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.”
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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.”
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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.
Karachi, where Syed Athar Abbas’ computer peripherals had an office, was where KSM and As Sahab was located. KSM settled his family in Karachi in 1998. In April 2001, al Hawsawi, whose laptop contained the anthrax spraydrying documents, traveled to Dubai from Karachi at the direct of Qaeda’s Media Committee. Between September 11 and September 21, 2001, KSM and others at the guesthouse in Karachi, Pakistan recorded many news stories of the 9//11 attacks for future in As Sahab films.
In “connecting the dots” one also would want to consider whether any supporter of the militants had access to the know-how of this encapsulation technique described in the PhD thesis by Ken Alibek’s assistant. She thanked William Patrick and Ken Alibek in the credits. She said that silica may have been used not for the purpose for which it traditionally has been used in Soviet bioweapons but for the purpose of “encapsulation,” thus permitting processing with less sophisticated equipment. I’ve posed the question whether Ali Al-Timimi had access to such know-how. A supporter of the Taliban who was working with Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, Al-Timimi was a Salafist imam sentenced to life plus 70 years for sedition and exhorting some young men to go abroad and defend their faith. We might also consider, however, whether any supporter of the militants has expertise in such polymerization or encapsulation relating to drug delivery, such as biochemist Magdy al-Nashar. He studied in North Carolina in 2000 where Al-Timimi’s small D.C. group had a branch. His co-founder of that group was Vice-President of the IANA spin-off Help The Needy. Magdy Al-Nashar’s webpage at Leeds explained he was expert in functional polymers used in the delivery of drugs. He was represented by an attorney in Cairo who has been alleged as Ayman Zawahiri’s conduit to jihadists in Egypt and Iraq and elsewhere. Al-Nashar had the keys to the apartment used to make the London subway bombs and to store materials shipped to al-Zawahiri’s chief aide al-Hadi.
Ali Al-Timimi was a graduate microbiology student at George Mason University, where famed Russian bioweaponeer and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Charles Bailey on March 14, 2001 filed a patent involving the use of hydrophobic silica in permitting greater concentration of biological agents. There is a related, more sophisticated, patent based on Dr. Alibek’s know-how published later (after the mailings). The First Floor that intermingled the Center for Biodefense/Hadron and the GMU/ATCC computational sciences people. Here, the government even allowed the method to be commercialized and be published in the public domain for use in a broad range of possible commercial applications. Perhaps the United States biodefense establishment should not let officials commercialize and disclose such dual use technology, whether the patent is assigned to a DARPA-funded program or not — and whether deemed “biofriendly” or not. (The patent, which is not classified, has been assigned to George Mason University). Earlier in this thread is a picture of the Floor Plan for the First Floor of Discovery Hall at George Mason University. FBI Director Mueller this Fall cautioned universities to guard against access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information.
GMU microbiology grad Al-Timimi, who was working with and had been taught by Bin Laden’s sheik, did mathematical support work for the Navy that required a high security clearance, while working for a Beltway contractor. What did his work for the Navy involve?
When pressed by the interviewer, “Does it nag at you in the back of your mind that possibly you do know [the anthrax processor]?” Dr. Bill Patrick said: “Possibly, possibly, I could have talked to these people. But it would have been within the context of their having a need to know.” He explained: “ Most of my discussions about the biological problem has been in secure conferences and meetings, and involve people with need to know, with security clearance and what have you. I don’t talk about ‘how to’, I don’t get into ‘how to’ with many people, no people other than the fact that those who really have a need to know.”
Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for some of his work for the government. Why? When?
As so well explained by Rutgers professor Richard Ebright, proliferation of know-how serves to proliferate opportunities for access to that know-how.