Posted on 04/30/2007 1:01:00 PM PDT by SevenMinusOne
Ross Getman Is Ayman Zawahiri Behind The Anthrax Mailings? April 13, 2007 at 6:26 pm · Filed under Vox Populi
Is Ayman Zawahiri Behind The Anthrax Mailings? Analysis of the means, motive, modus operandi and opportunity of the anthrax mailings in Fall 2001 suggests that US-based supporters of Ayman Zawahiri were responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall of 2001. The Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have pursued all possible leads and left no stone unturned. Attorney General Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2007 that FBI Director Mueller was very committed to seeing it to “some kind of conclusion in the relatively near future.”
Vanguards of Conquest
Zawahiri was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program. Ayman named it Zabadi or “Curdled Milk.” The Central Intelligence Agency has known of Zawahiri’s plans to use anthrax since July 1998, when the CIA seized a disc from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad military commander, during his arrest outside a restaurant by the CIA in Baku, Azerbaijan. The CIA refused to give the FBI the laptop. FBI’s Bin Laden expert John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s New York office, tried to get around this by sending an agent to Azerbaijan to get copies of the computer files from the Azerbaijan government. The FBI finally got the files after O’Neill persuaded President Clinton to personally appeal to the president of Azerbaijan for the computer files. O’Neill died on 9/11 in his role as head of World Trade Center security. He died with the knowledge that Ayman Zawahiri planned to attack US targets with anthrax — and that Zawahiri does not make a threat that he does not intend to try to keep.
The military commander claimed that Zawahiri intended to use anthrax against US targets. At the time, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (”DTRA”) set up a program at Lawrence Livermore to combat the Bin Laden anthrax threat. The CIA also snatched a particularly talkative member of EIJ shura or policy-making council. His confession runs 140 pages. He confirmed Ayman’s intent to use weaponized anthrax against US targets in connection with the detention of militant islamists. Yet another friend of Zawahiri, this one a Cairo lawyer who was the blind sheik’s attorney, in March 1999 said that Bin Laden and Zawahiri were likely to resort to the biological and chemical agents they possessed given the extradition pressure senior Al Qaeda leaders faced.
In late February 2003, authorities searched the townhouse of Ali Al-Timimi, 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 head 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. 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.”
On October 6, 2002, Ali Al-Timimi drafted a letter from dissident Saudi Sheik Al-Hawali threatening disastrous consequences if the US invaded Iraq and had it delivered to all members of Congress. Al-Hawali was one of two dissident Saudi sheiks who inspired Bin Laden and remained in contact with him. Ali Al-Timimi was thought by colleagues as a “numbers guy” rather than having hands-on drying expertise, and was not known to have worked on any biodefense projects. There’s every reason to think the FBI concluded that Al-Timimi was neither the processor nor the mailer, given that the government never charged him with the anthrax crimes. The FBI knows what he had for dinner on September 16, 2001, just two days before the first mailing
I’m not sure why Zawahiri would aim his anthrax at the media.
The 9/11 terrorist dropped them in the mail before they highjacked the planes.
This is such a non story.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have pursued all possible leads and left no stone unturned.”
Uh huh. Or pond undredged.
No, it did not come off that way - If AQ was part of this, it was from additional supporters here in the States. That were NOT part of the 19 on Sept 11th....
Seems to me that AQ would brag about the attack, and threaten more. I hope something comes out about the origin of the anthrax.
I can agree with this line of thought ~ Then again AQ at times does or doesn't do all sorts of things for seemingly peculiar reasons....
Why they didn't claim credit for the airplane crash outisde of NY?(or D.C.) a month or so after Sept 11th, always left me wondering.....(Pilot error, overly correctly wind-sheer elements causing the tail-fin to rip off)...Seemed perfect for AQ to simply take credit to an already extremely nervous American public....
You would if you weren't confident in the lethality of your batch. That way you'd get a disproportionate amount of attention for an essentially failed attack.
Why couldn't President Clinton just order the CIA to turn over the evidence to the FBI? Who's running the show here?
I’ve always believed that Iraq was the source of this weaponized anthrax and Saddam gave it to Zawahiri and his group.
We lost a hugely valuable AQ Intel resource (within the last several years...) because the FBI simply wanted a headline and praise....at the expense of this nation's security.
I agree. AQ’s thinking is a mystery in some ways. Old Dented-head didn’t mix that stuff up in a cave, though, so maybe we can learn something about the place of manufacture, if the PTB release that information.
Separation of the functions of CIA & FBI, I understand that. However, the president is boss over both. Why can’t the president, or his national security advisor (Sandy Berger, yikes!) make the determination as to whether the FBI needs the material? Why punt the whole affair to Azerbaijan? Unless the CIA is an organization that Bill Clinton feared to ‘cross’ (witness the criminal referral in the ‘Plame Affair’)? Excuse me while I re-adjust my tin foil...
ping
"Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism" (Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 2001/09/24) "This jewel comes from Sam Husseini, who runs the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, DC: "The fascists like Bid-Laden could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to - and the US stopped the sanctions and the bombing on Iraq." You've heard this "thought" expressed in one way or another, dear reader, have you not?.
At the time I remember commentators noting the odd phrasing, like Al Qaida is a political campaign. (Yes, I submitted the notion to the FBI tip line back in 2001.)
And there's this.
Former CIA Director Tenet has a some juicy paragraphs on this at pages 278-279, as I recall, of his book. They are uploaded under “updates” at
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
I don’t have cut-and-paste capability at this computer or else I would add them here. Perhaps someone could get them.
Anthrax ping list:
Let me know if you want on or off this list.
Fear is a much farther reaching disease than anthrax.
Seems to me that AQ would brag about the attack, and threaten more. I hope something comes out about the origin of the anthrax.
They do not think like we do.
I find it incredible that ANYONE can still believe that some al Qaeda 9/11 terrorist sent the anthrax letters. That is just plain CRAZY.
The first batch of letters (to the media) was postmarked a WEEK after 9/11, on September 18.
The second batch of letters (to the two Senators) was postmarked a MONTH after 9/11, on October 9.
I know people can conjure up screwball ways to rationalize how it could still be "possible" for the letters to have been mailed by the 9/11 hijackers, but it makes NO SENSE AT ALL to believe such a thing.
It makes no sense at all to believe that al Qaeda was behind the anthrax attacks.
How can ANYONE believe that al Qaeda would put MEDICAL ADVICE ("TAKE PENICILIN NOW") in such a letter to make certain the recipients took proper precautions?
How can ANYONE believe that al Qaeda would take all sorts of precautions to minimize the damage, such as taping the letters shut, telling the recipients that the powder was anthrax, using the pharmaceutical fold, and making certain the return address was not the address of a real school?
It's unbelievable the unbelievable things people believe!
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