have been able to trace the path of the samples through the other researchers to whom he gave material, both within USAMRIID and to outside labs.
During the time that Dr. Ivins was transferring quantities of spores to, for example, aerobiology for animal challenges and outside labs for their research, lab technicians continued to make spores at the behest of Dr. Ivins, thinking that the spores were needed to go into RMR-1029. His junior lab technician thought that the “Dugway Spores” were exhausted, so she needed to make spores for the animal challenges. In fact, she was under the impression that she was hired expressly for this purpose. His senior lab technician, on the other hand, thought that she was continuously making spores to add to the existing stock of “Dugway Spores.” In fact, the investigation revealed that there were never any additions to RMR-1029 after its creation in October 1997.[1]
- 2. RMR-1029 is the source of the murder weapon
As noted above, based on advanced genetic testing combined with rigorous investigation, the FBI concluded that RMR-1029 is the parent material of the evidentiary anthrax spore powder, i.e., the evidentiary material came from a derivative growth of RMR-1029. There are a number of investigative and scientific factors that play into the strength of the evidence that RMR-1029 is the parental material of the evidence. First, the collection of Ames isolates from laboratories both from the United States and abroad that constitute the FBIR are a comprehensive representation of the Ames strain. Contrary to widely-held perceptions in the anthrax community, Ames is a unique strain, first discovered in 1981 in Sarita, Texas, and is not known to have appeared anywhere else in nature since.[2] Through extensive interviews and reviews of all relevant documentation, investigators have determined the historical distribution of the Ames strain since its isolation in 1981 and subsequent transfer to USAMRIID. The investigation also revealed that all subsequent derivations obtained from the 15 domestic and three international laboratories that possessed the Ames strain have USAMRIID as their origin, either directly or indirectly. Second, the FBI determined that of the 1,070 FBIR samples screened for the morphological variants, only eight samples contained the four genetic mutations found in the anthrax letter spores. Finally, investigative findings through interviews of scientists and an
- ↑ Investigators unsuccessfully attempted to determine what happened to these spores. However, there is no evidence that RMR-1029 was the parent material to these new spores, as the laboratory technicians were utilizing frozen stock of Bacillus anthracis – and not liquid suspension such as RMR-1029 – as the parent material for their new spore preparations. In addition, the technique they used to grow new spores, known as a “single-colony pick,” would not produce genetically identical material to the parent material, making it extremely unlikely that these missing spores were utilized in the anthrax attacks.
- ↑ Once the blood from the cow was isolated, it was shipped from Texas to USAMRIID in a tube labeled “USDA, Ames, Iowa” – hence the “Ames strain.” USAMRIID maintained the original slant of the Ames strain in Dr. Ivins’s walk-in cold room in Suite B-3 of Building 1425 until its seizure by the FBI in 2005.
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