Some People Cannot Resist Posting Kittens

For me, it's farts:

A woman on TikTok has left people in stitches with her story about a time she ripped a fart in a spin class that led to a total evacuation of all people on the premises.

………

"This one time I went to a spin class after a heavy night of drinking and 4am kebabs..."

Then it happened.

"...And I farted a fart that smelled so bad that a girl threw up and they had to evacuate the gym because they thought they had a sewage problem."

She was apparently glad to finally get it off her chest.

"I was too embarassed to tell them it was just me. So now, eight years later, I'm telling you guys."

@maximevdd

Tell me your greatest fart stories. Can you beat that? #fyp #gym #gymproblems #fart #spinclass #hangover #embarrassing #ohno #fartsfordays #drunk

♬ Oh No - Kreepa

How is this woman still single?  Not mocking her.  Women who find farts funny are rare and should be treasured.

Also, it beats my story of Prednisone fueled farts, when I let one site slip out silently that violated the chemical weapons convention at the same time that my my dad loudly farted while we were in the car, and he took the blame from the rest of the family for 15 minutes until I fessed up.

More Weirdness in the Anthrax Mailings

It's been a while since I've written about the issues with the FBI's investigation of the Anthrax mailings, and now it appears that the GAO report on this matter has attracted the interest of The New York Times:

A congressional inquiry into the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the anthrax mailings of 2001 has identified major gaps in genetic evidence that purportedly links the germs to Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist blamed for attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 others and shook the nation.

The Government Accountability Office study, requested in 2010 and made public on Friday, echoes earlier criticism from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2011, its expert panel found that the bureau’s analysis of the genetic evidence “did not definitively demonstrate” a firm link between the mailed anthrax spores and a sample taken from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, and more generally was “not as conclusive” as the bureau had asserted.

The G.A.O. had better access to F.B.I. records and deepened the genetic critique, finding that the bureau’s investigation “lacked several important characteristics” that could have strengthened its case. “A key scientific gap,” the 77-page report said, was the bureau’s failure to investigate whether samples of anthrax spores could naturally mutate enough to obscure their putative links to Dr. Ivins.

I think that it is more than likely that Dr. Ivins was involved in the anthrax mailing.

I know that the FBI was flailing wildly, and was looking for anyone that they could finger as the perp, and Ivins was the 2^nd person that the FBI aggressively harassed, the first being Steven Hatfill, and it appears that in both cases, the FBI was hoping for a suicide to end their search.

Scientist Poke Holes in FBI's Anthrax Mailer ID

And they are doing this in a peer reviewed journal:

A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.

Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.

F.B.I. documents reviewed by The New York Times show that bureau scientists focused on tin early in their eight-year investigation, calling it an “element of interest” and a potentially critical clue to the criminal case. They later dropped their lengthy inquiry, never mentioned tin publicly and never offered any detailed account of how they thought the powder had been made.

The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.

Both the chairwoman of a National Academy of Science panel that spent a year and a half reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work and the director of a new review by the Government Accountability Office said the paper raised important questions that should be addressed.

…………

In its report last February, the National Academy of Sciences panel sharply criticized some of the F.B.I.’s scientific work, saying the genetic link between the attack anthrax and a supply in Dr. Ivins’s lab was “not as conclusive” as the bureau asserted.

If the authors of the new paper are correct about the silicon-tin coating, it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains. That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere or that he was not the perpetrator.

The FBI hasn't covered itself in glory,

Their behavior towards their first "person of interest", Steven Hatfill, as well as their behavior toward Bruce Ivins, seemed to be geared more toward driving their subjects to self destruction than to any finding of fact. (They went after Ivins' counselor, for example).

The bottom line here is that there is a lot of highly classified information that was not subject to review for this article, and a continued insistence on the part of the DoJ merely serves to reinforce the people who believe that the FBI did not find the right guy.

I Said that the Ivins AnthraxEvidence was Tenuous………

Lawyers at the Department of Justice have concluded that, notwithstanding the FBI's claims to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence that accused anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins had any access to equipment that would have had to be used to weapoonize the disease:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago.

………

Now, however, Justice Department lawyers have acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab — the so-called hot suite — didn't contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

The government said it continued to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court didn't explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that his secure lab "did not have the specialized equipment . . . that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."

The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never provided direct evidence that he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.

Earlier this year, a report by the National Academy of Sciences questioned the genetic analysis that had linked a flask of anthrax stored in Ivins' office to the anthrax in the letters.

I've always felt that the FBI was more interested in finding some guy than they were interested in finding the guy, and from that perspective.

In fact I think that Ivins' suicide was an implicit goal of their tactics, which appears to have been a desired outcome for the FBI (they went out of their way to, for example, alienate and terrify his therapist), because dead men don't defend themselves.

It makes it easier to close the case.

Background here.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along…

The National Academy of Sciences has reviewed the FBI's forensic claims regarding Bruce Ivins and the Anthrax mailing investigation, and has politely called bullsh%$ on this:

The National Academy of Sciences is just out with a 190-page review [1] of the forensic science behind the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. The takeaway: Some of the evidence cited to identify Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins as the perpetrator isn't as conclusive as the FBI has claimed.

In particular, the panel of experts said it "did not definitively demonstrate" that the source of the anthrax was spores taken from a flask controlled by Ivins, a microbiologist who did vaccine research at the U.S. Army Institute for Medical Research of Infection Diseases in Maryland. Nor did scientific data generated for the FBI "rule out other sources" for the anthrax, the panel's report says.

Considering the record on the investigation, the you can review their tactics to the prior "person of interest" in this situation (Stephen Hatfill, who was exonerated and received a cash settlement) and be rather surprised that he didn't top himself as well.

Anthrax Terrorism Case Officially Closed

So, the FBI says that it's case closed.

I've been following this for some time, and as I have noted before, I'm not certain of this.

Anthrax Update

First, we have an editorial in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific publication in world, suggesting that the data provided this far by the FBI has been incomplete and not properly reviewed. They strongly suggest that the FBI is using selective information releases to make their case, and I agree.

Meanwhile, this breathless article detailing the efforts to identify the sample genetically seems to be exactly what the editors of Nature are objecting to.

I again would note that none of the information provided by the FBI has shown how the samples might have been weaponized, a capability that was not present at Bruce Ivin's lab.

Questions Grow on Anthrax Case

Details here, and here

Additionally, the FBI will be releasing more evidence to buttress their claims.

Personally, I'm not as concerned about the timeline to mail the letter from New Jersey as the complete lack of evidence of weaponization equipment or experience.

It's clear that he could lyophilize (freeze dry) his anthrax, but then it would have to be milled in some manner to a very small particle size, and then coated with a substance that gives it a static charge so that it would aerosolize well, and this was not something done at the lab.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot????

It appears that there was no autopsy of Bruce Ivins following his death?

You have the unexpected death of a suspect in what is probably the crime of the decade, and the coroner decides, "They say that it is suicide, that is enough for me."

WTF are they thinking?

I agree with revere, "If, in fact, no autopsy was done on Ivins, the whole thing doesn't just smell bad. It reeks"

Department of Homeland Security: Waste, Inefficiency, Fraud, Business as Usual

DHS just chose Flora, MS, which was 14th out of 17th on an independent evaluation, as one of the 5 finalists for a DHS biodefense lab.

DHS Undersecretary Jay Cohen, a political appointee, made the final cut to 5.

Anthrax Case: ChristoFascist Connection

Well, it appears that the timeline given by the FBI for the Anthrax mailings is more an alibi than it is evidence of guilt, at least according to Glenn Greenwald:

The fastest one can drive from Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey is 3 hours, which would mean that Ivins would have had to have dropped the anthrax letters in the New Jersey mailbox on September 17 by 1 p.m. or -- at the latest -- 2 p.m. in order to be able to attend a 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. meeting back at Ft. Detrick. But had he dropped the letters in the mailbox before 5:00 p.m. on September 17, the letters would have borne a September 17 postmark, rather than the September 18 postmark they bore (letters picked up from that Princeton mailbox before 5 p.m. bear the postmark from that day; letters picked up after 5 p.m. bear the postmark of the next day). That's why the Search Warrant Affidavit (.pdf) released by the FBI on Friday said this (page 8):


If the Post's reporting about Ivins' September 17 activities is accurate -- that he "return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m." -- then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, "a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime," since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 -- not a September 18 -- postmark. Just compare the FBI's own definition of "window of opportunity" to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.

(emphasis author's)

Honestly, if the FBI thought that it could have convicted, it would have arrested him instead of harassing him in shopping malls.

A Baltimore Sun columnist expresses similar doubts, but throws in an interesting bit of information:

Another stretch comes with the attempt to explain the return address on the anthrax mailings, '4th GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL.' Apparently, agents discovered that Ivins and his wife donated money in 1993 to the American Family Association one month after an article ran in the group's journal about a lawsuit AFA had filed related to an incident involving a fourth-grade student at Greendale Baptist Academy.

Interesting, I suppose, but no more so than the link that investigators had made between 'Greendale' and their previous anthrax suspect, Hatfill: there is a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe, near where Hatfill once lived, that is known as - you guessed it - Greendale.

(emphasis mine)

Obviously, the fact that Ivins and his wife were supporters of the extremist Christofascist organization makes me more receptive to the idea that he might be involved, but the FBI has still not shown means. The anthrax was weaponized in a very sophisticated way, and they have still not shown how he could take the pathogen past the instant coffee level, which would not aerosolize properly to infect lungs.

The FBI is under a lot of pressure to close the case, but I do not yet see the case closed.

Anthrax Update

My position remains the same as always, that until I see evidence of how Bruce Ivins might have been able to acquire the equipment, which was not at Fort Detrick, and know how, which was not at Fort Detrick, to weaponize the anthrax, I am dubious of the FBI's case.

Had the case really been strong enough to go to court, they would have arrested him, instead of harassing him.

Meryl Nass, M.D., who has more background in this area than I do, runs down her concerns with the case, and notes that over 100 people had access to the flask.

Additionally, experts in the field are requesting a peer review of the FBI's genetic test, which, considering the record of problems at the FBI crime lab, is not at all unreasonable.

Finally, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) are calling for an investigation of the investigation, which would be a good thing.

So, How Did He Weaponize the Spores

Well, looking this description of the document dump made by the FBI, the most important question has not been answered: how did he weaponize the spores.

Drying the spores with the lyophilizer is certainly possible, but this stuff was weaponized in a sophisticated way. It was reduced to tiny particles with a coating to prevent them from clumping, and it also gave them a static charge to help create an aerosol.

This is a non trivial operation, and the equipment, and expertise, was simply not available at Fort Detrick.

If he was acting alone, then we do not have the means made public yet.

I'm about 51% on this guy being the mailer, but more information needs to be released.

FBI Used Abusive Tactics That Might Have Caused Ivin's Death

Just lovely. It appears that he was in counseling, and was briefly hospitalized, as a direct result of abusive FBI tactics, which included pressuring his children to turn on him, telling his son that he could get the $2.5 million dollar reward and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome pictures of the Anthrax victims, and told her, "Your father did this."

The FBI has noted his access to a lyophilyser, a freeze drying maching that, "could be used to dry wet anthrax into powder," but would not have produced weaponized anthrax.

The output would resemble instant coffee, which would require extensive processing to become inhalable. I used to do routing maintenance on an lyophilyser in an medical lab (1982-3), and I am aware of its capabilities.

A number of his co-workers believe that the FBI singled him out because of history of alcohol problems and other problems, so they figured that they could break him.