Posted on 10/28/2001 6:48:24 AM PST by Croooow
Troubling Anthrax Additive Found; Atta Met Iraqi
By ABCNEWS.com
Despite a last-minute denial from the White House, sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons — Iraq.
ABCNEWS has been told by three well-placed and separate sources that initial tests on an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have detected a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet.
An urgent series of tests conducted on the letter at Ft. Detrick, Md., and elsewhere discovered the anthrax spores were treated with bentonite, a substance that keeps the tiny particles floating in the air by preventing them from sticking together. The easier the particles are to inhale, the more deadly they are.
As far as is known, only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.
Just minutes before ABCNEWS' World News Tonight aired this report, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) flatly denied bentonite was found on the letters. Moments later, another senior White House official backed off Fleischer's comments, saying it does not appear to be bentonite "at this point."
The official said the Ft. Detrick findings represented an "opinionated analysis," that three other labs are conducting tests, and that one of those labs had contradicted the bentonite finding. But, the official added, "tests continue."
Fleischer added today that no test or analysis has concluded that bentonite is present in the Daschle anthrax, and "no other finding contradicts or calls into question" that conclusion.
Reading from what he said was a sentence from the report prepared by scientists at Fort Detrick, he told ABCNEWS, "It is interesting to note there is no evidence of aluminum in the sample." Aluminum, Fleischer said, would also be present if bentonite was.
Trademark Additive
While it's possible countries other than Iraq may be using the additive, it is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.
"It means to me that Iraq becomes the prime suspect as the source of the anthrax used in these letters," former U.N. weapons inspector Timothy Trevan told ABCNEWS.
In the process of destroying much of Iraq's biological arsenal, U.N. teams first discovered Iraq was using bentonite, which is found in soil around the world, including the United States and Iraq.
"That discovery was proof positive of how they were using bentonite to make small particles," former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel told ABCNEWS.
But officials cautioned today that even if Iraq or renegade Iraqi scientists prove to be the source, it's a separate issue from who actually sent the anthrax through the mail.
"What you have to keep in mind is the difference between knowledge about what type of information you have to have to produce it, and who could have sent it," Fleischer said. "They are totally separate topics that could involve totally separate people. It could be the same person or people. It could be totally different people. The information does not apply to who sent it."
Experts say the bentonite discovery doesn't rule out a very well-equipped lab using the Iraqi technique. In fact, commercial spray dryers that Iraq used to produce its biological weapons were bought on the open market from the Danish subsidiary of a U.S. company for about $100,000 a piece.
Starting Thursday, FBI agents began asking company officials in Columbia, Md., if anyone suspicious in this country had recently acquired one of them. — Brian Ross, Christopher Isham, Chris Vlasto and Gary Matsumoto
Atta Met Iraqi Spy
Raising new questions about whether Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, officials in the Czech Republic now confirm for the first time that a key hijacker met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.
Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said Mohamed Atta, believed by U.S. investigators to be a ringleader of the hijackers, met an Iraqi diplomat shortly before the consul was expelled. Czech intelligence officials were troubled by Al-Ani's photographing of the Radio Free Europe building in the city.
"At this point we can confirm," Gross said, "Mohamed Atta made contact with Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, who was expelled from the Czech Republic for conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status on April 22, 2001."
"The details of this contact are under investigation," Gross said.
The meeting took place on Atta's second known visit to Prague. A year earlier, on June 2, 2000, he had came to Prague from Germany by bus in the morning hours. The next day, Gross said, Atta left for the United States.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had previously denied Al-Ani had any contact with Atta in Prague. In recent weeks, Minister Gross also had said there was no evidence to support Prague media reports citing Czech intelligence officials who said Atta had met Al-Ani.
The meeting, along with Iraq's stockpiles of biological weapons, have led some to question whether Atta — and Hussein — were not somehow behind the anthrax attacks in the United States.
"There are reports that one of the things that may have happened at that meeting was that [Atta] was given by the Iraqi some sample of anthrax," former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler told ABCNEWS. "We do not know if that is true. I believe it is something that should be investigated."
For his part, Gross would not give further details on the Atta meeting.
"At this point, neither I nor anyone else from the police or Czech intelligence services will provide any further information concerning this contact and [Atta's] stay and movement on the territory of the Czech Republic until the investigation is finished," he said. — Brian Hartman
FBI Under Fire
Critics of the FBI are saying agents may have missed some early clues that could have helped prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
Weeks before the hijackings, the FBI received a CIA warning that two suspected terrorists had slipped into the United States. The FBI was unable to locate the two men, who ended up among the 19 hijackers.
They did, in August, arrest Zacarias Moussaoui, an Algerian man who aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. But FBI headquarters denied the agents' request to obtain a warrant to search through the suspect's computer because before Sept. 11 the agents didn't have enough evidence he was part of a terrorist plan.
"If going into that computer would have helped to determine or detect what was about to happen, then it's absolutely essential that that goes forward, even if you end up forgoing a prosecution," former FBI Assistant Director Buck Revell said.
And what about sharing information? After the Sept. 11 attacks, police chiefs complained that they were given the FBI's terrorist watch list, but little more. The FBI was also criticized for what many viewed taking too long to conduct tests and interview witnesses in the first Anthrax cases in Florida and New York.
FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledges, "There were some missteps early on."
Mueller, a career prosecutor who is the FBI's new director, comes from outside the bureau to lead it in the most challenging time in the agency's history.
Sen. Charles Grassly, a longtime FBI critic, says the director faces a tough task.
"Director Mueller has two wars to win, one on the outside against the terrorists, the other is with his own bureacracy," Grassley said. — John Miller
Italian Police Probe Man Found in Box
An extraordinary stowaway is under investigation in Italy.
Italian police are trying to learn why Rizk Amid Farid, a 43-year-old Egyptian arrested near Rome, would have been shipping himself across the Atlantic Ocean in a furnished box complete with a bed and toilet. Farid was discovered late last week in a shipyard in the southern port of Gioia Tauro, where his Canada-bound ship was docked for five days. Authorities on the ground say port authority personnel discovered Farid after hearing strange noises coming from his container. Crammed into the suspicious stowaway's box with him were two cellular phones, a satellite phone, a computer, cameras, many documents, and even a drill for making airholes.
Police believe he boarded the ship in Egypt and planned to travel all the way to Canada. But Farid, who was holding a Canadian passport, also had a plane ticket to fly from Rome to Toronto to Montreal. His seat on the flight, scheduled to leave last Friday, was confirmed.
Italian investigators say everything about Farid — his documents and claims about himself — appear to be either false or obscured. They have checked his stories with police in other countries — including Egypt, Canada and the United States — and believe none has panned out. Canadian investigators are further investigating the suspect's background.
Though police have not said they have any direct evidence tying Farid to terrorism, he is the first person to be arrested in Italy on the basis of a new counterterrorism law passed last week in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Under the new law, he can be held for at least six months as investigators try to determine whether he is a terrorist.
A prosecutor said the stowaway had studied in Egypt and in North America to qualify as a commercial jet engine mechanic. Before leaving Egypt, however, he was believed to be working at a magazine distribution company. Investigators say he claimed to be "running away" from a powerful brother-in-law in Egypt and had traveled in the container for five days.
— Ann Wise in Rome, Yael Lavie in London and Brian Hartman in Washington
Neo-Nazi and other extreme Right Wing groups are known to be very happy about the attacks on the WTC. They are also very gleeful about the negative and parnoid effects those attacks have had on the feeble minded members of society.
Adding a little anthrax to the mix, and knowing that much of the American press corp fits into that feeble minded category. Makes them the number one suspects in these, for the most part, harmless anthrax attacks.
Bin Laden and Sadam are into mass destruction, rather than mass confusion.
Please let's trust President Bush on this one. The American public does not need to know everything right now.
We all know that we will attack Iraq soon enough, why tip them off as to when, or how soon.
As soon as they point the finger at Iraq, Saddam will go underground again (remember the Gulf War). Why not point the finger at a "domestic terrorist" for right now, and give Saddam some sort of sense of calm.
Remember we are at War and we don't have the right to know everything our adminstration is doing. They are doing a great job right now, let them lead the war, not the nosy American public's "right to know".
Don't you know there are some disappointed lefties in the media and government now?!! They just knew they had their chance to blame the VRWC and the pro-lifers! I'm just glad we didn't have Attorney General Sasquatch in there or we would be seeing the ATF burning down houses based on the opinion on some Clinton hack.
Don't you know there are some disappointed lefties in the media and government now?!! They just knew they had their chance to blame the VRWC and the pro-lifers! I'm just glad we didn't have Attorney General Sasquatch in there or we would be seeing the ATF burning down houses based on the opinion on some Clinton hack.
Hey! She may soon be "Governer Sasquatch" in my state...(yeah, right).....NEVER.
I think Left-Wing Communist groups would be more likely to send physical poison thru the mail since they have been sending psychological poison thru the mail, over the airways and in the public schools for a 100 years.
1) Atta was passed weapons grade anthrax from Iraq during his one-day meeting in Prague.
2) Atta and his team were also given instruction as to how to create a primitive home laboratory so they could use the weapons-grade batch to grow additional batches. I would like any Freepers with biomedical background to confirm/deny whether this is possible and if so, how difficult this might be.
3) This would explain
a) the mysterious one-day meeting,
(b) Atta's subsequent visits to pharmacists for treatmenty of a rash on his hands (caused by caustic agents used in the home lab?) and his associate's visit to a doctor for treatment of persistant bad cold symptoms
4) This would explain the presence of 2 grades of anthrax seen in the aftermath:
(a) a primitve, non-centrifuged grade (The American Media anthrax and other instances) and
(b)one instance of the pure grade (Daschle's office and perhaps others).
5) Atta, once committed to his suicide flight, had no need to save the pure batch -- or else they saved the pure batch for the Senate and perhaps the White House.
6) Atta could have directed associates, still at large, to mail the anthrax one week after the Twin Towers crash.
7) The American Media batch may have been sent before the crash, as a test run. Since Atta lived nearby, perhaps he was observing (perhaps through an associate) to see whether any employees reported sick -- thereby confirming that the strategy would work. This would explain the choice of a near-by target for the trial run.
8) The crop-duster episodes, and Atta's interest in them, was perhaps an alternative strategy if the mail-strategy was a bust.
I suspect others have drawn similar conclusions -- please share.
Says who? How do you know so much about them? I haven't heard a thing coming from those groups. What source do you have that the rest of us don't?
That’s a good point. Bush said this war would be slow, long, and drawn out. First off, he’s got to appease a lot of Arabs who claim to be “non violent”. Then he’s got to take care of Afghanistan first, since it contains the most obvious and vocal number of terrorists. In the meantime, the CIA is trying to figure a way to get people into Iraq and take care of that situation without a war, if possible. This is all going to be a little complicated, but carried out with the least danger to the US, and the most effect.
Oh, baloney. Neo-Nazis generally don’t like A-rabs. Stop posting propaganda.
I work in a federal bldng. above federal triangle metro. I was dis-heartened to hear Sen. Kerry to say that he "did not" support a "second front" and used the word "management" to describe that position.
What I see is a loss of freedoms in the anti-terrorist legislation, insurance actuaries using spread sheets for decision making, and the mistaken belief that the same rules of media manipulation will work abroad as they do here at home.
It suddenly struck me as a programmer the difference between myself and these "managers." I start every project tabula rossa and then have to imagine it and create it into being. The managers are business majors and have been trained to read a spreadsheet. HEY FOLKS WE DEPARTED THE BUSINESS LEDGER ON SEPTEMBER 11th!
Sadly I have the capacity to imagine the consequences of these imbeciles whom lack the ability to see what logically will come next.
THIS IS A VERY SAD DAY IN AMERICA.
I have a horrible feeling that the insurance actuaries; (people whom figure out the number of deaths and then afix a price to them); and the "business as usual crowd" have made a decision to establish an acceptable 'burn-rate' of losses here at home as they seek a path of appeasement with radicals whom would poison us in mass.
Ignoring the truth does not change it.
The worst part about this mail terror, is that they will never catch the culprits. They only caught the Una-Bomber because he screwed up and published that wacky manifesto. My guess is, we'll never know who's sending this stuff.
There was a similar thread last night, reporters wanting more info. Tough. Leaks. The thread was about WH leaks. I'm hoping that some of the leaks are deliberate and bogus, so as to catch the offending parties.
This makes no sense. Extreme right-wing groups detest government intervention into people's lives and what this attack has resulted in is broader wire-tapping and surveillance procedures than we've ever had before and more rigorous checks at transportation sites and public buildings than we've ever had before.
If right-wingers wanted to get the government off our backs, then why would they choose methods that would result in the direct opposite of what they want?
I have a "need to know" criterion based on my proximity to this material and I resent not being fully informed as these spin-doctors beg us back into the malls so there top corporate donors are appeased.
IF THE GOVERMENT IS SUPPOSE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE then disclose ASAP.
Don't ask me to have faith in a government that would not do less then provide full disclosure. Find another programmer.
Maybe I missunderstood your post (I hate spreadsheets), but I am by no means saying to "ignore the truth".
My point was simply that at this time in the war, the American People, don't need the whole truth.
The truth will come out eventually. When President Bush thinks its an oppertune time.
My feeling is that maybe, the "investigative reporting", on sources of anthrax and other things, is putting our country in deep danger.
If the administration knows that Iraq is behind these attacks, maybe they are putting our forces in action as we speak. If it is reported in the media "SADDAM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ANTHRAX ATTACKS" before we are ready to attack, Saddam will run and hide.
All I am saying is that at this point and time, I trust President Bush to run this war.
Pretty tough without a PhD level lab and some unsuspecting or fanatical biology folk to process this stuff; it's much easier to get the spores from producers abroad in the bulk amounts needed, possibly of varying quality. I like the rest of your theory though.
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