* Catherine Herridge’s NEXT WAVE: Anwar Awlaki, Ali Al-Timimi and why FBI Agent Wade Ammerman wanted to allow Anwar Awlaki to meet with Ali Al-Timimi in October 2002

******

******

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Herridge in her book out today reports her search for answers as to why the arrest warrant for Anwar Awlaki was rescinded in October 2002 at the same he was stopped at JFK upon entering the country.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.”

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.”