You mean like Little Miss Muffett?
(I couldn't find a picture of her sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower).
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 ...
You mean like Little Miss Muffett?
(I couldn't find a picture of her sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower).
Note that the spider in your picture is a Brown Recluse Spider.
One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax and not a bite of a Brown Recluse Spider, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. It was his souvenir from Kandahar where virulent anthrax was later found.
“No one is dismissing this,” said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda’s Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States and most famous for terrorizing little Miss Muffet).
Dr. Tara O’Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins concluded it was anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, now director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: “The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he’s not an addict and doesn’t have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious.” The FBI says no anthrax was found where the hijackers were. (The FBI tested the crash sites where the planes came down and found no traces of anthrax). Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that “In 2001, likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cutaneous anthrax.” Wait a minute - did the 911 Commission really conclude that? Wow!
At the time, CBS reported that “U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthrax.” But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that “Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said.” Only years later did we learn that there was in fact extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. (Though some senior officials at the CIA and FBI knew this in Autumn 2003 and just didn’t tell Ed that was why they called off the conspicuous Hatfill surveillance). Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the John Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated.
What's your source for this information? Is it hearsay or is it documented somewhere?
errata -
Zac, concerning your “Wow!” comment about the 911 Commission Report. The reason you were surprised is because it was a typo. You meant to type something like:
finding by the 911 Commission that: “In 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.” But you are right that now that we know Kandahar is where the extremely virulent anthrax was located, it makes it more likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cutaneous anthrax.
It brings me back to the days, years ago, that TrebleRebel and I shared Badabing’s email account to participate on Niman’s email group. (Niman couldn’t understand why we kept saying contradictory things). :0) So we kept being banned for opposite reasons.”
Ed, can you add these recent articles on your anthraxinvestigation page on the subject of whether AQ had weaponized anthrax? Thanks.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09102007/news/worldnews/gitmo_prisoners_are_losing_hop.htm
GITMO PRISONERS ARE LOSING HOPE
AP
September 10, 2007 — SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After years of indefinite confinement, many detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they feel they may never receive justice, according to transcripts of hearings obtained by The Associated Press.
***
Sometimes the allegations alarmed even the panels of military officers charged with determining whether a detainee should be freed.
Rahmatullah Sangaryar stood accused of “planning biological and poison attacks on United States and coalition forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan,” and of possessing anthrax powder and a liquid poison.
The Afghan detainee said he was captured only with muddy clothes, possessed no anthrax and never planned such an attack. The officer in charge of the panel seemed to grope for a response.
“Do you know of anyone who would accuse you of such an act? This is so serious,” the unidentified officer exclaimed. “I am trying to understand why it is here in front of me, this allegation against you.”
***
Confiscation of Anthrax Questionable after Arrest of Taliban Spokesman
By David Press, January 19, 2007
On January 17, 2007, the Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that Afghanistan authorities had arrested a “high-profile” Taliban spokesman during a house raid in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, 50 miles from the Pakistan border.[1] During the arrest, packets of a powder suspected to be anthrax were confiscated from the spokesman.
The article states that Afghanistan officials have not yet declared how identification of the anthrax was made from the powders or how much of the bioagent was confiscated during the arrest.
According to a BBC report, Nangarhar Governor Gul Aghar Sherzai stated that the Taliban men, “planned to send the substance in envelopes addressed to government officials. The envelopes would explode when opened.”[2]
According to another BBC report, alleged Taliban spokesman Quri Mohammad Yosef has downplayed the arrest of Dr. Hanif, and has questioned the validity of the governor’s anthrax claims. Yosef stated that, “Dr. Hanif was not an important member of the Taliban movement. His arrest will have no negative effect on our reporting.”[3] Furthermore, he adds, “The remarks on seizure of anthrax from Dr. Mohammad Hanif are also false. The governor is making these remarks to prove that he is a criminal.”[3]
References
1 Taliban spokesman caught “with anthrax”: Afghan governor. The Nation. January 17, 2007. Available at http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=30024384 ; Accessed January 19, 2007.
2 Afghan governor provides details on Taleban spokesman’s arrest. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). January 17, 2007. Accessed January 19, 2007.
3 Afghan Taleban appoint new spokesman. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). January 17, 2007. Accessed January 19, 2007.
Sorry. As I've told you MANY times, my web site is about the anthrax attacks of 2001. It's not about al Qaeda or their quest for weapons of mass destruction.
The latest information related to the anthrax attacks of 2001 is that two of the DOJ employees who were confidential informants for the media have come forward, getting Newsweek off the hook in the Hatfill v FBI et al lawsuit. CBS, USA TODAY and The Washington Post are trying to get confidentiality wavers from their sources. Plus, Brian Ross of ABC has apparently been ordered by a different judge in a different case to name his confidential sources.
Additional source identifications may also result from the September 7, 2007 Order of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Hellerstein, J.), which ordered Brian Ross of ABC News to disclose his sources, for substantially the same reasons as this Court ordered the other five reporters to do so.
Does anyone know what that is about? I don't see any news articles about it, and the only lawsuit I find involving Brian Ross and anyone named Hellerstein is Ross et al v. 1 World Trade Center, L.L.C. et al. which is being presided over by Judge Alvin Hellerstein. The docket says there has been no activity on that case since it was filed on October 20, 2006.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDQ/is_2001_Oct_22/ai_80338940
Did the Kabul military commander that the USG Gitmo prosecutors allege had anthrax have any connection to this lab?
Anthrax in Kabul Red Cross lab left by foreign staff
Asian Political News, Oct 22, 2001
PARIS, Oct. 14 Kyodo
Foreign staff have abandoned a laboratory of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization in Kabul where anthrax bacilli were cultivated, a French weekly paper reported Sunday.
The Journal du Dimanche said foreign staff withdrew from Afghanistan on Sept. 16 and that the French intelligence service is concerned that terrorists might try to convert the bacilli into a biological weapon.
The bacilli kept at the laboratory were intended for use in making anthrax vaccines for domestic animals, the paper said.
ICRC spokesman Kim Gordon-Bates said that the bacilli used by scientists at the lab are not infectious and it is difficult to produce a deadly virus from the bacilli.
Fears of bioterrorism by anthrax are widening in the United States, where nine people have tested positive for anthrax exposure and one of them has died.
Were the fingerprints of the Kabul military commander who allegedly had anthrax found on these Bioport documents in Kabul? Who were these two Pakistani scientists arrested in November 2001? What page had stars across the top?
“BioPort-Related Documents Found In Kabul
Al-Qaida Had Interest In Company’s Product
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/1095626/detail.html
POSTED: 4:56 pm EST November 28, 2001
UPDATED: 1:37 am EST November 29, 2001
Authorities said that documents referring to anthrax vaccine-maker Bioport Inc. were found in the possession of the al-Qaida in Kabul, Afghanistan, Local 4 reported Wednesday
Two Pakistani scientists were arrested in Kabul and had the documents in their possession, according to Local 4.
The documents came from the U.S. Department of Defense...
The document contained highlighted items and stars were scribbled across the top of one page.”
Ed, can you post this article (which you’ve omitted) on the anthrax attacks?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,,591931,00.html
Bin Laden denies anthrax attacks
Rory McCarthy in Islamabad
Monday November 12, 2001
The Guardian
A Pakistani newspaper editor who met Osama bin Laden for a rare interview said yesterday that America’s most wanted man denied he was behind the anthrax letter attacks which have shaken the US.
Western intelligence officials will be poring over every word that Hamid Mir has written since his two-hour meeting with Bin Laden on Thursday at a secret location inside Afghanistan. It was the first interview the Saudi dissident has given since the World Trade Centre bombings and appears to hold precious clues about his current hideout.
Mr Mir said he asked Bin Laden if his al-Qaida network was involved in the letter attacks in America, which have claimed four lives. “He laughed and said: ‘We don’t know anything about it,’” Mr Mir wrote in his Daily Ausaf newspaper yesterday.
US investigators have been baffled by the anthrax attacks, which targeted media groups in New York and Florida and forced the closure of several government offices in Washington. Although it was at first suggested that Bin Laden or even Iraq might be responsible for the anthrax-laced letters, attention now appears to be turning to a US source.
Bin Laden was reported yesterday to have made a separate statement in which he gives the first open admission that his network carried out the September 11 attacks. A videotape said to have been circulating for two weeks among al-Qaida supporters shows him giving his account of the attacks in which he refers to the Twin Towers as “legitimate targets” and the suicide hijackers as “blessed by Allah to destroy America’s economic and military landmarks”.
The tape will form the focus of a batch of new evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt to be unveiled this week.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, Bin Laden is unashamed about killing civilians. “If avenging the killing of our people is terrorism then history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents.”
He also issued direct threats against President George Bush and Tony Blair. “Bush and Blair don’t understand anything but the power of force. Every time they kill us, we kill them, so the balance of terror can be achieved.”
Mr Mir’s encounter with the world’s most wanted man took place early last week when the Pakistani editor, who is known to have close links with Bin Laden and has interviewed him twice before, was invited to Kabul for a clandestine meeting. He was picked up in the city on Wednesday night by Arab fighters, blindfolded, wrapped in a blanket and driven in the back of a jeep along rough roads for five hours.
When his blindfold was removed early on Thursday morning Mr Mir found himself in a dark room. The temperature was low, suggesting he was high in the mountains. Minutes later Bin Laden arrived with his deputy, Ayman el-Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian jihad. Both carried Kalashnikov rifles. They stared blankly at the camera as they posed for photographs.
“The floor of the room showed that this was a mud house arranged temporarily for the interview,” Mr Mir wrote in his Urdu-language newspaper yesterday. “On regular intervals one could hear anti-aircraft guns, so it was not difficult to guess that it was close to the frontline. Osama bin Laden looked confident, healthy and fresh.”
Mr Mir said the Saudi appeared undaunted by the military campaign. “He told me five times that ‘maybe this place will be bombed now and both of us will be killed,’ and ‘I’m not scared of death,’” he said.
Bin Laden also promised to fight on even if major Afghan cities fell. “We will move to the mountains. We will continue our guerrilla warfare against the Americans,” he told Mr Mir.
In his first accounts of the meeting, the Pakistani editor described how Bin Laden had claimed he possessed nuclear and chemical weapons and might use them against the US. “We have the weapons as deterrent,” he quoted Bin Laden as saying.
Yesterday he said Bin Laden refused to say where he obtained the weapons but said he suspected US forces were using chemical weapons. “Bodies of mojahedin found from a site in Kabul had all turned black,” he told Mr Mir.
The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, said he doubted that Bin Laden had the ability to produce nuclear bombs, though he conceded that al-Qaida was probably in possession of nuclear materials.
US officials believe Bin Laden may have had more success in developing chemical weapons. One site at Derunta, near the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, is thought to have been a chemical weapons research laboratory. Yesterday the New York Times said that al-Qaida may have produced cyanide gas at Derunta in small quantities.
US intelligence officials are also concerned about a fertilizer plant in Mazar-i-Sharif, which had been run by al-Qaida and the Taliban until the Northern Alliance captured the area on Friday.
Equipment at the site could be used to make biological or chemical weapons, the paper said. Another site in Kabul which made anthrax vaccine and was used by the Taliban was also a worry for intelligence analysts because of the equipment it contained. None of the sites has been bombed.
Ed, here is an article by the Economist, Bill Gates’ favorite magazine, on the subject of the anthrax attacks and findings upon the fall of Kabul. As you’ll recall, when the Washington Post last summarized the status of Amerithrax, the WP reported that the FBI posited that when this guy from Gitmo, the Kabul military commander, pointed to a storage facility in Kabul where there was anthrax, the FBI posited that the anthrax had been weaponized in the US and brought there. Clearly, this military commander captured upon the Fall of Kabul, who agreed to turn over the weapons etc. and who stood accused of having possessed anthrax, was in the thick of things. And, according to the WP’s description of the Amerithrax investigation, you are clueless to omit all these articles while including dozens of articles about anthrax from African drums, shield laws, biological weapons convention etc. You even failed to link Mueller’s video when he said to think 9/11, think Oklahoma City.
In The House of Anthrax: Chilling evidence in the ruins of Kabul
http://www.aijac.org.au/updates/Nov-01/291101.html
Economist, Nov. 22, 2001
AMERICAN officials increasingly believe the anthrax attacks since September 11th were not carried out by people connected to al-Qaeda, but may have been the work of a lone American madman. To avert future attacks, though, perhaps they should look harder.
They might start, for example, in a nondescript house in the wealthiest district of Kabul, where a Pakistani NGO called Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) once had its offices. UTN’s president is Bashiruddin Mahmood, one of Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientists and a specialist in plutonium technology. Last month Mr Mahmood was arrested by the Pakistani authorities and interrogated on his links to the Taliban, with whom he has had frequent contact for, he insists, humanitarian reasons. Mr Mahmood was released again soon afterwards. The Taliban has denied any “abnormal” links between Mr Mahmood and Mr bin Laden, and he himself says he has never met the man.
In public, UTN helped Afghans with flourmills, school textbooks and road-upgrading schemes. But its offices suggest that this may have been a cover for something far more sinister. According to their neighbours, the Pakistanis who lived and worked there fled Kabul along with the Taliban, but the evidence they left behind suggests that they were working on a plan to build an anthrax bomb.
An upstairs room of the house had been used as a workshop. What appeared to be a Russian rocket had been disassembled, and a canister labelled “helium” had been left on the worktop. On the floor were multiple copies of documents about anthrax downloaded from the Internet, and details about the American army’s vaccination plans for its troops. The number of copies suggests that seminars were also taking place there.
One of the downloaded documents featured a small picture of the former American defence secretary, William Cohen, holding a five-pound bag of sugar. It noted that he was doing this “to show the amount of the biological weapon anthrax that could destroy half the population of Washington, DC.”
On the floor was a small bag of white powder, which this correspondent decided not to inspect. It may have contained nothing more deadly than icing sugar, but that could be useful for experiments in how to scatter powder containing anthrax spores from a great height over a city, or to show students how to do this. The living room contained two boxes of gas masks and filters.
On a desk was a cassette box labelled “Jihad”, with the name of Osama bin Laden hand-written along the spine. Most chilling of all, however, were the mass of calculations and drawings in felt pen that filled up a white board of the sort used in classrooms. There were several designs for a long thin balloon, something like a weather balloon, with lines and arrows indicating a suggested height of 10km (33,000 feet). There was also a sketch of a jet fighter flying towards the balloon alongside the words: “Your days are limited! Bang.” This, like the documents, was written in English.
Since UTN was run by one of Pakistan’s top scientists, a man with close links to the Taliban and, it is said, close ideological affinities with Mr bin Laden, the circumstantial evidence points to only one conclusion. Whoever fled this house when the Taliban fell was working on a plan to build a helium-powered balloon bomb carrying anthrax. Whether it was detonated with a timer or shot down by a fighter, the result would have been the same: the showering of deadly airborne anthrax spores over an area as wide as half of New York city or Washington, DC.
After the September 11th attacks, it was generally agreed that western intelligence agencies had failed through lack of “human intelligence”—men on the ground, as opposed to spy satellites and computers monitoring phone calls and e-mails. This failure was to be rectified. Yet since the fall of Kabul on November 13th, journalists have been fanning out across the city. They have stripped houses such as this one, and others directly connected to the al-Qaeda network, of all sorts of documents and other valuable evidence. These have included the names and addresses of al-Qaeda contacts in the West. For the West’s intelligence agencies, September 11th was Black Tuesday. There may be no words with which to describe their failure in the week since the fall of Kabul.
You naughty boys!
Okay. That one definitely pertains to the anthrax attacks, and it's definitely one I missed. I've just added it my site.
Thanks.
Okay, I've added that one, too. There's nothing new in the story that they found evidence that al Qaeda was "working on a plan to build an anthrax bomb," but it's worthwhile to show that another Right Wing media outlet like the Economist felt that investigators should look harder at al Qaeda.
Right and Left Wingers both seem to believe that if you do not find what they believe to be true, then you just aren't looking hard enough. However, it takes a total idiot to believe that American authorities weren't looking as hard as possible at every aspect of what al Qaeda was doing or planning to do.
The Washington Post has said that the FBI Amerithrax Task Force has posited that, when a Gitmo detainee (this Kabul military commander) told them that there was a storage of anthrax in Kabul, that it was made in the US and transported there. (Which is consistent with the travel of many operatives there during this timeframe).
For you not to include the story about what the USG has charged the Gitmo detainee with (possession of anthrax) renders you and your readers unable to “connect the dots” — and understand the Washington Post’s summary of the Amerithrax matter. For starters, you miss the identity and position of the person the Amerithrax Task Force was getting its information from. You also miss the allegation that the detainee has been charged with possession of weaponized anthrax.
Which leaves your analysis throwing a gutter ball.
U.S. Spy Chief: 9/11 ‘Could Have Been Prevented’
Director of National Intelligence Says U.S. Didn’t Connect Available Information
http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3621517&page=1
Given the stark difference between Cheney’s view of the anthrax attacks [see Hayes, CHENEY (2007), at 356-359] and Ed’s views, Ed should err on the side of including the recent national AP story alluding to the accusation that the Kabul military commander had weaponized anthrax for use against US targets in Fall 2001, upon the Fall of Kabul.
He should also include the article about the Taliban information minister being captured with anthrax packets for mailing to government officials (according to the longtime Afghan governor) so that the claim can be confirmed or debunked.
There simply is no reason not to do so.
Blinders are only useful in bowling — not true crime analysis or intelligence analysis.
There is a good quote by Rice from Summer 2006, I believe, to Hayes about how Cheney spearheaded the government’s response on the issue of the terrorist threat, especially anthrax. Hayes draws attention to his PBS interview with Lehrer.
I tend to agree with the postal workers on Amerithrax — and overlook their heartless (but honored in the breach) “no office supplies” policy. The Postal Magazine in the past has editorialized that AQ supporters were responsible. Here is an outside comment today to the same effect.
“Anthrax Letters Still Being Sorted 6 Years Later,” PostalMag, September 19, 2007
http://www.postalmag.com/anthrax-6-years-later.htm
Ed, here’s an interview of Ken for your page that is interesting.
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/newjournal/Interviews/displayInterview2.asp?interview=2
HOMELAND DEFENSE: OK. Let’s say I’m an Usama bin Laden–type individual. I have millions of dollars. Can I produce a high-quality “Ken Alibek–caliber” dry powdered anthrax?
KEN ALIBEK: In many cases it’s not likely. Of course, if you get hundreds of thousands of dollars and if you have a person who knows how to do this, you could make a highly effective biological weapon. But if you have a person with millions of dollars but has no idea how to do this, or someone with a bachelor’s degree in biology even, it’s not going to help. You need to have somebody with either practical knowledge or somebody with the right type of mind to do this. Unfortunately, this information is available now.
We just don’t understand that if your objective is to develop an effective biological weapon and to deploy it with an aerosol, all this information is available. It is a matter of time and effort in gathering this information. In many cases, it’s not necessarily the information that counts. It’s a matter of knowledge in microbiology and aerosol science and knowing how to build a more effective aerosol device. If you’ve got the money, and you’ve got the managerial skills to find the right people, the rest is just a matter of time.
KEN ALIBEK: No. In my time among the military we had several discussions. And they considered biological weapons to be the weapons of choice. Biological weapons would do something very important. For example, in a military conflict somewhere in the mountains, it’s very difficult to use conventional weapons. Even tactical nuclear weapons would not have a significant effect. But chemical weapons and especially biological weapons, could be used in the mountains very easily.
***
HOMELAND DEFENSE: So the information is still in your head if you wanted to do this? If you wanted to go set up an offensive production capability, you could do it?
KEN ALIBEK: I have no such intentions.
HOMELAND DEFENSE: But the point is, you probably have that information. If terrorists get the right technical data, they can reduce their timetable, for example, shrinking it from three years to three months.
KEN ALIBEK: That is correct. But I don’t like it when someone says I can do this. I know I can do this, but I know I will never do this.
HOMELAND DEFENSE: Well, we’re very glad that you’re on our side now … On a different subject, is the U.S. government doing the right things now to protect the country?
KEN ALIBEK: For me, this is a most painful topic. In my opinion, we are making such a huge number of mistakes, each step we take. I’m not saying everything is wrong. We’ve done a lot of things right. We admitted there was a problem. We admitted we were not prepared. We started talking about what we need to do. But then, to quote a Russian expression, “If you want to destroy something, make it enormous.” That’s what we’ve done, with more than 30 agencies and departments, everybody considers their department a major player.
The key to proving the case to a moral certainty perhaps has always been the inverted plasmid, and that aspect of the genetic findings, and not the method of weaponization as such.
THE PROBLEM OF INFILTRATION
OPERATION WOODWIND: Annapolis, MD, in June 2001
As described by Dr. Peter Turnbull’s Conference report for SFAM on “the First European Dangerous Pathogens Conference” (held in Winchester) , at the September 1999 conference, the lecture theater only averaged about 75 at peak times by his head count. There had been a problem of defining “dangerous pathogen” and a “disappointing representation from important institutions in the world of hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms.” Papers included a summary of plague in Madagascar and another on the outbreak management of haemorrhagic fevers. Dr Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University presented a paper on multilocus VNTR typing, for example, of Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis. There were more than the usual no-show presenters and fill-in speakers. In his report, Dr. Turnbull looked forward to a second, fully international conference in 2000 focused on the ever increasing problems surrounding hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms and aimed at international agreement on the related issues.
The Sunday at the start of the Organization of the Dangerous Pathogens meeting in September 2000 was gloomy. Planning had proved even more difficult than the International Conference on anthrax also held at the University of Plymouth, in September 1998. The overseas delegates included a sizable contingent from Russia. The organizers needed to address many thorny issues regarding who could attend. One of the scientists in attendance was Rauf Ahmad. The Washington Post reports: “The tall, thin and bespectacled scientist held a doctorate in microbiology but specialized in food production, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case.” Les Baillie the head of the biodefense technologies group at Porton Down ran the scientific program. Many of the delegates took an evening cruise round Plymouth harbour — the cold kept most from staying out on the deck. Later attendees visited the National Marine Aquarium — with a reception in view of a large tankful of sharks. Addresses include presentations on plagues of antiquity, showing how dangerous infectious diseases had a profound that they changed the course of history. Titles include “Magna pestilencia - Black Breath, Black Rats, Black Death”, “From Flanders to Glanders,” as well as talks on influenza, typhoid and cholera. The conference was co-sponsored by DERA, the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.
Les Baillie of Porton Down gave a presentation titled, “Bacillus anthracis: a bug with attitude! ” He argued that anthrax was a likely pathogen to be used by terrorists. As described at the time by Phil Hanna of University of Michigan Medical School on the sfam webpage, Baillie “presented a comprehensive overview of this model pathogen, describing its unique biology and specialized molecular mechanisms for pathogenesis and high virulence. He went on to describe modern approaches to exploit new bioinformatics for the development of potential medical counter measures to this deadly pathogen.” Bioinformatics was the field that Ali Al-Timimi, who had a security clearance for some government work and who had done work for the Navy, would enter by 2000 at George Mason University in Virginia.
Despite the cold and the sharks, amidst all the camaraderie and bonhomie no one suspected that despite the best efforts, a predator was on board — on a coldly calculated mission to obtain a pathogenic anthrax strain. The conference organizer Peter Turnbull had received funding from the British defense ministry but not from public health authorities, who thought anthrax too obscure to warrant the funding. By 2001, sponsorship of the conference was assumed by USAMRIID.
According to the Pakistan press, a scientist named Rauf Ahmad was picked up in October 2001 by the CIA in Karachi. The most recent of the correspondence reportedly dates back to the summer and fall of 1999. Even if Rauf Ahmad cooperated with the CIA, he apparently could only confirm the depth of Zawahiri’s interest in weaponizing anthrax and provided no “smoking gun” concerning the identity of those responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall 2001. His only connection with SFAM was a member of the society — he was not an employee. The Pakistan ISI, according to the Washington Post article in October 2006, stopped cooperating in regard to Rauf Ahmad in 2003.
The ship would sail again in June 2001. This time the good ship anthrax sailed in Annapolis, Maryland, the “sailing capital of the world.” The 74-foot classic wooden schooner was named WOODWIND. Martin Hugh-Jones had convened the conference along with Peter Turnbull, the Porton Down scientist who had led the UK conferences attended by Ayman Zawahiri’s scientist, Rauf Ahmad. Reports of livestock and national park outbreaks were followed by a summary by Dr. Turnbull. Other anthrax notables who spoke included Dr. Ezzell, who had one of the first looks at the Daschle product, and Dr. Paul Keim, who would play a key role in the genetic investigation. Other talks focused on cell structure and function such as the S-layer, exosporium, and germination. Theresa Koehler from the Houston Medical School gave a talk titled “The Expanding B. anthracis Toolbox” while Timothy Read from The Institute of Genome Research summarized research on The B. Anthracis Genome. Houston Medical School, the UK’s biodefense facility Porton Down, and Pasteur Institute each fielded three presenters. UK scientists presented on the characteristics of the exosporium of “the highly virulent Ames strain.” Researchers from the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, in association with a scientist from Columbus, Ohio, and assisted in the research by Porton Down scientists, demonstrated that inoculated mice survived a challenge with b.anthracis spores. Researchers used b.anthracis vaccine containing a plasmid with a mutated lethal factor. The mice were “immunized via gene gun inoculation with eucaryotic expression plasmids encoding either the protective antigen (PA), a mutated form of lethal factor (LF) or a combination of the two.” Dr. Phil Hanna from University of Michigan was there and presented, as he had been in the UK at the conference attending with Rauf Ahmad.
A Kazakhstan Ministry of Health scientist presented on the re-emergence of anthrax in Kazakhstan , which brings to mind that upon the break-up of the Soviet Union the first job offer Ken Alibek fielded as the Minister of Health in Kazakhstan. He protested when he realized that his new employer’s job description was “you know the job,” and he realized that they just wanted to do what the Soviets had been secretly doing in illegal and massive bioweapons program. After the KGB asked to meet with him, he asked to schedule the meeting in two weeks, so that he might visit his parents, and then found a secret expedited way of coming to the United States.
Pakistan Rauf Ahmad was the predator looking for the Ames strain and consulting on weaponization techniques at the UK conference. Did the Amerithrax perp attend this conference or work on any of the research presented? Ali Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy. Why? When? What did his work involve? The Daschle product used an Ames strain with an inverted plasmid — a combination of two cultures. Possibly just a natural mutation but possibly highly probative. Did Ali participate in the research by the Navy Medical Research Institute demonstrating that mice injected with the DNA vaccine with the mutated lethal factors survived? What strain was used in challenging the mice?
At the time, the original requestor of anthrax strains for vaccine research by USAMRIID, Dr. Gregory Knudson, worked at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute at the National Naval Medical Center. His work involved vaccine studies involving mice. In the Fall of 2001, he apparently faxed the letter from his file showing the mailing label used to ship the Ames strain. (The sender is evidenced by the fax line on the mailing label that I obtained from an ISU professor who receive the fax from the Naval Medical Center in Fall 2001). Thus, if genomics expert Al-Timimi was helping with the genomics involved in using the mutated plasmid for the Navy, he may have had access to the Ames strain there.
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