Your words "Remember that the anthrax letters helped pave the way for passage of the USA Patriot Act, for going to war with Iraq..." says it all. A pretext to a pre-planned war.
Bruce was a fly in the ointment that was better of not there, so the primary planted narrative supporting a war in Iraq would remain uppermost in the public mind. A suitable scapegoat to blame the letter on and like any other patsy, directly involved or not (in this case probably not at all) it was far more convenient that Bruce disappear taking the 'public perception of blame' with him. And by the way, 9/11 appears to have been a staged event and also a pretext to war.
I am mystified as to why Meryl in this thorough posting leaves out the key to solving whodunit. The key is to examine how the attack anthrax was processed, especially the attack anthrax in the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy. When the letter addressed to Senator Daschle was opened in the Hart Senate Office Building, one-half gram of anthrax powder therein floated out like a gas. Decontamination of the Hart Building (where 50 Senators have their offices) closed the building for three months and cost $42 million. In other words, said anthrax was "weaponized."
The first anthrax letters mailed were postmarked Sept. 18, 2001. Two weeks before that, the NY Times put on its front page an article entitled “U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits." This article exposed anthrax weaponization projects being conducted by the CIA and DIA in laboratories managed and operated by Battelle Memorial Institute.
Molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (former chairwoman of the biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists) and Martin Hugh-Jones (referred to by the FBI as a “renowned anthrax expert”) together determined the processing of the attack anthrax to be "microencapsulation" with silicone. They state: "Only one laboratory, the Army laboratory at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, is known to have made active, dry anthrax spores before the attacks. In its Department of Defense budget justification, Dugway expressed an interest in microencapsulation ... Battelle Memorial Institute was operating the Dugway laboratory in 2001. Battelle possessed anthrax spores that have been shown by the FBI to be a genetic match with the letter spores."
Meryl points out that some of the anthrax letters were contaminated by Bacillus subtilis and that this contaminant was absent at the Fort Detrick lab. In fact, both Dugway and Battelle were known to utilize dry spores of Bacillus subtilis as a convenient simulant for anthrax.
Bruce Ivins had neither the sophisticated equipment nor the expertise necessary to the processing of the attack anthrax. For that matter, Ivins did not have available to him even a fermenter necessary to the mass production of anthrax spores. All he had were shaker flasks in which he could not possibly have grown the trillions of spores contained in the anthrax letters.
Yes, but other countries probably also were able to produce this dried anthrax. There is no reason to believe it was produced in the US, and one great reason to believe it was not: if it came from Dimona, for example, no US law enforcement will ever be able to get the goods on it. Same true for some other nations.
Reading the PBS transcript linked below, and Dr. Keim said,
"At this point, certainly, a foreign source or Al Qaeda was still a very real possibility. The fact there’s a laboratory strain just meant that a person had done it. This strain was widely distributed around the United States. Sixteen or 17 different U.S. laboratories had this strain. "
"I met Bruce first in about 1998 in England. He was at the international anthrax meetings, and so was I. He was talking about his vaccine work, and I was presenting my work on DNA fingerprinting of anthrax strains. Our work was for the first time identifying differences between different isolates of anthrax from around the world. Bruce was intrigued by this because he was very interested in whether his vaccine would protect animals against all different types of strains, and he had never had the capability for telling one strain from another."
I too was at that meeting in Plymouth, UK. I met Keim and found him very hard-nosed; I thought he worked for intel as well as being an anthrax scientist. I hung around with Ivins there.
I think Keim told a white lie above. Bruce was not developing animal vaccines. He only worked on human vaccines. Spies are in the habit of telling lies. Keim was claiming to be a pure academic in this story. I don't think he was.
Meryl appears to be forgetting that the DOJ/FBI cover-up in the investigation known as Amerithrax that accused Bruce Ivins mostly depended on covering up how the attack anthrax was processed. As reported in Science Magazine: “Early in the investigation, the consensus among biodefense specialists working for the government and the military [was that] . . . the powder mailed to the Senate . . . was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology . . . In May 2002, 16 of these scientists and physicians published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, describing the Senate anthrax powder as ‘weapons-grade’ and exceptional: ‘high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping’ (JAMA, 1 May 2002, p. 2237) . . . [But] by the fall of 2002, the awe-inspiring anthrax of the previous spring had morphed into something decidedly less fearsome. According to sources on Capitol Hill, FBI scientists now reported that there was ‘no additive’ in the Senate anthrax at all. . . . The reversal was so extreme that the former chief biological weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, Richard Spertzel, found it hard to accept. ‘No silica, big particles, manual milling . . . That’s what they’re saying now, and that radically contradicts everything we were told during the first year of this investigation.’”
Later, the Wall Street Journal reported as follows: “Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at USAMRIID where Ivins worked ... 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 . . . 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.’ ... The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying ‘to reverse engineer’ (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases.”
The point is that the technology that went into the processing of the attack anthrax was extremely advanced, way beyond any technology known by specialists to exist. There were no other countries able to produce the attack anthrax.
Meryl – why would you cite Dr. Keim who knows nothing about weaponizing technology for the very misleading suggestion that Al Qaeda was a possible source, especially given that you go on to suggest Keim was a spy of some sort? I remind you that the language in the anthrax letters was designed to indicate that Al Qaeda (or some other radical Muslim terrorists) was responsible for the anthrax attacks. All of the anthrax letters contained the following language: “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great.” Accordingly, the official narrative was that Al Qaeda or Iraq was responsible -- this in support of our Global War on Terror. The official narrative later shifted to the admission that the anthrax attacks came out of our own biodefense/biowarfare program only because that fact became inescapable. (In effect, this was an admission that the anthrax attacks was false-flag.)
Silica as you probably know is silicon dioxide, used in products like glass. Before the FBI began covering up the processing, back still in 2001, the FBI briefed the German Foreign Ministry that the attack anthrax "spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle" so as to render the spores disbursable. This was reported in the Wall Street Journal in an op-ed by Richard Spertzel, former Deputy Commander at USAMRIID.
In the second of these papers, they point out that "DOD-sponsored projects explicitly involving microencapsulation at DARPA, Dugway and perhaps elsewhere were spelled out publicly in budget documents in 1999 and thereafter, and executed at the very time of the anthrax attacks. Both the Dugway laboratory and Battelle Memorial Institute, a sub-contractor at Dugway, had extensive experience in making Bacillus spore powders; [and] both had access to Bacillus anthracis genetically matching ... the Ames-strain Bacillus anthracis spores in a flask known as RMR 1029" found in Bruce Ivins' lab at Fort Detrick.
Fascinating. I'd heard, they had been treated with trimethylsilyl chloride. (Not polymeric. That requires 2 or more chlorides or other electronegative ligands on each silicon atom.) Some sort of waterglass encapsulation? I sure wouldn't want to try that!
In 2008 I was already aware of Bruce's case and how he was being scapegoated for a covert operation to scare Congress into passing the "Patriot" Act by sending weaponized (Ft. Detrick specialty) anthrax letters which killed-some-folks.
Some of my study of the 9/11 "inside job" evidence had led to the Anthrax coercion evidence to get the GWOT up and running.
I always suspected that he had been "suicided", or at least driven to it by hounding, financial assaults and public defamation.
"First, the US government did not know how many high containment labs existed in the US and abroad in 2001, as they did not have to be registered or inspected. Some may have belonged to private companies or individuals."
this by itself is a bombshell
i wonder for example if the reedley lab had anthrax kicking around somewhere
My impression is that it was an internal intentional bio exercise that needed a patsy to close the case! Reminds me of C Diff that exists in our hospitals that produce spores and kills more than 30,000 Americans each year and is ignored by CDC and the medicine man. The vector may be cattle since 6% are contaminated. Lost a dear friend in January from C Diff. A deep dive into eliminating this by the CDC is ignored as far as I know!
I would also suggest an investigation into the military's forced anthrax "vaxx" - I know a retired navy vet whose health has been a wreck since the Iraq debacle of "little" Bush. He suspects the anthrax dope they shot him with.
I spent many years of my life trying to stop those shots--yes they did terrible damage to many thousands of soldiers and other service members. We think it was perhaps a dress rehearsal for COVID shots.
Even someone like me with a modicum of police experience (3 years), could look at how poorly this "investigation" was done. Not that I was a capable in-depth investigator like Dr. Nass!
Former 3 letter agencies wielding power they should not have to control our country through secrecy and receipt. Starting wars through manipulation and fear.
From what you wrote, one tends to suspect the FBI was undertaking a coverup rather investigation.
My respects to you for attempting to clear the name of Bruce Ivins., especially since 9/11 and the surrounding events are too hot handle.
Stay away from Tylenol.
The link to the FBI case points to a "page not found" since 2017.
PDF case file:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130112183605/https://www.justice.gov/amerithrax/docs/amx-investigative-summary2.pdf
Explain page not found. Above site prior to 2017? They certainly dissected Ivin's life.
Your words "Remember that the anthrax letters helped pave the way for passage of the USA Patriot Act, for going to war with Iraq..." says it all. A pretext to a pre-planned war.
Bruce was a fly in the ointment that was better of not there, so the primary planted narrative supporting a war in Iraq would remain uppermost in the public mind. A suitable scapegoat to blame the letter on and like any other patsy, directly involved or not (in this case probably not at all) it was far more convenient that Bruce disappear taking the 'public perception of blame' with him. And by the way, 9/11 appears to have been a staged event and also a pretext to war.
I am mystified as to why Meryl in this thorough posting leaves out the key to solving whodunit. The key is to examine how the attack anthrax was processed, especially the attack anthrax in the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy. When the letter addressed to Senator Daschle was opened in the Hart Senate Office Building, one-half gram of anthrax powder therein floated out like a gas. Decontamination of the Hart Building (where 50 Senators have their offices) closed the building for three months and cost $42 million. In other words, said anthrax was "weaponized."
The first anthrax letters mailed were postmarked Sept. 18, 2001. Two weeks before that, the NY Times put on its front page an article entitled “U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits." This article exposed anthrax weaponization projects being conducted by the CIA and DIA in laboratories managed and operated by Battelle Memorial Institute.
Molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (former chairwoman of the biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists) and Martin Hugh-Jones (referred to by the FBI as a “renowned anthrax expert”) together determined the processing of the attack anthrax to be "microencapsulation" with silicone. They state: "Only one laboratory, the Army laboratory at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, is known to have made active, dry anthrax spores before the attacks. In its Department of Defense budget justification, Dugway expressed an interest in microencapsulation ... Battelle Memorial Institute was operating the Dugway laboratory in 2001. Battelle possessed anthrax spores that have been shown by the FBI to be a genetic match with the letter spores."
Meryl points out that some of the anthrax letters were contaminated by Bacillus subtilis and that this contaminant was absent at the Fort Detrick lab. In fact, both Dugway and Battelle were known to utilize dry spores of Bacillus subtilis as a convenient simulant for anthrax.
Bruce Ivins had neither the sophisticated equipment nor the expertise necessary to the processing of the attack anthrax. For that matter, Ivins did not have available to him even a fermenter necessary to the mass production of anthrax spores. All he had were shaker flasks in which he could not possibly have grown the trillions of spores contained in the anthrax letters.
Yes, but other countries probably also were able to produce this dried anthrax. There is no reason to believe it was produced in the US, and one great reason to believe it was not: if it came from Dimona, for example, no US law enforcement will ever be able to get the goods on it. Same true for some other nations.
Reading the PBS transcript linked below, and Dr. Keim said,
"At this point, certainly, a foreign source or Al Qaeda was still a very real possibility. The fact there’s a laboratory strain just meant that a person had done it. This strain was widely distributed around the United States. Sixteen or 17 different U.S. laboratories had this strain. "
Here is another paragraph from Keim:
"I met Bruce first in about 1998 in England. He was at the international anthrax meetings, and so was I. He was talking about his vaccine work, and I was presenting my work on DNA fingerprinting of anthrax strains. Our work was for the first time identifying differences between different isolates of anthrax from around the world. Bruce was intrigued by this because he was very interested in whether his vaccine would protect animals against all different types of strains, and he had never had the capability for telling one strain from another."
I too was at that meeting in Plymouth, UK. I met Keim and found him very hard-nosed; I thought he worked for intel as well as being an anthrax scientist. I hung around with Ivins there.
I think Keim told a white lie above. Bruce was not developing animal vaccines. He only worked on human vaccines. Spies are in the habit of telling lies. Keim was claiming to be a pure academic in this story. I don't think he was.
Meryl appears to be forgetting that the DOJ/FBI cover-up in the investigation known as Amerithrax that accused Bruce Ivins mostly depended on covering up how the attack anthrax was processed. As reported in Science Magazine: “Early in the investigation, the consensus among biodefense specialists working for the government and the military [was that] . . . the powder mailed to the Senate . . . was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology . . . In May 2002, 16 of these scientists and physicians published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, describing the Senate anthrax powder as ‘weapons-grade’ and exceptional: ‘high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping’ (JAMA, 1 May 2002, p. 2237) . . . [But] by the fall of 2002, the awe-inspiring anthrax of the previous spring had morphed into something decidedly less fearsome. According to sources on Capitol Hill, FBI scientists now reported that there was ‘no additive’ in the Senate anthrax at all. . . . The reversal was so extreme that the former chief biological weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, Richard Spertzel, found it hard to accept. ‘No silica, big particles, manual milling . . . That’s what they’re saying now, and that radically contradicts everything we were told during the first year of this investigation.’”
Later, the Wall Street Journal reported as follows: “Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at USAMRIID where Ivins worked ... 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 . . . 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.’ ... The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying ‘to reverse engineer’ (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases.”
The point is that the technology that went into the processing of the attack anthrax was extremely advanced, way beyond any technology known by specialists to exist. There were no other countries able to produce the attack anthrax.
Meryl – why would you cite Dr. Keim who knows nothing about weaponizing technology for the very misleading suggestion that Al Qaeda was a possible source, especially given that you go on to suggest Keim was a spy of some sort? I remind you that the language in the anthrax letters was designed to indicate that Al Qaeda (or some other radical Muslim terrorists) was responsible for the anthrax attacks. All of the anthrax letters contained the following language: “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great.” Accordingly, the official narrative was that Al Qaeda or Iraq was responsible -- this in support of our Global War on Terror. The official narrative later shifted to the admission that the anthrax attacks came out of our own biodefense/biowarfare program only because that fact became inescapable. (In effect, this was an admission that the anthrax attacks was false-flag.)
For elaboration, see my “The Truth about the Anthrax Attacks and its Cover-up" accessible at https://www.unz.com/article/the-truth-about-the-anthrax-attacks-and-its-cover-up/ .
"silica"? Did spell check change "silicone"?
Silica as you probably know is silicon dioxide, used in products like glass. Before the FBI began covering up the processing, back still in 2001, the FBI briefed the German Foreign Ministry that the attack anthrax "spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle" so as to render the spores disbursable. This was reported in the Wall Street Journal in an op-ed by Richard Spertzel, former Deputy Commander at USAMRIID.
Later, Stuart Jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry, teamed up with Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Martin Hugh -Jones (mentioned in my initial comment) to further analyze the processing of the attack anthrax. In two papers published in the "Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense" accessible at https://www.omicsonline.org/the-2001-attack-anthrax-key-observations-2157-2526.S3-001.php?aid=2008 and https://www.omicsonline.org/evidence-for-the-source-of-the-2001-attack-anthrax-2157-2526.S3-008.php?aid=10614, Jacabson, Rosenberg and Hugh-Jones substantiated that the processing of the attack anthrax amounted to "microencapsulation" with silicone, silicone being a synthetic polymer derived from silicon.
In the second of these papers, they point out that "DOD-sponsored projects explicitly involving microencapsulation at DARPA, Dugway and perhaps elsewhere were spelled out publicly in budget documents in 1999 and thereafter, and executed at the very time of the anthrax attacks. Both the Dugway laboratory and Battelle Memorial Institute, a sub-contractor at Dugway, had extensive experience in making Bacillus spore powders; [and] both had access to Bacillus anthracis genetically matching ... the Ames-strain Bacillus anthracis spores in a flask known as RMR 1029" found in Bruce Ivins' lab at Fort Detrick.
Fascinating. I'd heard, they had been treated with trimethylsilyl chloride. (Not polymeric. That requires 2 or more chlorides or other electronegative ligands on each silicon atom.) Some sort of waterglass encapsulation? I sure wouldn't want to try that!
Just another affront to the health of Americans for pushing biological weapons testing.
Orchestrated to induce more fear to pass Patriot Act…gotta love that name!
Next time something needs investigating, don't waste time calling in the FBI---call Dr.Nass instead!
Conveniently left behind like IDs on World trade Buildings 🤔😩
Thank You, Meryl.
In 2008 I was already aware of Bruce's case and how he was being scapegoated for a covert operation to scare Congress into passing the "Patriot" Act by sending weaponized (Ft. Detrick specialty) anthrax letters which killed-some-folks.
Some of my study of the 9/11 "inside job" evidence had led to the Anthrax coercion evidence to get the GWOT up and running.
I always suspected that he had been "suicided", or at least driven to it by hounding, financial assaults and public defamation.
;-(
The best overview of the criminality of the FBI in this case is the article: FBI sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug by Shelia Casey and Barry Kissin. https://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/46413512/fbi-sweeps-anthrax-under-the-rug
I remember your exchange early on with James Corbett about this whole operation, Dr Nass.
"First, the US government did not know how many high containment labs existed in the US and abroad in 2001, as they did not have to be registered or inspected. Some may have belonged to private companies or individuals."
this by itself is a bombshell
i wonder for example if the reedley lab had anthrax kicking around somewhere
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/heroic-officer-harper-saturday-november
This is still true--confirmed by Sen. Rand Paul to me in 2024.
is he doing anything about it? any of his colleagues?
much as i would like to bulldoze these places, that's not an option
"Were aspects of Bruce’s death orchestrated as well?"
Very likely.
I may have said this before, but I'm glad, Dr. N., that you weren't on these lists:
https://rense.com/general62/list.htm
https://rense.com/general40/dead.htm
My impression is that it was an internal intentional bio exercise that needed a patsy to close the case! Reminds me of C Diff that exists in our hospitals that produce spores and kills more than 30,000 Americans each year and is ignored by CDC and the medicine man. The vector may be cattle since 6% are contaminated. Lost a dear friend in January from C Diff. A deep dive into eliminating this by the CDC is ignored as far as I know!
And it can be cured with a poop transplant in most cases. Can't patent that.
I would also suggest an investigation into the military's forced anthrax "vaxx" - I know a retired navy vet whose health has been a wreck since the Iraq debacle of "little" Bush. He suspects the anthrax dope they shot him with.
I spent many years of my life trying to stop those shots--yes they did terrible damage to many thousands of soldiers and other service members. We think it was perhaps a dress rehearsal for COVID shots.
They made the world a killing field
Even someone like me with a modicum of police experience (3 years), could look at how poorly this "investigation" was done. Not that I was a capable in-depth investigator like Dr. Nass!
Former 3 letter agencies wielding power they should not have to control our country through secrecy and receipt. Starting wars through manipulation and fear.