* Robert Stevens died eight years ago today, the first victim of the still unsolved anthrax attacks
Posted by DXer on October 5, 2009
CASE CLOSED is a novel which answers the question “Why did the FBI fail to solve the 2001 anthrax case?” … click here to … buy CASE CLOSED by Lew Weinstein
Here’s what readers say about CASE CLOSED …
“CASE CLOSED reads fast and well. It could have happened just the way the author said. Full of intrigue mixed in with almost current events. The real people are just behind the fictional ones.”
“Author Lew Weinstein does a terrific job telling this fictionalized account of an inter agency post-mortem investigation of the (real) failed FBI investigation.”
******
Robert Stevens
On October 5, 2001, Robert Stevens, photo editor for American Media Inc. of Boca Raton Fla., died after being infected with respiratory anthrax.
Eight years have passed.
We don’t know why Mr. Stevens was chosen to receive an anthrax laced letter; no letter addressed to him or to AMI has been recovered.
And we don’t know why his murderers have yet to be brought to justice.
We do know that Dr. Bruce Ivins, accused by the FBI as the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, has never, after 8 years of the most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken by the FBI, been linked to either Mr. Stevens or AMI.
Lawsuit by Mrs. Stevens vs. U.S. and Battelle
Mrs. Maureen Stevens, the victim’s widow, has filed a $50 million lawsuit blaming the federal government for her husband’s death, alleging that the government’s lack of security allowed a mentally unstable man access to “some of the deadliest substances known to mankind.”
The U.S. government appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, asking that Mrs. Stevens’ suit be dismissed.
In March of this year, U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley in Florida refused to dismiss Stevens’ suit against the federal government and Battelle Memorial Institute, sending the case back to U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach.
******
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
AMERITHRAX SCIENCE update –
AMI Evidence:
Representatives from the Laboratory Division and WFO visited the Miami Public Health Laboratory (MPHL) on 7/11/03. It was decided that samples from the AMI buildings int he possession of the MPHL are adequate to test for the presence of the colony morphologies fond in the materials from the letters. Therefore, transportation of these samples to NMRC will commence on or about 08/11/03.
DXer said
An Amerithrax Weekly Update, first produced by the FBI to the NAS in December 2010, states:
“HMRU teams entered AMI on 08/30/02. In the mail room, the hottest mail slot was labeled “Enquirer Research.” This is located directly above the “Globe Photo” mail slot. A mail car with corresponding folders was also tested. The hottest folder was the Globe-photo folder.”
Anonymous Scientist said
We are now at T+ 75 days since the FBI announced they were ‘on the verge’ of closing the anthrax case.
Anonymous Scientist said
We are now at T+ 74 days since the FBI announced they were ‘on the verge’ of closing the anthrax case.
DXer said
8 years ago today, the bail for Vanguards of Conquest #2 was denied in Canada. Upon learning the news, the anthrax mailer rushed to mail the “real deal” just as had been threatened in late January 2001, as explained in a February 2001 PDB from the CIA to President Bush. The suddenness of his travel is provable through documentary evidence that has already been subpoenaed. Unlike Bruce Ivins, he would not have 3 adults living in the small house with him at the time Ivins supposedly made the trip overnight.
On January 23, 2001, a Canadian court held that the Court did not have jurisdiction to decide the constitutional and Charter issues raised by detainee and dismissed that part of the motion. A letter was received January 30, 2001 at the Citizenship and Immigration Office threatening to use anthrax. It was sent to Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan who had co-signed the detention certificate. Authorities suspected that the letter was sent by militant islamists in protest over the detention of Mahjoub, who ran Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. Mahjoub had been sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 1999 by Egyptian authorities for his involvement in Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Now, he was being detained without charges under an order cosigned by Immigration Minister Caplan and threatened with deportation. The postmark has never been publicly identified. Separately, hoax letters were also sent to American businesses and a Walmart in Saanich, British Columbia. Mahjoub had been in regular contact with a man named Marzouk, who had trained the 1998 embassy bombers and was captured in Baku, Azerbaijan in August 1998.
Suspecting Mahjoub of being a shura member of the Vanguards of Conquest and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Canadian intelligence officials alleged Mahjoub had significant contacts with persons associated with international Islamic terrorism including Osama Bin Laden, Ahmad Khadr, Essam Marzouk, Vanguards founder Ahmed Agiza, and Osama Bin Laden’s principal procurement agent for weapons of mass destruction Mubarak Al Duri. Al Duri was for a time was from British of Columbia. Al Duri, while living in Tucson, Arizona, was acquainted with Wadi al Hage who is in U.S. custody for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. Al Duri while residing in British Columbia may have been associated with Marzouk, who trained the 1998 embassy bombers.
When the letter was received in January 2001, the letter was sent by Department of National Defence jet to the Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg for examination. Authorities also sent the filters from the Jean Edmonds building’s ventilation system. Authorities said they were treating it as a possible terrorist act against the department and noted that it “was the first time a government department has been targeted in this way.” The Ottawa alert came after one of the employees working in the Minister’s office opened a plain white envelope at 11:15 a.m. The employee discovered powder and a piece of paper in the envelope. Police refused to reveal from where it had been mailed. One source said the letter was unsigned and “mostly gibberish.” (Indeed, the Fall 2001 letters might be described as mostly gibberish, and certainly the “JLo letter” — talking about Jennifer Lopez’ planned wedding — was.) An internal government memo distributed to staff said “an initial analysis of the envelope revealed some traces of bacteria.”
The question now is: who else is on Jaballah’s or Mahjoub’s Friends and Family Calling Plan? The authorities know this at least as to their home phones because they had been under surveillance for several years.
DXer said
In March 2009 I believe, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in United States remanded to the District Court. Under the JOINT PROPOSED SCHEDULING ORDER, here is the schedule:
Amended Pleadings due by 8/20/2010.
Expert Discovery due by 11/19/2010.
Fact Discovery due by 12/3/2010.
Joinder of Parties due by 8/20/2010.
Pretrial Stipulation due by 3/3/2011.
DXer said
In the suit by widow Stevens against the United States, Plaintiff’s Initial Rule 26 Disclosures was filed in June 2009. Note the designation for the former heads (at one time) of the three squads: Bob Roth (AMX-1), Scott Decker (AMX-2), Anne Colbert (AMX-3). AMX-1 was what we’ll call the Hatfill then Ivins squad.
DXer said
FBI Special Agent Scott Decker (of the AMX-2) or what we think of the science squad would be head of the FBI hazardous materials response unit, pictured in Joby Warrick’s Washington Post piece with Dr. Bannan.
DXer said
A recently leaked British intelligence manual instructs that
“Procedure for Bringing Codewords into Use. … [The codeword] should be:
b. Unrelated to the meaning, eg ICEBERG is unsuitable for cold weather operations.”
Did CLEAR VISION, intended to refer to seeing future of bioweapons, fit this requirement? What about PROJECT JEFFERSON, associated with Battelle’s West Jefferson facility.
What about Zawahiri’s ZABADI, which means curdled milk?
Relatedly, wasn’t Zawahiri a bit of a dolt to keep his correspondence from Rauf Ahmad lying around? To leave his laptop where it could be scooped upon the first bombing? Is there reason to think he was any smarter in choosing the codeword ZABADI with Abu Khabab? By his negligence, hasn’t Ayman betrayed his supporters just like he betrayed Qamari? With Qamari he could blame the fact he was tortured. What was his excuse for leaving his laptop unprotected? Or even saving the documents in the first place?
Doesn’t it prove Dr. Al-Sharif’s longstanding point that Ayman is a nerd with no social skills not suited to command operations? (Who just has some personal issues over his betrayal of Qamari and has been making empty threats now for 7 years?)
DXer said
Al-Qaeda number two ‘vows to kill Westerners’
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — Al-Qaeda’s second-ranking leader has vowed in a new video message to kill more Westerners to avenge “crimes” against Muslims, a US Al-Qaeda monitor said Monday.
Ayman al-Zawahiri dedicated his new video message, released Sunday, to Al-Qaeda operative Sheikh Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who died in a Libyan prison earlier this year, according to Alexandria, Virginia-based IntelCenter.
***
“Oh criminal killers, bloodsuckers,” Zawahiri is quoted as saying. “We will shed your blood and consume your economy until you stop your crimes, oh arrogant insolents.
“Oh blood shedders, killers of innocent people,” he continued.
“God willing, we will take revenge on you for every mujahid, every widow, every orphan, and every Muslim, and we will defend everyone you oppressed in this world.
“With the help of God, we will talk to you in the language that you understand until you refrain from and stop your crimes.”
Comment:
Ayman seems to be angry about something. His sister teaches antimicrobials at Cairo Medical. His father taught pharmacology. His uncle was the Dean of Cairo Medical. He had all the advantages of a loving family and a privileged youth. What has him so pissed off?
Given the importance of knowing your enemy, it is important to walk in his shoes and come to know the man. It’s part of what is known as “Red Teaming.” Former CIA Director Tenet in his memoirs said that after 9/11 they set up a small team of analysts – he wanted them not to think just “out of the box.” He wanted them to do their thinking from an entirely different zip code. It was called the “red cell.” One of their first challenges was to figure out who Ayman would have recruited to send mailed anthrax to US newspapers and Senators.
Al-Zawahiri’s family has its roots in a small town in Saudi Arabia “where the first battle between Prophet Muhammad and the infidels was fought
and won by the Prophet.” With 9/11 and the anthrax mailings, he essentially is seeking to recreate the taking of Mecca by a small band. Al-Zawahiri’s great grandfather came to the Nile Delta in the 1860s to a city where there is a mosque that still bears his name. His father, who was a professor of pharmacology at Ein Shams University, passed away in 1995. His grandfather on his mother’s side was president of Cairo University and the Egyptian ambassador to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. His grandfather was known for being pious and nicknamed “the devout ambassador.” Two of Ayman’s sisters are on the faculty at Cairo University Medical School. His uncle was the Dean of Cairo’s medical school at one point. Including in-laws, he has 40 doctors of various sorts in his family.
If the profilers at Quantico in early October 2001 had any learning on the subject, as part of their profile they would have been looking for a doctor recruited by Ayman Zawahiri at Cairo Medical School. But their experience with biological weapons and Zawahiri’s threat to use anthrax against US targets was when the toilet backed up on the 7th floor (or so told a profiler at a conference). But the CIA Zawahiri Task Force should have been all over Zawahiri’s anthrax planning and I have the documentary evidence to prove it.
Born June 1, 1951, Zawahiri grew up in Cairo’s Al-Ma’adi neighborhood. He graduated cum laude from Cairo University’s medical school in 1974 with an MD degree. He received a master’s degree in surgery in 1978 and was married the next year to Izzat Ahmad Nuwair who had graduated with a degree in philosophy from Cairo University. His wife and daughter tragically were killed in a bombing raid in Afghanistan and an obituary mourning their loss appeared in Cairo. He has a younger brother Hassan, an engineer, and had an older brother Muhammad. (Muhammad was in Al Qaeda until being extradited to Egypt pursuant to a death sentence imposed in the “Albanian returnees” case; Hassan was once extradited but released). Without his family, Zawahiri is a fanatic guided only by his faith and his literal interpretation of a book written many years ago that he memorized as a child.
In his youth, Zawahiri was influenced by Sayyid Qutb, one of the spiritual leaders of Islamic religious groups. After a two year stay in the
United States where Qutb gained a contempt for American culture, the secular writer Qutb returned to his religious roots and wrote extensively supporting violence against Christians and Jews, and even muslim leaders deemed infidel. “I have written Milestones for this vanguard, which I consider to be a waiting reality about to be materialized.” Zawahiri traces the origin of the modern islamist movement to the hanging of Qutb in 1966. (It was Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Muhammad, who supervised the research of the masters thesis of Saudi dissident sheik Safar Al-Hawali. Al-Hawali wrote a book on secularism as part of his master thesis at Umm Al-Qura University.) Al Qaeda’s spymaster al-Hakaymah wrote “The History of the Jihadist Movements in Egypt.” Al-Hakaymah reports that when he asked Ayman why he started his group, Al Zawahiri described Sayyid Qutb as like a coroner who dissects a body with a high degree of professionalism and talent that suit someone who knows it inside out.
As noted by al-Hakaymah in his historical treatise on the movement, Ayman and his young colleagues would go to the Al-Kikhya mosque in Abidin area in Cairo and read books from the Salafist library at the mosque, such as books by Ibn Taymiyah, whose religious rulings greatly influenced him. The group felt ashamed by Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war with Israel and attributed the defeat to Egypt’s failure to follow Shariah rule. Find a man whose father was killed in the 1967 war and you have motive in spades.
George Mason University microbiology grad student Al-Timimi years later would invoke both Sayyid Qutb and Ibn Taymiyah in an eloquent speech upon is indictment for sedition. Mohammad Qutb, Sayyid’s brother, was scheduled to speak alongside GMU microbiology graduate Al-Timimi at the 1993 conference along with the blind sheik’s son Mohammad Abdel-Rahman (from Afghanistan). Mohammad Abdel-Rahman’s was the blind sheik’s son and would serve on Al Qaeda’s three-member WMD committee along with fellow Egyptian Midhat Mursi. Former EIJ member and current Cairo activist Gamal Sultan was also scheduled to speak. Dissident Saudi sheik Al-Hawali was Al-Timimi’s
religious mentor at university. Al-Timimii reportedly had a high security clearance for work for some sort of mathematical support work for the Navy.
At one point, he worked just feet away from both famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former head of USAMRIID, the US biological defense program who has published a lot of papers involving the US Army “Ames strain.”
In 1968, Ayman’s group in high school brought together Nabil al-Bura’i, Ismail Tantawi, Dr. Sayyid Imam and others. They were all in the last year
of high school in the Cairo suburb of Maadi. Zawahiri later would form a military wing under the guidance of Al-Qamari, an Egyptian army officer. By
1974, the year he graduated from medical school, it had 40 members. Ayman deemed infiltrating the military was the most effective and least costly
means of seizing power. Known for their extreme secrecy, the group avoided growing beards like most Islamists and were thus known as “the shaven beards.” Ayman’s friend Kamal Habib, who later would contribute to the quarterly journal of the Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”), explained to CNN through a translator: “We thought at the time that the goal to apply the laws of Islam can’t be achieved with ways other than violence.” It would remain Zawahiri’s tactic to recruit members of the Egyptian army because of their training and expertise. After graduating medical school in 1974, he served three years as a surgeon in the Egyptian Army, at a base outside Cairo, before establishing a clinic at the same duplex he shared with his parents.
During the 1975-1979 period, radical but not revolutionary study groups spread quickly through the Cairo, Ayn Shams and al-Azhar universities and elsewhere. Al-Jihad began as such a student organization. The student groups were one of the main targets of Sadat’s crackdown in 1979. Hundreds were arrested and their campus groups dissolved. The revolutionary ideas of Qutb influenced these student groups, which were known as jam’iyat. Courses of study in Egyptian universities are narrow, preventing many from acquiring a liberal education as they acquired technical skills. Thus, many fundamentalists are highly educated in technical fields yet do not have a broader educational background. Life as a student in Egypt is hard and job prospects are poor. In the late 1970s, an estimated 85% of al-Jihad’s members were students.
At Cairo Medical School, Ayman, while a postgraduate, Ayman spoke fervently to members of Islamic Group, which operated openly within the
school and had great influence among the students. A former student there, Tawfiq Hamid, explains that Jamaah Islamiyah, then approved by both the Egyptian government and the university, was not classified as a terrorist organization until a few years later. The group “built a small prayer room in our medical school that later developed into a mosque with an associated library. ” He reports that “The mosque was behind the physiology and biochemistry departments, and members of Jamaah came there daily before science classes to lecture us on Islam. They warned us about the punishments awaiting us after death if we did not follow Islam strictly and were effective in advancing Islamism among many of the students, including me. He continued: “Our fear of being punished after death was exacerbated by our work in the cadaver room, where we dissected dead bodies. Seeing death regularly during anatomy and physiology courses made us feel that the life of this world was meaningless compared to “real” life after death.”
Once Jamaah Islamiyah became influential, it prohibited such social events as listening to music, female students were separated and not allowed to sit with males, and even Christian professors were threatened. The medical students were afraid to defy the group’s directives. Members of the group attacked an anatomy professor because he asked Jamaah leaders to end their “mandatory” daily sermon so that he could get started with his anatomy class. The emir of the group, a fourth year student, had explained to Tawfiq Hamid, recruited as a first year student: “Your brain is just like a donkey [a symbol of inferiority in the Arab culture] that can get you only to the palace door of the king (Allah). To enter the palace once you have reached the door, you should leave the donkey [your inferior mind] outside.” By this parable, Muchtar meant that a truly dedicated Muslim no longer thinks but automatically obeys the teachings of Islam.” Tariq Hamid says he called his family friend and former medical school classmate (although not in same year) Tarek Hamouda, who had been supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins, from abroad to ask about patents before 911. Dr. Hamouda told him it was all in the marketing.
Dr. Hamid met Zawahiri, “Dr. Ayman” as he was known, at an afternoon prayer session. He was one of the fiercest speakers he had ever heard.
Ayman fervently condemned the West for the freedom of its women. Ayman, Dr. Hamid explains, was exceptionally bright, one of the top postgraduate students in the medical school. When they met him, Zawahiri greeted him warmly through his coke bottle glasses. Dr. Hamid explains that one of Ayman’s achievements was to personalize jihad-that is, to have transformed it from a responsibility of the Umma, the Islamic collective, to an individual duty of Muslims. Within several months of meeting Dr. Ayman, he was invited to travel to Afghanistan to join other young Muslims in training for jihad. It was fairly common, he said, to be recruited after the end of Friday prayers. Dr. Hamid explains: “We viewed both the Soviets and the Americans as enemies.” “The Soviets were considered infidels because they did not believe in the existence of God, while the Americans did not follow Islam. Although we planned to fight the Soviets first, our ultimate objective was to destroy the United States-the greatest symbol of the
infidel’s freedom. ” Prophet Mohammed served as their role model. The harshest edicts of the koranic verses were to be followed and criticism of
those verses was punishable by death. Dr. Hamid explains: “I passed through three psychological stages to reach this level of comfort with death: hatred of non-Muslims or dissenting Muslims, suppression of my conscience, and acceptance of violence in the service of Allah.”
In 1979, while working at a Muslim Brotherhood clinic, Al-Zawahiri was asked if he wanted to go to Afghanistan and he jumped at the opportunity. Even then, Afghanistan represented a possible secure base from which to wage jihad. He would later write: “It is as if 100 years were added to my life when I came to Afghanistan.” He spent 4 months in Peshawar, Pakistan.
300 al-Jihad activists were arrested after Sadat’s assassination. Almost all of those arrested were between the ages of 20 and 28 and most
were medical, law or pharmacy students at either the Universities of Asyut or al-Minya. Of those prosecuted for Sadat’s assassination, five were
sentenced to life, twelve were given long prison terms and two were acquitted, including the blind sheik, who had purported to authorize the
assassination on the basis of Islamic doctrine. According to Professor Fawwaz Gerges, who conducted extensive interviews with Mr. Habib, a writer
for Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”), Kamal Habib, played a key operational role in the assassination of Anwar Sadat.
Years later, GMU microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi would be a celebrated speaker with the charity IANA. One Assistant United States Attorney argued
he had a “rock star” status. Al-Timimi studied in a program jointly sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection, which in an addition to
an online catalog, has a confidential patent repository of biological samples. ATCC has the most comprehensive and diverse collection n the world.
Zawahiri was imprisoned for a few years after Sadat’s assassination in 1981 and apparently tortured. Attorney Al-Zayat maintains that after his
arrest in connection with the murder of President Sadat, Al-Zawahiri was tortured by the Egyptian police, and disclosed where his close friend and
ally Al-Qamari was hiding. Zawahiri has burned with bitterness over the humiliation ever since. In the long run, torture merely tends to lead to
more terrorism. “They don’t seem to understand the cult of pain they’re creating,” al-Zayat has argued compellingly. After being released from
prison in 1984, Zawahiri went to Saudi Arabia in 1986, returning to Pakistan by the next year.
One co-defendant who said of him: “While in prison, I used to meet him court during the trial sessions. He is a very calm person and polite and has more of a strategic thought than being an intellectual or the owner of jurisprudence interpretations or even a student in search of knowledge.”
Attorney al-Zayyat, who was in prison for three years along with Ayman, had a similar view. Even back then, Zawahiri placed great weight on the
religious authority of the blind sheikh, Abdel-Rahman.
A powerful 5 minute excerpt from the PBS/Frontline, “Looking for Answers” shows Zawahiri delivering an impassioned speech (in English) from
jail. His statement sheds light on the motive underlying the anthrax mailings and the reason the two dates of mailing were chosen. The choice of
targets related to US appropriations to Egypt and Israel, the extradition or “rendering” of Egyptian Islamic Jihad members pursuant to the “Leahy Law,” retaliation for the detention and alleged mistreatment of the Blind Sheikh and others, and what Ayman views as “lies” about these issues in the media.
The two mailing dates were (1) the signing of the agreement between Egypt and Israel and (2) the assassination of Sadat for signing the agreement. The choice of mailing dates was not surprising when one realizes that the subject of the December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief to President Clinton was Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The PDB described the plan to attack the US using aircraft and other means. Islambouli was part of a cell with Khalid Mohammed who not only led the “planes operation,” but would come to lead the effort to attack the US with weaponized anthrax upon Atef’s death in November 2001.
Al-Zayyat writes:
“I visited him in the Ibn al-Nafees hospital, where he was working in
Jeddah. He looked very sorrowful. The scars left on his body from
indescribable torture he suffered caused him no more pain, but his heart
still ached from it.”
“The torture he suffered was not proportionate to his comparatively minor role in the assassination of Sadat. The authorities were particularly harsh
with him not because of his deeds, but because of his connections. They discovered after arresting him that he was in contact with a number of
officers from the Egyptian Armed Forces. These included the martyr ‘Esam al-Qamari, an Armed Forces officer. Qamari fled from the army when, in March 1981, the authorities discovered his Islamist orientations.”
Al-Zayat continued:
“Despite all that he had suffered physically, what was really painful to
Zawahiri was that, under the pain of torture, he was forced to testify
against his fellow members in the case against ‘Esam al-Qamari and other
officers. Zawahiri was taken from the Tora prison to the Higher Military
Court to give testimony against other jihadi members from the army. Under
these conditions, he admitted that they formed a movement inside the army to
topple the regime and institute an Islamic government.”
After he was arrested on October 15, 1981, Zawahiri informed the authorities of Qamari’s whereabouts. He had taken a refuge in a small mosque
where he used to pray and meet Zawahiri and other members of the group. It was this painful memory which was at the root of Zawahiri’s suffering, and which prompted him to leave Egypt for Saudi Arabia. He stayed there until he left for Afghanistan in 1987. During the three years following his arrival in Afghanistan, his leadership among jihadi Islamists became more prominent,
as he worked to regroup the disoriented group members.
Zawahiri left Egypt in late 1985 after he filed a lawsuit and obtained a stay of a decision of the minister of interior banning his travel. He
spent a year working at a medical clinic in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Zawahiri started the Islamic Jihad Bureau in 1987. He published a monthly
magazine called “al-Fath” [conquest]. When Bin Laden’s spiritual leader Azzam was assassinated, al-Zawahiri assumed the role. In Afghanistan and later Sudan, Zawahiri would control Bin Laden by surrounding him with members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group. As a result, Bin Laden’s
financial support flowed to Egyptian Islamic Jihad but not the Egyptian Islamic Group.
Zawahiri opposes democracy because then people could choose their own religion rather than adhere to the religious beliefs he was taught as a
young boy before he reached the Age of Reason. He thinks democracy must be overcome through violence. Although soft-spoken and outwardly calm, he is a fanatic. The humiliation he felt upon betraying his former mentor al-Qamari still rages within him. He is not constrained by what most would view as ethical limits. In the book Bitter Harvest, he was very critical of the Muslim Brotherhood for its growing accommodation of secular rulers, though he softened his views somewhat in Prophets under the Banner. Zawahiri’s friend, IANA magazine writer Kamal Habib, notes that, in contrast to Zawahiri, he has renounced violence and embraced democracy as a means of establishing sharia law.
In the mid-1990s, Al-Zawahiri sought to coordinate the activities of the various Islamic terrorist movements to carry out sabotage activities against
the United States. A series of meetings included representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah. In a meeting held in Khartoum in April 1995, one direction Al-Zawahiri charted was to develop the effectiveness of the Islamic networks in London and New York, especially Brooklyn, where he visited the Blind Sheik’s Services Organization.
Zawahiri visited the US in 1995 and visited mosques with Ali Mohammed and San Jose physician Ali Zaki. Apparently, however, it was the planned visit by someone from Saudi Arabia coordinating with Mohammed Islambouli several years later that more recently was key to lay groundwork for the planned attacks using aircraft and other means. The planned visit was the subject of the CIA’s December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief to President Clinton. Islambouli, brother of Sadat’s assassin, was in a cell with KSM, who upon Atef’s death assumed leadership of the cell planning to attack the US with weaponized anthrax. Islambouli was head of the blind sheik’s Services Organization in Peshawar. In addition to his numerous videotaped messages and his October 2001 book “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet,” Zawahiri in 2003 wrote “Loyalty to Islam an Disavowal to Its Enemies.” Perhaps the best measure of a man’s anger is his own words.
Zawahiri announced in 2007 that Islambouli was head of the Islamic Group members who had joined Al Qaeda. Perhaps someday the capture of Mohammed Islambouli will prove the watershed event that will permit authorities to bring Amerithrax to a successful resolution.
DXer said
Continuation of AFP report on Al Zawahiri’s new tape focus on the importance of the rendering and torture of senior EIJ leaders in his motivation.
“Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was killed in Libya” and “your administration has been complicit with the Libyan regime for his murder,” Zawahiri told Obama.
Zawahiri added that Libi had been “the military leader of the Arab mujahideen (fighters) during the battle of Tora Bora” in 2001, which was launched by the United States on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in a bid to capture Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
He said Libi had been arrested in Pakistan and “tortured” during his detention in several countries, including Egypt.
“Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was tortured in Egypt, where he was forced into making a false confession that was a link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime”, which one of the reasons invoked by Washington to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said.
His video message was carried by SITE Intelligence, another US centre monitoring Islamist websites.
The death of Libi had been disclosed on May 10 by a Libyan newspaper, OAS, which said he committed suicide in a prison in Libya.”
Comment:
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy would not support Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey because Mukasey hasn’t taken a firm enough stand against torture. Leahy said: “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.” Separately, Patrick Leahy at last report is very dissatisfied with the briefing the former US Attorney General Gonzales had promised to give him on why he had been sent mailed anthrax. He repeatedly criticized Gonzales for allowing waterboarding. Judge Mukasey was in a difficult spot through no fault of his own. Senator Leahy, one of my favorite Senators, was targeted in Fall 2001 precisely because of this issue of torture. The folks connected to the WTC 1993 prosecution overseen by Judge Mukasey were responsible.
After the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Cairo attorney Montasser al-Zayat first met blind sheik Abdel-Rahman after Montasser had been tortured for 12 hours. He was near a mental breakdown. Abdel-Rahman came over to where he was huddled in a corner of a cell, bent over and whispered: “Rely on God; don’t be defeated.” Mohammed had spoken the words in the Koran. Al- Zayat would become one of Sheik Omar’s most trusted legal advisers and a lawyer on the defense team of El Sayyid Nosair. Nosair was the Egyptian who served as Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard and was tried in New York in 1990 for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane. In March 1999, attorney al-Zayat was representing defendants in a massive prosecution of jihadists in Cairo. He told the press that Ayman Zawahiri would use weaponized anthrax against US targets because of the continued extradition pressure and torture faced by Egyptian Islamic Jihad members. Two senior EIJ leaders then on trial were saying the same thing to the press and in confessions.
US Postal employee Sattar, who had been the blind sheik’s spokesman after his 1993 arrest, in a 1999 Frontline interview spoke of the role of appropriations and torture in fueling the islamist rage:
“this is the same old story happening again, and again, and again. American government don’t get it. The American government [is] deceiving the American people. They’re not telling them what’s really going on. You can kill Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow. You can arrest him and put him on trial in New York or in Washington.”
“Tomorrow you will get somebody else, his name probably will be different, Abdullah, or Muhammad. It’s not going to end. Until you, take a hard, and a good look at your policies in the Islamic world and the Muslim world, as long as you’re supporting dictators like Mubarak as long as you are giving aid to regimes that [are worse] to their people than Saddam Hussein, things will get ugly, and you cannot control the emotion of people when you are tortured in Egyptian prison by an American trained Egyptian officer. He is torturing you, and he is bragging that he was in the United States getting his training, when the equipment that he is using is American made.”
The founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad Kamal Habib (who wrote for the quarterly magazine of the US charity Islamic Assembly of North America) told scholar Fawaz Gerges:
“The prison years also radicalized al-shabab [young men] and set them on another violent journey. The torture left deep physical and psychological scars on jihadists and fueled their thirst for vengeance. Look at my hands — still spotted with the scars from cigarette burns nineteen years later. For days on end we were brutalized — our faces bloodied, our bodies broken with electrical shocks and other devices. The torturers aimed at breaking our souls and brainwashing us. They wanted to humiliate us and force us to betray the closest members of our cells.
I spent sleepless nights listening to the screams of young men echoing from torture chambers. A degrading, dehumanizing experience. I cannot convey to you the rage felt by al-shabab who were tortured after Sadat’s assassination.”
While Kamal Habib wrote for the jihad-supporting Assirat, Al-Timimi was on the Board of Advisers.
In a videotape that circulated in the summer of 2001, Zawahiri said “In Egypt they put a lot of people in jails — some sentenced to be hanged. And in the Egyptian jails, there is a lot of killing and torture. All this happens under the supervision of America. America has a CIA station as well as an FBI office and a huge embassy in Egypt, and it closely follows what happens in that country. Therefore, America is responsible for everything that happens.”
An August 29, 2001 opinion column on Islamway, the second most read site for english speaking muslims, illustrates that the role of “Leahy Law” was known by educated islamists:
“There is an intolerable contradiction between America’s professed policy of opposition to state-sponsored terrorism, exemplified by the Leahy Law, and the U.S. Congress’ continuing sponsorship of Israeli violence against Palestinians.” The article cited “References: CIFP 2001. “Limitations on Assistance to Security Forces: ‘The Leahy Law’” 4/9/01 (Washington, DC: Center for International Foreign Policy) Center for International Foreign Policy Accessed 8/28/01.Hocksteader, Lee 2001.
The next day, in the same publication, there was an article describing the 21-page document released in Ottawa on August 29, 2001, in which the CSIS claimed that Canadian detainee Jaballah had contacts with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Shehata and sought to deport Jaballah. Shehata was in charge of EIJ’s Civilian Branch and in charge of “special operations.”The nominal President of the Syracuse-based Help the Needy IANA spin-off was moderator of islamway for women. It would be seven more years — not until February 2008 — before the Canadian government for the first time revealed that after coming to Canada in 1996, Jaballah would contact Ayman regularly on Ayman’s Inmarsat satellite phone.
“They [Senators Daschle and Leahy] represent something to him,” says James Fitzgerald of the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. “Whatever agenda he’s operating under, these people meant something to him.” To more fully appreciate why Leahy — a human rights advocate and liberal democrat — might have been targeted as a symbol, it is important to know that Senator Leahy has been the head of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, the panel in charge of aid to Egypt and Israel. In addition to the Senate majority leader, anthrax was mailed to the position symbolic of the 50 billion in appropriations that has been given to Israel since 1947 (and the equally substantial $2 billion annually in aid that has been keeping Mubarak in power in Egypt and the militant islamists out of power).
Within a couple weeks after September 11, a report in the Washington Post and then throughout the muslim world explained that the President sought a waiver that would allow military assistance to once-shunned nations. The militant islamists who had already been reeling from the extradition of 70 “brothers”, would now be facing much more of the same. President Bush asked Congress for authority to waive all existing restrictions on U.S. military assistance and exports for the next five years to any country where the aid would help the fight against international terrorism. The waiver would include those nations who were currently unable to receive U.S. military aid because of their sponsorship of terrorism (such as Syria and Iran) or because of their nuclear weapons programs (such as Pakistan).
In late September 2001, the Washington Post quoted Leahy: “We all want to be helpful, and I will listen to what they have in mind.” The article noted that he was chairman of both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, which were considering the legislation. “But we also want to be convinced that what is being proposed is sound, measured and necessary and not merely impulsive,” said Leahy. “Moral leadership in defense of democracy and human rights is vital to what we stand for in the world. Acts of terrorism are violations of human rights. Now is the time to show what sets us apart from those who attack us,” he said.
The options being considered in response to the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington included potential cooperation with virtually every Middle Eastern and South and Central Asian nation near Afghanistan. “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” would be the only test for foreign aid. The “Leahy Law” plays a key role in the secret “rendering” of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Al Qaeda) operatives to countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Algeria where they are allegedly tortured. Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar during the Clinton Administration, has quoted Vice-President Gore saying: “Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.” Although humanitarian in its intent, the Leahy Law permits continued appropriations to military and security units who conduct torture in the event of “extraordinary circumstances.”
In an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera television on October 7, 2001 (October 6 in the US) — about when the second letter saying “Death to America’” and “Death to Israel” was mailed — Ayman Zawahiri echoed a familiar refrain sounded by Bin Laden: “O people of the U.S., can you ask yourselves a question: Why all this enmity for the United States and Israel? *** Your government supports the corrupt governments in our countries.”
A month after 9/11, late at night, a charter flight from Cairo touched down at the Baku airport. An Egyptian, arrested by the Azerbaijan authorities on suspicions of having played a part in the September 11 attack, was brought on board. His name was kept secret. That same night the plane set off in the opposite direction. Much of the Amerithrax story has happened at night with no witnesses, with the rendering of University of Karachi microbiology student Saeed Mohammed merely one example. Zawahiri claims that there is a US intelligence bureau inside the headquarters of the Egyptian State Security Investigation Department that receives daily reports on the number of detainees and those detainees who are released. At the time Ayman Zawahiri was getting his biological weapons program in full swing, his own brother Mohammed was picked up in the United Arab Emirates. He was secretly rendered to Egyptian security forces and sentenced to death rendered in the 1999 Albanian returnees case.
Throughout 2001, the Egyptian islamists were wracked by extraditions and renditions. CIA Director Tenet once publicly testified that there had been 70 renditions prior to 9/11. At the same time a Canadian judge was finding that Mahmoud Mahjoub was a member of the Vanguards of Conquest and would be denied bail, Bosnian authorities announced on October 6, 2001 they had handed over three Egyptians to Cairo who had been arrested in July. In Uruguay, a court authorized the extradition to Egypt of a man wanted in Egypt for his alleged role in the 1997 Luxor attack. Ahmed Agiza, the leader of the Vanguards of Conquest (which can be viewed as an offshoot of Jihad), was handed over by Sweden in December 2001.
One islamist, a Hamas supporter, summarized why the anthrax was sent in an ode “To Anthrax” on November 1, 2001: “O, anthrax, despite, your wretchedness, you have sewn horror in the heart of the lady of arrogance, of tyranny, of boastfulness!” In an interview that appeared in the Pakistani paper, Dawn, on November 10, 2001, Bin Laden explained that “The American Congress endorses all government measures, and this proves that [all of] America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims.”
At a December 2002 conference held by “Accuracy in Media,” former State Department analyst Kenneth Dillon noted that Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), the key component of al Qaeda under Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, head of al Qaeda’s biowarfare program, likely targeted Senator Leahy because of his role as head of a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee that had developed the so-called “Leahy Law” in 1998. Dillon explained, “According to the wording of the Leahy Law, the U.S. Government was authorized to ‘render’ suspected foreign nationals to the government of a foreign country, even when there was a possibility that they would be tortured, in ‘exceptional circumstances.’ When the Leahy Law was applied to send EIJ members captured in the Balkans back to Egypt, Zawahiri fiercely denounced the United States. So Leahy was a high-priority target.”
That aid goes to the core of Al Qaeda’s complaint against the United States. (The portion going to Egypt and Israel constituted, by far, the largest portion of US foreign aid, and most of that is for military and security purposes.) Pakistan is a grudging ally in the “war against terrorism” largely due to the US Aid it now receives in exchange for that cooperation. The press in Pakistan newspapers regularly reported on protests arguing that FBI’s reported 12 agents in Pakistan in 2002 were an affront to its sovereignty. There was a tall man, an Urdu-speaking man, and a woman — all chain-smokers — who along with their colleagues were doing very important work in an unsupportive, even hostile, environment. The US agents — whether CIA or FBI or US Army — caused quite a stir in Pakistan along with the Pakistani security and intelligence officials who accompanied them. In mid-March 2003, Washington waived sanctions imposed in 1999 paving the way for release in economic aid to Pakistan. Billions more would be sent to Egypt, Israel and other countries involved in the “war against terrorism.”
The commentators who suggest that Al Qaeda would have had no motivation to send aerosolized anthrax to Senators Daschle and Leahy as symbolic targets — because they are liberal — are mistaken. The main goal of Dr. Zawahiri is to topple President Mubarak. He views the US aid as the chief obstacle and is indifferent to this country’s labels of conservative and liberal.
Zawahiri likely was surprised that the plainly worded message of the letters accompanying the anthrax was not deemed clear. Perhaps the talking heads would not have been so quick to infer an opposite meaning if no message had been expressed using words at all. Perhaps the public the sender had relied only on what KSM describes as the language of war — the death delivered by the letters — the pundits would not have been so misdirected. But why was Al Qaeda evasive on the question of responsibility for the anthrax mailings, dismissing the issue with a snicker, and falsely claiming that Al Qaeda did not know anything about anthrax? Simple. Bin Laden denied responsibility for 9/11 until it was beyond reasonable dispute. On September 16, 2001, he said: “The US is pointing the finger at me but I categorically state that I have not done this. I am residing in Afghanistan. I have taken an oath of allegiance (to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar) which does not allow me to do such things from Afghanistan.” Before that, Ayman had denied the 1998 embassy bombings too. On August 20, 1998, coincidentally on the day of strikes on camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, Ayman al-Zawahiri contacted The News, a Pakistani English-language daily, and said on behalf of Bin Laden that “Bin Laden calls on Moslem Ummah to continue Jihad against Jews and Americans to liberate their holy places. In the meanwhile, he denies any involvement in the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings.” To Ayman, “war is deception.”
The targeted Senators have another connection pertinent to the Egyptian militants. The United States and other countries exchange evidence for counterterrorism cases under the legal framework of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (”MLAT”). Egypt is signatory of such a treaty that was ratified by the United States Senate in late 2000. For example, when the Fall 2001 rendition of Vanguards of Conquest leader Agizah was criticized, the US explained that it was relying on the MLAT. In the prosecution of Post Office worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar, the MLAT was described. Sattar’s attorney Michael Tigar, at trial in December 2004 explained: “Now, that might be classified, it’s true, but we have now found out and our research has just revealed that on, that the State Department has reported that it intends to use and relies on the mutual legal assistance treaty between the United States and Egypt signed May 3, 1998, in Cairo, and finally ratified by the United States Senate on October 18th, 2000. The State Department issued a press report about this treaty on November 29th, 2001 and I have a copy here.” He explained that “Article IV of the treaty provides that requests under the treaty can be made orally as well as under the formal written procedures required by the treaty, that those requests can include requests for testimony, documents, and even for the transfer to the United States if the treaty conditions are met.”
Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Al-Sirri was a co-defendant in the case against post office worker Sattar. In the late 1990s Sattar and he often spoke in conversations intercepted by the FBI. Al-Sirri’s fellow EIJ cell members in London were subject to process under those treaties at the time of the anthrax mailings. Those London cell members had been responsible for the faxing of the claim of responsibility which stated the motive for the 1998 embassy bombings. A group calling itself the “Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places” took credit for the bombings listing as among their demands “the release of the Muslims detained in the United State[s] first and foremost Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the spiritual guide of the Gama’a Islamiya) who is jailed in the United States.” As reason for the bombings, in addition to the rendition recent EIJ members to Cairo and the detention of Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the faxes pointed to the detention of dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali . Al-Hawali was the mentor of GMU microbiology student Al-Timimi who spoke in London in August 2001 alongside 911 Imam Awlaki (also from Falls Church) and unindicted WTC 1993 conspirator Bilal Philips. Al-Timimi was in contact with Saudi sheik Al-Hawali in 2002 and arranged to hand deliver a message to all members of Congress he had drafted in al-Hawali’s name on the first anniversary of the anthrax mailings to Senator Leahy and Daschle.
Michael Scheuer the former chief, Bin Laden Unit, eruditely defended the extraordinary rendition program he had launched at the request of President Clinton and his advisors before Congress in April 2007. There’s always been a huge irony in Michael Scheuer’s emphasis on how OBL is attacking the US for its policies without publicly acknowledging the importance of the rendition policy is to those planning the attacks. For the purpose of true crime analysis, it’s not rendition as a policy or human rights issue — or even a tactical issue — that is the question presented. It is walking in the shoes of your adversary (as expert Scheuer urged us to do in his 2002 book). The key is seeing things in terms of what motivates them to act. Sometimes it’s the only way to catch the bad guys — so that you then have the luxury of deciding how well you are going to treat them.
The Amerithrax Task Force imagines that Ft. Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins targeted Leahy and Daschle because they were Catholics who voted pro-choice in opposition to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. The affidavit regarding Dr. Ivins further explains:
“On September 26, 2001, in an email to a friend, Dr. Ivins writes: “The news media has been saying that some members of Congress and members of the ACLU oppose many of the Justice Department proposals for combating terrorism, saying that they are unconstitutional and infringe too much on civil liberties. Many people don’t know it but the official ACLU position to oppose all metal detectors in airports and schools and other public buildings. It’s interesting that we may now be living in a time when our biggest threat to civil liberties and freedom doesn’t come from the government but from enemies of the government. Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans, but I guess that doesn’t mean a lot to the ACLU. Maybe I should move to Canada…”
The Amerithrax Task Force is mistaken and its analysis is quite foolish. If they really think that their profferred explanation is the answer, then the United States is not at all safe from Ayman Zawahiri’s vengefulness because they really suck at true crime analysis.
But, hey Ayman: Maybe the national security division is just playing rope a dope with you. In late 2001 and 2002, the US DOJ was criticized that it could not balance an intelligence function with a law enforcement function. Maybe the DOJ is just willing to take their lumps while they prove that they can. Maybe your network has been penetrated in ways you never imagined — dating back to late 2001.
DXer said
The letter sent to AMI in Florida sought to dissuade Jennifer Lopez from a planned marriage. A wedding or marriage is well-known Al Qaeda code for an attack. The sender said how much he loved her and asked her to marry him. Stevens noted at the time it was especially off the wall given that the Sun did not deal with celebrities, which was the subject of the sister-paper Globe. Stevens’ fellow photo editor Roz Suss was looking over his shoulder: “With that Bob says to me,” Hey, I think there’s something gold in here. It looks like a Jewish star sticking out of the powder.” I walked up behind him and reached over his shoulder. I pulled this little star out of what looked like a mound of powder in this letter. I remember it as a fine white powder.” “It looked like something from a Cracker Jacks box,” she says. She picked it out of the powder and tossed it in her wastebasket. Stevens’ colleague Bobby Bender has a different recollection. He says he opened a letter to Jennifer Lopez, recalls handling a large envelope to Jennifer Lopez, care of the Sun. In it was a cigar tube containing a cigar, a small Star of David charm, and something that seemed like soap powder. Hambali and two al-Qaeda minions considered attacking an Israeli restaurant, with a Star of David above it, in the Khao San Rd. backpacker area in Bangkok.
A December 1998 Presidential Daily Brief to President Clinton explained: “An alleged Bin Ladin supporter late last month remarked to his mother that he planned to work in ‘commerce’ from abroad and said his impending ‘marriage,’ which would take place soon, would be a ’surprise.’” The December 1998 PDB continued: “‘Commerce’ and ‘marriage’ often are code words for attacks.” Of course, sometimes, a young man just wants to tell his mom he’s got a job or warn her that she may not approve of the woman he intends to marry. Similarly, sometimes folks who write to tabloids are merely commenting on JLo’s impending nuptials.
Jennifer Lopez’s fame had withstood a number of under performing movies, to include the movie “The Cell” in the year 2000. In the movie, following a trail of bodies, an FBI agent tracks down and captures a disturbed serial killer. Before the killer can reveal the whereabouts of his next victim (a woman trapped in a cell on the verge of drowning), he falls into a coma. Enter beautiful FBI psychologist Lopez, who uses a radical link to the killer’s brain that could destroy her own sanity. “Her mission: Find the cell’s location before time runs out, and avoid getting trapped inside the killer’s head.” According to an early National Enquirer, Stevens held it up to his face and then put it down on the keyboard (where traces of anthrax were found). The publisher’s wife was the real estate broker who rented to two of the hijackers.
The heaviest concentration was in the mailroom on the first floor, with positive findings in many cubicles throughout the first floor. The second floor had positive traces mainly in the hallways. The third floor had the fewest positive traces. The FBI has a theory that the spores were distributed on copy paper, perhaps having fallen onto an open ream of paper in the mailroom where it was stored. Perhaps instead spores could have been spread by a vacuum cleaner and collected at copier machines because of the electrostatic charge and the fans on the machines. Mrs. Stevens recently explained: “They get strange letters sometimes, and the consensus seems to be that if Robert wasn’t wearing his glasses and if it was something funny, he would hold the letters up to his face. They think perhaps that’s how he got it. Just bad luck.” The key expert evidence on this issue of the Jennifer Lopez letter thus far is the New England Journal of Medicine in which Stevens’ doctor concludes that the letter, opened 9/19 and resulting in symptoms appearing 9/30, evidenced an incubation period consistent with inhalational anthrax. (He refers to the 1979 accidental release in Russia). A CDC report discussed a second letter of possible interest thought to have been opened on September 25 by a different woman who was exposed. The jury will have to remain out unless and until there is more information on the letter(s) that transmitted the anthrax to AMI. The FBI went back to AMI in August 2002. A February 2003 article in Esquire says the “cops and the doctors” have concluded that there were two letters, following two different paths, with one having been mailed to an old address of the National Enquirer before being forwarded. If there were two different letters, were they to two different AMI publications? That would make sense — with one directed to the Sun and one directed to the National Enquirer.
What does the J.Lo letter tell us about the sender, or senders? J.Lo is what they used to call a “sex bomb” — and the biggest one at the time. She had international fame. The vehicle had a “weird” love letter, a Star of David, maybe a cigar. Who had “issues” and weird obsessions with women, sex (with a cigar being a crude symbol) and Jewish symbolism? Atta, for example, had strict instructions in his will about what women would be allowed to do at his funeral. Follow the anomalies.
Two of the hijackers had subscriptions to AMI publications, as did Al Qaeda operative al-Marabh. Boston cab driver Al-Marabh had been in contact with the hijackers, to include Alghamdi who rented an apartment from the wife of the AMI publisher. Atta was seen at the apartment of Al-Marabh and his uncle (the co-founder with Jaballah of an islamic school in Toronto in the Spring of 2001. After coming to Canada in 1996, Jaballah spoke with Ayman regularly on Ayman’s satellite phone.
Anonymous Scientist said
We are now at T+ 72 days since the FBI announced they were ‘on the verge’ of closing the anthrax case.
BugMaster said
You would think the FBI could at least disclose whether or not they isolated the contaminating b. subtilis from the AMI building.
BTW: If the new nano-SIMS can be used to analyze as few as 100 spores or so, why doesn’t the FBI:
Stick a swab from the AMI building in the machine and smoke it!