05.31.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 8:46 am by George Smith
Blobs of castor powder containing ricin and some oil stains on Bloomberg letter.
Bigger.
UPDATED: FBI detains man in Texas. See post footer.
From yesterday at GlobaSecurity.Org:
[The ricin mailers] also must have at least vague recognition that the FBI’s WMD unit is now well-prepared to track such cases and there is a good chance they will be arrested.
When ricin mail arrives and a determination is made that active poison is present, one can imagine the FBI and other federal agencies immediately using Internet search, as well as their own tools, to scour the web for language similar to the messaging in the ricin mail.
This can be one Achilles’ Heel of the ricin mailer. Another vulnerability is the existence of confidants.
It is one thing to listen to a loony acquaintance rail about the president, or Mayor Bloomberg, and how they will make a poison powder. It is quite another to read in the newspaper that such a thing has been done, that castor beans have been pounded, the words are nationwide, and you might have an idea who did it.
From the wire, just breaking:
“Authorities, including the FBI, questioned a New Boston, Texas, man Thursday night in connection with an investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to government officials, including President Barack Obama,” KSLA-TV in Shreveport, La., reports.
According to ABC News, a source familiar with the case says investigators consider the man to be a person of interest at this time. The network writes that the source says the man’s wife “called authorities after she noticed strange material in her refrigerator, and noticed computer searches for ricin.”
Possible hit or blind alley? Time will tell.
But bean pounding, the making of poison powder in this country in 2013, hardly ever occurs in a perfect vacuum.
Texarkana Gazette breaking story on man in connection with new ricin letters.
“FBI agents secure the home [of Nathan D. Richardson] at 111 Maple in New Boston, Texas, where ricin is believed to be found,” it reads.
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05.30.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 3:38 pm by George Smith
Blobs of castor powder containing ricin and some oil stains.
Bigger.
“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns … Anyone [who] wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”
The grinding or pounding of castor seeds into castor powder containing ricin has its roots in the violent far right in the US. As far back as the late Eighties, American men in this demographic were interested in it, publishing recipes for the process in their pamphlets and books. The books and writings were devoted to collecting knowledge on how to use and make improvised weapons in an insurrection against the US government, or for use in a race war.
Many of the recipes for ricin now found on the Internet descend from the writings of Kurt Saxon, first in a pamphlet called The Weaponeer, and later in The Poor Man’s James Bond.
The newest case of ricin mail with its letters threatening the President, Mayor Bloomberg and to his Washington-based gun control group, implicates a philosophy not uncommon in the country’s violent far right.
The old blurb on the back of Saxon’s The Poor Man’s James Bond, has relevance in relationship to the implications of violence, outright threats, in this fresh collection of ricin letters:
“It is bad to poison your fellow man, blow him up or even shoot him or otherwise disturb his tranquility. It is also uncouth to counterfeit your nation’s currency and it is tacky to destroy property as instructed in [the chapter] Arson and Electronics …
“But some people are just naturally crude … It is your responsibility, then, to be aware of the many ways bad people can be harmful …
“Also, in the event that our nation is invaded by Foreign Devils, it is up to you to destroy them with speed and vigor. Or — and perish the thought — if our Capitol should fall to the enemy within, I expect you to do your duty.
“It is right to share with your enemies, the knowledge in this wonderful book …”
This bleak philosophy, or attitude — if you will, has long been associated with America’s violent right.
WhiteManistan may not like what the extremists are doing, or the implications of the threats in the latest ricin letter, but that’s where the roots of it are.
Formally, at GlobalSecurity.Org. Twitter tweet and share, please.
Update:
More letters associated with the Matthew Buquet ricin case in Spokane have been reported.
From the wire:
The FBI today said that a total of five threatening letters, three of which tested positive for the poison ricin, were mailed from Spokane earlier this month.
Four of the letters, including one to President Obama and another to Fairchild Air Force Base, have been intercepted, the FBI said.
One letter was apparently also mailed to the CIA and has gone missing.
If this hold, then all three of the recent ricin mailings have involved letters sent to the president.
Rhetorical question: Why does anyone thing personal mail with powders in it would ever get to the President over ten years post anthrax?
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Posted in Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 9:11 am by George Smith
Three incidents with ricin-tainted mail between April and May constitute new and uncharted territory in the US. And in two of the instances ricin mail targeting the President has been intercepted. The first, from alleged castor bean pounder J. Everett Dutschke in Tupelo, Mississippi. And now from Shreveport, LA.
This is a remarkable series of events, one that should shock Americans. Because while no one has been killed or even seriously made ill in any of the attacks, ricin mailing is insane behavior. And real ricin mailings (as opposed to powder hoaxes), which seem to immediately inspire copycat mail, has never happened.
Perhaps years down the road, there is Ph.D. thesis in the psychology of domestic poison powder mailers in it. Who thought unrelated people could be so psychotic, using the same poison powder ploy?
The newest ricin incident contains a message — one to the mayor of New York, and a similar one to the President, that marks it as gun nut hate mail, perhaps from Shreveport, Louisiana:
You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns … Anyone [who] wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.
To date no domestic terrorist has ever produced pure ricin.
What is produced is the crude powder of castor seeds which contain some ricin.
No one has ever been killed in a domestic US ricin incident.
However, now we’re in new territory, at least for the short term.
The people who mail ricin-tainted letters likely know, at least in a vague way, that their mail will be intercepted if it is sent to any official of great importance. 9/11 and the
anthraxer, Bruce Ivins, saw to that.
They also likely have at least vague recognition that the FBI’s WMD unit is now well-prepared to track such cases and that there is a good chance they will be arrested.
When ricin mail arrives and a determination is made that active poison is present, one can imagine the FBI and other federal agencies immediately begin using Internet search, as well as their own tools, to scour the web for
language similar to the messaging in the ricin mail.
This can be one Achilles’ Heel of the ricin mailer. Another vulnerability is the existence of confidants.
It is one thing to listen to a loony acquaintance rail about the president, or Mayor Bloomberg, and making a poison powder. It is quite another to read in the newspaper that such a thing has been done, the words are nationwide, and you might have an idea who did it.
Considering all these things, the three back-to-back ricin incidents indicate a threshold has been crossed. These are people who perceive that they may certainly be caught.
But they do it, anyway. In this case, the individual certainly appears to want everyone to know his words. It is quite an unusual standard.
This marks a strange and grotesque period as the country enters the summer of 2013. Crazy people engaged in a small and unconnected, but still quite astonishing, national group ricin mailing.
It’s a first in attempted American bioterrorism. We’re number 1, the exceptional country.
Wire reports inform that three police offices experienced mild diarrhea after contact with the latest ricin mail. Consistent with a minor degree ricin (or castor oil, since the mail was said to contain a greasy powder) ingestion?
Possibly. Or something else, unconnected.
Later laboratory testing may shed light on in coming days.
Analytically, what a castor powder mixture containing ricin looks like after SDS gel electrophoresis. Examples from a ricin domestic terrorism case in the US begin in the lanes to the right of the clear lane. The single band lane to the left is a lab ricin standard. And the arrow denotes ricin component in the crude mixture from castor seeds.
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05.29.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 6:11 pm by George Smith
Three ricin-letter cases in the space of April to May make a remarkable national landmark. This has never occurred before. What we’re seeing right now is novel deeply psychotic, imitative behavior, by Americans very much influenced by the group received terrorism mythology of ricin poison.
And it has been all uniquely domestic, none of the cases seeming to have much to do with 9/11.
I’ll remind readers, particularly with regards to this case, the popularization in use of ricin arose from the neo-Nazi violent right, specifically the writings of Kurt Saxon in The Poor Man’s James Bond.
From the New York Times:
Two letters that contained threats to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — one addressed to him, the other to a lobbyist who works on his gun control campaign — have tested positive for the deadly poison ricin, the authorities said on Wednesday.
The first letter was opened at a New York City mail center in Lower Manhattan on Friday, the police said. Although staff members at the mail center do not appear to have become ill, several police officers who came into contact with the letter’s contents “indicated some mild symptoms the next day, including diarrhea,??? and they are being treated in hospitals, the New York Police Department’s spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said on Wednesday afternoon. “They’re being checked out as a precaution.???
The second letter, which was opened on Sunday in Washington, was addressed to Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group Mr. Bloomberg helps run and finances, officials said. Mr. Glaze opened the letter, an official said. No injuries were reported, Mr. Browne said.
A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Peter Donald, confirmed that the bureau was investigating the letters, but declined to comment further. Both letters were identical in content, bore references to the debate over gun regulation and contained written threats to Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Browne said.
Both letters had a Louisiana postmark, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing …
The letters contained a “pink, orange oily substance,??? Mr. Browne said, which tested positive for ricin on Wednesday at the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland.
The mild symptoms may not mean anything since others were not affected. Castor would have to be eaten or swallowed to result in diarrhea. Perhaps more likely, something else or shared stress due to the circumstances of a ricin-letter attack.
Doubtless the FBI’s ricin group, now experienced, is well on the case.
Analytically, what a castor powder mixture containing ricin looks like. Example from a ricin and domestic terrorism case in the US. Arrow denotes ricin component in crude mixture from castor seed.
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05.24.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks at 12:59 pm by George Smith
Why? “No one can really say what attracts a few unusual American men to it. Pure madness and mental dysfunction, social anomie, or just a bad itch, one scratched by making what they believe to be a secret deadly powder?”
The FBI asserts active ricin was found in tainted letters attributed to Matthew Buquet in Sopkane, WA.
This means they ran the powder against an assay that relies on a measure of protein transcription in a cell process and its inhibition.
Ricin inactivates protein synthesis at the level of the ribosome. If you add a sample to a biochemical assay which relies on translation, it will stop.
Ricin can then be confirmed through addition of antibody specific for the poison in another round of testing. Cancellation of translation inhibition is then confirmatory for active ricin in a powder.
From the wire:
The indictment did not mention ricin, but the FBI made the link in a news release late Wednesday, saying analysis showed the letter sent to the judge contained “active ricin toxin.”
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05.22.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks at 6:36 pm by George Smith
Not another. Infatuated with his smartphone, too.
Matthew Ryan Buquet has been arrested by the FBI in connection with the recent mailing of two more ricin letters in Spokane, WA. Over the weekend, his apartment was raided and today he was arrested.
Buquet is on Facebook. He likes “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.
From the wire:
A man accused of mailing ricin to the post office in Spokane pleaded not guilty Wednesday in federal court.
Matthew Ryan Buquet was charged with one count of mailing a threatening communication …
The FBI said the 37-year-old man was arrested following last week’s discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin. Buquet was arrested Wednesday afternoon …
Spokane police confirmed that Buquet was also a registered level two sex offender. Buquet was convicted of indecent liberties involving a 10-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty in November of 1998 and served 18 months. He was released November 14th, 1999.
From the Spokane Spokesman Review:
A suspect was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in connection with the two ricin-laced letters sent by mail, one of which contained threats against U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle.
“The indictment did not mention ricin,” added the AP.
This is another odd one, leading to the potential that the ricin-detection was a false positive in the field in a test applied to all letters threatening officials. Or that ricin-testing of mail has been ramped up in the wake of the Dutschke case.
In which case, Buquet will not join the ranks of bean pounders and they will release him on bail for trial over sending a nasty letter to a judge.
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05.20.13
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 8:39 pm by George Smith
If you’ve kept up with the story of J. Everett Dutschke, his music and ricin letters here, you’ve had a full measure of the twisted idiosyncrasy and unusual crime he delivered to his neighborhood in Tupelo.
However, these three grafs leap of a Washington Post feature on him:
In the summer of 2012, as Dutschke prepared to enter his band RoboDrum in the annual Bud Lite Battle of the Bands contest, he started coming to the attention of law enforcement.
In June, he was charged with indecent exposure by the city attorney’s office after several neighborhood children came forward.
“He would get the attention of the girls with a green laser. He would hit the laser and click it around until they started to look into his house. Then he would expose himself,??? said Dennis Carlock, whose 13-year-old granddaughter was one of the victims and testified to the incidents.
He was convicted on exposure and later charged with three counts of fondling minors.
As mentioned earlier, there has to be a book in it: Bean Pounding, with only slight apologies to Faulkner.
J. Everett Dutschke — from the archives.
Do enjoy.
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Posted in Ricin Kooks at 7:54 am by George Smith
Moving a bit more slowly in the latest ricin case:
FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich would not say whether agents were questioning anyone in connection with the case.
“We are not actively looking for a subject,??? Sandalo Dietrich said. “We are not asking the public’s help in bringing someone in.???
Despite the hazmat suits, officials said apartment residents were not at risk, and people were seen coming in and out of the brick building in the city’s historic Browne’s Addition neighborhood.
“There’s no public risk,??? Sandalo Dietrich said.
Scott Ward has lived in the building for three years, and lives on the second floor near the apartment that was being searched. He said he does not know the neighbor who lives in that apartment.
“He’s a guy with a big beard,??? Ward said. “He sticks to himself.”
The US government, at least parts of it, has finally modified its comments on ricin in letters, in the last two cases stating the castor powder did not pose a threat.
News stories report it. However, they still add that a small pure amount, something which has never existed in ricin cases, is still deadly if eaten or “inhaled.”
Analytically, what a castor powder mixture containing ricin looks like.
With only slight apologies to Faulkner.
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05.18.13
Posted in Ricin Kooks at 9:02 am by George Smith
Just in from the wire, another castor seed kook:
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are executing a search warrant Saturday in the case of two letters containing the deadly poison ricin that were intercepted this week at a post office in Washington state.
Police say the investigation has focused on a neighborhood near downtown Spokane.
The FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Spokane police are involved, but further details were not immediately available …
“The crude form of the ricin suggests that it does not present a health risk to U.S. Postal Service personnel or to others who may have come in contact with the letter,” the agency said in a news release Thursday.
Coming one month after the J. Everett Dutschke affair, it would seem to signify serious brain damage.
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05.10.13
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 11:16 am by George Smith
During the height of the war on terror you hardly ever saw anyone in the professional ranks with the nerve to say that grubbing for more defense research funding on the back of fear was inadvisable.
For the Courier-Journal newspaper of Indiana, a scientist speaks of the recent ricin scare in a most surprising way:
I am a scientist. I am not opposed to research. It is essential for the similar preparation required for either a bioweapons assault or a naturally emerging disease. Nevertheless, a fear-based crisis response, because public officials happened to be among the targets, is self-defeating.
Academics should resist the temptation to exploit the ricin letters to obtain more resources for their research. There are already ongoing scientific studies of ricin, including some that employ the toxin to kill cancer cells. We don’t need an infusion of money into ricin research. I don’t claim to know the motives of the ricin letter mailer or whether he got the idea from a television show. I do know that overreaction encourages future terrorists.
The author, David Sanders, is “an associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue, is working on a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-sponsored curriculum-development project,” reads the newspaper.
“[Environmental] sensors for true biological agents are and will be for the foreseeable future wastes of money,” he adds.
Sanders also writes that the over-reaction to things like the Dutschke ricin-mailings inspires other terrorists.
He is echoing what I have written for years. The ocean of print, television and Internet news on the subject, during the war on terror years, established the received wisdom in the minds of would-be terrorists that biological and chemical warfare are easy to do.
As one consequence, many bad people have maintained an interest in fiddling with castor seeds.
It is fortunate that reality does not match the national belief that a ricin weapon is easy to make, simply by pounding castor seeds, and J. Everett Dutschke’s tainted letters were, in the final measure, just a damn nuisance.
After the ricin letters arrived and made news, a scientist and one company did immediately go rent-seeking.
And I wrote about it, pointing to a piece from Nature:
The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, has developed a vaccine called RVEc, which protected mice that were exposed to inhaled ricin.2 The vaccine has also been tested in human volunteers, who subsequently developed antibodies to the toxin. But further human testing is needed, and it is not clear whether the Department of Defense will continue to fund the vaccine’s development.
The other leading vaccine candidate, RiVax, is made by a company called Soligenix, based in Princeton, New Jersey. The vaccine was initially developed by Ellen Vitetta, an immunologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and batches made by her group have been tested in animals. Those batches have also been found to be safe in healthy human volunteers, in whom they stimulated the production of antibodies.
But Soligenix has not yet tested the safety and effectiveness of its own batches of RiVax. The company’s development efforts have slowed as a result of budget constraints at its funding agency, the NIAID, says Vitetta.
“It basically is not going anywhere,??? she says. “It’s disappointing and upsetting.??? After an event such as the latest ricin mailings, “everyone wants to know where the vaccines are. Somebody has to think this work is important enough to fund us and let us finish it.???
Soligenix’s work on the vaccine is currently funded by a US$9.4-million NIAID grant, but further testing in animals to prove the treatment’s effectiveness would cost between $20 million and $40 million, says Chris Schaber, the company’s president.
And another from a New Jersey business journal:
Soligenix is actively working to develop vaccines for bioterrorism agents such as ricin, but funding the research remains a challenge, according to company president and CEO, Christopher J. Schaber.
“Every biodefense program needs to be sponsored by the government,??? said Schaber. “We don’t spend our own money on biodefense. The company could not take off with biodefense unless we secure a large procurement contract from the government, which are typically in the hundreds of millions of dollars …
Soligenix’s share price rose 20 percent this week after the ricin-laced letters to government officials were publicized.
Soligenix would make money if the government stockpiles the vaccine, but the research has to be funded and it has to get FDA approval before the company can procure a government contract.
“We’ve taken this very far with the support of the NIH (National Institutes of Health), but we really need to get a larger contract with more funding to allow us to move forward,??? Schaber said. “The government many times doesn’t move that quickly on these things, especially because a lot of people haven’t died.
Bigger.
Soligenix’s stock, which isn’t worth a great deal, shot up on the 16th and 17th, the day ricin letters to Roger Wicker and the President were discovered, boosted by speculators. A letter had been sent to a judge in Tupelo, MS, on the 10th but did not make the news until after the letters had been discovered in the nation’s capital.
J. Everett Dutsche was arrested on April 27 by the FBI.
Soligenix, a company that exists only because of taxpayer spending during the war on terror — from the archives.
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