Colleague Disputes Case Against Anthrax Suspect

WASHINGTON — A former Army microbiologist who worked for years with Bruce E. Ivins, whom the F.B.I. has blamed for the anthrax letter attacks that killed five people in 2001, told a National Academy of Sciences panel on Thursday that he believed it was impossible that the deadly spores had been produced undetected in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory, as the F.B.I. asserts.

Asked by reporters after his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, the microbiologist, Henry S. Heine, replied, “Absolutely not.” At the Army’s biodefense laboratory in Maryland, where Dr. Ivins and Dr. Heine worked, he said, “among the senior scientists, no one believes it.”

Dr. Heine told the 16-member panel, which is reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the investigation, that producing the quantity of spores in the letters would have taken at least a year of intensive work using the equipment at the army lab. Such an effort would not have escaped colleagues’ notice, he added later, and lab technicians who worked closely with Dr. Ivins have told him they saw no such work.

He told the panel that biological containment measures where Dr. Ivins worked were inadequate to prevent the spores from floating out of the laboratory into animal cages and offices. “You’d have had dead animals or dead people,” he said.

a very valuable commodity.

And Ivins at least provided that.
Deadmen cannot protest accusations against them.

is going to matter one iota to an FBI that has decided to close the case.

No one REALLY wants an answer other than the one in the book.

White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax
By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001; 8:11 p.m. EDT

WASHINGTON –– President Bush said confidently Tuesday that "I don't have anthrax" after biohazard testing at the White House and the discovery of anthrax on a mail-opening machine at a screening facility six miles away.

All White House mail – more than 40,000 letters a week – is examined at military facilities across the Potomac River.

"Let me put it this way," Bush said. "I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe."

Asked if he was tested for the germ that has killed three people already this month, or if he was taking precautionary antibiotics, Bush replied simply: "I don't have anthrax."

At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago. White House officials won't discuss who might be receiving the anthrax-treating antibiotic now.

On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved.

http://www.webcitation.org/5jpoTH18h