That report on vials of unaccounted-for Anthrax will have to wait, according to State health officials.
The state department of health and senior services was due to report Wednesday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a department spokeswoman says they could not report because the FBI still has not completed their investigation of the incident. Last week, state health officials said they could not account for a pair of Anthrax vials stored at a government lab in Trenton, where they have been since shortly after the 2001 post office mailings that killed four people and sickened 17 across the country. The state still maintains the discrepancy was a clerical error and none of the deadly bacteria was actually lost.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/572763/postsFreeper Research on Anthrax Perps - Updated 9/17/01
Excerpt more at link and thread:
He was given anthrax and perhaps more biochems – of various grades. They may have been made in Iraq – they may have been made here. He did not develop them himself.
He knows lab procedures.
The alternative theory is that the terrorist cell had one and only one vial of the anthrax and they were rushed to use it for some reason, it could be that the very fine stuff settles to the bottom of the vial. The lab analysis of each specimen will eventually show if the only difference between envelopes is size of the spores - or if the batches were processed differently.
He is fairly diligent in handling the anthrax, but he is not perfect. He knows Dr. Malik, chairman of the Islamic Society of NJ. He may work with him. He’s been to the doctor’s office at 1542 Kuser Road in Trenton NJ. While there he accidentally infected the accountant next door at Civale Silvestri & Alfieri CPA, 1540 Kuser Road.
The perp may be from Pakistan and may have sought out Dr. Malik’s help (because he is also from Pakistan) to get employment/access to a nearby university hospital, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton. Dr Malik is on the staff there. The perp may have used lab facilities in the hospital (either at Hamilton or the main campus or one of its affiliates) to safely handle or prep the different batches of anthrax.
Dr. Malik has been in the U.S. since the 70's or so and is long established here. He is probably not a party to the terrorists. However, as head of the Islamic Center of Central NJ and being from Pakistan and having made it as a doctor here ... we wonder if a newcomer to the country living in that area, attending that mosque and wanting to become a doctor ... may have asked him for a job referral or such.
There probably are other people in his cell who may already be in custody - one with Florida license plates and others from Canada.
Several arrests of Pakistani nationals were made in Trenton/Hamilton two weeks ago --some in the Greenwood Village apartments, and some at 1001 N. Olden Street. The N. Olden Street arrests took place after a witness observed a man gingerly placing letters enclosed in a ziploc bag into his car. The car had Florida license plates.
Just after the events of September 11, the FBI arrested Mohammed Pervez, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent. Pervez was a Jersey City roommate of Ali Ayub Kahn and Mohammed Jazweeth Azmath, suspected of being hijackers whose plans were thwarted when their plane was grounded in St. Louis. Pervez, who worked in both Trenton and Newark train stations, was also a roommate of the potential anthrax suspects detained from the Greenwood village apartments in Hamilton.
Ali Ayub Khan also listed as one of his addresses the same Chicago apartment house as Sabash Gurung is staying in with his brother. Gurung is the Nepalese who was arrested at O'Hare Airport with a large stash of weapons (knives, a stun gun, etc.). The FBI said (or implied) that the Ali Khan who lives in the same apartment house as Gurung is a different Ali Khan, that it's a coincidence of names. But this seems not to be the case -- in fact, there is a newspaper article on Khan, dated well before Gurung was in the news, which gives that Chicago address for him.
There may be a chain of infection following the medical route – like there is following the mail route.
In DelRay Beach, Florida – a pharmacist (Gregg Chatterton at Huber Healthmart Drugs) claimed to have talked to Atta and another hijacker when they came into his pharmacy with ailments last August. Mostly, we heard about Atta, who had red hands. But the other hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi, had symptoms of inhalation anthrax (cough) that would have required him to visit a doctor in his area. The pharmacist said that a man resembling Al-Shehhi had returned to have a prescription filled, but his name was not found in their records – leading the investigators to think he had used an alias. The pharmacist said the red hands looked like a result from washing with bleach – that it did not look like cutaneous anthrax.
In Chester PA on 11/14/01 - teams of FBI agents complete with hazmat gear and tents, broke down door(s), swabbed and seized evidence at two homes and the city hall. One house was shared by City Health Commissioner Irshad Shaikh and his brother Masood. The other was the home of city accountant Asif Kazi. They are all from Pakistan. Kazi’s wife had a prescription for Cipro. Kazi had been seen dumping a cloudy liquid and handing a silver canister to someone.
Freepers wonder if this Could he be THE Asif Kazi, or is it a very common Pakistani name?
Asif Kazi (or Qazi or Khazi) is a very common last name. It means "judge" and is the designation for lots of low-level functionaries - like the English surnames "Judge" or "Cooper" or "Fletcher", it's just a last name based on a profession.
However, the dialogue on the discussion thread is troubling:
It has a single entry under "replies". If you click it, you see a reply consisting of the original message quoted with carets, and no new text. It seems most each reply is the same, with "mustafa's" original message quoted, but no new content. One reply had the same message "mustafa" entered, but this time not quoted (no carets, it appeared to be original content), and signed by "Bharathi Kumar". (BTW almost all the names seemed to be middle-eastern types.) The next message -- a reply to "Bharathi Kumar" -- (this one by a poster named "bluess") quoted the original message, again attributing it to "mustafa".
The next message after that one again had the text in quoted format, but attributed it to ">ASHISH BHARDWAJ" -- which happens to be the same name shown as the author of the post, although the Author: field showed it in lowercase. The reply to that message had "mustafa's" message, but this time once again formatted as caretless original text, and, missing the linebreaks that the previous messages had. It was signed by "Venkat", and the Author: field showed VENKAT in uppercase.
Conjecture, for discussion:
1. It could be a series of coded messages, with the "message" part being the email address, or the author name, or perhaps there's some subtle changes in the body of the text (an extra space here or there, etc.)
2. It could be a "recruiting station", with volunteers directed to post a followup message to that thread, so that they could be contacted via email. Why do something like that? So that the "recruiter" could see who "applies" without disclosing his own identity. The contributing Freeper has heard that "no footprint" communications like that happen on Usenet; and believes there's a newsgroup dedicated to such comms. There is no way for an observer to know who the recipient is, because the message is readable to the entire world, even though only the intended recipient will know how to decipher it.
Dr. Shaikh PhD. has been the Commissioner of Health since 1994. He received his undergrad and postgraduate diplomas in Community Medicine in Pakistan. He received his Masters and PhD in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is fellow of the Public Health Leadership Institute (PHLI). PHLI is an executive leadership program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Shaikh also holds a faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Welcome to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies"...Sponsored by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation & The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation..."
The Hopkins School of Hygiene and public health is across the street from the hospital. They do not have any labs for microbes there. They have no anthrax and neither does the hospital. This guy may be on the faculty at the School of Hygiene but there is certainly no institutional support for terrorist activites. The former Dean of that school, Henderson, was the one who wiped out smallpox. It is a great school except for some departments that seem to attract all kinds of socialists, communists, etc. The Robert Wood Johnson foundation endows all kinds of activities including wings at Hopkins for peds. The former head of a department at Hopkins headed the RWJ foundation. They probably do not provide cover for terrorists either.
Tests are now being performed for Dr. Gerald Weisfogel who believes he may have had skin anthrax earlier than the mailings. There are three Gerald M. Weisfogel's listed in NJ - Franklin Park, Kendall Park and Metuchen. Dr. Gerald Weisfogel is chief of cardiology at the JFK Medical Center in New Jersey, which is in Edison, New Jersey. Edison is just across the river from New Brunswick.
