A Year Later: Evidence points to foreign terrorists as anthrax culprits
PostalMag.com, 9/07/2002

There remains the possibility that Atta and the hijackers are responsible for the Florida anthrax cases and that another person - perhaps Steven Hatfill or another insider/scientist - is responsible for the other anthrax letters. The suspect anthrax contaminated AMI letter, received on September 4th - one week before September 11th, reportedly bears little resemblance to anthrax contaminated letters postmarked after September 11th. The AMI letter has been described as a "weird love letter" to Jennifer Lopez that contained a star of David and a soapy powder. It was addressed to Lopez c/o The Sun Tabloids. Anthrax-contaminated letters sent after 9/11 to Senators Leahy and Daschle and to Tom Brokaw and the editor of the New York Post, contained a sternly worded message that mentioned September 11th and Allah. The AMI letter was designed to be noticed. The other letters were designed to be nondescript until opened. However, a timeline of the anthrax mailings suggests that both parties (Atta and Hatfill/insider) could not have known about the other's plans and that two anthrax mailings conducted by two groups at the same time is highly unlikely.
 

A review of this last year's news accounts of the Florida anthrax cases suggests that Mohamad Atta and his hijacker cohorts are probably responsible for the Florida anthrax cases. To believe that Atta and the hijackers were not responsible for the Florida anthrax cases one would have to discount and ignore a mountain of physical and circumstantial evidence. It appears that they were planning an aerial dissemination of anthrax, but had to settle for letters after running out of time and experiencing difficulties in acquiring a crop duster and related necessary equipment. Below, is just some of the evidence as reported by major news organizations. There's much more: Search google.com or other search engines and news organizations for more information. Use keywords such as "Atta", "anthrax", "Florida", and "AMI".

• AMI, known for the National Enquirer and Sun tabloids and sight of the first anthrax fatality, is within two miles of the Delray Racquet Club, where some of the terrorists stayed in the months before the hijackings and is about 12 miles from the Lantana airport, where Atta flew a light airplane that he rented on four separate occasions in August.
   
• Several of the hijackers rented an apartment from a real estate agent who is the wife of the Sun’s editor, Mike Irish. The hijackers were known to be conducting business and "hanging out" within miles of the AMI building. Hatfill has no known connections to Delray Beach, but the hijackers sure did!
   
• ABC News reports: "Mohamed Atta, a suspected ringleader in the recent terror attacks in New York and Washington, made repeated visits to a crop-dusting airfield in Florida, according to Willie Lee, the chief pilot and general manager of South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade.

  Lee identified Atta to the FBI, telling agents the suspected hijacker came to the airfield as recently as the Saturday before the Sept. 11 attacks, asking questions about the capabilities of crop-dusters, including how big a load of chemicals they could carry.

  Atta was "very persistent about wanting to know how much the airplane will haul, how fast it will go, what kind of range it has," Lee told ABCNEWS.

  "The guy kept trying to get in the airplane," Lee added, saying his ground crew chief had to order Atta away from one of the planes at one point because he kept trying to climb onto the wing and into the cockpit.

  Lee said Atta and as many as 12 or 15 other men appearing to be of Middle Eastern descent visited the airfield in groups of two or three on several weekends prior to the attacks, often taking pictures of the aircraft."
   

• Washington Post reports: "In the waning hours of Operation Desert Fox in 1998, a British missile sheared off the top of a military hangar in southern Iraq and exposed a closely guarded secret. Plainly visible in the rubble was a new breed of Iraqi drone aircraft -- one that defense analysts now believe was specially modified to spread deadly chemicals and germs. Up to a dozen of the unmanned airplanes were spotted inside the hangar, each fitted with spray nozzles and wing-mounted tanks that could carry up to 80 gallons of liquid anthrax. If flown at low altitudes under the right conditions, a single drone could unleash a toxic cloud engulfing several city blocks, a top British defense official concluded. He dubbed them 'drones of death.'" - Atta's plans for crop dusting suspiciously mirror Iraqi efforts. Was Atta planning to use the crop dusters himself for a stash of anthrax he had, or was he acquiring intelligence about crop dusting that he was sending back to Baghdad?
   
• CBS News reports: "Barely two weeks before his arrest, accused Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui," (the so-called 20th hijacker) "inquired about the University of Minnesota's crop-dusting program, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
  
  The newspaper reported Friday that Moussaoui e-mailed the university's Crookston campus on July 31, 2001, seeking information on a "short course you offer to become a crop duster (6 month, 1 years max.)."
   
• It seems that Moussaoui and Atta had some type of substance they were planning to deliver from a crop duster. It's not like they were going to do Florida a public service and spray for mosquitoes. That one can suspect the substance was anthrax rests in the following pieces of evidence:
   
• The New York Times, as did many news organizations, reported the account of a Florida doctor who believes that he treated one of the hijackers for skin anthrax in June 2001. The eventual hijacker had an ugly, dark lesion on his leg and claimed that he got it from bumping into a suitcase months earlier. The antibiotic that the doctor prescribed was found in the hijacker's possessions, which led the FBI to the doctor. After reviewing the case, the doctor was certain that it was a case of skin (cutaneous) anthrax.
   
• A pharmacist in Delray Beach, Florida said he told the FBI that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for something to treat skin lesions (anthrax?) on Atta's hands.

Evidence tying Steven Hatfill to the anthrax mailings: One FBI profile
Evidence tying the September 11th hijackers to the anthrax mailings: Too much to list.

A note about FBI profiles: FBI profilers are sometimes asked to do the impossible. That's the case with the anthrax mailer profile. In the anthrax case, all they have to work with are short notes that contains little more than "YOU DIE NOW", "DEATH TO AMERICA", "DEATH TO ISRAEL", and "ALLAH IS GREAT". (Somehow, the FBI profilers have discerned that the culprit is an American scientist?!) Such was the case in the mid-west pipe bombing case. A short note led FBI profilers to declare that the bomber was an older gentleman who was "set in his ways". The bomber turned out to be Luke Helder, a young college-age kid who was a member of a grunge rock band. Given just tidbits of information, FBI profilers have developed some uncanny profiles that have helped catch a good number of criminals. However, in the anthrax case, FBI profilers simply do not have enough information (if you discount the obvious) to develop a valid profile that can help focus the investigation. Until further evidence is obtained, the focus needs to be on people who wish "death to America and Israel" and think that "Allah is great".
 

FBI: Hijacker-anthrax link coincidental CNN - October 15, 2001 Posted: 11:42 AM EDT (1542 GMT)
  BOCA RATON, Florida (CNN) -- In what the FBI calls a strange coincidence, two apartments used by suspected hijackers named in the September 11 terrorist attacks were rented to them by a real estate agent married to the editor of the tabloid newspaper where an employee died from anthrax.