Posted on 06/07/2002 7:45:03 AM PDT by mrustow
- In January 2000, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi, two hijackers aboard the jet that hit the Pentagon, met with other al-Qaeda members in a condominium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The operatives included a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. That attack killed 17 U.S. sailors. The meeting was hosted by Sufaat, a member of the militant Muslim group Jemaah Islamiah, which U.S. officials say is linked to Osama bin Laden. Soon after the meeting, Al-Midhar and Alhamzi entered the USA and enrolled at a flight school in San Diego.
- In October 2000, Sufaat met with Moussaoui in the same condominium. Law enforcement officials allege that he gave Moussaoui papers identifying Moussaoui as a "marketing consultant" for Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company. The papers were signed by "Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director." (Infocus Tech officials say Moussaoui never worked for the company.) Sufaat agreed to pay Moussaoui $2,500 a month and $35,000 up front, U.S. authorities say. Moussaoui arrived in the USA in February 2001 and deposited $32,000 in a bank in Norman, Okla. He attended flight schools in Norman and in Minnesota before he was arrested on immigration charges in August. FBI agents found the papers that mentioned Infocus Tech in Moussaoui's apartment in Minneapolis. Moussaoui now is being held in Alexandria, Va., awaiting a federal court trial in October. He could face the death penalty if convicted. Sufaat, 37, was arrested Dec. 9 as he returned to Kuala Lumpur from Afghanistan, where authorities say he fought against the U.S.-led coalition. He is one of 23 suspected al-Qaeda operatives who have been detained in Malaysia.
- Also in October 2000, Sufaat received instructions from another alleged al-Qaeda operative, Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, to purchase 4 tons of ammonium nitrate, a powerful explosive. Authorities say Ghozi, 30, an Indonesian also known as "Mike" and "Abu Saad," was a demolitions expert for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group seeking to create an Islamic state in the southern Philippines.?
Very suggestive, as is the fact that both individuals who contracted anthrax handled the letter, and the fact that no alternative candidate has been offered since, to my knowledge. The Star of David was always a no-brainer, but the J-Lo thing sounds less mysterious now that we have a sense of what Atta was like -- something of sadistic prankster, from the sound of it.
Have you ever heard of a soapy delivery vehicle for biological weapons?
No. But if you wanted to do a little goof hit without doing to much damage, you might cut the processed anthrax with a gelatinous "base" to limit its spread, I suppose. (I've never been a sadistic, life-hating terrorist on a suicide mission, entrusted with a supply of deadly, weaponized anthrax, so this is pure guesswork on my part).
Spores were recovered from Bob Stevens' keyboard and elsewhere from AMI; surely those samples were analyzed for added chemicals (powders, soap, bentonite, ...).
They haven't told us what they found, so we have no information on that one way or the other. Besides, grossly cutting the anthrax with something sticky like soap to reduce its volatility wouldn't necessarily be evident looking at spores taken from the victim's septum days later.
Again, all of this is speculation about something we have very little solid info about, and which is likely to be peripheral to the fundamentals of the situation. For what it's worth, I think AMI was a goof, a sick, sadistic little joke by Atta and his pals -- something they dreamed up whiling away the hours and days and months before the Big Day. I think they were entrusted with a small supply of weaponized anthrax to be used in the follow-up threat after the attacks. I doubt if there was ever a serious plan for them to disperse anthrax from crop-dusting planes -- I think that was more of a fantasy on their part, or maybe they were generating "reserve notes" for the 2nd tier people. I'm guessing they took a bit of the anthrax intended for the media and governmental threats, and cut it with some everyday substance to make sure the effect was limited. This is probably how Atta got his red hands - washing with bleach -- and the other guy got cutaneous anthrax. It may not have been entirely a joke, though. The other letters were self-identified as anthrax, so nobody died, except for those unintentionally exposed by spores squeezed out of the envelopes during mail processing. Bob Stevens wasn't warned of his exposure, so he couldn't get treatment in the critical time window. Remember how one of the threatening letters sent in St. Peterburg at the time crowed "First death. Now See What happens when the real thing flies." So, I guess I think it was somewhat functional in giving weight to the "formal" threats, but mainly it was, like I say, a discretionary, on-the-fly goof. That's my vibe on the incident, anyway.
I agree that information about additives probably couldn't be deduced from samples taken from the victims, but the spores found on the keyboard and elsewhere in the building could have been (and probably were) analyzed. As you say, though, we don't know what the results were.
Another argument against the soap-in-Florida idea is that there were two inhalation anthrax victims in Florida, but there were none among the envelope recipients in New York (just in postal workers, subjected to the "spray" from the mail processing machines squeezing the envelopes). You can't attribute this to the "warnings" in the letters. First of all, the letters at NBC News and the NY Post weren't recognized until after anthrax cases had been diagnosed. Secondly, no letters were found at CBS News or ABC News, but anthrax was sent to those places, presumably by letter. Several people at those locations contracted cutaneous anthrax, which was then treated, in some cases before the specific cause was identified. Why were there two inhalation anthrax cases at AMI, but none at the New York media offices? This is inconsistent with the AMI anthrax being soaped but the NY anthrax being a dry powder. [I exclude here the letters to Daschle and Leahy. The Daschle letter was recognized for what it was right away, and treatment was begun. The Leahy letter never reached its intended destination.]
The St. Petersburg letter you mentioned is one of the letters I was thinking of. (There was also the letter sent from St. Petersburg prior to the actual anthrax letter but to the same New York recipient -- I think this was the mailing to Tom Brokaw. And, as I recall, there were some other "hoaxes" from St. Petersburg too.)
Your list "... plus a few others" doesn't count as "very few" in my book. (And even if the truth were "very few," numbers don't mean much, where Saddam is concerned.) Since 1997, when a new federal law required that every instance of sharing for research purposes of anthrax or other deadly pathogens had to be registered with the CDC, our labs have shared Ames strain anthrax spores with the Canadians and the Brits, who in turn shared it with other, undisclosed scientists. We have no idea how many scientists we shared the Ames strain with prior to 1997, because there are no official records.
"Very few"? I think not.
Please do not pettifog (I couldn't resist!). Megan Gallagher -- even an aging Megan Gallagher -- can do no wrong. She has the status of evidence in theological-scientific arguments.
1. A friendly media;
2. A "scientific" or "humanitarian" front organization;
3. A steady stream of press releases and public appearances.
Millennium was a good show, btw. I agree with other poster that the second season was the finest.
Why doesn't everybody get the flu at once? Why do some drug addicts die or go crazy, and others live normal lives? Why did 34 of the 224 veterans who contracted Legionnaire's disease at that Phily convention die from it, but 190 recovered, despite being exposed to the same tainted air?
You are trying to read way too much into the data. There are thousand variables. The amount of anthrax, whether it was cut with a base, how well the envelope was sealed up, how it was dispersed (e.g. was it dropped on the floor, like the Daschle anthrax), how many people were exposed to it and by what route, whether people recieved treatment promptly, if they were already on the alert to be suspicious of the anthrax, was their case was reported in the press at all if it was quickly treated, etc., etc. All this in a tiny, tiny sample of people.
Published reports indicate that some of the recipients received either more or better quality anthrax, although all the anthrax was of the Ames variety. Although it is possible that the terrorists were supplied with multiple grades of anthrax, my guess is that if the quality was different, it was more likely achieved by cutting the same original material with a base, much as drug dealers cut heroin or cocaine. The extreme case of this may be the "blanks" -- the samples with little or no anthrax at all, like the one at the NYT. The reportedly "soapy" texture of the AMI anthrax is, to my mind, a hint that that was the way it was done. But, the bottom line, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans how it was done, or even whether it was done at all. No policy consequences follow.
Would a soapy medium have resulted in inhalation anthrax, while a powdery medium caused only cutaneous infections? This seems backwards.
And there's another apparent difference, this time between the two populations of inhalation anthrax survivors (AMI vs. Northeast postal worker). The Northeast postal workers who survived are suffering continuing symptoms, while the AMI survivor feels fine. (There is only one AMI survivor, so this seems more questionable statistically than the first difference. It seems that this difference might be due to chance variation, which is why I did the p-value computation.)
Oh, he had the goods on them, alright. In season two, he found a "factory" on a deserted farm in the Midwest or the Southwest, where the Group would murder and dismember people -- lots and lots of people.
And in the third season, a Gulf War veteran who had been involved in the production of the toxin that killed 70 people in the Pacific Northwest, kidnapped Peter Watts' daughter, and gave her the toxin, in order to force Watts to confess that the Group had deliberately released the toxin.
Later, the Group was rent by a schism pitting the "secular" against the "theological" wing, but there were no "good guys," except for Peter Watts, who acted like a bad guy, to give himself cover while he protected Frank.
Despite his powers, Frank was certainly fallible in his decisions (For example, when he let that gas station attendent get killed in the “urban legend” episode. They never addressed that major screw up.)
I don't remember that episode; what season was it from?
But since Fox cancelled the show, we’ll never know much of what happened in all the various plotlines.
I wonder if Carter has considered writing a Millennium TV movie?
The “wrap-up” on X-Files was beyond lame and didn’t tell anybody much.
I've heard it was awful. Like much wine, I guess Millennium didn't travel well to other series, even when they shared the same prodcution crew.
My favorite episodes were any ones with Lucy Butler. She was seriously evil. I wonder which episodes were the favorite of the obvious "Millenium" fan, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg.
Now, Lucy, I remember. She was either the Devil Incarnate, or one of his chief deputies, no?
I would imagine that Rosenberg's fave episodes were the two about the anthrax-type outbreak.
She may be a microbiologist, but functions as a Professor of Environmental Science. Well, at least that's what the SUNY-Purchase website says:
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Ph.D. Research Professor of Environmental Science
Not to denigrate SUNY-Purchase, but it looks like a school that just goes to the bachelor degree in Environmental Science. Probably not exactly a hotbed of cutting edge bio-weapons research.
I hope Professor Rosenberg isn't doing any bioweapons research for which SUNY-Purchase doesn't have certified containment facilities.
Just my naive guess, but about the only environmental research products she's turning out right now are: thermal pollution in terms of lots of hot air and fouling the waters in the public commons with too much bull excrement and release of red herrings.
Thanks for the observations, VOA. I'd meant to respond earlier. SUNY Purchase is a college, not a university, and a performing arts school, at that. "Environmental science" sounds like some version of "Physics for Poets," or maybe Physics for Political Activists: "The Politics of Pollution"; "Environmental Racism," "The Politics of the White House-Big Oil Connection," yadda, yadda, yadda.
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