Category Archives: Al Qaeda

Abu Zubaydah wanted to ‘bring America to its knees’ after 9/11

Jason Leopold writes: Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah, one of the highest-value detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was building a network to wage a war that would “bring America to its knees” before he was captured in 2002, his personal diaries show. In the document, Abu Zubaydah recounts the chaotic aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the toppling of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which provided shelter for men like him and Osama bin Laden.

After describing how he helped fellow fighters flee from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Abu Zubaydah writes of forming a network of trainers capable of teaching skills like bomb making in a new organization with ambitious plans to attack Israel. He notes that he returned to Afghanistan with $50,000 “to participate in any jihadist operation against the Jews” that he intended to carry out in Iran or Pakistan.

“I took them with me, from the flood, one or two individuals from each military science, just like Noah … two pairs from each … An instructor or two from each military subject, they are the nucleus of my future work, and I am starting from zero … I am preparing a safe location for us, so that we can start,” he writes.

That failed plot is just one of the revelations to emerge from the diaries, a government translation of which has been obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera America from a former U.S. government intelligence official who worked with the CIA and FBI on Al-Qaeda’s rise to power. Despite being coveted by security analysts and journalists because of their participant-observer’s account of the decade before the 2001 attacks that claimed almost 3,000 lives, the diaries have never been officially released. They have been repeatedly cited by U.S. officials as key evidence for holding Abu Zubaydah and dozens of other Guantanamo prisoners. [Continue reading…]

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The secret diaries of Abu Zubaydah

Jason Leopold reports:

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the secret personal diaries of Abu Zubaydah, one of the highest-profile prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. The six notebooks, which were obtained from a former U.S. government intelligence official who worked with the CIA and FBI on Al-Qaeda’s rise to power, were discovered at a safe house in Pakistan where Abu Zubaydah was captured in 2002. Repeatedly cited by U.S. officials in making the case for holding a number of prisoners at Guantanamo, the diaries, which were never officially released, cast fresh light on Abu Zubaydah and challenge some of the Bush administration’s accounts of its “war on terror.” Below are some of the highlights of the first notebook.

Arriving in Afghanistan in 1991, the young computer-science student Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah had no idea of the fateful journey he was embarking on — a journey that, 10 years later, would land him in a CIA black-site prison and then in Guantanamo Bay, branded by President George W. Bush as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.”

“I am actually scared,” he conceded in his diary. “Not of a bullet or a shell, rather of the future itself. If I decide to settle here, it means that I will cancel my education and there is no harm in that, God willing; jihad is a good thing, and I will stay.”

Abu Zubaydah arrived in Afghanistan from Mysore, India, where he had gone against his father’s wishes to study computer science.

“But,” his diary continues, “I am scared that I’ll be left high and dry in the future, God forbid. At that point, I will have no contingent plan to resort to, a degree or a job to lean on.” His fear was not martyrdom but surviving the war in Afghanistan, particularly if he was wounded. “What would I do if the party is over and there is no more jihad in Afghanistan! Where would I go when I have no job and no college degree?”

He was distrustful of the few friends he had, describing many of them as backstabbers. “Friendship is a fantasy, friendship is false.”

So in the diary — which offers deep insight into a man portrayed by the Bush administration as a seminal figure in the “war on terror” — Abu Zubaydah created a friend he could talk to.

“Dear 30-year-old Hani,” the diary begins, referring to himself by a childhood nickname and making clear that the audience is himself 10 years in the future, “Today I have decided to write my memoirs and these words are to you. So, this will be the letter in which I complain to you, get things off my chest, and cry in your arms whenever I feel the need to share my burden, from this silly world, with someone.”

He states that he intends to reread the diary only after he reaches that age. “So, I will be you; the 30 years old Hani, provided that I get to live to meet you.”

Perhaps mindful of how others might interpret his literary device, Abu Zubaydah writes, “I am not a schizophrenic, which is a split personality disease; rather, I am trying to divide myself into two parts because; I believe that everything changes with time, even human beings. Therefore, it is inevitable that you Hani 2 at 30 years of age are different than Hani 1 … Me… at 20 years old.”

FBI agents who read the diaries said that Abu Zubaydah’s writing to a different version of himself proved that he had a “schizophrenic personality.” The correct term for the exhibition of multiple personalities is dissociative identity disorder, however, not schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a disease often characterized by hallucinations or delusions but not by multiple personalities. [Continue reading…]

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Fear of al Qaeda has become more harmful than al Qaeda

David Rohde writes: Three disclosures this week show that the United States is losing its way in the struggle against terrorism. Sweeping government efforts to stop attacks are backfiring abroad and infringing on basic rights at home.

CIA drone strikes are killing scores of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. The National Security Agency is eavesdropping on tens of millions of phone calls worldwide — including those of 35 foreign leaders — in the name of U.S. security.

And the Department of Homeland Security is using algorithms to “prescreen” travelers before they board domestic flights, reviewing government and private databases that include Americans’ tax identification numbers, car registrations and property records.

Will we create a Minority Report-style Department of Precrime next?

Obama administration officials have a duty to protect Americans from terrorism. But out-of-control NSA surveillance, an ever-expanding culture of secrecy and still-classified rules for how and when foreigners and even Americans can be killed by drone strikes are excessive, unnecessary and destructive.

Twelve years after September 11, 2001, the United States’ obsession with al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist group itself. [Continue reading…]

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Documents reveal role of NSA’s targetted surveillance in drone warfare

NSA surveillance allowed the CIA to kill Hassan Ghul, a key al Qaeda operative, in a drone strike in Pakistan a year ago.

What further evidence could anyone need to accept that mass surveillance is necessary for America’s national security?

Sadly, that’s probably a strong argument in the sense that it’s an argument likely have its intended effect. Which is to say, if people believe that sifting through everyone’s email is what it takes to eliminate al Qaeda, then most Americans will probably acquiesce to this loss of privacy — a small price to pay in the fight against terrorism, so the thinking is meant to go.

The Washington Post reports:

It was an innocuous e-mail, one of millions sent every day by spouses with updates on the situation at home. But this one was of particular interest to the National Security Agency and contained clues that put the sender’s husband in the crosshairs of a CIA drone.

Days later, Hassan Ghul — an associate of Osama bin Laden who provided a critical piece of intelligence that helped the CIA find the al-Qaeda leader — was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

The U.S. government has never publicly acknowledged killing Ghul. But documents provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden confirm his demise in October 2012 and reveal the agency’s extensive involvement in the targeted killing program that has served as a centerpiece of President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy.

An al-Qaeda operative who had a knack for surfacing at dramatic moments in the post-Sept. 11 story line, Ghul was an emissary to Iraq for the terrorist group at the height of that war. He was captured in 2004 and helped expose bin Laden’s courier network before spending two years at a secret CIA prison. Then, in 2006, the United States delivered him to his native Pakistan, where he was released and returned to the al-Qaeda fold.

But beyond filling in gaps about Ghul, the documents provide the most detailed account of the intricate collaboration between the CIA and the NSA in the drone campaign.

The Post is withholding many details about those missions, at the request of U.S. intelligence officials who cited potential damage to ongoing operations and national security.

The NSA is “focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets,” an NSA spokeswoman said in a statement provided to The Post on Wednesday, adding that the agency’s operations “protect the nation and its interests from threats such as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

So, for readers who don’t parse the reporting carefully, the narrative thread here is that contrary to the claims of its critics, the NSA isn’t in the business of spying on Americans; it has a vital role in hunting down terrorists.

But keep going — all the way down to paragraphs fourteen and fifteen:

The [leaked] documents do not explain how the Ghul e-mail was obtained or whether it was intercepted using legal authorities that have emerged as a source of controversy in recent months and enable the NSA to compel technology giants including Microsoft and Google to turn over information about their users. Nor is there a reference to another NSA program facing scrutiny after Snowden’s leaks, its metadata collection of numbers dialed by nearly every person in the United States.

To the contrary, the records indicate that the agency depends heavily on highly targeted network penetrations to gather information that wouldn’t otherwise be trapped in surveillance nets that it has set at key Internet gateways. [Emphasis mine.]

Or, to put it more bluntly, we have yet to be shown any evidence that mass surveillance plays any significant role in the war against al Qaeda. In tracking down Ghul, the crucial element appears to have been “a surveillance blanket over dozens of square miles of northwest Pakistan” — not a surveillance blanket covering the world.

And having said that, even while mass surveillance by the NSA seems to have prompted greater concern among Americans both inside and outside Washington than many other forms of America’s outlaw conduct over the last decade, the larger issue about which far fewer people show any interest is the policy of sanctioned assassination.

That an American president can now operate like a mafia boss is apparently OK — so long as every man on his hit list has an Arabic name.

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Al Qaeda’s rise in northern Syria leaves Turkey with dilemma

Reuters reports: The rise of al Qaeda in parts of Syria’s north has left Turkey facing a new security threat on its already vulnerable border and raised questions about its wholesale support for rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey has long championed more robust backing for Syria’s fractious armed opposition, arguing it would bring a quicker end to Assad’s rule and give moderate forces the authority they needed to keep more radical Islamist elements in check.

But with Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking territory in parts of the north near the border in recent weeks, it is a strategy that increasingly looks to have been a miscalculation.

Ankara has found itself facing accusations that indiscriminate support for the rebels has allowed weapons and foreign fighters to cross into northern Syria and facilitated the rise of radical groups.

“We are being accused of supporting al Qaeda,” a source close to the Turkish government said, adding that U.S. officials had raised concerns on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York last month.

“They were politely but aggressively critical. The attention has focused away from Assad to al Qaeda,” the source said, echoing frustration voiced by other officials in Ankara that this was playing into Assad’s hands.

As if on cue, the Turkish army said on Wednesday it had fired on ISIL fighters over the border after a stray mortar shell hit Turkish soil. It has retaliated in the past in such cases but this appeared to be the first time its response had targeted al Qaeda-linked fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Qaeda suspect’s shipboard fast brings halt to U.S. interrogation

Reuters reports: An elite U.S. interrogation team abandoned its questioning of an al-Qaeda militant who was snatched in Libya after he stopped eating and drinking regularly on board a U.S. Navy ship where he was being held, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

As his health deteriorated, U.S. authorities decided to fly the suspect known as Abu Anas al-Liby to New York last weekend, where he was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Al-Liby, whose real name is Nazih al-Ragye, was expected to be arraigned in Federal Court in Manhattan on Tuesday on long-standing charges related to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

Upon arrival in the United States, al-Liby became subject to the rules of the civilian American court system. That means he can no longer be interrogated without being advised of his constitutional right to avoid incriminating himself, the official said. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda’s Syrian strategy

Barak Barfi and Aaron Y. Zelin write: Al Qaeda is storming across northern Syria. Last month, the al Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) captured the city of al-Bab in the northern province of Aleppo from a rival rebel militia. The capture of the city, one of the largest in the region, gives ISIS control over a key transit point linking Aleppo to its strongholds to the east. And that’s just the latest in a long string of ISIS’s military successes: After brief clashes with outgunned rebel opponents, ISIS took the towns of Azaz and Jarablus, which straddle Syria’s border with Turkey.

To commemorate its victories, the first thing ISIS did in these places was hang its black flag from the top of the highest building. After that, it began to gradually impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

ISIS has embarked on al Qaeda’s most comprehensive campaign yet to win Arab hearts and minds by providing social services to a war-ravaged society. But though the organization’s star is ascendant, its abuses, coupled with an international strategy to limit its influence, could still torpedo its plan to transform northern Syria into an Islamic emirate under its command.

ISIS is thought to count 5,000 to 6,000 fighters within its ranks. That means it’s a lot smaller than other rebel groups, such as the hard-line Salafi Syrian Islamic Front, which boasts 15,000 to 20,000 fighters. But ISIS has one important advantage: Many of its members have previously fought in other jihads, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya.

Nowhere is ISIS stronger than in the northern province of Raqqa. It controls the governorate’s capital, Raqqa city, whose prewar population of approximately 277,300 residents has mushroomed due to an influx of displaced persons from other regions. Meanwhile, the brigades affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are focused on squabbling among themselves. As a result, no FSA unit is strong enough to challenge the group in Raqqa, making it the largest city al Qaeda has ever controlled in the Islamic world.

ISIS has exploited its grip on the region to supply the provincial capital with the commodities essential to function. It provides most of the wheat for the city’s bread factories, trucking the grain in from its silos in the northern parts of the province on the border with Turkey. It also delivers the majority of the city’s oil needs, drawing on rebel-controlled wells in eastern Syria.

ISIS is doing far more than keeping the lights on. It runs a court with a mix of judges and religious scholars that draws on a strict interpretation of Islamic law. It adjudicates cases ranging from theft to financial malfeasance. According to Raqqan politicians and residents, in one ruling this summer the court ordered that a house confiscated by a rebel brigade be returned to its owner. It also provides abandoned houses to those whose living quarters were destroyed by regime bombings.

ISIS’s Raqqa Outreach Bureau, meanwhile, is trying to educate residents in what it considers the proper teachings of Islam. Raqqan politicians and residents say that the organization distributes pocket Qurans and flash drives with jihadi chants and videos showing the group’s military operations. Some of the leaflets that ISIS circulates include: “The Prohibition of Democracy,” “The Virtue of Jihad Over Remaining Silent,” and “Excommunicating the Alawites” — the latter a reference to the heterodox minority sect to which President Bashar al-Assad’s clan belongs. Nor has ISIS just restricted its attention to adults: It recently opened a children’s school in a city where the education system ceased functioning long ago.

By providing such services, ISIS seeks to prove that al Qaeda can make positive contributions and build institutions to serve society. Unlike in Iraq, the organization has produced dozens of videos highlighting this outreach. In doing so, the group hopes to illustrate that it has learned the lessons of its failures in the last decade, when Iraqi Sunnis rebelled against al Qaeda’s brutal ways. “As for our mistakes, we do not deny them,” ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami noted in a July 30 audio release. “Rather, we will continue to make mistakes as long as we are humans. God forbid that we commit mistakes deliberately.”

Despite these efforts, however, ISIS has proved unable to avoid the mistakes that have caused it to lose support in countries such as Mali and Yemen. The al Qaeda affiliate continues to persecute anti-Assad activists who don’t agree with its hard-line Islamic vision — the incarceration of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, an outspoken regime critic, has particularly angered Raqqans, according to residents of the city.

In other areas of northern Syria, the horror stories have been even worse. In Aleppo province, ISIS imprisoned a 14-year-old girl in dungeon-like conditions for use in a prisoner exchange, according to a fellow inmate. As a consequence of ISIS’s growing strength, many journalists have been kidnapped — and many more have opted to stay out of Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Did the U.S. make a mistake in seizing Anas al-Liby?

Jamie Dettmer reports: For Americans, he is a monster, a major al-Qaeda leader who had a hand in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 224 civilians and—until U.S. Special Forces snatched him off the streets of Tripoli last week—a veteran terrorist tasked with uniting jihadists not just in Libya but across the arc of North Africa.

Sitting down, though, with his wife of 22 years and three sons in their cramped apartment, on the elevated ground floor of a small apartment building in a middle-class district in the Libyan capital on Saturday evening, I heard a different story that didn’t fit the bogeyman portrait drawn by American officials.

And it is one that prompts the question: has the U.S. got the right man?

For his family, Abu Anas al-Liby, to use his nom de guerre, is an easy-going husband and kind, playful father who, just days before a Delta Force team grabbed and bundled the 49-year-old out of Libya, told his oldest son, Abdullah, that he was looking forward to becoming a grandfather.

For them, he is a Libyan patriot who sacrificed a great deal. His commitment to the ousting of Libya’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, required them all to suffer, including several years of imprisonment in poor conditions in Iran after the family fled Afghanistan. They say they endured harassment and surveillance in Britain, where they sought political asylum and lived from 1997 to 2000. [Continue reading…]

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Terrorist suspect will not be granted his legal rights until after his interrogation

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday rejected a request that he appoint a lawyer to represent a terror suspect who was captured last weekend in Libya and was said to be undergoing interrogation while in military custody on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

After that interrogation is over, the suspect, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, is expected to be advised of his right to a lawyer and speedy court appearance, and would eventually be brought to Manhattan for criminal prosecution.

Mr. Ruqai, 49, who is better known as Abu Anas al-Libi, faces indictment in Federal District Court on conspiracy charges stemming from the 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people.

On Tuesday, David E. Patton, the chief federal public defender in New York City, wrote to the judge overseeing cases stemming from that indictment, arguing that Mr. Ruqai was “a defendant in an indicted case before this court” and was entitled to be taken “without unnecessary delay” before a magistrate judge, where he would also have the right to counsel.

But on Friday, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, said that such a requirement was triggered only by a “federal criminal arrest.”

“The government denies that any federal criminal arrest has taken place,” he wrote, “and there is no evidence to the contrary.” As a result, Judge Kaplan wrote, there was “no proper basis” for the court to conclude that “the obligation to produce the defendant before it in this criminal case has come into existence.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. Tripoli raid deepens sense of chaos in Libya

Time reports: Two days after U.S. Special Forces seized one of the FBI’s most wanted al-Qaeda operatives in broad daylight in Libya’s capital, officials of that oil-rich nation are scrambling to explain what they knew in advance about a major foreign commando raid on their territory—an operation that could well provoke jihadist attacks in Libya and destabilize an already fragile government.

The U.S. operation was audacious: Early on Saturday morning, at least two carloads of armed men ambushed Anas al-Liby, one of the suspected masterminds of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar el-Salaam, which killed more than 200 people. As al-Liby returned from dawn prayers to his home in central Tripoli, the men cut off his black Hyundai sedan with their vehicles, smashed the window, pulled him out of the car and flew him out of Libya—all without the Libyan government’s knowledge or approval, or so the authorities in Tripoli claim.

To the U.S., al-Liby’s capture was a long time coming. At 49, al-Liby, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was a key computer expert for al-Qaeda, who logged time with Osama bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan during the 1990s and whom U.S. officials believe acted as a scout and planner for the organization. In 2000, the U.S. indicted him in absentia and others for the embassy bombings. Pentagon officials said on Sunday that al-Liby was “lawfully detained by the U.S. military in a secure location outside of Libya,” which was assumed by some to be a naval vessel in the Mediterranean. The operation’s stunning success was in stark contrast to a second commando raid before dawn on Saturday. U.S. Navy SEALs had tried to storm a house in southern Somalia, the suspected base of key al-Shabab operatives, when they came under a blaze of gunfire and were forced to withdraw before confirming if their target was dead.

Yet despite the success of the Libya operation, the fallout has already begun—and could deepen Libya’s already unstable security situation and shake its fragile government. On Sunday Libyan officials fumed in an official statement that the arrest was a “kidnapping,” and that they have “been in touch with the U.S. government and have asked for clarification on this matter.” Secretary of State John Kerry refused to say on Sunday whether the U.S. had sought Libya’s approval beforehand. But the statement from Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s office insisted the government was caught unawares. [Continue reading…]

Wayne White writes: This weekend’s US capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’I, better known by his alias, Anas al-Libi, might net only limited information of current intelligence value while potentially resulting in militant Islamist payback in what remains a very fragile Libya. Of no less than three al-Qaeda operatives bearing the alias al-Libi (simply “the Libyan” in Arabic), Anas al-Libi could be the least significant overall. And should a Libyan militant Islamic group or militia decide to retaliate for this bold US grab, they are capable of doing significant harm.

Anas al-Libi’s former association with al-Qaeda is well-known, as are standing US indictments against him for actions related to the horrific 1998 East Africa bombing. Yet, relatively little seems to be known about how active he remained over the past few years. So the information he has might not be particularly useful if, for example, he was not knowledgeable about or involved in last year’s Benghazi consulate attack or other recent operations. US authorities apparently believe he has been working to expand al-Qaeda’s network in Libya (although perhaps not a certainty since he has been living in Tripoli without security). [Continue reading…]

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Libya demands explanation for ‘kidnapping’ of citizen by U.S. forces

The Guardian reports: Libya has demanded an explanation for the “kidnapping” of one of its citizens by American special forces, hours after a separate US military raid on a terrorist target in Somalia ended in apparent failure and retreat.

In Tripoli the US army’s delta force seized alleged al-Qaida leader Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby and wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people.

But US navy Seals suffered a major setback when they launched an amphibious assault to capture an Islamist militant leader said to be Ahmed Godane, described as Africa’s most wanted man and the architect of last month’s attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya. The elite Seals were beaten back by heavy fire and apparently abandoned equipment that the Somali militants photographed and posted on the internet.

As dramatic details of Saturday’s twin operations emerged, US secretary of state John Kerry insisted that terrorists “can run but they can’t hide”, but faced growing questions about America’s military reach in Africa and the consequences of unilateral aggression.

Al-Liby was captured outside his family home at 6.15am in Noufle’een, a quiet suburb in eastern Tripoli, according to witnesses, but there were conflicting reports over who took him. His brother, Nabih, told the Associated Press that al-Liby was parking when a convoy of three vehicles encircled his car. Armed gunmen smashed the car’s window and seized al-Liby’s gun before grabbing him and taking him away, the report said. The brother said al-Liby’s wife saw the kidnapping from her window and described the abductors as foreign-looking armed “commandos”.

But al-Liby’s son Abdullah insisted that Libyan forces were involved. Appearing on Tripoli’s Nabir TV station, he said: “The people who took my father were Libyan, not Americans – they spoke with Tripoli accents. [Continue reading…]

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Anatomy of an al Qaeda ‘conference call’

Ken Silverstein writes: Two years ago, following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, a number of journalists wrote dramatic accounts of the Al Qaeda leader’s last moments. One such story, co-authored by Eli Lake in the Washington Times, cited Obama administration officials and an unnamed military source, described how bin Laden had “reached for a weapon to try to defend himself” during the intense firefight at his compound, and then “was shot by Navy SEALs after trying to use a woman reputed to be his wife as a human shield.”

It was exciting stuff, but it turned out to have been fictitious propaganda concocted by U.S. authorities to destroy bin Laden’s image in the eyes of his followers. Based on what we know now, the SEALs met virtually no resistance at the compound, there was no firefight, bin Laden didn’t use a woman as a human shield, and he was unarmed.

The White House blamed the misleading early reports on the “fog of war,” but as Will Saletan pointed out in Slate, “A fog of war creates confusion, not a consistent story like the one about the human shield. The reason U.S. officials bought and sold this story is that it fit their larger indictment of Bin Laden. It reinforced the shameful picture of him hiding in a mansion while sending others to fight and die. It made him look like a coward.”

Eli Lake

Many reporters uncritically rushed the government’s account into print. For Lake, though, it fit a career pattern of credulously planting dubious stories from sources with strong political agendas.

Which brings us to the news story that Lake and Josh Rogin broke for the Daily Beast last week, in which they reported that the “crucial intercept that prompted the U.S. government to close embassies in 22 countries was a conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders and representatives of several of the group’s affiliates throughout the region.” The story said that among the “more than 20 operatives” on the call was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who the piece claimed was managing a global organization with affiliates in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Other Al Qaeda participants involved in the call reportedly represented affiliates operating in Iraq, the Islamic Maghreb, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Sinai Peninsula, and Uzbekistan.

The sources for the story were three U.S. officials “familiar with the intelligence.” “This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” one told Lake and Rogin. “All you need to do is look at that list of places we shut down to get a sense of who was on the phone call.” [Continue reading…]

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New vision of al Qaida rises from U.S. embassy closings

McClatchy reports: The rise in prominence of Nasir al Wuhayshi, the Yemeni head of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, underscores the transformation of al Qaida from a relatively small group led by one charismatic man into a diffuse global organization with many branches that pursue local objectives but follow a single ideology, according to counterterrorism analysts and officials.

The change has undermined the Obama administration’s boast that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have “decimated” what’s been called core al Qaida, according to veteran al Qaida watchers. Instead, the organization, no longer dependent on the leadership of a single personality, is growing, with authority now spread among leaders not just in Yemen but also in Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Egypt’s Sinai. The branches that operate in those regions aren’t affiliates, the experts say, they’re al Qaida.

The experts are still uncertain how the various leaders of al Qaida interact with one another, and there are signs that Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who was named to lead al Qaida after U.S. special forces shot and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, still holds special influence.

But experts say it’s no longer accurate to talk about a core al Qaida that’s in charge of groups operating in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq and Syria.

“The great fiction al Qaida perpetrated on the West is that a centralized, hierarchical group controlled things from a cave in Afghanistan. That might’ve been true five years ago, but it’s certainly not true now,” said Christopher Swift, an adjunct professor of national security studies at Georgetown University who advises U.S. officials on counterterrorism strategy. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. staff flee from another diplomatic mission

The New York Times claims that a threat against the U.S. consulate in Lahore was unrelated to the threat that resulted in U.S. embassies being closed across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, but I suspect that the word “related” needs to be parsed carefully. In other words, even if the threat in Pakistan was not part of the same plot, it may well be related in the sense that a growing number of militants are seizing on the opportunity to find out how easy it is to make the State Department panic.

The United States ordered staff members pulled from its consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, on Friday, citing terrorist threats, and also advised Americans against traveling to Pakistan as violence continued to rattle the country for another day.

“The Department of State ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the U.S. Consulate in Lahore,” the warning said. Except for a small number of emergency personnel, the diplomats in Lahore were moved to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, a senior Obama administration official said.

At this point, it does not appear that the threat against the consulate is related to a broader terrorism alert that prompted the State Department to close 19 diplomatic missions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the official said.

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Al Qaeda shows how easy it is to make America cower

The New York Times reports: The gloating among jihadists and their sympathizers began last week, right after the United States shut down almost two dozen diplomatic posts across the Middle East in response to a terrorist threat.

“God is great! America is in a condition of terror and fear from Al Qaeda,” wrote one jihadist in an online forum. Another one rejoiced: “The mobilization and security precautions are costing them billions of dollars. We hope to hear more of such psychological warfare, even if there are no actual jihadi operations on the ground.”

The jihadists are not the only ones who see the new terrorist alert in a caustic light.

The Obama administration’s decision to evacuate so many diplomats on such short notice — however justified by the seriousness of the threat — has upset some of its foreign partners, who say the gesture contributes to a sense of panic and perceived weakness that plays into the hands of the United States’ enemies, and impedes their efforts to engage with people in their countries.

Some American officials have also said they believe the administration overreacted, in large part because of the political fallout from the attack last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. Since that attack, security procedures have been tightened at American diplomatic outposts across the Middle East. Those embassies are already so heavily fortified against attacks that many diplomats lament it is more and more difficult for them to do their jobs.

“I think since Benghazi the administration has been in a defensive crouch, and they are playing it as safe as they can,” said Will McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism official who is now an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Va. [Continue reading…]

As there is indeed every reason to assume that this is all post-Benghazi caution, it’s more than ironic that this follows the death of a diplomat who was renowned for his courage in engaging with the population where he was stationed. After all, what’s the point of having embassies if they end up just becoming fortified hiding places for Americans who dare not venture out?

No doubt, the epicenter of cowardice is Washington itself which doesn’t so much fear for the lives of its diplomats as much as it fears for the political fallout from any attack on a U.S. embassy.

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Major al Qaeda plot in Yemen foiled… Not

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “Yemeni officials said Wednesday that the country’s security forces had broken up several plots by al Qaeda militants but the government distanced itself from those reports later in the day…”

It’s not until the end of the report that we get a more informative picture of the much publicized threat from al Qaeda in Yemen: that it comes from no more than a few dozen men.

Yemeni armed forces conduct periodic high-profile land operations against militants whose affiliation with al Qaeda isn’t clear.

Estimates vary about the number of hard-core al Qaeda members in Yemen. Yemeni officials say the number is in the low hundreds. Regional intelligence agencies have published lists showing the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives number in the dozens.

Those most-wanted lists don’t include the numerous tribal and militant groups that also exist in Yemen, which have waged a yearslong battle against the central government and which sometimes make temporary alliances with al Qaeda members from their tribe or village.

The elastic definition of who is a threat is often illustrated in the death tolls announced after suspected U.S. drone attacks.

On Wednesday, six suspected militants were killed in a strike on two vehicles in the country’s southern Shabwa province, according to Yemeni officials. The identities of those killed remained unclear. In the five suspected U.S. missile strikes that have taken place in the last two weeks, only one of the 20 men reportedly killed was on Yemen’s most-wanted terrorist list.

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When al Qaeda says ‘jump,’ America jumps

The New York Times reports: The United States intercepted electronic communications this week among senior operatives of Al Qaeda, in which the terrorists discussed attacks against American interests in the Middle East and North Africa, American officials said Friday.

The intercepts and a subsequent analysis of them by American intelligence agencies prompted the United States to issue an unusual global travel alert to American citizens on Friday, warning of the potential for terrorist attacks by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates beginning Sunday through the end of August. Intelligence officials said the threat focused on the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has been tied to plots to blow up American-bound cargo and commercial flights.

The bulletin to travelers and expatriates, issued by the State Department, came less than a day after the department announced that it was closing nearly two dozen American diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa, including facilities in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Britain said Friday that it would close its embassy in Yemen on Monday and Tuesday because of “increased security concerns.”

It is unusual for the United States to come across discussions among senior Qaeda operatives about operational planning — through informants, intercepted e-mails or eavesdropping on cellphone calls. So when the high-level intercepts were collected and analyzed this week, senior officials at the C.I.A., State Department and White House immediately seized on their significance. Members of Congress have been provided classified briefings on the matter, officials said Friday.

And if nothing happens, everyone can claim victory.

Officials in Washington will solemnly talk about the need to maintain constant vigilance, and al Qaeda leaders will duly note that all it takes to force the U.S. to shut down all its embassies across the region is to shoot off a few emails. Can cyber-warfare get any easier?

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U.S. shuts down 21 embassies based on non-specific threat. Al Qaeda could strike — somewhere

The NSA might have developed an extraordinary capacity to keep track of global communications and everything every American does online. But when it comes to keeping track of al Qaeda, it appears the NSA and the CIA are still struggling.

Or to put it another way, U.S. intelligence can gather an unlimited amount of hay, but it still can’t find needles — or for that matter explain why there’s any reason to expect that the needles it might hope to find would be located in the haystacks it has created.

CNN reports: A State Department travel alert Friday said al Qaeda may launch attacks in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, as the United States is closing 21 embassies and consulates Sunday as a precaution.

“Current information suggests that al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August,” said the alert, which covers the entire month.

It warned that “terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests.”

A separate State Department list showed the 21 embassies and consulates that will close on Sunday, normally the start of the work week in the countries affected.

They included embassies in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen and 11 other countries, as well as consulates in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Other embassies to be closed were in the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Jordan, Djibouti, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Mauritania and Sudan.

A senior State Department official said the agency told the diplomatic facilities to close Sunday, normally the beginning of the work week, and that additional days could be added. The U.S. Embassy in Israel also will be closed as normal on Sunday.

I guess this could all be a cunning ploy to make it look like State doesn’t have very specific intelligence when in reality it does, but I’m more inclined to think that they are getting hints something bad might happen somewhere and everyone wants to play safe.

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