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| More Details About Jose Padilla’s Involvement With Al-Qaeda |
| 2004-06-03 |
| From The Washington Post. Edited to supplement a previous Rantburg posting. .... According to the summary released by the Justice Department, [Jose] Padilla has admitted during interrogations to meeting [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed, who dispatched him and an unidentified accomplice on a mission to blow up as many as 20 apartment buildings by sealing off units, filling them with natural gas and using timers to set off the explosions. New York was the most likely target, but Washington, Florida, Chicago and other targets were discussed, the government alleged. Padilla’s accomplice is also in custody, Comey said. The government alleges that Padilla first came in contact with terrorist operatives during a trip to Saudi Arabia in March 2000, where he met a Yemeni recruiter, and would later meet with much of al Qaeda’s top echelon, including Mohammed; military commander Muhammad Atef, who became a mentor on terrorist tactics for Padilla; lieutenant Abu Zubaida; and Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the Sept. 11 attacks. All are in U.S. custody except Atef, who was killed in a U.S. military strike in Afghanistan and whose body Padilla helped dig out of the rubble. In March 2000, Padilla told U.S. officials, he made a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, where he met an unidentified terrorist recruiter. Padilla made his way to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where his terrorist training allegedly began. The FBI obtained a copy of Padilla’s training camp application, completed under an alias and found in a binder with more than 100 others, according to the summary. At the al Farouq camp that fall, he was trained in firearms, communications, surveillance, explosives and other skills. During this time he met Atef, then al Qaeda’s military commander. The two would meet several times, including a session in July or August 2001 when Atef asked Padilla to blow up apartment buildings in the United States, the government alleged. His partner in that first mission was another al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. el Shukrijumah, a trained pilot and one of seven al Qaeda associates named in the warning issued last week by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. According to the summary released yesterday, Padilla and Shukrijumah -- who had known each other in the Miami area -- could not get along, and their mission was scrapped. Shortly after Atef’s death in November 2001, Padilla and an unnamed accomplice approached Zubaida with a plan to "travel to the United States and detonate a nuclear bomb they learned to make on the internet," according to the government documents. Zubaida arranged for Padilla and his accomplice to propose the idea to Mohammed. But both Zubaida and Mohammed believed plans to use nuclear or radioactive material were impractical, and the two al Qaeda leaders steered the volunteers toward blowing up apartment buildings instead. Mohammed envisioned as many as 20 simultaneous explosions, probably in New York, but left the details up to Padilla, the summary says. ... Padilla insists that "he returned to the U.S. with no intention of carrying out the apartment building operation," according to the government document. "However . . . Padilla does admit that he accepted a terrorist mission from al Qaeda, trained for that operation, and then traveled to the U.S." Comey said that FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel conducted the interrogations and Padilla was not mistreated. J.M. Berger points out in his analysis that the government’s report "does not cover Padilla’s activities in the United States prior to his departure (in September 1998) nor his connections to persons in the United States." Berger has pointed out possible relationships between Padilla, Shukrijumah, and Timothy McVeigh in Florida. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #4 "mission to blow up as many as 20 apartment buildings by sealing off units, filling them with natural gas and using timers to set off the explosions" Sounds like somebody was watching Fight Club... |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2004-06-03 8:54:22 AM |
| #3 The current left-activist Supreme Court may well have already decided to blow a hole in their legitimacy a mile wide with their forthcoming decision. This stuff could be laying the groundwork for end-running or simply ignoring it. |
| Posted by: someone 2004-06-03 3:01:44 AM |
| #2 Even these allegations against Padilla are even close to true he is the definition of the word "traitor." Try him, and if he's found guilty, the death penalty. |
| Posted by: RMcLeod 2004-06-03 2:26:34 AM |
| #1 Jayna Davis, author of new NYT bestseller, The Third Terrorist, has always maintained that there was an Iraqi connection to the Oklahoma Bombing. Here's her website: http://www.jaynadavis.com/ The FBI and Justice Dept. had been dragging their feet on investigating any clues, evidence she sent them. I heard her interviewed on the Barbara Simpson show about a month ago, and Davis said that after Gulf War I, the US took in Iraqi asylum/refugee seekers and within that group were Iraqi intelligence officers who have "disappeared" into the woodwork. Because all of this is rather embaressing to our government, Davis thinks that's the reason no one wants to open this can of bad PR worms-ie. we're "liberating " Iraqis while back at the ranch Iraqi bad guys are plotting evil things against us, and are in our midst, as a result of having been granted asylum 15 years ago. Here's an article by Michele Malkin that outlines the Iraqi refugee program that took place after Gulf War I. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20030403.shtml"Keep Iraqi POWs off American dole" ...After Gulf War I, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration recklessly opened our borders to former Iraqi prisoners of war -- from conscripts to elite Republican Guardsmen. The resettlement program was launched in response to pressure from the United Nations, the Saudi government (which balked at taking in the captured soldiers), and our own feckless State Department (which has, and always will, act like a hostile foreign entity). In total, the resettlement of Gulf War I-era Iraqi POWs and their family members in America soaked up some $70 million in taxpayer funds. No such aid was offered to American troops and their families who sacrificed during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. "We find it disturbing that American taxpayers must fund the travel of former Iraqi soldiers (who took up arms against our own soldiers) to the U.S.," noted Rep. Donald A. Manzullo, R-Ill., in a 1993 letter to then-President Clinton. "Ironically, we provide the (POWs) with welfare services while asking our own veterans and service personnel to bear the burdens of deficit reduction." Even more outrageous: the laxity of screening procedures for these enemy prisoners of war before they were allowed to settle across our home front, from Florida to Michigan, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas and California... |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-03 2:19:29 AM |