Posted on 09/26/2007 2:31:31 PM PDT by ZacandPook
WASHINGTON — Tracking scientists moving from country to country to share their expertise in building biological weapons is a major challenge, a top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.
...
Because they are easier to hide than nuclear weapons or missiles, biological weapons are best tracked by monitoring those with expertise to make them _ a formidable challenge in itself, Murrett said.
"The kind of challenge we have for proliferation which I think is tougher is, for example, the transfer of individual scientists from country A to country B," he said at a breakfast with defense reporters.
Tracking individuals trying to spread biological weapons know-how is beyond the capabilities of his agency alone, Murrett said. It requires multiple intelligence agencies to combine their intercepts, data bases and analyses.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
If the CIA or FBI wanted to track PhD microbiologists with access to pathogens and know-how, and even high security clearances and a letter of commendation from the White House, all they needed to do was check the water cooler at the nearby DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense, in the ATCC-sponsored program for bioinformatics.
The Sheiks, the Bioweaponeers, and DARPA
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#SheikandtheBioweaponeers
a. Hardball Tactics In An Era of Threats
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#Hardball%20Tactics%20In%20An%20Era%20Of%20Threats
b. The Education of Ali Al-Timimi
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#The%20Education%20of%20Ali%20Al-Timimi
c. “The Straight Path”: Connecting the Dots
d. GMU Center for Biodefense: Discovery Hall
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#GMU%20Center%20for%20Biodefense:%20Discovery%20Hall
e. Ali and The Islamic Ruling On The Peace Process
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#Ali%20and%20The%20Islamic%20Ruling%20On%20The%20Peace%20Process
f. The 2006 Arrest Of Former Falls Church “911 Imam” And Fellow Salafist Lecturer Awlaqi
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#The%202006%20Arrest%20Of%20Falls%20Church%20Imam%20And%20Fellow%20Salafist%20Lecturer%20Awlaqi
g. The Ability of Intelligence to Prevent Domestic Bioterrorism
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#The%20Ability%20of%20Intelligence%20To%20Prevent%20Domestic%20Bioterrorism
h. Infiltration of the US Biodefense Establishment: Sailing On The Good Ship Anthrax
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/alqaeda,anthraxa.html#SailingTheGoodShipAnthrax
If we don’t learn from history we are doomed to repeated it. So we can either uncritically read the press releases such as the report in the AP yesterday about tracking biological scientists by satellite, or we can check out books such as Zegart’s new book SPYING BLIND (Princeton University Press), and realize that the FBI has not yet demonstrated that it is not still trapped by the credo, “Real men don’t type.” Condi Rice was the author’s thesis advisor. It explores the systemic institutional problems that underlie the personal failures that the media finds it easier to grasp and describe.
The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (”PDB”) to the President Bush explained that Bin Laden planned to hijack some aircraft as part of an effort to free the blind sheik. A little noticed December 5, 1998 PDB to the same effect to President Clinton, however — declassified and included in the 911 Commission Report — said that the attacks were being planned by the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Mohammed Islambouli. The anthrax was sent on the date of Sadat’s assassination and the date the Camp David Accords (the reason Sadat was killed) were approved. Islambouli was in a cell with Khalid Mohammed (”KSM”), who would come to lead the cell planning anthrax attacks in the United States.
None of this should have come as a surprise. On July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar spoke to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.” In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged that following his arrest, Abdel Rahman, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, urged: “Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! ... It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” His list is a pretty concise summary of the terrorist actions taken over the next decade.
The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman - - was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on December 21, 1996 contained improvised explosive devices. The bombs were mailed on the Night of Decree or Night of Measures. The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik, Sheik Abdel Rahman. The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda.
The letter bombs were sent in connection with the treatment of the Egyptian islamists imprisoned for the earlier attack on the WTC and a related plot. The purpose of the letter bombs — which resulted in minimal casualty — was to send a message. (There initially was an outstanding $2 million reward — under the rewards for justice program, the reward now is up to $5 million.) There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist).
The FBI suspected the Vanguards of Conquest, a mysterious group led by Egyptian Islamic Jihad head Ayman Zawahiri. The group can be thought of as either the military wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or perhaps just EIJ by another name. It is sometimes known as the New Jihad. Yassir Al-Sirri was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad/ Vanguards of Conquest publicist and worked out of his London-based home while on the public dole. Another group under suspicion for the mailings was the Egyptian Islamic Group. The blind sheik Abdel Rahman simultaneously was the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad/Vanguards of Conquest. The next month, on February 12, 1997, the Islamic Group, for its part, issued a statement: “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its legitimate “jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom is Abdel Rahman.”
Abdel-Rahman’s friend, Ayman Zawahiri, was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program. The blind sheik’s son. Mohammed was on Al Qaeda’s three- member WMD committee. In 1993, Ali Al-Timimi was scheduled to speak before the blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman at the first annual conference of Al-Timimi’s charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) along with the former EIJ member Gamal Sultan and the brother of Sayyid Qutb. After WTC 1993, the islamists had found it prudent to get a new fresh start at developing the Salafist infrastructure in the United States. In July and August 2001, Al-Timimi spoke in Toronto and London alongside “911 imam” Awlaki and unindicted WTC 1993 conspirator Bilal Philips.
Ali Al-Timimi became a microbiology grad student at George Mason University, and worked alongside the scientists at the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense. The NIH just awarded a $25 million grant to work with BL-4 pathogens near the country’s capitol.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
errata -
I mistakenly said Bio-Level 4 when I should have said Bio-Level 3.
http://www.examiner.com/a-957947~George_Mason_to_study_avian_flu__anthrax_in_new_lab.html
I may have been thinking of the Bio-Level 4 lab planned for Boston, which has been the subject of articles this past week.
“I will keep pushing as long as I’m in the Senate. I’ll keep pushing to get the truth. When I was pushing on some of these questions once before, as you recall, I got one of the two anthrax letters. I don’t deter easily.”
Just as Ayman used the cover of charities and universities for his anthrax program, the FBI and CIA used the cover of BHR’s and the islamists’ own conspiracy theory as cover for their investigation.
Biographer Draper in Dead Certain reports that on October 4, 2001, Bush teared up during a speech at the State Department thanking them for their hard work after 9/11. Back at the White House, Bush motioned Fleischer into the Oval Office. “A Boca Raton tabloid editor had checked into a Florida hospital yesterday, Bush told Fleischer. Anthrax. The veil of resoluteness fell away from the president. His shoulders were hunched. Fleischer had never seen him more upset. Neither man said a word — neither had to: This was it, the second wave.” Then, on or about October 6, 2001, someone sent very fine powderized anthrax to US Senators Leahy and Daschle with a similar message. An infant visiting ABC was one of the first affected, which should have been prohibited (haram) in anyone’s book. Five people died, including an elderly woman and a hospital worker.
I first told the FBI and CIA that US-based operatives supporting Ayman Zawahiri were responsible for the anthrax mailings in December 2001. The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (”PDB”) to the President Bush had explained that Bin Laden planned to hijack some aircraft as part of an effort to free the blind sheik. A little noticed December 5, 1998 PDB to the same effect to President Clinton, however — declassified and included in the 911 Commission Report — said that the aircraft and attacks were being planned by the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Mohammed Islambouli. Islambouli was in a cell with Khalid Mohammed (”KSM”), who by December had come to lead the cell planning anthrax attacks in the United States. The anthrax was sent on the date of Sadat’s assassination and the date the Camp David Accords were approved. Sadat’s peace with Israel was a key reason the militants killed Sadat.
That same week in December 2001, I e-mailed a professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg at the State University of New York who had created a webpage pointing to an apparent connection to US-biodefense program. She had joined a lawyer for militant islamists, Professor Francis Boyle, in arguing that the FBI was covering up that rogue elements of the US biodefense establishment were responsible for the anthrax mailings. She responded succinctly that they already “know who the suspects are.” She was right, but for entirely the wrong reasons. As was indicated in a handwritten claim seized in Afghanistan in Fall 2001 — but not declassified and revealed until 2006 — Zawahiri had succeeded in infiltrating both the UK and US biodefense establishments and had access to government and intelligence information.
It was more than a happy coincidence for Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli that an active supporter of the Taliban was a US biodefense insider. Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, who did a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Ali Al-Timimi, a microbiology graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”).
After an October 2001 bombing raid at a Qaeda camp in Darunta, Afghanistan US forces found 100+ typed and handwritten pages of documents that shed light on Al Qaeda’s early anthrax planning and the Defense Intelligence Agency eventually gave me. It was not clear whether or not they had yet acquired virulent anthrax or weaponized it, but it was clear that the planning was well along. When Cheney was briefed on the documents in late 2001, he immediately called a meeting of FBI and CIA. “I’ll be very blunt,” the Vice President started. “There is no priority of this government more important than finding out if there is a link between what’s happened here and what we’ve found over there with Qaeda.” At one point, security personnel thought that the home belonging to Elizabeth Cheney, his daughter, had been hit by an anthrax attack. Elizabeth had to call her nanny to get her to take the kids to be tested for exposure. A June 1999 memo from Ayman to military commander Atef said that “the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were ‘more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.’ ‘’ Thus, in determining whether Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall of 2001, the FBI and CIA knew based on the growing documentary evidence available by that December, that Al Qaeda operatives were likely associated with non-governmental organizations and working under the cover of universities. From early on, the CIA and FBI knew that charity is as charity does.
At a White House press conference on December 17, 2001, Ari Fleischer said: “There is nothing that has been final that has been concluded. But the evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source. But, again, this remains something that is not final, nor totally conclusive yet. ...I can just report to you the information that I’ve heard. I can’t give you the scientific reasons behind it. But you can assume that they’re based on investigative and scientific means.” He emphasized: “There’s a big difference between the source of it and who sent it, because the two do not have to be tied.”
Among the supporters of these militant islamists were people like US scientist Ali Al-Timimi and Pakistan scientist Rauf Ahmad who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it. Two letters — one typed and an earlier handwritten one — written by a scientist named Rauf Ahmad detailed his efforts to obtain a pathogenic strain of anthrax. He attended conferences on anthrax and dangerous pathogens such as one in September 2000 at the University of Plymouth cosponsored by DERA, the UK Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. A handwritten letter from 1999 is written on the letterhead of the oldest microbiology society in Great Britain. The 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces by Rauf describe the author’s visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where 1000s of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab; a conference he attended on dangerous pathogens cosponsored by UK’s Porton Down and Society for Applied Microbiology , and the need for vaccination and containment. Rauf had arranged to take a lengthy post-doc leave from his employer and was grousing that what the employer would be paying during that 12-month period was inadequate. Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, who told his wife he was working for a Taliban medical brigade, got the job instead of Rauf.
I have uploaded a scanned copy of a typed memo reporting on a lab visit, which included tour of a BioLevel 3 facility, where there were 1000s of pathogenic samples. The memo mentioned the pending paperwork relating to export of the pathogens. The documents were provided to me by the Defense Intelligence Agency (”DIA”) under the Freedom of Information Act. I also have uploaded a copy of earlier correspondence between Rauf Ahmad and Dr. Zawahiri from before the lab visit described in the typed memo. The handwritten letter was reporting on a different, earlier visit, where the anthrax had been nonpathogenic. Finally, on the same linked page, there are handwritten notes about the plan to use non-governmental-organizations (NGOs), technical institutes and medical labs as cover for aspects of the work, and training requirements for the various personnel at the lab in Afghanistan.
Al-Timimi’s charity promoting the views of this mentor who had inspired and taught both Ali and Bin Laden — this dissident Saudi sheik who had been the subject of Bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996 — had the office of a spin-off and dba about a 1 mile from me in Syracuse, New York. Called “Help The Needy,” it was focused on dawa, spreading the word and promoting Salafism, a conservative and militant for of Islam, in Iraq. It used the cover of feeding the widows and orphans. I would drive by it at least twice a day. Having moved recently from Arlington, VA where there seldom was snow, I now would drive by the ice-crusted snowbanks with no way of knowing when the FBI would first start going through the trash bags set out in the dumpster. I had no way of knowing what the FBI was doing in its Amerithrax investigation.
ping
bump 3
Thank you for this thread and all the information.
Thank you for the ping.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzph9DAGNX8
C-Span Book TV short: Peter Lance on TRIPLE CROSS
Thanks for the ping, Calpernia.
The link for this thread is not working.
Here’s the correct url:
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Sep26/0,4670,Bioweapons,00.html
“Spy Officials Tracking Key Scientists”
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
Relatedly, on the subject of Ali Mohammed and TRIPLE CROSS, I’m a big fan of intelwire with Jon Berger, who is very knowledgeable about Ali Mohammed and OBL’s brother-in-law Khalifa. He uploads a lot of documents obtained from FOIA and has worked with Mr. Lance.
Ali Al-Timimi’s friend and mentor Bilal Philips in one interview said this of former US Army sergeant Ali Mohammed:
“[US Army Sergeant Ali Mohammed] used to coordinate with US intelligence. And, when Croatia closed its borders to Arab volunteers, there were a group of black Americans who completed their training and knew Islam through me. [Ali Mohammed] contacted Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and offered to use this group for sabotage acts inside the United States. The offer was made on the telephone, which apparently was tapped by US intelligence. Shaykh Umar replied by saying: ‘”Avoid civilian targets.’ “
In other word’s Ali Al-Timimi’s mentor was “Mr. Recruit Them From the US Army” himself. Ayman Zawahiri recruited Ali Mohammed. How do you best infiltrate the CIA or a US biodefense program? You fill out an application.
There is a new book from Cambridge University Press touching on the anthrax mailings. (I don’t know what it says but see this from the index available online).
Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime (Hardcover)
by Barry Kellman (Author)
Al Qaeda
acquisition of bioagents, expertise, 77–79
bioviolence preparations, plots, 78–80
Encyclopedia of Jihad, 72
legality of bioviolence, 74–77
motivation for bioviolence, 73–78
principle of reciprocity, 75
anthrax
2001 attacks, 14, 34, 94, 108, 150, 157, 176
10/3 update -
“Union wants anthrax answers,” New Haven Register, 10/03/2007
http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18877740&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517514&rfi=6
The author of the new book Bioviolence has had extensive (unclassified) discussions with the FBI. He tells me that the rumor is that they think Al Qaeda is responsible but they are not certain.
Anthrax Letters Still Being Sorted 6 Years Later
http://www.postalmag.com/anthrax-6-years-later.htm
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