Selling the threat of bioterrorism (LA Times investigates Alibek)

Interview about a new book addressing, among other things, the anthrax mailings.

Our Own Worst Enemy: Asking the Right Questions About Security to Protect You, Your Family, and America.

http://themoderatevoice.com/media/original-reporting/15247/interview-with-randall-larsen/

Has anyone read this new book by Randall Larsen discussing the anthrax mailings at some length?

As for the interview mention of the lesion, here are the details that lesion the hijacker had upon his arrival from Kandahar. One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. “No one is dismissing this,” said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda’s Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States)

Dr. Tara O’Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins concluded it was anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, now director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: “The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he’s not an addict and doesn’t have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious.” The FBI says no anthrax was found where the hijackers were. (The FBI tested the crash sites where the planes came down and found no traces of anthrax). Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that “ in 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.” Now that we know Kandahar is where the extremely virulent anthrax was located, it makes it more likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cutanous anthrax.

At the time, CBS reported that “U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthrax.” But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that “Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said.” Only years later did we learn that there was in fact extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. (Though some senior officials at the CIA and FBI knew this in Autumn 2003) Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the John Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated.

Has anyone read this new book by Randall Larsen discussing the anthrax mailings at some length?

As for the interview mention of the lesion, here are the details that lesion the hijacker had upon his arrival from Kandahar. One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. “No one is dismissing this,” said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda’s Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States)

Dr. Tara O’Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins concluded it was anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, now director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: “The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he’s not an addict and doesn’t have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious.” The FBI says no anthrax was found where the hijackers were. (The FBI tested the crash sites where the planes came down and found no traces of anthrax). Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that “ in 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.” Now that we know Kandahar is where the extremely virulent anthrax was located, it makes it more likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cutanous anthrax.

At the time, CBS reported that “U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthrax.” But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that “Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said.” Only years later did we learn that there was in fact extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. (Though some senior officials at the CIA and FBI knew this in Autumn 2003) Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the John Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated.

I love the opening of the book.

That’s why I get so annoyed at Mr. Lake when he intentionally omits the 2007 BBC and AP articles about AQ allegedly having weaponized anthrax. (One case involved the Information Minister who had the powder in packets for mailing to government offiicals and another the Gitmo Kabul military commander who allegedly possessed anthrax upon his capture).

People should feel free to advocate whatever position they like but they should not put blinders on and fail to disclose material that, unless debunked, tends to support a contrary view.

My only disagreement with Colonel Larsen is that he assumes that the FBI has had blinders on rather than aggressively pursued all leads in a confidential national security investigation. What Mueller in 2005 said as to motive was:
Remember 911. Remember Oklahoma City.

And what Ashcroft said was that people misunderstand what the DOJ means when they use the word “domestic” — it in no way excludes highly educated supporters (in the US) of the militants.

Fitzgerald, from the FBI behavioral unit, in 2002 was wrong. But that was five years ago.

Our Own Worst Enemy
by Colonel Randall J. Larsen USAF (Ret)

http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/34/0446580430/chapter_excerpt25523.html

Introduction

Wrong Questions Produce Wrong Answers

JUST NINE DAYS AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACKS, TWO MEN AND A WOMAN CROSSED Pennsylvania Avenue and approached the northwest entrance to the White House. All three carried briefcases. Security was incredibly tight, and it took them nearly fifteen minutes to clear the metal, explosives, and radiological detectors, and a physical search of their bags. These were not regular times at the White House, and these were not regular guests.

Everything appeared normal, but a uniformed Secret Service agent asked one of the men why he had a surgical mask in his briefcase. The man replied, “Just for demonstration. You saw Mayor Rudy Giuliani wear one at Ground Zero, right?” The three were permitted to enter. They walked down two corridors and up two flights of stairs. After waiting for several minutes in a small room, Vice President Dick Cheney and several of his senior staff members walked into the room. In the same briefcase that contained the surgical mask, not more than ten feet from where the vice president was seated, was a test tube filled with weaponized Bacillus globigii. None of the security devices had detected it.

During that meeting, Vice President Cheney asked the question: “What does a biological weapon look like?”

I pulled the test tube from my briefcase and said, “Sir, it looks like this, and by the way, I did just carry this into your office.” I went on to explain that Bacillus globigii is harmless, but physically and even genetically it is nearly identical to Bacillus anthracis—the bacterium that causes anthrax. If you can make the former, you will have no difficulty making the latter.

Two weeks later, Dr. Tara O’Toole, the director of the Center for Biosecurity–University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and I walked into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to meet with the chief of indications and warning. While going through the security checkpoint, I noted the presence of a guard in full battledress uniform and armed with a machine gun (something not often seen at CIA Headquarters). After making eye contact with him, I took the test tube from one pocket, looked at it for a moment to make sure he could see it, and gently placed it in the other. The guard said nothing. Once again, a test tube of weaponized Bacillus globigii was carried into one of the most secure buildings in America.

Three weeks later, the office of Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, received an envelope filled with a far smaller quantity of weaponized and dangerous Bacillus anthracis. The young intern running the automatic letter-opening machine saw a fine mist of powder emerge from the envelope, and the Capitol Police were summoned. Later that day, all members of Congress and their staffs were evacuated from the Capitol Building and the six congressional office buildings. The Senate Hart Office Building, home to Tom Daschle and his staff, would remain closed for ninety days. It was contaminated with anthrax.

It would be easy to place the responsibility for the two earlier security lapses on the men and women entrusted with guarding the White House and CIA Headquarters. After all, if they can’t protect their own house, how can we expect them to protect ours? But centering the blame on these individuals is both unjust and inaccurate. The failure was not one of execution, but of education. This lack of education and understanding of homeland security is the root of our problems. The Secret Service agent saw the test tube in my briefcase, but he asked about the surgical mask. He asked the wrong question. He is not alone.

And his next passage by Colonel Larsen underlies why I disagree with my friends Dany Shoham and Stuart Jacobsen who argued in a journal article that it was AQ operationally, but that Iraq supplied the know-how.

“The number one problem of homeland security is that the majority of leaders in the public and private sectors, academics, self-appointed experts, and pundits rush to provide answers before they have properly constructed the questions. This is because they assume the questions have not changed. They are wrong. The questions have changed. The reason for these changes is not al Qaeda or 9/11; the reason is technology. Weapons formerly restricted to the arsenals of large industrialized nation-states are now within reach of small states and some nonstate actors.

In the twenty-first century, biotechnology will change our lives even more than nuclear technology did in the twentieth century. Thirty years ago we didn’t have to struggle with the ethical dilemmas of stem cell research and cloning or the threat of genetically engineered bioweapons. But change has not been limited to new types of weapons; it is the entire international environment that has changed.

When I use the term al Qaeda in this book, I am not limiting it to the terrorist group commanded by Osama bin Laden. I use it to describe a loose affiliation of fanatical Islamic terrorists. They go by many names: Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), Islamic Jihad (West Bank and Gaza), Al-Gama al-Islamiyya (Egypt), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami (Pakistan), and the Armed Islamic Group (Algeria). The State Department identifies two dozen Islamic terrorist organizations. Some operations are under the strict command and control of bin Laden, such as the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, and 9/11. Other operations, such as the attacks in Bali, Spain, and London, were planned and executed by al Qaeda affiliates. These affiliates endorse al Qaeda religious guidance that allows for the killing of innocents during a holy war. Their theory is that “true innocents” will go directly to heaven when killed in a jihad. (According to bin Laden, Americans can never be true innocents since our tax dollars pay for the war against al Qaeda.) Some of these affiliates receive training and even limited funding from al Qaeda, while others operate independently except for moral support and religious guidance.”

His comments about where AQ would build a bioweapon remind me of a story this week about where Mexican drug lords choose to grow marijuana (in the US):

Colonel Larsen writes:

“I understand many Americans’ frustration with our porous borders, but we need to spend our limited resources on solutions that will really work. There are ways to significantly reduce illegal immigration, but I guarantee you there is no way to prevent terrorists from smuggling a bioweapon into this country. Furthermore, al Qaeda training manuals available on the Internet state that it’s better to build weapons inside the country one plans to attack, rather than transport them across international borders. In virtually every al Qaeda attack, this is precisely what the terrorists did, whether in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Bali in October 2002, Morocco in May 2003, Turkey in December 2003, Spain in March 2004, or London in July 2005. That is why biodefense requires different solutions than those required to reduce illegal immigration.”

Who is Randall Larsen, you ask?

Two days after 9-11, when VP Cheney wanted a briefing on the threat of bio terrorism, he called Randy Larsen.

During the anthrax crisis of Oct 2001, Larry King needed an expert; he called Randy Larsen-6 nights in a row.

”America’s leading expert on homeland security!”, says Congressman Chris Cox, Chairman of House Homeland Security Committee.

In addition to a videotape based on the book “Our Own Worst Enemy,” he has an earlier video program titled “Bioterrorism: Myth or Reality?”

errata re above - As indicated in the first two words of the book, I meant “Nine days after”... It was two days after the 9/18 anthrax letter postmark.

FBI Reorganizes Effort to Uncover Terror Groups’ Global Ties

By John Solomon

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 26, 2007; Page A05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/25/AR2007092502291_2.html

Borrowing from its mob-busting strategies in the 1980s, the bureau will encourage counterterrorism agents to forgo immediate arrests when an imminent threat is not present, allowing the surveillance of terrorism suspects to last longer. The aim is to identify collaborators, facilitators and sympathizers who increasingly span across multiple groups and countries, Billy said.

***

The changes have been driven partly by a growing number of FBI cases involving self-styled terrorist cells inside the United States that were inspired by al-Qaeda and bin Laden but receive support, advice or encouragement from disparate sympathizers across the globe, making group allegiances far less important.

“You don’t want to limit yourself to just assuming that one person who is a member of a certain terrorist group won’t particularly try to recruit or bring into the fold others overseas,” Billy said.

***

The effort required diplomacy with cooperating countries that became concerned that the terrorist cells might be moving toward an operational phase. A meeting was held last winter among international law enforcement agencies to decide when arrests should be made in each country and how to keep surveillance going, officials said.

***

But Laufman, who is now in private practice, cautioned that the FBI reorganization must “overcome the agent culture of the bureau” and allow intelligence analysts to drive the case agents, much like MI5’s domestic intelligence, which drives the investigations of Scotland Yard in Britain.

“The key to making this successful is to build a first-class analytical cadre, give counterterrorism analysts equivalent stature to agents in the FBI’s counterterrorism culture, and create an environment where analysts and agents continuously and seamlessly work together to identify relationships, sources of funding and operational plotting,” Laufman said.

Experts said the bureau’s future success also depends on attracting more Arabic speakers and intelligence analysts, and keeping them long enough to develop deep subject expertise.

I never saw this article until today.
I presume the Allen you pinged was meant to be me.

TrebleRebel, if we can’t ping the right guy, how are we going to solve Amerithrax?

Just as Ayman used the cover of charities and universities for his anthrax program, the FBI and CIA used the cover of BHR’s and the islamists’ own biodefense conspiracy theory as cover for their investigation.

Biographer Draper in Dead Certain reports that on October 4, 2001, Bush teared up during a speech at the State Department thanking them for their hard work after 9/11. Back at the White House, Bush motioned Fleischer into the Oval Office. “A Boca Raton tabloid editor had checked into a Florida hospital yesterday, Bush told Fleischer. Anthrax. The veil of resoluteness fell away from the president. His shoulders were hunched. Fleischer had never seen him more upset. Neither man said a word — neither had to: This was it, the second wave.” Then, on or about October 6, 2001, someone sent very fine powderized anthrax to US Senators Leahy and Daschle with a similar message. An infant visiting ABC was one of the first affected, which should have been prohibited (haram) in anyone’s book. Five people died, including an elderly woman and a hospital worker.

I first told the FBI and CIA that US-based operatives supporting Ayman Zawahiri were responsible for the anthrax mailings in December 2001. The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (”PDB”) to the President Bush had explained that Bin Laden planned to hijack some aircraft as part of an effort to free the blind sheik. A little noticed December 5, 1998 PDB to the same effect to President Clinton, however — declassified and included in the 911 Commission Report — said 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. The anthrax was sent on the date of Sadat’s assassination and the date the Camp David Accords were approved. Sadat’s peace with Israel was a key reason the militants killed Sadat.

That same week in December 2001, I e-mailed a professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg at the State University of New York who had created a webpage pointing to an apparent connection to US-biodefense program. She had joined a lawyer for militant islamists, Professor Francis Boyle, in arguing that the FBI was covering up that rogue elements of the US biodefense establishment were responsible for the anthrax mailings. She responded succinctly that they already “know who the suspects are.” She was right, but for entirely the wrong reasons. As was indicated in a handwritten claim seized in Afghanistan in Fall 2001 — but not declassified and revealed until 2006 — Zawahiri had succeeded in infiltrating both the UK and US biodefense establishments and had access to government and intelligence information.

It was more than a happy coincidence for Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli that an active supporter of the Taliban was a US biodefense insider. Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, who did a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Ali Al-Timimi, a microbiology graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”).

After an October 2001 bombing raid at a Qaeda camp in Darunta, Afghanistan US forces found 100+ typed and handwritten pages of documents that shed light on Al Qaeda’s early anthrax planning and the Defense Intelligence Agency eventually gave me. It was not clear whether or not they had yet acquired virulent anthrax or weaponized it, but it was clear that the planning was well along. When Cheney was briefed on the documents in late 2001, he immediately called a meeting of FBI and CIA. “I’ll be very blunt,” the Vice President started. “There is no priority of this government more important than finding out if there is a link between what’s happened here and what we’ve found over there with Qaeda.” At one point, security personnel thought that the home belonging to Elizabeth Cheney, his daughter, had been hit by an anthrax attack. Elizabeth had to call her nanny to get her to take the kids to be tested for exposure. A June 1999 memo from Ayman to military commander Atef said that “the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were ‘more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.’ ‘’ Thus, in determining whether Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall of 2001, the FBI and CIA knew based on the growing documentary evidence available by that December, that Al Qaeda operatives were likely associated with non-governmental organizations and working under the cover of universities. From early on, the CIA and FBI knew that charity is as charity does.

At a White House press conference on December 17, 2001, Ari Fleischer said: “There is nothing that has been final that has been concluded. But the evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source. But, again, this remains something that is not final, nor totally conclusive yet. ...I can just report to you the information that I’ve heard. I can’t give you the scientific reasons behind it. But you can assume that they’re based on investigative and scientific means.” He emphasized: “There’s a big difference between the source of it and who sent it, because the two do not have to be tied.”

Among the supporters of these militant islamists were people like US scientist Ali Al-Timimi and Pakistan scientist Rauf Ahmad who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it. Two letters — one typed and an earlier handwritten one — written by a scientist named Rauf Ahmad detailed his efforts to obtain a pathogenic strain of anthrax. He attended conferences on anthrax and dangerous pathogens such as one in September 2000 at the University of Plymouth cosponsored by DERA, the UK Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. A handwritten letter from 1999 is written on the letterhead of the oldest microbiology society in Great Britain. The 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces by Rauf describe 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; a conference he attended on dangerous pathogens cosponsored by UK’s Porton Down and Society for Applied Microbiology , and the need for vaccination and containment. Rauf had arranged to take a lengthy post-doc leave from his employer and was grousing that what the employer would be paying during that 12-month period was inadequate. Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, who told his wife he was working for a Taliban medical brigade, got the job instead of Rauf.

I have uploaded a scanned copy of a typed memo reporting on a lab visit, which included tour of a BioLevel 3 facility, where there were 1000s of pathogenic samples. The memo mentioned the pending paperwork relating to export of the pathogens. The documents were provided to me by the Defense Intelligence Agency (”DIA”) under the Freedom of Information Act. I also have uploaded a copy of earlier correspondence between Rauf Ahmad and Dr. Zawahiri from before the lab visit described in the typed memo. The handwritten letter was reporting on a different, earlier visit, where the anthrax had been nonpathogenic. Finally, on the same linked page, there are handwritten notes about the plan to use non-governmental-organizations (NGOs), technical institutes and medical labs as cover for aspects of the work, and training requirements for the various personnel at the lab in Afghanistan.

Al-Timimi’s charity promoting the views of this mentor who had inspired and taught both Ali and Bin Laden — this dissident Saudi sheik who had been the subject of Bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996 — had the office of a spin-off and dba about a 1 mile from me in Syracuse, New York. Called “Help The Needy,” it was focused on dawa, spreading the word and promoting Salafism, a conservative and militant for of Islam, in Iraq. It used the cover of feeding the widows and orphans. I would drive by it at least twice a day. Having moved recently from Arlington, VA where there seldom was snow, I now would drive by the ice-crusted snowbanks with no way of knowing when the FBI would first start going through the trash bags set out in the dumpster. I had no way of knowing what the FBI was doing in its Amerithrax investigation.

New book -

Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime (Hardcover)
by Barry Kellman (Author)

Al Qaeda

acquisition of bioagents, expertise, 77–79

bioviolence preparations, plots, 78–80

Encyclopedia of Jihad, 72

legality of bioviolence, 74–77

motivation for bioviolence, 73–78

principle of reciprocity, 75

anthrax

2001 attacks, 14, 34, 94, 108, 150, 157, 176

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-sci-biodefense5oct05,1,3066820.story?coll=la-news-politics-national&ctrack=1&cset=true
Experts detail risks of bioagent program

The growth in research meant to protect the U.S. from bioterrorism is overwhelming the oversight system, a House panel is told.

Comment:

Great article, most notable for the example it did not give.

Microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi worked in the same building with famed anthrax bioweaponeers and was sentenced to life plus 70 years for sedition. Yet, GMU just received a $25 million federal grant from NIH for a BL-3 lab for work with anthrax near the capitol while major issues remain unaddressed by the University or federal officials.

Al-Timimi at one point had an office about 15 feet from Ken and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, a prolific researcher who has published on the Ames anthrax strain.

Ali had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy, as explained by Milton Viorst in his article “The Educaiton of Ali Al-Timimi.”
To not address this issue — and provide answers bearing on this matter — is like talking about how the skies were sunny on December 7, 1941 and great for flying.

Bump

Thanks. Long but interesting thread.