Posted on 07/01/2007 8:58:07 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
WASHINGTON — In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union.
----------- Officials still value his seminal depictions of the Soviet program. But recent events have propelled questions about Alibek's reliability:
No biological weapon of mass destruction has been found in Iraq. His most sensational research findings, with U.S. colleagues, have not withstood peer review by scientific specialists. His promotion of nonprescription pills — sold in his name over the Internet and claiming to bolster the immune system — was ridiculed by some scientists. He resigned as executive director of a Virginia university's biodefense center 10 months ago while facing internal strife over his stewardship.
And, as Alibek raised fear of bioterrorism in the United States, he also has sought to profit from that fear.
By his count, Alibek has won about $28 million in federal grants or contracts for himself or entities that hired him.
The Los Angeles Times explored Alibek's public pronouncements, research and business activities as part of a series that will examine companies and government officials central to the U.S. war on terrorism -----------------------
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Ed writes:
“The FBI has stated many times that the crime was a “domestic” crime. But a True Believer can say that “domestic” means that it was a crime committed by an al Qaeda member who lives in the United States.”
Al-Timimi is a US Citizen. Had a high security clearance for work for the Navy. Had a letter of commendation from the White House. Now if he were involved, would that motivation be more like 9/11? Or Oklahoma City. I don’t know. You tell me. But Director Mueller wants us to think of both. Both involve a hatred of US policy and not a desire to save the US from calamity.
Ed, what part of this statement by Attorney General Ashcroft or by Director Mueller (in October 2005) do you not understand? Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant islamists. See Dr. Razsi’s thesis and discussion on this point. He works for the Homeland Security on WMD issues and written his doctoral thesis on preventing domestic bioterrorism such as by US-based supporters of Al Qaeda who work in US labs. His thesis was supervised by Dr. Alibek at GMU’s Center for Biodefense.
“Domestic terrorism” is defined by the Antiterrorism Act of 1991. Judge Harold Baer explained in 2003 in Smith v. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan that in distinguishing “international terrorism,” “[t]he main difference is that domestic terrorism involves acts that “occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” Here, the anthrax mailings are reasonably understood as involving acts that “occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” The District Court judge was “mindful that an expansive interpretation of ‘international terrorism’ might render ‘domestic terrorism’ superfluous.”
By way of example, was longtime Al Qaeda operative and former US Army sergeant Ali Mohamed “foreign” or “domestic”? Are the young men from Buffalo — most of whom were US citizens and born here — “foreign” or “domestic”? Would a graduate or postdoctoral microbiology student sympathetic to Al Qaeda — living and working in the US — be considered “foreign” or “domestic”? Would an islamist PhD animal geneticist and nutrition researcher living in the US for decades be “foreign” or domestic”? What about an Iraqi-born US citizen Ph.D. expert in bacillus thuringiensis who knew one of the WTC bombers? Or what about the Egyptian who made frequent attempts to obtain maps of the water supply system of Canton, Ohio, and sought books dealing with anthrax? What about a graduate in bioinformatics with access to GMU’s DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense facilities? What about Mohammed Junaid Babar from Queens, whose mother worked at the WTC, who post-9/11 met left the US and met with Al Qaeda’s #3, Zawahiri’s chief aide al-Hadi. And, of course, there is the lovely and pious Aafia Siddiqui from the Brandeis biology department who completed her dissertation in 2001 and remained committed to helping the widows, orphans and refugees of conflicts such as in Bosnia. A hazmat courier who delivered anthrax to Paul Keim’s lab at Northern Arizona was interviewed twice — the first was around March 2002. He says it was in the second interview, around January 2003, that “middle eastern men” became the focus of the FBI’s questions.
An interesting article, “The Knowledge: Biotechnology’s advance could give malefactors the ability to manipulate life processes — and even affect human behavior” in The MIT Technology Review (March/April 2006) is based on interviews with Sergei Popov (an expert at GMU who had worked as a Russian bioweaponeer), University of Maryland researcher Milton Leitenberg, Harvard’s Matthew Meselson, Rutger’s Richard Ebright and others:
“After last year’s bioterrorism conference in DC, I called on Richard Ebright, whose Rutgers laboratory researches transcription initiation (the first step in gene expression), to hear why he so opposes the biodefense boom (in its current form) and why he doesn’t worry about terrorists’ synthesizing biological weapons.
‘There are now more than 300 U.S. institutions with access to live bioweapons agents and 16,500 individuals approved to handle them,” Ebright told me. While all of those people have undergone some form of background check — to verify, for instance, that they aren’t named on a terrorist watch list and aren’t illegal aliens — it’s also true, Ebright noted, that ‘Mohammed Atta would have passed those tests without difficulty.’ “
***
‘That’s the most significant concern,’ Ebright agreed. ‘If al-Qaeda wished to carry out a bioweapons attack in the U.S., their simplest means of acquiring access to the materials and the knowledge would be to send individuals to train within programs involved in biodefense research.’ Ebright paused. ‘And today, every university and corporate press office is trumpeting its success in securing research funding as part of this biodefense expansion, describing exactly what’s available and where.’
One intelligence official has suggested that one reason that the FBI has not emphasized the possibility of a foreign source is that it might require UN involvement in the investigation pursuant to certain biological weapons protocols. The US specifically rejected France’s suggestion in October 2001 that there be a UN resolution condemning the attacks on the grounds that the Security Council had no role to play unless there was clear proof that the perpetrator was foreign. Bob Woodward quotes Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, in explaining why the administration did not acknowledge an al Qaeda link, even though it thought there was one: “If we say it’s al Qaeda, a state sponsor may feel safe and then hit us, thinking they will have a bye, because we’ll blame it on al Qaeda.”
In September 2005, Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office said that this “globe-spanning investigation remains intensely active and broadly focused.” According to one recent letter to a Congressman rejecting the request for a briefing, the investigation has spanned six out of seven continents. The FBI has conducted 9,100 witness interviews, 67 searches and issued 6,000 grand jury subpoenas.
In a press conference in October 2005, Director Mueller said that the FBI was pursuing all domestic and international leads. He told the public to remember Oklahoma City. Remember 9/11. He declined to say if they had a suspect. That year, FBI agents visited Asia, Africa and Afghanistan in the course of the Amerithrax investigation. Only Ed, however, has been hanging around playgrounds.
Ed is mistaken in thinking that the October 2005 Press Conference “Mueller on Anthrax”, Director Mueller was explaining FBI activities generally. He was specifically describing the Amerithrax investigation. The motives that Director Mueller pointed to involved a hatred of US policies. Not a bioevangelist looking to save the US from calamity.
We can have confidence that the FBI has pursued any and all theories and leads and left no stone unturned.
It just occurred to me that back on April 20, in the Hatfill v FBI et al lawsuit, Judge Walton ordered as follows:
ORDERED that the parties are referred to mediation for a period of sixty days commencing on May 21, 2007, and concluding on July 20, 2007.
Friday of this week is July 20. Since that date is almost upon us, it seems to me that Judge Walton might delay his ruling on the motion to compel reporters to identify their confidential sources until the mediation is concluded.
But I'm really lousy about trying to figure out when things will happen in this lawsuit. So, I could be totally wrong. Everything seems to take a lot longer that I expect.
US admits anthrax attacks still a mystery
Published: 7/17/2007
WASHINGTON - US authorities have yet to pin down who was responsible for a series of anthrax attacks that killed five Americans in late 2001, US President George W. Bush’s top counterrorism aide said Tuesday.
“Obviously, that’s an ongoing investigation,” Frances Townsend told reporters during a White House briefing on the newly declassified key findings of a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threats to the United States.
“I’m sure (FBI) Director (Robert) Mueller would be delighted to answer that,” joked Townsend, who had said that the United States had not suffered a terrorist attack nearly six years after the September 11, 2001 strikes.
Asked whether the anthrax attacks, which began with a letter reportedly postmarked September 18, 2001, counted as a terrorist attack, Townsend tersely replied: “It does in my mind.”
Five people died after letters containing anthrax spores were sent to several news media figures and two Democratic US senators.
07/17/2007 16:51 GMT
A recent summary of the evidence supporting that US-based supporters of Al Qaeda were responsible for the anthrax mailings. published with the consent of the copyright holder, is here:
Anthrax Mystery: Evidence Points to al-Qaida
Newsmax.com ^ | 6/07/07 | Ross E. Getman
Posted on 07/01/2007 12:14:48 AM PDT by Freedom of Speech Wins
Anthrax Mystery: Evidence Points to al-Qaida
Ross E. Getman
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have faded from the media spotlight. The FBI appears to have pursued all possible leads, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in January that FBI Director Mueller was committed to seeing it to “some kind of conclusion in the relatively near future.”
But an analysis of the anthrax mailings suggests that U.S.-based supporters of one of Osama bin Laden’s closest advisers, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were responsible.
Al-Zawahiri was head of al-Qaida’s biochemical program. He called it Zabadi or “curdled milk.” The Central Intelligence Agency has known of al-Zawahiri’s plans to use anthrax since July 1998, when the CIA seized a disc from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad military commander during his arrest by the CIA in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The CIA refused to give the FBI the laptop that al-Zawahiri used. The FBI’s bin Laden expert, John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s New York office, tried to get around this by sending an agent to Azerbaijan to get copies of the computer files from the Azerbaijan government, who also had the files.
The FBI finally got the files after O’Neill persuaded President Clinton to personally appeal to the president of Azerbaijan. O’Neill, who was head of the World Trade Center security, died in the 9/11 attacks. He died with the knowledge that al-Zawahiri planned to attack U.S. targets with anthrax — and that al-Zawahiri does not make idle threats.
At the time, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) set up a program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to combat the bin Laden anthrax threat.
The CIA also snatched a talkative member of the EIJ shura or policy-making council. His confession runs 140 pages. He confirmed al-Zawahiri’s intent to use anthrax against U.S. targets in connection with the detention of militant Islamists. Yet another friend of al-Zawahiri, this one a Cairo lawyer who was the blind sheik’s attorney in March 1999, said that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were likely to resort to the biological and chemical agents they possessed given the extradition pressure senior al-Qaida leaders faced.
Story Continues Below
Al-Zawahiri and his associates were seeking to recreate Muhammad’s taking of Mecca through violent attacks on Egyptian leaders. By the late 1990s, al-Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
Means
E-mails in the Spring of 1999 from al-Zawahiri to Egyptian Mohammed Atef, al-Qaida’s military commander, and former Cairo police sergeant, indicate that al-Zawahiri was a close student of the the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) anthrax program. He believed that the Quran instructed that a jihadist should use the weapons used by the crusader. “What we know is that he’s always said it was a religious obligation to have the same weapons as their enemies,” former CIA bin Laden unit counter-terrorism chief Michael Scheuer said.
In March 2003, handwritten notes and files on a laptop seized upon the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, al-Qaida’s No. 3 man, included a feasible anthrax production plan using a spray dryer and addressed the recruitment of necessary expertise.
Atef told his interrogators that Zacarias Moussaoui was not going to be part of 9/11 but was to be part of a “second wave.” Khalid explained that Moussaoui’s inquiries about crop-dusters may have been related to the anthrax work being done by U.S.-trained biochemist and al-Qaida operative, Yazid Sufaat.
Microbiologist Abdul Qadoos Khan was charged along with his son, Ahmed, for harboring the fugitives. As of March 28, 2003, he was in a hospital for a cardiac problem and had been granted “pre-arrest bail.”
In early June 2003, a CIA report publicly concluded that the reason for Atta’s and Moussaoui’s inquiries into crop-dusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. It had long been known that bin Laden was interested in using crop-dusters to disperse biological agents (since the testimony of millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam).
An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 bin Laden was planning an “unbelievable” biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid.
Anthrax lab coordinator Hambali was arrested in August 2003 in the quiet city of Ayuttullah, in Thailand. He was sent to Jordan. In Autumn 2003, extremely virulent anthrax was found at a house in Kandahar — after regional operative Hambali was harshly interrogated.
Al-Qaida had the extremely virulent anthrax before 9/11. Sufaat’s two principal assistants were also captured in 2003 and are in custody. They had been assisting Sufaat prior to 9/11. The FBI dropped the continuous conspicuous surveillance of Dr. Steve Hatfill in early Fall 2003, after extremely virulent anthrax that they knew could be readily weaponized was found at the house in Kandahar. Prior to that, the “Hatfill theory” had been an alternative hypothesis pursued by one of the squads within Amerithrax.
In January 2007, Muhammad Hanif, a spokesman for the Taliban, spoke quietly to the camera. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he said, was living in Quetta under the protection of the Pakistan ISI. In a press conference, the governor of the province on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan reported that they had found packets of powdered anthrax in his home upon his arrest.
As reported by Afghan Islamic Press news agency and translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, the governor said: “A biological substance, anthrax, was also seized from those arrested. They planned to send the substance in envelopes addressed to government officials . . .” The governor’s claim has not yet been confirmed.
In March 2007, Khalid confessed before a military tribunal that “I was directly in charge, after the death of Sheikh Abu Hafs [Atef] of managing and following up on the cell for the production of biological weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on dirty-bomb operations on American soil.”
A key question is how al-Zawahiri acquired the anthrax strain — the “Ames strain” first isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab in 1980. The U.S. Army recipe from the 1950s was not used, and obtaining the unprocessed Ames strain of anthrax does not warrant the weight given it by some press accounts. Although coveted as the “gold standard” in vaccine research, the “Ames strain” is known to have been at about a score of labs and over the years an estimated 1,000 people may have had access.
Opportunity
After a bombing raid at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan U.S. forces found over 100 typed and handwritten pages of documents that shed light on al-Qaida’s early anthrax planning.
It was not clear whether or not they had yet acquired virulent anthrax or weaponized it, but it was clear that the planning was well along. When Cheney was briefed on the documents in late 2001, he immediately called a meeting of the FBI and CIA. “I’ll be very blunt,” the vice president started. “There is no priority of this government more important than finding out if there is a link between what’s happened here and what we’ve found over there with al-Qaida.”
A June 1999 memo from Ayman to military commander Atef said that “said the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were ‘more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.’”
Thus, in determining whether al-Qaida was responsible for the anthrax mailings in 2001, the FBI and CIA knew, based on the growing documentary evidence available by December, that al-Qaida operatives were likely associated with non-governmental organizations and working under the cover of universities. From early on, the CIA and FBI knew that charity is as charity does.
Among the supporters of these militant Islamists were people who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it. Two letters — one typed and an earlier handwritten one — written by a microbiologist named Rauf Ahmad detail his efforts to obtain a pathogenic strain of anthrax. The Defense Intelligence Agency, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, gave me a copy of a typed memo reporting on a lab visit, which included tour of a BioLevel 3 facility.
The progress report to al-Zawahiri began ominously: “I successfully achieved the targets.” The memo mentioned the pending paperwork relating to export of the pathogens. A handwritten letter was reporting on a different, earlier visit, where the anthrax had been nonpathogenic.
There are handwritten notes about the plan to use non-governmental-organizations (NGOs), technical institutes, and medical labs as cover for aspects of the work, and training requirements for the various personnel at the lab in Afghanistan.
Ahmad attended conferences on anthrax and dangerous pathogens such as one in September 2000 at the University of Plymouth cosponsored by DERA, the UK Defense Evaluation, and Research Agency.
A handwritten letter from 1999 is written on the letterhead of the oldest microbiology society in Great Britain. The 1999 Ahmad documents seized in Afghanistan by U.S. forces describe Ahmad’s visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where thousands of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in al-Qaida’s anthrax lab; a conference on dangerous pathogens cosponsored by the U.K.’s Porton Down and Society for Applied Microbiology he attended, and the need for vaccination and containment.
Ahmad had arranged to take a lengthy post-doc leave from his employer and was grousing that what the employer would be paying during that 12-month period was inadequate. Yazid Sufaat, who told his wife he was working for a Taliban medical brigade, got the job instead of Ahmad.
In late February 2003, authorities searched the townhouse of Ali al-Timimi, a graduate student and employee in bioinformatics at George Mason University who shared a department fax with famed Russian bioweapons expert Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head and anthrax researcher Charles Bailey.
Al-Timimi was a celebrated speaker and religious scholar associated with the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based charity. The Washington Post later summarized: “The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘al-Timimi is an Islamist supporter of bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit.
The FBI even came to speculate that al-Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.”
In October 2002, al-Timimi drafted a letter from dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali threatening disastrous consequences if the U.S. invaded Iraq and had it hand-delivered to all members of Congress. Al-Hawali was one of two dissident Saudi sheiks who inspired bin Laden and remained in contact with him.
Al-Timimi was thought of by colleagues as a “numbers guy” rather than having hands-on drying expertise, and was not known to have worked on any biodefense projects. There is every reason to think the FBI concluded that al-Timimi was neither the processor nor the mailer, given that the government never charged him with the anthrax crimes. And the FBI would know: The FBI knows what he had for dinner on Sept. 16, 2001, just two days before the first mailing.
Brian Williams reports that investigators have told NBC that the water used to make the spores came from the northeastern United States based on an analysis of isotope ratios. That finding likely has served to focus the FBI’s investigation.
Modus Operandi
Just because al-Qaida likes its truck bombs and the like to be effective does not mean they do not see the value in a deadly missive. As Brian Jenkins once said, “terrorism is theater.” A sender purporting to be Islamist sent cyanide in both early 2002 and early 2003 in New Zealand and ingredients of nerve gas in Belgium in 2003. There’s even a chapter titled “Poisonous Letter” in the al-Qaida manual.
Princeton Islamist scholar Bernard Lewis has explained that while Islamists may disagree about whether killing innocents is sanctioned by the laws of jihad, extremists like al-Zawahiri agree that notice must be given before biochemical weapons are used. “The Prophet’s guidance,” says Michael Scheuer, an al-Qaida analyst retired from the CIA who once headed its bin Laden unit, “was always, ‘Before you attack someone, warn them very clearly.’”
The tactic of lethal letters was not merely the modus operandi of the militant Islamists inspired by al-Zawahiri, it was their signature. The Islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on Dec. 21, 1996 (which is Laylat al-Qadr, literally the “Night of Decree”) contained improvised explosive devices.
The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik Abdel Rahman. The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of al-Qaida. The FBI suspected the letter bombs were sent in connection with the treatment of the Egyptian Islamists imprisoned for the earlier attack on the WTC and a related plot.
The purpose of the letter bombs — which resulted in minimal casualties — apparently was to send a message. There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next 10, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar?
Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key World Trade Center 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist.) The FBI suspected the Vanguards of Conquest, a mysterious group led by Egyptian Islamic Jihad head al-Zawahiri. The group can be thought of as either the military wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or perhaps just EIJ.
The anthrax that infected the first victim, Bob Stevens, was contained in a letter to AMI, the publisher of tabloids — in a goofy love letter to Jennifer Lopez enclosing a Star of David and proposing marriage. A report, by the Center for Disease Control, of interviews with AMI employees (as well as detailed interviews by author Leonard Cole) supports the conclusion that there were not one, but two, such mailings containing anthrax. (The letters were to different AMI publications — one to the National Enquirer and another to The Sun.)
The “Federal Eagle” stamp used in the anthrax mailings was a blue-green. It was widely published among the militant Islamists that martyrs go to paradise “in the hearts of green birds.” In the very interview in which they admitted 9/11 and described the codes used for the four plane targets, the masterminds admitted to the Jenny code, the code for representing the date 9/11, and used the symbolism of the “Green Birds.”
Osama bin Laden later invoked the symbolism in his video “The 19 Martyrs.” A FAQ on the Azzam Publications Web site explained that “In the Hearts of Green Birds” refers to what is inside.
The mailer’s use of “Greendale School” as the return address for the letters to the senators is also revealing. A May 2001 letter that al-Zawahiri sent to Egyptian Islamic Jihad members abroad establish that he used “school” as a code word for the Egyptian militant Islamists.
Green symbolizes Islam and was the Prophet Muhammad’s color. By Greendale School, the anthrax perp likely was being cute, just as Yazid Sufaat was being cute in naming his lab Green Laboratory Medicine. “Dale” means “river valley.” Greendale likely refers to green river valley — i.e., Cairo’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Islamic Group.
The mailer probably is announcing that the anthrax is from either Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Group or Jihad-al Qaida, which is actually the full name of the group after the merger of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida. At the Darunta complex where jihadis trained, recruits would wear green uniforms, except for Friday when they were washed. In a Hadith the messenger of Allah explains that the souls of the martyrs are in the hearts of green birds that fly wherever they please in the Paradise.
The “4th grade” in the return address “4th Grade, Greendale School,” is American slang for “sergeant” — the rank of the head of al-Qaida’s military commander Mohammed Atef, who along with al-Zawahiri had overseen Project Zabadi, al-Qaida’s biochemical program.
The business-size sheet of stationery containing the anthrax to the National Enquirer was decorated with pink and blue clouds around the edges. In admitting that he had taken over supervising the development of anthrax for use against the U.S. upon Atef’s death (in November 2001), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed separately noted that “I was the Media Operations Director for Al-Sahab or ‘The Clouds,’ under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri.”
Motive
As to the reason Sens. Daschle and Leahy would have been targeted — they are commonly simplistically viewed as “liberals.” Al-Zawahiri likely targeted Sens. Daschle and Leahy to receive anthrax letters, in addition to various media outlets, because of the appropriations made pursuant to the “Leahy Law” to military and security forces. That money has prevented the militant Islamists from achieving their goals.
Al-Qaida members and sympathizers feel that the FBI’s involvement in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines undermines their prospects of establishing a worldwide Caliphate. The fall 2001 letter from al-Qaida spokesman al-Kuwaiti, directed to the American public — but which was not released until 2006 — claimed that the green light had been given for a U.S. bio attack (1) from people who were U.S. based, (2) above suspicion, and (3) with access to U.S. government and intelligence information.
He explained: “There is no animosity between us. You involved yourselves in this battle. The war is between us and the Jews. You interfered in our countries and influenced our governments to strike against the Moslems.”
Sen. Leahy was chairman of both the Judiciary Committee overseeing the FBI and Appropriations Subcommittee in charge of foreign aid to these countries. In late September 2001, it was announced that the president was seeking a blanket waiver that would lift all restrictions on aid to military and security units in connection with pursuing the militant Islamists.
This extradition and imprisonment of al-Qaida leaders, along with U.S. support for Israel and the Mubarak government in Egypt, remains foremost in the mind of al- Zawahiri. At the height of the development of his biological weapons program, his brother was extradited pursuant to a death sentence in the “Albanian returnees” case.
It’s hard to keep up with the stories about billion dollar appropriations, debt forgiveness, and loan guarantees to countries like Egypt and Israel and now even Pakistan. Those appropriations pale in comparison to the many tens of billions in appropriations relating to the invasion of Iraq.
In late January 2001, the immigration minister in Canada and the justice minister received an anthrax threat in the form of anthrax hoax letters. The letters were sent upon the announcement of bail hearing for a detained Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader who had managed bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. Canada announced on Jan. 18, 2001, that an Egyptian Islamic Jihad Shura member, Mahmoud Mahjoub, would have a Jan. 30 bail hearing.
Soon after, someone sent an anthrax threat letter to the minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Minister Caplan had signed the security certificate authorizing Mahjoub’s detention.
After arriving in Canada in 1996, Mahjoub continued to be in contact with high level militants, including his former supervisor, al-Duri, an Iraqi reputed to be bin Laden’s chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction.
In February 2001, the CIA briefed the president in a Presidential Daily Bulletin (”PDB”) on “Bin Laden’s Interest in Biological and Radiological Weapons” in a still-classified briefing memorandum. Like the PDB on bin Laden’s threat to use planes to free the blind sheik, the February 2001 PDB likely would illustrate the wisdom that most intelligence is open source.
The FBI’s Investigation
In connection with defending a civil rights claim by former USAMRIID scientist Steve Hatfill, the FBI described the anthrax probe as “unprecedented in the FBI’s 95-year history.” Agents had spent 231,000 hours up to that date.
The head of the investigation said that the investigation was “active and ongoing” and said agents’ time was divided between checking into individuals who might be connected to the attacks and a scientific effort to determine how the spores themselves were made using “cutting-edge forensic techniques and analysis.”
The court papers did not indicate that Hatfill was still among those being investigated. Hatfill was labeled a “person of interest” in the probe in August 2002 by Attorney General John Ashcroft in responding to press inquiries for the reason for searches and surveillance that Hatfill had reported.
By late 2003, all conspicuous surveillance had ended, according to two unnamed federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The head of the investigation cautioned that Hatfill’s lawsuit could force the FBI to divulge its “interest in specific individuals,” who could flee the country, destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses, or concoct alibis.
In a statement issued June 16, 2004, the 9/11 Commission staff concluded that “al-Qaida had an ambitious biological weapons program and was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to Sept. 11. According to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, al-Qaida’s ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face.”
Authorities had received information, for example, from at least one detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that there was an anthrax storage facility in the Kabul area. Amerithrax Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty. Then in November 2004, on further information, agents had spent several weeks unsuccessfully searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul. In 2005, an internal report was prepared summarizing the status of the investigation.
On March 31, 2005, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, in its “Report to the President of the United States,” concluded “al-Qaida’s biological program was further along, particularly with regard to Agent X [anthrax], than pre-War intelligence indicated.
The program was extensive, well-organized, and operated for two years before Sept. 11, but intelligence insights into the program were limited. The program involved several sites around Afghanistan. Two of these sites contained commercial equipment and were operated by individuals with special training.”
MSNBC, relying on an unnamed FBI spokesperson, reported that the FBI has narrowed the pool of labs known to have had the US Army anthrax strain known as the “Ames strain” that was a match from 16 to four but could not rule out that it was obtained overseas. Thus, not only was it likely that an al-Qaida perpetrator was associated with an NGO and university, but there had to have been access to a virulent anthrax strain that was only in a score or so of known labs, most of which were affiliated in some way with the U.S. government.
In a court filing dated May 20, 2005, an attorney for the United States Department of Justice wrote: “The investigation into the anthrax attacks is one of the largest and most complex investigations in law enforcement history. To bring those responsible to justice, the investigation remains intensely active.”
In a press conference in October 2005, Director Mueller said that the FBI was pursuing all domestic and international leads. He said, “Remember Oklahoma City. Remember 9/11.” He declined to say if they had a suspect. That year, FBI agents visited Asia, Africa and Afghanistan in the course of the Amerithrax investigation.
In his recent book, former CIA Director George Tenet noted: “The most startling revelation from this intelligence success story was that the anthrax program had been developed in parallel to 9/11 planning.”
The FBI’s profile includes a U.S.-based supporter of the militant Islamists. Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a U.S.-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant Islamists.
Whatever your political persuasion, and whatever disagreements about individual issues relating to due process and civil liberties, the FBI and CIA deserve our support on this issue. The country, after all, is facing this threat together.
First, the nature of such an investigation is that we lack sufficient information to second-guess (or even know) what the FBI agents and Postal Inspectors on the Amerithrax Task Force are doing. Media reports are a poor approximation of reality because of the lack of good sources. Indeed, there has been compartmentalization and divergent views even within the Task Force. After the leaks regarding Hatfill, Mueller instituted “stovepiping” even within the Task Force so as to minimize the risk of further leaks.
Second, hindsight is 20/20.
Third, now that the leaks relating to Hatfill seem to have long since been plugged, it is not likely we could do better in striking the appropriate balance between due process and national security.
Based only on the “open source” material readily available through databases such as “Google News” and the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), it appears that the solution to the Amerithrax case lies at the intersection of Ayman Avenue and Rahman Road. If the FBI does not succeed in its investigation, we might be looking at a different crossroads altogether.
Asked whether the anthrax attacks, which began with a letter reportedly postmarked September 18, 2001, counted as a terrorist attack, Townsend tersely replied: “It does in my mind.”
ROFL. Boy, does our government hate being reminded about the anthtrax attacks or what?
The White House and FBI understandably aren’t eager to talk about Amerithrax because access to the strain and weaponization know-how is suspected to have been by an islamist hardliner through a US Army DARPA program. See October 2006 WP, “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats.”
In July of 2005, Ali Al-Timimi was given a life sentence for acting as the religious leader of what would come to be known as the “Virginia Jihad Network,” a group of violent radicals that were preparing for holy war against Indians and Americans. He was working closely with Bin Laden’s religious mentor al-Hawali — the man was the express subject of the 1996 declaration of war against the US and the 1998 claim of responsibility for the bombing of the US embassies.
Al-Timimi worked a spitwad’s distance from famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek at DARPA-funded/founded George Mason University’s Center for Biodefense and the former head of USAMRIID Charles Bailey. He had a high security clearance for mathematical work in bioinformatics for the Navy.
Perhaps White House counterterrorism head Townsend and FBI Director Mueller don’t talk about Amerithrax because then they would have to admit that some USG knuckleheads somewhere gave a known islamist hardliner a letter of commendation from the White House and access to the computers at GMU. Al-Timimi’s bionformatics program was jointly run by the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”).
The new Bruce Willis “Live Free or Die Hard” movie is very good (for people who like the genre) and illustrates the same point using a fictional plot.
Yippee-kay-yay...
mf
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
The few sentences in the TurkishPress.com article are all that was said about the anthrax attacks at the briefing. CSPAN has the entire briefing on their web site HERE. Look for this section:
White House Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend
Frances Townsend, White House Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism conducts a press briefing on the national intelligence estimate and other actions to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks.
7/17/2007: WASHINGTON, DC: 45 min.
The briefing is 45:25 minutes long, and the question about the anthrax attacks is asked at the 39:25 minute point. When Fran jokes in reply, "I’m sure Director Mueller would be delighted to answer that," it gets a big laugh.
It looks like a two-pronged "joke" which seems to be explained this way: #1, she's not about to answer any questions about the anthrax attacks, and #2, she (and probably everyone) knows that Director Mueller also doesn't like to be confronted with questions about the anthrax attacks.
It's not that they don't like being reminded. It's that they don't like being asked questions they cannot answer because it's an "ongoing investigation." At least that's the way it seems to me.
But the good news for the administration is that the investigation only has to go on for another 18 months, and then they won't have to answer any questions about it anymore. :)
Perhaps so. But I wouldn't underestimate how quickly the "public memory" could be revived by a lengthy trial in the Hatfill v FBI case. And, if there's going to be a trial, its start date is not far off. (The depositions show exactly what happened to make Dr. Hatfill a "person of interest", so it shouldn't be "news," but it WILL be major news because very so few people have seen the depositions.)
And, if the lawsuit is settled (which is a REAL possibility), that could be a BIG news story, too. It should raise all sorts of questions. A lot of people in the media and in scientific fields went out on a limb to point their fingers at Dr. Hatfill. They're not going to just shut up.
Unfortunately, the general public will probably compare it to the Richard Jewell case, even though there is no similarity whatsoever. And I'm concerned that the media will promote that inaccurate version instead of looking for the real source behind Dr. Hatfill becoming a "person of interest" and a household name.
However, unlike the Wen Ho Lee case, I don't think it's going to get major highlights in the press if it happens. The media liked Wen Ho Lee, because he fit their stereotypical profile of a victim. They don't like Steven Hatfill, because he fits their stereotypical profile of a bad guy.
Let's not forget that Hatfill already reached a settlement with Conde Nast/Vanity Fair (who went the furthest in basically proclaiming him guilty), and best as I can tell, that went almost completely unnoticed by the mainstream media.
Yes, but that's because of the terms of the settlement agreement AND, most of all, because Dr. Hatfill changed lawyers so that he could get some money to live on out of all this right away instead of waiting for years of trials and appeals.
I think Dr. Hatfill went along with keeping the terms of that settlement quiet because he knows the Hatfill v FBI lawsuit is the real BIGGIE.
He wants vindication and to have his name cleared. That trial is where that would happen. And if there is a settlement, I don't think it will be anything like the Vanity Fair settlement. No one is going to allow that whole fiasco to be swept under the rug. Public apologies will be demanded. Facts behind the fiasco will be made known. If they are NOT made known, the Right Wing media will dig them out, because the Left Wing media played such a big role in the fiasco.
At least that's the way I see things. I could be totally wrong.
It appears that Conde Nast and Readers Digest were BEGGING Dr. Hatfill to settle. They were probably offering BIG money. Conde Nast and Readers Digest didn't want to go to trial in a lawsuit that they could not possibly win. And a jury could have awarded Dr. Hatfill many many millions in addition to showing that Vanity Fair and Readers Digest were wrong in pointing the finger at Dr. Hatfill.
But Dr. Hatfill's lawyers at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, LLP wanted to hold out for a jury trial.
So, Dr. Hatfill changed lawyers! He switched that lawsuit to a small law firm which did little except to help him with the settlement.
There's no chance that he would do the same thing in the Hatfill v FBI lawsuit. He's not only obligated to remain with Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, LLP, it's the ONLY way he can get vindication.
There is no possible way that he could have been vindicated and shown to be innocent by the Vanity Fair/Readers Digest trial. That could only come from the lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Justice. So, I don't see any possibility of a hushed up settlement like that with Conde Nast and Reader's Digest.
There was considerable connection between the Falls Church and London Salafists.
In Northern Virginia, Ali Asad Chandia was the “personal assistant” of Ali Al-Timimi and was the chauffer of London terorrist operative Mohammed Ajmal Khan who visited Falls Church.
The USG charged Chandia with arranging for the purchase of an electronic autopilot system and video equipment for use on model airplanes in connection with requests made by Mohammed Ajmal Khan to purchase the equipment .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601744.html
The Times [UK] notes that prosecutors described how Chandia had worked as a chauffeur for a London-based terrorism organiser, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, who was jailed for nine years in March in Britain after admitting shipping weapons to Pakistan.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1652360/posts
Mohammed Ajmal Khan was a teaching assistant in Leeds.
Chandia met Khan, a senior official and procurement officer for LET, at an office of that organization in Pakistan in late-2001. Khan traveled to the United States in 2002 and 2003 to acquire equipment for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Chandia assisted him in these efforts both times.
Khan is serving a nine-year sentence in the UK on terrorism charges.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/4817432.stm
(The U.S. will seek his extradition at the conclusion of that sentence.)
Al-Timimi would tend to speak at annual conferences held in London.
Marvin Miller, a lawyer for Chandia, says documents produced at trial evidenced he was under electronic surveillance. Ajmal Khan’s communications across the Atlantic were intercepted by the US National Security Agency and while in the US he was under surveillance pursuant to FISA.
Mohammed Ajmal Khan also was linked during a terrorist trial to Timimi’s acquaintance, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24-year-old who grew up in Falls Church, who was found guilty of terrorist offences in Virginia. The charges against Ahmed Omar Abu Ali also include providing material support to al Qaeda, contributing services to al Qaeda and receiving funds from al Qaeda. Abu Ali was a resident of Falls Church who received training in weapons, explosives, and document forgery from al Qaeda while in Saudi Arabia. When police searched Abu Ali’s home, they found tapes in Arabic promoting jihad and the killing of Jews, materials praising the 9/11 attacks and condemning U.S. military action in Afghanistan, and a book written by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri advocating the violent destruction of democracy. The operations planned by Abu Ali and his co-conspirators included a plot to assassinate President Bush using either multiple snipers or a suicide bomb, as well as a plot to conduct 9/11-style attacks with planes flying from other countries to the United States. Abu Ali faces up to life in prison for his crimes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43940-2005Feb22.html?nav=rss_politics
http://useu.usmission.gov/Article.asp?ID=4E315E3C-9635-4515-A171-7B72FB665AD0
Given the Falls Church [USA]-Leeds [UK] connection, the question arises:
did the fellow working near Ken Alibek and the former USAMRIID head [Ali Timimi], who had a high security clearance for his mathematics support work for the Navy in bioinformatics, know the Leeds biochemist who was expert in functionalized polymers, an assistant professor at Leeds, who provided the 7/7 bombers with the keys to the flat?
Al-Nashar was at UNC at Raleigh in the Spring of 2000.
The biochemist who provided the keys to the bombmaking flat was represented by an attorney who has been arrested in late March and is being held incommunicado. By the name Mamdouh Ismail. Egyptian authorities allege he has served as Ayman Zawahiri’s chief conduit to jihadists in Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq. The intermediary was AQ’s spymaster who wrote a treatise on intelligence that included a fairly lengthy discussion of the Amerithrax investigation.
Mohammed Junaid Babar, a jihadi turned informant from Queens, has explained that the 7/7 bombmaking flat provided by the biochemist, was also used to store and ship things to al-Hadi, Ayman Zawahiri’s chief aide.
Babar testified in the 2006 trial against the London bombers. He is cooperating and by reason of cooperation of the Brits on this issue with the US, will be available to testify in an Amerithrax prosecution. He studied pharmacy at St. John’s University in New York but dropped out and left for Pakistan sometime after 9/11.
To make it even sweeter, al-Hadi has now been captured and is being held incommunicado, after eventually having been moved to Guantanamo. It was al-Hadi, Ayman’s chief aide, who was calling the shots on 7/7.
So basically, the CIA and FBI have long kicked ass in Amerithrax but just couldn’t share. And we wouldn’t have wanted them to if it led to such successes as al-Hadi’s capture etc.
The media is in the job of reporting news, not speculation (or even for the most part, analysis) and so they are not to blame for not reporting any of this.
Here is a Wikipedia entry of the lawyer for the biochemist (formerly from UNC ) who is expert on functionalized polymers (encapsulation). (For a discussion of encapsulation, see Katie Crockett’s lucid PhD thesis at GMU supervised by Ken Alibek (with an assist from Bill Patrick) discussing the method of weaponizing the anthrax.
So while TrebleRebel was right to point to the importance of AFIP’s detection of silica to the true crime analysis, and the tantalizing fact that it then reportedly (by some) could not be seen, Dr. Alibek’s student now has quite lucidly explained why the spores might have been encapsulated using silica in the growth medium. This is actually, in part, why the CIA and FBI have worked so furiously on isotope ratio analysis relating to growth media.
Ed’s explanation, while an earnest and good faith effort, can be filed in the circular file now that we have the more current and authoritative summary from Katie (who got input from Ken and Bill P).
But thank you both, TrebleRebel and Ed for continuing to focus on this important issue of the technical forensics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamdouh_Ismail
Greetings everyone,
Just checking in before I have to go back to work. Very, very busy these days. Just one or two posts that I am going to address.
The first post actually I guess is in response to admin’s concern over the technological content on the blog. While I don’t believe it wise to be having that conversation in such an open forum, the first amendment allows you to do it unless you discuss classified information. I won’t go through and tell people what is correct and what is incorrect (when I am able to distinguish between them) simply because of the terrorism issue. Misinformation is a powerful ally that I won’t alienate.
With regards to Dr. Crockett, she is an excellent Biodefense expert with awesome mentors. I’m very happy to call her colleague and I very much respect her knowledge and opinions. I would not discard any theories to try and explain the different observations regarding the anthrax formulation as they are all just theories. No one except the attacker knows for sure how things were done and therefore which technique was effective. We haven’t been allowed to do the required testing (to support theory) in the USA since the end of the offensive component of our BW program in 1969.
One scientist who used to consult with Ali Al-Timimi ( the GMU scientist man working with Bin Laden’s sheik) thinks he was in Rm. 154B at GMU’s Discovery Hall, in the middle of that suite — rather than 154A. Former USAMRIID head and Ames strain anthrax researcher Charles Bailey, in Rm 156B, was given a Gateway desktop computer in mid-March 2001 (upon his arrival) — serial number 0227315480 . Like the one Dr. Alibek later would get in 156D. One way to think of proximity analysis — a form of true crime analysis — is the number of feet or inches between 154B and 156B/156D. Another way is to think of it is in terms of the number of feet or inches to the hard drives. Judging by the floor plan which I’ve linked (and any particular area can be enlarged as big as you like), the distance between the offices, as the crow flies, was 1 inch/ 1 foot... or adjacent, depending on your point of view.
That's not true.
It may be a "theory" that the attack spores had a sophisticated silica coating. However, when you have expert eyewitness testimony and solid facts which show that the attack spores did not have a coating, that is not an alternative "theory".
Facts and expert testimony are not the same as "theory."
And when facts show the "theory" about a sophisticated coating to be total unscientific nonsense, and that it's just a screwball conspiracy theory, it's doubly wrong to suggest that such a disproven theory is as equally valid as what solid facts indicate.
No offense intended.
Misinformation is a powerful ally that I won’t alienate.
Misinformation is used to promote all sorts of conspiracy theories. Allowing such idiotic theories to continue and to gain new converts every day does no one any good.
Misinformation should be identified and debunked whenever possible. We can't assume that ignorance is what is best for Americans or anyone.
Hey Ed,
No insult received...everything is fine. I respectfully have alternative viewpoints to yours.
1. I would not agree with you that the truth about one potential technological process to create improvised biological weapons should be delivered in a public format and therefore available to terrorists who would be likely to repeat that process. That would be irresponsible and potentially legally “complicatory” which is why I refuse to address technological issues on this blog. As far as conspiracy theories go, I wasn’t addressing them at all or promoting one view over another. My point is merely to say that if I see something on line that describes a process to create a weapon that can hurt people and that I know that process to not be of value, I am not going to correct it for the sake of “truth to the public”. I would hope that IF a terrorist was going to attack the people and couldn’t be stopped, that he or she would use such misinformation to develop his/her weapon. If people want to argue about conspiracy theories, that’s their right but I won’t engage in such discussions for the aforementioned reasons.
2. As an experienced scientist myself, I see your perspective when you are attempting to educate me as to the difference between theory and fact and will agree with you that there is a difference between the two. I will also provide the following though for your consideration. “Facts” are only as strong as the evidence upon which they are based and the people interpreting that evidence. A very, very important skill every scientist must develop is to analyze the methodology and results before agreeing or disagreeing with the conclusions. Quite well known scientists have had their conclusions “debunked” due to problems in their methodology...happens all of the time. One very public piece of information is that there was a very small amount of powder recovered for examination which means the sample size for the study was very small and subject to high degree of error and arguement. It’s like trying to draw conclusions on the lifestyles of the people of the world by only examing a couple of cultures. Sorry, I am not going to continue discussing the forensic conclusions or methodologies for the aforementioned security concerns.
Wish you the best, Ed. I’m very happy all of you are so dedicated to the investigation (we need to find the killer/killers) but I do just ask you to please keep in mind the security issues involved before you hit the “post” button. What you discover is important and hopefully the respective authorities are appreciative as you turn your information over to them.
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