I wonder if this fellow knew the Filipino-looking gentleman who was bragging about his skill in processing anthrax. As described in US News, a former reporter from the Kabul Times actually may have met a Filipino carrying papers from Zawahiri and bragging about his ability to manipulate anthrax. The man apparently was Hambali’s lieutenant, Muklis Yunos, who had been Hambali’s right-hand man and was in charge of special operations for the Philippine Moro Islamic Liberation Front (”MILF”). British reporter Philip Smucker, explained that the Afghan reporter working with him spoke fluent Arabic and made regular undercover trips into Afghanistan from Pakistan. He had visited three functioning al Qaeda camps, at grave risk to his life. Smucker explains that his colleague had landed in a Kabul hotel with a Filipino scientist who had a signed letter from al Qaeda’s number two, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, authorizing him to help the network develop biological weapons. The man at the hotel had described his own efforts to develop an “anthrax bomb.” Filipino Muklis Yunos was an explosives expert who had participated with Yazid Sufaat in the December 2000 church bombings. Upon his arrest in May 2003, Philippine intelligence said he had received anthrax training in Afghanistan. Perhaps he was who the journalist encountered.
Most of all, the puzzle piece needs to be put in the same box with the KSM and Hambali pieces — along with the spraydrying documents on the seized computer and the discovery of extremely virulent anthrax at a house in Kandahar in Fall 2003 after Hambali’s interrogation.
We know that they had anthrax spraydrying know-how in Afghanistan pre-9/11. KSM denies that the computer seized with the anthrax spraydrying documents was his computer — he says it the computer Mustafa Hawsawi, who was arrested the same day. Before departing for the UAE in early 2001, Al-Hawsawi had worked in the Al Qaeda media center (Al Sahab (Clouds) in Kandahar. He worked under KSM who in turn worked for Zawahiri. 9/11 attacks, Al-Hawsawi was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks and its paymaster, working from the United Arab Emirates, sending thousands to Bin Al-Shibh in the summer of 2001. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan where he met separately with Bin Laden, Zawahiri and spokesman Abu Ghaith. KSM worked closely with al-Hawsawi and it would make perfect sense that the computer is actually al-Hawsawi’s. The fact that the anthrax spraydrying documents were on that computer, however, and that he had worked under KSM and Ayman in Kandahar in 2000, serves to suggest that the undated documents pre-dated 9/11, particularly given that extremely virulent anthrax was later found in Kandahar. At the same time, it suggests that Al-Hawsawi has personal knowledge relevant to anthrax.
The Washington Post explains that “What the documents and debriefings show, the first official said, is that “he was involved in anthrax production, and [knew] quite a bit about it.” Barton Gellman in the Post explains that al Qaeda recruited competent scientists, including a Pakistani microbiologist who the officials declined to name. “The documents describe specific timelines for producing biochemical weapons and include a bar graph depicting the parallel processes that must take place between Days 1 and 31 of manufacture. Included are inventories of equipment and indications of readiness to grow seed stocks of pathogen in nutrient baths and then dry the resulting liquid slurry into a form suitable for aerosol dispersal.” The Washington Post story notes that U.S. officials said the evidence does not indicate whether al Qaeda completed manufacture. The documents are undated and unsigned and cryptic about essential details.
The Washington Post reported in March 2003 that “[t]wo officials said this month’s discoveries have changed their minds about the significance of an abandoned factory found a year ago in Kandahar.. Some government analysts believe the Afghan laboratory may have been fully equipped and even operating before U.S. ground forces arrived.” (According to news reports, no traces of anthrax were found at the site). “It has been moved elsewhere, in another country, and we haven’t been able to find it,’ the official said.” The Post explains that another official said “there is obviously a connection” between the seized documents and the evacuated lab.” The unnamed official notes that Al Qaeda need not have smuggled equipment out to rebuild the factory because the spraydrying equipment can be purchased commercially. The 9/11 Commission Report noted in passing that one idea KSM had was reservoir poisoning.
Susan Schmidt and Ellen Naskashima of the Washington Post, described the fruits of Khalid Mohammed’s ongoing interrogation: “Mohammed has also told interrogators that he knows nothing about why Moussaoui and some of the hijackers were interested in learning how to operate crop-dusters, but he has said it could have been connected to Sufaat’s work on anthrax.”
Hambali was arrested in mid-August 2003 in Thailand. Hambali had fled Malaysia with his wife, Lee, not long after 9/11.
His wife, an ethnic Chinese Malaysian who converted to Islam, was also detained. After being shipped to Jordan, where he was harshly interrogated, Hambali eventually began providing information about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. He told interrogators that the terror network had succeeded in producing what author Ron Suskind describes as an “extremely virulent” strain of anthrax before the September 11 attacks. In the autumn of 2003, Suskind reports, U.S. forces in Afghanistan found a sample of the virulent anthrax at a house in Kandahar. Pulitzer Prize winning author Ron Suskind writes: “One disclosure was particularly alarming: al Qaeda had, in fact produced high-grade anthrax. Hambali, during interrogation, revealed its whereabouts in Afghanistan. The CIA soon descended on a house in Kandahar and discovered a small, extremely potent sample of the biological agent.” He continued: “The anthrax found in Kandahar was extremely virulent. What’s more, it was produced, according to the intelligence, in the months before 9/11. And it could be easily reproduced to create a quantity that could be readily weaponized.”
Based on the additional information being provided in 2003, authorities also captured two mid to low level technicians —an Egyptian and a Sudanese. President Bush has explained that these mid-to low level technicians were part of a Southeastern Asian based cell that was developing an anthrax attack on the United States. Sufaat wrapped things up in the Summer of 2001, according to Tenet, and briefed Hambali and Zawahiri over the course of a week. That’s the ominous note — along with Tenet’s report that the planning was in parallel with 9/11 planning and that Ramzi bin-Al-Shibh had a CBRN role.