Can you still remember on the anthrax attacks after the attacks on the
World Trade Center?
NY Times – Aug. 1, 2008 – Man suspected in anthrax attacks said to commit suicide
By Mitchell L. Blumenthal
- Aug. 1, 2008
The seven-year investigation into the anthrax attacks that traumatized and baffled the nation just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks has taken a stunning new turn with the apparent suicide of a scientist who was the prime suspect in the case.
With investigators close to filing charges against him, the scientist — Bruce Ivins, 62 — apparently took his own life with a prescription painkiller, Tylenol mixed with codeine. He died Tuesday at a hospital in Frederick, Maryland, about an hour’s drive north of Washington.
Ivins, who was a biodefense researcher at Fort Detrick, had been told of the investigation into the anthrax incidents, said his lawyer, Paul Kemp of Rockville, Maryland, who issued a statement insisting that his client was innocent.
„For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him,“ Kemp said. „The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins‘ case, it led to his untimely death.“
Ivins, who the Associated Press said had received three degrees, including a doctorate from the University of Cincinnati, appeared to have been a brilliant but deeply troubled man, according to a portrait emerging from legal documents and the recollections of friends and acquaintances.
He was a church-going family man, and a dozen of his fellow parishioners gathered Friday morning to pray for him at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, where the Rev. Richard Murphy recalled him as „a quiet man … always very helpful and pleasant,“ the AP said.
But he was clearly in great mental anguish in recent weeks. Maryland court documents show he had been under psychiatric treatment and had been served with a restraining order directing him to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening. And a lab colleague told the AP he was recently removed from his workplace by the police because of fears that he had become a danger to himself or others.
One of his scientific specialties was working on a vaccine that would be effective against anthrax infection, even in difficult cases in which different strains of anthrax were mixed. In a scientific journal last month, Ivins wrote of the limited supply of monkeys available for testing the vaccine, and how, in any event, testing on animals would not necessarily indicate how humans would react.
The death of Ivins, who grew up in Ohio, is the most dramatic development in the case of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people and made 17 others ill in the fall of 2001 when they were exposed to anthrax spores sent through the mails. Letters containing anthrax powder was also sent to lawmakers‘ offices on Capitol Hill, causing great alarm in the capital when it was still jittery from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Letters were also found containing a similar-looking powder but no anthrax.
Little more than a month ago, the Justice Department agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit by another biodefense researcher at the same facility, Steven Hatfill. The settlement ended a five-year legal battle over Hatfill’s allegations that investigators violated his privacy by leaking information on the investigation to journalists.
At the time, the Department of Justice emphatically denied any liability in connection with Hatfill’s claims, despite agreeing to settle with him, and it was far from clear whether the suicide of Ivins might bring an end to the anthrax case — or point the way to further developments.Justice Department officials have not decided whether to close the investigation.Federal officials were caught off guard by Ivins’s death, and were limited in what they could say by grand jury secrecy rules. „All of that stuff is sealed — we have nothing we can talk about,“ an official said, adding that federal officials also needed to brief the victims‘ families before making any public statements.
Ivins, who was married and the father of two, died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital, according to an obituary published Friday in The Frederick News-Post, which said that he is survived by his wife of 33 years, Diane, and by a son and a daughter.
The obituary said Ivins had worked at Fort Detrick for 36 years, was a member of the American Red Cross, and was a parishioner at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, „where he was as a musician for many years for church services.“
The Los Angeles Times first reported the investigation of Ivins and the apparent connection to his death on Friday. But it was clear from the comments of Ivins’s lawyer and officials close to the case that the researcher had been under suspicion for many months.
The White House said President George W. Bush had been informed that a major new chapter in the case was about to unfold. Thomas Ivins Jr., Bruce Ivins‘ brother, said that another brother, Charles Ivins, called him earlier this week and said that Bruce had died of the overdose, and that the death was believed to be a suicide.
Thomas Ivins, who at 73 is the eldest of the three brothers, said in an interview Friday morning from his home in Middletown, Ohio, that FBI agents had contacted him about 18 months ago to ask about Bruce. He said he had been estranged from his youngest brother and had not spoken to him in 20 years, so he could tell the agents little about him or his work. „I gave them family background and history,“ he said.
He said his father, T. Randall Ivins, ran a pharmacy in Lebanon, Ohio, where the brothers grew up.
A relative who answered the phone at Charles Ivins‘ house said he was unable to talk because he was recovering from open-heart surgery following a recent heart attack. „It’s a very difficult time,“ said the relative, who declined to give her name.
The laboratory at Fort Detrick, officially known as the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, has been at the center of the FBI and in fact Ivins had assisted in analyzing samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks.
„We are not at this time making any official statements or comments regarding this situation,“ Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I’s Washington field office, which is investigating the anthrax attacks, told The Associated Press on Friday. The AP reported that prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty in the case.
The 2001 anthrax mailings were baffling in several ways, not least because the victims — whetherthey were chosen or were struck at random — seemed to have nothing in common. The dead included an editor at a tabloid newspaper based in Florida, a woman in New York City, another woman in Connecticut, and two postal workers at a huge mail-sorting building in Washington, D.C.
Targets of the mailings included Tom Brokaw of NBC and two Democratic senators: Tom Daschle of South Dakota, then his party’s Senate leader, and Patrick Leahy, a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee but arguably not an instantly recognizable figure outside Washington and his home state.
The letters were traced to a post office near Trenton, New Jersey, and had return addresses that, while fictional, suggested some knowledge of local geography.
NY-Times – Feb. 10, 2009– U.S. Army suspends germ research at Maryland lab
By Scott Shane
- Feb. 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Army officials have suspended most research involving dangerous germs at the biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, which the FBI has linked to the anthrax attacks of 2001, after discovering that some pathogens stored there were not listed in a laboratory database.
The suspension, which began Friday and could last three months, is intended to allow a complete inventory of hazardous bacteria, viruses and toxins stored in refrigerators, freezers and cabinets in the facility, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
The inventory was ordered by the institute’s commander, Colonel John P. Skvorak, after officials found that the database of specimens was incomplete. In a memorandum to employees last week, Skvorak said there was a high probability that some germs and toxins in storage were not in the database.
Rules for keeping track of pathogens were tightened after the 2001 anthrax letters, which killed five people. But pressure to improve recordkeeping and security at the Army institute intensified six months ago after the suicide of Bruce Ivins, a veteran anthrax researcher, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s announcement that prosecutors had been preparing to charge Ivins with making the deadly anthrax powder in his laboratory there.
A spokesman for the institute, Caree Vander Linden, said an earlier review had located all the germ samples listed in the database. But she said some „historical samples“ in institute freezers were not in the database, and the new inventory was intended to identify them so they could be recorded and preserved, or destroyed if they no longer had scientific value.
One scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said samples from completed projects were not always destroyed, and departing scientists sometimes left behind vials whose contents were unknown to colleagues. He said the Army’s recordkeeping and security were imperfect but better than procedures at most universities, where research on biological pathogens has expanded rapidly since 2001.
The suspension will interrupt dozens of research projects at the institute, whose task is to develop vaccines, drugs and other measures to protect American troops from germ attacks and disease outbreaks. Vander Linden said some critical experiments involving animals — often used to test vaccines and drugs — would not be halted.
News of the suspension, first reported Monday by the Science magazine blog ScienceInsider, comes as the Justice Department has been interviewing scientists at the Army institute to prepare the government’s legal defense against a lawsuit filed by the family of Robert Stevens, the Florida tabloid photography editor who was the first to die in the 2001 letter attacks.
That lawsuit, filed in 2003 and delayed by the government’s unsuccessful efforts to have it dismissed, accuses officials of failing to assure that anthrax bacteria at Fort Detrick and other government laboratories were securely stored. Ivins was not suspected in the attacks at that time, but the FBI’s conclusion last year added new weight to the lawsuit’s claims.
The FBI has released evidence of Ivins’s mental problems and of a genetic link between the mailed anthrax and a supply of the bacteria in his laboratory. But many of Ivins’s former colleagues at the Army institute have said they are not convinced that he mailed the letters.
The FBI has asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene a panel of experts to review its scientific work on the case, and the bureau and academy are completing a contract for the review, said an academy spokesman, William Kearney.
The anthrax case has underscored the threat of biological attack by biodefense insiders like Ivins, who have access to pathogens and the expertise to work with them.
The number of such researchers has grown rapidly since 2001, when the anthrax letters set off a spending boom on biodefense that led to a rapid addition of laboratories working on potential bioweapons, notably anthrax.
Before 2001, only a few dozen such facilities worked with anthrax. Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has registered 219 laboratories to do so, said an agency spokesman, Von Roebuck. He said 10,474 people had been cleared to work with dangerous pathogens and toxins nationwide after background checks by the Justice Department.
FBI Amerithrax conclusion
2007, after several years of scientific developments and advanced genetic testing coordinated by the FBI Laboratory, the Task Force determined that the spores in the letters were derived from a single spore-batch of Ames strain anthrax called “RMR-1029.” RMR-1029 had been created and maintained by Dr. Bruce E. Ivins at USAMRIID. This was a groundbreaking development in the investigation. It allowed the investigators to reduce drastically the number of possible suspects, because only a very limited number of individuals had ever had access to this specific spore preparation that was housed at USAMRIID. The Task Force then began applying traditional law enforcement techniques to a very limited universe.
https://vault.fbi.gov/Amerithrax/Amerithrax%20Part%2001%20of%2059/at_download/file
FDA – Bayer Corporation Letter for Approval for CIPRO
Klicke, um auf 19-537S038_Cipro_pharmr.pdf zuzugreifenhttps://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2000/19-537S038_Cipro_pharmr.pdf
Klicke, um auf 19-537S038_Cipro_corres.pdf zuzugreifenhttps://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2000/19-537S038_Cipro_corres.pdf
Cipro (Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride) Tablets, IV Solution, IV in 5% Dextrose, IV in 0.9% Saline, and Oral Suspension
Company: Bayer Corporation
Application No.: 19-537/S38, 19-847/S24, 19-857/S27, 19-858/S21, & 20-780/S8
Approval Date: 8/30/2000
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2000/19-537S038_Cipro.cfm
• Approval Letter(s) (PDF)
• Printed Labeling (PDF)
• Medical Review(s) (PDF)
• Pharmacology Review(s) (PDF)
• Statistical Review(s) (PDF)
• Microbiology Review(s) (PDF)
• Clinical Pharmacology Biopharmaceutics Review(s) (PDF)
• Administrative Document(s) (PDF)
• Correspondence (PDF)
Operation Whitecoat
Operation Whitecoat was a biodefense medical research program carried out by the United States Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland between 1954 and 1973. The program pursued medical research using volunteer enlisted personnel who were eventually nicknamed „Whitecoats“. These volunteers, all conscientious objectors, including many members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, were informed of the purpose and goals of each project before providing consent to participate in any project. The stated purpose of the research was to defend troops and civilians against biological weapons. A Consent Statement (1955) for one of the Operation Whitecoat experiments at Fort Detrick
Although the program was discontinued in 1973, human use research for biodefense purposes is still conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick and at other government and civilian research institutes. However, these post-Whitecoat studies are often human use challenge studies, in which a person is inoculated with a known pathogen to determine how effective an investigational treatment will be.
Results
Many of the vaccines that protect against biowarfare agents were first tested on humans in Operation Whitecoat.[4]
According to USAMRIID, the Whitecoat operation contributed to vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for yellow fever and hepatitis, and investigational drugs for Q fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, and tularemia. USAMRIID also states that Operation Whitecoat helped develop biological safety equipment, including hooded safety cabinets, decontamination procedures, fermentors, incubators, centrifuges, and particle sizers.[5]
Discontinuation
Operation Whitecoat came to an end in 1973 when the draft for the U.S. military ended and thus no more conscientious objectors were to be conscripted.
Using anthrax as a weapon
Source: BBC News, October 17, 2001.
By Nick Caistor, BBC News Online
Military interest in the use of anthrax as a weapon began in the First World War. The Germans used it to contaminate animal feed and livestock but, unlike chemical gases, it was not employed directly against enemy troops.
The first mass use of anthrax spores as a weapon is said to have taken place during the Japanese occupation of China from 1932 to 1945.
The Japanese allegedly experimented with the use of anthrax and other biological weapons in Manchuria, and some 10,000 deliberately infected prisoners are thought to have died as a result.
Second World War
In the Second World War, the Germans did not launch the much-feared biological attack, although they and the Allied forces experimented with the possibilities of using anthrax or other agents.
The UK military tested spore delivery systems of anthrax on the tiny island of Gruinard off the Scottish coast.
These spores persisted and remained theoretically capable of infection for decades afterwards.
A massive decontamination effort, started in 1979 and completed in 1987, used 280 tonnes of formaldehyde and 2,000 tonnes of seawater to clean up the island.
Virulent strain
After the Second World War, the US continued its biological weapon research into the 1950s, when Iowa State University produced the virulent „Ames strain“ of anthrax which was later sold to many parts of the world.
In 1970, President Nixon ordered an end to the production of biological weapons in the United States, since when research there has been confined to developing means of defence against any biological attack.
In 1972, international concern led to a treaty banning the production and stockpiling of biological weapons. This was eventually signed by some 140 nations.
Although it was one of the treaty signatories, the Soviet Union continued researching and producing biological weapons – and in April 1979 an accidental release of anthrax spores from a military facility near Sverdlovsk caused 68 known deaths.
Gulf War
But the greatest fears that anthrax might be used as a weapon came during the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq purchased anthrax spores from the United States in the 1980s, and was thought to be developing the capability to use them in warheads and in aerial attacks.
In the event, no biological weapons were used.
After the war, the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) destroyed the remaining production and stockpiling facilities for biological warfare in Iraq. „By 1998, we were able to establish that Iraq had no capability of producing biological weapons,“ a former UN inspector, Scott Ritter, told the BBC.
Anthrax powder
In the 1990s, the one publicised case of the use of anthrax for terrorist aims was by the Aum Shinrikyo group in Japan.
They are said to have tried unsuccessfully to release anthrax in Tokyo several times, leading them to change to sarin gas, with fatal results.
Producing large amounts of anthrax in powder form – necessary for its use as an effective large-scale weapon – is a complicated and expensive process.
It requires the use of large centrifuges for repeated washings, and then intensive drying to produce the concentrated or „military-grade“ powder.
The cost of this technology has led some experts in the United States to argue that the instigators of the present campaign must be a country, with previous experience, stocks and the necessary biotechnological expertise.
Scott Ritter also sees this as a real possibility.
„Terrorists do not have the facilities to weaponise anthrax, so if you have military grade anthrax being used, this would be the first solid evidence of state sponsorship,“ he said.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210617030204/https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxasweapon.html
Defense Department Anthrax Shipments
JULY 28, 2015
Officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Government Accountability Office (GAO), and Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services testified about live anthrax specimens that were accidentally transferred to several laboratories in the U.S. and abroad. Lawmakers called for accountability and increased oversight of the Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP), which oversees the possession, use and transfer of biological select agents and toxins
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327361-1/defense-department-anthrax-shipments
And at least for to day
a documentary about
The Anthrax War
Anthrax War is a 2009 documentary film about the 2001 anthrax attacks and the rise of today’s biomilitary industrial complex that was co-produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Arte-France. Broadcast internationally, it was nominated for the 2009 Prix Europa for Outstanding Current Affairs Broadcast. It also screened at the Frontline Club in London, the IDFA Festival in Amsterdam, the Tri-Continental Film Fest in Johannesburg, and the 9/11 Film Festival in Oakland, California, among other venues.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149590/
JULIMINATION 
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