From: "Krishna E . Bera" <keb_-at-_cyblings.on.ca>
To: nowar_-at-_flora.org
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 18:00:09 +0500
References: <LAW2-F66M5OrCHhVzrz00009945@hotmail.com>
ha.
-krishna
On 2001.12.20 01:08 DAWN ONE wrote:
Washington Post / Anthrax sent to Capitol Hill matches U.S. Army stocks /
Rick Weiss and Susan Schmidt
Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to
Capitol Hill are identical to stocks maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980,
according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.
Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in
recent bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found
to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters,
the scientists said. All those labs can trace their samples to a single U.S.
military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. "That means the original
source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID," said one of
the scientists.
Those matching samples are at Fort Detrick; the Dugway Proving
Ground military research facility in Utah; the British military lab at
Porton Down; and microbial depositories at Louisiana State University (LSU)
and Northern Arizona University. Northern Arizona University received its
sample from LSU, which received its sample from Porton Down. Dugway and
Porton Down got their samples directly from USAMRIID.
Last week government health officials said they would recommend that about
3,000 people exposed to anthrax, including hundreds of Washington postal and
Capitol Hill workers, be offered an experimental vaccine as a precaution, in
case antibiotic treatment alone failed to protect them from getting sick.
FBI inquiries into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether
U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the
CIA, may have been the source of deadly
anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to informed sources. The
results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility. The FBI is
focusing on a contractor that worked with the CIA, one source said.
But it remains unknown which lab may have lost control of the material that
apparently ended up in terrorist hands. One of the two scientists familiar
with the genetic testing, who has been advising the government on the
anthrax scare, said investigators know little about security at Porton Down,
though they have no reason to suppose it has been inadequate. Of the other
labs, Dugway has attracted the most FBI attention, he said. Dugway is also
the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores
into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled.
The CIA's biowarfare program, which was designed to find ways to defend
against bioterrorists, involved
the use of small amounts of Ames strain, an agency spokesman said. The CIA
declined to say where its Ames strain material came from. The spokesman
said, however, that the CIA's anthrax was not milled into the volatile power
form found in the letters and that none of it is missing.
However, the FBI has turned its attention to learning more about the CIA's
work with anthrax, which the investigators were told about by the agency
within the past few weeks, officials said. The CIA has tried to develop
defenses against a vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax reportedly made by
Russia several years ago.
Several scientists said they were surprised by the revelation that a U.S.
Army installation in Utah has been producing dried preparations of the Ames
strain of the anthrax bacterium, the same strain found in letters to Sens.
Thomas A. Daschle and Patrick J. Leahy.
The Guardian Weekly 20-12-2001, page 21
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