PANEL 2: STATES AND TERRORISM
WITNESSES: LAURIE MYLROIE, AUTHOR; JUDITH YAPHE, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY; MURHAF JOUEJATI, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY; MARK GASIOROWSKI, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY
TRANSCRIPT:
MS. MYLROIE: Thank you very much for the invitation to address you this morning.
A major policy and intelligence failure occurred in the 1990s, namely the emergence of a serious misunderstanding about the nature of major terrorist attacks on the United States. Prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, it was assumed that all major attacks against the United States were state-sponsored. The Trade Center bombing is said to mark the start of a new kind of terrorism that does not involve states, and that is simply not true.
And what I'm going to say to you is going to be different than you heard earlier this morning, and that's because the information on which I am basing these evaluations is the evidence from the trials rather than the intelligence. And because terrorism throughout the '90s was treated as a law enforcement issue, that evidence, I would suggest, is more important, more relevant, and more reliable in understanding the terrorist threat.
I'll speak briefly about three plots: the '93 Trade Center bombing, the '95 plot to bomb a dozen U.S. airplanes in the Philippines, and 9/11. My focus will be on the masterminds -- individuals like Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. My point will be: we do not know who these people are. Their identities are all based on documents in Kuwait that pre-date its liberation in 1991, and those documents are not reliable because Iraqi intelligence was there for seven months. Indeed, there is substantial reason to believe that these masterminds are Iraqi intelligence agents.
Now, the '93 bombing of the Trade Center is supposed to be the start of a new, stateless terrorism. But New York FBI, the lead investigative agency, its director, Jim Fox, believed that Iraq was behind the bomb. Why? It was huge. It was meant to topple one tower on to the other, and it left a crater six stories deep in the basement floors. Fox's background was counter-intelligence, and he believed that the individuals he was arresting immediately after the bombing, like the 26-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Salama, who was detained as he returned to the Ryder rental agency for his deposit on the van that carried the bomb. These individuals alone could not have carried out such an attack. There were also Iraqis all around the fringe of the plot. One of them, Abdul Rahman Yasin, came from Baghdad before the bombing, returned afterwards. He's still an indicted fugitive. Also, see Salama's many phone calls to Iraq at a crucial early stage of the plot, which are part of my testimony. That's government exhibit 824, a page from Salama's phone bill, evidence from his trial.
But the key point is the identity of the mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, without whom that bomb could not have been built. He entered the United States on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, and fled the night of the Trade Center bombing on a Pakistani passport in the name of Abdel Basit Karim. There really was an individual Abdel Basit Karim, born and raised in Kuwait. He graduated high school, then went to study in Britain, got his degree in June of '89, and returned to Kuwait. And apparently he was still there a year later when Iraq invaded. Yousef obtained the passport on which he fled New York by going to the Pakistani consulate with Xerox copies of the 1984 and 1988 passports of Abdel Basit Karim saying he was Karim, he had lost his passport, and he needed a new one to get home. The consulate didn't like the documentation, but nonetheless gave him a temporary passport, and that's the passport on which Yousef fled. The copies of Karim's passport that Yousef presented to the consulate were also evidence in the trial. If you look at government exhibits 739 C and B, you'll see the first two pages of those passports. You can look at the signatures, and you'll see that they're radically different.
Also, a Pakistani address has spaces for a permanent address in Pakistan and a present address in Pakistan. The present address in those passports is blank because the family lived in Kuwait. But the permanent address has changed. The permanent address is, in a Pakistani passport, the family's place of origin. By definition, it doesn't change. But in the 1984 passport, it says Karachi; the '88 passport, Baluchistan. The signature is different. The permanent addresses are different. Those documents went through a scanner.
And similar problem exists with Karim's file in Kuwait. As a routine matter, Kuwait's interior ministry maintained a resident alien file on Karim. Information was taken out. There should have been front -- Xerox copies of the front pages of passports with the signature, the picture, et cetera. The Kuwaitis recognized that that was missing because of Iraq's occupation. What they didn't realize was that the whole file was corrupted. Information was added. There was a notation that Abdul Basit Karim and his family left Kuwait on August 26th, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, crossing to Iran at Salancha on the way to Pakistani Baluchistan where they live now. But no one gives his whole itinerary when he crosses a border. That information doesn't belong in the file. Moreover, on that day, there was an Iraqi army of occupation -- no Kuwaiti government. The Iraqis put that information into Abdul Basit Karim's file.
Finally, Yousef's fingerprints are in that file. But everyone's fingerprints are unique, so that can mean only one of two things: Yousef's real identity is Abdul Basit Karim, or someone switched the fingerprint cards.
I met with Karim's teachers in Britain for a whole variety of reasons, including that Yousef is tall and Abdul Basit Karim was medium to short -- two different heights. Karim's teachers believe, as do I, that their student is not the bomber, that the student died in Kuwait, and that Ramzi Yousef assumed his identity.
And if Yousef is not Karim, that means a file in Kuwait was tampered with, including switching the fingerprint cards for the evident purpose of creating a false identity for a terrorist.
You're all aware of the practices of Soviet-style intelligence agencies. Agents not attached to an embassy are called illegals, and it's standard practice to develop false identities or legends for illegals. Reasonably, only Iraq could have tampered with Karim's file in Kuwait, including switching the fingerprint cards, while it occupied Kuwait. Iraqi intelligence created a legend for an illegal, and that's the significance of Karim's file.
Now, in '95, Yousef was involved in a plot to bomb a dozen U.S. airplanes in the Philippines. Arrested with him was an individual known as Abdul Hakim Murad. Murad is supposed to be Yousef's childhood friend from Kuwait. And, like Yousef, Murad is also Baluch. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was indicted for that plot, too. Mohammed escaped and went on to head al Qaeda's military committee after al Qaeda moved to Afghanistan, and he masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed is supposed to be Yousef's maternal uncle, but his identity like that of Yousef and Murad is based on what he himself has told other people, and documents in Kuwait that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraq. Neither are reliable. We don't necessarily know who Mohammad is.
Now, U.S. authorities understand the three other, quote, "relatives" of Yousef -- two older brothers and a younger cousin -- there is a chart on the back of my written statement -- they are also key al Qaeda figures. The brothers, and perhaps the cousin, were also born and raised in Kuwait and their identities, too, rest on Kuwaiti documents. Notably, these people are all Baluch, Sunni Muslim people living in eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Iraqi intelligence has long-standing ties with the Baluch. It used them against Iran.
Prior to the Trade Center bombing, no Baluch was involved in terrorism against the United States. Yes, there's nothing to do with them. And no Baluch organization is on the State Department's terrorism list. Why should Baluch attach the United States, except for the link to Iraqi intelligence?
It's essentially the claim now of U.S. authorities that the core of the murderous terrorist attacks from the Trade Center bombing to 9/11, at that core is a particularly talented and murderous Baluch family. Yousef, his friends, his uncle, two brothers, and a cousin. Yet there is another explanation. This is not a family. Rather they are Baluch illegals given legends by Iraqi intelligence on the basis of documents in Kuwait.
Recently I asked an Israeli retired from the number two position in military intelligence which made more sense: "Is this a murderous family or illegals with legends?" He replied: "It's obvious. It's obvious that these are illegals with legends."
There's a major lapse in the investigation to take these identities at face value. That question must be pursued, and there are suggestions about doing that in my written statement. The odds are high that these people are not whom they claim to be, and demonstrating that would constitute a clear link between Iraq and the 9/11 attack, as reasonably only Iraq could have created these legends while it occupied Kuwait. That would also demonstrate that there is no new kind of terrorism that does not involve states. This terrorism was part of a war that did not end with the 1991 cease-fire, but continues to this day. Thank you.
END TRANSCRIPT.