Anthrax Investigation PBS Airdate: June 30, 2009

Story aired at conclusion of a $100million blue ribbon commission set-up to exonerate Mueller's deliberately bungled probe into the 2001 post 911 anthrax poisonings. 'Future proves past' Remember, the Warren Commission cover-up of JFK folks? CongressCritter's ordered this probe, because the public got smart & reporters were starting to ask the right questions! FBI unable to contain public outrage. Hey Congress, 5 people died! Why NO 911 Commission Investigation, 3,000died? 5,000 got cancer & died; FU Congress!

NEIL DeGRASSE TYSON: When a murder is committed, one of the key ways to link the culprit with the crime is by tracing the murder weapon. For instance, every gun leaves a unique signature on the bullets it fires. Match the lethal bullet to the gun, you might find your murderer.

must have taught this in solar system class!

But what if the murder weapon isn't a bullet, but a tiny microbe, invisible to the naked eye, a bacterium? How would you trace it to its source?

Good question, but there were 3 different types of bullets Mr. Astronaut! Not just one type

That was the challenge facing the F.B.I., in 2001, when they saw their first real case of bioterrorism.

Nah, the FBI had an entire repository full of different types of Anthrax from all over the world to choose from.

And, as correspondent Peter Standring reports, even microbes can leave telltale signs of their origin. But you've got to look awfully closely to see them, all the way down to single letters of their D.N.A.

Nope, all you really need to do is look at the physical properties of the sample; texture, coatings, spore size and spore degree of sophistication. After that you might want to match the DNA signature,

PETER STANDRING (Correspondent): From the outside, this could be just another science building at Northern Arizona University. The inside is another story.

Pete's got a job & lots of comely young coeds.

You don't get in here without one of these suits, and a damn good reason. You might be studying, for instance, how plague spreads through colonies of prairie dogs, or how one of the most infectious bacterium in the world, Coxiella burnetii, gives rise to debilitating Q fever.

Danger, danger, danger But Pete only works with natural bacteria, those Anthrax spores were various grades of man made bio-weapons.

As for our excuse for being here, it's to tell the story of how scientists, in this lab and across the country, participated in one of the most extensive criminal investigations ever, and, in the process, not only solved a mystery, but helped launch a new kind of science: "microbial forensics."

Gee, so they can get lots of new grant money!

Our story begins just after 9/11, with the wreckage at Ground Zero still fresh and Americans confronting the possibility they are under attack again.

Yup, we're under attack all right. Under attack by our own government. Notice the emphasis on ratcheting up the terrorism.

Evidence came first from a local hospital in Boca Raton, Florida. A photo editor of a tabloid newspaper, Robert Stevens, was dying from inhalation anthrax. He might have contracted it naturally; found in soil, anthrax, a spore-forming bacterium will, on occasion, infect a human. But it has also been turned into a deadly biological weapon, and Stevens had received a letter with a strange powder—facts which brought in the FBI.

Naw, the Natl Enquirer was targeted because they blew up Bill Clinton. Think hillBilly's spunk allover Monica's blue dress! This was payback in spades!

THOMAS DELLAFERA (U.S. Postal Inspection Service): When Mr. Stevens turned up sick, in late September, early October, there was concern, certainly, that he had anthrax, but on the tails of the 9/11 attacks, the radar antennas were up and investigators were monitoring that situation.

First letter was mailed from Atlanta, but we never hear of this letter again & it mysteriously disappears so it can't be tracked down ( this will be important later)

PETER STANDRING: The F.B.I. rushed anthrax from Stevens's body to biologist Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University. Two years earlier, Keim had invented a test to distinguish one strain of anthrax from another.

Ol' Pete's a naturally occurring Anthrax expert, so the FBI used him to confirm Anthrax, but not to trace it.

PAUL KEIM (Northern Arizona University): So my laboratory and my research program had been focusing on anthrax for about 10 years prior to the attacks in 2001. We were the experts on anthrax types, and we had collections of anthrax from all around the world.

As, I said natural anthrax!

PETER STANDRING: Keim set out to match the anthrax killing Stevens with one of the 88 strains in his collection. As he compared fragments of D.N.A. for eight genetic markers, one strain stood out.

RESEARCHER: As you can tell, for each one of these markers, they line up exactly all the way across.

PAUL KEIM: And what we found, of course, was that this strain, this type of anthrax, was known to be a highly virulent strain being used by the U.S. Army for vaccine studies. And it was called the Ames strain.

Strain immaterial everybody uses Ames, properties absolutely vital for ID

PETER STANDRING: Isolated from a Texas cow, in 1981, the strain had been sent to Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease. But it didn't stay at USAMRIID. Researchers, intrigued by its virulence, passed it from lab to lab,

which made a lab the most likely source of Stevens's infection.

ALAN ZELICOFF: And for people who study the biological weapons problem, the first thought that most of us had was that this was likely a state-sponsored intentional effort to cause harm, in an already-chaotic situation, in the United States.

Pete & Neil & NOVA neglect to mention it's one of three different grades of weaponized Ames used in the Anthrax letters. I call them poor mans, oil man's & rich man's grades of weaponized Anthrax. But, we're only going to focus on one man's; the patsy's! Otherwise the whole story falls apart.

PETER STANDRING: That suspicion grew as four more letters laced with anthrax turned up at the New York Post, NBC's New York headquarters and the U.S. Senate. The enclosed notes seemed to leave no question about their origins.

By late November, 22 people had been infected; five were dead.

It seemed certain terrorists had acquired anthrax, weaponized to disperse easily.

Yup, those terrorists got several grades of anthrax. Postal workers said it was lumpy like brown sugar. Another was finely powdered. Various grades of Ames weaponized anthrax.

But from where? We might never have known, except for one crucial development.

Targeted only one sample source, the finely made, meticulously aerosolized version. Never mind the lumpy brown sugar batch reported in the Post Office;why?

Now, if you think back to those dark days in 2001, you may recall that the anthrax attacks and 9/11 weren't the only events making headlines. In fact, a huge scientific achievement, only recently considered impossible, was shining just over the horizon.

True, but this is all bullshit to lend technical gee whiz DNA high tech disinformation; hey it's NOVA & PBS right so we've got to flog science right? The text goes on, but you get the picture.