[lit-ideas] an old theory revived (in theory)
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 00:13:40 EST
[extract of long article at http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze43v8m/]
"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 confess to being involved with an Al Qaeda plot to
disperse weaponized anthrax using a drone. 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.
In November 2003, it was widely reported that a potential terrorist plot
had been thwarted in late 2002 after a London-based group tried to buy half a
ton of saponin. Saponin enhances the transmission of molecules through
biological cell membranes. When combined with a potent toxin, it can ease the
absorption of the poison through the skin, experts say. Midhat Mursi had worked
on a
chemical additive to increase skin absorption.
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. This would follow the pattern of
letters
they sent 1997 to newspaper branches in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as
we
ll as symbolic targets. The letters bombs were sent in connection with the
detention of 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
reportedly 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.
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 the leader of a faction of the
Egyptian
Islamic Jihad known as the Vanguards of Conquest. He was seeking to recreate
Mohammed's taking of mecca by a small band through violent attacks on Egyptian
leaders -- by the mid-1990s, Zawahiri had determined that the group 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.
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