So what were the 4 labs (or whatever) that had the 8 known samples of Ames that were an identical match?
Did the PhD neurologist Aafia Siddiqui have potential access to the exact matching virulent Ames strain at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston? Veterinarian and anthrax expert Martin Hugh-Jones, a professor at Louisiana State University, has said: “It was like trading baseball cards.” Hugh-Jones reports he got most of his anthrax from Peter Turnbull at the Porton Down lab in Great Britain, one of those that had received the Ames strain directly from Ft. Detrick.
Aafia studied for a time in Houston for a year after moving to Houston in 1990. (Her brother lived and worked in the Houston area beginning in 2001). Did Aafia ever have contact with the Program in Neuroscience at the University of Texas Health Science Center? The program is at the Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences where anthrax scientist Dr. Koehler is on the faculty. (Aafia was in the Brandeis Program in Neuroscience and her doctorate was in the neurological sciences.) The Program in Neuroscience is in Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy at 6431 Fannin Street.
Dr. Theresa M Koehler held a faculty appointment at the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She was Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. She has had grants from the CIA, the National Institutes of Health, and others for her work on virulence. Dr. Koehler’s address is 6431 Fannin, Houston — the same as the Program in Neuroscience. Her office was in the same complex, in the connected John Freeman Building. In Fall 2001, Dr. Koehler said she had taken the anthrax vaccine and that she got anthrax strains from Porton Down. In the Spring of 2003, Dr. Koehler explained that “It’s critical to use a genetically complete strain of the [anthrax] bacterium in experiments involving virulence.” A government study reported in April 2003 found that all of the labs that had received grants from the National Institutes of Health had unobstructed access to the floors with critical labs.
Ten million gallons of water were unleashed on the UT Medical School at Houston June 9, 2001 by Tropical Storm Allison. The basement, where the anthrax lab was located, was the hardest hit. More than 400 emergency personnel (internal and contracted) attempted to address the devastation. Throughout June, no equipment could be removed or powered up. Stairwell doors needed to be kept closed. By the first week of July 2001, the basement and ground floor was still off limits, and only one entrance was available. Ground floor occupants needed to continue to work at their temporary sites. Gross mold spore counts continued to be beyond acceptable limits in the basement, which was ventilated separately from the rest of the building.
The building was opened for business on July 11, 2001 but the ground floor and basement were construction remediation sites and off-limits except to access elevators to upper levels. Two entrances to the building were available: on the Webber Plaza side of the building near the circle drive and at the breezeway near the guard’s desk. Occupants were reminded in an employee newsletter not to block open stair well doors on any floor.
Did the anthrax lab in the basement have virulent Ames anthrax strain, to include Ames? (I don’t know of any indication and have no confirmation that they did). But if they did, what was done with the isolates during the devastation caused in the basement by the flood? At the time it was lawful to have virulent anthrax in its liquid form in a BL-2 facility, contrary to the occasional misperception; a hood is used in handling such isolates. A University President explained as much in a letter in connection with the incident when some live Ames spores were sent by Northern Arizona to Los Alamos in Fall 2001.
Members of the lab brought out the champagne at the lab in late 2001 when a special visa was granted to a research team member, who without it would have had to return to China. “We knew it was going to be risky,” said Dr. Koehler, a microbiologist at the school who for the past 20 years has studied the anthrax bacterium now being used as a terrorist weapon. “The question was whether current events would convince federal officials that [the researcher’s] skills are in the national interest or make them restrict workers from certain countries.”
“It is a horrible feeling to think that it could be someone I know, that the perpetrator is a microbiologist among us,” said Dr. Koehler. In September 2001, Dr. Koehler explained her anthrax research, how terrorists might deploy anthrax as a biological weapon and how physicians would treat it.
Aafia’s brother in 2001 was associated with addresses in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Canton, Michigan — and even Harrison, NJ — in 2001, but there is no indication that Aafia visited him at those locations. Nor is there any indication she visited him in Houston when he and his family moved there in 2001. The ACLU attorney representing Aafia’s family advised me that it had been years since she was Houston — certainly before 2001 and maybe not since she was married. She added that if Aafia was there, it was to visit her brother, who has nothing to do with the med center.” The attorney reports: “there is no way they could have helped her get access to the necessary labs at the med center.” The attorney had no reason to know that among other things, that not only were the doors at Aafia’s old university building not locked, upon the massive flooding, they were propped open.
On Research Day in 2003, the award winners for Biomedical Excellence included a graduate student working in Dr. Koehler’s lab, Melissa Drysdale, who worked on gene regulation in a virulent strain of bacillus anthracis.
Dr. Koehler received, for example, the Weybridge strain from Porton Down prior to the Fall of 2001. Did Dr. Koehler have virulent Ames from either Porton Down or somewhere else? (Her mentor was the eminent vaccine researcher Dr. Curtis Thorne who got samples directly from Ft. Detrick).
Remember: Khalid Mohammed, who told authorities about Aafia, had anthrax production documents on his assistant’s laptop (the guy working with Aafia’s future husband in UAE in the summer of 2001). She allegedly was associated with both KSM and “Jafar the Pilot” who is at large. She later married an Al Qaeda operative al-Baluchi who, like al-Hawsawi, had been listed as a contact for the hijackers and took over plots upon the arrest of KSM. Authorities have said that a Pakistani scientist , who they refused to name was helping Al Qaeda with its anthrax production program. Were they referring to bacteriologist Abdul Qudus Khan in whose home the Pakistan authorities claim KSM was captured? Was it Rauf Ahmad who Zawahiri sent to infiltrate UK biodefense? Was it the chemistry professor who met with Uzair Paracha in February 2003? Or was it Aafia who was alleged to be a “facilitator” who handled logistics. “Logistics” is handling an operation that involves providing labor and materials as needed. According to a UN dossier reviewed by a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, in June 2001 she allegedly traveled to Liberia (I’m very skeptical) to meet Al Qaeda’s military commander, Atef, who had been head of the anthrax planning. A key to analysis is to determine whether the chauffeur who claims the lady was Aafia is lying or mistaken. A FBI memo from 2003 titled “Allegations Relating to al Qaeda’s Trafficking in Conflict Diamonds,” and a related 2004 presentation to the intelligence community, debunking the allegations relating to trafficking in conflict diamonds. The memo was declassified in 2006 and provided under FOIA in February 2008 to intelwire.com. If those documents represent the FBI’s current thinking, there is good reason to think Aafia never went to Liberia in June 2001.
The ACLU in a February 2004 publication called “Sanctioned Bias: Racial Profiling Since 9/11” described Aafia’s brother first encounter with the FBI. Muhammad A. Siddiqui is an architect in Houston and father of two young children. When his mom and sister called him to say the FBI had questioned him, he called ACLU attorney Annette Lamoreaux. It was a Monday evening when two FBI agents came to visit. “I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’d like to have my attorney present.” Borrowing a page from your favorite television show, one of the FBI agents suggested he didn’t need an attorney. He said that asking for an attorney only made him look guilty. The FBI agent again said that he wanted to speak to him now, greatly emphasizing the word “now.”
Following the advice of his civil rights attorney, he repeated: “I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’d like to have my attorney present.” In response to the FBI’s continuing pressure, he called Attorney Lamoreaux on his cell phone. She told the FBI agent that the agent could call her office during the day and set up an appointment. He screamed at Lamoreaux that Siddiqui did not have a right to counsel (as he was not in custody). Repeating her earlier suggestion that the agent call her on Monday, she told the agent “and you are to leave the house immediately.” The FBI agent handed the cell phone back to Siddiqui. Muhammad did not feel comfortable telling the agents to leave and so he kept politely repeating his attorney’s advice. “Turn off that cell phone!” the agent demanded.
Siddiqui reasonably refused, at least wanting to permit his attorney to serve as a witness to the questioning. From Siddiqui’s point of view, at least, the FBI agent pulled back his coat to reveal a gun. Siddiqui repeats that he was afraid — his children were inside and his wife, a busy doctor who worked at the local medical center, was not at home.
“I do this all the time. As soon as there is a lawyer in the picture, they have to play by the rules,” Lamoreaux explains.
The agents — thwarted — turned away. One of them said upon leaving: “We will talk to you. We are watching you. Don’t leave town.”
When the agent called on Monday, Attorney Lamoreaux suggested that they meet on Thursday when Siddiqui was free from work and child care responsibilities. The agent insisted on meeting that day and said he would stand outside of Siddiqui’s home until he came out and spoke to them. At the 15 minute meeting held that day at Lamoreaux’s office, the agent confirmed he had never been a criminal target. Mr. Siddiqui says, “Once there was counsel involved, attitudes changed dramatically. Laws started to mean something.”
Someone with the same common name, as mentioned in the court record relating to Project Bojinka. United States of America v. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef et al, (August 26, 1996), page 5118. A letter was read into the record
“To: Brother Mohammad Alsiddiqi. We are facing a lot of problems because of you. Fear Allah. Mr. Siddiqi, there is a day of judgment. You will be asked, if you are very busy with something more important, don’t give promises to other people. See you in the day of judgment. Still waiting, Khalid Shaikh, and Bojinka.”
In addition to many people having this very common name, people often used aliases. The attorney, Dietrich Snell, at the time was under the impression it related to a solicitation for money. Attorney Snell was from the US Attorney’s Office. More recently, Snell acted as counsel for the 9/11 Commission. He served as Deputy Attorney General for Public Advocacy under Eliot Spitzer. What was the address of the recipient? Who was Muhammad Siddiqui with whom KSM corresponded?
Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Mueller made an on-the-record renewed push to find Aafia Siddiqui in a press conference on May 26, 2004 shortly after ACLU Attorney Annette Lamoreaux responded to my emailed inquiries about Aafia. Three days after the Pakistan Ministry of Interior claimed she had been handed over to US authorities in late March 2003.
There are the many questions surrounding the mystery of the disappearance of the lovely, intelligent and pious Aafia Siddiqui. Aafia once had an MIT alumni email account forwarded to umaisha@yahoo.com — which under one translation means lively mom. Aisha was the Prophet’s favorite wife. Maybe correspondence in that email account held the answers.
In a Pakistan news account, Attorney Whitfield Sharp says she doesn’t know of any police report filed by the mom. In the same account, she reports that Aafia received job offer at both John Hopkins and the State University of New York (SUNY). It likely was SUNY downstate in Brooklyn where her sister had gone to school and lived. (Her mother Ismat is associated with addresses in Brooklyn, as well as Massachusetts, in Houston, and in Ann Arbor where Mohammad’s wife had a medical practice. Mohammad is associated with some Ann Arbor and Detroit-area addresses. Ann Arbor, coincidentally, was where IANA was located, as well as the President of Global Relief.
When he was captured, Al-Baluchi, Khalid Mohammed’s nephew and Aafia Siddiqui’s husband, “was in possession of a perfume spray bottle which contained a low concentration of cyanide when he was arrested.” He was the fellow who met with Majid Khan about using a textiles shipping container to smuggle an unidentified chemical into the country. Cyanide in perfume bottles had been suggested for use in nightclubs in Indonesia but Bin Laden reportedly nixed the plan as ineffectual.
The transcript from the Combatant Status Review Tribunal explains:
MEMBER [AL-BALUCHI]: While you were in Pakistan you describe the cyanide…
DETAINEE: [Interrupting the Member]
MEMBER: … you had in your possession, a small amount, as being textile, chemical-oriented.
DETAINEE: Yes.
MEMBER: Why would you have that on your person?
DETAINEE: Just I have. Wasn’t for specific purpose but I have. It’s ah…
MEMBER: Did you have an intent to use it once you got there? What were you going to do with it?
DETAINEE: No, no. Just ah, it’s use for clothing to remove the color. And something in Pakistan it’s something that they do. It’s bleach like kinda bleach but industrial bleach so.”
Now we are told that Aafia Siddiqui had a liquid poison on her. Well... maybe Attorney Sharp will explain that Aafia just did Al-Balucchi’s laundry.
According to the DOD formal charges issued in February 2008, KSM would give the hijackers a chemical in an eye dropper to remove Pakistan visas from their passport. Perhaps the low concentration of cyanide in the perfume bottle used to remove stains just related to that — rather than consideration of a plot to spray cyanide in a nightclub that had been vetoed by Bin Laden.
But here’s a Helpful Heloise Tip. Before attempting to get that damn spot out, first get rid of that incriminating pocket litter. The transcript from the hearing on al-Baluchi’s status as an “unlawful combatant” continues: “The Detainee’s pocket litter included a letter from unidentified Saudi Arabian scholars to Usama bin Laden. The letter discussed al Qaida’s strategy in the War on Terror.”
Aafia had info on bio, chem and radiological military assets, the usual (now cliched info on NYC landmarks, etc. These Al Qaeda operatives obviously have not taken to heart Ayman’s online book (in Arabic) on COVERT OPERATIONS.
Using the YouTube screen name BruceIvi, which he signed up for, as I recall, in February of this year, Dr. Ivins wrote a message about the TV show “Mole” (I’m not familiar with it) and an episode where he was commenting about gouging the eyes out of the mole. His other YouTube post, as I recall it, related to overcoming stress by juggling.
This issue of moles was well-illustrated perhaps by the recent Mata Hari Aafia who now faces an amended indictment in New York.
Raymond Zilinskas, who was researching a history of the Soviet bioweapons program, told The Baltimore Sun a couple years ago that “his sources now say that Soviet intelligence routinely obtained details of work at USAMRIID that went beyond the descriptions in scientific journals.” The Sun quoted him saying: “It was clear there was somebody at Fort Detrick” who worked for Soviet intelligence. Alexander Y. Kouzminov, a biophysicist who says he once worked for the KGB, had first made the claim in a book, Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West. Initially, Dr. Zilinskas had dismissed the memoir because the Russian had made separate fanciful inferences about the US program being offensive and some bizarre specific claims unrelated to infiltration of the US program.
The Sun article explained that then “another former Soviet scientist told The Sun that his lab routinely received dangerous pathogens and other materials from Western labs through a clandestine channel like the one Kouzminov described.” A second unnamed “U.S. arms control specialist” told the Sun he had independent evidence of a Soviet spy at Fort Detrick.”
The Baltimore Sun, in the 2006 article, also relied on GMU scientist Serguei Popov, who was “a scientist once based in a Soviet bioweapons lab in Obolensk, south of Moscow.” Dr. Popov “said that by the early 1980s his colleagues had obtained at least two strains of anthrax commonly studied in Detrick and affiliated labs. They included the Ames strain, first identified at Detrick in the early 1980s.” Ames was used for testing U.S. military vaccines and was the strain used in the 2001 anthrax letters that killed five people and infected 23 in the U.S. Dr. Popov is now at George Mason University’s National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Disease at in Fairfax, Va. (Disclaimer: I know and like Serge). “If you wanted ’special materials,’ you had to fill out a request,” he said. “And, essentially, those materials were provided. How and by whom, I can’t say.” One colleague, Popov told the Sun, used this “special materials” program to obtain a strain of Yersinia pestis, a plague bacterium being studied in a Western lab. But he didn’t know whether that particular germ came from Ft. Detrick. Former KGB operative and author Kouzminov says the KGB wanted specific items from Western labs — including Detrick — that were closely held and were willing to pay for the privilege. The Soviets also wanted the aerosol powders U.S. scientists developed for testing during vaccine tests.
Raymond Zilinskas, the bioweapons expert with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and two colleagues wrote a scathing review of Biological Espionage in Nature, a British scientific journal. But Zilinskas later told The Sun “that his sources now say that Soviet intelligence routinely obtained details of work at USAMRIID that went beyond the descriptions in scientific journals.”
Expert William C. Patrick III, a retired Ft Detrick bioweapons expert, and famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek agree. Patrick’s suspicions arose when he debriefed defector Alibek in the early 1990s. Alibek emigrated to the U.S. upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Patrick and Alibek both recognized that the Soviet and American programs had moved in a curious lock step during the 1950s and ’60s. “Anything we discovered of any import, they would have discovered and would have in their program in six months,” Patrick told the Sun. After his talks with Alibek ended, he told the Sun: “For the next two weeks I tried to think, ‘Who the hell are the spies at Detrick?’”
Both former Russian bioweaponeers Ken Alibek and Serge Popov worked with Ali Al-Timimi at George Mason University. Dr. Al-Timimi has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years. Popov and Alibek worked at the Center for Biodefense funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). At one point, Al-Timimi worked not much more than 15 feet from both Dr. Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, who has been a prolific author and listed on a number of publications involving the virulent Ames strain. Neither Dr. Alibek nor Dr. Popov knew Ali to ever have worked on a biodefense project. He had a high security clearance for some work for the government, involving mathematical support work for the Navy, but no one seems to be able or willing to say what it involved. In the Fall of 2006, the Washington Post reported that when they raided his townhouse in late February 2003, two weeks after the capture of the son of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman, they suspected Al-Timimi of being somehow involved in the anthrax mailings. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was on Al Qaeda’s 3-man WMD committee and had spoken alongside Ali Al-Timimi at conferences of the Islamic Assembly of North America in 1993 and 1996.
But never mind. The documentary evidence establishes that a couple years ago, Dr. Bruce Ivins was editing a Wikipedia entry and debating whether it was correct to list members who had left the sorority.