This show was broadcast March 29, 2010.
It is now archived here (But note that the linked website has an annoying "radio" in the upper right corner that turns itself on several times during the radio interview, and must be turned off immediately so the interview can be heard.)
Any suggestion that the Salafist-Jihadis did not have experts equal to any of the cutting-edge scientists working for the United States government seems insupportable. As a single example, consider Magdy Al-Nashar, who studied in North Carolina in 2000 and knew Ali Al-Timimi (whose personal DC charity had a branch in North Carolina). Magdy then studied in London where he held the keys to the apartment used in the 7/7 London bomb. He is a cutting-edge expert in functional polymerization, which involves protecting the drug until it reaches the intended organ. Back in Cairo (where he stayed after the bombing), he was represented by Mahmoud Ismail, the attorney who is the alleged conduit between Ayman Zawahiri and jihadis in Egypt. (The spymaster who wrote the treatise on spying which included anthrax was the intermediary). Attorney Ismail represented Cairo Medical school pharmacology professor Heba Zawahiri (and the family) in connection with the rendering of Ayman Zawahiri’s brother in April 1999. The use of anthrax was threatened at the time (by Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders and Mamdouh Ismail’s colleague, Montasser Al Zayat) in retaliation for the rendering and mistreatment of senior Egyptian leaders. (The torture of prisoners was the last thing the Bush Administration wanted to talk about. The fact that Ali Al-Timimi was Andrew Card’s former assistant and had received a letter of commendation from the White House for classified work for the Navy while at SRA with Battelle consultant Charles Battelle, doomed the Amerithrax investigation from the start).
ReplyDeleteConsider Barry's argument through the lense of Nafeez Ahmed. Barry asked him a question at a C-SPAN event a few years back. I agree with his theme that he discovered that interpenetration undermined response to terrorist events.
ReplyDeleteThe closest parallel to Amerithrax I see relates to Ali Mohammed -- a case study of what Nafeez Ahmed is talking about. Peter Lance in TRIPLE X best covers the details of that "interpenetration" to borrow Nafeez' term.
He correctly says Blind Sheik was protected when Rabbi Kahane (the founder of a radical group) was assassinated by Nosair, the blind sheik's bodyguard. Under any history, it would have to be agreed that the FBI approached the case very narrowly. Boxes that had been seized, for example, were not opened and translated until after 1993. If they had been, Ali Mohammed's infiltration of Fort Bragg would have been exposed and perhaps the 1998 embassy bombings averted.
Here, once again, there are boxes the FBI prefers not to open.
Ali Mohammed, who was Ayman Zawahiri's chief of intelligence. He trained a fellow, Dahab, recruited from Cairo Medical in the early 1980s to make lethal letters. He and Dahab reported to Bin Laden that they had recruited 10 sleepers in the US from among the people they knew. So as I told the CIA in mid-December 2001, the first order of business should have been to consider whether Dahab knew any classmate from Cairo Medical in the early 1980s who was working alongside some Ames strain researcher.
Nafeez quotes in response to Barry's question at the CSPAN event
"If we don't know why we failed to protect ourselves, what is the purpose of going on with these wars?"
These people who failed us need to get out of office..."
And as the foot in the door, I would take a sledge hammer to conflicts of interest.
Here is an example of "interpenetration":
ReplyDeleteMy acquaintance "Tawfiq" (real name Tarek) Hamid was recruited by Ayman Zawahiri while in medical school. He has consulted with the IC for years now. His lifelong friend is Ames researcher Tarek Hamouda, who would visit Cairo from Khartoum, who while a foreign national newly minted by Ayman Zawahiri's sister came to head a DARPA project involving nanoemulsions/microencapsulation.
Microencapsulation is the functional polymerization method that many experts says is pointed to by the forensics. AUSA Kenneth Kohl had never interviewed him. AUSA Rachel Carlson Lieber had never interviewed him. No FBI agent or Postal Inspector from the Amerithrax Task Force had interviewed. I have no idea why not given that he was a consultant for the USG. Wasn't there supposed to be an effective sharing of information? But I view it as a misstep -- an oversight caused by the distraction of the stained panties, editing Wikipedia and then a suicide that had the potential of a lawsuit against the prosecutors and investigators who had made the decision to test his DNA (which seems calculated to humiliate a man that the FBI had been told was suicidal).
Dr. Hamid and Dr. Hamouda were classmates in the early 1980s while Ayman Zawahiri and Ali Mohammed was recruiting at Cairo Medical. He was a schoolmate of Dahab, the former medical school student was the operative who later travelled from the US to Bin Laden to report he and Ali Mohammed had recruited 10 sleepers.
Dr. Hamouda went back and got his PhD in 1994 in microbiology, where Ayman's sister Heba Zawahiri taught pharmacology.
3 years later he was in charge of a DARPA project and visiting Bruce Ivins, working with virulent Ames. Bruce says that when he arrived he didn't know he was not a US citizen. In early 2005, having obtained an attorney, his attorney noted that Dr. Ivins had mistakenly said that Hamouda's visit was arranged by Ivins' commander, when actually it had been arranged by Bruce. FWIW Hamouda went to business school at Michigan where Bioport was located and in a linked-in profile was listed as the university's director of vaccine research. (I don't have confirmation). Then he joined James Baker at the University of Michigan an hour or so away.
They received an initial $12 million or so from DARPA. Made $80 since without a product yet marketed.
But I view it in terms of the incompetence of individuals who incompetently allowed infiltration rather than a conspiracy. Many years ago, Dr. Ivins told the investigators that he felt horrible that he might have allowed access to the strain used in the attacks.
Here are some factual propositions:
ReplyDelete1) Ali Al-Timimi was Andrew Card's assistant for 2 months. Source: Ali's defense committee's old webpage. Rather than Saddam who had access to the know-how, it was Ali Al-Timimi who received the know-how in his mail-drop, on his fax etc. which he shared with the leading anthrax scientist and deputy USAMRIID Commander who co-invented the patent. See floorplan. Al-Timimi's dad worked at the Iraqi embassy as an attorney.
2) NSA warrantless wiretapping was begun on or about October 7, 2001 and centered around Al-Timimi and the US network. See generally Lichtblau's book BUSH'S LAW. Only 2 DOJ people knew about it. The ongoing proceeding on the wiretapping is highly classified.
3) Ali Al-Timimi had a letter of commmendation from the White House for classified work done for Navy while at SRA. Source: Ali Al-Timimi's first defense committee on its webpage.
4) Charles Bailey, former deputy USAMRIID Commander and later prolific Ames researcher, was at SRA in 1999 also and at the time was working as a Battelle cconsultant; See bio info online.
5) Charles Bailey was head of DIA biothreat asssessmen. See bio info online.
6) As I vaguely recall without checking, DIA took over from CIA Project Clear Vision. See Germs (2001)
7) Al-Timimi shared a suite with Alibek, the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy USAMRIID Commander. See floor plan I've posted.
8) Alibek and Bailey co-invented a patent involving silica in the culture medium (and some silica are water soluble i.e., surfactants). The co-applicant was the founder of AEROSOL TECHNIQUES in 1955. One application was a pharma aerosol. See international application. My consulting scientist who is head of the Air Force lab that tests anthrax simulants says the MICRODROPLET CELL CULTURE patent is a microencapsulation patent that increases the viability of a wide variety of pathogens.
9) A scientist expert at making dry powders and mixing with silica (according to his friend and supervisor) was arrested the same day and minute Al-Timimi's home was searched. I believe he and I were at the local mall one Sunday morning trying to buy Eric N's book when it came out. He went to current affairs -- but I went to military history given that the FBI was being so ineffective in investigating access to Ames by a Zawahiri recruit.
10) When Al-Timimi's residence was searched, they found the personal papers of Bassem Khafagi, the Ann Arbor-based IANA head. (IANA was the charity that promoted the two Bin Laden sheiks who were the subject of Bin Laden's declaration of war and the subject of discussion in the NSA wiretaps recently declared illegal.)
11) Tarek Hamouda's work involves nanoemulsions incorporated into the media.
12) Ali Al-Timimi had a role analogous to Ali Mohammed and was coordinating with fellow Falls Church imam Anwar Aulaqi. But the Administration found it convenient -- because of the desire to invade Iraq and to win a second term -- to look away.
13) $50 million in investment in Hamouda's firm came from the venture capital firm Perseus, headed for most of the period by Richard Holbrooke, now Department of Statet #3, and in charge of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Conclusion; Someone should tell Rachel and Ken that a cell is not part of the Kappa Kappa Gamma initiation. A compartmentalized cell is what the Vanguards of Conquest military and intelligence planners were planning to use to attack the US with anthrax. But that's what I said in December 2001 in a long private memorandum, didn't I?
The daughter of Kenneth Kohl's boss came to represent Al-Timimi pro bono. Ken's boss pled the Fifth Amendment as to who was responsible for the hyped Hatfill leaks that served to derail the investigation.
Lew is highlighting a lot of newly uploaded Ivins emails on an ongoing basis.
ReplyDeletehttp://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/
The FBI would not have concentrated their search in the US, unless they had good reason to do so. The gov't/military know their own products. While I do think they wasted precious investigation time on Bruce Ivins just because he was a convenient fall guy, who they thought they could "make" fit the "profile" of their "pseudo science experts" in psychology, I do not believe it was a mistake to investigate the stocks at Ft. Detrick. But unless they have failed to disclose all details to the public (which is most likely the case, because of National Security) then they should have considered many other possible sources of the spores.
ReplyDeleteBarry Kissin ROCKS this story. He, Glenn Greenwald, and the lovely Meryl Nass are heroes to me who remind me daily that I am not alone, crazy, stupid when it comes to what I see our government doing. Also in a wider realm, the great Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein are out there telling it like they see it, and I mostly learn from them.
ReplyDeleteBut back to Barry Kissin. This broadcast interview, from everything he said, right down to the tone of voice he has, represent most how I feel about the anthrax attacks on this country and the framing of Bruce Ivins.
Thank you, first, Meryl Nass, as always, for this lovely blog. And thank you Barry Kissin.
With Barry, I would emphasize that we know there are foreign terrorists, that's not hard to see, but the important thing going on here is what our own government has done and is doing to us. The foreign terrorists are not the primary problem. And foreign terrorists did NOT do the anthrax attack on the United States. At least, as the famous words go, if they did participate, they did not alone.