Posted on 03/09/2003 8:52:37 PM PST by FreeSpeechZone
An al Qaeda operative at Fort Bragg
By JOHN SULLIVAN and JOSEPH NEFF Raleigh News & Observer November 13, 2001
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - A former sergeant at Fort Bragg who became a close adviser to Osama bin Laden obtained sensitive documents describing how U.S. special operations units function.
Ali A. Mohamed, a trusted trainer in bin Laden's al Qaeda network, walked the halls of the U.S. military's top warfare planning center at Fort Bragg for more than two years as an Army sergeant.
From 1987 to 1989, he acquired sensitive documents describing how special operations units work and a detailed plan for a special operations training exercise, court documents say. The exercise was for an attack on Baluchistan, a part of Pakistan wedged between Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea.
From 1981 until his arrest in 1998, Mohamed was a key member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and he belonged to al Qaeda through the 1990s. He is in prison in an undisclosed location awaiting sentencing for his role in planning the 1998 car bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which killed 224 people and injured 4,500.
Among those who served at The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School while Mohamed was there, there is disagreement over the quantity of the documents he obtained and over the extent to which that information may compromise the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.
But court files make clear that Mohamed did obtain numerous documents from Fort Bragg, including some labeled "top secret."
In 1990, the FBI found Army documents that Mohamed gave to an Islamic extremist later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy. Included were top-secret documents identified as belonging to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander in Chief of the Army's Central Command, according to an FBI inventory.
"There is no doubt that his proximity, in hindsight, was very harmful," said one former Special Forces officer who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. "Does this hurt our efforts now? Absolutely."
But another officer who worked on the Baluchistan exercise said he didn't think knowledge of the late-1980s training exercise or documents used to plan it would jeopardize the U.S. military.
"We pulled that exercise out of the air," said retired Lt. Col. Lonnie R. Poole, who lives in Stockdale, Texas. "You can get more accurate information by going off post and buying a training book."
Mohamed's background made him an ideal spy for Islamic extremists at Fort Bragg. As a major in the Egyptian military's special operations forces, he took an officer training course for Green Berets at Fort Bragg in 1981. The U.S. military offered the course to dozens of foreign soldiers each year.
About the same time, he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group dedicated to overthrowing the government of Egypt and responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
In 1984, after obtaining a degree in psychology, Mohamed immigrated to the United States, joined the U.S. Army and was attached to the Fifth Special Forces - presumably because of his fluency in Arabic and familiarity with the Middle East. Though he was not a member of the Special Forces, he spent much of his time teaching Green Berets and others in special operations.
From 1981 until his arrest in September 1998, Mohamed was in contact with the U.S. government. He tried, without apparent success, to sign up as a CIA operative.
"He was an active source for the FBI, a double agent," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and director of counterterrorism at the State Department during the first Bush administration.
For a military spy such as Mohamed, there would be few better places to be than the JFK School in the late 1980s.
At the time, the U.S. military was combining the special operations units from all service branches under one command. For months, planners at Fort Bragg worked to create the new command structure.
"The JFK School was the architect for the structure -how it would operate the missions it would undertake and how it would train," said retired Gen. David J. Baratto of Alexandria, Va., who was in charge of developing the command.
Several officers recalled that Mohamed showed a keen interest in the Baluchistan training exercise, called the Special Operations Staff Officer Course Command Post Exercise, or SOSOC CPX.
The exercise was designed to help Special Forces officers learn how to fight a guerrilla leader staging an insurgency in Baluchistan. The scenario had the leader taking over the region and threatening U.S. interests.
"The exercise was designed to use Special Forces, Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs," Poole said.
Baratto and others disagree on the value of the information. He said the guidelines for how the forces operate would not change, but much else would.
"I know as much about Special Forces as anyone, and I could not lay out for you a scenario with any accuracy about what is being done in Afghanistan today," he said.
Baratto acknowledged that the exercise serves as the foundation for off-the-shelf plans, and that means much of the way the military operates in them would be the same in the exercise as in the plan.
Chester Richards, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel and military strategist, said bin Laden's forces would love to get their hands on a Command Post Exercise or the documents that go into one.
"It would be out of date," Richards said, "but it would be quite valuable and give him some insight, allow him to get inside our minds and how we do battle."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
FEBRUARY 7, 2000 : (REPORT : ) "….Last week, testifying on security threats against the United States before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, CIA director George Tenet laid out a blueprint for America's national security doctrine in the twenty-first century. Topping Tenet's list of principal threats was terrorism committed by Muslims. "There is an intricate web of alliances among Sunni extremists worldwide, including North Africans, radical Palestinians, Pakistanis, and Central Asians...There's an infrastructure out there that is perhaps bigger than we anticipated," said Tenet. "We essentially have undertaken to systematically develop a strategic plan to attack this infrastructure."
Like many of his colleagues in the national security profession, Tenet paints a picture for Congress and the American people of a vast conspiracy of "Islamic terrorists" stretching across the globe; irrational fanatics who burn with rage at America and probe our weaknesses for a chance to strike. Of course, that is the picture he must paint -- his agency's funding depends on it…….
In testimony before Congress in 1998, Larry Johnson, former deputy director for counter-terrorism for the U.S. State Department, said: "Groups and individuals that advocate terrorism are losing support rather than winning adherents. Consider Osama Bin Ladin's fatwas that have called for Muslims to rise up and attack U.S. citizens and installations around the world. His fatwa has fallen on deaf ears...Bin Ladin's failed fatwa is a reminder that Muslims are not terrorists and they do not endorse his tactics."
Articulation of the new doctrine is often preceded by disclaimers purportedly distinguishing between ordinary Muslims and "Islamic fundamentalist terrorists." But for the doctrine's proponents, these distinctions are superficial….." ------------ Islamic Views 2/7/00 Ismail Royer via ALAMO-GIRL'S DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON ; SECTION: BREACH OF TRUST; SUBSECTION: TERROR; Revised01
Larry Johnson's one of 10 "former intelligence officers" - you know, those VIPS folks- who asked for Congress to get involved in the Plame story. He's no fan of Judith Miller [at this time the libs were mad at here because of an article she wrote which concerned WMD finds and an Iraqi planning room with mockups of Israeli sites.]
"When Judith Miller went to jail in July I rejoiced because some justice, at least in my eyes, was being visited on a media whore who helped the Bush Administration mix the KoolAid that took us to war." ----------Fallout from the Miller Affair by Larry Johnson , Thu Oct 20th, 2005 at 07:41:29 PM EDT
Lary's one of the people who "confirmed" to the DU nutclub that Rove was going to be indicted in the leakamagiggy.
And he's the guy that wrote right beofre 9/11 about "The Declining terrorist Threat." Awesome timing, wot?
I think it's interesting that Randall "Ismail" Royer in February 2000 [see the Alamo-Girl citation above] noted and quoted Larry Johnson; Royer was involved with CAIR and as we know sometime after this article and after 9/11/2001 he ended up getting his little terrorist butt caught by the FBI in the Virginia Jihad / Paintball Cell investigations. The paintball Jihadis were led by the Iraqi-American Timimi.
blast from the past ping
In 1994, after an attempt to assassinate bin Laden, I went to the Sudan in 1994 to train bin Laden's bodyguards, security detail. I trained those conducting the security of the interior of his compound, and coordinated with the Sudanese intelligence agents who were responsible for the exterior security. . . . I was aware of certain contacts between Al Qaeda and Al Jihad organization, on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mugniyah, Hezbollah's chief, and bin Laden. Hezbollah provided explosives training for Al Qaeda and Al Jihad. Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.
In late 1994, I was in Nairobi. Abu Hafs met another man and me in the back of Wadih el- Hage's house. Abu Hafs told me, along with someone else, to do surveillance for the American, British, French and Israeli targets in Senegal in West Africa...."
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