Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's Anthrax Conspiracy Theory
"[A]rticles I found on the Internet indicated [Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg] believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a 'rogue scientist' and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs."--Ed Lake [Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks Home]When the FBI revealed in August 2008 that the late Dr. Bruce Ivins was their suspect in the anthrax mailings, some people were suspicious and unhappy. The paranoid Maoist MIM grumbled as he quoted what the deceitful sociopathic anthrax murderer Bruce Ivins told his friends (A.P. 8-6-08):
Another case seemed rushed along just in time for elections. “Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.
Even today, the disreputable conspiracy theorist and 9-11 Truther Sander Hicks continues to malign Dr. Steven Hatfill with fabricated anthrax canards, although a letter dated 11-4-02 that the Justice Department sent to to Senator Charles Grassley explains:
When the FBI conducted a consensual search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on June 25, 2002, in Frederick, Maryland, the mainstream media immediately interpreted this search as confirmation of all the speculation that had been previously circulating about Dr. Hatfill. The FBI was asked whether Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the case and when an arrest was anticipated. It was under these circumstances that unnamed sources at the FBI first described Steven Hatfill as one of many "persons of interest". ... The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill. On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and to explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been inteviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation.
The retired computer scientist and researcher Ed Lake explains in a post titled "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" why he thinks that the FBI Amerithrax investigation initially focused so much attention on the Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill.
According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Hatfill was targeted by a scientist named Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg because he was a strong opponent of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention:
[Dr. Hatfill] is an outspoken opponent to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC). He publicly demonstrated the ease with which biological weapons could be created. He was actively convincing people that terrorists were the biggest threat - not secret government projects run by the CIA.
According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Rosenberg, a founder and Director of the Federation of American Scientists Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, was a strong supporter of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) who believed that the U.S. government was secretly and illegally making weaponized anthrax. Of course, as I observed in my first post on the anthrax mailings, the anthrax that was mailed in fall of 2001 was not weaponized at all.
According to Mr. Lake's post "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" (6-10-03), Dr. Rosenberg believed:
[S]omeone from an illicit U.S. bioweapons program obtained anthrax from that program and sent it through the mail to undermine the position of those in favor of the BTWC.
Mr. Lake also has an interesting post titled "Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's 'Political Campaign'" (7-30-03). Mr. Lake begins his article by observing:
From the very beginning I viewed Barbara Hatch Rosenberg as just another crackpot conspiracy theorist. All the tell-tale signs were there. When she first made headlines in the anthrax case in November 2001 by making a speech at the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) in Geneva, the articles I found on the Internet indicated she believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a "rogue scientist" and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs. Those are the types of accusations found in most conspiracy theories.
Another early critic of Dr. Rosenberg is David Tell, who voiced skepticism of Dr. Rosenberg's science and her "crackpot" conspiracy theories in an article he published in The Weekly Standard (4-29-02):
[T]his veteran molecular biologist's sensational pronouncements betray a surprisingly uncertain grasp of contemporary genetic research and clinical protocols concerning Bacillus anthracis. And a surprisingly limited familiarity with anthrax-related military and civil-defense projects around the world. And a surprisingly unscientific, even Oliver Stone-scale, incaution about the "facts" at her disposal. Rosenberg claims the FBI has known the anthrax mailer's precise identity for months already, but has deliberately avoided arresting him--indeed, may never arrest him--because he "knows too much" that the United States "isn't very anxious to publicize." Specifically, according to an account the hazel-eyed professor offered on BBC Two's flagship "Newsnight" telecast March 14, the suspect is a former federal bioweapons scientist now doing contract work for the CIA.
Mr. Lake published a book titled Analyzing The Anthrax Attacks (2005). I wonder if he will publish a second book when the National Research Council scientists finish their extensive review of the science behind the Amerithrax investigation.
posted by Snapple at 3:51 PM
4 Comments:
Mr. Lake was the only person in the country who misunderstood what US Attorney was saying about the microbial forensics. Mr. Taylor was saying the flask was the source and that 100 people had access to the stream of identical isolates (to include at least 8 that were known). Others say the number is up to 300. Mr. Lake, as a layperson, seized upon the lawyer's use of the phrase mother / daughter to think that he was saying it was necessarily the case that Mr. Ivins took the anthrax from the flask and used it in the letters. That mistake, which he argued relentlessly for a half year, was really central to any assessment of the probativeness of the evidence. In short, no one else was confused on this single most important point. See press and posts. Only Ed.
"Ivins had submitted false anthrax samples to the FBI to throw investigators off his trail and was unable to provide "an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours" around the time of the attacks, according to the government documents. Investigators also said he sought to frame unnamed co-workers and had immunized himself against anthrax and yellow fever in early September 2001, several weeks before the first anthrax-laced envelope was received in the mail...Ivins "has been the sole custodian of RMR-1029 since it was first grown in 1997," said one affidavit...
One FBI document said Ivins "repeatedly named other researchers as possible mailers and claimed that the anthrax used in the attacks resembled that of another researcher" at the same facility.
"U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor formally announced Ivins was "the sole suspect" in the 2001 mailings that killed five people, shut congressional offices and paralyzed the U.S. Postal Service.
The first evidence listed against Ivins was "the genetically unique parent material of the anthrax spores used in the mailings," Taylor said, the now-famous "RMR-1029" flask of Ames strain anthrax spores, "created and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins at USAMRIID." In briefings, scientific meetings and publications over the last year, outside scientists engaged by investigators, such as Claire Fraser-Liggett of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, reported that four mutations in the genetic code of the anthrax used in the attack served as markers traceable back to the flask.
"We thoroughly investigated every other person who could have had access to the flask, and we were able to rule out all but Dr. Ivins," Taylor said, since the link between flask and scientist first became clear in 2005."
"Based on the totality of the evidence we had gathered against him, we are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks," said Jeffrey Taylor, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
He said the documents clearly show that Ivins, an anthrax researcher who worked at a biological warfare lab in Fort Detrick, Md., had grown, purified and dried the anthrax that was loaded into envelopes and mailed to U.S. Senate offices, news media headquarters and other locations across the United States
.......
Ivins had sole access to anthrax spores
Investigators linked the anthrax used in the attacks to a specific type of spore that Ivins created and had sole access to, Taylor said. He said Ivins was only one of a handful of scientists capable of creating such pure and concentrated spores, and he was one of the few people with access to the machine needed to dry them.
Taylor said at the time of the attacks, Ivins was working an "inordinate" amount of hours alone at his lab at night and on weekends, something he normally never did. When investigators questioned him about it, he failed to provide a satisfactory explanation, Taylor said.
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