03.31.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 12:11 pm by George Smith
After a brief state of grace in which a judge ruled that Georgetown student and ricin-maker Danny Milzman could be released to psychiatric treatment in the nation’s capitol, and then home, his case has reverted to standard procedure.
All Americans who have been caught in ricin cases in the last fifteen years are jailed until trial or plea agreements. At which point they have all been sent to prison.
The ramifications and results of this policy have been discussed at length on this blog, most recently, last week, where analysis of the present and past cases are listed as well as one minor exception to the rule.
From the WaPo, minutes ago:
Chief Judge Richard W. Roberts overruled a magistrate judge’s order that would have allowed the student, Daniel Milzman, to enter an inpatient psychiatric treatment program.
Roberts said Monday that he was troubled by Milzman’s conversation with a close friend in which the sophomore allegedly denied being suicidal and said he was “definitely a threat to someone,??? according to prosecutors.
The judge also said he was concerned that Milzman told law enforcement officials that he learned about the powdery substance from the hit TV show “Breaking Bad.??? In the show, the protagonist uses ricin to poison his adversary – not to kill himself …
In his ruling from the bench, Roberts acknowledged Milzman’s depression but said the student’s mental health issues do not “eliminate the possibility that he intended to use it on someone else??? and “may pose a threat to the community.???
Milzman’s “ability and determination??? to make the ricin, the judge said, “reflects the seriousness of the danger to others should he be released.???
After the hearing, Milzman’s parents — both local doctors — and his two brothers were surrounded by nearly 90 classmates, colleagues and other friends who filled the courtroom.
Milzman will apparently remain in jail. Historically, ricin cases proceed slowly. Among them, previously, there has been no such thing as a speedy trial.
As mentioned last week, the Milzman case should give everyone a headache. All ricin cases should.
The US justice system needs a diversion program for first-time ricin-offenders with ameliorating or extenuating circumstances.
It would only be just and fair.
The US does not get a lot of ricin offenders per year but the cases almost always become high profile. And the American social environment and beliefs about the poison virtually guarantee that every year will always bring a fresh crop of mixed-up, young, or in some way mentally unsound or damaged first-time ricin-makers.
No one has ever died in connection with an American ricin case. No members of the public have ever been injured in any way in American ricin cases. And nobody has died from the consumption, accidental or intentional, of castor seeds or castor powder, if the public record on the matter is accurate, in at least the last 20 years.
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Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 9:14 am by George Smith
Someone else who thought his smartphone gave him a technological edge.
Michael Piggin, an English teen who used his smartphone to download the old Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a bowdlerized copy of Maxwell Hutchkinson’s The Poisoner’s Handbook, has had England’s heavy artillery called out and arrayed against him in court.
A Porton Down chemist was called to testify on the digital text, which has been judged a seditious document in the United Kingdom for over a decade. That is, possession of it potentially gets you jail for having materials deemed likely to be of use to terrorists or in terrorism.
From the unparalleled archives of this blog, 2007:
“Defendant after defendant has discovered that a long-forgotten internet search has left an indelible record sufficient for a conviction under the profoundly disturbing section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows prosecution for simple possession of an item likely to be useful to terrorists, and carries a sentence of up to 10 years’ imprisonment,” wrote Gareth Piece for the Guardian on the 21st.
Pierce is a well-known defense lawyer in England. Her firm was notably reponsible for the defense in the trial of the notorious so-called London ricin gang and she has represented many others in England’s ongoing terror trials.
This blog has repeatedly analyzed and published portions — even entire copies — of documents which are now, for practical matters in the UK courts, considered seditious publications. For the legal system, there are only two working justifications for having them: Being a jounalist or a professional tasked with analyzing them.
For the trial of Samina Malik, aka The Lyrical Terrorist, DD was asked by the defense to contribute a short analysis concerning the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook.
It was found in Malik’s possession and is considered, wrongly, to be a document of potential use to terrorists. It contains many errors and some rather large fabrications which, while not obvious to laymen, are glaringly apparent to professionals trained in chemistry and biology.
DD has combed over it many times in the past year, tracing its origins and showing that it is fundamentally just an abridged and Bowdlerized copy of a pamphlet that had been published in the US in 1988, Maxwell Hutchkinson’s The Poisoner’s Handbook (Loompanics).
Samina Malik, from Southall, west London, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of owning terrorist manuals,” reported the BBC simply in November.
“The jury heard Malik had written extremist poems praising Osama Bin Laden, supporting martyrdom and discussing beheading … Malik worked at WH Smith at Heathrow Airport until her arrest last October.”
Malik was convicted for possessing records deemed to be of potential use to terrorists, including the document pictured above. It has been published many places on the web and the above snapshot was published in a Sunday edition of the Washington Post newspaper in 2005. Naturally, it is an object of great curiosity, and not just to aspiring terrorists.
However, if you reside in the United Kingdom, have downloaded it and are swept up in a counter-terror dragnet, you are in big trouble.
“[She] was acquitted on a more serious charge of possessing articles for terrorist purposes, a fact that the judge said he took into account when deciding on a suspended sentence,” reported the Los Angeles Times in early December.
However, Malik’s sentence was subsequently suspended by the judge on the condition she stay out of such trouble going forward. Which apparently she did.
In 2007, the law was used to get those suspected to be in on Islamic terrorism.
In the case of Michael Piggin, the circumstances are reversed.
If one is to believe the BBC, he wanted to firebomb schools and a mosque with molotov cocktails. That alone will, in all probability, guarantee he is kept at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a substantial period of time.
In 2004-2005, the UK government trotted out Porton Down experts for the famous London ricin trial. Porton Down is England’s ultimate biological and chemical weapons defense installation, historically famous.
In the infamous Wood Green ricin trial, Porton Down’s testimony on poison recipes and ricin was ineffective. And that story is retold, in great detail, by me, here in Playtime Recipes for Poisons, which is a good way to describe material similar to that included in the Mujahideens Poisons Handbook [1].
However, Michael Piggin will go down for it, this time. And the Porton Down expert will have been effective.
From the BBC:
Dr Paul Rice, employed at Porton Down since 1987, said fireworks and bleach found in Michael Piggin’s bedroom could be used to make chlorine gas.
Mr Piggin, 18, is accused of planning attacks on a mosque and a school.
He denies two Terrorism Act charges but has admitted possessing explosives.
The Old Bailey heard a copy of the prohibited Mujahideen Poisons Handbook had been found by police, downloaded on Mr Piggin’s mobile phone …
Dr Rice, a chemical and biological weapons expert, told the court that the Mujahedeen Poisons Handbook, was a publication he had come across before and contained details about “homemade chemicals, gases and drugs” …
The handbook contained instructions on how to make poisons such as ricin, which could prove lethal in tiny quantities, the court heard.
Time and the instruments of technology have changed. People haven’t.
Now your ricin recipes are downloaded by smartphone, rather than the old home pc.
Perhaps someone should write a handy app called …
iWantRicin.
Do you think the iTunes store would allow it?
The Piggin trial arrived in the British news in early March.
Excerpting from the Guardian on March 4:
The teenager, who has Asperger’s syndrome, had drawn up a hitlist that included his college, a mosque, a cinema, Loughborough University and the town’s council offices, the Old Bailey heard.
On the back of his notebook, Piggin had scribbled “Fuck Islam – born in England, live in England, die in England”, and inside he wrote that he was a member of the EDL (a far right soccer hooligan gang for English purity) in opposition to the “Islamic invasion of Europe” …
Piggin stockpiled nine partially assembled petrol bombs [molotov cocktails made from beer bottles], as well as improvised explosive devices, air rifles, a gas mask, a crossbow, a camouflage flak jacket and other weaponry, the court heard. Detectives also found the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook in Piggin’s bedroom, the jury was told.
One is taken aback when confronted by an anti-Islamic bigot teenager with a copy of the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook and an alleged plan to take a Columbine-like revenge on his community.
1. From Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy Bulletin at the Federation of American Scientists, in 2005:
“The first time I saw [the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook],” said chemist George Smith of GlobalSecurity.org, “I thought it must be a hoax.”
“Careful examination of the document shows that it is crammed with errors, seemingly the work of someone with little discernible sense, profoundly ignorant of the nature of simple compounds and incompetent in even minor [laboratory] procedures,” Dr. Smith wrote in National Security Notes in March 2004:
Link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-040304.htm
In short, the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook that was excerpted on the Washington Post web site indicates something nearly the opposite of what the Post article on terrorist use of the internet claimed to show.
“The ‘Poisons Handbook’ is an example of someone professing to know what he is doing on poisons who profoundly and obviously does not know what he is doing,” Dr. Smith said.
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03.28.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 11:03 am by George Smith
Young Georgetown ricin-maker, Danny Milzman, had a favorite TV show: Breaking Bad! In fact, if the lawyers in his case are to be taken at face value, one might say Breaking Bad broke him, in some hard to pin down way.
I liked the show, too. Especially the end where Walter dies to Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” and the screen turns to black. Perhaps not as much as Danny Milzman, though.
But Breaking Bad’s long fascination with ricin had nothing to do with reality of the poison. On the other hand, it has contributed to the weird beliefs Americans cleave to concerning it.
Walter White first made ricin in the desert, with partner Jesse Pinkman, to poison two drug kingpins. They cooked it.
You can’t cook castor seeds or any powder containing ricin. It destroys it. And this is probably what saved a woman, last year, who tried to poison herself.
From this blog’s incomparable archives:
Contrary to American war on terror mythology, castor seeds and ricin don’t make a good weapon. In fact, it is even harder than one might think to achieve simple poisoning.
“A suicidal North Logan woman who survived poisoning with the deadly ricin toxin earlier this month is getting another break: she will not be criminally charged …
“When the woman boiled the beans, she created ricin. The fumes contaminated the home, putting the family of 4 upstairs at risk.
“Police say the woman did eat some of the beans and was taken to the hospital.”
Proteins are denatured by heating. Ricin is a protein. And it is certain that it is destroyed by heat. Boiling the castor seeds is most probably what saved the woman’s life, although she was still hospitalized after eating 30 of them.
Boiling castor seeds does not produce ricin gas. A Hazmat team was summoned. No one except the woman was every really in any danger.
In fact, research has shown it is not elementary to end oneself even eating castor seeds. An abstract on eighty four incidents of accidental and intentional castor seed ingestion over the course of a decade in Kansas was discussed here earlier this week. (Again, why you read this blog. No news organization has ever published such information.)
People who unintentionally consumed castor seeds averaged eight and a half beans per incident. Those who did it on purpose, perhaps some of whom wished to poison themselves, ate ten.
There wasn’t one death.
One person even ate castor seeds and shot up a mix of them and failed to expire although they did suffer bloody diarrhea and vomiting!
(Note to ninnies: This does not mean you should eat castor seeds as a parlor trick at drinking parties to impress friends.)
In the last episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White puts his ricin powder in Brock’s artificial sweetener at a coffee shop. We see it go into her hot tea and later she is shown in the grip of ricin poisoning.
There’s that idea that you can put proteins, like ricin, in hot water again! And that consuming it is a sure death.
There is little to no real support for any of it in the scientific and historical record. But it’s good mass entertainment!
Whoever the science advisors were to Breaking Bad, on ricin — they were dogshite.
Now, from the Washington Post, an hour ago:
The hit TV show “Breaking Bad??? and its dark plotlines played an outsized role in a federal courtroom in Washington this week in the case of a Georgetown sophomore accused of turning his dorm room into a laboratory for the deadly poison ricin.
Lawyers argued over whether Daniel Milzman, a pre-med sophomore, made the powdery substance to poison someone — or to take his own life. In making the case that Milzman should remain behind bars, prosecutors have tried to connect Milzman’s intentions with his statement to authorities that he learned about the lethal toxin from his favorite show …
In the case of the Georgetown student, defense attorneys have said Milzman was a troubled 19-year-old struggling with depression. He created the ricin, his lawyers said, because he wanted to hide his suicide plans from his family. If he became ill from the substance, no one would know that he had killed himself.
But the federal prosecutor argued that Milzman’s statements about “Breaking Bad??? suggested otherwise. She told the judge that the show’s protagonist produced ricin not to commit suicide, but to kill someone else. A friend said Milzman was such a big fan of the show he knew the name of each episode by heart.
The judge asked if Milzman was such a big fan of the show, why had not the prosecutors brought it up on the day another judge had ordered the young man released to psychiatric treatment in a DC hospital?
The government’s lawyer responded she had been unfamiliar with the show.
“I was not as familiar with the show then as I am today,??? said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maia Miller, according to the Washington Post.
Fair enough.
The government argued Milzman’s language on Facebook, threats against someone else, echoed another grisly moment from Breaking Bad, one in which someone’s body is disposed of by dumping it into a plastic barrel of hydrofluoric acid.
According to documents, Milzman posted this to Facebook:
“You would be more useful to the world if you were chemically dis-incorporated and the elements that composed your body were sold to laboratories.???
The case of Danny Milzman should give you a headache. All American ricin cases should.
I’ve argued that ricin cases have been the domain of the senseless for years.
The only exceptions are those very few obviously done out of pure malice, like the J. Everett Dutschke case last year.
Shannon Richardson, the Texas woman, also from last year, who mailed the poison to the president in an attempt to have her husband jailed, aka Ricin Mama, was, like Danny Milzman, mentally unstable.
Matthew Buquet, the to-the-president-ricin-mailer in Spokane the same month has been recently bound over for psychiatric evaluation.
Buquet mailed the president on a company’s stationary where he was a night janitor, apparently because a secretary he took a shine to did not return his affections.
Jeffrey Levenderis, from Akron, Ohio, mentioned all this week, was a deeply depressed man living in a nursing home in 2011 when he was arrested for castor powder in a jar in the refrigerator at his former home.
And Casey Cutler, from Arizona during the height of the war on terror, was merely an addled young man with a drug problem, who did not even make ricin, but someone who impossibly tried to concoct it from castor oil in a plan to defend himself from drug gangsters who had beaten him up for being short on payment.
But because of the war on terror, the news and entertainment media, plus national security experts mythologizing about ricin, an artificial and crazy environment exists in which the US position on it is intellectually untenable.
There’s no diversion program for first time castor powder makers with no criminal priors and extenuating circumstance like mental illness and no harm.
The ruling precedent is that everyone who gets the federal public defender in a ricin case goes to jail. (One exception: Robert Alberg of Kirkland, Washington. An autistic man, the court recognized he was impaired when he made ricin and ordered release under a five year parole guideline. But he went back to making ricin and was subsequently re-jailed.)
A diversion program, or a reset of legal definition at the federal level, would take care of many of the distasteful things now obvious again because of the Danny Milzman case.
Optional: Throw a couple beans in the misery jar. (Page down after link.)
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03.27.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 2:19 pm by George Smith
Yesterday I posted a long analysis on the case of young Danny Milzman of Georgetown U., the first ricin-maker ruled to be sent to for psychiatric treatment at a hospital, then release to his parents after two weeks. The government argued Milzman should be held without bond.
If released to Sybil Memorial Hospital in the nation’s capitol, Milzman would have been a first in the history of Americans arrested for making ricin,
No ricin-makers have ever been granted such treatment. Until this case. They are always held in jail without bail until trial, which can often take years to arrive.
Wednesday, a second judge in the Milzman case slowed the process down, kicking the can down the road until Monday:
Daniel Milzman (COL ‘16), who was charged with possession of a biological toxin last Friday, appeared before District court on Tuesday for his detention hearing. Judge John M. Facciola ordered that Milzman be sent to Sibley Memorial Hospital for a 14 day inpatient psychiatric program.
On Wednesday, following a government appeal of Facciola’s decision, Chief Judge W. Roberts postponed the decision on whether to release Milzman to the inpatient program until next Monday.
Milzman is being held in solitary confinement under suicide watch.
He is not the first ricin-maker to have been judged depressed and potentially suicidal.
In 2011, Jeffrey Levenderis of Ohio was arrested for having ricin.
From yesterday’s analysis, an excerpt from wire news on the story:
Ricin suspect Jeff Boyd Levenderis will continue to be held on suicide watch in Summit County jail at least until a Feb. 15 federal court hearing when his lawyer will resume trying to get him released on bond.
Before his arrest last week, Levenderis was staying in a Tallmadge nursing home where his attorney said he was being treated for mental illness and a thyroid condition …
[His lawyer] said Levenderis’ suicide watch includes being held naked in a cell under constant watch from deputies.
Levenderis’ defense argued his health could deteriorate if he were maintained under such conditions. Nevertheless, a judge ruled that Levenderis could not be released.
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03.25.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 9:18 pm by George Smith
Danny Milzman, the ricin-making student at Georgetown, may be a first in the past decade’s history of castor bean pounders in America. After today’s court appearance, Milzman’s attorney, Danny Onorato, was successful at getting him into an in-house psychiatric evaluation and treatment program at a hospital after which he would be released to home. The government wanted him held in jail without bond. [1]
In ricin cases in the US this just doesn’t happen.
No one cares about ricin-makers. All of them, with one exception, a woman who attempted and failed to poison herself last year, are kept in jail and eventually convicted.
I’ll get to the contrasts with the Milzman case in a moment.
It’s no secret that class, economic status and family have much to do with how one is treated in the US justice system.
But Danny Milzman’s ricin case is now an example of that, too. Because if, eventually, he does not receive a prison sentence, class, the circumstances of his upbringing, his family’s resources and his treatment in the Washington Post will all have played a role.
From the Post, moments ago:
Daniel Milzman, who friends said has a sharp scientific mind, spent days carefully tinkering with castor beans and chemicals, finally producing a lethal amount of a toxin that is seven times as powerful as cobra venom: ricin. The poison has been manufactured by terrorists and can kill with just a small amount of contact …
[Ricin is not a contact poison. Post reporters get it wrong as soon as the second paragraph. However, the Milzman case is now one of human interest and, that, they can sink their teeth into.]
“He was tortured. He was having a hard time in his life. He was a scared 19-year-old kid,??? Onorato said. The ricin was “not intended for anyone other than himself.???
Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola agreed, ordering Milzman released to an in-patient psychiatric program at Sibley Memorial Hospital …
He co-authored articles with his father, David Milzman, who is the research director at the Department of Emergency Medicine at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola agreed, ordering Milzman released to an in-patient psychiatric program at Sibley Memorial Hospital.
Milzman was a National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist at Walt Whitman High in Bethesda, MD, which — you should know — is one of the public schools of choice for the upper middle class servants of the capitol’s political power and wealth brokers.
“Students remember that he raised money for leukemia research and launched several unsuccessful runs for president of the student government association that were punctuated by humorous speeches,” the Post adds.
Milzman had a “glowing” personality and answered science questions “lightning quick.”
You get the picture. The entire piece is here.
Yes, it would be a shame for Danny Milzman to get ten years on a ricin beef. There is no way such an outcome would serve any purpose other than punitive. Milzman is, at best, a petty nuisance with some mental problems.
However, there are a few wrinkles. There have been other ricin men who were no more than petty nuisances with some mental problems. The difference has been that in our system, no one cared about them like the folks care about Danny Milzman.
Take the case of Jeffrey Levenderis.
From this blog’s unsurpassed archives (these are wire news excerpts, with the last item being my words):
[In January of 2011 the] Akron office of the FBI received a tip on Monday about a possible hazardous substance at a house in the 2000 block of South Main Street. The next day, the FBI’s Hazardous Materials Response Unit from Quantico, Virginia and the FBI’s Pittsburgh Hazardous Response Team searched the home.
According to a news release from the FBI on Friday, FBI labs confirm the hazardous substance was ricin, which can be deadly if ingested or inhaled . The toxin is derived from the castor bean.
The FBI said during a news conference Friday that an arrest has made and 54-year-old Jeffery Levenderis, of Coventry Township, will appear in Akron federal court on Friday.
Levenderis used to live at the house and another person was in the process of moving in. He faces one count of having a dangerous or toxic substance. Authorities do not believe this has any connection to terrorism.
Ricin suspect Jeff Boyd Levenderis will continue to be held on suicide watch in Summit County jail at least until a Feb. 15 federal court hearing when his lawyer will resume trying to get him released on bond …
Before his arrest last week, Levenderis was staying in a Tallmadge nursing home where his attorney said he was being treated for mental illness and a thyroid condition. Bryan said Levenderis might go back there if released.
Bryan said Levenderis’ health improved dramatically after being placed in the nursing home in November and he expressed concern it might deteriorate in jail. He said Levenderis’ suicide watch includes being held naked in a cell under constant watch from deputies.
A judge refused bail to Jeffrey B. Levenderis, jailed when a container containing castor powder was found in what had been his refrigerator by a new tenant …
The judge in this case ruled that attorney’s had not shown the community would be safe if Levenderis was remitted to the nursing home he’d been in.
To my knowledge, Jeffrey Levenderis is still in jail awaiting trial.
Or take the case of Roger von Bergendorff.
From the Register, by me, in 2008:
It takes a special kind of American to be fascinated by ricin, and last week the latest, Roger Von Bergendorff, was indicted in the District Court of Nevada. Bergendorff possibly qualifies for an award in failed Darwinism, being the only person in recent times to have seemingly accidentally poisoned himself with the protein toxin, but not quite effectively enough for the FBI to have nothing to do except attend his funeral.
The US government’s complaint against Bergendorff, filed on April 15 paints a common picture: loser dude on the fringes of society, indigent but with still enough money to have two unregistered guns with silencers, castor seeds, a standard collection of anarchist poisons literature and castor powder – or “crude” ricin as the FBI puts it.
Bergendorff told the FBI his production of ricin was an “exotic idea.” He’d been puttering away at powdering castor seeds as something of a hobby since 2005 while living in poverty in Utah and Nevada. He’d pounded them in the basement of a cousin (who has also been charged in connection with the case) and, most recently, possibly in an Extended Stay America hotel room in Las Vegas.
Bergendorff had “researched” the Internet for his ricin recipe, downloading the Anarchist’s Cookbook. He babbled his method to the FBI, which duly reported he had conducted “a series of ‘mashings’ of the castor seeds with acetone and drying out the mash to remove the oil.” While Bergendorff admitted to doing this, he professed to not always remember precisely where he’d done the work or if he’d performed it on castor seeds bought from a garden shop, the receipt for which the FBI recovered in its searches. “Bergendorff admitted [that there had been people] who made him mad over the years and he had thoughts about causing them harm to the point of making some plans but he maintained he had never acted on those thoughts or plans,” reads the indictment.
Bergendorff had been hospitalized, possibly from his powder although this was never proven conclusively, and that is how the case came to light.
There was no sympathy or mercy. Bergendorff was convicted.
Said the judge: “You not only proved a material threat to yourself, you proved a material threat to everyone around you when you possessed this stuff.”
And, last, we arrive at the story of Casey Cutler, someone who never even made ricin. He wanted to but could not find castor seeds. Instead, he tried to make it from castor oil, which does not contain ricin.
From the Register, again — by me — in 2006:
But the biggest travesty is the story of Casey Cutler, an addled young man caught by very bad luck and drug use gone wrong, pathetically trying to make ricin from an intestinal lubricant.
As GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow, I chatted with Jon Sands, Cutler’s federal public defender at the beginning of summer. He laughed dryly and described the case as “terrorism lite” before sending over the files on the case.
Cutler, according to Sands, suffered from a variety of mental problems and had been “self-medicating” with marijuana and other drugs which he purchased from bad elements, the kind apparently quick to teach you a physical lesson should you renege on payment.
Cutler was subsequently rolled by his suppliers on April 28 of 2005, causing him to hatch a self-defense plan, one in which he would use ricin to poison his tormentors should they return. He would offer it as free drugs …
[Cutler] found he had no idea how to get the beans. So he went to a store and bought castor oil, which – of course – contains no ricin.
No worries, Cutler boiled down the castor oil “to reduce it and utilized acetone (as indicated by the recipe) to extract the ricin from the mixture,” reads the finding of fact in his federal plea agreement with the US. But since castor oil contains no ricin, the federal court document is stuck, finding it awkward to admit that the defendant could not possibly have had the toxin. Instead it reads, “Defendant Casey Cutler did something that was a substantial step toward the production of a biological toxin.”
Cutler, unfortunately, had a roommate just as easily confused as he. The man contracted bronchitis – “flu like symptoms” according to an FBI agent’s report – but because he knew of Cutler’s intent, thought he had been poisoned, and went to a local emergency room for treatment.
According to Sands, while local medical personnel were not overly concerned that ricin poisoning was afoot rather than bronchitis, once the word ricin was uttered, it had to be reported to the federal network.
What happened next was exactly what happened in the cases of Danny Milzman and Nicholas Helman last week. The mailed fist of US counter-terror came to town.
Adding confusion was a false positive for ricin lab test on a locket containing part of Casey Cutler’s marijuana stash.
While the test was shown to be in error, and Cutler never made ricin, nor could he have, he was convicted anyway. And in subsequent years he wound up being counted in government statistics on terrorism.
Contrast this with Danny Milzman, who actually did grind castor seeds and extract the result.
Readers can see the picture emerge.
These three men, like Danny Milzman, were really nothing more than petty nuisances. No one was hurt by any of them. And no one could have possibly been hurt in the Cutler incident. There was never any real danger to the public.
But these men received no sympathy. Certainly no one came forward in a big newspaper to speak to their character or what they once might have been. And they received little to no mercy in court.
Jeffrey Levenderis, arrested in 2011, has yet to be even granted a trial.
Danny Milzman, on the other hand, was highly regarded in his high school. At Georgetown he was fast with science answers. He wrote articles with his accomplished father, made ricin only when he knew his roommate was away, carefully and responsibly disposed of some it and confessed in tears to his ex-boyfriend.
Milzman was depressed, emotionally tortured in some way. It would be a waste for his case to turn out as badly as it could.
Just like the men who went to jail, for which things turned out very badly, anyway.
And this analysis is why one reads DD’s blog.
UPDATE, Wednesday: Another judge delays Milzman’s release for a few days pending further cogitation.
Notes:
1. From the wires, March 25:
After the judge ruled Milzman should be released to home confinement, upon which his parents would immediately take him to Sibley Memorial Hospital for two weeks of psychiatric care. Then, Milzman was ordered to be taken home and not left alone.
Prosecutors immediately requested a 24-hour stay to appeal the decision…
The misery jar.
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Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 11:16 am by George Smith
Danny Milzman, of Georgetown, in better days.
Contrast Danny Milzman’s media story and background with that of Nicholas Todd Helman, the same week.
Both were 19-year-old men/boys. Danny Milzman made ricin at the posh school, Georgetown. He was a National Merit Scholar semi-finalist at Walt Whitman high in Bethesda, a public school for the upper middle class servants of the wealthy in the nation’s capitol. Nicholas Helman wasn’t going to a posh school. He worked at Target, made ricin in his Hatboro neighborhood and held Homeland Security, SWAT and the Hazmat teams off for a couple hours when they arrived.
Danny Milzman was distraught and, perhaps, wanted to hurt someone else or himself and show the world, or acquaintances, at least. Nicholas Helman was upset over being thrown over and, perhaps, wanted to hurt someone else and show the world, or acquaintances, at least. And he sent a scratch-and-sniff ricin letter to his rival.
The Washington Post is on the job:
Prosecutors said Tuesday there is evidence that a Georgetown University student charged last week with possessing the biological toxin ricin may have wanted to poison someone with the powdery substance he learned about from the television show “Breaking Bad??? …
Court papers filed Tuesday describe Milzman as an emotional college student who struggled with depression, and vacillated between wanting to hurt himself – and someone else …
During their half hour talk, Milzman told his [Georgetown friend Thomas Lloyd] through tears that he was feeling anxious and unfulfilled by his school work and relationships, according to prosecutors. Milzman told the friend …that he was engaging in “risky behavior.???
Milzman, a member of his high school quiz bowl team who also played ice hockey, told Lloyd that he “scared himself by having ricin??? and that he was confiding in his friend because “part of Milzman wanted to be dared to use it and the other part of Milzman wanted to avoid using it,??? according to the court filing.
The Washington Post informs Milzman waited for his roommate to be away on the weekend before pounding and extracting his castor seeds.
“Investigators said Milzman first learned about ricin from quiz bowl, online sources and his favorite television show that in its final season includes a plot line involving a ricin poisoning,” reads the newspaper article.
Milzman apparently did not read this blog or any of the many other things I’ve written on ricin over the last ten years. All delivered by online sources, absolutely free.
The internet let Danny Milzman down. It let Nicholas Helman down. It lets everyone down.
It should have sent the message that ricin isn’t easy to make but that turning castor seeds into a powder was an easy way to get in big trouble and there’s not anything particularly special, exotic and fascinating about it.
Instead of that, it gives you:
Plus an ocean of like-minded clickbait and fantasy.
What’s the difference between Danny Milzman and Nicholas Helman?
Not much. Certainly there’s little difference in brain power. They’re both likely to suffer one shit ton of ruin and heartbreak for momentary lapses in judgment and getting caught up in America’s singular fascination with ricin.
However, Milzman is getting a more sympathetic reading because of class and positioning.
Nicholas Helman, of Hatboro, in better days.
Meta: Yes, dear readers, I am now writing post titles every bit the equal of the work turned out by the web portal of imbeciles known as Upworthy! Do you like it?
Due to the environment of lickspittle accidentally designed and imposed by the genius of Google algorithms in Mountain View, the publishing model that is the most successful today is one that delivers clickbait, troll pieces, ridiculous titling designed to poison search and bait & switch titling optimized to poison/rig search.
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03.24.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 4:08 pm by George Smith
A petty nuisance at a posh school, just before the mailed fist of emergency response showed up at the dorm.
The news yesterday was that authorities had recovered 0.12 gram of castor powder/ricin sample from Georgetown student Danny Milzman.
Of that, a smaller amount is ricin.
In the lab in the old days you could do a rough determination of protein, which is what ricin is, in a sample by redissolving a portion and looking at simple photometric absorbance at an ultraviolet wavelength. This returns a very gross estimate.
And ricin would hardly be the only protein in the sample so it’s impossible to say without a lot more information how relatively toxic Milzman’s stash was.
However, no kid in a dorm with an old electronic copy of Saxon [1] can make much of anything, though, except that which will send him to jail.
From the wire:
A Georgetown University student who was charged Friday with possessing the biological toxin ricin made aggressive comments online toward another student earlier this year, according to a recent Georgetown graduate who said she alerted the school’s administration to the messages and believed the second student might be in danger.
Daniel Milzman, 19, is facing federal charges for allegedly making the deadly toxin and keeping it in his dorm room, according to court papers …
Milzman’s friends said immediately after his arrest that he has a “good heart and a good conscience.???
The recent Georgetown graduate said she was alarmed when she found messages that Milzman had apparently posted on Facebook attacking another Georgetown student. The messages, which the graduate saved as images and sent to the university’s Office of Student Conduct on Jan. 29, call the male student a “useless waste of space??? and suggest that Milzman would be happy if the other student killed himself.
The graduate, who is 23, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution. The graduate, who does not know Milzman, served as an orientation adviser to the other student and was concerned about the bullying nature of the comments when that student made them public on Facebook…
In an interview Saturday, [a Georgetown U. friend of Milzman’s, Thomas Lloyd told the Washington Post] that the conversation [in which Milzman told him of his ricin] was “ambiguous??? about whether or not Milzman would use the poison on another person and “there was certainly no mention of a specific person.???
Here’s an abstract on the subject of the clinical toxicology of castor seed ingestion in Kansas over ten years.
Summarizing, doctors and researchers found 84 cases over a decade, 50 of which were accidental, 34 — intentional. Children and the witless probably account for the accidental cases.
There may be an attempted poisoning or two in the 34 unintentional, although I’m betting some were attempted suicides and some curious stupidity or belief in wive’s tales about the value of a castor seed as folk medicine. (There is such belief in foreign countries.)
“One patient developed hematochezia and vomiting after reportedly ingesting and intravenously injecting castor bean seeds,” report the doctors.
This would apparently seem to be a clear attempt at suicide. Or, more remotely, someone looking for a high.
No deaths were reported. Unintentional consumption averaged eight and a half seeds per dose. Intentional, ten seeds.
Of note:
“No delayed symptoms, serious outcomes, or deaths were reported. Discussion. Due to the presence of ricin, there is concern for serious outcomes after ingestions of the seeds of the castor bean plant. In this study GI symptoms were most commonly reported but serious morbidity or mortality was not present. The true risk of castor bean plant seed ingestions should continue to be re-evaluated.
This is real science. What the mythology of ricin is in America is not.
What the national security expert apparatus also works on has little to do with using the science of a matter to make evaluations.
The latter was born out of caution after 9/11, and then exploitation when many realized that there was free money that was going to be flowing to defend against the stuff.
So when some dumb shit of a kid, or two, “make ricin??? and armored cars filled with army men masked by respirators and hazmat men in scuba tanks descend on their neighborhoods you can only be impressed/astonished/horrified/[fill in the blank] at the bizarre affairs.
Frankly, at this point I’m surprised such things have not yet been included in sketch comedy.
It is a demonstration, too, in this case as to how — on the internet and courtesy of Google — the excrement of “information??? rises to the top, crowding out and making useless the rational and considered.
No matter what is put on the web, regardless of refereed science on the matter, what happens is dictated by belief that has been made and twisted from the course and nature of the war on terror and, absurdly, the narratives of the news media and entertainment industries.
All the stupid find is the concocted and the fantastic, suitable only for entertainment. Which it has been for a long time, for anyone who watches movies, television, internet video and on and on.
DD’s law remains in effect:
The probability that any predicted national security catastrophe, or doomsday scenario, will occur is inversely proportional to its appearance in entertainments, movies, television dramas and series, novels, non-fiction books, magazines and news …
Danny Milzmans are one of the results of the circumstances covered under DD’s Law.
The Culture of Lickspittle, groupthink and the internet, all as they pertain to ricin, plus youthful very bad judgment are at the root of the story.
[1]. The words of Kurt Saxon, from The Poor Man’s James Bond, the original source of Danny Milzman’s ricin recipe, now retrievable by iPhone:
“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 …???
The world of digital sharing: Often not what it’s cracked up to be.
Share! It’s edutainment!
Way better than:
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03.22.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 12:24 pm by George Smith
Just before the mailed fist of US anti-terrorism arrived in his dorm.
Through the confluence of the never-ending war on terror, the internet, old American neo-Nazis and stupid new American men and women, we have ricin kooks. During the last two years, they’ve come in clusters.
And today from the wire, continuing the riff from earlier this week, the story of 19-year-old Danny Milzman, much like Nicholas Herman of Hatboro, only with more money, courtesy of well-off parents:
A Georgetown University student who made the deadly chemical ricin in his dorm room was arrested in Washington, D.C. on Friday for illegal possession of a biological toxin, an FBI spokeswoman said.
The student, Daniel Harry Milzman, made the white powder with materials he bought at local stores, including The Home Depot and American Plant Company, according to an affidavit filed in court on Thursday. He found the recipe for making it by doing a search on his iPhone, investigators said.
Wearing goggles and a dust mask for protection, Milzman used Epsom salts and castor beans, among other materials, to make the ricin in his dorm room about a month ago, according to the affidavit …
On Tuesday evening, for reasons that are unclear, Milzman showed some of his ricin to his residential adviser …
From Escape from WhiteManistan, Thursday:
I suspect that in certain cases, not all, there is a juvenile hacker mentality at work, one you see in BitCoin altar boys, the old culture of virus-writers, and some hackers:
I’m going to do it because I must prove to acquaintances, and by extension — the world, that it can be done! I’ll show everybody!
A little more than twenty years ago I saw the first recipes for ricin in cyberspace, on the nascent internet and also on bulletin board systems run off computers in the bedrooms of young boys and men in America.
In the intervening time a couple things have changed. Now you download them with iJunk, if you like. But the combination of electronic recipes for ricin (all simple castor bean pounding and minor treatments with either a degreasing agent or precipitation after dissolving in water), the mythology on the subject and its dispersal to fingertip retrieval from the net, the rapid reaction force of the US national security apparatus have made a unique American phenomenon: the ricin kook.
Said more succinctly, ricin makes stupid.
Nineteen year-old-boys are no more capable of making weapons of mass destruction from internet recipes and crap bought at local stores than the opossum in your backyard.
Nevertheless, where we are as a nation dictates they must be dealt with.
So dealt with they are because what good is it, how smart and skillful you are in making ricin, with this week’s cases, if you don’t tell someone about it?
And Daniel and Nicholas were apparently just busting to do so.
When this happens a detachment from the American joint anti-terrorism force arrives in your neighborhood or right up close to your dorm in the form of a mailed fist of special agents, SWAT teams in full battle gear and respirators, HAZMAT men, fire trucks and armored cars.
In Georgetown.
Daniel Melzman’s ricin recipe, so handily captured on his iPhone, is descended from an original published by neo-Nazi/survivalist Kurt Saxon in the late Eighties, first in a self-published pamphlet called The Weaponeer, and later in The Poor Man’s James Bond.
You can tell by its description in the Reuters piece.
Make no mistake, ricin boys, men and women are almost purely American. While you sometimes see a couple in England, it’s ours. It could only have happened here.
I was a young man when Kurt Saxon first started publishing his ricin recipes. However, the United States was not peppered every year with a few task force investitures of neighborhoods for the arrest of ricin kooks and their leavings.
Why?
A number of reasons, and they all come in the development of the Culture of Lickspittle during the last couple of decades:
No internet, no war on terror, no years of fantastical television stories about the nefarious toxicity of ricin in the hands of bad people, no army of national security experts in all media spinning stories about it, no interest because of the groupthink/idiot’s belief you can make something really dangerous, something you must tell others about …by buying a pack of seeds and twiddling your fingers.
I’ll probably post more this weekend.
Remember, after twenty years of writing in cyberspace, that’s why you read about this stuff here.
Pass the Ricin Kooks link around.
And here’s the misery jar.
From last year, ricin-making machine at 2:11.
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03.20.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 1:42 pm by George Smith
Spring is coming and a fresh bunch of America’s ricin kooks are stirring in the neighborhoods:
A Hatboro man was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly sending a scratch-and-sniff birthday card laced with ricin to a man now dating his ex-girlfriend, authorities said.
Nicholas Todd Helman, 19, was charged with attempted murder and risking catastrophe after lab tests allegedly showed that the card he placed in the man’s family mailbox March 6 was discovered this week to have contained traces of the toxic substance, Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said …
Helman had bragged of the toxic card to a coworker at Target in Warrington on March 6, according to a probable cause affidavit. The coworker then notified police, the affidavit says …
When Helman was first questioned about the incident, on March 7, he told police that he had only coated the card with sodium hydroxide, the affidavit says, which he chose because it resembled the toxin anthrax.
Helman also admitted to sending threatening messages to the man via Facebook, according to the affidavit, and police seized from him what appeared to be sodium hydroxide and a notebook with a ricin recipe after questioning.
When a ricin mailing is found, everyone comes: the FBI, the local police, the Department of Homeland Security, the state and local hazmat and SWAT teams.
It must have been a thrilling day in the neighborhood.
And from the WaPost (no link), still another young bean pounder:
A white powder found Tuesday in a Georgetown University dorm room tested positive for ricin, school officials said Wednesday, and a D.C. police report indicates that a 19-year-old man told authorities he had produced the substance.
The “expert” who should have kept her mouth shut is deployed, emitting a comment that really has no relevance to what’s going on in America when ricin kooks are at work:
Amy E. Smithson, a senior fellow with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies who studies biological weapons, said that when ricin is produced with military precision, the substance can be highly lethal. “Ricin is one of the deadliest substances on the face of the planet, no ifs, ands or buts about it,??? she said.
The substance can be highly lethal. Military precision. It’s laughable, a factoid delivered entirely stripped of context. Nobody has died in the US from ricin poisoning in the last twenty years.
As in Hatboro, the Department of Homeland Security, the police, the firemen, everybody, came.
Why couldn’t I get a job like that? That’s real employment security.
The coincidence that, in these cases, both perpetrators are nineteen-year-old boys certainly leaves good work for graduate students in criminal psychology.
Surely both, as have others, have read enough about ricin on the internet to know they are just smashing castor seeds. But if they are caught with the result, which inevitably happens because they are compelled to — ahem — spill the beans, summoning a detachment from the full apparatus of the war on terror to their door, they will go to jail.
I suspect that in certain cases, not all, there is a juvenile hacker mentality at work, one you see in BitCoin altar boys, the old culture of virus-writers, and some hackers: I’m going to do it because I must prove to acquaintances, and by extension — the world, that it can be done! I’ll show everybody!
Addition: Why do ricin kooks seem to come in clusters in ‘Merica? Coincidences? Seasonal? This is the best time to get castor seeds?
Some underlying psychic network, connecting strands of bright, electric, vibrating mental illness?
I’ll probably never know the answer.
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03.02.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 1:06 pm by George Smith
Today, more indirect news evidence the Dept. of Homeland Security and FBI are heavily engaged in surveillance of Internet web sites on the Internet and/or on the Tor network. In this instance, a fascinating tidbit in the United Kingdom, a collateral arrest linked to the investigation of Black Market Reloaded and Jesse Korff.
From a small English newspaper:
A banker accused of trying to kill her magistrate mother at their Stratford home by lacing her Diet Coke with a poison more deadly than ricin is to stand trial in July after appearing at Southwark Crown Court today where she was further remanded in custody.
Kuntal Patel,36, is alledged to have plotted to kill Meena Patel,54, using abrin-a rare poison extracted from the seeds of a Peruvian plant.
She was arrested by counter terrrorism officers at the £450,000 home they share in Park Road earlier this month after US homeland security is believed to have tipped off Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command about a website based in the US which specialised in selling lethal toxins.
She is not facing terrorist charges, but is accused of attempted murder between December 10 2013 and January 26.
The Mirror also informs: “Their home has been subject to a four-day fingertip search by police wearing masks and protective suits.”
Three raids in London were conducted in connection with the case.
And last week, one kook in New York:
City cops are using facial recognition software and leaning on the FBI and Interpol to learn more about the unhinged Swedish man who showed up at a Bronx police station with cyanide.
Jonathan Norling, 22, had more of the toxin and a suicide note in his Cadillac. Another poison, abrin, was found in his Cruger Ave. apartment, cops said. Officers also recovered 9-mm. pistol and an AR-15 assault rifle in his rented U-Haul truck …
[Norling] claimed to have a background in chemistry and an expertise in computer hacking, though detectives doubt his claim that he hacked into Citibank when he was 14.
[Norling] told police he tried to make cyanide himself, failed to do so, then hacked into [Black Market Reloaded], an Internet black market that he accessed using [the TOR network], which is free software that provides online anonymity and hides the user’s location. He then purchased the cyanide online.
What’s with the baby-faced kook pretending he’s a hacker spreading anarchy 25 years after the fact?
“Precatory bean plants may be purchased at nurseries nationwide.
“Some years ago, a few very stupid people came up with the idea of using the attractive scarlet and sable beans for rosary beads… If your target is strongly religious, then these beads can easily be modified to kill.???
[Hutchkinson continues with the advice to scarify the rosary peas so that the abrin might leak out and poison anyone who handles them. Since abrin is a protein, it can’t be much of a contact poison, any more than you can eat a piece of meat by putting it on your skin, but Hutchkinson, of course, does not know this. He is more interested in poisoning the Pope.]
“As the abrin slowly kills your target, an interesting cycle will begin. The worse your target gets, the more he will pray with his rosary beads, which will only make him worse… ???
“These items make wonderful presents for the religious target. We’d send one to the Pope, but he already has nineteen hundred years of Christian spoils to adorn himself with.???
— Maxwell Hutchkinson, The Poisoner’s Handbook
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