Why Didn’t FBI Investigate AFIP’s Role in Starting the Iraq-Anthrax Rumors?By: emptywheel
Monday May 23, 2011 1:20 pm
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I’ve been reading the National Academy of Sciences Anthrax Report and noted something odd in follow-up to the McClatchy report of the other day describing unexplained tin and silicon in one of the anthrax samples. (Here’s Jim White’s post on the report.) As McClatchy reported, there’s some weird data about silicon and tin in some of the samples.
The lab data, contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters.
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To arrive at that position, however, the FBI had to discount its own bulk testing results showing that silicon composed an extraordinary 10.8 percent of a sample from a mailing to the New York Post and as much as 1.8 percent of the anthrax from a letter sent to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, far more than the occasional trace contamination. Tin — not usually seen in anthrax powder at all — was measured at 0.65 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, in those letters.
But it turns out that the weirdest data–showing the 10.8 silicon in the NY Post sample–didn’t come from FBI. As NAS explained, that data came from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
Early in the investigation, AFIP performed <scanning electron microscopy-energy-dispersive X-ray> SEM-EDX analysis of a New York Post letter sample and found regions in the sample having high silicon content but no oxygen, suggesting the presence of silicon-rich material that was not related to nanoparticulate silica. While this observation could have led to an explanation for the difference between the bulk and individual spore measurements, follow-up experiments apparently were not performed.
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Much More:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/05/23/why-didnt-fbi-investigate-afips-role-in-starting-the-iraq-anthrax-rumors/:kick: