Anthrax attacks 2001
The 2001 anthrax attacks ( Engl. 2001 anthrax attacks ) in the United States several weeks were after 18 September 2001 (one week after the over terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 perpetrated). Letters with anthrax spores have been sent to several news outlets and senators. Five people died. A sequel to the attacks was the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act against terrorism . On August 6, 2008, the FBI and Justice Department accused Bruce Edwards Ivins of being solely responsible for the attacks. He had committed suicide a week earlier.
Summary
Two waves of anthrax spore attacks have occurred:
On September 18, 2001, five letters were mailed that contained brown granular material. The letters were postmarked at a letter center in Trenton , New Jersey, and were addressed to three news channels and two newspapers, four from addresses in New York City.
Three weeks later, two more letters, postmarked October 9, 2001, were sent from the Trenton mail center. These letters contained a far more potent form of the anthrax. It was addressed to two Democratic Senators , Tom Daschle , South Dakota and Patrick Leahy , Vermont . The letter to Daschle was opened on October 15 by an employee. The government-internal mail distribution was then shut down. The unopened letter to Leahy was found in a confiscated mailbag on November 16 . Due to an incorrectly deciphered zip code , the letter was misdirected to a US State Department branch in Sterling, Virginia . The employee in the post office there, David Hose, inhaled the spores of the anthrax.
The letters to the senators were far more effective than the letters from the first anthrax attack. They contained very fine, dry powder, which consisted of about one gram of almost pure spores . The material was described by a professor at the State University of New York, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, as "weaponized" or "weapons grade". However, the Washington Post reported in September 2006 that the FBI no longer shares this assessment.
22 people developed anthrax infection, eleven via the life-threatening inhalation route. Five died as a result of the anthrax infection. In addition to the first victim, Robert Stevens from Florida, who worked for the addressee of the letters American Media , two other people succumbed to the anthrax in an unknown manner, presumably through cross-contamination of the letters: Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who lived in the New York borough of Bronx lived and worked in New York City, and Ottilie Lundgren, the 94-year-old widow of a prominent judge from Oxford, Connecticut . She was the last victim in the series of attacks. Two other victims, Thomas L. Morris, Jr. and Joseph P. Curseen, Jr., were employed by the Post Office in Brentwood , Washington, DC .
The letters
The anthrax virus is believed to have been sent from Princeton, New Jersey . In August 2002, investigators found anthrax spores on a public mailbox on Nassau Street near the Princeton University campus . About 600 mailboxes were checked for anthrax. Only the mailbox on Nassau Street was positive in the test.
The letter notes
The letters to the New York Post and NBC News contained the following words:
- 09-11-01
- THIS IS NEXT
- TAKE PENACILIN NOW
- DEATH TO AMERICA
- DEATH TO ISRAEL
- ALLAH IS GREAT
Translated into German this means:
- September 11, 2001
- This is the next [stop]
- Take penicillin now
- Death to america
- Death to Israel
- Allah is great
The contents of the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy read:
- 09-11-01
- YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
- WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
- YOU DIE NOW.
- ARE YOU AFRAID?
- DEATH TO AMERICA.
- DEATH TO ISRAEL.
- ALLAH IS GREAT.
The German translation of this is:
- September 11, 2001
- You can't stop us.
- We have this anthrax [here].
- You will die now.
- Are you scared?
- Death to america.
- Death to Israel.
- Allah is great.
The return address of the letters to Daschle and Leahy was:
- 4th grade
- Greendale School
- Franklin Park NJ 08852
The given address of the sender is fictitious. While there is Franklin Park in New Jersey , the zip code 08852 refers to the nearby settlement of Monmouth Junction , New Jersey. There is no Greendale School in New Jersey, only a Greenbrook Elementary School in neighboring South Brunswick Township , New Jersey, which also includes Monmouth Junction. “4th Grade” stands for the 4th grade of the US Elementary School , whose students are between 9 and 10 years old.
The anthrax material
The letters contained at least two different levels of anthrax: a coarse brown material in the letters to the media and a fine powder to the senators. It is also believed that the anthrax material sent to an old National Enquirer mailbox address and later forwarded to American Media (AMI) was an intermediate level of quality similar to the anthrax quality found in the Senatorial letters. The brownish granular spore powder sent to the media agencies in New York City only caused skin infections. The anthrax on the Senators and AMI in Florida caused a far more dangerous form of inhalation infection.
Although anthrax manufacturing qualities were different, all of the material came from the same strain of bacterial pathogen - known as the Ames strain - produced in the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Fort Detrick , Maryland bioweapons depot . The Ames strain has been distributed to at least fifteen biological testing laboratories within the United States and six overseas. The spores used in the attacks belonged to a genetic variant called RMR-1029 that was kept in a single bottle that was in Ivin's laboratory.
In early December 2001, DNA sequencing of the anthrax of the first victim, Robert Stevens, was carried out under the direction of the Institute for Genomic Research . The investigation was completed within a month. The analysis was published in the Journal Science 2002 and revealed a number of differences from tests carried out in laboratories in England. A subsequent series of tests showed that the anthrax was identical to the original Ames strain from Fort Detrick.
A radiocarbon dating , led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in June 2002, showed that the anthrax had not been cultivated as two years before sending the letters microbiologically. In October 2006 it was reported that the water needed for the development of the anthrax spores came from a spring in the northeastern United States. According to press reports in 2003, attempts by reverse engineering to reconstruct the anthrax from the letters under the direction of the FBI had failed.
Investigations
First, the US scientist Steven Hatfill was suspected of being the author of the anthrax attacks. However, the authorities closed the case again. Hatfills' lawsuit against the US authorities ended in July 2008 with a settlement and payment of $ 5.8 million to him.
According to media reports, US Army scientist Bruce Edwards Ivins committed suicide on July 29, 2008 , shortly before US law enforcement agencies could bring charges against him for the 2001 attacks. On August 6, 2008, based on all evidence gathered, FBI investigators announced that Ivins was the only person responsible for the anthrax attacks. At the same time, parts of the investigation files were released. The main indications against Ivins were an unreported contamination of his office with anthrax in 2001 and, according to his brother, a depressive disposition with a tendency towards omnipotence fantasies . In addition, Ivins had worked nightly overtime in the laboratory before the days of the anthrax shipment. Ivins' attorney, however, said relentless pressure and innuendo from the investigators resulted in his client's suicide.
The investigation was closed on February 19, 2010 and Bruce Edwards Ivins of the FBI declared the sole perpetrator. It is controversial whether the evidence was actually sufficient. The evaluation of the scientific investigations by the National Academy of Science , commissioned by the FBI, was still pending at the time the investigation was ended. Jeffrey Adamovicz, former boss of Ivins, is not convinced of his guilt because Ivins had neither the necessary know-how nor the necessary equipment.
His information coincides with the calculations of other observers, according to which the amount of anthrax required could not have been produced by Ivins alone. According to this, a total volume of around 260 l was required, which would certainly have been noticed, especially since it would have taken around 65 weeks with two production processes per week. Heine even speaks of 50 weeks of non-stop work to grow that amount of anthrax.
The "Amerithrax Investigative Summary" published under the FOIA is misleading in several places. For example, Ivins' easy access to a fermenter ( bioreactor ) and lyophiliser (device for freeze-drying ) is emphasized, although according to witnesses the fermenter had not been used in the period in question and was even defective. The lyophiliser is not in a safety laboratory and has not been used for anthrax, as this would have led to extensive contamination of the area and inevitably to infections of the unvaccinated employees. The FBI also lists Ivins' hours at unusual evening hours. Aside from the fact that these times are too short to produce anthrax for the letters, Gerry Andrews, another bacteriology chief at USAMRIID, considers the times to be irrelevant, since the spores could have been produced as early as 1997. The times could also be explained by Ivins' participation in vaccine studies (animal experiments) which, according to colleagues, would have needed care.
As a result of the attacks, the secret mail isolation control and tracking program (MICT) was introduced. All paper letters that are processed in the USA are photographed in order to enable the law enforcement authorities to follow up on them.
In October 2001, the Canadian and US governments forced drastic price cuts on Bayer , the maker of the anthrax antidote Cipro . The then US Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson had threatened to infringe Bayer's patent and have generics produced, as had previously happened in Canada.
reception
In his speech on 5 February 2003 to justify an attack on Iraq before the UN Security Council , the then moved US Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly to the anthrax attacks, by means of a small vial that allegedly contained anthrax who advised the assembled states of the dose of the poison. While "less than a teaspoonful of dry anthrax in an envelope paralyzed the United States Senate in the fall of 2001" and u. a. killed two postal workers (Powell's reference to the ampoule as a reference for the dose in the envelope), Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters that could fill "ten by ten by ten thousand of teaspoons" with the deadly material. The existence of anthrax in Iraqi stocks later turned out to be unfounded .
literature
- Leonard A. Cole: The Anthrax Letters. A Medical Detective Story. Joseph Henry Press, Washington / DC 2003, ISBN 0-309-08881-X
- Kenneth J. Dillon: Intriguing Anomalies: An Introduction to Scientific Detective Work. Scientia Press, Washington / DC 2008, ISBN 978-0-9642976-8-5
- Robert Graysmith: AMERITHRAX: The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer. Berkley Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-425-19190-7
- Graeme MacQueen: The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy Clarity Press, Atlanta 2014, ISBN 0-9860731-2-1
- Philipp Sarasin : Anthrax: Bioterror as phantasm. Suhrkamp. 2004, ISBN 3-518-12368-8 . ( Summary, English )
- Marilyn W. Thompson: The Killer Strain, Anthrax and a Government Exposed. HarperCollins, New York 2003, ISBN 0-06-052278-X .
- Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus Anthracis Mailings; National Research Council: Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters , The National Academies Press, ( Abstract and Reviews, free download ), English, ISBN 0-309-18719-2
Web links
- Did the White House know about the impending anthrax attacks at an early stage? (Heise.de, June 9, 2002)
- On the trail of the anthrax letters (with numerous references) (Heise.de, December 18, 2001)
- Wolfgang Kötter: When it rages inside me , from Friday , issue no.50 of December 11, 2008
- What about Abderraouf Jdey the Anthrax Mailer?
- Committee on Science, Technology, and Law - Policy and Global Affairs: Anthrax Mailings Report , English
Individual evidence
- ^ Officials Say Documents Tie Scientist to Anthrax Attack
- ↑ Emerging Infectious Diseases • Vol. 9, No. 6, June 2003 (English)
- ↑ Summary of the FBI report, pages 26–29 (PDF; 656 kB)
- ↑ DNA analysis anthrax of the first victim (English)
- ↑ NPR-News: Justice Department Settles Anthrax Probe Suit (English)
- ↑ Yahoo News / Associated Press: Dead Army vaccine scientist eyed in anthrax probe ( Memento from August 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Die Presse: FBI: Anthrax attacks from 2001 are solved , August 7, 2008
- ↑ Summary of the FBI report, pages 26–29 (PDF; 656 kB)
- ↑ Welt online: FBI declares microbiologists to be anthrax offenders , August 7, 2008
- ↑ https://www.heise.de/tp/features/FBI-schliesst-endgueltig-Anthrax-Fall-3384578.html
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.chemie.de/news/5566/us-gesundheitsminister-droht-cipro-macher-bayer-mit-patentbruch.html
- ^ Agreement between the US government and Bayer
- ^ Remarks to the United Nations Security Council . In: US Department of State Archives, February 5, 2003, accessed March 6, 2019.
