Breaking the Al-Qaeda code

Timesonline (UK) ^ | 2/13/2005 | Christina Lamb

[1066AD]

February 13, 2005

Breaking the Al-Qaeda code Christina Lamb, Charleston Terror database is secret weapon

SLEEPY Charleston, the South Carolina hometown of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, seems an unlikely place to be on the front line of the global war on terror.

Yet on the third floor of a glass office building overlooking the Cooper river is a locked room that is straight out of a futuristic thriller.

Inside, a series of control panels with flashing lights and whirring hard drives comprise the master computer of the world’s largest free-standing database of intelligence on Islamic terrorism. It could hold the key to dismantling Al-Qaeda.

“It’s the best database on Islamic terrorism in the world,” said a senior counter-terrorism official at the FBI.

The database is the pivotal tool in what those involved say will be the biggest class action in history: a $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the families of 1,431 of the people killed on 9/11 and 1,325 of the injured.

More than 100 of the clients are British. Yet while investigators building up the database have received government help in 19 countries, from Afghanistan to Syria, they have had none in Britain, according to Ron Motley, the lawyer behind the action.

“We’ve had zero co-operation from the UK,” said Motley, who works from an enormous yacht named Themis after the Greek goddess of justice. “They just don’t want to help their own citizens.”

Among the millions of pages of documents collated elsewhere are the Jordanian intelligence records on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America’s most wanted man in Iraq; Bosnian intelligence files of the minutes of the meeting to form Al-Qaeda; German prosecution reports on the Hamburg cell that spawned many of the key players of the September 11 attacks; and Spanish documents that show links between 9/11 and the 2004 Madrid bombings.

There are also records from the Philippines on the failed 1995 Bojinka plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the Pacific, the forerunner of 9/11; Moroccan intelligence on the 2003 Casablanca bombings and Moroccan members of the Hamburg cell; Russian files on Chechnya; and the Swiss bank records of Osama Bin Laden.

I first got an idea of the scale of the operation last year when I ran into two Americans in the home of an Afghan warlord. The sunglasses and bulging briefcases made me think CIA. But it emerged that they were a retired FBI agent and a former special forces officer, working as investigators for Motley.

I was the first journalist to be granted access to the database. Down a series of oak-panelled corridors in Motley’s law office is a darkened room where two database managers sit at laptops in front of a large screen. They showed me how they have adapted a British computer program called Analysts’ Notebook — used by many law enforcement agencies — to find links between some of America’s most wanted terrorists, well known Islamic charities and famous banks.

We typed in “Abdelghani Mzoudi”, one of the Moroccans from the Hamburg cell who, the German authorities believe, was involved in logistics for 9/11. We added “account” and the computer flashed up six accounts. We followed payments to his Citibank account in Düsseldorf and found that his fellow Moroccan, Zakariya Essabar, was the source of one of the transactions. Soon there was a web of bank transactions on screen, linking the two men.

Mzoudi was acquitted last year by a German court that said there was a significant possibility he knew nothing of the plot. German prosecutors are appealing.

One of the database managers demonstrated their party-piece: how they discovered who was behind the Madrid bombings. Running the names of those arrested through their database, they found the same names in documents from the German prosecutors.

“The Spanish government was blaming it on Eta and we were able to show it was Al-Qaeda, because the same names had been lower league players in Hamburg,” he said.

Jack Cordray, a lawyer involved in the case, has visited prosecutors, magistrates and police chiefs all over the world. He spent weeks with Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain’s most famous investigator, and got 40,000 pages of documents transferred to the US courts.

From Madrid he went to Bosnia, Germany, Russia and on and on, picking up court transcripts, seized documents, financial records and wiretap evidence.

Cordray was astonished by a lack of intelligence-sharing. “We found information in one country was not being passed to another so terrorists were easily able to move because evidence of their existence stopped at the border. Thus the members of the Hamburg cell could start all over again in Madrid because the Spanish government did not have the German records.”

New information is coming in all the time, particularly on the Madrid-Hamburg nexus. The investigation discovered that the July 2001 meetings in Spain of the 9/11 hijackers included individuals who took part in the Madrid bombings.

“We also discovered transfers from the Saudi ministry of interior directly to the Madrid cell,” said Cordray. “You are not telling me that money was for building mosques.”

This allegation of Saudi financial support is fundamental to the class action. The case is based on the argument that the 9/11 hijackers could not have carried out the attacks without generous — largely Saudi — backing. It rests on the premise that those who finance terrorist organisations are liable for the damage they cause.

The CIA estimates Al-Qaeda’s annual running costs at $30m (£16m), raised almost entirely through donations. Tracking down the donors has been given low priority by government agencies, but many involved in the war on terror believe it is only in stopping the financing that the fight can be won.

The 205 defendants accused of financing Al-Qaeda include some of the biggest banks in the Middle East, wealthy Saudi individuals and corporations and several leading Islamic charities.

Motley alleges that members of the Saudi royal family contributed millions in protection money to Al-Qaeda after the Khobar Towers bombing in Dharan in 1996, in which 19 American airmen died, a charge the House of Saud denies.

He also asserts that, contrary to their claims, the Bin Laden family continued to support Osama after he was declared a terrorist and one of his brothers, Yeslam, had a joint bank account with him until 1997. Yeslam has denied having any contact with Osama in the past 20 years.

Given that the Saudi kingdom is an important US ally, Motley’s charges are an embarrassment to Washington. But as those involved in the war on terror belatedly realise the importance of following the money trail, more and more officials are coming to Charleston.

Motley says he has spent $18m of his own money sending investigators round the globe, more than the $15m allocated to the 9/11 Commission into the attacks. He can afford it: his firm made more than $2 billion in a class action against the tobacco industry that was initally regarded as unwinnable and eventually immortalised in the Hollywood film, The Insider.

Motley took on the 9/11 case after he was approached by Deena Burnett, whose husband Thomas was on United flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attacked the hijackers. She wanted answers that she did not believe the government would find.

On the basis of what he has discovered so far, Motley argues that the World Trade Center attacks were not only preventable, as the 9/11 Commission suggested, but also entirely predictable.

He said: “I had never researched the foreseeability of someone hijacking an aeroplane and becoming a suicide bomber with the passengers as unwitting victims, but now it’s clear to me that there was a huge amount of evidence that should have forewarned the airlines and the government. I’ve got stacks of information of prior incidents.

“In 1994 the Algerian Islamic group, GIA, hijacked an Air France plane on Christmas Eve in Algiers and forced it to land in Marseilles, where it was refuelled far beyond necessity as it was only 170 miles from Paris. While refuelling was going on, the French intelligence got information that the intention was to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower and detonate it, so police stormed the plane. It was Christmas Eve, when Parisians gather around the tower, and they would have killed thousands.

“There are literally 40 or 50 prior incidents of people hijacking planes with the intent of committing suicide.”

It emerged last week that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) received repeated warnings in the months before 9/11 about Al-Qaeda’s desire to attack airlines. A previously undisclosed report by the 9/11 Commission revealed the FAA had warned that if a terrorist wanted to hijack a plane to commit suicide “in a spectacular explosion”, he would probably do so on American soil.

The case brought by bereaved families against the alleged financiers of 9/11 suffered a blow a year ago when a district court in Washington ruled that allegations against Saudi officials were not enough to warrant removing their sovereign immunity. In a further setback last month, a New York judge dismissed claims against a number of Saudi individuals and banks.

If a trial finally goes ahead, one of the key witnesses will be Niaz Khan, a British Pakistani whose story was reported by The Sunday Times last year. A waiter whose gambling debts led him to be sucked into Al-Qaeda, Khan was sent to hijacking school in Pakistan and then to America, where he was apparently intended to be part of the 9/11 attacks. He turned himself in to the FBI in April 2000 but was released after questioning and returned to Britain, where he remains a free man.

“Niaz is extremely important to the case,” said Motley. “It will give a jury the opportunity to hear from a person who came to the US to take part in a hijacking and turned himself in. The failure of the British authorities to act on him when he was handed over is inexplicable.”

If what he is doing seems like privatisation of intelligence gathering, Motley is defensive. “I’m not in the CIA business, I’m in the business of winning my case,” he said. “We’ve given the US government access to everything we’ve had that we believe is important to national security.”

Defending the recruitment of former military officers and government agents, he said: “They have access to people who won’t talk to the US government because they are former Taliban and frightened of ending up in Guantanamo. And sometimes we just outbid the US government in getting people to sell things such as hard drives.”

If that involves paying large sums to Taliban members, it seems Motley has no qualms. In this way, he acquired a rare list of senior Taliban officials complete with photographs, as well as the imprints of credit cards used by a top Al-Qaeda member.

His information-hunting has been so successful that the law firm’s library, the base of a small army of researchers, is packed with boxes of more than 1m pages of documents that await translation and inputting.

Help may be on the way, however. The FBI has now set up a department on terrorist financing. Anxious to get access to Motley’s treasure trove of documents, a branch of the US government might start to partly fund the database, enabling some of the boxes in the library finally to be opened.

[jriemer]

Finally, a plantiff's attorney for whom we can cheer.

Maybe, maybe not. I suspect these guys will be suing the hell out of the FAA and other government agencies, as well as the airlines

I think that ccmay might be right and Motley Rice is either building a shopping list of organizations to sue or information for leverage.

Lawyers have been big source of Edwards' campaign funds - USAToday - 7/6/2004
[snip] The Ness, Motley law firm gave $250,600 to Edwards. The firm — now called Motley, Rice — was heavily involved in litigation against tobacco companies that led to a $246 billion settlement with the states. The firm also let Edwards use its business jet. [/snip]

Mary Schiavo @ Motley Rice LLC
Throughout her distinguished career in law and public service, Mary Schiavo has held corporations, institutions and the government fully accountable for their obligation to protect the safety and security of the traveling public. She continues that mission at Motley Rice LLC as a member and leader of the aviation team.

From 1990 to 1996, Schiavo served as the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation. Under her direction, Schiavo and her staff secured more than 1,000 criminal convictions and uncovered billions in waste and abuse at the U.S.D.O.T. Since leaving the Transportation Department, Schiavo has represented passenger and crew families in every major U.S. air crash, as well as pilots and passengers on private planes. At Motley Rice, she continues to represent clients in all major aviation-related litigation, including family members of the passengers and crew aboard the four planes hijacked on September 11, 2001.[/snip]

Ms. Schiavo is famous for several things including:
[snip] The Los Angeles Airport Commission hired Hubbell in late summer 1994 to help ensure the U.S. Department of Transportation did not stop the city from making use of $58 million in airport funds. It paid Hubbell $24,750. A year ago, amid questions about the arrangement, former DOT inspector general Mary Schiavo found that Hubbell did not solicit the job and appeared to have done little work. She found Hubbell's lobbying consisted largely of one or two five-minute phone calls to the DOT general counsel. Hubbell was recommended to airport officials by the husband of then-Deputy Mayor Mary Leslie, a Hubbell friend and one-time Clinton administration appointee at the Small Business Administration under Erskine B. Bowles. [/snip]
Hubbell Meetings With Riady Draw Probers' Scrutiny - Wash Post 3/23/1997

[doug from upland]

This is like watching a steel-cage death match between Hillary and Ted Kennedy. For whom do you root? You want both of them to lose and not be able to crawl out of the cage.

[Cap Huff]

Dog,

I don't think you've posted to this. Thought you might like to see it.

[Dog]

Thanks Cap.

Inside, a series of control panels with flashing lights and whirring hard drives comprise the master computer of the world’s largest free-standing database of intelligence on Islamic terrorism. It could hold the key to dismantling Al-Qaeda.

I would love to tap into that database...I would never get off the computer....:-)

[JustDoItAlways]

"Al-Qaeda" itself means the base. Some people have taken it to mean the bases in Afghanistan but it is really "the database" that Osama used to keep track of his converted.

I've always thought that massively integrated databases was the way to bring down the cells of Al-Qaeda and, thereby, eventually the whole network of terrorists, financiers, clerics and sympathesizers.

Why doesn't the FBI, CIA, InterPol etc. have better systems than this private one?

[getgoing]

GoldenChain?

[Cap Huff]

I noticed that they are using Analyst's Notebook. That's what we understood our intel guys were using to track down Sadam.

[Dog]

I think it is in use to hunt Zarqawi.

New information is coming in all the time, particularly on the Madrid-Hamburg nexus

This caught my eye also....seems Hamburg is the main hub for AQ.

[Dog]

Ping.

[Peach]

Thanks for this ping! I had no idea this was going on in Charleston. I've been by the area they are talking about many times and will look at it a little more closely next time we visit.

What a fascinating article.

[Peach]

This attorney may want to check out how a Clinton appointed federal judge granted an award to some 9/11 families against Iraq for being complicit in the 911 attacks.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/05/september11/main520874.shtml

Hundreds of articles linking Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Some of the links DIRECTLY point to their involvement in 911.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1327993/posts

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[DTA]

>>>>>>"Al-Qaeda" itself means the base. Some people have taken it to mean the bases in Afghanistan but it is really "the database" that Osama used to keep track of his converted.<<<

When translating from other languages, error can occur if the word has homonyms in both languages. The trick to confirm translation is to translate back to check if the same meaning will be retained ("out of sight, out of mind translated to Russian and back to English may produce "blind idiot")

The understnding what the term "Al Qaeda" means is the foundation of the strategy to destroy it.

Yes, "Al Qaeda" in Arabic means "base" but in the meaning of "the foundation". Foundation can be tangible (e.g. of the building), can be an institution, but also can be a legacy.

Isaac Asimov's book "Foundation" was translated into Arabic as Al Qaeda.

Some say that it is OBL's Mein Kampf. In summary of the book, the publisher says:

"For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire had ruled supreme. Now it was dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, could see into the future - a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that would last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathered the best minds in the Empire - both scientists and scholars - and brought them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He called his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation found itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope was faced with an agonizing choice: Submit to the barbarians and be overrun - or fight them and be destroyed. "

Try to look at this from the eyes of young, filthy rich Saudi prince disgusted with the West who read the book while young and got the messianic idea to save Muslim World from "barbarians". Yet, the same person was given the tools of the trade by CIA and support in the highest corridors of power.

OBL has succeeded in seemingly impossible, to unite Shia and Sunni Muslims on a joint task in the name of Muslim faith. In a sense it is apostasy to both wings of Islamic faith.

I see it this way. The OBL uses his own concocted religion to unite shia and sunni within AQ network. I guess that this is "the foundation" i.e. OBL legacy to free the Muzleems from Western domination (barbarians)

Legacy can not be hit with JDAMs nor destroyed with counterterrorist measures. 20 or 30 years from now, when OBL is long dead, young and impressionable Muslim of today will be 40, perhaps a chief engineer in an aging nuclear nuclear power plant in a major Western country, willing to die for the OBL legacy (i.e. AQ in my interpretation) and become immortal.

This is the menace we are dealing with. Running jetliners into WTC was meant to destry the myth of invincible America, not merely to kill 10 000. Whoever has seen the posters glorifying this crime and the cheering crowds knows what I am talking about.

Dismantling joint shia/sunni base within AQ should be the first step to destroy the menace before it is too late.

[stand watie]

GOOD!

free dixie,sw

[upchuck]

Thanks for the ping Peach.

South Carolina Ping

Add me to the ping list. Remove me from the ping list.

[upchuck]

Thanks for the ping Peach.

South Carolina Ping

Add me to the ping list. Remove me from the ping list.

[uncleshag]

ping

[DTA]

Present day American Ambassador to Bulgaria James W. Pardew, while in Bosnia, observed AQ with his own eyes.

Present day American Ambassador to Bosnia, as well as NATO claim there is no Al Qaeda in Bosnia. Never.

They, and Islamic shills on FR would discount this report as "serbian propaganda"

[smonk]

---Yet on the third floor of a glass office building overlooking the Cooper river is a locked room that is straight out of a futuristic thriller.---

and all this time I thought that was public housing.

[visualops]

Bump.