Posted on 4/30/2007, 11:59:48 PM by genefromjersey
In a 2004 article,researcher/attorney Ross Getman voiced a belief the original anthrax plotters had been captured,killed, or otherwise neutralized; and that this explains why there was no subsequent attack.
The article came to light during a review of George Tenet's new book; and, with Ross' permission, I have republished it on my site as a Guest Post.
Getman's research -whether he is right or wrong -has been exhaustive.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidestraight.typepad.com ...
I recall notifying the Postal IG representative who was discussing the possibilities I'd come up with about the USPS employee associated with the Blind Sheikh.
His pen dropped; his jaw dropped; he quivered; he belched; and he ran off wildly in all directions.
I'd just picked that news up in the arrest of that sleezy old lawyer gal. It was all on the net.
Some people here have voiced the opinion that the anthrax attacks were actually sanctioned by Pakistan, and that they turned on a dime and came over to our side because we secretly threatened to blow the whole country to kingdom come after the second set of letter attacks.
pings
Thanks for the ping, Velveeta.
1. George Tenet, in At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, at 278-279 (April 30, 2007)
“Another key Al-Qa’ida connection to biological weapons was Yazid Sufaat, the Jemaah Islamiya associate who hosted the first operational meeting of the 9/11 hijackers at his apartment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in January 2000. In fact, Sufaat had provided commercial cover for Zacarias Moussaoui’s trip to the United States. Sufaat was also the self-described “CEO” of al-Qai’da’s anthrax program. U.S. educated and with a Malaysian military background, Sufaat had impeccable extremist credentials. In 2000 he had been introduced to Ayman al-Zawahiri personally, by Hambali, as the man who was capable of leading al-Qai’da’s biological weapons program.
Al-Qa’ida spared no effort in its attempt to obtain biological weapons. In 1999, 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. 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. Later, we uncovered Sufaat’s central role in the program. 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.
The most startling revelation from this intelligence success story was that the anthrax program had been developed in parallel to 9/11 planning. As best as we could determine, al-Zawahiri’s project had been wrapped up in the summer of 2001, when the al-Qaida deputy, along with Hambali, were briefed over a week by Sufaat on the progress he had made to isolate anthrax. The entire operation had been managed at the top of al-Qai’da with strict compartmentalization. Having completed this phase of his work, Sufaat fled Afghanistan in December 2001 and was captured by authorities trying to sneak back into Malaysia. Rauf Ahmad was detained by Pakistani authorities in December 2001. Our hope was that these and our many other actions had neutralized the anthrax threat, at least temporarily.”
2. George Tenet, in At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, at 278-279 (April 30, 2007)
“Over time, we were able to link the top echelon of al-Qa’da’s leadership to the group’s highly compartmentalilzed chemical, biological, and nuclear networks. This group included al-Qa’ida’s operational chief Sayf al-Adl; the group’s logistics chief, Hafs; Jemaah Islamiya chief Ruidin Isomuddin (Hambali); 9/11 planners Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Rambzi bin al-Shibh; Egyptian CBRN expert Abu Khabab al-Masri; self-described “CEO of anthrax,” Yazid Sufaat; and explosives expert and “nuclear CEO,” Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri.
As we researched the information we were slowly gathering from myriad sources, we unlocked a disturbing secret: the group’s interest in WMD was not new. They had been searching for these weapons long before we had been looking for them. As far we know, al-Qa-ida’s fascination with chemical weapons goes back to the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 by a group of religious fanatics called the Aum Shinrikyo. Twelve people died in that attack, but had the dispersal devices worked as planned, the death toll would have been higher. Al-Qai’da leaders were impressed and saw the attack as a model for achieving their own ambitions. (In retrospect, the Tokyo attack also foreshadowed al-Qa’ida’s interest in subway and railway systems, which later manifested itself in attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004; in London on July 7, 2005; an a planned attack against the New York City subway in fall 2003 that was called off by Ayman al-Zawahiri in the last stages of preparation — “for something better.”)
George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, at 260-261.
Thanks for the ping ZacandPook.
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