FBI recently agreed to pay $880,000 to the National Academy of Sciences for a review of the science used in the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax letters case (“Amerithrax”). According to the FBI, it took years and millions of dollars to develop and apply the science that incriminated Bruce Ivins. It will take another 15 months or more for the NAS to complete its study.
Though the NAS has announced that this study will not evaluate the quality of the case against Ivins, most mainstream observers assume that if the NAS finds the FBI science to be valid, this would “go a long way” toward confirming the guilt of Ivins. This is due to the fact that the FBI has done its best to pretend that it is the science in Amerithrax that largely establishes Ivins’ guilt. Once one grasps a few basic facts, it becomes apparent that this reliance upon science is not only mistaken but fraudulent.
Fact 1: Almost all of the FBI’s science relates to matching the genetic fingerprint of the anthrax in Ivins’ custody (called “RMR-1029”) to the genetic fingerprint of the anthrax in the letters (the “attack anthrax”).
Fact 2: From 1997, when RMR-1029 was created, to September 2001, when the first anthrax letters were mailed, literally hundreds of scientists, technicians and others have had access to anthrax with the same genetic fingerprint as that of RMR-1029.
Fact 3: The anthrax in Ivins’ custody was in the form of a wet slurry, the form that is suitable for testing vaccine efficacy. The attack anthrax, on the other hand (particularly the anthrax in the letters addressed to Sens. Daschle and Leahy), was in an extremely pure form of “weaponized” dried powder, the form that is suitable to causing death (by inhalational anthrax).
The Department of Justice — FBI deals with Fact 2 by pretending that it “thoroughly” investigated “every ... person who could have had access” to RMR-1029 and that all but Ivins were properly ruled out as potential suspects. Though the DoJ-FBI has been repeatedly questioned about this, it has consistently refused to this day to give any information whatsoever about how all of the persons with access were identified, who they are, and how each one of them was ruled out as a potential suspect.
The DoJ-FBI deals with Fact 3 by blatantly contradicting all of the initial reports (including its own descriptions) about the form of the attack anthrax. In 2001, a couple of days after the two postal workers died from inhalational anthrax, FBI Director Robert Mueller himself acknowledged that the attack anthrax was weaponized. But Ivins had neither the expertise, nor the equipment, nor the opportunity to produce weaponized anthrax from the wet slurry in his custody. And so the DoJ-FBI now resorts to pretending that there was no special process that went into the production of the attack anthrax.
NAS review of the science underlying Amerithrax will keep all of the focus and attention upon the above Fact 1, and serves to obscure and distract from Facts 2 and 3.
Let us not be distracted. It is established and acknowledged that for several years leading into 2001, anthrax weaponization projects were being conducted by the Army at Dugway in Utah as well as by the CIA in Ohio, all in laboratories contracted to be operated by the privately owned company named Battelle Memorial Institute. It is also known that Ivins was under order to send RMR-1029 to both of these locations leading up to the mailing of the anthrax letters.
Let us also not avoid the implications posed by the DoJ-FBI’s fraud in persecuting Bruce Ivins. This is a deception procured by very powerful forces inside our U.S.A. President/Gen. Eisenhower’s warning about our military-industrial-intelligence complex must be heeded.
