Foot and mouth lab failure causes outbreak (Britain)

A biosecurity failure at a research laboratory has been pinpointed as the likeliest source of Britain's foot and mouth outbreak.

An inquiry by scientists is centring on fears that the virus escaped from the Pirbright laboratory site in Surrey, the only centre licensed to work with the foot and mouth virus. It is feared that the virus, carried on the wind, infected cattle grazing in a field three miles away.

A private pharmaceuticals company, Merial Animal Health, which has been developing a foot and mouth vaccine, shares the Pirbright site with the government-funded Institute for Animal Health, which holds 5,000 strains of the virus. Officials have not ruled out the possibility that such a release of the virus was deliberate. Both centres, however, pride themselves on their tight security record.

Last night, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed that the strain found on the infected farm was not one that would normally infect animals. A spokesman said the strain was similar to a virus known as 01 BFS67, which was isolated in the 1967 foot and mouth outbreak.

The department said the strain was present at the institute and had been used in a vaccines batch made last month by Merial. The company, which is jointly owned by drugs giants Merck and Sanofi-Aventis, had agreed to halt production on a "precautionary basis", Defra said.

The strain is thought to be relatively mild - less virulent than the pan-Asian strain that swept the country in 2001.

The Health and Safety Executive is leading an investigation at the institute and a protection zone was set up around both the farm and the institute. A separate independent review into "biosecurity arrangements" at the institute was also being launched, to report to Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary.

David Biland, Merial's managing director, was flying back to Britain last night from a family holiday. In a statement released by the company, Mr Biland said: "Merial will co-operate fully with the UK Government to determine the source of the disease and will fully support Defra scientists in bringing this outbreak to a speedy and satisfactory -conclusion."

The outbreak, Britain's first for six years, threatens havoc to the countryside and to the nation's tourist industry. The 2001 outbreak led to the slaughter of nearly seven million animals and cost the country £8.5 billion.

Defra was investigating other possible outbreaks of the disease, Debby Reynolds, the Chief Veterinary Officer, disclosed last night.

"It's important not to rule out any possible source. One of the first things I did was I asked Pirbright to review biosecurity," she said.

The Government insisted yesterday that it had learnt lessons from the 2001 outbreak and was determined to act "quickly and decisively". But there were already accusations that Defra's handling of the crisis was flawed. Farmers and trading standards officials, who must enforce any ban on animal movements, claimed that they had not been properly informed on the implementation of restrictions.

Defra announced a voluntary worldwide ban on exports of animals and animal products. It applies to "cloven-hooved" animals, notably cattle, sheep and pigs. The European Commission said it was enforcing a compulsory ban on live animal exports from Britain, as well as meat and dairy products from the area affected by the outbreak.

It is estimated that a three-month ban on lamb and beef exports alone would cost Britain more than £70 million.

The effects of the new crisis are already being felt up and down the country. Agricultural shows in Northumberland and Cumbria have been cancelled, while there will be no livestock at shows in Norfolk, Shropshire and Lancashire.

In Bedfordshire, Woburn Abbey's deer park and safari park were shut yesterday, while Whipsnade Zoo closed its drive-through section. The strain of the disease infecting the Surrey farm is thought to be a relatively mild version, less virulent than the pan-Asian strain that swept the country in 2001.

The Government has imp-osed a 1.9-mile (three-kilometre) "protection zone" following confirmation on Friday of infection at the farm in Elstead, near Guildford, and a 6.2-mile (10-kilometre) "surveillance zone". A nationwide ban on the movement of all cattle, sheep and pigs is in force.

More than 60 cattle belonging to Roger Pride, a farmer and butcher, were slaughtered and taken away for incineration. The animals were being fattened for organic beef.

Animals in fields surrounding the affected farm may now be vaccinated against the disease under a policy introduced after 2001. Production of the vaccine cannot begin until the strain has been identified.

Gordon Brown, who broke off his holiday in Dorset to take charge of the crisis, said the authorities were doing "everything in our power" to contain the disease. The Prime Minister, who chaired a second meeting of Cobra, the Government's emergency committee, said yesterday he hoped investigators would identify the source of the disease "with hours and days".

Mr Brown spoke to David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, who also broke off his holiday.

More than 5,000 strains of infectious foot and mouth are held in a reference "library" by the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright and samples from all over the globe are sent there for analysis. It provides confirmation of outbreaks for the United Nations.

Merial UK is a pharmaceuticals company jointly owned by drugs giants Merck and -Sanofi-Aventis and, at Pirbright, it researches vaccines against foot and mouth. It has been attempting to create harmless versions of the virus that can be used in vaccines.

The Pirbright facility, which has about 100 members of staff, is a high-security site, holding samples of the most dangerous animal diseases known, including swine fever, sheep pox and bluetongue.

Professor Hugh Pennington, an expert on infectious diseases, said it would be "extremely concerning" if Pirbright were the source of the outbreak. He said: "If there has been some kind of escape then we will have to look very carefully at how we keep viruses locked up."

Dr John Anderson, the acting head of the institute, said there was no suggestion that the latest outbreak had been caused by an accidental virus release from his laboratories.

I doubt the foot and mouth was an intentional release by militant islamists.

In an essay “Islam and Terrorism,” Bilal Philips, the religious mentor of George Mason University’s microbiology grad Ali Al-Timimi, explained the principles of islamic jurisprudence of islamic warfare prohibit using poisons against a farm. Ali Al-Timimi worked in the same halls as famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, and so the opinion of his religious mentor is worth noting. Al-Timimi, too, has spoken on the issue of the principles of islamic jurisprudence governing warfare — and argued that a fiqh was needed suitable for the time and place.

http://www.studentofknowledge.com/islamandterror.htm

But the incident in the UK is another reason one would not want a BL-3 lab near Washington, D.C. located at George Mason University, Al-Timimi’s alma mater, is perhaps a very bad idea. As a poster notes, Washington already has enough problem with food in mouth disease.

Bilal Philips, one of the many on the list of unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators wrote:

“Islam opposes any form of indiscriminate violence. The Quran states: “Anyone who has killed another except in retaliation, it is as if he has killed the whole of humankind.” [Quran Surah #32 Verse #5] There are strict rules regulating how war may be conducted. Prophet Muhammad forbade the killing of women, children, and old people and the destruction of Churches and Synagogues or FARMS. Of course, if women, children or the elderly bear arms they may be killed in self-defense.

***

Defending Islam and the Muslim community is a primary aspect of the physical jihad which involves taking up arms against an enemy. God states in the Quran “Permission to fight has been given to those who have been attacked because they are wronged. And indeed, Allah is Most Powerful.” [Quran Surah #22 Verse #39] and “Fight in the cause of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not transgress the limits. Indeed Allah does not love transgressors.” [Quran Surah #2 Verse #190]. Muslims are also enjoined to fight against tyranny. The Quran states, “Why shouldn’t you fight in the cause of Allah and for those oppressed because they are weak. Men, women and children who cry out, ‘Our Lord! Rescue us from this town of oppressors’” [Quran Surah #4 Verse #75]”

a. Hardball Tactics In An Era Of Threats

The Washington Post, in an article “Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats,” dated September 3, 2006 summarized events relating Ali Al-Timimi:

“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.”

The FBI first contacted Timimi shortly after 9/11. He met with FBI agents 7 or 8 times in the months leading up to his arrest. Al-Timimi is a US citizen born in Washington DC His house was searched, his passport taken and his telephone monitored. Some of his communications with Sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends of Bin Laden, were intercepted. Al-Hawali was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s declaration of war in 1996 and the claim of responsibility for the bombing of the embassies in 1998.

Upon his indictment, in September 2004, al-Timimi explained he had been offered a plea bargain of 14 years, but he declined. He quoted Sayyid Qutb. He said he remembered “reading his books and loving his teaching” as a child, and that Qutb’s teaching was prevented from signing something that was false by “the finger that bears witness.” He noted that he and his lawyers asked that authorities hold off the indictment until he had received his PhD, but said that unfortunately they did not wait.

The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of BIF, the defendants watched videos depicting Mujahadeen engaged in Jihad and discussed a training camp in Bosnia. His defense lawyer says that the FBI searched the townhouse of “to connect him to the 9/11 attacks or to schemes to unleash a biological or nuclear attack.”

Famed head of the former Russian bioweaponeering program Ken Alibek told me that he would occasionally see him in the hallways at George Mason, where they both were in the microbiology department, and was vaguely aware that he was an islamic hardliner. When what his defense counsel claims was an FBI attempt to link him to a planned biological attack failed, defense counsel says that investigators focused on his connections to the men who attended his lectures at the local Falls Church, Va. In the end, he was indicted just for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States. During deliberations, he reportedly was very calm, reading Genome Technology and other scientific journals. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 70 years.

At the same time the FBI was searching the townhouse of PhD candidate Ali Timimi, searches and arrests moved forward elsewhere. In Moscow, Idaho, FBI agents interviewed Nabil Albaloushi. (They apparently searched his apartment at the same time they searched the apartment of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen, who they had woken from bed at 4:00 a.m.) Albaloushi was a PhD candidate expert in drying foodstuffs. His thesis in 2003 was 350 pages filled with charts of drying coefficients. Interceptions showed a very close link between IANA’s Sami al-Hussayen and Sheikh al-Hawali, to include the setting up of web sites, the providing of vehicles for extended communication, and telephone contact with intermediaries of Sheikh al-Hawali. Al-Hussayen had al-Hawali’s phone number upon the search of his belongings upon his arrest. Former Washington State University animal geneticist and nutrition researcher Ismail Diab, who had moved to Syracuse to work for an IANA-spin-off, also was charged in Syracuse and released as a material witness to a financial investigation of the IANA affiliate “Help The Needy.” After the government failed to ask Dr. Diab any questions for nearly 3 months, the magistrate bail restrictions and removed the electronic monitoring and curfew requirements.

In Moscow, Idaho, the activities by IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen that drew scrutiny involved these same two radical sheiks. U.S. officials say the two sheiks influenced al Qaeda’s belief that Muslims should wage holy war against the U.S. until it ceases to support Israel and withdraws from the Middle East. Sami Hussayen, who was acquitted, made numerous calls and wrote many e-mails to the two clerics, sometimes giving advice to them about running Arabic-language Web sites on which they espoused their anti-Western views.

At his sentencing, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke in clear and measured tones:

“I will not admit guilt nor seek the Court’s mercy. I do this not out of any disrespect to the Court. I do this simply because I am innocent.

My claim of innocence is not because of any inherent misunderstanding on my part as to the nature of the crimes for which I was convicted nor is it because my Muslim belief recognizes sharia rather than secular law. It is merely because I am innocent. ...

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I declare the government’s recitation poor as it stripped those words of their meaning.

***

Imprisonment of any term, as this Court well knows, is a crisis for the incarcerated and his or her loved ones. I am no exception to that.

But the real crisis brought on my imprisonment, I sincerely believe is America’s. For if my conviction is to stand, it would mean that two hundred and thirty years of America’s tradition of protecting the individual from the tyrannies and whims of the sovereign will have come to an end. And that which is exploited today to persecute a single member of a minority will most assuredly come back to haunt the majority tomorrow.”

Dr. Timimi has a substantial pending appeal relating to warrantless wiretapping and the First Amendment. Dr. Timimi’s attorney likely is understandably annoyed that they keep moving Al-Timimi between prisons.

KSM invoked George Washington in his statement to a military tribunal in March 2007. That was far less compelling because he was admitting to many serious crimes. Dr. Al-Timimi, on the other hand, was guilty of nothing other than exhorting some young men to go abroad and defend their faith. It seems that his only crime was to put his religion before his nation-state. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years. As one Washington Post reporter said of such cases, the government seems to be engaged in shadow boxing.

As Al-Timimi explained in his eloquent statement upon sentencing, he was convicted out of fear.

The former head of the DARPA Biological Counermeasures Program, Dr. Stephen S. Morse, who oversaw the funding of programs such as at the GMU Center for Biodefense, in an interview airing on Charlie Rose on October 10, 2001, explained that there was no need for the public to fear. He noted that maybe the mailer had a personal reason — no reason to assume the Florida death related to terrorism or a large group. Dr. Morse urged that we put it into perspective and inform the public so as to remove the mystery. He explained we should not allow ourselves to feel fear . As reiterated in other interviews that week, he said mailed anthrax was not a great danger.

But as those words aired, more letters were en route from that mailbox at 10 Nassau St. in Princeton. The anthrax mailer asked a pointed question in the letter containing a much more highly refined product — product that aerosolized much more readily. The new batch of letters asked: “Are you afraid?”

The answer was clearly yes.

In a November 30, 2004 letter of appeal circulated in sympathetic circles in the US and the UK, Bilal Philips encouraged Muslims to assist Al-Timimi “financially, morally or politically.” The letter urged that “whatever the charges against him [Al-Timimi] may be, from an Islamic perspective they are false and contrived in order to silence the Da’wah to correct Islam.”

b. The Education of Ali Al-Timimi

Milton Viorst, who knew Ali as a teenager, wrote a fascinating and sympathetic portrait in “The Education of Ali Al-Timimi” that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006.

In Saudi Arabia, Al-Timimi had been mentored by a Saudi-trained Canadian imam Bilal Philips. Philips was Al-Timimi’s Islamic Studies teacher at Manaret Riyadh High School in the early 1980s. Al-Timimi adopted Philips’ view that “The clash of civilizations is a reality,” and “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” Between 1991 and 1993, Philips relocated to the Mindinao, Philippines, where he taught at an islamic school. In 1993, according to an interview he gave in a London-based Arabic-language magazine interview, Philips ran a program to convert US soldiers to Islam stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Persian Gulf War. Philips was made a proselytization official by the Saudi Air Force. Philips followed up in the US, with telephone calls and visits intended to recruit the veterans as potential members of Bin Laden’s network. He enlisted assistance from others based in the U.S. and members of Islamic centers all over the US. These conversion specialists financed pilgrimages for US veterans and would later send Muslim clerics in the United States to their homes. Bilal Philips encouraged some converts from this program to fight in Bosnia in the 1990s. He enlisted WTC plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El to help him with the program. Hampton-El was associated with the Al-Kifah center in Brooklyn. Hampton-El in trial testimony described a meeting at the Saudi embassy in 1992 at which Philips gave him a list of US Army personnel to approach. Bilal Philips was named along with Osama bin Laden and Bin Laden brother-in-law Khalifa as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial that sent the “blind sheik” to prison.

It is a small world and the salafists in the US who travelled tended to know each other. Bilal Philips was a good friend of Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father. Philips wrote in his guestbook on the family website his son created about learning Arabic: “He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Allaah. Was salaam, Bilal.” Adnan’s family website also contained a picture of another “unindicted co-conspirator” of the ’93 bombing, Siraj Wahhaj, who would speak as the same Falls Church mosque as Al-Timimi.

After completing his religious education in Saudi Arabia in Medina, Ali Al Timimi had returned to the United States and received a second bachelor’s degree — this time in computer science at the University of Maryland, while also studying software programming at George Washington University. Timimi spoke at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1994. A senior al Qaeda recruiter, Abdelrahman Dosari, also spoke at three IANA conferences in the early 1990s. In December 1993, Al-Dorsari (a.k.a. Shaykh Abu Abdel Aziz “Barbaros”) spoke on ‘Jihad & Revival” and exhorted young men to fight for their faith as Al-Timimi would later be accused of doing privately with young men in Virginia.

One author, the father of a boy who knew Al-Timimi as young teen, wrote: “Dozens of his talks are available on the Internet in text and in audio format. They contain little about Arab concerns with the Arab-Israeli wars, the rivalries between the Arab states, the problems faced by Muslims living in the West, or even the war in Iraq. Rather, they reveal a man who reflects deeply on the Islamic vision of Judgment day, prophecy, the nature of the divine, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) — subjects with which he grappled in Medina and in his private reading.” Al Timimi’s lectures (in English after Arabic opening) include “The Negative Portrayal Of Islam In the Media,” “Signs Before the Day of Judgement,” “Advice to the UK Salafis” and “Crusade Complex: Western Perceptions of Islam.”

Al-Timimi’s increasing computer skills got him a job at SRA International where Ali worked as a “bioinformatics software architect” providing information technology to the government. Some of his jobs required that Ali obtain a high-level security clearance. One job resulted in a letter of recommendation from the White House. He then enrolled in a PhD program in computational biology at George Mason University.

By 2000, Ali Al-Timimi was already taking advanced courses at Mason in computational sciences. Timimi once explained his research: “I am currently a research scientist at the Center for Biomedical Genomics and Informatics, George Mason University. I am involved in the analysis of the microarray data generated by the CTRF Cancer Genomics Project (http://www.ctrf-cagenomics.vcu.edu/HOMEPAGE.htm). Likewise, I am developing new computational approaches and technologies in support of this project.” The webpage for Timimi’s program at the time explained: “Faculty members and graduate students in the Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology participate in numerous collaborative efforts including but not limited to the following Laboratories and Research Centers: Center for Biomedical Genomics and Informatics (GMU) , Laboratory for Microbial and Environmental Biocomplexity (GMU) and Center for Biodefense (GMU) Beginning the Spring of 2002. GMU hired Ali to develop a computer program that coordinated the research at several universities, letting him go only after he came under suspicion by the FBI. In Spring 2002, according to salary information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, GMU hired him for $70,000 a year. In 2002, the employment was through the School of Computational Sciences and in 2003, it was through Life Sciences Grants & Contracts.

The School of Computational Sciences at George Mason is a joint venture between the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”) and George Mason. The joint venture is an effort to maximize research efforts by combining the academic and applied approaches to research. The School’s first activity was to teach an ATCC course in DNA techniques adapted for George Mason students. The ATCC is an internationally renown non-profit organization that houses the world’s largest and most diverse archive of biological materials. The Prince William Campus shares half of Discovery Hall with ATCC. ATCC moved to its current state-of-the-art laboratory at Discovery Hall (Prince Willam II) in 1998. ATCC’s 106,000-square-foot facility has nearly 35,000 square feet of laboratory space with a specialized air handling system and Biosafety Level 2 and 3 containment stations. The ATCC bioinformatics (BIF) program carries out research in various areas of biological information management relevant to its mission. BIF scientists interact with laboratory scientists in microbiology, cell biology, and molecular biology at ATCC and other laboratories throughout the world. ATCC has strong collaborations with a large number of academic institutions, including computational sciences at George Mason University. Through these partnerships, the George Mason Prince William Campus offers George Mason microbiology students an opportunity for students to be involved in current research and gain access to facilities and employment opportunities at ATCC and other partner companies. While I’ve not yet found any reference directly confirming Timimi’s room number, the person who inherited his old telephone number (3-4294) is Victor Morozov in the Center for Biodefense, who upon joining the faculty and inheriting the phone number was in Rm. 154A, very near Dr. Bailey in Rm 156B. It has been suggested that it instead was Rm. 154B, in the middle of the office suite. GMU Information Services helpfully looked up the listings from 2001 directory. As of October 2001 (when the directory is published according to GMU Information Services), judging from the directory, Al-Timimi was still just a graduate student.

Former USAMRIID head and Ames strain anthrax researcher Charles Bailey, in Rm 156B, was given a Gateway desktop computer in mid-March 2001 (upon his arrival) — serial number 0227315480. Like the one Dr. Alibek apparently would get the next year in 156D. One way to think of proximity analysis — a form of true crime analysis — is the number of feet or inches between 154B and 156B/156D. Another way is to think of it is in terms of the number of feet or inches to the hard drives. You can judge the distance for yourself from this linked First Floor plan, clicking upon 154-156 area to enlarge.

c. The Straight Path”: Connecting the Dots

Al-Timimi was on an advisory board member of Assirat al-Mustaqueem (”The Straight Path”), an international Arabic language magazine that published out of Pittsburgh. Assirat, produced in Pittsburgh beginning in 1991, was the creation of a group of North American muslims, many of whom were senior members of IANA. Its Advisory Committee included Bassem Khafagi and Ali Al-Timimi. Two staff members who wrote for Assirat then joined IANA’s staff when it folded in 2000. They had been members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and were activists in the movement. One of the former EIJ members, Gamal Sultan, was the editor of the quarterly IANA magazine in 2002. Mr. Sultan’s brother Mahmoud wrote for Assirat also. The most prominent writer was the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Kamal Habib. He led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad at the time of Anwar Sadat’s assassination when young doctor Zawahiri’s cell merged with a few other cells to form the EIJ. Two writers for Assirat in Pittsburgh had once shared a Portland, Oregon address with Al Qaeda member Wadih El-Hage who served a Bin Laden’s “personal secretary.”

Kamal Habib had been a founding member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and had spent 10 years in jail for the assassination of Anwar Sadat. In the late 1970s, the cell run by the young doctor Zawahiri joined with three other groups to become Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) under Habib’s leadership. After a visit in 2000, Gamal Sultan said Pittsburgh was known as the “American Kandahar,” given its rolling hills. Besides forming the Islah (”’Reform) party wth Gamal Sultan, Mr. Kamal Habib contributed to Al Manar al Jadeed, IANA’s quarterly journal. The pair sought the blind sheik’s endorsement of their political party venture in March 1999 — although they were not seeking the official participation of organizations like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Egyptian Islamic Group, they were hoping the groups would not oppose it. The pair wanted members of the movement to be free to join in peaceful partisan activity. They were not deterred when the blind sheik responded that the project was pointless, at the same he withdrew his support for the cease-fire initiative that had been backed by the imprisoned leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Group.

In early April 2001, Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour rented an apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, for about a month, with the assistance of a man they met at the mosque. Nawaf Al-Hazmi had been at the January 2000 meeting at Yazid Sufaat’s Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Hijackers Nawaf and Hani Hanjour, a fellow pilot who was his friend from Saudi Arabia, attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, where Al-Timimi was located until he established the nearby center. The FBI reports that at an imam who had recently also moved from San Diego had closed door meetings with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in 2000 while all three of them were living in San Diego. Police later find the phone number of the Falls Church mosque when they searched the apartment of 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany.

Yusuf Wells, who was a fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation, visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive and an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:

“I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball weaponry. They call it ‘training’ and are very serious about it. I knew at least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.

Most all of them young men between the ages of 17-35. I was asked by the amir of the group to give a talk after Thuhr prayer. I spoke about seeing the conditions of Muslims overseas while with BIF, and how the fire of Islam is still very much alive in the hearts of the people even in the midst of extreme oppression. I also stressed the idea of being balanced. That we should not just be jihadis and perfect our fighting skills, but we should also work to perfect our character and strengthen our knowledge of Islam. I also said that Muslims are not just book reading cowards either, and that they should be commended for forming such a group.

Many were confused as to why I had been ‘trusted’ to join the group so quickly, but were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get presentations on their respective localities.”

Al-Timimi was not friends with the Virginia defendants — at least he did not regularly associate with them outside his classes they attended. But they were awed by Timimi, a man who could both translate 7th-century Koranic Arabic, talk about astrobiology with friends, or joke about the Redskins. The prosecutor argued that the paintball defendants “couldn’t figure out how to tie their shoelaces without asking al-Timimi.” The group looked up to Al-Timimi and sought his advice on all sorts of questions — to include whether it was permissible to pray in a moving car and whether one could cut short his prayers due to an approaching scorpion.

After 9/11, although a dinner that night was cancelled in light of the events of the day, Al-Timimi sought “to organize a plan in case of anti-Muslim backlash and to get the brothers together.” The group got together on September 16. Al-Timimi when he came in told the group to turn of their phones, unplug the answering machine, and pull down the curtains. Al-Timimi told the group that Mullah Omar had called upon Muslims to defend Afghanistan. Al-Timimi read parts of the al-Uqla fatwa to the group gave the fatwa to Khan with the instructions to burn it after he has read it. Al Timimi said the duty to engage in jihad is “fard ayn” — an individual duty of all Muslims. Over a lunch, Al-Timimi with two of the group, Al-Timimi told them not to carry anything suspicious and if they were stopped on the way to Pakistan to ask for their mother and cry like a baby. He told them to carry a magazine. The next day the pair left for Pakistan. The group from the September 16 meeting met again in early October, and a number left for Pakistan immediately after that meeting.

One man, Kwon, who had just become a U.S. citizen in August 2001, went to the mountain training camps of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The U.S. placed on its terrorist list in December 2001. Kwon practiced with a semi-automatic weapons and learned to fire a grenade launcher, but he was not able to join the Taliban. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan closed as U.S. forces took control of Afghanistan shortly before Kwon completed his training. His trainers suggested that he instead go back to the United States and gather information for the holy warriors. Kwon told jurors at al-Timimi’s trial how he first heard Al-Timimi speak in 1997 at an Islamic Assembly of North America conference in Chicago and then found that he lectured locally near his home in Northern Virginia. “Russian Hell” — a jihad video that featured bloody clips of a Chechen Muslim rebel leader executing a Russian prisoner of war — was a favorite among the videos that the group exchanged and discussed. “They (the videos) motivated us. It was like they gave us inspiration,” Kwon told the jurors.

Kwon recalled driving Al-Timimi home from the mosque Sept. 11, 2001 after the terrorist attacks. He said Al-Timimi and another scholar argued, with Al-Timimi characterizing the attacks as a punishment of America from God, while his fellow scholar decried the attacks. “He told me to gather some brothers, to have a contingency plan in case there were mass hostilities toward Muslims in America.” Kwon said Al-Timimi told the group that the effort to spread Islam in the United States was over and that the only other options open to them were to repent, leave the U.S. and join the mujahadeen — the holy warriors preparing to defend Afghanistan against the coming U.S. invasion. Four days later, Kwon was on the plane to Pakistan. “I made the decision to go, but (Al-Timimi) was a big part of my decision to go.”

In 2001, Al-Timimi kept the personal papers of IANA President Khafagi at his home for safekeeping. His taped audio lecturers were among the most popular at the charity Islamic Assembly of North America in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He knew its President, Khafagi, both through work with CAIR and IANA. Al Timimi was close to his former teacher Safar al Hawali, the dissident Saudi sheik who once close to Osama bin Laden and whose writings hail what he calls the inevitable downfall of the West. Al Hawali has played a public role in mediating between Saudi militants and the government. Al-Timimi sought to represent and explain the views of radical sheik Al-Hawali in a letter he sent to members of Congress. The same nondescript office building at 360 S. Washington St. in Falls Church where Timimi used to lecture at Dar al Arqam housed the Muslim World League.

The Hawali/Timimi October 6, 2002 letter drafted by Al-Timimi was hand delivered to every member of the US Congress just before their vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq, warning of the disastrous consequences that would follow an invasion of Iraq. Dr. Timimi’s defense committee explained on their website:

“Because Dr. Al-Timimi felt that he did not have enough stature to send a letter in his name on behalf of Muslims, he contacted Dr. Al-Hawali among others to send the letter. Dr. Al-Hawali agreed and sent a revised version which Dr. Al-Timimi then edited and had hand delivered to every member of Congress.”

In addition to the lucidly written October 6, 2002 letter , Hawali had sent a lengthy, convoluted October 15, 2001 “Open Letter” to President Bush in which he had rejoiced in the 9/11 attacks.

Bin Laden had referred to Sheik al-Hawali in his 1996 declaration of war on America. Prior to the 1998 embassy bombings, Ayman’s London cell sent letters to three different media outlets in Europe claiming responsibility for the bombings and referring to Hawali’s imprisonment. In two of the letters, the conditions laid out as to how the violence would stop were (1) release of Sheik Hawali (who along with another had been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in 1994) and (2) the release of blind sheik Abdel Rahman (who had been imprisoned in connection with WTC 1993). Hawali was released in 1999 after he agreed to stop advocating against the Saudi regime and agreed to limit himself to urging the destruction of the United States and Israel.

The authorities had an interest in a lecture by dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali upon a search on February 26, 2003 of an IANA-connected scientist, ar adiological engineer, in Syracuse, New York. A federal magistrate, however, found that we had not reached the point where such reading material would be a reason for denial of bail.

Al-Timimi sent out a February 1, 2003 email in Arabic containing an article that said:

“There is no doubt Muslims were overjoyed because of the adversity that befell their greatest enemy. The Columbia crash made me feel, and God is the only One to know, that this is a strong signal that Western Supremacy (especially that of America) that began 500 years ago is coming to a quick end, God willing, as occurred to the shuttle.”

d. GMU Center for Biodefense: Discovery Hall

Ali Al-Timimi worked at George Mason University’s Discovery Hall throughout 2000 and 2002 period. The Mason Gazette in “Mason to Pursue Advanced Biodefense Research” on November 17, 2000 had announced:”The School of Computational Sciences (SCS) and Advanced Biosystems, Inc., a subsidiary of Hadron, Inc., of Alexandria, are pursuing a collaborative program at the Prince William Campus to enhance research and educational objectives in biodefense research. The article noted that the program was funded primarily by a grant awarded to Advanced Biosystems from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Instead of starting a center from scratch, GMU chose to join forces with Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey’s existing research firm, Hadron Advanced Biosystems Inc., which was already working under contract for the federal government, having received funding from DARPA. Dr. Alibek told the Washington Post that he and Bailey had spent their careers studying an issue that only recently grabbed the country’s attention, after the anthrax mailings the previous fall. Dr. Bailey and Alibek met in 1991, when a delegation of Soviet scientists visited the USAMRIID at Ft. Detrick. Dr. Bailey explained that the purpose of the tour was to show the Soviets that the US was not developing offensive biological weapons. Bailey said he tried to engage Alibek in conversation but Alibek remained aloof. Alibek, for his part, explains that he was suspicious of this American smiling so broadly at him. A year later, Alibek would defect to the US and reveal an illegal biological program in the Soviet Union of a staggering scope. Alibek says that one reason he defected was that he realized that the Soviet intelligence was wrong — that the US research was in fact only defensive.

Former USAMRIID head and Ames researcher Bailey coinvented, with Ken Alibek, the process to treat cell culture with hydrophobic silicon dioxide so as to permit greater concentration upon drying. He was in Room 156B of GMU’s Discovery Hall. at the Center for Biodefense. The patent application was filed March 14, 2001. Rm 154A was Victor Morozov’s room number when he first assumed Timimi’s phone number in 2004 (and before he moved to the newly constructed Bull Run Hall). Morozov was the co-inventor with Dr. Bailey of the related cell culture process under which the silica was removed from the spore surface — but with the silicon still detectable by an EDX by reason of having been absorbed by the exosporium.

One ATCC former employee felt so strongly about lax security there the scientist called me out of the blue and said that the public was overlooking the patent repository as a possible source of the Ames strain. ATCC does not deny they had virulent Ames in their patent repository pre 9/11 (as distinguished from their online catalog). The spokesperson emailed me: “As a matter of policy, ATCC does not disclose information on the contents of its patent depository...”

George Mason University, Department Listings, accessed August 17, 2003, shows that the National Center For Biodefense and Center for Biomedical Genomics had the same mail stop (MS 4ES). The most famed bioweaponeer in the world — the former head of the Russian bioweapons program (to include anthrax ) — was not far from this sheik urging violent jihad in an apocalyptic struggle between religions. Dr. Alibek’s office was Rm. 156D in Prince William 2. The groups both shared the same department fax of 993-4288. Dr. Alibek advises me he had seen him several times in the corridors of GMU and was told that he was a religious muslim hard-liner but knew nothing of his activities. At one point, Timimi’s mail drop was MSN 4D7.

Charles Bailey at 3-4271 was the former head of USAMRIID and joined the Center in April 2001. He continued to do research with Ames after 9/11. Dr. Alibek reports that shortly after the mailings, he wrote Director Mueller and offered his services but was advised that they already had assembled a large group.

Ali Al Timimi had the same telephone number that Dr. Victor Morozov, of the Center for Biodefense would later have when he joined the faculty and occupied the newly constructed Bull Run Building, which opened in late 2004 (Rm. #362). If only to show the sophisticated cutting edge work they do at the Center, Dr. Morozov focuses on the development of new bioassay methods for express analysis, high-throughput screening and proteomics. He has recently developed a new electrospray-based technology for mass fabrication of protein microarrays. Dr. Morozov is currently supervising a DOE -funded research project directed at the development of ultra-sensitive express methods for detection of pathogens in which slow diffusion of analytes is replaced by their active transport controlled and powered by external forces (electric, magnetic, gravitational or hydrodynamic). His homepage explains that: “A variety of projects are available for students to participate in 1. Develop methods for active capturing of viruses and cells. 2. AFM imaging of macromolecules, viruses and cells. 3. Develop active immunoassay. 4. Analyze forces operating in the active assay of biomolecules and viral particles. 5. Develop immobilization techniques for antibodies and other biospecific molecules. 6. Study crystallization dynamics and morphology of organic and inorganic crystals in the presence of protein impurities. 7. Develop software to analyze motion of beads. 8. Develop software to analyze patterns in drying droplets. 9. Develop an electrostatic collector for airborne particles.”

Al-Timimi obtained a doctorate from George Mason University in 2004 in the field of computational biology — a field related to cancer research involving genome sequencing. He successfully defended his thesis 5 weeks after his indictment. Curt Jamison, Timimi’s thesis advisor and coauthor was in Prince William II (Discovery Hall) Rm. 181A. The staff of Advanced Biosystems was in Rm. 160, 162, 177, 254E and several others. Computational sciences offices were intermixed among the Hadron personnel on the first floor of Prince William II to include 159, 161, 166A, 167, 181 B and 181C. Rm. 156B was Charles Bailey, former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, who was head of the Center for Biodefense. Defense contractor Hadron had announced the appointment Dr. Charles Bailey as Vice-President of Advanced Biosystems in early April 2001. Over 13 years, he had served as a Research Scientist, Deputy Commander for Research, Deputy Commander and Commander at the U.S. Army Medical Research Instiute. As a USAMRIID scientist, he designed and supervised the construction of BL-3 containment facilities. His hands-on experience with a wide variety of pathogens is chronicled in 70 published articles. During his 4 years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he published numerous articles assessing foreign capabilities regarding biological weapons.” When I asked Dr. Bailey to confirm Al-Timimi’s room number relative to his own, his only response was to refer me to University counsel. Counsel then never responded to my inquiry regarding their respective room numbers. Dr. Jamison never responded to an emailed query either.

In Fall 2001, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (”AFIP”) had detected silicon dioxide (silica) in the attack anthrax — with a characteristic big spike for the silicon. The reason for the silicon dioxide/silica claimed to have been detected by AFIP has never been explained (and it’s been nearly a half decade). No silica was observable on the SEMS images that Dr. Alibek and Dr. Matthew Meselson saw. The Daschle product was “pure spores.” Wasn’t silicon dioxide used as part of a microdroplet cell culture process used prior to drying to permit greater concentration? As explained in a later related patent, the silica could be removed from the surface of the spore through repeated centrifugaton or an air chamber.

Dr. Alibek and the former head of USAMRIID, Ames anthrax research Charles Bailey, had filed a patent application in mid-March 2001 involving a microdroplet cell culture technique that used silicon dioxide in a method for concentrating growth of cells. The patent was granted and the application first publicly disclosed in the Spring of 2002. Weren’t the SEMS images and AFIP EDX finding both consistent with use of this process in growing the culture? It’s been suggested informally to me that perhaps the silicon analytical peak was more likely due to silanol from hydrolysis of a silane, used in siliconizing glassware. But didn’t the AFIP in fact also detect oxygen in ratios characteristic of silicon dioxide? Wasn’t the scientist, now deceased, who performed the EDX highly experienced and expert in detecting silica? Hasn’t the AFIP always stood by its report? AFIP explained: “AFIP experts utilized an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (an instrument used to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals through characteristic wavelengths of X-ray light) to confirm the previously unidentifiable substance as silica.” The nuance that was lost — or just never publicly explained for very sound reasons — was that silica was used in the cell culture process and then removed from the spores through a process such as centrifugation.

Dr. Morozov is co-inventor along with Dr. Bailey for a patent “Cell Culture” that explains how the silicon dioxide can be removed from the surface. Perhaps it is precisely this AFIP finding of silicon dioxide (without silica on the SEMS) that is why the FBI came to suspect Al-Timimi in 2003 (rightly or wrongly, we don’t know). The FBI would have kept these scientific findings secret to protect the integrity of the confidential criminal/national security investigation. There was still a processor and mailer to catch — still a case to prove. Above all, they needed to protect the due process rights of Al-Timimi while he defended himself on other charges.

e. The Ability of Intelligence To Prevent Domestic Bioterrorism

Journalist Bill Gertz, in his book Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (2002) explains the central importance of al-Hawali:

“bin Laden was ecstatic about the attack [on Khobar towers in 1995], according to intelligence sources. Bin Laden ordered an assistant to telephone ... a Saudi dissident based in London, who ran the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights. ‘You remember when the first ‘accident’ occurred. Now the second has occurred. More is coming.’ Bin Laden then told [him], ‘Let them keep our friend Safar al-Hawali in prison as he will good news very soon. We are working on getting him out.’

Their friend, Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi cleric, had been arrested and jailed by the Saudi government in 1994 for antigovernment activities. He is considered a spiritual godfather to bin Laden and his cohorts. Hawali is part of the extremist Salafi branch of the already extreme sect of Wahhabi Islam. Hawali would be released, and by October 2001, he had become a university lecturer living in Islam’s holy city of Mecca and a public criticism of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism.

But that was for the future. On the day of the Dhahran bombing, bin Laden received another telephone call. This call was from one of his closest associates in terror, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who asked about the bombing. Al-Zawahiri offered his congratulations to bin Laden for the successful attack.”

Last year, FBI microbiologist Dr. Doug Beecher commented in a publication that it undermines biodefense preparations to underestimate the danger of simple spore preparations. He provided me a copy when I wrote him as the designated corresponding author and then I distributed it to reporters. The paper had been reviewed by Professor Meselson at Harvard. Dr. Beecher is right that there is no reason to view it as akin to “militarization” or requiring state sponsorship. The two sentences by Beecher actually did not address the issue at all. They just go to illustrate and confirm Dr. Alibek’s point that a sophisticated product can result from a relatively simple method. Here, the government even allowed the method to be commercialized and be published in the public domain for use in a broad range of possible commercial applications. Perhaps the United States biodefense establishment should not let officials commercialize and disclose such dual use technology, whether the patent is assigned to a DARPA-funded program or not — and whether deemed “biofriendly” or not. (The patent, which is not classified, has been assigned to George Mason University).

Everyone is basically right in substantial part—Richard Ebright, Milton Leitenberg, Gary Matsumoto, TrebleRebel, France Boyle, Battle Axe, Mitchell, Allan, Matthew Meselson, Richard Spertzel, Cliff Kincaid, Barbara Rosenberg, EdLake, Richard Smith and many others who have long held strong and divergent opinions of what had been published in the media or what they knew. But it turns out that they apparently have just been seeing the elephant in the living room from a different angle. Actually, they’ve just been in a position to see the elephant’s rump from outside the living room door.

In a June 2005 interview in a Swiss (German language) weekly news magazine, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Ken Alibek addresses the anthrax mailings:

A. “...What if I told you Swiss scientists are paid by Al Qaeda? You could believe it or not. It has become somewhat fashionable to disparage Russian scientists. Americans, Iraqis, or whoever could just as well be involved with Al Qaeda. Why doesn’t anyone speculate about that?”

Q. “But could one of your students build a biological weapon in the garage?”

A. “Let me reply philosophically: Two hundred years ago, it was unthinkable to believe that people would be using mobile telephones, wasn’t it? Everything changes. Our knowledge grows, and technology develops incredibly quickly. These days even high-school kids can breed recombinant microbial strains. I am not saying that a student is in a position to build a biological weapon all by himself. But the knowledge needed to do it is certainly there.”

No one who responded to my inquiries ever knew Al-Timimi to ever have been involved in any biodefense project. For example, former Russian bioweaponeer Sergei Popov did not know of any such work by Al-Timimi, and Anna Popova had only seen him in the hall on a very rare occasion. Dr. Alibek thought of him as a “numbers guy” rather than a hands-on type. Given that the FBI knows what Al-Timimi had for dinner on September 16, 2001, it is very likely that the past years have involved a continued search for the mailer and/or processor. His attorney emphasizes that while they searched for materials related to a planned biological attack when they searched his townhouse in late February 2003, they came up empty.

Dr. Dustin Razsi’s 2006 thesis, “The ability of intelligence to prevent domestic bioterrorism “ was supervised by GMU’s Ken Alibek. It considers domestic terrorism to include the pursuit of biological agents for use against humans in the United States. For the purposes of his study, domestic bioterrorism can be perpetrated by U.S. Persons or non-U.S. persons located within the United States. This was always a common mistake many people made — they would seize on Ari Fleischer’s use of the word ‘domestic” at a press conference and ignore Attorney Ashcroft’s explanation of how the term was being used.

Dr. Razsi explains:

”Not all bioterrorists work in a laboratory or have access to dangerous pathogens. Several of the measures recommended focus on biohazardous facilities because the nexus of people and pathogens is a critical vulnerability and possibly a rich information source that currently is untapped. However, intelligence can be collected from a variety of sources, including academia and the private sector, for those who do not have access to pathogens still pose a bioterrorist threat. Such persons are the ‘locals’ and have the best feel for detecting odd situations that ‘don’t feel right ‘... — they are accustomed to the culture and nuances of daily life and better at separating suspicious activity from normal occurrences.”

“The importance of this reporting stream cannot be underestimated. In 2003, CBS News reported on al-Qa’ida’s efforts to pursue B anthracis — as a biological weapon. A top al-Qa’ida planner, Hambali allegedly was pursuing development of a biological weapons laboratory and recruited Yazid Sufaat — a member of al-Qa-ida affiliate group Jema Islamyah. According to media reporting, Sufaat obtained a degree in chemistry and laboratory science from California State University at Sacramento. Although Sufaat reportedly has been captured by Malaysian authorities, this information demonstrates the possibility that future terrorists could be studying in U.S. universities or working in the U.S. biotechnology sector and could use their knowledge for malicious purposes. Sufaat was a foreigner but future actors could be U.S. Persons.”

“There are dozens of examples in which U.S.-based students, scientists, or medical personnel exploited their positions and attempted or succeeded acquiring, developing, or using biological weapons. Given these cases it is important to have an open channel to the front line observers — professors, technicians, managers, and others who have information of importance.”

“By making individuals aware of signs they should watch for and how to report them, we elicit overt, voluntary human intelligence from a nationwide network that already is in place and knowledgeable. No government agency could cover that much territory nor would it be tolerated by the scientific and academic communities.”

Tenet says Sufaat wrapped up his work in the Summer and briefed Ayman and Hambali over the course of a week. He says Zabadi, the anthrax weaponization program, was compartmentalized at the highest level.

That’s what I told the CIA about Ayman’s codenamed Zabadi anthrax weaponization program in December 2001 and there’s been no discernible progress five years later.

As I best recall, I first identified Yazid Sufaat as an anthrax lab tech in March 2002 on FreeRepublic as PokerBuddy.

In November 2002, the FBI first interviewed Yazid.

President Bush says they didn’t realize his central role in Zabadi until after Hambali were captured in 2003. Then his assistants Barq and Wahdan were captured.

Personally, I think the suppression of information relates partly because DARPA doesn’t want to take the hit for allowing a hardline Salafist, who had a high level security clearance relating to bioinformatics work for the Navy, access to a DARPA funded Center for Biodefense. I don’t bother to call it a cover-up. I just urge that if the FBI and CIA doesn’t bring this is to a close, they risk having to explain the next 9/11 to some pretty upset folks.

The key to Amerithrax forensically perhaps was to know that encapsulation was done. That’s typically associated with drug delivery — preventing the good stuff from being destroyed by enzymes before being delivered to the intended organ. An expert in cutting edge work in such functionalized polymers was the guy who arranged for the 7/7 London bombmakers flat. His name is Magdy al-Nashar. The flat relatedly was used to ship stuff to Zawahiri’s chief aide, al-Hadi. Al-Nashar, according to his brother, had been held briefly in connection with Luxor. The biochemist’s lawyer, Mamdouh Ismail, was arrested in March 2007 and alleged to be Ayman’s chief conduit to jihadists in Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. A court in July ordered his release on bail pending trial.

Before they trot out al-Hadi’s confession at Guantanamo — al-Hadi once was Ayman’s chief aide — let me offer up some background on the Leeds [UK] / Falls Church. VA connection. In Northern Virginia, Al-Timimi’s personal assistant, Ali Asad Chandia, also served as the chauffer of London terorrist operative Mohammed Ajmal Khan who visited Falls Church more than once. The USG charged Chandia with arranging for the purchase of an electronic autopilot system and video equipment for use on model airplanes in connection with requests made by Mohammed Ajmal Khan to purchase the equipment .

Mohammed Ajmal Khan was a teaching assistant in Leeds. Chandia met Khan, a senior official and procurement officer for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), at an office of that organization in Pakistan in late-2001. Khan traveled to the United States in 2002 and 2003 to acquire equipment for LET, and Chandia assisted him in these efforts both times. Khan is serving a nine-year sentence in the UK on terrorism charges. (The U.S. will seek his extradition at the conclusion of that sentence.) Al-Timimi would tend to speak at annual conferences held in London. Marvin Miller, a lawyer for Chandia, says documents produced at trial evidenced he was under electronic surveillance. Ajmal Khan’s communications across the Atlantic were intercepted by the US National Security Agency and while in the US he was under surveillance pursuant to FISA.

Mohammed Ajmal Khan also was linked during a terrorist trial to Timimi’s acquaintance, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 24-year-old who grew up in Falls Church and was found guilty of terrorist offences in Virginia. Given the strong Falls Church [USA]-Leeds [UK] connection, the question for years now has been: did the fellow working near Ken Alibek and the former USAMRIID head [Ali Timimi], who had a high security clearance for his mathematics support work for the Navy in bioinformatics, know the Leeds biochemist who was expert in functionalized polymers, an assistant professor at Leeds, who provided the 7/7 bombers with the keys to the flat, a flat used to store things shipped to Zawahiri’s chief aide?

Ali had rock star status in Salafist circles who would give talks in London and Magdy is a Salafist.

This biochemist who provided the keys to the bombmaking flat was represented by an attorney who has been arrested in late March and is being held incommunicado. The attorney’s name is Mamdouh Ismail. Egyptian authorities allege that Ismail has served as Ayman Zawahiri’s chief conduit to jihadists in Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq. In April, 35-40 suspected members of the “Egyptian Project” were arrested and secretly kept by authorities in state security offices. Mamdouh Ismail, joined by his former law partner Montasser al-Zayat, had tried to start an islamist party at the same time as IANA writers Kamal Habib and Gamal Sultan in 1999. Between Mamdouh Ismail’s arrest and al-Hadi’s capture, the solution to Amerithrax is indeed close at hand.

It turns out that Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, perhaps is the final key that unlocks the Amerithrax mystery. As explained by Gertz in his 2002 book on the breakdown of intelligence that led to 9/11, Islambouli was part of a cell with KSM. KSM took over from the Al Qaeda military head Atef as head of the anthrax weaponization operation. Gertz also addresses the al Hayat letter bombs to NYC and DC newspapers and people in symbolic positions which was the key to profiling the modus operandi. And, so the usual intelligence or true crime analyst would ask: Where in the world is Islambouli? Or, of course, al-Hadi could be asked. The same Al Qaeda spymaster, Egyptian al-Hakaymah, who wrote about Amerithrax and served as Ayman’s intermediary in contacts with Mamdouh Ismail, announced Islambouli was leading those Egyptian Islamic Group members who have joined Al Qaeda to seek the release of their leader blind sheik abdel-Rahman, who is still languishing in an American prison.

Who did Islambouli visit when he came to the US to plan the next attack, as described in the December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief to President Clinton that warned of a planned attack involving airplanes and other means. The 9/11 Commission Report contains a copy of the declassified December 1998 PDB which discusses Islambouli. Everyone focuses on the PDB in the summer of 2001 directed to President Bush while forgetting that there was a PDB with the same substance from December 1998 to President Clinton.

We need to learn from history or we are doomed to repeat it.

Oh, and if you get a bunch of finance-related threat letters from Queens, that’s not a good thing. For that matter, foot and mouth in the UK — shown to be a laboratory strain — is not a good thing.

But as for the UK incident, the one thing any Salafist can be sure of is that if they were responsible for using a biological weapon to harm a farm or a child, they’ve reserved a place in hell for themselves. At ABC, it was an infant who was harmed. One fatality was an elderly woman. Another was a woman with no connection to the targets. Thus, the Amerithrax mailers are going to hell under the laws governing islamic warfare.

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