ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.Posted on 08/01/2004 7:50:32 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.
The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages.
A senior United States official would not confirm or deny that Mr. Khan had been the Qaeda figure whose capture led to the information. But the official said "documentary evidence" found after the capture had demonstrated in extraordinary detail that Qaeda members had for years conducted sophisticated and extensive reconnaissance of the financial institutions cited in the warnings on Sunday.
One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.
"This, for us, is a potential treasure trove," said a third senior American official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.
The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior American intelligence officials said. Much of that information had come from Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Pakistan, and some had also pointed to a possible attack on financial institutions, senior American intelligence officials said.
The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.
The American officials would say only that the Qaeda figure whose capture had led to the discovery of the documentary evidence had been captured with the help of the C.I.A. Though Pakistan announced the arrest last week of a Qaeda member, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa, the American officials suggested that he had not been the source of the new threat information.
An account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Mr. Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Mr. Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential American and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a "new Al Qaeda."
The Pakistani official described Mr. Khan as a fluent English speaker who had told investigators that he had visited the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries. Mr. Khan was one of thousands of Pakistani militants who trained in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the 1990's, the Pakistani official said.
If indeed Mr. Khan was the man whose arrest led the C.I.A. to new evidence, his role as a kind of clearinghouse of Qaeda communications, as described by the Pakistani intelligence official, could have made him a vital source of information. Since his arrest, Mr. Khan has described an elaborate communications system that involves the use of high and low technology, the Pakistani official said.
The question of how much to rely on information obtained from captured foes has always weighed on the intelligence business. In recent weeks, even as they cited accounts from some captured Qaeda members as the basis for new concerns about terrorism, American intelligence officials have acknowledged that another captured Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had recanted claims that Iraq had provided training in illicit weapons to Qaeda members.
Mr. Libi's earlier claims had been the primary basis for assertions by President Bush and his top advisers that Iraq had provided training in "poisons and gases" to Qaeda members.
In explaining the decision to call a new terror alert, American officials would say only that the evidence obtained by the C.I.A. after the arrest of the Qaeda figure in Pakistan had provided a richer, more credible source of intelligence than could have been provided by any single individual. They declined to say whether the "documentary evidence" included physical documents or might also include electronic information stored on computers, such as copies of e-mail communications.
The Qaeda communications system that Mr. Khan used and helped operate relied on Web sites and e-mail addresses in Turkey, Nigeria and the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan, according to the information provided by a Pakistani intelligence official.
The official said Mr. Khan had told investigators that couriers carried handwritten messages or computer disks from senior Qaeda leaders hiding in isolated border areas to hard-line religious schools in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.
Other couriers then ferried them to Mr. Khan on the other side of the country in the eastern city of Lahore, and the computer expert then posted the messages in code on Web sites or relayed them electronically, the Pakistani official said.
Mr. Khan had told investigators that most of Al Qaeda's communications were now done through the Internet, the official said. After a message was sent and read by the recipient, the entire communication and related files were deleted to maintain secrecy, he said. Mr. Khan had told investigators that e-mail addresses were generally not used more than a few times.
The young computer engineer, who received a bachelor's degree from a university in Karachi, is the unemployed son of an employee of Pakistan's state airline and a college botany professor, the official said. Heavily built and 6 feet 2 inches tall, he speaks English with a British accent, and was arrested carrying a fake Pakistani identification card.
The Pakistani official said Mr. Khan told investigators that he had received 25 days of training at a militant camp in Afghanistan in June 1998. By the time Mr. Khan had risen to his current position, the official said, Qaeda figures had arranged his marriage and were paying him $170 a month for rent for his house in Lahore and $90 for expenses.
Mr. Khan was in contact with the brother of the Indonesian Qaeda leader Hambali, who was studying in a religious school in Karachi, and who was recently deported. Mr. Khan has told interrogators that his Qaeda handler was a Pakistani he knew as Adil or Imran, who assigned him tasks related to computer work, Web design and managing the handler's messages. His correspondents included a Saudi-based Yemeni, Egyptian and Palestinian nationals and Arabs in unknown locations, and someone described as the "in-charge" in the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.
Asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Khan has told interrogators that even the top Qaeda commanders do not know, the Pakistani intelligence official said.
Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Rohde from Karachi, Pakistan.
Good article there.
Quite possibly, the captured Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan was a software engineer certified by Microsoft and his coding was probably some utility that amplified Windows 128 bit encryption algorithms. If Microsoft could encrypt it with their code, they can decrypt it, even though it may take a little more time.
This is baaaaad news for Islamic cyber terrorists everywhere (Detroit, Seattle, Redmond, Dallas, NYC, Portland, etc., etc.)
Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan--GUILTY!
Isn't the NYT on the excerpt list?
Good question. Since Ridge is being very specific in disclosing all of this, I can think of a few. One, we are not playing Coventry. We are not going to let our people die. So in this society, the public is going to know what precautions are being taken. Two, there is no reporting of a date. The information is not time specific, so my guess is, we're not going to "catch 'em" red-handed, either in a plotting or perpetration phase. We have all they players we're going to get on this one -- for now. Three, yes the public disclosure allows the enemy to see what we know. On the plus side this guy is a remarkably good catch and there's probably a lot of intelligence coups we don't know about yet.
RE post 64, it will work, but only me and you think it should be done.
RE post 64, it will work, but only me and you think it should be done.
Wasn't OBL exiled from S.A. in 1979?
So began the destabilization of S.A. and the extortion of money from any disaffected back-hump royals. Money was sent to "charities" with terrorist ties.
The front-line royals turned their heads to the flow of money as did everyone else around the world including -- us.
Thus the growth and "spike" of al Qaeda terrorism.
Are WE GOOD or what!? - ping.Yay!
Good to be getting cooperation around the world on stuff like this.
Arsehole 'RATS are saying the new heightened alert is politics on the part of
the Bush Administration. I didn't catch the name of the jerk on FOX that
referred to the Bush Administration having a 'credibility' problem. I think that
was the term he used. What an arse. That is something his boy clintoon would
do. Not Bush.
Even Phil Zimmerman (creator of PGP) has noted that PGP encrypted messages become more targetable for investigation, simply because ciphertext "stands out" from the stream of plaintext traveling across the Internet on mail ports. This wouldn't be a problem if everyone used PGP, ciphertext would be ubiquitous.
In addition, there are some (perhaps) tinfoil theories amongst the cipherfolks that all PGP keys have been cracked, and of course its demonstrably true that parallel computers have cracked DES and perhaps even 3DES.
It was the fall of the Shah of Iran. It showed America as a weakling who wouldn't lift a hand to help an ally so the terrorists knew they could act with impunity.
Then there was the hostage crisis. It was handled so sloppily that the terrorists KNEW the US couldn't or wouldn't act.
If it comes right down to it though we could blame SKerry or even Kennedy. Kennedy because he got us into a war and then wouldn't commit enough force to win. He also let down the Cuban patriots at the Bay of Pigs. He made our nation into an ineffectual enemy. Castro is still there.
Skerry because he came home from the war and aided and abetted and even led the anti-war movement and further politically paralyzed the US from using the force it needed to win. The House and the Senate were run by Dimocrats for like 40 years.
So to sum it up. It is Dimocrats showing weakness at the threat of a bully that has caused the terrorism we have today and the only way to stop it is to squash them like bugs wherever we find them and the same to those who aid and abet them.
The reason we can and do also blame Clinton is because he made it harder to track the terrorists and he did little or nothing to stop them and they grew stronger and braver in the face of ineffectual or non-exestant reprisals.
Yes, those leaders who worked directly with the geek knew he was arrested, but individual cells far from the center would not. Also, the issue is, why publicize this? If everyone in the terrorist network knew he was arrested, there would be no issue as to publicizing this, right?
The information reported by the NYT is severely flawed and not accurate. It also fails to highlight exactly what is being planned.
There is a high level team of three main individuals who are responsible for this specific project that is financed by Al Qaeda via JI. They are located in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. These individuals are the brains of the operation.
The main item on the agenda at this time is being able to use an EMP to destroy Wall Street and banks. And small devices have already been tested to gauge the effects and radius.
There are still a few small teams who are working on virus, worms, communications etc. but they are not the focus at this moment and they have no contacts above their tier group. They simply don't know anything.
"Secure communications" is not even a high priority at this time. What is and has been being used more is couriers and various other methods even including steganography. The operation is so decentralized though that busting Khan is not really going to amount to anything.
One month ago, I attempted to give specific information regarding this project to the US Government and it was basically shrugged off. I do however find it a bit ironic however that something like this is coming out. The concern of the government seemed to be "why" I wanted to give information rather than the content of what I had to give. The process of being "vetted" out was almost comical if would not have been so pathetic and sad ~ and as such I soon realized that it for the most part an exersize in futility on my part. Instead of receiving a "thanks" my motives were questioned and challenged.
The focus is not where it needs to be and that is really frightening. American companies and call centers etc. in India are and have been the target now for the last few years. It is a problem that no one seems to want to address. Al Qaeda already knows that individuals from Pakistan are going to be looked at closely and so the intense recruitment of Indians to do the work for them.
-------------------------------------------------------
Previous thread with regards to "computer experts"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1161484/posts
India is fast becoming the major hot spot - no more Arabs being sent to the USA to learn flight simulators. Now they are becoming a diverse collection of Indian Muslims and North African (French citizens) being actively recruited and being sent to the USA under such programs via Southeast Asia. Each one armed with "degrees", letters of recommendation from companies in Malaysia, Singapore, India and California etc. as "computer experts" - "programmers" etc.
Im gathering more information - on this and will post it here on Freerepublic.
This could also be disinformation to cover an asset which is still in place.
Interesting information. Any chance you have a ping list?
A friend who poured the concrete, set the steel for the towers, hung the dishes and then tuned the datastream for Australia's government WAN, had run out of challenges in the downunder and wanted to take a shot at a job here in the States.
On her arrival she brought her lappy up on my LAN and noted her irritation with the US government's policy restricting the export of encryption algorithms that used keys exceeding 56 bits.
Her solution had been to code her own, using a 1024 bit key. This was circa 1997.
I believe that some of the systems you refer to are probably capable of cracking any encryption now in use, but whether or not the masters of these machines have prioritized the actual processing cycles necessary to accomplish this task for every scheme in common use is doubtful.
If the enemy has coded their own, and I have no reason to doubt that they have, it becomes a contest between the enemy's ability to distribute new keys and our dedication towards cracking them.
(I know you are aware of this, but for others who may be reading, please understand that the will is there to accomplish these tasks, and that the hardware capability is probably there too, but there are only so many processor cycles in the day, and a machine tasked full time towards cracking a key cannot be used to locate and harvest new intercepts. It is a question of prioritization.)
meanwhile, from today's NRO The Corner section:
GETTING WARMER? [KJL]
FNC is reporting that a courier has been intercepted with a message from Zarkawi en route to Osama.
Posted at 02:36 PM
Sorry I dont have a ping list, nor do I often post threads. I do reply to many that I might be able to comment on though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.