06.02.15
Posted in Bioterrorism, War On Terror at 3:24 pm by George Smith
The mailing of live anthrax spores gives everyone an accidental opportunity to see some of the outlines of the unique public sector/private sector infrastructure bought to fight bioterrorism.
For example, see here, here, here, here, here and so on.
We paid for the network. I suppose it’s nice to see what it’s up to every now and then. In this case, sending out samples for testing against a variety of sensor systems and assays developed in the private and public sectors.
Number of bioterror attacks since Bruce Ivins: 0
A variety of quotes from the script of Dr. Strangelove would seem like a fun thing to do here.
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05.28.15
Posted in Bioterrorism, War On Terror at 1:39 pm by George Smith
The US government bio-defense laboratories produced the best bioterrorist money could buy. That was Bruce Ivins, the anthrax mailer.
Ivins brought on an incredible surge in spending to counter bioterrorism in this country. A huge nationwide infrastructure was built and augmented. I wrote about one of its keystone facilities here.
Billions and billions of dollars spent. Half a billion on the one in the link above, per year, alone.
Post Bruce Ivins, number of bioterrorism incidents: ZERO.
This week, a mistake in the anthrax defense program shows the facilities reach around the world, including government and private sector labs. Not really a big surprise. It’s what taxpayer money built. It’s a big business.
From the Los Angeles Times:
At least 26 people are being treated for potential exposure to deadly anthrax after an Army bio-defense facility in Utah mistakenly sent live samples to private and military laboratories in as many as nine states, including California, and South Korea, officials said Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was working with state and federal agencies to investigate how the anthrax samples were sent from the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground, a vast facility in southwest Utah where researchers try to build and test defenses against chemical and biological agents, including viruses and bacteria.
The CDC said it had launched its inquiry last weekend after it was contacted by a private commercial lab in Maryland that had received live spores.
This is a very big and embarrassing deal, although the specifics as to why are not really addressed in the LAT piece.
Ivins produced live anthrax spores, dry powder. In that state, anthrax is very dangerous. The spores float and get everywhere.
The US government’s bioterror-defense programs are not, repeat that — not — supposed to be producing live anthrax spore powder. That’s what Bruce Ivins did, something he kept secret during his clandestine work at Fort Detrick.
And you’re not supposed to make spore powder for reasons which now are very obvious.
Wet anthrax, slurry, sort of OK, as a research necessity.
What, precisely, was the state of the mailed samples?
The newspaper only mentions that “spores” are supposed to be “inert,” dead, rendered so by exposure to gamma rays.
Here’s a potential clue. Twenty two of the twenty six being treated are at Osan Air Base in South Korea.
“A joint U.S.-Korean program at Osan aims to boost bio-surveillance capabilities on the Korean Peninsula,” reads the newspaper.
This could mean someone opened a sample tube of dry spore preparation. And when it was discovered it was live, it was assumed everyone in the room, or who had opened it, had potentially been contaminated. Because of the very nature of the stuff.
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01.24.15
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 2:27 pm by George Smith
America is ricin happy, mesmerized by the mystique and allure of the poison found in castor seeds. Or at least a very small but unique demographic in it is.
The next item shows the FBI, unsurprisingly, is still looking at black market sites on the “Dark Web.” And, in a first, its agents have conducted a ricin sting, posing as a seller of poisons on one of these sites, allegedly netting a man who wished to buy “ricin pills.” For resale.
Reuters:
A Manhattan man tried to buy the biological toxin ricin from an undercover agent posing as a drug vendor on an online black marketplace, U.S. authorities said in criminal charges unsealed on Tuesday.
The man, Cheng Le, has been in federal custody since he was arrested on Dec. 23 …
The criminal complaint against Le said he used an unidentified black marketplace located within the “dark web,” a space on the Internet in which users’ true identities remain hidden while they communicate. Le allegedly contacted an agent who had taken over an online identity that had been previously used by a trafficker in illicit materials and asked to buy several lethal doses of ricin, a highly potent toxin derived from castor oil plant seeds …
The complaint said Le wanted the agent to send the ricin to a shipping store near his apartment where he maintained a postal box. He appeared to have plans to resell the ricin to buyers looking for ways to commit murder without being detected, and later asked the agent to put the ricin into pill form …
The man was “taken into custody after picking up delivery of a fake ricin pill,” reads a report from the Associated Press.
Apparently it is not widely known that when selling things from the “dark web,” the USPS is not part of the TOR network. And that in cyberspace the old aphorism is still true: Nobody knows if you’re a dog, or in this case, the Department of Justice.
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12.10.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 8:00 pm by George Smith
In the last twenty years, nobody has ever been released on bail in a ricin case. That’s NOBODY.
Get arrested for making castor powder. Go to jail. Stay there. Eventually, prison. It’s what happens to everyone in this small uniquely American demographic.
All that changed this week when Preston Rhoads of Oklahoma City was bailed on $200,000 and left to house arrest in the home of parents:
OKLAHOMA CITY – A man who was accused of plotting to kill his pregnant girlfriend with ricin has been released from jail.
Preston Rhoads was granted a $200,000 bond on Friday.
He will now go home to his parents’ house in Ada, where he will remain under house arrest.
Rhoads was charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of solicitation to commit murder in April.
Police received a tip that he was looking to hire someone to slip his girlfriend ricin in order to kill his unborn child.
Earlier, on Preston Rhoads, from the archives:
Today, Preston Rhoads, 30 of Oklahoma City, makes the second young American in 60 days to have been tabbed as influenced by Walter White, Breaking Bad and its secondary plot of ricin poisoning. Rhoads is the fourth young man arrested this year in connection with ricin-kookism, already up one from three arrests in the 12 months of last year.
The first [this year] was young Danny Milzman, a student at Georgetown University, of whom much has already been written here …
Wire news reported: “Test results have confirmed ricin was a substance found in the home of murder-for-hire suspect Preston Rhoads.
“A law enforcement source confirmed with News 9 the substance tested 100% positive for the deadly toxin. However, the substance was only found inside the home and police officers were not exposed.
“Oklahoma City Police and FBI agents say Rhoads was planning a murder before they searched his home on Thursday. The FBI says it processed his place for hazardous materials after finding the unknown substance, now identified as ricin.”
As in the case of Georgetown student Danny Milzman, Rhoads — although much older — was described as a perfect son by distraught friends and family members.
And, indeed, what profiling material exists upon the net supports this view.
Smiling faces of many friends [adorned] his Facebook page. And a self-made video of Rhoads on Vimeo shows an affable young man describing his career and education as a creator of digital art.
This year there have been more ricin cases than ever, up from 2013, which was also a bumper year in this small but nationally famous trend.
In 2013, three people were arrested and two already convicted in ricin, cases, all three which involved mailing castor powder to the president.
This year there have been five young men arrested in ricin cases this year: Rhoads, Danny Milzman of Georgetown University, Nicholas Todd Helman of Hatboro, PA, for a contaminated scratch-and-sniff card sent to a rival, Jesse Korff of Labelle, Florida, for ricin production and sale of abrin, the latter on which he has pleaded guilty, and — most recently, University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh student Kyle Allen Smith.
Smith remains in jail as does Nicholas Helman whose case was complicated by alleged additional death threats made while jailed. Danny Milzman pleaded guilty to making ricin, received a sentence of one year and one day, and will probably be released in January.
Much more on these cases can be found in the Ricin Kooks tab.
The archive of ricin case lore produced by this blog is comprehensive. Nothing else exists, anywhere, like it.
It makes troubling, confounding, and strange reading since the phenomenon of ricin-makers, or castor powder tinkerers, is almost entirely American. No other culture, no other western civilization, has anything like it. It is American exceptionalism in pure form.
While the numbers of people involved in it are small they always make national news.
Why are certain people drawn to pounding castor seeds? It would take a book to explain it.
Initially it was born of the belief in the far right in this country, now virtually universal in many quarters, that one had to be armed to the teeth to fight off tyrannical government, the encroaching UN, or anyone who might be coming for your stuff if civilization collapsed.
That cultural DNA inspired, and still inspires, a voluminous production of samizdat literature on weapons and the making of them from whatever is at hand. Poisons, like ricin, were and are part of it.
But today, ricin-making, that is the alleged easy production of a weapon of mass production, is part of American culture as accepted wisdom and entertainment. Movies and dramatic television (party like Heisenberg/Walter White!), books — fiction and non-fiction, and many related things now regularly stew American audiences in the lore of ricin.
The result: A civilization that thinks it knows a lot about it, the a lot being all rubbish.
No fatalities have ever been attributed to ricin in the war on terror. Indeed, there have been no ricin murders during the same period. Occasionally, castor bean mash is used for suicide. From the information that can be found, most attempts are unsuccessful.
One made the news earlier this year.
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12.03.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 9:14 am by George Smith
What the calling of a grand jury on 24th November in Oshkosh in the case of college student Kyle Allen Smith is hard to determine.
Initially I thought it indicated a slight difference in the trajectory of ricin cases in the US.
Apparently not.
It took a few hours, maybe minutes, maybe a day (the news coverage was very poor and confused) for the judge in the case to declare Smith would stand trial.
From the wire:
a Green Bay federal judge ruled there was enough evidence against 21-year-old Kyle Smith [to try him on a ricin complaint].
Prosecutors say Smith, a senior majoring in biology at UWO, admitted he knew what he was making and shouldn’t have been making it. According to Smith defense attorney William Kerner, Smith never intended to use ricin on humans. Kerner adds that the ricin powder found in Smith’s home was castor bean meal, which is used across the country and falls under different laws and regulations.
The judge ruled Smith would remain in jail. No lab equipment was found in his home, it was said.
In the past there was a decent-sized industry producing castor meal and castor oil, the first for fertilizer and occasionally as ineffective pesticide, the latter for lubrication, in this country.
Accordingly, there was federal regulation 173.955 governing the transport of castor powder.
It is here and shows no particular requirements that would lead one to think it was regarded as a serious hazard.
A recent regulation sheet shows castor to be at the same level of control it was when I first wrote of the matter back in 2008.
And emergency telephone number must be provided on the bill of lading and now, as then, the material was in the same category as this list of transportable commodities:
Battery powered equipment.
Battery powered vehicle.
Carbon dioxide, solid.
Castor bean.
Castor flake.
Castor meal.
Castor pomace.
Consumer commodity.
Dry ice.
Engines, internal combustion.
Fish meal, stabilized.
Fish scrap, stabilized.
Krill Meal, PG III.
Refrigerating machine.
Vehicle, flammable gas powered.
Vehicle, flammable liquid powered.
Wheelchair, electric.
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11.25.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 9:11 pm by George Smith
In the last fifteen years the trajectory of ricin cases in America has been constant.
Someone, almost always a white male, is arrested with castor powder after a joint anti-terrorism task force descends on his neighborhood. The powder is sent off to Frederick, MD, for assay at the multi-million dollar national facility built during the war on terror for just that purpose.
The arrested man either pleads guilty or goes to trial and is convicted.
But this year, and last, there has been a slow up-tick in people caught turning castor seeds into powder. While they may be nuisances and a danger to themselves, they are not obviously criminals or terrorists.
This year four young white man have been arrested. One used castor powder in a scratch-and-sniff card, part of hare-brained plot that went nowhere, one to allegedly retaliate against the new boyfriend of a former love. And another, in Oklahoma, by a young man who allegedly wanted to enlist someone in the poisoning of a pregnant girlfriend.
Two other cases, however, appear to be by two college students, mentally upset young men who exhibited extremely poor judgment.
Today, in Oshkosh, WI, a judge sent he question of whether or not University of Wisconsin student Kyle Smith would be indicted, and what he might be charged with, on a ricin complaint to a grand jury.
This just doesn’t happen in ricin cases and it is, perhaps, an indication that the senselessness of these alleged crimes and resulting history of convictions is beginning to sink in, if only in a minor way. Updated: There is, of course, the ham sandwich comparison which could mean, in this instance, the result will be as usual.
Or perhaps it means nothing at all, being too early to tell.
From the Oshkosh newspaper:
FBI special agent David Ratajczak testified in court Monday that the FBI submitted 1.624 grams of white powder in a vial for testing at the Homeland Security lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland. The substance tested positive for ricin and it was determined it contained 0.5 percent ricin.
It is evidence of another first: An actual laboratory characterization of the amount of poison in a small amount of castor powder.
In this case, 8 milligrams in the entire powder.
For reference purposes, the scientific literature indicates that anywhere between 350-700 micrograms of pure ricin constitutes a lethal dose in a 150 pound man — by injection.
In the historic literature there is only one case of death by lethal injection of ricin: the assassination of Georgi Markov. And ricin was never isolated in that case.
This year, there has been one case of death from ricin, an apparent suicide. And it is reported here.
A failed suicide was also reported earlier this year in southern California, on this blog.
In the United States, no one has died in any of the ricin cases reported during the last fifteen years. In one case, that of Roger von Bergendorff in 2008, the man accused of making the material was hospitalized for an emergency condition that was never specified.
As always, read the Ricin Kooks tab on this blog for a historically complete and comprehensive view of the topic.
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11.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 1:16 pm by George Smith
Last week saw an eruption of news on one of the genuinely exceptional things in our country: the small demographic of white usually guys who let an interest in castor seeds and poison lore get the best of them. It’s an interest that inevitably brings hazmat trucks and a joint anti-terrorism strike force to their neighborhoods.
And the news covers the age spectrum, from the youthful to the old.
In contrast to prior years, 2014 has turned into one in which young nerds, a couple of them university students, try their hand at pounding castor seeds into powder.
The newest bean-pounder is University of Wisconsin (in Oshkosh) student Kyle Smith.
From the Green Bay newspaper:
A University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh student has been suspended after he was charged with possession of ricin.
University officials announced Tuesday that 21-year-old Kyle Smith has been placed on interim suspension and cannot set foot on campus for the time being. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of the biological weapons offense. He made his first appearance Monday in federal court in Green Bay.
Two of Smith’s professors contacted police last month when they became suspicious he was making the deadly toxin, WLUK-TV reported. Tests confirmed a vial of white powder found in Smith’s off-campus home was ricin, according to a criminal complaint. The Oshkosh Police Department and Wisconsin National Guard also found a lab notebook during the search.
And a judge has now handed down the shortest sentence in ricin convictions on the book in the case of Georgetown University student Danny Milzman, covered much here.
Milzman, readers may recall, was a great fan of Breaking Bad, showing appreciation of Walter White’s “cooking” of ricin and its recurring role in the drama.
For the record, much in the series concerning ricin was almost total rubbish, from the way it was made to its eventual use.
From the Washington Post:
A Georgetown University student who was arrested for manufacturing the deadly chemical ricin in his dormitory room in March, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to a year and a day in prison.
In issuing her sentence, Judge Ketanji B. Jackson said Daniel H. Milzman’s intentions for manufacturing the chemical were “ambiguous at best??? but that Milzman put numerous people, including his classmates and dormitory roommate, at great risk.
Jackson also ordered Milzman, 20, to undergo a mental health evaluation …
Since Milzman has already served seven and a half months in jail, he will be released early next year.
The unique short sentence is as close to a diversion as one can get, I suppose. This year I argued for the worth of a diversion track for many first-time castor bean pounders.
Most of them cannot be described as terrorists and they pose mostly only a threat to themselves as they become a source of heartbreak for their families.
In the last fifteen years there have been zero fatalities associated with all ricin cases in the US.
In 2013 those arrested on ricin cases were all older than this years batch. They were unique in that all three were caught in schemes that mailed ricin-containing castor mash to the president of the United States. All three appear to have been frame-up jobs, one against a rival, one against a husband, and one against the office of a small business where a secretary ignored the romantic affections of a janitor.
This years ricin complaints all involve younger men, two of which are the university students mentioned here.
The old ricin-powder criminal, someone middle-aged or very old and angry with the federal government, was represented yesterday when sentences were handed down for two men involved in a domestic terrorism plan in Georgia.
From the New York Times:
Ending a case that involved questions about the line between rhetoric and criminal conduct, a judge on Friday sentenced two men to a decade each in prison for their roles in a plot that included using ricin in a series of attacks in major cities.
The decision by Judge Richard W. Story, of the Federal District Court, came nearly 10 months after a jury here convicted Samuel J. Crump [71] and Ray H. Adams [58] on a pair of charges connected to possession of ricin for use as a weapon …
Mr. Crump, by his own acknowledgment, was something of an excessively ambitious conspirator.
“There’s no way I could make that stuff,??? Mr. Crump said of ricin. “It takes a scientist and a million dollar lab, which we didn’t have.???
Judge Story agreed that it was unlikely that the plans Mr. Adams and Mr. Crump mapped out would have been successful.
However, this appeared to not be ameliorating.
Crump and Adams have been in jail since 2011. There original plot was a cracked scheme that involved the theoretical distribution of ricin-containing bean powder out of car speeding along on the highway, the idea being that it might drift over a town. [1]
Ricin cases and those convicted in them are almost entirely unique to the United States. In the last fifteen years this country has generated a steady stream of them. And they all make headlines.
In fact, 2013 and 2014 have shown an upward trend in this very unique phenomenon. That is, there are now more guys (and one woman) arrested on ricin beefs than at any other time.
The numbers are still very small. But the imitation, fascination and absurd appeal of castor bean pounding refuses to die and is even increasing, a bit more each year.
Ricin-making, from old neo-Nazi and survivalist poison recipes, to Breaking Bad, to an almost monthly presence in episodic crime television and in movie dramas about terrorism, is solidly embedded in the culture and character of the United States.
[1]. From the Atlanta Journal & Constitution:
According to testimony, the men talked of a plane dropping ricin on Washington and spreading the poison on federal government buildings in Atlanta, Athens and Gainesville and in public areas, such as on I-85 in Atlanta.
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10.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle at 2:05 pm by George Smith
People make mistakes, they screw up. Ebola is one disease that leaves little room for error with an outcome that’s appalling.
I’m going to assume you know most of the statistics. Two cases among health workers, nurses, in Dallas who tended patient zero, who was once turned away from the hospital while symptomatic. The second nurse traveled, when she should not have been allowed to and returned by airplane.
Americans just can not resist the urge to overstate their abilities. They never shut up and concede it’s a tough situation, one in which likely they’ll suffer setbacks with grim consequences.
But diseases surprise. This variant of Ebola seems more virulent than past strains in that there appears to be a lot more of it fulminating in those who are infected.
And the infection curve is still going up in West Africa.
What happens if, like the WHO says, it reaches 1000 new infections a week by December?
That’s the making of a Biblical calamity in which everyone who can starts running away.
What if Ebola virus escapes into a teeming urban center in India? Or Indonesia? Bangladesh? Lagos in Nigeria? Karachi in Pakistan? Any other place with a lot of poor people and spotty health care and resources for infection control? You can’t quarantine the world.
Can this country handle a few people a month who are infected coming in on airplane flights from the African continent?
I don’t know.
The government health officials continue to say it can’t happen here.
But what happens if someone slips through again into a poor neighborhood or a homeless population during flu season? Do they get discovered and isolated before they infect a few more?
This isn’t Liberia or Sierra Leone. But no one can say yet how it’s going to turn out with total confidence.
In 1977, Peter Piot discovered the Ebola virus. Last week, the Financial Times spoke with him:
The collapsing health systems of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea mean that many cases probably go unrecorded; the real toll could be far higher. Even the least alarming projections suggest there will be more than 20,000 cases by early next month. Looking further ahead, the worst-case scenario from the US Centres for Disease Control foresees 1.4m cases in west Africa by late January. Prof Piot says that while such dire predictions must be treated with caution – “like the ones in the 1990s that had everyone in Britain coming down with the human form of mad cow disease??? – he is frightened. “There is a very real danger of a complete breakdown??? in parts of west African society, he says.
Piot told the FT he “became very scared” in “late June” upon seeing the escalation of the outbreak.
The paradox here is that the US government only became interested in the Ebola virus and funding research on it after the start of the war on terror over concerns, unfounded and unrealistic, that it could be, ahem, used as a weapon on the homeland.
In the past week, news has been common how slashed funding at the NIH had impeded work on it.
Bioterrorism research funding has also been tapered. Additionally, it has been argued for years that the funding for bioterror research was never going to be effective, that the money would have been better spent in general research on the control of global infectious disease.
It has, and will be pointed out again, that Ebola outbreaks thrive in places of great inequality. That is, where there is no sufficient infrastructure or resources to apply to the poor populations where it takes hold.
And that is certainly the case in West Africa. The US military most likely cannot solve this problem with 4,000 troops and one hundred makeshift tent hospitals.
Mark Zuckerberg’s 25 million won’t do it, either. Ebola virus doesn’t conform to social media or wizards of the Silicon Valley.
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09.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 1:32 pm by George Smith
Nineteen year old Georgetown U. student Danny Milzman has pled guilty to “making ricin.”
Like everyone else in America, Milzman actually made castor powder, which contains some ricin.
Allegedly inspired by the Walter White character in Breaking Bad, this is another sad case, one in which a troubled student made one serious lapse in judgment. In the past, I’ve argued for diversion programs for some first-time American ricin offenders. Daniel Milzman is one such a person, not a threat to the community or his school.
Wire news indicates he could be sentenced to one to two years in jail.
From the net:
A former Georgetown University student accused of making ricin in his dorm room pleaded guilty Monday, and could face up to two years when he’s sentenced …
The amount of ricin Milzman produced was enough to kill an average person weighing 220 pounds if inhaled or injected, officials said. According to court documents, Milzman spent [about] a week researching ricin online, and watched 13 episodes of the show “Breaking Bad,” during which ricin was used as a weapon to injure or kill someone.
When sentenced, Milzman faces between 366 days and two years behind bars.
The news is in error. In Breaking Bad, Walter White “cooked” ricin to put into the meal of a drug lord who was holding him and his partner hostage in Mexico. The plot failed.
Ah, my bad. Must be the heat wave. In the final episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White finally puts his “cooked” ricin in the hot drink of a former partner in crime, apparently killing her.
Danny Milzman — from the archives.
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07.29.14
Posted in Bioterrorism at 2:02 pm by George Smith
From this blog, earlier in the summer:
In years to come, the effect of global warming on [the incidence of Vibrio vulnificus] will bear watching.
From the Washington Post, in a piece on Vibrio vulnificus in the Chesapeake:
“It is likely that over the next few decades, if global warming continues, the vibrio will start to multiply in the tidal waters of the bay earlier in the year and will persist later into the fall and possibly the winter,??? said Laurence Polsky, health officer at the Calvert County Health Department. “This will increase the number of people exposed to the bacteria over the course of the year, and the result will be a higher average number of cases as each decade passes.???
The story describes the usual cases in which the microorganism rapidly and catastrophically invades the tissue of the infected person.
I earned a Ph.D. identifying the collagen dissolving enzyme it produces, something that is, by its very nature and activity, uniquely suited in that function.
It goes without saying, again, that it’s always a horrible disease. It remains rare but it is not as rare now as in 1982. Every summer one sees regular news of it.
My original work is here.
Imagine. You know someone who worked on a germ that produces a “flesh-eating disease,” every day, for a few years.
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