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.
The Washington Post has previously reported that authorities had received information, for example, from at least one detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that there was an anthrax storage facility in the Kabul area. The Washington Post explained that “[b]ecause the deadly letters contained the Ames anthrax spores, manufactured in the United States, authorities entertained the possibility that they had been removed from a U.S. lab and transported overseas.” Amerithrax Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty. Then in November 2004, on further information, agents had spent several weeks unsuccessfully searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul. In 2005, an internal report was prepared summarizing the status of the Amerithrax investigation and Leahy and TrebleRebel and Ed are all frustrated at the delay in its resolution.
As for the source of any anthrax found in this fellow’s possession, consider the dog that didn’t bark. Consider the lack of sophistication of some of the individuals associated for example, Abu Ghaith, the founder of WAFA charity and Al Qaeda’s spokesman in 2002. Biochem documents and materials were found in a house associated with the charity. But Gitmo proceedings give us additional insight into WAFA. The manager of the Kabul WAFA office office explained that shortly before September 11, he helped Abu Ghaith to leave Afghanistan, and his family leave for Karachi, Pakistan. He had known Abu Ghaith from Kuwait. Before 9/11, he had been in Kandahar working with WAFA. He was paid $200 a month but had been willing to work for free as a volunteer. But after a month, he got a new supervisor he did not like. He would get upset when medical supplies came and it was broken or crooked. He complained about the expensive long distance calls young people would make, but his supervisor disagreed with his complaints. When the supervisor rifled through his and his wife’s things, he had reached his limit. His supervisor, in any event, said he only wanted people from Mecca working for him and kicked him out on about August 1, 2001. After bringing his family to Pakistan, he returned to Kabul where he met Abu Ghaith. He spent 16 days in what has been described as a “safe house” in Kabul while waiting to go safely back to Pakistan. “I am not a combat fighting animal. It is just a charity orgnaization. What is my mistake? Why are you mentioning Al Qaida and fighting when I worked for a charity organization?” He says he did not know Abu Ghaith was an Al Qaeda spokesman until after 9/11. The Tribunal found his statements to be self-serving and unpersuasive. Abu Ghaith, as Al Qaeda’s spokesman at the time, later made grandiose threats claiming that Al Qaeda had the right to use their military, nuclear, and biological equipment to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
Equally unremarkably, the family of one 22 year-old from Kuwait who allegedly worked in Kabul in July 2001 and then was captured in Karachi would call home often and was involved in some honey trading.
In short, the unclassified evidence relating to the unlawful combatants associated with WAFA in Afghanistan tended not to be rocket scientists, but Al Qaeda’s practice of using charities as cover was well-established.
Now let’s zero in on the Washington Post statement again that “[b]ecause the deadly letters contained the Ames anthrax spores, manufactured in the United States, authorities entertained the possibility that they had been removed from a U.S. lab and transported overseas.” It is interesting to note that an analysis of the ratio isotopes should have been able to distinguish between anthrax grown in the United States and anthrax grown in Afghanistan. So rather than merely entertaining the possibility, perhaps the United States knew that is exactly what happened. If Al Qaeda operatives in the US had finely powdered anthrax, might they not transfer it to the combat theater?