* In Sarasota investigation, who was the person associated with the hijackers’ flight school who was discovered to have re-entered the country after 9/11?
Posted by DXer on September 21, 2014
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
Bob Graham: Release redacted 9/11 documents
Bob Graham 12:39 p.m. EDT April 28, 2016
On April 11, CBS’s “60 Minutes” led with an important segment about the tragedy of 9/11 and how a 28-page chapter of the final report of a congressional investigation has been withheld from the American people for almost 13 years….
The forms of aggressive deceit have been multiple. A few are illustrative:
The 28 pages, which have been reported to disclose the sources of funding for the attack, have been under review for purposes of declassification for three years — three times the amount of time required for the congressional inquiry to research, analyze and issue an 838-page report.
The 28 pages are the most iconic, but not the only, evidence to be withheld from the report of the congressional inquiry. The report is pocked by hundreds of specific redactions.
Investigations at locales where the hijackers lived and plotted prior to the attacks also have been classified. One of those involves Mohamed Atta, the leader of the hijackers, and two of his henchmen who are alleged to have collaborated with a prominent Saudi family who lived in Sarasota for six years before abruptly departing for Saudi Arabia two weeks before 9/11.
The FBI publicly described its Sarasota investigation as complete and said it found no connection between the hijackers and the family. Later, responding to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, the FBI released an investigative report that said the family had “many connections” to individuals tied to the terrorist attacks. The FBI for two years has aggressively resisted releasing that report.
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2016/04/28/bob-graham-release-redacted-911-documents/83638852/
DXer said
A FOIA could be directed whether this document refers to Adnan El-Shukrijumah. If it does, it seems that there would no longer be grounds for the redactions. The exemptions invoked included b6, b7C, b7E.
DXer said
10 years after 9/11, suspected al Qaida figure still eludes FBI
By Alfonso Chardy, Juan O. Tamayo and Jay Weaver
McClatchy NewspapersSeptember 11, 2011
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“Scheuer, the former CIA analyst, said he’d “seen nothing to make me doubt” reports that Shukrijumah had used Mexican migrant smugglers and perhaps drug traffickers to sneak into the United States more than once since 9/11.”
DXer said
9/11 victims: Saudi Arabia’s backing of al-Qaida made attacks possible
BY DAN CHRISTENSENBROWARDBULLDOG.ORG
09/27/2014 8:55 PM 09/27/2014 9:33 PM
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article2278393.html#storylink=cpy
As defense attorneys tried again last week to get Saudi Arabia dropped from a massive federal lawsuit accusing it of complicity in the 9/11 attacks, lawyers for those who survived, and relatives of the dead, filed a sweeping new statement of the evidence they are marshaling for trial.
The 156-page pleading offers the court a fresh account of what’s become known about Saudi Arabia’s alleged ties to al-Qaida since it was initially dismissed from the lawsuit in 2005. An appeals court reinstated Saudi Arabia and its agency, the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SHC), as defendants late last year. …
The 9/11 victims don’t argue that Saudi Arabia had foreknowledge of the attacks. Rather, they contend the attacks were made possible by the Saudis’ “lavish sponsorship” of al-Qaida for “more than a decade leading up to September 11, 2001.”
The Saudis allegedly supplied that funding — as much as $35million a year — even though they knew “of al-Qaida’s intent to conduct terrorist attacks against the United States,” according to the pleading filed in federal court in Manhattan on Sept. 15.
In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s memorandum of law in support of its motion to dismiss the multi-billion dollar lawsuit opens with a blanket denial of wrongdoing.
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“Further undermining the Kingdom’s efforts to characterize the 9/11 Commission investigation as ‘exhaustive,’ recent disclosures make clear that both the 9/11 Commission and the 9/11 Joint Inquiry were deprived of critical information by the FBI,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
“For example, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought against the FBI by BrowardBulldog.org has revealed that the FBI never disclosed to the 9/11 Commission or the 9/11 Joint Inquiry the existence of a massive investigation into an apparent Saudi support network for the 9/11 hijackers in Florida.”
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BrowardBulldog.org, working with Irish journalist and author Anthony Summers, broke the story in September 2011. At the time, the FBI confirmed that it had investigated, but said no connection was found to the 9/11 plot.
Yet last year, seven months after the FOIA lawsuit was filed, the FBI made public records that say flatly the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” The records tie three of those individuals to Huffman Aviation — the Venice flight school where hijackers Atta and Shehhi trained — but the FBI blacked out their names and other details citing national security.
U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch in Fort Lauderdale is currently reviewing more than 80,000 pages of records turned over by the FBI in response to his order to decide what additional records can be made public.
The 9/11 victims, whose ranks include companies that suffered enormous property losses, are suing hundreds of other defendants — from Middle East banks and “purported” Islamic charities like the Muslim World League to the estates of the dead hijackers.
“Although representing themselves to the West as traditional charities or “humanitarian organizations,” these organizations are more accurately described as Islamic da’awa organizations, created by the government of the kingdom to propagate a radical strain of Islam throughout the world, commonly referred to as Wahhabism,” the 9/11 victims’ pleading says.
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Some of that developed evidence involves a terrorist support network in southern California whose members allegedly included suspected al-Qaida advance man Omar alBayoumi and two other Saudis, Fahad alThumairy and Osama Basnan.
The three are accused of aiding 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they entered the U.S. in January 2000 after attending an al-Qaida conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The support network “assisted them in settling in the United States and beginning preparations for the September 11th Attacks,” the pleading says.
The three are accused of aiding 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they entered the U.S. in January 2000 after attending an al-Qaida conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The support network “assisted them in settling in the United States and beginning preparations for the September 11th Attacks,” the pleading says.
Mihdhar and Hazmi were among the terrorists who flew a hijacked American Airlines jet into the Pentagon.
Bayoumi is described in the pleading as a Saudi intelligence agent. Bayoumi moved out of his San Diego apartment on June 23, 2001, telling his landlord he was leaving the country.
Basnan was an associate of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheikh who is serving a life sentence for his role in supporting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the pleading says.
DXer said
When Insiders Go Postal: Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s Paralegal
US Postal Employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar and His Connection To Anthrax Mailing Suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah, Son Of Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s Translator
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There were about 90,000 intercepted conversations from Sattar’s home phone made between March 1995 and March 2002, as part of a federal foreign intelligence investigation. Are Adnan El-Shukrijumah and his father, Gulshair, the Blind Sheik’s translator, on some of the calls?
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Abdel-Sattar first saw Abdel-Rahman in 1990 when he came to the United States. In the Summer of 1990 when Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman visited Sattar’s Abu Bakri mosque as a guest speaker. Abdel-Rahman had been famous in Egypt after the Sadat assassination trial in which he was acquitted. Abdel-Rahman’s attorney Al-Zayat also was at the mosque in 1990. Sattar was introduced to him on another occasion when Abdel-Rahman spoke at the mosque in 1991 and then came to know him in 1992. Beginning in October 1992, when Sattar became a member of the Board, he would see Abdel-Rahman regularly, whenever he spoke at the mosque. The blind sheik spoke twice a week. Mr. Sattar describes Abdel-Rahman’s as fiery, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-American policy. Sattar explained at trial that “90 percent of his sermons were about Egypt, what’s gone on in Egypt, how the government is treating the citizens of Egypt, what the people should do, how the people should react to the treatment by the government.” In January 1993, about 2,300 people attended a hearing on the attempt by the government to deport Blind Sheikh Abdel-Rahman and he arranged media interviews. During this period, he was questioned three times by the FBI — the first was in August 1992. He was questioned again in September 1992. Then in April or May 1993, two FBI agents came to his workplace — the Post Office — with a subpoena seeking a hand swabbing.
In June 1993, 10-15 were arrested for conspiracy to engage in a war of urban terrorism. Abdel-Rahman was indicted later that summer. The blind sheik was at the mosque and Sattar drove to the mosque to tell him the news. After sending out a “fake Abdel-Rahman” intended to distract media, , he says, he negotiated for a surrender to made at the firehouse across the street. Over the years, Sattar would “sit in the kitchen away from everybody and smoke — and he recognized smoking was sinful — and read relevant newspapers to Abdel-Rahman. He read various Arabic papers including Al Hayat. He read all the major New York newspapers but did not like the New York Post.
He is pictured alongside Abdel-Rahman in 1993 leaving the courthouse with the blind sheik followers. They lived in Brooklyn until 1995 — that is where Blind Sheik translator Gulshair El-Shukri lived with his son anthrax letters mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah. Upon moving to Staten Island, Abdel-Sattar, after a few months as a letter carrier, he started his job as a special delivery working messenger.He worked at the Post Office until the day of his arrest on April 9, 2002. In addition to his post office job, he helped a friend in his baby formula business — his friend bought wholesale and sold retail.
Sattar made hundreds of phone calls from his family’s small apartment to fundamentalist followers of the sheik across the globe — from Britain to Egypt to Afghanistan. Over the years, in the course of the calls he arranged, Mr. Sattar eventually joined their debates about using violence. Senior IG leaders began calling in late 1998. Sattar’s hundreds of telephone calls to Egypt cost him thousands of dollars a year. The government tapped 90,000 calls as part of the major intelligence effort.
The wiretapped calls show a tense dispute over whether to continue a cease-fire in their long war against the Egyptian government or return to violence. On the subject of the cease-fire, at trial , Sattar explained that Taha was the “bad cop” to the “good cop” played by Hamza, Montasser Al-Zayat and the imprisoned IG leaders. Egyptian Islamic Group founder Salah Hashim was the architect of the peace initiative. Al-Zayat’s codename was Zarzur meaning “little bird” (and he’s not little). In one call, Taha asked that Abdel-Rahman confirm he had “no objection to the formation of a team that calls for cancellation of the initiative or makes threats or escalates things.” Sattar’s comments suggest he came to favor the view of those who wanted to abandon the truce. Mr. Sattar’s phone calls show the debate between Sheik Salah Hashim, the Islamic Group’s group’s leader in Egypt, an outspoken proponent of the cease-fire and Taha, who opposed it. Taha was close to the Taliban and drawing ever closer to Bin Laden and Zawahiri. It was public outrage over those killings that led the Islamic Group to announce the cease-fire later that year and prompted Taha to step down as IG head in favor of Mustafa Hamza. Hamza would call Sattar every three weeks or month. Taha called more often. Sattar used to speak with Rifa’i Taha all the time. In 2002, Taha wrote a book found in the search of Sattar’s apartment and garage. As Sattar explained at trial, in the book “Basically Taha was trying to justify all the violence that took place in Egypt from 1990 until 1997 and to just make a justification for those things.” The book was uploaded to London-based Al-Sirri’s website.
In the Spring of 1999, Montasser Al-Zayat announced that Dr. Ayman Zawahiri would resort to using anthrax against US targets to retaliate for the rendering of senior EIJ officials, most notably Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman.
In his opening argument, the federal prosecutor handling Abdel-Sattar’s prosecution explained:
“Sattar led a double life. By day he was a postal worker. By night he was a terrorist living in a shadowy world, a world where to avoid detection people speak in code and don’t use their real names when they speak on the telephone. A world where Abdel Rahman is revered, a world where violence is solicited and terrorist conspiracies are hatched, a world where Sattar can proudly utter the words that he wants everybody to hear. These are his words: ‘Kill Jews wherever they are and wherever you find them.'”
In 1999, Sattar emphasized in a Frontline interview that reaction to what he perceived as a war against Islam was inevitable. “You’re going to see the same feeling everywhere in a Muslim country toward Americans right now. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, everywhere you go, you’re going to have the same feeling that there is a war declared by the West on Islam, and in particular, the United States of America on Islam. And something has to be done about it. [The] reaction could be like the bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It could be some demonstrations in front of American embassies throughout the Islamic world that we saw before. Could be kidnapping of Americans.”
Sattar described the Blind Sheik as “My friend, my mentor, my sheik, my imam, my father.” He recognized that it made him a suspect. He explained that he had been followed days and nights, under surveillance 24 hours a day sometimes. He said he had been visited by FBI agents at his Staten Island Post Office job in an attempt to prejudice my coworkers against me. He said “To me, am I a terrorist? Nope. I am a father. I am a man who believes in his religion.”
When the Frontline interviewer in 1999 suggested that the NYC joint terrorism task force likely thought he knew a lot of people who know a lot, he said he did. But he explained that an act like the World Trade Center or Oklahoma City bombing or the 1998 embassy bombings does not need many people to do it. As the result of this operational security and compartmentalization, he is not in a position to know. “Could be four or five people like in the World Trade Center.” He continued: “I’ll tell you something. When the World Trade Center occurred here, the American government released a list. 173 names. And they called them coconspirators of people who were living in this country, and people living abroad. 173 names. So, let’s not just jump to conclusions because the American government, you know, released a name that he must be a part of it. 173.”
KSM, when he was captured in March 2003, described Adnan El-Shukrijumah as a single cell — a lone individual able to hande attacks in the US without the need of others.
Before 2000, Mr. Sattar seemed to stay aloof from the group’s internal feuds, simply connecting phone calls among its members after finishing his work at the post office. But he began to change in June of that year after Mr. Abdel Rahman issued a statement, announced by Attorney Stewart in a press release in defiance of formal prison restrictions on communication.
The federal prosecutor explained in his opening argument before the jury: “[A]ll the secret messages back and forth between Abdel Rahman and his terrorist network culminate in the spring of 2000, when a public announcement is made by Abdel Rahman, courtesy of these defendants, saying that Abdel Rahman no longer supported a cease fire by this terrorist organization, the cessation of terrorist violence between his organization and the Egyptian government. In essence, these defendants helped Abdel Rahman break out of jail to inspire his terrorist group to return to terrorism. They allowed Abdel Rahman to tell his followers, ‘Fire.'”
After the press release by Attorney Stewart announcing the blind sheik’s new position, Mr. Sattar set up conference calls and then remained on the line while Mr. Hashim spoke from Egypt and Mr. Taha spoke from Afghanistan argued angrily. Mr. Taha said the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak “must be removed, and will not be removed except by using armed force.” “We are in a difficult stage; we can’t use force at all,” Mr. Hashim insisted. Many hundreds of IG members were still in jail and negotiations were underway with the government for their release.
At the time of these exchanges, Taha appeared with Bin Laden on a videotape that was broadcast on September 21, 2000, by Al Jazeera. They called for violent worldwide jihad to free Mr. Abdel Rahman from jail. A couple days later Mr. Taha called Mr. Sattar to get his reaction. “The words caused such an impact,” Mr. Sattar exclaimed.
In late September 2000, during an upsurge of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Sattar came home from the post office each day, immediately going to monitor Arab news Web sites and television. The images all look to him like Israeli attacks on innocent Palestinian civilians, according to the transcripts. “Animals, animals, I swear by God the Almighty,” Mr. Sattar said, referring to the Israelis. When Mr. Taha called, Mr. Sattar urged him to compose a religious decree that they could attribute to the sheik. Later he edited Mr. Taha’s draft. “Kill the Jews wherever they are found,” it says.
In his opening argument, the federal prosecutor explained: “Using the pretext of attorney-client visits and telephone calls, these defendants were able to break Abdel Rahman’s message of terror out of jail and deliver it to the very people who never should have heard it, other terrorists who still walk the streets and were still able to follow his instructions.” Separately, Taha wrote a legal justification for killing innocents and Sattar had a copy of the book.
Sattar helped Islamic Group leader Taha, who was in Afghanistan with the IG military commander Mustafa Hamza, compose a religious edict and release it under the sheik Abdel-Rahman’s name. He arranged for it to be uploaded to the internet and released to the press. He coordinated with Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Yasir Al-Sirri, based in London.
There were about 90,000 intercepted conversations from Sattar’s home phone made between March 1995 and March 2002, as part of a federal foreign intelligence investigation. Are Adnan El-Shukrijumah and his father, Gulshair, the Blind Sheik’s translator, on any of the calls?
The Washington Post reported in May 2002 that investigators had heard a summer 2001 conversation about a letter of introduction from Al-Sirri relied upon by the two who concealed a bomb in a camera that purportedly was going to film Northern Alliance leader. Massoud was killed two days before 9/11. A draft of the letter was found on Ayman’s computer in Kabul. Perhaps Taha wrote the letter on the computer in Ayman’s office after a conference call with Sattar and Al-Sirri.
On October 25, 2000, Taha told Sattar that an Egyptian male was involved in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and that Sattar should help in delivering a message to the US government suggesting that similar attacks would occur unless Abdel Rahman were freed.
If we do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat it. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency and Postal Inspectors failed to catch the Amerithrax killer(s), then we need the GAO to succeed where the other agencies failed.
In protecting innocents from bureaucratic CYA inside the beltway — which prevents agencies from learning from its mistakes and from history — the GAO is our last best defense.
But we can think practically. If the GAO finds the challenge too overwhelming, we may have to rely on some New York lawyers looking for a Saudi deep pocket.
DXer said
Anthrax Letters Mailing Suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah, Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman, and the Hallmark Greetings:
Egyptian Islamists’ Earlier WTC Letter Bombs To Washington DC And New York City Newspapers And Symbolic Targets
Adnan El-Shukrijumah was not coming from the hinterlands — from off what should have been the FBI’s radar for the anthrax mailings. He was coming from Brooklyn and the immigration office and flight schools accompanied by Mohammed Atta. Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the son of the translator for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Adnan was on FBI wiretaps from Spring 2001 as known to be really radical. He was the quintessential angry young man. Concern for the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman should have been at the heart of the FBI’s profile. The Blind Sheik’s lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat had announced Ayman Zawahiri’s intention to use anthrax to retaliate for the imprisonment of Abdel-Rahman and other EIJ leaders, which included Dr. Ayman’s brother, Mohammed.
Adnan’s father, Gulshair El-Shukrijumah hung out at the Blind Sheik Services Organization in Brooklyn run by Dahab. Dahab had been taught to send lethal letters by head of EIJ intelligence Ali Mohammed. Lethal letters were not merely the modus operandi of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose spiritual leader with Blind Sheik. It was its signature. There is an outstanding $5 million reward for the Al-Hayat letter bombs.
A memo seized in the 1995 arrest proposed flying an explosive laden plane into CIA headquarters. Anyone reading the Washington Post in the mid-1990s read about the plan to fly a plane into CIA headquarters over their morning coffee. The earlier plot to fly an airliner into the Eiffel tower by some Algerians connected to Bin Laden was also notable. Condi Rice professes not to have imagined the threat even though it was publicly known and even a threat at the G-8 conference.It’s important that as a country we learn from our mistakes and not pay short shrift to the evidence on the issue of modus operandi relating to Zawahiri’s planned use of anthrax.
This was not the first time the Egyptian islamists sent letter bombs to newspaper offices in connection with an attack on the World Trade Center. NPR set the scene. It was January 2, 1997, at 9:15 a.m. at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. The employee of the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat began to open a letter. It was a Christmas card — the kind that plays a musical tune. It was white envelope, five and a half inches by six and a half inches, with a computer-generated address label attached. It had foreign postage and a post mark — a postmark appearing to be from Alexandria, Egypt. It looked suspiciously bulky, so he set it down and called the police. Minutes later they found a similar envelope. These were the first two of four letter bombs that would arrive at Al Hayat during the day. A fifth letter bomb addressed to the paper was intercepted at a nearby post office. They all looked the same. Two similar letter bombs addressed to the “parole officer” (a position that does not exist) arrived at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. It seemed evident how some Grinch had spent the holidays in Alexandria, Egypt.
Egyptian Saif Adel (Makawwi), thought to be in Iran, was involved in military planning. Adel was a colonel in the Egyptian Army’s Special Forces before joining Al Qaeda. He helped plan the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Africa. He was also a planner in the attack on the USS Cole and has served as the liaison officer between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Adel assisted Atef, who had overall responsibility for Al Qaeda’s operations. According to Cairo Attorney Al-Zayyat, Makkawi had many times claimed responsibility for operations that were carried out inside Egypt but when the perpetrators were arrested, it would be al-Zawahiri’s name whose name they shouted loyalty to from the docks. After the letter al-Hayat letter bombs were sent in January 1997, Saif Adel (Makawwi) gave a statement denying responsibility on behalf of the Vanguards of Conquest.
On January 7, 1997 Saif Adel purporting to be speaking for the Egyptian Vanguards of Islamic Conquest said: “Those are messages of admonishment. There is no flirtation between us and the Americans in order for us to send them such alarming messages in such a manner.” Adel said that “the Vanguards of Conquest “are heavyweight and would not embark on such childish actions.” US press and political commentaries had hinted at the Vanguards of Conquest organization’s involvement in these attempts. In his statement to Al-Hayat, perhaps referring to the Egyptian Islamic Group, Adel added “I am surprised that we in particular, and not other parties, should be accused of such an operation.”
He got admonished by the unnamed but official spokesman for the Vanguards organization. This other spokesman chastised him as not being authorized to speak for the organization (or even being a member). “We welcome any Muslim who wants to join us, and if Makkawi wants to [join us], he will be welcomed to the Vanguards march, but through the organizational channels. But if words are not coupled with actions, we tell him: Fear God, and you can use a different name other than the Vanguards to speak on its behalf.” The spokesman denounced Makkawi’s authority to speak for the group, referring to the January 5th statement it had made denying responsibility. The spokesperson for the Vanguards of Conquest was Post Office employee Sattar’s friend, Al-Sirri, based in London.
The FBI would not speculate as to who sent the letters or why. But this was your classic “duck that walks like a duck” situation. As NPR reported at the time, “analysts say that letter bombs are rarely sent in batches, and when they are it’s generally prompted by politics, not personal animus.” Al Hayat was a well respected and moderate newspaper. It was friendly to moderate Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. That, without more, was accurately discerned by observers at the time as sufficient to make the newspaper outlet a target of the militant islamists. The newspaper, its editor explained, does not avoid criticizing militant islamists. The Al Hayat Editor-in-Chief explained: “We’ve been opposed to all extremists in the Arab world, especially the fundamentalists.” Mohammed Salameh, a central defendant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sent to Leavenworth in 1994. The other three Egyptian extremists convicted in the bombing were sent to prisons in California, Indiana and Colorado. Like the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman, Salameh had complained of his conditions and asked to be avenged. The Blind Sheik was particularly irked that the prison officials did not cut his fingernails.
Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy, bombing conspiracy, soliciting an attack on an U.S. military installation, and soliciting the murder of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. His followers were indicted for plotting to bomb bridges, tunnels and landmarks in New York for which Rahman allegedly had given his blessings. The mailing of deadly letters in connection with an earlier attack on the World Trade Center was not merely the modus operandi of militant islamists, it was the group’s signature. It was their calling card. Khaled Abu el-Dahab, a naturalized American, from Silicon Valley, in a confession detailed Egyptian defense ministry document dated October 28, 1998, explained that he was trained to make booby-trapped letters to send to important people, as well as asked to enroll in American aviation schools to learn how to fly gliders and helicopters. He was a friend of Ali Mohammed, the former special forces officer in the Egyptian army and former US Army Sergeant. The modus operandi of these militant supporters of the blind sheik was known to be planes and booby-trapped letters. Dahab, taught by EIJ head of intelligence Ali Mohammed, ran the Services Organization. Adnan’s father, Gulshair, liked hanging out on the second floor. Adnan lived with Gulshair in Brooklyn when he wasn’t training in Afghanistan or raising funds for Bosnia.
The Al Hayat reporters and editor were not expressing an opinion — though the owner did lay out various possibilities (e.g., Iraq, Iran etc.). The owner of the paper had commanded Saudi forces during the Persian Gulf War, when Bin Laden was so upset about American troops on the Arabian peninsula. Moreover, al Hayat had recently opened up a Bureau in Jerusalem, giving it a dateline of Jerusalem rather than al Quds, which some thought blasphemous. But none of the possibilities would plausibly explain why the letter bomb was sent to Leavensworth where three of the WTC 1993 defendants were imprisoned, including Ramzi Yousef’s lieutenant who had asked that his mistreatment be avenged. (That was the criminal genius who returned to Ryder to reclaim his deposit after blowing up the truck at WTC). Egyptian security officials argued that the letters were sent from outside of Egypt, the stamps were not available in Egypt, and that the postmark was not Alexandria as reported. Whatever the place of mailing, the sender likely was someone who was upset that KSM’s and Ramzi Yousef’s associates had been imprisoned, to include, most notably, the blind sheik. Whoever is responsible for the anthrax mailings, it is a very good bet that they are upset the blind sheik is detained. That should be at the center of any classified profile of the crime.
Vince Cannistraro opined that semtex had been used given the orange color and smell. Adnan El-Shukrijumah is an explosives expert. Did he send the Al-Hayat letter bombs?
On December 31, 1996 Mohammed Youssef was in Egypt — having gone to Egypt months before. The al Hayat letter bombs related to the detention and alleged mistreatment of the blind sheikh and the WTC bombers were sent 10 days earlier — on the Day of Measures. In 2006, he was named as co-defendant with Hassoun, Daher, Padilla and Jayyousi. Youssef was born in Alexandria. Do authorities suspect the “Florida cell” of being involved in the al Hayat letter bombs? Kifah Jayyousi’s “Islam Report” over the years — distributed by Adham Hassoun in Florida and Kassem Daher in Canada — expressed outrage at detention/extradition due to terrorism law and also what he perceived as attacks on his religion by some newspapers. His headlines on the internet groups blazed “Just In! First Muslim Victim of New Terrorism Law!: US Agents Arrest Paralegal Of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman Without Charge Prepares To Hand Him To Egyptian Regime,” soc.religion.islam, dated April 27, 1996 and “Islam Report (Newspaper Attacks Our Religion! Act Now!,” soc.religion.islam, Apr. 16, 1996. Hassoun worshipped with Padilla and Shukrijumah at the mosque in the Franklin Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale area. Franklin Park was part of the return address on the letters sent to the US Senators.
In connection with the January 1997 letter bombs, Ayman got the know-how to send sophisticated electronic letter bombs from Iraqi intelligence according to one item from the highly controversial Feith memo. In the al Hayat letter bombings, Ayman allowed the finger to be pointed at Libya. In the Amerithrax letters, he allowed the finger to be pointed to a United States biodefense insider by the prosecutor who would have presented to any indictment to the grand jury. Born in Haifa in 1948, the man’s daughter then came to represent microbiologist Al-Timimi pro bono.
After the Al Hayat letter bombs to newspapers in DC and NYC and people in symbolic positions, in January 1997, both the Blind Sheikh and his paralegal, Sattar, were quoted in separate articles in Al Hayat (in Arabic) denying that they or their supporters were responsible. The Blind Sheikh commented that al Hayat was fair and balanced in its coverage and his supporters would have no reason to “hit” them. The same sort of counterintuitive theory was raised in connection with the earlier letter bombing of newspapers to DC and New York City and people in symbolic positions. Sattar noted that the bombs were mailed on December 20, one day before the brief in support of the blind sheik on appeal. He questioned whether someone (like the FBI) was trying to undermine the appeal’s prospects. This time, Mr. Sattar did not need any help making the argument with respect to the anthrax letters. Numerous people with political or political agendas rushed to do it for him to include counsel for Bosnia and Herzogovina and legal advisor to the PLO, professor Francis Boyle. Or a retiree who thought a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters because of the block lettering used. (I’m not kidding). In accusing Dr. Ivins on the occasion of his death, the FBI embraced the same sort of theory — that is, when it was not grasping at other untenable theories relating to college sororities, incorrectly perceived anti-abortion news, or perceived financial motive.
In September 2006, in a As Sahab Media production called “Knowledge is for acting,” there is a clip in which Al Quds editor Atwan refers to his visit with Bin Laden in 1996 (see also his 2006 book The Secret History of al Qaeda). He says that Bin Laden was planning to attack America “and America prisons in particular.” That was an apparent reference to the Al Hayat letter bombs sent to newspapers and prisons in January 1997. There were recurrent references to Abdel-Rahman in the tape. At the As Sahab Media (“Clouds”) house, Adnan El-Shukrijumah worked with Padilla. He and Padilla and Hassoun had worshipped at that Franklin Park neighborhood mosque in Florida. El-Shukrijumah worked alongside Al-Hawsawi. KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax processing documents scanned on his laptop. The FBI reports Jafar the Pilot aka El-Shukrijumah came to the United States sometime after September 1, 2001.
It was Abu Zubaydah who told authorities, according to one investigative journalist, the alias used by Adnan El-Shukrijumah that led to the February 2003 BOLO being issued. Abu Zubaydah had refused to swear the oath to Bin Laden unless an operation were run aimed at freeing Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Abu Zubaydah was very senior and handled travel documents for operatives.
Back in Karachi from February – April 2002, Adnan El-Shukrijumah stayed in two safehouses with Al-Hawsawi, who had the anthrax spraydrying documents. I believe one of the houses was the Baba Afridi guesthouse.
Yazid Sufaat had been captured in December 2001 upon entering Malaysia. In written correspondence with me, Yazid Sufaat does not deny the anthrax mailings. He now has been thrown in jail after meeting with men going to fight in Syria.
Yazid Sufaat says that he felt he had been betrayed by his country and did not cooperate with interrogators because the CIA was not going to hear it from his mouth. A “friend” told his interrogators that he had been a member of a secret biological weapons program in February 2002 but, pissed off, Yazid Sufaat still refused to cooperate. He is as stubborn and ideologically steadfast as he is amiable.
And, as it turned out, counting on the FBI forensics people to solve the Amerithrax mystery was too much to hope for.
DXer said
Codename “Swift Knight”: Bin Laden’s Plan With Ibn Khattab To Use Charities And Infiltrators In Creating Biological Weapons
For a discussion of the planned infiltration relating to bio weapons, turn initially to paragraph 28:In the lawsuit described by Broward Bulldog (and in the Miami newspaper today).
PLAINTIFFS’ CONSOLIDATED AMENDED PLEADING OF FACTS AND EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF THEIR CLAIMS AGAINST THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND THE SAUDI HIGH COMMISSION FOR RELIEF OF BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
“28. In describing the importance of these regional military campaigns within the overall context of al Qaeda’s jihad against the West, a 1998 Department of Defense Intelligence Report states as follows:
[al Qaeda] seeks to establish a worldwide Islamic state capable of directly challenging the US, China, Russia, and what it views as judeo-Christian and Confucian domination.
The means by which the above goals are to be met are via terror, ethnic cleansing, “latent penetration” (NEI), and control over nuclear and biological weapons (Jikhad). Further, radical Islamic (predominantly Sunni) regimes are to be established and supported everywhere possible, including Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya, Dagestan, the entire northern Caucasus “from Sea to Sea,” central Asian Republics, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, all of Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and the states of the Persian Gulf.”
The 1998 Defense Intelligence Agency document confirms Bin Laden’s plans to penetrate US biodefense. It describes OBL’s biological aspirations in association with the late Arab Chechen fighter Ibn Khattab. The means by which a worldwide caliphate was to be established was by terror, “latent penetration,” and control over nuclear and biological weapons. (After 9/11, Ibn Khattab was killed by a poison letter.)
The typed document was derived from handwritten documents obtained through a classified intelligence project with the unclassified nickname “Swift Knight.” According to the report, the documents were written during the first two weeks of October 1998. The document stated in part:
THE NEW PROGRAM INCLUDES TOPICS IN– “DIVERSIONS” WITH THE HELP OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, INCLUDING BACTERIOLOGICAL, AND INCENDIARY MIXTURES
(A reference to the murder of Khattab by poison letter is described in a page omitted from the Detainee Assessment. Some things are just too scary for you to know to include the funding that Ibn Khattab was poised to receive under the cover of a major charity.)
The surest indication that the Administration credited the claims concerning Al Qaeda’s intention to weaponize anthrax “through latent penetration” for the purpose of using it as a weapon is that Vice President Cheney and his staff allegedly knew to take Cipro on 9/11. That was a full week before the first anthrax letter was mailed. An unclassified CIA report in January 2003 vaguely summarized the information available from open sources: “A senior Bin Ladin associated on trial in Egypt in 1999 claimed his group had chemical and biological weapons. Documents and equipment recovered from al-Qa’ida facilities in Afghanistan show that Bin Ladin has a more sophisticated biological weapons research program than previously discovered.
Tenet in his May 2007 In the Center of the Storm wrote:
“As we researched the information we were slowly gathering from myriad sources, we unlocked a disturbing secret: the group’s interest in WMD was not new. They had been searching for these weapons long before we had been looking for them. As far we know, al-Qa-ida’s fascination with chemical weapons goes back to the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 by a group of religious fanatics called the Aum Shinrikyo. Twelve people died in that attack, but had the dispersal devices worked as planned, the death toll would have been higher. Al-Qai’da leaders were impressed and saw the attack as a model for achieving their own ambitions.”
In Khartoum, Sudan, bin Laden sought to bring together Agiza’s Vanguards of Conquest faction and Saif Adel’s EIJ faction — both of which had splintered off from Zawahiri’s leadership. The Vanguards of Conquest initially had been set up by Ahmed Hussain Agiza, a physician graduated from Cairo Medical School, and split off from Zawahiri. Agiza had a falling out with Zawahiri in 1993 over the arrest of 800 Vanguards members in Egypt. By 1995, Zawahiri was serving as the group’s spokesman in connection with the attempted assassination of President Mubarak in Ethiopia. In 1997, the US State Department named Zawahiri as leader of the Vanguards of Conquest group. (Agiza was extradited from Sweden in December 2001). EIJ had maintained the goal of seizing power in Egypt since the coup planned by Jihad in 1981 despite the Egyptian government’s success in cracking down on the group. At the same time of their developing interest in anthrax, the pro-Bin Laden elements diversified the targets. Al Qaeda would no longer limit its tactics to the blowing up of installations. It launched joint action with other groups and organizations, both local groups and others operating outside their countries.
Formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Zawahiri assumed the #2 position after Bin Laden upon a merger of some of Islamic Jihad into Al Qaeda. The Vanguards of Conquest called creation of the front “a step forward and in the right direction,” but urged Bin Laden to “expand its membership to include other tendencies on the scene.. [and] all colors of the fundamentalist movement wishing to join such alliance in the Arab and Islamic worlds.” Upon the merger in 1998, the most senior planners in Al Qaeda relating to tactics and biological weapons were Egyptian Islamic Jihad, to include Ayman Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Midhat Mursi aka Abu Khabab. Zawahiri was always the real “brains” behind Al Qaeda, not Bin Laden.
Egyptian Taha –the blind sheik’s successor as leader of the Islamic Group, also was a senior member of Al Qaeda. Taha signed the 1998 statement declaring war on the United States along with Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Taha had not conferred with the Egyptian Islamic Group shura council. Moreover, Zawahiri apparently had not obtained the approval of EIJ’s shura council to their great consternation. While the US government views Al Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad as having merged in 1998, they have essentially been the same organization, with the merger having occurred some years earlier. Taha was in close touch with the Brooklyn-based paralegal for the Blind Sheik. The father of anthrax letters suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah hung out at the Blind Sheik’s Services Office.
In a statement in February 1998, the Vanguards of Conquest said that Muslims should unite against the “real enemies of Islam,’ the United States and Israel. “The time has come to coordinate..to stop our knee-jerk reactions and killing those who are not the enemy..we have to think strategically,” the group said. Under one view, EIJ by this time was Vanguards of Conquest by another name — with Zawahiri its leader and spokesperson. The Egyptian government claimed that Yasser al- Sirri managed and financed the group Vanguards of Conquest, also known as the New Jihad, from his London home while on the public dole. Zawahiri’s wrath against the United States sharpened in 1998 upon the extradition to Egypt of the islamic jihad members from Albania. The trial of the 107 defendants in the “Albanian returnees” in 1999 was the biggest trial of militant islamists since the assassination of Sadat. Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia, as was his brother, Muhammad. It was in connection with that trial that Blind SHeik Abdel-Rahman’s attorney Montasser Al-Zayat announced that Ayman Zawahiri intended to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate for the rendering and imprisonment of EIJ officials. Muhammad was responsible for Jihad’s military wing and was a member of its shura council. Muhammad Zawahiri was in charge of contacts with EIJ leaders inside Egypt and traveled with Ayman.
Microbiologist Heba Zawahiri, in Cairo Medical’s microbiology department, cried herself to sleep each night after his rendition. She had taught a microbiologist from Egypt and the Sudan that then was supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins at USAMRIID. He was based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and had received millions in funding from DARPA to develop a decontamination agent that was tested at Dugway.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
DXer said
The head of the Tampa office in an ABC interview in 2010 said that they are looking for the piece to the puzzle that will help put things together — he recognizes that post-911 the problem was a failure to “connect the dots.” It seems that the thing to do is to first turn up more of the pieces so you can see the picture. For example, did Adnan go with Atta to Norman in 2000? Staying with the apartment associated with Zacarias Moussaoui?
Some Background:
A NATION AT WAR: PRECAUTIONS; F.B.I. Describes Qaeda Suspect in U.S. as ‘Imminent Threat’
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: March 21, 2003
“Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said Mr. Shukrijumah had been identified as a potential terrorist from Al Qaeda by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the senior terrorist leader who was captured this month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and has been intensively questioned.
The officials said suspicions about Mr. Shukrijumah and his intentions had grown with the discovery that he had flight training in the United States about the same time as several Sept. 11 hijackers, that he had recently traveled on a passport issued by Guyana and that he had used a variety of aliases.
The bulletin said Mr. Shukrijumah might try to cross American borders with a Saudi, Canadian or Trinidadian passport. The bulletin included photographs of the suspect, including one from a Florida driver’s license issued in February 2001.
…
A senior Bush administration official said the government had evidence to suggest that Mr. Shukrijumah had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., one of two schools that Zacarias Moussaoui attended in 2001. Mr. Moussaoui, a Frenchmen, is awaiting trial in Virginia on charges that he conspired with the Sept. 11 hijackers.
But the director of operations at the school, Dale Davis, said a search of its records found no student with any of the six names that Mr. Shukrijumah is believed to have used. In a telephone interview, Mr. Davis said the F.B.I. had not been in contact with the school for months and, to his knowledge, had never asked the school about Mr. Shukrijumah.”
My initial interest in the case in December 2001 related to the convergence of players in Norman, Oklahoma. I did not learn of Yazid Sufaat’s capture until February 2002. (Sufaat was connected to both Shukrijumah and Moussaoui).
Wasn’t Adnan in Montreal, Canada with Jdey in connection with planning the 911 attacks? Adnan El-Shukrijumah thus may be a thread that sews together Yazid Sufaat and Zacarias Moussaoui and Jdey.
Here is some background from History Commons providing some of the publicly known puzzle pieces:
May 15, 1998: Oklahoma FBI Memo Warns of Potential Terrorist-Related Flight Training; No Investigation Ensues
An FBI pilot sends his supervisor in the Oklahoma City FBI office a memo warning that he has observed “large numbers of Middle Eastern males receiving flight training at Oklahoma airports in recent months.” The memo, titled “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” further states this “may be related to planned terrorist activity” and “light planes would be an ideal means of spreading chemicals or biological agents.” The memo does not call for an investigation, and none occurs.[NEWSOK (OKLAHOMA CITY), 5/29/2002; US CONGRESS, 7/24/2003] The memo is “sent to the bureau’s Weapons of Mass Destruction unit and forgotten.” [NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 9/25/2002] In 1999, it will be learned that an al-Qaeda agent has studied flight training in Norman, Oklahoma (see May 18, 1999). Hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi will briefly visit the same school in 2000; Zacarias Moussaoui will train at the school in 2001 (see February 23-June 2001).
A senior Bush administration official says the government has evidence Shukrijumah had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, but does not say when. Other Islamist militants, including Zacarias Moussaoui, attended that school before 9/11 (see February 23-June 2001, May 18, 1999 and May 15, 1998). The director of the school claims there is no evidence of a student with any of Shukrijumah’s publicly revealed aliases. [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/21/2003]
From November 2000 to the spring of 2002, the FBI in Florida investigated a group of Muslims it suspected of being terrorists, including Adnan Shukrijumah. Two members of the group were arrested in May 2002 and later found guilty and given prison sentences (see November 2000-Spring 2002). In April and May 2001, the focus was on Shukrijumah, but he was careful and the FBI was only able to prove that he lied on his green card application regarding a prior arrest (see April-May 2001).
An FBI informant, Elie Assaad, infiltrated the mosque run by Adnan’s father in early 2001, and grew suspicious of Adnan and his friend, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. However, his FBI handlers assigned him easier targets instead (see Early 2001). Assaad claims that shortly after 9/11, he grew very upset after he realized that Atta was one of the hijackers. “I curse on everybody. I destroyed half of my furniture. Uh, I went crazy.” Presumably Assaad would have told his FBI superiors about the link between Shukrijumah and Atta, if they didn’t know about it already. [ABC NEWS, 9/10/2009]
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a00floridamosque#a00floridamosque
Atta is seen with Adnan Shukrijumah, a suspected al-Qaeda operative, in 2001 (see May 2, 2001). His father previously served as an imam at the Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. In addition to working as a translator for Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, he also testified as a character witness at the WTC bombing trial for one of the defendants, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, who attended Al Farouq. [FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, 10/27/2003; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 9/3/2006] Gulshair Shukrijumah is receiving money from the Saudi embassy in Washington at this time. [NEWSWEEK, 4/7/2003] In 2009, an FBI informant will claim that he tried to get close to both Atta and Adnan Shukrijumah at the Al Hijrah mosque in early 2001, but the FBI had him work on easier cases instead, because both of them were secretive and wary (see Early 2001). [ABC NEWS, 9/10/2009] The army’s Able Danger data mining program identifies Atta as a member of an al-Qaeda cell centered on Brooklyn. Exactly how it does this is never disclosed, although Atta’s apparent association with Gulshair and AdnanShukrijumah is one possibile explanation (see January-February 2000).
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=aspring01fbishukrijumahagain#aspring01fbishukrijumahagain
Adnan Shukrijumah.[Source: FBI]
The FBI investigates Adnan Shukrijumah, an apparent associate of Mohamed Atta (see 2000-2001 and May 2, 2001), in connection with a South Florida-based Islamic militant group that is plotting to recruit operatives and finance attacks and assassinations in the Middle East (see (October 1993-November 2001)). The group includes Jose Padilla associates Adham Amin Hassoun and Mohammed Hesham Youssef, and is connected to Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman and the suspect charity Benevolence International Foundation (see 1988-1989). Shukrijumah keeps his distance from the core plotters and despite FBI wiretaps on the group’s phones, the FBI is unable to establish a firm connection between him and the plans. Shukrijumah is also being investigated over a plot to attack various businesses in Florida and blow up Mount Rushmore around this time (see April-May 2001). The FBI later determines that Shukrijumah is a top al-Qaeda operative and will issue a $5 million reward for his capture (see March 21, 2003 and After). [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 4/7/2003; ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, 11/23/2003;LOS ANGELES TIMES, 9/3/2006]
Shukrijumah – After 9/11, both Mohamed Atta and Adnan Shukrijumah are identified by the immigration officer as two of the men who visited her office. Upon seeing Shukrijumah’s photo, she will say that she is “75 percent sure” it is him, and will provide a description that matches his profile. At this time, Shukrijumah is being investigated by the FBI and is thought to be a well-connected al-Qaeda operative (see November 2000-Spring 2002, (Spring 2001), April-May 2001, and March 21, 2003 and After). Atta and Marwan Alshehhi also attend a Florida mosque run by Shukrijumah’s father (see 2000-2001). An FBI informant sees both Atta and Adnan Shukrijumah at the mosque in early 2001, but he is unable to get close to them (see Early 2001).
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0701shukrijumahtravels#a0701shukrijumahtravels
July-September 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Associate Travels around US and to Canada and Trinidad
In the weeks before 9/11, an associate of the 9/11 hijackers, Adnan Shukrijumah, travels around the US, visiting New York, Washington, and Chicago, as well as Montreal in Canada, for about a week each. (Nabil al-Marabh, a militant linked to the 9/11 attacks, is likely in Toronto, Canada, for most of this time period (seeJanuary 2001-Summer 2001 and Shortly Before July 11, 2001).) According to the FBI, he is scouting potential terrorist targets. Shukrijumah then visits his childhood home, Charlieville in Trinidad and Tobago, for a week …
DXer said
APRIL 6, 2014
A conservative judge rebukes FBI as he orders it to find and turn over 9/11 documents
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/04/a-conservative-judge-rebukes-fbi-as-he-orders-it-to-find-and-turn-over-911-documents/