http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/the-fbis-answers-to-questions-posed-by-members-of-the-house-judiciary-committee-in-september-2008-as-to-certain-aspects-of-the-fbi’s-investigation-of-the-2001-anthrax-attacks-are-insulting/

LEW WEINSTEIN

If you can’t get McDonalds to pick up its litter, then don’t expect to have people connect the dots with respect to an existential threat.

If everyone took a picture of the litter outside their local franchise, such fast food corporations might get the job done and stop dragging down their neighborhood.

The grant award was titled “‘Nanomolecule Based Agents for Pathogen Counter Measure.” The original budget 3/1997 - 2/28/2002 was $10,890,561.

Here is a 1996 report on a study done at Edgewood involving irradiated virulent Ames provided by John Ezzell that was used in a soil suspension.

http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/62/9/3474.pdf

This article discusses Ames supplied by the Battelle-managed Dugway, subtilus, and use of sheep blood agar.

Bacillus Spore Inactivation Methods Affect Detection Assays, Received 12 January 2001/Accepted 25 May 2001
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/67/8/3665

Did Battelle have virulent Ames across I-95?

Edgewood tested nanoemulsion biocidal agents at Edgewood during this time period, according to a national nanobiotechnology initiative report issued June 2002.

Scientists directly involved in the investigation of the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 will present their analyses and conclusions. Innovative science was a very important part of the investigation but has been widely misrepresented in the popular press because of secrecy requirements imposed by the FBI. This secrecy veil is now being lifted by allowing the investigative scientists to present their finds.

Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University will set the crime scene, the events, letters and the victims in the context of their work. Much of Dr. Keim’s talk will be about the Ames strain, which was the type of B. anthracis found in the letters. This will include a global analysis of B. anthracis strains. Whole genome sequencing of the Ames genome led to the discovery of DNA polymorphisms that were unique to the Ames laboratory strain. Highly sensitive and specific assays were developed to identify the strain material. These were subjected to extensive validation to insure that the investigators knew their strengths and weaknesses.

Joe Michael from the Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque will be presenting spore analysis – in particular he will discuss the electromagnetic analysis for silicon in the spores. His analysis explains where the silicon is found within the letter spores and that its origin was probably part of the culture and growth process.

Jacques Ravel of University of Maryland School of Medicine/Institute for Genome Sciences, Baltimore, Maryland, will present the discovery of colony morphology mutants in the letter material and how these morphs were isolated and then whole genome sequenced. He and his team used comparative genomics to identify the genetic basis of the morphological differences. Finally, he will present their assay development, validation and implementation.

Tom Reynolds of Commonwealth Biotechnologies, Inc., Richmond, Virginia, will talk about his team’s development of two assays to detect the genetic signatures associated with the morphological variants from the letters. This will include a description of the forensic analysis standards that were applied to the work. He will include results from his team’s analysis of the evidentiary material.

Jason Bannan of the Federal Bureau of Investigation coordinated the scientific investigation of multiple laboratories and handled the evidence in the case. He will discuss integrating the science from multiple labs and how it tied the anthrax letters to a particular source flask. He will include a discussion of the federal legal standards for new scientific evidence and how the scientific teams were addressing this requirement.

“Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs,” New York Times, February 4, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/05forensics.html?ref=us

http://www.radiodujour.com/people/bamford_james/

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, the very first clue to the 9/11 attack occurred in late December 1999, when the NSA picked up a message from a house in Yemen. The house was being used by bin Laden as his operations center. He didn’t have much capability to operate out of Afghanistan, so all the phone calls, all the messages, email and all that would go to this house in the city of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. NSA had been eavesdropping on that house for a number of years, and in late December 1999, it picked up a particular intercept, picked up a particular phone conversation.

And the phone conversation said that-send Khalid and Nawaf to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting. So, NSA picked that up, and they-first of all, they figured that Nawaf and Khalid had to be very important potential terrorists, because they were being assigned by bin Laden out in Afghanistan to go to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. That seemed like a terrorist summit meeting. NSA gave that information to the other intelligence agencies, and the CIA set up a surveillance in Kuala Lumpur, and then they lost them in Kuala Lumpur.

After they lost them, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi went to California. They got in without any problem. NSA, even though they had the last name of Nawaf al-Hazmi in their computers, they never bothered to check, so they both got in without any problem into the United States. They went down, and they lived in San Diego. And they began calling back and forth to that house in Yemen, the house that NSA was eavesdropping on. So NSA is picking up their conversations to the house in Yemen, translating them and then sending out the conversations to-or summaries of the conversations to the CIA without ever telling anybody that they were in the United States. And they were in the United States for almost two years. Al-Hazmi was there from January 2000 to September 2001. And again, they’re communicating back and forth; NSA is picking up but not telling anybody that they’re in the US.”

The intelligence failure that led to 9/11 is being repeated with Amerithrax. It helps to think of Hani and Nawaf as on “the Straight Path” — and it is critical to connect the Kuala Lumpur, San Diego, Falls Church and New Jersey dots.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/anthraxandalqaed.html#HaniandNawaf

Nawaf Hazmi and a colleague had arrived the previous year in San Diego, where they had been unsuccessful in learning to fly. Upon arriving in San Diego in 2000, he met with Imam named Aulaqi — perhaps even the same day as arriving. The 911 Commission Report said that Nawaf and his fellow hijacker and “developed a close relationship with him.” Aulaqi in early 2001 moved to Falls Church. Several months later, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who by then had joined them in San Diego in December 2000, also moved to Falls Church, Virginia.

On September 10, 2001, Hanjour, al-Mihdhar, and al-Hazmi checked into the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia where Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official — who later was appointed to head the mosques at Mecca and Medina — was staying. He was the uncle of Sami al-Hussayen, the webmaster of the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”). The uncle had met with officials from Ann Arbor, Michigan charity, IANA, for which his nephew raised funds and was the webmaster. Microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi — the Falls Church iman who was 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist in the world and former deputy USAMRIID commander — was the IANA’s leading speaker. NSA intercepts allegedly show, and his counsel admits, he was coordinating with the 911 imam and Bin Laden’s sheik. IANA had a spin-off and dba in Syracuse, NY. KSM was captured (two weeks earlier than publicly reported). The government then moved forward in the US. The day and minute Al-Timimi’s townhouse was searched, 100 agents came to Syracuse and simultaneously interviewed 150 people.

Al-Timimi had received a letter of commendation from the White House for his work. He had a high security clearance while at SRA in 1999 for doing mathematical support work for the Navy. For 2 months in 1996, his defense committee said, he had been the assistant to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card (who would have been at the automobile association at the time). As White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Card sought to influence the 911 Commission’s investigation.

If we do not understand history, we are bound to repeat it.

http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com

“We have observed that nasal immunization is particularly effective at inducing mucosal immunity in the lung. Nasal immunization with PA can be facilitated by the encapsulation of the protein in polymeric microspheres which … protects the protein from degradation ….”

A scientist two doors down from Al-Timimi, in a thesis advised by Dr. Alibek, explains that the spores may have been microencapsulated for this purpose. (According to one controlled study done at a military lab, when silanizing solution is used the same silicon spike results as found in the Daschle anthrax without any silica particles to be seen).

Les Baillie of Porton Down gave a presentation titled, “Bacillus anthracis: a bug with attitude!” He argued that anthrax was a likely pathogen to be used by terrorists. As described at the time by Phil Hanna of University of Michigan Medical School on the sfam webpage, Baillie “presented a comprehensive overview of this model pathogen, describing its unique biology and specialized molecular mechanisms for pathogenesis and high virulence. He went on to describe modern approaches to exploit new bioinformatics for the development of potential medical counter measures to this deadly pathogen.” Bioinformatics was the field that Ali Al-Timimi, who had a security clearance for some government work and who had done work for the Navy, would enter by 2000 at George Mason University in Virginia. Despite the cold and the sharks, amidst all the camaraderie and bonhomie no one suspected that despite the best efforts, a predator was on board — on a coldly calculated mission to obtain a pathogenic anthrax strain. The conference organizer Peter Turnbull had received funding from the British defense ministry but not from public health authorities, who thought anthrax too obscure to warrant the funding. By 2001, sponsorship of the conference was assumed by USAMRIID.

According to the Pakistan press, a scientist named Rauf Ahmad was picked up in December 2001 by the CIA in Karachi. The most recent of the correspondence reportedly dates back to the summer and fall of 1999. Even if Rauf Ahmad cooperated with the CIA, he apparently could only confirm the depth of Zawahiri’s interest in weaponizing anthrax and provided no “smoking gun” concerning the identity of those responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall 2001. His only connection with SFAM was a member of the society — he was not an employee. The Pakistan ISI, according to the Washington Post article in October 2006, stopped cooperating in regard to Rauf Ahmad in 2003.

At http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com, I have uploaded scanned copies of some 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces describing the author’s visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where 1000s of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab; and the need for vaccination and containment. He explained that the lab director noted that he would have to take a short training course at the BL-3 lab for handling dangerous pathogens. Rauf Ahmad noted that his employer’s offer of pay during a 12-month post-doc sabbatical was wholly inadequate and was looking to Ayman to make up the difference. After an unacceptably low pay for the first 8 months, there would be no pay for last 4 months and there would be a service break. He had noted that he only had a limited time to avail himself of the post-doc sabbatical. I also have uploaded a handwritten copy of earlier correspondence from before the lab visit described in the typed memo. The Defense Intelligence Agency provided the documents to me, along with 100+ pages more, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (”FOIA”). 90 of the 100 pages are the photocopies of journal articles and disease handbook excerpts.

The emails provided this week by USAMRIID under FOIA about the difficulties in planning the Fourth International Conference on Anthrax, held at Annapolis in June 2001, come after the FBI has already thrown USAMRIID Bruce Ivins overboard.

“In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them,” Tice told Olbermann. “What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year — and it made no sense. … I started to investigate that. That’s about the time when they came after me to fire me.”

When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, “An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists.”

“To what purpose?” Olbermann asked. “I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every email sent by all the reporters at the New York Times? Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York?”

NSA wiretapping is being briefed currently in the case of the other “anthrax weapons suspect.”

282 UNDER SEAL Government’s Motion for Treatment of Certain Defense Filings as Classified, filed by USA as to Ali Al-Timimi (original w/ Court Security). (tbul, ) (Entered: 01/13/2009)

281 ORDERED that pleadings 277 and 278 be and are removed from the public file and placed under seal with the Court Security Officer until further order of the Court; and, it is further ORDERED that [MSNBC legal commentator Turley] defense counsel scrupulously adhere to the Protective Order of December 3, 2004, as further violations of the Order could result in counsel losing his clearance; and, it is further ORDERED that any half sheets prepared for the public file be presented to the Court Security Officer before being tendered to the Clerk’s Office to avoid any inadvertent disclosure of classified information as to Ali Al-Timimi. Signed by District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema on 12/23/2008. (jlan, ) (Entered: 12/24/2008)

271 ORDER: For the reasons stated in open court, the defendant’s Motion to Compel Discovery 269 is GRANTED IN PART; and it is hereby ORDERED that the government provide a response to the five specific inquiries in the accompanying memorandum 270 . The response must include what, if any, relevant information was generated by, or is in the possession of, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency; and it is further ORDERED that the defendant’s Sealed Motion to De-Classify and Unseal the Government’s Ex-Parte Filing and the Instant Motion 264 and his Motion to Compel Discovery of Undisclosed Surveillance Evidence 268 be and are DENIED; ***”

Not only was the anthrax weapons suspect the White House Chief of Staff’s former assistant (for 2 months in 1996), had received a letter of commendation from the White House, and had been granted a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy, but an NSA employee alleges that the Administration targeted communications of US media, including strictly domestic communications.

To. Congressman Bob Goodlatte
From: Andrew David Taylor, 789 North Augusta Avenue, Waynesboro, Va 22980, 540-942-2190

I would like to be compensated by the United States Federal Government for their failure and liability to carefully screen the national borders from terrorists. The United States Government is supposed to protect its borders from foreign agents. The United States Government did compensate the loved ones of the victims of the 911 tragedy but the scope of the document that compensated them didn’t take into account those who got in the way of the terrorists as the terrorists were preparing to take the four airplanes. I would like to be compensated for the loss of my mother Mary Ann Taylor, my friend Gene E. Blair and the attempt on my life as well. My residence at the time at 4501 West Ox Road had to be destroyed because of the anthrax that was used. Can you initiate a bill in the House of Representatives to see that I am compensated for the losses? Below is a witness statement that I have constructed that recounts the deadly events of 1992 that greatly influenced me. I have searched for an attorney or a lawyer that will address the facts and take a deposition.

Witness Statement

I don’t work for the Federal Government. I’m a private citizen. I’ve never been trained by the military. I was in the employ of Mounir Murad in 1992 at a place that is known as The Publisher’s Service Bureau. About 2 or 3 Islamic Jihadists (Al Qaeda) came in to our offices and printed out 50 copies of an airport security map that was designed in a desktop publishing package called Illustrator. The terrorists made a mistake and tried to spool the (native) Postscript® file from their removable Syquest drive and ran out of disk space on that drive. They had to move the Illustrator file over to the native (resident) Macintosh IIci hard disk drive. As they left they tried to kill me with anthrax and they left a computer virus on the Mac IIci. My employer Mr. Murad is very knowledgeable about computers and he saw the virus eating away the bits and pixels on the screen so he automatically reached for his Norton Utilities and killed the computer virus. He was able to extract the file that was thrown in the trashcan of the Mac’s Graphical User Interface and the file revealed the map of airport security. He imaged a map on a Canon 500 copier and then noticed a terrible smell. The Jihadists had not only thrown anthrax in my face, but they had laced the rollers of his Canon 500 with anthrax. Mr. Murad was very disappointed but he said that the copier was insured and that it would be easily replaced. I noticed that he was still under their psychological control and I asked him a few technical questions to wake him up and then I asked him if he was ok. He stated to me that he did what he did in protecting them while they were in his establishment since they had ‘drafted him’ to be their cousin. He said he knew that they were Jihadists because they were reading the book (The Koran) wrong and they were going to kill the people in New York at the World Trade Center. I went home, but I took the issue seriously and called for help from the police. I called 911. The call was eventually transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency only because I had noticed that I could not understand the conversation between Mr. Murad and the Jihadists clients and it was derived that they were foreign agents on a mission to bring down the World Trade Center. I became very sick from the anthrax and I couldn’t go back to work for a few days. My roommate Gene Elwood Blair became sick as well and died. It was a very slow process. We had to unplug the phone from the wall because we were getting really strange calls from the mental health wards that are located in Fairfax, Virginia. When I tried to report the death of Reverend Doctor Gene Elwood Blair the 911 operator kept transferring my calls to the mental health wards suicide hotlines until I finally had to state to the 911 operated that she MUST NOT transfer me to them again that in fact I had a dead body to report and that it was a murder (homicide) and that the police need to take a statement about the death. The authorities sent someone from the Virginia Department of Health that is behind the Commonwealth of Virginia Police Station on Braddock road. The CSI fellow took biological samples of the top of Gene’s upper plate that revealed a grayish mold. I told him that I had been assaulted by anthrax, and I was given permission to take care of the body for burial. I’m mildly speech impaired and there were not enough funds in Mr. Blair’s account, so I had an unknown and new friend help me sell his car and those funds were used to bury his body in Ashland, Kentucky using Laser Funeral Home. Gene’s son Michael and Gene’s grandson Jason showed up at his funeral. I was listed as Mr. Blair’s caretaker with the Veterans Administration and I thought that meant that I was responsible for his person (to watch him in his blind condition) and that I was to show interest in his homicide case but the police informed me that I was allegedly only responsible for his burial. They essentially redefined my position from being his caretaking in life and guarding his condition of visual impairment or blindness with Pars Plantitis to limit my ability to sue the Commonwealth of Virginia State Police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their failure to take a written report and prosecute the homicide by redefining the word ‘caretaker’. Mr. Bair was a guest in my mother’s home because he was providing the essential services of caring for my mother in her diabetic (Type I) condition. Mr. Blair was Type 2 diabetic. I also had my sister Monica (who is mentally retarded) to worry about. Mary (my mother) was apparently stricken by the anthrax as well because Gene didn’t know how contagious it was. The effects appear as a cold and he identified it as something that they call ‘The Croup’ that you get in the countryside working on a farm with animals. I believe Mary Ann Taylor was euthanized by the state but the family is saying that she didn’t die at home, but instead died at INOVA Fairfax Hospital under the supervision of Dr. Cleary her cardio-pulmonary specialist. After burying the bodies I tried to go back to work only because the Virginia Employment Commission instructed me that I had to be standing on the ground at my place of work rather than being fired over the phone. Mr. Murad was afraid of a courthouse hearing where he would be called to testify. The real problem is the County of Fairfax and the way that they don’t like you to report wrongful death. I even got an attorney called Candice McCall because I was receiving so much static from everyone. She wouldn’t address the issue of the ‘wrongful death’ in civil court explaining to me that you have to be immediate kinship to the deceased to file a suit.

“Over the past two and a half years, a team of NSA technicians, analysts, and translators working round-the-clock out of cubicles at an open office the size of a small newsroom at Fort Meade had eavesdropped without warrant on the phone calls and e-mails of several thousand people in the United States suspected of ties to terrorists. An Islamic charity in Oregon had apparently been monitored. So had a woman in Baltimore [Fowzia Siddiqui] whose sister [Aafia[ was suspected of being an al Qaeda ‘facilitator, an imam [Aref] at a mosque in Albany with suspected ties to militants in Iraq, and a truck driver in Cleveland [Faris] who talked of taking a blow torch to the Brooklyn Bridge.”

In United States v. Ali Al-Timimi, attorneys have wrangled about the government’s failure to produce law enforcement interviews of Al-Timimi after WTC 1993 and after 9/11 — as well as failure to produce NSA intercepts from 2002. Al-Timimi’s original attorney was the first to tell us in 2003 that the FBI raided Ali’s townhouse on February 26, 2003 because they feared he was part of a planned WMD attack. Al-Timimi’s townhouse was raided two weeks after the blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman — a member of Al Qaeda’s 3-member WMD committee — was captured in Quetta, Pakistan. Al-Timimi’s attorney, Edward McMahon, in the Moussaoui case, stipulated to a timeline of events in 2001 related to what the US knew about a planned attack. Over this same period the United States government was failing to disrupt the coming attacks, microbiologist Al-Timimi was publicly lecturing on the signs of the coming day of judgment. In both July and August 2001, in Toronto and then London, Al-Timimi was lecturing on the end of times alongside the man known as the “911 imam.” “911 imam”, Awlaqi, was a fellow Falls Church iman who counseled key hijackers first in San Diego and then in Falls Church. Before that, in 1993 and twice in 1996, the man joining Al-Timimi at the podium was none other than Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik’s son. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman would serve on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee and recruit scientists.

Al-Timimi was granted a high security clearance and allowed to work alongside top anthrax bioweaponeers at the same time law enforcement and intelligence memos were flying fast and furious about Al Qaeda’s interest in biological weapons and the planned attack known to relate, in part, to the detention of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman.

Although the timeline by Al-Timimi’s attorney McMahon begins on February 6, 2001, let’s add some notes from the first week in February 2001 that set the stage. In February 2001, the CIA briefed the President in a Presidential Daily Brief (”PDB”) on “Bin Laden’s Interest in Biological and Radiological Weapons” in a still-classified briefing memorandum. Like the PDB on Bin Laden’s threat to use planes to free the blind sheik, the February 2001 PDB would illustrate the wisdom that most intelligence is open source. There was little about Ayman’ s plan to use anthrax against US targets in retaliation for rendering of EIJ leaders that was not available to anyone paying attention. The blind sheik’s attorney in Cairo had announced that Zawahiri likely would use weaponized anthrax to protest the detention of senior Egyptian militants. The previous military commander of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, then on trial, had made the same claim, along with yet another EIJ shura member. In September 1999, a London cleric even had a dialogue with Bin Laden, in open letters read at mosques in Pakistan and London, in which the cleric called for a holy biowar against the United States and Bin Laden responded.

The timing of the specific PDB on Al Qaeda’s biological weapons in early February 2001, however, was due to anthrax threat letters sent in late January 2001 to the Immigration Minister in Canada and the Justice Minister. The letters were sent upon the announcement of bail hearing for a detained Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader who had managed Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. Canada announced on January 18, 2001 that an Egyptian Islamic Jihad Shura member, Mahjoub, would have a January 30 bail hearing. Someone sent an anthrax threat letter to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Minister Caplan had signed the security certificate authorizing Mahjoub’s detention. After arriving in Canada in 1996, Mahjoub continued to be in contact with high level militants, including his former supervisor in Sudan, al-Duri, an Iraqi reputed to be Bin Laden’s chief procurer or weapons of mass destruction. Beginning on February 6, 2001, another former colleague of al-Duri in Sudan, Jamal Ahmad Al-Fadl, began his testimony in the Southern District of New York in United States v. Bin Laden about his own early efforts on Bin Laden’s behalf to obtain WMD. Then Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was the prosecutor. (The United States has been required to produce 900 pages of transcripts of video conferences between FBI agents and al-Fadl.) Al Duri, while living in Tucson, Arizona, was acquainted with Wadi al Hage. Wadi al Hage was another witness cooperating with authorities in connection with the prosecution of Bin Laden in Spring 2001 relating to the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. So if you want to know what the United States government knew and when they knew it, one resource would be the 900 pages of transcripts of the conversations with al-Fadl.

Returning for now just to the timeline stipulated to by Al-Timimi’s former attorney, Edward McMahon, in the Moussaoui case, however, let’s see what can be gleaned from intelligence briefings of senior executives about Bin Laden’s planned attacks. I have added some notations in parentheses.

On February 6, 2001, a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (”SEIB”) indicated a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacks against United States facilities, personnel, and other interests. (A SEIB, once called the National Intelligence Daily, is a CIA-produced intelligence summary similar to the President’s Daily Brief; it must be returned to the CIA within 5 days. The person signs it indicating he has read it. Unauthorized disclosure is subject to criminal prosecution and it may be not photocopied).

In March and April 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency disseminated a series of reports warning that Abu Zubaydah was planning an operation in the near future.

On April 13, 2001, the FBI sent an all-office message summarizing the intelligence reporting to date on the Sunni extremist threat.

On April 20, 2001, a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief indicated that that Osama Bin Laden was planning multiple operations.

On May 3, 2001, a SEIB indicated Bin Laden’s “public profile may presage attack.”

On May 23, 2001, a SEIB reported a possible hostage plot against Americans abroad to force the release of prisoners, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was serving a life sentence for this role in the 1993 plot to blow up landmarks in New York City. (The anthrax letters followed the pattern of letter bombs mailed in late 1996 to NYC and DC newspaper offices, along with people in symbolic positions associated with the detention with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and the WTC bombers. That is, the modus operandi of the anthrax letters was not just the modus operandi of The Friends of Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature).

On May 26, 2001, a SEIB indicated that Bin Laden’s plans were advancing.

On June 19, 2001, a CIA report passed along biographical information on several terrorists mentioned, in commenting on Khalid Mohammed, that he was recruiting people to travel to the United States to meet with colleagues already there so that they might conduct terrorist attacks on Bin Laden’s behalf. (An early December 1998 PDB to the same effect to President Clinton — declassified and included in the 911 Commission Report — reported that the aircraft and attacks were being planned by the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Mohammed Islambouli. Islambouli was in a cell with Khalid Mohammed (”KSM”), who by December had come to lead the cell planning anthrax attacks in the United States.)

On June 21, 2001, after a press report from a journalist reporting from Bin Laden’s entourage, United States embassies raised the force protection condition for United States troops in six countries to the highest possible level, Delta. The embassy in Yemen was closed. (In February 1999, militants had threatened to attack with anthrax if Americans did not promptly leave the country; the militants were thought to be connected to Abu Hamza in London; Ayman Zawahiri was in contact with a cell in Yemen).

The unclassified portion of “Daily UBL/Radical Fundamentalist Threat Update” for June 22, 2001 under “Newly Reported Threats and Incidents” (recently uploaded to intelwire.com) states:
“State notified all embassies and the national security community of a terrorist threat warning on 6/22/01. ‘The State Department has been made aware of the following uncorroborated threat information indicating a possible near term strike against U.S. interests (NFI). Usama Bin Laden reportedly intends to strike against U.S. interests within the next two days according to the information held by an Arab in Kabul, Afghanistan on 6/21/01. The Arab in Kabul was sure that the strike, whose location he did not disclose, would generate an American response. The DOD European also put out a similar warning to all military commands.”

On June 22, 2001, the CIA notified all its station chiefs around the world about intelligence suggesting a possible al Qaeda suicide attack on a United States target over the next the few days. The same day, the State Department notified all embassies of the terrorist threat and updated its worldwide public warning.

On June 23, 2001, the title of a SEIB warned, “Bin Laden Attacks May be Imminent.”

On June 25, 2001, a SEIB titled Bin Laden and Associated Making Near-Term Threats reported that multiple attacks were being planned by Bin Laden and his associates over the coming days, including a ’severe blow’ against United States and Israeli “interests,” during the next two weeks. (Senator Leahy is in charge of the subcommittee that oversees appropriations to Egypt and Israel).

Also, on June 25, 2001, an Arabic television station reported Bin Laden’s pleasure with al Qaeda leaders who were saying that the next few weeks “will witness important surprises” and that the United States and Israeli interests will be targeted. At the end of June 2001, an Qaeda intelligence report warned that something “very, very, very, very” big was about to happen, and most of Bin Laden’s network was reportedly anticipating the attack.

In late June 2001, a CIA terrorist threat advisory indicated a high probability of near-term “spectacular” terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties.

On June 30, 2001, a SEIB titled “Bin Laden Planning High-Profile Attacks,” repeated that Bin Laden operatives expected near-term attacks to have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportions. The SEIB contained an article titled “Bin Laden Threats Are Real.”

The intelligence reporting at the end of June consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil and that they would consist possibly of multiple — but not necessarily simultaneous — attacks.

Threat reports surged in June and July 2001.

On July 2, 2001, a SEIB indicated that the planning for Usama Bin Laden’s attacks continue, despite delays.

Also on July 2, 2001, the FBI issued a National Law Enforcement Telecommunications (”NLETS”) message concerning potential anti-United States attacks. The message summarized the information regarding the threats from Bin Laden and warned that there was an increased volume of threat reporting. The message indicated a potential for attacks against United Statets targets abroad from groups “aligned or sympathetic to Usama Bin Laden.” The message further stated, “The FBI has no information indicating a credible threat of terrorist attack in the United States.” The message asked recipient to “exercise extreme vigilance” and “report suspicious activities” to the FBI. (Later that summer, when a flying school instructor reported Zacarias Moussaoui and it was known he was associated with Bin Laden’s colleague Ibn Khattab, who intelligence showed was related to Bin Laden’s CBRN aspirations, FBI HQ denied the request that a FISA warrant be sought for his laptop.)

On July 5, 2001, the CIA briefed the Attorney General on the al Qaeda threat, warning that a significant attack was imminent. In addition, the Attorney General was told by the CIA that preparations for multiple attacks were in late stages or already complete and that little warning could be expected. The briefing addressed only threats outside United States.

On July 13, 2001, a SEIB indicated that Bin Laden’s plans had been delayed, maybe for as long as two months, but not abandoned.

On July 19, 2001, one of the items mentioned by the Acting FBI Director in a conference call with his special agents in charge, was the need, in light of increased threat reporting, to have evidence response teams ready to move at a moment’s notice, in case of an attack. The Acting Director did not task FBI field offices to try to determine whether any plots were being considered within the United States or to take any action to disrupt any such plots.

On July 25, 2001, a SEIB stated that one Bin Laden operation was delayed, but that others were ongoing.

On August 1, 2001, the FBI issued an advisory that in light of the increased volume of threat reporting and the upcoming anniversary of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa (which occurred on August 7, 1998), increased attention should be paid to security planning. The advisory noted that while most of the reporting indicated that the potential for attacks were on U.S. interests abroad, the possibility of an attack in the United States could not be discounted.

On August 3, 2001, the CIA issued an advisory concluding that the threat of impending al Qaeda attacks would likely continue indefinitely. The advisory suggested that al Qaeda was lying in wait and searching for gaps in security before moving forward with the planned attacks.

An article in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”PDB”) titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S” was the 36th PDB item in 2001 relating to Bin Laden or al Qaeda and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States. The PDB again mentioned the detention of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman as motivating the attack.

On August 7, 2001, a SEIB indicated that Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States.

On August 23, 2001, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet received a briefing on Zacarias Moussaoui, titled “islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” (Both Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohammed Atta had made cropduster inquiries during the summer).

On August 24, 2001, a foreign intelligence service reported that Abu Zubaydah was considering mounting terrorist attacks in the United States to Attack Targets in the United States.

The Stipulation ended just before the most interesting pre-911 data point.

A report titled “Risk Assessment of Anthrax Threat Letters” issued on September 10, 2001. It was a study of the mailed anthrax threat in January 2001. In contrast to a 1998 study by William Patrick that had been requested by Dr. Hatfill’s employer SAIC, the Canadian study found considerable exposure to those in the room resulted when such a letter was opened. Bacillus globigii spores (in dry powder form) had been donated by the US Department of Defense (Dugway Proving Ground, Utah). “The letter was prepared by putting BG spores in the center of a sheet of paper, folding it over into thirds, placing the folded sheet into the envelope and sealing using the adhesive present on the envelope. The envelope was then shaken to mimic the handling and tumbling that would occur during its passage through the postal system.” The aerosol, produced by opening the BG spore containing envelope, was not confined to the area of the desk but spread throughout the chamber. Values were almost as high at the opposite end of the chamber, shortly after opening the envelopes. 99% of the particles collected were in the 2.5 to 10 mm size range. The report explained: “In addition, the aerosol would quickly spread throughout the room so that other workers, depending on their exact locations and the directional air flow within the office, would likely inhale lethal doses. Envelopes with the open corners not specifically sealed could also pose a threat to individuals in the mail handling system.” The authors of the study emailed the study to the head of the CDC’s investigation of the anthrax mailings but he did not open or read the email. The lead CDC investigator explained: “It is certainly relevant data, but I don’t think it would have altered the decisions that we made.” In the week after 9/11, only an estimated 16 individuals in the United States knew of the report). Question: Was Ali-Al-Timimi one of the 16 who knew of the Canadian report on the danger of anthrax aerosols from mailed anthrax? Was the Canadian report faxed to the Alibek/Bailey/Timimi fax number or sent to his mail drop?

On October 5, 2001, bail was denied for Egyptian Islamic Jihad shura member Mahjoub. The anthrax mailer then rushed to mail the potent anthrax to the author of “Leahy Law” — that allows continued appropriations to security units in the event of “extraordinary circumstances.” The postmark was Tuesday, October 9, but Monday was a holiday, leaving the possibility the anthrax was mailed as early as October 6.

In March 2003, the FBI questioned people in Ann Arbor, MI and asked them if they knew of any conspiracies against the United States. Homam Albaroudi, co-founded the Islamic Association of North America in 1993, reports he was among those the FBI sought to question. He had been a member of the Ann Arbor Muslim Community Association (”MCA”) since 1999. He served on its board for 3 years. He organized the Free Rabih Haddad Committee in December 2001 and sought to garner support for Mr. Haddad in connection with the closed proceedings relating to his immigration status. The Muslim Community Association (”MCA”) runs the Michigan Islamic Academy which is right across from the University of Michigan North Campus. In 2001, Dr. Albaroudi was head of its PTO. As the American Civil LIberties Union explained in a suit against the United States Department of Justice in 2003, approximately 1000 people attend services at the mosque each Friday. MCA employs about 20 people and has about 700 registered, dues-paying members. Approximately 200 students were enrolled at the Michigan Islamic Academy which offered classes from pre-K through 11th grade. In addition to the standard academic curriculum used in state public schools, the ACLU explained, the school offers classes in Arabic language, Quranic recitation and Islamic Studies. The mission of the school is to provide students with the basic knowledge require to preserve their basic Islamic heritage, religion and cultural identity. Rabih Haddad, founder of the Global Relief Foundation, taught as a volunteer at the school twice a week. Bassem Khafagi, the Chairman who had been questioned about Ali Al-Timimi before 9/11 also lived in Ann Arbor. The MCA held numerous rallies and fundraisers supporting Rabih Haddad in connection the closed proceedings on his immigration status. The ACLU has noted that Dr. Albaroudi stepped down from the IANA because of personal differences with other IANA leaders. The ACLU reports that after the FBI raided IANA’s offices in February 2003 and Al-Timimi’s residence in Northern Virginia, the FBI sought to question him notwithstanding he no longer was associated with IANA.

The ACLU explains:

“The FBI contacted Mr. Albaroudi again in or about March 2003. On this occasion, the FBI agents who contacted him said they had not singled him out but rather were interviewing many people in the area to find out whether anyone had learned of any conspiracies against the United States Mr. Albaroudi explained to the FBI that he would have contacted them of his own accord if he had learned of any conspiracies against the United States. The FBI then asked Mr. Albaroudi about another co-founder of IANA [Bassem Khafagi], who had recently been arrested for an overdraft check and then detained on immigration charges. The FBI did not pursue did not pursue efforts to speak with Mr. Albaroudi after he informed them he did not feel comfortable speaking without an attorney present.”

According to Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer, Bassem Khafagi was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest.” Given that, according to his counsel, Al-Timimi was an “anthrax weapons suspect,” it appears that much of the investigation of former and present charity officials related to that suspicion about IANA’s celebrated speaker Al-Timimi. Whatever the US knew, it appears they wanted to know more.
The White House may find it awkward that Al-Timimi was an assistant to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card for 2 months while he was at the automobile association in 1996 snd that Al-Timimi received a letter of commendation from the White House.

The White House should get over its embarrassment before January 20, 2009 and bring Amerithrax to a successful conclusion.

Barack Obama is guided by the motto VERITAS. Nothing will stand in the way of the truth coming out.

The emails were dated September 10, 2001. If we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.

Quoted in a June 2002 Wall Street Journal column titled “The “lone wolf” theory is evidence of the Bureau’s ineptitude,” FBI Special Agent Rowley was highly critical of the FBI in “chalking this all up to the ‘20-20 hindsight is perfect’ problem.” The Minneapolis agents who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui before September 11 had quickly identified him as a terrorist threat and identified the legal grounds on which he has since been indicted. Agents in Phoenix had sounded an alarm about suspicious Arabs taking flight training. So she argues that “this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences.”

The FBI’s stock profile concerning a biological agent was a lone, unstable individual. In October 2001, the profilers pretty much just reached into the filing cabinet. One Special Agent involved in profiling such incidents explained in a conference, at which Dr. Steve Hatfill was also a presenter: “The closest I’ve ever come to biological-chemical issues is when the toilet on the 37th floor gets backed up *** It isn’t the Middle Eastern people. It isn’t white supremacists. It is the lone individual, lone unstable individual. That statistically, from the cases that we have, is the biggest threat right now.”

FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald, who had some early involvement in Amerithrax in issuing the “profile,” years earlier had special responsibility for scrutinizing the language of the manifesto in UNABOM. In late September 2001, his colleague from UNABOM, Kathleen Puckett turned in her study of “lone wolves” to include Kaczynski and others. Dr. Puckett sees “howling loneliness” as the key characteristic of a “lone wolf.” Before turning to work on domestic terror cases of the 1990s, her counterintelligence work typically involved Soviet spies. She would go and kibbitz the local agents on what she perceived as the personality of the subject. She retired on September 30, 2001 and handed in her study on lone wolves on her way out the door. By October, her colleague Fitzgerald was turning in a “lone wolf” profile for his assignment in Amerithrax. Judging from his comments to the media, he was one of those who was swayed that Daschle and Leahy were Democrats.

Hunting the American Terrorist (2007), by History Publishing is dedicated in part to the victims of the anthrax mailings. Dr. Terry Turchie and Dr. Kathleen Purkett appear to agree with the Special Agent Fitzgerald’s profile from October 2001. (Fitzgerald was their former team member) They write:

“Then, right on the heels of 9/11, another wave of attacks paralyzed the east cost of the United States. During the week of September 18, 2001, five letters containing micronized anthrax were mailed to addresses between New York and Florida. They targeted journalists, U.S. Senators, and news magazines. As in the case of Kaczynski and Rudolph cases, the envelopes had fictional return addresses.

Notes accompanying the mailings were supposedly from Islamic fundamentalists, and almost everyone in the government and the media quickly cast blame in that direction.

For those of us who were involved in the domestic terror campaigns of the 1990s, however, the anthrax mailings had all the earmarks of a lone wolf.”

One person’s lonely lone wolf is another man’s US-based dedicated islamist operating under strict principles of cell security. It seems that the FBI was making the same mistake it made in the case of the assassination of Rabbi Kahane 10 years earlier by the blind sheik’s bodyguard Nosair.

Inexplicably, the profilers do not seem to have been persuaded after 9/11 by the open source intelligence that Zawahiri had obtained anthrax for the purpose of weaponizing it for use against US targets. If intelligence analysis is an art, criminal profiling is drawing with crayons. A “profile” in connection to a person’s facial features might refer to what they look like in the dark. But, here, war had been declared. A weapon had been used by the enemy it had previously said it would use that specific weapon. Intelligence analysis, not profiling, was what was needed. The profilers apparently did not take to heart or learn the lesson of the al Hayat letter bombs in December 1996. James R. Fitzgerald, head of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, told an interviewer: “The attacker appears to be an opportunist [who] took advantage [of the terrorist attacks].” He continued “The rhetoric [in the letters] is made to sound like what a nonterrorist thinks a terrorist sounds like. The perpetrator was probably a right-winger with an ax to grind. It’s no secret that they [the intended recipients] are Democrats. People, including the Unabomber, have used representational targets for years.” Alluding to the mistaken notion that security guard Richard Jewell was responsible for the Olympic Park bombing, Vincent Cannistraro, formerly of the CIA, explained of the profile that the FBI are “intellectually convinced they’re on the right track, but they don’t want to come up with a janitor theory that’s wrong again.” The vague profile was fine but Agent Fitzgerald’s expanded comments to the press about the profile missed the mark. FBI profiler Fitzgerald, however, can be forgiven his early miscalculations. Such a profile likely was useful in supporting warrants in the US in connection with a variety of leads that prudently needed to be pursued. The forensics, without more, tended to point to a “domestic” source.

Victims and targets were highly skeptical of the FBI’s profile. David Pecker, the AMI publisher commented:

“I don’t believe in coincidences. I still think it was tied to al-Qaida. I don’t believe it was domestic.”

The emphasis in the press reports has always, however, been on the suggestion that the mailer likely is “domestic” rather than foreign — a lone, male scientist who works in a lab. The profile was issued shortly after the White House meeting where it was agreed that Al Qaeda was the likely culprit, but that the theory and the possibility of a state sponsor would not be discussed. Vice President Cheney was not at all impressed by the FBI’s profile and went on television to express his skepticism. Although the FBI profile was widely criticized by experts and in editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and other newspapers and magazines, it was more flexible than its critics imagined. The Amerithrax profile of a loner with a grudge permits a variety of motivations. The FBI uses the word “domestic” to include Americans sympathetic with an extremist islamic cause. The Washington Post explained in late October: “The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are considering a wide range of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing hate groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to the causes of Islamic extremists.” FBI profiler James R. Fitzgerald, head of FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, argued that the product could have been made for equipment costing as little as $2,500. Profilers were not actually part of Amerithrax Task Force and it is not clear how steeped they were in the historical evidence of Zawahiri’s intent to use weaponized anthrax, relying on the cover of charities and universities. Fitzgerald testified at civil deposition that on first hearing term “person of interest” had never heard Hatfill’s name.

An interesting article in MIT Technology Review in March/April 2006 is based on interviews with Sergei Popov (an expert at GMU who had worked as a Russian bioweaponeer), University of Maryland researcher Milton Leitenberg, Harvard’s Matthew Meselson, Rutger’s Richard Ebright and others:

“’There are now more than 300 U.S. institutions with access to live bioweapons agents and 16,500 individuals approved to handle them,” Ebright told me. While all of those people have undergone some form of background check — to verify, for instance, that they aren’t named on a terrorist watch list and aren’t illegal aliens — it’s also true, Ebright noted, that ‘Mohammed Atta would have passed those tests without difficulty.’ “
***
‘That’s the most significant concern,’ Ebright agreed. ‘If al-Qaeda wished to carry out a bioweapons attack in the U.S., their simplest means of acquiring access to the materials and the knowledge would be to send individuals to train within programs involved in biodefense research.’ Ebright paused. ‘And today, every university and corporate press office is trumpeting its success in securing research funding as part of this biodefense expansion, describing exactly what’s available and where.’”

The analytical problem is that researchers tend only to focus on their narrow field. So an analyst focused on Al Qaeda may not know anything about US biodefense programs. An analyst knowledgeable about US biodefense programs may not know anything about Egyptian Islamic Jihad. To knowledgeably address the issue of infiltration and the use of universities and charities as cover — which the documentary evidence shows Zawahiri planned to do and did in his anthrax weaponization program — requires a willingness to become knowledgeable and investigate the different substantive areas.

More fundamentally, all the really interesting stuff is classified. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (”FISA”) unit in the Department of Justice has traditionally been known as the “Dark Side.” Everything coming from Khalid Mohammed, according to Agent Van Harp, is classified. To understand the matter, journalists would have to have the cooperation of someone coming over from the Dark Side — which would be a felony. The solution to the Amerithrax case did not likely lie at the intersection of Bin Laden and Saddam streets among those cubicles at Langley with desktop PCs, not unlike any other office. Instead, it likely lies with the Zawahiri Task Force at Langley (if it still exists) which hopefully has an intersection of Ayman Avenue and Rahman Road. If not, we might be looking at a different crossroads altogether.

The Report of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001— by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, addresses strategic analysis, training and staffing. Did the agents and analysts in the basement of Quantico who came up with the FBI’s profile have relevant training or input from analysts expert in Al Qaeda? Assuming they did, did an investigative bias creep into their approach to the anthrax mailings that should instead have been informed by a strategic understanding of Zawahiri’s Vanguards of Conquest and its modus operandi? Did the profilers know of the al Hayat letter bombs (related to the imprisonment of the blind sheik) and KSM’s threat to use biochemical weapons in retaliation for the detention of the blind sheik and other militant islamists? Did the profilers know of the role of Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, in working with KSM in planning the attacks on the United States? Just as with 9/11, the correct understanding of the anthrax mailings begins with a trail that leads back to Malaysia, Khalid Mohammed, Hambali, Yazid Sufaat, Rauf Ahmad, Zacarias Moussaoui, various charities, the Albanian returnees trial, Bojinka, and even the assassination of Anwar Sadat. As George Santayana said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

One intelligence official has suggested that one reason that the FBI has not emphasized the possibility of a foreign source is that it might require UN involvement in the investigation pursuant to certain biological weapons protocols. The US specifically rejected France’s suggestion in October 2001 that there be a UN resolution condemning the attacks on the grounds that the Security Council had no role to play unless there was clear proof that the perpetrator was foreign. Bob Woodward quotes Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, in explaining why the administration did not acknowledge an al Qaeda link, even though it thought there was one: “If we say it’s al Qaeda, a state sponsor may feel safe and then hit us, thinking they will have a bye, because we’ll blame it on al Qaeda.”

Whatever your political persuasion, and whatever disagreements about individual issues relating to due process and civil liberties, the FBI and CIA deserve some latitude on this issue. We are, after all, facing this threat together. First, the nature of such an investigation is that we lack sufficient information to second-guess (or even know) what the FBI and Postal Inspectors on the Amerithrax Task Force are doing. Media reports — and even the FBI’s claims they have “solved the case” and expect to close it — are a poor substitute for any sort of evidencing establishing someone’s guilt. Indeed, there has been compartmentalization and divergent views even within the Task Force. Second, hindsight is 20/20. Third, now that the leaks relating to US scientist Dr. Steve Hatfill seem to have long since been plugged, it is not likely we could do better in striking the appropriate balance between due process and national security. The FBI’s profile includes a US-based supporter of the militant islamists. Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant islamists. As Ali Al-Timimi’s counsel notes in a late 2007 court filing unsealed (except for certain redacted passages) in April 2008, Al-Timimi “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.”

I know that Dr. Ivins did not do it. Also I do not believe that anyone who was connected to Bioport at the time of the mailings had anything to do with it.

When Dr. Ivins made his list and stated that he was going after certain people at Ft. Detrick he was reacting to what is called Organizational Injustice. He felt that he was being used as a scapegoat to hide the truth and he wanted to cause the people he felt were responsible to suffer the same fate. To me, he was acting like an innocent person would.

It is my belief that the person who did do it never expected the mailbox to be found. Their only consideration was not having a postmark that could be connected to them through there home or workplace. The mailbox used was one they knew about and was located in an area they felt comfortable with. It is likely on a route they drove regularly.

The mistakes in the return address are comprised of mistakes that would be made by a person who regularly drove the route near the Greenbrook Elementary School but had no connection to the school or the area except for passing through. They also had a reason for remembering Greendale instead of Greenbrook.

Likely their only connection to the school was the school bus traffic that enters and exits the area of Kendall Park on Hwy 27. Highway 27 turns into Nassau St. as it passes by the mailbox used.

That excludes Ivins and probably everyone connected to Bioport at the time of the mailings.

In my last post the last paragraph is what the person who sent the anthrax wanted people to think and where they wanted the investigation to lead to.

(( I wonder what struggling company in Michigan that was about to lose their sole means of support “like the anthrax vaccine contract with the military” might have motive to make hundreds of Millions of dollars by sending the anthrax laced letters.))

The DARPA-funded work involving use of the lyophilizer by Dr. Ivins apparently involved the DARPA-funded Ann Arbor researchers who thanked him in numerous patents for supplying the Ames and referenced his 1995 Vaccines article describing preparation of the spores. (The lead researcher had been a colleague of Ayman Zawahiri’s sisters who were on the Cairo Medical School faculty — Ayman’s father was a Professor of Pharmacology there until his passing in 1995.)

Salon.com blogger Glen Greenwald explains:

“The leaked ’scientific’ evidence is no better. If anything, it’s worse. The Washington Post today reports — all based on anonymous leaks — that “key to the probe” is the fact that Ivins “borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores.”

Throughout the period 1999-2008, the Ann Arbor researchers would explain: “B. anthracis spores, Ames and Vollum 1 B strains, were kindly supplied by Dr. Bruce Ivins (USAMRIID, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Md.), and prepared as previously described (Ivins et al., Vaccine 13:1779 [1995]).”

In an exclusive in early November 2008, the New York Post reported:

“The lyophilizer, located in a hallway surrounded by four labs, did not have a protective hood. A hood is necessary to circulate and filter air and make it possible to use the lyophilizer to work with harmful bacteria without the bacteria becoming airborne. Co-workers say the hoodless lyophilizer would have spewed poisonous aerosols, infecting co-workers. But no colleagues of Ivins experienced any symptoms.

Co-workers also point out that the machine would have to be fully decontaminated after use - a 24-hour process called paraformaldehyde decontamination that involves locking down the lab.

Without a full decontamination, the machine would have contaminated other bacteria or liquids used on the machine at a later date. And if it had not been decontaminated, the FBI should have been able to find traces of the dry anthrax on the machine. Yet they swabbed Ivins’ machinery numerous times and were unable to find traces of dry anthrax spores in his lab, Kemp said.”

“Even if Ivins did have access to a freeze-drying machine and a protective hood, sources who worked closely with Ivins estimate it would take a minimum of 40 days of continuous work without detection to create the volume of spores used in the attacks.” “If he was working eight hours a day on spore prep every day, it would be noticed,” said Gerry Andrews, Ivins’ supervisor between 2000 and 2003. “It’s ridiculous.” Ivins’ lab - just 200 square feet - was in “highly trafficked areas, and Bruce had colleagues that worked with him every day,” Andrews said.

Meanwhile, in September and October of 2001, Ivins was involved in 19 research projects, including working on the Department of Defense-funded anthrax vaccine that is now in clinical trials, anthrax vaccine testing on rabbits and monkeys, and an outside project with a government-contracted lab, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio.”

Gerry Andrews told the Baltimore Examiner “The only lyophylizer available was a speed vac,” he says. “That’s a low-volume instrument that you can’t even fit under a hood” used to contain pathogens. “The only opinions that I would place any confidence in would have to come from individuals who have made the stuff, in the same quantity of the letters,” said infectious disease specialist W. Russell Byrne. “And then I would ask them to go into B3 in building 1425, work there for a couple of weeks and reproduce what they say Bruce did. That’s the only way I could, in good conscience and in the spirit of objective scientific inquiry, believe them.”

There was no way Bioport was going to lose their contract with the military at the time, under virtually any circumstances whatsoever. This is why the claim that Ivins mailed the letters because he was in fear of loosing his job is so absurd. And, may I add, outrageous!

If Ivins did mail the letters, it was a result of his mental illness, which is what the FBI is claiming. If that is the case, then trying to determine motive is non-applicable, isn’t it? And this fear of loosing a job / save the Bioport vaccine put forth as a motive only demonstrates what F***ing Brute-stupid Idiots (note that Brute-stupid is hyphenated, therefore the acronym applies!) at least some of F.B.I. agents working the case are!

I’ll post another comment explaining the stupidity of this claim later.

Check this out: http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/blogs/marty_blog/2008/carfax-warns-odometer-rollbacks-on-the-rise/

Whereas the old mechanical odometers had lockouts to prevent such hijinks, your average 13-year-old iPhone programmer can probably hack into the OBDII port on modern-day vehicles and electronically turn back the clock. With used car sales on the verge of an increase as new car sales nosedive, Bob’s Shady Corner Used Car Lot is probably hiring young hackers in droves.

“Odometer fraud is alive and well,” says Larry Gamache, communications director at Carfax, pointing out that their research indicates a 57 percent increase in the con in the last four years.

One of the search warrants says he drove a 1993 Honda Civic, which he bought used in 1999.

Could be. But it still shows that he was thinking of ways to deceive his wife about what he was doing at night.

They have a challenge strains and vaccine strains of Anthrax. so I am guessing, but that sujest to me that they need to grow the vaccine strain to make the vaccine.

Probably on a larger level to produce the vaccine. I have seen paperwork that indicates that Bioport had 4 stainless steel Fermentation trains which was upgraded from a single 100 lt glassline fermentor to produce the vaccine.

To me it would seem likely that they would have grown the vaccine strain on a larger level than Ivins did when he was producing the challenge strain.

Also that considering the problems with silicon, which you point is a likely carsinagen, it would seem likely that they would use different antifoams.

Also on Greendale: There is a Greendale township in Michigan where they were producing the vaccine at the time of the mailings.

It is on a route between Midland Mi and Lansing Mi. Lansing is where Bioport was located at the time of the mailings.

Infact if you were driving from Lansing to Midland you would need to know that you would first enter the township of Greendale and then take a the first right turn after you pass a street named Greendale Court then proceed East past South Greendale rd then exit the township of Greendale and continue to Midland. returning from Midland to Lansing you would be taking the first left after passing South Greendale rd.

Is my logic on the antifoam correct?

In the NPR’s recent report on the anthrax letters Dr. Serguei Popov said the silicon “could have come from the use of foam suppressant agents, typically employed in the process of large scale fermentation of bacteria.”

I wonder what struggling company in Michigan that was about to lose their sole means of support “like the anthrax vaccine contract with the military” might have motive to make hundreds of Millons of dollars by sending the anthrax laced letters.

If you choose to believe theories based on sororities fantasies, a few 750 mile trips in the middle of the night, claims that the Florida anthrax letters were from some other anthrax mailer, and a six year old wrote the letters & addressed the envelopes, more power to you.

what ever Ed.

There is one thing I have been wondering about for quite some time. I don’t think in this day and age it is physically possible to “set back an odometer”. If it can be done, I don’t think it could be done easily, or done repeatedly without damaging or destroying it. An odometer is a component that the car makers have had a serious incentive to make tamperproof for decades now. You certainly can’t tamper with any of the newer digital ones (what year car did he have?) I don’t think this is that easy for anyone, much less someone like Ivins (”Gearhead” is not one of the terms commonly used to describe him.)

Maybe this statement and possibly others was him “just blowing smoke”. Maybe telling fanciful stories was something he did to amuse himselve (kind of fits).

This should be an easy one to figure out. I am sure there are quite a number of individuals out there that can provided more information as to how likely it is that he could set back his odometer.

It’s not a matter of believing theories. It’s a matter of looking at the facts.

The facts say the Chile letters were NOT related to the anthrax attacks. You argue that they MUST be related because you cannot believe otherwise.

The facts say the letters were written by a child of six, but you argue that some silly copying method was used - even though the facts say otherwise.

The facts say that Ivins routinely drove long distances at night, and he even talked about setting back his odometer to fool his wife. But you simply cannot accept these facts because you believe otherwise and have a conflicting THEORY that is not supported by any facts.

what ever Ed.

By Mark Schoofs
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
29 November 2001
The Wall Street Journal B15 English
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Federal health officials said that laboratory contamination appears responsible for the mysterious positive anthrax test of a letter sent to a Chilean pediatrician

–
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta analyzed the strain of the Chilean letter, sent by a private mail service from a medical publisher in Orlando, Fla., and concluded that it was different from the anthrax that has killed five people in the U.S. and “similar to strains outside the U.S.,” said Mitchell Cohen, director of the CDC’s division of bacterial and mycotic diseases.

Dr. Cohen said that when the Chilean scientists tried to culture anthrax from the envelope, “only a few colonies grew on the culture plate. If you were dealing with large concentrations of organisms, you would expect to get your plate covered with microorganisms.”

By contrast, the “light culture growth” obtained in the Chilean lab “is more consistent with contamination from a laboratory source.” He said that the CDC is working with the Chilean lab, which will send to the CDC other samples of anthrax it had in its possession. The CDC will then determine if they are the same. The anthrax strain also occurs in nature, Dr. Cohen said.

Chile Anthrax Letter Differs From Others

By Jose Decordoba and Mark Schoofs Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal
27 November 2001
The Wall Street Journal B6
English (Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

The doctor in Chile who received an anthrax-contaminated letter last week said the envelope doesn’t resemble those sent to two senators and to media outlets in the U.S. — adding another mystery to those already surrounding the anthrax investigation.

Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician in Santiago, Chile, said the envelope bore the return address of a medical publishing house in Orlando, Fla., that regularly sends him material.

—————

Anthrax Letter Sent to Chile Came From New York

By Wall Street Journal staff reporters Mark Schoofs and Jerry Markon in New York, Rick Brooks in Atlanta and Roger Thurow in Zurich
28 November 2001
The Wall Street Journal A4
English (Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

A letter sent to a doctor in Chile that authorities have said contains anthrax breaks so sharply from the pattern of previous letters that it is prompting skepticism among some U.S. health and law-enforcement officials.

The letter, bearing a Swiss postmark, was actually mailed from New York, through a New York-based subsidiary of the Swiss Post office, company officials said yesterday.

September 18 postmark

October 9 postmark

October 19 receit of letter in Buenos Aires

November 13 receit of letter in Chile

All mailed within a 55 day time period.

No other mailings prior to that 55 days and no other mailings after that period.

The first two postmarked from Trenton NJ and the last two both bulk post marked on the same machine in Florida.

http://www.promedmail.com/pls/otn/f?p=2400:1001:7906865921653694::::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_ARCHIVE_NUMBER,F2400_P1001_USE_ARCHIVE:1202,20011020.2596,Y

http://www.promedmail.com/pls/otn/f?p=2400:1202:7906865921653694::NO::F2400_P1202_CHECK_DISPLAY,F2400_P1202_PUB_MAIL_ID:X,14753

Here are a couple of links to one of the letters. I will research and find a few more in a bit then post them.

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r011128p.htm

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/11/23/anthrax.chile/index.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chile-says-letter-contained-anthrax-747766.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1671544.stm

There is no evidence or authority indicating that any letters containing anthrax were sent from Florida. If you think there is, by all means, cite it (as you haven’t thus far).

There were some interesting hoax letters.

Did the same person write the powder-containing hoax letters to Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg paper, Judith Miller of the New York Times (author of Germs), and to NBC’s Tom Brokaw as wrote the letters containing anthrax spores?

The three all received a letter postmarked October 5, 2001 from St. Petersburg.

The Troxler letter read: “Howard Troxler .. 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels.” Judith Miller is the author of the pre-9/11 book Germs.

A witness claims he saw Jafar the Pilot in Fall of 2003 catching a bite at Tampa subway. Tampa/St. Pete is where someone mailed hoax letters to journalists Troxler and Miller. Was the hoaxer upset at Troxler for coverage of local professor who was detained and at Judy Miller, who knows the neo-cons on a first name basis? The professor Troxler had written about had been a friend of KSM while at North Carolina.

The Florida letters started and stopped at about the same time as the Trenton letters.

I guess the other anthrax mailer from florida desided to only send two sets of anthrax laced letters and quit shortly after the Trenton mailer sent their two sets of letters and quit.

Of course they both desided to send anthrax laced letters during the same two month period and there are no reports of letters being sent before or after that period.

How totally logical of me to assume that it was the same person.

As for the sorority fantsies, the chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma in Philadelphia must have been not good enough to mail the letters by their mailbox, so he drove a few extra hundred miles.

Or maybe it was just that he had a fetish for Princeton Kappa Kappa Gamma girls.

Of course you first need to believe that the Trenton anthrax mailer expected the mailbox to be found.

If you choose to believe theories based on sororities fantasies, a few 750 mile trips in the middle of the night, claims that the Florida anthrax letters were from some other anthrax mailer, and a six year old wrote the letters & addressed the envelopes, more power to you.

It’s less than 200 miles from Frederick, MD to Princeton, NJ. About 390 miles round trip. So, your facts are wrong. Plus, he admitted to the FBI that he drove long distances the way others go for long walks. He was KNOWN to drive long distances to mail things so they couldn’t be tracked back to him.

“sororities fantasies”

His sorority “fantasies” are a documented fact.

“the Florida anthrax letters were from some other anthrax mailer”

The “other” Florida anthrax letters such as the one sent to the doctor in Chile were just a form of contamination from a lab in Chile. There was no connection whatsoever to the anthrax attacks. They didn’t resemble the attack letters. The strain was different. And the letters were mailed from New York, not from Florida. And they were mailed a month after the anthrax attacks. Whatever connection you see is PURELY in your overactive imagination.

But, it’s clear that you have no interest in any kind of facts. So, I agree that there’s no point in trying to get you to view any facts.

If you choose to believe theories based on sororities fantasies, a few 750 mile trips in the middle of the night, and claims that the Florida anthrax letters were from some other anthrax mailer, more power to you.

Also lets add the six year olds writing to the list.

I am done talking about it your just being unreasable.

We’ve already gone over this. I’ve stated that I can match groups of letters on other people’s writing that way. All it proves is that the same person did all the writing.

Everyone knows that writing the same thing twice will NOT result in EXACT duplication of everything. And there is no EXACT duplication of everything on the anthrax letters. There are just similarities that you would see when comparing two samples of ANYONE’S handwriting.

If you want anyone to even consider the idea that a “template” was used to do the writing, you need to explain why the R’s are so different in these examples:

The Brokaw letter. Kindergarten style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-01.jpg

The Brokaw envelope. First grade style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-02.jpg

If you would just explain that, maybe you would see what “the truth” is.

Take two evelopes.

Fill in the return address. You can use your own or create one.

Next take the second envelope and try and fill in the return address with the same return address used on the first.

scan them into your computer and try and line up each of the letters, like I did in the photo I sent you.

Try it Ed. It not a trick and you don’t have to post it.

It is just that it will help you understand.

there is not just six places that the letters line up like that.

You can check for yourself if you want to know the truth.

What about the return address? It’s clear from Kirk’s images that the return addresses do NOT line up in total. And when you shift things around, you can only get a few characters at a time to align. And, even then, they do not perfectly align. I already wrote this about Kirk’s six supposed matchings:

“The 4 in the first one is blurred, indicating that they don’t exactly overlay. In #2 the A is blurred. In #3 the G is blurred. In #4 the D and A are blurred. In #5 the E is blurred. In #6 the H is blurred.”

I can do the same thing with other people’s writing. I did it with one of the Goldman Sachs letters. If that wasn’t clear enough (I just overlaid specific words, not the entire letter), I can make a better version showing how you can align certain combinations of letters and they look like a near perfect match.

What this proves is that the addresses were NOT traced. A person writes in a very similar way every time. THAT’S WHY HANDWRITING EXPERTS CAN TELL ONE PERSON’S HANDWRITING FROM ANOTHER’S.

What Kirk needs to explain is: If the individual characters were traced from some “template” of a single version of each letter in the alphabet (if that’s what he’s saying), then why are there so many differences in the ways the letter R is drawn in these examples:

The Brokaw letter. Kindergarten style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-01.jpg

The Brokaw envelope. First grade style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-02.jpg

All you’re saying is that we never write anything identically the same way twice. We know that. The addresses on the letters do NOT totally line up as exact matches.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t FORCE things to look very similar the way you did and the way I demonstrated with the Goldman Sachs letter.

If I were to do as you suggest, there would be groups of letters that would line up perfectly. I’d have to have palsy for them not to.

I purposely used someone else’s handwriting to show you that strings of letters WILL always line up, because if I did it with my own handwriting you’d claim I traced something.

Take two evelopes.

Fill in the return address. You can use your own or create one.

Next take the second envelope and try and fill in the return address with the same return address used on the first.

scan them into your computer and try and line up each of the letters, like I did in the photo I sent you.

Kindergarten style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-01.jpg

First grade style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-02.jpg

When a person traces something, they normally have one sheet of paper atop the other. They write with one hand while the other holds the papers in place. When tracing from a projected image, there is still a need to hold the paper in place. So, what? When I write normally, I usually have my left hand holding the paper in place while I write with my right.

When tracing a projected image, the person has to prevent his hand from blocking the projection. But that’s not difficult for an adult. Why is it even an issue?

You’re idea makes less and less sense.

Your idea is so bizarre it is hard to imagine anyone doing such a thing. You need to describe the process in more detail.

What is? To what comment are you responding?

That’s because, like all children, the writer had a hard time judging how much room he needs. His writing of the return address droops downward because he doesn’t want to run into the stamp. His writing of the address droops downward, because he’s aiming for the farthest corner.

The letters all had plenty of room, so he wasn’t concerned about running out of room.

That is absolutely NOT TRUE. There are numerous examples of differences. The #1 example showing that the handwriting is that of a 6 year old just entering first grade are the R’s on the media letter and the R’s on the media envelopes. On the letter, the writer wrote kindergarten style (the top is a circle). On the envelopes he wrote first grade style (the top is an arc). Someone taught him (or her) the proper way to draw an R between writing the letter and addressing the envelope.

Kindergarten style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-01.jpg

First grade style: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/R-02.jpg

The problem with tracing is that the child has to write the same thing first OR the tracer has to pick characters and parts of words to trace. A handwriting expert would spot that right away. It is UNNATURAL handwriting. Among other things, It leaves unnatural gaps between characters and words. Plus, when tracing a letter you are concerned with following a line, so the drawing will show irregularities where the person is trying to stay within the original. No matter how you look at it, it would show that it was an UNNATURAL style of writing.

Take a close look at the Brokaw envelope. Instead of being traced, it is clear that the address is COPIED. The writer was writing very slowly and would periodically pause after drawing a stroke to see what the original looked like before starting another stroke. The pauses left little blobs of ink at the ends of the strokes. When you are tracing, you don’t need to pause to look somewhere else. The object being traced is right there under your pen.

That meant they needed to reposition their hand that was holding the evelope. Notice how the letters line up in groups of two to three.

And I overlaid the word AND from one place over two other places, plus I overlaid the HE from THE over another THE. All look as good as the matches KRolson showed us. Here’s the image: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/OverlayGS2.jpg

I think this proves that the “evidence of tracing” that KRolson showed us is NO SUCH THING. It can be done with almost ANYONE’S handwriting.

Just looking at the other ANDs on the original page, you can SEE that many of them appear to be virtual duplicates.

This is because handwriting is virtually automatic for us. And that is WHY HANDWRITING EXPERTS CAN TELL ONE PERSON’S HANDWRITING FROM ANOTHER’S.

I appreciate your thoughts on Ed.

I know that Ed has learned a lot about the case and that he has formed a number of opinions based on what he has learned.

Ed: when a person traces something they hold the pen in one hand and the paper or envelope in the other.

If tracing a projected image the person has to prevent anything from blocking the projection.
On a envelope with a flap on the back the person needs to hold the the envelope flat without blocking the projection with thier hand or body.

Please note that the only time that the person wrote in a slanted downward fashion was when they wrote on the envelopes.

The only reason I made the statement about it could have been traced from a childs homework is because I knew you have a theory that suggest that the person used a child to write the letters and address the envelopes.

The 4 in the first one is blurred, indicating that they don’t exactly overlay. In #2 the A is blurred. In #3 the G is blurred. In #4 the D and A are blurred. In #5 the E is blurred. In #6 the H is blurred.

All it says is that the spacing between letters is the same - which it is supposed to be. If there were variances in the spacing between characters THAT would indicated tracing.

KRolson is suggesting that someone kept shifting a slide of a handwriting sample around in order to trace the parts of words — or whatever.

That is absurd. If anything, the images are PROOF that the handwriting was NOT traced.

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/Time-02.jpg

Okay, but it’s a meaningless statement. To say that something is “possible” says nothing about whether or not it is also ridiculous.

It’s “possible” that invisible aliens from outer space came down and sent the anthrax letters. Does that also make is likely?

It’s here: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/SenatorEnv.jpg

I think your findings are meaningless. Shifting around an overlay on ANYONE’S handwriting will probably result in that kind of occasional match-up between two samples. I’ll use another handwriting sample to see what I can find.

If you read his earlier post on the subject he made the statement:

“KRolson also wrote: “Ed it is possible that the person used a childs homework assignment of printing capital letters to make the template.”

Any time anyone asks “is it possible” they already know that it IS possible, even though it may be totally ridiculous.”

I just wanted to make it clear that it was a statement that I had made and not a “totally ridiculous” question.

Ed’s reconsidered that viewpoint it seems

Just sent you a copy. It would be nice to see you post it.

Also ed the state I made: ” “Ed it is possible that the person used a childs homework assignment of printing capital letters to make the template.”

It was a comment and not a question.

Prunetacos,

But didn’t Dr. Ivins’ handwriting on the copyright application in fact look similar?

Absolutely not

Since that email address is on my web site, there are a hundred filters in place to sort out junk mail.

I can only assume that you are using words that the filters look for, like “prescriptions” or “Viagra.” I’ll look at the filter log to see if I can see what triggered the rejection.

But didn’t Dr. Ivins’ handwriting on the copyright application in fact look similar?

No match to whom? KRolson is arguing that the handwriting was disguised. I’m arguing that Ivins used a six-year-old to write the letters. The FBI stated that the handwriting analysis was “inconclusive.”

If you are arguing that the fact that the handwriting doesn’t look like Ivins’ style somehow proves that Ivins didn’t do it, that would be totally ridiculous.

Yes, send it to me at the email address that is on my web site: detect@newsguy.com

KRolson also wrote: “Ed it is possible that the person used a childs homework assignment of printing capital letters to make the template.”

Any time anyone asks “is it possible” they already know that it IS possible, even though it may be totally ridiculous.

Tracing someone else’s writing leaves clear indications of tracing. The writing on the anthrax letters and envelopes definitely did NOT involve tracing.

FBI experts have stated that the handwriting is the writer’s natural style. That’s why the FBI sent samples around to everyone in Central New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania to see if the handwriting was familiar to anyone. (It’s also one reason why I thought the FBI had a good suspect in New Jersey.)

In their “linquistic assessment” of the letters, they said,

“It is highly probable, bordering on certainty, that all three letters were authored by the same person.”

And

“While the text in these letters is limited, there are certain distinctive characteristics in the author’s writing style. These same characteristics may be evident in other letters, greeting cards, or envelopes this person has written.”

Source: http://www.fbi.gov/anthrax/amerithrax.htm

The poisonous letter is the title of one section no poison inks. “Write a letter to the victim mentioning very exciting and very interesting news,” it reads. “Wipe the envelope from the inside with silicone sealant,” it goes on, “so it would not kill the mailman.”

“Evidence suggests al Qaeda pursuit of biological, chemical weapons,” CNN, November 14, 2001
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/11/14/chemical.bio/index.html

” Western intelligence agencies are analyzing a new volume distributed on an unknown number of CD-ROMs. It contains precise, deadly formulas for chemical and biological weapons. ***

[C]hemical formulas are followed by step-by-step instructions in the manufacture of deadly biological weapons. Another chapter is called “The Poisonous Letter.”

***
[T]hree labs were purchased earlier this year by the Wafa Humanitarian Organization, whose U.S. assets were frozen after the government included it among several groups it identified as supporters of terrorism. [At one point, Sufaat was arranging with the Wafa head for procurement of equipment]

The laboratory equipment was shipped from the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan, according to the coalition intelligence agency.

A second al Qaeda acquisition of sophisticated scientific equipment took place in 1999, according to the same sources. In that transaction, three labs were purchased from the Ukraine and sent to Afghanistan, the sources said.

“I am quite surprised at the nature and scale and scope of that intensified activity that has gone silently without any efforts from intelligence agencies to stop the information transfer or the acquisition of these type of agents,” said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the world-renowned counterterrorism center located at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews.

Still other evidence comes from a 1999 boast by a terrorism suspect alleged to be a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a radical group with links to Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. Jihad was responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

On April 19, 1999, in a chaotic Egyptian courtroom, Ahmed Salamah Mabrouk spoke before his sentencing hearing to Egyptian reporter Mohammed Salah, considered to be his country’s top al Qaeda expert.

Through a caged-in section of the courtroom where defendants are kept, Mabrouk — who was charged in a terrorism conspiracy — admitted al Qaeda’s success in obtaining chemical and biological weapons.

“He told me that Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri have access to chemical and biological weapons,” Salah said.
***
“He also said that these chemical and biological weapons are already in the possession of some of the members of the organization, but (bin Laden lieutenant Ayman Al-Zawahiri) and bin Laden issued strict orders that they’ll never be used except in extreme emergency situations,” he said.

The Belgian Prime Minister and the US, British and Saudi Arabian embassies have been sent letters containing hydrazine and an arsenic derivative used in nerve gas in May 2003. Some mistakenly argue that islamists would never merely send lethal substances through the mail (though the risk of significant casualty is low) to send a message or warning. One of the ingredients is hard to obtain, suggesting one Health Ministry spokesman to remark that “We’re not dealing with a small-time joker.” A trial of 23 suspected al-Qaeda members was in its third week. “Set our brothers free. Bastards.” Couldn’t be a threat by islamists because they only go for mass casualties — not threats. Right? One of the defendants in that trial allegedly sought hydrazine for use in producing a bomb.

A similar modus operandi was followed in New Zealand with cyanide in early 2002 and early 2003 by a sender purporting to be islamist.

A December 2004 report on terrorism in the European Union noted that in July 2004, eight letters arrived at several official locations in Brussels that contained an ochre-coloured chemical substance that caused itchy eyes and breathing problems. Tests indicated that the substance was adamsite (phenarsasine). Some of the letters included “a threat letter written in (very poor) English, demanding that two recently convicted Islamic extremists are released within that month.”

Zawahiri feels that in the usual case, the best way to get a lot of people watching is to kill the maximum number of people. But he wouldn’t disagree with the comment by Brian Jenkins that “Terrorism is theater.” Just those 10 grams cost an estimated $6 billion and have been the subject of thousands of news stories and the focus of widespread bioterrorism preparations. They were fully adequate to do the job even within the constraints of small batch production.

The anthrax sender may not have intended to harm anyone. Stevens’ death was reported late on October 5. Whether the mailer knew of the death might depend on whether the mailing was made Saturday, October 6 — or whether it was made as late as Tuesday, October 9, the day it was postmarked after a long holiday weekend.

Al Qaeda’s shura or policy-making council is concerned with handling its efforts in such a way as to develop and maintain the Arab hatred of the US and Israel. That requires a delicate balance and choice of suitable targets and methods. For example, as explained by the spokesperson in mid-February, Abu al Bara’a Al-Qarshy, Al Qaeda will not use WMD in a muslim country, particularly the home of Mecca and Medina. Terrorism involves public relations. Zawahiri divines from his religious texts that it is moral to kill American civilians on the grounds that they stood silent as taxpayers while US-bought weapons were used on Palestinians. In 1998, in an interview that appeared in TIME Magazine, Bin Laden himself explained that it was Al Qaeda’s “religious duty” to obtain chemical and biological weapons, but it was up to them how to use them.

As Dr. Jane A. Alexander of DARPA once explained at DARPA Tech, 1999:

“Small scale attacks may be adequate to immobilize national will with panic unless reasonable defenses are available. Terrorists do not need the technological sophistication of a military offensive biological warfare program. A military offensive BW program strives for predictable effect so that military operations can be planned. Terrorists could actually benefit from the variation of the onset and outcome of the illnesses creating added panic in the public.”

The Ann Arbor NanoBio researchers thanked Dr. Alexander for her support of the DARPA research they were doing involving the Ames strain supplied by USAMRIID’s Bruce Ivins.

Thus, the modus operandi of the EIJ/VOC regarding sending poisonous letters, established by the documentary evidence, is to take steps to avoid killing the postman.

An October 2007 affidavit in support of a search of the home of Ft. Detrick microbiologist Bruce Ivins states:

“In that same September 26, 2001 email, Dr. Ivins states “Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans” — language similar to the text of the anthrax letters postmarked two weeks later warning “DEATH TO AMERICA,” “DEATH TO ISRAEL.”

The Postal Inspector fails to disclose that Bin Laden had decreed that and that Dr. Ivins was merely accurately describing a well- publicized news event.

Just before the 1998 embassy bombings, Zawahiri and his Vanguards of Conquest had said that the rendering of the senior EIJ leaders would be answered in “language you can understand.” Before the military tribunal, in March 2007, KSM talked of the language of war — deaths. “Same language you use, I use. That is why the language of any war in the world is killing.” Here, the lethal letters were plainly worded.

The letter postmarked September 18, 2001 read:

“09-11-01

THIS IS NEXT

TAKE PENACILIN NOW

DEATH TO AMERICA

DEATH TO ISRAEL

ALLAH IS GREAT.”

From the streets of Cairo to Tehran to Jakarta, on historic anniversaries (such as Jerusalem Day in Iran, the day the Israeli state was created) protesters have gathered on the streets and shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” For the talking heads to profile it as a non-Islamist awkwardly trying to sound muslim is odd. It is in fact the common protest slogan. What surer way to avoid giving away clues than to use common short phrases or short sentences using common words. Egyptians such as Islamic Group leader and soft-spoken accountant, Taha — and Egyptian Islamic Jihad #2 Shehata and Shawqi Islambuli, brother of Sadat’s assassin — may very well have watched these protesters shouting these very chants while living in Iran after 9/11.

The next month, the letter arriving one Friday afternoon at Senator Daschle’s office at Room 509 of the Hart Office Building had garnered little notice. It was routed up to the sixth-floor mailroom. No one opened the letter that afternoon. They were all at a talk on the threat of biochemical attacks sent through the mail. On Monday morning, however, an intern found the innocuous looking letter, postmarked October 9, 2001, at the top of a pile of a stack of mail waiting to be opened. The intern made a slight cut and immediately a small amount of powder spilled out on her skirt, shoes and the floor, as well as an intern standing next to her. She froze. The Capitol Hill officers arriving at the scene opened the letter and read it aloud:

“09-11-01

YOU CAN NOT STOP US.

WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.

YOU DIE NOW.

ARE YOU AFRAID?

DEATH TO AMERICA.

DEATH TO ISRAEL.

ALLAH IS GREAT.”

Among the piles of papers of documents relating to anthrax in a house associated with a Pakistan charity was a drawing of a jet shooting down a balloon. (There were 10 copies each as if a seminar or brainstorming session was being conducted). The words “YOU ARE DEAD, BANG.” Thus, although some pundits argued that “YOU DIE NOW” in the anthrax letters does not sound like a militant islamist, the physical evidence relating to Al Qaeda’s anthrax planning suggests otherwise. Indeed, “WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX” was starkly threatening, just like Atta’s “We have some planes” to the passengers of AA Flight 11 over the intercom.

You can create one at yahoo it is free and easy to do. I believe that it is a safe way of tranferring the photo without having to publish your true e-mail address.

Post a yahoo email address and I will send you a copy.

Ed if you would like a copy please let know.

Regarding your question, “If you were planning to do two attacks, what logical reason would there be to use two different powders?”

I believe we have already covered that.

The first letters contained the less lethal anthrax and was sent to get the medias attention.

The Senator letters were mailed on the date the media gave their full attention to anthrax by mail. The same day they taped off the building in Florida and we started seeing pictures of people in Bio-hazard suits. Also the same day that Tommy Thompson and John Ashcroft held news confrencess stating the the investigation was being turned over to the FBI.

You could not turn on tv or radio without hearing about it. Every paper printed the story.

The Senator letters held the more lethal anthrax and the only way the person could know the date that the investigation had turn toward the mail was by watching the media for their response.

I believe that we both agree that the person took steps to try and prevent anyone from dying.

Sending the dumb-downed anthrax to the media was just one of those steps.

By sending letters to the media and to the senators it is clear that the person wanted them both to be involved and to follow the investigation.

It is clear the person knew that the anthrax would be tested and that it would be found to be Ames Strain.

That is why the person said “We have this anthrax” and not we have anthrax.

Further proof that the letters were NOT written at the same time.

KRolson also wrote: “It is a fact!”

It is NOT a fact. Here are the addresses overlaid on top of each other. http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/Overlay.jpg

The 4 looks like a good match because I overlaid one atop the other. I created the match. But the two addresses get farther and farther away from being a match as they get farther from the 4.

And you evidently picked the one argument you thought would work in your favor. What about the punctuation? What about the doodling? What about the location of the date? What about the improvement in writing ability between the first mailing and the second?

It’s a common tactic to pick just one point and ignore all the others in an attempt to win a point. But, the one you picked doesn’t work. What about the others?

It would be interesting to see the image uploaded.

Here are the images as uploaded by the FBI.
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/page16.jpg

I’m not sure why Ed suggests that the date is in a different place.

The doublelining and addition of punctuation is not inconsistent, KR, with your suggestion.

But what would be the purpose? Concealment of one’s handwriting? (If so, how diabolical! If you are correct, we are dealing with a criminal mastermind.)

If you like, you could email it one of us and we could upload it.

The AQ operatives typically are not that clever.
They use dead drops, exchange emails without sending them (by writing drafts and then accessing the same account, for example). But if you are right, this is very clever.

One recent defendant used invisible ink in writing addressses and contact information but he left the address books otherwise blank — a dead giveaway.

Now what would be the purpose of the method you suggest? Would the writing have originally been written by someone else under your theory?

“In late 2002, the FBI’s Washington field office received two similar tips from local Muslims: Timimi was running ‘an Islamic group known as the Dar al-Arqam’ that had ‘conducted military-style training,’ FBI special agent John Wyman would later write in an affidavit.

Wyman and another agent, Wade Ammerman, pounced on the tips. Searching the Internet, they found a speech by Timimi celebrating the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, according to the affidavit. The agents also found that Timimi was in contact with Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi whose anti-Western speeches in the early 1990s had helped inspire bin Laden.

The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.

On a frigid day in February 2003, the FBI searched Timimi’s brick townhouse on Meadow Field Court, a cul-de-sac near Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Among the items they were seeking, according to court testimony: material on weapons of mass destruction.”

Al-Timimi had rock star status in Salafist circles and lectured in July 2001 (in Toronto) and August 2001 (in London) on the coming “end of times” and signs of the coming day of judgment. He spoke alongside officials of a charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Another speaker was Ali’s mentor, Bilal Philips, one of the 173 listed as unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators. Bilal Philips worked in the early 1990s to recruit US servicemen according to testimony in that trial and interviews in which Dr. Philips explained the Saudi-funded program. According to Al-Timimi’s attorney, Ali “was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis.”

At the same time the FBI was searching the townhouse of PhD candidate Ali Timimi, searches and arrests moved forward elsewhere. In Moscow, Idaho, FBI agents interviewed Nabil Albaloushi. (The FBI apparently searched his apartment at the same time they searched the apartment of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen, who they had woken from bed at 4:00 a.m.) Albaloushi was a PhD candidate expert in drying foodstuffs. His thesis in 2003 was 350 pages filled with charts of drying coefficients. Interceptions showed a very close link between IANA’s Sami al-Hussayen and Sheikh al-Hawali, to include the setting up of websites, the providing of vehicles for extended communication, and telephone contact with intermediaries of Sheikh al-Hawali. Al-Hussayen had al-Hawali’s phone number upon the search of his belongings upon his arrest. Former Washington State University animal geneticist and nutrition researcher Ismail Diab, who had moved to Syracuse to work for an IANA-spin-off, also was charged in Syracuse and released as a material witness to a financial investigation of the IANA affiliate “Help The Needy.” After the government failed to ask Dr. Diab any questions for nearly 3 months, the magistrate bail restrictions and removed the electronic monitoring and curfew requirements.

In Moscow, Idaho, the activities by IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen that drew scrutiny involved these same two radical sheiks. U.S. officials say the two sheiks influenced al Qaeda’s belief that Muslims should wage holy war against the U.S. until it ceases to support Israel and withdraws from the Middle East. Sami Hussayen, who was acquitted, made numerous calls and wrote many e-mails to the two clerics, sometimes giving advice to them about running Arabic-language websites on which they espoused their anti-Western views.

According to witness testimony in the prosecution of the Virginia Paintball Defendants, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” The FBI first contacted Timimi shortly after 9/11. He met with FBI agents 7 or 8 times in the months leading up to his arrest. Al-Timimi is a US citizen born in Washington DC. His house was searched, his passport taken and his telephone monitored. Ali Al Timimi defended his PhD thesis in computational biology shortly after his indictment for recruiting young men to fight the US in defending against an invasion of Afghanistan.

Some of his communications in 2002 with dissident Saudi sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends and mentors of Bin Laden, were intercepted. The two radical sheiks had been imprisoned from September 1994 to June 1999. Al-Hawali’s detention was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War against the United States and the claim of responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings.

ABC reported in July 2004 that FBI Director Mueller had imposed an October 1, 2004 deadline for a case that would stand up in court. The date passed with no anthrax indictment. Al-Timimi was not indicted for anthrax. He was indicted for sedition. Upon his indictment, on September 23, 2004, al-Timimi explained he had been offered a plea bargain of 14 years, but he declined. He quoted Sayyid Qutb. He said he remembered “reading his books and loving his teaching” as a child, and that Qutb’s teaching was prevented from signing something that was false by “the finger that bears witness.” He noted that he and his lawyers asked that authorities hold off the indictment until he had received his PhD, but said that unfortunately they did not wait. On October 6, 2004, the webmaster of the azzam.com website Babar Ahmad was indicted. It was not until 2007 that the North Brunswick, NJ imam who mirrored the azzam.com website was indicted (on the grounds of income tax evasion).

The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of Benevolence International Foundation (”BIF”), the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched the townhouse of “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.” Famed head of the former Russian bioweaponeering program Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see Al-Timimi in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department, and was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner. When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link Al-Timimi to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va. In the end, he was indicted for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. During deliberations, he reportedly was very calm, reading Genome Technology and other scientific journals. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 70 years.

Regarding your statement,”First, the facts say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer - unless you believe FBI agents don’t understand what facts are.”

I have a great respect for the men and woman of the FBI, but it is clear that the facts and evidenece does not support a claim that Dr. Ivins was the person who mailed the letters.

regarding your question, “Why is the handwriting on the second letter and the Senate envelopes half the size of the handwriting on the first letter and envelopes?

The projector was further from the envelopes.

On the Senators envelopes the person made a template that included the return address, the word Senator, and Senate Office Building Washington D.C. then projected it on to the envelopes and traced it.

It is easy to see with photos on seperate layers in photoshop.

It is a fact!

Yes, I understand that. All I’m saying is that your BELIEF is not supported by ANY facts.

“I really didn’t knwo that those facts were available. Could you please explain them to me?”

First, the facts say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer - unless you believe FBI agents don’t understand what facts are.

The timeline for Ivins work in lab B3 show that he first made one batch. Then, weeks later, he went back into the lab to make another.

The facts about Bruce Ivins show that he only had time to make a crude powder for the first letters, but had ample time to make a more sophisticated powder for the second letters.

If you were planning to do two attacks, what logical reason would there be to use two different powders?

The two sets of letters are VERY different. Why would they be so different if they were prepared at the same time?

The second letter seems to have been written with the knowledge that the first letter failed. The first letter doesn’t specifically mention anthrax. The second does. The author evidently thought that the powder and the warning “TAKE PENICILIN NOW” would be enough. He learned it wasn’t. The first letters went to the media and failed to get attention. The second went to two senators, NOT to more people in the media. The second letter specifically mentioned anthrax.

Why is the handwriting on the second letter and the Senate envelopes half the size of the handwriting on the first letter and envelopes?

Why did the writer doodle on the first letter but not on the second?

Why did the writer put the date in a different location on the first letter than on the second?

Why does the senate letter have punctuation, but the media letter does not?

The facts CLEARLY say the two sets of letters were NOT prepared at the same time.

The first letters to the media did what the person expected.

October 8th was the day the FBI was clearly involved and that is likely the date the second letters were sent.

How do you know that it is a HE and not a She?

I do believe that the person who mailed the letters planned more than one mailing from the start.

The first letters went to the media.

The second letters went to the Senators.

In your last post you stated ” The facts indicated that the culprit didn’t have anthrax ready for a second mailing immediately after the first. The facts also say that the second letter and envelopes were addressed weeks after the first.”

I really didn’t knwo that those facts were available. Could you please explain them to me?

I really do appreciate your thoughts.

Also I would like to ask you your opinion on something.

In your last post you said “The fact that the mailer did not intend anthrax to leak out is indicated by the tape.”

I have tried to find any article or listing of the FBI testing mailboxes prior to the anthrax letters but have been unable to find anything. Also from what I have read on the testing used on the mailboxes it seems that both the tests and the metrologies used to test the mailboxes were developed after the letters were sent.

In your valued opinion do you believe that the mailer even considered that the mailbox used would be found?

Like you said, the mailer did not intend anthrax to leak out which is indicated by the tape.

It is very clear that the culprit mailed the first anthrax letters - the media letters - either on the evening of September 17 or the morning of September 18. The Brokaw letter and The New York Post letter were both postmarked on the 18th.

It’s also clear (to me, at least) that some time went by between the writing of the media letter and the addressing of the media envelopes. Was it days? Was it weeks? I can’t be sure.

KRolson also wrote: “But the facts do point to the person waiting before mailing the more lethal letters.”

No one is disputing that. The mailings were three weeks apart, so obviously he waited before mailing the second batch.

The question is: If the first mailing would have achieved the results he wanted, would he have taken the RISK to mail more letters?

You seem to believe that there was a plan for two mailings from the start. The culprit’s plan was to wait until the first mailing achieved a specific goal (involvement of the FBI) before sending out the second mailing.

That’s very Machiavellian. Perhaps too Machiavellian.

As I see it, it was a MAJOR risk for the culprit to prepare and send out the first letters. He waited because he was expecting something to happen - he was expecting major headlines that ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Post and The National Enquirer had been attack by al Qaeda using anthrax. It was what a LOT of people were expecting and waiting for. He was expecting that his first letters would do it all.

But nothing happened. So, the culprit began working on anthrax for a second mailing. While he was working, Bob Stevens came down with anthrax and died. But people were saying it have could come from natural sources. There was no sign of any terrorist attack.

When he was ready with the second batch, he mailed those letters to the two Senators who seemed to be delaying action against possible Muslim terrorists in our midsts.

That’s what the facts say. Your interpretation is that he had a plan for two attacks all along. That’s pure speculation. And you also speculate that he was waiting for FBI involvement before sending out the second letters.

Do you also believe he expected the first mailing to get tossed aside and ignored?

If the first mailing HAD generated panic, the FBI would have been involved IMMEDIATELY. The facts indicated that the culprit didn’t have anthrax ready for a second mailing immediately after the first. The facts also say that the second letter and envelopes were addressed weeks after the first.

So, that says your theory has a MAJOR flaw. If he had planned two mailings all along, he would have had both sets of letters ready before he implemented his plan. He would have had no way to know how long it would be before the FBI became involved. No one plans for their first attack to fail.

In reality, if things had gone as he

The lawyer for the EIJ spiritual guide had announced in 1999 that Zawahiri intended to use anthrax to retaliate for the rendering and detention of senior EIJ leaders — and the plan was confirmed by the detained EIJ military leader (and another shura leader who was working for Egyptian intelligence services).

The threat to use mailed anthrax was described to President Bush by the CIA in a PDB in early February 2001 that is still classified. See 911 Commission Report.

It was particularly awkward because the Salafi-Jihadi who had infiltrated US biodefense had worked for and been commended by President Bush’s Chief of Staff (and then Al-Timimi was also referenced in the August 6, 2001 PDB about OBL’s plan to attack the US using planes).

The FBI PDB regarding OBL’s plan to use anthrax to retaliate against the rendering of senior EIJ leaders is as plainly worded and as significant as the August 6, 2001 PDB describing his plan to hijack an airliner to free the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual guide for the EIJ. Obama needs to ask to see a copy of the February 2001 PDB about the plan to use anthrax.

The late January threat was sent by the same people who sent letter bombs to the people symbolically responsible for the WTC 1993 plotters. Those letters were sent to newspapers in DC and NYC and people in symbolic positions relating to the detention (for example, the “parole officer” at Leavenworth, a position that does not exist). (The Al Hayat letter bomb investigation is still open and there is a $5 million reward under the Reward for Justice program) The Al Hayat targeting was key to understanding the modus operandi of the Amerithrax mailings. CIA analysts in Fall 2001 would have known that either EIJ/VOC was responsible or someone with access to threat intel who wanted to make it look like EIJ/VOC (Egyptian security, Mossad, CIA, e.g.) Cheney was briefed by the CIA in mid-December 2001 about documents seized in Afghanistan showing Ayman intended to use universities and charities as cover to weaponize anthrax (and his plan to recruit specialists already in the field). Fitzpatrick immediately came down like a ton of bricks on charities /leaders based 1 mile from the nanobiotechnology researchers working on anthrax for DARPA. Bruce Ivins had supplied the researchers with Ames.

If Dr. Ivins did not register any transfer under 1997 regulation then perhaps he had liability as an accessory before the fact (even though innocent of any knowledge that a crime was going to be committed). He would be in the position of being a gun dealer who provided the murder weapon without proper record-keeping. That is why they swabbed him for the DNA. Upon his unexpected suicide, they are doing the best they can — disclosing important science, continuing the investigation, and assuring the due process rights of all concerned.

It is embarrassing to the Administration because not only were they given express warning, but it is the former assistant of then White House Chief of Staff who the FBI suspects of accessing the biochemistry information relating to the concentration of anthrax using silica. See filing of defendant’s defense counsel.

The US Attorney Jeff Taylor was Gonzalez’ national security counsel. The US Attorney before him, Ken Wainstein, is the White House national security person (and former head of the DOJ national security division and the former chief of staff for Mueller). But I’m sure they will want justice done and would not be party to a cover-up just because of the serendipity of Al-Timimi having once been Andrew Card’s assistant.

Barack’s mother didn’t raise any stupid children and so it is best that everyone make sure they scrupulously put this on the right track to the correct solution, whatever it is. Much more will come out after January 20.

Given Al-Timimi’s father worked at the Iraqi embassy — and given for all I know the Salafi-Jihadi mailer actually works for Egyption intelligence/security (like shura member al-Najjar did) — it truly is not over until the fat lady sings. The one thing you can count on in life is to be surprised.

The bail for EIJ / VOC #2 was denied on October 5, 2001. The mailer, who is a nice guy, then literally dropped what he was doing and rushed to mail the anthrax. Whether he had seen the news report regarding Stevens death is unclear. Given there was no mail pick-up on Columbus Day, the letter could have been mailed anywhere from Saturday (after the last pick-up) through Tuesday (and when one is busy with things such as transporting anthrax one may miss a news item). A perp might not feel comfortable googling the word “anthrax” and much of America receive their news late in the morning paper a day or two later.

The fact that the mailer did not intend anthrax to leak out is indicated by the tape.

I think you are ignoring the March 14, 2001 patent application using silica in the culture medium to concentrate anthrax. It was filed by the leading anthrax scientist in the world and the former deputy head of USAMRIID. See FoxNews report regarding what the FBI suspects. They came to be 15 feet away from the man working with the 911 imam and Bin Laden’s sheik. That Salafi-Jihadi (Dr. Al-Timimi) had a high security clearance while working at SRA for the Navy in 1999. The method was not public until long after 9/11.

There are ongoing classified proceedings at which these allegations regarding anthrax are the subject of briefing. I could email the transcript to anyone who wants it.

The FBI WMD head’s remark regarding silica dioxide in the culture medium should not be so lightly regarded.

The people responsible for both the Al Hayat letter bombs and the anthrax mailings subscribe to the teaching under the koran that “innocents” should not be targeted. Women, children, the elderly are innocents. This is shown by their writings. A warning is expressly required under the hadiths. Given that the cell members have long lived in the US, they had no desire to use aerosolized anthrax in a more widespread manner. That would lead to the death of their family, friends and community members.

The anthrax letters were a threat intended to communicate: “We have this anthrax.” The anthrax letters were intended to retaliate for the rendering and mistreatement of senior EIJ leaders, deter the invasion of Afghanistan, and retaliate for appropriations to Egypt, Israel and other countries.

I think Ken D’s suggestion of Jdey mailer — which he first made almost a half decade ago — is an excellent one (but it had not occurred to me). Jdey was part of 911 and had worked with KSM and Hambali. He pulled back but not due to cold feet. He went missing at the time of the mailings.

The factual question of the day relates to the culture medium used by Ivins, and why the FBI did not allege that the recipe of the culture medium he used in the lab supported the searches they did. I infer heme was detected as having been in culture medium used to grow the anthrax.

I hold several Degrees, one of which is in the field of Organizational Behavior, which is an applied behavioral science that is built upon contributions from several behavioral disciplines. Those disciplines include psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science.

I am qualified to say that based on the information available the individual took steps to try and prevent deaths. Also that while they tried to prevent deaths it is clear the death of Stevens did not prevent the person from mailing the more lethal letters.

The news conferences, on October 8 2001, with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services were covered by all of the major news media. Some of whom were already trying to find out about the letters they had received. The person had targeted the media wanting to get there full attention focused on anthrax by mail, and this was the day the person got it.

Granted the only person who can say what the person was thinking is that person.

Based on my education, the knowledge that the person took steps to try and prevent deaths, the first letters targeted the media to get their full attention, and the fact that October 8 was the day they got the results they were aiming for by sending the media letters and the fact that the person waited until October 8 2001 to mail the more lethal letters: It is very likely the person waited until they knew they had the media’s full attention before sending the more lethal letters. It was the person only way of knowing that when the more lethal letters were opened it would be reported immediately and the person who opened the letter, and others whom might be exposed, would seek immediate medical attention.

Ed I do appreciate your insight and feedback.

The incidents in the mailers life that brought them to the point of planning the letters is likely to have occurred prior to 9/11. The skills, knowledge and abilities to produce the letters were all obtained prior to 9/11.

It is likely the person had planned the letters and produced the anthrax prior to 9/11. They just incorporated the events of 9/11 into their plan. That means the date of September 17 or 18 is an important date to them.

Do you have any thoughts on the first letters and there date of mailing?

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

Reader I would truly value your thoughts also.

You are just being argumentative. That’s non-productive.

The facts say the powder in the letters required at least a week to prepare.

Motivation relates to what caused the culprit to START preparing the letters.

There are no facts that establish that the person who processed the anthrax mailed the letters. That is speculation or an assumption.

“His motivation relates to what caused him to START preparing the letters.”

There is no evidence establishing that the mailer or processor was male. That is speculation or an assumption.

Yes, but you didn’t mail the anthrax letters, did you? So, what YOU would do doesn’t necessarily mean that is what the anthrax mailer did.

It took TIME to prepare the letters. Would the anthrax mailer send them out as soon as they were ready? Or would he sit around with the letters in a Baggie waiting for news that the FBI was on the case?

We can’t be sure he didn’t mail the letters on the evening of the 6th, or on the 7th. The 8th was Columbus Day. At the moment, I can’t recall if there was ever a definitive statement that there was a mail pickup on Columbus Day. If not, anything mailed from the evening of the 6th through the morning of the 9th would be postmarked on the 9th.

It’s certainly POSSIBLE that the anthrax mailer sat around for a few days waiting for the FBI to become involved. But everyone was reading about the Bob Stevens anthrax case, so people would already have been alert to anything mentioning anthrax - like a letter filled with powder containing a note that said “WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.” And government offices were particularly ready on the alert due to 9/11 and all the media talk of an anthrax attack as a followup to 9/11.

The facts say the culprit MUST have started preparing the letters at least a week before he mailed them. His motivation relates to what caused him to START preparing the letters. Whether or not he mailed them as soon as they were ready seems far less important — and purely speculative. At best, it’s just another argument that the culprit wanted to minimize the number of infections. That’s already clear. No additional arguments required.

Hosenball and Isikoff discuss the release of Sacramento State alum Yazid Sufaat. In 1999, before enlisting Sufaat, al-Zawahiri had recruited another scientist, Pakistani national Rauf Ahmad, to set up a small lab in Khandahar, Afghanistan, to house the biological weapons effort. George Tenet in his May 2007 In the Center of the Storm says: “Al-Qa’ida spared no effort in its attempt to obtain biological weapons.” He writes: “In December 2001, a sharp WMD analyst at CIA found the initial lead on which we would pull and, ultimately, unravel the al-Qa’ida anthrax networks. We were able to identify Rauf Ahmad from letters he had written to Ayman al-Zawahiri. … We located Rauf Ahmad’s lab in Afghanistan. We identified the building in Khandahar where Sufaat claimed he isolated anthrax. We mounted operations that resulted in the arrests and detentions of anthrax operatives in several countries.”

Delivering the James Smart Lecture, entitled “Global Terrorism: are we meeting the challenge?” at the headquarters of the City of London Police, Ms. Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, said: “Western security services have uncovered networks of individuals, sympathetic to the aims of al-Qa’ida, that blend into society, individuals who live normal, routine lives until called upon for specific tasks by another part of the network.” She concluded: “The threats of chemical, biological and radiological and suicide attacks require new responses and the Government alone will not achieve all of it; industry and even the public must take greater responsibility for their own security.”

Milton Leitenberg wrote in a chapter on evolving threats in Wenger and Wollenmann’s 2007 Bioterrorism: Confronting A Complex Threat:

“The first significant and meaningful information on what Al-Qaida may at some point have hoped to achieve in the area of bioweapons appeared on a single page in the journal SCIENCE in mid-December 2003, and then in declassified documents that were obtained in the last week of March 2004.

Appended to the single page in SCIENCE via the internet address was a list of thirty-two items: eleven books and twenty-one professional journal papers nearly all dating from the 1950s and 1960s dealing with pathogens or bioweapons.”

He explained: “They were found in Al Qaida training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 2001. Half of the books dealt with historic or general aspects of bioweapons and would be of little practical use in an effort to produce bioweapons agents. However, at least some of the journal papers and the remaining half of the books might have been useful in such an effort. They were found only a few kilometers from the site near the Kandahar airport that confirmed the rudimentary equipment also procured by Al-Qaida.”Most important of all, the documents indicated that “al-Qaida’s BW initiative included recruitment of individuals with PhD-level expertise who supported planning and acquisition efforts by their familiarity with the scientific community.”

Mr. Leitenberg concludes: “If it should turn out, as is currently assumed, that the Amerithrax perpetrator came from within the US government’s own biodefense program, with access to strains, laboratories, people and knowledge, then all previous conceptions about the significance of the events would be substantially altered.” He observes that “Al-Qaeda has actively recruited educated college graduates and … specifically sought individuals with particular knowledge and training. … Such recruiting patterns do not automatically translate into either an interest or capability in bioweapons, but they would be a key advantage should the interests of such a group turn in that direction, as Al-Zawahiri’s [1999] memorandum quoted above suggests they may.”

In 1999, a scientist from Porton Down had reported to sfam members on a conference in Taos, New Mexico in August that included a talk by Tim Read, (TIGR, Rockville, USA) and concerned the whole genome sequencing of the Bacillus anthracis Ames strain. The Ames strain may have been a mystery to many after the Fall 2001 mailings, but not to motivated Society for Applied Microbiology (”SFAM”) members, one of whom was part of Ayman Zawahiri’s “Project Zabadi.”

As described by Dr. Peter Turnbull’s Conference report for SFAM on “the First European Dangerous Pathogens Conference” (held in Winchester), at the September 1999 conference, the lecture theater only averaged about 75 at peak times by his head count. There had been a problem of defining “dangerous pathogen” and a “disappointing representation from important institutions in the world of hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms.” Papers included a summary of plague in Madagascar and another on the outbreak management of hemorrhagic fevers. Dr Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University presented a paper on multilocus VNTR typing, for example, of Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis. There were more than the usual no-show presenters and fill-in speakers. In his report, Dr. Turnbull looked forward to a second, fully international conference in 2000 focused on the ever increasing problems surrounding hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms and aimed at international agreement on the related issues. University of Maryland researcher Milton Leitenberg reports that the conferences described in the correspondence had been in July and September 1999.

The Sunday at the start of the Organization of the Dangerous Pathogens meeting in September 2000, which the sfam director confirmed to me that Rauf Ahmad also attended, was gloomy. Planning had proved even more difficult than the International Conference on anthrax also held at the University of Plymouth, in September 1998. The overseas delegates included a sizable contingent from Russia. The organizers needed to address many thorny issues regarding who could attend. One of the scientists in attendance was Rauf Ahmad. The Washington Post reports: “The tall, thin and bespectacled scientist held a doctorate in microbiology but specialized in food production, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case.” Les Baillie the head of the biodefense technologies group at Porton Down ran the scientific program. Many of the delegates took an evening cruise round Plymouth harbour. The cold kept most from staying out on the deck. Later attendees visited the National Marine Aquarium — with a reception in view of a large tankful of sharks. Addresses include presentations on plagues of antiquity, showing how dangerous infectious diseases had a profound that they changed the course of history. Titles include “Magna pestilencia - Black Breath, Black Rats, Black Death”, “From Flanders to Glanders,” as well as talks on influenza, typhoid and cholera. The conference was co-sponsored by DERA, the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.

Les Baillie of Porton Down gave a presentation titled, “Bacillus anthracis: a bug with attitude!” He argued that anthrax was a likely pathogen to be used by terrorists. As described at the time by Phil Hanna of University of Michigan Medical School on the sfam webpage, Baillie “presented a comprehensive overview of this model pathogen, describing its unique biology and specialized molecular mechanisms for pathogenesis and high virulence. He went on to describe modern approaches to exploit new bioinformatics for the development of potential medical counter measures to this deadly pathogen.” Bioinformatics was the field that Ali Al-Timimi, who had a security clearance for some government work and who had done work for the Navy, would enter by 2000 at George Mason University in Virginia. Despite the cold and the sharks, amidst all the camaraderie and bonhomie no one suspected that despite the best efforts, a predator was on board — on a coldly calculated mission to obtain a pathogenic anthrax strain. The conference organizer Peter Turnbull had received funding from the British defense ministry but not from public health authorities, who thought anthrax too obscure to warrant the funding. By 2001, sponsorship of the conference was assumed by USAMRIID.

According to the Pakistan press, a scientist named Rauf Ahmad was picked up in December 2001 by the CIA in Karachi. The most recent of the correspondence reportedly dates back to the summer and fall of 1999. Even if Rauf Ahmad cooperated with the CIA, he apparently could only confirm the depth of Zawahiri’s interest in weaponizing anthrax and provided no “smoking gun” concerning the identity of those responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall 2001. His only connection with SFAM was a member of the society — he was not an employee. The Pakistan ISI, according to the Washington Post article in October 2006, stopped cooperating in regard to Rauf Ahmad in 2003.

I have uploaded scanned copies of some 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces describing the author’s visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where 1000s of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab; and the need for vaccination and containment. He explained that the lab director noted that he would have to take a short training course at the BL-3 lab for handling dangerous pathogens. Rauf Ahmad noted that his employer’s offer of pay during a 12-month post-doc sabbatical was wholly inadequate and was looking to Ayman to make up the difference. After an unacceptably low pay for the first 8 months, there would be no pay for last 4 months and there would be a service break. He had noted that he only had a limited time to avail himself of the post-doc sabbatical. I also have uploaded a handwritten copy of earlier correspondence from before the lab visit described in the typed memo. The Defense Intelligence Agency provided the documents to me, along with 100+ pages more, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (”FOIA”). 90 of the 100 pages are the photocopies of journal articles and disease handbook excerpts.

The Post, in an exclusive groundbreaking investigative report, recounts that the FBI’s New York office took the lead U.S. role — and its agents worked closely with the CIA and bureau officials in Pakistan in interrogating Rauf. Though not formally charged with any crimes, Rauf agreed to questioning. While the US media focused on the spectacle of bloodhounds alerting to Dr. Steve Hatfill and the draining of Maryland ponds, this former Al Qaeda anthrax operative provided useful leads. But problems began when the U.S. officials sought to pursue criminal charges, including possible indictment and prosecution in the United States. In earlier cases, such as the othopedic surgeon Dr. Amer Aziz who treated Bin Laden in the Fall of 2001, the Pakistani government angered the Pakistani public when it sought to prosecute professionals for alleged ties to al-Qaeda. In the case of Amer Aziz, hundreds of doctors, engineers and lawyers took to the streets to demand his release. In 2003, the Pakistanis shut off U.S. access to Rauf. By then, I had noticed the reporting of his arrest in a press article about the raid of a compound of doctors named Khawaja and published it on my website. According to Pakistani officials, there was not enough evidence showing that he actually succeeded in providing al-Qaeda with something useful. Since then, the Post reports, Rauf has been allowed to return to his normal life. Attempts by the Post to contact Rauf in Lahore were unsuccessful. Initially the government agency had said an interview would be possible but then backpedaled.

“He was detained for questioning, and later the courts determined there was not sufficient evidence to continue detaining him,” Pakistan’s information minister told the Post. “If there was evidence that proved his role beyond a shadow of a doubt, we would have acted on it. But that kind of evidence was not available.” Yazid Sufaat got the job handling things at the lab instead of Rauf Ahmad. More importantly, Zawahiri, if keeping with his past experience, would have kept things strictly compartmentalized — leaving the Amerithrax Task Force much to do.

Question: Is this the resume of the Rauf Ahmad who attended the 1999 and 2000 conferences for the Society for Applied Microbiology and who wrote the handwritten and typed letters in the Summer and Fall of 1999 to Ayman Zawahiri about setting up a lab? (I don’t know). He provided me his resume and graciously offering to answer any further inquires, saying he was looking forward to an “optimistic exchange” (as I was also). After I indicated that I had the correspondence with Zawahiri, he did not respond to any questions.

It was the date that the Attorney General John Ashcroft held a new conference in Washington stating “We regard this as an investigation that could become a clear criminal investigation”.

Also October 8th 2001 was the same day that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Thomas Thompson held a news conference stating that the anthrax cases in Florida were being turned over to the FBI for investigation.

I have tried to add several links to the articles, but the link is long and all of the postings with that link have been removed.

For myself, I look at the fact that the person took the time to tape all of the seams of the envelopes and included warnings inside. I believe that they did this because they wanted to try and prevent deaths.

I believe that we both agree that if the more lethal letters had been sent to the media, there would have been a lot more people infected with inhalation anthrax.

To me it is a logical conclusion that the person waited until they knew the next person opening a letter with powder and a warning would be sure to report it immediately.