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Zawahiri's Biodefense Insider: "I successfully achieved the target"

Ross E. Getman, Esq. - 4/20/2007

"I successfully achieved the targets," Ayman Zawahiri's man on the inside wrote. The Defense Intelligence Agency ("DIA") produced the letter to me under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"). Zawahiri's anthrax weaponization efforts were part of a project codenamed Zabadi or "yogurt."

Examples of the documents produced are uploaded:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/letters.html
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze43v8m/letters2.html

The 1999 documents seized in Afghanistan by US forces described the author's visit to the special confidential room at the BL-3 facility where 1000s of pathogenic cultures were kept; his consultation with other scientists on some of technical problems associated with weaponizing anthrax; the bioreactor and laminar flows to be used in Al Qaeda's anthrax lab; and the need for vaccination and containment.

Rauf had arranged to take a lengthy sabbatical from his employer and was grousing that what the employer would be paying during that 12-month period was inadequate and that Dr. Zawahiri would have to make up the difference.

As described by Dr. Peter Turnbull's Conference report on the September 1999 "First European Dangerous Pathogens Conference" (held in Winchester in the UK), the lecture theater only averaged about 75 at peak times by his head count. There had been a problem of defining "dangerous pathogen" and a "disappointing representation from important institutions in the world of hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms." Papers included a summary of plague in Madagascar and another on the outbreak management of haemorrhagic fevers. Dr Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University presented a paper on multilocus VNTR typing, for example, of Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis. There were more than the usual no-show presenters and fill-in speakers. In his report, Dr. Turnbull looked forward to a second, fully international conference in 2000 focused on the ever increasing problems surrounding hazard levels 3 and 4 organisms and aimed at international agreement on the related issues.

A year later, the Sunday at the start of the Organization of the Dangerous Pathogens meeting in September 2000 was gloomy. Planning had proved even more difficult than an international conference on anthrax two years held at the same location. The overseas delegates included a sizable contingent from Russia. The organizers needed to address many thorny issues regarding who could attend. One of the scientists in attendance was Abdur Rauf. The Washington Post reports: "The tall, thin and bespectacled scientist held a doctorate in microbiology but specialized in food production, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case." Les Baillie the head of the biodefense technologies group at Porton Down ran the scientific program. Many of the delegates took an evening cruise round Plymouth harbour -- the cold kept most from staying out on the deck. Later attendees visited the National Marine Aquarium -- with a reception in view of a large tankful of sharks. Addresses include presentations on plagues of antiquity, showing how dangerous infectious diseases had a profound that they changed the course of history. Titles include “Magna pestilencia - Black Breath, Black Rats, Black Death”, “From Flanders to Glanders,” as well as talks on influenza, typhoid and cholera. The conference was co-sponsored by DERA, the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.

Les Baillie of Porton Down gave a presentation titled, “Bacillus anthracis: a bug with attitude! ” He argued that anthrax was a likely pathogen to be used by terrorists. As described at the time by Phil Hanna of University of Michigan Medical School on the Society for Applied Microbiology ("SFAM") webpage, Baillie "presented a comprehensive overview of this model pathogen, describing its unique biology and specialized molecular mechanisms for pathogenesis and high virulence. He went on to describe modern approaches to exploit new bioinformatics for the development of potential medical counter measures to this deadly pathogen."

Despite the cold and the sharks, amidst all the camaraderie and bonhomie no one suspected that despite the best efforts, a predator was on board -- on a coldly calculated mission to obtain a pathogenic anthrax strain and the know-how to weaponize it. Peter Turnbull had received funding from the British defense ministry. Public health authorities thought anthrax too obscure to warrant the funding. By 2001, sponsorship of the conference was assumed by USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

According to the Pakistan press, a microbiologist named Abdur Rauf was picked up in late 2001 by the CIA in Karachi. The most recent of the correspondence produced under FOIA by the DIA dates back to the summer and fall of 1999. Even to the extent Dr. Rauf cooperated with the CIA, he apparently could only confirm the depth of Zawahiri's interest in weaponizing anthrax and provided no "smoking gun" concerning the identity of those responsible for the anthrax mailings in the Fall 2001. His only connection with SFAM was a member of the society -- he was not an employee. The Pakistan ISI, according to the Washington Post article in October 2006, stopped cooperating in regard to Rauf in early 2003.

Delivering the James Smart Lecture, entitled "Global Terrorism: are we meeting the challenge?" at the headquarters of the City of London Police, Ms Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, said: "Western security services have uncovered networks of individuals, sympathetic to the aims of al-Qa'ida, that blend into society, individuals who live normal, routine lives until called upon for specific tasks by another part of the network." She concluded: "The threats of chemical, biological and radiological and suicide attacks require new responses and the Government alone will not achieve all of it; industry and even the public must take greater responsibility for their own security."

Rauf lived in Pakistan where he worked for the government. He would come to the UK once a year. Malaysian Yazid Sufaat got the job handling things at the lab instead of Rauf. Zawahiri, in keeping with his past experience, likely would have kept things strictly compartmentalized -- leaving the Amerithrax Task Force much to do.