Anthrax hair samples don't match

Washington Post ^ | August 13, 2008 | Carrie Johnson

[ZACKandPOOK]

So then my only fallback theory is that Cheney was at an undisclosed location too because he liked hanging out there, and Bruce was having an affair with Rielle Hunter.

[TrebleRebel]

Here's the Fox News email - the unredacted version - showing Fox News knows all the names on the email:



Here's what Catherine Herridge said on the air:

In the email Ivins circulated to colleagues it claims that the anthrax in the letters was from Fort Detrick, that is was virtually identical to powder that had been made by one of the scientists there.

Friends of Ivins have told me today that they believe that he really wanted to shed light on the possibility of what seems to be almost a foregone conclusion now that it was an army insider that was responsible for those attacks. Others would suggest that this was really Ivins's way of deflecting suspicion away from him.

[ZACKandPOOK]

11 p.m., midnight, 11 p.m., 10 p.m., 1 a.m. I see now (belatedly) that staying out past midnight would not have been noticed. Unless he was having an affair, and a mistress or someone else can alibi him, he easily could have made the trip.

Dammit, Ivins. Why couldn’t you have been having sex in the hot suite!

[ZACKandPOOK]

What sex is that knuckle? Surely there is some with knuckle recognition software who could help out.

[TrebleRebel]

The new Catherine Herridge video can be viewed at http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?CMP=KNC-YahooPI

You have to search for “anthrax” - then click on the August 1 video titled “Anthrax suspect commits suicide, Suspect dies as FBI close in.
Note the transcript is slightly different than the one written up here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,397325,00.html

[ladyjane]

FYI - Plum Island is not near the Statue of Liberty. It is at least 100 miles away, off the north fork of Long Island.

[ZACKandPOOK]

Thanks.

So I see that the photo is a screen grab of the Herridge video.

[archy]

I did an internet search a few years back.

There are a good dozen or more Greendale towns and suburbs in the USA and numerous Greendale schools.

There even used to be a picture on the web of an old Greendale school in Saskatchewan, Canada. I don’t know if it still is there.

On the old Andy Griffith TV Show, Don Knott's character, Deputy Barney Fife, was offered a job as sheriff in the town of Greendale.

Looks like we've got another suspect for the feds! Its a C O N S P I R A C Y !

[CougarGA7]

More proof

[Milligan]

So Ivin’s like the show MONK.
Didn’t Monk have mental issues too?

“....Adrian Monk is a brilliant detective who worked for the San Francisco Police Department until his wife, Trudy, was killed by a car bomb, which Monk believed was intended for him. Trudy’s death led Monk to suffer a nervous breakdown. He was discharged from the force and became a shut-in, refusing to leave his house for over three years. With the help of Registered Nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), he was finally able to leave the house. The breakthrough allowed him to work as a consultant for the homicide unit despite remaining limitations rooted in his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Monk’s compulsive habits are numerous, and an unknown number of phobias compound his situation. The OCD and plethora of phobias inevitably lead to very awkward situations and cause problems for Monk, and anyone around him, as he goes about investigating the cases. However, these same personal struggles, particularly the OCD, are what aid him to solve cases, resulting in his catchphrase, “It’s a gift, and a curse.”....”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(TV_series)

You can watch the episodes here.
http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/webisodes/index.html

---

Are you updating your website?
This investigation of yours is very interesting!

[ZACKandPOOK]

No, I took my website down and now communicate only in code and steganography using YouTube videos. I did not want to offend anyone and it is no longer clear that the FBI knows what they are doing. I’ve always thought they were just coming down hard on Ivins because that flask is the origin of the stream of matching samples downstream (to which 100 known people had access). (I’ve always been a bit of a Pollyanna in assuming the FBI had things under control). The jury is still out though. If you can’t just blindly trust that Mueller is really smart and reliable, then the world is truly going to pot. Keep your eye on the Aafia Siddiqui case — what a fascinating divergence in reporting. Where was Aafia for those 5 years? Is she cooperating with the US on US-based operatives? Where has she been for the past 5 years? What was the biological agent Aafia wanted to use to kill the former presidents? Are the anthrax mailer and processor having a good summer? Stay tuned.

[ZACKandPOOK]

No, I took my website down and now communicate only in code and steganography using YouTube videos. I did not want to offend anyone and it is no longer clear that the FBI knows what they are doing. I’ve always thought they were just coming down hard on Ivins because that flask is the origin of the stream of matching samples downstream (to which 100 known people had access), he destroyed evidence, allegedly obstructed the investigation etc. (I’ve always been a bit of a Pollyanna in assuming the FBI had things under control). The jury is still out though. If you can’t just blindly trust that Mueller is really smart and reliable, then the world is truly going to pot. For him to say that it is erroneous to think the FBI has made a mistake is just vintage Mueller.

However Amerithrax turns out, keep your eye on the Aafia Siddiqui case — what a fascinating divergence in reporting. Where was Aafia for those 5 years? Is she cooperating with the US on US-based operatives? Where has she been for the past 5 years? What was the biological agent Aafia wanted to use to kill the former presidents? Are the anthrax mailer and processor having a good summer? Stay tuned.

[Milligan]

I think we give security clearances to anybody including our enemies. For the last twenty years we have to be so PC about everything. We don’t have enough skilled scientist in this country so we hire from abroad.

Ivan’s social worker didn’t sound too tightly wrapped either. If Ivan’s was having so much problems mentally why wasn’t he relieved from his duties? That would be Standard Operating Procedure if they had competent people running things.

I wouldn’t doubt something went missing....too many chefs in the pot. I don’t think the lab followed any security procedure inorder to safe guard our most dangerous pathogens.

It’s better for the FBI to cover it up because if the American public really knew the truth it was scare the pants off them.

Ignorance is Bliss.

I do enjoy reading your theories.
It makes sense.

And I enjoy your arguments with Ed.

[ZACKandPOOK]

I like Ed. I must like him given that I’ve overlooked that he turned me into the FBI and claimed I was a “biovangelist” looking to sound the alarm. (And all because I said in 2003 that Aafia was an AQ operative plotting to use biological agents to kill senior politicians). He tried to send me to jail just because we grew tired of his labeling us and talking about our private emails — so we booted him out of our email group. So I know just how asinine these theories can be and how self-deluded and uninformed about intelligence matters these Quantico profilers can be. (See Gladwell’s brilliant November 2007 New Yorker article on profiling.) Of course, the likable and beautiful profiler has told her superiors the same thing about me. :0) I told her and her colleagues “Can’t we just accept my brilliance as established based on the scientific evidence.” And don’t polls show thatt 99.99% of Americans agree Ed’s First Grade Theory is idiotic? (100% if you poll First Graders themselves, as I have).

Peter Leitener who was a professor at GMU (and now I think is back at DOD) and some GMU grad students have great insights on the risk of infiltration, theft, loss etc. relating to the Center for Biodefense and the research on Ames that was going on there. ProQuest dissertation has a key thesis or two including the Crockett one on the issue of the silicon signature. She credits Alibek and Patrick.

I’ve moved on to film though because it is more fun. One YouTube screen name is Dad2Grace. All the many screennames in my favorites are mine too. I told Ayman that I was delivering coded messages through my films. (Midhat Mursi was the only one who has visited so far, though). Bruce’s YouTube screen name was BruceIvi .

[ZACKandPOOK]

1. Melanie Ulrich of Greencastle, Pa., who teaches at Hagerstown Community College, on Wednesday challenged circumstantial evidence against Ivins that has been made public.
***
  Ivins’ alleged use of a lyophilizer to make powdered anthrax. Ulrich said Ivins signed out a SpeedVac, but not a lyophilizer, which is too large to fit in a containment hood, or secure protective area.
She said it would take about an hour to dry one milliliter of wet anthrax spores in one vial in a SpeedVac. It would have been impossible for Ivins to have dried more than a liter, which would have been required for the amount of anthrax sent in the letters, in the time frame they were mailed, Ulrich said.

2. In Anthrax Case, Hindsight Shifts View of Ivins - WSJ.com
Dr. Ivins, his colleagues said, argued that al Qaeda was responsible. “He was very passionate about this,” former boss Jeffrey Adamovicz said. ...
www.wsj.com/article/SB121824122279026121.html

Ex-colleague questions government’s case against anthrax suspect

By ANDREW SCHOTZ (andrews@herald-mail.com
http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=200518&format=html

[Dr. Scarpetta]

Thanks for a wealth of info...

BTTT

[ZACKandPOOK]

I hope someone has researched, using the Wayback Machine, the dates and times of posts that he has made in September 2001 and October 2001. That might provide him an alibi that could be overlooked by someone first considering the issue years later (including Bruce himself).

For example, he posted a lot under the names Prunetacos on greek board. We learn why his explanation of why he holds his brother (the one who said he could go to hell) in equally low regard.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

“Daschle buys Ivins as Sole Culprit in 2001 Anthrax Attacks”
*****
“As to a motive for the attacks, Daschle noted three possibilities:

• Ivins and his wife were ‘vehement right-to-life advocates,’ while Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who also received an anthrax-tainted letter, are supporters of abortion rights.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-13-anthrax_N.htm?csp=34

********************************************
Now that Daschle says he agrees with the FBI, I have more doubts than ever...

[ZACKandPOOK]

I wonder if Attorney Daschle was told that the claim he had submitted a false sample is now reported to be untrue. That might affect anyone’s assessment. I wish his law firm undertook to assess things as a pro bono assignment — or some other large law firm.

As you know, I don’t see any evidence that Dr. Ivins is guilty of five capital murders. None. I’ve always thought the means, motive, modus operandi and opportunity pointed to US-based supporters of the Salafi-Jihadists.

Ironically, I used to spend a lot of time at George Mason University libraries. Years later, I’ve come to like and respect all the many faculty and students at GMU’s Center for Biodefense that I’ve come to know through email. The alum there are having a reunion there next Saturday. That’s quite a concentration of learning on the subject.

    The Washington Post, in an article “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats,” dated September 3, 2006 summarized events relating to George Mason University computational biology graduate student Ali Al-Timimi:

“In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local Muslims: Timimi was running ‘an Islamic group known as the Dar al-Arqam’ that had ‘conducted military-style training,’ FBI special agent John Wyman would later write in an affidavit.

Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips. Searching the Internet, they found a speech by Timimi celebrating the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, according to the affidavit. The agents also found that Timimi was in contact with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi whose anti-Western speeches in the early 1990s had helped inspire bin Laden.

The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.

On a frigid day in February 2003, the FBI searched Timimi’s brick townhouse on Meadow Field Court, a cul-de-sac near Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Among the items they were seeking, according to court testimony: material on weapons of mass destruction.”

Al-Timimi had rock star status in Salafist circles and lectured in July 2001 (in Toronto) and August 2001 (in London) on the coming “end of times” and signs of the coming day of judgment. He spoke alongside officials of a charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Another speaker was Ali’s mentor, Bilal Philips, one of the 173 listed as unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators. Bilal Philips worked in the early 1990s to recruit US servicemen according to testimony in that trial and interviews in which Dr. Philips explained the Saudi-funded program. According to Al-Timimi’s attorney, Ali “was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis.”

   The month before they searched Ali’s townhouse, they questioned Umar Lee. Police arrested Mr. Lee, an American-born Muslim in St. Louis, in mid-February 2003 on an unrelated charge and questioned him about whether he was planning any attacks against the U.S. government. Bret Darren Lee, whose Muslim name is Umar ben-Livan (and for simplicity he shortens it to “Umar Lee”), said that he was stunned by the questions asked by the FBI agents: “I just looked at them. I didn’t think they’d asked me anything worth responding to.” Mr. Lee said he was sleeping in his apartment about 5 a.m. Sunday when he was woken by loud knocking on his door. But rather than a Muslim neighbor waking him for prayers, it was several police officers with weapons drawn. They put Lee up against a wall and asked whether he had any weapons in the apartment. The National Rifle Association sticker affixed to the apartment’s front door was a cheap version of an alarm system. While he was down at the station house, the FBI agents spent a half-hour questioning his wife about whether he was a terrorist and his thoughts about the Taliban. Umar tells me that the suspicion reported in the Washington Post that Ali was involved in the anthrax mailings is nonsense. On his popular blog, he clarified a quotation of his that appeared at the time in the Post’s “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats.”

   Two weeks later, at the same time the FBI was searching the townhouse of PhD candidate Ali Timimi, searches and arrests moved forward elsewhere. In Moscow, Idaho, FBI agents interviewed Nabil Albaloushi. (The FBI apparently searched his apartment at the same time they searched the apartment of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen, who they had woken from bed at 4:00 a.m.) Albaloushi was a PhD candidate expert in drying foodstuffs. His thesis in 2003 was 350 pages filled with charts of drying coefficients. Interceptions showed a very close link between IANA’s Sami al-Hussayen and Sheikh al-Hawali, to include the setting up of websites, the providing of vehicles for extended communication, and telephone contact with intermediaries of Sheikh al-Hawali. Al-Hussayen had al-Hawali’s phone number upon the search of his belongings upon his arrest. Former Washington State University animal geneticist and nutrition researcher Ismail Diab, who had moved to Syracuse to work for an IANA-spin-off, also was charged in Syracuse and released as a material witness to a financial investigation of the IANA affiliate “Help The Needy.” After the government failed to ask Dr. Diab any questions for nearly 3 months, the magistrate bail restrictions and removed the electronic monitoring and curfew requirements.

   In Moscow, Idaho, the activities by IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen that drew scrutiny involved these same two radical sheiks. U.S. officials say the two sheiks influenced al Qaeda’s belief that Muslims should wage holy war against the U.S. until it ceases to support Israel and withdraws from the Middle East. Sami Hussayen, who was acquitted, made numerous calls and wrote many e-mails to the two clerics, sometimes giving advice to them about running Arabic-language websites on which they espoused their anti-Western views.

        According to witness testimony in the prosecution of the Virginia Paintball Defendants, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” The FBI first contacted Timimi shortly after 9/11. He met with FBI agents 7 or 8 times in the months leading up to his arrest. Al-Timimi is a US citizen born in Washington DC. His house was searched, his passport taken and his telephone monitored. Ali Al Timimi defended his PhD thesis in computational biology shortly after his indictment for recruiting young men to fight the US in defending against an invasion of Afghanistan.

        Some of his communications in 2002 with dissident Saudi sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends and mentors of Bin Laden, were intercepted. The two radical sheiks had been imprisoned from September 1994 to June 1999. Al-Hawali’s detention was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War against the United States and the claim of responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings.

        ABC reported in July 2004 that FBI Director Mueller had imposed an October 1, 2004 deadline for a case that would stand up in court. The date passed with no anthrax indictment. Al-Timimi was not indicted for anthrax. He was indicted for sedition. Upon his indictment, on September 23, 2004, al-Timimi explained he had been offered a plea bargain of 14 years, but he declined. He quoted Sayyid Qutb. He said he remembered “reading his books and loving his teaching” as a child, and that Qutb’s teaching was prevented from signing something that was false by “the finger that bears witness.” He noted that he and his lawyers asked that authorities hold off the indictment until he had received his PhD, but said that unfortunately they did not wait. On October 6, 2004, the webmaster of the azzam.com website Babar Ahmad was indicted. It was not until 2007 that the North Brunswick, NJ imam who mirrored the azzam.com website was indicted (on the grounds of income tax evasion).

        The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”), the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched the townhouse of “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.” Famed head of the former Russian bioweaponeering program Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see Al-Timimi in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department, and was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner. When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link Al-Timimi to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va. In the end, he was indicted for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. During deliberations, he reportedly was very calm, reading Genome Technology and other scientific journals. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 70 years.

         At his sentencing, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke in clear and measured tones:

“I will not admit guilt nor seek the Court’s mercy. I do this not out of any disrespect to the Court. I do this simply because I am innocent.
My claim of innocence is not because of any inherent misunderstanding on my part as to the nature of the crimes for which I was convicted nor is it because my Muslim belief recognizes sharia rather than secular law. It is merely because I am innocent.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I declare the government’s recitation poor as it stripped those words of their meaning.

***

Imprisonment of any term, as this Court well knows, is a crisis for the incarcerated and his or her loved ones. I am no exception to that.
But the real crisis brought on my imprisonment, I sincerely believe is America’s. For if my conviction is to stand, it would mean that two hundred and thirty years of America’s tradition of protecting the individual from the tyrannies and whims of the sovereign will have come to an end. And that which is exploited today to persecute a single member of a minority will most assuredly come back to haunt the majority tomorrow.”

        KSM invoked George Washington in his statement to a military tribunal in March 2007. That was far less compelling because he was admitting to many serious crimes. The evidence presented at Al-Timimi’s trial, however, was offered only to show that Dr. Al-Timimi was guilty of nothing other than exhorting some young men to go abroad and defend their faith. It seems that, under the government’s case, his only crime was to put his religion before his nation-state. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years. As one Washington Post reporter said of such cases, the government seemed to be engaged in shadow boxing.

        As Al-Timimi explained in his eloquent statement upon sentencing, he was convicted out of fear.

        The former head of the DARPA Biological Countermeasures Program, Dr. Stephen S. Morse, in an interview airing on Charlie Rose on October 10, 2001, explained that there was no need for the public to fear. He noted that maybe the mailer had a personal reason — there was no reason to assume the Florida death related to terrorism or a large group. Dr. Morse urged that we put it into perspective and inform the public so as to remove the mystery. He explained we should not allow ourselves to feel fear. As reiterated in other interviews that week, he said mailed anthrax was not a great danger. As those words aired, however, more letters were en route from that mailbox at 10 Nassau St. in Princeton. The anthrax mailer asked a pointed question in the letter containing a much more highly refined product — product that aerosolized much more readily. The new batch of letters asked: “Are you afraid?”

        The answer was clearly yes. To use the technical Army expression with such a biohazard, it had “major pucker factor.” After the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology reported that it had detected silica, former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, identified as a scientist at Advanced Biosystems Inc. at George Mason University, declined to comment on the purpose of the silica. He told one reporter:  ”I don’t think I want to give people — terrorists — any information to help them.”

        Oops. Too late. GMU PhD alum, wasn’t a siliconizing solution used in the culture medium? Isn’t that what explains what the FBI calls the “silicon signature.” Isn’t the best explanation for the AFIP finding suggested by Dr. Crockett’s excellent thesis in which she credits Dr. Alibek and Dr. Patrick?

[ZACKandPOOK]

    Milton Viorst, who knew Ali as a teenager, wrote a fascinating and sympathetic yet balanced portrait in “The Education of Ali Al-Timimi” that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006. In Saudi Arabia, Al-Timimi had been mentored by a Saudi-trained Canadian imam Bilal Philips. Philips was Al-Timimi’s Islamic Studies teacher at Manaret Riyadh High School in the early 1980s. Al-Timimi adopted Philips’ view that “The clash of civilizations is a reality,” and “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” Between 1991 and 1993, Philips relocated to the Mindinao, Philippines, where he taught at an islamic school. In 1993, according to an interview he gave in a London-based Arabic-language magazine interview, Philips ran a program to convert US soldiers to Islam stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Persian Gulf War. Philips was made a proselytization official by the Saudi Air Force. Philips followed up in the US, with telephone calls and visits intended to recruit the veterans as potential members of Bin Laden’s network. He enlisted assistance from others based in the U.S. and members of Islamic centers all over the US. These conversion specialists financed pilgrimages for US veterans and would later send Muslim clerics in the United States to their homes. Bilal Philips encouraged some converts from this program to fight in Bosnia in the 1990s. He enlisted WTC plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El to help him with the program. Hampton-El was associated with the Al-Kifah center in Brooklyn. Hampton-El in trial testimony described a meeting at the Saudi embassy in 1992 at which Philips gave him a list of US Army personnel to approach. Bilal Philips was named along with Osama bin Laden and Bin Laden brother-in-law Khalifa (and many others) as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial that sent the “blind sheik” to prison.

        Bilal Philips explained these recruitment efforts to a London newspaper in Arabic (translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service) in an article titled “Jamaican-Born Canadian Interviewed on Islamic Missionary Work Among US Troops”:

“[redacted] used to coordinate with US intelligence. And, when Croatia closed its borders to Arab volunteers, there were a group of black Americans who completed their training and knew Islam through me. [Redacted] contacted Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and offered to use this group for sabotage acts inside the United States. The offer was made on the telephone, which apparently was tapped by US intelligence. Shaykh Umar replied by saying: ‘”Avoid civilian targets.’”

“This was the expression under which he was sentenced to life. After this conversation, [Redacted]took the group to an apartment that was known to US intelligence and bugged by listening devices and cameras. The group was along with the American who travelled with them. He was the one who mentioned my name during the interrogation after denying his knowledge of any sabotage plans inside the United States. He said that he trained the group to go to Bosnia and that he was converted to Islam through me. This was how my name was involved in this case.”

        Bilal Philips was a good friend of Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father. Philips wrote in his guestbook on the family website his son created about learning Arabic: “He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Allaah. Was salaam, Bilal.” Adnan’s family website also contained a picture of another “unindicted co-conspirator” of the ’93 bombing, Siraj Wahhaj, who would speak as the same Falls Church mosque as Al-Timimi. Siraj Wahhaj would host Sheik Abdel-Rahman at Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn where two of the WTC bombers worshipped. Wahhaj was a character witness for Sheik Abdel-Rahman at his 1995 trial.

        In a November 30, 2004 letter of appeal circulated in sympathetic circles in the US and the UK, Bilal Philips encouraged Muslims to assist Al-Timimi “financially, morally or politically.” The letter urged that “whatever the charges against him [Al-Timimi] may be, from an Islamic perspective they are false and contrived in order to silence the Da’wah to correct Islam.”

        After completing his religious education in Saudi Arabia in Medina, Ali Al Timimi returned to the United States and received a second bachelor’s degree — this time in computer science at the University of Maryland, while also studying software programming at George Washington University. Timimi spoke at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1994. A senior al Qaeda recruiter, Abdelrahman Dosari, also spoke at three IANA conferences in the early 1990s. In December 1993, Al-Dosari (a.k.a. Shaykh Abu Abdel Aziz “Barbaros”) spoke on ‘Jihad & Revival” and exhorted young men to fight for their faith as Al-Timimi would later be accused of doing privately with young men in Virginia.

        At the first annual IANA conference in 1993, scheduled speakers included Bilal Philips, Mohammed Abdul-Rahman from Afghanistan, Mohammad Qutb from Cairo, Gamal Sultan from Cairo, and Abu Abdel Aziz ‘Barbaros’ (Bosnia).

        Mohammad Abdul-Rahman was the blind sheik’s son. The blind sheik would soon be sentenced for terrorism relating to WTC 1993 and the “Day of Terror” plot directed at NYC landmarks. In 2000, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a/k/a “Asadallah,” who is a son of Abdel Rahman, was sitting alongside Bin Laden and Zawahiri and was videotaped encouraging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.

        Mohammad Qutb was Sayyid Qutb’s brother. Egyptian Mohammad Qutb, a renown scholar and activist, taught Bin Laden at university in Saudi Arabia, having emigrated to Saudi Arabia. In the 1970s, bin Laden was taught by Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Dr. Mohammad Qutb, and a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood member, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, who later would found Al Qaeda. Azzam’s ideas of non-compromise, violent means, and organizing and fighting on a global scale were central to Al Qaeda methods. Qutb, as al-Hawali’s teacher, also strongly influenced al-Hawali. Al-Hawali would be sent to prison in 1994.

        Gamal Sultan was a former EIJ member who would seek to start a political party in 1999 with the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Kamal Habib. They sought to chart a nonviolent course (given the practical reality that the movement had been so infiltrated by the security forces). The blind sheik declined to endorse the venture. In 2000, on a trip to Pittsburgh, Gamal Sultan and his colleagues thought Pittsburgh reminded them of Kandahar given its rolling hills.

        Abu Abdel Aziz ‘Barbaros’ was a well-known holy warrior and fundraiser from Saudi Arabia. In 1994, Abdel Aziz glorified jihad and praised the Pittsburgh magazine Assirat for its interest in holy war. He asked Assirat readers and in a 1995 update, to donate money for holy war. He lauded Dr. Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda. He explained jihad will continue till the day of judgment.” In 1996, he was detained as the primary suspect in the attack on the Dhahran barracks, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed. As explained by expert witness Evan Koehlmann at the trial of one of Al-Timimi’s assistant, Abu Abdul-Aziz Barbaros was celebrated in LET propaganda.

        In 1995 Ali Al Timimi headed an IANA delegation to China together with IANA President Bassem Khafagi and Syracuse oncologist and IANA Vice Chairman Rhafil Dhafir. The IANA condemned the UN women’s rights conference as “an attack on Islam.” They urged Imams worldwide to tell Muslims about “the hidden agenda of this UN Conference, and how to foil the libertine and Westernization movements in the Islamic world.”

        Salafist commentator Umar Lee has explained that in the early 1990s “the most dynamic part of the salafi movement in the DC-area were the students Sheikh Ali al-Timimi who in the 1990’s co-founded a very small group with a small office for an organization called the Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah. In early July 1994, cooperation with Al-Timimi’s Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah, Washington, D.C., IANA held its first annual summer camp in English in Frederick, MD (where the ponds were drained in the Amerthrax investigation). The theme of the camp was “Living the Shahadah in America.” This is what Sheikh Ali was teaching kids at the 1st Annual IANA Summer Camp at a Frederick, MD park:
“Reflections on the Meaning of Our Testimony of Faith: ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah” by Ali Al-Timimi.
***
“6 Wage Jihad in the Path of Allah
***
“Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and practice not the true religion (Islam), being of those who have been given the Scripture (the Jews and the Christians) — until they pay tribute readily and have been brought low. (The Qur’an 9:29)

The Prophet has said:

I am commanded to fight mankind till they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establish the prayers and pay the charity. When they do that they will keep their lives and their property safe from me.”

        Author Milton Viorst, the father of a boy who knew Al-Timimi as a young teen, wrote: “Dozens of his talks are available on the Internet in text and in audio format. They contain little about Arab concerns with the Arab-Israeli wars, the rivalries between the Arab states, the problems faced by Muslims living in the West, or even the war in Iraq. Rather, they reveal a man who reflects deeply on the Islamic vision of Judgment day, prophecy, the nature of the divine, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) — subjects with which he grappled in Medina and in his private reading.” Al Timimi’s lectures (in English after Arabic opening) include “The Negative Portrayal Of Islam In the Media,” “Signs Before the Day of Judgement,” “Advice to the UK Salafis” and “Crusade Complex: Western Perceptions of Islam.” In one of his taped talks available online, al-Timimi warned Muslims not to become too friendly with non-Muslim “disbelievers” or even work for them if other jobs were available. “A Muslim should never allow the disbeliever to have the upper hand.”
 
       Al-Timimi’s increasing computer skills got him a job at SRA International where Ali worked as a “bioinformatics software architect” providing information technology to the government. Some of his jobs required that Ali obtain a high-level security clearance. One job resulted in a letter of recommendation from the White House. He then enrolled in a PhD program in computational biology at George Mason University.
  
      By 2000, Ali Al-Timimi was already taking advanced courses at Mason in computational sciences. Timimi once explained his research: “I am currently a research scientist at the Center for Biomedical Genomics and Informatics, George Mason University. I am involved in the analysis of the microarray data generated by the CTRF Cancer Genomics Project. Likewise, I am developing new computational approaches and technologies in support of this project.” The webpage for Timimi’s program at the time explained: “Faculty members and graduate students in the Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology participate in numerous collaborative efforts including but not limited to the following Laboratories and Research Centers: Center for Biomedical Genomics and Informatics (GMU) , Laboratory for Microbial and Environmental Biocomplexity (GMU) and Center for Biodefense (GMU). Beginning the Spring of 2002, GMU hired Ali to develop a computer program that coordinated the research at several universities, letting him go only after he came under suspicion by the FBI. In Spring 2002, according to salary information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, GMU hired him for $70,000 a year. In 2002, the employment was through the School of Computational Sciences and in 2003, it was through Life Sciences Grants & Contracts.

        The School of Computational Sciences at George Mason is a joint venture between the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”) and George Mason. The joint venture is an effort to maximize research efforts by combining the academic and applied approaches to research. The School’s first activity was to teach an ATCC course in DNA techniques adapted for George Mason students. The ATCC is an internationally renown non-profit organization that houses the world’s largest and most diverse archive of biological materials. The Prince William Campus shares half of Discovery Hall with ATCC. ATCC moved to its current state-of-the-art laboratory at Discovery Hall (Prince William II) in 1998. ATCC’s 106,000-square-foot facility has nearly 35,000 square feet of laboratory space with a specialized air handling system and Biosafety Level 2 and 3 containment stations. The ATCC bioinformatics (BIF) program carries out research in various areas of biological information management relevant to its mission. BIF scientists interact with laboratory scientists in microbiology, cell biology, and molecular biology at ATCC and other laboratories throughout the world. ATCC has strong collaborations with a large number of academic institutions, including computational sciences at George Mason University. Through these partnerships, the George Mason Prince William Campus offers George Mason microbiology students an opportunity for students to be involved in current research and gain access to facilities and employment opportunities at ATCC and other partner companies.

        While I’ve not yet found any reference directly confirming Timimi’s room number, the person who inherited his old telephone number (3-4294) is Victor Morozov in the Center for Biodefense, who upon joining the faculty and inheriting the phone number was in Rm. 154A, very near Dr. Bailey in Rm 156B. It has been suggested that it instead was Rm. 154B, in the middle of the office suite. GMU Information Services helpfully looked up the listings from 2001 directory. As of October 2001 (when the directory is published according to GMU Information Services), judging from the directory, Al-Timimi was still just a graduate student.
   
    Former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Ames strain anthrax researcher Charles Bailey, in Rm 156B, was given a Gateway desktop computer in mid-March 2001 (upon his arrival) — serial number 0227315480. It was like the one Dr. Alibek would get the next year in 156D. One way to think of proximity analysis — a form of true crime analysis — is the number of feet or inches between 154B and 156B/156D. Another way is to think of it is in terms of the number of feet or inches to the hard drives. You can judge the distance for yourself from a First Floor plan that is available online, clicking upon 154-156 area to enlarge.

        The December 2007 biodefense PhD thesis explains:

“Although computers are password protected, anyone can access the computers located throughout the labs.  Research results can be recorded on lab computers.  Someone wanting to access research results would first have to understand what the numbers meant.  Research results are also kept in a lab notebook that is kept in the lab or office.  This enables other students to repeat what was already done or to see results.”

        In April 2007, at a talk at Princeton University, Dr. Alibek noted that he felt that “[u]nfortunately, the likelihood is very high” of a follow-up to the anthrax mailings of 2001. “And the agent very likely is still anthrax.” “The biggest part of my life now is devoted to cancer and cardiovascular (research). If you work in the biodefense community, good luck to you. I hope you succeed.” Dr. Alibek explained that he had been scrutinized and consulted, and given a polygraph after the anthrax mailings. He said that anthrax likely would be the pathogen favored by terrorists because it is relatively easy to grow and transport. Dr. Alibek suspects it it was “a person who knew from some source how the U.S. manufactured anthrax years and years ago.” He said, “It’s not rocket science.”

Did Aafia Siddiqui know Ali Al-Timimi? If so, what has she told authorities?