Anthrax Whodunit/ Frederick News Post

Barry Kissin's Opinion piece at the Frederick News-Post

Back on Aug. 29, 2008, The FNP published a column by Katherine Heerbrandt titled "If not Ivins ..." Heerbrandt began with the viewpoint of Norm Covert, a well-known former Fort Detrick public affairs officer: "The anthrax in the mailings, he says, was 'highly bred, weapons-grade ... with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that each particle repelled the other ... each particle no more than five microns.' Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax ..."

Heerbrandt continued: "Since Nixon terminated the offensive weapons program at Detrick in 1969, there has been only one corporation in our country that operates laboratories where anthrax is weaponized: Battelle Memorial Laboratories, the corporation that does the bio-lab work for the [intelligence agencies] ...
"How do Americans even begin to confront the reality that the only bio-attack in our history came from an American military/intelligence lab?"
On Oct. 10, The New York Times ran a front-page story that contained the following statement: "If Dr. Ivins did not make the powder, one conceivable source might be classified government research on anthrax, carried out for years by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency." Looks like The New York Times is catching up to The Frederick News-Post.
An unavoidably critical piece of evidence has come to light. Scientists have discovered in among the 9,600 pages of documents provided by the FBI to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 a chart revealing substantial levels of silicon and tin in the attack anthrax as measured in an FBI lab. These levels establish the presence in the attack anthrax of a very advanced weaponizing technology.
The best-selling book "Germs," published in 2002, exposed the existence of up-until-then secret anthrax weaponization projects being managed and operated by Battelle for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The very advanced technology that went into the attack anthrax must have been developed in one of those projects.
But specifically whodunit? Mainstream authorities are realizing what Heerbrandt wrote about three years ago. Alice P. Gast, president of Lehigh University and the chairwoman of the National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the FBI's science in Amerithrax, was cited by The New York Times thusly: "Dr. Gast, the head of the NAS panel, noted that her group strongly recommended that future investigations of the attacks examine the government's classified work on anthrax."
Future investigations? According to a recent McClatchy Newspapers report, senior Republican Sen. Charles Grassley who has "been skeptical of the case against [Ivins] said adamant opposition from the FBI and Justice Department is likely to block further inquiry into the case."
The FBI and Justice Department have been caught not only peddling a bogus case against Ivins, but also covering up evidence of the anthrax letters' connections to "the government's classified work on anthrax." And all it's going to take to block further inquiry is their "adamant opposition"?
Grassley, certainly no rabble-rouser, also just said, "it would take a powerful grass-roots movement ... to reopen the ... investigation." Frederick is the most natural site for the birth of such a movement.

barrykissin@gmail.com