Birmingham Mail : Al-Qaida terror plots on New York and Manchester linked to Alum rock murder suspect Rashid Rauf

Al-Qaida terror plots on New York and Manchester linked to Alum rock murder suspect Rashid Rauf

Amardeep Bassey | January 6, 2013

A suspected Islamic terrorist accused of plotting attacks in the UK and the New York subway was being directed by a Birmingham Al Qaida mastermind, security sources claim.The allegation comes after the USA successfully applied for Pakistani student Abid Naseer to be extradited to face terror charges.

Naseer, 26, had originally come to Britain from his native Pakistan on a student visa to study in Manchester.

But US prosecutors believe they can prove Naseer was part of an Al-Qaida cell sent to the UK and US by former Alum Rock murder suspect Rashid Rauf, who planned for them to attack targets on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Americans claim Naseer had shopped for bomb ingredients, conducted reconnaissance and was in frequent contact with other al-Qaida operatives as part of a foiled plot to kill Easter shoppers at the Trafford and Arndale centres in Manchester in 2009, and a second suspected plot to blow up the New York subway.

An FBI source told the Sunday Mercury that investigators believe that both plots were directed by Birmingham baker’s boy turned terrorist Rauf, who had climbed the Al Qaida ranks to become a chief planner of its operations in the West.

He said: “It is highly likely that it was Rauf who briefed and sent the two teams to launch attacks in the US and the UK.

“Messages from Pakistan were remarkably similar in content and tone, suggesting they were emanating from the same person, namely Rauf, who had a very distinct and colloquially English style.”

Rauf is believed to have been killed by the CIA in a drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal areas in 2008. He fled the UK to join Islamic terror groups in Pakistan in 2002 after being implicated in the murder of his uncle in Alum Rock.

Security service investigators believe he was a vital link for foreign Al Qaida recruits because of his Western background and upbringing.

The Portsmouth University drop-out is said to have been the point of contact for the London 7/7 bombers, as well as being implicated in several Al Qaida plots across Europe.

The US source said: “Evidence suggests Rauf was directing a terror cell in the US which was eventually smashed after it was discovered they were planning to bomb the New York subway.

“Rauf was killed in late 2008 but by then the terror cells had been dispatched and briefed.”

After two years of legal arguments stalling his extradition, Naseer was finally taken from his cell at Belmarsh high security jail and put on a plane at Luton airport by officers from the Metropolitan police extradition unit last week.

Naseer was one of 12 people arrested in April 2009 in co-ordinated raids in Liverpool and Manchester after police uncovered the alleged Manchester plot. But all were released without charge because of lack of evidence.

They were ordered to leave Britain, but Naseer escaped deportation to Pakistan after a judge ruled it was likely he would be mistreated if he were sent home.

Naseer was re-arrested in July 2010 at the request of the prosecutors in Brooklyn where a federal indictment named him as a co-defendant with Adis Medunjanin.

In January 2011, a British judge approved Naseer’s extradition but acknowledged there was a “very real risk” Naseer would be tortured if the US ultimately returned him to Pakistan.

US authorities allege Medunjanin and his former high school friends Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay travelled to Pakistan in 2008 to seek terror training from al-Qaida.

Authorities say the trio were planning co-ordinated suicide bombings on Manhattan subway lines during rush hour near the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in what Zazi called a “martyrdom operation”.

The alleged plot was disrupted when police stopped Zazi’s car as it entered New York.

Bellingham Herald : Pentagon rebuffs request to televise 9/11 trial from Guantanamo

Pentagon rebuffs request to televise 9/11 trial from Guantanamo

By CAROL ROSENBERG — The Miami Herald | November 26, 2012

MIAMI — A surrogate of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday rejected a request by the Sept. 11 defense lawyers to let media organizations televise the Sept. 11 trial from the war court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

William Lietzau, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, wrote the defense lawyers that the Pentagon provides ample transparency for the trials through news coverage, a remote viewing site at Fort Meade, Md., and a website that posts transcripts of the pre-trial proceedings within 24 hours of hearings.

"At this time, there are no plans to televise military commission proceedings," Lietzau wrote in a single-page response to the lawyers for five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A total of 13 defense lawyers for the former CIA prisoners now facing military capital penalty proceedings wrote Panetta on Nov. 1 requesting that he use his authority as secretary of defense to enable the broadcasts.

The chief military commissions judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, said at a hearing earlier this year that only Panetta could make that decision.

Lietzau said he was responding for Panetta.

The lawyers, who defend alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men, argued that the trial, likely a year away, "is the most significant criminal trial in the history of our country." They argued there's a "pervasive distrust of these proceedings," and that the Guantanamo system has harmed the reputation of the United States.

"Allow the entire country, and world, to observe the proceedings for themselves," they wrote.

Lietzau responded that the war court was following U.S. military courts-martial and federal criminal practice. His letter was dated Nov. 20, but the defense lawyers said they received the reply Monday and provided a copy to The Miami Herald.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief war crimes prosecutor, has opposed broadcasts in remarks that suggest cameras in the court could harm the dignity of the death-penalty proceedings.

Defense lawyers have said that the public might be surprised to realize how much of the proceedings will be held in closed session.

They also want wider scrutiny on the hybrid nature of the proceedings that borrow from both military and civilian justice.

The Local (Germany) : Cops: 'Mafia-style killing' was complex suicide

Cops: 'Mafia-style killing' was complex suicide

November 22, 2012

Police in Hamburg investigating the death of a man who was found shot in the head in a tied-up sack floating in a river, suspect that rather than having been the victim of a Mafia hit, he killed himself.

The body of 43-year-old Uwe Sattler was found in the River Elbe in July by a fisherman. He was wearing a rucksack full of rocks and had been shot in the head and put into a sack fastened with cable ties before he hit the water.

Local media was rife with speculation about a Mafia murder - but after extensive investigation, the police now say they are nearly certain that the Sattler killed himself.

"We are 99.999 percent certain it was suicide," a Hamburg police spokeswoman told The Local.

"There is no other explanation; no other motive and no other evidence."

Detectives have worked out that there was enough of an opening in the sack between the cable ties for Sattler to get an arm out and shoot himself so that afterwards the gun would fall to the ground. He would have had to have done this while perched on the edge of a bridge or jetty to ensure falling into the water.

Why he would make such an effort to do this remains a mystery - as does the whereabouts of the gun, which was never found. "It just goes to show, there is nothing that does not exist," the police spokeswoman said.

After using fingerprints to identify the body, police went to his flat in Hamburg which reportedly looked newly renovated - and held absolutely no furniture. Officers found only a small box of documents, including a note to say that the belongings in the cellar should be given to the building landlord, Die Welt said.

Back in the summer when detectives were trying to piece together Sattler's life, they also found little to work with. He was single and unemployed, and seemed to have no friends, nor any contact with his family. Despite intensive efforts, the police admitted in July that they had been unable to find a single friend or acquaintance.

He had moved from Berlin to Hamburg in September 2008, but no friends could be found in the capital either. Die Welt said that he had rented a van in 2004 and crashed head-long into a bridge pillar. He survived the crash but was seriously injured. When police went to his flat after the crash they found it was completely empty just like his place in Hamburg.

This would seem to be reason to suggest he was suicidal - although might leave open some questions about the immensely complicated method he supposedly chose in Hamburg.

The investigation has been put on ice, but the case remains open.

The Local/hc

---

see also: Anorak : The mysterious death of Uwe Sattler – Germany’s Gareth Williams

Cynthia McKinney: Open Letter

Open Letter on the Occasion of the Seating of the New York Session of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine

Cynthia McKinney | October 7, 2012

This weekend, anti-war protests are taking place all over the world. I do believe that the position of the vast majority of the world’s people is one that is utterly tired of a hungry war machine ignited by gangster bankers concomitantly devouring the money resources of the world’s people. There is a growing awareness of exactly where the problem lies: it is not in the millions of working people who struggle every month just to make ends meet; it is not in the immigrant fleeing the intentional destabilization of her homeland; it is not in the descendants of Africans imported from Africa for enslavement; it is not in the right-wing White person misled to believe that individuals from the foregoing groups are his enemy; it is not in the group of people who pray to Allah; it is not in the people on the street this weekend demanding peace and an end to war. It is clear that those who helped construct this current society and now preside over it are also the ones who benefit from having things as they are today. Increasingly, more and more of us are paying an even higher price for them to continue their privilege because enough is never enough for them. Real change, then, requires not only changes in the names, color, ethnicities, languages spoken, religion, or gender of those who preside over the current political state of affairs. Real change requires dismantling the current political, economic, and social structures that serve only the interests of an elite to whom current elected office holders answer. In short, the kind of change that people thought they were voting for in 2008. I have consistently drawn attention to the need for this kind of deep, structural change. Therefore, this Open Letter addresses what is happening to me as I challenge a system that no longer serves the interests of the people and push for the kind of change that will really make a difference.

As I write this, I note the irony that I am currently conducting research in order to write a paper on the violent repression carried out by individuals acting on behalf of the United States government against certain political actors of the 1960s and early 1970s. It was during this research that I came across the notion of “soft repression” and immediately recognized myself in what I was reading. I said to myself as I read, “Hey, that’s me.” So, I decided to write this Open Letter in order to blow the cover off a secret that I have walked with for years.

“Soft repression” tactics include ridicule, stigma, and silencing. I have experienced and continue to experience each one of these types of targeting. I routinely receive hate mail and withstand very active organized attempts to ridicule, stigmatize, and eventually silence me. I routinely experience strange occurrences with my computer (typing by itself) and telephone (answered by someone before it even rings on my end), and more. Strange things happen to my friends and to the friends of my friends (like police stops for nothing, and worse, calls to remote immigrant acquaintances asking for information about me).

Not too long ago, I received a call from a lawyer with the ACLU who tracks politically-inspired civil liberties violations and he told me that my name came up in a Texas Fusion Center of the Department of Homeland Security document as someone, associating with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and traveling to Lebanon with him, who should be surveilled for any attempts engaged in by me to push Sharia law for the U.S. It’s ludicrous, I know. It’s even more ludicrous that U.S. tax dollars are being spent to surveil people for this stupidity. But there it is.

More recently, Congresswoman Maxine Waters courageously asked the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Robert Mueller, at a Congressional Hearing if the FBI was surveilling me because she had documents that suggested that due to my political beliefs and inflammatory words uttered by others after my 2006 campaign election theft that placed blame for the unfortunate election results on Jewish Israel partisans inside the U.S.

I have been stalked (unfortunately, the prosecution occurred under a false identity as a Muslim Pakistani) and thank goodness to local authorities, the perpetrator spent time in jail until his high-priced lawyer bailed him out, and the individual with the false identity was convicted of stalking. Upon my return to the U.S. from Cape Town, South Africa at which the Russell Tribunal found that Israel practices its own unique form of apartheid, I was notified by my local FBI office that I was [the] subject of a terroristic threat, along with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, by some poor hillbillies from the north Georgia mountains. The FBI offered to protect me from any other hillbillies who might get funny ideas.

Well, I’ve been through this before with the FBI, when a journalist called for my lynching on my way to vote. My alarmed Congressional staff alerted the FBI--only for us all to learn, years later, that this particular “journalist” was on the FBI payroll at the time that he made those reprehensible remarks.

I have lived with this “soft repression” since, as a Member of Congress-elect in 1992, I refused to sign the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pledge of support for Israel. I will begin to document and make public what has heretofore been covert activity carried out by bullies who pick on the weak. The members of my inner circle and I are extremely weak compared to the power and resources of those orchestrating and carrying out this “soft repression.”

What could they possibly be afraid of?

I will answer my own question: values whose time has come—truth, justice, peace, and dignity. Not only for the elite few, but also for the rest of us: everybody’s truth and everybody’s dignity.

I am honored to serve as a juror on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. I am honored to serve with Angela Davis and Alice Walker and Dennis Means as the U.S. contingent of jurors here in New York City. Davis, Walker, and Means are giants in U.S. activism, demonstrating self-sacrifice, dignity, and great love for community. I have been with this Tribunal from its opening Session in Barcelona, where I was the only U.S. member. At these New York Sessions so far, we have spoken of colonialism, oppression, murder, and war with impunity. Therefore, I in no way want to equate the unusual events occurring around me with the violence of the situation faced by Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, the particular focus of this Tribunal. I seek merely to expose covert actions directed at me, and people close to me, that constitute bullying and soft repression that would otherwise go unnoted and whose purpose I surmise is to punish me for my values and political beliefs that favor justice and peace, and, most probably, to dissuade me from future political activities.

Their plan will not work. I believe in hearing everyone’s truths, especially from those whose voices have been shut down. I believe that we can only achieve justice when we are willing to face everyone’s truths. I believe that peace is achievable when justice is prevalent. And I believe that human and planetary dignity will exist during such time as we all live together in peace. My work, every day, is to advance this cause in the best way that I know, using the tools at my disposal at this time.

I have already received some requests for these documents that have been made available to me; I will make them available to anyone who asks.

Toronto Star : Al Qaeda airline bomber was secret informant

Al Qaeda airline bomber was secret informant

Reuters | May 8, 2012

WASHINGTON—A bomber from the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen sent to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner last month was actually a Saudi intelligence agent who infiltrated the group and volunteered for the suicide mission, U.S. media reported on Tuesday.

Working closely with the CIA, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency placed the operative inside Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, with the goal of convincing his handlers to give him a new type of non-metallic bomb for the mission, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Western intelligence agencies have identified AQAP as among the most dangerous and determined Al Qaeda affiliates in the world, dedicated in part to attacks on the West.

The explosive device was intended to be smuggled aboard an aircraft undetected and then detonated.

The double agent arranged instead to deliver the device to U.S. and other intelligence authorities waiting outside Yemen, the L.A. Times reported. The agent arrived safely in an unidentified country and is being debriefed.

Experts at the FBI’s bomb laboratory in Quantico, Va., are now analyzing the device to determine if it really could have evaded airport security, the newspaper said.

If such a device could be brought on board an aircraft, it could in theory be detonated without the knowledge of aircraft passengers and crew.

The main charge was a high-grade military explosive that “undoubtedly would have brought down an aircraft,” the New York Times reported, citing a senior American official.

It appeared to be an upgraded version of the so-called “underwear bomb” that failed to down a passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, the L.A. Times said.

“Like that bomb, this device bears the forensic signature of feared Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri,” who is believed to be hiding in Yemen, the L.A. Times website reported.

The operation relied not on the high-tech and satellite surveillance for which the CIA has been known in recent years, but old-fashioned human intelligence work.

It did, however, produce intelligence that helped the CIA locate top Al Qaeda operative Fahd al-Quso, who was killed on Sunday when a CIA drone targeted him with a missile as he stepped out of his car in Yemen, the newspapers reported.

Quso was thought by intelligence analysts to have played a role in the bombing of guided missile destroyer USS Cole in a Yemeni port in 2000.

LAT : Suspected insurgents tortured in Afghanistan, U.N. says

Suspected insurgents tortured in Afghanistan, U.N. says

The United Nations report says detainees have been subjected to beatings, shocks and other brutal abuses. The findings may complicate U.S. efforts to hand off security responsibilities.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times | Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan | October 10, 2011

Suspected insurgents in Afghan custody have been subjected to torture including electric shocks, being hung by their hands and having their genitals twisted, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said in a report Monday.

The 74-page report, detailing a widespread pattern of brutal abuses, will probably complicate American efforts to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan authorities as a prelude to winding down the Western combat mission in Afghanistan.

"Torture is one of the most serious human rights violations under international law, a crime under Afghan law, and strictly prohibited under both laws," said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the U.N. mission. "Accountability for torture demands prosecutions and the taking of all necessary measures by Afghan authorities to prevent and end such acts in the future."

In a preemptive move, the NATO force announced last month that it had halted prisoner transfers to more than a dozen detainee centers named in the report, a draft of which was shown to American commanders. Many of the suspected fighters who end up in detention are captured in the field by U.S. and coalition forces.

The United Nations said the abuse, while routine and systematic, was not based on Afghan government policy, but rather appeared to have been carried out at the initiative of individual jailers and security officials. It added that Afghan government ministries had cooperated in the investigation and had already moved to take action against some of the officials allegedly involved.

Nonetheless, the allegations could call into question the legality of continued Western funding of training for Afghanistan's security services — another linchpin of the U.S. pullout plan. The Obama administration is withdrawing 10,000 American troops by the end of the year, with an additional 23,000 to follow in 2012.

The report, which was researched over nearly a year, ending in August, represents a setback to enormously expensive U.S.-led efforts to bring Afghanistan's criminal justice system and security practices up to something resembling international standards. The allegations also pose an immediate day-to-day practical challenge to Western officials dealing with a backlog of security suspects who cannot be handed over to Afghan officials because of the potential for abuse.

The report, based on interviews with more than 300 detainees, cited varying degrees of abuses at nearly 50 facilities in two-thirds of Afghanistan's provinces.

Most of the security detainees were suspected of affiliation with the Taliban or other insurgent groups, and the abuse was almost always aimed at wringing confessions from them about attacks on Western and Afghan troops, or operations in the planning stages.

The detainee accounts were compelling in their consistency, the report said, with prisoners asserting that abuse often escalated from beating and slapping to spending long periods suspended by their hands, sometimes culminating in electric shocks or the detainees' genitals being twisted until the prisoners passed out.

The NATO force, responding to the formal release of the findings, reiterated that it was working to "improve detention operations" and safeguard against abuses.

laura.king@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Denver Post : Coloradan Zazi's coded e-mail started agencies plan to stop N.Y. subway attack

Coloradan Zazi's coded e-mail started agencies plan to stop N.Y. subway attack

By Sara Burnett | The Denver Post | October 2, 2011

Jim Davis was in his backyard drinking a beer and grilling burgers for a Labor Day barbecue when his cellphone rang.

On the line was Steve Olson, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Denver office national security branch.

Olson told his boss that authorities monitoring the e-mail of a key al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan had intercepted a chilling message about a potential attack.

Then came the really shocking news: The person who sent the e-mail, Olson said, was here in Aurora.

Over the next few days the scramble to learn just who Najibullah Zazi was and what, if anything, he had planned played out with stunning speed and overwhelming media attention.

Two years ago, the 24-year-old airport shuttle driver was arrested and charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other charges.

Since then, new information from court proceedings and interviews with current and former FBI agents has emerged about Zazi's plan to set off bombs in the New York subway — a plot Justice Department officials have said was the most serious threat against the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

Zazi, Olson said recently, was part of the first operational al-Qaeda cell authorities knew was in the United States post- 9/11. He had direct contact with al-Qaeda leaders so high-ranking that one was killed by CIA drone strikes and another has a $5 million bounty on his head.

Zazi's attack was planned for sometime between Sept. 14 and 16, 2009 — less than 10 days from the time authorities learned of a possible plot — and was connected to another plot in the United Kingdom.

And like the mastermind of 9/11 who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center, Zazi was trained and willing to die, said Davis, who was special agent in charge for the Denver FBI at the time.

"He looked like the little kid next door," Davis said. "And he was Mohamed Atta​."

"Marriage" raised alarm

What the FBI knew about Zazi on the day the call came in from headquarters was basic. He was an Afghan immigrant living legally in the United States. He was married to his cousin, who was in Pakistan, and though he had spent most of his life in New York, he now lived with his parents and other family in an apartment on Smoky Hill Road in Aurora.

They also had three e-mails that Zazi had reportedly sent, in which he asked about "mixtures."

"The marriage is ready flour and oil," one e-mail stated, in part.

It's widely known in intelligence circles that terrorists use the word "marriage" to mean an attack or suicide bombing. To see the words "marriage" and "ready" in such close proximity, the agents knew, was cause for serious alarm.

But they didn't know what Zazi was planning, where he was planning to do it or if the threat was even real.

Early on, Davis called a meeting of his three assistant special agents in charge, the CIA, FBI supervisors and the Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Davis asked them: Is there anyone here who can tell me this is not the real thing?

"I went around the room," Davis recalled. "No one said yes."

Davis closed all 10 of the office's outposts in Colorado and Wyoming and brought those agents to Denver. Agents from other states were flown in to assist the Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of law enforcement from across the Denver metro area.

All other cases were put on hold, and the command post was opened.

An intelligence analyst at FBI headquarters dubbed it Operation High Rise — "High" for Denver, the Mile High City, and "Rise" because Zazi's e-mails referred to flour, used to bake bread.

Agents soon learned Zazi had rented a suite with a stove at an Aurora motel — the same suite he had rented nine days earlier.

When they tested the vent above the stove, they found traces of chemicals that could be used to make bombs. The chemicals didn't match anything used by the hotel's cleaning staff.

Then on Sept. 8, Zazi rented a car, again setting off alarm bells — why did a guy with access to multiple vehicles through his family's shuttle business need to rent a car?

The following morning, FBI agents followed him as he got on Interstate 70 and headed east, sometimes reaching speeds of 100 mph.

"We had no idea where he was going," Davis recalled. "But we were going to the mattresses."

At the FBI's request, a Colorado State Patrol trooper pulled Zazi's red Chevy Malibu over just east of Limon. When he asked Zazi where he was going, Zazi said he was headed to New York to take care of his coffee cart business.

It was the first time New York had entered the picture.

After the trooper let Zazi go, Zazi continued his cross-country drive, with FBI agents — unbeknown to him — tailing him the entire way.

The problem was that Zazi was rarely stopping, and he was driving fast. The FBI needed to get another tail in place. So back in Denver four agents got on an FBI plane to St. Louis. They rented a car, and using radio communication were able to take over the tail all the way to Ohio. There, agents from another field office took over.

As Zazi arrived in New York, police who had been alerted of the possible threat pulled him over, saying it was a routine stop. Later, police towed his car. On a laptop Zazi had left inside, authorities found bomb-making instructions.

A local imam who had been contacted by New York police soon tipped Zazi that authorities were asking about him. Zazi — who had been staying with a friend — got spooked and flew back to Denver on Sept. 12.

By then the media was camped out in front of Zazi family's apartment.

"For that first week, every day I came in amazed at how fast things were happening," Davis said. "I felt like I was living an episode of (the television show) '24.' "

A few days later Zazi's attorney called the FBI and said Zazi wanted to come in and clear things up.

Authorities were skeptical.

"I would have bet my paycheck he wasn't coming. Why would anybody bring this guy in and let him talk to the FBI?" Olson said.

"To our absolute, complete, surprise, he showed up. Not only that, but he came back for three days."

28 hours of interviews

Special agent Eric Jergenson, a member of the international terrorism squad, was chosen to be the lead interviewer, in part because of a recent success in "flipping" a key person in a different case.

Over the next few days Jergenson, with help from other agents, spent 28 hours interviewing Zazi, who was accompanied by his attorney, Art Folsom.

The interviews started out cordial.

"Zazi clearly didn't know that we knew what we knew," Olson said. "I think he honestly thought he could tell a story and make this whole thing go away."

The agents began by asking Zazi questions they already knew the answers to, and promptly caught Zazi in several lies, Olson said.

Zazi admitted he had traveled to Pakistan and was trained by al-Qaeda, for example. But he denied any plot, and said the bomb-making instructions on his laptop must have been unintentionally downloaded from the Internet.

As the FBI showed more and more of its hand — including showing Zazi one of the nine pages of bomb-making instructions they'd found on his laptop — Zazi's tenor began to change.

Zazi became more concerned about his family, and started asking for a guarantee that they wouldn't be prosecuted for immigration violations if he talked, Olson said.

When the FBI refused, Zazi stopped talking, left the interview and said he wouldn't be coming back.

Throughout those few days, tension grew among the law enforcement working the case as to when they should arrest Zazi.

"It was stressful, and there was a lot of second-guessing," Olson recalled. "If we left him out there one second too long, people are dead. If we arrest him too soon, he may have co-conspirators we don't learn about until it's too late."

But when Zazi announced he wouldn't be cooperating anymore, the decision was made.

On Sept. 19, Zazi was arrested and charged with making false statements.

The FBI, frustrated by the many leaks they believed were coming from the New York Police Department, decided this time to use the media attention to their advantage.

A caravan of police vehicles pulled up in front of the Zazis' apartment with lights and sirens going. In a made-for-TV moment that ran completely counter to the typical low-profile FBI arrest, agents walked Zazi out in front of the media. Though it was cool outside, as they drove away with Zazi in the back seat, agents made sure to leave the windows down so the cameras could capture the scene.

"All those theatrics were done with a purpose in mind," Davis said.

Perhaps it would increase pressure on Zazi; perhaps, if there were any co-conspirators out there, those images would cause them to stop what they had planned.

Less than two weeks after learning the name Najibullah Zazi, agents had him in custody and knew his target had been the New York subway system.

But they still didn't know about his network — or just how big this case was about to get.

A bad chemist

On Sept. 22, Zazi was charged in the Eastern District of New York with more serious terrorism-related charges.

In February 2010, with charges pending in New York against his father as well, Zazi agreed to a plea deal.

By then Zazi was talking again and authorities had gathered other intelligence about the extent of the plot.

Authorities say the plot on the New York subway was organized by three al-Qaeda leaders: Saleh al-Somali, Rashid Rauf and Adnan El Shukrijumah. The men were in charge of the "external operations" program, which is focused on attacks in the United States and other Western countries.

The bomb-making instructions the FBI recovered from Zazi's e-mails showed sophistication. According to the FBI, 30 grams of the substance Zazi wrote about would be enough to blow up a concrete block. Zazi's notes indicate he intended to make up to 10 pounds — enough to blow up subway cars and everyone in them, Olson said.

"These guys were familiar with the New York subway. They knew what trains are most crowded when, and that's what they focused on." Olson added. "It would have been catastrophic."

But he was caught because, starting Aug. 28, 2009, he began trying to make the explosives in the hotel room and failed every time. He frantically e-mailed an al-Qaeda facilitator in Pak istan named Ahmad, and it was those e-mails that the FBI intercepted.

In the end, Zazi's major undoing was that he was either a bad chemist or took poor notes, Olson said.

"Had he gotten it right the first time, he never would have sent the e-mails," he added. "He would have gotten in his car and driven to New York, and we would have been investigating a terrorist attack instead."

A cooperative effort

El Shukrijumah — the man who recruited Zazi — is still at large, and the FBI has a $5 million reward out for him.

Zazi's high school friends from Queens, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin, who traveled to Pakistan with him to fight alongside the Taliban but were then recruited by al-Qaeda, were also charged with terror-related crimes. Ahmedzay has pleaded guilty, while Medunjanin has said he wants to go to trial.

This past summer Zazi's father, Mohammed Zazi, was convicted of lying to authorities and conspiring to conceal evidence of the plot. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Najibullah Zazi, meanwhile, has a cooperation agreement with prosecutors in New York that states he could face a term of up to life in prison. It also states that he and other unnamed individuals could at some point be placed in the witness security program.

Davis and Olson point to the Zazi case as an example of how things are supposed to work in the post- 9/11 world — with various agencies sharing information and working together.

They also said it's impossible to overplay the impact the investigation had.

"This is exactly what we've been planning for since Sept. 12, 2001 — this very scenario," Olson said. "Had we — all of us — not done our job, a lot of people would have died."

Sara Burnett: 303-954-1661 or sburnett@denverpost.com

Guardian : Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes

Julian Borger and Georgina Smith in Ndola | August 17, 2011

New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder was covered up by British colonial authorities.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward.

The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft. They say the crash site was sealed off by Northern Rhodesian security forces the next morning, hours before the wreckage was officially declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

The key witnesses were located and interviewed over the past three years by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker based in Africa, who made the investigation of the Hammarskjöld mystery a personal quest since discovering his father had a fragment of the crashed DC6.

"My father was in that part of Zambia in the 70s and asking local people about what happened, and a man there, seeing that he was interested, gave him a piece of the plane. That was what got me started," Björkdahl said. When he went to work in Africa himself, he went to the site and began to question the local people systematically on what they had seen.

The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days leading up to Hammarskjöld's death on 17 September 1961, which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

Hammarskjöld was flying to Ndola for peace talks with the Katanga leadership at a meeting that the British helped arrange. The fiercely independent Swedish diplomat had, by then, enraged almost all the major powers on the security council with his support for decolonisation, but support from developing countries meant his re-election as secretary general would have been virtually guaranteed at the general assembly vote due the following year.

Björkdahl works for the Swedish international development agency, Sida, but his investigation was carried out in his own time and his report does not represent the official views of his government. However, his report echoes the scepticism about the official verdict voiced by Swedish members of the commissions of inquiry.

Björkdahl concludes that:

• Hammarskjöld's plane was almost certainly shot down by an unidentified second plane.

• The actions of the British and Northern Rhodesian officials at the scene delayed the search for the missing plane.

• The wreckage was found and sealed off by Northern Rhodesian troops and police long before its discovery was officially announced.

• The one survivor of the crash could have been saved but was allowed to die in a poorly equipped local hospital.

• At the time of his death Hammarskjöld suspected British diplomats secretly supported the Katanga rebellion and had obstructed a bid to arrange a truce.

• Days before his death, Hammarskjöld authorised a UN offensive on Katanga – codenamed Operation Morthor – despite reservations of the UN legal adviser, to the fury of the US and Britain.

The most compelling new evidence comes from witnesses who had not previously been interviewed, mostly charcoal-makers from the forest around Ndola, now in their 70s and 80s.

Dickson Mbewe, now 84, was sitting outside his house in Chifubu compound west of Ndola with a group of friends on the night of the crash.

"We saw a plane fly over Chifubu but did not pay any attention to it the first time," he told the Guardian. "When we saw it a second and third time, we thought that this plane was denied landing permission at the airport. Suddenly, we saw another aircraft approach the bigger aircraft at greater speed and release fire which appeared as a bright light.

"The plane on the top turned and went in another direction. We sensed the change in sound of the bigger plane. It went down and disappeared."

At about 5am, Mbewe went to his charcoal kiln close to the crash site, where he found soldiers and policemen already dispersing people. According to the official report the wreckage was only discovered at 3pm that afternoon.

"There was a group of white soldiers carrying a body, two in front and two behind," he said. "I heard people saying there was a man who was found alive and should be taken to hospital. Nobody was allowed to stay there."

Mbewe did not forward with that information earlier because he was never asked to, he said. "The atmosphere was not peaceful, we were chased away. I was afraid to go to the police because they might put me in prison."

Another witness, Custon Chipoya, a 75-year-old charcoal maker, also claims to have seen a second plane in the sky that night. "I saw a plane turning, it had clear lights and I could hear the roaring sound of the engine," he said. "It wasn't very high. In my opinion, it was at the height that planes are when they are going to land.

"It came back a second time, which made us look and the third time, when it was turning towards the airport, I saw a smaller plane approaching behind the bigger one. The lighter aircraft, a smaller jet type of plane, was trailing behind and had a flash light. Then it released some fire on to the bigger plane below and went in the opposite direction.

"The bigger aircraft caught fire and started exploding, crashing towards us. We thought it was following us as it chopped off branches and tree trunks. We thought it was war, so we ran away."

Chipoya said he returned to the site the next morning at about 6am and found the area cordoned off by police and army officers. He didn't mention what he had seen because: "It was impossible to talk to a police officer then. We just understood that we had to go away," he said.

Safeli Mulenga, 83, also in Chifubu on the night of the crash, did not see a second plane but witnessed an explosion.

"I saw the plane circle twice," he said. "The third time fire came from somewhere above the plane, it glowed so bright. It couldn't have been the plane exploding because the fire was coming on to it," he said.

There was no announcement for people to come forward with information following the crash, and the federal government did not want people to talk about it, he said. "There were some who witnessed the crash and they were taken away and imprisoned."

John Ngongo, now 75, out in the bush with a friend to learn how to make charcoal on the night of the crash, did not see another plane but he definitely heard one, he said.

"Suddenly, we saw a plane with fire on one side coming towards us. It was on fire before it hit the trees. The plane was not alone. I heard another plane at high speed disappearing into the distance but I didn't see it," he said.

The only survivor among the 15 people on board the DC6 was Harold Julian, an American sergeant on Hammarskjöld's security detail. The official report said he died of his injuries, but Mark Lowenthal, a doctor who helped treat Julian in Ndola, told Björkdahl he could have been saved.

"I look upon the episode as having been one of my most egregious professional failures in what has become a long career," Lowenthal wrote in an email. "I must first ask why did the US authorities not at once set out to help/rescue one of their own? Why did I not think of this at the time? Why did I not try to contact US authorities to say, 'Send urgently an aircraft to evacuate a US citizen on secondment to UN who is dying of kidney failure?'"

Julian was left in Ndola for five days. Before he died, he told police he had seen sparks in the sky and an explosion before the crash.

Björkdahl also raises questions about why the DC6 was made to circle outside Ndola. The official report claims there was no tape recorder in the air traffic control tower, despite the fact that its equipment was new. The air traffic control report of the crash was not filed until 33 hours afterwards.

According to records of the events of the night, the British high commissioner to the Rhodesian and Nyasaland Federation, Cuthbert Alport, who was at the airport that evening, "suddenly said that he had heard that Hammarskjöld had changed his mind and intended to fly somewhere else. The airport manager therefore didn't send out any emergency alert and everyone simply went to bed."

The witness accounts of another plane are consistent with other insider accounts of Hammarskjold's death. Two of his top aides, Conor Cruise O'Brien and George Ivan Smith, both became convinced that the secretary general had been shot down by mercenaries working for European industrialists in Katanga. They also believed that the British helped cover up the shooting. In 1992, the two published a letter in the Guardian spelling out their theory. Suspicion of British intentions is a recurring theme of the correspondence Björkdahl has examined from the days before Hammarskjöld's death.

Formally, the UK backed the UN mission, but, privately, the secretary general and his aides believed British officials were obstructing peace moves, possibly as a result of mining interests and sympathies with the white colonists on the Katanga side.

On the morning of 13 September the separatist leader Moise Tshombe signalled that he was ready for a truce, but changed his mind after a one-hour meeting with the UK consul in Katanga, Denzil Dunnett.

There is no doubt that at the time of his death Hammarskjöld‚ who had already alienated the Soviets, French and Belgians, had also angered the Americans and the British with his decision to launch Operation Morthor against the rebel leaders and mercenaries in Katanga.

The US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, told one of the secretary general's aides that President Kennedy was "extremely upset" and was threatening to withdraw support from the UN. The UK , Rusk said, was "equally upset".

At the end of his investigation Björkdahl is still not sure who killed Hammarskjöld, but he is fairly certain why he was killed: "It's clear there were a lot of circumstances pointing to possible involvement by western powers. The motive was there – the threat to the west's interests in Congo's huge mineral deposits. And this was the time of black African liberation, and you had whites who were desperate to cling on.

"Dag Hammarskjöld was trying to stick to the UN charter and the rules of international law. I have the impression from his telegrams and his private letters that he was disgusted by the behaviour of the big powers."

Historians at the Foreign Office said they could not comment. British officials believe that, at this late date, no amount of research would conclusively prove or disprove what they see as conspiracy theories that have always surrounded Hammarskjöld's death.

PRNewsWire : National Geographic Channel Presents Never-Before-Heard Revelations from U.S. Authorities on Plot to Blow Up Almost 10 Passenger Jets

National Geographic Channel Presents Never-Before-Heard Revelations from U.S. Authorities on Plot to Blow Up Almost 10 Passenger Jets

The Liquid Bomb Plot Presents Exclusive Interviews With CIA and Homeland Security Agents on the Chilling and Tense Global Surveillance Operation That Uncovered a Plot to Kill More Than 2,000 People

August 16, 2011

The Liquid Bomb Plot Premieres This Sunday, August 21, 2011, at 9 P.M. EDT/PDT on National Geographic Channel

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the summer of 2006, as many as 18 conspirators planned to simultaneously blow up almost 10 airplanes by bringing hydrogen peroxide-injected soda-bottles-turned-bombs onto flights bound from London to the U.S. and Canada. Now, National Geographic Channel (NGC) — with unprecedented access to undercover agents and top officials from the CIA, Homeland Security and British Counter-Terror Command — goes inside the true story behind the largest and most sophisticated terrorism plot since September 11, 2001, which changed airline security measures around the world.

The Liquid Bomb Plot details how a threat that began as a British counterterrorist investigation evolved into a global emergency. In the U.S., President Bush's administration, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security worked feverishly to protect America from an attack on the scale of 9/11.

With remarkable access to the highest-level officials involved in foiling the terrorists — some of whom have given NGC their only interview on the plot — the complete details behind the operation are revealed. Interviews include, from the U.S., General Michael Hayden, former director, CIA; Michael Chertoff, former secretary, Department of Homeland Security; Robert Grenier, former Islamabad station chief, CIA; Kip Hawley, former director, Transportation Security Administration; and Charlie Allen, chief intelligence officer, Department of Homeland Security. Top U.K. interviews include Lord John Reid, former home secretary and former defense secretary, Britain; Andy Hayman, former assistant commissioner for specialist operations, Metropolitan Police; and Peter Clarke, OBE, former national co-coordinator of terrorist investigations, Metropolitan Police.

Now, for the first time, U.S. officials recount how they essentially forced the hand of the British to arrest the suspected terrorists ahead of schedule by making a secret trip to Pakistan. General Michael Hayden was working closely with the British government on Operation Overt, the largest surveillance operation in U.K history, with more than 200 agents involved in surveillance alone, not to mention the senior officials on both sides of the pond monitoring the situation.

General Hayden discusses on camera for the only time how he visited Pakistan and met with the head of the Pakistan Intelligence Agency without alerting the British, who had requested more time to gather evidence. During Hayden's trip, Rashid Rauf, the key Al Qaeda operative in the plot, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities, thus compelling the British to move into the "arrest phase" ahead of plan before those involved found out they might be compromised.

"The British had always suspected the Americans were behind Rauf's arrest, but this is the first and only time a senior U.S. figure has discussed the arrest publicly," explains Executive Producer Louise Norman, who worked for more than a year to gain access to the true details behind the terror plot from both the U.S. and British governments. "The Liquid Bomb Plot is by far the most comprehensive, detailed report on how this incredible terror plot was foiled. I thought I knew the full story, but what happened behind the scenes has never been fully reported until now."

The resulting arrests led to 11 terrorism-related convictions and a mountain of evidence, including 26,000 exhibits from 102 property searches, 80 seized computers and related devices, and 15,000 CDs, 500 disks and 14,000 gigs of data.

The arrests also made news around the world and changed air travel in the most substantial way since 9/11—including passengers not being allowed to go through airport security with more than 3.4 ounces of liquid.

For more information, visit www.natgeotv.com.

SOURCE National Geographic Channel

National Geographic : Pakistan Undercover * Facts

Pakistan Undercover * Facts

Next Prime Time Airing Mon Aug 22

Founded in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency remains one of America's strongest defenses against terror and foreign threats. The attacks of September 11 focused the CIA on finding the persons responsible and preventing other attacks on the nation. Learn more about the origins of the CIA and how its operations today have helped protect us:

* The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the precursor to the CIA, formed during World War II.

* The colloquial term “agent” for members of the CIA conducting clandestine operations is a misnomer; the actual term is CIA Officer. Agents are foreign nationals who are recruited by an officer and are traitors to their own countries.

* The CIA headquarters are located in an area of Virginia that was once called Langley. Although this area was renamed McLean in 1910, the neighborhood surrounding the CIA is still referred to as Langley. Initial construction on the headquarters began in 1959 and was completed in 1961.

* The Security Service, frequently referred to as MI5 (Military Intelligence section 5), is the UK's intelligence agency. Established in 1909, it underwent four name changes before becoming the Security Service in 1931.

* Human Intelligence or “humint” is a critical component of espionage, in which information is gathered and provided by human sources.

* The function of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, has been likened to that of the CIA. It was formed in the early days of Pakistan's independence in 1948. There is evidence that ISI operatives have ties with militant networks working against Western interests. Some ISI members were allegedly involved in the planning of the 2008 Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul, a claim that Pakistan denies.

* The August 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” provides a substantive warning of threats posed by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda a month before the attacks on 9/11. A redacted copy of the brief was made public on April 10, 2004. With the help of computer software programs, cryptographers at a conference in Switzerland suggested it was highly probable that the word ‘Egyptian’ was redacted in the following sentence: “An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [redacted] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.”

* Rashid Rauf was reportedly killed in a UAV strike in 2008. However, British Intelligence sources question whether Rauf is really dead. Some sources insist that he was involved in the Easter Manchester bomb plot of April 2009.

* Waterboarding is not a new interrogation technique. In fact, the method was used as early as the Spanish Inquisition.

* Abu Zubaydah still remains in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To date, no formal charges have been brought against him.

* The CIA has a history of interesting but failed projects. One such endeavor involved psychics who attempted “remote viewing” of covert foreign military facilities. Another operation, “Acoustic Kitty,” hoped to develop a mobile listening technique by implanting trained cats with microphones. The first such cat was released and promptly run over by a taxicab.

* The technique known as “dead drop” allows two parties to transfer goods or information without meeting in person. Former CIA officer Aldrich Ames used the method to interact with the Russian foreign intelligence agency. He made specific chalk marks on a mailbox on 37th and R St. NW. in Washington D.C., to arrange a meeting.

* A false flag operation is an intentional effort to mislead either the public or a detainee. In one account of Zubaydah's interrogation, CIA officers allegedly tricked him into thinking he had been turned over to the Saudi Arabian government.

* Some of the CIA gadgetry that exists in the movies has a real life counterpart. In 2000, the CIA built a swimming robot catfish named "Charlie." Other gadgets of interest include a remote-controlled dragonfly and pigeons fitted with cameras.

* The “liquid bomb plot” that was thwarted in August 2006 exposed a lack of readiness and detection capability for that type of explosive and ushered in a new set of security restrictions for traveling with liquids.

WaPo : Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud

Elaborate ruse behind vast Kabul Bank fraud

By Joshua Partlow | June 30, 2011

KABUL — The top two officials of Kabul Bank used fake names, forged documents, fictitious companies and secret records as part of an elaborate ruse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to shareholders and top Afghan officials, according to newly obtained documents and interviews.

The scheme overseen by Sherkhan Farnood, the bank’s former chairman, and Khaililullah Frouzi, the chief executive, helped to cover up a vast disbursal of funds to Afghanistan’s ruling elite, the documents and interviews with bank insiders as well as U.S. and Afghan officials show. Among the major recipients was Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, who allegedly received $22 million in loans; some parliament members, warlords and cabinet ministers, including Mohammed Fahim, Afghanistan’s first vice president, are alleged to have received smaller sums.

Farnood and Frouzi were detained Wednesday night in the first high-level arrests since the scandal began. Both deny responsibility, and neither has been charged with a crime, but Afghanistan’s attorney general, Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, said in a brief interview that the evidence against them is “quite clear.’’

The documents, from the Afghan government and from the bank, provide the most detailed account yet of how the fraud was carried out in the years before it was discovered in 2010, forcing the Afghan government to take over the bank, split it in two, dissolve the shareholders’ assets and spend more than $800 million to bail it out.

The crisis at Kabul Bank has shaken confidence in Afghanistan’s financial system and caused the lapse of the International Monetary Fund’s line of credit, which has stymied tens of millions of dollars of foreign aid to the country. Now the job of recovering as much as possible of the $912 million in loans amounts to perhaps the most serious task for President Hamid Karzai’s government outside of fighting the Taliban.

Without a successful resolution of Kabul Bank’s problems, said one senior U.S. official, Afghanistan could face “the collapse of the banking sector.”

Senior prosecutors in Afghanistan announced the arrests of Farnood and Frouzi several days after a special commission, established by President Karzai last year to investigate charges of improper loans and financial mismanagement at the bank, completed its work and forwarded its findings privately to the government. The chairman of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, fled to Virginia this week and declared that his life was in danger because he had revealed the names of prominent loan recipients.

Frouzi could not be reached for comment for this article. But in an interview in May in Kabul Bank headquarters, Farnood called himself a “scapegoat” for a broader conspiracy of government and business leaders in which, he said, Frouzi had played a big part. Farnood, a world-class poker player, acknowledged that the bank had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Afghanistan’s Central Bank from discovering the extent of the unsecured insider lending.

To ensure that Central Bank regulators remained compliant and incurious, Farnood and another former executive said, Frouzi had paid monthly bribes to central bank officials.

But Farnood, who asserts that the illegal loans and bribes took place without his knowledge when he was out of Afghanistan, said others also bore significant responsibility. “People need to know who were the real criminals here,” he said. “At the end of the day, people need to know where the money has gone.”

Following the money

After the crisis broke out last August, Kabul Bank’s employees combed through bank records in an effort to document who received Kabul Bank’s money.

After reviewing these records, the Afghan government alleged that Farnood illegally received loans totaling $497.1 million in the name of 163 companies, while Frouzi took $79.6 million associated with 37 companies, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post. (Farnood said that he did not end up with the vast majority of the money but that bank loans in his name were given to other people.)

To facilitate these transactions, Kabul Bank relied on Shaheen Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer business that Farnood owned before starting Kabul Bank and that had representatives inside the bank’s headquarters. To skirt regulations about loans to insiders such as shareholders that exceeded legal limits, the bank issued loans in various names and transferred money to Shaheen Exchange, which would then reroute the money back to Afghanistan and keep records of the actual recipients, according to several former bank executives and shareholders.

Among the recipients, the documents show, was Mahmoud Karzai. The documents show that the $22.2 million he borrowed was recorded as 10 separate loans under names such as Abdul Rahim, Dawood and Sultan Mohammad Hafizullah LTD.

Mahmoud Karzai has acknowledged receiving loans, but said that he was unaware of the misleading practices and that he has now paid back all he owes, about one-third of the $22 million. He said he is not responsible for about $14 million because the sum includes a villa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, owned by Farnood and shares of Kabul Bank that the government has stripped from him.

“They were probably thinking I was not supposed to get a loan so they put in these different names. They did this illegal stuff for all the loans,” Mahmoud Karzai said in an interview.

These lending practices raised red flags within the bank at least two years before the Central Bank takeover last August. Employees in the credit department regularly encountered loan files with missing documents, including absent business licenses and audited financial reports and sent warnings to the leadership about the problems.

Managers ignored the procedures for determining borrowers’ risks. “Whenever I sent any file with a high-risk rating,” one former bank employee recalled, “they’d send it back and say I had to change it to medium or low. So I did that.”

Internal warnings

To create a veneer of legitimacy to fictional loans, financial documents were fabricated for front companies, according to two former bank employees.

In February 2010, six months before the Central Bank would take action, an internal memo addressed to Farnood called the loan portfolio “less than satisfactory.” The memo described the loans as sanctioned “without any proper scrutiny” and said that they were serving “vested, influential, and [concocted] interested parties which needs to be scrutinized at the highest level possible.”

The depth of the bank’s problems, first reported in The Post in February 2010, spooked the bank’s leadership and shareholders. The day after the article, Frouzi’s own Kabul Bank account reached its apex, $19 million. By July 4, it had been largely emptied, never again exceeding $3,000.

Despite the internal turmoil, the loans kept flowing. On July 20, 2010, an employee in the credit department wrote to Farnood about his concerns over being pressured to issue 71 loans that had no documentation. Farnood was warned that such loans were illegal and put “the bank at great risk and in particular me.”

The employee asked Farnood to instruct management to block the loans. “Please treat this mail in good spirit and take necessary action as these practices will lead to collapse of Kabul Bank, Officials and the Banking Industry,” he wrote.

Farnood did not write back. In his defense, Farnood said he was rarely in Kabul and left all authority for day-to-day operations to Frouzi.

Several people involved with the bank disagreed, saying the two men made all key decisions together. The shareholders did not hold meetings. One former executive said: “Sherkhan’s attitude was very simple, it’s like the mafia. ‘I’m the boss. I call you and tell you and you execute.’ You become an integral part of his activities.”

“He is the main perpetrator,” Mahmoud Karzai said of Farnood. “He is the architect of the entire episode.”

The daunting challenge

Among other prominent Afghan officials listed in bank documents as having received loans is Fahim, who is the first vice president and is identified as “Marshal Fahim,” and is said to have received $373,928. Others listed include Zalmai Rasoul, the foreign minister, $105,190; and Younis Qanooni, the former parliament speaker, $1.27 million.

Farnood did not dispute the figures but said they painted an incomplete picture, as bribes and other payments to officials were often recorded as expenses and the recipients not identified in the books by name.

The officials all denied they benefited illegally from Kabul Bank; those who acknowledged receiving loans said they paid them back. A person close to Fahim said that the Kabul Bank money was used to finance his vice presidential campaign in 2009 but that he has not received any money since. An aide to Fahim who uses only a first name, Gulbuddin, said “by no means has he borrowed any money from Kabul Bank or any other bank.’’

Rasoul said through a spokesman that he borrowed money from the bank but paid it back on time. He did not disclose the amount. An aide denied that Qanooni took the $1.27 million from Kabul Bank and said Qanooni would not be available for comment. Qanooni has said in the past that he did not receive gifts but received some donations from Kaubl Bank executives for his parliamentary campaign.

The challenge of fixing Kabul Bank has posed a daunting task for the Afghan government. It has responded, under international pressure, by stripping the shareholders of their ownership, putting the bank into receivership and breaking it into two parts: the “New Kabul Bank” for depositors and functioning loans, and another part functioning as a collection agency for the bad loans.

Under a warrant from the attorney general’s office, Interpol last month put Shokrullah Shokran, a cousin of Farnood’s who was the former deputy chief executive and has left Afghanistan, on a wanted list. In an attempt to follow the money amid competing versions by bank executives, an outside firm has also begun a forensic audit of the bank.

Some borrowers have refused repayment, and the government has collected less than $100 million. The arrests of Farnood and Frouzi on Wednesday were the most significant sign yet that the government was serious about prosecution.

“It’s a ridiculous situation,” said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, the deputy justice minister who is on a committee to look into Kabul Bank’s problems. “You can’t trust anybody.”

Correspondent Pamela Constable and special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

NYT : 3 Men Draw 25-Year Terms In Synagogue Bomb Plot

3 Men Draw 25-Year Terms In Synagogue Bomb Plot

By BENJAMIN WEISER | June 29, 2011

Three of the four men convicted in a plot to bomb synagogues in Riverdale in the Bronx were sentenced to 25 years in prison on Wednesday by a judge in Manhattan, who rejected the government’s request for life sentences.

In doing so, the judge, Colleen McMahon of United States District Court, imposed the minimum sentence. She also reiterated concerns that the government’s investigation had raised troubling questions about its tactics and its use of a cooperating witness who posed as a terrorist.

But the judge, who had refused to dismiss charges on grounds of government misconduct, said the men were “prepared to do real violence,” even though the plot had been a government-created sting operation that resulted in no injuries or deaths.

“What you attempted to do was beyond despicable,” she said. There was no doubt in her mind, she added, that whatever religious or political intent they had had was minor compared with their desire for money.

“You were not religious or political martyrs,” she said. “You were thugs for hire, pure and simple.”

The three defendants who were sentenced were James Cromitie, 45; Onta Williams, 35; and David Williams IV, 30, all of Newburgh, N.Y.

The sentencing of a fourth defendant, Laguerre Payen, has been postponed pending the result of a psychiatric review.

All four men were convicted in October 2010 in a case that relied on a government informer who, posing as a Pakistani terrorist, spent months recording discussions with the defendants about placing bombs outside synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood, and firing Stinger missiles at military transport planes at Stewart International Airport near Newburgh.

The charges related to the missiles carried the 25-year mandatory minimum prison term. Other counts, including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States, carried maximum life sentences.

Mr. Cromitie first met the informer, Shahed Hussain, in June 2008 outside a mosque in Newburgh; at some point, Mr. Cromitie made anti-Semitic remarks, and indicated he wanted to do “something” to America, prosecutors have said. Mr. Cromitie, they said, later recruited the other defendants to assist in the plot.

The men were arrested on May 20, 2009, after Mr. Cromitie, with the others acting as lookouts, placed what they thought were bombs — they were fakes — outside two Riverdale synagogues.

In asking that Judge McMahon impose life sentences, a federal prosecutor, David Raskin, cited evidence that the defendants believed ball bearings would be used in the bombs to make them more lethal.

“These defendants held those ball bearings in their hands and marveled at them,” Mr. Raskin said in court, calling their crimes “as serious a set of offenses as is imaginable.”

Judge McMahon, in her May ruling, found that Mr. Cromitie ultimately “became an enthusiastic jihadist” who, while not wanting to blow himself up, “showed no compunction” about placing bombs at the synagogues.

Mr. Cromitie apologized to the judge on Wednesday for “letting myself be caught up in a sting like this one.”

“I’ve never been a terrorist and I never will be a terrorist,” he said.

The two other men also apologized. “I’m sorry I ruined my life,” Onta Williams said.

Lawyers for all three men, who had claimed entrapment, said they would file appeals. Mr. Cromitie’s lawyers had portrayed him as an impoverished, disaffected, unsophisticated man who had a long criminal record and “a big mouth.” They contended he was incapable of carrying out such a crime, and had been motivated by the informer’s promises of financial reward.

Judge McMahon called Mr. Cromitie “utterly inept” before she sentenced him.

“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” she said. At one point, she also referred to Mr. Cromitie’s “fantasy terror operation.”

The judge refused defense requests that she ask the Federal Bureau of Prisons not to imprison the men in the same kind of extremely restrictive setting that is typically used for terrorists, as in the so-called Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

Judge McMahon said that the nature of the men’s crimes and the length of their sentences “virtually guarantee” that they would be imprisoned under the harshest possible conditions.

“I imagine that you will be far from here, and quite isolated,” she said. “I doubt that you will receive any training or rehabilitative treatment of any sort. Your crimes were terrible. Your punishment will indeed be severe.”

Moreover, she added, “25 years in the sort of conditions I anticipate you are facing is easily the equivalent of life in other conditions.”

APN : For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

By GLORIA TATUM | April 30, 2011

With additional reporting by Matthew Cardinale, News Editor.

(APN) ATLANTA -- It will be ten years since September 11, 2001, in just a few months. And yet some of the most basic and fundamental questions about what happened that day--based upon physics and the forensic science of structural engineering--in the collapse of three towers at the World Trade Center in New York, still linger.

Groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (A&E), founded by Richard Gage; and We Are Change Atlanta want to re-examine the evidence regarding the collapse of all three buildings.

First, the group is especially interested in new evidence of un-ignited fragments of nano-engineered thermitic pyrotechnics found in debris from the Twin Towers. The presence of these fragments would be consistent with explosives having been used in a controlled demolition.

Second, the group is also troubled that, in their view, official reports by the US government appear to defy the fundamental laws of physics.

[Before delving into these two sets of issues, an editorial note is in order. The purpose of this article is not to hypothesize what the real story behind the Towers' collapse is, but to address what we find to be reasonable and compelling questions about the government's official account.]

These issues will be addressed at an upcoming event in Atlanta. Gage; former US Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA); Luke Rudkowski, founder of We Are Change; and April Gallop, Pentagon survior will speak at First Iconium Baptist Church in East Atlanta on May 21, 2011, from 4-9pm.

DISCOVERY OF NANO-THERMITE

First, the discovery of thermite and nano-thermitic composites in the dust and debris following the collapse of the three buildings was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal in 2009, as proof that explosives were used in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Jeremy Lynes, We Are Change Atlanta, explained nano-thermite to Atlanta Progressive News, "Thermite has been around over a century and refers to aluminum's highly energetic reaction to iron when in a certain form. When ignited, thermite releases large amounts of energy and will destroy iron's integrity fast. Nano refers to the modern technology of constructing materials much smaller, on the supra-molecular scale, than previously possible, creating chemical reactions never-before imaginable. Nano-thermite is an advanced type of thermite which is more explosive and gives a faster complete burn."

The 2009 article was titled "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," and was written by Niels Harrit, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Jeffrey Farrer, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University; Steven Jones; Kevin Ryan; Frank Legge; Daniel Farnsworth; Gregg Roberts; James Gourley; and Bradley Larsen.

"The destruction of three skyscrapers (WTC 1, 2 and 7) on September 11, 2001 was an immensely tragic catastrophe that not only impacted thousands of people and families directly, due to injury and loss of life, but also provided the motivation for numerous expensive and radical changes in domestic and foreign policy. For these and other reasons, knowing what really happened that fateful day is of grave importance," the authors wrote.

The collapse of the towers generated a surprisingly large amount of fine, toxic dust. Four different Manhattan residents took samples of this dust and later responded to a call for such samples.

The authors conduct a variety of highly technical tests upon the small red and gray chips they found in the dust, to conclude as follows: "Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."

The publication of this article was highly controversial, leading to the resignation of editor-in-chief, Marie-Paule Pileni, who had no specific scientific rebuttal to the article. And for many activists, architects, and engineers who had already believed that explosives were involved in the collapse of the three towers, it confirmed their suspicions.

ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS SEE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION

The US government's official explanation of how terrorists came to hijack two planes and fly them into two buildings is provided in the 9/11 Commission Report. But its explanation of how those two plane collisions led to the buildings later collapsing into their own footprint is provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The NIST official report on 9/11 states that a "total progressive collapse or disproportionate collapse" occurred in WTC 1, 2, and 7, as in each case the entire building above the damaged area moved downward as a single unit.

Three buildings collapsed on 9/11, although only two were hit by a plane.

A growing chorus of activists, scholars, architects, and engineers--including several groups and activists in Atlanta--have been questioning the official account by NIST of how the three towers fell.

In WTC 1, NIST states fires weakened the core columns and caused the floors on the south side to sag. Other neighboring columns became overloaded and columns on the south wall buckled causing the top section of the building to tilt and begin its descent.

In WTC 2, NIST states fires caused the floors on the east side of the building to buckle and sag, which pulled neighboring columns and caused them to buckle causing the top section to tilt and begin its descent.

In WTC 7, NIST states fire-induced thermal expansion of the floor system surrounding column 79 led to the collapse of floor 13 which triggered a cascade of floor failures.

Last September, Derek Johnson, Structural Steel Inspector & Mechanical Engineer, visited Atlanta to make a multi-media presentation at the historic Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown, which called into question the official government report on the collapse of WTC 1, 2, and 7. 250 people attended the event hosted by We Are Change Atlanta.

Johnson's presentation blasted holes in NIST's report of a fire-induced total progressive collapse.

"NIST's conclusion of a fire-induced collapse of building 7 is based on computer simulation and not on physical evidence that can be tested and confirmed by others. NIST manipulated the computer inputs by using unrealistic values for the weight, strength, and flexibility of steel and concrete in their model," Johnson said.

"The model NIST used was more representative of Lincoln Logs that fall like a house of cards than the very strong welted and bolted large steel beams used throughout WTC 7," Johnson explained.

"The three buildings that were destroyed on 9/11 were designed and built using fire resistance plans that were thorough and continually updated, and that ensured the buildings could not fail from fires," Johnson said.

WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and received only minor damage from the falls of WTC 1 and 2. WTC 7 did exhibit all the characteristics of classic controlled demolition with explosives, such as rapid onset of collapse, sounds of explosions, free-fall acceleration, and collapsing completely in its own footprint with expanding pyroclastic dust clouds.

WTC 7 housed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) files relating to numerous Wall Street investigations including Enron, Citigroup, and WorldCom. All files and evidence from government agencies in WTC7 such as the CIA, Secret Service, DOD, and INS were destroyed.

Other high-rise building with much larger, hotter, and longer-lasting fires have never collapsed. WTC 4, which was next to WTC 2, was destroyed by tons of falling and buring debris with large permanent deformations and sagging of many beams, but it did not collapse.

WTC 5 was also destroyed by extensive fire-related damage, but it did not collapse.

Johnson reported "NIST would not release over three thousand documents on their investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 to Ron Brookman, a structural engineer... NIST's reason for refusing to release the documents was that it might jeopardize public safety."

"This is the first time in history that a steel and concrete framed building has collapsed due to office fires where one damaged column caused a total progressive collapse of the entire building at near free fall speed," Mike Smith, an Atlanta-based electrical engineer and member of A&E, said.

"If the official story of the collapse of the towers is true," Mr. Lynes said, "then the top floors, above the plane's impact, acted like a pile driver of incredible pressure, forcing its way to the ground through the other ninety floors at free fall speed--impossible, according to laws of conservation of energy. Therefore, after this demolishing, the top twenty or thirty stories would be sitting atop the rubble intact. Since they were not, it shows they were not the cause of the collapse."

The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am and the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am, while building 7 collapsed at 5:21 pm. The WTC7 collapsed in under seven seconds, while The Twin Towers collapsed somewhere between 8.5 and fifteen seconds.

"The accelerated speeds of collapses evident in videos of all three buildings prove that these are not progressive collapses as the government contends. In a progressive collapse a failed structure will encounter resistance--thousands of tons of steel and concrete--and exhibit jolts which will slow down, not accelerate, its decent and will not disintegrate symmetrically into its own footprint. The government's miraculous steel and concrete disintegration theory is fraudulent science. Only in a controlled implosion, using explosives to remove the internal support system, will you get the free-fall speed and vertical decent leaving only a pile of dust and rubble," Smith said.

"The rate of free fall or the gravitational acceleration of Earth is 9.8 meters per second per second, or 9.8/s^2 without air friction coefficients or drag. It is impossible for a gravitational collapse to proceed so destructively through a path of such great resistance in anywhere near free-fall time of 8.5 to 15 seconds," Smith explained.

In addition to the speed and symmetry of the collapse of WTC 7 and the Twin Towers, many eye witnesses, firefighters, and police officers reported hearing violent explosions from all three building before they fell.

"Amazing, incredible... For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down," Dan Rather of CBS News said, for example, according to a clip posted widely on Youtube.

LOCAL 9/11 TRUTH ACTIVISM

The Pink Elephant Collective, a group of local artists, painted a 9/11 Pink Elephant Mural on the wall at Euclid and Colquitt Avenues in Atlanta's Little Five Points during the summer of 2010. The mural shows several pink elephants drudging through oil, with the words "9-11 Truth" and "Nano-thermite?"

Camron Wiltshire, a member of the Pink Elephant Collective, said, "We painted the mural as a means to connect directly with people on the street and to have an authentic discussion of the facts. It is a visual invocation to awaken the heroic within us all and look at the evidence being brought forward by concerned citizens all over the world."

"The US is now immersed in two illegal wars of occupation and 9/11 is given as the righteous precedence, for our invasion, destruction, and occupation of these sovereign countries. Over one million innocent Iraqi men, women, and children have been murdered by our tax funded military occupation, not to mention the thousands of US soldiers and public servants. If we can be brave and look for ourselves at the evidence, we can begin fixing our country," Wiltshire said.

"The mainstream media is not willing to look at the evidence and spends much of its efforts demonizing or smearing anyone who is speaking out," Wiltshire said.

A CODE OF SILENCE

Since 9/11, there has been a code of silence surrounding any questions towards the accuracy of the US government's official account. This code of silence has been antithetical to the very values of freedom of speech, democracy, and open inquiry which are fundamental to our country.

Indeed, when former US Rep. McKinney asked in a 2002 radio interview what the President knew and when he know it, she was viciously attacked, and this led to her electoral defeat by former US Rep. Denise Majette (D-GA) in 2002.

A February 2010 article in the American Behavioral Scientist, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” by Lance deHaven-Smith, Professor of Public Administration at Florida State University, examines the characteristics of what he refers to as State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD). SCAD is a term intended to replace the term conspiracy theory, because government agencies frequently engage in illegal conspiracies as a proven fact.

DeHaven-Smith includes 9/11 as a suspected SCAD in a list of actual and suspected SCADs.

SCADs involve high-level government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power, according to deHaven-Smith. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

“Research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs... pre-existing beliefs can interfere with SCADs inquiry, especially in regards to September 11, 2001," Psychologist Laurie Manwell, University of Guelph, wrote, also in an article in the same February 2010 issue of ABS.

Professor Steven Hoffman, visiting scholar at the University of Buffalo, expanded upon this in his ABS article, “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification.”

“Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information," Hoffman wrote.

The present APN article is intended to increase citizens' awareness of the lingering questions, architectural analyses, and new physical evidence as it relates to 9/11. It is hoped that this article may advance public discourse and lead to an open conversation, including in the comments section of this article.

Views and News from Norway : Terror cell probe hits crucial phase

Terror cell probe hits crucial phase

February 7, 2011

An international probe of a terrorism case connecting Norway with the UK and the US is coming to a head, with authorities keen to gain access to US evidence related to an alleged Norwegian terror cell.

Newspaper Aftenposten reports that the Norwegian police intelligence service (Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste, PST) has requested information from the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that they believe links Mikael Davud, a Norwegian accused of heading a terrorist group in the country, to Abid Naseer, a Briton facing extradition to the US who allegedly coordinated attacks on targets in Britain, the US and Norway during 2009. Davud, Naseer and Najibullah Zazi, who has admitted involvement in the foiled attempt to bomb the New York metro system, are all thought to have maintained contact with the same Al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.

Contact in code

E-mails found on computers owned by the suspects suggest they maintained contact with Al-Qaida members, and apparently used a code in which discussion of weddings, marriage and the weather disguised plans for acts of terrorism. The Americans believe British Al-Qaida commander Rashid Rauf and another senior member, Saleh al-Somali – both of whom were later killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – led the plans of Davud, Naseer and Zazi. The three men are also believed to have been trained in Pakistan.

Norwegian authorities, though, face difficulties in using evidence from foreign security services in court. “There are almost sacred rules for the use of such information,” PST’s Janne Kristiansen told newspaper Aftenposten over the weekend. “It cannot be used in court without permission. If we still use it without permission from the cooperating service, it will hurt further collaboration.”

An Oslo court gave PST eight more weeks in January to question Davud, who reportedly has not been cooperative. The ruling emphasized the testimony of another of the accused, Shawan Bujak, which suggests that the Norwegian terror cell’s target was the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Davud himself has only mentioned the Chinese embassy in Oslo as a possible target, as revenge for Chinese oppression suffered by his family, but this has been rejected by investigators, who have confirmed that the accused did not know the location of the Chinese embassy in Oslo when questioned.

‘No firm plans’

Aftenposten reports that Davud’s own lawyer, Arild Humlen, also confirms this, suggesting that his client had no firm plans for an attack. He believes this weakens the prosecution’s case because “there isn’t any new evidence that strengthens the accusation that the three defendants had entered into any association” with each other. Indeed, documents revealed by Wikileaks, which detail discussions between the US embassy and Norwegian authorities, suggest that PST had, in January, no leads that illuminate the goal of any eventual attack.

In order to convict Davud, Bujak and their other alleged colleague, David Jakobsen, who was released from custody last fall, the prosecutors must convince the court that the men knowingly entered into an alliance with the intention of committing one or more acts of terrorism. After a further custody hearing in March, PST would have until the summer holidays at the latest to conclude their investigation, after which the public prosecutor will decide whether to indict the three suspects.

Long War Journal : US official explains National Counterterrorism Center's view of the enemy

US official explains National Counterterrorism Center's view of the enemy

By Thomas Joscelyn | September 23, 2010

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday, Michael Leiter provided an overview of how his National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) sees the terrorist threat. Leiter highlighted three types of threats: al Qaeda in northern Pakistan, al Qaeda affiliates around the world, and “homegrown” extremists who are inspired by al Qaeda’s “narrative” but do not necessarily receive guidance or assistance from senior al Qaeda leaders.

Leiter said the “range” of terrorist plots over the past year “suggests the threat against the West has become more complex and underscores the challenges of identifying and countering a more diverse array of Homeland plotting.”

Al Qaeda central

Leiter claimed that al Qaeda in Pakistan is “weaker today than at any time since the late 2001 onset of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.” Still, al Qaeda “remains intent” on “attacking the West and continues to prize attacks against the US Homeland and our European allies above all else.”

Al Qaeda launched a plot against the New York City subways last year. In Europe, there have been five “disrupted plots during the past four years,” Leiter told Senators in his written testimony. These include “a plan to attack airliners transiting between the UK and US, a credible plot in Germany, disrupted cells in the UK and Norway, and the disrupted plot to attack a newspaper in Denmark.”

Leiter also cited al Qaeda’s “propaganda efforts” as a substantial threat since “they are intended to inspire additional attacks by motivating sympathizers worldwide to undertake efforts similar to Nidal Hassan’s attack on Fort Hood last fall.”

Al Qaeda’s affiliates

Leiter cited al Qaeda’s “personnel losses” as one reason the core of al Qaeda has been weakened in recent years. Indeed, al Qaeda has lost key leaders due to America’s ongoing drone attacks in northern Pakistan. However, Leiter’s testimony also indicates why al Qaeda has been able to remain a serious threat despite these losses.

If al Qaeda is defined as only Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and their immediate followers in northern Pakistan, then the threat they pose would still be worrisome but not nearly a global menace.

Unfortunately, al Qaeda’s power reaches beyond this narrow band of individuals. Leiter’s testimony confirms, once again, that al Qaeda is the tip of the jihadist spear – the vanguard of a global jihadist movement that shares a common ideology, goals, and resources.

Afghanistan-Pakistan

Inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, al Qaeda’s senior leadership forged close relations with the heads of various jihadist organizations, thereby providing al Qaeda with strategic depth. For example, while Leiter cited the disrupted plot against a newspaper in Denmark as a success against al Qaeda, which is undoubtedly true, he noted that the plot was organized by Mohammed Ilyas Kashmiri, a commander in Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI).

HUJI was originally forged by jihadists committed to fighting the Soviets in the 1980s in Afghanistan. They received support from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, as did most if not all Pakistan-based jihadist organizations. In the 1990s, HUJI expanded its sphere of activity to India and Bangladesh, reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden.

Today, senior HUJI leaders such as Kashmiri actually work with and for bin Laden’s al Qaeda in the global jihadist struggle against America and her allies in Central and South Asia and beyond. In fact, Kashmiri is now a senior al Qaeda commander responsible for external operations – that is, operations against the West.

The same phenomenon can be seen in the disrupted plot against airliners traveling from the UK to the US in 2006, which was also cited by Leiter. Al Qaeda intended to destroy multiple airliners using liquid explosives assembled on board the planes once they were airborne. The plot was modeled after a plan named “Bojinka,” which was conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew Ramzi Yousef in the mid-1990s.

The plan was revived by al Qaeda after KSM’s arrest in 2003. The point man for the operation was Rashid Rauf, a senior member of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). JEM was originally formed with assistance from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment in the 1990s to fight Indian forces inside Kashmir. Like HUJI, JEM leaders serve al Qaeda’s global jihad. Thus, Rauf became one of the key figures in al Qaeda’s external operations wing.

The dossiers of terrorists like Rauf and Kashmiri illustrate that the lines between al Qaeda and other, like-minded jihadist organizations are becoming increasingly blurred.

Leiter cited other relationships in this vein. He called the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), which was responsible for the failed Times Square plot in May, al Qaeda’s “closest ally.” Leiter added, “TTP leaders maintain close ties to senior [al Qaeda] leaders, providing critical support to [al Qaeda] in the FATA and sharing some of the same global violent extremist goals.”

Counterterrorism authorities are “looking closely” at the TTP, as well as the Haqqani Network, “for any indicators of attack planning in the West,” Leiter said. Like the TTP, the Haqqani Network has “close ties” to al Qaeda.

Leiter noted that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), another creation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in the 1990s, “poses a threat to a range of interests in South Asia.” Moreover, LeT’s “involvement in attacks in Afghanistan against US and Coalition forces and provision of support to the Taliban and [al Qaeda] extremists there pose a threat to US and Coalition interests.”

Leiter said that while the LeT has not launched an attack against the West, it “could pose a direct threat to the Homeland and Europe, especially should they collude with [al Qaeda] operatives.”

Yemen, Somalia, North and West Africa, and Iraq

Outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Leiter cited four areas where al Qaeda’s affiliates are a particular concern.

Leiter described Yemen as a “key battleground and potential regional base of operations from which [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP] can plan attacks, train recruits, and facilitate the movement of operatives.” As evidence of the threat posed by AQAP, Leiter cited an assassination attempt on a Saudi prince last August, as well as Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack on Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009.

Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki “played a significant role in” Abdulmutallab’s plotting, Leiter says. According to published reports, Abdulmutallab met with the al Qaeda cleric in Yemen months prior to boarding a Detroit-bound airliner.

Some commentators have tried to distance Shabaab in Somalia from al Qaeda. But Leiter said that East Africa “remains a key locale for al Qaeda associates.” In addition, some Shabaab “leaders share [al Qaeda’s] ideology and publicly have praised Usama bin Ladin and requested further guidance from the group, although Somali nationalist themes are also prevalent in their public statements.”

Leiter also noted that Shabaab “leaders have cooperated closely with a limited number of East Africa-based [al Qaeda] operatives and the Somalia-based training program established by al Shabaab and now deceased [al Qaeda] operative Saleh Nabhan, continues to attract hundreds of violent extremists from across the globe, to include dozens of recruits from the United States.”

“The potential for Somali trainees to return to the United States or elsewhere in the West to launch attacks remains a significant concern,” Leiter explained in his written testimony.

In North and West Africa, al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a “persistent threat to US and other Western interests.” The “primary” threat, Leiter reported, comes from AQIM “conducting kidnap for ransom operations and small-arms attacks, though the group’s execution in July of a French hostage and first suicide bombing attack in Niger earlier this year punctuate AQIM’s lethality and attack range.”

Finally, counterterrorism operations have “continued to pressure” al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and “hinder its external ambitions.” But it remains a “key” al Qaeda affiliate, Leiter reported. “While AQI’s leaders continue to publicly threaten to attack the West, to include the Homeland, their ability to do so has been diminished, although not eliminated.”

Homegrown Sunni extremism

Homegrown Sunni extremist activity has spiked, according to Leiter, with “plots disrupted in New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, Texas, and Illinois during the past year.” Although these plots were “unrelated operationally,” they are “indicative of a collective subculture and a common cause that rallies independent individuals to violence.”

A crucially important part of Leiter’s testimony is his public identification of a “US-specific narrative that motivates individuals to violence.” This narrative, according to Leiter, is “a blend of [al Qaeda] inspiration, perceived victimization, and glorification of past homegrown plotting.”

In his new autobiography, A Journey: My Political Life, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair discusses this “narrative” at length and points out that it is not only a problem in the West, but also throughout the Middle East. Blair writes:

Here is where the root of the problem lies. The extremists are small in number, but their narrative – which sees Islam as the victim of a scornful West externally, and an insufficiently religious leadership internally – has a far bigger hold. …

It is the narrative that has to be assailed. It has to be avowed, acknowledged; then taken on, inside and outside Islam. It should not be respected. It should be confronted, disagreed with, argued against on grounds of politics, security and religion.

Leiter explained that the NCTC is coordinating a number of initiatives within the US government to counter this narrative. For example, the NCTC “helps coordinate the Federal Government’s engagement with Somali American communities” in order to counter radicalization. It is not clear, however, if the NCTC has a comprehensive plan in place to counter the narrative, as Blair argues is necessary.

Leiter cited two specific terrorist attacks in 2009 as examples of the threat posed by homegrown extremism: Major Nidal Malik Hassan’s shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas and Carlos Leon Bledsoe’s attack on an US military recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Leiter said these attacks “serve as stark examples of lone actors inspired by the global violent extremist movement who attacked without oversight or guidance from overseas-based [al Qaeda] elements.”

Leiter’s description does not match the facts of Hassan’s and Bledsoe’s attacks. Maj. Hassan contacted Anwar al Awlaki repeatedly by email to ask about the permissibility of certain acts (e.g. turning against the American Army) under Sharia law. Awlaki gave his blessing to Hassan. Awlaki would later claim in a propaganda video that he was proud to call Hassan one of his “students.” This certainly amounts to guidance.

In a letter to the judge in his case, Bledsoe (who changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad) admitted he was guilty of the “Jihadi attack.” It is at least possible that Bledsoe did receive some “guidance” from overseas actors as he admittedly studied jihad in Yemen, and claimed that he was a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It is not clear how much of Bledsoe’s letter is true, as opposed to bluster. But it is at least plausible that he did consort with al Qaeda or other jihadist organizations in Yemen.

"Homegrown" extremism is undoubtedly a serious security threat. However, it is often poorly defined.