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."

[muawiyah]

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the Union. There are tens of millions of people within 100 miles of New Jersey! There are numerous Arabs and Pakistanis in New Jersey and nearby areas, but the Detroit metro area has many more. Northern Virginia also has a great number of Arabs and Pakistanis. Although false IDs and money laundering took place in Northern Virginia there are as yet no reports that the anthrax attack was generated there. Note that the greater number of anthrax targets were located within 15 miles of one of the greatest concentration of Arabs and Pakistanies on the East Coast (Fairfax County, VA).

Florida is also heavily populated but the density is nowhere near that of New Jersey, nor are there numerous Saudi Arabians in the Palm Beach area.

That some aspect of this event would incidentally include New Jersey is not unlikely. That any aspect would include Boca Raton is exceedingly unlikely as an incidental matter.

I can go down the street about 1/4 mile and stop into any one of 5 halal butcher shops. They have give-away newsletters concerning the various Islamic communities in the US. Some of these newsletters come from New Jersey. Some are from Detroit. Others are locally generated. A terrorist would have ample resources to use to concoct fake return addresses in New Jersey.

So far not a single person who has been detained in New Jersey has been demonstrated to have any real relationship to the anthrax attack. There were people detained. There were thorough searches of homes and businesses. Cars were examined in great detail. The lifestyles and relationships of hundreds of people were looked at with a fine-toothed comb. Mailboxes were ripped out of the ground and studied.

On the other hand we now have a confirmation that at least one of the Florida based attackers was diagnosed as having an anthrax-like infection, and he was treated. Two others in Florida sought medications for what could be cutaneous anthrax. One of the victims in Florida was married to a woman who was known to two of the attackers.

The evidence points to Florida, and to people in Florida who had relationships with some people in New Jersey, Virginia and South Carolina. The logical conclusion is the anthrax attack was mounted from Florida by terrorists residing in Florida. An accurate understanding of normal postal operations illuminates the process.

[bvw]

Jersey City -- that's where the first WTC bombers hung out. A newstand in the Newark NJ train station -- a station that serves both the trains going into Times Square and the the PATH trains running into Jersey City and the WTC. That's where one of the 9/11 martyrs worked.

New Jersey's not just an incidental coincidence of a place in this.

[muawiyah]

Not saying that's not meaningful, but the killing started in Florida.

[Mitchell]

This leads to an interesting question, which I'll get to in a minute.

Where I would take issue with you is that I do not believe that there are warring factions within the government trying to get control over public perceptions,

I agree with you on this.

and competing with each other to get their spin out. IMO, everything is coming from the top. I cannot imagine Bush tolerating infighting on a matter of this gravity.

I'm not suggesting infighting. It's just hard to keep information under wraps when a lot of people know it. Things come out in conversation; even a hint is all that's needed to give a good reporter a lead.

Also, the Johns Hopkins group is not part of the Bush administration and may feel no particular compunctions about revealing information; that would be quite different from a White House leak.

I also believe that, if you watch very carefully, all official actions and statements fit into a coordinated plan.

As I said early on in this conversation, this may have been leaked officially, as part of the ramp-up of public opinion against Saddam Hussein, and also to keep the Rosenberg theory from becoming established as "something everybody knows is probably true."

Since that plan involves a certain degree of misdirection and secrecy, and probably some outright lying, it has sometimes been undercut by indpendent journalistic inquiry.

But, in this case, how would a reporter have gotten started without a new lead? I can't think of any existing public information that would have served as a lead.

Here's the interesting question I mentioned: How did the FBI dig this up in October? Dr. Tsonas says that he didn't remember the incident until it was pointed out to him. I really wonder what lead let the FBI (or any investigator) discover this incident at all.

However, most "connected," elite media journalists got to be that way by keeping their heads down, so the problem is limited. The misdirection has also carefully exploited built-in media biases, e.g. towards seeing camo-clad, Bible-thumping militiamen and venal defense contractors and rogue CIA men under every bed, to contain this problem, so far with considerable success.

This is true. The danger is that the "careful exploitation" may get turned around, becoming far too widely believed and outliving its usefulness. (This may have happened with the Oklahoma City bombing, and, if so, the government would now find it very difficult to extract itself from the lie.)

[freeperfromnj]

100% of the evidence concerning the movement of this mail points to Boca Raton as the point of origin.

FBI checks Rutgers copy machines

January, 16 2002 — 9:29 a.m.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — FBI agents examined Rutgers University photocopying machines last week, looking for links to four anthrax-tainted letters mailed from central New Jersey.

Two agents arrived Friday at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, a Rutgers affiliate in Piscataway, and asked protein biochemist Richard Ebright for the access code needed to operate the photocopiers.

"I asked whether it was related to the (anthrax) investigation," he said Tuesday. "The male investigator said, 'We can't leave any stones unturned so we're turning over stones,' or something to that effect."

The agents spent about 10 minutes at each Waksman Institute photocopier, making copies and slipping them into a portfolio or large envelope, Ebright said.

He said agents tested photocopiers in other buildings, but he did not know which ones or how many machines.

"It's obviously the geographic link," Ebright said. "The letters were mailed from this state, not more than 30 miles from this location."

Rutgers spokeswoman Sandra Lanman said Tuesday that it is "the university's policy is not to comment on investigations by outside agencies."

No anthrax research is conducted at Rutgers, Lanman said.

FBI spokeswoman Sherri Evanina would not comment Tuesday on the Rutgers visit or say whether similar tests were conducted elsewhere.

"Of course the investigation is ongoing into who sent the anthrax letters," Evanina said. "We're pursuing all possible leads."

Experts say photocopiers leave subtle clues on paper that can narrow the search for where copying was done.

At least four anthrax-laced letters passed through a Trenton-area mail facility. Two, addressed to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post, were postmarked Sept. 18. Two others were postmarked Oct. 9 and mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

[muawiyah]

Dr. Tsonas would have had to have written the prescription for the antibiotic given to the terrorist. Since the FBI already knew about the pharmacist who fielded the antibiotic inquiry from two of the terrorists, you can imagine all the prescriptions written in S. Florida for the last couple of months were examined thoroughly. Dr. Tsonas' name would have popped up.

Doctors typically don't remember their cases without reference to the records.

[Fred Mertz]

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.

[muawiyah]

Ebright, of course, is in error. It is known that a letter was mailed in Boca Raton. It left contamination in the letter drop at the main post office. It is presumed this one is the source of the anthrax that killed a man there and so thoroughly contaminated the building he worked in that it cannot yet be reopened.

My contention is ALL the letters were mailed there by the same individual(s).

My prior postings detail how this could have happened.

[freeperfromnj]

I know that they confirmed spores at the Boca post office so we can conclude that the AMI letter was probably mailed from Florida. The evidence for the other letters strongly indicates that they were mailed from New Jersey probably by by cells operating from Trenton or Jersey City.

[Mitchell]

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.

That's it -- thank you. The way the article was written, I had unthinkingly imagined them interviewing Tsonas about the diagnosis first and only then finding it among Alhaznawi's possessions. But it must have been the other way around.

[The sheer number of prescriptions for routine antibiotics in the S. Florida area in, say, the 6 months preceding the anthrax mailings must have been huge. Tsonas was interviewed in October. It's inconceivable that they went through all the prescriptions and the corresponding diagnoses in just a couple of weeks; it doesn't sound like a computer search would be of much help when the patient presents with a supposed bump from a suitcase. But your explanation makes sense.]

At this point, it's natural to ask if there were other cases of anthrax treated among the hijackers.

[muawiyah]

The letters were "postmarked" in New Jersey and spores were found in and around the machinery involved. No spores were found anywhere else in New Jersey. The only place we have any mail acceptance activity showing contamination is Florida.

Single piece rate First Class Mail could be mailed anywhere and still be "postmarked" in a different place. This is not unusual!

[The Great Satan]

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.

Yes, and the FBI arrested the accomplice on November 2 of last year only, as with this little tidbit about the hijacker having cutaneous anthrax, they haven't been exactly shouting it from the rooftops.

From the memory hole:

Anthrax Interrogations

Three Pakistani Men Face Questioning

ABC News, November 5, 2001.

Nov. 5 — Three Pakistani men faced questioning in the anthrax investigation today after being taken into custody near the contaminated postal facility in Hamilton Township, N.J.

One man, identified as Allah Rakah, was detained Friday. After FBI agents raided his residence, agents wearing protective gear searched the apartment, his car, which had Florida license plates, and a nearby mailbox.

A neighbor across the street said he called the FBI after seeing the man handling what the neighbor considered a suspicious plastic bag of letters.

"I noticed the gentleman late at night — maybe 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, — take a plastic bag, a clear plastic bag, with envelopes in it and placed it softly in the car, on the passenger side of the car, and locked it," the neighbor said.

The other two men were taken into custody earlier last week in an FBI raid at another nearby apartment building.

The manager of the building said FBI agents asked the men for handwriting samples and a neighbor said she saw the two men being taken out of an apartment where four other men of Middle Eastern descent lived. The two detained men were being held on immigration charges. Anthrax-laced letters mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office on Capitol Hill, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in New York and the New York Post were processed at the Hamilton Township facility near Trenton, N.J.

All three of the handwritten notes inside were dated "09-11-01," the date of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and contained the message: "DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT."

Hundreds of FBI investigators and postal inspectors continue to canvas the Trenton area in a search for clues they hope will lead them to the perpetrators of the bioterror attacks.

Anybody seen Allah Rakah lately?

[freeperfromnj]

Yours is an interesting theory which could be possible for the first 2 letters postmarked in September. Weren't the Daschle and Leahy letters mailed and postmarked a few weeks later in October?

[muawiyah]

The letters postmarked later could very well have been mailed at the same time as all the others.

[freeperfromnj]

This is a very long article so I'm only going to post the first couple of paragraphs. I don't know how to post the link. This article implies that it has already been established that the letters were indeed sent from NJ

Anthrax probe narrows to N.J.

By MARTIN MERZER, SETH BORENSTEIN and TOM AVRIL Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Investigators have found the mailbox used by the person who sent two anthrax-tainted letters, federal officials said yesterday. A source said the FBI is hunting several suspects, including a Pakistani who overstayed his visa.

"The FBI has been able to identify the site where the letters were mailed," said Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security. Asked specifically if he meant post office or mailbox, he said: "Mailbox."

He would not discuss the location of the mailbox, but postal inspectors said "multiple mailboxes" had been identified and removed west of Trenton, N.J. Most of the attention focused on Ewing, a town of 35,700 people about six miles northwest of Trenton.

Ridge also confirmed that all three samples of anthrax recovered so far in Florida, New York and Washington are identical and appear to have "come from the same batch." "The tests to date have concluded that the strains are indistinguishable," he said. Nevertheless, the anthrax "may have been distributed to different individuals to infect and to send into different communities."

The female New Jersey mail carrier who developed skin anthrax served 570 addresses - mostly private homes but also some apartment buildings - in Ewing, according to Tony Esposito, a postal inspector. She did not pick up mail from public boxes, co-workers said.

Two anthrax-laden letters - one sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, the other to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle - were postmarked at a regional mail center that serves the Ewing-Trenton area.

A second postal employee at that regional center, a 35-year-old man, has developed skin anthrax on his neck, health and postal officials said yesterday. In New York City, the same disease was contracted by an employee of The New York Post, the newspaper announced.

In all, eight cases have been confirmed in New York, New Jersey and Florida, and five media companies have been struck by anthrax. A South Florida man died; the others are being treated.

At the White House, spokeswoman Claire Buchan confirmed that a single mailbox had been identified by authorities. "That is a lead that is being strongly pursued," she said.

According to a U.S. law enforcement official who has been briefed on the case, the FBI is trying to track down a small number of people in connection with the anthrax that was mailed from the Trenton Main Post Office in Hamilton Township.

One of them, said the official, who requested anonymity, is the Pakistani national who has disappeared.

[muawiyah]

I believe that article is several months old. At the time they thought they were going to find a local private mailbox into which someone had placed anthrax laden letters.

This did not happen.

[muawiyah]

"Anthrax; Fear and Cases Rise New York Post Employee, Third New Jersey Postal Worker Test Positive Oct. 20 — Authorities in New Jersey have pinpointed the mail sorting box from which anthrax-laced letters were sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. "

This was news on ABC 5 months ago. The "box" was a misnomer for sortation bin on a piece of letter sorting equipment inside the post office.

Lack of knowledge of how the post office really works has been the bane of the FBI and Tom Ridge!

[ConservativeLawyer]

BTTT