Chapter 7: The Hijacker Connection

The claim that the anthrax attacks were the result of a high level domestic conspiracy in the U.S. will be shocking to some readers, but it will probably be less shocking than the companion claim that the domestic group that perpetrated this crime was linked to, or identical with, the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. But if we are committed to following the anthrax evidence wherever it may lead, we will find ourselves among the 19 Hijackers of 9/11 fame.

The Florida Connection

At least 15 of the 19 Hijackers had a connection to Florida.[1] The main area of their activity was along the southeast coast between West Palm Beach and Miami. The first person to die from anthrax, Robert Stevens, perished in Boca Raton, in the midst of this short strip, roughly 71 miles long.[2] Was there a connection between the first anthrax death and the Hijackers? The answer is Yes. 

Anthrax victim Robert Stevens worked as a photo editor for a tabloid in Boca Raton called the Sun.[3] (The Sun, now defunct, was owned by American Media Inc., which also owns the National Enquirer.) The editor-in-chief of the Sun was a man named Mike Irish, whose wife Gloria had a direct connection to two of the Hijackers. Gloria Irish was a real estate agent and she had found apartments, in the summer of 2001, for Marwan al-Shehhi and Hamza al-Ghamdi.[4] 

Al-Shehhi was, according to the official narrative of 9/11, a major player in the attacks. He is said to have been a close friend of ringleader Atta for years, having stayed with him in Hamburg and having been involved in early plans for attacks on the U.S. He is said to have had a joint bank account with Atta and to have been seen with him on many occasions in the U.S. On 9/11 itself, not long after Atta allegedly piloted a plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Al- Shehhi allegedly piloted a plane into the South Tower.[5] 

The links between Gloria Irish, the two Hijackers, and the anthrax attacks were apparently first reported on October 14, 2001.[6] The story was carried prominently in many newspapers on October 15.[7] The Washington Post’s Justin Blum was quick to say that his newspaper had interviewed Gloria Irish twice in September—but, of course, this was in relation to her connection to the Hijackers, not in relation to anthrax since the anthrax attacks were not public knowledge at that time.[8] 

On the occasions when she was willing to give interviews, Gloria Irish acknowledged that she remembered al-Shehhi and al-Ghamdi well, having driven them around town for three weeks.[9] She told one investigator: “I mean, Marwan called me all the time.”[10] She evidently liked al- Shehhi. “He was the only customer I ever had who called up to say he would be five minutes late.”[11] Or, again: “They were calling a lot. Marwan would come in laughing saying, ‘It’s us again.’”[12] Her two customers were, apparently, untypical for her. “I had never met Arabs before, and there they were.” “I wanted to tell them I was Jewish, but I didn’t.”[13] 

But if Gloria Irish had some familiarity with the two Hijackers, she had much more familiarity with Robert Stevens. Mike Irish had known Stevens for 25 years. Gloria Irish had found Robert Stevens’ house for him.[14] That is to say, she was the real estate agent of the first anthrax victim and of two of the 9/11 Hijackers. 

There were more than two Hijackers involved in the Irish affair. Nawaf al-Hazmi was said to have accompanied his two fellow Hijackers, as well as Irish, on their search for housing.[15] And once the two apartments were found, two Hijackers settled down in each one, making the apartments found by Irish home to four Hijackers.[16] The Delray Racquet Club apartment at 755 Dotterel Road, one of the two apartments, was a site of serious federal investigation. According to an October 15, 2001 article by the St. Petersburg Times:[17]

The Delray apartment is central to a massive federal investigation into the terrorist attacks. Investigators trying to piece the puzzle together created a diagram that includes photos of the 19 hijackers who seized control of four airplanes on Sept. 11. 

At the center of the diagram, which was obtained by the Miami Herald: an image of a house with the address 755 Dotterel Road. Arrows connect nine of the hijackers to the icon. 

The St. Petersburg Times posed the question: “It is clear that the apartment was a meeting ground for terrorists, authorities say. Now they must determine whether unit 1504 was also a hatching ground for the anthrax attacks.”[18] 

The St. Petersburg Times had no hesitation in saying that these discoveries revealed a link between the Hijackers and the company, American Media Inc. (AMI), whose employee had died. The newspaper entitled its article, “Hijackers linked to tabloid,” and it referred to “a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases.”[19] In truth, it was not merely the company that was linked: the physical building in Boca Raton that housed AMI was contaminated by anthrax spores. By the time the Gloria Irish connection was revealed three people in that building had tested positive for anthrax exposure and one of them (Robert Stevens) had developed inhalation anthrax and died.[20] 

Gloria and Mike Irish tried to extricate themselves from this web of connections by promoting a coincidence theory. “I can’t blame [the media] for trying to build a story, but in fact there was none,” Gloria Irish is quoted as saying, while her husband, Mike, added: “It was just a total coincidence.”[21] 

The Irishes are not the only ones committed to the coincidence theory. When the FBI first publicly spoke of Gloria Irish in relation to anthrax (on October 14, 2001), the Bureau simultaneously implied it had discovered a connection between the Hijackers and the anthrax case and that this connection was only apparent. “It’s just a coincidence right now,” said FBI spokesperson Judy Orihuela.[22] The Washington Post explained that, according to Orihuela, “there is no indication that Gloria Irish’s work with the suspected hijackers is connected to the anthrax case.”[23] Although Orihuela said hopefully that, “I’m sure there will be some sort of follow-up,”[24] the coincidence theory remains to this day the FBI’s choice. 

But the coincidence theory is not credible. In addition to other links to be explored in this chapter, there are obvious facts about the spatial congruence just explored that cannot be ignored. Many Hijackers lived, at one time or another, in this vicinity. “Six of them had addresses in Delray Beach or Fort Lauderdale, a few miles from the AMI building where the Sun was published.”[25] AMI employees are said to have gone to the same gym as Atta.[26] In addition, two of the Hijackers were reported to have taken out subscriptions to publications of AMI, where Stevens worked.[27] Mike Irish, a licensed pilot, was a former member of the Civil Air Patrol based at Lantana airport, the same airport where Atta supposedly rented a plane in August, 2001.[28] Anthrax victim Stevens lived in Lantana.[29] 

Academic researchers have largely tended to dismiss the Florida connections by accepting the FBI’s coincidence theory. Jeanne Guillemen comments in her 2011 study: 

Bureau agents had put enormous energy into testing the terrorists’ cars, personal possessions, and apartments for any signs of B. anthracis and found nothing. Coincidences abounded in Florida—al Qaeda operatives had rented an apartment through a real estate agent married to the editor of The Sun—but no evidence of a foreign source for the letters had surfaced.[30] 

The question, however, is not whether actual hijackers were involved in sending out letters laden with anthrax spores: the question is whether fictions, verbal or enacted, were intentionally created to make this narrative seem credible. The Hijackers did not have anthrax, but the script portrayed them as likely to have it. 

Some sought a way to rescue the FBI’s feeble coincidence hypothesis, explaining the Florida connection by assuming that Ivins, or a similar lone wolf, was an opportunistic killer whom September 11, 2001 had motivated to frame Muslims and fraudulently construct a link to 9/11, making a first attempt in Florida because Florida by that time was already well known as a haunt of the Hijackers. 

A theory of this sort was put forth pretty early in the investigation (before Ivins was a person of interest) by Don Foster, a professor of English whom the FBI had brought into the investigation.[31] Foster suggested that the anthrax killer may have been a misguided American scientist with access to highly lethal anthrax. This scientist, having seen the devastation of the 9/11 attacks and knowing how vulnerable the U.S. was to a bioweapons attack, might have wanted to make the point that the U.S. needed to start large scale funding of bioweapons research and thought the point could be made in a dramatic way with a few casualties. In order to link the attack to 9/11 and thus keep attention focused on foreign terrorists he or she chose Florida, where the hijackers were known to have based themselves, as the obvious choice for an initial attack. 

Foster’s theory will not fly without major reworking. In addition to the weaknesses of any lone wolf theory, which this book sets forth, Foster’s explanation, while it might explain why anthrax was delivered to Florida, will have difficulty explaining the precise and multiple connections between the Hijackers and AMI. The full set of connections between Stevens, Gloria Irish, AMI, and the Hijackers was not made public until after Robert Stevens’ death.[32] A Bruce Ivins or similar anthrax scientist would not have had access to this detailed information in time to target the first victim. Moreover, all evidence that indicates that the master narrative of the fall attacks had been established prior to 9/11—inter alia setting up Iraq through false statements about its anthrax supplies and means of delivery—rules out opportunistic patriots. The evidence suggests a grand plan, not an opportunistic foray. 

The Florida narratives referred to above do not exhaust the repertoire of stories meant to connect the purported al-Qaeda attackers to the anthrax attacks. In addition to the crop-duster scenarios discussed later in this chapter, The New York Times published a story of a Hijacker with a mysterious black lesion on his leg, later judged by some experts to have been cutaneous anthrax.[33] (The chief experts in this case were associated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense, one of the co-sponsors of the Dark Winter simulation.[34]) The same article reported a Hijacker looking for relief from irritation of the hands, supposedly resulting from his work with chemicals needed for the production of bioweapons.[35] There was a report of Hijacker corporeal remains, after the alleged crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11, testing positive for anthrax,[36] and a separate report of an al-Qaeda facility in an “overseas site” that tested positive for anthrax.[37] 

All of these reports were used to link the 9/11 attacks to the anthrax attacks. Considered important evidence at one time, the reports are now passed over in silence. 

The Hijackers

Readers unfamiliar with dissident writings questioning the official version of the events of 9/11 may find this book’s skeptical treatment of the Hijackers surprising and perplexing. Why are some people not convinced that these men hijacked planes on 9/11? And if they did not hijack planes does this mean that they had no connection to 9/11 and that their presence in the anthrax narratives fails to connect the anthrax attacks to the 9/11 attacks? 

Although there are numerous uncertainties about their identities and histories, there was certainly a group of young Arab men with connections to the 9/11 operation. There is a wealth of material relating to their presence in the U.S. prior to the attacks—renting apartments, attending flight schools—and to their suspicious actions during the immediate lead-up to the attacks.[38] But there is no credible evidence that they were involved in planning the attacks and there is no credible evidence they hijacked four planes on September 11. Rather, they appear to have been following a script, laying a trail that would later lead people to conclude they were hijackers. What their awareness of the overall operation may have been it is difficult to say. 

The following remarks are aimed at providing a brief introduction to the skeptical stance toward the Hijackers.

Burden of Proof

The concept of burden of proof suggests that if someone is accused of a crime the responsibility of providing evidence and making a case lies with the accusers. The accused, and those supporting the accused, do not have an equivalent responsibility to prove innocence. The accused is to be presumed innocent. 

If the U.S. government is convinced the 19 Arab men carried out the crime it must present its evidence. Indeed, this was the request of the Taliban, who indicated they would then turn over Osama bin Laden (thus obviating what would become the longest war in U.S. history)—but such proof was never forthcoming. The exhortation to simply trust the U.S. government, and the studies and reports associated with that government (such as the 9/11 Commission Report and the various studies by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology), is misguided. Deciding to trust government and to ignore evidence that conflicts with what government claims is unwise at the best of times, and in the present case it is strikingly irrational. The government that accused these 19 men of carrying out hijackings is the same government that made false statements about Iraq 935 times; it is the same government that is revealed in the Downing Street memo and in much other documentation as having conspired to deceive the public in order to carry out its agenda. 

The U.S. government’s attempts to furnish evidence that the 19 Arab men hijacked planes on 9/11 have failed to meet basic standards. 

Researcher Elias Davidsson has noted that, “the following five classes of evidence should have been produced by the US authorities in September 2001 or shortly thereafter:” [39] 

1. Authenticated passenger lists (or flight manifests), listing the names of all the passengers and crew members, including those suspected of hijacking; 
2. Authenticated boarding cards (or their detached coupons), on which the names of all the passengers and crew members figure, including those suspected of hijacking; 
3. Authenticated security videos from the airports, which depict the passengers (and the alleged hijackers) arriving at the airport, in front of check-in counters, passing security checkpoints and boarding the aircraft; 
4. Sworn testimonies of personnel who attended the boarding of the aircraft; 
5. Formal identification of the bodies or bodily remains from the crash sites, including chain-of-custody reports.” 

U.S. authorities, Davidsson notes, have not only failed to deliver all five of these classes of evidence but have failed to deliver a single one. 

But the FBI’s case concerning the 9/11 attacks is not merely unproved: it has a host of difficulties that make it extremely implausible. Here are eight categories under which these difficulties can be organized.

1. Strange behavior of the Hijackers 

The 9/11 Commission Report makes inadequate distinctions when dealing with the religious beliefs and practices of the Hijackers. One moment we receive evidence that they were pious Muslims; the next minute we are supposed to believe they were “fundamentalist;” and then we are led to believe they were violent extremists keen to kill themselves and large numbers of innocent others.[40] Further, The 9/11 Commission Report does not attempt to deal adequately with the media reports, which began soon after 9/11, of the peculiar behavior of the Hijackers, which included consumption of alcohol to the point of intoxication, as well as indulgence in cocaine, prostitutes, sex toys and lap-dancing.[41] This behavior certainly is not compatible with the first two options (piety and fundamentalism), and, in fact, stands as evidence that these characterizations were false. 

The questions must be asked: Who were these men, and what were their real beliefs and aims? 

2. Anomalies in the behavior of people on the hijacked planes 

Pilots whose planes are being hijacked can punch in a hijack code to let the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) know what is happening. It takes a few seconds to enter this four-digit code. Yet, although we are told four planes were hijacked on 9/11, not one of the eight men trained to do this (four pilots and four copilots) entered the code. In the case of “Flight 93,” which allegedly crashed in Shanksville after a passenger revolt, we are told it took more than 30 seconds for the Hijackers to break through the door and overwhelm the pilot and copilot, yet no hijack code was entered.[42] 

Within this category of anomalies belong the stories of passengers on the hijacked flights making phone calls, including cell phone calls, describing their situation and sending messages to loved ones. The contradictions, peculiarities and impossibilities in these phone calls have been catalogued and are available for public review.[43] 

3. “Drama queen” episodes

This category includes those cases where a Hijacker for whom secrecy is crucial repeatedly draws attention to himself, laying down a trail while creating an unforgettable persona. 

Here is a partial list of Mohamed Atta stories and episodes: 

1. Atta Annoys Airport Employees[44] 
2. Atta Leaves Incriminating Evidence in his Luggage (below, point 5) 
3. Atta is Bitten By a Dog[45] 
4. Atta Visits a Drugstore and Frightens an Employee[46] 
5. Atta Gets Pulled Over for Driving Without a License (and has a warrant for his arrest issued after he fails to show up for his court hearing)[47] 
6. Atta Abandons a Stalled Plane on the Runway[48] 
7. Atta Seeks a Federal Loan to Help Him Commit Mass Murder (later in this chapter) 
8. Atta Gets Drunk and Swears at a Restaurant Employee[49] 
9. Atta Threatens to Cut the Throat of a Federal Employee (later in this chapter) 

In at least two of these episodes (c, e) Atta’s actions apparently brought him to the attention of the police, and in two other cases (a, d) he appears to have narrowly missed the attention of the police. This seems like odd behavior for the ringleader of a secret operation. 

Atta did not necessarily do all the things recounted in these tales. As pointed out in this book, we often find ourselves confronting fiction of various sorts. But whether the accounts were accurate or fictional, they had the effect of making the Mohamed Atta persona frightening and unforgettable. And after a certain point a conflict arises between this persona and the profile fitting a sophisticated leader on a secret mission. 

4. Inability to carry out duties

The skills, determination and physical robustness of the men who hijacked four airplanes on 9/11—subduing crews and passengers and piloting the planes to new and very precise destinations—would have needed to be exceptional. But the evidence we have of the official Hijackers does not support this characterization. 

Hani Hanjour exemplifies the point.[50] 

Hanjour was, according to the official story of 9/11, the man who piloted a Boeing 757 into the Pentagon. The act was described at the time as a very impressive feat of flying.[51] While Hanjour could have simply steered the plane into the very large roof of the Pentagon, hoping for the best—there would have been many casualties—he is said to have chosen instead to execute a rapid and precise spiral descent so as to come in low and strike the side of the building virtually at ground level, clipping light poles as he went.[52] 

ABC News was told by an air traffic controller at Dulles International Airport: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.”[53] 

Who was this man, described by the 9/11 Commission as “the operation’s most experienced pilot”[54]? Hanjour has been characterized by those who met him in one of the many flight schools he attended as small, unassuming and quiet, and as an extraordinarily poor pilot.[55] One of his flight instructors said: “He could not fly at all.”[56] 

On what did the 9/11 Commission base its claim that Hanjour had the competence to fly a Boeing 757 the way it was allegedly flown on 9/11? The Report notes that he had obtained a private pilot’s license in the late 1990s, and that he followed this up with “a commercial pilot certificate” in 1999.[57] There are numerous elements of the story, however, that the Report omitted. It omitted the mystery as to when and where he received his “commercial pilot certificate”—the FAA refused to say.[58] Moreover, as Jeremy Hammond has pointed out, “[c]ontrary to the…assertion that this certificate allowed him ‘to fly commercial jets,’ in fact it only allowed him to begin passenger jet training. Hanjour did so, only to fail the class.”[59] 

The Commission Report also neglected to note that Hanjour had been reported repeatedly to the FAA by one of his flight schools, Jet Tech, whose manager, Peggy Chevrette, found his skills completely inadequate.[60] 

While admitting that his skills were substandard,[61] the 9/11 Commission suggested that perseverance eventually led him to master the art of flying.[62] The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this is false. He never mastered the art. Just three weeks prior to the 9/11 operation, Hanjour was still unable to handle competently a single-engine Cessna.[63] As for his competence in handling a Boeing 757, there is no evidence that he had ever flown any sort of jet.[64] 

The Commission’s claim that Hanjour’s perseverance had finally paid off and that he had attained, in the weeks before 9/11, the required skills, seemed to receive support from an assessment Hanjour received shortly before the 9/11 attacks. In an endnote dealing with August, 2001 preparations for the 9/11 attacks, the Commission Report notes that “Hanjour successfully conducted a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg, Maryland, landing at a small airport with a difficult approach. The instructor thought Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation.” The endnote indicates its source as “Eddie Shalev interview (Apr. 9, 2004).”[65] 

The FBI interview of Eddie Shalev was finally released in 2009.[66] In this document we learn that Shalev, who formerly “served in the Israeli [sic] Defense Forces in the paratroop regiment,” came to the U.S. a few months before 9/11 (April, 2001), having been “sponsored for employment” by Congressional Air Charters. The document notes that Shalev was left unemployed when Congressional Air Charters went out of business and that he might soon (in 2004, it seems) have to go back to Israel. 

Presumably, Shalev did go back to Israel: researchers trying to find him in the U.S. have been unsuccessful.[67] 

Shalev’s judgment conflicts with a mass of contrary testimony about Hanjour’s flying skills. There is no valid reason to favor an assessment by a vanished man from a defunct company over assessments made by known, competent and accessible persons in the U.S. who trained and tested Hanjour and whose descriptions of his skills are a matter of record. 

Not surprisingly, a number of pilots experienced in flying Boeing 757s and familiar with the details of the movements of the plane that approached the Pentagon on 9/11 have said that whoever or whatever may have been controlling the plane, it was not definitely not Hani Hanjour.[68] 

The Hanjour case throws into question the entire Hijacker narrative. 

5. Staged crime scenes

The Chinese have an expression that may be translated loosely as “painting legs on the snake.” The expression is said to come from an old story about two artists.[69] The artists were rivals and decided on a competition to see who could paint the best snake in the shortest time. One artist finished so quickly that he had time to spare, and he decided to improve his snake by painting legs on it. Naturally, he lost the competition. He had gone too far and added false details that discredited his work. 

There are several accounts of Hijackers where the creators of scenarios have painted legs on the snake. The story of Mohamed Atta asking for a government loan, recounted later in this chapter, is one such instance. 

But in addition to narrative accounts we also confront cases of physical evidence that appear to be legs on the snake. More familiar designations for what we face here are “planted evidence” and “staged crime scenes.” 

The passport of Hijacker Satam al-Suqami was allegedly found intact near the World Trade Center crime scene. A journalist writing for the Guardian, although wrongly identifying the Hijacker as Atta, was able to see the absurdity of this evidence: “the idea that Atta’s passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged [strains] credulity.”[70] 

Another example of apparently planted evidence is the material supposedly left by Mohamed Atta at Logan airport. In the developed form of this tale, “flight simulation manuals for Boeing airplanes, a copy of the Koran, a religious cassette tape, a note to other hijackers about mental preparations, and Atta’s will, passport, and international driver’s license” were all found in the luggage that was, mysteriously, not loaded onto his final flight.[71] The suspect nature of the evidence did not escape the immediate notice of investigators. Seymour Hersh noted years ago: 

Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.”[72] 

The question is: who deliberately left this trail? There was no evident advantage in such a procedure for either al- Qaeda or a state sponsor of al-Qaeda. 

These examples are two of many that could be given—the Hijackers left a treasure trove of evidence.[73] 

Those who refuse to believe that the U.S. military or intelligence community would plant evidence in such a serious case should consult the Operation Northwoods planning document of 1962, wherein the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed the view that “[i]t is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack”. Disturbingly, the document outlines how evidence might then be planted, in the hope of finding, through such a fraudulent incident, a pretext to invade Cuba: 

At precisely the same time that the aircraft was presumably shot down a submarine or small surface craft would disburse F-101 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately 15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast and depart… Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched and parts of aircraft found.[74] 

6. Deception and cover-up

The many instances of deception that the Bush administration was involved in preceding the illegal invasion of Iraq are well known. Recall the 935 false statements referred to earlier. But some of the known fictions involved the Hijackers. The “Mohamed Atta Visits Prague” story is a case in point: as noted earlier, this fiction was promoted by several members of the Bush administration and had a clear central purpose of tying Iraq to the Hijackers. But there is plenty of evidence of deception also on the part of the official investigating bodies charged with looking into the 9/11 attacks in addition to that related to Hani Hanjour, described above. David Ray Griffin’s book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions,[75] gives numerous examples. 

Once these deceptions come to light we are forced to ask: Why omit and distort if there is nothing to hide? Why pretend Hani Hanjour flew into the Pentagon? Why pretend Satam al-Suqami’s passport was found at the World Trade Center? 

Those who deliberately misrepresent evidence of a crime make themselves suspects in the crime. 

7. Intelligence connections

Early reports after 9/11 noted that some of the Hijackers had spent time in San Diego. The San Diego Union- Tribune gave details on September 16, 2001, noting:[76] 

Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Friday night sifted through belongings left behind by Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who rented a room from September through December last year [2000] in the Lemon Grove home of prominent Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh. 

Elaborating on the nature of the San Diego host, the Union-Tribune explained: “The retired San Diego State University English professor said he often invites students to live in his five-bedroom house for companionship and to learn other cultures and languages.” 

Shaikh, who had “deep ties to San Diego,” was said to have become “fond of Alhamzi”. (Recall that Nawaf al- Hazmi, also known as Alhamzi, apparently accompanied Irish, al-Shehhi and al-Ghamdi on their later apartment hunting in Florida.) Outraged “after hearing his former house guests identified as terrorists in a radio news report,” Shaikh contacted the FBI. 

Exactly one year later, September 16, 2002, the American public discovered how easy it must have been for Shaikh to contact the FBI. He had been a trusted FBI asset for years. “The connection just discovered by congressional investigators,” said Newsweek, “has stunned some top counterterrorism officials.”[77] 

Neither the officials nor the media seem to have remained stunned for long, apparently accepting the theory that the odd circumstance was simply a result of poor communication. The FBI did not allow Shaikh to testify before the 9/11 Congressional inquiry.[78] 

This was not the only case of Hijacker connections to intelligence agencies. For example, it eventually came out that one of the Hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, had three cousins alleged to have worked for intelligence agencies. One had worked for East German, West German and Libyan intelligence,[79] while the other two were arrested in Lebanon in 2008 and accused of spying for Israel.[80] Possible connections between the Hijackers and Israeli intelligence are especially interesting. 

A leaked 2001 document from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), an agency of the Department of Justice, made it clear that over 120 Israeli intelligence personnel, pretending to be art students, were aggressively active in the U.S. during 2000 and 2001, in the same places as the Hijackers.[81] 

Journalist Christopher Ketcham set out many of the key facts about the “art students” in 2002[82] and added further information in a 2007 article in CounterPunch.[83] In the latter article he also discussed a set of Israeli intelligence agents associated with Urban Moving Systems in New York City. 

About the “art students,” Ketcham remarks: 

In retrospect, the fact that a large number of “art students” operated out of Hollywood [within the 71 mile strip of territory mentioned above] is intriguing, to say the least. During 2001, the city, just north of Miami, was a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity and served as one of the chief staging grounds for the hijacking of the World Trade Center planes and Pennsylvania plane; it was home to fifteen of the nineteen future hijackers, nine in Hollywood and six in the surrounding area. Among the 120 suspected Israeli spies posing as art students, more than thirty lived in the Hollywood area, ten in Hollywood proper.[84] 

Ketcham gives an example of the spatial congruence at issue. Hanan Serfaty, an “art student” who was actually a former Israeli intelligence officer, “rented two apartments close to the mail drop and apartment of Mohammed Atta and four other hijackers.” Atta and al-Shehhi lived “some 1,800 feet from Serfaty’s South 21st Avenue apartment.”[85] 

Neither Ketcham nor the publications in which his articles appeared were prepared to consider the possibility that the Israeli spies may have been actively involved in some way in the 9/11 attacks, but disconcerting facts emerge from Ketcham’s study and other sources. 

The spatial congruence noted for Hollywood, Florida, for example, can hardly be a coincidence: 

In at least six urban centers, suspected Israeli spies and 9/11 hijackers and/or al-Qaeda-connected suspects lived and operated near one another, in some cases less than half a mile apart, for various periods during 2000-1 in the run-up to the attacks.[86] 

In addition, there is strong evidence that Israeli intelligence operatives working with a front company in New York City, Urban Moving Systems, had detailed foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. The UMS operatives were caught celebrating, and catching the World Trade Center and each others’ joyous expressions on camera, after the impact of the first plane into the World Trade Center, before the rest of the country had even reached the conclusion that a terrorist attack was taking place.[87] 

Ketcham, and several others in the mainstream media who have examined this issue, have been concerned that the Israelis (those working with UMS as well as the “art students”), due to their spying on al-Qaeda operatives, may have gained detailed foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks that they then did not share with U.S. intelligence agencies. Of course the other possibility is that the Israelis were directly complicit in the 9/11 operation. 

It was claimed in the fall of 2001 that U.S. intelligence had been warned by Israel before 9/11 of a major upcoming attack in the U.S. by Bin Laden. The story of Israel’s warnings was widely reported in the media. The warnings were said to have run from the summer until late August of 2001 and to have included considerable detail, such as the fact that it was an al-Qaeda operation, that there were 19 men involved, and that Iraq might be involved as well.[88] 

But the actions of the UMS operatives are hard to reconcile with the theory of the benign Israelis spies. Their early and joyous celebrations suggest that, instead of dedicating themselves to giving actionable warnings that could have led to the saving of lives, they were happy the attacks were successful.

8. Revised narratives

Sufficient documentation has survived to allow us to see fictional Hijacker narratives in the process of construction. We can see the false starts, the contradictions and unsupported allegations, the revisions and the cover-ups. It is impossible to take these stories at face value once the cutting and pasting have been made visible. 

Some of the stitched together stories are very important. An example is the story of the Hijackers (originally Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, later revised to Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari) who flew from Portland, Maine to Boston on the morning of 9/11, thereafter joining the two doomed flights out of Boston. (One of the significant elements of this tale is Atta’s luggage, referred to earlier, which failed to make it from his Portland flight to his Boston flight.) To support the revised version of this story the FBI eventually offered a detailed chronology with photographs and videos, as well as an affidavit.[89] But this evidence is riddled with contradictions, leaving the story without support.[90] 

When the chief of the local Portland police attempted to investigate these incidents he was told by the FBI to mind his own business. In fact, he was told he was risking “obstruction of justice.”[91] The FBI had been granted exclusive control over the investigation of the 9/11 events, and there were many instances of local police throughout the country being ignored or pushed aside.[92] 

The above are classes of evidence that do not fit the official narrative of the Hijackers and that, therefore, force sincere investigators to doubt whether the 19 Arab men really hijacked planes on 9/11. If they did not hijack planes, some party went to a great deal of trouble to pretend that they did. 

Crop-duster Planes

How did the media and the government explain the foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks once the actual attacks began? Surely with a run on Cipro and a whole series of warnings and representations related to imminent bioweapons attacks there must have been some evidential basis—some troublesome event or events—that could be used to justify this foreknowledge. 

There had been urgent but vague references to the dangers of biological and chemical weapons immediately after the 9/11 plane attacks and, as has been indicated earlier, these continued until the anthrax attacks began. There was also a proliferation of written materials and of dramatic fiction about bioweapons attacks in the year or two prior to the attacks of the fall of 2001. But the most concrete and sustained set of evidential claims involved an apparent connection between the 9/11 Hijackers and crop-duster planes. 

On at least two occasions (September 16 and September 23-24) in the interim between 9/11 and the anthrax attacks all 3500-4000 crop-duster planes in the U.S. were grounded by the FAA. These developments were related to several reported events. 

The main post-9/11 crop-duster warnings began on September 22, 2001. An article written for TIME Magazine announced on September 22 that the September 16 grounding of the planes was caused by the fact that “U.S. law enforcement officials have found a manual on the operation of cropdusting equipment while searching terrorist hideouts.”[93] The authors went on to explain: 

The discovery has added to concerns among government counterterrorism experts that the bin Laden conspirators may have been planning—or may still be planning—to disperse biological or chemical agents from a cropdusting plane normally used for agricultural purposes. 

They added that, according to “sources,” the materials in question were found among the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui. 

After September 11 Moussaoui was considered to have been a member of the Hijacker group. He was given the epithet, “the 20th hijacker.” We were apparently supposed to believe when the TIME article appeared, that because he had been interested in crop-dusters the rest of this dangerous team was also interested in crop-dusters. 

Other media also mentioned on September 22 the growing concern about crop-dusters. The Washington Post, for example, noted that “the FBI asked operators of the nation’s 3,500 crop-duster planes to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior around their hangars.”[94] The authors of the article expressed concern about “a cloud of microbes released from a small plane” and put this worry within the wider context of worries that a biological attack may already be in progress and that the physical signs may simply not have been recognized yet. Rick Weiss, author of the Post article, noted that in the previous week, “a National Guard unit with special training in bioterrorism was mobilized, as was a team with similar expertise from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.” 

The second piece of information, apparently responsible for the September 23-24 grounding of crop-dusters, appeared to be more significant. Information was released to the effect that between February and September, 2001, groups of “Middle Eastern men” had visited a municipal airport in Belle Glade, Florida—“about an hour’s drive from Delray Beach, the coastal community where some of the alleged hijackers are believed to have lived”—to inspect and enquire about crop-dusters.[95] Willie Lee, “general manager of South Florida Crop Care,” said the men described themselves as flight students.[96] The apparent leader of the group, identified by employee James Lester as Mohamed Atta,[97] was aggressive. 

“I recognized him because he stayed on my feet all the time. I just about had to push him away from me,” Lester said. 

Lee said the men pestered employees with ‘odd questions’ about his 502 Air Tractor crop-duster. He said they asked about the range of the airplane, how much it could haul in chemicals, how difficult it was to fly, and how much fuel it could carry. 

During one visit, they followed Lester around, asking questions while he was working on one of the planes. Another time, they carried video equipment and asked to photograph the inside of the cockpit.[98] 

Atta supposedly visited twice more over the following months, while a variety of other Middle Eastern men came back repeatedly for further details. The visitors took more photographs and video footage of the planes. At one point they wanted to enter the cockpit, but Lester refused to allow this.[99] 

Willie Lee confirmed that the “groups of two or three Middle Eastern men came by nearly every weekend for six or eight weeks prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—including the weekend [Saturday, September 8] just prior to the assaults.”[100] Lee estimated that, all told, perhaps 12 to 15 men had been involved over time and that each visit typically lasted 45-60 minutes. He added that, “They were asking the types of questions that other people didn’t ask,” and that they were so persistent and annoying that he asked the “Belle Glade Police Department to run them off”—without success.[101] 

On the same day the media reported this information, September 24, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before Congress.[102] After explaining that crop-dusters could be used to “distribute chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction,” he stated that Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader of the “hijackers,” “had been compiling information about crop-dusting before the Sept. 11 attacks.” 

The following day there was a shocking new development: Mohamed Atta had “apparently walked into a U.S. Department of Agriculture office in Florida last year [2000] and asked about a loan to buy a crop-duster plane.”[103] This information, uncovered for the first time on September 24, readers were told, “has heightened fears that the United States may be at risk of an aerial assault involving biological or chemical weapons.” Further details were scarce at this time because the key witness, Johnelle Bryant, “was told by authorities not to speak about it.” Fortunately, ABC News was able to fill out the narrative in 2002—the story will be discussed later in this chapter.

In the meantime, in the days and weeks following these early reports, well into the period of the growing panic and the deaths from anthrax, crop-dusters became a staple in the news media, being referred to repeatedly in articles that associated the Hijackers with the anthrax attacks. For example, on October 10, Mohammad Akhter, at the time executive director of the American Public Health Association and former commissioner of public health for the District of Columbia, began an article on bioterrorism with the sentence: “The disclosure that terrorists may have been interested in using crop-dusting planes to spread any number of deadly diseases shows how close we may be to getting our first real dose of bioterrorism.”[104] 

Perhaps the high point in the crop-dusters’ fame came on October 11, the day after Akhter’s article appeared, when George W. Bush included in a public address about the war on terror the following remarks: 

…let me give you one example of a specific threat we received. You may remember recently there was a lot of discussion about crop-dusters. We received knowledge that perhaps an al Qaeda operative was prepared to use a crop-duster to spray a biological weapon or a chemical weapon on American people, and so we responded. We contacted every crop-dust location, airports from which crop-dusters leave. We notified crop-duster manufacturers to a potential threat. We knew full well that in order for a crop-duster to become a weapon of mass destruction would require a retrofitting, and so we talked to machine shops around where crop-dusters are located. 

We took strong and appropriate action, and we will do so anytime we receive a credible threat.[105] 

In the question period after his speech Bush was asked what one was supposed to do, concretely, when told by intelligence agencies to increase one’s awareness or to be on the lookout for something suspicious. His response must have caused people on the streets of New York and Washington to scratch their heads in puzzlement: “You know, if you find a person that you’ve never seen before getting in a crop-duster that doesn’t belong to you, report it.” 

The crop-duster accounts, or at least those coming from Belle Glade, do appear to have been based on actual incidents involving real people. Independent researchers assert that they have confirmed that the Middle Eastern men in question were not only interested in the crop-dusters but were intrusive and impolite, making themselves unwelcome and unforgettable.[106] 

But why were crop-dusters such a concern and what were they supposed to signify? 

The idea of mounting an attack via planes with tanks full of biomaterial and nozzles for aerial dispersal above the target has been around for quite a long time. The U.S. had developed its own method of doing this between the mid-1950s and the early 1960s.[107] Miller et al claim that evidence gathered throughout the 1990s suggested that Iraq was pushing ahead not only with the production of large quantities of sophisticated anthrax but also with the development of crop-dusters or similar planes as a means of delivering the anthrax.[108] 

These authors are not the only ones to have made such claims about Iraq. In a list of developments in the Iraqi bioweapons program during the 1990s, the Monterey Institute of International Studies of Middlebury College prepared an “Iraq Biological Chronology” in which crop-dusters were listed in 1997 and 1998 as potential delivery vehicles being developed by Iraq.[109] 

Occasionally these claims made it to the mainstream media. In 1997 a story appeared about Iraq’s alleged crop-dusters and the danger they represented. The Deseret News had an article entitled, “Could Iraq spread death via remote crop dusters?”[110] The source of this story, says the Deseret News, is The Sunday Times and, ultimately, “Iraqi and Western intelligence sources.” In the article we learn of Iraq’s anthrax and of “Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s determination to hang on to the crop-duster system, which [The Sunday Times] said he calls his ‘doomsday option’.” 

What are we to say, then, about the crop-duster stories that led to the run on Cipro and the widespread feeling, in September of 2001, that an anthrax attack on the U.S. was about to take place? The beginning of an answer can be achieved by looking in more detail at the story of Mohamed Atta Seeking a Loan. 

As mentioned above, the story appeared in rudimentary form on September 25, 2001.[111] ABC News gave a full version of the story on June 6, 2002.[112] Brian Ross interviewed the key witness, Johnelle Bryant. 

Just prior to the Johnelle Bryant incident, Mohamed Atta had been, according to The Observer (September 30, 2001), in Europe: 

[Atta] was under surveillance between January and May last year [2000] after he was reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and for biological warfare. The US agents reported to have trailed Atta are said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their investigation.[113] 

Directly after these Frankfurt activities Atta attempted to acquire, in the United States, a plane that could be used for crop-dusting. Presumably still being tracked by U.S. agents, he made his way to Florida, and it was here that he was interviewed by Johnelle Bryant, a manager at an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Bryant supposedly told authorities of her experience a few days after 9/11 when she recognized Atta’s photograph in the newspaper. The authorities, after she allegedly passed a polygraph test, were said to have advised her not to talk about her experience.[114] 

The function of Bryant’s agency, she explained in her 2002 interview with Ross, was to make loans to farmers who were finding it impossible to obtain credit. Mohamed Atta entered her office seeking funds in late April or early May of 2000. (Although Bryant recalled a great many details of this encounter, she presumably did not take notes of the meeting, because she was unsure of the date.) Atta said he was from Egypt, via Afghanistan. He told Bryant his name, Mohamed Atta, and made sure she knew how to spell it. He was new to the U.S., he said, and wanted to fulfill his dream to fly planes, including crop-dusters. To this end he sought a loan of $650,000 with which to buy a two-engine, six-passenger aircraft. He wanted to modify the plane from its original form so that it could hold a very large chemical tank. He would then “run the spray nozzles along the wing span.” With this extra capacity tank, he explained, he would be able to do all the spraying required in one flight, not needing to land to refill his tank as he would have to in an ordinary crop-duster. Bryant was confused by this requirement. She was also dubious about his plan, because she had some experience with crop-dusters and knew it was essential that they be small and agile. She expressed her doubts about his plan but he assured her that he was an engineer and could manage the modifications without any problem. 

When Bryant explained to Atta that he could not simply walk out of her office with $650,000 in cash but would have to go through an application process, he became agitated. Noting the lack of security in the building, he asked what would stop him from going around her desk, cutting her throat, and taking the money from the large safe in the office. Bryant, unfazed, replied that they did not keep large amounts of cash in the safe and that, in any case, she knew karate. She went on to explain that he was ineligible for the loan because he was not a U.S. citizen. 

Atta then noticed a picture on her wall. It was an aerial photograph of Washington, D.C. He became obsessed with the photograph and threw down cash on her desk, wanting to buy it. It was one of the best photos of Washington he had ever seen. He admired the view of the monuments and buildings of the city and paid special attention to the White House and the Capitol, as well as to the Pentagon, which he was able to point out. She refused to sell the photograph, which she said was a gift, but he continued the conversation by explaining that he wanted to visit Washington. He asked Bryant what the security was like in the various buildings there and whether he would be admitted. 

Atta then said he would like to visit the World Trade Center in New York City. Again, he asked Bryant what the security was like. He also inserted into the conversation what seems to have been a recruitment probe. His organization, he explained, could use someone with insider knowledge of Washington, where Bryant had previously worked. Growing emotional, he told her the name of an organization, al-Qaeda, which he said was based in his country (she was not sure whether he meant Egypt or Afghanistan) and with which, he implied, he was associated. He next spoke of Osama bin Laden, telling Bryant Bin Laden “would someday be known as the world’s greatest leader.” 

Bryant had never heard of either al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, but she wished Atta luck and pointed him to a bank where he might pursue his loan. 

And that is the story of how a terrorist leader engaged in a top-secret operation sought a government loan to help him with his plan. 

Are we really supposed to believe that the leader of a group of men soon to successfully carry out one of the most lethal crimes in U.S. history would, a year before the operation, threaten to cut the throat of his interviewer—and do so in the context of pursuing his search for a plane with a large tank that would carry out its task on a single mission? That he would express interest in a view of Washington from the air? That he would also express interest in the World Trade Center and its security? That he would make sure his interlocutor knew his name and of his association with al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden? Are we to believe that he, evidently already being followed by U.S. agents suspecting him of planning an attack with biological or chemical weapons, sought hundreds of thousands of dollars from a U.S. government agency with which to acquire his delivery vehicle? 

We confront two possibilities. The first possibility is that the story of Atta and the loan is pure fiction and the event never took place. Presumably, if this is the case someone coached Bryant. Who might this have been? What was the role of her interviewer, Brian Ross, known by the news website Gawker as “ABC News’ Wrongest Reporter”?[115] Ross was certainly no stranger to fiction: he had taken the lead in the false bentonite stories meant to frame Iraq and he broke a number of misleading stories over the years that served the interests of the authors of the Global War on Terror.[116]

But suppose—this is option two—events unfolded as Bryant says. In this case Mohamed Atta was certainly no secretive al-Qaeda leader but a man laying down a trail we were supposed to follow. Other stories about him, some listed above in the discussion of the Hijackers, are similar. The man’s task appears to have been to make himself unforgettable. 

While it would be good to know which of these options is correct—whether we are dealing with verbal fiction (Bryant’s) or enacted fiction (Atta’s)—it is not actually necessary for us to figure this out. Either way, the event remains a fiction, constructed by some group to link the 9/11 and anthrax attacks while also establishing an evidential basis for the foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks. 

Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has called the terror crop-dusters a “fictoid,” a construction that was never grounded in reality but that entered into circulation, was promoted by the media, and was widely assumed to be true because it was referred to by multiple sources.[117] In this case the fictoid was deliberately manufactured for an ambitious propaganda campaign. 

History professor Philipp Sarasin said some years ago: 

What can be said is that objectively, the cropduster announcement was so absurd as to border on disinformation. Anyone with so much liquid anthrax that they can conceive of using a cropduster to spread it is planning a terror attack whose dimensions dwarf the operational details of 9/11. Gallons of liquid anthrax presupposes [sic] large-scale industrial production capacity, a ready supply of money, and very carefully thought out high-tech transport logistics. Nobody has ever claimed that terrorists of whatever stripe have such resources to draw on. A person or group capable of planning bioterror of this magnitude does not have to search for cropduster manuals over the Internet or sound out mechanics on the subject of spraytank capacity.[118] 

Sarasin’s remarks are very insightful. They may, however, be qualified in two ways. First, the crop-duster narratives did not border on disinformation: they were disinformation. This is easier to recognize today than it was when Sarasin made his comments almost ten years ago. Second, it is not quite accurate to say that, “Nobody has ever claimed that terrorists…have such resources to draw on.” 

In the year 2000, Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist and bioterrorism expert, authored, with the help of journalist John Schwartz, a book called, Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe.[119] Each section of the book opens with a fictional scenario, and one of these scenarios has a disillusioned former military scientist, Ed, working by himself in a basement laboratory. Ed, after solving various production problems, loads up his crop-duster plane and, having previously mastered the pilot’s art, heads off to disperse his homegrown supply of anthrax above a packed sport stadium. The multi-skilled Ed is successful in killing a large number of people and producing social chaos. 

Osterholm, if cornered, would probably admit that this scenario is not realistic. But the structure of the book, with its fictional interludes, allows him and his co-author to paint a picture—in this case of the lone wolf, and in another part of the book of the Double Perpetrator—that puts readers into a froth of apprehension. If challenged, the authors can always say: well, that part was just fiction! 

Putting aside fictions, we are now in a position to draw conclusions about the crop-duster scenarios. 

1. The crop-duster stories and/or incidents were meant to link the anthrax attacks to the 9/11 attacks. In this respect they are like the anthrax letters with “09-11- 01” written at the top. The 9/11 Hijackers—Atta and his companions—constitute the central, visible link between the two sets of events, and this link holds regardless of whether the crop-duster fictions were verbal or enacted. 
2. Al-Qaeda operatives, working by themselves, would have had no use for crop-dusters. As Sarasin rightly points out, crop-dusters make sense as a way of dispersing anthrax only if one has access to a massive quantity of anthrax, far more than al-Qaeda could have produced, even if the group had mastered the basic science. A state supplier is indicated. Given the attempt, stretching over several years, to implicate Iraq in a crop-duster scenario, it is clear that Iraq was the key target of this framing. 
3. Stories tying the Hijackers to Iraq, notably the tale, Mohamed Atta Visits Prague, surfaced at the same time as the crop-duster stories and were evidently meant to solidify this connection. 
4. Although the foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks received an apparent evidential grounding in the crop-duster reports, this grounding was illusory because the crop-duster reports were disinformation. 
5. It is clear why the crop-duster stories have fallen into obscurity and are now seldom mentioned, even though they were at one time pervasive. As long as the foreign group hypothesis was in play these stories were useful, but after the FBI admitted that the anthrax attacks were a domestic operation the stories had to be abandoned. Given that the anthrax attacks were a domestic operation, and given that the Hijackers were implicated in that operation prior to its occurrence, the conclusion cannot be avoided: the 9/11 attacks were also a domestic operation. This is the conclusion the FBI has been determined to avoid. 

We cannot rule out the possibility that a crop-duster attack of some sort may actually have been planned at one time by those who laid down the trail to the Hijackers. In April, 2000 a military exercise involving a chemical attack in the U.S. using a crop-duster plane was held.[120] 

The Powell Performance 

The crop-duster tales were not a complete failure as a disinformation product. True, the reference to crop-dusters in the initial indictment of Moussaoui was later dropped,[121] but when Colin Powell made his infamous bogus presentation at the UN Security Council in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq he did not hesitate to make reference to Iraq’s dreaded aerial dispersion techniques.[122] Moreover, having assured those present that “every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” Powell held up a vial of simulated anthrax and said: 

My colleagues, when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount—this is just about the amount of a teaspoon—less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope. 

This was classic propaganda. Powell did not claim Iraq was responsible for the attack on the Senate but he made sure Iraq, anthrax and the Senate were all mentioned together. He held the vial aloft for all to see. The fears of the fall of 2001 would have been instantly conjured up for Americans watching the performance. 

Powell’s presentation included more than misdirection, of course. It also included statements such as the following four that were simply false: 

• In 2003 Iraq still possessed bioweapons and the capacity to produce more. 
• Iraq had a long-range missile program that could be used to deliver its WMD. 
• Iraq also possessed the means to disperse anthrax from planes. (Powell showed a slide illustrating an Iraqi plane dispersing an anthrax simulant.) 
• Iraq tolerated al Qaeda on its soil and was prepared to adopt a sponsor relationship to al Qaeda. 

Actually, Iraq, a devastated and impoverished country when Powell gave his address in 2003, possessed no significant quantity of anthrax, nor had it possessed such since 1991 when it destroyed its stocks. By 1995-96 Iraq had destroyed even the technical infrastructure needed to reconstitute its bioweapons. In view of this, discussion of the technology required to deliver the non-existent anthrax was more or less irrelevant. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that Iraq’s two main aerial dispersion devices for its anthrax—tanks with spray devices mounted on jets and aerosolizers for helicopters—were, as far as we can tell, minimally effective and did not, in any case, survive the 1991 Gulf War and Iraq’s immediately subsequent destruction of its bioweapons material. The long-range missile program had also been terminated under pressure from UN inspectors and assorted intelligence officers—the UN inspection process was heavily infiltrated by intelligence agencies of countries hostile to Iraq—long before 2001- 2003.[123]

Reference was made earlier in this book to the 935 false statements by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq. Powell’s performance at the UN represents a peak in the graph of those statements. The U.S. Secretary of State displaying his vial of anthrax simulant before the international community just prior to a war of aggression against Iraq is one of the most telling gestures of the 21st century. 

Notes to Chapter 7

1. Christopher Ketcham, “What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?,” CounterPunch, 2007, 4, http://www.counterpunch. org/2007/03/07/what-did-israel-know-in-advance-of-the-9-11-attacks/. 
2. Thomas Tobin, “Florida: Terror’s Launching Pad,” St. Petersburg Times, September 1, 2002. This article includes a useful map. 
3. A good introduction to this topic can be found in Cole, The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America, pp. 34 ff. See also the History Commons timeline. 
4. “History Commons: 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” October 14, 2001: ‘Strange Coincidence’ Briefly Increases Suspicions Al-Qaeda is behind Anthrax Attacks. 
5. Wikipedia, as of June, 2014, remains for most topics related to 9/11 a reliably uncritical repository of the official narrative. See, therefore, “Marwan Al-Shehhi,” Wikipedia, accessed May 27, 2014, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_al-Shehhi. 
6. “History Commons: 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” October 14, 2001: ‘Strange Coincidence’ Briefly Increases Suspicions Al-Qaeda is behind Anthrax Attacks. 
7. Chris Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid,” St. Petersburg Times, October 15, 2001; Justin Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence,’” The Washington Post, October 15, 2001; Powell and Slevin, “Detective, Scientists Exposed to Anthrax; FBI Continues to Hunt for Letters’ Origins”; Bill Egbert, “Fla. Paper Linked To Hijackers,” New York Daily News, October 15, 2001; Alfonso Chardy, Wanda DeMarzo, and Ronnie Greene, “Tabloid Editor’s Wife Rented Apartment to 2 Hijackers,” Miami Herald, October 15, 2001. 
8. Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence.’” 
9. Frank Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents,” The Palm Beach Post, September 3, 2011. 
10. Cole, The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America. 
11. Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents.” 
12. Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence.’” 
13. Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents.” 
14. Cole, The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America. 
15. Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents.” 
16. Ibid. 
17. Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid.” 
18. Ibid. 
19. Ibid. 
20. Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence.’” 
21. Cole, The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America. 
22. The FBI spokesperson, Judy Orihuela, is said to have told the media on October 14 that “there is now a link between the editor’s wife and the terrorists,” but she is then supposed to have added: “It’s just a coincidence right now.” “I’m sure there will be some sort of follow-up,” she is quoted as adding hopefully. Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid.” 
23. Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence.’” 
24. Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid.” 
25. Cole, The Anthrax Letters: A Bioterrorism Expert Investigates the Attacks That Shocked America. 
26. See “AMI Employee says ‘It was Terrorist Attack.’” Apparently published in the Miami Herald, Oct. 12, 2001, and archived here: http://www. freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/546427/posts 
27. David Kidwell, Manny Garcia, and Larry Lebowitz, “Authorities Trace Anthrax That Killed Florida Man to Iowa Lab,” Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, October 9, 2001, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/ coms2/summary_0286-6784004_ITM. 
28. Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid.” See also the History Commons entry on Gloria Irish: http://www.historycommons.org/entity. jsp?entity=gloria_irish_1 
29. Blum, “Sun Editor’s Wife Found Rentals for 2 Hijackers; FBI: Link May Be Just ‘Coincidence.’” 
30. Guillemin, American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nation’s Deadliest Bioterror Attack, 170. 
31. Don Foster, “The Message in the Anthrax,” Vanity Fair, as reproduced at: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/messageanthrax.html, October 2003. 
32. The FBI first announced the Gloria Irish connection on October 14, 2001, apparently after an article appeared in The Mail. See, for example: Chardy, DeMarzo, and Greene, “Tabloid Editor’s Wife Rented Apartment to 2 Hijackers”; Tisch, “Hijackers Linked to Tabloid”; Sean Hamill, “Editor’s Wife Rented to 2 Suspects, FBI Says,” Chicago Tribune, October 15, 2001. 
33. William Broad et al, “Report Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated,” The New York Times, March 23, 2002. 
34. Ibid. 
35. Ibid. 
36. Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis Mailings, Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, p. 66. 
37. Ibid, pp. 66-67. 
38. “History Commons: Complete 911 Timeline” 
39. Davidsson, Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11: Counterfeiting Evidence, pp. 31 ff. 
40. The unconvincing treatment of al-Shehhi by the 9/11 Commission illustrates the point: The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York, 2004), 162. 
41. A description of Mohamed Atta as someone who had “adopted fundamentalism” is quoted, apparently with approval, by the 9/11 Commission. Ibid, 161. But the anomalous, hedonistic behavior is described by numerous eyewitnesses. See David Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton, Olive Branch, 2005), p. 20. See also the material gathered at the History Commons site: http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?the_alleged_9/11_hij ackers=mohamedAtta&timeline=complete_911_timeline 
42. “Consensus 9/11: The 9/11 Best Evidence Panel: Point Flt-1: A Claim Regarding Hijacked Passenger Jets,” n.d., http://www.consensus911. org/point-flt-1/. 
43. See, for example, points PC-1, PC-1A, PC-2, PC-3, “Consensus 9/11: The Best Evidence Panel,” http://www.consensus911.org/. 
44. There are various accounts of the Hijackers at the Belle Glade airport. Many insist that Atta was one of the most intrusive of the visitors. Willie Lee says he went so far as to phone the police, although he does not mention Atta as the one who provoked the call: Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents.” 
45. Ibid. 
46. Ibid. 
47. “History Commons: Complete 911 Timeline:” Mohamed Atta: April 26, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Given Ticket for Having No Driver’s License. 
48. Ibid: Mohamed Atta: December 26, 2000: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Abandon Stalled Plane on Florida Runway; No Investigation Ensues. 
49. Ed Vulliamy, “When Our World Changed Forever,” The Guardian, September 16, 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/16/ news.september11/print. 
50. David Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2007), 216 ff. 
51. David Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch, 2008), 78. 
52. Jeremy Hammond, “Al Qaeda’s Top Gun: Willful Deception by the 9/11 Commission,” Dissident Voice: A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice, April 18, 2010, 3, http://dissidentvoice. org/2010/04/al-qaeda%E2%80%99s-top-gun-2/. 
53. Ibid., 2. 
54. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 530, n. 147. 
55. Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, 216 ff. 
56. Ibid., 218. 
57. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 225–226. 
58. “Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report,” Popular Mechanics, March 2005, 217, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/ news/1227842. 
59. Hammond, “Al Qaeda’s Top Gun: Willful Deception by the 9/11 Commission,” 6. 
60. Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, 217–218. 
61. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 226. 
62. Ibid., 226–227. 
63. Hammond, “Al Qaeda’s Top Gun: Willful Deception by the 9/11 Commission,” 9–10. 
64. Hammond even throws into question the supposed training Hanjour carried out on flight simulators that would have prepared him for flying jets. “Al Qaeda’s Top Gun: Willful Deception by the 9/11 Commission,” 10 ff. 
65. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 531, n. 170. 
66. MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD: Interview of Eddie Guigui Shalev, FBI interview of E. Shalev by Quinn John Tamm, Jr., (April 9, 2004), http:// media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00551.pdf. 
67. Mark Gaffney, “How the FBI and 9/11 Commission Suppressed Key Evidence about Hani Hanjour, Alleged Hijack Pilot of AAL 77,” Information Clearing House, July 7, 2009, http://www.informationclearinghouse. info/article22999.htm. 
68. Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, 79. 9/11 Consensus Panel. Point Pent-3: The Claim Regarding Hani Hanjour as Flight 77 Pilot, http://www.consensus911.org/point-pent-3/ 
69. The story is from the Zhan Guo Ce (Wade-Giles, Chan-kuo Ts’e) , “Strategems of the Warring States,” composed over 2000 years ago. 
70. David Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (updated Edition), August, 2004 (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch, 2004), 87. 
71. Ibid., 86. 
72. Seymour Hersh, “What Went Wrong: The C.I.A. and the Failure of American Intelligence,” The New Yorker, October 8, 2001. 
73. “History Commons: Complete 911 Timeline,” September 11-13: 9/11 Hijackers Leave a Clear Trail of Evidence. 
74. ANNEX TO APPENDIX TO ENCLOSURE A: PRETEXTS TO JUSTIFY US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN CUBA (OPERATION NORTHWOODS, Pp. 137 Ff.), 1962, 141, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/ showDoc.do?docId=1244&relPageId=137. 
75. David Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2005). 
76. Kelly Thornton, “Hijackers Who Lived Here: ‘Nice,’ ‘Dull’: Search of Muslim Leader’s Home May Provide More Information,” San Diego Union-Tribune, September 16, 2001. 
77. Michael Isikoff, “Exclusive: The Informant Who Lived With the Hijackers,” Newsweek, September 16, 2002. 
78. “History Commons: Complete 911 Timeline,” October 5, 2002: FBI Refuses to Allow FBI Informant Who Was Landlord to Two 9/11 Hijackers to Testify before 9/11 Inquiry. 
79. Ibid, September 16, 2002: Der Spiegel Claims 9/11 Hijacker Jarrah Had Spy Relative. 
80. Ibid, 1983-July 2008: 9/11 Hijacker’s Two Cousins Allegedly Work as Israeli Spies. 
81. Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at DEA Facilities (Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 2001), http://physics911. ca/deareport. 
82. Christopher Ketcham, “The Israeli ‘Art Student’ Mystery (‘Corrected since Its Original Publication’),” Salon, May 7, 2002, http://www.salon. com/2002/05/07/students/. 
83. Christopher Ketcham, “Cheering Movers and Art Student Spies: What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?,” CounterPunch, 2007, http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/03/07/what-did-israel-know-in-advance-of-the-9-11-attacks/. 
84. Ibid., 4. 
85. Ibid., 4,5. 
86. Ibid., 5. 
87. The FBI eventually claimed that there was no solid evidence of foreknowledge, but this conclusion is extremely difficult to square with evidence from eyewitnesses and from the photographs, described by the Bureau, taken by the young Israeli men. FBI documents corroborate the original FBI bulletin’s claim on 9/11 that “Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact.” See Ketcham, “Cheering Movers and Art Student Spies: What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?”; Christopher Isham et al., “Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?,” ABC News, June 21, 2002, http:// abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1&singlePage=true; “FBI Documents Relating to the So-called ‘Dancing Israelis,’” n.d., http://www.scribd.com/doc/62394765/Related-article-at-http-tinyurl-com-FBI-Dancing-Israelis-Dancing-Israelis-FBI-document-Section- 6-1138796-001-303A-NK-105536-Section-6. 
88. “History Commons: Summer 2001: Israel Warns US of ‘Big Attack’; August 8-15, 2001: Israel Reportedly Warns of Major Assault on the US; August 23, 2001: Mossad Reportedly Gives CIA List of Terrorists Living in US; at Least Four 9/11 Hijackers Named,” n.d., http://www. historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=asummer01bigattack#asumm er01bigattack. 
89. Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, 160. 
90. Ibid.; “Consensus 9/11: The 9/11 Best Evidence Panel: Mohamed Atta’s Mysterious Trip to Portland: Point H-1,” n.d., http://www.consensus911. org/point-h-1/. 
91. Paul Duggan, “FBI Chief Promises to Give State And Local Police a Role in Probe,” The Washington Post, October 17, 2001. 
92. Ibid. 
93. Massimo Calabresi and Sally Donnelly, “Cropduster Manual Discovered,” TIME, September 22, 2001, http://www.time.com/time/nation/ article/0,8599,175951,00.html. 
94. Nakashima and Weiss, “Biological Attack Concerns Spur Warnings: Restoration of Broken Public Health System Is Best Preparation, Experts Say.” 
95. Blum and Eggen, “Crop-Dusters Thought To Interest Suspects.” 
96. Ibid. 
97. Ibid. 
98. Amanda Riddle, “Crop-Dusters a No-Go amid Fears,” Daily Iowan, September 25, 2001. 
99. Blum and Eggen, “Crop-Dusters Thought To Interest Suspects.” 
100. Dana Canedy, “Crop-Dusters Are Grounded on Fears of Toxic Attacks,” The New York Times, September 25, 2001. 
101. Cerabino, “Encounters with 9/11 Hijackers Still Haunt Palm Beach County Residents.” 
102. Canedy, “Crop-Dusters Are Grounded on Fears of Toxic Attacks.” 
103. Blum and Weiss, “Suspect May Have Wanted to Buy Plane; Inquiries Reported On Crop-Duster Loan.” 
104. Mohammad N. Akhter, “Bioterrorism: How Unready We Are,” The Washington Post, October 10, 2001. 
105. “‘This Is a Time of Testing,’” The Washington Post, October 12, 2001. 
106. Marilyn Thompson says she spoke to James Lester by phone and confirmed his story about Atta visiting the crop-dusting operation. Marilyn Thompson, The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 54. 
107. Miller, Engelberg, and Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War. 
108. Ibid, pp. 102, 110. 
109. The Monterey Institute of International Studies, (www.miis.edu) of Middlebury College prepared documentation for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (www.nti.org) called “Iraq Biological Chronology,” last updated in October, 2008. For crucial years this documentation details Iraq’s alleged development of biological weapons. 
110. “Could Iraq Spread Death via Remote Crop Dusters?” Deseret News, November 9, 1997. The Deseret News article presents itself as dependent on an article from The Sunday Times. 
111. Blum and Weiss, “Suspect May Have Wanted to Buy Plane; Inquiries Reported On Crop-Duster Loan.” 
112. “Face to Face With a Terrorist – Worker Recalls Atta Seeking Funds Before 9/11,” ABCNEWS.com, June 6, 2002. See Elias Davidsson’s insightful analysis of the incident: http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3190:johnelle-bryants-extraordinary-meeting-with-mohamed-atta&catid=194&Itemid=333 
113. Martin Bright et al, “The Secret War, Part 1: War on Terrorism,” The Observer, September 30, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/ sep/30/terrorism.afghanistan7. 
114. Blum and Weiss, “Suspect May Have Wanted to Buy Plane; Inquiries Reported On Crop-Duster Loan.” 
115. “ABC News’ Wrongest Reporter Strikes Again,” Gawker, December 30, 2009, http://gawker.com/5437245/abc-news-wrongest-reporter-strikes-again. 
116. Ibid. See also “How ABC News’ Brian Ross Cooked His ‘Hasan Contacted Al Qaeda’ Scoop,” Gawker, November 10, 2009, http://gawker. com/5401562/how-abc-news-brian-ross-cooked-his-hasan-contacted-al-qaeda-scoop. 
117. Edward Jay Epstein, “Fictoid #11: The Terror Crop Dusters,” The Big Picture, n.d., http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid11. htm. I have based my understanding of “fictoid” on the entry in Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fictoid. 
118. Sarasin, Anthrax: Bioterror as Fact and Fantasy, p. 156. 
119. Michael Osterholm and John Schwartz, Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe (New York: Dell Publishing, 2000). For the “Ed” narrative, see pp. 24 ff. 
120. A hijack exercise was performed on April 19, 2000 involving a “crop duster chemical incident” in which a “Crop Duster flies over Holloman and release [sic] an areosol [sic]”. Presumably “Holloman” refers to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. See the NORAD Exercises Hijack Summary from the 9/11 Commission: http://www.scribd.com/ doc/16411947/NORAD-Exercises-Hijack-Summary\ 
121. The crop duster gets a mention in Moussaoui’s first indictment: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -v- ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI (United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, December 2001), http://cryptome.org/usa-v-zm-ind.htm. But in the July 25, 2002 indictment the relevant section is dropped: “The old paragraph 17 in the Overt Acts has also been entirely deleted. That paragraph provided discussion of Mr. Atta making inquiries about crop dusting. That is no longer in the superseding indictment.” Ibid. 
122. “The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disperse lethal biological agents, widely and indiscriminately into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a programme to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by Unscom some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.” “Full Text of Colin Powell’s Speech,” The Guardian, February 5, 2003, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/05/ iraq.usa 
123. Charles Duelfer, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, September 2004; Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (New York: Nation Books, 2005). The section of the 1999 report to the UNSC by the UN weapons inspectors dealing with biological weapons is also of interest, although we can see in retrospect that it was extremely unfair to Iraq: UNSCOM – Report to the Security Council – 25 January 1999, 1999, http://www.fas.org/ news/un/iraq/s/990125/dis-bio.htm.