Anthrax Analysis
In My Opinion:
The individual who was mailing the anthrax letters was not trying to kill individuals, the purpose was to increase funding for bioweapons research. Attempting to fabricate a motive for the individuals to whom the letters were addressed is a waste of effort. If you look at them based on their jobs, you see the threats were addressed to the media and politicians, two groups who could influence increased funding. That is the connection I see.
Not all of the evidence collected in any case, especially evidence gathered from public areas, is actually tied to the case in the final analysis. A lot of the physical evidence that is gathered in a major investigation has nothing at all to do with the object of the investigation. It is collected because it might have some meaning, and is some cases may help in establishing a time line.
The anthrax samples were not all of the same granularity, some were fine and others were clumpy. Under controlled laboratory conditions you would expect them all to be of the same type.
The standard for a criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond all doubt.
27 comments
In my opinion, it was a conspiracy of more than one person and it may have been with the knowledge or direction of Donald Rumsfeld, because he’s just that bad an actor and he was in charge.
Rumsfeld would have preferred to shut down the lab and outsource the work, not increase the funding. It wasn’t part of his grand dream for the military.
Why would you assume there was more than one person involved, there was barely enough actual work for one person? Anything more than one person knows is no longer a secret, and this has been secret for a lot longer than anything else the Hedgemony has done.
Conspiracy requires a level of competence that has not been displayed by any of the principles in this administration. It hasn’t taken long to figure out they were doing something, the problem has been proving it because of all of the stonewalling.
The FBI were actually on this case before the Hedgemony really took control, and they were misdirected to Hatfill. Part of the solution is how that happened.
I see no reason that this has been so badly flubbed without it being due to intentional obstruction, which has been the pattern of this administration from the beginning.
And if you’re claiming that the Hedgemony wasn’t in complete control in the days and weeks after 9/11/01, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I presume it was a politically motivated act, and had nothing to do with funding for the lab.
I agree with you Bryan. As I’ve mentioned before, I was involved in finding out what happened when the hilton Hotel had been bombed in Sydney and everyone was crying “Terrorsists!!!” etc.. I am sure you know how it works by now. 😉
Turned out it was done by ASIO as an investigation by the GAO had found that they were wasting a lot of their budget and it could be slashed easily, mostly because ASIO never actually did much. So, they tried to use a terrorist scare to show they were valuable and worth the money, but they messed it up (master of understatement) and killed to innocents. They tried again some years later, with similar results (The *secret* National Crime Authority HQ was bombed whilst investigating Police corruption). Of course, none of this was ever made public and it was sealed under the 30 year secrecy act. By the time it’s revealed, they guilty will be history.
So yes, it’s quite believable, and I am sure there are other examples in the USA (and any other Nation) of a Gov agency trying to save their budget by *proving* their value in a similar way. 😉
What a World(tm)
Michael, I have had the benefit of having to “cooperate” with the FBI when I was in law enforcement. Read Tony Hillerman’s novels about crime on the Navaho reservation for more incite into the false general impression that the Feds know how to conduct an investigation. They are OK on bank robberies and fraud cases, which is what they normally do, but they are worthless on crimes of violence. The Feds screwing up a case is not a new phenomenon, it is the norm – Wen Ho Lee, the Atlanta bombing – do those ring a bell?
It takes more than a year after a change of parties in the White House to fill government positions down to the third level from the top when you have competent people in charge of hiring. The FBI was still being run by that idiot Freeh, one of the worst appointments Clinton made in 8 years.
You don’t solve many crimes assuming everything is political. What was the political advantage of having this follow so closely on the heels of 9/11, especially given the effort to bury the case ever since? When it was determined quickly that it was domestic terrorism, it had a negative political value for the Hedgemony.
Kryten, the CIA was constantly overstating Soviet capabilities to increase funding. All during Reagan some of us were wondering where the Soviets had acquired all of these magical capabilities, because they couldn’t even steal what they really needed – precision manufacturing capabilities. They had to cook up a black market deal with Norway and Japan to get the machines to balance the props for their subs. Funding is the Holy Grail of bureaucracies.
LOL Yeah, I know about that too. 😉
Mitsubishi (I think it was them) got in a ton of trouble for selling high-precision machinery to the Soviets for making their sub’s propellers, which were a lot more quiet and efficient than their original ones. And other assorted amusements. Capitalism eh… what a concept! LOL
Funny, isn’t it… the only truly *Nationalist* countries are the fanatics who mostly outsource terrorism, the Capitalist nations are faux-Nationalists, because “it’s always about the money stupid!”(tm) and the Commies are faux-Capitalists because they talk socialism, but it’s about the money there too now, and growing! I get so confused… Even with a playbook!
*shrug*
You need a scorecard to keep track of which league the sides are playing in and who got relegated for poor performance.
Georgia has paid the price for the invasion of Iraq. The US has been relegated.
Bryan, I certainly don’t assume all things are political, but terrorist acts generally are, and this was a terrorist act. There are more holes in this case than swiss cheese, unresolved inconsistencies that make it nearly impossible for this to have been a solo project by the guy who conveniently killed himself. As I recall this was used at the time to drum up public fear against Iraq. That’s how Rumsfeld benefitted.
Funding is a political process. The lab had all of its chemical weapons funding cut after the Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect in 1997, and Rumsfeld was making noises about cutting out or outsourcing nearly everything that wasn’t part of his vision of the “new” military.
You have your opinion and I have mine. I’m not going to change my mind based on the criticisms I’ve seen. I’m not saying that Ivins is guilty, juries make that decision, I’m saying there are the fundamentals of case, and most of the criticisms are on irrelevant points and things that a jury would never see for that reason.
The biggest problem I have with the investigation is that the assumption was that the letters were sent to kill people, and I don’t see any way of proving that.
By all means you are entitled to your opinion and here of all places you should say whatever you think. I don’t see how there couldn’t have been intent to cause death inasmuch as it was weaponized and sent but there has been nothing tying Ivins to the mailbox from which it was sent.
i was reading through another one of the technical reports earlier today, thinking if *i* were a mad scientist, this is exactly how i’d do it.
no good way to know for sure if the author of the report knew what they were talking about exactly, since they were trying to report fully but still being obscure about some of the details that ‘shouldn’t become public knowledge.’ but if the author is correct, it looks like the sender wanted to compare what would happen if ‘weaponized’ anthrax got loose in the world vs. what would happen if it were only ‘ordinary’ anthrax instead.
Michael, it wasn’t “weaponized”, whatever that is supposed to mean. The minimum size is determined by the size of an anthrax spore. When you are drying them out some of them will clump, but there are still individual spores. If you run the results through a sieve you can separate the individuals from the clumps. “Weaponizing” seems to be the name used for reducing the amount of clumping to get more individual spores which are easier to spread on the wind. If your purpose was to kill you wouldn’t use the Ames strain as it is readily treated with antibiotics like Cipro. The Iraqis used the Vollum strain which is more deadly and more drug resistant. The Soviets had strains that had resistance to most antibiotics. The people who died either had existing conditions, or didn’t realize what the problem was until too late.
As this article explains, it isn’t easy to kill a lot of people with anthrax, because it has been tried.
There is no way of proving that was the mailbox, and with the amount of evidence against Ivins, there is no way of proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was anyone else. Any further investigation might uncover more evidence, but there is no court case unless someone decides to confess, and possibly not even then. If you can’t make a case, you may as well close the case and move on, that is the reality of law enforcement.
Hipparchia, people get infected with anthrax all the time from animal hides. Anthrax is all over in the wild, but it isn’t a major problem unless you inhale a lot of them. I’m confident you could produce a filtering system to collect individual spores.
You might use the Ames strain if that’s what you had. It is very hard to make anthrax capable of killing people by mail, but that’s just what the killer did.
How do you prove that beyond reasonable doubt? The strain came from a weapons lab, and there were more deadly strains in that lab. There were other things in that lab that were a good deal more likely to cause death if the “intention” was death, and “intention” is what you would have to prove in a court.
Not everyone who received those letters died, or were even infected, and the postal workers who died weren’t even targets. You have to charge what you can prove in court, not what you “know”. If you can’t prove it, you don’t have a case, even if you “know” who did it.
This is why serial killers take so long to arrest, you have to gather enough evidence to prove the case.
Bryan, I’m sorry but the Ames strain is plenty deadly enough to kill and it did kill several people. If someone happens to have a larger caliber gun at their home in addition to the smaller caliber murder weapon, you don’t argue he didn’t mean to kill the victim because he used the smaller caliber.
Also, I’d think that if someone were to deliberately spread the Ebola Reston virus, for a completely different horrific but possibly harmless example, and if it caused anyone to come down with fatal ebola — the correct charge would still be murder.
Michael, murder is not a generic term in criminal law, it has a very specific meaning defined in the applicable law, and you must meet the specific conditions to charge someone with that crime. If you can’t prove those specific conditions in court beyond reasonable doubt you don’t charge the offense. If you charge a person under the wrong statute you can let a guilty person go free.
This is a matter of proving “culpable mental state” which determines the charge, and you go with what you can prove, not what you think. These “technical details” are why people go to law school.
If someone fires a gun and someone else dies, you have to determine if it was “accidental”, “reckless”, or “intentional”. The facts that a gun was fired and someone died, are not, in themselves enough to charge the person who fired the gun with murder.
Bryan, if someone intentionally aims the gun and fires the gun and someone dies, it is murder. You have to prove intent, that it wasn’t an accidental discharge, that the killer meant to pull the trigger, but you don’t have to prove that the killer used the largest caliber gun available.
Also, if someone commits a crime like robbing a bank, and does not intend in advance to kill anyone, but nonetheless during the course of the commission of the crime someone is killed, that is also murder.
Michael, you are mixing state and federal laws. The instance of death during the commission of a felony being murder is the law in some, but not all, states, and I don’t remember it being part of Title 18 of the US Code. This is a Federal case and will be tried under the Federal laws that were in effect at the time of the offense.
If you intentionally shoot someone with a pellet pistol and they die, you might not be charged with murder. If you intentionally give someone grain alcohol and they die, you might not be charged with murder. If you intentionally give someone a powerful laxative and they die, you might not be charged with murder.
In ten years in law enforcement I only had one arrest that didn’t result in a conviction or a plea, and that was because the suspect was murdered prior to trial. I know what it takes to win in court, and this case is a problem from the beginning. As things stand now, I don’t thing you can pull a decent case out of it, if a case was ever possible.
The Ames strain of anthrax is not equivalent to a pellet gun, it is a known deadly virus. That’s the point. And even Ebola Reston which is not known to have caused human fatality is closely enough related to other strains that do that knowingly and intentionally exposing someone to it would be murder if it resulted in death.
It is a bacillus not a virus, and penicillin will kill it. All that is required is testing the sample and beginning a prophylactic treatment which costs a doctor’s visit and $4 prescription. Not terribly “deadly” as a defense attorney would say.
You have to conform to the definition in the law, and to prove it. “Everyone knows” doesn’t hack it in a courtroom.
Antarctica is the only continent that doesn’t have anthrax blowing around or waiting in the soil.
You’re right, it’s not a virus, it’s a bacterium. And the mailed powder killed several people. You don’t need to rely on what “everyone knows” — there are dead bodies.
You continue to fail to understand that you have to prove things in court or there is no point to the process. If you can’t prosecute, you close the case and move on to something you can prove.
Bryan, I don’t fail to understand, and I don’t think you do either. The primary suspect is dead, of course, so there will be no prosecution, unless one or more co-conspirators or another suspect is found.