Posted on 07/04/2004 6:08:42 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
Distinct signature found in ’01 anthrax Discovery raises hope that source can be traced By Scott Shane Sun National Staff Originally published July 4, 2004 In a possible break for the FBI's investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001, scientists have discovered that the mailed anthrax was a mix of two slightly different samples, giving the bacteria a distinct signature that might make it easier to match with a source, according to two non-government experts who have been told of the finding. The discovery that bacteria taken from the letters all grew in the double pattern was made at least a year ago, and it is not known whether the FBI's hunt for a matching sample has succeeded.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
If there were two letters to AMI.....what is it a symbol of??? Are we dealing with the smiley bomber's mentality?
Suppose you're a Muslim radical who believes that Jews run the world on behalf of Satan from within the World Trade Center, you're in America getting ready to knock it down in a martyrdom operation, and then you see in the American media a group of Jewish voters complaining that the new president got into office by stealing their vote. If you and your hijacking team then relocate to their neighborhood (Palm Beach County)... well, I don't claim to know exactly what's going on in your head, but I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence. The move must have something to do with the conspiracy theories you believe and the signs that Allah is sending you about your future mission.
So that is the first thing to bear in mind - it is surely not a coincidence that Palm Beach County experienced the butterfly ballot, then the hijackers, then the anthrax in that order.
Next, we have the question, what was the role of the anthrax in the 9/11 attacks? Both Atta and Moussaoui expressed interest in cropdusters. This tells you that chemical or biological attacks were on the agenda. But whether for tactical or logistical reasons, the state sponsor (Iraq) only gave the 9/11 "away team" (Al Qaeda) a relatively small quantity of weaponized anthrax - enough to cause havoc, enough to signal the possibility of a genuine mass-casualty attack, but no more. In other words, the anthrax was the state sponsor's deterrent.
Finally, we have the question, why AMI? Well, here I'm going to assume that target selection was in the hands of Atta and his crew, rather than an Iraqi minder. So, you're Mohammed Atta, up-tight Islamist assassin who hates Western culture as a product of Jewish corruption. Somehow, you end up renting an apartment from the wife of this guy you met at one of the local airfields. It turns out, he's an editor at this publishing company called American Media. Well, the very name's a red flag, isn't it? Just like American Airlines. And what do they publish? Decadent trash like the National Enquirer; the founder of which, Gene Pope, was even a former CIA officer.
So, D-day is approaching, and you have your little stash of anthrax. Most of it is already spoken for - it's to be used in the second wave of terror. But there's enough for one personal gesture. So you write a rambling letter about the woman you most love to hate, the celebrity who for you epitomizes this degraded Western culture, throw in some anthrax and a Star of David, and send it off to the office of your landlord's husband. You swap a few high-fives with your partners in crime, hand over the remaining anthrax to the brother from New Jersey, and get on with the business of preparing to die.
The Star of David is an interesting addition. Maybe they wanted investigators to think it was all a Mossad plot - the Jews getting back at Bush for robbing them of the White House. Or maybe there was no Star of David, and that's just a rumor circulated by Islamists with the same sort of frame-Israel goal in mind. It's a bit hard to tell without knowing what was actually said in the AMI letter(s).
Good catch.
Cabosil does that real well. In fiberglass work it's the tiny and incredibly light little spheres of glass used as filler to lighten a cast or to reduce the amount of resins needed, or both. It's lighter than the same volume of air- at least it seems like it. Very floaty, very soft to the touch, lighter than goose down. You can barely feel it.
But why? If your theory is right, what purpose would this serve?
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2004/070804tenetresponse.pdf
More Atta-Prague stuff at this link. Note the CIA believe the only reason Atta went through Prague in 2000 was the hope that a non-EU country would be less likely to keep meticulous travel records.
Of course this was the trip where he took the plane to Prague without a Czech visa intitially and then flew back to Hamburg. He then got the visa and took the bus to Prague this time. Then he disappeared for 24 hours and got the plane to the US.
Surely the CIA version can be checked? If he really wanted to avoid meticulous travel records, why did he fly to Prague in the first place? Did he already have a flight ticket to the US by that time? Notice the CIA response conveniently does not discuss the fact that he made this initial flight to Prague.
Also, Tenet claims any April 2001 meeting with Al-Anni would have been too risky. Let's do a thought experiment here - why would Atta meet Al-Anni in person? What if something was transferred to Atta that couldn't be sent any other way - where a private courier was essential? Say this something had originally been sent to Prague in a diplomatic bag from Baghdad.
I'm not satisified with Tenet's reasoning at all.
1. Why would Atta care if the Czechs had less meticulous recordkeeping than EU countries? He was going and coming from an EU country anyway, Germany, and it recorded him. What's the point - he couldn't hide his destination.
When I first read that Tenet satement it sounded plausible, but examined it closer.
2. And what about the many other trips Atta didn't care about hiding his routes.
3. Oh, and Al Ani denied the meeting. Some evidence.
Oh, and Atta used his real name when he tried to rent a crop-duster plane. Also, he abondned a plane on a Miami runway. Obviously he wantd to keep a low profile.
Why do you think Tenet and Pavitt resigned?
Do you guys honestly believe that some group of people gets what is called the Poor Man's Nuke and then doesn't plan the consequences of what to do with it?
Whosoever did this had a reason for each and every one of the mailings. It's not like they had gobs of the powder. They must have thought about where every teaspoonfull would go.
No one gets the keys to the kingdom and throws them away.
Well, there was one early report that al-Ani transferred a vacuum bottle or Thermos bottle to Atta. As I recall, this was mentioned in a Frontline interview as having been reported in a newspaper article, but I never saw the newspaper article that was referred to.
I have my doubts about this story, however. How could anybody tell from a distance what was being transferred? And if that level of detail were known, there wouldn't be all these lingering doubts about the meeting in the first place.
So that report sounds like disinformation, disinformation that was pulled from distribution right away because there were too many holes in the story. It's one of the things that gives me pause about the whole Atta-al Ani story, that maybe the whole thing is disinformation.
You're right, the AMI cases are the bridge between the hijackers and the anthrax letters. And if 9/11 and the anthrax were part of the same conspiracy, I'm not sure why the terrorists would see a need to deliberately create such a bridge. You would think that the content and the timing of the letters would be enough; they would hardly anticipate that the letters would come to be viewed as the work of an opportunistic domestic terrorist, who was just pretending to be a Muslim radical.
We are hindered in our deconstruction of the plot by the uncertainty which still surrounds the AMI cases. We don't know if the AMI letter(s) were part of the main media mail-out, or if they were earlier; we don't know if the J-Lo letter carried the anthrax; we don't know what it said; we don't know if there was a Star of David. We know next to nothing about the relationship between Mohammed Atta, his landlady, and her husband the AMI editor and amateur pilot - when and how they met, what sort of social contact they had.
However, here is a scenario. As The Hatfill Project regularly points out, the media mailings were postmarked September 18, the day on which the Atta-in-Prague story (and thus the connection to Iraq) was first publicly aired. I think there is also ample evidence that Iraq was behind previous Al Qaeda attacks, and that the US government knew it, but chose not to talk about it in public. Here, then, is the scenario:
The anthrax letter to AMI did indeed precede the main wave of media letters, and it was originally intended to stand alone. The puzzling, isolated outbreak of inhalational anthrax would have been part of the 'secret dialogue' between Iraq and the USA, a warning that going after Saddam would invite biological terrorism. However, officials started floating the idea of Iraqi involvement before the message got through, and so the keeper of the anthrax upped the ante, first mailing all the major media outlets, and then going after the politicians themselves when the war in Afghanistan began.
I find this scenario more plausible if the anthrax mailer is thought of as an Iraqi agent rather than as an Al Qaeda member. I imagine him as based in New Jersey, but travelling to Florida in order to meet with the hijackers and help them prepare the J-Lo letter.
I don't know if I quite believe my own theory here, but there it is, another scenario. One thing it suggests is that similarly subtle forms of blackmail - demonstrations of the capacity for bioterrorism - may have accompanied previous attacks, in ways that would only be noticed by investigators who knew what to look for. I think there was an article or two recently about anomalous anthrax cases early in the 1990s; one might want to see if they occurred in conjunction with previous Al Qaeda operations.
And to whom was it addressed? Why did Stevens get the anthrax? And why were, reportedly, concentrations of anthrax found on his keyboard?
I'll tell you one thing, It might be a J.Lo. letter, but not the one that came in the package. I have trouble following the "powder" story - It could be different letters, and the "J.Lo." witnesses have been told to shut up.
That story could have been a mix-up from this story that is unrefuted, from the Egyptian 1999 trial:
"...The accused terrorists also claimed to have made agreements to buy "samples of anthrax" from a factory in Southeast Asia and a culture of the paralyzing botulinum bacteria from a lab in the Czech Republic for $7,500..."
Presumably the samples were in some kind of vial or thermos - not surprising.
As for disinformation, or just rumor-mongering, on the "pro" side all I can see possible are the handing over the vial story and maybe the ledger entry "Hamburg student" story.
On the anti- side, there's plenty. The "Not in Prague" story, the Havel story, all the innuendo about Cheney and Neocons, etc., unnamed sources saying the CIA said no, when they didn't.
As for disinformation, when did it start? From the meeting itself, or later, added on. EG, did the meeting actually occur, and did a meeting occur and Atta was merely misidentified later? Interestingly, the meeting coincides with a gap in information on Atta's whereabouts. Could the Czechs make that up so quickly? And what if the anthrax is Czech (they were big in biowar), and they made up a story to deflect attention from themselves, assuming their story only came out after the awareness of the anthrax attacks.
And did the Egyptians make up the thermos story on their own volition, to add to the already known Prague story, because they wanted America to assuredly strike AQ - into which Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged? Other countries have their own agendas.
BTW, what do you think about Tenet's latest statement?
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