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Open Message in New Window From: Michael Jacobsonj . IMdJLQ_Add£es.s_BoQk Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:58:18 -0400 To: [email protected] \: danalesemanrj I Attach ment: M ES_SAGE.. HTM L

Pursuit of al-Qaeda keeps coming back to Fla. By Richard Willing, USA TODAY HOLLYWOOD, Fla. ? This spring, FBI agents searching for suspected al-Qaeda terrorist Adnan El Shukrijumah homed in on Hollywood/Pines Boulevard, a leafy commercial strip in the suburbs of Fort Lauderdale. El Shukrijumah, a trained pilot who is the focus of a worldwide search, attended college and a mosque on the boulevard before disappearing in 2001. Police look for fingerprints at a Tampa sandwich shop where a man resembling al-Qaeda suspect Adnan El Shukrijumah was

spotted. By Chris O'Meara, AP The FBI knew the street well. In the spring of 2001, agents had tracked two local men who traveled up and down Hollywood/Pines organizing what they told an FBI informant would be an Islamic jihad, or holy war, of terror bombings in South Florida. The men, considered al-Qaeda "wannabes," tried unsuccessfully to persuade their friend El Shukrijumah to. join the plot. The pair later pleaded guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges, apparently without realizing El Shukrijumah's alleged standing in al-Qaeda. After Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI returned to Hollywood/Pines. This time, agents were tracing the steps of hijacking leader Mohamed Atta in the days before the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history. Two weeks before the hijackings, Atta went on the Internet at a Kinko's store on Hollywood/Pines Boulevard to buy a ticket for the flight he would crash into the World Trade Center. Five months earlier, one of the "wannabes," Imran Mandhai, had gone to the same Kinko's to print copies of a list of weapons. Tracking suspected Muslim terrorists in South Florida, a U.S. investigator there says, can seem like a

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Open Message in New Window From: Michael Jacobson| \d to Address Book Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:55:10 -0400 To: danalesemanj | Attachment: MESSAGE.HTML

Wahhabis in the Old Dominion What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered. b y Stephen Schwartz 04/08/2002, Volume 007, Issue 29 - Weekly Standard FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT has kicked over quite an anthill in Northern Virginia. A U.S. Treasury task force, Operation Green Quest, has been investigating the funding of Islamic terror. Raids on March 20 struck an extraordinary array of financial, charitable, and ostensibly religious entities identified with Muslim and Arab concerns in this country, most of them headquartered in Northern Virginia. Reaction to the raids suggests the Feds inflicted serious injury on the Wahhabi lobby, the Saudi-backed extremist network that largely controls Islam in America. Officials of the targeted groups as well as their non-Muslim apologists—notably GOP operative Grover Norquist, the chief enabler of Islamic extremists seeking access to the White House-have condemned the raids as civil rights violations. The convoluted system of interlocking directorates, global banking transactions, and ideological activities exposed in Northern Virginia will take time to sort out. Operation Green Quest has drawn attention to a previously overlooked aspect of support for extremism in this country: The principal threat comes not from the thousands of working-class Arab immigrants in places like New Jersey and Michigan who contribute modest sums to the so-called Islamic charities, but from the Arab elite. The Saudis stand behind all of it. The kingdom pledged $400 million last year for the support of "martyrs' families," according to the Saudi Embassy website. At $5,300 per "martyr," that works out to about 75,000 martyrs, suggesting the Saudi princes anticipate a lot more suicide bombings than Israel has yet suffered. The Saudis offered a fraudulent "peace" plan this year intended to divert attention from their involvement in the horrors of September 11. The keystone of the Saudi-sponsored Northern Virginia network is the Saar Foundation, created by Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz al-Rajhi, a scion of one of the richest Saudi families. The Saar Foundation is connected to Al-Taqwa, a shell company formerly based in Switzerland, where its leading figures included a notorious neo-Nazi and Islamist, Ahmed Huber. Subsequently moved to the United States, Al-Taqwa was shut down after September 11 and its assets frozen by U.S. presidential order. But operations continued, as the Wahhabi lobby shifted to its backup institutions here. Saar has also been linked to Khalid bin Mahfouz, former lead financial adviser to the Saudi royal family and ex-head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has been named by French intelligence as a backer of Osama bin Laden; Mahfouz endowed the Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirm was an arm of bin Laden's terror organization. Muwafaq's former chief, Yassin al-Qadi, oversaw the financial penetration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania by Wahhabi

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"And we need to return to that kind of diplomatic effort. . . ," Beers was saying, over the droning sound. His war goes on.

8) 5-Year Hunt Fails to Net Qaeda Suspect in Africa By DESMOND BUTLER New York Times MOMBASA, Kenya — A recent urgent terrorism alert in Kenya is the latest frustrating chapter in a five-year international manhunt for one of the world's most wanted Qaeda suspects, American and Kenyan officials say. The alert was issued in May after the suspect, Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, was sighted in Mombasa. Investigators say he has been an associate of Osama bin Laden since the early 1990's and is the leader of Al Qaeda's operations in East Africa. The officials said they had been pursuing him — sometimes close on his heels — since he emerged in the investigation of the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. What has helped Mr. Muhammad evade capture, Western officials say, is Kenya's porous 420-mile border with Somalia, an anarchic and lawless country where the American presence all but evaporated in the early 90's after a military debacle in which 18 G.l.'s were killed. "In East Africa, our most serious vulnerability is that we are neighboring the Somali Republic, a land with no government," Dave Mwangi, Kenya's permanent secretary for provincial administration of national security, said in an interview in Nairobi. "As long as Somalia remains that way, people can hide there. We have a long, porous border, which will remain a threat." One result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States was an American effort to re-establish some intelligence operations in Somalia. Now, with Mr. Muhammad's suspected use of Somali territory as a hiding place and staging area, Western officials here say, the United States is increasing its involvement, pursuing alliances with competing warlords in an effort to monitor ports and airfields. Kenyan officials said Mr. Muhammad audaciously returned to Mombasa, formerly his base, in May even though his photograph had been circulated to the police throughout the country and the region. He has been accused in the attack here last November in which suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden car into the Paradise Hotel, killing 13 people, as well as in an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet with a shoulder-fired missile. Shortly before his appearance in Mombasa, Mr. Muhammad was spotted in a mosque in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, according to Kenyan and Western officials. Since then Western antiterror agents, increasingly convinced that he and several Qaeda associates are using Somalia as a sanctuary and transit point for weapons and explosives, have been working to persuade warlords who control key airfields to produce flight manifests and allow the monitoring of ports. A contingent of German surveillance planes based in Mombasa is now monitoring ships and communication in international waters along the Somali coast with the aid of Western intelligence agents in Somali ports and in coordination with American forces in Bahrain, according to a German military official. They have been searching for suspect ships, including some identified as having ties to Qaeda business interests and operations, according to the official. In May, the State Department warned of the "credible threat" of another terrorist attack in Kenya, mentioning the risk of an assault using shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. After a similar warning from the British government,

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He turned to Rohling in the back seat: "By the way, happy Father's Day."

5) Defense Teams Seek Access to an Operative for Al Qaeda By BENJAMIN WEISER New York Times A dispute has arisen over whether lawyers for defendants in a terrorism case in Manhattan should be granted access to the son of the sheik who was convicted in 1995 in a plot to blow up New York landmarks, a new court document shows. The son, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, was with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, a federal indictment says. News reports have said that he was captured there in late 2001, and has since been held at Guantanamo Bay with other detainees. The request to interview him was made by lawyers for Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who faces trial in Federal District Court along with the New York lawyer Lynne F. Stewart, and an Arabic translator. All three defendants have been charged with supporting terrorism, and have pleaded not guilty. Mr. Sattar's lawyers say they want to interview Mr. Rahman, the son of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, because they say he will help bolster their defense to the charges. The office of the United States attorney, James B. Comey, wrote back to the defense last Monday, refusing to provide information about the son's status. The letter does not acknowledge whether the son is even in custody. Mr. Comey's office said that "disclosure of such information could be inimical to the national security of the United States." The dispute could evolve into a legal fight similar to that being waged in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is charged in the Sept. 11 attacks. A federal judge in Virginia has ordered the government to allow Mr. Moussaoui and his court-appointed legal advisers to have access to another captured Qaeda operative, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a coordinator of the attacks. The government appealed, saying that allowing such access would harm national security. In Manhattan, the indictment describes Mr. Sattar as an operative for an Egyptian terrorist organization called the Islamic Group, which Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman once led. The sheik has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. In 2001, the indictment says, Mr. Sattar arranged to send money to the sheik's son when he was in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda. Mr. Sattar's lawyers, Barry M. Fallick and Kenneth Paul, suggested in court papers last week that the sheik's son, if he were questioned, would say that any money he received was not supporting terrorism. "We expect that Ahmed Abdel Rahman would testify that any money sent to him by Mr. Sattar was for his own personal needs and use," the lawyers wrote. Citing the Moussaoui ruling, Mr. Sattar's lawyers asked Judge John G. Koeltl to order the government to disclose whether it has the son in custody, and if so, to grant them access. The other defendants are joining in the request, lawyers said. The judge, referring briefly to the dispute in a hearing on Friday, asked for further written arguments. In the hearing, defense lawyers asked that the charges be dismissed on various grounds.

For example, Ms. Stewart's lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, argued that the acts she is accused of were speech

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By Daniel Klaidman, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas Newsweek Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But "KSM," as he is always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside America? THE ANSWER, ACCORDING TO KSM's confessions and the intense U.S. investigation that followed, is yes. It is not known where the authorities took KSM after he was captured, looking paunchy and pouty, in a 3 a.m. raid in Pakistan on March 1. As Al Qaeda's director of global operations, KSM was by far the most valuable prize yet captured by American intelligence and its various allies in the post-9-11 manhunt. He probably now resides in an exceedingly spartan jail cell in some friendly Arab country, perhaps Jordan. He has probably not been tortured, at least in the traditional sense. Interrogation methods, usually involving sleep deprivation, have become much more refined. He probably did not tell all he knew. Qaeda chieftains are schooled in resisting interrogation, and informed sources said that at first KSM offered up nothing but evasions and disinformation. But confronted by the contents of his computer and his cell-phone records, he began speaking more truthfully. According to intelligence documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, many of the names, places and plots he revealed have checked out. After 9-11, Osama bin Laden's terror network "was clearly here," a top U.S. law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK. "It was organized, it was being directed by the leaders of Al Qaeda." Though rumors of sleeper cells have floated about for months, it is a startling revelation that Al Qaeda's chief of operations was directly running operatives inside the United States. Thanks to some real breakthroughs by the Feds, the Qaeda plots do not appear to have made it past the planning stage. The inside story of the war at home on Al Qaeda, reconstructed by NEWSWEEK reporters from intelligence documents and interviews with top officials, has been marked by good luck and good work. Still, no one in the intelligence community is declaring victory. RECRUITING TECHNIQUES KSM revealed an overhaul of Al Qaeda's approach to penetrating America. The 9-11 hijackers were all foreign nationals-mostly Saudis, led by an Egyptian~who infiltrated the United States by obtaining student or tourist visas. To foil the heightened security after 9-11, Al Qaeda began to rely on operatives who would be harder to detect. They recruited U.S. citizens or people with legitimate Western passports who could move freely in the United States. They used women and family members as "support personnel." And they made an effort to find African-American Muslims who would be sympathetic to Islamic extremism. Using "mosques, prisons and universities throughout the United States," according to the documents, KSM reached deep into the heartland, lining up agents in Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Peoria, III. The Feds have uncovered at least one KSM-run cell that could have done grave damage to the United States.

It is somewhat reassuring that, so far, at least, the FBI has not uncovered any plots to use chemical or biological or nuclear weapons against America. Al Qaeda chiefs, especially bin Laden's ghoulish No. 2, Ayman AlZawahiri, have shown a strong interest in the past in obtaining weapons of mass destruction. The terror network allegedly dispatched a Brooklyn-born Hispanic Catholic who converted to Islam, Jose Padilla, to scout out the possibility of building a radiological device, a so-called dirty bomb (arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in early 2002, he is being held as an "enemy combatant" in a military jail). But none of the operatives caught up in the web spun by KSM appears to have been working on a weapon that could wipe out an entire city. On the other hand, the plotters were apparently scheming to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, destroy an airliner, derail a train and blow up a whole series of gas stations. Fortunately, American law enforcement has been able to nip these plots in the bud. The methods used by the G-men to crack the Qaeda cells, while effective and understandable under the circumstances, raise uncomfortable questions about legal means and ends. Many of the Qaeda operatives have not been arrested or charged with a crime. The Bush Justice Department is reluctant to throw terror suspects into the American criminal-justice system, where they can avail themselves of lawyers and use their rights to tie prosecutors into knots (the alleged "20th hijacker" of the 9-11 plots, Zacarias Moussaoui, has succeeded in bringing his criminal prosecution to a grinding halt). Rather, the Justice

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Matthew Levitt on Saudi Arabia on National Review Online

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April 16. 2003, 7:15 a.m.

Drawing a Line in the Saudi Sand Time for Riyadh to prove it is an ally in the war on terror. By Matthew Levitt

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ith the Iraqi regime defeated and military victory near at hand, the United States and it allies are positioned to leverage greater cooperation in the war on terror from key Arab states, chief among them Saudi Arabia.

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A fifth generation Catifomian who runs a family farm in addition to teaching classics end writing milrtary rtistory. Vaster Davis Hanson shows how the chaos in immigration policy is caused by an unhoty alliance between the rigit and the left which stifles an honest discussion of me probtem and performs a crib death on meaningful reform.

For all its rhetoric, and its limited actions, Saudi Arabia remains part of the problem international terrorism, not the answer. To be sure, Saudi Arabia has made several contributions to the war on terror — albc limited and intermittent. In one instance, Saudi agents reportedly infiltrated two domestic al Qaeda cells, leading to the arrest last June of over 75 al Qaeda members several nationalities, including Saudis. Saudi security services have thwarted terror attacks targeting Western interests in the Kingdom. Still, even those counterterror efforts in which the Saudis do engage are inconsistem While limited operations have been conducted in the tactical realm of preventing ne term attacks on Saudi soil, the Saudis have proved far less cooperative in critical strategic areas such as combating terror financing or assisting international terrorisn investigations. The actions the Saudis claim to have already implemented amount tc little more than window dressing, when what is needed is concrete and concerted action. If the Saudis acted on the four following issues, they would make a significant contribution to the reinvigorated counterterror offensive to follow the removal of Saddam and liberation of Iraq. Critically, the only question is whether the Saudis an willing to take such action; they are certainly capable These are actions the Saudi regime is capable of taking, and should therefore be expected and held accountable implement.

ENCOUNTER BOOKS , Action in these areas is the yardstick by which the West should measure Saudi » ; .• • ,1 1 cooperation in the war on terror: 1. Assist International Terror Investigations. Saudi officials are not only

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U.S. News & World Report June 2, 2003 Copyright 2003 U.S. News & World Report U.S. News & World Report June 2, 2003 SECTION: NATION & WORLD; INVESTIGATIVE REPORT; COVER STORY; Vol. 134 , No. 19; Pg. 18 LENGTH: 6571 words HEADLINE: Playing Offense BYLINE: By David E. Kaplan; Aamir Latif; liana Ozernoy; Laurie Lande; Monica M. Ekman DATELINE: Pakistan; Jordan; Singapore HIGHLIGHT: The inside story of how U.S. terrorist hunters are going after al Qaeda; BODY: "After 9/11, the gloves come off." -GOFER BLACK, former director, CIA Counterterrorism Center And the brass knuckles came on. America's frontline agents in the war on terror have hacked into foreign banks, used secret prisons overseas, and spent over $ 20 million bankrolling friendly Muslim intelligence services. They have assassinated al Qaeda leaders, spirited prisoners to nations with brutal human-rights records, and amassed files equal to a thousand encyclopedias.

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But the war is far from over. Last week, Osama bin Laden's top deputy exhorted the faithful to strike at western embassies and businesses. The injunction, from Ayman al-Zawahiri, came on the heels of bombings in Morocco and Saudi Arabia and caused the United States to close diplomatic posts overseas and increase the homeland security warning level from yellow to orange. Al Qaeda, one FBI veteran explained, "has one more 9/11 in them." With all the headlines about the latest attacks and warnings, however, it is easy to miss the amount of damage America's terrorist hunters have inflicted on bin Laden's ragtag army. U.S. News has retraced the war on terror, starting in the very first weeks after 9/11, to examine in detail how Washington and its allies launched an unprecedented drive, led by the Central Intelligence Agency, to disrupt and destroy bin Laden's operation. Interviews were conducted with over three dozen past and current counterterrorism officials in a half-dozen countries; the magazine also reviewed thousands of pages of court records and analytical reports. The story-part detective yarn, part spy tale-is one of unsung heroes. It is a story of nameless CIA analysts who matched tortured renditions of Arabic names with cellphone numbers around the globe, of Pakistani soldiers killed while smashing down doors of al Qaeda, of Jordanian interrogators who wore down some of bin Laden's craftiest killers. Much of this has not been told before. A windfall of intelligence has led to a newer, more profound understanding of bin Laden's secret network, intelligence officials say. They have built up dossiers on his followers from a scant few hundred before 9/11 to over 3,000 today. They have identified the core group's sworn membership, now thought to number only 180 true believers. And bin Laden's personal fortune, investigators say, is all but gone. There's more. The investigators have unearthed a secret history of al Qaeda, discovering documents in bin Laden's own hand, along with records identifying donors to the terrorist group. They have forced captured operatives to help target their comrades-even listening in as a terrorist made a phone call that led to the assassination of a top al Qaeda leader.

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