Despite FBI Anthrax Briefing, Media and Blogging Arguably Egg on "Grassy Knollers"

Yesterday's FBI press briefing on the 2001 "anthrax" letter attacks was intended to rectify a few erroneous pieces of information in press reports and to bolster confidence in the science linking Bruce Ivins to the mailed Bacillus anthracis spores. However, several media outlets (eg, NYT) and Senator Tom Daschle, a target of one of the anthrax letters, continue to express skepticism that the FBI undeniably had its man. Specifically, to highlight the FBI's ineptitude, much is being made of an initial, unusable spore sample that was provided by Ivins to the FBI in 2002 and later destroyed by the agency.*

In an opening statement at the press briefing, Vahid Majidi, PhD, Assistant Director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, clarified that the mailed spores had not been "weaponized" with silicon—contrary to numerous, previous reports. Specifically Joseph Michael, PhD, at the Sandia National Laboratories (who was present at the briefing), concluded that silicon had been naturally incorporated into the spores after examining them with transmission electron microscopy. Majidi also further outlined the genetic investigation that led to the RMR-1029 flask of B. anthracis at USAMRIID (as graphically presented in a recent post).

An initial, preliminary analysis of the letter spores at the CDC revealed a mixture of several phenotypes. This discovery led to the extraction of DNA from these phenotypic variants at Northern Arizona University and full sequencing of the DNA samples at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). Majidi further advised that additional scientific information would be available in peer-reviewed publications and asked the audience to "respect the integrity of this process." He also acknowledged the FBI's inability to quell all suspicions related to the FBI's case against Ivins and added, "There's always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll," wrote the NYT.

Other panel scientists at the briefing included FBI Laboratory Director Chris Hassell, PhD; Paul Keim, PhD (Northern Arizona University); James Burans, PhD (National BioForensic Analysis Center); Rita Colwell, PhD (University of Maryland; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), Claire Fraser-Liggett, PhD (University of Maryland); and Jacques Ravel, PhD (University of Maryland).

Meanwhile, Slate blogger Glenn Greenwald—evidently forsaking all other evidence—believes the FBI's case against Ivins is completely undermined by the agency's inability to pinpoint exactly when Ivins drove from USAMRIID in Fort Detrick, Maryland, to Princeton, NJ (160 miles), on 2 occasions to mail the anthrax letters postmarked 9/18 and 10/9 of 2001.

* However, Paul Keim's lab at Northern Arizona University reportedly kept a sample of these spores for later analysis.

Additional source: ScienceNOW Daily News.

Scanning electron micrograph of spores of Ames strain of B. anthracis from CDC/Janice Haney Carr.