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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.