U.S. Officials Believe Recent Incidents Point To An Imminent Threat

[The 801]

CBS News: U.S. Officials Believe Recent Incidents Point To An Imminent Threat

June 5, 2006
(CBS/AP)

(CBS) U.S. officials believe Canadian arrests over the weekend and three recent domestic incidents in the United States are evidence the U.S. will soon be hit again by a terrorist attack. Privately, they say, they'd be surprised if it didn't come by the end of the year, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart in a CBS News exclusive.

The first of the domestic incidents, all of which drew little attention at the time, began with the holdup of a string of Torrance, Calif. gas stations last summer. Muslim converts who bonded together in prison planned to use the robberies to finance attacks on 20 Army recruiting stations.

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton admits they stumbled on the plot during a search.

"Make no mistake about it," Bratton said. "We dodged a bullet here — perhaps many bullets."

Police in Toledo, Ohio, busted another cell in February. This one consisted of three men training to attack U.S. forces overseas. Once again, luck played a role. When they tried to enlist someone in their mosque to help, he turned them in.

"These individuals are often hiding in plain sight in cities like Torrance and now Toledo," says John Pistole, a FBI deputy director.

Two months ago, a pair of Atlanta men, one a Georgia Tech engineering student, were arrested not long after communicating by e-mail with two of the suspects arrested in Canada over the weekend. The Atlanta men are charged with videotaping domestic targets, including the U.S. Capitol and the World Bank.

Analysts now conclude similarities between all the cases were dramatic: All were self-financed, self-motivated, and in each case the men were seeking out others to join their cell.

In short, Osama bin Laden didn't pay for these plots, recruit for them or even know of them. They were all totally homegrown — even amateurish. But if four, including the one in Canada, have been uncovered in just 11 months, officials fear there are inevitably other plots that have not been and are maturing even now.

The next attack here, officials predict, will bear no resemblance to Sept. 11. The casualty toll will not be that high, the target probably not that big. We may not even recognize it for what it is at first, they say. But it's coming — of that they seem certain.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/05/terror/main1683852.shtml

Mmmm, what do you think?

[NYer]

There are about `1 billion Muslims world-wide. It is estimated that about 1% are radicalized - which means 10 million potential IslamoNutzis bent on destruction. Quite a sobering thought for this 6/06/06. Pay attention to what is being taught in storefront mosques and meeting places. 9-11. 3-11, 7-07 ... Wake up and make no mistake - this IS a war.

"By their fruits ye shall know them."
Matt 7:20.

[Casey]

I have to admit, I have felt the same.

I have been concerned since the 1-2-3 video's that were released, recently.

I expect past strategy's are changing.

[Klaus]

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/site/modules/news/article.php?storyid=346

By Sean Osborne, Associate Director, Senior Analyst, Military Affairs Analyst
sosborne@homelandsecurityus.com

10 June 2006: Last evening a couple of items concerning recent and long-term Islamic terrorist activities suddenly began to coalesce for me, fitting together like two matching pieces of a much larger puzzle.

On Thursday, June 8, 2006 a 24-foot box truck truck was reported stolen from the parking lot of Savol Bleach, 91 Prestige Park Circle, East Hartford, Connecticut. I received the following from an anonymous source:

Specific Vehicle Identification:

VIN# 1HTSDAAN6YH23237
CT Tag# 27585A
Blue letters on side “SAVOL BLEACH”
Glass found at the scene of the theft indicates the drivers-side window was broken out.
Box contents: chlorine.

Shortly thereafter, I received a similarly anonymous Be-On-Look-Out (BOLO) advisory issued by the East Hartford Police Department. The BOLO informed me that the cargo within the box actually consisted of 64 5-gallon drums and a single 165 gallon drum of HYPOCHLORITE SOLUTION. Therefore, what was stolen amounted to 485 gallons of potential terrorist chemical mayhem in the northeastern United States.

Allow me to reiterate, the inherent properties of hypochloite solution made it a threat in and of itself in Islamic terrorist possession. Especially in high-density public places. However, the obvious soon became manifest as I fully engaged my "think-like-a-terrorist" mindset, i.e.: How would terrorists effectively deploy such a large amount of this chemical substance?

Sure, they could mix it with some common household cleaners to make deadly chlorine gas. However, while effective deployment to a target-of-opportunity remained a solvable problem, it was a problem never-the-less.

I then began to investigate the other more common uses for hypochlorite solution. I soon discovered, much to my amazement, that hypochlorite solution is recommended by the U.S. CDC to clean the outside of ziplock baggies filled with bacillus anthracis (anthrax) in a laboratory or anthrax-present environment.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/anthrax/environmental-sampling-apr2002.asp

I have known and kept fresh in my mind a few fascinating and not widely-known facts concerning a machine capable of producing weaponized anthrax which was published in July 2002 in the Weekly Standard by reporter David Tell. The report details how the $100,000 machine and its Pakistani purchaser, Syed Ather Abbas, disappeared from a false-flag jihadi operation in Ft. Lee, New Jersey during the spring of 2001; several months prior to the terrorist anthrax mailings in the fall of that year via from US Post Offices in Manhattan, NYC and Hamilton, New Jersey.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/470lfsdb.asp?ZoomFont=YES

An excerpt from the above linked article:

"No, what the FBI discovered, instead, was that Syed Athar Abbas was an abruptly vanished fugitive who, using an alias, had recently arranged to pay $100,000 in cash"--roughly the amount he'd stolen from Wells Fargo and Fleet--for the purchase and shipment of a "fine-food particulate mixer," a "sophisticated machine used commercially" to do various things you wouldn't expect an outfit called "Computers Dot Com" to do. Like "mix chemicals," for example.

Oh.

Mr. Parascandola reports that it's been established Abbas did take
possession of this machine at the "Computers Dot Com" offices in Fort Lee last summer, but had the thing "immediately transported elsewhere" before taking off himself for Pakistan. Federal investigators, Parascandola adds, "have not been able to locate the industrial food mixer" in question, which problem continues to be of some "concern."
All the more so because, despite his guilty plea and promise of restitution to the banks he bilked, Abbas has "refused to cooperate with investigators trying to find out more about his accomplices or the mixer."

Oh.

The $100,000 particulate mixer Parascandola describes, incidentally, is the exact same technology commonly employed by major food and pharmaceutical manufacturers to process fluid-form organic and inorganic compounds into powder: first to dry those compounds; next to grind the resulting mixture into tiny specks of dust, as small as a single micron in diameter; then to coat those dust specks with a chemical additive, if necessary, to maximize their motility or "floatiness"; and finally to aerate the stuff for end-use packaging. In other words, this is how you'd put Aunt Jemima pancake mix in its box. Or place concentrations of individual anthrax spores into letters addressed
to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy."

Based upon these to seemingly unrelated and time-displaced events, it is my current assessment that there might very well exist a high-volume terrorist anthrax production facility somewhere in the NYC-Boston, MA metropolitan corridor. In combining my long-held knowledge of Syed Athar Abbas' missing weaponized anthrax production-capable machine with the very recent theft of 485 gallons of hypochlorite solution the obvious becomes inescapable to my mind.

It is conceded that this is just one of the possible terrorist uses for 485 gallons of hypochlorite solution. However, my hunch is that terrorist related production of weaponized anthrax is the primary use of the $100,000 machine and the underlying reason this specific truck was stolen. Sure beats having to purchase large amounts of Clorox and do all the required diluting and chemical mixing yourself, and to keep such islamic jihadi's anthrax infection free.

[CHE]

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/site/modules/news/article.php?storyid=346

By Sean Osborne, Associate Director, Senior Analyst, Military Affairs Analyst
sosborne@homelandsecurityus.com

10 June 2006: Last evening a couple of items concerning recent and long-term Islamic terrorist activities suddenly began to coalesce for me, fitting together like two matching pieces of a much larger puzzle. ...


Don't panic when somone steals a truck that has bleach in it. This is really pathetic.

And, if a truck of bleach is stolen, and you jump to the conclusion that it must have been for production of anthrax, you might have a clinical condition.

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34015


So buying 485 gallons of bleach is suspicious? Perhaps, I guess it depends on the situation. But buying 3 buckets of pool chlorine is not suspicious, and that gives you 485 gallons of bleach if that it what you want.

It seems more likely that someone wanted to steal the truck than the bleach.

As for using it as some sort of weapon, would you rather adulterate and deploy 485 gallons (a truckload) of bleach or 3 buckets of pool chlorine? They have the same chlorine content, so I think the answer is obvious. I don't think terrorists are going around stealing large quantities of extremely dilute chemicals.

[Klaus]

Don't panic when somone steals a truck that has bleach in it. And, if a truck of bleach is stolen, and you jump to the conclusion that it must have been for production of anthrax, you might have a clinical condition.

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34015


Maybe someone has alot of dirty white laundry.....

It's news, and I put it here for discussion.

[al-Canine]

Maybe someone has alot of dirty white laundry.....

It's news, and I put it here for discussion.

Thank you for the news item, Klaus, it's very interesting, and I appreciate your posting it.