The anthrax was weaponized using the secret
US recipe
By Alllie
The anthrax was weaponized using the secret US recipe. This elminated
the possibility that any terrorist or foreign power made it because
the method was one of the most secret things in the world.
Additive
Made Spores Deadlier
The United States, the former Soviet Union
and Iraq are the only three nations known to have developed the
kind of additives that enable anthrax spores to remain suspended
in the air, making them more easily inhaled and therefore more
deadly, experts said yesterday. Each nation used a different technique,
suggesting that ongoing microscopic and chemical analyses may
reveal more about the spores' provenance than did their genetic
analysis, which is largely complete but reportedly has done little
to narrow the field.
…the conclusion that the spores were produced
with military quality differs considerably from public comments
made recently by officials close to the investigation, who have
said the spores were not "weaponized" and were "garden variety."
[The White House's insistence that the
spores were not "weaponized" reveals their knowledge
that they were not an antibiotic-resistant form of the pathogen.
Something they probably knew because they hadn't chosen an antibiotic
resistant strain of anthrax to send out. In a battlefield situation
such a resistant form would probably be used instead of the less
deadly Ames strain.] Those descriptions may be technically
true, depending on how one defines those terms, several experts
said. But they obscure the basic and more important truth that
the spores were treated with a sophisticated process, meaning
the original source was almost certainly a state-sponsored laboratory.
The finding strongly suggests that the
anthrax spores in the U.S. mail attacks were not produced in a
university or makeshift laboratory or simply gathered from natural
sources.
In the United States, that problem was
solved by Bill Patrick, who developed the process at Fort Detrick
as part of the U.S. biological weapons program that ended in 1969.
The process is protected by at least five secret patents
held by Patrick. It involved freeze drying and chemical processing
and was achieved without having to grow vast quantities of spores
or mill them to terribly small dimensions, Patrick and other experts
said.
Spores were mass-produced at a Pine Bluff,
Ark., facility, Patrick said. Production stocks were destroyed,
but he said he did not know whether "seed stocks" from which new
batches could be grown had also been destroyed. Under the terms
of an international treaty banning biological weapons, to which
the United States is a signatory, small amounts of biological
weapons can be produced to conduct defensive research.
"If [U.S. investigators] can get a clue
as to how the material in the Daschle letter was prepared, that
might narrow the field," Spertzel said. "It may not pinpoint it,
but it may narrow it."
So although the anthrax might have been shared, only the US has
the particular secret of this method of weaponization.
Of more importance to the investigation,
however, is the origin of: a) the material added to the anthrax
spores that causes them to separate from each other, greatly enhancing
virulence, and b) the method that assured the spores were relatively
uniform in size, and were sized for optimal lethality. Although
Ames was shared, this method of production, as well as the additive,
would have been closely-guarded secrets. They are what made Ames
extremely lethal. http://www.redflagsweekly.com/nassanthrax3.html
Again..this is so secret that even the patents are secret.
The optimal US weaponization process
is secret—Bill Patrick, its inventor, holds five secret patents
on the process and says it involves a combination of chemicals
. There is no evidence that any other country
possesses the formula.
Under the microscope, the letter anthrax
appears to be unmilled. Milled anthrax spores are identifiable
because they contain debris. The optimal US process does not use
milling.
The Daschle sample contains a special
form of silica used in the US process. It does not contain bentonite
(used by the Iraqis). A "coating" on the spores in the
letter sample, indicative of the secret US process, has been observed.
The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC
has studied the sample using an energy dispersive X-ray specroscope,
which can detect the presence of extremely tiny quantities of
chemicals; traces of several chemicals have been found (but not
reported, presumably for security reasons). http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm
Official:
Unusual coating in anthrax mailings
The purity, fineness and potency of
the anthrax -- particularly that mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle,
D-South Dakota, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont -- makes it highly
unlikely that the sender of the letters made and treated the spores
in a makeshift setting, according to officials involved in
the massive investigation. "There are only so many people, so
many places that this can be done," Van Harp, the assistant FBI
director leading the anthrax investigation, said last month.
The recipe for weaponizing anthrax was classified. Only a few scientists
in the world knew how to weaponize it and those worked for the defense
department or the CIA or their contractors.
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