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.
Although it was not in the unclassified charges, there was a mention in the transcript about him being a cell operations leader in Kandahar. Note that there has long been circumstantial evidence of anthrax in Kandahar.
One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. He had arrived in Florida earlier that month. “No one is dismissing this,” said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda’s Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States)
Dr. Tara O’Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins concluded it was anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, now director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: “The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he’s not an addict and doesn’t have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious.” The FBI says no anthrax was found where the hijackers were. (The FBI tested the crash sites where the planes came down and found no traces of anthrax). Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that “In 2001, likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cutaneous anthrax.
At the time, CBS reported that “U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthax.” But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that “Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said.” Only years later did we learn that there was in fact extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. (Though some senior officials at the CIA and FBI knew this in Autumn 2003) Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the John Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated.