Sunday, June 3, 2012

June 3 - June 9, 2012 Discussions

My entire comment on Sunday June 3 was an analysis of Laurie Garrett's beliefs regarding the anthrax attacks of 2001.  On this interactive blog and via emails, "Anonymous" keeps harping on how I haven't read Garrett's book "I Heard The Sirens Scream," which he seemingly feels is Holy Writ proving that Muslim terrorists were behind the anthrax attacks of 2001.

My analysis of Garrett's beliefs, based upon two lengthy interviews she gave to NPR (National Public Radio) and to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, shows that Garrett has NO real evidence that al Qaeda was behind the anthrax attacks.  All she has is a hodge-podge of scrambled, incoherent beliefs that the government screwed up and allowed 9/11 to happen, so they must have also screwed up when they found that Bruce Ivins was responsible for the anthrax attacks and not al Qaeda.  She compares the FBI's investigation to the antics of the Three Stooges.

She never mentions the evidence against Ivins, so it's doubtful that she has even bothered to examine it.

She admits that "most experts" don't agree with her.  So, she also acknowledges that "most experts" find the Three Stooges to be more believable than her.  But, she's too "outraged" by the failings of the U.S. government in allowing 9/11 to happen to care about what "most experts" think about the anthrax attacks.

Ed

66 comments:

  1. "A wannabe author who doesn't think it is worth his time to read a book on the subject is probably right." -- Regis

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous,

    If Laurie Garrett has any additional "evidence" that I didn't debunk in my comment and which supports her outraged beliefs, why don't you describe that "evidence" for us?

    All the things she mentions in her interviews are just old arguments that were debunked ten years ago.

    If I bought Garrett's book from Kindle and read it, you'd still argue that I'm not qualified to argue with Garrett, so there clearly isn't any point in reading her book. It's just her mistaken beliefs. Her beliefs have nothing to do with the realities of the Amerithrax investigation.

    Ed

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  3. Although I don't agree with the hypothesis that al Qaeda did it, I think one very valid criticism Garrett made was here: (NPR interview):
    ------------
    (Partial)
    So they decided that they were looking at a Ted Kaczynski-like model, the Unabomber, and for those of you that may be too young to know about the Unabomber, the key point was the idea of a very sick, solitary individual, a highly brilliant scientist, who in a very calculated and malevolent way designed, you know, a set of perfect crimes carried out against people for obviously irrational reasons.

    So the model became oh, we have somebody like the Ted Kaczynski inside of the biological programs that are run by the U.S. military or are secondary to the U.S. military, and that's who'd done it.

    And then they went through one after another after another within that apparatus. You know, before Bruce Ivins becomes the named culprit, named after he's dead and cannot defend himself, there were 10 others. And in every case, their lives were completely destroyed by the FBI investigation, by being named.

    They were deported and have never been allowed back in America, or they were driven to suicide, or they were publicly humiliated, lost their careers, lost marriages, everything imaginable because the FBI never had a way of doing an investigation that would end up in a courtroom.
    =============================================================
    Though David Willman's critical of the early fixation on Hatfill, he doesn't, that I can recall, question the notion that it HAS to be a Kaczynski-type loner, or a loner at all. Garrett does.

    And that's what my hypothesis has in common with that of a lot of people: Amerithrax-the-crime was a group effort and an awareness of the full range of the circumstances (the TOWN OF QUANTICO letter, the St Pete hoax letters etc.)and the chronology involved let's the analyst know that. The Task Force repeatedly tried to shoe-horn a group-orchestrated series of crimes into the mold of the lone-wolf offender. Disastrous.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Richard Rowley wrote: "Though David Willman's critical of the early fixation on Hatfill, he doesn't, that I can recall, question the notion that it HAS to be a Kaczynski-type loner, or a loner at all. Garrett does."

    You misunderstand the purpose of "profiling" and how it works. And if Garrett made such an idiotic claim, then she doesn't understand profiling, either.

    No one said the the anthrax mailed "HAD" to be a loner type or in the Ted Kaczynski model.

    When investigators (all types of investigators) have NO LEADS AND NO SUSPECTS, they ask profilers to give them some ideas of who to look for.

    Profilers look at previous crimes that seem to be similar, and they average out the types of people who committed such similar crimes. And they provide the police with a "profile" of what type of person most likely did it based on averages.

    Profilers can be wrong more than fifty percent of the time, but it doesn't really matter. They provide something to go on when there is nothing else to work with. The police then tell the public what type of person most likely did it, and they assign someone to listen to the tips as they come in. Meanwhile, other investigators try all the other investigative techniques they can think of to find leads via other methods.

    You may think that just asking you for your personal opinion is a better way, but investigations have been using profilers for probably fifty years. If profilers are right only 30 percent of the time, they are still worth asking.

    The police know that profilers can be wrong more often than they're right. They don't have any obligation to look for the specific "type" the profiler identified. They're just more likely to pay attention to potential suspects who fit the profile.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  5. Richard Rowley,

    I was wrong in guessing that profiling goes back only fifty years.

    "Informal criminal profiling has a long history. It was used as early as the 1880s, when two physicians, George Phillips and Thomas Bond, used crime scene clues to make predictions about British serial murderer Jack the Ripper's personality."

    Click HERE for an excellent article on profiling.

    The article also says that profilers believe they are right more often than they are wrong.

    There's another article on criminal profiling HERE.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  6. Partial post by Mister Lake: (his June 4, 2012 1:34 PM
    post):
    -----
    [Actually I'll skip most of it------the first several paragraphs------ because I agree with it, the general stuff about 'profiling']. Agree until we get to:
    ---------------------------------------------
    You may think that just asking you for your personal opinion is a better way,[...]
    ==============================================
    Once again we have Mister Lake attributing to me a thought I never had (but since he does this to other people on the Internet and he's been doing it to me for something like 3 solid years, I don't take it amiss).

    Although profiling was IMPLIED somewhat in what I wrote originally, that wasn't my focus (you won't find the word or any synonym in my previous post, beyond the word "model" which is first given by Laurie Garrett); I myself have NEVER criticized
    the Linguistic/Behavioural Analysis worked up in November of 2001
    http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/anthrax-amerithrax/linguistic-behavorial-analysis-of-the-anthrax-letters
    . Never criticised it because I think it well-done and it was a resource I used in late 2005-2006, when I started to look at Amerithrax.

    Rather my focus (and I think Garrett's, despite the fact that she uses the word 'model' in her criticism) was on their METHODOLOGY.

    To wit: apparently, after minimal scrutiny, they zero-filed the St Pete hoax letters as irrelevant to Amerithrax proper. That was NOT a direct result of profiling or the profile developed. It was a policy based on....well, I don't know what exactly. Except that it wasn't profiling. PERHAPS it was the tendency of human beings to judge things by their surface appearances.

    They also failed to exploit the letter denouncing Ayaad Assaad, the J-Lo letter etc. And when I say "exploit", I mean put it together with the data from the other mailings, consider the chronology, the forensic linguistics (ie the fact that the St Pete letters------or at least one------were/was written in pseudo-Cyrillic style, the Brokaw/NY POST letter in pseudo-Hebrew style etc.) and to draw the necessary conclusions. Not even the most profile-besotted investigator would have ignored those elements, if he could have but seen their relevance to the nature of the crimes.
    Alas, either none did, or IF he did, he was so low on the totem pole that he was ignored.

    As I wrote previously, the key to understanding Amerithrax is in the linguistics and the psychology. Naturally "psychology" brings to mind profiling, though the two aren't synonymous. Cops, even of the uniformed traffic variety, are confronted with human psychology every moment of every workday. They make decisions based on their understanding/misunderstaning of the people they interact with. This too was, in Ivins' case, disastrously handled.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Richard Rowley wrote: "Once again we have Mister Lake attributing to me a thought I never had ..."

    But, you are doing it again. Your entire post is about how YOU think the FBI should have done things. That implies that you believe you know more about such investigations than the FBI does, so they should have consulted with you if they wanted to get things right.

    You see connections that no one else sees.
    You think there are connections the FBI failed to see.
    You think you are right.
    You think the FBI is wrong.
    Ergo, you imply that if the FBI would consult with you, they'd do a better job. You can explain things to them that they fail to understand.

    You're not talking about profiling. You're talking about rationalizing.

    Rationalizing is when you begin with a suspect and then twist and distort all the evidence to make it fit your suspect.

    Profiling is when you look at the facts and determine what sort of person from past cases would commit such a crime. Profiling doesn't point to a person, it points to a TYPE of person.

    The FBI investigated the Assaad letter. The only connections between it and the anthrax letters are connections in your mind.

    Same with the St. Petersburg letters. EVERYTHING says there is no connection to the attack letters. The connections you see are entirely in your mind, not anywhere in the real world.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  8. I should note that last week I ascertained that the Texas threatening letters from 2008 to the present are indeed from the very same guy ('The Anthrax Killer'). Meaning I have to add that case to my list:

    The same person:

    1) sent* the petri dish marked 'anthrachs'(?) in April of 1997 to B'nai Br'ith.

    2) sent* white powder mailings to news outlets in 1999:
    -----
    February 1999 (B): There is another hoax anthrax attack (see April 24, 1997). A handful of envelopes with almost identical messages are sent to a combination of media and government targets including The Washington Post, NBC's Atlanta office, a post office in Columbus, Georgia (next to Fort Benning, an Army base), and the Old Executive Office Building in Washington. The letters contained fake anthrax powder.
    http://www.fromthewilderness.com/timeline/AAanthrax.html
    --------
    3) sent* the Amerithrax letters of 2001.

    4) sent* the St Pete hoax letters of 2001.

    5) sent* the TOWN OF QUANTICO letter of Sept 2001.

    6) sent* an anthrax-simulant mailing to a Reno, Nevada Microsoft office via Malaysia.

    7) sent* the anthrax-contaminated mailing to Antonio Banfi in 2001.

    8) sent* ricin through the mails in late 2003/early 2004(?), signing himself "Fallen Angel" and claiming to be in the trucking industry (again, a totally bogus story).

    9) sent* the threatening/apologizing Goldman Sachs letters of 2007.

    10) sent* the "jihad boom" threatening postcards in Florida in 2007.

    11) sent* the Texas threatening letters from 2008 to the present.

    The use of the verb "send" is not meant to imply that the perp HIMSELF dropped these mailings off at a mailbox or post office.
    In most instances he used a distribution network, of at least 4 persons, to accomplish all this. He likely sent the actually powders in baggies within an overnight deliverey box/envelope, with instructions as to how they were to be handled, opened so as to leave no forensic clues (fingerprints/fibers etc.

    Nor do I assume that the above is a comprehensive list of his terrorist-fun activities. He's too old to have started in 1997.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Richard Rowley wrote: "I should note that last week I ascertained that the Texas threatening letters from 2008 to the present are indeed from the very same guy ('The Anthrax Killer')."

    And it obviously doesn't bother you one bit that it looks like no one else in the entire world accepts your theory. In fact, most would probably consider it to be preposterous.

    You have a "suspect" who commits each crime from a different place. He changes his handwriting with every crime. He changes his terminology with every crime. He changes his modus operandi with every crime. He leaves no pattern connecting himself to any of these crimes except a pattern that only YOU can see.

    And, the FBI just can't see what you can see. If they would just consult with you, all these cases would be solved in an instant.

    Of course, the DOJ would also have to prosecute without any evidence, but you seemingly feel that your beliefs should be enough for everyone.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  10. Partial post by Mister Lake:
    ----------------
    Richard Rowley wrote: "Once again we have Mister Lake attributing to me a thought I never had ..."

    But, you are doing it again. Your entire post is about how YOU think the FBI should have done things.
    ==========================================================
    No, your reading skills have failed you ONCE AGAIN. I wrote:
    -----------
    They also failed to exploit the letter denouncing Ayaad Assaad, the J-Lo letter etc. And when I say "exploit", I mean put it together with the data from the other mailings, consider the chronology, the forensic linguistics (ie the fact that the St Pete letters------or at least one------were/was written in pseudo-Cyrillic style, the Brokaw/NY POST letter in pseudo-Hebrew style etc.) and to draw the necessary conclusions. Not even the most profile-besotted investigator would have ignored those elements, if he could have but seen their relevance to the nature of the crimes.
    Alas, either none did, or IF he did, he was so low on the totem pole that he was ignored.
    ========================================================
    That's a (partial) summary of what they did/failed to do. And there's no disputing it: way back in 2003 (ie 2 full years before I became interested in Amerithrax) Don Foster wrote:
    ------
    The Brokaw letter matched two other biothreat letters, also from St. Petersburg, mailed 15 days later -- same writing, same backward N's and Russian quotes, same threats of imminent bioterror. One was sent to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a co-author of Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, and the other to Howard Troxler, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times. Troxler opened his powder-packed letter on Tuesday, October 9. Miller opened hers at her office on Friday the 12th"the same day the NBC infection was diagnosed.
    ----------snip snip-------------------------[still Foster]
    Here, then, were two powder-filled biothreats addressed to the same news anchor[here Foster means Brokaw], two days and 1,000 miles apart. Neither writer could have known of the other unless they were in cahoots.
    http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/messageanthrax.html
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    So (one of?) the very forensic linguist(s) the Task Force selected for the case determined in late 2001 (though he's writing about it in the fall of 2003) that there was likely a connection between AT LEAST the St Pete letters and the canonical Amerithrax letters. Could he get the G-men interested? Evidently not! So it's not as though I have some peculiar idiosyncratic notion of 'how I think the FBI should have done things', it's about making reasonable inferences about the connectedness of things. Don Foster saw that way back in late 2001, and apparently without the benefit of recognizing the pseudo-Hebrew elements in the printing of the Brokaw/NY POST text. But the 'model' of the lone wolf, modeled on the Unabomber, was evidently too influencial and a moment of lucidity was.....avoided!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Partial post by Mister Lake:
    ---------
    Same with the St. Petersburg letters. EVERYTHING says there is no connection to the attack letters. The connections you see are entirely in your mind, not anywhere in the real world.
    =======================================================
    That's NOT what the Task Force's (FBI's) own forensic linguist consultant in Amerithrax told them in 2001. HE saw a connection (see my previous post).

    ReplyDelete
  12. Richard,

    So, you're once again citing Don Foster as an expert on the anthrax case?

    Don Foster was distorting the facts to make them fit his belief that Steven Hatfill was the anthrax mailer.

    Now you seem to be saying Don Foster distorted the facts to point at the wrong person. He should have pointed the distorted facts at your suspect.

    I would say that's doubly absurd.

    Obviously, nothing anyone says can change your mind about anything. Facts have no meaning to you. So, this whole discussion is a waste of time.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  13. Do you credit the claim by Al Qaeda regional commander at Tora Bora that Al Qaeda has used anthrax in improvised explosive devices?

    Wouldn't anthrax be destroyed in an explosion absent use of silica? Hasn't Dr. Ken Alibek explained that is a central purpose of adding silica to the coat by incorporation in the growth medium? (In addition to protection from explosion, microencapsulation prevents the anthrax from being destroyed by sunlight.)

    What is Laurie Garrett's treatment of the issue in her book?

    http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/162872/Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops-Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops-Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops-Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops-Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops-Anthrax-threat-to-British-troops

    ReplyDelete
  14. Ed,

    Tara O’Toole, the undersecretary for biosecurity at Homeland Security Department, says that the FBI did not establish that the anthrax came from USAMRIID but that it was merely the FBI’s “working hypothesis” and a “supposition”.

    Do you agree with the #1 person at Homeland Security Department on Amerithrax? Have you read any of the numerous articles on the subject in the journal she founded?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous wrote: "Do you credit the claim by Al Qaeda regional commander at Tora Bora that Al Qaeda has used anthrax in improvised explosive devices?"

    I wouldn't "credit" such a claim, since the facts "discredit" it. How many cases can you cite where al Qaeda used anthrax in explosive devices and caused anthrax infections?

    Anonymous also wrote: "Wouldn't anthrax be destroyed in an explosion absent use of silica?"

    No. In Ken Alibek's formula it wasn't silica that prevented the anthrax spores from being destroyed in the explosion. It was the resin.

    Anonymous also wrote: "In addition to protection from explosion, microencapsulation prevents the anthrax from being destroyed by sunlight."

    You still don't understand what microencapsulation is or how it works.

    Spores are "microencapsulated" naturally, so there is no reason for any further microencapsulation. If you microencapsulate spores to protect them from an explosion and from sunlight, you would also most likely prevent them from germinating, rendering them harmless.

    The microencapsulation process invented by Ken Alibek involved living bacteria, NOT SPORES.

    What's the purpose of linking to a March 2010 article about the threat of al Qaeda using anthrax as a weapon if the past two years have shown no such use? Anthrax has always a been a threat from al Qaeda, but there's no indication that it has ever been used by al Qaeda.

    And, who cares what Laurie Garrett thinks? She's too far removed from reality to be relevant to any discussion of anthrax or the anthrax attacks of 2001.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ed writes:

      "You still don't understand what microencapsulation is or how it works.

      Spores are "microencapsulated" naturally, so there is no reason for any further microencapsulation."

      I would be glad to quote you the literature you report you haven't read -- to include by author who advised the White House on the subject.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous,

      Quote away. It still boils down to opinions versus facts. And the FACTS say the opinions of your "experts" are nonsense.

      Ed

      Delete
  16. Anonymous wrote: "Tara O’Toole, the undersecretary for biosecurity at Homeland Security Department, says that the FBI did not establish that the anthrax came from USAMRIID but that it was merely the FBI’s “working hypothesis” and a “supposition”."

    Tara O'Toole has her own theory, so she discounts any facts which disagree with her theory. She's biased. She's also obviously uninformed and/or misinformed about the evidence in the case.

    There are "informed experts" with facts who say that the DOJ had a solid case against Ivins (e.g., Rachel Lieber, Edward Montooth) and there are "uninformed experts" without facts who say that the DOJ didn't have a solid case (e.g., Tara O'Toole, David Relman). In situations like that, it's best to look at what the FACTS say. The FACTS say that the DOJ had a SOLID case against Bruce Ivins.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ed,

      As the "informed experts" Ed is relying upon, Ed cites AUSA Lieber and Ed Montooth. Ed, they are the prosecutor and investigator respectively. A prosecutor is not an expert -- a prosecutor is an advocate charged under the federal rules with being zealous. Conversely, Paul Kemp, despite his eloquence, was not an expert. He was a lawyer.

      You might instead, though, seek the opinion of Dr. Scott Decker, who after obtaining his PhD in genetics at the University of Michigan did his fellowship at Harvard. It is fascinating that he then first did 7 years on violent crime in Boston. That's a cool pedigree. He could explain the contamination relating to the testing of the hijacker who had the leg lesion -- which you have made no attempt to understand.

      But you should not use the term "expert" as loosely as you do. An expert is someone who would be qualified by a federal court under the federal rules as an expert.

      The FBI's Dr. Bartick is another example of an expert on the subject of identification of the photocopier toner.

      Delete
    2. Ed, do you credit the findings by the Pakistan government that anthrax was mailed to Prime Minister Gilani?

      Delete
    3. Ed, do you credit the finding in this interrogation statement that “The detainee was in possession of anthrax powder that he planned to distribute to al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in preparation for future attacks on United States and Coalition forces.”

      http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-detainee-was-in-possession-of-anthrax-powder-that-he-planned-to-distribute-to-al-qaeda-and-taliban-operatives-in-preparation-for-future-attacks-on-united-states-and-coalition-forces/

      Delete
    4. Anonymous wrote: "A prosecutor is not an expert"

      You're misunderstand things again.

      I didn't claim they were "expert witnesses." I said they are "experts" in the FACTS of the case against Bruce Ivins. Since AUSA Lieber was going to prosecute the case, she should have been the world's #1 expert on the evidence against Ivins.

      Tara O'Toole and Laurie Garrett seem totally IGNORANT of the facts of the case against Bruce Ivins, yet they voice their IGNORANT opinions.

      Dr. Bartick is an expert whose expertise is irrelevant. So, he might as well be an "expert" on tuna fish. There is no tuna fish nor any toner evidence in the case against Bruce Ivins.

      Ed

      Delete
    5. Anonymous asked, "Ed, do you credit the finding in this interrogation statement that “The detainee was in possession of anthrax powder that he planned to distribute ..."

      I have no reason to challenge the statement. The point you fail to understand is: plans aren't the same as actions. Therefore, it's irrelevant to the Amerithrax investigation what plans someone had if they weren't implemented as part of the anthrax attacks of 2001.

      Anonymous also wrote: "Ed, do you credit the findings by the Pakistan government that anthrax was mailed to Prime Minister Gilani?"

      Unless there's some relevance to the Amerithrax case that you can prove, it's not a subject of interest to me. I have no opinions about it.

      Ed

      Delete
  17. Ed,

    Do you credit the report a few years ago that a senior Taliban official was captured with anthrax powder that he intended to mail to government officials? Did you read it? Did you link it or discuss it on your blog about the First Grader? Or do you consider relevant -- and read -- only the evidence that supports your theory that a First Grader wrote the letters for Dr. Ivins. Would you consider an expert on your theory a First Grader wrote the letters given that is all you choose relevant to read?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous wrote: "Do you credit the report a few years ago that a senior Taliban official was captured with anthrax powder that he intended to mail to government officials?"

      I look at the facts. The facts say that there is no al Qaeda or Taliban connection to the anthrax attacks of 2001. The facts also say that a child wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.

      Bringing up irrelevant subjects doesn't help your argument.

      Ed

      Delete
  18. The FBI agents told Noah Schactman that they don't when Dr. Ivins grew the anthrax. Would you credit their claim that they don't know when he would have grown it? (In contrast to your claim that you know.) They say, for example, that perhaps it would have been August rather than September.

    As for Agent Montooth, he has merely said that he is "comfortable" with an Ivins Theory.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous wrote: "The FBI agents told Noah Schactman that they don't when Dr. Ivins grew the anthrax."

    That's one reason I wrote my book. The FBI doesn't know exactly when Ivins grew the anthrax spores, but they know he had ample time and opportunity to do so.

    My book fills in the blanks. It explains when Ivins MOST LIKELY made the spores and when he MOST LIKELY dried the spores.

    It's not necessary to prove in court exactly when and how something was done if you can prove means and opportunity. If a burglary was committed sometime during a weekend, it's not necessary in court to prove that it happened at some exact time. It's only necessary to prove the the burglar did it sometime during the weekend.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  20. Ed, do you credit KSM's claim that Yazid Sufaat and his two assistants were vaccinated against anthrax in the Summer of 2001 and that the reason researchers get vaccinated is to work with virulent anthrax? Do you agree that Yazid was working with live anthrax in the Summer of 2001?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous asked, "Do you agree that Yazid was working with live anthrax in the Summer of 2001?"

      I have no reason to agree or disagree. There's no evidence that this has relevance to the anthrax attacks of 2001.

      Ed

      Delete
  21. I have to go now but it useful that we are now on the same page:

    Ed Lake agrees that Al Qaeda had powderized virulent anthrax.

    And he does not dispute Yazid Sufaat's claims to me on his Facebook page.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous wrote: "we are now on the same page"

    If you mean we aren't even reading the same book in the same language, then your comment makes sense. Otherwise, it's just another distortion of reality.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  23. Posted by Mister Lake, responding to anonymous:
    ----------
    Anonymous wrote: "A prosecutor is not an expert"

    You're misunderstand things again.

    I didn't claim they were "expert witnesses." I said they are "experts" in the FACTS of the case against Bruce Ivins. Since AUSA Lieber was going to prosecute the case, she should have been the world's #1 expert on the evidence against Ivins.
    =============================================================
    Okay, but what Mister Lake is missing is: attorneys are ADVOCATES. Advocates for their client if they represent an individual, but advocates for the STATE/'the people' (ie government) if they are prosecutors.

    In reality we don't even know for sure that Jeff Taylor or Rachel Lieber or any of the other DoJ lawyers involved PERSONALLY thought that the case against Ivins was proved to a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt degree. That's because they were PAID ADVOCATES for the Task Force/DoJ's position(s) on the case. They are hired guns just like private attorneys but with government salaries. That's not unique to the case against Ivins, but if you were to take the 'expert' prosecutors' words for it, no innocent person in the whole history of the United States of America was ever wrongly prosecuted.

    So we could access in 2008-2010 what the prosecutors' expertise told them was STRONG about the case against Ivins (they could and did speak about it publicly) but NOT what they saw as the weaknesses of that case. Occupational obligation to be one-sided.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Ed, when you say that Rachel and Ed were "informed," do you think that when they closed the case in 2010, they were aware of what the first counselor Judith McLean had written in her 2009 book in which she explained that in 2000 she was psychotic and took her instructions from an alien at night who had implanted a microchip in her butt?

    She thought murderous fiends were pursuing her and trying to kill her.

    ReplyDelete
  25. By "on the page," what I mean you don't dispute the fact that in the Summer of 2001 Yazid Sufaat were vaccinated against anthrax. You do not dispute that Al Qaeda had powderized virulent anthrax.

    You argue those facts relating to motive and means are irrelevant. You argue that a First Grader -- who you don't know to exist -- wrote the letters.

    You argue that what the first counselor wrote in her 2009 book about her psychosis in 2000 is irrelevant. You argue that she can be relied upon as a witness in support of an Ivins Theory. Indeed, her claim about Dr. Ivins being a murderous fiend is your first point on your webpage.

    You have not yet had a chance to respond to my question about whether you think your "informed experts" -- for example, the prosecutor -- knew about the 2009 book about her psychosis and paranoia about the murderous fiends trying to kill her. Moreover, you have not read the book by the first counselor.

    You argue that there were no known operatives working with the hijackers -- and nowhere address (for example) Jdey.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous wrote: "You argue those facts relating to motive and means are irrelevant."

      Not so. Motives aren't "irrelevant," they are meaningless unless accompanied by solid evidence showing that the person with motive also did the crime.

      Haven't you ever read any Agatha Christie? In her books, almost everyone has a motive. But the guilty person is the person who can be proved to have actually committed the crime.

      Anonymous also wrote: "You argue that there were no known operatives working with the hijackers"

      Not so. Everyone knows about the "20th hijacker" Moussaoui and the pair who were traveling in the Southwest. What I said was that there was no evidence of someone who traveled with the 9/11 hijackers and who was left behind to launch the anthrax attacks. Plus, the facts say there was no such person.

      Ed

      Delete
    2. Ed,

      Do you agree that Jdey was part of the 911 plotting?

      Do you agree that Jdey knew anthrax planners KSM, Hambali and Atef?

      Do you agree that he was detained at the same time as Moussaoui? With Moussaoui carrying cropdusting books and Jdey carrying biology books?

      Do you agree that the CIA formally concluded that Moussaoui's inquiries about cropdusters related to the planned dispersal of anthrax?

      Do you agree that the FBI withheld the information of Jdey's detention and release for 10 years?

      Do you agree that Jdey knew and worked with Atta and Nawaf?

      Do you agree that his whereabouts at the time of the mailings was unknown?

      Do you agree that you never discuss Jdey and instead argue that no operative has been pointed out? When instead he has been pointed out -- but because you are uninformed and don't read entire books, articles and official documents on the subject, you don't even know enough about him to discuss him. You are not qualified Ed to discuss the issues because you are not well-read on the subject.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous wrote: "Do you agree that the CIA formally concluded that Moussaoui's inquiries about cropdusters related to the planned dispersal of anthrax?"

      I find it hard to believe, much less agree to. Where's your source?

      I see it's a claim YOU have made countless times in various places, but you never seem to cite a source.

      The idea that they were going to use cropdusters to disperse anthrax makes little sense, although I can see where people who are totally ignorant about anthrax might believe such a thing.

      Ed

      Delete
  26. DOJ, on administrative appeal, has responded about a request about Jdey:

    "After carefully considering your appeal, and as a result of discussions between FBI personnel and this Office, I am remanding your request for a search for responsive records."

    Yet you claim that Jdey is "invisible." Just because you don't mention or discuss him, does not mean AQ operative is invisible. It just means you don't read the relevant books and articles and documents on the subject.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Claire Fraser-Liggett, is professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the University of Maryland Institute for Genome Sciences and an adviser to the FBI on Amerithrax.

    She asks, “What would have happened in this investigation had Dr. Hatfill not been so forceful in his response to being named a person of interest. What if he, instead of fighting back, had committed suicide because of the pressure? Would that have been the end of the investigation?”

    Do you agree with Dr. Fraser-Liggett, the FBI's genetics expert?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous asked, "Do you agree with Dr. Fraser-Liggett, the FBI's genetics expert?"

      Claire Fraser-Liggett's comments display an ignorance of the facts. That's why she just did "blind" testing without ever knowing who the numbered samples implicated in the case. Had she known, her bias would have negated some of the evidence.

      Ed

      Delete
  28. Richard Rowley wrote: "Okay, but what Mister Lake is missing is: attorneys are ADVOCATES."

    What Mr. Rowley is missing is (1) being and "advocate" doesn't automatically make you a hypocrite, and (2) the DOJ showed the world what evidence they had against Ivins, and by any objective measure it is a very SOLID case.

    The facts say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer. All that Rachel Lieber did was show us the facts. That's something no Anthrax Truther has ever done in support of his or her own theory. They just argue beliefs and nonsense.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  29. Ed relies on what anthrax epidemiology expert Martin Hugh-Jones describes as lawyer-talk.

    International anthrax expert Dr. Hugh Martin-Jones challenges the government to test his team’s hypothesis in a lab instead of with “lawyer talk.” He says “I hope [the findings] will add to the pressure that the investigation be actively reopened.”

    ReplyDelete
  30. Ed,

    Do you consider the head of the NAS panel expert? She say Dr. Martin Hugh-Jones and his co-authors raise important points that need to be addressed.

    From the New York Times:

    "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.

    Both the chairwoman of a National Academy of Science panel that spent a year and a half reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work and the director of a new review by the Government Accountability Office said the paper raised important questions that should be addressed.

    Alice P. Gast, president of Lehigh University and the head of the academy panel, said that the paper “points out connections that deserve further consideration.”

    Dr. Gast, a chemical engineer, said the “chemical signatures” in the mailed anthrax and their potential value to the criminal investigation had not been fully explored. “It just wasn’t pursued as vigorously as the microbiology,” she said, alluding to the analysis of micro-organisms. She also noted that the academy panel suggested a full review of classified government research on anthrax, which her panel never saw."

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous wrote: "Ed relies on what anthrax epidemiology expert Martin Hugh-Jones describes as lawyer-talk."

    Not true. I rely on the FACTS. I go far beyond "lawyer talk." On my web site (and in my book) I explain all the facts which "lawyer talk" doesn't explain, such as how Ivins made and dried the attack spores. Click HERE to visit my web page about HOW Ivins made the attack spores.

    There are plenty of facts showing the "most likely" way that Ivins made and dried the spores. But, "lawyer talk" just says that Ivins had the means to do it. The prosecutors didn't attempt to define which method Ivins specifically used, since there were several methods available to Ivins, and all would produce virtually identical results.

    Your arguments are getting more and more silly. The FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer. The only way that can be challenged is by providing FACTS which say he wasn't the anthrax killer, someone else was. You can't do that by silly arguments about "lawyer talk" versus "non-lawyer talk."

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous wrote: "Dr. Gast, a chemical engineer, said the “chemical signatures” in the mailed anthrax and their potential value to the criminal investigation had not been fully explored."

    The FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer. Exploring possible ways that the "chemical signatures" can be created won't change that. It might make an interesting science project, but it would mean nothing to the case.

    Dr. Gast and the others on the NAS committee only looked at the science used in certain parts of the investigation. They should know better than to try to argue about the validity of the government's legal case if they only examined one tiny part of it. That is just plain STUPID. The NAS scientists talk from ignorance when they try to discuss the legal case against Ivins.

    They should know better.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  33. The Al Qaeda operatives like Jdey and Jafar the Pilot who were footloose and fancy free in September and October 2001 (and associated with the other 911 operatives) are only invisible to someone who is unqualified to address the issue -- someone who makes it a point not to read material that contradicts his unsupported factual assertion that a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters.

    Those of us who read the relevant information -- to include most any newspaper reader on the street -- know better.


    Thug from Brooklyn ID’d as possible al Qaeda leader

    By CHUCK BENNETT

    June 9, 2012


    A terrorist with roots in the Big Apple is one of a handful of die-hard jihadists being touted as the next leader of al Qaeda, US officials and security analysts say.

    Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah, a 36-year-old Saudi who spent his teen years in Brooklyn, is in the running to take a prime leadership role after a US Predator drone in Pakistan took out No. 2 in command Abu Yahya al Libi Monday.


    Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/thug_from_brooklyn_id_as_possible_TT7X8RqeOWLA55mSDAyBHN#ixzz1xJELcNEK

    ReplyDelete
  34. Anonymous wrote: "someone who makes it a point not to read material that contradicts his unsupported factual assertion that a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters."

    Nonsense. I made it a point to hunt down every comment by every "handwriting expert" I could find to see what they had to say about the handwriting. I even contacted some of them to see what they had to say about the FACTS which show that a child wrote the letters. NO EXPERT WILL ADDRESS THE FACTS. They have stated their OPINIONS and they're sticking by their opinions, since their reputations may be at stake.

    Irrelevant facts about Muslims involved in 9/11 don't change the FACTS about the handwriting. My book points out that there are VAST differences between the printing done by the 9/11 terrorists and what is in the anthrax letters.

    Opinions about handwriting don't mean anything unless they address the specific topics of (1)WHY the writer wrote much smaller on the second mailing than on the first, even though the paper and envelopes were the same size, (2) WHY the writer drew certain characters of the alphabet differently in later writings than in the first writings, and (3) WHY the writer used punctuation in the second letter but not in the first letter.

    NO "EXPERT" has addressed those KEY facts about the handwriting. That's probably because they never even noticed them.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  35. Ed Lake has not read any of the handwriting literature.

    He has not read the peer literature as it relates to children handwriting or to ESL writers. Instead, he has posted on the internet in a debate with someone whose learning relates instead to graphology.

    Ed Lake has not even obtained and examined the handwriting samples, for example, of operative Adnan El-Shukrijumah.

    As a young adult in 1997, Adnan el-Shukrijumah participated in an "English as a Second Language" class, during which he spoke passable but limited English. He received extensive flight training in the late 1990s or early 2000 in Florida and has a flying license for light aircrafts. His father managed to contact him the last time in 2002 when Adnan el-Shukrijumah attended English lessons in Morocco.

    After the arrest of Khalid Shaik Mohammed in Pakistan on 03/01/2003 and his primary interrogation Adnan el-Shukrijumah was put on the FBI most wanted list on 03/26/2003 and is suspected of being an Al Qaeda cell leader.

    There is a $5 million reward.

    According to the interrogations 'Jafar the pilot' was selected after The 9/11 by Osama Bin Laden to be the terror group’s next Mohamed Atta for any second wave of attacks on America.

    Adnan el-Shukrijumah was in contact with The Pakistani female neurologist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who lived in the USA and returned to Pakistan on 01/2003 and prosecutors said was willing to participate in an anthrax attack. Aafia has said she researched anthrax as a bioweapon for 6 months.

    Although Ed doesn't realize it, his point - that he has made for 10 years without so much as reading the literature -- merely supports that the writer was one of several operatives that KSM had recently taught English.

    By all means, the GAO should obtain and publish all of the FBI's handwriting analyses relating to the letters and the known Al Qaeda operatives.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Anonymous wrote: "Ed Lake has not read any of the handwriting literature."

    You don't know what I've read and not read.

    The only important point is: The FACTS say that a child wrote the anthrax letters.

    Opinions are irrelevant, particularly since very few "handwriting experts" agree on much of anything about the handwriting in the letters.

    And the facts say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer, so everything you babble on about regarding al Qaeda is just irrelevant babble if you cannot PROVE who wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.

    You have NOTHING in the way of evidence to show that anyone other than Bruce Ivins sent the anthrax letters. You just have beliefs and opinions from others with beliefs.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  37. Yes, Ed, I do know what you have and haven't read. You post daily reports and take great pride in not having read the handwriting literature on children and ESL students to which I directed you.

    It is a fact, for example, that you have not read or examined the handwriting samples of Jaber Elbaneh, another Al Qaeda operative you pretend doesn't exist. (Or rather, you have no awareness of given that you are so uninformed on the subject of leads pursued by the Amerithrax Task Force.

    Jaber A. El-Baneh. A 45-year-old Yemeni known as Jubair, el-Baneh emigrated to New York where he settled for a time in Buffalo. He was viewed as the mastermind of the Lackawanna Six plot in 2003, having financed and recruited other members. A senior Obama administration official said last month that el-Baneh has risen to a leadership position in the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). “I do see, more and more, el-Baneh being a real concern,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “He has longtime connections, including to Egyptian extremist elements. And he does seem to be more engaged in trying to support attacks.”

    Before 911, he met Osama Bin Laden. One of the men asks bin Laden about a rumor that something big is about to happen. Bin Laden responds: “They’re threatening us. And we’re threatening them. But there are brothers willing to carry their souls in their hands.” [TEMPLE-RASTON, 2007, PP. 107-108] A couple of weeks later, the seven Lackawanna men and Derwish begin training at the Al Farooq training camp near Kandahar. One day, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri come to their camp and bin Laden gives a speech in Arabic to the hundreds of trainees there. The crowd is told the speech is being videotaped. In his 20-minute speech, he discusses the merger between al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. At the end, he calls on the gathering to pray for the 40 operatives who are en route for a very important mission.

    Jaber Elbaneh was being sought in connection with the case involving the young men from Buffalo. He had travelled to Afghanistan with them. There was up to a $5 million dollar reward for his capture before he was located and detained in Yemen. Agents Edward Needham and David Britten, of the Joint Terrorism Task Force of Western New York, believe Elbaneh may have returned briefly to Lackawanna. In June 2001, he had sold property he owned at 20-24 Wilkesbarre Ave., Jaber Elbaneh to Ahmed Umar for $15,000. The week before 9/11 (ending September 7, 2001), Jaber Elbaneh sold the property he co-owned a 28 Wilkesbarre Ave to a relative for $20,000.

    One by one, all the members of the group except for Jaber Elbaneh had dropped out and gone home before their basic training course is done. They will later be known as the “Lackawanna Six.” But none of the six tell any US authorities what they learned when they get back to the US before 9/11. Some of the six, such as Taher and Alwan, will later say that on the morning of 9/11 they realize the attack they are watching on television is what bin Laden was talking about when he discussed the 40 men on a suicide mission. [TEMPLE-RASTON, 2007, PP. 136-138]

    Are Agent Needham and Britten correct that Elbaneh returned to the United States? How did Dr. Majidi exclude Jabeneh as the mailer?

    GAO: What are the specific dates of Elbaneh's travel from Afghanistan and his travel to the United States. Anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat knew him. He was coming from Kandahar where the Al Qaeda anthrax lab was located. What was his job at Sorrento Cheese?

    ReplyDelete
  38. It was the June 2001 speech that Dr. Ayman gave about the merger between Al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad that was summarized by the June 2001 letter to supporters in the US in which Dr. Ayman used the code "School" to refer to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. That is why the CIA should have given first priority in late 2001 to people Dr. Ayman knew to recruit from Cairo, such as the microbiologist from Cairo supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous,

    This forum is about the anthrax attacks of 2001. If you can't stick the the subject and need to ramble on about irrelevant topics related to al Qaeda, I'll just prevent further such posts from being seen.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  40. Mr. Lake, you are the one who falsely said there were no operatives -- when instead you just don't know about them because your failure to read. Indeed, you have never even addressed the operatives living in and around New Brunswick, from where the anthrax letters were sent.... such as the subtilis expert in close phone contact with KSM's nephew, the WTC 1993 bomber.

    ReplyDelete
  41. The FBI's key expert , Dr. Patricia Worsham, says:

    "I don't believe that we had facilities at USAMRIID to make that kind of preparation. It would have taken a great deal of time it would have taken a huge number of cultures; it would have taken a lot of resources that would have been obvious to other people within containment when they wanted to use those resources.

    We did not have anything in containment suitable for drying down anything, much less a quantity of spores. The lyophilzer that was part of our division was in noncontainment. If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had nonimmunized personnel in the area, and I might have expected some of them to become ill."


    Note that the United States Attorney Taylor, in the remarks prepared by AUSA Lieber, claimed that Dr. Ivins used the lyophilizer.

    That was not well-founded. The lyophilizer was not where Dr. Ivins was located in the B3 while working with the rabbits on those nights.

    In order to make an Ivins Theory plausible, AUSA Lieber had to omit all mention of the rabbits.

    ReplyDelete
  42. The article "The Amerithrax Case, 10 Years Later" in January 2012 issue of Frederick Gorilla featured some statements by two fact witnesses. The article is by Stephanie Yamkovenko. The main fact witness against him is his first counselor, who reportedly told David Willman that Dr. Ivins was the scariest patient she had ever had. As Mr. Willman could have learned from reading her 2009 online book and official records, she actually had just become licensed the previous year. She then quit the part-time practice and left the state upon physical exhaustion from being chased by murderous astral (imaginary) entities. She says she was psychotic in 2000 and that an alien gave her instructions at night. The alien had implanted a microchip, she says, in her butt. Ed Lake has not read her book. That is the quality of his analysis.

    This is a key fact witness Ed Lake relies upon. He even capitalizes the word FACT -- as if it somehow gave it added weight.

    On the other hand, the fact witnesses actually competent to testify all argue that Dr Ivins is innocent -- Little, Worsham, Adamovicz, Andrews and countless others.

    In regards to the emails, Dr. Henry Heine, program director of Florida University’s Institute of Therapeutic Innovation and Ivins’ former colleague, believes their content was taken out of context.

    “You don’t know what the follow up email is. The FBI is pulling a line—a sentence—out of an email. They could go through any of your emails and pick things out of context and make anybody look bizarre and strange.”

    “They trash Dr. Ivins’ reputation, even though they have not shown a single link between Dr. Ivins and the letter attacks or the dried anthrax,” he adds. “They have shown nothing more than they did about

    Dr. Hatfill [another FBI “person of interest” in the Amerithrax case, who was cleared in early 2008], namely that Dr. Ivins had many personal problems and worked with pathogens for the Department of the Army.”

    Heine says that the Ivins he knew was a fun guy, and he enjoyed his company. “I miss him deeply,” he says. “The Bruce Ivins that has been painted by the Justice Department…I never met that gentleman. That’s a person that, to me, never existed. I never saw that person.”

    Ed does not agree with the FBI's experts who argue that the evidence such as the genetics evidence does not point to Dr. Ivins.

    Nor does he agree with the government fact witnesses who explain that there is no evidence that Dr. Ivins was responsible for the anthrax mailings. Instead, he relies on the woman who says she was controlled by the alien!

    ReplyDelete
  43. Anonymous wrote: "Mr. Lake, you are the one who falsely said there were no operatives ..."

    I never said anything about operatives. I'm saying that the FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer.

    The FACTS say that the 9/11 hijackers were DEAD for a week at the time of the first mailing, and DEAD for a month at the time of the second mailing. There are NO FACTS showing that the anthrax letters were part of some follow-up to the 9/11 attack launched by al Qaeda. The FACTS say that al Qaeda was NOT involved in the anthrax attacks.

    Anonymous quotes Patricia Worsham as saying, "We did not have anything in containment suitable for drying down anything, much less a quantity of spores."

    Patricia Worsham is absolutely WRONG. She's MISTAKEN. She's stating BELIEFS, NOT FACTS. She's falsely assuming that Ivins used some STANDARD drying procedure. In reality, all Ivins had to do was leave a plate of damp spores in a biosafety cabinet for about 2 hours and he'd have dry spores identical to what was in the letters.

    Anonymous also wrote: "Note that the United States Attorney Taylor, in the remarks prepared by AUSA Lieber, claimed that Dr. Ivins used the lyophilizer."

    Where? Cite the source.

    During the Aug. 6, 2008 briefing (link HERE, Taylor said:

    "Dr. Ivins was one of a handful of scientists with the capability to create spores of the concentration and purity used in the attacks. The affidavits allege that, not only did Dr. Ivins create and maintain the spore batch used in the mailings, but he also had access to and experience using a lyophilizer. A lyophilizer is a sophisticated machine that is used to dry pathogens, and can be used to dry anthrax. We know others in Dr. Ivins’ lab consulted him when they needed to use this machine.

    There's nothing in that statement that says Ivins used the lyophilizer to make the attack spores. It only says that Ivins knew how to dry spores by using a lyophilizer. So, he knew at least ONE method to dry spores.

    Anonymous also wrote: "On the other hand, the fact witnesses actually competent to testify all argue that Dr Ivins is innocent -- Little, Worsham, Adamovicz, Andrews and countless others."

    Nonsense. They cannot testify that Ivins was innocent. Their OPINIONS wouldn't even have been allowed in the Ivins trial. Their opinions were stated in the Stevens lawsuit, where the claims and legal rules were different.

    You can cite all the OPINIONS you want. They mean NOTHING when compared to THE FACTS which say Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  44. "I never said anything about operatives. "

    To the contrary, Ed, your argument for the past 10 years and this past week is that the hijackers were all dead.

    You don't talk about the operatives and argue that they were invisible when actually any reader of newspapers knows a lot about them.

    While Dr. Ivins has an alibi and there is no evidence he was near the mailbox, that is not true of many of the operatives.

    At the time the FBI developed their "Ivins Theory" and Dr. Ivins committed suicide, they had not yet learned that on both nights of mailing he attended his group therapy session (he was addicted to alcohol).

    "June 4, 2012 (B) - I was so busy yesterday debunking what Laurie Garrett talked about in those two interviews that I failed to mention some items of critical evidence she did not talk about:

    1. The 9/11 hijackers were DEAD for a week at the time of the first anthrax mailing, and DEAD for a month at the time of the second anthrax mailing. I believe that is very good circumstantial evidence that they did NOT send the letters. (Of course, people who believe the 9/11 hijackers were behind the anthrax attack just immediately conjure up an invisible assistant who left no trace of himself anywhere and who remained behind to do the actual mailings.)"

    ReplyDelete
  45. Ed argues that the FBI's anthrax expert is wrong.

    Perhaps Ed has not been through a trial before to understand how the trial would go. And perhaps he might want to go and quote US Attorney Taylor's sentence(s) about a lyophilizer to understand he is mistaken.

    As another example, the FBI's experts Velsko and Weber say that the silica and iron signature need further exploration. Ed disagrees. Okay. So what.

    The FBI's genetics experts say that the genetics don't point to Ivins. Ed disagrees. Okay. So what.

    And Ed's main witness says she could not distinguish reality from her paranoid delusions about murderous entities.

    So, let's see, that leaves the woman who hated him, Nancy, because she thought he was responsible for having her work called tantamount to "cold fusion" in the Washington Post the previous week. She instantly "knew" it was him when she was a cc on a group email. Well, Ed's and Nancy's beliefs are not cognizable in court.

    Ed misunderstands the nature of the testimony of the fact witnesses. They destroy an Ivins Theory -- on the facts.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Anonymous wrote: "While Dr. Ivins has an alibi and there is no evidence he was near the mailbox,"

    Your ignorance of evidence is astounding. There is an abundance of evidence that Ivins prepared the powders and the letters, and there is no evidence that he involved anyone else. Therefore, that is evidence that he was "near the mailbox," since the other evidence is enough to prove he mailed the letters. You do not need home movies of him actually putting the letters into the mailbox. The FACTS say he put the letters into the mailbox.

    Your favorite suspects may also have been "near the mailbox," but that fact by itself is meaningless. It's when combined with all the other evidence - as in the case against Ivins - that it becomes clear that Ivins was "near the mailbox" and mailed the letters.

    Anonymous also wrote: "the FBI's experts Velsko and Weber say that the silica and iron signature need further exploration. Ed disagrees. Okay. So what."

    I only disagree with the word "need." The case does NOT NEED further explanation of the silicon and iron signature. But Velsko and Weber might NEED a further explanation to quell their curiosity. From my discussions with them, however, they seem to feel that it's not worth the effort.

    Anonymous also wrote: "The FBI's genetics experts say that the genetics don't point to Ivins. Ed disagrees."

    That's total nonsense. No "genetic experts" have said the genetics don't point to Ivins. The NAS just said that the genetic evidence wasn't scientifically conclusive. But, in court it's not necessary for such evidence to be "scientifically conclusive" if there is ample additional evidence to support the fact that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. And there is such evidence.

    As you say, Nancy Haigwood's OPINION that Ivins was the anthrax mailer would never be aired in court. So, why do you even bring it up. Is it because it's an OPINION and all you can think about is OPINIONS?

    It is FACTS which would have convicted Ivins, NOT OPINIONS.

    You misunderstand the nature of the testimony of the fact witnesses. They confirm the Ivins CASE -- on the facts.

    Ivins had the means to make the powders. EXPERTS could testify to that in court.

    Ivins had the opportunity to make the powders. Experts could testify to that in court.

    Ivins had access to the source of the powders. Documents and Ivins' own word would confirm that in court.

    Ivins had MOTIVE. Ivins own words would confirm that in court.

    Ivins had no alibi for the times of the mailings. Ivins could not provide a verifiable alibi for himself. Investigators would testify to that in court.

    Ivins couldn't explain why he was working unusual hours during the times the powders were most likely being made. His own words would verify that in court.

    Ivins own words show that he didn't deny making the powders. He just claimed that if the did it, he couldn't remember doing it. Those taped words would have hung him in court.

    And, I can go on and on. The FACTS say that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. There are NO FACTS saying that any al Qaeda member is even a viable suspect, much less a BETTER suspect.

    Ed




    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  47. Ed misstates the facts. He wrote: "There's nothing in that statement that says Ivins used the lyophilizer to make the attack spores. It only says that Ivins knew how to dry spores by using a lyophilizer. So, he knew at least ONE method to dry spores."

    I asked him to correct his error but he didn't. He never does, leaving every post riddled with basic factual errors.


    Here is the statement by US Attorney Taylor.

    http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/opa-080806.html

    This was their formal written claim to tens of millions of Americans. This was the government's theory until it was demolished by the fact witnesses.

    "The affidavits allege that, not only did Dr. Ivins create and maintain the spore batch used in the mailings, but he also had access to and experience using a lyophilizer. A lyophilizer is a sophisticated machine that is used to dry pathogens, and can be used to dry anthrax. We know others in Dr. Ivins’ lab consulted him when they needed to use this machine."

    ReplyDelete
  48. Anonymous wrote: "I asked him to correct his error but he didn't."

    That's because THERE IS NO ERROR, except on your part. You misstate the facts.

    If you'll click HERE or go to my June 10, 2012 7:40AM comment in this thread, you'll see I corrected YOUR ERROR.

    U.S. Attorney Taylor said,

    "A lyophilizer is a sophisticated machine that is used to dry pathogens, and can be used to dry anthrax."

    Taylor did NOT say nor claim nor argue that Ivins used the lyophilizer to make the attack spores.

    In the Roundtable Discussion of August 18, 2008, Dr. Majidi of the FBI was far more clear:

    DR. MAJIDI: You know we really -- we really don't have the -- we don't really have any answers for what process was used to grow additional spores or what methodology was used to dry them. I think that a lot of folks focus on the issue of lyophilizer. You can ask any of the folks and the panel members, and they will tell you that you can dry biological samples in one of dozens of ways. lyophilizer is one of them. You can let the samples heat-dry. You can let the samples -- the water evaporate. You can -- "

    So, your argument is BOGUS. You made the error, not me. So, it's you who needs to correct your error.

    I've made many errors over the years, and I've corrected them whenever they were PROVED to be errors.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  49. Yes, the scientists had to hastily call a press conference in order to correct the mistake the lawyers made. But you can see the premise underlying the lawyer's "Ivins Theory."

    On interpreting both Dr. Relman and US Attorney Taylor's statements, it is a matter of a reading comprehension.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Anonymous,

    Ivins claimed he didn't know how to dry spores, yet he was in charge of teaching people how to use the lyophilizer. So, he lied. That appears to be the point Taylor was trying to make regarding the lyophilizer. But, people with little comprehension of the facts of the case - like you - jumped on it to argue that Taylor was saying that Ivins used the lyophilizer to make the anthrax powders.

    Dr. Majidi clarified the matter, even though the facts were already clear. It was just a matter of people not listening to what was being said, and putting their own spin on things. Which is what you do.

    Ed

    ReplyDelete
  51. Ed,

    Having no experience with litigation except for the suit against you for infringement, you don't appreciate that the beautiful and zealous AUSA Lieber has made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. In early statements, Dr. Ivins he had no training or experience to make a dried spore powder. The fact that the lyophilizer was signed out to him was as obvious as the large refrigerator-sized device located in the uncontained B2 just feet away from him while he was there. It was public record that it was used in by him and his colleagues in the 1995 patent he gave authorities. That patent in turn was referenced in the numerous patents in which the former Zawahiri associate thanked him for providing virulent Ames.

    Saying that he had no training to make a dried spore powder (involving virulent anthrax) is entirely different from using a lyophilizer as part of the vaccine research. Being uncritical and accepting what the earnest prosecutor has alleged, you simply buy into what is her spin and characterization -- as distinguished from evidence. Indeed, the DC US Attorneys Office expressly takes the position that the 302s are not prior statements because they involve the agent's characterization.

    The United States Attorney Taylor posited drying by lyophilizer and was immediately debunked. You falsely (in error) argued that Taylor did not say he used the lyophilizer -- when he in fact did.

    For months, you did not even know what the B3 included which led to many months of confused posts which you never corrected.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Anonymous wrote: "You falsely (in error) argued that Taylor did not say he used the lyophilizer -- when he in fact did."

    Nonsense. "Can be used" is not the same as "was used" in any language. It's only people who have other theories - like you - who twist the facts to create an argument where there really is no argument.

    The FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer. Arguing that Taylor didn't express himself well is beside the point and just a way to avoid discussing the FACTS which say that Ivins was the anthrax killer.

    Have you ever even attempted to assemble all the claims used in your "Al Qaeda Theory" to explain the theory step by step? If you try it, you'll see it's a laughable collection of unconnected and unrelated facts which make no sense.

    The "Bruce Ivins CASE" makes perfect sense, it's based upon solid facts, and the DOJ was presenting the case to a grand jury while also preparing to take it to court.

    Ed

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