The website of the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) contained “Provision of Suicide Operations,” dated June 19, 2001, that stated: “The mujahid [or warrior] must kill himself if he knows this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies or demolishing a center vital to the enemy or its military forces. In this new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.” On August 26, 2001, IANA’s website www.islamway.com published a propaganda statement that encouraged individuals to join arms against the West titled “An Invitation to Jihad,” stating that “[t]he mujahid brothers will accept you with open arms and within a period of two weeks you will be given commando training and will be sent to the frontline.” Whatever the debate on whether nonconventional weapons were forbidden (haram), some of the sheiks whose fatwas were appearing on the IANA website were likely to take a more permissive view.
In mid-December 2001, the US arrested US-based Al Qaeda biochem operative Ali Al-Marri, who had arrived on September 10, 2001 and was nominally a student living in Macomb, Illinois. Al-Marri had lived in Macomb the previous summer and had traveled to New York City to join with UK operative Dhiren Barot to case NYC helicopters and financial institutions. Authorities had learned of calls he made to KSM’s assistant al-Hawsawi from Illinois. Al-Hawsawi was KSM's assistant and it was Al-Hawsawi's laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it. The key to the Amerithrax solution possibly hinged on where Al-Marri had his computer sent after casing NYC locations. He had the imam at the local mosque store the computer in his basement and then ship it to Washington.
In January 2002, an FBI official told the Wall Street Journal, “We’ve done over 300 interviews at places we consider really critical. I can tell you categorically that we’ve given a lot of people shakes, [but] there was nothing to it.” Beginning that month, Ali Al-Timimi was on GMU staff and paid $70,000 a year. At some point, officials learned of communications between Al-Timimi and Bin Laden’s spiritual adviser, radical Saudi sheik al-Hawali. Al-Timimi's attorney, for example, says that Al-Timimi and Al-Hawali spoke on September 16, 2001 and September 19, 2001. They spoke, for example, about helping Moussaoui with his defense. They later spoke in coordinating a letter to members of Congress on the first anniversary of the anthrax letters to the Senators.
In March 2002, a crude biological weapons site was found in Afghanistan. U.S. forces discovered a site near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that appeared to be an Al Qaeda biological weapons lab under construction. Zawahiri’s plan, evidenced in the documents found previous in the Fall, was to move the location of the lab every 3 months.
As he described to ABCNEWS, Dr. Alibek and other scientists in March 2002 took lie detector tests. He had to answer questions including “Did you do it?” and “Do you know who did it?” Alibek reports that he passed the test. Although Dr. Alibek offered his services to the FBI Director in a letter, the response was that they already had a large group working on it. In late June 2002, quoting unnamed law enforcement officials, the Associated Press reported that up to 200 polygraph tests had been given to current and former employees of the Battelle Institute and of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where scientists have developed a powdered form of anthrax for testing biological defense systems. It was Dugway that provided the simulant used in testing after the 2001 threat letter relating to the detention of Mahjoub, the former manager of Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey had both worked for Battelle as consultants.
An intense concern over such leaks continued into the Spring in charity investigations involving a March 2002 probe of the Saar charity network. Even the US Attorney working on the investigation and his team were under investigation.
In August 2002, Afghan police found a store of chemicals in a house in Kabul formerly occupied by a Saudi non-governmental organization, the WAFA Humanitarian Organization. Local media reports called it a terrorist laboratory. “Some containers and documents have been found by the police authorities,” a spokesman for international peacekeepers said. One local report said that the discovery included 36 types of chemicals, explosive materials, fuses, laboratory equipment and some “terroristic guide books.” It said the laboratory was found in a residence in the diplomatic area of Kabul in a building that had been used by an Arab national who headed the group prior to 9/11. WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. Documents found in WAFA’s offices in Afghanistan revealed that the charity was intimately involved in assassination plots against U.S. citizens as well as the distribution of “how to” manuals on chemical and biological warfare. U.S. officials have described WAFA as a key component of Bin Laden’s organization.
In 2002, a man named Singh tried to purchase over the internet a wireless video module and a control module for use in an unmanned aerial vehicle (”UAV”). He chose an airborne video system with a camera and transmitter able to transmit video images from a UAV back to a receiver from as far as 15 miles away. The video camera could be used in military reconnaissance and in helping aim artillery and other weaponry across enemy lines. Singh placed his order from England, but the company was unable to confirm Singh’s overseas credit card. Two young men from Northern Virginia, Chapman and Khan, who were among the group later known as the “Virginia Paintball Defendants,”assisted him in completing the purchases. As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals later explained, the pair “attended the Dar al Arqam Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia where Ali Timimi, a primary lecturer, spoke of the necessity to engage in violent jihad against the enemies of Islam and the ‘end of time’ battle between Muslims and non-Muslims.” In the summer of 2002, Singh visited Virginia, staying first with one of them and then with the other. Ali Timimi was unindicted co-conspirator number 1 in the Virginia Paintball Case, and was only later identified by Prosecutors (and then separately indicted).
After meeting with "9/11 imam" Anwar Aulaqi to discuss the idea, Ali Timimi drafted a letter from dissident Saudi sheik Hawali dated October 6, 2002. He had it hand delivered it to every member of the US Congress just before their vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The letter was from al-Hawali (not Timimi), and warned of the disastrous consequences that would follow an invasion of Iraq.
Rm 154A in George Mason’s Discovery Hall (down from former USAMRIID head Dr. Bailey in Rm 156B) would be Victor Morozov’s room number when he first assumed Timimi’s phone number in 2004 (and before he moved to a newly constructed, adjacent building). Morozov was the co-inventor with Dr. Bailey of the related cell culture process under which the silica was removed from the spore surface. A faculty member who would consult with Ali suggests that it instead was Rm. 154B, in the middle of the office suite.
Later that year, Al-Hakaymah, a long-time colleague of Taha in the Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (Egyptian Islamic Group), summarized the Amerithrax investigation. Al-Hakaymah aka Abu Jihad was Al Qaeda’s spymaster. He dedicated the treatise on American intelligence and law enforcement: “To the pious and the hidden who are not known when they come and who are not missed when they disappear — To those whom their God will answer when they pray to Him. To all the eyes that are vigilant late at night to bring victory to this religion.” It was publicized by an EIJ shura member Al-Sibai, who had been detained in London in 1999 and then released, and now was an oft-quoted expert on Zawahiri and his followers. Like Al Zayat, Al Sibai has been openly critical of Al Qaeda and Zawahiri. Al Sibai views Zawahiri’s focus on the Far Enemy as having been disastrous for the Egyptian Islamic groups.
In mid-February 2003, Abdel Rahman’s son, who was on the WMD committee with Egyptian Midhat Mursi, was captured in Quetta, Pakistan. Along with Zawahiri, Abdel Rahman and his two sons have had considerable influence over Bin Laden. He reportedly treated them like sons. In jail in the early 1980s, Zawahiri had caused considerable tension by challenging the blind sheik’s ability to lead a coalition of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian Islamic Group. Zawahiri and Bin Laden nevertheless are Rahman’s friends. The leaders in charge of Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program thus had a close connection to those imprisoned in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center. The imprisoned WTC 1993 plotter Ramzi Yousef was KSM’s nephew. KSM claims to have been responsible for the planning of WTC 1993. WTC 1993 mastermind Ramzi Yousef had been the mentor of the new husband, Al-Baluchi, of MIT-graduate Aafia Siddiqui.
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi) is a cousin of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Yousef and nephew of KSM. In 2000-2001, along with KSM’s assistant Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Al-Baluchi facilitated the hijackers travel in transiting the UAE from Pakistan. He would send them money transfers after they were in the US. US biochem operative Al-Marri was in contact in August, September and October 2001 with Al-Hawsawi, who in August was in UAE and then after 9/11 was back in Pakistan. In 2002-2003, back in Pakistan, al-Baluchi worked with operative Majid Khan, a Maryland resident. He married Aafia Siddiqui shortly before being captured in Pakistan in the Spring of 2003. An Assistant United States Attorney ("AUSA") would say in the prosecution related to a plot involving Majid Khan that Aafia Siddiqui was willing to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. By reason of her relationship with 9/11 plotter KSM and KSM’s nephew al-Baluchi, Aafia was connected to both al-Hawsawi’s laptop with the anthrax spraydrying documents and Al-Marri. Activist Yvonne Ridley suggests she has been held in Bagram air base for the past 4 years and her plaintive cries for help were heard by a fellow prisoner, Moazzam Begg. Ridley calls the woman "the Gray Lady of Bagram."
When Director Mueller says, "I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " it may be more complicated than that. Consider in February 2001 the decision-making that went into whether to charged Hanssen, the FBI mole. They had enough to go ahead with a prosecution even before the last dead drop -- they could have charged conspiracy to commit espionage just as they did with Aldrich Ames.
Anthrax Ping
Hmmm, for those of us who are not quite experts on the anthrax deal, what’s the bottom line, here?