Tag Archives: Terrorism

What we learned from the Report of the 911 Commission XIII

Posted on by
Reply

The “Planes Operation.”

The East African embassy bombings had persuaded Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM) that OBL was serious about attacking the United States. He renewed his proposal for al Qaeda support for the “planes operation.” In March or April 1999, OBL agreed to support the plan. (pp. 216, 223.)

 

Planning.

KSM turned to the preparation phase of the attack. KSM, OBL, and Mohammed Attef worked up a target list. The early list of targets for the “planes operation” included the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center. KSM spent the first months (Spring-Summer 1999) collecting materials: “Western aviation magazines; telephone directories for American cities such as San Diego and Long Beach, California; brochures for school; and airlines timetables, and he conducted Internet searches on U.S. flight schools. He also purchased flight simulator software and a few movies depicting hijackings.” (p. 227.) NB: KSM found a San Diego phone book in a Karachi flea market. (p. 312.)

Initially, the target date of the attacks was set for May 2001, ideally 12 May 2001—seven months to the day after the attack on the USS Cole. (p. 360.)

OBL also provided KSM with four candidates as suicide bombers. In Fall 1999 these men were passed through an advanced commando and terrorism course at an al Qaeda camp. By December 1999 they were Karachi, Pakistan, for further training from KSM. Here they may have crossed paths with four young Muslims coming to Afghanistan from Germany.

In late 1999 OBL seems to have begun recruiting several dozen “muscle hijackers.” I conjecture this because the eventual “muscle hijackers” all began breaking contact with their families in late 1999 and early 2000. (p. 337.) Alternatively, these hijackers may have ended up in Afghanistan for training when they could not get to Chechnya, and been recruited there in Summer 2000. (pp. 337-338.) In any event, there were about 20 of them recruited. About ten of them fell by the way-side during the next year: failing to obtain visas to the United States, backing out of the plan, or failing some al Qaeda test. (pp. 340-341.)

 

Bumps.

The four men initially chosen as pilots were experienced mujahideen and devout Muslims, but they were clueless about America. When it became apparent that not all of the men would be able to gain entry into the United States, the planners added a second component of the plan. This would involve destroying airliners in flight leaving from places in Asia where access could be gained easily. In December 1999 three of them traveled on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A group of Muslim students living in Hamburg, Germany, became radicalized by some means that still is not clear. In late 1999, fired by a desire to join in “jihad,” four of the group left Germany for Afghanistan. Here they were recruited by al Qaeda. The intent was to use them for the “planes operation,” but they were not told exactly what their mission would be at this time. By late January 2000 they were back in Hamburg trying to get visas for the United States; in March 2000 Mohammed Atta, the alpha dog in the group, began contacting US flight schools. (pp. 231-245.)

In May 2001 the “planes operation” had to be postponed until July 2001 because the teams were not yet ready. (p. 360.)

In Spring 2000 UBL cancelled the Asian component of the “planes operation” on the grounds that it would be too difficult to coordinate with the American component. (pp. 221-231.)

In July 2001 the “planes operation” had to be postponed until September 2001 because of another glitch (probably the uncertainty over the commitment of one of the pilots, Jarrah). (p. 360.)

 

What we learned from the report of the 911 Commission XII

Posted on by
Reply

On 12 October 2000, an al Qaeda team staged a suicide bombing against the American warship, the USS Cole while it was at anchor in the Yemen port of Aden. The attack killed 17 American sailors.

Although the CIA “described initial Yemeni support after the Cole [bombing] as ‘slow and inadequate,’…the Yemenis provided strong evidence connecting the Cole attack to al Qaeda during the second half of November, identifying individual operatives whom the United States knew were part of al Qaeda. During December the United States was able to corroborate this evidence. But the United States did not have evidence about Bin Laden’s personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri[1] and Khallad[2] were captured in 2002 and 2003.” (p. 278.)

The Yemenis arrested two of the surviving members of the Cole team; extracted from them the names and descriptions of Nashiri, their immediate commander, and Khallad, the liaison who came from Afghanistan; and suggested to the Americans (correctly) that Khallad was actually Tawfiq bin Attash. (p. 277.) Both Nashiri and Khallad were known to the Americans to have been involved in the 1998 embassy bombings, for which al Qaeda had claimed credit, and to be linked to al Qaeda. (p. 278.) An FBI special agent participating in the investigation recognized the name Khallad as someone described by an al Qaeda source as Bin Laden’s “run boy.” In mid-December 2000 the Americans’ al Qaeda source identified a photograph of Khallad obtained from the Yemenis as Bin Laden’s agent. (pp. 277-278.)

Moreover, the 12 October 2000 “attack on the USS Cole galvanized al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.” [OBL ordered production of a propaganda video that highlighted the attack on the Cole.] “Al Qaeda’s image was very important to Bin Laden, and the video was widely disseminated… and caused many extremists to travel to Afghanistan for training and jihad. Al Qaeda members considered the video an effective tool in their struggle for pre-eminence among other Islamist and jihadist movements.” (p. 276.) [NB: Al Qaeda appeared to be claiming responsibility for the attack. How could the CIA still waver over identifying OBL as the originator of the attack on the Cole?]

In mid-November 2000 Sandy Berger asked Hugh Shelton to review plans for military action against Bin Laden. On 25 November 2000 Berger and Clarke wrote to President Clinton to inform him that the investigation would soon show that the Cole attack had been launched by a terrorist cell whose leaders belonged to al Qaeda and whose members had trained in al Qaeda facilities; the memo also sketched out a “final ultimatum” to the Taliban being pushed by Clarke. (pp. 280-281.)

 

 

 

[1] Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (1965- ). Saudi Arabian. One of the “Arab Afghans” who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Eventually aligned with Osama bin Laden. Captured by the CIA in 2002. Reportedly “waterboarded” during interrogation. Currently being held at Guantanamo.

[2] Walid Muhammad Salih bin Roshayed bin Attash (1979- ).  Yemeni immigrant to Saudi Arabia.  Another “Arab Afghan.”  Became very close to Osam bin Laden.  Captured in 2003.

What we learned from the report of the 911 Commission XI

Posted on by
Reply

Post-Crisis Reflection: Agenda for 2000.

In January, February, and March 2000 the NSC and others reviewed what lessons might be learned from the “millennium crisis.” They concluded that any effort at disrupting al Qaeda operations had to be undertaken in a more determined way henceforth and that domestic security had already been penetrated by “sleeper cells.” Action to deal with these problems was approved in a general way. (pp. 262-263.)

Various American delegations (including one by President Clinton which the security-conscious Secret Service loudly opposed) went to Pakistan in January, March, May, June, and September. The trouble is that the US had noting to offer the Pakistanis as a reward for their co-operation: Congressionally-imposed sanctions prevented the government from offering anything of substance [and apparently the Clinton Administration did not want to brave the wrath of Congress by requesting a revision of relations with Pakistan]. (pp. 263-265.)

Richard Clarke seems to have been so focused on al Qaeda that he could not see the need for CIA assets to deal with other forms of terrorism, still less for a robust general intelligence capability. This led to bitter disputes between Clarke and the CIA leaders, who may have played the terrorism card as a budget ploy without fully appreciating how grave the danger faced by America. (pp. 265-266.)

The executive branch didn’t get very far trying to tighten up border security, especially with regard to Canada.

By the end of 1999 or the start of 2000 the leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, wanted the US to line up as his ally in the struggle to overthrow the Taliban. Both Cofer Black and Richard Clarke wanted to do then what the US did anyway after 9/11. At the minimum, this would allow the CIA to put its agents into Afghanistan on a long-term basis, rather than relying on hearsay from the Northern Alliance and the “tribals.” The Clinton administration declined to forge such an alliance: the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance represented the minority within Afghanistan and many of its people had very shady pasts. (p. 271.)

Meanwhile, CIA agents in Malaysia took the group of suspects identified by the NSA intercepts under surveillance, but failed to communicate departure information in a timely fashion when some of the men moved on to Bangkok, Thailand. CIA agents in Bangkok not only failed to arrive at the airport in time to tail the arriving suspects, they failed to learn that two of the suspects had left for the United States on 15 January 2000 until March 2000. CIA’s Counterterrorist Center did not inform anyone else–neither the State Department nor the FBI– of the arrival of the two suspects in the United States until January 2001, after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. (pp. 261-262.) As a result, the first two members of the 9/11 team arrived in Los Angeles on 15 January 2000, at the height of the “millennium crisis.” Although neither one spoke any English and were Arabs, they failed to attract any recorded attention from Customs.

What We Learned From the Report of the 911 Commission X

Posted on by
Reply

In the mid- to late-Eighties, Khadr Abu Hoshar, a Palestinian terrorist resident in Jordan, was recruiting young men who had been through the Afghan training camps. In 1996 Abu Hoshar was imprisoned for a time by the Jordanians. By 1998 he had been released and was back to his old tricks. During 1998 he and a group of 15 fellow terrorists worked up an ambitious plan for attacks. During 1999 he got in contact with some Islamic terrorist jihadis in Afghanistan who had some sort of ties to OBL. They were providing technical advice and training to Abu Hoshar’s group. (pp. 252-253.)

Abu Hoshar’s security practices had not improved during his stretch in a Jordanian prison, however, because the Jordanian intelligence service spiked his phone and kept his whole group under observation. On 30 November 1999 the Jordanians intercepted a conversation between Abu Hoshar and Abu Zubaydah, the Afghan with connections to OBL, which seemed to herald an imminent attack. They rolled up all but one of the group, turned the screws on the prisoners until they got a bunch of intelligence in short order, and told the Americans what was up. (pp. 252-253.)

The CIA situated this report in a larger context during the first few days of December 1999 by reporting the possibility of a planned series of attacks by OBL at the “millennium,” some of which might involve weapons of mass destruction. (pp. 253-254.) Various efforts were made to hinder any such attacks by various means: by diplomacy (the Taliban were threatened, the Paks were cozened); by disruption in cooperation with friendly intelligence services; by loosening the leash on CIA operations. (pp. 254-255.) In December 1999 the leader of the Northern Alliance offered to plaster al Qaeda’s training camp at Derunta with rockets. Again, the CIA thought that this would violate a ban on assassinations, so they waved him off. (p. 270-271.)

Canada was awash in terrorists and aspiring terrorists in the late Nineties. Ahmed Ressam, a Moroccan petty criminal who had managed to find refuge in Canada in 1994, was recruited in 1998 by another jihadi then resident in Canada. Ressam spent part of 1998 training an Afghanistan terrorist camp. Here he joined a group of other Algerian jihadis who had been recruited for anti-American terrorist action. Back in Canada in the first half of 1999, Ressam received assistance from three other Algerians who were hiding out in Canada from French authorities, who wanted to talk to them about some stuff that had happened in France. By December 1999 he was in Vancouver, BC, preparing to enter the United States to attack LAX. (p. 255.)

On 14 December 1999 Ressam behaved oddly when attempting to enter the United States at Port Angeles, Washington, and was arrested. (p. 257.) The Ressam arrest coming on top of the report of the Jordanian plot caused great alarm in Washington. The FBI started tapping numerous telephones under FISA warrants. Richard Clarke’s office warned that “Foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the US and attacks in the US are likely.” Clarke also asked Berger rhetorically “Is there a threat to civilian aircraft?” (pp. 258-259.) In late December 1999 the US received a report from a foreign intelligence service that OBL planned to bomb several transatlantic flights. (p. 259.)

What We Learned From the Report of the 911 Commission IX.

Posted on by
Reply

In February 1999, there seems to have been no confusion among the NSC and CIA people about what they wanted to accomplish: they prepared to use intelligence about Bin Laden visiting a desert hunting camp favored by some important people from the United Arab Emirates to launch another cruise missile strike (and tough luck for any Emiratis who happened to be present). The report seems to me to suggest that Clarke first blocked this strike because he saw the UAE as America’s ally in the fight against terrorism, then in March 1999 basically exposed to the Emiratis the CIA’s knowledge that the campers welcomed Bin Laden. The camp immediately folded up and Bin Laden never passed through there again. (p. 202.)

In February 1999 Tenet persuaded President Clinton to allow the CIA to try to recruit the Northern Alliance to capture or kill Bin Laden. The Northern Alliance leader showed little enthusiasm for capturing an enemy and, besides, the Northern Alliance had no ready access to the areas where Bin Laden was located. (pp. 203-204.)

In May 1999 the CIA thought it had a 50-50 chance of nailing Bin Laden in Kandahar, but they had just botched the targeting of a “smart bomb” in Belgrade and had hit the Chinese embassy. Naturally a little touchy about accuracy, Tenet seems to have backed away when it looked like everyone was getting ready to John-the-Baptist him if the attack did not succeed. (pp. 205-206.)

The rest of 1999 got frittered away trying to come up with a plan to get Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Nothing emerged. However, in 1999, and again in 2000, a group of Americans from different agencies traveled to Saudi Arabia in an effort to sort out the source of al Qaeda’s money. To their surprise they discovered that Bin Laden was not financing operations out of a vast private fortune—as had long been the assumption. Belatedly, they discovered that Bin Laden had rebuilt the “Golden Chain” of donations. How to penetrate, let alone destroy, that network remained a mystery to the CIA. (p. 268.)

These developments really left the US with no option but to try to disrupt any offensive operations outside of Afghanistan. What were they doing on this front during 1998-2001? For one thing, the National Security Agency kept watch on the communications of known terrorists.

Real trouble was at hand. In 1994 a group of Algerian terrorists had hijacked a jet, possibly with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower. Later in 1994, Ramzi Yousef, then based in the Philippines, plotted to bomb twelve US airliners flying over the Pacific. (p. 90.) This plot was broken up. In early 1995, Ramzi Yousef’s accomplice in the Manila airlines plot told interrogators that the two men had discussed crashing a plane into CIA HQ. Khalid Sheik Mohammed had adopted this plan.

In mid-1996 KSM had pitched OBL on a plan to crash airliners into American buildings. (pp. 214-215.) OBL did not commit and KSM seems to have doubted that OBL was serious about attacking the Americans.

Then the embassy bombings persuaded KSM that OBL was serious about attacking the United States. He renewed his proposal for al Qaeda support for the “planes operation.” In March or April 1999, OBL agreed to support the plan. (pp. 216, 223.)

Thus, during 1999 both the Americans and al Qaeda were searching for ways to get at one another to deadly effect. Of the two, al Qaeda operated with fewer restraints and more imagination.

What We Learned form the Report of the 9/11 Commission VI.

Posted on by
Reply

“The modest national effort exerted to contain Serbia and its depredations in the Balkans between 1995 and 1999, for example, was orders of magnitude larger than that devoted to al Qaeda.” (p. 487.) Neither the American public nor American leaders seemed to even notice terrorism as a problem in the post-Cold War environment.

 

Crisis: August 1998.

Immediately after the embassy bombings CIA Director George Tenet knew that there would be a big gathering of terrorist leaders at Khowst in Afghanistan on 20 August 1998, and CentCOM commander Tony Zinni had his cruise missile plan already to go. The responsible decision-makers talked over the issues until 20 May and sent the Vice-Chairman of the JCS to warn the Pakistanis that the cruise missiles flying through their air space were not an Indian attack. Nobody wanted a nuclear war on the sub-continent as an unintended by-product of the strike at Bin Laden, but this probably constituted a serious breach of security. The missiles missed Bin Laden by a few hours and some people think that he was warned off by Pakistan’s intelligence service. (pp. 169-171.)

Clarke wanted the cruise missiles strikes of 20 August 1998 to be the opening act for continuous efforts to kill Bin Laden. It was not to be. (pp. 175-176.)

Although JCS Chairman Hugh Shelton ordered CENTCOM to plan for additional measures, he “did not recommend any of them.” “Shelton felt that the August 1998 attacks had been a waste of good ordnance and thereafter consistently opposed firing expensive Tomahawk missiles merely at ‘jungle gym’ terrorist training infrastructure. In this view, he had complete support from Defense Secretary William Cohen. Shelton was prepared to plan other options, but he was also prepared to make perfectly clear his own strong doubts about the wisdom of any military action that risked U.S. lives unless the intelligence was ‘actionable.’”(pp. 502, 503.)

CENTCOM commander Tony Zinni, who actually had to come up with a possible scheme, believed that a long-term development of relationships with neighboring countries made the most sense. Covert action of any kind would require some kind of local base. Zinni got the feeling that Washington was picky about doing business with dictators merely because they could help out the United States. (p. 197.)

Already haunted by memories of “Desert One” and “Black Hawk Down,” decision-makers probably became even more cautious about using force to solve the Bin Laden problem in the wake of the failed cruise missile strikes of 20 August 1998. (pp. 172-173.)

In addition to missing Bin Laden, there were serious downsides to this attack: international opinion heaped abuse on the US for being “bomb-happy”; the Republicans ridiculed Clinton for “pinpricks.” (pp. 172-173.)

Soon afterward, American diplomatic and military power was being applied in the Balkans against Serbia (October 1998-March 1999) and in the Middle East against Iraq (December 1998). This distracted most of the key people from problem of terrorism.

At the same time it is important to note that people working for Allen Holmes, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, produced a paper calling on the Defense Department to assume the lead in the global fight against terrorism. (pp. 176-177.) This paper did not get very far up the chain of approval during the Clinton Administration, but it may have lain dormant until Rumsfeld came to the Pentagon.

What we learned from the Report of the 9/11 Commission V.

Posted on by
Reply

Between 1996 and 1998, Bin Laden rebuilt al Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, “Pakistan was the nation that held the key to [Bin Laden’s] ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive his ambitious enterprise for war against the United States.” (p. 95.) Pakistan is a failed democracy in which the army’s most recent intervention in politics had led to an appeal to Islamist sentiment as a form of legitimization. Pakistan also is a failed economy in which large numbers of refugees from the Afghan war were educated in Saudi-funded Wahhabist “madrasas” that taught religious fervor in place of life skills. Bin Laden had long-standing ties with Pakistan’s intelligence service. [NB: Which is scary when you think about the ties between the ISI and A.Q. Khan.]

Bid Laden was hurting for financial resources, a number of al Qaeda members or allies went off on their own on the assumption that he was in decline, and one of his chief operations people had died in a ferry boat accident on Lake Victoria.

Not everything was against Bin Ladin by any means. Most of Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, a bunch of religious fanatics who thought that anything and everything OBL said made a lot of sense. While the Pakistanis may have wanted a friendly government in Afghanistan to give their country “strategic depth,” Pakistan also provided Afghanistan with the same sort of strategic depth against American retaliation. Afghanistan swarmed with terrorist-wannabes and jihadist from all over the Muslim world.   Various veterans of the war against the Soviets ran terrorist training camps, and supplied weapons, and arranged travel for jihadis. Donations from all over the Arab world, but especially from Saudi Arabia, kept most of these enterprises afloat. As one of the American counter-terroism people would later phrase it, “Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is not so much a state sponsor of terrorism as it is a state sponsored by terrorists.” (p. 263.)

 

Bin Laden revived his activities of the Afghan war and shared the results with the Taliban: the “Golden Chain” fund-raising system provided money and the recruiting system among Islamic fundamentalists provided manpower. Bin Laden seems to have creamed off the best of both for his own movement. (pp. 97-99.) Thus, the “Golden Chain” raised about $20-30 million a year. Al Qaeda paid the Taliban about $10-20 million a year for protection and support, so al Qaeda had about $10 million a year to spend on all his projects. (pp. 247-248.) Al Qaeda ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. About 70 percent of the people in the al Qaeda camps were Saudis; another 20 percent were Yemenis; and 10 percent came from various other places. (p. 336.) By 1998, after a year to a year-and-a-half of hard work, Bin Laden and al Qaeda were back in business.

Along the way, Bin Ladin renewed contact with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They had known each other in the Afghan war in 1987, but had not been in contact since 1989.

One thing worth noting is that Bin Laden was rebuilding al Qaeda at the same time that George Tenet was rebuilding the CIA. While bin Laden’s efforts were smaller than were those at CIA, they were also more tightly focused. Who would be ready first?

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press

What did we learn from the Report of the 9/11 Commission? III

Posted on by
1

Osama bin Laden seems to have encountered Sayidd Qutb’s philosophy through the tape recordings of a Palestinian evangelist named Abdullah Azzam, while attending Saudi Arabia’s Abdul Aziz University in the late Seventies. (p. 82.) Bin Laden adopted this worldview and only the conversion of everyone everywhere to his version of Islam would end his war with them. (pp. 76-77.)

Then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to support a threatened Communist regime. The Afghans fought back and devout Muslims from all over the world came to participate in the “jihad” against the Soviets. While the CIA channeled immense amounts of American aid to the “mujahideen through the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), a parallel private network—the so-called “Golden Chain”—also raised money in Saudi Arabia and recruited fighters for Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam played an important part in this latter effort.

At some point Bin Laden developed “a vision of himself as head of an international jihad confederation.” (p. 86.) When, in April 1988, the Soviets cried uncle and announced their plans to leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, Bin Laden and Azzam cast around for a new enemy to attack. Azzam argued for struggling to create a pure Islamic state in Afghanistan, then attacking Israel; Bin Laden argued for a global war. (p. 84.)

In fall 1989 Hassan al Turabi, an important Islamic fundamentalist leader in Sudan, invited Bin Laden to use Sudan as a base of operations. Turabi had a vision of Sunni and Shi’a putting aside their religious differences to make common cause against Israel and the United States. (p. 90.) Did Azzam oppose this move? On 24 November 1989 Azzam died in a car bombing. At the time, the bombing was attributed, but which now looks suspiciously like Bin Laden settling the debate.

Bin Laden then accepted al Turabi’s invitation. He sent men to begin buying property, while he himself returned to Saudi Arabia. Soon afterward, Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. A broad international coalition formed, led by the United States, to oppose a move that threatened the stability of the world oil market. Between August 1990 and April 1991 Bin Laden made himself deeply unpopular with the Saudi government by bitterly criticizing its decision to ally with the United States rather than calling on Islamic volunteers to oppose the invasion of Kuwait. By this time he was already profoundly anti-American. (p. 87.)

In April 1991 he escaped from Saudi Arabia and established himself in the Sudan. For the next few years Bin Laden worked hard at building covert international networks for finance and operations. He called his group al Qaeda. In this effort he seems to have had the strong support of Hassan al Turabi. The Sudanese leader created a “Popular Arab and Islamic Conference” as a forum for “violent Islamist extremists” who came to confer in the Sudan. Most of these groups forged links to al Qaeda. (p. 90.) Sudan also provided a safe haven for other terrorists who would attack surrounding Arab countries.

 

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).

Zarqawi.

Posted on by
Reply

Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (30 October 1966-7 June 2006) was born in Zarqa, Jordan. He sprang from a Bedouin family which had settled down in Jordan’s one factory town. Something went wrong early in life. He drank a lot and had a great deal of “contact” with the police. At some point, he got religion and shaped up his life. A passport photo shows him clean-shaven, with a white shirt and tie—and a sad, mean look. At some point, he took the alias “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” which means “the father of Musab” and “From Zarka.”

In 1989 he followed the well-worn Young Islamist pathway to Afghanistan. Here he met Osama bin Laden, may have received basic military training in one of the numerous camps, and wrote some stuff for an Islamist newsletter. By 1992 he was back in Jordan conspiring to overthrow the monarchy, for which he did five years in prison (1994-1999). In prison he came under the influence of the Jordanian Islamist writer Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. No sooner did he get out than he tried to blow up a tourist hotel in Amman (1999). This didn’t work out any better than his earlier plot. From 1999 to 2002 he moved to Afghanistan (where OBL fronted him $200,000 to start a Jordanian franchise of Al Qaeda and the Americans almost killed him in a bombing), then went to Iraq by way of Iran. He may have been recovering from an injury in Baghdad for a while. In summer 2002 he moved into northern Iraq, where he joined an Islamist group that was waging jihad by cutting pictures of women off ads.

More serious work tugged at him. He helped plot the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan (October 2002); organized the bombing of the UN’s HQ in Baghdad (August 2003); organized attacks on Shi’ite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad (March 2004); planned a huge abortive chemical weapons attack on the offices of the prime minister and the intelligence service of Jordan and on the American embassy (April 2004); beheaded a captured American civilian (May 2004), then posted the film on the internet; sent terrorists on an abortive attack on a NATO meeting in Turkey (June 2004); beheaded another captured American civilian (September 2004), then posted the film on the internet; organized the bombing of three hotels in Amman (November 2005); and organized the attack on the Al Askari mosque in Samarra (February 2006). These attacks are only the most spectacular of his operations.

Having been organizing in Iraq from before the Second Gulf War, he had the weapons and explosive, the local contacts, the hideouts, and the local knowledge for insurgent war. What he needed were fighters. These began to flow to him in the form of the many Islamist foreign fighters who entered the country from 2003 on. The newcomers lacked local contacts, so Zarqawi became their controller. He probably organized many of the hundreds of suicide bombings that battered Iraq from 2003 to 2006.

Zarqawi had been on American and Jordanian “Most Wanted” lists since early 2002. In January 2003, the CIA had proposed killing Zarqawi at a camp they had identified in Kurdistan. The proposal was rejected, possibly out of fear that an attack would release toxic clouds from chemicals stored in the camp. Once the US invaded Iraq, Special Forces groups hunted Zarqawi with mounting intensity. Several of these raids came close to capturing him, but always fell short. (One time they found eggs cooking, but not yet burning, on the stove of his empty hide-out.) However, the raids did capture some of his associates. One of these was interrogated—humanely—by an Air Force interrogator who uses the pseudonym “Matthew Alexander.” Zarqawi had a great many hiding places, but “Alexander” learned the location of one in a village near Baqubah. It took six weeks of watching before he came in sight. On the night of 7 June 2006, two precision guided bombs destroyed the house, Zarqawi, and his wife and child–Musab.

Just like imam used to make.

Posted on by
1

Trying to help foreigners understand America, the Gummint pays for some of them to study in the US as Fulbright scholars. Nasser al-Awlaki and his wife came from Yemen in 1971 on a Fulbright to study agricultural economics. He got an MA from UNM, then a Ph.D. from Nebraska, then taught at Meenasotta for a couple of years. Almost immediately, he and the missus had a child. They named the sprout Anwar al-Awlaki. Having been born in the USA, Anwar was an American citizen. In 1978 the family returned to Yemen.

To be perfectly honest, the goat pizza available in Yemen paled in comparison to what could be had in the States. In 1990, Anwar al-Awlaki started in at Colorado State University. One summer he spent the break fighting in Afghanistan. (Must have made for interesting conversation in the dorm that Fall. “So, Bill, what did you do this summer? I picked lettuce on my uncle’s farm. Hoo-whee, we had some wild times on Saturday night. How ‘bout you Anne-War? Well, I ambushed opposing mujahedeen, then walked around shooting the wounded in the head.”) Anyway, by 1994 he got a B.S. in Civil Engineering and was a part-time imam in a mosque in Denver.

In 1996 he landed a job as an imam in San Diego. Here he got an M.A. in Educational Leadership from SDSU. However, Shaitan (in the form of babes in bikinis) beset him: he got hauled in for soliciting prostitutes a couple of times. In 1999 the EffaBeeEye came around, wanting to know if he had any ties to the “blind sheikh” who had organized the 1993 WTC truck bombing or to the then-munchkin terrorist Osama bin Laden. He said “no” and that was good enough for them. Meanwhile, a couple of the future 9/11 guys were attending services at his mosque. In 2000 he landed a job as an imam at a big mosque in northern Virginia. (We can’t even keep alcoholic child-molesters from becoming school bus drivers, so why blame a mosque for hiring an imam who can’t keep his pants on?)   During 2001 he worked toward a doctorate in Human Resources Development at George Washington University’s Education School. (He actually didn’t have much in the way of Islamic scholarly credentials, so his charismatic appeal to ignorant fanatics seems to arisen from what he picked up in American Ed. Schools.)

Then 9/11 came along. “The US was at war with al-Qaeda, not with Islam.” So, Awlaki got invited to a lunch at what was left of the Pentagon. They probably served pork chops or crab cakes, because the next thing you know (March 2002), he was on a plane to Yemen. From 2002 to 2004 he bounced between Yemen, the US, and the UK as an advocate of jihad.

After a variety of adventures, Awlaki settled down as a long-distance recruiter and inciter of jihadis. His fluent English and knowledge of American society, his charismatic personality, and his ease in using modern media made him a prominent figure despite hiding out in a remote area of one of the most backward places on Earth. The London subway bombers, the Times Square bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and many others all had his sermons on their computers or had exchanged messages with him. Since he has said that “jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding upon every other able Muslim,” he probably wasn’t trying to calm them down. When the Underwear Bomber said that Awlaki helped train him for his mission, the government got fed up and decided to kill him. On 9/30/11 they did.

Can the United States execute an American citizen without trial, without even producing the evidence upon which the decision to kill him is based? Would you really want to establish the legal precedent? Talk about “death panels”! So, civil libertarians opposed the execution. On the other hand, some of them say the US can’t “execute” anyone anywhere without trial. It will be hard to fight a war on terrorism with those hand-cuffs in place. What to do?