Posted on 07/01/2007 8:58:07 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
WASHINGTON — In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union.
----------- Officials still value his seminal depictions of the Soviet program. But recent events have propelled questions about Alibek's reliability:
No biological weapon of mass destruction has been found in Iraq. His most sensational research findings, with U.S. colleagues, have not withstood peer review by scientific specialists. His promotion of nonprescription pills — sold in his name over the Internet and claiming to bolster the immune system — was ridiculed by some scientists. He resigned as executive director of a Virginia university's biodefense center 10 months ago while facing internal strife over his stewardship.
And, as Alibek raised fear of bioterrorism in the United States, he also has sought to profit from that fear.
By his count, Alibek has won about $28 million in federal grants or contracts for himself or entities that hired him.
The Los Angeles Times explored Alibek's public pronouncements, research and business activities as part of a series that will examine companies and government officials central to the U.S. war on terrorism -----------------------
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I’ve got better than that. When Meselson’s team returned they were individually debriefed by the CIA. At least one team member was asked if he thought Meselson was a Soviet sympathizer. I have that straight from the horses’s mouth.
Now, and I’m being absolutely deadly serious here, why on earth would the FBI use a person whose citizen loyalty had been questioned at the highest levels as a consultant to a national emergency - a terrorist attack of the utmost importance and sensitivity? When that person had continually demonstrated untrustworthiness spanning over 2 decades?
I’m guessing that the FBI did NOT have access to classified CIA files. I’m further guessing the CIA did not cooperate with FBI over the anthrax attacks. I’m also further guessing that the FBI didn’t bother reading books like Plague Wars. I’m still further guessing that even in September 2006 Douglas Beecher knew little about Matthew Meselson’s reputation, documented record in the public domain of media manipulation and errors concerning BWs spanning across 20 years, and had little idea that Director Mueller would soon be shining his headlights directly onto Beecher for adding unauthorized Meselson-inspired commentary to his peer reviewed paper. Let’s see where Beecher ends up in 6 months from now. Does Knoxville, TN have an opening for a FBI lab technician?
TrebleRebel,
While we wait for hell to freeze over and Ed to admit the bit about an electrostatic charge, note that you have not addressed the fact that the Bucchi tech rep for the east coast told me that a charge is inevitable in the mini-spraydryer due to the velocity coming out of the nozzle.
So while you argue a charge was imparted, it would seem that your argument fails to take into account the charge that is inevitable when using a mini-spraydryer. A mini spraydryer was used — not a pilot scale as Gary thinks could have been used. Why? Just because the small amount of product.
What word, beginning with a vowel apparently, might be redacted in this alleged message to an Albany, NY imam shortly before 9/11:
“how close the individual could get to an (redacted) aircraft.”
It apparently begins with a vowel but I can’t think of any word that would make sense.
Appeal of terror case hinges on directions
Defense claims judge’s statement that FBI had “good and valid reasons” to target Albany imam prejudiced jury
By ROBERT GAVIN, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, September 2, 2007
ALBANY — When the leader of an Albany mosque was convicted last year of supporting terrorism, the jury never heard about his 14 phone calls to a Syrian number the FBI linked to Osama bin Laden.
***
Among those reasons is an FBI report from an informant, which indirectly linked Aref to a terrorist network. The informant stated that only weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a messenger from al-Qaida approached him delivering an explicit message: Osama bin Laden was looking for information about flight schools and “how close the individual could get to an (redacted) aircraft.”
The messenger gave the informant two fax numbers in Damascus, Syria, one of which Aref contacted 14 times between November 1999 and October 2001, court papers said.
Parts of the report were redacted — blacked out — because the information is confidential. Kindlon objected to defense attorneys being kept from seeing what was blacked out and called the implied terror link ridiculous. He said his client called the number in Syria to contact college friends at the Islamic Movement for Kurdistan, a political office in Damascus where Aref worked after fleeing Iraq.
In court papers, prosecutors stated that a senior IMK leader, Mullah Krekar, formed Ansar-al-Islam, a designated terrorist organization, in 2001. Subsequently, when Aref was convicted, the 30 guilty counts included lying to FBI agents about knowing Krekar.
In targeting Aref, the government also had evidence showing that his name, address and telephone number were found in a notebook when U.S. forces raided a suspected Ansar-al-Islam training camp in Iraq on June 11, 2003. Some 80 insurgents were killed, with hundreds of weapons recovered, court papers said.
That same day, Aref’s contact information was found in another raid on a suspected Ansar-al-Islam safe house in Mosul. And in March 2003, Aref’s first name and phone number were found during a U.S. raid on a suspected Ansar-al-Islam facility in Sargat, Iraq, court papers said.
According to witness testimony, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” USA v. Khan, 03-CR-296A, “Memorandum Opinion,” p. 31 (ED VA)
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/290.pdf
This is what Sheikh Ali was teaching kids at the 1st Annual IANA Summer Camp at Frederic, MD, July 2-4, 1994. (Government Exhibit 7A3)
“Reflections on the Meaning of Our Testimony of Faith: ‘There is no go but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah” by Ali Al-Timimi.
***
“6 Wage Jihad in the Path of Allah
...
Allah — ta’ala— has said: “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them (captive) and beseige them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.” (The Qur’an 9:5) Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and practice not the true religion (Islam), being of those who have been given the Scripture (the Jews and the Christians) — until they pay tribute readily and have been brought low. (The Qur’an 9:29)
The Prophet .. has said:
I am commanded to fight mankind till they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establish the prayers and pay the charity. When they do that they will keep their lives and their property safe from me.”
In an exhibit introduced at Dr. Al-Timimi’s trial, one jihadist wrote an angry email to a mailing list — upon the December announcement by the Taliban it was surrendering — about the overly rosy picture that the website azzam.com had painted. (Gov. Exh. 7D15) (in posts above, I discussed the recent indictment relating to azzam.com of an imam from North Brunswick, NJ who frequently lectured in Brooklyn and the Bronx).
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/462.pdf
“What about Azzam.com? It seems the news from there was not authentic and (much as I hate to say this) we were duped.”
He explained:
“I have been enraged about the tactics of these brothers for some time now. I’ve expressed my outrage to a number of brothers over the years but it has only contributed to their rumors that I have “sold out.” I had been approached to host their sites when they were in trouble and flatly refused. When I asked on brother why they LIE (yes, LIE) while swearing they swear by Allah it is true, the response I got was “al-Harbu khud’ah” (Hadeeth, “war is deception”). War is deception to the KUFFAAR not to your brothers!!!. I know brothers who are leaving within the next few days who are now scratching their heads in confusion. What do they do with their one way, non-refundable plane tickets now that cost every cent they had placing themselves and their families in great hardship? “
Personally, if I really believed that our own government was conducting deadly anthrax experiments on us and preparing concentration camps, I couldn't continue loving the country. I would have to do everything in my power to move to Canada or Australia or something.
I asked Professor Boyle what he thought about the documents produced by the DIA under FOIA and he said that he dismissed them as all those nice convenient documents planted by the DIA and Army psyops in Afghanistan.
But with all due respect, that’s stupid. Ayman has unfettered access to the media and he would just poke fun at the USG if they made things up and claimed he had written them or that they were correspondence directed to him.
I mean that’s really stupid.
I had a problem with the Federalist Society types just as he did. But I also have a problem with people that take positions that lack common sense — and that argue politics in a criminal matter where many lives are at stake.
He expects to give it a rest given that he doesn’t have time to do adequate factual inquiry and that the numerous leads he’s pursued haven’t panned out. He does commend BHR, though, like Ed says. I told him that at least BHR reigned in her views after she was criticized for her March 2002 BBC interview.
errata - Above I mistakenly said he was HLS summa which I found impressive because it is pretty rarefied air. But now I don’t know where I thought I had seen that. That’s mistaken. He’s not.
You are demonstrating once again how you twist facts. YOU are the one who is always mentioning Professor Meselson. I generally ignore your hate-filled comments.
I only mention Meselson as being ONE OF MANY people who did not see any additives in the Daschle anthrax.
I know how you feel. But such people will argue that they also love America, they just think the Bush Administration is evil, and they feel it is their duty to warn America about what they believe the Bush Administration is conspiring to do.
There are plenty of Right Wingers who are equally filled with hatred and who view all sorts of imagined Left Wing conspiracies as being threats to the American Way Of Life.
Conspiracy theorists from all camps seem to really be getting a lot of attention these days. They probably all claim to love America, they just hate many of the people in it.
Hatred is becoming a very popular emotion these days.
Now that you’ve brought up Meselson again, it’s clear to me that you have once again forgotten about his track record in BWs. I’ve included some reminders below:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB61/
As Dr. William C. Patrick, the veteran of over 30 years as a biological weapons researcher at Fort Detrick, Maryland and expert on anthrax dispersal noted later, he and other experts “hooted” when Meselson presented his release estimates
http://www.fortfreedom.org/y04.htm
In 1987 Meselson returned with more false and scandalously
doctored whitewash of Soviet biochemical warfare in Foreign Affairs.
The following article, apart from summarizing the whole issue, also
throws light on Meselson’s sleazy suppression of evidence.
Your reasoning is just totally bizarre. Why would anyone CARE what Alibek believes about what AFIP said?
Is this some more of your thinking that if enough people believe in something, that somehow makes it true?
Everyone who viewed the Daschle anthrax under a SEM or who viewed SEM images of the powder has said it was "pure spores." They saw NO additives. The only person who saw any additives saw the "additives" HE himself had put into the anthrax.
Is that really so hard to understand? No one could see any additives, yet using an Energy Dispersive X-ray spectrometer (an instrument used to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals through characteristic wavelengths of X-ray light) the EDX found that there were elements in the spores that did not belong: The EDX detected the elements silicon and oxygen.
You can fantasize that the EDX operator at AFIP was able to tell without any doubt that the silicon and oxygen was in the form of silica, but the facts say otherwise.
Even though Gary Matsumoto was promoting a conspiracy theory in his article in Science Magazine, he did reveal that, in mid-2002, a laboratory analyzing the Senate anthrax spores for the FBI found "polymerized glass" in the attack anthrax. The article says,
The officials who received this briefing-- biowarfare specialists who work for the governments of two NATO countries-- said they had never heard of polymerized glass before.
So, why didn't the EDX operator at AFIP report on detecting polymerized glass in the Daschle anthrax? You seem to believe he knew exactly what form the silicon and oxygen was in. Can you be so certain that he didn't ASSUME that it was in the form of silica when it was actually in the form of polymerized glass? That's what the facts seem to indicate. And silica would be the natural assumption for everyone at that time.
"Polymerized glass" is just a way of saying manufactured glass, i.e., the trace elements of silicon and oxygen were found to have been combined into the molecular structure of manufactured glass, not silica.
In his article in Science magazine, Gary Matsumoto spun the finding to be some devious plot by the FBI to cover up the presence of silica:
By the fall of 2002, the awe-inspiring anthrax of the previous spring had morphed into something decidedly less fearsome. According to sources on Capitol Hill, FBI scientists now reported that there was "no additive" in the Senate anthrax at all. Alibek said he examined electron micrographs of the anthrax spores sent to Senator Daschle and saw no silica.
So, if the polymerized glass wasn't an additive and it wasn't visible, what what it? Answer: it was lab contamination.
Two scientific reports from 1980 showed that silicon had previously been detected in spores. At that time, no one bothered to figure out where it came from. They generally assumed it was some form of contamination from the glassware used to culture the bacteria or from some other equipment in the labs.
As a result of these findings, the whole new science of Microbial Forensics was formalized to examine sources of lab contamination and other factors to see what evidence could be provided in court. The FBI initiated the "working group" to formalize the science, and for the next TWO YEARS the Amerithrax investigation was pretty much on hold until the formalization could be completed. Then came more years as the science was used in labs around the world and facts and truths could be separated from non-facts and non-truths. A "database" of accumulated knowledge had to be built. The Supreme Court had stated that that was necessary before a new science could be used in court.
As part of that new science, books and papers were published which showed what spores coated with silica actually looked like. They looked nothing like what Matsumoto and Jacobsen fantasized in Matsumoto's article. The photos made it absolutely clear that the anthrax spores mailed in 2001 were NOT coated with silica. Whatever form the silicon and oxgyen was in, it was trace amounts absorbed into the natural surface of the spores, it was NOT a coating of any kind. And that's why no one could see any additives.
The facts are very clear here. Bringing up arguments about experiments or work done on simulants or test spores at this lab or that lab does not automatically mean that it has anything to do with the attack anthrax. If you want to understand what is going on, you have to FOCUS on the subject at hand and avoid going off into what people believe or what Joe Blow said to Sam Smith in Indonesia in 1974.
Okay, you've made it clear that I cannot respond to any messages you post which detail your pathological hatred. If I do, you'll claim that I am bringing up the subject. And you'll just use it as an excuse to vent more of your pathological hatred.
So you finally admit that Meselson’s track record spanning over 20 years in BW matters, where he has been wrong of else he has manipulated the media, disqualifies his opinions on Amerithrax. I thought that.
http://www.afip.org/images/public/nl081002.pdf
The AFIP lab deputy director, Florabel Mullick, said “This [silica] was a key component. Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011029-4.html
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: We do know that we found silica in the samples.
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: We do know that we found silica in the samples.
Distorting facts again, I see. Why else would you omit the rest of what General Parker said?
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: We do know that we found silica in the samples. Now, we don't know what that motive would be, or why it would be there, or anything.
AFIP mistakenly claimed they knew why it was there, but General Parker didn't. If the "silica" were VISIBLE, it would be clear to everyone why it was there. But, since no one could SEE any trace of additives, the intelligent person would admit that he didn't know why it was there. Anyone claiming to know why it was there would be making assumptions.
http://www.afip.org/images/public/nl081002.pdf
The AFIP lab deputy director, Florabel Mullick, said “This [silica] was a key component. Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011029-4.html
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: We do know that we found silica in the samples.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-3.2/osullbio.html
“Then they say, Well, what about Saddam Hussein? He must have done it on the cheap.’ Nonsense! If you read the UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] reports, there’s something like 14 facilities they knew were connected with the program, the biggest of which was Al Hakam, with enormous equipment—fermenters and the like. So as far as we know, he didn’t even get all the way there. Maybe some genius has a way of doing it in his garage, but that’s not the way anybody’s ever tried to do it—including Saddam.”
“If anthrax is stirred incorrectly it may clump,” notes Meselson, “and if the cells clump you can’t make an aerosol weapon. They stick together like glue. Who would have thought of that? And I imagine that there are hundreds of little wrinkles like that. All the nonsense about ease of production ignores these facts.”
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: May I repeat what I said? The Daschle sample is very fine and powdery. It appears that -- and I'm talking gross, looking at the specimen grossly, not under the microscope. The New York Post sample is very granular, by comparison. And when you look at the two samples under the microscope, the Daschle sample is very pure and densely compact with spores. And so is the New York Post sample, but not quite as dense -- I'm talking magnitudes of, you know, times 10 difference, maybe, between the density of the two samples. Both samples are densely populated with anthrax spores.
...
Q Will there be other ways to look for the composition of this additive? Are there other ways, aside from high energy x-rays, to go about looking for --
MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: The scientists are pursuing that, they're discussing it and are trying to characterize this right down to the point where we know everything about these samples. But you have to know that we don't have much sample, and so doing comparison is very, very difficult and people have to think about it before we destroy more sample to maybe run down a wrong road. So there's a lot of discussion about what is needed.
It would be months before they were able to determine that their assumption about silica was FALSE and that the silicon and oxygen was actually in the form of polymerized glass.
AFIP "announced" no such thing. They mentioned their mistaken assumptions in a self-serving newsletter intended to show people how important they are and what good work they do.
Why don't you ever ask why they failed to "announce" or even mention the presence of polymerized glass? Is it because it would show that AFIP didn't really know what form the silicon and oxygen was in?
AFIP ANNOUNCED that silica was the key aerosol enabling component of the Daschle anthrax.
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