[lit-ideas] al-Qaeda Anthrax scenario redux (long article)
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- Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 03:22:35 EDT
Analysis of the Anthrax Threat
Posted by Ross Getman on Thursday April 22, 2004 at 4:21 pm MST
Link to story: http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com
Today, we were told that a federal study found lax security at anthrax
labs, that the FBI was continuing to check crop dusting planes and pilots
because
of an Al Qaeda anthrax threat, and that the head of MI5 had warned the
British Commons of a possible anthrax attack.
Now that we know a bit more about the nature of terrorism threat analysis
as the result of the 911 Commission, let's go back and revisit the information
we have about the potential anthrax threat from Al Qaeda. In October 2001,
did the FBI profilers know of the draft message Khalid Mohammed had on the
seized laptop from Operation Bojinka in 1995? (Hambali's involvement dates back
to
Bojinka, as does Khalid Mohammed's.) The draft letter was signed "Khalid
Sheikh Bojinka." The letter threatened to use biochemical weapons if the blind
sheikh was not released.
Use of biochemical weapons as retaliation for such detentions was an
alternative scenario in the Bojinka planning -- just as was flying planes into
buildings. The "sender" was a coded reference to the nature of the operation.
i.e., Bojinka. Here, the coded reference referred to Greendale School -- i.e.,
Egyptian Islamic Jihad or Egyptian Islamic Group (or a coalition). Zawahiri had
used "school" as code for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in a letter in May 2001 to
all his followers explaining what was up.
Why is the United States Government privately whispering about an anthrax
threat and the risk of an attack this summer? Is it merely because it is a
theoretical risk? Well, yes. Just like the risk Al Qaeda was planning on flying
planes into buildings was theoretical -- and evidenced by the documentary
evidence.
What intelligence does the head of MI5 have available to her? For
starters, Moazzam Begg has confessed to being involved with an Al Qaeda plot to
disperse weaponized anthrax using a drone. "Dad," he whispered. His Dad could
barely hear him. "'I've been arrested, I'm being taken, I don't know where or
why."
Moazzam Begg was in the trunk of a car being taken away from his apartment in
Islamabad. He had been picked up by Pakistan and US agents. The Britoner had
come to Pakistan with his wife and children after the US strikes began in
Afghanistan. It was February 2002. Months later, he would His name had been
found
on a money transfer in the one-room chemical bunker of Egyptian scientist
Midhat Mursi at a camp in Afghanistan.
In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") report
publicly disclosed that the reason for Mohammed Atta's and Zacarias Moussaoui's
inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing
biological
agents such as anthrax. An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a
rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was
planning
an "unbelievable" biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback
upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM") the previous month in
Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In November 2003, a report by a UN Panel of experts
concluded
that Al Qaeda is determined to use chemical and biological weapons and is
restrained only by technical difficulties.
The CIA reportedly has been quietly building a case that the anthrax
mailings were an international plot. This is old news. It's just no longer
bureaucratically impolite to openly contest the FBI's (former) theory about a
lone,
American scientist. Many people have argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative
is behind the earlier Fall 2001 anthrax mailings in the US, and that the
mailings served as a threat and warning. The anthrax mailings followed the
pattern
of letters they sent 1997 to newspaper branches in Washington, D.C. and New
York City, as well as symbolic targets. The letter bombs were sent in
connection
with the detention of the blind sheikh Abdel Rahman and those responsible for
the earlier World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Handwritten notes and files on a laptop seized upon the capture of KSM, Al
Qaeda's #3, included a feasible anthrax production plan using a spray dryer
and addressed the recruitment of necessary expertise. What your morning paper
did not tell you, however, was that the CIA seized a similar disc from Ayman
Zawahiri's right-hand, Ahmed Salama Mabruk, 5 years earlier. The computer disk
was confiscated from him during his arrest by the CIA in Azerbaijan and handed
over to the Egyptian authorities. Mabruk, at the time, was the head of Jihad's
military operations. There is a risk that observers underestimate the time
that Al Qaeda has had to make progress in such recruitment and research and
development.
Some may still think that even in the final stages of the 9/11 plot,
Zacarias Moussaoui was going to fly a 5th plane into the Capitol or White
House.
There is an e-mail by Moussaoui, however, dated July 31, 2001 indicating that
he
sought to take a crop dusting course that was to last up to 6 months.
Moreover, in March 2003, Mohammed, reportedly said that Moussaoui was not going
to be
part of 9/11 but was to be part of a "second wave." Accused September 11
conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told his trial judge that he had an al Qaeda
mission that would have come after the terrorist attacks. KSM explained that
his
inquiries about crop dusters may have been related to the anthrax work being
done
by US-trained biochemist and Al Qaeda operative, Malaysian Yazid Sufaat. Al
Qaeda's regional operative, Hambali, who was at a key January 2000 meeting and
supervised Sufaat, has been captured. Hambali reportedly is cooperating to
some degree. Zacarias Moussaoui, never the sharpest tool in the shed and
thought
by his superiors to be unreliable, has told the judge at his trial in a filing
that he wants "anthrax for Jew sympathizer only."
Sufaat, according to both KSM and Hambali, did not have the virulent US
Army Ames strain that would be used. That would require someone who had access
to the strain. But if experience is any guide, nothing would stand in the way
of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri's decade-long quest to weaponize and use anthrax against
US targets that was described by one confidante to an Egyptian newspaper
reporter. The islamist had been released from Egyptian prison and had known
Zawahiri well for many years.
Zawahiri was associated with a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad known
as the Vanguards of Conquest. Zawahiri and the Vanguards of Conquest were
seeking to recreate Mohammed's taking of mecca by a small band through violent
attacks on Egyptian leaders. By 1998, Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian
Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold
off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
A key question is how they acquired the anthrax strain first isolated by
the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab in 1980. According to senior
counterterrorism officials, both here and abroad, among the supporters of these
militant islamists were people who blended into society and were available to
act
when another part of the network requested it.
A few days before Christmas 2003, after a renewed audiotape threat by
Zawahiri of attacks, to include in the US homeland, the threat level was raised
to orange or "high." After the alert condition had long since returned to
yellow, Zawahiri in late February issued another audiotape in which he urged
the
President that brigades and brigades would be coming under the banner of jihad
carrying death and seeking paradise -- that the US should expect another 9/11
on US soil. According to some reports, Zawahiri is thought by intelligence to
be Iran, on the border adjacent to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Wherever he is,
authorities need to focus on the traceable connection between him and those he
recruited.
I Summary and Introduction
Al Qaeda has had anthrax, the raw seed product in its unweaponized form,
since at least 1997, when it was purchased by Bin Laden through the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front ("Moro Front" or "MILF"). Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's #2, is
head
of Al Qaeda's biochemical program. The CIA has known of Zawahiri's plans to
use anthrax for a half decade. The confidante and right-hand man of Dr. Ayman
Zawahiri admitted that Zawahiri succeeded in obtaining anthrax and intended to
use it against US targets. Another senior Al Qaeda member (a shura or
policy-making council member no less) was working for the Egyptian intelligence
services and he confirmed the report in a sworn lengthy confession. Even
Zawahiri's
attorney in 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. A recently released islamist who had been a
close associate of Zawahiri said that Zawahiri spent a decade and had made 15
separate attempts to recruit the necessary expertise to weaponize anthrax in
Russia and the Middle East. The US Army recipe was not used, and obtaining the
unprocessed Ames strain of anthrax used does not warrant the weight given it by
some press accounts. There was lax control over the distribution of the Ames
strain that was used, especially in light of the fact that transfers were not
even required to be recorded prior to 1997. Significantly, the individual who
isolated it nearly a quarter century ago (now retired), upon being contacted,
does not report that he sent the only copy of the strain to Ft. Detrick.
Al Qaeda's anthrax production plans on Khalid Mohammed's computer did not
evidence knowledge of advanced techniques in the most efficient biological
weapons. At least according to the public comments by bioweaponeer experts
William Patrick and Kenneth Alibek, under the optimal method, there is no
electrostatic charge; in the case of the anthrax used in the mailings, there
was an
electrostatic charge. Although there was a dominance of single spores and a
trillion spore concentration, there were clumps as large as 40 - 100 microns.
(Spores must be no bigger than 5 microns to be inhalable.) Many point to the
trillion spore concentration as extraordinary. It is far simpler, however, to
achieve a trillion spore concentration in the production of a few grams than in
industrial processing typical of a state sponsored lab. The "trillion spore"
issue
was at the heart of a lot of mistaken theories of the matter concluding that
state sponsorship was necessarily indicated. The reported finding at Dugway
undermines the argument of both the "bomb Iraq" crowd and the liberals focused
on Dr. Steve Hatfill who object to US biodefense research because they view it
as being useful for offensive purposes.
USDA employee Johnelle Bryant first told us, in sensational detail, of
Atta's inquiries about purchasing and retrofitting a cropduster. Khalid
Mohammed
then told interrogators that Zacarias Moussaoui's inquiries about crop
dusting may have related to Yazid Sufaat's anthrax manufacturing plans.
Although the
details of the documents on Mohammed's computer may (or may not) point to
possible difficulties in aerial dispersal, they are fully consistent with the
product used in the anthrax mailings. Al Qaeda had both the means and
opportunity.
US-trained Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat met with 9/11 plotters and
two hijackers in January 2000. Sufaat was a member of Al Qaeda and a member of
Jemaah Islamiah ("JI"). JI has ties with the Moro Front. Sufaat used his
company called Green Laboratory Medicine to buy items useful to Al Qaeda.
(Green
symbolizes "Islam" and Prophet Mohammed's holy war). Zacarias Moussaoui, who
had
a crop dusting manual when he was arrested, stayed at Sufaat's condominium in
2000 when he was trying to arrange for flight lessons in Malaysia. Yazid
Sufaat provided Moussaoui with a letter indicating that he was a marketing
representative for Infocus Technologies and allegedly provided him $35,000. The
crop
dusters were to be part of a "second wave."
After 9/11, Yazid Sufaat traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to work for
the Taliban Medical Brigade and to continue his work with anthrax. As
described in US News, a former reporter from the Kabul Times apparently
actually met
Sufaat, without realizing it, while traveling near Kabul in October 2001,
perceiving him as Filipino. The fellow was carrying papers from Zawahiri and
bragging about his ability to manipulate anthrax. Sufaat was arrested in
December
2001 upon his return to Malaysia. Newsweek reported that a "second wave"
involving biological attacks had been thwarted upon the arrest of Al Qaeda
members
who had been intended to provide logistical support.
Various doctors, both foreign and American, are associated with Al Qaeda
leaders or operatives, to include the doctors Abdul Qadoos Khan, a
bacteriologist from Rawalpindi and Aafia Siddiqui, PhD, from Karachi.
Microbiologist
Abdul Qadoos Khan was charged along with his son, Ahmed, for harboring the
fugitives. As of March 28, 2003, he was in a hospital for a cardiac problem and
had
been granted "pre-arrest bail." Yet all you read about at the time was the
arrest of the son Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, who receives a stipend from the UN for
being
officially low-IQ due to lead poisoning.
It was Khalid Mohammed who told authorities about MIT-trained biologist
Aafia Siddiqui, who at one time was thought to be traveling with a Florida
"Atta level" pilot. The Pakistani press reported that she was nabbed in Karachi
after being spotted at the international airport on March 29, 2003. For the
longest time, no US newspaper reported that she was captured and instead
stories
continued to state that the FBI is seeking her for questioning. If the sources
relied upon by these journalists did not even know (or would not reveal) that
Aafia had been caught, why do these reporters think they know what's going on
in the Amerithrax matter? Amerithrax is a confidential investigation. The
Pakistan ISI and CIA rarely grant press interviews in connection with an
ongoing
manhunt. The CIA did not even allow the FBI access to KSM for 10 days after
his arrest. As agent Van Harp, then head of the Amerithrax investigation said,
the information coming from Khalid Mohammed is classified with the authorities
releasing only certain limited information. According to the Pakistan reports,
Aafia Siddiqui was spotted at the international airport and detained (after
she was followed to a relative's house). (Karachi is in the south). The reports
say she is suspected of having been a member of Al Qaeda's "Chemical Wire
Group." Perhaps something got lost in the translation, but the phrase "Chemical
Wire Group" has appeared in all the english Pakistan and India papers.
Officials have not publicly confirmed anything about the detention or
interrogation. There still is a very hot pursuit of the "Atta-level" Florida
pilot that Siddiqui is thought to have known and been assisting. He is said by
one FBI agent to be "very, very, very" dangerous. The United States truly no
longer has time for faulty analysis or politically-based preconceptions. In
early June 2003, a CIA report concluded that the reason for Atta's and Zacarias
Moussaoui's inquiries into cropdusters was in fact for the contemplated use in
dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. It has long been known Osama Bin
Laden was interested in using cropdusters to disperse biological agents
(since the testimony of millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam).
The hijacker Ahmed Alhaznawi appears to have contracted cutaneous anthrax
in Afghanistan. It's reasonable to credit his statement that he got the
lesion after bumping into a suitcase he was carrying at a camp in Afghanistan.
The
lesion is further evidence of Al Qaeda's anthrax production program in
Afghanistan.
One potential lead concerned a Fort Lee New Jersey $100,000 processor
possibly of a type that could have been used to weaponize the anthrax. The
processor was paid for in cash after a check-kiting scheme. The processor was
delivered to a business front in Ft. Lee at 215 Main St. The address was 1 mile
from
pilot Nawaf al-Hazmi at 96 Linwood Plaza, one of the two hijackers who had
attended the January 2000 meeting with anthrax technician Yazid Sufaat. Nawaf
Al-hamzi and Khalid Almidhar stayed at Yazid Sufaat's condominium outside Kuala
Lumpur. It eventually was determined that these two were on a level comparable
to Atta for planning purposes.
The present evidence relating to Atta's travel to Prague does not warrant
a conclusion that Al Qaeda obtained the Ames strain from Iraq. Iraq, however,
remains a possible source of the Ames. Former Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek
has said that a key Russian scientist assisted Iraq and that Russia had the
Ames strain. Zawahiri traveled to Baghdad in 1998 with an entourage to attend
the birthday party of Saddam's son. The papers found at headquarters of the
Mukhabarat, Iraq's secret police, show that an entourage from Al Qaeda group
was
sent to the Iraqi capital in March 1998 from Sudan. According to at least some
reports, Bin Laden rejected the suggestion of a closer alliance -- preferring
to pursue his own concept of jihad. Two top Iraqi scientists, code named
Charlie and Alpha, are helping the coalition to learn more about Iraqi's
anthrax
program, according to Dr. David Kay, head of the Iraq survey group in charge of
the hunt for WMD. He has said that the Iraqis made surprising innovations in
the milling and drying processes needed to weaponize anthrax.
opriations pale in comparison to the $87 billion in a "Supplemental"
appropriation relating to the invasion of Iraq. Al Qaeda had a motive in mind.
The media coverage has been seriously confused on the issue of motive and
the reason Senators Daschle and Leahy would have been targeted -- tending to
simplistically view them as "liberals." Zawahiri likely targeted Senators
Daschle and Leahy to receive anthrax letters, in addition to various media
outlets, because of the appropriations made pursuant to the "Leahy Law" to
military
and security forces. That money has prevented the militant islamists from
achieving their goals. Al Qaeda members and sympathizers feel that the FBI's
involvement in muslim countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia,
and
the Philippines interferes with the sovereignty of those countries. Senator
Leahy was Chairman of both the Judiciary Committee overseeing the FBI and
Appropriations Subcommittee in charge of foreign aid to these countries. In
late
September 2001, it was announced that the President was seeking a blanket
waiver
that would lift all restrictions on aid to military and security units in
connection with pursuing the militant islamists. This extradition and
imprisonment
of Al Qaeda leaders, along with US support for Israel and the Mubarak
government in Egypt, remains foremost in the mind of Dr. Zawahiri. At the
height of
the development of his biological weapons program, his brother was extradited
pursuant to a death sentence in the "Albanian returnees" case (now he faces
retrial). It's hard to keep up with the stories about billion dollar
appropriations, debt forgiveness, and loan guarantees to countries like Egypt
and Israel
and now even Pakistan -- and those appr In his Fall 2001 book titled Knights
under the Banner of the Prophet, Zawahiri argued that the secular press was
telling "lies" about the militant islamists -- to include the suggestion that
the militant islamists were somehow the creation of the United States in
connection with expelling the Russians from Afghanistan. Zawahiri argued
instead that
they have been active since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt because
of the treaty between the Camp David Accord and the resulting peace treaty
between Egypt and Israel. The anthrax letters were sent on the date of the Camp
David Accord and then the date Anwar Sadat was assassinated as if to
underscore the point to anyone paying attention. Most of the "talking heads" on
television, however, knew only that Daschle and Leahy were liberal democrats
and did
not know anything of Al Qaeda beyond what they read in the newspapers. The
FBI's profile includes a US-based supporter of the militant islamists. Attorney
General Ashcroft has always said that an "either-or" approach is not useful.
The media has tended to overlook the fact that when the FBI uses the word
"domestic" the word includes a US-based, highly-educated supporter of the
militant
islamists.
There is an emerging consensus that anthrax was contained in a letter to
AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer -- in a goofy love letter to
Jennifer Lopez enclosing a Star of David and proposing marriage. A report by
the
Center for Disease Control of interviews with AMI employees (as well as
detailed
interviews by author Leonard Cole) supports the conclusion that there were
not one, but two, such mailings containing anthrax. (The letters apparently
were
to different AMI publications -- for example, one may have been to the
National Enquirer and another to The Globe.)
This tactic of letters is not merely the modus operandi of these
militant islamists inspired by Zawahiri, it is their signature. The islamists
sent
letter bombs in January 1997 to newspaper offices in New York City and
Washington, D.C. in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade
Center and
the imprisonment of the blind sheik, Sheik Abdel Rahman. The former leader of
the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya ("Islamic Group"), he was also a spiritual
leader of Al Qaeda. The letter bombs were sent in connection with the treatment
of the Egyptian islamists imprisoned for the earlier attack on the WTC and a
related plot. The purpose of the letter bombs -- which resulted in minimal
casualty -- was to send a message. (There is an outstanding $2 million reward).
There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had
been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily
collected.
Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993
defendant was imprisoned, addressed to "Parole Officer" (a position that does
not exist).
Abdel Rahman's son was captured in Quetta, Pakistan in mid-February
2003. That arrest in turn led to the dramatic capture of Khalid Mohammed, Al
Qaeda's #3. Mohammed allegedly was hiding in the home of the Pakistani
bacteriologist Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan. Along with Zawahiri, Abdel Rahman and his
two sons
have long had considerable influence over Bin Laden. He reportedly treated them
like sons. Although while in jail in the early 1980s, Zawahiri caused
considerable tension by challenging the blind sheik's ability to lead a
coalition of
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian Islamic Group -- even citing the
Koran -- Zawahiri and OBL are Rahman's friends. The imprisoned WTC 1993 plotter
Yousef was KSM's nephew. Thus, the leaders in charge of Al Qaeda's anthrax
production program had a close connection to those imprisoned in connection
with
the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center. Osama Bin Laden had asked
Iraqi intelligence for technical assistance in sending letter bombs a half year
before the Al Hayat letters were sent.
A sender purporting to be islamist sent cyanide in both early 2002 and
early 2003 in New Zealand and ingredients of nerve gas in Belgium in 2003.
There's even a chapter titled "Poisonous Letter" in the Al Qaeda manual. Just
because Al Qaeda likes its truck bombs and the like to be effective does not
mean
they don't see the value in a deadly missive. As Brian Jenkins once said,
"terrorism is theater."
The mailer's use of Greendale School is revealing. A May 2001 letter that
Zawahiri sent to Egyptian Islamic Jihad members abroad establish that
Zawahiri used "school" as a code word for Al Qaeda in his correspondence. Green
symbolizes Islam and was the Prophet Mohammed's color. By Greendale School, the
anthrax perp was being cute, just as Yazid Sufaat was being cute in naming his
lab Green Laboratory Medicine. "Dale" means "river valley." Greendale refers to
green river valley -- i.e., Cairo's Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Islamic
Group. The sender is announcing that he is of either Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
Egyptian Islamic Group or Jihad-al Qaeda, which is actually the full name of
the
group after the 1998 merger of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda.
As to opportunity, though seldom reported, there is a wealth of "open
source" information about possible Al Qaeda or Egyptian Islamic Jihad or
Islamic Group in the United States and Canada. The public information mostly
relates to those suspected sleepers who have been detained or who are at large
and
are being sought. Zawahiri's mission in the United States in 1995 was to do
spadework for terrorism, not fundraising. He traveled under an alias and was
accompanied by a US Army sergeant named Ali Mohammed. What mosques exactly did
they visit and who did they meet?
Whatever your political persuasion (mine is liberal), the FBI and CIA
deserve our support. We are, after all, in this together. First, the nature of
such an investigation is that we lack sufficient information to second-guess
(or even know) what the FBI is doing. Media reports are a poor approximation of
reality because of the lack of good sources. Second, hindsight is 20/20.
Third, with the "new age" Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in charge of the investigation,
it
is not likely we could do better in striking the appropriate balance between
due process and national security. Rather than grouse and seek to place blame
--
with the benefit of hindsight -- about who dropped the ball with respect to
the Al Qaeda threat prior to 9/11, maybe we all owe it to ourselves and our
families to learn something about the pending threat to the country's security
and so some of the analysis ourselves.
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