The U.S. is "running out of demons. I'm down to
  Fidel Castro & Kim Il Sung"
  Colin Powell,
  former JCoS chair & millennial Sec•State
per Robt. Borosage   Inventing the Threat: Clinton defense pgm
  Frankenstein redux
[ U.S.S. Cole attack, like Libya & the Gulf War, is a
rogue monster of our own creation; yet more are our shibboleths
.   Until we insist on financing peace ¹ ² ³
"the murderers are among us"   Bertold Brecht
in place of more war , cruel & implacable retribution will haunt us.
Just as we looked the opposite direction when Saddam Hussein used U.S. Agriculture Dept loans to buy biochemical weapons & strategic munitions, so is Osama bin Laden a manifestation of blowback from Ronald Reagan era machismo foreign policy & vestigal cold war colonialism. ]
Experts are almost unanimous in saying that bin Laden is a creature of a US foreign policy which recklessly fed & nurtured him & his Islamic [ Wahhabi ] warriors with million of dollars worth of money & arms to fight the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Under a little known document called the National Security Directive 166 of 1985, Pres. Reagan ordered stepped up U.S. covert aid to militant groups fighting the Soviets. The order resulted in the CIA providing, lavishly and, as it turned out, recklessly, arms & training via money funnelled largely through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Even at that time, Bin Laden & his holy warriors had made it clear that the US was as much anathema to them as the communists. "bin Laden learnt a lot of tricks from the CIA, which is glad to help him fight the Russians. We all helped him. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and U.S. were united in the view that the Russians must be defeated. He was the point man," an unnamed Saudi intelligence official was quoted as saying in the U.S. media. Washington conceived a plan to make Moscow pay the maximum price for its occupation of Afghanistan while turning Islamic radicalism against the communists and, as a spin-off, against the Iranian Shia.
8.15.98   Chidanand Rajghatta "U.S. Frankenstein monster behind Kenya blasts?" Indian Express
The idea was to encourage a specifically Sunni radicalism aiming at full application of the sharia but avoiding any hint of Islamic "revolution". This suited Saudi Arabia perfectly, since it was anxious to strengthen its Islamic credentials in opposition to Iran. As for the Pakistani intelligence services, they had and still have the wider aim of playing the Sunni Islamist card to gain control of Afghanistan and achieve a breakthrough in Central Asia.
10.98   Barry Smerin "Fundamentalists without a common cause" Le Monde diplomatique
The CIA is now trying to destroy the same camps it helped set up, British writer Robert Fisk who covered the region and who met bin Laden at his camp, said in an interview on National Public Radio.
8.22.98   Chidanand Rajghatta India Express ¹
According to fundamentalist commander Bakhat Zamin in Khost, it takes very little to rebuild the camps that were struck in the U.S. attack. He said to rebuild "All one needs are mud and stones and there are plenty of them out here."
12.20.98   London Times
Osama bin Laden & his al-Qaeda organization is credited with U.S. embassies' bombings in Africa; funding Philippines terrorist training camps and Chechniyan, Tajikistan & Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist forces' training; assassination plots against President Clinton, the Pope, Egyptian President Mubarak & Jordanian king Hussein; the World Trade Center bombing; arming Somalian war lords' opposition to U.S. military peacekeeping; bomb attacks on U.S. servicemen in Yemen in 1992, at a Saudi National Guard Base in 1995, & at Dhahran's Khobar Towers in 1996; financing Egyptian terrorists' 1999 slaughter of 58 tourists; suicide bombs in Israel; and, most recently, the murder of U.S.S. Cole crew.
8.21.98   Martin Sieff, Washington Times
State Dept terrorism experts describe bin Laden as a skilled businessman and fund raiser. A 1996 report said his Sudanese empire included a $50 million stake in an Islamic bank, an investment company and an import- export firm; land holdings that gave him a near monopoly in Sudanese agriculture, notably gum, Arabic corn, sunflower and sesame products, and a construction company that built roads and airports in the Sudan & Afghanistan. Soon after bin Laden's CNN interview, the Clinton administration cut off Sudanese exports to the U.S., hoping to squeeze bin Laden's business interests. His ties to funds from his family's construction firm, largest in Saudi Arabia, were cut in 1994 when his citizenship was revoked.
8.20.98   Daryn Kagan CNN Morning News
He started organizing Afghan Muslim guerillas against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. The Klashnikov that he carries with him is the one which he took from a Russian soldier on a battlefield. The Klashnikov to him is now a sacred symbol.
8.99   M. Hassan Kakar, "Afghanistan Fdtn's White Paper or Dark Paper ?" Online Ctr for Afghan Studies
Still based in Afghanistan under protection by a Taliban faction after having been stripped of Saudi citizenship in 1994, expelled from the Sudan in 1996, and renounced even by some Afghans who "blame Pakistan & the U.S. for helping radical Islamic groups to flourish during the resistance to Soviet occupation and then washing their hands of the consequences"
8.21.98   Pamela Constable, Wash.Post
bin Laden founded al-Qaeda to provide funds and soldiers to the Afghan resistance in 1988 eight years after joining the mujahedeen at age 22. Four years later, he allied with Iran's Shiite Muslim terrorist organization Hezbollah in expressly targeting the U.S. and its allies foremost. Another four years later, he made his anti-U.S. goals public in a Declaration of Jihad or War in August 1996.
PBS Frontline
It was at his very beginning in 1980 that bin Laden, one of many Arab Muslims who traveled to Afghanistan to fight Soviet invasion, used Saudi funding and U.S. military arms & training from the Pakistan border.
10.25.96   Reuters
"We knew him as one of the Saudi benefactors who took care of widows & orphans" of the U.S. backed Afghan rebels who fought off Soviet invaders in the 1980s, said a retired U.S. official who helped fight that long battle. bin Laden spent millions supporting Afghan guerillas, financing thousands of volunteer foreign soldiers who came to Afghanistan from throughout the Islamic world, and creating a network of guest houses & charities to support them & their families. "He had a common cause with the U.S.," said Zalmay Khalilzad ², former State Dept & Pentagon official of Afghan descent who monitored the war. "But with the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989, his struggle became the struggle against the U.S., the dominant power in the world and in the Middle East."
bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1989 and began to support militant Islamic groups opposing moderate Islamic govts. His rage against the U.S. took root during the 1991 Gulf War, with the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. "He regarded that as an occupation of the Islamic holy places by the U.S.," Khalilzad said, and bin Laden swore vengence against what he called "the crusaders" of Christianity trespassing on Mecca & Medina. "What this man thinks about every day is: How do I get the U.S. out of my home in Saudi Arabia, and how do I get those corrupt pharaohs out of power?" said Kenneth Katzman, former CIA analyst & Congressional Research Service resident expert on MidEastern terrorism.
8.21.98   Tim Weiner NYTimes
In the mid-1980s, bin Laden co-founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) or Services Office to help funnel fighters & money to the Afghan resistance in Peshawar. The MAK ultimately established recruitment centers around the world, including in the U.S., that enlisted, sheltered and transported thousands of individuals from over 50 countries to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. It also organized & funded paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan & Pakistan. bin Laden imported heavy equipt to cut roads and tunnels and to build hospitals & storage depots in Afghanistan.
8.20.98   U.S. Information Agency factsheet
"After a brief relative disengagement, the US, much to its disbelief & dismay, discovered in 1993 that many of its past Afghan policies had started to boomerang against the US interests. Many of the mujahideen, incl Americans' own favourites & proteges like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorists. … Past policies that had begun to backfire on American interests."
8.99   P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA "The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security" Strategic Analysis IDSA monthly journal, v.XXIII n.5 p719-747
Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto and the CIA had each their own reason for creating & backing the Taliban. A company with which Asif Zardari, her husband, was connected, had the exclusive contract for the import of cotton from Turkmenistan for Pakistan's textile industry and the Taliban protected the cotton convoys from attacks by other mujahideen groups. The CIA was interested in using the Taliban for its operations against Iran and for facilitating the construction of oil & gas pipelines by U.S. oil company UNOCAL from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
When Sudan asked bin Laden to quit its territory in May,1996, Maj.Gen. Babar persuaded Benazir to agree to a request from Burhanuddin Rabbani, then in power in Kabul, to let bin Laden travel to Jalalabad via Pakistani territory on condition that he would not act against U.S. & Saudi Arabia from Afghan territory. Maj.Gen. Babar, through the IB & the ISI and with the support of the Taliban which had reasons to be grateful to him, ensured this.
First, the failure of the agencies to effectively control the Taliban & bin Laden, both of whom became Frankensteins. No govt of any Islamic State would accept him lest they fall foul of the U.S. The only way out, in Pakistani calculation, is help him flee to a country where Muslim insurgent elements control some territory.
12.18.98   R. Raman, dir. Inst. for Topical Studies
There's a strong body of Bin Laden supporters in Pakistan army & intelligence services and also, obviously, among increasingly powerful clergy. However, many moderate politicians realise Pakistan cannot jeopardise its U.S. relationship, and the continuing drip-feed of IMF & World Bank loans, by overtly obstructing efforts to capture him.
10.4.99   Jason Burke & H.Baweja India Today ³
"If there is a message that I may send through you, then it is a message I address to the mothers of the American troops who came here … To these mothers I say if they are concerned for their sons, then let them object to the American govt's policy and the American president. Do not let themselves be cheated by his standing before the bodies of killed soldiers describing freedom fighters in Saudi Arabia as terrorists. It is he who is a terrorist who pushed their sons into this. … "
3.97   bin Laden interview, Peter Arnett, CNN
"One should go to the refugee camps throughout Pakistan and find out how many boy children have been named Osama since last August (1998), that's scary," said former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the agency's covert campaign to arm the Afghan mujadeen fighting Soviet troops in the 1980's. Missiles (fired at Afghanistan & Sudan) inflicted little lasting damage but helped to make bin Laden "a revered figure" in the Islamic world a senior counterterrorism official said. "People feel they have no voice," said former American Amb. in Pakistan & former State Dept counterterrorism coordinator Robt B. Oakley. "They look at a people with great wealth while they live in deep poverty. They resent the personal corruption of the Saudis" and the power of the U.S. American counterterrorism officials ruefully agree that bin Laden's oratory also rings true in Saudi Arabia. "His attacks on the Saudi royal family's repression & corruption are factually similar to State Dept human rights reports and CIA economic analyses". But they differ sharply in blaming the U.S. for shoring up the House of Saud by stationing troops in the Arabian Peninsula. "And if we make it into a war, we lose," said former Amb. Oakley. "We'll swell their numbers enormously." That further increases the political threat that bin Laden presents, American officials concede.
7.29.99   Vernon Loeb "U.S. harassment campaign may backfire" Wash.Post

"The goal has never been to get bin Laden" ¹   4.6.02   AP
Gen. Richard Myers, chair U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Osama bin Laden, CIA creation & its "blowback"
"Terrorist" connected to CIA, drugs. … ¹
9.98   Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publ.
On 8.20.98 the U.S. launched a series of cruise missile attacks against alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, both of which were said to be under the control of a rabid Islamic fundamentalist leader & arch terrorist named Osama bin-Laden. I did some checking on bin-Laden and what I found out leads me to suspect that the CIA & the U.S. govt would rather have this evil terrorist hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan than answering questions which might embarrass them.

Shortly after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, young & wealthy Saudi Arabian named bin-Laden rushed to Afghani mountains to fight a Muslim holy war against Godless Communism. Having inherited more than thirty million dollars from his father's construction business he was in a position to lend immediate help to the struggling Afghani freedom fighters. He formed quick alliances among the half dozen or so major factions of the Mujahedeen led by Afghani Sheik Hekmatyar.
US records indicate that we spent nearly $3 billion dollars over the next 8 years to train & equip the Afghan rebels. We even supplied them with Stinger missiles, which caused great concern in later years as we began to fear they would be turned against us. U.S. Congress appropriated ransom money to buy them back in the early 90s. Few were recovered. In addition the CIA, under Bill Casey, sponsored an explosion in the heroin trade to finance the war. This was nothing new.

In 1979, when Soviet invasion occurred, virtually none of the heroin entering U.S. came from the so-called Golden Crescent in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time it was coming from Mexico & SE Asia. By 1982 the region was producing exportable opium base equivalent to 20-30 tons of heroin a year. Of that, at least 4.5 tons reached the U.S. By 1988 those numbers had increased to 70 to 80 tons of heroin of which 15 to 20 tons reached the U.S. According to Alfred McCoy, in his outstanding book The Politics of Heroin (Lawrence Hill Books, 1972, 1991), Hekmatyar controlled no less than 6 heroin refineries in the Khyber District of Pakistan alone. At his side was Osama bin-Laden.

Around the time that Osama bin-Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1980 he was also curiously able to found a series of investment companies under the umbrella SICO which he headquartered in Geneva. Sources formerly in the intelligence community have confirmed to me that, as bin Laden established branches in the Cayman islands & the Bahamas, he employed law firms & consultants connected to Langley, VA & the CIA. Throughout the Afghan war bin-Laden grew in reputation as a fearless leader and devout Muslim. His wealth also increased rapidly. By the end of the war and the Soviet withdrawal he was known throughout Africa & the MidEast as a radical fundamentalist leader who had turned his sights against the U.S. But this was not without creating enemies both in Afghanistan and his home country of Saudi Arabia, which drew ever more securely into the U.S. sphere, especially during & after the Gulf War.

In the early 1990s bin-Laden took up sanctuary in the Sudan and was afforded a kind of safe haven. He threw himself into massive construction projects including road building. The Sudanese govt has admitted that it had an agreement with the U.S. to monitor bin-Laden and to curtail his terrorist activities. In exchange for this Sudan received unspecified rewards. It is, therefore, mystifying as to why, with bin-Laden under scrutiny in the reasonably accessible and penetrable Sudan, the U.S. govt forced the Sudanese govt to expel him in 1995. This drove him back into the arms of the increasingly hostile Taliban militia in Afghanistan. There, he re-established relations with Afghani drug lords in the towns of Jhost and Jalalabad.
When the U.S. cruise missiles struck the El-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, a host of conflicting stories appeared as to who owned the plant and when it was built. The British turned up a man named Tom Carnaffin who claimed to have helped build the plant and manage it from 1992 through 1996. Other records & sources indicated, however, that the plant was not built until 1996. Carnaffin claimed that he was intimately familiar with the plant and that it could not have produced nerve agents as the U.S. claimed. Later the U.S. backed down and said that it didn't have proof that bin Laden owned the plant. In the meantime about 4 other people were named who reportedly did. Some of them didn't know each other.

What really got my attention was the fact that French Internet publication Indigo reported bin Laden was London guest of British Intelligence as recently as 1996 and his treasurer last year defected to the Saudis as different factions shifted alliances for new MidEast campaigns. …

As my good friend, producer Marc Levin, points out, the CIA has a term for it when one of their operations goes awry and turns ugly, "It's called 'Blowback'." Levin produced an outstanding 1997 6 hour documentary on CIA for PBS entitled, "CIA, America's Secret Warriors". … Special thanks to Ralph McGehee's CIA BASE Program, Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin and various unnamed sources who prefer it.]

Argentina bomb trial a lesson in terror fight
Prime suspect still loose after 7 years
9.21.01   Kevin G. Hall Knight Ridder News Service

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil   … Imad Mughniyah, a leader of the militant Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon, is thought to be living in Iran. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials believe Mughniyah directed the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in Beirut, in which Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was murdered; the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people; and the kidnapping of American hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. An Iranian intelligence official who defected to Germany told prosecutors in the Argentine case that Mughniyah helped plan the Buenos Aires bombing.

He's believed to have had help from the Iranian Embassy in Argentina, an accusation the Iranian govt denies. Argentina also alleged that Moshen Rabbani, a cultural attache at the embassy, had a role. "People should see that these attacks (in Argentina and in the United States last week) are different sons from the same father. It was like a preamble to what happened in New York," said Marta Nercellas, an attorney for the survivors and victims' families. Argentine Jews, who number more than 300,000, make up the largest Jewish community in South America. On the morning of 7.18.94, a white Renault van exploded in front of a 4 story building that housed the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association and the Delegation of Argentine-Israeli Associations. The building caught fire and collapsed, killing 85 people and injuring 300. A 3.17.92 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires also killed 23 people.

Jane's Foreign Report this week said Mughniyah allegedly kidnapped the head of the CIA station in Beirut, William Buckley, and may have killed "Buckley with his own hands in March 1984." Jane's said that in 1985, a reported combined operation of the CIA and Israel's Mossad exploded a car bomb in Lebanon at the the house of Hezbollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, killing dozens, including one of Mughniyah's brothers. Israel's Feb. 1992 helicopter gunship slaying of Hezbollah Sheik Abbas Musawi and his family in Lebanon then was the trigger for Hezbollah's attack a month later on Israel's Argentine Embassy. Jane's said that in December 1994, a car bomb in Beirut killed another Mughniyah brother, Fuad, and 3 others.

The Argentina trial also is expected to shed light on the nearly lawless border area where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet in the southern cone of South America. The FBI in late 1999 placed an anti-terrorism investigator at the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, to keep tabs on the area. Investigators in the Jewish center bombing think much of the logistics and planning may have been done from that tri-border area, where customs and immigration control often operate on bribes. Paraguay's internal security minister, Julio Fanego, said last week that his country was stepping up document checks in Ciudad del Este, a border city. Several people were held for fingerprinting to seek ties to the U.S. attacks.
The relationship between the tri-border underworld and Middle East terrorism became clear in February 2000, when authorities in Paraguay detained Ali Khalil Mehri, a recently naturalized citizen who was born in Lebanon. Mehri, a music counterfeiter, was held at the United States' request but managed to buy his way out of jail even as Argentina sought to question him and his brother Mustafa about the Jewish center bombing. Mehri flew within Brazil and then from Sao Paulo to Paris despite detention orders.

Paraguayan investigators and U.S. sources described Mehri as a fund-raiser from Hezbollah and accused him of copying thousands of CDs, which were used for recruiting. The CDs found in his apartment had interviews with suicide bombers, images of suicide bombings and a call from a cleric to attack the U.S. & Israel.

    The Accidental Operative Mondo Washington
Richard Helms's Afghani niece leads corps of Taliban reps
6.6.01   Camelia Fard & James Ridgeway Village Voice

… little regard for Osama bin Laden, whom she sneeringly refers to as a "tractor driver." She says he was inherited by the Taliban and is widely viewed as a "hang nail." …

    Taliban slammed over bin Laden appt
    8.30.01   UPI
Moscow … This month, Russian media quoted Pakistan's Nation daily as saying that the Taliban had named bin Laden commander of their troops. …
"Unless retaliation is designed to prevent escalation, the results are catastrophic. Israeli retaliation was most effective when the policy was to hunt down and kill known terrorist leaders.
One mistake in a deadly war, the
killing in Norway of Moroccan Ahmed Bouchki, and the timid response and subsequent soul searching that followed, cost the Israelis and others dearly. It led to the Knesset stopping the practice of seeking out and executing terrorists wherever they might be found.

Terrorism can be likened to a well prepared ambush. The choices we are presented with are

  • to keep walking into that ambush and continue to take heavy casualties;
  • no to venture out, avoid the ambush, and, in effect, capitulate to terror;
  • or to take the war to the terrorist, and, in so doing, contain the fight, and prevent the ambush.
It seems that the only sensible choice must be prevention.

There is a conflict between the religious teachings that have had a major influence on the way society moralizes. The Bible and Koran invoke "an eye for an eye", a policy I describe as retaliation.
The Hebrew Talmud says "If someone comes to kill you, rise and kill him first".   [ no cit. ]
  That is prevention. In less theological terms, teachings of military history have, for centuries, advocated attack as the best means of defense.

It is (cliché) that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When it comes to stopping terrorism, prevention is a multipurpose response;

  • it saves the lives of future victims
  • it saves the huge cost of armadas & airstrikes for rescue or retaliation, and
  • it avoids the cul-de-sac of escalation into which govts invariably find themselves driven.
As to moving against terrorism, Western democracies' responses are too little and/or, most often, too late. Intelligence information available from a variety of sources on terrorists is now superb, Law enforcement, however, is often unwilling or unable to use knowledge gained.

Take the case of Zuhair Akkasha, who was well known not only in counterterrorist circles, but to the London police as a Palestinian fanatic capable of murderous action. Akkasha appeared in a London courtroom 12.15.75, charged with assaulting a policeman.
This was no subtle plotter or devious Carlos, moving along a well prepared underground network of safe houses and sympathizers, going to elaborate lengths to avoid being noticed. Akkasha was noticed but the British police failed to spot his real potential.

For his assault against a police officer, Akkasha was sentenced to 6 months in jail and deportation. He served his time and was expelled; within a year, he was back. An observant policeman spotted him in Wimpy bar.
He was followed and seen going into a building in a row of inexpensive accommodations. The observation was dutifully relayed to Scotland Yard, but significance of the sighting went unheeded.
2 months later, Akkasha waited in the lobby of the Royal Lancaster Hotel. When he spotted his target in the back seat of a car in front of the hotel, Akkasha opened the back door and shot to death former Yemeni prime minister Cadi Abdullah al-Hajari, his wife Fatima and embassy diplomat Abdullah al-Hammami

Although the triple murder was committed in public on a street in central London, Akkasha got away. 6 months later, he surfaced again as one of those responsible for the highjacking of a Lufthansa plane and forcing it to land at Mogadishu, identified as the highjacker who shot pilot Jurgen Schumann.
When a (German SAS equivalent) GSG9 team successfully assaulted the highjacked aircraft, Akkasha was one of the terrorists killed.

Terrorists tend to escalate their outrages. If you let a terrorist get away, he'll come back to haunt you. If his next attack is against an ally, that ally won't be grateful.
Deporting a known terrorist does not mean a country is successfully exporting his terror making capacity. It is setting him free and washing its hands of the problem.

… With the United Nations unsuitable as a place to discuss and agree on the defeat of terrorism, counterterrorism created other forums such as, at a political level, a long-standing co-operation of Western intelligence services known as the Kilowatt Group created in 1977 upon an Israeli suggestion following Black September attack at 1972 Munich Olympic Games (successor org ENFOPOL), and the Club of Berne, and, operationally, the Intl Assn of Bomb Technicians & Investigators (AIBTI)"

"Retaliation" Çh. 11, et al   The War Against the Terrorists: How to Win It Gayle Rivers
    counterpoint op-ed C.L. Staten exec. dir. Emergency Response & Research Institute
Now bin Laden's dark eyes stare out of posters displayed proudly in thousands of Pakistani & Afghan shops & tea kiosks.
10.4.99 J.Burke & Harinder Baweja India Today
Since 9.11.01 attacks, Americans longing to help have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to aid agencies. Groups such as the Red Cross are using the donations to help thousands affected. But another little-known organization is funneling contributions in a very different direction. The Rewards for Justice Fund, a non-profit charity, was started to let the public contribute directly to the govt's fight against terrorism. A new marketing strategy, and some help from Internet professionals, is raising the profile of the Rewards for Justice Fund and raising a lot more money in the wake of 9.11.01. The money goes to pay for rewards offered by the State Dept and claimed by people who have helped bring criminal suspects to justice. The charity was the brainchild of 2 businessmen, Scott Case & Joe Rutledge, who approached the State Dept with the idea of creating an easy way for people to support an effort to apprehend terrorist suspects.

"We view ourselves no differently than people who went down to Ground Zero with water & sandwiches to help out the workers down there," Case told NPR's Ina Jaffe. "We were doing what we knew how to do, bring together a marketing program, to bring a solution about." Case says that about 100 million Internet advertisement "banners" have been distributed. A Web surfer clicking on one gets directed to the Rewards for Justice Fund, which describes how donations are used and gives directions for contributing funds electronically. The fund received part of the proceeds from an all-star benefit concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. that featured Michael Jackson, Bette Midler and the Backstreet Boys. And the state of Florida may soon issue United We Stand license plates, with the proceeds going to the fund.
Special Agent Walt Deering of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service says that the charity fund serves a purpose that goes beyond simply funneling money into the program. "It lets the American public have the opportunity to... become part of the cause, and bring intl terrorists to justice," Deering says. "And when you're... trying to get people to provide information, money talks." The reward program has paid out $8 million in rewards in recent years, involving 22 different incidents. Deering says most of the program's success stories are classified. One that isn't: capture & conviction of Ramzi Youssef, who helped plan 1993 World Trade Ctr bombing.


interview   personal views, Anssi Kristian Kullberg, Finnish Dir. of Immigration Western & Central Asia Desk legal & country intelligence service researcher.

… during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. British intelligence and part of the Pakistani intelligence community clashed with the US already during the Cold War period, because they wanted to support Ahmad Shah Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir". It was Massoud & his mujaheddin who finally, after getting Stingers from the British, managed to make the war too expensive for the Soviets, forcing them to retreat in 1989. Meanwhile, the CIA was incompetent enough to be dependent on the Pakistani intelligence services that, especially in Zia ul-Haq's period, favored Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a pompous figure who claimed to have extensive contacts throughout the Islamic world. He indeed had some contacts, incl with Osama bin Laden, but he was considered to be a KGB provocateur by Massoud & many others, and was never of any help in the Afghan independence struggle.
Instead of fighting the Soviet occupants, Hekmatyar preferred to fight other Afghans, and to conspire with suspicious Arab circles imported by his contact bin Laden to Peshawar. The Stingers that the CIA had provided to Hekmatyar, were not used to liberate Afghanistan. Instead, Hekmatyar sold them to Iran, and they were later used against the Americans in a well-known incident.
When the Soviet troops moved out, Hekmatyar pursued a bloody rebellion against the legal Afghan govt, devastating the country along with another rebel general, Dostum. (Though they were not aligned.) In 1993, Hekmatyar supported the KGB general & spymaster Haidar Aliyev's coup in Azerbaijan and, in 1994, Hekmatyar was involved in supporting pro-Russian Lezghin terrorists in the Caucasus.

As far as I know, Osama bin Laden was never a CIA agent. However, there are relatively plausible claims that he was close to Saudi intelligence, esp. to the recently fired intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faizal, until they broke up. Osama first appeared in the Afghan War theater either in 1979, or, at the latest in 1984. But at the beginning he was first & foremost a businessman. He served the interests of those who wished to construct roads accessible for tanks to cross through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. This might also explain his characteristic opportunism, quite atypical for a self-proclaimed warrior of faith. International jihadists surely want to portray him as a religious fighter or Muslim hero, but this is not the true picture, but, mostly, a myth created by the Western media. This is where Arab, Pakistani and Indonesian teenagers learn that Osama is a fighter in a universal struggle of Islam against its oppressors. But bin Laden never fought the Soviets to liberate Afghanistan. For most of this period, he was not even in Afghanistan.

He was managing an office in Peshawar, and the only credible claim about him being in a battle has been made by the former CIA official Milton Bearden concerning a minor skirmish that took place in spring 1987.
Bin Laden's first significant contact in Peshawar was the Palestinian Professor Abdullah Azzam, whom bin Laden has later described as his mentor. Azzam was an Arab idealist, who wanted to concentrate on the liberation of Afghanistan, and who wanted to support Massoud, whom he correctly regarded as being the right person to uphold. Bin Laden disagreed. He wanted to support the disloyal Islamist fanatic Hekmatyar. As a result, Azzam & his son were blown up in a car bomb in 1989, and consequently, bin Laden took over his organization and transformed it into Al-Qaida (the Base). Already before these events, he started to transform the agency by flooding it with his Arab contacts from the Middle East. These Arabs were not interested in liberating Afghanistan as much as in hiding from the law enforcement agencies of their own countries, most of all Egypt's.

When Russia attacked Tajikistan, bin Laden & his folks were by no means interested in liberating Tajikistan from a new communist yoke. Instead, bin Laden left Afghanistan and dispersed his terrorist network, directing it to act against the West. It is bizarre that a man claiming to be an Islamic fundamentalist supported the invasion by the Arab socialist (and thereby atheist) Iraq against Kuwait & Saudi Arabia, both with conservative Islamic regimes. Al-Qaida's supported all causes & activities against the West: the US, Turkey, Israel, and any pro- Western Muslim regime like Pakistan. Robbers on the island of Jolo in the Philippines qualified for Al-Qaida's support although they hardly knew anything about the Qur'an. They were immediately portrayed as "Islamic fighters". Even the strictly atheist anti-Turkish terrorist organization PKK has been welcomed. At the same time they definitely have not supported Muslims advocating Turkish-modeled moderate independence, like the Chechens, the original Tajik opposition or the Azeri govt under President Abulfaz Elchibey.

… Q: The "Arab" fighters in Afghanistan, are they a state with a state, or the long arm for covert operations (e.g., the assassination of Massoud) for the Taliban? Who is the dog and who is the tail?
A: The dog & tail can get very entangled here. Everybody is exploiting everybody, and finally all organizations & states are tools which consist of individuals and used by them.
The Arabs form the hard core of Al-Qaida. They are the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi etc. professional revolutionaries & terrorists who have gathered around the figurehead of Osama bin Laden. Many of these share the same old background in Marxist-inspired revolutionary movements in the Middle East. Ideology & facade have changed when green replaced red, but their methods as well as foreign contacts have mainly remained the same. This is why they are much more interested in attacking the West & pro-Western Muslim regimes than in supporting any true national liberation movements. Even if they try to infiltrate & influence conflict outcomes in the Balkans, the Caucasus, East Turkistan and Kashmir, they are set against the nationalist & secular, and usually pro-Western, policies of the legitimate leadership of these secessionist movements. So the people whom Al-Qaida may support and try to infiltrate are usually exiled or otherwise opposition forces acting in fact against the idea of independence. This has been the case in Chechnya, Dagestan, Bosnia, Kashmir and so on.

And this has been the case in Afghanistan as well. Osama bin Laden & his Arabs never contributed to the actual Afghan national liberation struggle. Instead they acted against it by infiltrating Afghan circles and turning them against each other. Their jihad is not intended to defend the Muslims against infidel oppressors, but to cause chaos and destruction, in which they apparently hope to overthrow Muslim regimes and replace them with the utopia of Salafi rule. It is not hard to see how this set of mind was inherited from the communist utopian terrorist movements that preceded the present Islamist ones. They had the same structures, the same cadres, the same leaders, the same sponsors and the same methods.
The Arabs in Afghanistan have feathered their nests, though. Osama bin Laden & his closest associates have all married daughters of Afghan elders from different factions and tribes and their sons & daughters have, in turn, married the off-spring of eminent Afghan leaders. This is how they secured their foothold in Afghan social networks, something neither the West nor Pakistan succeeded to do. When issues are reduced to family relationships, it is not to be expected that the Afghans would hand over the Arabs to the West or to Pakistan. Al-Qaida is not only fortifying itself physically, but also socially. At the same time their cells and countless collaborating agencies, some of whom are clearly non-Islamist, and some of which are govt agencies of certain hostile states, are hoping to escalate this "war against terrorism" and to exploit it for their own purposes. …

" … Afghanistan, source of 80% of the world's opium and target of a recent eradication campaign by the fundamentalist Taliban. … most of the country's real money comes from taxing non-dope trade. Nor will it bother the drug traffickers, who swarm the region and are shifting production north & west into such places as Turkmenistan. … "

1) http://www.india-today.com/itoday/19991004/cover.html

2) Zalmay Khalilzad said that "the US should actively assist the Taliban because even though it is fundamentalist, it does not practise the anti-US style fundamentalism of Iran". Within less than a month of the Taliban's take-over of Kabul, the US made a U-turn in its position, when it abandoned the plan to send an envoy to Kabul. The US policy shift came amidst mounting international criticism against the Taliban's appalling policies. The savagery and arbitrary medieval rule, while imposing a strict Islamic social code, banning women from working and shutting down girls schools, turned off the international community, drawing condemnation even from the orthodox Iranian clergy. Washington's denouncement of the Taliban action also came in the backdrop of the presidential election in the US, as supporting a regime that had no respect for human rights would have negatively affected Clinton's position. Robin Raphel said that the "US had little influence in Afghanistan, and supports none of the warring factions, and has no plan for bringing the conflict to an end." Another senior official of the US Administration denied that the US had assisted the Taliban in capturing Kabul. The official asserted that "as far as US policy is concerned, we have always maintained that peace and security in Afghanistan can only be achieved through the establishment of a broad coalition govt." Washington got rattled not only with the Inter-Services Intelligence's ill conceived plan but also horrified and ashamed at the Taliban's defiance. The US Taliban policy evoked mounting criticism for being too dependent on Pakistani inputs and analyses.
Aug. 1999 P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA
"The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security"
Strategic Analysis   monthly journal, v.XXIII no.5 p719-747

3) http://dawn.com/2000/01/02/op.htm#1

Islamabad, Pakistan   Warning that Muslims worldwide are under siege by a corrupted West, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden urged a gathering of hardline Muslims to prepare the next generation for holy war. Bin Laden's statement was issued to coincide with 3 day convention that ends Wednesday. About 200,000 Muslim men at the gathering celebrated the Deoband Dar-ul-Uloom Islamic teachings, which inspired the Taliban religious militia, who govern most of Afghanistan. The 143-year-old school in Deoband, India, is also the ideological inspiration of most hardline Islamic groups in Pakistan, including the conference organizers, Jamiat-e-Ulema or Organization of Islamic Clerics. Bin Laden's statement, which was sent to Pakistani news organizations earlier this week, was not read out at the convention.
The statement urged wealthy Muslims to support the Taliban and use their money to rebuild their war-shattered nation. It also urged the new generation to train for holy war, or jehad. "Issue a call to the young generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in Afghanistan," he said. "I appeal to you to teach Muslims that there is no honor except in jehad in the way of God." Successive speakers at the conference were sharply critical of the U.S. and the UN. They loudly denounced the sanctions imposed against the Taliban in January, an attempt to press them to hand over bin Laden for trial. The Taliban say it would betray Islamic tenets to hand over bin Laden to a non-Muslim country for trial. They also say the U.S. has not provided proof of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism.

In a taped address played Wednesday at the convention, the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar called the UN a tool of Washington, which he said wants to see the destruction of Muslims worldwide. The latest expression of intl outrage against the Taliban came in Feb. when Omar issued an edict ordering the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, including 2 mammoth ancient mountain carvings hewn from a Bamiyan cliff face. He called them idolatrous and offensive to Islam, which outlaws images. In his statement, Bin Laden praised Omar's edict, calling it a "great Islamic decision." Afghanistan has been battered by civil war, a drought, famine and the U.N. sanctions aimed at forcing Bin Laden's handover. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- CA, said he had met with Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil to offer a peace plan that would end more than two decades of fighting. Rohrabacher declined to elaborate on the proposal, which he said is his own initiative and does not represent the position of the U.S. govt. He spoke to The AP from the Qatari capital of Doha, where he met Muttawakil.
Rohrabacher, member of the HIRCommittee and former special asst for Afghanistan in the Reagan administration, said Muttawakil's response was "thoughtful and inquisitive." Rohrabacher said Muttawakil would present the plan to the Taliban leadership, and that he was prepared to travel to the Afghan capital Kabul if they showed interest.

bin Laden's divisive Euro truce
4.15.04   AP

Cairo, Egypt   A man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden offered a "truce" to European countries that do not attack Muslims, saying it would begin when their soldiers leave Islamic nations, according to a recording broadcast Thursday on Arab satellite networks. Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain quickly spurned what appeared to be an attempt to drive a wedge between Europe & America.
The tape, which ran in full at more than 7 minutes, also vowed revenge against America for the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and denounced U.S. as using the Iraq war for corporate profiteering. "I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries," the taped message said as the stations showed an old, still picture of al-Qaida leader.

The message said "the door to a truce is open for 3 months," but the time frame could be extended. "The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries," the speaker said without elaborating. A CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency conducted a technical analysis of the recording and concluded it is probably authentic. The official said the tape was likely recorded in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing of Yassin last month.
The tape made clear overtures to Europeans, calling them "our neighbors north of the Mediterranean," and tried to drive a wedge between Europe & U.S.
Several audio & videotapes of al-Qaida's #2 Ayman al-Zawahri, have been released in recent months, but Thursday's tape was the first purportedly from bin Laden since Sept. 2003. Then, a videotape showed bin Laden climbing down a craggy mountainside with al-Zawahri.

al-Arabiya editor Ayman Gaballah said only that the pan-Arab TV network received the tape from "our sources." He would not say if the tape was received at its UAE HQ or in a bureau elsewhere, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. "From the voice, it seems it is bin Laden, but we are not experts to confirm it," Gaballah said.
Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera also aired the tape in full. Its chief editor wasn't available for comment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee sr Democrat Jos. Biden said on NBC's "Today" show that bin Laden was "trying to separate us from the Europeans, and Europeans from the U.S. It's an example of how opportunistic he is."
Sen. Richard Shelby R-AL expressed skepticism about the offer made on the tape. "You cannot negotiate with terrorists, esp. someone like Osama bin Laden," Shelby told "Today".

In London, the Foreign Office ruled out any deal with al-Qaida. "Their attacks are against the very idea of co- existence," the Foreign Office said. "The right response is to continue to confront terrorism, not give in to its demands."
A British opposition spokesman said the purported truce offered was a sign that the al-Qaida network is rattled. "It is obviously an attempt by al-Qaida or the associates of al-Qaida, to try and drive a wedge between the coalition," said opposition Conservative Party foreign affairs spokesman Michael Ancram. "They are frightened about the effectiveness of the coalition," Ancram said in an interview with BBC radio.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome that "it's unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden; everybody understands this." Germany is a leading contributor to the intl peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. It opposed the Iraq war but is now helping train Iraqi police.
German govt spokesman said: "There can be no negotiations with terrorists & serious criminals like Osama bin Laden."

The voice on the tape defended al-Qaida's methods. "They say that we kill for the sake of killing, but reality shows that they lie," the speaker said. Russians, he said, were only killed after attacking Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya, Europeans after invading Iraq & Afghanistan and the Americans in NYC after supporting the Jews in Palestine & their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula."
"Stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood," the message added. "This is a difficult but easy equation." This truce, the message said, was to deny "the warmongers" further opportunities and because polls have shown that "most of the European peoples want reconciliation" with the Islamic world.

Germany rejected that notion. "The intl community must pursue the fight against intl terrorism together," a govt spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. "Germany will continue to make its contribution."
In a reference to terror attacks on U.S. & Spain, the voice on the tape said that "what happened 9.11.01 & 3.11.04
  [ Spain train bombings 3.11.04 by N.African group prev. most interested in independence from colonial rule in Ceuta & Mellila. ]
    was your goods delivered back to you. Security is a need for all humans and we could not let you have a monopoly on it for yourselves. People who are aware would not let their politicians jeopardize their security."
At the start of the recording, the voice called this a "message to our neighbors north of the Mediterranean, incl a reconciliation initiative in response to the recent positive developments that have appeared."

It did not give any specifics, but 3.11.04 attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people and increasing violence in Iraq have prompted debate in Europe & Asia about keeping troops there. Spain's outgoing PM Jose Maria Aznar's govt, which strongly backed U.S. led war in Iraq despite popular & political opposition, was ousted in general elections 3 days after the attacks in Spain.
Incoming Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by 6.30.04 unless UN takes control. However, his incoming govt rejected the offer of a truce with al-Qaida. Spain's incoming foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, speaking at his nation's parliament, said: "What we want is peace, democracy and freedom. We don't have to listen to or answer" the tape.

Madrid, Spain   A Spanish judge indicted Osama bin Laden and 34 others Wednesday on charges of terrorism, including 9.11.01 attacks in U.S. In a nearly 700-page document, investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon issued international arrest orders for bin Laden and 7 others suspected in 9.11.01. 2 other Spaniards also were indicted in connection with those attacks. Spain served "as a place or base for resting, preparation, indoctrinating, support and financing" of al-Qaida, Garzon said in the ruling.
The indictment charged bin Laden and the 9 others with membership in a terrorist organization and "as many crimes of terrorist murder ... as there were dead and injured" in 9.11.01. Garzon said terrorism is one of the crimes included in Spain's universal justice legislation, under which some offenses, such as crimes against humanity, can be tried here even if they were committed elsewhere. Garzon has used this law to try to prosecute abuses under military rule in Chile and Argentina.

The list of indicted suspects includes Tayssir Alouni, Al-Jazeera journalist arrested 9.8.03 in Spain, and Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was accused of leading an al-Qaida cell in Spain and was arrested in Madrid Nov. 2001. 6 others believed to be in Spain also were indicted, but not all will be jailed, according to the order, which was obtained by AP. Garzon ratified jailing orders for 11 already in prison in Spain. Garzon also accused the suspects of belonging to a terrorist group and other crimes, including weapons possession, tax fraud, forgery and other crimes.
Other names on the indictment list include Ramzi Binalshibh, another core leader of the Hamburg, Germany, cell that helped prepare 9.11.01. He was arrested in Pakistan Sept. 2002. Along with Germany, Spain is known to have been an important staging ground for 9.11.01. Accused ringleader & suicide pilot Mohamed Atta visited Spain July 2001 and is believed to have held a key planning meeting with other participants in the northeastern Spanish region of Tarragona.

Garzon said the warrants & indictments are not so much aimed at putting bin Laden on trial in Spain as preventing him & other suspects from escaping justice altogether if & when they are caught. "When this happens, that will be the time establish priority of jurisdiction," Garzon wrote. He also said at least one Spaniard died in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
In U.S., bin Laden is charged in an indictment returned by a grand jury in New York with multiple charges resulting from 8.7.98 bombings of U.S embassies in Nairobi, Kenya & Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed more than 200 people. The indictment charges bin Laden with murder of U.S. nationals, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and attack on a federal facility resulting in death.
The only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in U.S. is Zacarias Moussaoui, French citizen who admits allegiance to al-Qaida but denies being part of the hijacking plot. His trial is on hold while the courts determine whether he should have access to captured al-Qaida operatives he says will support his innocence.

About 40 Islamic extremist suspects have been arrested in Spain since the attacks, although many were released for lack of evidence. Garzon has been leading the investigation in Spain into alleged members of al-Qaida and other militant Islamic groups. Garzon had Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested in London but failed in 1999 to take him to court. Britain ultimately freed the aging ex-despot on grounds he was unfit to stand trial.
Last month, he had requested that Buenos Aires extradite 40 men indicted in Spain for abuses during Argentina's "dirty war." He also had focused on Spain's Basque separatist conflict, working to break up commando units of the armed group ETA.

bin Laden followers to be sentenced
10.16.01   AP

Extraordinarily tight security is being put into place in the New York courthouse where 4 followers of Osama bin Laden who were convicted in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa are to be sentenced this week. They were found guilty in May in a trial that laid out in detail what the govt knew about bin Laden and his al- Qaida terrorist network. Their sentencing will take place at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, blocks from the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center. U.S. marshals with shotguns guard the courthouse. Barricades block the adjacent street, and steel posts protect the building. The 4 were arrested in the 8.7.98 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and led to an international manhunt for top leaders of al-Qaida. The 6 month trial attracted few spectators beyond govt employees and the families of the victims. But the 9.11.01 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets, which have been blamed on bin Laden, have spurred new interest in the trial and the evidence the govt collected.
The defendants were the first convicted by a U.S. jury after bin Laden issued an edict in February 1998 to kill all Americans wherever they were found. They were convicted of conspiracy charges that alleged that their actions were carried out in furtherance of bin Laden's order, or fatwa. Bin Laden, who was indicted in the embassy case, is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. Federal prosecutor Kenneth Karas told the jury that the govt had "established the guilt of these defendants … in a conspiracy to murder the U.S. people merely because they were Americans."

Death penalty rejected
2 of the defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, could have gotten the death penalty, but jurors fearful of making the men martyrs decided not to impose it. Al-'Owhali and Mohamed face a mandatory life sentence. Al-'Owhali rode the bomb vehicle up to the embassy in Nairobi, slinging stun grenades at guards before fleeing. Mohamed helped to build the bomb that struck the embassy in Dar es Salaam. The 2 other men, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, and Wadih El-Hage, 41, were convicted after the evidence showed that they had played significant roles in al-Qaida. Prosecutors alleged that El-Hage, the only U.S. citizen among the group, led "a secret double life," traveling the globe to raise money and smuggle weapons, incl Stinger missiles, for al-Qaida's terror plots. They said Odeh was an explosives expert who was a "technical adviser" to the terror group.
Security had already been increased around the 2 federal courthouses in downtown Manhattan in the past year. The measures included installation of 2 of the world's largest hydraulically operated street barricades and a row of steel posts in front of the courthouse. Since the trade center attack, visitors are required to submit bags & briefcases for inspection outside the courthouse. Environmental workers have regularly checked the air inside court for contamination.

NBC: Top al-Qaida militant arrested   Libyan accused of masterminding 1998 African embassy attacks
3.17.02   Daniel Strieff Reuters

A senior al-Qaida militant listed by U.S. as one of the world's 22 most dangerous men has been captured in Africa, sr U.S. official told NBC News on Sunday. Anas Al-Liby was captured at least 3 weeks ago and is imprisoned in Egypt. He is believed to be a sr member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network and is accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya & Tanzania that killed 224 people. The FBI has offered a $25 million reward for the arrest of Al-Liby, Libyan national who lived in Britain, and placed him on its list of 22 most-wanted terrorists. Al-Liby is believed to be the first of the list, issued after 9.11.01 attacks, to have been captured alive. He is thought to have extensive computer skills, and U.S. officials will try to use him to explain al-Qaida's use of the Internet and encrypted computer files to communicate with terrorists around the world, the U.S. official told NBC News on condition of anonymity. London's Sunday Times newspaper reported that al-Liby is being held in a high-security prison in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and that U.S. & Sudan were in negotiations about a possible handover to U.S. custody. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory reports.

The Times said that days 9.11.01 between 30 & 40 al-Qaida members were secretly rounded up in Sudan and flown to Egypt. A further 10 were arrested last month, including Al-Liby. The suspect lived in Manchester, northern England, before fleeing Britain 2 years ago as an arrest warrant was issued for him by U.S., the paper said. British police tracked him down to his home May 2000, but he had left by the time they raided it, the Sunday Times said. Among possessions found at his flat was a manual entitled "Military Studies in the Jihad against Tyrants," the paper said. Scotland Yard spokesman in London declined to comment on the story. The most sr al-Qaida member known to be held by U.S. authorities is another Libyan, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured on the Afghan-Pakistani in Dec. while fleeing U.S.-led attack on the Tora Bora mountains. One other man on the most-wanted list, top al-Qaida member Mohammed Atef, was reported killed in a U.S. bombing raid on his home in Afghanistan.

More suspects arrested in bombing of USS Cole
4.1.01   WashPost pA22

Sanaa, Yemen   Police today arrested several new suspects in the bombing of the warship USS Cole, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed last year, a Yemeni official said. The security official said an unspecified number of suspects believed to be Islamic militants were held in the southern port city of Aden, site of the apparent suicide bombing that crippled the destroyer on Oct. 12. "They will be interrogated to see if they were involved in the attack on Cole", the official said.Yemen had earlier arrested six suspects in the attack, some of whom are reportedly Muslim militants. But officials have said the main suspect has apparently fled to Afghanistan. The security official said a team of Yemeni investigators left for the U.S. today to continue their probe. One of the suspects, Ali Mohammed Omar Kurdi, was arrested and his house was searched by security forces on Friday, a relative told the Associated Press. Authorities gave no explanation for the arrest of Kurdi or for the search.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is based in Afghanistan, might have been involved in the attack. Bin Laden, who is also accused by Washington of masterminding the 1998 bombings of 2 U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 people, has denied involvement in the Cole bombing. But Arab news media have reported that he publicly praised the Cole attack in a poem in February. The Taliban Islamic militia that controls most of Afghanistan has refused to surrender bin Laden to the U.S. despite U.N. sanctions. The Taliban says Washington has not provided proof of his guilt and that it is against Afghan tradition to hand over a guest to his enemies.

The tunnel rats of terror   al-Qaeda captives in Yemen spent 2 months digging to freedom. Did they get inside help?
2.20.06   M.Hirsh, M.Hosenball, R.Nordland, M.Isikoff Newsweek

… Earlier this month, … a group of 23 suspected terrorists dug their way to freedom from a basement compound beneath the Political Security Office (PSO), Yemen's main intelligence service, in the capital of Sana. Leading them out was Jamal al-Badawi, mastermind of Oct. 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. Another escapee was an American Muslim, Jaber Elbaneh, who was once part of an alleged cell in Buffalo, NY. None has been seen since.
Not all the details of the escape are yet clear. But it is highly unlikely it could have succeeded without help from members of the Yemeni govt, which has been an ally in the war on terror. Last Friday a U.S. Embassy cable sent from Sana, described to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. official who did not want to be identified discussing classified material, noted "the lack of obvious security measures on the streets" and concluded, "One thing is certain: PSO insiders must have been involved."

As described by Yemeni and U.S. officials, the prisoners, left to themselves in a locked basement, spent 2 months digging the 143-foot tunnel. For tools, they used a broomstick with a sharpened spoon lashed to the end as a spade, along with 3 pots tied together as a U-shaped scoop. The plotters also had a soccer ball that they kicked around indoors, apparently to make enough noise to drown out the digging.
At about 4:30 a.m. 2.3.06, the prisoners crawled through the tunnel, broke through the floor of a nearby mosque, somehow emerging in the women's bathroom, the least frequented part of the mosque, and disappeared into the darkness. The escape occurred on a Friday, the Muslim holy day when prison authorities do not conduct head counts as rigorously. While it is unclear what kind of outside help the escapees might have had, officials found it particularly suspicious that they knew exactly where to dig.

The Bush administration has been generally happy with assistance from Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland. A draft of the State Dept's forthcoming country survey of global terrorism, obtained by NEWSWEEK, notes that Yemen has acted against Islamist extremists involved in attacks on U.S. and Western targets. Once virtually a welcoming committee for Islamist agitators, Yemeni govt changed its attitude after the Cole attack, especially after 13 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a Dec. 2001 shootout with Qaeda fugitives. President Ali Abdullah Saleh began to work more closely with U.S. investigators.

But privately, U.S. officials say the plotters must have had serious, possibly high-level, help at the Political Security Office. U.S. investigators say the PSO's rival agency, the National Security Board, is now leading the probe, detaining and questioning everyone who worked at the PSO. Saleh's security chief and the head of the PSO, Ali Mutahar al-Qamish, is said to be under suspicion, according to two U.S. officials.
U.S. and Dutch navies, meanwhile, have mounted an expensive search operation off the Arabian and Red seas. "We're blocking their southern escape route," says Dutch Lt. Cmdr. Willem Cosiy.

Al-Badawi escaped once before, in 2003, when several prisoners were being transferred to another Yemeni prison. After he was recaptured, some Yemeni officials tried unsuccessfully to claim a multimillion-dollar U.S. award, suggesting a scam.
At the time, al-Badawi apparently was friendly with Col. Hussein al-Anzi, then a top PSO official. Yemeni officials say al-Anzi was fired and no longer has any ties to the PSO.
The State Dept cable also cited Yemeni sources who suggested alternative escape theories, including "that elements of the govt liberated the prisoners to engage them in covert operations." American authorities are now offering rewards of up to $5 million for al-Badawi and Elbaneh, and wondering who in Yemen they can really trust.


U.S. gives key allies evidence on Bin Laden
10.30.01   Norman Kempster (Wash.DC) & John Daniszewski (Islamabad); P.Richter & R.Wright (Wash.DC), M.Reynolds (Moscow) L.A.Times

The Bush administration on Tuesday presented evidence to its key allies that it said links Osama bin Laden to the 9.11.01 attacks, and dispatched Def.Sec Rumsfeld to the MidEast to consult with allies in the anti-terrorism campaign. … The administration presented a detailed information package to allies in NATO and to Pakistan govt. State Dept spokesman Richard Boucher said the information was also given to other countries but he declined to name them. " … We have said all along we'll be sharing that information with foreign govts as we can." He said the information is classified and will not be made public for the time being. … U.S. and European officials said the evidence includes transcripts of intercepted communications, along with information concerning Bin Laden's participation in earlier terrorist attacks. These officials said the intelligence was supplied both by the British govt & U.S. agencies. … bases in Uzbekistan could be key to bombing or commando attacks on Afghanistan. … Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov … has agreed to open his country's airspace for U.S. military overflights but has left the status of Uzbekistan's valuable air bases unclear. … State Dept counter-terrorism chief Frank Taylor discussed the evidence with NATO representatives in Brussels. … One European diplomat said of the information: "It includes people talking about having done the job. It includes discussions of personal links between Bin Laden and people who organized the attacks and their associates. "There's other evidence of financial and business transactions, setting up businesses to set up procurement of weapons … "

bin Ladens own stake in Mass. biomedical firm
9.25.01   Jonathan Wells & Jack Meyers MSNBC

One of Osama bin Laden's brothers and a separate Saudi banking family suspected of funneling millions of dollars to bin Laden's terrorist organization own 28% of the stock in a Massachusetts biomedical firm engaged in advanced DNA research. SEC records show that Yahia M. A. bin Laden, one of the bin Laden siblings in charge of the family's MidEast based construction conglomerate, owns 16 % of Cambridge-based Hybridon, Inc., an 11 year old co. developing new medicine to combat cancer and bolster the human immune system. A second co. stockholder is Abdela bin Mahfouz, member of wealthy family which controls Saudi Arabia's largest bank, National Commercial Bank. That bank was accused by the Saudi govt in 1999 of trying to transfer at least $3 million to front organizations for Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. As of last May, Abdela bin Mahfouz owned nearly 12 % of the stock in Hybridon. Earlier SEC filings show that another member of the family, Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz, held stock in Hybridon. Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz is a director of the National Commercial Bank as well as a board member of Blessed Relief, a Sudan-based charity, which U.S. officials say served as a front for Osama bin Laden.

Hybridon CEO Robert Anderson said Yahia bin Laden and the bin Mahfouz family have been "loyal stockholders." We don't have any issue with the background of the investors. We don't have any concern," Anderson said. "These families put money in early on … they deal at arms length. I imagine they have a number of investments in the U.S. We are a legitimate company which is developing medicine We have dedicated scientists doing cancer research, not anything harmful." Hybridon, incorporated in 1990, is one of a handful of companies in the U.S. developing "antisense" technology, which involves the design of synthetic DNA material to inhibit the body's production of disease-causing protein. The biggest U.S. company involved in the antisense field, Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is currently working under a $6.6 million research grant from the U.S. Defense Dept. to see if this new technology can be used to counteract the devastating effects of biological weapons.

Hybridon has an agreement under which it licenses intellectual property to Isis, but according to Anderson, Hybridon has no involvement in any research related to germ warfare. "Currently we don't," Anderson said. "I guess if Isis were successful in some way we would consider it." As far as Anderson knows, Hybridon researchers do not work with materials useful in the development of biological weapons. Anderson said he has never met Yahia bin Laden in person or spoken with him by telephone. However, he provided the Herald with a copy of a statement Hybridon received from the head of the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia a few days after the U.S. named Osama bin Laden as the chief 9.11.01 suspect. Signed by Abdullah A. A. bin Laden, the statement declared the bin Laden family's "strong denunciation & condemnation of this tragic incident which has resulted in the loss of lives of so many innocent men, children and women, which run counter to our gracious religion and which is repugnant to all religions and humanity. … We express our condolences to the families and relatives of the innocent victims." Restating a position first announced by the family in 1994, Abdullah bin Laden also asserted that "the bin Laden family has no relation at all with (Osama bin Laden's) acts and conducts." The message was delivered to Hybridon through the Saudi Arabian consulate in U.S..

Another Hybridon stockholder & member of the company's board of directors is Camille A. Chebeir, whose company, Saudi Economic Development Co., manages bin Mahfouz family money, which reportedly totals some $4 billion. Chebeir, former exec. vp of the bin Mahfouz's National Commercial Bank, was appointed to Hybridon's board in 1999. According to reports in USA Today and by Associated Press that same year, Saudi govt officials audited National Commercial Bank and its founder, Khalid bin Mahfouz, and found that several of the country's wealthiest businessmen had ordered the bank to transfer more than $3 million to New York & London, where it was placed in the accounts of Islamic charities, including Blessed Relief. Khalid bin Mahfouz was reportedly placed under house arrest after the discovery of the transactions. Anderson said he is unaware of any alleged financial dealings between the bin Mahfouz family and Osama bin Laden's organization. Of the bin Laden and bin Mahfouz stock ownership, Anderson said: "They have a vote for their number of shares at the annual meeting. Like any other common stockholder, they're allowed to vote their shares. Surely these people have significant investments in other companies. There must be many, many others because these people have vast amounts of money. Why single out a little company like ours?" Yahia bin Laden (also spelled Yehia) is one of 3 brothers who exert the most control over the Saudi-based Bin Laden Group, according to research by PBS' Frontline, and he is currently negotiating with Lebanese officials for a $50 million contract to help rebuild war-torn central town Beirut.

    Is Michigan a terror stronghold?
    10.20.01   Keith Naughton Newsweek
With one of the largest populations of Arabs outside the Middle East, Detroit & surrounding suburbs are fertile ground for terrorism fund-raising & recruiting. "The Detroit/Dearborn area is a major financial support center for many Mideast terrorist groups," according to a Michigan State Police report obtained by NEWSWEEK. "Southeast Michigan is known as a lucrative recruiting area & potential support base for international terrorist groups. It is also conceivable that 'sleeper cells' may be located in that area of the state." Michigan state police submitted the "3 Year Statewide Domestic Preparedness Strategy" report to the Justice Dept earlier this month, to help support a request for federal funds to fight terrorism in Michigan. A police spokesman says the report "was not intended for public distribution." Almost every major terrorist organization has operatives in Michigan, according to the report. Citing information received from the Detroit FBI office, the report says "most of the 28 international terrorist groups recently identified by the State Dept … are represented in Michigan. Examples include such well-known terrorist organizations as Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Brotherhood, Al-Gama'at, Al-Islamiyya, and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaeda." The Detroit FBI office declines to comment on the report, which it has not yet reviewed, says a spokeswoman.

Those groups, along with domestic "patriot groups" in Michigan, combine to create 374 "potential-threat elements" statewide, the report says. A State Police spokesman describes such elements as individuals or groups who could engage in acts of terror. To raise money for international terrorist groups overseas, Michigan operatives "commit criminal acts" the report says. It cites 2 arrests in Detroit last year which had direct links to international terrorist groups. "Nov. 2000, 2 individuals were arrested in Detroit by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for smuggling weapons & military equipt to Lebanon. Evidence existed that linked the individuals to the terrorist group Hizballah," according to the report. On Sept. 17, the FBI raided a house in a rundown neighborhood in southwest Detroit looking for a suspected Osama bin Laden associate. Instead, they found 3 men and a trove of forged documents, including visas, a passport and 28 passport-sized photos. They also found a day planner with Arabic notations about the "American air base in Turkey," the "American foreign minister" and the "Alia Airport" in Jordan. The day planner also contained drawings of an airport believed to be the U.S. military base in southern Turkey that patrols the no-fly zone in Iraq.

The man the feds were looking for in Detroit, Nabil al-Marabh, was arrested near Chicago a few days later and is now in federal custody in NY. According to published reports, Al-Marabh has been identified as a bin Laden associate by Raed Hijazi, who is on trial in Jordan for foiled plot to blow up tourist sites on Millennium eve. Al-Marabh, former Boston cab driver born in Kuwait, is suspected of knowing 2 9.11.01 hijackers.
In Detroit, 3 men are facing federal fraud charges in connection with the forged documents found in the Detroit raid. 2 of the men, Karim Koubriti, 23, and Amed Hannan, 33, both Moroccan, have been in federal custody since the raid. Both formerly worked for at Detroit Metropolitan Airport as dishwashers for an airline catering service, before quitting in June to take truck-driving lessons. Third suspect, Youssef Hmimssa, was arrested on Sept. 28 in Iowa. He pled not guilty to federal fraud charges in Detroit on Oct. 17. Authorities say Hmimssa's photo appeared on a forged passport found in the raid of the Detroit house. FBI sources say Hmimssa is believed to have traveled the world using several aliases.

Did 'Jihad' arms course visit U.S.?   U.K. authorities plan to question man running camp in rural Alabama   12.27.01   Mike Brunker MSNBC

British authorities plan to question a security expert who runs a Alabama firearms training camp about claims that radical Muslims from Britain were honing their marksmanship on American soil before going off to fight for Islamic causes around the globe. In response to a query from MSNBC.com, a British Crown Prosecution Service spokesman in London confirmed British bodyguard & firearms trainer Mark Yates who has operations in both UK & U.S., will be questioned about a suspected terrorist's offering of "live fire" weapons training in America for aspiring holy warriors. "(Yates) has not been questioned as yet … but there are plans to do so soon," said spokesman Doug Crighton. The claim that Yates was somehow involved in the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge" training offered by the Sakina Security Services company was made by company's founder Sulayman Bilal Zain-ul-abidin, in custody since 10.1.01 on terrorism charges, Crighton said. It was the first time British authorities have acknowledged the investigation had extended to U.S. Previously, a British prosecutor had said only that Zain-ul- abidin claimed to have a business "associate" in Alabama.

Yates, who is operations & training director at the Ground Zero firearms training camp outside Marion, AL, denied in a phone interview that he or Berkeley & Associates, the company that operates the camp, had any business dealings with Sakina. "I first heard of Sakina last month when the Sunday Telegraph ran an article that mentioned it," the 44 year old Yates said by phone from London offices of Trans Global Security Intl, one of several inter-linked security companies he operates or is associated with.
  [ Yates is hyperbolic self-promoter per this account. So were G.Gordon Liddy, E.Howard Hunt, Oliver North, Richard Secord & Wm Casey. ]
"No, we had no agreements, no arrangements." He added that he is cooperating with British investigators. FBI spokesman Steven Berry said investigators are aware of Yates & the Alabama camp, and indicated that after checking Zain-ul-abidin's claim of having an associate in the state, the bureau is skeptical of the claim. In fact, though the claims that Sakina Security was providing weapons training in the U.S. first surfaced in British media accounts 18 months ago, federal & state law enforcement agencies told MSNBC.com they never found any evidence such instruction actually took place. Attempts to reach the president of Berkeley & Associates, Jason Fish, were unsuccessful.

Zain-ul-abidin, 43, was arrested on Oct. 1 and charged under Britain's Prevention of Terrorism Act with one count of "providing instructional training in the making or use of firearms, explosives or chemical, biological or nuclear weapons" and a second count of "inviting" others to undergo such training. He remains in jail after being denied bail and is scheduled for arraignment on Jan. 4. Zain-ul-abidin's attorney Muddassal Arani said her client is innocent. She did not return calls from MSNBC.com seeking comment. The charges arise from Zain-ul-abidin's operation of Sakina Security Services, which provided bodyguard service and claimed to specialize in "high-risk jobs in the former Soviet Union and in the civil war arenas of the world." Sakina's website also offered courses in self-defense & hand-to-hand combat for Muslims, incl the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge." After mastering the "art of bone breaking" and learning to "improvise explosive devices," it said, British Muslims would be given the opportunity to squeeze off up to 3,000 rounds at a shooting range in U.S. before heading off to fight for Islamic causes around the world. "All serious firearms training must be done overseas" because of British gun laws, the website said.

At a bail hearing in London 10.5.01, prosecutor Patrick Stevens said Zain-ul-abidin had told investigators that Sakina was essentially a one-man operation in which he acted as chief instructor. But he also claimed to have "an associate" in Alabama, Stevens said. The prosecutor also said investigators had searched Zain-ul-abidin's apartment and seized documents believed to be related to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden & his al-Qaida network, anti-Semitic material and what appeared to be disabled firearms, including a rifle and 2 handguns. While Yates is adamant that he was not involved in a business relationship with Zain-ul-abidin or Sakina Security, he told MSNBC.com that he could not discuss whether he knew the suspect because the matter is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Sunday Telegraph reported that Zain-ul-abidin, who also used the name Frank Etim, attended a military training course taught by Yates several years ago at a secret camp near the village of Yetgoch in southern Wales. Young Muslims & others learned how to use Uzi machine guns at the camp, which was run by Trans Global Security Intl, the newspaper said, quoting 2 individuals who placed Etim at the scene. A third man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MSNBC.com that he met Etim at the camp and had recently been interviewed by police about the training. "My memory is that he came alone and didn't stick out as an exceptional or forceful character," said the man, who works in the security field in Britain. "He was very approachable and in fact quite a nice guy." He added that he saw no evidence that Yates & Etim had anything beyond the usual instructor-student relationship.

The Telegraph reported in November that Yates acknowledged that he "had contact with (Etim) on a number of occasions over the past few years," but said he declined to elaborate on the nature of the relationship. The reports of the Welsh training camp have rekindled a debate in Britain over whether the country has in recent years become a hotbed for military recruitment by radical Islamic elements. Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, firebrand Islamic leader in London and a founder of the fundamentalist al-Muhajiroun organization, told the Telegraph last year that between 1,800 & 2,000 British Muslims were going abroad each year for military training. "We find young men in university classes or mosques, invite them for a meal and discuss … ongoing attacks being suffered by Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine or Kashmir," the the newspaper quoted Bakri Mohammed as saying. "We … make them understand their duty to support the jihad (holy war) struggle verbally, financially and, if they can, physically in order to liberate their homeland." Others in the Muslim community have challenged Bakri Mohammed's estimates, saying they are only designed to further the aims of al-Muhajiroun, which advocates uniting the world's 50-plus Muslim states under a single "khilafah," or Islamic state.

While reliable numbers are impossible to come by, anecdotal accounts of such recruitment, incl apparent involvement of Sakina Security, were reported at least as early as May 2000. BBC interviewed a British Muslim it identified as Abu Yahya who claimed to have attended a military training camp in the Kashmir after being recruited by Sakina Security. "I learned everything with respect to fighting, making bombs, using artillery, using a Kalashnikov (assault rifle), how to ambush," he told the network. The following month, the Hindu newspaper of India quoted a Sakina Security representative who identified himself as Sulayman Balal (Zain-ul-abidin's first & middle names) as saying that "a few people" had signed up for the first "Ultimate Jihad Challenge" in April. He described the 2 week course as taking place on a "1,000-acre, state-of-the-art shooting range in the U.S." The description closely matches published information about Ground Zero, the Alabama training camp that Yates runs. The Ground Zero Web site, which was quickly retooled after 9.11.01 to highlight a new "5-day anti-terrorist training" course, says the Alabama compound features "state-of -the-art, world-class ... training facilities." British security co. WK Security, which offers training in SWAT team tactics at Ground Zero under an arrangement Berkeley & Assoc., advertises the 5-day course as being held at a "1000+ acre training facility."

Al-Muhajiroun movement founder Bakri Mohammed told the Telegraph last year that the U.S. was becoming a favored destination for military training. "We use U.S.A. because whenever we go to Afghanistan, U.S.A. labels us terrorist," the Syrian-born Bakri Mohammed was quoted as saying, "OK, so let us go to America. You call us tourists." Since 9.11.01 and British authorities' heightened scrutiny , al-Muhajiroun is now distancing itself from Sakina. Al-Muhajiroun spokesman Mohamed Sharif told MSNBC.com Bakri Mohammed's comments about military training in U.S. referred only to "3 or 4 men" who signed up for a Sakina course and practiced their marksmanship at an unidentified shooting club in Missouri. "They discover when they went to America that it was too expensive, about $3,000 to $4,000," he said. Sharif, who described Sakina as a "youth club" that was not affiliated with al-Muhajiroun, added that that reports suggesting that al-Muhajiroun & Sakina were engaged in military recruitment amounted to "a storm in a teacup."

Al-Fuqra tied to Colorado crimes
Leader owned land in Buena Vista; followers convicted in bombing of Krishna temple
2.12.02   Charlie Brennan MSNBC

Radical Islamic leader linked to the kidnapping of Wall St Journal reporter Daniel Pearl tied to a wide range of illegal activity throughout Colorado. Through a broad-based investigation launched in 1989, CO authorities convicted 4 members of the al-Fuqra movement on a series of felonies including racketeering, forgery, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and the 1984 firebombing of a Hare Krishna temple in Denver. Those who helped lead those investigations said the Pakistani-based leader of al-Fuqra, Sheik Mubarik Ali Jilani, briefly owned 2 lots in downtown Buena Vista. Susan Fenger, then an investigator for the state Labor & Employment Dept, helped build the case against Colorado al-Fuqra members. She said Jilani had been in Colorado. "Sheikh Mubarik Jilani was the leader of al-Fuqra and still is," said Fenger, now working privately as a forensic documents examiner. "Sheikh Jilani visited Colorado, we know that," said Jefferson County prosecutor Doug Wamsley. Wamsley, then an asst atty general, led the prosecution against four al-Fuqra members in the early 1990s. "We have at least one witness who remembered Jilani from the Buena Vista area, where he had talked to a realtor and arranged to buy a piece of property," said Wamsley. "But then it was sold, right away. We didn't pay much attention to it, because he held it so briefly."

Pearl was seeking to interview Jilani when he vanished 1.23.02 in Karachi. Jilani has been questioned in the Pearl kidnapping, but has reportedly denied knowing anything about it. Fenger described al-Fuqra's CO presence now as minimal. The extremist group is believed to still have compounds in NY, CA, SC and VA. Jilani was questioned in connection with the Pearl kidnapping, Fenger said, after police intercepted a communication from Jilani to al- Fuqra members at their compound in Red Huse, VA. "What the content of that communication was, I didn't ask," said Fenger. "I knew the source wouldn't tell me, so I didn't ask." Jilani, Fenger said, attended a Dec. 1993 meeting in Sudan that included members of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "I know Jilani was there," said Fenger, "and there was a huge group of Somalis," among whom there are many bin Laden supporters. While Jilani's reason for briefly investing in downtown Buena Vista more than 10 years ago may never be known, authorities know far more about other al-Fuqra CO activities.

For example, Jilani's followers also owned a 101-acre compound 12 miles east of Buena Vista near Trout Creek Pass. It was situated between 9 & 10 thousand ft, and lacked electricity or plumbing. Wamsley believed they wanted the property for "a high-altitude training camp." Police raided it in 1992 and discovered a hidden cave containing about 30 military weapons, including AK-47 rifles and about 6,000 rounds of ammunition. The Trout Creek Pass compound, located on an old mining claim, had been kept under surveillance by state & Chafee County authorities from June 1989 to March 1991, during which time police watched "various individuals conducting martial arts training, engaging in hand-to-hand combat & other paramilitary tactical maneuvers, and practicing the shooting of assorted firearms & weaponry," according to court documents. It was finally raided in Oct. 1992, resulting in the arrest of 4 members ultimately convicted in a series of crimes attributed to the group. Those still serving prison terms in Colorado in conection with their al-Fuqra activities are James D. Williams, 48, James Upshur, 57, and Edward Flinton. Fourth defendant Edward Ivan McGhee 46, has since been paroled.

"Jilani recruited these people in this country, and set up these groups around the country," said Wamsley. The first solid lead investigators developed on al-Fuqra in CO came in 1989. In probing a series of storage locker thefts in Colorado Springs, police executed a search warrant on a locker rented by the group. The locker held 30 lbs of explosives, 3 large pipe bombs, 10 handguns, silencers, military training manuals and bombing-making instructions. Additionally, investigators recovered documents, maps and surveillance photographs relating to potential targets in L.A., Tucson and Denver, plus a detailed description of the 8.1.84 Hare Krishna temple firebombing at 1400 Cherry St. in Denver. At that point, the fire was unsolved. One of the devices found in that Colorado Springs locker, Wamsley said, "was identical to the device that was used to burn the temple." Other crimes on which Colorado al-Fuqra members were convicted include defrauding the state of $355,000 in fraudulent worker compensation claims

Suspect: bin Laden living in border area
3.6.03   Kathy Gannon & Munir Ahmad AP

Islamabad, Pakistan   Osama bin Laden is alive, in good health and living in the border region between Pakistan & Afghanistan, suspected No. 3 al-Qaida leader told his interrogators after being captured last weekend, a Pakistani intelligence official said Thursday.
Suspected 9.11.01 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said he met with bin Laden in recent weeks using a complicated network of phone calls, runners and intermediaries to line up the visit, said the official, who participated in the interrogation.The meeting took place in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province or in the rugged mountain peaks that run along the border with Afghanistan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mohammed said he didn't know bin Laden's exact whereabouts now, but that he was in the region, according to the official. Mohammed was captured last Saturday in a joint raid by Pakistani & CIA operatives on a house in Rawalpindi, a bustling city adjacent to the capital. The official said Mohammed was interrogated for several hours by both Pakistani agents & CIA agents before being handed over to U.S. authorities and taken out of the country to an undisclosed location.
"He said proudly, 'the sheikh (bin Laden) is a hero of Islam and I am his tiny servant. Life, family, money, everything can be sacrificed for the sheikh,"' said the intelligence official.

In what appeared to corroborate Mohammed's information, Associated Press received similar information on Monday from a former Taliban intelligence chief. In a telephone interview from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the former intelligence chief said bin Laden was seen in South Waziristan in Baluchistan province less than 2 months ago. bin Laden was meeting with Taliban members, he said. His report could not be independently verified, but both U.S Special Forces & Pakistani soldiers are in South Waziristan trying to flush out fugitive Taliban & al-Qaida.

Several sources say that bin Laden moves with only a small number of guards, changing his location nightly, never using satellite telephones. Instead he reportedly sends messages through intermediaries to a selected person who makes phone calls on his behalf, according to former Taliban interviewed by AP in Pakistan's remote tribal regions.
Another intelligence official earlier told AP that a raid was carried out on a house in Wana in South Waziristan earlier this year after a tip off was received that bin Laden's top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri, was there. The raid led to the arrest of some Afghan Taliban, but not al-Zawahri.

Officially, however, Pakistan's Interior Ministry spokesman, Iftikhar Ahmad, said "we cannot say that Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He (bin Laden) would have been arrested if he had been here." Western diplomats say it's intriguing that Mohammed was arrested in a Rawalpindi neighborhood, where army generals & top military officials live. The congested city of about 4 million people is the headquarters of the Pakistani Army and home of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Mohammed was arrested at the home of an activist of Pakistan's oldest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which has close links with the Pakistan intelligence service, known as ISI. In the 1980s, Jamaat-e-Islami activists worked closely with Pakistan's intelligence to help Afghan insurgents during the U.S.-bankrolled anti-communist war in Afghanistan.

Arab & Pakistani sources told the AP that Mohammed may have been trying to raise money for terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. Fund-raising was not new to Mohammed, who ran an Islamic charity in northwestern Peshawar along with his brother during the 1980s war in Afghanistan. Through their charity they financed Islamic insurgents and taught students at religious schools in Peshawar & in nearby Pubbi, including the Jalozai Refugee camp, where many Arab militants lived.
Other militant Arab warriors lived in nearby Shamshatoo camp, which was run by renegade rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group. Hekmatyar has been labeled a terrorist by U.S. A former loyalist of Hekmatyar's, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who identified himself as Abu Yusuf, said Mohammed traveled freely throughout Pakistan. His only fear was from U.S. intelligence agents, who have provided the tipoffs to Pakistani security officials that have led to previous raids & arrests.

One such tip led to a raid in southern Karachi 9.10.02 in which Mohammed's wife & 2 small children were arrested, Abu Yusuf said. The next day, Ramzi Binalshibh, would-be hijacker who could not get into U.S., was captured in the southern port city of Karachi. He was an aide to Mohammed and a key 9.11.01 moneyman.
Pakistani officials said that an arrest made in Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, helped police trace Mohammed to Rawalpindi. However, other reports say that U.S. intelligence traced a telephone call that led police to Mohammed.
A second al-Qaida suspect, Saudi national Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, was arrested with Mohammed, along with Ahmed Abdul Qadus. Al-Hisawi was suspected of financing 9.11.01. He was also said to be the moneyman for al-Zawahri and may have been trying to contact the Egyptian fugitive at the time of his arrest


border diagram Afghan warnings that went unheeded at Tora Bora
U.S. decision not to send in its own ground troops might have enabled Bin Laden to escape, officials acknowledge
4.25.02   Megan K.Stack LA Times

Tora Bora, Afghanistan   Bombs rumbled in mountains that ribbon Pakistani border; anti-Taliban commander Haji Mohammed Zaman paced impatiently. On that hard, wintry December day, Zaman's troops were hunting for the world's most wanted man; they weren't having much luck. Day after day they captured, then lost, the same ground. His soldiers were shivering, hungry and losing their zeal. Zaman was frustrated.
"If America wants to capture Osama, why aren't they trying?" he complained. According to the commander's intelligence, Osama bin Laden was hunkered down in the mountains, waiting out the airstrikes in deep underground caverns. For weeks, Zaman had pressed the U.S. for more weapons, supplies and money to hunt the Al Qaeda chief, but Americans regarded the Afghan commander's information with suspicion.

Now, months later, interrogation of captured Al Qaeda fighters has reportedly led the Bush administration to conclude that Bin Laden was, indeed, hiding out in the mountain redoubt. He might have escaped by slipping over the border into wild tribal zones of Pakistan, just as anti-Taliban commanders warned.In hindsight, some U.S. officials have lamented the decision to fight the battle of Tora Bora with bombs & Afghan foot soldiers instead of sending in U.S. ground troops. But during the siege, a Western diplomat in the region characterized Zaman & other tribal warlords as "parasites" who were inflating reports of Al Qaeda's presence in hopes of milking money & supplies from the U.S.

If the U.S. was hesitant to trust the Afghan commanders, it wasn't for nothing. It was impossible to say what invisible laces of sympathy ran between the Afghans & their Al Qaeda foes. There was the bond of Islam. In candid moments, most of the anti-Taliban soldiers admitted that they'd rather see the terrorists flee than have to slaughter them. Then there were mercenary motivations: Some Afghans reportedly ferried desperate, wealthy terrorists to the Pakistani line for a pretty price. In a climate of mistrust & uncertainty and daunted by a forbidding terrain, U.S. military balked at sending troops. The Pentagon stands by that decision. Last week, Def.Sec. Rumsfeld said the U.S. couldn't be sure of Bin Laden's whereabouts.
In the swirl of second-guessing, some military officials say the Afghans fumbled, or even helped the terrorist chieftain evade capture. But as the battle unfolded, local warriors repeatedly warned of Al Qaeda members' probable, even imminent, escape.

A gap in strategies was obvious from the beginning: Instead of sending ground troops, U.S. warplanes flew overhead and dropped "daisy cutter" bombs & cruise missiles. The U.S. set a $25-million bounty on Bin Laden's head in hopes of appealing to local mercenaries. Afghans were skeptical. Bombs alone would never be enough to destroy the network of caves, they said. After all, they pointed out, Soviet forces spent years attacking Tora Bora, to little effect. Caves could be attacked & searched only on foot, they warned, and the sooner the better. As for the bounty, the men shrugged it off. Even if they bagged the famed fugitive, they didn't expect to see a single cent. "That money is for our commanders," said a soldier named Rohullah.

The Afghans pleaded for guns, food, coats and money. If they were properly outfitted, they said, they could storm Tora Bora and rout Bin Laden. But as the weeks passed, as biting winter brought the first snow clouds, and as U.S. hesitation to send ground troops to the region became apparent, local commanders spoke with impatience and, finally, bewilderment. "I don't think the U.S. wants to capture Osama," Zaman top aide Mohammed Alem said in late November. "We know where he is, we tell them and they do nothing. So they are not as serious as they say they are." When the Northern Alliance stormed into capital Kabul 11.13.01, provincial Taliban govts dissolved throughout eastern Afghanistan, and Zaman came riding over the Khyber Pass from Pakistan. Guarded by a young, ragged army, he returned to his family's stone house in Jalalabad and went to work plotting the ouster of "Arabs" who he insisted were hiding in the mountains.

Zaman told anybody who would listen that bin Laden had moved a few hours south to Tora Bora. He told the tale of a long convoy of Al Qaeda pickup trucks that rumbled out of the city and crept up into the hills. Accompanied by a tribal elder from the Pakistani region of Parachinar, Bin Laden had headed for Tora Bora, Zaman said. Villagers had watched him pass. "You know the infrastructure of Al Qaeda has broken down completely," Zaman said in November. "If the allies help us, we can get them out of Tora Bora." Newly appointed security chief for the eastern provinces Hazrat Ali was equally certain. "I know who is sending lunch & dinner from this city to Osama," he said one afternoon in November. He refused to elaborate.
Afghans said bin Laden was accompanied by one of his sons & by Egyptian doctor Ayman Zawahiri who looks after bin Laden's health and is also considered his most important advisor. They said the group included hundreds, even thousands, of hard-line followers from China, Chechnya, Kashmir and the MidEast.

First week of December, anti-Taliban moujahedeen clambered to a rocky plateau on the northern edge of Tora Bora. Far below, a dry riverbed lay like a spine on the drought-baked earth; abandoned terraces climbed the hillsides. The soldiers whistled, clapped and shouted; they were glad to start the fighting. But even in the first flush of battle, there was skepticism in the ranks. Commanders complained that their soldiers were being killed in misguided air attacks and that incessant bombing made it difficult to penetrate Al Qaeda hide-outs on foot.

A soldier named Yar Mohammed squinted into the hills, a rocket launcher slung over one shoulder. "These whole mountains are covered with caves, and across the mountain," he pointed, "is Pakistan. They could escape that way." Whether the roads to Pakistan had been sealed already by snow was an open question in the early days of the assault. At first, commanders claimed that Al Qaeda forces were cornered. But quietly, underlings contradicted them. "We see they're escaping, but it's difficult to go forward in the hills," Shorab Khan said. "Yeah, it's possible they can run away. We've blocked the roads as best we can."
It was an important point: south of Tora Bora lay the tribal areas of Pakistan, where lawlessness ruled and bin Laden enjoyed strong support. Commanders said the path through the mountains had already been trodden by fleeing Taliban leaders, including the chief of Nangarhar province, who'd reportedly taken shelter in Pakistan.

Eventually, it became clear that it was possible, even easy, to tramp through the snowdrifts into Pakistan. Around Dec. 7, the soldiers overheard Bin Laden on the radio. He was still in Tora Bora, but "they were getting ready to move," said Haji Zahir, another senior Afghan commander. The next morning, tribal scouts said they saw Bin Laden picking his way over the hills on horseback. The Saudi exile was flanked by four Al Qaeda guards, commander Haji Khalan Mir said.
The days slipped past. The Afghans said they caught sight of bin Laden, lost him, then found him again. In a shadow dance of rumors and overheard radio transmissions, bin Laden became an almost mystical figure: moving, moving, always moving. But this had always been the terrorist chief's way. One day, Zaman's scouts spotted blood in the snow on the route to the Pakistani border. The commander's conclusion was ominous: Al Qaeda fighters were escaping. The next day, Zaman & Ali, who seldom agreed on anything, spoke with renewed conviction of bin Laden's presence. Both refused to explain what made them so suddenly, unwaveringly certain. "I'm 100% sure Osama is here," Zaman said. "I send spies every day. They bring me the information." He paused, then gave a curt warning: "If America continues like this, it's a mistake."

At the height of combat, about 100 members of the U.S. & British special forces were stationed in Tora Bora. Otherwise, the U.S. kept an eye on the battle from the distant vantage of Tampa, FL. Afghan soldiers starved, shivered and wrapped their wounds in blankets because there were no medicines, bandages or doctors. They pressed toward the caves on the outskirts of the cave complex, only to be pushed back again. Foot soldiers seesawed over the same ground day after day, sniping & ducking along the rocky trails.
At night, when temperatures plunged and the hunger pangs were sharp, the soldiers, many barely beyond adolescence, climbed down from their posts and sought shelter in the mud houses of nearby farmers. One night, they raided a network TV truck and devoured the crew's food. "We were hungry," they said with a shrug the next day.

When morning broke, they battled their way back to the positions they'd abandoned the night before. "If we had coats or shoes, we could go ahead," said Sarbaz Khan, who headed an Afghan squadron. "It's so cold at night we can't hold our guns. Our blood freezes; it gets so we can't move easily." The Afghans had been holding walkie- talkie negotiations with Al Qaeda fighters since the attacks began. Then, 12.11.01, a core group of Al Qaeda fighters promised to turn themselves in at daybreak. But when the appointed hour arrived, eerie silence of the cease-fire was broken by a torrent of bombs from U.S. warplanes. Gunfire cracked against the rocks. "American bombing disturbed the negotiations," griped a commander named Ali Mohammed. "The Americans ruined everything." Other Afghans were wary: The negotiations were nothing but a trick, they said, a way to buy time. "Hundreds have already escaped," said Mir, the commander under security chief Ali. "And we are sure Osama bin Laden escaped through this road to the Pakistani tribal areas."

Report: al-Qaida headed to Lebanon ¹
Terrorist network looking for new home after Taliban defeat, U.K. paper says   2.1.02   R.Windrem (NY) D.Strieff (London) MSNBC, AP, Reuters

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network is trying to shift its base of operations to Lebanon following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a British newspaper reported Friday. The report comes amid the airing of an interview in which the Saudi dissident describes himself & his followers as "terrorists" and says the U.S. is headed toward "unbearable hell."
Citing intelligence reports, The Times of London said one of bin Laden's top deputies arrived in Lebanon in mid- January and has held meetings with representatives of the Hezbollah militant group. Hezbollah, which last attacked a U.S. facility in 1983 when a suicide truck bomb exploded in an American military barracks in Beirut, killing 241 servicemen, is believed to be sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. However, U.S. officials said they have seen no evidence to support the Times report. Some al-Qaida members had escaped from Afghanistan and some may have made their way to Lebanon along with a lot of other places but there is no indication they are setting up any "cells" or operations in Lebanon, one official told NBC's Robert Windrem.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Bush labeled Iran one of 3 countries along with Iraq & N. Korea that formed an "axis of evil." Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim organization, while al-Qaida is Sunni Muslim, long rival factions within the Muslim world. Although The Times quoted British diplomatic officials as saying the 2 groups were "unlikely bedfellows," it cited a long history of cooperation between them. Bin Laden is believed to have met with a senior Hezbollah leader in the mid-1990s and al-Qaida has also reportedly supplied Hezbollah with weapons & training. The Times also reported that the al-Qaida official, a Yemeni man said to use the alias Salah Hajir, had met with a radical Sunni Islamic group, Usbat al-Ansar, while in Lebanon. Neighboring Syria maintains around 30,000 troops in Lebanon and effectively controls the tiny country, which was ravaged by a 1975-1990 civil war.

CNN airs bin Laden tape
Meantime, CNN on Thursday night broadcast previously unseen portions of a taped interview with bin Laden, in which the Saudi-born militant said the U.S. war on terrorism was leading the American people "into an unbearable hell and a choking life." Speaking of 9.11.01, bin Laden first denied responsibility and then, pressed further, said, "If inciting people to do that is terrorism ... we are terrorists." CNN said it obtained the interview, done by the Arabic language Al-Jazeera television network in late October, "from a non-governmental source."
If the interview occurred in late Oct., that would have been about 2 weeks before Kabul, the capital, fell to U.S.- back Afghan alliance fighters & more than a month before the Taliban headquarters city of Kandahar was abandoned. Bin Laden wore camouflage fatigues and spoke without emotion as he told his Al-Jazeera interviewer that killing innocent civilians "is permissible in Islamic law."And he painted a grim future for Americans.

"The battle has moved inside America. We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God," bin Laden said in the interview. "I tell you, freedom & human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. govt will lead the American people in and the West in general into an unbearable hell & a choking life." CNN, which had close ties to the Qatar-based satellite network, reported Al-Jazeera decided not to air the interview at the time it was done because "it wasn't newsworthy."

bin Laden whereabouts
Meanwhile, even though bin Laden has not been seen on tape for a month, U.S. officials said they believe the terrorist leader is still alive. "The fact that you haven't seen him is not evidence to support the notion that he is still alive," one officials told NBC's Windrem. "I mean that is just intuitive. But we think it is more likely that he is lying low, concerned about his security, trusting nobody, being really careful." The official also said he does not believe bin Laden is going to be interviewed any time soon by any journalists. "Witness Massoud's fate," the official said, referring to the assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud by 2 men posing as TV journalists on Sept. 9, believed to be the work of Bin Laden. "He understands the perils of doing tv."
U.S. officials have said they have not heard or seen any evidence that Bin Laden is dead, noting that if he had been killed or died, there would likely be discussions of a succession among his commanders. So far, they have not heard or seen anything to indicate that. However, officials also note that they did not know the last tape was coming.

'We are terrorists'
The Al-Jazeera interviewer pressed bin Laden on his responsibility for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York & the Pentagon but got ambiguous answers. "America has made many accusations against us & many other Muslims around the world. Its charge that we are carrying out acts of terrorism is unwarranted," bin Laden said in his first answer. But moments later, CNN said, bin Laden took up the subject once more & said:   "If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists." The existence of the interview apparently was known in govt & intelligence circles quickly after it was done. CNN said the U.S. govt got a copy.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair quoted the interview in a speech to Parliament last November.   "On 20 Oct., bin Laden said in an unbroadcast video tape: 'If avenging the killing of our people is terrorism, let history be a witness that we are terrorists,'" CNN quoted Blair as saying. The interview, which CNN said was 60 minutes long, was believed to have been the first done after 9.11.01 and showed bin Laden justifying the killing of innocent Americans. "We kill the kings of the infidels, kings of the crusaders & civilians infidels in exchange for those of our children they kill. This is permissible in Islamic law & logically."

The Al-Jazeera interviewer interrupts to ask if bin Laden means to say it was appropriate to kill innocent people in retribution against those who "kill our innocents." The al-Qaida leader responds: "So we kill their innocents, and I say it is permissible in Islamic law & logic." The interview, done about a month before the Taliban & al- Qaida fled their headquarters at the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, shows a confident bin Laden, certain his forces would defeat U.S. "We believe that the defeat of America is possible, with the help of God, and is even easier for us, God permitting, than the defeat of the Soviet Union was before."

anthrax 'punishment'
Asked if he was behind the deadly anthrax attacks in the U.S. that began after 9.11.01, bin Laden said, "These diseases are a punishment from God and a response to oppressed mothers' prayers in Lebanon & Palestine." "They made hilarious claims. They said that Osama's messages have codes in them to the terrorists. It's as if we were living in the time of mail by carrier pigeon, when there are no phones, no travelers, no Internet, no regular mail, no express mail and no electronic mail. I mean, these are very humorous things. They discount people's intellect," bin Laden said.
CNN defended its airing of the interview despite protests from Al-Jazeera, which had said its exclusive interview did not meet its standards and was not newsworthy. CNN said Al-Jazeera refused to appear to explain the circumstances of the interview and accused the U.S. network of obtaining the video tape illegally. CNN further said the Arab language network announced it was breaking relations with CNN. "Al-Jazeera will sever its relationship with CNN and will take the necessary action to punish the organizations & individuals who stole this video & distributed it illegally," CNN quoted Al-Jazeera as responding. CNN said it did nothing illegal in obtaining the video tape of the interview. "Our affiliate agreement with Al-Jazeera gives us the express right to use any & all footage owned or controlled by Jazeera without limitation," CNN's statement said. Eason Jordan, CNN chief news executive, said the existence of the unbroadcast interview leaves Al-Jazeera with tough questions to answer. "Among them, why was the interview not ever televised, why did Al-Jazeera initially deny the existence of the tape, and what other tape does Al-Jazeera have, or did it have, that had never been acknowledged or televised," Jordan asked.


    bin Laden obituary
    3.31.02   AP
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia   Abdullah Awad bin Laden, patriarch of one of wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia & uncle of terror suspect Osama, died in Medina on 3.21.02. He was 75. Though he was head of the family, in the last decade Abdullah bin Laden had had little to do with the day- to-day running of the lucrative family business, the Saudi bin Laden Group. Osama bin Laden's father & Abdullah bin Laden's younger brother, Yemeni immigrant Mohammed bin Laden, started the enterprise as a construction firm in the 1930s. The business, which grew to include mining & telecommunications and had an estimated $3 billion to $5 billion in annual revenue, is now headed by Bakr bin Laden, one of Mohammed bin Laden's 54 sons. The bin Laden family disavowed any links with Osama bin Laden in 1994, the year Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship for his opposition activities. As head of his family, Abdullah bin Laden issued a statement offering condolences to those who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks blamed on Osama bin Laden.

Web denies death of al-Qaida leader
6.19.04  
AP

Cairo, Egypt   A message posted on an Islamic militant Web site Saturday denied that the leader of the al-Qaida cell in Saudi Arabia had been killed. Abdulaziz al-Moqrin had purportedly overseen the kinapping of Paul M. Johnson, American Whose decapitated body was found on Friday in Riyadh. Saudi officials claimed al-Moqrin, the reputed leader of the group calling itself al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in a shootout after Johnson's body was found.
"Some satellite networks and news agencies have been propagating the false news that Abdel Aziz al-Moqrin, God preserve him, has been killed", the statement said. "We would like to say that such claims, unleashed by the tyrants of Saudi Arabia, are aimed at dissuading the holy warriors and crushing their spirits".

The statement was impossible to verify but appeared on a Web site where similar claims have been made in the past. It began with a Quranic verse that urges believers to ensure the truth of information they receive, and was similar in appearance and tone as past messages. It said another statement would appear soon. A U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity Friday had confirmed that 31-year-old al-Moqrin was dead. A Saudi official said forensic tests would be conducted on the body to confirm his identity.

More Iraqis lured to al Qaeda group   The shift may expand the deadly reach of Abu Musab Zarqawi's faction of insurgents, once dominated by outsiders, officials say.   9.16.05   Greg Miller, Tyler Marshall L.A. Times

Wash.D.C.   Al Qaeda's top operative in Iraq is drawing growing numbers of Iraqi nationals to his organization, increasing the reach and threat of an insurgent group that has been behind many of the most devastating attacks in the country, U.S. officials and Iraqi govt leaders say.
The group, headed by Jordanian-born radical Abu Musab Zarqawi, previously was composed almost exclusively of militants from other Arab nations, and has symbolized the foreign dimension of a stubborn insurgency fighting to oust U.S. forces.
But Zarqawi "is bringing more and more Iraqi fighters into his fold," a U.S. official said, adding that Iraqis accounted for "more than half his organization."

Although Zarqawi is believed to command fewer than 1,000 fighters, the daring and lethal nature of their attacks, coupled with Zarqawi's links to the al Qaeda terrorist network, has made him the most notorious figure in the Iraq insurgency. The U.S. has set a $25-million bounty on Zarqawi, whose organization has been behind a series of beheadings, suicide bombings and other gruesome attacks.
Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for a bombing campaign this week that has left at least 169 dead in Baghdad, apparently in reprisal for a U.S.-Iraqi campaign against insurgents in the northern city of Tall Afar. One of the car bombers reportedly lured day laborers to his vehicle by posing as an employer. It was unclear whether he was Iraqi.

Details of a growing Iraqi dimension to Zarqawi's group were provided by 3 U.S. officials with access to classified intelligence data and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Their comments reflect the govt's latest attempt to come to grips with a multi-layered insurgency that has often confounded U.S. forces and intelligence agencies.
The U.S. officials indicated that the infusion of Iraqis, including, apparently, former members of the Iraqi intelligence service and military, represented a change in the group's makeup rather than a major expansion. A significant Iraqi presence in the Zarqawi group carries ominous implications, both for the Bush administration and the fledgling, popularly elected government it supports in Baghdad.

The Iraqis under Zarqawi's wing could provide him with better intelligence, and give legitimacy to a group viewed by many Iraqis as unwanted outsiders. In addition, Iraqi recruits are being exposed to the workings of a highly efficient extremist group. The influx of Iraqis also would diminish the effect of any tightening of border controls, a key Bush administration objective, on the insurgency's strength.
U.S. intelligence in Iraq has frequently been wrong. However, 2 factors add credence to the reports of the shifting composition of Zarqawi's group: Several of his sr lieutenants have been captured by U.S. forces in recent months and some reportedly have talked extensively under interrogation. Senior Iraqi officials reported seeing the same development.

Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security advisor and a former Shiite activist, said "there's no doubt" that once-nationalistic elements of the insurgency were drifting toward Zarqawi and his extremist Salafi sect, also known as Wahhabism, which seeks to establish a puritanical society modeled on early Islamic times.
"There's a tendency to religion-ize the insurgency," he said. "Religion is a strong motive. You're not going to find someone who's going to die for Baathists. But Salafists have a very strong message. If you use the Koran selectively, it could be a weapon of mass destruction."
Few Iraqis appear to share Zarqawi's goal of establishing a radical Islamic state, but small numbers of Iraqi hard-liners apparently are attracted by the effectiveness of Zarqawi's group.
"They're the best game in town, the most organized organization," said a U.S. official, who added that Zarqawi's network was also a "well-funded organization that is willing to pay people for their work" when many Iraqis, particularly police, have little or no income.

The officials noted that police in 3 cities, including Mosul, are not being paid. They declined to name the others. Officials said it was not clear how dedicated these Iraqis were to the broader Al Qaeda cause, or whether they would be willing to travel outside the country to carry out terrorist attacks in Arab or Western nations.
Zarqawi escaped capture in February near the city of Ramadi, authorities say. He fled on foot as coalition forces at a checkpoint intercepted a truck containing a laptop and documents. Coalition forces since have killed or captured several of his lieutenants. The latest such incident was announced 9.9.05, when a U.S. military official said a high-level aide had been killed in western Iraq.

But the U.S. officials who are familiar with intelligence on Zarqawi's group said the organization had proved remarkably resilient and was organized to withstand losses of key leaders, including Zarqawi. One of the officials noted that coalition forces thought they had delivered a major blow in January with the capture of Zarqawi's principal bomb maker in the capital. But since then, the official said, "car bombs are way up in Baghdad."
Overall, the officials said, the insurgency in Iraq is divided into 3 "clumps": religious extremists such as Zarqawi; former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein; and disparate Iraqi groups acting out of local or national interests.
The officials described a steady flow of Saudis, Yemenis and other Arab nationals into, and, in some cases, out of, the country. But officials said foreign fighters accounted for less than 10% of the insurgents in Iraq.

Zarqawi's reported success in recruiting Iraqis to his cause comes as frustration is mounting among the minority Sunni Arabs, who fear they will be marginalized in the new Iraq and are prepared to fight its emergence.
The CIA and other agencies have resisted pressure to provide an estimate of the number of insurgents in Iraq, partly out of concern that it would foster the impression that there is a finite population that can be stamped out. Rather, officials said intelligence analysts had noted that there were about 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi Sunni Arab men of military age who represent the pool of potential insurgents. How many might turn to violence depends on several factors, starting with the extent to which Sunnis are satisfied with their stake in any new govt.

Some Sunnis have objected to the draft constitution that is to be presented to Iraqis in a national referendum next month. The community's sense of estrangement could be heightened if the document is passed, as is likely, over its objections.
"They're going to be extremely disappointed when they fail, and they're going to believe this is the result of fraud and being cheated out of what they deserve," one of the U.S. officials said. "There's going to be some real ratcheting up of Sunni disaffection with the process."
The trial of Hussein, to begin next month, is also likely to add to a sense of victimization among Sunnis, analysts say.

Egyptian surgeon is No. 2 man in terror network   ¹
al-Zawahri leads group blamed in killing of President Sadat   9.20.01   Hamza Hendawi AP

Cairo, Egypt   … Ayman al-Zawahri, a surgeon from Cairo who hails from a middle-class family of doctors & scholars, is second only to bin Laden in the hierarchy of an international alliance set up in 1998 … 1966 when, as a 15-year-old, he was arrested for his membership in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. He was later freed. … A 1974 graduate of Cairo University's medical school, … His grandfather, Rabia'a al-Zawahri, was the grand imam of Cairo's al-Azhar, mainstream Islam's main seat of learning, early in the past century. Al-Zawahri wrote several books on Islamic movements, the best known of which is "The Bitter Harvest," a critical assessment of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. "He is the chief ideologue in the bin Laden group," Rashwan said. "Both he and bin Laden have combat experience, but it is Ayman who has the intellectual edge."Al-Zawahri is the most senior in a brigade of several hundred Egyptians thought working under bin Laden's leadership in Afghanistan.

Besides Sadat's killing, al-Zawahri's Jihad is also blamed for several assassination attempts … al-Zawahri re-established Jihad in Afghanistan in 1990 after the group was dealt a severe blow in the aftermath of Sadat's assassination. "No one ever really talks to him," said Salah, who writes for the respected London-based daily Al Hayat. "He would be touring camps in Afghanistan and delivering sermons, then just be on his way." Jihad, said Rashwan, doesn't rely on popular support and specializes in assassinations. … Al-Zawahri now heads only a faction of Jihad after disagreements with other leaders of the group over his Feb. 1998 pact with bin Laden's al-Qaeda group, two Pakistani groups and one from Bangladesh to create the International Front for Fighting Jews and Crusades. Targeting Americans and U.S. interests as a declared aim was likely to draw unwelcome interest, and the wrath of a superpower, the Jihad leaders who split from al-Zawahri argued.

Sobhi al-Sitta … is the commander of the front's military wing, known as the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites, which claimed responsibility for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One of al-Sitta's daughters married a son of bin Laden, according to TV footage of the wedding broadcast on an Arab satellite station in January. Al-Sitta succeeded another Egyptian, Ali al-Rashidi, who drowned in Uganda's Lake Victoria in 1995, two years after he was sent to Africa to recruit members for al-Qaeda. Salah said the cells al-Rashidi set up later bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Zawahri says survives US strike: TV
1.30.06   Inal Ersan, Patsy Wilson Reuters

al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri blasted President Bush as a "butcher" in a video tape aired on Monday, saying a recent U.S. air strike targeting him had killed only innocent people. In the tape aired by Al Jazeera television on Monday, Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, also mentioned a truce which the al Qaeda leader had offered U.S. in an audio tape aired earlier this month.
"U.S. warplanes have launched a raid … on a village near Peshawar just after the Eid al-Adha (feast) in which 18 Muslim men, women and children were killed in their (U.S.) fight against jihad which they call terrorism," he said, referring to the January air strike in Pakistan. "They said this was intended to kill myself and 4 of my brothers but now the whole world has discovered the U.S. lies and their failure and brutality," Zawahri added. "I will meet my fate (death) as set by God the Almighty but if my time did not come you (President) Bush or all the powers on earth ... cannot bring it one second closer."

Zawahri began the tape by saying "my first message is to the butcher Bush … you are not only a defeated liar, you are, with aid from God, scared, a failure and a bad omen for your nation. You have brought disaster to your country and will bring more."
Broadcasting more of Zawahri's remarks, Jazeera later said he invited Bush to become a Muslim. "Should you accept, you become a brother and God forgives you all that is past."

Reacting to the new tape, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "The al Qaeda leadership is clearly on the run and under a lot of pressure. … al Qaeda remains a lethal and determined enemy. … We continue to take the threat from al Qaeda seriously, and continue to pursue all those who seek to do us harm."
U.S. State Dept said officials were analyzing the tape for its authenticity, but downplayed its significance as it continues to battle al Qaeda after 9.11.01.
"Whatever the status of Zawahri there continues to be a determined al Qaeda effort to destroy peace and innocent lives," State Dept spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.

Zawahri appeared in the video dressed in white and speaking directly to the camera in front of a black background. The video carried English subtitles. Another U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the tape appeared to be an authentic recent recording from Zawahri.
"This seems to be the message we were expecting to see a couple of weeks ago. You would have expected al Qaeda to put out this kind of message if he had survived (the 1.13.06 raid)," the official said. Al Jazeera editors were not immediately available to comment on the tape.

Zawahri and Saudi-born bin Laden are believed to be hiding in a mountainous area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Earlier this month, Pakistani intelligence sources said 4 top al Qaeda militants were believed to be killed in a U.S. air strike, which U.S. officials say was aimed at Zawahri.
The video was Zawahri's second appearance this month. On 1.6.06, Al Jazeera aired a video of the al Qaeda deputy leader in which he said U.S. was being defeated by Muslim fighters in Iraq. In this latest video, he again blasted U.S. for saying it was gaining the upper hand against militants and said Americans would be defeated "at home."

Addressing the American people, Zawahri said bin Laden had offered Bush an "honorable exit" from Iraq but "your leaders' answer was that they do not negotiate with terrorists and that they are winning the war against terrorism."
bin Laden, in an audio tape aired by Jazeera 1.19.06, warned that al Qaeda was preparing new attacks inside U.S. but said the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans. The White House dismissed his offer.


With the bin Laden Organization winning the right to supervise and effect the renovation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the family's influence was solidified for good.
1979 Saudi mobilization to support Afghan Muslims against the Soviet invasion gave religious hard-liners like Osama more clout.
per bin Laden sister-in-law autobio
Truth about bin Laden & 9.11.01
10.17.01   alt.religion.islam
excerpted to omit unsubstantiated allegations of bin Laden as 2nd gen. Zionist agent & provocateur.

Born 1957 of Syrian mother, Osama bin Laden was the seventh son among 50 siblings. Father Mohammed Awad bin Laden came to Saudi kingdom from Hadramout (S.Yemen) sometime around 1930. Father started as a very poor laborer (porter in Jeddah port), ended as owner of biggest Saudi construction company. During reign of King Saud, father bin Laden became very close to the royal family when he took the risk of building King Saud's palaces much cheaper than the cheapest bid. He impressed King Saud with this, and built good relations with other members of the royal family, esp. Faisal. During the Saud-Faisal conflict in early 60s, Mohammed Awad bin Laden had a big role in convincing King Saud to step down in favor of Faisal, outcome favored by Israel. After Saud's departure the treasury was empty and bin Laden literally paid the civil servants' wages of whole kingdom for 6 months. King Faisal then issued decree that all construction projects should go to bin Laden. Appointed for a period as the minister of public works. In 1969 Father took task of rebuilding Al-Aqsa mosque after the fire. Later their company took over task of major extension in Mecca & Medina mosques. Father used to insist on sons to manage some projects themselves. He insisted to keep all his children in one premises. He maintained special daily program and obliged his children to follow.

Osama married at the age 17 to Syrian girl who was a relative. His primary, secondary and university education in Jeddah, degree in public administration 1981 from King Abdul-Aziz university in Jeddah. His father used to host hundreds of pilgrims during Hajj season from all over the world. Someof those were senior Islamic scholars or leaders of Muslim movements. This habit went on even after his father's death through his elder brothers, making contacts through those gatherings. At secondary school and university he publically adopted the main trend of many educated Muslims at that time, Muslim Brotherhood. There was a collection of Muslim scholars in Jeddah & Mecca at that period. There was nothing extraordinary in his personality and that trend was rather very non-confrontational. 1980 raid in the Grand Mosque in Mecca was not appealing to him, neither the theology or that group. He had two distinguished teachers in Islamic studies, which was a compulsory subject in the university. First was Abdullah Azzam who became later big in Afghanistan and the second was Mohammed Quttub, a famous Islamic writer & philosopher. First encounter with Afghanistan was as early as the first 2 weeks of Soviet invasion. He went to Pakistan and was taken by his hosts Jamaat Islami from Karachi to Peshawar to see the refugees and meet some leaders. Some of those leaders like Rabbani and Sayyaf were common faces to him because he met them during Hajj gatherings That trip which was a secret trip lasted for almost a month and was an exploratory rather than action trip. He went back to the kingdom and started lobbying with his brothers, relatives and friends at the school to support the mujahedeen against the Russians. He succeeded in collecting huge amount of money and material as donations to the jihad. He made another trip to take this material. He took with him few Pakistanis and Afghanis who were working in bin Laden co. for more than 10 years. Again, he did not stay more than a month The trip was to Pakistan and the border only and was not to Afghanistan. He went on collecting money and going in short trips once or twice a year until 1982.

In 1982 he went inside Afghanistan. He brought with him plenty of the construction machinery and put them at the disposal of the mujahedeen He started spending more and more time in Afghanistan occasionally joining actual battles but not in an organized manner. His presence was encouraging to more Saudis to come but the numbers were still small at that period. In 1984 he had one further step in strengthening his presence in Afghanistan by establishing the guesthouse in Peshawar (Baitul'ansar). That house was supposed to be the first station of Arab mujahedeen when they come to Afghanistan before going to the front or start training. At that period Osama did not have his own command or training camps. He used to send the newcomers to one of the Afghan factions.
Guesthouse establishment was coinciding with formation of Jihad Service Bureau by Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar. The Bureau was very active in terms of media, publications and charity work. The Bureau publications were important in attracting more Saudis and Arabs to Afghanistan. Osama within 2 years he built more than six camps his own camps inside Afghanistan . Some were mobilized more than once. His own front and running his own battles with his own command. Among the Arab fighters he had, there were senior Arab ex-military men from Syria and Egypt with good military experience. The story of the guesthouse and the camps was very attractive for more Arab mujahedeen to come and there was a significant surge in their numbers at that period.

In addition to many exchanges of fire and small operations, the first major battle he had face to face with the Soviet army with pure Arab personnel was the battle of Jaji in the province of Baktia 200 kilometers away from Khost. From then until 1989 he had more than 5 major battles with hundreds of small operations and exchanges of fire. During the period 1984-1989 he was staying more in Afghanistan than Saudi Arabia. He would spend a total of 8 months a year or more in Afghanistan. In 1988 Soviets nearing defeat, Osama made much more organized and arranged for proper documentation. He made a tracking record of the visitors, be they mujahedeen or charity or simple visitors. Movement between guesthouse and the camps had to be recorded as well as first arrival and final departure. Whole complex was then termed Al-Qa'edah which is an Arabic word meaning "The Base." Al-Qa'edah was very much public knowledge.
Late 1989 after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, he went to Saudi in an ordinary trip, since he was no longer needed there. There he was banned from travel and was trapped in the kingdom. Main reason for the travel ban were his intentions to start a new "front" of jihad in South Yemen. In addition, he embarrassed the regime by lectures & speeches warning of impending invasion by Saddam. At that time the regime was at very good terms with Saddam. He was instructed officially to keep low profile and not to give public talks. Despite the travel ban he was not hostile to regime at this stage. Indeed he presented a written advice in the form of a detailed, personal, private and confidential letter to the king few weeks before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He reacted swiftly to Iraqi invasion and saw it fulfilling his prophecy. He immediately forwarded another letter to the king suggesting in detail how to protect the country from potentially advancing Iraqi forces. In addition to many military tactics suggested, he volunteered to bring Arab mujahedeen to defend Saudi. That letter was presented in the first few days of the incident, and the regime response was consideration

While he was expecting some call to mobilize his men and equipt he heard the news which transferred his life completely. The Americans are coming. He always describes that moment as shocking moment. But it was not enough to bring in the Americans. He started lobbying through religious scholars and Muslim activists. He succeeded in extracting a fatwah from one of the senior scholars that training & readiness is a religious duty. He immediately circulated that fatwah and convinced people to have their training in Afghanistan. It was estimated that 4000 went to Afghanistan in response to the fatwah. The regime was not happy with his activities so they limited his movement to Jeddah only. He was summoned for questioning twice for some of his speeches & activities and was given warnings. To intimidate him, the regime raided his farm in the suburb of Jeddah by the National Guard. He was not there during the raid and was very angry when told, and afraid that compromising materials may have been discovered. He wrote a letter of protest to Prince Abdullah. He lied so well Abdullah apologized and claimed he is not aware and promised to punish who ever were responsible.

Osama was fed up with this almost house arrest situation and did not imagine himself able to further his goals in these circumstances. One of his brothers was very close to King Fahad and also close to Prince Ahmed, deputy minister of interior. He convinced his brother that he needed to leave the country to sort out some business matters in Pakistan and come back. There was a difficult obstacle, the stubborn Prince Nayef, minister of interior. His brother waited until Nayef went in a trip outside the kingdom and extracted lifting the ban from prince Ahmed. When he arrived in Pakistan around April 1991 he sent a letter to his brother telling him that he is not coming back and apologized for letting him down with the royal family. After his arrival to Pakistan he went straight to Afghanistan because he knew the Pakistani intelligence would hand him back to the Saudis.
There, he attended the collapse of the communist regime and the consequent dispute between the Afghan parties. He spent great effort to arbitrate between them. He ordered his followers to avoid any involvement in the conflict and told them it was a sin to side with any faction, so they would stay strong. During his stay the Saudis tried more than once to kidnap or kill him in collaboration with the Pakistani intelligence. He left Afghanistan disguised in private jet only few months after his arrival. That was late 1991.

At that time the new regime in Sudan raised an Islamic banner. He gained trust by helping govt in its construction projects. He was treated in Sudan as special guest who wanted to help Sudan when everybody was turning away. In Sudan he mobilized a lot of construction equipt and enrolled himself in busy construction projects. He spent good effort in convincing Saudi businessmen to invest in Sudan and had reasonable success. Many of his brothers & Jeddah merchants had and still have investment in real estate, farming and agricultural industry.

In Sudan he again escaped assassination attempt which turned out later to be plans of Saudi intelligence.
During his stay in Sudan anti-American incidents happened in Somalia & S.Yemen. Neither of the 2 incidents was performed by his group. Both were performed by people who had training in Afghanistan and had enough anti-American drive. He gave no sanctioning to the operations. Between his arrival to Sudan and early 1994 he was not regarded publicly as Saudi opposition and Saudi citizens were visiting him without too much precautions. Only well-informed people would know he was classified enemy to the Saudi regime. His assets were frozen sometime between 1992 and 1994 but that wasn't published. The Saudis decided to announce their hostility early 1994 when they publicized withdrawing his citizenship.

After long silence & tolerance, bin Laden replied by issuing a communique condemning the Saudi decision and saying that he does not need the "Saudi" reference to identify himself and it is not up to Al-Saud to admit or expel people from Arabian Peninsula. He then formed together with activists and scholars from the kingdom a group called "Advice and Reform Committee" (ARC). The ARC was, according to its communiques and published agenda, a purely political group. The ARC published around 17 communiques which contained harsh criticism of the Saudi regime and plenty of religious rhetoric, hoping for incitment of violence. Car bomb in spring 1995 in Riyadh was the first major anti-American action in the kingdom. Bin Laden never claimed responsibility, but the Saudi govt linked the incident to bin Laden by confessions of 4 "Arab Afghans" involved in the bombing.

Sudan was exposed to huge international pressure for hosting bin Laden & his followers. Early in 1996 he started making contacts with his old friends in Afghanistan to prepare for his reception. He fled Sudan in a very well planned trip with many of his followers to go straight to Jalalabad in Eastern Afghanistan. New goal of bin Laden was to set up an apparently Muslim terrorist organization that could draw the wrath of Americans.

When he arrived there, the situation in Afghanistan was very unsettled between the many factions, but he had very good relations with all factions and all would protect him. The area he arrived to was under control of Yunis Khalis, a very influential warlord who later on joined Taliban. June 1996, after his arrival in Afghanistan was the Khobar bombing.
Nobody claimed responsibility, but sources from inside Saudi ministry of interior confirmed involvement of Arab Afghans, with possible link to bin Laden The Saudi govt wanted to frame Shi'a, at the beginning but Americans were very suspicious of the Saudi story. Bin Laden himself never openly claimed responsibility but gave many hints that he might have been involved. The Saudi govt has acknowledged recently that bin Laden's men were behind the bombing.
After few months of his arrival he issued his first anti-American message, a Declaration of War. That declaration was limited to expelling American forces outside the Arabian Peninsula, inviting Iraq to invade. Interest in him by the Saudis never stopped and they tried very hard to convince Yunis Khalis to hand him over, and he flatly refused despite the luxurious offers.

Taliban swept Jalalabad late 1996, almost without war, and bin Laden came under their control. He was optimistic that they will give him sanctuary but he was not sure. He was surprised when a delegation of Taliban came to meet him by order of Mullah Omer, the leader of Taliban, with instructions to reassure him that he will have even better protection under Taliban. The delegation expressed Taliban honor of protecting somebody like him who sacrificed a lot for the sake of jihad. The Saudis never gave up.
Early 1997 they bought some mercenaries in the Pakistani Afghani border. The operation was arranged with the Pakistani intelligence. The information leaked to bin Laden and he decided to move immediately to Qandahar, the stronghold of Taliban. The operation was then cancelled.

When bin Laden left Jalalabad, he ordered many of his followers to join Taliban in their war against Dostum and to protect Kabul. The unexpected happened. Taliban troops were fooled by a trap in the north and Kabul front was exposed to Shah Masood. Taliban were so disorganized at that stage that it was only those few Arabs who werethere to push Shah Masood off Kabul and they did efficiently. The leader of Taliban Mulla Omer was keen to meet Osama. He met him early 1997 after two TV interviews, Channel 4 and CNN. Mulla Omer expressed respect & admiration but requested him to have low profile. He stressed that that was a request and not an order. Osama replied with appreciation and thanks and reassured Mulla Omer that he was going very low profile.

Sometime in late 1997 a big operation was planned by the Americans. The primary plan was for American special forces to attack bin Laden's residence in Qandahar and kidnap him in a commando style operation. The plan was mocked in Pakistani desert and proved dangerous. While the Americans were reconsidering the decision, the news leaked to bin Laden, and he made it public. That was published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi in London. The Americans had no choice but to cancel. Americans acknowledged this incident only recently, but did not acknowledge the leak.
Bin Laden noticed that the driving force in Taliban were Ulema (religious scholars). He made very good links with them and lobbied specifically for the subject of American forces in the Arabian Peninsula. He was able to extract a fatwah signed by some 40 scholars in Afghanistan sanctioning the use of all means to expel the American forces from the Peninsula. The issue of that fatwah was an asset to him inside Taliban domain. He felt that Ulema were at his back and he can go high profile after long silence.

His second presence in Afghanistan attracted many mujahedeen to move there again. Among those were Ayman El-Zawahery of Egyptian Jihad and Rift'ee Taha of Jama'a Islamia. There was also new phenomenon during that period. Bin Laden went pan-Islamic instead of Saudi or Arabic. He attracted Kashmiris, Pakistanis, Indians, and Muslims from the Soviet Republics. He thought at that stage that he could make an international alliance against America. In February 1998 he declared the formation of the Intl Front. The declaration contained 2 elements, formation of the front and a fatwah sanctioning killing Americans. Apart from two Arabic newspapers, the declaration had minimal coverage by the press.

Eid ornament
After avoiding the media for almost a year he decided to open the door wide for them. In April 1998 he received the ABC TV team and two weeks later he held press conference in Khost and warned of impending attack in few weeks time. Mulla Omer was not happy with this new media escalation, but felt it difficult to control him while he is protected by the scholars. Indeed bin Laden said that he would abide with what ever the Ulema board decides.

The bombings in Kenya and Tanzania July 1998 were a surprise in terms of choice of location &and targets. Despite his declaration of war against America anywhere, the attack was expected inside Saudi Arabia. Americans were advised by the Israelis to choose the camp in Khost to retaliate. The camp was an almost deserted camp where only few Arabs have stayed, with a neighboring camp of Kashmiris. Bin Laden himself was hundreds of miles away, and the rest of Arab Afghans were in the northern front celebrating their recent victories.

… Largely unnoticed by the public at the time, a trial that ended in May … A jury found four Al Qaeda members guilty of staging the August 1998 suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Bin Laden himself was charged in the 308-count indictment as the leader of the conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals in Africa and for exhorting his Al Qaeda followers to murder. A $5-million reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.
Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a Sudanese nearly twice the age of the Saudi Al-'Owhali. Al-Fadl had defected from Al Qaeda with many secrets. His testimony formed an operative flow chart of Al Qaeda for U.S. counter-terrorism officials … Al-Fadl knows more about Al Qaeda than most. He was there when the group was formed in 1989 … Al-Fadl offered little evidence against the defendants in the embassy bombing trial. His testimony was aimed squarely at Bin Laden, buttressed by similar accounts by two other Al Qaeda defectors and by terror mission documents left on computer disks seized by FBI agents in Nairobi after the blasts. … Al-Fadl sketched his own early life as that of a drifter. From his small hometown of Ruffa in Sudan, he went to Saudi Arabia. He was deported in 1981 after he was arrested for smoking marijuana. He headed to Atlanta, North Carolina then Brooklyn, where he worked as a grocer.

But in New York, he found religion at the Farouq Mosque, where Emir Mustafa Shalabi … Al-Fadl left in 1988 for Peshawar, the dusty and destitute Pakistani border town that was home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. It was the launch pad for the jihad, or holy war. There, at gritty guerrilla training centers that often doubled as refugee camps, he learned to fire a Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle, to hit helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades and to slip in and out of identities. His friends there knew him only as "the Sudanese." Al-Fadl said he met often with Bin Laden, the ascetic Saudi exile, in Peshawar's cramped guest house chambers and gardens. Often, they spoke in veiled terms about the overarching reach of jihad.
It was in 1989, Al-Fadl recalled, in an explosives-training camp in the battle-scarred Afghan town of Khost, that he learned of Al Qaeda's birth. The group's "general emir" was Bin Laden. And when asked whether he wanted to be one of the founding members, Al-Fadl readily agreed. Bin Laden, whose father bequeathed to him part of a corporate empire in Saudi Arabia, structured "the Base" as a cost- and personnel-efficient terrorist conglomerate. … Al Qaeda, Arabic for "the Base," … oath of allegiance to Bin Laden and his lieutenants. Called the bayat, the basic and once-secret rite of Al Qaeda endures through today. It is not unlike the omerta oath taken by members of the Mafia, which President Bush has compared to Al Qaeda … At the top, Al-Fadl explained, is the "shura council," veteran clerics and military leaders from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen and other nations, all freedom fighters who have proved themselves in jihad. The council is divided into 4 committees, Al-Fadl said. A military group is headed by field commanders. There's a group of mullahs and religious clerics who mesh Islam with Bin Laden's jihad battle plan. There's even a media group that handles Al Qaeda's public relations. Al-Fadl said he became a key player in the fourth committee: finance, the trusted aides who would buy farms and other businesses to give cover for Bin Laden's terror operations. ¹ ² ³
As for recruits to this new holy army, Al-Fadl said, the brutality of the Soviet occupation, the Persian Gulf War's Muslim casualties and oppressive Arab and African regimes took care of that. Along with their weapons training, they learned to cluster in small cells, operate on scant bits of command information, hew to the discipline of silence. And, always, Al Qaeda's moles followed Bin Laden's exhortation "to be patient." … Leave the Koran and prayer books behind, Al Qaeda's men were told. On a trip to Egypt, Al-Fadl got the standard line from his commander, Abu Talal al Masry: Buy cologne & cigarettes.

Al Qaeda also began acquiring ventures, mimicking Western corporations. Al-Fadl bought farms, one for $250,000 to grow sesame, peanuts and corn in the Sudanese countryside. He sent the crops to Afghanistan in planes that returned with British and American-made night goggles, rifle scopes and other advanced military gear, he said. … There were hundreds of thousands in donations to the jihad too, from the Arab world--religious corporate sheiks and fundamentalist govts.
Bin Laden told Al-Fadl: "Our agenda is bigger than business." The companies were fronts for the terror cells and cash cows for future operations. Al-Fadl was given several units to run. … an Egyptian, who had trained at a Texas flight school, with $210,000 to buy a small corporate jet. Bin Laden was ebullient with the purchase until the jet fell into disrepair and crashed on a Khartoum runway. … training facilities that he would attend in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains and barren desert plains. … 4 tiered structure of Al Qaeda's terror cells: intelligence, administration, planning and execution. …

at the end of Gaudin's week of exhausting interviews with Al-'Owhali that the agent asked him … "What would it take for this fighting to stop, you know, how can we prevent this? How can we end this?" Gaudin said he asked Al-'Owhali. What Gaudin got was boilerplate Al Qaeda: Stop supporting Israel; pull all U.S. forces out of the Arabian Peninsula; and stop "preventing Muslims from instituting sharia [Islamic law] worldwide." … When the World Trade Center towers collapsed 13 days ago, Al-'Owhali and nearly a dozen others charged in the embassy case were in their cells on the 10th floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, just 6 blocks away.

al-Qaida member in NY pleads guilty ¹
2.1.03   AP

New York   An al-Qaida operative pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy national defense materials, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail. Speaking before Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy in Federal Dist. Court Friday, defendant Mohamed Suleiman al Nalfi said he worked for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network in his native Sudan in the early 1990's.
He also said that he created a jihad (holy war) group in Sudan in 1989 and helped to build businesses in Sudan that backed al-Qaida. The govt has said that al-Qaida used these businesses as a front to procure explosives, chemicals and weapons. In 1990, al Nalfi & others traveled from Sudan to Egypt in a caravan of camels to "establish a route to be used by al-Qaida … to move weapons without detection," he said.

In addition, al Nalfi told the judge that he had attended a meeting in 1992 where al-Qaida officials spoke about ways of forcibly removing American & UN forces from Somalia & Saudi Arabia.

One of the last remaining al-Qaida operatives being held in Manhattan on criminal charges, al Nalfi, 40, was originally arrested in 2000 in a broad terrorism conspiracy case that incl 1998 bombings of 2 American embassies in East Africa.

If he had been convicted of charges related to that case, he could have faced a life sentence. There was no indication as to why the govt agreed to the lesser charge. Prosecutors said they had no comment.

Al Nalfi's lawyer, Marion Seltzer, said after the hearing that her client was not cooperating with authorities. Seltzer said his admissions in court Friday did not correspond directly to the charge of conspiring to destroy national defense materials, which al Nalfi pleaded guilty to. Instead "it fits into the overall conspiracy," she said. "He never participated in anything involving violence," she said. "But to be guilty of conspiracy, all that's necessary is there to be an agreement and you have knowledge of the agreement and somebody creates an act out of the agreement."


Women risking their lives to fight terrorism
12.01   Leslie Goldman, et al Marie Claire p78 ¹ ² ³ £
3rd of 5
  Terrorist hunter Jennifer Amoroso, age 30: Her phone has rung nonstop since 9.11.01. As MidEast terrorism expert, she now finds herself squarely in the midst of America's public battle to wipe out terrorism here & abroad. That mission is nothing new for the Spokane WA resident. She works regularly with the govt as a counter-terrorism consultant to anticipate & head off terrorist attacks. She certainly has the resumé for the job: she served 3 years as chief of intelligence operations for USAF Security Forces HQ, Force Protection Battlelab, tracking & analyzing terrorists' moves around the globe. Today, she delves into the minds of monsters such as 9.11.01, creating strategies to catch them before they act.
Even though the U.S. intelligence community didn't stop this attack, Jennifer is committed to its power. "We're often blamed first when something goes wrong, " she says. U.S. consultant contra ObL "But we have stopped numerous attacks that nobody ever heard about. If average U.S. citizens knew what we know, " she says, referring to the number of threats that surface each day, they'd be floored." Inquisitive by nature and intrigued by criminology, Jennifer took a terrorism course during her junior year of college that hooked her on the world of intl espionage. She spent summers during college at Air Force officer field training camp, where she learned hand-to-hand combat and how to shoot an M-9 and an M-16. After college, she worked her way into U.S. intelligence Even though she toils behind the scenes, Jennifer's work sometimes brings her close to the lines of fire: In 6.98, she was dispatched to track the purchase of a sophisticated weapons system. The party doing the buying (she can't say who) was threatening to use the system to conquer a neighboring country, endangering lives of U.S. civilians living there. Jennifer's mission: Help monitor transactions and keep the U.S. informed by reporting signs of possible danger.
"While our team was there, the American embassies in Kenya & Tanzania were bombed," she says. The U.S. retaliated, sending missiles to Sudan & Afghanistan; days later, an American newspaper erroneously reported Jennifer's team provided targetting info for the U.S. attacks. "The article told the terrorists where we were and that we were responsible for getting a bunch of their friends killed." she recalls, a hint of disbelief still lingering in her voice.

[ al-Zawahri's team was there at the same time; it is plain which belief "creates" strategy better. Moreover, the missles to Afghanistan that didn't explode were sold to the Chinese for reverse engineering. ]

Personal threats poured in immediately. "I could actually track the terrorists coming towards us," she says, although she can't disclose how. "We put a sniper at our facility entrance; all we could do was remain calm & pray. I lay awake at night, wondering if they were going to run into the room and gun us down." Luckily, the terrorists never found their target. 9.11.01 left Jennifer more resolved than ever to beat back terrorists who undermine the American way of life. She says the only way to fight is with increased financial, political and public support for covert intelligence efforts, and she's heartened to see that happening. She applauds America's recent resurgence of patriotism, which calls the greatest weapon in the U.S. arsenal. "I never thought it could be as strong as it is right now," she says of the country's spirit. "American pride is a force to be reckoned with and it's going to get us through this."

[ Is this person real? Is it cheaper to manufacture her in the flesh for propaganda's sake a la Truman Show cum Private Benjamin than actually salary such a lockstep? ]

For 27 terrifying hours, Genelle Guzman expected to die, trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Instead, she became the fifth & last person pulled out alive Guzman worked for NY & NJ Port Authority on the 64th floor of Tower 2, second to be hit 9.11.01.
"When I saw that it became dark & no one came and I am not hearing any noises nowhere around, I said I am not going to make it," she recalled, speaking from NY Bellevue Hospital. When the first plane struck the other tower, Guzman remembers an announcement telling workers to stay in their offices. But when the second plane hit their tower, she & 14 co-workers decided to get out and headed for the stairs.

"My girlfriend & I were holding hands all the way down," she said. As they descended, firemen passed them heading upstairs, telling them to be careful. Guzman asked her friend to help her take off her shoes, and then the building began to crumble around them.
"I told her to hold my shoes then it was like 'boom,'" the 32-year-old woman said. "We fell to the ground. We were thrown together."

Eventually she found herself standing in a corner, as more debris rained down. When collapse was over, her head was trapped between 2 concrete pillars, and her legs were pinned by the rubble. She did not know where her friend was. Gradually, night fell, and Guzman began to give up hope of rescue.
"I am going die here. I am going to see myself slowly die here," she recalled thinking. She said she asked God to show her a miracle. "Show me a sign that I am going get out of here," she prayed.

Eventually, she began to hear noises, and she began to shout. Rescuers responded, shouting back, and waving a flashlight, but she was too far buried to see the beam. She banged one piece of concrete against another, and the searchers closed in on her location. Guzman remembers she reached a hand out through the rubble, and someone, a fireman, she thinks, took it.
"He said, 'I've got you.'"
"I said, 'Thank God.'"

By the middle of the day on Wednesday, 9.12.01, she was finally freed from the rubble. Although her legs were partially crushed, Guzman is expected to recover. No one else has been pulled alive from the wreckage in the 16 days since her rescue, however. Guzman said her friend who held her hand while walking down the stairs is still missing.


Colombia's female fighting force
1.4.02   Jeremy McDermott BBC

El Caguan   Adriana is 17 years old. She joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), when she was 13 and killed her first man at 14. "We attacked a police station, Adriana said looking down as she recalled her first taste of combat. "I just kept firing at the police station whilst other moved in. I lost some good friends that day." Up to 30% of Colombia's most powerful guerrilla army is female. Women fight alongside the men and endure the same hardships as them. The FARC control more than 40% of the country and almost every week some isolated police station or security force base is attacked by guerrilla columns, hundreds strong. Without the women the FARC would not be able to maintain such territorial domination or mount such frequent operations. While the FARC 7 man secretariat is all men, women are making their way up the guerrilla ranks, and several now hold the coveted title of Commandante.

One such woman is Mariana Paez, 38. She has spent more than 11 years in the rebel ranks and now is on the FARC team involved in the peace process. She said the FARC was blazing a new trail in Colombia on the treatment of women. "In the FARC, there is no machismo, as a policy," she said. "Yes there are macho men in the FARC, because let's face it, this is a macho culture. But such is the discipline in the FARC, that we are erasing these tendencies."

women = 30% of FARC army
At first sight the women appear the same as the men. Both carry AK-47 assault rifles with the obligatory machete hanging on their hips. "Women are not treated differently, we do not cut them any slack during training or operations," said Mariana. "They march with the men, they carry their equipt and they fight just the same," she added as she sat in the sun outside the negotiating centre in the south of Colombia, in a 16,000 square mile zone granted to the FARC for peace talks. But peace talks are frozen and the dense jungles of this safe haven are riddled with FARC camps, where guerrilla live, train and plan their next operations.

Visiting these camps the practice seemed to contradict the theory as far as women are concerned. In the field kitchens it was the girls that were peeling the potatoes and preparing the lunch. It was the girls who served the meal and then cleared up after it. Despite the rough living conditions in the jungles of southern Colombia, many of the guerrillas girls wore make up, had colourful hair bands and exotically painted nails. Yet they receive no regular salary and few have the chance to go into towns to buy such luxuries as cosmetics.

Many armies around the world have, or are, considering putting women in the front line, but wrestle with how they can regulate relationships between the sexes in the close confines of operations. The FARC have set up a complex set of rules governing sexual relations.
They are permitted, but no lasting attachments are encouraged and pregnancy is forbidden. "In the first place girls have to ask permission before they embark on a relationship. There can be no secrets and if discovered these are punished," said Mariana Paez.
"Secondly there is no contract of any kind and if the commander tells her to leave her boyfriend then so be it. While they are together they may bunk down in the same place, but at no time must the relationship interfere with work." But there is discrimination within this policy. While male guerrillas may form relationships outside the rebel ranks, the females may only date men within the organisation.

But Adriana said that women are protected from abuse within the FARC. "They can't abuse the women because if they mistreat a women and she reports them to the commander, he has to go in front of a war council," she said. "If the war council finds a man guilty of rape, for example, he is executed."
Contraception is obligatory, no matter how young the guerrilla girl. "Well it is not written anywhere that we cannot have kids, but there is an obligation to plan against such, " said Mariana. "It is understood that we are professional revolutionaries. Now while that might not be stated when you join, slowly that is made clear to you, as it is very difficult to be a revolutionary and be a mother."

Women are being used not just in the front line of battle but increasingly in intelligence gathering. In July, the elite FARC column Teofilo Forero staged an audacious mass kidnapping operation. In the southern city of Neiva, not far from the guerrilla safe haven there is one luxury tower block of apartments, where the city's rich live. Guerrillas disguised as policemen took over the building, blowing armoured doors of their hinges and kidnapping 15 people. The operation had been planned long in advance and the information about how to get in and who to take had been painstakingly gathered by FARC women, who had infiltrated the building as maids.

Adriana was asked why the FARC recruit girls and why do they recruit them so young? She looked puzzled and said she didn't know. But then she unwittingly answered the question as she rambled on about her experiences: "There were not that many young boys left in our village, so they asked the girls. I went because I was bored at home and thought that life with the guerrillas would be an adventure. At 13 I did not know what I wanted to do, I did not realise that I could study like I am now."
But Adriana is not speaking from a FARC jungle camp. The FARC now want to kill her, as she has done the unthinkable , deserted from the guerrillas and turned herself in to the authorities. Now she is in a special rehabilitation house for minors and she is trying to unlearn how to kill, and to learn how to live in a city and a democracy. She can never go home again as her family live in FARC-controlled territory, where her former employers are waiting.


9.11.01 panel says Iraq rebuffed bin Laden
6.16.04   AP

Wash.D.C.   Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating 9.11.01 reported Wednesday there was "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaida target U.S. In a chilling report that sketched the history of Osama bin Laden's network, the commission said his far-flung training camps were "apparently quite good". Terrorists-to-be were encouraged to "think creatively about ways to commit mass murder", it added.
bin Laden made overtures to Saddam for assistance, the commission said in the staff report, as he did with leaders in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere as he sought to build an Islamic army. While Saddam dispatched a sr Iraqi intelligence official to Sudan to meet with bin Laden in 1994, the commission said it had not turned up evidence of a "collaborative relationship".

The Bush admin has long claimed links between Saddam Hussein & al-Qaida, and cited them as one reason for last year's invasion of Iraq. On Monday, VP Cheney said in a speech that the Iraqi dictator "had long established ties with al-Qaida". The bipartisan commission issued its findings as it embarked on 2 days of public hearings into the worst terrorist attacks in American history.
The panel intends to issue a final report July 2004. … The staff report pieced together information on the development of bin Laden's network, from the far-flung training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to funding from "well-placed financial facilitators and diversions of funds from Islamic charities".
Reports that bin Laden had a huge personal fortune to finance acts of terror are overstated, the report said.

The description of the training camp operations contained elements of faint, grudging praise. "A worldwide jihad needed terrorists who could bomb embassies or hijack airliners, but it also needed foot soldiers for the Taliban in its war against the Northern Alliance, and guerrillas who could shoot down Russian helicopters in Chechnya or ambush Indian units in Kashmir", it said.
According to one unnamed senior al-Qaida associate, various ideas were floated by mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the commission said. The options included taking over a launcher and forcing Russian scientists to fire a nuclear missile at U.S., mounting mustard gas or cyanide attacks against Jewish areas in Iraq or releasing poison gas into the air conditioning system of a targeted building. "Last but not least, hijacking an aircraft and crashing it into an airport or nearby city", it said.

The Iraq connection long suggested by administration officials gained no currency in the report. "bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded", the report said. "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq & al-Qaida also occurred" after bin Laden moved his operations to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship", it said.
"2 sr bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida & Iraq", the report said. In a separate report, the commission staff said sr al-Qaida planner Khalid Shaihk Mohammed initially proposed a 9.11.01 attack involving 10 planes. An expanded target list included CIA & FBI HQs, unidentified nuclear plants and tall buildings in California & Washington state.

That ambitious plan was rejected by bin Laden, who ultimately approved a scaled-back mission involving 4 planes, the report said. Mohammed wanted more hijackers for those planes, 25 or 26, instead of 19. The commission has identified at least 10 al-Qaida operatives who were to participate but could not take part for reasons including visa problems and suspicion by officials at airports in U.S. & overseas.
From a seamless operation, the report portrays a plot riven by internal dissent, including disagreement over whether to target the White House or the Capitol that was apparently never resolved prior to the attacks. bin Laden also had to overcome opposition to attacking U.S. from former Taliban regime leader Mullah Omar, who was under pressure from Pakistan to keep al-Qaida confined. U.S. toppled the regime in the wake 9.11.01, but Omar has eluded capture, as has al-Qaida.


Sharing efforts in weapons? ¹ ² ª
Experts hear tales, but evidence scarce
1.10.99   David Phinney ABCNEWS.com

Washington   … while some experts float the notion that bin Laden and Saddam combined efforts in Sudan to build weapons of mass destruction, others reserve judgment and advise caution in jumping to conclusions. "We have heard lots of claims like these and there are various reports about cooperation between Iraq & Sudan, but we have been unable to confirm it ourselves," says Ewen Buchanan, UN Special Commission spokesman in charge of disarming Iraq of all nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile systems. … bombing of the facility run by Shifa Company for Pharmaceutical Industries in Sudan's capital surprised many analysts, says Amy Smithson, Wash.DC Henry L. Stimson Ctr sr assoc. sr assoc. … "This bombing incident came out of the blue for a number of people," she says. "Sudan has never appeared on any public list ever released by intelligence agencies in the U.S., Europe or Russia." … The Sudanese pharmaceutical complex apparently was capable of purifying & distilling water, producing drugs that fight tuberculosis and manufacturing 60 different types of medicines for humans & animals. It also appears capable of producing precursors to deadly VX gas, say U.S. intelligence officials who now believe bin Laden became a primary benefactor to the facility with the hopes of acquiring deadly biological & chemical weapons.

If Iraq did move bioweapons materials to Sudan, then it probably shipped them through Libya, says terrorist expert Chris Kozlow with Research Planning, Inc. Kozlow says Iraq's purported bioweapons chief, Dr. Rihab Taha, transported "a bunch of stuff out of Iraq" during the Tamerlane claimed direct descent from Jenghiz Khan through house of Chagatai
 loved bold & valiant soldiers, by whose aid he opend the locks of terror Gulf War and escorted it to a jointly run Sudanese-Libyan water treatment plant near the mountainous Sudan border. But such speculation is just that and nothing more, says Tony Cordesman with the with Wash.DC Ctr for Strategic & Intl Studies. He says while bin Laden has a high profile for terrorist activities, the radical Sunni Muslim is far from being a mastermind. "I never exclude possibilities of linkages, but there just isn't the evidence that he is working with Iraq in Sudan," says Cordesman. "Does he have ties with Iraq? Of course. But that tie doesn't mean a network of conspiracy."
    references  
world’s first & only terrorist attack with a WMD took place in a functioning democracy
by indigenous young people with good educations & prospects.
re åum shinrikyo
more
per
Alex Constantine:
"Bin Laden Comes Home To Roost"   Michael Moran, MSNBC Intl Ed. 1998
"Osama bin Laden's American Business Ties"   WorldNetDaily 9.2.98
  "So let's get this straight. Osama blows up our facilities, & his family gets the contract for rebuilding them."
… reputed partners? The family of Sharon PERCY Rockefeller. wife of John D. Rockefeller 4th D- WV, great grandson of Standard Oil ¹ founder that used to bomb their own obsolete buildings to falsely blame their competitors. Bin Laden's so-called "secret" accounts, which the White House has said they would like to freeze, are or have been actually reportedly in the Harris Bank, Chicago, joint accounts with the family of Sharon PERCY Rockefeller. The Saudi Royal Family actually consists of some 5000 members, …
America's Reichstag Fire S.H. Skolnick 9.11.01
… Once lost, the Romans & Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people. Remember that when Crassus tells you Sparticus approaches, when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear, when the Reichstagg burns down.

UNHOLY WARS: Afghanistan, America & Intl Terrorism by John K.Cooley. London, Pluto Press. reviews
Afghanistan, The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response by M. Hassan Kakar, University of California Press, 1995
Bin Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky "based on bin Laden's interview with Robt. Fisk, British newspaper Independent, early July 1996 shortly after he arrived from the Sudan to the Ningrahar province in Afghanistan."
Pak Proxy War: A Story Of ISI, Bin Laden and Kargil by Rajeev Sharma

Spider's Web Secret History of How White House Illegally Armed Iraq Alan Friedman Fin.Times London (1994, Bantam)
Shell Game Peter Mantius (1995, St. Martin's Press)
Evidence is clear U.S. assisted Iraq in obtaining cluster bombs, nuclear enrichment technology, U.S. designed munitions, missile technology, $5billion in loan guarantees & much more in spite of Saddam's open hatred of U.S. and his wanton use of poison gas against his own civilian population.
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, by Antony C. Sutton 1986
Opiates & Political Power in America Story of how the Drug Enforcement Administration came to be
  Edward Jay Epstein, 1977 cf. Peter Dale Scott

battle plan after the fall of Kabul to Northern Alliance
[ Approx. 100 days after 9.11.01, the big budget film version of J.R.R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings began theatrical release while ObL was fugitive actively pursued by U.S. military ]   ¹ KANDAHAR   U.S. military officials have been balking at recent allegations that armed forces have not been doing enough in the search for Osama bin Laden, who is believed to have fled the caves of Tora Bora sometime during the recent wave of airborne cave-bombings. The cause for the sudden disappearance of the man believed to have masterminded the destruction of the World Trade towers and a wing of the Pentagon is now understood in chilling clarity. "The thing we had long feared to be true has been confirmed," said a visibly shaken Pres. Bush. "Bin Laden has found the One Ring, allowing him the ability to pass invisibly through any land or territory, even into the very heart of our command." The ring, which last sat on the finger of Senator Strom Thurmon, is believed to have fallen off at some point during his last term and found its way to Afghanistan.

Bush added: "The evil will within the ring will grant bin Laden seeming immortality but at a terrible price, manipulating and twisting his soul into ever-darkening circles of evil until his very being begins to Fade, leaving only a wraith, incapable of any emotion save for the indomitable urge to sup on human souls." While prolonged use of the One Ring almost always results in the same fate, the normal life span of the ring-bearer is lengthened extraordinarily, allowing for a far greater scope of evil-doing. "Already we have observed a massive army of crazed Muslim extremists flocking to his aide," reports Def.Sec. Rumsfeld. "The tide of the battle has begun to turn in their direction." U.S. Intelligence reports that a detachment of British SAS & U.S. Navy Seals were overtaken yesterday by this new army, and, with total disregard for international P.O.W. protocol, were then boiled in a rather heavy vinegar-based sauce. Pres. Bush expressed his desire to assuage fears of both the British & American families of those soldiers taken that they won't have died in vain. "If nothing else," commented Bush at a press conference, "the Afghans are fabulous chefs, having long ago learned to make savory meals with only the barest of herbs & sauces. Our boys tasted great! Of that, you can have no doubt." Bush then urged all forces opposing bin Laden to surrender and to head West, never to return to these lands again.


falconer Christopher Boyce, Orange Cty CA

"TRW security, Keystone cops"
Christopher Boyce
  to his NatSec interrogators
C.BOYCE: Well, I have no problems with the label traitor, if you qualify what it's to, and I think that eventually the U.S. Govt is going to involve the world in the next world war. And being a traitor to that, I have absolutely no problems with that whatsoever.
5.23.82 60 Minutes tv pgm (Australia) RAY MARTIN :
Had you ever been one of those "my country right or wrong" kids?

C.BOYCE: Absolutely. I was brought up in a very conservative home, to the right of Kubla Khan. As I got older, I came to see that most everything that I believed in was hypocrisy in this country. Things just aren't as they appear.

    Timothy McVeigh   ¹ ² ³
    Key to truth about OKC bombing may be enigmatic W.German immigrant ¹
    6.19.01   Michael Collins Piper Spotlight ¹   ²
A federal undercover informant, Andreas Strassmeir, was operating alongside Timothy McVeigh for a long time prior to the Oklahoma bombing. That's the big secret the major media and the govt are keeping under wraps. Slowly but surely the truth is emerging. While the media devoted endless coverage to Timothy McVeigh's execution, the media censored the fact that growing numbers of bombing survivors and families of victims doubt that McVeigh acted alone. Those who doubt McVeigh and the FBI base their suspicions on solid evidence that continues to emerge-in particular, long-suppressed FBI documents just recently uncovered. Instead of reporting all of this, the me dia provided vast attention to advocates of the "lone bomber" theory, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Morris Dees-allowing ADL and SPLC spokesmen to speculate about other potential terrorists who might bomb another building in the future. The ADL and the SPLC agree with McVeigh and the FBI that McVeigh was a "lone bomber."

While the media shifts attention to the grief of those who suffered, the media ignores devastating evidence that federal undercover agents operated alongside McVeigh in the bombing, having had him under close surveillance for probably several years. The SPOTLIGHT determined long ago that the key to uncovering the truth about the tragedy lay in unmasking the enigmatic German national Andreas Strass meir. This, in fact, now seems to be a consensus among a diverse group of independent investigators including, among others:

  •   Ex-Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key;
  •   Former London Telegraph correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard;
  •   Journalist J.D. Cash;
  •   New American editor William Jasper;
  •   The late Glenn Wilburn & his wife Kathy (who lost two grandchildren in the bombing); and
  •   Ex-Marine Colonel Roger Charles (a former producer for ABC's 20/20).
In addition, McVeigh's former attorney, Stephen Jones, as well as his most recent attorneys, Rob Nigh, Richard Burr, Nathan Chambers and Christopher Tritico, have charged that Strassmeir was a key player in the scenario. Well-known media figures such as Robert Novak and Sam Francis also raised questions about Strassmeir. The evidence indicates that Strassmeir, if not a participant in the bombing conspiracy, was certainly a longtime deep-cover informant for some federal agency, whether the FBI, the CIA or the BATF.

ADL foreknowledge
For its own part, The SPOTLIGHT has documented that the aforementioned ADL had early, inside knowledge of McVeigh's activities, possibly provided by its contacts in one or more federal agencies, based on data probably provided by Strassmeir and his close associates. That Strassmeir was an undercover informant also suggests that his close friend and sponsor (and attorney) Kirk Lyons was aware of Strassmeir's status and was, in fact, his "handler." Since, for the past eight years, Lyons has been engaged in intelligence agency, orchestrated efforts to destroy The SPOTLIGHT, predating public reports of his in volvement with Strassmeir, this adds further fuel to the belief that Lyons is a deep cover operative with a hidden agenda.
Lyons sounds like McVeigh prosecutor Beth Wilkinson claiming that allegations about Strassmeir are an "Elvis Presley" theory (referring to the claim that the singer is still alive). Along with Lyons, the FBI, the ADL and Morris Dees, it has been elite media voices such as NYTimes, Wash.Post and Newsweek that have dismissed allegations regarding Strass meir. Yet, while the Strassmeir connection has been suppressed in the American me dia, foreign news sources have been more forthcoming.

The June 8 issue of The Times of London featured a revealing story about Strassmeir, saying that he could be "the missing piece in the puzzle." The authors clearly believe Strassmeir knows more than he is telling and that Strassmeir probably was an undercover intelligence operative. The Times comments that "the syringe that executes McVeigh will also drain Strassmeir of significance; give him the status of a footnote", in other words, eliminate forever the one confessed conspirator who could finger Strassmeir. The London newspaper adds revelations pointing toward Strassmeir's strange connections. For example, it turns out that Strassmeir can read Hebrew-Israel's state language-as a consequence of having had an Israeli army girlfriend, "not exactly the typical choice of a neo-Nazi," the Times adds knowingly.
In addition, the Times notes that when Strassmeir first arrived in this country that this so-called neo-Nazi extremist "found friends easily-retired Army officers, CIA veterans, history buffs-and became part of a network" which the Times said "is powerful in the U.S., a web of influence that stretches into the Pentagon and the federal agencies, in churches and boardrooms, on the oil rigs and building sites."

Again, hardly the profile of your average grass-roots "extremist" but certainly the profile of an intelligence operative. The Times concludes its remarkable re port saying that "we don't believe Strass meir is John Doe II"-few people do-but adds, "there is a feeling, though, that in the huge cast of characters, all the losers, and fanatics that make up the opera bouffe of the OK investigation, only Strassmeir has the brain to be the brains."

Strassmeir claimed he is "really glad" that the missing FBI papers were uncovered, saying, "maybe they will show what garbage people have been talking about me." However, when McVeigh's attorneys appealed to block McVeigh's execution, they cited newly-released FBI documents which suggested that, in the attorneys' words, "There was . . . evidence, withheld by the govt, that another person could well have been the mastermind behind the bombing." The attorneys specifically named Strass meir and one of his friends, Dennis Ma hon of Oklahoma, as possible co-conspirators and charged that the FBI had engaged in a "scheme to suppress evidence" of their roles in the bombing. While the names of Strassmeir and Ly ons were revealed by the European-based Reuters News Agency on June 7, their names were totally suppressed by elite U.S. news sources despite a media frenzy over the midnight hour effort to block McVeigh's execution.
The American press continued to hype Mc Veigh's claim of having acted alone, censoring evidence that others were involved. Also telling is that McVeigh's attorneys said information in the FBI documents "suggested that one of the other participants in the bombing was an informant for federal law enforcement officers." Not only do most investigators seem to have concluded Strassmeir (more so than Mahon) was the likely candidate but Mahon's own statements suggest that Mahon-involved in the bombing or not-now believes Strassmeir was a govt man all along.

Another strike against Strassmeir has also been leveled by an ex-Marine officer, Roger Charles, a former producer of ABC's 20/20 who resigned in disgust when 20/20 canceled his scheduled report on Strassmeir some years ago. In the July 2001 issue of Soldier of For tune, Charles says that there is "compelling evidence" that Strassmeir had "access to prior knowledge regarding the bombing." Noting that Strassmeir, in several interviews, while proclaiming his own in nocence of any involvement, had claimed knowledge (after the bombing) that 1) there were actually two yellow trucks connected to the bombing; and 2) that federal authorities had placed a tracking device on one of those yellow trucks approaching Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing. Charles reports three different sets of witnesses told of seeing SWAT-dressed per sonnel with what were described as "hoops" near the Murrah building in the pre-dawn hours prior to the bombing, and on the interstate near Oklahoma City.

Noting that these so-called "hoops" are direction-finding devices used to triangulate the location from which an electronic emitter was active, Charles concludes authorities were tracking the bombers, having foreknowledge of their plans, and this was the activity seen by witnesses. Charles avers that while the authorities were following a "decoy" truck, the truck used to deliver a bomb to the Murrah building made it to the site. Charles points out that even The Denver Post conducted a six-month investigation of its own-never referred to in national news accounts, which concluded that not one, but two yellow trucks were involved in the bombing, and that the extra truck (that the govt says never existed) "could hold the key to unlocking one of the most enduring mysteries of the case, how many people were involved in the bombing."

Where, asks Charles, did Strassmeir get inside information about a vehicle-tracking device used by federal officials? That the ADL and Morris Dees of the SPLC are adamant in discounting the involvement of purported "neo-Nazis" such as Strassmeir in the bombing raises the question as to why these professional "nazi-hunters" are determined to discount the Strassmeir connection. The only logical explanation is that Strassmeir was not really a "neo-Nazi" but instead, a classic "snitch" reporting back to federal intelligence agencies allied with the ADL, or that Strassmeir was an ADL asset all along.

    John Doe #2 center stage at Nichols trial
    12.4.97   Lois Romano Washington Post pA28
Denver   A mysterious suspect never identified & never found dominated OKC bombing case today as defense lawyers tried to shift attention away from defendant Terry L. Nichols. The defense launched its case with a stream of witnesses who claimed convicted bomber Timothy J. McVeigh was seen with a man who did not fit the description of Nichols around the time of 4.19.95 blast.
On courtroom evidence monitors was now-famous FBI sketch of John Doe No. 2, bombing suspect never located by the authorities and who they now say is no longer being sought. Nichols's lawyers have long maintained their client's innocence in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Fed. Bldg and claim govt stopped looking for other suspects after his arrest. McVeigh was sentenced to death for the bombing, which killed 168 people; Nichols, 42, faces identical murder & conspiracy charges.

Morning after the bombing, employees of Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City KS, where McVeigh rented Ryder truck used in the blast, assisted FBI in creating composite drawing of a man who allegedly accompanied McVeigh to the shop. Tom Kessinger, who was not called today, gave the FBI a detailed description of the man as full-faced & stocky, with dark hair and an olive complexion. Today shop owner Eldon Elliott testified McVeigh was accompanied by second man wearing a white baseball cap when he rented the 20 ft Ryder truck used in the bombing. "I just took a glance at him," said Elliott, who said that he saw the men chatting.

Former Elliott's employee Vicki Beemer testified earlier that 2 days before the bombing, McVeigh was accompanied by a second man. A nurse from Herington KS told jurors she saw a Hispanic-looking man riding with McVeigh in the passenger seat of a Ryder truck several days before the blast. Numerous others testified that they saw a man resembling the sketch of John Doe No. 2 in or near a Ryder truck in the days preceding the bombing.
Under cross-examination, prosecutors sought to discredit all the witnesses by highlighting the differences between their testimony and what they told the authorities right after the bombing, suggesting their descriptions were colored by the pervasive news media coverage of the investigation. … The govt now takes the position that John Doe No. 2 was actually an innocent Army private who happened to be at Elliott's the day after McVeigh rented the truck. Tthat was not govt's position 2 years ago. Sketches of the men who rented the truck, neither of which resembled Nichols, were widely circulated around the world as FBI launched biggest manhunt in history.

First man was immediately identified as McVeigh. But despite sightings all over Kansas & Oklahoma, John Doe No. 2 was never found. Shortly before the McVeigh trial, govt stated John Doe No. 2 was no longer a suspect and withdrew the warrant for his arrest. Notion of 4th suspect also was introduced today, when a delivery man insisted that the person to whom he delivered Chinese food several days before the blast was neither McVeigh, Nichols nor John Doe No. 2. Jeff Davis of Junction City KS, said he delivered food to a motel room where McVeigh was registered but that the man who accepted the delivery was not McVeigh. Davis testified he believed federal authorities, who spoke with him a dozen times, were displeased with his descriptions because they did not fit the govt's theory of the case. Prosecutors have never called Davis as a witness.

Were Feds warned before OKC bomb built ?
2.6.97   Lou Kilzer & Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

… &Nbsp; The fuel dealer reported the purchasing attempt to the ATF, but the agency did not follow up. …

Who done it: "Muslim militants" or "our" govt?
Brief history of U.S. Govt directed & fomented terror
cit. "Secret Societies & Psychological Warfare" 2001 ed. Michael A. Hoffman II Independent History & Research
box 849, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816

… appt of D.A. Robt Macy, prosecutor who allegedly stymied all efforts to get to bottom of Oklahoma City conspiracy. Grand Jury delivered no indictments of ATF agents or of shadowy right wing, neo-Nazi "useful idiots" like Chevie Kehoe … of Yaak, MT & his partner, Danny Lee of Yukon, OK while "dressed in FBI raid outfits", killed gun dealer William Mueller & his entire family in Arkansas in 1996 because Mueller had inside information on T.McVeigh & OK City bombing conspiracy. (Spokesman-Review, Spokane WA 4.8.99 pB3). …
Only one indicted was investigative journalist David Hoffman, author of the seminal book, The Oklahoma City Bombing & the Politics of Terror (Feral House, 1998). … The entire remaining stock of David Hoffman's book was pulped & destroyed under legal threat from lawyers for agents of the FBI. …

Congress rebukes FBI's Okla. City probe 12.24.06   John Solomon Associated Press

  Wash. DC   The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.
 The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but far too many unanswered questions remain.

The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.
There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state at the time it occurred.
The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.

"We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," subcommittee chair Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA, said in an AP interview.
Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Dept, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully. The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people 4.19.95 in the Oklahoma City main federal building.

The report says the inadequacy of the bureau's work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents. FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Sunday, "Having not yet read the report, it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents."
Nonetheless, Kolko said: "The Oklahoma City bombing case was the largest case the FBI worked on before 9/11. Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads. Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed. The FBI worked tirelessly to cover all of the leads and conducted a thorough and complete investigation."

Previously, the bureau has said it believes its investigation of the bombing was exhaustive and there is no credible evidence that other people were involved. The subcommittee concludes the Justice Dept should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.
The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.

Rohrabacher's report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:
• Information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.
• Witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry. The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.
• Findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.
• Phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.
• Information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing.

An army of one?   In the war on terrorism, alliances are not an obstacle to victory; they're the key to it.
Sept. 2002  
Wash.Monthly
Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.), Supreme Allied commander, Europe 1997-2000, auth. Waging Modern War

A few days after 9.11.01, I happened to be walking the halls of the Pentagon, scene of many contentious meetings during my years as NATO Europe forces commander, and ran into an old acquaintance, now a sr official. We chatted briefly about TV coverage of the crisis and the impending operations in Afghanistan. At his invitation, I began to share some thoughts about how we had waged the Kosovo war by working within NATO, but he cut me off.
"We read your book," he scoffed. "And no one is going to tell us where we can or can't bomb."

That was exactly how the U.S. proceeded. Of course, the campaign in Afghanistan, as it unfolded, wasn't an all- American show. The U.S. sought & won help from an array of countries: basing rights in Central Asian states and in Pakistan; some shared intelligence from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim states; diplomatic backing from Russia & China; air & naval support from France; naval refueling from Japan; special forces from U.K. and so on.

But unlike the Kosovo campaign, where NATO provided a structured consultation and consensus-shaping process, allied support in this war took the form of a "floating" or "flexible" coalition. Countries supported the U.S. in the manner and to the extent they felt possible, but without any pretenses of sharing in major decisions.
European leaders sought to be more involved. At the Europeans' urging, NATO even declared, invoking, for the first time, Article V of its founding treaty, that the attack on the U.S. represented an attack on every member. But even so, Washington bypassed & essentially marginalized the alliance. The UN was similarly sidelined.

The first weeks of the Afghanistan campaign against the Taliban went well, an outcome that didn't surprise anyone who has had the honor to exercise command over these magnificent outfits. But the early successes seem to have reinforced the conviction of some within U.S. govt that continuing war against terrorism is best waged outside structures of intl institutions, that American leadership must be "unfettered." This is a fundamental misjudgment.
The longer this war goes on, and by all accounts, it will go on for years, the more our success will depend on the willing cooperation & active participation of our allies to root out terrorist cells in Europe & Asia, to cut off funding & support of terrorists and to deal with Saddam Hussein & other threats.

We are far more likely to gain the support we need by working through intl institutions than outside of them. We've got a problem here: Because the Bush administration has thus far refused to engage our allies through NATO, we are fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind our back.
That day at the Pentagon, the senior official and I never had the opportunity to complete the discussion. But it was clear that he had totally misread the lessons of the Kosovo campaign. NATO wasn't an obstacle to victory in Kosovo; it was the reason for our victory.
For 78 days in the spring of 1999, the alliance battled to halt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's Albanians being carried out by the predominantly Serb troops and govt of then-President Slobodan Milosevic. It was the first actual war NATO had fought in its 50-year history.

Like the U.S. war in Afghanistan, it was predominantly an air campaign (though the threat of a ground attack, I believe, proved decisive). America provided the leadership, the target nominations, and almost all of the precision strikes. Still, it was very much a NATO war. Allied countries flew some 60%of the sorties. Because it was a NATO campaign, each bomb dropped represented a target that had been approved, at least in theory, by each of the alliance's 19 govts.
Much of my time as allied commander was spent with various European defense officials, walking them through proposed targets and the reasoning behind them. Sometimes there were disagreements and occasionally we had to modify those lists to take into account the different countries' political concerns & military judgements.

For all of us involved, the president, secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and me, it was a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. But in the end, this was the decisive process for success, because whatever we lost in theoretical military effectiveness we gained manyfold in actual strategic impact by having every NATO nation on board. NATO itself acted as a consensus engine for its members.
Because it acts on the basis of such broad agreement, every decision is an opportunity for members to dissent, therefore, every decision generates pressure to agree. Greece, for example, never opposed a NATO action, though its electorate strongly opposed the war and the Greek govt tried in other ways to maintain an acceptable "distance" from NATO military actions. This process evokes leadership from the stronger states and pulls the others along.

Of course, this wasn't a pleasant experience for any of the participants. For U.S. leaders during the war, it meant continuing dialogue, frictions, and occasional hard exchanges with some allies to get them on board. For some European leaders, the experience must have been the reverse: a continuing pressure from the U.S. to approve actions, to strike targets, that would generate domestic criticism at home.
There was no escaping the fact that this was every govt's war, that they were intrinsically part of the operation, and each was, ultimately, liable to be held accountable by its voters for the outcome.

In the darkest days before the NATO 50th anniversary summit in late April in Washington, British PM Blair came to our Belgium headquarters on very short notice. To be honest, it wasn't altogether clear why he was coming. But as he & I sat alone in my office, it quickly became apparent. "Are we going to win?" he asked me. "Will we win with an air campaign alone? Will you get ground troops if you need them?" Blair made it very clear that the future of every govt in Western Europe, including his own, depended on a successful outcome of the war. Therefore, he was going to do everything it took to succeed. No stopping halfway. No halfheartedness.

That was the real lesson of the Kosovo campaign at the highest level: NATO worked. It held political leaders accountable to their electorates. It made an American-dominated effort essentially their effort. It made an American-led success their success.
Because an American-led failure would have been their failure, these leaders became determined to prevail. NATO not only generated consensus, it also generated an incredible capacity to alter public perceptions, enabling countries with even minimal capacities to participate collectively in the war. As one minister of defense told me afterwards, "Before Kosovo, you couldn't use the word 'war' in my country. War meant defeat, destruction, death, and occupation. Now it is different. We have won one!"

Milosevic was hoping the alliance would crack and the bombing campaign would fall apart. Instead, NATO's determination increased over time and the bombing intensified. He was hoping that neighboring countries, such as Bulgaria & Romania, would not cooperate with the West, and indeed, large majorities of their citizens initially opposed the war. But the power of NATO extended even to these countries, which at that point were non- members.
We simply made clear to their leaders that if they wanted to be considered for eventual membership in NATO, and they did, very much, then they'd have to help us against Milosevic, which they did, quickly. Faced with this remarkable unity of effort and determination, even the Russians, who strongly sympathized with the Serbs, also abandoned Milosevic in the end.

Other intl institutions helped us tighten the noose. The U.S. acted under the authority of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1199, passed in autumn 1998, and authorizing all available means to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, language which helped give our military intervention intl legal and moral authority.
The threat against Milosevic of war criminal charges was additional leverage. When the Intl Criminal Tribunal indicted Milosevic for war crimes on May 25, 1999, the resolve of our European allies notably stiffened, a fact that today's domestic opponents of the intl court should keep in mind.

In the end, NATO achieved every one of its aims. With the air war intensifying, a ground invasion being prepared, and no other country to turn to for help, Milosevic in early June pulled his troops, police, and weaponry out of Kosovo. A NATO-led intl peacekeeping force entered to establish order. Nearly a million Kosovars returned to their homes.
Weakened by his defeat, Milosevic lost an election he had tried to rig in his favor. When he still refused to cede power, a student-led uprising did the job for him. Milosevic is now behind bars at The Hague and is being tried as a war criminal. Though Serbia and Kosovo are still struggling with the aftermath of ethnic conflict & autocratic leadership, they are now governed by democratically elected leaders eager for good relations with the West. All this was achieved at a remarkably slight cost, minimal destruction on the ground, no NATO casualties, and relatively few civilian deaths despite the use of some 23,000 bombs & missiles.

What caused this outcome was not just the weapons of war. Forces far beyond the bombs & bullets were at work: the weight of intl diplomacy; the impact of intl law; and the "consensus-engine" of NATO, which kept all the Allies in the fight. The lesson of Kosovo is that intl institutions & alliances are really another form of power. They have their limitations and can require a lot of maintenance. But used effectively, they can be strategically decisive.
The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging & winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy & law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after 9.11.01, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the UN create an Intl Criminal Tribunal on Intl Terrorism.

We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden & the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity.
Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the intl coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region.

Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide.
On a purely practical level, we might have avoided the embarrassing arguments during the encirclement of Kandahar in early Dec. 2001, when the appointed Afghan leader wanted to offer the Taliban leader amnesty, asking what law he had broken, while the U.S. insisted that none should be granted.
We might have avoided the continuing difficulties of maintaining hundreds of prisoners in a legal no-man's land at Guantanamo Bay, which has undercut U.S. legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world. Instead of cutting NATO out, we should have prosecuted the Afghan campaign with NATO, as we did in Kosovo.

Of course, it would have been difficult to involve our allies early on, when we ourselves didn't know what we wanted to do, or how to achieve it. The dialogue & discussions would have been vexing. But in the end, we could have kept NATO involved without surrendering to others the design of the campaign. We could have simply phased the operation and turned over what had begun as a U.S.-only effort to a NATO mission, under U.S. leadership.
Even winning European approval of the air campaign need not have proved troublesome. The most serious difficulties we had in garnering European support for the Kosovo air campaign concerned bombing the so-called "dual-use" targets: bridges, power stations, TV towers, and govt buildings in Belgrade. The U.S. believed such attacks were crucial to breaking Milosevic's ability to wage war. The Europeans, deeply concerned about potential civilian casualties, preferred to hit Yugoslav military targets in Kosovo. In the end, we bombed both.

But a similar disagreement in Afghanistan between the U.S. & Europeans would have been highly unlikely, for the simple reason that the American bombing campaign focused exclusively on military targets. The U.S. concentrated its firepower on Taliban & al Qaeda troops, hideouts, and weapons stores, precisely the kinds of targets the Europeans were most likely to have approved.

NATO involvement would probably not have hastened our victory in Afghanistan. But had the Afghan campaign been waged with NATO, I believe we would have been in a stronger position to stay the course in Afghanistan and prosecute the coming stages of the war. As the president himself has warned, the struggle against terror requires far more than exclusively military actions. Indeed, as time goes on, the most important aspect of the war may be in law enforcement & judicial activities. Much of the terrorist network draws support & resources from within countries friendly or allied with us. Terrorists residing in Western Europe planned 9.11.01, and the greatest concentration of their "sleeper cells" outside the MidEast is probably in Europe.
Yet this is a threat that the American military can do little to combat. What we really need is closer alignment of our police & judicial activities with our friends & allies: greater cooperation in joint police investigations, sharing of evidence, harmonious evidentiary standards and procedures, as well as common definitions of crimes associated with terrorism.

Through greater legal, judicial, and police coordination, we need to make the intl environment more seamless for us than it is for the intl terrorists we seek. U.S. officials inevitably say that they are getting "good cooperation" from their European counterparts. They say the same, however, about countries like Saudi Arabia, where we know cooperation is minimal at best. Even with the limited information publicly available, it's clear that the police & judicial measures taken to detect, identify, track, detain, interrogate, arrest, charge, convict, and punish terrorists and their accomplices within friendly countries have thus far been less than fully successful.

Since last fall, European govts have arrested, then released, numerous suspected terrorists whom the U.S. govt would undoubtedly have preferred to see kept behind bars. In April, for instance, Spanish police arrested a Syrian- born al Qaeda suspect, but let him go, citing a lack of evidence. Yet, at the time of his arrest, he had in his possession hours of videotape of the World Trade Center from every conceivable angle, plus similar surveillance images of other planned al Qaeda targets such as Disney World. Fortunately, the Spanish police rearrested the man in July. But that same month, British courts released an Egyptian wanted in the U.S. for allegedly aiding a top terrorist leader.

The full cooperation we seek is unlikely without an overall consensus-building mechanism, like NATO, to drive the process. It is hard enough getting the CIA & FBI to share information, even when both answer (in theory) to the president & Congress. Imagine how difficult it is to get cooperation among various U.S. agencies & their counterparts working bilaterally with 20 different European countries, when each agency is competing with others. The longer the war goes on, the more we are going to need cooperation & support from other nations, not just troops and ships and airplanes, but whole-hearted govtal collaboration. Instead, we seem to be getting less as time goes on.
After 9.11.01, the U.S. gave the UN a list of groups & individuals suspected of funding terrorists. European govts responded by freezing their assets. In the spring, the U.S. govt provided an updated list with new names. This time, most European govts ignored the list, according to Wall St Journal, citing concern that the U.S. was providing insufficient recourse for those who claim they are innocent. Last fall, all of Europe understood 9.11.01 had been planned on European soil, that European targets were on the terrorists' lists, and that Europeans by the hundreds died in the World Trade Ctr. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder braved a no-confidence vote to win approval for German combat troops to be made available for Afghanistan. Even the French, long openly resentful of American power, expressed solidarity with us. Today, that support is being replaced by growing popular anger at the U.S.. Instead of focusing on the threat of terrorism, Europeans are focusing on the dangers of American hegemony. Their leaders are free to play to these fears because, without NATO involvement, the war is not seen as theirs, but ours. Not a single European election hinges on the success of the war on terrorism. As a consequence, European elected officials simply don't have a personal stake in the outcome. Some Americans seem to take a certain delight in Europe's outrage. But the fact is that this outrage is undermining our ability to carry out the next stages of the war, including, perhaps, toppling Saddam Hussein. We don't necessarily need Europe's full military support for a war against Saddam. But we need its diplomatic support now and its assistance in the aftermath. Without this support, others will have an excuse for not cooperating.
This has already begun to happen. King Abdullah of Jordan recently explained to Wash.Post why his country, which borders Iraq, could not be used as a staging area for a U.S. invasion force: "If it seems America wants to hit Baghdad, that's not what Jordanians think, or the British, [or] the French . . . " It's still not too late to enlist NATO in the fight against terrorism, to handle peacekeeping duties in an increasingly chaotic Afghanistan, to deepen its involvement in the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and to host the harmonization of judicial & law-enforcement activities. If there is to be a military operation against Iraq, then certainly NATO participation should be sought. Involving NATO more directly and deeply would give European leaders a personal political stake in the war.

In particular, bringing NATO into an expanded peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan would go a long way toward convincing the Europeans that the U.S. is serious about stability in post-war Iraq or other post-conflict situations. That NATO framework can be expanded at the military level to encompass countries that do not belong to NATO, just as we did in Bosnia & Kosovo. In the twilight of WWII we recognized the need for allies. We understood the need to prevent conflict, not just fight it, and we affirmed the idea that we must banish from the world what President Harry Truman, addressing the UN founding, called "the fundamental philosophy of our enemies, namely, that 'might makes right.'" Truman went on to say that we must "prove by our acts that right makes might."


Unabomber asks for his belongings
Kaczynski asks court to return his bomb materials
8.11.03   Michael Taylor SF Chronicle ¹
T.Kaczynski #04475-046
US Penitenary admin Max Facility
po box 8500 Florence CO 81226

Theodore J. Kaczynski, onetime UC Berkeley math professor better known as Unabomber, wants federal govt to return all his stuff, incl one of his bombs, that the FBI confiscated when he was arrested in his tiny Montana cabin 7 years ago.
Trading in his Ph.D. for his new activity as jailhouse lawyer, Kaczynski has filed a bevy of documents in U.S. Dist. Court in Sacramento, asking that thousands of personal papers and other materials be given back to him now that his days in court are ostensibly behind him and he is serving life without the possibility of parole.

Kaczynski wants the government to ship the material to a Michigan archive that already contains more than 15,000 of Kaczynski's papers. Kaczynski has requested that all the items described in the govt's inch-thick inventory of his belongings be turned over. Among those things, according to R. Steven Lapham, one of the federal prosecutors who tried the case, are a pipe bomb and tons of documents that include his voluminous autobiography.
"Quite a bit of what is on the inventory are bomb components," Lapham said. "Black powder, smokeless powder". The list also includes Kaczynski's tools, a can of matches, a pair of tweezers and a hatchet.

Lapham would not talk about whether Kaczynski is entitled to the material, but legal experts say the govt would probably be allowed to keep them on the remote possibility that Kaczynski's ongoing battle to clear himself, despite being turned down by the appellate courts, is successful and the prosecution is forced to start the case all over.
"The real reason the govt should hesitate to release (the material) is that he's still fighting the whole background of his having pled guilty," said San Francisco's Golden Gate Univ. Law School dean Peter Keane. "He's never indicated he was satisfied with that plea. The govt could argue to a judge that, on the outside chance that Kaczynski were ever successful, they would have to try him, and they might be losing materials of evidentiary value."

Kaczynski concedes in his legal papers that the issue of whether he can get his effects back is complex, and legal rulings, which he cites copiously, are inconsistent. But he says the govt should release the material for the sake of posterity. "Clearly, therefore," he says in his precisely handwritten papers, some of which have been posted at www.thesmokinggun.com, "this Court should take into consideration Kaczynski's interest, the public's interest, and the interest of scholars and researchers in the knowledge to be obtained from the study of Kaczynski's documents. Such study will help to reveal the true facts of Kaczynski's case."
But the facts of Kaczynski's case, according to the govt and Kaczynski's own guilty plea in Jan. 1998, are that in the 17 years between 1978 & 1995, he killed 3 men with bombs and injured 23 other people in 16 U.S. bombing incidents.

He was caught only after his ego got the better of prudence, and he offered to cease his murderous ways if he received a platform for his views. In conjunction with NY Times, and at the request of the govt, the Washington Post published his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto Sept. 1995. The phraseology was immediately recognized by his sister-in-law, Linda Patrik. Weeks later, her husband, David Kaczynski, by then convinced that his brother had written the tract, went to the authorities with his suspicions.
Now in permanent custody in a 12'x7' cell at Colorado federal maximum-security prison ADX-Florence, Kaczynski spends his time reading his mail, doing legal research and corresponding with the Univ. of Michigan, whose library has added thousands of his personal papers to its Labadie Collection, the foremost U.S. archive of anarchist papers.

In his new court filings, Kaczynski says he wants the govt to ship its UNABOM papers, at govt expense, to the curator of the Labadie Collection, "where they will be available to scholars & researchers." In one of the court documents, Kaczynski gives a lengthy accounting of why he's broke and can't pay for having the effects shipped to Michigan. Answering what appear to be standard questions, he says he got $100 from the Univ. of Michigan to cover "my expenditures for postage on papers that I send from time to time to (the Labadie Collection.)" Kaczynski said he had $22.16, as of July, in his prison commissary account.
His only other assets are the items held by the govt, he says, including "a .30-06 hunting rifle, which might be worth about $150 (rough guess). I believe that the rest of the property is of negligible intrinsic financial value (though the documents are of great value as sources of information). I have no idea what the property might be worth to collectors due to its 'celebrity' value.' "

UM spokeswoman Julie Peterson said the university believed the documents still held by the govt were "important historical materials. They're valuable as a resource for many people across the country and across the world to do research on social protest."


Document: OKC bombing was taped
4.19.04   AP

Wash.D.C.   A Secret Service document written shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing described security video footage of the attack and witness testimony that suggested Timothy McVeigh may have had accomplices at the scene. "Security video tapes from the area show the truck detonation 3 minutes 6 seconds after the suspects exited the truck," the Secret Service reported 6 days after the attack on a log of agents' activities and evidence in the Oklahoma investigation.

The govt has insisted McVeigh drove the truck himself and that it never had any video of the bombing or the scene of the Alfred P. Murrah building in the minutes before the 4.19.95 explosion. Several investigators & prosecutors who worked the case told AP they had never seen video footage like that described in the Secret Service log.
The document, if accurate, is either significant evidence kept secret for 9 years or a misconstrued recounting of investigative leads that were often passed by word of mouth during the hectic early days of the case, they said. "I did not see it," said retired FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh who ran the Oklahoma City probe. "If it shows what it says, then it would be significant."

Secret Service spokesman Charles Bopp declined to discuss the video footage reference, saying it would be addressed by witnesses later this week at the capital murder trial of McVeigh co-defendant Terry Nichols. "It is anticipated Secret Service employees will testify in court concerning these matters," he said.
Other documents obtained by AP show the Secret Service in late 1995 gave prosecutors several computer disks of enhanced digital photographs of the Murrah building, intelligence files on several subjects in the investigation and a file detailing an internal affairs inquiry concerning an agent who reconstructed key phone evidence against McVeigh. "These abstract sheets are sensitive documents which we have protected from disclosure in the past," said a Secret Service letter that recounted discussions in late 1995 with federal prosecutors on what evidence would be turned over to defense lawyers.

Lawyers for Nichols say they have never been given the security video, photo disks or internal investigative file referenced in the documents. The trial judge has threatened to dismiss the death penalty case if evidence was withheld. McVeigh was executed in 2001 on a separate federal conviction. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison on federal charges before being tried by the state this year.
The govt has maintained for years that McVeigh parked the Ryder rental truck carrying a massive fertilizer bomb outside the Murrah building and left alone in a getaway car he parked around the corner. The bombing killed more than 160 people. The only video prosecutors introduced at trial showed the Ryder truck without any visible passengers as it passed a security camera inside a high-rise apartment building a block away from the Murrah building.

But the Secret Service log reported on 4.24.95 & 4.25.95, that there was security footage showing the Ryder truck pulling up to the Murrah building. The log does not say where such video came from or who possessed it. A 4.25.95 log entry states that the security footage allowed agents to determine the time that elapsed between suspects leaving the truck and the explosion. An entry a day earlier on the same log reported that the security video was consistent with a witness' account that he saw McVeigh's getaway car in the lead before a woman guided the truck to its final parking spot in front of the Murrah building.
"A witness to the explosion named Grossman claimed to have seen a pale yellow Mercury car with a Ryder truck behind it pulling up to the federal building," the log said. The witness "further claimed to have seen a woman on the corner waving to the truck." A Secret Service agent named McNally "noted that this fact is significant due to the fact that the security video shows the Ryder truck pulling up to the Federal Building and then pausing (7 to 10 seconds) before resuming into the slot in front of the building," the log said. "It is speculated that the woman was signaling the truck when a slot became available."

Defenbaugh said the FBI had talked to several witnesses suggesting 2 people had left the truck, but prosecutors never introduced the scenario at trial because it couldn't be corroborated. That's why a new security video would be significant, he said. "It would have taken the investigation in a very specific direction," Defenbaugh said. "Rather than having to go down an 8 lane highway during rush hour, we would have gone down a faster path with just 2 or 4 lanes."
Defenbaugh said the FBI kept a log similar to the Secret Service document inside the Oklahoma City investigation command center that might help solve the mystery of the video. Justice officials declined to discuss documents, citing the ongoing Nichols' trial. In addition to the witness mentioned in the Secret Service document, a woman working in Murrah's Social Security office who was rescued from the rubble and a driver outside the building both reported to the FBI seeing 2 men leave the truck, according to govt documents.

The Secret Service log contained other information about the case, including that McVeigh made 30 calls to an Illinois gun dealer in the months before the attacks to seek dynamite and that the gun dealer subsequently failed a lie detector test. The Secret Service lost 6 employees in McVeigh's bombing, the single largest loss in agency history.
Nichols' attorneys last week asked the judge to dismiss the case on grounds the govt withheld evidence, incl the security video footage. New documents obtained by AP show the Secret Service provided prosecutors other evidence that may not have been provided to defense lawyers, incl a file showing the Secret Service agent who reconstructed crucial phone evidence against McVeigh was subjected to an internal affairs investigation and eventually cleared for her conduct in the case.

FBI officials say that file details allegations the agent wrongly collected grand jury-subpoenaed phone information about McVeigh's calls without FBI knowledge, and kept it for weeks while she produced analysis that helped the investigation. The internal investigation caused complications for prosecutors. They decided it tainted the agent as a witness and they chose instead to hire an outside expert to re-do the phone analysis for trial, officials said. Bopp said the Secret Service did nothing wrong.
"The Secret Service worked cooperatively with the FBI and other federal state & local law enforcement throughout the investigation," Bopp said. "The expertise of the Secret Service on electronic crimes & telecommunications provided unique and timely information to the ongoing investigation."

Tapes of Okla. City bombing aftermath released   4.19.95 terrorist attack killed 168 and injured hundreds   9.27.09   AP

OKC   Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday.
"The real story is what's missing," said Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
Trentadue gave copies of the tapes to The Oklahoman newspaper, which posted them online and provided copies to The Associated Press.

The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound (1,815 kilogram) fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.
"Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said. He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced."
"The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02," he said. "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see."

A spokesman for the FBI in Oklahoma City, Gary Johnson, declined to comment and referred inquiries about the tapes to FBI officials in Washington, who were not immediately available for comment Sunday. The soundless recordings show people rushing from nearby buildings after the bomb went off. Some show people fleeing through corridors cluttered with debris. None show the actual explosion that ripped through the federal building.
FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the federal building itself.

The FBI in the past refused to release the security camera recordings, leading Trentadue and others to contend the government was hiding evidence that others were involved in the attack.
"It's taken a lawsuit and years to get the tapes," Trentadue said.
He received the latest batch of tapes over the summer in response to an April request for video from security cameras in 11 different locations. Nothing on the tapes was unexpected.

"The more important thing they show is what they don't show," Trentadue said. "These cameras would have shown the various roads and approaches to the Murrah Building."
Trentadue began looking into the bombing after his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, died at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995. Kenneth Trentadue was a convicted bank robber who was held at the federal prison after being picked up as a parole violator at his home in San Diego in June 1995.
He was never a bombing suspect, but Jesse Trentadue alleges guards mistook his brother for one and beat him to death during an interrogation. The official cause of Kenneth Trentadue's death is listed as suicide, but his body had 41 wounds and bruises that Jesse Trentadue believes could have come only from a beating.

A judge in 2001 awarded Kenneth Trentadue's family $1.1 million for extreme emotional distress in the government's handling of his death.
Jesse Trentadue said he has received about 30 security tapes, including some images that were used as evidence at bomber Timothy McVeigh's trial. McVeigh was convicted on federal murder and conspiracy charges and executed in 2001. Coconspirator Terry Nichols is serving life in prison on federal and state bombing convictions.
Trentadue said he is seeking more tapes along with a variety of bombing-related documents from the FBI and the CIA. An FOIA request by Trentadue for 26 CIA documents was rejected in June. A letter from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which reviewed the documents, said their release "could cause grave damage to our national security."
Trentadue said he gave the latest set of tapes to The Oklahoman because of their historical value. The newspaper has agreed to provide copies to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.


Mark David Chapman ª   re Manchurian candidates
Origin of this passage's claims unknown.
Please provide attribution if known
Blocks from the DAKOTA where John Lennon was shot to death, Pres. elect Ronald Reagan was meeting with his designated CIA dir. Wm Casey. Shooter Mark Chapman had worked for CIA/DOD front WORLD VISION SOCIETY that purports to manage refugee camps but is noted for recruiting assassins. WVS was managing the Cuban boat people refugee camp at Ft Chafee, using remnants of ALPHA 66, the most violent of the groups the CIA sponsored for terror against Castro's Cuba.
Shooter of Ronald Reagan was the son of the WVS #2 man who was a Pres. Bush pere. One of the Bush son's was having dinner with Chapman's brother at the time of the shooting. Edward Bennett Williams, one of the members of the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Board, was Chapman's atty.

U.S. man convicted of pipeline, energy attack plan   7.13.07   Jon Hurdle Reuters   ª   EPR

Scranton PA   A Pennsylvania man was convicted on Friday of plotting to blow up U.S. oil pipelines and energy installations and of attempting to enlist al Qaeda militants on the Internet to help carry out his plan. A federal jury of six women and six men took a little more than an hour to convict Michael Curtis Reynolds, 49, on those charges and of possessing a hand grenade. He faces a maximum 57 1/2 years in prison.

The govt accused Reynolds, from Wilkes-Barre, of scheming to attack the Alaska and Transcontinental pipelines and other energy installations to prompt a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Reynolds' purported plot was uncovered by Shannen Rossmiller, a former Montana magistrate who has been independently tracking extremists on the Internet since 9.11.01.
In closing arguments earlier on Friday, defense attorney Joseph O'Brien said Reynolds had been attempting to communicate online with purported Islamist militants to expose them and not because he had any intention of working with them.
"His intent was the same as Rossmiller's," O'Brien told the court before U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik. "He was out there trying to uncover terrorist actions".

But Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gurganus said Reynolds had admitted he told no one of his online contacts with purported militants, who also included an FBI agent posing as an attack plotter.
"He actively offered his services to commit acts of terrorism," said Gurganus, dismissing Reynolds' claim that he intended to trap alleged militants on the Internet. "He really is a person who thought he could make money helping al Qaeda".
Reynolds was arrested 12.5.05 at a remote rest stop in Idaho where he had been lured with the promise of cash for his operation. The divorced father of three who had a succession of jobs in electronics, and once in a paintball field, was "kind of a dreamer, kind of a loner," O'Brien said.

He conceded that Reynold's methods of tracking down alleged militants on the Internet may have been less sophisticated than those used by Rossmiller and the FBI, but "that doesn't mean he's a terrorist. There is reasonable doubt as to whether Michael Reynolds did these things with the intent to support terrorist organizations," O'Brien said.

Jury seated for ex-airman's spy trial
1.27.03   Jonathan D. Salant
AP   ¹

Alexandria VA   Lawyers for retired Air Force enlisted man accused of of spying for Iraq, Libya and China argued at trial Monday that Brian Patrick Regan had no information that could harm his country. But in their opening statements at Regan's espionage trial here, govt prosecutors depicted him as a man willing to sell out his country for $13 million.
Regan's trial got under way, after months of procedural haggles, as 12 jurors & 4 alternates were seated. It is the first espionage case in 50 years that could lead to the death penalty.
  [ According to what? Death penalty was definitely considered initially for C.Boyce. ]

Asst U.S. atty Patricia Haynes charged Regan, deeply in debt, was willing to offer classified information to Iraq, Libya and China. "This trial is about espionage," she said. "Espionage is a crime against U.S." Defense atty Jonathan Shapiro countered that the retired Air Force enlisted man was playing spy and had no significant information to give to anybody. "It may be a case of bad judgment bordering on stupidity," Shapiro said. "What Mr. Regan had with him was worthless. It wasn't even classified. It posed no harm to U.S."
  [ Same intial defense tack as C.Boyce. ]

Before beginning opening arguments, lawyers for both sides used more than half of their challenges as they selected the jury, which incl 7 women. If convicted, Regan could be the first American executed for spying since Julius & Ethel Rosenberg June 1953. The Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiring to steal U.S. atomic secrets for the Soviet Union.
Regan's trial is being held in the same federal courthouse where John Walker Lindh was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year for fighting with the Taliban militia in Afghanistan.

It's rare for a spy case to go to trial. The govt usually would rather cut a deal than run the risk of revealing in open court the ways it tracks spies. Even when information provided by the CIA's Aldrich Ames or the FBI's Robert Hanssen led to the execution of U.S. agents overseas, the govt avoided a trial and agreed to plea bargains where both men were sentenced to life without parole.
Regan is charged with 3 counts of attempted espionage and one of illegally gathering national security information. He has pleaded innocent. The defense team & U.S. atty's office declined to comment on whether the govt offered an out-of-court settlement. One of Regan's lawyers, Nina Ginsberg, has called the decision to seek the death penalty "disproportionate."

Univ. of Pittsburgh law prof. John Parry, specialist on the death penalty, said because of 9.11.01, federal authorities may see it as important to seek the ultimate punishment in a case involving alleged spying for 2 countries the State Dept has labeled sponsors of terrorism, Libya & Iraq. "There is a belief that this is worse espionage because of who is getting the material, and the risk & danger those people pose to our country," Parry said. "Giving things to the Russians is bad, but not threatening in the same way as giving things to irrational terrorists or those who support them."

Regan retired from the Air Force Aug. 2000 to work for a defense contractor in the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites. A year later, FBI agents pulled Regan off a flight about to leave Washington for Zurich, Switzerland. They said he had a spiral notebook with codes describing images of a missile launcher in the northern no-fly zone over Iraq and of another launcher in China.
The FBI said Regan's home computer contained a letter to Saddam Hussein seeking $13 million in Swiss francs and offering information to help Iraq hide anti-aircraft missiles. "I am willing to commit espionage against U.S. by providing your country with highly classified information," the letter said, according to the indictment against Regan.Court records indicate that Regan, a father of four, was $53,000 in debt.

Federal prosecutors said Regan's offer to sell information to Iraq put U.S. and allied pilots patrolling the no-fly zones there at "grave risk of death." But defense lawyers claimed the letter was nothing more than "the alleged rantings of a retired Air Force master sergeant prepared in what appears to be an effort to scam a foreign govt out of $13 million."
Opening statements were expected to begin immediately after jury selection. The trial before U.S. Dist. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee likely will last about a month.


Chinese space pgm   Thread of the Silkworm auth. Iris Chang (BasicBooks 1995) re Tsien Hsue- shen, chinese pioneer of U.S. space age. Rejected by U.S. after his aid, father of Chinese missile pgm.
  Qian Xuesen (Tsien Hsue-shen). Graduated Jiao Tong Univ., Shanghai and went to MIT for further study in 1935. Then involved in early U.S. rocket pgm with Theodore von Karman & other scientists. Accused of being Communist, put under house arrest & and eventually deported to China in 1955. Chinese space pgm started one year later. As chief designer and one of major leaders, Qian played key role in Chinese space pgm Early Chinese rockets were developed from Soviet R-2 missile but Qian's knowledge & experience undoubtedly helps China launched its first ballistic missile, first ICBM and put first satellite into space.

    secret courts
Alien Terrorist Removal Court Another by Congress & the Clinton administration just like it's cousin, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, it is based on a statist political philosophy which creates the climate for secret courts, illegal surveillance, and prosecution flying in the face of the 4th Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, which guarantees that citizens will not be subject to govt abuse even in the name of a cause deemed worthy by said govt.
Diane Alden from S.L.E.E.P. Spies, Lies, Echelon, Economics, & People
    [ The following speculative conjecture is even less informative than the most ill supported inflammatory conspiracist's rant. There is zero mention of right wing terror organization P2 which was always far more active, internationally wide spread and better funded than Red Brigades.
    Any politically aware Italian knows if it's the Labor minister assassinated, look to P2 for the money, arms & culpability, regardless of misleading phone calls to the contrary.

    Moreover, all cold war era "terrorist" organizations were always primarily dependent on Soviet or NATO affiliated espionage agencies for the bulk of their funding & arms purchases. Per W.Tarpley, Red Brigades were P2 patsies.
    With state terrorist organizations unified, this murder is no less suspect of their instigation than the Chavez "coup".

    However, since organized crime is now irrevocably assimilated in international corporate directorates, at very least via mutual investment bankers, most likely this murder was no more than opportunistic attempt to replace a dutiful civil servant with a covert puppet of Cosa Nostra. ]

Ghosts of terrorists past   Cold-war relics back from the dead? Old terror groups show signs of life
4.26.02   Peter Dizikes ABC News NYC   Cold-blooded murder of a govt official stunned Italy last month. Now observers hope the killing is not the first shot in a revival of terror groups that have lain dormant for years. Police suggested a faction of Italy's Red Brigades, who terrorized the country in the 1970s & 1980s, is behind 3.19.02 killing of labor ministry official Marco Biagi. Next day a bomb near U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, killed 9, with the country's interior ministry blaming an offshoot of that country's notorious Shining Path terrorists for the attack.
Until this year, Red Brigades were held responsible for just one killing in recent years, while Shining Path, which waged low-level civil war for control of Peru during the 1980s, was decimated in the early 1990s. Apparent return of older groups has added to the concerns of govt officials still devising new security tactics after 9.11.01 al Qaeda assault on U.S.
Why have the Red Brigades & other non-Islamic groups seemingly stepped up their efforts?
[ Answer to this incredibly misleading question:
Because lazy police officials prefer to peddle myths of nonexistant hence unapprehendable perpetrators to even lazier corporate news merchants whose major stockholders are intelligence agencies' directors whose agents fund & administer crimes of politically motivated murder & terrorism that swell the portion of taxes allocated to security bureaucracies' budgets
. ]
Have they become emboldened after 9.11.01 ?
[ Since "they" was always treasonously double dealing security forces arming police agents acting as criminals, the answer, given martial law imposed in response to AºA, is clearly yes.]
With threat of terrorism a major security concern for 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece where the Nov. 17 terrorist group, also formed in the 1970s, continues to operate, these are hardly idle questions. "There's a recent history that can't be ignored," said Italian PM Berlusconi after a bomb exploded outside the country's interior ministry in Rome in February. "This is a worrying signal and it would be a mistake to underestimate it."

resurgence of anti-capitalism?
Most terrorism experts, however, feel it is premature to assess whether or not some of these groups are clambering back out of the dustbin of history. "It's too early to say how widespread the support is, or how it is organized," says Ctr for Study of Terrorism & Political Violence Magnus Ranstorp at St. Andrews Univ. in Scotland.
In Italy, Biagi's murder is officially still an open case, and politicians on the left in Italy have been quick to find a political motivation behind the comments of the conservative Berlusconi, who cited left-wing protests & rhetoric as potential source of terrorism.

Still, some observers feel the enormous social & political uncertainties surrounding contemporary Europe at a time of economic globalization and integration, along with large-scale immigration, might provide the sort of conditions in which reconstituted terror groups could draw new support.
"There's a new marketplace for ideas & recruitment," says Univ. of Oklahoma political science prof. Stephen Sloan, co-editor of Historical Dictionary of Terrorism, noting the "thrust toward violence on the part of various people who oppose globalization."
[ This remark is total canard. The anti-globalization movement is the most peaceful protest movement this planet has ever seen, even more than that of Mohandas Gandhi.
Outside of Wahhabi militancy, there is absolutely no call for armed struggle of any kind among anti-globalists. Printing the word
anti-capitalism as a reference to terrorist violence is unconscienceable & irrational slander by ABC News. ]
Indeed, proponents of globalization already appear to be terror targets. Biagi, for instance, had proposed reforms making it easier for companies to fire workers, while Massimo D'Antona, another labor official, was killed in 1999, with the Red Brigades claiming responsibility.
Italian police say they uncovered a plot to kill President Bush during the G-8 economic summit in Genoa last July.

Because of its impetus for economic modernization, "the European Union would be the biggest cause" of such a resurgence, agrees Randolph-Macon College political science prof. Tom Badey in VA. But he notes that with many Italian terrorists having been jailed in the 1980s, the current violence may be coming from new extremists filling the same role.
"We may not be looking at the same group of people, but it's possible a group of people with similar ideas may be calling themselves the Red Brigades," Badey notes.

Even with different operatives at work, a resurgence of frequent terror attacks by leftist extremists would be a dreadful prospect for Europeans who lived through "the leaden days" of the 1970s & 1980s, as they were dubbed after the title of a 1981 German film.
To be sure, some European terror squads of the past decades have been right-wing or featured nationalistic agendas, like the Irish Republican Army or the Basque ETA group in Spain. But many of the most prominent in continental Europe, including the Red Brigades, November 17, France's Action Directe and Germany's Red Army Faction, which was perhaps Europe's best-known terrorist group, generally espoused a left-wing, Marxist, anti-capitalist point of view.

Some groups, especially the Red Army Faction, also traded on communism's anti-fascist past by claiming that society had still not cleansed itself of its fascism. The havoc they wreaked was enormous.
[ Extreme bombast. All terrorist acts combined are infinitesimal compared to destruction done by NATO forces & client nations' armies acting in name & by direct order of U.S. govt's foreign policy. ]

In one gruesome episode, the Red Brigades kidnapped & killed former Italian PM Aldo Moro in 1978, while the Red Army Faction carried out a long series of killings, kidnappings and even hijackings in the 1970s & 1980s, often targeting bankers, industrialists or govt officials involved in the financial system.
    [ Orlando Bosch, Vladimiro Montesinos, Anastasio Somoza, Agusto Pincochet, ad infinitum ]

There are several reasons why these groups disbanded or were squelched, including anti-terror crackdowns and failure of some attempted terror actions. But more than anything else, end of the Cold War drained ideological & material support away from Europe's violent left-wing underground.

[ No less squelched by exposure of false flag origins & funding:

    "Synthetic terrorism is a strategy used by oligarchs for the purpose of waging war on the people, on the middle class in Machiavelli’s sense of popolo.
    Terrorism must therefore be opposed. My own understanding of these events is informed by having experienced first hand, as analyst, journalist, and author, the Italian and German terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s.

    In June 1978, while working as a correspondent in Rome, I was contacted by Giuseppe Zamberletti of the Italian Christian Democratic Party. The kidnap-murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro had reached its tragic climax in May 1978, when Moro’s body was found in the trunk of a car in Via Caetani in downtown Rome, 3 blocks from my office at that time.
    Zamberletti had been one of the very few Italian political leaders who had suggested a NATO role in the attack on Moro. Two days after Moro was kidnapped, and his bodyguards murdered, Zamberletti attracted the attention of the British press, which wrote

      'Signor Zamberletti, an intelligent Christian Democrat who has worked as deputy Interior Minister in charge of the Italian secret services, made a number of interesting comments about NATO.
      It seems that Zamberletti said that DeGaulle left NATO because of the dozens of assassination attempts against him, and that France, after that, and by implication as a result of that, had succeeded in keeping terrorism under control'.
      3.17.78   London Times

    In another interview, Zamberletti said that an effective defense against terrorism would have to be vigilant in all directions, '360 degrees', as he put it. (7.4.78 Panorama)   Here was de Gaulle’s celebrated formula of defense “tous azimuths,” against nominal allies as well as adversaries, west as well as east, US and UK as well as USSR.
    With this, Zamberletti became the target of the Anglo-American party in Italy. Zamberletti asked me to prepare a study of how the mass media had treated the Moro case, which had been the dominant news story for two months.

    I gathered a group of friends and co-workers from the EIR news agency I was working for at the time, and told them of the proposal. Out of a desire to defeat the nightmare of terrorism and provide justice for Moro, most of them, Italians and a couple of Americans, volunteered to spend their month-long summer vacation assembling the study that Zamberletti had requested. No money was ever involved.
    The more we looked, the more we found, and soon our study, entitled Chi ha ucciso Aldo Moro? (Who Killed Aldo Moro?) had grown far larger than the brief overview Zamberletti seemed to have had in mind.

    The writing was done during the summer of 1978 in what was then the EIR European headquarters in the Schiersteinerstrasse in Wiesbaden, Germany, not far from Frankfurt airport. The resulting product was released at a press conference in Rome in September 1978. It was extensively if unfavorably reviewed in the newsmagazine Panorama.
    The main finding was that Moro had been killed by NATO intelligence, using the Red Brigades as tool and camouflage at the same time. The cause of the assassination was Moro’s determination to give Italy a stable govt by bringing the Italian Communist Party into the cabinet and the parliamentary majority.

    This plan was opposed, as a violation of the Yalta spheres of influence which made Italy a vassal of the US, by the Henry Kissinger wing of the US foreign policy establishment, as well as by certain factions of the Italian ruling elite, grouped around the reactionary P-2 lodge, which was still secret at that time.
    Accordingly, my study named Kissinger, NATO, and British intelligence as prime suspects, and not the Warsaw Pact embassies named by the Italian media.

    Later, Moro’s widow revealed that her husband had been directly threatened by a leading US figure over the issue of expanding the majority to include the PCI. This figure had told Moro that any attempt to bring the PCI into the govt would bring terrible consequences for him personally.
    Some commentators identified this US figure as Kissinger, and here they were on firm ground. With this, the thesis of the study, Chi ha ucciso Aldo Moro, was vindicated.

    W.Tarpley,   Introduction, p7
    9/11 Synthetic Terrorism, Made in USA     ]  

Toppling of Eastern Europe's communist regimes made the fight against capitalism seem futile, while the vanished regimes themselves, particularly East Germany, had apparently provided a certain amount of logistical support, training and financial backing to terror groups.
In 1998, the Red Army Faction formally disbanded itself, after years of diminished activity. In a letter announcing the end of their activities, RAF members themselves seemed to acknowledge life in reunified Germany had dulled the group's ideological edge. "The RAF is now history," said the declaration. "We are stuck in a dead end."

That seemed to be the case in Peru as well, where Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, a mysterious figure for years when the group was flourishing, has languished in jail since his capture in 1992. A tough anti-terror campaign by then-president Alberto Fujimori helped throttle the group, which may have had 30,000 members at its peak.
But property-reform laws that made life easier for rural dwellers undercut some of the Shining Path's traditional provincial support and made the group's Maoist philosophy seem less appealing.

"If you compare it to the height of its activities, it's not the force it used to be," says Univ.TX Latin America expert Jennifer Holmes, Dallas. "For a while it looked like they might actually win [control of Peru]. But they don't have the encroachment into Lima they did before".
But the group never completely became extinguished, and has been carrying out dozens of terror acts every year even since Guzman was jailed.
"It was never wiped out," says Holmes. "It's important to remember they never completely went away." And, she adds, a hard-core group of Shining Path members remains committed to its Maoist principles: "They have a lot of ideology left in them."

The March bombing in Lima, largest attack on an urban target in Peru this year, could herald more trouble to come. "There are indications that terrorist organizations are continuing to plan actions directed against American citizens & American interests in Peru," warned the U.S. State Dept last week.
Similarly, in Greece, the November 17 terrorist group has never ceased operations since its mid-1970s foundation. While U.S. & Greece pledged joint crackdown on the group, upcoming Olympics could provide Nov. 17 with a chance to conduct new attacks or bargain with govt in return for the promise of no attacks, as ETA did before the 1992 Barcelona games.
[ "Might", "may" & "could" used throughout this article are excellent indications national security agencies are planning to conduct more covert state terror and using mass media to desensitize the general population sufficiently to cause citizens to accept these crimes rather than demand their investigation.
Change of one senator's party allegiance in the U.S. congress was sufficient to cause unprosecuted attempts of the 2 top Senate leaders' assassination by means of U.S. military germ weapons
. ]
"November 17 is in a unique position of leverage at this time," says Badey. "It may try to push a political agenda in an effort to get some change in policy." Even if November 17 doesn't attempt any Olympic attacks, others may target the Athens games. After 9.11.01, Badey says the success of al Qaeda's attacks could conceivably spur other groups into action.
He notes that terror experts have observed a "contagion theory, which says essentially as you watch events on tv & in media, people get affected by these events & motivated; there are people sitting on couches watching on TV thinking, 'We may not want to do that, but [it's] time for us to do something.'"
[ Mass media's impact indicates the exact opposite; when the event is portrayed on the small viewing screen in the living room or is rapidly displaced from prominent display in print publications, general consequence is acceptance & desensitization to terrorist crimes.
What motivates sympathetic mass attitudes & behavior is glorification of crime in overwhelming sensory spectacles such as cinema products manufactured & merchandised by the owner of ABC News, Disney Corp
. ]
Holmes, however, disagrees, saying the Shining Path & ETA, among others, have been continuously active without needing a prod from outside sources:
"Historically these groups have had no problem dreaming up things up on their own"

In either case, govt officials, law-enforcement agents and anti-terror units in Italy, Peru and elsewhere will be closely watching developments in their own countries, and hoping the social & political turbulence of the moment doesn't seed the growth of newly violent extremists.
"I hope terrorism has been [a non-recurring] disease for Italy," said defense minister Antonio Martino recently. "Once you have had it, you build up antibodies and you are immune to it from then on."

    Edwin P. Wilson
Ed Wilson's revenge   Biggest CIA scandal in history has its feet in starting blocks in Houston court house
Jan. 2000   Michael C. Ruppert FTW

… Paragraph 4 of the Briggs Declaration states, "According to CIA records, with one exception while he was employed by Naval Intelligence in 1972, Mr. Edwin P. Wilson was not asked or requested, directly or indirectly, to perform or provide any services, directly or indirectly, for CIA." … "The signers of the affidavit further state that CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin stated that, at minimum, the word 'indirectly' should be removed from paragraph four of the Briggs affidavit. … "

In a deposition before the Judge's ruling, according to Adler's motion, Larson told prosecutors … "the Agency would deal with the devil if needed." … the pattern of the U.S. secretly arming its enemies for the purposes of expanding budgets, "stimulating" the economy and ensuring election victories. …

Renegade spy, govt lies   Judge's order overturning the 20 year old conviction throws new light on federal power in terror suspects' prosecution
11.2.03   Jean Marbella Baltimore Sun

… "if this [Wilson] case were tried today, and if it involved al-Qaida, this man would have been put away without counsel," says Ctr for Health & Homeland Security dir. Univ. of Maryland law prof. I. Michael Greenberger, Justice Dept counter-terrorism official during Clinton administration. …

Wilson joined the CIA in 1955 and worked in undercover operations around the world before leaving in 1971. Soon after, he joined a secret Navy intelligence operation, which was shut down after 5 years. Wilson developed several private businesses … working for the CIA, in various off-the-books capacities. Wilson could always be counted on "to finance agency projects that required immediate action," according to one CIA official, Hughes' ruling noted.
… In 1980 Wilson, indicted on charges of shipping explosives to Libya, fled U.S. to escape prosecution. He lived as a fugitive in Libya, but even then met with federal agents in Rome, where he provided information on Libya's military and details on other companies supplying equipt to the country. In 1982, he was finally arrested, after falling for an elaborate govt ruse that brought him to the Dominican Republic.

… author Jos. C. Goulden … did attend Wilson's trial on charges that he put contracts out on a number of people, incl prosecutors and his ex-wife. "He had said, 'I bought her this nice wedding ring, I'd really like to have it back. You may have to cut her finger off, but I'd really like it back,'" Gould recalls. "The jury looked at him like a low-life dog. He was doomed right then and there." …

U.S. 'knowingly used false evidence'
11.2.03   Baltimore Sun

excerpts from 24 pg ruling issued last week by Judge Lynn N. Hughes, U.S. Dist. Court Houston:
… the govt convinced the judge to admit an affidavit from a principal CIA official to the effect that there were, with one minor exception, none - zero. There were, in fact, over 80 contacts.
Because the govt knowingly used false evidence against him and suppressed favorable evident, his conviction will be vacated.
This opinion refers only to the part of the record that the govt has reluctantly agreed may be made public. It does not attempt to recount even that limited range of data in its entirety; the govtal deceit mentioned here is illustrative - not exhaustive. …

Judge throws out ex-CIA agent's conviction
10.29.03   AP

Houston, TX   A federal judge threw out the conviction of a former CIA operative who has spent 20 years in prison for selling arms to Libya, saying the govt knowingly used false evidence against him. Edwin P. Wilson, 75, was convicted in 1983 of shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya, something he said he did to ingratiate himself with the Libyan govt at the CIA's request.
In a scathing opinion released Tuesday, U.S. Judge Lynn N. Hughes said the federal govt failed to correct information about Wilson's service to the CIA that it admitted internally was false. "Confronted with its own internal memoranda, the govt now says that, well, it might have misstated the truth, but that it was Wilson's fault, it did not really matter, and it did not know what it was doing," the judge wrote in a 24-page ruling.

Defense atty David Adler said the judge's decision ultimately could free Wilson from prison. However, the ruling's immediate effect was not clear because Wilson received prison time for 2 other convictions, incl one for conspiring to have prosecutors killed. At his 1983 trial in Texas, prosecutors introduced a sworn statement from a top-ranking official that Wilson didn't do anything for the CIA after his retirement in 1971.
"It was just a flat-out lie. He did a lot," Adler said Tuesday. Adler said the Reagan-era officials who pushed the case had been embarrassed by revelations they were trading arms for information and made Wilson a scapegoat. "For over 20 years he's been claiming he was not some kind of rogue CIA officer and he did not get a fair trial and, of course, it turns out he was right," Adler said.

Days after his conviction, but before his sentencing, the CIA forwarded a memo to the U.S. attorney's office saying at least 5 projects Wilson had worked on for the CIA after 1971 had surfaced, incl a planned trip to Iran with the CIA's deputy director. Hughes said officials failed to inform Wilson's attorneys of the memo and that in his appeal, the govt failed to acknowledge that the affidavit was false and suppressed other evidence that might have helped him.
The memo and documents about later discussions were obtained by Wilson's defense under the Freedom of Information Act and through court discovery for his 1999 appeal. Prosecutors have the option of appealing the judge's ruling or retrying Wilson. Adler said he didn't expect prosecutors to appeal, but U.S. Atty Michael Shelby of the Southern District of Texas said his office had not made a decision. "Obviously the charges (against Wilson) are very significant and we want to make sure we do the right thing," Shelby said in a story in Wednesday's Houston Chronicle.

Wilson, who set up front companies abroad for the CIA and posed as a rich American businessman, is serving a 52-year prison sentence in a federal prison in Allenwood, PA. In 1982, he was lured out of hiding in Libya and brought to NY for arrest. A federal court in VA convicted him of exporting firearms to Libya without permission and sentenced him to 10 years.
He was convicted in Texas in 1983, receiving a 17-year sentence for similar crimes, and a NY court sentenced him to 25 years, to run consecutively with the Texas & Virginia sentences, for attempted murder, criminal solicitation and other charges involving claims that Wilson conspired behind bars to have witnesses and prosecutors killed.
With the Texas sentence thrown out, Wilson could be eligible for parole this year or next year based on time already served in the other cases, Adler said. Wilson also could seek to have the Virginia case overturned, he said. If successful in that effort, he would probably be eligible for immediate release, he said.

Air America Acts I-V   re
5.3.01  
C. S. Mahoney  

… In 1975 George Bush became CIA dir. and Ted Shackley received yet another promotion, this time to Deputy Director of Intelligence in charge of world wide covert operations. This was a major step towards the directorship of the CIA, which Shackley would have received had Ford won the election. But Carter won and Admiral Stansfield Turner became director of the CIA.
Under Carter's direction, Adm. Turner began to dismantle large parts of the CIA's covert operations apparatus. Since accounts in Nugen Hand bank and military hardware stashed in Thailand had never officially existed, they were never touched. However remnants of Air America feared that this would not be the case for much longer so they found employment with the Shah of Iran until Turner's purge had run it's course.

The Shah was a longtime U.S. friend, so it was not difficult to get the operation approved. Elements of Air America apparatus began training & equipping Shah's secret police SAVAAK for a prolonged assassination program against the Shah's many political enemies, both in & out of Iran. The Shah paid the mercenaries off in petrodollars.
The operation was overseen by Edwin Wilson & Frank Turpel. Fear & hatred the ensuing assassination program brought about was instrumental in Iran falling to the Islamic militants. This was the first time that the Air America network had been used for purposes totally outside of the CIA's supervision, so Shackley & Tom Clines had to deal with something that neither of them expected, resistance from inside the intelligence community.

Many had winked at Shackley's ingenuity in financing the Phoenix Project (in Viet Nam) with Vang Pao's heroin profits; that selfsame apparatus for an operation at best only nominally in the national interest and very profitable to those involved made led Shackley & Clines to bow to the pressure from collegues and withdraw Air America elements from Iran.
Mere weeks later Shackley, Richard Secord, and Eric Von Marbod formed a company called EATSCO, Egyptian American transport & Service Co. Because Eric Von Marbod had been Asst Defense Secretary, the company received the contracts to ship all arms shipments into Egypt. Routes into Egypt had been opened due to the Camp David peace accords. These shipments were partially coordinated by Adler Berriman. (aka Berry Seal)

The Air America apparatus banked hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years until they came under the unwelcome scrutiny of U.S. Atty Larry Barcella. Barcella discovered Edwin Wilson had been selling explosives to Col. Qaddaffi in direct defiance of the U.S. arms embargo. Barcella indicted Wilson & Frank Turpel and began an investigation of Shackley, Clines, Secord and Von Marbod.
This investigation lasted less than a week before it was quashed, but Deputy Dir. of Intelligence Frank Carlucci did ask that Shackley & Clines resign from the CIA; they did.

Air America was mothballed for a period of slightly more than 2 months while Edwin Wilson, then under multiple federal indictments, traveled to Nicaragua to negotiate a deal with then dictator Anastasio Somoza. After obtaining a contract to supply Somoza with U.S. military hardware & private sector advisors in open contempt of U.S. policy, the apparatus was reactivated.
Even after Somoza was forced to flee to the Bahamas, Air America continued to supply arms & advisors to the vestiges of his supporters in Nicaragua, now called the Contras. The man who acted as liaison to the Contras was one of Ted Shackley's old Operation 40 operatives, professional assassin Chi Chi Quintero.

Quintero took orders from the Contras and relayed them to Adler Berrimen who set up the shipping routes. Shackley's next coup was to negotiate a deal with the Iranians whereby the hostages were kept on ice until the election was over. This enabled Reagan strategists to portray the Carter administration as weak and vacillating. … These operations were leading the Air America apparatus incrementally toward Mena. …


Reversal of CIA agent's conviction draws fire
10.30.03   Kim Cobb & Mike Hedges Houston Chronicle

… Retired U.S. Dist. Judge Stanley Sporkin, CIA general counsel at time of Wilson's trial, said he also took exception to the tone of the ruling by U.S. Dist. Judge Lynn Hughes. Hughes overturned Wilson's 1983 conviction on Monday, saying that Sporkin and other officials, incl 2 who also later rose to become federal judges, had been complicit in the use of false evidence.
The evidence at issue was a CIA affidavit that stated Wilson had no contact with the agency at the time he claimed to be acting at its direction, after 1971. "There is nothing further from the truth," Sporkin said of Hughes' statements.
"They are fine people," he said of the federal attys involved. "And there were differences, that was all. At the time it was written, I can assure you the people who prepared it thought it was a proper affidavit."

… In throwing out the conviction, Hughes pointed out in harsh terms that a cadre of govt officials knew the affidavit was false. The CIA forwarded a memo to the U.S. atty's office a few days after Wilson was convicted, but before he was sentenced, stating they had discovered at least 5 projects Wilson worked on for the CIA after 1971.
After debating the issue for months, govt officials decided not to inform Wilson's atty, Hughes said. Hughes noted that the jury had asked him to re-read the affidavit to them an hour before they returned a guilty verdict against Wilson. Hughes noted that as CIA counsel, Sporkin had advised federal prosecutors not to introduce the affidavit as evidence without removing the assertion that Wilson had never worked "indirectly" for the CIA after 1971.

Sporkin said Wednesday he still thinks that would have been wise, but not because he believed prosecutors intended to knowingly introduce false evidence. Although he did not attend Wilson's trial, Sporkin said, he raised 2 objections at the time to introducing the affidavit, it was hearsay and too sweeping.
If instead prosecutors had presented testimony that Wilson did not work for the CIA after 1971, defense attorneys could have cross-examined the witness, asking, "How can you be so sure? What records did you search?" Sporkin said. "And you have the voluminous nature of the CIA records," he added.
"For somebody to come out and make a definitive statement raises concern. I would not have used such a broad-based statement."

Sporkin was appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1985 and served 14 years as a federal district judge for the District of Columbia. He is a partner with Weil, Gotshal & Manges law firm in Washington.
Another attorney in the case, D. Lowell Jensen, now a federal district judge in Oakland CA, said Wednesday he could not recall discussing the flawed affidavit with prosecutors after Wilson's conviction. Jensen was head of the Justice Dept Criminal Div. during Wilson's trial.
He said he was not involved in discussions of strategy among prosecutors in Wilson's trial and did not come to Houston to attend it.

"I know that I would not have authorized the failure to disclose any information," Jensen said.
Hughes' opinion said that after the CIA found inaccuracies in the affidavit submitted at trial, Deputy Asst Atty General Mark Richard advised his boss, Jensen, "I think we ought to make a disclosure, either to the judge or the defense attorney."

Stephen Trott, who took over Justice Dept Criminal Div. in 1983 after Wilson's trial, is now a justice on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boise ID. Wilson's attorney, David Adler, said notes from a 9.30.83 meeting identify Trott as being present with Sporkin, prosecutors Ted Greenberg and E. Lawrence Barcella at a meeting at which Greenberg discussed various meanings that could be assigned to words in the disputed affidavit.

Trott would not comment Wednesday on Hughes' decision but denied being involved in the Wilson case.

"I was brand new in the criminal division. … I was not one of the prosecutors", he said.
Trott said, however, that he may have discussed the case with prosecutors after Wilson's conviction.
"It's been 20 years," he said.

Barcella, now a Washington atty in private practice, said he was surprised by Hughes' ruling. "By this point I suppose it is sort of irrelevant, but the judge got a few of the facts wrong," Barcella said.
Barcella was one of the prosecutors Wilson targeted for murder, which earned him the NY conviction for which he is still serving time. Barcella's recollections have not dimmed.
"The principal legal mistake in the case was allowing Wilson's defense, which centered on having been sanctioned in his actions by the CIA, a so-called `authorization defense'," Barcella argued.
"Wilson never even alleged that he had been authorized by anyone in the agency to ship 20 tons of C-4 explosives to Libya", Barcella said.

Barcella said Wilson could have been a free man long ago had he accepted a plea agreement on the table before the trial commenced.
"Remember, the most time he received was for conspiring to murder me and some of the witnesses in the case. That was all on tape as part of an FBI undercover operation. If he'd taken a plea agreement offered to him instead of plotting to kill people he'd have been released 15 years ago."

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency had no comment on the judge's ruling. But he did comment on Wilson's claim to have been acting for the agency when he sold arms to Libya.
"The CIA didn't authorize or have anything to do with his decision to sell explosives to Libya," Mansfield said. "That decision was his, and that is why he went to jail."
Justice Dept has not indicated whether it will appeal Hughes' decision.



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