I got around to transcribing the introductory remarks from the NAS Committee, which is working under contract with the FBI to review the validity of their scientific methods, the application of those methods, and their conclusions. All the members of the committee can be seen in the photo.However, the NAS Committee has seen fit to close all sessions to the public since the September 24-25 meeting, even to the extent of not even naming the witnesses that they've called. Why?
They claim that they are concerned about the release of classified material... welcome to the secret trials of Dr. Bruce Ivins. This is not at all surprising, considering the history of this case. This flies in the face of claims of "openness" and "transparency" made by the Committee Chair, Alice P. Gast.
The affiliations of the committee members makes for some interesting reading, too:
Here is the official list from the NAS web site - although they left out quite a bit of material, which I added in:
Alice Gast (Chair), President, Lehigh University
Gast is a past director of research at MIT during the period when biowarfare research funding was exploding. MIT has a very large "Biodefense Systems Group."
David Relman (Vice Chair), Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford University
Stanford University is a member of the Pacific Southwest Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research.
Arturo Casadevall, Chair, Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Leo and Julia Forchheimer Professor of Microbiology and Immunology; Professor, Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
-Casadevall is also the Deputy Director of the Northeast Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research. - and why does the NAS not include this title in their summary?
Nancy Connell, Professor of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
- The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is a member institution of the Northeast Biodefense Center. These "Centers of Excellence" were part of the massive expansion in biowarfare-related research funding that the anthrax attacks engendered.
Thomas Inglesby, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director of the Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Pittsburgh Schools of Medicine and Public Health
As the director of this institution, he must be aware that there are charges that these attacks were intended to alarm the public and create a causus belli for a massively expanded biowarfare research program - a program that funds his institution. Tagging "lone wolf" Bruce Ivins as the culprit would go some way towards protecting this funding train. Not only that, the "biowarfare scenarios" he has promoted avoid any discussion of actual the likelihood of a terrorist organization acquiring such weapons - they're just designed to raise fear and increase funding.
Murray Johnston, Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware
I see no direct conflicts of interest here - but this guy is an expert in mass spectrometry, and should have asked more questions about why no stable isotope analysis were conducted.
Karen Kafadar, James H. Rudy Professor of Statistics and Physics, Indiana University
Indiana University is a member of the Great Lakes Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research.
Richard Lenski, Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a member of the Great Lakes Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research.
Richard Losick, Harvard College Professor; Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
Harvard University is a member of the New England Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research.
Alice Mignerey, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland
The University of Maryland has extensive links to the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease research. It's so excellent, dude...
David Popham, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech is in the institute that hosts the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease website.
Jed Rakoff, Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Why put a judge with zero scientific background (other than baseball) on a scientific review panel, other than as a PR stunt?
Robert Shaler, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department; Director, Forensic Science Program, Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University is a member of the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research.
Elizabeth A. Thompson, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Washington
The Unversity of Washington is the lead institution in the Pacific Northwest Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research.
Kasthuri Venkateswaran, Senior Research Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Caltech is associated with the University of California, Irvine's massive grant for the establishment of the Pacific-Southwest Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research - the "largest grant in UCI history", delivered in 2005.
David Walt, Robinson Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Tufts University
Tufts University is a member of the Great Lakes Regional Center of Excellence For Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research, and is doing work with botulinum toxin among other things.
The audio begins fairly abruptly, but the speaker is Alice Gast, the Chair:
-begin segment-
....Chair of the National Academies Committee on the scientific approaches used during the FBI's investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis mailings and along with committee vice-chair Dr. David Relman, I'd like to welcome you to our second meeting.
The National Research Council has agreed to evaluate the scientific foundation of the specific techniques used by the FBI during its investigation to determine whether these techniques met appropriate standards for scientific reliability and for use in forensic validation, and whether the FBI reached appropriate scientific conclusions from its use of these techniques.
In instances where novel scientific methods were developed for purposes of the FBI investigation itself, the committee will pay particular attention to whether these methods were appropriately validated. The committee will review a range of scientific information including study plans, results, analysis, and reports documenting findings in connection with the 2001 Bacillus anthracis mailings.
In assessing this body of information, the committee will limit its inquiry to the scientific approaches, methodologies, and scientific techniques used during the investigation. I would also like to make it clear and remind you that what the committee will not do - the committee will only review and assess the scientific information related to the investigation - the committee is not charged, nor is it constituted, to address other aspects of the investigation not related to science.
Most importantly, the committee will not address the identity of the perpetrator of the anthrax mailings. The purpose of this meeting today is for the committee to continue its information gathering efforts - the committee will conduct additional information gathering over the next several months and will deliberate thoroughly before writing its draft report. Moreover, once the draft report is written it will go through a rigorous external review by experts who are anonymous to the committee, and the committee will then respond to this review with appropriate revisions that satisfy the NRC's report review committee, and the chair of the NRC, before the report is issued as a National Academies document.
The report will describe the committee's work, finding and conclusions from the review and assessment of the information provided by the FBI, and other experts appearing before the committee. The National Research Council is committed to an open scientific process, and as per NRC's contract with the FBI, is committed to producing a final report that will be available to the public in its entirety.
Now, a little aside here - she says that "The National Research Council is committed to an open scientific process..." This must be why the NRC closed all sessions after this one to the public, even to the extent of refusing to publish a list of witnesses?
It is important to note that the committee with no preconceived notions and no premature conclusions. It is this committee's task to gather and analyze the information that will allow it to formulate findings and conclusions to respond to its charge. The fact that committee members may make comments or ask probing questions should not be interpreted by anyone as anyone taking a position on anything at this point, nor should remarks made by committee members be construed to be representing the position of the NRC.
Committee members, all of us being academics or scientists or judges, typically ask probing questions, some more probing than others, in these information gathering sessions that may or may not be indicative of their personal views. I want to note that this is an open on the record session - interested individuals and members of the press may be attending as observers, I may ask them if they'd like to introduce themselves, so we'll know who is here.
Again, this is quite strange - since when are spectators at a public proceeding asked to identify themselves? There is also a serious lack of gravitas in the tone of these proceedings, incidentally.
However, this is not a press conference, and neither the committee nor the speakers will be entertaining questions from the floor. Reporters who would like to talk to the committee are kindly asked to touch base with us at the end of this session.
As noted in previous transcripts, the questions asked of the speakers were hardly probing - and the most important questions went unanswered.
This afternoon we will hear from a panel of scientists:
Dr. Rita Colwell, from University of [Maryland] College Park and John Hopkins University
Dr. Stephen Schuster, University of Madison in Dentistry of New Jersey
Dr. Paul Keim, Northern Arizona University
Dr. Patricia Worsham, United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases
They will present approaches, findings and results of the scientific analysis used in the investigation. One final point, if anyone would like to submit information to the committee for its consideration, you may provide that information via the National Academy's current project systems website, at www.nationalacademies.org
So thank you very much for coming, I'd like to first ask my committee members to introduce themselves. [see above]
Well, thank you. I've asked Rita to start us out with her overview of the scientific investigations, to change the order a bit from the agenda. Thank You.
-end segment-
By the way, when you think about biological warfare research, you should really think about this picture of dogs, not the one at the top of the page:
This is what is going on inside the gigantic new biodefense complex that has been created as a result of the anthrax attacks - a $5 billion a year cash cow for a handful of well-connected private firms, as well as a new source of funding for academic departments with few scruples.
In case you think this is some kind of exaggeration, allow me to explain with a few quotes from "The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project" by Ed Regis:
1) "The 8-Ball [testing chamber] ran through a sizeable population of Camp Detrick test animals. The anthrax trials alone consumed more than 2,000 rhesus monkeys."
This was not done to save lives, either - not by a long shot. The same goes for the modern biowarfare game.
2) "At the time of the first operational test of the M33/Brucella munition, therefore, the total indoor and outdoor population of this enemy city on the desert plain would be 3,230 guinea pigs."
3) "By the end of the M33 operational suitability trials, a total of 11,628 guinea pigs had been attacked by Brucella bombs at Dugway Proving Ground within the space of two months. As an Army Chemical Corps General remarked years later, "Now we know what to do if we ever go to war against guinea pigs."
4) "Between August 1943 and December 1945, seventeen different species of animals had been utilized at Detrick. The final tally was 598,604 white mice, 32,339 guinea pigs, 16,178 rats, 5,222 rabbits, 4,578 hamsters, 399 cotton rats, 225 frogs, 166 monkeys, 98 brown mice, 75 Wistar rats, 48 canaries, 34 dogs, 30 sheep, 25 ferrets, 11 cats, 5 pigs and 2 roosters..."
That was just when they were getting started, too. There is no "polio vaccine" excuse for this research - all they were trying to do was to quantify how toxic their new bioweapons were.
