Who is OBL’s brother-in-law Khalifa? Let’s review some background.
Al Qaeda’s regional operative, Hambali, was at the key January 2000 meeting and supervised anthrax lab technician Yazid Sufaat. KSM took over anthrax planning upon Atef’s death in November 2001. He was planning up follow-up attacks. Khalid Mohammed’s involvement dates back to Bojinka, as did Hambali’s. The money for Bojinka, a plot to simultaneously bomb airliners and to assassinate the Pope, went from Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa to the Abu Sayyaf Group, Al Qaeda’s primary Philippine affiliate, and then on to the cell that included KSM. An alternative plan in Bojinka was to use biochemical weapons in an attempt to free blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. When the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was arrested, he had Khalifa’s business card along with $62000 in cash in a suitcase.
The US-trained Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat met with 9/11 plotters and two hijackers in January 2000. Sufaat used his company called Green Laboratory Medicine to buy items useful to Al Qaeda. Zacarias Moussaoui, who had a crop dusting manual when he was arrested, stayed at Sufaat’s condominium in 2000 when he was trying to arrange for flight lessons in Malaysia. Yazid Sufaat provided Moussaoui with a letter indicating that he was a marketing representative for Infocus Technologies signed “Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director.” Sufaat had given Moussaoui an e-mail greenlab@usa.net that was accessed by authorities on September 19, 2001, one day before Al-Timimi was interviewed by the FBI. The crop dusters were to be part of a “second wave.” (Greendale School was the address used in the letter to the Senators).
When 9/11 hijacker Saeed Al-Ghamdi videotaped his will in 2000, he praised Saudi Sheik Al-Hawali. Telephone records for Mounir el-Mottasedeq, a Moroccan convicted in Germany of helping Mohammed Atta and other members of the “Hamburg cell” that planned 9/11, show that in the months prior to the attacks, he made repeated calls to Al-Hawali’s Riyadh offices. The other Saudi sheik mentioned as involved in the telephone calls in this week’s New Yorker calls was the other sheik, who along with al-Hawali and blind sheik Abdel-Rahman, were referenced in the 1996 Declaration of War and the 1998 claim of responsibility for the embassy bombings.
Ali Al-Timimi spoke alongside the blind sheik’s son Mohammed at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1996. The son was on Al Qaeda’s 3-member WMD committee. He recruited scientists. He was taken into custody two weeks before the FBI raided Ali’s residence looking, according to the warrant, evidence of WMD.
The late Khalifa owned a mighty fine fish restaurant in Saudi Arabia post-911 and stridently denied being associated with his friend and brother-in-law Osama.
Detrick Detox, Frederick News Post, April 25, 2008
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_columnist.htm?StoryID=74188
“Detrick insiders protest Detrick knows its job when it comes to containment and security. But well-documented breaches have occurred at Detrick over the years, incidents publicized in the local and national press, underscoring the wisdom and necessity of the commissioners’ action.
FOX News reported last month that the FBI has narrowed its focus to “about four suspects,” at least three of whom are linked to USAMRIID, including a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist.
FOX talked to a bioterrorism expert who said the Detrick link points out “serious security deficiencies ... the ability of researchers to smuggle out some type of very sophisticated anthrax weapon and in some quantity.”
This revelation goes far beyond calling into question security at Detrick.”
[Then the journalist, unburdened by knowing of these shredded-banana peel type details, advances a “bioevangelist” theory]
It was more than a happy coincidence, however, for Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli (who led a key cell planning the attacks with KSM) that an active supporter of the Taliban and supporter of jihad was a US biodefense insider. Microbiologist Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Charles Bailey, who would come to publish 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. He would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences — the blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad. 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”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high security clearance for work for the Navy in he late 1990s and in 1996 for two months had worked for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card when he was Secretary of Transportation. As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with a charity Islamic Assembly of North America.
Ed frequently for years argued that if there US-based “accomplices” helping the 911 hijackers, the USG would be talking about it. When, actually, common sense is that instead they would proceed with electronic surveillance in a highly secret investigation. No banana peel would be safe from shredding. When, for example, the 911 Commission Report discussed the Falls Church “911 imam” who knew the hijacker from Kuala Lumpur in both San Diego and Falls Church, Ed just avoided discussing possible US-based supporters. It was easier to argue that the hijackers were “dead, dead, dead” and not explore alternative hypotheses to the Amerithrax crimes. Ed had what is known as “cognitive rigidity.”
Let’s just hope the USG doesn’t lose its — well, a peel.