A Shock To No One But Liberals & the FBI: Letters Show Al-Qaeda Sought Anthrax Before 9-11

It's in he New York Times, yes; but I wonder what page of the print edition. I'm guessing it's hidden in a fold-out ad for a Macy's sale on flatware.

Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.

The operatives were not immediately able to obtain a sample of the deadly anthrax strain that they wanted to reproduce in their laboratory, according to the letters.

According to these letters. There certainly are many others not captured yet.

The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.

The letters, recently made public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room" with thousands of samples of biological substances.

The scientist tried to buy anthrax vaccines, which would be necessary to protect any Qaeda members working with the material. He also bought a sterilizer, a respirator and an air-contamination detector, one letter said.

"The conference was found to be highly beneficial for our future work," the letter said. "I finalized all the accessories required for the smooth running of our bioreactor."

A separate handwritten letter includes a detailed list of additional equipment that would be necessary, like an incubator and a centrifuge, as well as a crude layout of a four- or five-room laboratory.

The letter specifies a training program for the staff, lasting six to eight months for senior workers and two to four months for technicians.

The letters appear to be the same documents referred to in the report of a special presidential commission on intelligence failures and unconventional weapons led by former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the federal appeals court.

The report, released in March, describes a biological weapons program that "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11."

None of this is proof, but it does suggest that, in legal terminology, the FBI had its head stuck all the way up its ass in insisting, from day one, that the anthrax attacks must have been a domestic lunatic posing as an Al Qaeda terrorist (who just happened to have his anthrax ready to be shipped on 9-11).

posted by Ace at 01:22 PM

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