Exactly.
I’ve read all the responses to my original comments at # 7 and some of those statesments made in refutation I know to have been recently found inaccurate. I don’t want to get into the “who’s right and who’s wrong argument”, as that is what the bad guys want - us good guys fighting among ourselves. That is ultimately what the anthrax letters were supposed to do, just as in the attack at OKC when Bill Clinton blamed “right wingers” and ordered the FBI not to investigate the John Does.
One thing I will say that was well established even in 1986: terrorism can’t proliferate unless someone, somewhere has lots of money to fund such activities, and it is usually, though not always, a nation which provides the funding. That’s why it’s called state sponsored terrorism (duh!). So, take your pick of ME countries. Logic will tell you which ones, namely the radical theocracies and rampant dictatorships, are likely to pull such a stunt.
And for whatever reason of the moment, various groups, normally at odds with one another, will cooperate long enough to do us, or Israel, great harm. COMINT I was familiar with back in the early ‘80s indicated that 60% of all terrorist groups had the same three names at the top of the chain of command.
So, what happened between 1986 and 2001? The Presidency of Bill Clinton was what happened. How many good people left government, or were forced out, I don’t know. But the CIA I knew back in the mid-80s was superior to what it is today.
And who has so much money that they can spend it on activities that don’t benefit their own people. It’s that old truism - follow the money.
Frankly, I don’t trust ANYTHING coming out of the CIA anymore.
And one thing I’ve noticed in these postings has been seduction by myriad details. We have to keep our eyes on the ball. God is in the details, truly, and those have their place but we should not take our eyes off the big picture. Who would benefit from attacking us and are they fellow travelers, putting aside differences to work together.
Who has the means, the money, and the MOTIVE to attack us with anthrax.
The domestic angle about the anthrax attack is every bit as pathetic as Bill Clinton blaming right-wingers for the Murrah Building attack in Oklahoma City. Jaina Davis put a nail through the head of that snake. It was an Iraqi Republican Guard officer who drove the Ryder truck, filled with explosives and accompanied by Timothy McVie, who drove up to the front of the building and set it to explode.
MOTIVE - Saddam Hussein never, ever, stopped fighting the Desert Storm War. We had humiliated him in front of all other Arab nations and he wanted payback. He was willing to work with anyone who had the same goal, destruction of the U.S.A. What? You guys think he was too ethical to work with the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda? He never hesitated to supply the Palestinian groups with cash.
In the early 80s the Ayatollah Khomeini used a Phalangist Christian as a paymaster to arrange for two Syrian Intelligence pukes to make a bomb that was handed off to a Palestinian suicide car driver who in turn killed our Ambassador to Lebanon and two other people.
MOTIVE. Who wanted to hurt the United States and had the anthrax to do it with at that moment in time.
You ask: Who would have the motive?
On July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar spoke to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.” In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged that following his arrest, Abdel Rahman, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, urged: “Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! ... It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” His list is a pretty concise summary of the terrorist actions taken over the next decade.
The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman - - was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on December 21, 1996 contained improvised explosive devices. The bombs were mailed on the Night of Decree or Night of Measures. The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik, Sheik Abdel Rahman. The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda.
The letter bombs were sent in connection with the treatment of the Egyptian islamists imprisoned for the earlier attack on the WTC and a related plot. The purpose of the letter bombs — which resulted in minimal casualty — was to send a message. (There initially was an outstanding $2 million reward — under the rewards for justice program, the reward now is up to $5 million.) There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist).
The FBI suspected the Vanguards of Conquest, a mysterious group led by Egyptian Islamic Jihad head Ayman Zawahiri. The group can be thought of as either the military wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or perhaps just EIJ by another name. It is sometimes known as the New Jihad. Yassir Al-Sirri was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad/ Vanguards of Conquest publicist and worked out of his London-based home while on the public dole. Another group under suspicion for the mailings was the Egyptian Islamic Group. The blind sheik Abdel Rahman simultaneously was the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad/Vanguards of Conquest. The next month, on February 12, 1997, the Islamic Group, for its part, issued a statement: “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its legitimate “jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom is Abdel Rahman.”
Abdel-Rahman’s friend, Ayman Zawahiri, was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program. The blind sheik’s son. Mohammed was on Al Qaeda’s three- member WMD committee. Ayman named his biochem program Zabadi or “Curdled Milk.” The CIA has known of Zawahiri’s plans to use anthrax since July 1998, when the CIA seized a disc from Ayman Zawahiri’s right-hand, Ahmed Mabruk during his arrest outside a restaurant by the CIA in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the time, Mabruk was the head of Jihad’s military operations. Mabruk was handed over to Egyptian authorities. A close associate and former cellmate in Dagestan in 1996, Mabruk would be at Ayman’s side while Ayman would fall to his knees during trial and weep and invoke Allah. Their captors reportedly did not know the true identity of the prisoners. The CIA refused to give the FBI Mabruk’s laptop. FBI’s Bin Laden expert John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s New York office, tried to get around this by sending an agent to Azerbaijan to get copies of the computer files from the Azerbaijan government. The FBI finally got the files after O’Neill persuaded President Clinton to personally appeal to the president of Azerbaijan for the computer files. FBI Special Agent Dan Coleman would later describe the laptop as the “Rosetta Stone of Al Qaeda.” O’Neill died on 9/11 in his role as head of World Trade Center security. He died with the knowledge that Ayman Zawahiri planned to attack US targets with anthrax — and that Zawahiri does not make a threat that he does not intend to try to keep.
Mabruk claimed that Zawahiri intended to use anthrax against US targets. At the time, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (”DTRA”) set up a program at Lawrence Livermore to combat the Bin Laden anthrax threat. The CIA also snatched Egyptian Al-Najjar, another senior Al Qaeda member (a shura or policy-making council member no less) who had been working for the Egyptian intelligence services. Al-Najjar confirmed Ayman’s intent to use weaponized anthrax against US targets in connection with the detention of militant islamists in a sworn lengthy confession. Even Zawahiri’s friend, Cairo lawyer al-Zayat, who was the blind sheik’s attorney, in March 1999 said that Bin Laden and Zawahiri were likely to resort to the biological and chemical agents they possessed given the extradition pressure senior Al Qaeda leaders faced. He was in touch by telephone with US Post Office employee Sattar and Islamic Group leaders thoughout that year about the group’s strategy to free the blind sheik. An islamist who had been a close associate of Zawahiri later would explain that Zawahiri spent a decade and had made 15 separate attempts to recruit the necessary expertise to weaponize anthrax in Russia and the Middle East.
Zawahiri and the Vanguards of Conquest were seeking to recreate Mohammed’s taking of mecca by a small band through violent attacks on Egyptian leaders. By the late 1990s, Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
It likely was a happy coincidence for Ayman and Islamic Group leaders Rifai Taha, Mustafa Hamza and Mohammed Islambouli, that an active supporter of the Taliban — and associate of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali — was a US biodefense insider. Ali Al-Timimi was a graduate student in the same building where famed Russian bioweapon Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey worked at George Mason University. The three worked at the secure facility at Discovery Hall at the Prince William 2 campus. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey headed a biodefense program funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). Al-Timimi had a top security clearance and had previously worked for SRA International doing mathematical support work for the Navy.