Freeper Research on the Anthrax Perp

Various FR Posters | 11/15/01 | Various FR Posters

[Alamo-Girl]

The perp is here on a student VISA. He is Islamic and Middle Eastern. He may be a member of Al Queda. English is not his primary language, he may be a proficient computer user or coder especially if Al Queda.

He was given anthrax and perhaps more biochems – of various grades. They may have been made in Iraq – they may have been made here. He did not develop them himself. He knows lab procedures.

He is fairly diligent in handling the anthrax, but he is not perfect. He knows Dr. Malik, chairman of the Islamic Society of NJ. He may work with him. He’s been to the doctor’s office at 1542 Kuser Road in Trenton NJ. While there he accidentally infected the accountant next door at Civale Silvestri & Alfieri CPA, 1540 Kuser Road.

The perp may be from Pakistan and may have sought out Dr. Malik’s help (because he is also from Pakistan) to get employment/access to a nearby university hospital, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton. Dr Malik is on the staff there. The perp may have used lab facilities in the hospital (either at Hamilton or the main campus or one of its affiliates) to safely handle or prep the different batches of anthrax.

There probably are other people in his cell who may already be in custody - one with Florida license plates and others from Canada.

Several arrests of Pakistani nationals were made in Trenton/Hamilton two weeks ago --some in the Greenwood Village apartments, and some at 1001 N. Olden Street. The N. Olden Street arrests took place after a witness observed a man gingerly placing letters enclosed in a ziploc bag into his car. The car had Florida license plates.

Just after the events of September 11, the FBI arrested Mohammed Pervez, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent. Pervez was a Jersey City roommate of Ali Ayub Kahn and Mohammed Jazweeth Azmath, suspected of being hijackers whose plans were thwarted when their plane was grounded in St. Louis. Pervez, who worked in both Trenton and Newark train stations, was also a roommate of the potential anthrax suspects detained from the Greenwood village apartments in Hamilton.

There may be a chain of infection following the medical route – like there is following the mail route.

In DelRay Beach, Florida – a pharmacist (Gregg Chatterton at Huber Healthmart Drugs) claimed to have talked to Atta and another hijacker when they came into his pharmacy with ailments last August. Mostly, we heard about Atta, who had red hands. But the other hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi, had symptoms of inhalation anthrax (cough) that would have required him to visit a doctor in his area. The pharmacist said that a man resembling Al-Shehhi had returned to have a prescription filled, but his name was not found in their records – leading the investigators to think he had used an alias. The pharmacist said the red hands looked like a result from washing with bleach – that it did not look like cutaneous anthrax.

In Chester PA on 11/14/01 - teams of FBI agents complete with hazmat gear and tents, broke down door(s), swabbed and seized evidence at two homes and the city hall. One house was shared by City Health Commissioner Irshad Shaikh and his brother Masood. The other was the home of city accountant Asif Kazi. They are all from Pakistan. Kazi’s wife had a prescription for Cipro. Kazi had been seen dumping a cloudy liquid and handing a silver canister to someone.

Dr. Shaikh PhD. has been the Commissioner of Health since 1994. He received his undergrad and postgraduate diplomas in Community Medicine in Pakistan. He received his Masters and PhD in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is fellow of the Public Health Leadership Institute (PHLI). PHLI is an executive leadership program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Shaikh also holds a faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Welcome to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies"...Sponsored by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation & The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation..."

Freepers wonder if this Could he be THE Asif Kazi, or is it a very common Pakistani name?

Tests are now being performed for Dr. Gerald Weisfogel who believes he may have had skin anthrax earlier than the mailings. There are three Gerald M. Weisfogel's listed in NJ - Franklin Park, Kendall Park and Metuchen. Dr. Gerald Weisfogel is chief of cardiology at the JFK Medical Center in New Jersey, which is in Edison, New Jersey. Edison is just across the river from New Brunswick. He indicated on GMA that he had Middle Eastern patients.

Kendall Park, Franklin Park, Edison, and Metuchen are all close to each other, going north on Rte. 1. So all the addresses are probably for the same guy: hospital in Edison, offices in Metuchen and either or Franklin Park or Kendall Park, and home in the fourth place

There are significant labs in Piscataway, across the river from New Brunswick, the main campus of RWJ. Robert Wood Johnson has two high-profile microbiology labs in Piscataway -- the CABM(Center forAdvanced Biotechnology and Medicine) and the Waksman Institute. The Waksman Institute is a "microbe farm," producing germ "products" for industry and research.

Metuchen is right up the road to the northeast. (And down the road about 12 miles along Route 1 is the Islamic Society and Franklin Park.)

The perp accidentally infected the lady in New York. He did not go there by subway – he drove in. He may have gone to New York to pick up or deliver the anthrax. The car he used is most likely still contaminated. He may have rolled down a window or opened a door at just the wrong time for Kathy. The perp, may be working for RWJ University Hospital and had a business contact with Kathy’s hospital.

He is a member or attendee of The Islamic Society of Central Jersey. He has written many letters to them; he knows the zip code by heart. Although he gave a different town name on the return address (Franklin Park) – he automatically used the zip code he knew for that area. But the zip code does not go with Franklin Park.

There are probably canceled checks or correspondence at the Islamic Society of NJ that can be matched to his handwriting.

He is a member of Islamic student associations. He may have attended or be in association with a student at ETSU which is near an elementary school named "Greendale" in Abingdon, VA (a tri-state area.) He didn’t grab that name out of the air – neither brook nor dale would be common words to him.

In the alternative, he might have intentionally changed the name of a nearby school "Greenbrook" to "Greendale." The Greenbrook school only goes to the 4^th grade.

Another possibility: Greendale and Franklin, WI are right next to each other. The NJ school is Greenbrook School, not Greendale. Could it be some Freudian slip? There are 15,000 Muslims in the area.

The block lettering may indicate that he is a tutor for elementary level students or has (or is undertaking) an engineering or architecture education.

The emphasis on the letters might have been intentional – pointing to ATTA.

If he is Al Queda, he may present himself secular – going to bars, joining clubs, protesting the terrorists, etc.

He may be dead or missing.

Medical anthrax trail - there should also be a star for New Brunswick!

US

[Alamo-Girl]

HAHAHAHAHA! That's precious! Thank you so much!

[kristinn]

I'm just grateful to see some honest-to-God FReeper-style posting on Free Republic again.

[Alamo-Girl]

Research is right up there with activism in Free Republic specialties! I know of no other forum like this one! Hugs!!!

[AuntB]

Bumping for a read tomorrow. Good night! And thanks for all your work on this!

[Alamo-Girl]

You are quite welcome! Thanks for bumping by!!!

[Free Vulcan]

bttt

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for bumping by!

[Free Vulcan]

unless he's left handed. that would account for a slant like that. That's how my letters look when I write them.

[Free Vulcan]

Sorry bud, you're off the mark. Here is info about the anthax strain kept in Ames, Iowa. It is called 'Ames' though that is not exactly correct. It is a strain of the Ames group, 1 of 7 groups that exist for type A anthrax. Another group used by countries for weapons production is Vollum. See post #11 in that thread. Ames originates in the Middle East primarily. All type A anthrax eventually originates in Africa. The Ames substrain was found in Iowa 50 years ago and widely disseminated to many researchers. It is in fact the standard for vaccine testing worldwide.

[Balding_Eagle]

I had Tylenol case wixed up with the Excedrin case. Tylenol happened near Chicago in 1982, 7 died. It's never been solved.

This is one I was thinking of:

Thirteen years ago, in Washington state, Stella Nickell was convicted of killing her husband Bruce, and Sue Snow, a bank manager, by putting cyanide in Excedrin capsules. The crime was chillingly similar to the Chicago Tylenol murders four years earlier. Seven people died in that case, which was never solved.

That case moved Congress to enact tough tampering laws. Nickell was the first to be convicted. Now, 13 years later, private detective Al Farr and his partner Paul Ciolino are on a mission to prove what they both firmly believe: Nickell is innocent. Farr says that there is no credible evidence against her.

[SurferDoc]

Actually I read that they knew who did it but never had enough evidence. BTW great job AlamoGirl! Fred, are you sitting on a corncob, or what?

[Mitchell]

North Korean is my bet.

If you want to consider non-Middle-Eastern possibilities, think about China.

English is not his primary language and neither is Arabic. Note the dates on the xeroxed letters in the *anthrax letterbomb*

I don't know Arabic. Why do the dates indicate that the writer is not Arabic?

I agree that the sender does not appear to be an American. The date is written 09-11-01. All the Americans I know would have written 9/11/01, without the leading 0, and with slashes instead of dashes.

Much has been made of the fact that the date is written in the American order of month-day-year, but most foreigners would be aware of that and, in fact, would have become accustomed to that order after a few years here -- they'd be repeatedly told by Americans that they were writing dates incorrectly if they used the day-month-year order. But nobody misunderstands a date written with dashes instead of slashes; nobody even comments on such a thing, so a foreigner could easily not realize that it looks foreign.

See also *this article*

Thanks for the link on the Zimbabwe anthrax outbreak; I had never heard of it.

[Don Joe]

"Freepers wonder if this Could he be THE Asif Kazi, or is it a very common Pakistani name?"

Something very remarkable about that message. It has a single entry under "replies". If you click it, you see a reply consisting of the original message quoted with carets, and no new text.

I kept this up for a dozen or so replies -- each a different poster, with "mustafa's" original message quoted, but no new content.

I then found one that had the same message "mustafa" entered, but this time not quoted (no carets, it appeared to be original content), and signed by "Bharathi Kumar". (BTW almost all the names seemed to be middle-eastern types.)

The next message -- a reply to "Bharathi Kumar" -- (this one by a poster named "bluess") quoted the original message, again attributing it to "mustafa".

The next message after that one again had the text in quoted format, but attributed it to ">ASHISH BHARDWAJ" -- which happens to be the same name shown as the author of the post, although the Author: field showed it in lowercase.

The reply to that message had "mustafa's" message, but this time once again formatted as caretless original text, and, missing the linebreaks that the previous messages had. It was signed by "Venkat", and the Author: field showed VENKAT in uppercase.

Each of the author names that I checked (they are underlined hotlinks) had a mailto: with what look like valid email addresses.

I stopped clicking at that point, something like 15 or so plies into the thread. I have no idea how much longer it goes, but I'm flabbergasted. I've never seen anything like it.

Conjecture, anyone?

I'll toss in the first possible scenario or two to get the ball rolling. :)

1. It could be a series of coded messages, with the "message" part being the email address, or the author name, or perhaps there's some subtle changes in the body of the text (an extra space here or there, etc.)

2. It could be a "recruiting station", with volunteers directed to post a followup message to that thread, so that they could be contacted via email. Why do something like that? So that the "recruiter" could see who "applies" without disclosing his own identity. I've heard that "no footprint" communications like that happen on Usenet; in fact I think there's a newsgroup dedicated to such comms. There is no way for an observer to know who the recipient is, because the message is readable to the entire world, even though only the intended recipient will know how to decipher it.

FWIW, the forum software logs the posters' IP address, and appears to do reverse DNS when possible. Here are a few examples I grabbed at random from that thread:

Author Host/IP: bay-67.pppmad.vsnl.net.in / 203.197.133.162
Author Host/IP: NoHost / 61.11.238.229
Author Host/IP: proxy.sjc.netsetter.com / 216.34.56.12
Author Host/IP: cf1-adapter1.isu.net.sa / 212.26.19.155

I did not do any analysis of the addresses, but it did seem like some of the same B blocks kept showing up.

All in all, it's strange, very strange.

[BushWonGore'sDone]

WOW! AG and Mitchell are terrific! I'm amazed at the information that comes out of Free Republic. Thankyou

[Don Joe]

"In addition, Malik is a 'public figure' which pretty much makes him fair game for this sort of stuff, anyhow. But it's not necessary to get into the analysis of what that means because there's no defamation which must be proven first."

Must be proven first? Define "first". It certainly needn't be proven to file the suit. I'm living proof of that.

"BTW, when is truth NOT a defense to a charge of libel?"

When you can't afford a lawyer, and can't interest a public interest outfit to represent you because they already have enough "Does" on the case, and can't afford to travel halfway across the country for hearing after hearing after hearing to try to represent yourself.

[bvw]

When we are all hearing from media -- national and international media -- is these ridiculous stories about right-wing extremists, attempts such as yours at creating a honest profiles fitting reported facts are welcome and needed. Better to work from your more founded marshalling of facts and reasoned speculation than to say either we "know nothing, it could be anyone", or to work from a lead a false as the right-wing extremist fantasy.

A profile like yours is a decent basis for follow-on observations. That doesn't mean it's right, or that it's perfect, it's just an attempt to model the known reports and facts in a consistent narrative so as to suggest where further investigations may be more fruitful. It doesn't deny "something completely different" as a possibly.

I have two points related to the profile. One is a hunch is that the terrorist cell had one and only one vial of the anthrax and they were rushed to use it for some reason -- panic maybe. Why then would the letters contain different granularities? As another freeper suggested it could be because the very fine stuff settles to the bottom of the vial. As the powder was carefully spooned out of the vial early letters got a coarse grain, later letters a fine grain. If so, no connection to a biological lab is needed to be infered.

The second is the 'G' and '6' as handwritten on the letters and envelopes are peculiar and perhaps indicate a arabic cursive normal usage.

[BushWonGore'sDone]

You are something else! Great response...

[Jim Noble]

>> Mostly, we heard about Atta, who had red hands

Great work as usual!

I hope Atta wasn't handling plutonium, though...

[BushWonGore'sDone]

I clicked thru to just passed I believe 10/24 perhaps a little later then the message is no longer there.