get Cipro. We know he showed up at a pharmacy with red hands.”
After Stevens’s death from anthrax, the White House had been ringing the FBI every two hours. They too had heard the rumors that Atta had visited Huber Drugs, a Delray Beach pharmacy north of Boca Raton, a few miles from the AMI building, asking for an antibiotic to fight anthrax. In truth Atta had asked for medication to soothe an inflam- mation of his hands, a redness that stretched from the wrists down. “My hands burn,” he said. “They are itchy.” The pharmacist, Gregg Chatterton, sold him acid mantle, a cream. The irritation appeared to have been caused by bleach or detergent. Detergent effectively breaks up clumps of anthrax spores into smaller, more lethal particles. Atta’s irritated hands raised fears that Atta had been using caustic chemicals in a bioterror experiment.
“There are people in this area who have very direct rec- ollection of seeing [Atta],” Coz continued. “He worked out in a gym [the Delray Beach gym] where some of our em- ployees were.” Other terrorists trained in Boynton Beach, which adjoins Boca Raton, a few miles north of AMI and even closer to Bob Stevens’s home.
AMI chief executive David Pecker speculated that AMI had been targeted because of its name. American was also the name of American Airlines. United Airlines may have been a symbol for the United States. “I think this is an at- tack against America. The World Trade Center was at- tacked, the Pentagon was attacked, and American Media was attacked and I think this was the first bioterrorism at- tack in the United States. If you just look at the incredible coincidences, you cannot arrive at any other conclusion in my mind other than this is a bioterrorist attack.” A photo of
Osama bin Laden had been emblazoned on the front page of the Globe with the headline wanted dead or alive. The word alive had been crossed out. Two weeks later Bob Stevens was dead.
The wife of Sun editor Mike Irish was a Florida real estate agent. Gloria Irish had helped two of the 9-11 terror- ists, al-Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi, find apartments in the Hamlet Country Club. She recalled al-Shehhi as friendly and smiling. He told Mrs. Irish that he was doing pilot training and wanted only a three-month lease.
Ziad al-Jarrah, twenty-six, and Ahmed Ilbrahim Alhaz- nawi, twenty, had entered the U.S. on June 8, 2001. A week later Alhaznawi and Jarrah moved into a two-hundred- dollar-a-week flat attached to a private home on Bougain- villea Drive in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, twenty miles south of Boca Raton and the AMI office. In July, Jarrah extended his membership in the U.S.-1 Fitness Club in Dania, Florida. The clean-shaven, horse-faced young man passed his pilot’s certification test at the end of the month. Jarrah had been born in 1975 in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. His father was a government official and his mother a school- teacher.
Both men spoke little English so it was their neighbor and landlord, Charles Lisa, they sought out on June 25 to ask advice about a “gash” on Alhaznawi’s left calf. Lisa applied peroxide, wrapped the leg, and directed his two tenants to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. Alhaznawi and Jar- rah came into the hospital emergency room that evening. Using their own names, not aliases, the pair identified them- selves as pilots. Alhaznawi wore a wide black mustache and had large staring eyes.
“I got it from bumping into a suitcase two months ago,” Alhaznawi explained of his wound to emergency room phy- sician Dr. Christos Tsonas.
“That’s a curious injury,” Dr. Tsonas replied.
He studied the inch-long blackish lesion on Alhaznawi’s lower left leg. It had red, raised edges and was a little less than an inch wide. Dr. Tsonas recalled that the man ap- peared to be in good health, and that he denied having an illness like diabetes that might predispose him to such le-
sions. “They were well-dressed foreigners,” he said.
After Stevens’s death from anthrax, the White House had been ringing the FBI every two hours. They too had heard the rumors that Atta had visited Huber Drugs, a Delray Beach pharmacy north of Boca Raton, a few miles from the AMI building, asking for an antibiotic to fight anthrax. In truth Atta had asked for medication to soothe an inflam- mation of his hands, a redness that stretched from the wrists down. “My hands burn,” he said. “They are itchy.” The pharmacist, Gregg Chatterton, sold him acid mantle, a cream. The irritation appeared to have been caused by bleach or detergent. Detergent effectively breaks up clumps of anthrax spores into smaller, more lethal particles. Atta’s irritated hands raised fears that Atta had been using caustic chemicals in a bioterror experiment.
“There are people in this area who have very direct rec- ollection of seeing [Atta],” Coz continued. “He worked out in a gym [the Delray Beach gym] where some of our em- ployees were.” Other terrorists trained in Boynton Beach, which adjoins Boca Raton, a few miles north of AMI and even closer to Bob Stevens’s home.
AMI chief executive David Pecker speculated that AMI had been targeted because of its name. American was also the name of American Airlines. United Airlines may have been a symbol for the United States. “I think this is an at- tack against America. The World Trade Center was at- tacked, the Pentagon was attacked, and American Media was attacked and I think this was the first bioterrorism at- tack in the United States. If you just look at the incredible coincidences, you cannot arrive at any other conclusion in my mind other than this is a bioterrorist attack.” A photo of
Osama bin Laden had been emblazoned on the front page of the Globe with the headline wanted dead or alive. The word alive had been crossed out. Two weeks later Bob Stevens was dead.
The wife of Sun editor Mike Irish was a Florida real estate agent. Gloria Irish had helped two of the 9-11 terror- ists, al-Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi, find apartments in the Hamlet Country Club. She recalled al-Shehhi as friendly and smiling. He told Mrs. Irish that he was doing pilot training and wanted only a three-month lease.
Ziad al-Jarrah, twenty-six, and Ahmed Ilbrahim Alhaz- nawi, twenty, had entered the U.S. on June 8, 2001. A week later Alhaznawi and Jarrah moved into a two-hundred- dollar-a-week flat attached to a private home on Bougain- villea Drive in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, twenty miles south of Boca Raton and the AMI office. In July, Jarrah extended his membership in the U.S.-1 Fitness Club in Dania, Florida. The clean-shaven, horse-faced young man passed his pilot’s certification test at the end of the month. Jarrah had been born in 1975 in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. His father was a government official and his mother a school- teacher.
Both men spoke little English so it was their neighbor and landlord, Charles Lisa, they sought out on June 25 to ask advice about a “gash” on Alhaznawi’s left calf. Lisa applied peroxide, wrapped the leg, and directed his two tenants to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. Alhaznawi and Jar- rah came into the hospital emergency room that evening. Using their own names, not aliases, the pair identified them- selves as pilots. Alhaznawi wore a wide black mustache and had large staring eyes.
“I got it from bumping into a suitcase two months ago,” Alhaznawi explained of his wound to emergency room phy- sician Dr. Christos Tsonas.
“That’s a curious injury,” Dr. Tsonas replied.
He studied the inch-long blackish lesion on Alhaznawi’s lower left leg. It had red, raised edges and was a little less than an inch wide. Dr. Tsonas recalled that the man ap- peared to be in good health, and that he denied having an illness like diabetes that might predispose him to such le-
sions. “They were well-dressed foreigners,” he said.
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