Bruce Ivins, mad scientist

This actually points to the danger of developing weapons like this. You worry about their slipping into the wrong hands. But what if the wrong hands made them in the first place?

A couple of (somewhat dated) articles re. biological weapons:

cryptome.org/bioweap.htm

cryptome.org/smallpox-wmd.htm

It seems clear from the article that this poor man should never have been allowed to do the job he did. I don't want to discriminate against those suffering from mental problems, but someone who apparently had deep-seated, long term difficulties just shouldn't, out of charity, be exposed to the stress of such a demanding job.

Whether or not he's actually guilty (which seems likely); he was certainly driven to suicide.

A friend of a friend was in weapons research. I found this a bit unnerving, but the sense I got is that many who go into it are just uber-patriotic and maybe a tad mercenary. (As in they want money and don't really sweat the details of how) That doesn't sound like the kind of person I'd get on well with, but it's not like a total psycho.

This guy however... I don't know why they didn't restrict him earlier. In the past they'd restrict researchers who were homosexual or proned to mouth off or all kinds of things. Maybe he was just really good at hiding it and did not publicly give much sense of his madness.

From a post on Jerry Pournelle's website:

It's interesting to me that something none of these anonymous leakers seem to've considered is that were all their claims true, it would mean that a sociopathic, homicidal maniac with access to weapons of mass destruction (bioweapons) had been employed, undetected, for 20+ years by the U.S. government; and furthermore that the most deadly bioweapon attack in U.S. history was conceived, executed, and covered up by said employee of the U.S. government, making use of U.S. government resources in order to perpetrate his evil designs. In my mind, this curious lack of affect, much less the failure to spin this situation in such a way as to splash blame on some combination of bureaucratic enemies, rings false.

I don't know about the last sentence - I'm agnostic on this case, since I haven't followed it in detail - but the rest is disturbing to consider.

I once considered going into weapons research. That I didn't was the result of factors besides morality; I had no qualms about building bigger & better ways to kill people & break things, so long as it was for this country.

If you didn't hear the NPR interview of Mr. Ivins' brother you should make a quick listen of it (and you have to listen to get the full effect, the transcript doesn't carry the tone). These brothers definitely had mental/emotional problems.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93250745

The FBI has been unable to provide a sensible explanation for how Ivins' testing for anthrax contamination outside the biosafety suites implicates him, when they found not a spore in his home or car.

Assuming this to be exculpatory evidence is silly. It's only neutral.

If you've ever worked with highly radioactive or highly infectious hazardous substances, the one thing you make absolutely sure of is that the transport step to the target area is well planned and any potential mishap is prepared for.

I can easily see how a 30 year lab worker like Ivins could get anthrax-filled envelopes from a biohazard suite into that mailbox without any such evidence forming in the first place. It just takes decent planning, some trivial lab and household materials, old clothes, maybe rain gear, and (perhaps most importantly) a wet windy night in Princeton. Every biohazard worker knows that being and staying upwind of the agent is 95% of the game. And discarding of materials carefully is the rest.

"I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away."

Bruce Ivins can't say that, can he?

I had a good chuckle yesterday as the anchors on All Things Considered read letters from listeners protesting its reporter on the anthrax beat, who, having obtained the self-deceased Ivins's high-school yearbook, and then having called up an old teacher therein, went on air with the dramatic revelation that Mr. Anthrax had, thirty-four years ago - cue nailbiting Herrmannesque unmasking clip! - played a killer in a high-school play! One listener wrote to say that he had himself once played Sweeney Todd,* and shudders to think what the NPR reporter is destined as a result to have to cover in his future three decades hence...

*Seeing Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in the Broadway original, 1979, was a high-school highlight of mine.

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.

Let's not forget that spilling the weaponized anthrax would have not only killed him

Ivins had vaccinated himself for anthrax.

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.