The anthrax was Ames agricultural type anthrax from a University in Iowa.
My best guess is it came from Iowa originally, then on to Germany’s Department of Agriculture where the Germans gave a kilo to Iraq’s Department of Agriculure in the late 1990’s (supposedly as a gesture of goodwill post Desert Storm). Saddam Hussein’s personal guards intercepted the package on the steps of the Dept. of Ag. building (this is according to the then Department’s Director when interrogated by our intelligence officers), eventually passed on to Al Qu’aeda as some of the bombers were noted to have sores indicative of anthrax contamination and, of course, they had been trained to fly cropdusters. The letters were sent from Trenton, New Jersey, home of the Arab WTC bombers of the early 1990’s who had as their bomb builder, Ramzi Yussef, a cousin to Al Qu’aeda’s third in command, Khalid Sheik Muhammed. There are many connections between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups, and between groups such as the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qu’aeda, but they are purposefully hard to follow, as Hussein wanted deniability.
I have been flamed before for saying the above but for some stupid reason the government keeps trying to blame one of their own.
The anthrax originally was from a dead cow in Texas.
It may or may not have transited Ames, Iowa. The documentary evidence is ambiguous. Postal Inspector John Richter has told a Freeper that it did transit Ames.
If it did, the direct connection is with USDA Ames, not the University.
USDA had collected strains at Ft. Detrick’s request.
You are correct about the connection between Saddam and EIJ and Saddam and the warlord Hekmatyar. See recent report. It is unsettling that the media seizes on a perceived non-connection with Al Qaeda when it is senior EIJ folks who ran Al Qaeda and were in charge of the anthrax program (e.g., Zawahiri, Atef).
You are guessing, however, it went to Germany. The FBI knows of 16 labs it was at, as I recall. Perhaps 20-30 is a fair estimate of the maximum number. Of the known labs, the FBI has narrowed the field of labs to 4 based on genetic work. See MSNBC report. It may now be able to pinpoint it further based on developments in the science. See Keim’s article last month.
If you have any URLs to provide re Germany it would be interesting to see. Strains were traded like baseball cards. I called USDA Ames in Iowa and submitted a FOIA request nationally and the HQ responded formally denying they had a strain they knew as Ames.
Given Al-Timimi was speaking alongside the AQ WMD recruiter at charity conferences (the blind sheik’s son), associating with the “911 imam,” and his mentors were the WTC 1993-era recruiter Bilal Philips and Bin Laden’s sheik al-Hawali, there is no reason for guessing. (Al-Hawali was the sheik along with the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman OBL referenced in his Declaration of War. Indeed as to Ames strain, for example, we know Ali’s George Mason University Department was working with Delta Ames supplied by NIH under a multi-million dollar DARPA funded contract with USAMRIID. The DOD grants were from 2001. The mailed anthrax was a mix of two strains and included an inverted plasmid.
You are absolutely correct that if Iraqi intelligence helped EIJ on this it would be difficult to learn about.