Expert: Anthrax Suspect I.D.'d

The Times (New Jersey Online) ^ | February 19th, 2002 | Joseph Dee

[wimpycat]

PRINCETON BOROUGH -- An advocate for the control of biological weapons who has been gathering information about last autumn's anthrax attacks said yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a strong hunch about who mailed the deadly letters.

But the FBI might be "dragging its feet" in pressing charges because the suspect is a former government scientist familiar with "secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.

[Hagrid]

Good point. It is also possible that the Florida anthrax was from Atta's group and the weaponized stuff from a scientist.

[ex-Texan]

I have a good friend who has contacts with high level law enforcement authorities in the North East.

She was informed back at the end of December the FBI knew who was mailing the anthrax letters.

[anymouse]

FAS is a socialist propaganda mill. They're credibility is nile.

[hove]

Connect this dot.....

Who is in a position to profit by providing an anthrax vaccine?

[Donna Lee Nardo]

Her comments also don't really explain how the woman from the Bronx and the woman from Connecticut died from anthrax, at least as far as I can speculate from the information she provided. Did this "potential suspect" also travel to NY & CT? And while other authorities have stated these 2 anthrax death cases resulted from possible cross contamination, they have never offered any proof to back up their theory just the same.

[wimpycat]

This person might also have had access to smallpox and might therefore have prepared a "Doomsday" device to deter arrest by blackmail.

"Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines."

[Donna Lee Nardo]

...or a surprise abduction and detention in a good ole' USA jail for ever more.

[hove]

This person/s obviously wasn't trying to kill a lot of people. So terrorism was probably not the motive. There was enough spores in those letters to kill thousands. All someone had to do was open a window in Manhattan......If they were trying to terrorize.

Maybe $ were the motive.....not terror.

[The Great Satan]

It is also possible that the Florida anthrax was from Atta's group and the weaponized stuff from a scientist.

Yeah, this stuff just grows on trees. So many people, just waiting for the World Trade Center to be destroyed so they could fire off their anthrax. The tension must have been unbearable.

[MissAmericanPie]

It could be that the killer had a limited supply, and it also could be that he was taken out very quietly. I hope it is the latter he/she certainly didn't deserve any better, especially if they use to work for the government and held information the government didn't want known.

[piasa]

Anyone capable of making weaponized anthrax is also capable of making his or her own vaccine.

The vaccine is not that rare. People who travel or who work with animals or animal products like hides can get it, not just 'military people.'

[eno_]

All someone had to do was open a window in Manhattan......If they were trying to terrorize.

One of the theories why the anthrax attacks ended is that Atta took the remainder of it with him, intending to spread anthrax around the WTC crash site. The '93 WTC bomb included poison, which burned up in the explosion. Multi-layered attacks are part of the Al Quaida playbook (doesn't mean they succeed). At least one suicide bomb in Israel also carried poison.

And while it didn't kill a lot of people, the anthrax did contaminate a lot of Post Office equipment and facilities. Keep in mind they could not do a test run, so beginner's luck was their only real chance of killing a lot of people. Nobody had ever tried that many simultaneous hijackings either.

It also fits the longstanding Al Quaida pattern of not taking credit for attacks.

[Hagrid]

There was published talk in the scientific community before 9/11 of a scientist doing what was done. 9/11 could well have been the trigger.

[eno_]

That is another thing that stretches credibility. What are the odds such an attack was "on the shelf" waiting for the 9/11 attacks? Too much synchonicity for believability.

The whole "domestic anthrax" spin is beginning to sound like the "redneck security guard, no, whoops, Eric Rudolph" thing regarding the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics. Only this theory will be shoved aside once it is time to invade Iraq. They COULD be more original. I've read Bobbsey Twins books with more originality.

[piasa]

She's so confident she knows who this scientist is... but not confident enough to name him.

And she covers her trail by saying that he will probably quietly dissappear and never be revealed. How convenient for her.

" The big purple aliens ate my homework, teacher... my sources in the government told me they have been investigating big purple aliens. Only the big purple aliens know where my homework is kept, by the way. But the big purple aliens worked as subcontractors for the military, so the military is hiding the big purple aliens. No one will ever know there are big purple aliens involved in homework theft. So teacher, may I have an 'A+' on my theme paper?"

[Robert357]

They have more than a strong hunch, Barbara, honey. They've had him in custody since November 2, 2001. The mailer's name is Allah Rakah . He received the anthrax letters from their preparer, Mohammed Atta, in Florida, where he then lived, before moving to Hamilton Township, New Jersey, from where he dispatched the threats to prominent figures in the US media and government, a few days after Atta's suicide attack on the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, Rakah is just more lowlife mosque scum, recruited as a mule by Atta: he knows nothing about whether there really are large caches of Saddam's anthrax on US soil ...

Bump for future reference. Thank you for sharing this. I don't understand why the media has not followed up on this story? I can see why the administration has downplayed this, as much of the Pakistan government was our allie in the fight in Afghanistan.

[LiberteeBell]

bttt

[Ada Coddington]

The anthrax was Islamic terrorism.

Mebbee, but the NYT tells us that Dr. Paul Keim has been able to identify which lab stocked the anthrax strain used in the atacks and has informed the Fibees which one it was.

[The Great Satan]

The motive was to issue a threat. Just read the letter:

I know it's much more appealing to ignore the evidence of your own eyes and twist your brain into pretzels to come up with some convoluted theory about this, but how about we just try taking the letter at face value for a second? This really isn't a very complicated problem.

The first thing you have to do is get it into your head that this letter, accompanied as it was by high-grade, weaponized, aerosolizable anthrax, represents a credible threat to kill millions of people. I know that the anthrax story was managed in such a way as to distract you from that reality but, nevertheless, it is the reality.

The second thing you have to realize is that the boast "YOU CAN NOT STOP US" is entirely plausible, and would be recognized as such by the national command authority, the real target of this message. The anthrax emits no tell-tale signal, it takes up no space, it can be delivered by hand with devastating effect -- for example, a few bags of this stuff surreptitiously dropped on the NYC subway tracks would turn Manhattan into a worthless patch of uninhabitable waste ground overnight.

Then, you have to ask yourself, why would a "loose-knit, widely-dispersed" band of terrorists issue such a threat, instead of using the anthrax to kill as many people as possible? The answer is that the notion of "loose-knit, widely-dispersed" network of muslim crazies carrying out sophisticated terrorist attacks is a fable conjured up by the Clinton administration to avoid the unpleasant choices that would be involved in going after the real organizer and sponsor of these operations, whose initials are SH.

Iraq is the only hostile country known to have succeeded in turning anthrax into a viable weapon. The US biowar program is largely predicated on and driven by the threat presented by Iraq's anthrax capability. Coincidentally, Iraq's government is also the only government to have endorsed Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the World Trade Center, the only government whose talking points feature regularly in OBL's communiquees, and the only government known to have directly liaised with Mohammed Atta, and the only government to harbor an indicted conspirator in the original, 1993 attempt to topple the WTC towers.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, my friends.