How crazy was anthrax suspect Dr. Bruce Ivins? Batshit crazy is putting it mildly. From the Times:
But more than a year before the 2001 anthrax attacks, the scientist admitted to himself that he was losing his grasp on reality."Paranoid man works with deadly anthrax!!!" he wrote in one e-mail message in July 2000, predicting what a National Enquirer headline might read if he agreed to participate in a study on his work.
"I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind," he added a month later in another message to a colleague. "It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I am being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence."
He continued, "I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away."
I think Ivins, who killed himself as the FBI was closing in, did it. Thinking back on it, it's scary how close I and many of my colleagues at the New York Post came to being infected by Ivins' poison letters. Three Post employees did contract it, including my friends and close co-workers Johanna Huden and Mark Cunningham. Johanna, who was the editorial department secretary at the time, kept a pile of letters to the editor on her desk. The anthrax-filled one sat in the stack over which I would lean when I came over to talk to her. That letter sat about 12 inches under my nose, which is why when I came down with what turned out to be a mild respiratory infection right after Johanna was diagnosed with anthrax, my doctor put me on Cipro. Scary times.
I hope it's all over. I think it's all over.
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So the theory is that he prepared a bunch of anthrax, carried it out, got a little of it on completely unrelated part of the lab, and then managed to perfectly carry it the rest of the way? And then was dumb enough to clean that part of the lab in plain sight? Meanwhile not getting any of it in his car, which would have been impossible to clean without replacing the carpet and seats? What did he do, sterilize the container after it contaminated the lab but before he got in his car?
That's very easy to explain if you've ever done e.g. liquid radioactive work. Not to get into too much detail, but it involves simply sealing really nasty substances into polyvinyl plastic bags/pouches with an electric heat sealer in a filtered hood setup. Safety is achieved by multiplying the layers. Bleach off the bag in which you've sealed the nasty-containing envelope, then seal that bag into yet another, and repeat the bleaching and sealing for a third. Bleach that off, change latex gloves along the way at the right times, and you have a safe and externally sterile package, containing e.g. anthrax behind three layers of sterilized PVC and the letter paper. Not a spore free to be found until you open the PVC.
HTH you and your buddies in your next adventure in mailed goodies for your enemies. And do trust when the professionals say that not finding spilled material is not a problem to the case. Btw, the first mail carrier and various other people who handled the letter(s) didn't get infected, so the letters were probably themselves sealed off very well until they got into the mail sorting machine.
Meanwhile, the FBI can't actually demonstrate he was anywhere near those mailboxes either day. They have no case except to point out 'suspicious' behavior.
He lived what, 3-4 hours away from Princeton by car? And his m.o. probably would have required nighttime in any case. Seems like he had plenty of time to do it on any workday night to me.
Jillian: "That's very easy to explain...liquid radioactive work. Not to get into too much detail...polyvinyl plastic bags/pouches with an electric heat sealer in a filtered hood setup...Bleach off the bag...seal that bag into yet another...repeat the bleaching and sealing for a third. Bleach that off, change latex gloves...you have a safe and externally sterile package, containing e.g. anthrax behind three layers of sterilized PVC...Not a spore free..."
Scientist, "She Blinded Me With Science", Thomas Dolby:
"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!"
To heck with The A-Team, MacGyver, Mission Impossible and The Wild, Wild West: I'ma gonna make a beeline through the swinging doors of The Last-Chance Crunchy-Con Saloon, so's I can eavesdrop on Special Agent Jillian's table-talk in between numbers by the dancing girls...
Let's not forget that spilling the weaponized anthrax would have not only killed him
Ivins had vaccinated himself for anthrax.
Be funny if I'm not the only one in these precincts who, thanks to this story, is having major Simon Bar Sinister flashbacks:
fillio.com/blog/nd/files/SimonBarSinister.gif
Not to get into too much detail, but it involves simply sealing really nasty substances into polyvinyl plastic bags/pouches with an electric heat sealer in a filtered hood setup. Safety is achieved by multiplying the layers. Bleach off the bag in which you've sealed the nasty-containing envelope, then seal that bag into yet another, and repeat the bleaching and sealing for a third. Bleach that off, change latex gloves along the way at the right times, and you have a safe and externally sterile package, containing e.g. anthrax behind three layers of sterilized PVC and the letter paper. Not a spore free to be found until you open the PVC.
And, of course, that would be commonly done by...carrying the radioactive material into an uncontained area of the lab, and letting it get on the floor, and then sealing it up?
Maybe not.
I'm not saying that not getting it in his car proves he didn't do it, I'm saying not getting it in his car proves that the anthrax he cleaned didn't have anything to do with any possible removal from the lab if he was the one that removed it.
I.e., their big 'circumstantial evidence' that is 'totally inexplicably' if he wasn't committing some wrongdoing, is in fact totally inexplicable if part of the process of theft.
Ivins had vaccinated himself for anthrax.
And I bet you hear that from the FBI's leaks. Well, that's yet another 'let's slant information' leak. The anthrax researchers were all, or at least almost all, vaccinated for anthrax.
However, the anthrax leak he supposedly cleaned up was not in a contained area of the lab, and hence other workers would be near it, who hadn't been vaccinated.
You're right, I was wrong, he he would have been okay.
But it doesn't change the point that clearly wasn't weaponized anthrax, or a bunch of random people would be killed...which meant he'd have had to take it back into the lab, weaponize it, and take it out again...which makes no sense at all and makes it pretty clear this 'suspicious behavior' can't even slightly imply guilt.
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