* In late 2001 the training camp outside Kandahar, in training to introduce poison into water systems, what was the poison contemplated?
Posted by DXer on April 26, 2011
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
By way of some broad background, a February, 2003, report, “Ricin and Botulinum: Terrorist Use of Toxins,” was compiled by the PCO intelligence assessment secretariat, a division bolstered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The report was distributed to senior officials at the RCMP, CSIS, the ministries of health, defense, immigration and foreign affairs and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The AP in September 2003 had an article “FBI: al-Qaida May Try to Poison Water.”
September 05, 2003
“The FBI is once again warning terrorists might try to poison food or water supplies. Senior bureau officials said Thursday that al-Qaida is determined to attack Americans at home, even though the organization appears to have a relatively small U.S. presence.
Associated Press writer Curt Anderson reports that the FBI has not detected any individuals or cells actively planning attacks such as those almost two years ago that killed some 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Most al-Qaida operatives in the United States provide logistical support such as travel documents, recruitment and fund raising, according to Larry Mefford, the FBI’s chief counterterrorism official.
“My view is, it’s very small but it does exist,” Mefford said of al-Qaida’s U.S. presence. “Our concern continues to be what exists in the United States that we’re not aware of.”
***
The FBI’s latest weekly bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies cautions terrorists might use two naturally occurring toxins – nicotine and solanine – to poison U.S. food or water supplies. Nicotine is found in tobacco plants and solanine in potatoes that are old or have been exposed to sunlight for a long time.
The bulletin, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, says that terrorist manuals and documents recovered at al-Qaida sites in Afghanistan contain references to use of both substances as poisons.
The FBI said there are no known uses of either toxin by al-Qaida or other Islamic extremist groups, and there is no intelligence indicating such an attack is imminent. However, the bulletin noted a Michigan man pleaded guilty in May to lacing 250 pounds of ground beef with an insecticide containing nicotine, sickening 92 people, in an attempt to get a supermarket co-worker in trouble.
***
Mefford told reporters that the FBI’s strategy is to keep known al-Qaida operatives under surveillance for as long as possible and document any criminal or immigration violations they commit. The FBI can then arrest the individuals at a moment’s notice to disrupt or prevent terrorist operations from going forward.
“We may develop beneficial intelligence information from watching that group operate, or it may be at a point where we need to disrupt that activity,” Mefford said. “That’s a judgment call we will make tactically.”
Comment: Our tobacco companies kill 300,000 a year with nicotine. Maybe Ayman Zawahiri should just hire the latest Marlboro Man.
DXer said
Here is another fellow trained in poisons.
DXer said
City Of Topeka Comments On FBI’s Midwest Water Supply Investigation
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/FBI-Investigating-Threat-To-4-Cities-Water-Systems-Including-Wichita-228369651.html
Comment: Mayor Bloomberg was discussing NYC’s water supply earlier in the week.
The report above brings to mind the history relating to Al Qaeda operative in the United States Al-Marri.
DXer said
I have no idea what the midwest water supply investigation concerns but I doubt it relates to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda likely wouldn’t see any PR value in messing with a fire hydrant in Topeka. Although in 2002 there was an incident involving a localized water supply in Rome and, as I recall, cyanide. But that involved targeting an facility where the operatives thought there were IC personnel.
The Kansas Water Office chief was in the news recently upon his relief from prison.
Former Kansas Water Office chief paroled after decade in prison
September 30
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — A former Kansas official has been paroled after serving more than 10 years for kidnapping, burglary and sodomy.
Sixty-six-year-old Alan LeDoux, who headed the Kansas Water Office, was sentenced in 2003 for breaking into the Topeka home of one of his wife’s relatives and attacking the woman.
LeDoux was released on parole Friday under supervision in Jackson County. The Holton resident had pleaded guilty to the charges stemming from the 2002 attack. He was sentenced to 12 years and three months and entered prison in June 2003.
LeDoux was director of the state’s water policy agency from 1995 until he was placed on leave following his 2002 arrest. He had also been a top aide to former Republican governors Bill Graves and Mike Hayden.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/09/30/4520433/fromer-kansas-water-office-chief.html#storylink=cpy
http://cjonline.com/stories/050303/loc_ledoux.shtml
DXer said
In a declassified 16-page document filed in April 2006, the government described Peoria, Illinois resident Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri as an important Al Qaeda operative. Investigators eventually concluded he was the most important in the United States. The government say he met Osama bin Laden and was chosen by Khalid Sheik Mohammed to help other operatives conduct attacks, hack into computers, or deliver poisons. President Bush said the intelligence community believes that among Marri’s potential targets were “water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange and United States military academies.” KSM thought that the fact he was a father of five would help in blend in better than a single man. He reportedly trained at an Al Qaeda camp for up to 19 months during the years 1996 to 1998. Allegations included the grandiose goal that Al Marri was to seek to hack into the US banking system, and “to wipe out balances and otherwise wreak havoc with banking records in order to damage the U.S. economy.” KSM and Bin Laden planned for Al-Marri to be a “point of contact for al Qaeda operatives arriving in the United States.” KSM had met with Ali’s brother, Jarallah al-Marri, in late summer 2001 and told him of Ali’s U.S. activities. U.S. authorities officials allege that Al-Marri went to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. It was Al-Hawsawi’s laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it.
Al-Marri’s training included instruction in the use of toxins and poison at the Darunta camp near Jalalabad. Al-Marri had been calling numbers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to a filed complaint. Government sources say he was calling senior al-Qaeda operatives. He travelled to New York City about the same time as El-Shukrijumah and Dhiren Barot were casing financial institutions and casing NYC tourist helicopters. An oath was found on his computer: “Neither the United States nor anyone living in it will dream of security/safety before we live it in Palestine and before the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed,” and that God should “protect” and “guard” Usama Bin Laden.” Agents discovered that Al-Marri had created five e-mail accounts on September. 22, 2001 using a computer at Western Illinois University. The declaration by a member of the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism, dated September 9, 2004, provided his email addresses: William274@hotmail.com, Jefferson038@hotmail.com, Howard050@yahoo.com, Drake425@yahoo.com, and Kathy050@yahoo.com. There was as identical draft message in three of the accounts dated September 22, 2001 addressed to an account associated with KSM.
The draft stated:
“I hope every thing is ok with you and your family. I have started school ok. It is hard but I had to take 9 hours to meet the school standard. Me and my family are ok. I want to here [sic] from you soon can you contact me by email or on 701-879-6040
P.S.
I have tried to contact you at your uncle ottowa but I could not get in.”
Area code 701 is in North Dakota. Analysts determined that the number was a coded version of Al-Marri’s cellular number. Material is redacted that would reveal the code but it can be deduced. The area code in Macomb and Peoria, Illinois is 309. The simple code is 2 above 5 becomes 2 below 5. We can infer Al-Marri’s cellular number was 309-231-4060. (If you apply the same code to the zip code associated with the “Greendale School” return address, one comes up with Newton, Mass.; the FBI raided a posh hotel where two hijackers stayed in Newton the night before 9/11.)
Although his parents were Saudi, Al-Marri’s family had moved to Doha, Qatar. He was 17 when he came to the United States. He first studied computer science at a Spoon River College in Macomb, Illinois. The intensive english program at Western Illinois University attracted a lot of Middle Eastern students to the rural setting. He and his brother transferred to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. His brother later would be detained in Guantanamo, after being captured in Afghanistan. TheWashington Post reports that acquaintances remembered Ali as a “skinny, long-haired partygoer with a sense of humor.” He graduated in 1991 with a business degree and returned to Doha, Qatar. He told FBI agents he was in the US from 1983-1991. Back in Doha, he worked at the Qatar Islamic Bank and at the government audit bureau. Doha, Qatar was where future anthrax planners KSM and Mohammed Islambouli were given safe haven by the Qatar religious minister. In early 1996, in the midst of political turmoil involving Sheik al-Thani, who had ousted his father favored by fundamentalists, Al-Marri left for Afghanistan. In a court filing, Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official explained he went to train at a Bin Laden camp. KSM, too, had followed a similar path — first going to school in rural United States and then going to Doha, Qatar in the mid-1990s. By the mid-1990s, Mohammed had been involved in the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as well as Operation Bojinka in the Philippines. KSM worked in Doha for the government. He worked for the department that oversaw water works, where he may have learned something about poisoning a reservoir or localized water infrastructure.
Reporter Susan Schmidt, writing for the Washington Post, noted: “Mohammed and a group of militants found refuge on the outskirts of Doha, on a farm owned by the religious minister, according to the Sept. 11 commission. In 1996, as the FBI was closing in, Mohammed slipped out of the country for Afghanistan.” Rudolph Guiliani’s security firm advised the Qatar government on security matters and denies having tipped the government leader who then shared the information. Al-Marrireturned to Doha with the views of a hardened extremist. A former Qatari government official told The Washington Post that Al-Marri came home with CDs of al-Qaeda training lectures and propaganda — as well as a phony California driver’s license. The continuing investigation of a 1996 coup attempt directed at the reformist son who had usurped control from his father cost some of Al-Marri’s relatives their government jobs. His family returned to the Saudi desert. But although his wife and young children went to the Saudi desert, Al-Marri had other plans. Schmidt reports that in May 2000, he flew to Chicago from Dahmam, Saudi Arabia, using a fake passport and the name Abdullakareem A. Almuslam.
Al-Marri spent two months in Chicago. In July 2000, he then checked into Macomb, the farm town where he had first studied years earlier. He checked into the inexpensive Time Out Motel. Rm. 209 became the official address of the fictitious AAA Carpets that would receive money from the stolen credit cards. On August 17, 2000, he booked a flight to New York City. He called the imam of the Macomb mosque, a Saudi graduate student named Khalid al-Jaloud and asked for a ride to the Peoria airport. Jaloud told the Washington Post that he did not know the man and did not know where he was going. He nonetheless reportedly was glad to oblige. Dhiren Barot, who was pretending to be enrolled at the Mohawk Valley Community College in Upstate New York, was Al Qaeda’s chief operative in Great Britain. The Post investigative feature notes that Dhiren Barot was indicted in 2005 for casing the stock exchange and other financial targets. Journalist Susan Schmidt points out he had flown in from London the day before. Barot was arrested in Britain in 2004. He confessed to what the judge in the case called a plot of “colossal and unprecedented scale” to blow up London subway cars, detonate radioactive “dirty bombs” and use limousines packed with gas cylinders to destroy luxury hotels.
Al-Marri returned to Chicago for a few days and then returned to Saudi Arabia. The Macomb Imam told the Post, “He asked me to put a computer in my house,” I did not want to. He said he wanted to store stuff until he could bring his family back.” Jaloud continued: “A few weeks or a month or two later he started calling, wanting me to send it to Pakistan. He told me he is there.” He called two or three times and argued.” Jaloud said the request worried him. Finally, someone called and asked him to ship the computer to Washington. Jaloud reports that he did so at his own expense. Al-Marri re-entered the country on September 10, 2001, arriving in New York. He and his wife and kids made their way to their new hometown after an overnight stay in Chicago. Two days after 9/11, Al-Marri’s 6-year-old son was standing on the backseat. KSM’s idea that he would blend in even in rural Illinois because of 5 children had backfired. An officer stopped him. A check of his license turned up a 10-year-old warrant on a DWI charge. The Post explains that “groomed and polite,” he explained to the police officer he was back to study for his master’s degree in computer science. He was being taken to the station for booking when they stopped to drop the young boy off at the family’s room at the Time Out motel. Al-Marri makes the incredible mistake of opening a briefcase to pull out three hundred dollar bills from the bundles in a briefcase. “The briefcase was filled with bundles of hundreds.” The money was from the $13,000 Al-Hawsawi had given him in United Arab Emirates in August 2001.
That fall he travelled from Peoria to Macomb and pressed to be admitted to Western Illinois University’s intensive English program even though his English was fine. In applying, he would not provide a home address or sign the application. “He was a very pugnacious individual,” the administrator told the Post. He was calling students. A number of people reported him as acting suspicious in the heightened sensibilities after 9/11. One student from whom he sought help was the local mosque imam, graduate student Jaloud. Jaloud curiously reports that he did not remember him as the fellow he had taken to the airport 90 minutes away in the summer of 2000, or the fellow he had argued about shipping the computer, or the fellow who had then put him to the expense of shipping the computer to Washington. (Jaloud reports when questioned in 2005, he told the Saudis that he did not remember the address in Washington where he sent the computer.) Schmidt reports that although rural, the Islamic Center of Macomb “had come to the attention of intelligence and law enforcement agencies.” Before Marri could relocate to Macomb, the FBI’s Springfield office was advised by headquarters that an active phone number in their area was linked to the 9/11 plotters. A fedex mail receipt left at Dulles International had led them to a phone number associated with Hawsawi. The FBI learned that some calls to that number were made from cellphones and pay phones at odd hours of the night from Central Illnois by someone using prepaid phone cards. A call made on November 4 traced to Chicago matched Al-Marri’s visit there and a call on November 7 was made from his home phone. An intelligence official told the Washington Post journalist that when Mohammed Atef was killed in November 2001, “we found out there was a huge al-Qaeda interest in chemical and biological weapons. That prompted “a very energetic effort to identify people doing chem-bio.” The day after falsely denying he had called the number associated with al-Hawsawi, he was arrested and sent to New York in connection with a terrorism investigation there.
In December 2002, prosecutors expanded the charges against Al-Marri adding that he lied to the FBI when denied using pay phones in Chicago and Central Illinois to dial the number of KSM’s assistant, al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri had called the telephone number that Atta gave to Federal Express as the UAE telephone number as the point of contact for the recipient. Again, it was Al-Hawsawi’s laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it. Al-Hawsawi had received left-over funds from the hijackers shortly before 9/11. Al-Marri called al-Hawsawi’s number using a call card at a phone in Peoria on September 23, 2001, about a week after the first anthrax mailing. On October 14, about a week after the second anthrax mailing, he called al-Hawsawi’s number again. Three weeks after that, he allegedly tried to call two more times — this time from payphones in Chicago, including a payphone at a transient hotel on North Lincoln Avenue. He also called and spoke to someone in Houston who has not yet been publicly identified.
Al-Marri was separately charged with lying to agents about the trip he made to the U.S. in the summer of 2000. During that visit, he opened up three bank accounts for a fictitious business, AAA Carpets, at three different banks in Macomb, in southern Illinois. The accounts received funds from bogus credit card purchases. He was charged with using a stolen social security number in establishing the accounts. Al-Marri was working toward a master’s degree in computer information systems at Bradley when he was arrested in December 2001. He rarely attended classes and was failing.
The government’s indictment alleged:
“Computer audio files containing Arabic lectures by Usama bin Laden and his associates, concerning, among other things, the importance of jihad and martyrdom and the merits of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The lectures instructed, among other things, that Muslim scholars should organize opposition to Jewish and Christian control of “Palestine,” Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia; that ordinary Muslims should train in Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan by entering through Pakistan; and that clerics who claim that Islam is a religion of peace should be disregarded.”
President Bush designated him an “enemy combatant, after KSM was captured in the Spring of 2003 and identified Al Marri was one of the “second wave” plotters and facilitators whose name he revealed. Al-Marri’s research interest in one of the ingredients that would be used in attack using a “mobtakker” device on New York subways heightened interest in him further still. Authorities were especially concerned that Ayman Zawahiri had vetoed the idea pitched by Al Qaeda’s head in Saudi Arabia because Ayman had something bigger planned. The Post article quotes an intelligence official: “Since al-Marri was already in custody by then he couldn’t have been an active participant, but who he was in contact with might have led to the people who were involved in the plot.” One question that arises is: after al-Marri cased New York City targets, where in Washington did he have Jaloud ship the computer? Did the Washington Post mean Washington, D.C. or the State of Washington?
The Post article concludes by noting that despite the half decade of al-Marri’s custody, Al-Marri’s attorneys had never spoken to him about the specifics of the government’s claims. “We haven’t drilled down on those allegations. There’s no reason to. He’s not really charged with anything. He said he is innocent, he’s not a sleeper agent — at that point we left it at that.” On June 11, 2007, in al-Marri v. Wright, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the Military Commissions Act does not override al-Marri’s constitutional rights to challenge his accusers. The Court held ruled that al-Marri must be released from military detention and either freed or placed in US civilian detention where the federal government would have to charge him with crimes. In February 2009, shortly before the Supreme Court would ahve decided the question, the United States brought a general indictment against Al-Marri. Al-Marri’s attorneys have requested an extension of time so that they can become familiar with the facts bearing on the plea bargain he entered April 30, 2009. A lengthy investigative piece by Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post in July 2007 added intriguing detail to the declassified 16-page affidavit that detailed facts underlying the charges. Al-Marri trained under Egyptian Midhat Mursi. Mursi was a chemical engineer who graduated from Alexandria University. The Washington Post investigative feature mentions in passing that the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) contributed $10,000 to the Macomb, Illinois mosque with which Al-Marri was associated, according to documents filed in federal district court in a 2003 terrorism case. The Post reported that the documents show that several members of the Macomb mosque’s board had dealings with the group. When Mohammed Atef was killed in mid-November 2001, a review of his computer showed that Atef and Marri had “shared contacts.” Atef, was of course, was who Ayman was updating on his plans to weaponize anthrax. Former CIA director Tenet has said that the anthrax planning was compartmentalized at the highest levels of Al Qaeda.
All of the allegations in the article regarding the Islamic Center of Macomb in the Post article are false, the Center said in a statement. They never received a donation from IANA and to the “best of our knowledge,” the statement said, “none of the previous or current members of the Islamic Center Board have been a member of IANA.” Furthermore, the Center has never been investigated for terrorism as the article suggests. “We are unaware of the so-called reference to a 2003 terrorism case that was filed in a federal court,” the statement said. Marri never visited the mosque during his stay there, Mohammed Siddiqi, the former president of the Islamic Center, said. Ehsan Salman has been the Center’s treasurer for the last four years. At no time, he said, did he sit down for an interview with the Washington Post reporter nor was he contacted to do so. “I don’t know who she talked to or how she came up with that story about the Islamic Center of Macomb,” Salman said. Furthermore, Salman said the transactions are maintained regularly by the bank and there are records of all financial transactions. “All our donations are from members who utilize the service here or they are from the nearby communities who come and pray with us,” Salman said. (There are about 100 or 200 members of the mosque.)
Siddiqi pointed to the vagueness of the allegations in the Post article. “Several Muslim students raised concerns about financial irregularities [] according to local law enforcement, and college officials and a former student.” “What college office? And one former student, which former student?” Siddiqi explained “We knew about “(Marri) through news, through media, he never came to the Islamic Center.” (The center is also the address for the Muslim Student Association.) The statement further noted that “We very much doubt that Mr. Jaloud, [the young imam] who allegedly had few contacts with Mr. Marri, was aware of Marri’s intentions at that time,” the statement continued In 2009, Al-Marri was indicted in federal district court.
WIU Professor Siddiqui years ago founded the now-outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an Islamic fundamentalist organization, which advocates the “liberation of India” by converting it to an Islamic land. 147 million muslims in India, he notes, are not something that can be marginalized. SIMI was first banned shortly after 9/11. The SIMI was formed April 25, 1977. Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi was the group’s founding President. The group’s three core ideological concepts now are: Ummah, Caliphate and Jihad. SIMI is reportedly has been provided generous support from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). For as long as a decade before 9/11, it was suspected that WAMY served as a means of channeling public and private Saudi donations to hardline Islamic youth organiations such as SIMI. In the US, WAMY was headed by Bin Laden’s nephew Abdullah, who lived with his brother in Falls Church, Virginia. A BBC Newsnight show in November 2001 explained that a 1996 “FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him “because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.” The FBI sources leaking the information were complaining that investigation of the Bin Laden’s had been thwarted back in 1996.
SIMI believes that Osama bin Laden is an example of a true Mujahideen who has undertaken Jihad on behalf of the “ummah.” SIMI aims to restore the supremacy of Islam through the waging of Jihad. In August 2006, a formal ban was reiterated after a bombing in Mumbai that killed 200. A government spokesman claimed that SIMI continued to be involved in explosions, violence and inflammatory incitement throughout the country. After the Mumbai bombings, Professor Siddiqui, the SIMI founder, has explained that the group has strayed from its original purpose, which was education. He expressly repudiates the July 2006 Mumbai bombings and the group as unislamic. He once wrote the head of SIMI and urged that the fist on their stationery was not in keeping with the principles of the religion. Pakistani terrorist outfits such as Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) have had ties to SIMI.
In August 2007, an Egyptian doctor in Macomb who served the local university students with families testified during a hearing that he had been flagged as a suspected terrorist. He testifed that during a 2003 trip to Egypt he was detained at the airport and questioned. He had graduated from Cairo Medical School in 1986. Might this explain the reference to suspicion of terrorism in the passage in Schmidt’s article that Siddiqi disputes? The pediatrician, much beloved in the community by his patients, would treat the university students with families at no charge. The local Macomb doctor raised a claim of “selective prosecution” in connection with the State prosecuting him alleging fraud in connection with billing. At a preliminary hearing, a nurse practitioner indicated that Dr. Dabash had asked her in 2001 to fill in for him while he was away, out of the country. When Crim asked whether there would be a physician to “cover” for Dabash, Dabash said not. Crim refused to work without cover, noting that she wasn’t allowed to work unsupervised. Dr. Dabash then arranged for another physician to supervise Crim’s work. The biller for Dabash, who worked for him from January 2004 until after the charges were brought, told investigators that Dabash wanted nurse visits to be billed at the more expensive doctor visit rate, but that she refused to do that. He entered into a plea announced in September 2007 under which he agreed to repay $65,000. He subsequently has announced that he was leaving the community. A webpage by supporters reports that’ the Department of Homeland Security did an exhaustive investigation of the doctor’s business and personal life. The page explains: “After hundreds of hours, thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars spent, and the use of the full resources of the federal government, their finding: absolutely no evidence that Dr. Khaled Dabash was ever involved in, motivated by, or even politically or culturally aligned with the type of person who would even possbly fit a profile of a terrorist.”
Professor Siddiqui told the Washington Post in May 2003 that after the World Trade Center bombing, the media tended to unfairly stereotype muslims. A week after 9/11, he has explained, that he found himself sitting across an FBI agent. Professor Siddiqui explained in a presentation “Muslims and Islam in America: 9/11 and After”: “Some of the questions were such that the agent himself laughed while asking. For example, he asked, ‘Are you a terrorist.’” He sat with the FBI agent for two hours at the University Union. Siddiqi said in the first month (after Sept. 11) more than 2,000 Muslims were arrested and their basic civil liberties were violated. As for many of those detained after 9/11, “Most of them still don’t know what their crime is, except the investigation continues. This is a disturbing element, because if tomorrow I am charged with collaborating with terror, my family cannot know for months where I have gone.” He came to the US in 1980 to get his masters and PhD in mass communication. Throughout his career he has taken a lot of interest in how muslims and islam are portrayed in American newspapers and television networks. At a 2001 media workshop he was conducting in Bangalore that a number of SIMI members attended and wanted to have a separate session with him. He told them “the greatest jihad is to learn Islam and to practice it and to present it to other people.” He is a founding member of secretary general of the North American Association of Muslim Professionals and Scholars.
Siddiqi recalled hearing about the first plane flying into World Trade Center while driving to Western. By the time he reached his office, the second plane had already hit. He was sitting in his office when the mayor of Macomb called to assure him that the small number of Muslims in Macomb need not feel helpless.’ “It was reassuring to have support from the community and university,” Siddiqi added. On December 12, 2001, at the request of the Joint Task Force in New York who had discovered Al-Marri’s calls to KSM’s assistant al-Hawsawi, Al-Marri was arrested. It was not until nearly a half decade later that a 16-page affidavit detailed the reasons he was being detained. In his speech, Siddiqui emphasized that there was no relationship between what was done by the Muslims who hijacked the planes and what Islam is. “As Muslims, we are against any act of violence or terror aimed at innocent people. In our effort to make this world a peaceful and safer place, we have to establish justice. Peace cannot be established without justice.”
DXer said
Young Canadian Mohamed Mansour Jabarah was the courier and connection between Karachi and Kuala Lumpur. In 2002, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) delivered the former St. Catharines man to U.S. authorities, upon his written consent. St. Catherines is near Niagara Falls. He had been arrested in Oman, Jordan in June 2002, after being implicated in the plot to bomb American and Israeli embassies in Singapore. He was first taken to Brooklyn where he has been questioned by the FBI. Khalid Mohammed reports that Bin Laden was reportedly said to value Jabarah’s fluent English and his clean Canadian passport. He served as a go-between between the leaders in Karachi and operatives in Kuala Lumpur, and had a leadership role in a bombing plot there. He was let out of jail and while cooperating, lived with some FBI agents. After he learned that a childhood friend was killed in an attack on US Marines in Kuwait, he vowed to kill his captors. In a search of his room, agents found he had a plan for a steak knife that did not involve cutting his porterhouse. Authorities also found pictures of bin Laden, maps of Fort Dix, documents about New York’s drinking water supply and letters that lamented the fall of the Taliban and railed against America. The reference to New York’s drinking water supply brings to mind KSM’s plot to poison a reservoir in Upstate New York. Bloomberg explains: “He also had a U.S. Army memo describing New York City’s drinking water system, a map of the city’s water supply and testing results.”
Jabarah spent 3 weeks living with KSM in August 2001. KSM taught him how to travel and conduct surveillance in stealth mode. Jabarah was a go-between Khalid Mohammed in Karachi and Hambali in Kuala Lumpur. He delivered the money for the bombing attacks planned for Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Arrested in March 2002, he had joined Al Qaeda in May 2001. In his interrogation, the Catholic-schooled youth said that KSM had asked him to “go to Malaysia to meet with individuals who were planning an operation against the US and Israeli embassies in the Philippines.” KSM told the young man that he must leave Karachi to deliver the money to Hambali, Al Qaeda’s point man in Southeast Asia and the military chief for Jemiah Islamiyah, before September 11. He flew out to deliver the money on September 10, 2001. The picture of his home in St. Catherines, Ontario, brings to mind the movie “Arlington Road” about the terrorist who lived next door. In January 2008, Jabarah was sentenced to life in prison. His father urged that since 2002, when he made those private notes about how he would seek revenge against the agents and prosecutors, and would kill until killed, he has reformed. Jabarah’s father said he had taken an interest in biology and medicine and was applying himself to his studies.
KSM identified Majid Khan and Aafia Siddiqui as Al Qaeda operatives. KSM allegedly asked former Maryland resident Majid Khan to research contaminating a reservoir. What contaminant would have been used? Anthrax? Cyanide? Was it cyanide such as the thwarted attack against the US embassy in Rome in 2002? Some identified chemical intended to be smuggled in using the Paracha shipping container? Would the koran permit such indiscriminate murder of innocents? A recent study shows that anthrax is resistant to chlorine, but the officials typically think anthrax would be ineffective given the dilution. In February 2003, Majid Khan had met with Uzair Paracha and someone described as a “chemistry professor.” Paracha and his father Saifullah had meetings with al-Qaeda members Majid Khan and senior operative Ammar al-Baluchi, who about that time married Aafia. In the prosecution of Uzair Paracha, the AUSA said Aafia Siddiqui was willing to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. She opened up a P.O. Box to facilitate Majid Khan’s reentry into the country. Did she know Majid Khan? What was the name of the relatives — a cousin and an uncle — that introduced Majid Khan to KSM? His father said it was a relative but more distant than “uncle.” What was the name of the “local Islamic organization” with which Majid Khan was affiliated? Was it the same party associated with Abdul Qudus Khan? The Washington Post reports that “Khan also is accused of delivering money to an operative for Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian extremist group affiliated with al-Qaeda.”
New water-surveillance systems are being tested that promise to detect biological attacks more quickly and accurately than is possible today. Ever since the anthrax mailings, the Homeland Security Department has been concerned about the risk that public water supplies will be poisoned. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Cincinnati, and Argonne National Laboratory have paired up with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop the Water Sentinel Program: software that monitors municipal water systems. It is being tested in Albuquerque.