Report Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated

New York Times ^ | 3/23/02 | WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON

[piasa]

Probably not, unless they were all new... I just bumped a lot of old anthrax threads up to the top tonight while trying to dig through my favorites list. I was looking for the thread about animal carcasses in Afghanistan showing up on recon photos.

[Nogbad]

I don't know what you bumped,
but two of the stories
(unrelated, supposedly)
are from today's
(March 23)
New York Times.

Curious 'coincidence'?

[piasa]

Well, if they both came from the NYTimes, they probably are related. I've no doubt that something is up.

The pucker factor is really getting up there for someone.

I bumped Osama bought a batch for 10 Gs

Scientists Confirm bin Laden Weapons Test

And here's another article in my list...

Secrets of Dr. Germ

[eno_]

What does it take the NY Times five months for?

Well now that is the question isn't it. If any Freeper can figure out before their first cup of coffee that the anthrax attacks followed the hijackers' itinerary and stopped when they hit the buildings - and that the likeliest source for the anthrax was Atta's contact with Iraqi spies, you can only conclude that the NYT was being a team player in not asking questions about something this obvious.

The next question is how obvious is it - after we now know about Richard Reid - that AA587 was bombed?

[eno_]

and the crop dusters....

Thanks for the reminder! Remember: There is still a State Department owned Ayers cropduster with a armoured cockpit and long-range capbility that went missing between spraying cocoa in South America and it's return to Florida.

[patriciaruth]

This report sounds familiar. The only thing new is the added detail of the doctor's description of the lesion in his notes. Out here the first thought would have been a brown recluse spider bite. I've never seen anthrax either.

So there are really two mysteries I'd like solved before I check out, who sent the anthrax (were there two sets of perps--the terrorists in Florida and a domestic nutcase in New Jersey?) and then the most fun mystery, who is Deep Throat? I have a private bet going with my husband on that one.

[browardchad]

"Dr. Tsonas said he forgot entirely about the two men until federal agents in October showed him pictures of Mr. Alhaznawi and Mr. Jarrah, and he made positive identifications.

Then, agents gave Dr. Tsonas a copy of his own notes from the emergency room visit and he read them. "I said, `Oh, my God, my written description is consistent with cutaneous anthrax,' " Dr. Tsonas recalled. "I was surprised."

The FBI was apparently on top of this before this doctor even remembered it -- it doesn't seem that they could find any trace of anthrax in places where the hijackers had been, which perhaps indicates that there had to be a separate facility involved. What if these guys had anthrax that was totally unrelated to the letters? What if there were multiple agents with anthrax? That might explain the inability to connect the dots between New Jersey and Florida.

[Catspaw]

The meetings between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence boss in Prague, the forgotten first death from anthrax at the tabloid building a few miles from the terrorists rented houses and the crop dusters....on and on.

It is impossible for the FBI to know where the hijackers were minute by minute for the months they were here. All they can do is check out known places. It's not also out of the realm of possibility that they could've passed on the anthrax to an associate from another al Qaeda cell or an al Qaeda operative with instructions to mail out the anthrax post-9/11 to cause more chaos and terror.

[bvw]

Here's a theory on that: It was stolen, but crashed. Pilot error.

[BluH2o]

The disclosure about Mr. Alhaznawi, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, sheds light on another front in the investigation.

Every one else in this article is referred to using a professional title or full name. The low life terrorist is referred to as Mister who was killed in the crash which he and his terrorist cohorts orchestrated. Only in the NY Times, and perhaps the Washington Post, the two most liberal rags in the country ... would you see such convuluted PC crap.

[aristeides]

Remember that this is the week the New Yorker ran an article about Iraq's connection with genocide, poison gas, and Al Qaeda, together with suggestions that it has employed biological agents in the past. That article, by Jeffey Goldberg, is certainly not just stuff fed by the government -- Goldberg did significant legwork of his own. But I think the fact that these articles are appearing now is no coincidence.

Clinton's a Rapist (are you the same guy, Great Satan?) pretty clearly was right in his theory that the blackmailed U.S. government was unwilling to pin the blame on Iraq until we were ready to go to war with that country.

[eno_]

Plausible, but not neccessarily the highest probability. The cropduster was configured for a ferrying trip - using large internal and external tanks for fuel. It had a VERY long range, much much farther than any conventional light plane. It could have made it to Mexico or Central America from the island (forgot which) it started from. Then again, as you point out, the person who stole it might have not known how to switch fuel tanks and had to ditch in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Weather was mild at the time the plane disappeared.

I would also say it is likely that, just by the number of arrests made after 9/11, we messed up the schedule on at least a handful of ops under way.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up!!!

IMHO, it could be - from all these breaking news items connecting anthrax to 911 - that many Freepers will be vindicated. We've been suggesting that the government already knew Iraq was the state behind the WMD attack of al Queda but were not ready to tackle them until the Afghanistan problem had been mostly resolved to free up the military and put together the battle plan.

The timing of these "leaks" supports that idea. Cheney is completing the whirlwind tour to drum up support against Iraq following Dubya's state of the union address formally equating WMD development to terrorism.

[flamefront]

Bump. This is an independent article not getting wide distribution but very curious in its delayed timing and conclusions. Shoots big holes in the domestic source theory.

[aristeides]

The New Yorker does not seem to have put the Jeffrey Goldberg piece, "The Great Terror," on its Web site, but here's a LINK to an interview with the author, which also contains a summary of the article:

In this week's issue, Jeffrey Goldberg reports from Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, where, in the late nineteen-eighties, Saddam Hussein waged a devastating chemical and, possibly, biological war against the Kurdish people. Today, the Kurds have achieved limited autonomy, thanks to the U.S.-British no-fly zone, but they still face the threat of ethnic cleansing. Goldberg's report also raises questions about fears of future biochemical attacks against America or Israel—as well as Iraq's possible links to Al Qaeda.

[maestro]

Mr.='British'__________!

IMHO

[denydenydeny]

We talked about this a lot many months ago. This idea was all over Free Republic.

But this story is completely new, with new information. Let's review:

Previous stories have mentioned that Two of the hijackers, Marwan Alshehhi and Saeed Alghamdi, rented an apartment from the first anthrax victim.

We also know that Mohamed Atta went to a pharmacy in late August for treatment for skin and chest irritation..

This is more than just a series of coincidences. At any rate, it is beyond dispute that the cell was involved in the Florida anthrax attacks.

[freeperfromnj]

What does it take the NY Times five months for?

It seems to me that any qualified journalist or media outlet out to crack the anthrax case in the early stages, after the Florida death, would have jumped all over this lead. That's the problem with reporting these days, they report these bits and pieces of stories with news flashes and no follow up. Here at FR all of the reports seem to be investigated and pieced together so well that it puts the so-called investigative reporters to shame.

[maestro]

YOUR#38)..............................BTTT

[M. Thatcher]

Every one else in this article is referred to using a professional title or full name. The low life terrorist is referred to as Mister who was killed in the crash which he and his terrorist cohorts orchestrated. Only in the NY Times, and perhaps the Washington Post, the two most liberal rags in the country ... would you see such convuluted PC crap.

It's the New York Times style; always has been -- a leftover quaintness from its beginnings as a "polite" newspaper. Nothing to do with PC and everything to do with hidebound tradition.