* The newly released Senior Executive Brief, dated 7 August 2001 reports that Bin Laden wanted to follow example of WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef (associated with subtilis expert)
Posted by DXer on June 27, 2012
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
A September 25, 2014 letter from some members of Congress to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel expresses strong support for the 28 pages from the “Joint Inquiry.”
Click to access Letter-to-ISCAP-from-Members-of-Congress.pdf
Given that Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the son of a Saudi missionary who testified as a defense witness in connection with the WTC 1993-related prosecution, these 28 pages are useful historical context in understanding Amerithrax and the movements of Nawaf and Al-Hazmi.
Nawaf Alhazmi is from Mecca, Saudi Arabia. His family owned a shop and the family was wealthy. [ARAB NEWS, 9/20/2001; WRIGHT, 2006, PP. 378]
In Southern California, the two men were helped by alleged intelligence operative Osama Basnan.
“Mystery men link Saudi intelligence to Sept 11 hijackers,” The Guardian, November 24, 2002
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/25/alqaida.saudiarabia
“However, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday that there was more evidence linking Mr Basnan to Riyadh, saying he visited Houston in April just as Crown Prince Abdullah passed through with a large government entourage. The magazine quoted sources as saying Mr Basnan met “a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters”.
***
“The leaks about Mr al-Bayoumi and Mr Basnan are a symptom of rivalry in Washington. Congress is preparing a report into the September 11 investigation criticising the administration for failing to pursue leads that point to the Saudi establishment. The FBI is also frustrated that its inquiry into the Saudi role was stymied for political reasons.”
The signers have all reviewed the materials and conclude that the pages are not property classified at this time. The signers believe that declassification of the 28 pages would enhance, not harm, U.S. national security interests.”
The signers believe that declassification would advance national security by contributing to the national debate over, in part, the lingering mystery of whether the perpetrators received support from persons linked to foreign governments.
The members of Congress express their confidence that the panel “will agree that the time has come to declassify the 28 pages in question.” The members of Congress who signed the letter include Thomas Massie, Walter Jones, Paul Broun, Ted Yoho, Mark Sanford, Howard Coble, Steve Stockman and Michael Grimm.
Does the accomplished litigator Dietrich Snell agree that the pages should now be released?
http://www.peterlance.com/peter_lance/Dietrich_Snell.html
“Dietrich Snell, was the former prosecutor of Ramzi Yousef, whose very office had failed to act on the evidence from the Philippines National Police that Yousef was tied to the planes operation.” …
“As I saw it, Dietrich Snell should have been a witness before the 9/11 Commission, subpoenaed to testify under oath in open session. Instead he was hired as its senior counsel, and given the job of determining “the origin of the plot”—the most important question facing the 9/11 Commission. After all, f they couldn’t tell when the plot commenced, they couldn’t rightfully hold U.S. intelligence agencies responsible for not stopping it. But it soon became clear that the commissioners, and investigators like Snell, had little interest in assessing blame. Almost half of the commission’s staff was made up of alumni from the very agencies that failed to stop the attacks. In short, the foxes had been hired to guard the chicken coop.”
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a042904bushcheney
June 2004: Zelikow, 9/11 Commission Team Leader [Dietrich Snell] Delete Passages about Apparent Saudi Support for Hijackers from Main Text of Final Report
In a late-night editing session, 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow and Dieter Snell, head of the Commission team investigating the 9/11 plot, delete sections of the 9/11 Commission Report linking two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to suspected Saudi government operatives.
Evidence of Saudi Link – The sections were drafted by two of Snell’s team members, Mike Jacobson and Raj De, and deal with Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who had helped the two hijackers (see January 15-February 2000); Fahad al-Thumairy, another of their associates (see June 9, 2000); cash transfers from the wife of the Saudi ambassador in Washington to an associate of al-Bayoumi (see December 4, 1999); and a taxi driver who said he had seen the two hijackers in Los Angeles (see 2002).
Disagreement – However, Snell, a former prosecutor, is opposed to these sections, as he thinks the hijackers’ links to Saudi intelligence are not 100 percent proven, so it is better to leave them out. Jacobson is notified of the editing session just before midnight; he calls De and they both go into the Commission’s offices to discuss the material. Snell says that the final report should not contain allegations that cannot be backed up conclusively, but Jacobson and De say demanding this level of proof would exonerate the guilty.
Saudi Ties Moved to Endnotes – Zelikow appears sympathetic to Jacobson and De, and had also entertained suspicions of the Saudis at one point. However, he apparently sees his role at this late stage as that of a mediator and allows Snell to delete the sections from the main body of the report, although Jacobson and De are then permitted to write endnotes covering them. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 398-399]Material unfavorable to Pakistan is also omitted from the report (see July 22, 2004).
Attorney Snell is a partner in the Litigation Department at Proskauer. I once worked at Proskauer at the Colgate-Palmolive building in New York. Litigation partners at large law firms have been known to advise that when you want to know what the other party wants the judge to overlook — the issues that they can’t handle — look to the footnotes of their brief.
Compartmentalization of information and CYA instincts often will lead to a failure in counterintelligence analysis, even while we credit everyone’s good faith.
DXer said
FBI source reportedly met Usama bin Laden in 1993, revealed US plot, terror cell locations
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/26/fbi-source-reportedly-met-usama-bin-laden-in-13/
According to Edward J. Curran, a former top official in the Los Angeles office, FBI agent Bassem Youssef had developed a confidential source close to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheik” who masterminded the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center. The source was able to go overseas and meet with bin Laden.
When he returned to the United States, the source indicated to Youssef that bin Laden had already selected a Masonic lodge in the Los Angeles area as an attack target. The source, whose identity and whereabouts are not accounted for after 1994, also revealed that two terror cells were operating in Los Angeles and San Diego. The planned Los Angeles attack never took place, thanks in part to the information provided by the source.
The court case appears to have been the first public disclosure of FBI contact with bin Laden at such an early date. Attorney Stephen Kohn, who represented Youssef in the case, told the Times that he did not know about the contact until it was revealed during testimony because the information had been kept classified. Kohn claims that the FBI censored the information about Youssef’s source to keep the information from the public.
According to the Times, there is also no mention of the source in either the 9/11 Commission’s official report, published in 2004, or in any other report produced by congressional intelligence committees or by the CIA’s Inspector General. An FBI official told the paper that the bureau gave the commission access to “all relevant information,” “pertinent documents,” and “knowledgeable personnel.” It is not clear that Youssef was ever contacted by the commission.
DXer said
In July, 2006 the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the FBI illegally retaliated against Youssef because he had allegedly made whistleblower disclosures to the Director of the FBI and a Member of Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassem_Youssef_(FBI_agent)
DXer said
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/fbi-never-revealed-it-had-al-qaeda-mole-who-met-n39076
The FBI had a mole inside al Qaeda who met with Osama bin Laden eight years prior to 9/11 and knew he planned to finance terror attacks, but the bureau declined to tell Congressional investigators or the 9/11 Commission about the mole, sources involved in the case told NBC News.
The mole, NBC News has learned exclusively, was a Los Angeles-based “driver and confidante” of the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, now in prison for his role in planning the original 1993 terror attack on New York’s World Trade Center.
***
“It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al Qaeda, directly involved,” Curran told the court, according to excerpts of testimony published by the Washington Times. He also testified that the informant was “tight, close” with al Qaeda leadership.
The mole told the FBI that the Blind Sheikh said, “If you need any money, you go to Osama directly and tell him I sent you.”
DXer said
“The transcript of that deposition is posted on the National Whistleblowers Center’s website.”
Did FBI Really Place a Mole In Contact With Osama bin Laden Years Before 9/11?
By Mike Levine
Feb 26, 2014 6:35pm
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/02/did-fbi-really-place-a-mole-in-contact-with-osama-bin-laden-years-before-911/
Whatever one makes of this new story about the FBI asset, kudos to the National Whistleblowers Center for uploading the civil deposition in moving toward getting people “on the same page.”
I once went to DC to do research in their library in connection with benzene in soft drinks. It is a great public resource.
DXer said
Richard Esposito of NBC adds fascinating to the story in a breaking story.
Exclusive: Mole Who Met Bin Laden Killed by Al Qaeda in Bosnia
BY RICHARD ESPOSITO
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/exclusive-mole-who-met-bin-laden-killed-al-qaeda-bosnia-n39306
An FBI mole who provided valuable intelligence on al Qaeda and met with Osama bin Laden was lured away from the FBI to work for the CIA, but was killed by al Qaeda operatives in Bosnia who suspected he was an informant, NBC News has learned exclusively.
The informant, a Sudan-born driver and confidante to “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the radical Muslim cleric who allegedly masterminded the first attempt to take down the World Trade Center, had been the sole human asset providing first-person information about al Qaeda in the mid-1990s as the terror group gained strength around the globe.
…
The Egyptian-born Sheikh had been an FBI target since at least Nov. 5, 1990, when one of his followers, El Sayyid Nosair, shot and killed radical Rabbi Meir Kahane in a Manhattan hotel. After the shooting, boxes of information were found in Nosair’s apartment that hinted at a larger conspiracy.
Under pressure, the Sheikh moved some of his operations from the New York area to Los Angeles, where the future mole was living. The mole became the Sheikh’s driver. That’s when the FBI first noticed him, and started the process that would turn him into an informant.
…
The driver, however, still didn’t know he was talking to the FBI. But after subsequent meetings with Youssef and other agents in Rome and Brussels, he learned the truth, and agreed to provide information, said sources. He started talking about a terror group called al Qaeda. In Brussels, he passed a polygraph test, and then produced a dozen authentic U.S. and Canadian passports in which the original pictures had been replaced with the pictures of al Qaeda operatives. The operatives had used the passports to crisscross Europe and spread the message of jihad.
…
The driver was also able to arrange a trip to his home country of Sudan for a meeting with one of the Sheikh’s associates, a little-known Saudi-born terror leader named Osama bin Laden.
“Bin Laden was not bin Laden then,” said one Justice Department official. “He was not that hard to get to.”
In Sudan, bin Laden told the mole that he had “picked out” a Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles for an “explosion.” The mole also told the FBI that the Sheikh said, “If you need any money, you go to Osama directly and tell him I sent you.” It is not known whether the source tried to solicit funds from bin Laden.
Back in the U.S., the Blind Sheikh was arrested along with nine followers on June 24, 1993. He was later convicted of conspiracy for planned attacks on American landmarks, and sentenced to life in prison.
The informant continued working for the FBI after the Sheikh’s arrest, said sources. But the mole’s success had piqued the interest of another U.S. agency, the CIA. In 1994, a civilian female working for the CIA was able to convince the informant, with the help of a large sum of money, to work for the CIA instead of the FBI.
In 1994 or 1995, the CIA dispatched the informant to Bosnia, where jihadis were aiding Bosnia’s Muslim majority in a war against Serbian forces.
The FBI did not know at the time that its informant had started working for the CIA, or why he had disappeared. His former handler, Bassem Youssef, who by then was working undercover in Los Angeles as a supposed member of al Qaeda, began asking his al Qaeda sources what had become of the driver.
They told Youssef that the driver had gone to Bosnia, and that al Qaeda operatives there had killed him because they believed that he was a mole for the CIA. Later, Youssef was able to confirm that the al Qaeda operatives’ suspicions were justified, and that the driver had been working for the CIA.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/exclusive-mole-who-met-bin-laden-killed-al-qaeda-bosnia-n39306
DXer said
“Release Him”: Retaliation for Detention of the Blind Sheikh And Other Detainees
The extradition of Egyptian islamists has been one motive for Zawahiri’s crimes over the past quarter-century. In 1993, Abdel Sattar was 33. The US Post Office employee was a member of the board at Abu Bakr mosque in Brooklyn. He was already a close associate of Abdel-Rahman. In talking to a Washington Post reporter, he took a zigzag ride to a place chosen at random at the last minute. He explained that bad things likely would happen if the blind sheik was not released. In December 1994, Algerian Islamic militants seized control of an Air France jetliner in Algiers in an unsuccessful bid to crash it into Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day. The hijackers demanded the release of the blind sheik.
The United States State Department, on its webpage, explains that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad “[h]as threatened to retaliate against the United States for its incarceration of Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman and, more recently, for the arrests of its members in Albania, Azerbaijan, and the United Kingdom.” As one informant would later testify, Al Qaeda leadership, then in Khartoum, Sudan, found the blind sheikh’s arrest “very sad and.. very bad.” They concluded they had “to do something.. They talk about what we have to do against America.”
Blind sheik Abdel-Rahman spoke to Mary Anne Weaver, author of the seminal A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam in the mid-1990s. Abdel-Rahman first went to Peshawar in 1985. He left from Peshawar for a trip into Afghanistan after being released after three years in an Egyptian prison after Sadat’s assassination. He settled into the back seat of the U.S.-supplied camouflaged truck shortly after prayers, helped into a flak jacket by his friend, Afghan resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar was receiving half of the CIA’s financial support even though he was one of the most anti-US leaders in the resistance against Soviet occupation. Mary Anne Weaver wrote in The Atlantic Monthly in 1996: “They had much in common: both were exceedingly charismatic religious populists; both had committed their lives to jihad, or Islamic holy war; both were fiery orators. They were both given to elliptical, colorful turns of phrase, and their shared message was clear: the imperative to overthrow a secular government — whether in Afghanistan or Egypt — and establish an Islamic state.” Weaver recounts that joining them in the truck was Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The 60 CIA and special forces officers in Peshawar considered Abdel-Rahman an asset. In preaching jihad, Abdel-Rahman travelled to Islamic centers in Germany, England, Turkey, and the United States.
Weaver explained that Sheikh Omar’s closest friend in Peshawar was Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a highly respected Palestinian. He was killed by a car bomb in 1989. Azzam established the Service Office, which he led until November of 1989, which like its sister office at the Alkifah Refugee Center, on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, recruited Arab volunteers. Islambouli headed the office after Azzam’s death. Mohammed Islambouli had been a student of Sheikh Omar’s at the Upper Egyptian University of Asyut. WTC 1993 prosecutor McCarthy explained in a 2008 book: “In Peshawar, both in 1985 and several times thereafter, Abdel Rahman would enjoy the august company of his former student Mohammed Shawky al-Islambouli, a fixture there. A rising jihadist star in his own right, Shawky’s prominence owed much to his mythogenic brother…”
By the time Weaver wrote her article for the Atlantic Monthly, Mohammed Islambouli had joined a cell with KSM in planning the aircraft and other attacks on the US and was with him in Doha, Qatar.
In December 1995, the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a devastating car bomb following threats from militant Egyptian Islamist groups who demanded that the government of Pakistan stop extraditing their members who had stayed in Peshawar when the war came to an end. The groups also demanded that the United States release Sheikh Abdel-Rahman who had been imprisoned in connection with a plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
In a booklet written by al Zawahiri, distributed among his colleagues in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Zawahiri discussed the reasons that led to Egyptian Islamic Jihad to blow up the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. He criticized all branches of the Egyptian government from the Minister of Information, to the army and police forces, the justice system, the public prosecutor’s office, and the religious scholars. But his harshest criticism was directed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was responsible for pursuing jihad members abroad and kidnapping and extraditing them. In September 2000, in an interview with an Arabic-language television station, Usama Bin Laden called for a “jihad” to release the “brothers” in jail “everywhere.” In the book he wrote at the time of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, he explained that the reason for the attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan in 1995 was because Egypt had been extraditing fundamentalists from Pakistan. When surveillance of the US embassy showed that it was perhaps too difficult a target, the Egyptian embassy was targeted as a symbol. Zawahiri wrote in the Fall 2001 that : “It left the embassy ruined as an eloquent and clear message.”
An FBI 302 memo dated December 30, 1996 relating to intelligence gathered from the jailed WTC 1993 plotter Ramzi Yousef reflected the same warning of a hijack-of-an-aircraft-to-free-the-blind sheik plot.
Bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war on the United States complained of the arrests of Sheik al-Hawali and another colleague. In an interview, Bin Laden conducted with CNN’s Peter Arnett in 1997, Bin Laden told Arnett: “When the Saudi government transgressed in oppressing all voices of the scholars and the voices of those who call for Islam. I found myself forced, especially after the government prevented Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali [Ali Al-Timimi’s mentor at University] and some other scholars, to carry out a small part of my duty of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong.” The views of these two sheiks were promoted by the US-based charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”).
In a public relations debacle for the islamists, on or about November 17, 1997, six terrorists shot and stabbed a group of tourists visiting an archaeological site in Luxor, Egypt. Fifty-eight tourists were killed along with four Egyptians. The terrorists left leaflets explaining their support for the Islamic Group and calling for the blind sheik’s release. The torso of one was slit and a leaflet inserted: “No to tourists in Egypt.” It was signed “Omar Abdul Rahman’s Squadron of Havoc and Destruction — the Gama’a al-Islamiya, the Islamic Group.” Intelligence concluded that Bin Laden had financed the operation and that Luxor was ordered by Egyptian Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza.
Dale Watts, Chief of the FBI’s International Terrorism Section, explained in a 1998 Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee: “There is an indication that the November 1997 attack on foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt, was apparently an example of this type of interwoven violence. The ambush appears to have been carried out in an attempt to pressure the United States into releasing Sheik Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his part in planning attacks against the president of Egypt and several sites in New York City. ”
In 1998, the blind sheik issued a fatwa directing that Americans be killed to avenge his imprisonment. During the trial relating to bombing the U.S. embassies in Africa, one witness testified that Abdel Rahman smuggled a flier from prison calling on Muslims to avenge indignities he sustained as a prisoner. “Oh people, oh men of Allah, rise up from your deep slumber. .. Rise up and see justice done,” the sheik wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison.
Zawahiri gave the same motivation for the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. In 1998, the “Information Office of the Jihad Group in Egypt” issued a statement — a copy of which was received by Al-Hayat — entitled “About the extradition of three of our brothers.” It said that “the US government, in coordination with the Egyptian government, arrested three of our brothers in some East European states.” The statement said: “The accusation leveled at our three brothers was participation in a group declaring jihad against the United States and Israel and their trade, and cooperation with the mujahidin in Kosovo outside US influence.” It continued: “We are interested in briefly telling the Americans that their message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being [prepared], because we — with God’s help — will write it in the language that they understand.”
Three days later, 220 people at the embassies, mostly Africans, were killed. Zawahiri deemed many were working on intelligence matters against islamists in the region. In response to a retaliatory cruise missile strike after the embassy bombings, Zawahiri told a Pakistan journalist by satellite phone that “The war has only just begun.” The phone had been bought by a charity worker in Columbia, Missouri who later lived with the father of the leader of the Virginia Paintball defendants Royer.
In the Spring and Fall of 1999, the Blind Sheik’s assistant, Sattar, was in telephone communication with Deputy Military Commander Mustafa Hamza, the blind sheik’s successor Taha, Yassir al-Sirri, and al-Zayat. They spoke on conference calls about the blind sheikh’s withdrawal of his support for the cease fire. Although suspecting his phone was wiretapped, Sattar continued to talk vaguely in code about these issues with these people, all of whom were closely connected to al-Zawahiri. This was the period Zawahiri moved forward his anthrax planning and there was a public dialogue between Bin Laden and a London cleric’s call for a holy biowar.
On September 21, 2000, an Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, televised an interview with Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Islamic leader Abu Yasser (of the Islamic Group and Al Qaeda), and Mohammed Abdel Rahman (the blind sheik’s son), during which they pledged jihad to free Abdel Rahman. They urged that his followers avenge the “insult” paid him by his imprisonment for conspiracy to commit murder. Bin Laden vowed “to work with all our power to free our brother, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and all our prisoners in America, Egypt, and Riyadh. Bin Laden told his followers to remember Nosair, the man who assassinated Rabbi Kahane. In an audio overlay, Mohammed was heard saying “avenge your sheik” and “go to the spilling of blood.”
When Abdel-Rahman visited Peshawar in the late 1980s and early 1990s Abdel-Rahman stayed in a large house outside of Peshawar with Mohammed Islambouli and Zawahiri. Al-Timimi would speak alongside Abdel-Rahman’s son at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1996. Alarm bells should have gone off when Al-Timimi in the late 1990s first started walking down the hallways with famed Russian bioweaponeer and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey — two leading DARPA-funded Ames researchers. There is no indication that they did.
Zawahiri wrote in Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet published at the time of the second anthrax mailing that he agreed with the supporter of the “blind sheik” who said: “the Egyptian Government is guilty of a major shortcoming by not intervening to safeguard the shaykh, guarantee his humanitarian rights inside the US jail, and find a solution to his case because, in the final count, he is an Egyptian national, a Muslim scholar, and a professor at Al-Azhar university. Finally he is a blind and sick old man. His continued detention and the inhuman way in which he is treated will continue to be a source of tension on all levels.
The ruling shura (council) of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the mid-1990s had 14 members, including three in London. Two of those three, Adel Abdel Bari and Ibrahim Eidarous, at the time of the anthrax mailings, were the ones who had announced that the 1998 embassy bombings were in retaliation for the detention of the blind sheik and Sheik al-Hawali. They were in Belmarsh prison fighting extradition to the United States for alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Ahmed and Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, two of the Egyptian sheikh’s 13 children, were named as co-conspirators in the September 11 attacks.
In late May 2000, Post Office employee Sattar had telephone conversations with Islamic Group leaders in which he explained that Abdel Rahman (1) did not object to a return to “work” (terrorist operations); (2) agreed that the IG should escalate the issues in the media; (3) advised the IG to avoid division within the IG’s leadership; and (4) instructed the IG to hint at military operation even if the group was not ready for military action.
On October 4, 2000, US Postal employee Sattar called the Vanguards of Conquest publicist in London, Al-Sirri, and read to him a fatwa to be issued under Abdel Rahman’s name entitled, “Fatwah the Killing of Israelis Everywhere,” which Al-Sirri agreed to distribute. The next day, the fatwa appeared on a web-site operated by Al-Sirri.
On or about November 21, 2000, Al Jazeera featured a meeting of Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Taha under a banner that read “Convention to Support Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman. The three pleaded “jihad to free Abdel Rahman from incarceration in the United States. Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik’s son, was heard urging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.” But the blind sheik’s plight was also of concern to alleged Al Qaeda operatives in the US.
Members of an alleged Detroit, Michigan terror cell had an angry conversation in June 2001 about Abdel Rahman’s imprisonment.
Similarly, the Government’s Indictment of the Buffalo defendants explained that one of the reasons motivating the terrorists actions was that “al Qaeda opposed the United States Government because of the arrest, conviction and imprisonment of persons belonging to Al Qaeda or its affiliated terrorist groups or those with whom it worked.”
IANA writer Kamal Habib, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was in charge of the “National Campaign to Release Detainees.” It perhaps was inevitable that IANA would be caught in the crossfire just as was Abdel-Rahman’s attorney Lynne Stewart.
As a source, the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the U.S.” mentions “a senior EIJ member” living in California. The reference is to former US sergeant Ali Mohammed, Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence. The references in the PDB to the threat of aircraft hijacking in an attempt to free blind sheik Abdel-Rahman were perhaps underscored a month later when, the week before 9/11, the Taliban government offered to exchange eight Christian missionaries in exchange for Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Whether viewed as blackmail or retaliation, the detention of the blind sheikh and numerous other detainees in custody prior to 9/11 figured as an important part of the motive for all the terrorist attacks by the Salafist-Jihadis for years leading up to the anthrax mailings.
In April 2005, Moussaoui confessed to a plot to fly a 747 into the White House if the United States government refused to free the blind sheikh. Bin Laden had considered hijacking a plane in an attempt to flee the blind sheikh but determined it was impractical.
In the Amerithrax Third Squad’s testing of the theory that a supporter of the Salafist-Jihadis mailed the anthrax, concern for detention of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman should have been a major factor. By overcompartmentalizing and suppression of the fact that the FBI and CIA had a mole meeting with Bin Laden and then going to Bosnia, investigators of the anthrax mailings were unnecessarily hampered.
Amerithrax, in my opinion, represents the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in United States history and the United States faces an existential threat associated with Dr. Ayman’s plan to use anthrax as a weapon against the United States.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
There are numerous pending motions in connection with the Ali Al-Timimi case. The recent revelations show that overcompartmentalization contributes to failed intelligence analysis. The public’s “right to know” is being given inadequate weight.
In 2000, IANA radio ran an item “CIA to Monitor Foreign Students.” The item as published on the IANA website read: “American anti-terrorism policies are ‘seriously deficient according to the US National Commission on Terrorism, a body created by Congress after the bombing of 2 US embassies in East Africa.’”
In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the need to guard against spies at universities, who for example, may have access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information.
“Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.”
Infiltrator Ali Mohamed was the “Teflon terrorist.” Ali Mohammed, an EIJ member who was associated with the unit that killed Sadat, had an alibi for the Sadat assassination. He was at an officer exchange program studying at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina., Green Beret and Delta Force officers trained there. After he was forced out of the Egyptian Army for his radical beliefs, he went to work at Egyptair. As a security advisor, where he learned how to hijack airliners. He then joined the CIA and the US Army. He was a supply sergeant at the US Army’s Fort Bragg. He lectured Green Beret and Delta Forces on the middle east. He stole high resolution maps from the map shack and brought them to Zawahirii in Afghanistan. In 1989, Ali Mohamed traveled from Fort Bragg to train men that would later commit WTC 1993. When Ali Mohammed traveled to Brooklyn, he stayed with Islamic Group and Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard Nosair, the man who would assassinate Rabbi Kahane in 1990.
WTC 1993 prosecutor Andrew McCarthy concludes that “in small compass, [Ali Mohammed] is the story of American intelligence and radical islam in the eighties and nineties: the left hand oblivious not only to the right but to its own fingers … while jihadists played the system from within, with impunity, scheming to kill us all.” He emphasizes: “There is no way to sugar coat it: Ali Mohamed is a window on breathtaking government incompetence.” He writes: ”I raised holy hell … that I strongly suspected Mohamed was a terrorist, that the FBI should be investigating him rather than allowing him to infiltrate as a source … Because, you know what they say “IMAGINE THE LIABILITY.”
In 1991, when Bin Laden wanted to move from Afghanistan to Sudan, Ali Mohammed served as his head of security and trained his bodyguards. Along with a former medical student, Khalid Dahab, Ali Mohamed recruited ten Americans for “sleeper cells.” After the 1998 embassy bombings, when FBI agents secretly swarmed his California residence, they found a document “Cocktail” detailing how cell members should operate. Even Al Qaeda central would not know the identity of members and different cells would not know each other’s identity. It was Ali Mohamed who was the source for the December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explaining that the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli, was planning attacks on the US. In November 2001, did the Quantico profilers know of this egregious history of infiltration and harm flowing from treating the Nosair case as a “lone wolf” rather than an international conspiracy? One man’s “lone wolf” experiencing howling loneliness is another man’s Salafist operating under strict principles of cell security and “need-to-know.”
A former FBI agent in the New York office who asked not to be identified, told author Peter Lance: “Understand what this means. You have an Al Qaeda spy who’s now a U.S. citizen, on active duty in the U.S. Army, and he brings along a video paid for by the U.S. government to train Green Beret officers and he’s using it to help train Islamic terrorists so they can turn their guns on us. By now the Afghan war is over.”
Steve Emerson once said of the former US Army Sergeant who was Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence: “Ali Mohamed is one of the most frightening examples of the infiltration of terrorists into the infrastructure of the United States. Like a [character in a] John Le Carre thriller, he played the role of a triple agent and nearly got away with it.” Those officials who sought to minimize the security breach would have to explain away the classified maps of Afghanistan he stole from the map shack, and the classified cables and manuals found in such places as the home of Nosair, the assassin of Rabbi Kehane.
Not even Ali Mohammed, however, could boast the letter of commendation from the White House once given Ali Al-Timimi, previous work for White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, or a high security clearance. Ali Mohammed did not even have a security clearance but was merely a supply sergeant at the base where Special Operations was located. ‘Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s Support Committee’ in an email to supporters dated April 5, 2005 explained: “This is a summary of the court proceedings that took place yesterday April 4th 2005. We will send a summary everyday inshallah. *** “In his opening statement, Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said that Al-Timimi was born and raised in Washington DC. He has a degree in Biology and he is also a computer scientist, and a mathematician. He worked for Andrew Card, who’s now the White House chief of staff, at the Transportation Department in the early 1990s.”
There was an elephant in the rooom no one talked about. A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to ATCC facilities, as well as facilities of the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense at George Mason University then run by Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey. The bionformatics grad student once had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy.
Many commentators have long held strong and divergent opinions of what has been published in the media about Amerithrax, what they knew and their political views. But it turns out that they apparently have just been seeing the elephant in the living room from a different angle. Actually, they’ve just been in a position to see the elephant’s rump from outside the living room door. One US law professor, Francis Boyle, who has represented islamists abroad, first publicized the theory that a US biodefense insider was responsible. He has served as legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Separately the theory was adopted by professor Barbara Rosenberg. But Professor Boyle and Rosenberg were not so far from the truth — just incorrect as to motive. The documentary shows that Zawahiri’s plan was to infiltrate the US and UK biodefense establishment, and the evidence shows that is exactly what he did.
In a June 2005 interview in a Swiss (German language) weekly news magazine, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Ken Alibek addresses the anthrax mailings:
A. “What if I told you Swiss scientists are paid by Al Qaeda? You could believe it or not. It has become somewhat fashionable to disparage Russian scientists. Americans, Iraqis, or whoever could just as well be involved with Al Qaeda. Why doesn’t anyone speculate about that?”
Q. “But could one of your students build a biological weapon in the garage?”
A. “Let me reply philosophically: Two hundred years ago, it was unthinkable to believe that people would be using mobile telephones, wasn’t it? Everything changes. Our knowledge grows, and technology develops incredibly quickly. … I am not saying that a student is in a position to build a biological weapon all by himself. But the knowledge needed to do it is certainly there.”
No one who responded to my inquiries says they ever knew Al-Timimi to ever have been involved in any biodefense project. For example, former Russian bioweaponeer Sergei Popov did not know of any such work by Al-Timimi. Anna Popova had only seen him in the hall on a very rare occasion. Dr. Alibek thought of him as a “numbers guy” rather than a hands-on type. Given that the FBI knows what Al-Timimi had for dinner on September 16, 2001 and lunch on September 17, it is very likely that the past years have involved a continued search for the mailer and/or processor. His attorney emphasizes that while they searched for materials related to a planned biological attack when they searched his townhouse in late February 2003, they came up empty.
DOD official Peter Leitner, who also taught at GMU, supervised a 2007 PhD thesis by a graduate student that explores biosecurity issues at GMU. The PhD biodefense thesis on the vulnerability of the program to infiltration explains:
“As a student in the biodefense program, the author is aware that students without background checks are permitted to work on grants, specifically Department of Defense, that has been awarded to NCBD under the Department of Molecular and Microbiology at GMU. Students are also permitted to do research separately from work in the lab for their studies. Work and studies are separate, but related by the lab. Thus, student access, research and activities go unchecked and unmonitored. Students have access to critical information and technology.”
The author explains:
“A principal investigator (PI) may hire a student based on a one on one interview, post doctoral or masters interest, technical abilities, publications, previous work and lab experience, whether student qualifications match the principal interrogators current research, whether there is a space, and if the timing is right. There is no formal screening process or background check that the author is aware of for teaching or research assistantships.”
Other students took a “red cell” approach that have corroborated the findings of the thesis. Proliferation leads to great risk of infiltration.
LSU researcher Martin Hugh-Jones explained: “There were no more than ten labs in the nation working with the organism, and now it’s about 310—and they all want virulent strains. In the old days virtually everyone was paid by Department of Defense to do their research because that’s the only place where money came from because the organism wasn’t thought to be of economic importance. Now that it’s a bioterrorist threat and money’s available for research, experts have come out of the walls. The whole damn thing is bizarre.”A 2004 Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services report: “Serious weaknesses compromised the security of select agents at the universities under review. Physical security of select agents at all 11 universities left select agents vulnerable to theft or loss, thus elevating the risk of public exposure.”
Dr. Leitner in a letter to the Fairfax County Police Department wrote:
“Now we see that Sergeant Rasool was the subject of a several-year long investigation – in fact, he was under investigation at the time he lodged his complaints against us — and was recently convicted of a very serious security breach involving misusing FBI databases to assist another person under FBI investigation for Federal terrorism charges.” Rasool sought to stop the training work being done by Dr. Leitner, who taught biosecurity work at George Mason University’s Center for Biodefense.
Knowing who to trust is not easy. But making judgments on evidence requires that we do out best to establish the facts.
That requires avoiding the suppression of information to the extent motivated only by the CYA that dominates inside the beltway.
DXer said
Chasing Islambouli’s Ghost: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
When dealing with Ayman Zawahiri, it never pays to underestimate the importance to him in the 1990s of the terrorist infrastructure in Brooklyn. In the late 1990s, Steve Emerson traced the development of the “Mekhtab Al-Khidemat Al-Mujahideen,” or the “Office of Services of the Mujahideen,” from its formation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the early 1980′s to the Al Kifah Refugee Centers which spread throughout the United States and internationally. Zawahiri visited Brooklyn’s al Farouk mosque, which was part of Khidmat Services in Peshawar and was used to funnel jihadists and funds to Afghanistan. The blind sheik’s lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, visited in 1990. Islambouli was head of the office in Peshawar. In a 1990 documentary by SBS-TV “Cutting Edge” series entry called “Sword of Islam,” Islambouli said: “Islam grows on the severed limbs and blood of martyrs. Islam will be back, and take over the world.”
The CIA’s December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explained that Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, was planning an attack using aircraft and other means on the United States. After Bojinka, which can be thought of as the origin for the 911 planning, Islambouli had been in a cell with KSM in planning the attacks. KSM came to be head of the cell planning to use weaponized anthrax on the United States. Therefore, it is important to understand who Islambouli knew and consider his historical connection to the al-Farook mosque in Brooklyn, New York.
Now the surest way to know who Islambouli knew would be to go back to the late 1970s leading up to Sadat’s assassination and study membership in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad cells at the universities. But the story also can fruitfully be picked up a decade later in the context of Islambouli’s ongoing connection to al-Farook. The Al-Kifah Refugee Center had found its home in the early 1990s at the Al-Farooq mosque on Atlantic Avenue. Some of the men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing worshipped at the mosque, as did the blind sheik’s bodyguard El-Sayyed Nosair, who killed the radical Israeli Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The Brooklyn office of Makhtab Khidmat al-Mujahiden was staffed by Egyptian Islamic Jihad operative Khaled Dahab, a used car salesman from Santa Clara. Dahab handled the logistics for terrorists out of his home. He patched through calls for Egyptian Islamic Jihad members and transferred money. Ayman called Dahab periodically — once to price telephone surveillance equipment. Dahab at last report was in jail in Egypt. Dahab had been recruited by Ali Mohammed, the former US Army sergeant who was Bin Laden’s chief of security during the move from Afghanistan to Sudan. Ali Mohammed helped conduct the surveillance leading much later to the embassy bombings. He trained Dahab on how to make letter bombs.
When Ali Mohammed would visit Brooklyn, he would stay with a fellow Egyptian Nosair, who assassinated Meir Kahane. Nosair had been one of the men practicing with the men at the Calverton shooting range in Long Island under Mohammed’s instruction (along with some of the WTC 1993 bombers).
In 1992, Mohammed Islambouli, was in regular fax contact from his Peshawar Mujahedeen Office in Peshawar, Pakistan and the Brooklyn Al-Kifah office. One 1992 memo from Islambouli’s Peshawar office read: “The military wing of the Jihad seals its news with success everywhere. However, the matter is the hands of the leadership to form the Islamic government to manage the country.”
Sheik Abdel-Rahman would lecture regularly at al-Farook. He would visit Islambouli in Pakistan from Brooklyn in 1989 and during the early 1990s. It was not until April 1993, upon a crackdown on the foreign fighters, that Islambouli and Zawahiri had to move their operations into Afghanistan. Islambouli moved a scant 100 miles. Before disappearing into Afghanistan, Islambouli told the press the group would continue its holy war against the Egyptian government. In 1993, after he had to leave Peshawar, Islambouli lived at the Samarkhiel Guest House in Jalabad, a town in eastern Afghanistan three hours by road from the Pakistan border. In April 1993, a fax to Western news media threatened American interests if anything happened to Abdel-Rahman. At the time, Egyptian Islamic Group had about 200 members in Jalabad.
Even back then, moreover, there was a connection between Brooklyn and the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. For example, a 1992 memo read:
“We urge you to support them and to support them and to contribute to their developments, programs and projects in order that they may do their part in accomplishing our jihad and mission of raising the World of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and the Message of our Prophet Muhammad (saw) to the Highest.” Another memo from the Moro National Liberation Front read: “THIS IS TO CERTIFY that according to the records of this office, that Mr. Abdul Zindani had shown his sincerity, loyalty, and devotion to his work and noble project as Chairman of:
AL-KIFAH REFUGEE CENTER OF AMERICA
P.O. Box – 294, Brooklyn NY -11217
Telephone No. 718-797-9207
We urge you to help all kinds of support needed to all concern Islamic movements, specially our Muslim Mujahidin around the Globe including those in Bosnia Herzegovinia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Kurdisn, Burma, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Lebanon, India, Trinidad, Somalia and Bangsamoro in Southern Philippines.”
By 1995, Nosair was in prison and a defendant in a trial for sedition along with the Blind Sheik. The father of Adnan El-Shukrijumah (“Jafar the Pilot”) once translated for the Blind Sheik and was a character witness for Clement Rodney Hampton one of the defendants in the 1995 sedition trial. Jafar’s father was Bilal Philip’s mentor. Bilal Philips in turn was Al-Timimi’s mentor (and he continued to be in contact with him). Hampton-El testified that Philips was the head of “Project Bosnia.” He explained that Philips funneled money from Saudi Arabia to pay for noncombatant support services for the mujahideen in Bosnia. Project Bosnia also recruited combatants and men for paramilitary training. Numerous cities would come to have subsidiary Al Kifah offices. Aafia Siddiqui would be associated with the one in Boston, which after WTC 1993 was renamed Care International. The Care head was MIT MSA Imam Suheil Laher. He worked with Aafia in fundraising.
In 2003, prosecutors alleged in a complaint unsealed in Brooklyn federal court that a Yemeni cleric raised millions, some of it through Al-Farooq mosque, that was then funneled to al-Qaida terrorists. Prosecutors alleged that Sheik Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad used the mosque to raise money for Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network in 1999. He allegedly told an FBI informant that he supplied al-Qaida with more than $20 million, recruits and weapons in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The government sought to extradite Al-Moayad and his assistant. The complaint said much of the money came from contributors in the United States, including the Al-Farooq mosque.
If the federal investigative interest over the years has been any indication, it appears that authorities perceived that a tree grew in Brooklyn. But given the FBI and CIA’s suppression of information relating to the mote that they had in Al Qaeda, intelligence analysis has been seriously hampered.
DXer said
“At a meeting in a Denny’s coffee shop in Los Angeles a week after the
Kahane assassination [by the blind sheik’s bodyguard Nosair],
the 20-year veteran field agent met with one of his
top undercover operatives, a burly 33-year-old FBI contract employee who
had been a premier bomber for a domestic terrorist group before being
“turned” and becoming a government informant.
“Why aren’t we going after the sheikh [Abdel Rahman]?” demanded the
undercover man.
“It’s hands-off,” answered the agent.
“Why?” asked the operative.”
http://www.textfiles.com/conspiracy/wtcbomb1.txt
[From _The Village Voice_, March 30, 1993]
THE CIA AND THE SHEIK
The Agency Coddled Omar Abdel Rahman, Allowing
Him to Operate in the U.S.
Now This Unholy Alliance Has Blown Up in Our Faces.
By Robert I. Friedman
“They were talking all the time about targeting American symbols,” says the
FBI undercover informant, “the Empire State Building, the Statue of
Liberty. A few of the guys came to the mosque to pray and go home. But
others gathered to conspire in small groups, talking in deep, low voices.
They see the U.S. as an imperialist power, the Big Satan, the root of all
the evil in the world.”
The FBI operative, Mamdouh Zaki Zakhary, monitored the radical activities
at the El Salaam Mosque in Jersey City, which was the headquarters of the
terrorist cell that allegedly planned and carried our the of the World
Trade Center on February 26. Zakhary, a heavily bearded Coptic Christian
from Egypt who owned an import-export firm in Jersey City, spent a year and
a half spying on the local Arab American community and the mosque,
beginning January 10, 1990. During this time, he watched the first two men
arrested in connection with the bombing. Mohammed Salameh and Ibraham
Elgabrowny, as well as the spiritual leader who may have inspired them, the
fiery blind fundamentalist cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is infamous
throughout the Arab world for his alleged role in the assassination of
Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat.
“The only thing they want is to establish an Islamic world,” Zakhary told
The Village Voice during an interview from his home in Alexandria, Egypt.
“They will do anything to achieve it. You have to understand their desire
to strike out, to avenge anything that hurts Islam. I asked Elgabrowny,
‘Why do you stay here [in Brooklyn]?’ And he told me, I want to earn their
dollars so that I can stab them in the back.”
Zakhary reported the group’s subversive activities in regular meetings with
his FBI handler, Special Agent Kenneth Strange. But Zakhary, who was not
able to penetrate the cell’s inner circle, had no advance warning that
there was a plan to commit one of the most sensational acts of foreign
terrorism on American soil before the bombing of the World Trade Center:
the assassination of the controversial right-wing Zionist leader Rabbi Meir
Kahane.
***
But the FBI is. On the eve of Nosair’s trial, a frustrated federal
investigator told me that he didn’t believe Nosair had acted alone.
“There’s nothing to prove that Nosair took it upon himself to [kill
Kahane]. There are many conspiracy theories. We hit a lot of dry wells.”
Yet the federal agent said that the NYPD had jurisdiction in the case and
that the FBI’s investigation was “superficial.”
What investigators would have found if they had done their job thoroughly
is that Sheikh Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair were at the heart of a
far-flung terrorist conspiracy. A magnet for the angry and dispossessed of
the Muslim world, Abdel Rahman, through his violent preaching, has been
linked to dozens of terrorist incidents in Egypt and now to the attack on
the World Trade Center. an act he says he deplores.
In the aftermath of the bombing, many are wondering why there wasn’t a
comprehensive, wide-ranging investigation of Meir Kahane’s murder.
At a meeting in a Denny’s coffee shop in Los Angeles a week after the
Kahane assassination, the 20-year veteran field agent met with one of his
top undercover operatives, a burly 33-year-old FBI contract employee who
had been a premier bomber for a domestic terrorist group before being
“turned” and becoming a government informant.
“Why aren’t we going after the sheikh [Abdel Rahman]?” demanded the
undercover man.
“It’s hands-off,” answered the agent.
“Why?” asked the operative.
“It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he’s still in the
country,” replied the agent, visibly upset. “He’s here under the banner of
national security, the State Department, the NSA [National Security
Agency], and the CIA.” The agent pointed out that the sheikh had been
granted a tourist visa, and later a green card, despite the fact that he
was on a State Department terrorist watch-list that should have barred him
from the country. He’s an untouchable, concluded the agent. “I haven’t
seen the lone-gunman theory advocated [so forcefully] since John F.
Kennedy.”
***
This much is certain: Just 12 hours after Kahane’s killing, the government
was espousing the lone-gunman theory and Nosair’s terrorist connections
were ignored. Had the investigation into the assassination of Rabbi Meir
Kahane been vigorously pursued, the World Trade Center bombing may never
have happened.
DXer said
Report: 1990s FBI/CIA mole killed by al-Qaida operatives in Bosnia War
Feb. 27, 2014 at 10:08 AM
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) —
The Egyptian-born Rahman had been an FBI target since at least Nov. 5, 1990, when one of his followers shot and killed radical Rabbi Meir Kahane in a Manhattan hotel. In the aftermath, information found in Nosair’s apartment suggested a larger conspiracy. When the sheik moved some of his operations from New York to Los Angeles, the person who eventually became the FBI’s informant became the sheik’s driver.
The FBI began working on the informant while he was in Yemen after 1993.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/02/27/Report-1990s-FBICIA-mole-killed-by-al-Qaida-operatives-in-Bosnia-War/UPI-11431393513729/#ixzz2uXiOl7cp
DXer said
US [Los Angeles] citizen Khalil Deek financed the anthrax program at Darunta, according to Harun al-Afghani, who helped Yazid Sufaat set up the laboratory in Kandahar
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 6, 2011
Early 1990s: Al-Qaeda Operative Running Training Camps in California Also Helping Militants in Bosnia War
Khalil Deek, a US citizen and al-Qaeda operative mostly living in California, also works in Bosnia for the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), during the Bosnia war. [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11/17/2000] A secret 1996 CIA report will say, “The IARA office in Zagreb [Croatia] provides weapons to the Bosnian military, according to a clandestine source. The source claimed the office was controlled by officials of Sudan’s ruling party, the National Islamic Front.” [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 1/1996] The Wall Street Journal will later claim that the “US suspects [the IARA] was involved in smuggling fighters into Bosnia from among the mujaheddin.” [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11/17/2000] Deek has a Bosnian passport. [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 270] … Deek will later reportedly serve similar roles for al-Qaeda in Pakistan, helping to smuggle weapons (see May 2000) and direct recruits to militant training camps in Afghanistan (see 1998-December 11, 1999). While in Bosnia, he will get to know other al-Qaeda operatives later connected to various bomb plots (see January 2000). Around the same time that he is working in Bosnia, he is also being monitored by the FBI running militant training camps in California, but the FBI takes no action against him or his camps (see Early 1990s).
…
Al-Qaeda operative Khalil Deek runs military training camps in Southern California in the early 1990s. Those trained in the camps include followers of the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, and some of the people involved in the 1993 “Landmarks” plot (see June 24, 1993). Deek is a member of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell based in Orange County and has reportedly been under investigation by US intelligence since the late 1980s …
March 1993-1996: FBI Uninterested in Warnings of California Terrorist Cell
In 1992 and early 1993, the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, visits a mosque in Anaheim, California, and is hosted by an al-Qaeda sleeper cell there. Cell leaders Hisham Diab and Khalil Deek live next door to each other and are avid followers of Abdul-Rahman. Apparently he stays with Deek on one trip and with Diab on another. Saraah Olson, Diab’s wife, sees Abdul-Rahman on television in connection with the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993) and fears that her husband is a terrorist. She will later claim, “I called the FBI. I said I have information about the blind sheikh. He’s been to my house, and I need to speak to someone.” But she will say they responded, “We don’t know who you’re talking about. Thank you for the information. And they hung up.” [ABC NEWS, 12/23/2004; ABC NEWS, 12/23/2004] From 1990 until 1996, when she divorces Diab, she claims that “some of Osama bin Laden’s top deputies would stay with her and her husband.” She claims she repeatedly tried to warn the FBI about this but was never taken seriously. She also claims that even after Abdul-Rahman was arrested in mid-1993, he would regularly call Diab from prison each Sunday and deliver fiery sermons that were recorded and distributed to some of his other followers. US intelligence had been investigating Deek since at least the late 1980s but never took any action against him (see Late 1980s). [ABC NEWS, 12/23/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/8/2006] Apparently also in the early 1990s, the FBI is apparently aware that Deek is running militant training camps in California for followers of Abdul-Rahman, but they take no action against him or the camps (see Early 1990s). Diab eventually becomes a US citizen and then will leave the US in June 2001. He is now believed to be hiding in Pakistan with top al-Qaeda leaders. The FBI has been asked about Olson’s allegations but has neither confirmed nor denied them. [ABC NEWS, 12/23/2004]
***
December 9, 1999: President Clinton Warned about Al-Qaeda Operatives Living in US
As an al-Qaeda millennium plot is broken up in Jordan (see November 30, 1999), attention is focused on the fact that two of the plotters were long time US residents. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger sends a memo to President Clinton about the two men, Raed Hijazi and Khalil Deek. Hijazi had lived in California and then moved to Boston to drive a taxi there for several years. The 9/11 Commission will say Berger tells Clinton was a naturalized US citizen who had “been in touch with extremists in the United States as well as abroad.” Later in the month, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will warn Berger in an e-mail, “Foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the US and attacks in the US are likely.” [9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 179, 501]
DXer said
http://www.globaljihad.net/view_page.asp?id=914
Hisham Diab
Hisham Diab was born, probably in Egypt, in 1959 and arrived to USA in the mid 80s’. In his early years in USA Hisham Diab worked as an insurance salesman for MetLife in California.
From 1987 he held meetings with Islamic militants at his apartment in California. Among the participants was also a fellow countryman, the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.
In 1991 Hisham Diab married in California a USA citizen Sarah [Saraah?] Olson, born in 1969, which converted with her son from her first marriage to Islam, and became, through the marriage, an USA citizen. Their neighbor at that time in Orange County, California was Khalil Deek.
On 02/26/1993 , the day of the World Trade Center attack (WTC), while working on a term paper at her Garden Grove apartment, Saraah Olson turned on her television and saw coverage of the explosion. She immediately called her husband, Hisham Diab. She reached Diab at his office in Carson, California. “They blew up the Trade Center,” Olson told him according to her testimony. “They keep saying, ‘The Arabs did it; the Arabs did it. They are blaming Arabs.’” Olson recalls that her husband didn’t seem the least bit surprised and uttered exactly two words: “They should,” he said and hung up the telephone. Following this conversation Sarah Olson called the FBI about her husband for the first time. She later called the FBI several times more but, eventually, was not taken seriously.
Hisham Diab is one of the figures, in the mid 90s’, which had influence on Adam Yahiye Gadahn and helped, with Khalil Deek, to transform him to an Islamic Militant and recruit him to Al Qaeda.
In 06/2001 Hisham Diab disappeared and never renewed contact with his wife in USA. It is assumed that he went to Waziristan, Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan.
Sarah Olson admitted that during their short marriage she helped her husband to forge documents and that she played a role in drawing up the papers for a fake charity, called Charity Without Borders, that the Orange County cell used to funnel money overseas.
Sarah Olson claimed that she identified her former husband’s voice in an Al Qaeda footage, released in Pakistan in late 10/2004, in which a masked man promised that the “streets of America will run red with blood.”
Today (05/2008) the deeds or whereabouts of Hisham Diab remain unknown.
Summary
The FBI suspected that Hisham Diab, like many Egyptians who left Egypt in the early 80s’, after the assassination of the Egyptian President Anwar Saadat, on 10/06/1981, and the crack down on Islamic militants in Egypt, was an Islamic extremist himself and formed a sleeping cell for Al Qaeda in Orange County, California. Like many other Al Qaeda operatives his first mission was to blend in the local society. Hisham Diab’s connection to Al Qaeda was through Khalil Deek.
DXer said
Saraah Ferguson cooked home-cooked meals for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Who drove him to the apartment?
HER HELLISH MARRIAGE TO AL QAEDA MAN IN U.S.
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2004, 12:00 AM
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/hellish-marriage-al-qaeda-man-u-s-article-1.610420#ixzz2uYQzsjhw
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=352268
An American Married to Al Qaeda, Dec 23, 2004
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=352268
O.C. Man Rises in Al Qaeda
`Azzam the American,’ or Adam Gadahn, has moved from translator to propagandist.
October 08, 2006|Greg Krikorian and H.G. Reza | Times Staff Writers
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/oct/08/local/me-gadahn8
Diab and Deek hosted Abdel Rahman in their apartments during his lecture tours of Orange County mosques in 1992 and 1993. Olson said she cooked dinner for the Egyptian sheikh. A relative of Deek, who asked not to be identified, said Abdel Rahman stayed in Deek’s apartment for two days during one visit.
Olson said Gadahn never met the radical cleric, but she said he too was a follower. According to Olson, Abdel Rahman would call Diab and others in Orange County from prison on Sunday afternoon to deliver fiery sermons that were recorded.
In 1995, the year Gadahn converted to Islam, Diab formed Charity Without Borders, which according to state records was founded to “provide an education and humanitarian aid to poor and needy people in USA and in other countries.”
The nonprofit’s records list Diab as its chief financial officer. In April 1999, Gadahn was added as the charity’s secretary. His name is spelled “Gaden” on the form, which also has a phony Santa Ana address for him.
DXer said
It is plausible but not confirmed that Khalil Deek financed the anthrax lab — but it would have had to have been in very early stages. He was arrested in Peshawar and sent to Jordan long before the Spring 2001 procurement of additional equipment.
Palestinian-American Khalil Deek stands trial this month…
March 05, 2000|By Hugh Dellios, Tribune Foreign Correspondent.
Deek was arrested at his home in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan, and extradited to Jordan within days of the other arrests. Investigators say he arranged financing and travel plans for the cell and had direct links to bin Laden and one of his top lieutenants through a bank account.
“They had the serious intention of doing a spectacular operation against Jordan and foreign tourists in Jordan,” said a high-ranking Jordanian official.
Investigators are “absolutely” certain that Deek had direct contact with bin Laden, the official said, and that bin Laden’s organization was behind not only the Jordan plot but the bomb-smuggling operation into the U.S. in December.
..
U.S. intelligence officials have been in Jordan helping to analyze the evidence and interrogations of the detained cell members, which has added significantly to what was known about bin Laden’s loosely organized but far-reaching network.
While U.S. and Jordanian officials believe the targeting of Jordan was merely an extension of bin Laden’s anti-Western campaign, it concerns Israeli officials, who worry that he may focus his attacks on the fitful Middle East peace process.
DXer said
Ramzi Yousef will sleep well tonight knowing that the FBI WMD head did not test suspect labs for the genetically matching subtilis because there was only $100 million to spend and the FBI had other priorities.
DXer said
Here is the HBO’s “Path To Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center”
DXer said
At 51:51 in the movie “To Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing”, Ramzi Yousef’s car accident is shown. The phone number listed in that accident report is the number repeatedly called by the subtilis expert Walied Samarrai up to the time of the Blind Sheik’s arrest. Amerithrax represents the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in the history of the United States.
DXer said
The phone of the subtilis expert at Hunter College repeatedly called the number (201) 435-7501, which was the phone of key WTC 1993 participants, including WTC 1993 mastermind Ramzi Yousef.
Ramzi Yousef was a relative a Khalid Mohammed; Khalid Mohammed in turn claims he was directly involved in overseeing the planning of WTC 1993. KSM also claims to have been involved in anthrax planning.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PsE8AAAAIBAJ&sjid=JC4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=1208,3755676&dq=khalid-mohammed+wtc+1993&hl=en
The subtilis expert Walied Samarrai is directly connected to the telephone number used to rent the U-Haul used to bomb the World Trade Center.
Both Mohammed Salameh, Walied Samarrai, Abdul Yasin and Musab Yasin were all associated with the same 34 Kensington Ave. street address. Men who knew each other lived in both Apt. #4 and #8.
The telephone number (201) 435-7501 was listed which was subscribed to 34 Kensington Ave., Apartment 4, Jersey City, N.J. under a woman’s false name.
Walied Samarrai and the brother Musab in the mid-1990s co-authored a paper on the distribution of a virus. Computer Model of the Gene Control in Lambda Virus Life Cycle, authored by Walied Samarrai, Sidi Beri, Khaled Amiri, and Musab Yasin. Published as part of the Society For Modeling and Simulation 2006.
Does Musab know where his brother Yasin is? For whom there is a $5 milllion reward for his participation in the WTC 1993 bombing?
Did Walied know Ramzi Yousef?
DXer said
Part of appreciating the connection between 911 and the anthrax mailings to the 1993 WTC bombing is understanding the close connection between KSM and Yousef — who according to a recent district court decision offered to cooperated against his uncle in 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-13/terrorist-yousef-offered-to-cooperate-with-u-dot-s-dot-judge-says
Terrorist Yousef Offered to Cooperate With U.S., Judge Says
By Patricia Hurtado on October 13, 2012
Duffy said in his ruling that Yousef and his uncle had a close relationship. While Yousef was in Manila working on the Bojinka plot, he was visited by Mohammed, the judge said. Evidence provided by the U.S. showed Yousef became interested in the movements of the Pope and Clinton and had even acquired a Catholic priest’s garb and rosary beads, Duffy said.
‘Entertaining Thoughts’
“Some have conjectured that Yousef and KSM were entertaining thoughts of assassinating one of both of the visiting dignitaries,” Duffy said. “One thing is clear: Yousef was close to his relative KSM both in blood and in mental desire to wreak havoc on civilized society.”
David Nevin, a lawyer for Mohammed, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on Duffy’s ruling.
Kleinman filed a letter with the appeals court in New York last night saying that Yousef’s alleged cooperation offer to the government “was a matter that has been under seal in both the district court and the court of appeals to date.”
“It is inexplicable, and wholly improper for the district court to now make this a matter of public record,” Kleinman said,
DXer said
Egypt: Calls to Release Blind Sheikh Near Cairo Court
Tagged: Egypt, Legal Affairs, North Africa
9 September 2012
http://allafrica.com/stories/201209100388.html
DXer said
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/2012/07/31/movie-review-strange-culture/
Doing Good Science
Building knowledge, training new scientists, sharing a world.
Doing Good Science HomeAboutContact
Movie review: Strange Culture.
By Janet D. Stemwedel | July 31, 2012 |
More baffling than the behavior of the first responders was the behavior of the federal agents who searched the Kurtz home. While they raised the specter that Steve Kurtz was producing biological weapons, they ended up leaving the place in shambles, strewn with bags of purportedly biohazardous material (as well as with the trash generated by the agents over the long course of their investigation). Leaving things in this state would be puzzling if the prime concern of the government was to protect the community from harmful biological materials, suggesting that perhaps the investigative teams was more interested in creating a show of government force.
… It suggests that scientific understanding and accurate risk assessment is a problem not just for the public at large but also for the people entrusted with keeping the public safe.
DXer said
I have suggested that upon the news of the denial of Mahjoub, Vanguards of Conquest #2, on October 5, 2001, the anthrax mailer rushed to send the real deal just as had been threatened upon announcement of his bail hearing the previous January (2001).
I have pointed out that the announcement of former EIJ shura leaders and Blind Sheik’s lawyer, Montasser Al-Zayat, was made in the context of a massive trial known as the Albanian Returnees case. Mahjoub had been the manager of the farm north of Khartoum where Al-Hawsawi handled the finances. Khartoum was where Taha, Mustafa Hamza, Mohammed Islambouli, and Ayman Zawahiri plotted the attempted assassination of Mubarak in 1995 in Ethioopia.
I don’t understand why the Canadian government would have bothered objecting to Mr. Mahjoub calling 3 lawyers involved in that Albanian Returnees case in support of the argument that there was no connection. The late listing of witnesses is totally understandable given earlier Mubarak was still in power. Their testimony allows a wonderful opportunity for cross-examination.
DXer said
Arafat’s body should be exhumed — by a party trusted by all concerned — following strict chain-of-custody procedures. Such incidents need to be authoritatively resolved so that the Implications can be understood. Best guesses by interested parties don’t cut it. For an investigator merely to be “comfortable” with a theory while documents and evidences are withheld is unacceptable..
Today-
Scientists: Radioactive polonium-210 found on Yasser Arafat’s toothbrush, clothes
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/04/12556777-scientists-radioactive-polonium-210-found-on-yasser-arafats-toothbrush-clothes?lite
DXer said
Poisoned Penpal: The Murder of Chechen Rebel Leader Ibn Khattab
The question raised today whether Arafat was poisoned by polonium is similar to the unexplained poisoning of Ibn Khattab.
Ibn Khattab, a friend of Bin Laden, was an extremist leader in Chechnya and who was in contact with a correspondent writing for azzam.com.
By way of some background, an April 1, 2001 note to FBI Director Freeh, titled “Bin Laden/Ibn Khattab Threat Reporting, read: “Director Freeh: This note is to advise you of recent threat reporting deemed significant and urgent by the United States Intelligence Community.”
“The U.S. Government has received information indicating that serious operational planning has been underway since late 2000, with an intended culmination in late Spring 2001. These plans are being undertaken by Sunni extremists with links to Ibn al Khattab, an extremist leader in Chechnya and to Usama Bin Laden. There are several planning channels, some with connections to Afghanistan, all within a large shared mujahideen recruitment network.”
“It is not known whether there are different parallel plans or whether all activity centers on one major operation since all the players are heavily intertwined.”
Ibn Khattab was killed by a poisoned letter in 2002. The trusted courier had retrieved the contents of a post office box in Baku, Azerbaijan, to include some small presents and money. The man, named Ibragim, brought a coded Sony video-camera, a watch and a letter. After Ibn Khattab opened the envelope, he went into his tent. He came out a half hour later. His face was pale — he was, rubbing his face with the stump of his arm. He then fell into the arms of his bodyguards. Feeling temporarily better, Khattab gave an order to let Ibragim, who, along with five others, had been put under arrest, could go. “He has to get back to Baku.” An hour later Khattab fell ill again. He fell into some bushes, and a short while later was dead. Khattab’s people searched for Ibragim in Baku for a month. His bound body was found in the city outskirts with five bullets in the head. In an interview with the Prima News Service, Shamil Basaev, who reportedly had personally ordered Ibragim’s execution, confirmed his opinion that Khattab had been poisoned by the Russian special services: “They slipped him a poisoned letter,” Basaev told the interviewer.
What was the motive of the islamist who delivered a poison letter to Bin Laden’s friend, Khattab, in March 2002? The letter was delivered by a messenger who he knew — someone he trusted who had was delivering mail from a P.O. Box in Baku, Azerbaijan sent from the Middle East. Was the islamist who carried the letter that killed Khattab working for the Russian intelligence services? A Western intelligence service? Was the courier an unwitting dupe? Or was it all an internal feud such as when Zawahiri (some speculate) killed Azzam years ago? What are the implications, if any, for the correct resolution of Amerithrax.
DXer said
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/still-search-justice-story-security-certificate-detainee-mohammad-mahjoub/11507
STORY posted on JUNE 26, 2012 by TIM GROVES
Still In Search of Justice: The story of Security Certificate Detainee Mohammad Mahjoub
by TIM GROVESALI MUSTAFA
Comment:
If they are not going to charge Mr. Mahjoub, he should be released and deported as Morsi now seeks in his inaugural speech. There is no impediment to his deportation with the recent changes in Egypt.
If there were evidence important enough to warrant Mahjoub’s detention, then it seems that they would have thought to preserve the evidence and not destroyed the wiretaps.
His former co-defendants in that trial — Al-Nashar and Ahmed Salama Mabruk — should be interviewed by journalists concerning their publicized claim in the Spring of 1999 that Dr. Zawahiri was going to use anthrax as a weapon against US targets to retaliate for the detention of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad officials. Attorney Al-Zayat, the blind sheik’s lawyer, explained the same thing. Mr. Mahjoub allegedly was #2 in the Vanguards of Conquest and the anthrax mailer rushed to mail the “read deal” immediately upon receiving word of Mr. Majoub’s denial of bail on October 5, 2001, just as had been threatened.
When the jihadists finally claim responsibility and the world moves into uncharted territory, AUSA LIeber and Agent Montooth can explain why they permitted the documents relating to Dr. Ivins work with the rabbits — explaining why he was in the lab — were withheld from disclosure.
We can only hope that the rule of law and humane common sense principles govern the parties on all sides.
Excerpt:
“I have been in detention for 12 years without charge or trial… Why? I didn’t commit any crime and I didn’t do anything wrong, whether here or abroad. If I committed a crime, charge me and put me on trial, or release me. It’s very simple – even people who commit murder get a fair trial,” says Mohammad Mahjoub, currently the longest serving security certificate detainee in Canada.
***
Mahjoub likely first attracted the interest of the Canadian government as one of the 107 people summarily convicted by an Egyptian military court in the high profile ‘Returnees from Albania’ trial. Mahjoub was sentenced, in absentia, to 15 years imprisonment in a trial that has been internationally condemned for relying almost entirely on evidence obtained under torture.
After the fall of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak last year, the case was reopened and many of Mahjoub’s co-accused have since been cleared of any wrongdoing and freed.
DXer said
Is Ahmed Salama Mabruk, the former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s military operations, stil lin Egyptian jail? Whether in jail or released, he would be a fascinating interview. He was a close confidant of Zawahiri and had announced in 1999 that Dr. Ayman was going to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate for the rendering of senior EIJ officials, to include the Blind Sheik. Why rely on some profilers in Quantico gazing at their navel when you can ask the folks with first hand information?
From Crime & Justice International in June 1999:
June – 1999
Vol# 15 – Issue# 29
Chemical Weapons Use Threatened by Islamic Extremists
-Mike Kinney (research analyst)
An imprisoned, major leader in the Egyptian group, Islamic Jihad, has said that the terrorist organization does possess chemical and biological weapons and it has all intentions of using these weapons on United States and Israeli targets.
Ahmed Salama Mabruk, the head of Jihad’s military operations, stated the Jihad had devised a plan for completing over 100 attacks against the United States and Israeli targets and public figures in different parts of the world. This detailed plan was on a computer disk confiscated from him during his arrest in Azerbaijan. The disk was later handed over to Egyptian authorities. Mabruk said that upon learning of his arrest, fugitive Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant Ayman Al-Zawahri would have changed the dates and locations for the attack outlined in the plan.
In a mass trial of Jihad members, an Egyptian military court sentenced to death nine fugitive Jihad leaders and handed down prison terms to 78 other members, most of whom were still at large. Mabruk was one of 11 militants sentenced to hard labor for life, although only Mabruk and two others, who had been handed over to Egypt by Albania, were in police custody in Egypt. For the first time understanding how the group was set up overseas and by arresting members who infiltrated the group from abroad, the verdicts sealed a very strong case which helped authorities deliver a crippling blow to Jihad operations in Egypt.
However, the movement still poses a long-term threat, as its leader and many other militants still operate from their main overseas base in Afghanistan. Among those sentenced to death were Zawahri, the head of the Jihad who became bin Laden’s lieutenant and is believed to be with him in Afghanistan. Zawahri’s brother, Mohammed, was also given the death penalty. The nine Jihad leaders sentenced to death were convicted of trying to revive the group by training people abroad to use explosives to kill and terrify innocent people. After the verdicts, a Jihad splinter group later warned it would continue “the holy war until victory or martyrdom.”
DXer said
Similarly, Essam Marzouk would be a fascinating interview. Was he released?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essam_Marzouk
In mid-August 1998, the CIA captures Zawahiri’s right-hand man, Saqr, and two men he is meeting with — Ahmed Salama Mabruk and Canadian Essam Marzouk.
Mabruk was a known member of Islamic Jihad’s ruling council. He was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad military commander and had been in jail with Zawahiri recently. He explained upon his capture that Dr. Ayman planned on using anthrax against US targets to retaliate against the US for the CIA’s rendering of senior EIJ officials.
Marzouk, who was in communication with Mahmoud Mahjoub in Toronto, had been living in Canada and Canadian intelligence has long been suspicious about his militant ties.
The US quickly renditioned Saqr, Marzouk, and Mabruk to Egypt. Marzouk is sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mabruk is sentenced to life in prison, and Saqr’s fate in Egypt is unknown. [NATIONAL POST, 10/15/2005; ROSS AND KAY, 2007, PP. 214-224]
The CIA discovered a treasure trove of information about al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad in Mabruk’s laptop and after a great struggle the late John O’Neill of the FBI obtained it. (He died in the 911 attack).
Since 1996, Canadian intelligence had monitored many calls between Mabruk and an Islamic Jihad operative in Canada and another Canadian, Jaballah.
If the FBI did not understand the connection of the Canadian detainees Jaballah and Mahmoud to Dr. Zawahiri’s plan to use anthrax to retaliate for the rendering and mistreatment of EIJ detainees, then Amerithrax was doomed to fail from the start.
What Amerithrax needed was not profiling but intelligence analysis informed by the history of Dr. Ayman’s anthrax planning.
If intelligence analysis is an art, criminal profiling is drawing with crayons.
DXer said
The capture of Mabruk and Marzouk and Zawahiri’s right-hand man, Saqr, is described by the Mossad agent, Canadian Michael Ross, who passed on the information about the meeting to the CIA in The Volunteer: The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists, by Michael Ross (Author), Jonathan Kay (Contributor) (2007).
DXer said
Milton Leitenberg once called me up in 2002 (or maybe 2003) and asked me if I was Mossad.
He asked me how I knew things before they happened.
I told him I didn’t. I knew about them only after they happened (if they were reported).
I told him it was something called “google.”
DXer said
Missing the connection between WTC 1993 and the anthrax mailings is the same lapse that led to 9/11.
Excerpt from Fox News today from article titled something like “Outrage Builds As Egypt Presses for Release of Blind Sheik Behind WTC 1993 Attack”:
“I was shocked over his call for the release,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told FoxNews.com. “This is a man who was going to virtually destroy New York City. I can’t imagine we would even consider releasing him.
“It seems as if (Morsi) wants to ingratiate himself with extremists. That’s something to consider. I always think we are better off being cautious than trusting.”
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution against Rahman in 1995, said it isn’t surprising that Morsi believes he has a chance.
“Egypt is going to pitch this as a humanitarian gesture,” McCarthy said. “We have an administration which just issued a visa to Hani Hour Eldin, and he is a part of the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. This is an organization we use to take very seriously.
“So if you’re President Morsi and you’re are sitting back and seeing what’s going on, what stops you from making an appeal? Morsi has pressure on him. This agenda has been there the whole time.”
Rahman was convicted along with nine others of seditious conspiracy. He is being held in the Butner Federal Correctional Facility in North Carolina. He was accused of being the leader of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which was responsible for numerous violent acts including the 1997 massacre of over 60 people in Luxor, Egypt.
Although the 1993 attack failed to seriously damage the World Trade Center, it left six dead and was a precursor for the 9/11 attacks eight years later.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/03/outrage-builds-as-egypt-presses-for-release-blind-sheik-behind-3-wtc-attack/#ixzz1zb4WokfH
DXer said
The CIA’s December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief: The Ghost Of Sadat’s Assassin Visits the United States to Plan the Attacks Using Aircraft and Other Means
Former CIA agent Robert Baer in See No Evil first publicly reported that in 1996 KSM was in a cell with Mohammed Islambouli, the younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the militant who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Baer’s source was a local police chief.
ABC’s Brian Ross has reported that “the FBI tracked Mohammed to Doha, and was within hours of capturing him.” Ross’s source was Jack Cloonan, in the New York Office Bin Laden Squad. Cloonan told Ross that “a specially equipped government executive jet complete with blackout windows, was standing by to transport Mohammed.” As recounted by author Peter Lance in Triple Cross, Cloonan said that “somebody had leaked the information to Khalid Shaikh and he left.” Brian Ross identified the collaborator as none other than the Qatari religious affairs minister. The FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue team found that he had already fled to the Czech Republic. Mohammed’s work at the water department is worth noting given the later plans and research relating to poisoning water supplies. The head national security person at the time at the DOJ, Daniel Seikaly, would later serve as the lead Amerithrax prosecutor who was leaking sensationalized stories diverting public attention to Hatfill.
The “Presidential Daily Brief” on December 4, 1998 to President Clinton, titled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks,” states: “1. Reporting [ redacted ] suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sidiq Awda.'” Awda was al-Hawali’s fellow radical Saudi sheik who was detained from 1994 through 1998. Sheik Abdel-Rahman, Awda and al-Hawali were all expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war against the US. US Sheik Al-Timimi drafted a letter for al-Hawali and had it hand-delivered to members of Congress on the first anniversary of anthrax letters to Senators.
The December 1998 PDB continued: “One source quoted a senior member of Gama’ at al-Islamiya (IG) saying that, as of October, the IG had completed planning an operation in the US on behalf of bin Ladin, but that the operation was on hold. A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options — perhaps including an aircraft hijacking.” The December 4, 1998 PDB stated: “IG leader Islambouli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during the “next couple of weeks” to free ‘Abd al-Rahman and the other prisoners, according to what may be a different source.” Islambouli was the brother of Sadat’s assassin. Islambouli is still at large and is working with Zawahiri. He can be thought of as the leader of those IG members who support Al Qaeda.
The younger brother of Sadat’s assassin, Mohammed, had gone to Pakistan where he had joined Al Qaeda and run a camp. Islambouli operated in Afghanistan and had good connections in Pakistan. He worked for Maktab al-Khidmat (Bureau of Services) in Peshawar. When the blind sheik visited Peshawar, he would stay at a large house outside of Peshawar with both Islambouli and Ayman. Islambouli had an Algerian passport. He left Peshawar, Pakistan for Afghanistan in Spring 1993 upon a crackdown on foreign fighters. In more recent years he reportedly spent some time living in Algeria.
In his introduction on an August 2006 tape, Al-Zawahiri said the Egyptian group was led by Mohammed al-Islambouli. It had been his brother Mohammed’s detention that motivated the assassin Khalid Islambouli to seize an opportunity presented to kill Sadat on October 6, 1981. Sadat was killed during the annual Armed Forces parade celebrating Egypt’s successful attack on Israel in 1973. The militants objected to his signing the Camp David Agreement establishing a peace between Israel and Egypt. The assassin was promptly tried, sentenced to death, and executed. The anthrax mailer appears to have chosen the dates of the approval of that agreement and Sadat’s assassination to send the anthrax letters.
The Al Qaeda spymaster Al-Hakayma appeared on a tape in 2006 claiming that IG had joined formally with Al Qaeda. In front of a grove of palm trees, Al-Hakayma said former members had decided to revive the group and rejected the imprisoned leaders’ adherence to a truce. He vowed loyalty to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. This was a controversial announcement because the shura members of the group had denounced violence against innocents and dissolved their military wing.
The person making the announcement, Al-Hakayma, was the Al Qaeda spymaster, an Egyptian Islamic Group member himself, who had summarized the Amerithrax investigation in a 2002 treatise on US intelligence apparatus. Al-Hakayma says in the interview that a group of hardliners from Al Jamaa Al Islamiya had joined Al Qaeda, “to help our great scholar, His Eminence the unshakable Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, languishing in the dungeons of the American prisons.”
DXer said
The mother of the man in the cell with KSM planning the attacks on the US explains her relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri in Afghanistan, her son’s motivation, and the importance of the Camp David agreement to the motivation behind the attacks (e.g., appropriations to Egypt).
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3124.htm
DXer said
Several alternative motivations can be gleaned for the targeting of the anthrax letters.
Deterrence Against Invasion of Afghanistan
A senior militant who met with Atef, Zawahiri and Bin Laden to discuss these issues in the summer of 2000 in Kandahar confirms that deterring the invasion against Afghanistan was a key purpose of the threatened use of WMD.’
In November 2007, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, Numan Bin Uthman, wrote an open letter to al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri telling him that Jihadi groups in Arab countries have failed and that the strategy of using nonconventional WMD to deter an invasion of Afghanistan was a misguided and failed strategy.
In his letter to Zawahiri, the Libyan jihadist Uthman also said that he had taken part in an important al-Qaeda summit in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2000, in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had defined search for and use of weapons of mass destruction as a “Sharia obligation”.
Numan Bin Uthman began the letter:
“Dear Doctor Ayman, as I told you during a meeting in Kandahar [in Afghanistan] in 2000…”
“During this occasion, I had a strong dispute with the martyr Abu Hafs al-Kumandan [Commander Abu Hafs aka Mohammed Atef, Al Qaeda’s military commander], because he was heavily involved in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.”
Ayman Zawahiri was reporting to Atef about anthrax weaponization program codenamed Zabadi. Atef died when a missile landed on his head in November 2001.
Ali Al-Timimi had a stern warning not to invade Iraq hand-delivered to every member of Congress on October 6, 2002 — the first anniversary of the mailing to Senator Leahy and Senator Daschle. It was in the name of Bin Laden’s sheik.
Significance of Mailing Dates : Camp David Accord and Sadat’s Assassination
The FBI Counterterrorism Division sent out a warning to law enforcement in August 2001 that Al Qaeda or related groups might attack on an anniversary.
NLETS MESSAGE (ALL REGIONS)
8/1/01
A MESSAGE FROM FBI COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION, WASHINGTON, D.C
**
CONCLUSION: RECIPIENTS ARE BEING NOTIFIED AT THIS TIME BECAUSE THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CONSIDERS ANNIVERSARY DATES AS A KEY THREAT INDICATOR. ALTHOUGH LAW ENFORCEMENT AND SECURITY PERSONNEL ARE CAUTIONED NOT TO EXCLUSIVELY RELY ON SUCH DATES TO ‘PREDICT’ ACTS OF TERRORISM, ANNIVERSARY DATES CERTAINLY WARRANT INCREASED ATTENTION IN ROUTINE SECURITY PLANNING.
RECIPIENTS WHO RECEIVE OR DEVELOP ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS MATTER SHOULD CONTACT THEIR LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR FBI HEADQUARTERS IMMEDIATELY.
Anthrax was sent on the date of the Camp David Accord and the related Sadat assassination (Armed Forces Day). Expert Michael Scheuer, formerly with the CIA, has said that Al Qaeda does not plan attacks around important dates, so far as the CIA can glean. But take Ayman at his word when he says he at least plans some of his messages around anniversaries, as he and Islambouli did by sending Zawahiri-issued messages in 2004 on the third anniversary of 9/11 and then in 2005 on the third anniversary of the transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo. He said: “These days we are marking three years since the transportation of the first group of Muslim prisoners was sent to the Guantanamo prison.”
The Vanguards of Conquest did the same thing in the late 1990s. Just as Zawahiri’s thinking on weaponizing anthrax was gaining traction in emails to Atef in the Spring of 1999, the Vanguards invoked an anniversary relating to the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and issued a statement marking its 20th anniversary. The group said at the time it was reiterating its enmity toward the US and Israel to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of the treaty in March 1979. Signed on March 26, 1979, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty was a direct result of the Camp David Peace Accords, signed in September 1978.
The first round of letters was sent to ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Post, and the publisher of the National Enquirer and Sun. Letters were sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy in a second batch, using a much more highly refined product. The mailing dates were of special importance to the man that the CIA in its December 4, 1998 PDB told President Clinton was planning the attack the US using aircraft and other means — Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The letters to the news organizations were mailed — coincidentally or not — on September 17 or September 18, either the day the Camp David Accord was signed in 1978 or the next day when it was approved by the Israeli knesset. Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, in the early 1980s, said: “We reject Camp David and we regret the normalization of relations with Israel. We also reject all the commitments that were made by the traitor Sadat, who deviated from Islam.” He continued: “As long as the Camp David Agreement stands, this conflict between us and the government will continue.”
At the time of the anthrax mailings, Sadat’s assassination and the Camp David Accord still dominated Zawahiri’s thinking. In Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, Al-Zawahiri argued in the Fall of 2001 that the Camp David Accord sought to turn Sinai into a disarmed area to serve as a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel. He cites the peace treaty between the two countries, particularly issues related to the armament of the Egyptian Army inside Sinai. He claims that Egypt has restored Sinai formally but it remains in the hands of Israel militarily. Al-Zawahiri cites many examples about the US flagrant support for Israel, including the US pressure on Egypt to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at a time when Israel publicly declares that it will not sign the treaty because of its special circumstances.
Despite this, Zawahiri says, the United States sympathizes with Israel and overlooks its actions. This means that the United States has deliberately left the nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel to threaten its Arab neighbors. Al-Zawahiri argues in his book that the western states have considered Israel’s presence in the region a basic guarantee for serving the Western interests.
The Wall Street Journal explained in August 2002: “Oct. 8 last year was Columbus Day, a public holiday on which mail wasn’t collected from letter boxes. That may mean the letters could have been posted as early as the Saturday before.” Taking into account the fact that there was no mail postmarked with a Trenton postmark on Columbus Day, October 8, the letter to Senator Tom Daschle postmarked October 9 may actually have been mailed October 6. (The FBI, of course, may know the date it was mailed based on information that has not been disclosed.) (Some press reports, however, suggest that they are considering that the mailing may have been at anytime during the October 6-October 9 period). October 6 was the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated for his role in the Camp David Accord. President Sadat was assassinated on the national holiday called “Armed Forces Day.” He was killed during an annual holiday parade which marks the day, October 6, 1973, that Egypt made a critical successful surprise attack on Israel during the 1973 war.
“Death to Pharaoh!” the young Army officer Khaled Islambouli shouted. He and his confederates jumped off the truck shot into the reviewing stand where Sadat had been watching the annual parade. “I killed the Pharaoh, and I do not fear death.” Sadat’s detention of Muhammad Shawqi al-Islambouli had spurred his brother, Khalid, to seize an opportunity presented on short notice to assassinate Anwar Sadat.
Kamal Habib, founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and writer for the IANA quarterly magazine, who spent 10 years in prison in connection with the assassination, told academic Fawaz Gerges: “It was not a well-coordinated operation, and it succeeded by a miracle.”
A street was named after Khalid Islambouli in Iran, with Iran having been upset at Egypt for granting the Shah safe haven. In an interview this past year, Mohammed Islambouli’s mother described her relationship in Afghanistan to Bin Laden and Zawahiri and noted that there was not just a street named after her son, but also squares and bridges. After leaving Egypt in the mid-1980s, Muhammad Islambouli operated in Pakistan recruiting Egyptian fighters for the war in Afghanistan, and headed a branch of Bin Laden’s Maktab al-Khidmat (‘Bureau of Services’) in Peshawar. Muhammad Islambouli was the subject of the December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks” explaining that Bin Laden planned an attack on the US involving airplanes and that the motivation was to free the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman and a dissident Saudi sheik.
In his Fall 2001 Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, Zawahiri explained that the US support for Israel (at Egypt’s expense) was well-illustrated by the historic 33-day airlift to Israel after this October 6 attack. He argues that the US support for Israel made the difference between success or failure for Egypt. Al-Zawahiri describes how the United States shipped weapons, ammunition, and tanks to Israel for 33 days, with the goal being to compensate Israel for its war losses and to swiftly upgrade the combat capabilities.
He explained in his Fall 2001 book: “The animosity to Israel and America in the hearts of islamists is indivisible. It is an animosity that has provided the ‘al-Qa’dia’ and the epic of jihad in Afghanistan with a continuous flow of ‘Arab Afghans.'” Regarding the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Zawahiri adds: “Whoever examines the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty will realize that it was intended to be a permanent treaty from which Egypt could not break loose. It was concluded in an attempt to establish on the ground, by force and coercion, a situation whereby it would be difficult to change by any government hostile to Israel that comes after Al-Sadat.” The militants were especially angry that Sadat had not fully implemented shariah law.
Complicating consideration of the issue, on October 5, 2001, the shura member of EIJ and former head of Bin Laden’s farm in the Sudan, Mahjoub, had his bail denied. Mahmoud Mahjoub was second in command of the Vanguards of Conquest. A letter containing nonpathogenic bacteria had been sent in late January 2001 threatening use of mailed anthrax to the immigration minister signing his security certificate. Mahjoub was bin Laden’s farm manager in Sudan. Al-Hawsawi, KSM’s assistant with the anthrax spraydrying documents on his laptop, kept the books.
The CIA and FBI analysts should have pored over translations of the journal Al-Manar Jadeed published by the Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America from 1998 – 2002 by writers based in Cairo. It mainly concerned Egyptian politics and planned the strategy based on all that had gone on before. There was a change in tone between the first piece by Gamal Sultan and the second installment. The first (before his letter to Abdel-Rahman) urged a pluralistic tolerant approach to differing views while the second issue (after his letter to Abdel-Rahman) contained his piece that seems to have resorted to the familiar intransigent neo-Salafist view.
In a September 2006 video, in a message on yet another 5-year anniversary of 9/11, Zawahiri explained: “Among the most prominent of these conspirators are the rulers of Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan and the traitors in Iraq who shade themselves with the cross of America, the Great Satan…[For these regimes] the slogan ‘death to America, death to Israel’ has gone to be replaced by ‘rule from America and peace with Israel.'” On numerous occasions, Zawahiri has been paying express attention to anniversary dates.
Tarek Hamouda’s lifelong friend, Khaled Hamid (CAIR-St. Louis) has a website (KhalidHamidForum.com) that addresses the US support for Israel. Tarek Hamouda was a former Zawahiri associate supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins and worked alongside him in the B3 at USAMRIID.
“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 weaponized anthrax 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 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.
Zawahiri’s View of the “Lies” of the Secular Media
Zawahiri explained in the Fall of 2001:
“The killing of Anwar al-Sadat .. was a strong blow to the US-Israeli plan for the region:
“This proves the lies that are reiterated by Arab secularism that several jihad movements, especially those in the Afghan jihad, are the creation of the United States. One is surprised by the capacity of secular writers to lie. Seeing the overwhelming support in the Muslim world for the Islamic Jihad movements, which dealt painful blows to the United States, they invented this lie, forgetting that Anwar al-Sadat was killed at the hands of fundamentalists in 1981, i.e., at the beginning of the Afghan jihad. These mujahidin participated in the Afghan jihad afterward.”
Zawahiri summarizes in Knights Under The Banner of the Prophet: “If we add to the foregoing the media siege imposed on the message of the jihad movement as well as the campaign of deception mounted by the government media we should realize the extent of the gap in understanding between the jihad movement and the common people.”
In his book first published October 7, 2001, Zawahiri says of the media:
“The Western media and the Arab media are both responsible for demeaning and distorting the image of the Arab Afghans. They portrayed them as half insane maniacs who revolted against America, who trained and financed them before. This was repeated over and over after the comeback of the Arab Afghans in the second half of the 90’s. . . . The aim of the American campaign to defame the Arab Afghans is clear. America is trying to deprive the Arab nation of claiming the championship. It’s as if the Americans are saying to us, ”Those who you think of as heroes are made by me and they are mercenaries who revolted against me when I stopped financing them.”
Even dating back to the summer of 1993, CBS’ Dan Rather was just one of many who carried reports of the blind sheik being let in the country, with interviewees taking the position that they believed the sheik was being deliberately rewarded by the CIA for his help in the Afghanistan war.
The best publicly evidence available online of Dr. Al-Timimi’s own views on the subject are his online speeches, “The Negative Portrayal Of Islam In the Media” and “Crusader Complex: Western Perceptions of Islam.” In 1994, Al-Timimi spoke alongside Commander Abu Abdel Aziz ‘Barbaros’ (Bosnia) at the annual IANA conference. Barbaros was the Al Qaeda recruiter who met at BIF offices in Zagreb, Croatia in 1992 to plan strategy relating to jihad directed against the US. Jihadist fighter “Barbaros” speaks pretty directly to the issue in a 1994 interview “Understanding Jihad” in the arab language Assirat, for which Al-Timimi served on the advisory board.
“THE MEDIA CAMPAIGN (AGAINST JIHAD)
The main purpose of the International media campaign against Jihad is to paint it with the trait of terrorism and things of that sort. (This is done) to push people away from it. They know that Muslims, if they hold tight to Jihad, will achieve the intended thrust which will make them reach whatever Allah wills. They know quite well that the Muslim zeal to Jihad stems from the belief that Allah is the sole source of victory, He will send His help from the sky and that if the Mujahid dies, his abode shall be the highest Firdaws (Peak of Paradise)…”
Why did the sender target the New York Post rather than the New York Times? One would expect the New York Times to be targeted if a conservative biodefense insider was responsible. Was the mailer from the New York City region? The New York Post is one of the most pro-Israel papers around. The Post letter was addressed to the “Editor.”
In an audiotape received by al-Jazeera and published in October 2002, Zawahiri repeated his view of the secular lies being told: “America is clearly lying concerning any news related to Afghanistan.” Bin Laden himself in January 2004 noted “This is in addition to the crusader media campaigns against the Islamic nation.”
“Release Him”: Retaliation for Detention of the Blind Sheikh And Other Detainees
The extradition of Egyptian islamists has been one motive for Zawahiri’s crimes over the past quarter-century. In 1993, Abdel Sattar was 33. The US Post Office employee was a member of the board at Abu Bakr mosque in Brooklyn. He was already a close associate of Abdel-Rahman. In talking to a Washington Post reporter, he took a zigzag ride to a place chosen at random at the last minute. He explained that bad things likely would happen if the blind sheik was not released. In December 1994, Algerian Islamic militants seized control of an Air France jetliner in Algiers in an unsuccessful bid to crash it into Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day. The hijackers demanded the release of the blind sheik.
The United States State Department, on its webpage, explains that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad “[h]as threatened to retaliate against the United States for its incarceration of Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman and, more recently, for the arrests of its members in Albania, Azerbaijan, and the United Kingdom.” As one informant would later testify, Al Qaeda leadership, then in Khartoum, Sudan, found the blind sheikh’s arrest “very sad and.. very bad.” They concluded they had “to do something.. They talk about what we have to do against America.”
Blind sheik Abdel-Rahman spoke to Mary Anne Weaver, author of the seminal A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam in the mid-1990s. Abdel-Rahman first went to Peshawar in 1985. He left from Peshawar for a trip into Afghanistan after being released after three years in an Egyptian prison after Sadat’s assassination. He settled into the back seat of the U.S.-supplied camouflaged truck shortly after prayers, helped into a flak jacket by his friend, Afghan resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar was receiving half of the CIA’s financial support even though he was one of the most anti-US leaders in the resistance against Soviet occupation. Mary Anne Weaver wrote in The Atlantic Monthly in 1996: “They had much in common: both were exceedingly charismatic religious populists; both had committed their lives to jihad, or Islamic holy war; both were fiery orators. They were both given to elliptical, colorful turns of phrase, and their shared message was clear: the imperative to overthrow a secular government — whether in Afghanistan or Egypt — and establish an Islamic state.” Weaver recounts that joining them in the truck was Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The 60 CIA and special forces officers in Peshawar considered Abdel-Rahman an asset. In preaching jihad, Abdel-Rahman travelled to Islamic centers in Germany, England, Turkey, and the United States.
Weaver explained that Sheikh Omar’s closest friend in Peshawar was Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a highly respected Palestinian. He was killed by a car bomb in 1989. Azzam established the Service Office, which he led until November of 1989, which like its sister office at the Alkifah Refugee Center, on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, recruited Arab volunteers. Islambouli headed the office after Azzam’s death. Mohammed Islambouli had been a student of Sheikh Omar’s at the Upper Egyptian University of Asyut. WTC 1993 prosecutor McCarthy explained in a 2008 book: “In Peshawar, both in 1985 and several times thereafter, Abdel Rahman would enjoy the august company of his former student Mohammed Shawky al-Islambouli, a fixture there. A rising jihadist star in his own right, Shawky’s prominence owed much to his mythogenic brother…”
By the time Weaver wrote her article for the Atlantic Monthly, Mohammed Islambouli had joined a cell with KSM in planning the aircraft and other attacks on the US and was with him in Doha, Qatar.
In December 1995, the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a devastating car bomb following threats from militant Egyptian Islamist groups who demanded that the government of Pakistan stop extraditing their members who had stayed in Peshawar when the war came to an end. The groups also demanded that the United States release Sheikh Abdel-Rahman who had been imprisoned in connection with a plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
In a booklet written by al Zawahiri, distributed among his colleagues in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Zawahiri discussed the reasons that led to Egyptian Islamic Jihad to blow up the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. He criticized all branches of the Egyptian government from the Minister of Information, to the army and police forces, the justice system, the public prosecutor’s office, and the religious scholars. But his harshest criticism was directed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was responsible for pursuing jihad members abroad and kidnapping and extraditing them. In September 2000, in an interview with an Arabic-language television station, Usama Bin Laden called for a “jihad” to release the “brothers” in jail “everywhere.” In the book he wrote at the time of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, he explained that the reason for the attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan in 1995 was because Egypt had been extraditing fundamentalists from Pakistan. When surveillance of the US embassy showed that it was perhaps too difficult a target, the Egyptian embassy was targeted as a symbol. Zawahiri wrote in the Fall 2001 that : “It left the embassy ruined as an eloquent and clear message.”
An FBI 302 memo dated December 30, 1996 relating to intelligence gathered from the jailed WTC 1993 plotter Ramzi Yousef reflected the same warning of a hijack-of-an-aircraft-to-free-the-blind sheik plot.
Bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war on the United States complained of the arrests of Sheik al-Hawali and another colleague. In an interview, Bin Laden conducted with CNN’s Peter Arnett in 1997, Bin Laden told Arnett: “When the Saudi government transgressed in oppressing all voices of the scholars and the voices of those who call for Islam. I found myself forced, especially after the government prevented Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali and some other scholars, to carry out a small part of my duty of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong.” The views of these two sheiks were promoted by the US-based charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”).
In a public relations debacle for the islamists, on or about November 17, 1997, six terrorists shot and stabbed a group of tourists visiting an archaeological site in Luxor, Egypt. Fifty-eight tourists were killed along with four Egyptians. The terrorists left leaflets explaining their support for the Islamic Group and calling for the blind sheik’s release. The torso of one was slit and a leaflet inserted: “No to tourists in Egypt.” It was signed “Omar Abdul Rahman’s Squadron of Havoc and Destruction — the Gama’a al-Islamiya, the Islamic Group.” Intelligence concluded that Bin Laden had financed the operation and that Luxor was ordered by Egyptian Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza.
Dale Watts, Chief of the FBI’s International Terrorism Section, explained in a 1998 Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee: “There is an indication that the November 1997 attack on foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt, was apparently an example of this type of interwoven violence. The ambush appears to have been carried out in an attempt to pressure the United States into releasing Sheik Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his part in planning attacks against the president of Egypt and several sites in New York City. ”
In 1998, the blind sheik issued a fatwa directing that Americans be killed to avenge his imprisonment. During the trial relating to bombing the U.S. embassies in Africa, one witness testified that Abdel Rahman smuggled a flier from prison calling on Muslims to avenge indignities he sustained as a prisoner. “Oh people, oh men of Allah, rise up from your deep slumber. .. Rise up and see justice done,” the sheik wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison.
Zawahiri gave the same motivation for the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. In 1998, the “Information Office of the Jihad Group in Egypt” issued a statement — a copy of which was received by Al-Hayat — entitled “About the extradition of three of our brothers.” It said that “the US government, in coordination with the Egyptian government, arrested three of our brothers in some East European states.” The statement said: “The accusation leveled at our three brothers was participation in a group declaring jihad against the United States and Israel and their trade, and cooperation with the mujahidin in Kosovo outside US influence.” It continued: “We are interested in briefly telling the Americans that their message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being [prepared], because we — with God’s help — will write it in the language that they understand.
Three days later, 220 people at the embassies, mostly Africans, were killed. Zawahiri deemed many were working on intelligence matters against islamists in the region. In response to a retaliatory cruise missile strike after the embassy bombings, Zawahiri told a Pakistan journalist by satellite phone that “The war has only just begun.” The phone had been bought by a charity worker in Columbia, Missouri who later lived with the father of the leader of the Virginia Paintball defendants Royer.
In the Spring and Fall of 1999, the Blind Sheik’s assistant, Sattar, was in telephone communication with Deputy Military Commander Mustafa Hamza, the blind sheik’s successor Taha, Yassir al-Sirri, and al-Zayat. They spoke on conference calls about the blind sheikh’s withdrawal of his support for the cease fire. Although suspecting his phone was wiretapped, Sattar continued to talk vaguely in code about these issues with these people, all of whom were closely connected to al-Zawahiri. This was the period Zawahiri moved forward his anthrax planning and there was a public dialogue between Bin Laden and a London cleric’s call for a holy biowar.
On September 21, 2000, an Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, televised an interview with Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Islamic leader Abu Yasser (of the Islamic Group and Al Qaeda), and Mohammed Abdel Rahman (the blind sheik’s son), during which they pledged jihad to free Abdel Rahman. They urged that his followers avenge the “insult” paid him by his imprisonment for conspiracy to commit murder. Bin Laden vowed “to work with all our power to free our brother, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and all our prisoners in America, Egypt, and Riyadh. Bin Laden told his followers to remember Nosair, the man who assassinated Rabbi Kahane. In an audio overlay, Mohammed was heard saying “avenge your sheik” and “go to the spilling of blood.”
When Abdel-Rahman visited Peshawar in the late 1980s and early 1990s Abdel-Rahman stayed in a large house outside of Peshawar with Mohammed Islambouli and Zawahiri. Al-Timimi would speak alongside Abdel-Rahman’s son at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1996. Alarm bells should have gone off when Al-Timimi in the late 1990s first started walking down the hallways with famed Russian bioweaponeer and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey. There is no indication that they did.
Zawahiri wrote in Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet published at the time of the second anthrax mailing that he agreed with the supporter of the “blind sheik” who said: “the Egyptian Government is guilty of a major shortcoming by not intervening to safeguard the shaykh, guarantee his humanitarian rights inside the US jail, and find a solution to his case because, in the final count, he is an Egyptian national, a Muslim scholar, and a professor at Al-Azhar university. Finally he is a blind and sick old man. His continued detention and the inhuman way in which he is treated will continue to be a source of tension on all levels.
The ruling shura (council) of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the mid-1990s had 14 members, including three in London. Two of those three, Adel Abdel Bari and Ibrahim Eidarous, at the time of the anthrax mailings, were the ones who had announced that the 1998 embassy bombings were in retaliation for the detention of the blind sheik and Sheik al-Hawali. They were in Belmarsh prison fighting extradition to the United States for alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Ahmed and Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, two of the Egyptian sheikh’s 13 children, were named as co-conspirators in the September 11 attacks.
In late May 2000, Post Office employee Sattar had telephone conversations with Islamic Group leaders in which he explained that Abdel Rahman (1) did not object to a return to “work” (terrorist operations); (2) agreed that the IG should escalate the issues in the media; (3) advised the IG to avoid division within the IG’s leadership; and (4) instructed the IG to hint at military operation even if the group was not ready for military action.
On October 4, 2000, US Postal employee Sattar called the Vanguards of Conquest publicist in London, Al-Sirri, and read to him a fatwa to be issued under Abdel Rahman’s name entitled, “Fatwah the Killing of Israelis Everywhere,” which Al-Sirri agreed to distribute. The next day, the fatwa appeared on a web-site operated by Al-Sirri.
On or about November 21, 2000, Al Jazeera featured a meeting of Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Taha under a banner that read “Convention to Support Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman. The three pleaded “jihad to free Abdel Rahman from incarceration in the United States. Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik’s son, was heard urging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.” But the blind sheik’s plight was also of concern to alleged Al Qaeda operatives in the US.
Members of an alleged Detroit, Michigan terror cell had an angry conversation in June 2001 about Abdel Rahman’s imprisonment.
Similarly, the Government’s Indictment of the Buffalo defendants explained that one of the reasons motivating the terrorists actions was that “al Qaeda opposed the United States Government because of the arrest, conviction and imprisonment of persons belonging to Al Qaeda or its affiliated terrorist groups or those with whom it worked.”
IANA writer Kamal Habib, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was in charge of the “National Campaign to Release Detainees.” It perhaps was inevitable that IANA would be caught in the crossfire just as was Abdel-Rahman’s attorney Lynne Stewart.
As a source, the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the U.S.” mentions “a senior EIJ member” living in California. The reference is to former US sergeant Ali Mohammed, Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence. The references in the PDB to the threat of aircraft hijacking in an attempt to free blind sheik Abdel-Rahman were perhaps underscored a month later when, the week before 9/11, the Taliban government offered to exchange eight Christian missionaries in exchange for Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Whether viewed as blackmail or retaliation, the detention of the blind sheikh and numerous other detainees in custody prior to 9/11 figured as an important part of the motive for all the terrorist attacks by the Salafist-Jihadis for years leading up to the anthrax mailings.
In April 2005, Moussaoui confessed to a plot to fly a 747 into the White House if the United States government refused to free the blind sheikh. Bin Laden had considered hijacking a plane in an attempt to flee the blind sheikh but determined it was impractical.
In the Amerithrax Third Squad’s testing of the theory that a supporter of the Salafist-Jihadis mailed the anthrax, concern for detention of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman should have been a major factor.
DXer said
The Supporters of Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman
Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War focused not only on dissident Saudi sheik al-Hawali’s imprisonment, but also invoked the detention of the Egyptian sheik Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “the blind sheik.” The reporting by the CIA in 2001 about Al Qaeda’s intention to attack the United States on the homeland confirmed this. In 1993, On July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar had spoken to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.”
In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged that following his arrest, Abdel Rahman, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, urged: “Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” His list is a pretty concise summary of the terroristactions taken over the next decade.
The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman — was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman such as Jdey (who in a letter quoted the Blind Sheik’s sentence above), it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on December 21, 1996 contained improvised explosive devices. The bombs were mailed on the Night of Decree or Night of Measures. It is known as the Night of Qadr. The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik.
The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda. There initially was an outstanding $2 million reward. Under the rewards for justice program, the reward now is up to $5 million. There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist).
The FBI suspected the Vanguards of Conquest, led by Egyptian Islamic Jihad head Ayman Zawahiri. The group can be thought of as either the military wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or perhaps just EIJ by another name. It is sometimes known as the New Jihad. Yassir Al-Sirri was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad/ Vanguards of Conquest publicist and worked out of his London-based home while on the public dole.
The blind sheik Abdel Rahman simultaneously was the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad/Vanguards of Conquest. The next month, on February 12, 1997, the Islamic Group, for its part, issued a statement: “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its “jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom is Abdel Rahman.” Abdel-Rahman’s friend, Ayman Zawahiri, was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program. The blind sheik’s son, Mohammed, was on Al Qaeda’s three- member WMD committee.
Jemaah Islamiah (”JI”) in Indonesia also was committed to Abdel-Rahman’s release. My one-time Facebook Friend, JI-member Yazid Sufaat, was a proud Al Qaeda operative. The US-trained Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat allowed the 9/11 plotters and two hijackers to use his Kuala Lumpur condo in January 2000. JI has ties with the Moro Front. Sufaat used his company called Green Laboratory Medicine to buy items useful to Al Qaeda. Zacarias Moussaoui, who had a crop dusting manual when he was arrested, stayed at Sufaat’s condominium in 2000 when he was trying to arrange for flight lessons in Malaysia. Yazid Sufaat provided Moussaoui with a letterindicating that he was a marketing representative for Infocus Technologies signed “Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director.” Sufaat had given Moussaoui an e-mail greenlab@usa.net that was accessed by authorities on September 19, 2001. The cropdusters were to be part of a “second wave.”
Al Qaeda’s regional operative, Hambali, was at the key January 2000 meeting and supervised Sufaat. Khalid Mohammed’s involvement dates back to Bojinka, as did Hambali’s. The money for Bojinka, a plot to simultaneously bomb airliners and to assassinate the Pope, went from Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa to the Abu Sayyaf Group, Al Qaeda’s primary Philippine affiliate, and then on to the cell that included KSM.
Al-Kifah in Brooklyn had long since become the headquarters of Abdel-Rahman’s supporters in the US. After the anthrax mailings, the Amerithrax investigation naturally considered whether the solution to the mystery had its roots in Brooklyn. Abdel-Rahman was the spiritual leader of both Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He was close to Ayman Zawahiri, known to be head of Al Qaeda’s anthrax weaponization project. FISA warrants issued immediately after 9/11 but did not prove fruitful. At Fitzgerald’s urging, a criminal investigation of the two charities, BIF and GRF,was opened in October 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that in December 2001, “[t]hese plans were dramatically accelerated when CIA analysts, drawing on intelligence gathered in an unrelated FBI investigation, expressed concerns that GRF could be involved in a plot to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”
On December 14, 2001, the FBI raided the charity offices of the two charities. BIF and GRF offices were raided in Illinois — a BIF office in Newark, New Jersey also was searched. Germs author and New York Times journalist Judy Miller (or her colleague) called the GRF office in Illinois the night before the search. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was furious. He had been the AUSA who handled the prosecution of Bin Laden earlier that year in the case involving the 1998 embassy bombings. Authorities had planned on waiting and watching to see how the US charity personnel responded to a search of offices abroad. Their hand was forced when GRF officials in Illinois began shredding documents.
At a White House press conference on December 17, 2001, Ari Fleischer said: “There is nothing that has been final that has been concluded. But the evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source. But, again, this remains something that is not final, nor totally conclusive yet. I can just report to you the information that I’ve heard. I can’t give you the scientific reasons behind it. But you can assume that they’re based on investigative and scientific means.” He emphasized: “There’s a big difference between the source of it and who sent it, because the two do not have to be tied.”
DXer said
Two days ago –
Morsi Promises to Free ‘Blind Sheik’ from U.S. Prison
By MATT BRADLEY
Egypt’s President-elect Mohammed Morsi made a nod to his base in a speech on Friday when he pledged to seek the release of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman from U.S. custody.
Sheik Abdel-Rahman, who is better known as the “blind sheik” is serving a life sentence at a federal penitentiary in North Carolina for his role in planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City….
is detention has become a cause célèbre among hard-line Salafi Islamists whom Mr. Morsi counted on in his runoff against ex-regime loyalist Ahmed Shafiq.
Dozens of bearded Abdel-Rahman supporters, many in religious vestments, have slept outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in a sit-in that has lasted the better part of a year. A full city block of downtown Cairo is festooned with banners bearing the blind sheik’s image—bearded, capped with a red tarboosh and 1960s-era wayfarer sunglasses….
Sheik Abdel-Rahman was one of the primary leaders of the Egyptian militant group Al Gama’a al Islamiyya. Though the group was accused of masterminding the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Sheik Abdel-Rahman avoided blame and moved to Afghanistan, where he made close associations with Osama bin Laden, the late leader of the militant group al Qaeda.
In 1990, the blind sheik, who lost his eyesight as a result of a childhood illness, moved to New York. He traveled the nation peddling anti-American propaganda to Arab audiences before his conviction in 1995 on charges of “seditious conspiracy” in connection with the Trade Center bombing.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577497053026356034.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
DXer said
NYC mayor opposes new Egyptian leader’s vow to work to release blind sheik in US custody
By Associated Press, Published: June 29
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he opposes comments made by Egypt’s first Islamist and civilian president-elect about releasing a terrorism convict.
Mohammed Morsi told a crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir Square he’d work for the release of a blind sheik imprisoned in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York landmarks.
Bloomberg says he would oppose any effort to “undermine” the sheik serving a life sentence. He says the sheik’s conviction was a measure of justice against a man “who tried to kill so many.”
DXer said
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/morsy-spokesman-backpedals-dissolved-parliament-and-abdel-rahman
Ali also said that Morsy commented on the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, who is imprisoned in the United States in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, from a human and not legal perspective. “It was out of sympathy with Abdel Rahman’s family,” Ali said, stressing that Egypt respects the laws of other countries. “But, the human perspective can be a tool for solutions,” he added.
DXer said
New York Post opinion –
Morsi’s infamous friend
Posted: June 30, 2012
There’s disturbing news out of Egypt — whose first post-Mubarak elected president is taking office — and it has worrisome implications for America.
In a fiery speech yesterday to hundreds of thousands in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Mohammed Morsi took the oath of office — and vowed to obtain freedom for the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman.
“I see banners for Omar Abdel Rahman’s family, and for prisoners arrested according to martial rulings and detainees from the beginning of the revolution,” said Morsi.
“It is my duty to make every effort, and I will beginning tomorrow to secure their release, among them Omar Abdel Rahman.”
So much for those who insist that Morsi, the radical Muslim Brotherhood’s man, is a moderate — and that the group itself has moved beyond its Islamist origins.
After all, we’re talking about the same blind sheik now serving a life term in US prison for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plotting attacks on other New York landmarks.
The same blind sheik whose fatwa was cited by Osama bin Laden as religious justification for the 9/11 attacks.
The same blind sheik whose terrorist movement, Gamaa Ismaliya, elected members to Egypt’s new Islamist-dominated parliament.
Just last week, it was disclosed that one of those legislators had been granted a visa, in apparent defiance of US law, and been given a sit-down with Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.
And what did he do with this valuable face time?
Why, demand the release of Omar Abdel Rahman — the blind sheik.
All of which raises troubling questions.
The White House says it wants to work with Egypt’s new leadership. But that will bear fruit only if the Muslim Brotherhood has in fact discovered political moderation.
Was Morsi tossing a rhetorical bone to the screaming throngs in Cairo?
Does it make any difference?
The challenge was issued loudly and in public, and America’s response must be equally high profile.
President Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, need to make it clear that they will not truck with terrorists — nor with their apologists in high places.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/morsi_infamous_friend_kZ7CdmOlXQirFFQcKsVo1N#ixzz1zQVZFGp7
DXer said
Given the Department of State’s role regarding the Blind Sheikh, it is worth noting that the principal investor in NanoBio came to be Perseus, the venture capital firm in DC led by the man who became the powerful #3 at State. By Spring 2005, the time the FBI finally obtained the 20 or so pages about the research alongside Bruce Ivins in the B3 done by the former Zawahiri associate and blind sheik supporter, the powerful man had already come to have millions at stake.
To sum up: there is no government accountability — just a few folks in the IC (like Rush Holt) who apparently are trying to lay out how Amerithrax came to be screwed up.
There is no enforcement of conflict of interest regulations in many areas of government. GAO’s skill set may not lend itself particularly well to solving true crime mysteries or intelligence analysis, but they are the last, best hope of enforcement of conflict of interest principles.
The man regrettably passed away of a burst vessel not long after Dr. Ezzell’s scare at the DC conference.
DXer said
Although we have heard most about Lynn Stewart, Stanley Cohen has also been very accomplished in representing various salafists over the years. For example, the New York Times article below discusses his defense of the doctor working at Lenox Hill and co-authoring an article about Ms. Nguyen’s fatal anthrax infection. The doctor allegedly was associated with and assisting an Al Qaeda member. The doctor really did not get the medical training he had claimed and instead had been involved in jihad during the period taking fighters to camps.
Attorney Cohen says the USG is just trying to silence him but that doesn’t really make sense. Instead, it provides him a soapbox as it did Attorney Lynn Stewart for years.
An advocate taking on powerful adversaries needs to be especially careful in dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s” — precisely because of the leverage that it would afford the adversary. The same is true, for example, when the adversary is a powerful corporation as they commonly hire private detectives.
See generally
Hassan Faraj Consent Order Provided Today By Virginia Board Of Medicine Announcing He Was Planning To Leave The Country And Never Return
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 27, 2012
Here is the article about his defense of the Lenox Hill anthrax article co-author:
Hassan Faraj outside Federal Court in Brooklyn yesterday. Prosecutors submitted a letter to the court suggesting that Mr. Faraj had Qaeda ties.
U.S. Letter Tries to Establish a Doctor’s Links to Terrorists
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 6, 2004
In a letter submitted to a federal judge yesterday, prosecutors outlined what they said were ties linking a Syrian-born American doctor, who has been charged with lying to obtain American citizenship, to terrorism and suspected members of Al Qaeda.
Still, no new charges have been brought against the man, Hassan Faraj, of Brooklyn, and his lawyer belittled the letter as a scare tactic and called the allegations flimsy.
Mr. Faraj, 39, was arrested in June and charged with naturalization fraud. Prosecutors accuse him of lying to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, when he applied in 1993 to come to the United States as a Bosnian refugee. He was later released on bail.
Mr. Faraj worked for three years until June as a resident in internal medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.
“The government loves to dangle all the buzzwords because it’s very seductive,” said the lawyer, Stanley Cohen. “Quite frankly, Judge, it means nothing. There’s nothing new.”
In the letter, addressed to Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, prosecutors in the office of the United States attorney for the Eastern District charged that Mr. Faraj tried to help a man they say was a suspected Qaeda associate enter the United States.
They also raised questions about what they said were shredded blueprints of Washington-area sites found in his apartment and about his association with a Muslim charity group in Croatia.
Formally, the letter was drawn up to request that Judge Matsumoto order Mr. Faraj taken into custody because of what prosecutors said was a risk that he might flee the country.
Judge Matsumoto ordered yesterday that Mr. Faraj be electronically monitored, but he delayed a decision on whether he will be held until the next hearing, set for Nov. 10.
The letter also provided a look into the prosecutors’ thinking on the case. Terror-related charges would carry years of jail time, while Mr. Faraj faces a maximum of six months in jail and deportation under the current naturalization fraud charges, his lawyer said.
Nationwide, federal prosecutors have had mixed results prosecuting terror cases.
In Detroit last year, two men were convicted on terrorism charges in a prominent case, whose handling later came into question.
In February, a federal judge in Virginia acquitted an American who had been accused of taking part in a “jihad network” in Virginia.
An assistant United States attorney, John Buretta, the prosecutor who argued the case yesterday, declined to comment on why Mr. Faraj had not been indicted on any terror-related charges, saying only that an investigation into his activities is continuing.
Among the questions raised in the letter were prosecutors’ claims that Mr. Faraj worked for and later donated money to a Muslim charity, Benevolence International Foundation, whose assets were frozen in December 2001 after the government designated it a terrorist organization.
It gained national attention when its director was charged with terrorism, and Attorney General John Ashcroft went to Chicago to announce the indictment.
Mr. Cohen argued that the charity was a United Nations-registered entity at the time Mr. Faraj worked there and that his subsequent donations mentioned by prosecutors totaled just $750.
In addition, a federal judge in Chicago declined to convict the organization’s director, Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born American citizen, on terrorism charges.
“Indict him and arrest him and charge him with terrorism,” Mr. Cohen said.
“They don’t because they can’t prove it.”
Mr. Cohen said the destroyed blueprints had belonged to Mr. Faraj’s older brother, a civil engineer, who had lived with Mr. Faraj for several years but had moved out this summer.
Prosecutors also said Mr. Faraj had tried to help a man they identified as a suspected Qaeda associate enter the United States in December 2001 by filling out an affidavit agreeing to sponsor the man. It was not clear from the letter if the man had eventually entered the United States, or what his precise connection was to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Faraj, a soft-spoken man quick to smile, said he had provided the affidavit as a courtesy for a friend who knew the man, Amir Abdulrazzak.
Sitting outside the courtroom half an hour early for his hearing yesterday, Mr. Faraj said: “I have nothing to be afraid of. They have nothing else to do but to make things up.”
[Mr. Faraj – Note that by treating patients after falsely claiming to have received medical training he didn’t put the patients at risk. Having been trained at medical school is something that you shouldn’t make up.]
DXer said
A subtilis expert called the telephone number of Ramzi Yousef, KSM’s nephew who was the 1993 WTC bombing mastermind, up until the minute of the blind sheik’s arrest. In 2001, Intellius indicates that he lived 20 miles from the mailbox from which the anthrax was mailed. He was an expert on mutations arising from nutrient starvation. A genetically distinctive subtilis was found in one of the anthrax mailings. How was he eliminated as a person of interest? On the grounds of lack of access to virulent Ames?
The address/phone number associated with the WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef was frequently called by subtilis expert Walied Samarrai in February 1993 (up to the time and hour of the first arrests). See WTC 1993 trial, Exhibit 818. That address is separately associated with Dr. Samarrai, a subtilis expert, in this Intellius Report. Did the subtilis expert know WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef? Who does Walied Samarrai think is responsible for the anthrax mailings? Is it correct that in 2001 Professor Samarrai lived at one of the two addresses about 20 miles from the mailbox in Princeton?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 7, 2011
US Attorney Taylor made numerous central factual mistakes in his August presentation (lyophilizer, federal eagle stamp, reason for being in lab, alibi, 1412 vs. 1425). Those readily grasped errors reveal Amerithrax to be one of the greatest failures in law enforcement history.
There was no real reassessment of the evidence — AUSA’s Ken and Rachel then moved on to other matters. Ken then was found by a district court to have been guilty of prosecutorial misconduct in a historic opinion in the Blackwater case in which the murder indictments were dismissed.
After Dr. Ivins’ death, USG went into CYA mode.
What the DOJ needed was an Attorney General who said “no defensive BS” — as Eric Holder reportedly instructed regarding “Fast and Furious.”
They did not need a lead investigator who is content to be “comfortable” with an Ivins Theory or an AUSA who did not push for full disclosure of the documents showing Dr. Ivins work with the rabbits..
Anyone not part of the solution is part of the problem.
DXer said
Let’s consider then this connection between the Manhattan anthrax mystery jihad-supporting doctor. Attorney Stanley L. Cohen represented Hassan Faraj. Attorney Cohen explained at the time: “The defendant had nothing to give and wouldn’t become one of their snitches.”
In October 2001, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and seized before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging U.S. State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. An employee of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and another cell member was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubaydah. The employee’s planned immigration to the United States was going to be sponsored by Dr. Hassan Faraj, who worked at the hospital where the first New York inhalational anthrax victim died. The doctor was a co-author of a leading article in the Journal of American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the causes of the woman’s death. Dr. Faraj lived in the building next to Al-Timimi until 1999 when he moved to Brooklyn to take an internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
An arrest warrant issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past three years.
The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was accused in late June 2004 of supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist. He was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61- year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The doctor, Hassan Faraj, was an intern there at the time and then finished his residency at Lenox Hill in 2004. The article explained that an epidemiological study of her workplace and residence had not turned up any explanation of how she was exposed. The United States government charged Dr. Farah with immigration violations, accusing him of providing aid to a supporter of Osama Bin Laden and making false statements. In early November 2004, federal prosecutors alleged that they found shredded blueprints for a suburban Washington overpass in a bag in his Brooklyn apartment. His lawyer claimed that they were from his brother, a lecturer at an unidentified Washington-area university who had left the country. Prosecutors said that Faraj’s duties included running recruits to camps in Bosnia. In November 2004, the Daily News reported that “Computers seized at the foundation’s office in Chicago contained a deleted file stating, ‘Hassan has spent substantial amount of time with us in Bosnia . . . and had said that he is willing to do anything.’”
In an April 11, 2005 letter (provided to me by intelwire.com, an Assistant United States Attorney explained to a federal magistrate the “defendant had engaged in repeated fraud in pursuing a medical career in this country, including lying to obtain his Virginia medical license.” The Virginia medical licensing website, there is a Consent Order confirming that he had surrendered his license. His license in Connecticut was also allowed to expire that year after it had been granted.
The AUSA in the 2005 letter explained that on June 29, 2004, the defendant had been arrested on charges of falsely obtaining his United States citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1425.
An Order in Virginia by the medical board explains that he had been warned about his job performance on February 28, 2003.
The government argued that false statements to the Virginia board were part of a larger pattern of medical fraud by the defendant, dating back several years. In essence, the defendant satisfied two other essential medical requirements beyond the state licensing requirement through fraud: (i) fraudulently securing a required medical residency position at Lenox Hill hospital, and (ii) fraudulently securing a required certification from the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMGO). The government contended that in 2001, the defendant told at least two significant lies to secure the residency. “First, in his personal statement and application submitted to Lenox Hill, the defendant falsely claimed that, “[f]rom January 1996 to January 1997, I did an internship in Zvijezda Hospital in Zagreb where I rotated in all departments.” The government continued: “In fact, the defendant did not intern at that hospital and was in the United States eleven months of the twelve he was supposedly doing the internship in Croatia.”
The defendant engaged in similar fraud, the government explained, in his submissions to the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates, which regulates the practice of foreign medical graduates in the United States. Among other things, the defendant falsely asserted to the ECFMG that he was an intern at yet another hospital in Croatia in 1996, the Venograd Hospital. The defendant even went so far as to submit a fraudulent certification to ECFMG that he interned at Sestre Vinogradska (Sisters of Misericordy) hospital in Croatia from September 1, 1996 to January 31, 1997.
The good doctor came under suspicion, in part, because of his support for suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak. Associated Press reported in November 2004 that “Sources familiar with the case said Abdulrazzak’s immigration documents were found on a computer recovered during a raid by U.S. Special Forces on a building in Bosnia housing the Saudi High Commission for Relief, an independent group linked to the Saudi Arabian government. The building, also known as “Mecca House,” was targeted after intelligence reports indicated terror suspects using it as a meeting house were planning to attack U.S. and NATO targets in Bosnia, according to a 2001 report by Army Times, a weekly for military personnel.”
In the 2005 letter to the federal magistrate, the Department of Justice formally provided additional detail:
“In the fall of 2004, the government discovered that the defendant used his fraudulently-obtained United States citizenship in January 2002 to sponsor the attempted entry into the United States by suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak, also known as Amir Amrush. At the time, Amir Abdulrazzak was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for Refugees (SHCR) in Bosnia. In October 2001, just a few months before the defendant’s sponsorship of Abdulrazzak, NATO forces raided the SHCR Sarajevo office where Abdulrazzak worked. The search recovered computers containing, among other things, the following information:
– confirmation of Abdulrazzak’s SHCR employment, including as acting manager of SHCR
– Abdulrazzak’s obtainment of software to hack into Hotmail e-mail accounts;
– an inventory of chemical protective clothing;
– anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda;
– a German magazine article regarding Usama Bin Laden’s travel to Bosnia in 1993; and
– documents concerning the appearance of United States State Department identification.
Due to SHCR’s terrorism ties, the Saudi government eventually closed the SHCR Sarajevo office.”
The government claimed that “the defendant’s attempt to assist Abdulrazzak was only the most recently known example of the defendant’s support for terrorism-related organizations.”
As noted above, when he was not sponsoring Al Qaeda operatives, he was serving as a listed author on an article in a prestigious journal addressing the epidemiological puzzle of the anthrax spores that infected a fellow Lenox Hill employee Kathy Nguyen — who worked in the stock room at MEETH. It seems that one never knows what one is hiding in the closet.
Attorney Stanley L. Cohen represented Hassan Faraj. “The defendant had nothing to give and wouldn’t become one of their snitches,” Cohen told the press in November 2004. Attorney Cohen was the law partner of radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, was on Al Qaeda’s 3-member WMD committee. Mohammed was in frequent contact with the blind sheik’s paralegal, Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. He would use Lynne Stewart as a “dove” to send messages to his father. The blind sheik once bemusedly said that they’ll stop using doves when the US stops using secret evidence. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was captured on February 13, 2003 in Quetta, Pakistan, and that had quickly led to the seizure of anthrax spraydrying documents at the home of a bacteriologist and the raid on Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse on February 26, 2003. According to the February 2007 Virginia Consent Order, two days later — “on or about February 28, 2003″ — Lenox Hill had issued a warning to Dr. Faraj about his job performance.
Those massive searches and numerous arrests would be enough to distract even the most committed doctor from their work.
Now JAMA is just as prestigious and well-regarded as NAS. This case study demonstrates that government in the Sunshine and compliance with FOIA laws is a good thing — because things are not always as they seem.
DXer said
http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202561225265&Circuit_Rejects_Speech_Claim_in_Upholding_Stewart_Term&slreturn=1
This past week the First Amendment was squarely presented and addressed by the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in upholding the 10 year sentence imposed upon resentencing of the blind sheik’s former lawyer, Lynne Stewart. She had argued that it violated her First Amendment right of free speech to take into account her comments after her conviction upon a re-sentencing.
Although the court was dismissive of the argument describing the precedent as cobbled together precedent and dicta, without me having the benefit of reading the cases, it does seem to present a fascinating issue. That same sort of language often can fairly be used to apply to an important issue of first impression that should be considered by the United States Supreme Court or the Circuit Court upon a rehearing en banc.
It’s precisely the sort of issue that the court and its clerks might love to entertain. First Amendment cases generally are very interesting and require a balancing of interests.
It is especially fascinating in the historical context — where former seditionists and enemies of the regime now aspire to (and are achieving) power through legitimate means and popular vote in Egypt.
These issues are not as simple as they might seem when viewed in light, for example, of the rousing PBS Series LIBERTY: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION that I’ve watched this week. One man’s revolutionary may be a future founding father.
Article:
Ex-defense lawyer Lynne Stewart’s attempt to win a reduction of her sentence for helping her imprisoned client communicate with his followers in an Egyptian terrorist group was rejected yesterday by a federal appeals court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit turned aside Stewart’s claim that she was punished with a 10-year prison term at resentencing in 2010 for making comments outside of court following her initial, lighter sentence in 2006.
“The sentencing judge was determining the characteristics of the defendant, which were legally relevant to a determination of the appropriate sentence to impose on Stewart, through the comments she voluntarily and publicly made,” Judge Sack wrote for the panel in United States v. Stewart, 10-3185.
Stewart, 72, was convicted in 2005 of acting as a conduit between Islamic Group and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was serving a life sentence for his conviction on seditious conspiracy as part of a broader plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
She violated multiple promises to abide by Special Administrative Measures imposed on Rahman to prevent him from communicating with the outlaw group, including passing a press release to a reporter announcing Rahman’s withdrawal of support for a ceasefire on attacks in Egypt.
After receiving the 28-month sentence on Oct. 16, 2006, Stewart spoke to supporters outside the courthouse in lower Manhattan and was asked if she had any regrets.
“I don’t think anybody would say that going to jail for two years is something you look forward to, but as my clients have said to me ‘I can do that standing on my head,'” she said.
During a Nov. 18, 2009, television interview, Stewart was asked if she would do anything differently. She denied criminal intent but said she thought it was “necessary” to serve her client zealously.
“I would do it again,” she said. “I might handle it a little differently, but I would do it again.”
The comments did not help her on the government’s appeal of her sentence to the Second Circuit, which threw out the sentence and remanded to Koeltl.
The circuit faulted the initial sentence for failing to fully take into account Stewart’s abuse of trust in her role as a lawyer and the perjury she committed on the witness stand at trial. It also questioned whether the application of a sentencing enhancement for committing a crime of terrorism should apply and told the judge to “consider the overall question of whether the sentence is appropriate in view of the magnitude of the offense.”
Lack of Remorse
In resentencing Stewart on the remand, Koeltl said the “standing on my head” comment indicated that Stewart “did indeed view the sentence as a trivial sentence” (NYLJ, July 16, 2010).
Stewart tried to explain away the comment that she would do “it” again, saying the word “it” meant “compassionately represent my client.”
Koeltl, however, said the statement indicated “a lack of remorse for conduct that was both illegal and potentially lethal.”
Given that the Second Circuit had virtually instructed the lower court to consider imposing a longer sentence on remand, Stewart was facing long odds when she returned to the circuit to challenge the 10-year-sentence. Oral arguments were heard on Feb. 29 (NYLJ, March 1).
Yesterday, Sack wrote that Stewart’s appeal this time depended on “cobbling together scraps of First Amendment doctrine and dicta for support.”
“Stewart was not punished for violating a governmental restriction on speech,” Sack said. “The district court did not treat her speech as a violation of any law—it considered the content of that speech to be helpful in enabling the court to craft a sentence ‘sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes set forth'” elsewhere in the sentencing guidelines, §3553.
Sack said Stewart ineffectually argued that she was prosecuted and punished for her political beliefs.
Koeltl, Sack said, “was properly concerned about whether she considered her previous sentence to be ‘trivial,’ and whether she had remorse for her acts adjudged to be serious crimes, not about any political views of hers that may or may not have played a part in her commission of the crime or her reaction to her conviction and sentence.”
The court also was not persuaded by Stewart’s argument that punishing defendants for their comments outside of court will have a chilling effect on speech.
“There is no authority for the general proposition that underlies Stewart’s arguments: that the government cannot use the contents of voluntary public speech to the speaker’s disadvantage despite the likelihood that someone will subsequently think twice about making a similar public statement,” he said.
Similarly, the court rejected Stewart’s claim she was punished for “ambiguous” statements, which Sack called “a questionable proposition.”
“Were we to read the Constitution to prohibit the consideration of a defendant’s statements solely because they were only arguably unfavorable to the defendant’s position, as Stewart urges, we would take away from the district court the ability fully to assess facts bearing on the defendant’s state of mind in accordance with the requirements of section 3553, which enables the court to impose a sentence fair to both the defendant and society,” he said.
The court then rejected the remainder of Stewart’s arguments on the sentencing enhancements, saying the district court on remand “punctiliously followed our instructions.”
Herald Price Fahringer represented Stewart on the appeal.
“We are terribly disappointed and we are planning to pursue further appellate remedies,” Fahringer said.
DXer said
Here is the background on the rejection of Lynne Stewart’s appeal this past week on Wikipedia. It is only relevant if you come to understand that the Blind Sheik’s detention and his supporters were an important part of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri’s anthrax planning.
(For those who think that stained panties and blindfolded sorority coeds lie at the core of the relevant profiling, you can return to your pictures of naked women or your obsession with office affairs.)
In this Lynne Stewart case, I hope counsel’s First Amendment argument gets reconsidered en banc — it seems unfortunate that it was not heard by a different panel than the one that remanded. The late Professor Archibald Cox, a First Amendment expert, would have loved the issue presented.
Wikipedia –
Violation of “Special Administrative Measures”
As part of Stewart’s defense of Rahman, and her serving for several years on post-conviction issues, she was subject to modified “special administrative measures” which govern communications between suspects and their legal counsel. Stewart had accepted the condition that, in order to be allowed to meet with Abdel Rahman in prison, she would not “use [their] meetings, correspondence, or phone calls with Abdel Rahman to pass messages between third parties (including, but not limited to, the media) and Abdel Rahman”.[21] The special administrative measures, or SAMs, were modified in the wake of the September 11th attacks and was designed to prevent communications that could endanger US national security or lead to acts of violence and terrorism.[22]
According to a federal grand jury indictment Stewart along with interpreter Mohamed Yousry, an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at York College CUNY, and postal clerk Ahmed Sattar passed messages between Rahman and his supporters in violation of the SAM,[23] thereby conspiring to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. The indictment also charged Stewart with violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and 18 U.S.C. § 2, and making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001), and Ahmed Sattar with being an active Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya leader who served as a vital link between Rahman and the group’s members. Stewart was accused in the indictment of passing Rahman’s blessing for a resumption of terrorist operations to Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya members in Egypt after they inquired whether they should continue to honor a ceasefire agreement with the Egyptian government.[23] According to video surveillance of Rahman’s cell Stewart, Yousry and Rahman had been tricking the guards into believing that Stewart and Rahman were having a routine conversation relating to his case, when Rahman was dictating statements to Yousry with Stewart joking that she should get an award for acting.[8][24]
Stewart said that the dispute was over one communication on behalf of her client to his supporters via a Reuters article, followed by a clarification after it appeared to have been misinterpreted. The clarification said: “I [Omar Abdel-Rahman] am not withdrawing my support of the cease-fire, I am merely questioning it and I am urging you, who are on the ground there to discuss it and to include everyone in your discussions as we always have done.”[25][26]
The material support charges were dismissed in the summer of 2003, but in November 2003 Stewart was re-indicted[27] on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism. She was convicted on these charges.
According to Judge John G. Koeltl, in denying Stewart’s motion to reject the verdict as unfounded,
A rational jury could have inferred that, by relaying a statement withdrawing support for a cessation of violence by an influential, pro-violence leader of a terrorist group, Stewart knew that she was providing support to those within the IG (Islamic Group) who sought to return to violence—who the jury could have found were participants in the Count Two conspiracy, particularly Taha.
[26] Michael Tigar, her attorney, stated that “that this case really is a threat to all the lawyers who are out there attempting to represent people that face these terrible consequences”[25] Supporters of Stewart alleged that the government charged her for her speech in defending the rights of her client. They believed that Stewart’s efforts to release communications from her client were part of an appropriate defense method to gain public awareness and support. They also expressed alarm that wiretaps and hidden cameras authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were used by the Government to gather evidence against her, which they called a violation of attorney–client privilege.
…
Conviction
On February 10, 2005, following a nine-month trial and 13 days of jury deliberations, Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government (18 U.S.C. § 371), providing material support to terrorists (18 U.S.C. § 2339A and 18 U.S.C. § 2) and conspiring to conceal it (18 U.S.C. § 371), and making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001). Co-defendants Mohamed Yousry and Ahmed Sattar were found guilty as charged.[30][31] Her conviction meant automatic disbarment, and on October 16, 2006, Judge Koeltl sentenced Stewart to 28 months in prison. Yousry and Sattar were sentenced to 20 months and 28 years, respectively.[32] Yousry was released in 2011. Sattar is serving his sentence at the Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.[33]
Stewart remained free on bail pending the results of her appeal.[34] However, the appeal also raised the stakes, in that the United States Attorney’s office asked the Court of Appeals not only to uphold the conviction but to require a much longer sentence than Judge Koeltl imposed. This risk only grew when, after the shock of conviction and facing decades in prison, her relief upon being sentenced to 28 months led her to exult spontaneously to the press, “I can do that standing on my head.” For the sentencing judge to hear that would be unfortunate for her, if the appeals court were to direct that he re-sentence her to reflect her degree of remorse — as indeed it ultimately did.
…
Re-sentencing; 10 years
In response to Stewart’s appeal, a customary three-judge Court of Appeals panel affirmed the convictions on November 17, 2009. Further, it ordered the district court to revoke Stewart’s bail immediately, and remanded the case for resentencing in light of her possible perjury at her trial and other factors not properly considered against her by the sentencing judge.[39]
On November 19, 2009, Stewart surrendered to U.S. Marshals in New York City to begin serving a 28-month sentence as prisoner #53504-054. In January 2010, the full Second Circuit bench, in a split decision, declined to reconsider its panel’s affirmance and resentencing directive. On July 15, 2010, Stewart was re-sentenced by Judge Koeltl on remand to 10 years in prison, taking into consideration what he concluded were false statements she made under oath at her trial and other factors as directed by the appellate court.[40]
The renowned veteran First Amendment lawyer Herald Price Fahringer contested the new sentence, bringing the case back to the Court of Appeals. On February 29, 2012, in a courtroom packed with Stewart’s supporters, Fahringer presented oral argument based on freedom of speech. The same three-judge panel that had ordered the resentencing presided, skeptically probing his argument. But Fahringer insisted that out-of-court comments on a public issue cannot be punished with enhanced imprisonment, suggesting that otherwise “no one will be able to comment after a sentence for fear that the same thing could happen to them.”[41]
DXer said
On June 27, 2012, Dr. Dhafir through counsel filed his appeal of his resentencing. He was sentenced to the same 22 years. He did not regret his efforts to route moneys to the needy in Iraq. I believe that the general thrust on appeal may be that 10 years is more appropriate given that he was not in the role of a third party money launderer but instead was motivated by charity. I have not read the brief, though, and so am unfamiliar with its argument.
I was always impressed by the equitable argument that if he did not hide what he was doing, Saddam’s agents would have seized the money.
I think there were 8 agencies here working on the matter with something like 30 extensions of warrants.
DXer said
Charity is as Charity Does: The Blind Sheik Followers Who Saw No Evil
Benevolence International Foundation (“BIF”) had long been of keen interest to the FBI in connection with its investigation of the threat of biological, chemical or radiological terrorism. One of the founders of BIF in 1987 was Bin Laden’s late brother-in-law, the late Jamal Khalifa. Cooperating witness Jamal al-Fadl told Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI that in 1992, Bin Laden sent him from Bin Laden’s headquarters in Sudan to Zagreb, Croatia, to gather information about the prospects of jihad in Bosnia. In Croatia, he met with Enaam Arnaout (who the next year would become the head of the BIF in the US), and al-Qaeda operative Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros. In 1994, when Khalifa was arrested in northern California where he was visiting, he was traveling with BIF President Mohammed Loay Bayazid. Bayazid reportedly was looking to buy enriched uranium. Bayazid listed BIF’s Chicago-area office as his residence. Years earlier, Bayazid had left Kansas City to go to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. Bayazid, a Syrian, was one of the founders of both Al Qaeda and BIF. He was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded.
Khalifa’s personal organizer had the numbers for Khalid Mohammed, regional Al Qaeda operative Hambali, and the 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef. Khalifa’s name was also written on a bomb making manual in the possession of
one of the WTC 1993 bombers. Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri visited the area the next month on a charity fundraising trip. Thus, authorities have long alleged that Al Qaeda has sought to develop weapons of mass destruction – and charities like the Benevolence International Foundation have been at the center of such allegations for years. When the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was arrested, he had Khalifa’s business card along with $62,000 in cash in a suitcase. One idea the Bojinka plotters had, as evidenced by draft letters on Ramzi Yousef’s laptop, was to attempt to free an imprisoned brother by threatening a chemical or poisonous gas attack. When Al Qaeda gets what it thinks is a good idea, they tend to stick with it.
Barbaros spoke alongside Ali Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in the mid-1990s in exhorting young men to jihad. A Justice Department indictment explains that Barbaros told Fadl that “al-Qaeda’s goal in Bosnia was to establish a base for operations in Europe against al-Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.” Around this time, BIF began providing food, clothing, money and communications equipment to fighters in Bosnia. The blind sheik’s son, who would serve on the 3-member Al Qaeda WMD committee, spoke alongside Al-Timimi in 1993 and again in 1996.
In 1996, al-Fadl, who had been involved in an earlier attempt to buy uranium for Bin Laden along with Bayazid, defected from al-Qaeda. There are 900 pages of transcripts of conversations in videotaped teleconferences. The FBI agents and prosecutor Fitzgerald did not realize the marshals who set up the video teleconferences were taping.
An FBI Special Agent in an affidavit in the prosecution of the BIF head, Arnaout, alleged that Arnaout “has a relationship with Usama Bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade, as evidenced by cooperating witnesses and seized documents.” He continued “various persons involved in terrorist activists – specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda – have had contacts with BIF offices and personnel.” The agent opined that Arnaout was a trusted associate of Bin Laden and also Gubuddin Hekmatyar and once involved with Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami organization. For a time, the BIF head administered funds for Bin Laden but later had a personality conflict with Al Qaeda military commander, Egyptian Mohammed Atef. Atef came to head the plans to weaponize anthrax. A folder recovered in another BIF trash search in December 2001 contained handwritten notations in Arabic indicating that BIF had a field office in Zagreb, Croatia for relief operations support of jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the prosecution of BIF head Arnaout, the agent recounted that in an April 1999, the FBI recovered from BIF’s office in Palos Hills, Illinois, a February 1999 article in the Seattle Times concerning smallpox as a biological terrorism weapon. The sections of the text indicating that authorities were poorly prepared for a biological attack involving smallpox were highlighted. Although I do not see the referenced article from February 1999, on March 15, 1999, for example, there was a news article explaining that the idea that smallpox was a threat took hold when Ken Alibek said that Russia had produced tons of anthrax, along with smallpox. The FBI at some point apparently realized that if one wanted to gain access to what this defector knew about weaponizing anthrax, one would merely have to apply to be a graduate student down the hall from him – which is exactly what Falls Church, VA Salafist Ali Al-Timimi did.
In 2000, Chechen military commander associated with Bin Laden’s CBRN aspirations, Ibn Khattab solicited funds on the Al Qaeda website, qoqaz.com. Mirrored by a North Brunswick, NJ webmaster Mazen Mokhtar, the website said that funds should be routed through one of two charities. One of the two charities commended by the website for this purpose was BIF.
In the New York City area, BIF was represented by Saffet Abid Catovic. Catovic was a boy scout troop leader, religious teacher, hospital administrator, and senior Bosnian diplomat and “Minister Counsellor” at the Bosnian Mission to United Nations in Manhattan. New York City police found his New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation business card among the personal effects of the blind sheik’s bodyguard, El Sayyid Nosair, after Nosair assassinated militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane. Mr. Catovic worked as a budget director at a New York Hospital. In a videotaped religious lecture, Catovic introduced and praised Siddig Ali (who was later convicted of a central role in a fundamentalist conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks in 1993). Siddig Ali spoke on the subject of “Jihad: The Forgotten Duty.” Catovic spoke alongside Mazen Mokhtar at a jihad summer camp in Pennsylvania in 2000 in which he explained that a timeframe for the US to become a caliphate was 2-5 years.
Yusuf Wells, who was a BIF fundraiser, 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.. 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.”
After the anthrax mailings, former FBI agent Jack Cloonan and several colleagues arrived in Khartoum, Sudan in November 2001 to interview al-Douri and Bayazid. He was part of a joint FBI-CIA team. Cloonan has said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when asked about possible bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime, saying bin Laden hated Saddam. Bin Laden viewed Saddam as “a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate.” Both al-Douri and
Bayazid lived in Tucson during the early 1990s.
On December 14, 2001, in the afternoon, three immigration agents arrested Rabih Haddad, head of Global Relief Foundation, at his Ann Arbor home on a minor immigration violation. The FBI made related raids of BIF
offices in connection with the search for evidence that Bin Laden was planning further attacks in the US and developing weapons of mass destruction such as weaponized anthrax. United States Attorney Fitzgerald’s
original plan did not call for searches or “takedowns of the GRF or BIF offices in Illinois.” Instead, the 9/11 Commission found, the FBI had intended to listen using electronic intercepts to the reaction to the searches by the charity personnel. Their hand was forced, however, by the reporter’s call to Global Relief Foundation.
The Newark, NJ BIF office was searched in mid-December 2001 at the same time the BIF and Global Relief Foundation offices in Illinois were searched.
The charity investigation remained shrouded in secrecy until June 2002 when a helicopter emerged out of the clouds circling about Adham Hassoun’s car not not far from his residence in Sunrise, Florida. “They
thought I was somebody important. They thought they hit the jackpot.” FBI agents questioned him initially when it was discovered that he had been the American representative for the publication Nida’ul Islam. “Brother Adham
Hassoun” was listed as the publication’s subscription officer. Hassoun explained “I called these people and told them, ‘Take my name off there’.” Hassoun was the founder of BIF in the US, in Plantation, Florida in 1992
before it was moved to Chicago.
The government alleged that Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer, had allegedly planned an assassination, provided material support to terrorist groups, and was a member of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman’s Islamic
Group. Hassoun, a Palestinian of Sunrise, Florida born in Lebanon, allegedly tried to recruit Egyptian Mohammed Yousseff, a friend of Padilla’s. Hassoun had ties to charitable groups with alleged links to terrorist groups. The
authorities did not want to arrest him and instead wanted to see where he might lead them. Their hand was forced when a Miami reporter called him to ask him about Padilla and they thought he might flee. It is suspected that
Hassoun was among those who would be assisting Zacarias Moussaoui in a separate mission, totally separate to 9/11.
Mohammad Javed Qureshi, a Muslim from Pakistan and founder of the School of Islamic Studies in Sunrise, was Padilla’s former boss. As manager of a Taco Bell he hired Padilla to make Tacos about the time Padilla
converted to Islam. ”With this latest arrest it leads me to believe that there is a cell or organization recruiting Muslims for terrorist activities,” Javed told a local newspaper upon news of Padilla’s detention.
”We need to look into Egypt and see where he went,” he told New York
Times, “and then put the two and two together. Are there recruiters here?
Yes. Have I met them? No. But .. the recruiters are out there. I’m trying to
find them myself.”
The FBI investigation of Mr. Hassoun began after the arrest of supporters of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman in Brooklyn revealed the existence of a network in North American supporting Islamic fighters worldwide. Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over more than a decade. No one was arrested until June 2002 and no charges were
brought until October 2004. Phone calls related to financial support of individuals willing to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and Somalia. A November 2005 indictment details numerous checks payable to
Global Relief Foundation to fund “tourists” from 1998 – 2001.
An associate of Jayyousi, Hassoun helped distribute the Islam Report in South Florida and looking for young recruits willing to become mujahidin to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes, according to the FBI. According to court papers, Hassoun had been under FBI investigation since a January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and the blind sheik. Like Hassoun, Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a strong supporter of Abdel- Rahman. Jayyousi frequently spoke with the jailed sheik by telephone in 1994 and 1995. Shortly after Rahman’s arrest, Jayyousi (aka Abu Mohammed) founded the American Islamic Group, which published the
Islam Report. The newsletter carried news about the sheik and recounted the exploits of jihadists around the world.
Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt during the probe, also used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim extremists through nonprofit organizations to include Save Bosnia Now, later renamed to American Worldwide Relief. Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but was not charged until April 2005. He was released on bail – the only defendant in the Miami case to win pretrial release. Jayyousi was dismissed from his job as
Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools in the Spring of 2001.
Co-defendant Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman, lived in Le Duc, Canada and helped distribute Jayyousi’s Islam Report in Canada. According to the FBI, Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and is still
there, having been detained in 2000. According to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Daher had contact with Vanguards of Conquest member Jaballah and involvement with EIJ activities. After 9/11, an article in the
Arabic newspaper Sharq al Awsat reported that Lebanon had received a request from Canada through Interpol for information on eight people, including a man described as a “partner of Daher’s” – Ahmad Khadr (“al-Kanadi”). Thus,
there appears to have been a coordination between the “al-Kanadi” and Florida networks. The “Florida cell” had connections to Jaballah and would have been concerned over his detention to a security certificate, along with
EIJ member Mahmoud Mahjoub.
The federal government charged that Adham Hassoun recruited Padilla into Islam and possibly into al Qaeda. Padilla started studying Islam at the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute and the al-Iman mosque. An outspoken
Palestinian activist living in the area, Hassoun had quit his job as a computer programmer to oversee the opening of a Muslim charity, Benevolence International Foundation, in Plantation. Although only recently incorporated
in the U.S., the charity had existed for a couple of years in previous incarnations – with branches in Pakistan, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. The group can be traced back to the wealthy Saudis who founded
its predecessor groups, two sheiks with strong ties to Osama bin Laden. The same two sheiks underlie the views espoused by the Islamic Assembly of North American formed in 1993. One of the two sheiks, al-Hawali, was in touch with
Al-Timimi in fall 2001 in connection with having his views heard and understood by the US Congress.
CBS reported that “US officials describe Hassoun as an important link not only to the Padilla investigation, but possibly to a suspected US-based al-Qaeda network awaiting orders for future attacks. Sources said
domestic intelligence intercepts have now convinced officials that such a network of al-Qaeda fund-raisers and operatives exist in the United States.” Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Ranking Member, Intelligence Committee)
said: “I-I fear that it’s a lot more widespread than we originally thought, and there are probably other terrorist cells that could be affiliated with them, other groups besides al-Qaeda.”
BIF Canada was founded by Mahammed Khatib, an employee of the International Islamic Relief Organization. International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is a Saudi charity that Canadian agents allege was
involved in financing Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Manila office of the IIRO was headed by Khalifa, bin Laden’s brother-in-law. Muslim World League and IIRO had an office at 360 Washington, the location of Al-Timimi’s Dar Arqam.
The Canadian BIF chapter shared an office in Toronto with IIRO’s parent organization, Muslim World League, and both Canadian groups were run by the same man.
Dating back to its founding, BIF is connected to World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Falls Church, Virginia, which was run by Bin Laden’s nephew. 50 FBI agents raided WAMY offices in late May 2004. The Washington
Post explained: “Sources said the raid was part of an investigation into whether the group’s operations around the world have financial and other ties to terrorists, but the scope of the probe could not be learned because
the case is under court seal.” Abdullah bin Laden incorporated WAMY’s U.S. branch in Falls Church in 1992, became president and was listed on forms until at least 1998. A volunteer board member who had just received his
computer sciences doctorate from George Mason University was arrested on immigration charges. He was expert and had published on computer security protocols. The WAMY official and newly minted GMU computer security PhD left
for Saudi Arabia in July under a plea agreement.
An arrest warrant then issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past
three years.
The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He had gone to medical school in Zagreb, graduating in 1995 apparently. He was accused in late June 2004 of
supporting an Al Qaeda operative who after 9/11 asked the doctor to support his application to come to the United States. Dr. Faraj was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (“JAMA”) about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61- year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The
article concluded that although her workplace had been searched for traces of anthrax, it was unknown how Kathy Nguyen had been exposed. It is still unknown how Kathy Nguyen was exposed to anthrax – and an association of BIF
under these circumstances is still of keen interest.
His attorney was indicted in late June 2012 on unrelated income tax charges. The same week had the newly elected President Morsi demand the release of the Blind Sheik and other senior jihadists, the blind sheik’s former attorney Lynn Stewart’s appeal of her resentencing denied, the former Vice-Chairman Rafil Dhafir file the appeal of his resentencing, and Mahmoud Mahjoub, the former Vanguards of Conquest #2 point out that he should be charged or released.
Charity is as charity does.
First do no harm.
DXer said
The Islambouli and Zawahiri families have long been intertwined as illustrated by the acquittal in March 2012 of charges that they had planned militant attacks.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/19/201778.html
By Al Arabiya With Agencies
CAIRO
An Egyptian military court on Monday acquitted Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman, and Mohammed Islambouli, whose Islamist brother Khaled assassinated president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
The two had been convicted of convicted of planning militant attacks.
“Thank God, he was found innocent,” Zawahiri’s son Abdelrahman told AFP by telephone after the verdict.
“We expect him to be released in the next few days,” his lawyer Kamel Mandur said.
In 1998, Zawahiri and Islambouli were sentenced on charges of undergoing military training in Albania and planning military operations in Egypt. {Editor’s Note: Recall 1998 seizure of Mabruk’s laptop containing anthrax planning docs and public announcement of defendants in Spring 1999 that anthrax was going to be used against US targets in retaliation for rendering of senior EIJ officials).
Mandur said the trial also acquitted several other former militants including Sayyed Imam Fadl, once the spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and mentor of Ayman al-Zawahiri.
But Fadl, like the others acquitted, had shunned violence in the late 1990s and engaged in a war of letters with Ayman al-Zawahiri, denouncing Al-Qaeda’s use of violence.
Islambouli returned from exile in Iran after a popular uprising overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, joining a number of Egyptian Islamist militants returning to the country after the ouster of their nemesis.
Under the military, which took power after Mubarak’s ouster, several jailed Islamist militant leaders have been released, including Islamic Jihad leader Abud al-Zumor.
The formerly militant Gamaa Islamiya, involved in Sadat’s murder, has even formed a party with representation in the Islamist-dominated parliament.
DXer said
•
Next Gen Terror-Watchers Go Deep Into Al-Qaida, Tweet a Lot
• By Spencer Ackerman
June 29, 2012
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/next-gen-counterterrorism/all/
“Tawfiq” Hamid, who was recruited by Ayman Zawahiri, featured in this article by Wired today. “Tawfiq” told me on the telephone that he had called his childhood friend and Cairo Medical classmate Tarek Hamouda prior to 9/11 to ask about patents.
Dr. Hamouda was a DARPA-funded researcher doing research with Ames anthrax alongside Bruce Ivins in the B3 at USAMRIID. His patents related to a nanoemulsion that was a decontamination agent.
When “Tawfiq” asked his brother, a St. Louis MD — who was the representative of CAIR — about patents, the St. Louis brother recommended he call Tarek.
Tarek told “Tawfiq” that it was all in the marketing. (And indeed is true and is conventional wisdom that any patent owner can tell you).
Tarek would come from Khartoum, Sudan, as a child. He, “Tawfiq” and Tawfiq’s brother ( who also would go on to Cairo Medical with them), would go to a comic store. Their mothers had met in French school. His mother was an accounting professor at the University in Khartoum.
Later, at Cairo Medical, Dr. Zawahiri would come on Fridays to recruit students to jihad. “Tawfiq” has written lucidly about his recruitment in a book INSIDE JIHAD.
The Wired article quotes a General who was former Inspector General of the Pentagon. He emphasizes that “Tawfiq” is a treasure. The lucidity and importance of his book and humane perspective speaks for itself.
I emailed Dr. Hamouda, the researcher who worked with virulent Ames alongside Bruce Ivins in the B3, years ago to ask him if he knew Mohammed Islambouli and Dr. Ayman when he and Dr. Ayman were doing their planning from Sudan.
Or if he was recruited by Dr. Ayman along with Dr. Hamid.
But he didn’t respond.
I first wrote a lengthy analysis along these lines to the CIA in December 2001. Early subpoenas went out in 2001 to LSU and University of Michigan.
I’ve been meaning to get an on-the-record interview with Heba Zawahiri, Tarek’s former microbiology professor. I think it was the rendering of her brother that was a strong motivation for Dr. Ayman to move forward with his anthrax planning reflected in his correspondence with Atef.
In the US, the brother from St. Louis stopped talking to “Tawfiq” when he started cooperating with intelligence agencies. The St. Louis had been in the Ann Arbor area with Tarek and so would have keen insights as to Ann Arbor salafist scene. But in a radio interview as he told the FBI, he can’t tell the FBI about a sleeper cell if he doesn’t know about it. The St. Louis MD is as articulate as his brother “Tawfiq” — although they come from different perspectives.
The compartmentalization contemplated by Ali Mohammed in maintaining cell security led to operational success for Dr. Ayman’s Vanguards of Conquest/Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
The compartmentalization that characterizes our government led to the greatest failure in law enforcement history.
DXer said
The question relevant to an Al Qaeda theory is what access to the US Army strain might have been accomplished by someone with 1) an organization supported by funds diverted from charities backing his play, and 2) a lot of educated and technically-trained Salafists who believe in his Islamist cause.
A former KGB spy master says that the Russians had a spy at Ft. Detrick who provided samples of all specimens by diplomatic pouch. But it seems more likely that Al Qaeda got it directly from a western laboratory. For example, Ayman had a trusted scientist attending conferences sponsored by Porton Down scheduling 10-day lab visit as early as 1999. In the US, he had the support of other scientists (such as GMU’s Al-Timimi) who did advanced research alongside researchers working with the Ames strain under a contract with USAMRIID for DARPA.
The DOJ also has provided a December 5, 1997 letter from a University of Michigan Medical Center scientist to Bruce Ivins. It states
“Dear Dr. Ivins:
It was a pleasure speaking with you the other day. I much appreciate your willingness to work with us concerning our new anti-sporicidal material. We are looking forward to doing it in vitro evaluating or not whether this material against anthrax spores given its efficacy against other species of bacillus spores. These studies would involve mixing the material with the spores for varying lengths of time and then either separating the spores or culturing them directly to determine the viability. We might also do fixation of the spore preparations to determine if there are any ultrastructural changes in the spores that can be oberved with electron microscopy.”
“My technicians are fully trained in the contagious pathogen handling and have experience with level 3 biosafety requirements. They, as I, are willing to undergo the anthrax and plague immunizations, although I was hoping that they might be able to administer the vaccines at the University of Michigan. This might allow us to only make one trip to USAMRID before we begin the studies. If we could either purchase the vaccine from you or from a commercial distributor, we would be happy to administer it and document titers in any way you feel appropriate.
I look forward to the initiation of this work. I believe it could be a very interesting collaboration that could eventually lead to animal studies. On December 19, commensurate with the filing of patents on this material, I will send you additional data on the formulations and our studies concerning the ability of these materials to inactivate spores both in vitro and in vivo.
Sincerely,
____________
_____ Division of Allergy”
The FBI apparently did not obtain the documents from Bruce Ivins relating to the correspondence with the University of Michigan researchers until 2005 — four years after the mailings. At that time, someone using Arthur Friedlander’s telephone number forwarded evidence that Dr. Hamouda and lab tech Michael Hayes had received anthrax and plague vaccinations in advance of coming to work alongside Dr. Ivins in the BL-3 laboratory using virulent Ames. The sender noted that the 20 pages being forwarded had been provided the sender by Bruce Ivins.
The University of Michigan Medical Center letter dated May 10 [1998] to Bruce Ivins
“My colleagues and I would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to both you and Dr. Ivins for the opportunity to work at USAMRIID. Dr. Ivins _______________________ were very helpful and cooperative in facilitating our studies as well as providing excellent technical assistance. Their efforts made our stay at USAMRIID both pleasant and highly productive. In particular, our discussions with Dr. Ivins provided valuable insights which will enable to better define and develop our technology.”
“The data generated in these studies serves to clarify and validate the results which we have seen in our model systems (see attachments). We were able to block growth of both strains of B. anthracis with emulsion incorporated media (Table 1). We also were successful in reducing both Vollum and Ames spore counts by 95% (as assessed by CFU of viable organisms). These reductions were observed at spore concentrations of up to 1 X 10 6/ ml (Figure 1) and were seen even in conditions which limited germination (room temperature incubation). Decreased numbers of spores also were identified microscopically in the media after treatment. In contrast, no reduction in counts was noted with an initial spore innoculation of 1 X 10 8 / ml (Figure 2). …”
“We were pleased with this outcome and the personal interaction that produced them. Given the non-toxic nature of these emulsions, we feel that they may have a role in the decontamination and treatment of agents such as anthrax and alphavirus. We look forward to future collaborative efforts with Dr. Ivins and his laboratory staff. With the diverse nature of our respective programs, we believe that a cooperative approach will serve to accelerate the development of these compounds.”
In a number of patents by University of Michigan researchers in Ann Arbor, Tarek Hamouda and James R. Baker, Jr., including some filed before 9/11, the inventors thanked Bruce Ivins of Ft. Detrick for supplying them with virulent Ames. The University of Michigan patents stated: “B. anthracis spores, Ames and Vollum 1 B strains, were kindly supplied by Dr. Bruce Ivins (USAMRIID, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Md.), and prepared as previously described (Ivins et al., 1995). Dr. Hamouda served as group leader on the DARPA Anti-infective project.
A patent application filed April 2000 by the University of Michigan inventors explained:
“The release of such agents as biological weapons could be catastrophic in light of the fact that such diseases will readily spread the air.
In light of the foregoing discussion, it becomes increasingly clear that cheap, fast and effective methods of killing bacterial spores are needed for decontaminating purposes. The inventive compounds have great potential as environmental decontamination agents and for treatments of casualties in both military and terrorist attacks. The inactivation of a broad range of pathogens … and bacterial spores (Hamouda et al., 1999), combined with low toxicity in experimental animals, make them (i.e., the inventive compounds) particularly well suited for use as general decontamination agents before a specific pathogen is identified.”
In late August 2001, NanoBio relocated from a small office with 12 year-old furniture to an expanded office on Green Road located at Plymouth Park. After the mailings, DARPA reportedly asked for some of their product them
to decontaminate some of the Senate offices. The company reportedly had pitched hand cream to postal workers. The inventors company, NanoBio, was initially funded by DARPA.
Dr. Hamouda graduated Cairo Medical in December 1982. He married in 1986. His wife was on the Cairo University dental faculty for 10 years. Upon coming to the United States in 1994 after finishing his microbiology PhD at Cairo Medical, Dr. Hamouda was a post-doctoral fellow at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in downtown Detroit. His immunology department biography at Wayne indicates that he then came to the University of Michigan and began work on the DARPA-funded work with anthrax bio-defense applications with James R. Baker at their company NanoBio.
The University of Michigan researchers presented in part at various listed meetings and conferences in 1998 and 1999. The Department of Justice provided a copy of December 1999 article titled “A Novel Surfactant Nanoemulsion with Broad-Spectrum Sporicidal Activity of against Bacillus Species” in its disclosure under FOIA. The article in the Journal for Infectious Diseases states: “B. anthracis spores, Ames and Vollum 1B strains, were supplied by Bruce Ivins (US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases [USAMRIID], Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD) and were prepared as described elsewhere. Four other strains of B. anthracis were provided by Martin Hugh-Jones (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge).” Dr. Baker advises me by email that NanoBio’s research with virulent Ames was “done at USAMRIID by a
microbiologist under Dr. Ivins’ direct supervision and at LSU under the direction of Dr. Hugh Jones.”
In the acknowledgements section, the University of Michigan authors thanked:
(1) Shaun B. Jones, Jane Alexander, and Lawrence DuBois (Defense Science Office, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) for their support;
(2) Bruce Ivins for supplying virulent Ames;
(3)Patricia Fellows (who is identified as Ivins’ Former Colleague #2 in the Amerithrax Investigative Summary);
(4) Mara Linscott (who is identifed as Ivins’ “Former Colleague #1); and
(5) Arthur Friedlander, the Army’s top anthrax expert.
He thanked Drs. Fellows, Linscott and Friedlander for their technical support and helpful suggestions in the performance of the initial anthrax studies.
(7) Martin-Hugh-Jones at LSU,
(8) Kimothy Smith, who moved from LSU to Northern Arizona University, where he was a key genetics expert for the FBI typing submitted samples in 2002; and
(9) Pamala Coker, Kimothy’s close associate
who served as the LSU biolevel 3 lab head.
Dr. Hamouda thanked Hugh-Jones, Smith and Coker for supplying the characterized B. anthracis strains and the space at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge).
The University of Michigan researchers found that their nanoemulsion incorporated into the growth medium completely inhibited the growth of the spores. Transmission electron microscope was used to examine the spores.
The patent explained that “The nanoemulsions can be rapidly produced in large quantities and are stable for many months *** Undiluted, they have the texture of a semisolid cream and can be applied topically by hand or mixed with water. Diluted, they have a consistency and appearance similar to skim milk and can be sprayed to decontaminate surfaces or potentially interact with aerosolized spores before inhalation.”
A March 18, 1998 press release had provided some background to the novel DARPA-funded work. It was titled “Novavax Microbicides Undergoing Testing at University of Michigan Against Biological Warfare Agents; Novavax Technology Being Supplied to U.S. Military Program At University of Michigan as Possible Defense Against Germ Warfare.” The release stated that “The Novavax Biologics Division has designed several potent microbicides and is supplying these materials to the University of Michigan for testing under a subcontract. Various formulations are being tested as topical creams or sprays for nasal and environmental usage. The biocidal agent’s
detergent degrades and then explodes the interior of the spore. Funding, the press release explains, was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense.
In a presentation at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) on September 26, 1998, Michael Hayes, a research associate in the U-Michigan Medical School, presented experimental evidence of BCTP’s ability to destroy anthrax spores both in a culture dish and in mice exposed to anthrax through a skin incision. “In his conference presentation, Hayes described how even low concentrations of BCTP killed more than 90 percent of virulent strains of Bacillus anthracis spores in a culture dish.” Its website explains that the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy is the “[p]remier meeting on infectious diseases and antimicrobial agents, organized by the American Society for Microbiology.”
In 1999, LSU researcher Dr. Kimothy Smith, who was thanked for providing BL-3 space for the research by the University of Michigan researchers, moved to the Arizona lab, bringing with him the lab’s first samples of anthrax.”
A University of Michigan Medical school publication, Medicine at Michigan, (Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1999) explained: “In studies with rats and mice in the U-M Medical School under the direction of James R. Baker, Jr., M.D., professor of internal medicine and director of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology, the mixture, known as BCTP, attacked anthrax spores and healed
wounds caused by a closely related species of bacteria, Bacillus cereus. (The letters BCTP stand for Bi-Component, Triton X-100 n-tributyl Phosphate.)
Baker describes the process as follows: “The tiny lipid droplets in BCTP fuse with anthrax spores, causing the spores to revert to their active bacterial state. During this process, which takes 4-5 hours, the spore’s tough outer membrane changes, allowing BCTP’s solvent to strip away the exterior membrane. The detergent then degrades the spores’ interior contents. In scanning electron microscope images, the spores appear to explode.” The rapid inactivation of anthrax bacteria and spores combined with BCTP’s low toxicity thus make the emulsion a promising candidate for use as a broad-spectrum, post-exposure decontamination agent.
***
The research is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research and development organization for the U.S. Department of Defense.”
Dr. Baker, by email, advises me that Ivins did the studies involving Ames for them at USAMRIID. He reports: “We never had Ames and could not have it at our UM facilities.” Before September 2001, it’s office was described as in the basement of a downtown bank which seems to describe 912 N. Main St., Ann Arbor, just west of the University of Michigan campus.
An article in the Summer of 2000 in Medicine at Michigan explains:
“Victory Site: Last December [December 1999]
Tarek Hamouda, Amy Shih and Jim Baker traveled to a remote military station in the Utah desert. There they demonstrated for the U.S. Army Research and Development Command the amazing ability of non-toxic nanoemulsions (petite droplets of fat mixed with water and detergent) developed at Michigan to wipe out deadly anthrax-like bacterial spores. The square vertical surfaces shown here were covered with bacterial spores; Michigan’s innocuous nanoemulsion was most effective in killing the spores even when compared to highly toxic chemicals.”
An EPA report explains: “In December 1999, the U.S. Army tested a broad spectrum nanoemulsion and nine other decontamination technologies in Dugway, Utah, against an anthrax surrogate, Bacillus globigii. Nanoemulsion was one of four technologies that proved effective and was the only nontoxic formulation available. Other tests against the vaccine strain of B. anthracis (Sterne strain) were conducted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.”
As Fortune magazine explained in November 2001 about NanoBio: “Then bioterror struck…. It moved to a bland corporate park where its office has no name on the door. It yanked its street address off its Website, whose hit rate jumped from 350 a month to 1,000 a day.” NanoBio was part of the solution: “in the back of NanoBio’s office sit two dozen empty white 55-gallon barrels. A few days before, DARPA had asked Annis and Baker if they could make enough decontaminant to clean several anthrax-tainted offices in the Senate. NanoBio’s small lab mixers will have to run day and night to fill the barrels. ‘This is not the way we want to do this,’ sighs [its key investor], shaking his head. ‘This is all a duct-tape solution.’ ” James Baker, founder of Ann Arbor’s NanoBio’s likes to quote a Chinese proverb: “When there are no lions and tigers in the jungle, the monkeys rule.”
It’s naive to think that Al Qaeda could not have obtained Ames just because it tended to be in labs associated with or funded by the US military. US Army Al Qaeda operative Sgt. Ali Mohammed accompanied Zawahiri in his travels in the US. (Ali Mohamed had been a major in the same unit of the Egyptian Army that produced Sadat’s assassin, Khaled Islambouli). Ali Al-Timimi was working in the building housing the Center for Biodefense funded by the DARPA and had access to the facilities at both the Center for Biodefense and the adjacent American Type Culture Collection. For example, Michael Ray Stubbs was an HVAC system technician at Lawrence Livermore Lab with a high-level security clearance permitting access; that was where the effort to combat the perceived Bin Laden anthrax threat was launched in 1998. Aafia Siddiqui, who attended classes at a building with the virulent Vollum strain. She later married a 9/11 plotter al-Balucchi, who was in UAE with al-Hawsawi, whose laptop, when seized at the home of a bacteriologist, had anthrax spraydrying documents on it. The reality is that a lab technician, researcher, or other person similarly situated might simply have walked out of some lab that had it.
DXer said
Here is some of the uploaded correspondence between Bruce Ivins and the University of Michigan researchers.
DXer said
Research was also done at LSU in Martin Hugh-Jones’ lab but the work there concerned four characterized (non-Ames) strains.
DXer said
GAO: What has the DOJ intercepted KSM saying (at Guantanamo) about anthrax on the wiretaps that the DOJ is sitting on?
Book: Military feared use of terrorist’s comments
By PETE YOST, Associated Press – Jun 6, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new book says Justice Department prosecutors were stunned to learn three years ago that the U.S. military had secretly tape recorded incriminating comments that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed made to fellow detainees during daily prison yard conversations but was not planning to use them at military tribunals.
In “Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency,” journalist Daniel Klaidman says Mohammed was caught on tape boasting to other detainees about the 9/11 attacks. According to the book, Mohammed mentioned specific pieces of evidence, documents and computer files that could be tied directly to him through his voluntary statements to other detainees at the military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.
Justice prosecutors were surprised because civilian prosecutors regularly use the jailhouse statements of inmates against them at trial and because the statements, voluntarily uttered, would allow the government to get around the problem of using statements the detainees made during harsh interrogations that defense lawyers would try to exclude from trial as tainted by torture.
Mohammed’s conversations “were intercepted by military spies and mined for intelligence,” Klaidman writes in his new book. “There were hundreds of hours of such recordings, including musings by KSM and other high-value detainees, uttered freely, during unguarded moments.”
It is unclear whether the military has changed its mind and now plans to use the recordings against Mohammed at his upcoming military commission trial. On Wednesday, a Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, declined to comment.
Klaidman writes that despite “the potential gold mine” the recordings represented, military prosecutors decided a number of years ago not to use the evidence.
In fact, “they refused to even listen to the recordings,” Klaidman writes. “They worried that the intrusive means by which the evidence was obtained might not pass muster with their judges.”
Military tribunals were barely four years old at the time, largely untested and with practically no case law built up to guide lawyers, the military prosecutors were reluctant to take any chances, Klaidman writes.
In 2009 when the Justice Department was contemplating prosecuting KSM in a civilian federal court in New York City, prosecutors were eager to use the recordings, according to Klaidman’s book.
David Raskin, chief prosecutor of the terrorism unit in the southern district of New York, realized that “if KSM had talked openly about his role in 9/11, those statements would be among the most powerful evidence prosecutors could bring before a jury,” writes Klaidman. “They would be entirely voluntary statements, making them almost certainly admissible in court. Significantly, Raskin realized, prosecutors would be able to avoid a legal fight … KSM’s lawyers would not be able to, in effect, put the CIA on trial for torture.”
“For Raskin, the military lawyers’ refusal to listen to the tapes bordered on legal malpractice,” Klaidman writes.
According to the book, when Attorney General Eric Holder received a report on the military’s decision not to use the intercepted conversations, his first reaction was skepticism.
How could it be that the military was refusing to use this evidence?
“What am I missing here?” he asked.
Without explicitly disclosing the existence of the tape recordings, the attorney general made a cryptic reference to the evidence on them during a news conference 2½ years ago as he announced plans to try Mohammed and other terrorist suspects in a civilian court, the book says. The Obama later administration dropped the planned federal court trial in the face of widespread political and public opposition.
On Nov. 13, 2009 when the attorney general announced the planned trial, “Holder stubbornly stayed on message, saying over and over again that their case was strong and he was confident the Justice Department would win convictions,” writes Klaidman. “Then he obliquely alluded to the secret evidence that he believed was his trump card: ‘I will say that I have access to information that has not been publicly released that gives me great confidence that we will be successful in the prosecution of these cases in federal court.'”
From a legal perspective, the recordings were a vast improvement over evidence obtained through harsh interrogation techniques inflicted on Mohammed by CIA interrogators.
Mohammed was water boarded 183 times during his interrogations. In contrast, his conversations with other inmates would be free of the legal taint resulting from a variety of harsh interrogation techniques, which included pouring water over the immobilized prisoner’s face to impose the sensation of drowning.
The alternative was for military prosecutors to use clean-team statements, interviews conducted by FBI interrogators with no involvement in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, but some federal judges had thrown out clean-team evidence as well, arguing that once a defendant had been tortured, any future testimony he might give to American authorities would be tainted, Klaidman writes.
James Connell, an attorney for Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, one of the defendants in the Sept. 11 trial at Guantanamo, said that he was unaware of any recordings, but that if it turns out that they exist he would ask for them to be turned over to the defense to be evaluated. Any statements made by a defendant that are in the possession of the government would be subject to discovery under military commission rules, Connell said.
Cheryl Bormann, an attorney for another of the defendants, Walid bin Attash, said she wouldn’t be surprised if the government had surreptitiously recorded her client’s conversations.
“Their entire scheme here, meaning the U.S. government, has been to collect intelligence,” Bormann said. “The system was designed to do that and prosecution was an afterthought.”
DXer said
Here is Dr. Hamid’s description of his recruitment by Dr. Zawahiri.
from DXer … the lifelong friends of Dr. Tarek Hamouda, supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins, actively denounce their former medical school associate Ayman Zawahiri as a fanatic – one serving as President of CAIR-St. Louis and the other as author of INSIDE JIHAD.
DXer said
Bio-Weapons Crusader Calls For Tighter Research Oversight
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: June 27, 2012
http://defense.aol.com/2012/06/27/crusader-against-bio-weapons-calls-for-new-oversight-of-dangerou/
But the only known bio-attack on the United States, the anthrax letters that killed five people in late 2001, appears to have originated not from abroad but from within America’s own bio-defense complex, with the FBI’s suspicions — and Meselson’s — centering on Bruce Ivins, a researcher at the Army’s Fort Detrick laboratory, who killed himself as the investigation closed in. That fact puts a premium on how the US monitors and reviews its own scientists.
DXer said
Dr. Hamid met Zawahiri, “Dr. Ayman” as he was known, at an afternoon prayer session. He was one of the fiercest speakers he had ever heard. Ayman fervently condemned the West for the freedom of its women. Ayman, Dr. Hamid explains, was exceptionally bright, one of the top postgraduate students in the medical school. When they met him, Zawahiri greeted him warmly through his coke bottle glasses.
Dr. Hamid explains that one of Ayman’s achievements was to personalize jihad—that is, to have transformed it from a responsibility of the Umma, the Islamic collective, to an individual duty of Muslims. Within several months of meeting Dr. Ayman, he was invited to travel to Afghanistan to join other young Muslims in training for jihad. It was fairly common, he said, to be recruited after the end of Friday prayers. Dr. Hamid explains: “We viewed both the Soviets and the Americans as enemies.”
“The Soviets were considered infidels because they did not believe in the existence of God, while the Americans did not follow Islam. Although we planned to fight the Soviets first, our ultimate objective was to destroy the United States—the greatest symbol of the infidel’s freedom. ” Prophet Mohammed served as their role model. The harshest edicts of the koranic verses were to be followed and criticism of those verses was punishable by death. Dr. Hamid explains: “I passed through three psychological stages to reach this level of comfort with death: hatred of non-Muslims or dissenting Muslims, suppression of my conscience, and acceptance of violence in the service of Allah.”
DXer said
The December 3, 1998 raw intelligence report that discusses Mohammed Islambouli and his planning, in a cell with KSM, the US attacks.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/368936-1998-12-03-title-excised-planning-by-usama-bin.html
The became an Item in the December 4, 1998 President’s Daily Brief [1998-12-03]
It was Ali Mohamed who, in part, was the source for the reporting about Islambouli, which is redacted. He was the one who taught the Cairo Medical alum to make lethal letters (Dahab). Dahab practiced flying an ultralight.
The raw intelligence report states, in a portion not redacted,
“BIN LADIN WAS PLANNING TO EXECUTE NEW OPERATIONS AGAINST UNITED STATES (U.S.) TARGETS IN THE NEAR FUTURE. PLANS TO HIJACK A U.S. AIRCRAFT WERE PROCEEDING WELL. TWO INDIVIDUALS FROM THE RELEVANT OPERATIONAL TEAM IN THE U.S. HAD SUCCESSFULLY EVADED SECURITY CHECKS DURING A TRIAL RUN AT NEW YORK ….THE OPERATION IS TO OBTAIN THE RELEASE OF [ .. BLIND SHEIK ABDEL RAHMAN, RAMZI YOUSEF, AND ONE OF BIN LADEN’S SHEIKS IN SAUDI ARABIA.]
RAMZI YOUSEF AND RAHMAN WERE CONVICTED OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING IN NEW YORK.
(Note: The Saudi sheik and Bin Laden’s other sheik, Ali Al-Timimi’s mentor, Al-Hawali, had been detained).
A genetically distinctive subtilis is found in the mailed anthrax. Yet there is no indication that the FBI compared to the subtilis in the lab of the subtilis expert, Walied S., who was in contact with Ramzi Yousef’s number up until the minute of the Blind Sheik’s arrest . (WS is expert on mutations arising due to nutrient starvation).
Moreover, given the focus on Hatfill, it apparently was never a priority to pursue leads given to the CIA and FBI in December 2001 about Islambouli’s associates who had access to virulent Ames from Bruce Ivins’ Flask 1029 …
.According to the chief Amerithrax investigator FBI Director Mueller for years was fixated on Dr. Hatfill…
and so well…
even crediting everyone’s good faith and earnestness…
Amerithrax except the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in the history of the United States.
There is no reason to think that GAO will be able to set things on the right course before a mass attack using anthrax.
In August, GAO will issue its report about the $5.7 billion that an anthrax detection system that gives prompter lab results will cost.
But it doesn’t cost anything to do necessary reading and analysis.
If you have loved ones, I would think you would be plenty motivated notwithstanding mundane career concerns.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
“The only way to stop something with this sort of power, is to grab it by the tail and gun it in the other direction.” — Denzel Washington’s character in UNSTOPPABLE.
DXer said
Intelligence analysts taking over leading role in spy game: CSIS chief
By Douglas Quan, Postmedia News June 25, 2012
“In today’s information universe of WikiLeaks, the Internet and social media, there are fewer and fewer meaningful secrets for the James Bonds of the world to steal,” Fadden told a conference of the Canadian Association of Professional Intelligence Analysts in November 2011. “Suddenly the ability to make sense of information is as valued a skill as collecting it.”
Fadden said today’s intelligence analysts must be well-read in history, religion, politics and geography and be able to provide answers to complex questions
***
Today’s intelligence analysts must be more creative in their thinking and be able to “imagine the next attack” before it happens, Fadden said. “Every now and then we need to pause and pretend that it is September 10, 2001.”
Fadden told the group of analysts that as their influence grows, they will need courage “because on occasion you are required to give policymakers information they might find decidedly inconvenient.
“The politicization of intelligence is an occupational hazard, and must be resisted,” he said. “The Iraq war remains a lesson for us all. We need more than ever to be honest and true to our assessments.”
————–
Clinton today on blind sheik Abdel-Rahman:
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/clinton-says-trial-proceedings-blind-sheikh-were-correct
Clinton says trial proceedings for ‘Blind Sheikh’ were correct
The US secretary of state has responded to President Mohamed Morsy’s call for extraditing Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is currently serving life imprisonment in the US.
Hillary Clinton said the legal procedures of Abdel Rahman’s trial were correct.
Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 for taking part in the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and helping plan other attacks, including one planned for the United Nations headquarters.
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Schumer:
New York-area politicians condemn Egypt’s new leader over bid to free terrorist
By NBCNewYork.com’s Jonathan Dienst
New York political leaders are voicing outrage at
“President Morsi’s offensive statements are an insult to the memories of the victims of the World Trade Center bombing,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “Sheik Rahman is a terrorist who planned to kill innocent Americans, rest assured he will stay right where he belongs — in jail for the rest of his life.”
Egypt counts on billions of dollars in aid from the United States, and a State Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Morsi’s speech.
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The legal proceedings regarding the former #2 of the Vanguards of Conquest, whose bail was denied on October 5, 2001, is ongoing.
Secret info tossed from gov’t case against Toronto man
The Canadian Press
Jun 25, 2012 4:56 PM ET
In the ruling, Federal Court Judge Edmond Blanchard ordered that summaries of wiretap information used against Mohamed Mahjoub be excluded, because intelligence officials destroyed the original records.
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Court orders 11 federal lawyers, clerks off national security case but no stay
Colin Pekel, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – Fri, 1 Jun, 2012
***
Although he refused to stay the proceedings, Blanchard did say Mahjoub can use the charter breach related to the seized documents and the delay sorting out the mess caused in his ongoing battle to toss the proceedings as an abuse of process.
TORONTO – Eleven federal lawyers and assistants have been ordered to step down from a long-running national security case in an unusual court ruling that stops short of staying the proceedings.
The order comes after the government inadvertently took confidential legal files belonging to Mohamed Mahjoub, who has been imprisoned or under house arrest for a dozen years based on secret evidence.
In reaching his decision, Federal Court Justice Edmond Blanchard decided to the banish the 11 Dept. of Justice lawyers and clerks “in the interest of ensuring public confidence in the administration of justice.”
Blanchard had harsh words for Ottawa’s “negligent” conduct, saying the seriousness of the consequences “cannot be overstated.”
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/court-orders-11-federal-lawyers-clerks-off-national-142401581.html
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Terror Suspect Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub Wants Case Thrown Out After Ottawa Takes His Lawyers’ Files
Posted: 04/22/2012 2:00 pm Updated: 04/22/2012 3:27 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04/22/mohammed-mahjoub-terror-case-thrown-out_n_1444039.html
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Mohammad Mahjoub detained without charges for 12 years under security certificate
By John Bonnar
June 27, 2012
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/johnbon/2012/06/mohammad-mahjoub-detained-without-charges-12-years-under-security-cer
Comment:
Unless I a misunderstanding something, there is no longer any reason for Mr. Mahjoub to be detained given that the Islamists having gained power in Egypt,. He can simply be deported there and he will be welcomed by a cheering crowd.
It brings the Canadian justice system in serious disrepute to detain someone on unspecified charges — and then destroy the underlying wiretap evidence allegedly sufficient to warrant detention under a security certificate.
In Amerithrax, the DOJ didn’t just drop the ball. They took it, dropped it, and then picked it up and threw a touchdown pass in the wrong direction.
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Mohamed Al-Islambouli is discussed in the redacted portion above. He was in a cell with KSM planning the attacks.
Mohamed Al-Islamouli’s mom, recently returned from Afghanistan and the grandmother-in-law of Bin Laden’s son, is also available for an interview. She is now accepting condolences for the execution of the older son, Khaled, who assassinated President Sadat. To not understand that the anthrax letters were on the dates of and served to commemorate the assassination of Sadat and oppose the Camp David peace treaty was to miss things entirely.
But the “profilers” in the basement of Quantico in early October 2001 only knew what they knew. No one can be faulted for that. People can only be faulted when they willfully fail to inform themselves when time and the opportunity permits.
Attorney Mahmoud Ismail, a key conduit to the jihadists on these issues, is also available for interview by Facebook, chat and email. He is in touch with Al-Islambouli’s mom and Islambouli and is familiar with these issues. He represented the polymerization expert who had the keys to the 7/7 bombers apartment and was long connected to Al Qaeda’s spymaster who wrote so eloquently about Amerithrax.
Dr. Ayman’s sister, the microbiology professor Heba, and her mother, hired Attorney Ismail after the rendering of her brother Muhammad in 1999. They understandably were distraught, and with no word, concerned that he was being mistreated. The Zawahiri family had hired attorney Mahmoud Ismail to represent them in connection with the rendition; attorney Ismail later was indicted as Zawahiri’s conduit to jihadis in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq. Now he is a member of the assembly, he recently surprised MPs by being so straightforward and forthright in advancing the salafist view that it is important that Morsi, who won the recent election in Egypt, not turn out to be a “Pharaoh.” (Khalid Islambouli’s rallying cry as he shot Sadat was “Death to the Pharaoh.”
Microbiology professor Heba Zawahiri, highly educated, is also online and is reachable for inquiries.
Those who know of Amerithrax are no more embarrassed by the anthrax mailings than Yazid Sufaat. Just as it was the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the United States, it was a huge intelligence / espionage success for the islamists.
Quite simply, Dr. Ayman bested the CIA and FBI who took no steps to ramp up security in biodefense facilities even upon notice since 1998 of Dr. Zawahiri’s intentions.
http://www.albawaba.com/news/my-son-killed-anwar-sadat-boasts-proud-egyptian-mother-414042
‘My Son killed Anwar Sadat’, boasts Proud Egyptian Mother
Published February 22nd, 2012 – 14:48 GMT via SyndiGate.info
The mother of Khaled Al-Islambouli – the army officer who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981 – has expressed pride in her son during an interview with Iran’s state-run Fars news agency.
“I am very proud that my son killed Anwar Al-Sadat,” said Mrs Qadriya, 85. “[The government] called him a terrorist, a criminal, and a murderer, but they didn’t say that was he was defending Islam. They didn’t say anything about the oppressed people in Palestine, about Camp David, or how Sadat sold out the country to the Jews and violated the honor of the Islamic nation.”
Islambouli was executed in 1982 for his role in the assassination.
Mrs Qadriya, who is also the grandmother-in-law of Osama Bin Laden’s son, said she was proud to see a street named after her son in Tehran.
Al-Islambouli admired Iran, Mrs Qadriya added. He was greatly affected by its Islamic revolution and hoped the same would happen across the Arab world.
Mrs Qadriya also said that her return to Egypt from Afghanistan was secured by the Iranian authorities because she feared she would be “assassinated or kidnapped” on the way. “I returned to Egypt through diplomatic channels, not security ones. The [Iranian authorities] put me in a hotel in Tehran for 15 days and made all the travel arrangements.”
Mrs Qadriya’s other son, Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya leader Mohamed Al-Islambouli, was sentenced to death in absentia at a military trial in 1992 for planning terrorist operations in Egypt. He was seized at Cairo airport upon arriving from Tehran in August and is awaiting a retrial after submitting an appeal against his conviction.
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From History Commons (which has hyperlinks):
Early 1998: CIA Ignores Ex-Agent’s Warning KSM Is ‘Going to Hijack Some Planes,’ Visiting Germany
Robert Baer. [Source: Publicity photo]In December 1997, former CIA agent Robert Baer, newly retired from the CIA and working as a terrorism consultant, meets Hamad bin Jassim bin Hamad al Thani, who was Qatar’s minister of the economy and chief of police until he was deposed and exiled the year before, and whom he calls the “black prince.” Al Thani tells Baer that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) was being sheltered by then Qatari Interior Minister Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani in 1996 (see January-May 1996). However, the black prince knows other details, based on what Qatari police and intelligence learned when KSM was in the country. He says that KSM is chief of al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations (see Early 1998). KSM was leading an al-Qaeda cell in Qatar together with Mohammed Shawqui Islambouli, the brother of the Egyptian who had killed Anwar Sadat. They also were linked to bomber Ramzi Yousef. But what worries the black prince is that KSM and Islambouli are experts in hijacking commercial planes. He tells Baer that KSM “is going to hijack some planes.” Further, he says that KSM has moved to the Czech Republic, and has also traveled to Germany to meet bin Laden associates there. In early 1998 Baer sends this information to a friend in the CIA Counterterrorist Center, who forwards the information to his superiors. Baer doesn’t hear back from the CIA. He says, “There was no interest.” [Baer, 2002, pp. 270-71; Vanity Fair, 2/2002; United Press International, 9/30/2002; Baer, 2003, pp. 190-198] Later in 1998, President Clinton will be briefed about a hijacking threat in the US involving Islambouli, …
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Target Acquired: Al Qaeda’s Spymaster on Amerithrax
As explained by author Peter Lance in Triple Cross, after the 1998 embassy bombings, a ten-member federal team secretly entered the California residence of Ali Mohamed, Zawahiri’s former head of intelligence. They copied Mohamed’s hard drives and removed a series of CD-ROM and floppy disks. A memo titled “Cocktail” appeared to be a draft manual on sleeper cell structure.
The file on cell structure read in part:
“Every member knows how to do everything.
Every member has a legal job as a cover (Student, worker, trade).
Safety is the main concern, so the contingency plan is very important. Before working on the target you have (to) specify a rally point to meet in case of separation for any reason.
The communications between the different groups are conducted through the dead drop only.
Each group does not know anything about the other group, even Majmouat (the word means “the collected” or “the collection”). Al-qeyada does not know how many group(s) under its leadership. Only the group know each other because the members of one group only working with each other.”
Mohammad Hasan Khalil al-Hakim took on Ali Mohammed’s role. His alias is easier to remember — Abu Jihad al-Masri. Al Masri means the Egyptian. Also known as Al-Hukaymah, he was the author of the description of the Amerithrax investigation in 2002. Born in 1961, Abu Jihad al-Masri joined the Egyptian Islamic Group in 1979. He was arrested in 1981 after Sadat’s assassination. He once was arrested alongside the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. Hukaymah is reportedly connected to the blind sheikh’s successor Taha, the Islamic Group head who was in close touch in 1999 and 2000 with the NY-based US postal employee Sattar, the blind sheik’s “surrogate.” Al-Hukaymah dedicated the treatise “[t]o the pious and the hidden who are not known when they come and who are not missed when they disappear — To those whom their God will answer when they pray to Him. To all the eyes that are vigilant late at night to bring victory to this religion.”
The introduction of the 152-page book starts:
“The Manhattan raid led to a radical change in the perception of American Security. After the northern half of the continent had been isolated from the rest of the world and its threats by two oceans, it now came from inside. The surprise hit the symbols of American power in its economic and security dimensions.”
Published at al-Maqreze Center for Historical Studies website (www.almaqreze.com) by the one-time EIJ shura member al-Sibai, the section on the anthrax investigation appears to have been written in 2002.
“The Anthrax Scandal:
Over many months, there was an excited search for the person responsible for the worst biological terror attack on American soil. Six letters sent by mail to Leahy, Daschle, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, The New York Post and the offices of the National Enquirer in Florida, led to the sickening of 18 people and five deaths. The crime was especially scary because anthrax, which is a complex powder that scatters in the atmosphere, had spilled from the envelopes and spread through parts of the mail system and contaminated a Senate building. One year later, the main post office in Washington had not yet opened.
The FBI is under great pressure to close this case, and the anthrax criminal is supposed to be alive and free. Two members of the Senate have asked to receive regular reports about this investigation from the FBI, and they have become increasingly impatient.”
After a lengthy discussion of the focus on Hatfill, the author explains,
“Until the investigators find material evidence that connects a person to the crime, they are forced to speculate about the motives and methods of the criminal. They are still casting a wide net. Law enforcement sources say they have issued hundreds of subpoenas and they are analyzing thousands of documents in search of new evidence.
The evidence may be small and unseen – sweat or an odor on an envelope – but that is all that they need in order to attract the dogs.”
Al-Hukaymah pointed to the Aldrich Ames incident and the FBI’s inability to find the perpetrator of the anthrax mailings as evidence that U.S intelligence can be defeated. Aldrich Ames, head of counterintelligence relating to the Russians, had a different rolex for different days of the week. He drove a new jaguar to work. Aldrich told the CIA that his money came from his wife’s foreign inheritance, and the CIA never required meaningful corroboration. So we should not be that surprised when someone known, to borrow Dr. Alibek’s description to me, as an “Islamic hardliner,” is given access to Center for Biodefense and ATCC facilities, to include a program funded by DARPA’s $13 million during the relevant period. Perhaps the focus should not be on more money for biodefense but on doing a better job at maintaining security. Perhaps focus should be on avoiding proliferation of know-how.
Al-Hukaymah reportedly was Ayman’s connection to Mamdouh Ismail, an Egyptian defense attorney and a former member of “the Jihad group” who since the 1980’s has represented various Egyptians accused of terrorism offenses in Egypt. Mamdouh Ismail represented al-Nashar, the biochemist who was an expert on polymerization and had a key to the 7/7 bomber’s flat. Ismail was one of several hundred rounded up following the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. He served three years. He represented Ayman Zawahiri’s family in connection with the rendition and detention of Ayman’s brother Muhammad in the Spring of 1999. Ismail was arrested on March 29, 2007.
In 1999, Ismail was refused permission to establish an Islamist political party with the help of fellow lawyer attorney al-Zayat. After the blind sheik said in March 1999 that an attempt through a political party should not be attempted, Al-Zayat and Mamdouh Ismail deferred and Attorney Ismail has publicly objected to a reconciliation between Cairo and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The two had worked with EIJ shura member al-Sibai before he took refuge in the UK. Mamdouh Ismail then was accused by the Mubarak regime of complicity in an “Egyptian project” of al-Qaeda, taking his orders from Ayman al-Zawahiri via al-Qaeda propaganda chief al-Hukaymah and the UK-based EIJ publicist Hani al-Sibai. Both al-Hukaymah and Al-Sibai denied the charge. Al Sibai considers himself historian of the movement and published his diaries in Al Hayat in 2004. He is at al-Maqreze Center for Historical Studies website that published the treatise that included the discussion of Amerithrax.
Al-Hukaymah was apparently killed in a missile strike in late October 2008. Cairo-based IANA writer Kamal Habib says that the man was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad that had assassinated Sadat but was part of a second generation, not part of the first generation responsible for the assassination. Abu Jihad al-Masri was said by US authorities to operate in Iran as the head of media and propaganda for al-Qaeda, and “may also be the Chief of External Operations for al Qaeda”.
Al-Hukaymah appeared in an August 2006 as-Sahab (al-Qaeda) video to announce the merger of al-Qaeda with part of the Egyptian Islamic Group. Ayman al-Zawahiri introduced him. The video claimed that al-Hukaymah joined al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya in 1979 and was arrested in connection with the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat in 1981, and subsequently rearrested several times in various countries. Zawahiri claimed in that video that Muhammad al-Islambouli (brother of assassin Khalid al-Islambouli) had joined al-Qaeda with al-Hukaymah.
In addition to the analysis of the American intelligence community, the next month al-Hukaymah wrote a short piece entitled Towards A New Strategy in Resisting the Occupier that appeared on a jihadist website. Abu Jihad Al-Masri emphasized the need to consider public opinion in planning operations.
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Sailing The Good Ship Anthrax
USAMRIID released some emails by Bruce Ivins discussing the difficulties of planning the Fourth International Conference on Anthrax in Annapolis. The first of the emails was from September 1998, upon his return from the conference at Plymouth. In June 2001, the good ship anthrax sailed in Annapolis, Maryland, the “sailing capital of the world.” The 4th International Conference on Anthrax was held at St. John’s College in historic Annapolis, Maryland, June 10 – 13, 2001. The conference was organized by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and managed by the American Society for Microbiology. The 74-foot classic wooden schooner was named WOODWIND. Martin Hugh-Jones had convened the conference along with Peter Turnbull, the Porton Down scientist who had led the UK conferences attended by Ayman Zawahiri’s scientist, Rauf Ahmad. Reports of livestock and national park outbreaks were followed by a summary by Dr. Turnbull. Other anthrax notables who spoke included senior USAMRIID scientist Dr. Ezzell, who had one of the first looks at the Daschle product, and Dr. Paul Keim, who would play a key role in the genetic investigation.
Theresa Koehler from the Houston Medica School gave a talk titled “The Expanding B. anthracis Toolbox” while Timothy Read from The Institute of Genome Research summarized research on The B. Anthracis Genome. Houston Medical School, the UK’s biodefense facility Porton Down, and Pasteur Institute each fielded three presenters. UK scientists presented on the characteristics of the exosporium of “the highly virulent Ames strain.” Researchers from Columbus, Ohio and Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, assisted by Porton Down scientists from the UK, demonstrated that inoculated mice survived a challenge with b.anthracis spores. Researchers used b.anthracis containing a plasmid with a mutated lethal factor.” Dr. Phil Hanna from University of Michigan presented, as he did at the conference attending with Rauf Ahmad.
A Kazakhstan Ministry of Health scientist presented on the re-emergence of anthrax in Kazakhstan. Upon the break-up of the Soviet Union the first job offer Ken Alibek fielded was the position of Minister of Health in Kazakhstan. He protested when he realized that his new employer just wanted to do what the Soviets had been secretly doing in an illegal and massive bioweapons program he had supervised as its First Deputy. After the KGB asked to meet with him, he asked to schedule the meeting in two weeks, so that he might visit his parents, and then found a secret expedited way of coming to the United States.
Pakistan Rauf Ahmad had been the predator looking for the Ames strain and consulting on weaponization techniques at the UK conference. Did the Amerithrax perp attend this conference or work on any of the research presented? Ali Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy. Why? When? What did his work involve? In January 2002, FBI Assistant Director Van Harp told the 40,000 members of the American Society for Microbiology that it was “very likely that one or more of you know this individual.” They very likely did.
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WMD And The Hunt For Moles
Raymond Zilinskas, who was researching a history of the Soviet bioweapons program, told The Baltimore Sun a couple years ago that “his sources now say that Soviet intelligence routinely obtained details of work at USAMRIID that went beyond the descriptions in scientific journals.” The Sun quoted him saying: “It was clear there was somebody at Fort Detrick” who worked for Soviet intelligence. Alexander Kouzminov, a biophysicist who says he once worked for the KGB, had first made the claim in a book, Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West. Initially, Dr. Zilinskas had dismissed the memoir because the Russian had made separate fanciful inferences about the US program being offensive and some specific claims unrelated to infiltration of the US program.
The Sun article explained that then “another former Soviet scientist told the Sun that his lab routinely received dangerous pathogens and other materials from Western labs through a clandestine channel like the one Kouzminov described.” A second unnamed “U.S. arms control specialist” told the Sun he had independent evidence of a Soviet spy at Fort Detrick.”
The Baltimore Sun, in the 2006 article, also relied on Serguei Popov, who was “a scientist once based in a Soviet bioweapons lab in Obolensk, south of Moscow.” Dr. Popov “said that by the early 1980s his colleagues had obtained at least two strains of anthrax commonly studied in Detrick and affiliated labs. They included the Ames strain, first identified at Detrick in the early 1980s.” Ames was used for testing U.S. military vaccines and was the strain used in the 2001 anthrax letters that killed five people and infected 23 in the U.S. Dr. Popov is now at George Mason University’s National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Disease in Fairfax, Va.
“If you wanted ’special materials,’ you had to fill out a request,” he said. “And, essentially, those materials were provided. How and by whom, I can’t say.” One colleague, Popov told the Sun, used this “special materials” program to obtain a strain of Yersinia pestis, a plague bacterium being studied in a Western lab. But he didn’t know whether that particular germ came from Ft. Detrick. Former KGB operative and author Kouzminov says the KGB wanted specific items from Western labs — including Detrick — that were closely held and were willing to pay for the privilege. The Soviets also wanted the aerosol powders U.S. scientists developed for testing during vaccine tests.
Raymond Zilinskas, the bioweapons expert with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and two colleagues had written a scathing review of Biological Espionage in Nature, a British scientific journal, but he later told The Sun “that his sources now say that Soviet intelligence routinely obtained details of work at USAMRIID that went beyond the descriptions in scientific journals.”
Expert William C. Patrick III, a retired Ft Detrick bioweapons expert, and famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek agree. Patrick’s suspicions arose when he debriefed defector Alibek in the early 1990s. Alibek emigrated to the U.S. upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Patrick and Alibek both recognized that the Soviet and American programs had moved in a curious lock step during the 1950s and ’60s. “Anything we discovered of any import, they would have discovered and would have in their program in six months,” Patrick told the Sun. After his talks with Alibek ended: “For the next two weeks I tried to think, ‘Who the hell are the spies at Detrick?’”
Both former Russian bioweaponeers Ken Alibek and Serge Popov worked with Ali Al-Timimi at George Mason University. Dr. Al-Timimi has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years. Popov and Alibek worked at the Center for Biodefense funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). At one point, Al-Timimi worked not much more than 15 feet from both Dr. Alibek and Dr, Bailey.
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Know Not Just Your Enemy, But Who He Knew
Given that the documentary evidence establishes Ayman Zawahiri’s central and key role in anthrax planning, the individuals with the closest connection to him are the strongest candidates for co-conspirators in the anthrax mailing. Analysis of who Ayman Zawahiri might have recruited can start with these known associates that Zawahiri had known for a quarter century. Through the 1990s, there was an ongoing debate among these associates over tactics.
As a general matter, Ayman commanded the loyalty of members of the Vanguards of Conquest, which was an offshoot of Egyptian Islamic Jihad once led by Agiza. Agiza, one of the main EIJ intellectuals, was extradited from Sweden after 9/11. He broke away from Zawahiri due to disagreements in 1993 but Bin Laden helped the Egyptian islamists reconcile their differences in the mid-1990s. Al Zayat argued in his book that the Vanguards of Conquest was not a separate group, and that Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Vanguards of Conquest were “two names for the same group led by Zawahiri.” Attorney Al Zayat says in his book: “This was clear from the fact that the four accused in the Vanguards of Conquest cases that were tried by a military court were shouting their allegiance to Zawahiri from behind bars.”
The August 6, 2001 PDB to President Bush explained: “Al-Qaida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa’ida members found guilty in the plot to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.” (The reference was to Ali Mohamed with no mention that he trained US Special Forces on matters relating to jihad at Ft. Bragg and had been Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence).
In a study of 400 terrorists, University of Pennsylvania professor Marc Sageman concluded that 70 percent of terrorists were recruited outside their native country, having traveled abroad in the hope of improving their livelihood through jobs or education. Separation from their families and a feeling of alienation from their host countries prompted many to seek companionship at mosques. Friendship constituted 70 percent of recruitment, kinship 20 percent and discipleship only 10 percent. Social networking continues to be relied upon by the Muslim Brotherhood — which won the recent election in Egypt — as a means of recruitment. Who did Ali Mohammed and Ayman Zawahiri meet in their travels? Just as interesting as the question who Ayman Zawahiri knew is who Ali Mohammed, Ayman’s head of intelligence and cell recruitment, knew. He recruited Dahab from Cairo Medical in the early 1980s.
Zawahiri traveled to Malaysia, Singapore, Yemen, Iraq, Russia, Great Britain and United States. In March 1995, Zawahiri reportedly met with Taha (who at the time was based in Peshawar, Pakistan), Egyptian Islamic Group leader Mustafa Hamza (who at the time was based in Sudan), and Sudanese leader Turabi. Zawahiri traveled to Sudan and Ethiopia in mid-June. According to his former friend and EIJ’s spiritual advisor, Al-Sharif, Zawahiri was paid $100,000 by Sudanese intelligence to attempt to kill the Egyptian prime minister on a visit he made to Ethiopia. Al-Sharif writes that Zawahiri promised Sudanese intelligence to carry out 10 operations against Egypt.
Zawahiri went to Russia in 1996 where he was imprisoned for 6 months. (Zawahiri was arrested in Dagestan after he tried to enter Chechnya; the Russians apparently never learned his real identity.) Two men joined the local islamists in urging the release of the three. One was Shehata, who would later serve briefly as head of al Jihad. Shehata was in charge of “special operations” and was in regular contact with Jaballah in Canada.
As in life, it’s who you know that is important. What mosques did Zawahiri visit when he came to the United States in 1995? Who did he know from his days recruiting students to jihad at Cairo Medical in the early 1980s?
In an article that reconstructed his travels of his travels between April 1995 until December 1996, Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison of the Wall Street Journal described some of the contents of his computer: “visa application for Taiwan; details of a bank account in Guangdong, China; a receipt for a computer modem bought in Dubai; a copy of a Malaysian company’s registration that listed Dr. Zawahiri, under an alias, as a director; and details of an account in a bank in St. Louis, Mo.” The St. Louis bank account related to reimbursement of expenses of the satellite phone used in planning the 1998 embassy attacks. Purchase was made by a charity worker in Columbia, Missouri. (The Saudi dissident in London who was a friend of Bin Laden and the Egyptian London cell members were complicitous in the purchase). The father of Al-Timimi’s friend Royer rented a room to Khalil Ziyad in his St. Louis-area home in 2000.
In 1997, back in Afghanistan, after his imprisonment in Russia, al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden plotted their strategy as to the United States. Bin Laden was able to convince Al-Zawahiri to discontinue the military operations inside Egypt and, instead, focus on the common enemies America and Israel. They had concluded that it was United States’ appropriations that propped up the regimes of Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt that had prevented the islamists from toppling those regimes. In 1996, Bin Laden announced war against America to the extent of its presence in the Middle East region. By the end of 1997, Bin Laden had determined to openly declare war against America and urge that Americans be killed everywhere.
Bin Laden issued a fatwa on February 23, 1998 announcing the creation of “The World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and the Crusaders [Christians].” Along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, it was signed by Taha, the man in charge of the Advisory Council of the Islamic Movement in Egypt. Taha was the blind sheik’s successor in the Egyptian Islamic Group. At the end of July 1998, Taha signed a statement saying he had never signed the fatwa. Al-Zayat, who had remained in touch with Taha until he was detained while transiting Syria, reports that Taha said that he was asked on the phone whether he would sign a statement to support the Iraqi people who were under American air strikes and he agreed. Taha explained that he had agreed to join in the 1998 “Crusaders” statement because he was told it was in opposition to the bombing strikes in Iraq. “He was surprised to discover later that the statement referred to the establishment of a new front, and that it included a very serious fatwa that all Muslims would be required to follow.” Taha emphasized that this all happened without “any clear approval” from the Egyptian Islamic Group “regarding participation in the Front. [The group] found itself a member of a front that they knew nothing about.”
Attorney al-Zayat notes that when Mabruk, a long-time confidante of Zawahiri and the head of military operations, was captured in Albania in 1998, “[i]n his possession, the authorities found a laptop that had many names of the members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. This led to the arrest of more than a hundred members, who were tried in one case.” As a general rule, however, organizational security was very strict. “Any arrest of members is an opportunity for information to be extracted through torture. This is why each member knows only his role. When the members pledge their obedience and loyalty to the leader of the group, they are aware that they are not supposed to ask any questions about things that are not directly related to their role.” For example, Ramzi Binalshibh and Zubaydah knew only the limited operation they were engaged in. Such adherence to cell security makes piercing a conspiracy and proving it beyond a reasonable doubt very difficult.
Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza, who reportedly supported a cease-fire, and Islamic Group leader Taha, who supported a return to violence, apparently had a falling out after the Luxor debacle. In 1998, following Taha’s resignation as Islamic Group’s head, Hamza took over as its head. But after Taha was rendered to Egypt while in transit through Syria in 2001, Islamic Group leader Taha’s wife and children lived with Hamza’s family in Mashhad, Iran. Thus, the alleged falling out perhaps had not caused too great a rift. They both remained in contact with the blind sheik and his paralegal Sattar in 1999 at a time there was talk of a need for a second Luxor.
Zawahiri kept in touch with Mahmoud Jaballah, who had emigrated to Canada in 1996, by satellite phone. EIJ shura member Mahmoud Mahjoub was also in Canada. Mahmoud Mahjoub was second in command of the Vanguards of Conquest, after Agiza (who later was succeeded by Zawahiri) In seeking refugee status in Canada, Mahjoub claimed that the persecution in Egypt was the result of a brief association with a suspected member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mahjoub said that he was arrested several times while in Egypt and claimed to have experienced torture at the hands of the civilian authorities.
In June 2000, Zawahiri visited Hambali in Indonesia with al-Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef. Hambali the next year would attempt to reestablish Sufaat’s anthrax lab in Southeast Asia.
Another friend and colleague of Ayman, Kamal Habib, was playing a prominent role in Egyptian politics. Kamal Habib had graduated from Cairo University in 1979 in political science. Twenty years later, he wrote for the Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”) quarterly magazine. The Cairo-based publication Al-Manar Al-Jadeed was sponsored by the Ann Arbor-based charity, Islamic Assembly of North America. The 1999 website announced:
“IANA has signed a cooperative agreement with the Cairo based publisher and distributor Dar Al-Manar Al-Jadeed. Jointly they will publish in Cairo and distribute around the world the quarterly Al-Manar Al-Jadeed magazine. The magazine is devoted to addressing the religious, social, and civil matters. Six issues of the magazine have already been published. The editor in chief is the well-known writer, Jamal Sultan. We wish the magazine a very prosperous future.”
Habib was a key founding member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and spent 1981-1991 in jail for the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Like Abdel-Bari, al-Zayat and Taha, he was critical of Ayman’s tactics, though not his goals. In the late 1970s, the cell ran by the young doctor Zawahiri joined with three other groups to become Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) under Habib’s leadership. The blind sheik was their spiritual adviser. In a 2002 New Yorker article, Lawrence Wright wrote in “The Man Behind Bin Laden: How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror,” that “[l]ike Zawahiri, Habib, who had graduated in 1979 from Cairo University’s Faculty for Economics and Political Science, was the kind of driven intellectual who might have been expected to become a leader of the country but turned violently against the status quo.”
The editor-in-chief of the IANA quarterly journal Al Manar Jadeed was Gamal Sultan, who had also been a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. When Mr. Sultan traveled to Pittsburgh in 2000, Mr. Sultan recalls other islamists remarking it was the Kandahar of the US, given its rolling hills. Kamal Habib and Jamal (Gamal) Sultan also wrote for Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, an Arabic-language magazine embracing radical, anti-U.S. views that was published in Pittsburgh from 1991 to 2000. Mr. Sultan’s brother Mahmoud did also. Unlike Zawahiri, Kamal Habib and Gamal Sultan believe in achieving shariah law through democracy. Computational biologist Al-Timimi was on the Assirat Advisory Board.
Al-Timimi was sentenced to life plus 70 years for exhorting young men to jihad. A prominent IANA speaker, he shared a fax in the summer of 2001 with former Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head and Ames researcher Charles Bailey. Al Timimi met government agents regularly for more than a year before his indictment. The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of BIF, the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. Al-Timimi had asked the FBI to hold off on the indictment until he received his degree. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched Al-Timimi’s townhouse “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.” Former Russian bioweaponeering program head Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see Al-Timimi in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department. Dr. Alibek was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner but considered him “a numbers guy.” When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link him to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va.
The IANA webmaster Al-Hussayen from Moscow, Idaho complained in a Sept. 8, 2002, phone conversation that “we have to have control over our projects,” saying operators of the Islamway Web site, the Al-Manar magazine and the Alasr Web site were doing whatever they wanted, then sending IANA the bills. At the IANA publication Alasr, he complained, “Khalid Hassan puts in it what he wants, with some of the articles being sensitive causing us some problems at the present time. .. They don’t think, for example, what you might face being here.” Four fatwas justifying suicide attacks — including flying a plane into a tall building — that were posted on the Alasr’s Web site were central to the allegations against Sami Al-Hussayen.
Al Qaeda military commander and former Egyptian police sergeant commander Atef, a key anthrax planner, was killed in November 2001. Taha was rendered transiting Syria in 2001. Canadian Khadr was killed. In 2005, Iran reportedly turned Mustafa Hamza over, where he was tried and convicted for assassination and attempted assassination of various high Egyptian government officials. In 2006, Zawahiri’s chief aide al-Hadi was captured. Cairo attorney Mamdouh Ismail, al-Zayat’s co-founder of the Islamic party, was arrested in late March 2007. He allegedly was serving as a conduit with jihadis in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq. In short, it’s not been a good decade for Friends of Ayman. Any compartmentalized cell in which Ayman operated in his anthrax program was tight indeed. The roots of the Amerithrax likely grew in the United States rather than a faraway place like Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia or Malaysia. Although the seeds were planted in Cairo, the tree took root not only in Brooklyn and in many places in the US.
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Fall 2001 Greenlight of Biological Attack By US-Based Operatives
In October or November 2001, Al Qaeda’s spokesman al-Kuwaiti wrote a letter to the Administration claiming that they would use their biological weapons if the US did not stop their financial and military support for Israel and the muslim regimes. The letter from Abu ‘Abdullah Al-Kuwaiti outlined the next attack against the Americans and issued a statement to the Americans to let them know of their fighters’ readiness to kill hundreds of thousands with their nuclear and biological arsenal. The letter has been declassified (and was released by West Point Combating Terrorism Center in 2006).
Your Brother Abu ‘Abdullah Al-Kuwaiti; 1- Announcing publicly the next attack.2- Announcing publicly that we gave some groups the green light to move.3- The groups that are present in America and Europe are above suspicion. 4- We obtain our intelligence information from your government and intelligence agencies.5- The statement/letter should be directed to the American people.A- There is no animosity between us. You involved yourselves in this battle. The war is between us and the Jews. You interfered in our countries and influenced our governments to strike against the Moslems.
If the American people are ready to die as we are ready to die, then our combat groups along with our military, nuclear, and biological equipment will kill hundreds of thousands of people we don’t wish to fight.
B- If you are ready to die as we are ready to die, the thousand present here in Afghanistan equals hundreds of thousands of Americans. I am pleased to inform you that the billions you spent fighting us so far have resulted in killing a small number of us. We consider them martyrs and they did not exceed (10) martyrs. We warn you that our war against you has not ended, but its effects will increase. Isn’t it time to end American arrogance and begin listening to your people before you experience more devastating disasters?
In early October, Abu Graith had appeared on two widely-circulated videos on al Jazeera television to defend the attacks and threaten retaliation for the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, saying “Americans should know, the storm of the planes will not stop. There are thousands of the Islamic nation’s youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live.” Abu Gha’ith, Bin Laden’s spokesman, was from Kuwait and made a similar threat in a videotape released June 2002. In June, he renewed the biochem threat, more broadly, urging that under the koran, it was morally justified to kill up to 4 million Americans, including 1 million children, with biological or chemical weapons.
Suleiman Abu Ghaith claimed that Al Qaeda has the right to murder four million Americans, in a three-part article “In the Shadow of the Lances,” posted in June 2002 on the web-site of the Center for Islamic Research and Studies, Abu
Ghaith wrote:
“The Americans have still not tasted from our hands what we have tasted from theirs. The [number of] killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were no more than fair exchange for the ones killed in the Al-‘Amiriya shelter in Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, and Afghanistan.”
“We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill four million Americans – two million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons.”
In July 2003, a Kuwaiti minister announced that the Iranian government had offered to extradite Abu Ghaith to Kuwait, but that Kuwait had refused the offer. After eventually being released, Abu Ghaith has had a change of heart and appreciates that such mass murder would be immoral and violate the koran.
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The Sheiks, Bioweaponeers and DARPA
An article in GMU Gazette, in “CAS Holds Terrorism Briefing on Capitol Hill,” dated October 16, 2001 stated: “On Friday, October 12, the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) hosted a legislative briefing on terrorism, bioterrorism, and extremist movements on Capitol Hill. The briefing provided legislators and their staffs with comprehensive background information on Islam, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, bioterrorism, and information security.
Ken Alibek, affiliate faculty member at George Mason and president of Advanced Biosytems Inc., addressed chemical and biological warfare issues. Alibek served as first deputy chief of defense of the civilian branch of the Soviet Union’s offensive biological weapons program.” Ali Al-Timimi was knowledgeable about Islam, the Taliban and information security. Indeed, he was actively recruiting for the Taliban and was communicating with Bin Laden’s sheik and the so-called fellow Falls Church “911 imam” Anwar Aulaqi at the time.
The “Teflon Terrorist” And Risk Of Infiltration
In 2000, IANA radio ran an item “CIA to Monitor Foreign Students.” The item as published on the IANA website read: “American anti-terrorism policies are ‘seriously deficient according to the US National Commission on Terrorism, a body created by Congress after the bombing of 2 US embassies in East Africa.'”
In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the need to guard against spies at universities, who for example, may have access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information.
“Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.”
Infiltrator Ali Mohamed was the “Teflon terrorist.” Ali Mohammed, an EIJ member who was associated with the unit that killed Sadat, had an alibi for the Sadat assassination. He was at an officer exchange program studying at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Green Beret and Delta Force officers trained there. After he was forced out of the
Egyptian Army for his radical beliefs, he went to work at Egyptair. As a security advisor, where he learned how to hijack airliners. He then joined the CIA and the US Army. He was a supply sergeant at the US Army’s Fort Bragg. He lectured Green Beret and Delta Forces on the middle east. He stole high resolution maps from the map shack and brought them to Zawahirii in Afghanistan. In 1989, Ali Mohamed traveled from Fort Bragg to train men that would later commit WTC 1993. When Ali Mohammed traveled to Brooklyn, he stayed with Islamic Group and Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard Nosair, the man who would assassinate Rabbi Kahane in 1990.
In 1991, when Bin Laden wanted to move from Afghanistan to Sudan, Ali Mohammed served as his head of security and trained his bodyguards. Along with a former medical student, Khalid Dahab, Ali Mohamed recruited ten Americans for “sleeper cells.” After the 1998 embassy bombings, when FBI agents secretly swarmed his California residence, they found a document “Cocktail” detailing how cell members should operate. Even Al Qaeda central would not know the identity of members and different cells would not know each other’s identity. It was Ali Mohamed who was the source for the December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explaining that the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli, was planning attacks on the US. In November 2001, did the Quantico profilers know of this egregious history of infiltration and harm flowing from treating the Nosair case as a
“lone wolf” rather than an international conspiracy? One man’s “lone wolf” experiencing howling loneliness is another man’s Salafist operating under strict principles of cell security and “need-to-know.”
A former FBI agent in the New York office who asked not to be identified, told author Peter Lance: “Understand what this means. You have an Al Qaeda spy who’s now a U.S. citizen, on active duty in the U.S. Army, and he brings along a video paid for by the U.S. government to train Green Beret officers and he’s using it to help train Islamic terrorists so they can turn their guns on us. By now the Afghan war is over.”
Not even Ali Mohammed, however, could boast the letter of commendation from the White House once given Ali Al-Timimi, previous work for White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, or a high security clearance. Ali Mohammed did not even have a security clearance but was merely a supply sergeant at the base where Special Operations was located. ‘Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s Support Committee’ in an email to supporters dated April 5, 2005 explained: “This is a summary of the court proceedings that took place yesterday April 4th 2005. We will send a summary everyday inshallah. *** “In his opening statement, Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said that Al-Timimi was born and raised in Washington DC. He has a degree in Biology and he is also a computer scientist, and a mathematician. He worked for Andrew Card, who’s now the White House chief of staff, at the Transportation Department in the early 1990s.”
There was an elephant in the room no one talked about. A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to ATCC facilities, as well as facilities of the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense at George Mason University then run by Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey. The bionformatics grad student once had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy.
Many commentators have long held strong and divergent opinions of what has been published in the media about Amerithrax, what they knew and their political views. But it turns out that they apparently have just been seeing the elephant in the living room from a different angle. Actually, they’ve just been in a position to see the elephant’s rump from outside the living room door. One US law professor, Francis Boyle, who has represented islamists abroad, first publicized the theory that a US biodefense insider was responsible. He has served as legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Separately the theory was adopted by professor Barbara Rosenberg. But Professor Boyle and Rosenberg were not so far from the truth — just incorrect as to motive. The documentary shows that Zawahiri’s plan was to infiltrate the US and UK biodefense
establishment, and the evidence shows that is exactly what he did.
In a June 2005 interview in a Swiss (German language) weekly news magazine, Ken Alibek addresses the anthrax mailings:
A. “What if I told you Swiss scientists are paid by Al Qaeda? You could believe it or not. It has become somewhat fashionable to disparage Russian scientists. Americans, Iraqis, or whoever could just as well be involved with Al Qaeda. Why doesn’t anyone speculate about that?”
Q. “But could one of your students build a biological weapon in the garage?”
A. “Let me reply philosophically: Two hundred years ago, it was unthinkable to believe that people would be using mobile telephones, wasn’t it? Everything changes. Our knowledge grows, and technology develops incredibly quickly. … I am not saying that a student is in a position to build a biological weapon all by himself. But the knowledge needed to do it is certainly there.”
No one who responded to my inquiries ever knew Al-Timimi to ever have been involved in any biodefense project. For example, former Russian bioweaponeer Sergei Popov did not know of any such work by Al-Timimi. Anna Popova had only seen him in the hall on a very rare occasion. Dr. Alibek thought of him as a “numbers guy” rather than a hands-on type. Given that the FBI knows what Al-Timimi had for dinner on September 16, 2001 and lunch on September 17, it is very likely that the past years have involved a continued search for the mailer and/or processor. His attorney emphasizes that while they searched for materials related to a planned biological attack when they searched his townhouse in late February 2003, they came up empty.
DOD official Peter Leitner, who also taught at GMU, supervised a 2007 PhD thesis by a graduate student that explores biosecurity issues at GMU. The PhD biodefense thesis on the vulnerability of the program to infiltration explains:
“As a student in the biodefense program, the author is aware that students without background checks are permitted to work on grants, specifically Department of Defense, that has been awarded to NCBD under the Department of Molecular and Microbiology at GMU. Students are also permitted to do research separately from work in the lab for their studies. Work and studies are separate, but related by the lab. Thus, student access, research and activities go unchecked and unmonitored. Students have access to critical information and technology.”
The author explains:
“A principal investigator (PI) may hire a student based on a one on one interview, post doctoral or masters interest, technical abilities, publications, previous work and lab experience, whether student qualifications match the principal interrogators current research, whether there is a space, and if the timing is right. There is no formal screening process or background check that the author is aware of for teaching or research assistantships.”
Other students took a “red cell” approach that have corroborated the findings of the thesis. Proliferation leads to great risk of infiltration.
LSU researcher Martin Hugh-Jones explained: “There were no more than ten labs in the nation working with the organism, and now it’s about 310—and they all want virulent strains. In the old days virtually everyone was paid by Department of Defense to do their research because that’s the only place where money came from because the organism wasn’t thought to be of economic importance. Now that it’s a bioterrorist threat and money’s available for research, experts have come out of the walls. The whole damn thing is bizarre.”A 2004 Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services report: “Serious weaknesses compromised the security of select agents at the universities under review. Physical security of select agents at all 11 universities left select agents vulnerable to theft or loss, thus elevating the risk of public exposure.”
Dr. Leitner in a letter to the Fairfax County Police Department wrote:
“Now we see that Sergeant Rasool was the subject of a several-year long investigation – in fact, he was under investigation at the time he lodged his complaints against us — and was recently convicted of a very serious security breach involving misusing FBI databases to assist another person under FBI investigation for Federal terrorism charges.” Fairfax County Police Department Sergeant Rasool sought to stop the training work being done by Dr. Leitner, who taught biosecurity work at George Mason University’s Center for Biodefense.
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Al-Timimi’s Connection to AQ WMD Comm. member Mohammed Abdel-Rahman
While Al-Timimi was recruiting for the Taliban, he was also connected to one of the principals on Al Qaeda’s WMD Committee, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman spoke at the first conference of the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) in 1993 and was noted to be from Afghanistan. Mohammed Abdelrahman spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi again, for example, in 1996 in Toronto and again that December in Chicago at the annual conference. The December conference was held after blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was indicted. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was close to bin Laden and was engaged in planning key operations. OBL considered him like a son. Mohammed was on the three member WMD committee with Midhat Mursi. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman ran a training camp that was part of the larger complex of several camps. He was an explosives trainer.
The “Superseding Indictment” in United States of postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar and others explains that on February 12, 1997, with Mohammed Abdelrahman back in Afghanistan, a statement issued in the name of the Islamic Group threatened, “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its legitimate jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom” is Abdel Rahman. Three months later, on May 5, 1997, a statement issued in the name of the Islamic Group threatened, “If any harm comes to the [S]heikh [,] al-Gama al-IsIalamiy[y]a will target [] all of those Americans who participated in subjecting his life to danger.” The statement also said that “Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya considers every American official, starting with the American president to the despicable jailer [] partners endangering the Sheikh’s life,” and that the Islamic Group would do “everything in its power” to free Abdel Rahman.
Al Qaeda continued to seek religious approval from blind sheik Abdel-Rahman for its attacks. The US indictment of the Post Office worker in contact with Mohammed Abdel-Rahman alleged: “On or about June 19, 2000, one of Abdel Rahman’s sons, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, spoke by telephone with SATTAR and asked SATTAR to convey to Abdel Rahman the fierceness of the debate within the Islamic Group about the initiative, and said SATTAR should tell Abdel Rahman to calm the situation by supporting “the general line of the Group.” The indictment of the US Post Office worker Sattar further alleges: “On or about June 20, 2000, SATTAR spoke by telephone with Mohammed Abdel Rahman and advised him that a conference call had taken place that morning between Abdel Pahman and some of his attorneys and that Abdel Rahman had issued a new statement. The press release issued in Abdel-Rahman’s name containing additional points which made clear, among other things, that Abdel Rahman was not unilaterally ending the initiative, but rather, was withdrawing his support for it and “stating that it was up” to the “brothers” in the Islamic Group now to reconsider the issue.
The indictment of the US Post Office employee Sattar further alleges: “On or about September 21, 2000, an Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, televised a meeting of Usama Bin Laden (leader of the al Qaeda terrorist organization), Ayman al Zawahiri (former leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and one of Bin Laden’s top lieutenants), and Taha. Sitting under a banner which read, “Convention to Support Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman,” the three terrorist leaders pledged “to free Abdel Rahman from incarceration in the United States. During the meeting, Mohammed Abdel Rahman was heard encouraging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.”
Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was arrested in mid-February 2003. Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse was searched two weeks later.
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GMU Center for Biodefense: Discovery Hall
Ali Al-Timimi worked at George Mason University’s Discovery Hall throughout 2000 and 2002 period. The Mason Gazette in “Mason to Pursue Advanced Biodefense Research” on November 17, 2000 had announced: “The School of Computational Sciences (SCS) and Advanced Biosystems, Inc., a subsidiary of Hadron, Inc., of Alexandria, are pursuing a collaborative program at the Prince William Campus to enhance research and educational objectives in biodefense research. The article noted that the program was funded primarily by a grant awarded to Advanced Biosystems from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). A 2007 GMU PhD thesis explains that the “An Assessment of Exploitable Weaknesses in Universities” by Corinne M. Verzoni offices and research located in Discovery Hall, making this an attractive building on the Prince William Campus to target for information and technology.” The 2007 PhD student biodefense student explained: “Discovery Hall currently has BSL 1, 2 and 2+ labs in which students work with attenuated and vaccine strains of Fracella tularemia, anthrax and HIV. GMU will eventually have new biological labs featuring a BSL-3 lab which will have anthrax and tularemia.”
Instead of starting a center from scratch, GMU chose to join forces with Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey’s existing research firm, Hadron Advanced Biosystems Inc. Hadron was already working under contract for the federal government, having received funding from DARPA. Dr. Alibek told the Washington Post that he and Bailey had spent their careers studying an issue that only recently grabbed the country’s attention, after the anthrax mailings the previous fall. Dr. Bailey and Alibek met in 1991, when a delegation of Soviet scientists visited USAMRIID at Ft. Detrick. Dr. Bailey explained that the purpose of the tour was to show the Soviets that the US was not developing offensive biological weapons. Bailey said he tried to engage Alibek in conversation but Alibek remained aloof. Alibek, for his part, explains that he was suspicious of this American smiling so broadly at him. A year later, Alibek would defect to the US and reveal an illegal biological program in the Soviet Union of a staggering scope. Alibek says that one reason he defected was that he realized that the Soviet intelligence was wrong — that the US research was in fact only defensive.
Former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Ames researcher Bailey coinvented, with Ken Alibek, the process to treat cell culture with hydrophobic silicon dioxide so as to permit greater concentration upon drying. He was in Room 156B of GMU’s Discovery Hall at the Center for Biodefense. The patent application was filed March 14, 2001. Rm 154A was Victor Morozov’s room number when he first
assumed Timimi’s phone number in 2004 (and before he moved to the newly constructed Bull Run Hall). Morozov was the co-inventor with Dr. Bailey of the related cell culture process under which the silica was removed from the spore surface.
One ATCC former employee felt so strongly about lax security there the scientist called me out of the blue and said that the public was overlooking the patent repository as a possible source of the Ames strain. ATCC would not deny they had virulent Ames in their patent repository pre 9/11 (as distinguished from their online catalog). The spokesperson emailed me: “As a matter of policy, ATCC does not disclose information on the contents of its patent depository.” Previously, though, the ATCC head publicly explained that it did not have virulent Ames.
George Mason University, Department Listings, accessed August 17, 2003, shows that the National Center For Biodefense and Center for Biomedical Genomics had the same mail stop (MS 4ES). The most famed bioweaponeer in the world was not far from this sheik urging violent jihad in an apocalyptic struggle between religions. Dr. Alibek’s office was Rm. 156D in Prince William 2. The groups both shared the same department fax of 993-4288. Dr. Alibek advises me he had seen him several times in the corridors of GMU and was told that he was a religious muslim hard-liner but knew nothing of his activities. At one point, Timimi’s mail drop was MSN 4D7.
Charles Bailey at 3-4271 was the former head of USAMRIID and joined the Center in April
2001. He continued to do research with Ames after 9/11. Dr. Alibek reports that shortly after the mailings, he wrote FBI Director Mueller and offered his services but was advised that they already had assembled a large group. A 2004 report describes research done by Dr. Alibek and his colleagues using Delta Ames obtained from NIH for a research project done for USAMRIID. There were two grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 2001. One $3.6 million grant dated to July 2001 and the other was previous to that.
Ali Al-Timimi had the same telephone number that Dr. Victor Morozov of the Center for Biodefense would later have when he joined the faculty and occupied the newly constructed Bull Run Building, which opened in late 2004 (Rm. #362). Dr. Morozov focuses on the development of new bioassay methods for express analysis, high-throughput screening and proteomics. He has recently developed a new electrospray-based technology for mass fabrication of protein microarrays. Dr. Morozov is currently supervising a DOE -funded research project directed at the development of ultra-sensitive express methods for detection of pathogens in which slow diffusion of analytes is replaced by their active transport controlled and powered by external forces (electric, magnetic, gravitational or hydrodynamic). His homepage explains that: “A variety of projects are available for students to participate in “*** 7. Develop software to analyze motion of beads. 8. Develop software to analyze patterns in drying droplets. 9. Develop an electrostatic collector for airborne particles.”
Al-Timimi obtained a doctorate from George Mason University in 2004 in the field of computational biology — a field related to cancer research involving genome sequencing. He successfully defended his thesis 5 weeks after his indictment. Curt Jamison, Timimi’s thesis advisor, coauthor and loyal friend, was in Prince William II (Discovery Hall) Rm. 181A. The staff of Advanced Biosystems was in Rm. 160, 162, 177, 254E and several others. Computational sciences offices were intermixed among the Hadron personnel on the first floor of Prince William II to include 159, 161, 166A, 167, 181 B and 181C. Rm. 156B was Charles Bailey, former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, who was head of the Center for Biodefense. Defense contractor Hadron had announced the appointment of Dr. Bailey as Vice-President of Advanced Biosystems in early April 2001.
“Over 13 years, Dr. Bailey had served as a Research Scientist, Deputy Commander for Research, Deputy Commander and Commander at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute. As a USAMRIID scientist, he designed and supervised the construction of BL-3 containment facilities. His hands-on experience with a wide variety of pathogens is chronicled in 70 published articles. During his 4 years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he published numerous articles assessing foreign capabilities regarding biological weapons.” When I asked Dr. Bailey to confirm Al-Timimi’s room number relative to his own, his only response was to refer me to University counsel. Counsel then never substantively responded to my inquiry regarding their respective room numbers citing student privacy. Ali’s friend and thesis advisor, Dr. Jamison never responded to an emailed query either. GMU perhaps understandably was very nervous about losing the $25 million grant for a new BL-3 regional facility to be located very near our country’s capitol.
The reports on the study on the effectiveness of the mailed anthrax in the Canadian experiment was reported in private briefings in Spring and Summer of 2001. An insider thus was not dependent on the published report later that Fall. (The date on the formal report is September 10, 2001).
Dr. Charles Bailey for DIA wrote extensively on the the biothreat posed by other countries (and presumably terrorists). He shared a fax number with Al-Timimi. What came over that fax line in Spring and Summer of 2001? At some point, Dr. Al-Timimi, Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey also shared the same maildrop. It certainly would not be surprising that the two directors who headed the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense — and had received the biggest defense award in history for work with Delta Ames under a contract with USAMRIID — would have been briefed on the threat of mailed anthrax. The 1999 short report by William Patrick to Hatfill at SAIC on the general subject was far less important given that it did not relate to actual experimental findings.
Plus, it is common sense that while someone might use as a model something they had surreptitiously learned of — they would not use as a model something in a memo that they had commissioned. Thus, it was rather misdirected to focus on the 1999 SAIC report commissioned by Dr. Hatfill rather than the 2001 Canadian report. The Canadian report related to the anthrax threat sent regarding the detention of Vanguards of Conquest #2 Mahjoub in Canada. Mahjoub had worked with al-Hawsawi in Sudan (the fellow with anthrax spraydrying documents on his laptop). The anthrax threat in late January prompted the still-classified Presidential Daily Brief (“PDB”) in early February 2001 by the CIA to President Bush on the subject.
In Fall 2001, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (”AFIP”) had detected silicon dioxide (silica) in the attack anthrax — with a characteristic big spike for the silicon. No silica was observable on the SEMs images that Dr. Alibek and Dr. Matthew Meselson saw. The Daschle product was “pure spores.” Was silicon dioxide used as part of a microdroplet cell culture process used prior to drying to permit greater concentration? As explained in a later related patent, the silica could be removed from the surface of the spore through repeated centrifugaton or an air chamber.
Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey had filed a patent application in mid-March 2001 involving a microdroplet cell culture technique that used silicon dioxide in a method for concentrating growth of cells. The patent was granted and the application first publicly disclosed in the Spring of 2002. Weren’t the SEMS images and AFIP EDX finding both consistent with use of this process in growing the culture? It’s been suggested informally to me that perhaps the silicon analytical peak was due to silanol from hydrolysis of a silane, used in siliconizing glassware. But didn’t the AFIP in fact also detect oxygen in ratios characteristic of silicon dioxide? Wasn’t the scientist, now deceased, who performed the EDX highly experienced and expert in detecting silica? Hasn’t the AFIP always stood by its report. In its report, AFIP explained: “AFIP experts utilized an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (an instrument used to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals through characteristic wavelengths of X-ray light) to confirm the previously unidentifiable substance as silica.” Perhaps the nuance that was lost — or just never publicly explained for very sound reasons — was that silica was used in the cell culture process and then removed from the spores through a process such as centrifugation. The applicants in March 2001 for an international patent relating to vaccines were a leading aerosol expert, Herman R. Shepherd, and a lonstanding anthrax biodefense expert, Philip Russell.
Dr. Morozov is co-inventor along with Dr. Bailey for a patent “Cell Culture” that explains how the silicon dioxide can be removed from the surface. Perhaps it is precisely this AFIP finding of silicon dioxide (without silica on the SEMs) that is why the FBI came to suspect Al-Timimi in 2003 (rightly or wrongly, we don’t know). The FBI would have kept these scientific findings secret to protect the integrity of the confidential criminal/national security investigation. There was still a processor and mailer to catch — still a case to prove. After 9/11, intelligence collection takes precedence over arrests. As Ron Kessler explains in the new book, Terrorist Watch, many FBI officials feel that they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Outside observers are constantly second-guessing them about how to proceed rather than trusting that they are in the best position to balance the competing considerations of national security, intelligence gathering, the pursuit of justice, and the safeguarding of civil liberties. Above all, in disclosing the theory of access to know-how, the FBI has needed to protect the due process rights of Al-Timimi while he defended himself on other charges.
An example from October 2006 of equipment that went missing from GMU’s Discovery Hall was a rotissery hybridization oven belonging to the Center for Biomedical Genomics. “This equipment can be used to manufacture biological agents and genetically modified agents, which could potentially be used as biological weapons,” Corinne Verzoni explained in her PhD 2007 thesis. “Upon hearing about instances or missing equipment in Discovery Hall, the author contacted campus security who was unaware of instances of missing equipment. Missing equipment should be reported to the equipment liaison. Missing equipment may not be reported to campus security because labs tend to share equipment. Equipment also goes missing because it is not inventoried if it is under $2,000.”
One of her other examples was equally dramatic:
“A DI system is a de-ionized water system, which removes the ions that are found in normal tap water. The assistant director for operations noticed the DI system in Discovery Hall was using the entire 100 gallons in two days, which is
an enormous amount of water for the four DI taps in the whole building. According to the assistant director for operations, it is difficult to calculate the reason for that much water since no leak was found. A large amount of water used over a short period of time for unknown reasons could indicate that the research is being conducted covertly.”
“A student with legitimate access to Discovery Hall,” she explained, “has easy accessibility to equipment. A student with access to the loading dock could steal equipment on the weekend when campus security is not present in Discovery Hall. A student could also walk out of the entrance with equipment on the weekend without security present.” She concluded: “The events at GMU demonstrate opportunity to create a clandestine lab, the ability to sell items illegally, or the ability to exploit school equipment.” In a late September 2001 interview on NPR on the anthrax threat, Dr. Alibek said: “When we talk and deal with, for example, nuclear weapons, it’s not really difficult to count how much of one or another substance we’ve got in the hands. When you talk about biological agents, in this case it’s absolutely impossible to say whether or not something has been stolen.”
Al-Timimi’s prosecution was remanded while the defense is given an opportunity to discover any documents that existed prior to 9/11 about al-Timimi and to address an issue relating to NSA intercepts after 9/11. Ali’s defense counsel explained to the federal district court, upon a remand by the appeals court, that Mr. Timimi was interviewed by an FBI agent and a Secret Service agent as early as February 1994 in connection with the first World Trade Center attack. The agents left their business cards which the family kept. Defense counsel Johnathan Turley further explained that “We have people that were contacted by the FBI and told soon after 9/11 that they believed that Dr. Al-Timimi was either connected to 9/11 or certainly had information about Al Qaeda.” Then it dropped from PACER. Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg could perhaps give an update to the extent the information can be shared.
Al-Timimi worked for SRA in 1999 where he had a high security clearance for work for the Navy. At a conference on countering biological terrorism in 1999 sponsored by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Dr. Alibek was introduced by a former colleague of Dr. Bailey:
“Dr. Llewellyn: This is rather strange because I just met Dr. Alibek today. He was introduced to me by Dr. Charlie Bailey, who now works for SRA. But Charlie and I were associated with the Army Medical Research and Development Command Defense Program for over 20 years.”
When I emailed Dr. Bailey in December 2007 to confirm Ali had the room right near his at Discovery Hall and whether he had worked with Al-Timimi at SRA he politely referred me to counsel and took no questions. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Popov have told me that Ali is not known to have worked on any biodefense project. Dr. Popova told me I should direct any such questions to Dr. Bailey. Dr. Bailey told me I should direct any questions to University counsel. University counsel declined to answer any questions.
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The 2006 Arrest Of Falls Church “911 Imam” And Fellow Salafist Lecturer Awlaqi
In March 2002, fellow Falls Church iman Anwar Aulaqi — known as the “911 imam” — suddenly left the US and went to Yemen, thus avoiding the inquiry the 9/11 Commission thought so important. (Eventually Aulaqi would be banned from entering both the UK and US because of his speeches on jihad, martyrdom and the like). Upon a return visit in Fall 2002, “Aulaqi attempted to get al Timimi to discuss issues related to the recruitment of young Muslims,” according to a court filing by Al-Timimi’s attorney at the time, Edward MacMahon. McMahon reports that those “entreaties were rejected.” After 18 months in prison in Yemen in 2006 and 2007, he was released over US objections, where he says he was subject to interrogation by the FBI. By 2010, when the United States announced that there was authorization to attempt to kill Anwar Aulaqi, he had long since gone into hiding after acknowledging his role in the Ft. Hood shooting and attempt to bring down an airliner flying into Detroit.
Al-Timimi’s counsel explained in a court filing unsealed in April 2008: “]911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.”
Falls Church imam Awlaqi (Aulaqi), who met with hijacker Nawaf, reportedly was picked up in Yemen by Yemen security forces at the request of the CIA in the summer of 2006. British and US intelligence had him and others under surveillance. Al-Timimi would speak alongside fellow Falls Church imam Awlaqi (Aulaqi) at conferences such as the August 2001 London JIMAS and the August 2002 London JIMAS conference. They would speak on subjects such as signs before the day of judgment and the like. Dozens of their lectures are available online. Unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post in 2008 that “they have come to believe that Aulaqi worked with al-Qaida networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia.” One official said: “There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies.” “Some believe that Aulaqi was the first person since the summit meeting in Malaysia with whom al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi shared their terrorist intentions and plans,” former Senate Intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham wrote in his 2004 book “Intelligence Matters.”
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Awlaqi was hired in early 2001 in an attempt by the mosque’s leaders to appeal to younger worshipers. Born in New Mexico and raised in Yemen, he had the total package. He was young, personable, fluent in English, eloquent and knowledgeable about Middle East politics. Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Al Hazmi worshiped at Aulaqi’s mosque for several weeks in spring 2001. The 9/11 commission noted that the two men apparently showed up because Nawaf Hazmi had developed a close relationship with Aulaqi in San Diego. In 2001, Awlaqi came to Falls Church from San Diego shortly before Nawaf did. Awlaqi told the FBI that he did not recall what Nawaf and he had discussed in San Diego and denied having contact with him in Falls Church.
The travel agent right on the same floor as Al-Timimi’s Dar Arqam mosque organized trips to hajj in February 2001. San Francisco attorney Hal Smith was Aulaqi’s roommate. Mr. Smith tells me that he was very extreme in his views when speaking privately and not like his smooth public persona. “Aulaqi is deep into hardcore militant Islam. He is not a cleric who just says prayers and counsels people as some of his supporters have suggested.” Sami al-Hussayen uncle checked into the same Herndon, VA hotel, the Marriot Residence Inn, on the same night — September 10, 2001 as Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and another hijacker. Hussayen had a seizure during an FBI interview and although doctors found nothing wrong with him was allowed to return home. During his trip to the US, al-Hussayen had visited both “911 imam” Aulaqi and Ali Al-Timimi.
The unclassified portion of a U.S. Department of Justice memorandum dated September 26, 2001 states
“Aulaqi was familiar enough with Nawaf Alhazmi to describe some of Alhazmi’s personality traits. Aulaqi considered Alhazmi to be a loner who did not have a large circle of friends. Alhazmi was slow to enter into personal relationships and was always very soft spoken, a very calm and extremely nice person. Aulaqi did not see Alhazmi as a very religious person, based on the fact that Alhazmi never wore a beard and neglected to attend all five daily prayer sessions.”
The Washington Post explains that “After leaving the United States in 2002, Aulaqi spent time in Britain, where he developed a following among young ultra-conservative Muslims through his lectures and audiotapes. His CD “The Hereafter” takes listeners on a tour of Paradise that describes “the mansions of Paradise,” “the women of Paradise,” and “the greatest of the pleasures of Paradise.” In London, after leaving the United States, he spoke at JIMAS and argued that in light of the rewards offered to martyrs in Jennah, or Paradise, Muslims should be eager to give his life in fighting the unbelievers. “Don’t think that the ones that die in the sake of Allah are dead — they are alive, and Allah is providing for them. So the shaheed is alive in the sense that his soul is in Jennah, and his soul is alive in Jennah.” He moved to Yemen, his family’s ancestral home, in 2004.” Before his arrest in Yemen in mid-2006, Aulaqi lectured at an Islamist university in San’a run by Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and was designated a terrorist in 2004 by the United States and the United Nations.
Law enforcement sources told the Post that Aulaqi was visited by Ziyad Khaleel, who the government has previously said purchased a satellite phone and batteries for bin Laden in the 1990s. The Post explains: “Khaleel was the U.S. fundraiser for Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity the U.S. Treasury has designated a financier of bin Laden and which listed Aulaqi’s charity as its Yemeni partner. A Washington Post article explained: “The FBI also learned that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he had ties to people raising money for the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, according to Congress and the 9/11 Commission report.”
He then was released and came to be at the center of a controversy concerning what the FBI should have known and shared about Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter. The next month he was alleged to have been involved with the planned bombing of a airliner flying into Detroit. More recently, from the grave, Aulaqi has sought to justify under the hadiths killing innocents using biological weapons.
Amerithrax represents the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in the history of the United States.
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FBI Director Mueller: Remember the anthrax mailings. Remember Oklahoma City.
An FBI Special Agent in the Minneapolis, MN Field Office, Harry Samit unsuccessfully appealed to his superiors for a FISA warrant that would permit him to view the contents of Moussaoui’s computer in the weeks leading up to 9/11. He wrote an August 18, 2001 email: “What does everyone think of calling in the NSDA Behavioral Assessment quacks? They probably have a psyche profile for an Islamic Martyr and could tell us if our 747 guys fit.”
Samit’s memo had explained that Moussaoui was connected to a radical fundamentalist group in Chechnya, whose leader Ibn Khattab had ties to Bin Laden. “For this reason, it is imperative that his effects be searched in order to gather intelligence relating to these connections and to any plans for terrorist attacks against the United States or United States Persons to which he may be a party.” He wrote: “I am so desperate to get into his computer, I’ll take anything.” A colleague emailed Samit: “ thanks for the update. Very sorry that this matter was handled the way it was, but you fought the good fight. God Help us all if the next terrorist incident involves the same type of plane. take care Cathy.”
The emails were dated September 10, 2001.
FBI Special Agent Rowley was highly criticalof the FBI in “chalking this all up to the ’20-20 hindsight is perfect’ problem.” The Minneapolis agents who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui before September 11 had quickly identified him as a terrorist threat and identified the legal grounds on which he has since been indicted. Agents in Phoenix had sounded an alarm about suspicious Arabs taking flight training. So she argues that “this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences.”
Authors John Schwartz and Minnesota University Professor Michael Osterholm in a book Living Terror published in December 2000 explain that bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and William Patrick each believed “he was working to match a threat from a resourceful and brilliant enemy. I keep that in mind when people ask me how anyone could do such a terrible thing: how anyone could contemplating creating chances that you could kill so many. The answer makes me terribly uncomfortable — it could be anyone, even the nicest guy you ever met.”
The FBI’s stock profile concerning a biological agent was a lone, unstable individual. In October 2001, the profilers pretty much just reached into the filing cabinet. One Special Agent involved in profiling such incidents explained in a conference, at which Dr. Steve Hatfill was also a presenter: “The closest I’ve ever come to biological-chemical issues is when the toilet on the 37th floor gets backed up *** It isn’t the Middle Eastern people. It isn’t white supremacists. It is the lone individual, lone unstable individual. That statistically, from the cases that we have, is the biggest threat right now.”
FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald, who had some early involvement in Amerithrax in issuing the “profile,” years earlier had special responsibility for scrutinizing the language of the manifesto in UNABOM. In late September 2001, his colleague from UNABOM, Kathleen Puckett turned in her study of “lone wolves” to include Kaczynski and others. Dr. Puckett sees “howling loneliness” as the key characteristic of a “lone wolf.” Before turning to work on domestic terror cases of the 1990s, her counterintelligence work typically involved Soviet spies. She would go and kibbitz the local agents on what she perceived as the personality of the subject. She retired on September 30, 2001 and handed in her study on lone wolves on her way out the door. By October, her colleague Fitzgerald was turning in a “lone wolf” profile for his assignment in Amerithrax. Judging from his comments to the media, he was one of those who was swayed based on the fact that Daschle and Leahy were Democrats.
Hunting the American Terrorist (2007), by History Publishing is dedicated in part to the victims of the anthrax mailings. Dr. Terry Turchie and Dr. Kathleen Purkett appear to agree with the Special Agent Fitzgerald’s profile from October 2001. (Fitzgerald was their former team member) They write:
“Notes accompanying the mailings were supposedly from Islamic fundamentalists, and almost everyone in the government and the media quickly cast blame in that direction.
For those of us who were involved in the domestic terror campaigns of the 1990s,however, the anthrax mailings had all the earmarks of a lone wolf.”
One person’s lonely lone wolf is another man’s US-based dedicated islamist operating under strict principles of cell security. It seems that the FBI was making the same mistake it made in the case of the assassination of Rabbi Kahane 10 years earlier by the blind sheik’s bodyguard Nosair.
Inexplicably, the profilers did not seem to have been persuaded after 9/11 by the open source intelligence that Zawahiri had obtained anthrax for the purpose of using it as a weapon against US targets. If intelligence analysis is an art, criminal profiling is drawing with crayons. A “profile” in connection to a person’s facial features might refer to what they look like in the dark. But, here, war had been declared. A weapon had been used by the enemy it had previously said it would use that specific weapon. Intelligence analysis, not profiling, was what was needed. The profilers apparently did not take to heart or learn the lesson of the al Hayat letter bombs in December 1996.
The official published profile was very vague and spoke of a nonconfrontational loner carrying a grudge. Malcolm Gladwell, author of the acclaimed Blink, in his New Yorker article concludes that criminal profiling is no different than a parlor trick known by astrologers for years.
The emphasis in the press reports has always, however, been on the suggestion that the mailer likely is “domestic” rather than foreign — a lone, male scientist who works in a lab. The profile was issued shortly after the White Housemeeting where it was agreed that Al Qaeda was the likely culprit, but that the theory and the possibility of a state sponsor would not be discussed. Vice President Cheney was not at all impressed by the FBI’s profile and went on television to express his skepticism. Although the FBI profile was widely criticized by experts and in editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and other newspapers and magazines, it was more flexible than its critics imagined. The Amerithrax profile of a loner with a grudge permits a variety of motivations. The FBI uses the word “domestic” to include Americans sympathetic with an extremist islamic cause.
An interesting article in MIT Technology Review in March/April 2006 is based on interviews with Sergei Popov (an expert at GMU who had worked as a Russian bioweaponeer), University of Maryland researcher Milton Leitenberg, Harvard’s Matthew Meselson, Rutger’s Richard Ebright and others:
“There are now more than 300 U.S. institutions with access to live bioweapons agents and 16,500 individuals approved to handle them,” Ebright told me. While all of those people have undergone some form of background check — to verify, for instance, that they aren’t named on a terrorist watch list and aren’t illegal aliens — it’s also true, Ebright noted, that ‘Mohammed Atta would have passed those tests without difficulty.“
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‘That’s the most significant concern,’ Ebright agreed. ‘If al-Qaeda wished to carry out a bioweapons attack in the U.S., their simplest means of acquiring access to the materials and the knowledge would be to send individuals to train within programs involved in biodefense research.’ Ebright paused. ‘And today, every university and corporate press office is trumpeting its success in securing research funding as part of this biodefense expansion, describing exactly what’s available and where.’”
The analytical problem is that researchers tend only to focus on their narrow field. So an analyst focused on Al Qaeda may not know anything about US biodefense programs. An analyst knowledgeable about US biodefense programs may not know anything about Egyptian Islamic Jihad. To knowledgeably address the issue of infiltration and the use of universities and charities as cover — which the documentary evidence shows Zawahiri planned to do and did in his anthrax weaponization program — requires a willingness to become knowledgeable and investigate the different substantive areas.
The Report of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001— by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, addresses strategic analysis, training and staffing. Did the agents and analysts in the basement of Quantico who came up with the FBI profile have relevant training or input from analysts expert in Al Qaeda? Assuming they did, did an investigative bias creep into their approach to the anthrax mailings that should instead have been informed by a strategic understanding of Zawahiri’s Vanguards of Conquest and its modus operandi? Did the profilers know of the al Hayat letter bombs (related to the imprisonment of the blind sheik) and KSM’s threat to use biochemical weapons in retaliation for the detention of the blind sheik and other militant islamists? Did the profilers know of the role of Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, in working with KSM in planning the attacks on the United States? Just as with 9/11, the correct understanding of the anthrax mailings begins with a trail that leads back to Malaysia, Khalid Mohammed, Hambali, Yazid Sufaat, Rauf Ahmad, Zacarias Moussaoui, various charities, the Albanian returnees trial, Bojinka, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and even the assassination of Anwar Sadat. As George Santayana said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
In its March 31, 2005 Report to the President, the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities said: “competing analysis is of no use, even counterproductive, if there is no attempt at constructive dialogue and collaboration.”
In September 2005, Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office said that this “globe-spanning investigation remains intensely active and broadly focused.” According to one recent letter to a Congressman rejecting the request for a briefing, the investigation has spanned six out of seven continents. The FBI had conducted 9,100 witness interviews, 67 searches and issued 6,000 grand jury subpoenas.
In a press conference in October 2005, Director Mueller said that the FBI was pursuingall domestic and international leads. He told the public to remember Oklahoma City. Remember 9/11. Both crimes involved a hatred of US policy. He declined to say if they had a suspect. That year, FBI agents visited Asia, Africa and Afghanistan in the course of the Amerithrax investigation.
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 has 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. As Ali Al-Timimi’s counsel notes in a late 2007 court filing unsealed (except for certain redacted passages) in April 2008, Al-Timimi “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.”
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FBI Tracks Possible Military ‘Insider Threats’
June 27, 2012
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/27/155849671/fbi-tracks-possible-military-insider-threats
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Zawahiri’s Booklet On “Covert Operations”
Mark A. Gabriel, PhD, once taught at Al-Azhar in Egypt. He wrote a very lucid book Journey Into The Mind Of An Islamist Terrorist. He discusses a booklet Zawahiri wrote titled COVERT OPERATIONS which is available online in Arabic. The Nigerian underpants bomber Abdulmutallab wrote his father asking “when is lying allowed to deceive the enemy?”
If you want to know how Zawahiri views deceit on such issues as battle plans and spying, read his own words online.
Gabriel explains:
“Ayman al-Zawahiri leads a busy terrorist organization, and he must solve practical problems. For example, he may want some Al-Qaeda members to blend in and live in the United States. If these men wore full beards and went to ultraconservative mosques to pray, they they would arouse suspicion and get put on a watch list. Instead, al-Zawahiri would want these operatives to go undercover and blend into society. However, these devout Muslims will not go undercover unless they believe they have permission to do so from the teachings of Islam.
As a result, al-Zawahiri wrote a booklet titled COVERT OPERATIONS, which goes deep into Islamic teaching and history to describe how deceit can be a tool in Muslim life.”
The entire book by al-Zawahiri is posted in the Arabic language website for al-Tawheed Jihad (The Pulpit of Monotheism and Jihad). Zawahiri concluded that “hiding one’s faith and being secretive was allowed especially in time of fear from prosecution of the infidels.” Indeed, his student group in Cairo in the 1970s was known as the “shaven beards.” The founder of one of the cells merged with Ayman’s to form the Egyptian Islamic Jihad then wrote for Al-Timimi’s charity IANA.
Al-Zawahiri discussed two specific ways Muhammad used deceit in battle: (1) keeping battle plans secret, and (2) spying. The author writes: “Al-Zawahiri specifically gave radicals permission not to pray in the mosque or attend Friday sermons if it would compromise their position.” He noted that Al-Zawahiri sealed his argument with a very important quote from Ibn Taymiyyah (who was quoted by Al-Timimi upon his his indictment). Ever the practical man, Muhammad approved lying in three circumstances (1) during war, (2) to reconcile between two feuding parties, and (3) to a spouse in order to please her.
Ali Al-Timimi’s former fellow Falls Church imam Anwar al-Aulaqi in “44 Ways To Support Jihad” similarly urges that a lot of jihad work by its nature is secret and clandestine in nature. He advises that everything should be on a need-to-know basis (in other words, don’t tell your wife). Secrecy and cell compartmentalization was a key organizing principle of how the anthrax mailings were accomplished.
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The profilers in the basement of Quantico felt that Al Qaeda’s modus operandi was the “big bang.” The FBI pulled a recently completed study on serial killers and proclaimed that the responsible party was likely a disturbed loner. When actually, mailed letters and targeted assassination was not only the modus operandi of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, but it was its signature.
In August 2002, Afghan police found a store of chemicals in a house in Kabul formerly occupied by a Saudi non-governmental organization, the WAFA Humanitarian Organization. Local media reports called it a terrorist laboratory. “Some containers and documents have been found by the police authorities,” a spokesman for international peacekeepers said. One local report said that the discovery included 36 types of chemicals, explosive materials, fuses, laboratory equipment and some “terroristic guide books.” It said the laboratory was found in a residence in the diplomatic area of Kabul in a building that had been used by an Arab national who headed the group prior to 9/11. WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. Documents found in WAFA’s offices in Afghanistan revealed that the charity was intimately involved in assassination plots against U.S. citizens as well as the distribution of “how to” manuals on chemical and biological warfare. U.S. officials have described WAFA as a key component of Bin Laden’s organization.