Mueller on anthrax,

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

On March 14, 2001, former USAMRIID deputy commander Ames researcher Charles L. Bailey and famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek filed a patent application for a process to treat cell culture with hydrophobic silicon dioxide so as to permit greater concentration upon drying. Dr. Bailey was in Room 156B of GMU’s Discovery Hall at the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense. They had received the largest biodefense award in history funding work for USAMRIID. Ali Al-Timimi, an associate of radical Saudi sheik al-Hawali, considered to be Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, was a graduate student who worked in the same building.

The website of the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) contained “Provision of Suicide Operations,” dated June 19, 2001, that stated: “The mujahid [or warrior] must kill himself if he knows this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies or demolishing a center vital to the enemy or its military forces. In this new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.” On August 26, 2001, IANA’s website www.islamway.com published a propaganda statement that encouraged individuals to join arms against the West titled “An Invitation to Jihad,” stating that “[t]he mujahid brothers will accept you with open arms and within a period of two weeks you will be given commando training and will be sent to the frontline.” Whatever the debate on whether nonconventional weapons were forbidden (haram), some of the sheiks whose fatwas were appearing on the IANA website were likely to take a more permissive view.

In mid-December 2001, the US arrested US-based Al Qaeda biochem operative Ali Al-Marri, who had arrived on September 10, 2001 and was nominally a student living in Macomb, Illinois. Al-Marri had lived in Macomb the previous summer and had traveled to New York City to join with UK operative Dhiren Barot to case NYC helicopters and financial institutions. Authorities had learned of calls he made to KSM’s assistant al-Hawsawi from Illinois. Al-Hawsawi was KSM's assistant and it was Al-Hawsawi's laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it. The key to the Amerithrax solution possibly hinged on where Al-Marri had his computer sent after casing NYC locations. He had the imam at the local mosque store the computer in his basement and then ship it to Washington.

In January 2002, an FBI official told the Wall Street Journal, “We’ve done over 300 interviews at places we consider really critical. I can tell you categorically that we’ve given a lot of people shakes, [but] there was nothing to it.” Beginning that month, Ali Al-Timimi was on GMU staff and paid $70,000 a year. At some point, officials learned of communications between Al-Timimi and Bin Laden’s spiritual adviser, radical Saudi sheik al-Hawali. Al-Timimi's attorney, for example, says that Al-Timimi and Al-Hawali spoke on September 16, 2001 and September 19, 2001. They spoke, for example, about helping Moussaoui with his defense. They later spoke in coordinating a letter to members of Congress on the first anniversary of the anthrax letters to the Senators.

In March 2002, a crude biological weapons site was found in Afghanistan. U.S. forces discovered a site near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that appeared to be an Al Qaeda biological weapons lab under construction. Zawahiri’s plan, evidenced in the documents found previous in the Fall, was to move the location of the lab every 3 months.

As he described to ABCNEWS, Dr. Alibek and other scientists in March 2002 took lie detector tests. He had to answer questions including “Did you do it?” and “Do you know who did it?” Alibek reports that he passed the test. Although Dr. Alibek offered his services to the FBI Director in a letter, the response was that they already had a large group working on it. In late June 2002, quoting unnamed law enforcement officials, the Associated Press reported that up to 200 polygraph tests had been given to current and former employees of the Battelle Institute and of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where scientists have developed a powdered form of anthrax for testing biological defense systems. It was Dugway that provided the simulant used in testing after the 2001 threat letter relating to the detention of Mahjoub, the former manager of Bin Laden’s farm in Sudan. Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey had both worked for Battelle as consultants.

An intense concern over such leaks continued into the Spring in charity investigations involving a March 2002 probe of the Saar charity network. Even the US Attorney working on the investigation and his team were under investigation.

In August 2002, Afghan police found a store of chemicals in a house in Kabul formerly occupied by a Saudi non-governmental organization, the WAFA Humanitarian Organization. Local media reports called it a terrorist laboratory. “Some containers and documents have been found by the police authorities,” a spokesman for international peacekeepers said. One local report said that the discovery included 36 types of chemicals, explosive materials, fuses, laboratory equipment and some “terroristic guide books.” It said the laboratory was found in a residence in the diplomatic area of Kabul in a building that had been used by an Arab national who headed the group prior to 9/11. WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. Documents found in WAFA’s offices in Afghanistan revealed that the charity was intimately involved in assassination plots against U.S. citizens as well as the distribution of “how to” manuals on chemical and biological warfare. U.S. officials have described WAFA as a key component of Bin Laden’s organization.

In 2002, a man named Singh tried to purchase over the internet a wireless video module and a control module for use in an unmanned aerial vehicle (”UAV”). He chose an airborne video system with a camera and transmitter able to transmit video images from a UAV back to a receiver from as far as 15 miles away. The video camera could be used in military reconnaissance and in helping aim artillery and other weaponry across enemy lines. Singh placed his order from England, but the company was unable to confirm Singh’s overseas credit card. Two young men from Northern Virginia, Chapman and Khan, who were among the group later known as the “Virginia Paintball Defendants,”assisted him in completing the purchases. As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals later explained, the pair “attended the Dar al Arqam Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia where Ali Timimi, a primary lecturer, spoke of the necessity to engage in violent jihad against the enemies of Islam and the ‘end of time’ battle between Muslims and non-Muslims.” In the summer of 2002, Singh visited Virginia, staying first with one of them and then with the other. Ali Timimi was unindicted co-conspirator number 1 in the Virginia Paintball Case, and was only later identified by Prosecutors (and then separately indicted).

After meeting with "9/11 imam" Anwar Aulaqi to discuss the idea, Ali Timimi drafted a letter from dissident Saudi sheik Hawali dated October 6, 2002. He had it hand delivered it to every member of the US Congress just before their vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The letter was from al-Hawali (not Timimi), and warned of the disastrous consequences that would follow an invasion of Iraq.

Rm 154A in George Mason’s Discovery Hall (down from former USAMRIID head Dr. Bailey in Rm 156B) would be Victor Morozov’s room number when he first assumed Timimi’s phone number in 2004 (and before he moved to a newly constructed, adjacent building). Morozov was the co-inventor with Dr. Bailey of the related cell culture process under which the silica was removed from the spore surface. A faculty member who would consult with Ali suggests that it instead was Rm. 154B, in the middle of the office suite.

Later that year, Al-Hakaymah, a long-time colleague of Taha in the Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (Egyptian Islamic Group), summarized the Amerithrax investigation. Al-Hakaymah aka Abu Jihad was Al Qaeda’s spymaster. He dedicated the treatise on American intelligence and law enforcement: “To the pious and the hidden who are not known when they come and who are not missed when they disappear — To those whom their God will answer when they pray to Him. To all the eyes that are vigilant late at night to bring victory to this religion.” It was publicized by an EIJ shura member Al-Sibai, who had been detained in London in 1999 and then released, and now was an oft-quoted expert on Zawahiri and his followers. Like Al Zayat, Al Sibai has been openly critical of Al Qaeda and Zawahiri. Al Sibai views Zawahiri’s focus on the Far Enemy as having been disastrous for the Egyptian Islamic groups.

In mid-February 2003, Abdel Rahman’s son, who was on the WMD committee with Egyptian Midhat Mursi, was captured in Quetta, Pakistan. Along with Zawahiri, Abdel Rahman and his two sons have had considerable influence over Bin Laden. He reportedly treated them like sons. In jail in the early 1980s, Zawahiri had caused considerable tension by challenging the blind sheik’s ability to lead a coalition of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian Islamic Group. Zawahiri and Bin Laden nevertheless are Rahman’s friends. The leaders in charge of Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program thus had a close connection to those imprisoned in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center. The imprisoned WTC 1993 plotter Ramzi Yousef was KSM’s nephew. KSM claims to have been responsible for the planning of WTC 1993. WTC 1993 mastermind Ramzi Yousef had been the mentor of the new husband, Al-Baluchi, of MIT-graduate Aafia Siddiqui.

Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi) is a cousin of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Yousef and nephew of KSM. In 2000-2001, along with KSM’s assistant Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Al-Baluchi facilitated the hijackers travel in transiting the UAE from Pakistan. He would send them money transfers after they were in the US. US biochem operative Al-Marri was in contact in August, September and October 2001 with Al-Hawsawi, who in August was in UAE and then after 9/11 was back in Pakistan. In 2002-2003, back in Pakistan, al-Baluchi worked with operative Majid Khan, a Maryland resident. He married Aafia Siddiqui shortly before being captured in Pakistan in the Spring of 2003. An Assistant United States Attorney ("AUSA") would say in the prosecution related to a plot involving Majid Khan that Aafia Siddiqui was willing to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. By reason of her relationship with 9/11 plotter KSM and KSM’s nephew al-Baluchi, Aafia was connected to both al-Hawsawi’s laptop with the anthrax spraydrying documents and Al-Marri. Activist Yvonne Ridley suggests she has been held in Bagram air base for the past 4 years and her plaintive cries for help were heard by a fellow prisoner, Moazzam Begg. Ridley calls the woman "the Gray Lady of Bagram."

When Director Mueller says, "I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " it may be more complicated than that. Consider in February 2001 the decision-making that went into whether to charged Hanssen, the FBI mole. They had enough to go ahead with a prosecution even before the last dead drop -- they could have charged conspiracy to commit espionage just as they did with Aldrich Ames.

It appears that the FBI’s theory is that it was more than a happy coincidence for Ayman Zawahiri 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. Dr. Bailey would 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. Ali 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 Al-Timimi. He was 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 the late 1990s. The defense webpage reported that in 1996, for two months had worked for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card (who had been Secretary of Transportation in 1992-1993). As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the charity Islamic Assembly of North America.

In a filing unsealed this Spring, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer explained that his client “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was a microbiologist who had worked in the building housing the “Center for Biodefense” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). He came to have an office 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy commander of USAMRIID. Dr. Al-Timimi’s counsel summarizes:

“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:
* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;
* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;
* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;
* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;
* was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]
* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;
* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;
* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and
* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***
The conversation with [Bin Laden’s sheik] Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. Al-Timimi called Dr. Hawali after the dinner with Kwon on September 16, 2001 and just two hours before he met with Kwon and Hassan for the last time on September 19, 2001.
[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.

[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]”

The letter by Al-Timimi’s counsel attached as an exhibit is equally meaty. An example of an additional detail is that in March 2002, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke with Dr. Al-Hawali (Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War”) about assisting Moussaoui in his defense.

The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor has pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill.

In an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material.” “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same — his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!’”

FOX News reports:

“The FBI has narrowed its focus to ‘about four’ suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.”

C-SPAN this week interviewed Jane Mayer on the Dark Side and she mentions Vice-President Cheney’s understanding in October 2001 that he had been exposed to a fatal anthrax exposure. The pertinent excerpt from the book is at NPR “Fresh Air.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (”FISA”) unit in the Department of Justice has traditionally been known as the “Dark Side.” Everything coming from Khalid Mohammed’s laptop, for example, as Agent Van Harp, the former (now retired) Amerithrax head, once explained, is classified. To understand the matter, journalists would have to have the cooperation of someone coming over from the Dark Side — which would be a felony. The FBI and CIA counterterrorism analysts working on the Dark Side in trying to avoid the next 9/11 are not even allowed to tell their spouses about their work. Based, however, only on the “open source” material readily available through databases such as “google news” and the CIA’s “Foreign Broadcast Information Service” (”FBIS”), it appears that the solution to the Amerithrax case does not likely lie at the intersection of Bin Laden and Saddam streets among those cubicles at Langley with desktop PCs. Instead, it lies with the Zawahiri Task Force at Langley which hopefully has an intersection of Ayman Avenue and Rahman Road. If not, we might be looking at a different crossroads altogether.

Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, told a conference in early 2007: “One of my biggest worries is a terrorist group attacking the computer network serving the United States’ financial services industry and simultaneously mailing anthrax-laced letters.” He said: “If someone were to have a sophisticated attack on our financial services system, let’s just say cyber network broadly, at the same time that they mailed, through the US mail, FedEx and UPS, the equivalent of letters sprinkled with anthrax, it would have a devastating impact.”

Whatever your political persuasion, and whatever disagreements about individual issues relating to due process and civil liberties, the FBI and CIA deserve our support on this issue. We are, after all, facing this threat together. First, the nature of such an investigation is that we lack sufficient information to second-guess (or even know) what the FBI and Postal Inspectors on the Amerithrax Task Force are doing. Media reports are a poor approximation of reality because of the lack of good sources. Indeed, there has been compartmentalization and divergent views even within the Task Force. Second, hindsight is 20/20. Third, now that the leaks relating to US scientist Dr. Steve Hatfill seem to have long since been plugged and the US has entered into a settlement for $5.8 million, it is not likely we could do better in striking the appropriate balance between due process and national security. The FBI’s profile includes a US-based supporter of the militant islamists. Attorney General Ashcroft once explained that an “either-or” approach is not useful. The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word “domestic” the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the militant islamists. In November 2007, in a speech, FBI Director Robert Mueller pointed specifically to the problem of spies at universities and access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information.

Although investigation was moving forward, the press remained seriously misdirected because of propaganda by those inside and outside of the investigation. Professor Francis Boyle was the first to raise a US “bioevangelist” theory of the anthrax mailings in the press. Law Professor Boyle represented Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 and over the years continued to serve as its counsel. Boyle has worked closely with one of the lawyers for blind sheik Abdel-Rahman in seeking the impeachment of President Bush. He has acted as legal advisor to the PLO. He wrote a book advancing the theory and continued to press the theory in the press over the next half decade using a paid public relations person. In 2002 and 2003, the theory was fueled by leaks by the lead criminal prosecutor, whose law firm’s online biography indicates he was born in Haifa in 1948. He was head of the criminal division at the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia. The attorney moved over from the CIA in late September 2001. He received regular briefings on the investigation and was the one who would have supervised presentment of any indictment in Amerithrax to a grand jury.

During the course of a speech marking the sixth anniversary after 9/11, bin Laden referenced the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which occurred on August 6, 1945), as occurring only a few days prior to his speech. It’s another example supporting the significance of the mailing dates of the anthrax to the senior Egyptian militant, Mohammed Islambouli, who the CIA reports was in the cell with KSM planning the attacks on the US. Islambouli was the brother of Sadat’s assassin. The letters were mailed on the anniversary of the Sadat assassination and Camp David Accord in conveying a message — “we have this anthrax.” It was if the sender was asking the same scripted and approved question the assassin posed to Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, just before the bomb hidden in his camera detonated. The interviewer asked: “How will you deal with the Osama bin Laden issue when you are in power and what do you see as the solution to this issue?”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Obama_press_told_to_cover_up_not_wear_green.html

Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, accompanying Obama on his trip to the Middle East and Europe, emails: Reporters traveling overseas with Sen. Barack Obama were thrown a bit of curve last week when the campaign emailed a “dress code” for Israel and Jordan. Aides had passed along as a courtesy the list that they had distributed to their staff to follow. But some of the tips raised a few eyebrows, particularly among the female reporters. “Do not wear green.” (Explained later as the color of Hamas)

Comment:

“Greendale” School is the return address of the anthrax letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy — two Senators who played key roles in both appropriations to Israel and Arab secular regimes and the rendering of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders. In December 2002, the Arabic paper London Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that correspondence on Zawahiri’s computer (which was obtained by the Wall Street Journal) shows Zawahiri uses “school” as code for Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The letter was found on Al Zawahiri’s computer. The letter was designed to look innocent. It was dated 3 May 2001 and signed “Dr. Nour, Chairman of the Company.”

Green dale refers to green “river valley” — Egypt, Cairo, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and/or Egyptian Islamic Group. Put it all together and you have their new official name (though the American press does not use it) — Qaeda al Jihad. For what it is worth, at the Darunta complex where jihadis trained, recruits would wear green uniforms, except for Friday when they would be washed.

It was widely published among the militant islamists that martyrs go to paradise “in the hearts of green birds.” The stamp used in the anthrax mailings was designed by artist Michael Doret. Mr. Doret advises me that the color of the eagle is a “teal” or greenish-blue.

In the very interview in which they admitted 9/11, and described the codes used for the four targets for the planes, KSM and Ramzi Binalshibh admitted to the Jenny code, the code for representing the date 9/11, and used the symbolism of the “Green Birds.” Osama Bin Laden later invoked the symbolism in his video “The 19 Martyrs”, describing a hijacker as “A man of worship who enjoined good and forbade evil. His body was on earth but his heart roamed with the green birds that perch beneath the Throne of the Most Merciful.”

9-11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh a few months earlier in his interview with al-Jazeera, in a lengthy and articulate essay “The Nineteen Lions” published by Azzam Publications on December 2002, explained:

“One of the explanations of the Quranic verse [3:169] in which Allah says that the shuhadaa (martyrs) are not dead, is that as well as their souls being inside the hearts of green birds, they are alive because the shaheed (martyr) gives life to those around him. Indeed evidence of this is apparent throughout the Ummah today.”

Peter Finn of the Washington Post explains the symbolism:

“Around 7 one evening during Ramadan in 1998, the believers filed down a long corridor leading to the prayer room of the Al Muhadjirin mosque here, placing their shoes on the dark brown shelves before stepping onto a carpet the color of turquoise, a mixture of green for Islam and blue for heaven. Among the worshipers was a small group of men who clustered around a severe, slight Egyptian named Mohamed Atta. ..

In the [9/11/2002] interview with al-Jazeera, Binalshibh, said that Al-Shehhi, even before he learned of the operation, used to have beautiful visions that he flies in the sky with huge green birds and crashes into things.”

A FAQ on Al Qaeda’s website, the Azzam Publications website, explained that “In the Hearts of Green Birds” refers to what is inside: “The actual Arabic word used in the Hadith is not Qalb (heart) but it is Jowf which can mean any of interior, inside, or heart (as in center).” There was a video based on the hadith with the title “In The Hearts of Green Birds” about foreign mujahideen that had been martyred in Bosnia. The audiocasette was created in August 1996 and its 3rd edition was released in January 1997. The azzam.org website selling the “In the Hearts of Green Birds” audiocassette was shut down after 9/11 because authorities thought it might contain codes and instructions to militants.

Azzam.com posted an exclusive interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri and stressed the importance of cash donations and gas masks and chemical-resistant suits. Ibn Khattab, the Arab Chechnyan fighter who was Bin Laden’s good friend, had told his public that azzam.com was highly recommended and that only the two charities identified by the website should be used to route donations — announcing in 2000 that Benevolence International Foundation was one of the charities that should be used. The other was the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”). Ibu al-Khattab, the late Arab-Afghan commander of foreign mujahideen in Chechnya (who in March 2002 was killed by a poison letter), expressly endorsed Azzam Publications.

Azzam.org had “no bricks and mortar address, but operates a post office box in London, and bill[ed] itself as “an independent media organisation providing authentic news and information about jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere.” One posting datelined from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and was a message to Muslim youth from top terror suspect Bin Laden. A farewell message from Azzam Publications .. exhorts “Muslims all over the World (to) render as much financial, physical, medical, media and moral support to the Taliban as they can.” Azzam also urged those with computer expertise to mirror the website so as to keep it up after authorities took it down. One can access old websites as they existed on past dates through www.archives.org and its wonderful Wayback Machine.

British and US intelligence sources suspected that some of Azzam.com’s jihad photos and graphics contain messages embedded with a technology known as steganography. The code instead perhaps was there separately for all to see on the stamps of the lethal missives being sent.

A man formerly known as Paul Hall, was arrested in Phoenix on a federal criminal complaint in March 2007 and agreed to be removed to District of Connecticut for further prosecution where there has been investigation of Azzam Publications website located on a server there He is alleged to have provided classified information to the London-based Azzam Publications about a U.S. Navy battle group as it traveled from California to the Persian Gulf region in 2001. He allegedly “described a recent force protection briefing given aboard his ship, voiced enmity toward America, praised Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen [and] praised the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole.”

Even Zarqawi invoked the imagery in a 60-minute audio message:

“The martyrs rejoice in the bounty provided by God. Their souls are inside the bodies of green birds that fly in heaven.”

In Fall 2004, the federal authorities indicted the fellow behind Azzam Publications selling “Green Birds,” Babar Ahmad, pointing, in part, to the “distribution of videotapes and compact discs depicting fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere, and the eulogizing of dead fighters, for the purpose of recruiting individuals and soliciting donations to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Chechnya.” Of Pakistani descent, Ahmad is a British computer specialist. He is associated with KSM, who had anthrax production documents on his laptop and admits to having headed the cell (after Atef’s death) planning to use weaponized anthrax against the United States. Ahmad is also the cousin of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested mid-2004 in Pakistan. Khan’s computers carried detailed surveillance of five financial buildings in New York, Newark and Washington and once prompted the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the threat alert level to orange.

In an affidavit, an FBI special agent and computer investigative specialist, alleged that a New Brunswick, NJ man, Mazen Mokhtar, assisted Babar in maintaining the continued operation of the Azzam sites, through the use of mirror sites, when the administrators of Azzam sites shut down the Azzam.com site down after 9/11. The mirror sites, www.qoqaz.net and www.waaqiah.com, allegedly routed people trying to access www.azzam.com. The affidavit alleges that Mr. Mokhtar is listed as the administrative contact for the mirror sites. He also operated minna.com. A friend reports: “He said he used to run a hosting service four or five years ago that used to resell Web hosting services to people. He said he didn’t know those guys (mentioned in court papers) and he is not involved in anything like that.” An Egyptian-born imam and political activist, he is a supporter of Palestinian cause and frequent speaker before groups in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He is said to be nice and seems a man of peace.

Of course, given that the symbolism used in this regard in the anthrax mailings had an origin in religious writing, there is no direct tie with the website — the tie could be with the hadith. The webmaster has said that the FBI allowed it to remain up (while it moved from server to server) for another year hoping to get leads on supporters.

Bin Laden was using “Green Birds” in the same way he used the repeated phrase “Looming Tower” to hint of what was to come with the planes attack on the World Trade Center. He would say:

“Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower.”

On October 7, 2001 in a prerecorded tape aired October 7, Bin Laden said “The winds of faith have come.” This would be enough to keep Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and VP Dick Cheney up at night — or when they do sleep, keep them dreaming about green birds.

The same counsel prosecuting and defending the criminal contempt of Dr. Al-Arian for refusing to testify before the grand jury in Northern Virginia are the respective counsel in the case involving microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi, who his lawyer describes as an “anthrax weapons suspect.”

Who was at the 2001 (and/or 2002) meetings referenced below on the subject of advocacy against the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings?

The same defense lawyers use similar language as used in the affidavit below in explaining that microbiologist Al-Timimi met with the “911 imam” Anwar Aulaqi in coordinating the outreach to the US government over 9/11 in October 2002. Ali then arranged to have a letter from Bin Laden’s sheik hand-delivered to every member of Congress on the first anniversary of the anthrax mailings.

Were Al-Timimi and the “911 imam” at these meetings chaired by Sami Al-Arian? Is that why they are being so aggressive toward Al-Arian?

As I recall, Leahy and Daschle were involved in approval of MLAT, a treaty that would allow the use of secret evidence from abroad. The blind sheik Abdel-Rahman’s previous liaison had been held for years based on secret evidence, as had (Lynne Stewart’s partner) Stanley Cohen’s client Abu Marzouk. Does the Department of Justice suspect that one or more people complicitous in the anthrax mailings attended the 2001 and 2002 meetings? This same AUSA argued the case on appeal before the Fourth Circuit — recently affirmed — involving someone who I recall as being a former GMU student. While I am ignorant of all matters relating to Palestine/Israel, and Department of Justice practices, it seems notable that the AUSA prosecuting Al-Timimi is pressing so hard for information in other cases.

In a 21-page June 12, 2008 affidavit by Dr. Sami Al-Arian (that was followed by a detailed supplementary affidavit two weeks later), he affirms:

“46. During the 1999-2000 presidential campaign and up until September 11, 2001, I was very much involved in lobbying activities before Congress and in lobbying the administration to ban the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings, among other civil rights issues. I recall having contacted a couple of dozen Muslim leaders and intellectuals across the United States in the summer of 2001 to establish a permanent lobbying group and political training organization. ... They encouraged me to pursue the project and promised to promote it as best they could when it got off the ground. The full plan for such organization was seized in the 2003 search and is currently in the FBI Tampa office.

47. I chaired a strategy and brain-storming session regarding this project in July 2001 in the northern Virginia area. I recall that it was attended by several of the above mentioned individuals. The minutes of the meeting and the attendance list were seized by the FBI during the 2003 search and is currently in the FBI office in Tampa.

48. After September 11, 2001, I chaired another meeting in the northern Virginia area (possibly in late 2001 or early 2002) which was attended by at least a dozen people including some people from IIIT. I believed that the objective of the meeting was to explore an effective strategy for the Muslim community in the United States to respond to the 9/11 tragedy. The minutes of this meeting meeting, along with the attendance list, were seized by the FBI during the 2003 search and are currently being held in the FBI office in Tampa.”

update...

Speaking of Bassem Khafagi :

... American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key players in the Middle East's new political landscape. The connections underscore that Islamists everywhere are united by a single goal: the imposition of Shari'a.
One of the prominent figures to embody these ties is Bassem Khafagi, who in March announced his intention to run for president of Egypt on behalf of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to resurrect the caliphate and achieve "mastership of the world." He failed to get the nod, but his back story is intriguing nonetheless. Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer has pointed out that Khafagi once worked for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and is among its most notorious alumni. While serving as CAIR's community affairs director, Khafagi was arrested in 2003 as part of a terrorism support and recruitment probe targeting the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), of which he was a founder. The government deported Khafagi after he pleaded guilty to bank and visa fraud.
Khafagi's election platform was the essence of Islamism: "complete the implementation of Islamic law in Egypt." He also remarked that he "never loved" America, an "infidel country" that "constitutes a criminal element in this world." Moreover, Khafagi boasted about being "the first to expose the notion of 'moderate Islam,' which is used as a means to canonize a 'non-Islamic Islam.' … This 'moderation' means violation [of the laws] of Islam." .....American Islamist Groups Shape Arab Revolutions Frontpagemag.com ^ | 31JUL12 | David J. Rusin Posted on 07/31/2012 8:55:16 AM PDT by bayouranger
http:/frontpagemag.com/2012/david-j-rusin/american-islamist-groups-shape-arab-revolutions/

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