Anthrax: If this was Jethro, Jethro was Trained Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Anthrax: If this was Jethro, Jethro Was Trained Peter Bell "These people know what they're doing, I'm truly worried. They have the keys to the kingdom." - Alan Zelicoff senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories Two very interesting reports, in the Washington Post and New York Times, on the anthrax delivered to Daschle's office. Unlike the anthrax in Florida or NYC, the stuff in the Daschle envelope is now being described - by a lot of people willing to use their names with reporters - as almost certainly weaponized. The definition of "weaponization" is important here. While this strain is - surprisingly - not antibiotic resistant, the envelope which went to Daschle apparently had spores which had been treated to make them float in air, rather than falling quickly or sticking to surfaces. That treatment, to reduce their electrostatic charge, is quite reasonably considered a key step in developing a weapons-grade disease vector. The Post article states flatly that three countries are known to have this capacity: the US, the FSSR, and Iraq - but also says that "sources close to the investigation" say it does not look to be a treatment of the sort developed in Iraq or the FSSR. This is important - each weapons program developed its own treatment, which was not something which was published in the open literature. However, I am skeptical of the three nations being the sole nations who could have developed a treatment; the apartheid rulers of South Africa had an extensive bioweapons program and may have played a role in an anthrax outbreak in Zimbabwe in 1979-80 (about which outbreak I know little, unfortunately.) Israel is also known to have an active biological weapons research program; the British Porton Down facility may well also have developed techniques for treating small particles. However, it is most possible, at least from the Post article, that the anthrax in the Daschle letter was treated with the techniques developed by the US - which makes one wonder about how gruntled all of the former USAMRIID staff are, exactly, with their retirement. The Post report also reemphasizes the point that many people who have looked at the letters do not think they look or sound convincingly as if penned by a Muslim hand. Following my own advice, I have to say: this is a very early piece of reporting, and the early reports on anthrax have had a tendency to be wide of the mark; it's a very significant one, but it may be out of date tomorrow.- Peter http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47864-2001Oct24.html Additive Made Spores Deadlier 3 Nations Known to Be Able to Make Sophisticated Coating By Rick Weiss and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, October 25, 2001; Page A01 The anthrax spores that contaminated the air in Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle's office had been treated with a chemical additive so sophisticated that only three nations are thought to have been capable of making it, sources said yesterday. The United States, the former Soviet Union and Iraq are the only three nations known to have developed the kind of additives that enable anthrax spores to remain suspended in the air, making them more easily inhaled and therefore more deadly, experts said yesterday. Each nation used a different technique, suggesting that ongoing microscopic and chemical analyses may reveal more about the spores' provenance than did their genetic analysis, which is largely complete but reportedly has done little to narrow the field. A government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said yesterday that the totality of the evidence in hand suggests that it is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq. Even identifying the kind of coating may not solve the crucial question of who is perpetrating the terror, because little is known about how secure the stores of the three countries' stocks have been during the past few years. Nonetheless, the conclusion that the spores were produced with military quality differs considerably from public comments made recently by officials close to the investigation, who have said the spores were not "weaponized" and were "garden variety." Those descriptions may be technically true, depending on how one defines those terms, several experts said. But they obscure the basic and more important truth that the spores were treated with a sophisticated process, meaning the original source was almost certainly a state-sponsored laboratory. The finding strongly suggests that the anthrax spores in the U.S. mail attacks were not produced in a university or makeshift laboratory or simply gathered from natural sources. But it does not answer the question of whether a state-sponsored laboratory supplied the anthrax spores directly to terrorists or simply lost control of some stocks in recent years. The presence of the high-grade additive was confirmed for the first time yesterday by a government source familiar with the ongoing studies, which are being conducted by scientists at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick. Four other experts in anthrax weapons said they had no doubt that such an additive was present based on the high dispersal rate from the letter to Daschle (D-S.D.). "The evidence is patent on its face," said Alan Zelicoff, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories' Center for National Security and Arms Control. "The amount of energy needed to disperse the spores [by merely opening an envelope] was trivial, which is virtually diagnostic of achieving the appropriate coating." David Franz, formerly of USAMRIID and now at the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, said, "In order for a formulation to do what the one in Daschle's office appears to have done -- be easily airborne -- it would require special treatment." Genetic testing of the spores found in Daschle's office, at NBC offices in New York and in Florida found that the three samples were indistinguishable. The ongoing USAMRIID studies on the spores used in the U.S. attacks involve examinations using conventional microscopes and scanning electron microscopes, along with complex chemical analyses that are difficult to conduct even when the bacteria in question are not dangerous. The analyses are far more difficult in this case, experts said, because anthrax spores must be studied in specially sealed laboratory enclosures to ensure that they do not escape. Results of those tests have not been made public beyond a simple description of how small the spore particles were in the Daschle letter. That particle size, 1 1/2 to 3 microns in diameter, said Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), is extremely small -- a first requirement for making "weapons grade" anthrax spores for warfare or terrorism. But more than that is needed to get anthrax spores to drift easily in the air and spread widely without settling quickly to the ground. That is because tiny particles tend to have electrostatic charges -- the static electricity that can cause hair to extend skyward when it is rubbed against a balloon. Those charges make the tiniest particles clump together into heavier ones, which then settle to the ground. One of the primary goals of bioweapons engineers since the 1960s was to figure out how to treat those tiny particles in ways that would neutralize the problematic charges. Properly processed, the tiny particles will remain separated from one another and fly up and outward with virtually no effort. An imperceptible wisp of a breeze can send them across a room. In the United States, that problem was solved by Bill Patrick, who developed the process at Fort Detrick as part of the U.S. biological weapons program that ended in 1969. The process is protected by at least five secret patents held by Patrick. It involved freeze drying and chemical processing and was achieved without having to grow vast quantities of spores or mill them to terribly small dimensions, Patrick and other experts said. Spores were mass-produced at a Pine Bluff, Ark., facility, Patrick said. Production stocks were destroyed, but he said he did not know whether "seed stocks" from which new batches could be grown had also been destroyed. Under the terms of an international treaty banning biological weapons, to which the United States is a signatory, small amounts of biological weapons can be produced to conduct defensive research. The Russian program, which has been described in detail by Ken Alibek, who ran it for many years before moving to the United States to do biological research, required the production of much larger quantities of spores that were more heavily milled than the U.S. spores and used a different kind of freezing and coating process. The Iraqi technique, uncovered by U.N. inspectors, was a novel one-step process that involved drying spores in the presence of aluminum-based clays or silica powders, said Richard Spertzel, who was part of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) team that was to uncover and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program after the Gulf War. UNSCOM was ultimately frustrated in its attempt to account for all of Iraq's biological weapons. "If [U.S. investigators] can get a clue as to how the material in the Daschle letter was prepared, that might narrow the field," Spertzel said. "It may not pinpoint it, but it may narrow it." White House officials and some lawmakers have said they suspect a connection between the anthrax letters and the al Qaeda terrorist organization, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, has been blamed for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. President Bush suggested again yesterday that it is his working assumption that al Qaeda is involved. "I have no direct evidence, but there are some links" between Sept. 11 and the anthrax mailings, Bush said in a speech in Anne Arundel County. "Both series of actions are motivated by evil and hate. Both series of actions are meant to disrupt Americans' way of life. Both series of actions are an attack on our homeland. And both series of actions will not stand." FBI investigators say they have no evidence connecting the anthrax cases with the bin Laden network, although they are operating under the presumption that there could be a link. The three letters recovered include references to Allah and vows of death to Israel and the United States, but many investigators suspect the language is purposeful misdirection. Some within the administration and on Capitol Hill have also pointed a finger at Iraq, and some officials have expressed a desire to punish Iraq if it were found to have been involved. Also yesterday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said authorities continue to receive a high number of terrorist threats after the Sept. 11 assaults, and he warned that more attacks are a "distinct possibility." "I must tell you that the threat level remains very high," Mueller said at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington. "More attempts and possible attacks are a distinct possibility. This possibility requires all of us to continue walking the fine line of staying alert on the one hand without causing undo alarm on the other hand." Staff writers Eric Pianin and Mike Allen contributed to this report. (c) 2001, The Washington Post * http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/national/25WEAP.html Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade October 25, 2001 By WILLIAM J. BROAD Scientists in and out of government said yesterday that the anthrax strike on Capitol Hill involved an advanced, highly refined powder that is quite dangerous and not the primitive form of the germ that some federal officials have recently described. Three top scientists -- all with experience in germ weapons and knowledge of the federal investigation -- said in interviews yesterday that the powder was high-grade and in theory capable of inflicting wide casualties. And, two of the scientists said, the anthrax was altered from its natural state to reduce its electrostatic charge, a process that prevents small particles from sticking together and to nearby objects, thus making them more likely to become airborne. The experts noted that turning anthrax into a weapon of mass destruction still required added steps, like making the powder in quantity and learning how to disseminate it effectively. One expert said that only the United States, the Soviet Union and Iraq were known to have developed the necessary technique. But the experts said some officials were playing down the powder's potency out of ignorance or an impulse to reassure a frightened public. Federal officials and weapons experts have given varying descriptions of the powder in the 10 days since an aide to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, opened a letter containing the anthrax. Some federal officials have said the germs were an unrefined preparation of microbes, while others have warned that they were potent and easily turned into a cloud that could infect many people. Anthrax spores in the powder contaminated at least 28 people in Senate offices. None of these people have become sick, but federal investigators said the Daschle letter may have leaked anthrax in transit from New Jersey and infected postal workers there and in Washington. Two Washington postal workers have died of anthrax. William C. Patrick III, a microbiologist who designed germ weapons for the United States before President Richard M. Nixon renounced them in 1969, said he had learned details of the federal inquiry from a senior investigator. The Senate powder, Mr. Patrick said, was quite potent and capable of sailing far through the air to hurt many people. He said the makers of the anthrax spores sent to Mr. Daschle's office had produced a dry powder that was remarkably free of extraneous material. "It's high-grade," said Mr. Patrick, who consults widely on making germ defenses. "It's free flowing. It's electrostatic free. And it's in high concentration." Experts on germ weaponry agree that the removal of electrostatic charges is a major step toward making an effective munition. The Soviet Union and United States developed sophisticated ways of diminishing this attraction and helping the particles float more freely, increasing their ease of dissemination and likelihood of inhalation. Mr. Patrick said that whoever sent the Daschle letter had clearly achieved this step. "It's fluffy," he said, quoting experts who examined the powder. "It appears to have an additive that keeps the spores from clumping." Removing the charge, he added, is a black art, few details of which are known publicly. Assertions by some federal officials that the material was not the type that would be used in weapons are "nonsense," he said. "The only difference between this and weapons grade is the size of the production. You can produce a very good grade of anthrax powder in the lab. The issue is whether those efforts can be expanded in scale, so you can make large quantities." Richard Spertzel, a microbiologist and former head of biological inspection teams in Iraq for the United Nations, said he, too, had talked to federal investigators about the Senate powder. "There's no question this is weapons quality," Dr. Spertzel said. "It has all the characteristics -- fine particles and readily dispersible." Particles must be small to penetrate deep into human lungs, where they can start a lethal infection. Al Zelicoff, a physician and expert on biological weapons at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, who is developing a computerized system to allow epidemiologists to track suspicious disease outbreaks, said his conversations with federal investigators had alarmed him. "These people know what they're doing," Dr. Zelicoff said of the anthrax terrorists. "I'm truly worried. They have the keys to the kingdom." He cautioned, however, that the federal investigation was continuing and had produced results that were preliminary, with no firm conclusions. "But if they have indeed perfected the aerosolization process," Dr. Zelicoff said of the terrorists, "it's strongly suggested they can do large-scale dissemination when they wish. 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