Posted on 10/14/2001 8:57:59 AM PDT by Brian Mosely
Sunday October 14, 11:50 am Eastern Time
NEW YORK, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The FBI has evidence from ``technical sources'' that Al Qaeda terrorist leaders in Afghanistan have placed at least four calls to telephone numbers in the United States since the September 11 devastation of New York's World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Newsweek has learned. The prevailing theory agents are following up is that Osama bin Laden was trying to activate more terror cells hiding in the U.S., but the phone calls haven't yet produced new leads, writes Senior Writer Jeffrey Bartholet in the October 22 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 15). One target number that was tracked down turned out to be The New York Times.
Bin Laden's aim is not simply to terrorize America, writes Bartholet. The attacks on civilians are a means to an end, which is to overthrow or ``reform'' regimes across the Muslim world. According to a 1999 FBI memo obtained by Newsweek, bin Laden's desire to ``cleanse'' the Persian Gulf region is just a start. ``He envisions installing a worldwide Islamic government with himself as the caliph.'' The memo also noted that investigators had ``revealed a limited network of bin Laden associates in the United States,'' but warned darkly that ``a larger U.S. presence is anticipated.'' The CIA estimates that up to 20,000 volunteers have passed through bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan since 1995, reports Bartholet, and even if only a quarter of those people are active now, that's a lot of true believers indoctrinated in bin Laden's extremist interpretations of Islam.
The FBI and the CIA have full-time teams probing bin Laden's mystique and his methods. The most urgent question concerns his Al Qaeda network, and its ability to find and recruit 19 men to join a mass suicide plot to kill thousands of civilians. ``If we had to sit down and do the psychological vetting to find people like that, we'd never get 19 out of 19,'' says a former senior intelligence officer for the CIA, who specialized in Afghan operations. ``But I don't think they vetted 5,000 people to find the 19. I think there are hundreds of potential fanatics within bin Laden's grasp, willing to give up their lives at his command.''
Most volunteers appear to be Arab or Pakistani, but they've also included Europeans, Chinese, Chechens, and Muslims from Southeast Asia. Some are peasants, others have advanced degrees. Al Qaeda vets volunteers and assigns them to different camps, and eventually gives them marching orders. Some of the volunteers are placed in bin Laden's 055 brigade in Afghanistan, where they fight alongside the fundamentalist Taliban militia. Others have been sent to hotspots like Chechnya and Bosnia. Still others are trained in terror skills, including bomb making, assassination and sabotage, and are encouraged to settle in the West, Asia or Africa. They might set up an Islamic relief organization, an import-export company or a computer business. Sometimes they get help from Al Qaeda operatives to acquire documents like asylum papers or visas, or even false passports.
Sometimes the vetting involves psychological screening. One Tajik who signed up to fight communists described, for a friend, how he failed one such test. His handlers put him in a room and told him to wait there until someone came for him. He waited two days and part of a third, at which time the handlers came and told him he had failed. When the surprised Tajik asked what he had done wrong, he was told that he pulled back a window curtain several times to look outside -- a sign of psychological weakness. Al Qaeda wanted someone who would sit without stirring, at peace with himself, until he was called to the task at hand.
Often, Al Qaeda recruits locals who are given specific duties, but little other information about the operation they're involved in. One of the participants in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam was a Tanzanian grocery clerk named Khalfan Muhamed. He became involved with terrorism at his local mosque, where he was introduced to the idea that he was part of the worldwide Islamic community and had obligations to fellow Muslims who were suffering in warzones like Bosnia. Muhamed later went into training camps in Afghanistan and hoped to become a warrior for God in the Balkans or in Chechnya. But he never joined Al Qaeda and was disappointed when he was told his training was over and that he should go back home. But more than a year later an Al Qaeda operative approached him on a ferry and asked if he wanted to help with ``a jihad job.'' He handled local logistics including a safe house and rental car for the Tanzanian bombers and was not told of the target until a few days before the bombings. And while Al Qaeda operatives left the country when the mission was done, Muhamed was left behind to clean up.
Very interesting! Would that be "lion" as in ungodly imaginations? This man has sure lived up to his name! What does "laden" mean?
I know one was to a Mr. John Walsh.
1) Miss Cleo
2) Hot Singles
3) Home Shopping Network (Thomas Kinkade painting)
4) Miss Cleo
Mark W.
Great news!!!
I'm trying to find now, evidence of the education level of the terrorists.
Thanks again
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.