(anthrax) The forensic guy from the FBI

Ed, your views are frozen in 2002 and never evolved because you closed your mind to other developments that didn’t fit your preconceptions.

In Northern Virginia, GMU microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi had been questioned by the FBI agent and Secret Service agent in connection with WTC 1993. Al-Timimi was a graduate student and employee in bioinformatics at George Mason University who shared a department fax with famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID deputy commander and anthrax researcher Charles Bailey. Al-Timimi was a celebrated speaker and religious scholar associated with the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”), an Ann Arbor-based charity. Ali spoke alongside the blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman at IANA conference in 1993 and 1996. On February 26, 2003, authorities searched Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse. Although you paid the news no attention, the Washington Post later summarized: “The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.”

That same morning, they arrested Sami al-Hussayen, who funnelled money from Saudi Arabia to the Islamic Assembly of North America and maintained websites for radical Saudi Sheiks who inspired Bin Laden. Sami al-Hussayen was in regular contact with Sheik al-Hawali. At the same time they searched Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse, in Virginia, and arrested Sami al-Hussayen, the FBI searched the home of two PhD level food production experts. One was in Moscow, Idaho and one was in Syracuse, New York. 100 agents came here to Syracuse, NY that day as part of “Operation Imminent Horizon” and simultaneously interviewed 150 people. The animal geneticist and food researcher in Syracuse, Ismail Diab, mixed with silica in making animal feedstuffs. Dr. Diab was not questioned. He had been in Syracuse in Fall 2001 but then returned to Pullman, Washington until the FBI began investigating there in August 2002. At the same time, the FBI interviewed and searched the apartment of Sami’s friend Nabil Al-Baloushi, a doctoral student in food engineering at the University of Idaho. His PhD thesis in 2003 on drying had 350 pages of drying coefficients.

Authorities trumpeted checks years earlier exchanged between the Syracuse, NY charity with Global Relief Foundation and Benevolence International Foundation as if important evidence. Help The Needy was a dba and spinoff of affiliated with the Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America. Sami was President of the Muslim Student Association and Nabil Albaloushi was Vice-President. Nabil’s 350-page thesis was filled with charts relating to drying coefficients that may have made the FBI think that they had found someone who was cutting edge in drying technique. Sometimes a french fry is just a french fry. The fact that Battelle ran the nearby Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (”PNNL”), which granted access to facilities to Washington State University students and shared library facilities with WSU, may have made the FBI even more peevish about access to cutting-edge drying or aerosol technology.

The Pakistan government, at a press conference, claimed that Khalid Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s #3, was captured on March 1, 2003. According to the Pakistan government officals, Mohammed allegedly was hiding in the home of the Pakistani bacteriologist Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan. The family of the bacteriologist claimed that KSM was not there at the home upon the early March raid but had been captured at a different location. That claim is also made by an informed Pakistani journalist, in the 2007 book Pakistan Frontline, and sourced to an unnamed Pakistan police officer involved in the capture. The author reports that KSM was actually picked up two weeks earlier but authorities wanted time to catch accomplices planning attacks.

In April 2008, Dr. Alibek noted that has not seen anyone from the FBI for the last 6 years. He reports that has lectured for many government officials on these 2001-anthrax “issues” several times years ago. He says he can just assume there were some of them from FBI but that was the extent of his contact. Dr. Alibek assures me that he has never been asked to provide with his handwriting. Dr. Alibek recalls offered his help to them about 4 or 5 years ago — and published reports at the time confirm he did in 2002. He was thanked and decided to leave the area of biodefense afterwards. He no longer is at George Mason University. Now he is working in the field of pharmaceutical development and spends his time developing and manufacturing cardio and cancer drugs. In contrast to Dr. Alibek’s responses, in December 2007, Dr. Bailey referred me to University counsel even on the simple question of confirming Al-Timimi’s desk was not much more than 15 feet away by January 2002. University counsel cited student privacy in refusing to provide any information.

Ed, while you remained totally unaware, contenting yourself with chronicling civil litigations, the evidence continued to accumulate.

Handwritten notes and files on a laptop seized upon the capture of KSM, Al Qaeda’s #3, included a feasible anthrax production plan using a spray dryer and addressed the recruitment of necessary expertise. Although the details of the documents on Mohammed’s computer may (or may not) point to possible difficulties in aerial dispersal, they are fully consistent with the product used in the anthrax mailings. Al Qaeda had both the means and opportunity. Mohammed told his interrogators that Moussaoui was not going to be part of 9/11 but was to be part of a “second wave.” KSM explained that Moussaoui’s inquiries about crop dusters may have been related to the anthrax work being done by US-trained biochemist and Al Qaeda operative, Malaysian Yazid Sufaat. Zacarias Moussaoui once told the judge at his trial in a filing that he wants “anthrax for Jew sympathizer only.” Al-Timimi and Bin Laden’s sheik al-Hawali spoke by telephone about how they might help in connection with Moussaoui’s defense.

In early March 2003, a man named Saud Memon, who was in the textiles business, was captured in South Africa. He had fled here after Daniel Pearl was killed on his property. Memon reportedly gave information on Al Qaeda’s anthrax work that he allegedly helping to finance. He reportedly was associated with Harakat ul-Mujahedeen Al-Almi and was one of the trustees of Al-Akhtar Trust International, a charity the United States Treasury alleges was tied to al Qaeda and the Taliban. After four years in detention at an undisclosed location, he was left in front of his home in Karachi on April 28, 2007 in very poor health. He died a couple weeks later. The cause of death was reported to be meningitis and tuberculosis. Memon’s lawyer said he had been in the custody of Pakistani intelligence officials. Memon’s name is not on the final official lists of Guantanamo captives issued on May 15, 2006. The Wall Street Journal also quoted an unnamed Pakistani official who said that Memon for a time was held in the American Bagram Theater detention facility.

Bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan was charged along with his son, Ahmed, for harboring the fugitives. As of March 28, 2003, he was in a hospital for a cardiac problem and had been granted “pre-arrest bail.”

A man named Muklis Yunos, who reportedly received training on use of anthrax as a biological weapon in Afghanistan according to Philippine intelligence reports, was arrested on May 25, 2003, and cooperated with authorities over a bucket of spicy Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yunos had been Hambali’s right-hand man and was in charge of special operations of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (”MILF”).

In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency (”CIA”) report publicly concluded that the reason for Mohammed Atta’s and Zacarias Moussaoui’s inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. It had long been known Osama Bin Laden was interested in using cropdusters to disperse biological agents (since the testimony of millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam). An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was planning an “unbelievable” biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He had been captured the previous month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Tenet in his May 2007 At The Center Of The Storm wrote: “And in early 2003, al-Qaida canceled a planned cyanide attack on the New York City subway, Al-Zawahiri recalled the operatives in New York because ‘we have something better in mind.’” Tenet noted that the CIA still does not know what al-Zawahiri meant but adds that the cyanide attack ‘was not sufficiently inspiring’ for al-Qaida.”

The attorney for White House staffer Scooter Libby revealed that Libby in July 2003 was preoccupied with many national security issues, including the possibility al-Qaida had brought anthrax into the United States. President Bush had first nicknamed him “Germ Boy” after his office in the Spring 2001 took charge of the issue of the possibility of an WMD attack using biological weapons. Libby met twice with Germs author Judy Miller in DC. Libby’s attorney read about these threats from a court-approved summary of classified information in arguing that Libby had honestly forgotten what he told reporters about Valerie Plame being a CIA operative. (When Libby’s attorneys announced that Libby in fact was not going to testify, the Judge excluded any testimony about terrorist matters in July 2003 that Libby may have addressed.)

Anthrax lab coordinator Hambali was arrested in August 2003 in the quiet city of Ayuttullah, Thailand, which is about half way between Bangkok and Chang Mai. He was sent to Jordan. In Autumn 2003, extremely virulent (but unweaponized) anthrax was found at a house in Kandahar — after regional operative Hambali was harshly interrogated. Al Qaeda had the extremely virulent anthrax before 9/11. Sufaat’s two principal assistants — and Egyptian and a Sudanese man — were also captured in 2003 and are in custody. They had been assisting Sufaat prior to 9/11. The FBI dropped the continuous conspicuous surveillance of Dr. Steve Hatfill in early Fall 2003, after extremely virulent anthrax that they knew could be readily weaponized was found at the residence pointed out by Hambali. Prior to that, the “Hatfill theory” had been an alternative hypothesis pursued by one of the squads within Amerithrax. It was the one that got massive attention because of intentional leaks by at least one key federal official who headed the criminal division at the US Attorney’s office in the District of Columbia. The man, born in Haifa in 1948, had shifted over from the CIA in late September 2001. His daughter later represented anthrax weapons suspsect Al-Timimi pro bono.

In connection with defending a civil rights claim by former USAMRIID scientist Steve Hatfill, which has been your sole focus for years, the FBI described the anthrax probe as “unprecedented in the FBI’s 95-year history.” By late November 2003, agents had spent 231,000 hours. The head of the investigation said that the investigation was “active and ongoing” and said agents’ time was divided between checking into individuals who might be connected to the attacks and a scientific effort to determine how the spores themselves were made using “cutting-edge forensic techniques and analysis.” The court papers did not indicate that Dr. Hatfill was still among those being investigated. Hatfill was labeled a “person of interest” in the probe in August 2002 by Attorney General John Ashcroft in responding to press inquiries for the reason for searches and surveillance that Dr. Hatfill had reported. By late 2003, all conspicuous surveillance had ended, according two unnamed federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The head of the investigation cautioned that Hatfill’s lawsuit could force the FBI to divulge its “interest in specific individuals,” who could flee the country, destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses, or concoct alibis.

In mid-December 2003, two brothers, Michael Ray and James Stubbs, were arrested in a Manila suburb where they were fundraising for a charity that supported the militant islamists and allegedly in contact with militant brothers. Michael Ray, an American, had been a HVAC technician at Lawrence Livermore near San Francisco — until March 2000 — where the Defense Threat Reduction Agency had launched a program to combat the Bin Laden anthrax threat in 1998. His brother, James, Jr., was also known as Jamil Daud Mujahid. James reportedly was monitored saying that he had been a classmate of bin Laden and had named his son Osama. James once was a policeman in California and a teacher in Missouri. James allegedly met with members of Abu Sayyef and Moro Islamic Liberation Front while in the Philippines doing charity fundraising. The brothers had been under surveillance at the time of their arrest. James Stubbs, according to some reports, had recently left a job as a teacher in California to study Arabic in Sudan. Other reports suggested that his recent work instead involved training dogs. Authorities allege that the brothers in May 2003 had met with several charity groups suspected of being al-Qaeda fronts, founded by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa.

In mid-April 2004, Patrick Hughes, Lieutenant General (Retired), Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis, Homeland Security Department testified before the 9/11 Commission. He explained that interrogations and other evidence revealed that Al Qaeda wanted to strike the US with a nonconventional weapon, most notably anthrax.

Palestinian Marwan Jabour had gone to Pakistan as a student. In May 2004, he was arrested by authorities in Lahore, Pakistan. “He was in touch with top Al Qaeda operational figures and was strongly linked to Al Qaeda chemical and biological efforts and had provided some funding for an Al Qaeda [biological weapons] lab,” one anonymous counterintelligence official was quoted in the press as saying. After dinner with a Professor at Lahore University, some men on the street approached him and asked him about his friend, before forcing him into a car. The men also arrested the Professor and another friend who had joined them for dinner. The men took him to the local station of the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (”ISI”). When finally released two years later, he gave a rare glimpse into the conditions in which detainees have been secretly held. He first was held for a month at a secret detention facility operated by the U.S. and Pakistan, as described in detail in the report “Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention.” He was flown to a CIA secret prison, that he believes was in Afghanistan, before finally being flown to Jordan, transferred to Israel and eventually released in the Gaza Strip. He admits having trained in Afghanistan in 1998 and then fighting with the Taliban. He acknowledges helping some Al Qaeda figures escape to Pakistan in 2003. Jabour denies any ties to terrorism. He says the mujahideen he helped relocate to Pakistan in 2003, because of his familiarity with the area and his fluency in Urdu, were “unaffiliated” and had not sworn an oath of loyalty to Al Qaeda.

In a statement issued June 16, 2004, the 9/11 Commission Staff concluded that “Al Qaeda had an ambitious biological weapons program and was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11. According to the 2004 statement by the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to the 911 Commission, al Qaeda’s ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face.” On August 9, 2004, it was announced that in the Spring of 2001, a man named El-Shukrijumah, also known as Jafar the Pilot, who was part of a “second wave,” had been casing New York City helicopters. Photographs from a seized computer disc included the controls and the locks on the door between the passengers and pilot. In a bulletin, the FBI noted that the surveillance might relate to a plot to disperse a chemical or biological weapon.

The first inhalational anthrax victim in New York City, Kathy Nguyen, had died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where a former BIF employed worked as an intern and then as a resident in internal medicine. She worked in the stockroom of a nearby hospital that was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. In late June 2004, when US authorities much later charged the doctor with immigration violations, he was represented by Stanley L. Cohen, the partner of the blind sheik’s Abdel-Rahman’s lawyer Lynne Stewart. Faraj lived in Brooklyn where he had moved in 1999 from Falls Church. Others represented by Attorney Cohen have included Falls Church, VA Hamas political leader Abu Marzouk and Virginia Paintball leader and Al-Timimi friend, Royer.

Authorities had received information, for example, from at least one detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that there was an anthrax storage facility in the Kabul area. Amerithrax Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty. The Washington Post explained that “[b]ecause the deadly letters contained the Ames anthrax spores, manufactured in the United States, authorities entertained the possibility that they had been removed from a U.S. lab and transported overseas.” Then in November 2004, on further information, agents spent several weeks unsuccessfully searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul. In 2005, an internal report was prepared summarizing the status of the investigation.

On March 31, 2005, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, in its “Report to the President of the United States,” concluded “al-Qai’da’s biological program was further along, particularly with regard to Agent X [anthrax], than pre-War intelligence indicated. The program was extensive, well-organized, and operated for two years before September 11, but intelligence insights into the program were limited. The program involved several sites around Afghanistan. Two of these sites contained commercial equipment and were operated by individuals with special training.” One technician was named Barq. Another was named Wahdan.

In a court filing dated May 20, 2005, an attorney for the United States Department of Justice wrote: “The investigation into the anthrax attacks is one of the largest and most complex investigations in law enforcement history. To bring those responsible to justice, the investigation remains intensely active.”

In June 2005, President of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf told CNN in a filmed interview: “These people were involved in the .. production of anthrax.”

After a small plane accidentally entered restricted airspace near the White House and Capitol in 2005, the danger passed quickly, but not before bringing back frightening memories for Senator Patrick Leahy.

“Having been one of the two Senators they tried to kill with the anthrax letter– yes, I do react to that. But here I’m far more concerned about all of the other people, because whatever the threat was they thought it was enough to threaten everybody here. And there are thousands of good men and women who work on the hill, plus the tourists, the visitors and we want to keep them safe.”

In a late September 2005 letter to the Washington Post, Michael Mason, head of Amerithrax investigation (as head of the DC Field Office), wrote: “while not well known to the public, the scientific advances gained from this investigation are unprecedented and have greatly strengthened our government’s ability to prepare for — and prevent — biological attacks. Since the first anthrax mailing, investigators have worked with scientists to narrow the focus of this investigation.” He continued “Despite the frustrations that come with any complex investigation, the FBI’s investigators never stop thinking about the innocent victims of these attacks.” In a press conference in October 2005, Director Mueller said that the FBI was pursuing all domestic and international leads. He told the public to remember the anthrax letters. Remember Oklahoma City. He declined to say if they had a suspect. That year, FBI agents visited Asia, Africa and Afghanistan in the course of the Amerithrax investigation.

In the opening argument of the Uzair Paracha trial in November 2005, the Assistant United States Attorney claimed that MIT graduate Aafia Siddiqui was willing to help with an anthrax attack. She had been associated with the Maktab Khidmat (Bureau of Services) branch in Boston, which in 1993 was renamed Care International. Any evidence supporting the dramatic statement was later excluded from evidence on the grounds that it would be unduly prejudicial.

That month, Interpol head Ronald Noble urged: “Al Qaeda’s global network, its proven capabilities, its deadly history, its desire to do the unthinkable and the evidence collected about its bio-terrorist ambitions, ominously portend a clear and present danger of the highest order.” Henry Crumpton, the U.S. State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator agreed: “The threat is real. But what really concerns me is weapons of mass destruction,” Crumpton said, pointing to this evidence U.S. officials said they found in Afghanistan that al-Qaeda was working on anthrax weapons. From 1999 to 2001, Crumpton was deputy chief of operations for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. He led the CIA’s counterterrorism campaign in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2002.

The hyped intentional leaks about Hatfill distracted the world’s press attention. A federal district court judge hearing a civil rights claim against the Department of Justice confirms there is not a “scintilla of evidence” against Hatfill. The CIA, however, continued to work quietly building a case that the anthrax mailings were an international plot. This is old news. It’s just no longer bureaucratically impolite to openly contest the FBI’s early theory about a lone, American scientist. Some argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative is behind the earlier Fall 2001 anthrax mailings in the US, and that the mailings served as a threat and warning — — intended to deter invasion of Afghanistan.. Princeton islamist scholar Bernard Lewis has explained that while islamists may disagree about whether killing innocents is sanctioned by the laws of jihad, extremists like Zawahiri agree that notice must be given before biochemical weapons are used. “The Prophet’s guidance,” says Michael Scheuer, an al-Qaeda analyst retired from the CIA who once headed its Bin Laden unit, “was always, Before you attack someone, warn them very clearly.” The anthrax mailings followed the pattern of letters they sent in January 1997 to newspaper branches in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as well as symbolic targets. The letter bombs were sent in connection with the detention of the blind sheik Abdel Rahman and those responsible for the earlier World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

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