NY Times: Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans! [5/21/2005]

NY Times ^ | 5/21/2005 | ERIC LIPTON

[Southack]

Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans

WASHINGTON, May 20 -Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.

...

The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.

The letters...detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room" with thousands of samples of biological substances. ...

The letter specifies a training program for the staff, lasting six to eight months for senior workers and two to four months for technicians. ... describes a biological weapons program that "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11." ....

"They were moving to try to get the right stuff," said D. A. Henderson, an expert on biological weapons ... ...Dr. Milton Leitenberg...said many of people who were involved in the effort had been arrested or, in one case, killed. ...

The writer of the two letters is widely believed to be Abdur Rauf, a Pakistani microbiologist who is known to have attended a conference before 2001 sponsored by the Society for Applied Microbiology, said a biological weapons researcher who insisted on anonymity because of his work investigating Al Qaeda.

One letter was written on a notepad from the Society for Applied Microbiology, a prominent British organization of microbiologists.

All the names on the letters are blacked out ...

At the same camp where the letters were found, officials recovered articles from medical journals that detailed an approach to isolating, culturing and producing bacteria, including anthrax. ..."

[Baraonda]

"Don't matter who was president,"

I think it DOES matter who is president.

I'm sure these animals wouldn't dare attack us while under the leadership of a strong and determined president like Reagan or Bush.

[Baraonda]

"WOW! I'd like to read the whole article, but I refuse to sign up with the NYT."

So do I. I wouldn't dare sign up with a leftist newspaper.

But those who already subscribe to it should post the entire piece. It's difficult to make a comment w/o the full story. I also would not give the leftist media a "hit" by clicking for the entire article.

[Baraonda]

**This can't be true. Everyone knows that the attacks were planned and carried out by operatives for the Bush Administration as an excuse to begin his imperialist agenda of conquering Middle Eastern countries and plundering their oil.**

Oh please! too many paranoids in these threads saying it's Bush's fault. It is not Bush's fault and what you said above is not true.

[Mixer]

Stellar Dendrite,

Thanks for that link....never knew about it.

[Peach]

Ping aling.

[Right_in_Virginia]

BTTT

[bnelson44]

"Didn't we find some weather balloon stuff in Iraq?? at one point??"

We found lots of drones

[bnelson44]

"Unfortunately," it says, "I did not find the required culture of b. anthrax, i.e. pathogenic. However, I have started correspondence with [name blacked out] for the supply of the culture."

Who blanked the name out? Now that is interesting

[kayak]

First thing that comes to mind is the rash of deaths of world renown microbiologists about 10 years ago leading up to 2001. Anybody remember a good summary thread about those incidents?

backhoe ~~~ do you have such a list among your various goodies?

[sissyjane]

I remember the room our soldiers found in Afghanistan with a lot of bio. and chem. stuff in it. Remember the film of the dog being poisened to death ?

[frankiep]

Oh please! too many paranoids in these threads saying it's Bush's fault. It is not Bush's fault and what you said above is not true.

ahem, if you had happened to read the very next sentence in my post you would have seen that I was being sarcastic.

[aposiopetic]

Link to Ross Getman's site:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/

Thanks for the link. Getman appears to have assembled lots of information that nobody else has put together.

[OESY]

The letters appear to be the same documents referred to in the report of a special presidential commission on intelligence failures and unconventional weapons led by former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the federal appeals court. -- New York Times, May 21, 2005


Finally, we have evidence of why the Times was so vitriolic in its condemnation of the Robb-Silberman investigation as a waste of time and money. It also reveals the Times was premature, if not wrong, in censoring Judith Miller for reporting on WMD in Iraq.

As represented by the Times, Newsweek, CBS and many other sources of liberal MSM misinformation, the Left allowed itself to be duped by a clever dictator because their story lines would do maximum damage to the Bush administration while possibly rescuing their moribund Democrat party.

Let's recount what we know.

1. Al-Qaeda left evidence (letters, PCs, vials) in Afghanistan that they were working on WMD and planned to kill westerners who disagreed with their Islamist doctrine.
2. The evidence confirms the findings of the CIA, Pentagon, Kay, Duelfer, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Robb-Silverman investigations.
3. Saddam often expressed his desire to kill Americans and had the means, motives and intent to do so, as evidenced by prior use on humans and on research dogs.
4. Iraq had given sanctuary, funding and training camps to al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden and Zarqawi, as well as other known terrorists like Abu Nidal.
5. Deadly ricin was found stockpiled at the al-Qaeda camp at the Ansar al-Islam in Iraq near the Iranian border, along with other biochem poisons like aflatoxin.
6. Saddam and his generals believed they had WMD capabilities and had built complex warheads to carry biochem agents on U.N.-banned long-range missiles.
7. Saddam attempted to purchase additional missiles from North Korea 1999-2002.
8. Such WMD products were often produced in small quantities, especially while Saddam was under world scrutiny, highly concealable and highly mobile.
9. Before the war began, Saddam had ample time to relocate his WMD stocks to his Ba'athist allies in Lebanon and Syria, which was consistent with satellite imagery.
10. As the newly released letters illustrate, there was surprisingly extensive WMD commerce between Iraq and Afghanistan in product, talent and equipment.
11. Iraqi scientists were aggressive in attempting to acquire and sell privately their WMD expertise and products, and concealed or buried evidence at their homes.
12. Many Iraqi WMD scientists were assassinated or threatened after the war and documents destroyed rendering investigations difficult and arguably incomplete.
13. Saddam had become impatient with international sanctions and attempted to bribe French, Russian and Chinese officials to relax restrictions, mainly because he wanted to restart his nuclear program, according to Saddam's inner circle.
14. Every other intelligence service in the world, including Egypt and Jordan, believed Saddam had WMD, which the Left has conveniently discounted after the fact.


The analogous situation to the WMD controversy is where you know by overwhelming circumstantial evidence that murders were committed by a serial killer, confirmed by motive and means, but you can't find the whole body of the last victim because some parts are missing. Only a liberal (not very useful) idiot could claim the murderer was therefore innocent and not a danger to society if left at large to continue his killings.

Democrats used to argue Bush was citing too many reasons for removing Saddam: regime change, violations of 17 U.N. resolutions, possession of WMD and banned delivery systems, need to protect Israel and jump-start their peace process, spread of democracy, etc. Now they deny those reasons as well as their CYA statements.

In a larger sense, the al-Qaeda letters reveal not that the American Left is incapable of defending America, but that their mindset is counterproductive to the War on Terror. Bottom-line, they cannot be trusted to defend America against future terrorist attacks.

The fact that Bush did the world a favor by removing the menace Saddam and his sons posed for current and future generations of westerners drives liberals crazy because it exposes their own ineffectual efforts during the Clinton administration to "fight" terrorism with a reliance on a combination of multilateral institutions and wishful thinking. Liberal delusions are dangerous in today's world.

[texasbluebell]

"Oh please! too many paranoids in these threads saying it's Bush's fault. It is not Bush's fault and what you said above is not true."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The "paranoids" have just assumed that one would know they made sarcastic remarks, without using the < /sarc > code.

IOW, it's a joke!

Or perhaps you forgot your own < /sarc > ?

~~~~~~~~~~~

sar·casm ( P ) Pronunciation Key (särkzm)
n.
A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.
A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.

[Baraonda]

Am not a conformist.

[texasbluebell]

I'm reading an invisible < /sarc > there!

[arasina]

I'm so very skeptical about anything coming from the FRAUDcasters and Old Media now -

I'm with you. There's an agenda here somewhere and it isn't an attempt by the NYT to be 'balanced'. I'm waiting for the proverbial 'other shoe to drop' or at least a punch line.

[Nita Nupress]

[browardchad]

For those who think this story is some kind of truth break-though by the NYT, please note the following paragraphs, well into the story:

The report, released in March, describes a biological weapons program that "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11."

Two biological weapons experts who have read the letters said in interviews Friday that the letters suggested that the laboratory construction was at an early stage and that it would have most likely been at least two to three years, if not more, before the Qaeda team would have been able to produce enough anthrax to use as a weapon.

"They were moving to try to get the right stuff," said D. A. Henderson, an expert on biological weapons who is a former top scientific adviser to the Health and Human Services Department. "But not in a very sophisticated way."

The second of the two experts, Dr. Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said many of people who were involved in the effort had been arrested or, in one case, killed.

"It is not likely that anything is going on right now," said Dr. Leitenberg, author of "The Problem of Biological Weapons" (2004). "And in the three years they were working on this, as best as is known, they did not succeed in obtaining a pathogen or reach the stage of growing the pathogen in the laboratory."

To recap the tortured logic here:

1) The lab existed two years before 9/11, but since an expert says it would take two years or more to produce anthrax, they didn't produce anthrax.

2) They had all the right equipment, an expert adviser and were apparently negotiating with an outside source, but all this was "not in any sophisticated way."

3) Most of the people involved have been arrested or killed, but no mention of what led to their arrest or death -- such as the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq -- it just happened, dude!

And thus, as opposed to your logical listing of reasons why the international community (not just Bushitler) considered Iraq a major threat, we have the factual meatgrinder of the NYT producing the expected result -- we didn't find clearly labeled, neatly stacked storage rooms full of anthrax in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Bush lied.

Personally, I think Saddam, or one of his allies, got impatient waiting for their glorious plans to materialize, and used the OFF money to purchase small quantities of anthrax ready-made, probably from more than one source (which would explain the different grades used in the Amerithrax attacks). He probably paid through the nose for it, but what the heck, it wasn't his money anyhow.