Posted on 10/21/2007 7:36:55 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
Page 609 of this volume is quite intriguing in it's claim. Page 610 is unfortunately restricted in Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=Zts-QdpDiWUC&pg=PA342&dq=healthcare+admin:+Wolper&sig=VRk6LDm6m3PXsNqXDZZ7uUtLgXs#PPA609,M1
"Bioterrorism Preparedness" , in by John D. Blair, Cynthia A.Holubik, Robert K. Keel, Angela M. Roberson, and Steven R. Tomlinson Chapter in HEALTH CARE ADMINISTRATION, by Lawrence F. Wolper
"After participating in several al Qaeda attacks and eventually leading his own cell in Yemen, Shafal was asked to return to Afghanistan to become a cadre member in the training camps. His charismatic leadership and technical proficiency resulted in his becoming one of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants. In 1998, he slipped across the U.S. Canadian border with a false passport and falsified student visa. Meanwhile, anthrax powder also was crossing the border.
Anthrax is the biological weapon of choice for terrorists. This supply was developed and produced for al Qaeda by five scientists from the former Soviet Union's extensive bio-warfare effort. The scientists were paid $2 million each for their work. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, they smuggled both samples of several key weaponized biological agents, including anthrax, and copies of the detailed operational plans and procedures for growing and weaponizing anthrax."
ping
Where's my million bucks?
ping
Money talks nobody walks. Everyone has his price, screw the rest of the world. There are far too many people out there who are only concerned about the here and now. Life is short, they want to live it to the peak, and the hell with the rest of mankind, that’s the attitude you are dealing with. No shortage of those types out there.
from russia with love.
Maybe page 610 begins “this fictional account is what the Federal Admin most fears............”
But it seems too specific to claim that it got smuggled in 1998. We really need access to page 610.
Maybe Sandy Burglar can purloin a copy?
COMING UP THIS WEEK
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN - 5 hours ago
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on
the anthrax scare of six years ago.
link for hearings:
http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071021/NEWS03/710210347
I don’t credit the treatise discussion. The timeline is inconsistent with Ayman’s emails to Atef in the Spring of 1999 in which he was just turning to the recruitment of specialists. Moreover, it is inconsistent with the poverty that characterized the email correspondence between ayman and the Yemeni cell — he lashed out at them in 1999 for buying a new fax machine when they already had two. (The head of the cell suggested he had no choice but to quit — he wouldn’t have bought the new one if the other two weren’t broken).
TrebleRebel, could you, while we’re on the subject, post the press release about the Newsweek story in December 2001 about help from one or more Russian bioweapons scientists? Jeffrey Bartholet is an esteemed journalist - 4 years as Newsweek’s foreign editor and in 2006 he became the DC bureau chief. Maybe his report hit the mark even if this treatise discussion does not.
I’d have to see the actual treatise — page 610 and footnotes — to make any sense of the discussion.
In contrast, I credit the discussion below (except that at one point the name Atef appears when the name should be KSM)
Anthrax Mystery: Evidence Points to al-Qaida
Thursday, June 7, 2007
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/6/6/163931.shtml?s=lh
Discussions of such devices in that country must always be held highly suspect!
I was going to poke fun at the thought that Ayman cared for the nicety of local regulations, but maybe it would be interesting to look back at the email from Ayman that journalist Cullison interpreted as being to the Yemen cell and consider whether it instead was to folks in London. As I recall its substance, it would fit the London cell, where two members were in open dispute with Ayman and resigning. The London cell definitely did a lot of faxing.
Guarantee you no one was doing a lot of faxing or photocopying inside Yemen. They have some pretty hardcore “no graven image” types there who’d kill you on the spot. Makes it hard to do business there.
Here’s the press release re the Newsweek report by a senior writer who served 4 years as foreign editor before becoming the DC Bureau Chief in July 2006. If it is true, it was very tightly held because I’ve not yet ever seen any corroboration.
A U.S.-Based Al Qaeda ‘Sleeper Cell’ Was Poised to Launch a Post-Sept. 11 Attack on a Major Washington Target; Would-Be Terrorists Went Underground or Fled U.S.
Evidence Indicates Al Qaeda Had Russian Help Developing Anthrax;
Al-Zawahiri Believed Involved in Bin Laden’s Biological Weapons Program
NEW YORK, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ — A U.S.-based cell of the Al Qaeda terror network nearly launched an attack on a major target in Washington, D.C. after September 11, Newsweek has learned. Intelligence sources say a Qaeda “sleeper cell” in the U.S. was poised to launch the attack — perhaps against the Capitol Building. The sources believe that the FBI, in its sweep against visa violators and other illegals of Mideast backgrounds, picked up members of a “support cell” tasked with providing logistics help to the people actually carrying out the mission. Intelligence sources say the would-be terrorists then went underground or fled the country. Investigators have not yet been able to identify the plotters from among the hundreds of people caught in the FBI dragnet; they’re not even sure they are still in custody, according to a Newsweek Special Report in the December 17 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, December 10), written by Senior Writer Jeffrey Bartholet and reported by Newsweek Correspondents in Afghanistan, Washington and the Middle East.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20011209/HSSA004 )
The war in Afghanistan has produced a hodgepodge of disturbing
intelligence that investigators are still trying to sift and analyze. Perhaps
the most alarming evidence gathered so far concerns Al Qaeda efforts to
develop biological weapons. According to intelligence sources, U.S.
operatives in Afghanistan have collected information that one or more Russian scientists were working inside Afghanistan with Al Qaeda operatives. One well-placed source tells Newsweek that evidence from the scene indicates that the renegade Russians were helping Al Qaeda to develop anthrax, and that spores of the deadly disease may actually have been stockpiled by the terrorist group. While intelligence sources say they believe any such stockpiles were destroyed in U.S. bombing raids, it is not known how much, if any, of the anthrax ever made it out of Afghanistan.
There were probably 60 to 70 of them, plus their dependents. For the most part they were living 10 to 20 people per townhouse and you'd see them walking the streets day and night to escape the congestion inside the houses.
They flew the coop on 9/11.
Could be anywhere now.
1. Here is the email exchange and on its face is represented to be an exchange with the Yemen cell which was active that year.
TO: Ezzat (real name unknown)
FROM: Ayman al-Zawahiri
FOLDER: Outgoing Mail—To Yemen
DATE: February 11, 1999
Noble brother Ezzat …
Following are my comments on the summary accounting I received:
… With all due respect, this is not an accounting. It’s a summary accounting. For example, you didn’t write any dates, and many of the items are vague.
The analysis of the summary shows the following:
1- You received a total of $22,301. Of course, you didn’t mention the period over which this sum was received. Our activities only benefited from a negligible portion of the money. This means that you received and distributed the money as you please …
2- Salaries amounted to $10,085—45 percent of the money. I had told you in my fax … that we’ve been receiving only half salaries for five months. What is your reaction or response to this?
3- Loans amounted to $2,190. Why did you give out loans? Didn’t I give clear orders to Muhammad Saleh to … refer any loan requests to me? We have already had long discussions on this topic …
4- Why have guesthouse expenses amounted to $1,573 when only Yunis is there, and he can be accommodated without the need for a guesthouse?
5- Why did you buy a new fax for $470? Where are the two old faxes? Did you get permission before buying a new fax under such circumstances?
6- Please explain the cell-phone invoice amounting to $756 (2,800 riyals) when you have mentioned communication expenses of $300.
7- Why are you renovating the computer? Have I been informed of this?
8- General expenses you mentioned amounted to $235. Can you explain what you mean? …
TO: Ayman al-Zawahiri
FROM: Ezzat
FOLDER: Incoming Mail—From Yemen
DATE: February 17, 1999
Kind brother Nur al-Din [al-Zawahiri]:
… We don’t have any guesthouses. We have bachelor houses, and the offices are there too. We called it a guesthouse hypothetically, and we don’t have any bachelors except Basil and Youssef. And Abd al-Kareem lives at his work place.
If I buy a fax and we have two old ones, that would be wanton or mad.
Communication expenses were $300 before we started using the mobile phone—and all these calls were to discuss the crises of Ashraf and Dawoud and Kareem and Ali and Ali Misarra and Abu Basel and others, in compliance with the orders.
Renovating our computer doesn’t mean buying a new one but making sure that adjustments are made to suit Abdullah’s [bin Laden’s] work. There were many technical problems with the computer. These matters do not need approval.
There are articles for purchase that are difficult to keep track of, so we have put them under the title of general expenses …
The first step for me to implement in taking your advice is to resign from … any relationship whatsoever between me and your Emirate. Consider me a political refugee …
2. As for 9/11, I tend to favor the 911 Commission Report, to include its discussion of Falls Church Imam Aulaki, who was picked up in Yemen this summer by Yemeni security forces at the request of the CIA, after being monitored for years by US and British intelligence. He fled the country in March 2002. As for other support personnel, there would be no need for more than have been identified in the Commission report.
Don’t expect anything from the hearing of interest to the Amerithrax investigation.Gerald W. Parker, DVM, PhD, MS, from the Homeland Security Department will testify as he has previously on biopreparedness, to include medical countermeasures. You’ll hear about Project Bioshield, but nothing about whether the bloodhounds are barking up the wrong tree. It will be about how they are spending your money, not on solving the crime. One of the scientists behind the opinion re the hijacker’s leg lesion is the least constrained by a boring official title. But her testimony can be expected about spending priorities also.
That textbook discussion was just a hypothetical discussion.
Beginning of page 610, says “coated” up to Soviet standards so you know it’s fiction. ;0)
Hypothetical goes from 609-614.
But note that in real life, the Bartholet article shortly followed Cheney’s briefing on the documents seized in Afghanistan which include a redacted name of a scientist Rauf Ahmad consulted with. Maybe that guy was a former Russian bioweaponeer.
The second most famed former Russian bioweaponeer, living in the UK, died while gardening Fall 2001 of a heart attack.
*ping*
Wolper’s atx story here is not sourced, and pretty much out there if not sourced somehow. There is a lot of nonsense out there. Ed posts some from an FBI agent, Terry, who had no input into Amerithrax.
“”The trouble is that many politicians (and former CIA Director James Woolsey) started telling the public that the anthrax attacks looked like they were connected to Iraq. In hindsight, this seems to be the best proof that there were many in the U.S. government that were itching for the excuse to invade Iraq sooner rather than later.””
What politicians? Some speculated it might be Iraqi source, not surprising since Iraq was nearly synonymous with ATX, given their failure to account for stocks of it being a continuing rationale for sanctions. Also, “the best proof?” The best proof is what the Bush Admin said from the outset, they were prioritizing regime change in Iraq more than Clinton had. It’s not as if this were a secret, which Agent Terry spins as so.
Here’s worse,
“We referred Kathy’s study on the Lone Wolf to our colleagues in the Bureau at the time and the FBI stepped up to the plate and beat back the tide on this issue”.
Unless it’s mere bragging, these two are claiming they twsited the FBI not to consider foreign sources and are proud of it.
To paraphrase Sen. Leahy, maybe this investigation should of been handed off to a small town police chief.
Now, that quote from Tenet’s book that Zac posted elsewhere, that was intriguing, and sourced to the top. Can you post it again here?
BTW, re: “Amerithrax”, has the name of an FBI investition ever been invented to focus on one set of suspects and preclude others, non-American?
BTW
And to now hear the former lead guy on the Unabomber and Eric Rudolph putting in his two cents on this is just an absolute joke. Eric Rudolph was caught by an alert and fortunate local policeman who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and caught Rudolph in the act of dumpster diving. The Unabomber was caught because his brother turned him in. I guess you have to give the feds credit for the idea of putting out the manifesto for public reading, but if his brother hand't been such a good citizen, Teddy boy would probably still be out there today.
I guess it's understandable though that if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. At least nobody has asked Charles Moose what he thinks of the anthrax attacks yet!
If the atx was coated, treated, etc.,
why were there those efforts to “reverse engineer” it?
Correction:
If the atx was NOT coated, treated, etc.,
Great question. There were reports going on for years that the FBI were secretly trying to reverse engineer the powder, there are plenty of links out there to these stories. Then Michael Mason admitted the attempts failed. Then after 5 years the FBI said they knew all along the powder was not coated. So why did they try to reverse engineer it?
Of course Ed Lake has all the answers - he says they did actually succeed - it’s just that the media misinterpreted Mason when he announced they failed.
The chapter quoted above, for which only the page 609 was available online, is providing an elaborate hypothetical scenario. pp. 609-614.
It posits 4 US-based cells, each with a different task, and each unaware of the other.
I especially like his suggestion that cell members communicate by maildrops.
In the real world, a herd of FBI agents and technicians secretly swarmed the residence of Ali Mohamed after the 1998 embassy bombings. He had a document “Cocktail” on his computer that posited such communication. He had infiltrated the US Army, CIA and even duped the FBI. He was stealing classified maps out of the map shack at Ft. Bragg and bringing them to Afghanistan to show Ayman.
Under the draft document outlining how US based cells should communicate on Ali’s computer, not even AQ HQ would know the identity of cell members. Ali and his friend Dahab in fact claim to have recruited 10 cell members. Though there is no reason to think there is any connection between them and Amerithrax, they are a living Exhibit A in the active steps Ayman Zawahiri was taking to develop a US-based infrastructure. Ali Mohammed taught Dahab how to make letter bombs. (This predated the work on anthrax but is relevant to the al Hayat letter bombs that involved letters to newspapers in DC and NYC and people in symbolic positions relating to the detention of WTC 1993).
The more relevant info from the Turchie fellow is that no profiler was made part of the Task Force and he acknowledges that to have a meaningful role, the analyst would have to have an ongoing role and in a position to adapt his analysis based on incoming information. In Unabom, they profiled that one of the first victims was the perpetrator — and that he was angry at a university security officer who had given him a ticket. Years into the matter, they still suspected one of the first victims and refused to change the profile because “they already knew who was responsible.” So his example of Unabom is actually an indictment of profiling, even though it is offered in support.
David Kacyznski, along with some letters and a 1971 essay taken from the Chicago family homestead, was all it took to provide probable cause to search the cabin — and the cabin provided a motherlode of evidence.
And so FBI profiling merely contributed to the 18 year delay in catching the criminal. While historically I’m a big fan of the FBI, when you take Fitzgerald’s expanded March 2002 comments to the press — pointing to Leahy and Daschle being democrat — and Turchie’s comments, the reality now apparently being revealed by Fitzgerald’s colleague is that FBI profiling impeded the solution to AMERITHRAX. The profile itself is serviceable — it was Fitzgerald’s expanded comments showing what he believed and putting a gloss on the profile that showed the profilers were screwing the pooch. But basically one man’s “lone wolf” whose soul is filled with “howling loneliness” is another Salafist in a foreign country trying to connect to his islamic country’s culture. One man’s “lone wolf” is just another person’s operative working under principles of strict cell security. Marc Sage, a former CIA psychiatrist, found that 70 percent of all jihadists lived abroad from their home country and a majority of them were recruited by friends (rather than indoctrinated by ideology).
Having said all that, if Turchie and Wright at Quantico and others had not advocated strongly for publishing the manifesto (over the objections under conventional wisdom that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” UNABOM would not have been solved. And so in that sense, they truly did break the case. But I tend to favor the view of the US Attorney in Northern Virginia who said of AMERITHRAX, in every case you need a lucky break — whether UNABOM or when Lincoln’s assassin jumped on the stage (and broke his leg). It’s just that the profile was not much good — and, for example, was way off on the age and pegged the bomber as fastidiously neat.
If intelligence analysis is an art, criminal profiling is drawing with crayons. I’ve been been trying to get T. Turchie to go on record on the profile so that we have historical record that if Amerithrax is solved, it will be shown to have been solved in spite of Quantico’s best efforts in Fall 2001 and Spring 2002.
It is rather silly for either the prosecutor or the profilers to take credit for solving UNABOM. David Kaczynski solved UNABOM. Actually, his wife Linda did. In 1985, David gave his friend Joe LaFollette the idea for the novel TECHNOPHOBIA who woke up bearded and unkempt, as if from a dream, having killed a bunch of people because of a phobic fear of technology. David was living in a hole in Texas under a piece of corrugated metal at a time. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m not suggesting that upon finding a prolific 36,000 word (or whatever) manifesto writer they should have searched unpublished writing at the Library of Congress, if they had, they might have caught TK on their own, and then they would have had bragging rights.
The prosecutor claimed victory when TK, acting in the end as his own counsel, avoided the death penalty, by brilliantly invoking the right to self-representation at the last minute on the eve of trial, imbedding the matter with potential reversible error. The evidence in the cabin was overwhelming and so the prosecutor who a few years ago was presuming to give advice on AMERITHRAX because of a successful prosecution in UNABOM was perhaps missing the obvious point that TK beat his pants off.
“We referred Kathy’s study on the Lone Wolf to our colleagues in the Bureau at the time and the FBI stepped up to the plate and beat back the tide on this issue”.
This is a key point. Kathy retired on September 30, 2001. She handed her report surveying 10 lone wolves to her supervisor as she walked out the door. She had previously worked with Fitzgerald who came to head the Quantico behavioral unit. On UNABOM, he had been the person who most closely scrutinized the manifesto. The previous historical summary by outside observers was that they merely pullled the “lone wolf” theory out of the file. When the reality was that they pulled it off the top of the filing cabinet because it had been put there just days earlier by Kathleen. Now the rub is that both she and Turchie had counterterrorism experience. Dr. Puckett’s experience mainly was in Soviet espionage cases. But Turchie had background in Cole and other cases. Resorting to the “cookie cutter” lone wolf study and handing it off to their close working colleague Fitzgerald may have given them the sense that they had the case cracked in the first week of October, but it avoided the necessity of hours of research using the “open source” and classified information that was available relating to such things as the al Hayat letter bombs in January 1997 that fit the pattern of the anthrax letters exactly. It also avoided them learning that the potent stuff was sent to the two Senators most responsible for the billions in aid to Egypt and Israel the day after the bail was denied for an Egyptian Islamic Jihad shura member. In late January 2001, a letter threatening to use anthrax had been sent to the Canadian immigration minister responsible for signing his detention certificate — it was sent right after announcement of his bail hearing. Did the profilers even know about the threat letter and the denial of bail on October 5, 2001? The CIA did. It was the denial of that bail that prompted the second mailing and the CIA knew this as of December 2001. I submit to you that the CIA did not tell the FBI — and that some in the FBI did not know of it until months later. Mahjoub was the name. He was manager of Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan and let me say this again — Ayman’s operatives had threatened to use anthrax if his bail was denied. It then was denied on October 5, 2001. It was the January 2001 threat that prompted the classified February 2001 PDB to Bush about their interest in using anthrax.
It’s important to note though that the Task Force has always pursued the alternative hypotheses. It was not that the profile truncated their investigation. It’s just that Fitzgerald’s public comments (in March 2002 I believe) and private conversations by DOJ or FBI officials to press have confused public understanding of the matter.
I think the FBI had overcome its confusion no later than 2003.
We would want them to aggressively pursue all alternatives and there is no reason to think that they failed to do so.
Consider Peter Lance’s TRIPLE CROSS about Ali Mohamed’s infiltration of the US Army and CIA and his duping of the FBI.
The book poses this question: who was responsible for failing to detect the Al Qaeda infiltrator?
Well, Turchie and Puckett were the ones involved in counterterrorism, detecting moles, profiling the psyches of such infiltrators. Perhaps we should ask them.
The same question is presented with Ali Al-Timimi. Who was responsible for the granting of a high security clearance (for work with the Navy) to a Salafist taught by Bin Laden’s sheik? Isn’t “Do you hope for the destruction of Western civilization” one of the questions on the form for a high security clearance? Who allowed him unfettered access to the most diverse microbiological collection of the world at ATCC? Who then allowed the microbiologist, a computer expert, to work just feet from famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Charles Bailey, who has published many papers on the Ames strain? And then who hid these egregious missteps for the public for a half decade while we only ever hear about how billions in taxpayers money is being spent to address the breach of security that has never been admitted. The government officials, by spinning the story, then move on to high paying positions in private industry and the public is just left with an enduring mystery.
No one should be heard to marvel at Ali Mohamed’s infiltration if they then turn a blind eye to Al-Timimi’s infiltration.
Some profiler likely has gleaned that my atypical harsh comments about the competence of the investigation in 2001/2002 are prompted by my pique at a university parking officer who unfairly gave me a ticket. :0) But I’ll get over it and get back to being the FBI’s “fanboy” (to borrow the Great Satan’s disparaging phrase). As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
Of course, I never said any such thing. You're just making up nonsense as usual.
On December 6, 2006, the subject of "reverse engineering" was thoroughly discussed when the article the article titled "Science aids a nettlesome FBI criminal probe" came out in the December 4, 2006, issue of Chemical & Engineering News.
Early in the article it says this:
This September, Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office, acknowledged the major, if unheralded, role science is playing in the probe. Yet the FBI has said little about what science has revealed, citing the criminal nature of the case as its reason. What scientific tidbits the public has been fed come from media reports, and most of these have been incorrect or incomplete.
And then it corrects the nonsense printed in the media years before:
Daniel Martin, a microbiologist in Dugway's Life Sciences Division, tells C&EN that Dugway was asked "to produce materials to see how they compared with the materials the FBI had in its possession." But, Martin says, Dugway did not reverse or back engineer the attack powder. "Back engineering implies that you know exactly what the material is and can replicate the material exactly, step by step." That isn't what Dugway did, he says.
Instead, Martin says, Dugway used the Leahy powder as the culture starter to "produce several different preparations using different media, and different ways of drying and milling the preparation" that the FBI could use for comparison purposes. Dugway, he says, never analyzed the Leahy powder and did no comparative analyses between the preparations made and the Leahy powder.
So all the talk about the FBI failing to "reverse engineer" the Daschle anthrax at Dugway was total nonsense. No one even ATTEMPTED to do that. In order to do such a thing you would first have to know everything there is to know about the Daschle anthrax. They didn't know that.
FBI special agent Robert Casey spoke at Indiana State Friday. He spoke to students about careers in the field of criminology. Casey used stories about anthrax, among others, to illustrate the kinds of skills it takes to be successful in the criminal justice field. The four keys of success he laid out during the speech were the ability to verbally communicate effectively, the ability to communicate effectively in writing, the ability to think critically about information and the ability to manage risk.
I think he underestimates the usefulness of pictures. I propose that TrebleRebel and Ed, using no words (other than to label a picture), see who can post the prettiest pictures, in representing whatever it is they have been arguing about for the past 5 years.
Anyone else can play, so long as the pictures are in some fashion intended to promote a solution to Amerithrax. Then we’ll take a poll and the winner will get a signed copy of Ed’s book on the investigation (if he is so inclined). (The reason such a contest comes to mind is that Ed included especially attractive pictures on a new entry announcing a similar contest). But enough with words — lets have pictures ladies and germs. If TrebleRebel posts a picture of Badabing Badablonde at the Eiffel Tower, he is disqualified and Badabing needs to go to Paris with one of us.
Dugway had admitted that the FBI asked them to make a product without silica - and Dugway reported that the product they made without silica “flew like a penguin”.
But afterwards the FBI set about to reverse engineer the Daschle and Leahy powders. Director Mueller said they would need to go into new territory to do that (Hmmmm - why would they need to go into new territory to prepare some uncoated and untreated anthrax spores?).
Dateline November 11, 2002
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1102/111102gsn1.htm
The bureau has been working for months to reconstruct the spores, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Nov. 1, according to The Washington Post. “We’re replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task,” the Post quoted Mueller as saying. “We are going into new territory in some areas,” he added.
Dateline September 30, 2003
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/fbifailsanthrax.html
Two years after the nation’s deadly anthrax attacks, the FBI still has not been able to re-create the process the killer used to produce the substance sent through the U.S. mail, a top FBI official said Monday.
Dateline September 28, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/28/america/NA_GEN_US_FBI_Anthrax.php
“The FBI and its partners in this investigation have never been under any misconceptions about the character of the anthrax used in the attacks,” Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch wrote Holt on Thursday. “On the contrary, since the earliest months of this investigation, we have consulted with the world’s foremost scientific experts on anthrax and relevant bio-forensic sciences, both inside and outside the FBI.
Naturally Ed Lake coinsiders the above warped and conflicting statements from the FBI made over a five year time span to be perfectly consistent and reasoable.
Yes, and as a result of that ONE test, the whole ridiculous idea that the FBI had failed to reverse engineer the attack anthrax was launched.
That ONE test involved allowing spores to dry in the air and then scraping them on a screen to break up the results. ANYONE could tell you that processing spores that way would result in particles which would fly like penguins.
Naturally Ed Lake coinsiders the above warped and conflicting statements from the FBI made over a five year time span to be perfectly consistent and reasoable.
There's nothing warped about the statements and they are totally consistent. They are looking for EVIDENCE to use in court. That involves creating all kinds of spore powders in order to show how each differs from the other and how the differences are detected and evaluated.
If all you do is look for massive conspiracies, that's all you will find.
OK, you can all stop laughing now.
"Sometime in February or March, officials at the Justice Department held a closed-door meeting with a federal judge in Washington, where they laid out what the government knows about the anthrax-letter attacks of 2001.
Nobody is exactly sure what the department told the judge during that meeting. People familiar with the presentation say it was held under top-secret conditions; documents were escorted to the courtroom under the supervision of the U.S. Marshals Service, and the judge was not even allowed to keep copies of the papers that were shown to him. But at a hearing on March 29, the judge, Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, gave a hint of what he'd seen. The two-and-a-half-year-old investigation into the anthrax letters is at a "critical" stage, Walton said. Based on the evidence he'd been shown, a breakthrough in the case might be just around the corner."
By the way, that wasn't February or March of 2007, that was February or March of 2004, over three years ago!
I have little doubt that microbial forensics is probably an exciting and cutting edge scientific field, but it has yet to produce an indictment in this case, much less a conviction.
Here is a picture of the man that the CIA told President Clinton on December 4, 1998 was behind the planning of attacks on the US using aircraft and other means. He was in a cell with KSM and had received safe haven in Doha, Qatar. When the FBI sent an elite squad to grab KSM and his colleague, they had been tipped off (by the religious affairs minister) and fled. The answer to Amerithrax lies not just with KSM but this man, Mohamed Shawqi Islambouli, the brother of Sadat's assassin. But given that it is "open source" information, it doesn't mean you can't know the truth. He now heads those Egyptian Islamic Group members who joined Al Qaeda. He is close to blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The solution is slow in coming partly because the government does not want to admit that an infiltration even worse and even more obvious than Ali Mohammed occurred.
KSM was working as an engineer in the Doha water department. So when you hear he was planning to poison a reservoir north of New York City, that's not a good thing.
But you won't hear a peep of this in tomorrow's hearing which will be about medical countermeasures and the like.
The facts seem to indicate that the Department of Justice is unwilling to authorize an arrest at this time, since there is NO PRECEDENT for using Microbial Forensics in court.
The way things work, if they were to authorize an arrest and go into court, the judge could throw the case out because there is NO PRECEDENT for using Microbial Forensics as evidence.
Doing some research, I found a 2005 article by Bruce Budowle from the FBI's lab in Quantico, VA, and Rockne Harmon from the District Attorneys Office in Oakland, CA. The article is titled "HIV Legal Precedent Useful for Microbial Forensics." It suggests a way that the DOJ might be able to use an HIV case as a precedent.
For what it's worth, the article begins with this sentence:
"The field of microbial forensics was formalized because of the need for attribution in events where a bioweapon has been used.
So, it appears that the field has been formalized. But getting judges to accept it is another matter.
I also found a report titled "Decoding the Origin of a Bioagent." That report from 2006 says,
“Forensics data are most valuable when different techniques provide the same results,” notes Malkin. NanoSIMS, AFM, gene typing, and other technologies are being combined to construct an attribution profile for microorganisms turned into bioweapons. “Strain identification must be quick enough to allow for an adequate medical and public health response, yet it must also endure the rigorous standards for evidentiary material that may be presented in a courtroom,” says [chemical physicist Steve] Velsko. It’s a tall order. Still, Velsko is optimistic that the research avenues being investigated will soon provide the necessary capability.
This also seems to indicate that the FBI is finished with its investigation, but the lawyers at the DOJ aren't willing to authorize an arrest for fear that a judge could throw out all evidence produced via microbial forensics.
There is up to $5 million reward for the solution to the al Hayat letter bombs under the Rewards for Justice program. 
I believe that below is the actual photo of Aafia that the FBI used to make the photo above.
Microbial Forensics is partly just an extension of ordinary forensics - any unusual materials found under a microscope and compared against other samples will in principle be accepted as evidence in court. This extends from the millions of samples of unusual fibers that have been accepted as forensic evidence in hundreds of thousands of cases. Ed Lake, of course, is a conspiracy theorist who believes dozens of forensic scientists conspired to delude others in the microbial forensics field that weaponized anthrax spores and anthrax simulants are coated with silica nanoparticles.
His beliefs are that the FBI secretly have obtained massive forensic evidence against a drunk from Milwaukee that would prove beyond doubt he made the spores - but these pesky courts just won’t accept such evidence - even although microscopic evidence of fibers, soil, pollen, dust, hair and just about any other microscopic sample you can name are routinely used to sucessfuly prosecute cases. But, you never know, the DOJ could change their minds any day now, at which point the FBI would move in and arrest their man.
The image on the computer to the left was faked by TIME -- the image was added to the computer front.
What other anthrax pictures are faked?
The notion that the feds already have a guy and are building a scientific case against him sounds to me like so much rubbish with nothing to substantiate it. Of course I could be wrong, and I would certainly love to see the perp(s) brought to justice, but I think my instincts are pretty good, and I can usually tell when I'm being bullshitted.
The picture above is of Jack Cloonan in the FBI’s New York Office even though I mistakenly paired it with a discussion of John O’Neill. Both were experts on Bin Laden. Cloonan was close to and knows Ali Mohamed well. He flew to Sudan shortly after 9/11 to meet with al-Duri, who had been in charge of WMD procurement and had been the supervisor of Mahjoub, the EIJ shura member in Canada who had been the subject of the anthrax threat letter. Former Special Agent Cloonan should be asked his opinion on Amerithrax.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.