* Amerithrax: GAO And Reporters Should Obtain Handwriting Exemplars Of Atta’s Associate El-Shukrijumah, Al Qaeda’s Head of External Operations, Who Promoted His Father’s Language Course
Posted by DXer on May 15, 2013
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
This lot was by Adnan El-Shukrijumah?
Was it handwritten or typed?
In English or Arabic?
Bin Laden told of al Qaeda suspect’s plot in ‘chilling’ letter: U.S
BY NATE RAYMOND
NEW YORK Tue Feb 17, 2015
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/17/us-usa-security-naseer-idUSKBN0LL1X120150217
In an opening statement at trial in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, prosecutor Celia Cohen said the letter from al Qaeda’s head of Western operations updated bin Laden on plans by Naseer and others to carry out attacks in New York, Copenhagen and Manchester, England.
“You will see that chilling reminder in the letter to Osama bin Laden that al Qaeda’s goal was to attack infidels in their home territories,” Cohen said.
Jurors were not told that the letter came from the May 2011 raid in Abbotabad, Pakistan that killed bin Laden. But before the trial, Cohen said it was recovered in that operation.
The USG Has Denied FOIA Requests For Atta’s Handwriting Since The Fall 2001 Anthrax Mailings On Grounds It Could Interfere With Enforcement Proceedings
Posted by Lew Weinstein on November 1, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/the-usg-has-denied-foia-requests-for-attas-handwriting-since-the-fall-2001-anthrax-mailings-on-grounds-it-could-interfere-with-enforcement-proceedings/
GAO Should Obtain A Copy Of The FBI’s Handwriting Analysis Comparing The Letters To Atta’s
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 22, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/gao-should-obtain-a-copy-of-the-fbis-handwriting-analysis-comparing-the-letters-to-attas/
DXer said
Graeme MacQueen at page 187 of “2001 Anthrax Deception: writes:
On October 12, 2001 the news media announced that Erin O’Connor, an assistant to Tom Brokaw at NBC news, had tested positive for cutaneous anthrax. Employees at NBC remembered that a letter had been received at NBC, postmarked in St. Petersburg, Florida on September 20 and addressed to Tom Brokaw.27 The letter had contained a threat and a quantity of white powder. The enclosed message had announced itself with the words: “the unthinkable.”28
In early analyses of the anthrax attacks, this letter played a prominent role. Even when it was discovered that the white powder was harmless and that a letter from New Jersey,
postmarked on September 18, had contained the anthrax spores that infected O’Connor, it was assumed by many that the September 20 letter was part of the operation.29
The September 20 threat letter was apparently one of a set of three from St. Petersburg, the others arriving at their destinations in October. One went to Howard Troxler at the St. Petersburg Times and one to Judith Miller at her New York Times office. The conclusion that the three were a set was based not only on identical locations of origin and similar dates of postage, but on quite specific peculiarities in the writing.30
It would take us too far afield to discuss these threat letters in detail and, in any case, the September 20 letter has not been released to the public. But Don Foster, an English professor who was given access by the FBI to the September 20 letter, says the following about the text:
The letter, postmarked on September 20 in St. Petersburg, Florida, began:
“THE UNTHINKABEL” SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK31
The letter went on to threaten bioterror attacks on various targets. The capital Ns in “THE UNTHINKABEL” were printed backwards, and Foster comments that they “resembled the letter I in Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet.” Foster does not pretend to know why “the unthinkable” was put in quotation marks and spelled wrong, although he comments that it “looked like a deliberate misspelling” and adds that the quotation marks “were done Russian-style.”
***
Although it may seem obvious that the St. Petersburg letter postmarked on September 20 was part of the anthrax attacks, some investigators, including the FBI,33 have denied this. But the evidence suggests the September 20 letter was part of the operation. (See Appendix for reasons why the denials are unconvincing.) There is, in this case, no mystery as to why it had to be swept into oblivion. Why would al- Qaeda or Iraq have referred to a biological attack as “the unthinkable?” Misspelling the word and using backward Ns
***
Is the September 20 threat letter compatible with the FBI’s Bruce Ivins hypothesis? It is not. Consider the difficulty of the location from which this letter, and its two companion letters, was sent. The FBI was not even able to show that Ivins had driven secretly from his home in Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey to mail the anthrax letters that had been sent from that location. The best the Bureau was able to do was to argue that he could have made it to Princeton and back.34 How much more difficult it would be to argue that he sneaked away repeatedly to St. Petersburg, Florida during this period! (If he went by car a return trip to Princeton, New Jersey would have taken about 6.5 hours, whereas each return trip to St. Petersburg would have consumed about 30 hours.) At the very least he would have needed an accomplice, and this would signal the end of the lone wolf hypothesis. This was explained by Barbara Rosenberg years ago.35 It has been pushed aside because it is an embarrassment to the FBI’s hypothesis.
Comment:
Putting aside whether the St. Petersburg is related or not, the federal district court judge will order production of some of the 80,000 documents that the FBI never told the “Joint Inquiry” or 911 Commission about. Those documents will point to Adnan El-Shukrijumah as an associate of Mohammed Atta. Not Tara O’Toole.
Graeme in a filmed talk demonstrated that he was totally unaware of the hijacker’s connections to that area on the west coast of Florida. He thought they only were on the East Coast and prepared some nice powerpoints emphasizing the point. He was wrong. But now makes no mention in his September 2014 book about the hijackers connections
— and associates — from the area where the St. Petersburg letters were sent. Graeme is entitled to his political opinion — however extreme — but not his own true crime facts.
On a minor point, he cites Vince Foster who says the quotation marks on the St. Petersburg were made in a Russian-style, apparently not appreciating that Foster’s opinion on the Fall 2001 anthrax was initially that the letters were written by someone whose native language was Urdu.
Barry’s and Graeme’s energy would be spent seeking exemplars of Atta’s handwriting and obtaining the FBI’s comparison of Atta’s handwriting with the anthrax letter. The opinion being withheld was that the handwriting was consistent — whereas the opinion as to Bruce Ivins’ handwriting was that he probably did NOT write the letters.
But while we are at it, someone should consider whether Adnan El-Shukrijumah was a bad speller — whether he ever spelled the word UNTHINKABLE or ever reversed his “N’s” in printing.
For example, on the webpage above, Adnan El-Shukrijumah spelled “grammar” as “grammer.”
Adnan El-Shukrijumah spelled “basically” as “basicly.”
Adnan El-Shukrijuman sometimes spelled “sheikh” as “shiekh”.
If I point out that El-Shukrijumah spelled “unthinkabel”, would someone be willing to pay $2.5 million, $5 million or $25 million? How about bus fare to St. Petersburg?
I don’t think Adnan is going to be win a spelling bee any time soon — this shiekh’s son basicly had bad grammer. Moreover, he was partial to using block letters, often with no punctuation.
He cased targets (including NYC and DC in 2001) for KSM. Like Yazid Sufaat, in Afghanistan, he stayed at KSM’s house in Kandahar.
Guess who re-entered the United States — but the FBI concealed the fact from the public?
DXer says: Adnan El-Shukrijumah is the anthrax mailer … on or about 9/13/2001, he phoned from KSM’s house to tell his mom he was coming to the US
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 6, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/dxer-adnan-el-shukrijumah-is-the-anthrax-mailer-on-9132001-he-phoned-from-ksms-house-to-tell-his-mom-he-was-coming-to-the-us/
Will the FBI produce long withheld documents about DXer’s anthrax mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah?
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/will-the-fbi-produce-long-withheld-documents-about-dxers-anthrax-mailing-suspect-adnan-el-shukrijumah/Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 19, 2014
What did Al Qaeda anthrax lab head Yazid Sufaat discuss at the meeting in Kandahar with Adnan El-Shukrijumah and KSM before Adnan set off to return to the United States shortly after 9/11?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 7, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/what-did-al-qaeda-anthrax-lab-head-yazid-sufaat-discuss-at-the-meeting-in-kandahar-with-adnan-el-shukrijumah-and-ksm-before-adnan-set-off-to-return-to-the-united-states-shortly-after-911/
FBI’s Undercover Informant Asaad Is Frustrated That He And FBI Missed Opportunity To Thwart Mohammed Atta and Anthrax Letter Suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah, Al Qaeda’s Current Head Of External Operations
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 26, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/fbis-undercover-informant-asaad-is-frustrated-that-he-and-fbi-missed-opportunity-to-thwart-mohammed-atta-and-anthrax-letter-suspect-adnan-el-shukrijumah-al-qaedas-current-head-of-external-opera/
DXer said
Note to Graeme and Barry: Tara O’Toole is an excellent speller. Adnan El-Shukrijumah, Atta’s colleague from Florida, on the other hand, was a terrible speller when writing in English.
(No offense, Adnan and Nabil. I’m sure Adnan is very good at making bombs. Everyone has their strengths. I’m very unskilled at learning foreign languages and would be a horrible speller in any language other than English.)
Here are some more examples of El-Shukrijumah’s poor spelling in English.
http://www.angelfire.com/ar/ma1/order.html
2) SECOND, IN A PEACE OF PAPER WRITE (CLEARLY) THE PROGRAMS YOU NEED …
4) FORTH, PUT EVERYTHING IN AN ENVELOPE …
As another example, in a headline instead of “Who is The Arabic Master??”, he writes
“Whos is The Arabic Master??”
He spelled PRONOUNS as PRONUONS
RIGHT PHRASES AND PRONOUNS etc
and he wrote YOURSELF as two words.
“TO EXPRESS YOUR SELF.”
He wrote:
THIS PROGRAM HAS A BOOK
AND SIX TAPE
He wrote “WOUNDER” for “WONDER”
and COMPREND rather than COMPREHEND.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000226002351/http://www.masterarabic.com/
He spelled “handling” as HANDELING.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000226002351/http://www.masterarabic.com/
Now, if you want to go on a $25 million hunt for the word “UNTHINKABEL”, here are archived copies of Adnan’s website.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.masterarabic.com
Oh, and the FBI has 80,000 pages from an investigation in the area that it is withholding.
Someone interested in true crime analysis rather than being an anti-American political propagandist would consider whether the same people responsible for the anthrax letters were behind the Al Hayat letter bombs. (And anyone who purports to be in favor of nonviolence should want to catch the perpetrators of violence).
There is an outstanding $5 million reward offered for the Al-Hayat letter bombs (which were thought related to prosecution of the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman).
The Al Hayat letter bombs involved lethal letters sent to newspapers in NYC and DC and symbolic targets relating to the WTC 1993 plotters. Were the Al Hayat letter bombs the model for the Amerithrax letters? Were the same people responsible?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on November 25, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/the-al-hayat-letter-bombs-involved-lethal-letters-sent-to-newspapers-in-nyc-and-dc-and-symbolic-targets-relating-to-the-wtc-1993-plotters-were-the-al-hayat-letter-bombs-the-model-for-the-amerithra/
The head of Egyptian Jihad Intelligence Ali Mohammed specifically trained Dahab, at the Blind Sheik’s Services Offices, to send lethal letters.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the son of the Blind Sheik’s Brooklyn translator, Saudi government employee and missionary Gulshair. Father and son lived in Brooklyn before moving to Florida.
The head of the “911 Joint Inquiry, Bob Graham — who wrote the passages about involvement of some Saudi government employees — says the Administration is covering up the matter by excising the 28 pages from the “Joint Inquiry” report.
Lethal letters were just the modus operandi of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, it was a signature.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
richard rowley said
” Foster does not pretend to know why “the unthinkable” was put in quotation marks and spelled wrong, although he comments that it “looked like a deliberate misspelling” and adds that the quotation marks “were done Russian-style.””
===================================================
Yes, certainly an ADULT (no, I’ve not gone ‘il Lago’ on the matter) who had good familiarity with English would know that ALL such words in English ending with the morpheme are spelled either “-able” or “-ible”. Or to put it another way, ANY noun ending “-abel” would look weird to a literate adult familiar with English orthography. Meaning it would pretty much HAVE to be a purposeful misspelling or done by someone either uneducated in English or pretending to be so. “Pretending to be so”=a deliberate mistake.
richard rowley said
“On a minor point, he cites Vince Foster…”
=================================
Of course you mean Don Foster (Vince having died in 1993, ie 21 years ago).
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/messageanthrax.html
DXer said
http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2014-09-11/islamic-links-keep-tt-under-watch
Saudi-born Adnan El Shukrijumah, whose father is Guyanese, remains on the US’s 2014 Counterterrorism Calendar for Al Qaeda involvement and activities. The US had sought him since 2002 after he passed through T&T and Canada between 2001 and 2006 after visits to Panama and Honduras in 2001 and 2004. Known to hold T&T, US and Canadian passports, he entered T&T on a Guyanese passport for a “six-day stay with friends,” and stayed in central Trinidad, where he had ties to an Islamic institute.
His Guyanese father, Gulshair, brought the family to live in T&T in the mid-1980s, when he taught in mosques. Family members now live in South Florida. A US$5 million reward is still out for El Shukrijumah, described in 2010 as Al Qaeda’s operations head. Questions on the issue to T&T’s US Embassy didn’t receive a reply.
DXer said
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/387198/most-wanted-list-911-michelle-malkin
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
On the Most-Wanted List Since 9/11
Where in the world is jihad pilot Adnan Shukrijumah?
By Michelle Malkin
…
Now is a good time to ask a question I first posed ten summers ago: Where is Adnan Shukrijumah? A decade later, the question is still unanswered. The FBI has yet to track down this homicidal plotter. Have you forgotten?
Saudi-born Shukrijumah, billed as the “next Mohammed Atta,” has been a fugitive since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His father, Gulshair, was a Wahhabi cleric funded by the Saudi government. The elder Shukrijumah headed mosques in New York and Miami, consorted with Israel-bashing black Muslim agitators, and also served as one-time interpreter for convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik). The radical Muslim apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
The younger Shukrijumah has been tied to al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and reportedly met convicted Muslim-convert “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla overseas. Gitmo detainee and jihad overlord Khalid Sheikh Mohammed identified Shukrijumah as a fledgling new cell leader. He allegedly trained under alleged terror financier Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
In September 2003, the feds put a $5 million bounty on Shukrijumah’s head. The FBI “Most Wanted Terrorists” bulletin warns that he is “armed and dangerous.” Aliases: “Adnan G. El Shukri Jumah, Abu Arif, Ja’far al-Tayar, Jaffar al-Tayyar, Jafar Tayar, Jaafar al-Tayyar, Hamad.” The translation of Ja’far al-Tayar, Jaffar al-Tayyar, Jafar Tayar, and Jaafar al-Tayyar? “Jafar the Pilot.”
One of these aliases linked the enigmatic man to the same Oklahoma flight school attended by convicted “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui. Shukrijumah reportedly undertook flight training in the late 1990s or early 2000 in Florida and secured a flying license for light aircrafts. He is rumored to have acquired bomb-making expertise as well. Somehow and somewhere along the way, Shukrijumah obtained a legal U.S. green card.
Among the nightmare activities Shukrijumah has reportedly coordinated, according to the FBI:
Conspiracy to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction; Providing Material Support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization; Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization; Receiving Military-Type Training from a Foreign Terrorist Organization; Conspiracy to Commit an Act of Terrorism Transcending National Boundaries; Attempt to Commit an Act of Terrorism Transcending National Boundaries; Use of Destructive Device.
In 2007, Shukrijumah’s name surfaced in wiretaps related to a busted New York City subway bombing plot. (Colorado jihadist Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty to terrorism charges related to the “martyrdom operation” in 2010.)
In 2010, Shukrijumah was indicted in the Eastern District of New York for his alleged role in a terrorist plot to attack targets in the United States and the United Kingdom. According to the charges, senior al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan oversaw the conspiracy and a larger scheme by al-Qaeda in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United States.
Law-enforcement sources have placed Shukrijumah on the southern border, in Guyana, at a Trinidad jihadi compound, and at a meeting of Latin American gangs. Shukrijumah reportedly joined high-level jihad planners in Pakistan’s outlaw Waziristan province in 2004, which experts likened to the pivotal planning session in Kuala Lumpur that preceded the 9/11 attacks. “This was a meeting of a bunch of cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do and have an intense desire to inflict an awful lot of pain and suffering on America,” a source told Time magazine at the time.
“He speaks English and has the ability to fit in and look innocuous,” an FBI agent noted. “He could certainly come back here, and nobody would know it.” The magazine added that “U.S. authorities have put his name on domestic and international watch lists but fear he will travel to Mexico or Canada on phony documents and then sneak across the border into the U.S.”
Bin Laden may be dead. But jihad lives. Our borders are wide open. Our fraud-riddled visa programs continue to be exploited. Tens of millions of visa overstayers, deportation fugitives, and border-crossers go unpunished, undetected, and unmonitored. And political correctness reigns. God help America the Unsecure.
DXer said
Contrary to Graeme’s understanding, Zawahiri read widely in the genre of biodefense and biowarfare books. That literature was all about addressing the “unthinkable.” For example, in the two years before Fall 2001, obtained
Mangold, T, and Goldberg, J. (1999). Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological
Warfare. MacMillan, Great Britain.
Clarke, R. (1968). We All Fall Down: The Prospects of Biological and Chemical
Warfare. Penguin Books, London.
Murphy, S, Hay, A, and Rose, S. (1986). No Fire, No Thunder: The Threat of Chemical
and Biological Weapons. Pluto Press, London.
Proceedings of the Conference on Airborne Infection. (1961). Bacteriol. Rev. 25:173-
382.
Roberts, B. (1993). Biological Weapons: Weapons of the Future. Significant Issues
Series XV(1). Center for Strategic and International Studies. Washington, DC.
Rothschild, JH. (1964). Tomorrow’s Weapons. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Walgate, R. (1990). Miracle of Menace? Biotechnology and the Third World. The Panas
Institute, London.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/dxer-documents-in-the-possession-of-ayman-zawahiri-and-his-associates-illustrate-the-dangers-of-scientific-openness/
As yet another example of Adnan’s poor spelling, Adnan El-Shukrijumah spelled “conducting” as cunducting.
http://www.angelfire.com/ar/ma1/master.html
Gulshair, the father, talked peace, not politics. As I best recall, Adnan made his first trip to Afghanistan as early in 1995.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2003-03-26/news/0303260175_1_mosque-leaders-gulshair-el-shukri-jumah-adnan-el-shukri-jumah
Now Prince Bandar may have been uncomfortable with disclosure of the tie to the son of the Saudi government employee and missionary, but 13 years later the documents and information being withheld should be disclosed and understood.
Mosque Fires Father Of Suspect
March 26, 2003|By Tanya Weinberg Staff Writer
His son, branded a terror suspect and the subject of a worldwide FBI search, has disappeared. Now a respected Islamic holy man’s position at a Miramar mosque is gone, too.
“They fired me,” Gulshair El’Shukri-Jumah said Tuesday. “I can’t sleep at night anymore.”
Mosque leaders say they do not suspect El’Shukri-Jumah, 73, of terrorism. But they say their community is nervous about publicity over federal investigators accusing his 27-year-old son, Adnan El’Shukri-Jumah of possibly coordinating al-Qaida’s next attack against America.
“In light of what happened he was asked to step down,” said board member Abzal Hosein. “We want to let people know at no time we have any affiliation with terrorists.”
As Gulshair El’Shukri-Jumah nervously awaited a follow-up meeting with mosque directors Tuesday, he retraced elements of his religious career, which included 20 years of missionary work for the Saudi government. In 1995 he retired after 10 years leading a Brooklyn mosque where at least one suspect from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 prayed.
El’Shukri-Jumah said he testified in a trial in which Abdul Rasheed was convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations and the Holland Tunnel.
El’Shukri-Jumah said he understood that Rasheed, prosecuted under his legal name of Clement Hampton-El, had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims.”
“He was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean he was involved in any acts of terror,” El’Shukri-Jumah said. “But I do not know.”
When he retired, El’Shukri-Jumah sent for his wife and six children in Saudi Arabia and moved to Florida.
On Fridays, 50 to 100 people congregate at the small Al Hijrah mosque on SW 27th St. in Miramar, but the simple white building was empty most of Tuesday.
Mosque leaders said they would continue to extend a small stipend and charity to the family.
The shaykh, as the elder El’Shukri-Jumah is addressed, said he did not resist the request of two board members that he step down.
“I said my religion teaches peace and I would like to live in peace,” he said.
Throughout South Florida, Muslims who have prayed with, studied with and listened to the shaykh echoed the sentiment that the highly respected religious scholar disseminates a peaceful message.
“He teaches peace. My kids were going to him as a religion teacher,” said Bashir Ahmed, owner of Miami Tandoor Restaurant in Pembroke Pines.
“He talks about peace and brotherhood. He never talks about politics.”
But Ahmed and others said they could not be so certain about the shaykh’s son.
Gulshair says the board asked him to serve as imam, or spiritual leader, three years ago. He took two months to decide, uncomfortable with the idea that the leadership would want him to promote Trinidad. He is a Guyanese native more interested in spreading Islam.
DXer said
Similarly, the head of CIA operations, Vince Cannistraro, turned consultant for the Saudis — and ABC too — may also have been uncomfortable. In the mid-1990s, the Blind Sheik was going to call him to testify for the defense. The Blind Sheik’s Services organization in Brooklyn was used by the CIA to recruit jihadists.
Vince and a colleague or two in Maryland set up a website that pitched the lone nut profile for Amerithrax. They volunteered their services to Amerithrax.
If you think the Saudis played hide-the-ball, then to understand the access to the White House see the photo of Prince Bandar on 9/13 with Cheney, Condi, Bush and I presume that is Andy Card, slightly out of the picture.
Or see the picture of him at Bush’s ranch in Texas in August 2002. Then study the ridiculous webpage the Saudi former CIA consultant Vince Cannistraro was involved in that pitched the lone nut with a sexual dysfunction.
(This blog, btw, makes a far better honeypot for IPs than his website).
You need to understand the Blind Sheik supporters in Brooklyn during the 1990s to profile 9/11 and Amerithrax.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
As for my personal opinion, I don’t think former CIA should be allowed to work for foreign powers. And I don’t think Prince Bandar plays straight with the American public.
We deserve better. Disclose the 28 pages from the “Joint Inquiry” and we’ll let bygones be bygones.
Don’t vote for anyone for President who doesn’t favor release of the 28 pages.
Here are some previous posts on the subject:
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/in-the-formal-handwriting-examination-conducted-in-the-amerithrax-investigation-it-was-concluded-that-bruce-e-ivins-probably-did-not-write-the-writings-appearing-on-the-anthrax-envelopes-and/comment-page-1/#comment-24996
August 15, 2013 at 1:42 pm
One person who weighed in the handwriting was a consultant for the Saudi government and the FBI’s Amerithrax Task Force. Vince Cannistraro had been the former head of CIA’s operation when the CIA used the Blind Sheik to recruit fighters to Afghanistan. Vince and a colleague or two from Maryland, as I recall, set up a website on the handwriting and their profile that was to serve as a “honey trap” — collecting IPs. They helped promote the lone, unstable guy profile.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah was a big supporter of the Blind Sheik, with whom Vince Cannistraro had worked. Adnan’s father was the Blind Sheik’s interpreter. I previously pointed out that the Blind Sheik’s lawyer had wanted to call Vince as an expert witness to explain the relationship between the Blind Sheik, his Brooklyn Services organization and the CIA.
I have previously archived links to Vince Cannistraro’s website that was to serve as the “honey trap” for the Task Force.
GAO: Wasn’t it a conflict of interest for Vince to take money from the Saudis at the time he was offering his free consultancy services to the FBI’s Amerithrax Task Force? Adnan’s father was also paid by the Saudis. He was a contract missionary.
The Blind Sheik’s lawyer has been indicted here in Syracuse.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/in-the-formal-handwriting-examination-conducted-in-the-amerithrax-investigation-it-was-concluded-that-bruce-e-ivins-probably-did-not-write-the-writings-appearing-on-the-anthrax-envelopes-and/comment-page-1/#comment-24998
August 15, 2013 at 4:07 pm
While I look for the links in support of my assertions above, I will simply paste my phrasing on this issue from last May in my connection of discussing AQUSA and Zazi:
“Some websites are designed by the FBI as honey pots such as the one Vince Cannistraro set up for Amerithrax with a couple of his Maryland buddies in 2002. (He was on the Saudi payroll and urging to the FBI an unstable lone America such as the Quantico profilers in their naivete had profiled). But no one visited the website. (Pssst. Hey, Vince, it is a conflict of interest to advise the FBI on Amerithrax while being paid by the Saudis. Given your work with the Blind Sheik you should have known your theory was crock).
For example, the FBI gamed the same approach with the recent overblown announcement in the Gardner art heist matter. The FBI announced that they had solved the case and there would be a press conference in a few hours. They said they had identified the robbers. Please just click this link.
But it is easier to take an ongoing website and arrange things so they know who visits on a real-time basis — one way or the other. For example, in the case of this blog, it was an actual federal undercover who did the graphics. And I think he did a damn good job.”
August 15, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Back when Vince was running things for CIA operations, Prince Bandar was meeting with Sarkis Soghanalian at a Beni Hanas restaurant arranging to pay for deliving of a 100 helicopters to Saddam equipped with TOW and quick release pesticide mechanism. If Vince doesn’t think I have the transcript and audio then maybe his intel isn’t as good as he thinks. The foreign minister Tariq Aziz claimed it was for agricultural spraydrying missions — even though it was at the height of the Iraq-Iran war. I didn’t approve of that deal and I don’t approve of the proffered solution in Amerithrax. 800,000 Iranian soldiers died. The Saudis didn’t care so long as Iraq and Iran beat each other’s heads in. War is bad. Peace is good. Killing is bad. Living with our differences is good. Democracy and the rule of law is good. Corruption is bad. Bribes are bad. Honesty and doing one’s job with integrity is good. Lack of government accountability andthe revolving door between government national security positions and defense contractors is bad.
The influence of money is bad. Protecting innocents is the primary directive.
Most of all, the truth is unstoppable. History takes no prisoners.
August 15, 2013 at 4:40 pm
Vince Cannistraro’s colleague in the project on the “handwriting analyst” was Mark Smith.
By way of some history, Pat Clawson, Dr. Hatfill’s friend, recommended that Dr. Hatfill’s attorney get in touch with handwriting analyst Mark Smith. He said he had insights on the Task Force investigators.
Mark Smith believes in paranormal auras, which have no scientific basis and are easily debunked in simply conducted experiments. Thus, I have to say that the 302 interview statements, in comparison, demonstrate very solid work product.
“From: “Pat Clawson” [email redacted]
To: “Vic Glasberg” [email redacted]
Sent: Tuesday, September I0, 2002 8:33 PM
Subject: Clawson’s Last Posting Before Leaving for Seattle ….
Victor…
Aiso, you need to phone Mark Smith, the handwriting expert who has offered his services.
Interesting guy – and he’s been in touch with the FBI agents working Steve’s case. He has some insight at to their ineptness that you might find helpfu!. His phone is 301 xxx xxxx
***
Regards,
Pat Clawson”
From the face of the website still on the Wayback Machine — even without a backdoor to the relevant servers — that former CIA honcho Vince Cannistraro was involved.
The Pursuit of Steven Hatfill.
By Marilyn W. Thompson
Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page W06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49717-2003Sep9?language=printer
But this case posed an entirely new set of challenges, and Roth was willing to try almost anything to solve it. At one point, he held a meeting with Mark Smith, a veteran Maryland handwriting analyst, and two associates, who proposed setting up a computer sting operation in an effort to identify the killer. Smith would try to lure the perpetrator to two Web sites, handtomind.com and anthraxhunt.com, by making provocative comments about the killer’s handwriting and publicizing the sites in interviews and on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted.”
Roth encouraged the men to try the plan. If it worked, they might be eligible for the FBI reward for information leading to a conviction — a sum that began at $1 million and eventually ballooned to the current $2.5 million. The sting operation lasted a few months and attracted at least two people on the bureau’s watch list, but it apparently produced no breakthroughs.
Smith says the FBI’s frustrations with the case were palpable. At one meeting at the Washington field office, agents talked candidly about the toll the long hours were exacting on their families. Roth vented, too, groaning to no one in particular, “Get me out of this!”
Mark Smith, according to the Washington Post, when he was not lecturing about interpreting personalities based on a person’s aura, helped set up websites “handtomind.com and anthraxhunt.com” and “making provocative comments about the killer’s handwriting and publicizing the sites in interviews and on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted.””
How did this FBI’s strategy of provoking a suspect by talking about sexual dysfunction, being bi-polar, and having a martyr complex work?
Didn’t it in fact allow the agents to close the case? Wouldn’t the FBI and its experts have been creamed at trial given that the handwriting expert not known for his belief in the paranormal had flatly opined that Bruce E. Ivins probably did NOT write the letters.
If the FBI and CIA want more credible fronts, they should avoid anthrax smelling dogs and folks touting the paranormal. The FBI should stop withholding exculpatory documents and spinning bullshit. Instead, they should avoid conflicts of interest governing the conduct of a criminal and national security investigation and focus on the interrogation statements from Yazid Sufaat.
DXer said
I have suggested that Atta’s friend, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, was the mailer of the Fall 2001 anthrax letters. He was with Atta in Florida when immigration forms were filled out. The GAO should obtain and state the conclusion of the FBI’s handwriting expert who compared Shukrijumah’s handwriting with the Fall 2001 letters. That same examiner concluded that Dr. Ivins probably did not write the letters.
DXer said
Is US discussing a drone attack on El-Shukrijumah in Guyana?
I see this report in Swedish referring to an ABC report to that effect.
Hot mot flygbolag | Nyheter | Aftonbladet
http://www.aftonbladet.se/…/article18337197.a... – Translate this pageAftonbladet
3 hours ago – ”Ambassaden uppmanar alla amerikanska medborgare i Guyana som reser med Caribbean … Terroristkoppling till Guyana. I Guyana tros en av FBI:s mest eftersökta, al-Qaida-medlemmen Adnan Shukrijumah leva. Han växte upp iFlorida och New York och tros vara den amerikanska medborgare som är …
Then there is this Guyana blog about a report by ABC’s Brian Ross.
US govt discussing drone strike against adnan el shukrijumah in Guyana
POSTED BY ADMIN ⋅ FEBRUARY 10, 201
http://propagandapress.org/2014/02/10/us-govt-discussing-drone-strike-against-adnan-el-shukrijumah-in-guyana/
Transcript for Americans Advised to Avoid Flights from Guyana Due to Terror Threat First, big terror news breaking overnight. The U. S. Government is warning American citizens not the fly caribbean airlines because of threat information about flights into the U. S. Today. Brian Ross has more. This is a specific warning. It is. It’s stark and unprecedented. To Americans to avoid this specific airline starting today until at least Wednesday because of a terror threat unconfirmed but troubling enough to warrant this unusual arrest. It fries from Guyana into new York, Miami. U. s. Officials have been worried about terror lynx in Guyana. One of the most want terrorists is believed to be the most active U. S. Person plotting against American citizens. There’s an A. P. Report overnight that U. S. Officials have identified an American member of Al Qaeda overseas actively planning attacks. They’re trying to debate on whether or not to have a drone strike against this American. We don’t know who this is right now. Not identified by the associated pres. They say there’s a debate within the administration about the president’s tactic of addressing U. S. Terrorists with strikes.
For all this talk about the importance of transparency, the USG hasn’t even produced the handwriting comparison of Mohammed Atta’s handwriting with the Fall 2001 anthrax letters. (I’ve argued that while they are at it, it would be nice to see the comparison with El-Shukrijumah’s handwriting.)
DXer said
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/anthrax-files/edward-montooth-the-mandate-was-to-look-at-the-case-with-fresh-eyes/
[interviewer ]
When you say “what we see today,” what do you mean?
[Ed Montooth]
The debate that carries on to this day; the people that feel he couldn’t have done it; the people that say, “It was weaponized”; the people that say, “It’s Al Qaeda.”
The fact remains, our investigation wasn’t reviewed by a judge and a jury, and Dr. Ivins wasn’t held accountable. That leaves a lot of people unsatisfied, unfulfilled. …
That’s exactly what we were afraid of. We wanted to be able to answer to the victims all their questions, let it be heard in a court of law so that they could see that justice was served one way or another.
Comment:
If Agent Montooth wanted justice to be served, then why did the FBI withhold the rabbit documents? Why did the FBI withhold the documents relating to the testing in Afghanistan of Sufaat’s labs from the NAS?
Why are they still withholding the handwriting comparisons?
The comparison of the photocopy toner? etc.
The FBI selectively presented evidence –rather than provide the documents relating to the science that was relevant — such as the exculpatory study done on the photocopy toner — the FBi presented scientific evidence that at most narrowed things to a couple hundred people — who then could have given a speck of the anthrax to anyone.
For example, the photocopy toner withheld by Mr. Montooth contradicts the innuendo raised in the Amerithrax Investigative Summary about time Dr. Ivins spent in the library.
The handwriting analyses point to Al Qaeda operatives — and are exculpatory of Dr. Ivins.
If the personnel in charge of producing documents wanted justice, the FBI would not have delayed production of documents to the GAO — and there are many hundreds of key pages of documents being withheld documents from the GAO.
GAO has proved toothless in forcing FBI to produce documents that it doesn’t want to produce..
DXer said
DXer said
When Adnan El-Shukrijumah was not fighting in Bosnia, visiting Saudi Arabia, before moving to Miramar Florida in 1996, he was in Brooklyn with his father Gulshair, who was a translator for Blind Sheikh Abdel-Rahman at al-Farouq mosque.
Since December 2001, I have argued that the Fall 2001 anthrax mailer was connected to the detention of the Blind Sheikh Abdel-Rahman and Brooklyn, NY. Just a few months before, a short, asthmatic young man named Adnan had called his mom from KSM’s house, in Kandahar. Kandahar was where Yazid Sufaat had his anthrax lab; Yazid had assured KSM that there was no risk in working with the virulent anthrax because he and his assistants had been vaccinated. When Adnan called his mom, she urged him not to come because he would be arrested for 911. She protested but he was insistent.
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. The United States government kept secret that it had detained El-Shukrijumah’s associate, Jdey, at the same time as Moussaoui — but released him.
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 modus operandi of the Fall 2001 anthrax letters — deadly letters to symbolic targets — was first established by the Al Hayat letter bombs sent in retaliation for the conviction of the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman.
Anthrax letter suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father was his translator at the Brooklyn al-Farouq mosque.
A memo seized in the 1995 arrest proposed flying an explosive laden plane into CIA headquarters. Anyone reading the Washington Post in the mid-1990s read about the plan to fly a plane into CIA headquarters over their morning coffee. The earlier plot to fly an airliner into the Eiffel tower by some Algerians connected to Bin Laden was also notable. Condi Rice professes not to have imagined the threat even though it was publicly known and even a threat at the G-8 conference. Armed with the benefit of our 20/20 hindsight, it’s important in moving forward as a country that we learn from our mistakes and not pay short shrift to the evidence on the issue of modus operandi relating to Zawahiri’s planned use of anthrax.
This was not the first time the Egyptian islamists sent letter bombs to newspaper offices in connection with an attack on the World Trade Center. Such letters previously had been sent in retaliation for the blind sheik’s conviction and the conviction of the WTC 1993 plotters. Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s Saudi father had been a character witness for one of the defendants.
NPR set the scene. It was January 2, 1997, at 9:15 a.m. at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. The employee of the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat began to open a letter. It was a Christmas card — the kind that plays a musical tune. It was white envelope, five and a half inches by six and a half inches, with a computer-generated address label attached. It had foreign postage and a post mark — a postmark appearing to be from Alexandria, Egypt. It looked suspiciously bulky, so he set it down and called the police. Minutes later they found a similar envelope. These were the first two of four letter bombs that would arrive at Al Hayat during the day. A fifth letter bomb addressed to the paper was intercepted at a nearby post office. They all looked the same. Two similar letter bombs addressed to the “parole officer” (a position that does not exist) arrived at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth.
Egyptian Saif Adel (Makawwi), thought to be in Iran, was involved in military planning. Adel was a colonel in the Egyptian Army’s Special Forces before joining Al Qaeda. He helped plan the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Africa. He was also a planner in the attack on the USS Cole and has served as the liaison officer between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Adel assisted Atef, who had overall responsibility for Al Qaeda’s operations. According to Cairo Attorney Al-Zayyat, Makkawi had many times claimed responsibility for operations that were carried out inside Egypt but when the perpetrators were arrested, it would be al-Zawahiri’s name whose name they shouted loyalty to from the docks. After the letter al-Hayat letter bombs were sent in January 1997, Saif Adel (Makawwi) gave a statement denying responsibility on behalf of the Vanguards of Conquest.
On January 7, 1997 Saif Adel purporting to be speaking for the Egyptian Vanguards of Islamic Conquest said: “Those are messages of admonishment. There is no flirtation between us and the Americans in order for us to send them such alarming messages in such a manner.” Adel said that “the Vanguards of Conquest “are heavyweight and would not embark on such childish actions.” US press and political commentaries had hinted at the Vanguards of Conquest organization’s involvement in these attempts. In his statement to Al-Hayat, perhaps referring to the Egyptian Islamic Group, Adel added “I am surprised that we in particular, and not other parties, should be accused of such an operation.”
He got admonished by the unnamed but official spokesman for the Vanguards organization. This other spokesman chastisied him as not being authorized to speak for the organization (or even being a member). “We welcome any Muslim who wants to join us, and if Makkawi wants to [join us], he will be welcomed to the Vanguards march, but through the organizational channels. But if words are not coupled with actions, we tell him: Fear God, and you can use a different name other than the Vanguards to speak on its behalf.” The spokesman denounced Makkawi’s authority to speak for the group, referring to the January 5th statement it had made denying responsibility. The spokesperson for the Vanguards of Conquest apparently was Post Office employee Sattar’s friend, Al-Sirri, based in London.
The FBI would not speculate as to who sent the letters or why. But this was your classic “duck that walks like a duck” situation. As NPR reported at the time, “analysts say that letter bombs are rarely sent in batches, and when they are it’s generally prompted by politics, not personal animus.” Al Hayat was a well respected and moderate newspaper. It was friendly to moderate Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. That, without more, was accurately discerned by observers at the time as sufficient to make the newspaper outlet a target of the militant islamists. The newspaper, its editor explained, does not avoid criticizing militant islamists. The Al Hayat Editor-in-Chief explained: “We’ve been opposed to all extremists in the Arab world, especially the fundamentalists.” Mohammed Salameh, a central defendant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sent to Leavenworth in 1994. The other three Egyptian extremists convicted in the bombing were sent to prisons in California, Indiana and Colorado. Like the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman, Salameh had complained of his conditions and asked to be avenged. The Blind Sheik was particularly irked that the prison officials did not cut his fingernails.
Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy, bombing conspiracy, soliciting an attack on an U.S. military installation, and soliciting the murder of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. His followers were indicted for plotting to bomb bridges, tunnels and landmarks in New York for which Rahman allegedly had given his blessings. The mailing of deadly letters in connection with an earlier attack on the World Trade Center was not merely the modus operandi of militant islamists, it was the group’s signature. It’s their calling card. Khaled Abu el-Dahab, a naturalized American, from Silicon Valley, in a confession detailed Egyptian defense ministry document dated October 28, 1998, explained that he was trained to make booby-trapped letters to send to important people, as well as asked to enroll in American aviation schools to learn how to fly gliders and helicopters. He was a friend of Ali Mohammed, the former special forces officer in the Egyptian army and former US Army Sergeant. The modus operandi of these militant supporters of the blind sheik was known to be planes and booby-trapped letters.
The Al Hayat reporters and editor were not expressing an opinion — though the owner did lay out various possibilities (e.g., Iraq, Iran etc.). The owner of the paper had commanded Saudi forces during the Persian Gulf War, when Bin Laden was so upset about American troops on the Arabian peninsula. Moreover, al Hayat had recently opened up a Bureau in Jerusalem, giving it a dateline of Jerusalem rather than al Quds, which some thought blasphemous. But none of the possibilities would plausibly explain why the letter bomb was sent to Leavensworth where three of the WTC 1993 defendants were imprisoned, including Ramzi Yousef’s lieutenant who had asked that his mistreatment be avenged. (That was the criminal genius who returned to Ryder to reclaim his deposit after blowing up the truck at WTC). Egyptian security officials argued that the letters were sent from outside of Egypt, the stamps were not available in Egypt, and that the postmark was not Alexandria as reported. Whatever the place of mailing, the sender likely was someone who was upset that KSM’s and Ramzi Yousef’s associates had been imprisoned, to include, most notably, the blind sheik. Whoever is responsible for the anthrax mailings, it is a very good bet that they are upset the blind sheik is detained. That should be at the center of any classified profile of the crime.
On December 31, 1996 Mohammed Youssef was in Egypt — having gone to Egypt months before. The al Hayat letter bombs related to the detention and alleged mistreatment of the blind sheikh and the WTC bombers were sent 10 days earlier — on the Day of Measures. In 2006, he was named as co-defendant with Hassoun, Daher, Padilla and Jayyousi. Youssef was born in Alexandria. Do authorities suspect the “Florida cell” of being involved in the al Hayat letter bombs? Kifah Jayyousi’s “Islam Report” over the years — distributed by Adham Hassoun in Florida and Kassem Daher in Canada — expressed outrage at detention/extradition due to terrorism law and also what he perceived as attacks on his religion by some newspapers. His headlines on the internet groups blazed “Just In! First Muslim Victim of New Terrorism Law!: US Agents Arrest Paralegal Of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman Without Charge Prepares To Hand Him To Egyptian Regime,” soc.religion.islam, dated April 27, 1996 and “Islam Report (Newspaper Attacks Our Religion! Act Now!,” soc.religion.islam, Apr. 16, 1996
In connection with the January 1997 letter bombs, Ayman got the know-how to send sophisticated electronic letter bombs from Iraqi intelligence according to one item from the highly controversial Feith memo. In the al Hayat letter bombings, Ayman allowed the finger to be pointed at Libya. In the Amerithrax letters, he allowed the finger to be pointed to a United States biodefense insider by the prosecutor who would have presented to any indictment to the grand jury. Born in Haifa in 1948, the man’s daughter then came to represent microbiologist Al-Timimi pro bono.
After the Al Hayat letter bombs to newspapers in DC and NYC and people in symbolic positions, in January 1997, both the Blind Sheikh and his paralegal, Sattar, were quoted in separate articles in Al Hayat (in Arabic) denying that they or their supporters were responsible. The Blind Sheikh commented that al Hayat was fair and balanced in its coverage and his supporters would have no reason to “hit” them. The same sort of counterintuitive theory was raised in connection with the earlier letter bombing of newspapers to DC and New York City and people in symbolic positions. Sattar noted that the bombs were mailed on December 20, one day before the brief in support of the blind sheik on appeal. He questioned whether someone (like the FBI) was trying to undermine the appeal’s prospects. This time, Mr. Sattar did not need any help making the argument with respect to the anthrax letters. Numerous people with political agendas rushed to do it for him to include counsel for Bosnia and Herzogovina and legal advisor to the PLO, professor Francis Boyle. In accusing Dr. Ivins on the occasion of his death, the FBI embraced the same sort of theory — that is, when it was not grasping at other untenable theories relating to college sororities, incorrectly perceived anti-abortion news, or perceived financial motive.
In September 2006, in a Sahab Media production called “Knowledge is for acting,” there is a clip in which Al Quds editor Atwan refers to his visit with Bin Laden in 1996 (see also his 2006 book The Secret History of al Qaeda). He says that Bin Laden was planning to attack America “and America prisons in particular.” That was an apparent reference to the Al Hayat letter bombs sent to newspapers and prisons in January 1997. There were recurrent references to Abdel-Rahman in the tape.
DXer said
As I pointed out over a decade ago, Adnan El-Shukrijumah even left the “Clouds” / 911 calling card.
The week before the Fall 2001 anthrax mailing, Adnan El-Shukrijumah was at KSM’s residence calling his mom to tell her he was coming to the United States. He was insistent over her protests that he would be arrested.
KSM was the Operations Director for “Clouds.” His assistant was Al-Hawsawi, who had the anthrax spraydrying documents on his laptop. After the anthrax mailings, Adnan El-Shukrijumah hid out in safehouses from February 2002-April 2002 with Al-Hawsawi. (see al-Hawsawi’s detainee assessment)
Adnan was closely associated with both “Clouds” and 911 plotters Ramzi Bin-AlShibh and Mohammed Atta. The letter sending the first anthrax reportedly had clouds pictured on it.
Adnan left the “Clouds” calling card as plain as the stationery used in the letter talking about Jenny’s planned wedding. Jenny was code for 911 planner Ramzi Binalshibh. When Atta wrote to Ramzi to tell him the 911 date he pretended to be talking to his girlfriend “Jenny.”
KSM’s instruction to El-Shukrijumah to prepare to travel was given him by 911 planner Ramzi Al-Shibh. Lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was Adnan’s associate in Florida.
The flagship of American Media, Inc., National Enquirer, described the letter sent AMI as follows:
“Bobby Bender came around the corner with this letter in the upturned palms of his hands,” said photo assistant Roz Suss, a 13-year Sun staffer
“It was a business-size sheet of stationery decorated with pink and blue clouds around the edges. It was folded into three sections, and in the middle was a pile of what looked like pink-tinged talcum powder.”
In admitting that he had taken over supervising the development of anthrax for use against the US upon Atef’s death (in November 2001), KSM separately noted that “I was the Media Operations Director for Al-Sahab or ‘The Clouds,’ under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
DXer said
“Jenny” (Ramzi Bin-Alshibh) and El-Shukrijumah were sending a very specific message in code by the choice of stamps. The stamp was a green bird. It was widely published among the militant islamists that martyrs go to paradise “in the hearts of green birds.” The stamp’s image of a green-blue colored bird was designed by artist Michael Doret. Mr. Doret provided me “a file made directly from the original art [he] created, so the color is an accurate representation of the printed envelope.” Michael advises me that the color of the eagle is a “teal” or greenish-blue.
In the very interview with Al-Jazeera in which they admitted 9/11, and described the codes used for the four targets for the planes, KSM and Ramzi Binalshibh admitted to the Jenny code, the code for representing the date 9/11, and used the symbolism of the “Green Birds.” Osama Bin Laden later invoked the symbolism in his video “The 19 Martyrs”, describing a hijacker as “A man of worship who enjoined good and forbade evil. His body was on earth but his heart roamed with the green birds that perch beneath the Throne of the Most Merciful.” Isn’t “green birds of paradise” discussed in Abdel-Rahman’s 2,000 page PhD thesis on the chapter in the Koran called “Repentance,” which addresses the foreign policy and military affairs of the Islamic state?
A FAQ on Al Qaeda’s website, the Azzam Publications website, explained that “In the Hearts of Green Birds” refers to what is inside. The actual Arabic word used in the Hadith is not Qalb (heart) but it is Jowf which can mean any of interior, inside, or heart (as in center). There was a video based on the hadith with the title In The Hearts of Green Birds about foreign mujahideen that had been martyred in Bosnia. The audiocassette was created in August 1996 and its 3rd edition was released in January 1997. The azzam.org website selling the “In the Hearts of Green Birds” audiocassette was shut down after 9/11 because authorities thought it might contain codes and instructions to militants. British and US intelligence sources reportedly suspected that some of Azzam.com’s jihad photos and graphics contain messages embedded with a technology known as steganography. The code instead perhaps was there for all to see on the stamps of the lethal missives being sent.
In early Fall 2001, the Azzam.com website was mirrored by someone who lived 6 miles from the mailbox where the anthrax was mailed. He was indicted in Spring 2007 for income tax invasion. To the left of the advertisement for the “Green Birds” video, you’ll see the description of al-Hawali’s imprisonment. The imprisonment of al-Hawali and certain other scholars was the “Cover Theme” (which includes a related article on the torture of prisoners in Saudi prisons). GMU microbiology grad al-Timimi drafted a letter for al-Hawali and had it hand-delivered to every member of Congress on the first anniversary of the anthrax mailings. (Of course, given that the symbolism used in this regard in the anthrax mailings had an origin in religious writing, there is no direct tie with the website — the tie could be with the hadith. The London webmaster once said that the FBI allowed it to remain up (while it moved from server to server) for another year hoping to get leads on supporters.)
Even Zarqawi invoked the imagery in a 60-minute audio message:
“The martyrs rejoice in the bounty provided by God. Their souls are inside the bodies of green birds that fly in heaven.”
Bin Laden was using “Green Birds” in the same way he used the repeated phrase “Looming Tower” to hint of what was to come with the planes attack on the World Trade Center. He would say:
“Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower.”
In concocting an imagined code with the anthrax letters, in contrast, the agent whose experience was undercover drug buys in D.C. looked at the double-lined letters spelling A-T-T-A, Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s close associate. He pretended one was double-lined when it wasn’t, and imagined a code that had Bruce saying “F—- New York.” The woman who had been thanked by the former Zawahiri associate for providing technical assistance for his work with virulent Ames says that Bruce once went to NYC and thought the beds were lumpy! Not even the FBI’s expert on the specific code agrees with its forced interpretation — pointing to the letter the agent mistakenly perceived double-lined. To say that Bruce liked codes is not the stuff of sound analysis. We all likes codes, don’t we? That’s like saying someone likes ice cream or a good mystery. I have the same book that the FBI showed that Dr. Ivins had. I have lots of books. And I can assure you I would throw out anything if I thought it would confuse the FBI and cause them to ruin my life — which was what Dr. Ivins was experiencing. (Indeed, it was when he threw out semen stained panties that the FBI got really excited and seized upon the issue as if it was somehow evidence). Maybe we all have sexual issues — some in the workplace even, and some more than others.
An advertisement for “In The Hearts of Green Birds” sold by Al Qaeda’s website read: “In the Summer of 1996, Azzam Recordings released the first audio tape of its kind to be produced in English. The name of this tape was: ‘In the Hearts of Green Birds.’ It outlined some of the stories of these men. This tape was so successful, that it spread, by the Will of Allah, throughout many Muslim homes in the UK, North America and Australia. Due to popular demand, in the Summer of 1997, Azzam Recordings produced the sequel to this tape: ‘Under the Shades of Swords.’ We ask Allah to accept the Shuhadaa’ and shower His Mercy upon them.” (It appeared in the 21st issue of Nida’ul Islam magazine (http://www.islam.org.au), December-January 1997- 1998). The Virginia Paintball defendants really liked videos like “In the Hearts of Green Birds” and “Russian Hell” and found them inspirational.
In July 2002, the President of the Help The Needy (a medical technologist who was president in name only) posted a story titled: “Raising Mujaahideen” on an Islamway bulletin board (noted to be an IANA subsidiary) which invoked the “green bird” imagery. On 9/11, under the screen name islam_1981, she had posted an IANA announcement deploring the unfair suspicion fundamentalists might come over. Soon afterward, she posted an explanation that killing civilians was absolutely forbidden by the koran and that upon acceptance of a visa (and accepted in the country as a guest) a person is forbidden from attacking his host. In July 2002, however, she posted a story titled “Raising Mujaahideen” that (apparently consistent with the earlier posts) celebrated raising children to be martyrs — in the story the martyr’s “soul gently leaves his body to reside in the heart of a green bird in Jannah.” She was President and the Vice-President was Idris Palmer of Northern Virginia, who had co-founded the Society for the Adherence of the Sunnah with Ali Al-Timimi.
If the FBI Director had not compartmentalized the investigation, the agent whose experience was undercover drug buys in D.C. might have had the experience needed to do the intelligence analysis needed for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailngs.
DXer said
Allusion to Both Atta and Genomic Sequencing of Ames Strain
The writing of the text of the letter is also interesting in that the “As” and “Ts” are double-lined — to suggest ATTA, El-Shukrijumah’s associate from Florida.
When the US Centers for Disease Control first identified that the Ames strain had been used in the mailing to Florida in October 2001, Paul Keim and his colleagues at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) had nearly finished a project to sequence Bacillus anthracis— specifically, the chromosome of an anthrax isolate from a laboratory in Porton Down, U.K.Ayman had a microbiologist attending Porton Down-sponsored conferences at which presentations were made about the sequencing of Ames. The letter writer appears to have even double-lined A’s and T’s in the letters accompanying the anthrax possibly to simultaneously allude to Atta and the genomic sequence.
As explained at the Porton Down conferences attended by Ayman’s operative Rauf Ahmad, Keim’s research team eventually discovered 60 new ‘markers’ in the Bacillus anthracis genome—DNA sequences that may vary from one isolate to another. These include insertions or deletions of DNA, and short sequences that are repeated at different lengths in the genome known as VNTRs (variable-number tandem repeats). A decade earlier, it had been determined that one of three proteins comprising anthrax toxin, and the first nucleotide sequence to be reported from B. anthracis (by USAMRIID authors no less), had a consensus TATAAT sequence located at the putative -10 promoter site. It is greek to us but apparently something with meaning to the person who drafted the letter. Perhaps the sender was saying that the bacteria was pathogenic unlike what had been sent to the Canadian immigration minister six months earlier.
When authorities determined that the anthrax had not been genetically modified so as to be resistant to antibiotics, Condi Rice told the President: “That’s the best news you’ve had as president.” Years later, at trial for sedition, GMU microbiology grad student Ali Al-Timimi read “Genome Technology.”
The coded e-mail Faris wrote back to KSM suggesting that the idea of removing bolts from the span of the Brooklyn Bridge was not a viable idea was but one of many examples of the simple codes used by Al Qaeda operatives. NYC subway plotter Zazi, indicted along with Adnan El-Shukrijumah, used “wedding” to mean attack just as Al Qaeda did in 2001. Sometimes the code might be as simple as Adham Hassoun’s “stuff” for the local soccer team in places like Bosnia or his references to a young man who wanted to go out and get some “fresh air” [go join the jihad]. Sometimes it might be Iyman Faris’ reference to the weather or Ramzi Binalshibh’s “shirts” for Sally or Atta’s use of “Jenny” to refer to 911 coordinator Ramzi Bin-Alshibh. Sometimes it might be a reference to Greendale School or a marriage proposal to Jenny such apparently in the case of the anthrax mailings. The CIA reports that wedding is Al-Qaeda-speak for an event. In its Ivins Theory, the FBI investigators and prosecutors signed on to a real doozy.
But putting aside this question of nuptials, the fact remains that the sender of the anthrax letters would have had no reason to use the same address on the second letter unless he was communicating something. That identical return address, in fact, helped authorities locate and intercept the letter to a Senator. All of the coding together may have served to tell the world, for example, that Mohammed Atta and the others were going to fly to paradise in a green bird and that the anthrax was courtesy of the Vanguards of Conquest. If you mistreat our prisoners or continue appropriations to Israel and Egyptian regimes, we may attack Washington, D.C. and New York City with aerosolized anthrax. You act at your peril. Zawahiri simultaneously framed the US Army by using the “Ames strain” while telling them who did it. Now that 911 imam Anwar Aulaqi formally urged that it would be islamically permissible to kill a million civilians, this is not the time to be distracted by a bag of stained panties found in the basement of the residence of some fragile USAMRIID scientist.
In contrast, not even the expert the FBI consulted as to its theory of the code thought that its theory passed the “giggle test.”
DXer said
The present head of Al Qaeda’s external operations, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, was living with KSM in Kandahar, where the anthrax lab was located, when he called his mom to tell her he was coming to the United States. (She was upset fearing he would be arrested). Yazid Sufaat, the head of the anthrax lab, assured KSM that he and his assistants had been vaccinated against anthrax and so it had been safe to work with it in developing it as a weapon against US targets.
The pundits, seeming not informed that Ayman Zawahiri’s colleagues had publicly announced Dr. Zawahiri’s intention to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate for the detention of the Blind Sheik, did not pay any attention to the son of the translator for the Blind Sheik when he came to the US the week following 9/11. He had cased the targets in NYC and DC in 2001 on KSM’s instruction.
In his March 2007 confession to a military tribunal, KSM admitted to having been involved in a plot to assassinate a number of former American presidents (including Jimmy Carter), Pope John Paul II and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. In January 2008, it was revealed that Jabarah, the go-between KSM and Hambali had vowed to avenge the death of a friend by killing FBI agents and prosecutors he knew and apparently intended to use some steak knives he had secreted. To suggest that Zawahiri and his colleagues do not use targeted assassination as their modus operandi — indeed, to not appreciate that it is the EIJ’s key modus operandi — totally misses the mark.
Contrary to the pundits who just associate Al Qaeda with a “big bang,” a key modus operandi of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, for which the Blind Sheik Abdel Rahman was the spiritual leader, was targeted assassination. It was widely known known that Zawahiri was seeking to weaponize anthrax for use against US targets. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad group specializes in armed attacks against high-level Egyptian government officials, including Cabinet ministers. The group had a “hit list” that included tens of Egyptians to be killed by the group, including journalists. In May 1987, a Major General was shot outside his home in Cairo. Several EIJ members and two Islamist Group members were arrested in connection with the attack. In November 1990, six members of EIJ were arrested in connection with the murders of People’s Assembly Speaker and five security men on October 12, 1990. The EIJ’s military wing, the Vanguards of Conquest, launched a violent campaign in March 1992. Of 223 killed in the first year or two, 67 were policemen, 76 were Islamic militants, 36 were civilian Christian Copts, and three were foreign tourists. Prosecutors and policemen would be targeted to avenge torture. By April 1995, 700 had been killed. Al-Jihad has had a role in most foreign terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies over the past 20 years. The group is most well known for its first, the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In August 1993, the same year as the bombing of the World Trade Center, al-Jihad attempted to assassinate Egyptian Interior Minister by firing on his motorcade and detonating a homemade bomb. The group also made an attempt that year against Prime Minister with an explosion which occurred about 500 yards from his home as his motorcade passed. A 15-year-old girl standing at a nearby bus stop was killed. EIJ issued a statement claiming the action was to avenge the recent death sentences. In 1992, Islamic Jihad activists murdered an author, Faraj Fodah, who had openly supported Israeli-Egyptian peace. The secular columnist in his last article had suggested that the militants were motivated by sexual frustration more than politics. In March 1994 Egypt’s higher military Court passed death sentences in absentia that included Tharwat Salah Shehata, Yasser al-Sirri, ‘Isam Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Rahman for the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Sedki on November 25, 1993. In 1994 al-Jihad militants were linked to two unsuccessful attempts to bomb the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Manila. In June 1995, the Vanguards of Conquest claimed responsibility for a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In November 1995, an EIJ suicide car bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan killed 17 and injured 59. An Egyptian with Canadian citizenship, Ahmad Saeed Kadr (Khadr), was charged in connection with the bombing. Kadr worked as the regional director of Human Concern International, a Canadian relief agency in Peshawar, and was alleged to have moved money through the aid agency from Afghanistan to Pakistan to pay for the operation. In December 1995, the Vanguards of Conquest sent a communiqué warning Pakistan to stop extraditing militants to Egypt, or “it will pay a heavy price.” That month, Egyptian Security forces arrested 56 terrorists after being tipped off by an EIJ informer. The group was accused of planning to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak on 1995 using 550 pounds of explosives to blow up the President’s motorcade.
In November 1997 after the killing in Luxor, Egypt, of 58 tourists by Al Gamaa Al Islamiyaa, the Vanguards of Conquest warned that orders had “already been given for attacks on Americans and Zionists not only in Egypt but elsewhere.” In February 1998 Al Jihad was one of the founding signatories involved in the creation of the World Islamist Front for the Jihad against Jews and the Crusaders (World Islamist Front). The Front subsequently issued a fatwa calling for the killing of Americans worldwide and the expulsion of Americans from the holy land and Jews from Jerusalem. Egyptian Islamist sources declared that the release of the statement marked Al Zawahiri’s, and Al Jihad’s, return to the field of active terrorist groups.
In June 1998 Egyptian security authorities arrest seventeen members on charges of forming an Al Jihad cell in east Cairo. Resulting confessions revealed that Al Jihad was planning to assassinate a number of public figures and security officers. That month, Jihad members al-Najjar (head of Al Jihad in Albania), and Majed Mustapha were arrested in Albania, reportedly with the aid of the Central Intelligence Agency, and extradited to Egypt in late June 1998. An August 1998 Statement issued by the Information Office of the Jihad Group in Egypt vowed revenge on the United States for the extradition of three Al Jihad members from Albania to Egypt.
In September 1998, a number of senior EIJ and IG leaders in London were arrested, including the EIJ cell members who had faxed the claim of responsibility for the embassy bombings. In April 1999, after verdicts in the “Returnees from Albania,” the Vanguards of Conquest and Al Jihad issue separate threats of retaliation. Of the 107 accused, 87 defendants were found guilty, including Canadian Mahmoud Mahjoub. The day of the bombing, shortly after the explosions, EIJ military commander Mabruk called Canadian VOC member Jaballah and told him to call the London cell members and tell them he could be reached at Shehata’s residence. Shehata was Jaballah’s brother-in-law. The London cell members then issued a claim of responsibility for the blasts. That year, the group also planned an unsuccessful attack on the U.S. Embassy in Albania.
Throughout these years, an estimated 70 Egyptian militants were rendered by the US to Cairo prior to 9/11 and the anthrax mailings. The fact that targeted assassination was the modus operandi of the US-based islamists — and that the motivation was retaliation for the detention of senior leaders and to create leverage aimed at their release — was established by the first of a series of terrorist attacks in the US — the assassination of radical rabbi Meir Kahane by Egyptian Nosair, who had emigrated from Egypt in 1981. In his address book, Nosair had written the names of some Jewish officials, to include two judges who recently had extradited an Arab terrorist. Nosair’s job had been to protect the blind sheikh in the US. He was a friend of Ali Mohammed who stayed with him when he came to New York. The commentators who argued that Al Qaeda just goes for the “big bang” were overlooking the modus operandi of the Vanguards and what was known about Ayman’s biological program through “open source” materials.
DXer said
The father of Adnan El-Shukrijumah was associated with al-Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. That was the home of Al-Kifah. After WTC 1993, Al-Kifah was renamed Care International. The FBI has thousands of pages of investigatory material relating to its investigation of Al-Kifah.
On October 4, 2001, ten to fifteen agents arrived at Storage USA self-storage unit in Northboro, Massachussetts rented near where one of the officials of Care International lived. Care International was incorporated in Massachussetts after a weekly newsmagazine drew a connection between Al Kifah and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The search of the storage unit was a covert operation. Agents brought translators and a photocopying machine so they could leave documents where they found them. They came prepared to copy computer hard drives and disks rather than seize them. At 5 p.m., they hung a sign on the outside gate saying that it was broken so they could work uninterrupted. They didn’t finish until 3 a.m. Later, at the trial of the Boston Care International and various of its former officers, prosecutors introduced an April 1998 email from Azzam Publications giving instructions on how to deliver money to mujahideen in Kosovo. The agent testifying about the search in early October 2001 explained his job as “mostly intelligence, connecting the dots, looking for relationships and patterns.”
Abdullah Azzam founded the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Anthrax letters suspect El-Shukrijumah The government points to a report by Dr. Abdullah Azzam titled “Journey of Maktab Khadamat Al-Mujahideen” which discusses issues relating to the organization including publishing its “Al Jihad” magazine and providing support for the fighters. It concludes noting that the “Islamic foundations contributed in the Jihadist area through the financial support of the fronts and of the Arab lions in the Maktab Al-Khadamat.” In 1993, Al Kifah announced it was switching its operations to Bosnia, and Al Kifah reincorporated under the name of the nonprofit Care International. Federal prosecutors allege that Care sent money to several organizations that have been designated as terrorist or terrorist-supporting organizations by the U.S. Treasury Department after September 11, 2001, to include Global Relief Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, Help the Needy and the Holy Land Foundation.
The FBI raided Care International storage unit at the Northboro storage facility again in April 2003 and confiscated the original hard copies of more than 18,000 pages of material, 40 videotapes, four computer hard drives and 100 computer diskettes, among other evidence. According to the FBI, a publication of Care’s newsletter Al-Hussam claimed that Mr. Azzam himself founded Care. (Azzam founded Al Kifah, Care’s predecessor — he could not formally have founded Care four years after he was killed by a car bomb). Its newletter promoted Azzam’s views and anyone active in the field knew of Azzam’s connection to Bin Laden.
In 2007, jury members heard wiretaps in which two successive presidents of Care International from 1993 through 1998, speak with Kifah Jayoussi and Adham Hassoun. Jayoussi and Hassoun were convicted in 2007, having been charged with belonging to a North American terrorism support cell that provided money, recruits and supplies to Islamic extremists around the world. About three dozen wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were introduced to the jury — authorities intercepted many tens of thousands of conversations involving Hassoun. In an August 3, 1998, intercept, Mr. Jayoussi spoke to one of the Care defendants about raising money for the wife of a man who had been chairman of a defense committee for Nosair, the man charged with murdering Jewish militant Rabbi Meir Kahane on Nov. 5, 1990, and who “joined the group of the skyscraper in N.Y.” The Care official instructed Jayoussi “to send me a letter saying that this is a request to help a family or some poor people or something like that.” He cautioned Jayoussi that he should conceal its real purpose given that Care International incorporated to sponsor widows and orphans affected by overseas wars. Mr. Daher, an associate of Florida cell defendants Hassoun and Jayyousi, was also on some of the intercepts.
Since the time of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, the FBI has known of Adnan El-Shukrijumah. The undercover operative at the mosque was steered away from Atta and Adnan El-Shukrijumah because they were too secretive. Hindsight of course is 20/20. But sometimes it is important to look back at history and see things clearly.
If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
DXer said
In 1999, Adnan El-Shukri-jumah, who I have argued was the anthrax mailer for over a decade, held garage sales and car washes to raise money for Global Relief Foundation and the Muslim refugees of the war in Bosnia. GRF was long known to have WMD plans.
“‘I remember him telling me once that he felt like those people were his family too,” his mother said. At the time, his family said, neither they nor Adnan were aware that the charity they supported — Global Relief Fund — was allegedly involved in funding terrorist organizations. About the same time, the family befriended a man named Imran Farooq Mandhai — who later would become the genesis of the FBI’s suspicions about Adnan. Mandhai, now serving nearly 12 years in prison for plotting to blow up power plants and other South Florida facilities, first approached Gulshair’s father for spiritual leadership. The family described him as a follower of little intellect but lovable. ”
“FBI sees terror; family sees good son Ex-resident of Miramar being sought in terror case ,” BY DAVID KIDWELL AND LARRY LEBOWITZ (Natalie McNeal contributed), The Miami Herald, 03/31/2003
In mid-December 2001, knowing that Zawahiri intended to use non-governmental organizations in his anthrax program, some of the NATO-troops who raided the Chicago-based Islamic charity, Global Relief Foundation in Kosovo were clad in hazmat suits. The charity was suspected of supporting international terrorism which was “allegedly involved in planning attacks against targets in the US and Europe.”
“It is our contention that Global Relief Foundation and Benevolence International Foundation are both linked financially with funneling funds to al Qaeda and other associate groups,” said a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department.
After an October 2001 bombing raid at a Qaeda camp in Darunta, Afghanistan US forces found 100+ printed, typed, handwritten pages of documents that shed light on Al Qaeda’s early anthrax planning. The Defense Intelligence Agency provided me the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents confirmed that it was Zawahiri’s plan to use established specialists and the cover of universities and charities as cover for weaponizing anthrax. From early on, the evidence suggested that charity is as charity does. 90 of the 100 pages are the photocopies of journal articles and the disease handbook excerpts. It was not clear whether or they had yet acquired virulent anthrax or weaponized it, but it was clear that the planning was well along. When Vice President Cheney was briefed on the documents in late 2001, he immediately called a meeting of FBI and CIA. “I’ll be very blunt,” the Vice President started. “There is no priority of this government more important than finding out if there is a link between what’s happened here and what we’ve found over there with Qaeda.” At one point, security personnel thought that the home belonging to Elizabeth Cheney, his daughter had been hit by an anthrax attack. Elizabeth had to call her nanny to get her to take the kids to be tested for exposure. A June 1999 memo from Ayman to military commander Atef said that “the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were ‘more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.’ ”Thus, in determining whether Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall of 2001, the FBI and CIA had reason to know based on the growing documentary evidence available by mid-December 2001, that Al Qaeda operatives were likely associated with non-governmental organizations and working under the cover and talent in universities. Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s, Atta’s associate, was closely associated with the charity, Global Relief Foundation, known to be connected to Al Qaeda’s WMD aspirations.
The government froze the assets of the Global Relief Foundation (GRF”) on December 14, 2001, saying it was a financial conduit to terrorists. No warrant had been obtained before the FBI arrived at Global Relief’s headquarters in Bridgeview, Illinois. The search was done pursuant to a provision in FISA that permitted a warrantless search when the Attorney General declares that an emergency situation .The 911′s Terrorist Financing Monograph notes that GRF’s newsletter, “Al-Thilal” (“The Shadow”) openly advocated a militant interpretation of Islam and armed jihad. The 911 Commission reports that the FBI suspected the Executive Director of being affiliated with the blind sheik’s Egyptian Islamic Group. Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father had been the Blind Sheik’s translator in Brooklyn. The 911 Commission explains: “In early 2000, Chicago informed Detroit that GRF’s executive director, Chehade, had been calling two Michigan residents. One of these subjects was considered GRF’s spiritual leader and the other, Rabih Haddad, was a major GRF fund-raiser.” Its Chairman, Ann Arbor, Michigan community leader Rabih Haddad was arrested in mid-December 2001 for overstaying his visa. Haddad taught twice a week at an Ann Arbor school and was an assistant to the leader at Ann Arbor’s mosque. He was an imam there. Rabih Haddad was an effective fundraiser for the mosques in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and for the Ann Arbor chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His students have testified that he stated unequivocally that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were not the acts of true Muslims. Congressman John Conyers, Jr, of Michigan joined several newspapers in suing to force the government to open the hearings. Mr. Conyers argued that Haddad was being unfairly targeted as a Muslim cleric. After a visit by Congressman Conyers in March 2002, Mr. Haddad was removed from solitary confinement and placed with the general prison population.” Haddad was allowed to make phone calls and for the first time watch television. Mr. Haddad’s lawyer, Ashraf Nubani, of Northern Virginia, who later arranged for the pro bono representation of the Virginia Paintball defendants, said at the time “The government never established, other than smoke screen and innuendo, that he was linked to terrorism.” Attorney Nubani said that his client travelled mostly to Pakistani as part of his relief efforts. Haddad refused to testify before a grand jury unless granted full immunity. As part of DARPA-funded research, Dr. Bruce Ivins of USAMRIID supplied virulent Ames to Ann Arbor researchers whose office by September 2001 was 2 minutes –1 mile — from the mosque where Mr. Haddad was an imam. Although the evidence is “secret,” most intelligence is open source.
Certainly, former US Attorney Jeff Taylor should have known all this when he made all the provably mistaken claims at the early August 2008 press conference blaming Bruce Ivins for the anthax mailings.
The New York Times reported at the time that “Prosecutors said they were keeping some evidence secret to protect terrorism investigations.” It was Haddad’s lawyer who arranged the pro bono representation for the Virginia Paintball defendants, including Al-Timimi. As a Detroit Free Press headline explained in 2004, “Unproven weapons claim led to Islamic charity raid in [mid-December] ‘01.” Global Relief Founder (”GRF”) cofounder Rabih Haddad was associated with Bin Laden’s Makhtab al-Khidamat, which was headed by Mohammed Islambouli in Peshawar. Mohammed Islambouli was head of a cell with KSM planning the attacks on the United States. Mohammed Islambouli led the faction of the Egyptian Islamic Group that joined Al Qaeda. KSM came to spearhead the attack using anthrax on the United States. Adnan El-Shukrijumah lived with KSM when he called his mom on September 13, 2001 and told her he was coming to the US. It was KSM’s assistant, al-Hawsawi, who had the anthrax spraydrying documents on his laptop. After the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, El-Shukrijumah hid out with Al-Hawsawi at safe houses in Karachi. Al-Hawsawi was working with Al-Baluchi to get the 911 hijackers into the country. Al-Baluchi would marry MIT-graduate Aafia Siddiqui. An Assistant United States Attorney asserted in passing in open court, without naming her, that Aafia was willing to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. Aafia Siddiqui is associated with Ann Arbor addresses near the mosque where her brother and sister-in-law, an MD, lived. The $5 million BOLO was issued for Aafia at the same time as Adnan El-Shukrijumah.
Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”) and Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”) attorneys in unison explained that the US had supported Makthab al-Khidamat in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s. (BIF head Arnaout, a Syrian, was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded.) Investigation of the two charities was well underway prior to 9/11, although plagued by lengthy unnecessary delays emanating from headquarters. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that on April 21, 1999, upon weekly dumpster diving, FBI “agents had recovered from BIF’s trash a newspaper article on bioterrorism, in which someone had highlighted sections relating to the United States’ lack of preparedness for a biological attack.” As University of Maryland researcher Milton Leitenberg has pointed out, “[u]nfortunately, ten years of widely broadcast public discussion has provided such groups, at least on a general level, with suggestions as to what paths to follow.”
The FBI had a better relationship with the CIA in the investigation of BIF than with GRF. The 9/11 Commission noted that “[t]he Chicago agents believed the CIA wanted to shield certain information from the FBI because of fears of revealing sources and methods in any potential criminal litigation in the United States.” Chicago agents benefited from the New York Office files on the two charities but the New York FBI office personnel were overwhelmed and working their own leads. The Illinois-based investigations remained an intelligence gathering exercise with no thought given to a criminal prosecution to disrupt the financing of Al Qaeda until after 9/11.
In January 2003, the Chairman of Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America, which promoted the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks, was arrested for bouncing a $6,000 check. Al-Timimi’s good friend, Dr. Bassem Khafagi, operated International Media Group out of his home. Before 911, according to the counsel for Falls Church scientist Ali Al-Timimi, Ann Arbor resident Khafagi was asked about Al-Timimi “purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]”
Former United States Attorney Jeff Taylor, of course had reason to know all this, but then after blaming Bruce Ivins in a press conference left to take a high-paying job.
Certainly, as a return on the taxpayer investment in our civil servants, we can at least expect our legislators to share answers to questions sent by those involved in governmental oversight. As taxpayers, we can expect answers to questions relating to Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s casing of targets in 2001. He reportedly spent a week each in New York City, Washington DC and Montreal. He reportedly travelled by train. The public has a right to know whether the FBI has evidence of El-Shukrijumah’s travel. Adnan El-Shukrijumah — that 5 4″, asthmatic momma’s boy who held the garage sales and car washes for his cause — is actively plotting to attack the United States.
Despite the well-intentioned efforts by Senator Leahy, Senator Grassley and others, oversight of the Department of Justice on the issue seems totally ineffective.
For starters, the deletion of large passages from the 911 Commission about the Saudis has obscured analysis given Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father was a Saudi missionary. The desire to avoid embarrassment to friends is no excuse to allow Amerithrax to go unsolved.
There needs to be government accountability.
DXer said
Charity is as charity does. Anthrax mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah was a blind sheik follower who saw no evil.
Like Global Relief Foundation, 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. KSM and Adnan El-Shukrijumah would both fight in Bosnia in 1995. In Croatia, Khalifa 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, Khalifa 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. But it was the son of the blind sheik’s translator’s who was entrusted by a special mission by KSM. KSM wrote the instruction that El-Shukrijumah to travel and gave it to 911 plotter Ramzi Bin-alShibbh to give to El-Shukrijumah.
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. A 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. 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. 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.
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.”
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 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.”
Padilla’s colleague — the one who part of a KSM-led plot — was none other than Miramar resident, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, the son of the blind sheik’s former translator who had been the imam at the al-Farouq mosque in Brooklyn funneling fighters to Bosnia.
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 was detained there in 2000. According to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Daher had contact with Vanguards of Conquest member Jaballah and involvement with EIJ activities. Thus, there appears to have been a coordination between the “al-Kanadi” and Florida networks.
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.”
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.
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. In 1995, he had helped fighters like KSM and anthrax letters suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah get to camps in connection with fighting in Bosnia.
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 with a charity assisting the fighters in Bosnia — a charity with long established WMD aspirations — was of keen interest.
But the Amerithrax mystery was never solved.
The country remains at risk.
The leading suspect for the mailings (in my opinion) is now head of Al Qaeda’s external operations and is planning to the attack the United States.
As George Bush famously said, failure is not an option.
DXer said
The evidence is that the man who is now Al Qaeda’s head of external operations came to the United States at the time of the anthrax mailings.
Did the FBI scrub the records of Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s travel?
Is the FBI going to disclose the information relating to El-Shukrijumah’s travel the week of his phone calls to his mom about his intended travel to GAO?
GAO is engaged in its assessment of the FBI’s conclusion of Amerithrax. If the FBI withholds the information the information was “scrubbed” in the CYA. withholding and obstruction of justice sense of the word.
Who is responsible at the FBI, CIA or NSA for withholding the information of El-Shukrijumah’s travel to the United States?
It was the failure to act on the travel of the two key hijackers that led to 9/11.
It was the failure to act on the travel of El-Shukrijumah that led to the botched Amerithrax investigation.
If we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/05/fbis-mueller-concedes-slipup-on-boston-bombers-travel-164151.html
“When [Tamerlan] returned to the United States there as an automatic message that was pushed out that also came to the task force in that way and there was no additional action taken on that,” the FBI director said. “It may well have been because of the numerous inquiries that we handle….That particular Joint Terrorism Task Force in any given year handles hundreds of similar assessments and leads and the like.”
Mueller indicated changes are being made to make sure such notices are followed up on.
“To the extent that we come back and look and scrub and see what we could have done betters this is an area where we are looking at it and scrubbing it and doing better,” the FBI director said. “In this particular incident, handling the TECS notice is an area that we are going to do better on the next time.”
DXer said
Relatedly, who “scrubbed” the information — and failed to disclose for a decade — that Jdey was detained at the same time as Moussaoui but then released?
The FBI and CIA failed to disclose that Jdey was detained ( with biology textbooks) at the same time as Zacarias Moussaoui and then released.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/the-fbi-and-cia-failed-to-disclose-that-jdey-was-detained-with-biology-textbooks-at-the-same-time-as-zacarias-moussaoui-and-then-released/
The dropping of the ball relating to Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi’s entering the country after the meeting at the KL condo of the anthrax lab tech was closely related to the detention and release of Jdey at the time of Moussaoui’s arrest.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 7, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/the-dropping-of-the-ball-relating-to-al-mihdhar-and-al-hazmis-entering-the-country-after-the-meeting-at-the-kl-condo-of-the-anthrax-lab-tech-was-closely-related-to-the-detention-and-release-of-jde/
Atta Was Coordinating With Jdey’s Associate Al-Hazmi, First In Fort Lee, NJ In Late August 2001 And Then In Laurel, MD in September 2001 ; Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi Had Been At The Planning Meeting At Yazid Sufaat’s Kuala Lumpur Condo With Anthrax Planner Hambali And Anthrax Lab Director Yazid Sufaat And Yet The FBI Never Told The Public That Jdey Had Been Detained Along With Moussaoui In August 2001 (With Biology Textbooks) And Then Released
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/atta-was-coordinating-with-jdeys-associate-al-hazmi-first-in-fort-lee-nj-in-late-august-2001-and-then-in-laurel-md-in-september-2001-jdeys-associate-nawaf-al-hazmi-had-been-at-the-planning/
DXer said
Adnan El-Shukrijumah, the week before the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, told his mom that he was coming to the US notwithstanding her concern he would be arrested in the fallout relating to 9/11.
Adnan was staying with KSM at the time in Kandahar where the anthrax lab was located. (Adnan was already known to be associated with Mohammed Atta by an FBI informant).
Adnah El-Shukrijumah is now Al Qaeda’s external operations chief. The former Al Qaeda anthrax lab director in Kandahar with Adnan has told me that the plan was on the way.
Yazid had been a member of a long abandoned secret Malaysian biological weapons program.
It is important Yazid cooperate lest Malaysia be blamed for a mass anthrax attack. Yazid’s court date has reportedly been reset for Monday.
Adnan was in Kandahar with Yazid Sufaat during the summer and early Fall 2001 — even at KSM’s residence, as was Yazid.
I will start linking to the leaked classified reports. The entire purpose of my blogging was to avoid a failure in analysis resulting in the compartmentalization of information. The United States government apparently did not learn the lessons of 911 adequately. Not only compartmentalization, but the intentional withholding and destruction of documents has characterized review of the Amerithrax investigation, to include the FBI’s inexcusable delay in producing documents to GAO.
Yazid Sufaat knows Adnan — just as he knew Moussaoui. Yazid saw Moussaoui off at the airport, giving him a letter of introduction and cash.
A Congressional subcommittee should ask for a declassified timeline of Adnan’s travels in the United States based on credit card records and banking records for the year 2001 — which is over a decade ago.
In scoping targets for KSM in 2001, Adnan reportedly travelled by train.
From dishwasher to al Qaeda leadership: Who is Adnan Shukrijumah?
From Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt, CNN
August 6, 2010 8:12 a.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/06/terror.qaeda.leader/index.html
The FBI says it now has a more detailed profile of Shukrijumah in part, from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Just before 9/11, the FBI says Shukrijumah crossed the U.S. by train. Later, he scoped out the Panama Canal as a target.
He went to Trinidad, London and — by June 2001 — Afghanistan.
On 9/11, his mother says he called home for the last time.
“He called me and he said, ‘Did you hear what happened with so and so and so?’ He said, ‘They’re putting it on the Muslims. I said, ‘yes.'”
She says she told him not to come home.
“And he was arguing with me. He said, ‘No, I didn’t do nothing. I will come, don’t worry about this,'” she recalls.
After that, she says, she never heard from him again.
On 9/11, his mother says he called home for the last time.
“He called me and he said, ‘Did you hear what happened with so and so and so?’ He said, ‘They’re putting it on the Muslims. I said, ‘yes.'”
She says she told him not to come home.
“And he was arguing with me. He said, ‘No, I didn’t do nothing. I will come, don’t worry about this,'” she recalls.
After that, she says, she never heard from him again.
DXer said
1. Here is KSM’s Detainee Assessment.
Click to access us9ku-010024dp.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
Detainee said Jafar al-Tayar was given a more general tasking in 2001of spotting and conducting surveillanceof potential targets across the US.
For details, GAO should see TD 341/44238-04
Click to access us9pk-001460dp.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
2. The SECRET NOFORN 20331030 detainee assessment of Qahtani, the intended “20th hijacker” who unsuccessfully tried to get into the country in early August 2001, says he saw Padilla and Adnan El-Shukrijumah at KSM’s house on September 13, 2001.
Click to access UBLdocument3.pdf
“Detainee stated he visited KU-10024’s house approximately 13 September 2001, during which he saw suspected “dirty-bomb” plotters Jose Padilla, ISN US0US-010008DP (US-10008); and Adnan al-Shukrijumma aka (Jafar al-Tayyar).26″
For details, GAO should see IIR6034094403,IIR6034084403
3. Now according to CNN and other media accounts, we know Adnan had one or two calls with his mom and he told her he was coming and she argued with him — telling him to stay away.
In a letter on a laptop from someone who had access to operational communications, KSM instructed Razmi bin al-Shibh to tell El-Shukrijumah to be ready to travel. When asked about the letter, KSM was surprised the letter still existed because protocol called for destruction of such evidence. That letter should be disclosed — its date should be made public.
The May 30, 2008 SECRET FORN 20330530 Bashir Nasir Ali al-Marwalah states:
In another letter recovered during the Karachi raids, KU-10024 instructed YM-10013 to tell an individual named Jafar al-Tayyar to be ready for travel. When KU-10024 was confronted with the letter during a custodial interview, he was surprised that the letter existed, as detainee was supposed to destroy important documents and correspondence.38 (Analyst Note: KU-10024’s comment indicates that detainee had access to operation planning and coordination through his handling of the correspondence. It is probable that Jafar al-Tayyar (Tayyar is Arabic for pilot) was involved in an operational planning utilizing the data from the hard drives recovered during the safe house raid.)
Click to access us9ym-000837dp.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
DXer said
Now the person closely associated with Adnan El-Shukrijumah was Al-Hawsawi, KSM’s assistant with the anthrax spraydrying documents on his computer when it was seized. Al-Hawsawi worked for the media organization “Clouds.”
Adnan was also closely associated with Atta, whose code name was “Jenny.”
The letter, according to CDC, containing the anthrax was regarding a wedding — Al Qaeda code for attack — involving Jenny. The stationery contained pink and blue clouds.
None of this matters unless you have loved ones in Washington, DC or New York City or unless you care about what happens to this country.
According to the detainee assessment, Adnan hid out with Al-Hawsawi, the fellow who helped the hijackers get into the country, in Karachi in the Spring of 2002.
Al-Hawsawi was the fellow who Atta wired the remaining money the same day he and the other were filmed at KINKOS doing the cutting and copying.
GAO should obtain the reports on the toner and paper being withheld by the FBI. They exclude the photocopiers at USAMRIID available to Dr. Ivins but include the photocopiers at KINKOS.
The GAO should also obtain a copy of the film of them at KINKOS.
Click to access us9sa-010011dp.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
•
Apr 27, 2011 – o (S/A{F) Detainee is closely affiliated with Muhammad Essagh Sher Muhammad. Khan aka (Jafar al-Tayar). (Analyst Note: Jafar al-Tayar is …
•
(S/A{F) Detainee is closely affiliated with Muhammad Essagh Sher Muhammad
Khan aka (Jafar al-Tayar). (Analyst Note: Jafar al-Tayar is currently on the FBI’s most
wanted list.)
o (S/A{F) PK-1461 claimed detainee was a student of Jafar al-Tayar.a6
o (S/A{F) Detainee identified a photo of Adnan el-Shukri Jumah as resembling
Tayar when detainee last saw him in Apil 2002. Detainee and Tayar had also shared
two Karachi safe houses from February until April 2002.47
DXer said
Atta’s Wire Transfer Of Funds On 9/8/2001 — A Time The FBI Reports He Was Filmed Copying At A Laurel, MD KINKOS — Was To KSMs Assistant Mustafa Ahmad (Hawsawi) Whose Laptop, When Seized, Contained Scanned Notes Detailing Drying Liquid Slurry Of Anthrax To Create Dried Powder Suitable For Dispersal
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/attas-wire-transfer-of-funds-on-982001-a-time-the-fbi-reports-he-was-filmed-copying-at-a-laurel-md-kinkos-was-to-ksms-assistant-mustafa-ahmad-hawsawi-whose-laptop-when-seized-contain/
The FBI Should Disclose The Video Surveillance Of Atta Xeroxing, Cutting and Pasting At KINKOS in Laurel, MD on September 7, 2001
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 24, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-fbi-should-disclose-the-video-surveillance-of-atta-xeroxing-cutting-and-pasting-at-kinkos-in-laurel-md-on-september-7-2001/
GAO: Doesn’t the FBI’s photocopy toner report EXCLUDE the make and model of photocopier used at USAMRIID but INCLUDE the make and model used in the Maryland KINKOS so often used by the hijackers in August and September 2001?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 24, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/gao-doesnt-the-fbis-photocopy-toner-report-exclude-the-make-and-model-of-photocopier-used-at-usamriid-but-include-the-make-and-model-used-in-the-maryland-kinkos-so-often-used-by-the-hijackers/
DXer said
NBC Miami reported the exchanges from September 2001 as follows:
“He called me two, three days after [911] and said, ‘Did you see what happened in New York?'” Adbu Ahmed said. “I told him, ‘Don’t come back. They are putting what happened on Muslims.'”
She told the paper he called once more a week later and she repeated her warning.”
A Congressional Committee should ask the FBI if it knows from where he made the second call. Wasn’t it made from the United States? Could NSA work backwards and figure out from where it was made?
DXer said
The intended 20th hijacker Qahtani, according to a detainee assessment, says Adnan was at KSM’s house on September 13, 2001. He called her that day and then a few days later.
The week after 9/11, Adnan and his mother argued whether he would come to the US. He wanted to — she urged him not to come.
The week after 911 would not be the time someone who was operational for Al Qaeda and an associate of Atta would be planning to come to the US unless he was on a mission.
KSM wrote an instruction to Jdey to prepare to travel . I’ve suggested the date of that instruction should be disclosed to publicly the date for public consumption. The information should be declassified.
Failure to do so merely serves to undermine, not further, justice and national security
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
Private Message to Yazid Sufaat for his lawyers to relay:
Yazid, I’ve named Adnan El-Shukrijumah and addressed the issue of acquisition of virulent Ames to take the pressure off you so that you can rejoin a family that needs you. Your silence would gain you nothing but lots of time in a 7 x 10 foot cell. The only thing that is needed for you to officially corroborate is the genetic strain. The tests (see David Relman’s article in SCIENCE) already point to it being Ames — notwithstanding your compliance with Dr. Ayman’s protocol for decontamination. You needn’t even have to clarify matters as to the acquisition of Ames.
“He called a few days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and his mother told him not to come home because Muslims were going to become targets.”
Fla. mom says son is not a high-ranking al Qaeda terrorist, but a kind boy
• August 7, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hk2mj8uXrd830DC0bebHp1lzdJXg
Rising Al-Qaeda leader spent youth in US: report
(AFP) – Aug 6, 2010
Investigators now believe he arrived in Afghanistan by June 2001, and called his mother shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
His mother, who declined to be identified, told CNN they argued about whether it was safe for him to return to the United States after the attacks, and she has not heard from him since.
…
“He called me two, three days after [the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center] [this would be on or about September 13] and said, ‘Did you see what happened in New York?’ ” Adbu Ahmed said. “I told him, ‘Don’t come back. They are putting what happened on Muslims.'”
El Shukrijumah phoned again about a week later and his mother again told him, “don’t come,” she said.
“He never called again. I don’t know where he is,” she said Friday.
She said the FBI doesn’t believe her.
DXer said
In “Enemies Among Us, dated June 7, 2004, experienced Newsweek national security journalists Thomas, Klaidman and Iskioff reported:
,”For the time being, the bureau does not even know if they are in the United States. The scariest-sounding is Adnan El Shukrijumah, a Saudi also known as “Jafar the Pilot.” The slight, asthmatic 28-year-old son of an Islamic
“Frantically trying to find Shukrijumah after 9/11, the FBI developed a chilling timeline from credit-card and bank receipts showing that the suspected Qaeda operative had been traveling across the United States visiting landmarks (he also made a trip to the Panama Canal), presumably casing them as targets. Shukrijumah vanished by late 2002 and has apparently shed his identity. His father had been an interpreter for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted in 1996 of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks. (Shukrijumah’s father had received regular stipends from the Saudi Embassy in Washington; embarrassed Saudi officials told the FBI that the money was part of a larger program to finance the spread of Islam in the United States.)”
Thus, if the FBI disclosed what the credit card and bank records showed about this travels in the US in 2001, we might better able to judge whether he has an alibi.
Dr. Ivins , in contrast, is known to have an alibi — ranging from the records relating to his group therapy sessions (which the FBI had not obtained by the time of their early August 2008 press conference), to his access card records at work, to his computer records and the family 302s being withheld from production by the FBI.
Rather than evidence of travel, the FBI relies on the same sort of speculation about possibilities that characterized the FBI’s testimony against the Elvis impersonator.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Chasing Islambouli’s Ghost: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
For many years — for a decade — I have argued that it is important to understand who Mohammed Islambouli knew and consider his historical connection to the al-Farook mosque in Brooklyn, New York. Islambouli was a former cell member of KSM who was planning attacks on the US. In particular, it is important for GAO to obtain the written document by KSM instructing Adnan El-Shukrijumah to prepare to travel. Anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat also lived with KSM for six days that fall — reporting on his work with virulent anthrax. The scientific tests point to the strain being used as Ames, the strain used in the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings.
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.
When dealing with Ayman Zawahiri and this plan to use anthrax against US targets, it never pays to underestimate the importance to him in the 1990s of the terrorist infrastructure in Brooklyn led by Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father, Gulshair El-Shukrijumah. 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 Farook 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 father of Adnan El-Shukrijuman was Gulshair El-Shukrijumah, a Saudi missionary. In 1985, Gulshair El-Shukrijumah was transferred to Brooklyn to lead a mosque. In 1986, al Qaeda set up shop at the Al-Farook (Al-Farooq) mosque in Brooklyn, sporting the name Alkifah Refugee Center.
Following the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, law enforcement turned its attention to Alkifah. Several men related to the center were alleged to have been involved in the bombing. One was Clement Rodney Hampton-El (“Dr. Rashid”), an artillery and bomb-making expert and an experienced mujahadin fighter in Afghanistan.
Hampton-El’s key chief/character witness was Gulshair El Shukrijumah.
Gulshair defended Hampton-El stating that he believed Hampton-El had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims” and that Hampton-El “was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean he was involved in any acts of terror…”
On June 24, 1993, Hampton-El was arrested, along with eight others, and in 1996, he was convicted for plotting to blow up the United Nations, the FBI headquarters, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.
Before Hampton-El’s and his fellow terrorists’ convictions, Gulshair skipped town to soak up rays with his family in sunny South Florida… but not before his son had ample time in New York to make his own radical connections to set his present course.
Upon moving to Miramar, Florida, Gulshair became head of the Masjid al Hijrah (established by the Caribbean American Islamic Association), located next door to his home.
The El-Shukrijumahs raised money for the Global Relief Foundation, a charity that was placed on the UN terror list and was closed down by the United States government for its involvement in funding terrorist organizations. Adnan the son took computer-engineering classes at Broward Community College and used his newfound skills to create a website for his father language course called MasterArabic. In the Wayback Machine online, there are saves from of the website from 1999-2001. It was last edited in early May 2001.
One of the persons he gave Arabic classes to was terrorist Mandhai, later convicted of plotting to blow up a National Guard armory, South Florida electrical substations, Jewish-owned businesses and community centers, and Mount Rushmore. Mandhai reportedly suggested Adnan’s relationship with Atta and the 9/11 attacks.
The guestbook on Gulshair’s website was signed by Bilal Philips, someone that has been named as a possible co-conspirator to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He wrote, “Mabrook on the website and special salaams to your father [Gulshair] and prayers for his good spiritual and physical health. He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend…” Bilal Philips was the mentor of Ali Al-Timimi, who came to share a suite with the leading DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers.
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. According to the intended 20th hijacker Qahtani, El-Shukrijumah was living with KSM on September 13, 2001 and according to documents, there was a letter by KSM instructing El-Shukrijumah to prepare to travel.
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. Dahab trained to use ultralights in Afghanistan as part of a plot to free detained senior leaders from an Egyptian prison.
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.
I told the CIA that in a lengthy memo in December 2001. Amerithrax represents the greatest failure in intelligence analysis in the history of the United States.
I didn’t do my graphics during the 2010-2012 period. A federal undercover did.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
Inside the beltway, there’s a saying: It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
DXer said
The date of the mailing to Senator Daschle and Leahy was the date of Anwar Sadat’s assassination. Sadat’s assassin was the brother of Mohammed Islambouli, the fellow who had been in the cell with KSM planning attacks on the uS. Islambouli is a longtime associate of Zawahiri in planning attacks on the US.
S E C R E T / / NOFORN / / 20330924
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE HEADQUARTERS, JOINT TASK FORCE GUANTANAMO U.S. NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA APO AE 09360
JTF-GTMO-CDR
24 September 2008
MEMORANDUM FOR Commander, United States Southern Command, 3511 NW 9lst Avenue, Miami, FL 33172
SUBJECT: Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD) for Guantanamo Detainee, ISN US9YM-001463DP (S)
JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment
Click to access 001463dp.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf
␣ (S//NF) Detainee assisted senior al-Qaida member and deputy to UBL, Aiman al-Zawahiri in leaving Yemen. In 1997, detainee met Zawahiri in Sanaa, Yemen, at the house of Ahmad Maqalih. Also accompanying Zawahiri was Mohammed Showki Islambouli along with two unknown Egyptians. The group arrived from Sadah and was hosted by al-Qaida sympathizer and Sadah region tribal leader Qaed Shaweet. Detainee advised that he was tasked to facilitate the group’s travel from Yemen to Sudan. Detainee and a PSO convoy escorted Zawahiri and Islambouli to the airport. 48
(Analyst Note: Islambouli was the Political leader of al-Gamaat al-Islamiyya [IG] and is the brother of Khalid Islambouli, who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.)
DXer said
KSM’s work with Islambouli in a cell regarding planning attacks on the US — such as WTC 1993 dates to his days in Qatar where KSM worked as as an engineer for Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water.
Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh … – Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=1101475706
Richard Miniter – 2011 – Political Science
By now the FBI knew who KSM was: one of the financiers of the 1993 World Trade …Qatar’s government could not publicly support an arrest without alienating … It was pure vinegar and water when it came to the FBI special agent and me, with …
The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 … – Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=0316202738
Terry McDermott, Josh Meyer – 2012 – Political Science
… 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Terry McDermott, Josh Meyer … an engineering position in the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water Yemeni …
Mohammed Shawqui Islambouli – History Commons
http://www.historycommons.org › Entities
KSM was leading an al-Qaeda cell in Qatar together with Mohammed ShawquiIslambouli, the brother of the Egyptian who had killed Anwar Sadat. They also …
DXer said
I have a friend who used to serve as a consular officer in Embassy Ankara. He has always considered the handwriting in the anthrax letters to bear an uncanny resemblance to the kind of writing he saw then. Visa applicants from countries that use the Arabic alphabet would print in English almost as if they were writing a kind of Kufic script, as in the letters. (Atta spent years in Saudi Arabia and Atta grew up in Egypt). He views the handwriting in the anthrax letters as typical of the way that such people print in the unfamiliar Roman alphabet. He has always considered the blithe assumption that the Mailer was domestic to be made by people who were ignorant of this aspect of the letters. The handwriting is not probative, but it is highly consistent with a Arabic script writer.