Posted on 03/26/2002 2:08:27 AM PST by snopercod
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:23 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Just when most people felt safe again wielding a letter opener, anthrax is suddenly back in the news.
Several recent reports offer worrying reminders that the attacks that left five Americans dead last fall are far from solved. Most troubling, they suggest that the FBI's theory that this anthrax was the work of a domestic loner may be off the mark; or, even if it isn't, the more relevant reality may be that Saddam or al Qaeda is planning to cook up another biological attack. Months later, about the only thing we still know for sure is that there is nothing elementary about the cases of Americans killed by anthrax.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I suspect that any honest managers quietly retired during the clinton (mal-)administration.
Yeah, what's up with that? I made a wrong guess, but in order to not appear stupid, I'm going to manipulate evidence and ignore facts to make myself look good. Didn't these anthrax letters to the politicos contain the phrase "Allah be praised" or Allah Akbar (whatever)? And reports came out waaaaaay back that Atta and al-Shehhi went to a pharmacist looking for treatment for Atta: horribly red/chapped hands (bleach overdose to kill anthrax?) and al-Shehhi: horribly severe flu-like symptoms. Circumstantial evidence abounds, yet the FBI is fixated on some home-grown lone anthraxer (no proof whatsoever).
Shhhh! Don't tell the feds, it will blow their cover story.
A="aaah"
WI="weee"
YAH="ya" or "ja" like in Deutschland!
Easy enough, eh?!
This guy discovered separation of Church and State in the Dark Ages, and also as head of a Moslem Empire. I think you'd like him.
This understates the connection. Marwan al-Shehhi, who accompanied al-Haznawi to the doctor when the latter apparently had cutaneous anthrax, was one of the people who rented an apartment from real estate agent Gloria Irish, married to Michael Irish, who worked in the anthrax-contaminated American Media building. See this CNN article. [I think I've misspelled al-Shehhi as al-Shehri in some recent posts.]
That's the apartment to focus on for the anthrax investigation. It's unit 260 at the Hamlet Country Club, 401 Greensward Lane, Delray Beach, FL.
She also handled the rental of unit 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club, 755 Dotterel Rd., to Hamza Alghamdi, another one of the hijackers. Investigators seem to have mistakenly turned their attention mostly to Alghamdi's apartment instead of al-Shehhi's. See this link. Both apartments are in Delray Beach.
FBI finds link to hijackers, SunSpeaking of Allah Rakah's arrest, here's that story, for the record:
MIAMI -- Confirming a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases, the FBI said late Sunday that The Sun tabloid editor's wife rented two Delray Beach, Fla., apartments to two hijackers killed in the Sept. 11 suicide missions.
The Sun is part of the American Media Inc. tabloid chain, and it employed photo editor Bob Stevens, who died earlier this month from inhalation anthrax. Two other AMI employees were exposed, and five more are being retested to confirm positive blood test results.
Sun editor Michael Irish's wife, Gloria, a real estate agent, rented unit 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club, 755 Dotterel Road, to Hamza Alghamdi; and unit 260 at the Hamlet Country Club, 401 Greensward Lane, to Marwan al-Shehhi this summer, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.
Al-Shehhi and Alghamdi were both aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second jet to strike the World Trade Center.
"There is now a link between the editor's wife and the terrorists," Orihuela said.
Just as quickly, she said the FBI wasn't drawing immediate conclusions.
"Right now it looks like a coincidence," Orihuela said from outside the tabloid's Boca Raton headquarters. "We are not searching the apartment at this time. We are focusing on this building."
In other developments, a police officer and two lab technicians involved in the NBC anthrax investigation have tested positive for the bacteria, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Sunday. Nevada officials said four people who might have come into contact with a contaminated letter at a Microsoft office tested negative, while results weren't known for two others.
In South Florida, the apartment connection marks the most direct link to date between the terrorist hijackers and the AMI anthrax cases. It was first reported in the Mail newspaper in Great Britain.
The Delray Racquet Club apartment in question is central to a massive federal investigation into the terrorist attacks. Investigators trying to piece the puzzle together created a diagram that includes photos of the 19 hijackers.
At the center of the diagram, which was obtained by The Herald: an image of a house with the address 755 Dotterel Road. Arrows connect nine of the hijackers to the icon.
Hamza Alghamdi rented the apartment in Delray Beach just north of Boca Raton, the FBI said. The other seven, including suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta, are connected because they visited the apartment or otherwise had a direct tie to the inhabitants, said a federal official familiar with the investigation.
Previously, only Saeed Alghamdi and another terrorist, Ahmed Alnami, both aboard United Flight 93, had been connected to the Delray Racquet Club apartment.
It is clear that the apartment was a meeting ground for terrorists, authorities say. Now they must determine whether unit 1504 was also a hatching ground for the anthrax attacks.
Gloria Irish, the wife of tabloid editor Michael Irish, was approached by reporters Sunday afternoon outside her Delray Beach home.
"I can't believe you people," said Irish, who works for the Pelican Properties real estate company. "We are not making any comments."
Irish told the FBI she had several conversations with al-Shehhi and Alghamdi when they came to her asking to rent two apartments, Orihuela said.
At the AMI building Sunday, a Palm Beach County special operations fire truck dropped off two hazardous materials containers as the investigation continued.
In addition to Stevens and the two other workers who were exposed to the bacteria, AMI general counsel Michael Kahane said, five people tested positive for anthrax antibodies, which indicates that at some point in their lives they were exposed. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the findings are preliminary and that more tests are necessary. Authorities said that none displayed symptoms, and all were being treated with antibiotics.
One AMI employee who asked not to be identified said three of the five work for the National Enquirer, which is another of the company's publications housed in the same building.
Other employees continue to be tested for the presence of anthrax bacteria and to be interviewed by the FBI.
"They asked where I sat in the building, how close I was to where Stevens worked, how often I dealt with the mailroom, if I knew of any employee who might have been a target, or of any animosities among employees," said National Enquirer reporter Kevin Lynch.
Anthrax Interrogations
Three Pakistani Men Face QuestioningSource: ABC News
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
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.
Anyway, here's what they say about Rakah (which they spell Rakha):
"After the agency announced a $1 million reward for useful information in that case - since raised to $1.25 million - Stan Kiszka, a 58-year-old brick mason in North Trenton, N.J., got to thinking about the Middle Eastern-looking man who lived down the street. More than six weeks after the attacks, he called 911.
"Right before the bombings, he had four guys visit him in a white car, a compact thing like a Neon or a Previa or something, and it had Florida tags," Kiszka says he told the dispatcher. "Then, right around the bombings, this guy disappears for a couple of days."
He added: "Before that, the afternoon of Sept. 7, I saw this guy carrying a small plastic sandwich bag with an envelope inside of it out to his car, place it real gently on the passenger seat like it was a baby or something, then look around, lock the car and go upstairs."
By 8:30 that morning, two Trenton city detectives were at Kiszka's front stoop. Ten minutes after they left, they called to tell him not to go to work yet, that the FBI wanted to hear his story. Two FBI agents soon showed up.
Neighbors say the two agents staked out the predominantly Polish block for the next four days. On Nov. 3, about 10 police officers and five federal agents surrounded a small apartment building up the block and presented a search warrant at the second-floor unit of Allah Rakha, a 43-year-old gas-station attendant from Pakistan. They searched and questioned Rakha and his brother, Ilyas Chaudhry, who have shared the $750 unit with two cousins for nearly six years.
A hazardous-materials crew took swabs of the apartment and its mailbox for anthrax testing. They confiscated some prescription cold medicine from the bathroom. And Rakha, who was in the process of getting his expired work visa renewed, was handcuffed and taken into Immigration and Naturalization Service detention at Hudson County Jail in Kearny, N.J.
By Nov. 6, an FBI spokeswoman said, the FBI had cleared Rakha of any connection to anthrax or Sept. 11, although he remains in jail pending an immigration hearing. Rakha couldn't be reached for comment.
Like I said, this isn't a reliable source. So is there any independent confirmation that Rakah (or Rakha) was officially cleared?
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