* Amerithrax: Hazmi and Mihdhar Timeline
Posted by DXer on January 30, 2012
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Posted by DXer on January 30, 2012
This entry was posted on January 30, 2012 at 8:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: *** 2001 anthrax attacks, *** Amerithrax, *** FBI anthrax investigation, Hazmi and Mihdhar Timeline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks?
DXer said
In approaching an analysis of the means, motive, opportunity and modus operandi of the anthrax mailings, if the FBI had created a timeline for Dr. Ivins before his suicide, they would have discovered that he had a group therapy session on the night that they alleged he travelled to mail the Fall 2001 antharx letters.
He had no “opportunity.” Establishing his whereabouts those evenings was a greater priority than determining the DNA on the panties taken from his garbage.
It was only after Dr. Ivins’ death that the FBI acknowledged and confirmed he went to his group therapy session the evening of 9/17 on 10/8 — just as he had claimed. Why didn’t they corroroborate and acknowledge such a critical fact sooner?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 11, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/it-was-only-after-dr-ivins-death-that-the-fbi-acknowledged-and-confirmed-he-went-to-his-group-therapy-session-the-evening-of-917-on-108-just-as-he-had-claimed-why-didnt-they-corroroborate/
DXer: The big picture may seem complicated. But, most simply, Dr. Ivins in fact had an alibi on 9/17. That was when his group therapy met.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 22, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/dxer-the-big-picture-may-seem-complicated-but-most-simply-dr-ivins-in-fact-had-an-alibi-on-917-that-was-when-his-group-therapy-met/
from DXer … Dr. Bruce Ivins had group therapy sessions scheduled on both September 17, 2001 and on October 8, 2001, the same dates the FBI says he was mailing the anthrax letters
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 9, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/from-dxer-dr-bruce-ivins-had-group-therapy-sessions-scheduled-on-both-september-17-2001-and-on-october-8-2001-the-same-dates-the-fbi-says-he-was-mailing-the-anthrax-letters/
While a timeline created for Dr. Ivins traces back to proof of his alibi that evening, a timeline of key hijackers Hazam and Mihdar traces backs to Anwar Awlaki and Al Qaeda lab director Yazid Sufaat. A timeline of Atta, if information were not compartmentalized and hidden, would have traced back to anthrax mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah.
In February 2003, the FBI announced that “Jafar the Pilot” (aka Adnan El-Shukrijumah) had entered the country sometime after September 1, 2001
Posted by Lew Weinstein on September 26, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/in-february-2003-the-fbi-announced-that-jafar-the-pilot-aka-adnan-el-shukrijumah-had-entered-the-country-sometime-after-september-1-2001/
DXer said
DXer said
Graeme MacQueen writes in “2001 Anthrax Deception” (Clarity, 2014) at page 136:
“There were more than two Hijackers involved in the Irish affair. Nawaf al-Hazmi was said to have accompanied his two fellow Hijackers, as well as Irish, on their search for housing.15 And once the two apartments were found, two Hijackers settled down in each one, making the apartments found by Irish home to four Hijackers.16 The Delray Racquet Club apartment at 755 Dotterel Road, one of the two apartments, was a site of serious federal investigation. According to an October 15, 2001 article by the St. Petersburg Times:17
The Delray apartment is central to a massive federal investigation into the terrorist attacks. Investigators trying to piece the puzzle together created a diagram that includes photos of the 19 hijackers who seized control of four airplanes on Sept. 11. At the center of the diagram, which was obtained by the Miami Herald: an image of a house with the address 755 Dotterel Road. Arrows connect nine of the hijackers to the icon.
The St. Petersburg Times posed the question: “It is clear that the apartment was a meeting ground for terrorists, authorities say. Now they must determine whether unit 1504 was also a hatching ground for the anthrax attacks.”18
Nawaf, you may rcall, had been at the terror summit at the Kuala Lumpur condo meeting of Al Qaeda anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat. Sufaat and Hambali were travelling and recruiting for the anthrax lab in 2000.
See also
1. NSA ORCON: CIA and FBI Dropping the Ball In Anthrax Mailings and 9/11 Involved Same Failure To Track And Intercept Al-Midhar And Nawaf After Meeting At Kuala Lumpur Condo Of Anthrax Lab Tech Sufaat and Anthrax Planner Hambali
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 27, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/nsa-orcon-cia-and-fbi-dropping-the-ball-in-anthrax-mailings-and-911-involved-same-failure-to-track-and-intercept-al-midhar-and-nawaf-after-meeting-at-kuala-lumpur-condo-of-anthrax-lab-tech-sufaat/
2. The dropping of the ball relating to Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi’s entering the country after the meeting at the KL condo of the anthrax lab tech was closely related to the detention and release of Jdey at the time of Moussaoui’s arrest.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 7, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/the-dropping-of-the-ball-relating-to-al-mihdhar-and-al-hazmis-entering-the-country-after-the-meeting-at-the-kl-condo-of-the-anthrax-lab-tech-was-closely-related-to-the-detention-and-release-of-jde/
3. Atta Was Coordinating With Jdey’s Associate Al-Hazmi, First In Fort Lee, NJ In Late August 2001 And Then In Laurel, MD in September 2001 ; Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi Had Been At The Planning Meeting At Yazid Sufaat’s Kuala Lumpur Condo With Anthrax Planner Hambali And Anthrax Lab Director Yazid Sufaat And Yet The FBI Never Told The Public That Jdey Had Been Detained Along With Moussaoui In August 2001 (With Biology Textbooks) And Then Released
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/atta-was-coordinating-with-jdeys-associate-al-hazmi-first-in-fort-lee-nj-in-late-august-2001-and-then-in-laurel-md-in-september-2001-jdeys-associate-nawaf-al-hazmi-had-been-at-the-planning/
4. In Late August 2001, Atta Went With Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi From The Fort Lee, NJ Main Street Location That The Particulate Mixer Had Been Delivered To Laurel, MD Where The FBI Later Has Atta On Film At KINKOS Copying; Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi Had Been At The Planning Meeting At Yazid Sufaat’s Kuala Lumpur Condo With Anthrax Planner Hambali And Anthrax Lab Director Yazid Sufaat
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/in-late-august-2001-atta-went-with-jdeys-associate-nawaf-al-hazmi-from-the-fort-lee-nj-main-street-location-that-the-particulate-mixer-had-been-delivered-to-laurel-md-where-the-fbi-later-has-a/
DXer said
Graeme MacQueen writes in “2001 Anthrax Deception” (Clarity, 2014) at page 137
The Washington Post explained that, according to Orihuela, “there is no indication that Gloria Irish’s work with the suspected hijackers is connected to the anthrax case.”23 Although Orihuela said hopefully that, “I’m sure there will be some sort of follow- up,”24 the coincidence theory remains to this day the FBI’s choice.
But the coincidence theory is not credible. In addition to other links to be explored in this chapter, there are obvious facts about the spatial congruence just explored that cannot be ignored. Many Hijackers lived, at one time or another, in this vicinity. “Six of them had addresses in Delray Beach or Fort Lauderdale, a few miles from the AMI building where the Sun was published.”25 AMI employees are said to have gone to the same gym as Atta.26 In addition, two of the Hijackers were reported to have taken out subscriptions to publications of AMI, where Stevens worked.27 Mike Irish, a licensed pilot, was a former member of the Civil Air Patrol based at Lantana airport, the same airport where Atta supposedly rented a plane in August, 2001.28Anthrax victim Stevens lived in Lantana.29
Academic researchers have largely tended to dismiss the Florida connections by accepting the FBI’s coincidence theory. Jeanne Guillemen comments in her 2011 study:
Bureau agents had put enormous energy into testing the terrorists’ cars, personal possessions, and apartments for any signs of B. anthracis and found nothing. Coincidences abounded in Florida—al Qaeda operatives had rented an apartment through a real estate agent married to the editor of The Sun—but no evidence of a foreign source for the letters had surfaced.30
DXer said
Up to page 137, I haven’t noticed any indication that Graeme MacQueen in his “2001 Anthrax Deception” realizes that the Yazid Sufaat was working on anthrax lab in Kandahar, Afghanistan rather than Florida, United States. He has copious citations at the end of his lucidly written chapters. It seems, therefore, that the omission is intentional and part of a misguided propaganda effort. Politics, however, should have no role in true crime analysis. Ironically, the same woman, Tara O’Toole, who he libels by suggesting that Dark Winter was evidence of participation in 911 and anthrax attacks, is the one who pointed out that the hijacker coming from Kandahar had a blackened leg lesion.
That constitutes true crime analysis. Graeme might try an approach that follows the evidence on and off the plane — taking the airplane right up to and off the gate.
Yazid Sufaat’s lab was at Kandahar. The crates had been delivered in May 2001 — prior to that, Yazid Sufaat was working on the project at Omar Hospital. A fellow named Ahmed Al-Haznawi was at Kandahar until June 2001 when he flew to Florida.
Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. “No one is dismissing this,” said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. He had traveled with al Shehri from Dubai, United Arab Emirates via London-Gatwick, England to Miami, Florida. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda’s Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States).
Dr. Tara O’Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins, now head of biosecurity at Homeland Security, concluded it related to exposure to anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, and National Academy of Sciences anthrax science review panel member, explained: “The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he’s not an addict and doesn’t have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious.” Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that ” in 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.” Now that Kandahar reportedly is where the extremely virulent anthrax was located, it makes it more likely that the Johns Hopkins people were correct that the lesion was cautions anthrax.
At the time, CBS reported that “U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthrax.” But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that “Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said.” Only years later did author Suskind claim that in fact there was extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the Johns Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated after Hambali’s interrogation in Jordan.
DXer … questions about 911 hijacker’s anthrax leg lesion
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 10, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/dxer-questions-about-hijackers-leg-lesion/
Is the Flight 93 Hijacker discussed in the NAS report the same fellow who had the leg lesion Homeland Security biosecurity head Tara O’Toole thought consistent with anthrax?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 18, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/is-the-flight-93-hijacker-discussed-in-the-nas-report-the-same-fellow-who-had-the-leg-lesion-homeland-security-biosecurity-head-tara-otoole-thought-consistent-with-anthrax/
Tara O’Toole, the undersecretary for biosecurity at Homeland Security Department, says that the FBI did not establish that the anthrax came from USAMRIID but that it was merely the FBI’s “working hypothesis” and a “supposition”
Posted by Lew Weinstein on October 13, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/tara-o’toole-the-undersecretary-for-biosecurity-at-homeland-security-department-says-that-the-fbi-did-not-establish-that-the-anthrax-came-from-usamriid-but-that-it-was-merely-the-fbis/
DXer said
At page 139, Graeme MacQueen does reach the issue:
“In addition to the crop-duster scenarios discussed later in this chapter, The New York Times published a story of a Hijacker with a mysterious black lesion on his leg, later judged by some experts to have been cutaneous anthrax.33 (The chief experts in this case were associated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense, one of the co-sponsors of the Dark Winter simulation.34) The same article reported a Hijacker looking for relief from irritation of the hands, supposedly resulting from his work with chemicals needed for the production of bioweapons.35 There was a report of Hijacker corporeal remains, after the alleged crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11, testing positive for anthrax,36 and a separate report of an al-Qaeda facility in an “overseas site” that tested positive for anthrax.37 All of these reports were used to link the 9/11 attacks to the anthrax attacks. Considered important evidence at one time, the reports are now passed over in silence.
Ha! The fellow passing over these reports about the Kandahar lab, to include the report in Science about the DNA finding for Ames, is Graeme.
The fellow who I haven’t seen use the name Yazid Sufaat is Graeme MacQueen.
On the red hands, I think the best evidence is that it relates to creating the home-made spray used by the hijackers.
By way of some background, shortly before 9/11, Atta went to a pharmacy with red hands, as if he had been working with bleach or detergent. Delray Beach, Florida pharmacist Greg Chadderton explained:
“There are two fellows, well dressed, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help them. And the one fellow turned over to me and he showed me his hands, and he said “They’re itching and they’re burning, do you have a cream for this?” His hands were red from this area down (indicating from wrist down) on both of his hands, they were red. Not the normal colour you and I would have from just being like this, but they were red. They weren’t blistering – they were simply red. They were red as if you had taken your hands and dunked them in a bucket of perhaps bleach or something. But they weren’t red on this side (backs of hands) where you would think. That’s what puzzled me, it was very perplexing that this side (palms?) was all red, it was almost as if he had touched something like this.”
He was given a cream called acid mantle. The explanation I favor is that it was just a latex allergy from wearing gloves. Maybe his red hands related to use of gloves while making a gas or spray later used to subdue passengers such as the red pepper spray introduced as an exhibit in the Moussaoui trial.
There is another disturbing, less likely possibility. The late Midhat Mursi aka Abu Khabab, the chemist helping Zawahiri with his Zabadi, or Curdled Milk, project, worked with a chemical additive for his pesticide/nerve agent. It increased absorption into the skin. Saponin, a natural detergent, is used for that purpose in a variety of commercial contexts. In late 2002, a plot was foiled when an attempt to purchase 1100 pounds of saponin was noticed by a chemical company and stopped. Authorities are not talking. A final even more remote possibility for Atta’s red hands concerns the use of chlorine bleach to decontaminate anthrax.
But the anthrax lab was in Kandahar rather than Florida. My Facebook Friend Yazid Sufaat had been working at Omar Hospital prior to May 2001. By May 2001 the crates of equipment he had gathered were shipped to the new lab at Kandahar. He was being helped by a Yemeni microbiologist Saeed Mohammed in Karachi was was rendered early on. Yazid Sufaat does not deny Al Qaeda’s responsibliity for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. He pleads the Fifth Amendment.
Before his recent arrest, Yazid Sufaat declined to tell DXer the strain of the “anthrax spore concentrate” harvested July 4, 2001
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 29, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/before-his-recent-arrest-yazid-sufaat-declined-to-tell-dxer-the-strain-of-the-anthrax-spore-concentrate-harvested-july-4-2001/
Marwan Hadid al-Suri, who was assisting Yazid Sufaat at Omar Hospital in May 2001 and then helped set up the anthrax lab in Kandahar later that month, was killed in 2006 in northwestern Pakistan. Marwan al-Suri, 38, was said to be a close aide of al-Qaida No. 2 Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Posted on May 15, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/marwan-hadid-al-suri-who-was-assisting-yazid-sufaat-at-omar-hospital-in-may-2001-and-then-helped-set-up-the-anthrax-lab-in-kandahar-later-that-month-was-killed-in-2006-in-northwestern-pakistan-m/
Mohammed Ahmad Rabbani was one of two who Khalid Mohammed (KSM) used to help Atef and Sufaat moving a roomful of crates purchased in Pakistan to Kandahar for the Al Qaeda anthrax program. KSM’s assistance had been sought by Abu Harith al-Masri.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 6, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/mohammed-ahmad-rabbani-was-one-of-two-who-khalid-mohammed-ksm-used-to-help-atef-and-sufaat-moving-a-roomful-of-crates-purchased-in-pakistan-to-kandahar-for-the-al-qaeda-anthrax-program-ksms-as/
Abdul Rabbani Abu Rahman was the other fellow who KSM tasked to move the crates with biological equipment for Al Qaeda’s anthrax program
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 6, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/abdul-rabbani-abu-rahman-was-the-other-fellow-who-ksm-tasked-to-move-the-crates-with-biological-equipment-for-al-qaedas-anthrax-program/
DXer said
I am not going to address pages about 9/11 from 140-149. Graeme says he is often approached by strangers on the street who accost him and say his ideas are “nutty” and “outrageous.” That’s my view.
Am I always looking to obtain and read contemporaneous documents,? Absolutely.
That is why production of the documents of the investigation in Florida are so important — as well as the release of the 28 pages in the “Joint Inquiry.”
The Sarasota documents, when produced, will point to Adnan El-Shukrijumah, and not Tara O’Toole.
Graeme should get a f—— clue.
Picking up the story at page 150, Graeme writes:
“7. Intelligence connections
Early reports after 9/11 noted that some of the Hijackers had spent time in San Diego. The San Diego Union- Tribune gave details on September 16, 2001, noting:76
Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Friday night sifted through belongings left behind by Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who rented a room from September through December last year [2000] in the Lemon Grove home of prominent Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh.
Elaborating on the nature of the San Diego host, the Union-Tribune explained: “The retired San Diego State University English professor said he often invites students to live in his five-bedroom house for companionship and to learn other cultures and languages.”
Shaikh, who had “deep ties to San Diego,” was said to have become “fond of Alhamzi”. (Recall that Nawaf al- Hazmi, also known as Alhamzi, apparently accompanied Irish, al-Shehhi and al-Ghamdi on their later apartment hunting in Florida.) Outraged “after hearing his former house guests identified as terrorists in a radio news report,” Shaikh contacted the FBI.
Exactly one year later, September 16, 2002, the American public discovered how easy it must have been for Shaikh to contact the FBI. He had been a trusted FBI asset for years. “The connection just discovered by congressional investigators,” said Newsweek, “has stunned some top counterterrorism officials.”77
Neither the officials nor the media seem to have remained stunned for long, apparently accepting the theory that the odd circumstance was simply a result of poor communication. The FBI did not allow Shaikh to testify before the 9/11 Congressional inquiry.”
Former 911 “Joint Inquiry” Chairman Bob Graham is the one leading the choir. I am hoping he runs for President. He was the head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and also later the WMD Commission that discussed Al Qaeda’s work with anthrax (“Agent X”). He is joined, for example, by former 911 Commission Chairman THomas Kean. There is a massive amount of documents that should be released so that the fullest possible history can be written.
DXer said
Here is an August 2014 public television interview of former Senator Bob Graham.
http://video.wpbt2.org/video/2365310648/
There are two strands emphasized by former Senator Graham: San Diego and Sarasota.
The 28 pages in the “Joint Inquiry” report relate to San Diego. Graham has seen them — his group wrote them based on their extensive investigation.
8,000 pages withheld by the FBI relating to Sarasota, which for this blog’s purposes relate in part to El-Shukrijumah.
Someone else is going to have to tell you about the R&D Saudi head at University of Michigan and what prompted his return to Saudi Arabia. The controversy was kept private.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
“Classified pages of a 9/11 report may implicate key U.S. ally,” PBS, September 11, 2014
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/classified-pages-911-report-may-implicate-key-u-s-ally/
DXer said
The 9/11 Commission was chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) co-led the official Congressional inquiry into the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, known as the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. “
The Congressional investigation supplemented the “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” also known simply as the 9/11 Commission.
The 28 pages is from the Graham-led inquiry.
But for Kean’s part, for example, he says there are many additional documents that are being withheld that should be released.
DXer said
Source: Feds’ search intensifies for New Yorkers with jihadist intentions, domestic terror goals
Updated September 10, 2014 10:09 PM
By KEVIN DEUTSCH
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/source-search-by-feds-for-new-yorkers-with-jihadist-intentions-and-domestic-terror-goals-intensifies-1.9281994
“they are also conducting surveillance and monitoring phone and email communications of people they suspect have made contact with known jihadists.”
Comment:
I had written exchanges with Yazid Sufaat, Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab director. He is the fellow who says that 911 was marketing islam.
In response to my questioning, he pled the Fifth Amendment as to whether Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax attacks.
I think I forwarded screen shots of each and everyone of the communications to my friend, the federal undercover who did these graphics featured on Lew’s blog. (I wanted to avoid getting in any trouble or to cause any misunderstanding; before that, I also would contact the first anthrax lab director Rauf Ahmad periodically to try to get a substantive interview).
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
To promote government accountability and transparency, and to learn from history:
First, I think the district court judge in Florida should order as wide a production of the documents relating to El-Shukrijumah as possible. (FWIW, Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father was a missionary for the Saudi government; he was a translator for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman in Brooklyn.)
Second, I think GAO should do all it can to promote the widest disclosure as possible. Under its procedural rules it has the right to upload transcripts of the interviews it conducts. GAO also can encourage the FBI to provide the documents relating to the other forensic methods under FOIA; the majority of documents relating to the scientific methods used has not been released yet.
Third, I think the White House should release the 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry Report about help that the hijackers received in the US. The redactions currently considered should be removed.
Fourth, in the Ali Al-TImimi case, I think Judge Brinkema should err on the side of disclosure to the greatest extent possible. He was in contact with Bin Laden’s Saudi Sheik Al-Hawali about helping with the defense of Sufaat’s buddy Moussaoui. He shared a suite with the leading DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers.
My concern is not to make the Saudis feel awkward. (I don’t follow Mideast politics — just true crime.) Prince Bandar may already feel awkward enough about the transcript of his conversation with Sarkis Soghanalian that day at Benihanas that still hasn’t been disclosed. The helicopters he purchased for Iraq were equipped with quick-release spray drying mechanism. It was publicly announced by Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that they were going to be used for agricultural spray drying missions. (But the sale to the agriculture ministry was just a cover story). The indictment in Florida revealed that they were equipped with TOW missiles. Eric Nadler attended the trial and could share what he remembers.
My focus is merely to allow people to connect the dots regarding the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. Put simply, I think my Facebook Friend Yazid Sufaat, the Al Qaeda anthrax lab director, was involved.
Don’t be misled by his charm and his undeniable good looks.
As the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the top 911 Commission former Senator Graham says, if we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
Read Graham’s “Keys to the Kingdom” novel — which is 40% fiction, 40% nonfiction, and 20% a blend. He says he had to write a novel because the censors excised so much from his non-fiction book INTELLIGENCE MATTERS. For those who have followed Amerithrax all along, it was an interesting choice for the title’s name, to be sure. See Zelikoff quote.
Not being in the US government, nothing prevents me from connecting the dots.
I urge that Prince Bandar agree to release the 28 pages. As Prince Bandar has said, he cannot argue against any mistaken implications drawn from blank pages.
It is best simply to put it out there and explain and reconstruct what happened, who was involved and why etc.
DXer said
Soon-to-be-deported Bilal Philips would be a fascinating interview on these issues. In an interview, he once explained that he recruited members of the US military — he worked for Saudi Arabia. He spoke alongside Anwar Awlaki and Ali Al-Timimi in the summer of 2001.
He was good friends with Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father, Gulshair, the one-time translator for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Bilal once posted his kind regards upon the passing of the senior El-Shukrijumah. In a foreign language interview (on the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (“FBIS”) perhaps). He was quite forthright about his efforts to recruit US servicemen to jihad.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/911-imam-anwar-awlaki-spoke-alongside-anthrax-weapons-suspect-ali-al-timimi-in-england-in-august-2001/
One of the most unfounded arguments I’ve ever seen made in Al-TImimi’s defense was by defense counsel McMahon who once claimed that Al-Timimi did not know fellow Falls Church imam Anwar Awlaki. Ali Al-TImimi spoke alongside Anwar in July and August 2001 in Canada and the UK.
Background of deportation:
Philippines to deport Canadian imam accused of terror links
REUTERS AND STAFF
MANILA — The Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/philippines-to-deport-canadian-islamic-teacher-over-terror-links/article20509232/
The Philippines has become the latest country to kick out a controversial Canadian cleric whose orthodox Islamic teachings made him unwelcome in Britain, Germany, Australia and Kenya.
Bilal Philips lectures in the United Arab Emirates, but he regularly appears at events in Canada and was last year the imam of a Toronto mosque.
Philippine officials say he was reported to be “inciting and recruiting locals to conduct terrorist activities,” a top immigration official said on Wednesday.
Siegfred Mison, head of the Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration, said Mr. Philips, would be deported within the week after the bureau filed a complaint that he was an undesirable individual.
Police said Mr. Philips was also barred from entering the United States and Australia because his activities were considered a threat to national security.
***
Mr. Philips also says his phone number was in the address book of a man convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This, he says, explains why his name is among those in a lengthy list of unindicted people linked by U.S. prosecutors to the World Trade Center case.
A U.S. congressional committee heard in 2006 that Mr. Philips mentored Ali Al-Timimi, a Virginia man convicted in 2005 of inciting terrorism.
DXer said
In Saudi Arabia, Al-Timimi had been mentored by a Saudi-trained Canadian imam Bilal Philips. Philips was Al-Timimi’s Islamic Studies teacher at Manaret Riyadh High School in the early 1980s. Al-Timimi adopted Philips’ view that “The clash of civilizations is a reality,” and “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” Between 1991 and 1993, Philips relocated to the Mindinao, Philippines, where he taught at an islamic school. In 1993, according to an interview he gave in a London-based Arabic-language magazine interview, Philips ran a program to convert US soldiers to Islam stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Persian Gulf War. Philips was made a proselytization official by the Saudi Air Force. Philips followed up in the US, with telephone calls and visits intended to recruit the veterans as potential members of Bin Laden’s network. He enlisted assistance from others based in the U.S. and members of Islamic centers all over the US. These conversion specialists financed pilgrimages for US veterans and would later send Muslim clerics in the United States to their homes. Bilal Philips encouraged some converts from this program to fight in Bosnia in the 1990s. He enlisted WTC plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El to help him with the program. Hampton-El was associated with the Al-Kifah center in Brooklyn. Hampton-El in trial testimony described a meeting at the Saudi embassy in 1992 at which Philips gave him a list of US Army personnel to approach. Bilal Philips was named along with Osama bin Laden and Bin Laden brother-in-law Khalifa (and many others) as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial that sent the “blind sheik” to prison.
Bilal Philips explained these recruitment efforts to a London newspaper in Arabic (translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service) in an article titled “Jamaican-Born Canadian Interviewed on Islamic Missionary Work Among US Troops”:
“[redacted] used to coordinate with US intelligence. And, when Croatia closed its borders to Arab volunteers, there were a group of black Americans who completed their training and knew Islam through me. [Redacted] contacted Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and offered to use this group for sabotage acts inside the United States. The offer was made on the telephone, which apparently was tapped by US intelligence. Shaykh Umar replied by saying: ‘”Avoid civilian targets.’”
“This was the expression under which he was sentenced to life. After this conversation, [Redacted]took the group to an apartment that was known to US intelligence and bugged by listening devices and cameras. The group was along with the American who travelled with them. He was the one who mentioned my name during the interrogation after denying his knowledge of any sabotage plans inside the United States. He said that he trained the group to go to Bosnia and that he was converted to Islam through me. This was how my name was involved in this case.”
Bilal Philips was a good friend of Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father. Philips wrote in his guestbook on the family website his son created about learning Arabic: “He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Allaah. Was salaam, Bilal.” Adnan’s family website also contained a picture of another “unindicted co-conspirator” of the ’93 bombing, Siraj Wahhaj, who would speak as the same Falls Church mosque as Al-Timimi. Siraj Wahhaj would host Sheik Abdel-Rahman at Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn where two of the WTC bombers worshipped. Wahhaj was a character witness for Sheik Abdel-Rahman at his 1995 trial.
In a November 30, 2004 letter of appeal circulated in sympathetic circles in the US and the UK, Bilal Philips encouraged Muslims to assist Al-Timimi “financially, morally or politically.” The letter urged that “whatever the charges against him [Al-Timimi] may be, from an Islamic perspective they are false and contrived in order to silence the Da’wah to correct Islam.”
After completing his religious education in Saudi Arabia in Medina, Ali Al Timimi returned to the United States and received a second bachelor’s degree — this time in computer science at the University of Maryland, while also studying software programming at George Washington University. Timimi spoke at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1994. A senior al Qaeda recruiter, Abdelrahman Dosari, also spoke at three IANA conferences in the early 1990s. In December 1993, Al-Dosari (a.k.a. Shaykh Abu Abdel Aziz “Barbaros”) spoke on ‘Jihad & Revival” and exhorted young men to fight for their faith as Al-Timimi would later be accused of doing privately with young men in Virginia.
At the first annual IANA conference in 1993, scheduled speakers included Bilal Philips, Mohammed Abdul-Rahman from Afghanistan, Mohammad Qutb from Cairo, Gamal Sultan from Cairo, and Abu Abdel Aziz ‘Barbaros’ (Bosnia).
Mohammad Abdul-Rahman was the blind sheik’s son. The blind sheik would soon be sentenced for terrorism relating to WTC 1993 and the “Day of Terror” plot directed at NYC landmarks. In 2000, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a/k/a “Asadallah,” who is a son of Abdel Rahman, was sitting alongside Bin Laden and Zawahiri and was videotaped encouraging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.
Mohammad Qutb was Sayyid Qutb’s brother. Egyptian Mohammad Qutb, a renown scholar and activist, taught Bin Laden at university in Saudi Arabia, having emigrated to Saudi Arabia. In the 1970s, bin Laden was taught by Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Dr. Mohammad Qutb, and a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood member, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, who later would found Al Qaeda. Azzam’s ideas of non-compromise, violent means, and organizing and fighting on a global scale were central to Al Qaeda methods. Qutb, as al-Hawali’s teacher, also strongly influenced al-Hawali. Al-Hawali would be sent to prison in 1994.
Gamal Sultan was a former EIJ member who would seek to start a political party in 1999 with the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Kamal Habib. They sought to chart a nonviolent course (given the practical reality that the movement had been so infiltrated by the security forces). The blind sheik declined to endorse the venture. In 2000, on a trip to Pittsburgh, Gamal Sultan and his colleagues thought Pittsburgh reminded them of Kandahar given its rolling hills.
Abu Abdel Aziz ‘Barbaros’ was a well-known holy warrior and fundraiser from Saudi Arabia. In 1994, Abdel Aziz glorified jihad and praised the Pittsburgh magazine Assirat for its interest in holy war. He asked Assirat readers and in a 1995 update, to donate money for holy war. He lauded Dr. Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda. He explained jihad will continue till the day of judgment.” In 1996, he was detained as the primary suspect in the attack on the Dhahran barracks, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed. As explained by expert witness Evan Koehlmann at the trial of one of Al-Timimi’s assistant, Abu Abdul-Aziz Barbaros was celebrated in LET propaganda.
In 1995 Ali Al Timimi headed an IANA delegation to China together with IANA President Bassem Khafagi and Syracuse oncologist and IANA Vice Chairman Rhafil Dhafir. The IANA condemned the UN women’s rights conference as “an attack on Islam.” They urged Imams worldwide to tell Muslims about “the hidden agenda of this UN Conference, and how to foil the libertine and Westernization movements in the Islamic world.”
Salafist commentator Umar Lee has explained that in the early 1990s “the most dynamic part of the salafi movement in the DC-area were the students Sheikh Ali al-Timimi who in the 1990’s co-founded a very small group with a small office for an organization called the Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah. In early July 1994, cooperation with Al-Timimi’s Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah, Washington, D.C., IANA held its first annual summer camp in English in Frederick, MD (where the ponds were drained in the Amerthrax investigation). The theme of the camp was “Living the Shahadah in America.” This is what Sheikh Ali was teaching kids at the 1st Annual IANA Summer Camp at a Frederick, MD park:
“Reflections on the Meaning of Our Testimony of Faith: ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah” by Ali Al-Timimi.
***
“6 Wage Jihad in the Path of Allah
***
“Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and practice not the true religion (Islam), being of those who have been given the Scripture (the Jews and the Christians) — until they pay tribute readily and have been brought low. (The Qur’an 9:29)
The Prophet has said:
I am commanded to fight mankind till they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establish the prayers and pay the charity. When they do that they will keep their lives and their property safe from me.”
Did Bilal Phillip’s protege Ali Al-TImimi infiltration US biodefense — as Bilal had solicited US servicemen to do?
DXer said
Bilal Philips has issued this trenchant statement in his remarks.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF DR BILAL PHILIPS ON HIS ARREST IN PHILIPPINES
Guests September 13, 2014
http://muslimmatters.org/2014/09/13/official-statement-bilal-philips-arrest-philippines/
Over time I’m wrong in how I spell BP’s name about half the time, sometimes inserting a second “l” in Philips. I used to do the same with the country Philippines. I just recently mistakenly inserted a second “l” in hs last name, mistakenly recalling that is how he spelled it on his Facebook Page.
https://www.facebook.com/DrBilalPhilips
This is yet another example on the importance of linking and uploading the actual documents.
I think the background of former Florida Senator Bob Graham’s concerns is his understanding that terrorist groups organize “beads” on a necklace.
The head of intelligence for Egyptian Islamic Jihad had a document on his computer seized by the FBI that outlined principles of cell security that would be followed
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 22, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/the-head-of-intelligence-for-egyptian-islamic-jihad-had-a-document-on-his-computer-seized-by-the-fbi-that-outlined-principles-of-cell-security-that-would-be-followed/
On the substantive issues, here is a History Commons link for background with cited and lilnked sources. He was involved in recruiting US servicemen to the religion. Beyond that, his interviews are the best measure of what specifically he said, including his foreign language interviews translated by FBIS.
March-September 1991: Radical Imams and Saudi Government Convert Many US Soldiers to Islam; Some Later Fight in Bosnia
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=state_department_1
Bilal Philips. [Source: Lightuponlight.com]
Shortly after the end of fighting in the US-led Persian Gulf war against Iraq, the US allows the Saudi government to conduct a massive program to convert US soldiers still stationed in Saudi Arabia (see March 1991) to Islam. Huge tents are erected near the barracks of US troops and Saudi imams lecture the soldiers about Islam and attempt to convert them. Within months, about 1,000 soldiers, and perhaps as many as 3,000, convert to Islam. Some US officials express concern about the aggressive conversion effort and the long term implications it may have, but the program is not stopped. Radical imam Bilal Philips helps lead the conversion effort. He will later explain that a special team of fluent English speakers, some trained in psychology, was amply paid by the Saudi government to convert the soldiers. Converts had their pilgrimages to Islamic holy cities paid for and Muslim imams were assigned to follow up with them when they returned to the US. Philips is openly hostile to the US, saying such things as, “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” He will later note that some of his converts went to fight in Bosnia and others were the subject of terrorism probes in the US. [US CONGRESS, SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 10/14/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 11/2/2003] Philips will work with the Saudi government and one of the “Landmarks” bombers to send 14 Muslim ex-US soldiers to fight in Bosnia in 1992 (see December 1992). Listed as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing, he will be deported from the US in 2004.[AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/4/2007]
December 1992: Saudi Embassy Pays Radical Militants in US to Fight in Bosnia
Clement Rodney Hampton-El, one of the 1993 “Landmarks” bombers (see June 24, 1993), is summoned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and told that wealthy Saudis are sponsoring fighters in Bosnia. Hampton-El has longstanding links to the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which is closely tied to the Saudi government (see October 12, 2001). He is given $150,000 to recruit and train people in the US to fight in Bosnia. [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 121-122] He starts a militant training camp in Pennsylvania that same month (see December 1992-Early February 1993) and gets $150,000 overseas from a bin Laden linked charity front (it is not known if this is the same $150,000 or additional money) (see Late 1992-Early 1993). The Saudi embassy also introduces him to a radical imam named Bilal Philips. Philips, a Canadian citizen and author on Islamic topics, has been employed by the Saudi government since early 1991 to proselytize among US soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia (see March-September 1991). Philips gives Hampton-El a list of likely candidates who are ex-US soldiers that Philips recently helped convert to Islam. [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 121-122] That same month, 14 ex-US soldiers go to Bosnia to fight and train there (see December 1992-June 1993). They are led by double agent Ali Mohamed, who, like Hampton-El, is closely tied to the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in New York.
DXer said
Ex-Senator: FBI covered up 9/11 investigation
Mike Deeson, WTSP6:05 p.m. EDT September 10, 2014
Sarasota, Florida — On the eve of the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are now learning of allegations of a major FBI cover-up that connects Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers to the Saudi Arabian government. As 10 Investigates discovered, there is a growing chorus calling for the reopening of the 9/11 investigation and it is being led by one of Florida’s most influential leaders: former Senator Bob Graham.
***
There is a growing chorus calling for the reopening of the 9/11 investigation and it is being led by one of Florida’s most influential leaders: former Senator Bob Graham.
However, the president’s visit wasn’t the only thing to tie this Bay area county to the September 11th attacks. Within days, we learned three of the hijackers had been living in the area while taking flying lessons at Huffman Aviation and Florida Flight Training in Sarasota County… but there is even more than that.
“There was a network supporting the hijackers,” says former U.S. Senator and Florida governor Bob Graham.
***
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages
DAILY COMMENT
SEPTEMBER 9, 2014
The Twenty-Eight Pages
BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT
***
The story told in those twenty-eight pages picks up with the arrival of two young Saudis, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, in Los Angeles in January, 2000. They were the first wave of the 9/11 hijackers. Neither spoke English well, so their mission—to learn how to pilot a Boeing jetliner—seemed crazily improbable, especially if they had no assistance.
“In some ways, it’s more dangerous today,” Timothy Roemer, who was a member of both the Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission, observed. “A more complex series of threats are coming together than even before 9/11, involving ISIS, Al Qaeda, and cyber-terrorist capabilities. The more the American people know about what happened thirteen years ago, the more we can have a credible, open debate” about our security needs. Releasing the twenty-eight pages, he said, might be a step forward. “Hopefully, after some initial shock and awe, it would make our process work better. Our government has an obligation to do this.”
NSA ORCON: CIA and FBI Dropping the Ball In Anthrax Mailings and 9/11 Involved Same Failure To Track And Intercept Al-Midhar And Nawaf After Meeting At Kuala Lumpur Condo Of Anthrax Lab Tech Sufaat and Anthrax Planner Hambali
Posted on January 27, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/nsa-orcon-cia-and-fbi-dropping-the-ball-in-anthrax-mailings-and-911-involved-same-failure-to-track-and-intercept-al-midhar-and-nawaf-after-meeting-at-kuala-lumpur-condo-of-anthrax-lab-tech-sufaat/
In Late August 2001, When Atta Was In Fort Lee, NJ Planning 911 With Nawaf Al-Hamzi At 244 W. Main St., Did He Stumble Over The $100,000 Particulate Mixer That Had Been Delivered Just Feet Away At 215 Main St The Previous Month?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/in-late-august-2001-when-atta-was-in-fort-lee-nj-planning-911-with-nawaf-al-hamzi-at-244-w-main-st-did-he-stumble-over-the-100000-particulate-mixer-that-had-been-delivered-just-feet-away-at-2/
DXer said
1. NC congressman presses for release of censored 9/11 report pages
http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/09/nc-congressman-presses-for-release-of-censored-911.html
This week marks 13 years since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, but the public still does not have access to all the details of what happened — particularly those related to the involvement of foreign governments. That’s because President George W. Bush classified 28 pages of the official report related to Saudi connections to the attacks, citing national security concerns, and President Obama has allowed the classification to continue.
But U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has read the 28 pages — and he’s now working to get them declassified. Last year he introduced H. Res. 428 to release the pages and has the support of 11 of his House colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats. In the order they signed on, the resolution’s co-sponsors are Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Michael Grimm (R-NY), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Steve Stockman (R-TX), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Paul Broun (R-GA), Ted Yoho (R-FL), Charles Rangel (D-NY), John Duncan Jr. (R-TN), and Howard Coble (R-NC). Jones, Lynch, and Massie held a press conference this week draw renewed attention to declassification effort.
“The families of the victims deserve to know all the facts concerning that tragic day,” Jonessaid last December when he introduced the resolution. “Furthermore, the information contained in the redacted pages is critical to our foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American public.”
2. Atta Made the 911 Reservation With Nawaf Al-Hazmi At Yuricom; If No Cars Were Passing And He Had Been There A Month Or Two Earlier, He Could Have Seen The Particulate Mixer Being Delivered By The Delivery Truck
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 27, 2012https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/atta-made-the-911-reservation-with-nawaf-al-hazmi-at-yuricom-if-no-cars-were-passing-and-he-had-been-there-a-month-or-two-earlier-he-could-have-seen-the-particulate-mixer-being-delivered-by-the-de/
3. Atta Was Coordinating With Jdey’s Associate Al-Hazmi, First In Fort Lee, NJ In Late August 2001 And Then In Laurel, MD in September 2001 ; Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi Had Been At The Planning Meeting At Yazid Sufaat’s Kuala Lumpur Condo With Anthrax Planner Hambali And Anthrax Lab Director Yazid Sufaat And Yet The FBI Never Told The Public That Jdey Had Been Detained Along With Moussaoui In August 2001 (With Biology Textbooks) And Then Released
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/atta-was-coordinating-with-jdeys-associate-al-hazmi-first-in-fort-lee-nj-in-late-august-2001-and-then-in-laurel-md-in-september-2001-jdeys-associate-nawaf-al-hazmi-had-been-at-the-planning/
4. When The 9/11 Commission Reported That Jdey Had Been Part Of The “Planes Operation” Planning And Was Connected To Atef, Special Operations Planner Saif Adil, KSM, Lead Hijacker Atta, 9/11 Planner Binalshibh, And Key Hijacker Nawaf al Hazmi, Had The 9/11 Commission Been Told By The FBI That Jdey (With Biology Textbooks) Had Been Detained At Same Time As Moussaoui (With Cropdusting Material Scanned) And That Then Jdey Had Been Released? GAO: Has Amerithrax Been One Big “CYA” Operation From The Very Beginning? Was Jdey The Anthrax Mailer?
Posted on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/when-the-911-commission-reported-that-jdey-had-been-part-of-the-planes-operation-planning-and-was-connected-to-atef-special-operations-planner-saif-adil-ksm-lead-hijacker-atta-911-planner/
DXer said
I think instead Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the anthrax mailer. He visited the condo that is the subject of the FBI’s withholding of documents discussed by former US Florida Senator Graham.
DXer says: Adnan El-Shukrijumah is the anthrax mailer … on or about 9/13/2001, he phoned from KSM’s house to tell his mom he was coming to the US
Posted on June 6, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/dxer-adnan-el-shukrijumah-is-the-anthrax-mailer-on-9132001-he-phoned-from-ksms-house-to-tell-his-mom-he-was-coming-to-the-us/
DXer said
Text of Resolution Urging the president to release information regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the United States
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hres428/text
DXer said
1. Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham explains the importance of redacted 28 pages in the [911 Commission Report].
2. This article appears in the September 12, 2014 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Capitol Hill Press Conference
Slams Obama as a 9/11 Liar
by Jeffrey Steinberg and Edward Spannaus
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2014/4136pr_conf_slam_obm_9_11.html
“White House Responds to CNN
On Sept. 8, the issue of the 28 pages and President Obama’s failure to keep his promise to release them, was featured on CNN’s “The Lead” program, hosted by Jake Tapper—the first time in many years, if ever, that CNN has covered this story.
Tapper interviewed Bill Doyle, whose son was killed in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Doyle described his meeting with Obama in 2011, and then how, after Obama promised to release the 28 pages, Doyle told Obama: “You know something? I’m going to hold you to your word. And I’m not going away.” Later, Doyle declared flat-out, that Obama “broke his promise.”
The CNN story referenced Omar al-Bayoumi, who provided financial assistance to two of the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego, and noted that the 9/11 Commission believed him to be a Saudi intelligence agent.
Also quoted in the CNN report were Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Congressional Joint Inquiry, Tom Kean, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, and Rep. Walter Jones.
Tapper noted that the Saudis, 11 years ago, had said they did not object to release of the 28 pages, and the segment concluded with Tapper declaring: “Why the 28 pages remain hidden from the public, remains a mystery.”
Indicating that the Obama White House is feeling the pressure, shortly after the program aired, CNN reported that it had received a statement from National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden, which said: “Earlier this summer the White House requested that ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] review the 28 pages from the joint inquiry for declassification. ODNI is currently coordinating the required interagency review and it is ongoing.”
DXer said
For the purpose of the anthrax mailings, I consider this to be a key timeline.
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat’s lab tested positive for the Ames strain as did the remains of the hijacker who came from Sufaat’s Kandahar lab.
Amerithrax represents the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the United States — it is a continuation of the failure to to properly handle the Almihdhar and Alhazami leads. The intelligence failure, potentially, has greater consequences than 911.
FBI Director Mueller, who investigators say was fixated on Hatfill, should have known that microbiologist Yazid Sufaat was developing anthrax for Al Qaeda. It was as simple as obtaining his personnel file from the 1988-1991 period.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/693513/posts
He should not have allowed the FBI to botch the related Amerithrax leads or to allow Yazid Sufaat to go uncharged with the crime of developing WMD for a terrorist organization. The Director allowed Amerithrax to be closed on scant evidence supporting the FBI’s Ivins Theory — based on a memo (Amerithrax Investigative Summary) that did not cite the record evidence and was contradicted by the documents withheld by the DOJ and known to investigators and prosecutors. Director Mueller should now correct the missteps in analysis and set things back on course.
Amerithrax represents the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in the history of the United States.
The Hijackers We Let Escape
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2002/06/10/the-hijackers-we-let-escape.htmlThe Hijackers We Let Escape
Jun 9, 2002 8:00 PM EDT
In late December 1999, intercepted conversations on the Yemen phone tipped off agents to the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur summit, and to the names of at least two of its participants: Almihdhar and Alhazmi. The condo where the meeting took place was a weekend getaway owned by Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-educated microbiologist who had become a radical Islamist and bin Laden follower. He was arrested last December when he returned from Afghanistan, where he had served as a field medic for the Taliban. Sufaat’s lawyer says his client let the men stay at his place because “he believes in allowing his property to be used for charitable purposes.” But he claims Sufaat had no idea that they were terrorists.
After the meeting, Malaysian intelligence continued to watch the condo at the CIA’s request, but after a while the agency lost interest. Had agents kept up the surveillance, they might have observed another beneficiary of Sufaat’s charity: Zacarias Moussaoui, who stayed there on his way to the United States later that year. The Malaysians say they were surprised by the CIA’s lack of interest following the Kuala Lumpur meeting. “We couldn’t fathom it, really,” Rais Yatim, Malaysia’s Legal Affairs minister, told NEWSWEEK. “There was no show of concern.”
Immediately after the meeting, Alhazmi boarded a plane to Bangkok, where he met a connecting flight to Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000. Since the CIA hadn’t told the State Department to put his name on the watch list of suspected terrorists, or told the INS to be on the lookout for him, he breezed through the airport and into America. Almihdhar was also on the plane, though CIA agents did not know it at the time.
The CIA is forbidden from spying on people inside the United States. Had it followed standard procedure and passed the baton to the FBI once they crossed the border, agents would have discovered that Almihdhar and Alhazmi weren’t just visiting California, they were already living there. The men had moved into an apartment in San Diego two months before the Kuala Lumpur meeting.
The CIA’s reluctance to divulge what it knew is especially odd because, as 2000 dawned, U.S. law-enforcement agencies were on red alert, certain that a bin Laden strike somewhere in the world could come at any moment. There was certainly reason to believe bin Laden was sending men here to do grave harm. Just a few weeks before, an alert Customs inspector had caught another Qaeda terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to cross the Canadian border in a rental car packed with explosives. His mission: to blow up Los Angeles airport. Perhaps agency officials let down their guard after warnings about a Millennium Eve attack never materialized. Whatever the reason, Alhazmi and Almihdhar fell off their radar screen.
Free to do as they pleased, the 25-year-old Alhazmi and 26-year-old Almihdhar went about their terrorist training in southern California. They told people they were buddies from Saudi Arabia hoping to learn English and become commercial airline pilots. The cleanshaven Alhazmi and Almihdhar played soccer in the park with other Muslim men and prayed the required five times a day at the area mosque. They bought season passes to Sea World and dined on fast food, leaving the burger wrappers strewn around their sparsely furnished apartment. And, despite their religious convictions, the men frequented area strip clubs. Neighbors found it odd that the men would rarely use the telephones in their apartment. Instead, they routinely went outside to make calls on mobile phones.
People who knew the men recall that they couldn’t have been more different. Alhazmi was outgoing and cheerful, making friends easily. He once posted an ad online seeking a Mexican mail-order bride, and worked diligently to improve his English. By contrast, Almihdhar was dark and brooding, and expressed disgust with American culture. One evening, he chided a Muslim acquaintance for watching “immoral” American television. “If you’re so religious, why don’t you have facial hair?” the friend shot back. Almihdhar patted him condescendingly on the knee. “You’ll know someday, brother,” he said. …
But would even that have been enough? There’s no doubt that Alhazmi and Almihdhar could have been stopped from coming into the country if the CIA had shared its information with other agencies. But then two other hijackers could have been sent to take their place. And given how little the FBI understood Al Qaeda’s way of operating–and how it managed to mishandle the key clues it did have–it’s possible that agents could have identified all 19 hijackers and still not figured out what they were up to. That, one former FBI official suggests, could have led to the cruelest September 11 scenario of all: “We would have had the FBI watching them get on the plane in Boston and calling Los Angeles,” he says. ” ‘Could you pick them up on the other end?’ “
DXer said
“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, Alrababah, that had been sent by 911 Anwar Awlaqi to help them. A Syrian from West Paterson, New Jersey, had told Alrababah to go to Awlaqi in that regard. Nawaf Al-Hazmi had been at the January 2000 meeting at Yazid Sufaat’s Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Hijackers Nawaf and Hani Hanjour, a fellow pilot who was his friend from Saudi Arabia, attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, where Al-Timimi was located until he established the nearby center. The FBI reports that at an imam named Awlawki who had recently also moved from San Diego had closed door meetings with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in 2000 while all three of them were living in San Diego. Police later found the phone number of the Falls Church mosque when they searched the apartment of 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. In his 2007 book, Center of the Storm, George Tenet noted that Ramzi bin al-Shibh had a CBRN role.
Yusuf Wells, who was a fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation, visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:
“I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball weaponry. They call it ‘training’ and are very serious about it. I knew at least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.
Most all of them young men between the ages of 17-35. I was asked by the amir of the group to give a talk after Thuhr prayer. I spoke about seeing the conditions of Muslims overseas while with BIF, and how the fire of Islam is still very much alive in the hearts of the people even in the midst of extreme oppression. I also stressed the idea of being balanced. That we should not just be jihadis and perfect our fighting skills, but we should also work to perfect our character and strengthen our knowledge of Islam. I also said that Muslims are not just book reading cowards either, and that they should be commended for forming such a group.
Many were confused as to why I had been ‘trusted’ to join the group so quickly, but were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get presentations on their respective localities.”
A man named Kwon recalled driving Al-Timimi home from the mosque Sept. 11, 2001 after the terrorist attacks. He said Al-Timimi and another scholar argued, with Al-Timimi characterizing the attacks as a punishment of America from God. “He told me to gather some brothers, to have a contingency plan in case there were mass hostilities toward Muslims in America.” Kwon said Al-Timimi told the group that the effort to spread Islam in the United States was over and that the only other options open to them were to repent, leave the U.S. and join the mujahadeen —e 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 lucidly written October 6, 2002 letter, drafted by Al-Timimi, Hawali had sent a lengthy October 15, 2001 “Open Letter” to President Bush in which he had rejoiced in the 9/11 attacks. One Al-Hawali lecture, sought to be introduced in the prosecution of the IANA webmaster, applauded the killing of Jews and called for more killing, praised suicide bombings, and said of Israel that it’s time to “fight and expel this hated country that consists of those unclean, defiled, the cursed.”
Bin Laden referred to Sheik al-Hawali in his 1996 Declaration of War on America. Prior to the 1998 embassy bombings, Ayman’s London cell sent letters to three different media outlets in Europe claiming responsibility for the bombings and referring to Hawali’s imprisonment. In two of the letters, the conditions laid out as to how the violence would stop were (1) release of Sheik al-Hawali (who along with another had been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in 1994) and (2) the release of blind sheik Abdel Rahman (who had been imprisoned in connection with WTC 1993). Hawali was released in 1999 after he agreed to stop advocating against the Saudi regime.
Al-Timimi sent out a February 1, 2003 email in Arabic containing an article that said:
“There is no doubt Muslims were overjoyed because of the adversity that befell their greatest enemy. The Columbia crash made me feel, and God is the only One to know, that this is a strong signal that Western Supremacy (especially that of America) that began 500 years ago is coming to a quick end, God willing, as occurred to the shuttle.”
As Ali later explained to NBC, “To have a space shuttle crash in Palestine, Texas, with a Texas president and an Israeli astronaut, somebody might say there’s a divine hand behind it.”
DXer said
The Zacarias Moussaouis indictment (since June 2000) establish some points on a Moussaoui timeline:
http://www.justice.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm
– On or about May 17, 2000, in Germany, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh applied for a visa to travel to the United States, listing a German telephone number (“German Telephone #1”). This visa application was denied.
[Note: Former CIA Director Tenet says that Ramzi Yousef was involved in CBRN planning]
– On or about June 15, 2000, in Germany, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh applied for a visa to travel to the United States. This visa application was denied.
– On or about August 14, 2000, in Yemen, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh arranged to wire money from his account in Germany to the account of a flight training school in Florida.
– On or about September 15, 2000, in Yemen, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh applied for a visa to travel to the United States, listing a residence in Hamburg, Germany. This visa application was denied in September 20
– On or about October 25, 2000, in Germany, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh applied for a visa to travel to the United States. This visa application was denied. Bin al-Shibh Sends Money to al-Shehhi (#175)
– On or about September 29, 2000, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI contacted Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma using an e-mail account he set up on September 6 with an internet service provider in Malaysia.
[Note: Moussoui was staying in the condo of anthrax lab tech Yazid Sufaat to which anthrax planner Hambali had keys]
– In or about October 2000, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI received letters from Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company, stating that MOUSSAOUI was appointed Infocus Tech’s marketing consultant in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, and that he would receive, among other things, an allowance of $2500 per month. Atta (#11) Purchases Flight Training Equipment
– Between on or about December 2 and December 9, 2000, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh traveled from Hamburg, Germany to London, England. MOUSSAOUI Travels from London to Pakistan
– On or about December 9, 2000, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI flew from London, England to Pakistan. Atta (#11) Purchases More Flight Training Equipment
– On or about February 7, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI flew from Pakistan to London, England.
– On or about February 23, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI flew from London, England to Chicago, Illinois, declaring at least $35,000 cash on his Customs declaration, and then from Chicago to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
– On or about February 26, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI opened a bank account in Norman, Oklahoma, depositing approximately $32,000 cash.
– Between on or about February 26, 2001, and on or about May 29, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, ending his classes early.
– On or about March 19, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi (Flight-77) purchased flight deck videos for the Boeing 747 Model 400, the Boeing 747 Model 200 and the Boeing 777 Model 200, and another video from the Ohio Pilot Store. MOUSSAOUI Joins a Gym
– In or about March 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI joined a gym in Norman, Oklahoma. Hijackers Travel to and Within the United States
– On or about April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi (Flight-77) was in Oklahoma.
– In or about June 2001, in Norman, Oklahoma, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI made inquiries about starting a crop dusting company. Other Hijackers Attend Gym Training
– On or about July 8, 2001, Mohammad Atta (#11) purchased a knife in Zurich, Switzerland. MOUSSAOUI Pays for Flight Lessons
– Between on or about July 29 and August 2, 2001, in Norman, Oklahoma, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI made several telephone calls from public telephones to a number in Duesseldorf, Germany (“German Telephone # 2”).
– On or about July 30 and 31, 2001, in Hamburg, Germany, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, using the name “Ahad Sabet,” received two wire transfers, totaling approximately $15,000, from “Hashim Abdulrahman” in UAE.
– On or about August 1 and 3, 2001, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, using the name “Ahad Sabet,” wired approximately $14,000 in money orders to ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI in Oklahoma from train stations in Dusseldorf and Hamburg, Germany. MOUSSAOUI Purchases Knives
– On or about August 3, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI purchased two knives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
– On or about August 9 and August 10, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI was driven from Oklahoma to Minnesota. MOUSSAOUI Takes Commercial Flying Lessons in Minnesota
– On or about August 10, 2001, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI paid approximately $6,300 in cash to the Pan Am International Flight Academy.
– Between August 13 and August 15, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI attended the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for simulator training on the Boeing 747 Model 4
– MOUSSAOUI Possesses Knives and Other Items
– On or about August 16, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI possessed, among other things: — two knives; — a pair of binoculars; — flight manuals for the Boeing 747 Model 400; — a flight simulator computer program; — fighting gloves and shin guards; — a piece of paper referring to a handheld Global Positioning System receiver and a camcorder; — software that could be used to re view pilot procedures for the Boeing 747 Model 400; — a notebook listing German Telephone #1, German Telephone #2, and the name “Ahad Sabet;” — letters indicating that MOUSSAOUI is a marketing consultant in the United States for Infocus Tech; — a computer disk containing information related to the aerial application of pesticides; and — a hand-held aviation radio. MOUSSAOUI Lies to Federal Agents
– On or about August 17, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI, while being interviewed by federal agents in Minneapolis, attempted to explain his presence in the United States by falsely stating that he was simply interested in learning to fly. Jarrah (#93) Undertakes “Check Ride” At Flight School
– On or about August 17, 2001, Ziad Jarrah (#93) undertook a “check ride” at a flight school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Final Preparations for the Coordinated Air Attack
– On or about September 5, 2001, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh traveled from Dusseldorf, Germany, to Madrid, Spain, and did not return to Germany.
– On or about September 6, 2001, Satam al-Suqami (#11) and Abdulaziz Alomari (#11) flew from Florida to Boston. The Hijackers Return Excess Money to Al-Hawsawi in UAE91. On or about September 6, 2001, approximately $8,055 was wired from Fayez Ahmed’s (#175) Florida SunTrust account to the Standard Chartered Bank account over which Al-Hawsawi had power of attorney.
– On or about September 8, 2001, an Arab male retrieved the package from Mohammad Atta (#11) at FedEx in Dubai, UAE.
– On September 8, 2001, Mohammad Atta (#11) wired $2,860 to “Mustafa Ahmed” in UAE.
[- Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 8, 2001, Mohammad Atta (#11) wired $5,000 to “Mustafa Ahmed” in UAE.
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 9, 2001, Waleed M. al-Shehri (#11) wired $5,000 to “Ahamad Mustafa” in UAE.
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 10, 2001, Marwan al-Shehhi (#175) wired $5,400 to “Mustafa Ahmad” in UAE.
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 11, 2001, in UAE, approximately $16,348 was deposited into Al-Hawsawi’s Standard Chartered Bank account.
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 11, 2001, in UAE, at about 9:22 a.m. local time (the early morning hours of Eastern Daylight Time), Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi moved approximately $6,534 from the $8,055 in Fayez Ahmed’s (#175)Standard Chartered Bank account into his own account, using a check dated September 10, 2001 and signed by Fayez Ahmed; Al-Hawsawi then withdrew approximately $1,361, nearly all the remaining balance in Ahmed’s account, by ATM cash withdrawal.
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
– On September 11, 2001, in UAE, approximately $40,871 was prepaid to a VISA card connected to Al-Hawsawi’s Standard Chartered Bank account. The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks 1
[Mustafaa Ahmed was KSM’s assistant who had the anthrax production documents on his laptop which it was seized from the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan on or about March 1, 2003]
DXer said
When Nawaf Al-Hazmi (coincidentally or not) followed their spiritual guide 911 Imam Anwar Awlaki from San Diego to Falls Church, did they stop to see Moussaoui in Oklahoma en route? He was ticketed en route on I-40 about 40 miles west of Oklahoma City. Moussaoui had arrived in late February 2001.
Nawaf’s and Hanjour’s lease in Mesa, AZ (where they had gone after San Diego) ended on March 31. Oklahoma City is due west and where they would naturally pass through. But are there any other records that indicate that Nawaf and al-Mihdhar met with Moussaoui?
Here is a map showing that Oklahoma City was on the route that they would be taking in any event.
http://www.mapquest.com/#c1673dd3b602f7ba02a2f527
Now upon arriving in Falls Church, it is said there was a chance meeting with someone from Awlaki’s mosque, Alrababah, who before settling them in Paterson, New Jersey took them to Fairfield, CT. The 9-11 commission wrote that Hazmi and Hanjour met Alrababah at the Dar al Hijra mosque who was computer technician who had moved from West Paterson, New Jersey and was there to ask imam Anwar al-Awlaki about finding a job. He helped the pair rent an apartment in Alexandria where they moved in.
The September 11 Commission concluded that two of the hijackers “reportedly respected Awlaki as a religious figure”. When police raided the Hamburg, Germany, apartment of Ramzi bin al-Shibh while investigating the 9/11 attacks, his telephone number was found among bin al-Shibh’s personal contact information. Given the CIA knows that Ramzi was a CBRN planner, isn’t there reason to be concerned that Al-Hazmi was involved in CBRN operations also? When he and Atta book their 911 flight 88 yards from where the $100,000 equipment was delivered, isn’t there reason to be sure to track down that equipment. Shouldn’t AUSA Lieber be able to tell you where that equipment went before she started focusing on the fact that Dr. Ivins liked looking at pretty women and she and Pat handed Mara a dildo on her last day of work at a DC sex shop?
Relatedly, law enforcement sensitive records are very unclear about that visit to Connecticut with Alrababah referring only to on or about 4/4/01- 5/04/01. Aren’t there any more precise phone or billing records reflecting al-Hazmi’s time in Connecticut? For example, don’t I recall that there were phone calls made from a CT pizzeria? What was the date and location of those calls?
How often do people take cross-country trips with people shortly after they meet them in a 7/11 — with the fellow they met someone who had gone to ask Awlaki about work he could do. Isn’t the more astute understanding that Al-Hazmi was a man on a mission and engaged in very purposeful behavior? And that the fellow helping them was helping them at the behest of Awlaki?
What does Al-rababah say about the time he spent with Al-Hazmi and the others in Connecticut?
How did Ottilie Lundgren come to be infected with anthrax?
Here is a description of the stop by the State Trooper.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/dailyoklahoman012002.html
Terrorist Ticketed Last April on I-40
by Nolan Clay and Randy Ellis
The Daily Oklahoman
January 20, 2002
Five months before hijacking the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, terrorist Nawaf al-Hazmi was ticketed along Interstate 40 in far western Oklahoma.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper C.L. Parkins pulled al-Hazmi over for speeding and for not wearing a seat belt.
Those tickets became clues for the FBI as agents since Sept. 11 have tried to piece together the movements of the 19 terrorists across the country.
“I wish I had known more, but that’s hindsight,” Parkins told The Oklahoman.
“I’m just glad I did stop him and did the paper trail on him. That way it could help the FBI or other agencies further their investigation.”
Al-Hazmi’s presence in the state was significant enough to be included — without detail — in the indictment against Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of being a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attack.
Moussaoui was enrolled in flight school in Norman at the time al-Hazmi was ticketed.
The Oklahoman learned of the traffic tickets after making an Open Records Act request to the state Department of Public Safety.
The FBI already has questioned Parkins, who knows he could be a witness in Moussaoui’s trial.
Al-Hazmi was driving east along the interstate — about 50 miles after crossing into Oklahoma — when he was caught by radar going 85 mph. The speed limit was 70.
It was 6:06 p.m. April 1. Parkins would be with al-Hazmi 12 minutes.
He said the driver was short and spoke English well, but he can’t recall anything that was said.
“I just barely remember even having him in my car,” Parkins said. “You stop so many people that if … you don’t arrest them or anything … you don’t remember too much after a couple months.
“The best I remember, I asked him to come back to my car and he sat there, and I visited with him a little bit,” Parkins said.
“I wrote him a ticket for speeding and the seat belt. We did our normal checks — check to see if the vehicle’s stolen, check to see if he’s wanted, if his driver’s license status is valid — try and see if there’s anything we need to look further into.”
The driver was alone and wasn’t nervous, Parkins also recalled.
Al-Hazmi wasn’t under suspicion then. He had a valid California driver’s license and an address in San Diego.
Parkins, a trooper of seven years who loves his job, couldn’t have done anything else.
“I understand that, but it’s difficult sometimes to think back and go: What if you had known something else?” he said.
“We wish something could have been done prior to this happening, but we didn’t see anything to go any further with the contact … on this man to find out any more.”
Al-Hazmi mailed his tickets and $138 in money orders as payment to the Washita County court clerk later in April. Court Clerk Tena Arganbright said FBI agents picked up the tickets in October.
Grand jurors do not explain why al-Hazmi, 25, was in Oklahoma in the indictment over the terrorist attack.
“I think the inference they were trying to draw was he was in Oklahoma; Moussaoui was in Oklahoma at the same time,” said Bob Ricks, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety.
Moussaoui, 33, is accused in the indictment of conspiring with Osama bin Laden and with the 19 terrorists who hijacked four commercial airliners Sept. 11.
Moussaoui is charged with undergoing the same training, receiving the same funding and pledging the same commitment to kill Americans as the hijackers, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in December.
More than 3,000 people were killed when the planes were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and the countryside of Pennsylvania.
Moussaoui, a French citizen, was at Airman Flight School in Norman from Feb. 26 to May 29, but dropped out without getting his pilots license. He was detained in August — at first on immigration violations — after raising an instructor’s suspicions at a flight school in Minnesota.
His trial is set for October.
Al-Hazmi came to the United States on Jan. 15, 2000, from Bangkok, Thailand, and lived for months in San Diego. The FBI describes him as a possible Saudi citizen.
Last March, he bought videos for a Boeing 747 flight deck. Moussaoui later bought videos for a Boeing 747 flight deck.
Al-Hazmi stayed in a motel in Maryland with other hijackers and worked out at a gym in September, days before the attack. He and four others hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 after it left Dulles International Airport on Sept. 11 and crashed it into the Pentagon.
His blue Toyota was found at the airport. Al-Hazmi was apparently driving that car when the trooper stopped him in Oklahoma.
Al-Hazmi died in the attack. In a video, bin Laden praises al- Hazmi by name afterward, according to some translations.
Ricks is pleased with the troopers contribution to the investigation.
“I believe our troopers are our front line of defense,” he said. “They make contacts with hundreds of thousand of people every year. … We are the crossroads of America.”
Ricks, who once was in charge of the FBI’s operation in Oklahoma, said agents found the tickets because the trooper had checked a national crime information computer for any records on al-Hazmi.
“The trooper did the right thing,” Ricks said. “By his making the inquiry, it establishes a permanent record.
“We’re not going to solve cases, necessarily, for the FBI or others, but what we can do is be part of that equation. Putting together the movements of these people throughout the country gives you a picture,” Ricks said.
“That’s what Ive tried to stress with our people. We are part of that,” he said. “You never can tell when that one ingredient may turn out to be so key at establishing that the person was in a particular area when his alibi — or whatever he is claiming — may be in another area. Or, there’s an association that may be taking place — one person with another person. Just by having this permanent record, were able to establish these things.”
Parkins, 41, lives outside Cordell. He hasn’t lost any sleep over thinking how a terrorist sat right beside him but he admits, “Every now and then I’ll think of it.”
“I get choked up over the bombing of New York City. I was thinking about it … (Thursday) coming back from one of my partner’s mother’s funeral, sitting there thinking of all the service people (in the military) that are having a hardship right now. They’re not at home with their families, and its just a terrible thing.
“We fight for our freedom, and its kind of like we’ve lost it right now.”
DXer said
Moussaoui was connected to 911 planner Ramzi Binalshibh:
Moussaoui Charged in Sept. 11 Attacks
Published December 12, 2001
Associated Press
Ramsi Binalshibh, who the FBI says was supposed to be the 20th hijacker, wired $14,000 to Moussaoui from Germany the month before the Sept. 11 attacks. A week later, Moussaoui paid $6,300 in cash to a flight school in Minnesota. Investigators also found telephone numbers for Binalshibh in a notebook belonging to Moussaoui.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40702,00.html#ixzz1lPZUtKWt
DXer said
Almihdar and Nawaf stayed at anthrax lab tech Sufaat’s condo (to which anthrax planner Hambali had keys) in January 2000 while Moussaoui in September 2000 and October 2000.
Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian Reach
Group Operating in 4 Nations Believed Tied to Sept. 11 Hijackers
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 3, 2002; Page A01
***
U.S. and Malaysian officials said Sufaat is a Jemaah Islamiah leader in Malaysia and a close associate of Hambali’s. A square-faced man with thick black hair, Sufaat was the person Hambali asked to host Moussaoui at his three-bedroom condominium in a suburban Kuala Lumpur high-rise in September and October 2000, the officials said.
Sufaat was arrested in December after returning from Afghanistan, where Malaysian officials say he served in a Taliban medical brigade.
The two Sept. 11 hijackers who visited Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 also stayed in Sufaat’s condo for three days, although a Malaysian government official said intelligence agents photographing the building saw no evidence that Sufaat met with the men. The hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were followed by Malaysian agents, who were tipped off by the CIA.
The official said Hambali, who had a set of keys to the condo, knew of the presence of Almihdhar and Alhazmi, and he likely met the men.
U.S. law enforcement officials believe the rough outlines of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington were likely discussed during the visit to Kuala Lumpur. The U.S. officials also believe the two men may have been involved during this time in the planning of the bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden nine months later, in October 2000.
DXer said
Anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat hosted both Zacarias Moussaoui and Almihdhar and Nawaf at his condo in Kuala Lumpur. Anthrax planner Hambali was involved. Where are the timelines that show what Moussaoui was doing from February 2001 – August 2001? The former head of CTC says Moussaoui was with Jdey and Adnan El-Shukrijuman. Given that Moussaoui’s whereabouts are so closely tied to the claims that the FBI and CIA dropped the ball by not tracking Almihdhar and Nawaf, GAO should press (over a decade later) for a full timeline of Moussaoui’s whereabouts based on his phone and billing records). For example, one witness years ago insisted to me that Moussaoui was in New Jersey the weekend of July 4. Is that true? Scientific hypothesis need to be formed in real world context and not be some academic exercise among ivory tower walls. For example, Atta and the other hijackers were seen copying in al-Marabh’s copy shop in Toronto (the shop had a large Bin Laden portrait hanging). The mass spec on the toner of machines used there should be compared to the toner used in the mailed letters.
Indonesian Cleric Had Role in Skyjackings, Officials Say
Terror: In Malaysia, a jailed Cal State graduate helps unravel Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asia network
by Mark Fineman and Bob Drogin
The Los Angeles Times
February 2, 2002
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A Cal State graduate from Malaysia has led authorities here to conclude that a Muslim cleric from Indonesia ran terror operations for Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia and played a role in the Sept. 11 skyjackings.
Officials said Yazid Sufaat, who has a 1987 bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from California State University, Sacramento, has cooperated with authorities since he was arrested Dec. 9 as he returned from apparently serving in a Taliban medical brigade in Afghanistan.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials said Sufaat identified the alleged regional terrorism chief as Riduan Isamuddin, who is also known as Hambali. Sufaat also is helping them unravel the logistics and operations of a network that was far larger–and far more dangerous–than U.S. officials suspected.
Officials said Hambali, who remains at large, used Malaysia’s modern infrastructure, bustling economy and numerous Muslim organizations to hide a way station for Osama bin Laden’s loose-knit global army–a place to help future suicide skyjackers in transit, to forge identification letters and to purchase explosives.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said for the first time publicly Thursday that Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia took part in planning the Sept. 11 attacks. Evidence previously pointed to operatives in Hamburg, Germany, and financial conduits in the United Arab Emirates.
Hambali left Malaysia shortly before Sept. 11, officials here said, and his precise role remains unclear. Officials believe that he returned to Indonesia, home to another cleric who authorities in Malaysia and Singapore say is the network’s spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.
One Malaysian official compared their roles to that of top members of the Mafia. “If Abu Bakar is the godfather, Hambali is the consiglieri,” or chief advisor and operational director, the official said. Abu Bakar has declared Bin Laden to be “a true Muslim fighter” but denied any terrorist ties.
Officials describe Sufaat as a foot soldier who provided housing and false identification letters and helped obtain explosives.
The officials said, for example, that Hambali instructed Sufaat to play host to two of the Sept. 11 skyjackers in January 2000, as well as Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who has been indicted in Virginia for his alleged participation in the plot.
Sufaat’s signature also appears on a phony letter that the FBI found in Moussaoui’s apartment after his arrest in August. The letter, which Moussaoui apparently obtained during one of two visits here in September and October 2000, appointed Moussaoui marketing representative in North America and Europe for a computer technology company called Infocus Tech, Malaysia. It was signed, “Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director.”
***
Officials said Hambali instructed Sufaat to play host to two future Sept. 11 skyjackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, for three days in January 2000. Their presence in Malaysia already has been reported, but Sufaat has provided authorities with new details.
Local officials said U.S. authorities had asked Malaysian intelligence to watch for a group of suspected Arab terrorists who might be entering the country in 2000. The CIA asked the authorities to only record and watch their movements, not to arrest them.
Those suspects, as well as Almihdhar and Alhazmi, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 5, 2000, and Malaysian agents tracked them 20 miles south to a secluded and well-kept condominium complex called Evergreen Park.
The group stayed in Sufaat’s modest three-room, two-bath weekend retreat next to a country club and 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. Malaysian officials said they immediately gave surveillance photos of the group to U.S. intelligence.
CIA officials have said they determined only last summer that the meeting was important, when they identified one person in the photos as a possible suspect in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen in October.
As a result, they warned the FBI and U.S. immigration officials to watch for Almihdhar and Alhazmi, but it was then determined that they already had entered the United States. The two men are believed to have helped commandeer American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.
***
Malaysian officials said Sufaat acknowledged his role soon after his arrest. He helped Malaysian and Singaporean authorities break up a cell that plotted to attack U.S. military and commercial targets in Singapore, as well as several embassies there, they said.
They said Sufaat also admitted that his Green Laboratory was used as a conduit to purchase 4 tons of ammonium nitrate to build a truck bomb for the Singapore cell–ingredients that authorities now believe are stored on the Indonesian island of Batam a short ferry ride from Singapore.
Fineman reported from Kuala Lumpur and Drogin from Washington. Times staff writer Eric Bailey in Sacramento contributed to this report.
DXer said
Building BL-3s in Pakistan doesn’t seem to be a good idea.
Ref ID: 08ISLAMABAD581
Date: 2/9/2008 9:59
Origin: Embassy Islamabad
Classification: SECRET
Destination:
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Al-Qaeda ‘planning dirty bomb’ 02 Feb 2011
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Tags: TBIO,PTER,TSPL,ETTC,PK
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 ISLAMABAD 000581 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/09/2018 TAGS: TBIO, PTER, TSPL, ETTC, PK SUBJECT: BIOSECURITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM: BALANCING PUBLIC HEALTH WITH NATIONAL SECURITY IN PAKISTAN Classified by: Deputy Chief of Mission Peter W. Bodde for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
1.(S) Summary: In response to emerging infectious diseases such as avian influenza, Pakistan is rapidly developing plans to enhance its public health infrastructure, including biocontainment facilities and national regulations on the safe handling of dangerous pathogens. The Department’s Biosecurity Engagement Program (BEP) began work with the Government of Pakistan (GOP) in 2007 to assist in developing safe, secure and sustainable public health infrastructure that ensures transparency, meets international standards and fosters collaboration with the U.S. and other international partners. Over recent weeks, BEP representatives in Islamabad have met with GOP officials, many of which requested assistance in the construction of proposed biosafety level 3 (BSL3) facilities and increased collaboration with BEP. The Executive Director of Pakistan’s National Institute of Health also expressed interest in a personnel reliability program to screen for “extremists” or other groups looking to gain access to pathogen collections. This cable is the second in a series of five outlining BEP progress in Pakistan. End summary.
2.(SBU) In a follow up to summer 2007 meetings with Ministry of Health (MOH) officials in Islamabad, BEP Director Dr. Jason Rao met with Secretary of Health Khushnood Akhtar Lashari, who proposed further areas of collaboration. Lashari thanked the BEP for its sponsorship of MOH staff to attend biosecurity training sessions and emphasized the training’s positive impact on the Ministry. Secretary Lashari requested further U.S. assistance to develop biosafety guidelines, a resource center for biosecurity and biosafety training and undertake a national survey of potentially dangerous pathogens. Lashari has appointed a team to develop national biosafety guidelines, as well as begin a baseline survey of pathogens in the country’s research institutions. The Secretary commented that Pakistan’s National Association of Pathologists, the lead organization on both of these initiatives, lacked expertise to carry the projects to completion.
ASSISTANCE FOR BIOSAFETY LEVEL THREE LABORATORIES
3.(SBU) Pakistan’s National Institute of Health (NIH) has begun work on a biosafety level three (BSL3) laboratory. Initial plans call for the lab to be modular and pre-fabricated, located inside a brick and mortar shell. The outer shell is currently under construction. According to NIH officials, lab construction has stalled due to funding shortages. Details on the manufacturer of the modular lab, engineering design and time line for completion were not disclosed. NIH Executive Director, General (retired) Dr. Masood Anwar, expressed concerns about laboratory design flaws and cost overruns and requested BEP assistance in reviewing design implementation. BEP has begun to work with MOH staff to develop an action plan for implementation. Executive Director Anwar invited BEP representatives to join weekly BSL3 lab working group meetings.
4.(S) Representatives of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Center (PARC) also requested assistance in the design and operation of a planned BSL3 facility to be built at PARC headquarters in Islamabad. The Japan International Aid organization (JICA) has agreed to sponsor most of the laboratory construction costs. BEP plans to eventually provide substantive experts to the PARC BSL3 working group. PARC houses a full range of viral and bacterial pathogens, including dangerous agents such as anthrax, FMD (foot and mouth disease), brucellosis and highly pathogenic avian influenza. Virtually no biosecurity measures were observed during March and June 2007 visits to PARC, but by early February 2008, dedicated safety officers and improved security practices were in place.
DEFENSE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATION
5.(S) The Defense Science and Technology Organization (DESTO) has requested meetings with BEP officials to continue discussions on biological and chemical safety. BEP has met several times with DG Major General Guftar Shah. Shah requested BEP involvement in DESTO’s development of a biological and chemical detection and response capability, both to ensure transparency and add technical insight. Shah has led two delegations to the U.S. to initiate collaboration in this area and BEP teams toured the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in March 2007 and provided biosafety training to AFIP personnel in June 2007. BEP also plans to tour DESTO’s Karachi facilities to provide a baseline assessment of safety and security practices there. COMMENT ISLAMABAD 00000581 002 OF 002
6.(SBU) The BEP has utilized engagement, training and exchanges to highlight the importance of biosecurity to GOP representatives and its role in non-proliferation efforts. Several ministries view the program as adding value to Pakistan’s efforts to combat both bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. BEP assistance serves a dual benefit in addressing real threats to international security while at the same time strengthening efforts to safely and transparently expand Pakistan’s public health infrastructure. We hope that this synergy will increase as a result of the establishment of a dedicated BEP office in Pakistan. PATTERSON
DXer said
DXer said
In connection with the anthrax reportedly mailed to the Pakistan Prime Minister, I have emailed the PCSIR Chairman to ask for a copy of the report.
But what does NIH in Islamabad say?
Did guinea pigs die or not?
Pakistan’s experience of a bioterrorism-related anthrax scare.
Ahmad K, Dil AS, Kazi BM, Us-Saba N, Ansari J, Nomani K.
Source
Public Health Laboratories Division, National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Abstract
From November 2001 to March 2002, the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan, received 230 samples from 194 different sources for analysis for anthrax spores. These samples were taken from letters/packages suspected of containing anthrax and from individuals exposed to them. When cultured on sheep blood agar, 141 samples yielded growth suggestive of Bacillus species. On the basis of growth characteristics, absence of beta-haemolysis, absent or doubtful motility and morphological characters of the isolates on Gram stain, 62 isolates were considered suspicious and were inoculated into guinea-pigs. Inoculated animals remained healthy well beyond the required observation period of 5 days. All the samples were therefore reported as negative for B. anthracis. Systems for handling and analysing suspected anthrax-contaminated materials are discussed.
DXer said
For anecdotal account from Prouty book –
Anthrax Sent to Pakistan’s PM Begs Question of Whether FBI Investigated Presumed Anthrax Sent to US Pak Embassy in 2001
Posted on February 2, 2012 by Jim White
http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/02/02/anthrax-sent-to-pakistans-pm-begs-question-of-whether-fbi-investigated-presumed-anthrax-sent-to-us-pak-embassy-in-2001/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anthrax-sent-to-pakistans-pm-begs-question-of-whether-fbi-investigated-presumed-anthrax-sent-to-us-pak-embassy-in-2001
DXer said
Hambali and Anthrax Lab Tech Yazid Sufaat
George Tenet in his May 2007 In the Center of the Storm says Sufaat was “the self-described ‘CEO’ of al-Qai’da’s anthrax program.” Tenet reports that “Sufaat had impeccable extremist credentials” and “[i]n 2000 he had been introduced to Ayman al-Zawahiri personally, by Hambali, as the man who was capable of leading al-Qai’da’s biological weapons program.”
The 9/11 Commission Report explained:
“Hambali played the critical role of coordinator, as he distributed al Qaeda funds earmarked for joint operations. In one especially notable example, Atef turned to Hambali when al Qaeda needed a scientist to take over its biological weapons program. Hambali obliged by introducing a U.S.-educated JI member, Yazid Sufaat, to Ayman al Zawahiri in Kandahar. In 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.”
Participants at a key meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 included Hambali, Yazid Sufaat, two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, Cole planner Attash aka Khallad, and others. Tawfiq Bin Attash was a long time Bin Laden operative. The Yemeni first went to Afghanistan in 1989. He came to lead Bin Laden’s bodyguards and was an intermediary between Bin Laden and those who carried out the bombing of the Cole in October 2000. Attash also had been a key planner in the 1998 embassy bombings, serving as the link between the Nairobi cell and Bin Laden and Atef. Khalid Almhidhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers, was from Saudi Arabia but was a Yemeni national. Almhidhar was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment against Zacarias Moussaoui. Al-Hindi, who along with Jafar the Pilot would later case the NYC landmarks, had gone to Kuala Lumpur with Attash. While not at the meeting with the hijackers, they met Hambali shortly after.
Zacarias Moussaoui was alleged, at least initially, to have received his money from Yazid Sufaat, under the cover of a company managed by his wife named Infocus Tech. A legitimate company, the company has eight employees and virtually no connection to the US. The company was an importer of US computer software and hardware. After authorities found a letter signed by Yazid Sufaat purporting to authorize Zacarias Moussaoui as its marketing representative, authorities went looking for Sufaat. But by then, he had left for Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to his wife, he went to Pakistan in June 2001 because he wanted to do his doctorate in pathology at the University of Karachi. Dursina had attended Sacramento State with Sufaat. It was her mother who encouraged Yazid’s religious studies. According to his wife, Sejarhtul Dursina, “He had planned to set up a medical support unit in Afghanistan, near Kandahar.” Kandahar is where Al Qaeda established its anthrax lab and where extremely virulent (but unweaponized) anthrax, according to author Suskind, was found at a home identified by Hambali after his capture.
Sufaat graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 1987. He received a bachelors degree in biological sciences, concentrating on clinical laboratory technology, with a minor in chemistry. Sacramento State biological sciences professor Robert Metcalf taught Sufaat a food microbiology class in the spring of 1986. The first lesson in class was to teach students how German physician Robert Koch proved that anthrax was caused by a specific bacterium. “All of my students know how to isolate anthrax in soil samples,” Metcalf told the Chicago Tribune. “Anthrax was the first organism we talked about.” Sufaat joined the Malaysian army, where he was a lab technician assigned to a medical brigade. After five years, he left the service with the rank of captain and worked for a civilian laboratory. In August 1993, he set up his own company, Green Laboratory Medicine. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Sufaat started work on the al Qaeda biological weapons program after he participated in JI’s December 2000 church bombings. In December 2001, Sufaat was arrested upon returning from Afghanistan to Malaysia where (his wife says) he had been serving in a Taliban medical brigade.
Malaysian officials sought to minimize Sufaat’s role. Sufaat merely was a foot soldier who provided housing and false identification letters and helped obtain explosives. “I would put it this way: If Hambali [Al Qaeda’s point man in Southeast Asia] was the travel agent, Sufaat was the guy at the airport holding up the sign.”
Sufaat admits to having purchased 4 tons of ammonium nitrate to build a truck bomb for the Singapore cell. The Malaysian officials report that they believe that Sufaat had no knowledge of what the hijackers who stayed at his condominium or Zacarias were planning. That is consistent with the principles of cell security ordinarily followed — also evasion in interrogation. At a minimum, however, the established facts relevant to the Amerithrax investigation show that in the Summer and Fall of 2001 an Al Qaeda supporter who had assisted in the 9-11 operation — and who was a lab technician working with anthrax — was in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
DXer said
March 2003 Arrest Of Bacteriologist Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan
On March 1, 2003, authorities announced that Khalid Mohammed had been captured 400 miles from Quetta, in Islamabad. A walk-in to the CIA, the Egyptian said he was upset that Al Qaeda had attacked the United States. An unnamed Egyptian reportedly received $25 million for providing the information about Khalid Mohammed. Authorities said he had been in the car that drove KSM to a safe house that night. Agents quickly raced him back through the streets as he made out landmarks, leading them to KSM, who was being harbored in the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan.
Khalid Mohammed had hands-on responsibility for planning 9-11. Reports of the arrest described his role in various operations over the years, including the thwarted “Operation Bojinka” in the Philippines in 1995. At that time, Philippine authorities searching a seized laptop computer found a letter signed by “Khalid Shaikh Bojinka” that threatened to attack American targets “in response to the financial, political and military assistance given to the Jewish state in the occupied land of Palestine by the American government.” The letter, apparently written by Mohammed and his associates, threatened to not only attack aircraft, the principal plot underway, but threatened to launch a chemical attack if an imprisoned co-conspirator was not released from custody. Khalid Mohammed reportedly played a substantial role in trying to build Al Qaeda’s expertise in biological and chemical weapons. It turned out that he knew quite a bit about the process for weaponizing anthrax.
The Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan ran a respected cardiology institute called Hearts International Dr. Khan and his wife, according to early accounts, had been at a wedding in Lahore. The family reports that at 3 a.m on Saturday, a squad of around 20 officers burst into the home.
The day after the raid of the Khan’s home, authorities also detained another of the microbiologist’s sons for questioning, a major in the Pakistan Army, though he was not arrested. Pointing at a large cage of blue and green budgies on the patio, Mrs. Khan, Ahmad’s mother, said: “These are his life. Ahmed is a very simple person. He had no job, he hardly went out, just to the mosque to pray. He never traveled and his main thing was pets. He loved pets. “Ahmed can’t be a terrorist,” a neighbor who was a Colonel in the Army said. “He’s a goof, simple in the head.” The son reportedly receives a stipend from the UN’s Farm and Agriculture Organization for having a low IQ due to lead poisoning.
Ahmed Qadoos’ mother was an activist for the ladies’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s biggest religious party. Ramzi Binalshibh, the 9/11 plotter arrested in Karachi, and Abu Zubaydah, were both found in houses belonging to JI members.
The bacteriologist’s father’s role came to be all the more important when the documents relating to the weaponization of anthrax were found on Khalid Mohammed’s laptop computer (which allegedly had been seized at the microbiologist’s home). On March 28, 2003, the father, at a hospital receiving treatment for his heart condition, was granted “pre-arrest bail,” which was confirmed the next day in court upon his arrest. Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan, a bacteriologist with access to production materials and facilities, previously worked in Sudan for the UN’s World Health Organization. According to his family, he retired in 1985 after heart bypass surgery. “His career speaks about his honesty, and he has never been involved in any
clandestine activities,” his counsel successfully argued in seeking pre-arrest bail. Al Qaeda was based in Sudan from 1992-1996. The 78-year-old microbiologist was reported in Pakistani press to be a leader of the Jamaat-i Islami, a fundamentalist group in Pakistan.
Documents in UTN’s “House of Anthrax” in Kabul indicated a connection to Jamaat-I-Islam. Jamaat is part of the United Action Council, the coalition of fundamentalist religious groups that controls the provincial government of the Northwest Frontier Province and about one-fifth of the seats in the Federal parliament.
There has been no mention of the arrest of Abdul Qadoos Khan or the disposition of his legal matter — that I’ve noticed — since he was granted pre-arrest bail.
DXer said
Capture of Hawsawi and Laptop With Anthrax Spray Drying Docs Capture of Hawsawi and Laptop With Anthrax Spray Drying Docs
On March 23, 2003, the Washington Post reported on documents allegedly discovered at the Abdul Qadoos Khan residence — on a seized laptop — relating to biochemical weapons. The documents indicated that Al Qaeda leaders may already have manufactured some of them. The documents at the Qadoos home reveal that Al Qaeda had a feasible production plan for anthrax. Confronted with scanned handwritten notes on the computer, Mohammed reportedly began to talk about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. KSM, however, denies that it was his computer. He says it was the computer of his assistant, Mustafa Hawsawi, who was captured at the home the same day. In 2001, before departing for the UAE, Al-Hawsawi had worked in the Al Qaeda media center Al Sahab (Clouds) in Kandahar. The letter containing the first anthrax went to the American Media in Florida had blue and pink clouds on it.
Hawsawi worked under KSM who in turn worked for Zawahiri. Al-Hawsawi was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks and its paymaster, working from the United Arab Emirates. He sent thousands of dollars to Bin Al-Shibh the summer of 2001. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan where he met separately with Bin Laden, Zawahiri and spokesman Abu Ghaith. KSM worked closely with al-Hawsawi. The fact that the anthrax spray drying documents were on that computer, however, and that Al-Hawsawi had worked for Al Sahab in Kandahar in 2000, serves to suggest that the undated documents predated 9/11, particularly given that extremely virulent anthrax was later found in Kandahar. Al-Hawawi in turn worked with Aafia Siddiqui’s husband-to-be, KSM’s nephew Al-Baluchi, in the UAE in the summer of 2001. The two provided logistical support for the hijackers.
Hawsawi worked as a financial manager for Bin Laden when he was in Sudan. Egyptian Islamic Jihad shura leader Mahjoub was Bin Laden’s farm manager in Sudan. Mahjoub was the subject of the anthrax threat in January 2001 in Canada, upon announcement of his bail hearing. The day after Mahjoub’s bail was denied on October 5, 2001, the potent stuff was sent to US Senators Daschle and Leahy.
DXer said
The Washington Post explained that “What the documents and debriefings show, the first official said, is that “KSM was involved in anthrax production, and [knew] quite a bit about it.” Barton Gellman in the Post explained that Al Qaeda had recruited competent scientists, including a Pakistani microbiologist who the officials declined to name. “The documents describe specific timelines for producing biochemical weapons and include a bar graph depicting the parallel processes that must take place between Days 1 and 31 of manufacture. Included are inventories of equipment and indications of readiness to grow seed stocks of pathogen in nutrient baths and then dry the resulting liquid slurry into a form suitable for aerosol dispersal.” The documents are undated and unsigned and cryptic about essential details.
In addition to establishing him as paymaster for the hijackers, Al-Hawsawi’s computer disks reportedly also included lists of contributors worldwide, to include bank account numbers and names of organizations that have helped finance terror attacks. In press accounts, one unnamed government official confirmed that the information has yielded the identities of about a dozen suspected terrorists in the US. In his substituted testimony in the Moussaoui case, Al-Hawsawi says he became part of Al Qaeda’s media committee in Afghanistan in about July 2000. Hawsawi lived at the media office. For about 4-5 months in 2000, Hawsawi worked as a secretary on al Qaeda’s media committee. Hawsawi’s role “was to copy compact discs and reprint articles for the brothers at the guesthouse in Qandahar. After 2000, Hawsawi worked at the direction of Sheikh Mohammed, transferring funds, and procuring goods.” KSM joined the committee in February 2001.
The first time that Hawsawi was asked to become involved in operational activities was about March 2001, when he took his second trip to the UAE. Although Sheikh Mohammed did not use the word “operation,” Sheikh Mohammed told Hawsawi that he would be purchasing items, receiving and possibly sending money, and possibly meeting individuals whom Hawsawi would contact or who would contact him.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed told Hawsawi that Hawsawi would be in contact with individuals called ‘Abd Al-Rahman (Muhammad Atta) and the “Doctor” (Nawaf al-Hazmi). Atta called Hawsawi four times while in the US. Hawsawi says he was never in contact with Hani or Nawaf while in the US. On September 9, Ramzi bin Shibh told him the date of the planned operation and urged that he return to Pakistan. He flew out on 9/11 and after a night in Karachi, flew on to Quetta. Hawsawi stated repeatedly that he never conducted any activity of any type with or on behalf of Moussaoui and had no knowledge of who made Moussaoui’s travel arrangements.
Documents, however, reportedly show that al-Hawsawi worked with the Dublin cell to finance Moussaoui’s international travel. Hamid Aich was an EIJ operative there who once had lived with Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber, in Canada. The indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui named al-Hawsawi as an unindicted co-conspirator. Moussaoui unsuccessfully tried to call KSM and Hawsawi as witnessses.
Microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi had spoken with Bin Laden’s sheik about helping with Moussaoui’s defense.
Hawsawi has said that it was Qahtani who was to have been “the 20th hijacker” rather than Moussaoui. Qahtani, Hawsawi said, had trained extensively to be one of the “muscle hijackers.” Atta went to pick Qahtani up at the Orlando airport but immigration officials turned Qahtani away. Al-Hawsawi said he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, sometime in the first half of 2001, but was not introduced to him and had not conducted any operations with him. At Moussaoui’s trial, the government pointed to FAA intelligence reports from the late 1990s and 2000 that noted that a hijacked airliner could be flown into a building or national landmark in the U.S. Such an attack was viewed “as an option of last resort” given the motive of the attack was to free blind sheik Abdel Rahman. Flying a plane into a building would afford little time to negotiate.
Zacarias Moussaou was in Karachi with anthrax lab tech Yazid Sufaat on February 3, 2001 when they bought air tickets through a local travel agency for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They left on a flight for KL on February 8, 2001. Moussaoui began at the Norman, Oklahoma flight school on February 26, 2001. KSM says that Moussaoui’s inquiries about cropdusters may have related to Hambali and Sufaat’s work with anthrax.
Another reason not to overlook Hawsawi’s possible role in an anthrax operation is his contact with al-Marri. Al-Marri, who entered the country on September 10, 2001, was researching chemicals in connection with a “second wave.” Al-Marri was also drafting emails to KSM. Although al-Marri denies being in contact with Hawsawi, phone records show otherwise. E-mail evidence also confirms messages drafted by al-Marri to KSM. An article by Susan Schmidt in the Washington Post on al-Marri notes that al-Marri picked up $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri made the mistake of opening the briefcase containing the money in bundles and peeling off a few hundred dollars to pay his bail after being stopped on a traffic charge a couple days after 9/11.
In applying to school, 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.
DXer said
2003 Capture Of Hambali And Sufaat’s Assistants And The Reported Seizure Of “Extremely Virulent” (But Unweaponized) Anthrax
Muklis Yunos was arrested on May 25, 2003. Agents reportedly became suspicious when an ambulance pulled over and delivered Yunos, who was wearing a plaster cast on a leg as part of a disguise. According to other reports, he was also wearing facial bandages. An Egyptian missionary accompanying him, Al Gabre Mahmud, was apparently on an international terrorist watchlist. Authorities became suspicious when the two went to the wrong gate (and did not go to the one typically used for medical transport). The pair then objected when officials wanted to remove some of the mummy-like bandages. AP reported that a police intelligence dossier describes him as “a fanatic of the extreme fundamentalist movement” who received training in an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, including lessons on the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. He is described as about five foot three and with the features of a Japanese-Korean. According to one report, Yunos initially was cooperating with authorities over a bucket of spicy Kentucky Fried Chicken, complaining about the arrogance and unhelpfulness of MILF leadership.
Hambali was arrested in mid-August 2003 in Thailand. Hambali had fled Malaysia with his wife, Lee, not long after 9/11. His wife and her sister had studied at the school of Bashir, JI’s religious leader. He told his mother they were moving to Thailand. Hambali worked and his wife studied Arabic. Over the next two years, he also spent time in Cambodia and Myanmar.
Soft-spoken and polite, the neighbors said he kept to himself in the apartment building.
His wife, an ethnic Chinese Malaysian who converted to Islam, was also detained. After being shipped to Jordan, where he was harshly interrogated, Hambali eventually began providing information about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. He told interrogators that the terror network had what author Ron Suskind describes as an “extremely virulent” strain of anthrax before the September 11 attacks. In the autumn of 2003, Suskind claims, U.S. forces in Afghanistan found a sample of the virulent anthrax at a house in Kandahar. Pulitzer Prize winning author Ron Suskind writes: “One disclosure was particularly alarming: al Qaeda had, in fact produced high-grade anthrax.
Hambali, during interrogation, revealed its whereabouts in Afghanistan. The CIA soon descended on a house in Kandahar and discovered a small, extremely potent sample of the biological agent.”
Suskind wrote:
“Ever since the tense anthrax meeting with Cheney and Rice in December 2001, CIA and FBI had been focused on determining whether al Qaeda was involved in the anthrax letter attacks in 2001 and whether they could produce a lethal version that could be weaponized. The answer to the first was no; to the second, ‘probably not.’ Though the CIA had found remnants of a biological weapons facility — and blueprints for attempted production of anthrax — isolating a strain of virulent anthrax and reproducing it was viewed as beyond al Qaeda’s capabilities.”
Suskind continued:
“No more. The anthrax found in Kandahar was extremely virulent. What’s more, it was produced, according to the intelligence, in the months before 9/11. And it could be easily reproduced to create a quantity that could be readily weaponized.”
“Alarm bells rang in Washington. Al Qaeda, indeed, had the capabilities to produce a weapon of massive destructiveness, a weapon that would create widespread fear.
Based on the additional information being provided in 2003, authorities also captured two mid to low level technicians — an Egyptian and a Sudanese. President Bush has explained that these mid-to low level technicians were part of a Southeastern Asian based cell that was developing an anthrax attack on the United States.
In Fall of 2006, President Bush explained:
“KSM also provided vital information on al Qaeda’s efforts to obtain biological weapons. During questioning, KSM admitted that he had met three individuals involved in al Qaeda’s
efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent — and he identified one of the individuals as Yazid. KSM apparently believed we already had this information, because Yazid had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM’s arrest. In fact we did not know about Yazid’s role in al Qaeda’s anthrax program. Information from Yazid then helped lead to the capture of his two principal assistants in the anthrax program.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/world/asia/pakistan-reveals-prime-minister-gilani-was-sent-anthrax.html
Mr. Shaheedi said that law enforcement authorities had identified the sender as an associate professor at Jamshoro University in the southern province of Sindh. But he could not say whether the professor, a Ms. Zulekha, had been arrested or detained.
A senior police officer in charge of presidential security, Hakim Khan, gave a different account. He denied any knowledge of the suspect Mr. Shaheedi named, but he confirmed that a police team had been sent to Jamshoro to investigate. The packet had been sent from a small post office on the Jamshoro University campus, he said.
Mr. Khan said the case had been registered under a provision of Pakistan’s penal code that deals with the act of sending poison with the intention of causing harm.
In November 2001, suspicious letters containing anthrax spores were sent to three private businesses, including the country’s largest Urdu-language daily, Jang, in the southern port city of Karachi. No motive was ever determined.
DXer said
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C02%5C02%5Cstory_2-2-2012_pg7_5
“The PCSIR report confirmed that the packet was filled with anthrax, which could also contain silica or other sophisticated additives to make it float more easily in the air,” the police official maintained.
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Dr. Shaukat Pervaiz, PCSIR, did the testing and report.
THere was a plastic envelope inside the outer paper envelope.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=12184&Cat=13
Federal Minister for Postal Services, Sardar Umar Gorgaige, when contacted by this scribe for his comment, said that he has taken up the case and would constitute a high-level inquiry committee to fix the responsibility. “This is a serious matter, and we have to mark the staff members responsible for this negligence,” the federal minister said adding that it would be investigated how the latter was cleared by the Post Office staff deployed for scanning the highly sensitive letters.
…
There was also a plastic envelop inside the outer paper envelop, containing some type of powder or chemical. On receipt of the envelop, the security officer of the Secretariat sent the envelop, along with the material, to Dr Shaukat Pervaiz, PCSIR, Islamabad, for its examination and submission of report.
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“Leahy Law” and Appropriations to Military and Security Units
After the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Cairo attorney Montasser al-Zayat first met blind sheik Abdel-Rahman after Montasser had been tortured for 12 hours. He was near a mental breakdown. Abdel-Rahman came over to where he was huddled in a corner of a cell, bent over and whispered: “Rely on God; don’t be defeated.” Mohammed had spoken the words in the Koran. Al- Zayat would become one of Sheik Omar’s most trusted legal advisers and a lawyer on the defense team of El Sayyid Nosair. Nosair was the Egyptian who was Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard and was tried in New York in 1990 for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane. In March 1999, attorney al-Zayat was representing defendants in a massive prosecution of jihadists in Cairo. He told the press that Ayman Zawahiri would use anthrax as a weapon against US targets because of the continued extradition pressure and torture faced by Egyptian Islamic Jihad members. Two senior EIJ leaders then on trial were saying the same thing to the press and in confessions.
The founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad Kamal Habib (who wrote for the quarterly magazine of the US charity Islamic Assembly of North America) told scholar Fawaz Gerges:
“The prison years also radicalized al-shabab [young men] and set them on another violent journey. The torture left deep physical and psychological scars on jihadists and fueled their thirst for vengeance. Look at my hands — still spotted with the scars from cigarette burns nineteen years later. For days on end we were brutalized — our faces bloodied, our bodies broken with electrical shocks and other devices. The torturers aimed at breaking our souls and brainwashing us. They wanted to humiliate us and force us to betray the closest members of our cells.
I spent sleepless nights listening to the screams of young men echoing from torture chambers. A degrading, dehumanizing experience. I cannot convey to you the rage felt by al-shabab who were tortured after Sadat’s assassination.” When Kamal Habib wrote for the jihad-supporting Assirat, Al-Timimi was on the Board of Advisers.
In a videotape that circulated in the summer of 2001, Zawahiri said “In Egypt they put a lot of people in jails — some sentenced to be hanged. And in the Egyptian jails, there is a lot of killing and torture. All this happens under the supervision of America. America has a CIA station as well as an FBI office and a huge embassy in Egypt, and it closely follows what happens in that country. Therefore, America is responsible for everything that happens.”
An August 29, 2001 opinion column on Islamway, the second most read site for english speaking muslims, illustrates that the role of “Leahy Law” was known by educated islamists:
“There is an intolerable contradiction between America’s professed policy of opposition to state-sponsored terrorism, exemplified by the Leahy Law, and the U.S. Congress’ continuing sponsorship of Israeli violence against Palestinians.” The article cited “References: CIFP 2001. “Limitations on Assistance to Security Forces: ‘The Leahy Law’” 4/9/01 (Washington, DC: Center for International Foreign Policy) Center for International Foreign Policy Accessed 8/28/01.Hocksteader, Lee 2001.
The next day, in the same publication, there was an article describing the 21-page document released in Ottawa on August 29, 2001, in which the CSIS claimed that Canadian detainee Jaballah had contacts with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Shehata and sought to deport Jaballah. Shehata was in charge of EIJ’s Civilian Branch and in charge of “special operations.” It would be seven more years — not until February 2008 — before the Canadian government for the first time revealed that after coming to Canada in 1996, Jaballah would contact Ayman Zawahiri regularly on Ayman’s Inmarsat satellite phone.
“They [Senators Daschle and Leahy] represent something to him,” says James Fitzgerald of the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. “Whatever agenda he’s operating under, these people meant something to him.” To more fully appreciate why Leahy — a human rights advocate and liberal democrat — might have been targeted as a symbol, it is important to know that Senator Leahy has been the head of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, the panel in charge of aid to Egypt and Israel. In addition to the Senate majority leader, anthrax was mailed to the position symbolic of the 50 billion in appropriations that has been given to Israel since 1947 (and the equally substantial $2 billion annually in aid that has been keeping Mubarak in power in Egypt and the militant islamists out of power).
Within a couple weeks after September 11, a report in the Washington Post and then throughout the muslim world explained that the President sought a waiver that would allow military assistance to once-shunned nations. The militant islamists who had already been reeling from the extradition of 70 “brothers”, would now be facing much more of the same. President Bush asked Congress for authority to waive all existing restrictions on U.S. military assistance and exports for the next five years to any country where the aid would help the fight against international terrorism. The waiver would include those nations who were currently unable to receive U.S. military aid because of their sponsorship of terrorism (such as Syria and Iran) or because of their nuclear weapons programs (such as Pakistan).
The options being considered in response to the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington included potential cooperation with virtually every Middle Eastern and South and Central Asian nation near Afghanistan. “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” would be the only test for foreign aid. The “Leahy Law” plays a key role in the secret “rendering” of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Al Qaeda) operatives to countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Algeria where they are allegedly tortured. Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar during the Clinton Administration, has quoted former Vice-President Gore saying: “Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.” Although humanitarian in its intent, the Leahy Law permits continued appropriations to military and security units who conduct torture in the event of “extraordinary circumstances.”
In an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera television on October 7, 2001 (October 6 in the US) — about when the second letter saying “Death to America’” and “Death to Israel” was mailed — Ayman Zawahiri echoed a familiar refrain sounded by Bin Laden: “O people of the U.S., can you ask yourselves a question: Why all this enmity for the United States and Israel? *** Your government supports the corrupt governments in our countries.”
A month after 9/11, late at night, a charter flight from Cairo touched down at the Baku airport. An Egyptian, arrested by the Azerbaijan authorities on suspicions of having played a part in the September 11 attack, was brought on board. His name was kept secret. That same night the plane set off in the opposite direction. Much of the Amerithrax story has happened at night with no witnesses, with the rendering of University of Karachi microbiology student Saeed Mohammed, who allegedly involved in the Cole bombing, merely one example. At the time Ayman Zawahiri was getting his biological weapons program in full swing, his own brother Mohammed was picked up in the United Arab Emirates. He was secretly rendered to Egyptian security forces and sentenced to death rendered in the 1999 Albanian returnees case.
Throughout 2001, the Egyptian islamists were wracked by extraditions and renditions. CIA Director Tenet once publicly testified that there had been 70 renditions prior to 9/11. At the same time a Canadian judge was finding that Mahmoud Mahjoub was a member of the Vanguards of Conquest and would be denied bail, Bosnian authorities announced on October 6, 2001 they had handed over three Egyptians to Cairo who had been arrested in July. In Uruguay, a court authorized the extradition to Egypt of a man wanted in Egypt for his alleged role in the 1997 Luxor attack. Ahmed Agiza, the leader of the Vanguards of Conquest (which can be viewed as an offshoot of Jihad), was handed over by Sweden in December 2001.
One islamist, a Hamas supporter, summarized why the anthrax was sent in an ode “To Anthrax” on November 1, 2001: “O, anthrax, despite, your wretchedness, you have sewn horror in the heart of the lady of arrogance, of tyranny, of boastfulness!”
The appropriations go to the core of Al Qaeda’s complaint against the United States. (The portion going to Egypt and Israel constituted, by far, the largest portion of US foreign aid, and most of that is for military and security purposes.) Pakistan is a grudging ally in the “war against terrorism” largely due to the US Aid it now receives in exchange for that cooperation. The press in Pakistan newspapers regularly reported on protests arguing that FBI’s reported 12 agents in Pakistan in 2002 were an affront to its sovereignty. There was a tall man, an Urdu-speaking man, and a woman — all chain-smokers — who along with their colleagues were doing very important work in an unsupportive, even hostile, environment. The US agents — whether CIA or FBI or US Army — caused quite a stir in Pakistan along with the Pakistani security and intelligence officials who accompanied them. In mid-March 2003, Washington waived sanctions imposed in 1999 paving the way for release in economic aid to Pakistan. Billions more would be sent to Egypt, Israel and other countries involved in the “war against terrorism.”
The commentators who suggest that Al Qaeda would have had no motivation to send weaponized anthrax to Senators Daschle and Leahy as symbolic targets — because they are liberal — are mistaken. The main goal of Dr. Zawahiri is to topple President Mubarak. He views the US aid as the chief obstacle and is indifferent to this country’s labels of conservative and liberal.
Zawahiri likely was surprised that the plainly worded message of the letters accompanying the anthrax was not deemed clear. Perhaps the talking heads would not have been so quick to infer an opposite meaning if no message had been expressed using words at all. Perhaps the if the sender had relied only on what KSM describes as the language of war — the death delivered by the letters — the pundits would not have been so misdirected. But why was Al Qaeda evasive on the question of responsibility for the anthrax mailings, dismissing the issue with a snicker, and claiming that Al Qaeda did not know anything about anthrax? Simple. Bin Laden denied responsibility for 9/11 until it was beyond reasonable dispute. On September 16, 2001, he said: “The US is pointing the finger at me but I categorically state that I have not done this. I am residing in Afghanistan. I have taken an oath of allegiance (to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar) which does not allow me to do such things from Afghanistan.” Before that, Ayman had denied the 1998 embassy bombings too. On August 20, 1998, coincidentally on the day of strikes on camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, Ayman al-Zawahiri contacted The News, a Pakistani English-language daily, and said on behalf of Bin Laden that “Bin Laden calls on Moslem Ummah to continue Jihad against Jews and Americans to liberate their holy places. In the meanwhile, he denies any involvement in the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings.” To Ayman, “war is deception.”
The targeted Senators have another connection pertinent to the Egyptian militants. The United States and other countries exchange evidence for counterterrorism cases under the legal framework of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (”MLAT”). Egypt is signatory of such a treaty that was ratified by the United States Senate in late 2000. For example, when the Fall 2001 rendition of Vanguards of Conquest leader Agizah was criticized, the US explained that it was relying on the MLAT. In the prosecution of Post Office worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar, Sattar’s attorney Michael Tigar, at trial in December 2004 explained: “Now, that might be classified, it’s true, but we have now found out and our research has just revealed that on, that the State Department has reported that it intends to use and relies on the mutual legal assistance treaty between the United States and Egypt signed May 3, 1998, in Cairo, and finally ratified by the United States Senate on October 18th, 2000. The State Department issued a press report about this treaty on November 29th, 2001 and I have a copy here.” He explained that “Article IV of the treaty provides that requests under the treaty can be made orally as well as under the formal written procedures required by the treaty, that those requests can include requests for testimony, documents, and even for the transfer to the United States if the treaty conditions are met.
Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Al-Sirri was a co-defendant in the case against post office worker Sattar. In the late 1990s Sattar and he often spoke in conversations intercepted by the FBI. Al-Sirri’s fellow EIJ cell members in London were subject to process under those treaties at the time of the anthrax mailings.
Those London cell members had faxed the claim of responsibility which stated the motive for the 1998 embassy bombings. A group calling itself the “Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places” took credit for the bombings listing as among their demands “the release of the Muslims detained in the United State[s] first and foremost Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the spiritual guide of the Gama’a Islamiya) who is jailed in the United States.” As reason for the bombings, in addition to the rendition recent EIJ members to Cairo and the detention of Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the faxes pointed to the detention of dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali . Al-Hawali was the mentor of GMU microbiology student Al-Timimi who spoke in London in August 2001 alongside 911 Imam Awlaki (also from Falls Church) and unindicted WTC 1993 conspirator Bilal Philips. Al-Timimi was in contact with Saudi sheik Al-Hawali in 2002 and arranged to hand deliver a message to all members of Congress he had drafted in al-Hawali’s name on the first anniversary of the anthrax mailings to Senator Leahy and Daschle.
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Excerpt:
Letter to the Editor in response to “The 2001 Attack Anthrax: Key Observations”, by ME Hugh-Jones, BH Rosenberg, and S Jacobsen, Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense S3:001
Michael Robert Kuhlman*
Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, OH, USA
*Corresponding author: Michael Robert Kuhlman
Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, OH, USA
E-mail: kuhlmanm@battelle.org
…
This note has been submitted to correct certain errors contained in a recent review article by Hugh-Jones, et al. [1]. Specifically, that review included an incorrect representation of work performed by Battelle Memorial Institute in support of the FBI’s investigation of the Amerithrax crimes. It is recognized that the erroneous representation contained in the review first appeared in the lay press [2]; however, due to the then active status of the Amerithrax investigation and because Battelle takes seriously our obligation to protect information deemed sensitive by our clients, Battelle did not respond when the errors were first published. These are the same reasons that this author declined to speak with Mr. Richard Preston or his assistant when they were seeking information potentially relevant for the book, The Demon in the Freezer, published in 2002, and cited by Hugh-Jones, et al. in their review.
The passage in the review article that cites this book and requires a response is as follows:
However, there is reason to question whether the attack samples were in pristine condition when these measurements [of particle size of the anthrax powders] were carried out, or whether Battelle had autoclaved them first, which might have caused clumping. Richard Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer describes an argument at a meeting on October 22, 2001 involving the FBI laboratory, scientists from the Battelle Memorial Institute, and scientists from the Army [1]: “…One Army official is said to have blown up. . . at the meeting, saying to the Batelle [sic] man, ‘Goddamn it, you stuck your anthrax in an autoclave, and you turned it into hockey pucks’” [2].
The quoted discussion, in fact, never occurred. Most specifically, the work performed by Battelle did not include autoclaving the samples prior to fluidizing the aliquots taken for particle size analysis.
***
Because the samples analyzed for particle size were not autoclaved, the concern expressed by Hugh-Jones et al. that the powders analyzed may not have been “in pristine condition” should be dismissed. The particle size analyses reported [3] by Battelle to the FBI effectively demonstrated that powder samples of an accepted surrogate for B. anthracis (B. atrophaeus, formerly B. subtilis var. niger and B. globigii) produced at 1 g scale by simple means and without any additives exhibited particle size and dispersability quite similar to those of the anthrax powder samples provided by the FBI. This is also the conclusion reached by the National Academy of Sciences Committee in its review of this work [4].
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Documentary Clues
What was the envelope, return address and postage used in connection with the recent reported mailing of anthrax to the Pakistan Prime Minister.
In connection with the Fall 2001 anthrax mailngs, the “Federal Eagle” stamp used in the anthrax mailings was a blue-green. It was widely published among the militant islamists that martyrs go to paradise “in the hearts of green birds.” In the very interview in which they admitted 9/11, and described the codes used for the four targets for the planes, the masterminds used the Jenny code and the code for representing the date 9/11, and used the symbolism of the “Green Birds.” Osama Bin Laden later invoked the symbolism in his video “The 19 Martyrs.” A FAQ on the Azzam Publications website explained that “In the Hearts of Green Birds” refers to what is inside. The mailer’s use of “Greendale School” as the return address for the letters to the Senators is also revealing. A May 2001 letter that Zawahiri sent to Egyptian Islamic Jihad members abroad establish that Zawahiri used “school” as a code word for the Egyptian militant islamists.
Green symbolizes Islam and was the Prophet Mohammed’s color. By Greendale School, the anthrax perp likely was being cute, just as Yazid Sufaat was being cute in naming his lab Green Laboratory Medicine. “Dale” means “river valley.” Greendale likely refers to green river valley — i.e., Cairo’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Islamic Group. The mailer probably is announcing that the anthrax is from either Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Group or Jihad-al Qaeda, which is actually the full name of the group after the merger of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda. At the Darunta complex where jihadis trained, recruits would wear green uniforms, except for Friday when they were washed. In a Hadith the Messenger of Allah explains that the souls of the martyrs are in the hearts of green birds that fly wherever they please in the Paradise.
The “4th grade” in the return address “4th Grade, Greendale School, is American slang for “sergeant.” That was the rank of the head of Al Qaeda’s military commander Mohammed Atef, who along with Zawahiri had overseen Project Zabadi, Al Qaeda’s biochemical program.
The business-size sheet of stationery containing the anthrax to the National Enquirer was decorated with pink and blue clouds around the edges. In admitting that he had taken over supervising the development of anthrax for use against the US upon Atef’s death (in November 2001), KSM separately noted that “I was the Media Operations Director for As Sahab or ‘The Clouds,’ under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri.”
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In late July 2008, Ft. Detrick vaccine reearcher Bruce Ivins died — an apparent suicide due to an overdose of Tylenol with codeine and valium. The United States Department of Justice has not yet come close to proving its case against Dr. Bruce Ivins. Based, however, only on the “open source” material, it appears that the solution to the Amerithrax case does not lie at the intersection of Bin Laden and Saddam streets among those cubicles at Langley with desktop PCs. Nor does the answer lie with the girls of Kappa Kappa Gamma as the FBI now suggests. Instead, it lies with the Zawahiri Task Force at Langley which hopefully has an intersection of Ayman Avenue and Rahman Road. If not, we might be looking at a different crossroads altogether.
The FBI appointed two agents to take over leadership of the case in 2006. Vincent Lisi, a supervisory agent, and Edward Montooth, an inspector in the case, helped lead a team that re-examined all the evidence. The new team concluded that a man who was depressed and focused — obsessed, the FBI says — on a campus sorority from his school days was responsible. As the narrative about Ft. Detrick anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins evolved, stories made him as crazy as he needed to be fit the FBI’s profile. The FBI, as its central witness, relied upon Dr. Ivins first counselor, Judith McLean, who wrote a 2009 book available for sale at amazon.com explaining that she thought she was controlled by an alien who had implanted a chip in her butt. The American public deserves better from the Department of Justice. he FBI leakers had done the same with Hatfill when it served their purpose.For example, even though contemporaneous news accounts indicated he had moved to Frederick from Gaithersburg by January 2001, the Associated Press reported that he had moved down the block from a Kappa Kappa Gamma member to be close to her. (He in fact had moved out of Gaithersburg before she arrived). As with “The Hatfill Theory”, such a bell is hard to unring. The US Attorney had claimed he had used the lyophilizer which now has been shown was elsewhere. The US Attorney claimed that the Federal Eagle stamp was uniquely sold in his Post Office when it was sold throughout Virginia and Maryland.
The FBI’s profile included a US-based supporter of the militant islamists. Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant islamists. In November 2007, in a speech, FBI Director Robert Mueller pointed specifically to the problem of spies at universities and access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information. Michael Mason, former assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office during a portion of the investigation and later a senior official at FBI headquarters, said in August 2008, “the bureau, for its efforts, owes an apology to no one. This is the most complex investigation the bureau has ever had.” Bruce Ivins killed himself, leaving the US DOJ the lesser burden of proving its case through leaks and innuendo rather than putting on admissible evidence that would withstand cross-examination. But it is foolish to think that his death made getting to the bottom of the matter more difficult. Instead, his death — if the FBI stopped withholding key documents — would make establishing the facts easier.
The investigators signing the affidavits in support of searches had 18 months and 3 years of experience — there had been lulls in public announcements about the investigation longer than that.
In 2002 and 2003, a “bioevangelist” theory was fueled by leaks by the lead criminal prosecutor, whose law firm’s online biography indicates he was born in Haifa [Palestine] in 1948. He was head of the criminal division at the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia. The attorney had moved over from the CIA on September 18, 2001. He received regular briefings on the investigation and was the one who would have supervised presentment of any indictment in Amerithrax to a grand jury. His family members are Palestinian activists who wrote and lectured publicly in 2001 and 2002 –and his daughter came to represent a key anthrax weapons suspect Ali Al-TImimi pro bono.
During the course of a speech marking the sixth anniversary after 9/11, Bin Laden referenced the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (observed August 6, 1945), as occurring only a few days prior to his speech. It’s another example supporting the significance of the mailing dates of the anthrax to the senior Egyptian militant, Mohammed Islambouli, who the CIA reports was in the cell with KSM planning the attacks on the US. Islambouli was the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The letters were mailed on the anniversary of the Sadat assassination and Camp David Accord in conveying a message — “we have this anthrax.” It was if the sender was asking the same scripted and approved question the assassin posed to Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, just before the bomb hidden in his camera detonated. The interviewer asked: “How will you deal with the Osama bin Laden issue when you are in power and what do you see as the solution to this issue?”
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http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/02/police-seeks-record-from-pm’s-secretariat-regarding-anthrax-parcel/
Police seeks record from PM’s Secretariat regarding anthrax parcel
Islamabad – The Islamabad City Police on Thursday approached the Prime Minister’s Secretariat requesting the PM’s security staff to give them the parcel containing anthrax, which was allegedly sent to the PM by a woman from Jamshoro, Sindh, for investigation.
***
According to sources, a female associate professor of Jamshoro University allegedly posted the said anthrax-filled letter to the PM. But police said that after getting the said letter they would start proper investigation.
DXer said
Before we see 100 more copies of the AP article without our understanding being advanced, someone should pick up the phone and call PCSIR and ask them if any guinea pigs in fact died. 20 days is long enough for guinea pigs to die — or not.
East Mediterr Health J. 2004 Jan-Mar;10(1-2):19-26.
Pakistan’s experience of a bioterrorism-related anthrax scare.
Ahmad K, Dil AS, Kazi BM, Us-Saba N, Ansari J, Nomani K.
Source
Public Health Laboratories Division, National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Abstract
From November 2001 to March 2002, the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan, received 230 samples from 194 different sources for analysis for anthrax spores. These samples were taken from letters/packages suspected of containing anthrax and from individuals exposed to them. When cultured on sheep blood agar, 141 samples yielded growth suggestive of Bacillus species. On the basis of growth characteristics, absence of beta-haemolysis, absent or doubtful motility and morphological characters of the isolates on Gram stain, 62 isolates were considered suspicious and were inoculated into guinea-pigs. Inoculated animals remained healthy well beyond the required observation period of 5 days. All the samples were therefore reported as negative for B. anthracis. Systems for handling and analysing suspected anthrax-contaminated materials are discussed.
DXer said
The date of mailing is reported here as October 18, 2011.
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=188768
Bid to squeeze deadliest Anthrax in PM Secretariat foiled
ISLAMABAD: Bid to squeeze deadliest of poisonous powder, Anthrax through a sealed parcel into the Prime Minister’s Secretariat has been foiled.
The police had impounded the parcel , said to have been sent from some unknown person in Sindh on Oct 18, 2011 and containing the most deadliest compound Anthrax, which has also been alleged to be have been used in unsuccessful bids to create mass deaths in America and European continent in post-9/11 scenario.
The labs after checking the materiel confirmed the presence of deadly powder, wherein police has registered a case against the culprit according to section 270.
It is pertinent to note that this deadly powder has already caused numerous deaths.
DXer said
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9054412/Anthrax-parcel-sent-to-home-of-Pakistans-prime-minister.html
By Rob Crilly, Islamabad
3:20PM GMT 01 Feb 2012Comment
While it marks the first time criminals have used the biological agent in an attack on a government office, letters laced with anthrax spores were sent to a mass-market Urdu newspaper and to a computer company in Karachi soon after 9/11, at the same time as scares in the US.
“We have just received the lab reports confirming it was anthrax but we cannot say more than that at the moment,” said Hakim Khan, a police officer in the government and diplomatic area of the capital, where the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, has his official residence.
Pakistan has been gripped for months by speculation that the government could be toppled by the military or the courts, and the use of a biological agent will deepen concern about the country’s fragility.
A spokesman for Mr Gilani said it had been delivered in October and police were notified this week after laboratory tests were completed.
“We believe the culprit was a lady professor,” said Akram Shaheedi, but he declined to speculate on a motive.
Comment: The last report I saw in 2002 regarding the bank, Jang and Dell indicated that the one hospital had not yet turned it over to the government for confirmatory testing. So first the retesting of those results should be confirmed and reported.
Then as to the current matter, the nature of the testing by PCSIR should be described so independent scientists can apprise it.
In the event the 2001 or 2011 mailings withstand scrutiny, then we reach the question of the strain.
It’s not like there hasn’t been a whole lot of anthrax planning going on in Karachi and the environs.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jm9rp7uigmyN9NiRTJYDMstRZaTw
Suspect in Pearl’s killing dies after interrogation: report
(AFP) – Nov 11, 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A Pakistani businessman suspected of playing a role in the brutal 2002 killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl died earlier this year, shortly after being interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Pearl, a Karachi-based correspondent for the Journal, was kidnapped on January 23, 2002, and killed execution-style shortly after.
The newspaper said Karachi businessman Saud Memon became a key suspect in the case because he owned a nursery where Pearl had been held captive.
Citing an unnamed senior US law enforcement official, the report said Memon was interrogated by both US and Pakistani intelligence services.
The interrogation produced information that Memon was helping Al-Qaeda develop anthrax strains, the newspaper said.
He was “in a lot of the rooms where important things were being discussed,” the paper quotes the US official as saying. “He knew senior Al-Qaeda people, and was moving equipment and supplies.”
But Memon’s family members and human rights groups said that in April, the businessman was left in front of his Karachi home badly injured and emaciated, weighing just 80 pounds (36 kilograms), according to the report.
About a month later, he died from what was described as complications from meningitis and tuberculosis, the Journal said.
DXer said
(Reuters) – A small parcel mailed to an office of the Pakistani prime minister in October contained a small amount of deadly anthrax spores, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
“The security team became suspicious of the package,” Akram Shahidi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told Reuters. “After lab testing, it was determined that this was anthrax.”
There were no reported casualties. The parcel was mailed from the town of Jamshoro in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/pakistan-anthrax-idINDEE8100F720120201
Note: Reuters has a picture of the spokesman reporting the news.
DXer said
errata – that is a picture of the PM attending a conference on terrorism at the World Economic Conference in Davos on January 26, 2012.
DXer said
The story is, shall we say, developing. At this moment, this AP Islamabad seems the best on the subject.
Pakistan says anthrax sent to PM’s office
By ABDUL SATTAR
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD — A female university professor sent a packet containing anthrax to the office of Pakistan’s prime minister in October last year, his spokesman said Wednesday, an incident that will fuel security concerns in a country that is home to top al-Qaida leaders and other extremists.
No one was made ill, and her motive was not clear, said Akram Shaheedi, a spokesman for Yousuf Raza Gilani.
He said tests at laboratories run by Pakistan’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Islamabad since confirmed the substance in the package was anthrax.
Shaheedi said the package was received in October 2011.
He initially told The Associated Press it was received 12 months ago, but called back to say he was mistaken.
He didn’t say why he was making the news public now. He also didn’t say whether the woman, a professor at Jamshoro University in Sindh province, had been arrested.
Islamist militants and other rebels have carried out scores of attacks against the Pakistani state in recent years, but have not been known to send letters or packages containing toxic material.
DXer said
Associated Press writer Hussain Afzal contributed to this report from Parachinar, Pakistan.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/02/01/2135996/gunmen-kill-11-paramilitary-soldiers.html#storylink=cpy
I hope Abdul Sattar and Hussain Afzal get interviews that will shed more light. For example, what strain was it? Has a sample been given to the US for testing? Have the results been confirmed by the next best Pakistan lab? What was the quality of the powder? What color was it? Was the return address? What does the professor say? Is she still teach at the University or does sending anthrax to the Prime Minister affect your career prospects. I would recommend that they keep it away from the FBI labs — every time there was a positive finding they concluded it must have been lab contamination.
DXer said
Polisi Pakistan Selidiki Pengirim Parsel Antraks ke Rumah Perdana Menteri
Rabu, 01 Pebruari 2012 19:48 WIB
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ISLAMABAD – Polisi Pakistan mengatakan mereka sedang menyelidiki bagaimana dan mengapa sebuah paket berisi antraks bisa terkirim ke kediaman resmi Perdana Menteri Yousuf Raza Gilani di ibukota Islamabad bulan lalu.
Ini tampaknya menjadi kasus pertama yang dilaporkan tentang bioterorisme berupa vitus antraks ke kantor pemerintah di Pakistan.
“Paket yang berisi bubuk anthrax dikirim bulan lalu, sekitar 20 hari lalu. Setelah uji laboratorium mengkonfirmasi bahwa paket berisi antraks, kami mulai bergerak,” kata perwira polisi, Hakim Khan.
Tidak ada konfirmasi segera dari rumah perdana menteri, yang terletak di daerah dengan pengamanan ekstra di Islamabad.
Sampai saat ini, masih belum jelas siapa yang bertanggung jawab, atau bagaimana mereka bisa mengakses antraks, di Pakistan.
Polisi mengatakan parsel itu dikirim dari distrik Jamshoro di selatan provinsi Sindh, beribukota Karachi. Wilayah ini merupakan kota terbesar di Pakistan yang digunakan oleh Amerika Serikat untuk memasok logistik bagi tentaranya yang bertempur di Afghanistan.
“Kami telah mengirim tim polisi untuk menyelidiki kasus ini,” kata Khan.
Paket antraks ini bukan yang pertama di Pakistan. Pada bulan November 2001, polisi menangkap dua pria yang dicurigai mengirim surat berisi anthrax untuk surat kabar terbesar di Pakistan, Jang.
Redaktur: Ajeng Ritzki Pitakasari
Sumber: Nahar News
STMIK AMIKOM
DXer said
In this earlier version, AP’s Abdel Sattar states that it was a “white powder.”
http://www.standard.net/stories/2012/02/01/toxic-powder-sent-pakistan-pm-office
DXer said
sources said the parcel did not bear the name and address of the sender
http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/02/anthrax-parcel-scares-pms-security-staff-2.html
DXer said
Someone at ABC or AP should call PCSIR and ask the nature of testing done.
Pakistan Government Spokesman Says Anthrax Sent to Prime Minister’s Office Last Year
ShareEmail Comment Print
Text Size- / +ISLAMABAD February 1, 2012 (AP)
Pakistan government spokesman says anthrax sent to prime minister’s office last year.
DXer said
AP Islamabad has an interest wrinkle. You would think someone could pick up the phone and ask Rauf Ahmad visited — the second one with the thousands of pathogens — and ask him what lab he visited.
Pakistan says anthrax sent to PM’s office
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
(02-01) 05:52 PST ISLAMABAD, (AP) —
A spokesman for Pakistan’s prime minister says a packet containing anthrax was sent to the premier’s office one year ago.
Akram Shaheedi said Wednesday a female professor at a large university in Sindh province sent the substance to Yousuf Raza Gilani in January 2011.
He says tests since confirmed it was anthrax.
He says no one was hurt in the office.
Earlier, a police officer said a toxic substance was sent to Gilani three weeks ago.
The cause of the apparent inconsistency in the dates was unclear.
Shaheedi didn’t say why he was making the news public now.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/02/01/international/i055256S90.DTL#ixzz1l8ntNdSa
What was the large university in Sindha province? Why did the female professor send the Prime Minister the substance that tested positive as anthrax?
DXer said
Was she from one of these? (Karachi is also in Sindh province but from a different story I gather the mailer was from Jamshoro).
Sindh University
• The Sindh University located in Jamshoro has the largest residential campus in Pakistan. The University is a college university and controls 4 law colleges, 74 graduate and post graduate colleges located across the province of Sindh. The university also has 43 teaching departments offering a wide range of subjects for graduate and post graduate education.
Mehran University of Engineering and Technology
• This 20-year old university in Jamshoro, Sindh lies within close proximity of the Sindh University. The university offers undergraduate and post graduate engineering and technology courses. Subjects offered include mechanical engineering, civil engineering, metallurgy, textile engineering and chemical engineering.
Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences
• The university is a public sector medical university established as a medical college in 1881. The University offers graduate and post graduate courses in all medical disciplines including medicine, surgery, dentistry, public health and basic medical sciences.
DXer said
She apparently was a professor at
Jamshoro University in Sindh province.
See AP Islamabad.
DXer said
I’ve emailed the head of the microbiology department at Sindh University in Jamshoro to confirm whether Sindh University it is what AP Islamabad is referring to when it uses the phrase Jamshoro University.
DXer said
February 1, 2012 10:11 AM
PRINT TEXT
Pakistan PM’s office reveals anthrax attack
He also didn’t say whether the woman, a professor at Jamshoro University in Sindh province, had been arrested.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57369559/pakistan-anthrax-sent-to-pms-office-all-ok/
DXer said
FEBRUARY 1, 2012, 5:40 A.M. ET
Anthrax Parcel Sent To Pakistan PM’s House – Police
•
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120201-704043.html
ISLAMABAD (AFP)–Pakistani police were Wednesday investigating how and why a parcel containing anthrax was sent to the prime minister’s official residence in the capital Islamabad last month.
“The parcel containing anthrax powder was sent last month, about 20 days ago. After the laboratory test confirmed that the parcel contained anthrax we registered a case against unknown people,” said police officer Hakim Khan.
Comment: Is this confirmed not to have been a false positive? There were a lot of false positives regarding such letters to Pakistan media in late 2001. I think one would want confirmation by US authorities as at least in 2001 the testing in Pakistan labs on this score were not up to snuff.
DXer said
Similarly, I was unable some years ago to get confirmation of this story:
Taliban Spokesman With Anthrax Packets Intended For Mailing To Government Officials
Amerithrax Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty, sources told the Washington Post. In November of that year, on additional information, agents spent weeks searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul. Again they found nothing. In January 2007, a Taliban spokesman was captured. An Afghanistan governor says his residence contained anthrax powder packets. According to a report by the Afghan Islamic Press Agency, as monitored by the BBC, the powdered anthrax was intended for mailing to government officials. The former Taliban spokesman quietly told a camera that he was “on a mission” when he was arrested.
The fellow who reportedly had “anthrax powder packets” had been living in Peshawar. Muhammad Hanif’s real name is Abdulhaq Haji Gulroz. Is this young guy mentioned above Qari Mullah Din Muhammad Hanif, the former madrassa-trained Minister of Education who wouldn’t let the medical school use cadavers? (That was a good thing given that the school didn’t have electricity.) Is he a “Dr.” If so, what kind? The former education minister had not received a secular education and oversaw the medical school. A veterinary student in September 2001 said they had nothing in the way of facilities or equipment. It was the Agriculture Minister who had taken a keen interest in supervising the Red Cross/FAO-funded anthrax vaccine laboratory. Yazid Sufaat did his anthrax work, he says, as part of a “Taliban medical brigade.” A building associated with the charity WAFA housed a lab, and WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. So while we still lack lab tests and further clarification or confirmation, this sketchy report about anthrax powder packets is intriguing.
No failure on the part of the ISI to cooperate with the FBI or CIA on the subject of an attack using aerosolized anthrax should be countenanced.
DXer said
The Pakistan anthrax hoaxes in 2001.
In late 2001, there were 100 other hoaxes in Pakistan including hoax letters sent to other Jang newspaper branches. There were three of special note after some initial positive testing — there was no report about the retesting of letters at the main branch of Jang, Habib International bank and Dell Computer. As of a November 12, 2001, the well-regarded private hospital that had done the lab testing had not yet provided the samples to the Pakistan government for retesting. But the take-home back then was the Pakistan labs were not cutting-edge in 2001 regarding their testing. What was the methodology used this time? Has it been retested by proven experts using the most sophisticated tests available. If in fact it is confirmed to be anthrax, and an AFP report does not yet rise to that level, what was the strain?
Sources:
Hannah Bloch, “Some More Spores?: Suspicious packages raise prospect that Pakistan may be the latest target of bioterrorists”, TIME, November 12, 2001.
“Pakistan, other US allies grapple with anthrax scares,” Christian Science Monitor, November 5, 2001.
“Anthrax attacks in Pakistan as US strikes raise tensions,” Middle East Times November 2, 2001.
“Anthrax Found in Pakistan News Office, ” ABCNews, November 2, 2001.
“US Firm in Pakistan Gets Anthrax Letter,” rediff.com October 24, 2001.
“Pakistan reports anthrax exposures,” CNN, November 2, 2001.
“Pakistan to test 3 people for anthrax exposure, ” CNN, November 3, 2001.
Ghulam Hasnain, “Lethal Weapon: With three confirmed cases of anthrax exposure so far, offices in Karachi begin to gear up to face the new threat” Newsline (November 2001).
“No anthrax in Pakistan: minister,” Dawn.com (reporting on 100 hoaxes and confirming that three cases at issue had not yet been retested; urging no need to panic).
DXer said
In this month’s case, Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) did the testing. What was the nature of the testing? What is the rate of false positives with regard to such a test? (In 2001, although the private lab was well-regarded, they hadn’t forwarded it to PCSIR. I’m not in a position to judge the relative sophistication of testing at the respective facilities. It is not without irony that as I recall Zawahiri infiltrator Rauf Ahmad worked at PCSIR.
http://www.thenewstribe.com/2012/02/01/unknown-accused-booked-for-sending-anthrax-to-pakistan-pm/#.TykroSN4Vq0
“Police source said when substance sent through the parcel proved to be anthrax, a case was registered against the unknown senders. They added that the powder was not provided to police rather a copy of the laboratory test report wads given to police.
They said that the powder was sent to Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s (PCSIR) lab for test that confirmed the substance was anthrax. Following the incident, the mechanism to monitor PM House’s posts has been tightened.”
DXer said
Pakistan Today reports:
But in Jamshoro, 180 kilometres (113 miles) northeast of Karachi, police said they had not been informed by Islamabad of any anthrax delivery, instead finding out through local media reports.
“We have not yet received any instructions from the government to investigate this matter,” local police official Bashir Ahmed told AFP.
“We have asked the local post office protectively to check their records to know about the sender.
“We can’t say how long it will take to complete the investigation. We expect a quick result if the sender’s identity is not fake.”
In November 2001, police arrested two men suspected of sending a letter containing anthrax to Pakistan’s largest newspaper, Jang.
In the United States, anthrax mailings rattled a jittery American public just days after the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.
US government scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide in July 2008 as FBI agents were about to bring charges against him over the anthrax campaign, which killed five people and injured 17.
Comment: The Pakistan media or Western media needs to call PCSIR what testing was done and report it so that experienced experts can assess the probability of a false positive.
DXer said
Note the lyophilizer pictured in documents now obtained by Frontline under FOIA confirms that it is too big for Ivins to have moved (see previous photos of that model uploaded to this blog making the same point).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/anthrax-files/exclusive-new-photos-of-anthax-suspects-lab/
Also, note that there is a window into the BL-3. This is highly notable because even absent access there is line of sight so that anyone on the other side of the window can see.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/anthrax-files/exclusive-new-photos-of-anthax-suspects-lab/
We thank Lauren Ezell for the thought that went into framing the requests and following items up. As I recall, Frontline and their colleagues showed special diligence in parsing some of the more dense material like FBIR submissions.
And a special thanks to the tireless, multitasking and highly responsive FOIA personnel overseeing USAMRIID requests for their dedication to their role.
Just as often as not, the response was to explain why the request was misconceived and there would be no responsive documents in any event. Other times there was guidance on where such documents might be found.
As for the FBI, while we can appreciate the workload relative to the funding, the FBI’s FOIA is fairly faulted for failing to prioritize requests.