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.
The lynchpin is the dead National Enquirer employee in Florida, whose wife was a landlady for a couple of the 9/11 terrorists.
If Hatfill was the poisoner, what’s his connection to the dead man, and why send him the first anthrax letter?
I posit that this fellow was curious, may have even asked questions that alarmed Atta, and that an anthrax letter was sent when all the others were mailed from New Jersey. Frankly, I believe it was not part of their original plan and is the strongest evidence yet pointing to an Al Qu’aeda connection.
Have you noticed how the dead man’s wife seems to have never been publicly interviewed? I’ve not once read any interview she has given to a journalist. It would be just like the FBI to tell her to keep her mouth shut so they can divert attention away from the truth: terrorists hit us with anthrax and the government was caught lacking.
Oh yeah, the stuff about Germany came out about two years ago, was posted here at FR by someone other than myself. The Germans actually went public themselves in that admission, though it seems our government knew all along. How cozy.
Maybe you can find it, maybe not. I don’t always have luck finding old postings here even when they are mine and I know the key words!