al-Qaida stays connected in number of wa
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| Wed, 08-11-2004 - 12:12pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Bin%20Laden%20In%20Charge
Wednesday, August 11, 2004 · Last updated 6:55 a.m. PT
al-Qaida stays connected in number of ways
By PAUL HAVEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- If Osama bin Laden is directing plans for an attack on the United States - as Washington intelligence officials suspect - his instructions are likely coming out of the craggy mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the back of a donkey or under the shawl of an unassuming-looking villager.
After the arrests of several top lieutenants, bin Laden and his right hand man, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, have learned their lessons well, Pakistani intelligence officials and international terrorism experts say. They don't use satellite or cellular phones, don't trust anyone outside their innermost circle and never come up for air.
Messages from the men likely pass through the hands of many couriers, most of whom have no idea where they originated, before they are turned into e-mails or conveyed by phone calls to other militants.
"If bin Laden wants to convey something, he gives a letter to someone in his circle, who takes it a certain distance and then hands it to someone else, and then someone else until it reaches its final destination. Nobody knows who the letter is from except the first person who is one of bin Laden's most trusted men," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official who has been in on his nation's most sensitive counterterror operations.
The Bush administration believes plans for a terror attack are being directed at the most senior levels of the al-Qaida leadership, including bin Laden, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press in July.
How much input the top men have is open to question, but a Pakistani government official told the AP that several captured al-Qaida men have told authorities they received instructions from bin Laden.
"Probably he is alive, and some al-Qaida suspects captured in Pakistan have talked about receiving verbal messages from him through different channels," he said of bin Laden.
The American and Pakistani officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
There has been no firm intelligence on bin Laden and al-Zawahri's whereabouts since they slipped away during a U.S.-Afghan assault on their mountain hideouts in Tora Bora in late 2001, but they are believed to be hiding in the mountainous no man's land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, protected by deeply conservative tribesmen who share their beliefs.
With the exception of about a half-dozen audio taped messages that the CIA has authenticated as being his voice, there has been virtually no sign of bin Laden since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. That silence has lent him almost a mythic quality, especially among his followers, but officials say he is still very real, and very dangerous.
The Pakistani intelligence official said one of the best leads came with the arrest of al-Qaida's No. 3 man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who had a letter on him that he told interrogators he got directly from bin Laden, and which experts authenticated as being in bin Laden's handwriting.
The letter was apparently personal and destined for several of bin Laden's relatives in Iran, the official said. He would give no further details.
"Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said he got the letter directly from bin Laden and was supposed to give it to someone else and it would eventually go to Iran," the official said. He said the letter proves bin Laden was alive as recently as early 2003. Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan on March 1, 2003 and is now in U.S. custody.
Several top al-Qaida fugitives arrested in Pakistan have allegedly been tracked using satellite intercepts, including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh. A tribal elder accused of sheltering foreign militants was killed in a bombing in Waziristan on June 18, hours after he used a satellite phone to call media to denounce the government.
The importance of discretion has become even more apparent in recent weeks following the July 13 arrest of an alleged al-Qaida computer whiz named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan. Intelligence gleaned from Khan and his computer has led to counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, and dozens of suspects have been arrested.
Khan's computer contained a trove of information, including coded e-mails to other operatives. He is said to have cooperated with authorities and sent e-mails while in custody to militants so that authorities could arrest them.
Armed with electronic intelligence, raids in Pakistan have netted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian with a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, and at least 19 other suspects.
Authorities in Dubai detained Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a Pakistani with close links to bin Laden who ran an Afghan training camp through which some 3,500 militants passed. In Britain, a dozen suspects have been picked up, including a senior al-Qaida operative identified as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi who was reportedly involved in surveillance on financial institutions in Washington and New York.
"Terrorists, like the rest of us, are finding out that they cannot live without the Internet. It is very difficult to keep in touch with a lot of people over large distances without it," said Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
He said al-Qaida operatives have used encrypted e-mails and other techniques, like hiding messages inside photographs, to conceal communications. But they can't always hide, and when authorities get diskettes or hard drives, they can deal terror groups a major blow. "The technology that al-Qaida has used so effectively can also be its Achilles heel," he said.
Pakistani authorities say bin Laden and al-Zawahri have shielded themselves, staying clear of the chatter between lower ranking operatives. Bin Laden is seen mostly as a financial backer and religious inspiration to his fighters, making regular communication unnecessary.
"Whenever we get hold of high profile al-Qaida activists there is a great deal of euphoria and excitement, and it leads to a lot of optimism ... that it will lead us to the eventual prize - the apprehension of Osama and al-Zawahri," said Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat. "But we have to be very cautious. This network ... remains a potent threat to Pakistan, and to civilized humanity."
The Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged that the lack of solid intelligence has been frustrating.
"You keep waving your sword in the air and you hope a bird will come along and you will hit it," he said. "It's a matter of luck."
---
Associated Press Writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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"al-Qaida operatives have used encrypted e-mails and other techniques, like hiding messages inside photographs, to conceal communications. But they can't always hide, and when authorities get diskettes or hard drives, they can deal terror groups a major blow. "The technology that al-Qaida has used so effectively can also be its Achilles heel," "
Some of this technology is amazing. What appears to be a pixel in a picture can contain a message. How is someone surposed to search & find
What is this Man Plotting?
A newly revealed summit of terrorists raises fears of a fresh plan to attack the U.S. This bombmaker and pilot could be a key player.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040823-682236,00.html?cnn=yes
It was a gathering of terrorism's elite, and they slipped silently into Pakistan from all over the world in order to attend. From England came Abu Issa al-Hindi, an Indian convert to radical Islam who specializes in surveillance. From an unknown hideout came Adnan el-Shukrijumah, an accomplished Arab Guyanese bombmaker and commercial pilot. And from Queens in New York City came Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who arrived with cash, sleeping bags, ponchos, waterproof socks and other supplies for the mountain-bound jihadis.
The March 2004 terrorist summit in the lawless province of Waziristan, described to TIME by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last week and expounded on by U.S. officials, has become a subject of obsession for authorities in both countries. "The personalities involved, the operations, the fact that a major explosives expert came here and went back," Musharraf said, "all this was extremely significant."
Although some summit participants have been arrested, others are still at large and are considered very dangerous. At least two are believed to have done some of the surveillance of targets in New York City and elsewhere that authorities found out about last month. Some U.S. officials fear that the meeting may have been a pivotal planning session, much the way a 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur was for the 9/11 attacks. "This was a meeting of a bunch of cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do and have an intense desire to inflict an awful lot of pain and suffering on America," says an official familiar with the summit. A senior counterterrorism official said analysts are scrutinizing the recent pattern of enemy activity against timelines of previous attacks. This, he said, has contributed to the worry that at least some members of a strike team are already in the U.S.
Musharraf told TIME that the discovery of the March meeting has exposed the "second string" leadership of al-Qaeda. Summiteer Mohammed Babar, 29, was arrested in Queens in April, shortly after returning from Pakistan. He has been charged with trying to buy materials to make bombs for use in attacks in Britain. Al-Hindi, who is in his mid-30s, is also in custody, in England, having been picked up two weeks ago. U.S. officials say he was in e-mail contact with Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 29, the Pakistani techie whose computer contained much of the material about staging attacks with helicopters and limousines—as first reported in TIME—that led to the decision by U.S. officials two weeks ago to raise the alert level at financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. Al-Hindi had been sent to the U.S. to case economic and "Jewish" targets in New York City, the 9/11 commission stated in its report last month. He also passed along several contacts in the U.S. to senior al-Qaeda leaders in case they "needed help," the commission reported.
The terrorist who worries Washington most is el-Shukrijumah, 29, chiefly because he is still at large but also because he is practically homegrown. Born in Guyana and reared in Miramar, Fla., where his father, a Saudi-Yemeni cleric now deceased, preached hard-line Wahhabism at a small mosque, el-Shukrijumah took computer classes at Broward Community College in Florida. He holds Guyanese and Trinidadian passports, may also have Canadian and Saudi passports and can easily pass for Hispanic. "He speaks English and has the ability to fit in and look innocuous," says an FBI agent. "He could certainly come back here, and nobody would know it." U.S. authorities have put his name on domestic and international watch lists but fear he will travel to Mexico or Canada on phony documents and then sneak across the border into the U.S.
Since last May, when FBI director Robert Mueller held a televised news conference to plead for news of el-Shukrijumah, tips have poured in placing him everywhere from Niagara Falls, N.Y., to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. "He's kind of like Elvis," an intelligence official told TIME. "He seems to pop up all over the place." The last place he can credibly be traced to, however, is Waziristan. FBI agents call el-Shukrijumah the next Atta—after Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the 9/11 attacks. Investigators are trying to learn whether the versatile el-Shukrijumah helped case the buildings featured on recently retrieved computer discs and are hoping al-Hindi can shed more light on what happened at the summit. Exactly what was discussed isn't known yet, officials say.
An aide to President George W. Bush came close last week to boasting that authorities had busted up more than just a plot. "I believe that the string of arrests represents a strategic success against al-Qaeda as opposed to the wrapping up tactically of a single cell," said a senior White House official. But others found that view premature. "We know we've disrupted a plot, but we don't know that we've derailed it," said a senior counterterrorism hand. "And we certainly don't know that it's the only plot."
An aide to President George W. Bush came close last week to boasting that authorities had busted up more than just a plot. "I believe that the string of arrests represents a strategic success against al-Qaeda as opposed to the wrapping up tactically of a single cell," said a senior White House official. But others found that view premature. "We know we've disrupted a plot, but we don't know that we've derailed it," said a senior counterterrorism hand. "And we certainly don't know that it's the only plot."
Nothing new there!
"an individual who could blend right in"
He looks very benign.
More on that March 2004 terrorist meeting...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Pakistan%20al%20Qaida
Monday, August 16, 2004 · Last updated 1:04 p.m. PT
Terror suspect visited Pakistan in March
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A senior al-Qaida operative captured in Britain this month had traveled in March to a militant hideout near the Pakistan-Afghan border and met with other terror suspects, officials said Monday.
But Pakistan's army spokesman dismissed a report that the meeting - alleged to have taken place around the time a major military offensive was launched against al-Qaida fugitives - plotted new attacks on the United States.
Abu Eisa al-Hindi, accompanied by an explosives expert, secretly visited the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan in March before "discreetly going back to London," said the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. He did not identify the explosives expert.
The spokesman said Pakistan got the information about the visit of al-Hindi, a British citizen, from Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al-Qaida computer engineer who met with al-Hindi. Khan, a Pakistani, was captured by Pakistani intelligence agents on July 13 in the eastern city of Lahore.
His capture triggered a wave of arrests. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said Monday that in the past four weeks, authorities have arrested 51 Pakistanis and 12 foreigners for involvement in various acts of terrorism.
Among the foreigners was Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani - a Tanzanian wanted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa that killed more than 200 people - who was arrested on July 25 in eastern Pakistan. Some Pakistanis involved in last year's two failed assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and last month's suicide attack on prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz have also been arrested, Hayyat said. Aziz escaped unharmed, but nine people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the town of Fateh Jang.
Information from Khan was also shared with Britain, leading to the arrest of al-Hindi and 12 other suspects on Aug. 3.
Al-Hindi is a veteran of the Islamic militant struggle against Indian forces in Kashmir. He is also reported to have worked as an instructor at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
He is suspected of authoring surveillance documents recovered from Khan and Ghailani's computers of five financial buildings in the United States. The computers contained photographs, maps and plans of Heathrow airport and other potential terrorist targets in Britain.
The unearthing of this intelligence prompted the United States to declare a terror alert. Although the surveillance of the U.S. financial institutions appeared to date back as far as 2000, the Bush administration said it was another sign al-Qaida might be planning attacks.
Time magazine reported on its Web site Sunday that al-Hindi held a "terrorist summit" in South Waziristan in March with other al-Qaida operatives - including an American of Pakistani descent, Mohammed Junaid Babar, who was arrested in New York in April and linked to a terrorism plot in Britain.
The report cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying they feared the meeting could have been a planning session for attacks on the United States. It quoted Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, as saying the meeting was "extremely significant."
However, Sultan said that in his interview Musharraf said "nothing about the possibility of new attacks in the United States."
The spokesman stressed the surveillance information gleaned from Khan's computer was dated.
"Let me clarify, none of this was new. They were old maps and old plans," he said.
Sultan would not elaborate on the significance of al-Hindi's visit to Pakistan - which came in the same month that Pakistan launched a major military operation against al-Qaida militants in South Waziristan.
Soon after that operation began on March 16, Musharraf revealed that a "high-value" target was believed to be hiding there. Pakistani officials divulged that the target was thought to be bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.
However, when the operation ended two weeks later, after more than 100 people had been killed, no senior figures had been arrested.
Officials still say that al-Qaida's top two men could be sheltering some place along the rugged Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but appear to have no hard information on their whereabouts.
"The computers contained photographs, maps and plans of Heathrow airport and other potential terrorist targets in Britain."
This too could have been old info. Remember the threats earlier this year
I'm sure that the majority of the info we 'get' from captured terrorists is old info.