Reply #17: Sure

[Marie26]

I looked to see if there's any recent articles that mention a connection between Battelle & Ivins. According to a Aug. 4 LA Times article, Battelle's facility actually provided Ivins w/the anthrax spores that were eventually traced to the anthrax attacks. During the investigation, the FBI sent some of the anthrax to Battelle for genetic testing. Unfortunately, Battelle accidentally destroyed the anthrax samples instead, making them useless for any genetic testing. Oops.

This is from the LA Times, Aug. 4., 2008:

"Records reviewed by The Times and interviews with people knowledgeable about the investigation provide new details about the trail of evidence that finally led to Ivins.

Ivins had mixed spores shipped to Ft. Detrick from the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a facility operated by the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio, a private contractor that performs top- secret work for the CIA and other agencies. By cross-referencing the dates when those spores were received and handled at Ft. Detrick, the FBI sharply narrowed the list of government employees with possible access to the material....

Ivins' government work with the separate batches of dry powder anthrax was not widely known at USAMRIID. Two former top officials there told The Times in recent weeks that they had no idea until being contacted by a reporter that USAMRIID had received anthrax in either powder or wet form from Dugway or Battelle, whose own anthrax testing is done in Ohio. The former officials noted that USAMRIID typically supplies live anthrax spores for use at the two outside facilities, not the other way around.

The forensic analysis of the anthrax sent in the mailings had long posed a challenge to the FBI, whose in-house scientists were not equipped to decipher the potential origin of the material. Some of the first analysis was performed by Ivins and other scientists at USAMRIID; such efforts also were attempted at Battelle, but technicians there rendered some of the material forensically useless by first sterilizing it with steam, scientists told The Times. A spokesman for Battelle, T.R. Massey, declined earlier this year to discuss Battelle's role.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax4-2008aug04,0,18671,full.story