For a benchmark, Michael Moore is 49.
Posted on 03/18/2003 1:24:13 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is a Pakistani Baluch. So is Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, together with a third Baluch, Abdul Hakam Murad, the two collaborated in an unsuccessful plot to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes. Years later, as head of al Qaeda's military committee, Mohammed reportedly planned the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.
Why should the Baluch seek to kill Americans? Sunni Muslims, they live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan. The U.S. has little to do with them; there is no evident motive for this murderous obsession. The Baluch do, however, have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence, reflecting their militant opposition to the Shiite regime in Tehran. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war. According to Mr. Samarrai, Iraqi intelligence has well-established contacts with the Baluch in both Iran and Pakistan.
Mohammed, Yousef and Murad, supposedly born and raised in Kuwait, are part of a tight circle. Mohammed is said to be Yousef's maternal uncle; Murad is supposed to be Yousef's childhood friend. And U.S. authorities have identified as major al Qaeda figures three other Baluch: two brothers of Yousef and a cousin. The official position is thus that a single family is at the center of almost all the major terrorist attacks against U.S. targets since 1993. The existence of intelligence ties between Iraq and the Baluch is scarcely noted. Indeed, these Baluch terrorists began attacking the U.S. long before al Qaeda did.
Notably, this Baluch "family" is from Kuwait. Their identities are based on documents from Kuwaiti files that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi occupation, and which are therefore unreliable. While in Kuwait, Iraqi intelligence could have tampered with files to create false identities (or "legends") for its agents. So, rather than one family, these terrorists are, quite plausibly, elements of Iraq's Baluch network, given legends by Iraqi intelligence.
Someone named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. After high school in Kuwait, he enrolled at Chowan College in North Carolina in January 1984, before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he received his degree in December 1986. Is the Sept. 11 mastermind the same person as the student? He need not be. Perhaps the real Mohammed died (possibly during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait), and a terrorist assumed his identity.
Mohammed should now be just under 38, but the terrorist's arrest photo, showing graying sideburns and heavy jowls, seems to suggest an older man (admittedly, a subjective judgment). Yet this question can be pursued more reliably. Three sets of information exist regarding Mohammed: information from U.S. sources from the 1980s (INS and college documents, as well as individuals who may remember him); Kuwaiti documents; and information since the liberation of Kuwait (from his arrest, the interrogation of other al Qaeda prisoners, and the investigation into the 1995 plane-bombing plot).
The Kuwaiti documents should be scrutinized for irregularities that suggest tampering. The information about Mohammed from the '80s needs to be compared with the information that has emerged since Kuwait's liberation. The terrorist may prove to be taller (or shorter) than the student. Interrogators might ask him what he remembers of the colleges he is claimed to have attended. Acquaintances -- like Gaith Faile, who taught Mohammed at Chowan and who told the Journal, "He wasn't a radical" -- should be asked to provide a positive identification.
Along these lines, Kuwait's file on Yousef is telling. Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, but fled on a passport in the name of Mohammed's supposed nephew, Abdul Basit Karim. But Kuwait's file on Karim was tampered with. The file should contain copies of the front pages of his passport, including picture and signature. They are missing. Extraneous information was inserted -- a notation that he and his family left Kuwait on Aug. 26, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, entering Iran at Salamcheh on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan. But people do not provide authorities an itinerary when crossing a border. Moreover, there was no Kuwaiti government then. Iraq occupied Kuwait and would have had to put that information into the file.
Karim attended college in Britain. His teachers there strongly doubted that their student was the terrorist mastermind. Most notably, Karim was short, at most 5-foot-8; Yousef is 6 feet tall.
Nevertheless, Yousef's fingerprints are in Karim's file. Probably, the fingerprint card in Karim's file was switched, the original replaced by one with Yousef's prints on it. James Fox, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 WTC bombing, has been quoted as affirming that Iraqi involvement was the theory "accepted by most of the veteran investigators." Pakistani investigators were likewise convinced that Yousef had close links with the MKO, an anti-Iranian terrorist group run by Iraq, and conducted a bomb attack in Mashhad, Iran, in 1994.
U.S. authorities may unravel the story very quickly if they pursue the question of Mohammed's identity, instead of assuming they know who their captive really is. As for the larger issue of these murderously anti-American Baluch, that matter may become clear soon, once U.S. forces take Baghdad -- and take possession of Iraq's intelligence files.
Ms. Mylroie is the author of The War Against America (HarperCollins, 2001)
Western counter-terrorism experts believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was probably the brain behind September 11. In 1995, he and Ramzi Yousef together plotted from their hideouts in the Philippines a series of terrorist strikes against the US, which did not materialize. Both fled to Pakistan after the Filipino authorities got scent of their plans. Ramzi was arrested by the Pakistani authorities under Benazir Bhutto, and handed over to the US for trial relating to the New York World Trade Center explosion case, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammad managed to evade arrest and emerged as one of the principal aides of Osama bin Laden, when the latter returned to Afghanistan in 1996.The author is an Indian government official, so that may have something to do with the anti-Pakistan, anti-ISI slant I detect here.
Western media have in recent weeks quoted a senior US intelligence official as saying that if he had to decide between catching Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he might prefer the latter. "Bin Laden is unquestionably the leader, the symbol and the recruiting poster," the official said. "But it's looking more and more like Khalid actually makes things happen." They also quoted French terrorism expert and UN Security Council consultant Roland Jacquard as saying, "He is probably the only man who knows all the pieces of the puzzle."
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also uses the aliases Abdul Majid, Salim Ali, Ashrai Refaat, Nabith Renin, Khalid Abdul Waddod and Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Khalid. Police in the Philippines have described him as a Kuwaiti-born and US-educated Pakistani. If he is definitively established to be a Pakistani, this would show that September 11 was masterminded by a Pakistani assisting bin Laden. It may be recalled that Sheikh Omar, who has already been convicted in the Pearl murder case and has appealed against it, was reported to have told Karachi police that during a visit to Afghanistan before September 11 he had come to know of the plans for the terrorist strikes in the US and had immediately informed Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, the present director general of the ISI, who was at that time Corps Commander, Peshawar.
A number of interesting/intriguing questions about Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad remain unanswered. Are they related to each other as some reports claim? Are they Pakistanis (Yemeni-Balochis) as Filipino and Western agencies seem to believe, Kuwaitis (this is denied by the Kuwaiti authorities) or Iraqis (in the past, the Pakistani media have consistently referred to Ramzi Yousef either as a person of Middle Eastern background or as an Iraqi).
An interesting aspect of the raid in Karachi of September 11 has not received the attention it deserves. The so-called encounter lasted nearly four hours before the terrorists could be arrested. The authorities of the ISI have claimed that this was because the terrorists were heavily armed. Sindh police sources have, however, denied this. According to them, the security forces led by an ISI officer fired about 5,000 rounds as against about 100 fired by the terrorists.
The police authorities allege that the ISI officer, who led the raiding group,deliberately kept up heavy firing without any need for it in the hope that this would either kill Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or enable them to escape. While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed seems to have escaped, Binalshib was caught alive.
For a benchmark, Michael Moore is 49.
That much is certainly true. Let us all hope he has calculated wisely.
99% of FReepers know more than TGS.
Impossible. Quite impossible, given the standard of ignorance around here.
A fair question is:
What has happened to your theory of WMD blackmail? I guess Bush knows more than you, doesn't he? That much is certainly true. Let us all hope he has calculated wisely.
Things have not worked out like TGS predicted. But that only leaves major questions unanswered. If this war finally ends without any appearance of WMDs, that leaves the issue flapping in the breeze. And the govt still acts like the failure to charge anyone over the anthrax attacks is quite ok. Nothing to worry about.
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