Source: https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2017/02/17/dxer-asks-vice-president-pence-who-at-the-fbi-is-responsible-for-withholding-ivins-notebook-4282-containing-the-notes-from-the-time-of-the-fall-2001-anthrax-mailings/comment-page-1/
Timestamp: 2017-03-24 17:57:54
Document Index: 227623584

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 55', 'art 55', 'art-55', 'art 55', 'art 55', 'art-55', 'art 1', 'art 55', 'art-55']

* DXer asks Vice President Pence: Who at the FBI is responsible for withholding Ivins’ Notebook 4282, containing the notes from the time of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings? « CASE CLOSED … what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks?
« * OGIS Mediation has proved ineffective in avoiding litigation with the FBI over its withholding of Notebook 4282
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 17, 2017
This entry was posted on February 17, 2017 at 8:18 am	and is filed under Uncategorized.
15 Responses to “* DXer asks Vice President Pence: Who at the FBI is responsible for withholding Ivins’ Notebook 4282, containing the notes from the time of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings?”
March 13, 2017 at 10:50 am Upon learning the FBI had not made any progress, I emailed the FOIA specialist today in order to provide help in locating the pages:
It is Dr. Dillon’s understanding that the FBI either lost or destroyed the notes showing what Dr. Ivins was doing at the time of the anthrax mailings when he was growing Ames anthrax. It has now been a couple of weeks and the notes were not located.
Although you are the expert, my guess is that may have been indexed and filed either under Science (see SCI designation) in memo URL — or under Ivins. The entire Part 55 seems to relate to Ivins. (But I do not know anything about your indexing system).
If you go to Part 55 of the FBI’s online Vault ( https://vault.fbi.gov/Amerithrax/amerithrax-part-55-of/view ),
you can see the first reference at page 47 describing the contents.
The memo explains that “Notebook 4282, IVINS/ __________, Pages 65 through 70, contain experiments conducted between 08/23/2001 and 09/18/2001, including the growth of Ba Ames. [redaction]. (Ames was the strain used in the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings and so these pages are hugely important).
Here is an image of a description of the notebook contained in the Vault at page 55 of Part 55.
RIID NOTEBOOKS.xls
To locate the notes, perhaps one would go to 279A-WF-222936-SCI18-11. The memo was declassified on January 6, 2009. A redacted copy in produced in Part 55 of 59 parts of Amerithrax documents in the FBI’s FOIA Vault. ( https://vault.fbi.gov/Amerithrax/amerithrax-part-55-of/view )
The memo explains that between April 10, 2007 and April 29, 2007, Special Agents reviewed laboratory notebooks of Dr. Ivins that had been collected pursuant to a Federal Grand Jury subpoena number 5429, issued in the District of Columbia on March 20, 2007. The memo attached an inventory of the laboratory notebooks reviewed with notations indicating: date received, date reviewed, date returned, reviewer, comments on the the notebook, and 1B numbers (if applicable).
When you turn to the Excel spreadsheet, RIID NOTEBOOKS.xls, you see that the column indicating the date returned is redacted, as is the column indicating Location.
But although much of the entry is redacted, it states “Copied several pages from time of mailings. See 1A GJ 1100.”
Pages 65 through 70 contain contain experiments conducted between 8/23/2001 and 9/18/2001. That is, they explain what Ivins was doing in the lab at a time when the AUSA argued that he had no reason to be in the lab. That pages should be produced. The pages constitute contemporaneous record of what Ivins was doing in the lab. If the FBI destroyed or lost the notebook pages, it is important that the public know.”
March 13, 2017 at 10:53 am excellent assistance
March 12, 2017 at 7:52 am Glaring gaps: America needs a biodefense upgrade
Pages 86-91 | Published online: 16 Feb 2017
When it comes to preparedness and response capabilities in the face of a large-scale biological incident, whether natural or human-made, American planning remains a work in progress. Recent legislation has called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy. If carried out in a thorough and systematic way, and properly funded, this will be a great improvement for the country and the world.
Daniel M. Gerstein, PhD works at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and is an adjunct professor at American University, in Washington, where he teaches courses in bioterrorism and technology policy. He was the undersecretary (acting) and deputy undersecretary in the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security from 2011 to 2014.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.2017.1288438
Comment: Why is biodefense such a priority when it requires spending billions but it is not a priority warranting that the FBI pull a key document from its files showing contemporaneous notations made in Bruce Ivins on the date of mailing… the date that the FBI mistakenly claimed he had no reason to be in the lab?
February 27, 2017 at 4:59 am Trump Should “Drain the Swamp” at the FBI Before Terror Strikes …
“Playing down the threat of jihadist bioterrorism is something that U.S. intelligence agencies, led by the FBI, did in the case of the anthrax attacks. In 2010, the FBI officially blamed those attacks, which killed five Americans, on a dead man, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins.
February 25, 2017 at 11:51 am Cliff Kincaid:
Can you help get Vice President Pence to focus on the FBI’s failure to produce Notebook 4282 so as to help people get on the same page in connection with the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings?
Sometimes, the FBI closes a case upon lack of evidence when actually the problem is that the evidence was available but not efficiently obtained.
February 25, 2017 at 11:54 am FOIA Requestor Dr. Dillon is an academic and publisher. He is a former intelligence analyst associated with the US State Department. In testing the FBI’s theory that Dr. Ivins had no reason to be in the lab, he has sought Lab Notebook 4282 which contains contemporaneous handwritten notes about one of the many experiments he was working on (at pages 65-70). The pages were first obtained by the FBI in 2003 and put in Part 1A of an FBI 302 report. See 1A GJ 1100.
In response to Dillon’s FOIA request for information relating to Ivins’ activities in Sep.-Oct. 2001, the FBI initially falsely claimed that it had uploaded the information (such as Notebook 4282) to the FBI’s “Vault”
I have uploaded the FBI discussing the documents relating to Notebook 4282 that is still subject of the DOJ and FBI’s game of hide-the-ball at the hyperlinks above. I forwarded them to Attorney Matt Hurd. Attorney Hurd, who has been very gracious, has expressed a willingness to have an attorney reconsider the denial. But that just lead to an attorney doing the same ineffectual searches in the decades-old database being used of words like “Notebook” “USMRMC.” Instead, Attorney Hurd should have picked up the phone and call FOIA analyst Meredith Savary or former lead Amerithrax investigator Richard Lambert or someone currently at the FBI who would know and ask where to find the documents. To claim that the dog ate the lab pages in Dr. Ivins’ notebook on the date of mailing of anthrax that killed 5 people is unacceptable. I am advised by FOIA Officer Ms. Rogers that the Notebook 4282 that the FBI has not returned is titled “Anthrax.”
Now upon the request being reopened, Kris Weart is the FBI Specialist needs to pick up the phone and run down the pages from the Notebook.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah is still at large.
Politics has no role in true crime or intelligence analysis. Neither does a CYA mentality and non-compliance with the FOIA statute.
February 21, 2017 at 7:42 am The FBI’s “Ivins Theory” was premised on the notion that someone surreptitiously or accidentally acquiring or being provided virulent Ames would sign it out — or that records would confirm he was given it.
Is there anything that the government has done in the biodefense field — or simple logic or the practical realities — that would have made the premise a sound one?
FEMA countererrorism training center suspected lethal toxin mix-up …
USA TODAY‎ – 13 hours ago
Officials at a federal training facility that mistakenly exposed thousands of first responders to deadly ricin toxin were worried five years ago that their vendor had shipped the wrong type of powder, records obtained by USA TODAY show.
The vial of powder contained ricin “greater than 90% pure,” according to its certificate of analysis. The certificate also warned: “Extremely toxic! … May be lethal if injected, inhaled, or ingested – use caution when handling.” Ricin, made from castor beans, is regulated as a potential bioterror agent. There is no antidote for ricin poisoning.
But the vendor assured staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness that the powder was a safer, inactivated form of the poison, according to a December 2011 email.
So FEMA went ahead and used the powder in its training programs – and for five years kept buying more of it for use in classes — despite the vials continuing to arrive with certificates declaring that the powder was lethal, nearly pure ricin, the records show.
FEMA has blamed its vendor for the mix-up – the latest known high-profile mishandling of bioterror pathogens and toxins by a federal agency. But the newly released documents raise questions about why FEMA didn’t catch the problem sooner.
The agency and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General are investigating the incident, which was revealed last fall by The Anniston Star.
“The FEMA review and OIG investigation are ongoing,” the agency said in a statement to USA TODAY. FEMA said it is taking actions improve how it procures and verifies biological materials in the future. In the meantime, since Nov. 8, the agency has suspended use of biological and chemical agents in training programs at its Center for Domestic Preparedness facility in Anniston, Ala., until sometime in March.
FEMA has refused to identify its vendor and blacked out the vendor’s name from the newly-released documents. USA TODAY has previously reported it was Toxin Technology in Sarasota, Fla. Company officials could not be reached Monday, but have previously said all of its ricin products were accurately labeled as “RCA60” — a scientific name for the whole ricin toxin, which can be deadly.
Nearly 10,000 firefighters, paramedics and other responders participated in simulated bioterrorism response sessions where the deadly form of ricin was used in detection equipment classes instead of the safer form that FEMA thought it had purchased. All of the trainees wore protective equipment and nobody was sickened, FEMA has said.
The FEMA mistakes follow several other high-profile safety lapses at federal biodefense facilities that have prompted ongoing congressional investigations. In 2015, the Pentagon discovered that an Army lab had been mistakenly shipping specimens of live anthrax – labeled as killed – to labs and defense contractors around the world for a decade. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention potentially exposed workers to live anthrax and the Ebola virus.
The newly released documents indicate that the FEMA mix-up began with an email exchange in December 2011 – after the training center had made some initial purchases of what it thought was the inactivated form of ricin, called “chain A” because it contained only one of the two parts of the whole ricin toxin.
“Can you please confirm that you shipped Ricin chain A and not Ricin. The question has arose that there is a possibility we could have received Ricin instead of the chain A,” a training center employee wrote to the vendor that supplied the powder in a Dec. 6, 2011 email. FEMA blacked out the employee’s name from the records.
The next morning, a representative from the supply company replied: “The only Ricin we have is chain A. So yes, the product we shipped you is Ricin chain A.” The company and employee’s name were also redacted.
An October 31, 2011 invoice sent by the company to the training center showed that the item shipped was catalog item “RCA-1” and “LOT#20510RCA” and it was described as “Ricin Toxin (RCA 60).” RCA60 is the scientific name for the lethal whole ricin toxin. And the “Certificate of Analysis” for the specific lot that was shipped also stated that it was Ricin (RCA60) “greater than 90% pure” and it warned that it was extremely toxic.
Over the next five years, the records show that FEMA placed several more orders with the company that indicate the training center intended to buy inactivated, chain A ricin. FEMA repeatedly submitted “Intended Use Declaration” forms to the vendor that state the agency was requesting “Ricin chain A” and not the more highly regulated whole toxin.
Yet repeatedly over the years, the company sent back to FEMA invoices and certificates of analyses that said the vials being shipped were “RCA60” — the lethal form of ricin, the records show. Despite the conflicting documentation coming in from the vendor, when the vials would arrive at the Alabama training center, FEMA staff would log the product received as Ricin Chain A – the inactivated form.
FEMA has said the ricin mix-up was discovered in November after training center staff “recognized a discrepancy in the documentation related to the type of ricin being provided.”
According to the newly released records, a training center staffer was seeking an updated price quote in October 2016 to purchase the vendor’s catalog item “RCA-1” and during the discussions had specified that the center wanted just the “chain A” form of ricin. The request raised concerns from a worker at the supply company, who in an email told the FEMA worker to note “that RCA-1 is both ‘chain A & B. [Redacted] mentioned that you were referring to ‘chain A’ only?”
Unsaid in the email is that when both chains are present, the ricin is a whole toxin – and capable of being fully lethal, unlike the partial toxin FEMA thought it had been ordering.
In a statement to USA TODAY, FEMA said the supply firm told the training center biologist requesting the price quote that the company only sold ricin holotoxin. “This response was the opposite from what the vendor had originally told (the training center) in 2011 (that they only sold ricin A-chain).”
February 18, 2017 at 5:12 pm Bill Gates: Bioterrorism could kill more than nuclear war — but no no one is ready to deal with it. Washington Post‎ – 46 minutes ago
Gates, who founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife in 2000, has been worrying about the world’s ability to stop a deadly …
If the FBI cannot even retrieve basic documents from their files, do you think they are going to be able to stop a planned massive attack?
It’s a lot easier to find a document in your own files than it is to find the relevant proof relating to a clandestine bioweapons program.
Moreover, the FBI’s failure to provide expedited treatment of Dillon’s requests was, on its face, misfeasant.
February 18, 2017 at 6:11 pm Bioterrorists a bigger threat than nuclear weapons, warns Gates
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/bioterrorists-a-bigger-threat-than-nuclear-weapons-warns-gates-35461383.html
the defence and security establishment “have not been following biology and I’m here to bring them a little bit of bad news”.
“With nuclear weapons you’d think you would probably stop after killing 100 million. Smallpox won’t stop. Because the population is naive, there are no real preparations. That, if it got out and spread, would kill a larger number.”
February 20, 2017 at 2:51 am Bill Gates Warns of an Intentional Biological Attack
By Zoe McAlister February 19, 2017 Microsoft founder estimates a 30 million people could die in a year due to a deadly virus attack that could happen within the next 15 years.
Gates’ speech at the Munich conference came as no surprise. In almost every public appearance in the last decade, he voiced a concern about bio-terrorism.
https://newswire.net/newsroom/news/00095282-bill-gates-warns-of-an-intentional-biological-attack.html
Comment: I rhink Mr. Gates, to his great credit, is more focused on the risk of natural epidemics. Although he definitely touches on the threat of intentional bioterrorism, his main emphasis remains natural epidemics. See Business Insider piece he authored.
Personally, I think jihadists would not choose to use a bioweapon that could blow back on them. Many muslim countries have poor health systems and might be disproportionately affected.
And, who knows … if they have attempted to weaponize, for example, the plague, maybe the reports are true that it did precisely that and wiped out the camp.
(That’s not to say that I don’t keep a pair of rowboat oars locked in my car).
If his emphasis, indeed, was intentional bioterrorism, then surely someone with his influence could have obtained Notebook 4282 so as to get people on the same page with the FBI’s controversial Ivins theory.
But I can’t help but like and admire any bridge player who has the realistic means of making a bid to save millions.
February 17, 2017 at 11:07 am Progress? Your persistence is remarkable.
February 17, 2017 at 2:20 pm I spoke with Kris Weart this morning at the FBI. Whether there is progress will be up to him.
February 18, 2017 at 4:47 am And just to clarify, for a long while, the FOIA requests are solely due to the persistence of former intelligence analysis, Dr. Dillon. Another request by Dr. Dillon that is pending and long overdue is his request for the lengthy memo written by former lead Amerithrax investigator Richard L. Lambert. The delay associated with that request illustrates how broken FOIA is at the FBI. If government were a business, it would have not have survived the marketplace because it is too inefficient, too slow in getting tasks done.
February 17, 2017 at 11:05 am I just got off the phone with the FBI’s Kris Weart. He was patient as I sought to explain, in substance:
To locate the notes, one would go to 279A-WF-222936-SCI18-11. The memo was declassified on January 6, 2009. A redacted copy in produced in Part 55 of 59 parts of Amerithrax documents in the FBI’s FOIA Vault. ( https://vault.fbi.gov/Amerithrax/amerithrax-part-55-of/view )
*************The memo explains that “Notebook 4282, IVINS/ __________, Pages 65 through 70, contain experiments conducted between 08/23/2001 and 09/18/2001, including the growth of Ba Ames. [redaction]**************
Disclosure of the fact that the notebook was not returned in April 2007 along with others is hidden by the redaction.
All the FBI need do to comply with the statute is to go 1A GJ 1100 and provide those pages. Should it really be so hard to keep track of Dr. Ivins’ contemporaneous notes at the time of mailing — which may either alibi him or prove his guilt?
************(The FBI’s entire Ivins Theory was predicated on him having no reason to be in the lab and so notes showing otherwise would destroy an Ivins Theory).*************
Dr. Ivins complained bitterly that the FBI had not returned key notebooks that he needed to reconstruct his time.
If the OGIS had been effective, an explanation of the meaning 1A GJ 1100 would have been provided — and an explanation why those pages could not now be produced.
Is it because they were destroyed? Or because the FOIA system at DOJ is broken and the new Administration needs to bring in experts experienced with data storage and data retrieval.
February 24, 2017 at 4:01 am The Post’s View Opinion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-nature-is-a-terrorist/2017/02/23/57bed82e-f942-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html
Mr. Gates insisted that world leaders think differently about public health and national security. They should listen.
In 2001, bioterrorism was suddenly a very real security problem. After the anthrax attacks that year, the United States spent billions of dollars to develop and stockpile medical countermeasures and build warning systems. But in the years that followed, the villain that appeared to cause death and illness was not a bioterrorist, but Mother Nature….
Comment: I had great fun yesterday tracking down my IPhone (see police report), which had an adventure like the cat that somehow crawls into the crevice of someone else’s car (formerly associated with law enforcement). There was an early morning stakeout by me and my sidekick, a high-speed chase using a geolocator, and then some nice policemen I had enlisted confronted the individual with the fact that my phone was secreted in his car parked outside the criminal courthouse. My IT Department caused it to beep as they approached, confirming or debunking his explanation, depending on one’s point of view. (It was slid down into the crevice holding his windshield wipers.)
My IPhone had valuable brainstormed possible interpretations of clues in a treasure hunt sponsored by by the local newspaper. Things are heating up — apart from the nearly 70 degree weather. But if the FBI is as bad at finding out things as they are at retrieving notebook pages retrieved in their own files, don’t expect Bill Gates’ efforts to save those millions to be successful.