The trial of accused ricin mailer Matthew Buquet has been pushed off until next year. The reason? Because there is only one lab in the country that does the forensic ricin determinations needed in the case, according to the judge.
But is this really true? It’s an interesting story.
The federal trial of a Spokane man charged with sending a poison letter to President Barack Obama has been delayed until next year because of the complexity of the case, U.S. District Court Judge Lonny Suko ruled on Tuesday.
Suko pushed back the trial of Matthew Ryan Buquet, 37, until May 5. It was supposed to begin later this month.
Suko agreed with lawyers on both sides that the complexity of the case, including dealing with a deadly poison called ricin, made a speedy trial impossible.
“There is only one lab that can process this evidence because of the nature of the toxin involved,” assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Van Marter told the judge.
Prosecutors hoped to have most of their evidence turned over to defense lawyers within the next month, she said.
Defense attorney Matthew Campbell, of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington, said that his office would then have to undertake complex analysis of that evidence.
“There can be no trial in a speedy time,” Campbell said.
The lab being referred to is the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center and, more specifically, its National Bioforensic Analysis Center, or NBFAC.
The NBACC homepage does not list the cost of construction but material from the web pegged its estimated price from 120-150 million dollars. It is run by Battelle under a contract for 500 million.
“NBACC’s National Bioforensic Analysis Center (NBFAC) conducts bioforensic analysis of evidence from a bio-crime or terrorist attack to attain a ‘biological fingerprint’ to identify perpetrators and determine the origin and method of attack,” reads its homepage.
“NBFAC is designated by Presidential Directive to be the lead federal facility to conduct and facilitate the technical forensic analysis and interpretation of materials recovered following a biological attack in support of the appropriate lead federal agency. On January 12, 2007, NBFAC achieved ISO 17025 accreditation, the most rigorous international standard of testing and calibration by which a laboratory can be assessed. Through this achievement, NBFAC has established itself as a model for bioforensic laboratory practices.”
It certainly sounds like the expensive NBACC has all the tools necessary to process ricin samples.
But does it?
In a recent domestic ricin case dating from last year, I was consulted as Senior Fellow at Globalsecurity.Org for my expertise in ricin terrorism.
This was a startling thing. Why did the country’s premier bioterrorism research facility outsource its lab work to another firm? The NBACC was built, and — indeed — its homepage explicitly states that its mission was to have its highly accredited facilities be a model for bioforensic laboratory practice.
A colleague, Milton Leitenberg, when hearing of the NBACC procedure, asked sources in the US biodefense community why this was done. No answers were provided.
So, yes — indeed, with all the shuffling of samples and evidence through offices and labs, it is easy to understand why a ricin trial would be put off.
But, strictly speaking, it’s not because only one lab can (or does) the work.
And it shows that, as in many things, the taxpayer does not get good value for dollar, or even cheaper work, when everything is outsourced as knee-jerk procedure. In fact, the opposite.
Today’s Washington Post featured a news piece on Booz Allen Hamilton and the outsourcing of work in the national security megaplex.
Near the end, there was this:
But the growth in contracting in defense and homeland security work continues. That has been fueled by several factors — ongoing public worry about terrorism, antipathy toward big government and an evolution in Washington’s revolving-door culture that provides extraordinary rewards to top government officials who go private, experts say.
Yet even outsourcing’s most vocal skeptics agree contractors are here to stay, despite what they contend are illusory savings.
“Curbing the use of contractors would be difficult or impossible,??? said Chuck Alsup, a retired Army intelligence officer and vice president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an Arlington County-based association of private companies and individual experts. “It would be, frankly, unwise.???
BioWatch is a now infamous and expensive government program, put together in the aftermath of the anthrax mailer, to detect aerial release of pathogens in major American cities.
After ten years, it does not work.
In 2012, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of news stories on it that tore apart the program’s reputation.
Last year, David Willman of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
President George W. Bush announced the system’s deployment in his 2003 State of the Union address, saying it would “protect our people and our homeland.” Since then, BioWatch air samplers have been installed inconspicuously at street level and atop buildings in cities across the country — ready, in theory, to detect pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases.
But the system has not lived up to its billing. It has repeatedly cried wolf, producing dozens of false alarms in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
Worse, BioWatch cannot be counted on to detect a real attack, according to confidential government test results and computer modeling.
The false alarms have threatened to disrupt not only the 2008 Democratic convention, but also the 2004 and 2008 Super Bowls and the 2006 National League baseball playoffs. In 2005, a false alarm in Washington prompted officials to consider closing the National Mall.
Federal agencies documented 56 BioWatch false alarms — most of them never disclosed to the public — through 2008. More followed.
The ultimate verdict on BioWatch is that state and local health officials have shown no confidence in it. Not once have they ordered evacuations or distributed emergency medicines in response to a positive reading.
“I just think it’s a colossal waste of money … It’s a stupid program,” one scientist for the Colorado Department of Health and the Environment told the newspaper.
Even my hometown has been affected by BioWatch’s failures.
Wrote the Times:
Dr. Takashi Wada, health officer for Pasadena from 2003 to 2010, was guarded in discussing the BioWatch false positive that occurred on his watch. Wada confirmed that the detection was made, in February 2007, but would not say where in the 23-square-mile city.
“We’ve been told not to discuss it,” he said in an interview.
Despite its failures and increasing news of such, no one can halt the BioWatch program. Put together by the federal government and under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, BioWatch is also run by private sector national security contractors.
One such contractor is a business virtually no Americans have heard of called the Tauri Group.
It’s website is bland, revealing little except that it’s a great company to work for and that one of its specialties is combating weapons of mass destruction. A page mentioning its involvement in BioWatch is
here.
In e-mail discussions between your GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow earlier this year on the money spent battling the threat of bioterrorism (not counting the recent goofball ricin mailers, there have been no deadly bioterror attacks since Bruce Ivins) an insider with knowledge of the BioWatch program had this to say:
“Some of the Tauri Group contractors running BioWatch were making $350K on top of their military pensions.”
BioWatch has cost one billion dollars to date. The sum indicates why there is intense effort to sustain it.
Outsourcing, from the NBACC and trivial ricin mail cases, to BioWatch, does not necessarily save taxpayer dollars.
The look of national bioterrorism defense entitlement spending in Omaha, Nebraska. The flush days may be ending.
“Federal funding for the Special Pathogens and Biosecurity Laboratory at University of Nebraska’s Medical Center peaked at $1.2 million, has been sliced in half in recent years, and could get whacked again,” reads the Omaha World Herald caption on the picture.
It’s the type of article that shows up about once a month now, bioterrorism defense scientists at obscurely named labs built in the great counter-bioterror boom after anthrax, exuding woe that their work is being, or could be, slashed.
The country way over-invested in bioterror defense in the wake of 9/11. Free money went out for almost a decade. No results were required and none were furnished. During the time the public was bombarded with assertions that catastrophic bioterror attacks were easy to mount and likely.
None of the claims of the threat-mongers materialized. That’s zero.
Many of our most famous bioterror defense researchers grew wealthy during a period when millions of other Americans saw their economic futures languish or go up in smoke. Infrastructure repair and spending for the public good shriveled but national security spending ballooned.
Now, in some places, it is getting a much needed haircut. But still not enough.
It’s a hard fact the poor in America have no political voice. But those in national security work always do.
The Omaha World news piece tries to paint a picture of a high tech lab engaged in secret and sensitive work, vital to the safety of citizens.
It does not help the case, however, to mention ricin as a big thing.
From the Herald:
The three-ring binders, each one containing its own nightmare, line one shelf in the lab.
“Bacillus anthracis,??? one binder is labeled …
“Ricin,??? another binder is labeled. That would be the powdery poison that a Mississippi man allegedly mailed to President Barack Obama this spring in the upside-down days after the Boston Marathon bombing.
There are other binders, many others, but as I write down their names, the Omaha scientists who run Nebraska’s Special Pathogens and Biosecurity Preparedness Laboratory politely ask me to stop …
This bookshelf of horrors needs to stay secret, they say.
“We’d let you read this, but then we’d have to lock you up for 10 years,??? says Dr. Steven Hinrichs, director of the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory, which oversees the biosecurity lab.
He points to the ricin binder. He is joking. At least I think he is.
However, the public knows there’s not much book in ricin terrorism having experienced a uniquely remarkable period of it this year.
Ricin, or more descriptively — castor powder, in mail is hardly a hazard. This despite the national line, now twelve years old, that it is profoundly deadly and easy to make.
In the long period between now and the beginning of the bioterror defense boom there’s been essentially no change in the science used to examine ricin or samples suspected to be contaminated with it. In fact, the science is the almost the same as when I was in grad school working protein biochemistry in the mid-Eighties.
I know. I’ve seen the work from ricin cases, been asked about it from a professional’s standpoint.
There’s nothing new needed for ricin. The FBI gathers its evidence and does preliminary testing. Then it sends its sample to the mega-bioterror defense lab built in the response to Bruce Ivins, the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) in Maryland.
Then the NBACC, despite its vast resources and its ability to do the work in house, outsources the determinative work to yet another lab. And it’s all part of the chain of over-spending established during the war on terror.
Think of it as nationally hiring crews of hundreds to screw in a couple light bulbs.
Why?
Perhaps because they were given way too much money.
Because the national leadership over-reacted over a long period of time. Because no very-important-person can suggest the bioterrorism threat has been hyped and inflated and that the response to it is now glaringly inappropriate without losing their career.
The Omaha scientists find their lab “increasingly starved for once-plentiful federal cash,” writes Matthew Hansen for the newspaper.
What if everyone decides the [bioterror threat] is no big deal?
An amount of ricin roughly equivalent to three grains of salt can kill a human. A Mississippi man tried to send ricin to the president of the United States in April. A Texas woman — a small-time actress in the TV series “The Walking Dead??? — tried to send President Obama ricin in May.
And yet you would’ve barely known that if you looked at the front page of a newspaper. The first ricin story got crowded out by the Boston bombing, and the second barely made a blip in the 24-hour news cycle.
It’s laughable.
You couldn’t get away from Shannon Richardson during the days leading up to her arrest and after. Her husband made celebrity morning television to speak tearfully of his scheming wife. Thousands of pictures of castor seeds and Shannon in various fetching outfits overflowed Internet gossip sites.
James Everett Dutschke became ubiquitous on the evening news. His
coincidentally bad timing with respect to his ricin mail scheme, coming as it did during the week of the Boston bombing, gave the incident even more publicity.
No, the public got a very good look at ricin terrorism. And there was a cognitive disconnect between what it saw and what it had been told about the allegedly deadly horror of it over the last twelve years.
The [scientists of the Special Pathogens and Biosecurity Laboratory at UNMC] bring up the fact that you can find recipes on the Internet to cook up any number of biological horrors,” adds the reporter.
Something that’s been said thousands of times in the last dozen years. Repeated ad nauseum in the news, worked into television shows, dramatic series and movie plots.
Mostly it’s been convenient bullshit. That it has lost a lot of its power to frighten and persuade is not really a case of public apathy.
But it has always had a lot to do with those defending their career turf.
A secret three-ring binder for lil’ ol’ me? Tee-hee.
Earlier this year, [Ross Miller of Elma, NY], [a] 44-year-old artist and small-businessman assisted the FBI as a witness in a case involving letters that were poisoned with a deadly substance called ricin and mailed to President Obama, a judge and a Republican senator, Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi.
Miller, who has been visiting loved ones in East Aurora and Elma this week, said he was shocked and upset to learn that someone may have used beans he sold to make a substance intended to hurt or kill public officials.
“We were very upset. It was irritating and nerve-racking. I found it offensive that somebody would use a bean product that we sold them to try to kill someone,??? Miller told The Buffalo News.
The Millers, meanwhile, had been following news reports in the case. They realized that ricin could be made from ground-up castor bean shells …
“We’d been … hoping that nobody used any beans that were bought from us to make ricin,??? Miller said.
“We checked our records to see if we’d ever sold any beans to anyone in that part of Mississippi. My wife keeps extensive records, and she found out that we had sold some beans to??? Dutschke last year.
He was a faceless Internet customer who spent about $20 on about 100 castor beans the Millers sent to him.
The realization that they may have sold beans used to make ricin that was sprinkled on a letter to the world’s most powerful leader scared and deeply concerned the Millers …
[The Millers, after making inquiries, were put in touch with] W. Chad Lamar, the federal prosecutor in Mississippi who was handling the ricin case …
“The Millers’ information was very helpful, especially after Dutschke had denied ever buying castor beans,??? [a lawyer friend of the Millers] said.
The Millers told the newspaper their craft business will no longer sell castor beans. They were not very profitable, anyway, Ross Miller informed.
A federal public defender has asked a judge to delay the trial of a Mississippi man charged with sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge.
Attorney Greg Park says in a court filing Tuesday that he needs more time to prepare for the trial of James Everett Dutschke of Tupelo.
The trial was scheduled for July 29, unusually speedy for these kinds of things. It appears the federal government may want to pack the current clutch of accused ricin mailers away fast.
By contrast, the two men arrested last year and accused in the ricin-part of the Georgia Ricin Beans case have yet to go to trial.
Shannon Richardson was just indicted on three charges of mailing threatening letters, the most famous of which went to the President. If guilty, it’s five years per charge.
“(I will) make sure you wont be runnin this country in the ground any further,” the letter to the Prez said, which along with the other two, were intended to frame her husband.
Richardson’s lawyer requested a mental exam for her a week or so ago & the court granted it. Such a shame that a taste of Hollywood took her down this dark path of ruin.
Goofball quote of the last two weeks, from a national lab research doing rent-seeking on the bank of the ricin case cluster:
There is an urgency to the [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory] work, because for many would-be terrorists, the ease of access and relatively simple production method has made ricin the “weapon of choice,??? David Wunschel said.
Whatever the three involved in the ricin cluster are, “would-be terrorists” doesn’t describe them.
“Ricin Mama,” however, does describe one.
Trivia note: That’s Steve Cropper, best known as guitarist for Booker T. & the MG’s and the Blues Brothers Band, beside southern strategy Boogie Man Lee Atwater in the video.
Matthew Buquet, 37, entered not-guilty pleas during an appearance before U.S. Magistrate Cynthia Imbrogno.
He is charged with producing and transferring a biological toxin called ricin; mailing a threatening communication to the president of the United States; and mailing a threatening communication to a federal judge. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
No motive has been offered for the mailings, and the federal government has sealed most of the court documents in the case.
Last week, a case of rent-seeking behavior on the hazard of ricin from a laboratory funded by Homeland Security, by reporter Tom Sowa of the Spokesman Review newspaper:
As federal prosecutors build a case against a Spokane man charged with sending ricin-laced letters to the president, the CIA, a federal judge and Fairchild Air Force Base, one of the legal challenges they’ll face is proving that the substance is indeed ricin, a lethal poison derived from ground seeds of the castor plant.
[Note: This is untrue. There straightforward lab procedures used to test for active ricin. Typically, the FBI sends suspect samples, be they castor seeds, castor powder, or both, to the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC). NBACC, which was built for the war on terror, then outsources the lab work to a firm like American International Biotechnology Services (AIBiotech) in Richmond, VA. Why does the NBACC, one of the most well-funded science installations in the country, outsource this work? Interesting question, one perhaps to be answered in the future.]
[Investigators] also can use tests to figure out how the ricin was made, which can help link a suspect with the chemicals used in the process or determine how much advance planning took place. New versions of those analytic tests are being developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, at the Chemical and Biological Signature Sciences Laboratory.
[Although the documents in the Buquet case are sealed, the FBI reporting agent will already have a very good idea of how the tainted letters were made. This is again not really accurate news, shaped to make the work at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory appear more valuable.]
Among the lab’s goals is developing better tools to identify the exact methods used to make ricin or other toxic substances, said David Wunschel, a biochemical researcher at PNNL.
There is an urgency to the lab’s work, because for many would-be terrorists, the ease of access and relatively simple production method has made ricin the “weapon of choice,??? Wunschel said.
[But ricin is not a weapon of choice of terrorists. This is, again, untrue and the researcher must know it. The alleged perpetrators in the cluster of three ricin cases — J. Everett Dutschke, Matthew Buquet, and Shannon Richardson — are not “terrorists” in the sense of the war on terror. A look at their pictures and what is known of their lives shows everyone that this is the case.
The choice to make ricin mail, in these cases, appears to be trivial. One case, that of Shannon Richardson, looks like it could have been a partial copy-cat of the J. Everett Dutschke incident, one where the primary aim is to draw attention and frame another person.
It is not difficult to understand this. However, rent-seeking behavior, that is the justification of continued work, or research on a matter that is of little value to average Americans, requires that a different story be told — that ricin is a “weapon of choice” of terrorists.
During the war on terror, zero people have been killed by ricin.]
Ricin is a “one-to-one??? attack that relies on getting a potential victim to breathe or swallow the toxin. Unlike poisonous gases or viruses, ricin isn’t absorbed easily through the skin.
Even so, the bioterror scenarios include the possible distribution of dozens of ricin-laced packages to a government office, causing a lot of disruption and requiring extensive cleanup, Wunschel said
Wunschel joined the PNNL staff in 2000. Following 9/11, the new Department of Homeland Security started funding projects to give law enforcement better tools in dealing with bioterrorism. The ricin study has been underway in Richland since 2005.
Scientists say extracting ricin from castor seeds may be relatively simple if someone follows a series of steps deliberately and carefully. But if someone uses a less-complex method with fewer steps, the result is a less pure and less lethal product, Wunschel said.
Ricin accounts for roughly 1 percent of the weight of the dry castor seed.
Ricin isn’t a contact poison. It’s not absorbed through skin anymore than a piece of lunch meat is, period.
But there you have it, once again. Ricin is simple to make. The purification of ricin is beyond the people being arrested in the US on ricin-making charges.
Ricin just does not make a very good weapon. One of the reasons is that there isn’t much of it in a castor bean. A bean is generally mostly oil and 1 percent as ricin is only a start point. Any protein purification must, by definition, result in less because that is the nature of the work.
Currently, war on terror rent-seeking in the national security complex has funded the development of two research ricin vaccines.
One is being pursued by a company mentioned infrequently here — Soligenix. The other is in development at USAMRIID, once known as Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD., that national lab facility on bioterror defense that, in turn, spawned the idea for the NBACC.
Two other ricin-making machines, one human and the other a seed grinder that spews castor hulls and powder into the air.
The rest of the world does not care about the bullshit on castor beans, terrorism and ricin peddled by the American national security complex.
Does humor belong in music? Ricin Mama says it does. I’m the best rock guitarist and harp player in the national security field, easy.
If this doesn’t make you laugh or smile, you can’t be my friend. Really. That’s what I told ’em on Facebook.
Details: That’s a castor bean extraction machine operating in Malaysia. Obviously, producing a lot of dust. (This is for the thickheaded in the US who still think castor powder is a WMD.)
A Federal Grand Jury indicted a Browne’s Addition man Wednesday for allegedly mailing five letters laced with ricin. Matthew Ryan Buquet faces life in prison if a jury finds him guilty.
Buquet sent ricin-tainted mail to the White House, Fairchild AFB, a judge in Spokane and the “downtown Spokane post office.” A letter sent to the CIA was not delivered and returned to a postal facility.
All letters were said to include the statement:
“We have a bomb placed. We are going to Kill you. Hezbollah.”
Buquet had a page on Facebook. On it he liked his smartphone, “Hannibal,??? the tv show, PSY’s new single, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,??? Cody Wilson’s 3D printed plastic gun and the right wing crank newsite, Newsmax.
Authorities have returned to a Texas home linked to the investigation into ricin-tainted letters sent to New York City’s mayor and President Barack Obama.
FBI agents wearing hazardous material suits were seen going in and out of the house in New Boston Wednesday. The house also was searched last Friday.
Gathering more evidence for the case against Shannon Richardson?
Or looking for more because the FBI does not completely believe the stories of Nathaniel Richardson?
Was it a one person operation?
You must admit the now not-unique idea of framing your husband with a ricin letter sent to the President because you believe the resulting publicity may raise your profile in Hollywood is a tortured one.
