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Secrets of Al-Qaeda: Network studied Oklahoma-style bomb

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 2001

NICK FIELDING

THE terror organisation of Osama Bin Laden drew up plans to copy the Oklahoma City bomb, which claimed the lives of 168 people in 1995.

A do-it-yourself guide, detailing the components needed to make the bomb and written by a Bosnian recruit to Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, was among documents and weapons found last week in the basement of a Kabul mansion used by the terrorists.

The author of the notebook was one of 200 young militants drawn to Afghanistan for a holy war against America and its allies. They fled from Kabul on Monday night.

The bomber and his fellow fanatics from Somalia, Algeria, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Sudan and the Dagestan region of Russia left behind 22 Milan anti-tank missiles as well as step-by-step instructions on how to lay minefields and topple skyscrapers. But it was the bomb-making manual with diagrams, mathematical equations and the initially puzzling codeword CHON that sheds most light on Bin Laden's organisation.

On one page, under the title Explosivija za Oklahomu, the owner of the notebook had scribbled formulas with inscriptions in English for TNT, ammonium nitrate and nitro-glycerine. The Oklahoma bomb was made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

Underlined several times on the page were the capital letters CHON. Their meaning became clear towards the end of the notebook. There the terrorist recruit had written, without punctuation, "Karbon Hidrogen Oxygen Nitrogen". The Oklahoma bomb may have been a topic of study only because it demonstrates how much damage a simple bomb can create. But there is a more intriguing possibility. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, his accomplice, were responsible for the Oklahoma bomb. Several investigators pointed out that Nichols had spent time in the Philippines and met members of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic group connected to Bin Laden. Suggestions that the two bombers had been manipulated by an Arab terror cell were rejected by the FBI, but are still a source of speculation in America.

As at least four former Al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul began to give up their secrets last week, details emerged of plans for nuclear devices and chemical warfare.

Comments on headed notepaper from the Grand hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, discuss a "supersonic moving missile". A house used by two Arab doctors working for Al-Qaeda contained instructions for making the poison ricin.

More elaborate plans uncovered in Kabul include studies for a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads. However, it seems more likely that the terrorists were toying with a proven form of attack: another assault on a building in America. Qurban Bir, 27, a decorator hired to repaint the Kabul house, said he saw a diagram of a tall building "like the Empire State in New York" with diagonal lines showing the best trajectories for its demolition.

Also scattered across the floor of the elegant house in the Karte Parwan district of Kabul was a flight simulator computer program and a list of American flying schools.

A page torn out of Flying magazine listed schools in Florida, including Walkawitz Aviation in Titusville which is also a skydiving school, and Phoenix Aviation in Daytona Beach. Both schools have been visited by the FBI several times since September 11.

Greg Nardi, who manages Walkawitz Aviation, said he told FBI investigators on Thursday of a conversation about a year ago with an Arab visitor. The man asked whether it was possible to parachute safely from a jet plane and how far he would drift.

Other papers included addresses of people in Canada and Italy and letters from young recruits hoping to join Al-Qaeda. A visiting card from U-Enterprises of Vancouver, in Canada, was found. Essam Hafez Marzouk, one of its directors, was arrested in Egypt two years ago and jailed for links with the militant Islamic Jihad group.

Copies of a letter from Bin Laden to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban, were found in which Bin Laden asked not to be turned over to the Americans. Omar's reply agreed to this request.

Scattered across the floors were dozens of green and yellow forms in Arabic marked "Al-Qaeda Ammunition Warehouse". They list weapons including rifles and grenades and note who they were issued to. The walls of the Al-Qaeda houses were plastered with maps including one showing power plants in Europe, Africa and Asia. Another map showed Saudi Arabia with American military bases marked in Arabic "Occupied by the Crusader".

To the east of Kabul, at the Farmada and Darunta training camps near Jalalabad, more evidence has emerged of bomb-making and chemical weapons laboratories. At Farmada, where 600 Arabs lived, dozens of tanks and armoured personnel carriers were abandoned amid craters from the American bombing. The camps were hit by bombs but many parts are still standing.

At the former Soviet military base of Darunta, where villagers said 300 Arab fighters were stationed, a cramped laboratory was found which had been run by a 60-year-old red-bearded Arab, thought to be a Saudi called Abu Khabab. He fled the night before cruise missiles and American bombers hit the site.

Left behind was a long metal box containing 18 toxic liquids, including several brown half-gallon bottles of sulphuric and nitric acid and acetone. On another shelf were several smaller plastic containers, including one labelled cyanide. Much of the laboratory equipment was from the United Arab Emirates. Chemicals came from China. A packet of ear plugs bought in Britain still bore a £2.51 price tag.

Another British link emerged in papers piled on a shelf beside manuals on bomb-making, detonation and guerrilla warfare. It was a photocopy of a money transfer in sterling asking a London branch of Pakistan's Habib Bank AG Zurich to credit the account of Moazzam Begg in Karachi.

A training manual found in another room illustrated the basic geometry of assassination: a killer riding pillion on a motorcycle should shoot his victim at an angle of 30 degrees for maximum effect.

Like Farmada, Darunta was hit in air attacks — but even though it is close to the main highway to Kabul, the laboratory survived cruise missiles. Khabab is believed to be still on the loose, heading south with what remains of his young Al-Qaeda recruits.

Saber, thanks for the flag as always.

A few of us began to discuss potential links between Oklahoma City and the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11 on this thread when jra asked that the photos of Mohammed Atta and John Doe #2 be posted side by side like this:

4 posted on 10/24/01 10:33 PM Central by Nick Danger

(Nick, I think I'll leave the one of the Tourist Guy and John Doe #2 on that other thread....LOL)

If you don't mind, Pericles, I'll bring some of the other information over here, FWIW:

   One story is particularly poignant. Daina Bradley lost a leg in the April 19 blast, and her
    mother and two children were killed. She recalls looking out the plate-glass window of the
    Social Security office a few minutes before the explosion and seeing a yellow Ryder pull
    into the driveway. That is where the terrorists left the truck. According to Bradley, it was
    there for three to five minutes. Then she saw a side view of an olive-skinned white man
    leaving the passenger side of the Ryder truck. He was wearing a dark blue jacket and a
    baseball cap. She does not believe that person, who left the truck and walked quickly away
    from the federal building, was McVeigh. After that, all she recalled was electricity running
    through her body and a sensation of falling into rocks. Prosecutors contend that Bradley is
    a trauma victim and therefore her account is not reliable.

Emphasis mine
Link to Gerald Oosners page Link

33 posted on 10/24/01 11:12 PM Central by eddie willers

Grand Jury Charges Two With Bombing

                    "I think any time the government has to give two
                     {potential} co-defendants a pretty good deal, there
                     are weaknesses in the case," Jones told reporters.

                     He quickly sought to cloud the prosecution's
                     contentions by issuing a statement about a
                     government informant who late last year warned
                     federal authorities of a developing bomb plot
                     against a federal building in a midwestern city.

                     According to Jones, the informant described the
                     orchestrators of the plot as a "combination of
                     American citizens and, he thought, either Latin
                     Americans or Arabs.

                     The individuals were identified by Arabic names."
                     Jones said the informant also talked of traveling to
                     Kingman, Ariz.

40 posted on 10/24/01 11:33 PM Central by Irma

Mohammed Atta

He is a possible Egyptian national.

He used the birthday Sept. 1, 1968.

Aliases include: Mehan Atta; Mohammad El Amir; Muhammad Atta; Mohamed
El Sayed; Mohamed Elllsayed; Muhammad Muhammad Al Amir Awag Al
Sayyid Atta; Muhammad Muhammad Al-Amir Awad Al Sayad.

                Identified by the FBI as the man who piloted the first plane to crash into the
                World Trade Center, Atta is said to have met early this year with the head of
                the Iraqi intelligence service, a report Iraq denies.

Atta, who had an Egyptian driver's license, is also reported to have met with
several Islamic extremists at a hotel at the Spanish beach resort Salou.

                At times he used the name Mohamed El-Amir, as he did for eight years while
                an electrical engineering student at the Technical University in Hamburg,
                Germany, where he had ties to an Islamic group that planned attacks on
                American targets, and lived with Marwan Al-Shehhi, a cousin who also
                appears on the FBI's hijacker list.

The two men are believed to have arrived in the U.S. in May. Atta lived in
                Venice, Coral Springs, and Hollywood, Fla., where he may have used public
                computers at two libraries, and where he and Al-Shehhi were spotted
                partying the Friday before Sept. 11, playing video games and drinking.

                Both men trained as pilots at Huffman Aviation in Venice, where they lived
                together, and practiced on Boeing 727 flight simulators at SimCenter in
                Opalacka, Fla.

                Based on an eyewitness identification, investigators believe Atta was one
                of a group of five men holed up in the Valencia Hotel in Laurel, Md., in
                August and September, driving an older model Toyota Corolla with California
                license plates.

Video surveillance photos of the airport in Portland, Me., show Atta and
Abdulaziz Alomari rushing to make a flight from Maine to Boston early on
the morning of the hijackings.
Source

73 posted on 10/25/01 12:25 PM Central by Irma

69 posted on 10/25/01 11:39 AM Central by Howlin

I also can't help but believe that the EgyptAir Flight 990 suicide/crash was connected to terrorism.
Just look at the manner in which it happened.

Report: Relief pilot ordered EgyptAir co-pilot out of seat

                WASHINGTON -- The relief co-pilot suspected of
                  putting EgyptAir Flight 990 into a fatal dive reportedly
                  used his seniority to order the plane's co-pilot out of his
                  seat shortly before the crash. Gameel el-Batouty "pull(ed)
                  rank" on the younger co-pilot, investigators told the New
                  York Times.

                  The conversation between the more senior aviator
                  el-Batouty, 59, and co-pilot Adel Anwar, 36, was in
                  Arabic. Three U.S. officials who described it told the
                  newspaper they were relying on translations and the tone
                  of voice.

                  They would not give specific wording of the conversation,
                  which was recorded on the plane's cockpit voice recorder
                  before the plane plunged into the ocean off
                  Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, killing all 217 people
                  aboard.

                  "He was using his stature," said one official, who
                  described el-Batouty as being "very assertive." Another
                  U.S. official told the Times that "very insistent" was a
                  better description than "assertive."

Remember all the reports of Middle-Easterners in jump seats? And Atta may have been Egyptian?