The U.S. is "running out of demons. I'm down toFidel Castro & Kim Il Sung" Colin Powell,
former JCoS chair & millennial Sec•State
per Robt. Borosage Inventing the Threat: Clinton defense pgm
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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 |
| "the murderers are among us" Bertold Brecht |
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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 … 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." …
8.30.01 UPI
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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)"
"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. |
auth. After the Rain How the West Lost the East
… 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. 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. |
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. …
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."
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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."
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
"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
'We are terrorists'
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'
3.31.02 AP
Web denies death of al-Qaida leader
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Egyptian surgeon is No. 2 man in terror network
¹
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
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.
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."
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."
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.
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.
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." |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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."
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Women risking their lives to fight terrorism 12.01 Leslie Goldman, et al Marie Claire p78 ¹ ² ³ £ |
3rd of 5 |
"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
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"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? ] |
Final person rescued from WTC 9.28.01 ABC News "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.
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.
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. 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. |
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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." |
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.
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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."
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." |
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.
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 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.
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.
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. |
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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. |
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."
|
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Free Republic |
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
satire
[ 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
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.
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.
Key to truth about OKC bombing may be enigmatic W.German immigrant
¹ 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:
ADL foreknowledge
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.
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.
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.
12.4.97 Lois Romano Washington Post pA28 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.
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 ?
… &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?
… 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). …
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 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.
"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.
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."
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.
Rohrabacher's report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:
An army of one?
In the war on terrorism, alliances are not an obstacle to victory; they're the key to it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
"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."
A judge in 2001 awarded Kenneth Trentadue's family $1.1 million for extreme emotional distress in the government's handling of his death. Please provide attribution if known 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.
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 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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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." 
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.
Diane Alden from S.L.E.E.P. Spies, Lies, Echelon, Economics, & People
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. 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. ] 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.
resurgence of anti-capitalism?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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."
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."
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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
… "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.
… 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'
excerpts from 24 pg ruling issued last week by Judge Lynn N. Hughes, U.S. Dist. Court Houston: |
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.
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.
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.
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. |
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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.
… 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.
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.
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.
"I know that I would not have authorized the failure to disclose any information," Jensen said.
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. |
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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