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Homeland Security Focus Areas Terrorism - General Counterfeit Goods May Finance Global Terrorist Operations International counterfeiting and law enforcement officials testified before the House Committee on International Relations on 17 July that as state-sponsored funding for terrorist organizations becomes scarce, groups like al Qaeda are turning toward intellectual property crimes to support their operations, according to media reports. Committee member commented that the testimony by Ronal Noble, Secretary General of Interpol and other witnesses represented the first time that law enforcement officials have drawn a line between black market sales and terrorism financing, according to the New York Times. Consumer goods counterfeiting, rife in major U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, has an estimated yearly market value of $400 billion a year, costing American businesses approximately $200 billion a year, the New York Times and AP reported. Since the counterfeiting industry has little overhead and turns high profits, it is an easy way for terror organizations to raise money, Noble testified. Supporters of al Qaeda have been found in possession of large quantities of fake goods according to AP. "If you find one al Qaeda operative with it, it's like finding one roach in your house or one rat in your house. It should be enough to draw your attention to it," Noble said in his testimony. ANALYSIS: While counterfeiting has long been tied to criminal activities, the congressional testimony reflected how homeland security officials are re-evaluating old crimes and the end beneficiaries, CNN noted. Now that the link has been established, anti-counterfeiting groups and industry leaders affected by counterfeiting are pushing the federal government to take steps to crackdown on intellectual property crimes. Some groups have proposed that the U.S. take the lead in encouraging international cooperation to crack down on counterfeiters, Fox News reported. Noble maintained that law enforcement agencies could make counterfeiting a high priority crime and do more to determine whose benefiting from the illegal sales, according to AP. Jack Valenti, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America called for a federal response stating, "U.S. industry alone will never have the tools to penetrate these groups or to trace the nefarious paths to which those profits are put. Only governments have the tools necessary for this kind of investigation," GovExec reported. Interpol: fake goods fund terror WASHINGTON, July 16 (UPI) -- Groups like al-Qaida and Hezbollah have
turned to trafficking in counterfeit consumer goods, a Interpol official
will tell Congress. Top Al Qaeda Agent in Iran, Official Says July 15, 2003 TEHRAN - Iran has custody of several high-ranking Al Qaeda members, including spokesman Sulaiman abu Ghaith, a senior reformist official close to Iran's president said over the weekend. Diplomats in Tehran representing three countries also say that, based on their intelligence, Abu Ghaith is among those in custody. The senior Iranian official declined to say how or when Abu Ghaith and the others had been apprehended or where they were being held. However, diplomats from another country indicated that Abu Ghaith, a native of Kuwait, had been in custody at least since June. Diplomats said they believed the detainees were in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, a region in eastern Iran populated by Sunni Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda. U.S. officials were skeptical. "Everybody on the U.S. side has been saying, 'Not to our knowledge,' " said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We did have knowledge of a number of Al Qaeda people in Iran under some circumstance, rumors of them being taken into some kind of custody, the nature of which is unclear. Abu Ghaith is one of them." Abu Ghaith has appeared on a number of video and audiotapes taking responsibility for Al Qaeda attacks, including a bombing at a Kenyan hotel last year that killed 16 people. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he appeared in a video and vowed that a "storm of airplanes" would continue to strike American targets until the U.S. ended its "crusade" against Afghanistan and Islam. Western nations, including the U.S., have for months alleged that Al Qaeda members are in Iran. Tehran has said it has arrested a number of suspected Al Qaeda members, but it has kept the number of detainees and their identities tightly guarded. What Iran intends to do with those in its custody is complicated by long-standing fractures among the different Iranian state institutions, such as the Intelligence Ministry, nominally under the control of reformist President Mohammad Khatami; the Revolutionary Guards, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and the hard-line judiciary, controlled by powerful clerics. The senior reformist official said Iran has been seeking to exchange information about those in custody in return for guarantees from Western governments to, in effect, shut down the Moujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian opposition group that wants to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran. The Iranians want the group's activities to be banned in Iraq, its longtime base of operations, as well as in Europe. While Iran has been eager to appear cooperative in the war on terrorism and there are indications that it may be willing to extradite those in its custody, it appears highly unlikely they would be handed over directly to the United States. 'Axis of Evil' Decades-old animosity with Washington, aggravated by President Bush's labeling Iran a member of an "axis of evil," has left Tehran reluctant to do any favors for the U.S. The hard-line Khamenei has refused to allow militants to be turned over to the United States, the senior Iranian official said. Reformists in the government, however, hope that cooperation over Al Qaeda can ease tensions with the West on a range of issues. Further complicating any discussion of extraditions, the senior official said, is that the militants' countries of origin are hesitant to accept them. "Say we return Abu Ghaith to Kuwait," said the official. "It could spark a revolution. Half of Kuwait listens to his tapes in the car, but the Kuwaitis would either have to execute him or turn him over to the U.S. It's awkward." Kuwait has revoked Abu Ghaith's citizenship. Diplomats said Al Qaeda - and Abu Ghaith in particular - were among the subjects discussed when Kuwait's information minister visited Iran last month. Iran has also had high-level contacts with Saudi Arabia recently. The head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, traveled to Saudi Arabia this month; during the visit, unprecedented for an Iranian judiciary chief, Shahroudi met with nearly all of the kingdom's leadership, diplomats said. And the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, visited Tehran last month, diplomats said, to talk about Iran's Al Qaeda detainees, particularly any Saudis among them. According to the senior Iranian official, optimism for a deal with Western governments was running high this spring, particularly before a suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, in May that killed nearly three dozen people and was blamed on Al Qaeda. Iranian hope for such a deal was bolstered when the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq rounded up and disarmed Moujahedeen Khalq members. Iran's first step in any deal would have been to tell the West the identity of those it was holding; the hope on both sides was that this might have led to more substantive cooperation. The plan was scuppered at the last minute by a dispute among Iran's divided political factions over the terms of the bargain, the official said. Ambitious Plan Iran's ambitious agenda for dealing with the suspects - secure a deal over the Moujahedeen Khalq and win points with the West while staying in the good graces of Arab governments and public opinion - has created a set of conditions for any hand-over that one Western diplomat described as "following a classic Iranian pattern of bargaining so hard that the deal is lost." "As always, we're losing out on these important chances," the senior Iranian official said, "because we can't negotiate with the United States directly, and our domestic problems mess things up." How to deal with the Moujahedeen Khalq - also known by the initials MKO - may be a sticking point in any negotiations. Iranian officials have accused Washington of double standards in the war on terrorism, pressuring Iran to round up suspected Al Qaeda operatives but allowing the MKO - which is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations - to retain a presence in Iraq. Western officials have argued that Iran cannot equate the two organizations and that Tehran would be best served by cooperating rather than trying to drive a hard bargain. "The MKO doesn't pose a global, imminent threat on the scale of Al Qaeda," said a Western diplomat in Tehran. "The Iranians accept this, but want to keep the moral high ground so they can link the two issues." Some countries whose nationals may be among the detainees - Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - are U.S. allies. Tehran fears it cannot rely on assurances from such countries that U.S. officials will not be permitted to interrogate the fugitives and that intelligence relating to their time in Iran will be withheld from Washington. Tehran is concerned that the U.S. could use such information to accuse Iran of support for Al Qaeda. Anti-U.S. Group in Iraq Claims Al Qaeda Link DUBAI (Reuters) - A group claiming links to the al Qaeda network has released a tape saying it, not Saddam Hussein loyalists, was behind attacks on U.S. forces, but offered no evidence to back up the claims. "I swear by God no one from his (Saddam Hussein's) followers carried out any jihad (holy struggle) operations like he claims...they are a result of our brothers in jihad," said an unidentified voice on a video tape aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television Sunday night. The tape bore none of the hallmarks of bin Laden and al Qaeda messages previously aired on Arab channels. It was not peppered with Koranic sayings and it mentioned the Western calendar before the Islamic calendar. The voice on the tape, which sounded slowed down for disguise, warned of an attack in the days to come that would "break the back of America completely." It was not clear if it was threatening an attack in Iraq, where 148,000 U.S. troops are stationed, or elsewhere. The only image on the tape was a still of an unidentified white-bearded man in a turban. A spokesman told Reuters the channel had received an anonymous call asking it to collect the tape from a location in Baghdad. The voice said the "Armed Islamic Movement for al Qaeda, the Falluja Branch," a previously unheard-of name, was behind the attacks and that its members were dispersed all over Iraq. U.S. forces blame Saddam loyalists for most of the attacks that have killed more than 30 U.S. soldiers since May 1. Earlier this month, an audio tape said to be made by Saddam urged Iraqis to fight the U.S.-British occupation. The rhetoric on the tape conforms with Baath Party style used by loyalists of the deposed Iraqi president. "I think this is by local groups who share al Qaeda's aims but I don't think it is issued by the group led by bin Laden," Egyptian expert on Islamist groups Dia Rashwan told al-Arabiya. Calling on U.S. forces to leave Iraq, the taped voice warns "the end of America will be at the hands of Islam." The voice prayed to God "to grant success to our brothers who are dispersed in Iraq's governorates and in the countries of the world, (especially) Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar" and stated the date as July 10, 2003. Mullah Omar headed the Taliban government that harboured al Qaeda and was deposed by the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan. "We don't have any way of proving or disproving what was said on that tape," a spokesman in Florida for the United States Central Command said. July 11, 2003 WASHINGTON, July 10 - The Justice Department called on a federal appeals
court today to reconsider an earlier ruling that would allow Zacarias
Moussaoui to interview a captured member of Al Qaeda who had acknowledged
that he was a crucial organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Kenya Charges Fifth Man in Terror Case The Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya - A Kenyan court on Tuesday charged a fifth man in a
terrorist attack in Mombasa that killed at least 10 Kenyans and three
Israeli tourists in November. Suicide bombers kill at least 14 in Moscow By Sarah Karush MOSCOW - Two women strapped with explosives blew themselves up yesterday
at the gates of a Moscow rock festival crowded with tens of thousands
of fans, killing at least 14 persons and reviving fears that separatist
rebels are bringing the Chechen war to the Russian capital. FBI: Al Qaeda has blank Saudi passports WASHINGTON (Reuters) --Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, whose operatives have used fraudulently obtained passports for international travel, has acquired stolen blank Saudi passports, the FBI said Wednesday. In its weekly intelligence bulletin to local law enforcement officials, the FBI said the unissued Saudi passports are authentic and have key security features that allow them to pass routine examination. "Numerous al Qaeda terrorists have also carried Saudi passports issued in the Holy Capital, another term for the city of Mecca," the FBI said. It said past FBI intelligence bulletins have noted the use by Islamic extremists of fraudulent Pakistani passports and al Qaeda's use of altered or fraudulent Colombian identification cards and passports. "Until recently, passports from Saudi Arabia have also been vulnerable to misuse ... because they were easily acquired under false pretense and were relatively easy to forge," the FBI said. "Nearly one-third of the Saudi passports confiscated from suspected terrorists and examined by U.S. authorities show signs of fraudulent issuance or alteration." The FBI said new Saudi passports first issued in early 2002 incorporated features designed to hinder alteration. The blank passports al Qaeda acquired were from the new "E-series." The FBI asked law enforcement authorities who encounter suspect travel documents, such as U.S. and foreign passports and visas, to contact immigration officials at the Department of Homeland Security. Italian Daily: Bin Laden Spotted in Iran, Planning New Attacks Milan daily Il Corriere della Sera reported on 25 June that a "highly confidential" report making the rounds in Italian intelligence circles indicates that fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been sighted in Tehran, Iran in late May. According to the paper, the report also warns that the terror organization is possibly planning attacks in Italy, Turkey, and Pakistan, and that two al Qaeda lieutenants traveling under the names Khalid Amin and Musa Jabir arrived in Rome in early June. According to the Il Corriere report, the dossier does not say what possible targets might be or what methods would be used, though it does say that the individuals have training in "operational espionage." ANALYSIS: The article referenced the possibility that the information is coming from an "allied" country, rather than from Italy's own intelligence service, and there has been no pickup of the report in other European media. Iran does have an al Qaeda presence in the country - the Iranian government admitted on 27 May, in response to U.S. pressure, that it was holding a "handful" of suspected al Qaeda members, and Saudi officials have been in talks to extradite some Saudi nationals suspected of involvement in the Riyadh bombings in May - but no other open source has indicated that bin Laden himself was in Iran. The article's author, Fiorenza Sarzanini, writes often on terror-related subjects and has a history of reporting on supposedly secret documents and papers speculating on possible attacks by al Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, Italy's own Red Brigades, and other terror groups. CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - COURTS & JUSTICE Islamic Religious Groups Jockey for Prison Access As Concerns Over Inmate Terrorism Grow By Amy Menefee, Special to CQ Homeland Security "There is a big problem with extremism in the jails in this country." That sentiment doesn't come from Attorney General John Ashcroft or the FBI, although it well could have. It came from a prisoner - a Muslim prisoner - whose letters from a federal penitentiary were obtained by CQ/Homeland Security on condition that the author not be identified. More than 13,000 federal prisoners claim allegiance to some form of Islam. Until Sept. 11, 2001, few people cared much about their religious preferences or the prison chaplains who served them. Now, they do. Militant Muslim prison organizing has not only raised the ire of Shiite and moderate Sunni Muslim prisoners but caught the attention of U.S. counterterrorism officials, and now Congress, which will hold the first of a series of hearings Thursday. Some Muslim organizations, however, have been concerned about militant Islamic organizing behind bars for a decade. The agents of influence are clerics from the Wahhabi branch of Islam, the faith officially sanctioned by the Saudi royal family and associated with Osama bin Laden. "In these prisons it is hard to come across authentic Islamic books," wrote one prisoner two years ago, "because the Wahhabism dominates the prisons with their possenous [sic] books." Wahhabism, also known as Salafi - the term "Wahhabi" is considered offensive by many members of the sect - dominates federal Muslim prison chaplaincies in the U.S., according to many sources. Hedieh Mirahmadi, director of public affairs for the anti-extremist Islamic Supreme Council of America, says she's been fielding prisoner complaints like the one above for 10 years. One prisoner asked the leader of a Muslim organization to raise "the issue of miseducation of Muslims in prisons and the right we have to be taught traditional Islamic doctrine." Another prisoner complained that a fellow convict who was schooled in Wahhabi extremism was transferred, leaving the rest of the Muslim population vulnerable to Salafi/Wahhabi influence. "That brother had lots of knowledge to keep the Salafis in check, now that he's gone it's gotten crazy!" "Whoever gets there first," said Mirahmadi, "wins" the battle for Muslin hearts and minds. And Muslim extremists got to U.S. prisons first a long time ago, she says. There, some teach a hatred of the United States akin to that preached by Osama bin Laden. Mirahmadi's organization, which represents itself as a purveyor of "classical" Islam, hopes to see more Sunni and Shiite chaplains adding "religious diversity" to the prisons. In New York, four Shiite prisoners filed a lawsuit, now on appeal in district court, saying their rights had been violated by the state prison system. They complained that prison officials and Wahhabi chaplains had denied them access to literature and teaching in line with their beliefs. In recent years, the only two organizations certifying Muslim clerics for federal prison service have been Wahhabi-related: the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (SISS) in Leesburg, Va., and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), based in Plainfield, Ind. The SISS is still under investigation in connection with the 2002 Customs search for terrorist funding ties, dubbed Operation Green Quest. ISNA, which is affiliated with Hartford Seminary's training program for Muslim chaplains, will hold its sixth annual conference on Islam in U.S. prisons July 4 weekend in Dallas, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) says other Muslim organizations are free to sponsor chaplains - they just haven't done it. But Mirahmadi said certifying chaplains isn't as simple as they say. Wahhabist Web The SISS and ISNA don't state a Wahhabi affiliation on their Web sites. But they are affiliated nonetheless, said Stephen Schwartz, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit Washington-based terrorism research organization. Schwartz will testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on Thursday. Schwartz, a Sunni Muslim, has published a guide to Muslim organizations operating in North America. He said "the court has been lax in its oversight" of these organizations. "SISS represents an extremist ideology being taught in our prison system," said Schwartz, who suggested the BOP change its chaplain hiring process. "We don't feel that this is a good policy for the security of the U.S." A spokesman for SISS was not available for comment. The ISNA is just trying to contribute to the American chaplaincy as it evolves, said Ingrid Mattson, who serves a dual role as director of Hartford Seminary's training program for Muslim chaplains and vice president of ISNA. "The Muslim community hasn't developed criteria for who can be endorsed as a Muslim chaplain," Mattson said, adding that she hadn't heard of other organizations in the endorsing arena besides her own and SISS. Muslim clerics aren't used to thinking of the chaplaincy as a separate profession, she said. "We try to clarify that the role of a chaplain" is to help "people of all faiths," Mattson said. "What I teach the chaplains is, their role is not to be an enforcer of a particular position within the Muslim community." Islamic Communities Though many have expressed concern about the role of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences and the Islamic Society of North America as the only organizations endorsing federal Muslim chaplains, the Bureau of Prisons says other groups just haven't applied to challenge them. "Other national religious groups have the opportunity to serve as endorsers," said a BOP statement in response to repeated inquiries. "However, at this time, only two [ISNA and GSISS] have completed the appropriate documentation to serve in this role." Because applicants name their own endorsers, those from other Muslim groups could have the same opportunity, the statement said. "At the request of Islamic candidates, we requested general endorsement information from another organization on two occasions, but the documents were not returned," the BOP said. This illustrates a responsibility that lies with Islamic organizations, said Paul Rogers, president of the American Correctional Chaplains' Association. "It's an Islamic community issue," Rogers said. "There might be some political and religious infighting in the Muslim community." But Mirahmadi said her experience has contradicted BOP's stance. "It's not as simple as filling out a form," said Mirahmadi, who has worked trying to place Sunni and Shiite chaplains. "To be able to prove that you're being discriminated against is very difficult," she added. A Civil Action While the Muslim community irons out the meaning of a chaplain, some prisoners on the inside say they're facing discrimination. Schwartz's foundation has filed an amicus brief on behalf of four Shiite prisoners in the New York state prison system. The inmates, whose suit is on appeal and scheduled for oral arguments July 14, are seeking prayer services and literature congruent with their beliefs. Earlier, the court had said prison policies were sufficient to accommodate all Muslims and had told the state prison system to watch for discrimination against the Shi'a. The results were not satisfactory, said the prisoners' attorney, Andrew Kent, because the differences between the sects can't be underestimated. "You can't compare this to Baptist and Lutheran," Kent said, likening the doctrinal divide more to that between Catholics and Protestants. In fact, Schwartz said, Wahhabis often call Shiites members of a "Jewish conspiracy." Kent said he doesn't foresee constitutional obstacles to granting Shiite prisoners their own services. "I don't think it's quite as tricky as the prison officials want you to think," Kent said. "The prison system has not worked with us constructively on this. They've just been challenging us in court." That, however, is on the state level - where selection and monitoring of chaplains is anything but uniform. In the federal system, a selection process is already in place that includes criminal background checks, educational requirements, ministry experience and endorsement from a recognized religious body. Threat Matrix Meanwhile, the FBI is interested in the prison chaplaincy as a possible recruiting platform for militant extremists. The bureau is developing a handbook on spotting terrorist recruitment efforts in prisons, said spokesman John Iannarelli. Members of Congress have also expressed interest in a review of federal prison policies. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., urged an "immediate investigation" in a March letter to the Justice Department's inspector general. "It is disturbing that organizations with possible terrorist connections and religious teachings contrary to American pluralistic values hold the sole responsibility for Islamic instruction in our federal prisons," Schumer wrote. The Justice Department would "neither confirm nor deny" that an inquiry is under way. More recently, Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, addressed an inquiry to Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin with a response requested by June 25. "What standards does the BOP use to ensure that prisons are not being used to spread Islamic extremism and terrorism?" Coble asked. "What additional tools does the BOP need to prevent these persons from entering the prisons?" The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, chaired by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, will begin to address these issues Thursday in a hearing titled "Growing Wahhabi Influence in the United States." Another hearing, titled "Recruitment of Terrorists in Prison," is yet unscheduled but may come in early July, committee aides say. From the "Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security Daily," 24 June: Launch Looms for Banks’ Anti-Terrorism Requirements Terrorism Spending Capped by Senate Appropriators Air Marshals Packing Heat on Canada Flights Biotech Pioneer Gets DOD Contract for Terror Defense Feds Seeding Rebirth of Ground Zero Transit Crushed on 9/11 Bradley U. Student Declared ‘Enemy Combatant’
Senate FAA Authorization Detailed Here French probe links to terrorist activity PARIS - French judges yesterday placed 17 suspects under investigation
for links to terrorism in a crackdown on an Iranian exile group that triggered
a hunger strike in Washington and protests in several European capitals.
The Washington Times U.S. citizen secretly pleads guilty to scouting hit sites for
al Qaeda An al Qaeda sleeper agent "wrapped in his cloak of American citizenship"
has secretly pleaded guilty to aiding Osama bin Laden by scouting out
bridges and railroads for destruction in New York and Washington, Attorney
General John Ashcroft said yesterday. June 19, 2003 One evening in late April, the F.B.I. chief in Indiana, Thomas V. Fuentes,
went to a crowded basement in an Evansville mosque to ask for help in
the fight against terrorism. Some 100 Muslims listened politely. Morocco blames bombings on international terrorists RABAT, Morocco (CNN) --The Moroccan government said Tuesday that an
international terrorist network was behind the bombings that killed 31
people as well as 12 suicide bombers May 16 in Casablanca. Journalist's sentence reduced Bombing in Tel Aviv raised vexing questions June 17, 2003 JERUSALEM -- The result of the odyssey that brought two suicide bombers to a beachfront bar in Tel Aviv was not unusual: They died. And so did three of their 58 victims. But otherwise, the story of the attack six weeks ago breaks with the familiar narrative of suicide bombings in Israel. The bombers were not Palestinians from the dusty towns or seething refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The two were Britons of Pakistani descent, radicalized in the Islamic extremist milieu in Britain that has been a breeding ground for Al Qaeda. They became the first foreigners to commit a suicide attack here since the start of the intifada in 2000. It is not clear who gave the orders to blow up Mike's Place, a coastal hangout for English speakers, on April 30. The identity of the masterminds has become the subject of a politically charged dispute. Israeli officials said Monday that their security forces are "examining suspicions" that the attack teamed the Palestinian militant group Hamas with Al Qaeda recruiters who groomed the bombers. Because Al Qaeda activity in Israel has been limited, such an alliance would be worrisome. "It shows a very ominous trend," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "This is the first time that we have found evidence that Hamas was working to recruit suicide bombers through Al Qaeda." But Israeli officials offered little proof. Hamas usually takes responsibility for its attacks; it has not made any claim on the Tel Aviv bombing. Hamas leaders Monday denied any link to Al Qaeda and accused Israel of trying to discredit them at a key moment in a military and diplomatic struggle with the Sharon government. "Of course the world today is fighting Al Qaeda," said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. "And Al Qaeda has a different struggle from the Palestinian struggle. . . . And Israel wins if she makes links between the two issues." Israeli officials insist Al Qaeda's offensive converged with Hamas' intelligence-gathering infrastructure and its need for operatives with European passports who can move more easily through Israeli checkpoints. But Omar Bakri, an extremist Syrian cleric based in London who knew one of the bombers since boyhood, said profound "sectarian differences" make cooperation between Hamas and Al Qaeda unlikely. Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune Hunt in N. Iraq For al Qaeda Is Hit and Miss KIRKUK, Iraq, June 15 -- The word came at 11:15 a.m. -- al Qaeda suspect
in the southeast sector of the city. FBI: Cell phones rigged to set off bombs WASHINGTON (AP) - Investigators looking into the recent terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia found cell phones rigged to detonate explosives by remote control, the FBI said Wednesday, urging U.S. law enforcement officials to be on the lookout for similar devices. The modified cell phones turned up during searches following the May 12 bombing in Riyadh that killed 35 people, including nine Americans, according to a weekly FBI bulletin to 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies. Although the FBI said it has no information indicating any of the tens of millions of existing cell phones would be used by terrorists in the United States, the bulletin urged local officials to take precautions if a suspected device is found. For instance, officers should "immediately evacuate the area to a minimum distance of 300 yards. Radios, cellular telephones and pagers should not be used within 50 feet of the suspected device," the bulletin said. Terrorists also have used pagers and radio systems to detonate bombs by remote control, the FBI said. The bulletin did not say whether cell phones were used in the Saudi bombings, nor were there other details about the searches that uncovered the suspicious phones. Saudi officials, who blame al-Qaeda for the attack, said last week they had identified 12 of the attackers and had 25 people in custody in the case. A cell phone was used in the July 2002 bombing at a cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including five Americans. The bomb, filled with nails and metal, was hidden in a bag left on a table in the crowded room and was detonated by a call from a cell phone. Late last year French police found explosives systems meant to be detonated with cell phones during a series of raids around Paris that dismantled a terror group with ties to al-Qaeda and rebels in Chechnya. Experts say the cell phone provides the advantage of allowing the bomber to be far away from the explosion. Timing devices such as windup alarm clocks or radio transmitters more frequently used in improvised pipe bombs usually require the perpetrator to be closer. The FBI bulletin included details of how a cell phone can become part of a deadly bomb. It requires use of a battery, a switch, an initiation device such as an electric match or a light bulb, conducting wires and explosives. The phone itself is not a bomb. When the phone receives an incoming call, "the electrical power from the telephone's ringer or vibrator activates the bomb's circuitry" causing an explosion. "Law enforcement officers without specialized explosives training should never attempt to remove or disable a suspected device," the bulletin warned. Greg Baur, chief of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, said use of cell phones requires expertise to program the phones and handle tiny components. He did not know of a domestic bombing case involving use of a cell phone. "You'd have to have a lot of technological ability," said Baur, former commander of the Milwaukee police bomb squad. "It takes a certain amount of training, a certain amount of electronic knowledge." Landline phones have been used in years past to set off smaller explosions, FBI officials say. One technique was to rig the phone so it ignited gasoline-soaked material when it rang. In many of those cases, the aim was to collect insurance money when a building burned. U.S. Report: al Qaeda Terrorism Attempt Likely in Next Two Years A U.S. report submitted to the United Nations Security Council on 17 April, but just publicly released on 9 June, said that there is a "high probability" that al Qaeda will attempt a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) attack in the next two years. Despite advances made to dismantle the organization, the report indicated that "al Qaeda maintains the ability to inflict significant casualties in the United States with little or no warning," CBSNews.com reported. "Al Qaeda will continue to favor spectacular attacks, but also may seek softer targets of opportunity, such as banks, shopping malls, supermarkets, and places of recreation and entertainment," the report stated. It further concluded that is likely the terrorist organization will continue "its efforts to acquire and develop" weapons of mass destruction. ANALYSIS: The report said, "Identifying and neutralizing these sleeper cells remain our most serious intelligence and law enforcement challenge." While it indicated that the U.S. is conducting "hundreds" of investigations into people and organizations suspected of having ties to al Qaeda, especially on the east and west coasts and in the southwestern U.S., it also suggested that despite these efforts, "the al Qaeda network will remain for the foreseeable future the most immediate and serious terrorism threat facing the United States." U.S. Sees Likely Al Qaeda WMD Attack Within 2 Years UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States sees a high probability the clandestine al Qaeda network will try to launch a chemical, biological or nuclear attack within two years, the U.S. government said in a report made public on Monday. "Al Qaeda will continue to favor spectacular attacks but also may seek softer targets of opportunity such as banks, shopping malls, supermarkets and places of recreation and entertainment," the United States told the United Nations in the report. "Al Qaeda will continue its efforts to acquire and develop biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. We judge that there is a high probability that al Qaeda will attempt an attack using a CBRN weapon within the next two years," said the report. The report, prepared before last month's triple suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia which killed 35 people, did not say whether it thought such an attack would take place inside the United States or elsewhere. Dated April 17 but just released by the world body, the report was prepared in response to a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring the 191 U.N. member-nations to crack down on al Qaeda -- by, for example, freezing its assets and tracking its agents -- for its role in Afghanistan leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The group led by Osama bin Laden is blamed by Washington for the suicide hijack attacks, which killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Washington said al Qaeda remained the "top concern" of U.S. law enforcement authorities. There were hundreds of ongoing counter-terrorism investigations in the United States directly associated with the group, most of them on the East and West coasts and in the U.S. Southwest, it said. But the greatest threat to U.S. security was possible "sleeper cells" that have not been identified or detected, it said. "Identifying and neutralizing these sleeper cells remains our most serious intelligence and law enforcement challenge," the report said. June 9, 2003 WASHINGTON, June 8 - Two of the highest-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in
American custody have told the C.I.A. in separate interrogations that
the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government
of Saddam Hussein, according to several intelligence officials. June 2, 2003 WASHINGTON, June 1 - The Justice Department's ability to continue prosecuting
members of Al Qaeda and other important terrorist suspects in civilian
courts is on the line in a landmark appeals court hearing this week in
the government's case against Zacarias Moussaoui, Bush administration
officials and defense lawyers agree. Cover Story 6/2/03 By David E. Kaplan COFER BLACK, former director, CIA Counterterrorism Center And the brass knuckles came on. America's frontline agents in the war
on terror have hacked into foreign banks, used secret prisons overseas,
and spent over $20 million bankrolling friendly Muslim intelligence services.
They have assassinated al Qaeda leaders, spirited prisoners to nations
with brutal human-rights records, and amassed files equal to a thousand
encyclopedias. With all the headlines about the latest attacks and warnings, however, it is easy to miss the amount of damage America's terrorist hunters have inflicted on bin Laden's ragtag army. U.S. News has retraced the war on terror, starting in the very first weeks after 9/11, to examine in detail how Washington and its allies launched an unprecedented drive, led by the Central Intelligence Agency, to disrupt and destroy bin Laden's operation. Interviews were conducted with over three dozen past and current counterterrorism officials in a half-dozen countries; the magazine also reviewed thousands of pages of court records and analytical reports. The story--part detective yarn, part spy tale--is one of unsung heroes. It is a story of nameless CIA analysts who matched tortured renditions of Arabic names with cellphone numbers around the globe, of Pakistani soldiers killed while smashing down doors of al Qaeda, of Jordanian interrogators who wore down some of bin Laden's craftiest killers. Much of this has not been told before. A windfall of intelligence has led to a newer, more profound understanding of bin Laden's secret network, intelligence officials say. They have built up dossiers on his followers from a scant few hundred before 9/11 to over 3,000 today. They have identified the core group's sworn membership, now thought to number only 180 true believers. And bin Laden's personal fortune, investigators say, is all but gone. There's more. The investigators have unearthed a secret history of al Qaeda, discovering documents in bin Laden's own hand, along with records identifying donors to the terrorist group. They have forced captured operatives to help target their comrades--even listening in as a terrorist made a phone call that led to the assassination of a top al Qaeda leader. On the run. Al Qaeda's wounds run deep. Over half of its key operational leaders are out of action, officials tell U.S. News. Its top leaders are increasingly isolated and on the run. Al Qaeda's Afghan sanctuary is largely gone. Its military commander is dead. Its chief of operations sits in prison, as do some 3,000 associates around the world. In the field, every attempt at communication now puts operatives at risk. The organization's once bountiful finances, meanwhile, have become precarious. One recent intercept revealed a terrorist pleading for $80, sources say. If the global war on terror has a nerve center, it is the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. At first glance, the CTC looks unremarkable, packed with the cubicles, gray desks, and desktop PCs that make up just about any government office in Washington. A hint that its work might be somewhat out of the ordinary is offered by signposts that mark the corridors. One well-trodden intersection lies at the crossroads of Bin Laden Lane and Saddam Street. The 9/11 attacks severely shook the CTC--staffed, at the time, by some 600 case officers, analysts, and support personnel. "There was real shock," remembers one official. "Our sole job was to stop things like this." Cofer Black had taken the top CTC job two years before 9/11. A near-legendary figure around the CIA, he had spent 26 years in the agency's covert operations division. But as he stared at the expressions on his staff's faces, he was struck by a look he'd seen only overseas. They reminded him of peering into the eyes of Israeli intelligence officials--how haunted and driven they were. "You appreciate the gravity of your situation when your own people are in the kill box," he says. Black knew al Qaeda well. He had chased Osama bin Laden ever since the Saudi exile tried to kill him in Sudan a decade earlier. Black had returned the favor, drafting CIA plans to assassinate bin Laden long before 9/11--plans that, on the order of higher-ups, sat on the shelf. All that changed after 9/11. Within days, Black's team came up with its answer to al Qaeda. They called it the Worldwide Attack Matrix. It was an operational war plan, a no-holds-barred leap back to the agency's heyday of covert action. As detailed in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, the Matrix called for a worldwide campaign to root out its cells in 80 countries. Intelligence officials confirmed to U.S. News the dramatic scope of the Matrix and related proposals. The new plans authorized the use of deadly force, break-ins, and psychological warfare. They allowed the CIA to pour millions of dollars into friendly Arab intelligence services and permitted the once gun-shy agency to work with any government--no matter how unsavory--as long as it got results. On September 17, six days after the attack, President Bush signed an executive order approving virtually everything the CIA had asked for. Job 1 was destroying the terrorists' Afghan sanctuary. "Nothing emboldened al Qaeda more than us not going after them," says Michael Rolince, who ran the FBI's international terrorism section during 9/11. "I sat through hundreds of meetings at which DOD [the Department of Defense] just listened. The people who fought wars had no role in the war on terror." That was about to change. "Like the Nazis." The war in Afghanistan caught al Qaeda's leaders off guard. Bin Laden's top people were convinced the United States would respond to 9/11 with merely a volley of cruise missiles, interrogations later showed. By late 2001, the U.S.-led assault had taken out al Qaeda's camps and headquarters, killed hundreds of its followers, and driven the Taliban from power. So rapid was the advance that bin Laden's operatives left behind a motherlode of intelligence--address books, videos, computers, and more. Nearly 100 places yielded valuable intelligence, from caves to training centers. Among the key finds: rosters of trainees at al Qaeda facilities, which gave the CIA a handle on the tens of thousands of jihadists who had passed through some 50 camps across Afghanistan." They were like the Nazis," says an FBI terror expert. "They were meticulous record keepers." One of the richest finds came in November, after a CIA Predator--a remote-controlled drone-tracked dozens of the enemy to a hotel outside Kabul. A U.S. airstrike blew the building apart, killing close to 100, including Mohammed Atef, al Qaeda's longtime military commander and a key planner of the 9/11 and U.S. Embassy attacks in Africa. Investigators also found in the rubble scores of documents and videotapes that would spark alerts in a half-dozen countries. The videos featured five would-be martyrs railing against "infidels" and vowing to die in suicide attacks. Analysts soon recognized one of them: 30-year-old Ramzi Binalshibh, a glib young Yemeni whose hopes to join the 9/11 hijackers were thwarted by visa problems. Binalshibh was nabbed in Pakistan months later. But another--Khaled Jehani--surfaced only last month in Saudi Arabia, blamed as the mastermind of the suicide car bombings in Riyadh. From the rubble came another video, one revealing assassination plots against leaders at an upcoming Persian Gulf summit. U.S. officials pulled faces off the tape of some 45 al Qaeda operatives. Also in the ruins: a German passport in the name of one Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a fugitive thought to have recruited the Hamburg, Germany, cell members behind 9/11. Investigators soon caught up to Zammar in Morocco. But perhaps the biggest find was yet another video--a homemade, 20-minute surveillance tape of Singapore. The tape helped officials there thwart an extraordinary series of plots by Jamaat Islamiya--al Qaeda's key ally in Southeast Asia. The militants hoped to spark a holy war by bombing U.S. military sites and businesses, diplomatic posts, and the city's subway and water supply. The intelligence "take" from the Kabul hotel and other sites was quickly crated up and shipped to the CTC for a closer look. Once considered a backwater at the CIA, the CTC now stood at the heart of the biggest surge of covert action since the Cold War. Cofer Black found himself overseeing secret operations, paramilitary units, propaganda efforts, and more. In the weeks after 9/11, the CTC nearly doubled in size to over 1,100 people, including FBI agents, military officers, and CIA operatives. Before 9/11, the CTC had focused on a dozen different terrorist groups; it now restructured to zero in almost exclusively on al Qaeda. New teams concentrated on finances, leadership, collection of intelligence, and work with foreign governments. Analysts sorted through reams of field reports, satellite photos, and electronic intercepts. Link-analysis printouts, some as big as bedsheets, lined the walls of cubicles, as researchers charted al Qaeda's far-flung contacts. "There are subnetworks of subnetworks," says a top intelligence official. "Thank God we've got giant printers." By late November, the amount of intelligence pouring in was overwhelming, and CTC staffers understood why. For years, their efforts at fighting terror had vied with a dozen other priorities of U.S. foreign policy. But the message from Washington now was clear. "No nation can be neutral in this conflict," declared President Bush. "You're either with us or you're against us." The results were immediate. "Before 9/11, the cooperation was halfhearted," recalls Richard Clarke, the top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council at the time of the attack. "But now everyone knew the president had a blank check to do whatever he wanted." From the Indian government came intercepts of al Qaeda-tied militants in Kashmir; from Italy, wiretapped conversations of Islamic radicals in Milan; from Sudan, long-awaited files on bin Laden operatives once headquartered in Khartoum. Much to the delight of old pros at the CIA, intelligence arrived even from old foes, among them Libya and Syria. Bits and pieces. Each day, the CTC took in some 2,500 cables from CIA stations overseas; each week, some 17,000 new bits of intelligence arrived. And that didn't count the huge hauls from Afghanistan. One veteran case officer said the amounts were measured "literally in terabytes"--a terabyte is roughly equal to a thousand bound editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The CTC had become the world's single largest collector and coordinator for intelligence on terrorism. So large is the volume of material collected, sources tell U.S. News, that even today, substantial amounts remain unexamined. By March 2002, the intelligence windfall revealed how little U.S. intelligence had understood about al Qaeda. "There were tremendous gaps in our understanding of al Qaeda's structure, its chain of command, its operational network," says Roger Cressey, director for transnational threats at the National Security Council at the time of 9/11. "Think of it as a 1,000-piece jigsaw in which we had maybe 200 pieces. After 9/11, the pieces came fast and furious." America's best analysts were troubled as they surveyed the new intelligence. "It was even worse than we thought," says Black, who was struck by Afghan reports of dead al Qaeda fighters with blond hair and blue eyes--Chechens--as well as Uzbeks, Indonesians, and Chinese. "They had internationalized themselves to a far greater degree," he says, "and it was all networked really well." The body kills, the seized computers and correspondence, combined with prisoner interrogations and other intelligence, offered a fairly complete portrait of bin Laden's secretive organization. Analysts began to grasp how al Qaeda actually operated, from its finances to its key personnel. Before 9/11, U.S. intelligence had files on only a few hundred al Qaeda-trained Islamists. But by March, the number had ballooned to 3,000 and was growing daily. As their knowledge increased, analysts learned to differentiate among the varied bands of jihadists. As one counterterrorism veteran explained, there are, in effect, two al Qaedas: One is al Qaeda the ideology, which fuels a sprawling network of radical Islamists who draw inspiration from bin Laden but are not his direct disciples. Within that network are what analysts have called al Qaeda's franchises--allied radical groups from Uzbekistan to Indonesia who share bin Laden's dream of a pan-Islamist world. But there is also al Qaeda the organization--a finite, disciplined, Mafia-like grouping with its own rules, finances, and "made" members. Although tens of thousands went through its training camps, very few in fact joined the group. "Al Qaeda is an elite organization that takes very few members," exp |