Still no trace of tons of ammonium nitrate

It's not a coincidence that the Murrah building was blown up using an al-Qaida technique.

Uhn-oh.

And the plot sickens.

It's not a coincidence that the Murrah building was blown up using an al-Qaida technique.

People were using that technique long before al-Qaida. In 1970, the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin was blown up with ammonium nitrate.

Do a google search on the key names in this article and you will find a tremendous amount of information. Yazid Sufaat mentioned here had the apartment where the terrorists met and were monitored by the CIA. He and his wife also used a U.S. company they owned to sponsor the U.S. entry of the 20th hijacker later caught in Minnesota. He bought the explosives which were, as the article here mentions, never recovered. I think he also had 7 more tons on order. To my knowledge the Indonesian location of the storage facility has never before been named so there is some new news in this article. Yazid Sufaat was caught coming back into the country from Afghanistan where he served in the medical corp for the Taliban. His father-in-law is an active islamic militant. Yazis Sufaat and his wife both went to school in northern California; I think it was UC Davis but I might be incorrect.

Background Research on Yazid Sufaat: Malaysian Microbiologist and Al Qaeda-Hijacker Connection

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/693513/posts

"It's not a coincidence that the Murrah building was blown up using an al-Qaida technique."

Longer piece from AP via Yahoo.

Threats to U.S. Embassies raise question _ where is the missing explosive stockpile?

Fri Sep 13, 8:59 PM ET By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Nine months ago, authorities foiled an al-Qaida-linked plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Singapore using trucks loaded with explosives made from ammonium nitrate, a chemical fertilizer.

Dozens of Islamic militants were arrested, but the four tons of ammonium nitrate were never recovered and slipped from the public consciousness — until the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, when threats of strikes by al-Qaida closed embassies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The feared weapon in the new strikes? Several tons of ammonium nitrate, U.S. intelligence indicated.

Authorities in Southeast Asia say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, they have broken the back of a regional extremist network with al-Qaida connections by detaining scores of suspects in Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

But the trail of the missing ammonium nitrate, once thought to have been stored in Malaysia, has gone cold.

Malaysian police believe they traced the stockpile to Batam island, an outcropping in sight of Singapore that is Indonesian territory and therefore outside the jurisdiction of Malaysian officials.

"As far as we know, the ammonium nitrate was sent to Batam," a Malaysian official said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We don't know what happened after that."

Malaysia informed Indonesia, but Indonesian officials have not advised Malaysian authorities if they followed up on the lead, the official said.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, supports the international fight against terrorism but has sometimes been criticized for not doing enough to clamp down on militant Islamic groups.

Also missing is Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddan, an alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the regional network believed to be linked to al-Qaida. Isamuddan, who is better known as Hambali, reportedly arranged trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan ( news - web sites) for training in al-Qaida camps.

On Hambali's orders, former Malaysian army captain and biochemistry graduate Yazid Sufaat bought four tons of ammonium nitrate in October 2000 through his company, Green Laboratory Medicine, Malaysian officials said.

Widely available as fertilizer, ammonium nitrate becomes an explosive more powerful than dynamite when mixed with fuel oil.

Timothy McVeigh ( news - web sites) used two tons of the fertilizer — mixed in barrels and loaded into a rental truck — to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

Yazid and more than a dozen other suspects were arrested in December in a series of raids in Malaysia connected to the Singapore plot. Singapore police arrested 13 suspects around the same time. All are being held without trial.

Singaporean officials said the plotters stored four tons of ammonium nitrate in Malaysia while they tried to get more. Two foreigners directing the Singapore militants — among them an Arab al-Qaida operative — said they needed 21 tons in all for several truck bombs, Singapore alleges.

Malaysian officials said police believed the ammonium nitrate Yazid bought was moved out of the country shortly before the December raids that exposed the Singapore plot.

Yazid also figures in the Sept. 11 attacks, allegedly arranging — again at Hambali's bidding — for two of the hijackers to meet other al-Qaida figures at an apartment he owned near Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Yazid also gave terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui a phony letter of employment, which may have helped him enter the United States.

On Sept. 10, the U.S. government raised its alert status from code yellow to code orange — the second-highest level — and closed nine U.S. embassies and at least two consulates. The embassies in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta — which remained closed Friday — said they received "credible and specific" threats.

Embassy officials wouldn't comment further. But the Philippines said it received a warning from the United States that truck bomb attacks were possible.

"Intelligence evaluation indicates that al-Qaida operatives are prepared to launch truck bomb attacks and they are in possession of several tons of ammonium nitrate," Ambassador Albert del Rosario, the Philippine envoy to Washington, said in a letter. "The intelligence community considers the information credible."

The FBI ( news - web sites) has asked to question Yazid.

Yazid's wife, Sejaratul Dursina, who was detained for two months, said Yazid sold the ammonium nitrate to a quarry in Indonesia.

"Yazid told me the ammonium nitrate was purchased solely for a business deal," Sejaratul told The Associated Press. "It was not for any jihad."

Outside of Singapore, I would doubt than much tracking of ammonium nitrate is possible. In addition to agriculture, it is used in Mining, rock quaries, etc. I recal that a bunch of stored ammonium nitrate went off in San Patong near Chiang Mai, Thailand a couple of years ago. It was a sufficient amount to kill two or three dozen people and level half the village. The investigation resulted in charges being filed against the businessman doing the storing but offically "nobody knew nothing" when it came to explaining just how it got there. This ammonium nitrate was for lamyai orchards. Now, however, a lot of arms are passing through the area and in and out of Burma, but "nobody knows nothing".

Now, however, a lot of arms are passing through the area and in and out of Burma, but "nobody knows nothing".

Burma seems to be another deniable sock puppet for China.

Gertz' Inside the Ring for June 21 points out China trained Taliban:

China-trained Taliban

China's military provided training for Afghanistan's Taliban militia and its al Qaeda supporters, according to a U.S. intelligence report.

The intelligence was obtained from anti-Taliban Afghan sources. It was surprising to U.S. analysts because China is a target of Islamic separatists, who are known to have been trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

The training of the Taliban forces took place before September 11. It was carried out in cooperation with Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, defense officials told us.

The report, and others like it, was unwelcome news for some of the pro-China analysts within the U.S. government who are pushing the Bush administration to adopt a more conciliatory posture toward the communist government in Beijing. These officials point to China's cooperation in the war on terrorism, which has included intelligence sharing of limited value.

U.S. intelligence officials do not know why the Chinese provided the military training to Islamic radicals. But some analysts believe it was an attempt to gain influence over the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Another theory is that the Chinese military training was a high-risk variation on the Soviet deception operation in the 1920s known as the Trust. The operation created a false dissident organization in Russia. The group lured regime opponents back to Russia, where they were imprisonment or executed. The Chinese training could have been part of an effort to identify some of the thousands of Uighurs in China's western Xinjiang province, who are working with al Qaeda.

Evidence of Chinese military backing for the Taliban continues to surface. Late last month, U.S. Army Special Forces troops discovered 30 HN-5s, the designation for Chinese-made SA-7s surface-to-air missiles, in southeastern Afghanistan.

Other intelligence reports indicated the Chinese shipped missiles to the Taliban after September 11. China's government has denied supporting al Qaeda and the Taliban.

~~~

Atta met with Saddam's agents, and Saddam harbors Al Qaeda operatives and training facilities, and China did fiber optics installations for Saddam.

China helped Pakistan with its nukes, in effect putting the Islamic Bomb into play.

China's missile designs have been sheep-dipped through its other deniable sock puppet North Korea, then proliferated to Iraq, Syria, Libya.

But perhaps the Wa Army was too busy with heroin and methamphetamine business to notice ammonium nitrate. Tons of chemicals? Nope, haven't seen it.

Besides, why would China wish to destabilize Indonesia and the Philippines with Islamist insurgency? That would be the type of provocation of the Great Imperialist Hegemon, wouldn't it?

Oh, China is the Great Imperialist Hegemon.

And the construction of the Axis of Evil just happens to bracket it.

But perhaps the Wa Army was too busy with heroin and methamphetamine business to notice ammonium nitrate. Tons of chemicals? Nope, haven't seen it.

The Wa, some of the Karen and some of the Shan(ethnic Tai and Khun Sa's old group) are heavily into the meth trade but the Wa State Army is the surrogate of the junta to do business and make war on other ethnic groups. This gives the Wa the edge in the drug trade and, as I am told, a lock on the arms trade. The junta in Rangoon is about as evil a group as you are likely to come across. They were voted out by 80% of their people when they decided the legitimatize themselves but that hasn't weakened their grip on power. Perfect playmates for Bejing.

BBTTT!!!!!

Well, as long as it's not on a boat heading here!

The formula found under the legend "Explosivija za Oklahomu" ("Explosive Used in Oklahoma") in a notebook found in Kabul did not just include ammonium nitrate -- it also included nitroglycerin and dynamite. Such an explosive could well have caused the powerful secondary blast observed at OKC. It did cause such secondary blasts at the embassy bombings in East Africa.

Thanks for the heads up!