THE HISTORY OF AL QAIDA
Laurie Mylroie
Prepared for
Office of Net Assessment
Department of Defense
W7 4V8H-04-P-0187
September 1, 2005
THE HISTORY OF AL QAIDA
List of Illustrations
page iv
Glossary of Individuals and Groups
page v
Executive Summary
page xi
Introduction
page 1
PART I: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AL QAIDA
1. Changing Views of al Qaida
page 12
2. The Arab Afghans
page 26
3. Saudi Interlude—And Sudan Years, Including Somalia
page 43
4. Bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan
page 73
PART II: MAJOR TERRORIST PLOTS AGAINST THE U.S.
5. The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
page 103
6. Shaykh Omar and the Spring 1993 Bombing Plot
page 127
7. The 1995 Manila Air Plot: The Attempt to Down 12 U.S. Airliners page 155
8. The 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings
page 169
ii
PART III: DIFFICULTIES IN UNDERSTANDING AL QAIDA
9. The Baluch Masterminds
page 202
10. A Closed Conceptual Circles?
page 222
PART IV: IMPLICATIONS
11. The Insurgency in Iraq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
page 241
Conclusion
page 261
Appendix A: Ramzi Yousef’s Passport
page 271
Note on Spelling
page 280
Bibliography
page 281
iii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Photo of Mamdouh Salem
page 33
Page with false stamp from passport used by Mohammed Odeh
page 58
Photo of Khalid al-Fawwaz
page 64
Title page of Afghan terrorism manual
page 78
Page from Mohammed Salameh’s Phone Records
page 115
Abdul Rahman Yasin’s Application for US Passport
page 115
Map of Ramzi Yousef’s Suspected Escape Route
page 123
Picture of Abdul Hakam Murad
page 156
Picture of Usama Asmurai
page 164
Map of East African Coast
page 172
Page with false stamp from Fazul Mohammed’s passport
page 178
Front page of al Quds al Arabi, following bin Ladin’s “fatwa”
page 185
Chart of Khalid al-Fawwaz’s calls to Iraq
pages 191-5
Picture of Armed Baluch
page 215
IIS Letterhead
page 225
Pictures of Shaykh Omar and bin Ladin
page 238
Pictures of Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaykh Mohammed
page 239
iv
GLOSSARY OF INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS
INDIVIDUALS
Abdel Rahman Yasin: Dual Iraqi-American citizen; sole remaining indicted fugitive
from the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
Abdo Mohammed Haggag: Egyptian émigré living in New York. Had been among
Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman’s coterie, but broke with the blind shaykh and became an
informant for the Egyptian government
Abdul Hakam Murad: Baluch acquaintance of Ramzi Yousef; convicted for his role in
the 1995 Manila Air Plot
Abdul Majid: Alias used by Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), according to Filipino
authorities.
Abdul Qadir Mahmoud Abdul Karim: Baluch. Brother of Ramzi Yousef and KSM
nephew. Arrested in Karachi in November 2004.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf: Head of the Afghan party, Ittihad-i-Islami (Union of Islam), one of
seven groups officially recognized by Pakistan during the anti-Soviet jihad. Sayyaf had
the closest ties to Saudi intelligence and the Arab jihadis.
Abdullah Azzam: Palestinian militant. Leading Arab figure in the Afghan jihad against
the Soviets. Killed in Peshawar, along with two sons, in November 1989 by a car bomb.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (real name: Ahmed Fadhil Nazzal al-Kalaylah): Jordanian-born
Palestinian, who has come to be seen as the face of the Iraqi insurgency.
Abu Zubaydah (real name: Zain al Abidin Muhammad Hasan): Saudi-born Palestinian,
who ran al Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan. Captured in March 2002.
Ahmed Ajaj: Palestinian militant, who traveled with Ramzi Yousef from Pakistan to
New York in September 1992. Convicted in 1994 for the World Trade Center bombing.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani: Tanzanian, indicted for his role in the bombing of the U.S.
embassy in Dar es Salaam. Captured in Pakistan in July 2004.
Ahmed Ressam: Algerian militant, detained as he tried to enter the United States in
December 1999 to bomb Los Angeles airport. After his 2001 conviction, began cooperating with U.S. authorities.
v
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Legendary Afghan leader of the Northern Alliance.
Assassinated on the eve of the 9/11 attacks.
Ali Mohammed: Egyptian, associated with Islamic radicals, including al Qaida.
Appears to have been cooperating with U.S. authorities since 2000.
Ali Othman Taha: Deputy to Hassan Turabi, in Sudan’s National Islamic Front.
Ammar al-Baluchi (Ali Abdul Aziz Ali): Nephew of KSM and brother-in-law of Ramzi
Yousef. Main financier of 9/11 attacks.
(Dr.) Ayman al-Zawahiri: Trained physician. Leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Merged his organization with al Qaida shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
Ayyad Allawi: Iraq’s transitional prime minister
Azzam : Saudi. Suicide bomber in attack on U.S. embassy in Nairobi
Dawood Badani: Brother-in-law of Ramzi Yousef; Assistant to KSM. Captured in
Pakistan in the summer of 2004.
El Sayyid Nosair: Egyptian émigré, who ran the “Struggle” office in Jersey City,
associated with the mujahidin Services Office. Murdered Meir Kahane in November
1990.
Emad Salem: Egyptian informant for New York FBI.
Enaam Arnaut (Abu Mahmoud al-Suri): Syrian. Early associate of bin Ladin.
Executive director of the Benevolence International Foundation. Charged with funding
terrorism and pled guilty to lesser related charges.
Essam Rida: Egyptian, raised in Kuwait, and settled in the United States. He aided the
Afghan mujahidin for several years in the 1980s and developed an intense dislike of bin
Ladin, whom he regarded as ignorant of military affairs.
Fazul Mohammed (Harun): From Comoros Island. Assistant in al Qaida’s Nairobi
office; indicted fugitive in1998 U.S. embassy bombings.
Gulbiddin Hekmatyar: Head of Afghanistan’s Hizb-i-Islami, most extreme of the seven
Afghan parties officially recognized by Pakistani intelligence to fight the jihad against
the Soviets. Favored by Pakistani intelligence.
Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin): Indonesian who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Involved with a company that provided funding for the Manila Air Plot and through his
acquaintance with Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, Hambali became the key link between al
Qaida and Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah. Captured in Thailand in August 2003.
vi
Hassan Ghul: Courier intercepted at Iraqi border in early 1994, with letter presumed to
be from al-Zarqawi. Close associate of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed.
Hassan Turabi: Leader of Sudan’s National Islamic Front. Gained power in 1989,
following a military coup in Khartoum. Ousted by his military partners in 1999.
Jamal al-Fadl: Sudanese. Joined al Qaida in Afghanistan. Broke with bin Ladin after
stealing money from him and Sudan’s National Islamic Front. Became key early
informant on al Qaida.
Jumma Khan: Pakistani Baluch, with ties to Iranian Baluch. Founder of Baluch
Liberation Front in 1964. Had ties to radical Arabs and found safe haven in Baghdad,
after the 1968 Baathist coup.
Khalfan Khamis Mohammed: Tanzanian who provided local support for the bombing
of the U.S. embassy in Dar es-Salaam. Arrested and convicted in 2001.
Khalid al-Fawwaz: Saudi national. Bin Ladin’s representative in London in the mid1990s. Indicted on conspiracy charges related to the 1998 embassy bombings. Detained
in Britain, pending completion of extradition proceedings.
Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM): Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and head of a clan
of Baluch that provided the expertise for many of the major Islamic terrorist attacks
starting with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Captured in Rawalpindi in
March 2003.
L’Houssaine Kherchtou: Moroccan member of al Qaida, who split with bin Ladin in
1996, when he was denied $500 for a C-section for his pregnant wife. Testified in the
trial of the U.S. embassy bombers.
Mamdouh Salem: Iraqi, founding member of al Qaida. Arrested on conspiracy charges
related to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies.
Mohammed Abu Halima: Egyptian émigré, living in New York, convicted for his role
in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Mohammed Atef: Egyptian. Became al Qaida’s military commander in 1996 and was
killed in November, 2001.
Mohammed Loay Bayazid (Abu Rida al-Suri): Syrian, who obtained U.S. citizenship.
Founding member of al Qaida
Mohammed Daoud: Afghan president from 1973 to 1978, when he was overthrown by
Communists.
vii
Mohammed Mansour Jabara: Kuwait-born Canadian citizen, al Qaida member,
directed by KSM to operate in Southeast Asia with Jemaah Islamiya.
Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan: Pakistani, al Qaida communications expert; his
detention in July 2004 follows on arrest of KSM nephew, Musaad Aruchi (below).
Mohammed Odeh: Palestinian member of al Qaida; based in Kenya, and detained at
Karachi airport the morning of the 1998 US embassy bombings. Convicted in 2001.
Mohammed al-Owhali: Saudi. Supposed to die delivering Nairobi embassy bomb, but
survived. Convicted in 2001.
Mohammed Salameh: Palestinian, living illegally in New York area. Befriended by
Ramzi Yousef. Rented the van that carried the World Trade Center bomb. Arrested in
early March 1993, as he returned to the rental agency for his deposit on the van.
Musab Yasin: Brother of indicted World Trade Center bombing fugitive, Abdul
Rahman Yasin.
Musaad Aruchi: (Abdul Karim Mahmoud Abdul Karim): Baluch. Another KSM
nephew and brother of Ramzi Yousef. Also terrorist mastermind. Arrested in Karachi in
June 2004. His detention leads to further arrests, culminating in August 2004 terrorism
alert and discovery of bombing plots in the U.S. and U.K.
Mullah Omar: Leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan
Mustafa Fadhil: Egyptian al Qaida member, participated in the 1998 bombings of the
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Mustafa Shalabi: Egyptian émigré, living in New York, where he helped run the
mujahidin Services Office. After Shaykh Omar arrived in the United States, the two
quarreled bitterly and Shalabi was murdered in 1991. The murder was never solved,
although associates of Shaykh Omar were suspected.
Najibollah: Last Afghan communist ruler. Overthrown in 1992.
Nazih al-Raghie (Anas al-Liby): Libyan member of al Qaida, forced to leave Sudan
under pressure from Col. Qaddafi. Settled in Britain, where he received political asylum.
A training manual was found on his computer, when police raided his Manchester home
in 2000, but he himself had fled.
Nidal Ayyad: Palestinian. Friend of Mohammed Salameh. Convicted in 1994 for his
role in the World Trade Center bombing.
Ramzi Yousef: (real name believed by most U.S. authorities to be Abdul Basit
Mahmoud Abdul Karim)
viii
(Shaykh) Omar Abdul Rahman: Blind cleric. Head of Egypt’s “Islamic Group.”
Entered the United States in 1990, despite being on a terrorism watch list. Widely
misunderstood as leader of the World Trade Center bombers.
Siddig Ali: Sudanese émigré living in New York. With FBI informant, Emad Salem,
led the group planning to bomb the United Nations and other New York targets in the
spring of 1993. Pleaded guilty in 2005 and co-operated with prosecution.
Usama Asmurai (Waly Khan Amin Shah): Led his own group in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Convicted for this role in the 1995 Manila Air Plot.
Wadih El Hage: Lebanese Christian raised in Kuwait, and convert to Islam. Headed al
Qaida’s office in Nairobi. Convicted in 2001 on conspiracy charges related to the U.S.
embassy bombings.
Wail Julaidan (Abu Hasan al Madani): Saudi, founding member of al Qaida, and
member of al Qaida’s Advisory Council. Involved in Saudi religious charities and after
the 9/11 attacks designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist financier.
Yazid Sufaat: Malaysian member of JI, with bachelors of science degree from California
State University. Hosted the al Qaida meeting in January 2000, attended by two 9/11
hijackers, and tried unsuccessfully to cultivated anthrax
ORGANIZATIONS
ARC: Advice and Reformation Committee of Arabia. Created by Usama bin Ladin and
maintained an office in London from 1994 to 1998.
BIF: Benevolence International Foundation
Islamic charity.
BLF: Baluch Liberation Front.
CDLR Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, based in London and headed by
a Saudi, Mohammed al Masari, who received political asylum there after he was briefly
jailed by the Saudi government in 1993. As late as 1996, the CDLR was the main Saudi
opposition group.
EIJ: Egyptian Islamic Jihad Headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and merged with al Qaida
shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
JI: Jemaah Islamiyah (“Islamic Group.”) Southeast Asian group. Led by Indonesian
cleric, Abu Bakr Bashir.
ix
Gamaat Islamiya (“Islamic Group.”) Egypt’s largest radical Islamic organization.
Headed by Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman.
IIS: Iraqi Intelligence Service
ISG: Iraq Survey Group. Established to determine the status of Iraq’s weapons
programs.
Maktab al-Khidhimat (Services Office.) Founded in the mid-1980s to facilitate Arab
travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan in support of the anti-Soviet jihad.
Mercy International Relief Agency: Kenyan Islamic charity, whose head was friendly
with those at al Qaida’s Nairobi office.
NIF: National Islamic Front. Headed by Hassan Turabi and ruled in Sudan in
partnership with the military from 1989 to 1999, when the military ousted the NIF and
placed Turabi under house arrest.
PAIC: Popular Arab and Islamic Conference. Held regularly by NIF head Hassan Turabi
in Khartoum, starting in 1991.
x
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This project, “The History of al Qaida,” is based on: 1) the open-source literature written
from a national security perspective on al Qaida, including official U.S. studies; and 2)
the court records of most of the major U.S. terrorism trials held between the 1993
bombing of New York’s World Trade Center and the 9/11 strikes (the 1993 Trade Center
bombing; subsequent 1993 plot against New York landmarks; 1995 Manila Air Plot; and
1998 embassy bombings.)
The court records are extremely important, but they are voluminous and not easily
accessible. Consequently, they are regularly neglected. They encompass an enormous
amount of information, including documents such as phone records, passports, consular
papers, etc. This material would ordinarily be highly classified intelligence, but in all
these terrorist plots, there were early arrests and the material was used almost exclusively
for the purpose of criminal trials. Because of the “wall” existing then between law
enforcement and intelligence, the national security agencies did not receive that
information. Indeed, it does not appear that the material contained in these court records
was ever really studied and analyzed for the national security purpose of understanding
these major terrorist attacks.
After 9/11, a bitter debate ensued about the possible ties of the former Iraqi
regime to al Qaida. The phone records of Usama bin Ladin’s London representative
(Khalid al-Fawwaz) were evidence in the trial for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in
Africa. Those records include hundreds of calls to Iraq in the months before and after
xi
those assaults. This was not brought to the attention of senior U.S. policymakers,
however. Nor has it been noted by the bevy of journalists, academics, and others writing
about al Qaida; nor is it mentioned in any of the official U.S. studies on the subject. As a
colleague involved in 9/11 litigation remarked, it does not seem that anyone even looked
at them. Other errors and omissions reflecting a systematic neglect of these court records
are noted below.
Shifting Views of al Qaida
For most of the time al Qaida has existed, U.S. officials have had a poor understanding of
the organization. Al Qaida was established in August 1988 in Peshawar, Pakistan by bin
Ladin and some fourteen other Arabs following a bitter dispute with Abdullah Azzam,
the leading Arab figure in the anti-Soviet jihad. Yet there are stunningly few references
to al Qaida in the open-source literature during its first decade; this author, searching
several major data bases, could find just five mentions of the organization. The same is
true of the classified material. As the 9/11 Commission explains, “While we now know
that al Qaida was formed in 1988, at the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the
Intelligence Community did not describe this organization, at least in documents we have
seen, until 1999”1 (emphasis added.)
Two years later, al Qaida would execute one of the most lethal foreign attacks in
U.S. history, comparable only to Pearl Harbor. The situation is as if the U.S. intelligence
community had begun to identify and analyze the Japanese Imperial Navy only in 1939.
The near-simultaneous bombings of two U.S. embassies in August 1998 brought
al Qaida to the fore. Analysts then began to depict it as a huge, sprawling enterprise, with
1
The 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, Washington DC, 2004, p. 358.
xii
extraordinarily lethal capabilities, although they had been unaware of its existence only
shortly before. Few noted the inconsistency.
Similarly, in the period following the embassy bombings, the earlier terrorist
attacks directed against the United States, starting with the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing (if not before), began to be attributed to al Qaida. Thus, a history of terrorist
activity was essentially invented for the organization.
Notably, Bin Ladin is not indicted for any major terrorist assault on the United
States prior to the embassy bombings (an extensive investigation was conducted into any
potential ties he might have had with the earlier attacks.) These earlier attacks are also
not included in the U.S. military charges issued against detainees at Guantanamo Bay,
which describe al Qaida’s conspiracy against the United States. Some other party—and
not al Qaida—was responsible for them.
The post 9/11 investigation has revealed that al Qaida was, in fact, relatively
small. There were also similar figures and groups in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of
men may have gone through the Afghan training camps, but actual al Qaida membership,
those who swore loyalty to bin Ladin, was about 200 at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
Alan Cullison, a Wall Street Journal reporter, obtained the computer used by bin Ladin’s
deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and wrote a series of articles based on it. Cullison
concludes, “Al Qaeda has been mythologized as a disciplined and sophisticated foe,
united by a deadly commonality of purpose and by the wealth of its leader.”2
The reasoning of many analysts was backwards. Once the embassy bombings
were attributed to al Qaida, they read into the organization the qualities that would help
2
Alan Cullison, “Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2004.
xiii
explain how it had carried out such an assault. Their view did not derive from any
substantial knowledge of the organization, of which, in fact, there was very little.
The Baluch Masterminds
CIA Director George Tenet explained in June 2002, “We now believe that a common
thread runs between the first attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 and the
11 September attacks.”3
Not only did the two assaults involve the same target, but they
involved the same family. Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind of the first assault on the
Trade Center, which aimed to topple one tower onto the other, and bring them both down.
Yousef has a very good understanding of chemistry, and he built the Trade Center bomb.
Almost all the others who participated in that plot were foot soldiers, disposable
individuals acting at Yousef’s direction (Yousef later confided that he had “used” them.)
Yousef is the maternal nephew of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), who
masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Yousef and KSM were both involved in a 1995 plot to
bomb a dozen U.S. airliners (Manila Air Plot), which went awry when Yousef
accidentally started a fire in the kitchen sink of his Manila apartment, while mixing
explosives. Although the plot was unsuccessful, Yousef had the technical knowledge to
execute it. He tested a small bomb on a Philippines Airways plane, which blew a hole in
the fuselage, killing one passenger, and forcing an emergency landing.
In fact, KSM and Ramzi Yousef represent an entire clan of individuals who
possess an unusual skill-set for terrorist attacks. A classified CIA report, cited by the
9/11 Commission, is entitled, “Khalid Sheik Muhammad’s Nephews.” Six members of
“Unclassified Version of Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet's Testimony before the Joint
Inquiry into Terrorist Attacks Against the United States,” June 18, 2002.
3
xiv
this remarkable family have been publicly identified. They include two older brothers of
Ramzi Yousef, who are also terrorist masterminds and who were both arrested in 2004.
In addition, another nephew of KSM--Ali Ammar al-Baluchi--cousin to Yousef and his
brothers, served as KSM’s right-hand man and sent the funding for the 9/11 attacks to the
hijackers in America.
U.S. officials were unaware until well after the 9/11 strikes that KSM was even
a member of al Qaida. Shortly after KSM’s capture in Rawalpindi in March 2003, the
Washington Post reported,
'To be honest, it wasn't until recently that any of us even realized he was
part of al Qaeda," a U.S. intelligence official said in an interview last
year. "The big problem nailing him down is that the informants that we
relied on, especially before 9/11, were mujaheddin. They'd been in
Afghanistan, in Sudan, back in Afghanistan. Khalid was never a part of
any of that."4 (emphasis added).
KSM was hidden very deeply within al Qaida. Thus, U.S. officials long failed to
understand the source of al Qaida’s terrorism expertise, which was, in significant
respects, distinct from the jihadi milieu, as noted by the U.S. intelligence official quoted
above. Yet now that the source of al Qaida’s terrorism expertise is understood, no major
revision of our understanding of al Qaida has emerged. New facts are merely
incorporated into the pre-existing framework.
“Bold Tracks of Terrorism's Mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed Carried Al Qaeda's Hope for
Revenge, Renewal,” Washington Post, March 9, 2003.
4
xv
Ramzi Yousef
Khalid Shaykh Mohammed
The ethnicity of KSM’s clan is significant. These men are Baluch, a Sunni
Muslim people, with their own language and their own compact territory, which lies in
eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Like the much better-known Kurds, the Baluch
aspired to a state of their own in the twentieth century, but failed to achieve one. The
United States has very little to do with the Baluch; most Americans are unfamiliar with
so much as the name. The Baluch have no evident motive for these murderous terrorist
attacks, save one: the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had deep and extensive ties
with the Baluch on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. Going back to the 1970s,
Iraq used the Baluch against the Shi’a government in Tehran, with which Baghdad was
long at odds, and Baghdad employed the Baluch extensively during the Iran-Iraq war
(1980-1988).
xvi
Notably, these Baluch—KSM and his extended family—do not appear to be
particularly religious. In the Philippines, Ramzi Yousef, KSM, and the other conspirators
in the Manila Air Plot had girlfriends, and they enjoyed the city’s raucous nightlife. The
9/11 Commission describes them as “rootless but experienced operatives,” who were “not
necessarily formal members of someone else’s organization,” but, nonetheless, made
their terrorism expertise available to those organizations.5
The existence and activities of this Baluch clan is well-documented. The facts
cited above are not in dispute. This clan should be seen as an entity in its own right, yet it
rarely is.
The Mindset
A “mindset” (what Israelis call a conzeptzia) exists, and it consists of a very narrow focus
on Islamic ideology and Islamic militants. This constrained perspective can easily blind
analysts and others to the activity of other hostile elements in the Middle East. The risk
is that analysts will not recognize what is before their eyes, because their framework of
analysis is so skewed that they will evaluate incorrectly the enormous amount of
information they must sift through.
Indeed, it might be suggested that this is precisely what has occurred regarding
the Baluch terrorists. The facts about them are “signals” lost amid a very great deal of
5
The 9/11 Commission Report, op. cit., p. 59. This author has serious doubts as to whether these people are
really a family. It is highly unusual and no other terrorist organization has, at its core of expertise, a family.
A significant number of these identifications are based on two unreliable sources: 1) the terrorists
themselves and 2) files in Kuwait that predate Kuwait’s liberation from Iraqi occupation in February 1991.
This author believes that Iraq tampered with Kuwait’s alien resident files to create false identities, or
“legends,” for a number of its agents, while it occupied Kuwait. That is why these men appear to be a
family, in this author’s view. Those who agree include James Woolsey, Richard Perle, and Amos Gilboa,
former deputy head of Israeli military intelligence. This argument is set forth regarding Ramzi Yousef in
Laurie Mylroie, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America (Washington DC:
American Enterprise Institute, 2000). It would apply as well to KSM and the other members of this
remarkable “family” whose identities are based on Kuwaiti files.
xvii
“noise,” to borrow terminology from Roberta Wohlstetter’s seminal, Pearl Harbor:
Warning and Decision.
The mega-terrorist attacks against the United States began with this Baluch clan.
They are the “common thread” linking the first and second assaults on the World Trade
Center. Very notably, that link is not an Islamic figure, like bin Ladin, or an Islamic
group, like al Qaida. Yet what these Baluch might represent is scarcely explored,
because they are merely incorporated into the framework and ideology of the Islamic
militants.
Al Qaida as a Merger of Two Groups
In fact, al Qaida, as it existed on the eve of the 9/11 attacks, might be best understood as
the merger of two entities: 1) the original al Qaida, consisting of bin Ladin and the
Islamic militants who first gathered around him in the late 1980s, and 2) this Baluch clan,
which made its terrorist expertise available to al Qaida (just as the 9/11 Commission
suggests) following bin Ladin’s expulsion from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996..
At that time, Washington had little understanding of the Afghan scene. The
embassy in Kabul had been closed for nearly a decade and to the extent the CIA station in
Islamabad maintained an interest in Afghanistan, it was mostly concerned about the drug
trade. A CIA officer persuaded the Agency to send him to Afghanistan in the fall of 1996
to discuss bin Ladin with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary leader of the Northern
Alliance. Massoud cautioned the officer against focusing too narrowly on bin Ladin. Bin
Ladin’s group, he explained, “was just one dangerous part of a wider movement of armed
xviii
Islamic radicalism,” which included “Pakistani and Arab intelligence agencies.”6
(emphasis added)
This project suggests that this is precisely what is missing from our understanding
of al Qaida and the contemporary phenomenon of Islamic terrorism: the possible, indeed
likely, involvement of foreign intelligence agencies.
. THE FIRST FACE OF TERROR: SHAYKH OMAR ABDUL RAHMAN
Throughout the 1990s, Americans have not thought of terrorism in terms of foreign
intelligence agencies. Rather, they became accustomed to think of major terrorist attacks
in terms of one man, an Islamic figure, and his fanatical followers. The first such face of
terror was the blind Egyptian cleric, Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman; he was followed by
Usama bin Ladin, and now it is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
This study strongly suggests this is not a useful way to understand major terrorist
attacks. It is simplistic and as part of that simplicity, tends to emphasize Islamic
extremism to the exclusion of other foci of identity and loyalty. It also discounts the
significance of expertise and training in carrying out a major terrorist attack. The current
readiness of analysts to accept and promote an explanation for terrorism based on the
notion that it is likely to be the work of one Islamic figure and his extremist followers
leaves the United States vulnerable to being attacked by others, who may work in
conjunction with such figures, supply critical knowledge and other resources, but, in fact,
be the hidden, more dangerous partner in that relationship.
6
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden from the Soviet
Invasion to September 10, 2001, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), p. 13.
xix
This notion—that one man and his fanatical followers are responsible for major
attacks on the United States--when applied to Shaykh Omar and the terrorism attributed
to him is demonstrably false. This is particularly significant, because our understanding
of the early terrorism attributed to the blind cleric, including the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, set the stage for understanding subsequent acts of terrorism in a similar
fashion.
The erroneous, widely-held view regarding Shaykh Omar comes from a
misunderstanding of the charges against him and a lack of attention to the court records.
An FBI undercover operation emerged after the February 26, 1993, bombing of the
World Trade Center, with an Egyptian informant, Emad Salem, acting as agent
provocateur. A Sudanese émigré, Siddig Ali, proposed a bombing plot to Salem, which
grew to encompass the United Nations, New York’s Federal building, and other targets.
The individuals involved in this plot were not very competent. The expertise to
make the bombs, such that it was, came from the FBI informant. He directed the
conspirators to buy fertilizer for their ANFO bombs, and they returned from a Manhattan
garden store with $150 worth of Scotts Super Turf Builder. That material does not have
enough ammonium nitrate to produce an explosive, as an FBI agent testified during the
trial.
The conspirators in this plot were arrested on the morning of June 24, 1993, when
the FBI had sufficient evidence against them, including video of their mixing what they
believed to be explosives. Meanwhile, Shaykh Omar had come to public attention
following the Trade Center bombing. As head of Egypt’s largest Islamic terrorist group,
he was banned from entry into the United States. He had recently been ordered deported,
xx
but was free, as he appealed that order. The FBI tried to get Shaykh Omar in its
undercover operation, but he was not really interested in attacking New York. He wanted
to kill the president of Egypt and seize power there. Thus, Shaykh Omar was not arrested
with the other conspirators.
Following revelation of this second bombing plot, New York politicians
complained of the dangers Shaykh Omar posed. He was soon detained on the ironic
grounds that he posed a flight risk, as he appealed his deportation. Once imprisoned,
Shaykh Omar began to suggest he might accept deportation, but the U.S. Attorney’s
Office in Manhattan had meanwhile developed a subtle legal strategy for indicting and
convicting him. The FBI opposed that indictment (it wanted to deport him), but Attorney
General Janet Reno made the decision to proceed.
Seditious conspiracy was a key charge against the blind cleric, “Conspiracy to
Wage A War of Urban Terrorism,” and this has contributed to a major confusion.7 The
prosecution postulated that a “Jihad Organization” had emerged in New York and Shaykh
Omar was one of its principal leaders. The “Jihad Organization” was a legal construction
developed solely for the purpose of this trial. A number of violent acts were attributed to
the “Jihad Organization,” of which the Trade Center bombing was the most lethal.
Once a conspiracy is found to exist, all members of the conspiracy are legally
responsible for all actions of all other conspirators, whether they know about those
actions in advance or even whether they know the individuals who commit them. Thus,
the prosecution told the jury, “I am not going to stand up here and tell you that defendant
[Shaykh Omar] Abdel Rahman picked up the phone, called overseas and ordered Ramzi
7
United States of America v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdul Rahman et al., Indictment, S4 93 Cr. 181 (MEM), p.
6.
xxi
Yousef to show up.” However, Yousef “came from the same channel, the same group of
people involved with jihad, the same jihad, and the same enemy, America” as Shaykh
Omar and the other defendants. 8
Thus, Ramzi Yousef was said to be a member of the “Jihad Organization.” He
need never have met or spoken with Shaykh Omar. And he could be a highly-trained
foreign intelligence agent who penetrated and used the Islamic militants for his own
purposes. But that would be completely and entirely irrelevant to the question of the
guilt or innocence of Shaykh Omar et al. That may sound strange, but that, in fact, is
entirely consistent with U.S. federal laws.
There is also a crucial legal distinction between a “count” and an “overt act.” A
count is a crime charged against a defendant, about which a jury decides guilty or
innocent. An overt act is an action taken in furtherance of a conspiracy. Often overt acts
are not crimes in themselves, and therefore, not charged as counts. The World Trade
Center bombing is an overt act in the conspiracy attributed to Shaykh Omar et al,, but it is
not charged as a substantive count, because other people—not Shaykh Omar or the other
defendants in his trial--carried out that attack.
This is the official U.S. position. As the prosecuting U.S. Attorney explained, “No
defendant in the Rahman trial was charged with executing the World Trade Center
bombing. The bombing was charged as an overt act of the conspiracy count in the
Rahman case, and none of the Rahman defendants are named in that overt act.”9
8
United States of America v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdul Rahman et al., trial transcript, pp. 18612-3.
“Response By: United States Attorney's Office, Southern District Of New York To Section C: The World
Trade Center Bombing, (February 27 And March 10, 1997).” Posted at:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9704b/7wtctr.htm
9
xxii
The widespread misunderstanding that Shaykh Omar was behind the Trade Center
bombing comes from this legal proceeding. This confusion has been compounded
because a number of those involved in this case misrepresent it. FBI director, Louis
Freeh, testifying before the 9/11 Commission, for example, did not correct the impression
that Shaykh Omar was behind the Trade Center bombing, and he portrayed the second
bombing conspiracy--the FBI undercover operation--as being akin to the Trade Center
bombing, claiming that the FBI had thwarted a plot that would have caused massive
destruction. That is simply not true, as the court record makes clear.
Criminal trials do not generally address state sponsorship. This point cannot be
over-emphasized. The focus of a trial is to determine the guilt or innocence of individual
defendants, according to very formal, well-established procedures. Thus, it is also
irrelevant to the case of Shaykh Omar et al. whether or not a terrorist state was involved
the Trade Center bombing (senior figures in New York FBI, the lead investigative
agency, believed Iraq was behind the attack.)
Two intelligence agents posted to Sudan’s U.N. mission became involved in the
second bombing plot. That is clear from the trial transcript. They had extensive contacts
with the ringleader (Siddig Ali) and a Sudanese intelligence agent was to provide the
diplomatic plates to get the bomb-laden vehicle into the U.N. parking garage. The two
Sudanese agents were never indicted, however, because the judgment was made that
Sudan would not agree to lift their diplomatic immunity. Their involvement is likewise
irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of Shaykh Omar et al.
The notion that one man and his fanatical devotees are solely responsible for
major terrorist attacks against the United States has its origins in a misunderstanding of a
xxiii
legal proceeding, in which the key national security question regarding the potential
involvement of a foreign intelligence agency in those attacks was completely irrelevant.
Usama bin Ladin: The Second Face of Terror
Bin Ladin was based in Khartoum from 1991-1996. He was not a particularly important
figure then. A typical list of those attending major Islamic conferences held regularly in
Khartoum will not even mention his name. Nor was bin Ladin seen as someone who
carried out terrorism himself. Rather, he was then considered to be a financier of
terrorism carried out by others. In May 1996, Sudan, under U.S. pressure, expelled him
to Afghanistan, a move which imposed great hardship on him and his organization.
Three months later, in August, he issued a lengthy, bellicose diatribe against the United
States, a “Declaration of Jihad,” and two years after that al Qaida would bomb two U.S.
embassies nearly simultaneously.
Following those bombings, it quickly became clear from two separate sources that
al Qaida was involved. One source was a low-level conspirator, on the fringes of the
plot, who was detained after flying into Karachi from Nairobi on a fraudulent passport,
which had a false stamp showing an entry into Pakistan four days after his actual arrival.
He was angry at his predicament and talked at length with the FBI. Further corroboration
of al Qaida’s role in the bombing came from claims of responsibility made in the name of
a fictitious organization, which were traced to bin Ladin’s satellite phone.
Notably, al Qaida was not on the official U.S. list of proscribed terrorist groups on
the day of the embassy bombings. It was added to the list afterwards.
xxiv
The then director and senior director for counterterrorism at the White House,
David Benjamin and Steven Simon write, “No previous terrorist operation had shown the
kind of skill that was evident in the destruction, within ten minutes, of two embassy
buildings separated by hundreds of miles. Someone at the time was quoted as saying that
two such attacks were not twice as hard, they were a hundred times as hard.”10 They
further explain, “The question nagged: how could any group execute such a pair of
attacks without the help of a state sponsor?” and they write, “The intelligence community
maintained that it had no indications of any noteworthy relationship between al-Qaeda
and a state sponsor of terror, except Sudan.”11
U.S. knowledge about al-Qaida was, however, radically incomplete. As the 9/11
Commission observes, the intelligence community did not even begin to describe al
Qaida until 1999 (relevant passage cited above.) So how could anyone know in 1998 that
al Qaida did not have ties to a state sponsor of terror beyond Sudan, which may have
been involved in those attacks? Nor did the United States have good knowledge of the
scene in Afghanistan to where bin Ladin had recently relocated. It did not understand
just what parties were active there, as the leader of the Northern Alliance advised a CIA
officer already in 1996.
It is hard to understand how in August 1998, when al Qaida’s existence was
scarcely known and it was not even on the official U.S. list of proscribed terrorist groups,
it managed alone to carry out the near simultaneous bombings of two U.S. embassies.
The obvious answer, as Benjamin and Simon suggest, is that it had help from a more
experienced party. We now know that it did—from Khalid Shaykh Mohammed and his
10
David Benjamin, and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, (New York: Random House, 2002), p.
257.
11
Ibid. p. 263
xxv
Baluch clan of terrorist masterminds, even as it remains unexplained just what these
individuals represent.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: The Third Face of Terror
It is not easy to understand the official U.S. view of the insurgency in Iraq. However,
there does seem to have been a consensus of sorts as of early this year. The predominant
view in the Defense Department was that the core of the insurgency was Former Regime
Elements (FREs), who worked with elements in the Syrian regime and with the jihadis.
The CIA maintained that the insurgency was a broader nationalist revolt of Iraq’s Sunni
Arabs. Iraqi officials, for their part, spoke of the insurgency in terms similar to the
Defense Department, only they stated more forcefully that Syria was involved and that
the Baathists (both Syrian and Iraqi FRE’s) worked with the jihadis and provided them
crucial support.
Despite the differences in these three views, they shared a key point. None saw
the insurgency in Iraq as driven primarily by Islamic extremism, nor did they see the
insurgency in terms of “the face of terror,” the approach strongly critiqued here in which
major acts of violence are attributed to one Islamic figure and his fanatical followers.
Yet, apparently, starting in the spring of 2005, the U.S. military in Iraq began to
focus on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the foreign jihadis as the most dangerous element in
the insurgency and this has affected understanding of the conflict at a national level. The
“face of terror” has emerged as a model for comprehending the Iraqi insurgency, or so it
seems.
xxvi
Understanding even one of the major terrorist attacks described in this study
requires reading and analyzing a very large volume of information. This author cannot
even begin to imagine the size of the enormous volume of information that would be
relevant to understanding the Iraqi insurgency. Most probably, few people are truly wellstudied in a very great deal of it. If analysts approach a large, complex, and confusing
volume of information with a distorted conceptual framework (a “mindset”), they may
well misunderstand it. This is a phenomenon well-known in history.
A key point of this study is that we have such a distorted framework. For the past
twelve years, the U.S. approach to understanding major Islamic terrorist attacks has
entailed a fixation on successive individual Islamic figures, who are at one and the same
time, both fascinating and repulsive. Analysts regularly ascribe to them and their
organizations the expertise and other resources that would explain the violence that is
attributed to them. But we now know that al Qaida lacked significant qualities ascribed
to it, and the lot hanging around Shaykh Omar had none of those qualities. There is even
a kind of competition among authors and commentators speaking in the public arena to
show how big, bad, and frightening these people are. The media and the public
enthusiastically embrace this.
However, it is a dubious approach, and it may now be creating difficulties for
understanding the insurgency in Iraq. It is truly questionable whether major acts of
Islamic violence directed against the United States can legitimately be understood in
terms simply of one man and his fanatical followers. It is decidedly not true in the case
of the terrorism attributed to Shaykh Omar. It is very questionable regarding the terrorism
carried out by bin Ladin and al Qaida. And by extension, it is also very questionable
xxvii
regarding the violence attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers. Notably,
the view of Iraqi officials regarding the insurgency in Iraq has not changed and differs
quite significantly.
Nor is this problem of analysis necessarily limited to the present conflict in Iraq.
The “face of terror” approach, which we seem to embrace with such relish, along with a
very narrow focus on Islamic figures and Islamic militancy, may well distort our
understanding of future acts of violence directed against the United States and its allies.
xxviii