20120624
Anthrax alert system at risk as cost estimate hits $5.7 billion - The Washington Post
The total price may reach $5.7 billion, according to a 2011 report by LMI, a McLean-based consulting firm hired by the Department of Homeland Security.
The $2.1 billion and $5.7 billion “cannot be validly compared,’’ Noah Bartolucci, a BioWatch spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Daniel Bettis, operation manager, holds a vile with an individual dose of an Anthrax vaccine at VaxGen in South San Francisco, Calif. The vaccine produced by this company was placed in a national stockpile.
The $5.7 billion figure covers a longer time period — 17 years, vs. 10 years — and program planners “assigned no confidence level’’ to the $2.1 billion estimate, he said.
BioWatch currently uses canisters that must be installed manually and taken to a lab for analysis. It can take 48 hours to get the results. That delay could mean lost lives in an emergency, Michael Walter, program manager for BioWatch, said in a phone interview.
20120311
20111017
Scientists Dispute F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case
A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.
Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.
F.B.I. documents reviewed by The New York Times show that bureau scientists focused on tin early in their eight-year investigation, calling it an “element of interest” and a potentially critical clue to the criminal case. They later dropped their lengthy inquiry, never mentioned tin publicly and never offered any detailed account of how they thought the powder had been made.
The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.
20110724
DOJ casts serious doubt on its own claims about the anthrax attack
20110225
Review Faults F.B.I.’s Scientific Work in Anthrax Investigation
The review, by a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences, says the genetic analysis “did not definitively demonstrate” that the mailed anthrax spores were grown from a sample taken from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. It does add, however, that the evidence is “consistent with and supports an association” between Dr. Ivins’s flask and the attack anthrax.
The academy’s report faults the F.B.I. as failing to take advantage of scientific methods developed between the mailings in 2001 and its conclusion after Dr. Ivins’s suicide in 2008 that he was the sole perpetrator.
“In subsequent years, the investigators did not fully exploit molecular methods to identify and characterize” anthrax samples, the report said.
Nothing in the 170-page academy report directly refutes the conclusion of what was by most estimates the most expensive and manpower-intensive criminal investigation in American history. The academy panel, which was paid $1.1 million by the F.B.I. for its review, assessed only the scientific aspects of the investigation and not the traditional detective work.
Alice P. Gast, chairwoman of the 16-member scientific panel and president of Lehigh University, said Tuesday at a news conference that it “could be fruitful” for any future review to consider both scientific and police work. But Dr. Gast said the exclusive scientific focus permitted her panel to go into depth on the role played by science in the “national emergency” set off by the anthrax attacks.
Dr. Gast, a chemical engineer, said the panel reached no conclusion as to Dr. Ivins’s guilt or innocence.
The academy said the 9,600 pages of F.B.I. documents it used in its review would be made available to the public on request. The last 500 pages were provided by the F.B.I. only in November, after the bureau was given the final draft of the report for review and objected to some conclusions, leading to some changes to the report.
In a joint statement, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department did not directly dispute the weaknesses the academy identified. Instead, the statement said the panel of scientists “reiterates what is and is not possible to establish through science alone in a criminal investigation of this magnitude.”
The F.B.I. “has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case,” the statement said. It said Dr. Ivins “was determined to be the perpetrator of the deadly mailings.”
Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and physicist who has followed the case, said he thought the academy’s review showed that “the F.B.I. attached too much certainty to the scientific parts of the case.”
“I also think it shows the case was closed prematurely,” Mr. Holt said.
He said he was reintroducing a bill to create a national commission, similar to the Sept. 11 panel, to take a more comprehensive look at the anthrax case and its implications.
In an interview, three investigators who spent years on the case expressed frustration with the academy’s findings but said the report raised no questions that change the conclusion about Dr. Ivins. The investigators, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the academy report merely underscored the difference between pure science and the reality of gathering evidence in a criminal case.
“The totality of the evidence incriminating Dr. Ivins is overwhelming,” one investigator said.
He noted, among a long list of circumstantial evidence, the unusual late hours Dr. Ivins spent alone in his lab in the days leading up to the two anthrax mailings and a recorded conversation with a colleague in which Dr. Ivins made equivocal statements about whether he was involved in the anthrax mailings.
Dr. Ivins’s guilt has been adamantly denied by many of his colleagues at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where he was seen as an eccentric but popular character. The academy’s report is likely to renew claims by the F.B.I.’s critics that the bureau merely took advantage of Dr. Ivins’s suicide to close the case.
The academy report calls for another look at tests that indicated the possible presence of anthrax at a primitive lab used by Al Qaeda; the report does not give its location, but such a lab was found in Afghanistan after the American invasion. The anthrax investigators said an exhaustive review, including interviews with Qaeda operatives who used the facility, found no evidence that it was capable of producing the anthrax powder in the mailings.
The anthrax letters were dropped in a Princeton, N.J., mailbox in September and October of 2001, and killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. Coming shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, the letters set off a national scare over bioterrorism and led to a huge increase in government spending on biodefense.
20110219
Science review casts doubt on 2001 anthrax case
Science review casts doubt on 2001 anthrax caseBy Kerry Sheridan (AFP) – 4 days ago
WASHINGTON — A scientific review released Tuesday cast doubt on the US government's conclusion that scientist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself in 2008, was to blame in the 2001 case of deadly anthrax mailings.
There was insufficient scientific evidence to support the FBI's assertion that anthrax sent to politicians and journalists in the wake of the September 11 attacks originated in Ivins' lab, said the National Academy of Sciences.
"It is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available scientific evidence alone," said the NAS report.
The anthrax mailings, which killed five people and injured 17, rattled an already jittery American public just days after Al-Qaeda militants hijacked passenger jets and plunged them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The review found that anthrax contained in a flask, known as RMR-1029, in Ivins' lab shared genetic similarities with spores in the mailed letters but "was not the immediate source of spores used in the letters."
"One or more derivative growth steps would have been required to produce the anthrax in the attack letters," the report said, adding that the letters sent to Washington had different characteristics than those sent to New York.
"They have enough physical and chemical differences between the two that they must have come from separate batches," said lead author of the report Alice Gast.
The FBI concluded that the mailed anthrax must have come from a single flask of parent spores that Ivins had created and which he alone had maintained.
The type of anthrax contained in the letters, mailed to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, the New York Post and senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, was correctly identified as the Ames strain of B. anthracis, which originated from a cow in Texas in 1981 and was shared with labs worldwide, the report said.
But a key problem arose from the way the FBI attempted to narrow down the source of the anthrax by creating a repository of potential samples provided by the labs that maintain them.
The repository was incomplete, leaving the possibility that other sources could remain unexamined, and also relied on scientists to provide their own samples, allowing for manipulation by potential suspects.
"Standards of custody of evidence would dictate that agents of the FBI should have obtained the samples," the report said.
"The sender could have been the instigator and may not have complied with instructions, as the FBI alleges with respect to Dr. Ivins."
Ivins, a bio-defense researcher at the US Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, committed suicide by taking drugstore medications in July 2008 as FBI agents were about to bring charges against him.
Investigators began focusing on Ivins in 2007 after new forensic scientific methods traced the anthrax back to him.
The NAS report was delayed in November 2010 when the FBI, which had just received the final draft for security review, decided to release more, previously classified information for the panel to consider.
FBI investigators had looked at anthrax evidence from "an undisclosed overseas site at which a terrorist group's anthrax program was allegedly located," the report said.
"The information indicates that there was inconsistent evidence of Ames strain DNA in some of these samples, but no culturable B. anthracis," it said, adding that the late-arriving information "deserves a more thorough scientific review."
The NAS reviewers also noted that their analysis of evidence was limited to "the biological, physical, and chemical sciences," and did not consider other traditional forensic science methods.
The FBI, which commissioned the NAS report, highlighted the panel's assertion that a definitive conclusion based on science alone "was not possible" and said a combination of factors led investigators to Ivins.
"The FBI has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case," it said in a statement.
Some lawmakers called for a new, independent probe of the government's response.
"The National Academy of Sciences report released today shows that the science is not necessarily a slam dunk," said Senator Chuck Grassley.
"There are no more excuses for avoiding an independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case."
Congressman Rush Holt said he was re-introducing a 2008 bill to establish a legislative commission to investigate.
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