in someone’s garage, but rather in a high-tech lab by someone with knowledge and experience:
If this is a preparation of bacterial spores, it is an extremely pure preparation, and an extremely high concentration. These are not “garage” spores. The nature of the spore preparation suggests very highly that professional manufacturing techniques were used in the production and purification of the spores, as well as in converting the spores into a very fine powder.
See Attachment G.[1]
Drying the spores likely would have attracted attention unless the perpetrator accessed the equipment at night. Drying anthrax spores requires either a sophisticated drying machine called a lyophilizer, a speed-vac, or a great deal of time and space to let the spores air-dry – that is, to allow the water to evaporate – in the lab. Because drying anthrax is expressly forbidden by various treaties, overt use of any of these methods, if noticed, would have raised considerable alarm and scrutiny.
A detailed review was conducted of off-hours access by USAMRIID researchers to B-313 during the time frame leading up to the mailings – August through October 2001 – and then generally over the preceding two years for which lab access records were available, and again for the year that followed. It was clear that, from time to time, Dr. Ivins would enter the lab during evening and weekend off-hours. These entries generally can be supported by his lab notebooks, and those of the other researchers he was assisting, which detail the experiments he was working on that would require this off-hour lab time. However, beginning in the middle of August 2001, there was a noticeable spike in his evening and weekend access to B-313, which continued in spurts through October 2001, and then trailed off to his typical pattern. The data for 2001 revealed the following: January through July: eight hours and 48 minutes total in B-313 during off-hours; August: 11 hours, 15 minutes; September 2001: 31 hours, 28 minutes; October: 16 hours, 13 minutes; November: six hours, 20 minutes; December: three hours, four minutes. (See Attachment H; see also Attachment I, depicting Dr. Ivins’s off-hours lab access over four years). There was no big experiment or project going on in September/October 2001 that would justify all of the time in the hot suites. Even Dr. Ivins could not explain this extraordinary change in his work schedule.
Dr. Ivins’s specific off-hours times and dates in the hot suites are listed below. It is important to note that entering and leaving B-313 is a time-consuming process. One must disrobe and change into lab attire on the way in, and then, on the way out, change out of the lab-wear, shower, and get dressed. For each of the following times in the hot suites, Dr. Ivins was
- ↑ Such observations were repeated by Dr. Ivins in interviews on October 18, 2001, and again on February 18, 2008. Given his expertise, Dr. Ivins played an integral role in the early stages of the investigation into the anthrax attacks.
30
