“In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local Muslims: Timimi was running ‘an Islamic group known as the Dar al-Arqam’ that had ‘conducted military-style training,’ FBI special agent John Wyman would later write in an affidavit.

Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips. Searching the Internet, they found a speech by Timimi celebrating the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, according to the affidavit. The agents also found that Timimi was in contact with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi whose anti-Western speeches in the early 1990s had helped inspire bin Laden.
The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.

On a frigid day in February 2003, the FBI searched Timimi’s brick townhouse on Meadow Field Court, a cul-de-sac near Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Among the items they were seeking, according to court testimony: material on weapons of mass destruction.”
Al-Timimi had rock star status in Salafist circles and lectured in July 2001 (in Toronto) and August 2001 (in London) on the coming “end of times” and signs of the coming day of judgment. He spoke alongside officials of a charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Another speaker was Ali’s mentor, Bilal Philips, one of the 173 listed as unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators. Bilal Philips worked in the early 1990s to recruit US servicemen according to testimony in that trial and interviews in which Dr. Philips explained the Saudi-funded program. According to Al-Timimi’s attorney, Ali “was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis.” The NSA was intercepting communications by Fall 2001 without a warrant.

At the same time the FBI was searching the townhouse of PhD candidate Ali Timimi, searches and arrests moved forward elsewhere. In Moscow, Idaho, FBI agents interviewed Nabil Albaloushi. (The FBI apparently searched his apartment at the same time they searched the apartment of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen, who they had woken from bed at 4:00 a.m.) Albaloushi was a PhD candidate expert in drying foodstuffs. His thesis in 2003 was 350 pages filled with charts of drying coefficients. Interceptions showed a very close link between IANA’s Sami al-Hussayen and Sheikh al-Hawali, to include the setting up of websites, the providing of vehicles for extended communication, and telephone contact with intermediaries of Sheikh al-Hawali. Al-Hussayen had al-Hawali’s phone number upon the search of his belongings upon his arrest. Former Washington State University animal geneticist and nutrition researcher Ismail Diab, who had moved to Syracuse to work for an IANA-spin-off, also was charged in Syracuse and released as a material witness to a financial investigation of the IANA affiliate “Help The Needy.” After the government failed to ask Dr. Diab any questions for nearly 3 months, the magistrate bail restrictions and removed the electronic monitoring and curfew requirements.

In Moscow, Idaho, the activities by IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen that drew scrutiny involved these same two radical sheiks. U.S. officials say the two sheiks influenced al Qaeda’s belief that Muslims should wage holy war against the U.S. until it ceases to support Israel and withdraws from the Middle East. Sami Hussayen, who was acquitted, made numerous calls and wrote many e-mails to the two clerics, sometimes giving advice to them about running Arabic-language websites on which they espoused their anti-Western views.

According to witness testimony in the prosecution of the Virginia Paintball Defendants, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” The FBI first contacted Timimi shortly after 9/11. He met with FBI agents 7 or 8 times in the months leading up to his arrest. Al-Timimi is a US citizen born in Washington DC. His house was searched, his passport taken and his telephone monitored. Ali Al Timimi defended his PhD thesis in computational biology shortly after his indictment for recruiting young men to fight the US in defending against an invasion of Afghanistan.

Communications between Al-Timimi with dissident Saudi sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends and mentors of Bin Laden, were intercepted. The two radical sheiks had been imprisoned from September 1994 to June 1999. Al-Hawali’s detention was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War against the United States and the claim of responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings. He had been Al-Timimi’s religious mentor at University.

ABC reported in July 2004 that FBI Director Mueller had imposed an October 1, 2004 deadline for a case that would stand up in court. The date passed with no anthrax indictment. Al-Timimi was not indicted for anthrax. He was indicted for sedition. Upon his indictment, on September 23, 2004, al-Timimi explained he had been offered a plea bargain of 14 years, but he declined. He quoted Sayyid Qutb. He said he remembered “reading his books and loving his teaching” as a child, and that Qutb’s teaching was prevented from signing something that was false by “the finger that bears witness.” He noted that he and his lawyers asked that authorities hold off the indictment until he had received his PhD, but said that unfortunately they did not wait. On October 6, 2004, the webmaster of the azzam.com website Babar Ahmad was indicted. It was not until 2007 that the North Brunswick, NJ imam who mirrored the azzam.com website was indicted (on the grounds of income tax evasion).

The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”), the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched the townhouse of “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.” Famed head of the former Russian bioweaponeering program Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see Al-Timimi in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department, and was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner. When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link Al-Timimi to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va. In the end, he was indicted for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. During deliberations, he reportedly was very calm, reading Genome Technology and other scientific journals. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 70 years.

At his sentencing, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke in clear and measured tones:

“I will not admit guilt nor seek the Court’s mercy. I do this not out of any disrespect to the Court. I do this simply because I am innocent.

My claim of innocence is not because of any inherent misunderstanding on my part as to the nature of the crimes for which I was convicted nor is it because my Muslim belief recognizes sharia rather than secular law. It is merely because I am innocent.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I declare the government’s recitation poor as it stripped those words of their meaning.
***

Imprisonment of any term, as this Court well knows, is a crisis for the incarcerated and his or her loved ones. I am no exception to that.

But the real crisis brought on my imprisonment, I sincerely believe is America’s. For if my conviction is to stand, it would mean that two hundred and thirty years of America’s tradition of protecting the individual from the tyrannies and whims of the sovereign will have come to an end. And that which is exploited today to persecute a single member of a minority will most assuredly come back to haunt the majority tomorrow.”

KSM invoked George Washington in his statement to a military tribunal in March 2007. That was far less compelling because he was admitting to many serious crimes. The evidence presented at Al-Timimi’s trial, however, was offered only to show that Dr. Al-Timimi was guilty of nothing other than exhorting some young men to go abroad and defend their faith. It seems that, under the government’s case, his only crime was to put his religion before his nation-state. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years. As one Washington Post reporter said of such cases, the government seemed to be engaged in shadow boxing.

As Al-Timimi explained in his eloquent statement upon sentencing, he was convicted out of fear.

The former head of the DARPA Biological Countermeasures Program, Dr. Stephen S. Morse, in an interview airing on Charlie Rose on October 10, 2001, explained that there was no need for the public to fear. He noted that maybe the mailer had a personal reason — there was no reason to assume the Florida death related to terrorism or a large group. Dr. Morse urged that we put it into perspective and inform the public so as to remove the mystery. He explained we should not allow ourselves to feel fear. As reiterated in other interviews that week, he said mailed anthrax was not a great danger. As those words aired, however, more letters were en route from that mailbox at 10 Nassau St. in Princeton. The anthrax mailer asked a pointed question in the letter containing a much more highly refined product — product that aerosolized much more readily. The new batch of letters asked: “Are you afraid?”

The answer was clearly yes. To use the technical Army expression with such a biohazard, it had “major pucker factor.” After the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology detected silica, former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, identified as a scientist at Advanced Biosystems Inc. at George Mason University, declined to comment on the purpose of the silica. He told one reporter:  ”I don’t think I want to give people — terrorists — any information to help them.”

Dr. Timimi’s attorney was understandably annoyed that they kept moving Al-Timimi between prisons and did not let him consult privately with his client. George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley, his counsel on appeal, explained that last year they were playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?”, preventing him from consulting with his client. Now we know where he is but the ongoing proceeding is shrouded in great secrecy while they litigate the issue of the Administration’s alleged illegal wiretapping.

“All you are saying is that, if I do not look at what you look at, read what you read and believe as you believe, then I must be wrong.”

Ed is not interested in the report or the email, he says, even though he relies on the expert named by Bruce as making the powder that matched the anthrax. He is not interested in how authorities eliminated the other three reported as suspects between March 2008 and August 2008. Hundreds of other named experts are on record saying, in contrast, that they want to see how the FBI excluded others with access to RMR 1029 or see probative evidence relating to Dr. Ivins. Ed’s confusion stems from him thinking genetics somehow limited things to Ivins — his mistaken assumption that more 4 morphs were probative in winnowing the field.

I think you’re just acting as a stenographer for the propaganda campaign, Ed. It’s fairly obvious – every time the FBI has changed it’s story over the past eight years, you’ve also altered your web site to reflect those changes – i.e., you boosted the Steven Hatfill story, and now you’re parroting the FBI claims on the use of silica compounds to aerosolize the spores.

Scientifically speaking, those arguments do not hold water – so why do you keep repeating them?

You thought he conspired with a New Jersey scientist that he in fact never knew and you thought that some unidentified First Grader wrote the letters.

You dismissed the FBI’s rejection of your theory on December 21, 2001 — the headline was to the effect that the suggestion was “baloney” — by saying that the FBI was not at liberty to admit that the file was actually open. They had to pretend it was closed, you said.

Now you dismiss as “conspiracy theorists” when folks experienced in microbiology and prosecution (including US Senators) say that the evidence presented by the FBI in no way shows Ivins was responsible for the mailings.

You were wrong in being close-minded for 7 years, Ed, and you are wrong now not to be interested in questions such as who had access to virulent Ames from RMR-1029 and how they were excluded. You are also wrong in thinking the FBI has ever said that they were going to explain how they were excluded.

All the NAS review will accomplish is confirm science not in substantial dispute — that there was a stream of isolates with the same genetic profile as the attack anthrax.

Obama’s Cairo security angers some Muslims
The Hill

In other news preceding Obama’s visit, the grand mufti of Egpyt, Ali Gomaa, issued an unprecedented fatwa Sunday against the use of nuclear or biological weapons, decreeing that “it is not permissible for Muslim countries to use weapons of mass destruction … but they can possess them only as a deterrent against possible attacks.”

I had previously quoted the FBI WMD Chief’s statement.
It was exactly as I quoted.
He says it could have been in the culture medium.
You nowhere address who among researchers using Ames used silica in the culture medium and why.

Given that a leading anthrax expert and the former USAMRIID deputy Commander did — and they shared a fax and maildrop with the man coordinating with the 911 imam — the FBI WMD’s Chief comment deserves close attention. Indeed, Ali Al-Timimi had a letter hand-delivered in the name of Bin Laden’s sheik on the First Anniversary of the letters to the Senators threatening dire consequences if Iraq was invaded.

The government has reason, as former FBI Counterterrorism Chief Ben Furman wrote me, to keep information from the public. He says the public will only ever know the tip of the iceberg and that is the way it should be. (I would agree as a general matter except that there are other indications that the US DOJ has been politicized as it was during this period.) He agrees Amerithrax is a “mess.” You, in contrast, think that Amerithrax has remained open for the past year while FOIA information officers got out their magic markers!

He seems to agree that the ONLY way to show that someone could make a powder with the same properties as the mailed spores, that shows the same data as the Hart building EPA studies (ie. re-aersolization of single spores) is for NAS to actually do the experiment and prove it.

Not doing so would be similar to the FBI’s junk science lead in bullets analysis – ie. ““It (lead in bullets) hadn’t been based on science at all, but rather had been based on subjective belief for over four decades.”

Most scientists agree that the most important role NAS will play will be to use the scientific method to prove the FBI’s subjective belief that Ivins had the equipment at his disposal to do it:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/18554

“The only opinions that I would place any confidence in would have to come from individuals who have made the stuff, in the same quantity of the letters,” said infectious disease specialist W. Russell Byrne. “And then I would ask them to go into B3 in building 1425, work there for a couple of weeks and reproduce what they say Bruce did. That’s the only way I could, in good conscience and in the spirit of objective scientific inquiry, believe them.”

You are making up your own facts. You are pretending that this study used raw dried spores. Ho and Duncan very carefully did not reveal how they made the simulant they used.

Private correspondance reveals this:

“Another observation is that Beecher has demonstrated little aerosol experience before or after publication of this paper. Yet, in the discussion, much speculation was given to particle size distributions for anthrax spore preparations. In some statements, he clearly could not distinguish the significance of number versus mass particle size distributions. He probably never handled spore powders in a weighing balance. If he did, he would have understood the difference between raw dried spores as compared to prepared material designed for aerosol dissemination.“

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/03/al-qaeda-eyes-bio-attack-via-mexico-border/?feat=home_top5_read&page=2

EXCLUSIVE: Al Qaeda eyes bio attack from Mexico

By Sara A. Carter June 3, 2009

EXCLUSIVE:

U.S. counterterrorism officials have authenticated a video by an al Qaeda recruiter threatening to smuggle a biological weapon into the United States via tunnels under the Mexico border, the latest sign of the terrorist group’s determination to stage another mass-casualty attack on the U.S. homeland.

The video aired earlier this year as a recruitment tool makes clear that al Qaeda is looking to exploit weaknesses in U.S. border security and also is willing to ally itself with white militia groups or other anti-government entities interested in carrying out an attack inside the United States, according to counterterrorism officials interviewed by The Washington Times.

The officials, who spoke only on the condition they not be named because of the sensitive nature of their work, stressed that there is no credible information that al Qaeda has acquired the capabilities to carry out a mass biological attack although its members have clearly sought the expertise.

The video first aired by the Arabic news network Al Jazeera in February and later posted to several Web sites shows Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling a room full of supporters in Bahrain that al Qaeda is casing the U.S. border with Mexico to assess how to send terrorists and weapons into the U.S.

“Four pounds of anthrax — in a suitcase this big — carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there,” the recruiter said. “What a horrifying idea; 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration.”

In the video, obtained and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, al-Nafisi also suggests that al Qaeda might want to collaborate with members of native U.S. white supremacist militias who hate the federal government.

Sean Smith, a spokesman for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the U.S. takes such threats seriously.

“We can never stop being vigilant while there are individuals who seek to do harm on the American people,” he said. “We continue to step up our efforts with additional personnel and better technology along the northern and southern borders and continue to strengthen our sea, land and air ports of entry.”

A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said al-Nafisi is a “person of interest” and a veteran recruiter for al Qaeda. Misidentified on some blog sites as a professor, he is a Kuwaiti dissident and al Qaeda associate who is thought to have communicated with senior al Qaeda leaders in recent years, the counterterrorism official said. The recruiter is also said to have close ties to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the senior Afghan Taliban leader now thought to be in Pakistan.

Al-Nafisi “is a significant ideological player in terrorist circles, and that makes him dangerous because he can inspire his followers to do extremely bad things,” the official said.

Drug Enforcement Administration and Defense Department officials have been paying close attention to links between various terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, and drug cartels in South America, Central America and Mexico.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that terrorist organizations would utilize the border to enter the U.S.,” said a DEA official who also asked not to be named because of his involvement in ongoing intelligence operations. “We can’t ignore any threat or detail when it comes to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations bent on attacking the U.S.”

The Times first reported in March that Hezbollah — an Iran-backed group based in Lebanon — is using routes that Mexican drug lords control to smuggle contraband and people into the United States to finance operations.

While Hezbollah appears to view the U.S. primarily as a cash cow to finance its operations elsewhere, “it should not be viewed lightly, as the money raised can be used against the U.S. or assets in future operations,” another counterterrorism official said.

No confirmed attacks in the U.S. have been linked to Hezbollah.

In the video, al-Nafisi emphasized that al Qaeda had chemical laboratories in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion. He described his admiration for Hezbollah and said that al Qaeda continues to have scientists and resources at its disposal.

“The Americans are afraid that the [weapons of mass destruction] might fall into the hands of ‘terrorist’ organizations like al Qaeda and others,” he told followers. “There is good reason for the Americans’ fears. … [Al Qaeda] had laboratories in north Afghanistan. They have scientists, chemists and nuclear physicists. They are nothing like they are portrayed by these mercenary journalists – backward Bedouins living in caves. No, no, by no means. This kind of talk can fool only naive people. People who follow such things know that al Qaeda has laboratories, just like Hezbollah.”

Intelligence officials said the video provides important insights into al Qaeda recruitment methods and views of the West.

In the 10-minute clip, al-Nafisi suggested that al Qaeda might want to make common cause with what he claimed are “300,000″ members of white supremacist and other militias in the U.S.

“These militias even think about bombing nuclear plants within the U.S.,” he said. “May God grant them success, even though we are not white, or even close to it, right? They have plans to bomb the nuclear plant at Lake Michigan. This plant is very important. … May God grant success to one of these militia leaders, who is thinking about bombing this plant. I believe that we should devote part of our prayers to him.”