Slashdot Mirror
New Scientific Evidence Emerges In Anthrax Case
sciencehabit writes "A Science Magazine investigation uses clues from a key document unveiled last week to reconstruct the trail that led the FBI to Bruce Ivins. Among the revelations: Anthrax fingerprinting was not critical to the investigation, as many reports have suggested. Rather, brute-force genetic sequencing, with the help of the J. Craig Venter Institute, helped crack the case. New potential motivations by Ivins are also revealed."
This was a really well done article. One quote reminded me of something odd about this case:
FTA:
I keep hearing this when they interview government types. It's weird, it seems like they're trying to sow doubt about their case, because:
Ivins's lawyer (from NPR):
Response:
Weak...
OK, now you're getting somewhere! Why is it they only go to the relevant part when pressed?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For those who aren't yet aware of it, Glen Greenwald at Salon.com has been making a rather thorough analysis of the holes in the DOJ's case against Ivins, and is not sparing the media coverage, either.
Read and judge for yourself.
I can see the fnords!
Does anybody know how the feds know where a specific envelope was purchased? I've been looking at the ones I own, and there doesn't seem to be anything identifiable about them.
Dr Bruce Ivins was just a patsy. Hans Reiser actually did it.
A glaring omission, meanwhile, is any evidence placing Ivins in Princeton, New Jersey, on any of the days the envelopes could have been mailed from there.
Personally, I don't see that as such a big deal. I'll assume that there's no evidence that he wasn't in Princeton on those days. Lots of criminals have been caught by credit card receipts from gas stations, but those stories have gotten lots of press over the years. Ivins was at least as smart as Lisa Nowak, who planned her crime attempt meticulously. Sure, people laughed about her using adult diapers, but I'll bet there weren't any photos taken of her at rest stops. I'd bet he not only paid cash for his gasoline, he probably checked the driving distance and his car's MPG, and bought exactly the amount used on the trip.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
It assumes competence. I could see something on the level of say, an anthrax attack being possible to arrange with a minimum amount of people involved. Most of the other events you mention would require too many participants to enforce secrecy. I've worked in classified settings for the government, and not to denigrate my coworkers in the least, but secrecy within an organization is a joke. While external secrecy is fairly good, the secrets aren't morally outrageous. I somehow doubt people would take their oaths particularly seriously if they discovered the U.S. government organized any of the above events.
Now if you want to argue that it was a sin of inaction, that someone high up knew an attack was coming and chose to do nothing, that might be plausible, since less people would need to be involved. I wouldn't rule it out completely, though my faith in humanity would be shattered if it were the case. I'm not inclined to believe even that much.
Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected. The people you accuse of conspiracy did not aid them in any way, they just took obscene advantage of the situation.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
-1 submitter. Speculation is not "revealed", facts are.
So if we base a clever article on a leaked document, shouldn't we first assume that the document is truthful?
When a high-profile person commits suicide because of the pressure of an investigation, the authorities will always try to justify their action. This was observed many times. I do remember a big scandal where a perfectly honest corner shop owner was investigated by the IRS and harassed in the worst possible ways. He turned out that his books were perfectly clean, but there was nevertheless an attempt at a smear campaign against the poor guy after his death.
I am sure that this suicide is embarrassing some higher-ups at the FBI and that they will do their best to avoid being blamed.
So I'd take these revelations with a grain of salt.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
You say: Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected.
But just below your post another /.ter mentions another article which says:
"The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
I hear this claim not the first time, and there should be plenty of physical evidence to support this claim if it's true (such as receipts for Cipro retained at pharmacies.) And if this is true then the attacks were expected, and the "right people" were advised to act ahead of time.
Call me paranoid, but I'm instinctively suspicious when the guy who unexpectedly ends up dead and thus isn't around to defend himself is revealed by the government to be TEH GENIUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND!!!1.
I thought they were 'Basket Full of Puppies' now.
Anthrax rocks are bigger than Alan Cox.
Thanks to Scott Ian it hurts when I go peein'...
Yeah, or, it might be that I (and the rest of America) had to make Steve Hatfill and Richard Jewell millionaires because these guys thought it would be great to make their lives hell by "leaking" to the press that they were being "investigated" when, in fact, they were being set up to take the fall. Given the record of these high-profile cases, there is *no* reason to believe that Ivins is the guy. His death was very convenient for the wrap-up that we're seeing now - "oh well, he's dead but we think he did it so we'll close this case. Say, anybody see the big game last night? is that Madonna over there?"
Do you have ESP?
Contrary to the triumphalist tone of the uber-parent, the case has not been cracked, chipped, broken apart, or otherwise solved.
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It's likely. And even makes sense. What happens when there isn't enough of an antidote for everyone and you warn the public of a possible attack? So who do you warn? Those that you need to keep the country afloat in case it really happens, for which you do have enough antidote.
The problem is that you can't even justify it later without risking an outrage. It is, from a purely intellectual point of view, the most sensible thing to do. But you can't justify it "morally" that you play god and decide who may live and who will die should it really happen.
And this is how conspiracies are born.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Considering the avalanche of bullshit the Justice Department has been spewing out (and/or failing to remember) during this administration, I honestly don't know why they're bothering to make a case. I'm not going to bother reading anything about this story because I'm pretty sure its just going to be more of the same.
I was cynical before, but at this point I don't even bother reading the news.
I was referring to the other events he listed (9/11, WTC bombing). Sorry if I wasn't clear. The anthrax mailings I know too little about to give much of an opinion on.
That said, anthrax paranoia does not imply awareness of a specific threat. Remember, at one point a substantial portion of the country thought Saddam:
If that was believed, it would be logical (or at least, movie logical as Bruce Schneier might put it) to take precautionary measures, even without a known imminent threat.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Not really, it only implies someone thought an attack using anthrax was possible. In other it means nothing except someone was intelligent enough to realize anthrax was a plausible biological weapon. Conspiracy theories exist because human brains are pattern matching machines and if you look enough at something you'll find some form of pattern by pure chance. Science and statistics exist because someone realized that without rigorous standards the conclusion we draw are often less than worthless.
The gadolinium level was off the chart, I tell you. That is what tipped them off.
when people keep coming up with different spellings of his name (Qaddafi/Gaddafi, Osama/Usama, Ivins/Ivans).
I'll admit that I am a *little bit* into conspiracy theories, but I'm not at all convinced that Ivins is guilty. When he was around to defend himself, the evidence was really weak and inconclusive, but as soon as he died, heaps of damning evidence suddenly appeared and all the holes in the story were filled in.
In this case, the question to be answered is what makes us think it was Ivans rather than someone else in the lab. This part of the case is weak. It seems that many people had access. Other people likely had as strong a motive. Why him specifically?
Evidence that he went to NJ is not strictly necessary, except that so many other areas are weak. Holes don't matter if the rest of the case is very strong, but they can sink a weak case.
Now if you want to argue that it was a sin of inaction, that someone high up knew an attack was coming and chose to do nothing, that might be plausible, since less people would need to be involved. I wouldn't rule it out completely, though my faith in humanity would be shattered if it were the case. I'm not inclined to believe even that much.
Well, if it's going to upset you, then you probably shouldn't think about it at all.
Some questions:
Do you think there are Freddie Scappaticcis-type informers in Al Qaeda?
How do you think US intelligence agencies maintain high-level assets within terrorist organisations?
Do you think American intelligence services ever allow terrorist attacks to go ahead?
suggests the actions of a loan deranged scientist as more likely than some sort of conspiracy
it always amazes me how the same people that talk of the federal government in terms of utter incompetence in one sentence, the next sentence they are suggesting a multiorganizational airtight conspiracy has been meticulously arranged
motive? right! warhawks hellbent on invading iraq... zzz
warhawks DO exist. but most everything that happens in the realm of tricky manipulation is usually due to the individual initiative of individual warhawks. not some sort of grand poobah conspiracy of warhawk cabals, or whatever. this is called paranoid schizophrenia, not intelligent insight
i think some people have been watching too many steven seagal movies. real life is far more mundane than your fantasy life suggests, i'm sorry about that
but don't mind me, i'm obviously an agent of the illuminati, come to cast aspersions on armchair intelligence anaylsts and their cutting insights
oops! gotta go, someone's chatting about the vince foster suicide cover up on an obscure message board... gotta cover that up... brb
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of the weak points in the affidavit is Ivins's motive, says Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense specialist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The FBI suggests that Ivins was afraid of losing his job if the government ended a project he was working on that was trying to solve regulatory issues around the so-called AVA anthrax vaccine. It "seems a bit of a stretch" that Ivins would have thought his job hinged on that project, says Koblentz. His group "would have had plenty of other anthrax vaccine-related work to keep them busy."
Sounds, to me, like the same line trotted out before. So, what new potential motives are revealed?
I realize I'm expecting a lot, but couldn't a Slashdot summary be accurate, just once.
First, its Bruce IVINS. Not IVANS. The Russians had nothing to do with this.
Second, the linked article doesn't provide any new information at all regarding IVINS' alleged motivations. It just repeats what's been reported already. And those don't make a lot of sense (the claims that he was psychologically unstable make much more sense, if those are reliable).
Third, yes anthrax fingeprinting was crucial to this case. Yes they brute forced the DNA sequencing (duh!) but the main evidence against Ivins is a statistical fingerprint based on four specific mutations in the anthrax that the FBI claims was present in the anthrax mailed to Congress critters, etc. and the anthrax in a vial that only Ivins controlled. But as the linked article points out, without knowing more you can't really conclude much from that. For example, the similarities could occur in portions of the anthrax DNA that are hypervariable which would significantly reduce their value.
So, so far it looks like the FBI case is based largely on two facts: a) Ivins began working late nights in the weeks prior to the anthrax mailings -- he apparently claimed he had trouble at home and found solace in his work which the FBI apparently found absurd; b) a statistical similarity in certain unspecified mutations among the anthrax mailed out and the anthrax in a vial that only Ivins had access to.
The Science article also suggests that the FBI assumed that because the envelopes used to mail the anthrax were purchased in Maryland or Virginia that the anthrax *had* to be produced there, so they then used as a basis for their investigation that the anthrax *had* to come from USAMRIID . . . which is why they focused on Hatfill so intensely.
Maybe Ivins was the killer, but the Science article seems to raise more questions about how solid the FBI's case really is. Maybe future, more detailed information releases will bring this more into focus, but so far this doesn't appear to be the slam dunk that the FBI has so far made it seem.
I guess you've never heard of Sibel Edmonds who's been trying to make noise on this exact case, yet is consistently not allowed to. Government knew well in advance of 9-11.
George Carlin had a comedy sketch about terrorists hijacking planes which was remarkably similar to 9/11 years before it happened.
How does an anti-terrorist bioweapons expert in the service of US military turn to a domestic terrorist right after terrorists attacked USA, and decide to launch a terrorist attack of his own?
All within one week, creating his own strain of anthrax, getting the stuff needed for manufacturing it and mailing it, all without leaving any evidence? Or was Ivins prepared to carry out the anthrax attacks even before 9-11 took place?
It is apparent that people with GOP connections received warnings and went on Cipro before any of the anthrax letters were even mailed.
Ivins was also a part of the investigation team, which would be standard CIA procedure, if this was a CIA op. (This is why FBI agents and coroners are used for assassinations inside USA, because they can be used to coverup the crimes.) Ivins would also likely have been easy to talk into the op since he was a rabid arab hater and neocon, as well as easy to blackmail later to take the blame, since he had a wife and 2 kids.
A lone person just doesn't spontaneously feel motivated to join al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against their own nation, especially if they work for the US military anti-terrorim team, even if their invention were to get more use.
This Salon guy has lots more discrepancies in the official story:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
It is clear to me that FBI is covering up one of the GOP's illegal Casus Belli operations for Iraq war. You can keep your head in the sand, while calling others paranoid, but it won't make you any more secure.
Where to start?
Well for one, it's spelled "thermite" not "thermate." And while it does indeed burn quite hot, it doesn't even remotely approach the temperature at the core of the sun. Not by a factor of more than a thousand. Also, it takes an enormous amount of heat to initiate the thermite reaction - burning jet fuel won't cut it.
The buildings coming down at freefall speed? Well duh, they're 90% air. Once the tops, which weighed half a million tons, got moving, nothing was going to stop them due to intertia.
People coming out with injuries due to explosives? Not suprising, since the planes impacting the buildings caused GIANT EXPLOSIONS that set multiple entire floors on fire.
Seriously, Bushco is guilty of plenty enough crimes that they actually committed to deserve the deaths of traitors - no need to make shit up.
There were a number of mysterious deaths involving more than 12 microbiologists around the world in the year or so after 9/11. Wonder if any of this is related!
These days it's more usual that people cut themselves when shaving too much with that Occam's razor. Namely, they usually insist on believing the absolute minimal and ignore all inconsistencies and contradictions. They never go against the authority and parrot it's message, calling others lunatics and paranoid. God created the Earth. End of story. No explanations necessary. The Authority has spoken.
I'd take the time to refute you, but someone else has:
www.lolloosechange.co.nr
Also, my personal favorite:
www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons
Oh, but your comment about thermate is hilarious. I'll give you points for that one.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
It seems incredible that FBI has seen fit to destroy the original antrax evidence in the case.
let me be perfectly clear: distrust of government is the mark of a healthy society
i repeat: distrust of government is the mark of a healthy society
have i made myself crystal clear?
meanwhile, rabid kneejerk hobbling distrust is the mark of someone with a personality disorder
you can distrust TOO MUCH just as much as you can trust too much. got that?
you are correct, it is 100% possible to trust too much. but it is also possible to distrust too much. it's a balance
so when you see someone who is trying to balance trust and distrust, you are not allowed to accuse them of trusting to much, simply because they do not share with you your impoverished level of distrust. your distrust is on the far end of the specturm. it is not healthy. of course, there are those on the far end of too much trust too. they are unhealthy too. i view them, and you, with incredulity
but don't mind me, right? i'm obviously a blind fooled sheeple. you've got it all figured out from your basement and your vast collection of intartube links. i should trust your fantasy life based on b-grade hollywood movies as superior to dem evil gubmints
baaaaah
baaaaah
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And while I appreciate your taking the time to debunk the loon...
The loon in question (and all of his looney friends, and the hundreds of man-years that sane people have wasted in attempts to debunk them) is the perfect example of Thomas Pynchon's Proverbs for Paranoids in action.
"3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
- Thomas Pynchon, (Proverbs for Paranoids), in Gravity's Rainbow
If there were a 9/11 conspiracy, it'd be necessary for the conspirators to invent something as insane as the thermite "theory", if for no other reason than to keep everyone busy debunking the bogus claims of the loons, rather than asking the right questions. And of course, if there weren't a 9/11 conspiracy, some idiot would have come up with something as insane as the thermite "theory" anyway.
So you can't even use the existence of the truther loons as evidence that there is, or isn't, a conspiracy. Catch-22. Best catch there is.
what does that have to do with a dead anthrax scientist?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah true, but demolitions are not done with just one explosion 75% of the way up the building. There IS a lot of air inside, but there are also supports running all the way up.
I'm NOT saying that it was a controlled demolition, only that I'm not sure it wasn't. I am not an expert (or even a knowledgeable layman) and I'm not taking my seat-of-the-pants feeling as a real analysis. I don't consider us (to include myself) capable of really addressing the question here, partly because one of the options leads us off into a never-never land where we have to ask who did the demolition.
I'm not a 9-11 truther, and despite my misanthropy and cynicism I just can't believe that any group of any size could have the buildings professionally demolished and then successfully cover it up. But it looked weird as hell, and I don't believe that the official version is all that credible. I just don't see that running planes into the buildings that far up would make the entire buildings collapse into their own footprints. But the alternative is too weird to contemplate as well, so...
Back in 2001, there was a rumor that some locations in a foreign country, a country considered as a potential Al-Qaeda training grounds, are being used as anthrax testing grounds. One of the top leaders (Al-Qaeda was quite structured at that time) had a large bank account in that country financial institution. That institution was incidentally also a reservoir of a grant from a related US department.
2 weeks before 911, there was an urgent request from the said financial institution to a huge US based IT company, to take over it's IT system by force. The reason of the hostile take over is because the old IT department blackmail the financial institution.
The take over was a success. And then a total rewrite of their core banking application was executed. Relevant data were migrated..
A couple of months after 911, US declared that the institution was misusing the grant.
Conspiracy theory start, 3, 2, 1. :-)
One of the oddest aspects of this case is the way that Ivins supposedly chose to commit suicide. Tylenol typically causes a horrible, drawn-out death that takes two to three weeks. The impression given by the media is that he tossed down a bottle of Tylenol, grabbed his throat and keeled over. But that just isn't the way it happens, and Ivins would have known that.
This article provides an excellent discussion of the time line of deterioration and eventual death that results comes from Tylenol poisoning.
1) On the Federal level, you can either have the Constitution OR democracy, not both.
2) The Constitution ended a long, long time ago, and almost no current politicians make any pretense of having any loyalty to it.
3) Fascism is system of government and economics. It is also known as Corporatism (a point of some confusion among the less educated, it has zero to do with the corporation as presently understood). Even if your first paragraph's contentions where true in their entirety, it would not necessarily indicate a fascist system of government and society.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
They can't place him there because he couldn't have been there. According to the FBI's warrants, etc. the letters were mailed from a specific box in Princeton, NJ after 5 pm on September 17, 2001. Ivins was out of the office in Frederick VA earlier in the day (after coming in briefly in the morning), but was back before 5 pm for a meeting. There is no indication that they have cracked his alibi from 5 on sufficiently to allow him to make the round trip during the time window.
Unless they have a real whopper saved up (he hired his secret twin brother to sleep with his wife that night?) Bruce Ivins could not have done it alone. Which (right on the tail of the Hatfill fiasco and the Siegelman fiasco and all the rest) might lead a reasonable person to wonder if he was involved at all.
--MarkusQ
P.S. The best way I've heard of salvaging their case would be if Ivins drove up in the daytime (he might just barely have had time) and asked someone to mail the letters for him. If they had this (presumably innocent foil) in witness protection or something they might actually have a better case than they've shown. But in any case he would have needed an accomplice of some sort.
History books also omit the 50 billion other coincidences that didn't have any backing for them. If you're working in hindsight you can even make things look like coincidences by reinterpreting them (see prophecies of a certain dead guy).
It is certainly possible that enough evidence has been collected to nail Ivins. However, the evidence so far produced is far, far from convincing, especially the explanation of the TIGR data. It does seem like they've used a relatively small number of markers to identify the strain. If these markers are SNPs, then there is a fairly non-trivial chance that parallel mutations could cause false positives and that further mutations on the original strain could cause false negatives. And by what criteria did they choose only 4 of the mutations they successfully found? Even if they are less common mutations, there is abundant evidence that mutations of all kinds (duplications, deletions, even inversions) can happen rather frequently. But with no information, we're left wondering.
The interpretation of polymorphism data through ad hoc statistics compounded with arbitrary ascertainment bias could potentially allow the FBI to implicate anyone. If they were malicious (or trying to perform some CYA) they could even choose which markers to use and whatever hand-wavy analyses they wanted to implicate particular strains. Perhaps the research is completely above-board and is rigorous and implicates Ivins beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm very much open to that possibility. However, two things give me pause. First, the sketchy details we have concerning the data render them highly suspect. Specifically, if I'm to take literally everything I've read as being the essence of the most convincing evidence the FBI has, then I'd have to say they don't have a scientific case. (Convincing a credulous jury is another issue. See Simpson, O.J.) Secondly, the way they present the evidence is highly suspect. As one commenter suggested, what does the shoddy description of the details of the case tell us about the FBI's understanding of the relevant issues? As a scientist, I can say that I'm underwhelmed by their ability to communicate basic ideas.
Whether this is the FBI being secretive and leaving out key details or this is just incompetence, I can't tell. In either event, the cloudy picture currently painted in the public sphere is so suspect as to make anyone who knows anything about population variation to hear loud alarm bells regarding this case.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-there-anything-you-wouldnt-believe.html
I'm sorry, but I can't help mulling over the preposterousness of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. The anthrax attack was made with state-of-the-art - let me correct myself, beyond-state-of-the-art - weaponized anthrax. The Russians couldn't have made it, the Chinese couldn't have made it, hell, even the Iraqis (ha!) couldn't have made it. Only one tiny group of people in the world could have made it, a handful of scientists at . . . Fort Detrick. I hate to even bring it up, but developing this expertise is completely illegal under treaties signed and ratified by the American government. The main point is that the manufacturing process needed to make this stuff was beyond the ability of anyone other than a tiny number of American scientists, and Bruce Ivins wasn't one of them.
The case against Ivins is based entirely on (questionable) DNA analysis which is said to prove that he had custody of a flask of the base anthrax material from which the weaponized powder was made. How do we get from anthrax spores to weaponized powder? According to the FBI, Ivins made it all by himself in his spare time at night.
Ivins was an immunologist. He worked on vaccines. He had neither the expertise - remember, it is beyond-state-of-the-art - nor the equipment to turn the spores into weaponized anthrax. It is as if he was trained as an accountant and the FBI told us his night-time hobby was brain surgery. Or better, manufacturing gasoline out of crude oil in the oil refinery he built in his lab, without anybody noticing. Or better, manufacturing gasoline out of crude oil in the oil refinery he built in his lab, using beyond-state-of-the-art refining techniques developed over years of experimentation, without anybody noticing.
And yet, we're told he must have done it, as he had custody of the flask. Others, some of whom were part of a team that actually had made beyond-state-of-the-art weaponized anthrax based on years of (illegal) experiments using the most sophisticated equipment and techniques, also had access to the contents of the flask, but they have been 'ruled out'. Somehow Ivins, without training in the right field, the proper equipment, years of (illegal) experiments, and a team of scientists, turned the contents of his flask into beyond-state-of-the-art weaponized anthrax in his spare time at night without anybody noticing. On top of this, he did it without getting any of the notoriously hard-to-contain spores on himself or his car or his home. If you believe this, is there anything you wouldn't believe? I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Eh, it wasn't much of my time. And leaving it unanswered opens up the possibility of someone else reading it and believing it's correct. I view troofers and other conspiracy loons as one of a. the kind who blame the someone else for everything because they refuse to face up to their failures, b. the kind who are there to scam you into buying their troofer book, or c. people who have schizophrenia or other some other disorder that impairs one's ability to correctly discern reality.
Outside "I Exist," nothing else can be absolutely proven and we have to accept certain axioms to function - troofers either refuse to accept them or they use "wrong" axioms, in which case anything can be proven, since all statements can be proven true given contadictory axioms.
And while we're on troofer theories, here's mine: the neocons knowingly let it happen because pnac wanted their new Pearl Harbor. Half of bushco are sociopaths IMO... If not sociopaths, severely delusional.
But it looked weird as hell, and I don't believe that the official version is all that credible. I just don't see that running planes into the buildings that far up would make the entire buildings collapse into their own footprints.
"Looked weird as hell"? Of course it did. We've never seen anything on that scale before or since. Unless you have one or more other examples of 100+ story truss-stabilized tubular frame supported structures that were hit by aircraft and then collapsed, you have no grounds to claim that's not what happens. Really, if you have doubts, read the Popular Mechanics debunking. It logically lays the whole thing out. Seriously, the "truthers" theories are completely insane. It's not too to entertain the notion that perhaps the building was wired for demolition, but when you view that assertion in light of all the other things that would have to be true--- the various degrees of complicity in the hijacking that'd be necessary--- it's just complete and utter nonsense. Some fucktard jihadis found a loophole in the system and exploited it. Shit happens.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I just don't see that running planes into the buildings that far up would make the entire buildings collapse into their own footprints.
As I understand it, the plane impacts dumped a bunch of jet fuel all over the buildings; this fuel didn't explode instantly, but burned for quite a while. The heat of burning weakened the buildings more and more until catastrophic failure.
Bin Ladin, on one of his infamous tapes, said that they hadn't been sure if the planes could really bring the whole towers down or not, but that he had hopes. (So, if there was a conspiracy to destroy the buildings, I guess he was in on it! Bin Ladin working with Bush, to help Bush accomplish his nefarious plan... no, THAT's not a stretch is it.)
I look at our government's inability to keep a secret and, from that, I speculate that it is highly unlikely that this (or the 9/11) attacks were sponsored, ordained, ordered, or even remotely believed to be plausible to our government. It is actually the constant reminders of the abysmal state of the American government that makes me inclined to think that some NYT reporter wouldn't have heard of it and posted it on the front page a long time ago.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Such a policy wouldn't be secret. In case of a biological epidemic of some kind, the US military will receive the antidote/vaccine before their own families and before the general population of the US. I'm sure the civilian government of the US also receives such privilege. And really, it makes sense in such a wide-scale panic case.
I'm pretty sure this recipe is vaguely familiar.
Yeah I think I saw it in a movie.
"911 Synthetic Terror" the greatest book on 911, by Webster Griffin Tarpley. Not to be confused with David Ray Griffin, another historian who wrote the most detailed accounts about 911 in a series of 3 books, all available on amazon.com
Do your duty, buy a copy of these books written by these exceptional US citizens.
For those of you who still believe in the Disneyworld pancaking version of the twin towers fall, here is a start: http://www.mondialisation.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9781
And on this blog are referenced a few Google video documentaries http://mittiprovence.blog.fr
It's likely. And even makes sense. What happens when there isn't enough of an antidote for everyone and you warn the public of a possible attack? So who do you warn?
Ah, but here's the problem with that scenario. We largely went to war because of Anthrax. Remember the so-called "mobile bioweapons lab", etc.? The official explanation is that he worked alone. So, if there was intelligence information warning of an anthrax attack, where did it come from?
Religion.
It was originally assumed that 9/11 and the anthrax mailings are related to each other. And indeed: both were committed by religious zealots. Ivins was a conservative Catholic crank (as you can see e.g. from his letters to the editors of The Frederick News) who sent the anthrax letters to pro-choice senators. These horrendous acts were not only committed by religious zealots, but were also committed due to their stupid factual beliefs and unacceptable morals.
It's time that people of minimal intelligence open upen up their eyes to the facts and stop maintaining silence whenever they hear people of faith spill their speeches.
But you can't justify it "morally" that you play god and decide who may live and who will die should it really happen.
We can't? Don't we already have underground bunkers for such people in the event of a nuclear attack?
And how does Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, qualify as one of the "right people"? You need bloggers and columnists to keep the country afloat? (In case magazine sales start to flag, for instance?) Right ...
Absurd, eh? And what have we learned here? Never do overtime.
If you'd rather stare into a flask than see your wife again, do yourself a favour and go get wasted at the pub. Sure, it ruins your liver, but so does Tylenol. Or get a mistress. Get a divorce. But for the love of Bast, don't be the last guy at the office.
Sure, you may think you're an IT dude, no way someone would link anthrax to your servers. Right? We'll see who laughs last when some idiot script kiddie defaces a DOD web server, and people go "OMG, it was in the same county as a computer which controls the nukes! The hacker mastermind must have planned to reprogram the computer to load itself into a truck, drive there and plug itself into the secure network! It's teh Al Qaeda! Terrorism! Jihad! Concerted attack on our freedoms! It's those dastardly... umm... hey, Jack, which country has oil and we didn't bomb already? Right, it was those dastardly Canadians and their false prophet!"
So leave Slashdot, close that SSH window, turn off the computer (is the uptime willy-waving worth someone inferring that you must have been there if the computer was up and doing stuff on the servers?), tell a bunch of co-workers "good bye" and walk out that door. Yes, you can do it. For the love of all that's good and holy, walk out that door.
And if your boss doesn't like it, tell him you're doing your patriotic duty. When that arab genius mastermind hacks a computer to load itself into a truck and drive to a nuke base, the CIA can chase him instead of wasting valuable time and resources on chasing you. It would be unpatriotic to interfere with their investigation by setting yourself up as a decoy. The future of democracy and freedom may depend on it. If you don't do it, the terrorists win!
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
and when that lawyer dropped dead during the Clinton years we spent how many years of amateur sleuths telling us what a grand conspiracy it was?
Just consider this "what goes around, comes around"
There is a conspiracy anywhere you have a crackpot
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Actually, it's not a stretch at all. The Bush family and the Bin Laden family have been close friends and business partners for decades. That is half the point of this whole line of inquiry. Or have you not seen the footage of Bush Sr. kissing the arab dude? I'd love to be a loon and making the whole thing up, or frightened for no good reason, and the bill of rights is still safe, JFK was shot from behind, and that Diebold counts our votes. I'd like very much for all of that to be true, but unfortunately the facts surrounding the case DO NOT provide evidence for that hypothesis. Quite the contrary.
Thermate was not a mis-spell. Thermate is different than Thermite, though very similar, it has additional sulfer to speed up and increase the reaction.
It is the way buildings are currently demolished by professionals, and lends itself strongly to Occam's Razor.
Those buildings WERE NOT AIR, and they WERE NOT EMPTY. They had GIANT solid steel beams throughout their entire core. Just do the minimal of research on destruction of sky scrapers. Do even a small comparison of a few demolitions, watch those tapes, review the evidence at hand and tell me how planes melted those central steel columns when jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel that quickly or thoroughly.
Please stop parroting your idiotic philosophical ideas and re-hashed Popular Mechanics references. Read all the various reports, including the scientific peer-reviewed ones, and then draw your own fresh conclusions.
It was painfully evident and obvious that very few of the haters who are also apparently modding me down have done any research, AT ALL.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
How about you read some. And try to give us scientific references, as that pop culture you threw at me I've read already, and was not at all impressed, though sometimes Maddox is funnier than others, and sometimes his Conservative-Colbertism is on the money. That article however is not one of them, in my opinion. I like his reviews of children's art, however. Top rate.
Now go and read, and debate this on scientific points, or STFU.
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree with one exception ... you can set thermite off with a match. The reaction's been used as far back as the 1900's to weld train rails together.
First off, yes they were about 90% air, that's what makes them useful as an office building. Next the beams are hardly 'GIANT', they seem to be fairly standard construction I-beams. You want giant go look in a steel mill, shipyard, or suspension bridge.
You don't need to melt steel to make it useless as a structural element. Depending on the type of steel & it's treatment, it can loose up to 80% of it's structural strength prior to even starting to glow. Specifically, heat treated types of steel - such as used in high strength bolts & nuts - turn to shit very quickly. I don't recall if the Twin Towers were built with rivet or bolt joints, but either would fail long before the beams themselves would begin to melt - the bolts being heat treated & the rivets being a mild steel.
Take it as you will, but this part of your argument isn't sound.
Bruce Ivans wasn't the anthrax mailer. He wasn't even a right wing nut job. He was just who the FBI got the "crack". FBI agents aren't that bright, they just assume anyone who cracks is guilty.
Anyway, read the FBIs story about how he mailed the letters. They claim he drove to Princeton, mailed the letters, and returned to work. He was seen at work that same day at 5pm. However, this story blatantly contradicts the fact that the letters were post marked the following day! How can he have mailed them well before 5pm but have the letters postmarked the following day?
In fact they have given no evidence pointing to Bruce Ivins except for the fact that he committed suicide. Btw, the FBI is also classifying the letter blaming that egyptian guy as a mere coincidence, despite the fact that this letter was mailed first. I'm not sure if the FBI knows who the anthrax mailer was, but it's crystal clear that they don't want to know who blamed the egyptian guy.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
There have been so much lies and ridiculous claims about this case. That its hard to judge what you can believe. It al started with blaming Al Qaida for sending anthrax letters to politicians that where opposed to Bush and his war(!!). And it just went downhill from there.
"It is not because no one sees the truth that it becomes a mistake" (Mahatma Gandhi)
Bruce Edwards Ivins (the Anthrax suspect) aka Jimmy Flathead aka
jimmyflathead@yahoo.com
From: jimmyflathead@yahoo.com (jimmyflathead)
NNTP-Posting-Host: p-903.newsdawg.com
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.literature/msg/d305ab96c3af13b9?hl=en
p-903.newsdawg.com = 64.209.5.103
-------
OrgName: Global Crossing
OrgID: GBLX
Address: 14605 South 50th Street
City: Phoenix
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85044-6471
Country: US
NetRange: 64.208.0.0 - 64.209.127.255
-------
Global Crossing [NSA-affiliated IP ranges]
Phoenix AZ US
64.208.0.0 - 64.209.127.255
64.210.0.0 - 64.210.127.255
64.211.0.0 - 64.211.223.255
64.212.0.0 - 64.215.255.255
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I've seen nothing to indicate that Ivins acted alone"
That's because you seen nothing at all, and how by any rules of logic, can you infer the absence of any 'evidence' that he actied alone, as being evidence that he didn't act alone.
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Bruce Ivins could not have done it alone"
..
What 'evidence' is ther that Irvins was involved, traces of that particular strain was found near by, well they would find it, as he initially helped with the analysis of the anthrax-tainted envelopes. They only turned on Irvins, when the other 'suspect' (Steven Hatfill) refused to roll over
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Well, first they take a DNA sample of the saliva used to seal the envelope with the anthrax"
...
What alleged bio-terrorist, would lick his own anthrax envelopes shut, especially considering he ws a highly trained microbiologist and vaccinologist, go back to your 'John and Jane' books
davecb5620@gmail.com
http://www.startribune.com/nation/26267974.html?location_refer=Homepage:8
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Like the JFK murder, or the downing of flight KAL007, rumors are starting to change into facts, and we are arguing about what someone said about what someone said about...
Can we get some data and squelch the silly rumors that waste time ?
were the spores weaponized or not ? I see a lot of people with strong statements, but no evidence or data.
Can we get an answer at this point, and move on ?
were the envelopes used really only available in the Va area ?
What are the 8 other labs that the FBI says had the supposed strain of anthrax
how good was record keeping at ivens lab - was it really so good that they can say no one else had access to the "flask" ?
etc
Of the recipients of the letters, how many of them were opposed to the Patriot act and/or the invasion of Iraq?
davecb5620@gmail.com
What was his motivation, why did he include anti-Israeli statements in the letters? What effects would such statements have on Americas willingness to prosecute the 'War on Terrorism'?
09-11-01, THIS IS NEXT, TAKE PENACILIN NOW, DEATH TO AMERICA, DEATH TO ISRAEL, ALLAH IS GREAT, 09-11-01, YOU CAN NOT STOP US., WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX., YOU DIE NOW., ARE YOU AFRAID?, DEATH TO AMERICA. , DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Maybe the Post Office F'd it up. What's the more likely scenario? Some big conspiracy, or some Post Office official not picking up the mail until the morning?
I don't know. I have no idea how reliable the Post Office is at picking up mail, but this seems to make more sense to me.
HOWEVER, there have been a lot of convenient suicides lately!
If they had this (presumably innocent foil) in witness protection or something they might actually have a better case than they've shown.
Oh, wow, that actually makes some sense. If all of this is true, he could have used a KKG sister as the friendly bystander to bring the sisterhood notoriety.
Just speculation based on weak evidence, of course.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I can see this from an Incompetence point of view, however, if the FBI was smart enough to warn Journalists about an anthrax attack and to get vaccines, why the HELL wouldn't they increase the monitoring/surveilance of one of the top biological research labs in the United states? Wow, we're so smart we can predict anthrax attacks to specifically tell people to get a specific vaccine, but so dumb not to actually WATCH trouble areas for the attack.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
That's been my experience
He also was apparently either prepeared in advance, or managed to do this in under one week, right after the 9-11 attacks.
Umm... left hand not knowing what the right one does? The FBI is big enough for that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So they found the flask, and he had access to it, but he'd given samples from that flask to hundreds of people over the years. The FBI could not have proven anything.
But when the FBI asked for a sample from the flask they suspected as the origin of the spores, but Dr Ivins gave them some other anthrax in an attempt to confuse the issue, the FBI wanted to know how it was that the sample they were given did not have the properties such as having silicon that they expected to find. So they siezed the flask, tested it, and sure enough, the contents of the flask were as they expected them to be.
But that raises the question of why did Dr Ivins send them the wrong samples? Why indeed, unless he was the one who sent out the letters in the first place. Confronted with this, Dr. Ivins knew they had him, and he killed himself.
He really should have just given them the samples they asked for, but he decided to get cute. This one falls under the dumbass category.
As for motivation, I don't get it. He did take the trouble of half-weaponizing the spores. He made them so that they would be dispersed in air well. But if he really wanted to weaponize them, then he would have first fed his anthrax brew low levels of various antibiotics until they became resistent before making spores. The result would then be a truely weaponized and far more deadly anthrax.
No doubt, Dr Ivins' primary motivation was not to kill, but to strike fear. Although he could easily have made resistent anthrax, he knew that those in the know would be more impressed by someone making easily airborne spores without getting themselves infected. This meant that whoever was sending the letters had the equivalent of an atom bomb within easy reach.
It would be comparatively simple to make the anthrax resistent to all treatment, and brew up 50 pounds or so of dispersable spores to let blow over a major metropolitan area killing possibly millions.
Maybe that person already had such a backpack full of death in their closet.
Maybe the motivation was to feel the rush, of having such power . By sending the letters, he showed the world what he could do, and invited the full resources of the US to come and TRY to find him out. While he remained anonymous, he could feel quite clever indeed. He didn't need to actually have the backpack of death in his closet. It was enough to have the FBI looking for him and failing to find him to prove to himself that he was clever.
Too bad for him that he wasn't all that clever. For one thing, having succeeded in creating such nice spores meant that whoever made the spores had a lab designed to contain them. It would take alot of money and some smarts to create such a lab. And this was Ames strain anthrax. This was no Hillbilly Joe who happened to find some anthrax on a dead cow.
And the FBI knows all about serial killers who like to think they are clever. They were dealing with a technical someone with access to government anthrax who worked in real labs and knew how to deal with the anthrax. That the person didn't fully weaponize the anthrax and made no demands gave him away as a serial killer, not a terrorist. A terrorist would have made demands or just cast his bio spell on some city. And they would have fully weaponized their anthrax since it would be so easy to do so if they could already make airborne spores. Likely they would just destroy the city and then take credit since giving away a sample of their spores would give scientists a chance to find it's achilles heel in terms of treatment if it indeed had any that the terrorists hadn't thought of.
Terrorists' goal being to stir up the US into inflicting collective punishment on innocent ( of terrorism at least ) individuals and nations so as to stir up more resentment of the US and thereby increase the terrorist's numbers, would want the US as pissed off as they could get it. Why pussyfoot around?
It may be that would be terrorists have come into possesion of nukes or anthrax, but have chosen not to use it because it is also necc
...
1)
thermate and thermite both exist, and
thermate is the more likely candidate
to have brought down the buildings.
Your understanding of thermAte initiation
is both incorrect, and irrelevant.
2)
> The buildings coming down at freefall
> speed? Well duh, they're 90% air.
The other 10% including masses of vertically
continuous interconnected structural steel.
It is, in fact, beyond puzzling that the
distruction of these
steel columns apparently presented no
significant retardation effect on the speed
of fall, which was pegged, by the way, by
the official reports, at around 10 seconds:
barely slower than freefall.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789293570011775.html
Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit
By RICHARD SPERTZEL
August 5, 2008
PageA17
Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001.
But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone.
I believe this is another mistake in the investigation.
Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.
Information released by the FBI over the past seven years indicates a product of exceptional quality. The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled.
What's more, they were also tailored to make them potentially more dangerous. According to a FBI news release from November 2001, the particles were coated by a "product not seen previously to be used in this fashion before." Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.
Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.
In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.
The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.
Furthermore, the anthrax in this case, the "Ames strain," is one of the most common strains in the world. Early in the investigations, the FBI said it was similar to strains found in Haiti and Sri Lanka. The strain at the institute was isolated originally from an animal in west Texas and can be found from Texas to Montana following the old cattle trails. Samples of the strain were also supplied to at least eight laboratories including three foreign laboratories. Four French government laboratories reported on studies with the Ames strain, citing the Pasteur Institute in Paris as the source of the strain they used. Organism DNA is not a very reliable way to make a case against a scientist.
The FBI has not officially released information on why it focused on I
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
I can't find the link to the article I read now, but it has been claimed the FBI found the preparation made it more deadly, not anything done genetically to the anthrax. The preparation powder was perfectly milled as opposed to random flakes. The anthrax was also coated with silicate and slightly negatively charged. The end result is this would suspend the anthrax in the air longer, encourage it to disperse further, and it would more readily attach to lung tissue.
suggests the actions of a loan deranged scientist as more likely than some sort of conspiracy
it always amazes me how the same people that talk of the federal government in terms of utter incompetence in one sentence, the next sentence they are suggesting a multiorganizational airtight conspiracy has been meticulously arranged
The Federal goverment as a whole is incompetent. That doesn't mean that every piece of it is, or every person involved in it is.
motive? right! warhawks hellbent on invading iraq... zzz
warhawks DO exist. but most everything that happens in the realm of tricky manipulation is usually due to the individual initiative of individual warhawks. not some sort of grand poobah conspiracy of warhawk cabals, or whatever. this is called paranoid schizophrenia, not intelligent insight
You don't need a grand conspiracy. Individuals, or groups of individuals, can certainly carry out actions without the rest of the government knowing. And you are deluding yourself if you think there aren't highly secretive groups within our government, whether they are "official" groups or just a like-minded group of individuals.
i think some people have been watching too many steven seagal movies. real life is far more mundane than your fantasy life suggests, i'm sorry about that
Steven Seagal? Dang, is it the early 90's again? woo-hoo, I'm gonna go start an internet company. ;)
but don't mind me, i'm obviously an agent of the illuminati, come to cast aspersions on armchair intelligence anaylsts and their cutting insights
oops! gotta go, someone's chatting about the vince foster suicide cover up on an obscure message board... gotta cover that up... brb
Well, we don't get the real intelligence on this stuff, we get whatever is leaked or given to media outlets. And that is USED by those in power as a tool to manipulate common opinion. There's no conspiracy there, that is just fact. But it works both ways - we get faked nu-ku-lar purchace agreements and statements of imminent threat from Iraq, and we get nut-case-ufo-conspiracy theories.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite:
> GIANT EXPLOSIONS that set
> multiple entire floors on fire.
eh? I saw a big flameoff from fuel
spewed in the air--I didn't see a
massive decompression event on impact.
As far as I can tell, you are zero for
four in your analysis of this situation.
Might I suggest you actually look at the
argument you are trying to refute?
No, if everything in the linked article is true it couldn't be a KKG sister from that location. From the article:
The building is apparently a warehouse, normally unoccupied, apparently unlabeled, in which various fraternities, sororities, and other campus organizations store stuff. There's no indication that any of the sisters were involved. So unless he had an empty uniform mail it for him, the KKG connection is a dud. The big problem with their case is it's strung together like a badly written made for TV movie; hard to swallow even in the middle of the chase scene, and falling apart more and more the closer you examine it.
--MarkusQ
P.S. I love your sig.
While the poor ability for more than two people to keep secrets, especially morally outrageous ones, undermines the credibility of most conspiracy theories, the very existence of weaponized anthrax suggests the presence of an illegal covert program. Given the abysmal record of this administration with respect to international law, the idea that a covert bioweapons program was initiated by the US gov. Within this context it would be difficult for involved parties to blow the whistle on the "misuse" of their products.
The building is apparently a warehouse
I had read a news story describing it as an office and that they don't have a house. I have no first-hand knowledge and a cursory web search was unrewarding. It's possible that shortly before rush it'd be occupied, but I have no idea. I suggested on another thread that Scotch tape would have been a sufficient accomplice too, and that takes much less coincidence.
P.S. I love your sig.
Thanks. I have a new server sitting on my bench to do something interesting there... just gotta get it installed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Google Philip Zack http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/anthraxmissingarmylab.html "Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a security guard."
Not those buildings - they were rather unusual in that they were mostly empty inside, with all support provided by the core and the outer walls, and long trusses between them supporting the floors. Very strong when everything's together, but with nothing providing secondary support if it fails.
If we are going to start throwing 'facts' about ... ... it's lower ignition temperature (a quick google did not enlighten me as to what this might be nor how it would compare to burning fuel - but surely a conspiracy that can arrange the coincidence of a pair of jets and towers can shell out for a remote detonator?)
Thermate is correct, it is a variant of Thermite used by the military and pyrotechnics types for its larger area of effect with significantly more flame, a higher burning temperature than thermite and
To address the GP, however, Thermate differs from Thermite by the addition of sulfur and barium compounds - no barium oxide has been found.
Ok. Let's assume that the FBI is right and that Ivans engineered all of this... to test his vaccine... that he never tested. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. And maybe he just happened to kill himself as they were about to seal the deal, cuz he was so guilty... and not because he'd been hounded to death after helping the government from the beginning. Bush is still president and Polosi says he didn't commit any crimes, so anything is possible... How did the anthrax get from its liquid state into the fine and specially formulated powder that went out in the USPS? Did Ivans do that? All by himself? With what and when? An EasyBake Anthrax Oven while pretending to make a beer run during church bingo?
Hey, are you refuting a MORMON?
Cut the guy some slack. He just misspelled TERMITES.
Remember these are government workers - don't expect any of this was competent. I don't know if he was innocent or not, and I doubt we will ever know - in the mean time, this takes the heat off the law men.
I just don't think I trust the government anymore -- they are all telling too many lies:
Here are some government lies