A newly declassified U.S. intelligence report details the plans of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network to establish itself in Chechnya because the Russian enclave is "unreachable by strikes from the West." The Defense Intelligence Agency Intelligence Information Report [pdf file] was obtained by the public interest group Judicial Watch Oct. 30 through a Freedom of Information Act request made nearly four years ago regarding the Clinton administration's decision in 1998 to bomb the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and suspected al-Qaida terrorist training camps in the area of Khost, Afghanistan. "This report provides a deeply disturbing 'snapshot' of what the U.S. intelligence community knew about the activities of bin Laden and his associates back in 1998," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The global scope and rabid fanaticism of these Islamist terrorists is spelled out in no uncertain terms, including their intense interest in WMDs," Fitton said. "Documents such as these give the American people some idea of the terror threat facing the West."
The report is derived from handwritten documents obtained through a classified intelligence project nicknamed "Swift Knight." It includes a description of how al-Qaida envisions achieving its goals through methods that include "ethnic cleansing" and "control over nuclear and biological weapons." Also, mentioned is the tactic of "latent penetration," a reference to so-called "sleeper cells." The report, with extensive information about al-Qaida's activities in Central Asia, confirms the existence of a secure, terrorist transport "route to Chechnya from Pakistan and Afghanistan through Turkey and Azerbaijan."
It also provides basic biographical information on bin Laden and his formation of al-Qaida. According to the report, the documents were written during the first two weeks of October 1998. The dual-site bombing operation by the U.S. that year, codenamed "Infinite Reach," reportedly was in retaliation for the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The spellings, references and phrases in the report are verbatim transcriptions from the original handwritten document, Judicial Watch said, rendering, for example, to the al-Qaida leader as "Usam ben Laden." |