Navy-led Study: People outside Senate office (in 01) infected with anthrax

[Rose Siding]

A Navy-led analysis of the anthrax attack on Sen. Tom Daschle's office in October 2001 has uncovered evidence that anthrax spores released in the Hart Senate Office Building infected people outside the building.

The researchers could not pinpoint where the four exposed people worked or where they encountered the airborne spores. They apparently fought off infection without getting sick, but they turned up in a group of 20 people who were "outside the building and presumed to be unexposed," says the study in the Jan. 15 Journal of Infectious Diseases.

"We couldn't believe it," says Navy Cmdr. Daniel Freilich, one of the study's authors.
...
The surprise finding supports previous analyses indicating that the spores were engineered to float long distances in the air. Environmental samples revealed that spores penetrated so far into the Hart Building that the structure had to be fumigated.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-08-anthrax-usat_x.htm

[napi21]

1. There's a WHOLE LOT missing from this story. I don't disputethe info

IN the story, but I want to know the rest of the results of this investigation. If they found people outside the Hart building were exposed, how far away were they? Why did they chooseTHOSE PEOPLE to test? Where do they THINK the spores came from?

I still say the anthrax story stinks! Not ONE Pub got exposed. It only affected Dems, a guy in a scandal paper who was anti Shrub, and afew innocent postal workers. This has been soo many years already. I want to know just what they know so far!

[teryang]

3. The tabloid managers spouse rented to 911 terrrorists, they also

...happened to get flying lessons at the managers fav airfield.

[whistle]

2. Here is an article which discussed the attack early on...

...linking the anthrax strain to US Army biological weapons manufacturing in Utah.

<snip>
US anthrax attacks linked to army biological weapons plant
By Patrick Martin
28 December 2001

The anthrax spores enclosed in envelopes mailed to two leading Senate Democrats in October are biologically identical to bacteria secretly manufactured at a US germ warfare facility during the last decade, according to press reports and an analysis by a leading microbiologist.

The army biological and chemical warfare unit at the Dugway Proving Ground, about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, may well be the source of the weapons-grade anthrax sent to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Scientists at Dugway grew and processed spores deriving from the Ames strain—the strain that appeared in all the letters sent to media outlets and Congress.

The spores had been carefully milled to produce the size most effective in spreading the deadly bacteria, between one and three microns.

The existence of the secret army program was first revealed by the Baltimore Sun in an article published December 12. Until then, US officials, including those investigating the anthrax attacks, had maintained that the American military stopped producing germ warfare materials in the late 1960s, before the signing of an international treaty banning the development of such weapons.

Pentagon spokesmen now claim that the development of weapons-grade anthrax was legal under the treaty because the production of small quantities is permitted for “peaceful and protective” purposes, i.e., to prepare countermeasures to a germ warfare attack. The United States is the only country that is known to have produced weapons-grade anthrax in the past 25 years.
<MORE>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/anth-d28.shtml

[teryang]

4. WTF?

The researchers could not pinpoint where the four exposed people worked or where they encountered the airborne spores.

Two subjects had been vaccinated against anthrax before the attacks.