Dr. Mercola's Comment:

This piece of information is so crucial that I am going to provide my comment before the supporting piece of information from the traditional media. I believe the Washington Post to be one of the best newspapers in the world and many will note that I have recently been posting many of their health stories.

The story below my comments, excerpted from the September 23 Post, will support the concept of cell groups that are already in the US.

In mid September a very prominent nutritional researcher called me and explained that they wanted me to have important information to share with you about bioterrorism. This individual wished to remain anonymous but put me in direct contact with a former microbiologist who was employed for many years in the CIA's BioDefense Germ Warfare Program.

I have been in extensive discussions with him over the past few weeks and he has given me an education which I have been seeking to corroborate through the literature and my own network of experts.

His grandparents were involved in the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which killed more about 100 million individuals. He explains that the flu virus actually mutated as a result of individuals who were exposed to mustard gas in the World War One.

At any rate, he committed his life to becoming a microbiologist and working on preventing these types of disasters from every occurring which is how he eventually wound up with the CIA. Between 1985 and 1991 he was working in a covert CIA laboratory on how to defend against biological warfare.

Nearly all of the emerging countries, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, etc, have been actively pursuing Germ Warfare programs and scrapping their nuclear programs.

His connection in one of the terrorist's countries told of over 100 cell groups with 11 members in each team, positioned strategically across the US in various major cities. There is usually one female in each team. The woman is the carrier or smuggler of the biological agents into the US which are usually inserted into their vaginal areas.

The other ten are men who will carry out the operations once the deadly pathogens have been grown to sufficient volumes from the starter cultures which are already in their possession.

They have many hundreds of targets that will be simultaneously hit across the country. For example, subway systems in major cities. Air ducts of large office buildings. Large gatherings of people at stadiums. Crowded streets during rush hour traffic.

These cell groups are in over 100 major US cities and will possibly use small private aircraft to widely disperse anthrax and other biological warfare agents.

Anthrax is so deadly that some say that if it were sprayed over a major city like New York there would be a minimum of 400,000 people dead in a few days. If they spray over a larger area and are effective in their spraying techniques there could be as many as 25 million dead.

I am working on a very effective way to provide virtual protection against anthrax but am still investigating the specifics. In the meantime one of the best protections will be to purchase the filter masks.

I will have VERY specific recommendations of how you can protect you and your family. However, I have been on a physician's retreat on Vashon Island outside of Seattle for one week and it has been a major challenge to work on this story so it might take one or two more weeks to compile the recommendations.

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By Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus

Four to five al Qaeda groups have operated in the United States for the last several years, but investigators have not yet found any connection between them and any of the 19 hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, according to government officials.

The groups, called "cells" by the FBI, are under intensive government surveillance.

The FBI has not made any arrests because the group members entered the country legally in recent years and have not been involved in illegal activities since they arrived, the officials said.

Government officials say they do not know why the cells are here, what their purpose is or whether their members are planning attacks. One official even described their presence as "possibly benign," though others have a more sinister interpretation and give assurances that measures are in place to protect the public.

There has been widespread fear and speculation about other al Qaeda groups in the United States, but officials say they have no specific information about their plans.

"They are so good at compartmentalizing," an official said yesterday, noting and anguishing over the difficulty of finding clear links among the cells. The officials declined to identify the cities where the al Qaeda groups are located.

Investigators are finding a highly unusual degree of discipline and patience in the groups, which usually number fewer than a dozen individuals.

One of the central questions the FBI has been struggling with is why the groups have stayed in the United States.

One official speculated that they could be here to gather intelligence or to support or execute terrorist attacks.

The members of al Qaeda have a level of commitment and zeal that is not easily understood in the United States.

While in training, they sign an agreement called a bayat.

They agree to go to a country on which a jihad has been declared and wait to be called upon to undertake a task, according to testimony at the recent New York City trial of bin Laden associates who were convicted of bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"You swear to agree about the jihad, listen to the emir . . . and do whatever work they ask you in group, you have to do it," said the government's prime witness, Jamal Ahmed Mohamed al-Fadl. "If they ask me to go anywhere in the world for specific mission or target, I have to listen. . . . They say when you make bayat and you agree about the al Qaeda and about the war, anything."

The domestic al Qaeda groups operate in a similar fashion to the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks: They stick together, moving among inexpensive hotels, motels and apartments, and keeping largely to themselves.

At any one time, the CIA has had fewer than six informants within the groups that have been associated with bin Laden, said a senior intelligence official. The FBI at most had a "handful," according to a former FBI official with extensive experience in counterterrorism.

"They are unlike the mafia, which built loyalty out of criminal enterprise, but where personal and even family relationships could be overcome with money or deals with those in prison," the former FBI official said. The Islamic fundamentalists, he said, "would have to give up their religious beliefs to become sources [for the FBI], and that is potentially more dangerous than threat of death."

He said the terrorists believe that death in fighting in a religious war against their enemies puts them in eternal heaven.

Turning against their religious vows, by informing authorities about their activities, damns them to eternal hell.

"In order to enter a [terrorist] cell," he said, "someone inside must vouch for the bona fides of the newcomer. Walking in cold is very hard." He also said that religious leaders, called emirs, in the United States and abroad solidify the spiritual ties, reminding the terrorists their eternal fate rests in remaining true to their cause.

One of the bureau's few informants supplied the tip that thwarted a 1993 attempt to blow up the United Nations headquarters building after the first World Trade Center bombing had taken place.

"The trouble was we used him [the informant] and he got burned," the official said. Identified, "he had to retire. . . . We gave him a new identity and he's gone," the official added.

"The ability of the FBI to penetrate is very limited. . . . The fundamentalist Islamic community is very tight and different from other Muslims in the community," said a former senior bureau official with long experience in the counterterrorism field.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, CIA coverage of bin Laden groups and other Muslim terrorist operators was helped because they regularly talked over cell phones, often bragging about what they were about to do or what they had done, according to former intelligence officials.

In addition, during the 1980s, "we could always find a participant who would turn in the others for $1 million, a new identity and a house in California," he said. "That has all changed. Now they are ready to commit suicide."

Excerpted from the Washington Post September 23, 2001; Page A01