Gentlemen,
I think there is a reconciliation of views revealed by the David Tell article quoted by Ed.
First, TrebleRebel is correct, under the article cited by Ed, that Dugway historically has used silica.
TrebleRebel is also correct that the AFIP detected the presence of silica.
But Ed is correct that Dr. A and Professor M. did not see silica on the SEMS. There is just no reason not to credit their report as the same SEMS were available for government experts to observe.
This article points to a reconciliation — where silica was not used in the manner historically used by Dugway but nonetheless would lead to silica being detected on the SEMS. Professor M’s broad authority about the tendency of the exosporium to absorb silicon actually provides support that silica could have been used (and absorbed) as part of an earlier step in the manufacture.
Dr. A for a long while thought a spraydryer was used. He later came to think a fluidized bed dryer was used. He explains this in a chapter of BIOHAZARD 2.
As noted above, the hijackers had gone to Paterson, NJ. David Tell also addresses Paterson, NJ and the food mixer that was delivered there 1 mile from the hijackers.
Paterson is in the news this week where the imam told the FBI in 2005 that he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He faces deportation because he failed to disclose that he had been detained for 3 months for admitting he was a member of Hamas. The military’s interrogation tactics were later banned by a 1999 Israeli supreme court ruling that equated them with torture.
Imam’s defense: He was tortured into ‘confessing’ he joined Hamas
Deportation trial under way for respected Passaic cleric, Star-Ledger, May 10, 2008
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-10/121030776169890.xml&coll=1
David Tell, “Who Is Syed Athar Abbas? And what was he doing with a $100,000 “fine particulate mixer” last summer?
Weekly Standard, July 17, 2002
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/470lfsdb.asp
“BACK IN APRIL, having marinated myself in a decade’s worth of published microbiology research and whatnot, I wrote a longish story for the Standard expressing near total bewilderment about the FBI’s investigation of last fall’s anthrax terrorism.
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The Newark, New Jersey office of local U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie has kindly provided me a fax copy of the April 23, 2002 plea agreement—signed by Mr. Abbas on June 10—according to which said Pakistani gentleman now waives his right to prosecution by indictment and agrees, instead, to acknowledge guilt in connection with a one-count felony “information” alleging his participation in an elaborate check-kiting scheme. Abbas, it appears, “from on or about June 7, 2001, through on or about July 10, 2001,” defrauded two banks, a Wells Fargo branch in Woodland Hills, California and a Fleet Bank branch in Fort Lee, New Jersey, of slightly more than $100,000—by manipulating three checking accounts he’d opened for a bogus Fort Lee business alternately known as “Dot Com Computer” and “Cards.Com.”
**
None of which by itself makes Abbas particularly noteworthy or ties him, even inferentially, to the anthrax letters or any other form of terrorism. True, it turns out that the FBI, pursuing some thus far undisclosed lead, originally went looking for Abbas—in the first few days after September 11—at his presumed address on the top floor of a commercial building in Fort Lee. And Fort Lee is thought to have been home at some point to Nawaq and Salem Alhamzi, both of whom helped fly American Airlines Flight 77 into the side of the Pentagon. And the FBI could not locate Abbas at first because, so says his former landlord, the man had suddenly abandoned his Fort Lee lease more than a month before—and had disappeared without a trace.”
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No, what the FBI discovered, instead, was that Syed Athar Abbas ***had recently “arranged to pay $100,000 in cash”—roughly the amount he’d stolen from Wells Fargo and Fleet—for the purchase and shipment of a “fine-food particulate mixer,” a “sophisticated machine used commercially” to do various things you wouldn’t expect an outfit called “Computers Dot Com” to do. Like “mix chemicals,” for example.”
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Mr. Parascandola reports that it’s been established Abbas did take possession of this machine at the “Computers Dot Com” offices in Fort Lee last summer, but had the thing “immediately transported elsewhere” before taking off himself for Pakistan. Federal investigators, Parascandola adds, “have not been able to locate the industrial food mixer” in question, which problem continues to be of some “concern.” All the more so because, despite his guilty plea and promise of restitution to the banks he bilked, Abbas has “refused to cooperate with investigators trying to find out more about his accomplices or the mixer.”
***
The $100,000 particulate mixer Parascandola describes, incidentally, is the exact same technology commonly employed by major food and pharmaceutical manufacturers to process fluid-form organic and inorganic compounds into powder: first to dry those compounds; next to grind the resulting mixture into tiny specks of dust, as small as a single micron in diameter; then to coat those dust specks with a chemical additive, if necessary, to maximize their motility or “floatiness”; and finally to aerate the stuff for end-use packaging. In other words, this is how you’d put Aunt Jemima pancake mix in its box. Or place concentrations of individual anthrax spores into letters addressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.”
Now on the day and minute that Ali Al-Timimi’s residence was searched, the FBI searched the residence of two food researchers. One drying expert who was Sami al-Hussayen’s good friend and whose PhD had 350 pages of drying coefficients was searched at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. Another food researcher, a PhD animal geneticist, was arrested here, at the same time 100 federal agents fanned out simultaneously interviewing 150 people.
There are records for two Syed Athar Abbas. Both had home-based computer peripherals business that went defunct at the same time. One was in Cal/NJ. One was in Texas. The one in Texas could not be reached throughout the time the Cal/NJ was in jail. Are they the same person with different records resulting from one person using two different social security numbers?
It was about the day after TrebleRebel passed by the Texas Syed Athar Abbas’ home and observed a standard suburban lifestyle — swingset, two cars etc. — that someone (then unidentified) leaked the baseless, hyped story to Newsweek about the bloodhounds. Mark Miller had been looking into the Syed Athar Abbas issue but then the bloodhound story trumped any development along these lines. Coincidence? Okay, probably. Then let’s get back to the facts. What was the fine particulate mixer for and where is it?
This Texas Syed Athar Abbas had a home-based computer business from Karachi called Mixun Solutions. He lived near the Hamas-connected Holy Land Foundation in Texas. He had a different social security number according to the Newsweek researcher than the NJ/Cal. Syed Athar Abbas. He could not be reached by telephone throughout the period of the incarceration of the NJ/Cal Syed Athar Abbas.
The Syed Athar Abbas who went to prison for check kiting turned in two passports — but the judge denied bail because he was known to have three passports.
Who is Syed Athar Abbas and what was the fine food particulate mixer for? Is he the same Syed Athar Abbas who owned the home-based computer firm Mixun Solutions (with an office in Karachi) which then went defunct when the NJ/Cal. Syed Athar Abbas went to jail?
TrebleRebel was thrown off the scent by the outrageous hyped bloodhound story by the fellow born in Haifa in 1948 who came over to the US Attorneys Office from the CIA on September 29, 2001. That man’s daughter now represents “anthrax weapons suspect” Al-Timimi pro bono in the sedition case.