MODEL JURY INSTRUCTIONS:
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1.5 DIRECT AND CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Evidence may be direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence is direct proof of a fact, such as testimony by a witness about what that witness personally saw or heard or did. Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence, that is, it is proof of one or more facts from which one can find another fact.

You are to consider both direct and circumstantial evidence. Either can be used to prove any fact. The law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to either direct or circumstantial evidence. It is for you to decide how much weight to give to any evidence.

Comment

"It is the exclusive function of the jury to weigh the credibility of witnesses, resolve evidentiary conflicts and draw reasonable inferences from proven facts. . . . Circumstantial and testimonial evidence are indistinguishable insofar as the jury fact-finding function is concerned, and circumstantial evidence can be used to prove any fact." United States v. Ramirez-Rodriquez, 552 F.2d 883, 884 (9th Cir. 1977) (quoting United States v. Nelson, 419 F.2d 1237, 1239-41 (9th Cir. 1969)). See also United States v. Kelly, 527 F.2d 961, 965 (9th Cir. 1976); and Payne v. Borg, 982 F.2d 335, 339 (9th Cir. 1992) (citing United States v. Stauffer, 922 F.2d 508, 514 (9th Cir.1990)).
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It may be helpful to include an illustrative example in the instruction:

By way of example, if you wake up in the morning and see that the sidewalk is wet, you may find from that fact that it rained during the night. However, other evidence, such as a turned-on garden hose, may provide an explanation for the water on the sidewalk. Therefore, before you decide that a fact has been proved by circumstantial evidence, you must consider all the evidence in the light of reason, experience, and common sense.

4. Anything you see or hear about this case outside the courtroom is not evidence, unless I specifically tell you otherwise during the trial.

Furthermore, a particular item of evidence is sometimes received for a limited purpose only. That is, it can be used by you only for one particular purpose, and not for any other purpose. I will tell you when that occurs, and instruct you on the purposes for which the item can and cannot be used.

Finally, some of you may have heard the terms “direct evidence” and “circumstantial evidence.” You are instructed that you should not be concerned with those terms. The law makes no distinction between
direct and circumstantial evidence. You should give all evidence the weight and value you believe it is entitled to receive.

[There are, generally speaking, two types of evidence from which a jury may properly determine the facts of a case. One is direct evidence, such as the testimony of an eyewitness. The other is indirect or circumstantial evidence, that is, the proof of a chain of facts which point to the existence
or non-existence of certain other facts.]

[As a general rule, the law makes no distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence. The law simply requires that you find the facts in accord with all the evidence in the case, both direct and circumstantial.]

It is also important to note that direct evidence such as eyewitness identification and confessions given by suspects are fraught with potential problems as demonstrated by the investigations into 300-plus exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals by the Innocence Project. The leading cause of wrongful convictions, especially in sexual assault cases is eyewitness misidentification, a prime example of direct evidence. Eyewitness identification has proven to be unreliable in approximately 75% of the 300 DNA exonerations, yet remains very persuasive as direct evidence for judges and juries. False confessions given by defendants, and incriminating statements made by jailhouse snitches and others have been found to occur in approximately 25% of all the DNA exoneration cases to date. Once jurors hear this type of direct testimony, it is nearly impossible to un-ring that bell.

QUESTION: Is circumstantial evidence enough for conviction?

8% Say Yes
92% Say No

Most trials are based on CE [Circumstantial Evidence].

Most criminal cases that go to trial are based on circumstantial evidence. If there is direct evidence like video they don't go to trial. Those cases are usually plea bargained. Cases that actually go to trial are almost always based on circumstantial evidence. It's difficult for the defense to get around a video that shows the defendant robbing the 7-11.

Some 95 percent of felony convictions are the result of plea bargains, with no formal evidence ever presented, and most never bother with an appeal.

What was Sony thinking? In the history of corporate bonehead decisions, the financing and distributing of a slobbola comedy about the assassination of a sitting world leader has to rank right up there with the New Coke.

“The Interview” is not exactly hard-hitting political satire. It’s more like a gross-out jamboree with just enough political window-dressing to make it seem “daring.” (Much is made of the fact that the Supreme Leader is reputed by his people to be so superhuman he has no need to go to the bathroom.) But even if the film were sharper, even if it was made by satirists on the order of Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern in their “Dr. Strangelove” days, I would still argue that greenlighting such a film is a blunder. The exercise of free speech does not exempt one from the consequences of stupidity.

Movies, even dumb movies like “The Interview,” are staged in the world arena, and it’s clueless for Hollywood to pretend otherwise. Those who denounce Sony for setting a terrible precedent by pulling the film are only half right. What about the precedent of making the movie in the first place?

The investigation was undertaken partly because of questions raised by a National Academies study released in 2011, which determined that the FBI’s scientific data did not rule out other possible sources of the weaponised anthrax spores in the letters.

The GAO also found that one of the four genetic tests the FBI used on the anthrax samples had a 43% false negative rate. ‘That just really dropped my jaw, and it should be very embarrassing to the FBI that they still relied on that,’ says Jim White, a now retired molecular biologist with expertise in fermentation technology and microbial growth. Two of the three other genetic tests that the FBI relied on had false negative rates in the 20% range.

The FBI issued a response saying it has ‘complete confidence’ in its scientific results. The agency said the genetic tests it used were ‘well validated’, and that it has reviewed the results of all scientific analysis conducted during the course of the investigation and is satisfied by its quality. The FBI further noted that the scientific results alone were not the sole basis for concluding that Ivins committed the attacks.

But White and others argue that the information and questions that have surfaced in recent years warrant reopening the case.

GAO found the genetic tests that were conducted by the FBI’s four contractors were generally scientifically verified and validated and met the FBI’s criteria. However, the FBI lacked a comprehensive approach — or framework — that could have ensured standardization of the testing process.

“The use of a standardized approach to verification and validation from the beginning could have more definitively established the performance of all the genetic tests,” GAO reported. “It could have helped in communicating expectations clearly, ensuring confidence in results generated by any genetic tests developed.”

December 22, 2014 - After 13 years of arguments, there are still things to be learned and discovered about the anthrax attacks of 2001.  And the best way to discover them is to argue with people who have a totally different view of things than you do.

Yesterday on my interactive blog, I got into yet another argument with "DXer" about the hidden message Bruce Ivins encoded into the anthrax letter sent to Tom Brokaw.  (Click HERE for a large image of the complete Brokaw letter.)  DXer has been arguing for years that the horizontal line in the T in "NEXT" is not double-lined (traced over), even though it clearly is darker than all other line strokes in the word.

 

As anyone can see, whether expert or not (and without magnification), the “X” is double-lined. Now why on earth did Agent Steele not tell us the “X” was double-lined — was he trying to make an imagined code fit his Ivins Theory?

GAO was asked to review the FBI’s genetic test development process and statistical analyses. This report addresses (1) the extent to which these genetic tests were scientifically verified and validated; (2) the characteristics of an adequate statistical approach for analyzing samples, whether the approach used was adequate, and how it could be improved for future efforts; and  (3) whether any remaining scientific concerns regarding the validation of genetic tests and statistical approaches need to be addressed for future analyses.

GAO did not review and is not taking a position on the conclusions the FBI reached when it closed its investigation in 2010.

The combination of limited communication among the contractors, varied timing in the validation efforts, uncertainties the FBI faced as the investigation unfolded, and increasing knowledge about the repository samples made it clear, with hindsight, that the contractors’ verification and validation approaches were likely to differ.

Although we identified several aspects of the FBI’s scientific methods we reviewed that could be improved in a future investigation, we recognize that in 2001, the FBI was faced with an unprecedented case. Determining the source of the spores in the envelopes was complicated by many factors, including the uncertain provenance of samples in the FBI repository, an unknown mutation rate for B. anthracis under laboratory growth conditions, and the performance of the genetic tests under “realworld” conditions

Although the complexity and novelty of the scientific methods at the time of the FBI’s investigation made it challenging for the FBI to adequately address all these problems, the agency could have improved its approach by including formal statistical expertise early in the investigation and establishing a statistical framework that could identify and account for many of the problems.

A key scientific gap—how stable genetic mutations are in a microbial genome and thus their suitability as genetic markers—remains an issue. Lack of this knowledge has implications for both the development of genetic tests, or other investigative approaches and technologies, and the analysis of the results they generate. For example, how likely it is that the same genetic mutations will arise independently in separate cultures is currently unknown, and so is whether different culture conditions can change the ratio of the mutations significantly enough to provide a negative rather than a positive result. DHS-funded research into the evolutionary behavior of variants in the genome of B. anthracis and other microbial agents and the use of genome sequencing is a step in the right direction because the FBI is planning to use sequencing in future investigations to analyze all the material in evidence samples. However, in determining the significance of using mutations as genetic markers, an understanding is still needed about the stability of genetic mutations. DHS’s ongoing research is likely to take several years and some of the technologies it entails, such as whole genome sequencing, are still evolving. Therefore, it is not clear when and whether this research alone will address this gap.

STOCHASTIC:

Stochastic is synonymous with "random." The word is of Greek origin and means "pertaining to chance" (Parzen 1962, p. 7). It is used to indicate that a particular subject is seen from point of view of randomness. Stochastic is often used as counterpart of the word "deterministic," which means that random phenomena are not involved. Therefore, stochastic models are based on random trials, while deterministic models always produce the same output for a given starting condition.

To ensure that a structured approach guides the validation of the FBI’s future microbial forensic tests, we recommend that the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation work with the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a verification and validation framework. The framework should be applied at the outset of an investigation involving an intentional release of B. anthracis, or any other microbial pathogen. It should (1) incorporate specific statistical analyses allowing the calculation of statistical confidence for interpreting the results and specifying the need for any additional testing to fully explore uncertainties relative to the type of genetic test being validated and (2) applied and adapted to a specific scenario and employs multiple contractors.

In addition, we recommend that the Director of the FBI establish a general statistical framework that would require input from statistical experts throughout design and planning, sample collection, sample processing, sample analysis, and data interpretation that can applied and adapted to address a specific scenario involving an intentional release of B. anthracis or any other microbial pathogen.

If you actually say, out loud, that the FBI faked its search for the anthrax criminal(s), flushed $100 million down the toilet in its most expensive case to date, and deliberately avoided conducting a credible investigation to find the anthrax letters perpetrators, then you question the entire edifice of US law enforcement and imply a conspiracy around an anthrax letters coverup at the highest levels of government, as suggested in Professor Graeme MacQueen's recent book. And that, ladies and gentlemen, you are simply not permitted to do.

The FBI used flawed scientific methods to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others, federal auditors said Friday in a report sure to fuel skepticism over the FBI's conclusion that Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator.

The 77-page report from the Government Accountability Office says the FBI's research, including novel microbial forensic tests, did not provide a full understanding of how bacteria change in their natural environment and in a laboratory. This failure to grasp the reason for genetic mutations that were used to differentiate between samples of anthrax bacteria was a "key scientific gap" in the investigation, the report says.

The GAO also found a lack of rigorous controls over sampling procedures and a failure to cite the degree of uncertainty in measurement tools used to identify genetic markers.

"Although the complexity and novelty of the scientific methods at the time of the FBI's investigation made it challenging for the FBI to adequately address all these problems, the agency could have improved its approach," the report said.

The GAO didn't take a position whether Ivins, who worked at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, made and mailed the anthrax-filled envelopes.

GAO did not review and is not taking a position on the conclusions the FBI reached when it closed its investigation in 2010.

The GAO report was requested by a trio of congressional members led by Rep. Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, whose district includes the Princeton mailbox used in the attacks. Holt, who is retiring at the end of the year, said Congress should demand a comprehensive, independent review of the investigation to ensure that lessons have been learned.

"The GAO report confirms what I have often said — that the FBI's definitive conclusions about the accuracy of their scientific findings in the Amerithrax case are not, in fact, definitive," Holt said in a written statement.

Ivins' attorney, Paul F. Kemp, said he hopes Holt's plea doesn't fall on deaf ears.

"There's no evidence he did it," Kemp said.

The New York Times reported this evening that North Korea is “centrally involved” in the hack, citing unnamed U.S. intelligence officials. It’s unclear from the Times report what “centrally involved” means and whether the intelligence officials are saying the hackers were state-sponsored or actually agents of the state. The Times also notes that “It is not clear how the United States came to its determination that the North Korean regime played a central role in the Sony attacks.” The public evidence pointing at the Hermit Kingdom is flimsy.

Other theories of attribution focus on hacktivists—motivated by ideology, politics or something else—or disgruntled insiders who stole the data on their own or assisted outsiders in gaining access to it. Recently, the finger has pointed at China.

The Sony attacks were routed from command-and-control centers across the world, including a convention center in Singapore and Thammasat University in Thailand, the researchers said. But one of those servers, in Bolivia, had been used in limited cyberattacks on South Korean targets two years ago. That suggested that the same group or individuals might have been behind the Sony attack.

The Sony malware shares remarkable similarities with that used in attacks on South Korean banks and broadcasters last year. Those intrusions, which also destroyed data belonging to their victims, are believed to have been the work of a cybercriminal gang known as Dark Seoul. Some experts say they cannot rule out the possibility that the Sony attack was the work of a Dark Seoul copycat, the security researchers said.

The Sony attack also borrowed a wiping tool from an attack two years ago at Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, where hackers wiped off data on 30,000 of the company’s computers, replacing it with an image of a burning American flag.

1) DXer is right: there's no evidence Ivins made either trip to Jersey, no evidence he was in Jersey in the entire calendar year of 2001.

2) Lake is right: there's no evidence that Shukrijumah was in New Jersey, or, for that matter, in the US in September-October of 2001.

That doesn't exclude the possibility that such trips were made WITHOUT LEAVING ANY SIGN WHATSOEVER, but as to a 'skein of evidence', it simply does not exist ...  the trips are merely being INFERRED

You may yet persuade people of your suspect's guilt by OTHER skeins of evidence, but not via a non-existent skein pointing to (merely putative) trips, trips which may never have been made. 

True. The trips to New Jersey made by Dr. Ivins are "inferred" or logically deduced. That is how circumstantial evidence works. But no trip by Shukrijumah to New Jersey at the time of the mailings can be inferred by the available evidence. The evidence infers just the the OPPOSITE, that Shukrijumah was nowhere near New Jersey at the time of the mailings.
....

It's the "OTHER skeins of evidence" which "infer" that Ivins made the trips to New Jersey. No one has argued that Ivins' trips to New Jersey are evidence of his guilt.

DXer, on the other hand, IS arguing that evidence that Shurkijumah MAY have been somewhere in the Western Hemisphere at some time after 9/11 is meaningful evidence that Shukrijumah was in New Jersey to mail the anthrax letters. It is NOT meaningful evidence of any kind related to the anthrax mailings.

The idea being that people with lots of free time on their hands will be able to find a nugget seemingly missed by harried police officers in-between arguments with the chief.

Of course, as with any project in 2014, the site won't be launching without users putting hands into their pockets. CrowdSolve is currently asking for donations on Indiegogo, with a target of $50,000 necessary before the documents can begin to flow. The bulk of that cash will be used to obtain the relevant documents ready for a launch around August next year.

The GAO report, based on new information, is expected Friday, December 19, 2014.

CNN.com – Transcripts
edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0111/15/ltm.01.html
Nov 15, 2001 … Target: Terrorism: Look at Al Qaeda’s Dreadful Recipe Book … and was given three chapters of the manual, in order to prove it’s existence. … The poisonous letter is the title of one section [on] poison inks. … “Wipe the envelope from the inside with silicone sealant,” it goes on, “so it would not kill the mailman.

The poisonous letter is the title of one section [on] poison inks. "Write a letter to the victim mentioning very exciting and very interesting news," it reads. "Wipe the envelope from the inside with silicone sealant," it goes on, "so it would not kill the mailman."

El-Shukrijumah may have been announcing by the address who the sender was — speaking in a code as he taught his colleagues (like Binyam) plotting with Padilla to do.

4TH GRADE
GREENDALE SCHOOL
FRANKLIN PARK NJ 08852

Zawahiri seeks his justifications in the hadiths — which is why he would have used the extremely virulent Ames strain of anthrax. The hadiths commanded that one use the weapon of one’s enemy.

Lastly, I've created a new thread for my interactive blog using the cartoon above to get it started on the subject: Evidence vs Opinions.  DXer has been using the thread to offer his opinions about a 2014 PhD thesis by Michael Garvey.  Dr. Garvey's thesis is that more work needs to be done to fully establish Microbial Forensics as a accepted scientific discipline.  It appears that in DXer's opinion, this somehow means that Dr. Garvey in some way doesn't agree with the findings of the Amerithrax investigation.

As far as I can tell, Dr. Garvey offers no opinion on Dr. Ivins' guilt.  The only relevant opinion he offers is a statement on page 94 where Dr. Garvey says, "this author does not believe that the material recovered from OCONUS [Outside the CONtinental United States] missions was related to the 2001 anthrax attacks."  In other words, Dr. Garvey doesn't believe DXer's theory that the attack anthrax was made in Afghanistan.

A Cicero man admitted today that he sent nearly two dozen mailings filled with white powder and a deadly threat between 1997 and 2012.

Brian D. Norton, 59, pleaded guilty in federal court to conveying false information threatening injury or death.

He admitted sending 21 letters containing what he falsely claimed was anthrax or ricin to people, schools and organizations starting in 1997.

His arrest in June was the result of a 17-year investigation by FBI agents.

In contrast to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, which started in late 2013 and will last well into 2015 or longer, the US "Ebola crisis" was encapsulated in a single month, October 2014. But there may well be US Ebola cases to come, brought here by travelers or returning volunteers. And other emerging infectious diseases will surely reach the United States in the months and years ahead.

So now is a propitious time to harvest some crisis communication lessons from the brief US Ebola "crisis."

We're putting "crisis" in quotation marks because there was never an Ebola public health crisis in the United States, nor was there a significant threat of one. But there was a crisis of confidence, a period of several weeks during which many Americans came to see the official response to domestic Ebola as insufficiently cautious, competent, and candid—and therefore felt compelled to implement or demand additional responses of their own devising.

1. Don't over-reassure
2. Acknowledge uncertainty
3. Don't overdiagnose or overplan for panic
4. Tolerate early overreactions; don't ridicule the public's emotions

Treat the public like grownups

Aiming to convince the public that there was no cause for Ebola alarm, officials and experts used overconfident over-reassurance and absolutist invocations of "the science." And then they had the gall to ridicule the public as hysterical and panic-stricken. We hope that before the next unfamiliar and frightening infectious disease arrives, officials and experts will practice treating the public like grownups.

The CDC's pre-Dallas policies were promptly changed once they proved inadequate. But [CDC Director Tom] Frieden hadn't warned that errors and policy reversals were to be expected as officials climbed the Ebola learning curve. Instead, he reiterated often his contention that Ebola was well-understood and would succumb to tried-and-true public health measures.

(By contrast, after some initial overconfident over-reassurances during the 2001 anthrax attacks, Frieden's predecessor Jeff Koplan, MD, MPH, warned that public health officials would learn things in the coming weeks that they would then wish they had known when they started.)

There's a great deal of very interesting material in the article, including some links to additional material in the final section: "Other crisis communication lessons."

While it's about "crisis communication," it also relates to the reactions you'll get from conspiracy theorists.  In the world of conspiracy theorists, admission of uncertainty by a public official is the same as an admission of incompetence.  And any statement implying certainty that turns out to be incorrect is the same as "being caught in a lie," which is viewed as "proof" of a conspiracy.

While there are certainly some "crisis communication" lessons that can be learned from the "Ebola crisis," there are also people out there who will consider such lessons to be instructions on how to manipulate the public in order to lead them away from "the truth."  So, no matter how well you communicate with "the public," there will always be some "Truthers" who will believe what they want to believe.

[Sabrina Rubin] Erdely [the author of the Rolling Stone article] did find time to interview Wendy Murphy, whom she introduced to readers as an attorney who has filed Title IX lawsuits. She’d have been better identified as the activist who made incendiary and spurious public statements in the Duke lacrosse hoax. It’s disturbing how these same people -- and the same news outlets -- keep arising in stories. Al Sharpton, Tawana Brawley’s champion and Crown Heights riots provocateur, is now organizing protests over the police shooting in Ferguson. The New York Times, cheerleader of the fake Duke lacrosse claims, led the witch hunt against Steven Hatfill.

That case was reported properly by diligent Los Angeles Times investigative journalist David Willman. It was not Hatfill who terrorized the East Coast with anthrax, it was government scientist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself when the FBI finally closed in. Willman, who won an earlier Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on the Food and Drug Administration, would have made Joseph Pulitzer proud. Rolling Stone magazine—not so much.

April 3, 2003. KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] also named three individuals who, he said, worked on an al-Qa'ida anthrax program that was still in its "earliest stages."

After CIA interrogators "demonstrated the penalty for lying," al-Barq again stated that "I made the anthrax" and then immediately recanted, and then again stated that he made anthrax.

Two days later, al-Barq stated that he had lied about the anthrax production "only because he thought that was what interrogators wanted."

December 9, 2014 (B) - Overnight, I received three emails from DXer.  The first email contained this section of page 068 from Dr. Ivins' notebook #4010 (click HERE for a larger version):



The intent of the email was to show that I still haven't fully corrected my mistake about when flask RMR-1029 was created.  The note describes how RMR-1029 was created, it is signed at the bottom by Bruce Ivins, and it is dated "22 Oct 97."

So, I again stand corrected.  In yesterday's comment, I stated that, while I could be wrong, it was my

The spores were then dispensed into 2 equal lots, 500ml/lot, in polycarbonate screw-capped flasks (sterile).  They were store in the B3 cold room at 2-8 C. 

I'm embarrassed for you because there are 217 mistakes like this - we're stuck at #1 because you refuse to correct your mistake

Zawahiri seeks his justifications in the hadiths — which is why he would have used the extremely virulent Ames strain of anthrax. The hadiths commanded that one use the weapon of one’s enemy.

About a third of Americans, for example, believe the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is a foreigner. About as many believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” by the Bush administration.

The idea that such beliefs are held only by a bunch of nerdy white guys living in their parents' basements is a myth. Surveys by Uscinski and Parent show that believers in conspiracies “cut across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status.”

MacQueen, in countering anti-conspiratorial thinkers of the left and right who approach such issues with minds like beds already made up, explains his method thus: “The tools of investigation are no different from those used to test other proposals. We use evidence and reason. In some cases we will be able to make confident assertions and in other cases we shall have to acknowledge that we are speculating, but even in this second case we will do our best to ground our speculation in evidence. Ideology, national loyalty, outrage and ‘common sense’ will not do the job.”

The anthrax letter attacks began on September 18, 2001 when the first letters were mailed from Princeton, New Jersey. Between October 3 and November 20 twenty-two people were infected with dried anthrax spores and five died. Between October 6 and October 8 especially highly refined and aerosolized anthrax letters were sent to two key Democratic Senators, Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Before October 3 when the first case, that of Robert Stevens who died two days later, was diagnosed, the FBI claimed that “no one except the perpetrators knew…that the attacks were in progress.”

Yet The New York Times, between September 12 and October 3, made reference to the possibility of biological or chemical terrorist attacks 76 times, 27 references specifically to anthrax. Many of these warnings came from government leaders.

1.  The belief is that some scientist member of al Qaeda (or just some Muslim scientist named xxxxx xxxxxxx) was given access to a B3 suite at USAMRIID in May 1998.  While there, the scientist was given a sample of the Ames strain.   (But records show that the first sample taken from flask RMR-1029 which was removed in Sept. 1998.)  Click HERE for more details. 

That’s not what the records show. The records show that the first known sample taken from Flask RMR-1029 were from March 1998. The inventory he relies upon has been noted by Ivins to not reflect all the transfers and yet Ed relies on it because of a lack of mastery of the documents.

I have uploaded and linked the FBI’s expanded log of known withdrawals from Flask 1029 (based on the documents that the FBI was able to obtain).

And you talk about tours of USAMRIID when in fact Bruce Ivins GAVE virulent Ames to a former Zawahiri associate as part of research that was conducted at the BL-3 at USAMRIID. As part of his official duties. As evidenced by numerous patents by the DARPA-funded researchers.

Tarek Hamouda thanked Patricia Fellows, Dr. Ivins' chief accuser, for her technical assistance and thanked Bruce Ivins for supplying the Ames. 

If you cannot make your argument without intentionally lying, Ed, it reveals the weakness of your argument.

And if you are not intentionally lying, it just reveals you to be incredibly stupid.

That [the details of his theory] will eventually be understood by those with an open mind. In 2020, or 2022. Or whenever. With any 'luck' at all, Mister Lake won't live to see it.