Intelligence: March 2004 Archives

March 30, 2004

Weary special forces quit for security jobs

Telegraph | News | Weary special forces quit for security jobs

By David Rennie in Washington and Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 31/03/2004)

Exhausted American and British special forces troopers, the West's front line in the war on terrorism, are resigning in record numbers and taking highly-paid jobs as private security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senior US commanders are so alarmed that they have held emergency meetings to agree new deals on pay and conditions for the men.

Men from the SAS in Britain and Australia and America's Delta Force are said to be weary after almost 30 months of nearly continuous service since the September 11 attacks.

Gen Bryan "Doug" Brown, head of the US special operations command, summoned his commanders to Washington for a crisis meeting last week. He told the Senate armed services committee that the retention of special forces had become "a big issue".

US special forces troopers earn up to �30,000 but are being offered packages of �60,000 to �120,000 to work in combat zones.

For SAS soldiers earning �250 a week in Iraq, the lure of up to �1,000 a week is easily understood. The most experienced men in the most dangerous jobs are reported to be making �5,000 a week.

The manning crisis comes as Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, pushes the military to use special forces more and more widely, favouring them over conventional forces, for their speed, small scale and ability to operate in complete secrecy with only minimal legal oversight.

Gen David Grange, a retired army Ranger, Green Beret and member of Delta Force - the elite, top-secret unit modelled on the SAS - told The Telegraph yesterday that family pressures were also taking their toll on his former colleagues.

"In my Vietnam platoon two people were married. Now it's maybe 60 per cent. Even if special forces are wild characters, with high divorce rates, there's still enormous pressure from families. They've been away more or less continuously since September 11 and wives are asking, 'Where the hell are you?' "

The war on terrorism has placed unprecedented strains on special forces. Gen Grange said: "The US army alone has people in 120 countries.

"A lot of those people are special forces - counter-drug, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism - as well as our own insertions."

The US government is also increasingly privatising its most sensitive missions, hiring defence contractors for such tasks as guarding Paul Bremer, the Iraq occupation chief, or Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, or heading overseas to train foreign militaries.

Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors, a study of such privatisation, said the US defence department was the largest client for such private security contractors, paying companies large sums to supply them with former special forces whose training was paid for by US taxpayers.

Gen Grange said special bonuses were now being paid to special forces for overseas deployment and hazardous duty. But money was never the key factor for many of his comrades, he said. "In the private sector you don't have the brotherhood or the sense of duty and country."

Though many of Gen Grange's missions remain secret, he conceded that special operations offered greater excitement than private work.

"Going out to destroy something or capture or kill someone - those have to be government or military missions unless you're a mercenary or doing something illegal."

Green Berets and other special forces receive 18 months' training in combat and survival skills, including airborne and amphibious warfare, and are also required to learn at least one foreign language. They may apply only after six to eight years in the military. Army Rangers are also counted as special forces, specialising in seizing airfields and ports.

The precise number of US special forces is shrouded in secrecy, though an overall figure of between 49,000 and 66,000 is quoted for Special Operations Command.

However, Jennifer Kibbe, an intelligence specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said such large numbers included administrative and support personnel. "What they call 'trigger pullers' is more in the vein of 10,000," she said.

British officials say more than 300 soldiers have left the armed forces in the past six months to take up lucrative jobs with private companies such as Olive Security, Armour Security, Global and USDID. The problem goes beyond elite special forces. There are more than 160 British former paratroopers working in Baghdad, where the Coalition Provisional Authority has hired a battalion of Fijian soldiers to guard money deliveries to banks.

More than 500 former Gurkhas, working for Global Logistics Security, are guarding buildings for the CPA.

March 30, 2004 at 11:18 PM in SAS | Permalink | TrackBack (170) | Top of page | Blog Home

Islamic bomb attack foiled by raids in the heart of suburbia

Telegraph | News | Islamic bomb attack foiled by raids in the heart of suburbia

By John Steele, Home Affairs Correspondent
(Filed: 31/03/2004)

A suspected Islamic plot to launch a huge bomb attack in Britain was disrupted yesterday in one of the country's biggest anti-terrorist operations involving 700 police officers from five forces.
More than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, a basic ingredient of home-made explosives, was discovered at dawn in a self-storage depot in the west London suburb of Hanwell.

At the same time eight men aged between 17 and 32 were arrested in a series of raids in London, Sussex, Surrey, Luton and the Thames Valley. All are British-born citizens of Pakistani descent.

Families peered from behind their curtains as police vehicles blocked normally quiet streets and dozens of officers poured out.

Residents were shocked when they realised that people they knew and chatted to had been arrested.

Hanwell is close to Heathrow airport and one of the suspects was said to work for LSG Sky Chefs, a Gatwick-based company supplying airline food. But there was believed to be no evidence that airports were the intended targets.

The men were detained under a section of the Terrorism Act 2000 that refers to "being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism".

Last night, as searches continued at 24 locations, mainly houses, they were were being questioned at Paddington Green high security police station in west London, where they can be held for up to 14 days.

Click to enlarge
The operation was carried out a fortnight after Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said that an attack in Britain by al-Qa'eda or a linked group was inevitable. He said that soft targets, such as pubs and clubs, were particularly at risk.

The raids followed a "protracted" investigation by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch and MI5 and was the largest MI5 operation since the height of the IRA mainland bombing campaigns.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said: "The fact that such action was felt necessary is a timely reminder that the United Kingdom and its interests abroad remain a target."

The ammonium nitrate was found in a 6ft high plastic sack in the Access self-storage warehouse in Boston Road, Hanwell, near Boston Manor Tube station.

After a thorough search of the warehouse, police removed the fertiliser in case it became unstable and to reassure residents who feared for their safety.

Ammonium nitrate has been used both by the Provisional IRA and Islamic terrorist groups linked to al-Qa'eda. Similar fertiliser was a major ingredient, using fuel as an accelerant, in the Islamic bombs that killed more than 200 people in Bali in 2002.

It was also used in bombings against British targets in Istanbul last year.

The amount found at Hanwell is similar to that used by the IRA in lorry bombs which caused death and destruction in London's Docklands and Manchester in the mid-1990s.

Supplies of ammonium nitrate are not legally controlled in mainland Britain, as they are in Northern Ireland - something that worries security chiefs.

Initial searches did not uncover evidence to point to a potential target for any bomb.

Nor, it is understood, have officers found weapons or other components needed to construct a vehicle bomb, including detonators, small amounts of high explosive as a booster and large amounts of sugar, which is combined with fertiliser to produce an explosive mixture.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the anti-terrorist branch, told a press conference that officers from the Metropolitan, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex and Thames Valley forces searched residential and business premises in Uxbridge, Ilford and Colindale in London, Crawley, Slough, Luton, Horley and Reading.

"As part of the same operation we have recovered more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser from a self-storage facility.

"Part of the investigation will focus on the purchase, storage and intended use of that material."

Two of the suspects were arrested in Uxbridge, west London; one each in Ilford, east London, at Horley in Surrey, and Slough, Berks; and three were detained at Crawley in West Sussex.

Mr Clarke said the operation was not linked to Irish terrorism or the recent attack on trains in Madrid that killed 190 people.

MI5 and police have been concerned for some time about young Muslims who travelled to Afghanistan under the Taliban to join training camps.

However, they have had to reshape their profile of potential Islamic terrorists to reflect the emergence of a generation of young, British-born Muslims, whose views have been radicalised by their opposition to the war in Iraq and concerns about conflicts in Kashmir and elsewhere.

Mr Clarke said: "As we have said on many occasions in the past, we in the police service know that the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community are law abiding and completely reject all forms of violence."

Police met Muslim community leaders yesterday "to address any concerns they may have".

March 30, 2004 at 11:10 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (126) | Top of page | Blog Home

Muslim leaders urge imams to keep watch for deadly fanatics

Times Online - Britain

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

BRITAIN’S leading Muslim organisation is today writing to every mosque in the country asking imams and other community leaders to be on the lookout for possible terrorists in their midst.

The Muslim Council of Britain wants Muslims to inform police if they have grounds to suspect illegal activity in their mosques or communities.

The appeal to the country�s two million-plus adherents of Islam is an attempt to project an image of Islam as antiviolence and of Muslims as law-abiding British citizens, as the great majority are.

There is concern at the growing use of the term �Islamic terrorist�, especially since the Madrid bombings.

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the council, said: �There is a letter going to mosques across the country bringing to their attention the concern that has been expressed of an immediate attack taking place in the UK.

�It is important that we exercise vigilance in terms of fulfilling our duty. If there is anything we become aware of, it is our duty to ensure that this is reported immediately to the police. We will not tolerate terrorism.�

The letter was planned before yesterday�s arrests but has been rewritten to take the latest developments into account.

Sent to the imams, chairmen and secretaries of more than 1,000 mosques, the letter points out that, according to the Koran, the murder of one individual is �tantamount to murdering entire humanity�. It says: �Islam categorically forbids violence and killing of innocents, let alone indulging in violence which can cause death and mayhem.�

The Muslim Council is urging imams to provide the �correct Islamic guidance� to their communities, �especially to our youth, as to their obligation to maintain the peace and security of our country�. It calls for the �utmost vigilance� against �mischievous or criminal elements� attempting to infiltrate the community.

The council calls for close liaison with the local police and urges the �fullest co-operation� to help the police to deal with any terrorist threat.

The plea to Britain�s Muslims is part of a long-term plan to help the Muslim community to cope in a climate of increasing Islamophobia.

Further details of the plan are expected to be announced this evening at the Muslim News Awards for Excellence, in London. Mr Sacranie said a meeting will be called of all the Muslim leadership in the country to consider what action may be taken to promote the message that Islam has �nothing to do with terrorism� and �condemns violence�.

Other leading Muslims issued a warning yesterday that the police raids could provoke a backlash from the community. Ahmed Versi, editor of The Muslim News, said: �The police have to be more sensitive to make sure they have proper evidence before they detain anyone. Of course we are not against targeting terrorists.�

March 30, 2004 at 11:08 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home

The terrorist's weapon of mass destruction

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent

LORRY bombs loaded with home-made explosive have become the chosen weapon of mass destruction for terrorists from al-Qaeda to the Provisional IRA and far-right American extremists.

The half ton of ammonium nitrate uncovered yesterday in a storage centre in West London could have been converted with fuel oil and a detonation charge into a device capable of killing hundred

Bombs of a similar size detonated by the Provisional IRA destroyed the Arndale Centre in Manchester at a cost of nearly �1 billion, and killed two men in South Quay, East London, in 1996, creating damage costing �170 million.

Yet ammonium nitrate, used routinely for military explosive manufacture, can be found in the potting shed of every gardener as an ingredient of general fertilisers.

Farmers use it as a main source of nitrogen to improve their land. The chemical is usually sold in half-tonne consignments and the haul found in Hanwell yesterday would have cost only about �65, according to dealers.

But ammonium nitrate is also used in the manufacture of explosives and is a cheap and readily available bomb-making ingredient.

Mike Yardley, a former army officer and security expert, said: �Terrorists and militants use the ammonium nitrate because it�s incredibly stable to store. The risk of terrorists injuring themselves whilst handling ammonium nitrate is dramatically reduced compared to other explosives.�

Garth Whitty, a former weapons inspector and now head of the Homeland Security department of the Royal United Services Institute, said that ammonium nitrate was not effective in isolation. �But it�s very easy to make a bomb with it, provided you know what you�re doing,� he said.

Last year al-Qaeda and its allies used ammonium nitrate in attacks on three compounds housing foreigners in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 29.

It was also used for the suicide bomb attacks on the British Consulate and a bank in Istanbul which killed 160, including the British Consul.

But most countries, including the US and Australia, do not regulate the sale of fertiliser-grade ammonium nitrate. In the EU fertiliser-grade ammonium nitrate is manufactured to higher standards than the explosive grade with large, dense granules to prevent them absorbing fuel oil. Stabilisers are sometimes added to prevent the granules breaking down, and fertilisers may be marked so any bomb can be traced to its source.

In Britain suppliers are supposed to inform the authorities of any irregular or sudden inquiries about buying large amounts. But police say that the system is nowhere near tight enough and are planning to lobby for more controls.

March 30, 2004 at 11:07 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (20) | Top of page | Blog Home

How surveillance ensnared enemy within

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory
Operation Crevice led to anti-terrorist raids across London's suburbs.

ANTI-TERRORIST officers had nervously kept their secret for weeks: how close Britain was to a devastating bomb attack. Only a handful of senior figures were trusted with the knowledge that a group of young Britons from half a dozen suburbs around London were finalising their plans to strike.

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Most were living quietly with their parents or their young families. Bemused neighbours of the men said that that they had lived at the same addresses for years and had jobs such as taxi drivers and builders; one was an airport caterer. Another of the teenagers arrested yesterday was a student with ambitions to go to university.

All the young men were described as models of suburban respectability. But counterterrorist officers and MI5 suspected otherwise.

�This was truly the enemy within,� said one senior figure involved in what was named Operation Crevice. �This is proof that it�s not a question of if, it�s the when and the where.�

Even as leading politicians argued on television whether the public should be scared by repeated warnings from police and ministers about the inevitability of a terrorist strike, the plot was fast taking shape.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, was informed about it and gave permission for the telephones of some of the suspects to be tapped.

While all the speculation in recent days has been of possible British links to the train bombings in Madrid, the intelligence agencies have been concentrating on a number of terraced houses in locations such as Crawley, Slough and Ilford.

Undercover teams had been closely shadowing some of those arrested yesterday and are reported to have linked them to others in the group through telephone calls and e-mails.

At this stage, the counterterrorist teams said they did not know how any attack was to be carried out. Most of the men picked up yesterday were considered too young to have fought in Afghanistan or to have been schooled in bomb-making at al-Qaeda training camps. Police believe that they were recruited in Britain. Although most of them are of Pakistani origin, all were born in Britain or have spent most of their lives here.

The focus of the inquiry suddenly changed with a string of intercepted telephone calls inquiring about renting space in storage warehouses. These anonymous, prefabricated buildings are the perfect hiding place. They are large enough to store vehicles and, as witnessed yesterday, a builder�s sack full of industrial- strength fertiliser, without anybody paying much attention.

There are a number of Asian-owned building firms that use the Access storage centre in Hanwell where the fertiliser was found, so the sight of young men lugging a 6ft bag of what looked like builders� materials was not out of the ordinary.

The dilemma for the security authorities was when to move in. Operation Crevice differed from previous terrorist surveillance operations in that the men being watched were spread so widely around London and the Home Counties.

Detectives were understandably guarded about why they chose yesterday to make their move. One suggestion is that they intercepted a telephone call which indicated that the half tonne of fertiliser was about to be moved.

In its industrial packaging in the Access storage unit, it was no danger to anyone. Those planning to fashion it into a bomb needed somewhere to mix the fertiliser with fuel oil and the explosive charge, then pack it into a van or lorry to deliver it to the intended destination.

One of the many addresses reported to have been searched yesterday was a warehouse in Slough, half an hour�s drive from where the fertiliser was stored. Police declined to say if it was from here that they suspected the bombmaker was to operate.

After intense discussions, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, and Assistant Commissioner David Veness, Scotland Yard�s most experienced terrorist expert, chose Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, for the early-morning raids. They had to co-ordinate in secret with five separate forces and the intelligence agencies for the biggest raid seen in Britain since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The 700 or so officers involved were told to gather before dawn at various assembly points around the Home Counties, where they were briefed as to their targets. Most of those involved were not told details of a possible bombing plot. The first raids began at 4.30am and by the end of the morning police and forensic science teams had moved in to 24 premises. Seven of those were in Crawley. One of the properties was in Juniper Close, where the homeowner was said by neighbours to work for a catering firm which prepares inflight meals for airlines at Gatwick airport. The man, of Pakistani origin, was said to live there with two sons and a daughter.

Another of the men taken into custody was arrested at the Holiday Inn at Gatwick, where police sealed off two rooms on the fourth floor while they were searched by explosives experts.

Curious onlookers were kept away from two neat homes in Gossops Green, where one of the neighbours, Martyn Tidd, 46, said that the father and sons who lived there all worked for a minicab firm which operated from Gatwick. Six more addresses raided were in the Bury Park area of Luton.

Bystanders in Overstone Road watched as an elderly Asian couple who had lived in the street for about 15 years were led away by police. Officers also searched a property across the road that the couple were said to have bought for their married daughter. A middle-aged woman and a man in his 20s left the house carrying an overnight bag as police made it clear that none of them had been arrested.

Anthony Pisano was leaving for work when he saw police in riot gear bursting into a flat near his home in Hencroft Street South, Slough, not far from Heathrow.

He could not remember the name of the tall, slightly built man of North African origin who lived in the converted property, but Dr Pisano described him as being in his late 20s.

On the few occasions that the pair chatted, the man had apologised for the noise he was making but explained that he was renovating the flat where he lived with his sister.

Near by, in Warrington Avenue, Slough, neighbours watched as forensic science teams investigated a white, pebble-dashed, semi-detached house.

When Joey Baynham, 19, looked through his bedroom window in Grovelands Road, Reading, and saw police break down the door of a house, he assumed that it was a drugs raid. An Irish woman who lived there, and who is thought to work at a school in the area, did not appear to be at home. Neighbours said she had a young lodger of Pakistani origin staying there.

Senior officers made clear last night this was just the first phase of Operation Crevice. Searches will continue today at all the properties that were raided.

Officers admited that they could not be certain that others involved in any plot may still have access to other homemade explosives. Above all, they do not yet know the targets the men may have had in mind.

March 30, 2004 at 11:03 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (165) | Top of page | Blog Home

The truck bombers of suburbia

Times Online - Britain

By Stewart Tendler and Daniel McGrory

Eight young British Muslims questioned

Explosives found in 27 raids around London

A PLOT by al-Qaeda supporters to set off a massive lorry bomb was foiled yesterday after the biggest counterterrorist operation seen in Britain since September 11.

MI5 agents and anti-terrorist officers were questioning eight young Britons last night after the discovery of the ingredients for a half-tonne fertiliser bomb in a storage unit in West London. The bomb would have been five times the size of the devices used in the al-Qaeda attack on Bali, which claimed more than 200 lives.

Seven of the men arrested are 22 and under, including a 17-year-old student who was seized at an address in Slough. The other man is 32 years old.

The police, who believe an al-Qaeda inspired operation is by far the most likely explanation for the intended attack, fear that terrorists were intending to kill hundreds of civilians with an attack on a �soft target� such as a shopping centre. Only last week Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that terrorists would target crowded bars, nightclubs, pubs and shopping centres in an attempt to cause mass casualties. He was criticised by David Blunkett for saying that an attack was �inevitable�.

Sir John did not mention that MI5 and five forces were involved in Operation Crevice, which culminated in yesterday�s arrests.

Mr Blunkett praised what he called a first-class police and security operation. In a statement yesterday, he said: �I would like to record the Government�s thanks to all those from the police and security services who work so tirelessly and bravely on our behalf.�

At dawn yesterday 700 officers raided 24 homes and businesses across London and the South East. Police marksmen were on standby as arrest teams and search units raided properties in Ilford, East London, and Uxbridge, Colindale and Hanwell in West London. Other addresses around the M25 were in Luton, Crawley in West Sussex, Horley in Surrey, Slough and Reading. Experts say that the explosive was the same type used by al-Qaeda sympathisers last November in their attacks against targets, including the British Consulate, in Istanbul. Police did not identify the suspected target for the bombers here, but a security source said they are confident that they have the ringleader of this plot among those being held in custody.

With the Easter holidays approaching, security will be tight at many civilian targets including football grounds and shopping centres. Security arrangements for this weekend�s Grand National and other sporting events are certain to be reviewed.

All those in custody in the high-security wing at Paddington Green police station are British citizens, and the majority are of Pakistani origin. The biggest discovery in the raids was at the Access storage company in Boston Road, Hanwell, where police found the ammonium nitrate. The fertiliser could easily have been bought on the internet and would have cost about �60.

The supplier of the chemicals has been traced but detectives are concerned at the lack of effective control on the sale of a chemical that is used to make military explosive.

This same mixture has been used regularly by al-Qaeda groups since their 1998 lorry bomb attacks on two US embassies in East Africa and in the bombings of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia, where Western workers live.

The storage unit is a short drive from Heathrow, and at least three of those arrested live close to Gatwick and addresses were raided near Luton airport. Police do not believe that any of the three airports were the intended target.

The man leading yesterday�s operation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, took the unusual step of making a public statement within a few hours of the arrests in an attempt to calm public concerns.

He said the operation was part of �continuing and extensive inquiries by police and the Security Service into alleged international terrorist activity and I must stress that the threat from terrorism remains very real. The public must remain watchful and alert.�

More arrests are expected. The police said they were in contact with Muslim leaders in the areas raided to brief them about the reason for the arrests and to assure them that this was not an attack on the Islamic communities living there.

March 30, 2004 at 11:02 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (81) | Top of page | Blog Home

Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?

ABCNEWS.com : Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?

June 21 — Millions saw the horrific images of the World Trade Center attacks, and those who saw them won't forget them. But a New Jersey homemaker saw something that morning that prompted an investigation into five young Israelis and their possible connection to Israeli intelligence.

Maria, who asked us not to use her last name, had a view of the World Trade Center from her New Jersey apartment building. She remembers a neighbor calling her shortly after the first plane hit the towers.
She grabbed her binoculars and watched the destruction unfolding in lower Manhattan. But as she watched the disaster, something else caught her eye.

Maria says she saw three young men kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of her apartment building. "They seemed to be taking a movie," Maria said.

The men were taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background, she said. What struck Maria were the expressions on the men's faces. "They were like happy, you know � They didn't look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange," she said.

She found the behavior so suspicious that she wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police. Before long, the FBI was also on the scene, and a statewide bulletin was issued on the van.

The plate number was traced to a van owned by a company called Urban Moving. Around 4 p.m. on Sept. 11, the van was spotted on a service road off Route 3, near New Jersey's Giants Stadium. A police officer pulled the van over, finding five men, between 22 and 27 years old, in the vehicle. The men were taken out of the van at gunpoint and handcuffed by police.

The arresting officers said they saw a lot that aroused their suspicion about the men. One of the passengers had $4,700 in cash hidden in his sock. Another was carrying two foreign passports. A box cutter was found in the van. But perhaps the biggest surprise for the officers came when the five men identified themselves as Israeli citizens.

�We Are Not Your Problem�

According to the police report, one of the passengers told the officers they had been on the West Side Highway in Manhattan "during the incident" � referring to the World Trade Center attack. The driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers, "We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem." The other passengers were his brother Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari.

When the men were transferred to jail, the case was transferred out of the FBI's Criminal Division, and into the bureau's Foreign Counterintelligence Section, which is responsible for espionage cases, ABCNEWS has learned.

One reason for the shift, sources told ABCNEWS, was that the FBI believed Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.

After the five men were arrested, the FBI got a warrant and searched Urban Moving's Weehawken, N.J., offices.

The FBI searched Urban Moving's offices for several hours, removing boxes of documents and a dozen computer hard drives. The FBI also questioned Urban Moving's owner. His attorney insists that his client answered all of the FBI's questions. But when FBI agents tried to interview him again a few days later, he was gone.

Three months later 2020's cameras photographed the inside of Urban Moving, and it looked as if the business had been shut down in a big hurry. Cell phones were lying around; office phones were still connected; and the property of dozens of clients remained in the warehouse.

The owner had also cleared out of his New Jersey home, put it up for sale and returned with his family to Israel.

�A Scary Situation�

Steven Gordon, the attorney for the five Israeli detainees, acknowledged that his clients' actions on Sept. 11 would easily have aroused suspicions. "You got a group of guys that are taking pictures, on top of a roof, of the World Trade Center. They're speaking in a foreign language. They got two passports on 'em. One's got a wad of cash on him, and they got box cutters. Now that's a scary situation."

But Gordon insisted that his clients were just five young men who had come to America for a vacation, ended up working for a moving company, and were taking pictures of the event.

The five Israelis were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, ostensibly for overstaying their tourist visas and working in the United States illegally. Two weeks after their arrest, an immigration judge ordered them to be deported. But sources told ABCNEWS that FBI and CIA officials in Washington put a hold on the case.

The five men were held in detention for more than two months. Some of them were placed in solitary confinement for 40 days, and some of them were given as many as seven lie-detector tests.

Plenty of Speculation

Since their arrest, plenty of speculation has swirled about the case, and what the five men were doing that morning. Eventually, The Forward, a respected Jewish newspaper in New York, reported the FBI concluded that two of the men were Israeli intelligence operatives.

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of operations for counterterrorism with the CIA who is now a consultant for ABCNEWS, said federal authorities' interest in the case was heightened when some of the men's names were found in a search of a national intelligence database.

Israeli Intelligence Connection?

According to Cannistraro, many people in the U.S. intelligence community believed that some of the men arrested were working for Israeli intelligence. Cannistraro said there was speculation as to whether Urban Moving had been "set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area."

Under this scenario, the alleged spying operation was not aimed against the United States, but at penetrating or monitoring radical fund-raising and support networks in Muslim communities like Paterson, N.J., which was one of the places where several of the hijackers lived in the months prior to Sept. 11.

For the FBI, deciphering the truth from the five Israelis proved to be difficult. One of them, Paul Kurzberg, refused to take a lie-detector test for 10 weeks � then failed it, according to his lawyer. Another of his lawyers told us Kurzberg had been reluctant to take the test because he had once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.

Sources say the Israelis were targeting these fund-raising networks because they were thought to be channeling money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups that are responsible for most of the suicide bombings in Israel. "[The] Israeli government has been very concerned about the activity of radical Islamic groups in the United States that could be a support apparatus to Hamas and Islamic Jihad," Cannistraro said.

The men denied that they had been working for Israeli intelligence out of the New Jersey moving company, and Ram Horvitz, their Israeli attorney, dismissed the allegations as "stupid and ridiculous."

Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, goes even further, asserting the issue was never even discussed with U.S. officials.

"These five men were not involved in any intelligence operation in the United States, and the American intelligence authorities have never raised this issue with us," Regev said. "The story is simply false."

No �Pre-Knowledge�

Despite the denials, sources tell ABCNEWS there is still debate within the FBI over whether or not the young men were spies. Many U.S. government officials still believe that some of them were on a mission for Israeli intelligence. But the FBI told ABCNEWS, "To date, this investigation has not identified anybody who in this country had pre-knowledge of the events of 9/11."

Sources also said that even if the men were spies, there is no evidence to conclude they had advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. The investigation, at the end of the day, after all the polygraphs, all of the field work, all the cross-checking, the intelligence work, concluded that they probably did not have advance knowledge of 9/11," Cannistraro noted.

As to what they were doing on the van, they say they read about the attack on the Internet, couldn't see it from their offices and went to the parking lot for a better view. But no one has been able to find a good explanation for why they may have been smiling with the towers of the World Trade Center burning in the background. Both the lawyers for the young men and the Israeli Embassy chalk it up to immature conduct.

According to ABCNEWS sources, Israeli and U.S. government officials worked out a deal � and after 71 days, the five Israelis were taken out of jail, put on a plane, and deported back home.

While the former detainees refused to answer ABCNEWS' questions about their detention and what they were doing on Sept. 11, several of the detainees discussed their experience in America on an Israeli talk show after their return home.

Said one of the men, denying that they were laughing or happy on the morning of Sept. 11, "The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."

ABCNEWS' Chris Isham, John Miller, Glenn Silber and Chris Vlasto contributed to this report.

March 30, 2004 at 09:52 PM in Israel | Permalink | TrackBack (173) | Top of page | Blog Home

Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 ...

Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 ... - [Sunday Herald]

Were they part of a massive spy ring which shadowed the 9/11 hijackers and knew that al-Qaeda planned a devastating terrorist attack on the USA? Neil Mackay investigates

THERE was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.

Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis � and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA.

Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.

After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: �It�s very good.� Then he corrected himself, adding: �Well, it�s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel from Americans].�

If Israel�s closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond with the world�s only hyperpower and an effective free hand in dealing with the Palestinian terrorists who had been murdering its innocent civilians as the second intifada dragged on throughout 2001.

As she gazed at the burning towers, she noticed a group of men kneeling on the roof of a white van in her parking lot. Here�s her recollection: �They seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know ... they didn�t look shocked to me. I thought it was strange.�

Maria jotted down the van�s registration and called the police. The FBI was alerted and soon there was a statewide all points bulletin put out for the apprehension of the van and its occupants. The cops traced the number, establishing that it belonged to a company called Urban Moving.

Police Chief John Schmidig said: �We got an alert to be on the lookout for a white Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration and writing on the side. Three individuals were seen celebrating in Liberty State Park after the impact. They said three people were jumping up and down.�

In the car was $4700 in cash, a couple of foreign passports and a pair of box cutters � the concealed Stanley Knife-type blades used by the 19 hijackers who�d flown jetliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon just hours before. There were also fresh pictures of the men standing with the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings, like a fan at a pop concert. The driver of the van then told the arresting officers: �We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.�

His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzberg�s brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBI�s Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence Section � the bureau�s anti-espionage squad.

A warrant was issued for a search of the Urban Moving premises in Weehawken in New Jersey. Boxes of papers and computers were removed. The FBI questioned the firm�s Israeli owner, Dominik Otto Suter, but when agents returned to re-interview him a few days later, he was gone. An employee of Urban Moving said his co-workers had laughed about the Manhattan attacks the day they happened. �I was in tears,� the man said. �These guys were joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, �Now America knows what we go through.��

This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11 hijackers � simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them.

After the owner vanished, the offices of Urban Moving looked as if they�d been closed down in a big hurry. Mobile phones were littered about, the office phones were still connected and the property of at least a dozen clients were stacked up in the warehouse. The owner had cleared out his family home in New Jersey and returned to Israel.

Two weeks after their arrest, the Israelis were still in detention, held on immigration charges. Then a judge ruled that they should be deported. But the CIA scuppered the deal and the five remained in custody for another two months. Some went into solitary confinement, all underwent two polygraph tests and at least one underwent up to seven lie detector sessions before they were eventually deported at the end of November 2001. Paul Kurzberg refused to take a lie detector test for 10 weeks, but then failed it. His lawyer said he was reluctant to take the test as he had once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.

Nevertheless, their lawyer, Ram Horvitz, dismissed the allegations as �stupid and ridiculous�. Yet US government sources still maintained that the Israelis were collecting information on the fundraising activities of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mark Regev, of the Israeli embassy in Washington, would have none of that and he said the allegations were �simply false�. The men themselves claimed they�d read about the World Trade Centre attacks on the internet, couldn�t see it from their office and went to the parking lot for a better view. Their lawyers and the embassy say their ghoulish and sinister celebrations as the Twin Towers blazed and thousands died were due to youthful foolishness.

The respected New York Jewish newspaper, The Forward, reported in March 2002, however, that it had received a briefing on the case of the five Israelis from a US official who was regularly updated by law enforcement agencies. This is what he told The Forward: �The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it.� He added that �the conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs�, but the men were released because they �did not know anything about 9/11�.

Back in Israel, several of the men discussed what happened on an Israeli talk show. One of them made this remarkable comment: �The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event.� But how can you document an event unless you know it is going to happen?

We are now deep in conspiracy theory territory. But there is more than a little circumstantial evidence to show that Mossad � whose motto is �By way of deception, thou shalt do war� � was spying on Arab extremists in the USA and may have known that September 11 was in the offing, yet decided to withhold vital information from their American counterparts which could have prevented the terror attacks.

The Fox News source refused to give details, saying: �Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It�s classified information.� Fox News is not noted for its condemnation of Israel; it�s a ruggedly patriotic news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and was President Bush�s main cheerleader in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

Another group of around 140 Israelis were detained prior to September 11, 2001, in the USA as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected espionage ring run by Israel inside the USA. Government documents refer to the spy ring as an �organised intelligence-gathering operation� designed to �penetrate government facilities�. Most of those arrested had served in the Israeli armed forces � but military service is compulsory in Israel. Nevertheless, a number had an intelligence background.

The first glimmerings of an Israeli spying exercise in the USA came to light in spring 2001, when the FBI sent a warning to other federal agencies alerting them to be wary of visitors calling themselves �Israeli art students� and attempting to bypass security at federal buildings in order to sell paintings. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report suggested the Israeli calls �may well be an organised intelligence-gathering activity�. Law enforcement documents say that the Israelis �targeted and penetrated military bases� as well as the DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, including secret offices and the unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel.

A number of Israelis questioned by the authorities said they were students from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, but Pnina Calpen, a spokeswoman for the Israeli school, did not recognise the names of any Israelis mentioned as studying there in the past 10 years. A federal report into the so-called art students said many had served in intelligence and electronic signal intercept units during their military service.

According to a 61-page report, drafted after an investigation by the DEA and the US immigration service, the Israelis were organised into cells of four to six people. The significance of what the Israelis were doing didn�t emerge until after September 11, 2001, when a report by a French intelligence agency noted �according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and suspected terror cells lived in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as in Miami and Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity to the Israeli spy cells�.

The report contended that Mossad agents were spying on Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi, two of leaders of the 9/11 hijack teams. The pair had settled in Hollywood, Florida, along with three other hijackers, after leaving Hamburg � where another Mossad team was operating close by.

Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11, or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on American soil, but did nothing to warn the USA. But that�s not quite true. In August 2001, the Israelis handed over a list of terrorist suspects � on it were the names of four of the September 11 hijackers. Significantly, however, the warning said the terrorists were planning an attack �outside the United States�.

Their lawyer, Ram Horwitz, insisted his clients were not intelligence officers. Irit Stoffer, the Israeli foreign minister, said the allegations were �completely untrue�. She said the men were arrested because of �visa violations�, adding: �The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11.�

Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would never know the truth, saying: �If we found evidence of unauthorised intelligence operations that would be classified material.� Yet, Israel has long been known, according to US administration sources, for �conducting the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any US ally�. Seventeen years ago, Jonathan Pollard, a civilian working for the American Navy, was jailed for life for passing secrets to Israel. At first, Israel claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but the government later took responsibility for his work.

It has always been a long-accepted agreement among allies � such as Britain and America or America and Israel � that neither country will jail a �friendly spy� nor shame the allied country for espionage. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Boston�s Political Research Associates and an expert in intelligence, says: �It�s a backdoor agreement between allies that says that if one of your spies gets caught and didn�t do too much harm, he goes home. It goes on all the time. The official reason is always visa violation.�

What we are left with, then, is fact sullied by innuendo. Certainly, it seems, Israel was spying within the borders of the United States and it is equally certain that the targets were Islamic extremists probably linked to September 11. But did Israel know in advance that the Twin Towers would be hit and the world plunged into a war without end; a war which would give Israel the power to strike its enemies almost without limit? That�s a conspiracy theory too far, perhaps. But the unpleasant feeling that, in this age of spin and secrets, we do not know the full and unadulterated truth won�t go away. Maybe we can guess, but it�s for the history books to discover and decide.

March 30, 2004 at 09:51 PM in Israel | Permalink | TrackBack (218) | Top of page | Blog Home

'Flawed circle' of intelligence

From Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem

BRITISH, American and Israeli intelligence agencies passed information around in circles before the Iraq war, reinforcing each others’ exaggerated analyses of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction capability, an Israeli parliamentary investigation concluded yesterday.

In a scathing indictment of its own intelligence services, including Mossad, it said that there was a general failure of intelligence based on mutually reinforcing evaluations based on �speculation� without any hard data.

�The uniform evaluation of the international intelligence bodies was implanted somewhat in a sort of �magical circle� and in a way of reciprocal feedback, which for most cases was harmful rather than useful,� an 81-page report by the Knesset�s all-party Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee concluded.

�This created a structural failure, it led to exaggerated self-confidence and lack of scepticism among the international intelligence communities in the Western world.�

The report is a severe blow to Israel�s much-vaunted and highly secretive intelligence agencies. Yuval Steinitz, the committee chairman, called for changes in intelligence- gathering and analysis and demanded to know why officials had not relied on signals and intelligence technology instead of �speculation.�

The problem, he said, arose after 1998, when the withdrawal of United Nations inspectors from Iraq removed the intelligence community�s best source of hard information.

While other Western services focused on Saddam�s nuclear capability, he said that Israeli intelligence began an �inexplicable escalation� in its estimates of Saddam�s missile arsenal �without the committee finding any data to support this change in estimates�.

Mr Steinitz refused to say what Israeli intelligence received from its Western counterparts before the war, but said that the United States and Britain had big advantages in intelligence-gathering capability because their jets were flying over Iraq, their troops were based in neighbouring Kuwait and they had satellite data.

He described what he called the circular �trap� that Western intelligence agencies appeared to have fallen into.

�The Israeli services give information to the foreign services, who use it for their own purposes and pass it on and it comes back to the Israeli intelligence services,� he said. �That is a circle of feedback that feeds on itself without any substance in the field.�

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.

March 30, 2004 at 09:49 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (48) | Top of page | Blog Home

British Broadsheet Links Mossad to 9/11

:: jahangirafzal.com ::

There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes. Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis – and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA.

After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would mean for USA-Israeli relations. He said: �It�s very good.� Then he corrected himself, adding: �Well, it�s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel from Americans].� If Israel�s closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond with the world�s only hyperpower and an effective free hand in dealing with the Palestinian terrorists who had been murdering its innocent civilians as the second Intifada dragged on throughout 2001.

It�s not surprising that the New Jersey housewife who first spotted the five Israelis and their white van wants to preserve her anonymity. She�s insisted that she only be identified as Maria. A neighbour in her apartment building had called her just after the first strike on the Twin Towers. Maria grabbed a pair of binoculars and, like millions across the world, she watched the horror of the day unfold. As she gazed at the burning towers, she noticed a group of men kneeling on the roof of a white van in her parking lot. Here�s her recollection: �They seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know � they didn�t look shocked to me. I thought it was strange.�

Maria jotted down the van�s registration and called the police. The FBI was alerted and soon there was a state-wide all points bulletin put out for the apprehension of the van and its occupants. The cops traced the number, establishing that it belonged to a company called Urban Moving. Police Chief John Schmidig said: �We got an alert to be on the lookout for a white Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration and writing on the side. Three individuals were seen celebrating in Liberty State Park after the impact. They said three people were jumping up and down.�

By 4pm on the afternoon of September 11, the van was spotted near New Jersey�s Giants stadium. A squad car pulled it over and inside were five men in their 20s. They were hustled out of the car with guns levelled at their heads and handcuffed. In the car was $4700 in cash, a couple of foreign passports and a pair of box cutters � the concealed Stanley Knife-type blades used by the 19 hijackers who�d flown jetliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon just hours before. There were also fresh pictures of the men standing with the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings, like a fan at a pop concert.
The driver of the van then told the arresting officers: �We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.� His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzberg�s brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBI�s Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence Section � the bureau�s anti-espionage squad.

Vince Cannistraro, former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with the CIA, says the red flag went up among investigators when it was discovered that some of the Israelis� names were found in a search of the national intelligence database. Cannistraro says many in the USA intelligence community believed that some of the Israelis were working for Mossad and there was speculation over whether Urban Moving had been �set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists�. This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11 hijackers � simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them.

Nevertheless, their lawyer, Ram Horvitz, dismissed the allegations as �stupid and ridiculous�. Yet USA government sources still maintained that the Israelis were collecting information on the fundraising activities of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mark Regev, of the Israeli embassy in Washington, would have none of that and he said the allegations were �simply false�. The men themselves claimed they�d read about the World Trade Centre attacks on the internet, couldn�t see it from their office and went to the parking lot for a better view. Their lawyers and the embassy say their ghoulish and sinister celebrations as the Twin Towers blazed and thousands died were due to youthful foolishness.
The respected New York Jewish newspaper, The Forward, reported in March 2002, however, that it had received a briefing on the case of the five Israelis from a USA official who was regularly updated by law enforcement agencies. This is what he told The Forward: �The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it.� He added that �the conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs�, but the men were released because they �did not know anything about 9/11�.

Following September 11, 2001, more than 60 Israelis were taken into custody under the Patriot Act and immigration laws. One highly placed investigator told Carl Cameron of Fox News that there were �tie-ins� between the Israelis and September 11; the hint was clearly that they�d gathered intelligence on the planned attacks but kept it to themselves. The Fox News source refused to give details, saying: �Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It�s classified information.� Fox News is not noted for its condemnation of Israel; it�s a ruggedly patriotic news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and was President Bush�s main cheerleader in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

According to a 61-page report, drafted after an investigation by the DEA and the USA immigration service, the Israelis were organised into cells of four to six people. The significance of what the Israelis were doing didn�t emerge until after September 11, 2001, when a report by a French intelligence agency noted �according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and suspected terror cells lived in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as in Miami and Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity to the Israeli spy cells�.

Hollywood in Florida is a town of just 25,000 souls. The French intelligence report says the leader of the Mossad cell in Florida rented apartments �right near the apartment of Atta and al-Shehi�. More than a third of the Israeli �art students� claimed residence in Florida. Two other Israelis connected to the art ring showed up in Fort Lauderdale. At one time, eight of the hijackers lived just north of the town.
Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11, or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on American soil, but did nothing to warn the USA. But that�s not quite true. In August 2001, the Israelis handed over a list of terrorist suspects � on it were the names of four of the September 11 hijackers. Significantly, however, the warning said the terrorists were planning an attack �outside the United States�.

The Israeli embassy in Washington has dismissed claims about the spying ring as �simply untrue�. The same denials have been issued repeatedly by the five Israelis seen high-fiving each other as the World Trade Centre burned in front of them. Their lawyer, Ram Horwitz, insisted his clients were not intelligence officers. Irit Stoffer, the Israeli foreign minister, said the allegations were �completely untrue�. She said the men were arrested because of �visa violations�, adding: �The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11.�

Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would never know the truth, saying: �If we found evidence of unauthorised intelligence operations that would be classified material.� Yet, Israel has long been known, according to USA administration sources, for �conducting the most aggressive espionage operations against the USA of any USA ally�. Seventeen years ago, Jonathan Pollard, a civilian working for the American Navy, was jailed for life for passing secrets to Israel. At first, Israel claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but the government later took responsibility for his work.

Article courtesy of Scottish-based Herald Newspapers

March 30, 2004 at 09:44 PM in Berlin | Permalink | TrackBack (407) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI6 and Tripoli to share information on al-Qaida

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | MI6 and Tripoli to share information on al-Qaida

Nicholas Watt in Tripoli
Friday March 26, 2004
The Guardian

Britain and Libya are to swap sensitive intelligence on al-Qaida suspects as they intensify their co-operation in the war against terrorism in the wake of Tony Blair's historic handshake yesterday with Colonel Muammar Gadafy.
MI6 agents, who played a pivotal role in persuading Tripoli to abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons, are to work alongside their Libyan counterparts to stamp out al-Qaida's north Africa network.

The new co-operation was hailed by Mr Blair yesterday as a sign of the success of his carrot and stick approach to foreign policy, which persuaded Col Gadafy to begin disarming last December. Speaking after nearly two hours of talks in the Libyan leader's tent on the outskirts of Tripoli, the prime minister praised Col Gadafy for his "historic decision".

"I was particularly struck by Col Gadafy's insistence not only of Libya's determination to carry on down this path of co-operation but also his recognition that Libya's own future is best secured by a new relationship with the outside world and the recognition also of a common cause with us in the fight against al-Qaida extremism and terrorism which threatens not just the west but Arab nations too," he said.

Diplomats accompanying Mr Blair said that the Libyans have been handing over intelligence about an al-Qaida offshoot - the Libyan Islamic Fighters Group. "The Libyans obviously have intelligence that we would never be able to lay our hand on," a diplomatic source said. This information will be passed to US intelligence.

The process is two-way. It is understood that Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, has travelled to Tripoli to meet his Libyan counterpart, Musa Kusa, to discuss the dismantling of Libya's banned weapons and the fight against terrorism.

Libya made clear that it warmly welcomes the chance to join forces with Britain to tackle al-Qaida, a point reinforced by Col Gadafy when he had a lengthy discussion with Mr Blair about September 11 and its aftermath.

But Tripoli could not resist pointing out that it had identified the threat posed by Osama bin Laden when the west was arming his fighters in the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Abdulrahman Shalgam, the Libyan foreign minister, said: "When we started speaking about terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s some countries in America and Europe were supporting these people. At the time we spoke about Bin Laden and others - and we considered them terrorists."

But Mr Shalgam said it was time to work together to defeat al-Qaida, which tried to assassinate Col Gadafy in 1998.

March 30, 2004 at 09:39 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 28, 2004

Who Killed George Polk?

Every spring for the past 45 years, the most distinguished names in journalism have gathered in New York City for the George W. Polk Awards, commemorating an American reporter murdered during the Greek civil war. But for all the honors they have bestowed in his name, George Polk's fellow journalists failed him when they accepted as truth a sham investigation and murder trial. The story of how and why that happened is the subject of this book.

On Sunday, May 16, 1948, a boatman discovered the body of CBS correspondent George Polk floating in the bay of Salonika in northern Greece. He had been shot in the back of the head at point-blank range. The Greek government declared that it would spare no effort to find the murderer. The United States, which was spending a million dollars a day to help the conservative Greek regime suppress a communist rebellion, promised to monitor the investigation closely.

The list of possible murder suspects was long. Polk had relentlessly criticized players on both sides of the Greek civil war. He had called the communist guerrillas thugs, accused the Greek government of greed and corruption, branded a former minister of public order a gangster, and blasted Washington for supporting the repressive, right-wing Greek government.

Journalists in New York City attempted to raise funds to send an independent team of reporters to Greece to look into the murder. Their efforts were soon eclipsed by more powerful, mainstream Washington journalists who formed a committee and chose Walter Lippmann as its chair. With the creation of the Lippmann Committee--which was content to work through official channels--any hope for an independent journalistic investigation into George Polk's death vanished.

Who killed George Polk?
From the start of their investigation, the fiercely anti-communist Greek security police planned to convict a leftist for Polk's murder. Four Greeks were eventually accused. The first, a mid-level official of the Communist Party, was hundreds of miles from Salonika at the time of Polk's death. The second, a Greek newspaper reporter and alleged communist, was in his office at the time police said Polk's body was dumped in the water. The third, the reporter's aging mother, confessed to save her son from torture. The fourth, a member of the Central Committee of the Greek Communist Party, had died four weeks before Polk was killed.

The Lippmann Committee and CBS endorsed the assertion of the Greek security police that communists were responsible for Polk's murder. With the conviction in April 1949 of three of the four suspects, they were satisfied that justice had been served. More than 40 years after the trial, however, the case mounted by the Greek government--and largely unquestioned by the American press--has collapsed.

In 1956 the American intelligence operative assigned to the case--who had repeatedly warned the Lippmann Committee that a coverup was taking place--told Walter Lippmann that the "whole truth never came out." In 1978 he characterized the trial as "a show to cover up the real perpetrators of the crime."
In 1976 the journalist convicted in the case appealed for a new trial, charging that he "confessed" only after two months of torture by the Salonika security police. The Greek Supreme Court denied his request.
In 1977 experts proved that the only physical evidence produced at the trial, a handwriting sample used to indict the journalist's mother, was written by someone else. The original sample has since disappeared.
In 1978 one of the two men convicted in absentia, living in exile in Rumania, proclaimed his innocence of any crime and asked for permission to return to Greece to stand trial. The Greek government refused his request.2
A 15-year search of U.S. government archives and an examination of the personal papers of some of the central figures in the case have documented that the Greek Government and the United States Department of State played a role in framing innocent men for George Polk's murder. And that some of the most respected names in American journalism stood by and let it happen.

March 28, 2004 at 07:41 PM in UK, US | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

A Murder and Its Meaning

"A Murder and Its Meaning

by Elias Vlanton
from The Nation, January 28, 1991 pp. 93-95
THE POLK CONSPIRACY: Murder and Cover-up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk. By Kati Marton. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 369 pp. $22.93.
By the middle of 1947, American intervention in the Greek civil war between Communist-led guerrillas and the American-backed rightist regime had made Greece a coveted dateline for ambitious journalists. In July, George Polk, a young, irreverent and respected foreign reporter, moved his base of operations to Athens. Unwilling just to rewrite Greek government handouts, the CBS correspondent began voraciously gathering information about the people and politics of Greece. Over time his dispatches--always well reasoned and well researched--began questioning the honesty and competency of the Greek government, and of the American aid program propping it up.

On May 16, 1948, a few days before he was to return to the United States, a boatman pulled Polk's body out of the Bay of Salonika; his hands and feet were bound and he had been shot once in the back of the head. Within hours Greek authorities announced to the press that Polk had been killed by Communist guerrillas while on his way to meet their leader, General Markos--an assessment foreign-policy officials and the press largely accepted, even defended, throughout the case.

Efforts by members of the New York Newspaper Guild to send an independent team of journalists to Greece to investigate their colleague's death were quickly pre-empted by a committee of prestigious media representatives, headed by Washington columnist Walter Lippmann. The Lippmann Committee refused to back an independent inquiry, electing instead to work with the State Department in monitoring the Greek government's investigation. Lippmann appointed General William (Wild Bill) Donovan, the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services, as the committee's counsel.

When, a month after Polk's death, Greek officials had made no progress toward identifying his killers, Donovan dispatched a young Greek-American intelligence operative, Lieut. Col. James Kellis, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the murder. In the course of his inquiry, Kellis discovered that Polk had received information that Greek Foreign Minister Constantine Tsaldaris had deposited $25,000 in a New York bank, money Polk may have suspected came out of U.S. aid funds. Shortly before his death the CBS correspondent had confronted Tsaldaris and threatened to destroy him and his government. In late July, as Kellis gathered indications that the rightists, not the Communists, were responsible for Polk's murder, the State Department had him recalled from Greece.

A few days later Donovan dramatically stepped up the pressure on Greek authorities to make an arrest. By August 14 the police had picked up journalist Gregory Staktopoulos; over the next six weeks the security police systematically tortured Staktopoulos until he agreed to "confess" to his role in helping the Communists to set up Polk. At a show trial the following April, Staktopoulos announced that the crime had been committed by two high-ranking Greek Communists acting on orders from the Kremlin. Staktopoulos was sentenced to life imprisonment as an accomplice. With a few notable exceptions, among them I.F. Stone, as well as Constantine Poulos writing in this magazine (May 28, 1949), the American press and government praised the verdict. The case was closed and largely forgotten for the next four decades.

Now Kati Marton has written a thrilling account of Polk's murder and of the cover-up by the American press and foreign-policy establishment. Her story is fast-paced, compellingly written and entirely engaging, and many will finish it convinced that American journalism has finally gotten its man. Marton rightly condemns American government officials for having been more concerned with protecting their investment in the Greek government than in finding Polk's killers. She also properly raps Walter Lippmann for his gullibility in having accepted, virtually without question, information supplied by American officials and General Donovan. But by singling out Donovan and Lippmann as the chief villains in the press cover-up of the murder, Marton misses a larger point.

It wasn't Walter Lippmann alone who failed George Polk and Gregory Staktopoulos; it was American journalism. Although a central figure in the case, Lippmann was hardly the only journalist to accept blindly that the Communists killed Polk, while ignoring evidence that suggested right-wing involvement. He has to share that responsibility with most of his fellows, including Edward R. Murrow and other top journalists at CBS, the major dailies such as The New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, and other American reporters then covering Greece. The only dissenters were a handful of members of the New York Newspaper Guild.

This was not a gigantic conspiracy, but journalism-as-usual. It was reporters writing about countries whose language, customs and politics they were unfamiliar with and accepting the word of official sources--American and Greek--without doing the necessary legwork to confirm the information. Worse, there was a failure to apply basic standards of logic and fairness, whether to a murder confession riddled with inconsistencies or to a trial that mocked the notions of justice and the rule of law.

Unfortunately, Kati Marton, too, practices journalism-as-usual. Marton suggests that Foreign Minister Tsaldaris ordered the assassination of Polk to prevent the reporter from carrying out his threat to bring down Tsaldaris and his government. She names Michael Kourtessis as the man who planned and carried out the murder. Kourtessis, she says, was part of a secret paramilitary organization within the port authority of Piraeus (OLP), to which Tsaldaris had close ties. Marton bases her claim on a series of letters written to Colonel Kellis by one of the Greek informants he used during his investigation into Polk's death.

Marton did not get these documents from Kellis, now deceased, but from sources she does not disclose, "for I have assured them anonymity." Her grant of anonymity to her sources raises several relevant questions: Who needs anonymity in providing forty-two-year-old documents? Did the documents come from the C.I.A., where Kellis served in the early 1950s? If so, why were they given to Marton? Did she receive all the reports in Kellis's possession, or were they leaked selectively to lead the author's inquiries down a particular path?

Also, if the documents sent to Colonel Kellis were so convincing, why did Kellis himself evidently dismiss them? In a 1977 deposition Kellis testified he did not know who killed Polk, and he went on to suggest that a British information officer was involved. (That testimony is mentioned in The Polk Conspiracy, but Marton doesn't mention that it contradicts the thesis of the book.)

Had Marton independently confirmed the story told by Kellis's informant, and/or produced Michael Kourtessis, she would have made a valuable contribution to efforts to clear up the mystery surrounding Polk's death. But the evidence she has "uncovered" appears to be little more than forty-year-old hearsay--the kind of raw intelligence that informers routinely supplied to Kellis and other American officials, information that was often disproved, contradicted or replaced by new information a few days later and hearsay is a far cry from hard evidence. Not only does Marton fail to prove that Kourtessis was a right-wing thug working for the OLP, she does not even prove that anyone named Michael Kourtessis ever existed.

In her analysis of the crime, Marton willingly sacrifices accuracy for drama. For example, The Polk Conspiracy claims that Kourtessis flew to Salonika between May 4 and May 6, 1948, to plan the murder, yet Polk himself only decided to fly there on May 7. How is this possible? Saturday night, May 8, Marton says, Polk dined in a private home with a group of right-wing conspirators posing as Communists. Sometime during the meal they put a soporific into Polk's drink; after the meal, Marton says, they said good night to Polk, who returned to his hotel, the Astoria. But why let him leave alive? How could the killers be sure Polk would return to his hotel? Why not murder him during dinner, in the relative seclusion of a private home in Salonika, rather than risk killing him near the Astoria, which sits on one of Salonika's busiest intersections?

After following Polk up to his room, they stuffed the dazed journalist into a laundry basket, which the murderers wheeled out of the hotel and into an alley. The killers supposedly then shot Polk, dragged his body across a deserted Nikis Street to the edge of the quay and heaved him into the Bay of Salonika. No one familiar with Salonika or Greek habits will find this scenario convincing. Getting Polk's body from the Astoria Hotel to the bay required dragging it three long blocks in an area filled with outdoor cafes, restaurants and movie theaters. Why would the murderers have chanced such a display around midnight (Polk's watch stopped at 12:20, a fact Marton fails to mention), when the streets would have been full of Greeks taking a stroll after their typically late Saturday night dinner? Nor does Marton try to explain how a body dropped over the edge of the quay wound up miles out in the bay; given the action of the waves the body, if it had moved at all, would have been washed closer to the shore, not farther away from it.

In addition to her failure to reconstruct accurately the story of Polk's murder, Marton inflates as revelations her discoveries of facts others made long ago. She writes, for example, that a C.I.A. document on Polk "was declassified in 1988 by the C.I.A. as a result of a Freedom of Information suit by this author." In fact, the document had been released a decade earlier at the request of other journalists. Nor, as Marton implies, was she the first to bring to light the Polk-Tsaldaris fight, news of which appeared in left-wing American newspapers two months after Polk's death. And by 1949 the story of the Tsaldaris illegal bank deposit was known to the dissenting journalists based in the New York Newspaper Guild.

The Polk Conspiracy does not chronicle the efforts of John Donovan, a colleague of Polk's, who strove, largely without recognition, to uncover the truth about Polk's death from 1948 until his debilitating stroke in the 1980s. He traveled to Athens to talk with Gregory Staktopoulos after he was released from prison in 1960 (apparently the only American journalist to do so), and he doggedly pressed Kellis and others connected to the case for possible leads. Donovan unsuccessfully tried to interest every broadcast network, including CBS, and countless newspapers to cover new developments in the case, and he submitted his own articles about the case to magazines and newspapers nationwide. Ironically, many of the same publications that have heaped praise on The Polk Conspiracy, among them The New York Times and The Washington Post did not publish John Donovan's investigations ten and twenty years ago.

Nor does Marton's bibliography even list The Salonika Bay Murder (Princeton, 1989), by Edmund Keeley. Keeley's work, while not as intriguing or compellingly written as Marton's, remains a more reliable source about the murder, investigation and cover-up. Although Keeley fails to assign adequate blame to American officials for their role in the cover-up, his book is thoroughly footnoted and factually correct, whereas Marton's is very poorly referenced and replete with errors. For example, throughout the course of her book Marton manages to get almost every detail of Staktopoulos's life wrong, including what he did during the war, how he was arrested, when he was transferred from jail to prison, when he was freed, when his brother died, and that his sister went insane.

To its credit, The Polk Conspiracy has again drawn attention to how American journalists forty years ago sacrificed their integrity to solidify domestic support for the cold war. The uncritical praise The Polk Conspiracy has received, however, shows how American journalists today accept a terrific story and stylish prose in lieu of meticulous research and critical analysis. Either way, they are still not getting it right.

March 28, 2004 at 06:55 PM in UK, US | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 27, 2004

Comment: Liam Clarke: Gadaffi's lesson to the IRA: cling onto power

Times Online - Sunday Times

It was strange enough for the rest of us, but what did they make of it in Ballybinaby when they turned on their television sets to see Tony Blair shaking hands with Muammar Gadaffi, cementing a new alliance against terror?

Ballybinaby, for those who don�t know it, is the rural South Armagh redoubt of old-style republicanism where Tom �Slab� Murphy, millionaire bandit and chief of staff of the IRA, rules the roost. Like some Third World warlord he provides most of the local employment and levies �taxes� on smugglers using Larkin�s Road, which runs past his front door.

Murphy�s mind must have slipped back to the day in August 1985 when he stood on Clogga Strand in Co Wicklow to take delivery of 300 boxes of Libyan arms, a gift from Gadaffi. They included AK-47 rifles, pistols, Semtex, grenades and heavy machine guns. It was enough to supply the IRA for 30 years; Murphy needed a tractor to haul it ashore.

He may have remembered Colonel Nasser Ashour, the Libyan intelligence officer whom he first met a few weeks after Constable Yvonne Fletcher was murdered by gunmen firing from the Libyan People�s Bureau in London.

Now Murphy and, Gadaffi, Ashour�s boss, are allies of Blair in the war against terror. There is a parallel: the IRA keeps the dissidents in line while Gadaffi opposes the militant Islamists to help secure the West�s oil supply. They may be sonsabitches, to paraphrase the Americans� description of Latin American dictators they propped up, but they are now our sonsabitches.

The IRA�s weapons deal with Libya worked out well for both. The IRA was kept in business as a result. The weaponry helped sway hardliners to back the leadership�s move towards politics and secured Murphy�s power base.

Gadaffi later won brownie points in the West by giving the British government an inventory of what he supplied to the IRA. Murphy and the IRA are still using the same guns to buy political influence by demanding concessions in return for decommissioning them. And that�s not counting the concessions they won when the guns were in use.

They were well worth the �100,000 in used notes with which Murphy personally paid Adrian Hopkins, the captain who smuggled them, in a Dundalk bar.

�The world is changing and we have got to do everything we possibly can to tackle the security threat that faces us,� Blair told Gadaffi, his upper lip so stiff and his smile so thin that it might have been Botoxed on. Murphy, like the beaming Gadaffi, could hardly have disagreed with a word the prime minster said.

Winston Churchill summed up these situations very well. When he concluded a pact with Stalin against Nazi Germany he observed that if Hitler had invaded hell he would have felt it his duty to give the devil a favourable mention, at the very least, on the floor of the House of Commons. Of course, once the German threat was vanquished, Churchill changed his tune and was an enthusiastic advocate of the cold war. An iron curtain had descended over Europe, he warned.

Realpolitik dictates that yesterday�s pariahs are often today�s allies. More disturbingly, if a dictator or a terrorist can hang on to power long enough, democratic politicians � who come and go every few years � will eventually shift their positions to accommodate him.

The West tried to isolate Gadaffi when he toppled King Idris in a military coup that he claimed was a socialist revolution 30 years ago. He stuck to power, resisting their pressure, and now they need him. In the changed climate of the 21st century, Gadaffi�s Libyan Jamahiriya looks like one of the most secular regimes in the region and possibly a more stable source of oil than Saudi Arabia.

Iraq used to look like that too. Saddam Hussein was favoured for holding the Shi�ite extremists, as they were then regarded, in check and keeping Iran at bay. Donald Rumsfeld used to visit him; he was a friend and client of the West which armed and supplied his long, futile war with Iran.

Things changed when he invaded Kuwait and it became clear he was trying to wage a war of conquest that would give him a stranglehold on the oil supplies of the region and allow him to hold the West to ransom. That led to the first Gulf war and sanctions.

In Afghanistan, too, Osama Bin Laden was our sonofabitch when he was fighting the Russians. It was then the Soviets who were accusing America of sponsoring terrorism by supplying Osama, the Taliban and their cohorts with money, weapons and advisers with which to topple the relatively liberal pro-Soviet regime of Mohammad Najibullah. Yesterday�s freedom fighters are today�s Frankenstein�s monster.

Now world politics has been moved around to take account of the new dispensation. Bin Laden�s talk of restoring the Muslim empire, expelling the Americans from Saudi Arabia and taking over the place was once regarded as just rhetoric. Since September 11, it is taken seriously.

The decision to take Saddam out followed Bin Laden�s attack on the twin towers, even though the two men were not linked ideologically or practically. After September 11, as we now know, western governments began to say that Saddam was actually doing the things that they feared he might. �No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein,� said Rumsfeld in September 2002.

�Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.�

We now know that was bunkum but it doesn�t mean that there is no rhyme, reason, or consistency in the attitude of the West and of democratic governments towards dictators and terrorists. International politics is usually a matter of choosing between unpalatable alternatives and it is almost always a search for stability.

After September 11 it seems America wanted to project its power in the Middle East and create a new world order in which Osama Bin Laden�s virulent brand of Islamic extremism would be contained. The aim of setting up Iraq as a stable democracy and ally was not the war�s stated aim but it was there in the background, and may yet be achieved.

The invasion of Iraq, even if it wasn�t justified by weapons of mass destruction, did change the world order. American troops are now in reach of any country in the Middle East and former �problem� states as diverse as Iran, Libya and Pakistan are being brought on board for a new relationship with the West.

All the same, how will it look in Ballybinaby, and all the other places where tinpot dictators cling on to power in their fiefdoms across the globe? The lesson they draw from it won�t necessarily be a moral one; it may well be �stick to your guns�.

March 27, 2004 at 11:27 PM in IRA | Permalink | TrackBack (119) | Top of page | Blog Home

RUC 'covered up agent's murders'

Times Online - Sunday Times

Liam Clarke

POLICE in Northern Ireland covered up nine murders committed by an informer to protect the flow of intelligence, a whistleblower claims.
The retired detective says his colleagues prevented the arrest of an Ulster Volunteer Force spy who took part in at least nine killings and ordered several more.

The accusations, made by Johnston Brown, a former sergeant, are contained in three dossiers being investigated by Nuala O�Loan, the Northern Ireland police ombudsman. Last week the whistleblower stopped co-operating with her investigators after they threatened to interview him under caution for failing to prevent the killings.

�It has made me question whether the ombudsman is the appropriate person to investigate this case,� said Brown. �I am risking my neck by exposing wrongdoing but it seemed that I was the one being put in the dock. I am putting the matter in the hands of my solicitor.�

Brown, who has 30 years service as a detective, is best known as the man whose evidence jailed Johnny Adair, the Ulster Freedom Fighters mobster known as Mad Dog. He also brought to light the allegation that the man who police believe killed Pat Finucane, the Catholic lawyer, was a Special Branch agent who had allegedly confessed to the crime but had not been charged.

The deaths in which Brown believes this informer was personally involved include:

Sharon McKenna, 27, a Catholic taxi driver, who was shot dead at the home of a Protestant pensioner for whom she was cooking dinner on January 17, 1993. McKenna had been supplying information to the CID in light of her concern about paramilitary activity.

Thomas Sheppard, 41, who was shot dead on March 21, 1996, allegedly by the informant, who was a personal friend of his. Sheppard had been lured to a meeting in Towers Tavern, Ballymena, Co Antrim, and his murder was part of an internal UVF dispute.

William Harbinson, 39, a Shankill Road Protestant who died on May 19, 1997, after being handcuffed and beaten in an alley on north Belfast�s Shore Road.

David Templeton, 43, a Presbyterian minister who died of a heart attack some weeks after a punishment beating in February 1997. He had earlier resigned from the ministry after being arrested by customs with a gay pornographic video.

Gary Convie, 24, and Eamon Fox, 44, Co Tyrone Catholics gunned down at a north Belfast building site in May 1997 in a sectarian killing.

David McIlwaine, 18, and Andrew Robb, 19, both Protestants who were found stabbed to death by the side of Druminure Road near Tandragee, Co Armagh, on Feburary 19, 2000. They were victims of a feud involving the UVF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

Tommy English and David Greer, two loyalists shot dead by the UVF during a feud with the Ulster Defence Association in October 2000.
The informer also ordered an attack in which Raymond McCord Jr was beaten to death, and then dumped in a Ballyduff quarry in November 1997. This killing was part of a dispute over drugs money. McCord�s father, also called Raymond, has since become a campaigner against paramilitary violence.

�In CID we were hearing of this man�s involvement in these murders from informants who were working around him and with him,� said Brown. �Every time we reported his actions, we were taken to task for feeding information that was embarrassing a Special Branch source. Some of the informants who told us about it also suffered for helping us.�

Questioned about Brown�s allegations, a spokesman for O�Loan said: �[We] have been talking to a former police officer in relation to a current investigation and have had discussions with him about how we could interview him at a later stage. At no time did we say we would arrest him.�

Brown�s dossiers indicate there was strong competition between the Special Branch, which gathers intelligence, and the CID, which investigates crime, for control of key agents within the paramilitary underworld.

Brown recruited three agents, each of which is the subject of a separate dossier. He believes two were �burnt off� by Special Branch for reporting crimes by fellow agents. One fled and the other was jailed. �In some cases, the loyalist paramilitaries were warned that these people were helping me,� he said.

The third informant was handed over to Special Branch in October 1991, because he was a senior figure in the UVF. His information was judged too valuable for CID to manage. �When I was handling him he saved lives: when Special Branch took control he became a killer. Once he started to take life, you could have caught this boy real handy and I tried a few times but I wasn�t allowed,� said the whistleblower.

March 27, 2004 at 11:23 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (26) | Top of page | Blog Home

Focus: The confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Times Online - Sunday Times

Christina Lamb in Kabul
'I met Osama Bin Laden in Kabul. It was at this time we discussed the Heathrow operation'

It makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the operation.

Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles � which was �blown up� in the film Independence Day � were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda operations chief.

�We were looking for symbols of economic might,� he told his captors.

He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In that attack Yusuf succeeded only in ripping a crater into the foundations with a van bomb. �We knew from that experience that explosives could be problematic,� said Mohammed, �so we started thinking about using planes.�

When he was captured in March last year in the house of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi, the paunchy 37-year old was unshaven and wearing a baggy vest. He looked more like a down-and-out than one of the most dangerous men in the world.

The interrogation reports make clear, however, that he was not only the chief planner for September 11 but also introduced Osama Bin Laden to Hambali, the Indonesian militant accused of the Bali bombing.

To date, Mohammed is the most senior Al-Qaeda member to have been caught. Until now there has been no word of where he is being held or what, if anything, he is saying.

Although the interrogation transcripts are prefaced with the warning that �the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead�, it is clear that he is talking � and that the September 11 conspiracy was much more extensive than has previously been revealed.

The confessions reveal that planning for the atrocity started much earlier than anyone had realised and was intended to be even more devastating.

�The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the East Coast of America and five on the West Coast,� he told interrogators. �We talked about hitting California as it was America�s richest state and Bin Laden had talked about economic targets.�

Bin Laden, who like Mohammed had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that �it would be too difficult to synchronise�.

Mohammed switched to two waves: hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second attack. �Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast,� he said.

Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan who had lived in London, was sent to the Pan Am international flight school in Minnesota to train for the West Coast attack, according to Mohammed. His instructor alerted the FBI, however, after the Moroccan showed no interest in landing planes � only in steering them. He was arrested in August 2001.

Until now it had been widely believed that Moussaoui was meant to have been the 20th hijacker on September 11. The revelation by Mohammed that he was part of a �second wave� is lent weight by the FBI�s recent arrest of two other men who were allegedly part of the West Coast conspirators.

Despite the setbacks, Mohammed described the September 11 attack as �far more successful than we had ever imagined�.

Mohammed, whose family came from Pakistan, was born in 1965 in Kuwait city, where his father was a preacher. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager and went to the United States to study engineering in North Carolina.

At that time the Afghan jihad against the Russians was in full flow. After graduating, Mohammed headed for one of Bin Laden�s guest houses in the Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar. He has told interrogators that it was there that he first met Hambali.

In 1992 Mohammed moved south to Karachi. Posing as a businessman importing holy water from Mecca, he acted as a fundraiser and intermediary between young militants and wealthy sponsors in the Gulf.

Ramzi Yusuf�s attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 inspired him to conceive his own operations.

The first was Operation Bojinka (Serbo-Croat for big bang) � a plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the Pacific. Both Yusuf and Hambali were involved. It failed after the conspirators� Manila bomb factory caught fire. The men fled to Pakistan where Yusuf was arrested.

Undeterred, Mohammed decided to start working on something �far more spectacular� for which he �hoped to persuade Bin Laden to give him money and operatives�. He also decided to introduce Hambali to Bin Laden.

Hambali � real name Riduan Ismuddin � headed Jemaah Islamiya (JI), which wanted to unite southeast Asia under an Islamic banner.

Mohammed told interrogators: �I was impressed by JI�s ability to operate regionally and by Hambali�s connections with the Malaysian government. He told me that his group had a training camp in the Philippines and a madrasah (religious teaching)programme in Malaysia on the border with Singapore.

�In 1996 I invited Hambali to Afghanistan to meet Osama. He spent three or four days with him and it was agreed that Al-Qaeda and Hambali�s organisation would work together on �targets of mutual interest�.�

Hambali, who had been operating on a shoestring, was provided with a new car, mobile phones and computers.

Bin Laden was apparently impressed by Mohammed�s networking and ideas and made him head of Al-Qaeda�s military committee.

From then on he was a key planner in almost every attack, including the simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Bin Laden dubbed him The Brain.

The big challenge was to attack Americans on their own soil. Initially Mohammed proposed leasing a charter plane, filling it with explosives and crashing it into the CIA headquarters. Then the plan became more ambitious.

Bin Laden pointed out that on a visit to America in 1982 he had been to the Empire State building in New York and was astonished by how unprotected such key landmarks were.

A committee, known as the shura, was formed comprising Bin Laden, Mohammed and four others. It met at what was known as the war room in Bin Laden�s camp outside Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The plan for a two-pronged attack was formed.

�We had scores of volunteers to die for Allah but the problem was finding those familiar with the West who could blend in as well as get US visas,� said Mohammed.

Two Yemenis and two Saudi pilots, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, were selected and given commando training in Afghanistan. �All four operatives only knew that they had volunteered for a martyrdom operation involving planes,� said Mohammed.

In 1999 the two Yemenis were refused American visas; but a few months later four jihad recruits from Hamburg arrived in Quetta, Pakistan. Led by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian, they had originally planned to go to Chechnya to fight the Russians, but a former mujaheddin in Germany had given them an introduction to Bin Laden.

After meeting the Al-Qaeda leader in Kandahar, they delivered the baia, the oath of allegiance required to gain access to his inner circle, and were invited to his Ramadan feast. He told them that they had been selected for a top- secret mission and promised that they would enter paradise as martyrs.

They were instructed to go home and destroy their passports so their trip to Pakistan would be undetected. They should then shave off their beards, get new passports, and obtain pilots� licences in America.

Mohammed told interrogators that he had provided them with a special training manual which included information on how to find flight schools and study timetables.

Three of the four were granted American visas. The fourth, Ramzi Binalshibh, failed and returned to Afghanistan where he communicated with them through internet chat rooms.

In the spring of 2000, after a planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Bin Laden scaled back the plan from two-prong to two-wave because they had been unable to get enough potential pilots into America. Moussaoui succeeded in entering the United States, but the order went out for potential recruits who were not Arab, Mohammed told his captors.

A date was set for the first wave attack, codenamed Porsche 911, and a message went round the world for followers to return to Afghanistan by September 10.

The messages were intercepted by several western intelligence agencies but none apparently realised their significance.

When the suicide planes struck on September 11, Al-Qaeda seems to have been taken by surprise � both by the success of the attacks and by the American reaction. �Afterwards we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run,� said Mohammed. He said the war on terrorism and the American bombing of Afghanistan completely disrupted their communications network. Operatives could no longer use satellite phones and had to rely on couriers, although they still used internet chat rooms.

�Before September 11 we could dispatch operatives with the expectation of follow-up contact but after October 7 (when the bombing started that changed 180 degrees. There was no longer a war room or shura and operatives had more autonomy.� He told interrogators that he remained in Pakistan for 10 days after September 11, then went to Afghanistan to find Bin Laden: �I went to Jalalabad, Tora Bora, looking for him and then eventually met him in Kabul.� The Al-Qaeda leader instructed him to continue operations � with Britain as the next target. �It was at this time we discussed the Heathrow operation,� said Mohammed.

�Osama declared (Tony) Blair our principal enemy and London a target.� He arranged for operatives to be sent from Pakistan and Afghanistan to London, where surveillance of Heathrow airport and the surrounding areas began. However, he claimed, the operation never got beyond the planning stages. �There was a lot of confusion,� he said. �I would say my performance at that time was sloppy.�

One priority was to get Hambali out of Afghanistan. In November 2001, Mohammed arranged for him to go to Karachi. There he gave him $20,000 and a false Indonesian passport with which he could travel to Sri Lanka and on to Thailand from where he would help to organise the Bali nightclub bombing the following year. They kept in touch through Hambali�s younger brother who was in Karachi. The net was closing in around Mohammed himself. Another shura member, Abu Zubayda, was arrested in Faisalabad in March 2002.

Six months later Binalshibh was seized in the Karachi apartment that he shared with Mohammed. Mohammed managed to escape, but his flight came to an end in the early hours of March 2 last year in Rawalpindi. Questioned for two days by Pakistan�s military intelligence, who say he did nothing but pray repeatedly, he was flown blindfolded to Bagram, the US base in the mountains above Kabul. It is not clear how long he was held there nor what methods were used to get him to talk.

Afghans released from Bagram claim to have been subjected to sleep deprivation and extremes of hot and cold. There have also been unconfirmed reports of truth drugs and the use of Arab interrogators so that detainees think they are in an Arab camp. Investigators have been cross-checking Mohammed's story with those of Binalshibh, Abu Zubayda and Hambali, who was arrested in Thailand in August last year. Despite the arrests and interrogations, however, Al-Qaeda lives on. Madrid has been attacked with devastating human and political consequences. And, somewhere in London, there may be �sleepers� that Mohammed has put in place, just waiting for instructions.

March 27, 2004 at 11:15 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qaeda leader says: Heathrow our target

Times Online - Sunday Times

Christina Lamb

OSAMA BIN LADEN, the Al-Qaeda leader, ordered a devastating attack on Heathrow to punish Tony Blair, calling the prime minister his “principal enemy”, a senior lieutenant has revealed.
He told his operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to prepare the strike on the airport at a meeting in Kabul soon after the attacks on America in September 2001.

The Sunday Times has seen transcripts of Mohammed�s long-running interrogation. These records relate to a period of four months after his capture in Pakistan just over a year ago and indicate that Al-Qaeda terrorists were sent from Pakistan and Afghanistan to work on �the Heathrow operation�.

The transcripts also show Mohammed, mastermind of the September 11 onslaught that killed 2,818 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, originally planned to hijack 10 planes and crash them into targets on the east and west
coasts of America. Each interrogation is prefaced with a warning: �The detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead.�

But the statements have been cross-checked with the confessions of other senior Al-Qaeda prisoners. This has enabled investigators to build an authentic picture of the organisation.

The claims about Heathrow by the most senior Al-Qaeda member in captivity lend weight to this month�s warning by Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, that an attack on London is �inevitable�. Stevens says the Madrid bombings of March 11 should be a �wake-up call� to Britain and the European Union.

Like Spain, Britain has been picked by Bin Laden as a target. The government has said on several occasions that it has received warnings about Heathrow. But Mohammed's account is the first confirmation of an authorised plan of attack.

He told interrogators that Al-Qaeda's men were given money and told to begin surveillance of the airport, assessing its weak points and finding locations from which planes might be shot down.

In February 2003 � more than a year after this directive and several weeks before Mohammed's arrest � tanks and 400 troops surrounded the airport. Blair was accused of staging a stunt to boost support for the imminent invasion of Iraq, but insists that he had received intelligence indicating a possible attack.

"To this day we don't know if it was correct and we foiled it or if it was wrong," he said in a speech in his constituency.
Mohammed claims that the Heathrow operation never advanced beyond surveillance, blaming difficulties in communicating with operatives after the Americans began to bomb Afghanistan and the Taliban government was overthrown.

Describing September 11 2001 as "far more successful than we had ever imagined", Mohammed said he and his colleagues were taken aback by the strength of world reaction. "Afterwards we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run."

Key people could no longer use satellite phones and had to rely on a laborious courier system. "Before September 11 we could dispatch operatives with the expectation of follow-up contact, but after October 7 [when the bombing started] that changed 180 degrees. There was no longer a war room and operatives had more autonomy."

Mohammed said 9/11 had originally been conceived as a two-pronged attack on five targets on the east coast of America and five on the west coast. Planners had considered targeting bridges, nuclear plants, landmark buildings such as Library Tower in Los Angeles and Sears Tower in Chicago and Hollywood studios.

"We had talked about hitting California as it was America's richest state and Bin Laden had talked about economic targets," he said. However, Bin Laden decided a two-pronged attack would be impossible to synchronise and ordered an onslaught in two stages instead.

Realising that "after 9/11 Arabs would be scrutinised", the plotters had recruited a second group of four pilots with non-Arab passports.

Mohammed said they included Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-born Moroccan who had lived in Brixton, south London, from 1992-95.

The plan for a second wave of attacks on the west coast was dropped after Moussaoui was arrested at a Minnesota flight school a month before September 11. Until now it had been believed that Moussaoui was to have been the 20th member of the hijack gang that crashed the four planes.

The transcripts portray Mohammed, who trained as an engineer in America, as a frightening figure with an absolute disregard for human life and an obsession with devising spectacular ways of killing people.

He has made it clear that planning for the September 11 attacks had been going on for much longer than previously realised.

March 27, 2004 at 11:10 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (32) | Top of page | Blog Home

Hamas in terror plea to Al-Qaeda

Times Online - Sunday Times

THE Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas has urged Al-Qaeda to respond to the killing of its co-founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, by striking Jewish targets across the world. It is the first sign of co-operation between the two groups, writes Uzi Mahnaimi.

Hamas, whose terror structures are largely confined to the Middle East, has refrained from working with Osama Bin Laden�s network up to now. It was critical of the September 11 attacks on America, fearing that they might lead to retaliatory action against the Islamic community.

Israel�s assassination of Yassin last Monday appears to have prompted a change by the Hamas leadership. Within hours a call from Hamas appeared on a website believed to be a mouthpiece for Al-Qaeda. It demanded revenge.

The message was addressed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, an Al-Qaeda group that claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombings earlier this month.

For the first time Hamas also ran its own statement on the Al-Qaeda site, urging all Muslims to avenge Yassin�s death. The message was signed by the Izzedine al-Qassem Brigades, Hamas�s military wing.

The statements are being taken seriously by Israel. Intelligence sources said security had been stepped up around the Israeli embassy in London and at other Israeli sites around the world.

March 27, 2004 at 11:06 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (20) | Top of page | Blog Home

SAS man tells how coup went wrong

Times Online - Sunday Times

Tom Walker

A FORMER SAS soldier languishing in a Zimbabwean jail has confessed to numerous failures in his attempt to lead a group of mercenaries in overthrowing the president of Equatorial Guinea.
In a 13-page handwritten statement, Simon Mann describes how he hoped to convince the Harare authorities to let him and his men pass through Zimbabwe.

He pretended to back a rebel army in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that could have helped Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean leader, to secure diamond rights for his bankrupt regime. The operation would have been a smokescreen: after dumping off arms for the rebels, Mann and his fighters would have flown on to their real target, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.

The operation, launched on March 7, foundered when the Zimbabwean authorities impounded Mann�s plane after it landed at Harare airport to pick up weapons. Mann and 69 men, mainly South Africans, Angolans and Namibians, were last week charged with conspiring to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea. They face life imprisonment if found guilty.

In his statement Mann says that he was introduced early last year to Severo Moto, a prominent Equatorial Guinean opposition leader exiled in Madrid. If Moto returned, �there would be an uprising of military and civilians� against Nguema, he says.

Mann, 46, writes that he ordered weapons from Zimbabwe Defence Industries in January: �Naively, I believed that by dealing with ZDI I was dealing with a high level and would be �covered�.�

However, he encountered a string of misfortunes, including a bird strike to the engine of his Russian Antonov 12. When the rebels he was pretending to help failed to secure an airstrip at Kolwezi, in southern DRC, as planned, the operation was postponed.

By mid-February he was planning another run but this ended in the group�s arrest.Mann, an old Etonian, insists he was not working with the connivance of western intelligence, as has been alleged.

March 27, 2004 at 11:04 PM in SAS | Permalink | TrackBack (44) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 25, 2004

A deadly plot more complex than 9/11

Telegraph | News | A deadly plot more complex than 9/11

(Filed: 14/03/2004)

To acquire explosives, select targets, conduct dry runs and deliver the bombs to the right place at the right time without alerting any of the intelligence agencies is astonishing, says Sean Rayment
In many ways, the Madrid train bombings would have required a higher degree of planning and a more sophisticated terrorist network than that which led to the September 11 atrocity in 2001, say intelligence officers at MI5.

To plant 13 complex remote-controlled bombs on three separate trains at the height of rush hour in a European capital, without alerting any of the West's numerous intelligence agencies, is simply astonishing.

Collectively, Nato, and the US in particular, spend billions on counter-terrorism. Listening stations eavesdrop on millions of conversations every week. A high degree of mobile phone "chatter" between suspected terrorists has often been the precursor to an attack. This time there was no "chatter" and no warning.

For the urban terrorist to succeed, extreme security is essential. Most terrorist groups now adopt the "cellular" system perfected by the Provisional IRA in the 1990s. At that time, active service units (ASUs) - teams of terrorists composed of four men and women - were given exceptional operational autonomy, with only its leader in communication with the organisation's heads.

No ASU member knew the identity of other teams, which always ensured some security if any ASU member was captured. The ASUs chose their own targets, times of attack and means, providing it fitted in with the overall Provisional IRA armed philosophy. The tactics were deadly and successful.

For the Spanish bombers to achieve their mission, targets would have been selected through a painstaking process involving weeks of study, reconnaissance and rehearsals. Many targets would have been deemed unsuitable because, for example, casualty rates would not be high enough or the likelihood of capture prior to or after the attack would be too high.

It is likely that several "dry runs" to iron out any logistical problems were carried out by the teams before last Thursday's attacks.

Each bomber would have required at least two "watchers" to make sure he could deliver his or her bomb to the right destination at the right time without being spotted by security officials. Once delivered, the bombing team would need to be extracted to a safe house where they could stay for a few hours or even days before leaving the country.

Making remote-controlled bombs is a complex and dangerous business. And obtaining high explosives in a country that has been waging a war against a ruthless terrorist organisation, Eta, for more than 30 years would have been extremely difficult.

Once built, these devices would need to have been tested to determine what factors might inhibit detonation, such as distance, radio interference and even the weather. Only when the terrorists believed that they could virtually guarantee success would the operation have been launched.

All of this would have been achieved without the knowledge of the Spanish security services, the CGI and the CNI, Interpol, MI6, MI5, the FBI and the CIA and numerous other intelligence agencies in other European countries that monitor suspects, bank accounts and trade routes.

The questions most worrying for the heads of all friendly intelligence and security services in the western world is "Why didn't we know?" and "Where will they strike next?".

March 25, 2004 at 07:57 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (57) | Top of page | Blog Home

Army 'can't go to war for five years'

Telegraph | News | Army 'can't go to war for five years'

By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 25/03/2004)

Britain's Armed Forces will not be able to mount another operation on the scale of the Iraq war for another five years, the Chief of Defence Staff said yesterday.

Gen Sir Michael Walker told the Commons defence committee that the Army in particular would not be able to recover from operations in Iraq until 2008 or 2009.

"I think we have already accepted that we cannot do another large-scale operation now," he said. "We are unlikely to be able to get to large-scale much before the end of the decade, somewhere around 08 or 09." The claim goes much further than Adml Sir Michael Boyce, his predecessor, who said at the end of the war that the Armed Forces would not be ready for another such operation until the end of this year.

The Army has been stretched to breaking point by its involvement in the war on terrorism and a series of operational commitments in the Falklands, Cyprus, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Sir Michael said the Army was still reconstituting units from the Iraq conflict and at the same time undergoing reorganisation.

He told the MPs that if he was asked to send the same number of troops to another troublespot urgently he would have to tell Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, that "something will have to give".

The problems have already affected the deployment of extra troops to Afghanistan to back up the American-led hunt for Osama bin Laden. Defence chiefs have been considering sending 1,400 commandos and paratroopers to support the SAS and US special forces' operation in Afghanistan.

Operation Mountain Storm is led by Task Force 121, which is made up of US and British special forces units and has been ordered to capture bin Laden before the US presidential elections. But Gen John Reith, Chief of Joint Operations, has warned Sir Michael that the British troops could not be committed to the hunt for bin Laden for more than six months.

One of the two units being considered for Afghanistan, the Royal Marines' 40 Commando, was due to be sent to Basra, so if it goes to Afghanistan another infantry unit will have to be sent in its place.

There are even more problems finding paratroopers. The Parachute Regiment's second battalion is in Basra, the first is on standby to fly to Kosovo, and the third, which would have to go, is training for a tour in Northern Ireland.

Sir Michael's complaint to the defence committee comes days after 700 men were sent to Kosovo, adding to the pressure faced by planners to identify units that could be deployed.

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of General Staff, told the MPs that the Army was short of medics and experts in "human intelligence" gathering, both of which skills are heavily dependent on reservists.

Large numbers are now resigning from the TA, largely because they cannot combine the increasing demands being made on reservists with their civilian careers.

One senior TA source said it was clear that many were waiting to receive their annual �1,000 bonus before resigning.

March 25, 2004 at 07:55 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (38) | Top of page | Blog Home

Libya's return to the fold is merely isolated victory in War on Terror

Times Online - Britain

By Bronwen Maddox

MICHAEL HOWARD had half a point. Tony Blair will have known, in choosing to go directly from the Madrid memorial service to Tripoli, that the juxtaposition would not pass without comment. Condemning terrorism one day, sitting with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi the next.

But only half a point. The Blair visit � just a day after that of William Burns, the US envoy � is an appropriate, deliberate reward for Gaddafi�s decision to cash in his secret weapons programme.

For Blair and President Bush, Gaddafi is the prize exhibit in their case that they can win the War on Terror. Their hopes are understandable and, up to a point, well-founded. It is not just Libya�s change of mind that is encouraging. The limitations of its weapons programme, now exposed, are reassuring, too; if that is the best that the black market can deliver, then terrorists are some way from nuclear weapons.

Yet the more sobering conclusion is that much about the Libyan case is unique. It looks like a poor model for bringing others in from the cold.

Cash, foreign corporate cash, lots of it and very soon. That was the implication of the briefings from Blair�s team yesterday, who dangled the names of Royal Dutch/Shell Group and BAe Systems.

It is in UK and US interests to give Libya a highly public reward for giving up a weapons programme that was far more ambitious than the West had suspected. Libya spent ten years painstakingly collecting spare parts from the world�s nuclear black market. Now, it is watching as the uranium enrichment plants are broken up, stashed in crates and shipped to the US.

Gaddafi appears able to separate his nuclear aspirations from a sense of national pride, an unusual quality. Even so, the dismantling of his nuclear kit might seem a humiliation. Part of the purpose of Blair�s trip is to say that it is not. Gaddafi�s move looked sudden, but represents a deal as formal, almost, as the Lockerbie settlement. Over several years, using the Lockerbie talks as a point of contact, British and American diplomats dangled the booty they had to offer in front of the Libyan leader � and even more important, his Westernised son Sa�f al-Islam al-Gaddafi.

Gaddafi�s calculation looked shrewd from the start. His efforts to build nuclear and chemical weapons were expensive, and sanctions were shutting out any businesses that might employ the hordes of educated young people pouring into the workforce.

The more we find out about his weapons programme, the better the deal looks for him. Libya�s chemical weapons programme was smaller than some analysts reckoned. The nuclear research, the real shock to the West, was very large in scope. It extended from uranium enrichment to plans for making a nuclear weapon.

But, according to reports from Western officials based on interviews with Libyan scientists, the nuclear programme was missing crucial components. They were ordered from black-market suppliers, including the network assembled by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the now-disgraced Pakistani scientist, but many of the most valuable parts never arrived, to the rising frustration of the Libyan team.

So the programme that Gaddafi has sacrificed in order to put himself on speaking terms with the West was much less complete � and less valuable � than it first seemed.

In one sense, it is reassuring. It shows that even a technically sophisticated country, with plenty of money dedicated to the task, found it hard to get nuclear components. But it does not follow that a country that had mastered the technology to a much higher level � Iran, say, or North Korea � could easily be persuaded to do the same. The imperfect state of Libya�s research makes it a less useful precedent than it first seemed.

As does the suddenness of the switch, surprising even to those involved. It tells us a lot about how much Libya is still under the control of one man. In Iran, every nuance about the warmth of dealings with the West would provoke huge debate within the regime; in Saudi Arabia, too, to some extent. But in Libya, Gaddafi decided it was worth his while to switch, and that was that.

It is right that Blair and American envoys give Gaddafi an immediate reward with their presence; but it would be wrong to conclude that Libya is an easy model to replicate.

March 25, 2004 at 06:58 PM in Middle East | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 24, 2004

Who's the Enemy Now?

TIME Magazine: Who's the Enemy Now?

With al-Qaeda's leaders on the run, the terrorist threat is evolving—and getting scarier. Here's why .....

Posted Sunday, March 21, 2004
Along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, there is no shortage of spies and informers. In that mountain lair where al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are burrowed in amid local tribes that pay little heed to the government in Islamabad, at least five rival Pakistani agencies run networks in search of Osama bin Laden and his cohort. The snitches seemed to have come up with gold last week. TIME has learned that Pakistani troops, already engaged in an offensive to flush out foreign fighters, pounced on an informer's tip that al-Qaeda sympathizers were hiding with foreign militants in the village of Kalosha. Before dawn last Tuesday, 400 members of Pakistan's Frontier Corps swooped in, only to be ambushed by heavy fire; at least 22 troops died. In response, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered 8,000 troops to converge on a cluster of villages deep in South Waziristan, drawing a cordon around 20 sq. mi. of hills and apple orchards dotted with mud fortresses. Somewhere inside, Musharraf announced, his forces had surrounded a "high-value target." Soon a variety of sources were giving the target a name: Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda and bin Laden's closest aide.

The Army's spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, acknowledged that no one had definitively spotted al-Zawahiri in the area since fighting flared on Tuesday. Lieut. General Safdar Hussain, the Frontier Corps commander, told journalists that a vehicle that may have been carrying al-Zawahiri managed to crash through militia roadblocks and escape. Yet what made the military believe they might still have a trophy in their gunsights was that al-Qaeda fighters normally vanish when confronted with a sizable force. This time they resisted fiercely, as if to protect someone special. Somewhere between 200 and 400 militants kept 8,000 Pakistani soldiers half a mile away with a steady barrage of small-arms fire, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades. After a day of battle, the army commander called in helicopter gunships, jets and artillery. By Saturday night a cloud of dust hung over the area, but the army had still not defeated the militants. "We've tightened our cordon," said Sultan. "Nobody will escape."

As the battle raged, Bush Administration officials played down expectations. Officials said U.S. intelligence could not confirm reports of al-Zawahiri's whereabouts. But the possibility that he might be cornered sent pulses racing. Since the late '90s, the Egyptian has served as bin Laden's chief tactician, personal doctor and spiritual guide. His elimination would mean the al-Qaeda command structure that plotted the 9/11 attacks would be almost completely wiped out.

No one hoped he was caught more than George W. Bush. A picture of al-Qaeda's second in command dead or in chains would give a boost to the President's insistence that, even as chaos mounted in Iraq and the world reverberated from the shock of the commuter-train bombings in Madrid, the U.S. is winning the war on terrorism. With Bush's election campaign picking up speed, the stakes for finding al-Zawahiri and bin Laden have never been higher, especially now that terrorist forces seem to have developed a keen eye for political calendars. The Islamists charged with slaughtering more than 200 Madrid commuters struck on March 11. Three days later Spanish voters tossed out the ruling party allied with the U.S. in the war in Iraq.

Incoming Socialist Party Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who called the Iraq occupation a "fiasco," reiterated a campaign promise to pull Spain's 1,300 peacekeepers out of Iraq by June unless the U.N. takes over operations there. In Iraq insurgents attacked several hotels on the eve of the war's first anniversary, just when the U.S. hoped to talk up Iraq's successes. The bombings were believed to be the work of Islamic extremists eager to plunge the country into chaos before the June 30 deadline for handing authority back to Iraqis.

The sweep of death and destruction gave fresh evidence of how the Islamist terrorist threat has managed to survive the global war waged against it. New networks of jihadists emerge faster than the U.S. and its allies can arrest or kill them. Counterterrorism experts believe that the old al-Qaeda organization commanded by bin Laden may be expiring and that a new, more elusive generation of extremists apparently inspired by al-Qaeda's ruthless vision�men like Jamal Zougam, 30, a cell-phone salesman arrested for the Madrid bombings, and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, 37, the Jordanian suspected of orchestrating violence in Iraq�has taken up the banner. Barely recognizable even to officials who make a living tracking terrorists, the new jihadists proved in Madrid that they can evade detection while they hatch their plots. And no one knows where they will strike next.

THE SPANISH CONNECTION
Nobody thought Islamic terrorism would happen in Spain. Much of Europe is known to be a logistical base for the militants but rarely a theater of operations. "We knew there were Islamist networks in Spain, even knew who most of the people involved were," says a French counterterrorism investigator. "But we had no idea these networks and cells were operational in planning and staging attacks."

That may account for the lackadaisical response Spanish security services gave to warnings from France and Morocco to keep an eye on Zougam. Last Friday a Spanish judge charged Zougam and two fellow Moroccans with carrying out the train bombings. All three proclaimed their innocence. But Zougam had been under watch by European counterterrorism officials since at least August 2001, after French officials found a number of their suspects crossing paths with him. They asked Spanish law enforcement to search Zougam's Madrid apartment, where he lived with his mother, who had taken him from Tangiers when he was 10, and two sisters. Inside police found videotapes on bin Laden and jihad and the telephone numbers of three members of the Soldiers of Allah cell run by Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, known as Abu Dahdah. In November 2001 Spanish authorities jailed Yarkas, believed to be the leader of al-Qaeda's cells in Spain, for allegedly helping in the preparation and implementation of the 9/11 attacks.

A tall man with stylishly unkempt hair and no beard who wore Western clothes, Zougam hardly looked like an Islamic fundamentalist. He did not appear religious. In Lavapies, a Madrid melting pot of North African, Chinese and Indian immigrants, Zougam ran a locutorio, one of the popular shops where you can make cheap phone calls abroad. The owner of another locutorio says Zougam was an expert in "liberating" phones�altering handsets sold cheaply by service providers to take prepaid SIM, or internal identity, cards. Among Zougam's customers was Yarkas. According to the November 2001 indictment against Yarkas, police tapping his cell phone heard him tell other contacts that he was in "Jamal's telephone shop." In September 2001 Zougam called Yarkas to say he had just returned to Madrid from Morocco and brought greetings from Abu Dahdah's brother.

The connections were too vague for Spanish investigators to arrest Zougam, who was not suspected of criminal activity. But law-enforcement authorities in Morocco began tracking him on his frequent visits to his old neighborhood in Tangiers. There he may have heard the preachings of Sheik Mohammed Fizazi, the spiritual leader of Salafia Jihadia, a group of Moroccan radicals said by some investigators to have ties to al-Qaeda. In August 2003 Fizazi was sentenced to 30 years in jail for inspiring the terrorists who bombed five sites in Casablanca, including a Spanish club, in May 2003. Zougam's name surfaced during the investigation of those attacks: at one point, he shared an apartment in Madrid with Abdelaziz Benyaich, one of those arrested for his alleged connection with the bombings. Morocco last week was again looking for links between Zougam and the Casablanca attacks. He had been in Morocco in advance of the strike and returned to Spain just three weeks before it occurred. But so far, says an official, "the only connection involves background and ideology."

To investigators, Zougam appeared to be a low-level operative who moved easily in Islamist circles, not a terrorist kingpin. Moroccan officials told TIME they considered him an intermediary between various cells in that country. "His name came up very often," said a Moroccan official. "But we had no evidence he had done anything, so we could not arrest him."

In the end, Spanish police reconnected with him through dumb luck. A bomb that didn't explode on March 11 was connected to a cell phone whose SIM card was tracked back to Zougam's shop. Spanish press reports say he purchased a whole box of them recently, along with 14 cell phones. In a thorough search of his shop, police reportedly found a piece of plastic broken from the casing of the cell phone found with the unexploded bomb.

Still, Zougam's possible role in the Madrid plot is unclear, and experts are still divided over who might have ordered it. Although the key arrests in the railway bombings were Muslims, there is no iron-clad evidence�though there is plenty of speculation�that they worked for al-Qaeda or any other group. Analysts say the timing of the attacks may signal a dangerous turn: a new generation of terrorists, impressed by their seeming ability to sway an election, could plan to calibrate future attacks to achieve political objectives.

IRAQ'S NEW INSURGENTS
The mighty car bomb last week that lit the sky orange as flames shot from the wreckage of the five-story Mount Lebanon Hotel in downtown Baghdad was the latest evidence of the changing nature of terrorism there too. Though the bombing killed only seven, not 27 as originally reported, its impact was outsized, underscoring the trend toward striking ever softer targets. That included last week's murders of four U.S. missionaries and two European engineers working to rebuild Iraq.

It all seemed intended to stamp a negative image on the course of the occupation one year after it began and step up a calculated campaign to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30. U.S. officials expect attacks to increase as the date nears. "All of a sudden, it put a countdown clock on this country," says General Mark Kimmitt, the military's chief spokesman in Iraq. Kimmitt and other U.S. officials in Iraq increasingly believe Islamic radicals have taken charge of orchestrating the violence as Saddam Hussein loyalists fade from the scene. Their intent is to push the country into anarchy, where extremism can flourish.

It seems to be working. Brigadier General Mark Hertling, assistant commander of the 1st Armored Division patrolling Baghdad, told TIME that compared with capturing Saddam, unraveling the network of terrorist organizations in Iraq is a much rougher struggle. Unlike Saddam's loyalists, the jihadists operate in cells that are not based in specific neighborhoods or tribes. They avoid fighting the U.S. directly, instead using terrorism to sow fear and undermine security among Iraqi civilians.

The U.S. believes the new extremists are not the made men of al-Qaeda, but men with a similar militant mind-set. A few come from abroad, but others seem to be indigenous. "We are not seeing a major flow of foreign fighters coming across the border," says Kimmitt. He thinks there are a "couple of hundred" extremists doing the dirty work, including a few al-Qaeda elements, remnants of Ansar al-Islam that were dispersed from their headquarters in the Kurdish north during the war, Sunni extremists who share bin Laden's radical brand of Islam and a trickle of individual volunteer jihadis.

The man most often cited by occupation authorities as the ringleader is al-Zarqawi. They frequently tie the Jordanian militant to al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam. But now al-Zarqawi seems to be running his own network in Iraq. He allegedly set out, in a long letter U.S. officials attributed to him in January, his plan for inciting civil war through attacks on Iraqis. He was quickly blamed last week for the hotel bombing, which mimicked al-Qaeda's style. "I think he might be one of the leaders giving instructions," says Hertling. Catching al-Zarqawi is a "daily mission," says Kimmitt, but he adds that it probably wouldn't stop the extremists. He has seen signs that the old regime's loyalists are joining forces with Islamists who have the money and leaders to take on the U.S. In exchange, militants who belonged to the ousted Baath ruling party can provide safe houses, weaponry and trigger pullers. "They've got to grab on to something," says Kimmitt, and if the trend continues, it may mean the "couple of hundred" fighters would be bolstered by many, many more.

JIHAD INC.
More than two years, two wars and billions of dollars in intelligence expenditures have made the U.S. more effective than ever at hunting and pre-empting terrorists. Much of the old al-Qaeda leadership has been destroyed, along with many of its trained field operatives. Though bin Laden and al-Zawahiri remain at large, U.S. officials believe they have been "off net" for some time, relying on laborious courier traffic to communicate with their subordinates. That means logistical planning for attacks has been done independently of them.

Yet intelligence officials acknowledge that the U.S.'s success in dismantling bin Laden's organization has not lessened the threat of Islamic terrorism. Al-Qaeda has spawned a movement greater than itself. "Al-Qaeda has infected others with its ideology," CIA director George Tenet said recently. "Other extremist groups within the movement it influenced have become the next wave of the terrorist threat." That only makes them harder to find and stop. Even in hindsight, there was no electronic chatter, no rumor, nothing from interrogations hinting at an attack before the train bombers struck in Madrid. The amorphous nature of the plotters' network enabled it to operate under the noses of intelligence and police forces.

That's why, in the darkened warrens of the U.S.'s counterterrorism agencies, the pace is unrelenting, as analysts try to disrupt the terrorists before they can strike here. Those officials are intensely worried that Islamists, emboldened by the Spanish vote, are focusing on how to target the U.S. in the run-up to Election Day to blow up public confidence in the Bush Administration. Officials warn that this summer's Democratic and Republican conventions in Boston and New York City present exactly the kinds of targets al-Qaeda teaches its operatives to choose: the crush of VIPs, chaos, noise and long hours will be a security nightmare. And, as a senior U.S. official points out with a shudder, both conventions will be held above train stations.

�Reported by Timothy J. Burger and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Stephan Faris and Vivienne Walt/Baghdad, James Graff and Samuel Loewenberg/Madrid, Syed Talat Hussain/Islamabad, Scott MacLeod/Rabat and Tim McGirk/Wana

March 24, 2004 at 12:45 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

Decoding the Chatter

TIME.com: Decoding the Chatter -- Mar. 29, 2004

Monday, Mar. 29, 2004
Most of America is sleeping, but deep within CIA headquarters in northern Virginia, officials pulling overnight duty are scarfing junk food, soft drinks and coffee as they surf mountains of intelligence reports for the latest potential threat to Americans. These are the men and women of the year-old Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). As they sit at gray, modular workstations equipped with secure computer terminals and phones, their toil is long and arduous but never dull. "It's day right now in half the world, so this shift's pretty fast paced," says an official. "In another hour, it's morning prayers in East Africa. It's morning already in Kabul."

In an unprecedented tour of TTIC's interim quarters as well as the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the pipeline that leads to the site of President Bush's top-secret daily intelligence briefings, TIME correspondents got an inside look at the nerve center of America's efforts against terrorism. The atmosphere was one of camaraderie mixed with urgency. Asked how often a night goes by without any potentially alarming intelligence reports coming in, an official replies, "I haven't had a night like that. There's always something."

Each day, officials at TTIC (pronounced tee-tic) examine 5,000 to 6,000 pieces of intelligence, trying to assemble the best picture of what's out there. Staffed by representatives of about a dozen government entities, TTIC strives to address the failure of agencies to share vital intelligence before 9/11. "We have an FBI analyst who's sitting next to a CIA analyst who's sitting next to a Secret Service analyst who's sitting next to a Coast Guard analyst," says TTIC chief John Brennan, a senior CIA officer. "They take information from their different systems and say, 'Hey, have you seen this?' or 'Is this something that affects what you're doing now?'"

Brennan insists TTIC doesn't run spy operations inside the U.S., which the CIA is prohibited from doing. But, he says, as TTIC chief he can quickly get the FBI to do so to fill "gaps in our knowledge." The center is helping to monitor "a lot of folks who have acquired U.S. citizenship or green cards that are engaged in international terrorism," says Brennan. A well-placed source says the FBI now keeps tabs on about 400 individuals in the U.S. who are thought to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda or somehow connected to Sunni extremism. The FBI has also tried to co-opt some of them as informants.

Toward midnight, in an interview in a nondescript office in the Counterterrorist Center, a senior official describes a mission that is much closer to the Hollywood image of spy work: intense, often risky covert action against terrorists abroad. "Our job is to capture them and kill them," the official says. That means, he explains, taking action "at the direction of the President, by formal decree, clandestinely. Sometimes you're acting at his direction to change the world."

But even at the Counterterrorist Center, the official notes, much of the work is "so goddam nitty-gritty it'll turn your mind numb." Some of the best intelligence comes from interrogating captured terrorists. The Counterterrorist Center helps direct and analyze those sessions. It's all about "who knew who five years ago," says the official. "Where did they go after that? How did the network expand? What were they plotting then? Where did they live? Who did they live with?" But the adrenaline really gets pumping after an attack like the one in Madrid. The Counterterrorist Center will immediately run through a checklist of questions: What's the first take from the local intelligence service? What kind of evidence was found? Did anyone get a license plate? Was there any known operational terrorist cell there before? Are there satellite intercepts of telephone conversations? If the local authorities arrested someone, is that person known to the CIA?

In another part of the CIA complex, President Bush's briefer is on her way in. The thirtysomething, nine-year agency veteran is winding up a year-plus rotation in the job, which requires her to get to work around 2 a.m., six days a week. "Everything [the CIA] has produced in the past 24 hours crosses my desk," she says. That's plenty. To determine what intelligence the President should hear at around 8 a.m., along with his standard daily reports, she will zoom through a stack of fresh intelligence as tall as three phone books.

� With reporting by Viveca Novak and Elaine Shannon/Washington

From the Mar. 29, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

March 24, 2004 at 12:41 AM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (39) | Top of page | Blog Home

Beware! Our friends are bugging us, embassies told

Times Online - Britain

By Daniel McGrory and Andrew Pierce

BRITISH diplomats in Brussels head the list of envoys who are being targeted by foreign intelligence agencies, according to a leaked Foreign and Commonwealth Office document seen by The Times.
Security experts have warned senior diplomats in the Belgian capital that their e-mails may be intercepted and homes may be bugged, and that counter-surveillance “sweeps” are unlikely to succeed.

British diplomats in Bosnia and Pakistan have also been told that they are being spied upon by supposedly friendly governments, according to the document.

Concern is now so great that one of the officials in charge of Foreign Office security has cautioned envoys that the department�s information technology systems are �under attack� and that routine e-mails to and from Whitehall could no longer be regarded as safe. Diplomats have been told that every message they send must be delivered on a secure system after one foreign government took offence at an e-mail that its agents had secretly and illegally intercepted.

The envoys at risk include the three British ambassadors in Brussels who deal respectively with the EU, Nato and the host Belgian Government, and those at the British Embassy in Sarajevo and the High Commission in Islamabad.

The new generation of spies believe they will learn far more secrets from eavesdropping on diplomats� homes rather than trying to bug formal meetings at embassy buildings.

These security lapses were only discovered after ministers ordered an urgent review following the bomb attack on the British Consulate in Istanbul last November. As well as the threat from terrorist bombers, the investigators found evidence of espionage leaks.

The document seen by The Times details how Peter Millett, the head of the security strategy unit at the Foreign Office, discussed the latest spying operations last month with leaders of the Diplomatic Service Association, which represents 650 of Britain�s senior envoys.

The revelation comes weeks after Clare Short, the former Cabinet minister, claimed Britain was spying on Kofi Annan, the UN SecretaryGeneral, and MI5 was accused of bugging the Pakistani High Commission in London. So far, the Foreign Office has not made any public protest to the three countries named in the report.

The Foreign Office and other departments have secure systems in their buildings but staff often fail to use them when routinely sending e-mails.

There is also evidence of how spies are listening into conversations between senior envoys and visiting ministers, believing British officials and their government guests might speak more freely over dinner or drinks in the residence than they might during formal embassy briefings.

MI5 officers were sent to Brussels to investigate the bugging of offices used by British diplomats in the EU Council of Ministers building.

The Russians and the Israelis were suspected of planting sophisticated bugs in the offices of six EU delegations, including Britain, which were discovered last May.

There were also accusations last summer that the Pakistani authorities tried to bug the British High Commissioner�s office when a stray wire was found trailing from his desk.

The Foreign Office said of these latest spying allegations: �We do not comment on leaked documents.�

The reaction of foreign diplomats in Britain was summed up by one veteran envoy in London, who said: �It would be a bit rich for Britain to take the high moral ground about being spied on by friends after their alleged behaviour at the UN.�

March 24, 2004 at 12:17 AM in Espionage - general | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 22, 2004

Committee report on the military

Committee report on the military - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

Panel finds Clinton, Bush had plenty of options
MSNBC
Updated: 5:54 p.m. ET March 24, 2004

Staff Statement No. 6
Members of the Commission, with your help your staff has developed initial findings to present to the public on the use of America’s armed forces in countering terrorism before the 9/11 attacks. These findings may help frame some of the issues for this hearing and inform the development of your judgments and recommendations.

This report reflects the results of our work so far. We remain ready to revise our understanding of these topics as our investigation progresses. This staff statement represents the collective effort of a number of members of our staff. Bonnie Jenkins, Michael Hurley, Alexis Albion, Ernest May, and Steve Dunne did much of the investigative work reflected in this statement.

The Department of Defense (DOD) and Central Intelligence Agency have cooperated fully in making available both the documents and interviews that we have needed for our work on this topic.
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The Role of the Military in Counterterrorism Strategy
Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. government asked the armed forces to develop a capability for combating terrorism. Though this was initially conceived narrowly for hostage rescue, the failure of the 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission demonstrated the need to build more robust forces. By the mid-1980s the U.S. government also began considering capabilities for offensive counterterrorism missions that would use military forces to attack terrorist organizations on their home ground. These were the years in which the organization now known as the Joint Special Operations Command was created. As the international terrorism danger subsided at the end of the 1980s, little additional effort seemed needed for an offensive counterterrorism capability. In George H.W. Bush’s presidency and the early years of the Clinton administration, the DOD was a secondary player in counterterrorism efforts which focused on the apprehension and rendition of wanted suspects.

After the 1996 attack on an Air Force residential complex in Saudi Arabia, Khobar Towers, the Department of Defense and the military gave particular attention to defending against attack. In their lexicon, “anti-terrorism” means defensive force protection. “Counter-terrorism” refers to offensive operations. After Khobar Towers, anti-terrorism had the priority claim on attention and resources.

Under the directive on counterterrorism policy issued by President Clinton in May 1998, Presidential Decision Directive 62, there were ten program areas. The only one that highlighted a DOD role was the tenth, on the protection of Americans overseas. The directive stated that the Defense Department, through the unified regional commanders, was responsible for the protection of U.S. forces stationed abroad. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also established a special office dedicated to what DOD officials describe as a decades-old, high-priority mission to protect U.S. troops from unconventional attack.

At home, the military’s role was specialized support to state and local authorities for dealing with the consequences of terrorist attack, and security support for special events, such as the Olympics. Defense Secretary William Cohen and his deputy, John Hamre, gave significant attention to the danger of an attack with unconventional weapons and took some initial, innovative steps to develop a domestic military capability to assist civil authorities in the event of such an attack.

Abroad, the role of the military was to provide support for law enforcement, such as military transport for terrorist renditions, or support for other agencies as they responded to a terrorist attack. The undersecretary of defense for policy at the time, Walter Slocombe, told us that it would have been extraordinary to assign the military a leading role in counterterrorism efforts abroad since military force was not the primary counterterrorism instrument.

Operation Infinite Reach
After the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were attacked on August 7, 1998, President Clinton directed his advisers to consider military options. The difficult relationship between evidence and action, mentioned earlier today, was soon clarified with extraordinary intelligence that fixed responsibility quickly and authoritatively on Usama Bin Ladin personally, as well as his organization.

Focused by intelligence suggesting that terrorist leaders, including Bin Ladin, would be meeting at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, President Clinton organized a tightly compartmented planning effort to prepare a set of strikes, code-named “Operation Infinite Reach.” He and his advisers agreed on a set of targets in Afghanistan. His advisers recommended that the U.S. government should strike whether or not there was firm evidence that the terrorist commanders were at these facilities. Secretary Cohen told us it was also important to send a signal that the United States was coming and was not going to tolerate terrorist activity against America.

More difficult was the question of whether to strike other al Qaeda targets in Sudan. Two possible targets were identified in Sudan, including a pharmaceutical plant at which, the President was told by his aides, they believed VX nerve gas was manufactured with Usama Bin Ladin’s financial support. Indeed, even before the embassy bombings, NSC counterterrorism staff had been warning about this plant. Yet on August 11, the NSC staff’s senior director for intelligence advised National Security Adviser Berger that the “bottom line” was that “we will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options.” By the early morning hours of August 20, when the President made his decision, his policy advisers concluded that enough evidence had been gathered to justify the strike. The President approved their recommendation on that target, while choosing not to proceed with the strike on the other target in Sudan — a business believed to be owned by Bin Ladin. DCI Tenet and National Security Adviser Berger told us that, based on what they know today, they still believe they made the right recommendation and that the President made the right decision. We have encountered no dissenters among his top advisers.

This strike was launched on August 20. The missiles hit their intended targets, but neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leaders were killed. The decision to destroy the plant in Sudan became controversial. Some at the time argued that the decisions were influenced by domestic political considerations, given the controversies raging at that time. The staff has found no evidence that domestic political considerations entered into the discussion or the decision-making process. All evidence we have found points to national security considerations as the sole basis for President Clinton’s decision.

The impact of the criticism lingered, however, as policymakers looked at proposals for new strikes. The controversy over the Sudan attack, in particular, shadowed future discussions about the quality of intelligence that would be needed about other targets.

Operation Infinite Resolve and Plan Delenda
Senior officials agree that a principal objective of Operation Infinite Reach was to kill Usama Bin Ladin, and that this objective obviously had not been attained. The initial strikes went beyond targeting Bin Ladin to damage other camps thought to be supporting his organization. These strikes were not envisioned as the end of the story. On August 20, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Hugh Shelton, issued a planning order for the preparation of follow-on strikes. This plan was later code-named Operation Infinite Resolve. The day after the strikes the President and his principal advisers apparently began considering follow-on military planning. A few days later the NSC staff’s national coordinator for counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, informed other senior officials that President Clinton was inclined to launch further strikes sooner rather than later.

On August 27 Undersecretary Slocombe advised Secretary Cohen that the available targets were not promising. There was, he said, also an issue of strategy, the need to think of the effort as a long-term campaign. The experience of last week, he wrote, “has only confirmed the importance of defining a clearly articulated rationale for military action” that was effective as well as justified.

Active consideration of follow-on strikes continued into September. In this context Clarke prepared a paper for a political-military plan he called “Delenda,” from the Latin “to destroy.” Its military component envisioned an ongoing campaign of regular, small strikes, occurring from time to time whenever target information was ripe, in order to underscore the message of a concerted, systematic, and determined effort to dismantle the infrastructure of the Bin Ladin terrorist network. Clarke recognized that individual targets might not have much value. But, he wrote to Berger, we will never again be able to target a leadership conference of terrorists, and that should not be the standard.

Principals repeatedly considered Clarke’s proposed strategy, but none of them agreed with it. Secretary Cohen told us that the camps were primitive, easily constructed facilities with “rope ladders.” The question was whether it was worth using very expensive missiles to take out what General Shelton called “jungle gym” training camps. That would not have been seen as very effective. National Security Adviser Berger and others told us that more strikes, if they failed to kill Bin Ladin, could actually be counterproductive — increasing Bin Ladin’s stature.

These issues need to be viewed, they said, in a wider context. The United States launched air attacks against Iraq at the end of 1998 and against Serbia in 1999, all to widespread criticism around the world. About a later proposal for strikes on targets in Afghanistan, Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg noted that it offered “little benefit, lots of blowback against [a] bomb-happy U.S.”

In September 1998, while the follow-on strikes were still being debated among a small group of top advisers, the counterterrorism officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense were also considering a strategy. Unaware of Clarke’s plan, they developed an elaborate proposal for a “more aggressive counterterrorism posture.” The paper urged Defense to “champion a national effort to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists have thrown at our feet.” Although the terrorist threat had grown, the authors warned that “we have not fundamentally altered our philosophy or our approach.” If there were new “horrific attacks,” they wrote that then “we will have no choice nor, unfortunately, will we have a plan.” They outlined an eight-part strategy “to be more proactive and aggressive.” The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, Allen Holmes, brought the paper to Undersecretary Slocombe’s chief deputy, Jan Lodal. The paper did not go further. Its lead author recalls being told by Holmes that Lodal thought it was too aggressive. Holmes cannot recall what was said, and Lodal cannot remember the episode or the paper at all.

The President and his advisers remained ready to use military action against the terrorist threat. But the urgent interest in launching follow-on strikes had apparently passed by October. The focus shifted to an effort to find strikes that would clearly be effective, to find and target Bin Ladin himself.

Military Planning Continues
Though plans were not executed, the military continued to assess and update target lists regularly in case the military was asked to strike. Plans largely centered on cruise missile and manned aircraft strike options, and were updated and refined continuously through March 2001.

Several senior Clinton administration officials, including National Security Adviser Berger and the NSC staff’s Clarke, told us that President Clinton was interested in additional military options, including the possible use of ground forces. As part of Operation Infinite Resolve, the military produced them.

In December 1998 General Shelton ordered planning for the use of Special Operations Forces to capture UBL network leaders and transport them away from Kandahar. A second order issued on the following day examined the possible interception of aircraft. Plans refined throughout 1999 added successive options within the Infinite Resolve plan, including the possible use of strike aircraft, as well as Special Operations Forces. The targets included not only terrorist training camps, but also many other targets associated with Bin Laden and the known infrastructure of his organization.

The relationship of the White House and the Pentagon was complex. As Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Staff, put it, the military was often frustrated by civilian policymakers whose requests for military options were too simplistic. For their part, White House officials were often frustrated by what they saw as military unwillingness to tackle the counterterrorism problem.

General Shelton told us that he was aware of criticism that the Pentagon was too reluctant to engage the military against al Qaeda and UBL before 9/11. He said that, when he provided military advice to policymakers, he wanted to ensure they understood that military force is not “magic.” He remarked that while the U.S. military is a great force, risks associated with using that force must be explained, though such cautions may be frustrating to those eager to conduct a military operation.

General Shelton said that “given sufficient actionable intelligence, the military can do the operation.” But he explained that a tactical operation, if it did not go well, could turn out to be an international embarrassment for the United States. Shelton and many other military and civilian DOD officials we interviewed recalled their memories of episodes such as the failed hostage rescue in Iran in 1980, and the “Black Hawk Down” events in Somalia in 1993. General Shelton made clear, however, that upon direction from policymakers the military would proceed with an operation and carry out the order.

Secretary Cohen said the Pentagon was always ready to capture Bin Ladin if it could and to kill him if necessary. Cohen says he told other policymakers, “We can do this. It’s high risk, but if you’ve got the information to tell us where he is, we will be prepared to recommend that we use force.”

Another set of concerns came from the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), General Anthony Zinni. Before 9/11 any military action in Afghanistan would be carried out by CENTCOM. The Special Operations Command did not have the lead; it provided forces that could be used in a CENTCOM-led operation. The views of the key field commander carried great weight. General Zinni told us he did not believe that some of the options his command was ordered to develop would be effective, particularly missile strikes. Zinni thought a better approach would have been a broad strategy to build up local counterterrorism capabilities in neighboring countries, using military assistance to help countries like Uzbekistan. This strategy, he told us, was impeded by a lack of funds and limited interest in countries, like Uzbekistan, that had dictatorial governments.

As for the strike options, Zinni thought they would have little military effect and might threaten regional stability. Zinni told us that he advised the JCS chairman, General Shelton, about his reservations. Planning updates were generally not briefed to the policymakers. When they were briefed, the military carefully laid out the pros and cons of each option.

Military officers explained to us that sending Special Operations Forces into Afghanistan would have been complicated and risky. Such efforts would have required bases in the region; however, the basing options in the region were unappealing. Pro-Taliban elements of Pakistan’s military might warn Bin Ladin or his associates of pending operations. The U.S. government had information that the former Pakistan Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISID) head Hamid Gul, as a private citizen, contacted Taliban leaders in July 1999 and advised them that the United States was not planning to attack Afghanistan. He assured them that, as he had “last time,” he would provide three or four hours of warning should there be another missile launch.

With nearby basing options limited, an alternative was to fly from ships in the Arabian Sea or from land bases in the Persian Gulf, as was later done after 9/11. Such operations would then have to be supported from long distances, overflying the airspace of nations that might not be supportive or aware of the U.S. efforts.

Finally, military leaders again raised the problem of “actionable intelligence,” warning that they did not have information about where Bin Ladin would be by the time forces would be able to strike him. If they were in the region for a long period, perhaps clandestinely, the military might attempt to gather intelligence and wait for an opportunity. One special operations commander said his view of actionable intelligence was that if “you give us the action, we’ll give you the intelligence.” But this course would be risky, both in light of the difficulties already mentioned and the danger that U.S. operations might fail disastrously — as in the 1980 Iran rescue failure.

Cruise Missiles as the Default Option
Cruise missiles became the “default option” because it was the only option left on the table after the rejection of others. The Tomahawk’s long range, lethality, and extreme accuracy made it the missile of choice. However, as a means to attack al Qaeda and UBL-linked targets pre-9/11, cruise missiles were problematic.

Tomahawk cruise missiles had to be launched after the vessels carrying them moved into position. Once these vessels were in position, there was still an interval as decision-makers authorized the strike, the missiles were prepared for firing, and they flew to their targets. Officials worried that Bin Laden might move during these hours from the place of his last sighting, even if that information had been current.

Moreover, General Zinni told Commission staff that he had been deeply concerned that cruise missile strikes inside Afghanistan would kill numerous civilians. Zinni pointed out that most of the places where Bin Ladin was likely to be found were populated areas, and a percentage of the missiles would also simply go awry. Zinni estimated that a cruise missile strike might kill up to 2,000 innocent Afghans. In discussing the potential repercussions of missile strikes in his region of military responsibility, he warned, “It was easy to take the shot from Washington and walk away from it. We had to live there.”

No Actionable Intelligence
The paramount limitation cited by senior officials on every proposed use of military force was the lack of “actionable intelligence.” By this, they meant precise intelligence on where Bin Ladin would be, and how long he would be there.

National Security Adviser Berger said that there was never a circumstance where the policymakers thought they had good intelligence but declined to launch a missile at UBL-linked targets for fear of possible collateral damage. He told us the deciding factor was whether there was actionable intelligence. If the shot missed Bin Ladin, the United States would look weak, and Bin Ladin would look strong.

There were frequent reports about Bin Ladin’s whereabouts and activities. The daily reports regularly described where he was, what he was doing, and where he might be going. But usually, by the time these descriptions were landing on the desks of DCI Tenet or National Security Adviser Berger, Bin Ladin had already moved. Nevertheless, on occasion, intelligence was deemed credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Usama Bin Ladin.

Kandahar, December 1998
The first instance was in December 1998, in Kandahar. There was intelligence that Bin Ladin was staying at a particular location. Strikes were readied against this and plausible alternative locations. The principal advisers to the President agreed not to recommend a strike. Returning from one of their meetings, DCI Tenet told staff that the military, supported by everyone else in the room, had not wanted to launch a strike because no one had seen Bin Ladin in a couple of hours. DCI Tenet told us that there were concerns about the veracity of the source and about the risk of collateral damage to a nearby mosque. A few weeks later, Clarke described the calculus as one that had weighed 50 percent confidence in the intelligence against collateral damage estimated at, perhaps, 300 casualties.

After this episode Pentagon planners intensified efforts to find a more precise alternative to cruise missiles, such as using precision strike aircraft. This option would greatly reduce the collateral damage. Not only would it have to operate at long ranges from
home bases and overcome significant logistical obstacles, but the aircraft might be shot down by the Taliban. At the time, Clarke complained that General Zinni was opposed to the forward deployment of these aircraft. General Zinni does not recall blocking such an option. The aircraft apparently were not deployed for this purpose.

The Desert Camp, February 1999
During the winter of 1998-99, intelligence reported that Bin Ladin frequently visited a camp in the desert adjacent to a larger hunting camp in Helmand province of Afghanistan, used by visitors from a Gulf state. Public sources have stated that these visitors were from the United Arab Emirates. At the beginning of February, Bin Ladin was reportedly located there, and apparently remained for more than a week. This was not in an urban area, so the risk of collateral damage was minimal. Intelligence provided a detailed description of the camps. National technical intelligence confirmed the description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the UAE. The CIA received reports that Bin Ladin regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited with Emiratis. The location of this larger camp was confirmed by February 9, but the location of Bin Ladin’s quarters could not be pinned down so precisely. Preparations were made for a possible strike at least against the larger camp, perhaps to target Bin Ladin during one of his visits. No strike was launched.

According to CIA officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike might kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with Bin Ladin or close by. The lead CIA official in the field felt the intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable; the UBL unit chief at the time agrees. The field official believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill Bin Ladin before 9/11.

Clarke told us the strike was called off because the intelligence was dubious, and it seemed to him as if the CIA was presenting an option to attack America’s best counterterrorism ally in the Gulf. Documentary evidence at the time shows that on February 10 Clarke detailed to Deputy National Security Adviser Donald Kerrick the intelligence placing UBL in the camp, informed him that DOD might be in position to fire the next morning, and added that General Shelton was looking at other options that might be ready the following week.

Clarke had just returned from a visit to the UAE, working on counterterrorism cooperation and following up on a May 1998 UAE agreement to buy F-16 aircraft from the United States. On February 10, Clarke reported that a top UAE official had vehemently denied that high-level UAE officials were in Afghanistan. Evidence subsequently confirmed that high-level UAE officials had been hunting there.

By February 12 Bin Ladin had apparently moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot. In March the entire camp complex was hurriedly disassembled. We are still examining several aspects of this episode.

Kandahar, May 1999
In this case sources reported on the whereabouts of Bin Ladin over the course of five nights. The reporting was very detailed. At the time CIA working-level officials were told that strikes were not ordered because the military was concerned about the precision of the source’s reporting and the risk of collateral damage. Replying to a frustrated colleague in the field, the UBL unit chief wrote that “having a chance to get UBL three times in 36 hours and foregoing the chance each time has made me a bit angry. …the DCI finds himself alone at the table, with the other princip[als] basically saying ‘we’ll go along with your decision Mr. Director,’ and implicitly saying that the Agency will hang alone if the attack doesn’t get Bin Ladin.” These are working-level perspectives.

According to DCI Tenet the same circumstances prevented a strike in each of the cases described above: the intelligence was based on a single uncorroborated source, and there was a risk of collateral damage. In the first and third cases, the cruise missile option was rejected outright, and in the case of the second, never came to a clear decision point.

According to National Security Adviser Berger, the cases were “really DCI Tenet’s call.” In his view, in none of the cases did policymakers have the reliable intelligence that was needed. In Berger’s opinion, this did not reflect risk aversion or a lack of desire to act on DCI Tenet’s part. The DCI was just as stoked up as he was, said Berger. Each of these times, Berger told us, “George would call and say, ‘We just don’t have it.’” There was a fourth episode involving a location in Ghazni, Afghanistan, in July 1999. We are still investigating the circumstances.

There were no occasions after July 1999 when cruise missiles were actively readied for a possible strike against Bin Ladin. The challenge of providing actionable intelligence could not be overcome before 9/11.

Millennium Plots
In late 1999, the military engaged in substantial preparations in anticipation of possible terrorist attacks around the Millennium. The Joint Chiefs of Staff developed a plan to react as rapidly as possible to an al Qaeda strike anywhere in the world. The Pentagon was also prepared to provide assistance within the United States to other federal agencies in response to an act or threatened act of terrorism.

In the summer of 2000, the Joint Chiefs of Staff refined its list of strikes and special operations possibilities to a set of thirteen options within the Operation Infinite Resolve plan. Planning by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CENTCOM also focused primarily on the development of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for the purposes of intelligence collection and targeting of Bin Ladin and al Qaeda leaders. That story, involving the CIA and the military, will be treated in detail in tomorrow’s staff statement.

The Attack on the U.S.S. Cole
On October 12, 2000, suicide bombers in an explosives-laden skiff rammed into a Navy destroyer, the U.S.S. Cole, in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors and almost sinking the vessel. In January 2000, jihadists had also tried to bomb the U.S.S. The Sullivans using identical tactics, but the plot failed when the skiff carrying the explosives sank under their weight — something unknown to the U.S. government until after the attack on the Cole. The FBI, the CIA, and the Yemeni government all launched investigations to determine who had attacked the Cole. DOD’s role was primarily the provision of aircraft for the interagency emergency response team kept on standby for such occasions.

After the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, National Security Adviser Berger asked General Shelton for military plans to act quickly against Bin Ladin. General Shelton tasked General Tommy Franks, the new commander of CENTCOM, to look again at the options. According to Director for Operations Newbold, Shelton wanted to demonstrate that the military was imaginative and knowledgeable enough to move on an array of options, and to show the complexity of the operations. Shelton briefed Berger on the thirteen options. CENTCOM also developed a “Phased Campaign Concept” for wider-ranging strikes, including against the Taliban, and without a fixed endpoint. The new concept did not include contingency plans for an invasion of Afghanistan. The concept was briefed to Deputy National Security Adviser Kerrick and other officials in December 2000.

Neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration launched a military response for the Cole attack. Berger and other senior policymakers said that, while most counterterrorism officials quickly pointed the finger at al Qaeda, they never received the sort of definitive judgment from the CIA or the FBI that al Qaeda was responsible that they would need before launching military operations. Documents show that, in late 2000, the President’s advisers received a cautious presentation of the evidence showing that individuals linked to al Qaeda had carried out or supported the attack, but that the evidence could not establish that Bin Ladin himself had ordered the attack. DOD prepared plans to strike al Qaeda camps and Taliban targets with cruise missiles in case policymakers decided to respond.

Essentially the same analysis of al Qaeda’s responsibility for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole was delivered to the highest officials of the new administration five days after it took office. The same day, Clarke advised National Security Adviser Rice that the government “should take advantage of the policy that ‘we will respond at a time, place and manner of our own choosing’ and not be forced into knee-jerk responses.” Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told us that “tit-for-tat” military options were so inadequate that they might have emboldened al Qaeda. He said the Bush administration’s response to the Cole would be a new, more aggressive strategy against al Qaeda.

Pentagon officials, including Vice Admiral Scott Fry and Undersecretary Slocombe, told us they cautioned that the military response options were limited. Bin Ladin continued to be elusive. They were still skeptical that hitting inexpensive and rudimentary training camps with costly missiles would do much good. The new team at the Pentagon did not push for a response for the Cole, according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy. Wolfowitz told us that by the time the new administration was in place, the Cole incident was “stale.” The 1998 cruise missiles strikes showed UBL and al Qaeda that they had nothing to fear from a U.S. response, Wolfowitz said. For his part, Rumsfeld also thought too much time had passed. He worked on the force protection recommendations developed in the aftermath of the U.S.S. Cole attack, not response options.

The Early Months of the Bush Administration
The confirmation of the Pentagon’s new leadership was a lengthy process. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz was not confirmed until March 2001, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith did not take office until July 2001. Secretary Cohen said he briefed Secretary-designate Rumsfeld on about 50 items during the transition, including Bin Ladin and programs related to domestic preparedness against terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction. Rumsfeld told us he did not recall what was said about Bin Ladin at that briefing. On February 8, General Shelton briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on the Operation Infinite Resolve plan, including the range of options and CENTCOM’s new phased campaign plan. These plans were periodically updated during the ensuing months.

Brian Sheridan — the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in DOD — never briefed Rumsfeld. Lower-level SOLIC officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda. Undersecretary Feith told the Commission that when he arrived at the Pentagon in July 2001, Rumsfeld asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact. Traditionally, the primary DOD official responsible for counterterrorism policy had been the assistant secretary of defense for SOLIC. The outgoing assistant secretary left on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced when the Pentagon was hit on September 11.

Secretary Rumsfeld said that transformation was a focus of the administration. He said he was interested in terrorism, arranging to meet regularly with DCI Tenet. But his time was consumed with getting new officials in place, preparing the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Defense Planning Guidance, and reviewing existing contingency plans. He did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11, other than the development of the Predator unmanned aircraft system for possible use against Bin Ladin. He said that DOD, before 9/11, was not organized or trained adequately to deal with asymmetric threats.

As recounted in the previous staff statement, the Bush administration’s NSC staff was drafting a new counterterrorism strategy in the spring and summer of 2001. National Security Adviser Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley told us that they wanted more muscular options. In June 2001 Hadley circulated a draft presidential directive on policy toward al Qaeda. The draft came to include a section that called for development of a new set of contingency military plans against both al Qaeda and the Taliban regime. Hadley told us that he contacted Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz to advise him that the Pentagon would soon need to start preparing fresh plans in response to this forthcoming presidential direction.

The directive was approved at the Deputies level in July and apparently approved by top officials on September 4 for submission to the President. With this directive still awaiting the president’s signature, Secretary Rumsfeld did not order the preparation of any new military plans against either al Qaeda or the Taliban before 9/11. Rumsfeld told us that immediately after 9/11, he did not see a contingency plan he wanted to implement. Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz also told us the military plans presented to the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 were unsatisfactory.

Roads Not Taken
Officials we interviewed flatly said that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before the shock of 9/11 — despite repeated attacks and plots, including the embassy bombings, the Millennium plots, concerns about al Qaeda to acquire WMD, the U.S.S. Cole, and the summer 2001 threat spike. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz warned that it would have been impossible to get Congress to support sending 10,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan to do what the Soviet Union failed to do in the 1980s. Vice Admiral Scott Fry, the former operations director for the JCS, noted that “a two-or-four division plan would require a footprint [troop level] and force that was larger than the political leadership was willing to accept.”

Special Operations Forces always saw counterterrorism as part of their mission and trained for counterterrorist operations. “The opportunities were missed because of an unwillingness to take risks and a lack of vision and understanding of the benefits when preparing the battle space ahead of time,” said Lieutenant General William Boykin, the current deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and a former founding member of Delta Force. Before 9/11, the U.S. Special Operations Command was a “supporting command,” not a “supported command.” That meant it supported General Zinni and CENTCOM, and did not independently prepare plans itself. General Pete Schoomaker, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army and former Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, said that if the Special Operations Command had been a supported command before 9/11, he would have had the al Qaeda mission rather than deferring to CENTCOM’s lead. Schoomaker said he spoke to Secretary Cohen and General Shelton about this proposal. It was not adopted.

There were also activists in the most senior levels of the uniformed military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Noting the frustration of others in DOD and elsewhere grappling with the al Qaeda problem, General Newbold, the JCS operations director, prepared a comprehensive plan designed to incorporate military, economic and political activities to influence and pressure the Taliban to expel UBL, and follow with massive strikes if necessary. Newbold said he briefed this plan at the end of 2000 to General Shelton and NSC counterterrorism coordinator Clarke. Much of it was beyond the scope of the Defense Department to implement. Like other options produced by the military before 9/11, this plan too was eventually given back to the Joint Chiefs with no direction for further action. The military continued to develop and refine this plan.

Conclusions
In summary, our key findings to date include the following:

* In response to the request of policymakers, the military prepared a wide array of options for striking Bin Ladin and his organization from May 1998 onward;
* --When they briefed policymakers, the military presented both the pros and cons of those strike options, and briefed policymakers on the risks associated with them;
* --Following the August 20, 1998 missile strikes, both senior military officials and policymakers placed great emphasis on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recommending or deciding to launch military action against Bin Ladin and his organization;
* --Policymakers and military officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence;
* --Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the Special Forces and the counterterrorism policy office, expressed frustration with the lack of military action;
* --The new Administration began to develop new policies toward al Qaeda in 2001, but there is no evidence of new work on military capabilities or plans against this enemy before September 11; and
* --Both civilian and military officials of the Defense Department state flatly that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before the shock of 9/11.

March 22, 2004 at 05:06 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

March 21, 2004

Security Officials Reject Idea of C.I.A. for European Union

By PATRICK E. TYLER

Published: March 20, 2004

RUSSELS, March 19 — In the wake of the Madrid train attacks, European Union justice and interior ministers on Friday rejected proposals to create a Central Intelligence Agency for Europe, but they agreed that a growing threat made greater intelligence-sharing essential.
The ministers recommended that the European Union have its own "intelligence coordinator," appointed as early as next week as European leaders prepare for their summit meeting, diplomats said.

They also asked Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief, to draw up plans for an "information board" where member states and police agencies could exchange intelligence in a crisis management center at the European headquarters here.

One purpose of the meeting was also to prod countries to adopt basic law enforcement tools such as the European arrest warrant, greater supervision of borders and identity documents, particularly passports, and uniform laws for preserving telecommunications data from cellphones and the Internet.

The Belgian police said Friday that they had conducted some 20 raids against suspected Islamic militants in several cities. One unidentified person arrested was connected to the Moroccan investigation of the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca that killed 45 people, a police statement said.

Meanwhile, French ministers announced that the intelligence chiefs of the five large states, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, would meet in Madrid on Monday to reinforce cooperation in the bombing investigation there.

The urgency reflects how intensely Europe's political leaders perceive a new threat � and potential political backlash � with public opinion very much unsettled over how the West is managing postwar Iraq and the struggle against Islamic extremism.

On Friday, the interior and justice ministers were clearly resistant to the idea of handing over any major intelligence function to a European government. For now, ad hoc arrangements among the major intelligence services in Europe � and with the United States � seem likely to remain the status quo.

Part of the reason, diplomats said, is that Europe's largest states � Britain, France, Germany and Italy � jealously guard their secret intelligence functions, including counterterrorism, as an indivisible part of national sovereignty. It is the smaller European states, some of which lack intelligence agencies, that want greater cooperation.

"We don't want new institutions," said the British home secretary, David Blunkett. "We want action on those measures which have already been agreed upon."

March 21, 2004 at 11:16 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (36) | Top of page | Blog Home

Religious Pressure, Cash Protect al-Qaida

Yahoo! News - Religious Pressure, Cash Protect al-Qaida

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
SHKIN, Afghanistan - From a mosque high on an Afghan peak, tribal elder Mohammed Safai pointed to what he said was an al-Qaida training camp on the mountain of Salor Gai — just across the frontier in Pakistan.

One by one, fellow Afghan tribal leaders around him ticked off the names of surrounding Pakistani villages that they say are sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban: Bahna. Shakul. Mangadthai.

capt.wana10103211415.pakistan_al_qaida_hunt_wana101.jpg
Elders of different tribes convene Jirga, or a grand meeting, to discuss ongoing anti-al-Qaida operations in Pakistan tribal agency, Sunday, March 21, 2004 in Wana of South Waziristan. Pakistani forces were searching homes amid a lull in fierce fighting against suspected al-Qaida holdouts near the Afghan border on Sunday, while tribal villagers cursed the army for deaths of civilians during its biggest counter-terrorist drive yet. (AP Photo/Ahsanullah Wazir)

Across the poorly marked and little-heeded border, Pakistani forces on Sunday were searching homes in South Waziristan province in a six-day-old hunt for suspected al-Qaida that has seen dozens of people killed and more than 100 people arrested.

The Afghan Pashtuns say their Pakistani Pashtun brothers know the terror camps and hiding places. But the tribal elders in Pakistan will likely never tell � silenced by a code of honor, by al-Qaida money, and by a fierce distrust of the far-off Pakistani government, Pashtun leaders said.

"The tribal area people, they are sympathizers with al-Qaida and Taliban," Safai said. "They are not showing the exact location where al-Qaida is hiding."

In South Wazirstan, Pakistani officials and residents said they had no idea whether there was an al-Qaida camp on Salor Gai, as the Afghans charge. But the Afghans, who cross the border at will, say the Pakistanis are playing dumb.

"The al-Qaida people, they are so rich � they are giving so much money to the people who are giving shelter to al-Qaida and Taliban," said Mirowgain Khan, like Safai, an Afghan elder of the Pashtun Kharoti tribe.

Pakistan's anti-American Jamaat-e-Islami religious party is helping seal the silence, circulating among Pakistani border villages to encourage the Pashtun there to be faithful hosts to their al-Qaida and Taliban guests, say the Afghans.

Pakistan military leaders said they believed a "high-value" suspect might be at the center of this week's fighting � perhaps Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s deputy, Ayman al-Zawarhri, or Tahir Yuldash, the leader of an Uzbek terror group allied with al-Qaida.

On Thursday, Safai said, six al-Qaida fighters seeking escape from the Pakistani operation fled over the border to villages around a U.S. military outpost at Shkin, 100 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Safai sent tribal gunmen, chasing off five of the men and capturing a sixth, he said.

The man was al-Qaida, a Chechen who spoke a little Pashto and Dari, the two leading languages in Afghanistan (news - web sites), Safai said.

Tribal men took an AK-47 assault rifle and seven grenades off the fugitive, and turned the Chechen over to the U.S. military at Shkin.

Around Shkin, tribal elders were worried Sunday after they were warned in an anonymous letter that their villages would be rocketed if they failed to release the Chechen.

The elders repeat a common complaint of Afghans here in Paktika province � that neither side, Pakistani or Afghan, does anything to close the frontier.

In two days in the border mountains of Paktika, an Associated Press reporter saw no Afghan troops in the countryside, and only a few American soldiers.

Afghans here insist they welcome the U.S. forces, seeing them as the promise of reconstruction, aid and security. But they said the Americans have not sought help from locals who know the hundreds of cross-border trails.

"If they want to stop al-Qaida, they have to get support of the local people living and belonging to this area. They know all the ways," Safai said.

Pakistan, meanwhile, says it is confident that its paramilitary and soldiers can track down militants.

"Our people who are guarding the border know these tribesmen very well," Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Looking at Salor Gai mountain, Safai scoffed.

"If you wanted to, you could walk from there to Kabul, and not hit a single checkpoint," he said.

March 21, 2004 at 10:52 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (55) | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qaida's No. 2 Claims to Have Nukes

Yahoo! News - Al-Qaida's No. 2 Claims to Have Nukes

SYDNEY, Australia - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.

In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that "smart briefcase bombs" were available on the black market. It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place.

U.S. intelligence agencies have long believed that al-Qaida attempted to acquire a nuclear device on the black market, but say there is no evidence it was successful.

In the interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television, parts of which were released Sunday, Mir recalled telling al-Zawahri it was difficult to believe that al-Qaida had nuclear weapons when the terror network didn't have the equipment to maintain or use them.

"Dr Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said `Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available,'" Mir said in the interview.

"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying.

Al-Qaida has never hidden its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden charges that as far back as 1992 he "and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons."

Bin Laden, in a November 2001 interview with a Pakistani journalist, boasted having hidden such components "as a deterrent." And in 1998, a Russian nuclear weapons design expert was investigated for allegedly working with bin Laden's Taliban allies.

It was revealed last month that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist had sold sensitive equipment and nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea (news - web sites), fueling fears the information could have also fallen into the hands of terrorists.

Earlier, Mir told Australian media that al-Zawahri also claimed to have visited Australia to recruit militants and collect funds.

"In those days, in early 1996, he was on a mission to organize his network all over the world," Mir was quoted as saying. "He told me he stopped for a while in Darwin (in northern Australia), he was ... looking for help and collecting funds."

Australia's Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the government could not rule out the possibility that al-Zawahri visited Australia in the 1990s under a different name.

"Under his own name or any known alias he hasn't traveled to Australia," Ruddock told reporters Saturday. "That doesn't mean to say that he may not have come under some other false documentation, or some other alias that's not known to us."

Mir describe al-Zawahri as "the real brain behind Osama bin Laden."

"He is the real strategist, Osama bin Laden is only a front man," Mir was quoted as saying during the interview. "I think he is more dangerous than bin Laden."

Al-Zawahri � an Egyptian surgeon � is believed to be hiding in the rugged region around the Pakistan-Afghan border where U.S. and Pakistani troops are conducting a major operation against Taliban and al-Qaida forces.

He is said to have played a leading role in orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

March 21, 2004 at 10:48 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home

Ex-aide says Bush ignored warnings about al-Qa'eda

Telegraph | News | Ex-aide says Bush ignored warnings about al-Qa'eda

By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 22/03/2004)

The former White House head of counter-terrorism said last night that President George W Bush refused to take al-Qa'eda seriously before the September 11 attacks, preferring to focus on Iraq instead.
Richard Clarke, who resigned a year ago, told CBS television that Mr Bush had "ignored" the terrorist threat in the months before the 2001 attacks despite unprecedented alarm in intelligence circles.

Mr Clarke said that a day after the attacks Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, called for bombing raids on Iraq rather than on Osama bin Laden's Afghan bases.

He described an administration in which a small circle of hawks fed Mr Bush only what they wanted him to hear. He said he had been placed under great pressure to find a link between Iraq and al-Qa'eda.

Predicting, correctly, that Bush loyalists would denounce his claims as sour grapes and partisan politics, Mr Clarke said: "I am sure they will launch their dogs on me. But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he has done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it; he ignored terrorism for months."

Mr Clarke, a leading security official in every administration since President Ronald Reagan, was speaking two days before he gives evidence to a federal panel investigating September 11 and whether more could have been done to prevent it. His book, Against All Enemies, goes on sale today.

His resignation in February 2003 was ascribed by Bush aides to pique: his job had been downgraded and he was passed over for the No 2 job at the new department of homeland security.

Yesterday those unnamed aides told reporters that Mr Clarke's media forays were "an audition" for a role in Sen John Kerry's Democratic presidential campaign.

But Chuck Hegel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, said: "The administration is going to have to answer some of these charges. His book is obviously serious. It comes from a serious professional."

Mr Clarke said that in January 2001 he asked Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, for an urgent cabinet level meeting to discuss impending al-Qa'eda attacks. After a wait of three months he was granted a meeting, but with deputy heads of each department.

Mr Clarke told them: "We have to deal with bin Laden." But he said Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary and a long-time Iraq hawk, interrupted: "No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al-Qa'eda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

Recalling the first hours after the attacks, Mr Clarke described arguing with Mr Rumsfeld over retaliatory strikes, saying that Afghanistan should be the target.

"Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' "I said, 'Well there are lots of good targets in lots of places but Iraq had nothing to do with it.' " Mr Bush then ordered Mr Clarke to find out whether Iraq was behind the attacks.

"Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this."

Democratic veterans of the Clinton administration have long alleged that they failed to interest the incoming Bush team in the threat posed by al-Qa'eda.

Mr Clarke's allegations will be grist to their mill. But by themselves they will do little to dent the faith of ordinary Americans in Mr Bush as a tough, decisive war leader.

20 March 2004: 'We should have hit al-Qa'eda sooner'
4 March 2004: Bush ready to remind US who's boss
12 September 2001: Mission of terror finally completed

Previous story: We must fight terrorism together, EU told
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External links

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President Bush Reaffirms Resolve to War on Terror, Iraq and Afghanistan [19 Mar '04] - The White House

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March 21, 2004 at 10:08 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (47) | Top of page | Blog Home

Hispanics are dividing US, warns academic

Times Online - World

From James Bone in New York

THE Harvard professor who first proclaimed the global “clash of civilisations” has ignited a new firestorm with his claim that Mexican immigration is splitting America in two.
Samuel P. Huntington says in a new book that Americans are acquiescing in “their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish)”.

�As their numbers increase, Mexican Americans feel increasingly comfortable with their own culture and often contemptuous of American culture,� he writes.

The stark warning from the 76-year-old chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies coincides with a Census Bureau projection that America�s white majority, which is now about 69 per cent of the population, would fall to just 50.1 per cent of the United States by 2050.

The Hispanic population will grow by 188 per cent, to 102.6 million, or roughly a quarter of the American population, by mid-century. The Asian population will rise 213 per cent, to 33 million. The number of blacks would increase 71 per cent, to 61 million, making them the second-largest minority. Non- Hispanic whites would grow by just 7 per cent, to 210 million, over the same period.

Professor Huntington�s 1996 book The Clash of Civilisations predicted that a collision of �Western arrogance (and) Islamic intolerance and assertiveness� would dominate the post-Cold War world. The thesis provoked denunciations from proponents of multiculturalism and spurred the creation of a United Nations process called The Dialogue of Civilisations, which collapsed after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

His new book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America�s National Identity, is causing similar consternation. Carlos Feuntes, the Mexican author, accused him of racism. Liberals say that after seeking new enemies abroad, he is identifying a new enemy at home. With Republicans and Democrats chasing the Hispanic vote, Professor Huntington has even been attacked by conservatives, who say that his definition of American culture is too limited.

The professor says that America was founded by white British Protestant settlers whose �Anglo-Protestant� values have shaped the country ever since. �Contributions from immigrant cultures modified and enriched the Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. The essentials of that founding culture remained the bedrock of US identity, however, at least until the last decades of the 20th century,� he writes.

Although the United States has successfully absorbed many millions of immigrants, the professor contends that the influx of Mexicans is fundamentally different from previous waves and shows no sign of ebbing. The US- Mexican border is the longest frontier in the world between a developed country and a Third World nation, he writes, and US per capita income is four times that of its neighbour.

Moreover, almost all of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah belonged to Mexico until the Texan War of Independence of 1835-36 and the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

Although he views the return of these lands as �unlikely�, he says that the demographicand cultural reconquest of the southwestern United States is well under way. �This trend could consolidate the Mexican-dominant areas of the United States into an autonomous, culturally and linguistically distinct and economically self-reliant bloc within the United States,� he says.

March 21, 2004 at 10:03 PM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

'Mercenaries' in Harare charged with murder plot

From Jan Raath in Harare

ZIMBABWEAN Government lawyers sprang a surprise yesterday on the 70 men arrested over an alleged attempt to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea and charged them with plotting to murder the country's President, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The new allegations came as an apparent afterthought and were announced to the prisoners, including Simon Mann, a former British SAS officer, in Chikurubi prison outside Harare. On Monday they were formally charged over the illegal purchase of weapons and for violating immigration regulations when they flew into Harare on Sunday last week.

All 70 are to appear in court today, Jonathan Samkange, one of their lawyers, said.

The Government has been struggling for more than a week to find what it believes will be appropriate legislation to deal with the 70 men, other than with what are offences classed almost as misdemeanours under firearms control and immigration laws. The group charged with the murder plot includes an advance party of three, the 64 men on board the Boeing 727 that flew to Harare from South Africa, as well as the crew of three. They were arrested shortly after landing at Harare international airport.

Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea say that the men were about to load up a consignment of AK47 rifles, light machineguns, pistols, rocket-launchers, mortars and hand grenades allegedly bought in Zimbabwe by Mr Mann, and then planned to fly on to the oil-rich West African country and overthrow President Mbasogo.

President Mugabe�s Government appears determined to deliver what Stanislaus Mudenge, the Foreign Minister, said last week would be �the severest punishment in our statutes, including capital punishment�.

�It�s very original,� one lawyer said, �but the State is going to have great difficulty with jurisdiction over the conspiracy that appears to have taken place in so many countries.�

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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March 21, 2004 at 10:00 PM in SAS | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home

First in the queue: For cheap flights to Berlin, from �41 return

Richard Green

Berlin is rising fast in the city-break popularity stakes, and soon you’ll be able to get there on brand-new services from four UK airports. EasyJet is launching low-price flights from Liverpool and Luton (both starting on April 28), Newcastle (from May 1) and Bristol (from May 20). Return fares on all four routes will start at �41, including taxes. To book, visit www.easyjet.com or call 0871 750 0100.
Meanwhile, Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com) is launching a direct service from Dublin, starting on March 28, with return fares from €147.

Why go? The ambitious remodelling of the German capital is nearing completion, and already, swaths of the cityscape have been transformed � from the upmarket Mitte, with its designer shops and hotels, to the architectural showcase of Potsdamer Platz, reborn as an impressive 21st-century plaza. The whole city is packed with culture, history and attractions. Berlin is impressive, enjoyable, challenging � and never quite what you expect.

The sights: the transparent dome of the Reichstag, on Platz der Republik, is architecture at its best, offering great views every which way you look. You can gaze down into the debating chamber of the German parliament; across the void to the ingenious double walkways that spiral to the summit; or out onto the Brandenburg Gate and across the vast Tiergarten park to the Kurf�rstendamm.

As well as superb shopping, riverside walks, churches and palaces, Berlin has more than 170 museums. The heart- stopping Pergamon (Museum Island; admission �5; 00 49 30-2090 5201) was purpose-built to house a colossal, frieze-filled altar from the ancient Greek town of Pergamon, as well as Babylon�s stunning Ishtar Gate and processional way. The Film Museum (Potsdamer Strasse 2; �5; 300 9030), has an intriguing Marlene Dietrich exhibition; and there�s the engrossing Jewish Museum (Lindenstrasse 14; �3.40; 2599 3300), with a uniquely arresting building and collection.

And until September 19, while the Museum of Modern Art in New York undergoes refurbishment, the New National Gallery (Potsdamer Strasse 50; �7; www.das-moma-in-berlin.de) has the loan of 200 displaced masterpieces. Its exhibition includes iconic works such as The Dance by Matisse, Van Gogh�s Starry Night and Roy Lichtenstein�s Drowning Girl � brought together for the first time outside the USA.

June 3, meanwhile, will see the opening of the German Museum for Photography (Jebenstrasse 2), where more than 1,000 of the late Helmut Newton�s portrait, news, and fashion photos will go on display. Newton, who was born in Berlin and studied there before fleeing the Nazis in 1938, presented this collection to the city only last October.

Less highbrow is the newly opened Aqua Dom and Sea Life Centre (Spandauer Strasse 3; adults �9, children �7; 99280), with more than 30 tanks illustrating marine habitats in and around German waters. One leads you through a glass tunnel into the North Sea, while the final tank contains a glass lift that starts on the �sea bed�, then whisks you clear out of the water, 90ft above, for terrific views over the city.

Where to stay: two new hotels have opened on Potsdamer Platz this year. The Marriott (Inge-Beisheim-Platz 1, 0800 221222, www.marriott.com; doubles from �95) has an elegant 10-storey atrium to match its clean lines and contemporary feel. And the new Ritz-Carlton (0800 234000, www.ritzcarlton.com; doubles from �112) is rumoured to have spent �1m on each of its bedrooms, which draw their decor inspiration from the opulent German imperial style.

The Radisson SAS (Karl Liebknecht Strasse 1, 00800 3333 3333, www.radissonsas.com; doubles from �108) is even newer � it opened this month. It is on the banks of the River Spree, opposite Museum Island, home to several of Berlin�s big-hitting museums.

If you�re on a tight budget, head for the Circus Hostel (Rosa-Luxembourg Strasse 39; 00 49 30-2839 1433, www.circus-berlin.de), where the rooms are spotless and the staff are extremely knowledge-able about the city. Rates start at �10pp in a six-bed room, rising to �41 for a two-bed ensuite apartment with balcony.

Where to eat: inside the exclusive Schloss Hotel, you will find the baroque-styled Vivaldi rest- aurant (Brahmsstrasse 10, 8958 4521), which recently picked up its first Michelin star. The decor is by Karl Lagerfeld; main courses start at �24.

Borchardt, at Franz�sischestrasse 47 (2038 7110) is a Berlin institution with an unfussy interior and fine French cuisine; main courses from �11. Or go local at the Altes Zollhaus (Carl-Herz-Ufer 30, 692 3300), a restored canal-side customs house where German and international dishes are served in a tranquil setting; menus from �24.

Nightlife: for traditional slurping from steins, head for the vast beer garden at the Caf� am Neuen See (Lichtensteinallee 2).

Something more stylish? Try the Trompete (L�tzowplatz 9), with its soft settees and live music. There is also a fun cluster of bars and restaurants at the Hackesche H�fe, a restored block of old industrial buildings.

Later on, try Dorian Gray, on Potsdamer Platz (2529 2172, www.doriangrayberlin.de), which is celebrating its first anniversary this year. Intimate it ain�t, but with four bars spread across three floors, it packs in an eclectic crowd with an accessible programme of themed nights, from R&B to 1970s disco.

Excursions: Potsdam was the surreal creation of the megalomaniac king Frederick the Great. You�ll stumble on a Dutch windmill and a Chinese tea pavilion � and don�t miss the Neues Palais and Schloss Sanssouci. S-Bahn trains from Zoo station (20 minutes).

A couple of stops along the S-Bahn back to Berlin, you�ll find the largest inland beach in Europe, at Wannsee. A small bridge leads to what was once Goebbels�s private island, and there�s a museum at the venue of the infamous Wannsee conference of 1942.

Getting around: until 2007, when the vast new Berlin airport is due to open, the city will be served by three airports � Tegel, Templehof and Sch�nefeld. EasyJet will fly to Sch�nefeld, from where half-hourly trains to town take 30min (�1.50 each way).

For a short stay, the best option is to buy one-day tickets from the orange-and-yellow machines found at the U- and S-Bahn stations � they cost �4 and allow unlimited travel until 3am the next morning. A three-day Museum Pass (�8) allows access to 50 museums.

Further information: call the German National Tourist Board on 020 7317 0908, or visit www.berlin-tourist-information.de.

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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March 21, 2004 at 09:58 PM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

Rageh Omaar: Three months on, the strange silence of Saddam

The coalition hit the jackpot a full three months ago. When Saddam Hussein was dragged out of a dark and airless hole in the ground on December 13, near the town of al-Dawr in central Iraq, everyone hoped that the vital questions could at last be be answered.
What had happened to the evidence, cited by President Bush a few days before the war began, that the dictator’s regime continued to “possess and conceal weapons of mass destruction”? Had these illegal instruments of warfare really been spirited secretly to Syria, as an American administration official had hinted at in July? There were other promises, too. What would the pages of names retrieved from the ousted leader’s foxhole at the time of his capture reveal — were these the identities of his main supporters? Did the $750,000 found there represent some of the funds that let these supporters plant the “IEDs” (improvised explosive devices, in the lexicon of the US military) that had been killing hundreds of young American soldiers and many more Iraqi civilians? Would the documents finally lead to the “real” ringleaders of this campaign? Expectations were high. Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, head of American forces in Iraq, announced: “Saddam Hussein, the prisoner, is talkative and co-operative.”

The next day American and British leaders talked in finite terms and with surprising self-confidence about the impact and significance of Hussein�s capture. Bush said that his capture marked �the end of the road� for the dictator and his followers. Tony Blair said this was the moment when Britain, the United States and Iraq could �put the past behind us�.

Even as recently as the end of January, General Raymond Ordierno, commander of the US 4th Infantry Division, told reporters at the Pentagon: �Capturing Saddam was a major operational and psychological defeat for the enemy.�

Instead there has been nothing. A strange, beguiling silence. Three months later Saddam is no longer even featured in the briefings emanating from Iraq on a daily basis. The fact that he is in custody has almost been forgotten. How has this happened? As has always been the case, it has been Iraqis, not western politicians, commanders and commentators, who have the most realistic response to the significance of events in their country. Several hours after the announcement of Saddam�s capture, senior members of Iraq�s governing council were taken to see the deposed dictator. They gave a very different version of Saddam in captivity. He was, they said, not being co-operative but, as always, defiant � if also profoundly deluded.

When confronted about his past crimes, the old dictator had dismissively replied that he had been �a firm but just ruler�. What about the ordinary Iraqis who at that very moment were celebrating his capture in Baghdad? Saddam replied contemptuously: �They are hired mobs.� He flatly denied that he possessed any weapons of mass destruction, saying: �The US dreamt them up itself to have a reason to go to war with us.�

I have spoken to two sources whom I have known for five years. They work in the Middle East, one for the Foreign Office and the other in MI6. They are both well informed about Iraq, have visited the country often and are fluent in Arabic. Both of them have seen parts of the transcripts of the interviews with Saddam.

I asked them what these documents revealed on the key questions of weapons of mass destruction or the insurgency. The SIS man, who has clearly been spending a lot of time in the company of American intelligence officials, replied: �Horseshit.�

�Do you remember the stuff that Saddam mentioned about how he didn�t want to have a pee while Iraq was being occupied?� he asked. �Well that�s been the tone of all he�s had to say. You�ve read and listened to enough of his speeches over the years, all that lyrical poetic Fusha (classical Arabic). That�s all we�ve got. The barmy musings of a has-been tinpot dictator, with zero intelligence value.�

I went back to my notes of those original comments from Saddam, which were reported in the international press. When Saddam had been asked courteously, �How are you?�, the former Iraqi dictator replied: �I am sad because my people are in bondage.� When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, he said: �If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?� Beneath this comic dialogue there is a grim reality. After the months of fruitless work by David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group, and the interrogations of Saddam and almost all of his senior henchmen, no new information on weapons of mass destruction has come forward and the violent attacks continue. One has to ask the question: what or who else is left to provide the answers? Perhaps Saddam has been answering but his information has been kept secret for security reasons. That seems unlikely. London and Washington desperately need visible progress on the weapons of mass destruction issue and need to be seen to be making inroads in reducing the insecurity in Iraq. Surely something would have leaked onto the front pages of our newspapers and into television news bulletins by now? The truth, I suspect, is more stark. Saddam�s capture has yielded little of practical value to the occupation of Iraq. The source in the Foreign Office put it this way: �The Americans dreamt up the ridiculous notion of a deck of cards for their most wanted list. Now that we�ve got Saddam, the ace of spades, and most of the others, how come we still don�t have a strong hand?�

Revolution Day by Rageh Omaar is published by Viking, �17.99

March 21, 2004 at 09:44 PM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Kerry protests to Blair over Ulster report

Times Online - Britain

From Roland Watson in Washington and Rosemary Bennett

JOHN KERRY has accused Tony Blair of jeopardising Northern Ireland’s police reforms by delaying the release of a dossier on four murders.
The Democratic presidential candidate was one of seven senators to push the Prime Minister on the issue in a letter sent earlier this month. The group demanded the immediate publication of the long-awaited Cory report into claims that the security forces colluded in the murders, including that of the Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane. The senators told the Prime Minister: “It is of grave concern that your Government’s handling of this matter is jeopardising much of the progress made to date in achieving a new beginning for policing in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Kerry follows a long line of American politicians who have waded into the turbulent waters of the Province for political gain. When Bill Clinton was campaigning for the Democratic nomination in 1992 he put Northern Ireland in the shop window, announcing 36 hours before the New York primary, where the Irish-American lobby is a powerful force, that he would appoint a peace envoy. In this case Mr Kerry�s intervention came a week after the victories on �Super Tuesday� that gave him the Democratic crown. However, his campaign is desperately short of cash and is looking for donations.

Another of the signatories was Edward Kennedy, Mr Kerry�s fellow senator from Massachusetts, who helped him to recover from a slump in the polls to victory in the primaries. Other signatories were also from states with a strong Irish-American presence.

Downing Street has already made clear that the Cory report will be published this month. The delay over publication has been a source of tension in Northern Ireland, hampering attempts to revive the peace process and the power-sharing executive.

Whitehall sources say that while letters to Downing Street from groups of American senators are not an everyday event, neither are they a rarity, especially on the subject on Northern Ireland.

However, the US presidential race puts the Prime Minister in an awkward political spot. While naturally a supporter of the Democrats, he does not want to jeopardise his carefully constructed relationship with President Bush by publicly supporting Mr Kerry.

Previous elections in Britain and America have seen senior strategists from the Democrats and the Labour Party crossing the Atlantic to provide assistance for the centre-left cause.

But Downing Street is trying to ensure that the Government and the Labour Party leadership adopts a position of strict neutrality in this year�s presidential race. Plans for about 20 senior Labour figures to hold talks with Democrats in Washington have been cancelled and Mr Blair has ordered colleagues to steer clear of the presidential contest.

March 21, 2004 at 09:38 PM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home

Iraqis drugged, brainwashed and sent to die for bin Laden

Times Online - World

From James Hider in Karbala

TERRORISTS linked with al-Qaeda are increasingly recruiting young Iraqis to carry out suicide bombings, brainwashing them with Osama bin Laden's sermons and drugging them before sending them off to wreak mayhem, Iraqi police believe.

The expanding networks led by foreign Islamic extremists are also using Iraq's porous borders to smuggle drugs into Saudi Arabia, using the proceeds to finance their operations, according to police in Karbala, the city 60 miles south of Baghdad which has this month suffered a devastating wave of bombings.

A year after the US-led coalition invaded Iraq to stamp out its alleged links to terrorism, fundamentalists are freely crossing the vast Saudi border and looting weapons from arms caches left by the former regime. �It�s just God protecting the Saudi border,� Colonel Karim Sultan, Karbala�s police chief, told The Times. �The border is wide open. It�s like a business fair, you can come any time and do your shopping.�

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In raids on remote border villages before the Karbala attacks, Colonel Sultan�s officers arrested a dozen men, some of them drugged and brainwashed, and impounded narcotics valued at $20 million (�11 million) and recordings of bin Laden preaching.

Colonel Sultan said that drugs being shipped to the Saudi market originated in Afghanistan and were smuggled through Iran by commercial dealers linked to al-Qaeda, then brought into Iraq with the crowds of Iranian pilgrims visiting the holy Shia cities of Najaf and Karbala.

�It�s a huge network. They have a lot of different contacts. It�s almost impossible to count. Bin Laden is starting to funnel his money in here,� he said. �They communicate by many means � satellite phones, the Internet, letters and couriers. They are very well-equipped.�

Police believe that the attacks on Karbala were carried out by nine suicide bombers. The terrorists had formerly used mainly foreign fanatics � Yemenis, Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians � for such attacks. But recent raids have netted a number of young Iraqis, some of whom were drugged and ready to act.

In a practice strikingly similar to the medieval cult of the Assassins, who used hashish to conjure up images of paradise in their suicidal attackers and trained them in remote mountain strongholds, the terrorists lure discontented young men with money and promises of glory for indoctrination.

�It�s a long process to brainwash them. They seduce them with money, then start to use drugs on them until they are half conscious,� Colonel Sultan said. The main drug used on the would-be bombers is Artane, an anti-psychotic prescription drug frequently abused by looters to give them a sense of invulnerability.

�Maybe they do all this in the villages. We hear they are doing lectures out there,� said the police chief, whose men found bin Laden recordings in the village of Ukheidir, a medieval fortress on a desert pilgrimage route to Saudi. They also unearthed a large cache of explosives and shells in a bulldozed pit outside the village.

A military official from the US-led coalition said there were up to 200 cells of Iraqi religious extremists operating in Iraq, some of them developing ties to the al-Qaeda network.

Police believe that Iraqi fundamentalists, as well as secular guerrillas loyal to the former regime, are providing the vital link for the foreigners, recruiting kamikaze bombers and locating arms stashes. �There�s an Arabic saying �Me and my brother against my cousin, but me, my brother and my cousin against the outsider�. You can accept odd bedfellows,� one coalition official said.

Militants loot weapons abandoned by the Iraqi army during last year�s war. These are stockpiled in in remote areas and are often laxly guarded. �In a certain sense they�re like huge supermarkets where terrorists can pull in and load up,� the official said.

Iraqi police believe unless action is taken, the carnage of this month�s Ashoura religious festival could be repeated next month when tens of thousands of pilgrims gather for the Shia festival of Arbaiyin.

March 21, 2004 at 09:29 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

History of Japan

Japan Nowadays

Then let's have a brief look on the history
Until ten or twenty thousand years ago, Japan was still connected to the Asian continent by land but became island due to the crust movement of the earth. The sea protected Japan from invasion only with one exception by Mongolian invaders with a force 150,000 strong in 13th century but were failed due to typhoons and then a word "Kamikaze" born. Kami is god and Kaze is wind, ie Divine Wind saved the country. But it had fairly easy access to the advanced foreign cultures and this allowed Japan to learn and abosorb their cultures and latest technologies but at the same time Japanese succeeded to develop and grow highly independent and its own Japanese culture. World history is written in this colour.

Jomon Period(circa 10,000 b.c. - 300 b.c.)
Livelihood mainly hunting and fishing. Famous for its earthenware decorated with Jomon cord-making.
334 b.c. Alexander the Great begins his conquest to the East.

Yayoi Period(circa 300 b.c.- 300 a.d.)
Rice cultivation and use of metal tools were started and set the fundamental patterns of Japanese life. Also a large number of complex political units called Kuni emerged and began to unite under the hegemony of Yamatai Koku ruled by Queen Himiko which is still mysterious where it was actually located and whether Yamatai Koku can be equated with the early state of Yamato.
221 b.c. China unifies under Qin dynasty.

Kofun Period (circa 300 - 710 a.d.)
Large tumuli (Kofun) were built for deceased members of the ruling elite. The first state in Japan called Yamato emerged and established diplomatic relations with Korean states and Chinese courts. It was mid 6th century that Buddhism was introduced from the asian continent.
China, Sui Dynasty (589-618), Tang Dynasty (618-907)
622 Prophet Muhammad arrives at Medina and the Islamic era begins.

Asuka Period( 593 - 710 a.d.)
On 4th century Yamato (current Imperial family) consolidated Japan and strengthen the foundation of Japan by introducing various Chinese systems such as Buddhism, ideology(Confucianism), social and writing systems also arts. In the two ancient chronicles written in the 8th century, "Kojiki"(712 a.d. which is oldest history book of Japan) and "Nihon Shoki" (720 a.d.) say Emperor Jinmu began his reign on 11th February of 660 b.c. and recorded many Japanese mithologies including the birth-myth of the nation. That's why Japanese national holiday called National Foundation Day was set aside on that day. These chronicles were compiled by the order of the Emperor and especially "Kojiki" clearly represents Emperor family's ideology thus went upto the age of the gods. So very interesting but too difficult to prove them scientifically.
Shotoku Taishi(Prince) (574/622a.d.) whose profile was printed on the head of old 10,000 yen bill is famous in promoting Buddhism and establishing many political innovations including the Constitutions with 17 articles. Japan in japanese language is translated as "Nippon" or "Nihon". Both meaning is the same. ie, "Where the sun rises." This is a word created by him. When he sent a diplomatic letter to China's Sui dynasty, he wrote "The emperor where the sun rises gives a letter to the emperor where the sun sets....." Blooming days called Asuka culture based upon Buddhism were here.

Nara Era (710 - 794 a.d.)
Era based upon "Heijou Kyou" in Nara. In art it is devided to Hakuhou era and Tenpyou Era. This period was characterized by the full implementation of the Ritsury� system of government. Taihou Ritsury�(Code) in 701 a.d. and Y�r� Ritsuryo(Code) in 718 a.d. were compiled based upon Buddhism and Confucianism. The huge, 15m high, bronze statute known as Daibutsu of the temple T�daiji is a good example to show new heights in intellectual and cultural acheivement.

Heian Era (794 - 1185 a.d.)
A capital was set in Kyoto until moved to Tokyo at 1867a.d. During this era, Japan completely assimilated the essence of Chinese systems and created its indigenous institutions in all fields. The development of Kana syllabary made the outburst of literary creativity. It mainly used for composing Waka (japanese poetry). Lovers communicated each other through Waka. Kokin Waka Syuu is a fruit of this era. Court ladies produced great works of Heian Literature using it. Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji) by Murasaki Shikibu and Makura no Soushi (Pillow Book) by Sei Shou Nagon are the two greatest.
800 Charlemagne crowned by Pope Leo 3 as Charles 1, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1066 William, duke of Normandy, is crowned king of England.
1096 The first expedition of the Crusaders.

Kamakura Era (1185 - 1333 a.d.)
Opening the era of Samurai warriors who overpowered the nobility. Formally, the leading Samurai warrior were appointed by the Emperor as his "Shogun in charge of conquering barbarians" and with this designation his feudal government called "Bakufu" was formed. First Shogun was Minamoto Yoritomo who founded his Bakufu in Kamakura which located about 60km west of current Tokyo. Samurai era continued upto the end of Edo Era for nearly 700 years. Kamakura society exalted Loyalty, Honour and Frugality. This spirit was later sublimated to the Bushid� and became a backbone of the Samurai (warrior).
The most dramatic event of this era was Mongol invasions taken place twice. In 1274 with forces 40,000 and 1281 150,000 strong they landed around Hakata, Kyusyu and had fierce battle. But Kamikaze (tyhoon) blew them out.
1271 Marco Polo sets out on his journey to the court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan
1279 Kublai Khan conquers China and establishes Yuan Dynasty(-1368).

Muromachi Era (1333 - 1438 a.d.)
Samurai worrior Ashikaga Takauji was designated to Shogun and opened his Bakufu at Muromachi, Kyoto. A golden pavilion was constructed in 1397 at Kyoto. Great expansion of economic activities and emaerge of two powerful social forces, a self conscious marcantile group and market oriented peasantry.
1337 England-France Hundred Years' War bigins.
1347 Black Death rages in Europe (-1351)
1368 China, Ming Dynasty (-1644) founded.

Sengoku(War time)Era(1438 - 1568 a.d.)
Anything could happen. A word Gekokuj� (the overturning of those on top by those below) characterizes this era. Days for struggling for hegemony. Only the worriors with power could survive.
1492 Christopher Columbus lands in the Bahamas.
1498 Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut in India via Cape of Good Hope.

Azuchi Momoyama Era(1568 - 1600 a.d.)
A hero Oda Nobunaga followed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi re-united the country and devised new measures to govern the country on a nationwide basis. Especially T. Hideyoshi was a hero of the heroes. He was born just as a poor peasant but went up to the highest position of the country as "Kanpaku Dajyou Daijin" (Imperial Regent and Grand Minister of State) and governed the country as he wanted. Gorgeous and progressive era backed up by the self-confidence. Age of Daimyos (feudal lords), big marchants and common folks. Foreign trades were very active. During this short but spectacular Era, Japan underwent the transition from the medieval to the eaarly modern era. Japanese venture overseas was very active and the activities of European traders and Cathoric missionnaries in Japan too gave this era a cosmopolitan flavour.
1600 British East India Company incorporated.

Edo Era(1600 - 1867 a.d.)
Tokugawa Ieyasu as a Shogun is a founding father of Tokugawa Bakufu. A Haiku (Japanese poem of 17 syllables) discribes the characters of three heroes as follows using a bird called "Hototogisu"(a little cuckoo) ;
1) Oda Nobunaga- - A little cuckoo, if you don't twitter, I will kill you.
2)T. Hideyoshi- - A little cuckoo, even if you don't twitter, I will try everything to let you twitter.
3) Tokugawa Ieyasu- - A little cuckoo, if you don't twitter, then I will wait till you will.
Era of the great peace both inside and outside for more than 2 centuries. Dispite of Sakoku (National Seclusion) policy, Japan enjoyed developments in all fields. Industies, money economy and matured culture etc. Tokugawa law relied heavily on Confucianism; Chuu (loyalty) and Kou (filial piety) were conservative and supportive of the existing social and political order.
Stable hierarchy "Shi - Nou - Kou - Shou" (Warrior - Farmaer - Artisan - Merchant) worked well for 2.5 centuries.
1644 China, Qing dynasty (-1912) established.
1689 English Bill of Rights enacted.
1776 Continental Congress issues the US Declaration of Independence.
1789 French Revolution begins.
1804 Napoleon becomes emperor of France.
1839 Opium War begins in China (-1842)
1861 Civil War bigins in USA (-1865)

Meiji Era(1867 - 1912 a.d.)
End of the Samurai feudalism and a beginning of modern industrial state along wtih its emergence from isolation into the ranks of major world powers. The year happen to be the same as Canadian Confederation in 1867 ; The Dominion of Canada. Meiji Emperor made an oath and published "Charter Oath of Five Articles" as a basic policy of new Japan.
Article 1. All affairs of State shall be referred to public opinion through general conferences.
Article 2. The government and the people shall act in harmony energetically carrying out administrative matters.
Article 3. No citizen, whether a civil or a military or one of the common people, shall be discouraged in the pursuit of his aspirations.
Article 4. Evil practices of the past shall be abandoned and universal justice shall prevail.
Article 5. The foundation of Imperial regime shall be strengthened by the acquisition of knowledge from throughout the world.
1876 A Graham Bell invented telephone.
1896 First modern Olympic Games held in Athens.

Taisho Era (1912 - 1925 a.d.)
Struggle between Imperialism and Democracy.
1914 World War One begins (-1919).
1917 October Revolution in Russia.

Showa Era(1925 - 1989 a.d.)
The era of violent changes with war and peace. It was the longest imperial regime (62 years) in Japanese history. Emperor becomes just a symbol of the country with no actual function. Defeat of World War 2 gave drastic shock to all Japanese mentally and materially but re-borned as a peaceful country giving up any war and everything was started from "Zero". Rapid economic growth brought so-called "Bubble Economy" and in this extravagance the era has been succeeded to Heisei Era.
1927 C. Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic Ocean.
1929 US stock market crashes and Great Depression begins.
1933 A. Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
1939 World War Two bigins (-1945)
1945 United Nations established.
1949 The People's Republic of China established.
1950 Korean War begins (- 1953)
1962 Cuban Missile crisis

Heisei Era (1989 a.d. - present)
In 1993 the Bubble Economy bursted out and land price / stock index fell down to less than half of the end of Showa Era. Again collapsed a traditional value. ie, The myth of the land price which was believed to be "the invincible". Re-structuring, Down-sizing, Re-engineering and Out-sourcing etc.�So many ordeals have to be challenged for economic re-flotation by erasing the shadow of the Bubble , of course including bad debts of financial institutions. Japan is continuing its slow but steady efforts to achieve greater diversity in its social fabric to allow everyone's real freedom for fulfilling life.
1989 Berlin Wall demolished.
1991 Soviet Union dissolved.

March 21, 2004 at 07:27 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (24) | Top of page | Blog Home

The war on four fronts

The war on four fronts - [Sunday Herald]

A year after the war on Iraq began, its benefits remain dubious and its potential repercussions perilous. Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle and Investigations Editor Neil Mackay look at how the coalition got here and where it might be headed

Resolution in adversity, unity in the face of increased danger, steadfastness in an uncertain world, defiance against an unyielding enemy ... that is the message the Bush administration is sending out as it marks the first anniversary of military operations against Iraq.

First on parade was President Bush, rallying his allies with an address in the White House which spoke of steadfastness in adversity and the need to avoid compromise as though it were the work of the devil. His hawkish defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld followed with a homely, upbeat message to the troops, thanking them for their efforts and promising the end was almost in sight. Getting Iraq straightened out, he said, was like teaching a kid to ride a bike: �They�re learning, and you�re running down the street holding on to the back of the seat. You know that if you take your hand off they could fall, so you take a finger off and then two fingers, and pretty soon you�re just barely touching it. You can�t know when you�re running down the street how many steps you�re going to have to take. We can�t know that, but we�re off to a good start.�

If only it were so simple. Both men showed determination in getting their message across to Washington�s allies and the troops in Iraq, but the reality is much more complicated than the president�s folksy, downhome moralising . One year after the coalition forces unleashed their modern weapons to bring down Saddam Hussein�s regime there is no sense of closure or comfort, little belief that the war was well won or its objectives fulfilled.

True, Saddam has been deposed and Iraq has been put on the long road towards freedom from dictatorship, but these could probably have been achieved by other means. Dr Hans Blix, former head of the UN weapons inspection team, certainly thinks so. On Friday he said the invasion of Iraq had polarised the Middle East and worsened the threat of global terrorism. He also had harsh words to say about the coalition, blaming Bush and Blair for pursuing a �witch-hunt� to justify their actions , exaggerating the Iraqi threat, and undermining his inspectors . They were, he said, like advertising executives hyping their product: war in Iraq is good.

So what now? Instead of scanning the horizon with the gaze of the justified conqueror, the US is embroiled in a series of interconnected conflicts, none of which it is winning in the short term and all of which will create headaches for Washington�s strategic planners for at least 25 years . For the distinguished military commentator Anthony Cor desman, hol der of the Arleigh A Burke chair in strategy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the scenario is bleak and testing. He has given the clearest analysis of the challenges the US faces in a paper he presented to the institute called Four Wars And Counting. The four wars are Iraq, Afghanistan, Terrorism and the War Yet To Come.

He argues that these conflicts will require greater pragmatism and less reliance on ideological soundbites and slogans. �It�s going to be a very tough year,� he says. �In fact, it�s going to be a very tough decade.�

The War in Iraq

Following the coalition�s crushing victory , the war against Iraq is now being seen as possibly illegal and, in many minds, distinctly immoral. Why was its anniversary marked across the globe yesterday by the same kind of protests which preceded it? Why are the hawks on either side of the Atlantic so defensive, dem anding that the world has to move on ? For all the advance scaremongering , the fighting was certainly unequal. One statistic tells casual observers all they need to know about the military operations . In the financial year before the US and Britain sent their forces to the Gulf , the US spent $379 billion dollars on its armed forces, while Iraq rustled up a mere $2bn for the same purpose. The outcome of the conventional battle should never have been in doubt, and it comes as no surprise to find that in the most recent analyses of the conflict the shortest sections are on the performance and shortcomings of the Iraqi forces.

While most commentators agree that the best results of the war were the toppling of Saddam and the crushing of a rogue nation that threatened the stability of the Middle East, there is also a widespread admission that WMD will never be found, either because they had been decommissioned by the UN weapons inspection teams or because they had been spirited out of the country. It is also possible that their existence owed more to the braggadocio of the Saddam loyalists who ran Iraq�s armed forces and gave their leader over-optimistic accounts of their arsenal. Remember Comical Ali?

And the war itself has not yet been won. Coalition forces are bogged down in a nasty, low-intensity conflict which shows no sign of abating, though almost 600 soldiers have died since it officially ended. In public, US commanders toe the party line by emphasising improvements, such as the growing Iraqi security forces, and insisting that the transfer of power will take place according to timetable. In private, their thoughts are darker. Some fear coalition forces will be needed for at least 10 years to keep the peace, while others doubt that democracy and Iraq are natural bedfellows. For evidence they have only to look outside their defended compounds, where the different factions are weighing up their chances in the scramble that will follow the transfer of power. Winning the war in 2003 was the easy part; but securing the peace in 2004 is a different and much more volatile matter.

The War In Afghanistan

Further to the east, Afghanistan is still simmering. If not for this weekend�s fighting in south Waziristan, which has given rise to rumours that Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden�s right-hand man, is about to be captured , Afghanistan would be in danger of becoming the forgotten war.

In terms of realpolitik, the attack on the Taliban administration was fully justified � as they provided shelter and training facilities for the al-Qaeda terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks. Yet even this was a skewed victory, achieved as much by the opposition militias which acted as proxy allies as by the weight of US firepower. Attempts at nation-building have not been the complete success the Bush administration craved, and the writ of President Hamid Karzai�s administration does not run much beyond Kabul. There has to be something wrong when a leader rarely ventures out of his base and leaves much of his country in the hands of warlords.

It has not all been bad news: on the credit side, the Afghanistan operation has demonstrated the value of multilateralism in the task of nation-building. That was the message taken to Kabul last week by secretary of state Colin Powell, who produced a roll-call of successes including the provision of 25 million school textbooks, the construction or rebuilding of 203 schools, the rehabilitation of 140 clinics, and the vaccination of 4.26 million children against measles and polio. Perhaps the highest-profile achievement is the restoration of the 310-mile Kabul-Kandahar high way, which now allows the trip between the two cities to be taken in less than four hours, a third of the previous ordeal.

While the bulk of the fighting was undertaken by the US, with considerable support from British special forces, reconstructing the country has fallen on the international community. Nato is now in command of the 5000-strong International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the UN is overseeing the elections which are due to take place in June. Not that it has been plain sailing: Isaf still takes casualties, with two US soldiers being killed at the end of the week and five UN inspectors narrowly escaping when their compound in Paktia�s Chamkani district was attacked with rockets on Friday.

The War Against Terrorism

The despatch of the Taliban in Afghanistan has done little to discomfort al-Qaeda . While some of its leaders were killed or captured in the military campaign, the network simply moved out of Afghan istan and reinvented itself as a different, more shadowy grouping, still pursuing the salafi-jihadi doctrine of transnational jihad, sometimes called �the war against the Crusaders�. That they can still attack at will was shown all too graphically in the attack on the Madrid trains and the bombs that slaughtered tourists in Bali. Calling it al-Qaeda is also a hindrance. While it is an instantly recognisable shorthand, Cor des man points out that it masks the rarely-spoken fact that �the war against terrorism is not against al-Qaeda, but against violent Islamic extremism driven by mass demographic, economic and social forces in a region with limited political legitimacy�.

Chillingly, Cordesman and other US analysts now believe this war will take at least 25 years to complete, and that it will not be won by the methods now being used. Strategists now know there will be no quick and decisive victories, that sophisticated conventional weapons have only a limited role to play, and that the fighting will be costly in financial and human terms. Instead of firing off smart weapons and Cruise missiles, the network has to be infiltrated, bank acc ounts have to be seized, communications systems penetrated � all expensive, time-consuming tasks. A campaign of that kind also needs partners, not just in the Western alliance but also in the Arab world, who are prepared to stay the course and work to achieve common ground. That will mean less talk about pre-emptive strikes and more about economic reforms. There has to be a greater emphasis on the Palestinian problem, and there needs to be an end to pious promises of imposing democracy.

Unless there is a shift of emphasis, this third and perhaps greatest of the four wars is the one the US might be in greatest danger of losing. In the aftermath of September 11 waging war on terrorism was an easy slogan, but while it won Bush instant allies (including the now much-reviled French), it was a mass of contradictions. To the Americans it was clear-cut. They had been attacked by fundamentalist terrorists, most were of Saudi Arabian extraction and all had links to al-Qaeda. Hitting back was sold as a righteous duty, yet the need to retaliate led to the creation of a belief that the war was being waged against the Arab world in general and then Iraq in particular.

The War Yet To Come

As well as Afghanistan, Iraq and the war against terrorism, the US faces the prospect of further confrontation with North Korea over its possession of nuclear weapons. While Libya has been counted a success for surrendering its WMD, there are still question marks over Iran and Syria, both deeply suspicious entities in the minds of Rumsfeld and his hawkish allies. Elsewhere there is the ever-present danger of being sucked into a regional conflict over Taiwan, and the drug wars in South America are never far from causing the US grief. Not only does the drug trade fund crime, it is linked to terrorism, and it offers a stark reminder that homeland security remains a chimera while cocaine from South America floods into the West. Already Washington�s neo-conservative think-tanks are having to spend more time defending their thinking than looking for the next place to get another taste of pre-emptive action.

All this has come about in a way that has not always benefited US interests. A year ago Washington was clear about its aims. With the UN Security Council opposed to force, the US pushed through its policy of acting unilaterally and decisively, hitting Iraq before the dangers escalated. In place of the multilateralism offered by the international community there would be a coalition of the willing, and the UN itself would be sidelined as a liberal �old world� irrelevance . (In pursuit of that policy, a US State Department official told the Sunday Herald they would not be pushed around by �a Marxist in a toga� � a clear reference to the UN ambassador from Guinea who presided over the Security Council in the last fevered days before the Iraq war.)

What a difference a year makes. T he UN is now more deeply involved than ever, and even the �coalition of the willing�, now numbering 90 countries, is showing that its foundations are far from secure. Spain looks certain to carry out its new administration�s threat to pull out of Iraq and realign the country with the sceptics of Old Europe who were opposed to war in the first place. President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland has admitted feeling �very uncomfortable� about the failure to discover WMD, and latest coalition recruits South Korea and Japan have told the coalition high command that they, not the US joint chiefs of staff, will decide how and whether their troops will be deployed. Local US commanders hoped the 3600-strong Japanese contingent would join the US 1st Infantry division in the Kirkuk area, but this has been vetoed in Tokyo. As a worried State Department official put it, the coalition is not yet faltering, but �it is failing to put the necessary building blocks in place in advance of the transfer of power� .

It is not the beginning of the end of the coalition, but the road ahead looks less secure than when US armoured forces thundered to Baghdad in just three weeks, crushing the opposition . Then, victory was a matter of destroying a known enemy. Now it is a matter of deciding who the enemy really is.

21 March 2004

March 21, 2004 at 12:29 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

Bush And Blair: Blood Brothers

Bush And Blair: Blood Brothers - [Sunday Herald]

With Spain’s pro-war party ousted at the polls, continuing violence in Iraq, rising levels of terrorism and still no WMD, the coalition of the willing is looking more than a little ragged, writes Westminster Editor James Cusick

In difficult times politicians tend to dump convention and tradition. That Tony Blair did not reach for the telephone and offer congratulations to Senator John Kerry on his recent triumph in becoming the Democrat’s man to challenge George W Bush for the United States presidency later this year, is therefore no surprise. Equally there should be no surprise that the Prime Minister and his senior advisers have quietly informed key Labour Party personnel that they should keep out of the US presidential campaign. Well advanced plans for senior Labour figures to begin holding a series of talks with Kerry’s close advisers were also quickly killed off.

Blair isn�t just choosing his American friends carefully these days. The horrors in Madrid last week � and the misjudged attempts by the ruling right-wing government to influence the general election by deliberately misinforming the Spanish electorate in the hope of securing another term in office � helped put the Socialist party, led by Jos� Luis Rodr�guez Zapatero, in power. Where Kerry got nothing, Zapatero at least got something. A call to the new Spanish prime minister from Blair was made, but was said to be a gesture of courtesy rather than one charged with goodwill towards a fellow left-leaning European politician.

Zapatero is merely another part of Blair�s post-war annus horribilis: a year where Iraq and the aftermath of war dominated the political agenda in Britain. The war was, and is, still seen as Blair�s war. He asked his party, parliament and the country to trust him. And trust was conditionally given, but that has since evaporated. Blair admitted as much in a speech in Sedgefield earlier this month. Having lost the contest on trust, he now wanted the post-war agenda to at least shift to his judgement on how he dealt with Saddam.

Blair painted a new post-war anniversary portrait of himself as a leader who understood the dangers democratic states now faced, as against those leaders who did not understand the wisdom of confronting such �mortal dangers�. Blair�s solution is to reform the United Nations and to extend the concept of the right�s international community. In the period between September 11 and the beginning of the Iraq war, Blair�s international status as a statesman would have added due gravitas to the problems he described in Sedgefield. Now, having sidestepped the UN, sided with Bush, dragged � rather than led � his party over the past 12 months, and watched (and seemingly accepted) the UK�s dwindling influence in Europe, Blair is no longer in a position of authority to dictate what the rest of the world should look like.

A year ago Blair was a different statesman. A year ago at the Azores summit there were no hypo- thesised dangers, there was only certainty and the action that would follow from that certainty. The summit pressed the �GO� button for the coalition�s war on Iraq. Blair stood erect and defiant alongside George Bush and Jos� Mar�a Aznar, then Spanish prime minister. Seven months later, during the Columbus Day celebrations in Spain, Downing Street learned what would happen if Aznar fell. Zapatero sat down when the US flag passed him. He told those around him: �It�s not my flag.�

On the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, with the UK general election maybe only a year or so away, and with the US presidential election this November, the popular perception of Blair is that he has become a prime minister tied to too many flags. He knows that to win a third term he will have to overcome the idea that three flags now fly outside Downing Street � the Union flag, the Stars and Stripes and the red and blue �elephant� of Bush�s Republican Party.

The anti-war, anti-US Zapatero carries no such baggage. In office for barely hours he distanced himself from Washington and threatened to pull Spanish forces from Iraq by July unless the United Nations were in control by then.

If that was the first indication that the coalition would mark this first anniversary of war by fragmenting, more was to follow. Last Thursday in Rome, the Italian European affairs minister, Rocco Buttiglione, told the Il Messaggero newspaper: �The war may have been a mistake. What is certain is that it wasn�t the best thing to do.�

Italy currently has 3000 troops in Iraq. And, like Aznar, the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is one of the strongest European proponents of the US-led war. Buttiglione is one of Berlusconi�s coalition partners in the Italian government and now clearly feels that his silence on what the war in Iraq achieved is no longer politically advantageous to his Christian Democrat Party. He added: �Terrorism cannot be defeated only by the force of arms and if we give the impression that weapons play the dominant role, we will only stir up feelings among the Arabs against us.� Arab democracy will not, according to Buttiglione, �be born through the force of arms or because we have defeated Saddam.�

The anniversary of the Iraq invasion is thus being marked � even by former supporters � as the time to discuss the merits of leaving. But where Buttiglione can talk of it all as �a mistake�, Bush in an election year and equally Blair with his own ballot-box test just round the corner do not have the luxury of saying: �We got it so wrong.� Kerry�s early campaign focus is clearly to highlight the mistake, to claim Bush �misled� America. Kerry, a Vietnam war hero, needs to persuade the electorate that even as the world�s only superpower, it can�t survive alone and that the US�s military power alone (plus some key allies�) won�t win the battle against terrorism.

Kerry�s other trump card is to paint Bush as the president who wasted the international sympathy that flowed towards the US after 9/11 but which has vanished in the last 12 months. Bush believes his resolve over Iraq will mean payback at the November election: �We showed the dictator and a watching world that we mean what we say.� Iran falling into line and Libya handing over its nuclear programme are Bush�s �hard evidence� for getting it right. Bush�s vice-president, Dick Cheney, speaking last week, managed to link John Kerry and the Madrid bombings into one neat simplistic package. The bombs in Madrid �were a reminder that there are evil people in the world�. As for Kerry, Cheney said he was just too worried about law enforcement rather than military action.

�He [Kerry] has embraced the strategy of the 1990s which holds that when we are attacked, we ought to round up those directly responsible, put them on trial and call it a day.� Cheney�s get-them-before-they-get-us philosophy is just a crude summary of Blair�s �international community� which need new laws for new tough times ahead. Nevertheless, just in case Kerry�s liberal message manages to resonate loudly, Bush�s advisers have switched to �negative� campaigning far earlier than any pundits had believed was possible. The reasoning? Bush�s team believe they are already in deep trouble.

The pugilistic Bush is probably up for a fight and the record of his father � who succeeded in destroying Democratic presidential contender Mike Dukakis before a vote was cast � will only encourage the strategy of creating Kerry as the flip-flop liberal victim with no backbone against Bush�s image as the one-time �compassionate conservative� who found the guts to take on Saddam.

�My administration,� said Bush recently, �has a positive vision for winning the war on terrorism and for extending peace and freedom throughout our world.� The key to that �vision� being believable is for the agreement signed in November last year to be an unquest- ionable success. It set out a timetable that will formally transfer power back to an interim Iraqi administration on June 30, with elections taking place by the end of January 2005 (although many in the Foreign Office believe this election date is unlikely to be met). During his state visit to London, Bush highlighted the importance of June 30. The US would then be in Iraq �by invitation� and what the war will have left, said the President, is a �free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East�. For Bush and Blair that will be portrayed as an era-defining event that will (as Bush believes) kick-start �the global democratic revolution�.

That the new Spanish government has already refused to buy into that US-led utopian vision is not surprising given the horrors of the Madrid bombing. And with the US military death toll � approaching 600 soldiers � still steadily rising, neither is it a given that the US electorate will buy it either, however well wrapped during the election campaign. Tony Blair � having lost the argument over WMD � now needs an Iraq, a better �democratic� Iraq, that is being run by the Iraqis themselves.

This weekend�s anniversary of the invasion will barely be celebrated by Blair simply because there is nothing to celebrate, nothing to sell, yet. The continuing question mark over the war�s legality, alongside the Madrid bombing � which highlighted that none of the coalition governments can point to the world being a safer place � means the outcome of this June 10�s European elections has become a significant hurdle for Blair. Labour officials are already downgrading its outcome, pointing to a likely low turn-out and a probable drop in Labour MEPs. But if Labour suffer badly in the overall percentage vote, Blair�s position as leader will, yet again, be under serious threat. A Blair loyalist MP said: �Tony has never been a liability only an asset. He is a crisis leader � and if a crisis visits in June he�ll deal with it.��

June 30 however is different. Between now and then there will be almost frantic efforts to get the UN formally re-involved, re-engaged with Iraq. The reason? Both Blair and Bush now need the UN again, a year after they pushed aside Hans Blix and the UN inspection teams and simply ignored the majority decision of the Security Council. According to one Foreign Office adviser: �The UN would complete the circle, almost legitimise the entire process for Downing Street. It could leave the Prime Minister effectively saying he carried out what the UN should have. He has said this before, and his critics have rounded on him. But with Saddam gone, democratic elections on the horizon and the UN back inside the Iraqi equation; that is vindication, is it not? That is not failure?�

But what will the definition of Iraqi control be? Will the Iraqi people and a new government be in control of how their oil money is distributed? Will they be in control of which firms will be employed to carry out reconstruction work � contracts that have so far gone to US companies (many of them with links to the Bush administration) which stand to achieve massive profits from the $87 billion up for grabs? For Bush these matters are academic. The decision for US voters in November, might � as Bill Clinton has warned � be down to a �gut check�. According to Clinton�s analysis, people in dangerous times prefer a leader who is strong and wrong, rather than one who is weak and right. For Blair however �strong and wrong� might not be enough. Strong and right is what Blair sold himself as. Anything less and the party will begin looking elsewhere for a leader (if they aren�t doing so already).

A recent poll carried out by YouGov for Sky News found that 75% believed that as a result of Britain�s role in the Iraq war, the UK had been left more vulnerable. A terror attack on Britain � as was the case in Spain � would therefore inevitably be linked to Blair�s decision to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US. The political fallout for Blair points to a scenario far different from the events in Spain. There would be no cover-up, nor a need for one. The main opposition party, the Conservatives, backed the war. If al-Qaeda struck, Blair would have to mount a defence that centred on his continuing belief that global terrorism had to be confronted and that Britain had no choice.

The question mark on the first anniversary of the invasion would be whether or not Blair marched too close behind Bush and prosecuted a war that was unnecessary and possibly illegal and, in so doing, let the real enemy, al-Qaeda, go unchecked for too long. The hope in Downing Street is that such a question remains theoretical. Nobody wants it to be tested by the reality of terror that the government now knows is no longer if, but when.

21 March 2004

March 21, 2004 at 12:19 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (18) | Top of page | Blog Home

March 20, 2004

Unclear if Bin Laden Deputy Is Trapped

Yahoo! News - Unclear if Bin Laden Deputy Is Trapped

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer
WANA, Pakistan - As helicopters circled overhead and gunfire crackled in the distance, a Pakistani general said Saturday many of the al-Qaida fighters surrounded near the Afghan border were Chechen or Uzbek, and he was uncertain if they included Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

Although Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain hedged on the identity of the senior figure, he said he still believed a "high-value" terrorist target remained in the trap and had not escaped across the border into Afghanistan (news - web sites).

The operation in the arid, rugged terrain of South Waziristan raged into its fifth day with no sign of surrender from 400 to 500 foreign fighters and local tribesmen facing a thunderous barrage of artillery by night and Cobra helicopter gunship fire by day.

Hussain said 5,000 to 6,000 Pakistani troops were deployed in Pakistan's largest anti-terror campaign, conducted across a 25-square-mile swath of territory within 10 miles of the Afghan frontier.

About 2,500 soldiers were fighting the militants and the rest conducting searches, he said. Pakistani officials said a dozen American personnel are helping with technical intelligence and surveillance.

"I would not rule out any possibility, but with this level of resistance, even after 48 hours (of bombardment), I believe the high-value target is still there," Hussain told about 40 journalists flown by Pakistan's military to this town about three miles from the battle.

He said the fighters were a blend of foreigners and members of the local Yargul Khel tribe, and that this was the first of a series of operations to clear the lawless tribal region of militants.

The military announced Saturday that more than 100 fighters had been detained, some of them sent to the provincial capital, Peshawar, for interrogation. It showed journalists about 40 captured fighters at a military base in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. They were blindfolded and with hands bound, crammed into a military truck. The corpse of another militant lay wrapped in a white shroud in a military ambulance.

Security officials said prisoners under interrogation included Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and ethnic Uighurs from China's predominantly Muslim Xinjiang province, where a separatist movement is simmering.

There have been reports that at least 80 ethnic Uzbek Islamic militants, led by Qari Tahir Yaldash � a Taliban ally and deputy of slain Uzbek leader Juma Namangani � are in the Waziristan region. Namangani was killed during the U.S.-led coalition's assault on Afghanistan that began in late 2001.

"Our people are interrogating them to determine who these terrorists are," said Brig. Mahmood Shah, the chief of security for tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan. "Some of them are foreigners."

The military also showed journalists in Wana belongings and equipment seized from a Chechen fighter who was killed, including grenades, detonators, a traditional pakor hat and prayer beads. Also displayed were four locally made rifles, a dozen grenades, AK-47s and boxes of Soviet-era ammunition seized from tribesmen.

The Pakistani army has intercepted some radio conversations of militants inside the encampment � mostly in the Chechen and Uzbek languages and some in Arabic.

One radio intercept in Uzbek or Chechen said a man wounded when he tried unsuccessfully to flee the area in a vehicle on the first day of the operation would need "four men to carry him and 10 or 11 people to protect him," Hussain revealed.

That raised suspicion the man was important and "most likely Chechen or Uzbek, as the intercepts were in those languages," he said.

Al-Zawahri is Egyptian, and would be expected to have mostly Arabic-speaking protectors. But Hussain said it was possible a figure like al-Zawahri would be guarded by fighters of different nationalities. He also said the protected man could have been a top local tribesman.

Last year, Russian authorities revealed that al-Zawahri was detained in Dagestan in 1997 after visiting Chechnya (news - web sites) under an assumed name and held in a pretrial detention center for a few months. He was released and expelled from Russia after authorities failed to establish his identity.

Earlier, President Pervez Musharraf said commanders believed they had a "high-value" target surrounded. Four senior Pakistani officials then said they believed al-Zawahri was the target, based on the level of resistance and intelligence placing him in the region recently. The government has been cautious, saying it would not know who was present until the operation is completed.

Hussain said 400 to 500 militants are believed to still be fighting, using mortars, AK-47s, rockets and hand-grenades in a face-off with troops.

The military gave no updated details of casualties. On Friday, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan put the number of troops killed at 17, most in a disastrous initial assault Tuesday. Pakistan says 26 militants also have been killed.

Thousands of tribal residents fled their homes, and on Saturday, a small bus packed with villagers from near Wana was hit by gunfire and rockets from a Pakistani helicopter, killing 12 people, eight of them women, and injuring seven, an intelligence official in Wana said on condition of anonymity.

Sultan confirmed the incident but blamed firing by militants. He said that seven people, including five women, were killed and 13 injured.

____

Associated Press reporters Paul Haven and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, and Noor Khan in Afghanistan's Paktika province contributed to this report.

March 20, 2004 at 10:32 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

A new force

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A new force part one

Six months ago the Met was in crisis - millions had been wasted on fruitless investigations of leading members of the Black Police Association, new accusations of institutional racism were in the air. Simon Hattenstone meets four officers who were in the eye of the storm then and have now come out the stronger.

Saturday March 20, 2004
The Guardian

Long before he was infamous, Ali Dizaei was famous. He was frequently cited as the person most likely to be Britain's first non-white police chief. It had even been suggested that he would get the very top job: that he would be the first black officer to head the Metropolitan police.
And then came the mudslinging. The Metropolitan police began investigating Dizaei in August 1999 and he was suspended in January 2001, accused of misuse of drugs, sex with prostitutes, divulging confidential information, unregistered business interests, accepting gratuities, swindling expenses, perverting the course of justice and having undermined national security. By the time he was tried last year, all charges had been dropped, bar two: perverting the course of justice (over where his car had been parked) and misconduct in public office (relating to a �270 expenses claim). After an estimated �7m of public money had been spent on the investigation, he was acquitted on both counts at two Old Bailey trials.

Even then, the rumour mill had it that Dizaei, who was born in Iran, would never serve in the police force again. We were reminded in newspapers that Dizaei had lied about where he had left his car in September 2000 (he admitted he had not told the truth, fearing he would get into trouble with his boss for ignoring an order not to attend a meeting of the Black Police Association). More damagingly, we were reminded that he made threatening phone calls to girlfriend Mandy Darrougheh after she left him, saying, "I will take such revenge on you that, like a dog, you will be sorry. You will never treat me like this again. Mandy, I am going to declare war on you and I have declared it as of now. See what I will do to you. From now on, you are dead." That was indisputable - he had said terrible things to her - but what we were never told, he says, was that the police also had tapes proving that, 20 minutes after the abusive messages, he and Darrougheh had made up; the relationship continued for another six months before they split up amicably.

We first meet in September 2003, just after the expenses case has been thrown out of the Old Bailey - the prosecution was forced to admit that, rather than overclaiming �270 from the Black Police Association (BPA), Dizaei was owed around �400.

Not only does the Met have the "Dizaei problem", it has the "Logan problem". Almost �1m was spent investigating detective chief inspector Leroy Logan, another leading light in the BPA, over an �80 expenses claim. Logan has been cleared of any wrongdoing, no charges have been brought, and he is taking the Met to an employment tribunal for victimisation. At this point, the relationship between the Met and its black police officers is at an all-time low. It appears that the force has hounded two of its most senior - and most politicised - black officers, and the BPA says their experience is representative of that of many others. It is threatening to boycott the programme to recruit more black officers. Its argument is simple - if our officers are still facing such victimisation, how can we possibly recommend new black recruits to join? This is catastrophic for the Met, undermining its claim to police the capital even-handedly.

Many black officers, Dizaei included, believe this new crisis is a backlash against the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. When Macpherson famously concluded that the Met was "institutionally racist", black officers felt vindicated. At the same time, many white officers felt disempowered - Glen Smyth, the chairman of the Police Federation, frequently complained that white officers could no longer do their job properly if every time they stopped a black person they were going to be accused of racism. Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, recently admitted that some senior white officers had become wary of disciplining black officers, and as a result either overlooked minor indiscretions or over-reacted through inappropriately formal channels. An internal police report shows that black officers are twice as likely as white officers to be disciplined.

For black officers such as Sgt Gurpal Virdi and former chief inspector David Michael, their nightmares go back further - in Michael's case, right back to the formation of the BPA in 1994, a year after the murder of Stephen Lawrence. But, in the end, they believe they are telling the same story - the story of black, politicised officers being picked off in a predominantly white police force.

Dizaei, legal adviser to the BPA, is convinced that the millions spent investigating him was in part a consequence of Macpherson. "I think the initial intention was just to kick me out of the job. The thinking was, 'It will send a very clear message to the rest who is the boss. We can reclaim some of the turf that has been lost as a result of the Lawrence inquiry.'" But, ultimately, he says, the operation went further. "Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Imagine there were 44 people you worked with who got up every morning for three years, with all the executive power at their disposal, all the money they wanted, and their aim as they chewed their bacon sandwich was to put you in Brixton prison, and they got you almost to the door of the prison ... imagine, how do you think of them, how do you think of your employer?" The 44 people he refers to are the officers who formed Operation Helios, the team created to investigate him in 1999.

On January 18 2001, Dizaei was asked to report to assistant commissioner Mike Todd. He was told that Todd wanted to congratulate him for being accepted on to the senior commanders' course that would see him fast-tracked into the Met's top rank. He wore his best suit for the occasion. But as he arrived at Cannon Row police station, four senior officers told him that he'd been under secret surveillance for more than a year and that dozens of officers were currently carrying out forensic searches of his family home, office, car, gym locker, and his girlfriend's home. When he was told that he was accused of corruption and was a threat to national security, he burst out laughing. But when none of the other officers joined in, he began to feel sick.

At his trial last year, documents disclosed to the defence revealed the lengths to which Helios officers were prepared to go to find something of which they could accuse Dizaei. These are just a few examples:

� Investigate for any missing items at police stations defendant served and then see if found in house search. Eg laptop missing in Kensington. Contact Supt Bennett at Reading Police Station re stamps going missing in 1980s.

� Investigate defendant's car speedometer to see if it is working OK to prove mileage claims.

� Investigate if Thames Valley would want to take action since defendant was in possession of a police nametag from his days in that force.

� Fly to south of France to obtain statements from a concert-goer re sale of concert tickets.

� Identify black PC who worked with defendant 16 years ago.

� Obtain the immigration file of every person known to defendant.

� Trace and take statement from every taxi driver who has given defendant a receipt since 1998.

� Investigate with dry cleaners to see if defendant had got a discount for dry cleaning his jeans.

At Dizaei's first Old Bailey trial, it was revealed that chief superintendent Barry Norman, who led Helios, sent a letter to both the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department asking for help in the investigation of Dizaei because, "This operation is our last opportunity to prevent him from going on to the strategic command course and becoming a chief officer." All in all, Helios took 7,000 actions, 3,000 statements, 3,000 exhibits, and tapped 3,500 telephone calls. Dizaei was given the surveillance name Mozart. Friends of his (mostly Iranian, all from ethnic minorities and none of them ultimately charged with anything) were also given composers' names: Chopin, Elgar, Bach, Strauss, Ravel, Verdi, Wagner, Holst, Mahler, Brahms, Orff, Haydn, Puccini .

Ali Dizaei joined the police in 1986 and rose quickly from sergeant to inspector to superintendent. He became more and more outspoken, often taking the Met to task and informing successive home secretaries that the police were failing black people. As he describes all this, he addresses me in the same assertive manner he must have used to countless senior officers. "You, for example, as chief superintendent running Notting Hill, have you considered why a black person is six times more likely to be arrested than a white person? And why is it when you walk into most police stations, all the pictures of villains stuck on the wall are black? Are there no white villains in London? And, if the police were really worried about the number of stop and searches they did on young black men, why not leaflet the community to tell them their rights when they were stopped? The chief superintendents looked at me as if I was mad when I said that. I was nearly burned as a heretic."

Dizaei was never going to be an average copper. He was sure of that from day one. First of all there were his qualifications - he had a master's in law, had trained as a barrister and was to go on to complete a PhD. Then there were his own expectations. His father, a policeman in Iran, had sent him to England, at nine, for a public school education. "To be parachuted into a different culture at that age, where I couldn't even ask, can I have any more food, or can you tell me where the bathroom is, a boarding school of the 70s, is not to be underestimated, and I had to very quickly fend for myself. Everything was a challenge. I think this is what the Helios team underestimated - that I've had to fight for everything." Despite facing hostility at school because of his lack of English, he fought his way to the top of the class and into the rugby team. Success may not have come easy, but it always came.

After his master's degree, he applied to the police, aged 24, at a time when the Met was desperate for high-flying black officers, and the recruitment ads promised the earth. His father wasn't convinced. He told him that he hadn't put him through 10 years of private education just for him to be PC Dizaei, and that he'd walk the beat with officers who had struggled to pass three O-levels and didn't have much oil in their lamp. "He had serious concern as to whether I'd be accepted here because he'd witnessed the very overt racism of the 70s." So had young Ali. He had been chased by skinheads. But that was the past. Every organisation needs its bricklayers and its architects, he told his father, and he was going to be an architect.

Even his father's worst forebodings could not have prepared him for the reality. "Very quickly I found the way I speak, where I come from, my colour, my religion, became an obsession among my colleagues. It was breathtaking. Every joke was about my background, every comment linked to the fact that I came from Iran, and that we're all heathens there, and we kill people and chop people's hands off. I remember a sergeant at my training school, every time I went past him he'd pretend he had a grenade because the Iranian revolution was on at the time."

As soon as he finished his probation, he took the sergeants' exam. While his boss provided time for other aspirant sergeants to revise, he sent Dizaei on foot patrol around the streets of Reading at night. "It made me more determined - I passed it and came in the top 20 nationally out of 10,000, which qualified me immediately to apply for the accelerated promotion scheme, which is like the cr�me de la cr�me of the police force."

Dizaei is an unlikely mix - swaggering and gentle, invincible and vulnerable, suspicious and generous. I ask what made him such a good officer. Well, he says, he always had a strong vision of how policing should be delivered, and he came up with good initiatives - for example, introducing police surgeries in Reading. "We rented a room in the local community centre and said to the public come and speak to us about any minor thing. We were only PCs at the time." No one has ever doubted Dizaei's ability. But many have doubted his character. He has been called arrogant and flash ("flash Arab") more times than he can remember. And while it's true he stands out, in his cowboy boots and shades and long suede coats, he is convinced that if he were white, different words would be used - outspoken, strong, assertive, say.

Between 1987 and 1990, PC Albert Bernard and Dizaei were beat bobbies together. Today, Bernard is still a PC, and they are still good mates. "There are two sides to Ali, bless his cotton socks. At heart he's like a little kid. Out of uniform he's friendly, buoyant, polite, the life and soul of the party. When he's got the Queen's uniform on, he's completely different - so professional and businesslike. I always judge police officers by their understanding and reasonability, if that's a word. And his understanding was always good, and he was very reasonable. But he also had an arrogance, a confidence in himself that sets him apart from any officer I've known. Ali's the type of person you either love or hate."

Bernard thinks it is amazing that he has survived the past four years. "A lesser man would have crumbled. But he's passionate about policing, you know. Last year, on the eve of the Met dropping their allegations, he asked me, 'Albino, what would you do if you were in my shoes?' and I said, 'I'd get the hell out of here' and what he said was, 'It's not about the money, it's about doing the right thing.'"

As Dizaei, now 41, continued to progress through the ranks, he came across more obstacles. In 1999, he had to overcome opposition when he wanted to apply for promotion from chief inspector to superintendent; he threatened to go to an employment tribunal. "When you join the force, there is a presumption of incompetence unless you prove otherwise." And that is why, he says, black officers tend to be better qualified than their white peers - they build up their CV in anticipation of discrimination.

It's also why so many black officers have resorted to the courts. "I suppose I've been a market leader in it, which may explain why the police administrators hate me - you deprive me of my right and I will sue you and I will win. And please, Simon, this is not about arrogance, it is about dedicating your life to a profession at considerable expense and then wanting to do well in it. Now, I'm not going to let a handful of bigots stop me."

As a vocal member of the BPA, he complained that black people were harassed because of a perceived lack of respect for the police - not saying yes sir, no sir, thank you sir, when stopped and asked for their driving licence, for instance. It didn't mean that they were criminals, he said. "Last time I checked the legislative books, there was no offence called Contempt of Cop."

He became a voice for the Met's foot soldiers, complaining that the organisation did not mentor its black officers, did not encourage them to go on courses, did not provide positive reinforcement. By 1998, the BPA was beginning to be taken seriously and aggrieved members knew that if they wanted something, they should see Ali Dizaei about it. "I soon realised that black officers are not going to come to us as an association wanting us to organise curry evenings, they would come to us because they have had enough. So this networking forum quickly became mobilised and people like me who were legally qualified got almost daily referrals - people didn't want a shoulder to cry on, they wanted help in suing the force." The top brass thought of him as a dissident. "They thought I was the brains behind the BPA - wrongly so, because many of my colleagues in the BPA are far smarter than me."

He called the Met strategically naive, arguing that simply increasing the number of black police officers, as Lord Scarman had suggested in his 1980s report after the Brixton riots, would not increase the confidence of black people in the Met: it didn't matter what colour officers were if their attitudes went unchanged. "It's like trying to cure a brain tumour with a Lemsip." He has always enjoyed his soundbites. The point he returns to time and again is that the Met never thought through the new recruitment policy. "The whole issue of diversity and race relations within policing came on the blind side of the police force because none of those people who thought it was a wonderful idea to change the structure of the organisation, by bringing in people who think differently, act differently, thought there might just be a bit of a problem." It was assumed, he says, that all the new black and Asian officers would eat in the canteen and drink in the Nag's Head because that is what cops have always done, with no thought that they might have other ideas.

Dizaei was not surprised when he was suspended. For his PhD, Dizaei explored the issue of black policing in America and discovered the same pattern there 40 years earlier. After the race riots of the 1960s in the US, the Kerner Commission concluded that America needed more black police officers. Black officers entered the profession with high hopes which were soon thwarted. They set up a networking forum with the approval of police administrators, which then became mobilised into more militant associations that decided to demand rights.

"They said if you don't give us rights, we're going to get them through the courts, which they did. And what did the police administrators do? They basically said, 'Fuck you, we'll take you on.' They took on a guy called Renault Robinson who set up the first black police association in Chicago. They tried to do him for not wearing his cap. Actually, it's freaky when you look at what they did to him and what they did to me and Leroy Logan. They tried to pay informants to incriminate him, which they did with me. And what did Robinson do? He took them to court and won. He beat Chicago's political police machine, and ever since the US National Black Police Association have hit a different horizon. Well, isn't that exactly what's happened over here?"

Detective chief inspector Leroy Logan meets me in the reception area of New Scotland Yard by the memorial to officers killed in the course of duty. He is well built, exudes gravitas, a man of considerable presence. Logan is chair of the Met's Black Police Association, the biggest branch of the BPA. Two years after the Metropolitan police began to investigate Ali Dizaei, they started to look at the colleagues he networked with, basically members of the BPA. They combed the books and finances of the BPA, calling it collateral intrusion. In June 2001, Logan was served with a disciplinary notice for wrongly claiming �80 expenses after a night in a hotel following a BPA conference. Logan recognised it as an oversight, paid back the money, but the police decided to press ahead anyway. After three years trawling through Logan's expenses, no evidence of wrongdoing was found. The investigation was estimated to have cost almost �1 million.

Like Dizaei, he says he was anticipating an attack on his probity. "I felt it coming from a long way. To be honest, when you're challenging issues at governmental strategic levels ... there was clear indication from certain people that the national BPA had overstepped the mark. There was definitely a backlash."

In October 2003, the tensions within the Metropolitan police force were at their peak. Ali Dizaei had been cleared but not offered his job back, and Leroy Logan was preparing for his employment tribunal against the Met. The appointment of Britain's first black police chief, Mike Fuller, to head up the Kent force, had done little to quell the anger. The BPA had announced that it would boycott the recruitment programme for black officers, and was calling for an inquiry into Operation Helios.

Logan takes me to the canteen so we can talk. Wherever we sit, there are people surrounding us. What does he ultimately hope to gain from the tribunal? "Justice," he says and then stops. "Do you think we could go somewhere else, look for a private office?" Eventually, we find space in the office of the Sikh Society, friends of Logan who don't approve of the boycott, saying that it runs counter to the goals of the BPA. Logan talks easily here, about his past, how he studied to be a scientist, worked as a research technician at London's Royal Free Hospital before deciding to join the police, aged 26.

"I think what spurred me on was that, two months before I joined, my father was badly beaten up by police officers in Holloway. He was 57, and he wasn't your standard yob. He was a long-distance driver who had double-parked to pop into a chip shop near where we used to live in Islington, and the officers came by and said he was blocking the highway. My dad said, 'Can I just measure it?' but before he could do anything, they clubbed him and he was battered black and blue." As Logan tells the story, even he seems surprised by his reaction: "Even though you would have thought the last thing I should do is join the police service, there was something in me saying that you've got to be part of the organisation to move that organisation on, to challenge those sorts of people's attitudes and behaviour."

His father, he says, was horrified. "He couldn't believe I was joining the organisation that beat him up. I told him they needed more black people and, you know, you can't steer a ship from the shore." It wasn't only Logan's father who was dismayed. Nobody could understand his intentions - he was regarded as a turncoat. "My family and friends said, why are you going into a racist organisation that persecutes us, and I questioned myself on that several times, but I believed I was being called to do it."

Most of his colleagues didn't see it that way, though. "I used to represent the division for football, and we were driving from King's Cross to Surrey and they were making comments about black people and females, and a lot of it was focused on me. This was my team-mates. Fortunately I had a good game, so they were quite positive coming back. As we parked at King's Cross hours later, I said, 'If I wasn't present on the bus, what would you have talked about?' I think a lot of it was about testing my mettle, it wasn't just about being racist, it was can we get to him."

Did he rise to the bait? "Yeah, I did. But not the way they thought I would. They wanted me to show that I was vulnerable, but I told them, 'I had a career before I joined this organisation, and I'll have a career afterwards. I wonder how many of you can guarantee that. Some of you are just fit to do police work, and some of you have got to question how fit you are to be police officers.'"

Logan was praised in Sir William Macpherson's report for his testimony, and was awarded an MBE in 2001. He made considerable progress in the Met, if not at Dizaei's spectacular rate. The two weren't exactly mates, but they worked closely together in the BPA, stressing that retention was as important as recruitment (three times as many black officers fail to complete training school) and exposing the way non-white officers tended to be overscrutinised for a mistake and underpraised for fine work.

"My case was always linked to Ali's. This is one of the things I didn't want to say downstairs because ears were flapping. The inquiry team realised they'd spent a lot of money and there wasn't a lot to show for it, and they thought the BPA was incompetent and corrupt. So they started looking at the Home Office money we had and the Met money we had. I think they lost objectivity and were on a personal vendetta. They thought, take the shepherds out and the sheep will scatter - divide and rule."

The Metropolitan police strongly denies the allegation that Operation Helios was an attempt to undermine the BPA. "We don't believe that Operation Helios was racist in motivation or motivated by internal politics," a spokesman says. "It was an investigation into an allegation of corruption and unprofessional activity by an individual officer, and the Metropolitan police takes the integrity of its officers and staff very seriously. We must investigate any allegations of wrongdoing. And that's the case regardless of rank, race, gender. Before the first trial of Supt Dizaei began, there were several weeks when Supt Dizaei's defence lawyers attempted to make exactly this argument, and the recorder of London, the most senior judge at the Old Bailey, rejected this argument and found the investigation had been properly conducted."

Retired detective chief inspector David Michael was one of the founder members of the BPA 10 years ago. Actually, he says, its roots go back to a series of seminars held in Bristol in 1990. The seminars were organised by the Met because it realised that many black officers were unhappy in their work, and they wanted to know how to improve their lot. "Out of the seminars the Met formed an equal opportunities committee, and there was not one black person on it." He smiles. In that year, he also lodged his own employment tribunal case against the police for racial discrimination and victimisation.
How different it was from the day he joined the Met on his 19th birthday in December 1972. Michael was a golden boy, a natural leader. "At Hendon training school, the class instructor told us to pick a class captain, and the vast majority decided they wanted me to be the class captain. And when we took it back to the class instructor, who was a sergeant, he bounced it back and told the class to have another go. For me, that was one of the defining moments. But I didn't make an issue of it." Michael, as the first black officer in Lewisham, soon came to be regarded as a role model, the face of the future. He was even featured on television and in newspapers.

Before we meet, he tells me to look at his website, which features stories about officers who have been victimised; not simply those who experienced racism, but women who were discriminated against and one former officer who was dismissed for refusing to attend an on-duty drinks party. Famous quotes are scattered around the website. One of Michael's favourites is by abolitionist Frederick Douglass and dates back to 1857. "Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters."

Michael joined the police before the introduction of the Race Relations Act in 1976. "Crude racist language and behaviour were accepted everywhere - in the canteen, in police cars, in the front office. Black people were referred to as coons, wogs, spades, spooks, all those sorts of things. And it went completely unchallenged by supervising or senior officers." But the strange thing is, Michael says, most of the officers who were so hostile to black people were well-intentioned towards him. "My colleagues at the time did not personally abuse me, though my experiences later on proved different. They'd say, 'We don't see you as a black person, we see you as just one of us. We just see you as a cop.' " They would tell him they were sure that if he went back to Dominica, where he was born, he could become a sergeant or even higher. "I used to think, why are you saying that, I'm a Metropolitan police officer, so in a sense they were making the decision that I wasn't to aspire to anything apart from being a foot soldier in the Met."

But he did make progress: slow, steady progress from constable to sergeant to detective inspector, before hitting what he perceived to be a glass ceiling.

The David Michael who helped found the BPA was a very different man from the starry-eyed youngster who joined the police. Whereas he had spoken passionately in defence of the Met, now he was using his eloquence to expose his employer. He was always quick to praise the good - even now, he wants to stress that there have been great forward-thinkers leading the Met, such as Robert Mark and Peter Imbert - but he also drew attention to the bigotry. "I think I was the first serving police officer in Britain to stand up at a conference and say that racism is endemic in the Metropolitan police - that was in November 1995. It caused a furore." When he returned to work, even junior officers were openly hostile to him. He had to explain himself to the deputy commissioner of police, the ultimate discipline authority for the Met.

Michael regarded himself as something of a test case when he went to the employment tribunal. "To be frank, black people were suffering so much, coming into work and being systematically put down and debilitated and going home to their families as broken people, I thought a time had come to highlight that openly to the public." He expected his case to be resolved quickly. But the Met dragged it out over four years. "I think people were hoping I'd die of cancer or end up in a mental hospital or under a bus, or a plane would land on my house, so it would vanish." And in that time, he says, he faced a lot of hatred and retaliation.

Eventually, in the fourth year, Michael had a breakdown. He finds it difficult to talk about, but says he remembers the churning in his stomach and the forgetfulness (he drove away from garages twice without paying, but when the police made inquiries the attendant said he had simply seemed distracted), and lack of energy. "I'd describe that period as one where I went through an extreme test of the human spirit ..."

Just before the tribunal was due to start, the Met settled with him. "It was March 13 1998, which so happened to be the last day of part two of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, which I gave evidence to." Like so many police officers, he has a good head for dates. He received compensation and was welcomed back to work by the then commissioner, Sir Paul Condon. By now race was a huge issue, and the last thing the Met wanted was headline stories about the first black officer in Lewisham taking his employer to court.

Even so, Michael was greeted with renewed hostility on his return. "He [Condon] showed me the greatest humanity and on a personal level treated me very well. Unfortunately, this was repudiated by others in the organisation who stuck two fingers up to him." Michael served his full 30 years before retiring a year ago, but after he returned, and despite a promotion to chief inspector, he realised that his career had been stymied. He spent a great deal of his final years in the Met advising black officers who had been victimised. Michael recites the names of wronged black officers like a mantra: Sandra Locker, Joy Hendricks, Raj Ranjan, Norwell Roberts (the first black man to be accepted into the Met in 1967, he had his buttons torn off his uniform by fellow officers and bananas thrown at him from patrol cars) and, perhaps most famously, Gurpal Virdi, the sergeant who was sacked after being accused of sending himself and others racist hate mail.

And now Michael's youngest daughter is considering joining the police. He says he would do nothing to dissuade her. "Although I have discussed all these experiences with you, I wouldn't want it to be lost how proud I am of the many significant achievements I gained in my 30 years in the British police."

Gurpal Virdi, 45, is a quiet, dignified man with a generous smile and a nervous laugh. He has been back at work for two years. When we met at his house a couple of years ago, he was almost in tears as he told me how the police ransacked his home in 1998 as if he were a terrorist. The thing he kept returning to was that his children were there. "They even searched the kids. It was April 15 ... the same day the Titanic went down."

Back then, Virdi had complained about racist hate mail that he had received at work. On the day they raided his house, he discovered he was the chief suspect - the allegation was that he had sent out the hate mail to prove that there was racism in the police force because he was bitter at still being a sergeant after 16 years of service. The police also alleged that the Sikh officer was aggrieved because he had been ignored when he suggested that the stabbing of two Asian people had been racially motivated. Virdi was found guilty and sacked. Two years ago, he told me, in a barely audible tone, that he had hit such a low he had considered killing himself.

Today he is all smiles and hearty handshake. He talks about the work he's now doing with the community, under the aegis of the Met's most senior black officer, assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur. In January 2002, the Metropolitan Police Authority's 200-page Virdi report concluded he'd been falsely accused of sending racist hate mail to himself and other ethnic minority officers, and had been "convicted" by a kangaroo court. Meanwhile, an employment tribunal ruled he had been falsely dismissed for an offence he couldn't have committed. He eventually received about �240,000 compensation.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all was that Virdi decided to rejoin the force when he was cleared. But he says he had no choice.What was his first day back like? "It was weird." He laughs uncertainly. "I was very nervous. You're thinking, how many eyes are on me? What are people thinking? How many knives are going to go into my back?"

A couple of years ago, Virdi said he thought the police had changed for the better post-Macpherson, but now he's unsure. "There is a commitment from the top and there is a commitment from the bottom, but we have a cancer of middle management that is unwilling to change. A lot of racism after Macpherson has gone underground. Ali calls it stealth racism.

"When I first came back I purposely used to walk in the police canteen. You know, up and down, up and down with David Michael, just to prove a point - the point was that we're strong, we're back. It was something that I think needed to be done, also to reassure other ethnic officers that we're here to stay and we're not going to be frightened off by racists."

Has anyone had a go at him? "Not directly, no." It has been stressful, though. "Sathat [his wife] didn't want me to come back. I had a nice job with British Airways, stress-free, and Sathat was worried about the consequences, and she was right. My blood pressure's shot up and I'm on permanent medication now."

Does he still see himself as a career copper? "I'm aiming to do my 30 years, but I can't see myself going up the ranks somehow. A job came up recently with the Complaints Directorate, looking at employment tribunal grievances. I raised the issue of an application and I was told I would not be considered because I am contaminated!" He laughs.

Of course, racism is not exclusive to the Met. Virdi tells me the one thing everyone is talking about at the moment is The Secret Policeman, the BBC undercover documentary shot in a police training college in Cheshire that revealed rampant racism and resulted in seven officers resigning. (One of them, PC Rob Pulling of North Wales police, was captured wearing a Ku Klux Klan-style hood and saying that he believed Stephen Lawrence had deserved to die.) "All the ethnic officers were delighted by the programme actually because it was something they'd been saying for many years," Virdi says. "With the white officers there was shock, horror and denial in some quarters."

By early November 2003, things had finally come to a head - the boycott coupled with the documentary forced the issue. David Blunkett personally intervened to broker a deal between the Met and the BPA. Logan is to be paid �100,000 compensation and agrees to drop his employment tribunal, Dizaei is to be paid �80,000 compensation and reinstated, and there is to be an inquiry, chaired by former TGWU leader Sir Bill Morris, into the way in which Scotland Yard examines allegations against its own staff. In exchange, the BPA is to end its boycott of the recruitment programme. Although Morris stressed that it will not focus purely on prominent individuals and will not concern itself solely with race, the inquiry is largely a result of the collapse of the cases against Dizaei. It is expected to hear from more than 100 black officers who feel they have been mistreated by the Met.

In late January 2004, I meet Dizaei at the BPA's London HQ. He is back on the fast-track to promotion (of 74 officers currently being fast-tracked, only two are from ethnic minorities), preparing to start his senior commanders' course. He looks so different - instead of the jeans and cowboy boots, he is packed tight into a uniform. It's going to be a strange six months, even by Dizaei's standards - while he is on the course, he will be giving evidence to the Morris inquiry.

Dizaei has been away in Iran seeing his family, but in his absence there have been more news stories about him. He is issuing libel writs against Associated Newspapers and the Sun. "Look," he says, "they've done it again", and shows me a story about his "extravagant" lifestyle. "They think people like myself and members of the public will just put their tail between their legs and walk away. But I will remortgage my house if I need to fight a defamation action. Simple as that. I trained as a lawyer and I put my money where my mouth is. I think my battle has just finished with the Met, but it has just started with the newspapers." He estimates that the Met would have been willing to pay him a seven-figure sum to leave quietly, but he insisted on returning to the �60,000 a year job he loves.

He suggests we get coffee from Victoria station. As we walk down the street, he says that, in one way, it is wonderful to be back at work. "Incredible. When I walk through the police station, invariably every black and Asian officer comes up and shakes my hand." And the white officers? "They simply acknowledge my rank." It's different with the public. "I was at Victoria station the other day buying a paper and I had men in grey suits coming to me and saying well done."

In some ways, he says, returning to work has been extremely uncomfortable. "I don't trust anybody. I don't leave my bags in the office. I carry everything in a suitcase which I lock; I don't put anything on my office computer - I have a laptop; I don't use the work phone unless I'm ringing another superintendent. It's almost like I have two angels on my shoulders - one is saying, 'Be careful, be careful' and the other is saying, 'Don't let these bastards change your life'."

He talks about the many black officers who have quit the force because of the treatment they faced from white colleagues and superiors. That is why, he says, it is so important that there have been David Michaels and Gurpal Virdis and Leroy Logans and Ali Dizaeis - survivors, officers who have come through terrible times and lived to tell the tale. The attempt to smear him and Logan was not about discrediting two individual officers, he says again; it was about discrediting the BPA. "And just look how it has backfired." Over the six months I have been following Dizaei, the BPA has grown from an obscure abbreviation into a national force - possibly the most potent black pressure group Britain has known.

It's mid-February, and we meet on the first day of the Morris inquiry. Dizaei is sitting towards the back of the room with Logan, listening to commissioner Sir John Stevens giving evidence. They are all smiles as they come out at lunchtime, pleased at Stevens' comments that the disciplinary procedure for Met officers is long-winded and outdated, and needs rethinking.

We head off for coffee, and Dizaei is virtually skipping. He tells me that he feels so much better about being back at work now. He was seconded to Ealing to get him back into the operational swing of things. "There was a month of reintegration, and it went incredibly well. I went there with considerable anxiety, but my Met supervisor, Alan Brown, has bent over backwards to equip me with the skills shortages that I had because of my absence ... Now I'm looking forward to moving on."

In six months' time, he should have completed his senior commanders' course. Could he conceivably become a commander when he still has so many enemies in the Met? "I recognise that," he says, "and you know, three months ago, people were saying, 'Come on, is it conceivable that you will ever wear a uniform again and be an operational superintendent?' Well, I'm now back in uniform and last night I was making operational decisions." Yes, he says, of course he thinks he should get the job. But does he think he will? "I really do believe if I don't get a job, it would not be because of my competence to be a commander. Now the question is about acceptability. Remember, I'm the dark angel - the demonisation of Dizaei has been a clear strategy." And what if they find him unacceptable? "I think I have to be realistic. Part of the pantomime was muckraking and some of the mud has stuck. But you know, they'd better be good, extremely good, in refusing me for the right reasons because they know that I don't take No easily."

March 20, 2004 at 10:30 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (32) | Top of page | Blog Home

Telling tales: the spy chief�s novel

Times Online - Sunday Times

Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

THE dress is Zilkha, Ronit Zilkha. The car is an Audi quattro, not an Aston Martin, and she is more likely to have a dab of perfume behind her ears than a spy gadget up her sleeve.
Welcome to the secret agent world of Liz Carlyle as created by Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, in her debut novel.

At Risk, to be published this summer, is a fast-paced thriller with a 34-year-old female spook as its heroine. She inhabits a world that Rimington, who retired as MI5�s director-general in 1996, is uniquely qualified to describe.

If Rimington�s brief was to free the spy novel from male bondage, it is mission accomplished. She has said in the past that Ian Fleming�s 007 �had damaged the image of MI5� because he was such a male chauvinist. He fostered the notion that women, except for a few secretaries, do not work in the intelligence services.

Carlyle is a thoroughly modern Smiley, equally at home talking about Afghan guerrillas or the Foo Fighters and ready to discard her married lover, a profile writer for The Guardian newspaper.

Whereas 007 wore Cuban heels concealing espionage devices, Carlyle sports pointed plum-coloured shoes with kitten heels that are apt to get wedged in the cracks between paving stones.

She is more like Zoe, played by Keeley Hawes in BBC1�s drama Spooks. She is intelligent but not overtly so and relaxes by lying in the bath �listening to La Boh�me and trying half-heartedly to make sense of an article in The Economist�.

Her smart dress even draws sarcastic fire from her superiors in the intelligence services. �Ah. You�re running an agent in Harvey Nichols,� says one.

Rimington, who was accused of spilling state secrets when she published her autobiography Open Secret three years ago, plans to write a series of novels featuring Carlyle.

The book is not without humour. Rimington names one of her baddies after Ray Gunter, a minister in Harold Wilson�s government of the 1960s when the secret service became overly suspicious about alleged Soviet sympathies among Labour politicians.

Rimington also gets her revenge on David Shayler, the former MI5 officer who was prosecuted for publishing his concerns about the intelligence service�s alleged abuse of its powers and who called her a hypocrite for penning her memoirs. For the Christmas party at MI5, where staff drink from FBI mugs and store their pencils in Fortnum & Mason jars, 50 agents plan to upset their section head by donning rubber masks bearing Shayler�s face under a Santa hat.

The plot of At Risk concerns an Al-Qaeda-type terrorist who is smuggled into Britain but becomes a far more dangerous threat when he teams up with an �invisible�.

An invisible is CIA talk for a terrorist who, because he or she is an ethnic native of the country, can cross its borders unchecked, move around unquestioned and infiltrate its institutions with ease.

Carlyle is a member of the Joint Counter-Terrorist Group, created by the government immediately after the World Trade Center attacks to share intelligence. As the terrorists move towards their target in East Anglia, only her female intuition can avert disaster.

However, the new heads of MI5 will frown at their former chief�s lengthy description of how terrorists buy explosive materials and make a bomb.

In one scene, a couple of terrorists go into a toy shop and buy children�s �silly putty�.

They then mix up explosives with all the detail of a Delia Smith recipe: �Taking a Pyrex bowl, Faraj brought water to the boil. Adding two packets of clear gelatin, he mixed it with a stainless steel dessert spoon. Handing the woman the gloves, he allowed the mixture to cool, then added a half-cup of cooking oil and stirred.

�As they watched, a thin surface crust of solids began to form. With the spoon, she skimmed these off and placed them in a small Tupperware box, which she then left in the freezer compartment of the fridge. Both worked in silence.�

One other staple ingredient of the Bond novel, however, is missing. There are no steamy sex scenes.

Rimington, who is 69 this year, said: �I have dreamt for years of writing a thriller and have had the main character, Liz, in my mind all that time.

�She has changed and developed as the years have gone by and as I have changed. She is obviously in large part autobiographical but she also draws on a number of other female intelligence officers I have met during my professional career.�

She is still ruffled by the traditional image of the woman�s role in MI5, having joined the service herself as a �5-a-week clerk/typist. �I don�t see many Moneypennys in here,� Carlyle snaps at a male chauvinist colleague at one stage.

In her memoirs, Rimington wrote that �even in the 1980s I was warned against doing counter-terrorist work because I was told a family needs its mother�.

Today, she believes, MI5 still has set ideas on how its operatives should dress. �The accepted look, which most people seemed gradually to fall into, lay somewhere between sombre and invisible,� she writes in At Risk. �Dark trouser suits, neat skirts and jackets, sensible shoes � the sort of stuff you found in John Lewis or Marks & Spencer.�

This remark may draw some sniping when Rimington next attends a board meeting at Marks & Spencer, where she has been a non-executive director since 1997.

March 20, 2004 at 10:04 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (148) | Top of page | Blog Home

The spy within

Times Online - Sunday Times

Graham Greene's mistress unravels the mystery of Kim Philby

For more than three decades, Graham Greene discreetly shared his life with a mistress, Yvonne Cloetta. After the novelist’s death in 1991 she maintained their code of silence until — provoked by smears that, among other things, he had been homosexual — she decided to set the record straight.
She began preparing her memoirs with the help of Marie-Fran�oise (“Soizic”) Allain, a confidante of the couple. Cloetta died in 2001 while the book was unfinished, but Allain has now completed it from recordings of their conversations.

It opens up Greene�s complex world from within � including his enduring links to British intelligence and the mystery of his friendship with Kim Philby, the double agent.

This relationship, which has long intrigued Greene�s many fans � and enemies � began when they served together in British intelligence. After Philby fled to Moscow in 1963, Greene controversially wrote the introduction to the traitor�s memoirs. In a spy novel, The Human Factor, he also created a sympathetic double agent who flees to Russia.

When Greene was dying in 1991, his authorised biographer, Norman Sherry, was still pressing him for details of the relationship. Days before his death, Sherry wrote to him: �Wish you felt you could write me last thoughts about Kim Philby and maybe also Yvonne who would have her own response to Kim Philby.�

Sherry�s entreaty has been lingering for more than a decade. The final volume of his biography is still unpublished.

Cloetta�s book now unravels the mystery. Allain�s own inside knowledge � her father, a close friend of Greene, was a senior French intelligence agent assassinated in 1965 � amplifies the story.

Allain says: �What Yvonne told me about Greene and espionage is complex and precious: encounters with Philby in Moscow (she was there); the atmosphere on the Riviera where Graham often met with pals from the �old firm�; hints about his activities in Indochina, etc.

�All these elements may help us towards an understanding of Greene the writer and the many men within, as Yvonne slowly releases her �secrets� and interrogations.�

Soizic Allain: Would you say Graham was an honest man?

Yvonne Cloetta: The word �honest� has so many different meanings. Honest and good with other people, yes; honest with himself, I�m not entirely sure.

SA: He wasn�t a cheat?

YC: No, no. A many-sided character, for sure, but not a cheat. During a period of his life, of course, he had to cheat � unwillingly, I would say � for the sake of others.

SA: You mean in his role as a secret agent during the war?

YC: No, I was thinking of his relationships with women.

SA: As far as cheating or different degrees of reality are concerned, how could he reconcile the Catholic faith with visiting the brothels of Havana?

YC: He was a complex man, who seemed to have different compartments in his head. He could devote himself completely to religion and, indeed, also delve into the mystery of a brothel in Cuba in all its shady aspects.

There�s a link to be made with his fascination for espionage. He always saw a connection between brothels and spying: when he was sent to Africa by MI6 during the war, he had had the idea of opening a �house� where prostitutes would have been agents.

He often said to me: �Don�t think that I went to brothels to do what other men normally do in those places. First, I was intrigued. I wanted to know why those girls had come there. Furthermore, I found their conversations much more interesting than those that one heard in fashionable circles.� He even kept up a correspondence with some of them.

Graham�s secret was his passion for secrecy. Just as he was interested in priests and the power that confession conferred on them: so many secrets to unravel.

SA: Didn�t Graham play a game, particularly where Kim Philby was concerned? Various theses have been advanced lately which put forward a new scenario in which Kim was not simply a double, but a triple agent, with Graham being used as a privileged contact (without necessarily knowing it) so that certain information could be passed to the British secret service. The friendship between him and Philby was therefore secondary to the exigencies of intelligence.

YC: I can only repeat what I was told by Rufina, Kim�s wife: �To suggest that Kim became a triple agent after he came to Moscow is pure nonsense.�

SA: But what do wives know about men like that? She would have been kept out of it.

YC: From what I saw of Kim Philby, he was not going to begin another career over there. His physical state, his health and his age did not allow him to question everything and put his life at risk. What is more, and it is one of the qualities Graham recognised in him, what he did he did out of conviction and not for money, even if he did have a good pension and lived in a well-appointed flat. Money did not interest Kim Philby.

SA: Did Graham ever mention this hypothesis that Philby could be a triple agent?

YC: No, never, because it didn�t occur to him. For him, Kim Philby�s real career came to an end in 1963, when he left for Moscow. And Norman Sherry never had an answer from Graham on this matter.

Graham was worried when he received his letter. He admitted to me: �I�m anxious about what Norman has to say about this affair. God knows what Norman is going to say.�

No, Philby�s real career was over. I learnt later about the way he had been treated in Moscow at the beginning. After all his struggles on their behalf, he expected to be greeted as a hero by the Soviets � the KGB in particular. That was far from being the case. The object of mistrust and suspicion, he felt in some way rejected by his own. He started to drink � drinking as if he was suicidal. He wanted to destroy himself. And it was Rufa who rescued him. She told me this when she came to visit me.

SA: Could all this have been a set-up perhaps, to confuse the issue?

YC: Hardly . . . Not during the Brezhnev period! Once he was in Moscow, he couldn�t even be a �double� any longer. What�s more Philby disliked this term �double agent�. At one of our meetings, at the Georgian restaurant Aragvi in Moscow in September 1987, when the conversation turned to �what we�d do if we had our chance again�, he suddenly said angrily: �I�m always treated as a spy or a traitor. But a traitor to what and to whom? I�ve never belonged to the Establishment. It was up to them to know what I was doing. I never betrayed my true friends � the Russians. The right I have done is greater than the wrong I have done.�

As far as I�m concerned there was Kim the friend and Kim the spy. He had that gentle, hypocritical expression � he looked like the perfect spy.

SA: Should we forget some of the dreadful deeds he was responsible for?

YC: You�d have fallen for his charms, despite everything. And yet when I knew him, in 1986, he was no longer young; just two years younger than Graham, 80 in fact. He suffered from emphysema and he was very ill. But he was a delightful man. He had extraordinary charm. He needed it, for the job he was doing. He took everyone in. Physically he was nothing special: he wasn�t handsome, only average height, but as soon as he started speaking his expression and his smile melted you.

SA: Do you think Graham may have fallen for that charm?

YC: No.

SA: What was it, then?

YC: They used to meet during the war, in the evenings in London during the blitz, at a restaurant. For Graham (who never stopped making a mockery of the secret service afterwards) at that time joining the secret service was a great adventure.

SA: Did Graham suspect the double game Philby was playing, in 1943 or later? He once said to me: �I didn�t know anything then. All I knew was that Philby, like me, was a man of the left . . . He was playing a very dangerous game. He was very brave.�

YC: For him Philby was a charismatic boss who had �all the small loyalties to his colleagues, and, of course, his big loyalty was unknown to us�.

SA: Kim�s defection didn�t seem to have damaged their friendship, did it?

YC: No, on the contrary. And yet between 1963 and 1986 they never met. They corresponded: 12 letters and a postcard from Cuba from Kim. Nine letters from Graham.

SA: Can you try to describe their friendship?

YC: Throughout the time I saw Graham and Kim together in Moscow, after they had not seen each other for so many years, I said to myself: �If they�re friends, then they must hold certain essential ideas in common.�

I had seen what Graham thought of the Soviet regime, and how he disapproved of it completely, as he demonstrated on several occasions. And I wondered how Kim, who had to live in Moscow, and was really trapped there, could endure it.

SA: Did they not share more or less the same ideas or illusions about communism?

YC: No. You have to distinguish between the two men, if only because of the difference in the intensity of their idealism and their convictions. Philby went to the very end. Graham�s interest very soon waned. The story about his becoming a member of the Communist party for four weeks in Oxford in 1923 was simply so that he could make a trip to Russia. Whereas with Philby, it was really deep-rooted. Graham was far less idealistic than him and he lost his enthusiasm once he realised that life in the Soviet Union did not quite correspond with the idea he had of it from Marxist theories.

No, between Graham and Philby, it really was the �human factor�, even if it wasn�t easy to deal with, considering the pressure coming from Britain on the part of the public. So if there was one man for whom Graham committed himself totally, it was Kim Philby. And he really had to be fond of him to do that.

The first meetings between them actually date from 1941. Graham was finishing his military training; Kim at the time was head of a small section of the intelligence service dealing with German and Italian activities in Portugal and west Africa, including Sierra Leone (which Graham knew already), where he was posted.

After a gap of about two years they found themselves in the same section under Philby�s command. In June 1944, Graham turned down Kim�s offer of promotion and decided to stop all official activities in the intelligence service. He�d had enough. This petty bureaucrat work did not correspond at all with the image he had of the secret service. Besides, he had already decided to devote himself to writing. He couldn�t do both.

Graham never allowed himself to be taken in by the �seductiveness� of espionage. His friendship for Kim was to do with the man he was and not because he was a spy. Kim had a fine sense of humour, which Graham appreciated.

You wouldn�t say that Philby was his best friend, but he�s the one he took most risks for. And he never stopped speaking up for him, even to his friends in the �old firm�. I often saw evidence of that. They would explode with rage and hatred. Graham attributed this purely and simply to the feelings of jealousy that foot soldiers have for an important general, and this was only increased by the fact that they knew Philby could have been �C� (head of SIS). When Kim died, someone wrote in an English newspaper: �I hope he died in agony.� Graham was shocked and furious. He said to me: �Those people do more harm than anything Kim Philby could have done.� His colleagues and former colleagues on the C�te d�Azur, naturally, did not agree with Graham and could not understand his friendship for Philby, even if they retained a certain sympathy for the man himself, while disapproving utterly of his activities.

SA: I have often wondered how Graham could have disregarded his activities.

YC: Graham�s loyalty was unshakeable. To a friend.

SA: Was he not drawn a little too far?

YC: I jotted down his words: �Sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together even more than sharing a faith . . .�

SA: Do you think it was this that drew Philby and Graham to one another? I�m thinking of their correspondence about Afghanistan. Could Philby have been a sort of dissident? Did you have the impression that when they met they were tacitly putting on an act?

YC: If Graham were putting on an act with Kim Philby, then he was putting on a terrific one. Because there was nothing in Graham�s behaviour � really nothing � throughout all those years that could have allowed me to think that he was playing a double game, or that he was lying or telling me stories. No, quite simply they were two companions meeting after not seeing each other for a long time.

SA: Was it Philby who had asked to see Graham?

YC: Yes. Before the trip, Graham had said to me: �Since I�m going there, I should like to meet my friend Kim.� When I asked him why, he replied: �First, because he�s a friend, and then because it�s always pleasant to meet a friend you haven�t seen for a very long time; and then, out of curiosity, too. I should like to see how much he has remained an Englishman and how Russian he�s become.�

We went first of all to Moscow, then to Leningrad, and afterwards to Georgia. It was only on our return to Moscow that a meeting with Philby was arranged. Naively, I�d said to Graham: �But why don�t you telephone him?�

�No, he knows I�m here, and if he wants to see me, he�ll make the first move. I�ll leave him alone; I�ll let him come to me. I won�t do a thing.�

Eventually we were asked to dinner with Philby and his wife. It was clear that precautions had been taken. The driver did not drop us at the building where the Philbys lived; he asked us to get out just before we got there. Rufa came to meet us in a small street, behind where he lived.

My eyes were on stalks from the very beginning. It was quite obvious there was a lot of emotion there. First of all, they just stared, petrified, at one another, and then when Kim was able to speak he said: �Well, it�s obvious that much water has flowed by, you�re looking a good deal older!�

Graham replied: �No more than you!�

SA: Had Philby become slightly Russian?

YC: No. Totally English � 100%.

SA: Did you have the impression that he was being watched? That it was as if he was in prison?

YC: No, not in prison, but . . . he was living in a flat that belonged to the KGB, and when we met the following day at a restaurant he had a car with curtains. I would say not so much watched as protected.

One tiny detail I did notice: he spoke a great deal about his mother-in-law, Rufa�s mother, whom he was very fond of. And he said that she was very worried about him, and he didn�t know why. Well, it so happened that I went into the kitchen to talk to Rufa, who was cooking dinner. She said to me: �The telephone is bound to ring, and it�s bound to be my mother calling, for she knows someone is coming to dinner tonight. She�s going to telephone to find out how everything was going, how it all went.� And, sure enough, the telephone did ring. So, was it her mother, or someone else?

The overall atmosphere of the meeting was cautious. Philby�s words to Graham were: �Please, Graham, don�t ask me any questions about the past.�

SA: So their conversation was actually rather banal.

YC: Yes, Graham asked him questions about his life in Moscow. I really did have the impression that the two men were meeting like friends who did not want to hark back to the past any more, and especially that Graham should not ask him questions about what he had actually done.

SA: Do you think that Graham was fascinated by disloyalty, or was he actually appalled by it?

YC: He didn�t speak in those terms. When he spoke of Philby, he was careful not to make judgments about what he did.

SA: I was talking about disloyalty as a constant feature of his work. Did he confront disloyalty head on?

YC: Yes, but it had much more to do with betraying a person. He made a crucial distinction here. It�s the story of Sarah and Maurice Castle in The Human Factor. They are betrayed by the various services.

SA: Wasn�t Graham in some ways close to thinking that it was Philby who had been betrayed? Why was there this similarity between The Human Factor and Philby�s story?

YC: This similarity was a pure coincidence � and I was witness to what happened. It was in 1970. During the winter. It was cold in the flat. I took a stepladder to look on top of the cupboards where the radiators were kept. I found a pile of papers. They included a few pages of a manuscript which he had begun over 10 years before and which he had entitled The Human Factor. He had started to write it in 1959-60, but he had abandoned it because in 1963 Kim disappeared and he said to himself that everyone would think that he just wanted to retell the story of Philby. When we discovered these pages he read them again and said: �Well, now that this affair is over, I may be able to carry on with my research.� He thought that these dozen or so pages were good and could lead to something interesting.

SA: So he had begun the book before Philby escaped to Moscow?

YC: That�s right. Before Kim defected.

SA: So you can see the conclusions that might be drawn. That he had not wanted to publish it at the time, either because his writer�s intuition had helped him to figure out what Philby was up to and he did not want anyone to suspect that he had been in the know; or else that he did not want to betray a friend by giving food for thought to readers and the press.

YC: No, no, these hypotheses are childish.

SA: Don�t you get the feeling that espionage was a bit of a game for him? Espionage was a subject that entertained him.

YC: Yes, he enjoyed making a mockery of it and standing back from it somewhat. Particularly when he was with your father. Once when we had invited your parents to dinner � this must have been in 1959 or shortly afterwards � the two men were like small children and they spent the evening in fits of laughter! Graham loved playing pranks.

SA: He remained an adolescent at heart . . .

YC: Hard to say. On the one hand he was so mature, so tormented. You couldn�t say that he was still childish, but like all men he had a slight puerile side to him. With his friends he may have felt the need to experience what he possibly missed in his childhood.

SA: Going back to �the old spies club� did he see much of former members of the �old firm�?

YC: Yes. There were several who lived in the south of France. They made up a sort of fraternity. They all looked as if they were playing at being spies! Graham lived and breathed in that atmosphere. It was a world he frequented. The greater majority of them were former SIS people.

SA: Do you think Graham could have been disloyal to Britain?

YC: Today, I often wonder how far Graham�s attraction for the Russians extended, what explained the attraction . . . I often ponder what he wrote in the margins of my notebook � as he sometimes did � after he met Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1987. Graham wrote: �To me as we shook hands, he said: �I have known you for some years, Mr Greene�.� He told me that Gorbachev spoke in English, without an interpreter. Gorbachev�s remark is quite enigmatic. Of course, Graham was famous as a writer, and that was a compliment Gorbachev was paying him, but I am wondering . . . Wasn�t Graham leaving a clue in my notebook? That�s why I ask myself how far Graham�s sympathies went. Graham came close to thinking that it was Philby who had made the wisest choice.

SA: However, if what Norman Sherry reports is correct, Graham broke the rule of total loyalty towards Philby: he would pass on Philby�s letters to the Foreign Office.

YC: No, he only gave them the ones he thought would be of any interest to them. He gave them the one on Afghanistan. He told me that. When he left Antibes for England soon afterwards, he casually told me: �I�m taking with me Kim�s letter together with my answer, because it can be information, it can be disinformation, so it�s as well I take it to the Foreign Office.�

SA: Graham, in his last letter to me, also refers to the same letter from Philby: �He wrote to me about the war in Afghanistan, to tell me that he was against it and that he knew no one around him who was for � in other words, he clearly indicated that the KGB had been against that war.� So what is your conclusion?

YC: Graham has left us, taking his secrets with him. But what I can tell you is that, to the very end, he worked with the British services.

� Estate of Yvonne Cloetta and Marie-Fran�oise Allain 2004

� Translation Euan Cameron 2004

Extracted from In Search of a Beginning: My Life with Graham Greene by Yvonne Cloetta as told to Marie-Fran�oise Allain to be published by Bloomsbury on April 8 at �16.99. Copies can be ordered for �13.59 + �2.25 p&p from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585 or at www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

March 20, 2004 at 09:47 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (229) | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qa'eda 'mastermind' trapped

Telegraph | News | Al-Qa'eda 'mastermind' trapped

By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 19/03/2004)

A battle was raging in the Pakistani tribal borderlands last night as hundreds of troops surrounded a "high-value al-Qa'eda target" protected by fanatical fighters.
Pakistani officials said they believed they had cornered Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand-man and physician. Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri, 52, helped to mastermind the September 11 attacks and numerous other atrocities.

Officials said he was being defended by more than 200 al-Qa'eda guerrillas in mud-walled fortified villages. American intelligence officials were hoping he would be taken alive.

A military official said: "We have been receiving intelligence from our agents who are working in the tribal areas that Zawahiri could be among the people hiding there."

Some reports said al-Zawahiri was more important even than bin Laden in shaping the ideology of the terrorist network. Bin Laden is not thought to be in the immediate area.

The US has offered $25 million (nearly �14 million) for information leading to al-Zawahri's capture and has doubled to $50 million the reward for catching bin Laden.

The initial attack against the village of Kaloosha in a high, bowl-shaped valley about 20 miles from the Afghan border was launched on Tuesday by lightly armed troops and was beaten back.

At least 15 troops were killed, as well as 26 suspected Islamic militants, most of them apparently foreigners. One was a Chechen. Interrogation of 18 captured men suggested that al-Zawahiri had been wounded.

Pakistani special forces, regular army troops, frontier guards and tribal militia allies then joined the battle and helicopters and heavy artillery pounded the area. Pakistan said it planned to launch an air assault on the complex at dawn today.

Gen Pervaiz Musharraf, the Pakistani president, used the phrase "high-value al-Qa'eda target" when describing the battle. He said his forces had thrown a net around the area. However, officials privately expressed fears that the rugged terrain was impossible to seal at night.

Gen Musharraf said the army commander in the field had told him: "They seem very strong, dug-in positions. The houses there are almost forts. They are mud forts."

A local commander, Brig Mahmood Shah, said that, as well as Kaloosha, the battle involved the villages of Azam Warsak and Shin Warsak.

All three are in South Waziristan, which from British colonial times has always resisted central government control. Tuesday's incursion so enraged tribesmen that they burned more than a dozen army vehicles..

Gen Musharraf conceded that his commanders had initially been "careless" in sending in forces that were too light for the task. He said villagers had been told to flee the battle zone to reduce civilian casualties.

At America's request, Pakistani forces have spent weeks on an unprecedented penetration of tribal zones. They have been offering bribes to gain co-operation and destroying houses when they encounter resistance.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, yesterday rewarded Pakistan's co-operation in the war on terrorism by designating the country a major non-Nato ally. This allows it to buy advanced American arms. He ended a visit to Pakistan hours before the fighting intensified

No one would say whether United States forces were involved in the fighting. Mindful of Pakistani public opinion, American and Pakistani officials insist that the US military keeps strictly to the Afghan side of the border. However, American personnel, including CIA paramilitaries, are believed to be providing communications and surveillance assistance.

They are believed to have helped a year ago when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected al-Qa'eda No 3 and the mastermind of September 11, was captured as he slept in a safe house in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.

President George W Bush issued an uncompromising warning to Spain and other allies yesterday that terrorists could never be "appeased". Speaking against a backdrop of cheering troops, he said nations would not find safety by running and hiding from the war on terrorism.

The Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for last week's Madrid train bombings has said its next targets could be in Britain, Australia, Japan or Italy, an Arabic newspaper reported.

The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri said it was calling a truce in Spain to give the new socialist government time to carry out its pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Pentagon officials are highly sceptical that the Abu Hafs group, with only tenuous links to al-Qa'eda, was capable of masterminding the bombings.

March 20, 2004 at 09:45 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

Trapped al-Qa'eda leader is Uzbek mullah

Telegraph | News | Trapped al-Qa'eda leader is Uzbek mullah

(Filed: 21/03/2004)

Bin Laden's number two is no longer believed to be the man cornered in Pakistan. Massoud Ansari and Philip Sherwell report on the other leading al-Qa'eda figure suspected of leading the resistance.

A radical Uzbek mullah who is one of Osama bin Laden's most important lieutenants is believed to be the senior al-Qa'eda figure leading the resistance to a ferocious five-day Pakistani offensive in Waziristan, the Telegraph has learned.

As heavy artillery and Cobra helicopter gunships were deployed yesterday against an international brigade of Islamic fanatics, officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan identified Tahir Yuldash, the leader of several hundred Central Asian Islamic fundamentalist fighters, as the key figure being protected by up to 400 al-Qa'eda militants.

Yuldash, a founder of the hardline Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, teamed up with bin Laden in Afghanistan but has been based in Pakistani tribal areas since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. His cordon of bodyguards is fighting the Pakistani onslaught with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

While Yuldash would be a prized captive, Pakistan faced criticism last night for at first suggesting that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who is bin Laden's right-hand man, was trapped in the vicious firefight being waged along a chain of mud fortresses in the lawless border terrain of South Waziristan.

In an interview last Thursday, the Pakistani president, Gen Pervaiz Musharraf, said that a "high value target" was believed to be encircled. Pakistani military officers later identified the target as al-Zawahiri.

As they backed away from their claims yesterday, it was unclear whether al-Zawahiri - one of the suspected masterminds of the September 11 attacks - had been at the scene and managed to escape, or whether he was not there at all. Western officials were concerned that senior al-Qa'eda figures - a Chechen rebel leader known only as Daniar is also believed to have been embroiled in the fighting - may have slipped through the Pakistani security cordon.

Yet their disappointment with the Pakistanis will be tempered by the knowledge that the CIA apparently identified the area as a likely hide-out for al-Zawahiri as long ago as December, but Washington took the decision to hold off from mounting an immediate operation.

The battle is the fiercest yet waged against fighters who sought refuge on Pakistani soil after the US-led attack toppled the Taliban, the hosts for bin Laden's terrorist network. Under pressure from the US, Gen Musharraf sent 70,000 troops into the semi-autonomous tribal territories.

Just across the border in Afghanistan, 10,000 US troops have massed for Operation Mountain Storm, a mission intended to hand President George W Bush the scalp of bin Laden before November's presidential elections. About 100 SAS troops arrived in Kabul last week to join the operation.

According to villagers, the ranks of fighters in Waziristan included Arabs, Chechens, Afghans, Uzbeks and Chinese Uighurs. "There has been deafening firing every day," Dilawer Khan, a resident of the nearby town of Wana, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Helicopter gunships have been dropping bombs all morning at Kaloosha and Zaragandai."

Maj Gen Shoukat Sultan, a Pakistani army spokesman, said: "The mission is to get these people dead or alive." Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, who is in charge of the sweep, added: "These have been here for a long time. They are extremely professional fighters."

Thousands of villagers have fled while some of those who remain complain that they are effectively being held hostage by the Pakistani forces. "The soldiers know that they could be ambushed out in the open so they have sought refuge in local houses, holding the villagers as human shields," said a tribal elder.

The Pakistanis also claimed to have taken 100 prisoners during the offensive, although it is unclear how many are suspected al-Qa'eda operatives and how many are local tribal allies. "Many suspects who have been in the area a long time know the local language so we cannot immediately ascertain their nationalities," said Brig Mehmood Shah, the senior security commander for the border zone.

The joint squeeze on both sides of the border is being termed a "hammer and anvil" operation by the Americans. An unknown number of US and British special forces are operating in Pakistan.

As a result, bin Laden is facing the most sustained threat to his liberty since he was targeted in the siege of Tora Bora in December 2001. Then, despite a massive American aerial bombardment and supposed stranglehold by local US-backed fighters, he escaped from the eastern Afghan mountain range.

One intelligence official said that last week's events would have troubling echoes of Tora Bora for President Bush if it transpired that al-Zawahiri had been in the area.

The Telegraph has learned that the battleground - about 10 square miles of remote villages and mud compounds - came to the CIA's attention last December. Local tribesmen told US operatives on the ground that al-Zawahiri was sheltering near the settlements of Kaloosha, Azam Warsak, Shin Warsak and Zarangadai.

The information was backed up by at least one electronically-intercepted message indicating that al-Zawahiri was in the area.

Yet intelligence officials said that a decision was made in Washington not to take any immediate action. "The atrocious weather meant that any attack would be difficult and slow, giving al-Zawahiri plenty of chance to escape," said one official. "Secondly, plans were already being finalised for the current spring offensives.

"Thirdly, the CIA hoped to hear through local contacts that bin Laden had arrived in the area to meet his deputy. They wanted the chance to kill or capture both."

March 20, 2004 at 09:37 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

DNA tests on corpse will reveal if it is Bin Laden's deputy

Times Online - Sunday Times

Christina Lamb, Wana, South Waziristan
I watch the hunt for terror supremo

IN this land of razor-backed mountains where every man carries a gun, Pakistani troops yesterday launched house-to-house searches after days of fierce fighting to establish once and for all whether Osama Bin Laden’s deputy was holed up inside one of the mud-walled forts.

Flying in a Soviet MI-17 helicopter over southern Waziristan, in Pakistan�s borderlands with Afghanistan, it was easy to understand why Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born brains behind Al-Qaeda and one of the world�s most wanted men, might have chosen it as a hiding place.

Forts with 3ft thick walls, inside which could be friend or foe, were dotted around steep gorges. Through them run riverbeds that are dry in winter and in summer cause flash floods. Grey dust coats everything, getting into mouths and eyes.

�It�s the most rugged and inhospitable stretch of the border in the whole of the tribal areas,� said Brigadier Ali Khan. He is commander of a brigade of reinforcements sent to the area at the height of five days of battles between Pakistani forces and Al-Qaeda militants which are thought to have killed at least 70 people on both sides.

A Motorola wireless set found on a Chechen militant killed in the first day�s fighting on Tuesday enabled Pakistani forces to discover the frequency used by the fighters, some 400 of whom were thought to be still trapped yesterday.

Hopes that al-Zawahiri was among them were raised when they picked up a message � in Chechen � that said: �The wounded gentleman would need four men to carry him and 11 or 12 to protect him.�

�I would not rule out any possibility, but this message combined with the way they are still showing such fierce resistance makes me believe they must be protecting someone important,� said General Safdar Hussain, the Peshawar corps commander. He had moved his 5,000-man brigade on Thursday to join Frontier Corps and South Waziristan scouts taken by surprise by the resistance they faced.

Safdar said he believed the �gentleman� was hurt while trying to escape in one of three armoured vehicles that had attempted to break through a Pakistani cordon on Tuesday.

Two of the cars were shot at and crashed, but a third escaped in a cloud of dust. Safdar admitted, however, that the injured person might also be Thuraya, an Uzbek leader.

A senior American official involved in the hunt for Bin Laden said that al-Zawahiri may already be dead. According to his version of events, the Egyptian was in the escaping car and was shot by Taskforce 121, the shadowy rapid reaction force comprising special forces and CIA agents that had helped to capture Saddam Hussein last December.

The body, he said, had been retrieved from the wreckage and was undergoing DNA tests to confirm whether it was that of al-Zawahiri. In deference to the US forces� hosts, any announcement was being delayed to make it look as if it were a Pakistani-run operation, as well as to have time to use any information garnered to capture other fighters.

Members of Taskforce 121 � whose existence is so secret that their area Camp Vance in the main US base of Bagram is a no-go area to all other US military � were moved to the firebase of Shkin last week, on the Afghan border with Pakistan just a few miles from Wana. Their numbers were boosted by bringing some members back from Iraq.

The capture or killing of al-Zawahiri would be an enormous breakthrough in the war on terrorism in a week when the Madrid bombings have left many feeling that it is a losing battle. While Bin Laden is the public face of Al-Qaeda, many consider that the Egyptian surgeon is the organisation�s real mastermind.

Indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but most notorious for his involvement in planning the September 11 attacks, he has a $25m bounty on his head.

While Pakistani intelligence has been briefing journalists all week that its forces had al-Zawahiri surrounded, both Safdar and General Shaukat Sultan, spokesman for the Pakistani military, admitted that there had been no actual physical sighting of him. It was more a presumption as he had been known to be in the area.

However intelligence officials said they believed the trapped fighters included top Al-Qaeda bodyguards who work only for Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.

Some 100 people have been taken prisoner. Yesterday a truckload of 40 of them were shown off, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. Around half of them were white-bearded old men.

Pakistan said its helicopters had fired on a truck trying to break through the cordon at high speed last night.

Most of the foreign fighters left in the area are believed to be Chechens and Uzbeks, considered by American forces to be the fiercest fighters who will continue until death. Asked about when the operation would be ended, Sultan replied: �The logical conclusion is mission accomplishment, which means the target is destroyed.�

Waziristan is one of seven tribal areas created by the British in the late 19th century as a buffer zone between British India and Afghanistan. The Waziris have always been renowned for their fierceness and were so hostile to outsiders that in the 1930s there were more British troops stationed there than in the rest of the Raj. Part of the Waziris� Pashtun code of honour is to give shelter to those who ask, even if they have committed a crime � a quality exploited by Al-Qaeda.

Yesterday as Cobra helicopter gunships circled, 2,500 Pakistani soldiers were involved in a sweep-up operation while another 2,500 guarded escape routes.

Inside the forts so far searched, Safdar�s men found trenches, watchtowers and complexes of buildings, even though the area is just across a jagged mountain from the army headquarters in Wana.

Until recently Pakistani forces have hardly dared to enter the area. Locals are resentful of the incursions, which started last October but on nothing like the scale of last week�s operation.

Mohammad Azam Khan, who became political agent six months ago, persuaded tribal elders and religious leaders to betray the fighters. �I tried to convince them that when you give someone shelter, he should obey your laws rather than you being under his thumb,� he said.

Capturing al-Zawahiri would be a coup for George W Bush, who has increased troop levels in Afghanistan by 2,000 to 13,000.

It would also be a triumph for Pakistan�s president, General Pervez Musharraf, and help to cleanse the image of a country besmirched by its role in the sale of nuclear secrets to pariah states.

March 20, 2004 at 09:37 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

"The Tragedy of Andaluc�a"

spain02 : Tragedy of Andalucia

�2002 by Marcia Nieuwenhuis
"Let the world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andaluc�a would be repeated in Palestine. We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish... I say these events have split the whole world into two camps: the camp of belief and disbelief. So every Muslim shall take — shall support his religion."
Osama bin Laden in his video aired on al-Jazeera, October 7, 2001

What is, in fact "the tragedy of Andaluc�a?" Can you compare the tragedy of Andaluc�a to the current developments in Israel? Is there a new division in the world six months after the attacks on America? And how far can you go in the name of your religion? Andaluc�a � an area in the south of Spain with a history of war between Muslims and Catholics � might be able to provide the answers.

The smell of incense is filling the old alleys in the neighbourhood of Albayc�n. People are sitting snugly together in homey tea bars as crowds stroll past. The old quarter is still a spiritual, cultural and economical centre, and there is no sign of the modern world. What once was Albayc�n's greatest mosque is now a church. Parts of the mosque have been pulled down; now only its foundations remain visible.

Just outside the rectory the current parish priest, Antonio Valverde Casado, expresses his anger at the current Islamic regimes: "In which Islamic country do they have a democratic regime? And if so: where does that democracy come from?"

For him it's no problem at all that his predecessors were Muslim. "When Moors from northern Africa invaded Spain in 711, there were already evangelists in Spain. Here on this exact same spot there was a church before."

To Valverde September 11 revealed a division of humanity. "Muslims are different," Valverde continues: "for Islamic countries the most important thing is the Koran, here the law is secular. We have different realities, so it's hard to come together. It's easier to unite in the Euro, than to unite people."

The parish priest agrees with what Osama has said in his first video on the split of humanity; he doesn't feel the split within the religions, but between the occidental and oriental world. "There are two ways of life: the occidental way � which is not the same as Christian � and the one of the Islamic countries � which in fact is the oriental mentality."

In "La Teter�a Oriental", a Moroccan tea bar in Albayc�n, there is no sign of any new division; all seems calm, peaceful music, atmospheric lightning and the steam of the tea rising from a silver teapot, as it is poured into a traditional small Moroccan tea glass.

It feels like Morocco; at least as long as you don't see the visitors: tourists, in all shapes and sizes. Two Spaniards make room to enable five Japanese to take pictures in turns. In the corner a girl with dreadlocks kisses a boy. On the other side of the bar a mother is breast-feeding her baby. Meanwhile dad settles business on the phone and he informs his boss about his tourist activities in Granada.

The manager of the teter�a, Naoufel Idrissi, thinks that the camps of belief and disbelief, as mentioned by Osama bin Laden, don't exist in Spain. He is Moroccan from the northern part of Africa, as are the majority of the foreign workers in Albayc�n.

The history is important to Idrissi. "The Moors from Baeze have set the atmosphere. During Arab rule, until 1492, there have been eight centuries of convivencia, a form of relative religious tolerance. So they're used to other cultures, also because Spain is the closest spot near Morocco."

Idrissi is amazed by the question: "Did you take refuge?"

"No, I'm not a political refugee!" he answers forcefully. But after some hesitation Idrissi admits that he is an economic refugee. He has completed training in Arabic, Spanish and French translation, but he can't find a job in Morocco. "Right now there are no jobs as a translator available in Spain either. The economy is the only field in Spain in which there isn't any tolerance. Immigrants can't work for the same wages as the Spaniards. This is one of the few cases in which the level of tolerance has been affected by September 11."

After a small pause he continues: "To be honest, sometimes September 11 does affect me personally. Some people think that the Muslims are all the same... all the same bad persons. Many people have a prejudice against Muslims. We should not be judged because we are Muslim, but we should be judged upon our individual merits."

Osama bin Laden stated in his video: "So, every Muslim shall take � shall support his religion." To a certain extent Idrissi does agree on that: "As long as you back the ideals which improve the whole world, yes."

Juan Bustos, honoured with the position of the official chronicler of Granada, walks into a typical Spanish cafeteria with the newspaper "Ideal" under his arm. He orders a "cortado con leche" at the bar and takes a seat. Bustos describes the "Granadinos" � like the rest of the Spaniards � as "on the surface very tolerant, but on the inside their level of tolerance is not that high. When it comes to the crunch there is a glint of rejection."

The public opinion about September 11 is, according to Bustos, neither very negative, nor very positive. "In general, people think that the United States is excessive in their retaliation and acting vindictive."

"La Paradoja"

Bustos says that the Muslim characteristic of "fatalism" still has its grip on the Andaluc�an population of today. "It's a paradoxical philosophy of life. They have a wish for competitiveness and at the same time they fight for surviving. In work for example they think: 'Why would we work so much? Work, yes, but not much. What has to happen happens.'"

"The aggressive spirit of the Andaluc�ans might lie in the nature of the Muslims too," thinks Bustos. "Yet it wouldn't be reasonable to ascribe that to the Muslims only. That's the climate as well," he adds, "heat goes to the head."

Uphill in the university complex of Granada social anthropologist, Francisco Javier Garc�a Casta�o, arrives at the Laboratory of Intercultural Studies. Javier agrees that there is a low level of tolerance. "There is a major rejection. People think: 'Yes, it's fine as long as immigrants forget the place where they come from,' but people can't forget about their origins. The conservatives use the argument that they protect the country and thus are against immigrants. Spain has a strong policy against immigrants."

Javier thinks it's almost impossible to practice the Muslim religion in Spain, because of the country's homogeneity. "Here, one hundred percent of the people are Catholic: there is no Muslim religion." Javier doesn't even think there is any convivencia at all in the Spain these days.

"The discussion about immigrants has revived since September 11, because of the presence of the mass media. There is a rejection, not only of al-Qaeda and Osama, but of the whole Islam. People think Islam is equal to violence," explains Javier.

"Besides the mass media, Bush also made use of September 11 as a sort of 'crusade.' Bush acted in name of the Christian religion, one of the first things he did was to stress the religious aspects."

Javier thinks that especially in Spain the attitude towards Muslims is contradictory. "A big part of Spain is influenced by Muslims. It's very much a paradox. We use the Alhambra; we all know Granada is marvellous. People think: 'The Islam of the present: no thanks, but the Islam of the past: yes. We don't mind to reap the fruits of the Alhambra.'"

La Alhambra"

March 11 2002, the morning exactly six months after the attacks on America, Crist�bal Torres Delgado, professor in Mediaeval History at the University in Granada visits the Alhambra. To him it's one of the most precious buildings in the world. His thoughts go back to when he was young; he has been here numerous times.

"Ever since the Moors have left, Muslim Granada lives on," Torres says, "through its architectural monuments, but also through its traditional craftsmanship in gold and silver and inlaid work. Traditions, habits and its manners of life take roots in today's popular feelings. Andaluc�a continues a juxtaposition of two different societies. Unifying distinct religions and languages is a tricky and delicate process which inevitably causes tension."

Andaluc�a is not the only place where difficulties cause tension, as we have seen for decades in Israel. Both emanate from a failed coexistence of different religions.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant draws up a whole constitution based on idealism. The perfect state he designed is based on tolerance and coexistence: "a state in which men are living side by side in a common regime of liberties."

In Andaluc�a, little by little the Moors had created a state where Christians and Jews were tolerated, as long as they accepted the Muslims as rulers. However, when Spain's northern Catholics came to Andaluc�a to "pacify" the Kingdom, it turned out to be the beginning of the end of coexistence. With the Catholics in power convivencia came to an end.

Historian Asuncion Lopez Dapena, who also works at the University of Granada, explains it with disgust in her eyes: "The Catholic Kingdom forced Jews to convert. A tribunal traced Jews, for example by checking if they were buying pork at the butcher. If not, they were not truly converted and sentenced. The Catholic Kingdom expelled the Jews from Spain. It was a terrible era."

In Spain the big change in the level of tolerance came after the issue was formalised, when the Catholics entered Moorish territories. A comparable development took place in Israel, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, just after the First World War; there was a sudden change in the level of tolerance.

Iranian Mehdi Mozzafari, professor of International Relations, now lives in Denmark. At the University of Aarhus he is specialised in terrorism and history. Mozzafari explains when the problems started: "After the official proclamation of the Israeli state in 1948, Jews received their own state Israel, but meanwhile Palestinians didn't create their own state."

Mozzafari imagines Osama's line of thoughts: "He isn't talking about specific religions. He thinks losing Andaluc�a was a failure of Muslims. 'We are not going to capitulate again and won't give the land in Palestine to the Jews. Muslims must prevail.' It's about avoiding the same failure that they committed in Andaluc�a."

"El Suspiro del Moro"

To the Muslims, like Bin Laden, the loss of Andaluc�a is a symbol of defeat. The last Islamic ruler Muhammad XII, or Boabdil as the Spaniards call him, lost the city January 2, 1492. Leaving the city he looks back in sorrow. The sight of Granada moves him to tears. His mother, accompanying him into exile, reprimands him: "Weep like a woman, son, for that which you could not defend as a man."

Today "El Suspiro del Moro," "The Sigh of the Moors" stands in its beauty as evidence of an advanced Islamic culture. The view over the Alhambra doesn't give a clue about what has happened on either January 2, 1492 or September 11, 2001. But today the Alhambra is a symbol without foundation. The society around it will never be what it was. As Juan Bustos says, "It has happened a lot of years ago. Five centuries are a lot of centuries. Andaluc�a is already lost."

Last update: Friday, April 12, 2002 at 2:54:34 PM

A magical view over the Alhambra, through the window you look upon the white houses in the old Moorish neighbourhood Albayc�n. The ornaments on the sealing and the authentic mosaic show its refined culture.

Last update: Friday, April 12, 2002 at 10:06:08 AM

March 20, 2004 at 09:18 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

A biography of the man suspected to be the financier and mastermind behind the terrorist attacks against the United States of September 11, 2001

Osama bin Laden

Article added on October 1, 2001

Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh in 1957. He is said to be the 17th of 52 children by Yemeni-born Muhammad bin Laden, Saudi Arabia's wealthiest construction magnate with close ties to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. After his father's death in 1968, Osama bin Laden inherited some estimated $300 million.

According to The Mideast Mirror, after his secondary school graduation in Jiddah in 1973, Osama Bin Laden enjoyed life in nightclubs and bars in Beirut, a period which ended in 1975 with the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon.

In 1979, Osama bin Laden graduated from King Abdul Aziz University in Jiddah with a degree in civil engineering. The Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent creation of an Islamic regime and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan changed the young man's perception of the world. "I was enraged," he told the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi.

After Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan on December 26, 1979, Osama bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to join the Afghan resistance to fight the atheist communist regime. In the first half of the 1980s, he became a fund raiser for the mujahedeen in their jihad against the Soviets, provided the rebels with logistical and humanitarian aid, recruited and trained Arab nationals for war.

Mainly Pakistani but also American intelligence supported his actions. Pakistan�s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was considered the CIA�s key conduit in their covert war against the Soviet occupation. For the Reagan administration, the Afghan mujahedeen and Osama bin Laden were, as the enemy's enemy, an ally in their efforts to contain Moscow in the region. However, according to Bin Laden and American intelligence sources, there was no direct contact between them.

In 1984, Osama bin Laden moved to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. He was a co-founder of an organization called Maktab al-Khidamar (MAK) which recruited and trained soldiers around the world to fight in Afghanistan. He became a key supporter of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups. In 1987, Osama bin Laden split from MAK and established al Qaeda (the Islamic Salvation Foundation), an umbrella organization for ex-mujahedeen and other extremist groups. According to some Islamic sources, Osama bin Laden became an important guerilla leader in the late 1980s and participated in numerous battles against Soviet troops; other sources maintain that he remained a man in the background who was never active in war.
Osama bin Laden was one of those who, after having successfully fought the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, thought that they could change their home countries too. According to Abdullah Anas, in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden fell under the influence of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad who had helped assassinate President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981. The war in Afghanistan led to an increased Muslim self-confidence as well to a radicalization. Osama bin Laden became involved in opposition movements to the Saudi monarchy while working for his family's Bin Laden Group, the country's biggest construction company.

According to Christian M�ller (NZZ, October 2, 2001), the United States and Saudi Arabia both secretly supported the mujahedeen with some $60 million per year each. In 1984, they increased the yearly some to $350 million each. But is was the Pakistani ISI (in particular its key figure Hamid Gul) who decided who received the money. Only after an intervention by the later CIA boss Robert M. Gates, the followers of Ahmad Shah Masud also received arms [paragraph added on September 2, 2001].

During the Gulf War, Osama bin Laden opposed the US-Saudi alliance because King Fahd invited the United States and its allies to station forces in Saudi Arabia. The presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina enraged bin Laden as well as other Arabs. Osama bin Laden turned radically anti-American. Another reason for him to turn against the United States was that when the Gulf War alliance was set up, the Palestinians were promised their own territory to administrate. Several conferences such as the one in Oslo took place in order to make the plan reality. However, until today, these promises could not fully be kept. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has a corrupt and archaic regime, run by incompetent people. Despite its oil resources, the country has large debts.

In April 1991, after Saudi intelligence officials caught Osama bin Laden smuggling weapons from Yemen. The Saudi's withdrew his passport and later in 1991 expelled him for his political activities. In 1994, the Saudi government revoked his citizenship and moved to freeze his assets in Saudi Arabia because of his support for Muslim fundamentalist movements. Osama bin Laden first returned to Afghanistan. In 1992, he moved to Khartoum, Sudan. The ruling National Islamic Front (NIF) had made the country a safe haven for Muslim terrorists and extremists. Osama bin Laden began to set up legal businesses, including an import-export firm, a tannery, two farms and a road construction company. When Pakistan threatened to expel 480 mujahedeen near the Afghan border, bin Laden paid for the veterans to join him in Sudan. He also began to finance several terrorist camps in northern Sudan for radicals form Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia.

According to US intelligence, the explosion of a bomb in a hotel in Aden, Yemen, on December 29, 1992, is considered the first terrorist attack involving bin Laden, who was considered one of the most influential men in Yemen. The two Yemeni Muslim militants arrested later had been trained in Afghanistan. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Muslim militants. Again, bin Laden was considered one of the men behind the terrorist attack.

In 1993, the State Department placed Sudan on their list of countries that sponsor terrorist activities. Osama bin Laden was accused of trying to obtain components of nuclear weapons and begining to work with Sudan's NIF to develop chemical weapons.

In 1995, Ramzi Yousef, the key figure behind the World Trade Center bombing, was captured in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. American investigators believe him to be financially linked to bin Laden. The same year, an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the life of the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, took place in Addis Abeba. American intelligence sources believe bin Laden was somehow involved.

In 1996, pressure by the United States and Saudi Arabia made the Sudan expel Osama bin Laden who moved back to Afghanistan. The same year, he wrote an open letter to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. His first "Declaration of War" asked the king to drive U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula, to overthrow the Government of Saudi Arabia, to liberate Muslim holy sites and to support Islamic revolutionary groups around the world.

In 1996, President Clinton signed a top secret order that authorized the CIA to use any and all means to destroy bin Laden's network (according to PBS Frontline). In August 1996, a secret grand jury investigation began against Osama bin Laden in New York.

In May 1996, Osama bin Laden went back to Afghanistan where the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist militia, became the country's leading group. After four years of civil war, some Afghans saw the Taliban as a uniting force who would reinstall law and order. Soon, it became clear that the regime of terror they installed was even worse. All sorts of entertainment were banned and women's rights were abolished.

In February 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a joint declaration with the Islamic Group, Al Jihad, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh and the "Jamaat ul Ulema e Pakistan" under the banner of the "World Islamic Front". It stated that Muslims should kill Americans (including civilians) anywhere in the world. Osama bin Laden called it a "fatwa" (a religious order issued by Islamic priests).

In Albania in June 1998, in a raid conducted by U.S. and Albanian security personnel, two suspected employees of bin Laden were arrested. Two weeks later, two more suspected bin Laden associates were arrested.

On August 7, 1998, two bombs exploded simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In Kenya, 213 people died and in Tanzania 11 were killed. According to Newsweek, U.S. intelligence intercepted a mobile phone conversation between two of bin Laden's lieutenants that implicated them in the embassy bombings.

In August 1998, the U.S. launched retaliation attacks against bin Laden with cruise missiles directed at suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. They also bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum which, as it turned out, had been falsely accused of producing chemical weapons for bin Laden.

On November 4, 1998, a new American superceding indictment was issued against Osama bin Laden, Muhammad Atef (considered bin Laden's chief military commander) and other suspects charged with bombing two U.S. embassies and conspiring to commit other acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. Two rewards of five million dollars each were offered for Atef and bin Laden.

In connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, on May 29, 2001, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of charges including murder, conspiracy and perjury after a nine-week federal trial. Two of them face the death penalty at their sentencing, the other two face life in prison.

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four passenger planes, two from American Airlines and two from United Airlines. In an unprecedented act of terrorism, the hijackers crashed two of them into New York City's 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing over 5000 civilians. One American Airlines plane crashed into the Pentagon, killing more than 100 people. The fourth plane crashed in a rural area in Pennsylvania. The passengers probably hindered the hijackers to attack another building in Washington. Osama bin Laden is suspected to be the key financier and instigator of the terrorist attacks.

Time and again, one could read about "Kamikaze" attacks. That is incorrect in the sense that in the Second World War the Japanese pilots used their military planes (and not hijacked civilian passenger planes) and they crashed into military objects and personnel (not into the civilian population). The September 11 attacks were cowardly suicide attacks against innocent civilians.

Regarding the Taliban and their Islamic regime one can often read about a return to the Middle Ages in Afghanistan. Is that correct? No. In the Middle Ages, Islamic rulers such as the ones in Spain were relatively tolerant. It was up to the Spaniards to install a repressive regime in 1492 (the year in which Columbus "discovered" America): they chased out the last Moors as well as the Sephardic Jews from the Hispanic peninsula. Today's Taliban terror regime is a perversion of Islam. Even without the terror attacks in America, the "civilized" world should have intervened in Afghanistan a long time ago. The Taliban regime has already forced some one million Afghan refugees into Iran, some 100 000 into Tadchikistan and some 10 000 to Uzbekistan - these were the numbers before the September terrorist attacks. Since then, additional hundreds of thousands of people expecting an American military strike tried to flee to neighbouring countries.

The Taliban regime could not have survived without the support of the Pakistani intelligence service which has been active in Afghanistan since 1978, even before the Soviet invasion. The Pakistanis have supported the Taliban since 1994 and were largely responsible for helping them to seize power. In the past, American intelligence services have, at times, backed Pakistani and Taliban actions.

Neither the British colonials nor the Soviet invaders were able to control the Afghan territory. Present day Afghanistan is twice the size of Germany, but without highways and other features of modern infrastructure. It is a space divided by mountains and valleys. In short, a region virtually impossible to control.

Even if it were possible to catch Osama bin Laden, it is evident that the Saudi millionaire is just a small cog in al Qaeda. This umbrella organization grouping several terrorist forces with cells around the world can not easily be dismantled. As the Bush administration made clear, a broad political, diplomatic, military and economic and financial action is needed to come to terms with Osama bin Laden and his affiliated groups. And there are of course plenty of other terrorist groups around the world.

This should include peaceful solutions in the entire region. As long as Israel and its Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are not ready to accept a viable Palestine state, there will be no peace. In Palestine, unemployment reached around 40%. This is the climate in which an entire generation with no education and no future becomes an easy target for terrorist recruiters such as Osama bin Laden. Bush junior may also regret that his father did not chase Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. Saddam's terror regime in conjunction with the Western economic sanctions against Iraq have destroyed one of the rare middle classes existing in the Arab world. Last but not least, there are regimes like Saudi Arabia which are not more likeable than let's say the one in Iran. As long as American and Western foreign policy in the region remains partial and partly hypocrite, there will be unrest, terror and even war.

Regarding the Taliban, one should not forget another powerful reason for an intervention: the Afghan/Pakistan region is the world's largest heroin producer. Not only do they cause terrible suffering among heroin addicts especially in Europe, the heroin production and export also bring enormous sums of money into the pocket of the Taliban and terrorist groups. According to Russia, Osama bin Laden has 55 camps and 13 000 supporters in Afghanistan. Other sources say that Islamic terrorists from Algeria to Moro Rebels in the Philippines have been trained there.

So far Bush administration seems to be inclined to support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, letting them do the dirty work on the ground to chase the Taliban. Military intervention in Afghanistan is an extremely delicate matter. There is not only the latent conflict between Muslim and Christian states and groups. There are important oil and gas fields in the region. There is the heroin. Pakistani and Afghans in the border region are both ethnically Pashtunes. Pakistan and its neighbour India are nuclear powers. In short, all the ingredients for a possible nightmare are united. It will soon turn out whether George W. Bush is an able president or not.
______________________________

For sources for this article such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Neue Z�rcher Zeitung, PBS Frontline, check our Medialinks and Govlinks. For more articles on world affairs: Politics.

www.cosmopolis.ch
No. 20, October 2001

March 20, 2004 at 09:15 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (78) | Top of page | Blog Home

European Victory

Shining full plate and a good broadsword

If ever there was a time for redefining the concept of "Spanish steel", it would be now.
I can only imagine the great and enthusiastic speech of the new prime minister of Spain, who has just declared the immediate withdrawal of all troops from the "disaster" of Iraq. In this time of great trial of the spirit, let me put forward this speech for his careful consideration when he takes office:

We shall stop now, we shall capitulate in Iraq, we shall capitulate on the seas and oceans, we shall capitulate with receding confidence and receding strength in the air, we shall forsake our country, whatever the demands may be, we shall capitulate on the beaches, we shall capitulate on the landing grounds, we shall capitulate in the fields and in the streets, we shall capitulate in the hills; we shall always surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment doubt, this country or a large part of it were victorious and prosperous, then our European Union within our borders, armed and guarded by the concept of Socialism, would lay down their arms, until, in God's good time, the United Nations, with all its wrangling and bureaucracy, steps away to ensure the slavery of the old.

Let us, for a moment, consider the truth of history. I believe (perhaps I am mistaken) that Osama Bin Laden called attention to the fact that the Moors lost Spain, and that it was part of his dream to reclaim it - a full year and a half before the Iraq war. Naturally, Europeans never take terrorists at their word, so some excuse was needed to justify the fact that Bin Laden must have been correct and the United States, and those who follow it, simply wrong. This is of course the European way.

It appears that the Spanish, along with the rest of Europe, not only are unable to remember history, but are unable to learn from it as well. With all of their "post colonialist" deconstruction, I doubt that any could actually tell you what exactly happened in 1492, and why it is so vital that Spain suffer for this "indignation" even today. But, in the beautifully high spirit of multiculturalism, one cannot go pointing fingers at anyone else except for the United States of America.

Europe has failed the test. This indeed was the European reaction. We all remember the American one on September 11th. It was the very practical, clear-headed, simple response of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and doing what had to be done in a time of war.

Europe and Spain's reaction to the same exact event? Hide; capitulate; appease; run.

Words utterly fail me in expressing my absolute revulsion at the European mindset - for make no mistake, this was a European election and not merely a Spanish one. I fear that we will stand alone in the end, abandoned by all save Israel and a few other odd allies, while the barbarians storm our gates to sack our cities and wonder at our Pantheons before they destroy them forever.

No longer does the West know how to fight wars. Our enemies are constrained by nothing, and we are constrained by everything - every little minute detail of "fairness" which is never followed by the Islamists who seek to destroy us completely. Europe is, naturally, the worst at this ideal since they have given up on their own defense ever since the end of the second World War. We, and a few other select countries in the Western World, appear to be the only ones who remember how not to run; how to stand our ground and fight the good fight. Perhaps it is time that we watch our own backs and dismiss the cowards we have stationed there to do that job.

On 9/11, the world proclaimed that it was American. And then we understood the value of such fleeting words. I too had compassion and pity for the Spaniards on 3/11, but it appears to have completely dissipated - much like Spanish and European courage. Four days ago I was Spanish too, just like they were Americans two and a half years ago.

Now I am American once again, and proud of it.

---
Yours in haste,
Banagor.

March 15, 2004 02:56 AM

March 20, 2004 at 09:12 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (29) | Top of page | Blog Home

What Does Osama Bin Laden Want?

What Does Osama Bin Laden Want? : Vancouver Indymedia

http://slate.msn.com/id/115404/
Nothing we have.
By David Plotz
Posted Thursday, September 13, 2001, at 11:30 PM PT
To no one's surprise, Secretary of State Colin Powell today named Osama Bin Laden as a prime suspect in Tuesday's attacks. Bin Laden's brutal record is well known. The United States indicted him for masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Saudi fugitive was also reportedly connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1993 killing of American soldiers in Somalia, mid-'90s bombings of U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Authorities have prevented Bin Laden associates from launching attacks during the millennium celebrations, bombing a dozen trans-Pacific flights in 1995, and assassinating the pope and President Clinton in the Philippines.
This is what Bin Laden does. But why does he do it? What does he want?

Bin Laden is the most notorious advocate of a potent strain of militant Islam that has been gaining popularity in the Muslim world for 30 years. It is simultaneously theological and cultural. Its fundamental tenet is that the Muslim world is being poisoned and desecrated by infidels. These infidels include both outsiders such as the United States and Israel, and governments of Muslim states�such as Egypt and Jordan�that have committed apostasy. The infidels must be driven out of the Muslim world by a jihad, and strict Islamic rule must be established everywhere that Muslims live. These extreme "Islamists," as Bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky dubs them, hope to re-establish the Caliphate, the golden age of Muslim domination that followed the death of Muhammad. They regard the Taliban's Afghanistan as a model for such Islamic rule.

This Islamist militancy has ancient roots�Saladin's expulsion of the crusaders in the 12th century is one starting point�but it was galvanized in the 1970s by several events. The growing influence of secular Western capitalism in the Muslim world, the military triumphs of Israel, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan horrified Islamic traditionalists. The Afghanistan invasion was the culminating moment: It persuaded Bin Laden and thousands of others of the need for Islamic holy war. Their fervor has only increased since, fueled by the Palestinian intifada, the Gulf War, the American operation in Somalia, and other conflicts of Islam with the West.

(The Islamists are not merely Pan-Arab but Pan-Islamic. Bin Laden is exceptional in his ability to recruit from all over the Muslim world. The Sunni Muslim world, that is. Bin Laden and his allies follow a very strict Sunni Islam.)

That is Bin Laden's general philosophy. What is his particular grievance against the United States? According to CNN's Peter Bergen, author of a forthcoming book on Bin Laden, Holy War, Inc., Bin Laden is most enraged by the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was incensed when the Saudis invited U.S. troops to their defense after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Bin Laden�like many Muslims�considers the continued presence of these armed infidels in Saudi Arabia the greatest possible desecration of the holy land. That is why he sponsored bombings of the American military facilities in Saudi Arabia, why he has tried to destabilize the Saudi government, and why the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed on Aug. 7, 1998�eight years to the day after the first American troops were dispatched to Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden is also furious about American support for Israel. He detests Jews and views the United States as the Jewish lackey. ("[Jews] believe that all humans are created for their use, and they found that the Americans are the best-created beings for that use," Bin Laden has said.) His supporters seem particularly exercised by Israel's reaction to the current intifada, Bergen says. Bin Laden also can't tolerate American alliances with moderate Arab governments in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

Mainstream Muslims denounce Bin Laden's bloody-mindedness�in 1998 he issued a fatwa calling for attacks on all Americans�but he has found plenty of firebrand clerics to offer Quranic backing for his belief that terrorism is glorious. According to Bodansky, these mullahs insist that all methods of war, including terrorism, are justified in the battle against the infidels. (Bin Laden, holding up a Quran, puts it this way: "You cannot defeat the heretic with this book alone. You have to show them the fist.")

Bin Laden has strategic reasons to believe in terrorism, too. The Muslim victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan showed him that superpowers are not so superpowerful. And the ignominious American withdrawal from Somalia�following a Bin Laden connected attack�convinced him that the United States is morally weak. The U.S. soldier is "a paper tiger" who crumples after "a few blows."

It is a mistake to assume that killing Bin Laden means killing his movement. It's true that Bin Laden is an iconic leader who inspires his followers and millions of sympathizers in the Muslim world. But eliminating Bin Laden would do nothing to decrease the intensity of the other militant Islamists. The Afghan war created a cadre of warriors and belligerent clerics who are constantly recruiting. Bin Laden has a core of highly trained aides ready to continue his work. His trainees are scattered in two dozen countries. It is hard to imagine how the United States could neutralize all of them. And attacks on Bin Laden have only increased his popularity: Killing him would likely rally many more Muslims to his cause.

(Some pundits have suggested that killing Bin Laden would be effective because it would stanch the flow of cash to terrorists. This may not be so. Bin Laden's groups do get funds from his personal fortune, but they also finance operations by dunning wealthy Gulf Arabs and by siphoning off donations to Muslim charities. And the terror organization is cheap. They don't use heavy weapons, and it costs almost nothing to house and train hundreds of men in Afghanistan.)

Is there anything we can do to persuade Bin Laden to stop? The terror groups Americans are familiar with�Palestinian bombers and hijackers, IRA hard men�have desires we understand. They perform acts of terror in order to gain sympathy or sow fear. That sympathy or fear is a means to their end: political recognition, a state, compensation. They seek to participate in our world.

But Bin Laden and his followers are alarming because they don't want anything from us. They don't want our sympathy. They want no material thing we can offer them. They don't want to participate in the community of nations. (They don't really believe in the nation-state.) They are motivated by religion, not politics. They answer to no one but their god, so they certainly won't answer to us.

***sidebar****

The 44-year-old Bin Laden, as you probably know, is one of 50 children of a Saudi billionaire. (He made his fortune in construction. Among his projects: the tallest skyscraper in the Middle East.) After what seems to have been a playboy youth�drinking and womanizing in Lebanon�Bin Laden was radicalized in his early 20s, first by university professors, then by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He became an ardent believer in the Islamic struggle against infidels. During the Afghan war, Bin Laden used his own vast fortune (estimated at $250 million, but no one really knows) and money raised from Gulf Arabs to fund the mujahideen. He may or may not have fought himself, but he certainly recruited thousands of young Muslims from all over the Middle East to the cause.

Since the early '90s, Bin Laden has run al-Qaida ("The Base"), which CNN's Peter Bergen, author of the forthcoming Holy War, Inc., describes as a kind of "holding company" for Islamic militants. According to Bergen, Bin Laden has an inner circle of several hundred followers who have sworn him loyalty oaths. Several thousand men, perhaps as many as 10,000, have trained as soldiers and terrorists in Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. These men populate and run militant Islamic groups in almost every country with a significant Muslim population, everywhere from Bosnia to Algeria to Chechnya to Indonesia. Bin Laden has been sheltered by the Taliban since Sudan expelled him in 1996. He has given the Taliban millions of dollars in aid.

It is not clear how much control Bin Laden has over his followers or over the acts of terror attributed to him. The best guesses are that Bin Laden has financed most if not all of these terrorist acts, and that his top aides had some kind of operational control over them.

March 20, 2004 at 07:36 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

New Osama bin Laden Video Contains Anti-Israel and Anti-American Statements

Osama bin Laden: Profile

The following are excerpts from the transcript of the most recent videotape of Osama bin Laden. As in previous statements, bin Laden is shown making repeated references to an American "crusade" against Islam. He claims the brand of terrorism carried out by operatives of his Al Qaeda network against America is "a good accepted terrorism" with the goal of ending U.S. support for Israel, "who is killing our children." The pan-Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera broadcast the video on December 26, 2001:

"After three months passed since the blessed attacks against the global infidelity, against America, the head of infidelity, and after almost two months passed since the beginning of the vicious crusade campaign against Islam, we would like to talk about some of the meanings of these events. These events revealed many issues that are significant to Muslims.

"It became very clear that the West in general and America, head of the infidels in particular, bear hate and grudge against Islam and Muslims that cannot be described.

"And those who lived during the continuous bombardment of different kinds of bombs by the American planes know that very well how many innocent villages were demolished and how many millions of innocent people were misplaced in this harsh cold weather.

"Those weak men, women and children had to live in tents in Pakistan. These are innocent, just for a suspicion and America launched its campaign; those who claim humanity and freedom. We have seen here their true criminal ways �

"Our terrorism is a good accepted terrorism because it's against America, it's for the purpose of defeating oppression so America would stop supporting Israel, who is killing our children."

More Bin Laden Statements
__________________________________

About Osama bin Laden

Profile: Osama bin Laden, International terrorist/Islamic Extremist
Age: 44
Born: Saudi Arabia
Current location: Unknown - Probably in Afghanistan
Activities: Bin Laden masterminded and financed several of the past decade's most barbaric acts of terrorism. His worldwide terrorist network, Al-Qaeda, played a central role in the Sept. 11, 2001 multiple plane hijackings and coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Saudi exile has been directly linked to the Aug. 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people, and the October 2000 bombing attack of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen.
Beliefs and Goals: In 1998, bin Laden issued a religious edict to his followers, "to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and the military." Bin Laden has made no secret of his anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiments.
Status: Bin Laden tops the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. Until recently, he has been living in exile under the protection of Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, he has been in hiding. Though his current whereabouts are unknown, most reports indicate that, if alive, Bin Laden is probably in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda Organization

Osama bin Laden is a 44 year-old "businessman" and son of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, and the coordinator of an international terrorist network believed to be responsible for numerous deadly attacks against American and Western targets.

Bin Laden formed the terrorist Al-Qaeda ("the base") organization in 1988, and it is believed to have operatives in as many as twenty countries. In 1998 bin Laden announced the establishment of "The International Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders," an umbrella organization linking Islamic extremists in scores of countries around the world, including Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The group issued a religious edict upon its establishment: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians, and the military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque from their grip and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated, and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty G-d, and 'fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in G-d."

His militancy is traced back to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Laden's avowed goal from that time is to remove Western "infidels" from Muslim countries - the Russians from Afghanistan, the American military from Saudi Arabia and other points in the Gulf - the downfall of many government of Muslim states, and for the destruction of the United States and its allies.

Bin Laden is the son of the Yemeni-born owner of a leading Saudi construction company. Born into great wealth, he is believed to have inherited as much as $300 million when his father died in the 1960's. From 1979, bin Laden began raising money for the Mujahadeen forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and gradually became more and more affiliated with Egyptian Islamic extremist groups, such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad. From the mid-1980's bin Laden began to establish training camps in Afghanistan, initially for the war in Afghanistan, but later to fight against other targets worldwide. He has attracted thousands of recruits from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Sudan.

Reportedly, bin Laden's anti-Americanism intensified during the Gulf War, when U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia. According to The New York Times: "The presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the home of the two holiest Muslim shrines, enraged Mr. bin Laden and other Arab militants." He and his associates also blamed the U.S. support for Israel as anti-Islam.

In 1994 Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden's citizenship, citing his opposition to the Saudi King and leadership and expelled him from the country. He then went to Khartoum, Sudan (where he owns numerous businesses), but under U.S. pressure was expelled in 1996 and relocated to Afghanistan. Bin Laden is on the FBI's list of 10 most-wanted criminals, and the State Department offered a $5 million reward for his arrest following the August 1998 embassy bombings. The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1999 for harboring bin Laden, and many nations, including the U.S. have frozen assets owned by bin Laden and his senior associates.

Bin Laden has been thought to finance, inspire or directly organize various terrorist attacks. In one way or another his name has been linked to the killings of Western tourists by militant Islamic groups in Egypt, bombings in France by Islamic extremist Algerians, the maintenance of a safe-house in Pakistan for Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and sheltering Sheikh Omar Abd Al-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh), who was also convicted in the World Trade Center bombing. He has also been linked to the 1992 bombings of a hotel in Yemen, which killed two Australians, but was supposedly targeted against American soldiers stationed there; the 1995 detonation of a car bomb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the 1995 truck bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen; and the 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Bin Laden has been directly connected to the August 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people, and the October 2000 attack of the U.S. destroyer ship Cole in Yemen.

Bin Laden has made no secret of his anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiments. In fact, he has been outspoken on these topics, issuing theological rulings calling for Muslims to attack Americans and threatening terrorism against related targets. Pointing to the defeat of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, bin Laden has consistently declared that the United States is vulnerable to defeat by a jihad by Islamic forces:

Osama bin Laden in His Own Words:

September 23, 2001 - "We hope that these brothers (Muslim casualties in Pakistan) are among the first martyrs in Islam's battle in this era against the new Christian-Jewish crusade led by the big crusader Bush under the flag of the Cross; this battle is considered one of Islam's battles... (text illegible)
We ask Allah to make him (Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar) victorious over the forces of infidels and tyranny, and to crush the new Christian-Jewish crusade on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan... "

Summer 2001 - A videotape circulating in the Middle East features bin Laden reciting a victory poem about the USS Cole bombing, and then issues a call to arms: "To all the Mujah: Your brothers in Palestine are waiting for you; it's time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts the most."

January 1999 � In an interview with bin Laden published in Newsweek: "Muslim scholars have issued a fatwa [a religious order] against any American who pays taxes to his government. He is our target because he is helping the American war machine against the Muslim nation."
"The [International Front of Islamic Movements, an alliance of extremist organizations created by bin Laden] is an umbrella to all organizations fighting the jihad against Jews and the crusaders. The response from Muslim nations has been greater than we expected. We are urging all of them to start fighting, or at least to start preparing to fight, against the enemies of Islam."

In an interview published in Time the same week (from a December 1998 ABC News interview with bin Laden): "If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka�aba [Islamic shrines in Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia] is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal.

Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God"

May 1998 - Bin Laden issued a statement entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders," in which he stated that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God."
February 1998 - Under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders," bin Laden endorsed a fatwa, religious decree, to call for the liberation of Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as the death of Americans and their allies. The decree says, "These crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger and Muslims."
May 1997 - During an interview with CNN, bin Laden reaffirms his call for a holy war against Americans. "We have focused our declaration of jihad on the U.S. soldiers inside Arabia�The U.S. government has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine."

Bin Laden in an interview with CNN�s Peter Arnett: "If the American government is serious about avoiding the explosions inside the US, then let it stop provoking the feelings of 1,250 million Muslims. Those hundreds of thousands who have been killed or displaced in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, do have brothers and relatives. They would make of Ramzi Yousef [convicted for his role in 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center] a symbol and a teacher. The US will drive them to transfer the battle into the United States."

May 1997 - Bin Laden reaffirmed his call for a holy war against Americans. "The US Government has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine"
February 1997 - Bin Laden threatens holy war against the U.S. in an interview on the British documentary program, Dispatches. "This war will not only be between the people of the two sacred mosques and the Americans, but it will be between the Islamic world and the Americans and their allies because this war is a new crusade led by America against the Islamic nations."
November 1996 - Bin Laden issues an ultimatum to the U.S. and Western countries with troops stationed in Arab countries and declares a holy war against the "enemy." "Had we wanted to carry out small operations after our threat statement, we would have been able to� We thought that the two bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran would be enough (sic.) a signal to the wise U.S. decision-makers to avoid the real confrontation with the Islamic nation, but it seems they did not understand it."
November 1996 - Bin Laden warns U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia to expect more "effective, qualitative" attacks and advises Western forces to speed their "departure" from the Middle East.
August 1996 - Bin Laden says to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the Saudis have a "legitimate right" to attack the5,000 American military personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia. "The presence of the American crusader armed forces in the countries of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger and the biggest harm that threatens the world�s largest oil reserves� The infidels must be thrown out of the Arabian Peninsula."
August 1996 - Bin Laden issued a Declaration of jihad, holy war, entitled: "Message from Osama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula."
August 1996 In an interview with The Independent, a London daily, bin Laden calls the June 1995 truck bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia" the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States."
July 1996 - Bin Laden warns that the terrorists who bombed American soldiers in Saudi Arabia will also attack British and French military personnel. He said "[the bomb in Dhahran] was the result of American behavior against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine, and the massacre of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon."

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March 20, 2004 at 10:39 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Osama bin Laden FAQ - MSNBC

Osama bin Laden: FAQ

NBC NEWS

NEW YORK — Osama bin Laden, Saudi-born millionaire turned Islamic terror chieftain, has been on the radar of the United States since the days when both he and the CIA were fighting the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Now, he is public enemy number one. NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem has tracked bin Laden’s activities since the mid-1990s. Here are some questions and answers about bin Laden:

Where is Osama bin Laden?
No one knows for sure. The U.S. has followed leads putting bin Laden in a wide variety of places in the Islamic world, from Yemen to Saudi Arabia to Iran. The last definitive evidence of his location was lost at the Afghan border with Pakistan in December 2001, when a voice believed to be his was last overheard in Tora Bora. In late 2001, combined U.S. military and intelligence operatives in Afghanistan searched the mountainous regions of western Pakistan, where they had picked up a pattern of phone communication between bin Laden and friends. Most intelligence analysts think bin Laden is still holed up in Pakistan�s treacherous border zone. An audio tape recording of bin Laden has proved that he was alive at least till late October, 2002.

How often does U.S. intelligence know where he is?
Before Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. intelligence had gotten a better grasp on how he operated and from where. �We are getting better at finding him. There are days and days where we don�t know where he is,� said one U.S. official. On other days, the United States has �different degrees of specificity as to where he is. Does he move every night? Not every night ... but he moves a lot.� Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sept. 16, 2001 that the United States did not know where bin Laden currently was. That has held true. By late 2002, when an audio tape proved he had survived the Afghan campaign, U.S. agents concluded that bin Laden is hiding in a locale where he doesn�t move around much. Photo reconnaissance has not captured any �signatures� showing regular movement by guards or vehicles that might belong to bin Laden. While some 1,100 CIA analysts and covert operatives staff the terrorism hunt, operating out of Virginia, there are about 50 special officers who focus solely on the terrorist leader.

How does bin Laden disguise his movements?
During his time in Afghanistan, bin Laden regularly varied the details of his movements. He varied not only the number of vehicles in his convoys, for example, but also the type of vehicle as well. On some travels, he gave his entourage hours� notice of his departure. At other times, he left at a moment�s notice. Post-9/11, far less is known. U.S. experts believe only a hard core of no more than 20 dedicated guards knows of his presence, and they are pledged to die rather than give him up.

How does he communicate?
His biggest problem remains communications, which the United States has successfully compromised during his time in Afghanistan. For a time, he used satellite phones, but that ended after a leak revealed that the U.S. was listening in.
More simple methods followed, primarily based on couriers. Bin Laden�s couriers often carry encrypted floppy disks and meet in third countries. Once in the hands of the target nation�s cell, the disk is de-encrypted. He has also used faxes from remote locations and in some cases, Internet-based e-mail. In addition to encryption, al-Qaida has used various code words and aliases to disguise identities. Bin Laden has been described in al-Qaida communications as �the Sheikh,� �Hajj,� �Abu Abdullah� and �the Director.� Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of the embassy bombings, used at least three aliases. Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the World Trade Center, used 15, as well as 11 passports. One law enforcement source said al-Qaida has been trying to recruit Americans as couriers, knowing an American passport is easier to use worldwide. Currently, bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Personal couriers riding on motorcycles and buses apparently pass messages from bin Laden in the tribal areas to al-Qaida�s hideouts in Pakistani cities like Peshawar and Karachi.

Can he travel outside Afghanistan?
U.S. officials had hoped not, but the November 2002 audio tape bearing his voice seemed to prove otherwise. Officials doubt he is moving around much now, but they concede that he may have altered his appearance, and that would make such movements harder to detect.

How is bin Laden�s terror network, al-Qaida, structured?
Bin Laden is the undisputed leader, called �emir� or �prince� by his followers, who must take a sworn oath to him, violation of which is punishable by death. Beneath him is the �shura al-majlis� or �consultative council,� which includes his top lieutenants. His two aides are Egyptians: Ayman al-Zawahiri, a physician and leader of al-Jihad, the violent Egyptian group responsible for the Luxor tourist massacre in 1995. Muhammed Atef, his military commander, also served in al-Jihad.
A �fatwah� committee of the council makes the decisions to carry out terrorist attacks.

Where does al-Qaida operate?
Al-Qaida is believed to have operations in 60 countries, active cells in 20, including the United States. It is also believed to operate training centers in both Afghanistan and Sudan, the first beginning operations in 1994 with representatives from Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian and Palestinian extremist groups. Among the countries or regions identified as having active cells of al-Qaida are Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Chechnya, Philippines, Egypt, Tunisia.

How does al-Qaida network operate?
Its operations are meticulous, with some plans in the works for months if not years. They are also clever, and bin Laden himself is very much hands-on.
Some examples:
The 1993 World Trade Center bombers cased the twin towers multiple times, looking not just at security but the points under the trade center where an explosion could do the most damage.
The East Africa embassy bombers phoned in credible threats to the embassy and then observed the embassy response.
The 1995 assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was based on surveillance of Mubarak�s security arrangements in Ethiopia two years earlier. Similarly, bin Laden operatives videotaped security arrangements at President Clinton�s 1994 visit to Manila, knowing he had already committed to visiting the Philippine capital for an Asian-Pacific summit two years later. The tapes were sent to bin Laden, then living in Sudan.
�He may have begun as a venture capitalist for terrorism,� said one high-ranking intelligence officer of his evolution as a terrorist. �But there is no doubt now that he is operating like a CEO.�

How long is an operation in the planning stages?
The minimum appears to be four to six months, with some plans evolving over years. The surveillance of the East Africa embassy bombings began in 1993, five years before the bombing was carried out.

How are operational responsibilities divided?
Each operation has a planning cell and an execution cell, with the execution cell arriving on the scene in some cases only weeks before the attack is carried out.
In most cases, like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the embassy bombings, an outsider recruits local country nationals to operate as a cell. Cells rarely number more than 10 people. In rare cases are the bombers � either the planners or the operators � older than 30. At the time of the two bombings, the masterminds were both 25.
Plans are made in one location, then the bomb is made in another. In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the planning took place in a Jersey City, N.J., apartment, the materials were stored in a self-storage facility and the bomb was put together in a garage. Similarly in Nairobi, the planning was done at a run-down hotel in downtown, while the bomb was put together in a suburban villa.

How much do these operations cost? Bin Laden has enormous resources. Is he using up most of his money?
�Terrorism is not an expensive sport,� said one senior Treasury Department official who tracks terrorists� money. The total cost of the 1993 World Trade Center attack amounted to around $18,000, including purchase of equipment, rental of the van used in the bombing, purchase of a car, rental of two apartments, a garage and the self-storage space as well as plane tickets. Not included in the cost: $6,000 in unpaid phone bills.
Although at the time of the embassy bombings, the CIA and others pegged bin Laden�s wealth at $300 million, subsequent intelligence gathering has resulted in a significant reduction of the estimate, although the number is still in the tens of millions.

Does he focus on one target at a time or simultaneously plan various attacks?
Said one official of his recent planning, �He is planning several hits, and at some point he�s going to break through.� U.S. officials note that the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were to be accompanied by other, near-simultaneous bombings in other world capitals. One in Tirana, Albania, was foiled days before it took place, so a series of coordinated attacks is well within his operational capabilities. In a November 2002 audio recording, bin Laden warned of �spectacular� attacks against America and its allies. Officials say they believe some of these attacks might already have been in the planning stages.

How important is operational security to al-Qaida?
Very, say officials. They have seen repeated instances where if operatives encounter something unexpected, they will �go back to square one� out of fear that operational security has been breached. There is little autonomy, little spontaneity in operational matters and changes in plans must be approved at higher levels. The cell leader on the scene can call off an operation without consulting anyone higher, said a senior intelligence official.
Said one counter-terror official: �They have one idea ... alter it for them, then they go back to the drawing board. They are not agile. They have to reload, and that takes months ... about four to six months.�
�They are very willing to trade time for operational security.�

Has the United States had any success against his operations?
If we were to gauge our progress on the war on terror by the criteria laid out by the president a year ago - of whether or not we find bin Laden dead or alive - we haven�t made a lot of progress. Yet, in the past year, �Numerous senior leaders of al-Qaida ... have either been eliminated, incarcerated or detained someplace,� according to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
And several planned attacks and plots have been foiled by intelligence agencies of various countries working in close cooperation with one another.
Without providing details, CIA Director George Tenet has publicly testified that the CIA has disrupted �several� terrorist attacks against Americans. U.S. officials confirm those disruptions have involved planned attacks by bin Laden. But pride in those successes diminished considerably after the Sept. 11, 2001 catastrophe.

Are his operations limited to bombings or does he have aspirations in the nuclear, biological and chemical areas?
Officials from intelligence, military, emergency management and national security agencies say bin Laden is branching out: planning assassinations using �contact poisons,� obtaining �rudimentary� chemical and biological materials, trying to acquire radioactive material.
The newest information, which one official called �fascinating,� is that bin Laden may be returning to an old strategy: assassination. One Pentagon official involved in tracking bin Laden says the man officials call �the terrorist prince� has been obtaining �contact poisons ... KGB-like pellets� that would be used in assassinations and in some cases are difficult or impossible to detect in an autopsy. The official noted that in the early 1990s bin Laden and his al-Qaida network were involved in assassination attempts on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Jordanian Crown Prince � now King � Abdullah as well as planning to kill Pope John Paul and President Clinton.
He added that public U.S. intelligence reports on bin Laden�s training camps have noted the network has instructed terrorists in assassination and kidnapping.
The contact poisons are among �rudimentary chemical and biological stuff� bin Laden has obtained recently. However, one official said the network�s efforts to obtain such materials is �scattershot and unfocused ... all over the board� without a pattern to indicate what he might be planning.
�He is looking for all sorts of stuff,� adding that twice bin Laden operatives tried to obtain nuclear materials. Bin Laden�s German operation was the victim of a sting operation in 1993 when it tried to buy highly enriched uranium on the Soviet black market. A year later, another similar attempt failed. The bin Laden operatives in charge of those attempts, Mamdouh Salim and Ramzi Yousef, are in U.S. custody. Moreover, Russian intelligence has told the United States that it believes bin Laden has been working with Chechen rebels to obtain radioactive material for a �radiological dispersal device� or �dirty bomb� that would spray the potentially deadly material over a small area. An official involved in planning emergency response to a terrorist attack says the United States has taken the intelligence seriously.
However, officials cautioned that there is �no sense of a technical sophistication� in bin Laden�s camp and that �this stuff is much more difficult to use than people think.
�After all, Saddam Hussei