in the crime.
I saw the article dated November 9, 2013 on OpEdNews.com,
on MWCnews.net
and mentioned on a
web page about articles relevant to the Homeland Security
Department of the U.S. government: USGovernmentPortal.com.
It simply didn't occur to me to check further to see if it was an old
article being recirculated for some reason. So, I was
ignorant of its original publication date. Live and learn.
The lesson for today: NEVER trust OpEdNews.com or MWCnews.net,
particularly OpEdNews. Always verify.
November 10,
2013 (A) - In last
Sunday's
comment, I mentioned that I was going to watch a documentary in the
Reelz channel called "JFK:
The Smoking Gun."
Well, I didn't watch it -- not in its entirety, anyway. I
watched it as far as the first commercial, about 20 minutes into
it. I then decided I wasn't in the mood to go any further.
I just couldn't find any benefit to watching a show about a new theory that some Secret Service
agent accidentally killed
President Kennedy.
During the 20 minutes I watched, they showed parts of a CBS program I
remember from many years ago where they had rifle experts demonstrate that Lee Harvey Oswald could have fired the three shots in
the time he had. The program also debunked the "Magic Bullet"
argument by showing that a single bullet could definitely have gone through
JFK's neck, into Governor Connally's back, out Connally's chest and
into his leg. Connally's seat simply wasn't located where the
"Magic Bullet" nay-sayers believe it was. It was a jump seat, not
a
regular car seat.
The Google
barge mystery I mentioned last Sunday seems to be
solved. Yesterday's San
Francisco Chronicle explains that it is going to be a tourist
attraction, a meeting center, and a "work of art" that can be moved
from place to place in San Francisco Bay and elsewhere along the West
Coast. The SF Chronicle article makes no mention of the fact that
there's an East Coast version, too. The
Guardian, however, has an article which says that that mystery is
also solved. According to The Guardian, it's the same thing as
the West Coast barge, primarily an "interactive learning center."
Meanwhile, in case anyone's
interested, I've been very
busy with my new sci-fi novel during the past week. I have no
firm
idea what the key event in the story is. Right now, the book has
the main character
working with two scientists who invented a new type of crime-solving
tool. And the three of them are slowly being drawn into trying to
help stop a group
of Right Wing terrorists from committing some dastardly
deed.
Unlike
screenplays, where it's definitely best to have the characters and the
beginning, the middle and the end of the story all laid out before you
actually start writing, writing novels can be much more organic.
You just pick
a character or two, and a general idea, and start writing.
If done right, and if each chapter ends with a bit of a "cliff hanger,"
the idea for the next chapter springs into your mind as
you finish the current chapter. You become just as interested in
seeing what happens next as literary agents and the eventual book buyers will hopefully be when the
book is finished.
If you don't believe any "professional" would write a book that way, a
few days ago I
happened to see a CNN interview with best-selling author Scott Turow
where he said that is exactly
what he does. I can't find that specific interview on CNN or
YouTube.com, but in other interviews HERE, HERE and HERE he talks
about how his latest book "Identical" began with an idea about
identical twins. (Click HERE for an
interesting discussion of problems with publishing e-books that are
then "re-sold" without profit to the author. He also talks about
how e-books are handled by libraries.)
Here are the current stats for my new novel (I'm currently on chapter
14):
| Chapter |
Pages |
Pgs total |
words |
wds total |
Started |
1
|
5
|
5
|
880
|
880
|
Oct
29
|
2
|
7
|
12
|
1425
|
2305
|
Oct
30
|
3
|
9
|
21
|
1883
|
4188
|
Oct
30
|
4
|
5
|
26
|
1065
|
5253
|
Oct
31
|
5
|
7
|
33
|
1320
|
6573
|
Nov
1
|
6
|
9
|
42
|
1919
|
8492
|
Nov
1
|
7
|
9
|
51
|
2082
|
10574
|
Nov
2
|
8
|
8
|
59
|
1473
|
12317
|
Nov
3
|
9
|
8
|
67
|
1574
|
13891
|
Nov
3
|
10
|
9
|
76
|
1928
|
15819
|
Nov
4
|
11
|
6
|
82
|
1186
|
17005
|
Nov
5
|
12
|
10
|
92
|
2314
|
19319
|
Nov
7
|
13
|
6
|
98
|
1117
|
20436
|
Nov
7
|
14
|
1
|
99
|
10
|
20446
|
Nov
9
|
The minimum length for a novel is generally considered to be 60,000
words. So, while it may seem from the word count alone that I'm
about one-third done, in reality I'm just on the first draft, and the
first draft could easily end up with only about 40,000 words. Or
it could be 80,000 words. There's no way to tell. And it's
the writing of the second
draft where I will
almost certainly be spending the most time.
Although it's a sci-fi novel, the story within the novel takes place in
the current time, not in outer space or in the distant future. As
I mentioined above, it
involves the invention and use of a new tool for crime-solving.
Use of the tool can pose certain dangers, but the results can be
extremely
valuable - or totally worthless. So, the first part of the book
follows the story teller
as other main characters experiment with the device to show the story
teller what it can do. In the next chapter or so, they'll start
getting more involved with solving the major crime that involves Right
Wing terrorists.
While I plan to have the main action take place in Washington, D.C.,
the
story begins in the Chicago
area. I've been using Google's
satellite images and "Street Views" to figure out what things look like
where things
happen. I spent
most of Friday with the main characters visiting a spot where a
large helicopter involved in a crime landed on a golf course. I
picked
the landing spot to be just to the left of the green in the bottom
right of the satellite
picture below. I was going to have the investigators walk onto
the golf course the same way a patrol car had entered, via the "path"
between the trees that can be clearly seen:
And, it's not a flat
"path" as it seems to be in the satellite view. It's an incline
down
to the golf course, with a
gravel path at the bottom of the incline.
But, the investigators can
still enter through there, and so can a patrol car - particularly if
the alternative is to drive across the golf course from the club
house. And, as you can see, there is no curb to prevent driving
onto the grass. I had to do other kinds of Google searches to
try to figure out what those small
white and dark objects are in the gray rectangles next to the greens
in the satellite view. They appear to be a ball washer and
sign indicating the hole number, the number of yards to the next hole,
etc. That kind of detail helps me describe the setting to the
reader. It's certainly easier than actually driving to Chicago to
see for myself, and it's infinitely better than just trying to make up
a believable but imaginary
location
and all of its surroundings.
I have no way of knowing if the above information is of any interest to
any reader of this web site, but it was absolutely fascinating to me to see exactly
what someone at the scene of the abandoned helicopter would see.
When I do the second draft,
I'll have to research large helicopters that do heavy lifting for
construction work so that I can better describe what such a machine
looks like while setting there on the grass of the golf course (with
the dead
body of the owner still inside).
I also need to do some research to find out what kind of aircraft can
haul a fully loaded semi-trailer truck from Chicago to Washington,
D.C. A C-17 Globemaster can almost do it. But, as
seen in the picture HERE,
the wheels would have to be removed when it is positioned at the
plane's center of gravity between the wings. A C-5
Galaxy may be better, but it's still a tight fit.
Busy busy busy.
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