Tag: Osama bin Laden

17 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The CIA produces a top-secret intelligence report, “Usama Bin Ladin’s Finances: Some Estimates of Wealth, Income, and Expenditures,” that is unable to estimate the al Qaeda head’s wealth, nor where he was getting money from or how he moved it. The report said that bin Laden was getting financial support from his family in Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf-based individuals.

In discussing the report, a National Security Council working group on terrorist finances asks the CIA to push again for access to a former al Qaeda official, Madani al Tayyib, who is in Saudi custody. The 9/11 Commission requests that the CIA use its back channels to see “if it is possible to elaborate further on the ties between Usama [sic] bin Ladin and prominent individuals in Saudi Arabia, including especially the Bin Ladin family.” (911 Commission, p. 122).

In September, Vice President Al Gore made a personal appeal to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for direct access to al Tayyib. Richard Clarke writes: “Upon learning that much of al Qaeda’s financing came from Saudi Arabia, both from individuals and from quasi-governmental charities, ‘We decided that we needed to have a serious talk with the Saudis as well as with a few of the financial centers in the region. We recognized that the Saudi regime had been largely uncooperative on previous law enforcement-focused investigations of terrorism … so we wanted a different approach … So we asked Vice President Gore to talk to the Crown Prince … We wanted to avoid a typical pattern of Saudi behavior we had seen: achingly slow progress, broken promises, denial, and cooperation limited to specific answers to specific questions … The Saudis protested our focus on continuing contacts between Usama and his wealthy, influential family, who were supposed to have broken off all ties with him. “How can you tell a mother not to call her son,” they asked. (Against all Enemies, pp. 194–195)

The United States never obtained direct access.

13 November 1995

Posted on by William Arkin
The Office of Personnel Management/Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM/SANG) in downtown Riyadh is bombed.

 

In probably the first al Qaeda attack against the United States, an obscure U.S. military outpost, the Office of Personnel Management/Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM/SANG) in downtown Riyadh is attacked, killing six Americans and two East Indian contractors. The 300 lb. bomb was detonated outside the small building housing U.S. military and contractor personnel overseeing the massive U.S. military assistance program.

“Despite demands from Washington that U.S. officials be kept informed, the Saudis quickly shut the door on its investigation.” (Age of Sacred Terror, p. 132). Something called the Islamic Movement of Change took responsibility, an organization thought to be connected to (or inspired by) Osama bin Laden.

“In this case especially, the Saudis, who are secretive by nature, didn’t want foreign police agencies poking into their internal affairs. Indeed their Minister of the Interior compiled a list of several hundred suspects culled from nearly 15,000 files of Saudi nationals who’d fought in or supported the Afghan War.” (The Cell, pp. 149–150).

Four suspects were eventually and officially apprehended, though FBI investigators are denied direct access to them, with those suspects then secretly tried and publicly executed. In the words of Lawrence Wright, “The men read their nearly identical confessions on Saudi television, admitting that they had been influenced by reading bin Laden’s speeches and those of other prominent dissidents. They then were taken to a public square and beheaded.” (Looming Tower, p. 211)

The following people were killed in the terrorist attack on OPM-SANG’s headquarters: Sgt. 1st Class David K. Warrell, James H. Allen, Alaric J. Brozovsky, William L. Combs, Jr., Tracy V. Henley, Wayne P. Wiley, Eyakunnath Balakrishnan, and Thermal B. Devadas. Both Balakrishnan and Devadas were cooks in the building’s cafeteria.

12 November 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Corregidor, Philippines

 

Wandering around the globe, oblivious to everything terrorism and Islam going on around him, Bill Clinton lands in the Philippines on a two-day state visit, visiting Corregidor, site of the Japanese victory in the conquest of the American commonwealth in World War II, and of the U.S. Army’s return.

While in the Philippines, what are now believed to be al Qaeda operatives (including Ramzi Yousef) undertake surveillance of the presidential party, preparing for an assassination attempt on Clinton’s life. The 911 Commission says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent $3,000 to Yousef to fund the plot.

According to Triple Cross (p. 163), Yousef and associate Wali Khan Amin Shah applied for visas on November 3 and travel to Manila (Khan would later be captured and tortured by Philippine police and then “rendered” to the United States). Triple Cross claims that Terry Nichols, accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was also in the Philippines at the same time.

Clinton arrived in the country after a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Fahd at King Khalid Military City in Hafr-Al-Batin in the north, near the Iraqi border. “I had been impressed by Fahd’s call, in early 1993, asking me to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims,” Clinton later writes (My Life, p. 627).

It was hardly a humanitarian move on the Saudi part. Bosnia would be one of the first locations outside Afghanistan where radical Islamists and al Qaeda adherents would travel to and carry out jihad, and Osama bin Laden certainly saw the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia as part of the global assault on the Islamic people.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban have their first significant military success, capturing Kandahar in the south. It all happened in November 1994, all the threads gathering, but the global pattern was unseen at the time.

8 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The United States posts a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden in light of his indictment (see November 4).

Diplomatic inquiries are made of the Taliban government in Afghanistan to turn him over. They respond by offering to try bin Laden themselves. After a secret court hearing, and with no U.S. representative present, they find him “innocent” of wrongdoing.

Much has been written about the reasons for Taliban support of bin Laden—that he was bankrolling the regime, or that al Qaeda was helping to fight the normal tribes and alliances resisting Taliban rule and still holding parts of the country. But he didn’t have that much money left after leaving Sudan (and losing much) and al Qaeda wasn’t really engaged in combat. Instead it was a genuine ideological affinity, especially given international condemnation of the Taliban. And Saudi insistence. Perhaps. It was one of only three countries recognizing and supporting the Taliban.

5 November 1990

Posted on by William Arkin
Meir Kahane

 

Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born Zionist extremist and founder of the Jewish Defense League, is assassinated at a Marriott Hotel in midtown Manhattan. It is perhaps the first case of radical Islamic terrorism on America’s shores, and certainly a precursor to all that would follow, from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center to 9/11.

El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen, infiltrated the hotel, where Kahane was giving a speech. Others who were later involved in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center accompanied him or waited outside in getaway cars.

As Kahane was leaving the ballroom, Nosair shot him twice, killing him. He ran from the room, shouting “It’s Allah’s will!” At the door, a man tried to stop him and Nosair shot him in the leg and fled. Confronted by a U.S. postal police officer outside the hotel, Nosair also shot him. The officer, wearing a bulletproof vest, fired back, hitting Nosair, who was taken to Bellevue hospital.

Nosair was acquitted of the murder but convicted of lesser, related charges. When federal agents raided Nosair’s New Jersey residence after his arrest, they found many incriminating items, including a sermon by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”) that urged followers to attack “the edifices of capitalism.” He would be later convicted on terrorist conspiracy to life in prison. FBI investigators reportedly later found that Osama bin Laden had paid for Nosair’s defense.

4 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda lieutenants are indicted in the Southern District of New York.

The unsealed indictment, resulting from the African embassy bombings, included bin Laden; al Qaeda operational chief Mohammed Atef; Wadih El Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (also known as Harun Fazul); Mohamed Sadiq Odeh; and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali. Both bin Laden and Atef are added to the Department of State Rewards Program.

The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hizballah. The original sealed indictment, according to the 9/11 Commission (p. 128) had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” Interestingly, this language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq was dropped from the final indictment filed in November 1998.

Upon the indictment, a threat advisory was sent by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) headquarters to all immigration inspectors at ports of entry. It warned of possible infiltration into the United States by radical Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to bin Laden. It calls for “hard” inspections of certain visitors from Middle Eastern countries. It seems to have no effect whatsoever.

CIA director George Tenet would later write: “I can’t imagine this fazed him in the least since he was living comfortably in his Afghan sanctuary.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 109)

31 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
George Tenet

 

President Clinton signs additional covert action authorities for fighting al Qaeda, including expanding the number of individuals who were subject to capture operations. The formal presidential “findings,” a series of six Memorandum of Notifications, built upon previous (July 1999) covert action authorities already granted to the CIA.

Authority to undertake capture operations are specified by individuals and by country as to what assistance and circumstances the Agency can seek foreign government (and foreign organization) help. There are no “lethal” authorities per se, though obviously in 1998, cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda sought to kill the leader.

CIA Director George Tenet is also instructed to develop additional capabilities beyond those already granted in 1999, such as strengthening relationships with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and Uzbek groups in Afghanistan. Another Memorandum calls for covert action to fight the expansion of al Qaeda into Lebanon.

30 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Sandy Berger passes the baton to Condoleezza Rice

 

After the attack on the USS Cole, but absent any “proof” of al Qaeda culpability, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger agrees to a State Department proposal making another approach to the Taliban to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.

U.S. diplomats had already been in touch with Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Jalil and now Berger orders that the U.S. message to the Taliban “be stern and foreboding.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration is also working with the Russian government on new U.N. sanctions against Mullah Omar’s regime.

Between 1998 and 9/11, the United States issued a half dozen threats to the Taliban, both about bin Laden and support for al Qaeda, and to protest the treatment of women. None of the warnings had any effect.

20 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Ali Mohammed

 

Ali Mohammed pleads guilty. Surely one of the strangest sub-plots of 9/11.

Mohammed was the only al Qaeda operative known to have successfully infiltrated the U.S. military and intelligence community before 9/11. Along the way, he was an Egyptian Army officer who learned to speak English and Hebrew, attended foreign officer training at Ft. Bragg, was recruited by the CIA, joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, was dropped by the CIA, entered the U.S. despite being on a watchlist and again was engaged by the CIA, married an American woman and moved to California, enlisted in the U.S. Army, joined special forces back at Ft. Bragg, taught Middle East and radicalism courses to the Army, took leave to go and fight in Afghanistan, returned to the Army and secretly trained radicals in New York who were later implicated for the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, wrote the al Qaeda training manual “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants,” got an honorable discharge from the Army (after all that), joined the Army Reserve, continued work for al Qaeda from his home in Santa Clara, California, became an informant to the FBI, helped Osama bin Laden leave Afghanistan in 1991, worked to settle bin Laden in Sudan, trained al Qaeda recruits, returned to Afghanistan to provide explosives and tradecraft training, helped to set up the al Qaeda cell in Kenya that would blow up the Embassy in 1998, hosted Zawahiri on a fundraising tour of American mosques, continued to work for the FBI, provided Army intelligence with information on camps in Afghanistan, fought with fighters loyal to Farah Aideed in Somalia, scouted targets for bin Laden in Kenya and Tanzania, helped bin Laden move back to Afghanistan, was secretly arrested after the African embassy bombings, and becomes an informant (again) for the government.

In October 2000, Mohamed entered a guilty plea on five counts of conspiracy. Thereafter in custody, Ali Mohammed’s life was a bit of a mystery, supposedly never sentenced and after 9/11, again a source for the CIA and FBI.

18 October 1992

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Osama … we hardly knew you. Osama Bassnan, a Saudi government intelligence officer according to the FBI, throws a Washington, DC party for Omar Abdel Rahman, “the Blind Sheikh,” who is now living in New York. This is four months before the first bombing of the World Trade Center and well before there was much recognition of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

An FBI asset is at the party, and according to the famed “28 pages” (the deleted material from the 9/11 Commission report that is finally released in 2016), Bassnan “made many laudatory remarks … about bin Ladin [sic], referring to Bin Ladin as … the ruler of the Islamic world.” According to the FBI asset, Bassnan spoke of Bin Laden “as if he were a god.” He also stated that he heard that the U.S. government had stopped approving visas for students from the Middle East. He said that such measures were insufficient to stop Islam because there were already “enough Muslims in the United States to destroy the United States and make it an Islamic state within ten to fifteen years.”

In May 1992, according to former Sen. Bob Graham (Intelligence Matters, pp. 24-25), the State Department provided the FBI “with a box of documents recovered from an abandoned car.” In the box are a number of letters addressed to Osama Bassnan, a “Saudi spy … [later] suspected of being groomed to replace [Omar] al-Bayoumi in San Diego.” Graham says “the FBI did not open an investigation,” even after the October party.

Omar al-Bayoumi, another Saudi intelligence officer, “meets” the first two hijackers to enter the United States—Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi—the would be pilots who arrived in Los Angeles and were helped by Bayoumi to settle in in San Diego. Bassnan would go on to live in the same apartment complex at Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. Both Bassnan and Bayoumi would disappear before 9/11, and though Bayoumi was interviewed in Saudi Arabia by Commission staffers, their involvement in 9/11 remained shrouded in secret.