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| India-Pakistan |
| The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda's Engineer |
| 2002-12-23 |
| Gary Farber points to this very in-depth piece of reporting from LA Times. Warning! The entire article is 8 1/2 miles long! Pakistani intelligence officials said that in recent months they have seen persistent evidence that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — even on the run — has been aggressively directing Al Qaeda terrorist cells. "Despite being so much in danger, he has not gone into hibernation," one senior Pakistani official said. "He is trying to protect what they have. He would like to consolidate first and then rebuild on the same edifice. And he is doing that. He remains active." Mohammed, believed to be 37, has traveled the world as one of the chief managers of the Al Qaeda network, using Egyptian, Qatari, Saudi, British and Kuwaiti identities. He is said to speak Arabic with a Kuwaiti accent and to be fluent in Urdu, the principal language of Pakistan, and English, acquired in part as he studied for his mechanical engineering degree at a university in North Carolina. Although born in Kuwait, he is a Pakistani national whose family is from Baluchistan. He has used more than three dozen aliases, including one — Mukhtar al Baluchi — that honors this tribal heritage. Mohammed has been operating out of Karachi on and off for a decade. He communicates with Al Qaeda cells around the world by courier, e-mail, coded telephone conversations and shortwave radio. Even during the U.S. bombing campaign against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan late last year, Mohammed continued to plan, staff and direct new terrorist attacks. Mohammed the Pakistani, as the Asian bombers knew him, housed a young Canadian recruit for weeks in his Karachi apartment, personally instructing him on communication protocols — e-mail passwords, telephone codes. He then sent him off to coordinate and finance the bomb squads. With just a few days' notice, Mohammed was able to deliver $50,000 to the recruit to pay for bomb-making materials. The money was delivered in packs of $100 bills at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That plot was foiled, but Mohammed's intimate involvement in it underscores his leadership in building regional terrorist networks. Al Qaeda members in custody have told their interrogators that Mohammed had operational cells in place in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks and that he was the principal proponent within Al Qaeda of developing radioactive "dirty bombs." The FBI acknowledges that it underestimated Mohammed's significance for years, a senior agency official said. "He was under everybody's radar. We don't know how he did it. We wish we knew.... He's the guy nobody ever heard of. The others had egos. He didn't." Pakistani and American officials say catching Mohammed now could turn the tide in the war on terrorism. The senior Pakistani intelligence official said: "If you catch Khalid Shaikh at this point, you will break the backbone of the entire network." Almost every Al Qaeda suspect whom the Pakistanis have arrested since last year has had some connection to Mohammed, authorities say. Many of those arrested have no links to one another, but they all know Mohammed. Khalid appears to be at the top of the list of Bad Guys — probably the guy who's really in charge of what's left of al-Qaeda. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 Saudi Arabia's national airline offered special jihad fares. Wow, buy now, get a low rate on a trip to paradise? ;-) |
| Posted by: Brian 2002-12-23 15:51:05 |