Report Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated

New York Times ^ | 3/23/02 | WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON

[kattracks]

he two men identified themselves as pilots when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had an ugly, dark lesion on his leg that he said he developed after bumping into a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Christos Tsonas thought the injury was curious, but he cleaned it, prescribed an antibiotic for infection and sent the men away with hardly another thought.

But after Sept. 11, when federal investigators found the medicine among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at a new diagnosis. The lesion, he said in an interview this week, "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax."

Dr. Tsonas's assertion, first made to the F.B.I. in October but never disclosed, has added another layer of mystery to the investigation of last fall's deadly anthrax attacks, which has yet to focus on a specific suspect.

The possibility of a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax-laced letters has been explored by officials since the first anthrax cases emerged in October. But a recent memorandum, prepared by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, and circulated among top government officials, has renewed a debate about the evidence.

The group, which interviewed Dr. Tsonas, concluded that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax, which causes skin lesions, was "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available." The memorandum added, "Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks."

A senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, had recently read the Hopkins memorandum and that the issue has been examined by both the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"No one is dismissing this," the official said. "We received the memo and are working with the bureau to insure that it continues to be pursued."

In their public comments, federal officials have said they are focusing largely on the possibility that the anthrax attacks were the work of a domestic perpetrator. They have hunted for suspects among scientists and others who work at laboratories that handle germs.

The disclosure about Mr. Alhaznawi, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, sheds light on another front in the investigation. Senior law enforcement officials said that in addition to interviewing Dr. Tsonas in October and again in November, they thoroughly explored any connection between the hijackers and anthrax. They said the F.B.I. scoured the cars, apartments and personal effects of the hijackers for evidence of the germ, but found none.

Dr. Tsonas's comments add to a tantalizing array of circumstantial evidence. Some of the hijackers, including Mr. Alhaznawi, lived and attended flight school near American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., where the first victim of the anthrax attacks worked. Some of the hijackers also rented apartments from a real estate agent who was the wife of an editor of The Sun, a publication of American Media.

In addition, in October, a pharmacist in Delray Beach, Fla., said he had told the F.B.I. that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for something to treat irritations on Mr. Atta's hands.

If the hijackers did have anthrax, they would probably have needed an accomplice to mail the tainted letters, bioterrorism experts knowledgeable about the case said. The four recovered anthrax letters were postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in Trenton. It is also possible, experts added, that if the hijackers had come into contact with anthrax, it was entirely separate from the supply used by the letter sender.

For his part, Dr. Tsonas said he believed that the hijackers probably did have anthrax.

"What were they doing looking at crop-dusters?" he asked, echoing experts' fears that the hijackers may have wanted to spread lethal germs. "There are too many coincidences."

In recent interviews, Dr. Tsonas, an emergency room doctor, said Mr. Alhaznawi came into the hospital one evening in June 2001, along with a man who federal investigators believe was another hijacker, Ziad al-Jarrah, believed to have taken over the controls of United Flight 93.

They used their own names, he added, not aliases.

"They were well-dressed foreigners," he said. "I assumed they were tourists."

The men explained that Mr. Alhaznawi had developed the ulcer after hitting his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Tsonas recalled that Mr. Alhaznawi appeared to be in good health, and that he denied having an illness like diabetes that might predispose him to such lesions. The wound, he recalled, was a little less than an inch wide and blackish, its edges raised and red.

Dr. Tsonas said he removed the dry scab over the wound, cleansed it and prescribed Keflex, an antibiotic that is widely used to combat bacterial infections but is not specifically recommended for anthrax.

The encounter lasted perhaps 10 minutes, Dr. Tsonas said.

He took no cultures and had no thoughts of anthrax, a disease at that time was extremely rare in the United States and was unfamiliar even to most doctors.

In October, amid news reports about the first anthrax victims, Dr. Tsonas, like other doctors, threw himself into learning more about the disease. An incentive was that his hospital is relatively near American Media, so victims there might come to Holy Cross for treatment.

Dr. Tsonas said he forgot entirely about the two men until federal agents in October showed him pictures of Mr. Alhaznawi and Mr. Jarrah, and he made positive identifications.

Then, agents gave Dr. Tsonas a copy of his own notes from the emergency room visit and he read them. "I said, `Oh, my God, my written description is consistent with cutaneous anthrax,' " Dr. Tsonas recalled. "I was surprised."

He discussed the disease and its symptoms with the agents, explaining what else could possibly explain the leg wound. A spider bite was unlikely, he said. As for the hijacker's explanation — a suitcase bump — he also judged that unlikely.

"That's a little unusual for a healthy guy, but not impossible," he said.

After his meetings with F.B.I., Dr. Tsonas was contacted early this year by a senior federal medical expert, who asked him detailed questions about the tentative diagnosis.

Last month, experts at Johns Hopkins also called Dr. Tsonas, saying they, too, were studying the evidence. The Hopkins analysis was done by Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Tara O'Toole, director of the center in Baltimore and an assistant secretary for health and safety at the federal Energy Department from 1993 to 1997.

In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that after consulting with additional medical experts on the Alhaznawi case, she was "more persuaded than ever" that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was correct.

She said the Florida mystery, as well as the entire anthrax inquiry, might benefit from a wider vetting.

"This is a unique investigation that has many highly technical aspects," she said. "There's legitimate concern that the F.B.I. may not have access to the kinds of expertise that could be essential in putting all these pieces together."

John E. Collingwood, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the possibility of a connection between the hijackers and the anthrax attacks had been deeply explored.

"This was fully investigated and widely vetted among multiple agencies several months ago," Mr. Collingwood said. "Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been. While we always welcome new information, nothing new has in fact developed."

[Capt. Tom]

The man wanted to stay alive until Sept. 11. What was he supposed to do? Kick the bucket and miss his moment of glory??

Good point but their must be muslim doctors who could assist them and keep quiet. Muslims are not obligated to help infidels out. Nor would a muslim want to risk getting his family or themselvces killled for bringing attention to the hijackers.

They must have available muslim medical support here. Why go to the enemy for help? -Tom

[muawiyah]

The letters were probably mailed September 8, before the attack!

See my other comments in other threads in the FR Anthrax section for an explanation of how this all worked.

[The Great Satan]

I disagree. The operational decoy spin before the "rogue scientist"-Barbara Nutbag theory was the "rightwing militia" theory, which was injected into the public arena by Bob Woodward. Woodward is the quintessential insider, viz his recent WP series on Bush's War on Terror, or his Gulf War book, The Commanders. If he was used to put out that red herring, knowingly or unknowingly, then clearly the administration does not care if it has to pander to lefties' wish-fulfillment fantasies to keep up the stall. Hey, whatever works! Besides, they'll get egg on their faces in the end. Actually, it all sounds very much like the George W. Bush we have come to know -- remember his strategic lovefest with Teddy Kennedy a few weeks back? The overwhelming issue was and is how to manage the anthrax threat without putting the economy in a tailspin -- everything else is small potatoes.

[aristeides]

Certainly there is such a thing as anthrax antitoxin. It is produced in the normal way antitoxins are produced, by injecting an animal like a horse with the toxin in question. The method is currently used in China to produce anthrax antitoxin. This is precisely the same method the CDC uses to produce the botulin antitoxin that it has stockpiled.

Yes, some people can have a bad reaction to the antitoxin. They can get serum sickness. But that is better than certain or highly probable death.

Read Ken Alibek's Biohazard. He recounts one incident where one of his fellow workers was exposed to anthrax and appeared to be about to die (the anthrax was cutaneous, but it was on the man's neck, so that the swelling threatened to block his breathing.) As a last resort, the man was administered what Alibek calls "antiserum" (which I assume must be the antitoxin,) and that saved his life.

[muawiyah]

Everybody knows Woodward put out that story on a right-winger as a decoy for the fact that Planned Parenthood had just gotten caught preparing to send hundreds of thousands of fake anthrax threat letters as a fund-raising, fear-mongering exercise.

He didn't know squat about the anthrax attack then, and he still doesn't know anything about it.

The man is a shill for left-wing and abortion interests. Nothing more!

[The Great Satan]

White House senior adviser Karl Rove, who has known Bush since the early 1970s and is his closest political adviser, said the president has separated what he can control from what he can't control.

"I think 35 years from now when everything is coughed up to the public," Rove said in an interview, "I think the sense of fatalism will come across. This view, the sense that if there are more of them [terrorists] and they're coming after me, they're coming after me. And if they want to use X, if they want to use a biological agent in the White House, no matter how much everybody says . . . no matter what steps are taken, they might be able to do it.

"But there will never be the moment of agony. There will be no moment of 'Oh, God.' . . . There'll never be a moment of the shudder brought about by the lack of confidence. There's never a moment of doubt as to the course taken. There just won't be." From

Bush Awaits History's Judgment by Dan Balz and Bob Woodward,February 3, 200

A disclaimer accompanying this series of articles:

"This series is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and many other key officials inside the administration and out. The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken by several participants.

This account is inevitably incomplete. The president, the White House staff and senior Cabinet officers responded in detail to questions. Some matters they refused to discuss, citing national security and a desire to protect the confidentiality of internal deliberations."

[Nogbad]

Good point but their must be muslim doctors who could assist them and keep quiet.

Here we get into the realm of pure speculation.
How close were they to the indigenous Arab-Moslem community
(if much exists)
in Florida?

There could be good reason for staying away from US citizens of Arabic background,
who would be in a position to ask probing questions.

[denydenydeny]

See my link in post #37 in this thread.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[okie01]

Thanks for the ping.

I presume this morsel means we are preparing the ground toward, some 45-60 days from now, revealing Iraq as the source of the anthrax -- and the target of an imminent attack.

Sweat, Saddam. Sweat.

[duck soup]

DEFECTOR CLAIMS IRAQ-BIN LADEN TIES.

A high-ranking defector who served for 16 years in an Iraqi intelligence agency said on 2 November that the Baghdad regime has controlled and funded Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network since 1998. He was briefing members of the Iraq National Congress (INC) in London, according to Melbourne's "The Sunday Herald Sun" on 4 November.

He claimed that the funding for Al-Qaeda came from illegal oil exports channeled through Dubai in the Persian Gulf. An INC activist said "he has first-hand information about the link between Saddam and bin Laden because he also worked as a money-launderer and sanctions-buster for the Iraqi leader."

The defector's name was withheld for the sake of his personal security, but London-based sources say he has been living "in one of the Scandinavian countries."

An INC activist continued to say "this is the third time a reliable Iraqi informant has come forward with disclosures about how Iraq has been in control of Al-Qaeda for the last three years."

AFP reported on 3 November that "La Reppublica" of Italy had also reported on the defector's testimony before the INC. Here, the former officer is identified as "A.S." Among his claims is that Iraq had sent a ton of anthrax to bin Laden. He also said that members of bin Laden's terror network have been trained in Salman Pak in Iraq. (David Nissman)

[Nogbad]

Clinton soon will be gone. Satan will be around for a while.

[Capt. Tom]

There could be good reason for staying away from US citizens of Arabic background, who would be in a position to ask probing questions.

To me it would be more likely that an infidel would be more likely to expose them than a fellow Muslim,if they were diagnosed with anthrax.

As you said earlier, it is speculation.

I don't have faith in the present FBI who seem untrustworthy and inept. It will take years to get that organization back on track. - Tom

[freeperfromnj]

Here's an article from today's NJ Star Ledger. The NJ investigator seems to think it's a NJ connection rather than a lone nut theory. See highlighted portion of NJ Bureau investigator's comments. A couple of months ago the Feds were investigating photocopy machines at the Institute of Microbiology, which is part of Rutgers University, for possible matches to the xeroxed anthrax letters.

MD thinks terrorist had anthrax

Florida physician says he treated hijacker for lesion that researchers believe was skin form

Sunday, March 24, 2002

BY MARK MUELLER Star-Ledger Staff

A Florida doctor who treated one of the Sept. 11 hijackers for an unusual lesion last summer believes the man may have been infected with anthrax, a theory recently backed by a panel of bioterrorism experts.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, based in Baltimore, wrote in a memo to federal officials last month that cutaneous, or skin, anthrax was the most likely diagnosis for Ahmed Alhaznawi, said Tim Parsons, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins' school of public health.

The development, first reported yesterday in the New York Times, provides another intriguing, if strictly circumstantial, link between the hijackers and the anthrax-tainted letters that killed five people and sickened more than a dozen others last fall. At least four tainted letters passed through a Hamilton Township mail-processing facility.

The FBI has known of the doctor's conclusions since October, but exhaustive investigation has so far yielded no proof that the hijackers possessed the deadly bacteria, Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the bureau in Washington, said yesterday.

"We've looked at this issue and vetted it through multiple agencies, and we have no evidence to support that the hijackers had ever come into contact with anthrax," Bresson said. "It doesn't change anything."

While the FBI has reached no definitive conclusions, agency profilers have worked up a portrait of the anthrax killer as a "lone wolf" domestic scientist with access to a well-equipped laboratory and military-grade anthrax.

But the findings by the Florida physician, Christos Tsonas, gained new attention with the interest by the Johns Hopkins researchers, who interviewed Tsonas about his brief examination of Alhaznawi in the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.

Alhaznawi -- one of the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, the plane that took off in Newark and crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside -- arrived at the hospital in June with Ziad Jarrah, Flight 93's pilot. Both men, living in Florida at the time, would later take up residence in Paterson.

Alhaznawi told Tsonas he had bumped into a suitcase two months earlier, resulting in a dark lesion that remained on his leg. Tsonas treated the lesion -- slightly less than an inch wide, with red, raised edges -- by removing the scab and cleaning it, the Times reported. He then gave Alhaznawi a prescription for Keflex, a widely used antibiotic, and sent him away. While Tsonas considered the lesion odd in a young man with no history of diabetes, he told the Times he didn't think about the visit again until two FBI agents, bearing photos of Jarrah and Alhaznawi, came to see him in October.

Investigators had found the antibiotic among Alhaznawi's belongings, tracing it back to Tsonas.

By then, the anthrax attacks were in full bloom, the number of victims and public fear growing by the day.

Tsonas revisited his scant records of Alhaznawi's visit -- he had taken no cultures -- and decided the ulcerous mark was consistent with cutaneous anthrax, which leaves telltale lesions on its victims. Tsonas shared his theory with the FBI.

Months later, the doctors at the Johns Hopkins center backed Tsonas' view, sending to federal officials a memo calling anthrax infection "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available."

"Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks," the memo said.

Tsonas, in a statement, said yesterday he would have no further comment beyond what he told the Times. Calls to the Johns Hopkins doctors were not returned. A spokeswoman for the Fort Lauderdale hospital would say only that officials were cooperating with the FBI.

The theory that Alhaznawi contracted anthrax contributes to circumstantial evidence indicating some link between Sept. 11, the world's deadliest terrorist attack, and the anthrax mailings, the nation's first brush with modern bioterrorism.

Several of the hijackers, Alhaznawi among them, attended flight school near the Florida tabloid where the first anthrax victim, Robert Stephens, worked as a photo editor. The hijackers also lived in the area, some of them finding their apartments through a real estate agent who was married to the tabloid's editor.

Further suspicion was raised when a Delray Beach pharmacist told authorities Mohamed Atta, the terrorist plot's suspected ringleader, sought out medication to treat an angry rash on his hands. Atta also had been inquiring at local airports about crop-dusting.

While those actions present a tantalizing chain of clues, they don't add up to proof. They also don't explain who might have mailed the letters for the hijackers, who died a week before the first tainted notes were postmarked.

Bresson, the FBI spokesman, said yesterday that while the agency remains open to all ideas, investigators are leaning heavily toward a domestic suspect.

Kevin Donovan, the former chief of the FBI's New Jersey office, spoke more explicitly about that theory in an interview with The Star-Ledger two weeks ago, shortly after he had been promoted to the bureau's New York office.

Donovan called the likely suspect a U.S. resident with "significant scientific background."

The tainted letters, sent to Capitol Hill and to media organizations in New York, were postmarked Sept. 18 and Oct. 9. All had passed through the Hamilton mail-sorting facility, leading authorities to suspect the sender knows the area.

"I don't know if it's someone currently in New Jersey," Donovan said. "But we all believe it's someone with a familiarity with the Trenton area, who's been in and out of here, either through previous employment or currently."

[WhiteGuy]

Disinformation

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for that article!!!

[Nogbad]

ping

[Nogbad]

ping

[Nogbad]

ping