The Breeding-Ground and Birth of al-Qaeda
The USA, via the CIA, originally backed the Islamic guerrilla resistance against the Marxist regime and Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s. Its efforts focused increasingly on a hardline faction which was to spawn al-Qaeda in 1987-88. ...
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured in at least US $6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin [in Afghanistan]. Other western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more. ...
Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. ... Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.
[Norm Dixon, "How the CIA created Osama bin Laden" (autumn 2001)]
As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar ["Services Office"] � the MAK � which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio[graphy] conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation. ...
[Michael Moran, "Bin Laden comes home to roost", MSNBC, 24 Aug. 1998]
In 1986, early in Ronald Reagan's second term as President, the US effort was stepped up ...
Milt Bearden was the CIA's station chief in Pakistan's capital Islamabad in 1986-89; as such he oversaw the agency's efforts to back the mujaheddin. He later said, "The CIA does not recruit Arabs. ... There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight." And the CIA denied any direct contact with bin Laden.
(Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin, 2005 edn), pp.87, 147, 208; Peter L Bergen, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [Weidenfield & Nicholson, London, 2001], pp.70-71)
But J. Michael Springmann, head of the non-immigrant visa section at the "CIA-dominated" US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1987-88, said he learned that the CIA had a "program to bring people to the United States for terrorist training, people recruited by the CIA and its asset Usama bin Laden, and the idea was to get them trained and send them back to Afghanistan to fight the then Soviets." "Their nationalities for the most part were Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese." These "recruits without backgrounds" were given visas over Springmann's protests.
(Transcript of Springmann interview, Fox TV, 18 July 2002, Center for Cooperative Research; transcript of Springmann interview with CBC, 3 July 2002, 9/11 Review )
The MAK, headed by the Palestinian-Egyptian Abdullah Azzam in conjunction with bin Laden, was based in Peshawar, Pakistan. Numerous branches were established in the USA under the name of al-Khifa. The first was set up in Tucson, amid the large Arab community there, in 1986. The 9/11 Commission's Report later noted that "A number of important al Qaeda figures attended the University of Arizona in Tucson or lived in Tucson in the 1980s and early 1990s".
The largest branch of al-Khifa was in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, New York (in or next to the Farouq Mosque). Other branches were in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere. Officially known as the al-Khifa Refugee Center and the associated Afghan Refugee Services, the Brooklyn centre provided the interface for "Operation Cyclone", the American effort to support the mujaheddin. The organization became known as the "Services Office", after its Peshawar original, and worked to raise funds and train recruits for the war effort.
Azzam is believed to have visited from time to time, and bin Laden was numbered among the financial supporters. Al-Khifa had a training camp in Connecticut, where "Recruits received brief paramilitary training and weapons induction, according to evidence in [subsequent terrorist] trials". Several former members of the "active service" of the CIA were employed there as "expert consultants".
(Andrew Marshall, "Terror 'blowback' burns CIA: America's spies paid and trained their nation's worst enemies", Independent on Sunday [UK], 1 Nov. 1998; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edn), p.155; 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 2, p.58 [HTML version]; ibid, chapter 7, p.226 [HTML version]; Richard Lab�vi�re, Dollars For Terror [Algora, 2000; translation of Les Dolleurs de la Terreur, Grasset, 1999], pp.223-4)
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques, (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built "training camps", some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed "terrorist universities" by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers. ...
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company � albeit one that integrates the operations of a military force and related logistical services with `legitimate' business operations.
[Norm Dixon, "How the CIA created Osama bin Laden" (autumn 2001)]
... bin Laden split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan. ... Afghan vet[eran]s, or Afghanis ...
[Michael Moran, "Bin Laden comes home to roost", MSNBC, 24 Aug. 1998)]
As the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan during 1988-9, a policy split emerged between the US State Department and the CIA. The State Department focused on moderate Afghan factions and a negotiated supersession of the Soviet-installed Najibullah regime. But the CIA continued military support, via Pakistan, of Hekmatyar and other Islamists. Meanwhile, Arabs continued to flow in to fight alongside the Afghan Islamists. ...
(Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edition), chapters 10 to 12)
New Roles for the "Arab Afghans"
The CIA decided that bin Laden's "Arab Afghans" were too useful an ally to abandon after the Soviets left Afghanistan, and in a meeting at Green's Hotel, Peshawar, Pakistan, in late 1991, between their local representatives, Prince Turki bin Faisal (head of the Saudi intelligence service) and the "Arab Afghans", they decided to continue links. The "strategic" position of Afghanistan vis-a-vis Central Asian oil was a factor in this decision.
(Lab�vi�re, Dollars For Terror, pp.104-5; cf. pp.227-8. "Arab Afghans" is a term Lab�vi�re uses for both the "proto-Qaeda" formed in Afghanistan with the CIA's help, and the later "fully-formed" version.)
The Islamist connections were employed in Bosnia during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Using the Pakistani ISI as an intermediary once more, the CIA channelled weapons and "Arab Afghan" and other Islamic fighters to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Chinese, North Korean and Iranian arms were supplied in order to maintain deniability.
[T]he Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization ... has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia ... TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama bin Laden ...
(Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate", Center For Global Research, Oct. 2001; quotation from Washington Post, 22 Sept. 1996)
"Blowback": The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing and After
At 18 minutes past noon on 26 February 1993, a huge truck bomb exploded in the underground parking garage beneath the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center. ... (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 3, p.71. [HTML version])...
The ensuing FBI investigation led to (amongst others) "terrorist mastermind" Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was subsequently convicted on various terrorist charges, including a plot to bomb New York landmarks such as the UN building, the FBI headquarters and the Holland Tunnel.
Rahman's record is revealing. Born in Egypt, he was "spiritual mentor" of several Islamist groups. These included Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was later to "merge" with al-Qaeda, and more especially Jama'a Islamiya (the Islamic Group), which had formed from a split with Jihad (and was later to partially remerge with it). Rahman played a leading role in recruiting foreign Islamic fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and also raised finance for the "holy war". He was issued a US entry visa in 1987. In 1990, Rahman was interviewed in Khartoum, Sudan, by the CIA's area station chief. He was subsequently issued with a multiple-entry visa by an undercover CIA operative who worked in the consular section of the US embassy there. This included the coveted green-card � permanent-resident � status. (Official statements later put down the visas to a series of computer errors; and the fact that the consular official was a CIA agent was dismissed as "sheer coincidence".) On entering the US, Rahman went to the al-Khifah "refugee center" in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, New York, the front for raising anti-Soviet fighters ... He was also a "central figure" at the Farouq mosque next door, and also preached at a mosque in nearby Jersey City.
(Richard Lab�vi�re, Dollars For Terror, pp.221-4 [he refers to Newsweek as confirming the visa story, but fails to give a specific reference]; Peter L Bergen, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [Weidenfield & Nicholson, London, 2001], pp.72-3 [his reference is Marguerite Michaels, "Martyrs for the Sheik", Time magazine, 19 July 1993]; 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 3, p.72 [HTML version])
Ramzi Youssef, the man who parked the truck bomb under the WTC, was himself an "Arab Afghan" who learned the arts of terrorism in Peshawar, Pakistan. And he had, according to a classified FBI file, been recruited by the local branch of the CIA. (His uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], was to become the "mastermind" of 9/11.) (Lab�vi�re, Dollars For Terror, pp.220-1. 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 3, p.73. [HTML version]) ...
"A confidential CIA internal survey concluded that it was 'partly culpable' for the World Trade Center bomb, according to reports of the time. There had been blowback." (Andrew Marshall, "Terror 'blowback' burns CIA", Independent on Sunday [UK], 1 Nov. 1998) However, as Michel Chossudovsky comments, "The 'blowback' thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the 'Islamic Militant Network'. ..." ("Osamagate", Center For Global Research, Oct. 2001)
Some of the future "9/11 hijackers" were discovered "by association with" the 1993 plotters in the "data-mining" operation Able Danger in 1999. (Mosque links between Mohammed Atta and Rahman are specifically mentioned. Jacob Goodwin, "Inside Able Danger ...", Government Security News (23-24 Aug. 2005)) Fifteen of their number were also to obtain US visas with ease at the "CIA-dominated" US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (See "The Hijackers".)
The FBI investigation into the later US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 was said to have found that the traces from the explosions came from an American military explosive, of the type of which the CIA had apparently given to the "Arab Afghans" just three years before.
(Alexandra Richard, "La CIA aurait rencontre Ben Laden en juillet", Le Figaro, 31 Oct. 2001; a translation of this article is 'Links: Le Figaro Reports CIA, bin Laden Contacts', Scoop, 2 Nov. 2001. (The same article reported that the CIA's local representative, Larry Mitchell, met bin Laden in Dubai just three months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.))
Ali Mohammed: A Key Link?
(Sources:- Andrew Marshall, "Terror 'blowback' burns CIA: America's spies paid and trained their nation's worst enemies", Independent on Sunday [UK], 1 Nov. 1998; Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, "Al Qaeda terrorist worked with FBI ...", San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Nov. 2001; Ton Hays and Sharon Theimer, Associated Press, "Egyptian agent worked with Green Berets, bin Laden", Jerusalem Post, 31 Dec. 2001. Other references indicated at appropriate points in text.)
Ali Mohammed ("al-Amriki", the American) fits the profile of a double agent, according to Larry Johnson (former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the US State Department). Mohammed worked for the CIA, and US special forces, at different times during the 1980s and 1990s. In the same period, he also co-operated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. But he may also have been an FBI informant. He was later convicted on terrorism conspiracy charges.
Originally an Egyptian Army captain, and fluent in English, Mohammed completed a training programme for foreign officers at the Special Forces school in Fort Bragg (home of the Green Berets) in North Carolina in 1981. But at the same time he became involved with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a militant Moslem group "later absorbed by al-Qaeda". (And he was apparently in the same army unit as the soldier who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.)
Mohammed left the Egyptian Army in 1984 and became a CIA informant. At some unspecified later time the CIA dropped him because he was "boasting" of his relationship with the agency. They put his name on a watch list aimed at blocking his entrance to the USA, according to a US government official.
Nevertheless, Mohammed got a visa one year later, and returned to America. He married a Santa Clara woman and became a US citizen. Mohammed joined the US Army in 1986 and returned to Fort Bragg the following year. Here he worked as a supply sergeant for the Special Forces, and also gave briefings on Islamic fundamentalism at the Kennedy Center and School there.
Mohamed's behavior and his background were so unusual that his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, became convinced that he was both a "dangerous fanatic" and an operative of U.S. intelligence.
Anderson, now [in 2001] a businessman in North Carolina, said that on their first meeting in 1988, Mohamed told him, "Anwar Sadat was a traitor and had to die."
Later that year, Anderson said, Mohamed announced that � contrary to all Army regulations � he intended to go on vacation to Afghanistan to join the Islamic guerrillas in their civil war against the Soviets. A month later, he returned, boasting that he had killed two Soviet soldiers and giving away as souvenirs what he claimed were their uniform belts.
Anderson said he wrote detailed reports aimed at getting Army intelligence to investigate Mohamed � and have him court-martialed � but the reports were ignored.
"I think you or I would have a better chance of winning Powerball (a lottery), than an Egyptian major in the unit that assassinated Sadat would have getting a visa, getting to California ... getting into the Army and getting assigned to a Special Forces unit," he said. "That just doesn't happen."
It was equally unthinkable that an ordinary American GI would go unpunished after fighting in a foreign war, he said.
Anderson said all this convinced him that Mohamed was "sponsored" by a U.S. intelligence service. "I assumed the CIA," he said.
[The Boston Globe reported in 1995 that Mohamed did in fact benefit from a visa waiver programme for intelligence assets. (Paul Quinn-Judge and Charles M Sennat, "Figure Cited in Terrorism Case Said to Enter US with CIA Help ...", Boston Globe, 3 Feb. 1995; referred to in Peter L Bergen, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2001], pp.142-3)]
In 1989 Mohammed "came to the New York area to train mujaheddin on their way to Afghanistan". His location was evidently "the Al-Khifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, a place of pivotal importance to Operation Cyclone, the American effort to support the mujaheddin". There he trained Nosair and other figures soon to commit acts of terror on United States soil (most prominently perhaps, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing). Mohammed also provided military training for mujaheddin in Jersey City and in Connecticut (perhaps at the camp where ex-CIA operatives were employed as "consultants" [see above, "The Breeding-Ground and Birth of al-Qaeda"]).
Ali Mohammed was "honorably discharged" from the US Army in November 1989 � and received at least two good-conduct medals. In the early 1990s he returned to Afghanistan, where he gave training in the al-Qaeda camps. "In one of the first training classes that [he] conducted was [Osama] bin Laden; [bin Laden's "deputy"] Ayman al-Zawahiri ... and others". (Jack Cloonan interview, PBS, 13 July 2005 (edited online version)) Mohammed apparently helped the terrorist organization prepare for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (carrying out reconnaissance in 1993 [9/11 Commission Report, chapter 2, p.68 [HTML version]]).
Returning to California in the mid-1990s, Mohammed helped Zawahiri raise money for Egyptian Islamic Jihad. (Zawahiri was the leader of Jihad, which was in the process of merging with al-Qaeda.) But former State Department counter-terror boss Johnson believes he was also an FBI informant, and told them, after the embassy attacks, that bin Laden was responsible.
Mohammed was subpoenaed to testify before a New York grand jury in connection with the 1993 Trade Center bombing, before himself being convicted on conspiracy charges. He was imprisoned in New York's Metropolitan Correction Center.
But this was not the end of Mohammed's "borderlands" role. Just before the Afghanistan invasion, he was consulted at the prison by the chief human-intelligence officer of Delta Forces. Mohammed provided advice on the Qaeda training camps. (Jack Cloonan interview, PBS, 13 July 2005 (edited online version))
The CIA's Bin Laden Unit and the "New Qaeda", 1996-98
... Within the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. "The idea was born from discussions in the Counterterrorist Center's senior management group. ... The CIA's managers wanted to experiment with a new kind of unit, a prototype that might be used against other transnational targets [as well]." David Cohen, head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, wanted to try out a "virtual station", modelled on the Agency's overseas stations, but based at Langley headquarters and dedicated to a particular issue. It was originally suggested that the station focus on terrorist financial links and be dedicated to one person in particular, Osama bin Laden.
(Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edn), p.319; 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 4, p.109 [HTML version]. (The 1986 creation of the Counterterrorist Center is a fascinating tale in itself; see Coll, pp.137-44.)
The unit was formally known as the Bin Laden Issue Station, and codenamed "Alex", or "Alec Station". (It is presumably the "Alex Base" referred to by "Able Danger" liaison Shaffer � cf. below.) It drew on personnel from the CIA and elsewhere in the intelligence community. It initially had about twelve staff, rising to 40-50 employees by September 11, 2001. (The Counterterrorist Center as a whole had 200 and 390 employees at the corresponding times.) By the latter year the station also directed 200 CIA officers worldwide.
(9/11 Commission Report, Notes, p.479, note 2 (to Ch.4, p.109) [HTML version]; Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edn), p.649, note 7 (quoting a CIA press statement).)
The Station was "staffed by CIA, [National Security Agency] NSA, FBI and other officers", Tenet later recalled;
The group's mission was [or was expanded to become] to track [bin Laden], collect intelligence on him, run operations against him, disrupt his finances, and warn policymakers about his activities and intentions. ...
[By early 1999, the Station had] succeeded in identifying assets and members of Bin Laden's organization ...
(Testimony of CIA boss Tenet to the 9/11 Commission, 24 March 2004, pp.4, 18)
Unlike other such units, the bin Laden task force [was] allowed to act something like an overseas station of the CIA and [did] not have to consult much with the bureaucracy in Washington.
[Peter L Bergen, Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2001), pp.126-7]
The Station had been set up by Michael Scheuer and was run by him until 1999. He came back to the unit as a special adviser shortly after 9/11, staying until November 2004.
(Dana Priest, "Former Chief of CIA's Bin Laden Unit Leaves", Washington Post, 12 Nov. 2004, p.A04; "Bin Laden Expert Steps Forward", "60 Minutes", CBS News, 14 Nov. 2005)
The unit's core personnel (according to Scheuer) remained at under thirty from 1999, with a "periphery" of several hundred short-term staff. Scheuer, who described himself as a conservative and instinctive Republican voter, became disillusioned with the Clinton administration's failure to decisively deal with bin Laden, resigning in 1999. This, however, was after Tenet had replaced him as head of the unit (with "Richard": see below, "The 'Plan' and the 'Planes Operation'"). (He was not much more complimentary about the Bush administration.)
(Julian Borger, "We could have stopped him", The Guardian [UK], 20 August 2004)
The Station soon began to pick up useful material. Jamal al-Fadl, who had lived in the US for two years in the mid-1980s, mainly in Brooklyn and Atlanta, had been recruited to the Afghan mujaheddin "through the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn" (for which see above). He joined al-Qaeda in 1989 (Bergen calls him the "third member"), apparently in Afghanistan, and became a "senior employee" of the organization.
After embezzling $110,000 from Qaeda al-Fadl "defected". He contacted the CIA via the US's Eritrean embassy and, after receiving limited assurances from the US authorities, returned (after staying in Germany for a while) to the United States, in spring 1996.
For the next three years Jack Cloonan, an FBI special agent "seconded" to the bin Laden unit, and his colleagues baby-sat al-Fadl in a safe-house. From December 1996 Al-Fadl began to provide "a major breakthrough of intelligence on the creation, character, direction, and intentions of al Qaeda"; "bin Laden, the CIA now learned, had planned multiple terrorist operations and aspired to more" � including the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium.
From 1996, the Bin Laden unit began to "find connections everywhere". ... "There was never a terrorist group which we knew more about in terms of goals, organization, method of operation [and] personnel, than Al Qaeda", Scheuer was to say later. "[B]y the summer of 1998, we had accumulated an extraordinary array of information about this group and its intentions."
Al Qaeda operated as an organization in more than sixty countries, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center calculated by late 1999 [a figure that was to help underpin the "War On Terror" two years later]. Its formal, sworn, hard-core membership might number in the hundreds. Thousands more joined allied militias such as the [Afghan] Taliban or the Chechen rebel groups or Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines or the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan. ...
Al-Fadl, who had "passed the polygraph tests he was given", became a key witness in the US v. bin Laden trial that began in February 2001. Here he "outlined the operational structure of al-Qaeda and the responsibilities of [its] various committees ...".
(9/11 Commission Report, chapter 2, p.62; [HTML version]; idem, chapter 4, p.109 [HTML version]; Peter L Bergen, Holy War, Inc. (op. cit.), p.65; Jack Cloonan interview, PBS, 13 July 2005 (edited online version); Michael Scheuer interview, PBS, 21 July 2005 (edited online version); Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Penguin, 2005 edn, pp.336, 367, 474; Jane Mayer, "Junior: The clandestine life of America's top Al Qaeda source", The New Yorker, 4 Sept. 2006)
The Bin Laden Station was reportedly disbanded in late 2005. (Mark Mazzetti, "C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden", New York Times, 4 July 2006; Associated Press, "CIA Reportedly Disbands Bin Laden Unit", Washington Post online, 4 July 2006)
The "Plan" and the "Planes Operation" (1999)
The bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 served as the starting-point for new initiatives by both the CIA and al-Qaeda. During the winter of 1998-9 the two organizations began to develop plans in parallel.
On 4 December 1998 Director of Central Intelligence Tenet declared, in a memo to his senior deputies, "We must now enter a new phase in our efforts against bin Laden ... We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort." Soon after, Tenet designated the bin Laden threat at the very highest level. Tenet's "declaration of war" was not widely read in the intelligence community, and was apparently ignored; and finances remained tight.
(Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin, 2005 edition), pp.436-7 and 646 note 42; 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 11, p.357 [HTML version])
Nevertheless Tenet's declaration was the launch pad for what became known as "the Plan". "Early in 1999 Tenet ordered the Counterterrorist Center to begin a 'baseline' review of the CIA's operational strategy against bin Laden ... that spring of 1999 Tenet demanded 'a new, comprehensive plan of attack' against bin Laden and his allies." Tenet transferred Mike Scheuer from his leadership position at the bin Laden unit, replacing him with "Richard", a "fast-track executive assistant from the seventh floor [of CIA HQ, where Tenet himself had his suite]. ... Tenet quickly followed this appointment with another: He named Cofer Black as director of the entire Counterterrorist Center." The CTC produced the "comprehensive plan of attack" against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and "previewed this new strategy to senior CIA management at the end of July".
(Coll, Ghost Wars, pp.451-2, 455, 456; Testimony of CIA boss Tenet to the 9/11 Commission, 24 March 2004, p.14)
Also in the winter of 1998-9, bin Laden gave Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) the "green light" for the "planes operation", and planning for what was to become known as 9/11 began "in earnest". Qaeda developed an initial list of targets, which included "the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center". The first candidate hijackers were chosen some time in 1999 (see below, "The Core Hijackers").
(9/11 Commission Report, chapter 5, pp.149-50, 154-5 [HTML version]. Based on "intelligence interrogations" of KSM.)
In [September] 1999, DCI Tenet unveiled the CIA's new Bin Ladin strategy. It was called, simply, "the Plan". The Plan proposed continuing disruption and rendition operations worldwide. It announced a program for hiring and training better officers with counterterrorism skills, recruiting more assets, and trying to penetrate al Qaeda's ranks [my emphasis]. The Plan aimed to close gaps in technical intelligence collection (signal and imagery) as well. In addition, the CIA would increase contact with [Ahmed Shah Massood's] Northern Alliance rebels fighting the Taliban. ...
... In late October, a group of officers from the Counterterrorist Center flew into the Panshir Valley to meet up with Massood, a hazardous journey in rickety helicopters that would be repeated several times in the future. ... The Bin Laden unit was satisfied that its reporting on Bin Ladin would now have a second source. ...
Finally, the CIA considered the possibility of putting U.S. personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. The CIA had been discussing this possibility with Special Operations Command [SOCOM] and found enthusiasm on the working level but reluctance at higher levels. CIA saw a 95 percent chance of [SOCOM] forces capturing Bin Ladin if deployed � but less than a 5 percent chance of such a deployment. ...
... such a protracted deployment of U.S. Special Operations Forces into Afghanistan, perhaps as part of a team joined to a deployment of the CIA's own officers, would have required a major policy initiative ...
[9/11 Commission Report, chapter 4, pp.142-3 (HTML version). Tenet put forward the Plan on 16 Sept. 1999: ibid, Notes, pp.*** (HTML version)]
... [Cofer] Black and his new bin Laden unit [sic] wanted to "project" into Afghanistan, to "penetrate" bin Laden's sanctuaries. They described their plan as military officers might. They sought to surround Afghanistan with secure covert bases for CIA operations � as many bases as they could arrange. Then they would mount operations from each of the platforms, trying to move inside Afghanistan and as close to bin Laden as they could to recruit agents [my emphasis] and to attempt capture operations. ... Black wanted recruitments, and he wanted to develop commando or paramilitary strike teams made up of officers and men who could "blend" into the region's Muslim populations. [My emphasis.]
Even with Tenet's support they struggled for resources. In the same weeks that he began to talk to the White House, FBI and Pentagon about what he called "The Plan" for revived global operations against bin Laden, Black was forced to implement a 30 per cent cut in cash operating budgets at the Counterterrrorist Center � including in the bin Laden unit. [This seems to contradict subsequent statements by top CIA men to the 9/11 Commission: though the CIA as a whole had been "badly damaged" by budget constraints in the years leading up to 9/11, the CTC had been excepted from cuts. (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 11, p.358 [HTML version]) So how do we account for Black's "30% cut" at the very moment he was plugging the Plan?] ...
In September [1999], Pakistani ISI intelligence chief General] Ziauddin flew to Washington to meet with Cofer Black ... and Gary Schroen. Nearly every politician in Pakistan believes, at least some of the time, that the CIA decided who served as prime minister in [the Pakistani capital] Islamabad. The Pakistani commando training accelerated, and the [CIA] brought the snatch team up to "a pretty good standard", as an American official recalled. The commandos moved up to the Afghanistan border. A staging camp was constructed. From [CIA headquarters at] Langley and [the CIA's] Islamabad station, the Counterterrorist Center was positioning its agents and collection assets and "getting ready to provide intelligence for action", the American official recalled.
In mid October, Pakistani generals Pervez Musharraf and Mahmoud Ahmad launched their coup against Prime Minister Sharif and General Ziauddin. Ziauddin, whom Sharif had newly replaced Musharraf with as head of the army, moved the CIA-trained commandos to Islamabad to protect himself and Sharif. But, according to accounts later circulated by the CIA, the commandos could see that Pakistan's army had turned against Sharif, and they melted away (headed for the hills, as a US official later put it). The Pakistani Tenth Corps detained Sharif and his allies. Musharraf rewarded Mahmoud Ahmad for his help by making him head of the ISI.
(Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edn), pp.457, 481, 483)
The Core Hijackers: Selection and Initial Training
In 1999 "Bin Ladin ... selected four individuals", the Saudi Arabians Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and the Yemenis "Khallad" and Abu Bara, to train as suicide pilots. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had obtained US visas in April 1999 on their own initiative. The two Yemenis were unable to obtain visas, however (KSM then earmarked them for a projected south-east Asia branch of the planes operation).
"In the fall of 1999, the four operatives selected by Bin Ladin for the planes operation were chosen to attend an elite training course at al Qaeda's Mes Aynak camp in Afghanistan." The commando course was especially rigorous, and "focused on physical fitness, firearms, close quarters combat and shooting from a motorcycle".
After completing this course al-Hazmi, Khallad and Abu Bara moved in early December 1999 to Karachi, Pakistan. Here Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) taught them basic English, how to read flight timetables and phone books (copies included those for San Diego and Long Beach, California), and to play flight-simulator computer games.
Al-Mihdhar did not join them, but in early January 2000 travelled from Yemen to the Qaeda conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was joined by the other three.
On his way to Karachi from Afghanistan, al-Hazmi had spent a night at a safe-house in Quetta, where "an Egyptian named Mohamed Atta simultaneously stayed on his way to Afghanistan for jihad training". The Qaeda leadership substituted Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (originally from the United Arab Emirates) for the two Yemenis who had failed to obtain US visas. Their companions Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi Binalshibh also joined the conspiracy (but Binalshibh, himself a Yemeni, was subsequently unable to obtain a US entry visa).
(9/11 Commission Report, chapter 5, pp.155-8, 161, 168 [HTML version]. Based on "intelligence interrogations" of KSM. Ibid, Notes, p.492, note 41 [HTML version])
The 9/11 Commission's account seems to conflict with earlier media reports. These placed al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in San Diego in November 1999, when they moved into a ground-floor apartment at the Parkwood Apartments. Omar al-Bayoumi, a figure in the local Islamic community, drove them there from Los Angeles Airport and paid their first month or two's rent. (Amy Goldstein, "Hijackers Led Core Group", Washington Post, 30 Sept. 2001, p.A01; Goldstein et al, "Hijackers Found Welcome Mat on West Coast", Washington Post, 29 Dec. 2001, p.A01; 9/11 Commission, "Appendix A: The Financing of the 9/11 Plot", pp.138-9)
Omar Saeed Sheikh: The Hijackers' Financier
In December 1999, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Kashmiri terrorist-kidnapper, and later financier of the "9/11 hijackers", was released from an Indian jail, after terrorists, apparently "al-Qaeda", hijacked an Indian airliner and held 155 passengers hostage against his release at Kandahar, Afghanistan. "Saeed stayed at a Kandahar guesthouse for several days, conferring with Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar and Osama bin Laden. An ISI colonel then escorted him to a safe house in Pakistan.
Saeed, the son of a wealthy Pakistani immigrant into the UK, became involved with al-Qaeda and the ISI during the 1990s. In 1999, according to the London Times, British intelligence supposedly offered him an amnesty and the chance to live in London a free man if he would reveal his links to al-Qaeda, but Saeed refused. Nevertheless, "There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA ...". In the two years before 9/11, Saeed lived "openly and opulently" in Lahore, Pakistan, and was able to visit Britain several times.
(Paul Thompson "Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh" (but now sadly lacking its photos), Center for Cooperative Research. Thompson's references are almost entirely mainstream media.)
Saeed Sheikh is, in many ways, mirrored by "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ("KSM"), to the extent that one wonders if the latter has been used as a fictionalized form of the former. Exposed in the media as the financier of Mohammed Atta and the other "9/11 hijackers", Saeed was later superseded by KSM as "financier" (of similar sums of money). Saeed was also said to have helped train the "hijackers", a role subsequently re-attributed to KSM. And, at first said to be behind the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl (the investigative journalist who went to Pakistan to investigate terrorist links) Saeed was once again superseded by KSM as the kidnap/murder "mastermind".
(See my "Omar Saeed Sheikh � Khalid Sheikh Mohammed", and Thompson, "... The Many Faces ...".)
Plans Unfolding, 1999�9/11
Beginning in September 1999 the CTC picked up multiple signs that bin Laden had set in motion major terrorist attacks for the turn of the year. "Tenet ... forecast between ten and fifteen terrorist attacks around the millenium." He told the White House, "we must assume that several of these attacks will be in the U.S." The CIA set in motion the "largest [intelligence] collection and disruption activity in the history of mankind", as Cofer Black later put it. There were no successful attacks at this time.
George Tenet's exhortations about bin Laden cascaded through the CIA. It was rare for the Director of Central Intelligence to personally invast himself in a single counterterrorist mission, as Tenet had done. The result during 1999 and early 2000 was a surge of recruitments of unilateral agents who could operate or travel in Afghanistan. It was the largest CIA drive for unilateral Afghan agents since the late years of the anti-Soviet war. ...
"By 9/11, a map would show that these collection programs and human networks were in place in such numbers as to nearly cover Afghanistan", Tenet testified to the Congressional Joint Inquiry in 2002.
(Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2005 edn), pp.485, 495-6, and p.654 note 7.)
Military Intelligence Operation Able Danger "Identified Atta Qaeda Cell in Brooklyn", Winter 1999-2000
This story emerged in August 2005. It was initially put forward by Curt Weldon, a Republican congressman and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. The story was first published in Government Security News.
Able Danger, a classified military intelligence group/operation, was set up in October 1999 "to identify potential al-Qaida operatives for U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM]". The group had a core of 10 staffers stationed at SOCOM headquarters (in Tampa, Florida), and was headed by Navy Captain Scott Philpott. (Robert Burns, Associated Press, "Pentagon finds More Who Recall Atta Intel", Washington Post online, 2 Sept. 2005) Within the next few months Able Danger identified about 60 suspects, in the US and abroad.
According to Weldon, Able Danger found a possible Qaeda cell in the United States consisting of Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar [al-Mihdhar], and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Able Danger codenamed the potential cell "Brooklyn", the New York City district where it discovered them. Philpott, speaking through Weldon, said Able Danger had identified Atta by Jan.-Feb. 2000. (Jacob Goodwin, "Did DoD lawyers blow the chance to nab Atta?", Government Security News [8 Aug. 2005]; Kimberley Hefling, Associated Press writer, "Congressman: Defense Knew 9/11 Hijackers", San Francisco Chronicle online, 9 Aug. 2005; Philip Shenon, "Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks", New York Times, 23 Aug. 2005, reproduced on 9/11 CitizensWatch) (After 9/11, Atta and al-Shehhi were named by the FBI as the pilots of the planes that struck the north and south towers respectively of the World Trade Center; al-Mihdhar, known as one of the six organizers of the attacks, was "on the flight that hit the Pentagon", as was al-Hazmi.)
According to conventional wisdom, from 1993 to June 2000 Atta lived in Hamburg, Germany. In 1999 he was joined from Bonn by al-Shehhi, when they set up the "Hamburg cell". In the winter of 1999-2000 they paid a visit to a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. (Immediately afterwards, they reported their passports stolen.) "Starting in 2000, the CIA placed Atta under surveillance in Germany."
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, having attended the January 2000 Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, entered (or re-entered) the US via Los Angeles. "They were identified by the CIA, but were not put on the terrorist watch list that is shared with other agencies."
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Atta, Shehhi and Hazmi were selected by the Qaeda leadership in December 1999 to train for and carry out the "planes operation". Osama bin Laden chose Atta to lead the group (which also included Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi Binalshibh). (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 5, pp.157-8, 166 [HTML version] This "information" is derived from intelligence interrogations of supposed Qaeda plot members captured after 9/11. It should be noted that such people are held outside of the law, otherwise incommunicado, and in dubious conditions. (Cf. chapter 5, p.146. [HTML version] However, as seems so often the case, the "intelligence" tales may indeed be a mirror of reality.)) Able Danger thus had remarkably rapid knowledge of the group.
Major Anthony Shaffer was the liaison officer between Able Danger and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In a subsequent lengthy interview with Government Security News, Shaffer revealed that Able Danger discovered "five cells, one ... in the United States". (The interviewer says this, and Shaffer concurs. A "Brooklyn cell" is not mentioned; however Weldon has since confirmed that Able Danger identified "five Qaeda cells", including the "Brooklyn cell".) Shaffer makes the unclear statement that "We found two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta". (He doesn't say whether one was the US cell.) Shaffer twice refers to Able Danger itself as a "cell", during the course of his long interview.
It is a remarkable claim that (out of the subsequently purported "tens of thousands" of Qaeda affiliates [Cf. 9/11 Comm. Rept., chapter 2, p.67 [HTML version]] Able Danger was able to pinpoint "two of the three cells which conducted 9/11" (and not very many other people). (However, Shaffer's statement is unclear, and for all we can tell, Able Danger found all of the "9/11 cells".) Also notable is the fact that Shaffer speaks as if the "9/11 cells" were already formed by the winter of 1999-2000. This however conflicts with Weldon's description of the "Brooklyn cell", whose personnel cut across the "actual hijack teams" of 9/11.
In his interview, Shaffer insisted that Able Danger was a planning operation, not an intelligence-gathering one; "Once these [60-odd suspects] had emerged out of the data crunching, there was an interest to try to confirm or refute their linkage to Al Qaeda, and then do operations to further exploit them." "Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision-makers options for taking out al-Qaeda targets", he previously remarked (speaking anonymously at the time: "Pentagon team spotted Sept. 11 leader a year before attacks", Telegraph, 10 Aug. 2005).
In early 2000 Able Danger drew up a chart with the identities of the approximately 60 Qaeda suspects, including the "Brooklyn cell". The chart was presented to SOCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, in the summer of that year.
In September 2000 Able Danger recommended that the information on the "Brooklyn cell" be passed on to the FBI, but "Pentagon lawyers ["working for Special Ops"] rejected the suggestion because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement". (Kimberley Hefling comments that this statement doesn't seem to make sense, because Atta et al were in the USA on visas; they did not have permanent-resident status.)
Shaffer told The New York Times that lawyers associated with SOCOM "did not want the information circulated because it would reveal the existence of the secret military intelligence project and lead to criticism that the military was collecting information on the American people". But Cmdr. Chope (of the Center for Special Operations at SOCOM), commenting in September 2005, denied that military lawyers had blocked information sharing.
Able Danger went out of existence when the planning effort was finished in January 2001, Chope also said. (Robert Burns, Associated Press, "Pentagon Finds More Who Recall Atta Intel", Washington Post, 2 Sept. 2005, 7am [EDT])
The winding-up of Able Danger dovetails in time with the new Bush administration's initiation of its "ambitious plan to eliminate al-Qaeda". (See the following article.)
Source articles for Able Danger
(in date order)
Jacob Goodwin, "Did DoD lawyers blow the chance to nab Atta?", Government Security News (8 Aug. 2005)
Kimberley Hefling, Associated Press writer, "Congressman: Defense Knew 9/11 Hijackers", San Francisco Chronicle online, 9 Aug. 2005
Philip Shenon, Douglas Jehl, New York Times, "9/11 panel members call for new probe", San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Aug. 2005
Patrick Martin, "... Intelligence officer goes public in Able Danger expos�", World Socialist Web Site, News, 19 Aug. 2005
Jacob Goodwin, "Inside Able Danger � The Secret Birth, Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death of a U.S. Military Intelligence Program", Government Security News (23-24 Aug. 2005)
� Includes the lengthy interview with Anthony Shaffer
Shaun Waterman, UPI, "Congressman doubts accounts ...", World Peace Herald, 8 Sept. 2005
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring", Washington Times, 30 Sept. 2005
� Weldon confirms Able Danger identified 5 Qaeda cells including the "Brooklyn cell"
See also:-
"Complete 911 Timeline: Able Danger program", The Center for Cooperative Research
"Able Danger", Wikipedia
Devlin Barrett, Associated Press, "Sept. 11 commission rejects Atta claim", The Miami Herald, 14 Sept. 2005
"Sources: Pentagon wants 'able danger' hearings closed", Fox News, 16 Sept. 2005
"Press Conference of Rep Curt Weldon: 9/11 Commission and Operation 'Able Danger'", Congressional Quarterly, reproduced by Centre for Research on Globalization, 17 Sept. 2005
� transcript (lengthy) of Weldon's press conference
Philip Shenon, "Pentagon Bars Military Officers and Analysts From Testifying", New York Times, 21 Sept. 2005
"'Able Danger' Hearings", transcript, Online Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Pod Broadcasting System, 21 Sept. 2005
William Bender, "[Pentagon] Report: Curt [Weldon] wrong about Able Danger", DelcoTimes.com, 22 Sept. 2006
The CIA and the Predator Drone (2000-2001)
By the late spring of 2000, Richard Clarke and his White House counterterrorism group had grown frustrated by the quality of intelligence reporting on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts [in Afghanistan]. ... Clarke and his aides brainstormed for new ideas. Could they find a way to place a beacon on one of bin Laden's aircraft so they could track the plane with bin Laden aboard and shoot it down in flight? ...
Several years later, a number of people involved in these highly classified discussions claimed credit for the idea of sending Predator reconnaissance drones to Afghanistan to search for bin Laden. Despite the confusion of competing recollections, it seems clear, in a general sense, that Clarke, [Admiral Scott] Fry [head of operations at the Joints Chiefs of Staff], [Samuel "Sandy"] Berger [Clinton's National Security Adviser], [Charlie] Allen [in charge of intelligence-collection at the CIA], [Cofer] Black [head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center], and officers in the CIA's bin Laden unit jointly conspired, amid persistent squabbling amongst themselves, to launch the Predator experiments.
(Steve Coll, Ghost Wars [Penguin, 2005 edition], pp.526-7)
In 2000, Cofer Black advocated arming the Predator with an air-to-ground missile to hit bin Laden, but there were legal fears that such a device would violate a nuclear treaty ...
Meanwhile, Joint-Stars, the USAF's airborne sensor and command system, had reduced the satellite-timelag for rapid-response remote sensing. The Predator, using this system, had been field-tested in the Kosovo war in 1999. "Improvements in communications systems now made it possible, at least in theory, to fly the drone remotely from great distances. ...
The drone itself could be housed and recovered at hangars on a remote Uzbek airfield, [where the US had a secret agreement to do so,] but it would be flown with a joystick propped on a table inside a CIA operations center in Virginia. ... The CIA would complete its mission without its pilots or commanding officers ever leaving the Virginia suburbs [of Washington; my emphasis].
The bin Laden unit drew up maps and plans for fifteen Predator flights, each lasting just under twenty-four hours. ... [The Predator first flew over Afghanistan on 7 September. (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 6, p.189 [HTML version])]
A large video screen loomed in the middle of the CIA's makeshift flight operations center. Air Force drone pilots and CIA officers from the Counterterrorist Center and the bin Laden unit huddled in the darkened room in the [CIA's] Langley campus from midnight to dawn ...
By mid-October, deteriorating weather conditions prompted the White House and the Counterterrorist Center to call a halt to operations. "The Afghan mission had always been designed as a finite experiment. ... During the winter hiatus Black and others at the CIA hoped the lawyers would resolve the treaty questions that had postponed testing of an armed version of the Predator. Having seen the images of bin Laden ... Black was now a vocal advocate of fixing missiles to the drone. ..."
(Coll, Ghost Wars [Penguin, 2005 edn], pp.530-4)
Thus, one year before 9/11, the CIA had obtained a facility for remote-controlling aircraft in real time. Was this its cover for flying aircraft into buildings on 9/11?
Black, and the bin Laden unit chief "Richard", continued to press for an armed Predator during 2001. One was successfully tested in Nevada in June that year. (Coll, Ghost Wars, pp.548-9, 581; Frank Freeman, "The Lead-Up to 9/11")
An October Surprise?
"Intelligence evidence" suggests that bin Laden originally wanted the kamikaze planes operation executed as a response to then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's provocative Likud-party march on al-Qods/Temple Mount, the Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews, in September 2000. This was the event that sparked off the second intifada, or Palestinian stone-throwing "uprising". (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 7, p.250 [HTML version]; based on "intelligence reports", post-9/11 interrogations of "9/11 coordinator" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.) (The planes operation was to be postponed twice more, in May and July 2001, because "the hijack teams weren't ready". [See "The Lead-Up to 9/11".])
The attack on the USS Cole apparently came out of the blue. ... "With just slightly more skilled execution, CIA analysts later concluded, the bombers would have killed three hundred and sent the destroyer to the bottom." (Coll, Ghost Wars, 2005 Penguin edn, p.537)
A successful 9/11-style operation in October 2000 would presumably have caused a landslide for Bush and the Republicans in the November elections. Even the "poor-man's substitute", the successful sinking of a US battleship with 300 fatalities, would have been likely to produce a (un)healthy) majority for them. As it was, Bush scraped in in a controversial election ...
However Kie Fallis at the DIA, from "data mining and analysis", "predicted" in early autumn 2000 a Qaeda attack by an explosives-laden small boat against a US warship. And Able Danger, uncovered data of increase Qaeda "activity" in Aden Harbour, Yemen. Able Danger elevated Yemen "to be one of the top three hot spots for al-Qaeda in the entire world" and, allegedly days before the Cole attack, warned the Pentagon and administration of the danger.
But the "warnings" were "ignored" ....
(9/11 Timeline for Able Danger, Center For Cooperative Research)