* While US government focuses on Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the media continues to overlook Aulaqi’s connection to fellow Falls Church imam, “anthrax weapons suspect” Ali Al-Timimi
Posted by DXer on May 25, 2010
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The FBI’s case against Dr. Ivins is clearly bogus: no evidence, no witnesses, an impossible timeline. The real question is why the FBI persists in sticking to such a pathetic story. What are they hiding? I offer one “fictional” scenario in my novel CASE CLOSED, 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
Editorial
What we don’t know about the killing of Anwar Awlaki
The government must be forthcoming not only about the legal rationale for this extraordinary act of violence but also about the factual evidence.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-awlaki-memo-20140422,0,3765478.story#ixzz2zyDsFdVo
Executing an American without trial — even one who has allied himself with terrorists — can be justified only if he poses a truly imminent threat to Americans and can’t be safely captured. But by refusing to fully explain its rationale, and asserting the “state secrets privilege” in seeking to block a lawsuit by Awlaki’s family, the administration made it look as if it had something to hide.
The government must be forthcoming not only about the legal rationale for this extraordinary act of violence but also about the factual evidence. That is a standard the administration has failed to meet in the Awlaki case.
DXer said
Even if FoxNews has to take a small step back in light of its (IMO mistaken) report yesterday about its interpretation of the documents produced under FOIA, it seems only a matter of time that it takes a giant two leaps forward.
DXer said
Wolf Requests Clarification On FBI’s Treatment Of Aulaqi
Wednesday August 15, 2012
Contact: Jill Shatzen
(202) 225-5136
WOLF REQUESTS CLARIFICATION ON FBI’S TREATMENT OF AULAQI
Believes Witness at Hearing on Fort Hood Shootings Made Misleading or Incorrect Statements
Washington, D.C. (August 15, 2012) – Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, today asked the bureau’s director to clarify a number of statements made by a senior FBI official at a recent hearing on the FBI’s investigation of the Fort Hood shootings.
Wolf requested clarification on six statements made by Mark Giuliano, FBI executive assistant director for national security, at an August 1 hearing before the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations subcommittee. The hearing was on the Webster Commission report on the FBI’s investigation of the 2009 shooting rampage that left 13 people dead.
In a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Wolf wrote that he is concerned Giuliano made comments that were “misleading or incorrect with regard to the nature of findings in the Webster Commission report and the FBI’s understanding of Anwar Aulaqi at various points over the last decade.”
Wolf asked Mueller to provide the subcommittee with the FBI’s official position on six questionable statements made by Giuliano, including his assertion that “political correctness” made no impact in its decision not to investigate Hasan. Wolf also requested clarification on Giuliano’s statements on Aulaqi’s relationship with Hasan as well as the 9/11 hijackers, his 2002 return to the U.S., and his profession that Aulaqi had never served as a confidential informant for the FBI.
In addition, Wolf requested clarification on the FBI’s perception of the “full nature of the Aulaqi threat,” saying that Giuliano’s refusal to comment and assertion that Aulaqi was simply a “propagandist” who “had somewhat of a moderate tone” was “fundamentally false.” Wolf goes on to outline abundant evidence that suggests he “had a very long record of radical rhetoric” that was noted in reports and articles by the Treasury Department, the New York Police Department, the Washington Post, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, and even in essays Aulaqi wrote himself.
Wolf said he expects Mueller will provide the committee the “necessary information to clarify some of these misleading, inaccurate or incomplete statements” by September 15.
The full text of the letter is below.
Director Robert S. Mueller III
Federal Bureau of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20535
Dear Director Mueller:
I am raising the concerns detailed in this letter because it is the responsibility of the Congress to conduct oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and this subcommittee, which I chair, has the direct task of funding the bureau with money provided by the citizens of the United States, including the families and loved ones of those killed at Fort Hood in 2009.
I was sorry that you were not available to testify before the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations subcommittee on August 1 for the hearing on the Webster Commission report on the FBI’s investigation of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan. As you know, Maj. Hasan has been charged with the murder of 13 individuals following his terrorist attack on Fort Hood in November 2009; his long overdue trial is reportedly scheduled to begin next week. The release of this long-awaited report provided an opportunity for the Congress to learn about the bureau’s efforts to improve its counterterrorism operations and investigative practices to prevent future attacks.
I am concerned that the bureau’s witness at this recent hearing, Mr. Mark Giuliano, the executive assistant director for national security, made comments to the committee that I believe were misleading or incorrect with regard to the nature of findings in the Webster Commission report and the FBI’s understanding of Anwar Aulaqi at various points over the last decade. I know Mr. Giuliano has had a distinguished career at the FBI and perhaps felt uncomfortable testifying in public.
I have summarized in detail each comment made by Mr. Giuliano that I believe was potentially misleading, uninformed or incomplete. As part of the record, I am asking you to respond to each of these statements and to provide the committee with the bureau’s official position. Specifically, I request your clarification on the following six statements made by Mr. Giuliano during the hearing:
1. Statement on the Webster Commission findings on the role of “political correctness” in the FBI’s decision not to interview Hasan or his colleagues.
2. Statement on Hasan and Aulaqi’s relationship.
3. Statement on FBI’s perception of full nature of the Aulaqi threat.
4. Statement on Aulaqi’s relationship with 9/11 hijackers.
5. Statement on Aulaqi as confidential informant for the FBI.
6. Statement on Aulaqi’s 2002 return to the United States.
I also have enclosed a detailed timeline produced by the New York Police Department summarizing what information is publicly known about the FBI’s interactions with Aulaqi through 2009. I request that the bureau affirm or correct the record for each of the events on the enclosed timeline to provide the Congress with a detailed understanding of the bureau’s interactions and knowledge of Aulaqi’s activities.
1. Statement on Webster Commission findings on “political correctness.”
I asked Mr. Giuliano whether political correctness may have played a role in the decision by the Washington Field Office (WFO) task force agents not to further investigate Hasan after receiving a lead from San Diego Field Office (SD) task force. In response to my question, Mr. Giuliano stated, “the [Webster Commission] report did not find political correctness was in any way, shape, or form responsible for his lack of going forward with the interview [of Hasan or his colleagues].”
Mr. Giuliano’s statement was not accurate. The Webster Commission report explicitly notes on pages 81 and 82 that the SD officers were told by WFO officers that “political sensitivities” were a factor in the WFO’s decision not to investigate Hasan further. Although the Webster Commission report includes no analysis of these findings, I believe they merit a much more thorough review.
I repeatedly asked Mr. Giuiliano to cite the section of the report that found that there was no political correctness “in any way, shape, or form,” but he refused. When I confronted him about misleading the committee, he admitted that I was correct on that point. Later in the hearing reversed again and said that he and I just “disagree” on that point.
Please confirm for the record whether the Webster Commission report conclusively determined, as Mr. Guiliano testified, “the report did not find political correctness was in any way, shape, or form responsible for his lack of going forward with the interview” and provide me with the citation, as I asked him to do during the hearing.
2. Statement on Hasan and Aulaqi’s relationship.
I asked, “Did Aulaqi ever meet with Major Hasan in Virginia?” and Mr. Giuliano definitively responded “No, not that we know.”
This statement is contrary to a number of published reports, including a February 1, 2010, piece in The Weekly Standard that reported, “[Aulaqi] met Hasan when Hasan’s mother died in early 2001, and [Aulaqi] presided over her funeral.”
Please confirm for the record whether or not Maj. Hasan and Aulaqi met while he served as imam for the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. If so, please provide a summary of the FBI’s full understanding of their encounters, including the funeral.
3. Statement on FBI’s perception of full nature of the Aulaqi threat.
I asked Mr. Giuliano if he agreed that violent Islamist extremism was a cause of the Fort Hood terrorist attack. He refused to comment, but said “Clearly, Anwar Aulaqi was an individual who was well known in the community, he was a – a propagandist at that point back in that time.”
In a later response to a question from the subcommittee’s ranking member, Mr. Fattah, Mr. Giulaino stated, “So [Aulaqi] changed and he changed a lot over the years. When he went to prison in Yemen in, you know, ’06, ’07 and as he came out and came back up online in early ’08, [Aulaqi] still had somewhat of a moderate tone but – but began to be more of a propagandist, began to show more radical tendencies, but we could not and the [Intelligence Committee] did not see him as operational or in an operational role at that time.”
Aside from Mr. Giuliano’s troubling failure to acknowledge the obvious about Maj. Hasan’s violent Islamist extremist motivation for the attack, I was troubled by his characterization of the Aulaqi threat in 2009 – including his assessment that Aulaqi “still had somewhat of a moderate tone” as late as 2008. This statement, quite simply, is fundamentally false.
According to a February 27, 2008 Washington Post article by Susan Schmidt titled “Imam from Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda,” a U.S. counterterrorism official speaking on the condition of anonymity 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.” Again, this article was published in early 2008, the same period of time that Mr. Giuliano asserted that Aulaqi “still had somewhat of a moderate tone” and alleged that the U.S. Intelligence Community “did not see [Aulaqi] as operational or in an operational role at that time.”
Additionally, according to the article, Aulaqi had a very long record of radical rhetoric – not the “moderate tone” as Mr. Giuliano alleged. Schmidt noted that just six days after 9/11, Aulaqi wrote on the “IslamOnline” Web site that the FBI “went into the roster of the [hijacked] airplanes and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default,” and months later Aulaqi “posted an essay in Arabic titled ‘Why Muslims Love Death’ on the Islam Today Web site, lauding the fervor of Palestinian suicide bombers.”
Schmidt also reported that “In one speech apparently made in 2006, [Aulaqi] predicted an epic global clash between Muslims and ‘kfur,’ or nonbelievers. ‘America is in a state of war with Allah,’ he said, referring to the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He praised the insurgency in Iraq and ‘martyrdom operations’ in the Palestinian territories. Muslims must choose sides between President Bush and the ‘mujaheddin,’ he said. The solution for the Muslim world, he said, ‘is jihad.’”
If these comments were all made prior to 2008, how can Mr. Giuiliano honestly state that Aulaqi still had a “moderate tone” and was not operational as late as 2008?
Even within the FBI, many believed Aulaqi was a far more serious threat around 2009 than Mr. Guiliano indicated. The Webster Commission report specifically noted that at least certain sections of the bureau perceived the threat posed by Aulaqi around 2009 as more substantial than a “propagandist” or radicalizer. Specifically, the unclassified version of the Webster Commission report notes “SD-Agent and SD-Analyst believed Aulaqi had [ambitions beyond radicalization],” which conflicts with Mr. Giuliano’s description of Aulaqi as merely a “propagandist at that point back in time.”
There is ample evidence that Aulaqi had demonstrated operational roles in terrorism activities far earlier than 2009, despite Mr. Giuliano’s assessment. A detailed examination of Aulaqi’s record – based on publicly available reports – clearly demonstrates Aulaqi’s history of operational actions and associations with al-Qaeda affiliated groups and individuals.
When the Treasury Department “designated” Aulaqi under Executive Order 13224 in July 2010, its press release included a quote from Stuart Levey, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, stating, “[Aulaqi] has involved himself in every aspect of the supply chain of terrorism — fundraising for terrorist groups, recruiting and training operatives, and planning and ordering attacks on innocents.” The release indicates Aulaqi’s operational role starting as early as January 2009 – the exact same timeframe I asked Mr. Giuliano about during the hearing. How did Treasury come to a different understanding of Aulaqi’s role in early 2009 than the bureau?
Additionally, the Treasury Department’s release specifically notes that Aulaqi was “imprisoned in Yemen in 2006 on charges of kidnapping for ransom and being involved in an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. official.” This plot and his subsequent arrest certainly indicate that Aulaqi was far more operational prior to 2009 than Mr. Giuliano indicated.
Aulaqi, himself, wrote of his radicalization in the early 1990s. In his final column for al Qaeda’s Inspire publication, before his death last year, Aulaqi wrote about his radicalization and his early affiliation with al Qaeda-affiliated groups, which was not referenced in the Webster Commission analysis of Aulaqi’s record. Aulaqi wrote that following the Gulf War, “That is when I started taking my religion more seriously and I took the step of traveling to Afghanistan to fight,” in 1993. “I spent a winter there and returned with the intention of finishing up in the U.S. and leaving Afghanistan for good. My plan was to travel back in summer. However, Kabul was opened by the mujahideen and I saw that the war was over and ended up staying in the U.S.”
The federal government’s own records show that Aulaqi was far more closely affiliated with al-Qaeda than the bureau has indicated. A 2009 New York Police Department (NYPD) special analysis report on Aulaqi reported that from 1998 to 1999, Aulaqi served as the vice president for the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, which federal prosecutors have described as “a front organization… used to support al-Qaeda…”
The NYPD report also notes that from 1999 to 2000, the FBI investigated Aulaqi for “fundraising links to Hamas and al-Qaeda” and found that Aulaqi met with “an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman,” the “blind sheik,” who is currently serving a life sentence for terrorist activities associated with the 1993 World Trade Center attack that killed six people. According to Schmidt’s February 2008 article, “Law enforcement sources now say that agent was Ziyad Khaleel, who the government has previously said purchased a satellite phone and batteries for bin Laden in the 1990s. 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.”
The Webster Commission report also explicitly notes that Aulaqi was twice under investigation by the FBI prior to his reemergence in Yemen: once by SDFO in the late 1990s and again – under full investigation by WFO – from 2001 to 2003. These two investigations demonstrate that, as early as 14 years ago, the FBI considered Aulaqi to be a significant concern.
The NYPD report also indicates that in 2002 the federal government added Aulaqi to the Terror Watchlist, which coincidentally is managed by the FBI. Again, this designation should certainly demonstrate that the both bureau and the entire Intelligence Community, in fact, considered Aulaqi to be of serious concern as early as 2002.
It is also worth noting that around 2006, prior to his arrest in Yemen, Aulaqi was invited to give lectures at the Yemini university run by Abdul al-Zindani, “designated” a terrorist in 2004 by the U.S.
This record indicates that Aulaqi has long been viewed by both the FBI and the Intelligence Community as a more significant threat than the mere “propagandist” than Mr. Giuliano stated. Given this public information demonstrating Aulaqi’s long history with al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and multiple bureau investigations, please confirm for the record whether the bureau viewed Aulaqi only as “propagandist” with a “moderate tone” as late as 2008, or in fact regarded him as a more complex and substantial threat than Mr. Giuliano described?
4. Statement on Aulaqi as confidential informant for the FBI:
I asked Mr. Giuliano whether Aulaqi or Hasan had ever served as a confidential informant for the FBI, given that the Webster Commission report noted that the SD officers suspected this based on WFO’s failure to further investigate Hasan. Mr. Giuliano definitively responded, “No, sir.”
However, Aulaqi’s own words could potentially indicate otherwise. In his final column for Inspire, Aulaqi wrote: “I was visited by two men who introduced themselves as officials with the US government (they did not specify which government organization they belonged to) and that they are interested in my cooperation with them. When I asked what cooperation did they expect, they responded by saying that they are interested in having me liaise with them concerning the Muslim community in San Diego.”
Although Mr. Giuliano testified that neither Aulaqi nor Hasan ever served as a confidential informant for the FBI, in light of Aulaqi’s own comments, I would like you to provide for the record whether the FBI or other federal agencies ever approached, cultivated or targeted Aulaqi or Hasan to be potential confidential informants. I believe this additional information would help reconcile Aulaqi’s comments with the bureau’s actions – and perhaps clarify why the FBI was reluctant to take more aggressive investigative actions with regard to Aulaqi.
5. Statement on Aulaqi’s relationship with 9/11 hijackers:
I asked Mr. Giuliano about the FBI’s understanding of Aulaqi’s relationship with the 9/11 hijackers. I wanted to know whether the bureau’s view on Aulaqi’s connection to the 9/11 plot might have influenced its actions in 2009.
In response to my question, Mr. Giuliano stated, “We were never able to obtain a stitch of evidence that shows Aulaqi knew beforehand about 9/11 or supported the 9/11 hijackers.” However, the public record shows that there were certainly a number of signs that show Aulaqi may have been closer to the 9/11 plot than originally believed. Consider the following:
• The 9/11 Commission report noted that, “Some [FBI] agents suspect that [Aulaqi] may have tasked Rababah to help [9/11 hijackers] Hamzi and Hanjour. We share that suspicion, given the remarkable coincidence of [Aulaqi]’s prior relationship with Hamzi.”
• Last year House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King sent you and Secretary Napolitano the enclosed letter detailing other known links between Aulaqi and the 9/11 plot. This information certainly adds to the 9/11 Commission’s suspicions about Aulaqi’s role in a possible domestic support network for the hijackers.
• Former Senator Bob Graham, a past chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, wrote in his 2004 book that, “Some believe that Aulaqi was the first person since the [al Qaeda] summit meeting in Malaysia with whom al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi shared their terrorist intentions and plans.”
• The 2009 NYPD report on Aulaqi also noted that, “Witnesses claim closed door meetings between [Aulaqi and Hamzi and Mihdhar] were common.” It also reports that following 9/11, “German police found a phone number for the Dar al-Hijrah mosque [where Aulaqi served as imam at the time] in the apartment of Ramzi Binalshibh, a 9/11 co-conspirator.”
• In 2010 the New York Times reported, “One day in August 2001, Mr. [Aulaqi] 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. 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.”
Despite these very serious connections to the 9/11 hijackers and suspicious comments, Mr. Giuliano testified, “We were never able to obtain a stitch of evidence that shows Aulaqi knew before hand about 9/11 or supported the 9/11 hijackers.”
Please confirm for the record that Mr. Giuoliano’s statement that the FBI was “never able to obtain a stitch of evidence that shows Aulaqi knew beforehand about 9/11 or supported the 9/11 hijackers” accurately reflects the FBI’s position?
Also, please confirm for the record whether Mr. Guiliano’s characterization correctly represents the FBI’s understanding of Aulaqi’s connection to the 9/11 plot today, especially in light of any information that may have been learned from documents seized during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011?
6. Statement on Aulaqi’s 2002 return to the United States:
As you know, for several years I have been pressing the FBI for a full accounting of why Aulaqi was abruptly released from custody upon his return to the U.S. in October 2002. I have not yet received an unclassified explanation.
Following Aulaqi’s abrupt departure from the U.S. in early 2002, the State Department became aware of Aulaqi’s fraudulent Social Security and passport statements, and the warrant for his arrest was approved. However, Fox News and others have reported that on October 9, 2002, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Colorado abruptly and uncharacteristically submitted a motion to dismiss its complaint and vacate the outstanding arrest warrant against Aulaqi.
On the same day, Aulaqi was reportedly the subject of a classified FBI Electronic Communication (EC) memo. At that same time, Aulaqi was en route back to the U.S. after months living abroad but was detained by U.S. customs agents upon his arrival at Kennedy Airport in New York City.
However, following his detention at Kennedy early on the morning of October 10, 2002, Aulaqi was reportedly ordered to be released by U.S. customs agents after having been detained on an outstanding warrant, according to the Fox News report. This is particularly questionable given the time of these events. The Colorado U.S. Attorney’s motion to dismiss the warrant was not approved until October 11, 2002 — the day after Aulaqi was inexplicably released into the U.S. To date, this action and the timeline of these events have never been adequately explained.
Had Aulaqi been arrested and tried in 2002, there is a chance that his rise as a radicalizer and terrorist operative over the last decade might have been prevented. While there may have been a reasonable argument for allowing him into the U.S. at the time the decision was made in October 2002, the FBI has, thus far, failed to publicly explain its rationale and its role. More troubling, the documents surrounding the release of Aulaqi do not match the bureau’s public statements on this incident.
Given the key role that Aulaqi played in the radicalization of Maj. Hasan, and 13 innocent individuals who died at Ft. Hood as a result of his radicalization, I asked Mr. Guiliano to provide some explanation for this landmark October 2002 incident. While the full summary of our dialogue may be found in the committee record, I want to note several noteworthy comments made by Mr. Giuliano on this topic during the hearing that may or may not contradict the FBI’s official position on this incident.
Mr. Giuliano testified, “I assure you, the bureau, if anything at that point [in October 2002], would have, if we could have incarcerated [Aulaqi], we would have.” He also told the committee, “We knew [Aulaqi] was coming in before [his flight arrived]…
The unclassified version of the Webster Commission report confirmed that around 2001, “WFO opened a full investigation” on Aulaqi, and it remained open until May 2003, after Aulaqi again fled the U.S. for the U.K. and, later, Yemen.
As noted above, NYPD reported that Aulaqi was placed on the federal government’s Terror Watchlist in Summer 2002. Please explain why and how Aulaqi was permitted to board a flight to the U.S. in October 2002 if he was already included on the watchlist?
Additionally, if, as Mr. Giuliano testified, the FBI “knew [Aulaqi] was coming in” before he landed at JFK, what information was communicated to the U.S. attorney’s office that would set off this strange series of events early in the morning of October 10? Please provide for the record the full series of communications between the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office and the customs office?
During the hearing, I raised the question of whether the FBI requested that Aulaqi be allowed into the country, without detention for the outstanding warrant, due to a parallel investigation regarding Aulaqi’s former colleague al Timimi, a radical imam who was recruiting American Muslims to terrorism. Notably, the Timimi case was being led by the same WFO agent who called the U.S. attorney’s office and customs on the morning of October 10. Did WFO want Aulaqi released to assist in its investigation of Timimi?
Public records demonstrate a nexus between these cases. According to Schmidt’s article, after flying to Washington on October 10, Aulaqi visited Timimi. Timimi’s own attorney in a court filing wrote, “Aulaqi attempted to get al Timimi to discuss issues related to the recruitment of young Muslims,” for jihad. “Timimi was sentenced in 2005 to life in prison for inciting young Muslims to go to Afghanistan after 9/11 and to wage war against the United States. Eleven of his followers were convicted of charges including weapons violations and aiding a terrorist organization.”
According to a November 30, 2009 ABC News article titled “How Anwar [Aulaqi] Got Away:” “The decision to cancel [Aulaqi]’s arrest warrant outraged members of a Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego, which had been monitoring the imam. ‘This was a missed opportunity to get this guy under wraps so we could look at him under a microscope,’ said a former agent with the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), who asked not to be named. ‘He couldn’t cause any harm from a prison cell.’”
The timing and rationale for these decisions simply don’t add up. Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the blind sheik, recently wrote, “To begin with, the warrant had not been ‘pulled back’ at the time of [Aulaqi]’s detention at JFK. The prosecutor and the FBI may have made an application for dismissal from the court, but not such application had been granted. The warrant was still in effect. It was not dismissed by a judge until later that day, at the earliest. Of course, had the warrant actually been vacated at the time of [Aulaqi]’s arrival, as the government has been claiming, it would almost certainly have been withdrawn from the Customs database. And if, as the government claims, the FBI told Customs the warrant had been ‘pulled,’ the protocol would have been for Customs to ask for, and the FBI to supply, easily accessible paperwork showing dismissal of the warrant by the court. There was no such paperwork because the warrant had not been dismissed. Customs appears to have released [Aulaqi] based not on a court dismissal but on the FBI’s say-so.”
McCarthy continued: “When [Aulaqi] was detained at JFK airport on October 10, 2002, there was a live warrant for his arrest and every valid reason to press ahead with the case against him. If, down the road, a defense lawyer thought he could make the ‘correct the record’ gambit fly, the prosecutor could have opposed that in court – that’s what prosecutors do. There was no reason to dismiss the case at that point.”
To that point, Mr. Giuliano testified to the committee that the FBI knew Aulaqi would be arriving in the U.S. – and more importantly – told me, “I assure you, the bureau, if anything at that point, would have, if we could have incarcerated Aulaqi, we would have.”
Please confirm for the record whether the FBI did everything in its power to incarcerate Aulaqi on October 10, 2002? Specifically, did the WFO agent or others ask the customs office and/or the U.S. attorney’s office to use the outstanding warrant to detain Aulaqi further, as Mr. Giuliano asserted that the FBI would have wanted? Or did the FBI ask the other agencies involved to stand down and withdraw the warrant to allow Aulaqi in the country for the purpose of further investigation regarding Timimi or other suspects?
I am asking you to provide the committee with a detailed unclassified accounting of the FBI’s actions in October 2002 with regard to Aulaqi. Given that I have been asking for this information since 2010, I believe it is long overdue. I also request that this information be provided to my colleague, Rep. Fattah, as well as House Homeland Security chairman Rep. Peter King, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers and ranking member, Dutch Ruppersberger, Senate Commerce-Justice Science Appropriations subcommittee chairman Sen. Barbara Mikulski and ranking member Sen. Kat Bailey Hutchison, Senate Homeland Security chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman and ranking member Sen. Susan Collins, and Senate Intelligence chairman Sen. Diane Feinstein and ranking member Saxby Chambliss.
Finally, I remain concerned that the Justice Department has never fully explained why it failed to use its authorities under the Patriot Act and other anti-terror statutes to investigate and prosecute Hasan, especially given his communications with Aulaqi, who is the ultimate terrorist given his connections to the Christmas Day attempted bombing and other plots. This connection is noteworthy because the president authorized the drone strike that targeted and killed Aulaqi last year. Yet, these important anti-terror investigative tools were provided to the FBI and Justice Department for cases exactly like the Fort Hood attack, but a decision was made in the department not to exercise these authorities. Can you please explain to the committee why this decision was made, and whether the department sacrificed any opportunities to gather additional evidence in choosing not to use these tools?
I hope you can understand why I was disappointed in a number of the statements made to the subcommittee during this hearing. That is why I wanted to give you the opportunity to correct the record. I expect that you will provide the committee, by September 15, with the necessary information to clarify some of these misleading, inaccurate or incomplete statements. I look forward to your response.
I sincerely appreciate your efforts – and those of the hard-working agents, analysts and staff members of the FBI – to keep the country safe.
Best wishes.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Wolf
Member of Congress
DXer said
Lawmaker accuses FBI official of faulty testimony on how bureau handled al-Awlaki
By Catherine Herridge
Published August 16, 2012
FoxNews.com
“I would like you to provide for the record whether the FBI or other federal agencies ever approached, cultivated or targeted Aulaqi or Hasan (the alleged Fort Hood shooter) to be potential confidential informants. I believe this additional information would help reconcile Aulaqi’s comments with the bureau’s actions – and perhaps clarify why the FBI was reluctant to take more aggressive investigative actions with regard to Aulaqi.”
In an incident first reported by Fox News as part of its ongoing investigation of the cleric, al-Awlaki was detained by customs agents at New York City’s JFK airport because there was an active warrant for his arrest on passport fraud.
At the time, al-Awlaki was the subject of a full investigation by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and he had been interviewed at least three times in the first week after 9/11 because of his known contact with two of the hijackers. He was killed in September 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike.
On the morning of Oct. 10, 2002, FBI agent Wade Ammerman told customs agents to release al-Awlaki, even though court records show the arrest warrant was still active.
On a bipartisan basis, the committee rejected Giuliano’s explanations as not believable, because after the cleric was released from federal custody at JFK on the say-so of Agent Ammerman, the cleric then turned up in Ammerman’s investigation in Virginia of Ali al-Timimi, who was later convicted of inciting terrorism. While Timimi’s case is on appeal, court records show he thought al-Awlaki was wired.
Wolf suggested the FBI agent wanted the cleric in the U.S. to facilitate his case.
“While there may have been a reasonable argument for allowing him (the cleric) into the U.S. at the time the decision was made in October 2002, the FBI has, thus far, failed to publicly explain its rationale and its role,” Wolf writes in his letter. “More troubling, the documents surrounding the release of Aulaqi do not match the bureau’s public statements on this incident….
“During the hearing, I raised the question of whether the FBI requested that Aulaqi be allowed into the country, without detention for the outstanding warrant, due to a parallel investigation regarding Aulaqi’s former colleague al Timimi, a radical imam who was recruiting American Muslims to terrorism. Notably, the Timimi case was being led by the same WFO (Washington Field Office) agent who called the U.S. attorney’s office and customs on the morning of October 10. Did WFO (the FBI Washington Field Office) want Aulaqi released to assist in its investigation of Timimi?”
***
The letter also questions the FBI’s view of al-Awlaki in 2008 and 2009 as a propagandist who had yet to cross the threshold to violence. There is now strong circumstantial evidence, as first reported by Fox News, that the cleric’s contacts with the hijackers were not a series of coincidences but rather evidence of a purposeful relationship.
As one example, the cleric knew a Syrian, Daoud Chehazeh, who facilitated the hijackers in Virginia. Fox News has shown that a series of bureaucratic screw-ups has allowed the Syrian to continue living in New Jersey, where he is fighting deportation.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/16/lawmaker-accuses-fbi-official-faulty-testimony-on-how-bureau-handled-al-awlaki/#ixzz23nTdCAZe
Comment:
As Catherine Herridge inches ever closer to the truth, she needs to be flagged as a must-read. She definitely is a strong candidate for a Pulitzer.
I hope at the end of the day the same facts establish FBI Agent Wade Ammerman as a thwarted hero. Wade Ammerman was pursuing the Al-TImimi as a “anthrax weapons suspect” — according to his defense counsel Turley (in briefing). He was doing important work.
Hardball Tactics In An Era Of Threats – Global Politician
http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=3278
“The Washington Post, in an article “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats,” dated … ‘In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local …Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips.”
But he was hamstrung because the head of the criminal division in DC, the fellow calling the shots in Amerithrax, was the lead prosecutor — whose daughter would come to represent Ali Al-Timimi pro bono. He was the one who derailed the Amerithrax investigation with the hyped Hatfill stories. (He pled the Fifth and was represented at deposition by Plato Cacheris). His sister-in-law initially denied payments from a Saudi foundation. In 1982, she told the Washington Post that to be born Palestinian is necessarily to be political. She told the Wash Po that she attended all the rallies. She and her husband Richard (the prosecutor’s brother) publicly denied that Bin Laden was responsible for 911 in 2002. That must have been interesting dinner conversation at Thanksgiving.
Another fellow calling the shots was Ali Al-Timimi’s boss at Transportation, Andrew Card — the White House Chief of Statff to whom the FBI Director reported on the investigation on almost a daily basis. Ali had received a letter of commendation from the White House for classified work for the Navy.
To his credit, FBI Director Mueller threatened to resign if the White House warrantless wiretapping of Ali Al-Timimi and his stateside network continued. The wiretapping, for example, included Aafia’s sister Fowzia at Johns-Hopkins.
FBI Director Freeh had resigned after the Hanssen fiasco — but the intelligence failure reflected by Amerithrax is even bigger than the debacle involving Hanssen, the senior FBI official found to have been working for years for Soviets.
Reporting on the issue gets increasingly difficult if Awlaki was not the informant at the meeting with Al-TImimi — and the meeting was not merely wiretapped — and instead the informant was a third person at the meeting.
As for whether Ali Al-TImimi had been approached to act as an informant, the answer is yes — absolutely. He met with agents 8 times. He explained upon indictment that like Qutb he had refused to “point the finger.”
(Qutb, more than Zawahiri, will turn out to have motivated the anthrax mailer).
DXer said
Ali Al-Timimi’s friend, Randall Todd Ismail Royer, reportedly drove Awlaki around when he visited in October 2002. Was he at the meeting between Awalki and Al-TImimi that Al-TImimi, according to his counsel, thought was wiretapped?
Another friend of Ali, an erudite blogger, in 2009 reported that Mr. Royer has fallen on hard times. Mr. Royer would be a fascinating interview — if interviews of prisoners were allowed. (Media interviews of Terre Haute prisoners, for example, is forbidden). Royer is very well-read and has written long, thoughtful letters to journalists.
Although I don’t have a URL for either his written blog or a video blog, Umar explained:
“The situation is very bad for Ismail and his family so I request that you make duah for him. He had been housed at the GTMO for American-Muslim political prisoners in Terre Haute, IN. At this institution there was a lot of bullying going on and much of this was being instigated by the “intelligence officer” who runs the prison …
Ismail confronted one of the bullies who had been harassing elderly Muslim prisoners and a fight ensued. The guy who started the fight, a buddy of the intelligence officer at Terre Haute, is back on the campus chillin. Ismail, meanwhile, has been shipped off to Greenville, IL while he waits to be shipped to the most high security prison in America Florence ADX.
When I heard this news I was floored. Can anyone in their right mind tell me that a man who has never committed a violent crime and has never been a harm to anyone deserves to be in a prison reserved for the most dangerous prisoners in America?”
Expert J.M. Berger author of “Jihad Joe” describes Mr. Royer as an idealist.”
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LomKwVXd-o8C&q=Ismail+Royer#v=snippet&q=Ismail%20Royer&f=false
see also
Randall “Ismail” Royer’s letters from prison
http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/news-points/randall-“ismail”-royers-letters-prison
Ismail was blogging at the time of Awlaki’s visit in October 2002.
http://ismailroyer.blogspot.com/
By his testimony against Ali Al-Timimi in 2004, he was seeking a reduction of his sentence.
http://singularvoice.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/transcript-and-clarification/
Here is the erudite Salafist blogger Umar Lee on his friend Ismail
Here is blogger Umar Lee on Ali Al-TImimi.
Umar himself was asked to cooperate with authorities when they kicked down his door in St. Louis years ago — in early Spring 2003 as I recall. (I believe that would be standard practice in interviewing most anyone). But he explained he didn’t know anything. He just looked at them in disbelief.
A very engaging, likable and articulate fellow, Umar is very knowledgeable about the Salafi scene in DC in 2000 and 2001 and so would be a fascinating interview.
Umar Lee Explains The Why and How of The Rise and Fall of the Salafi Movement
He knows all about Anwar and Ali’s relationship.
The early claim by Al-Timimi’s original defense lawyer that Ali did know his former fellow Falls Church imam — with whom he had just spoken alongside in Toronto in July 2001 and in England in August 2001 — is mistaken.
I’ve never known a supporter of the salafi-jihadis to lie to me. They instead will just choose not to answer a question.
In dialogue, Umar Lee will return respect with respect. He blogs precisely to get his insights out for discussion. If you want to inform discussion, hearing from DOJ spokesmen perhaps is not the way to go about it.
Answers are as near as a cab ride away.
Dr. Ayman Zawahiri’s anthrax program was highly compartmentalized. A lot of idealists were merely capsized in Dr. Ayman’s wake.
It’s time for the truth-tellers to come forward.
DXer said
The report mentions a Mr. Chehazah.
In a May 2012 decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals:
“Chehazah settled in Northern Virginia and bagan attending the Dar al Hijra mosque in Falls Church. Through that affiliation, he became acquainted with two Saudi men named Hanji Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who told him that they were in the United States studying to become pilots. On at least one occasion, Hanjour and al-Hazmi visited Chehazeh in his apartment.”
http://ebookbrowse.com/daoud-chehazeh-v-atty-gen-usa-pdf-d319909128
al-Hazmi met with Hambali at the condo of the anthrax lab director in Kuala Lumpur.
Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is seeking information from the FBI about whether Al-Awlaki may have aided the 9/11 hijackers before the attacks.
King asserts that, in 2001, Daoud Chehazeh, a Syrian living in the U.S. and a fake-document peddler, directed a middleman, Palestinian Eyad al-Rababah, to Al-Awlaki’s mosque in Virginia for “work.”
Chehazeh told Al-Rababah that two would-be hijackers were “special police” and “important” men.
Once there, Al-Awlaki connected hijackers Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hamzi with al-Rababah, King contends.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-08-02/news/33005415_1_anwar-al-awlaki-mexico-born-square-bomber-faisal-shahzad
Who does Mr. Chehazah think is responsible for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings?
DXer said
A great source on why Awlaki was released in October 2002 is the filing in US v. Al-Timimi that has defense counsel explaining that Alwaki was on his way to meet with Al-Timimi to coordinate in recruiting young men to jihad. I need to find the uploaded page. The FBI wanted the meeting to happen. There are a lot of judgment calls and I’m not sure that it is fair to the FBI to view such judgment calls harshly ;
they are doing their best faced with difficult challenges. The focus instead should be on understanding the things that happened a decade ago. The US Attorney out in Colorado issued a plainly worded explanation of why the arrest warrant was dropped; thus there already is transparency at least in regard to the reasoning of the prosecutor.
Possible sources include FBI Agent Wade Ammerman, defense counsel and prominent professor Turley, and Al-Timimi’s gracious wife Ziyana. I believe press are banned from interviewing the prisoners at Terre Haute but if that were not true, Rafil Dhafir could also describe the July and August 2001 conferences.
While I have uploaded the sourcing for Awlaki being in England with Al-Timimi in August 2001 (thanks to the helpful research of Paul Iorio) I am still trying to re-find the sourcing for my claim that Awlaki was with Ali in Toronto in July 2001. I am confident of it but likely will need to use the Wayback Machine to refind it.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/awlaki_aw_luck_rzqFB2v535d0wJ2PbqHe0N
Awlaki aw‘luck’y
By CARL CAMPANILE
August 3, 2012
The FBI had Anwar al-Awlaki, the late New Mexico-born terrorist and Muslim cleric, in custody in October 2002 — a year after 9/11 — but released him, an official admitted yesterday at a hearing of a congressional committee that oversees the bureau.
Mark Giuliano, FBI assistant director for national security, testified the bureau knew al-Awlaki was returning to the United States before he was detained at JFK Airport on a warrant, Fox News reported.
Al-Awlaki had been in contact with three of the 9/11 hijackers and was later linked to 26 other terrorism cases, including the Fort Hood massacre. He was killed last September in Yemen in a US drone strike
Why the FBI agreed to release al-Awlaki remains a mystery, but ex-agents speculated that the bureau let him into the country in hope of keeping tracks on him or flipping him to be an informant.
DXer said
Fort Hood report faults FBI for missteps in Hasan review, cites political correctness
Published July 19, 2012
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/19/fort-hood-report-recommends-many-changes-for-fbi-no-disciplinary-action/#ixzz216srMtn7
DXer said
Exclusive: Outside review of massacre at Fort Hood to be filed soon, calling for change at FBI
By Catherine Herridge
Published July 05, 2012
FoxNews.com
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/05/exclusive-independent-fort-hood-calls-for-change-at-fbi/#ixzz1zps10U29The final independent report on the 2009 Fort Hood massacre will include 18 formal recommendations for change at the FBI, Fox News has learned.
In a July 3 letter to Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees FBI funding, Judge William Webster, who led the independent review, said it would be on FBI Director Robert Mueller’s desk no later than July 13.
“The Final Report will exceed 150 single-spaced pages in length and include eighteen (18) formal recommendations for corrective and enhancing measures on matters ranging from FBI policies and operations to information systems infrastructure, review protocols and training.”
Mueller tasked the now 88-year-old Webster, a former director of the FBI and CIA, with the review in December 2009. Characterizing his task as a “complex and lengthy assignment,” Webster wrote that his teams focused on the FBI and its more than a hundred Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and how they “handled and acted on counterterrorism intelligence before and after the shootings … and the FBI’s remedial measures in the aftermath of Fort Hood.”
A five-month Fox News investigation, which aired on the ongoing series “Fox Files,” showed that the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki used more than 60 email accounts while under FBI surveillance to connect with his followers, including the accused Fort Hood shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan. Hasan faces a military trial on charges of murdering 13 and wounding more than 32 when he opened fire on the Texas base Nov. 5, 2009.
The information about Hasan’s contact with al-Awlaki, who was killed Sept. 30, 2011, in a CIA-led operation in Yemen, was never shared by the JTTF in Washington, D.C., with army investigators.
In summer 2009, the FBI’s JTTF decided not to interview Hasan’s Army supervisors because they were concerned about hurting his career. While Hasan’s performance reviews were positive, Fox News confirmed that Hasan openly saw suicide bombings as justified and cited the writings of Usama bin Laden on at least three occasions.
If there was a single point of failure, Hasan’s email contact with a known terrorist was never connected to his radical statements as an Army officer and psychiatrist. Hasan’s statements so alarmed his fellow students at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., that some fled the classroom.
Coming more than a decade after 9/11, Webster’s review of the Fort Hood massacre is expected to be seen as a pivotal, outside assessment of whether the FBI has made the transition from a case-driven law enforcement culture where turf wars raged to an intelligence-driven organization that can more fully utilize analysts and share intelligence with other departments, including the military.
In a June 27 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Wolf formally requested that a copy of the Webster Report, in draft or final form, be made available to Congress by July 15.
“I am deeply concerned that as we approach the third anniversary of the Fort Hood attack, this report has still not been released to the Congress or the American people.”
Wolf strongly suggested in the letter that the independent review, and ultimate release of the report, should not be delayed any longer.
“The independent review of this terrorist attack — which occurred in the first year of the Obama Administration — may not be released until near the end of his term. There is no excuse for such an important review to span nearly a full presidential term of office.”
Wolf said both the Clinton and Bush administration ignored warnings before 9/11.
“I fear that now, as was then, the government is not doing enough to learn from past threats and attacks to prevent and prepare for future threats. People died in the attack on Fort Hood. We have to learn from this tragedy.” …
DXer said
U.S. officials warn of possible retaliation over al-Awlaki killing
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 5:09 PM EST, Sat October 1, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/01/world/meast/yemen-radical-cleric/
DXer said
In the Atliantic today, J.M. Berger writes about Aulaqi’s connection to the hijackers.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/anwar-al-awlakis-links-to-the-september-11-hijackers/244796/
DXer said
By a letter dated May 26, 2011, the Committee on Homeland Security initiated an investigation into al Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terrrorist Anwar al-Awlaki’s possible involvement in the planning and execution of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, including assisting, facilitation, and mentoring 9/11 hijackers Khaled Al-Midhar, Nawaf Al-Hazmi, and Hani Hanjour.
“in 1999, a prior investigation by the San Diego FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) tie al-Awlaki to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. A known al Qaeda procurement agent named Ziyad Khaleel had been in contact with al-Awalki, and Khaleel had previously purchased a satellite phone for Osama bin Laden. In addition, the San Diego JTTF investigation also concluded that in 2000, a person closely connected to The Blind Sheik also conacted al-Awlaki in San Diego.”
The Committee seeks all documents pertaining not only to Awlaki (Document Request #2) but other named individuals, to include those that pertain to Ziyad Khaleel. (Document Request #2)
You’ll see Ziyad Khaleel pictured above. On the one side there is the line connecting to Anwar. On the other side there is the line connecting to Ayman.
And that’s because Ayman maintained a bank account in St. Louis that Ziyad Khaleel used to buy the satellite phone.
DXer said
Scott Shane wrote on this subject in early May 2010 and noted that Ziyad Khaleel, who was an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman. had visited Awlaki.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011818714_awlaki09.html
Role in 9/11 attacks?
One day in August 2001, al-Awlaki knocked at the door of 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.
As 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,’ ” Higgie said.
The next month, when al-Qaida attacked the United States, Higgie remembered the exchange and was shaken, convinced his neighbor had some advance warning of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In fact, the FBI had first taken an interest in al-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 FBI agent later testified was “a front organization to funnel money to terrorists.”
He had been visited by Ziyad Khaleel, an al-Qaida operative, as well as by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, who was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.
DXer said
Anwar Aulaqi, who was coordinating with Ali Al-Timimi, was interviewed by 9/15/2001 by the FBI
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 22, 2010
DXer said
Here is a floor plan of suite at GMU’s Discovery Hall in 2001 with Ali Al-Timimi and leading anthrax scientists
Attorney Jonathan Turley describes his client Al-Timini as an “anthrax weapons suspect” and argues it is critical to understand Aulaqi’s connection in understanding the allegations. Is this the kind of connection it is critical for Homeland Security Committee to investigate as it investigates the connection between Awlaki and the known Al Qaeda operatives?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 27, 2010
Who does former lead Amerithrax prosecutor Daniel Seikaly and his daughter, Ali Al-Timimi’s former defense counsel, think is responsible for the anthrax mailings of Fall 2001?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 22, 2011
In Amerithrax, the leaker of the hyped Hatfill stories was the father of the lawyer who later represented “anthrax weapons suspect” Al-Timimi pro bono
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 3, 2010
DXer said
To revisit some background, Aulaqi ( 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 has explained 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 ones 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.”
Now was that close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, Ziyad Khaleel?
DXer said
EXCLUSIVE: Congress to Probe Suspected Connection Between Anwar al-Awlaki and 9/11
By Catherine Herridge
Published August 15, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/15/exclusive-congress-to-probe-suspected-connection-between-radical-cleric-anwar/
DXer said
“On Another Awlaki Diatribe, and the Insatiable Need to Inflate the Threat”
John Glaser, August 12, 2011
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/12/on-another-awlaki-diatribe-and-the-insatiable-need-to-inflate-the-threat/
I’ve often suggested Hal, a San Francisco attorney who roomed with Anwar in Spring 2001, as having the best info about what Anwar was thinking and saying privately (as distinguished from his statements to the press). When I last spoke to him, he had a list of all the people who travelled with them.
One can be against military intervention and occupation without being naive and uninformed about the true crime facts relating to Awlaki’s activities in 2000 and 2001.
Because in avoiding the next attack or attributing the attacks in 2001, it DOES matter.
Politics has no place in true crime analysis.
DXer said
Here is another excerpt from former Senator Bob Graham’s novel. (He was former head of the Senate Select Commitee on Intelligence) and says key information about a support network based in the United States was redacted from the 911 Commission report.)
“Back in his office, passing the time until it was nine on the West Coast, Tony [former special ops, he is now a State Department analyst] reread the relevant portion of [the late Senator’s] John Billington’s memo.
“San Diego: Of the various places the hijackers lived before 9/11, we know the most about Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhhar, the two who lived from early February of 2000 until the end of that year in the suburb of Lemon Grove. Information on them is central to understanding the full role of the Saudi government and entities in the run-up to 9/11.
Teresa McKenzie, an investigative reporter for the San Diego Union-Tribune, has written extensively and insightfully on the next between the FBI, the hijackers, and the infrastructure of Saudi confederates in San Diego.”
DXer said
Hani and Nawaf on the Straight Path: Connecting the Kuala Lumpur, Falls Church and New Jersey Dots
Nawaf Al-Hazmi was one of the two hijackers who had been at the meeting at anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat’s Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Nawaf Hazmi and a colleague had arrived the previous year in San Diego, where they had been unsuccessful in learning to fly. Upon arriving in San Diego in 2000, he met with Imam Anwar Aulaqi — perhaps even the same day as arriving. The 911 Commission Report said that Nawaf and his fellow hijacker and “developed a close relationship with him.” One pilot at the flight school in Arabic said that Nawaf wanted to learn to jets right away, rather than start with small planes. The pilot man thought Nawaf and his colleague, Khalid al-Mihdar, were either joking or dreaming.They were joined in San Diego by Hani Hanjour, a good friend of Nawaf’s from Saudi Arabia. Hani was the pilot of flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. He was one of the most conservative and religiously observant of the hijackers.
Hani had first come to the United States in 1991. After short stay in the US in Tucson where he studied in English, he returned to Saudi Arabia until 1996, when he worked in Afghanistan for a relief agency. He took flight lessons in Phoenix, Arizona where he did poorly. He eventually earned his commercial pilot training in 1998. Hani had been at al-Qaeda’s al-Faruq camp when Bin Laden or Atef told him “to report to KSM, who then trained Hanjour for a few days in the use of code words.” Hani then met with Aafia Siddiqui’s future husband al-Baluchhi in United Arab Emirates. Al-Balucchi opened an account for Hani who then traveled to San Diego.
Aulaqi in early 2001 moved to Falls Church. Several months later, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who by then had joined them in San Diego in December 2000, also moved to Falls Church, Virginia. On April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi received a ticket for speeding in Oklahoma, apparently while driving cross-country from San Diego to Falls Church, Virginia. 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 Aulaqi’s mosque. They lived at 3355 Row St., Apt. 3 in Falls Church. The hijackers attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque, where Aulaqi was now located. Ali Al-Timimi attended the mosque until he established the nearby center. 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. Various instructors have confirmed that Hani continued to have poor english and flying skills. Nawaf’s english and flying skills also remained poor.
On May 1, 2001, Nawaf reported to police that men tried to take his wallet outside a Fairfax, Virginia residence. Before the county officer left, al-Hazmi signed a “statement of release” indicating he did not want the incident investigated. Hani and Nawaf then moved to Paterson, New Jersey, renting a one-bedroom apartment where they lived with some of the other hijackers. On June 30th, his car was involved in a minor traffic accident on the east-bound George Washington Bridge. Hani was stopped by police on August 1, 2001 for driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone in Arlington, Virginia. On August 22, 2001, Nawaf al Hazmi purchased a Leatherman Wave Multi-tool from a Target department store in Laurel, Maryland.
Hani and Nawaf moved out of the New Jersey apartment on September 1. Hani was photographed a few days later using an ATM with a fellow hijacker in Laurel, Maryland, where all five Flight 77 hijackers had purchased a 1-week membership in a local Gold’s Gym. On September 10, 2001, Hanjour, al-Mihdhar, and al-Hazmi checked into the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia where Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official — who later was appointed to head the mosques at Mecca and Medina — was staying. He was the uncle of Sami al-Hussayen, the webmaster of the Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”).
DXer said
Catherine Herridge in her book out today reports her search for answers as to why the arrest warrant for Anwar Awlaki was rescinded in October 2002 at the same he was stopped at JFK upon entering the country.
She asked Edward McMahon, Jr, if he knew FBI Agent Wade Ammerman who she says was involved in the dropping of the arrest warrant.
“You bet I know him, Catherine, I told you when you started that Awlawki showed up in Ali [Al-Timimi’s] case…
McMahon tells me that Ammerman was the FBI’s number or number two agent in the Al-Timimi case. Ammerman was also the agent who told customs to let the cleric go at JFK.”
Ms. Herridge writes Mr. McMahon “says client had no idea who the cleric was when he showed up in Northern Virginia.”
Mr. McMahon’s understanding is mistaken. The fellow Falls Church, VA imams — both with “rock star” status, as prosecutors are fond of saying — both spoke at July and August 2001 conferences in Canada and then the UK. Those conferences are very important in understanding things leading up to 9/11.
Al-Timimi’s later counsel, Professor Turley, 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.”
In the court filing, Professor Turley describes his client Ali Al-Timimi, who shared a suite with the two leading DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers working with virulent Ames, as an “anthrax weapons suspect.” The researchers used the contractor Southern Research Institute in Frederick, Maryland to do the B3 lab work.
Ali Al-Timimi came to be represented pro bono by the daughter of the head of the Amerithrax prosecution, Daniel Seikaly, who pled the Fifth Amendment in connection with leaking the hyped Hatfill stories about anthrax-smelling bloodhounds.
The NEXT WAVE notes that defense counsel sought audiotapes made during the October 2002 meeting but prosecutors said there was no authority for the request.
Ms. Herridge writes: “By now, we knew there was a connection between Al-Awlaki’s re-entry into the United States and a senior FBI agent.”
Catherine, known as the “Terror Pixie”, asks:
“What was the FBI’s motivation for allowing the cleric in?”
Well, for the answer, let’s turn to previous reporting by the Washington Post on the subject.
The Washington Post explained in Fall 2006:
‘In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local Muslims: Timimi was running ‘an Islamic group known as the Dar al-Arqam’ that had ‘conducted military-style training,’ FBI special agent John Wyman would later write in an affidavit.
Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips. Searching the Internet, they found a speech by Timimi celebrating the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, according to the affidavit. The agents also found that Timimi was in contact with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi whose anti-Western speeches in the early 1990s had helped inspire bin Laden.
The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.”
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Book links Awlaki to 9/11 attacks
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/19/book-links-awalki-911-attacks/
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National Correspondent Catherine Herridge’s first book, “The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda’s American Recruits” will be published by the Crown Publishing Group on June 21. It draws on her reporting for FOX News into al-Awlaki, his new generation of recruits, and it explores why information about the cleric was withheld from government investigators.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/07/radical-muslim-clerics-pentagon-lunch-top-dod-lawyers-executive-director-cair/#ixzz1OgHpPLuP
But is it the Terror Pixie who is missing the important story that should be suggested by the very title of her book?
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National Correspondent Catherine Herridge’s first book “The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda’s American Recruits” will be published by Crown on June 21st. It draws on her reporting for Fox News into al-Awlaki, his new generation of recruits, and it explores why information about the cleric was withheld from government investigators.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/19/exclusive-new-details-emerge-al-qaeda-terror-chiefs-lunch-pentagon/#ixzz1MyoUJw7K
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/19/exclusive-new-details-emerge-al-qaeda-terror-chiefs-lunch-pentagon/
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Whether we agree or disagree with her on particulars, The “terror pixie” Catherine Herridge’s first book “The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda’s American Recruits” is bound to be worth reading as soon as it comes out. She has been the DOJ correspondent for FoxNews.
To take an example, her March 2008 report “FBI Focusing on ‘About Four’ Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks” was fascinating and important. Painstaking work by Anonymous involving magnification of the email that she was holding in her hand then clued us in to further details about the dried aerosol project that the FBI had not disclosed, in which the FBI anthrax expert made a dried aerosol out of Flask 1029 aka “the murder weapon.” According to an item today, In her book she explains why information about Awlaki was withheld from government investigators. I have noted that Ali Al-Timimi was Andrew Card’s former assistant (according to his defense committee’s webpage). So instead of DOD vetting that excluded him from sharing a suite with the DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers, with that on his resume he got clear sailing. His dad was a lawyer at the Iraqi embassy. To my eye, the infiltration of US biodefense that Dr. Ayman Zawahiri accomplished was a redux of the infiltration by EIJ chief of intelligence Ali Mohammed. The USG thought that they were being clever and gaining access to the thinking of the Salafist-Jihadis when actually they were being played.
FBI Focusing on ‘About Four’ Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks
Friday, March 28, 2008
By Catherine Herridge and Ian McCaleb
WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to “about four” suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.
Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.
The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.
The anthrax attacks began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, further alarming a nation already reeling from the deaths of 3,000 Americans. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others were infected by the deadly spores in the fall of 2001.
A leading theory is that the anthrax was stolen from Fort Detrick and then sealed inside the letters. A law enforcement source said the FBI is essentially engaged in a process of elimination.
Much of the early public focus fell on a Fort Detrick scientist named Steven Hatfill, who is suing federal authorities for identifying him as a person of interest. Now the FBI is focusing on other scientists at the facility.
“Fort Detrick is run by the United States Army. It’s the most secure biological warfare research center in the United States,” a bioterrorism expert told FOX News.
Asked to comment on the likelihood that the anthrax originated at the facility, the expert said:
“It’s not suprising, except that it would underscore that there was serious security deficiencies that existed at one time at Fort Detrick — the ability of researchers to smuggle out some type of very sophisticated anthrax weapon and in some quantity. And, nevertheless, it was possible.”
In December 2001, an Army commander tried to dispel the possibility of a connection to Fort Detrick by taking the media on a rare tour of the base. The commander said the Army used only liquid anthrax, not powder, for its experiments.
“I would say that it does not come from our stocks, because we do not use that dry material,” Maj. Gen. John Parker said. The letters that were mailed to the media and Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy all contained powdered anthrax.
But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared … to duplicate the letter material,” the e-mail reads. “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!'”
Asked for comment, an Army spokeswoman referred all calls to the FBI. The FBI would not comment about the pool of suspects, but a spokeswoman said the investigation clearly remains a priority.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342852,00.html#ixzz1MyqiFEXl
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“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 September 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.”
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EXCLUSIVE: New Evidence Suggests Radical Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki Was an Overlooked Key Player in 9/11 Plot
By Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne, Cyd Upson & Gregory Johnson
Published May 20, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/20/new-evidence-suggests-radical-cleric-anwar-al-awlaki-overlooked-key-player-11/#ixzz1N8MvlAfL
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Details of radical imam’s friendly post-9/11 lunch speech at the Pentagon – after the FBI had questioned him like a suspect
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:29 PM on 20th May 2011
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389133/Radical-Imam-Anwar-al-Awlakis-Lunch-Pentagon-After-September-11.html#ixzz1Mu4W4yam
A former high-ranking FBI agent told Fox News that there was tremendous ‘arrogance’ about the vetting process at the Pentagon.
‘They vetted people politically and showed indifference toward security and intelligence advice of others’, the former agent said.
U.S. born radical al-Awlaki is widely believed to be the mastermind behind a number of terror atrocities and the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389133/Radical-Imam-Anwar-al-Awlakis-Lunch-Pentagon-After-September-11.html#ixzz1Mu4NJli
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http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/04/6583895-an-american-to-head-al-qaeda
An American to head al Qaeda?
By Robert Windrem
Ayman al Zawahiri is by no means a shoo-in as al Qaeda’s next leader. He is not liked by many in the organization, and he faces competition from at least two others, one of them an American, a senior U.S. official tells NBC News.
In addition to having a face for radio, and not at all charismatic, he is not nearly as popular as bin Laden internally. He has a reputation as being arrogant,” said the official. “We could see Anwar al-Awlaki move in …
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Congress Questions Handling of Awlaki Case After Fox News Report on Dropped Arrest Warrant
By Catherine Herridge
Published April 06, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/06/congress-questions-handling-awlaki-case-fox-news-report-dropped-arrest-warrant/#ixzz1IpLKajNp
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The DOJ’s press spin about The Vault”
“It reflects a strong commitment to build public trust and confidence through greater public access to FBI records.”
And thanks to new technology developed by the FBI, users can also search for keywords within individual files.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/05/fbi-unveils-vault-including-unseen-11-records/#ixzz1IpK94cOi
Some particulars of the reality in the Amerithrax case:
And yet the FBI hasn’t produced the lab notebook pages from the 5 nights that the FBI speculates Dr. Ivins was growing and/or powderizing anthrax — and the AUSA, through a DOJ spokesman, specifically refuses to do so.
In addressing why the DOJ did not produce the documents relating to the quashing the arrest warrant of Awlaki, Congress should consider the DOJ’s failure, for example, to provide the documents relating to the overseas testing to the NAS for two years.
On that 2002 visit by Awlaki to the States, Sheikh Anwar was meeting with “anthrax weapons suspect” (his defense counsel’s phrase) Ali Al-Timimi.
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Anwar Aulaqi, who was coordinating with Ali Al-Timimi, was interviewed by 9/15/2001 by the FBI
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Attorney Jonathan Turley has described the critical importance of the Sheikh Anwar Aulaqi to understanding the allegations against his client “anthrax weapons suspect” (defense counsel’s phrase) Ali Al-Timini.
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Doesn’t Amerithrax constitute the biggest intelligence failure in the history of United States? When an investigator’s shrug of his shoulders about the who, where, when is accepted as a substitute for substantive proof? When an elaborate theory based on numerous mistaken factual premises and assertions is allowed to stand in the place of forensic evidence? And doesn’t the mistake relate directly to an existential threat that has been made against the United States?
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It will be interesting to see what “terror pixie” Catherine Herridge and Fox News say about Hani and Nawaf on the Straight Path — and what they say in connecting the Kuala Lumpur, Falls Church and New Jersey dots.
Nawaf Al-Hazmi was one of the two hijackers who had been at the meeting at anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat’s Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Nawaf Hazmi and a colleague had arrived the previous year in San Diego, where they had been unsuccessful in learning to fly. Upon arriving in San Diego in 2000, he met with Imam Anwar Aulaqi — perhaps even the same day as arriving. The 911 Commission Report said that Nawaf and his fellow hijacker and “developed a close relationship with him.” One pilot at the flight school in Arabic said that Nawaf wanted to learn to jets right away, rather than start with small planes. The pilot man thought Nawaf and his colleague, Khalid al-Mihdar, were either joking or dreaming.They were joined in San Diego by Hani Hanjour, a good friend of Nawaf’s from Saudi Arabia. Hani was the pilot of flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. He was one of the most conservative and religiously observant of the hijackers.
Hani had first come to the United States in 1991. After short stay in the US in Tucson where he studied in English, he returned to Saudi Arabia until 1996, when he worked in Afghanistan for a relief agency. He took flight lessons in Phoenix, Arizona where he did poorly. He eventually earned his commercial pilot training in 1998. Hani had been at al-Qaeda’s al-Faruq camp when Bin Laden or Atef told him “to report to KSM, who then trained Hanjour for a few days in the use of code words.” Hani then met with Aafia Siddiqui’s future husband al-Baluchhi in United Arab Emirates. Al-Balucchi opened an account for Hani who then traveled to San Diego.
Aulaqi in early 2001 moved to Falls Church. Several months later, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who by then had joined them in San Diego in December 2000, also moved to Falls Church, Virginia. On April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi received a ticket for speeding in Oklahoma, apparently while driving cross-country from San Diego to Falls Church, Virginia. 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 Aulaqi’s mosque. They lived at 3355 Row St., Apt. 3 in Falls Church. The hijackers attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque, where Aulaqi was now located. Ali Al-Timimi attended the mosque until he established the nearby center. 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. Various instructors have confirmed that Hani continued to have poor english and flying skills. Nawaf’s english and flying skills also remained poor.
On May 1, 2001, Nawaf reported to police that men tried to take his wallet outside a Fairfax, Virginia residence. Before the county officer left, al-Hazmi signed a “statement of release” indicating he did not want the incident investigated. Hani and Nawaf then moved to Paterson, New Jersey, renting a one-bedroom apartment where they lived with some of the other hijackers. On June 30th, his car was involved in a minor traffic accident on the east-bound George Washington Bridge. Hani was stopped by police on August 1, 2001 for driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone in Arlington, Virginia. On August 22, 2001, Nawaf al Hazmi purchased a Leatherman Wave Multi-tool from a Target department store in Laurel, Maryland.
Hani and Nawaf moved out of the New Jersey apartment on September 1. Hani was photographed a few days later using an ATM with a fellow hijacker in Laurel, Maryland, where all five Flight 77 hijackers had purchased a 1-week membership in a local Gold’s Gym. On September 10, 2001, Hanjour, al-Mihdhar, and al-Hazmi checked into the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia where Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official — who later was appointed to head the mosques at Mecca and Medina — was staying. He was the uncle of Sami al-Hussayen, the webmaster of the Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”).
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Expert warns of bioterror’s ability to undermine America
by Jeffrey Bigongiari on March 9, 2011
http://www.bioprepwatch.com/news/236579-expert-warns-of-bioterrors-ability-to-undermine-america
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Scott Shane wrote on Awlaki this past week. (March 5, 2011) Scott has a fascinating and extremely important dream job that calls upon him daily to master a mountain of widely diverse material (e.g., Wikileaks).
Radical Cleric Still Speaks on YouTube
A quick search of YouTube today for “Anwar al-Awlaki” finds hundreds of his videos, most of them scriptural commentary or clerical advice, but dozens that include calls for jihad or attacks on the United States.
The story of You Tube and Mr. Awlaki is a revealing case study in the complexity of limiting controversial speech in the age of do-it-yourself media, as the House prepares for hearings next week on the radicalization of American Muslims.
***
In eloquent American English or Arabic with English subtitles, Mr. Awlaki can be seen in videos decrying America’s “war on Islam”; warning Muslims why they should “never, ever trust a kuffar,” or non-Muslim; praising the attempt by his “student” to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner; and patiently explaining why American civilians are legitimate targets for killings. Such videos have been posted in multiple copies and viewed hundreds or thousands of times.
***
In the case of terrorism-related material, objections could fall in the categories “violent or repulsive conduct,” including subcategories for “physical attack” or — in a label added last November after complaints about Mr. Awlaki — “promotes terrorism.” Militant messages could be “hateful or abusive content,” with a subcategory for “promotes hatred or violence.”
Then YouTube reviewers look at the flagged videos with the assistance of sophisticated software. Any video that violates the company’s guidelines is removed, Ms. Grand said.
“We encourage our users to continue to bring this material to our attention,” she said. “We review flagged videos around the clock.”
The system has prevented YouTube from succumbing to the otherwise inevitable flood of pornography, which is directed to reviewers by software that scans uploaded videos for flesh tones.
***
The variety and volume of Mr. Awlaki’s YouTube material makes it more difficult than might be supposed to decide its fate. Should his sermon on what makes a good marriage come down? His account of the final moments of the Prophet Muhammad? His counsel on the proper diet for a good Muslim?
Such material does not violate any YouTube standard. But there is evidence that those inspired by Mr. Awlaki to plot violence usually were first drawn by his engaging lectures, including Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the Fort Hood shootings; the young men who planned to attack Fort Dix, N.J.; and the 21-year-old British student who told the police she stabbed a member of Parliament last May after watching 100 hours of Awlaki videos.
Even Mr. Awlaki’s most incendiary material appears in widely varying contexts on YouTube. A long interview he gave last year justifying violence against Americans, for instance, appears in some videos with the logo of Al Qaeda’s media wing, but in others as excerpted in newscasts by CNN and Al Jazeera.
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http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2011/02/26/next-wave-al-qaeda-coming-within-us
February 26, 2011
Next Wave of Al Qaeda Coming From Within U.S.?
The threat from so-called lone wolf operators was the subject of a recent intelligence assessment obtained by Fox News as part of an on-going investigation into the American born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is said to be an operational planner for Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. The assessment, titled “Evolution of the Terrorist Threat to the United States,” clearly says the threat is more diversified than ever before.
While there is no way to know how many lone wolf operators are inside the U.S., the threat has evolved since 9/11.
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Evidence linking anthrax to Bruce Ivins ‘not as definitive as stated,’ panel says
Researchers say they have no reason to believe federal scientist Bruce Ivins was not involved in mailing letters containing anthrax that killed five people — but they find some cracks in the conclusions the FBI based on the scientific evidence.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2011, 11:21 a.m.
The panel also noted that the FBI had tried to investigate a potential Al Qaeda link to the mailings by attempting to grow anthrax from swabs taken from unspecified overseas sites but was unable to get the samples to grow.
ANTHRAX AND AL QAEDA: THE INFILTRATION OF US BIODEFENSE
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1443811
100+ graphics –
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
DXer said
Ali Mohammed, the head of intelligence for Egyptian Islamic Jihad who had a document on his computer seized by the FBI that outlined principles of cell security that would be followed, trained Dahab, a Cairo medical drop-out, to make deadly letters. Who does Ali think is responsible?
DXer said
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-01/world/uk.terror.testiomony_1_awlaki-qaeda-muslim-cleric?_s=PM:WORLD
‘Terror planning’ by Muslim cleric al-Awlaki described in UK trial
BRITISH AIRWAYS
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February 01, 2011|From Andrew Carey and Paul Cruickshank, CNN
A court in London has heard detailed information about the alleged terrorist activities of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric associated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based off-shoot of the group founded by Osama bin Laden.
The details emerged Tuesday during the opening day of the trial of Rajib Karim, a British citizen of Bangladeshi descent accused of helping prepare terrorist acts.
The court heard that al-Awlaki and Karim had been corresponding, via heavily encrypted software, in late 2009 and early 2010. In one message purported to be from al-Awlaki, the writer made clear where his priorities lay: “Our highest priority is the United States. Anything there, even on a smaller scale compared to what we may do in the United Kingdom, would be our choice.”
Upon learning that Karim worked for British Airways, al-Awlaki asked for what the prosecution suggests was key terror-planning information; as well as offering Karim clear operational guidance:
“I immediately wanted to contact you to tell you that my advice to you is to remain in your current position,” al-Awlaki wrote. “Depending on what your role is and the amount of information you can get your hands on, you might be able to provide us with critical and urgent information and you may be able to play a crucial role.”
According to the prosecution, the cleric continued, “I pray that Allah may grant us a breakthrough through you.”
Al-Awlaki then sought information on Karim’s precise role at British Airways, and the extent of his access to information and the company’s IT infrastructure. He also sought details on “limitations and cracks” in present airport security systems.
A few days later, according to the prosecution, Karim sent al-Awlaki a detailed reply in which he suggested his knowledge of key British Airways hardware locations could be useful. If those locations were targeted, he told al-Awlaki, flights could be disrupted causing British Airways financial loss. He also identified three “brothers” in the UK who could be helpful, one of whom worked in baggage handling at Heathrow and another at airport security. “They respect you a lot,” he told al-Awlaki.
In another communication, on February 12, 2010, al-Awlaki made it clear that Karim should remain in the UK; he told Karim he should train as British Airways cabin crew if possible. Their plans may take time, he said, according to the prosecution.
DXer said
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/british-airways-employee-plot-al-qaeda-leader-prosecution/story?id=12822418
Airline Employee Plotted With Al-Qaeda Leader, Prosecution Says
Prosecutors: Anwar Al-Awlaki Communicated in Encrypted Messages With British Airways Employee
Post a Comment
By LEE FERRAN
Feb. 2, 2011
DXer said
The feature article in the recent INSPIRE issue that mentioned anthrax is Al-Awlaki.
http://m.memri.org/14499/show/ed2c7b7fa081c80974638fa18c23562b&t=20320d97cb30b6845cb6422bedb5dfbe
“The five-page feature article, by Yemeni-American jihadist cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, is titled: “The Ruling on Dispossessing the Disbelievers wealth in Dar al-Harb.” In it, Al-Awlaki encourages jihadists living in the West to assist the financing of jihadist activities through any means possible, including theft, embezzlement, and seizure of property. The U.S. government and U.S. citizens are singled out as prime targets for these acts. Following are main points and excerpts from the article:
In an attempt to deal with the cash shortage that jihadist groups are facing, Al-Awlaki gives religious justification to any actions used by jihadists to obtain money. He rules that Western countries are considered dar al-harb, i.e. the territory of war – meaning that they are countries to which the rules of war apply. Since this is the case, Al-Awlaki says, Muslims living in the West are not bound by any laws or contracts that prohibit them from harming their countries of residence: “It is the consensus of our scholars that the property of the disbelievers in dar al-harb is halal [permissible] for the Muslims and is a legitimate target for the mujahidin,” he states.
According to Al-Awlaki, jihadists living in the West are in a unique situation: they are fighting across enemy lines, in guerilla fashion, and therefore any money or property that they obtain belongs to them and can be disbursed as they see fit. Al-Awlaki states that “all of our scholars agree on the permissibility of taking away the wealth of the disbelievers in dar al-harb whether by means of force or by means of theft or deception. Our scholars differ on how wealth taken by means of theft and deception should be divided…”
Al-Awlaki also urges Muslims in the West to avoid paying taxes: “Every Muslim who lives in dar al-harb should avoid paying any of his wealth to the disbelievers, whether it be in the form of taxes, duties, or fines. If a Muslim is allowed to deceive the disbelievers to appropriate their wealth then he is also allowed to deceive them to avoid paying them his wealth.” Al-Awlaki advises the jihadists in most Western countries to carefully select the institutions and individuals that they steal from, for public relations reasons. However, he considers the U.S. government and all its citizens to be legitimate and desirable targets: “Even though it is allowed to seize the property of individuals in dar al-harb, we suggest that Muslims avoid targeting citizens of countries where the public opinion is supportive of some of the Muslim causes. We therefore suggest that the following should be targeted: Government owned property; Banks; Global corporations; Wealth belonging to disbelievers with known animosity towards Muslims.”
He continues, “In the case of the United States, both the government and private citizens should be targeted. America and Americans are the [leaders of heresy] in this day and age. The American people who vote for war mongering governments are intent on no good. Anyone who inflicts harm on them in any form is doing a favor to the ummah…”
Al-Awlaki concludes by underlining the major role Western jihadists can play in dealing with the jihadi groups’ pressing shortage of funds: “Since jihad around the world is in dire need of financial support, we urge our brothers in the West to take it upon themselves to give this issue a priority in their plans. Rather than the Muslims financing their jihad from their own pockets, they should finance it from the pockets of their enemies…”
DXer said
An article in GMU Gazette, in “CAS Holds Terrorism Briefing on Capitol Hill,” dated October 16, 2001 stated: “On Friday, October 12, the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) hosted a legislative briefing on terrorism, bioterrorism, and extremist movements on Capitol Hill. The briefing provided legislators and their staffs with comprehensive background information on Islam, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, bioterrorism, and information security.
Ken Alibek, affiliate faculty member at George Mason and president of Advanced Biosytems Inc., addressed chemical and biological warfare issues. Alibek served as first deputy chief of defense of the civilian branch of the Soviet Union’s offensive biological weapons program.”
Ali Al-Timimi was knowledgeable about Islam, the Taliban and information security. Indeed, he was actively recruiting for the Taliban and was communicating with Bin Laden’s sheik and the so-called fellow Falls Church “911 imam” Anwar Aulaqi at the time.
In 2000, IANA radio ran an item “CIA to Monitor Foreign Students.” The item as published on the IANA website read: “American anti-terrorism policies are ‘seriously deficient according to the US National Commission on Terrorism, a body created by Congress after the bombing of 2 US embassies in East Africa.'”
In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the need to guard against spies at universities, who for example, may have access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information.
“Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.”
Infiltrator Ali Mohamed was the “Teflon terrorist.” Ali Mohammed, an EIJ member who was associated with the unit that killed Sadat, had an alibi for the Sadat assassination. He was at an officer exchange program studying at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Green Beret and Delta Force officers trained there. After he was forced out of the Egyptian Army for his radical beliefs, he went to work at Egyptair. As a security advisor, where he learned how to hijack airliners. He then joined the CIA and the US Army. He was a supply sergeant at the US Army’s Fort Bragg. He lectured Green Beret and Delta Forces on the middle east. He stole high resolution maps from the map shack and brought them to Zawahirii in Afghanistan. In 1989, Ali Mohamed traveled from Fort Bragg to train men that would later commit WTC 1993. When Ali Mohammed traveled to Brooklyn, he stayed with Islamic Group and Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard Nosair, the man who would assassinate Rabbi Kahane in 1990.
WTC 1993 prosecutor Andrew McCarthy concludes that “in small compass, [Ali Mohammed] is the story of American intelligence and radical islam in the eighties and nineties: the left hand oblivious not only to the right but to its own fingers … while jihadists played the system from within, with impunity, scheming to kill us all.” He emphasizes: “There is no way to sugar coat it: Ali Mohamed is a window on breathtaking government incompetence.” He writes: ”I raised holy hell … that I strongly suspected Mohamed was a terrorist, that the FBI should be investigating him rather than allowing him to infiltrate as a source … Because, you know what they say “IMAGINE THE LIABILITY.”
In 1991, when Bin Laden wanted to move from Afghanistan to Sudan, Ali Mohammed served as his head of security and trained his bodyguards. Along with a former medical student, Khalid Dahab, Ali Mohamed recruited ten Americans for “sleeper cells.” After the 1998 embassy bombings, when FBI agents secretly swarmed his California residence, they found a document “Cocktail” detailing how cell members should operate. Even Al Qaeda central would not know the identity of members and different cells would not know each other’s identity. It was Ali Mohamed who was the source for the December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explaining that the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli, was planning attacks on the US. In November 2001, did the Quantico profilers know of this egregious history of infiltration and harm flowing from treating the Nosair case as a “lone wolf” rather than an international conspiracy? One man’s “lone wolf” experiencing howling loneliness is another man’s Salafist operating under strict principles of cell security and “need-to-know.”
A former FBI agent in the New York office who asked not to be identified, told author Peter Lance: “Understand what this means. You have an Al Qaeda spy who’s now a U.S. citizen, on active duty in the U.S. Army, and he brings along a video paid for by the U.S. government to train Green Beret officers and he’s using it to help train Islamic terrorists so they can turn their guns on us. By now the Afghan war is over.”
Steve Emerson once said of the former US Army Sergeant who was Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence: “Ali Mohamed is one of the most frightening examples of the infiltration of terrorists into the infrastructure of the United States. Like a [character in a] John Le Carre thriller, he played the role of a triple agent and nearly got away with it.” Those officials who sought to minimize the security breach would have to explain away the classified maps of Afghanistan he stole from the map shack, and the classified cables and manuals found in such places as the home of Nosair, the assassin of Rabbi Kehane.
Not even Ali Mohammed, however, could boast the letter of commendation from the White House once given Ali Al-Timimi, previous work for White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, or a high security clearance. Ali Mohammed did not even have a security clearance but was merely a supply sergeant at the base where Special Operations was located. ‘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.”
There was an elephant in the room no one talked about. A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to ATCC facilities, as well as facilities of the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense at George Mason University then run by Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey. The bionformatics grad student once had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy.
Many commentators have long held strong and divergent opinions of what has been published in the media about Amerithrax, what they knew and their political views. But it turns out that they apparently have just been seeing the elephant in the living room from a different angle. Actually, they’ve just been in a position to see the elephant’s rump from outside the living room door. One US law professor, Francis Boyle, who has represented islamists abroad, first publicized the theory that a US biodefense insider was responsible. He has served as legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Separately the theory was adopted by professor Barbara Rosenberg. But Professor Boyle and Rosenberg were not so far from the truth — just incorrect as to motive. The documentary shows that Zawahiri’s plan was to infiltrate the US and UK biodefense establishment, and the evidence shows that is exactly what he did.
In a June 2005 interview in a Swiss (German language) weekly news magazine, Ken Alibek addresses the anthrax mailings:
A. “What if I told you Swiss scientists are paid by Al Qaeda? You could believe it or not. It has become somewhat fashionable to disparage Russian scientists. Americans, Iraqis, or whoever could just as well be involved with Al Qaeda. Why doesn’t anyone speculate about that?”
Q. “But could one of your students build a biological weapon in the garage?”
A. “Let me reply philosophically: Two hundred years ago, it was unthinkable to believe that people would be using mobile telephones, wasn’t it? Everything changes. Our knowledge grows, and technology develops incredibly quickly. … I am not saying that a student is in a position to build a biological weapon all by himself. But the knowledge needed to do it is certainly there.”
No one who responded to my inquiries ever knew Al-Timimi to ever have been involved in any biodefense project. For example, former Russian bioweaponeer Sergei Popov did not know of any such work by Al-Timimi. Anna Popova had only seen him in the hall on a very rare occasion. Dr. Alibek thought of him as a “numbers guy” rather than a hands-on type. Given that the FBI knows what Al-Timimi had for dinner on September 16, 2001 and lunch on September 17, it is very likely that the past years have involved a continued search for the mailer and/or processor. His attorney emphasizes that while they searched for materials related to a planned biological attack when they searched his townhouse in late February 2003, they came up empty.
DOD official Peter Leitner, who also taught at GMU, supervised a 2007 PhD thesis by a graduate student that explores biosecurity issues at GMU. The PhD biodefense thesis on the vulnerability of the program to infiltration explains:
“As a student in the biodefense program, the author is aware that students without background checks are permitted to work on grants, specifically Department of Defense, that has been awarded to NCBD under the Department of Molecular and Microbiology at GMU. Students are also permitted to do research separately from work in the lab for their studies. Work and studies are separate, but related by the lab. Thus, student access, research and activities go unchecked and unmonitored. Students have access to critical information and technology.”
The author explains:
“A principal investigator (PI) may hire a student based on a one on one interview, post doctoral or masters interest, technical abilities, publications, previous work and lab experience, whether student qualifications match the principal interrogators current research, whether there is a space, and if the timing is right. There is no formal screening process or background check that the author is aware of for teaching or research assistantships.”
Other students took a “red cell” approach that have corroborated the findings of the thesis. Proliferation leads to great risk of infiltration.
LSU researcher Martin Hugh-Jones explained: “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. 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. 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.”A 2004 Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services report: “Serious weaknesses compromised the security of select agents at the universities under review. Physical security of select agents at all 11 universities left select agents vulnerable to theft or loss, thus elevating the risk of public exposure.”
Dr. Leitner in a letter to the Fairfax County Police Department wrote:
“Now we see that Sergeant Rasool was the subject of a several-year long investigation – in fact, he was under investigation at the time he lodged his complaints against us — and was recently convicted of a very serious security breach involving misusing FBI databases to assist another person under FBI investigation for Federal terrorism charges.” Fairfax County Police Department Sergeant Rasool sought to stop the training work being done by Dr. Leitner, who taught biosecurity work at George Mason University’s Center for Biodefense.
DXer said
The Washington Post, in an article “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats,” dated September 3, 2006 summarized events relating to George Mason University computational biology graduate student Ali Al-Timimi:
“In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local Muslims: Timimi was running ‘an Islamic group known as the Dar al-Arqam’ that had ‘conducted military-style training,’ FBI special agent John Wyman would later write in an affidavit. Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips. Searching the Internet, they found a speech by Timimi celebrating the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, according to the affidavit. The agents also found that Timimi was in contact with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi whose anti-Western speeches in the early 1990s had helped inspire bin Laden.
The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.
On a frigid day in February 2003, the FBI searched Timimi’s brick townhouse on Meadow Field Court, a cul-de-sac near Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Among the items they were seeking, according to court testimony: material on weapons of mass destruction.”
Al-Timimi had rock star status in Salafist circles and lectured in July 2001 (in Toronto) and August 2001 (in London) on the coming “end of times” and signs of the coming day of judgment. He spoke alongside officials of a charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Another speaker was Ali’s mentor, Bilal Philips, one of the 173 listed as unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators. Bilal Philips worked in the early 1990s to recruit US servicemen according to testimony in that trial and interviews in which Dr. Philips explained the Saudi-funded program. According to Al-Timimi’s attorney, Ali “was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis.” The NSA was intercepting communications by Fall 2001 without a warrant.
At the same time the FBI was searching the townhouse of PhD candidate Ali Timimi, searches and arrests moved forward elsewhere. In Moscow, Idaho, FBI agents interviewed Nabil Albaloushi. (The FBI apparently searched his apartment at the same time they searched the apartment of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen, who they had woken from bed at 4:00 a.m.) Albaloushi was a PhD candidate expert in drying foodstuffs. His thesis in 2003 was 350 pages filled with charts of drying coefficients. Interceptions showed a very close link between IANA’s Sami al-Hussayen and Sheikh al-Hawali, to include the setting up of websites, the providing of vehicles for extended communication, and telephone contact with intermediaries of Sheikh al-Hawali. Al-Hussayen had al-Hawali’s phone number upon the search of his belongings upon his arrest. Former Washington State University animal geneticist and nutrition researcher Ismail Diab, who had moved to Syracuse to work for an IANA-spin-off, also was charged in Syracuse and released as a material witness to a financial investigation of the IANA affiliate “Help The Needy.” After the government failed to ask Dr. Diab any questions for nearly 3 months, the magistrate bail restrictions and removed the electronic monitoring and curfew requirements.
In Moscow, Idaho, the activities by IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen that drew scrutiny involved these same two radical sheiks. U.S. officials say the two sheiks influenced al Qaeda’s belief that Muslims should wage holy war against the U.S. until it ceases to support Israel and withdraws from the Middle East. Sami Hussayen, who was acquitted, made numerous calls and wrote many e-mails to the two clerics, sometimes giving advice to them about running Arabic-language websites on which they espoused their anti-Western views.
According to witness testimony in the prosecution of the Virginia Paintball Defendants, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” The FBI first contacted Timimi shortly after 9/11. He met with FBI agents 7 or 8 times in the months leading up to his arrest. Al-Timimi is a US citizen born in Washington DC. His house was searched, his passport taken and his telephone monitored. Ali Al Timimi defended his PhD thesis in computational biology shortly after his indictment for recruiting young men to fight the US in defending against an invasion of Afghanistan.
Communications between Al-Timimi with dissident Saudi sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends and mentors of Bin Laden, were intercepted. The two radical sheiks had been imprisoned from September 1994 to June 1999. Al-Hawali’s detention was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War against the United States and the claim of responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings. He had been Al-Timimi’s religious mentor at University.
ABC reported in July 2004 that FBI Director Mueller had imposed an October 1, 2004 deadline for a case that would stand up in court. The date passed with no anthrax indictment. Al-Timimi was not indicted for anthrax. He was indicted for sedition. Upon his indictment, on September 23, 2004, al-Timimi explained he had been offered a plea bargain of 14 years, but he declined. He quoted Sayyid Qutb. He said he remembered “reading his books and loving his teaching” as a child, and that Qutb’s teaching was prevented from signing something that was false by “the finger that bears witness.” He noted that he and his lawyers asked that authorities hold off the indictment until he had received his PhD, but said that unfortunately they did not wait. On October 6, 2004, the webmaster of the azzam.com website Babar Ahmad was indicted. In 2007, the North Brunswick, NJ imam who mirrored the azzam.com website was indicted (on the grounds of income tax evasion).
The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”), the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched the townhouse of “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.” Famed head of the former Russian bioweaponeering program Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see Al-Timimi in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department, and was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner. When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link Al-Timimi to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va. In the end, he was indicted for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. During deliberations, he reportedly was very calm, reading Genome Technology and other scientific journals. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 70 years.
DXer said
It will be fun to see if the Quantico weighs in with a profile given the paradox noted by New York magazine.
It will be interesting to see if Aulaqi does.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/01/guy_who_finds_report_suspiciou.html
Mind-Bending Mail-Bomb Campaign Continues
If we can attempt to delve into the mind of a psycho for a moment, the guy’s point might be that when people are told to be on alert for suspicious activity, they are bound to interpret certain nonthreatening activities as suspicious, if only to err on the side of caution. The signs then, by their very existence, are concocting “suspicious activity.” Why bombing people proves that there is no legitimately suspicious activity to report, though, and not the opposite, we have no idea.
DXer said
NPR story (7/29) on Awlaki
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128831726
DXer said
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Awlaki and 9/11 [Marc Thiessen]
In today’s Washington Post, I write about how the wolves are circling the CIA’s Predator program, and how the Obama administration is endangering the CIA officials involved in the program by expanding operations while shrinking the legal ground on which their efforts are based. The administration refuses to invoke the president’s Article II powers under the Constitution to defend the country, relying instead on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). The problem, former State Department Legal Advisor John Bellinger has explained, is that Congress authorized the use of force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But many of those currently targeted — particularly outside Afghanistan — had nothing to do with those attacks. The President has authority to target these individuals under his Constitutional powers as Commander in Chief, but the case is murkier if relying on the AUMF alone.
As examples, I cite the Pakistani Taliban leaders who sent a terrorist to blow up a car in Times Square, but were not involved in 9/11. (On these pages, Andy McCarthy has called for updating the AUMF to cover all branches of the Taliban.) And I note that, “The American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi was not involved in Sept. 11 — yet he has reportedly been put on the targeting list.”
On this last point, Tom Joscelyn writes to correct me:
Your point before this stands, but Awlaki clearly was involved in Sept. 11. The intelligence community and FBI consistently messed up their analysis of him beginning in 1999. He hosted two of the hijackers in San Diego beginning in Jan. 2000 and became, according to the Joint Inquiry, their “spiritual advisor.” When Awlaki left for Falls Church, VA, one of the two followed him there. Awlaki’s congregation then assisted both this hijacker (Hazmi) and another hijacker in their tour of the Northeast.
Some have tried to claim that Awlaki may not have known what was going on. I think that is utter nonsense. The two hijackers who met up with him in Jan. 2000 (Mihdhar and Hazmi) had just left a key planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur when they boarded a plane for San Diego. When they got to San Diego, they set up shop and would drive all the way across town to get to Awlaki’s mosque — even though other mosques en route were closer.
You have that fact, Awlaki’s known “spiritual advice,” the fact that one of the two followed him to Falls Church, VA, the fact that still another hijacker then went to the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, etc.
I think that Awlaki’s involvement is one of the items that KSM kept from his interrogators. There is no indication that he spilled the beans on him. But this doesn’t mean Awlaki wasn’t involved as the CIA’s own reporting notes that KSM kept certain aspects of AQ’s operations secret even after the EITs.
Tom also points out:
Hazmi and Mihdhar did move close to Awlaki’s mosque in February 2000, but they didn’t initially live near there. My point about driving to his mosque is that they had plenty of other options and just happened to pick Awlaki’s. And Hazmi and Mihdhar had closed door meetings with Awlaki in San Diego. He wasn’t teaching them that jihad is a purely personal and spiritual endeavor, you can bet on that!
Tom Joscelyn is a national treasure.
DXer said
Rule 101 of cell security was not followed by this correspondent with Anwar Aulaqi discussed in news stories today:
Don’t use your dead drop to communicate with the federal undercover and don’t tell him your code.
When Anwar urged that clandestine matters needed to be conducted on a need-to-know basis, he meant don’t tell the FBI and especially don’t tell your wife.
Remember: Shuffleboard, okay. Trips to the zoo, okay. Clandestine matters involving waging war against infidels, no.
Intelligence analysts have to go back to social network analysis dating to the late 1970s and early 1980s in Cairo to plow really fertile territory if they want to do more than catch the occasional angry young man going to fight abroad.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/08/2001565/fbi-texas-man-called-al-qaida.html
After this, an informant working for the FBI befriended Bujol in November 2009, and Bujol believed the informant was a recruiter of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Bujol created a secret code that he used to communicate with the informant and gave himself the Arabic moniker of “Abu Abuadah,” according to the search warrant application.
The informant had Bujol retrieve items from “dead drops,” pre-arranged secret locations in public places used to exchange messages and other items. In one of these dead drops, Bujol retrieved two false identification cards from a hollowed rock FBI agents placed in a park, the warrant application said.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/08/2001565/fbi-texas-man-called-al-qaida.html#ixzz0qM6DwrRv
DXer said
There was a time when an estimate 1/3 of the KKK was either an informant or undercover agent.
FBI Makes Two More Busts Related to Alleged ‘Domestic’ Radicalization
Joe Epstein / AP
A television crew sets up outside the home of Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, who was arrested at New York’s JFK airport as he tried to board a plane bound for Egypt on Saturday.
In less than a week, federal authorities have announced arrests in two investigations involving American citizens who allegedly sought to involve themselves with violent jihadist groups. One common factor between the otherwise unrelated cases: suspects in both cases allegedly fell under the influence of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is believed to be hiding in Yemen and who reportedly has been targeted for death by the Obama administration.
According to official press releases, both of the cases announced by the feds—one became public in Houston last Thursday, and the other broke in New Jersey on Sunday—involved close and extended monitoring of the suspects by undercover informants, and in neither case do the feds claim that the suspects were anywhere close to launching real attacks, either inside the U.S. or overseas.
However, the latest cases lend further weight to concerns by many federal officials about a growing and potentially dangerous trend in which U.S. citizens or residents are becoming more regularly involved in real and would-be violent jihadist plotting. As we reported, over the last 18 months, government records show, at least 25 American citizens have been charged with serious federal terrorism violations.
***
Sometime in 2009, Robinson says, an undercover officer, who the U.S. attorney’s office said worked for the intelligence division of the New York Police Department, began “spending time” with Almonte and Alessa. During the course of those interactions, the feds recorded a series of conversations that give one of the most disturbing insights available to date of the kind of radicalization process that experts worry more and more American citizens are succumbing to.
***
Over the next several weeks, according to the FBI, the defendants engaged in weight training at a gym in Jersey City; watched more violent videos, including pictures of attacks on tanks in Iraq; and went for a hike in the snow and mud in a Passaic County, N.J., mountain reservation. In March, Alessa watched a video at the undercover agent’s residence that included a diatribe by Adam Gadahn, the American convert to Islam who has become the principal English-language mouthpiece of what remains of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan-based central command. By the end of March, the feds say, Almonte was telling the undercover officer, “Any Muslim that gets an opportunity, or a chance, or even ten-percent out of one-hundred chance of making it there [referring to waging violent jihad abroad] should–should risk it … Because what’s better than sitting back here and working like a dog and … being somebody’s puppy, basically what I call it, than moving forward to … a life of honor, life of dignity, once Allah … takes your soul upon that.”
DXer said
“Official: Yemen won’t extradite US radical cleric
(AP) – 1 hour ago
SAN’A, Yemen — A Yemeni official says the government would not hand over to the U.S. a radical American-born cleric tied to al-Qaida because the constitution bans extradition of Yemeni citizens.
The Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, is believed to be hiding in Yemen since 2004.
Islamic Affairs Minister Hamoud al-Hitar said on Tuesday that Yemen is encouraging al-Awlaki to turn himself in.
He says Washington should provide proof of al-Awlaki’s terrorist ties to the Yemeni justice system.
The U.S. says al-Awlaki is active in al-Qaida and has placed him on the CIA’s list of targets for assassination, despite his American citizenship. Yemen’s al-Qaida offshoot last month released a video of al-Awlaki calling for the killing of Americans.”
Is it against the law in Yemen to solicit murder of civilians? AP should note that Anwar was detained (and being interrogated by the FBI for 1 1/2 years in the 2006 period) and then Yemen released him. So it is not entirely accurate to say he “is believed to be hiding in Yemen since 2004.”
DXer said
Anwar al Aulaqi was interrogated about the anthrax mailings while imprisoned in 2006.
He had worked as the Muslim Chaplain at George Washington Univ. He was the “spiritual advisor” to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, and the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 reported that “the FBI agent responsible for the September 11 investigation informed staff that ‘there’s a lot of smoke there’ with regard to…[al Aulaqi’s] connection to the hijackers.” Awaki had coordinated with Ali Al-Timimi, who shared a suite with the leading anthrax scientist in the world and former deputy USAMRIID Commander, a prolific Ames researchers. Both were Battelle consultants and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency whose researchers were exploring the effect of the Corona Plasma Discharge and Sonicator on Ames spores. The DARPA-funded researchers at the Center for Biodefense located at GMU had co-invented a process using silica in the cultivating medium used to grow anthrax, a process that also had application to making aerosols. (see international application)
After his release, Aulaqi published “44 Ways to Support Jihad”
Aulaqi writes of the important of working to free jihadis who have been detained:
“Jihad is the greatest deed in Islam and the salvation of the ummah is in practicing it. In times like these, when Muslim lands are occupied by the kuffar, when the jails of tyrants are full of Muslim POWs, when the rule of the law of Allah is absent from this world and when Islam is being attacked in order to uproot it, Jihad becomes obligatory on every Muslim.
This was an important motive of the anthrax mailings.
Aulaqi rails against what he calls the “lies of the Western Media”:
“The perceptions of many Muslims are formed by the Western media. Allah says: ‘O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one (fasiq) with information,
investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful’ (49:6) So what about when the news is coming from a kafir rather than
a fasiq?!”
“The danger of the Western media stems from the fact that it puts on the cloak of truth and objectivity when in reality it is no more than the mouthpiece of the devil. Can’t you
see that the Western media is constantly trying to underplay the atrocities committed by the West while exaggerating the violations – which are few and far in between –
committed by Muslims? Can’t you see how the Western media succeeded in presenting the awlyaa’ (friends) of Allah, the ones who are fighting in His cause, as the followers of evil, while it presents the Pharaoh of this day and his armies as the army of good? The Western media is so good in its deception that its lies pass on a wide section of
the Muslim ummah.”
“The fact is that this media demonizes the mujahideen, spreads lies about them, blows out of proportion their mistakes, tries to sow the seeds of disunity amongst them,
attempts to ruin the reputations of their leaders, and ignores or demonizes the scholars of truth when on the other hand, it glorifies and promotes the scholars of falsehood.”
“So my dear brothers and sisters part of your duty is to campaign amongst Muslims to raise their awareness regarding this issue. You should encourage them to be careful and critical of the Western media. A Muslim should not believe Western sources unless they are confirmed by a trustworthy Muslim one. I say a ‘trustworthy’ Muslim source because the verse was warning us from accepting the news of a disobeying Muslim. Now that is not to say that we should not believe the media in anything it says even in its weather forecasts! No, what we are saying is that you should not believe what they say about Islam and Muslims. A media source that could otherwise be very objective and truthful could become a fabricator when it comes to covering news on Muslims. That is how the disbelievers dealt with Muslims since the dawn of history…and there is no reason for us to believe why that would change.”
This was another motive of the anthrax mailings and the choice of media targets.
Aulaqi urges that a lot of jihad work by its nature is secret and clandestine in nature. He advises that everything should be on a need-to-know basis (in other words, don’t tell your wife). Secrecy and cell compartmentalization was a key organizing principle of how the anthrax mailings were accomplished.
Protecting the mujahideen and preserving their secrets
“We need to guard our tongues. Sometimes you could end up endangering your brothers unwillingly by your words. A Muslim should develop the habit of being able to
keep secrets. We have an incident from seerah where a sahabi refused to tell his own wife about a secret mentioned to him by the Messenger of Allah. Sometimes you want to protect the secrets from the closest people to you: your wife, parents, children and brothers, because they might be the most vulnerable. A Muslim should learn to not say
more than what needs to be said, to work on a ‘need to know basis’.” “A lot of Jihad work is secret and clandestine by nature. Therefore, brothers and sisters
should be very careful with their words. A lot of harm was inflicted on Jihad work because of otherwise good and sincere brothers who had loose tongues.” “The enemies of Allah will try to recruit Muslims to infiltrate Islamic work. They will tell them that we are doing this to protect the Muslims. They may carry along with them
scholars who would approve that. Part of your role in protecting the mujahideen is by warning the Muslim community that spying on a Muslim for a non-Muslim is nothing less
than kufr. Allah says: ‘And whoever is an ally of them among you – then indeed, he is one of them.’ (5:51)”
He advocates that jihadis develop the “steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy.” Under his reasoning, his fellow Falls Church imam Ali Al-Timimi had an individual duty to develop anthrax was a weapon.
“Preparing for Jihad is obligatory since Jihad today is obligatory and the sharia rule states that: ‘Whatever is needed for an obligatory act becomes obligatory’.”
“Arms training is an essential part of preparation for Jihad. Allah says: ‘And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may
terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you don’t know but Allah knows’ (8:60) The Messenger of Allah (saaws) said regarding this verse:
‘Power is marksmanship, power is marksmanship’ (Related by Muslim)”
“The issue is so critical that if arms training is not possible in your country then it is worth
the time and money to travel to another country to train if you can.”
He explains that jihad supporters must learn the fiqh or jurisprudence of jihad. Al-Timimi relatedly explained that fiqh must be understood in the context of modern times.
“Learning the fiqh of Jihad includes the fatwas of scholars regarding the issues that face the mujahideen today such as the ruling of Jihad today, rulings of dar-ul-Harb, the issue of civilians and collateral damage, the issue of the covenant of security with non-Muslim governments, fighting in the absence of an Imam, and the ruling on present
governments in the Muslim world. It is equally important to study the virtues of Jihad. One also needs to study the writings of scholars and thinkers who are charting out the
course for today’s Jihad.”
On fulfilling our responsibilities towards the Muslim POW, a key motive of the anthrax mailngs, Aulaqi writes:
“Rasulullah (saaws) says’ ‘And free the prisoner’ (al Bukhari). Our scholars say that it is a duty on Muslims to free the POWs even if they have to expend all their money. Many
mujahideen are forgotten, lingering in prison cells in every continent around the world. Not even the islands of the sea are spared. We need to raise the awareness of the
ummah regarding their issue, keep them in our dua and fight for their release.”
Aulaqi advises that those pursuing advanced degrees should acquire skills that would benefit the mujahideen:
“The field of Jihad is wide and it demands many skills. The brothers and sisters need to learn these skills and then use them to serve Islam. I emphasize on using them to serve ‘Islam’ because we hear a lot about Muslims claiming that the reason why they are studying and pursuing degrees is to serve Allah but in the end they end up serving their pockets and selfish desires.”
DXer said
Scott Shane has explained in an interview on NPR that the CIA is aiming to kill Anwar Aulaqi.
Anwar Al-Awlaki: An American Citizen, A CIA Target
May 18, 2010
NPR:
May 18, 2010
Last month, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration had authorized the targeted killing of the American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for his operational role in al-Qaida attacks against the United States and American interests. The author of that article, Scott Shane, covers national security for the Times and has written about Awlaki’s role in inspiring a number of Americans to commit acts of terrorism.
“He has turned the corner from being merely a person who encouraged and incited terrorism to someone who has an operational role in plotting attacks,” Shane explains in an interview with Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies. “This is all classified information, but it appears the CIA believes he’s now an operational member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula …
Awlaki, born in New Mexico, is currently in hiding in Yemen. His audio recordings, which have encouraged jihad against U.S. targets, have turned up in investigations of more than a dozen incidents of terrorism, including the Fort Hood shootings, where 13 people were killed, allegedly by an Army psychologist, and Times Square, where suspect Faisal Shahzad allegedly attempted to detonate a car bomb on May 1.
On Anwar al-Awlaki and the media after the Sept. 11 attacks
“Because he was at a big mosque outside Washington, D.C. — in Fairfax, Va. — he was very quickly identified as a guy who was good for the media to call with questions about Islam [and] questions about the attacks. [This was] partly because so many imams speak with a foreign accent [and] sometimes their English isn’t perfect. He spoke fluent English with an American accent and was very willing to explain things and so he appeared in almost all the major media in the weeks after 9/11. And [he] seemed to relish the role of the explainer of Islam. He condemned the attacks although he also linked the attacks to American foreign policy, suggesting that these didn’t come out of nowhere, that these came out of grievances in the Muslim world. But he presented himself and was presented by others, including my newspaper, as a guy with the potential to bridge the gap between the United States and the worldwide community of Muslims.”
On Awlaki and militants
“The prominent ones would certainly include Nidal Hassan, the Army psychiatrist who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood last November. In that case, Nidal Hassan had met Mr. al-Awlaki in his mosque in Virginia and then later, when Awlaki was hiding out in Yemen but had a website, Nidal Hassan wrote to him through the website and they exchanged a number of e-mails. The e-mails are still secret — we don’t know exactly what they said — but one of the questions Nidal Hassan had for Awlaki was, ‘Is it okay under Islam if an American soldier attacks fellow soldiers because they’re on their way to fight in Afghanistan?’ and it appears that the answer to that question that Mr. Awlaki gave was, ‘Yes.’ ”
“Then most recently, Faisal Shahzad, the person who’s accused of implanting the car bomb on Times Square on May 1 — he has told investigators that Anwar al-Awlaki was an important influence for him as well.”
“[The men accused of plotting an attack at Fort Dix] were found to have his materials in their possession and cited him as an influence.”
On Awlaki’s background
“He was born in New Mexico in 1971 when his father was a grad student in his country. … Anwar lived in [the U.S.] from birth until age 7, when his parents returned to Yemen. … [He was part of a] very prominent family — very Westernized, and certainly no history in his immediate family of extreme religiosity or radicalism — and at the age of 19, was sent back by his father to Colorado State University, with all appearances that he would become a sort of technocrat. And he majored in civil engineering and graduated four years later with a degree in civil engineering.”
On Awlaki’s anti-U.S. audio messages
“He’s able to frame events in a very persuasive way. But I think it’s the events themselves that give him the material to work with. When he says that the United States is at war with Islam — if he had said that in 1999 — it might have been difficult to sort of pull together the evidence to support his thesis. Now he can point to the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq that’s still ongoing, the drone strikes in Pakistan which began quite a few years ago but which were greatly stepped up in the summer of 2008. So that’s sort of another front. And even the two recent airstrikes — allegedly by Yemeni forces but certainly involving U.S. weaponry — in December of last year in Yemen. And so, you can certainly present this as a war in multiple Muslim countries in which many Muslims are being killed. I think many people would say that’s a gross oversimplification and that the U.S. has been fighting on the side of the majority of Muslims in these countries and still is, but if you want to present these things as evidence that the U.S. has an expanding war around the globe against Islam, [that’s] one that he’s able to articulate in a very convincing way for many people.”
Anthrax and Al Qaeda: Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.blurb.com/books/1385387
DXer said
May 24, 2010
Getting Serious About Anwar al Awlaki
Thomas Joscelyn: Time to Declassify Intelligence On Anwar al Awlaki’s “Students”
(CBS) Thomas Joscelyn is the Senior Editor of The Long War Journal. Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki described both the Fort Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day bomber as his “students.” in a tape released this weekend, according to press reports.
This is not surprising – the evidence tying Awlaki to both terrorists has continued to mount. But Awlaki’s comments highlight, once again, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s many failures in investigating the al Qaeda cleric. The Obama administration should declassify as much information about Awlaki’s ties to these attacks (as well as previous ones) as possible, because American authorities have repeatedly failed to detect Awlaki’s hand until it was too late. The public has a right to see the evidentiary threads that were missed
***
The Obama administration has rightly decided to target Awlaki inside Yemen, authorizing military and intelligence officials to kill the cleric if given the opportunity. But the administration should also declassify and release Awlaki’s emails with the Fort Hood Shooter, as well as any other threads of evidence that have been missed. Those bits of intelligence that are still highly sensitive because they deal with current operations can be redacted.
But the American people deserve to see the evidence that their counterterrorism officials have repeatedly failed to understand.
Anthrax and Al Qaeda: The Infiltration of US Biodefense (May 27, 2010 draft) (440 pages fully previewable)
http://www.blurb.com/books/1385387
DXer said
Aulaqi quotes Zawahiri in his new 45 minute video:
“Take, for instance, what Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri said to Obama. He said to him: “Mr. Obama, may Allah bring about the downfall of the US at the hands of the mujahideen. That way, we – along with the entire world – will find relief from your evil.” This is an example of the discourse of honor. It is a candid and clear expression of the Muslims’ view of the US. We, along with the rest of the world, are waiting to find the relief from your evil, because of your oppression and aggression against the world. In contrast, when Obama visited the Islamic world – he went to Riyadh by way of Cairo – a preacher greeted him, saying: “What a blessed moment, Abu Hussein.” A blessed moment?! When Obama comes to the heart of the Islamic world, that Arabian Peninsula?! Is it a “blessed moment” when we welcome Obama – the commander of the Crusader war against Islam today, the Pharaoh of our times? Should we be welcoming him with these words? This is an example of the jurisprudence of ignominy and the culture of servility.”
DXer said
Aulaqi discusses the role of appropriations in his May 2010 video:
Anwar Al-Awlaki: Yes. With regard to the issue of “civilians,” this term has become prevalent these days, but I prefer to use the terms employed by our jurisprudence. They classify people as either combatants or non-combatants. A combatant is someone who bears arms – even if this is a woman. Non-combatants are people who do not take part in the war. The American people in its entirety takes part in the war, because they elected this administration, and they finance this war. In the recent elections, and in the previous ones, the American people had other options, and could have elected people who did not want war. Nevertheless, these candidates got nothing but a handful of votes. We should examine this issue from the perspective of Islamic law, and this settles the issue – is it permitted or forbidden?
[…]
For 50 years, an entire people – the Muslims in Palestine – has been strangled, with American aid, support, and weapons. Twenty years of siege and then occupation of Iraq, and now, the occupation of Afghanistan. After all this, no one should even ask us about targeting a bunch of Americans who would have been killed in an airplane. Our unsettled account with America includes, at the very least, one million women and children. I’m not even talking about the men. Our unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the plane are a drop in the ocean.
DXer said
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022603267_pf.html
Imam From Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
“My son is not a terrorist,” he said. “He never advocated violence against anybody.”
***
The 9/11 Commission and the joint House-Senate Inquiry into the intelligence failures that allowed the attacks to take place reported that in 1999 the FBI opened a short-lived investigation of Aulaqi when it learned he may have been visited by a “procurement agent” for bin Laden.
Law enforcement sources now say that agent was Ziyad Khaleel, who the government has previously said purchased a satellite phone and batteries for bin Laden in the 1990s. 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.
The FBI also learned that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the 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.
But the bureau lacked enough evidence to bring a case, and closed its investigation. Around the same time, two future Sept. 11 hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, fresh from an al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia — turned up at Aulaqi’s San Diego mosque in early 2000.
Witnesses later told the FBI that Aulaqi had a close relationship with the hijackers in San Diego. “Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and another individual,” the Joint House-Senate Inquiry reported. In press interviews at the time, Aulaqi denied having such contacts.
DXer said
Saga of Dr. Zawahri Sheds Light On the Roots of al Qaeda Terror
Sep 25, 2004 … and details of an account in a bank in St. Louis, Mo. …
Royer admitted in his grand jury testimony that he had already waged jihad in Bosnia under a commander acting on orders from Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors also presented evidence that his father, Ramon Royer, had rented a room in his St. Louis-area home in 2000 to Ziyad Khaleel, the student who purchased the satellite phone used by Al-Qaeda in planning the two U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa in August 1998. Royer eventually pleaded guilty to lesser firearms-related charges, and the former CAIR staffer was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
wikipedia-
Ziyad Khaleel, also known as Khalil Ziyad, Ziyad Sadaqa, and Ziyad Abdulrahman, was a Palestinian-American al-Qaeda member, based in the United States, primarily in Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Missouri. He had been identified as a “procurement agent” for Osama bin Laden,[1][2][3] arranging the purchase and delivery of “computers, satellite telephones, and covert surveillance equipment” for the leadership of al-Qaeda,[4]as well as administering a number of radical Islamic websites as webmaster, including the website of the terrorist group Hamas.[5][6][7] Among the cities in which he resided at various times were Denver, Detroit, Columbia and Orlando.
In 1991, while living in Denver, he was vice president of the Denver Islamic Society.[8] By 1994 he was residing in Detroit and his name and address were reflected in ledgers taken from the Al Kifah Refugee Center, a financial and strategic arm of al-Qaeda.[7]
Upon moving to the Missouri city of Columbia, he was known as Ziyad Khaleel, but began using the surname Sadaqa as early as 1996. That year he was a fundraiser and one of eight regional directors of the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), which the government later determined was a front for al-Qaeda and Hamas.[9]
Late in 1996 he bought a $7,500 INMARSAT satellite telephone at the instruction of senior al-Qaeda lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz.[7][10] He delivered the satellite telephone and a battery pack to bin Laden in Afghanistan in May 1998.[11][12] Bin Laden used the phone to place phone calls around the world, directing al-Qaeda’s operations and orchestrating the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.[9] The billing information from the number reflects calls to every country in which al-Qaeda is now known to have had cells.[13]
In 1998 and 1999, Khaleel lived in an apartment in the eastern part of Florida’s Orange County, near Orlando.[14][15]
The FBI investigated Anwar al-Awlaki, later linked to three of the 9/11 hijackers, the Fort Hood shooter, and the Christmas Day 2009 bomber, beginning in June 1999 through March 2000, after it learned he had been contacted by Khaleel.[16][17]
On December 29, 1999, as he arrived in the Jordanian capital of Amman, local authorities arrested him on charges of being a procurement agent for bin Laden, but he was later released.[7][18] In 2000 Khaleel lived in Manchester, Missouri, and attended Columbia College in St. Louis.[19]
Khaleel is now believed to be dead.[20][21]
history commons –
Ziyad Khaleel was a participant or observer in the following events:
November 1996-Late August 1998: US Tracks Bin Laden’s Satellite Phone Calls
An Inmarsat Compact M satellite phone, the type used by bin Laden.[Source: Inmarsat]
During this period, Osama bin Laden uses a satellite phone to direct al-Qaeda’s operations. The phone—a Compact M satellite phone, about the size of a laptop computer—was purchased by a student in Virginia named Ziyad Khaleel for $7,500 using the credit card of a British man named Saad al-Fagih. After purchasing the phone, Khaleel sent it to Khalid al-Fawwaz, al-Qaeda’s unofficial press secretary in London (see Early 1994-September 23, 1998). Al-Fawwaz then shipped it to bin Laden in Afghanistan. [CNN, 4/16/2001] It appears US intelligence actually tracks the purchase as it occurs (see November 1996-Late December 1999), probably because an older model satellite phone bin Laden has is already being monitored (see Early 1990s). Bin Laden’s phone (873682505331) is believed to be used by other top al-Qaeda leaders as well, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammad Atef. Al-Fawwaz also buys satellite phones for other top al-Qaeda leaders around the same time. Though the calls made on these phones are encrypted, the NSA is able to intercept and decrypt them. As one US official will put it in early 2001, “codes were broken.” [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 2/13/2001; NEWSWEEK, 2/18/2002] The Los Angeles Times will report that the monitoring of these phones “produced tens of thousands of pages of transcripts over two years.” [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/14/2001] Bin Laden’s satellite phone replaces an older model he used in Sudan that apparently was also monitored by the NSA (see Early 1990s). Billing records for his new phone are eventually released to the media in early 2002. Newsweek will note, “A country-by-country analysis of the bills provided US authorities with a virtual road map to important al-Qaeda cells around the world.” [SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON), 3/24/2002] The countries called are:
Britain (238 or 260). Twenty-seven different phone numbers are called in Britain. Accounts differ on the exact number of calls. Khalid al-Fawwaz, who helps publish statements by bin Laden, receives 143 of the calls, including the very first one bin Laden makes with this phone. Apparently most of the remaining calls are made to pay phones near him or to his associates. He also frequently calls Ibrahim Eidarous, who works with al-Fawwaz and lives near him. [CNN, 4/16/2001;NEWSWEEK, 2/18/2002; SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON), 3/24/2002; O’NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 111]
Yemen (221). Dozens of calls go to an al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen, which is run by the father-in-law of 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar (seeLate August 1998). [NEWSWEEK, 2/18/2002; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 9/1/2002; BAMFORD, 2008, PP. 8]
Sudan (131). Bin Laden lived in Sudan until 1996 (see May 18, 1996), and some important al-Qaeda operatives remained there after he left (see February 5, 1998). [SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON), 3/24/2002]
…
Azerbaijan (67). An important al-Qaeda operative appears to be based in Baku, Azerbaijan. [WASHINGTON POST, 5/2/2001] This is most likely Ahmad Salama Mabruk, who is very close to al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri and is said to be the head of the al-Qaeda cell there. He kidnapped by the CIA in Baku in late August 1998 (see Late August 1998).
Kenya (at least 56). In the embassy bombings trial, prosecutors introduce evidence showing 16 calls are made on this phone to some of the embassy bombers in Kenya (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998), apparently all before a raid in August 1997 (see August 21, 1997). The defense introduces evidence showing at least 40 more calls are made after that time (see Late 1996-August 1998). [CNN, 4/16/2001]
Pakistan (59).
Saudi Arabia (57).
A ship in the Indian Ocean (13).
The US (6).
Italy (6).
Malaysia (4).
Senegal (2). [SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON), 3/24/2002]
Egypt (unknown). Newsweek reports that calls are made to Egypt but doesn’t say how many. [NEWSWEEK, 2/18/2002]
Iraq (0). Press reports note that the records indicate zero calls were made to Iraq. [NEWSWEEK, 2/18/2002; SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON), 3/24/2002] 1,100 total calls are made on this phone.
As I recall the news, the CIA had a bugging device planted in the battery that Hamdi carried while acting as an assistant to a newsman interviewing Bin Laden.
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=tarik_hamdi
DXer said
Click to access nefabackgrounder_alawlaki.pdf
The Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 provides additional detail, noting that, “in early 2000,” al Awlaki “was visited by a subject of a Los Angeles investigation closely associated with Blind Sheikh [Omar Abdel] al-Rahman,” 24 who is jailed for life for his involvement in a 1993 bomb plot targeting New York City. A Treasury Enforcement Communications System document establishes that he received money from the subject of a Houston Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation.25 Additionally, court documents allege that after returning to Northern Virginia in 2002, al Awlaki unsuccessfully “attempted to get [Ali] al Timimi to discuss issues related to the recruitment of young Muslims” for jihad.26 In April 2005, al-Timimi was convicted on an array of counts, including soliciting others to wage war against the United States.27
In his description of his educational background, al Awlaki writes that he studied with Salman al Odeh,28 a Saudi cleric who is alleged to have been one of Usama Bin Laden’s spiritual mentors.29
Comment: The detention of that Bin Laden spiritual mentor was the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War, along with al-Hawali (Al-Timimi’s former mentor) and blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. At the time of the Spring 1999 announcement of Ayman Zawahiri’s intention to use anthrax against US targets, it was explained that the motive was the pressure from the continued rendition of senior jihadi leaders.
DXer said
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee
20 January 2010
Intelligence Reform: The Lessons and Implications of the
Christmas Day Attack
Statement for the Record
of
Dennis C. Blair
Director of National Intelligence
Michael E. Leiter
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
“We are taking a fresh and penetrating look at strengthening both human and
technical performance and do what we have to do in all areas. I have specifically
been tasked by the President to oversee and manage work in four areas:
Immediately reaffirm and clarify roles and responsibilities of the
counterterrorism analytic components of the IC in synchronizing,
correlating, and analyzing all sources of intelligence related to terrorism.
Accelerate information technology enhancements, to include knowledge
discovery, database integration, cross-database searches, and the ability to
correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence.
Take further steps to enhance the rigor and raise the standard of tradecraft of
intelligence analysis, especially analysis designed to uncover and prevent
terrorist plots.
Ensure resources are properly aligned with issues highlighted in strategic
warning analysis.
Comment: What does Michael E. Leiter think of the characterization of the documentary evidence in Amerithrax Investigative Summary?
As a trained attorney and really bright guy, if Mr. Leiter does not realize it is a pile of crap which mischaracterizes and conflicts with the documentary evidence it nowhere cites, then isn’t the above testimony to Congress just a nice public relations piece? For example, why hasn’t Michael Leiter made it a point to ask for and see the contemporaneous notes that Dr. Ivins made on the 5 nights he allegedly was creating a dry anthrax aerosol? Why hasn’t he and his center asked for and obtained a copy of the report of the examination of the photocopy toner in which Dr. Bartick excluded the xerox machine that Rachel Carlson Lieber and Ken Kohl allege, without basis, was used by Dr. Ivins?
Infiltration of US Biodefense (440 pages freely viewable)
http://www.blurb.com/books/1319010