* GAO: Is Tariq, the suspected al Qaida anthrax operative residing in New York identified by Saifallah Paracha, the same “Tariq” as associated with a notation for the anthrax vaccine and the same as the businessman in the pharmaceutical industry? Or do these references refer to more than one Tariq.
Posted by DXer on May 31, 2013
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
Batarfi was told by Shawqi who was told by Hadrami that Tahar Butt Kashmeri (which I understand to be an alias) either was the anthrax mailer or knew the anthrax mailer’s identity. Was Najmut Tariq the fellow known as Tahar Butt Kashmeri — instead of, say, Al-Hindi or Iyman Faris, as I had previously brainstormed? My vote now is that Najmut Tariq is Tahar Butt Kashmeri. I will try to find his email so as to ask him about all this.
I’ve previously argued that Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the anthrax mailer. (I wouldn’t have spent the last decade making the points about Adnan if he did not represent a threat of a mass attack — in dramatic contrast to these ridiculous castor bean pounders, to borrow Dick Destiny’s wonderful phrase.)
And while I still favor Adnan El-Shukrijumah as the mailer, these two main operational people in Pakistan point to the other fellow, Tahar Butt Kashmeri, as also complicit in the mailings, if not the mailer himself.
To highlight some points previously urged about El-Shukrijumah:
1) on 9/13/2001, when Adnan El-Shukrijumah was living with KSM. On or about that day (some say the date was 911 instead), he called his mom and told her he was coming to the US (and insisted over her protests). Thus, he was on a mission.
2) He met with KSM and Yazid Sufaat in the summer of 2001;
3) My former Facebook Friend Yazid Sufaat, the anthrax Al Qaeda lab director, does not deny Al Qaeda’s anthrax mailings. (He invokes the Fifth).
4) for 6 days that Fall, Yazid Sufaat also lived with KSM and explained his anthrax work to KSM; he explained that he and his assistants were vaccinated and thus protected (he would have no reason to be vaccinated unless working with virulent anthrax. Thus, the bald assertion that Al Qaeda did not obtain virulent anthrax has been contradicted by KSM’s statements in interrogation since March 2003 ;
5) Adnan El-Shukrijumah was connected to the other bio planners — in the Spring of 2002, Adnan even lived with Al-Hawsawi, who had the anthrax spraydrying documents, and
6) although this is classified and you’ll want to avert your eyes if you don’t have clearance, there was an anthrax lab in Karachi. (So when you hear Yazid and Hambali were in Karachi for 3 weeks buying equipment, consider the possibility that Yazid was not one to just sit and wait and let only dust grow in his petri dish.)
But having said all that — and having urged that GAO obtain El-Shukrijumah’s handwriting exemplars — I would be remiss not to also urge that handwriting exemplars also be obtained Najmut Tariq. What do the former employees of his stores say? What about the regular customers who knew Najmut? Or the people from the mosque where Najmut and Saifallah Paracha worshiped.
I realize there are a lot of unfamiliar names. But the resolution of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings is well worth getting right. (The ricin mailings don’t amount to a hill of beans IMO — but anyone convicted of sending those found responsible for those mailings should get stiff sentences nonetheless.)
DXer said
In trying to figure out the identity of “Tahar Butt Kashmeri,” reporters could start by interview the pharmacy owner from New York City said to be a suspected anthrax operative of some sort. His brother has his telephone number.