http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49502-2001Dec15.html Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks 5 Labs Can Trace Spores to Ft. Detrick By Rick Weiss and Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A01 Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests. Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall's bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. "That means the original source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID," said one of the scientists. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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