Mark Steyn
Mohammed Atta and his federal loan officer
Tue Apr 5, 2005 00:41
64.140.158.184
Mark Steyn -- Mohammed Atta and his federal loan officer
National Post (Toronto)
June 10, 2002
Mohammed Atta and his federal loan officer
No matter how dumb he was, officialdom was always dumber
When last in this space, 10 days ago, I was writing about whether political
correctness kills. This was apropos the 9/11 nutters: "Everything they did
stuck out. But it didn't matter. Because the more they stuck out, the more
everyone who mattered was trained to look the other way."
I didn't know the half of it. The other day, Johnelle Bryant, an official
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, gave an interview to ABC News in
which she revealed that Mohammed Atta and three other September 11th
terrorists had visited her Florida office seeking government loans.
America, it seems, came this close to having the World Trade Center
incinerated at the taxpayers' expense.
Mr. Atta swung by in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about
it. "At first," she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that
she was, in his words, "but a female." After he'd reiterated the point, she
pulled rank: "I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service
agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me."
Throughout the hour-long interview, he continued to dismiss her as "but a
female."
Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a
crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and then
remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside
the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except
for where the pilot would be sitting."
Hmm.
When she explained that his application would have to be processed, Mr. Atta
became "very agitated." He'd apparently been expecting to leave the office
with cash in hand. "He asked me," recalls Ms. Bryant, "what would prevent
him from going behind my desk and cutting my throat and making off with the
millions of dollars in that safe." Try this with your Royal Bank loan
officer -- I find it works every time. But Ms. Bryant replied politely that
there was no money in the safe because loans are never given in cash, and
also that she was trained in karate.
His fiendish plan stymied at every turn, Mr. Atta then spotted an aerial
view of Washington hanging on the wall behind her. He told her he
particularly liked the way it got all the famous landmarks of the city in
one convenient picture, pointing specifically to the Pentagon and the White
House. "He pulled out a wad of cash," says Ms. Bryant, "and started throwing
money on my desk. He wanted that picture really bad."
She told him it wasn't for sale, but he only tossed more dough at her. "His
look on his face became very bitter at that point," Ms. Bryant remembers.
"He said, 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city
and some of the monuments in it,' like the cities in his country had been
destroyed?"
Hmm.
Mr. Atta then moved on to other prominent landmarks in other American
cities, and enquired about security at the World Trade Center. Ms. Bryant
had a Dallas Cowboys souvenir on her desk, and he asked her about their
spectacular stadium and, specifically, the "hole in the roof."
At that point, the chit-chat turned to Mr. Atta's own country, which he
claimed was Afghanistan. "He mentioned Osama bin Laden," she says. "He could
have been a character on Star Wars for all I knew." So Mr. Atta helpfully
explained that this bin Laden guy "would someday be known as the world's
greatest leader."
Alas, the interview ended badly from the terrorists' point of view when Ms.
Bryant informed her visitor that the loan program is for farm-based projects
and a crop-dusting business did not qualify.
A few weeks later, another September 11th killer showed up, Marwan al-
Shehhi, seeking half-a-million bucks supposedly to buy a sugar-cane farm.
Accompanying him was Mr. Atta, but he was cunningly disguised with a pair of
glasses and claiming to be someone else entirely, attending in his capacity
as Mr. al-Shehhi's accountant. Sportingly, Ms. Bryant went along with the
wheeze. I'm reminded of the time my sister tried to wangle her boyfriend a
day off work. She called up the receptionist and, adopting a fake accent,
told her that she was the dentist's secretary and he needed to come in
immediately for critical dental work. "My God, that's terrible," said the
receptionist. "I'll tell him at once." She then buzzed through to the
boyfriend: "Stewart, Karen just called pretending to be the dentist's
secretary. Do you think she needs to see a doctor?"
But Ms. Bryant didn't think Mr. Atta was sick. The safe-breaking, the
throat- slitting, the fake specs ... why, he was just being charmingly
multicultural! "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the
country that he came from," she says. "I was attempting, in every manner I
could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I
could." Unfortunately, his imaginative business plan for a crop-duster
capable of crop-dusting Texas was frustrated by the unduly onerous
restrictions and bureaucratic torpor of the USDA program. By late summer,
Mr. Atta and his chums had concluded the government was never going to buy
them their own twin-props and they'd have to make do with the aircraft that
were already up there. So they switched their flight training courses from
small planes to large jet simulators, and told their instructors to skip all
that takeoff and landing stuff.
Ms. Bryant has come forward now because she thinks "it's very vital that the
Americans realize that when these people come to the United States, they
don't have a big 'T' on their forehead." No, indeed. In some cases, they
have a big "T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T" flashing in neon off the end of their nose.
Ten days ago, I pointed out that these fellows made virtually no effort to
blend in. They weren't in "deep cover," they were barely covered at all.
Atta was the brains of the operation, and he did a marginally better job of
it than Leslie Nielsen would have. His one great insight into Western
culture was his assumption that he could get a government grant to take out
the Pentagon. Yet no matter how dumb he was, officialdom was always dumber
"If they watch this interview and they see the type of questions that Atta
asked me," Ms. Bryant told ABC News, "then perhaps they will recognize a
terrorist, and make the call that I didn't make." Meanwhile, here are some
signs to look for:
1) He threatens to cut your throat.
2) He talks about the destruction of prominent landmarks.
3) He enquires about security at said landmarks.
4) He hails Osama bin Laden as a great leader.
There'll be more of these stories, tales of men virtually screaming their
intentions but up against a culture sensitivity-trained into a coma. A
stump- toothed Appalachian mountain man would get slung out on his ear if he
was that misogynist and abusive in a government office. In a Hollywood
movie, the guy refusing to deal with the little lady and demanding to see
the real boss would be a sexist Republican Congressman. In the new
motion-picture blockbuster The Sum Of All Fears, the Islamic terrorists of
Tom Clancy's novel have been replaced with neo-Nazis -- a safe villain that
won't offend our delicate multicultural sensibilities.
The good news is we're up against idiots. The bad news is we're also up
against the suppler idiocies of current Western orthodoxy. Thus, the U.S.
government's new plans to photograph and fingerprint visitors from countries
"believed to harbour terrorists" have already been attacked by Mary
Robinson, the UN Human Rights honcho who's never met an Arab dictator she
didn't like. Islamists want to kill us in the name of Islam. Regrettable,
but there it is. If we pretend otherwise, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Islamic Society of Britain
might be nice to us. But, speaking personally, I can't say I care. If
Islamic lobby groups throughout the Western world really want to hitch their
star to a bunch of psychopathic morons, good luck to them. It's a free
country. Hey, we'll even give you a government grant to tell us how racist
we are.
====================
In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") report publicly disclosed that the reason for Mohammed Atta's and Zacarias Moussaoui's inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was planning an "unbelievable" biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM"). He had been captured the previous month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In November 2003, a report by a UN Panel of experts concluded that Al Qaeda is determined to use chemical and biological weapons and is restrained only by technical difficulties.
In a statement issued June 16, 2004, the 9/11 Commission Staff concluded that "Al Qaeda had an ambitious biological weapons program and was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11. According to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, al Qaeda’s ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face." On August 9, 2004, it was announced that in the Spring of 2001, a man named El-Shukrijumah, also known as Jafar the Pilot, who was part of a "second wave," had been casing New York City helicopters. Photographs from a seized computer disc included the controls and the locks on the door between the passengers and pilot. In a bulletin, the FBI noted that the surveillance might relate to a plot to disperse a chemical or biological weapon.
The CIA reportedly has been quietly building a case that the anthrax mailings were an international plot. This is old news. It's just no longer bureaucratically impolite to openly contest the FBI's (former) theory about a lone, American scientist. Many people have argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative is behind the earlier Fall 2001 anthrax mailings in the US, and that the mailings served as a threat and warning. Princeton islamist scholar Bernard Lewis has explained that while islamists may disagree about whether killing innocents is sanctioned by the laws of jihad, extremists like Zawahiri agree that notice must be given before biochemical weapons are used. "The Prophet's guidance," says Michael Scheuer, an al-Qaeda analyst who recently retired from the CIA and once headed its Bin Laden unit, "was always, Before you attack someone, warn them very clearly..." The anthrax mailings followed the pattern of letters they sent in January 1997 to newspaper branches in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as well as symbolic targets. The letter bombs were sent in connection with the detention of the blind sheik Abdel Rahman and those responsible for the earlier World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Handwritten notes and files on a laptop seized upon the capture of KSM, Al Qaeda's #3, included a feasible anthrax production plan using a spray dryer and addressed the recruitment of necessary expertise. What your morning paper did not tell you, however, was that the CIA seized a similar disc from Ayman Zawahiri's right-hand, Ahmed Salama Mabruk, 5 years earlier. The computer disk was confiscated from him during his arrest by the CIA in Azerbaijan and handed over to the Egyptian authorities. Mabruk, at the time, was the head of Jihad's military operations. There is a risk that observers underestimate the time that Al Qaeda has had to make progress in such recruitment and research and development.
Some may still think that even in the final stages of the 9/11 plot, Zacarias Moussaoui was going to fly a 5th plane into the Capitol or White House. Others argue that he was to be part of a second wave of airliners directed to targets on the West Coast. There is an e-mail by Moussaoui, however, dated July 31, 2001 indicating that he sought to take a crop dusting course that was to last up to 6 months. In March 2003, Mohammed reportedly said that Moussaoui was not going to be part of 9/11 but was to be part of a "second wave." Although Ramzi Binalshibh provided him $14,000 in July, accused September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told his trial judge that he had an al Qaeda mission that would have come after the terrorist attacks. KSM explained that Moussaoui's inquiries about crop dusters may have been related to the anthrax work being done by US-trained biochemist and Al Qaeda operative, Malaysian Yazid Sufaat. Zacarias Moussaoui, never the sharpest tool in the shed and thought by his superiors to be unreliable, has told the judge at his trial in a filing that he wants "anthrax for Jew sympathizer only." Al Qaeda's regional operative, Hambali, who was at a key January 2000 meeting and supervised Sufaat, has been captured. Hambali reportedly is cooperating to some degree. KSM and Hambali sent al-Hindi (al-Britani), along with Jafar the Pilot, to case NYC targets for a second wave. It was as part of that surveillance in early 2001 that Jafar the Pilot studied tourist helicopters in the NYC area.
Sufaat, according to both KSM and Hambali, did not have the virulent US Army Ames strain that would be used. That would require someone who had access to the strain. But if experience is any guide, nothing would stand in the way of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri's decade-long quest to weaponize and use anthrax against US targets that was described by one confidante to an Egyptian newspaper reporter. The islamist had been released from Egyptian prison and had known Zawahiri well for many years. Emails from Zawahiri to Atef in the Spring of 1999 indicate that Ayman was a close student of the USAMRIID anthrax program. He believed that the koran instructed that a jihadist should use the weapons used by the crusader. "What we know is that he's always said it was a religious obligation to have the same weapons as their enemies," former CIA OBL unit counter terrorism chief Michael Scheuer has said. The Wall Street Journal reported that a computer used by Zawahiri contains a June 1999 memo that "said the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were 'more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.' ''
Zawahiri was associated with a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad known as the Vanguards of Conquest. Zawahiri and the Vanguards of Conquest were seeking to recreate Mohammed's taking of mecca by a small band through violent attacks on Egyptian leaders. By 1998, Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
A key question is how they acquired the anthrax strain first isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab in 1980. According to senior counter terrorism officials, both here and abroad, among the supporters of these militant islamists were people who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it.
A few days before Christmas 2003, after a renewed audiotape threat by Zawahiri of attacks, to include in the US homeland, the threat level was raised to orange or "high." After the alert condition had long since returned to yellow, Zawahiri in late February issued another audiotape. He urged the President that brigades and brigades would be coming under the banner of jihad carrying death and seeking paradise. Zawahiri said that the US should expect another 9/11 on US soil. According to some reports, Zawahiri is thought by intelligence to be somewhere near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. At one time, some thought he had been spotted in Iran. Wherever he is, authorities need to focus on the traceable connection between him and those
National Post (Toronto)
June 10, 2002
Mohammed Atta and his federal loan officer
No matter how dumb he was, officialdom was always dumber
When last in this space, 10 days ago, I was writing about whether political
correctness kills. This was apropos the 9/11 nutters: "Everything they did
stuck out. But it didn't matter. Because the more they stuck out, the more
everyone who mattered was trained to look the other way."
I didn't know the half of it. The other day, Johnelle Bryant, an official
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, gave an interview to ABC News in
which she revealed that Mohammed Atta and three other September 11th
terrorists had visited her Florida office seeking government loans.
America, it seems, came this close to having the World Trade Center
incinerated at the taxpayers' expense.
Mr. Atta swung by in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about
it. "At first," she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that
she was, in his words, "but a female." After he'd reiterated the point, she
pulled rank: "I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service
agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me."
Throughout the hour-long interview, he continued to dismiss her as "but a
female."
Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a
crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and then
remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside
the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except
for where the pilot would be sitting."
Hmm.
When she explained that his application would have to be processed, Mr. Atta
became "very agitated." He'd apparently been expecting to leave the office
with cash in hand. "He asked me," recalls Ms. Bryant, "what would prevent
him from going behind my desk and cutting my throat and making off with the
millions of dollars in that safe." Try this with your Royal Bank loan
officer -- I find it works every time. But Ms. Bryant replied politely that
there was no money in the safe because loans are never given in cash, and
also that she was trained in karate.
His fiendish plan stymied at every turn, Mr. Atta then spotted an aerial
view of Washington hanging on the wall behind her. He told her he
particularly liked the way it got all the famous landmarks of the city in
one convenient picture, pointing specifically to the Pentagon and the White
House. "He pulled out a wad of cash," says Ms. Bryant, "and started throwing
money on my desk. He wanted that picture really bad."
She told him it wasn't for sale, but he only tossed more dough at her. "His
look on his face became very bitter at that point," Ms. Bryant remembers.
"He said, 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city
and some of the monuments in it,' like the cities in his country had been
destroyed?"
Hmm.
Mr. Atta then moved on to other prominent landmarks in other American
cities, and enquired about security at the World Trade Center. Ms. Bryant
had a Dallas Cowboys souvenir on her desk, and he asked her about their
spectacular stadium and, specifically, the "hole in the roof."
At that point, the chit-chat turned to Mr. Atta's own country, which he
claimed was Afghanistan. "He mentioned Osama bin Laden," she says. "He could
have been a character on Star Wars for all I knew." So Mr. Atta helpfully
explained that this bin Laden guy "would someday be known as the world's
greatest leader."
Alas, the interview ended badly from the terrorists' point of view when Ms.
Bryant informed her visitor that the loan program is for farm-based projects
and a crop-dusting business did not qualify.
A few weeks later, another September 11th killer showed up, Marwan al-
Shehhi, seeking half-a-million bucks supposedly to buy a sugar-cane farm.
Accompanying him was Mr. Atta, but he was cunningly disguised with a pair of
glasses and claiming to be someone else entirely, attending in his capacity
as Mr. al-Shehhi's accountant. Sportingly, Ms. Bryant went along with the
wheeze. I'm reminded of the time my sister tried to wangle her boyfriend a
day off work. She called up the receptionist and, adopting a fake accent,
told her that she was the dentist's secretary and he needed to come in
immediately for critical dental work. "My God, that's terrible," said the
receptionist. "I'll tell him at once." She then buzzed through to the
boyfriend: "Stewart, Karen just called pretending to be the dentist's
secretary. Do you think she needs to see a doctor?"
But Ms. Bryant didn't think Mr. Atta was sick. The safe-breaking, the
throat- slitting, the fake specs ... why, he was just being charmingly
multicultural! "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the
country that he came from," she says. "I was attempting, in every manner I
could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I
could." Unfortunately, his imaginative business plan for a crop-duster
capable of crop-dusting Texas was frustrated by the unduly onerous
restrictions and bureaucratic torpor of the USDA program. By late summer,
Mr. Atta and his chums had concluded the government was never going to buy
them their own twin-props and they'd have to make do with the aircraft that
were already up there. So they switched their flight training courses from
small planes to large jet simulators, and told their instructors to skip all
that takeoff and landing stuff.
Ms. Bryant has come forward now because she thinks "it's very vital that the
Americans realize that when these people come to the United States, they
don't have a big 'T' on their forehead." No, indeed. In some cases, they
have a big "T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T" flashing in neon off the end of their nose.
Ten days ago, I pointed out that these fellows made virtually no effort to
blend in. They weren't in "deep cover," they were barely covered at all.
Atta was the brains of the operation, and he did a marginally better job of
it than Leslie Nielsen would have. His one great insight into Western
culture was his assumption that he could get a government grant to take out
the Pentagon. Yet no matter how dumb he was, officialdom was always dumber
"If they watch this interview and they see the type of questions that Atta
asked me," Ms. Bryant told ABC News, "then perhaps they will recognize a
terrorist, and make the call that I didn't make." Meanwhile, here are some
signs to look for:
1) He threatens to cut your throat.
2) He talks about the destruction of prominent landmarks.
3) He enquires about security at said landmarks.
4) He hails Osama bin Laden as a great leader.
There'll be more of these stories, tales of men virtually screaming their
intentions but up against a culture sensitivity-trained into a coma. A
stump- toothed Appalachian mountain man would get slung out on his ear if he
was that misogynist and abusive in a government office. In a Hollywood
movie, the guy refusing to deal with the little lady and demanding to see
the real boss would be a sexist Republican Congressman. In the new
motion-picture blockbuster The Sum Of All Fears, the Islamic terrorists of
Tom Clancy's novel have been replaced with neo-Nazis -- a safe villain that
won't offend our delicate multicultural sensibilities.
The good news is we're up against idiots. The bad news is we're also up
against the suppler idiocies of current Western orthodoxy. Thus, the U.S.
government's new plans to photograph and fingerprint visitors from countries
"believed to harbour terrorists" have already been attacked by Mary
Robinson, the UN Human Rights honcho who's never met an Arab dictator she
didn't like. Islamists want to kill us in the name of Islam. Regrettable,
but there it is. If we pretend otherwise, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Islamic Society of Britain
might be nice to us. But, speaking personally, I can't say I care. If
Islamic lobby groups throughout the Western world really want to hitch their
star to a bunch of psychopathic morons, good luck to them. It's a free
country. Hey, we'll even give you a government grant to tell us how racist
we are.
====================
In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") report publicly disclosed that the reason for Mohammed Atta's and Zacarias Moussaoui's inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was planning an "unbelievable" biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM"). He had been captured the previous month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In November 2003, a report by a UN Panel of experts concluded that Al Qaeda is determined to use chemical and biological weapons and is restrained only by technical difficulties.
In a statement issued June 16, 2004, the 9/11 Commission Staff concluded that "Al Qaeda had an ambitious biological weapons program and was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11. According to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, al Qaeda’s ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face." On August 9, 2004, it was announced that in the Spring of 2001, a man named El-Shukrijumah, also known as Jafar the Pilot, who was part of a "second wave," had been casing New York City helicopters. Photographs from a seized computer disc included the controls and the locks on the door between the passengers and pilot. In a bulletin, the FBI noted that the surveillance might relate to a plot to disperse a chemical or biological weapon.
The CIA reportedly has been quietly building a case that the anthrax mailings were an international plot. This is old news. It's just no longer bureaucratically impolite to openly contest the FBI's (former) theory about a lone, American scientist. Many people have argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative is behind the earlier Fall 2001 anthrax mailings in the US, and that the mailings served as a threat and warning. Princeton islamist scholar Bernard Lewis has explained that while islamists may disagree about whether killing innocents is sanctioned by the laws of jihad, extremists like Zawahiri agree that notice must be given before biochemical weapons are used. "The Prophet's guidance," says Michael Scheuer, an al-Qaeda analyst who recently retired from the CIA and once headed its Bin Laden unit, "was always, Before you attack someone, warn them very clearly..." The anthrax mailings followed the pattern of letters they sent in January 1997 to newspaper branches in Washington, D.C. and New York City, as well as symbolic targets. The letter bombs were sent in connection with the detention of the blind sheik Abdel Rahman and those responsible for the earlier World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Handwritten notes and files on a laptop seized upon the capture of KSM, Al Qaeda's #3, included a feasible anthrax production plan using a spray dryer and addressed the recruitment of necessary expertise. What your morning paper did not tell you, however, was that the CIA seized a similar disc from Ayman Zawahiri's right-hand, Ahmed Salama Mabruk, 5 years earlier. The computer disk was confiscated from him during his arrest by the CIA in Azerbaijan and handed over to the Egyptian authorities. Mabruk, at the time, was the head of Jihad's military operations. There is a risk that observers underestimate the time that Al Qaeda has had to make progress in such recruitment and research and development.
Some may still think that even in the final stages of the 9/11 plot, Zacarias Moussaoui was going to fly a 5th plane into the Capitol or White House. Others argue that he was to be part of a second wave of airliners directed to targets on the West Coast. There is an e-mail by Moussaoui, however, dated July 31, 2001 indicating that he sought to take a crop dusting course that was to last up to 6 months. In March 2003, Mohammed reportedly said that Moussaoui was not going to be part of 9/11 but was to be part of a "second wave." Although Ramzi Binalshibh provided him $14,000 in July, accused September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told his trial judge that he had an al Qaeda mission that would have come after the terrorist attacks. KSM explained that Moussaoui's inquiries about crop dusters may have been related to the anthrax work being done by US-trained biochemist and Al Qaeda operative, Malaysian Yazid Sufaat. Zacarias Moussaoui, never the sharpest tool in the shed and thought by his superiors to be unreliable, has told the judge at his trial in a filing that he wants "anthrax for Jew sympathizer only." Al Qaeda's regional operative, Hambali, who was at a key January 2000 meeting and supervised Sufaat, has been captured. Hambali reportedly is cooperating to some degree. KSM and Hambali sent al-Hindi (al-Britani), along with Jafar the Pilot, to case NYC targets for a second wave. It was as part of that surveillance in early 2001 that Jafar the Pilot studied tourist helicopters in the NYC area.
Sufaat, according to both KSM and Hambali, did not have the virulent US Army Ames strain that would be used. That would require someone who had access to the strain. But if experience is any guide, nothing would stand in the way of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri's decade-long quest to weaponize and use anthrax against US targets that was described by one confidante to an Egyptian newspaper reporter. The islamist had been released from Egyptian prison and had known Zawahiri well for many years. Emails from Zawahiri to Atef in the Spring of 1999 indicate that Ayman was a close student of the USAMRIID anthrax program. He believed that the koran instructed that a jihadist should use the weapons used by the crusader. "What we know is that he's always said it was a religious obligation to have the same weapons as their enemies," former CIA OBL unit counter terrorism chief Michael Scheuer has said. The Wall Street Journal reported that a computer used by Zawahiri contains a June 1999 memo that "said the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were 'more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.' ''
Zawahiri was associated with a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad known as the Vanguards of Conquest. Zawahiri and the Vanguards of Conquest were seeking to recreate Mohammed's taking of mecca by a small band through violent attacks on Egyptian leaders. By 1998, Zawahiri had determined that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad should focus on its struggle against the United States and hold off on further attacks against the Egyptian regime.
A key question is how they acquired the anthrax strain first isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab in 1980. According to senior counter terrorism officials, both here and abroad, among the supporters of these militant islamists were people who blended into society and were available to act when another part of the network requested it.
A few days before Christmas 2003, after a renewed audiotape threat by Zawahiri of attacks, to include in the US homeland, the threat level was raised to orange or "high." After the alert condition had long since returned to yellow, Zawahiri in late February issued another audiotape. He urged the President that brigades and brigades would be coming under the banner of jihad carrying death and seeking paradise. Zawahiri said that the US should expect another 9/11 on US soil. According to some reports, Zawahiri is thought by intelligence to be somewhere near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. At one time, some thought he had been spotted in Iran. Wherever he is, authorities need to focus on the traceable connection between him and those
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