The 1st Encounter: June
2001
The first encounter with anthrax
occurred in Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida in June 2001. Ahmed Alhaznawi, who identified
himself as a pilot, was brought to the emergency
room by an associate, also claiming to be a pilot.
The emergency was that he had an ugly, black lesion
on his leg. Dr. Christos Tsonas examined it, but
was unable to identify the pathogen involved since
he had not previously seen a black lesion of that
type. Alhaznawi told him it had been caused by
a bump. So he prescribed an antibiotic for the
infection. In September, it was discovered that
Ahmed Alhaznawi was one of the hijackers of United
Airlines Flight 93. Dr. Tsonas prescription was
found in his room in Florida. In October, Dr.
Tsonas was shown pictures of black lesions caused
by anthrax by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center
for Civilian Bio- defense Strategies. He concluded
from these photos and other information about
Anthrax that the lesion he had examined in June
had been caused by handling anthrax. He stated
for the record that the lesion "was consistent
with cutaneous (skin) anthrax." If so, Alhaznawi
and his associate had lied to Dr. Tsonas to conceal
their contact with Anthrax bacteria. This would
suggest that at least two of the terrorist hijackers
were involved in the first incident.
The Second Encounter: August or September 2001
The second
encounter with Anthrax occurred in around September
2001 at the headquarters of American Media, inc
in Boca Raton, Florida . The 66,000 square foot
office building was completely contaminated with
anthrax spores, causing the death of an employee,
Robert Stevens on October 2nd. Since the incubation
period for anthrax can be four weeks or more,
the date of the attack cannot be narrowed down
to before or after September 11th. No warning,
letter or envelope was found in this attack. Nor
is not known how the anthrax was delivered. The
attacker could have sent it in a letter or package,
or he (or they) could have hand-delivered it to
the building. Since Anthrax spores were distributed
throughout the building— not just in the mail
room— its point of origin is unknown. (That traces
found in local post offices does not solve the
mystery since they could have been the result
of cross-contamination from American Media's outgoing
rather than its incoming mail.) The only evidence
in this second attack is the anthrax recovered
from the body Robert Stevens. The anthrax was
identified as the virulent Ames strain. When
the DNA was analyzed by the Institute for Genetic
research (TIGR) it was determined that the source
of anthrax was samples of the Ames strain at either
the US Army Medical Research Institute at Fort
Detrick or the CAMR lab at Porton Downs in Britain
(It could not distinguish between them.) Since
these are closed facilities, an employee of one
of these two labs, acting either an agent for
a state or acting on his own behalf, stole a trace
of the sample. The theft could have occurred any
time in the past 12 years. Such a theft would
not be difficult for someone with access since
it would require only a microscopic amount— indeed,
a quantity that could be smuggled out in a pencil
point. Since there was no warning, ultimatum
or propaganda found in the building, this attack
may have served as a test. The attackers presumably
wanted to determine the lethality of the anthrax
mixture, its ability to disperse and the response
time of US bio-terror defenses. If so, they presumably
were close enough to the attack site to assess
the results.
The Third Encounter: September 18th, 2001
On Sept 18th 2001, two identical anthrax-laced
letters, with no return address, were sent from
Trenton to NBC and the New York Post in New York
City. The photocopied letters contained both a
warning and a message in eighteen block- written
words. It warned that an anthrax attack was "next"
and advised the letter- openers to take "penacilin,"
thus alerting the medical system. The message
was: "Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah
is Great." The anthrax in both letters was from
the same Ames strain used in the first attack.
It was prepared in dry powder form. Since the
samples at the US Army Medical Research Institute
at Fort Detrick or the CAMR lab at Porton Downs
in Britain were in wet slurry form, someone had
to grow and prepare the attack anthrax. So there
were at least 3 roles involved in this anthrax
attack: The theft of the sample, which required
access to one of two government labs; the preparation,
which required biotech equipment, such as a centrifuge,
and a mailer, which required a person in Trenton,
NJ on September 18th. Since these letters were
sent to both a national and local news organization,
and accompanied by letters, the attack may have
been designed as a media alert. Its design was
to cause panic.
The Fourth Encounter: October 9th, 2001
On October 9th, two anthrax-laced envelopes
were sent to two Democratic Senators, Senator
Tom Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy in Washington
DC. Both contained identical photo-copies letters.
The message stated "You can not stop us. We have
this anthrax." By using the plural "we" and "us,"
the attack party described itself as a conspiracy.
The enclosed letters contained billions of such
spores of the same virulent Ames strain as the
second and third encounter. Many spores were as
small as one micron in diameter (one-twentieth
of a human hair). The tiny size made these virulent
spores into aerosol weapons capable of infecting
the entire United States Congress. The difference
in the size of the anthrax is the third and fourth
encounter demonstrated that the attacker had an
operational lab, capable of progressively refining
and weaponizing the anthrax. The facility, at
a minimum, would have to be constructed to avoid
any leakage of spores while they were sequentially
filtered and moved from glass slides into envelopes.
Since large spore counts can defeat both antibiotics
and vaccine-induced immunity, the preparers of
the attack anthrax themselves require protection
akin to a Biosafety Level 3 facility, in which
lab workers use either moon suits or gloved boxes.
The inability of the FBI to find this lab, despite
a massive investigations, indicated that the lab
is either extremely well stealthed or located
abroad outside the purview of US investigators.
By the fourth encounter, the attacking party,
which had identified itself as a group in the
letters, demonstrated that: 1) it had penetrated
a well-guarded American or British bio-warfare
facility with an agent with access to the Ames
Strain. 2) it had the equipment and technology
to create new batches of anthrax, weaponized it
and insert billions of spores in envelopes. 3)
it had the means to deliver it anonymously through
the mails. 4) It had enough security around its
apparatus to remain undetected.
Such an attack may have been
meant as a demonstration of a both a weapon and
a delivery system. As a weapon, it demonstrated
that mere two letters could shut down a high-priority
building. The Hart Senate Office Building took
3 months and cost $14 million to detoxify to the
point that it could be re-opened. Presumably any
other facility with a ventilation system could
be paralyzed. The postal system, both public and
private, could also be shut down.
As a delivery system, it demonstrated
that the international postal systems was capable
of delivering hundreds, if not thousands, of anthrax
letters from abroad as well as the United States,
which would cross- contaminate other letters.
The fourth encounter demonstrated, in short, a
poor man's weapon of mass destruction that could
be used for purposes of an ultimatum or deterrence.
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