Free Amerithrax by Robert Graysmith Page A

The same Southeast Asian factory had al- ready supplied anthrax spores to the Indonesian-based Is- lamic Moro Front, a terror group closely associated with bin Laden. Al Qaeda was supplied the deadly bacteria by mail and without identification for $3,685, and that included ship- ping costs.
    After paying $7,500 up front, Al Qaeda also bought an- thrax spores from factories in the Czech Republic and from East European and Southeast Asian labs for as little as
    $10,000, again without identification. They purchased E. coli and Salmonella for $5,000 in the Czech Republic. Ad- ditional samples of deadly anthrax may have been obtained from North Korea for a smaller amount of cash.
    Special chemical- and biological-agent production labs had been purchased in the former Yugoslavia in early May 1998, and shipped via Pakistan to Afghanistan, where an- thrax was a common veterinary disease. “It’s in Afghani- stan,” molecular biologist Paul S. Keim of Northern Arizona University said. “If a cow dies of anthrax it will bleed out its nose. All you have to do is scrape up a little blood, put it in a petri dish, and you have anthrax.” You can get spores from either the soil or a carcass.
    Training in the use of chemical agents for Al Qaeda took place in Afghanistan. An instruction manual was recovered from the home of a Libyan Al Qaeda member in Manches- ter, England. Rabbit and dog test animals were later found near bin Laden’s Jalalabad training camps. Convicted ter-
    rorist Ahmed Ressam testified that he spent six months in 1998 at one of bin Laden’s Afghan training camps learning to release cyanide into the ventilation systems of office buildings. Bin Laden was also interested in the use of “low- flying aircraft for the distribution of toxic materials.”
    They may have had the supervision of a few Ukrainian expert chemists and biologists. Al Qaeda training included “kits” with toxins and chemical agents. Some terrorists were being trained to grow “lethal biological cultures” using sub- stances easily available on the commercial market.
    The CIA had predicted that a bioweapon attack by bin Laden was “highly likely.” Once the FBI learned that the 9-11 terrorists had a host of connections with the Boca Ra- ton area and with AMI, they began searching for anthrax residue among the terrorists’ corpses. The FBI searched the charred remains of Flight 93, which terrorists had crashed into a Pennsylvania field when the passengers rose up against them. Was there any trace of anthrax in the body of Alhaznawi, which was recovered from that crash site? They analyzed the remains of American Airlines Flight 77, which had crashed into the Pentagon. They conducted exhaustive testing for the presence of anthrax spores anywhere the hi- jackers had lived or worked or trained or died. They found none.
    The anthrax was probably not mailed by Al Qaeda. It did not fit their style. “Sources,” said the FBI, “suggest Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several cri- teria: High symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy and maximum psychological trauma.” The strain of mailed anthrax had been sensitive to every oral antibiotic—penicillins, tetracyclines, and quinolones such as Cipro. A terrorist set to do the maximum damage would have employed a more advanced strain, a virulent, engineered anthrax that would be impervious to antibiotics and cause greater casualties. It was rumored that the Russians had such a strain at their secret Siberian bio-
    installation—Vector.
    But the anthrax letters had been mailed after the terrorists died in the plane crashes. Were they sent by a confederate? Law enforcement emphasized that the anthrax cases had not
    been linked to bin Laden. “These diseases are a punishment from God,” bin Laden said later of the anthrax attacks, “and a response to oppressed mothers’ prayers in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and everywhere.” Within a few weeks, the White