Posted on 10/28/2001 7:36:38 AM PST by WL-law
My own theory since anthrax first appeared is as follows, building on the accumulated circumstantial evidence:
1) Atta was passed weapons grade anthrax from Iraq during his one-day meeting in Prague.
2) Atta and his team were also given instruction as to how to create a primitive home laboratory so they could use the weapons-grade batch to grow additional batches. I would like any Freepers with biomedical background to confirm/deny whether this is possible and if so, how difficult this might be.
3) This would explain
a) the mysterious one-day meeting,
(b) Atta's subsequent visits to pharmacists for treatmenty of a rash on his hands (caused by caustic agents used in the home lab?) and his associate's visit to a doctor for treatment of persistant bad cold symptoms
4) This would explain the presence of 2 grades of anthrax seen in the aftermath:
(a) a primitve, non-centrifuged grade (The American Media anthrax and other instances) and
(b)one instance of the pure grade (Daschle's office and perhaps others).
5) Atta, once committed to his suicide flight, had no need to save the pure batch -- or else they saved the pure batch for the Senate and perhaps the White House.
6) Atta could have directed associates, still at large, to mail the anthrax one week after the Twin Towers crash.
7) The American Media batch may have been sent before the crash, as a test run. Since Atta lived nearby, perhaps he was observing (perhaps through an associate) to see whether any employees reported sick -- thereby confirming that the strategy would work. This would explain the choice of a near-by target for the trial run.
8) The crop-duster episodes, and Atta's interest in them, was perhaps an alternative strategy if the mail-strategy was a bust.
I suspect others have drawn similar conclusions -- please share.
I understand .. but that's why we've seen both home-grown and weapons-grade. They used the latter to grow the former.
see my response above -- maybe my post was not clear on this point. I understand that they couldn't create weapons-grade -- but they could have produced home-lab grade based on culturing the weapons-grade.
Could be that, or could be rash from caustic cleaning agents used in the home-lab, or other ingredients.
If he did contract anthrax it may have steeled his resolve to carry out the hijacking. Because he already was a dead man.
Subject: A Useful historical lesson:
A terrorist pilot, named Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis soon captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement Israel had to agree to release so called "political prisoners". However, the Israelis would not release any prisoners with "blood on their hands". So a well meaning American President and his Secretary of State insisted that they all be released. Thus Mr. Atta was freed and eventually thanked us-the USA-by flying an AMERICAN airplane into tower one of the world trade center.
This was reported by many of the networks at the time the terrorists were first identified, but it was missing (deleted) from later reports. This "kindly" president was Ronald Reagan and George Schultz was the Secretary of State.
Partisan poltics aside, the importance of this lesson, differentiating between "political prisoners,"--activists for another cause, and "terrorist"--those with the blood of the innocents on their hands, SHOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN. We have paid dearly in learning this lesson and hopefully we will not repeat the mistake.
Dr. Sheldon Hanft, History Dept., Appalachian State University, Boone,NC 66040--
The resident was supposedly cleared of involvement, but -- were the terrorists seeking medical treatment 'confidentially' (from similar exposure in a home-lab) from a someone identified as a friendly medical resource? Or perhaps something more sinister?
These are the two 'suspects who were from the NY/NJ area, and had flown out of Newark the morning of 9-11. Recall that they had box cutters in their possession, as well as disguises (wig) and large amount of cash.
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With several hours of instruction and $10,000 worth of equipment it would be much easier than is being argued.
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