| ||
| | |
| ||||||||||||||
p Was Mahmoud Jaballah The Egyptian Scientist In The Library Researching Anthrax? The Globe and Mail reports today that “When Mahmoud Jaballah appears before Federal Court as an alleged terrorist threat in coming months - the third such case against him - he’ll finally get to answer specific allegations about how he is believed to have relayed terrorist communications during the 1998 African embassy bombings.” The government has alleged that on the day of the bombing, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad military commander Mabruk had called Jaballah from Baku, Azerbaijan and told him to call the London cell members. Mabruk asked Jaballah to tell them they could reach him in the home of Shehata, who was in charge of Special Operations for Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Shehata was Jaballah’s brother-in-law and had been Jaballah’s lawyer in the 1980s in connection with problems with the government. (Shehata was Montasser al-Zayat’s law partner). Jaballah allegedly had been in regular contact with Mabruk, Shehata and the London cell members who faxed responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings in which over 200 people died. Shehata’s former law partner, Montasser al-Zayat, and military commander Mabruk announced in March 1999 that Ayman Zawahiri was going to use anthrax against US targets in retaliation for the rendering of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders. Jaballah’s colleague Mahjoub was #2 in Zawahiri’s Vanguards of Conquest. When Mahjoub’s bail hearing was announced in January 2001, one of Zawahiri’s minions threatened to use anthrax if bail was denied. This was the subject of a February 2001 Presidential Daily Brief from the CIA to President Bush. Bail was denied on October 5, 2001. The potent anthrax was mailed to the US Senators the next day. The government alleges that at one point Jaballah reported to Mabruk that he had recruited individuals who had been members of the Muslim Brotherhood and emphasized that they had been tested and could be trusted. For the first time, the government now publicly alleges that Jaballah was in regularly in touch with Ayman Zawahiri by telephone. Zawahiri was head of Al Qaeda’s program to weaponize anthrax for use against US targets. The Globe and Mail, quoting allegations made public earlier this week, infers that “The new charges indicate CSIS targeted Mr. Jaballah almost as soon as he arrived in Canada [in 1996]. They make specific references to 1990s-era phone calls, and even include remarks about the suspect’s tone of voice. The documents cite code words Mr. Jaballah is alleged to have used or heard in his phone calls. For example, the documents say “hospitalized” was used as a code for a man being arrested overseas, and “the green outfit” referred to a forged passport. Here’s one question that I am hoping Jaballah or a spokesperson will answer. It has not been alleged by the government. Was Mahmoud Jaballah the Egyptian scientist in the library in Ohio in June 2001 researching anthrax in water? The mailed anthrax was sent to the United Senators the day after bail was denied by the Canadians of his colleague, Mahmoud Mahjoub, who now is revealed be the #2 man in Zawahiri’s Vanguards of Conquest. Stateside, in Ohio, there was the long-forgotten case of a mysterious Egyptian in the Summer of 2001 associated with the members of an alleged terror cell. The young men worked at a local chicken slaughterhouse and are more commonly known as the “Detroit cell.” In June 2001, they had an angry conversation about the detention of the Egyptian blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. Sometime before 9/11, an older Egyptian man with one of these young men made repeated attempts to obtain maps of the water supply system of Canton, Ohio. At the library, he studied books dealing with disease spread to human by animals such as anthrax. The Akron Beacon Journal reported that after 9/11, a librarian in Canton alerted authorities who called in the FBI. The man had visited the library as many as a half dozen times and asked for detailed maps of Canton’s water system and books concerning microbiology and animal borne diseases. Among the things the man sought were maps of waterlines running under Interstate 77 to Canton’s Mercy Medical Center. The librarian described the man as 50ish, with a slight paunch, and balding. Jaballah reports that he graduated from the University of Zagazig’s Faculty of Biology. Was the scientist in Ohio in June 2001 ever identified and questioned? According to the Akron Beacon Journal, the man told the librarian that he worked at Case Farms. After 9/11, Case Farms was investigated in connection with allowing illegal immigrants to work without proper identification. The Egyptian reportedly had lived with the young men in Canton for a time in the past year or so, according to the librarian. (Their names were Hanna and Koubriti) The FBI has never confirmed the story. Case Farms doesn’t confirm the story. The librarians won’t confirm the story — and a reporter who went to the library in person was shown the door. What news, if any, came out of the trial of members of the Detroit terror cell? Portions of the proceeding were sealed. During the same period, two of the men on trial reportedly had enrolled in a four-week truck-driving course. The “Detroit defendants” were arrested when the week after 9/11 authorities kicked down the door of the apartment that had the name Nabil al-Marabh on the mailbox. Knowing of his connection to Al Qaeda, the FBI had gone looking for him after 9/11. His lawyer handling a fender bender involving al-Marabh’s taxicab in Boston had a forwarding address for him. In considering how many Egyptians trained in biology taxi driver Nabil Al-Marabh knew, well, he knew Mahmoud Jaballah. Mahmoud Jaballah was a biology teacher and co-founder, with al-Marabh’s uncle, of an elementary school on the edge of Little Beirut in Toronto. After coming to Canada in 1996, Jaballah would contact Ayman regularly on Ayman’s Inmarsat satellite phone. Jaballah was rearrested in August 2001 after an earlier security certificate was quashed. Why was he rearrested? Were authorities upset had gone off the radar for a matter of weeks? CSIS alleges Jaballah knew Mahmoud Mahjoub who the CSIS now for the first time alleges was #2 in the Vanguards of Conquest. CSIS alleges that Jaballah was in regular contact with both the Vanguards/Egyptian Islamic Jihad head of military operations and the head of special operations — with the latter being both his brother-in-law and lawyer. CSIS alleges that he has had contact for years with Hassan Farhat and Ali Hussein, whom they say were part of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Hassan Farhat was with the Ansar al-Islam. Hassan Farhat was a senior member of Ansar Al Islam, formed in 2001, and was arrested by Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. Farhat was the Imam of the Salaheddin Mosque in Toronto, which was affiliated with the school founded by Jaballah, from 1997 to 2002. Farhat also lived in Montreal for a time where Jaballah visited him. For an organization that emphasizes cell security, Jaballah was well-connected. After Jaballah’ s second arrest, Nabil al-Marabh’ s uncle, Ahmed Shehab, took over as principal at Jaballah’ s school. Mr. Shehab had shared control of the school with Jaballah as co-founder. Was Jaballah the scientist researching anthrax in Canton, Ohio from May to July 2001? The man told the librarian that he had worked at a laboratory in Egypt where he had learned to detect pathogens otherwise not detectable. He said he wanted to help the United States detect pathogens. (The librarian said that his english was so poor, she would expect him to be asking about a green card; but she finally got the word “pathogens” out of him). Jaballah was 40 rather than 50ish. But he otherwise fit the description and from his picture looks older than his age. Jaballah reports that he graduated at the University of Zagazig from what he described as “the Faculty of Biology.” A January 2008 decision addressed the conditions of Jaballah’s detention (such as whether his son could bring a wireless laptop home, why his apartment had DSL service etc.). The decision explained: “After serving three months as principal at Salaheddin Islamic School [the one he cofounded with al-Marabh’s uncle] and teaching privately from his home for six months, Mr. Jaballah founded Um Al Qura School in July of 2001. Shortly after the school opened, Mr. Jaballah was detained (August 14, 2001).” Why was he arrested? What was the new evidence or new concern? Had he been missing? Had they lost track of him — did authorities want to know how he spent his summer vacation? Aly Hindy, president of the affiliated Salaheddin Islamic Center, imam of its mosque and a civil engineer in Toronto, described the school to the Wall Street Journal in December 2001. “We had to take our children out” of the public-school system, which teaches about “homosexuality” and allows undue “mixing between boys and girls.” The Wall Street Journal article explains: “Mr. Jaballah helped organize the curriculum at Salaheddin during the summer of 2000 and taught Arabic for a few months. “He wanted to be principal. I told him no,” Mr. Hindy says, because his English wasn’t good enough.” The mailed anthrax was sent to the United Senators the day after a judge denied bail to Jaballah’s colleague, Mahmoud Mahjoub, who now is revealed be the #2 man in Zawahiri’s Vanguards of Conquest. Cheney, remember, is Bush’s #2. As explained in a still-classified February 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (”PDB”), a threat to use anthrax was mailed to the Canadian immigration minister. q. Hoax Letters That May Fly As Real Thing Did the same person write the powder-containing hoax letters to Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg paper, Judith Miller of the New York Times (author of Germs), and to NBC's Tom Brokaw as wrote the letters containing anthrax spores? The three all received a letter postmarked October 5, 2001 from St. Petersburg. The Troxler letter read: "Howard Troxler .. 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels." Judith Miller is the author of the pre-9/11 book Germs. A witness claims he saw Jafar the Pilot in Fall of 2003 catching a bite at Tampa subway. Tampa/St. Pete is where someone mailed hoax letters to journalists Troxler and Miller. Was the hoaxer upset at Troxler for coverage of local professor who was detained and at Judy Miller, who knows the neo-cons on a first name basis? The professor Troxler had written about had been a friend of KSM while at North Carolina. Another letter being closely considered is an anonymous letter sent to Quantico military police suggesting that Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian at Ft. Detrick was a potential bioterrorist -- even though he was Coptic Christian, rather than muslim. Under one view, that would appear to be an over-reported red herring and irrelevant to the correct Amerithrax analysis. Alternatively, it bears analysis because it may have been sent by the perpetrator to deflect suspicion. Dr. Assaad holds graduate degrees from Iowa State University and has lived in the United States since the mid-1970s. He is a Coptic Christian, a sect that has been attacked by militant islamists in Egypt. Dr. Assaad's attorney found it probative that such a letter about Egyptian scientist would be written claiming to warn about a potential bioterrorist (before the anthrax letters were known to have been sent). Dr. Assaad has commented, "My theory is, whoever this person is knew in advance what was going to happen [and named me as a] scapegoat for this action. You do not need to be a Nobel laureate to put two and two together." Anthrax experts, however, such as Dr. Koehler in Texas, already were publicly speaking on the subject as of September 20, 2001. A man in a biohazard suit was on the front cover of TIME magazine that week. Reuters, Associated Press, TIME and others all had stories about Atta's crop duster inquiries and the possibility of an imminent anthrax attack before the Dr. Assaad letter was sent. It therefore is not at all surprising such a letter would be sent after Atta's inquiries about cropdusters had been reported. Without more, it is not at all probative. The Assaad letter was sent to Quantico Military Police. There was nothing improper about the letter to the extent it was conveying factual information. It is regrettable that the letter writer has chosen to remain anonymous. The issue may be emotionally charged for Dr. Assaad because of unsuccessful employment litigation he may think related. Dr. Assaad, a Coptic Christian, explained: “Whoever sent the anthrax letters did this to divert attention. They knew the attacks would be eventually traced back to USAMRIID, and they used me as a scapegoat. Who better than an Arab American scientist who used to work there.” Given that Assaad was a non-muslim Egyptian working for Ft. Detrick, was the letter an attempt by someone with information about US biodefense insiders to lay a false trail even more directly to Ft. Detrick? r. The North Brunswick, NJ Connection to Al Qaeda's Website Azzam.com posted an exclusive interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri and stressed the importance of cash donations and gas masks and chemical-resistant suits. Ibn Khattab, the Arab Chechnyan fighter who was Bin Laden's good friend, had told his public that azzam.com was highly recommended and that only the two charities identified by the website should be used to route donations -- announcing in 2000 that Benevolence International Foundation was one of the charities that should be used. In February 2000, the Quoqaz.net website posted donation links for the two charities, one being BIF. Ibu al-Khattab, the late Arab-Afghan commander of foreign mjuahideen in Chechnya (who in March 2002 was killed by a poison letter), expressly endorsed Azzam Publications.
Azzam.org had "no bricks and mortar address, but operates a post office box in London, and bill[ed] itself as "an independent media organisation providing authentic news and information about jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere". One posting datelined from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and was a message to Muslim youth from top terror suspect Bin Laden. A farewell message from Azzam Publications .. exhorts "Muslims all over the World (to) render as much financial, physical, medical, media and moral support to the Taliban as they can." Azzam also urged those with computer expertise to mirror the website so as to keep it up after authorities took it down. One can access old websites as they existed on past dates through www.archives.org and its wonderful Wayback Machine -- except to the extent blocked. The azzam.com website gave instructions on how to route money to the Taliban. It recommended carrying an official letter of the organization stating that the donation was for "for the suffering people of Afghanistan." The posted form letter from people in South Arlington, read:
A man formerly known as Paul Hall was arrested in Phoenix on a federal criminal complaint in March 2007 and agreed to be removed to District of Connecticut for further prosecution where there has been investigation of Azzam Publications website located on a server there. He is alleged to have provided classified information to the London-based Azzam Publications about a U.S. Navy battle group as it traveled from California to the Persian Gulf region in 2001. He allegedly "described a recent force protection briefing given aboard his ship, voiced enmity toward America, praised Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen [and] praised the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole." On August 6, 2001, the numeric Internet addresses for the domain Qoqaz.net were changed by its administrators to correspond directly with those of another existing domain: Minna.com. Thus, all web visitors to qoqaz.net and minna.com were shown the same identical Qoqaz.net homepage. Minna.com at the time was registered to: Mokhtar, Mazen (MMZ265) mazen@ABETTERMARKET.COM Minna International Corporation 216 Bishop Blvd. North Brunswick , NJ 08902 Although moderate in his posts and lectures, he for a time used the email signature: “Hamas has no victims, it only has legitimate targets.” In one atypical posting, he wrote that suicide bombing should be encouraged
In Fall 2004, the federal authorities indicted the fellow behind Azzam Publications selling "Green Birds," Babar Ahmad in London, pointing, in part, to the "distribution of videotapes and compact discs depicting fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere, and the eulogizing of dead fighters, for the purpose of recruiting individuals and soliciting donations to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Chechnya." Of Pakistani descent, Ahmad is a British computer specialist. He is associated with KSM, whose assistant had anthrax production documents on his laptop. Ahmad is also the cousin of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested mid-2004 in Pakistan. Khan’s computers carried detailed surveillance of five financial buildings in New York, Newark and Washington and prompted the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the threat alert level to orange. In an affidavit, an FBI special agent and computer investigative specialist, alleged that a New Brunswick, NJ man, Mazen Mokhtar, assisted Babar in maintaining the continued operation of the Azzam sites, through the use of mirror sites, when the administrators of Azzam sites shut down the Azzam.com site down after 9/11." The mirror sites, www.qoqaz.net and www.waaqiah.com, allegedly routed people trying to access www.azzam.com. The affidavit alleges that Mr. Mokhtar is listed as the administrative contact for the mirror sites. He also operated minna.com. A friend reports: "He said he used to run a hosting service four or five years ago that used to resell Web hosting services to people. He said he didn't know those guys (mentioned in court papers) and he is not involved in anything like that." An Egyptian-born imam and political activist, he is a supporter of Palestinian cause and frequent speaker before groups in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He is said to be nice and seems a man of peace. He gave a couple of thoughtful presentations in the Fall of 2006 that are online on YouTube, to include to the Muslim Students Associationa at Rutgers University. In an affidavit in support of the indictment of Babar Ahmad, "[t]his same fund raising solicitation and instructions were also posted by a specific individual [the North Brunsick, NJ-based Mazen Mokhtar] who resided in the United States and who served as a U.S.-based administrator for www.qoqaz.net, the mirror site of www.azzam.com, as well as for Azzam Publications sites generally in late 2001." The affidavit continued:
In late April 2007, Mr. Mokhtar was indicted for failing to file tax returns and filing false tax returns. The Indictment alleges that for the tax years 2003 and 2004, Mokhtar failed to file business tax returns. The Indictment additionally alleges that for the tax years 2000, 2002 and 2003, Mokhtar filed fraudulent personal tax returns in that he failed to state the entire amount of income he received from his business, Mindcraft. He likely will raise selective prosecution as a defense though it is a difficult defense to establish. In an exhibit introduced at Dr. Al-Timimi's trial, one jihadist wrote an angry email to a mailing list -- upon the December announcement by the Taliban it was surrendering -- about the overly rosy picture that the website azzam.com had painted.
He explained:
Jaber Elbaneh, who escaped from a Yemeni prison, reported to a judge in late February 2008, introduced himself to the judge, and then walked out of the courtroom surrounded by four bodyguards. He lives in Yemen with his family. It had been seven years since some young men from Buffalo, New York, before going to the al-Farook camp, were at a guesthouse and were shown a movie about the destruction of the USS Cole. Upon arrival at the camp, each individual began using code names. Green uniforms were worn everyday except Friday, when civilian clothes were worn so that the uniforms could be washed. Because Al Qaeda operatives sometimes use the word “wedding” as code for event, one of the defendants later was hauled away from the altar in Bahrain on his wedding day. The district court, in denying bail an e-mail for one defendant, described an email sent from the Middle East regarding a planned attack by al-Qaeda on Americans. The e-mail message, the “Big Meal” e-mail, was translated as follows: “How are you my beloved, God willing you are fine. I would like to remind you of obeying God and keeping him in your heart because the next meal will be very huge. No one will be able to withstand it except those with faith. There are people here who had visions and their visions were explained that this thing will be very strong. No one will be able to bare [sic] it.” The fellow who recruited the Buffalo boys, Derwish, was killed by a cruise missile that targeted and hit the car he was in. He had been in contact with KSM’s nephew, Khallad (Attash). Khallad had a prosthetic leg. He had been the emir of a guesthouse in Kandahar and was Bin Laden’s assistant. Attash was at the January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur (and planned the Cole bombing). Attash had intended to be part of 9/11. Like Ramzi Binalshibh, was unsuccessful getting into the country. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Khallad had grown up in Saudi Arabia where his father knew the Blind Sheikh. It was likely learning of that contact between Derwish and Attash that got the authorities, particularly the CIA, especially animated over the potential threat posed by the fact that the Buffalo fellows had spent some time in an Afghanistan training camp. Jaber Elbaneh was being sought in connection with the case involving the young men from Buffalo. He had travelled to Afghanistan with them. There is up to a $5 million dollar reward for his capture. He was in jail until he escaped along with others through a tunnel. Then he turned himself in. Agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force of Western New York believe Elbaneh may have returned briefly to Lackawanna but left for Yemen prior to the September 11, 2001. In June 2001, he had sold property he owned at 20-24 Wilkesbarre Ave., Jaber Elbaneh to Ahmed Umar for $15,000. The week before 9/11 (ending September 7, 2001), Jaber Elbaneh sold the property he co-owned a 28 Wilkesbarre Ave to a relative for $20,000. (He may have acted through his wife and apparently was not present for the closing.) Elbaneh is the married father of 7 children. His uncle Albanna was the vice-President of the American Muslim Council of Western New York. In federal district court, his uncle faced felony charges that were filed against him in December 2002, alleging that he illegally sent money to Yemen. Albanna was interviewed on an excellent PBS documentary called “chasing the sleeper cell” and denied any wrongdoing in the case. As for the reward offered for the capture of his nephew, Albanna commented at the time: “I’ve just spoken to his parents. They’re stunned. They’re resigned to the fact that they have no way of contacting him, and the U.S. government has all the power. They leave it in the hands of Allah. ” “Five million dollars is a lot of money. You could probably overturn a government in that part of the [world].” Elbaneh’s uncle, Mohamed, said. “I can’t believe al-Qaeda would rely on somebody like Jaber. He’s a very timid man. He wouldn’t even pick up a pistol. He has seven children. . . . He is one of the most harmless people I’ve ever met.” Ahearn, U.S. Attorney Michael A. Battle and other law enforcement officials said they believe Elbaneh while in Yemen, was associating with major al Qaeda figures. The Buffalo News reports that before leaving the region, Elbaneh had worked for several years at Sorrento Cheese. Before that, he worked at a warehouse operated by his uncle, agents said. Ahmad Elbaneh of Holland Avenue, Jaber A. Elbaneh’s elderly father, years ago reported that his son had rented a house in Sana and drove a taxi. “He went to Yemen for his children to put them in an Arabian school to learn about Islam,” his father said. He has since been detained in Yemen — on again and off again — depending on the whims of the digging of prison tunnels and opening of courtroom exit doors by his escorts. Yemen officials have refused to extradite him. It was after the "extremely virulent" anthrax was found in Kandahar that, a few days before Christmas 2003, the country returned to "orange" temporarily and brought in the New Year under high alert. Then, in late February 2004, Zawahiri promised another attack on the homeland was coming. This, perhaps overblown (perhaps not) threat was embodied in the dimunitive Adnan G. El-Shukrijumah aka Jafar the Pilot. Adnan G. El-Shukrijumah was born on August 4, 1975, in Medina, Saudi Arabia to a 16-year-old mother and a 44-year-old Islamic scholar who had headed a mosque in Brooklyn. El-Shukrijumah's father once translated for the blind sheik. His father, Gilshair, testified as a character witness at a trial of defendants charged with conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks in 1995. He appeared on behalf of Clement Hampton El, who was convicted of plotting to blow up the Holland tunnel and the United Nations. He was the mentor of Bilal Philips who in turn was the mentor of GWU microbiology grad student of Ali Timimi. Adnan's father had been sent to the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago by the Saudi government as an Islamic missionary. The family lived there until 1983. When his father was transferred to New York City to lead a Brooklyn mosque, the family returned to Saudi Arabia. Brooklyn had long been important to the infrastructure in the US for obtaining jihadi recruits. Established in the mid-1980s by Egyptian Mustafa Rahman as a joint venture with Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Al-Kifah (or Struggle) Refugee Center in New York originally recruited and raised funds for Mujahedeen headed for Afghanistan. In Peshawar, the organization was headed by Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Anwar Sadat's assissin. In 1993, the group announced it was switching its operations to Bosnia. These "mujahideen" recruitment centers spread throughout the USA, to places such as Portland, Oregon, which opened a branch in October 1994 -- and to Boston where Aafia Siddiqui attended Brandeis and MIT. In the mid-1990s, KSM and Islambouli were given safe haven in Doha, Qatar by the religious minister there. Mohammed Islambouli and his plan to attack using the aircraft and other means was the subject of a December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief that the CIA provided President Clinton. In 1995, after Adnan had graduated from high school, his father retired from his missionary job as Imam in Brooklyn and the family to Florida, moving the family to Miramar in 1996. The modest retirement home was next door to a small mosque at which the father would preach. For the next two years, Adnan studied computer engineering at Broward Community College, though he did not get a degree. Imam at the mosque next door to his house, Adnan's Dad often taught at other mosques. One of the mosques he and Adnan would frequent was in Fort Lauderdale -- the one across from Franklin Park. It was there that Adnan met Jose Padilla, the ''enemy combatant'' charged in connection with a plot to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States and arrested en route to meet Adham Hassoun, another worshiper at the mosque. The former imam of that mosque, Awad, confirms El-Shukrijumah and Padilla knew each other. Adnan's father counseled Padilla's wife when he left to go to Egypt and she sought a divorce. (When the Padillas were divorced in 2001 Jose Padilla gave an address in Egypt.) Adnan was responsible at a young age, with his father absent in Brooklyn. The family acknowledges that Adnan had a quick temper. In 1999, Adnan held garage sales and car washes to raise money for Muslim refugees of the war in Bosnia. The fundraising supported Global Relief Fund, which the government has alleged funded terrorist organizations. In May 2001, he went to Saudi Arabia via Trinidad and Panama to sell Islamic goods and trinkets. He didn't like the permissiveness of American society -- he objected to scantily clad women. He wanted to get married. He allegedly was at one or more meetings in the Summer of 2001 in Pakistan at which KSM and Sufaat were present. After 9/11, the FBI began visiting the family home. His mother told him to stay away and not come home. ''I tell him we don't want to know where he is.'' She said the last she knew he was teaching English in Morocco and had gotten married. Adnan El Shukrijumah holds a green card but did not become a U.S. citizen. He is still a citizen of Guyana. Saudi Arabia is quite emphatic that he is not a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Officials say he uses a half-dozen aliases and passports, from such countries as Canada, Trinidad and Saudi Arabia. Not only is he an alleged associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed but of Ramzi Binalshibh, another key 9/11 plotter. George Tenet, former CIA Director, noted that Ramzi Yousef had a CBRN role. Apparently, Adnan Shukrijumah accompanied Mohammed Atta and another hijacker in visiting an INS office in Miami in May 2001. The INS employee is 75% sure it was him, having commented to a colleague at the time at how good looking the fellow was. The Special Branch Trinidad & Tobago Police said they have records that El Shukrijumah was in Trinidad in 2001 and 2002 into 2003. The Express was told: "We have records on him coming and leaving including the fact that he left on a BWIA flight for London in 2001 but on the last occasion he was here we only have records on him coming to Trinidad but none of him leaving." El Shukrijumah has been associated with the Darul-Uloom Institute, an Islamic institute in Central Trinidad. Part of the problem is that El Shukrijumah has several passports including a Trinidad and Tobago passport and has in the past used several aliases to escape law enforcement agencies. He is known to have Guyanese links. The US authorities also report that he may have been in Canada in 2002 looking for nuclear material for a "dirty bomb." US officials found a letter advising Egyptian El-Maati that he had been granted Canadian citizenship and a patient's card from Toronto General Hospital. His brother, Ahmad Abu-Elmaati, in a written confession, that he now has recanted, described a plan to drive a truck bomb into the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. In late May 2004, Jafar allegedly was spotted a Tegucigalpa Internet cafe. According to Honduras security official, he made phone calls to France and the United States. The witness, the owner of the cafe, says he was with two other men, "all badly dressed and bearded," who spoke English and French. Security Minister Oscar Alvarez claimed Shukrijumah was involved in a plot to disrupt shipping in the Panama Canal. u. Al-Marri And The Alleged IANA Connection To The Macomb Mosque A lengthy investigative piece by Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post in July 2007 added intriguing detail to the declassified 16-page affidavit that detailed facts underlying the charges. Al-Marri trained under Egyptian Midhat Mursi. Mursi was a chemical engineer who graduated from Alexandria University and contrary to press reports is still thought to be alive. The Washington Post investigative feature mentions in passing that the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) contributed $10,000 to the Macomb, Illinois mosque with which Al-Marri was associated, according to documents filed in federal district court in a 2003 terrorism case. The Post reported that the documents show that several members of the Macomb mosque’s board had dealings with the group. When Mohammed Atef was killed in mid-November 2001, a review of his computer showed that Atef and Marri had “shared contacts.” Atef, was of course, was who Ayman was updating on his plans to weaponize anthrax. Former CIA director Tenet has said that the anthrax planning was compartmentalized at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. All of the allegations in the article regarding the Islamic Center of Macomb in the Post article are false, the center said in a statement. They never received a donation from IANA and to the “best of our knowledge,” the statement said, “none of the previous or current members of the Islamic Center Board have been a member of IANA.” Furthermore, the center has never been investigated for terrorism as the article suggests. “We are unaware of the so-called reference to a 2003 terrorism case that was filed in a federal court,” the statement said. Marri never visited the mosque during his stay there, Mohammed Siddiqi, the former president of the Islamic Center, said. Ehsan Salman has been the center’s treasurer for the last four years. At no time, he said, did he sit down for an interview with the Washington Post reporter nor was he contacted to do so. “I don’t know who she talked to or how she came up with that story about the Islamic Center of Macomb,” Salman said. Furthermore, Salman said the transactions are maintained regularly by the bank and there are records of all financial transactions. “All our donations are from members who utilize the service here or they are from the nearby communities who come and pray with us,” Salman said. (There are about 100 or 200 members of the mosque.) Siddiqi pointed to the vagueness of the allegations in the Post article. “Several Muslim students raised concerns about financial irregularities É according to local law enforcement, and college officials and a former student.” “What college office? And one former student, which former student?” I would add, which 2003 prosecution — the prosecution of IANA webmaster Sami al-Hussayen? Siddiqi explained “We knew about “(Marri) through news, through media, he never came to the Islamic Center.” (The center is also the address for the Muslim Student Association.) The statement further noted that “We very much doubt that Mr. Jaloud, [the young imam] who allegedly had few contacts with Mr. Marri, was aware of Marri’s intentions at that time,” the statement continued. Professor Siddiqi said he refused an interview with the Washington Post reporter when she came to Macomb. He says he did not know why Schmidt was re-visiting the case, five years after Marri was in custody. (The reason likely was that a Court of Appeals held in June 2007 that he would have to be released or charged as a civilian, which is big news indeed). “What’s new in that article? There is nothing new,” Siddiqi said. I have written Professor Siddiqi, a sharp critic of unfair press coverage, probing this passage about IANA, but got no response. Professor Siddiqui, journalism department director at Western Illinois University, said: “There are a lot of things in that article that really bother me from a journalistic point of view.” Siddiqui definitely has a point regarding the vagueness of the allegations relating to IANA. To what do they refer? WIU Professor Siddiqui years ago founded the now-outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an Islamic fundamentalist organization, which advocates the “liberation of India” by converting it to an Islamic land. 147 million muslims in India, he notes, are not something that can be marginalized. SIMI was first banned shortly after 9/11. The SIMI was formed April 25, 1977. Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi was the group’s founding President. The group’s three core ideological concepts now are: Ummah, Caliphate and Jihad. SIMI is reportedly has been provided generous support from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). For as long as a decade before 9/11, it was suspected that WAMY served as a means of channeling public and private Saudi donations to hardline Islamic youth organiations such as SIMI. After 9/11, WAMY has been investigated in the US along with a number of other Muslim charities. In the US, WAMY was headed by Bin Laden’s nephew Abdullah, who lived with his brother in Falls Church, Virginia. A BBC Newsnight show in November 2001 explained that a 1996 “FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him “because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.” The FBI sources leaking the information were complaining that investigation of the Bin Laden’s had been thwarted back in 1996. SIMI believes that Osama bin Laden is an example of a true Mujahideen who has undertaken Jihad on behalf of the “ummah.” SIMI aims to restore the supremacy of Islam through the waging of Jihad. In August 2006, a formal ban was reiterated after a bombing in Mumbai that killed 200. A government spokesman claimed that SIMI continued to be involved in explosions, violence and inflammatory incitement throughout the country. After the Mumbai bombings, Professor Siddiqui, the SIMI founder, has explained that the group has strayed from its original purpose, which was education. He expressly repudiates the July 2006 Mumbai bombings and the group as unislamic. He once wrote the head of SIMI and urged that the fist on their stationery was not in keeping with the principles of the religion. Pakistani terrorist outfits such as Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) have had ties to SIMI. In August 2007, an Egyptian doctor in Macomb who served the local university students with families testified during a hearing that he had been flagged as a suspected terrorist. He testifed that during a 2003 trip to Egypt he was detained at the airport and questioned. He had graduated from Cairo Medical School in 1986. Might this explain the reference to suspicion of terrorism in the passage in Schmidt’s article that Siddiqi disputes? The pediatrician, much beloved in the community by his patients, would treat the university students with families at no charge. The local Macomb doctor raised a claim of “selective prosecution” in connection with the State prosecuting him alleging fraud in connection with billing. The same claim and defense had been raised in connection with the prosecution of IANA Vice Chairman Rafil Dhafir. At a preliminary hearing, a nurse practitioner indicated that Dr. Dabash had asked her in 2001 to fill in for him while he was away, out of the country. When Crim asked whether there would be a physician to “cover” for Dabash, Dabash said not. Crim refused to work without cover, noting that she wasn’t allowed to work unsupervised. Dr. Dabash then arranged for another physician to supervise Crim’s work. The biller for Dabash, who worked for him from January 2004 until after the charges were brought, told investigators that Dabash wanted nurse visits to be billed at the more expensive doctor visit rate, but that she refused to do that. He entered into a plea announced in September 2007 under which he agreed to repay $65,000. He subsequently has announced that he was leaving the community. Was the Schmidt story about financial irregularities actually a confused reference to that matter relating to a separate medical practice (and not the mosque) which stemmed from a tip some years ago? Was Dr. Dabash perhaps on the board of directors leading to the mistaken connection with the mosque? The webpage does not list directors and I have asked Professor Siddiqi this question by email but got no responnse. A webpage by supporters reports that' the Department of Homeland Security did an exhaustive investigation of the doctor's business and personal life. The page explains: "After hundreds of hours, thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars spent, and the use of the full resources of the federal government, their finding: absolutely no evidence that Dr. Khaled Dabash was ever involved in, motivated by, or even politically or culturally aligned with the type of person who would even possiby fit a profile of a terrorist." Professor Siddiqui told the Washington Post in May 2003 that after the World Trade Center bombing, the media tended to unfairly stereotype muslims. A week after 9/11, he has explained, that he found himself sitting across an FBI agent. Professor Siddiqui explained in a presentation “Muslims and Islam in America: 9/11 and After”: “Some of the questions were such that the agent himself laughed while asking. For example, he asked, ‘Are you a terrorist.’” He sat with the FBI agent for two hours at the University Union. Siddiqi said in the first month (after Sept. 11) more than 2,000 Muslims were arrested and their basic civil liberties were violated. As for many of those detained after 9/11, “Most of them still don’t know what their crime is, except the investigation continues. This is a disturbing element, because if tomorrow I am charged with collaborating with terror, my family cannot know for months where I have gone.” He came to the US in 1980 to get his masters and PhD in mass communication. Throughout his career he has taken a lot of interest in how muslims and islam are portrayed in American newspapers and television networks. At a 2001 media workshop he was conducting in Bangalore that a number of SIMI members attended and wanted to have a separate session with him. He told them "the greatest jihad is to learn Islam and to practice it and to present it to other people." He is a founding member of secretary general of the North American Association of Muslim Professionals and Scholars. Siddiqi recalled hearing about the first plane flying into World Trade Center while driving to Western. By the time he reached his office, the second plane had already hit. He was sitting in his office when the mayor of Macomb called to assure him that the small number of Muslims in Macomb need not feel helpless.’ “It was reassuring to have support from the community and university,” Siddiqi added. On December 12, 2001, at the request of the Joint Task Force in New York who had discovered Al-Marri's calls to KSM's assistant al-Hawsawi, Al-Marri was arrested. It was not until nearly a half decade later that a 16-page affidavit detailed the reasons he was being detained. In his speech, Siddiqui emphasized that there was no relationship between what was done by the Muslims who hijacked the planes and what Islam is. “As Muslims, we are against any act of violence or terror aimed at innocent people. In our effort to make this world a peaceful and safer place, we have to establish justice. Peace cannot be established without justice.” Baltimore Police Office McNulty on HBO's "Wired" has said the same thing, "no justice, no peace." v. The Sympathizer Who Was A HVAC Technician at Lawrence Livermore Lab According to the evidence from a trial in Egypt in 1999, Bin Laden first arranged to purchase anthrax through the Moro Islamic Liberation Front ("MILF") in 1997 (from a supplier in North Korea). In light of the detention by Philippine authorities of the former heating, ventilation and air-conditioning ("HVAC") technician with top-level security clearance from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California -- and because of the alleged contacts with Abu Sayef and MILF leaders -- authorities needed to address whether the lab had virulent Ames and whether the individual had access to it. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency launched anthrax research at the Livermore lab in 1998 precisely because of the Bin Laden anthrax threat. Research at the lab included, for example, work relating to biodetector sensors and decontaminating gels, as well as later work on the genetic sequencing of the Ames strain. Philippine authorities announced at a press conference in December 2003 that the former Livermore employee, Michael Ray Stubbs, 55, and his brother, James Stubbs, 56, had been detained and were being deported to the US because they met with charity groups believed to be fronts for Al Qaeda founded by Bin Laden's close friend and brother-in-law Khalifa. A spokesman for the lab said that Michael Ray Stubbs' security clearance in July 2000 as a routine matter after he left his job on medical leave. The Philippines officials described the pair as "diehard extremists" despite indications that Michael Ray, according to his brother Mujahid, is not even muslim. Mujahid reportedly has previously called for the overthrow of the US government. In the late 1980s, Bin Laden's brother-in-law KhalifaKhalifa ran the Peshawar, Pakistan office of the Muslim World League where he helped the recruits on their way to fight in Afghanistan. Peshawar also was the base of Mohammed Islambouli who ran the Peshawar office of the Services Organization founded by Azzam and then led by the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. In the late 1980s, Bin Laden sent Khalifa to the Philippines where he set up more than a dozen business and charity fronts to include the Benevolence International Corporation which in the United States was renamed Benevolence International Foundation in 1992. Benevolence International Foundation had a branch in Peshawar, Pakistan and Zagreb, Croatia. In 1991, Khalifa founded the Philippine branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). Thus, when it is that the Stubbs brothers were meeting with Abu Sayef and MILF officials soliciting funds for charities founded by Khalifa, that tends to impugn their charitable motivations and prompted the FBI's scrutiny of whether sensitive know-how from the Lawrence Livermore. The brothers were arrested December 13 in a Manila suburb. Authorities said they violated immigration rules by soliciting charitable funds while having only a tourist visa. They reportedly were in the Philippines visiting their wives, who are Filipina. Mujahid, a Muslim convert and a former teacher in California, had been in the country since February 2003. Immigration Commissioner and the Philippine Navy flag officer in command announced that African America brothers were arrested by a joint military and immigration team. “Actually Mujahid’s name has been coming up in a lot of intelligence reports way back and he has been on the alert list since September 11 and this is based from international intelligence information as well as our local information. Surveillance shows that they [Stubbses] have been meeting with MILF and ASG [Abu Sayyaf Group] members,” said the Immigration Commissioner. “In fact, only recently, he has been in constant communication through cellular phone with a known ASG member and he has been monitored as saying that he was a classmate of bin Laden in a theological seminary in Saudi Arabia, and they are so close that he even named his son Osama,” said the Marines commandant. As for the MILF personalities allegedly met by the two, authorities refused to reveal their identities, saying there is an ongoing follow-up operation. James Carl Stubbs Jr., who adopted the name Mujahid, was a teacher in California before traveling to Sudan, where he studied Arabic and converted to Islam. Intelligence officers alleged that in May 2003, Mujahid met with several leaders believed to be fronts of the al-Qaeda network in the country that were founded by bin Laden’s brother-in-law. The fronts were reportedly being used as conduits to channel funds to terrorists cells allied with al-Qaeda in the Philippines. Mujahid said he met with various private organizations here to set up financing from US-based Muslim groups to build schools, homes and improve farms in Muslim communities in Mindanao. A solicitation letter and letters of endorsement for solicitation of funds were found on Mujahid. Michael Ray Stubbs and James Stubbs denied any wrongdoing when they appeared at a news conference in handcuffs. James Stubbs, who became a Black Panther in the 1960s, called out that the allegations were a fabrication and noted his brother was not even muslim. The brothers attended high school in Indianapolis before moving to California in the early 1980s. Their sister, Pamela Thornton, of Indianapolis, told The Indianapolis Star that her brother James has radical political ideas, but that neither of the brothers is a terrorist. Intelligence officers reportedly claim Stubbs is a computer expert who maintains suspiciously substantial bank deposits. For what charities was Michael Ray Stubbs and his brother soliciting? Michael Ray Stubbs was a HVAC technician at Lawrence Livermore near San Francisco until March 2000. Since 1998 Lawrence Livermore scientists have participated in the Department of Energy's program to improve response capability to biological (as well as chemical) attacks on the civilian population. A 1999 Internal Livermore communication (available on-line at the LLNL website) discussed the anthrax threat posed by Bin Laden and the program that had been launched at Livermore to combat the threat. Did that lab have the virulent Ames strain that was used in the anthrax attacks in the Fall of 2001? In October 2001, Lawrence Livermore scientist explained on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" that they tested their decontamination method using the simulant BG in field tests conducted at Dugway. Mr. Stubbs left the lab on medical leave with a back problem in March 2000. According to an Environmental Assessment relating to a proposed BL-3 lab being constructed there, the lab has worked with "a number" of different strains since the Spring of 2000. One on-line account, quoting a "Frequently Asked Questions" list reportedly faxed by the lab's communications department, says that the lab had used "25 different strains." Was one of those strains from the Spring of 2000 the US Army "Ames" strain that was used in the attacks? If so, was it avirulent or virulent (an avirulent strain has a key plasmid removed) Dead (irradiated) or alive? Was it obtained from the same Northern Arizona University lab that later sent the Ames strain to the University of California-run facility at Los Alamos in October 2001? (The shipment included a small number of live spores). The Lawrence Livermore lab worked on the genetic sequencing of the Ames strain with that Northern Arizona University lab. The Northern Arizona University lab helped the FBI in the genetic signature of the strain. The DOE standard badge is the key to the complex. The standard badges in 2000 were blue for Q-cleared employees, yellow for L-cleared employees and gray for uncleared employees. Foreign nationals with Q- and L-clearances had a red strip on their badges behind their names, while uncleared foreign nationals had red badges. Michael Ray reportedly had the high security clearance -- "Q level" -- and a blue badge. . m. Was Jdey the Anthrax Mailer? Kenneth J. Dillon is a professional historian, retired foreign service officer, and former Department of State intelligence analyst. He currently works as a medical device entrepreneur, and he is writing a book about scientific detective work. He argues that Jdey was the anthrax mailer. With his permission, I'll set forth his argument at length. HIs analysis has much to commend it.
VI. The Sheiks, Bioweaponeers and DARPA a. The "Teflon Terrorist" And Risk Of Infiltration Ron Kessler in his new book The Terrorist Watch quotes FBI Director Robert Mueller on the subject of WMD and the risk of infiltration:
In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the need to guard against spies at universities, who for example, may have access to pre-patent, pre-classification biochemistry information. A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life plus 70 years in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to ATCC facilities, as well as facilities of the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense at George Mason University then run by Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey. The bionformatics grad student once had a high security clearance for mathematical support work for the Navy. I spoke to William Livingstone, one of the officers of ExecutiveAction, in advance of the group’s release of the monograph they wrote for Pharmathene titled “Spores: The Threat of a Catastrophic Anthrax Attack on America.” I asked him, “How much more obvious does a case of infiltration have to be — does he need to be sitting on Dr. Ken Alibek’s lap?” Infiltrator Ali Mohamed was the "Teflon terrorist" and serves as a useful historical example as author Peter Lance so well demonstrates in the detailed 2006 book Triple Cross. Ali Mohammed, an EIJ member who was associated with the unit that killed Sadat, had an alibi for the Sadat assassination. He was at “an officer exchange program studying at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Green Beret and Delta Force officers receive training.” After he was forced out of the Egyptian Army for his radical beliefs, he went to work at Egyptair, as a security advisor, where he learned how to hijack airliners. He then joined the CIA and the US Army. A supply sergeant at the US Army’s Fort Bragg, where he lectured Green Beret and Delta Forces on the middle east, he stole high resolution maps from the map shack and brought them to Ayman in Afghanistan. In 1989, Ali Mohamed traveled from Fort Bragg to train men that would later commit WTC 1993. When Ali Mohammed traveled to Brooklyn, he stayed with Islamic Group and Abdel-Rahman’s bodyguard Nosair, the man who would assassinate Rabbi Kahane in 1990. After Nosair’s arrest, the FBI did not bother to translate or study the dozens of boxes of materials seized from Nosair's home, which included classified maps and cables from the Joint Chiefs stolen by Ali Mohammed. In 1991, when Bin Laden wanted to move from Afghanistan to Sudan, Ali Mohammed served as his head of security and trained his bodyguards. Along with a former medical student, Khalid Dahab, Ali Mohamed recruited ten Americans for “sleeper cells.” After the 1998 embassy bombings, when FBI agents secretly swarmed his California residence, they found a document “Cocktail” detailing how cell members should operate — even Al Qaeda central would not know the identity of members and different cells would not know each other’s identity. It was Ali Mohamed who was the source for the December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explaining that the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli, was planning attacks on the US. In November 2001, did the Quantico profilers know of this egregious history of infiltration and harm flowing from treating the Nosair case as a “lone wolf” rather than an international conspiracy? One man’s “lone wolf” experiencing howling loneliness is another man’s Salafist operating under strict principles of cell security and “need-to-know.” A former FBI agent in the New York office who asked not to be identified, told author Peter Lance: “Understand what this means. You have an Al Qaeda spy who’s now a U.S. citizen, on active duty in the U.S. Army, and he brings along a video paid for by the U.S. government to train Green Beret officers and he’s using it to help train Islamic terrrorists so they can turn their guns on us. By now the Afghan war is over.” Steve Emerson once said of the former US Army Sergeant who was Ayman Zawahiri’s head of intelligence and taught Bin Laden and Atef and others spycraft: “Ali Mohamed is one of the most frightening examples of the infiltration of terrorists into the infrastructure of the United States. Like a [character in a] John Le Carre thriller, he played the role of a triple agent and nearly got away with it.” (Those officials who sought to minimize the security breach would have to explain away the classified maps of Afghanistan he stole from the map shack, and the classified cables and manuals found in such places as the home of Nosair, the assassin of Rabbi Kehane.) Not even Ali Mohammed, however, could boast the letter of commendation from the White House once given Ali Al-Timimi, previous work for White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, or a high security clearance. Ali Mohammed did not even have a security clearance but was merely a supply sergeant at the base where Special Operations was located. Many commentators have long held strong and divergent opinions of what has been published in the media about Amerithrax, what they knew and their political views. 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. One US law professor, Francis Boyle, who has represented islamists abroad, first publicized the theory that a US biodefense insider was responsible. He has served as legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina. (He has reported that he was on all five terror watchlists.) Separately the theory was adopted by professor Barbara Rosenberg. But Professor Boyle and Rosenberg were not so far from the truth — just incorrect as to motive. We need to stop seeing such important issues through political lenses that lead to knee-jerk reactions rather than careful factual analysis. For example, the lawyer advocating for islamist clients, Professor Boyle, tells me that he assumes that the correspondence between Ayman Zawahiri and Rauf Ahmad provided me by the Defense Intelligence Agency under FOIA were forgeries. That is a baseless supposition. If that were true, Ayman Zawahiri who appears on television more often than Wolf Blitzer, would say so and ridicule the United States government for the fraud. Instead, the documentary shows that Zawahiri’s plan was to infiltrate the US and UK biodefense establishment, and he did. In a June 2005 interview in a Swiss (German language) weekly news magazine, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Ken Alibek addresses the anthrax mailings:
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 and lunch on September 17, 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. Peter Leitner at GMU has supervised a 2007 PhD thesis by a graduate student that explores biosecurity issues at GMU. Other students took a “red cell” approach that have corroborated the findings of the thesis. The thesis points to a pretty big iceberg indeed. Proliferation leads to great risk of infiltration. LSU researcher Martin Hugh-Jones explained: “There were no more than ten labs in the nation working with the organism, and now it’s about 310—and they all want virulent strains. In the old days virtually everyone was paid by Department of Defense to do their research because that’s the only place where money came from because the organism wasn’t thought to be of economic importance. Now that it’s a bioterrorist threat and money’s available for research, experts have come out of the walls. The whole damn thing is bizarre.” It turns out that Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, may be the final key that unlocks the Amerithrax mystery. 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. The same Al Qaeda spymaster, Egyptian al-Hakaymah, who wrote about Amerithrax 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. Islambouli was expected to send someone from Saudi Arabia 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. b. 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 to George Mason University microbiology graduate student Ali Al-Timimi:
Al-Timimi had rock star status in Salafist circles and lectured in July 2001 (in Toronto) and August 2001 (in London) on the coming “end of times” and signs of the coming day of judgment. He spoke alongside officials of a charity, Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) promoting the views of Bin Laden’s sheiks. Another speaker was Ali’s mentor, Bilal Philips, one of the 173 listed as unindicted WTC 1993 conspirators. Bilal Philips worked in the early 1990s to recruit US servicemen according to testimony in that trial and interviews in which Dr. Philips explained the Saudi-funded program. According to Al-Timimi's attorney, Ali "was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing ("Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US") as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis." The month before they searched Ali's townhouse, they questioned Umar Lee. Police arrested Mr. Lee, an American-born Muslim in St. Louis, in mid-February 2003 on an unrelated charge and questioned him about whether he was planning any attacks against the U.S. government. Bret Darren Lee, whose Muslim name is Umar ben-Livan (and for simplicity he shortens it to "Umar Lee"), said that he was stunned by the questions asked by the FBI agents: "I just looked at them. I didn't think they'd asked me anything worth responding to." Mr. Lee said he was sleeping in his apartment about 5 a.m. Sunday when he was woken by loud knocking on his door. But rather than a Muslim neighbor waking him for prayers, it was several police officers with weapons drawn. They put Lee up against a wall and asked whether he had any weapons in the apartment. The National Rifle Association sticker affixed to the apartment's front door was a cheap version of an alarm system. While he was down at the station house, the FBI agents spent a half-hour questioning his wife about whether he was a terrorist and his thoughts about the Taliban. Umar tells me that the suspicion reported in the Washington Post that Ali was involved in the anthrax mailings is nonsense. On his popular blog, he clarified a quotation of his that appeared at the time in the Post's "Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats." Two weeks later, 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. (The FBI 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 websites, 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 websites on which they espoused their anti-Western views. According to witness testimony in the prosecution of the Virginia Paintball Defendants, after September 11, 2001, “Al-Timimi stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy.” 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. Ali Al Timimi defended his PhD thesis in computational biology shortly after his indictment for recruiting young men to fight the US in defending against an invasion of Afghanistan. Some of his communications in 2002 with dissident Saudi sheik Safar al-Hawali, one of the two fundamentalist sheikhs who were friends and mentors of Bin Laden, were intercepted. The two radical sheiks had been imprisoned from September 1994 to June 1999. Al-Hawali’s detention was expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War against the United States and the claim of responsibility for the 1998 embassy bombings. ABC reported in July 2004 that FBI Director Mueller had imposed an October 1, 2004 deadline for a case that would stand up in court. The date passed with no anthrax indictment. Al-Timimi was not indicted for anthrax. He was indicted for sedition. Upon his indictment, on September 23, 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. On October 6, 2004, the webmaster of the azzam.com website Babar Ahmad was indicted. It was not until 2007 that the North Brunswick, NJ imam who mirrored the azzam.com website was indicted (on the grounds of income tax evasion). The indictment against the paintball defendants alleged that at an Alexandria, Virginia residence, in the presence of a representative of Benevolence International Foundation (”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 Al-Timimi 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 Al-Timimi 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 for inciting them to go to Afghanistan to defend the Taliban against the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. 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 his sentencing, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke in clear and measured tones:
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. The evidence presented at Al-Timimi's trial, however, was offered only to show that Dr. Al-Timimi was guilty of nothing other than exhorting some young men to go abroad and defend their faith. It seems that, under the government’s case, 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 seemed 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 Countermeasures Program, Dr. Stephen S. Morse, 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 — there was 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. As those words aired, however, 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. To use the technical Army expression with such a biohazard, it had "major pucker factor." After the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology detected silica, former USAMRIID Deputy Commander Charles Bailey, identified as a scientist at Advanced Biosystems Inc. at George Mason University, declined to comment on the purpose of the silica. He told one reporter: "I don't think I want to give people -- terrorists -- any information to help them." Dr. Timimi’s attorney was understandably annoyed that they kept moving Al-Timimi between prisons and did not let him consult privately with his client. George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley, his counsel on appeal, explained that last year they were playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?”, preventing him from consulting with his client. c. The Education of Ali Al-Timimi Milton Viorst, who knew Ali as a teenager, wrote a fascinating and sympathetic yet balanced 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 (and many others) as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial that sent the “blind sheik” to prison. Bilal Philips explained these recruitment efforts to a London newspaper in Arabic (translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service) in an article titled "Jamaican-Born Canadian Interviewed on Islamic Missionary Work Among US Troops":
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. Siraj Wahhaj would host Sheik Abdel-Rahman at Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn where two of the WTC bombers worshipped. Wahhaj was a character witness for Sheik Abdel-Rahman at his 1995 trial. 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.” After completing his religious education in Saudi Arabia in Medina, Ali Al Timimi 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-Dosari (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. At the first annual IANA conference in 1993, scheduled speakers included Bilal Philips, Mohammed Abdul-Rahman from Afghanistan, Mohammad Qutb from Cairo, Gamal Sultan from Cairo, and Abu Abdel Aziz 'Barbaros' (Bosnia). Mohammad Abdul-Rahman was the blind sheik’s son. The blind sheik would soon be sentenced for terrorism relating to WTC 1993 and the “Day of Terror” plot directed at NYC landmarks. In 2000, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a/k/a “Asadallah,” who is a son of Abdel Rahman, was sitting alongside Bin Laden and Zawahiri and was videotaped encouraging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood. Mohammad Qutb was Sayyid Qutb’s brother. Egyptian Mohammad Qutb, a renown scholar and activist, taught Bin Laden at university in Saudi Arabia, having emigrated to Saudi Arabia. In the 1970s, bin Laden was taught by Sayyid Qutb’s brother, Dr. Mohammad Qutb, and a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood member, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, who later would found Al Qaeda. Azzam’s ideas of non-compromise, violent means, and organizing and fighting on a global scale were central to Al Qaeda methods. Qutb, as al-Hawali’s teacher, also strongly influenced al-Hawali. Al-Hawali would be sent to prison in 1994. Gamal Sultan was a former EIJ member who would seek to start a political party in 1999 with the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Kamal Habib. They sought to chart a nonviolent course (given the practical reality that the movement had been so infiltrated by the security forces). The blind sheik declined to endorse the venture. In 2000, on a trip to Pittsburgh, Gamal Sultan and his colleagues thought Pittsburgh reminded them of Kandahar given its rolling hills. Abu Abdel Aziz 'Barbaros' was a well-known holy warrior and fundraiser from Saudi Arabia. In 1994, Abdel Aziz glorified jihad and praised the Pittsburgh magazine Assirat for its interest in holy war. He asked Assirat readers and in a 1995 update, to donate money for holy war. He lauded Dr. Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda. He explained jihad will continue till the day of judgment.” In 1996, he was detained as the primary suspect in the attack on the Dhahran barracks, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed. As explained by expert witness Evan Koehlmann at the trial of one of Al-Timimi's assistant, Abu Abdul-Aziz Barbaros was celebrated in LET propaganda. In 1995 Ali Al Timimi headed an IANA delegation to China together with IANA President Bassem Khafagi and Syracuse oncologist and IANA Vice Chairman Rhafil Dhafir. The IANA condemned the UN women’s rights conference as “an attack on Islam.” They urged Imams worldwide to tell Muslims about “the hidden agenda of this UN Conference, and how to foil the libertine and Westernization movements in the Islamic world.” Salafist commentator Umar Lee has explained that in the early 1990s “the most dynamic part of the salafi movement in the DC-area were the students Sheikh Ali al-Timimi who in the 1990’s co-founded a very small group with a small office for an organization called the Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah. In early July 1994, cooperation with Al-Timimi’s Society for the Adherence to the Sunnah, Washington, D.C., IANA held its first annual summer camp in English in Frederick, MD (where the ponds were drained in the Amerthrax investigation). The theme of the camp was “Living the Shahadah in America.” This is what Sheikh Ali was teaching kids at the 1st Annual IANA Summer Camp at a Frederick, MD park:
Author Milton Viorst, the father of a boy who knew Al-Timimi as a 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.” In one of his taped talks available online, al-Timimi warned Muslims not to become too friendly with non-Muslim “disbelievers” or even work for them if other jobs were available. “A Muslim should never allow the disbeliever to have the upper hand.” 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. 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 William 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 Deputy Commander and Acting Commander 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. It was like the one Dr. Alibek 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 a First Floor plan that is available online, clicking upon 154-156 area to enlarge. In April 2007, at a talk at Princeton University, Dr. Alibek noted that he felt that "[u]nfortunately, the likelihood is very high" of a follow-up to the anthrax mailings of 2001. "And the agent very likely is still anthrax." "The biggest part of my life now is devoted to cancer and cardiovascular (research). If you work in the biodefense community, good luck to you. I hope you succeed." Dr. Alibek explained that he had been scrutinized and consulted, and given a polygraph after the anthrax mailings. He said that anthrax likely would be the pathogen favored by terrorists because it is relatively easy to grow and transport. Dr. Alibek suspects it it was "a person who knew from some source how the U.S. manufactured anthrax years and years ago." He said, "It's not rocket science." d. Al-Timimi’s Connection to AQ WMD Comm. member Mohammed Abdel-Rahman While Al-Timimi was recruiting for the Taliban, he was also connected to one of the principals on Al Qaeda’s WMD Committee, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman. The CIA and FBI apparently have known this for years but have kept it secret as part of their ongoing confidential national security and criminal investigation. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman spoke at the first conference of the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”) in 1993 and was noted to be from Afghanistan. Mohammed Abdelrahman spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi again, for example, in 1996 in Toronto and again that December in Chicago at the annual conference. The December conference was held after blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was indicted. Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation was closely involved in the financing and promotion of IANA activities. Al-Buthi of Al-Haramain was in contact with Bin Laden’s sheiks and also his brother-in-law Khalifa who had funded the KSM-led Bojinka operation. Global Relief Foundation participated in and sponsored a number of annual conferences. GRF sent money to IANA to offset the conferences' costs. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was close to bin Laden and was engaged in planning key operations. OBL considered him like a son. Mohammed was on the three member WMD committee with Midhat Mursi. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman ran a training camp that was part of the larger complex of several camps. He was an explosives trainer. The “Superseding Indictment” in United States of postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar et al., explains that on February 12, 1997, with Mohammed Abdelrahman back in Afghanistan, a statement issued in the name of the Islamic Group threatened, “The Islamic Group declares all American interests legitimate targets to its legitimate jihad until the release of all prisoners, on top of whom” is Abdel Rahman. Three months later, on May 5, 1997, a statement issued in the name of the Islamic Group threatened, “If any harm comes to the [S]heikh [,] al-Gama al-IsIalamiy[y]a will target [] all of those Americans who participated in subjecting his life to danger.” The statement also said that “A1-Gamaa al-Islamiyya considers every American official, starting with the American president to the despicable jailer [] partners endangering the Sheikh’s life,” and that the Islamic Group would do “everything in its power” to free Abdel Rahman. The same person who posted notice of the 1996 conference where Al-Timimi, Bilal Philips and Mohammed Abdel-Rahman spoke, then posted notice of a protest titled “STOP RAILROADING OF SHEIKH OMAR ABDEL RAHMAN - PROTEST US POLICIES AGAINST ISLAM.” The Rally was to take place on June 20, 1997 in front of the US Bureau of Prisons in Washington DC. An FBI affidavit, drafted in support of a warrant for the search of Post Office employee Sattar’s Staten Island apartment, explains that Sattar was the communications hub to and from the imprisoned Abdel-Rahman. The 42-year-old postal worker worked as a paralegal during the blind terrorist’s federal trial for attorneys Lynne Stewart and Stanley Cohen. Sattar was in frequent contact with IG leaders worldwide, including Rifa’i Taha Musa (”Taha”) and WMD Committee member Abdel-Rahman’s son Mohammed. Al Qaeda continued to seek religious approval from blind sheik Abdel-Rahman for its attacks. The US indictment of the Post Office worker in contact with Mohammed Abdel-Rahman alleged: “On or about June 19, 2000, one of Abdel Rahman’s sons, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, spoke by telephone with SATTAR and asked SATTAR to convey to Abdel Rahman the fierceness of the debate within the Islamic Group about the initiative, and said that “even if the other side is right,” SATTAR should tell Abdel Rahman to calm the situation by supporting “the general line of the Group.” The indictment of the US Post Office worker Sattar further alleges: “On or about June 20, 2000, SATTAR spoke by telephone with Mohammed Abdel Rahman and advised him that a conference call had taken place that morning between Abdel Pahman and some of his attorneys and that Abdel Rahman had issued a new statement containing additional points which made clear, among other things, that Abdel Rahman was not unilaterally ending the initiative, but rather, was withdrawing his support for it and “stating that it was up” to the “brothers” in the Islamic Group now to reconsider the issue. The indictment of the US Post Office employee Sattar further alleges: “On or about September 21, 2000, an Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, televised a meeting of Usama Bin Laden (leader of the al Qaeda terrorist organization), Ayman al Zawahiri (former leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and one of Bin Laden’s top lieutenants), and Taha. Sitting under a banner which read, “Convention to Support Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman,” the three terrorist leaders pledged “to free Abdel Rahman from incarceration in the United States. During the meeting, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a/k/a “Asadallah,” who is a son of Abdel Rahman, was heard encouraging others to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.” In December 2001, the blind sheik’s lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat — the fellow in touch with US Post Office employee Sattar who claimed in March 1999 that Zawahiri was going to use weaponized anthrax against US targets — claimed that Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, 29, had died from wounds received during the bombardment of the Tora Bora caves in eastern Afghanistan. He said his information came from an Islamic activist in London. The report was false. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman was arrested in mid-February 2003 and Ali Al-Timimi's townhouse was searched two week later. The FBI feels that they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. They are criticized for making arrests too soon — other times they are criticized for not acting sooner. They are criticized when they don’t give out any information. They are criticized when they do. All the while, the public is seldom well-positioned to second-guess the issue. e. “The Straight Path”: Connecting the Dots Al-Timimi's attorney explained in a court filing that unsealed in April 2008 that Ali "was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali" and "was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having 'extensive ties' with the 'broader al-Qaeda network." Al-Timimi was on an advisory board member of Assirat al-Mustaqueem (”The Straight Path”), an international Arabic language magazine. 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. As Al-Timimi's counsel explained in a court filing unsealed in April 2008:
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. Wadih al Hage was Ali Mohammed’s friend and served as 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 with 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. They were not seeking the official participation of organizations like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad or the Egyptian Islamic Group — they were just 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 named Awlawki 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 found the phone number of the Falls Church mosque when they searched the apartment of 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. In his 2007 book, Center of the Storm, George Tenet noted that Ramzi bin al-Shibh had a CBRN role. 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 after 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:
| ||||||||||||||
