Posted on 05/12/2002 8:52:07 AM PDT by Ordinary_American
It is still unclear why the FBI is focussing primarily on the domestic terrorist theory in their anthrax investigation.
American and European intelligence agencies had warned immediately after the September 11 attacks that they had information leading to the possibility that a second wave of terrorist attacks was planned by bin Laden. Bin Laden’s video broadcast by al-Jazeera TV also contained open threats of dreadful new attacks against the U.S. The timing of the anthrax campaign, which began somewhere around September 18, fits with second wave hypothesis.
It is now considered a fact beyond reasonable doubt that al-Qaeda had an active program to develop chemical and biological weapons. There is also information supporting the conclusion that Iraq collaborated in this effort.
The regime of Saddam Hussein is the only rogue element which has used chemical weapons against its enemies on a massive scale. Saddam did not hesitate to use chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, nor even against Iraqi citizens, as shown by the bombing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq in 1988. Furthermore, Iraq is the only state which has the motivation and the stamina to support such an operation, provided it could avoid being seen to be directly involved.
Iraqi intelligence worked hard to develop close ties with bin Laden and his operatives. Saddam Hussein's interest in meeting with him reportedly became a priority following the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. In 1998 General Hijazi was appointed ambassador to Turkey. In his role as a diplomat, the former intelligence director was able to travel more freely abroad. One of his first trips was to Afghanistan, where he met with bin Laden. The general conveyed a personal message from Saddam Hussein inviting bin Laden to Baghdad.
Bin Laden was allegedly seen in Baghdad's al-Rashid Hotel in December 1998. International lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano, who was in Baghdad at the time to negotiate a contract to represent Iraqi Airlines in Italy and Yugoslavia, met and talked with bin Laden. Western and regional intelligence officers, as well as Iraqi exiles, confirm that bin Laden met with Saddam, who reportedly offered to grant bin Laden a base and asylum in Iraq. Bin Laden, however, already firmly established in Afghanistan, where his money and armed followers had made him an important figure in the regime, declined. Bin Laden did agree to send men to Iraq to receive "special" training.
The London-based Arabic paper Al Wattan El Arabi claimed in January 1999 that bin Laden and the Iraqi regime had arrived at an agreement to fight together against the U.S., including cooperation in the field of biological and chemical weapons, which would be produced in bin Laden’s laboratories, with the assistance of Iraqi specialists.
Al-Qaeda’s program to produce chemical and biological weapons, codename “al-Zabadi”, the Arabic phrase for curdled milk, was begun in earnest in the spring of 1999. This conclusion has been confirmed by U.S. intelligence based on information contained on computers looted from a building used by al-Qaeda leaders and purchased in December by a Wall Street Journal reporter.
In one memo, apparently written by Dr. Ayman Zawahari, an Egyptian physician and bin Laden's chief strategist, he says "the destructive power of these weapons is no less than that of nuclear weapons".
Another memo laments al-Qaeda's sluggishness in realizing the menace of these weapons, noting that "despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply."
A May 7, 1999, file indicates that by that time, al Qaeda leaders had earmarked $2,000 to $4,000 for "start-up" costs of the program. In a letter dated May 23 and written under one of Dr. Zawahri's aliases, the author reports discussing some "very useful ideas" during a visit to Abu Khabab, the alias of an elderly Egyptian scientist. "It just needs some experiments to develop its practical use."
German and British intelligence chiefs told their U.S. counterparts that an Egyptian from Islamic Jihad called Midhat Mursi, aka Abu Khabab, may be even more dangerous than Osama bin Laden. Mursi is the organization's expert on "special weapons." In al Qaida's Darunta camp complex just north of the Khyber Pass, and now evacuated, the al-Bahder camp was renamed the Abu Khabab center when Mursi took it over to train young al Qaida militants in CBW -- chemical and biological warfare.
It is now apparent, however, from reports emanating from U.S. Central Command that the al-Qaeda chemical and biological facilities in Afghanistan, although considerable, were not sufficiently sophisticated to produce the anthrax used in the September 18th and October 9th attacks. By spring 2001, Bin Laden and Zawahri may have concluded that their efforts would not be able produce chemical or biological agents of sufficient quality and quantity for a successful second wave attack. One source that could was Iraq either directly or indirectly from another source funneled through Iraqi intelligence.
Al-Qaida terrorist Mohammad Atta, who hijacked and piloted American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Center in September, met often with Iraqi intelligence officers. He met at least twice with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a known Iraqi intelligence officer who worked in the Iraqi Embassy in Prague under diplomatic cover. Atta went to Prague from Hamburg by bus on June 2, 2000, to meet with al-Ani. The next day Atta left for the United States, where he enrolled in a flight school in Florida.
It was reported that Czech authorities said that Atta is believed to have also met with Farouq Hijazi in the spring of 2001. Hijazi is Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and a former general in the intelligence service. Hijazi is Saddam Hussein's personal liaison with bin Laden and is reportedly the man who as early as 1995 came up with the plan to destroy the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners.
The FBI has car rental and other records showing that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va. on or about April 8, 2001. It is not clear that Atta actually made his third trip to Prague at that time and returned to the United States just 72 hours later. According to original reports, Czech intelligence indicated that Atta's meeting with the Iraqi agent occurred during this three-day period.
Atta’s interest in a possibly chemical biological attack predates these activities and lends credence to terrorist involvement in the subsequent anthrax mailings. On more than one occasion in the year 2000, Atta led a group of men described as Middle Eastern to inquire about crop dusting at the Belle Glade State Municipal Airport, about an hour northwest of Fort Lauderdale. Those reports coincide with al-Qaeda’s “curdled milk” project and raised concerns that the hijackers might have been researching a means to deliver biological or chemical weapons.
The alleged cutaneous anthrax infection of Ahmad Ibrahim A.Al Haznawi also points to the hijackers involvement in the anthrax mailings. Al Haznawi entered the United States on June 8, records show. On June 22, he moved to an apartment at 4641 Bouganvilla in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea where his roommate was Ziad Samir Jarrah (from the Hanburg cell), another of the suspected hijackers. According to statements last fall by the building’s landlord, Charles Lisa, Jarrah and Al Haznawi, who spoke little English, later came to him seeking advice about a “gash” that appeared on Al Haznawi’s left calf. Lisa said he applied some peroxide, wrapped the leg and directed the two to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. Law enforcement officials said Al Haznawi, accompanied by Jarrah, was examined June 25 at Holy Cross. Al Hazawi claimed that the infection was the result of an injury obtained two months earlier by bumping into some luggage. Since the injury was on the left calf, it is difficult to imagine backing into luggage with such force as to produce an injury of that extent and one which persisted for two months. In addition, the diagnosis of Al Hazawi’s injury being consistent with cutaneous anthrax was later confirmed by experts at Johns Hopkins University.
"The bureau also has pooh-poohed a recent memo written by two biodefense experts at Johns Hopkins University. They concluded that one of the hijackers who went to a Florida doctor last June seeking treatment of a "black lesion" or a "gash"–the description varies–probably suffered from cutaneous, or skin, anthrax. But the FBI says exhaustive testing for anthrax anywhere the hijackers were present came up empty. " from U.S. News & World Report, 15 April 2002
"How Mrs. Lundgren became infected has never been explained, though the mail has always been suspected. But researchers never found spores in her home or anywhere else that she spent time, even though they took 449 samples from her home and 33 other places she visited, including a beauty parlor and a clinic. " NY Times, 27 March 2002
"When Kathy T. Nguyen died of inhalation anthrax in New York on Oct. 31, the police and medical investigators were quickly deployed to find the source of the spores that had infected her. They interviewed 232 co-workers, 27 neighbors and 35 acquaintances in an effort to reconstruct her final two months. They searched her apartment and swabbed surfaces there and in her workplace and the subway stations she used. They vacuumed her clothes in search of spores. They used her subway fare card to trace her path around the city, studied her phone records and inspected her usual laundry, post office and grocery store. They never found a single spore or any other clue to how Ms. Nguyen became infected. " NY Times, 2 April 2002
Why would the FBI expect to find anthrax spores where the hijackers had been several months after the fact when they could not find it where victims had been immediately after the fact?
It is of interest to note that Atta visited a pharmacist at about the same time seeking medication for redness and irritation of both hands. It has been suggested that this type of skin irritation can be caused by soaking the hands in household bleach. It is well known among those trained in biological and chemical warfare defense that bleach is a well-known expedient decontaminant of biological and chemical agents.
Significant care in the preparation of the letters was indicated by the handwriting (maybe a non-English speaker or a child), the pharmacist fold, and letter copies rather than originals. The use of what seems like A3 or A4 size paper, however, suggests a non-U.S source.
It is now known that the potency of the anthrax increased with subsequent mailings. This is consistent both with a process of “ramping up the terror” and with the possibility that the suppliers of the anthrax were conducting tests as to the effectiveness of various concoctions.
It is clear that New Jersey served as one hub for the conspirators in the days and nights of summer 2001 South Florida served as the other, the two locations where the anthrax mailings appeared to have originated. One should recall that the center of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy was Jersey City, New Jersey.
A key to determining whether this was a case of domestic terrorism perpetrated by a single individual or a September 11th -related conspiracy could depend on the timing of the initial Florida infection and might suggest two initial mailings, one in Florida and the other, the known New Jersey mailing on September 18th. On September 24, 73-year-old Ernesto Blanco, the AMI newspaper mailroom clerk who delivered mail to Robert Stevens (the Florida man who died of inhalation anthrax) had onset of fatigue. On September 28, nonproductive cough, intermittent fever, rhinorrhea, and conjunctivitis developed. He was admitted to hospital on Oct 1st, one day before Robert Stevens. Given the fact that anthrax has a 6-45 day incubation period and given evidence that the Florida anthrax letter had the wrong address and was routed through two post offices (spores found in each), one could conclude a separate and perhaps earlier Florida mailing.
It is entirely possible that the anthrax mailer is no longer in the United States and has not been for months. Last autumn, flights leaving major U.S. metropolitan areas carried significant numbers of Middle Eastern men out of the U.S. e.g. Yemenis from Detroit to Frankfurt and later on to Yemen, a known al-Qaeda stronghold.
Further evidence of the possible September 11th link comes from intelligence reports which arrived in late September 2001 said that the 200 Taliban fighters reaching North Iraqi in mid-July were in fact members of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. They came in response to an Iraqi offer to train Al Qaeda terrorist personnel in the use of chemical and biological warfare weapons. In northern Iraq, the men underwent a secret intensive course at the hands of Iraqi army experts and instructors in the operation, by three- or four-men squads, of bombs and explosives containing chemical and biological material.
To explain the arrivals, the Iraqis fabricated an impending attack on Kurdistan, concentrating troops north of Mosul, to make the story credible to skeptical military and intelligence experts.
The Iraqi thrust into Kurdistan never came. After the course, the terrorists split into three groups. The largest, about 100 men, returned to Afghanistan by the same route it had come. They spent several days near the city of Jalalabad in al-Bahder Camp 1, the Abu Khabab facility.
About a week before the suicide attacks in the United States, the group was moved to Bin Laden’s hideouts in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Little Pamir.
Another group of 40 Bin Laden terrorists trained in Iraq headed for Mogadishu, thence to Trieste and onto Kosovo aboard Albanian mafia smuggling craft.
The third group of about 60 men flew on commercial airlines via Addis Ababa, Mogadishu, Tiblisi in Georgia, Tashkent in Uzbekistan to the Bin Laden Central Asian Command in the strategic Ferghana Valley.
They actually focused on the foreign angle, and possible connections to the 9/11 hijackers. far more in the first month or so of the investigation. That the possibility of foreign involvement has been "ignored" is incorrect. They switched to focusing on domestic after they were unable to turn up anything linking it to foreign activity or the 9/11 hijackers.
What is your source for the 200 Taliban trained in Northern Iraq and, in particular, their subsequent movements?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.