* from DXer … the lifelong friends of Dr. Tarek Hamouda, supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins, actively denounce their former medical school associate Ayman Zawahiri as a fanatic – one serving as President of CAIR-St. Louis and the other as author of INSIDE JIHAD.
Posted by DXer on May 7, 2010
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The FBI’s case against Dr. Ivins is bogus: no evidence, no witnesses, an impossible timeline, science that proves innocence instead of guilt. So what really happened? And why? The “fictional” scenario in my novel CASE CLOSED has been judged by many readers, including a highly respected official in the U.S. Intelligence Community, as “quite plausible.”
* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
The National Geographic tv yarn about the Amerithrax investigation of Bruce Ivins has a curious brief snippet. It involves a search of USAMRIID by the squad that was investigating a foreign lead. Each squad, we knew from the start of the investigation, was to stay in their own lane. The handsome muscled Ryker asked the fellow who headed the squad investigating foreign leads — who was retrieving massive documents from USAMRIID — what he was doing there. (And the fellow responded that Ryker should keep his eyes on his own paper, or words to that effect). What would have been been doing there? Would he have been investigating the lead to the Egyptian scientist who Ivins had supplied Ames? That scientist did the research in the BL3 at USAMRIID, and at LSU and elsewhere. I emailed the fellow to ask if we knew former or current members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in common but he didn’t respond.
Or did it involve the scientist who shared the suite with leading Ames researchers at the DARPA-funded biodefense center at GMU. The one with the Russian defector Ken Alibek and the members of his company. His name is Ali Al-Timimi. Imam Ali Al-Timimi, whose counsel Jonathan Turley described him as an “anthrax suspect” in a court filing. GMU shared facilities with ATCC, which had the largest biological repository in the world. I once spoke to Ali’s gracious wife Ziyana but she was not authorized by counsel to answer any questions.
DXer said
Roush Review: An Anthrax Scare Depicted in a Tepid ‘Hot Zone’
Matt Roush, TV Insider 57 min ago
https://www.insidenova.com/lifestyles/entertainment/roush-review-an-anthrax-scare-depicted-in-a-tepid-hot-zone/article_563470bc-b4a9-531a-8e91-ef0f6096017e.html
DXer said
The CDC shut down an Army lab that’s working on an Ebola vaccine
By: Meghann Myers 20 hours ago
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/08/08/the-cdc-shut-down-an-army-lab-thats-working-on-an-ebola-vaccine/
The U.S. Army Medical Research of Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is at a standstill until the violations are fixed and it is re-instated with the Federal Select Agents Program, which allowed it to handle dangerous biological specimens.
“CDC can confirm FSAP has suspended USAMRIID’s registration with the Federal Select Agent Program until USAMRIID corrects deficiencies that have been identified by FSAP,” Sharon Hopkins said.
Hoskins did not provide further details of the lab’s compliance issues.
USAMRIID, a Defense Department lab under Army Medical Research and Development Command, primarily does research with the goal of protecting troops who might come in contact with biological agents while deployed.
DXer said
Decker wrote: “of the ninety-two laboratories located across the country that had shipped or received live anthrax since 1996, twenty-seven had still not responded…. I began drafting a second subpoena to follow up. If an instittion did have the Ames strain, I then asked, whom had they gotten it from, and when and where had they sent it?
My search did to stop with the CDC transfer records. I requested the FBI Laboratory’s library conduct searches of scientific journals for mention of anthrax….
I contacted the US Patent Office across town and requested a search of patent applications.”
DXer said
Decker writes: “As December passed, 91 of the 103 laboratories had responded to the question of possessing Ames; 29 answered in the affirmative.”
DXer said
In light of Dr. Scott Stanley’s nearly daily presence at USAMRIID for long periods, he would have been the one to follow up on this lead of a non-citizen from Egypt — whose friends were recruited into jihad by Dr. Ayman Zawahiri at Cairo Medical. Did he?
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
COURT: New twist in terror case
As trial gets underway, Islamic rights group [ CAIR ] seeks information on the FBI informant who sparked the case to ensure defendants get a fair trial
http://www.pe.com/articles/informant-698704-kabir-deleon.html
Updated: Aug. 12, 2014
DXer said
Scott Shane, although busy with finishing his book on Anwar Awlaki, is a long recognized early expert on Amerithrax:
FBI scrutinizes biodefense labs in anthrax probe
Staff at Fort Detrick, records at Dugway draw new interest
25 sites have had spores
February 22, 2002|By Scott Shane | Scott Shane,SUN STAFF
The FBI has turned to those same biodefense experts to find clues in the powder.
One government official says that despite the extraordinary concentration and purity of the powder, with an estimated 1 trillion spores per gram, chemical analysis has not pointed to a specific source. Scientists have not been able to rule out the possibility that the powder might have been diverted from Dugway, the official says.
Genetic analysis, conducted at Northern Arizona University and the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, at first established that the mailed anthrax has almost the same genetic fingerprint as the Army’s Ames strain, acquired in 1981 from a heifer that died in Texas. (The “Ames” designation came from a researcher’s mistaken belief that the sample came from Ames, Iowa.)
Now researchers led by Paul Keim at Northern Arizona are trying to find tiny variations among different labs’ samples of Ames anthrax. Keim said at a Las Vegas meeting last week that he has had some success. But the work is not complete, and it remains to be seen whether it will help pinpoint a source.
Part of the challenge is collecting Ames samples from the 25 or more labs that got the strain directly or indirectly from the Army. Government experts doubt it is possible to identify every place with Ames stocks – particularly overseas, where investigators know five countries had samples but believe the real number is higher.
Comment: FBI Director Mueller explained that it was not possible to obtain complete sampling from abroad due to the lack of cooperation of some countries.
DXer said
Consider the analogy of charting the distribution of smallpox. If only the US sample was counted — and not the sample in Russia — then not only would the analysis miss Russia but also all those researchers that Russia gave the sample, including samples distributed in past years. The analysis would miss all the researchers that those researchers gave the sample etc. And of course the HVAC repairman and his brother and the grad student who walked through the lab too. Prior to 9/11, anthrax in its liquid form was only a BL-2 pathogen and did not require a BL-3 facility.
Anyone with access could simply have provided access to anyone else, whether for money or as a favor. Anyone who says they necessarily did not have it because their institution was not a BL-3 facility is either uninformed or being misleading — because virulent anthrax was BL-2 in its liquid form.
PST Bad guys don’t cooperate with subpoenas. HOO! DOH! GRR.
People need to step up their game. Here are the new 3 letter scrabble words:
AJI a type of chili pepper , CAF a cafeteria or cafe CUZ a cousin DAS plural of da DEP a convenience store DOH do DUM cooked with steam ECO ecology EMO emo rock EST a group technique for raising self awareness FAH fa FOO a name for temporary computer files GIF a computer file GIS plural of gi GRR interj used to express annoyance HOM a sacred plant of the ancient Persians HOO expresses suprise (interj) LUD a form of address to a judge in a court LUN a lee MAM a mother MEH interj boring MMM mm MOI me- interj MUX to transmit several messages simultaneously along a single channel NAV navigation
NUG a chunk of wood sawn from a log OCH interj used to express surprise or regret OOF interj used to express discomfort OPA grandfather ORG organization OWT anything PHO Vietnamese soup POS plural of po REZ reservation (area of land) ROO kangaroo RYU school of japanese martial arts SAN a sanatorium SEV an Indian food of deep fried strands of flour SOC a sociology course
SOH sol SUS to suss (figure out) TEC tech TES plural of te TIX tickets TIZ tizzy TUM stomach UNI uniform/ university VIN French wine VOG air pollution caused by volcano
DXer said
One or more non-citizens in the United States also were supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins.
For example, Dr, Hamouda thanked Bruce Ivins for supplying virulent Ames in numerous published patents and a 1999 journal article.
Dr. Ayman Zawahiri would come on Fridays to Cairo Medical school to recruit students to jihad. Dr. Ayman was an alum and his sister Heba taught microbiology at Cairo Medical. Dr. Zawahiri and his family were very highly regarded.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
2014 NRC report on microbial forensics explains:
A “second path was predicated on the fact that early nuclear weapons testing had caused a change in atmospheric carbon-14 ratios. The phenomenon suggested a potential way to date the production of the spores and showed that the spores in the letter sent to Senator Leahy were produced between 1998 and 2001.”
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Building 1412 , Rm. 212 was where the FBI’s expert made a dried powder out of Ames supplied from RMR 1029 as part of a DARPA-funded program. No sample was submitted initially to the repository and it was later seized. JE’s assistant then went on to Johns-Hopkins. The Ames seized from Building 1412, Rm. 212 had 3 mutations.
DXer said
Executive Summary
Review of FBI Interactions with the Council on American- Islamic Relations
September 2013
Click to access e0707r-summary.pdf
DXer said
The scientist taught microbiology by Heba Zawahiri worked alongside Bruce Ivins and the Patricia Fellows in the B3 with virulent Ames.
DXer said
Khaled Hamid, Tarek Hamouda’s friend who explained in a radio interview that he was questioned by the FBI about whether he knew of a sleeper cell, discusses the rules relating to the conduct of warfare found in the Quran. Under his interpretation, it is forbidden to kill an old man, woman or child. “Make sure to avoid them during battles and in conducting raids.” Ali Al-Timimi also spoke about the application of such rules.
Khaled addresses the issue in his blog here:
http://muslimdreamer.blogspot.com/2008/01/islam-violence-and-war.html
January 11, 2008
Islam, Violence and War
In a different message to another military leader, Omar ordered: “Never kill and old man, a woman or a child. Make sure to avoid them during battles and in conducting raids”.
DXer said
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lawmaker-report-fort-hood-attack-faults-fbi-16808230#.UAdjCmCwOm0
Lawmaker: Report on Fort Hood Attack Faults FBI
By EILEEN SULLIVAN Associated Press
WASHINGTON July 19, 2012 (AP)
In emails to a known terrorist, the man charged with killing 13 people in a 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, expressed his support for suicide bombings and killing civilians — glaring signs that the FBI did not act on but should have, a lawmaker briefed on a new report on the rampage said Wednesday.
Army Maj. Nidal Hasan told a radical Islamic cleric — a man well-known to the U.S. intelligence community — that he advocated using suicide bombers and that he believed it was OK to kill civilians, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told The Associated Press. And the known terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki, told Hasan in an email that the Army psychiatrist should keep the terrorist’s contact information handy, McCaul said.
But the agents on the FBI’s Washington anti-terrorism task force thought the issue of a Muslim soldier talking to extremists was too sensitive to bring up with the Defense Department, McCaul said the report found.
“It shows you the length of the political correctness stuff going on,” McCaul said after he was briefed on the findings of the independent review Wednesday.
***
But McCaul said that wasn’t the whole story. The FBI in San Diego had been investigating al-Awlaki, a former San Diego resident, for his possible connections to the 9/11 hijackers. When agents saw emails between Hasan and al-Awlaki, they asked the FBI’s Washington office to talk to Hasan’s bosses, according to a government official briefed on the findings who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the Webster report. But the Washington agents thought that interviewing American Muslims who visit extremist websites was a sensitive issue and did not reach out to Hasan’s bosses at the Defense Department.
DXer said
In his new book HUNTING IN THE SHADOWS, Seth Jones describes the rift between Zawahiri and his former mentor, another Cairo Medical alum in Khartoum, Sudan in the early 1990s. Before both leading the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, in addition to the recruiting at medical school, they would travel in the same social circles — see each other at weddings etc.
Those who had read about the history of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad is in fact the modus operandi of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and it was EIJ who led the way on the anthrax planning. (I don’t know about you but I bought my Cipro on or about September 22, 2001 about the time of the New York Times article on cropdusting inquiries.) The profilers who talked about Al Qaeda liking the “big bang” simply were not well-informed about EIJ’s anthrax planning or its past attacks. What the profilers in Quantico should have said was “Dr. Ayman has announced he plans to use anthrax against US targets. We need to obtain any B3 records of his former associates in Khartoum and Cairo by 5:00 p.m. today. And we need to ask that subtilis expert living in the Princeton area why he was calling the telephone number associated with WTC 1993 mastermind, KSM’s nephew Ramzi Yousef, right up to the time of the Blind Sheik’s arrest.”
And what you definitely did not want to do was invade Iraq given that all the evidence pointed to Al Qaeda and not Saddam. Dr. Ayman had sent 4 EIJ leaders to Iraq in 2001 to form Ansar Al-Islam out of an amalgamation of local islamist groups.
Seth Jones writes:
“[Dr.] Sharif’s opposition to a violent campaign against the Egyptian government provoked radical members, who preferred an activist approach. …
Quoting from the Qur’an, Sharif berated Zawahiri: “Who is further astray than the one who follows his own whims with no guidance from God? Truly God does not guide those who do wrong.”
But Zawahiri was not persuaded and argued that the Egyptian government was illegitimate. “An analysis of the political situation in Egypt would reveal that Egypt is struggling between two powers,” he noted. “An official power and a popular power that has its roots deeply established in the ground, which is the Islamic movement in general and the solid jihad nucleus in particular.”
…Zawahiri, who had a flair for the apocalyptic, won the argument. Egyptian Islamic Jihad then joined with other violent groups and went on a killing spree. In 1992 they gunned down Farag Fodah, one of Egypt’s best-known authors, who was a secularist and supported the Israeli-Egyptian best-known authors, . The following year they attempted to kill the Egyptian interior minister, Hasan al-Alfi. Al-Alfi escaped, but five others died. In November 1993, Egyptian Islamic Jihad attempted to kill the Egyptian prime minister, Aref Sidqi. They failed but one bystander was killed and eighteen were injured.”
DXer said
Summer 2001 Inquiries About Cropdusters and Helicopters
Expert Kohlmann reports that “The LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba] has also displayed persistent efforts at aimed at obtaining remote control drone aircraft, presumably in order to gather reconnaissance on enemy positions. Kohlman quotes a November 2000 Taiba Bulletin that quotes a LeT representative boasting ” Lashkar-e-Taiba also made a remote control aeroplane that was caught in Occupied Kashmir. We are developing the modern technology.” Evan Kohlman reports that “one of the best accounts of the jihad in Kashmar is the book Army of Madinah in Kashmir written by “Esa al-Hindi”. He quotes Al-Hindi: “Running … straight into the enemy ranks on a well-worn battlefield is a noble and admirable action, but it needs to be complemented by all other fields of the battle arena for a successful operation… [including] Physical warfare, Drug warfare, Germ warfare, Chemical warfare, [and] Sabotage warfare.’ ”
Authors Schwartz and University of Minnesota Professor Osterholm explained in December 2000:
“Dozens of Websites offer information on new and used crop-dusting planes and equipment that can be fitted to almost any plane or even trucks. Most of the equipment can be found on those sites produce a highly controlled mist spray, with nozzles that can set the droplet size precisely.”
“A quick call to the toll-free number for a state university’s agricultural service (listed, naturally on its Website) revealed that powder dispersal systems, while less popular than wet systems, are still available. One Website even provides a handy guide to the area one would expect to cover using various particle sizes, wet and dry — from thousand micron particles to half-micron particles capable of drifting almost four hundred miles.”
It was no small irony that by the time the paperback version came out in September 2001 just a few miles away Zacarias Moussaoui had in fact downloaded such materials onto his laptop.
Attorney General Ashcroft, on October 1, 2001 explained: “I think shortly after the September 11 events, we developed information about crop dusters and noted that there had been an interest expressed in the dispersal of chemical agents by some of the individuals who had relationships with the hijackers and were the hijackers, and we asked those who were associated with the agriculture, chemical industry, and crop dusting to begin to be more careful, to lock their airplanes, to be aware of anyone seeking to adjust the kind of way in which the nozzles would be, which would maybe require a different approach.
President Bush, at a press conference on October 11, 2001 said:
“We received knowledge that perhaps an al-Qaeda operative was prepared to use a crop-duster to spray a biological weapon or a chemical weapon on American people, and so Kabul home with papers relating to the aerial delivery of anthrax.
Some investigators on the team prosecuting Zacarias Moussaoui thought he wasn’t expected to take part in the 9/11 plan as such or fly into the White House as prosecutors would allege in January 2003, but was expected instead to use a cropduster. In an e-mail dated July 31, 2001, after receiving $14,000 from Ramzi Binalshibh, Moussaoui inquired of a Minnesota school concerning a 6 month or year long cropdusting course. Although French intelligence suggests instead that there was a separate hijacking plot (of an international airline) to occur later, in light of the e-mail, use of a cropdusting plane may have been an alternative plan at least as of the end of July 2001. Khalid Mohammed reportedly has told his interrogators that Moussaoui was to be part of a second wave of attacks. He said that Moussaoui’s interest in cropdusters may have related to Yazid Sufaat’s work on anthrax.
In a coded communication in the summer of 2001, KSM told Ramzi Binalhibh to send the “skirts” to “Sally”, apparently referring to sending funds to Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui may have been considered as a substitute if one of the pilots, who had developed a strained relationship with Atta, dropped out. They were referred to as the “unhappy couple” and it was said that a divorce would be expensive. Was Moussaoui really slated for a “second wave” of similar attacks on California targets that merely involved the same modus operandi? In an email dated July 31, 2001, he was inquiring about a cropdusting course. Was this just a means of avoiding the need for “muscle hijackers?” (After the first “wave”, it likely would be more difficult for such muscle to get into the country.)
Atta’s code name for Ramzi was “Jenny”. “Wedding” was code for attack. In September 2001, the AMI received a letter thought about Jenny’s planned wedding that contained white powder that Robert Stevens put on his keyboard where a high concentration of anthrax was detected. Mrs. Stevens has said investigators surmise that was the letter that infected him.
It’s unknown what role Atta’s roommate, pilot Ramzi Binalshibh, would have played if he had succeeded on one of his four attempts to get into the country. Ramzi Binalshibh was Atta’s former roommate in Germany and was captured in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002. The government deleted the two allegations regarding cropduster inquiries from the indictment of Moussaoui. Although the move was never explained, it perhaps was because in his defense he was relying on a July 31, 2001 e-mail seeking to sign up for a cropdusting course that would take 6 months to a year. Moussaoui was attempting to use the e-mail to argue that it demonstrated that he was not part of the 9/11 conspiracy.
On September 19, 2001, an FBI agent asked a federal judge in Colorado for permission to search an e-mail account named “greenlab@usa.net” that Sufaat had given Moussaoui to use.
Perhaps the cropdusters related to a chemical or nerve agent. Based on the interrogation of Ramzi Binalshibh, it now appears that the 9/11 planners lost confidence in Moussaoui’s discretion, and intended to use him only as a fallback. Whatever the reason for any inquiries, perhaps they ran out of pilots (due to Zacarias Moussaoui’s arrest and Ramzi Binalshibh’s inability to get into the country). The prosecution team in the Moussaoui case at one point, in January 2003, argued there was to be a fifth plane targeting the White House. Bin Laden wanted the White House to be targeted. Atta thought it would be too difficult. Or perhaps cropdusters will be used in the future. The FBI is currently looking for a diminutive Saudi Arabian, Adnan Shukrijumah, who, at least according to some reports, was trained as a pilot and was last known to have been in Miami in late 2001. The Saudi Arabian from Florida is said to be at the level of Atta. A federal undercover agent has reported that he saw El-Shukrijumah with Atta.
Jdey, also hotly sought by the FBI, was one of two other pilots who for unknown reasons were not still candidates for the first wave. He was detained at the same time as Moussaoui — and then released — but the FBI has never disclosed that fact.
DXer said
Targeted Assassination of Individuals in Symbolic Positions
Contrary to the pundits who just associate Al Qaeda with a “big bang,” a key modus operandi of the Vanguards of Conquest was targeted assassination and it was widely known known that Zawahiri was seeking to weaponize anthrax for use against US targets. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad group specializes in armed attacks against high-level Egyptian government officials, including Cabinet ministers. The group had a “hit list” that included tens of Egyptians to be killed by the group, including journalists. In May 1987, a Major General was shot outside his home in Cairo. Several EIJ members and two Islamist Group members were arrested in connection with the attack. In November 1990, six members of EIJ were arrested in connection with the murders of People’s Assembly Speaker and five security men on October 12, 1990. The EIJ’s military wing, the Vanguards of Conquest, launched a violent campaign in March 1992. Of 223 killed in the first year or two, 67 were policemen, 76 were Islamic militants, 36 were civilian Christian Copts, and three were foreign tourists.
Prosecutors and policemen would be targeted to avenge torture. By April 1995, 700 had been killed. Al-Jihad has had a role in most foreign terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies over the past 20 years. The group is most well known for its first, the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In August 1993, the same year as the bombing of the World Trade Center, al-Jihad attempted to assassinate Egyptian Interior Minister by firing on his motorcade and detonating a homemade bomb. The group also made an attempt that year against Prime Minister with an explosion which occurred about 500 yards from his home as his motorcade passed. A 15-year-old girl standing at a nearby bus stop was killed. EIJ issued a statement claiming the action was to avenge the recent death sentences. In 1992, Islamic Jihad activists murdered an author, Faraj Fodah, who had openly supported Israeli-Egyptian peace. The secular columnist in his last article had suggested that the militants were motivated by sexual frustration more than politics.
In March 1994 Egypt’s higher military Court passed death sentences in absentia that included Tharwat Salah Shehata, Yasser al-Sirri, and ‘Isam Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Rahman for the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Sedki on November 25, 1993. In 1994 al-Jihad militants were linked to two unsuccessful attempts to bomb the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Manila. In June 1995, the Vanguards of Conquest claimed responsibility for a failed assassination attempt to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In 1993-1994, hundreds of Cairo-area Vanguards of Conquest members were rounded up and prosecuted while Dr. Hamouda finished up his PhD in microbiology at Cairo Medical in the microbiology department where Heba Zawahiri taught. I asked him which of the defendants he knew but he did not respond.
In November 1995, an EIJ suicide car bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan killed 17 and injured 59. An Egyptian with Canadian citizenship, Ahmad Saeed Kadr (Khadr), was charged in connection with the bombing. Kadr worked as the regional director of Human Concern International, a Canadian relief agency in Peshawar, and was alleged to have moved money through the aid agency from Afghanistan to Pakistan to pay for the operation. In December 1995, the Vanguards of Conquest sent a communiqué warning Pakistan to stop extraditing militants to Egypt, or “it will pay a heavy price.” That month, Egyptian Security forces arrested 56 terrorists after being tipped off by an EIJ informer. The group was accused of planning to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak on 1995 using 550 pounds of explosives to blow up the President’s motorcade.
In November 1997 after the killing in Luxor, Egypt, of 58 tourists by Al Gamaa Al Islamiyaa, the Vanguards of Conquest warned that orders had “already been given for attacks on Americans and Zionists not only in Egypt but elsewhere.” In February 1998 Al Jihad was one of the founding signatories involved in the creation of the World Islamist Front for the Jihad against Jews and the Crusaders (World Islamist Front). The Front subsequently issued a fatwa calling for the killing of Americans worldwide and the expulsion of Americans from the holy land and Jews from Jerusalem. Egyptian Islamist sources declared that the release of the statement marked Al Zawahiri’s and Al Jihad’s return to the field of active terrorist groups.
In June 1998 Egyptian security authorities arrest seventeen members on charges of forming an Al Jihad cell in east Cairo. Resulting confessions revealed that Al Jihad was planning to assassinate a number of public figures and security officers. That month, Jihad members al-Najjar (head of Al Jihad in Albania), and Majed Mustapha were arrested in Albania, reportedly with the aid of the Central Intelligence Agency, and extradited to Egypt in late June 1998. An August 1998 Statement issued by the Information Office of the Jihad Group in Egypt vowed revenge on the United States for the extradition of three Al Jihad members from Albania to Egypt.
In September 1998, a number of senior EIJ and IG leaders in London were arrested, including the EIJ cell members who had faxed the claim of responsibility for the embassy bombings. In April 1999, after verdicts in the “Returnees from Albania,” the Vanguards of Conquest and Al Jihad issue separate threats of retaliation. Of the 107 accused, 87 defendants were found guilty, including Canadian Mahmoud Mahjoub. The day of the bombing, shortly after the explosions, EIJ military commander Mabruk called Canadian VOC member Jaballah and told him to call the London cell members and tell them he could be reached at Shehata’s residence. Shehata was Jaballah’s brother-in-law. The London cell members then issued a claim of responsibility for the blasts.
DXer said
Requirement Under Laws Of Jihad Of Warning Before Use of Biochemical Weapons
“Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors… ,” says the Koran (2:190). Post office employee and blind sheik spokesman Abdel Sattar has explained that Mustafa Hamza, who took over from Taha as Islamic Group leader after the Luxor debacle in which in 58 tourists were murdered, was asked how can you explain killing tourists. Mustafa Hamza answered in every moment and action, the group starts off by consulting with the righteous Olama. No action is initiated without fatwas from our trusted Olama — meaning scholars in the plural. In other words, before carrying out an operation, they get a fatwa. He confirmed that fatwas are important because they are authoritative statements by religious leaders declaring what is and is not Islamically permissible. Sattar had a copy of the book written by former Islamic Group leader Taha justifying the attacks that had been committed, to include Luxor. The book had been uploaded at the website maintained by London-based Vanguards of Conquest publicist Al-Sirri.
The Koran and hadiths provide extensive guidance on the honorable conduct of warfare. One of the leading non-muslim expert on the subject was Princeton’s Bernard Lewis. For years, Princeton University Middle Eastern history Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis’ writing on the clash between islam and the west would be translated by the Muslim brotherhood and handed out as pamphlets outside of mosques. After the 1998 “Crusaders” statement by Bin Laden and Zawahiri, Lewis wrote a Foreign Affairs article “License to Kill, Usama Bin Ladin’s Declaration of Jihad.” “Obviously, the West must defend itself by whatever means will be effective. But in devising strategies to fight the terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them.”
In a September 27, 2001 Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal, the 87 year-old historian explained the use of biochemical weapons by Al Qaeda: “the laws of jihad categorically preclude wanton and indiscriminate slaughter. The warriors in the holy war are urged not to harm noncombatants, women and children, ‘unless they attack you first.’ Even such questions as missile and chemical warfare are addressed, the first in relation to mangonels and catapults, the other to the use of poison-tipped arrows and poisoning enemy water supplies. Here the jurists differ– some permit, some restrict, some forbid these forms of warfare. A point on which they insist is the need for a clear declaration of war before beginning hostilities, and for proper warning before resuming hostilities after a truce. As Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman once said in the context of criticizing Sadat’s peace with Israel: “Believers govern according to God’s laws and do not change or replace a single letter or word of them.”
In an essay “Islam and Terrorism,” Bilal Philips, a key religious mentor of GMU microbiology grad Ali Al-Timimi, explained the principles of islamic jurisprudence of islamic warfare:
“Islam opposes any form of indiscriminate violence. The Quran states: “Anyone who has killed another except in retaliation, it is as if he has killed the whole of humankind.” [Quran Surah #32 Verse #5] There are strict rules regulating how war may be conducted. Prophet Muhammad forbade the killing of women, children, and old people and the destruction of Churches and Synagogues or farms. Of course, if women, children or the elderly bear arms they may be killed in self-defense.”
***
As Ali Al Timimi once explained: “Modern warfare did not exist during those times when they wrote those classical books of fiqh.” The old principles therefore must be relied upon to guide the issue in new times.
Spokesman al-Kuwaiti was giving a plain warning in the Fall 2001 threat letter — not disclosed until 2006 — that the green light had been given for US -bio attack (1) from folks that were US-based, (2) above suspicion, and (3) with access to US and UK government and intelligence information. “The Truth about the New Crusade: A Ruling on the Killing of Women and Children of the Non-Believers,” Ramzi bin al-Shibh, argues that “the sanctity of women, children, and the elderly is not absolute” and concludes that “in killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million noncombatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless.” Spokesman Abu Ghaith used the same figure in June 2002 in arguing in favor of the moral right to use biological or chemical weapons.
A book commemorating the September 11 “raid” was published by Majallat al-Ansar and consisted of four essays. It addresses the importance that any attack comply with the laws of Sharia. “Some people see fit to raise the issue of Islamic principles of warfare. They claim that the raid does not observe those principles and that Sharia errors occurred. Some ‘modern’ legal scholars see the raid as a violation of the Sharia.” The book continued: “Everyone knows that the groups in the traditionalist mujahid movement are more committed than anyone else to Sharia in their actions. After all, their actions can cost them their dearest possession after their faith — their souls.” While purporting not to want to get entangled in a discussion of the legal technicalities, the author then addressed at length why the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was justified under the laws of sharia.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, discussed the requirement of warning under the laws of jihad on NPR in connection with the Al Qaeda audiotape by Bin Laden that aired shortly before the November 2004 election. In the case of anthrax, Ayman Zawahiri likely considers that the warning required under the laws of jihad has been given.
Zawahiri is the grandson of the well-known “Pious Ambassador,” who was President of Cairo University. Dr. Zawahiri is reserving himself a spot in a bad place by reason of his botched analysis of the hadiths and teachings of Mohammed governing warfare (no women, children, noncombatants etc.) The same principles prohibit attacking livestock, crops or wells. Judging by the interpretive texts, it would seem that Al Qaeda and the anthrax mailer have violated the Quran and hadiths by killing noncombatant women and children, and even the aged. It cannot be persuasively argued that those noncombatant women and children and the aged attacked the jihadists first. An infant visiting ABC was infected by the anthrax. Before the military tribunal, KSM says the koran forbids killing children. He noted that warfare is guided by the koran and hadiths.
The former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Cairo Medical alum who approved of Sadat’s assassination and was released after a quarter-century in prison — the man who had a falling out with Zawahiri in Khartoum in the early 1990s — said of 9/11:
“The killing of businessmen is forbidden by Islamic law and the World Trade Center was all businessmen. The killing of women and children and old people is forbidden by Islamic law and many of those were killed in the building.”
Thus, the harshest judgment may await true believers in another world.”
DXer said
Allusion to Both Atta and Genomic Sequencing of Ames Strain
The writing of the text of the letter is also interesting in that the “As” and “Ts” are double-lined — to suggest ATTA, the lead hijacker.
When the US Centers for Disease Control first identified that the Ames strain had been used in the mailing to Florida in October 2001, Keim and his colleagues at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) had nearly finished a project to sequence Bacillus anthracis— specifically, the chromosome of an anthrax isolate from a laboratory in Porton Down, U.K.Ayman had a microbiologist attending Porton Down-sponsored conferences at which presentations were made about the sequencing of Ames. The letter writer appears to have even double-lined A’s and T’s in the letters accompanying the anthrax possibly to simultaneously allude to Atta and the genomic sequence.
As explained at the Porton Down conferences attended by Ayman’s operative Rauf Ahmad, Keim’s research team eventually discovered 60 new ‘markers’ in the Bacillus anthracis genome—DNA sequences that may vary from one isolate to another. These include insertions or deletions of DNA, and short sequences that are repeated at different lengths in the genome known as VNTRs (variable-number tandem repeats). A decade earlier, it had been determined that one of three proteins comprising anthrax toxin, and the first nucleotide sequence to be reported from B. anthracis (by USAMRIID authors no less), had a consensus TATAAT sequence located at the putative -10 promoter site. It is greek to us but apparently something with meaning to the person who drafted the letter. Perhaps the sender was saying that the bacteria was pathogenic unlike what had been sent to the Canadian immigration minister six months earlier.
When authorities determined that the anthrax had not been genetically modified so as to be resistant to antibiotics, Condi Rice told the President: “That’s the best news you’ve had as president.” Years later, at trial for sedition, GMU microbiology grad student Ali Al-Timimi read “Genome Technology.”
***
The coded e-mail Faris wrote back to KSM suggesting that the idea of removing bolts from the span of the Brooklyn Bridge was not a viable idea was but one of many examples of the simple codes used by Al Qaeda operatives. Sometimes the code might be as simple as Adham Hassoun’s “stuff” for the local soccer team in places like Bosnia or his references to a young man who wanted to go out and get some “fresh air” [go join the jihad]. Sometimes it might be Iyman Faris’ reference to the weather or Ramzi Binalshibh’s “shirts” for Sally. Sometimes it might be a reference to Greendale School or a marriage proposal to Jenny such apparently in the case of the anthrax mailings. The CIA reports that its theory passed the “giggle test.”
In support of an Ivins Theory, Special Agent Steele claimed that the “T” was double-lined when in fact the scientific analysis shows that it was not double-lined. He thereby concocted a code “PAT FNY” that was used in support of an Ivins Theory in closing the case. Those who uncritically accept what the USG alleges don’t bother to appreciate that the “T” in NEXT is in fact not double-lined. The entire NAS review was largely a waste of time because there wasn’t any scientific evidence that pointed to Dr. Ivins — instead it exculpated him. But the FBI only chose to present select issues to the committee such as the genetic analysis that winnowed the field from 700 to 300. (The same people had access to the Ames with and without the 4 morphs and so it was a huge waste of time). Instead, basic questions like the claimed double-lining of the “T” in NEXT — or the availability of the lyophilizer — should have been reviewed.
DXer said
The existing security procedures _ described in two long-secret reports _ were so lax they would have allowed any researcher, aide or temporary worker to walk out of the Army bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md, with a few drops of anthrax _ starter germs that could grow the trillions of spores used to fill anthrax-laced letters sent to Congress and the media.
The two reports, which have not been made public for more than nine years, describe a haphazard system in which personnel lists included dozens of former employees, where new hires were allowed to work with deadly germs before background checks were done and where stocks of anthrax and other pathogens weren’t adequately controlled.
Fort Detrick since has adopted new bio-security measures. But the security reports by independent government specialists suggest that deadly anthrax stocks may have been more accessible than investigators assumed in declaring Army scientist Bruce Ivins the perpetrator.
The letters, mailed to two U.S. senators and at least three media outlets, panicked the nation in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Justice Department says the letter spores derived from a flask controlled by Ivins at Fort Detrick.
Marked “for official use only,” the two reports were completed in 2002. One was conducted by a seven-member team from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. The other was by auditors for the Army’s inspector general’s office.
The teams evaluated security at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), then the lead federal lab for developing vaccines and other medical defenses against biological weapons.
McClatchy, the online investigative newsroom ProPublica and PBS’s “Frontline,” which have collaborated in an examination of the Justice Department’s case against Ivins, obtained copies of both reports.
..
The Sandia report emphasized that terrorists had obtained germs from research labs before. It cited a February 2001 National Defense University study that found 11 cases in which terrorists or other “non-state operatives” had acquired biological agents from “legitimate culture collections,” including three research or medical laboratories.
Despite USAMRIID’s sobering mission, the Sandia report said, the western Maryland lab had developed a work environment in which employees failed to make the same “indisputable commitment to security” as they did to research.
“The current biosecurity system at USAMRIID does not adequately protect HCPTs (high-consequence pathogens and toxins) and related information,” wrote the Sandia team, headed by security expert Reynolds Salerno.
The report said no rules governed movement of germ specimens from one building to another, for example, and that a test tube containing some of Ivins’ spores was left for weeks in a refrigerator in a second building.
Fort Detrick’s personnel database failed to list 213 of USAMRIID’s employees but did include 80 who had left their jobs, the Sandia report said. A separate human resources roster listed 56 people who had left but not 12 who worked there.
Conflicting rosters didn’t necessarily signal a security weakness, the Sandia team wrote, but they contributed to “perceived chaos in the personnel system” at the facility.
Secret Reports: With Security Spotty, Many Had Access to Anthrax
http://www.propublica.org/article/secret-reports-with-security-spotty-many-had-access-to-anthrax
…
Comment: The name of the former Zawahiri associate was misspelled on the physical sign-in and the 16-pages documents relating to the research were provided to the FBI in Spring 2005. By then, some earnest FBI agent had already developed his sorority theory. James Baker at the University of Michigan apparently knew jack about Dr. Ayman’s announced plans.
DXer said
FRONTLINE, Emptywheel, and the Ghost of Bruce Ivins
By: robertarend Sunday October 9, 2011 12:40 am
http://my.firedoglake.com/robertarend/2011/10/09/frontline-emptywheel-and-the-ghost-of-bruce-ivins/
DXer said
The July 8, 2011 Declaration of David R. Franz, dated July 8, 2011 explains:
“4. From 1995 to 1998, I was the Commander of the U.S. Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick. Previously, I served at USAMRIID as Deputy Commander (1992-1995), Chief of the Toxicology Division (1989-1992), and Chief of Cardiorespiratory Toxicology Department (1987-1989). …
5. In 1998, I served briefly as the Deputy Commander, U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command, during the transition period of one Commanding General to another. I retired from military service on 1 Aug 1998, after 27 years on active duty.
6. After leaving service I worked for Southern Research Institute from 1998 to 2003…before joining Midwest Research Institute (MRIGlobal).”
Is Dr. Franz the one who approved the research by the non-citizen, who I describe as a former Zawahiri associate, alongside Bruce Ivins with virulent Ames? (I don’t know). Bruce was not aware Tarek was a non-citizen until after his arrival but approval was granted by email after Tarek arrived.
Dave stopped providing answers once my questions got harder.
DXer said
Dr. Hamouda thanked Patricia Fellows and Mara Linscott for providing technical assistance in connection with the research with virulent Ames supplied by Bruce Ivins. In Stevens v. United States, Patricia Fellows was deposed on November 4, 2010 and Mara Linscott was deposed on February 10, 2011.
DXer said
David Willman is continuing to pitch the story of Mara Linscott where Dr. Ivins fantasized about a vengeful act involving a jug of wine after a soccer game here in Upstate New York. (We similarly heard colorful stories about Hatfill; in the Hatfill matter we had him imagined to be a colleague of “Dr. Death”; here the narrative offers up Dr. Ivins as the “avenging angel of death.”)
“On the afternoon of July 18, 2000, Ivins arrived for his fourth session with McLean. They began discussing anew his obsession with Mara. He said he felt deeply attached to her, but she did not show the same interest in him. She was not responding regularly to his e-mails, and this angered him.
In a matter-of-fact manner, Ivins described how he had driven recently to upstate New York to watch Mara play in a soccer match, and how he had brought along a jug of wine that he had spiked with poison.”
Did the therapist know the first name Mara?
If so, a 1999 google search would have shown that the former Zawahiri associate thanked Mara for providing technical assistance in connection with the research did alongside Bruce, Pat Fellows and Mara in the B3 at Ft. Detrick.
This article was the only article produced by the FBI in its production of 3500 pages of documents.
A Novel Surfactant Nanoemulsion with Broad-Spectrum Sporicidal Activity against Bacillus Species
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/180/6/1939.short
DXer said
http://media.www.thebrownandwhite.com/media/storage/paper1233/news/2011/02/25/News/Gast-Heads.Panel.Discussing.Anthrax.Letters-3980440.shtml
Gast heads panel discussing anthrax letters
By Kelsey Stocker
Issue date: 2/25/11 Section: News
The committee announced that the data presented did not allow a specific origin of the letters to be pinned down, contrary to what the FBI reported. The committee also opted for more public awareness of the procedures used to analyze results in the forensic science field.
“Information like this could be a danger to the public, if the public is not scientifically aware,” Gast said. “Some people put science results on a pedestal, with all the new technology and results in genomic sequencing.”
DXer said
The California chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the ACLU say they will announce a federal class action lawsuit Wednesday against the FBI for “illegal surveillance of the Muslim community.”
“CAIR-St. Louis,” the doctor who moved from Ann Arbor to St. Louis in 2001 and who was a lifelong friend of the former Zawahiri associate supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins, can appreciate that questions relating to surveillance are highly particularized.
Although CAIR has not yet described the particulars of their class allegation complaint, it would be surprising that class action allegations could be stated that would survive a motion to dismiss.
DXer said
Dr. Hamid should appreciate that transparency and engendering trust requires not just PR and posturing but compliance with FOIA requests directed to the documents subject to FOIA relating to the millions invested in taxpayer dollars on the DARPA-funded research done by his lifelong friend, the former Zawahiri associate Tarek supplied with the virulent Ames.
The University of Michigan should have produced the requested documents under FOIA.
DXer said
DXer said
Fox News video (after commercial)
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4540229/fresh-doubts-in-anthrax-probe
DXer said
It’s a case that’s been marked by controversy and mystery for nearly a decade: who was responsible for the deadly anthrax-laced letters sent after 9/11?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/anthrax-letters-sept-11-attacks-national-research-council/story?id=12922509
ANTHRAX AND AL QAEDA: THE INFILTRATION OF US BIODEFENSE
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1443811
100+ graphics –
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
DXer said
Below is a list of scientists that the FBI excluded. Are you saying that Tarek, so prominently in the documents, is one of them? (About 25 pages in the FBI’s production was related to his work with Bruce at the BL-3 with virulent Ames, alongside Former Colleague #1 and Former Colleague #2; Ed appears not to have read it). Didn’t you ever wonder why they submitted the peer-reviewed article on nanoemulsions? That was the only article disclosed.
If you say Tarek was excluded and on this list, which one do you say he is? (He does not seem to be on the list).
* A physician who told associates that s/he was one of the few people who could have prepared and mailed the anthrax letters. A preliminary investigation suggested that this individual possessed a financial motive for committing the crime and possessed knowledge of anthrax dispersal techniques.
* A scientist, although deceased for more than a year prior to the mailing of the anthrax letters, reported to have possessed chemical and biological materials of interest, and who may have been closely associated with key figures from a biological weapons program in a foreign country.
* A researcher with access to the Ames strain who possessed a keen interest in the weapons application of the Ames strain, biological terrorism scenarios, and biological warfare in general.
* A researcher with access to the Ames strain who possessed particular expertise in the fermentation production of bacteria.
* A scientist with an arguable financial motive to commit the attacks, who traveled to New Jersey at or near the time of the New York and Washington, D.C. anthrax mailings.
* A scientist with access to the Ames strain who trained others in the refinement and weaponization of biological agents.
* A foreign-born researcher who worked at a facility maintaining the Ames strain and against whom an anonymous letter had been sent to law enforcement alleging that s/he had strong anti-American sentiments and may have had access to “biological poisons.”
* A foreign-born scientist with particular expertise working with a Bacillus anthracis simulant known as Bacillus subtilis, and against whom there were allegations that s/he had connections with several individuals affiliated with the al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam terrorist networks. * A microbiology student who allegedly had associations with al-Qaeda’s anthrax program.
* A foreign-born scientist who published certain microbiology articles that were found at an al-Qaeda training facility in a foreign country.
* A foreign-born microbiologist in New Jersey who had allegedly made certain anti-American statements, and who lived and worked in close proximity to Princeton.
* A Postal Service employee at the Hamilton Township Plant and Distribution Center in Hamilton, New Jersey, who resigned shortly before the mailings, and whom a witness alleged was associated with a U.S-based al-Qaeda laboratory involved in anthrax production.
* A scientist who allegedly had the capability and disposition to use anthrax as a weapon.
* A researcher whose unusual behavior prompted a former colleague to contact the FBI,
* A researcher against whom the FBI received several tips that s/he fit the publicized profile of the anthrax terrorist, and who reportedly had a grudge against the United States. * A microbiologist whose suicide after the attacks was coupled with allegations that s/he might have some association with the anthrax attacks. * A scientist with extensive knowledge of the production of weaponized anthrax, and who arguably had a financial motive for committing the attacks. * A disgruntled foreign scientist who allegedly had reason to take revenge against her/his former employer, and about whom other co-workers had expressed concerns. Each of these individuals was ultimately excluded as a suspect based on a number of factors, including alibi, insufficient ability, and lack of access to RMR-1029.
DXer said
Now consider how thorough an investigation would be done if the #3 most powerful person in the State Department, the fellow in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the recent head of the DC venture firm that invested $50 million in the individual’s small company.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0203/Fort-Hood-attack-Did-Army-ignore-red-flags-out-of-political-correctness
Fort Hood attack: Did Army ignore red flags out of political correctness?
A Senate report on the Fort Hood attack suggests that the Army failed to heed warnings about the prime suspect because it was wary of singling out a devout Muslim.
A cursory FBI investigation followed, but between poor coordination with the Defense Department and a failure to use all the intelligence available, nothing was done, according to the report.
The report provides insight into a larger problem, says Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism specialist: the US government has been uncomfortable identifying and dealing with radical ideology for fear of infringing on people’s freedoms and making the political gaffe of racial profiling.
The Senate committee’s report calls for updated military training to identify signs of violent Islamist extremism and policies to ensure it is not tolerated, a change that would allow Army officials to root out Muslim extremists without being subject to accusations of racial profiling – a concern that may have prevented officials at Fort Hood from intervening when Hasan first showed signs of extremism.
DXer said
Catherine Herridge, the reporter holding up the email from Dr. Ivins about the FBI anthrax expert’s making of the dried powder using Flask 1029, reported recently on “Senate Committee Criticizes Several Agencies in Wake of Fort Hood Shooting”L
Senate Committee Criticizes Several Agencies in Wake of Fort Hood Shooting
By Catherine Herridge
Published February 03, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee that spent 14 months on the report, said Hasan was open about his extremist views, but instead of disciplining Hasan, the Army rewarded him.
“This is an individual who is open about the fact that he had radicalized — who says outrageous statements in front of entire class of mil officers — and yet he’s promoted,” Collins said. “It’s just astonishing and very troubling.”
Prior to the shooting on Nov. 5, 2009, the Senate report concludes the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, or JTTF, failed to tell the military that Hasan exchanged at least 18 e-mails with the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is described by U.S. officials as an operational planner who sanctions these attacks. Awlaki is linked to every major attack or attempted attack on the U.S. over the last 12 months.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/03/senate-committee-criticizes-agencies-wake-fort-hood-shooting/#ixzz1D4taHsQg
DXer said
CAIRing for Anwar al-Awlaki and Other Targets of Interest
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/02/cairing-for-anwar-al-awlaki-and-other-targets-of-interest/
DXer said
DXer said
Here, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad who was the lead IANA writer of the Ann Arbor-based charity, explains the challenge to Dr. Ayman of the writing of an imprisoned leader challenging his interpretation of the laws governing jihad.
Kamal graduated Cairo University in 1979 and was top of his class as I recall. He majored in political science.
Will this IANA writer and political activist, the founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, play a role in the new government?
Did Tarek, supplied virulent Ames by Dr. Ivins, know Kamal?
Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle
Jailhouse Dissent Seen as Challenge to Al-Qaeda
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 15, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401182.html
DXer said
A Note on Egyptian Torture, Feb. 1, 2011
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/a-note-on-egyptian-torture/70476/
DXer said
This was Ed’s theory for 7 years. Although his theory was dismissed as “baloney” he persisted and then added the gloss that a First Grader wrote the letters.
Anthrax Probe Story Is Baloney, FBI Says
by Bruce Cadwallader and Catherine Candisky
The Columbus Dispatch
December 21, 2001
The FBI says it is not investigating a former Battelle scientist in relation to an anthrax scare, contrary to national broadcast news reports.
Published Friday, December 21, 2001
The Miami Herald
Anthrax investigators focusing on strain from military facility
BY DAVID KIDWELL
Federal anthrax researchers are attempting to match the strain that killed a Boca Raton man and four others to a weaponized strain secretly manufactured at a U.S. military facility in the Utah desert, according to sources familiar with the probe.
Agents are examining lab workers and researchers who had access to the weaponized, powdered anthrax grown at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds and later supplied to Battelle Memorial Institute, a military research company based in Columbus, Ohio.
Among those interviewed include a fired researcher at Battelle who, according to FBIrecords, made remarks about an anthrax project in the basement of his Milwaukee home.
“This is complete nonsense,” Michael P. Failey told The Herald Thursday. “I have never been a researcher of anthrax. I’ve never had access to anthrax. I didn’t even know it was a bacteria until I saw it on TV. All I did was mention the word, that’s it.
DXer said
“The microscopic spores magically leaped from the microscopic slide. They wafted away weightlessly, climbing up into the laminar-flow hood. The glass safety cabinet was open in front, but under negative air pressure. Whenever the lanky Ezzell tried to weigh a sample the spores refused to rest on the scale. They would not adhere to sticky tape. The slightest breath of air, arm movement, or tabletop vibration propelled them into the air. As spores flitted about under the hood like gas, Ezzell began to worry about the number of escapees clinging to the top. Soon there would not be enough to analyze. Ezzell was seeing weaponized anthrax for the first time in his life.”
***
“A biologist assisting in the investigation said the increasing potency of the anthrax in the letters suggested Amerithrax might be a thief who had stolen several samples.”
[Comment: At the November 29, Dr. Ezzell says that perhaps it was not fully weaponized — that perhaps its sophistication had been overestimated. He emphasizes that what he had made was more pure — was better. We first heard that the FBI anthrax expert had made a better product — using Ames from Bruce Ivins’ flask — 8 years after the anthrax mailings.]
***
“It wasn’t just a matter of [lax] security,” said a scientist granted unsupervised access to secure biohazard labs. “There was absolutely no security.”
“It was a concern to me,” said Dr. Assaad, “that these scientists were being allowed access not only to lethal [microbes] but knowledge and information.” He complained that “shenanigans had been going on at the lab.” … Foreign scientists, selected for their expertise with deadly microbes and as leverage against an aging workforce, had unrestricted access to secure lab facilities. They worked at the Institute for months. It was not uncommon to find them working nights and weekends. The FBI’s operating theory was that the Institute was the anthrax source and that an insider took the spores to another location to prepare the letters.”
“And so there was anthrax at the Institute, apparently of the letter strain. And it was possible that it had been stolen from there — not bought, although the same germs had been for sale in the past for research.”
DXer said
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
July 14, 2002 Sunday TWO STAR EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg.E-3
HEADLINE: THEIR FARAWAY EYES; IN THE LAX CASE, AS IN ANTHRAX, THE FBI AVERTS ITS GAZE
FBI isn’t supposed to stand for Foolish, Blind and Incompetent. But the investigation into the L.A. airport shooting July 4 is the latest indication that it may.
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet stuffed two automatic pistols, extra clips of ammunition and a knife into his pockets, drove 45 miles to LAX, walked up to the El Al counter and blasted away. He killed two people and wounded others before being shot dead by El Al security. It took the FBI more than a day to conclude he’d gone to the airport intending to hurt people.
Special Agent in Charge Richard Garcia was quicker to dismiss “terrorism” as a motive for Hadayet’s crime. He did this in a rambling and incoherent press conference hours after the shootings, even though FBI agents had yet to search Hadayet’s home or interview his neighbors and co-workers.
The FBI is backtracking rapidly now that Israeli intelligence has identified Hadayet as a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and an Arabic newspaper in London reported that Hadayet met twice with Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian who is the No. 2 man in al-Qaida.
The bureau tends not to follow trails that lead in politically incorrect directions. Consider now the anthrax investigation.
On Sept. 18, 2001, letters containing powdered anthrax were sent to NBC News and the New York Post. On Oct. 9, two more letters were sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The anthrax in both was from the Ames strain developed at the Army lab at Fort Detrick, Md. But the anthrax in the letters sent to the senators was much more finely milled.
The Ames strain also claimed the life of Robert Stevens, an employee of American Media Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., publisher of the National Enquirer and other tabloids. He died Oct. 5, the first known anthrax death.
Every bioterror incident in the last 100 years was the product of a conspiracy, according to a study by the National Defense University. But the FBI’s working hypothesis is that the anthrax letters were mailed by a disgruntled American scientist.
Why are they so sure? Look at the first anthrax incident of 2001 — June 2001, that is. As The New York Times reported in March, a man named Ahmed Alhaznawi came to the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale on June 25, 2001, for treatment of an ugly black lesion on his leg. Dr. Christos Tsonas had never seen a lesion of that kind before. Alhaznawi told him it had been caused by a bump. Tsonas prescribed an antibiotic.
Alhaznawi was one of the 9/11 hijackers of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. He was accompanied to the doctor’s office by Ziad Jarrah, another one of the Flight 93 hijackers. Tsonas’ prescription was found among Alhaznawi’s effects. When Tsonas was shown photos of lesions caused by anthrax, he said Alhaznawi’s lesion looked exactly like them. Fort Lauderdale, by the way, is just a short drive from the American Media headquarters in Boca Raton.
If the anthrax letters were prepared and sent by a single rogue scientist, the FBI ought to have found him by now. The list of scientists capable of weaponizing anthrax is not long. The list of scientists who have had access to the top secret areas at Fort Detrick is shorter. And no scientist, no matter how brilliant, could have prepared the anthrax on the workbench in his garage. For that, sophisticated equipment such as a centrifuge would be required. There aren’t many private purchasers of such equipment.
The FBI hasn’t found the terrorist lab. This could be because: (1) It is extremely well hidden, (2) the FBI is unbelievably incompetent or (3) the anthrax wasn’t prepared in the United States.
The U.S. government gave a sample of the Ames virus to the British military lab at Porton Downs. U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Iraqi scientists tried in 1988 to get a sample of the Ames virus from Porton Downs, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said in a floor speech last month. Perhaps they succeeded.
“European government and CIA officials reported meetings between al-Qaida members and intelligence officials,” said Rep. Pence. “The 9/11 hijackers also attempted to rent crop dusters, presumably as delivery vehicles. These are all facts that suggest an international connection.”
Somebody should tell the FBI.”
DXer said
he Independent (London)
December 4, 2001
FBI Fears US Anthrax Attacks Were An “Inside Job”
Colonel Arthur Friedlander said the FBI had been asking questions about possible insider suspects but he said he thought this was unlikely. “We haven’t had an offensive programme for a long time,” he told the New York Times. “Nobody [at the army laboratory] has that kind of expertise.
Comment: The 16 pages faxed in February 2005 about the visit by the former Zawahiri associate came from AF’s fax number. (I believe Bruce may have given him the documents). AF apparently did not know that the FBI anthrax expert JE had made a dried powdered Ames that was more pure than the Daschle product. Neither did Bruce until he saw responses to a FOIA request a couple years later.
DXer said
This appeared on May 20. JE’s lab sent Ivins lab the protocols to use in submitting the samples on May 24, 2002 after repeated request.
The FBI’s anthrax investigation turns on itself.
By Laura Rozen
Issue Date: 5.20.02
When anthrax first turned up in letters to journalists and members of Congress last October, much of the public, still shaken from the September 11 attacks, naturally assumed that the perpetrator was an outside terrorist group like al-Qaeda.
But as investigators have honed in on domestic facilities and possibly even domestic suspects, the FBI faces a difficult test. Suppose the attacks were an inside job — by, say, one of the U.S. Army’s own biowarfare scientists. What scientific authorities could the FBI turn to if it’s effectively investigating the very labs that do its testing? The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, for example, is charged with running diagnostic tests on the anthrax found in letters sent to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. And while FBI sources say they’re happy with USAMRIID’s level of cooperation, there’s no getting around the fact that some of that lab’s employees, former employees, and contract workers belong to the FBI’s pool of potential suspects. After all, they know how to grow and weaponize anthrax, and they have access to spores.
“There are really only a few places weapons-grade anthrax could have come from, including Dugway [Army Proving Grounds in Utah], Fort Detrick, and other labs contracted by the military,” said David Fidler, a University of Indiana law professor who has written about the legal implications of biological terrorism. “In a way, you have one arm of the executive branch investigating another. And the FBI doesn’t have the built-in competencies to conduct an investigation alone which is based on public health principles and science.” In fact, the FBI has hired some 20 expert consultants to assist with the anthrax investigation, and most of them belong to the government bio-defense establishment.
One measure of how very close the investigators are to the investigated is the fact that in March, those consultants were asked to take polygraph tests. “Did you do it?” the experts were reportedly asked, and, “Do you know who did it?” Likewise, even as some FBI investigators set up shop at USAMRIID, working side by side with scientists to trace the source of the anthrax, another FBI team descended on Fort Detrick in February to question lab employees about suspicious activity they might have seen — and to administer polygraph tests to those with access to suites where anthrax and other deadly germs are handled.
According to one USAMRIID scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, all of the lab’s current employees have been cleared. But sources close to the investigation suggest that the FBI also has taken an interest in former USAMRIID scientists. As employees of other government agencies and contracting firms, such former laboratory employees might have continued access to military bio-defense facilities. But here the FBI has hit a particularly baffling roadblock. The bureau’s investigators are not confident that other government agencies, such as the CIA and the Department of Defense, have let them in on the full range of bio-defense work they have commissioned. And this lack of full disclosure may not just be a matter of stonewalling, one former FBI investigator suggested. Rather, FBI investigators may not have the top level security clearances that would allow CIA or Pentagon officials to disclose all they know. The result is an almost comical impasse of mutual distrust and bureaucratic red tape.
If the FBI can’t investigate the U.S. bio-defense establishment, who can? It’s an increasingly important question, given the apparent direction of the FBI’s probe. The FBI is particularly interested in U.S. military bio-defense laboratories, well-placed sources suggest, because the anthrax in the letters was processed into a finely spored, chemically fluffed, aerosolized dry powder — a form consistent with that used to test American defenses against biological weapons. Scientists who have seen photos of the spores also remark on their extraordinary degree of concentration. At more than a trillion spores per gram, the powder’s potency surpasses what was achieved at the height of the U.S. offensive biological weapons program, which ended in 1970. But given the secrecy that surrounds such research, investigators may not yet know what innovations the U.S. government has made in chemically processing germ weapons since the program officially ended. It wasn’t until last December, in fact, that the U.S. Army admitted to making small amounts of the lethal, dry, powder form of anthrax for testing purposes out at Dugway since the 1990s. Preliminary reports suggest that the anthrax in the Leahy letter was processed using methods and chemicals different from those of known government biowarfare programs.
But could there be programs the FBI doesn’t know about? For all that, and despite its public insistence that it has not zeroed in on a suspect or ruled anything out, the FBI does appear to be making progress on the case. And from the look of it, that progress is taking the investigation to the bio-defense establishment’s doorstep.
The investigation’s “office of origin” remains the FBI’s Washington field office, but sources say that in the last month, the bureau has stepped up activity at its field office in Baltimore, Maryland. Moreover, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an interagency body that specializes in tracking domestic terrorists, has also been mobilized on the anthrax case — yet another indication that investigators may believe the perpetrator was not international but homegrown. Identifying the lab from which the anthrax in the letters originated will supply one major piece of the puzzle. But investigators point out that this information is far from sufficient. Indeed, the classic criminal investigator’s questions — who had not just the weapon, but the motive and the opportunity? — will most likely be addressed by the gumshoe special agents out in the field questioning people, gathering testimony, and testing hypotheses.
Already investigators have identified the Xerox machine used to photocopy the letters sent to Democratic senators, NBC, and the New York Post last fall, a source close to the investigation said. The machine is “publicly accessible” and is in New Jersey, but in what town or what facility was not disclosed. The question of motive remains perhaps the most perplexing.
BugMaster said
““publicly accessible” and is in New Jersey, but in what town or what facility was not disclosed.”
Searchs of the copy machine at the Waksman Institute on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus got a bit of press. There were several reports in the Princeton University newspaper.
DXer said
There’s perhaps no reason to credit that newspaper report as the government later denied it. And it likely related to the issue of “tracks”. As to the USAMRIID photcopier, the more “hard-core” issue relates to photocopy toner. It can be included or excluded at the 99% and my information is that it can be EXCLUDED.
There’s no excuse for the FBI not to produce the photocopy toner examination expert report. The science nowadays permits copiers to be excluded (or included) up to a 99% level of confidence. I’ve previously provided the references to the literature. If a lawyer Rachel in the February 2010 memo is not telling you that it could be included, that’s because it can be excluded. Judges know to look to the footnotes for issues the lawyer cannot handle or wants the reader to overlook.
If the NAS does not reach the science of the photocopier toner examination done by Dr. Bartick, an FBI scientist, and consulting scientists, then it will not have accomplished its expressly assigned task.
By the way, if Rachel’s nickname is “Ice Princess.” I understand that a senior attorney nicknamed “Ice Princess” went to visit a jihadi in jail after a deal had been struck in a different prosecution. She got in trouble. It smacked to me of superiors trying to prevent her from doing her job in the matter she was handling. It smacked me of obstruction of justice on the part of the superiors.
DXer said
If the DOJ lawyer can get the public and NAS to overlook the issue of photocopy toner and the fact that the USAMRIID photocopiers can be excluded, then the issue is deemed immaterial. (The examination of the photocopy toner, because of advances in the science, actually permits a far more probative scientific analysis than a genetics inquiry that limits things from 1,000 to hundreds (at USAMRIID alone).
If the reports can be kept from public view altogether, there is no occasion to question how the forensics were used.
Suspicions about FBI analysts growing
By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The U.S. attorney’s office in the District has found more than 100 cases since the mid-1970s that need to be reviewed because of potentially falsified and inaccurate tests by FBI analysts.
The report, filed in D.C. Superior Court late Friday, stems from an internal investigation by prosecutors after the exoneration in December of Donald E. Gates, who was falsely imprisoned for 28 years for the 1981 rape and slaying of a Georgetown University student.
The review was launched to examine 20 cases in which Justice Department officials questioned the validity of statements made by six FBI forensic analysts who were identified in a 1997 report by the department’s office of inspector general.
***
But Sandra Levick, chief of the special litigation division for the District’s Public Defender Service, said the new report is “troubling” because “the government still does not know the number of people hurt by testimony from discredited FBI analysts, although it was given names beginning in 1997.”
One of the analysts accused of providing false testimony was Michael P. Malone, who testified in the Gates’s trial that one of Gates’s hairs scientifically matched a hair found on the body of Georgetown student Catherine Schilling, 21. DNA testing 28 years later proved that was not true.
The latest review was ordered by Superior Court Judge Fred B. Ugast at Gates’s hearing in December. At the time, Levick, Gates’s attorney, requested the DNA tests that later proved Gates, who had maintained his innocence since his arrest, did not rape or murder Schilling.
In the initial 20 cases Riley reviewed, she concluded that the FBI analysis did not affect the outcome of the case for various reasons. In some cases, the suspect was not prosecuted. In others, the analysis was not completed before the plea, or the evidence was not relevant to the charge.
“We do not believe that the [inspector general’s report] contains information that undermines or was material to the outcome of any of the cases,” Riley wrote.
DXer said
Biosecurity laws hobble research
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57399/
Casman and her team also found that US labs working on anthrax or Ebola are also collaborating less with labs outside of the US, likely a result of restrictions in the laws. “International collaborations between a US author and a non-US author were inhibited,” she said
Comment: Hasn’t all the biodefense spending made the world and country LESS safe?
DXer said
Given the FBI did not do a creditable job in solving Amerithrax — given it takes 2 years to process a simple stack of paper deleting proper nouns in email correspondence by a vaccine researcher — doesn’t that mean the plug should be pulled on biodefense spending?
DXer said
BTW, why wasn’t — before the Patriot Act — use of a pathogen already subject to the Export Control Act as a “deemed export”?
What was Jane A. Alexander thinking when she gave $12 million to a newly minted microbiologist trained by Ayman Zawahiri’s sister?
DXer said
And why should we now listen to the man who supplied that scientist with BL-3 space about the burdens of paperwork?
Should we pay much heed to those who would drill for oil in our oceans or who are responsible for the safety of our coal miners about the burdens of paperwork?
DXer said
It was Patricia Fellows’ research, published as a chapter in LSU Pamala Coker’s PhD thesis, that explained how to make a more effective bioweapon by cloning the virulence plasmids.
The former Zawahiri associate Tarek Hamouda thanked Bruce Ivins for supplying virulent Ames. At the same time, he thanked LSU’s Martin Hugh-Jones, Kimothy Smith, and Pamala Coker for providing the BL-3 space. He thanked USAMRIID’s Patricia Fellows and Mara Linscott for providing technical assistance. Patricia Fellows was the Former Colleague #2 who the FBI relies so heavily on in accusing Ivins. Dr. Mara Linscott was the Former Colleague #1.
NYT journalist (and co-author of GERMS) William Broad explained in 2003 of the research by Dr. Fellows and her colleagues: “But the finding could also aid the creation of designer varieties of anthrax that are potentially deadlier to humans.”
And so I think Martin Hugh-Jones who is usually quoted about the proliferation of labs, was perhaps just simply quoted out of context in the story this week about paperwork. It is his point about proliferation that is the sound point and the one commonly quoted. In the past, he says it is crazy now how many researchers are working with virulent anthrax.
Although I have not read the journal article that is published this week described about current research being “inefficient”, there is always the question whether the conclusion assumes causation when only a correlation is established by the statistics. Perhaps another reasonable conclusion that needs to be considered is that the money is flowing so easily that it is funding research that does not warrant being published. Or perhaps the journals are not interested in publishing more articles on the same narrow topic. Perhaps redundant research is being needlessly funded. Or perhaps the statistics were skewed by the dozen Amerithrax articles that never were published.
Or perhaps there is recognition that there are perils associated with scientific openness. See JB Petro’s 2002 article in Science.
The 2 years of withholding of Dr. Ivins emails and the documents relating to the science prevented the correct solution of Amerithrax. Such withholding, for example, led to suppression of the fact that dried powdered anthrax using Ames was being made at Ft. Detrick by the FBI expert John Ezzell. The DARPA research was being done by his former assistant Joany Jackman. For example, it also prevented disclosure that a scientist (Al-Timimi) coordinating with the 911 imam (Awlaqi) had unfettered access to the most diverse microbiological repository in the world at the American Type Culture Collection (which btw then won the bid to manage the Critical Reagent Program that oversees distribution of virulent Ames).
It was not possible to ferret out the conflicts of interest due to the withholding. For example, how often have we heard that Dr. Ivins submitted a false sample without it having been revealed that the scientist typing the sample was the one who provided the former Zawahiri associate the BL-3 space? Conflicts of interest exist regardless of the good faith of all those involved (which I presume). If the NAS does not address this issue of conflicts of interest, it will not have done its job and its conclusions will be invalid.
A NATION AT WAR: ANTHRAX RESEARCH
A NATION AT WAR: ANTHRAX RESEARCH; Key to Strains Of Anthrax Is Discovered
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: March 27, 2003
Scientists have discovered why different strains of the bacterium that causes anthrax differ so much in virulence, a finding that in theory could produce more effective vaccines and better tools for distinguishing and tracking the lethal germ.
But the finding could also aid the creation of designer varieties of anthrax that are potentially deadlier to humans. Because of that potential danger, a debate occurred over whether the discovery should be kept secret, scientists said. In the end, it was decided that the benefits of publication outweighed the risks.
The discovery was made by six scientists at Louisiana State University, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the nation’s top center for studying germ defenses. It is published in the current Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
The lead author, Dr. Pamala R. Coker, formerly at L.S.U. and now at the Livermore laboratory in California, spearheaded the research for her Ph.D. dissertation. The Livermore laboratory once pioneered nuclear arms but increasingly studies biology and germ defenses.
The team’s finding centers on the anthrax genome, which consists of a single large chromosome and two small circles of DNA, known as plasmids, that carry extra genes. The scientists found that, contrary to common belief, each anthrax bacterium carries not just one set of plasmids but up to 243 copies of the first and up to 32 copies of the second, which is known as pX02. The more copies of this plasmid in a bacterial strain, the more it is capable of causing disease, the scientists said.
The research was conducted in guinea pigs. The scientists found, for example, that an anthrax strain from Mozambique that possessed just one pX02 plasmid killed 25 percent of the test animals. But a strain from Australia with 32 copies of the plasmid left all the guinea pigs dead.
The team of scientists also reported that added factors like subtle features of the bacterium’s DNA chromosome appeared to help determine virulence. Thus, the anthrax that killed five Americans in the germ attacks of 2001 — the so-called Ames strain — was found to possess just two copies of pX02. But it nonetheless killed 62 percent of the guinea pigs.
The pX02 plasmid carries genes that let the anthrax bacterium fashion an outer protein coat that acts as a defensive shield to thwart the immune system of hosts. The scientists suspect that multiple copies of pX02 thicken that coating, letting the germ escape immune damage and multiply to do extensive harm.
Scientists had previously identified 89 types of anthrax as genetically distinct but had failed to discover what determined their wide differences in virulence. The plasmid findings, they said, opened a new window on that question.
”It’s very interesting,” said Dr. Sam Kaplan, a microbiologist at the University of Texas medical school at Houston. ”But a lot more work needs to be done.”
Dr. Martin E. Hugh-Jones, a team member at L.S.U., said the discovery would help scientists understand why some anthrax vaccines are effective and others weak. ”This will allow us to do some very impressive things in coming on with new vaccines,” Dr. Hugh-Jones added.
It could also aid investigations of germ attacks. Dr. Coker of the Livermore laboratory said the finding could help forensic scientists track down the country and laboratory from which the weapon arose. That, she said, was possible because the plasmid technique acted as a kind of microscope to reveal finer genetic distinctions among the 89 known varieties of anthrax. A match between the attack germ and a library of detailed fingerprints could help locate the perpetrator.
Dr. Coker conceded that the research in theory could also help a genetic engineer make a more deadly form of anthrax by increasing the number of pX02 plasmids.
Dr. Kaplan of the University of Texas, who heads the publication board of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, said no reviewer or official of the society raised objections to publication of the plasmid paper, even though the White House has urged scientists to screen their work carefully for possible harm to national security.
Steve Wampler, a spokesman at the California laboratory, said the plasmid research was done before Dr. Coker came to Livermore but the laboratory nonetheless put the paper through a careful security review. ”In the end,” he said, ”it was decided that it was fine to publish.”
In addition to Dr. Coker of Livermore and Dr. Hugh-Jones of L.S.U., the paper’s authors are Dr. Kimothy L. Smith of the Livermore laboratory, Patricia F. Fellows of the Army research institute, and Dr. Galena Rybachuck and Dr. Konstantin G. Kousoulas of L.S.U.
DXer said
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3jowivA9ydAJ:www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/2004/09/17/anthrax.php+%22Martin+Hugh-Jones%22+bizarre&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
When Hugh-Jones started working on anthrax eight or nine years ago, everyone in the field knew each other by their first names. “There were no more than ten labs in the nation working with the organism, and now it’s about 310—and they all want virulent strains,” he says.
“In the old days virtually everyone was paid by Department of Defense to do their research because that’s the only place where money came from because the organism wasn’t thought to be of economic importance,” he says. “Now that it’s a bioterrorist threat and money’s available for research, experts have come out of the walls.”
“The whole damn thing is bizarre.”
DXer said
The ACLU has provided the biography below of a contemporary of Tarek Hamid, Khalid Hamid, and Tarek Hamouda. Dr. Hamouda was the scientist working alongside Bruce Ivins with virulent Ames as head of a DARPA project. (Although he received his PhD in microbiology in 1994 from Cairo Medical, Dr. Hamouda graduated from Cairo in the early 1980s at the time the Egyptian security services had arrested their school mate Agiza, head of the Vanguards of Conquest.)
It was the arrest of Agiza’s #2 in the late 1990s, Mahmoud Mahjoub, that prompted the threat to use mailed anthrax upon the announcement of notice of his bail hearing in January 2001. See CIA PDB to President Bush in early February 2001. Mahjoub’s bail was denied on October 5, 2001 and then anthrax was promptly sent to the individuals symbolic of the appropriations to Egypt and Israel.
The CIA had reason to know as early as December 2001 that the cell responsible for the anthrax mailing would be highly motivated by the detention and torture of Vanguards of Conquest leaders. That was the express motive announced by Montasser Al-Zayat, the lawyer for the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman and detained EIJ leaders Mabruk and Al-Najjar.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:f08R7FptP1YJ:www.aclu.org/national-security/biography-plaintiff-ahmed-agiza+The+Empire+Strikes+Back:+The+Rendition+of+Former+Vanguards+Of+Conquest+%231,+Cairo+M.D.+Ahmed+Agiza&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
It would have been awkward for the Bush Administration to admit that the anthrax was in retaliation for the rendering and rough treatment of prisoners because they intended to do quite a bit more.
Did Rachel Carlson Lieber or Kenneth Kohl ever retrieve the character witness statements submitted in connection with Agiza’s detention in 1982?
ACLU explains:
May 30, 2007
Ahmed Agiza
NEW YORK – On December 18, 2001, 45-year-old Ahmed Agiza was secretly apprehended in Sweden by Swedish Security Police. Agiza was then handed over to agents of the U.S. CIA, who stripped him, dressed him in overalls and chained and shackled him before transporting him in a Gulfstream V aircraft to Egypt, where he was severely tortured. At the time of his unlawful rendition, Agiza, an Egyptian citizen, was living in Sweden with his wife and five young children, waiting for a determination on their political asylum application.
BACKGROUND
In 1982, Agiza was arrested and tortured by Egyptian security police because they suspected that his cousin had been involved in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Following his release, Agiza was threatened and continuously harassed by the security police. He filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian government in 1991 for his torture and, fearing further persecution as a consequence, he fled Egypt with his family to various countries in the Middle East, before finally settling in Iran.
In Egypt in 1999, Agiza was tried in absentia before a military tribunal for alleged membership in “Al Gihad,” a banned organization. In April 1999, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment with hard labor and without the possibility of appeal.
Early in 2000, concerned that improving relations between Egypt and Iran might result in his expulsion back to Egypt, Agiza decided to flee Iran with his family and seek asylum in the United Kingdom. Because he could not secure visas to travel to the U.K., he purchased tickets to Canada instead. On September 23, 2001, during a transit stop through Stockholm, Agiza and his family decided to seek asylum in Sweden, instead.
On December 18, 2001, while their joint application for asylum was pending before the Swedish immigration authorities, Agiza was secretly apprehended by Swedish Security Police and taken by them to Bromma airport on the outskirts of Stockholm where he was handed over to agents of the CIA. They stripped him, inserted suppositories into his rectum, dressed him in a diaper and overalls, blindfolded him and placed a hood over his head. Agiza was then handcuffed, shackled and dragged into an awaiting Gulfstream V aircraft, registered number N379P. Flight records obtained in the course of investigations in Europe into CIA activities in Europe show that this aircraft departed Johnson County Airport, North Carolina on December 18, 2001 and proceeded to Cairo, Egypt. These records show also that the same aircraft then left Cairo for Bromma airport in Sweden and arrived there at 7:43 p.m. The plane departed Bromma for Cairo at 8:48 p.m., arriving on December 19, 2001. On December 20, 2001, the aircraft departed Cairo at 6:56 and arrived back in Washington, D.C. at 7:18 p.m.
Swedish civil aviation documents and a related invoice show that Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. provided essential flight and logistical support services to the aircraft and crew to ensure the aircraft’s safe passage from Sweden to Egypt. Following the aircraft’s arrival in Cairo, Agiza was handed over to agents of the Egyptian intelligence services and driven to a secret detention facility on the outskirts of Cairo. During the first five weeks of his incarceration, neither Swedish government officials nor family members were permitted to meet with him.
Agiza was held in solitary confinement in a squalid prison cell measuring little more than two square meters, without windows, heat or light. He was kept shackled and blindfolded for extended periods, and was interrogated, beaten, and tortured repeatedly.
On April 27, 2004, after a six-hour military trial, Agiza was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for membership in an Islamic organization banned under Egyptian law. His requests for a forensic medical examination during his trial to prove his allegations of torture were summarily denied by the court. Moreover, according to Human Rights Watch which acted as an independent trial monitor, the proceedings failed to comport with internationally recognized due process requirements, a fact later acknowledged by the Swedish government. The HRW report on his trial is available at: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/05/egypt8530.htm. In June, 2004, without explanation, Agiza’s prison sentence was reduced to 15 years and he was transferred to the minimum security prison at Tora where he is presently incarcerated.
In 2004, Agiza’s wife, Hanan Attia, and their children were granted asylum on humanitarian grounds by the Swedish government. A year later they were formally granted refugee status and are currently seeking Swedish citizenship.
The Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman of the Swedish Government and the Swedish Parliament’s Standing Committee on the Constitution have inquired into the Swedish government’s handling of Agiza’s rendition and the Swedish Security Police’s involvement in the process and determined that the circumstances surrounding the rendition violated relevant Swedish laws. The Ombudsman’s report concluded that U.S. and Egyptian officials involved in the rendition had violated Swedish criminal law by subjecting Agiza to “degrading and humiliating treatment” and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil. The Standing Committee on the Constitution concluded that Swedish government actions violated Swedish immigration laws prohibiting the transfer of anyone from Sweden to a country where there is a substantial likelihood of his being subjected to torture.
In addition, two United Nations Human Rights bodies, the U.N. Committee Against Torture and the U.N. Human Rights Committee, found that the expulsion of Agiza and Mohammed El-Zery – another Egyptian citizen rendered from Sweden to Egypt at the same time as Agiza – violated, inter alia, Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (prohibition against rendition to torture) and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (prohibition against torture).Agiza is seeking remedies for these treaty violations from the Swedish government. To date, however, his demands have not been met.
DXer said
Zawahiri’s Planned Use of Charities And Universities As Cover
On August 20, 2001, Saleh Hussayen, who would soon be appointed minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of its two holy mosques, arrived in the United States to meet with some of this country’s most influential fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders. He met with officials of the Global Relief Foundation and Islamic Assembly of North America in Ann Arbor, Michigan. IANA promoted the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. On the night before September 11, Hussayen stayed at a Herndon, Virginia hotel where three of the Saudi hijackers stayed.
As a Detroit Free Press headline explained in 2004, “Unproven weapons claim led to Islamic charity raid in [mid-December] ‘01.” Global Relief Founder (”GRF”) co-founder Rabih Haddad was associated with Bin Laden’s Makhtab al-Khidamat, which was headed by Mohammed Islambouli in Peshawar. The government froze the assets of the Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”) on December 14, 2001, saying it was a financial conduit to terrorists. The 911’s Terrorist Financing Monograph notes that GRF’s newsletter, “Al-Thilal” (“The Shadow”) openly advocated a militant interpretation of Islam and armed jihad. The 911 Commission reports that the FBI suspected the Executive Director of being affiliated with the blind sheik’s Egyptian Islamic Group. The 911 Commission explains: . “In early 2000, Chicago informed Detroit that GRF’s executive director, Chehade, had been calling two Michigan residents. One of these subjects was considered GRF’s spiritual leader and the other, Rabih Haddad, was a major GRF fund-raiser.”
Its Chairman, Ann Arbor, Michigan community leader Rabih Haddad, was arrested in mid-December 2001 for overstaying his visa. Haddad taught twice a week at an Ann Arbor school and was an assistant to the leader at Ann Arbor’s mosque. He was an imam there. In 2000, Rabih Haddad wrote an article in the MCA newsletter about the unfair portrayal of muslims as terrorists.
Congressman John Conyers, Jr, of Michigan joined several newspapers in suing to force the government to open the hearings. After a visit by Congressman Conyers in March 2002, Mr. Haddad was removed from solitary confinement and placed with the general prison population.” Mr. Haddad’s lawyer, Ashraf Nubani, of Northern Virginia, said at the time Attorney Nubani said that his client travelled mostly to Pakistan as part of his relief efforts. Haddad refused to testify before a grand jury unless granted full immunity.
The New York Times reported that “Prosecutors said they were keeping some evidence secret to protect terrorism investigations.” Haddad’s lawyer arranged the pro bono representation for the Virginia Paintball defendants, including Al-Timimi, who came to be represented pro bono by the daughter of the lead Amerithrax prosecutor Daniel Seikaly.
It was KSM’s assistant, al-Hawsawi, who had the anthrax spraydrying documents on his laptop. Al-Hawsawi was working with Al-Baluchi to get the 911 hijackers into the country. Al-Baluchi would marry MIT-graduate Aafia Siddiqui who told her defense psychiatrist that she had been tasked to study germ weapons under a fatwa. In an earlier prosecution, an Assistant United States Attorney asserted in passing in open court, without naming her, that Aafia was willing to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. The defense psychiatrist reports that Aafia told him that she had been tasked by “Abu Lubaba” to study germ warfare. Aafia Siddiqui is associated with Ann Arbor addresses near the mosque where her brother and sister-in-law, an MD, lived.
Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”) and Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”) attorneys in unison explained that the US had supported Makthab al-Khidamat in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s. (BIF head Arnaout, a Syrian, was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded.) Investigation of the two charities was well underway prior to 9/11, although plagued by lengthy unnecessary delays emanating from headquarters. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that on April 21, 1999, upon weekly dumpster diving, FBI “agents had recovered from BIF’s trash a newspaper article on bioterrorism, in which someone had highlighted sections relating to the United States’ lack of preparedness for a biological attack.” (Many articles that year quoted famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek who was at George Mason University in Falls Church, Virginia.)
The FBI had a better relationship with the CIA in the investigation of BIF than with GRF. The 9/11 Commission noted that “[t]he Chicago agents believed the CIA wanted to shield certain information from the FBI because of fears of revealing sources and methods in any potential criminal litigation in the United States.” Chicago agents benefited from the New York Office files on the two charities but the New York FBI office personnel were overwhelmed and working their own leads. The Illinois-based investigations remained an intelligence gathering exercise with no thought given to a criminal prosecution to disrupt the financing of Al Qaeda until after 9/11.
In mid-October 2001, Dr. Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University told an NPR reporter that an insider could have taken some anthrax from a lab. He didn’t want to be interviewed on tape. ‘If I were to guess,’ he says, ‘it was probably some summer intern talking to a friend in a local bar. The friend said, “Could you get me some?”‘ Hugh-Jones says various protest groups have been scouting for anthrax for years.
In January 2003, the Chairman of Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America, which promoted the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks, was arrested for bouncing a $6,000 check. Dr. Bassem Khafagi operated International Media Group out of his home. Before 911, according to the counsel for Falls Church scientist Ali Al-Timimi, Ann Arbor resident Khafagi was asked about Al-Timimi “purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]” Ann Arbor resident Khafagi, the IANA head, was a good friend of microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi and his personal papers were later found in Al-Timimi’s residence.
Dr. Tarek Hamouda at NanoBio in Ann Arbor thanked Louisiana State University researchers for making space available for the research. The LSU researchers had provided four characterized strains while Bruce Ivins had provided virulent Ames. After the anthrax mailings, “We’ve had subpoenas left, right and center. We were inspected twice by the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. Hugh-Jones told a reporter. “The FBI is frequently calling in. We’re cooperating closely.”
The Ann Arbor researchers in December 1999 went to Dugway, a military installation in the remote Utah desert to demonstrate the effectiveness of their biocidal cream on an aerosolized anthrax surrogate.
In late August 2001, NanoBio moved in to its new offices from less impressive digs in the basement of a bank. Bruce Ivins had supplied its University of Michigan researchers Ames strain three years earlier for DARPA-funded biodefense research. Dr. Hamouda declines to describe the dates and locations of his work with virulent Ames or discuss his relationship with the Salafists-Jihadis walking the same halls. That would be fine except that his research was funded by nearly $12 million in United States taxpayer funds and the University of Michigan has obligations to taxpayers under that federal statute.
DXer said
Among the supporters of these militant islamists were people like US scientist Ali Al-Timimi and Pakistan scientist Rauf Ahmad who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it. Two letters — one typed and an earlier handwritten one — written by a scientist named Rauf Ahmad detailed his efforts to obtain a pathogenic strain of anthrax. He attended conferences on anthrax and dangerous pathogens such as one in September 2000 at the University of Plymouth co-sponsored by DERA, the UK Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. In October 2009, historian Christopher Andrew published an official history of MI5 in which he reported that MI5 had found money and equipment in Rauf Ahmad’s luggage as he left the September 2000 conference.
A handwritten letter from 1999 is written on letterhead of the oldest microbiology society in Great Britain. The 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces by Rauf describe the author’s visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where 1000s of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab; a conference he attended on dangerous pathogens cosponsored by UK’s Porton Down and Society for Applied Microbiology, and the need for vaccination and containment. Rauf had arranged to take a lengthy post-doc leave from his employer and was grousing to Zawahiri that what the employer would be paying during that 12-month period was inadequate. Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, who told his wife he was working for a Taliban medical brigade, got the job instead of Rauf.
One typed memo reporting on a lab visit, which included tour of a BioLevel 3 facility, where there were 1000s of pathogenic samples. The memo mentioned the pending paperwork relating to export of the pathogens. The documents were provided to me by the Defense Intelligence Agency (”DIA”) under the Freedom of Information Act.
Taliban supporter Al-Timimi was a graduate student in the same building where famed Russian bioweapon Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey worked at George Mason University. The three worked at the secure facility at Discovery Hall at the Prince William 2 campus. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey headed a biodefense program funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). Al-Timimi had a top security clearance and had worked for SRA International doing mathematical support work for the Navy. In 2000 and 2001, Timimi was a graduate student in computational sciences. His field was bioinformatics.
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Al-Timimi tended to travel to give speeches on interpretation of the koran during semester breaks. Al-Timimi’s speeches are widely distributed on the internet and tend to focus on religious rather than political issues. A district court judge would say that Al-Timimi’s later speeches tended to favor violent jihad. After 9/11, they reportedly were removed from the website of the Center he had founded. The night of 9/11, he got in a heated debate with some colleagues. He said while islamically impermissible, the targeting of civilians was not impermissible where they were used as a shield. Others thought that it was reckless to say that so soon after the 9/11 attack when emotions were so inflamed.
Years earlier, the blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was scheduled to come from Afghanistan to speak at the IANA 1993 conference alongside Ali Al-Timimi and former EIJ member Gamal Sultan. Al-Timimi was scheduled to speak alongside the blind sheik’s son again in 1996, the year Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War against the United States. In July and August 2001, Ali was scheduled to speak in Toronto and London alongside “911 imam” Anwar Awlaki and unindicted WTC 1993 “unindicted co-conspirator” Bilal Philips.
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The CIA has known of Zawahiri’s plans to use anthrax since July 1998, when the CIA seized a disc from Ayman Zawahiri’s right-hand, Ahmed Mabruk, during his arrest outside a restaurant in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the time, Mabruk was the head of Jihad’s military operations. Mabruk was handed over to Egyptian authorities. A close associate and former cellmate in Dagestan in 1996, Mabruk was at Ayman’s side while Ayman would fall to his knees during trial and weep and invoke Allah. Their captors reportedly did not know the true identity of the prisoners. After Mabruk’s capture in Baku, Azerbaijan, the CIA refused to give the FBI Mabruk’s laptop. FBI’s Bin Laden expert John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s New York office, tried to get around this by sending an agent to Azerbaijan to get copies of the computer files from the Azerbaijan government. The FBI finally got the files after O’Neill persuaded President Clinton to personally appeal to the president of Azerbaijan for the computer files. FBI Special Agent Dan Coleman would later describe the laptop as the “Rosetta Stone of Al Qaeda.” O’Neill died on 9/11 in his role as head of World Trade Center security. He died with the knowledge that Ayman Zawahiri planned to attack US targets with anthrax — and that Zawahiri does not make a threat that he does not intend to try to keep.
At the time, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (”DTRA”) set up a program at Lawrence Livermore to combat the Bin Laden anthrax threat. The CIA also snatched Egyptian Al-Najjar, another senior Al Qaeda member (a shura or policy-making council member) who had been working for the Egyptian intelligence services. Al-Najjar confirmed Ayman’s intent to use weaponized anthrax against US targets in connection with the detention of militant islamists in a sworn lengthy confession. Even Zawahiri’s friend, Cairo lawyer Montasser al-Zayat, who was the blind sheik’s attorney, announced in March 1999 that Bin Laden and Zawahiri were likely to resort to the biological and chemical agents they possessed given the extradition pressure senior Movement leaders faced. That week, and thoughout that year, Al-Zayat was in touch by telephone with US Post Office employee Sattar and Islamic Group leaders about the group’s strategy to free the blind sheik. An islamist who had been a close associate of Zawahiri later would explain that Zawahiri spent a decade and had made 15 separate attempts to recruit the necessary expertise to weaponize anthrax in Russia and the Middle East.
EIJ military commander Mabruk was in regular contact with Mahmoud Jaballah, who was in Toronto beginning May 1996. Although Mabruk changed his location every few months, Jaballah kept aware of his whereabouts through his contacts with Jaballah’s brother-in-law Shehata. Shehata was in charge of EIJ’s “special operations.” When Mabruk was arrested and imprisoned in Dagestan along with Zawahiri, Jaballah was told on December 13, 1996 that Mabruk was “hospitalized.” That was code for “in jail” and, for example, is the code used by Zawahiri in emails on the same subject. Jaballah raised funds for Mabruk’s release and coordinated these collection efforts with Shehata. Indeed, it was Jaballah’s brother-in-law Shehata who brought the money to Dagestan to arrange for Zawahiri’s and Mabruk’s release.
Correspondence between Mabruk and Jaballah in 1997 reported on Jaballah’s recruitment efforts. Mabruk, EIJ’s military commander, was pleased. Jaballah confirmed with Shehata and Mabruk his view of the reliability of the individuals he had recruited. His recruits were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Zawahiri and the Vanguards of Conquest sought to recreate Mohammed’s taking of mecca by a small band through violent attacks on Egyptian leaders. By the late 1990s, Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
The cause of the Egyptian militants had suffered a serious setback with the murder of tourists at Luxor. After the public relations debacle of Luxor, and after the August 1998 US embassy bombings, al-Qaeda actively sought religious and legal opinions from Movement scholars around the world who might help rationalize the killing of innocents. The following letter is an example of such a letter taken from Zawahiri’s computer.
“Folder: Outgoing Mail
Date: September 26, 1998
Dear highly respected _______
I present this to you as your humble brother concerning the preparation of the lawful study that I am doing on the killing of civilians. This is a very sensitive case—as you know—especially these days.
It is very important that you provide your opinion of this matter, which has been forced upon us as an essential issue in the course and ideology of the Muslim movement
[Our] questions are:
1- Since you are the representative of the Islamic Jihad group, what is your lawful stand on the killing of civilians, specifically when women and children are included? And please explain the legitimate law concerning those who are deliberately killed.
2- According to your law, how can you justify the killing of innocent victims because of a claim of oppression?
3- What is your stand concerning a group that supports the killing of civilians, including women and children?
With our prayers, wishing you success and stability.”
A February 1999 letter signed by “Army of Suicidals Group 66, Bin Laden Militant Wing” threatened anthrax attacks against Westerners if they stayed in Yemen beyond a 11-day ultimatum ending February 27, 1999. Investigators considered a possible connection to the attempted extradition to Yemen of the London-based Egyptian Islamic preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri. Memos in the Spring of 1999 from Zawahiri to Egyptian Mohammed Atef, Al Qaeda’s military commander, and former Cairo police sergeant, indicate that Ayman was a close student of the USAMRIID anthrax program. He believed that the Koran instructed that a jihadist should use the weapons used by the crusader. “What we know is that he’s always said it was a religious obligation to have the same weapons as their enemies,” former CIA Bin Laden unit
counterterrorism chief Michael Scheuer once explained.
The most senior Vanguards of Conquest leader in North America was Mohammad Mahjoub. Mahjoub had known Essam Mohamed Hafez Marzouk. Marzouk had trained the 1998 embassy bombers. Marzouk was one of those picked up in Azerbaijan in August 1998. For a time, Marzouk had lived in Canada in British Columbia. After initially denying he knew Marzouk, Mahjoub testified in 2001 that earlier he had lied and said he knew and had been in contact with him. Canadian Vanguards member Jaballah claimed that Mahjoub was in regular contact with Marzouk, who lived in British Columbia.
87 of the 107 defendants in the 1999 “Returnees from Albania” trial in Cairo were Vanguards members. Mahjoub was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 15 years. Vanguards of Conquest #1 Agiza, the former Cairo Medical school mate of the Hamid brothers and Tarek Hamouda was convicted. The group swore that it would seek revenge in retaliation for the convictions in that case.
According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (“CSIS”) in the years leading up to his arrest, Mahjoub had shown signs of security consciousness. One time in December 1998, “he looked over his shoulder on three (3) occasions for no apparent reason, after making a call from a public pay phone.” He would call from pay phones rather than his residence. In May 1999, “he was observed looking back on several occasions while walking through a shopping centre parking area prior to boarding a bus.” In late January 2000, Mahjoub told an associate that he preferred to talk face to face when an associate asked about news. He said that could not talk about the matter because of “Moukhabarat” (secret services). When asked whether he meant military or civilian, Mahjoub said “both.”
in early February 2001, he CIA briefed President Bush on a threat to use mailed anthrax if the bail for Vanguards of Conquest #2 was denied. His bail was denied on October 5, 2001. The anthrax mailer then sent especially deadly anthrax to the people in the symbolic position of appropriations to Egypt and Israel and the rendering of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Egyptian Islamic Group leaders.
Dr. Khaled Hamid organized a conference attended by many doctors and denounced the involvement of doctors in terrorism. He told one interviewer that if he knew a sleeper cell in the United States, he was inform on it.
Putting the question of sleeper cells aside, let’s address who knew who. I’ve asked Dr. Hamouda, for example, how many of the hundreds of Vanguards of Conquest members he knew from the prosecution push in 1993-1994, when he was finishing up his PhD, and he did not respond.
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For example, do Tarek, Khaled and Tarek know Mohammed Islambouli?
Mohammed Al-Islambouli Finally Surfaces
Kenneth Katzman in “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors, 2001,” CRS Report or Congress, September 10, 2001 explained that past plotting by the bin Laden network suggests that “the network wants to strike within the United States itself.” Mr. Katzman explained in the September 10, 2001 report to Congress:
“The following Egyptian Islamist figures have been named SDT’s: (1) Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman, who was acquitted in 1984 of inciting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s assassination, is in a medical detention facility in Missouri following his October 1995 conviction for planning terrorist conspiracies in the New York area; (2) Ayman al-Zawahiri, about 50, who is a top lieutenant of bin Ladin (see below) and was convicted in Egypt for the Sadat assassination, (3) Rifa’i Taha Musa, about 47, another top aide of bin Ladin; (4) Abbud al-Zumar, leader of the remnants of the original Jihad who is serving a 40 year sentence in Egypt; (5) Talat Qasim, about 44, a propaganda leader of the Islamic Group; and (6) Muhammad Shawqi Islambouli, about 46, the brother of the lead gunman in the Sadat assassination. Islambouli, a military leader of the Islamic Group, also is believed to be associated with bin Ladin in Afghanistan.”
Muhammad Islambouli is connected to both Midhat Mursi (aka Abu Khabab) and blind sheik’s son Mohammed. Islambouli was a former student of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The CIA and FBI knew all of this on September 10, 2001. The IANA charity was promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks who had been expressly the subject of the 1996 Declaration of War. Handing over the “keys to the kingdom” to a scientist working with Bin Laden’s sheik and actively supporting the Taliban — or even storing them in the same building — was not a good idea.
In October 2006, the Al Qaeda spymaster Al-Hakayma, who had written about the Amerithrax investigation, announced that the Egyptian Islamic Group had joined Al Qaeda. In his introduction on the tape, Al-Zawahiri said the Egyptian Islamic Group was led by Mohammed al-Islambouli, the younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the militant who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Islambouli fled Egypt in 1988. Mohammed al-Islambouli worked for Maktab al-Khidmat (Bureau of Services) in Peshawar. Maktab al-Khidmat was established by Azzam, Bin Laden’s mentor, and financed by Bin Laden. The blind sheik would stay with Islambouli and Zawahiri in a large house outside Peshawar when he visited from Brooklyn. Islambouli was deputy leader of the Islamic Group. Islambouli told the press that the group would continue its holy war against the Egyptian government.
In early 1993 he moved 100 miles west to Jalabad, Afghanistan from Peshawar upon a crackdown on Arab fighters. In 1993, the US and Egypt was putting pressure on ISI to deal with the same militants everyone had welcomed repelling the Soviets from Afghanistan. Islambouli was sentenced to death in absentia in 1993. The CIA noted in a December 4, 1998 President Daily Briefing to President Clinton that Islambouli was involved in planning the attacks on the US involving aircraft and other attacks in retaliation for the detention of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. According to the PDB, someone from Saudi Arabia was expected to travel to the United States to meet with other Egyptian Islamic Group members to discuss options. At one point, Islambouli was thought to have spent much of his time in Algeria under the assumed name Mahmoud Youssef.
In January 2007, Muhammad Hanif, a spokesman for the Taliban, spoke quietly to the camera. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he said, was living in Quetta under the protection of the Pakistan ISI. In a press conference, the governor of the province on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan reported that they had found packets of powdered anthrax in his home upon his arrest. As reported by Afghan Islamic Press news agency and translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, the Governor said: “A biological substance, anthrax, was also seized from those arrested. They planned to send the substance in envelopes addressed to government officials.” The claim has not been confirmed or corroborated.
In March 2007, Khalid Mohammed confessed before a military tribunal that “I was directly in charge, after the death of Sheikh Abu Hafs [Atef] of managing and following up on the cell for the production of biological weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on dirty-bomb operations on American soil.
In late March 2007, islamist attorney Mamdouh Ismail was arrested. Egyptian authorities accuse Mamdouh Ismail, a prominent defender of islamists and former EIJ member who had been imprisoned for 3 years after Sadat’s assassination, of working with Ayman as a key liaison with Iraqi and Yemeni jihadis. The prosecution claimed that Attorney Ismail linked the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan with networks in Algeria, Iraq and Yemen. Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution also charged Ismail with leading what officials termed al Qaeda’s “Egyptian Project,” an effort to revive al Qaeda in Egypt. Ismail was the attorney for Egyptian biochemist al-Nashar, a polymerization expert who owned keys to the bomb flat of the 7/7 London subway bombers. Al-Nashar had been a student in North Carolina in 2000 where Al-Timimi’s own small DC-based group had a branch.
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Motive: The Need To See Things Through Your Adversary’s Eyes
On the issue of motive and the reason Senators Daschle and Leahy would have been targeted — they are commonly simplistically viewed as “liberals.” Zawahiri likely targeted Senators Daschle and Leahy to receive anthrax letters, in addition to various media outlets, because of the appropriations made pursuant to the “Leahy Law” to military and security forces. That money has prevented the militant islamists from achieving their goals. Al Qaeda members and sympathizers feel that the FBI’s involvement in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines undermines their prospects of establishing a worldwide Caliphate. The Fall 2001 letter from Al Qaeda spokesman al- Kuwaiti, directed to the American public — but which was not released until 2006 — claimed that the green light had been given for a US bio attack (1) from folks who were US-based, (2) above suspicion, and (3) who had access to US and UK government and intelligence information.
He explained: “There is no animosity between us. You involved yourselves in this battle. The war is between us and the Jews. You interfered in our countries and influenced our governments to strike against the Moslems.”
Senator Leahy was Chairman of both the Judiciary Committee overseeing the FBI and Appropriations Subcommittee in charge of foreign aid to these countries. In late September 2001, it was announced that the President was seeking a blanket waiver that would lift all restrictions on aid to military and security units in connection with pursuing the militant islamists. This extradition and imprisonment of Al Qaeda leaders, along with US support for Israel and the Mubarak government in Egypt, remains foremost in the mind of Dr. Zawahiri and men like Islamic Group leaders Mohammed Islambouli and Rafa Taha. At the height of the development of his biological weapons program, Zawahiri’s brother was extradited pursuant to a death sentence in the “Albanian returnees” case. It’s hard to keep up with the stories about billion dollar appropriations, debt forgiveness, and loan guarantees to countries like Egypt and Israel and now even Pakistan. Those appropriations pale in comparison to the many tens of billions in appropriations relating to the invasion of Iraq. Salafist-Jihadi supporters had a motive.
The anthrax that infected the first victim, Bob Stevens, is thought by some to have been contained in a letter to AMI, the publisher of tabloids — in a goofy love letter to Jennifer Lopez enclosing a Star of David and proposing marriage. A report by the Center for Disease Control of interviews with AMI employees (as well as detailed interviews by Rutgers Professor Leonard Cole) supports the conclusion that there were not one, but two, such mailings containing anthrax. (The letters were to different AMI publications — one to the National Enquirer and another to The Sun).
Just because Al Qaeda likes its truck bombs and the like to be effective does not mean they do not see the value in a deadly missive. As Brian Jenkins once said, “terrorism is theater.” A sender purporting to be islamist sent cyanide in both early 2002 and early 2003 in New Zealand and ingredients of nerve gas in Belgium in 2003. There’s even a chapter titled “Poisonous Letter” in the Al Qaeda manual. A former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, Numan Bin Uthman, recently wrote an open letter Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2007 indirectly revealing that the purpose of the anthrax in the first place was deterrence against the invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Uthman, alluding to a Summer 2000 meeting over several days in Kandahar at which these issues discussed, argued that the strategy of using nonconventional WMD to deter an invasion of Afghanistan was a misguided and failed strategy. Use of such weapons, he explained to Zawahiri, merely contributed to both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The Supporters of Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman
Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War focused not only on dissident Saudi sheik al-Hawali’s imprisonment, but also invoked the detention of the Egyptian sheik Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “the blind sheik.” Three years earlier, on July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar had spoken to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.”
In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged that following his arrest, Abdel Rahman, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, urged: “Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” His list is a pretty concise summary of the terrorist actions taken over the next decade.
The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman — was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on December 21, 1996 contained improvised explosive devices. The bombs were mailed on the Night of Decree or Night of Measures. It is known as the Night of Qadr. The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik.
The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda. There initially was an outstanding $2 million reward. Under the rewards for justice program, the reward now is up to $5 million. There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist).
The FBI suspected the Vanguards of Conquest, led by Egyptian Islamic Jihad head Ayman Zawahiri. The group can be thought of as either the military wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or perhaps just EIJ by another name. It is sometimes known as the New Jihad. Yassir Al-Sirri was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad/ Vanguards of Conquest publicist and worked out of his London-based home while on the public dole.
The blind sheik Abdel Rahman simultaneously was the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad/Vanguards of Conquest. The next month, on February 12, 1997, the Islamic Group, for its part, issued a statement: “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its “jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom is Abdel Rahman.” Abdel-Rahman’s friend, Ayman Zawahiri, was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program. The blind sheik’s son, Mohammed, was on Al Qaeda’s three- member WMD committee.
Jemaah Islamiah (”JI”) in Indonesia also was committed to Abdel-Rahman’s release. JI-member Yazid Sufaat was a member of Al Qaeda. The US-trained Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat met with 9/11 plotters and two hijackers in January 2000. JI has ties with the Moro Front. Sufaat used his company called Green Laboratory Medicine to buy items useful to Al Qaeda. Zacarias Moussaoui, who had a crop dusting manual when he was arrested, stayed at Sufaat’s condominium in 2000 when he was trying to arrange for flight lessons in Malaysia. Yazid Sufaat provided Moussaoui with a letter indicating that he was a marketing representative for Infocus Technologies signed “Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director.” Sufaat had given Moussaoui an e-mail greenlab@usa.net that was accessed by authorities on September 19, 2001. The cropdusters were to be part of a “second wave.” Al Qaeda’s regional operative, Hambali, was at the key January 2000 meeting and supervised Sufaat. Khalid Mohammed’s involvement dates back to Bojinka, as did Hambali’s. The money for Bojinka, a plot to simultaneously bomb airliners and to assassinate the Pope, went from Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa to the Abu Sayyaf Group, Al Qaeda’s primary Philippine affiliate, and then on to the cell that included KSM.
Al-Kifah in Brooklyn had long since become the headquarters of Abdel-Rahman’s supporters in the US. After the anthrax mailings, the Amerithrax investigation naturally considered whether the solution to the mystery had its roots in Brooklyn. Abdel-Rahman was the spiritual leader of both Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He was close to Ayman Zawahiri, known to be head of Al Qaeda’s anthrax weaponization project. FISA warrants issued immediately after 9/11 but did not prove fruitful. At Fitzgerald’s urging, a criminal investigation of the two charities, Benevolence International Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, was opened in October 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that in December 2001, “[t]hese plans were dramatically accelerated when CIA analysts, drawing on intelligence gathered in an unrelated FBI investigation, expressed concerns that GRF could be involved in a plot to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”
On December 14, 2001, the FBI raided the charity offices of the two charities. BIF and GRF offices were raided in Illinois — a BIF office in Newark, New Jersey also was searched. The GRF Founder Rabih Haddad was the imam at the Muslim Community Association and volunteer at Michigan Islamic Academy not far from Ames research Tarek Hamouda, the former Zawahiri associate. Germs author and New York Times journalist Judy Miller (or her colleague) called the GRF office in Illinois the night before the search. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was furious. He had been the AUSA who handled the prosecution of Bin Laden earlier that year in the case involving the 1998 embassy bombings. Authorities had planned on waiting and watching to see how the US charity personnel responded to a search of offices abroad. Their hand was forced when GRF officials in Illinois began shredding documents.
At a White House press conference on December 17, 2001, Ari Fleischer said: “There is nothing that has been final that has been concluded. But the evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source. But, again, this remains something that is not final, nor totally conclusive yet. I can just report to you the information that I’ve heard. I can’t give you the scientific reasons behind it. But you can assume that they’re based on investigative and scientific means.” He emphasized: “There’s a big difference between the source of it and who sent it, because the two do not have to be tied.”
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On March 14, 2001, former USAMRIID deputy commander Ames researcher Charles L. Bailey and famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek filed a patent application for a process to treat cell culture with hydrophobic silicon dioxide. Dr. Bailey was in Room 156B of GMU’s Discovery Hall at the Center for Biodefense. Ali Al-Timimi, an associate of radical Saudi sheik al-Hawali, considered to be Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, was a graduate student who worked in the same building. Ali Al-Timimi was the most celebrated speaker of the charity Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”). The IANA website had published the fatwa “Provision of Suicide Operations,” dated June 19, 2001, that stated: “The mujahid [or warrior] must kill himself if he knows this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies or demolishing a center vital to the enemy or its military forces. In this new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.” On August 26, 2001, IANA’s website http://www.islamway.com published a propaganda statement that encouraged individuals to join arms against the West titled “An Invitation to Jihad,” stating that “[t]he mujahid brothers will accept you with open arms and within a period of two weeks you will be given commando training and will be sent to the frontline.”
In mid-December 2001, the US arrested US-based Al Qaeda biochem operative Ali Al-Marri, who had arrived on September 10, 2001 and was nominally a student living in Macomb, Illinois. Al-Marri had lived in Macomb the previous summer and had traveled to New York City to join with UK operative Dhiren Barot to case NYC helicopters and financial institutions. Authorities had learned of calls he made to KSM’s assistant al-Hawsawi from Illinois. He had the imam at the local mosque store the computer in his basement and then ship it to Washington.
Beginning December 2001, Ali Al-Timimi was on GMU staff and paid $70,000 a year. Officials learned of communications between Al-Timimi and Bin Laden’s spiritual adviser, radical Saudi sheik al-Hawali. Al-Timimi’s attorney, for example, says that Al-Timimi and Al-Hawali spoke on September 16, 2001 and September 19, 2001. They later spoke in coordinating a letter to members of Congress on the first anniversary of the anthrax letters to the Senators and helping Moussaoui with his defense.
In March 2002, a crude biological weapons site was found in Afghanistan. U.S. forces discovered a site near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that appeared to be an Al Qaeda biological weapons lab under construction. Zawahiri’s plan, evidenced in the documents found previous in the Fall, was to move the location of the lab every 3 months.
As he described to ABCNEWS, Dr. Alibek and other scientists in March 2002 took lie detector tests. He had to answer questions including “Did you do it?” and “Do you know who did it?” Alibek reports that he passed the test. Although Dr. Alibek offered his services to the FBI Director in a letter, the response was that they already had a large group working on it. In late June 2002, quoting unnamed law enforcement officials, the Associated Press reported that up to 200 polygraph tests had been given to current and former employees of the Battelle Institute and of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where scientists have developed a powdered form of anthrax for testing biological defense systems. It was Dugway that provided the simulant used in testing after the 2001 threat letter relating to the detention of Mahjoub, the former manager of Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. The DARPA-funded Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey had both worked for Battelle as consultants. In 2001, if a researcher wanted to test a biodefense project, if it was inside, it could be done at either West Jefferson, Ohio facilty or at the Dugway facility managed by Battelle in Utah. But if it was an outside testing, it would be done in Utah.
In August 2002, Afghan police found a store of chemicals in a house in Kabul formerly occupied by a Saudi non-governmental organization, the WAFA Humanitarian Organization. Local media reports called it a terrorist laboratory. “Some containers and documents have been found by the police authorities,” a spokesman for international peacekeepers said. One local report said that the discovery included 36 types of chemicals, explosive materials, fuses, laboratory equipment and some “terroristic guide books.” It said the laboratory was found in a residence in the diplomatic area of Kabul in a building that had been used by an Arab national who headed the group prior to 9/11. WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. Documents found in WAFA’s offices in Afghanistan revealed that the charity was intimately involved in assassination plots against U.S. citizens as well as the distribution of “how to” manuals on chemical and biological warfare. U.S. officials have described WAFA as a key component of Bin Laden’s organization.
In 2002, a man named Singh tried to purchase over the internet a wireless video module and a control module for use in an unmanned aerial vehicle (”UAV”). He chose an airborne video system with a camera and transmitter able to transmit video images from a UAV back to a receiver from as far as 15 miles away. The video camera could be used in military reconnaissance and in helping aim artillery and other weaponry across enemy lines. Singh placed his order from England, but the company was unable to confirm Singh’s overseas credit card. Two young men from Northern Virginia, Chapman and Khan, who were among the group later known as the “Virginia Paintball Defendants,”assisted him in completing the purchases. As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals later explained, the pair “attended the Dar al Arqam Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia where Ali Timimi, a primary lecturer, spoke of the necessity to engage in violent jihad against the enemies of Islam and the ‘end of time’ battle between Muslims and non-Muslims.” In the summer of 2002, Singh visited Virginia, staying first with one of them and then with the other. Ali Timimi was unindicted co-conspirator number 1 in the Virginia Paintball Case, and was only later identified by Prosecutors (and then separately indicted).
Ali Timimi drafted a letter from dissident Saudi sheik Hawali dated October 6, 2002. He had it hand delivered it to every member of the US Congress just before their vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The letter was from al-Hawali (not Timimi), and warned of the disastrous consequences that would follow an invasion of Iraq. Rm 154A in George Mason’s Discovery Hall (down from former USAMRIID head Dr. Bailey in Rm 156B) would be Victor Morozov’s room number when he first assumed Timimi’s phone number in 2004 (and before he moved to a newly constructed, adjacent building). Morozov was the co-inventor with Dr. Bailey of the related cell culture process under which the silica was removed from the spore surface. A faculty member who would consult with Ali suggests that it instead was Rm. 154B, in the middle of the office suite.
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The Former Collections Scientist From ATCC’s Bacteriology Division Coordinates The Microbial Forensics Claimed To Point To Ivins And Away From ATCC
MSNBC, relying on an unnamed FBI spokesperson, reported that the FBI has narrowed the pool of labs known to have had the US Army anthrax strain that was a match from 16 to 4, but could not rule out that it was obtained overseas. Thus, not only was it likely that an Al Qaeda perpetrator was associated with an NGO and university, but there had to have been access to a virulent anthrax strain that was only in a score or so of known labs. Most of those labs were affiliated in some way with the US government. A key question is how they acquired the anthrax strain — the “Ames strain” first isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab in 1980. The US Army recipe from the 1950s was not used, and obtaining the unprocessed Ames strain of anthrax does not warrant the weight given it by some press accounts. Although coveted as the “gold standard” in vaccine research, it is known to have been at about a score of labs and over the years an estimated 1,000 people may have had access.
After the suicide of Ft. Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins, it was announced that the number of people known to have had access to one of the matching samples to have been at up to 377 at USAMRIID, even before considering the isolates downstream. Initially, at an August 2008 press conference the United States Attorney had estimated 100, but by the time of the Amerithrax Investigative Summary finally released in February 2010 it was admitted that the Ames had also been used in 1412, and thus up to 377 had access at Ft. Detrick alone. In Fall 2001, top Army anthrax expert Arthur Friedlander said. “They’ve asked us about personnel who had access.” “They didn’t talk to me about my personal experience. They asked me about other personnel.” Dr. Friedlander was thanked by Dr. Hamouda for providing technical assistance and in February 2005 faxed the FBI (or someone using his telephone number did) 20 pages about Dr. Hamouda’s visit that he had been given by Dr. Ivins.
Al Qaeda’s anthrax production plans on Khalid Mohammed’s computer, according to an unnamed source relied upon by the Washington Post, did not evidence knowledge of advanced techniques in the most efficient biological weapons. At least according to the public comments by bioweaponeer experts William Patrick and Kenneth Alibek, under the optimal method, there is no electrostatic charge. In the case of the anthrax used in the mailings, there was an electrostatic charge. (According to what the technical representative for Bucchi told me, a static charge is unavoidable with their mini-spraydryer). Although there was a dominance of single spores and a trillion spore concentration, there were clumps as large as 40 – 100 microns. (Spores must be no bigger than 5 microns to be inhalable.) The sophistication and effectiveness of the product perhaps lay not in just its concentration, but in its crumbliness and how it floated right out of the envelope.
‘The New York Times explained in early December: “William Patrick’s February 1999 report focused on what kinds of contamination terrorist anthrax would cause when a letter was opened and what the requirements for decontamination were. *** In his report, Mr. Patrick said the American program had achieved a concentration of one trillion spores per gram — what scientists today say is near the theoretical limit of how many of the microscopic spheres can be packed into a tiny space.”‘The “trillion spore” issue was an aspect of the mistaken theory that state sponsorship was necessarily indicated. Many point to the trillion spore concentration as extraordinary. It is far simpler, however, to achieve a trillion spore concentration in the production of a few grams than in industrial processing typical of a state sponsored lab. ‘I don’t think they’re manufacturing this in caves,” Dr. Alibek told the New York Times of the terror anthrax. ”It’s coming from another source.” The product had electrostatic charge — and indeed perhaps even a unipolar charge added. The FBI now describes what it calls a “silicon signature” and reports it does not know the reason for it.
In contrast, though not necessarily inconsistently, an FBI Lab scientist on composition of powders from the Hazardous Materials Response Unit published the comment in 2006: “Individuals familiar with the composition of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents. However, a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. The issue is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.” Harvard professor Matthew Meselson consulted with the author on the article.
In the affidavit regarding the investigation of Ft. Detrick scientist Ivins, the investigator refers to a finding of silicon (as distinguished from silica) but does not explain why silicon would point to Dr. Ivins, given that no silicon was detected in the Ivins flask. At a mid-August 2008 briefing on the science, the FBI’s WMD head explained the silicon dioxide could have been in the culture medium.
Contamination with a genetically distinct bacillus subtilus was found in the Post and Brokaw letters. “”Phenotypic and genotypic analyses demonstrate that the RMR-1029 does not have the Bacillus subtilus contaminant found in the evidentiary spore powders, which suggests that the anthrax used in the letter attacks was grown from the material contained in RMR-1029 and not taken directly from the flask and placed in the envelopes. Since RMR-1029 is the genetic parent to the evidentiary spore powders, and it is not known how the Bacillus subtillus contaminant came to be in the Post and Brokaw spore powders, the contaminant must have been introduced during the production of the Post and Brokaw spores.”
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The New York Times has a feature today on Anwar Awlaqi. Defense counsel Turley has argued that Anwar Aulaqi has a central role to understanding the allegations of his client, Ali Al-Timimi, who he says was an “anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was the lead speaker for the Ann Arbor charity Islamic Assembly of North America, for which the Cairo-based co-founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad was the lead writer.
In March 2002, fellow Falls Church iman Anwar Aulaqi — known as the “911 imam” — suddenly left the US and went to Yemen, thus avoiding the inquiry the 9/11 Commission thought so important. (Eventually Aulaqi would be banned from entering both the UK and US because of his speeches on jihad, martyrdom and the like). Upon a return visit in Fall 2002, “Aulaqi attempted to get al Timimi to discuss issues related to the recruitment of young Muslims,” according to a court filing by
Al-Timimi’s attorney at the time, Edward MacMahon. McMahon reports that those “entreaties were rejected.” After 18 months in prison in Yemen in 2006 and 2007, he was released over US objections, where he says he was subject to interrogation by the FBI. By 2010, when the United States announced that there was authorization to attempt to kill Anwar Aulaqi, he had long since gone into hiding after acknowledging his role in the Ft. Hood shooting and attempt to bring down an airliner flying into Detroit.
Al-Timimi’s counsel explained in a court filing unsealed in April 2008: “]911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.”
Falls Church imam Awlaqi (Aulaqi), who met with hijacker Nawaf, reportedly was picked up in Yemen by Yemen security forces at the request of the CIA in the summer of 2006. British and US intelligence had him and others under surveillance. Al-Timimi would speak alongside Fellow Falls Church imam Awlaqi (Aulaqi) at conferences such as the August 2001 London JIMAS and the August 2002 London JIMAS conference. They would speak on subjects such as signs before the day of judgment and the like. Dozens of their lectures are available online. Unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post in 2008 that “they have come to believe that Aulaqi worked with al-Qaida networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia.” One official said: “There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies.” “Some believe that Aulaqi was the first person since the summit meeting in Malaysia with whom al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi shared their terrorist intentions and plans,” former Senate Intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham wrote in his 2004 book “Intelligence Matters.”
Awlaqi was hired in early 2001 in an attempt by the mosque’s leaders to appeal to younger worshipers. Born in New Mexico and raised in Yemen, he had the total package. He was young, personable, fluent in English, eloquent and knowledgeable about Middle East politics. Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Al Hazmi worshiped at Aulaqi’s mosque for several weeks in spring 2001. The 9/11 commission noted that the two men apparently showed up because Nawaf Hazmi had developed a close relationship with Aulaqi in San Diego. In 2001, Awlaqi came to Falls Church from San Diego shortly before Nawaf did. Awlaqi told the FBI that he did not recall what Nawaf and he had discussed in San Diego and denied having contact with him in Falls Church.
The travel agent right on the same floor as Al-Timimi’s Dar Arqam mosque organized trips to hajj in February 2001. San Francisco attorney Hal Smith was Aulaqi’s roommate. Mr. Smith tells me that he was very extreme in his views when speaking privately and not like his smooth public persona. “Aulaqi is deep into hardcore militant Islam. He is not a cleric who just says prayers and counsels people as some of his supporters have suggested.” Sami al-Hussayen uncle checked into the same Herndon, VA hotel, the Marriot Residence Inn, on the same night — September 10, 2001 as Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and another hijacker. Hussayen had a seizure during an FBI interview and although doctors found nothing wrong with him was allowed to return home. During his trip to the US, al-Hussayen had visited both “911 imam” Aulaqi and Ali Al-Timimi.
The unclassified portion of a U.S. Department of Justice memorandum dated September 26, 2001 states
“Aulaqi was familiar enough with Nawaf Alhazmi to describe some of Alhazmi’s personality traits. Aulaqi considered Alhazmi to be a loner who did not have a large circle of friends. Alhazmi was slow to enter into personal relationships and was always very soft spoken, a very calm and extremely nice person. Aulaqi did not see Alhazmi as a very religious person, based on the fact that Alhazmi never wore a beard and neglected to attend all five daily prayer sessions.”
The Washington Post explains that “After leaving the United States in 2002, Aulaqi spent time in Britain, where he developed a following among young ultra-conservative Muslims through his lectures and audiotapes. His CD “The Hereafter” takes listeners on a tour of Paradise that describes “the mansions of Paradise,” “the women of Paradise,” and “the greatest of the pleasures of Paradise.” In London, after leaving the United States, he spoke at JIMAS and argued that in light of the rewards offered to martyrs in Jennah, or Paradise, Muslims should be eager to give his life in fighting the unbelievers. “Don’t think that the tones that die in the sake of Allah are dead — they are alive, and Allah is providing for them. So the shaheed is alive in the sense that his soul is in Jennah, and his soul is alive in Jennah.” He moved to Yemen, his family’s ancestral home, in 2004.” Before his arrest in Yemen in mid-2006, Aulaqi lectured at an Islamist university in San’a run by Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and was designated a terrorist in 2004 by the United States and the United Nations.
Law enforcement sources told the Post that Aulaqi was visited by Ziyad Khaleel, who the government has previously said purchased a satellite phone and batteries for bin Laden in the 1990s. The Post explains: “Khaleel was the U.S. fundraiser for Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity the U.S. Treasury has designated a financier of bin Laden and which listed Aulaqi’s charity as its Yemeni partner. A Washington Post article explained: “The FBI also learned that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he had ties to people raising money for the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, according to Congress and the 9/11 Commission report.”
Who was this close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman? The other lead IANA writer Gamal Sultan, who when he visited Pittsburgh in 2000 said the area reminded him of the rolling hills of Kandahar?
Aulaqi now has been released and came to be at the center of a controversy concerning what the FBI should have known and shared about Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter. The next month he was alleged to have been involved with the planned bombing of a airliner flying into Detroit. What did Awlaqi, detained in mid-2006 and held for a year and a half, tell questioners, if anything, about his fellow Falls Church imam and fellow Salafist conference lecturer Ali Al-Timimi?
From today’s New York Times:
The Evolution of a Radical Cleric: Quotes from Anwar al-Awlaki
Published: May 8, 2010
•
ON ISLAM AND GOVERNANCE:
“This is how, by taking [the Prophet Muhammad] as a role model, the image of the messenger gives us an example of somebody who was extremely successful as a head of state. Nevertheless, he never had to compromise his integrity.”
— July 20, 2001, sermon at Friday Prayer in the United States Capitol
ON SEPT. 11:
“Muslims still see bin Laden as a person with extremely radical ideas. But he has been able to take advantage of the sentiment that is out there regarding U.S. foreign policy. We’re totally against what the terrorists had done. We want to bring those who had done this to justice. But we’re also against the killing of civilians in Afghanistan.”
— Oct. 11, 2001, quoted by The Washington Times
ON RADICAL TALK AND SEPT. 11:
“In the past we were oblivious. We didn’t really care much because we never expected things to happen. Now I think things are different. What we might have tolerated in the past, we won’t tolerate any more. There were some statements that were inflammatory, and were considered just talk, but now we realize that talk can be taken seriously and acted upon in a violent radical way.”
— Oct. 19, 2001, quoted by The New York Times
ON AMERICAN MUSLIMS:
“Yes, we disagree with a lot of issues when it comes to the foreign policy of the United States. We are very conservative when it comes to family values. We are against the moral decay that we see in the society. But we also cherish a lot of the values that are in America. Freedom is one of them; the opportunity is another. And that’s why there is more appreciation among the American Muslims compared to the Muslims in other parts of the world.”
— Nov. 1, 2001, interview with PBS
ON 2002 RAIDS ON THE FIQH COUNCIL OF NORTH AMERICA AND OTHER AMERICAN MUSLIM ORGANIZATIONS:
“If the offices of the Fiqh Council of North America were raided and attacked, who is next? Masjids [mosques] may be raided and closed down. Islamic schools — their reputation has been tarnished through the media. Where is it going to stop? Where is this going to lead to? Therefore it is a responsibility of us as Muslims to make it very clear to the world that American Muslims are persecuted on a religious basis.”
— March 2002 talk at Dar al-Hijrah mosque, Fairfax, Va.
ON THE WAR IN IRAQ AND OTHER PERCEIVED ASSAULTS ON ISLAM:
“The ummah [global Muslim community] is watching while Iraq is being devoured. It’s not going to stop there, because it’s going to spill over into Syria and Allah knows where. In your own city, and in this country, many people have been arrested. You know if you talk about Guantánamo Bay and all this — there’s a Guantánamo Bay in this country. It’s an insult to Islam. Allah will revenge for himself, but the thing is, we cannot allow such things to happen and just watch.”
— 2003 lecture at East London Mosque
“And then you had the incident of this Swedish cartoons which depicted Muhammad in the worst form, which is one of the worst forms of cursing Muhammad we have ever heard of. And then you now have the abuse of the book of Allah in ways that we have never heard of using it, as toilet paper and shooting at the book of Allah for target practice. So what is happening now and the enormous extent of it, even though it angers every Muslim, it is also a sign that the end of these kuffar [unbelievers] is near.”
— 2008 audio lecture from Yemen
ON THE FORT HOOD, TEX., SHOOTING SUSPECT:
“Nidal Hasan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a U.S. soldier. The U.S. is leading the war against terrorism, which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges. The heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the Muslim American community. Increasingly, they are being cornered into taking stances that would either make them betray Islam or betray their nation.”
— Nov. 9, 2009, statement on his now-defunct Web site, anwar-alawlaki.com
“I, for one, was born in the U.S. I lived in the U.S. for 21 years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam involved in nonviolent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.”
— Mar. 17, 2010, audio statement posted to Web
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By SCOTT SHANE and SOUAD MEKHENNET today (May 8, 2010) have a major feature on Anwar Aulaqi.
Imam’s Path From Condemning Terror to Preaching Jihad
Excerpt:
“One day in August 2001, Mr. Awlaki knocked at the door of Mr. Higgie, his neighbor, to say goodbye. He had moved the previous year to Virginia, becoming imam at the far bigger Dar al-Hijrah mosque, and he had returned to pick up a few things he had left behind.
IN THE WASHINGTON AREA, AN EXPERT SOURCE FOR REPORTERS Mr. Awlaki preaching in July 2001. Just after Sept. 11, he became the go-to Muslim cleric for reporters scrambling to explain Islam.
As Mr. Higgie tells it, he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area — and got a strange response. “He said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing me. I won’t be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you’ll find out why,’” Mr. Higgie said.
The next month, when Al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington, Mr. Higgie remembered the exchange and was shaken, convinced that his friendly neighbor had some advance warning of the Sept. 11 attacks.”
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“In fact, the F.B.I. had first taken an interest in Mr. Awlaki in 1999, concerned about brushes with militants that to this day remain difficult to interpret. In 1998 and 1999, he was a vice president of a small Islamic charity that an F.B.I. agent later testified was “a front organization to funnel money to terrorists.” He had been visited by Ziyad Khaleel, a Qaeda operative who purchased a battery for Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone, as well as by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, who was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.”
Who was this visitor? Was it Gamal Sultan, the editor of the quarter Islamic Assembly of North America [Ann Arbor] journal who upon visiting the United States that year said Pittsburgh area reminded him of the rolling hills of Kandahar?
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Comment:
“The Straight Path”: Connecting the Dots
Al-Timimi’s attorney explained in a court filing that unsealed in April 2008 that Ali “was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali” and “was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having ‘extensive ties’ with the ‘broader al-Qaeda network.” Al-Timimi was on an advisory board member of Assirat al-Mustaqueem (”The Straight Path”), an international Arabic language magazine. Assirat, produced in Pittsburgh beginning in 1991, was the creation of a group of North American muslims, many of whom were senior members of IANA. Its Advisory Committee included Bassem Khafagi and Ali Al-Timimi. As Al-Timimi’s counsel explained in a court filing unsealed in April 2008:
“[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted passage ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden.”
Two staff members who wrote for Assirat then joined IANA’s staff when it folded in 2000. They had been members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and were activists in the movement. One of the former EIJ members, Gamal Sultan, was the editor of the quarterly IANA magazine in 2002. Mr. Sultan’s brother Mahmoud wrote for Assirat also. The most prominent writer was the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Kamal Habib. He led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad at the time of Anwar Sadat’s assassination when young doctor Zawahiri’s cell merged with a few other cells to form the EIJ. Two writers for Assirat in Pittsburgh had once shared a Portland, Oregon address with Al Qaeda member Wadih El-Hage. Wadih al Hage was Ali Mohammed’s friend and served as Bin Laden’s “personal secretary.”
Kamal Habib had been a founding member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and had spent 10 years in jail for the assassination of Anwar Sadat. In the late 1970s, the cell run by the young doctor Zawahiri joined with three other groups to become Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) under Habib’s leadership. After a visit in 2000, Gamal Sultan said Pittsburgh was known as the “American Kandahar,” given its rolling hills. In Egypt he formed the Islah (“Reform”) party with Gamal Sultan. While contributing to Al Manar al Jadeed, the Ann Arbor-based IANA’s quarterly journal, the pair sought the blind sheik’s endorsement of their political party venture in March 1999. They were not seeking the official participation of organizations like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Egyptian Islamic Group. They were just hoping the groups would not oppose it. The pair wanted members of the movement to be free to join in peaceful partisan activity. They were not deterred when the blind sheik responded that the project was pointless, at the same he withdrew his support for the cease-fire initiative that had been backed by the imprisoned leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Group.
In early April 2001, Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour rented an apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, for about a month, with the assistance of a man they met at the mosque. Nawaf Al-Hazmi had been at the January 2000 meeting at Yazid Sufaat’s Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Hijackers Nawaf and Hani Hanjour, a fellow pilot who was his friend from Saudi Arabia, attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, where Al-Timimi was located until he established the nearby center. The FBI reports that at an imam named Awlawki who had recently also moved from San Diego had closed door meetings with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in 2000 while all three of them were living in San Diego. Police later found the phone number of the Falls Church mosque when they searched the apartment of 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. In his 2007 book, Center of the Storm, George Tenet noted that Ramzi bin al-Shibh had a CBRN role.
Yusuf Wells, who was a fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation, visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:
“I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball weaponry. They call it ‘training’ and are very serious about it. I knew at least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.
Most all of them young men between the ages of 17-35. I was asked by the amir of the group to give a talk after Thuhr prayer. I spoke about seeing the conditions of Muslims overseas while with BIF, and how the fire of Islam is still very much alive in the hearts of the people even in the midst of extreme oppression. I also stressed the idea of being balanced. That we should not just be jihadis and perfect our fighting skills, but we should also work to perfect our character and strengthen our knowledge of Islam. I also said that Muslims are not just book reading cowards either, and that they should be commended for forming such a group.
Many were confused as to why I had been ‘trusted’ to join the group so quickly, but were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get presentations on their respective localities.”
A man named Kwon recalled driving Al-Timimi home from the mosque Sept. 11, 2001 after the terrorist attacks. He said Al-Timimi and another scholar argued, with Al-Timimi characterizing the attacks as a punishment of America from God. “He told me to gather some brothers, to have a contingency plan in case there were mass hostilities toward Muslims in America.” Kwon said Al-Timimi told the group that the effort to spread Islam in the United States was over and that the only other options open to them were to repent, leave the U.S. and join the mujahadeen —preparing to defend Afghanistan against the coming U.S. invasion.
After 9/11, although a dinner that night was cancelled in light of the events of the day, Al-Timimi sought “to organize a plan in case of anti-Muslim backlash and to get the brothers together.” The group got together on September 16. Al-Timimi when he came in told the group to turn of their phones, unplug the answering machine, and pull down the curtains. Al-Timimi told the group that Mullah Omar had called upon Muslims to defend Afghanistan. Al-Timimi read parts of the al-Uqla fatwa to the group and gave the fatwa to Khan with the instructions to burn it after he read it. Al Timimi said the duty to engage in jihad is “fard ayn” — an individual duty of all Muslims. Over a lunch with two of the group on September 19, Al-Timimi told them not to carry anything suspicious and if they were stopped on the way to Pakistan to ask for their mother and cry like a baby. He told them to carry a magazine. The next day the pair left for Pakistan. The group from the September 16 meeting met again in early October, and a number left for Pakistan immediately after that meeting.
Al-Timimi’s lawyer explains that Al-Timimi was in telephone contact with Al-Hawali on September 16, 2001 and September 19, 2001:
“The conversation with Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. Al-Timimi called Dr. Hawali after the dinner with Kwon on September 16, 2001 and just two hours before he met with Kwon and Hassan for the last time on September 19, 2001.”
Al-Timimi was urging the young men go defend the Taliban against the imminent US invasion. A recent open letter to Ayman Zawahiri from a senior Libyan jihadist, Bin-Uthman, now living in London, confirms that Ayman Zawahiri and Atef, at a several day meeting in Kandahar in the Summer of 2000, viewed WMD as a deterrent to the invasion of Afghanistan.
Kwon, who had just become a U.S. citizen in August 2001, went to the mountain training camps of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The U.S. placed on its terrorist list in December 2001. Kwon practiced with a semi-automatic weapons and learned to fire a grenade launcher, but he was not able to join the Taliban. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan closed as U.S. forces took control of Afghanistan shortly before Kwon completed his training. His trainers suggested that he instead go back to the United States and gather information for the holy warriors. Kwon told jurors at al-Timimi’s trial how he first heard Al-Timimi speak in 1997 at an Islamic Assembly of North America conference in Chicago and then found that Al-Timimi lectured locally near his home in Northern Virginia. “Russian Hell” — a jihad video that featured bloody clips of a Chechen Muslim rebel leader executing a Russian prisoner of war — was a favorite among the videos that the group exchanged and discussed. “They (the videos) motivated us. It was like they gave us inspiration,” Kwon told the jurors.
In 2001, Al-Timimi kept the personal papers of IANA President Khafagi at his home for safekeeping. His taped audio lecturers were among the most popular at the charity Islamic Assembly of North America in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He knew its President, Khafagi, both through work with CAIR and IANA. The same nondescript office building at 360 S. Washington St. in Falls Church where Timimi used to lecture at Dar al Arqam housed the Muslim World League.
Al Timimi was close to his former teacher Safar al Hawali, the dissident Saudi sheik whose writings hail what he calls the inevitable downfall of the West. (Under pressure from authorities after 9/11, Al Hawali has played a public role in mediating between Saudi militants and the government.) Al-Timimi sought to represent and explain the views of radical sheik Al-Hawali in a letter he sent to members of Congress on the first anniversary of the mailing to the US Senators Daschle and Leahy. The Hawali October 6, 2002 letter drafted by Al-Timimi was hand delivered to every member of the US Congress just before their vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq, warning of the disastrous consequences that would follow an invasion of Iraq. Dr. Timimi’s defense committee explained on their website:
“Because Dr. Al-Timimi felt that he did not have enough stature to send a letter in his name on behalf of Muslims, he contacted Dr. Al-Hawali among others to send the letter. Dr. Al-Hawali agreed and sent a revised version which Dr. Al-Timimi then edited and had hand delivered to every member of Congress.”
In addition to the October 6, 2002 letter, drafted by Al-Timimi, Hawali had sent a lengthy October 15, 2001 “Open Letter” to President Bush in which he had rejoiced in the 9/11 attacks. One Al-Hawali lecture, sought to be introduced in the prosecution of the IANA webmaster, applauded the killing of Jews and called for more killing, praised suicide bombings, and said of Israel that it’s time to “fight and expel this hated country that consists of those unclean, defiled, the cursed.”
Bin Laden referred to Sheik al-Hawali in his 1996 Declaration of War on America. Prior to the 1998 embassy bombings, Ayman’s London cell sent letters to three different media outlets in Europe claiming responsibility for the bombings and referring to Hawali’s imprisonment. In two of the letters, the conditions laid out as to how the violence would stop were (1) release of Sheik al-Hawali (who along with another had been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in 1994) and (2) the release of blind sheik Abdel Rahman (who had been imprisoned in connection with WTC 1993). Hawali was released in 1999 after he agreed to stop advocating against the Saudi regime.
Al-Timimi sent out a February 1, 2003 email in Arabic containing an article that said:
“There is no doubt Muslims were overjoyed because of the adversity that befell their greatest enemy. The Columbia crash made me feel, and God is the only One to know, that this is a strong signal that Western Supremacy (especially that of America) that began 500 years ago is coming to a quick end, God willing, as occurred to the shuttle.”
As Ali later explained to NBC, “To have a space shuttle crash in Palestine, Texas, with a Texas president and an Israeli astronaut, somebody might say there’s a divine hand behind it.”
DXer said
Ali Al-Timimi’s lecture was featured each week on the IANA radio net. IANA was based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Lecture of the Week
Sheikh: Ali Al-Timimi
The Future of Muslims
Top bill on the same edition –
An Urgent Call from the Commanders of the Mujahideen in Chechnya
http://web.archive.org/web/20000301121616/http://www.ianaradionet.com/
February 22, 2000.
DXer said
Comment:
The Other “Anthrax Weapons Suspect”: White House Chief of Staff’s Former Assistant Ali Al-Timimi
In a filing unsealed in United States v. Al-Timimi, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer, Professor and MSNBC commentator Jonathan Turley, explained that his client “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was a computational biologist who came to have an office 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy commander of USAMRIID. A motion filed in early August 2008 seeking to unseal additional information in federal district court was denied. The ongoing proceedings are highly classified.
Dr. Al-Timimi’s counsel summarizes
“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;
* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;
* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;
* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;
*was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]
* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;
* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;
* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and
* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***
The conversation with [Bin Laden’s sheik] Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. ***
[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.
[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden [redacted]”
The letter attached as an exhibit notes that in March 2002 Al-Timimi spoke with Al-Hawali about assisting Moussaoui in his defense. Al-Hawali was Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War.” Moussaoui was the operative sent by Bin Laden reportedly to be part of a “second wave” who had been inquiring about crop dusters. The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill. His daughter withdrew as Al-Timimi’s pro bono counsel on February 27, 2009.
‘Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s Support Committee’ in an email to supporters dated April 5, 2005 explained: “This is a summary of the court proceedings that took place yesterday April 4th 2005. We will send a summary everyday inshallah. *** “In his opening statement, Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said that Al-Timimi was born and raised in Washington DC. He has a degree in Biology and he is also a computer scientist, and a mathematician. He worked for Andrew Card, who’s now the White House chief of staff, at the Transportation Department in the early 1990s.”
Bruce Ivins had supplied the virulent Ames strain of anthrax to Ann Arbor researchers. One of the researchers, Dr. Hamouda, obtained his PhD in microbiology from Cairo Medical in 1994. He and his wife came to the United States to settle that year. By 1998, he was working on a DARPA-funded project involving nanoemulsions and a biocidal cream. In December 1999, he and two colleagues travelled to a remote military installation in Utah, Dugway, to test its effectiveness in killing aerosolized anthrax surrogates. An April 2001 report describing testing at Dugway concluded that the best performing decontamination agents were from University of Michigan, Sandia National Laboratories, and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL).
The FBI and CIA may have been concerned that there might have been unauthorized access to the Ames strain. That would explain their aggressive prosecution of various matters related to Al-Timimi’s charity, IANA, which was based in Ann Arbor 1 mile from the NanoBio office. IANA promoted the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Al-Timimi was IANA’s most celebrated speaker. He was in active contact with one of those sheiks, who had been Ali’s religious mentor at university in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. Ali Al-Timimi preached on the end of times and the inevitability of the clash of civilizations. He was in active contact with al-Hawali whose detention had been the express subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War. At GMU, Dr. Bailey would publish a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. The anthrax used in the anthrax mailings was traced to Bruce Ivins’ lab at USAMRIID, where Ivins, according to a former colleague, had done some work for DARPA. Al-Timimi would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences. The blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad.
The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Al-Timimi. He was a graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high ecurity clearance for work for the Navy in the late 1990s. The defense webpage reported he had once served as the assistant for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. (Mr. Card had been Secretary of Transportation in 1992-1993; from 1993 to 1998, Mr. Card later was President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.) As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the Ann Arbor-based charity Islamic Assembly of North America.
A laptop evidencing Al Qaeda’s intent on weaponizing anthrax was seized in Baku in July 1998. Two months later, Dr. Ken Alibek, then Program Manager, Battelle Memorial Institute, testified before the Joint Economic Committee on the subject of “Terrorist and Intelligence Operations: Potential Impact on the U.S. Economy” about the proliferation of know-how. Dr. Alibek noted that “[t]here are numerous ways in which Russia’s biological weapons expertise can be proliferated to other countries.” Indeed. Sometimes such proliferation is funded by DARPA and any student who wanted to apply to work in the building could submit an application. One applicant accepted was this Salafist preacher seeing signs of the coming day of judgment and the inevitable clash of civilizations. He had been mentored by the sheik named in Bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996. In 1999, Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for work for the Navy. His father worked at the Iraqi embassy.
Dr. Alibek testified before the House Armed Services Committee Oversight Panel on Terrorism again in May 2000 about the issue of proliferation of biological weapons. He explained: “Terrorists interested in biological weapons are on the level of state-sponsored terrorist organizations such as that of Osama bin Laden; on the level of large, independent organizations such as Aum Shinrikyo; or on the level of individuals acting alone or in concert with small radical organizations.”
Dr. Alibek in 2003 told me he knew Ali was a hardliner. More recently he described Ali as a fanatic. Dr. Alibek explained to the Congressional Committee in May 2000: “When most people think of proliferation, they imagine weapons export. In the case of biological weapons, they picture international smuggling either of ready-made weapons material, or at least of cultures of pathogenic microorganisms. However, this area of proliferation is of the least concern. Even without such assistance, a determined organization could obtain virulent strains of microorganisms from their natural reservoirs (such as soil or animals), from culture libraries that provide such organisms for research purposes, or by stealing cultures from legitimate laboratories.” American Type Culture Collection, the largest microbiologist depository in the world, co-sponsored Ali’s bioinformatics program. Dr. Alibek explained: “The proliferation issue is particularly complex for biological weapons. In many cases, the same equipment and knowledge that can be used to produce biological weapons can also be used to produce legitimate biotechnological products.”
By 2001, Al-Timimi was allowed access to the most diverse microbiological repository in the world and allowed to work alongside staff at the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense. The Center for Biodefense personnel were working under the largest biodefense award in history. Delta (avirulent) Ames was supplied by NIH. Raymond H. Cypess, president of the germ bank, said of the Ames strain, “We never had it,’ and we can say that on several levels of analysis.” ATCC refuses to confirm to me whether its patent repository, as distinguished from its online category, had Ames, but we can assume government scientists would have ensured that the patent repository was considered at the same time as the online catalog and, to the best of their ability, excluded as a source of the Ames.
Al-Timimi had supervised Cairo-based militants writing for the Pittsburgh-based Assirat and then for IANA. One of them, Kamal Habib, was the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a friend of Ayman Zawahiri. The Cairo-based writers Kamal Habib and Gamal Sultan approached the blind sheik Abdel Rahman about starting a political party in early 1999. On March 1 and 2, 1999, Lynne Stewart and translator Yousry visited Abdel Rahman in prison in Rochester, Minnesota and relayed the proposal. On March 6, 1999, the first press reports about anthrax appeared quoting the blind sheik’s Cairo lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, and detainees in a massive trial al-Zayat was defending. He explained that Ayman likely was going to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate against the rendering and detention of the Egyptian militants.
On March 9, 1999 following the visit in prison at which the political idea had been proposed, Abdel Rahman issued a statement rejecting a proposal that the Islamic Group form a political party in Egypt. That day, the Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza spoke with the blind sheik’s liaison, US Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. The next month, the Blind Sheik’s publicist Sattar spoke with Taha, the IG head close to the Taliban and Bin Laden, in a three-way call with Cairo attorney Al-Zayat. Sattar also spoke on the telephone with Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Al Sirri (based in London). From the beginning, the weaponization of anthrax for use against US targets was inextricably linked to the detention of senior militant Egyptian leaders, including the blind sheik.
Ayman Zawahiri’s brother Muhammad was rendered to Cairo in April 1999. Mamdouh Ismail, Al-Zayat’s co-founder of a key reform party, represented the Al-Zawahiri family in connection with Muhammad’s rendition and detention. Ayman Zawahiri and Muhammad’s sister, Heba, a Pharmacology Professor at Cairo Medical, were concerned that he might be mistreated by Egyptian security services. A recent graduate from the same department, Tarek Hamouda, soon was working alongside Bruce Ivins with virulent Ames at Ft. Detrick.
DXer said
Scott Shane and his colleague write today in a lengthy feature on Anwar Awlaki:
“One detective, whose name has been redacted, told the commission he believed Mr. Awlaki “was at the center of the 9/11 story.” An F.B.I. agent, also unidentified, said that “if anyone had knowledge of the plot, it would have been” the cleric, since “someone had to be in the U.S. and keep the hijackers spiritually focused.”
The 9/11 commission staff members themselves had sharp arguments about him. “Do I think he played a role in helping the hijackers here, knowing they were up to something?” said one staff member, who would speak only on condition of anonymity. “Yes. Do I think he was sent here for that purpose? I have no evidence for it.”
The separate Congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks suspected that Mr. Awlaki might have been part of a support network for the hijackers, said Eleanor Hill, its director. “There’s no smoking gun. But we thought somebody ought to investigate him,” Ms. Hill said.
Alarmed about Mr. Awlaki’s possible Sept. 11 connections, a State Department investigator, Raymond Fournier, found a circuitous way to charge Mr. Awlaki with passport fraud, based on his false claim after entering the United States in 1990 that he had been born in Yemen.
A warrant was issued, but prosecutors in Colorado rescinded it, concluding that no criminal case could be made. Mr. Awlaki returned from a trip abroad in October 2002 — an act some colleagues say was evidence for his innocence of any 9/11 role — for what would prove to be his last stay in the United States.
During that trip, he visited Ali al-Timimi, a Virginia cleric later convicted for encouraging Muslims to join the fight against American troops in Afghanistan. Mr. Awlaki “attempted to get al-Timimi to discuss issues related to the recruitment of young Muslims,” according to a motion filed in his criminal case. Mr. Timimi wondered if Mr. Awlaki might be trying to entrap him at the F.B.I.’s instigation, his friends say.”
Comment:
Here is a floor plan showing Ali Al-Timimi’s office was in the suite with leading anthrax scientist and former deputy USAMRIID Commander, the DARPA-funded Battelle consultants who co-invented for the process using silica in the cultivating medium.
In a filing unsealed in United States v. Al-Timimi, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer, Professor and MSNBC commentator Jonathan Turley, explained that his client “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was a computational biologist who came to have an office 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy commander of USAMRIID. A motion filed in early August 2008 seeking to unseal additional information in federal district court was denied. The ongoing proceedings are highly classified.
Dr. Al-Timimi’s counsel summarizes
“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;
* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;
* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;
* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;
*was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]
* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;
* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;
* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and
* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***
The conversation with [Bin Laden’s sheik] Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. ***
[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.
[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden [redacted]”
The letter attached as an exhibit notes that in March 2002 Al-Timimi spoke with Al-Hawali about assisting Moussaoui in his defense. Al-Hawali was Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War.” Moussaoui was the operative sent by Bin Laden reportedly to be part of a “second wave” who had been inquiring about crop dusters. The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill. His daughter withdrew as Al-Timimi’s pro bono counsel on February 27, 2009.
‘Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s Support Committee’ in an email to supporters dated April 5, 2005 explained: “This is a summary of the court proceedings that took place yesterday April 4th 2005. We will send a summary everyday inshallah. *** “In his opening statement, Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said that Al-Timimi was born and raised in Washington DC. He has a degree in Biology and he is also a computer scientist, and a mathematician. He worked for Andrew Card, who’s now the White House chief of staff, at the Transportation Department in the early 1990s.”
Bruce Ivins had supplied the virulent Ames strain of anthrax to Ann Arbor researchers. One of the researchers, Dr. Hamouda, obtained his PhD in microbiology from Cairo Medical in 1994. He and his wife came to the United States to settle that year. By 1998, he was working on a DARPA-funded project involving nanoemulsions and a biocidal cream. In December 1999, he and two colleagues travelled to a remote military installation in Utah, Dugway, to test its effectiveness in killing aerosolized anthrax surrogates. An April 2001 report describing testing at Dugway concluded that the best performing decontamination agents were from University of Michigan, Sandia National Laboratories, and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL).
The FBI and CIA may have been concerned that there might have been unauthorized access to the Ames strain. That would explain their aggressive prosecution of various matters related to Al-Timimi’s charity, IANA, which was based in Ann Arbor 1 mile from the NanoBio office. IANA promoted the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Al-Timimi was IANA’s most celebrated speaker. He was in active contact with one of those sheiks, who had been Ali’s religious mentor at university in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. Ali Al-Timimi preached on the end of times and the inevitability of the clash of civilizations. He was in active contact with al-Hawali whose detention had been the express subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War. At GMU, Dr. Bailey would publish a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. The anthrax used in the anthrax mailings was traced to Bruce Ivins’ lab at USAMRIID, where Ivins, according to a former colleague, had done some work for DARPA. Al-Timimi would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences. The blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad.
The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Al-Timimi. He was a graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high ecurity clearance for work for the Navy in the late 1990s. The defense webpage reported he had once served as the assistant for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. (Mr. Card had been Secretary of Transportation in 1992-1993; from 1993 to 1998, Mr. Card later was President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.) As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the Ann Arbor-based charity Islamic Assembly of North America.
A laptop evidencing Al Qaeda’s intent on weaponizing anthrax was seized in Baku in July 1998. Two months later, Dr. Ken Alibek, then Program Manager, Battelle Memorial Institute, testified before the Joint Economic Committee on the subject of “Terrorist and Intelligence Operations: Potential Impact on the U.S. Economy” about the proliferation of know-how. Dr. Alibek noted that “[t]here are numerous ways in which Russia’s biological weapons expertise can be proliferated to other countries.” Indeed. Sometimes such proliferation is funded by DARPA and any student who wanted to apply to work in the building could submit an application. One applicant accepted was this Salafist preacher seeing signs of the coming day of judgment and the inevitable clash of civilizations. He had been mentored by the sheik named in Bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996. In 1999, Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for work for the Navy. His father worked at the Iraqi embassy.
Dr. Alibek testified before the House Armed Services Committee Oversight Panel on Terrorism again in May 2000 about the issue of proliferation of biological weapons. He explained: “Terrorists interested in biological weapons are on the level of state-sponsored terrorist organizations such as that of Osama bin Laden; on the level of large, independent organizations such as Aum Shinrikyo; or on the level of individuals acting alone or in concert with small radical organizations.”
Dr. Alibek in 2003 told me he knew Ali was a hardliner. More recently he described Ali as a fanatic. Dr. Alibek explained to the Congressional Committee in May 2000: “When most people think of proliferation, they imagine weapons export. In the case of biological weapons, they picture international smuggling either of ready-made weapons material, or at least of cultures of pathogenic microorganisms. However, this area of proliferation is of the least concern. Even without such assistance, a determined organization could obtain virulent strains of microorganisms from their natural reservoirs (such as soil or animals), from culture libraries that provide such organisms for research purposes, or by stealing cultures from legitimate laboratories.” American Type Culture Collection, the largest microbiologist depository in the world, co-sponsored Ali’s bioinformatics program. Dr. Alibek explained: “The proliferation issue is particularly complex for biological weapons. In many cases, the same equipment and knowledge that can be used to produce biological weapons can also be used to produce legitimate biotechnological products.”
By 2001, Al-Timimi was allowed access to the most diverse microbiological repository in the world and allowed to work alongside staff at the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense. The Center for Biodefense personnel were working under the largest biodefense award in history. Delta (avirulent) Ames was supplied by NIH. Raymond H. Cypess, president of the germ bank, said of the Ames strain, “We never had it,’ and we can say that on several levels of analysis.” ATCC refuses to confirm to me whether its patent repository, as distinguished from its online category, had Ames, but we can assume government scientists would have ensured that the patent repository was considered at the same time as the online catalog and, to the best of their ability, excluded as a source of the Ames.
Al-Timimi had supervised Cairo-based militants writing for the Pittsburgh-based Assirat and then for IANA. One of them, Kamal Habib, was the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a friend of Ayman Zawahiri. The Cairo-based writers Kamal Habib and Gamal Sultan approached the blind sheik Abdel Rahman about starting a political party in early 1999. On March 1 and 2, 1999, Lynne Stewart and translator Yousry visited Abdel Rahman in prison in Rochester, Minnesota and relayed the proposal. On March 6, 1999, the first press reports about anthrax appeared quoting the blind sheik’s Cairo lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, and detainees in a massive trial al-Zayat was defending. He explained that Ayman likely was going to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate against the rendering and detention of the Egyptian militants.
On March 9, 1999 following the visit in prison at which the political idea had been proposed, Abdel Rahman issued a statement rejecting a proposal that the Islamic Group form a political party in Egypt. That day, the Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza spoke with the blind sheik’s liaison, US Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. The next month, the Blind Sheik’s publicist Sattar spoke with Taha, the IG head close to the Taliban and Bin Laden, in a three-way call with Cairo attorney Al-Zayat. Sattar also spoke on the telephone with Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Al Sirri (based in London). From the beginning, the weaponization of anthrax for use against US targets was inextricably linked to the detention of senior militant Egyptian leaders, including the blind sheik.
Ayman Zawahiri’s brother Muhammad was rendered to Cairo in April 1999. Mamdouh Ismail, Al-Zayat’s co-founder of a key reform party, represented the Al-Zawahiri family in connection with Muhammad’s rendition and detention. Ayman Zawahiri and Muhammad’s sister, Heba, a Pharmacology Professor at Cairo Medical, were concerned that he might be mistreated by Egyptian security services. A recent graduate from the same department, Tarek Hamouda, soon was working alongside Bruce Ivins with virulent Ames at Ft. Detrick.
DXer said
In the Red Chair Series: Tawfik Hamid
DXer said
lobal Relief Founder Rabih Haddad in 2000:
Al-Kawakibul Muneerah Min Fiqhis Seerah (2)
(Reflections On The Life And Times Of Prophet Muhammad(saw))
By Rabih Haddad
Click to access link_may00.pdf
How many times have we heard this expression before: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”, or “history repeats itself”? While this does not seem to apply to all matters, it is certainly true for others. As previously declared, I will be drawing parallels between events from the seerah of the Prophet (saw) and present day matters that seem to be almost identical.
In the early stages of Islam in Makkah, Quraish put in motion a variety of tactics to combat the new revolutionary teachings. They engaged in the worst defamation campaign imaginable. They attempted a full character assassination on the Prophet (saw). These tactics can be summarized in the following:
•Mocking, humiliating, degrading, and ridiculing the few new followers of the new religion along with their leader and role model Muhammad (saw), in an attempt to break their morale and weaken their resolve. They leveled all sorts of ridiculous accusations at the man whom, until recent days, they called “the truthful” and “the trustworthy”. Now, all of a sudden, he has become a liar, a sorcerer, or insane!
•Distorting the teachings of the Prophet (saw) and launching a campaign of disinformation and negative propaganda against him (saw) and his message. They stepped up the tempo of their attacks so the laymen of their time would have no chance to sort fact from fiction, right from wrong.
•Claiming that Muhammad (saw) did not bring anything new. That his message and a lot of what he (saw) says can be found in other ancient mythologies. An- Nadr ibnul Harith went so far as to travel to Persia to learn the traditions and accounts of the kings of Persia.
•Making offers of compromise asking the Prophet (saw) to meet them halfway, trying to find some common ground. They made offers like: we will worship
your god for one year and you worship ours for another. To that the Qur’an replied: “Say (O Muhammad (saw)) O Kafirun, I worship not that which you worship, Nor will you worship that which I worship”. [109:1-3]
This seems to be the exact same recipe used against Islam and Muslims even today. One does not need to look beyond the daily newspapers and weekly magazines in the East and West, to see the many signs of ridiculing and mockery. Many cartoons are drawn portraying Islam in a degrading fashion. Scores of articles are published mocking basic beliefs in Islam.
The Media (Western media in particular) seems to have taken upon itself to distort Islam and misrepresent it in every way possible. They have worked systematically over an extended period of time to make the word Islam or Muslim synonymous with Terrorism or fundamentalism or radicalism. Muslims are always portrayed as backward, blood -thirsty warmongers who should only be dealt with through excessive force and extreme prejudice. The positive facts about Islam, to the authenticity of which history testifies, are frequently and maliciously suppressed. Muslim scholars and activists have also received their share of defamation and slander. With the absence of ‘Khilafah’ and a true Islamic state, Islamic institutions and organizations are receiving the most severe blows, being the only physical manifestation of Islam today. Here in the US, an honorable Islamic organization has been targeted with unfounded and totally fictitious accusations.
The American public was rudely awakened by the distorted image of Islam and Muslims. Every attempt was, and still is, being made to widen the gap and increase public paranoia and apprehension through stereotyping Muslims in a variety of ways. This has put a strain on many families trying to live and raise children on this soil, and has caused some to hide or even change their identity. Others have tried very hard to sugar coat some basic principles of Islam so they would be more acceptable to non-Muslims. Indeed, the only versions or images of Islam that seem to be acceptable to those who are actively engaged in the media war against Islam, are the ones considered by mainstream Islam to be on the fringes or even out of the bounds of Islam altogether.
DXer said
Patriot Act Legal Attacks Pile Up
Joanna Glasner 08.01.03
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SunbieGgK6kJ:www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/08/59863+Nazih+Hassan&cd=19&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Nazih Hassan is deliberately noncommittal when asked whether the Muslim organization he leads in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been targeted by federal investigators.
“Even if I have been asked, I cannot tell you,” he says, noting that under provisions of theUSA Patriot Act, he isn’t allowed to discuss pending investigations. According to the act — drafted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to broaden government powers in fighting terrorism — organizations are prohibited from revealing requests for records by federal agents.
The obligation to secrecy, however, hasn’t preventedHassanfrom taking action to prevent future investigations carried out under the Patriot Act.
Hassan’s 700-member Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor signed on as lead plaintiff in alawsuitfiled this week by the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of U.S.-based Islamic organizations seeking to dismiss provisions of the Patriot Act on constitutional grounds.
The suit was filed in federal court for the Eastern District of Michigan, home to one of the largest populations of Muslim Americans. It focuses on a portion of the act — Section 215 — that lets the FBI secretly obtain personal records and belongings, including those of individuals not suspected of criminal activities, in the course of antiterrorism investigations.
DXer said
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/statement-nazih-hassan-target-illegal-spying
March 31, 2006
Illegal NSA Spying
I was born in Lebanon in 1969 and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2001. I work as a technology consultant and live in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
The recent revelations about the warrantless National Security Agency surveillance program, used by the government to monitor communications between U.S. residents and people abroad without court order, is of grave concern to me.
I have been active in peace and justice issues and have spoken publicly against government policies related to the war in Iraq, detention of Muslims in the U.S. and infringement on Muslims’ civil liberties. For instance I was active in the Committee to Free Rabih Haddad, a man who was detained for 18 months and then deported without being charged with any crime.
I regularly communicate with friends and relatives overseas by phone and email. I discuss with them current events such as the war in Iraq, the war on terror, treatment of detainees and U.S. policies in the Middle East. Some of them, like Rabih Haddad, are viewed with suspicion by the U.S. government based apparently purely on their political and religious advocacy.
The fact that the NSA program is without any judicial oversight, and can be abused to spy on innocent political discussions, has made me reluctant and fearful to discuss current events with people overseas.
I have always believed that the rights to privacy, to be free of illegal monitoring and free political discourse, are constitutional guarantees to every U.S. resident. These illegal surveillance programs clearly violate these core principles and could result in widespread abuses of Muslims’ privacy rights.
The U. S. Constitution and laws require warrants issued by a judge in order to monitor anyone under suspicion – and rightly so. The unlawful surveillance of innocent Americans, regardless of their country of origin or ethnicity is un-American and wrong. The power that the NSA has been given to view our daily lives is unprecedented and disheartening.
I came to this country with the knowledge that it is every person’s right to speak out, associate with others and worship freely. It would be a shame if all of that became untrue as a result of legitimate fear directed illegitimately at innocent people.
DXer said
Area group challenges Bush’s spy program
It joins ACLU lawsuit, saying a judge should decide if surveillance in U.S. is warranted.
DETROIT — Nazih Hassan admits that he has some interesting friends, including a deported Islamic cleric and a man who says he fled the country amid harassment by the FBI.
Hassan says it’s fine with him if the government attempts to eavesdrop when he talks to those friends, as long as there’s a warrant.
Now Hassan’s group, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and a host of others are wading into the first legal challenge to the Bush administration’s controversial domestic spying program with a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Amid an escalating constitutional battle among the administration, some members of Congress and advocates for civil liberties, the lawsuit seeks to have the program declared unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs also want the government to reveal the details of its surveillance.
Hassan, who is not a U.S. citizen but a permanent resident under federal immigration law, says he fled war-torn Lebanon in 1988.
“I lived in a police state,” he said. “I know what it looks like. I worry we are getting close to that now.”
The lawsuit, and a companion case filed by another organization Tuesday in New York, seeks to test the assertions of the Bush administration that it has targeted the international phone calls and e-mails of a small number of people with known links to al-Qaida.
The administration insists that the so-called domestic spying is not only legal but also an important component of national defense in an age of terror.
Critics say the administration can accomplish the same ends by using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act allows federal officials to begin electronic surveillance immediately, in crucial cases, and then approach a special court within 72 hours for official permission.
For his part, Hassan said he does nothing illegal. He only wants a judge to determine whether he should be the subject of surveillance.
“I think I have the freedom to discuss political issues, to discuss my opposition to U.S. policies,” said Hassan, 36, of Ypsilanti. “I want a court to authorize such monitoring, if it is necessary. I doubt that any judge would find a reasonable suspicion.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit in Detroit on behalf of several plaintiffs, including the ACLU-Michigan, Greenpeace, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in addition to the group that Hassan belongs to.
While none of the plaintiffs said they can produce evidence they have been spied on, they insist that given their contacts overseas, it is likely. They also say that the public record, to date, on the domestic spying indicates it is far more widespread than the Bush administration asserts.
But others think their likelihood of success in court is small.
First, the Justice Department will immediately ask that the lawsuit be tossed out on procedural grounds, including whether the plaintiffs were actually harmed, according to Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and Wayne State University law professor.
“How do you show harm? The cops could break into your house right now and just because you’re afraid they might doesn’t give you grounds to sue,” Henning said.
Michael Steinberg, chief legal counsel for the ACLU-Michigan, disagreed.
Steinberg said that by legal precedent, the defendants need only demonstrate “a well-found belief that they were monitored.”
If the lawsuit survives that test, the lawyers will seek extensive information about the domestic spying program.
But Henning said the government will attempt to block that by using arguments about national security to avoid answering any questions. Henning said that if it is forced to respond, the government could simply abandon the program rather than making any revelations about it.
“Unlike most legal cases, there are different avenues to win this or vindicate their interests,” Henning said. “It’s unlikely that the courts are going to vindicate their interests — this is a political question.”
U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ralph Guy, who stepped down in May as presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, said it’s a tough balancing act.
“I know if I was in the executive branch, I would push to the limits of what I thought was in the best interests of the country. I’d rather be accused of doing too much than not enough,” said Guy, a former U.S. attorney in Detroit. But he added: “It’s the courts’ job to put the brakes on once in awhile.”
Hassan says his contacts with acquaintances overseas are entirely innocent, and part of the Council on American Islamic Relations goal of furthering the understanding of Islam.
“I have some relations and communications with people who I consider friends, who lived in this country, whom the government has painted with a broad brush of extremism,” said Hassan, a technology consultant.
Hassan’s contacts overseas have drawn substantial interest from the government in the past. But he and others involved in the suit filed in Detroit say not only did both men not deserve the scrutiny, neither was ever charged with a crime.
Hassan says he communicates with Rabih Haddad, a Muslim cleric in Ann Arbor who was deported to Lebanon in 2003, and Islam al-Murabi, the executive director of the Islamic Assembly of North America.
The government deported Haddad to Lebanon in 2003 after holding him in solitary confinement for months and investigating his fundraising activities. His case became a cause celebre among those who feel that the government is trampling on the rights of Muslims and people of Arab descent in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Al-Murabi, an American citizen, said he was moving back Saudi Arabia because of what he alleged was harassment by investigators.
“Now, I am still in contact with these people,” Hassan said. “I used to discuss political issues, U.S. government policies, issues related to Islam and extremism and terrorism with them, and I feel, right how, that I can not exercise this fundamental right.” “If the government thinks these people pose a security threat, I want a judge to be able to make this determination, not some bureaucrat at the NSA who can abuse his power.”
Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Tuesday that the surveillance is properly and lawfully conducted. “We want to reassure the American public that the FBI does not target any particular individual based on ethnic status or political beliefs,” the FBI said.
President Bush defended the policy earlier this month.
“This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America, and I repeat limited,” Bush said.
DXer said
The lead speaker for the Ann Arbor Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), Dr. Ali Al-Al-Timimi, spoke for example at the Ann Arbor Muslim in Community Association in Contemporary Challenges in America in 2000. His conviction for sedition was overturned and is on remand due to alleged warrantless wiretapping by the NSA. Ali Al-Timimi shared a suite with the DARPA-funded Battelle consultants — one was the leading anthrax scientist and another was a prolific Ames researcher who had been deputy USAMRIID Commander. According to Al-Timimi’s defense counsel, Ali was an “anthrax weapons suspect.” Ali had been Andrew Card’s former assistant briefly years earlier. The White House did not tell the Department of Justice about the wiretapping — only two individuals knew of it and they were not part of Amerithrax.
Click to access link_october99.pdf
DXer said
The 2003 ACLU Complaint provides the background of the lawsuit by the Ann Arbor Muslim Community Association and CAIR and others against John Ashcroft. The last paragraph (57) quoted mentions Bassem Khafagi, the IANA head whose personal papers were later found — upon a February 26, 2003 search –kept for safekeeping in Ali Al-Timimi’s Falls Church residence for safekeeping. Dr. Al-Timimi’s defense counsel explains that Dr. Al-Timimi was an “anthrax weapons suspect” and that allegations relating to Anwar Aulaqi were central to the conspiracy allegations against his client for sedition.
Muslim Community Ass’n of Ann Arbor v. John Ashcroft, et al.
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Defendant Attorney General John Ashcroft heads the United States …. Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and the Islamic Center of Portland, …
news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/aclu/mcaa2ash73003cmp.pdf –
4. Plaintiff Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor (“MCA”) is a non-profit, membership-based organization that serves the religious needs of Muslims in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan. MCA owns and administers a mosque and an Islamic school. MCA sues on its own behalf and on behalf of its members, students, and constituents.
30. Based on their personal experiences and the government’s own actions, plaintiffs have a well-founded belief that they and their members, clients, and constituents (hereinafter “members and clients”) have been or are currently the targets of investigations conducted under Section 215. Because Section 215 does not require the government to provide notice to surveillance targets, and because it strictly gags recipients from disclosing that the FBI has sought or obtained information from them, plaintiffs and other innocent targets of FBI surveillance have no way to know with certainty that their privacy has been compromised.
31. The FBI has already targeted plaintiffs, their members, and their clients in a number of ways.
32. The FBI has sought information directly from some of the plaintiffs about their members and clients.
33. The FBI has sought information from some of the plaintiffs’ members and clients directly, either during visits to their homes and businesses, or through numerous
Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor
42. MCA is a non-profit, membership-based organization that owns and administers a mosque and an Islamic school, the Michigan Islamic Academy, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Approximately 1000 people attend services at the mosque each Friday; as many as 2500 attend services on religious holidays. MCA employs approximately 20 people and has about 700 registered, dues-paying members.
43. Approximately 200 students are enrolled at the Michigan Islamic Academy, which offers classes from pre-K through 11th grade. In addition to offering the standard academic curriculum used in the State of Michigan for public schools, the school offers classes in Arabic language, Quranic recitation and Islamic Studies. The mission of the school is to provide students with the basic knowledge required to preserve their Islamic heritage, religion and cultural identity.
44. MCA has spent a significant amount of time, staff resources, and funds discussing the impact of September 11th and the Patriot Act on the civil rights of Muslims. It sponsored civil rights forums on January 26, 2002; April 14, 2002; October 13, 2002; and March 12, 2003. Each of these forums addressed the impact of the Patriot Act. The MCA has also sponsored numerous rallies and fundraisers related to the Rabih Haddad case; at these events, the Patriot Act was almost always discussed.
45. Because of the relationship between MCA, its members and leaders, and persons and organizations investigated, questioned, detained, or arrested since September 11th, MCA reasonably believes that the FBI has used or is currently using Section 215 to obtain records or personal belongings about it and its members, students, and constituents.
46. For example, the MCA, its leadership, and its members have been associated with Rabih Haddad. Rabih Haddad is a 41-year-old native of Lebanon who came legally to the United States and lived until recently in Ann Arbor with his wife and four children. He was an active member of MCA and a volunteer teacher at MCA’s Michigan Islamic Academy. In 1992, he co-founded the Global Relief Foundation, a humanitarian organization which the federal government has accused of having provided material support for terrorism. In December 2001, Mr. Haddad was arrested on immigration charges. Though never accused of threatening or harming anyone, Mr. Haddad was denied bond and held in solitary confinement for months with almost no access to his family or the outside world. The INS commenced removal proceedings against him based on visa violations, and the government attempted to close the INS hearings to the press and public. The ACLU, the Detroit Free Press, Representative John Conyers and others successfully sued to open the hearings. Mr. Haddad was ultimately imprisoned for approximately nineteen months, and deported to Lebanon in July 2003. He was never charged with any crime.
47. Some MCA members founded the Free Rabih Haddad Committee in December 2001. The Free Rabih Haddad Committee supported the Haddad family during Mr. Haddad’s imprisonment, raised money to assist in his defense, organized public demonstrations in support of Mr. Haddad, and organized a letter-writing campaign. The Free Rabih Haddad Committee continues to educate the public about the government’s treatment of Mr. Haddad. The MCA itself also held numerous fundraisers and public rallies to protest Mr. Haddad’s detention.
48. Almost all meetings of the Free Rabih Haddad Committee were held at the MCA. During his detention, Mr. Haddad placed weekly telephone calls to the MCA in order to speak with MCA leaders and members.
49. The MCA, its leadership, and its members have also been associated with Dr. Sami Al-Arian. In October 2002, Dr. Sami Al-Arian spoke at the MCA mosque on the “Eroding Status of Our Civil Liberties.” Dr. Al-Arian is a Kuwaiti-born former professor at the University of South Florida. He was indicted in the Middle District of Florida in February 2003 for allegedly aiding and abetting terrorism in the occupied West Bank. The federal government has introduced evidence in the case that they obtained through wiretaps authorized under another Patriot Act amendment to FISA. Dr. Al-Arian’s daughter, Layla Al-Arian, spoke about her father’s case at MCA’s mosque in March 2003.
50. Other MCA members and leaders have been individually targeted for investigation by the FBI.
51. For example, MCA member Homam Albaroudi was born in Syria and came to the United States in 1987. He received a Masters in Engineering from Missouri State University and a Ph.D. in Engineering from Oregon State University. He is now a United States citizen. He is married to a United States citizen and has three children, all United States citizens. He works as an engineer for a Fortune 100 company.
52. Mr. Albaroudi has been an active member of MCA since 1999. He was a member of the Michigan Islamic Academy’s board of directors for 3 years.
53. Mr. Albaroudi has also been a member of CAIR’s Michigan chapter for approximately three years.
54. In 1993, Mr. Albaroudi co-founded the Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”), a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about Islam. While he was associated with the organization, IANA organized conferences, published religious books, and supplied Qurans to incarcerated Muslims. Mr. Albaroudi served as IANA’s Executive Director from the organization’s founding in 1996 until 1997, when he stepped down from his position and ended his association with IANA because of personal differences with other IANA leaders. The FBI raided IANA’s offices in February 2003, seizing computers and taking photographs of books. The computers contained information about Mr. Albaroudi. FBI agents also questioned IANA associates and ex-employees about Mr. Albaroudi, notwithstanding that his association with IANA ended in 1997.
55. Mr. Albaroudi was also a founder of the Free Rabih Haddad Committee. Mr. Albaroudi convened the initial meeting of the Committee on the premises of the MCA.
56. Mr. Albaroudi has twice been contacted by the FBI. On the first occasion, which was approximately four years ago, Mr. Albaroudi was on an employment-related consulting assignment in Indiana when the FBI came looking for him at his home in Michigan. When the FBI discovered that Mr. Albaroudi was not at home, they left their cards with Mr. Albaroudi’s wife, asking that Mr. Albaroudi contact them when he returned. Mr. Albaroudi did so. The FBI did not pursue efforts to speak with Mr. Albaroudi after he informed them that he did not feel comfortable speaking with them without an attorney present.
57. The FBI contacted Mr. Albaroudi again in or about March 2003. On this occasion, the FBI agents who contacted him said that they had not singled him out but rather were interviewing many people in the area to find out whether anyone had learned of conspiracies against the United States. Mr. Albaroudi explained to the FBI that he would have contacted them of his own accord if he had learned of conspiracies against the United States. The FBI then asked Mr. Albaroudi about another co-founder of IANA, who had recently been arrested for an overdraft check and then detained on immigration charges. The FBI did not pursue efforts to speak with Mr. Albaroudi after he informed them that he did not feel comfortable speaking with them without an attorney present.
DXer said
The 2001 990 for CAIR-Michigan, Inc. lists the IANA co-founder Dr. Albaroudi as the only member from Ann Arbor.
We know the FBI was asking Dr. Albaroudi about IANA head, Bassem Khafagi, Al-Timimi’s good friend.
And we know from the filings by defense counsel in United States v. Al-Timimi that before 9/11 the authorities were asking Bassem Khafagi about Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden.
Did the FBI also ask Dr. Albaroudi about Ali Al-Timimi?
Did the FBI also ask about the former Zawahiri associate funded by DARPA, Tarek Hamouda, who worked alongside Bruce Ivins with virulent Ames?
DXer said
Dr. Albaroudi, along with a number of other requestors represented by the ACLU, sought under FOIA:
Click to access FOIA12-2-04Final2.pdf
“3. Any records relating or referring to how, why or when any of the Requestors or
any of their employees, members, officers or directors or their activities was
selected to be a subject of monitoring, surveillance, observation, questioning,
interrogation, investigation, infiltration, and/or collection of information;
4. Any records relating or referring to how monitoring, surveillance, observation,
questioning, interrogation, investigation or infiltration of, and/or collection of
information about, any of the Requestors or any of their employees, members,
officers or directors or their activities was or will be conducted;
5. Any records relating or referring to the names of any other federal, state, or local
government agencies participating in any monitoring, surveillance, observation,
questioning, interrogation, investigation or infiltration of, and/or collection of
information about, any of the Requestors or any of their employees, members,
officers or directors or their activities;
6. Any records relating or referring to the specific role of the National Joint
Terrorism Task Force or any local Joint Terrorism Task Force or any other Joint
Terrorism Task Force or Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, the Office of
Law Enforcement Coordination, The National Intel Share (NIS) Project, or any
formal or informal group, gathering or coalition involving one or more
government employees, representative or agents or any member, representative or
agent of or for any of same in any monitoring, surveillance, observation,
questioning, interrogation, investigation or infiltration of, and/or collection of
information about, any of the Requestors or any of their employees, members,
officers or directors or their activities;
etc.”
Dr. Albaroudi and I share the same interest and have submitted FOIA on this question.
Does the answer relates to the fact that Al-Timimi, the lead IANA speaker, was (to borrow his counsel’s phrase) an “anthrax weapons suspect”?
What was produced in connection with the FOIA request?
DXer said
By the way, putting aside the legality of such provisions – and I admire the ACLU’s work — the reason to keep a very tight lid on the reason for the investigative interest is to get the drop on the targets through electronic surveillance.
DXer said
Let’s consider the indictment pending at the time alleging Sami Al-Hussayen with conspiracy to provide material support that was filed on the day that Ali Al-Timimi’s residence was searched. (Al-Hussayen was acquitted). It makes various allegations against IANA the Ann Arbor charity headed by Bassem Khafagi for which Ali Al-Timimi was the lead speaker and the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad was the lead writer. Homam Albaroudi has explained that although he had co-founded IANA, he had parted ways with IANA.
Given the FBI’s investigative interest in IANA, and given the fact that Ali Al-Timimi was its lead suspect and the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad was its lead writer, the reason for its investigative interest was not as mysterious as the ACLU may have thought.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
vs.
SAMI OMAR ALHUSSAYEN,
Defendant.
Introduction
1. From on or about September 13, 1994, to on or about February 26, 2003, the defendant,
SAMI OMAR AL-HUSSAYEN, provided and conspired with others to provide material support and
organization. Specifically, at various times, AL-HUSSAYEN unlawfully provided to terrorists and
terrorist organizations, directly and indirectly, expert advice and assistance, communications equipment,
currency, monetary instruments, financial services and personnel by, among other things, creating and
maintaining internet websites and other internet media designed to recruit mujahideen and raise funds for
violent jihad in Israel, Chechnya and other places.
Background
***
4. At all times pertinent to this Second Superseding Indictment:
a. The Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”) purported to be a non-profit
charity organized pursuant to the laws of the United States. Between on or about January 1, 1999, and on
or about February 26, 2003, the IANA maintained offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among other things,
the IANA provided a number of websites and other internet-related outlets for disseminating information
regarding Islam, as well as for soliciting and receiving donations of monies from within and outside the
United States. As detailed below, IANA-sponsored websites included a variety of materials intended to
recruit mujahideen and raise funds for violent jihad. The IANA also hosted regular conferences in the
United States, with participation by individuals affiliated with other purported charitable organizations in
the United States.
***
5. At various times between on or about November 16, 1999, and on or about February 26,
2003, AL-HUSSAYEN was an employee, official and registered agent of the IANA. As such, he
engaged in significant decision-making and business transactions related to the IANA’s business,
particularly with respect to the creation, maintenance and content of websites and other internet media.
AL-HUSSAYEN also was involved in planning at least one IANA conference and attended and
participated in others.
6. While AL-HUSSAYEN was a student in the United States, he received a stipend for
living expenses from a foreign source. During that same time, AL-HUSSAYEN, at various times,
maintained at least six United States bank accounts in Indiana, Texas, Idaho and Michigan. From at least
January 23, 1997, until February 26, 2003, AL-HUSSAYEN received into and disbursed out of these
accounts hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess of the stipend he received during the same period of
time.
7. Beginning on or about November 16, 1999, AL-HUSSAYEN disbursed funds to and on
behalf of the IANA and its officers (including its president) to pay various operating expenses, including
employee salaries and foreign and domestic IANA-related travel expenses for himself and others.
8. Between on or about November 16, 1999, and on or about February 26, 2003, ALHUSSAYEN
frequently communicated with the president of the IANA via telephone, e-mail and faceto-
face meetings. During that same time, AL-HUSSAYEN disbursed money directly to the president of
the IANA via wire transfers and personal checks and maintained a checking account in Michigan in his
name alone, but with the president’s home address.
The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation
***
The Websites: General Recruitment
And Fundraising For Violent Jihad
12. From at least on or about October 2, 1998, to on or about February 26, 2003, ALHUSSAYEN
provided extensive computer and internet-related services, advice, assistance and support
to organizations and individuals, including the IANA, Dar Al-Asr and two prominent Saudi clerics. This
included, but was not limited to AL-HUSSAYEN’s creation, registration, management, administration
and maintenance of websites, many of which contained materials designed and intended to recruit
mujahideen and raise funds for violent jihad. Additionally, AL-HUSSAYEN and others, known and
unknown to the Grand Jury, published or broadcasted a wide variety of speeches, lectures and articles
justifying and glorifying violent jihad, as well as graphic videos depicting mujahideen and other subjects
relating to violent jihad, with the intent to inspire viewers to engage in and provide financial support for
violent jihad.
13. More specifically, at various times pertinent to this Second Superseding Indictment, ALHUSSAYEN
and others, known and unknown to the grand jury, assisted the IANA in creating, operating
and maintaining websites designed and intended to recruit mujahideen and raise funds for violent jihad.
This included, but was not limited to, the following websites, one or more of which contained explicit
calls for violence against non-Muslims and urged visitors to participate in or make financial contributions
to support violent jihad:
a. http://www.al-multaqa.com, a website that included the online publication of “Al-
Multaqa,” an Arabic language magazine of which AL-HUSSAYEN was a member of the Board of
Editors, which was created on April 5, 1999, and registered to “Al-Multaqa” at a Moscow, Idaho address
used by AL-HUSSAYEN. At times pertinent to this Second Superseding Indictment, this website
published the following articles which also were found on AL-HUSSAYEN’s home computer: “The
World’s Bravest People” (extolling the Chechen mujahideen (warriors) and asking Allah to destroy the
Russian army and make their wives into widows), “Jihad in the Qur’an and the Sunnah”, “The True
Meaning of Shaheed” (stating that to die as a shaheed (martyr) is the ultimate honor), “The Objectives
and Aims of Jihad”; and “The Religious and Moral Doctrine on Jihad;”
b. http://www.islamway.com, a website created on August 18, 1998 and registered to the
IANA. AL-HUSSAYEN was the director, administrator and advisor to other webmasters of this
website, in creating, maintaining and controlling the site’s format and content;
c. http://www.alasr.ws, an internet magazine created on September 11, 2000, with ALHUSSAYEN
as the sole registrant, editor of the magazine and administrator of the website, and on
which AL-HUSSAYEN and others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, published several fatwas
justifying and encouraging violent jihad, including suicide attacks, on or about May 15, 2001;
d. http://www.iananet.org, a website created on August 1, 1995, registered to the IANA,
and subsequently designed and maintained by Dar Al-Asr;
e. http://www.almanar.net, a website created on October 2, 1998, and registered to Al-
Manar Al-Jadeed Magazine, with AL-HUSSAYEN as the administrative contact person;
f. http://www.ianaradionet.com, an Internet radio station, created on May 25, 1999 and
registered to the IANA, with AL-HUSSAYEN as the head of its supervisory committee and a member of
its technical committee;
***
15. At various times pertinent to this Second Superseding Indictment, AL-HUSSAYEN also
provided internet-related services to, for and on behalf of two prominent Saudi clerics including the
publication of fatwas justifying violent jihad.
20. This particular internet e-mail group was intended to permit members to post inquiries
and information relating to violent jihad. As such, it provided a communication platform for individuals
who wished to engage in and recruit mujahideen for violent jihad, as well as to raise funds to support
violent jihad. Consistent with this theme, the invitation to join the internet e-mail group included a “Cry
and Call” to Muslims exhorting them to “fight the idolater with your money, your selves, your tongues
and your prayers.” The first posting on the internet e-mail group, on February 2, 2000, was an identical
“Cry and Call” posted by AL-HUSSAYEN himself, one of numerous postings he made to the group.
21. Ultimately , this internet e-mail group grew to more than 2400 members. Among the
postings to the group were the following:
***
e. A February 25, 2003, posting that contained an “urgent appeal” to Muslims
serving in the American military. The posting called upon such individuals to identify and provide
information about potential targets for attacks, particularly in the Middle East. The long list of requested
targets included American military bases, logistical support (including drinking water) for such bases,
residences of civilian workers supporting bases, storage facilities for weaponry and ammunition,
facilities of American oil companies, and routes followed by oil tankers. The posting also exhorted
others to attack a specifically identified high-ranking American military official.
Defendant’s Efforts And Intent To Conceal The
Provision Of Material Support And Resources
22. On or about January 19, 2003, AL-HUSSAYEN and a co-conspirator whose identity
presently is unknown to the Grand Jury discussed a plan to conceal from the authorities their
participation in the broadcast of a lecture by one of the clerics described above, during which the cleric
urged listeners to participate in violent jihad in Israel. In substance, AL-HUSSAYEN and the coconspirator
agreed that if they were questioned by the authorities about their activities, they would deny
that they knew the nature of the materials they were broadcasting. Additionally, the two talked about
ways they could structure the broadcast to permit them to make that denial.