Sunday, January 27, 2013

Jan. 27 - Feb. 2, 2013 Discussions

My comment for Sunday, January 27 was primarily about two posts a (former?) USAMRIID scientist made on Thursday evening to Lew Weinstein's blog and to this blog.

The two posts suggest that the scientist was contacted by a True Believer and urged to join in on arguments that Bruce Ivins was innocent and that someone else sent the anthrax letters.  The True Believer almost certainly wanted to convince the scientist that an al Qaeda agent was behind the attacks.  But, it appears the scientist has his own theory: He believes someone at Dugway Proving Grounds was behind the attacks.  OR, the lapse in security that led to someone getting a sample of the Ames strain occurred at Dugway.

I responded to the scientist's post in the Apr. 29 - May 5, 2012 discussion thread by explaining that he was wrong in his belief that Ivins didn't have the equipment in Suite B3 to make the attack anthrax powders.  I explained how easy it was for Ivins to make the powders.  Plus, there are facts which show that the spores were not made at Dugway.

So far, the scientist hasn't responded to what I wrote.  Nor did he respond to "DXer's" comments which followed the scientist's ranting post to Lew Weinstein's blog.

It's another example of a scientist who appears to be largely ignorant of the facts yet still has a very strong opinion.  I'm hoping that someday one of these scientists will want to sit down and discuss the facts to see what the facts actually say about the case.

While looking for links to add to the comment on my web site, I noticed that the publication date for Edward Jay Epstein's new book "The Annals of Unsolved Crime" has been pushed out two weeks, from February 26 to March 12, 2013.  It made me wonder if the fact that I said I was prepared to debunk the section about the anthrax attacks of 2001 caused Epstein to go back and do some rewrites.  There could easily be some other explanation, but the change in the publication date certainly has me curious.  They may have made the anthrax attacks section a bit more difficult to debunk, but anything Dr. Epstein says on the subject is still expected to be largely bunk.

Lastly, I commented on how totally worthless I am as a salesman.  I've written what I think is a terrific book, but I'm doing next to nothing to promote it.  I'm waiting for the world to beat a path to my door, even though "the world" doesn't even know I exist.  Amazon reportedly has about 1.8 million different books for sale in print form, and 800,000 on Kindle.  Without some kind of promotion, no one is going to find my book in that mass -- particularly when so many other people are trying so hard to promote other books. 

But, maybe something will happen to bring attention to my book.  The review of the Amerithrax investigation by the General Accountability Office could do it.  Or maybe it won't do anything.  So, I'll probably just wait and see.

Ed      

No comments:

Post a Comment