* In February 2003, the FBI announced that “Jafar the Pilot” (aka Adnan El-Shukrijumah) had entered the country sometime after September 1, 2001
Posted by DXer on September 26, 2014
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
With it increasingly likely that Donald Trump, Jr. will be indicted to lying before the House Intelligence Committee, FOIA issues relating to Amerithrax fade in importance.
But let me point out something that should be obvious: Adnan El-Shukrijumah is dead. No (b)(6) or (b)(7) exemption is warranted.
As for whether it is classified, Senator Leahy would be the first to point out that when the FBI wants to keep secret that they botched something, they are quick to stamp it secret. That’s why it is important that the FBI not be allowed to selectively spin (and provide) Bruce Ivins’ emails.
Let his alibi be established through the September-October 2001 documents wrongfully withheld, and then history can just record Amerithrax unsolved and that will be cool.
DXer said
With it increasingly likely that President Trump will resign and/or not run for reelection (or run and be defeated), it may be a different President who considers the evidence that Adnan El-Shukrijumah entered the country across the Mexican border.
DXer said
POLITICS
01/06/2019 01:43 pm ET
Fox News’ Chris Wallace Shreds Sarah Huckabee Sanders Over Border Terror Claims
“I studied up on this,” Wallace said as he disputed the White House press secretary’s claims about terrorists coming into the U.S.
By Hayley Miller
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fox-news-chris-wallace-sarah-huckabee-sanders_us_5c321e10e4b073352833c7c0
DXer said
“There’ll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.” — Robert Mueller
What intelligence analysis conclusion did former FBI Director Mueller make when the FBI deterimined that Adnan El-Shukrijumah had entered the US after 9/11?
What conclusion did he make as to Shukrijumah’s purpose in coming back?
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
November 26, 2016 8:00 AM
Mom of alleged Broward al Qaeda boss tired of family being hassled
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article117123223.html
DXer said
“Pakistani intelligence also seized several computers with incriminating information concerning WMD during the KSM capture operation, including a document attributed to senior al-Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah. The document with the heading “The Martyr Jaffar al-Tayyar” featured a map with an arrow from Afghanistan pointing to the continental United States. This was concerning, because the FBI had reports suggesting that Shukrijumah may have had contact with al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Atta in the US, prior to 9/11.”
How to Get Terrorists to Talk
A former CIA interrogator on the “do’s” and “don’ts” of interrogation.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen
February 18, 2015
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-get-terrorists-talk-12270
DXer said
Al Qaeda operative freed from US federal prison early for ‘time served’
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/20/al-qaeda-operative-freed-from-us-federal-prison/
Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri — an admitted Al Qaeda operative in the United States — was released last week from a federal prison prior to completing his 15-year sentence because of “time served,” the Justice Department told Fox News on Tuesday.
***
“Our intelligence community believes (he) was training in poisons at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, and had been sent to the United States before September the 11th to serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks,” Bush said. “Among the potential targets our intelligence community believes this al Qaeda operative discussed … were water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange and United States military academies such as this one.”
Comment:
If folks like FBI Special Agent Borelli and FBI Special Agent Wade Ammerman are not in a position to write a book on the subject, a book by Al Qaeda operative Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri would be fascinating.
Al-Marri is yet another reason not to underestimate Hawsawi’s role in an anthrax operation. Al-Marri, who entered the country on September 10, 2001, was researching chemicals in connection with a “second wave.” Al-Marri was also drafting emails to KSM. Although al-Marri denies being in contact with Hawsawi, phone records show otherwise. Email evidence also confirms messages drafted by al-Marri to KSM. An article by Susan Schmidt in the Washington Post on al-Marri notes that al-Marri picked up $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri made the mistake of opening the briefcase containing the money in bundles and peeling off a few hundred dollars to pay his bail after being stopped on a traffic charge a couple days after 9/11. References to al-Hawsawi turned up in the Dublin, Ireland, office of a Saudi-backed charity suspected of having links to bin Laden upon a raid after 9/11 by Irish authorities. even though his English was fine. In applying, he would not provide a home address or sign the application. “He was a very pugnacious individual,” the administrator told the Post. A number of people reported him as acting suspicious in the heightened sensibilities after 9/11. One student from whom he sought help was the local mosque imam, graduate student Jaloud. Jaloud curiously reports that he did not remember him as the fellow he had taken to the airport 90 minutes away in the summer of 2000, or the fellow he had argued about shipping the computer, or the fellow who had then put him to the expense of shipping the computer to Washington. (Jaloud reports when questioned in 2005, he told the Saudis that he did not remember the address in Washington where he sent the computer.)
Did Al-Marri know Al-Hindi and Shukrijumah from 2000?
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
It is highly relevant to Amerithrax, IMO, whether Al-Marri ever joined Al-Hindi and Shukrijumah in New Jersey for the casing of New York City targets.
Mr. Al-Marri, you are a free man and you’ve paid your debt collected by the Americans. Now let’s hear your understanding of the truth.
By way of some background to Al-Marri’s release, in a declassified 16-page document filed in April 2006, the government described Peoria, Illinois resident Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri as an important Al Qaeda operative. Investigators eventually concluded he was the most important in the United States. The government say he met Osama bin Laden and was chosen by Khalid Sheik Mohammed to help other operatives conduct attacks, hack into computers, or deliver poisons. President Bush said the intelligence community believes that among Marri’s potential targets were “water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange and United States military academies.” KSM thought that the fact he was a father of five would help in blend in better than a single man. He reportedly trained at an Al Qaeda camp for up to 19 months during the years 1996 to 1998. Allegations included the grandiose goal that Al Marri was to seek to hack into the US banking system, and “to wipe out balances and otherwise wreak havoc with banking records in order to damage the U.S. economy.” KSM and Bin Laden planned for Al-Marri to be a “point of contact for al Qaeda operatives arriving in the United States.” KSM had met with Ali’s brother, Jarallah al-Marri, in late summer 2001 and told him of Ali’s U.S. activities. U.S. authorities officials allege that Al-Marri went to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. It was Al-Hawsawi’s laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it.
Al-Marri’s training included instruction in the use of toxins and poison at the Darunta camp near Jalalabad. Al-Marri had been calling numbers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to a filed complaint. Government sources say he was calling senior al-Qaeda operatives. He travelled to New York City about the same time as El-Shukrijumah and Dhiren Barot were casing financial institutions and casing NYC tourist helicopters. An oath was found on his computer: “Neither the United States nor anyone living in it will dream of security/safety before we live it in Palestine and before the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed,” and that God should “protect” and “guard” Usama Bin Laden.” Agents discovered that Al-Marri had created five e-mail accounts on September. 22, 2001 using a computer at Western Illinois University. The declaration by a member of the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism, dated September 9, 2004, provided his email addresses: William274 — at — hotmail, Jefferson038 — at– hotmail, Howard050 — yahoo, Drake425 –yahoo, and Kathy050 — yahoo. There was as identical draft message in three of the accounts dated September 22, 2001 addressed to an account associated with KSM.
The draft stated:
“I hope every thing is ok with you and your family. I have started school ok. It is hard but I had to take 9 hours to meet the school standard. Me and my family are ok. I want to here [sic] from you soon can you contact me by email or on 701-879-6040
P.S.
I have tried to contact you at your uncle ottowa but I could not get in.”
Area code 701 is in North Dakota. Analysts determined that the number was a coded version of Al-Marri’s cellular number. Material is redacted that would reveal the code but it can be deduced. The area code in Macomb and Peoria, Illinois is 309. The simple code is 2 above 5 becomes 2 below 5. We can infer Al-Marri’s cellular number was 309-231-4060. (If you apply the same code to the zip code associated with the “Greendale School” return address, one comes up with Newton, Mass.; the FBI raided a posh hotel where two hijackers stayed in Newton the night before 9/11.)
Although his parents were Saudi, Al-Marri’s family had moved to Doha, Qatar. He was 17 when he came to the United States. He first studied computer science at a Spoon River College in Macomb, Illinois. The intensive english program at Western Illinois University attracted a lot of Middle Eastern students to the rural setting. He and his brother transferred to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. His brother later would be detained in Guantanamo, after being captured in Afghanistan. TheWashington Post reports that acquaintances remembered Ali as a “skinny, long-haired partygoer with a sense of humor.” He graduated in 1991 with a business degree and returned to Doha, Qatar. He told FBI agents he was in the US from 1983-1991. Back in Doha, he worked at the Qatar Islamic Bank and at the government audit bureau. Doha, Qatar was where future anthrax planners KSM and Mohammed Islambouli were given safe haven by the Qatar religious minister. In early 1996, in the midst of political turmoil involving Sheik al-Thani, who had ousted his father favored by fundamentalists, Al-Marri left for Afghanistan. In a court filing, Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official explained he went to train at a Bin Laden camp. KSM, too, had followed a similar path — first going to school in rural United States and then going to Doha, Qatar in the mid-1990s. By the mid-1990s, Mohammed had been involved in the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as well as Operation Bojinka in the Philippines. KSM worked in Doha for the government. He worked for the department that oversaw water works, where he may have learned something about poisoning a reservoir or localized water infrastructure.
Reporter Susan Schmidt, writing for the Washington Post, noted: “Mohammed and a group of militants found refuge on the outskirts of Doha, on a farm owned by the religious minister, according to the Sept. 11 commission. In 1996, as the FBI was closing in, Mohammed slipped out of the country for Afghanistan.” Rudolph Guiliani’s security firm advised the Qatar government on security matters and denies having tipped the government leader who then shared the information. Al-Marrireturned to Doha with the views of a hardened extremist. A former Qatari government official told The Washington Post that Al-Marri came home with CDs of al-Qaeda training lectures and propaganda — as well as a phony California driver’s license. The continuing investigation of a 1996 coup attempt directed at the reformist son who had usurped control from his father cost some of Al-Marri’s relatives their government jobs. His family returned to the Saudi desert. But although his wife and young children went to the Saudi desert, Al-Marri had other plans. Schmidt reports that in May 2000, he flew to Chicago from Dahmam, Saudi Arabia, using a fake passport and the name Abdullakareem A. Almuslam.
Al-Marri spent two months in Chicago. In July 2000, he then checked into Macomb, the farm town where he had first studied years earlier. He checked into the inexpensive Time Out Motel. Rm. 209 became the official address of the fictitious AAA Carpets that would receive money from the stolen credit cards. On August 17, 2000, he booked a flight to New York City. He called the imam of the Macomb mosque, a Saudi graduate student named Khalid al-Jaloud and asked for a ride to the Peoria airport. Jaloud told the Washington Post that he did not know the man and did not know where he was going. He nonetheless reportedly was glad to oblige. Dhiren Barot, who was pretending to be enrolled at the Mohawk Valley Community College in Upstate New York, was Al Qaeda’s chief operative in Great Britain. The Post investigative feature notes that Dhiren Barot was indicted in 2005 for casing the stock exchange and other financial targets. Journalist Susan Schmidt points out he had flown in from London the day before. Barot was arrested in Britain in 2004. He confessed to what the judge in the case called a plot of “colossal and unprecedented scale” to blow up London subway cars, detonate radioactive “dirty bombs” and use limousines packed with gas cylinders to destroy luxury hotels.
Al-Marri returned to Chicago for a few days and then returned to Saudi Arabia. The Macomb Imam told the Post, “He asked me to put a computer in my house,” I did not want to. He said he wanted to store stuff until he could bring his family back.” Jaloud continued: “A few weeks or a month or two later he started calling, wanting me to send it to Pakistan. He told me he is there.” He called two or three times and argued.” Jaloud said the request worried him. Finally, someone called and asked him to ship the computer to Washington. Jaloud reports that he did so at his own expense. Al-Marri re-entered the country on September 10, 2001, arriving in New York. He and his wife and kids made their way to their new hometown after an overnight stay in Chicago. Two days after 9/11, Al-Marri’s 6-year-old son was standing on the backseat. KSM’s idea that he would blend in even in rural Illinois because of 5 children had backfired. An officer stopped him. A check of his license turned up a 10-year-old warrant on a DWI charge. The Post explains that “groomed and polite,” he explained to the police officer he was back to study for his master’s degree in computer science. He was being taken to the station for booking when they stopped to drop the young boy off at the family’s room at the Time Out motel. Al-Marri makes the incredible mistake of opening a briefcase to pull out three hundred dollar bills from the bundles in a briefcase. “The briefcase was filled with bundles of hundreds.” The money was from the $13,000 Al-Hawsawi had given him in United Arab Emirates in August 2001.
That fall he travelled from Peoria to Macomb and pressed to be admitted to Western Illinois University’s intensive English program even though his English was fine. In applying, he would not provide a home address or sign the application. “He was a very pugnacious individual,” the administrator told the Post. He was calling students. A number of people reported him as acting suspicious in the heightened sensibilities after 9/11. One student from whom he sought help was the local mosque imam, graduate student Jaloud. Jaloud curiously reports that he did not remember him as the fellow he had taken to the airport 90 minutes away in the summer of 2000, or the fellow he had argued about shipping the computer, or the fellow who had then put him to the expense of shipping the computer to Washington. (Jaloud reports when questioned in 2005, he told the Saudis that he did not remember the address in Washington where he sent the computer.) Schmidt reports that although rural, the Islamic Center of Macomb “had come to the attention of intelligence and law enforcement agencies.” Before Marri could relocate to Macomb, the FBI’s Springfield office was advised by headquarters that an active phone number in their area was linked to the 9/11 plotters. A fedex mail receipt left at Dulles International had led them to a phone number associated with Hawsawi. The FBI learned that some calls to that number were made from cellphones and pay phones at odd hours of the night from Central Illnois by someone using prepaid phone cards. A call made on November 4 traced to Chicago matched Al-Marri’s visit there and a call on November 7 was made from his home phone. An intelligence official told the Washington Post journalist that when Mohammed Atef was killed in November 2001, “we found out there was a huge al-Qaeda interest in chemical and biological weapons. That prompted “a very energetic effort to identify people doing chem-bio.” The day after falsely denying he had called the number associated with al-Hawsawi, he was arrested and sent to New York in connection with a terrorism investigation there.
In December 2002, prosecutors expanded the charges against Al-Marri adding that he lied to the FBI when denied using pay phones in Chicago and Central Illinois to dial the number of KSM’s assistant, al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri had called the telephone number that Atta gave to Federal Express as the UAE telephone number as the point of contact for the recipient. Again, it was Al-Hawsawi’s laptop that had the anthrax spraydrying documents on it. Al-Hawsawi had received left-over funds from the hijackers shortly before 9/11. Al-Marri called al-Hawsawi’s number using a call card at a phone in Peoria on September 23, 2001, about a week after the first anthrax mailing. On October 14, about a week after the second anthrax mailing, he called al-Hawsawi’s number again. Three weeks after that, he allegedly tried to call two more times — this time from payphones in Chicago, including a payphone at a transient hotel on North Lincoln Avenue. He also called and spoke to someone in Houston who has not yet been publicly identified.
Al-Marri was separately charged with lying to agents about the trip he made to the U.S. in the summer of 2000. During that visit, he opened up three bank accounts for a fictitious business, AAA Carpets, at three different banks in Macomb, in southern Illinois. The accounts received funds from bogus credit card purchases. He was charged with using a stolen social security number in establishing the accounts. Al-Marri was working toward a master’s degree in computer information systems at Bradley when he was arrested in December 2001. He rarely attended classes and was failing.
The government’s indictment alleged:
“Computer audio files containing Arabic lectures by Usama bin Laden and his associates, concerning, among other things, the importance of jihad and martyrdom and the merits of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The lectures instructed, among other things, that Muslim scholars should organize opposition to Jewish and Christian control of “Palestine,” Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia; that ordinary Muslims should train in Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan by entering through Pakistan; and that clerics who claim that Islam is a religion of peace should be disregarded.”
President Bush designated him an “enemy combatant, after KSM was captured in the Spring of 2003 and identified Al Marri was one of the “second wave” plotters and facilitators whose name he revealed. Al-Marri’s research interest in one of the ingredients that would be used in attack using a “mobtakker” device on New York subways heightened interest in him further still. Authorities were especially concerned that Ayman Zawahiri had vetoed the idea pitched by Al Qaeda’s head in Saudi Arabia because Ayman had something bigger planned. The Post article quotes an intelligence official: “Since al-Marri was already in custody by then he couldn’t have been an active participant, but who he was in contact with might have led to the people who were involved in the plot.” One question that arises is: after al-Marri cased New York City targets, where in Washington did he have Jaloud ship the computer? Did the Washington Post mean Washington, D.C. or the State of Washington?
The Post article concludes by noting that despite the half decade of al-Marri’s custody, Al-Marri’s attorneys had never spoken to him about the specifics of the government’s claims. “We haven’t drilled down on those allegations. There’s no reason to. He’s not really charged with anything. He said he is innocent, he’s not a sleeper agent — at that point we left it at that.” On June 11, 2007, in al-Marri v. Wright, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the Military Commissions Act does not override al-Marri’s constitutional rights to challenge his accusers. The Court held ruled that al-Marri must be released from military detention and either freed or placed in US civilian detention where the federal government would have to charge him with crimes. In February 2009, shortly before the Supreme Court would ahve decided the question, the United States brought a general indictment against Al-Marri. Al-Marri’s attorneys have requested an extension of time so that they can become familiar with the facts bearing on the plea bargain he entered April 30, 2009.
A lengthy investigative piece by Susan Schmidt of theWashington Post in July 2007 added intriguing detail to the declassified 16-page affidavit that detailed facts underlying the charges. Al-Marri trained under Egyptian Midhat Mursi. Mursi was a chemical engineer who graduated from Alexandria University. When Mohammed Atef was killed in mid-November 2001, a review of his computer showed that Atef and Marri had “shared contacts.” Atef, was of course, was who Ayman was updating on his plans to weaponize anthrax. Former CIA director Tenet has said that the anthrax planning was compartmentalized at the highest levels of Al Qaeda.
DXer said
I’ve often told you that AUSA Lieber was formally reprimanded for going to a jihadi with whom “a deal had been cut.” (I think it was to Rachel’s great credit to have gone; it is a classic “Law and Order” scene for a prosecutor or investigator to be guided by their integrity and professionalism).
If I’m right, who was the jihadi she had visited with whom a deal had been cut? Was she punished for having gone to see an operative working with KSM and Hawsawi who cased NYC targets with Adnan El-Shukrijumah?
If her options were so circumscribed by some unnamed superior, is it so surprising that she tried to make an Ivins Theory fly by stuffing 52 rabbits down into a hat?
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
In the Senate Torture Report, look for footnote 2031 — all redacted — to be where they address the theory that Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the anthrax mailer. It’s right before the Report discusses the letter in which KSM instructed Ramzi to have Jaffar al Tayyar “get ready to travel.”
The letter was seized when Bin Al-Shibh was captured in September 2002.
I’ve had to do woodchipping for much of the day outside — so bear with me as I chip away at the 600 page Executive Summary. I am posting as I am going along.
DXer said
Jumping for a moment to the CIA’s response. The CIA disputes the Senate Torture Report’s claim that:
“Abu Zubaydah provided information on a KSM associate named la1ar al-Tayyar to FBI agents in May 2002J prior to being subjected to the CIAJs enhanced interrogation techniques.”
The CIA states:
“Abu Zubaydah’s information in May 2002 came after being subjected to sleep deprivation. Although sleep deprivation was not officially designated an enhanced technique in 2002, it was classified as such in 2005. This information was an initial step toward identifying the right Ja’far al- Tayyar, but we were not able to do so until KSM provided more detailed reporting.
The Study implies that CIA had substantial information on Ja’far al-Tayyar by noting that we produced “a targeting study” on him in January 2003, prior to KSM’s detention. However, that study was titled, “Targeting Study: Finding the Right Ja’far al-Tayyar,,,226 and the first paragraph stated, “Unfortunately, many extremists use the name of Ja’far al-Tayyar, which can be translated as ‘Jafar the Pilot.’ Headquarters research has identified several distinct Ja’far al-Tayyars. We very much want to confirm the locations of each of these Jafars.,,227
DXer said
The Senate Torture Report in footnote 2043 states:
“For more on the letters that were seized during the September 11, 2002 raids in Pakistan, and Abu Zubaydah’s reporting, see ALEC ______10022(121216Z APR 02); ____________________ (172117Z sep 02); ______________; ______________. Federal Bureau of Investigation documents pertaining “to the interrogation of detainee Zayn Al Abideen Abu Zabaidah” and provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by cover letter dated July 20 2010 (DTS #2010-2939).
Note that Abu Zubaydah was detained in March 2002. Zubaydah saw Jafar en route to Pakistan in January 2002. So I understand Adnan El-Shukrijumah to have returned from mailing the anthrax letters by January 2002. He then stayed in Karachi with Al-Hawsawi from Feb. – Apr 2002. Al-Hawsawi had the anthrax processing documents on his laptop. Al-Hawsawi from KSM’s assistant.
But let’s see the letter from KSM to Ramzi Bin-Al-Shibh, Atta’s close associate, telling Jafar the Pilot to prepare to travel — and to smuggle himself through Mexico.
DXer said
Did anthrax letters suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah smuggle himself into the United States in September 2001 from Mexico?
The Senate Torture Report reads discusses the issue of travel by Adnan El-Shukrijumah:
On September 11, 2002, Ramzi bin al-Shibh was captured in Karachi, Pakistan.2034 During the capture operation, a letter referencing Jaffar al-Tayyar was seized. According to a translation of the letter, it stated “tell an unidentified pilot named Ja’far that he should be ready for travel.”2035 Shortly after his capture, bin al-Shibh was rendered to foreign government custody.2036 In November 2002, while still in foreign government custody, bin al-Shibh was questioned on “Ja’far the Pilot” and provided a physical description
On March 7, 2003, CIA sent information on Jaffar al-Tayyar to the CIA’s DETENTION SITE BLUE, where KSM was located, for use in the interrogation of KSM.2040 The documents included the following: • a “targeting study” on Jaffar al-Tayyar completed by the CIA in January 2003;2041 • a letter from KSM to bin al-Shibh referencing “Jafar the Pilot” and indicating that “Jafar” “ought to prepare himself’ to smuggle himself from Mexico into an unspecified country; • a letter from Jaffar al-Tayyar to Ramzi bin al-Shibh asking for clarification of KSM’ s letter; and • additional background and reporting information on Jaffar al-Tayyar.
DXer said
The Senate Torture Report notes that CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah provided a description and information on a KSM associate named Jaffar al-Tayyar to FBI special agents prior to any enhanced interrogation.
DXer said
I could believe that Abu Zubaydah’s identification of the alias resulted in this BOLO. But while I credit that Adnan Shukrijumah came to the United States after September 1, 2001 – as he told his mom he was doing — he was already back in Karachi in two successive safehouses with Al-Hawsawi by February 2002. Al-Hawsawi had the anthrax processing documents on his laptop. Both Adnan and Al-Hawsawi had worked at the media organization, “Clouds.”
The Senate Torture Report states:
“The CIA made repeated claims that the use of the CIA’ s enhanced interrogation techniques resulted in “key intelligence” from Abu Zubaydah and KSM on an operative named Jaffar al-Tayyar,2013 later identified as Adnan el-Shukrijumah.2014 These CIA representations frequently asserted that information obtained from KSM after the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques resulted in an FBI investigation that prompted al-Tayyar to flee the United States. These representations were inaccurate. KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. Jaffar departed the United States in May 2001.20”
DXer said
New York Times states that five of Adnan’s “aides” were killed, and they were “all Saudi men.” (Elbaneh was Yemeni; so there seems to be no confirmation that he was killed along with Shukrijumah).
Pakistan Kills Senior Qaeda Leader Wanted by F.B.I.
By ISMAIL KHANDEC. 6, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world/pakistan-kills-senior-qaeda-leader-wanted-by-fbi.html?_r=0
The public relations department of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency, said in an official statement that Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, who was in charge of all external operations for Al Qaeda, was killed during an intelligence operation in Shin Warsak, about five miles west of Wana, the largest town in South Waziristan.
***
He was accused of conspiring in a plot, uncovered in September 2009, to bomb three lines of New York City’s subway system. The plot was directed by three senior Qaeda leaders who had found a safe haven in Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal regions. He was also accused of plotting to blow up a shopping center in Manchester, England.
***
He said five of Mr. Shukrijumah’s aides, all Saudi men, had also been killed, as well as one Pakistani soldier, in a shootout that began late Friday night at the compound and continued into early Saturday morning. One soldier was critically wounded.
Mr. Shukrijumah, also known as Jaffar Tayar, was fluent in English, Arabic and Pashto, a language he had picked up while hiding in Waziristan.
“He was invisible,” a security official said of Mr. Shukrijumah. “There was no sighting of him. We thought he might have gone to Iraq or Syria.”
DXer said
This NYT article, in contrast, also by Ismail Khandec, states on Afghan aide was killed — not five Saudi aides. There may have been initial confusion — five is apparently the number of his family members according to some reports were taken into custody (his wife and four children).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world/pakistan-kills-senior-qaeda-leader-wanted-by-fbi.html
Pakistani Military Kills a Senior Qaeda Leader
By ISMAIL KHANDEC. 6, 2014
The attack touched off a gun battle that continued into early Saturday morning, said a senior military official who, lacking the authority to speak to the media, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
***
On Saturday, Pakistani military officials were at pains to stress that the information leading to Mr. Shukrijumah’s whereabouts had come from their own sources, not American ones.
“Americans often question our sincerity, asking, ‘Where are the high-profile militants?’ ” said one of those officials. “Today’s operation is an answer.”
The military said Mr. Shukrijumah’s death stemmed partly from the drive against Taliban and allied militants in North Waziristan, which started six months ago and has caused many militant groups to scatter.
But American and Afghan officials, and many counterterrorism experts, say that Pakistan’s push against the militants is selective and that it continues to strategically support certain groups, particularly those that carry out attacks in India and Afghanistan.
DXer said
Adnan’s wife and four children were reportedly taken into custody.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pakistan-military-kills-al-qaeda-leader-wanted-in-us/article21981738/
Pakistan military kills al-Qaeda leader wanted in U.S.
Hafiz Wazir
WANA, Pakistan — Reuters
Published Saturday, Dec. 06 2014, 8:58 AM EST
Last updated Saturday, Dec. 06 2014, 8:58 AM EST
Pakistani helicopter gunships swooped on a militant hideout in a predawn raid on Saturday and shot dead a top al-Qaeda operative who was wanted in the United States for planning to bomb the New York subway system, the military said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered a $5-million reward for the capture of Saudi national Adnan el-Shukrijumah, 39, who it said was believed to be al-Qaeda’s external operations chief at one time.
***
In Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, all phone lines and mobile phone signals were shut down overnight and the roads were blocked, a Reuters reporter there said.
Residents awoke just before dawn to the thudding of helicopter gunships and the growl of convoys of military vehicles approaching from several directions.
They were heading to a small house on a main road less than five kilometres from the main market on the outskirts of town, a witness said. Residents say the neighbourhood is known to be sympathetic to the Taliban and the house had been used to shelter Afghan Taliban fighters for years.
One military official said security forces first heard that Chinese hostages were held at that location and then learned about Shukrijumah’s presenceand planned a large operation, the officer said.
Two intelligence officers said the militants opened fire on the Pakistani military and Shukrijumah, who one described as “an Arab national,” was killed in the ensuing gun battle. One soldier was killed and another wounded, the military said.
A military official said five other militants were taken into custody during the raid, but intelligence officials said they were Shukrijumah’s wife and four children.
Shukrijumah is wanted in the United States for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and to commit murder in a foreign country.
“The charges reveal that the plot against New York City’s subway system, uncovered in September of 2009, was directed by senior Al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan,” the FBI website said.
The subway plot was described by prosecutors at the time as described as the most serious threat to New York since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Shukrijumah was also linked by U.S. authorities to other suspects, including a group of men accused of planning to bomb fuel pipelines at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
DXer said
Given the interest in concealment by participants and/or lack of knowledge by those close to the participants, one needs to look to the documentary traces of a person’s whereabouts.
If the FBI had made that a priority in connection with the crashed computer of Dr. Bruce Ivins’ therapist, Dr. Ivins for that day and at least the early evening would have been established from the start; it was not until after Ivins’ suicide that the FBI confirmed that he could have not have travelled to Princeton that day because the window before the early evening session was not large enough to fit a 7 hour roundtrip.
Will the FBI produce long withheld documents about DXer’s anthrax mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah?
Posted on April 19, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/will-the-fbi-produce-long-withheld-documents-about-dxers-anthrax-mailing-suspect-adnan-el-shukrijumah/
One of the men who set up Yazid Sufaat’s anthrax lab in Kandahar in May 2001 acknowledged association with Jaffar al-Tayyar aka (Adnan al-Shukrijumah) but apparently the interrogator was confused by the multiple aliases
Posted by Lew Weinstein on September 22, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/one-of-the-men-who-set-up-yazid-sufaats-anthrax-lab-in-kandahar-in-may-2001-acknowledged-association-with-jaffar-al-tayyar-aka-adnan-al-shukrijumah-but-apparently-the-interrogator-was-confused/
After the BOLO issued in Spring 2003, a message appeared on the forum maintained by Adnan’s brother, Nabil, which originally had been set up by Adnan, announcing anonymously that he was safe. The location of that access could have been checked. Adnan presumably used an anonymizer but the NSA and FBI is often ahead of the game. If he called his mom on or about 9/11 or 9/13/2001, I have little reason to doubt that he dropped his younger brother an email. Both Adnan and Nabil were internet users and had lived in the same small home.
By analogy, in the Oak Island mystery, historical records could be checked to see if the 3 ships that went from Havana to New Foundland in 1762 actually went there or instead stopped off en route at Oak Island.
Crooker, in his wonderful discussion in Oak Island Gold (Kindle, May 2013), notes the 3 ships that correspondence indicates were dispatched to Halifax. He writes:
“Stating his intention to depart later in the month with sixty ships, [Pocock] reported that [Augustus] Albermarle proposed to leave independently towards the end of December. As to what had already taken place, Pocock informed Clevland … that three warships had been dispatched to Halifax, Nova Scotia , in response to news from New York and Boston that the French had invaded Newfoundland.”
But Mr. Crooker also very reasonably posits that the repository could have been prepared in advance. This addresses the problem of keeping the secret — miners and sappers involved in the project could be told that they merely were building a storage bunker for ammunition and explosives.
This is a plausible hypothesis and flagship was in fact in the area in 1958 for the attack on Louisbourg.
British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792: Design, … – Google Books Result
Rif Winfield – 2007 – History
Augustus Keppel (-1752); … Commodore Augustus Keppel; sailed for Virginia 23.12.1754; to Nova Scotia 1756, then home; sailed for North America 16.4.1757; at Louisbourg 1758, and at ..
As Graham Harris and Les MacPhile develops in their “Oak Island and Its Lost Treasure” (Kindle 3d ed. 2013) in developing a different British soldier/Spanish treasure theory involving a fellow named Phips and treasure from the ship Concepcion, a leading miner/sapper Bontein died by 1762. Although I presently do not subscribe to the Harris theory relating to Phips and The Concepcion, he adds wonderfully detailed elements about the particular miners and sappers who had the know-how to building the five-finger drain and flood tunnel complex — and yet by the time of depositing the treasure in 1762 would have been quite dead enough to keep the secret.
Importantly, his account places the Chief Engineer of North America, Bastide, in the area — at Louisbourg — in the summer of 1760 and returning to England in October 1762.
For the last two decades, I have favored sacking of Havana 1762 theory. I think Graham Harris’ fabulous fine strokes about the mining engineers merely strengthens it, once you build in William S. Crooker’s sensible hypothesis that the work could have been done in advance of the 1762 attack on Havana. It would make sense — after capturing Louisbourg in 1758, the British would have been acutely aware of the need for a fortification that would withstand the regular transfer of control back and forth between the British and French. The miners and sappers then demolished Louisbourg in 1760 over the course of 6 months. William Bontein, Chief Engineer of Nova Scotia, was under the charge of John Henry Bastide, Chief Engineer of North America at Louisbourg in 1760. Harris writes: “The British Army only employed professional miners in its tunnelling activiities, for it was perceived as a specialist occupation.” Harris notes: “Military records regarding the attack on Louisbourg make reference to Bastide, who was responsible for the reduction of the fortress [in 1760], being accompanied by “eleven engineers, as many miners, and 90 carpenters.” No doubt the miners were those who had accompanied Bontein from Cornwall, but excluding these, Bastide’s engineering force comprised another hundred men.”
William Bontein, who would have served as the chief engineer on-site then died in January 1762, before the treasure (under this theory) would have been deposited. Harris quotes the historical record:
“Engineer Extraordinary in our service in North America, on his passage to England with his wife and 4 small children, taken by a French privateer and being obliged to go on board the said enemy’s ship was, in a violent storm, before he could reach it, overset and drowned, leaving his wife and children to be carried prisoners to Spain, having been plundered of all their effects and reduced to extreme want. Widow to be allowed £20 a year from January 1, 1762.”
On arrival in Halifax in early May 1758, Bastide prepared six blockhouses of squared timber with the timbers marked so that they could be erected within a few hours upon arrival at Louisbourg. The timbers in Smith Cove’s in the slipway were similarly marked with Roman numerals. Bastide sailed under the command of Keppel’s good friend and confidante, Jeffrey Amherst. In 1759, it was decided that Louisbourg would be razed. Bastide arrived from England in May 1760 with engineers from England. Bastide wrote to Amherst on November 28, 1760 that “the demolition of its fortifications and harbour defences had been completed” and left Louisbourg on Jan 15, 1761. He apparently remained in the area. On June 25, 1761, Bastide participated in the “Burying the Hatchet ceremony (Nova Scotia)” in Halifax. He supervised the construction of the fortifications at Halifax until July 1762. Bastide returned to England in October 1762.
I have no idea which theory might ultimately prevail — Harris’ Phips theory or Crooker’s Havana theory. Both seem very reasonable. Each has different possible disturbing implications. For example, as to Mr. Crooker’s Havana1762 theory, I don’t see why we shouldn’t assume that the British would have recovered the stored treasure in 1776 when hundreds of ships evacuated Boston to Halifax — and the King would have been had good use for the stored gold to fund the Revolutionary War with the colonies. If I were advising the earnest brothers from Michigan, Marty and Rick Lagina, currently digging on Oak Island, I would focus on Smith’s Cove. I would urge that they open their mind to the view the Money Pit as a drain, and not the location of the cache. I would take a vacation this winter in Minorca and do historical research of the wharves and fortifications. Or perhaps Lew would go. Of course, I am available to be sent — in the interest of historical pursuit of truth. The same technology that would permit establishment of a dry dock would permit construction of a hidden treasure vault underwater in Smith’s Cove. Both Bastide and Bontein’s Nova Scotia mentor Cowley were very familiar with the works at Minorca.
In the Oak Island mystery, watch the ongoing History series online — being patient this week on Tuesday while waiting for a detour through the swampy morass (IMO) of a Knight Templars theory.
http://www.history.com/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island/videos
DXer said
If Adnan El-Shukrijumah was in New Mexico this year, note that Adnan’s little sister lives several hours due north of Anthony in Alberquerque. Although Adnan once bit her arm while babysitting, I believe they are still close. Adnan, did you visit your sister? Did she know you were in the state?
The March 2014 meeting at a private residence which El-Shukrijumah attended is claimed to have been in Anthony, New Mexico — not technically not Texas as I think I posted earlier this week. Anthony, NM is on the outskirts of the border city, El Paso, Texas. It is ironic that JW is so big on government transparency and yet offers such weak description of its sourcing on such an important issue. The phrase “according to Judicial Watch sources”, IMO, does not yet permit any weight to be given the account. We can look forward to a fuller disclosure of JW’s sourcing. Even the addition of “law enforcement” or “government” in front of sources would help the reader to know better whether to credit the report.
Is a former DIA analyst working for JW being told something by a former colleague? The possible lead seems very important given the threat Shukrijumah poses. But there seems to be no official corroboration yet. If there were, it seems that there would be a renewed BOLO.
El Paso Narco-Terror Figure Exposed by JW Pleads Guilty
OCTOBER 17, 2014
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/10/el-paso-narco-terror-figure-exposed-jw-pleads-guilty/
“Earlier this week JW reported that Huerta’s partner in crime, Emad Karakrah, was arraigned in Chicago where he’s been jailed since taking police on a high-speed chase and threatening to blow up his car. The two men have quite a history and a few years ago met with two of the FBI’s “most wanted” terrorists: Jaber A. Elbaneh and Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah(a/k/a: “Javier Robles”). The meetings took place in a private home in Anthony, NM. The four men discussed the movement of drugs, money and people. The plots were further planned by fellow conspirators at a “mosque” on Redd Road in El Paso, as well as two other “mosques” in the city. Karakrah, Huerta, Elbaneh and el Shukrijumah all met again in Anthony, NM in March 2014 according to Judicial Watch sources.”
DXer said
Who does Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s brother, Nabil, think is responsible for the Fall 2001 anthrax letters? What does he think of the Federal Eagle stamps? Does he think the sender used to symbolize the green birds of paradise — taking the souls of the hijackers to paradise?
Nabil, can you clarify when Adnan called and from where he called — when he came and left the United States? There are a lot of contradictory press accounts, often based on witness sightings, which as a general matter are not a reliable guide. On the hand, you knew Adnan well and would know better his comings and goings. Like Adnan, you now are teaching children — viewing it as a mission to bring children to islam.
Nabil is El-Shukrijumah’s brother. Here is a 38 minuted filmed interview. He lived with Adnan in the early months of 2001. He is interviewed on his and his family’s biography. Nabil grew up in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He was 13 when the family came to the States, going to New York first for a couple of months and then Florida. His father and brother had been living in Brooklyn while his family was in Saudi Arabia. His father would visit twice a year from Brooklyn. Adnan didn’t speak English when he first arrived — and so in 8th grade didn’t speak to anyone.
He likes his job because he can influence middle schoolers and persuade them not to be influenced by American culture — and embrace their identity, calling them into islam.
The interviewer nowhere asks him about his brother being indicted for the subway plot and alleged to be head of Al Qaeda’s external operations for North America.
A pleasant young man, Nabil speaks about paradise and people climbing on the throne and others — former friends who didn’t follow the right path — in hellfire.
Nabil says his brother Adnan El-Shukrijumah was involved in summer camp.
Nabil says he did some printing, then tried his hand at selling cell phones — and then was called and planted at the school where he is an administrator.
He discusses his successful participation in koran recitation contests. He works in the front office at the school and serves as the imam — serving as the role model for the impressionable students in middle school.
Click to access 1332.pdf
DXer said
Nabil,
Below are links to the green bird used in the stamp that I was talking about.
Where did your brother stay in Spring 2001 when he was casing the targets in DC? (I think he stayed about a week but would have to pull the source).
Note that there is a $5 million dollar reward — also a $25 million reward applicable — in case you ever decide you disapprove of the mass murder of innocents, such as Adnan contemplated in the NYC subway plot.
Records showed that the “Federal Eagle” envelope printed during the January 2001 to June 2002 run was sold by 45 offices in Virginia and Maryland — including Laurel, Maryland, where Atta and the hijackers had their need for postal supplies served by the Mail Boxes Etc. office in Laurel.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/records-showed-that-the-federal-eagle-envelope-printed-during-the-january-2001-to-june-2002-run-was-sold-by-45-offices-in-virginia-and-maryland-including-laurel-maryland-where-atta-and-the/
The United States Attorney Falsely Alleged That The Federal Eagle Stamp Was Uniquely Sold At Dr. Bruce Ivins’ Post Office And Then That Ran As An AP Headline. In fact, the envelopes with the printing defects are known to have been sold throughout Maryland and Virginia post offices (and that is where the hijackers were).
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 10, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/dxer-questions-about-the-federal-eagle-stamp-sold-at-the-post-office-used-by-dr-bruce-ivins/
from DXer … infiltration of U.S. Biodefense? … was code used in the anthrax letters?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 20, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/from-dxer-infiltration-of-u-s-biodefense-was-code-used-in-the-anthrax-letters/
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Nabil,
Al-Mindhai, convicted in the power station plot, was taught at your father’s mosque next door to your home. He did his copying in connection with the that plot at the same KINKOS Atta used. Al-Mindhai had said in a conversation with the federal undercover that Adnan was really radical and would be interested in joining. (But in conversations with the undercover Adnan then reportedly only engaged in innocent chitchat).
Did your brother do his copying there too at the same KINKOS as Atta? Did Atta ever go there with your brother?
Atta of course also used KINKOS elsewhere — such as for the cutting and pasting he did at KINKOS in Laurel, MD on September 7, 2001.
The FBI Should Disclose The Video Surveillance Of Atta Xeroxing, Cutting and Pasting At KINKOS in Laurel, MD on September 7, 2001
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 24, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-fbi-should-disclose-the-video-surveillance-of-atta-xeroxing-cutting-and-pasting-at-kinkos-in-laurel-md-on-september-7-2001/
Atta’s Wire Transfer Of Funds On 9/8/2001 — A Time The FBI Reports He Was Filmed Copying At A Laurel, MD KINKOS — Was To KSMs Assistant Mustafa Ahmad (Hawsawi) Whose Laptop, When Seized, Contained Scanned Notes Detailing Drying Liquid Slurry Of Anthrax To Create Dried Powder Suitable For Dispersal
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/attas-wire-transfer-of-funds-on-982001-a-time-the-fbi-reports-he-was-filmed-copying-at-a-laurel-md-kinkos-was-to-ksms-assistant-mustafa-ahmad-hawsawi-whose-laptop-when-seized-contain/
In Late August 2001, Atta Went With Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi From The Fort Lee, NJ Main Street Location That The Particulate Mixer Had Been Delivered To Laurel, MD Where The FBI Later Has Atta On Film At KINKOS Copying; Jdey’s Associate Nawaf Al-Hazmi Had Been At The Planning Meeting At Yazid Sufaat’s Kuala Lumpur Condo With Anthrax Planner Hambali And Anthrax Lab Director Yazid Sufaat
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/in-late-august-2001-atta-went-with-jdeys-associate-nawaf-al-hazmi-from-the-fort-lee-nj-main-street-location-that-the-particulate-mixer-had-been-delivered-to-laurel-md-where-the-fbi-later-has-a/
Flying to Maryland On September 7, 2001, Atta’s Travelocity.Com Account Was Accessed from KINKOS (IP 204.120.54.1) Around Dinner Time And A Reservation Was Made For Him To Fly Out Of Maryland On September 9, 2001
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/flying-to-maryland-on-september-7-2001-attas-travelocity-com-account-was-accessed-from-kinkos-ip-204-120-54-1-around-dinner-time-and-a-reservation-was-made-for-him-to-fly-out-of-maryland-on-se/
DXer said
Nabil,
Where did your brother stay in New Jersey when he cased the targets in New York City in the Spring of 2001? I believe he stayed with Al-Hindi’s cousin Meeta and her husband snd/or Al-Hindi’s aunt Sude… on both occasions.
Barot made two reconnaissance trips to the United States in August 2000 and March 2001 — visiting the aunt in New Jersey on both occasions. He was accompanied by Adnan. (They later famously met in Paksitan in 2004 with Queens operative Babar).
A 1-hour, 20-minute New York reconnaissance film was later discovered in London spliced into a video tape copy of “Die Hard With A Vengeance.”
The camcorder footage of buildings on New York’s Broad Street and Wall Street was shot in 2001, when Barot also took two helicopter trips across Manhattan.
The pair’s U.S. targets included the World Bank headquarters and the International Monetary Fund, both in Washington, the Citigroup buildings in New York and the Prudential building in Newark, New Jersey.
Al Hawsawi, who had the anthrax processing documents scanned on his laptop, was closely affiliated with Adnan El-Shukrijumah
Posted by Lew Weinstein on September 22, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/al-hawsawi-who-had-the-anthrax-processing-documents-scanned-on-his-laptop-was-closely-affiliated-with-adnan-el-shukrijumah/
One of the men who set up Yazid Sufaat’s anthrax lab in Kandahar in May 2001 acknowledged association with Jaffar al-Tayyar aka (Adnan al-Shukrijumah) but apparently the interrogator was confused by the multiple aliases
Posted on September 22, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/one-of-the-men-who-set-up-yazid-sufaats-anthrax-lab-in-kandahar-in-may-2001-acknowledged-association-with-jaffar-al-tayyar-aka-adnan-al-shukrijumah-but-apparently-the-interrogator-was-confused/
DXer says: Adnan El-Shukrijumah is the anthrax mailer … on or about 9/13/2001, he phoned from KSM’s house to tell his mom he was coming to the US
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 6, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/dxer-adnan-el-shukrijumah-is-the-anthrax-mailer-on-9132001-he-phoned-from-ksms-house-to-tell-his-mom-he-was-coming-to-the-us/
Will the FBI produce long withheld documents about DXer’s anthrax mailing suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 19, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/will-the-fbi-produce-long-withheld-documents-about-dxers-anthrax-mailing-suspect-adnan-el-shukrijumah/
DXer said
Nabil,
Am I correct that this is not Adnan’s writing? (That is, that is Atta’s handwriting ; the forms were not filled out by Adnan).
GAO Should Obtain A Copy Of The FBI’s Handwriting Analysis Comparing The Letters To Atta’s
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 22, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/gao-should-obtain-a-copy-of-the-fbis-handwriting-analysis-comparing-the-letters-to-attas/
Do you have some handwriting samples of Adnan’s writing so a handwriting comparison can be made by an expert and he can be excluded as the person who wrote the letters? Thanks.
Amerithrax: GAO And Reporters Should Obtain Handwriting Exemplars Of Atta’s Associate El-Shukrijumah, Al Qaeda’s Head of External Operations, Who Promoted His Father’s Language Course
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 15, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/amerithrax-gao-and-reporters-should-obtain-handwriting-exemplars-of-attas-associate-el-shukrijumah-al-qaedas-head-of-external-operations-who-promoted-the-esl-language-course/
The USG refuses to produce samples of Atta’s handwriting.
The List Of Comparisons Done By FBI’s Handwriting Analyst Who Found Ivins Probably DId Not Write The Anthrax Letters Is 22 Pages Long; The FBI Advises DXer That No Comparison Of Mohammed Atta’s Handwriting Is Among The Many Dozens Listed That Were Provided The Amerithrax Task Force
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 28, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/the-list-of-comparisons-done-by-fbis-handwriting-analyst-who-found-ivins-probably-did-not-write-the-anthrax-letters-is-22-pages-long-the-fbi-advises-dxer-that-no-comparison-of-mohammed-attas-h/
The USG Has Denied FOIA Requests For Atta’s Handwriting Since The Fall 2001 Anthrax Mailings On Grounds It Could Interfere With Enforcement Proceedings
Posted by Lew Weinstein on November 1, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/the-usg-has-denied-foia-requests-for-attas-handwriting-since-the-fall-2001-anthrax-mailings-on-grounds-it-could-interfere-with-enforcement-proceedings/
DXer said
Nabil, you have insights. Why did Bin Laden deny responsibility for 9/11?
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091601noinvolvement
A close aide to Osama bin Laden reports that bin Laden denies any role in the previous day’s attacks on the United States, but has praised those responsible for them. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/12/2001] The aide, one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants, speaks by satellite telephone with Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail, who is the Islamabad bureau chief of Abu Dhabi Television. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/12/2001; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 9/13/2001] Ismail has long-standing ties with bin Laden and has conducted several interviews with him over the last few years.[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/13/2001] The aide, who does not want to be publicly named, calls Ismail early in the day from a hideout somewhere in Afghanistan. He quotes bin Laden as calling the attacks on the US “punishment from almighty Allah” for America’s attempt to “control the entire world by force.” He tells Ismail, “Osama bin Laden thanked Almighty Allah and bowed before him when he heard this news [of the attacks].” But, the aide says, bin Laden has stated, “I have no information about the attackers or their aims and I don’t have any links with them.”[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/12/2001; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 9/13/2001; REUTERS, 9/13/2001; BBC, 9/14/2001]
DXer said
Nabil, your Dad testified as a character witness for one of hte WTC 1993 bombers and sometimes translated for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. As a teen when you first arrived in Brooklyn, did you ever meet subtilis expert Walied Al-Samarrai?
The newly released Senior Executive Brief, dated 7 August 2001 reports that Bin Laden wanted to follow example of WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef (associated with subtilis expert)
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 27, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/the-newly-released-senior-executive-brief-dated-7-august-2001-reports-that-bin-laden-wanted-to-follow-example-of-wtc-1993-bomber-ramzi-yousef-associated-with-subtilis-expert/
The address/phone number associated with the WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef was frequently called by subtilis expert Walied Samarrai in February 1993 (up to the time and hour of the first arrests). See WTC 1993 trial, Exhibit 818. That address is separately associated with Dr. Samarrai, a subtilis expert, in this Intellius Report. Did the subtilis expert know WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yousef? Who does Walied Samarrai think is responsible for the anthrax mailings? Is it correct that in 2001 Professor Samarrai lived at one of the two addresses about 20 miles from the mailbox in Princeton?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 7, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/the-addressphone-number-associated-with-the-wtc-1993-bomber-ramzi-yousef-was-frequently-called-by-subtilis-expert-walied-samarrai-in-february-1993-up-to-the-time-and-hour-of-the-first-arrests/
Former Amerithrax investigator Bradley Garrett, who took the lead on the Hatfill searches, rode on the plane with KSM’s nephew, WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, upon his rendering to the US. How did Agent Garrett exclude the subtilis expert living 20 miles from the mailbox who frequently called and was called by the number associated with Abdul Yasin and Ramzi Yousef in February 1993? On the mistaken grounds that Dr. Ayman Zawahiri did not have access to virulent anthrax?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 22, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/former-amerithrax-investigator-bradley-garrett-who-took-the-lead-on-the-hatfill-searches-rode-on-the-plane-with-ksms-nephew-wtc-bomber-ramzi-yousef-upon-his-rendering-to-the-us-how-did-agen/
Was the North Brunswick computer person Mazen Mokhtar who mirrored Al Qaeda’s website azzam.com (which explained the symbolism of the “green birds”) in contact with subtilis expert Walied Samarrai in 2001?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 8, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/was-the-north-brunswick-computer-person-mazen-mokhtar-who-mirrored-al-qaedas-website-azzam-com-which-explained-the-symbolism-of-the-green-birds-in-contact-with-subtilis-expert-walied-samarra/
DXer said
Nabil,
Did you meet Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, when they visited your father’s mosque in Brooklyn? By one account, Zawahiri came to Brooklyn in late 1994 or 1995. Al-Dahab, trained by Ali Mohammed to send lethal letters, ran the Services Organization at the Brooklyn and says that Zawahiri visited in late 1994 or early 1995. Did you meet Dahab? Dahab and Ali travelled to Afghanistan and told OBL that they had recruited 10 sleepers in the US. Did Adnan know Ali Mohammed, the EIJ head of intelligence? For example, Ali trained the WTC bomber who your father gave a character reference at trial. Did Adnan know Dahab, the fellow trained by the head of EIJ intelligence to send lethal letters?
“There is considerable dispute about the exact date of Zawahiri’s trip to the United States, or whether there was more than one. Ali Mohammed, the FBI’s main source on this matter, told investigators that Zawahiri traveled to Brooklyn in 1988 in the company of Abu Khaled al-Masri, which is an alias for Mohammed Shawki Islambouli, the brother of the assassin of Anwar al-Sadat, and who was on the shura council of Jihad. As for the California trip, Mohammed says it took place in 1993 before the World Trade Center bombing, which occurred on February 26. Zawahiri’s host in California, Dr. Ali Zaki, however, says he met Zawahiri once, in 1989 or 1990. There is also court testimony in Egypt by Khaled Abu al-Dahab, another member of al-Jihad who lived in California. “Ayman al-Zawahiri came to America to collect donations,” Abu al-Dahab told a court in Cairo in 1999. Abu al-Dahab gave the date of Zawahiri’s trip as late 1994 or 1995.”
“According to [former Special FBI Agent] Dan Coleman, Zawahiri paid a visit to the mujahideen’s Services Bureau branch office in Brooklyn in 1988. The office on Atlantic Avenue was run by one of Zawahiri’s men in al-Jihad, Mustafa Shalabi. Two years later, Shalabi got into a dispute with Zawahiri’s old rival, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, over money. The blind sheikh wanted to use the funds the center raised to support the international jihad. Shalabi wanted the money to go into the Islamist rebellion against Egypt. He refused to relinquish control of the account. In March 1991 someone entered Shalabi’s apartment in Brooklyn, beat him, strangled him, and stabbed him more than thirty times — a murder that was never solved.”
The Looming Tower, Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 [by Lawrence Wright], p. 406 (2002)
Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli (brother of Sadat’s assassin) personally visited Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s Brooklyn, NY mosque, Al-Farouq
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 7, 2013
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/zawahiri-and-mohammed-islambouli-brother-of-sadats-assassination-personally-visited-adnan-el-shukrijumahs-brooklyn-ny-mosque-al-farouq/
The head of intelligence for Egyptian Islamic Jihad had a document on his computer seized by the FBI that outlined principles of cell security that would be followed
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 22, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/the-head-of-intelligence-for-egyptian-islamic-jihad-had-a-document-on-his-computer-seized-by-the-fbi-that-outlined-principles-of-cell-security-that-would-be-followed/
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=khaled_abu_el-dahab
By the mid-1980s, Osama bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam jointly founded a charity front based in Pakistan which is called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) (which means “services office”) and is also known as Al-Kifah (which means “struggle”) (see 1984). …
But around 1986, Khaled Abu el-Dahab, the right hand man of double agent Ali Mohamed, informally founds the branch in Brooklyn, New York, and it soon becomes the most important US branch. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/22/1998; BURR AND COLLINS, 2006, PP. 269-270]
Jamal al-Fadl, a founding member of al-Qaeda and future FBI informant (see June 1996-April 1997), also works at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in its early days. [MILLER, STONE, AND MITCHELL, 2002, PP. 155] The Brooklyn office recruits Arab immigrants and Arab-Americans to go fight in Afghanistan, even after the Soviets withdraw in early 1989. As many as 200 are sent there from the office. Before they go, the office arranges training in the use of rifles, assault weapons, and handguns, and then helps them with visas, plane tickets, and contacts. They are generally sent to the MAK/Al-Kifah office in Peshawar, Pakistan, and then connected to either the radical Afghan faction led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf or the equally radical one led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/11/1993] The CIA has some murky connection to Al-Kifah that has yet to be fully explained. Newsweek will later say the Brooklyn office “doubled as a recruiting post for the CIA seeking to steer fresh troops to the mujaheddin” fighting in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Brooklyn office is where “veterans of [the Afghan war arrived] in the United States—many with passports arranged by the CIA.” [NEWSWEEK, 10/1/2001] Robert I. Friedman, writing for New York magazine, will comment that the Brooklyn office was a refuge for ex- and future mujaheddin, “But the highlight for the center’s regulars were the inspirational jihad lecture series, featuring CIA-sponsored speakers.… One week on Atlantic Avenue, it might be a CIA-trained Afghan rebel traveling on a CIA-issued visa; the next, it might be a clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret, who would lecture about the importance of being part of the mujaheddin, or ‘warriors of the Lord.’ The more popular lectures were held upstairs in the roomier Al-Farouq Mosque; such was the case in 1990 when Sheikh [Omar] Abdul-Rahman, traveling on a CIA-supported visa, came to town.” One frequent instructor is double agent Ali Mohamed, who is in the US Special Forces at the time (see 1987-1989). Bin Laden’s mentor Azzam frequently visits and lectures in the area. In 1988, he tells “a rapt crowd of several hundred in Jersey City, ‘Blood and martyrdom are the only way to create a Muslim society.… However, humanity won’t allow us to achieve this objective, because all humanity is the enemy of every Muslim.’” [NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 3/17/1995] Ayman Al-Zawahiri, future Al-Qaeda second in command, makes a recruiting trip to the office in 1989 (see Spring 1993). [NEW YORKER, 9/9/2002] The Brooklyn office also raises a considerable amount of money for MAK/Al-Kifah back in Pakistan. The Independent will later call the office “a place of pivotal importance to Operation Cyclone, the American effort to support the mujaheddin. The Al-Kifah [Refugee Center was] raising funds and, crucially, providing recruits for the struggle, with active American assistance.” [INDEPENDENT, 11/1/1998] Abdul-Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” is closely linked to bin Laden. In 1990, he moves to New York on another CIA-supported visa (see July 1990) and soon dominates the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. Shalabi has a falling out with him over how to spend the money they raise and he is killed in mysterious circumstances in early 1991, completing Abdul-Rahman’s take over. Now, both the Brooklyn and Pakistan ends of the Al-Kifah/MAK network are firmly controlled by bin Laden and his close associates. In 1998, the US government will say that al-Qaeda’s “connection to the United States evolved from the Al-Kifah Refugee Center.” Yet there is no sign that the CIA stops its relationship with the Brooklyn office before it closes down shortly after the 1993 WTC bombing. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/22/1998]
Entity Tags: Jamal al-Fadl, Khaled Abu el-Dahab, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Mustafa Shalabi, Maktab al-Khidamat, Osama bin Laden, Fawaz Damra, El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Central Intelligence Agency,Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Al Farouq Mosque, Abdullah Azzam, Ali Shinawy, Ali Mohamed, Al-Kifah Refugee Center
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
Late 1994 or 1995: Islamic Jihad Head Fundraises in US Again
A young Ayman al-Zawahiri dressed as a Westerner.[Source: Public domain via BBC]
Ali Mohamed helps Ayman al-Zawahiri enter the US for another fundraising tour and acts as his head of security during his stay. At the time, al-Zawahiri is known to have been the head of the militant group Islamic Jihad since the late 1980’s. He is also al-Qaeda’s de facto number two leader, though this is not widely known. This is apparently his third visit to the US after recruiting and fundraising trips in 1989 and 1993 (see Spring 1993) . [NEW YORKER, 9/9/2002] Al-Zawahiri travels on a passport forged by Mohamed and uses a false name. He pretends to be a doctor for a charity raising money for refugees in Afghanistan, but in fact raises money for his Islamic Jihad group. Some donors know his true purpose, and others do not. According to one security expert, he is also in the US “to see whom he could recruit here, what could be done here—preparing the establishment of a base.” Mohamed and Khaled Abu el-Dahab (see 1987-1998), the two known members of a Santa Clara, California, based al-Qaeda sleeper cell, host al-Zawahiri in Santa Clara and escort him to nearby mosques in Santa Clara, Stockton, and Sacramento. [SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/11/2001; CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 12/11/2001] He spends weeks in the US, traveling to other states such as Texas and New York to raise money from mosques there as well. He raises as much as $500,000. El-Dahab is later told some of the money collected is used later in the year to fund bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 17 diplomats (see November 19, 1995).[SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 10/11/2001] Accounts on the timing of the trip are vague, and differ as to whether it took place in late 1994 or some time in 1995. Perhaps coincidentally, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden’s brother-in-law, is arrested in mid-December 1994 in Morgan Hill, California, approximately 30 miles from Santa Clara. The FBI finds and quickly translates literature in Khalifa’s luggage advocating training in assassination, explosives, and weapons, bombing churches, and murdering Catholic priests, but seemingly inexplicably, they deport him a few months later (see December 16, 1994-May 1995). Two directors of President Clinton’s National Security Council’s counterterrorism team later will claim that they did not learn of al-Zawahiri’s trips until 1999, and even then they only learned about it by accident and were unable to get the FBI to reveal any more about the trips (see 1999).
Entity Tags: Khaled Abu el-Dahab, Islamic Jihad, Ali Mohamed, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ayman al-Zawahiri
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
Mid-1990s: Ali Mohamed Associate Said to Recruit 10 Sleeper Agents in US
Khaled Abu el-Dahab travels to Afghanistan to be personally congratulated by bin Laden. He is congratulated for recruiting 10 US citizens of Middle Eastern descent into al-Qaeda. Bin Laden was particularly keen to recruit such people so their US passports could be used for international travel by other al-Qaeda operatives. El-Dahab makes this visit with Ali Mohamed; the two of them make up the heart of an al-Qaeda cell based in Santa Clara, California (see 1987-1998). El-Dahab will reveal this information in a 1999 trial in Egypt. The names of the recruits and other details about them apparently are not publicly revealed, and it is unclear if or when they are ever uncovered. [SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 11/21/2001]
Entity Tags: Ali Mohamed, Osama bin Laden, Khaled Abu el-Dahab
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Nabil,
Did you know the background of Dahab, who ran the Services Organization for the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman out of your father’s mosque? He says he was recruited operatives in the US and was trained to mail lethal letters.
Given that Adnan El-Shukrijumah, your brother, was there in 1995 when Dahab says Ayman Zawahiri visited, I would have expected that the CIA would have been all over Adnan when the FBI referred Adnan El-Shukrijumah for investigation. Someone seems to have dropped the ball.
The FBI had learned through citizen tips and otherwise that Adnan was associated with the lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, at the Sarasota residence, flight school, and immigration office. It was an especially hot lead when it was learned from Abu Zubaydah in interrogation that Adnanhad entered the country in Fall 2001. See Sarasota documents. (Adnan was nown to Zubaydah only by the name in the travel document Mohammed Sher…)
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/in-sarasota-investigation-who-was-the-person-associated-with-the-hijackers-flight-school-who-was-discovered-to-have-re-entered-the-country-after-911/
The FBI and CIA knew or should have known all of this background in October 2001 based on the confession and courtroom testimony of Dahab. Dahab helped with the Services Organization for the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman out of your father’s mosque. Dahab in 1999 had testified about Ayman Zawahiri and the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli, at the Brooklyn mosque in 1995.
By way of some background, Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, was in a cell with KSM planning attacks on the US. They were in Qatar and KSM fled upon being tipped off that a Lear Jet had been sent for his rendition. (The FBI never found out who tipped KSM off but might have tried harder. given the tip-off is fairly understood then to have to 9/11 and the deaths of 3,000)
I wrote a long memo to the CIA in December 2001 about Dahab’s recruiting and pointed to the Brooklyn mosque as to where to look for the mailer of the Fall 2001 anthrax letters.
But by then, your brother, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, was already in the wind. (That is, assuming that witnesses who reported at the barbecue just before the March 2003 BOLO were mistaken.)
The CIA and Egyptian security knew the names of the 10 recruits named by Dahab in his confession, didn’t they?
Did the CIA feel that they had dropped the ball due to the compartmentalization of the information? (Being a big fan of the FBI and CIA, I credit that is what happened in leading up to 9/11. I view missteps as relating to an understandable CYA instinct that simply needs to be overcome by breaking down the compartmentalization of information).
Is that why Vince Cannistraro — who helped arrange for the Services Organization recruitment of jihadis in the 1980s — came up with that lame “lone nut” profile and website for Amerithrax Task Force and FBI Special Agent Roth? He and a couple of colleagues offered it up as a sting to collect IPs, when it really, in effect, merely served the purpose of anchoring discussion on a lone nut, sexual deviant profile. See Marilyn T’s article and then go to the websites in the Wayback Machine.
“In 2002, the “anthraxhunt.com” website was an “FBI sting” that sought to provoke a reaction from the perpetrator. Did it work?”
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 16, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/in-2002-the-anthraxhunt-com-website-was-an-fbi-sting-that-sought-to-provoke-a-reaction-from-the-perpetrator-did-it-work/
Vince Cannistraro, who has consulted for the Saudis , might more usefully delved into the history of the Blind Sheik’s Services Organization. (Prince Bandar was chief of Saudi intelligence and had great influence over the US Administration over decades) Vince perhaps could have shed light on whether Adnan El-Shukrijumah had been recruited by Dahab and Ali Mohammed. Relevant records might include Adnan’s trips and training abroad in Afghanistan and/or Bosnia.
Press reports explain that defense counsel subpoenaed Mr. Cannistraro to testify in the Blind Sheik’s defense, so as to provide some historical background to the Services Organization dating to the 1980s.
Vince coincidentally has served as a news consultant for ABC News. ABC News in turn might have, for its part, more productively focused on the Blind Sheik’s Services Organization in Brooklyn rather than stories seeking to associate the mailed anthrax with Iraq.
As any investigative news organization knows, however, it is never too late to be right — until it is. ABC News has since done some important and good work on the subject of your brother, Adnan El-Shukrijumah.
As they say inside the Beltway, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.
Nabil, here is the background of Dahab in case you were too young to be in a position to know what was going on.
I considered this article by Lance Williams to be one of the most important articles ever written indirectly bearing on the solution to the mystery of the Fall 2001 anthrax letters.
A key was to obtain a copy of the Dahab’s confession from Egyptian security and the CIA as to who Dahab and Ali Mohammed had recruited. That is what Agent Bob Roth should have done instead of going with Vince Cannistraro’s website about a lone nut with a sexual dysfunction.
“A confessed operative of a Silicon Valley terrorist cell says he recruited 10 U.S. citizens into Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization during his 12-year residence in California, according to a new account of his statements to an Egyptian military court.
Bin Laden personally congratulated Khalid Abu-al-Dahab, 37, an Egyptian- born U.S. citizen, Silicon Valley car salesman and confessed member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, for recruiting Islamic Americans into al Qaeda, Dahab told investigators after his 1998 arrest in Cairo on terrorism charges.
Dahab said bin Laden was eager to recruit American citizens of Middle Eastern descent because their U.S. passports could be used to facilitate international travel by al Qaeda terrorists, according to the account of the confession. It was published Oct. 10 in the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat.”
In his confession, Dahab said he and another admitted terrorist from Silicon Valley, former U.S. Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed, had traveled to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to report to bin Laden on their success in recruiting Americans. …
Dahab’s confession supports the view of many terrorism experts that al Qaeda has “sleeper” operatives on station in the United States for future terrorist attacks. …
Khaled Duran, an author and terrorism expert who has written about the Silicon Valley cell, said it was “perfectly credible” that Dahab and Mohamed had recruited other Americans into the terrorist cell.
“These people are like missionaries,” he said. “If you want to make a revolution, you need revolutionaries, and to get them you have to preach, to spread the gospel, so to speak.”
The recruits would be expected to “fade into the woodwork” until the organization needed them, he said.
The confession also sheds new light on Dahab, whom bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky has called a “high-quality” al Qaeda agent, one of the “senior jihadist operatives in the United States” during the 1990s.
His story, obtained from accounts of Egyptian court proceedings and interviews with people who knew him, is entwined with that of Mohamed, a former Egyptian military officer and aide to bin Laden who recruited Dahab into al Qaeda, brought him to America and became his handler.
FROM A WEALTHY FAMILY
People who met Dahab in California say he is handsome and outgoing and speaks excellent English. He said he was from a wealthy Alexandria family: his father was an airline pilot, his mother was a physician, and he also planned a career in medicine.
But Dahab told acquaintances he had been radicalized by a tragedy that happened when he was a schoolboy: his father, he claimed, had been among 108 people killed in the 1973 crash of a Cairo-bound Libyan Arab Airlines plane that was shot down by Israeli fighter jets when it strayed over the Sinai Peninsula, which at the time was occupied by Israel.
He claimed that his father’s death — and Egypt’s failure to avenge it — had turned him against the Egyptian government and against Israel and the United States, as well. He said he was drawn toward Islamic Jihad, a radical movement that had assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981 in an effort to remake Egypt into a fundamentalist Muslim state.
While a medical student in Alexandria in about 1984, according to his confession, Dahab met Mohamed, who then was an officer in the Egyptian commando forces and a Jihad operative planning to emigrate to the United States.
As The Chronicle has previously reported, Mohamed and Dahab pulled off one startling feat and plotted another.
In 1995, using a fake passport and identity documents, they smuggled Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is bin Laden’s chief deputy and a suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and a long list of other crimes, into the United States from Afghanistan for a covert fund-raising tour in which the terrorist raised as much as $500,000. Part of the money financed the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, Dahab said.
Dahab also said that at Mohamed’s direction he had gone to terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 1990 and trained guerrilla fighters to fly hang gliders. He said Islamic Jihad was planning a hand-glider assault to liberate imprisoned Jihad leaders, some of whom had been locked up since the assassination of Sadat.
***
LEARNED TO MAKE LETTER BOMBS
Meanwhile, Dahab said Mohamed gave him military training and taught him how to make letter bombs.
***
On another visit to Afghanistan, Dahab said, he and Mohamed discussed the project with Zawahiri and bin Laden. He said bin Laden especially wanted access to the recruits’ passports to facilitate travel by other al Qaeda operatives.
Bin Laden also hoped the recruits would obtain travel visas in the United States that could be used by al Qaeda operatives to move between countries without security concerns.
***
Dahab told Egyptian authorities he and Mohamed had found 10 recruits, all of them naturalized U.S. citizens who had been born in the Middle East. The account of the confession did not name the recruits or provide other details about them. But Dahab’s story was consistent with information in U.S. court records about bin Laden’s recruitment of American citizens and al Qaeda’s use of forged U.S. passports.
Bin Laden’s Bay Area recruiter / Khalid Abu-al-Dahab signed up American Muslims to be terrorists
Lance Williams, Chronicle Staff Writer
Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, November 21, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bin-Laden-s-Bay-Area-recruiter-Khalid-2852208.php
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a020395mohamedexposed
1987-1998: California Al-Qaeda Cell Serves as Vital Communications Hub
***
He receives phone calls from the likes of Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who also visits California twice (see Spring 1993; Late 1994 or 1995). He distributes forged documents and makes money transfers. He is trained to make booby-trapped letters, enrolls in a US flight school to learn how to fly gliders and helicopters, and recruits additional US sleeper agents (see Mid-1990s). He helps translate US army manuals and topographical maps into Arabic for al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad training. El-Dahab will move to Egypt in 1998 and get arrested in October of that year. He will confess his role in all of this in an Egyptian trial in 1999. The Egyptian government will sentence him to 15 years in prison (see 1999).[NEW YORK TIMES, 10/23/2001; LONDON TIMES, 11/11/2001; SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 11/21/2001; CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 12/11/2001]
DXer said
On November 11, 2001, the Sunday Times reported on court proceedings in Egypt:
“El-Dahab was trained to make booby-trapped letters to send to “important people” and was also instructed to enroll in American aviation schools to learn how to fly gliders and helicopters.”
The FBI and CIA knew that Zawahirii associate Dahab, Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s associate at the mosque, had been trained by the EIJ head of intelligence to make booby-trapped letters to send to “important people.”
And so what explains such a clueless approach to Amerithrax? Ali Mohammed, the head of EIJ intelligence, had briefly worked for the CIA and was an FBI informant on immigration matters. He served as a Sergeant in the US Army. See Peter Lance’s hard-hitting “TRIPLE X”.
But if the CIA got over the embarrassment over Ali Mohammed’s training of WTC 1993 bombers — to include the one given a character reference by Adnan’s father at trial — surely it could get over training relating to the mailing of lethal letters. Couldn’t it?
The claim by talking heads that sending lethal letters was not the modus operandi of Al Qaeda was especially uninformed.
Sending lethal letters was not merely the modus operandi but it was the signature of the supporters of the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman based in the United States.
The Blind Sheik’s lawyer, who came to Brooklyn in the early 1990s to help with Nosair’s trial, had expressly announced that Ayman Zawahiri would use anthrax to retaliate for the rendering of the EIJ leaders, to include most notably its spiritual guide, Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman.
We needn’t think of it as a cover-up — the folks informed about Brooklyn and WTC 1993 just did a very bad job at “connecting the dots” in solving an admittedly difficult mystery.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
And so when the FBI referred Adnan El-Shukrijumah for investigation in 2001, what investigation was done by the CIA?
INSIGHT: Bin Laden had US terror cell for a decade
The Sunday Times (UK) ^ | November 11 2001 | The Insight Team
A TERRORIST network funded by Osama Bin Laden was established in New York and California more than 10 years ago with operatives dispatched to America for training in aviation, urban warfare and sending booby-trapped letters.
The plot that succeeded: a terror base was set up in America 10 years before the twin towers attack
Confessions by Islamic fundamentalists under the command of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s deputy, have revealed how – years before the September 11 attacks – the terrorists established sleeper cells across the western world and were plotting sophisticated attacks.
In more than 10,000 pages of Egyptian state security documents, Britain is named as one of the key bases of Al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad organisation. Three leading members of its ruling council were based in London and it was also an important fundraising centre, making money through farming and even renovating houses in London.
Among the terrorist leader’s agents living in America in the early 1990s were a communications specialist, a special forces officer, two wealthy doctors and a chain of fundraisers.
One operative with American citizenship, codenamed Adam, was planted in the United States in 1987 and then helped to co-ordinate communications, dispatch forged documentation and finance terrorists. Adam, the son of an Egypt Air pilot, was also instructed to get flight training.
Another agent, a former Egyptian special forces officer, worked with the American army before providing personal security advice to Bin Laden in Sudan in 1992.
Compiled by the Egyptian defence ministry, the documents provide the most authoritative account yet of the Islamic Jihad organisation and of Al-Zawahiri, whom many suspect was the inspiration behind the September 11 attacks. One of the most important hijackers, Mohammed Atta, was an Egyptian from Cairo. He, too, is suspected of being a member of Al- Zawahiri’s organisation.
The documents reveal how:
Islamic Jihad, now considered part of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, was being funded in Egypt from Bin Laden’s personal fortune from the early 1990s.
A base in Santa Clara, California, was used from 1990 to co- ordinate communications with terrorists’ cells around the world, including Bin Laden’s Sudanese base. Other operatives were based in New York.
American army manuals and topographical maps were translated into Arabic for terrorist training.
Sources of funds of the terrorist network included the sugar trade and sheep rearing in Albania as well as the renovation of old houses in London. According to one confession, the ruling shura (council) of Islamic Jihad in the mid-1990s had 14 members, including three in London. Two of those three, Adel Abdel Bary and Ibrahim Eidarous, are now in Belmarsh prison fighting extradition to the United States for alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
But Hani al-Sibai, a third alleged member of the shura at that time, lives with his wife and five children in Hammersmith, west London. Sources say he has split with Al-Zawahiri, at least since 1999.
Al-Sibai, a lawyer, denies any link with Islamic Jihad. Last week he said he had known Al-Zawahiri in the past but was himself a “quiet man” who had never committed a crime. Al-Sibai said he been visited by Scotland Yard detectives since September 11 and had been warned against making inflammatory statements. He has not been arrested or charged.
The most detailed account of Islamic Jihad’s activities in the West is provided by Khaled Abu el-Dahab, a naturalised American, codenamed Adam. His confessions are detailed in a state security document from Egypt’s defence ministry dated October 28, 1998.
DXer said
Here is a translation of the Arabic-language London Al-Sharq al-Awsat article (1 of the 3 part series) mentioned by Lance Williams.
Dahab’s confession discussed acquisition of anthrax and other pathogens.
So when this fellow at the Blind Sheik’s Services Organizations, Dahab, was taught to make booby-trapped letters to send to important people, the hot-headed son of the Blind Sheik’s translator at the same location in the early 1990s up to 1995 should have been a candidate for anthrax mailer right from the start.
http://fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo.htm
Title: Islamic Jihad ‘Confessions’ Described
Document Number: FBIS-NES-1999-0309
Document Type: Daily Report
Document Title: FBIS Translated Text
Document Region: Near East/South Asia
Document Date: 06 Mar 1999
Division: Arab Africa
Subdivision: Egypt
Sourceline: MM0903100499 London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 6 Mar 99 p 5
Citysource: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat
Language: Arabic
N/A
Subslug: First of three reports by Khalid Sharaf-al-Din from Cairo: “Surprises
in the Trial of the Largest International Fundamentalist Organization in
Egypt. Abu-al-Dahab: My Mission Was To Attack the Turah Prison After
Dropping a Bomb from a Glider”
***
Nonconventional Weapons [subhead]
The most controversial point in the confessions of the defendants from
the Albanian fundamentalist group was the confirmation that pro-Bin-Ladin
elements had obtained germ and biological weapons by post at a cheap
price. Factories in the former Eastern Europe supply viruses that cause
fatal diseases, such as E-Coli and Salmonella, without checking the
identities of the purchasers. The important thing for them is payment of
the invoice in advance. One of the organization’s members secure an offer
to supply samples of anthrax gas [as published] and other toxic gases
from a factory in a Southeast Asian country. The germs were offered at a
price of $3,685, including shipping costs. A laboratory in Indonesia
exported serums to the Islamic Moro Front, which has close ties with
pro-Bin-Ladin groups and with Arab Afghans and Balkans [as published]. It
is believed that the Moro Front has large quantities of toxic gases.
DXer said
http://www.dawn.com/news/88955/22-000-pakistanis-register-with-ins
DAWN
Washington, March 21, 2003
AL QAEDA: The FBI has issued a nationwide alert for the arrest of Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan, a Pakistani national. Khan is a pilot and was last seen in Miami, the FBI said. “He is armed and dangerous and may be connected to Al Qaeda,” said an FBI directive. But intelligence sources said that Khan may be the same as Adnan el-Shukrijumah, a 27-year-old Saudi national FBI is also looking for. Shukrijumah is wanted for questioning in regard to a possible domestic terrorist plot. Shukrijumah is thought to have a Guyanese passport and to have been trained as a pilot. The possibility that he is in the United States and could pose a threat was developed from questioning key Al Qaeda official Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan earlier this month. Shukrijumah, who uses the alias Ja’far al-Tayar and similar names, is between 5’3″ tall and weighs at least 130 pounds. FBI’s description for Khan fits that of el-Shukrijumah’s, although the FBI alert says Khan is 36-years-old and was born in Pakistan. Federal agents recently raided a home in Miami where Khan was believed to be living, but failed to apprehend him. The original FBI warning about Khan acknowledged that the law enforcement agency was unsure of his name, age and place of birth. However, Khan is known to use the same aliases as Shukrijumah.
The Dawn
DXer said
In March 2003, his mom was saying that upon 9/11, it was Trinidad that he called from.
Father denies son linked to terror
By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2003
MIRAMAR — While a worldwide hunt continued Friday for a man thought to be an al-Qaida terrorist, the suspect’s father insisted that his long-absent son has no links to violent extremists.
***
“He is a nice boy,” said the father, an Islamic scholar in a traditional lavender robe and Western jacket. “I trained him to be an Islamic missionary.”
Soon after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, Adnan El Shukrijumah phoned his parents from Trinidad.
He cautioned his family about federal scrutiny.
“He told us, do not get panicked and stay cool, and people will come and question you,” the elder El Shukrijumah said.
Indeed, authorities have been to the family’s house at least a half-dozen times, most recently on Thursday.
***
The FBI is also is investigating Adnan El Shukrijumah’s friendship with Imran Mandhai, one of two Florida college students convicted of conspiring to bomb electrical stations, a National Guard armory, Jewish businesses and Mount Rushmore, plots not carried out. The elder El Shukrijumah said the two knew each other but were never close.
“Imran used to come to me for lessons in Arabic and commentaries on the Koran,” El Shukrijumah’s father said. “I’ve never seen any negative acts by him.”
When they last spoke, El Shukrijumah’s father said, he and his wife advised their son to stay out of the United States.
Adnan El Shukrijumah told them his import business of robes, women’s shawls and books on the Koran would soon take him to Saudi Arabia.
He gave no address or phone number, said his father. “Very rarely he contacts us,” he said.
,,,
— Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press and WTSP-TV Ch. 10 was also used.
Detained al Qaeda suspects identified man from Broward
Miami Herald ^ | March 22, 2003 | DAVID KIDWELL, LARRY LEBOWITZ AND MANNY GARCIA
Posted on March 22, 2003 4:12:47 AM EST by sarcasm
***
Agents first became interested in El’Shukri-jumah in March 2001 after a Broward terrorism suspect bragged that he was trying to recruit him to join his cause. Weeks later, agents secretly tape-recorded El’Shukri-jumah speaking with a government informant, but it was only innocent chatter. Agents looked for him after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but he had left the United States weeks before the assaults.
He became a worldwide priority after Mohammed’s arrest.
***
RECRUITMENT
According to investigators, in late 2000 or early 2001, Mandhai told an FBI informant who was secretly recording the conversation that he was recruiting 25 to 30 men, including El’Shukri-jumah, for a terror campaign.
Mandhai described El’Shukri-jumah as ”really radical.” But he never joined the cause.
The informant, wearing a hidden microphone, then tried to befriend El’Shukri-jumah in spring 2001. El’Shukri-jumah never incriminated himself during the conversation.
”Adnan doesn’t say anything,” an investigator said, “all innocent stuff.”
At that point, the probe into El’Shukri-jumah ended.
El’Shukri-jumah’s family said Mandhai was incapable of masterminding any plots.
”The guy was just a kid himself. He couldn’t even drive a car. The way he always got around was on a bike,” said Adnan’s brother Nabil. The brother described Mandhai as easily manipulated and “very stupid, lightheaded. He couldn’t recruit anybody to do anything. I feel sorry for the guy. He just got caught up in something out of his control.”
LEFT COUNTRY
After the terrorist attacks, the FBI began looking for El’Shukri-jumah and interviewing his family. But he had left the country.
El’Shukri-jumah’s father said he left in May 2001, several months before the attacks. According to his family, El’Shukri-jumah traveled frequently, selling Islamic items and clothing.
”He called us from Trinidad after it happened,” his mother said. ”He was as surprised as any of us. I told him not to come back, that everything had changed here.” Investigators then discovered he had lied on his application for permanent residency status with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. El’Shukri-jumah swore on the application that he had never been arrested, but state records show Miramar police had charged him with biting his little sister in June 1997.
The misdemeanor charges were dropped by Broward prosecutors.
That sister, Aidah, now 18, said Friday the biting incident was just normal sibling bickering.
DXer said
For FBI documents about El-Shukrijumah’s association with Atta and what was known about El-Shukrijumah in late 2001 and 2002 by the Florida FBI, see the documents the federal judge is reviewing in the Broward Bulldog FOIA lawsuit.
The person the FBI knew had returned to the United States was Jafar The Pilot aka Adnan El-Shukrijumah. See the widely reported public announcements in February and March 2003.
In Sarasota investigation, who was the person associated with the hijackers’ flight school who was discovered to have re-entered the country after 9/11?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on September 21, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/in-sarasota-investigation-who-was-the-person-associated-with-the-hijackers-flight-school-who-was-discovered-to-have-re-entered-the-country-after-911/
DXer said
Bilal Philips, Ali Al-Timimi’s mentor in Saudi Arabia, reports on the website that Adnan created that he was a good friend of Adnan’s father Gulshair, the translator for the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman.
Milton Viorst, who knew Ali as a teenager, wrote a fascinating and sympathetic yet balanced portrait in “The Education of Ali Al-Timimi” that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006. In Saudi Arabia, Al-Timimi had been mentored by a Saudi-trained Canadian imam Bilal Philips. Philips was Al-Timimi’s Islamic Studies teacher at Manaret Riyadh High School in the early 1980s. Al-Timimi adopted Philips’ view that “The clash of civilizations is a reality,” and “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” Between 1991 and 1993, Philips relocated to the Mindinao, Phillippines, where he taught at an islamic school. In 1993, according to an interview he gave in a London-based Arabic-language magazine interview, Philips ran a program to convert US soldiers to Islam stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Persian Gulf War. Philips was made a proselytization official by the Saudi Air Force. Philips followed up in the US, with telephone calls and visits intended to recruit the veterans as potential members of Bin Laden’s network. He enlisted assistance from others based in the U.S. and members of Islamic centers all over the US. These conversion specialists financed pilgrimages for US veterans and would later send Muslim clerics in the United States to their homes. Bilal Philips encouraged some converts from this program to fight in Bosnia in the 1990s. He enlisted WTC plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El to help him with the program. Hampton-El was associated with the Al-Kifah center in Brooklyn. Hampton-El in trial testimony described a meeting at the Saudi embassy in 1992 at which Philips gave him a list of US Army personnel to approach. Bilal Philips was named along with Osama bin Laden and Bin Laden brother-in-law Khalifa (and many others) as unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial that sent the “blind sheik” to prison.
Bilal Philips explained these recruitment efforts to a London newspaper in Arabic (translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service) in an article titled “Jamaican-Born Canadian Interviewed on Islamic Missionary Work Among US Troops”:
“[redacted] used to coordinate with US intelligence. And, when Croatia closed its borders to Arab volunteers, there were a group of black Americans who completed their training and knew Islam through me. [Redacted] contacted Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and offered to use this group for sabotage acts inside the United States. The offer was made on the telephone, which apparently was tapped by US intelligence. Shaykh Umar replied by saying: ‘”Avoid civilian targets.’”
Bilal Philips was a good friend of Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father. Philips wrote in his guestbook on the family website his son created about learning Arabic: “He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Alla h. Was salaam, Bilal.”
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Title:
Name-Recognition Tool Used in Hunt for Al Qaeda Suspect
Source:
eWeek. (Mar. 21, 2003):
http://www.eweek.com
To help police, banks and other business institutions search their databases as they try to track down suspected al Qaeda associate Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a maker of smart name-recognition software is giving away a collection of over 500 linguistic name and alias variations.
The FBI said on Thursday that El Shukrijumah is possibly involved with al Qaeda terrorist activities and may pose a threat to U.S. security. Language Analysis Systems, in Herndon, Va., responded by making public on its site about 40 of the most common name variations that may be in use by El Shukrijumah, including variations of the aliases identified by the FBI. The company also will give away a more extensive list to certain agencies.
John Hermansen, CEO and founder of LAS, said that examples of organizations that have a demonstrated need are police departments or joint terrorism task forces. Other organizations or individuals would be deluged by the number of possible name variations, he said.
According to LAS, its Arabic name experts believe that the aliases provided–among them, “Abu Arif” and “Ja’far Al-Tayar”–could mean one of a few things. The first could translate to “father of Arif” or could be a nickname for a knowledgeable person. The word “Tayar” could be a nickname for “pilot,” which would make the second alias translate into “Ja’far the pilot.”
Police and others checking their databases for name variants would likely do a simple search on the top names, Hermansen said, whereas financial institutions or government agencies would need LAS’ search technology–which includes the products NameClassifier and NameHunter–to make use of the entire list.
NameClassifier is software that identifies what cultural background a given name comes from. Names translated from Chinese, Korean, Hispanic and Arabic, for example, have distinct spelling variations that crop up when translating from a non-Roman alphabet to a Roman character set. NameHunter is software that takes the search one step further after the culture of a name is identified by using language-specific parameters. For example, “Abdul” is a common identifier in Arabic and appears in the left string of name characters, much like “Ms.” or “Mr.” in English. NameHunter would therefore place emphasis on characters that appear in characters to the right.
The abbreviated list of name variations is available here.
Lisa Vaas
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
“Name-Recognition Tool Used in Hunt for Al Qaeda Suspect.” eWeek 21 Mar. 2003. Academic OneFile. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA99063647&v=2.1&u=nysl_ce_ocpl&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=c76ba38db0d8a8208914a076772ceb23
DXer said
Mohammed Sher was an alias Shukrijumah used in forging his fake travel documents.
The Terrorist List – Volume 2 – Page 257
books.google.com/books?isbn=0313374716
Edward F. Mickolus, Susan L. Simmons – 2011 – Preview – More editions
Adnan G. El Shukrijumah: variant Adnan G. el Shukri Jumah; aliases Abu Arif, Ja’far al-Tayar, Jaffar al-Tayyar, Jafar Tayar, … The FBI rescinded a February alert issued against Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan, an alias of El Shukrijumah.
DXer said
Gerald Posner, the Chief Investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, summarized the issue in a 9/10/09 piece “Mohamed Atta’s Successor”:
“For the longest time, American intelligence did not know the real identity of Jafar the Pilot. An FBI file was mistakenly opened in one of Adnan’s aliases, Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan. The first detainee to give up any information about him was Abu Zubaydah, sometime after May 2002, maybe even as late as August when Zubaydah was waterboarded. He told his interrogators that Jafar the Pilot would deliver a so-called American Hiroshima, an ambitious plan to detonate dirty bombs (conventional explosives filled with radioactive material) inside America. But Zubaydah did not know Jafar’s real name. It wasn’t until interrogators got hold of Khalid Sheik Mohammad—who had met Adnan in Pakistan—that they discovered he had been a Florida resident for 16 years. U.S. military officials realized they had been finding Adnan’s name in “pocket litter”—documents and scraps taken from prisoners and dead al Qaeda soldiers—but did not know who he was.”
DXer said
Gerald Posner’s article about the source of the information about Adnan’s alias “Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan” is
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/09/11/mohammed-attas-successor.html
It links the video where Adnan instructs on jump-starting a battery.
Gerald Posner is an award-winning author of 10 investigative best sellers and resides in Miami Beach Florida.
This week I studied his book about the Zubaydah interrogation and Saudi connection. Fascinating stuff. He reports that Zubaydah’s US interrogators pretended to be Saudi interrogators — so that he would think that they had no constraints. (Compare movie “Unthinkable.”) Zubaydah calmly told his interrogators — hey, no problem here. Call these two numbers he had memorized and you’ll be told that everything’s cool. The Saudi princes named then all died within a few days of the intel being shared with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The CIA had planned on monitoring the Pakistan and Saudi reaction to the news. Pretty dramatic stuff but I’ll keep my focus more narrowly on Amerithrax — with the Al-Hawali- Ali Al-Timimi being sufficient to thread the needle.
DXer said
Click to access us9gz-010016dp.pdf
S E C R E T / / NOFORN / / 20331111
Detainee [Z:ubaydah] did not pledge bayat to UBL and did not become a full al- Qaida member. Detainee refused to make the pledge unless al-Qaida agreed to stage an attack inside Israel or mount an operation to help free Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman aka (the Blind Shaykh).9 (p.3)
9 Analyst Note: Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman is serving a life sentence in the US for his part in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Abu Zubaydah worked as “a travel facilitator for al-Qaida” — he “specifically assisted al-Qaida members in acquiring false passports and visas.” (pp. 6-7) Detainee has intimate knowledge of al-Qaida’s use of a document committee for forging documents such as identification cards, visas, and passports.21 Thus, he would know the fake identity he provided for travel.
On 7 February 2002, detainee spoke with Jose Padilla, ISN US0US- 010008DP (US-10008) and Binyam Ahmad Mohammad, ISN US9ET001458DP (ET- 1458), regarding their plan to create a dirty bomb and conduct an attack inside the United States. Detainee agreed to sponsor this plan.35 (p. 8)
(S//NF) In early 2002, detainee [Zybatdag] sent Jose US-10008 [Padilla] to see KU-10024 [KSM] to discuss future operations in the US. KU-10024 directed US-10008 to travel to Chicago, Illinois to rent two apartments in high rise buildings which utilized natural gas for cooking and/or heating. KU-10024 explained to US-10008 a method to cause a natural gas explosion which would cause the building to collapse.” (pp. 8-9)
Detainee facilitated the procurement of hundreds of obtained fraudulent passports and other documents for militants and al-Qaida. 46 (p. 10)
(S//NF) Detainee stated it was easy to obtain misplaced or stolen passports from any country, usually obtaining passports from people in the target country who were sympathetic to the cause, then altering the passports to suit the intended traveler.53 (p. 11)
(S//NF) Placement and Access: Detainee was part of UBL’s inner circle. He had access to multiple al-Qaida leaders and was present during multiple operational meetings. Detainee maintained a close relationship to high ranking al-Qaida leaders. Detainee worked directly with al-Qaida, and was trusted enough to provide a safe haven for UBL after the 11 September 2001 attacks. (p. 13)
DXer said
By Dan Eggen and Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 21, 2003; Page A07
“FBI on Global Hunt for Saudi Al Qaeda Suspect”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1056-2003Mar20.html
“El Shukrijumah may be traveling on passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Canada or Saudi Arabia, the FBI said. He last entered the United States before the terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon and left later that year, a law enforcement official said.”
A troll in a box is a lot of fun. Be sure to stay for the end — for the delightful discussion of free will by Mr. Trout and Mr. Pickles.
Dare to be brave! Dare to be free! Dare to be square!
DXer said
In late 2002, Al-Hakaymah, a long-time colleague of Taha in the Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (Egyptian Islamic Group) summarized the Amerithrax investigation. Al-Hakaymah was Al Qaeda’s spymaster. He dedicated the treatise on American intelligence and law enforcement:
“To the pious and the hidden who are not known when they come and who are not missed when they disappear — To those whom their God will answer when they pray to Him. To all the eyes that are vigilant late at night to bring victory to this religion.”
It was publicized by a EIJ shura member Al-Sibai, who had been detained in London in 1999 and then released, and now was an oft-quoted expert on Zawahiri and his followers. He was #5 in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad according to a leaked intelligence report.
In mid-February 2003, Abdel Rahman’s son, who was on the WMD committed with Egyptian Midhat Mursi, was captured in Quetta, Pakistan. That month, a chemistry professor tasked with working on biological and chemical weapons met with Uzair Paracha and others at an ice cream parlor.
In the Spring of 2003, Aafia Siddiqui married Amar al-Baluchi, who had been a key lieutenant for KSM during the 9/11 planes operation and helped Al-Hawsawi helped with getting the hijackers into the US. The plan was to smuggle a chemical into New York City using a large shipping container controlled by Paracha’s father. In connection with that prosecution, the Assistant United States Attorney would later say that MIT-graduate Aafia Siddiqui was prepared to participate in an anthrax attack if asked. Her new husband, KSM’s nephew and Al-Hawsawi’s confederate, asked her to assess the skills of Yazid Sufaat’s assistant to reconstitute the anthrax program in Karachi. Yazid Sufaat had been captured in December 2001 when he tried to re-enter Malaysia. In written correspondence with me, Yazid Sufaat does not deny involvement in the Fall 2001 anthrax letters. He had been working in the lab in Kandahar since May 2001 with two assistants and prior to that they had been working at a lab in Omar Hospital.
On February 26, 2003, authorities searched the townhouse of Ali Al-Timimi, a graduate student and employee in bioinformatics at George Mason University who shared a department fax with famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head and fellow Ames anthrax researcher Charles Bailey. Al-Timimi was a celebrated
speaker and religious scholar associated with the Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”), an Ann Arbor-based charity. It’s lead writer was Kamal Habib, the Cairo-based founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who had been in a cell with Ayman Zawahiri in Maadi. The charity’s focus in its Arabic publication concerned tactics that would succeed in freeing Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman.
The Washington Post later summarized: “The agents reached an alarming conclusion: ‘Timimi is an Islamist supporter of Bin Laden’ who was leading a group ‘training for jihad,’ the agent wrote in the affidavit. The FBI even came to speculate that Timimi, a doctoral candidate pursuing cancer gene research, might have been involved in the anthrax attacks.”
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/07/threat.transcript/index.html
Ashcroft, Ridge, Mueller announce threat level increase
Friday, February 7, 2003
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. government Friday raised the national threat level to “orange,” indicating a “high risk of terrorist attacks.”
The announcement was made by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Here is a transcript of their remarks:
***
Recent intelligence reports suggests that al Qaeda leaders have emphasized planning for attacks on apartment buildings, hotels and other soft or lightly secured targets in the United States.
[blowing up apartment buildings had been the plot that Padilla and Binyman, who was trained in February 2002 by Shukrijumah in faking passports ]
…
There are also indications bolstered by the recent arrests in London where chemical ricin was discovered. These indications demonstrate al Qaeda’s interest in carrying out chemical, biological and radiological attacks.
MUELLER: Thank you, Tom.
,,,,
But I’ve got to emphasize also, we believe that an alert public is our strongest asset. If you observe suspicious activity, I encourage you to contact your local FBI office or your local police, and to report such activity.
I thank you.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/07/threat.level/
Official: Credible threats pushed terror alert higher
FBI seeking Pakistani man for questioning
Sunday, February 9, 2003
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Citing credible threats that al Qaeda might be planning attacks on American targets, the U.S. government raised the national color-coded threat level Friday to orange, indicating a “high” risk of a terrorist attack.
The change is only the second time the alert level has risen above yellow, an “elevated” risk, since the system was put in place in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
,,,
“[The reports] demonstrate al Qaeda’s interest in carrying out chemical, radiological and biological attacks.”
*****************
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/06/sprj.irq.alqaeda.links/index.html
By Sheila MacVicar and Henry Schuster
CNN
Thursday, February 6, 2003
PARIS, France (CNN) — Two senior al Qaeda figures helped train the people now suspected of planning chemical and biological attacks in France and the United Kingdom, European intelligence and judicial sources tell CNN.
One of those figures is Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the man singled out by President Bush as a link between the terrorist group and Iraq.
The other is Abu Khabab whose voice has been identified by intelligence sources as the man on a videotape showing al Qaeda operatives performing chemical weapons experiments on dogs.
The information comes after a recent wave of arrests in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain that investigators say helped uncover several cells of Islamic terrorists who had the material to make chemical and biological weapons. And, investigators say, the terrorists were apparently ready to use them. (France, Italy, Spain)
Among the common links between some of the men who were arrested: They trained at a camp in the Caucasus region, particularly the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia and in nearby Chechnya, according to investigators.
Officials are concerned the area has become a new base of operations for terrorist groups.
“They are coming from the same region, most of them are Algerian, trained [in] the same place, in some camps in Afghanistan, and at the same time in Georgia in the Pankisi Gorge. They have the same trainers,” said Gilles Leclair, who coordinates anti-terrorism efforts for the French Interior Ministry.
“And it seems, if we can recognize what we found in the searches, that they wanted to start chemical attacks,” Leclair told CNN.
In raids near Paris in December, the French police not only recovered a chemical suit, as previously reported, but also chemicals, including cyanide.
The formulas for chemical weapons found during the searches appeared to be different from the formulas in al Qaeda’s Encyclopedia of Jihad and other training manuals for developing bombs and chemical and biological agents that were recovered from abandoned camps in Afghanistan. And sources say that difference is of particular concern to French security officials….
President Bush last October mentioned Zarqawi as a “very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks.” ***
Comment: I questioned Yazid Sufaat about Abu Khabab’s experiments prior to 9//11. He complimented the question but “pled the Fifth.”
experiments led by Egyptian Abu Khabab killing rabbits with poisons under during the month before 9/11 at a camp outside Kabul
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 26, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/experiments-led-by-egyptian-abu-khabab-killing-rabbits-with-poisons-under-during-the-month-before-911-at-a-camp-outside-kabul/
DXer said
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/kephart.html
Immigration and Terrorism
Moving Beyond the 9/11 Staff Report on Terrorist Travel
By Janice Kephart September 2005
The FBI’s Most Wanted Al Qaeda LPR
Born in Saudi Arabia,82 Adnan El-Shukrijumah, aka “Jafar the Pilot,” has spent 15 years in the United States (mostly in South Florida), speaks fluent English, and has been employed as a teacher.83 El-Shukrijumah trained with Jose Padilla to partner in the dirty bomb plot,84 helicopter plots, and the New York and New Jersey financial infrastructure plots discovered in the summer of 2004. A Department of Homeland Security document quoted in Newsweek states that “KSM has identified Adnan el Shukrijumah, a Saudi born permanent U.S. resident alien, as an operative with standing permission to attack targets in the United States that had been previously approved by Osama Bin Ladin.”85 FBI Director Robert Mueller called him “a trained operative who poses an operational threat to the United States”86 who the FBI considers to be armed and dangerous.87
In late 2000 or early 2001, El-Shukrijumah was under investigation for his relationship to Imran Mandhai, convicted in Florida of conspiring to bomb a National Guard armory, power stations, Jewish businesses, and Mount Rushmore prior to 9/11.88 Mandhai was associated with Hakki Cemal Aksoy, convicted in 2002 for firearms violations and asylum fraud and in whose apartment bomb making manuals and notes were found. El-Shukrijumah had previously applied for naturalization, but the INS interior enforcement office in Miami noticed that the application was fraudulent. The INS agents working the case met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, and even discussed seeking a search warrant for El-Shukrijumah’s residence. Without further information linking El-Shukrijumah to terrorist activity, the matter was dropped.89
As an LPR, El-Shukrijumah easily traveled to and from attended training camps in Afghanistan,90 where he was most likely schooled by Ramzi Binalshibh, famous for his role as emissary between KSM and 9/11 ring leader Mohamad Atta.91 El-Shukrijumah is a skilled bomb maker and a Florida-trained pilot,92 and authorities have found a document that ties him (via one of his aliases) to the Oklahoma flight school where Zacarias Moussaoui trained.93 He may have been friendly with Atta as well, as I describe an immigration officer’s witnessing of receiving a request for help with travel documents in May 2001 from El-Shukrijumah on behalf of Atta and likely another 9/11 pilot in 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.94
According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, El-Shukrijumah “scouted sites across America that might be vulnerable to terrorist attack.”95 In addition to surveilling high-profile targets in New York’s financial district,96 El-Shukrijumah surveilled the Panama Canal.97 Back in the United States, he was also involved in an aborted plot with Jose Padilla to blow up apartment buildings in the United States.98 He was also likely Padilla’s first partner in the dirty bomb plot, but differences between them ended the joint venture.
There are also reports that El-Shukrijumah attempted to procure radioactive material from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.99 In March 2004, El-Shukrijumah attended a terrorist summit in Pakistan and met with a number of key al Qaeda members, including Abu Issa Al-Hindi, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, and Mohammed Babar.100 Recently he has been spotted in Mexico.101 ***
DXer said
The learned author cites in footnote 92 the article “Quiet Investigation Centers on Al Qaeda Aide in New York.” That article does not provide support for the oft-made claim that “Jafar the Pilot” is a trained pilot. The FBI Special Agent steeped in the details of Adnan’s life in an interview has denied it.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah, who cased the NYC and DC targets in 2001, was the son of the Blind Sheik’s translator. The cited article describes how in 2004, they met with an operative from Queens named Mohammed Junaid Babar South Waziristan in Pakistan.
THE NATION
Quiet Investigation Centers on Al Qaeda Aide in New York
A Pakistani American raised in Queens is telling authorities about plotting with top network members, court documents show.
September 03, 2004|Josh Meyer, Greg Krikorian and William C. Rempel | Times Staff Writers
NEW YORK — As President Bush touted his record in the war on terror Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, another front in the terrorism fight was playing out nearby in the federal holding cell of a Pakistani American named Mohammed Junaid Babar.
Babar, who grew up in Queens, is a cooperating witness in an unfolding investigation of what authorities say may be a New York-based “sleeper cell” involved in Al Qaeda efforts to launch attacks in the U.S.,…
The investigation remains nearly invisible to the public, and federal authorities and defense lawyers have refused to discuss it.
But unsealed court documents show that Babar, 29, has admitted meeting with senior Al Qaeda members in remote South Waziristan in Pakistan this year as part of a scheme to smuggle money, night-vision goggles and other equipment to the terrorist network.
On June 3, he secretly pleaded guilty to charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization and agreed to cooperate in ongoing investigations.
***
Authorities believe three of the men Babar met with were involved in plotting attacks in London and perhaps the United States, using surveillance gathered during visits to New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., in 2000 and 2001.
***
Some of the investigations have been underway for months or even years. In others, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies are pursuing recent leads generated through electronic intercepts and the capture and interrogation of suspected terrorists overseas and a review of their computers, cellphones and paper documents.
Several of the investigations involve alleged terrorism cells in New York and northern New Jersey, where suspected Al Qaeda operatives have been under intermittent surveillance since the early 1990s.
One focuses on local supporters of prominent Yemeni cleric Mohammed al Hasan al-Moayad and an aide, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, who authorities contend have used a Brooklyn-based mosque, ice cream parlor and other businesses to funnel $20 million to Al Qaeda overseas, court documents show.
New York area authorities also continue to investigate whether local sympathizers helped another prominent cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called blind sheik, communicate with leaders of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization while Abdel Rahman was imprisoned in Colorado. One U.S. postal employee is being prosecuted in that case.
Note:
The article about the investigation at the end of the story mentions the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s paralegal, who worked at the Post Office.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/sattar.html
DXer said
In fn. 93, the author cites Dan Eggen and Manuel Roig-Franzia, “FBI on Global Hunt for Saudi Al Qaeda Suspect.” The Washington Post. Mar. 21, 2003
That article states the FBI’s understanding of his travel in the Fall of 2001:
“[Shukrijumah] last entered the United States before the terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon and left later that year, a law enforcement official said.”
[Note he was back with Al-Hawsawi, KSM’s assistant with the anthrax spraydrying documents, back in Karachi by February 2002; that is where Hambali and Sufaat were consulting about reinstituting the anthrax program after the anthrax lab back in Kandahar had to be abandoned.
This article notes that the FBI does not credit that he received pilot training but does recognize that a document tied him to the school in Norman, Oklahoma. I believe this is when he visited there with Atta in 2000 to scope it out and consider Atta’s enrollment.
The Washington Post journalists write:
FBI on Global Hunt for Saudi Al Qaeda Suspect
By Dan Eggen and Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 21, 2003; Page A07
The FBI launched a global manhunt yesterday for a suspected Saudi al Qaeda member who is feared to be planning terrorist attacks, even as federal agents fanned out across the country as part of a wartime plan to interview Iraqi nationals and arrest those in violation of immigration laws.
The FBI called Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, 27, an “imminent threat to U.S. citizens and interests” who is “suspected of planning terrorist activities.” A senior law enforcement official described him as a possible terrorism organizer in the style of Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But authorities said they have no details on what kind of plot he might be involved in.
The FBI called Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, 27, a suspected al Qaeda member, an “imminent threat to U.S. citizens and interests.” (Fbi Via AFP)
An alias used by El Shukrijumah “kept coming up in numerous places,” including interrogations of captured al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an official said. El Shukrijumah is believed to have a connection, as yet unclear, to Jose Padilla, the American al Qaeda suspect held on charges he was plotting to explode a radiological bomb in the United States.
U.S. authorities also recovered a document that links the same alias to the Oklahoma flight school where Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person in the United States charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, studied aviation, an official said. There is no evidence that El Shukrijumah received pilot training in the United States, the official said.
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On a day when French officials discovered trace amounts of the poison ricin in vials at a luggage facility in a Paris train station, U.S. health officials began shipping antidotes for nerve agents and cyanide to large emergency rescue squads around the country.
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El Shukrijumah may be traveling on passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Canada or Saudi Arabia, the FBI said. He last entered the United States before the terrorist attacks in New York and on the Pentagon and left later that year, a law enforcement official said. … But authorities fear he may have reentered the United States illegally.
The El Shukrijumah family moved to Miramar, a suburb north of Miami, in 1995, according to Neville and Una Khan, who live in the same neighborhood and have known the family since the 1960s. The Khans said that El Shukrijumah’s father is a prominent Muslim leader in this suburb north of Miami and is the head of a prayer center, Masjid al Hijrah, next door to the family home. That home was searched yesterday by FBI agents.
Una Khan described Adnan El Shukrijumah as a devout student of the Koran who worked with children at the prayer center. He tended to be modern in his thinking, she said. “He never indicated in any way that he was extremist. . . . This is such a shock; this is something I don’t understand. I can’t believe it.”
The Khans say they have not seen El Shukrijumah for several years. They believe he is doing Islamic missionary work, though they don’t know where. He was also earning money by selling Islamic books, they said.
Several officials said the FBI decided to issue a public alert because of El Shukrijumah’s tentative connections to Padilla and Moussaoui, the apparent references to him in terrorism-related documents and interrogations, and because they were unable to find him. …
The public plea for information came after weeks of investigation that centered on an alias of El Shukrijumah that the FBI had attached to another man, a law enforcement official said. The bureau yesterday rescinded a February alert issued under that man’s name, Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan. That earlier search was one factor that led to the elevation of the U.S. threat level last month.
DXer said
“The INS agents working the case met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, and even discussed seeking a search warrant for El-Shukrijumah’s residence. Without further information linking El-Shukrijumah to terrorist activity, the matter was dropped.89”
As support for the statement that prosecution had been contemplated of El-Shukrijumah for an immigration violation in 2001, the author cites in fn. 89, “Email from former INS Supervisory Special Agent Bill West, August 29, 2005.”
DXer said
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/feds-beat-bushes-saudi-thug-article-1.671943
FEDS BEAT THE BUSHES FOR A SAUDI THUG
BY GREG B. SMITH NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, March 21, 2003, 12:00 AM
The FBI issued a worldwide alert yesterday for a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist who may be plotting new attacks against American interests. But the Daily News has learned the Saudi man is the same suspect identified in an FBI alert last month under a different name, photograph and nationality. For six weeks, the FBI used the wrong information to track down the suspect, Adnan El Shukrijumah, 27, a trained pilot who may have been in the U.S. shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials confirmed. An FBI alert sent to law enforcement agencies nationwide in February mistakenly identified the suspect as Mohammed Sher Mohammad Khan, a Pakistani whose photograph does not resemble El Shukrijumah’s. “It’s not anybody we want,” Judy Orihuela, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Miami office, said of Khan. It was agents in Miami who figured out the bureau was looking for the wrong guy. FBI officials said the new information leading them to El Shukrijumah was obtained from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda operations chief captured in Pakistan on March 1. Bureau officials who shipped El Shukrijumah’s photo to law enforcement agencies across the country said they were not sure he was still in the country. El Shukrijumah “poses a serious threat to U. S. citizens and interests worldwide,” the FBI said. One media report said El Shukrijumah may be plotting a dirty bomb attack against Americans and linked him to alleged dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla. Yesterday, agents in Florida were interviewing neighbors near Shukrijumah’s last known address, in Miramar, not far from Miami. Tracking El Shukrijumah may not be easy. He is believed to carry a Guyanese passport but may also have papers from Saudi Arabia, Canada and Trinidad. He also has several aliases, including Abu Arif and differently spelled versions of Ja’far Al-Tayar. The Al-Tayar aliases also were attributed to Mohammad Khan. Shukrijumah is described as 5-feet-3 inches to 5-feet-7 inches tall, of medium to heavy build, with black hair and eyes, dark complexion and, sometimes, a beard.