T5 B68 Terrorist Database Materials 2 of 2 Fdr- 2003 Draft- March to War Against US- 11 Pgs- Shorter...

8/14/2019 T5 B68 Terrorist Database Materials 2 of 2 Fdr- 2003 Draft- March to War Against US- 11 Pgs- Shorter Timeline (Se

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The March to War Against the United StatesThe Critical Juncture

In February 1989, the last Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan. The Islamistleaders of the Jihad confronted the question of "where to go next," wh ere to direct the"Islamic Army" (as bin Laden him self then titled it ) that ha d evolved in the decade-long w arwith the Soviets. This brought to the forefront a growing split between bin Laden, who had inthe recent years become increasingly influen ced by a group of m ili tant Egyptians, and hiserstwhile mentor Abdullah A zza m . This w ould prove to be a decisive fork in the path todeclaration of war against the United States by the transnational terrorist force we now knowas al Qaeda.Both factions affirmed adherence to the long-standing Islamist goal of re-establishing theglobal Caliphate und er pure Quranic la w (which as a universal given wo uld require elimin atingthe Israeli state).1 Their division w as over how to get there.The Egyptian mili tants had long ago declared th e "apostate" Middle Eastern regimes

to be the principal obstacle to the ultimate objective of re-establishing a pure IslamicCaliphate, and they saw the emergent Islamic Army as a new force for their long standingJihad. By the t ime th e Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan bin Laden had come to fully espousethis posit ion. He was already creating his own organization, distinct from what he had unt i lthen shared with Azzam , in which many of the top positions were held by members of theEgyptian Islamic Jihad.Azzam did not quarrel with the principle that bringing dow n the apostate regimes in theMuslim countries w as essential to the ult imate objective. But he strongly opposed w hat heconsidered a diversion offerees , funds an d other resources from what he insisted was the moreimmediate task - completing the establ ishment of an Islamic state in Afghanistan. Although theSoviets ha d withdraw n their troops they had left in place a proxy regime. He also argued that

th e next priori ty for the Islamic Arm y should be expunging th e Israeli "occupiers" from th esacred Muslim lands of Palestine. Whatever resistance might have been sustained by Azzaman d his remaining supporters w as taken care of on 24 No vemb er 1989 when he wasassassinated, along with two sons, in a car bombing in Peshawar.Adopting the path of Jihad against the apostate rulers of the Muslims lands would havealmost certainly led inev itably to attacks on those w hom the Islamists viewed as the sources, "the

. The historical backg round is described in Daniel Benjamin an d Steve Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, (NewYork: Rando m House, 2002) 95-109; Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., (New York-The Free Press/Simon an dSchuster, 2001), 40-62; Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al-Qaeda, (New Y ork: Columbia University Press, 2002) 16-26. The split between Azzam and bin Laden and the Egyptian groups is also described in testimony by JamalAhmed al-Fadl, an al Qaeda member who was there at the time an d turned himself over to U.S. authorities inmid-1996. Se e New York District Co urt: Transcripts o f Trial o f Usama Bin Laden et al [African EmbassyBombings]; Testimony of Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, 6 Feb. 01, 189-95; 506). Fadl claims to have been formally"sworn in" as a member of bin Laden's group in 1989 at a special meeting at a bin Laden camp (Camp Farouq)in Khost, Afghanistan. Re "Islamic Arm y," see Gun aratna 22-24. Contrary to common wisdom, bin Laden didnot form hi s organization under th e title of al-Qaeda. It was Azzam who conceptualized it in 1987, and hisarticle "Al-Qa'aidah al Sulbah," The Solid Foundation," in the Arabic Journal Al Jihad in April 1988 has beendescribed by some Arabists it as the "fou ndin g docum ent" for the organization that has become known as "alQaeda." See Bergen 60ff. Fadl ha s said in his testimony that w hen bi n Laden was initially forming hi s group,the members referred to it both as al Qaeda and the Islamic Army, an d only later adopted use of the single termal Qaeda. (Fadel 6 Feb.2001, 212)


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props," of the apostate leaders' power - the U.S. andother w estern states. The U.S. was in factcharged with being theprop forboth the "far enemy" - Israel - and"near enemies" such as theMubarek regime in Egypt. (And by this time bin Laden had put the Saudi regime in the samecategory.) In this situation , the deployment and ultim ately sustained basing of U.S. forces in SaudiArabia and the Gulf States in 1990 was a m atch in an already smo king pit , and provided a"billboard" for bin Laden's evocations for Jihad.Thus the evolving "bin Laden doctrine" added a new layer to the hierarchy of targets.Before the apostate regimes could be brought down, the U.S. military forces had to be evicted

from the region. And as the focus of the Jihad became th e U.S., the objectives of the Jihadwould soon expand beyond evict ion from the M usli m lands to global attack against the U.S.

The PathThe Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided a common cause for Islamists whosemilitancy and mo tivations had diverse origins. The Afgha n battlefield offered a focus forrecruitment of "troops," acquisit ion of weapons, and the development of a command an dlogist ic pipeline, including transnational f inancial sources and movem ent channels. Many ofthe individuals who cam e from the Middle East to play key leadership roles in the "AfghanArab" forces had been engaged in some form of their own Jihad movements long before theconflict erupted in Afghanistan. These included bin Laden's initial mentor and partner inPakistan, Abd ullah Azzam, as well as the Egyptian Islamists that w ould later comprise most

of the inner circle.Bin Laden linked up with Azzam in Pakistan in 1984, where they jointlyestablished the "Bureau of Services" (Maktab al-Khidmat - MAK,) . The MAK served as

a recruit ing network hub - bringing fighters to Peshawar, putt ing them up in guesthouses, andthen dispatching them to training camps in Afghanistan. Branches would be establishedaround the globe, inc luding several in the Uni ted States.Azzam had already been a prominent figure among Islamists long before he moved toPakistan, issuing public c alls for Jihad to return the historic M uslim lands to the governance

of pure Islamic law . He w as virulently anti-Israel; he was born in Palestine in 1941, and afterreceiving a degree at a Damascus university in 1966 he had returned to fight against Israel inthe 1967 war. In 1973 he took up studies in Egypt at the al-Azhar University, the mostprominent center of Islamic studies, before becoming professor of Islamic law at Abdul AzizUniversity in Jeddah . His experience in Palestine and immersi on in the doctrine of ancientMuslim teachers ha d committed him to Jihad. By the end of the 1970s Azzam was droppedby Abdul Aziz University because of his rhetoric, and he migrated to Pakistan where hebecam e a lecturer at the Islamic U nive rsity in Islamabad.According to most accounts, when the MAK was init ial ly formed Azzam was itsdoctrinal leader wh ile bin Laden served as his deputy and provided much of the funding. BinLaden essentially confined himself to shuttling between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (with

2. Bin Laden was a student at Abdul Aziz in 1981, an d thus would have known of Azz am's teachings evenbefore the two linked up in Pakistan. Ano ther teacher at Al-Aziz at the time was Muhammad Qutb, brother ofSayyid Qutb, who had been executed by Nasser in 1966, but who, as described below, co ntinued to be the mostwidely read Islamist in the Middle East and is the author of what is still considered by man y militant Egyptiansto be the "manifesto" of their Islamist groups.


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occasional v entures into Afghanistan to establish his Mujahidin bona fides), while Azzam,traveled the globe on recruitmen t and fundra ising missions, w hich included some 20 trips toUS. The Farouq mo sque in Brooklyn was one of his regular sites for lectures on the du ties ofJihad, and as is described below, one of the first branches of the MAK was set up there.In the mid-to-latter 1980s key leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) were

moving to the Pakistan and Afghanistan sites in increasing numbers, and bin Ladenbecame increasingly influenced by them. M any w ho have studied the history of theemergence of al Qaeda have pointed out that the evidence suggests that the organization wasas m uch a product of the Egyp tians Islamists d rawing in bin Laden as is was a matter of hisincorporating them into his inner circle.3M ost prominent among these was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a medical doctor, describedby some as the leader of EIJ, by others as leader of a "faction" of the EIJ.4 He had beenimprisoned for three years on weapons charges follow ing the assassination of EgyptianPresident A nwa r Sadat on 6 October 1981. When released he went to Pakistan to providemedical services to Mujahidin waging Jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.Also in Pakistan at this time was Sheikh Omar Ahmad Abdel Rahman (the "BlindSheikh"), who was generally considered to be the spiritual guide of Egyptian Islamic Jihad(EIJ). M any accounts claim he simultaneously served as spiritual leader for a parallel,similar organization known as the Egyptian Islamic Group (EIG), headed by RifaiAhmed Taha. Sheikh Ra hm an had for m any years issued public "Fatawas" justifying th eterrorist actions of both groups. He publicly praised the assassination of Sadat in 1981, andwas subsequen tly arrested and tried for his role, but ended u p being acquitted. (M ubarakapparently viewed imprisoning a/the top M uslim cleric as likely to incite more trouble that itwould solve.)Both the EIJ and the EIG were in effect "rebellious offspring" of the MuslimBrotherhood. The Brotherhood had emerged in the Middle East in the late 1920s in the

tumultuous post-WW I situation - the Ottoman dominion gone, much of its form er territoryplaced under control of League of Nation "m andates" (seen by m uch of the populace in theregion as an extension of European colonialism), and Palestine erupting into what wouldprove to be an unending conflict . The M uslim Brothers propagated the doctrine that only"Salafiyya" Islam - Islam purged of impurities andWestern influences - could saveMuslims from the colonial powers.By the 1950s, as the colonial powe rs begin p ulling out, the focu s of animosity turnedon indigenous leaders of the Middle Eastern states who were seen as having acceptedwestern law as a substitute for the Sharia, "abandoning God's law" an d submitt ing to"man -mad e law." (These "apostate" leaders were labeled as "Jahiliyya," a term originallyused to described the "barbarians" existing before the Prophet's message began to be

propagated.) Some Islamic scholars fram ed the issue in terms of the need to deal first withthe "near enemy" in their own lands before m oving to comb at the "far enem y" in Israel.While the "Brothers" first emerged in Palestine/ Jordan, their doctrine had its most potent3. M any who have studied the history of the emergence of al Qaeda have pointed out that the evidence suggeststhat the organization was as muc h a product of the Egyptians Islam ists draw ing in bin Laden as is was a matterof hi s incorporating them into hi s inner circle. See, fo r example, Bergen, Holy W ar Inc., 199-204; Benjamin an dSimon, The New Age of Terror, 103; Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda, 25 .. The "faction leader" description is by Benjamin and Simon, 103.


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appeal an d attracted most followers in Egypt. The Al-Azhar Islamic study center in Cairobecame the m ain site of its transnational gatherings.The Brotherhood doctrine nominally did not call for violence, bu t rather preached a"bottom up" app roach, in which conversion of the ma sses was seen as the wa y to createpower that would eventually topple th e "Jahili" leaders. No nethele ss, this declared positiondid not prevent the movement from engaging in significant incidents of violence in theensuing decades.By the late 1960s factions w ithin and outside the Brotherhood were e xplicitly rejectingthe "bottom up" concept, declaring that experience demon strated there was no wa y theapostate leaders in the historical M uslim lands wo uld accede to a peacefu l transition to a trueCaliphate. This fueled the break off the groups that formed the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and

the Egyptian Islamic Group. While the doctrine of these groups started at the same point asthe Brotherhood - immersion in the Koran - they described it as a basis for forming a"Revolutionary Vanguard" whose mission was "Jihad" against th e existing politicalleaders in the lands of the Prophet. (The most influential preacher in this development wasSayyid Qutb, who was eventually executed by Nasser in 1966, bu t whose books are still themost widely read in the militant M uslim w orld. His "Signpost" treatise is generallyconsidered to be the manifesto of the militant Egyptian m ovem ents. As noted above, hisbrother was teaching at Al-Azziz Un iversity in Jeddah at the time bin Laden was a studentthere.)

Bin Laden and his Egyptian colleagues saw the Islamic A rm y that ma triculated fromthe war against the Soviets as having created this "vanguard;" the main question w as where toemplo y it next. (Bin Laden, in fact referred to his organization as the Islamic A rm y, of wh ichal Qaeda was only a central leadership "foundation.") W ith the defeat of the Soviets, theEgyptians not surprisingly wa nted to take the army back to pursue their fundamentalobjective of ousting th e apostate leaders in the lands of Islam, starting in Egypt, bu textending through th e region.Azzam's insistence on focusing the Islamic Army's resources on finishing the jobin Afghanistan an d then turning to the enemy in Palestine presumably was at least in partbecause of his experience in Palestine. Ac cording to some sources he also was skepticalabout the reality of prospects - at least under the existing circumstances - forousting theMiddle Eastern rulers through militant actions. This was the same debate am ong the Islamiststhat scholars had in earlier years described as contesting priorities between the "near enemy"and the "far enemy."At the time Azzam was a ssassinated Bin Laden was conveniently back in Saud iArabia. He has since routinely praised Az zam , but many suspect that he was behind thekilling. (Or perhaps it was the Egyptians who initiated an d pulled it off, while bin Laden

adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" position.)By this time bin Laden was already well down th e road in forming his organization.According to an al Qaeda defector, Jamad A hm ed al-Fadl, who claims to have formally joinedthe organization in its foun ding stages, it s inner circle was dominated by members ofEgyptian Islamic Jihad .5 Zawahiri was his principal deputy. Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri ,

5. The de scription of the initial leadership and structu re is given in the Fadl testimony, 6 Feb. 2001, 193-211;221; and 13 Feb., 510-514. This includes Fadl's account of his official "swearing in" process.


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former Egyptian police officer an d prominent participant in the Jihad battlefield inAfghanistan, was the first "military chief," while Muhammed Atef, (aka Abu Hafs alMasry) another E L f member, was deputy chief of operations, and ultimately would succeedBanshiri after his death a few years later. Acco rding to several sources w ith direct access, atthe same time Zawahiri held this principal deputy position in al Qaeda's Shura, hecontinued to hold a leadership position in the EIJ, and the two organizations pursued acom mo n agenda in Egypt. (Members of al Qaeda w ho have since defected or beenapprehended have said m any key players belonged sim ultaneously to both al Qaeda and aterrorist entity in their countries of origin.)

Other members of the initial inner circle or "Shura," w ho m the source knew only bytheir pseudonyms, included: An additional Egyptian - Sheikh Sayyid el Masry. Three Saudis (in addition to bin Laden - Abu Musab al Saudi, A bu Saad alSharif A bu Mohamed Saudi , and Abu Fadl al Makkee) . . Three Iraqis - Mamudh Sa l im, aka AbuHajer whomanaged weaponsprocurement; Abu Ayoub and Abu Burhan. A Yemeni (Abu Farij); a Libyan (Saif al Liby); an Omani (Khalifa al

Muscat), and a Nigerian (Qaricrpt al Jizaeri).Beneath th e Shura were a series of com mittees, u sua lly chaired by one or moremembers of the Shura. These included The military committee, initially chaired by Banshir i with A tef as his deputy(and ultimate successor). A finance or "business" committee, initially chaired by Abu Fadhl alMakkee. A Fatawa Committee, chaired by Abu Saad al Sharif Abu Moh amed Saud i.This com position, and the linkages and affiliations that the organization has continuedto dem onstrate since then, suggest that its most descriptive title would the one - "The

International Islamic Front" - unde r which it issued its "Fatawa" en jo in ing M usl ims of theworld to wage holy war against the western "crusaders."An early bin Laden effort at toppling an "apostate" regime occurred in October 89 ,when he offered bribes to Pakistan parliamentarians to support a no confidence resolutionagainst Pakistan Prime M inister Benazir Bh utto. She narrowly survived the vote on 1 No v. Ina later intervie w, Bh utto said some parliame ntarians who had been offered money told her itcame from Saudi sources. She said that wh en sh e queried the Saudi government she was toldthat bin Laden had put up the mo ney, and that this was the first she had heard of him . Shealso said, however, that whatever bin Laden's role in providing the money, she was convincedthat th e initiator of the scheme was the chief of Pakistani intelligence (ISI)., who had beenrunning the CIA support channels to the Afghan Mujahidin and who had both th e motivation

an d th e necessary connections to set up the scheme.It was in this same time frame that bin Laden is reported to have begun the process ofmoving his main operational headquarters to Sudan and setting up operational supportfacilities there.

. Bergen , Holy War, Inc., 61-62, describing his interview w ith Bhutto.


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[Note: Ano ther person in Pakistan at this time fo r who m there is no record of a role in thedebates then taking place, but who wo uld subsequ ently emerge as a significant ope rative inthe al Qaeda organization, was W adih el-Hage. He had in fact been there on previous stints,e.g. liv ing there in 1983-84 at the time the MA K was form ed, whe n he is said to have beenassociated with Azzam. He returned again in '86-'87, and again in late '89-'90.(nydc/5feb01/32-37, 57-58)]

The Move to SudanSometime in the latter half of 1989,according to al Qaeda d efector Jamad Ah med al-Fadl, the Sudanese N ational Islamic Front (Defaa al Shabi) sent a small delegation to meetwith bin Laden at his camp in Khost, Afghanistan, to invite him to move hi s organizationalbase to Sudan. The National Islamic Front, had com e to power in Sudan in the summ er of1989 in collaboration with a military junta . Its leader was Hassan al-Turabi, a Sorbonne-educated Islamist.Fadl claims to have been present at the m eeting w ith the Sudanese delegation, and to

have later learned that it had connections to Sudanese intelligence services. He has said thatbin Laden and his Shura members saw some clear advantages to the offer - e.g., support fromthe Emir of what was in effect seen the most successful effort, outside Iran, of establishing anIslamist state, and proximity to the M iddle Eastern states w hich were the focus of the Jihadagainst apostate regimes. Some Shura mem bers, including bin Laden, nonetheless felt a needto learn a bit mo re before m aking a final decision. A reconnaissance team was sent to Sudanfor this purpose and returned w ith a favorable report, according to wh at Fadl says he heard inthe guesthouse discussions. The preparations for movin g the bin Laden group's operationalplatform to Sudan began.8By early 1990Bin Laden w as back in Saudi A rabia laying the groundwo rk for hemove. He dispatched a number of operatives to Sudan acquire properties an d facilities that

would be used to set up operating bases and a logistics and adm inistrative infrastructu re.Many of these acquisitions wou ld be used to establish b usiness enterprises th at would serveboth as means of raising money and as cover mechan isms for bin Lade n's terroristorganization, and as channels fo r moving funds.Meanwhile, he maintained at least a part of his network of guesthouses an d camps inPakistan and Afgha nistan, whe re volunteers continued to flow through even tho ugh theSoviets ha d pulled out of Afghanistan. Initially, according to Fadl, they were coming to jointh e fight against th e comm unist regime th e Soviets had left in place under MohammadNajibullah. This flow provided a source fo r spotting an d siphon ing recruits into bin Laden'semerging group, an d before long the incom ing voluntee rs increasingly identified their motiveas the desire to join al Qaeda.9

7. Fadl testimony, 6 Feb.Ol, 218-19, 233; 13 Feb.514-16) Fadl is unable to give a precise date fo r this meeting,e.g. whether it was before or after Assa m's assassination. [Note: In cross exam ination on 20 Feb.O l, p.890, Fadlanswers "yes" to a question on whether he went to Sudan for bin Laden in 1989. But it is slightly out of timingwith his actual description in direct exam.]8. Fadl says the reconnaissance team consisted of Abu Hamman al Saudi, Abu Hajer al Iraqi, (aka MamdouhMahmud Salim), Abu Hassan al Sudani , and Abu Rida al Suri, a Syrian9. Fadl testimony, 13 Feb.Ol, 434-35.


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Fadl claims that in this initial period he heard no talk of the United States being th eenemy, but that this began to change as bin Laden progressed in preparing th e infrastructurefor his move to Sudan. Even before th e move to Sudan w as carried out, according to Fadl, th efocus had shifted to the United States.

One version that ha s achieved legend status is that a few days after Iraq invadedKuwait , bin Laden approached the Saudi regime of fering the services of his followe rs forJihad against Saddam, and told American forces were coming to take care of the defense ofSaudi Arabia. Whatever th e validity of this story, bin Laden did in fact launch a publicdiatribe against the presence of U.S. forces in the land of the sacred M uslim sites after thedeployment of the first U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia on 7 Au gus t 1990. He was joined in thisline by some Islam ic preachers, and the Saudi regime wou ld soon make it clear he wasunwelcome there.1 [Need some d etails: Didn ' t the Saudi regime impose some kind ofrestrictions on him about this time?]

Fadl, who was a Sudanese national, w as part of the bin Laden team sent to Sudan tobegin setting up the infrastructure. Amo ng his tasks in the ensuing m onths w as to takeadvantage of his Sudanese nationality to purcha se large farm s. (Sudanese property-right lawsimposed constraints on such purchases by non-S udanes e nationals.) Operating unde rinstructions of al Qaeda military chairman Banshiri, he purchased in his own name a farmnorth of Khartoum with $250,000 given to him by bin Laden's principal deputy Zawahiri, anda salt farm near Port Sudan with $180,000 from finance comm ittee chairman Abu FadhI al-Makkee. One of the functions of these farm s was to provide space for training camps forweapons employ ment and explosives construction.11 (Fadl later became an assistant to Fadhla lMakkee . )

In Apr il 1991 bin Laden, who had been confronting significant hostility from th eSaudi government in response to his public diatribes, left Saudi Arabia fo r Pakistan. By thistime, many of his minions ha d already moved from Pakistan to Sudan, and much of thelogistic and support structure fo r relocating his operations platform was in place there. Thefront com pany W adi al Aqiq (w hat Fadl describes as the "mother comp any"), w as up andrunning by this t ime. Among it s various functions were th e provision of offices for bin Ladenand some of his key coordinators, and channels fo r moving finances fo r various operations.Fadl says th e process of setting up the infrastructure w as facilitated by Sudanese intelligenceofficers who provided letters enabling shipments to be brought into the country withoutcustoms inspections. H e quotes bin Laden as saying that th e Sudanese were "openingdoors."13

By this time, according to various sources, bin Laden had begun dispatchingequipment, mo ney and training materials to assist the Moro Islam ic Liberation Front in thePhilippines, and also helping set up there the Abu Sayyaf Brigade, named after one of thedominant Afg han Jihadists. (Some o f the reports claim that this began at the end of 1990.)Fadl has said he was told of this by two al Qaeda mem bers, Osama Azmarai and Abu Talha allo. One of ma ny accounts of this is in Bergen, Holy W ar Inc., 77 .". The descriptions of this process are given in Fadl's testimony 6 Feb. 01, 220-22; 234-239. In his testimonyhe initial said this was in early 1990, but in cross examination he answered "yes" to the question of whether hewas initially sent there in 1989. Various versions are also in Berg en, Holy War Inc., 78-79; Benjamin andSimon, Age of Sacred Terror, 110, an d Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, 29 .'2 . Fadl testimony 20 Feb.Ol, 895.'3. Fadl 234-39; 418-20. On p. 890, Fadl says the com pany actually began to be set up in late 1989. The m oveto Pakistan is also described in Bergen, Holy War Inc., 79 .


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Sudan i . The M anila police also have videotaped a confession of an ethnic Phil ippine named(Roberto Angeles) who claimed to have been a founding member of the Abu Sayyaf brigade,and who said on the taped stateme nt that one of the people bin Laden sent to the Philippinesto assist in setting it up w as the same person that the police believe to have been RamziYousef . (The name he used in the Phil ippines was Abd ul Basil Mahmood Abdul Karim, th esame nam e he used on the passport with which he left the U.S after th e 1993 WTC attack.The Phil ippine police also had him un der the name of Ram zi Yo uso p.) 1 4Fadl claims that he also learned at this time of al Qaeda support going to a Pakistanigroup. He says he was personally involved in renting a guesthouse to be used by the group,and was told of bin Laden's role in finan cing it by the group's emir, Sheikh Fazil ur Rahman ,(this is the same na me a s used by one of the four signatories to bin Laden's February 1998Fatawa, who called himself in that document the "Emir of the Jihad M ovemen t ofBangladesh.")15W hile bin Laden was still in Pakistan, a group of Islamic scholars back in SaudiArabia sent a "Letter of Demands" to the Saudi regime calling for the shedding of allwestern influences and the return to pure Sharia law. This group wo uld shortly begin calling

themselves "the Awakened Sheikhs," and bin Laden would in the ensuing years exploit theirconflict with the Saud i regime to set up the dissident exile group "A dvice and Reform ationComm ittee" in London . This Lond on-based organiza tion wou ld become a key center infuture al Qaeda recruitment.16 (In a CNN interview aired in May 1997, bin Laden touted thesupport he said he felt at the time for the group from th e time of its origins.)In the summer of 1991, Bin Laden, moved to Sudan and took "on-site command"of the infrastructure that he had been setting up there.Meanwhile, parallel events were unfo lding in New Yo rk (and elsewhere in the UnitedStates) whose connections with the al Qaeda transnational network would only becomeevident many years later.

The New York "Cell"As noted above, one of the first "branch offices" of the Azzam/bin LadenPeshawar-based "Bureau of Services" (MAK) was set up in Brooklyn, (onAtlanticAvenue) in the mid-1980s under the title al-Khifa. It was tied to the neighboring AlFarouq mosque, and would become a hub for many of the participants in the terroristattacks undertaken in the New York area in the early 1990s. Azzam assigned a protege,Mustapha Shalabi, to be its initial chief. And as was also noted above, Azzam's numerousrecruiting trips to the U nited States in the 1980s included several lectures given at theBrooklyn Mosque. A videotape of one of these lectures, given in 1988, is described in a 1995

[need to check specific month] issue of The New Yorker.17

14. Benjamin and Simon, Ag e of Sacred Terror, 112; Fadl testimon y, 6 February 2001, 354; Manila Times, 26April 2002.15. Fadl testimony, 6 February 2001, 355-56.16. Benjamin an d Simon, 107-08. Note that Bergen, Holy War, Inc.; 88, claims the letter wa s sent in May 1992.Need to check which is correct.".Bergen, Holy War Inc., 136 gives the start-up of al-Khifa as 1987. According to Miller an d Stone, The Cell,336, the videotape was mad e by Steve Emerson. Need to ask him .


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10

At that time, one of those employed in the support staff of the al-Khifa center wasJamad Ahmed al-Fadl, the al Qaeda defector who has provided so much of what isknown of the formation of bin Laden's infrastructure up to the time he moved back toAfghanistan. Fadl was born in Sudan in 1963, studied English in m iddle and secondaryschool, moved to the US in 1986 on a student visa, an d quickly married an American(evidently to secure his residence. He had already married a Sudanese sho rtly before comin gto the U.S.) He then settled in Broo klyn, work ing under Shalabi at the al Khifa Bureau. Hehas said in his testimon y that he knew al Khifa and the Farouq M osque were part of a largerBureau of Services netw ork set up by Azzam and bin Laden in Pakistan to support th e AfghanJihad. He has described its functions as including raising money, recruiting "jihadists," an dfacilitating the acquisition of travel documen ts. In late 1988, according to Fadl, he departedfor Peshawar with three other "brothers ... under the direction of Shalabi," to join the A fgha nJihad. (A t which time he dumped his American wife. ) 1 8 [No t certain this was before o r afterAzzam's videotaped lecture at the Brooklyn mosque, b ut Fadl's description of it as "late"suggests it was after.]

Another of Azzam's many recruitment ventures to the United States, in 1989, [beforehis assassination in Novem ber] was to give a lecture in Oklahoma at a convention of theMuslim Arab Y outh League an d Islamic Association fo r Palestine. T his conv ention was theoccasion of an introductory meeting of Wadih el-Hage and Mahmud Abouhalima, bothof whom wo uld later be identified as key players in the terrorist collage associated with the al-Khifa center in Brooklyn.19Hage especially would go on to become a key player in the al-Qaeda organizationthrough most of the next decade.20 Born in Lebanon in 1960 to a Catholic family, heconverted to Islam w hile a teenager, an d then came to US in 1978 after finishin g high school.He settled in Lafayette, Louisiana un der th e care of a Muslim family there, attended th eUniversity of South L ouisiana, an d later moved to Arlington, Texas.Hage participated in setting up A zzam 's lecture in Oklahoma in 1989, and in fact thereis substantial evidence indicating that he already had been connected with him in thepreceding years. Hage was in Pakistan from 1983 to 1985, assisting th e Afghan Mujahidinas a "relief worker"21 serving at the same place an d same time and for the same causefor which bin Laden and Azzam were setting up their "Bureau of Services." Afterreturning to Arlington, Texas in 1985, Hage went back to Pakistan in 1986 an d stayeduntil 1987, after which he returned to the U.S. an d established a business office in Tucson,Arizona. One of the enterprises he helped to found there was the "Al-Bunyan IslamicInformation Center." Between 1987 and the end of 1989 he reportedly made several tripsto Brooklyn, in wh at has been described as in the service o f Azza m at the al Khifa center.

18. Fadl testimony 6 February 2001, 162-65; 7 February, 424. Fo r further details on Fadl's personal history see"Players" appendix below.19. Benjamin an d Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, 99-101.20. Hage's biographical background is given in several of the books cited above, and the details of his travels arein the court materials, starting with the opening statements by the U.S. Government on 5 February 2001, pp.20-28; 48-52.21 . A shriveled arm from birth disability prevented him from serving as battlefield fighter.


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He returned to Pakistan yet again in late 1989 or early 1990, again staying for about ayear, an d then returned to Arlington Texas 1990 or '91.22[S o far, we have no t turned up any details ofHage's association with the formation ofthe "Bureau... ," but the introductory statements of both U.S. Attorney and his own defenseattorney in the 2001 African Embassy bombing trial establish that he did have contacts w ithboth Azzam and bin Laden in Pakistan an d subsequently in Afghanistan. Th e issue incontention during his various hearings and interrogations has not been whether he wasassociated with bin Laden but how close and in what function. Given what followed, asdescribed below , the details of how soon and to what degree this U.S. cell was set up, andHage is central]During this time frame in the late-1980s Hage does not appear to have surfaced on theterrorist threat radar screen, one of the persons he met during Azzam's Oklahoma lecture -Mahmud Abouhalima - was on a screen, literally.In July 89, the Joint Terrorism Task Force23 in New York, acting on a tip that a"Palestinian group" associated with the al-Khifah Center was planning bombings of Atlantic

City casinos, conducted surveillance photography of a dozen of them engaging in shootingexercises at Calverton range on eastern Long Island. Photos were taken on fourconsecu tive weeke nds. The identities of some of the participants in these exercises remaine dunknown for some time, but one of those who were relatively quickly identified was MahmudAbouhalima (whose street name was "M ahmud the Red" because of his hair color.) Othersidentified in the photographs included El-Sayyid Nosair an d Nidal Ayyad, both of whom,like Abouhalim a, were of Egyptian ethnicity; Moham med Salameh, a Palestinian; and anAfrican American Muslim named Clement Hampton-El (aka "Dr. Rashid because of his jobas a hospital worker) who had already served as a combatant in the Afghanistan Jihad. In thephotographs, some participants are wearing T-shirts with Jihad slogans, some with title"Services Office," an d some with a map of Afghanistan. 24One of the instructors [according to ms/c] w as a tall African-American identified ayear and a half later as Richard Smith, who in late 1990 became a suspect in a gun runninginvestigation. Another instructor, not identified at the time, was Ali Mohamed, who had been

a sergeant at Fort Bragg, N.C. [Was he still in the army at that time?] The weapons beingused included AD-47s, 357 and 9m m pistols, shotguns, and other rifles, (ms/c 51, 58 ;Bensim 5.) [Bensim say the group was identified as fellow-w orshippers of the FarouqMosque, bu t this is not a significant distinction because the mosque was the "spiritual office"of al-Kifa.] A Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF, established by the FBI and NYP D in 1980,according to ms/c -34) assigned an NYPD group (headed by Tom Corrigan) to put the al-Kifah/Farouq subjects under surveillance. This led to the observation, and* This group [according to ms/c, p. 50] began to be pulled together by Nosair as early as1987. In addition to those seen in the photos at the firing range, the group included a

person named Bilall Alkaisi, a Palestinian who had also trained in Afghanistan. The22 . See 5 February record, (p?). Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 135In his later trips to Afghanistan in 1986 and again in1989 he took his family with him23 . A "Joint Terrorism Task Force" (JTTF) is "a combination of federal and state law enforcement formed toidentify in order to identify and investigate international and domestic terrorism and terrorists." (See e.g. USDistrict Court, Western District of New York, Criminal Complaint in the case of the group from Lackawanna,NY , 13 September 2002. Th e first JTTF was established in New York in (1980 according to Miller and Stone,The Cell, 34) but many others have since been set up about the United States.24. Am ong many sources are Miller and Stone, 50ff, and Benjamin and Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, 5ff.


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Sources(b/hwi) Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., (New York - The Free Press/Simon andSchuster,2001)(ms/c) John M iller andMichael Stone, The Cell (New York - Hyperon; 2002)(rg) Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al-Qaeda, (New York: C olumbia U niversity Press, 2002)(bensim) Daniel Benjamin an d Steve Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, (New York: RandomHouse, 2002)(nydc 01 ) New York D istrict Court: Records of Trial of Usama Bin Laden et al (AfricanEmbassy Bombings) beginning 5 Feb. 2001. Opening statements,(fadl) Testimony of Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, 6, 7,13 Feb. 2001, NYDC(ridi) Testimony of Essam al Ridi, 14 February 2001, NYDC( juma) Testimony of Ashif Mohamed Jum a, 14 February 2001.["Players" listing annexed at end of chron.]

Some classified and sealed documents relating to transportation of Odeh from Pakistan to US?See p. 413 of nydc 2001 trials.

John Miller andMichael Stone, TheCell, (New York - Hyperon; 2002)

New York D istrict Court: Transcripts of Trial of Usama Bin Laden et al (African Embassy Bombings);Opening statements 5 Feb. 2001.Testimony of Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, Feb. 6 (346), 7 (405), 13 (534), 20 (889- 1060).Testimony of Essam al Ridi, 14 (624) February 2001, NYDCTestimony of Ashif Mohamed Juma, 14 (675) February 2001.

T5 B68 Terrorist Database Materials 2 of 2 Fdr- 2003 Draft- March to War Against US- 11 Pgs- Shorter...

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