The Ames strain involved originally came from a cow in Texas in 1981.
It was sent to Ft. Detrick by the vet and then distributed to at least
a score or so of labs. One expert, Dr. C.J. Peters, summarizes on
PBS:
"Knowing that this strain was originally isolated in the U.S. has
absolutely nothing to do with where the weapon may have been prepared
because, as I tried to make the point, these strains move around. A
post doc in somebody's laboratory could have taken this strain to
another lab and it could have been taken overseas and it could have
ended up absolutely anywhere. Tiny quantities of anthrax that you
couldn't see, that you couldn't detect in an inventory can be used to
propagate as much as you want. So that's just not, in fact, very
helpful."
