|
Most
People think the anthrax mailer has been inactive for years – and will
never get caught.
Most people are wrong - on both counts....
Welcome
to Anthrax City - Now and Then
-
2001
"Anthrax was found around the supreme court's mail
The BBC's Tom Carver finds life in the US capital remarkably
calm given the continuing threat of anthrax and the war rumbling on in
Afghanistan.
Welcome to anthrax city, where the postman doesn't
knock twice. Or even once.
In fact, he hasn't knocked all week at our front door.
In some ways, it is rather a blessing not to have all that junk mail...."
Saturday, 27 October, 2001,
GMT 15:38 UK
-2005
The Downtown Public Library in Nashville
had to be evacuated Saturday morning,
after a suspicious package was found.
A powdery substance and a note that read
"Welcome to Anthrax City", was inside
the package.'
News Channel 5 Nashville - Apr 09 5:24 PM 2005
|
|
ARE YOU AFRAID?
|
|
2005
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Confirms Positive Anthrax Tests:
2005
Two labs confirmed Pentagon anthrax
By Dee Ann Divis
Senior Science & Technology Editor [UPI]
Published 3/21/2005 12:18 PM
WASHINGTON, March 21 (UPI) -- Anthrax has been confirmed in samples
collected from the two Pentagon mail facilities that were at first closed
last week and then declared free of the pathogen, United Press
International has learned.
The head of the company that was accused of contaminating the samples sent
from those facilities -- a detached building on the Pentagon grounds in
Arlington, Va., and the other in Falls Church, Va. -- said the presence of
anthrax was detected independently by two government laboratories.
***
"It is a fact that we had a presumptive positive test come up,"
he said. "That presumptive positive test was confirmed by us and by at
least two other labs as being a true positive."
Carlee Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., which tested the
samples after CBI, confirmed that the follow-up tests on the first sample
were positive and that two labs had done such tests."
BIOCHEMICAL ATTACKS
The Anthrax Attacks of 2005
"The Elephant in the Room"
by Sean Osborne, Military Affairs Expert, Senior Analyst
23 March 2005: Youve probably heard a casual mention on one of the evening
news programs recently of an incident involving a report of anthrax being
found at the Pentagon and two other facilities in Washington, DC last week.
This report was quickly followed by reports that the alarm was really the
cause of false positive test results and the incident was actually a
non-event. Lacking true investigative journalists for the most part, the
press rarely follows through on getting answers to the more difficult
questions and accepts the official denials, moving on to cover more
sensational stories such as the Michael Jackson trial and the sad case of
Terry Schiavo as the talk of terrorism is beginning to get tiresome anyway.
More importantly, though, this most recent anthrax case brings to mind the
old phrase about the presence of there being an elephant in the room,"
which is used to describe a situation where there is a very large problem
or situation, but everyone pretends that it really isn't there, and no one
really wants to talk about it. Such describes the anthrax incident that
began in Washington, DC on Thursday, March 10, 2005.
Incident is, of course an improper term should the facts ever show that the
false positives and accusations of cross contamination prove to be
government doublespeak superficial denials as we have come to know them.
Biological attack is a more appropriate phrase, although no one dares utter
that on the record. Rather, the official line is to blame an independent
laboratory, Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. (CBI), one that has conducted
over 2,000 such tests in the past two years and tens of thousands of others
and has never experienced a false positive test result. Further, those
results were also verified by two other independent laboratories as being
true positive. We were also treated to an interesting confirmation from a
spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases (USAMRIID) in Frederick, Maryland, Carlee Vander Linden. She
stated that they tested the samples after CBI reported the tests for anthrax
as positive, and confirmed that their follow-up tests on the first sample
were also positive and admitted that two other labs had done such tests and
received the same conclusively positive results.
Summarized Chronology of Events
It began on Thursday, March 10, 2005 when CBI collected initial samples
consisting of swabs of surfaces from the Pentagon mail facility (detached
from the Pentagon but located on the same grounds) in Arlington, Virginia
and at a mailroom in a Defense Department-leased building in Falls Church,
Virginia, which is part of a three-building complex. Those tests were
completed in 24-hours and read “positive for bacillus anthracis
(anthrax).
According to Robert B. Harris, president and chief executive officer of
Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. (CBI) in Richmond, Virginia, the
conclusive results were reported to the appropriate authorities the very
next day, on March 11, 2005. Further, stated Harris, not only were the
tests presumptively and conclusively proved positive, the the anthrax found
at the Pentagon was the same genetic strain used in the 2001 attacks.
Then on Friday, March 18, 2005, yet another alarm sounded at Bolling Air
Force Base, which is located along the Anacostia River in Washington. The
alert occurred in a mail-handling facility used by the Defense Intelligence
Agency at that location. DIA spokesman Major Paul Swiergosz verified that
the DIA remote-delivery facility was closed due to an initial positive test
of incoming mail for hazardous biological agents." He added that all
people who were working and inside of the building were asked to stay, and
based on an independent report to the Northeast Intelligence Network,
actual decontamination procedures were utilized at this facility.
Conflicting Stories
According to officials reporting these incidents, all appear to be the
result of cross-contamination somewhere in the Defense Department mail
system. There were three alerts: one at the Pentagon, one in Falls Church
and one at Bolling Air Force Base, and all three were specific for anthrax.
The official storyline is that all three tests were posiive for anthrax,
but that cross-contamination of the collected samples appeared to be the
cause.
That explanation sounds reasonable until more probing questions are asked
and the procedures inspected a little closer. It is critical to note that
two of the three alerts resulted from biosensor readings located Falls
Church and at Bolling in the facilities and were totally unrelated to CBI
testing. Accordingly, the issue of cross-contamination by CBI, then, is not
possible. And despite the reports of false positives, the entire
three-building complex at Falls Church remained closed for two days and
decontamination procedures were implemented.
On Monday, March 14, 2005, Douglas J. Hagmann, Director of the Northeast
Intelligence Network independently confirmed that the Falls Church facility
at the Skyline Plaza was in lock down for at least six hours and about 25
building occupants were being actively decontaminated. An official source
at the scene who spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that this is
the first time this has happened in this area since the first time in 2001.
Despite the downplaying of these events and the allegations of cross
contamination by CBI, Pentagon officials continue to this day to gather
thousands of pieces of mail that moved through the detached facility
between March 10 and March 14, 2005 for review and further testing.
Disturbing Scenario
In summary, we have a situation where an independent laboratory with an
impressive track record collected surface swabs from two Defense Department
mail facilities that conclusively tested positive for anthrax. Further,
this was not just any old strain of anthrax, but the very same genetic strain
of bacillus anthracis that was used in the biological attacks in 2001, a
crime still unsolved. CBI President was emphatic about his results, and
noted that not only his lab, but tests by two other laboratories came up
with the same results: "It is a fact that we had a presumptive
positive test come up," he said. "That presumptive positive test
was confirmed by us and by at least two other labs as being a true
positive."
Finally, we have Carlee Vander Linden, from the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., which tested the
samples after CBI and confirmed that the follow-up tests on the first
sample were indeed positive and also confirmed Harris's assertions that two
other labs had done such tests. Referring to the possible
cross-contamination issue, she interestingly and carefully made the
following statement:
"USAMRIID is not saying that, 'Gee, there probably was a contamination
event.' I think some people are surmising that. It certainly has been
reported that way. I think that we'll just have to wait and see."
As To Motive
|
|
|
Posted by The Great Satan to j2r2 On News/Activism
05/17/2002 8:02 PM PDT #37 of 188
|
