The 9/11 commission statement, Part 2

This is the second part of my critique of Statement #15 of the 9/11 commission, in particular with regard to its apparent numerous errors as far as the nature, structure, and activities of al-Qaeda are. These errors are quite disturbing, as the purported purpose of this commission is more or less to determine what went wrong concerning the intelligence failures that led up to 9/11 - that doesn't work too well if the commission persists in perpetuating many of those exact same errors.

As in the previous, most of my counter-claims are not sourced due to my own time constraints and reliance on hard-copy sources for this particular project. If you want a source, let me know and I will do my best to be accomodating on this one. I should also probably add the caveat, suggested by another lovely young intern at AEI, that it is entirely possible that I am incorrect concerning the commission's apparent errors with reference to this statement.

Please indulge me on this one.

By early 1998, Bin Ladin was also in the early stages of what would become a merger of his al Qaeda and another major terrorist group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. On February 23, 1998, Bin Ladin and the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman Zawahiri, published a fatwa that announced a “ruling to kill the Americans and their allies.”

I've seen 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, and 2001 respectively listed as the date in which the Egyptian Islamic Jihad formally merged with al-Qaeda. I suspect that the de facto merger does in fact go all the way back to 1989, regardless of when one places the de jure merger. 1998 fits at least as well as any of the others in that respect.

It was also signed by the heads of three other groups, but their signatures were more a matter of show than substance. Unlike earlier statements, this fatwa explicitly instructed followers to kill “civilians and military.” The decree said this ruling was “an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”

That first statement is factually untrue. The other three public signatories of the document are people like Rifa Ahmed Taha, the head of Gamaa al-Islamiyyah now that the Blind Sheikh remains imprisoned, who has also merged his organization with bin Laden's at around the same time that al-Zawahiri did. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, for example, is the leader of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen and at the time of the document in question was one of the most powerful jihadi leaders in all of Pakistan. Sheikh Mir Hamzah, likewise, was the secretary-general of the Jamaat ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan, an important Pakistani religious party. I say "public signatories" because most of the other Middle Eastern organizations, particularly the larger ones like the GSPC, are also signatories but they were not noted when bin Laden went public in February 1998 in order to ensure that his terrorist coalition was more or less a secret one. Most of the major Pakistani jihadi organizations are also signatories to the document, but to claim that anybody who signed on publicly in 1998 simply did so out of show is an extremely dangerous assumption to make.

On August 7, 1998 nearly simultaneous truck bombs ravaged the U.S. embassies in the East African capitals of Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Nairobi embassy was destroyed, and 213 people were killed, including 12 Americans. About 5,000 people were injured. In Dar es Salaam 11 more were killed, none of them American, and 85 were injured.

Good so far ...

U.S. intelligence learned a few months later that the targeting of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi began in late 1993. It was one of more than a dozen potential targets analyzed by a team residing with the same Nairobi cell used to provide assistance to the Somalis. In January 1994, al Qaeda leaders concluded that the U.S. embassy in Nairobi would be easy to attack. Preparations for the attack did not begin in earnest until late spring 1998, and the bombs were only assembled a few days before the attacks. By the night before the embassy bombing, all al Qaeda members except the suicide squads and a few people assigned to clean up the evidence trail had left East Africa. Bin Ladin and other al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan had also left for the countryside in expectation of U.S. retaliation.

So are we to infer from reading this that the Clinton administration's retaliatory attack on al-Qaeda's training infrastructure in Afghanistan came nowhere close to actually killing bin Laden? The major focus of the US cruise missile strikes were at Zhawar Kili and al-Badr camps near Khost and Jalalabad, which generally aren't thought of as being the Afghan countryside ...

The attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa in the summer of 1998 demonstrated a new operational form—they were planned, directed, and executed by al Qaeda, under the direct supervision of Bin Ladin and his chief aides.

They aren't giving enough credit to Fazul Abdullah Mohammed on executing the embassy bombings. Also, no mention is made of the capture and subsequent torture of Mohammed Sadiq Odeh in Pakistan, who was the first individual to give us a real look into the inner workings of al-Qaeda. Given what is described in the court documents available to the public, I would say that the planning and execution of the embassy bombings was pretty much run out of Kenya and Tanzania by local cells that had been set up years earlier and were in regular contact with the military committee. I certainly don't want to de-emphasize the role bin Laden played in the plot, but here again he's not exactly Dr. Doom by any means.

On October 12, 2000, an explosives-laden boat tore through the side of the U.S.S. Cole anchored in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen members of the Cole crew were killed, and another 39 were wounded. In the course of the ensuing investigation, U.S. officials learned that an earlier attempt to attack a U.S. warship had been made in January 2000, aimed at the U.S.S. The Sullivans, but had failed because the boat was overloaded with explosives and sank. The boat was salvaged, a new martyr crew was selected, and the attack was successfully executed ten months later.

The operational commander of the attack was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who had previously assisted one of the East African embassy bombers. He had arrived in Yemen in late 1999 to supervise the purchase of the boat used in the attack, and to direct the casing and execution of the attacks. Nashiri was assisted by an al Qaeda member close to Bin Ladin, Tawfiq bin Attash (“Khallad”), who supplied the explosives used in the attack.

Here again, this is accurate as far as it goes but there's reasonably little attention to the role played by both the Islamic Army of Aden and the Yemeni Islamic Jihad (the Yemeni analogue of al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad) and given the types of mental gymnastics the commission indulged in over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Oplan Bojinka, they could just as easily argue that whether or not bin Laden was "directly involved" in the Cole attack was "unsubstantiated." After all, he wasn't at the Kuala Lumpur summit ...

One other rather troubling item is that at the time of the Cole attack there were definite suspicions that either Iraqi or Iranian explosives were used to perpetrate the bombing. In this case, the commission says that Khallad supplied the explosives and the next paragraph references purchasing them, but it doesn't say from where.

This attack followed the operational pattern demonstrated in the East African embassy bombings—it was directed by key al Qaeda operatives, using equipment and explosives purchased with al Qaeda funds, and executed by members of al Qaeda willing to be martyrs for the cause. By mid-November 2000, U.S. investigators were aware of the roles Nashiri and Khallad had played in the attack, and that they were senior al Qaeda operatives. The one part that could not be ascertained at the time was whether the attack had been carried out under direct orders from Bin Ladin himself. This could not be confirmed until Nashiri and Khallad were captured in November 2002 and April 2003, respectively.

So in other words, the commission is claiming that we couldn't state definitively whether or not the Cole attack was the work of bin Laden until we captured al-Nashiri in November 2002. Might I suggest that this view is at odds with the vast majority of the US intelligence community? Indeed, I can quite easily recall Sandy Berger and Co at the commission hearings claiming that by November 2000 they were already quite confident that bin Laden was responsible for the Cole.

At the same time, however, two disrupted Millennium plots demonstrate that Bin Ladin remained willing to provide support to attacks initiated by more independent actors. Neither intended Millennium attack was a traditional al Qaeda operation: rather, both were planned and orchestrated by independent extremist groups which received training and assistance from al Qaeda-affiliated figures. One was a plot to destroy hotels and tourist sites in Amman, Jordan. It was planned and carried out by a Palestinian radical and his partner, an American citizen, who sought to kill Americans. The other was the attempted bombing of Los Angeles International Airport. It was orchestrated by Ahmed Ressam, who conceived and prepared for the attack on his own. Ressam commented after his arrest that he had offered to let Bin Ladin claim credit for the attack, in return for providing Ressam future funding. Both Ressam and the Jordanian cell took what they needed from al Qaeda-associated camps and personnel, but did not follow the traditional al Qaeda top-down planning and approval model.

Both Millennium plots were conceived by local groups and then approved by Abu Zubaydah in Afghanistan. The actors in question in both cases were about as "independent" as your average McDonald's manager is from the McDonald's board of directors. This is more or less a franchise system and one of its benefits is that it ensures that there is reasonably competent leadership at the local as well as the international level. In the case of Ressam, he was a leader within the Algerian GIA, whereas the Palestinian in question in Jordan was none other than Abu Musab Zarqawi and his al-Tawhid group. Both men were dependent on al-Qaeda for training and financing as well as needing approval from Zubaydah before setting out to begin laying the groundwork for their attacks. These are hardly "independent actors."

As far as "the traditional al-Qaeda top-down planning and approval model," the commission really needs to look into whether this is the exception or the rule with regard to planning attacks, especially with regard to how various affiliate organizations relate back to the core network. If anything, I think they're find it to be the former.

Many of the operatives in the African Embassy and Cole attacks attended training camps in Afghanistan, as did all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers. There was a mutually reinforcing relationship between the camps and terrorist operations: the camps provided operatives for terrorist attacks, and successful attacks boosted camp recruitment and attendance. The training at al Qaeda and associated camps was multifaceted in nature. A worldwide jihad needed terrorists who could bomb embassies or hijack airliners, but it also needed foot soldiers for the Taliban in its war against the Northern Alliance, and guerrillas who could shoot down Russian helicopters in Chechnya or ambush Indian units in Kashmir. Thus, most recruits received training that was primarily geared toward conventional warfare. Terrorist training was provided mostly to the best and most ardent recruits.

A word regarding all of these al-Qaeda alumni concerning how the training program functioned. Going off of my own copy of The Afghan Guide to Jihad as well as Declaration of Jihad Against the Nation's Tyrants (Military Editions), here is how things were structured:

• Basic Training: Standard guerrilla warfare course, which lasts anywhere between 2 weeks to 3 months depending on how badly more cannon fodder are needed. I'm not quite sure how these guys don't fit the legal definition of terrorist given that they're deliberately taught to target civilians, but more or less this is what al-Qaeda's cannon fodder gets. Those who survived fighting the Northern Alliance were then sent on to places like Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Somalia, ect. Anybody who survived that long enough might eventually make their way up the chain of command, but it was still a pretty crappy existence.

• Advanced Training: This covers a very specific set of lessons, which are as follows: general introduction, necessary qualifications and the al-Qaeda chain of command, counterfeiting and forging documents, organizing military bases and arms caches, apartments and safe houses, concealing weapons and means of transportation, explosives training, weapons training, operational security, martyrdom operations, gathering information overtly, gathering information covertly, assassination, torture, and prisons and detention centers. It is generally assumed that most of those receiving advanced training have already "graduated" from basic training. This is pretty much what al-Qaeda's "officer corps" as well as most commanders within those groups that operate under its aegis receive. The final lesson may be particularly illustrative of the kinds of problems that the US has in dealing with senior and mid-level al-Qaeda operatives, as it provides a clear illustration of kinds of risks posed by operating in Middle Eastern as well as Western nations and also summarizes the various legal rights that one possesses in various Western nations. During the year prior to 9/11, another lesson was added, this one dealing with obtaining and utilizing non-conventional weapons.

• Leadership Training: This is reserved only for committee members and the affiliate groups' leadership and covers the finer points of Salafist ideology, Middle East history and contemporary politics, codes of ethics and behavior, communications, surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, the fourteen points of al-Qaeda's dictum honorium, tactics, strategy, navigation, urban warfare, and membership in the vanguard of international Salafism.

My point in presenting this is to illustrate that there were at least three styles of training present in Afghanistan at al-Qaeda or affiliated camps and that while the average Chechen or Kashmiri jihadi would have only received basic training, someone like Shamil Basayev or Omar Saeed Sheikh would have almost certainly received leadership training.

The quality of the training provided at al Qaeda and other jihadist camps was apparently quite good. There was coordination with regard to curriculum, and great emphasis on ideological and religious indoctrination. Instruction underscored that the United States and Israel were evil, and that the rulers of Arab countries were illegitimate.

The curriculum was coordinated and unified because all of the groups that were present in Afghanistan were coordinated and unified under the banner of bin Laden's International Islamic Front. The commission is also missing the point of these camps if they believe that the anti-American or anti-Semitic mindset was something that was picked up in Afghanistan - that was pretty much a prerequisite for being selected to train there and was simply part of the camp culture, along with the illegitimacy of most Arab governments.

The camps created a climate in which trainees and other personnel were free to think creatively about ways to commit mass murder. According to a senior al Qaeda associate, various ideas were floated by mujahidin in Afghanistan: taking over a launcher and forcing Russian scientists to fire a nuclear missile at the United States; mounting mustard gas or cyanide attacks against Jewish areas in Iran; dispensing poison gas into the air conditioning system of a targeted building; and, last but not least, hijacking an aircraft and crashing it into an airport terminal or nearby city.

Most of these sound like bad plots from a James Bond movie, but it certainly sounds plausible enough. After all, Jose Padilla initially went to Abu Zubaydah with a grandiose plan to set off a nuke in Washington DC, at which point Zubaydah, who had some understanding of just how difficult that would be to do, told him to scale back his ambitions to something more realistic, perhaps a dirty bomb.

Trainees in the camps did not focus solely on causing the deaths of enemies. Bin Ladin portrayed “martyrdom” in the service of jihad as a highly desirable fate, and many recruits were eager to go on suicide missions.

Indeed. Al-Qaeda has successfully exported the Salafist culture of suicide bombing to other parts of the world where it had previously been completely absent: Chechnya, Indonesia, Kashmir, Mindanao, Turkey, ect. Bin Laden's greatest achievement, if nothing else, has been to export this charming death cult to the rest of the planet.

As time passed and al Qaeda repeatedly and successfully hit U.S. targets, Bin Ladin became a legendary figure among jihadists both inside and outside of Afghanistan.

Feh. He was already a hero among jihadis for his role in Afghanistan and the only guy who could ever be described as his equal in those circles, Khattab, regularly sang his praises.

He lectured at the camps. His perceived stature and charisma reinforced the zeal of the trainees. Bin Ladin also personally evaluated trainees’ suitability for terrorist operations.

This would tend to explain why so many of cannon fodder can recall meeting bin Laden or seeing him at least once during their time in Afghanistan. And in case anybody asks why we didn't simply assassinate him by slipping one of our agents into the camps, do keep in mind that whenever bin Laden traveled to one of these camps that he was accompanied by his praetorian guard.

The camps were able to operate only because of the worldwide network of recruiters, travel facilitators, and document forgers who vetted would-be trainees and helped them get in and out of Afghanistan.

This, here again, are the nuts and bolts aspects of the International Islamic Front.

There are strong indications that elements of both the Pakistani and Iranian governments frequently turned a blind eye to this transit through their respective countries.

Given that elements of both the Pakistani and Iranian governments are and continue to be in cahoots with al-Qaeda, this is not altogether surprising ...

We can conservatively say that thousands of men, perhaps as many as 20,000, trained in Bin Ladin-supported camps in Afghanistan between his May 1996 return and September 11, 2001. Of those, only a small percentage went on to receive advanced terrorist training.

This just in Afghanistan between 1996-2001, which may explain the wide disparity between the 20,000 figure (which I've seen used by other government agencies) and the 70-110,000 figure used by the CIA according to Senator Bob Graham. I'm still curious as far as how much we know about all of the jihadis who were trained in Sudan circa 1991-2001.

After establishing itself in Afghanistan, al Qaeda relied on well-placed financial facilitators and diversions of funds from Islamic charities. The financial facilitators raised money from witting and unwitting donors, primarily in the Gulf countries, and particularly in Saudi Arabia. The facilitators also appeared to rely heavily on certain imams at mosques, also primarily in the Gulf countries, who were willing to divert mandatory charitable donations known as zakat. Al Qaeda also collected money from employees of corrupted charities. Operatives either penetrated specific foreign branch offices of large, international charities, particularly those with lax external oversight and ineffective internal controls, or controlled entire smaller charities, including access to their bank accounts.

Color me skeptical on this one. While I have no doubt that al-Qaeda was quite successful in subverting otherwise benign Islamic NGOs towards its own agenda, the collective activities of the al-Haramain Foundation, Global Relief, Benevolence International, Mercy International, International Islamic Relief Organization, ad infinitum tend to leave very little doubt in my mind that a fair number of these folks didn't know damned well what was being done with all of this money. This is particularly true in the case of many of the Saudi charities, many of which are very clearly associated with the Saudi government. But, of course, we can't talk about that ...

There is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11 (other than limited support provided by the Taliban after Bin Ladin first arrived in Afghanistan). Some governments may have turned a blind eye to al Qaeda’s fundraising activities. Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior officials within the Saudi government funded al Qaeda. Still, al Qaeda found fertile fundraising ground in the Kingdom, where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving is essential to the culture and, until recently, subject to very limited oversight. The United States has never been a primary source of al Qaeda funding, although some funds raised in the United States likely made their way to al Qaeda. No persuasive evidence exists that al Qaeda relied on the drug trade as an important source of revenue, or funded itself through trafficking in diamonds from African states engaged in civil wars.

This is a pure whitewash of Saudi Arabia and its role in international terrorism and completely ignores most conventional wisdom in this regard outside of the niceties of US diplomacy. That Mohammed Jamal Khalifa and other members of the Golden Chain are still free men in the Kingdom even after the discovery of documents stating their affiliation is testimony enough to the fact that al-Qaeda has at the very least a tacit home in the Kingdom. Combine this with Gerald Posner's investigative reporting claiming that a deal was struck between al-Qaeda and Saudi intelligence in 1991 (a position at least indirectly supported by a UN report on the subject) and there seems to me a good number of other clear-thinking people to be a very damning case against the Kingdom, or at least a sizeable number of the princes. But then, I'm not bound by the byzantine intricacies that are US-Saudi relations.

As far as the noticeable lack of any state financing al-Qaeda, this is due to the fact that the organization is pretty much self-sufficient and what state assistance it does receive comes more in the form of a safe harbor as well as providing intelligence, weaponry, and other forms of logistical rather than financial support.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, the claim that there's no evidence of al-Qaeda activity in West Africa (which is also, near as I can tell, idiocy to claim) flies directly in the face of European and international court claims, accurate in my view, that the Charles Taylor government in Liberia provided assistance and safe haven to al-Qaeda operatives who used diamonds plundered from Sierra Leone as a means of offsetting international efforts to freeze the organization's assets. I don't suppose the New York Times will bother to splash up a front page headline claiming that both the UN as well as the Europeans were wrong on this one right next to their claim that the commission's statement contradicts current and previous statements by the Bush administration ...

Al Qaeda’s money was distributed as quickly as it was raised—what was made was spent. The CIA estimates that al Qaeda spent $30 million annually, including paying for terrorist operations, maintaining terrorist training camps, paying salaries to jihadists, contributing to the Taliban, funding fighters in Afghanistan, and sporadically contributing to related terrorist organizations. The largest expense was payments to the Taliban, which totaled an estimated $10-20 million per year. Actual terrorist operations were relatively cheap. Although there is evidence that al Qaeda experienced funding shortfalls as part of the cyclical fundraising process (with more money coming during the holy month of Ramadan), we are not aware of any evidence indicating that terrorist acts were interrupted as a result.

The money was spent as soon as it was raised due to the fact that after 1998, the US launched a very extensive and very elaborate investigation of how al-Qaeda got its cash, which is one of the reasons that Al Gore ended up talking with the princes to begin with about how all of the cash from their charities suspiciously started ending up in the hands of some very nasty characters. I've also heard the al-Qaeda budget totaled at $50,000,000 annually, with another $100,000,000 to dole out among the various affiliate groups.

As far as why no terrorist attack has ever been aborted due to a lack of financing, the reasoning has to do with the fact that al-Qaeda is not the fabulously wealthy organization that it is sometimes conceived as it does not engage in penny-pinching. If a certain amount of cash is needed in order to finance an attack, that cash will provided, period.

Since the September 11 attacks and the defeat of the Taliban, al Qaeda’s funding has decreased significantly.

I'm not too terribly sure on this point, as no identifiable actions have been taken against the individuals believed to be financing them. Just how many members of the Golden Chain are currently in jail, or otherwise unable to access their not-inconsiderable assets?

The arrests or deaths of several important financial facilitators have decreased the amount of money al Qaeda has raised and increased the costs and difficulty of raising and moving that money.

I suspect the fact that the organization's treasurer, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, was captured with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has also considerably strengthened our intelligence as to the nature of the organization's finances far more than any corpses we've managed to create along the way.

Some entirely corrupt charities are now out of business, with many of their principals killed or captured, although some charities may still be providing support to al Qaeda.

I don't think that there's a "may" about it here and the Saudis' willingness to turn a blind eye to that little detail would seem to reinforce the position that they're part of the problem. Al-Haramain has been reined in, at least temporarily, though its former chairman, Aqeel al-Aqeel, apparently remains a free man in the Kingdom.

Moreover, it appears that the al Qaeda attacks within Saudi Arabia in May and November of 2003 have reduced—perhaps drastically— al Qaeda’s ability to raise funds from Saudi sources.

That Nayef is still the Interior Minister and that the Golden Chain members remain at large would tend to argue otherwise.

Both an increase in Saudi enforcement and a more negative perception of al Qaeda by potential donors have cut its income.

Ignoring the dubious nature of Saudi law enforcement concerning al-Qaeda to date, I really don't think that we need to look at the Kingdom through rose-colored glasses when making an assessment of this nature. A lot of Saudis, maybe even a majority, have consistently supported al-Qaeda over the years, including some very powerful officials and yes, even some royals. This needs to be acknowledged by anyone other than perhaps Adel al-Jubeir and Prince Bandar who is active in foreign and defense policy circles inside the Beltway if we want to start re-evaluating US policy towards the Kingdom.

At the same time, al Qaeda’s expenditures have decreased as well, largely because it no longer provides substantial funding to the Taliban or runs a network of training camps in Afghanistan.

Though training camps remain in operation in Pakistan and Bangladesh are funded courtesy of the ISI or local affiliate organizations, whereas al-Qaeda training camps inside Iran are located at official IRGC military bases. Bin Laden has actually been forced to scale back his funding to the Taliban in order to help finance Zarqawi's operations inside Iraq. However, independently-financed training camps still exist in the Philippines, Somalia, Georgia, Indonesia, and even in the Sahel region of North Africa that are sustained by al-Qaeda funding.

Despite the apparent reduction in overall funding, it remains relatively easy for al Qaeda to find the relatively small sums required to fund terrorist operations. Prior to 9/11, al Qaeda was a centralized organization which used Afghanistan as a war room to strategize, plan attacks, and dispatch operatives worldwide. Bin Ladin approved all al Qaeda operations, often selecting the targets and operatives.

I still don't think the commission is appreciating just how decentralized a network that al-Qaeda was. Yes, bin Laden and Co approved major operations against the US, but within the framework of the International Islamic Front, bin Laden was hardly Dr. Doom, plotting deep from within his Afghan stronghold. For example, Hambali ran most of the operations in Southeast Asia, just as al-Muqrin now runs things in Saudi Arabia. This is part of the problem with the traditional US means of looking at al-Qaeda is that we're only recognizing this type of coordination and activity when it's aimed at Westerners rather than against other Muslim or miscellaneous Third Worlders. No serious effort has been made by the US government, for example, to look into the nature and extent of al-Qaeda, Sudanese, and yes even Iraqi support provided to the Allied Democratic Forces, an al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Uganda opposed to the Museveni regime.

After al Qaeda lost Afghanistan after 9/11, it fundamentally changed. The organization is far more decentralized. Bin Ladin’s seclusion forced operational commanders and cell leaders to assume greater authority; they are now making the command decisions previously made by him.

I think that it's probably more accurate to say that the titular head of the military committee is now calling the shots and that there have been three of them since 9/11. The first, Mohammed Atef, was killed in Afghanistan and his apparent replacement, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured in March 2003. Khalid's own replacement, Saif al-Adel, is currently being protected inside Iran by Qods Force, the elite of the IRGC.

Bin Ladin continues to inspire many of the operatives he trained and dispersed, as well as smaller Islamic extremist groups and individual fighters who share his ideology. As a result, al Qaeda today is more a loose collection of regional networks with a greatly weakened central organization. It pushes these networks to carry out attacks, and assists them by providing guidance, funding, and training in skills such as bomb-making or urban combat.

With the exception of the weakened central network, I really don't think that this is all that different from how they behaved pre-9/11, except that now people have started paying attention to just how inter-connected all of these different groups are. It's a shame, really. Back when Azzam.com was still around, it made no pretense as to just how inter-connected all of these Salafist "mujahideen" groups were. Both Russian and Indian intelligence honestly seem to have a better grasp of this concept than the CIA.

Al Qaeda remains extremely interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear attacks. In 1994, al Qaeda operatives attempted to purchase uranium for $1.5 million; the uranium proved to be fake. Though this attempt failed, al Qaeda continues to pursue its strategic objective of obtaining a nuclear weapon. Likewise, it remains interested in using a radiological dispersal device or “dirty bomb,” a conventional explosive designed to spread radioactive material. Documents found in al Qaeda facilities contain accurate information on the usage and impact of such weapons. Al Qaeda had an ambitious biological weapons program and was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11. According to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, al Qaeda’s ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face. Similarly, al Qaeda may seek to conduct a chemical attack by using widely-available industrial chemicals, or by attacking a chemical plant or a shipment of hazardous materials.

This is pretty concise description of the goals of Midhat Mursi and the rest of Project al-Zabadi. No mention is actually made of either, of course, which is particularly unfortunate given recent events such as the failed Zarqawi plot in Jordan.

The Intelligence Community expects that the trend toward attacks intended to cause ever higher casualties will continue.

I think that anyone who saw what they allegedly just tried to do in Amman might likewise come to that assessment ...

Al Qaeda and other extremist groups will likely continue to exploit leaks of national security information in the media, open-source information on techniques such as mixing explosives, and advances in electronics.

Most of the damage on this front has already been done, in my mind. Too many talkative reporters and too many anonymous intelligence sources looking to score points to stop that bomb from going off now, all we can do is hope to contain the explosion. The recent inter-agency, inter-party, and inter-worldview pissing matches over the issue of faulty intelligence on Iraq have already ensured that there's going to be absolutely no political will to make definitive assessments with regard to issues like Iran, North Korea, or even our estwhile "allies" like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. And that is the real tragedy, regardless of where one stands on the issue of the war.

It may modify traditional tactics in order to prevent detection or interdiction by counterterrorist forces. Regardless of the tactic, al Qaeda is actively striving to attack the United States and inflict mass casualties.

Indeed. And this will remain true for most of the near future.

Closing Thoughts

Now I readily admit that a good deal of this is nitpicking to certain extent, but to be quite honest there were so many omissions, inaccuracies, or adoptions of the ostrich position in this particular statement that I honestly felt as though I had very little choice.

The main items of contention as far as this statement are concerned:

• The claim that there is "substantial uncertainty" as to the al-Qaeda role in either the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or Oplan Bojinka is just wrong. Period.

• The complete lack of understanding as far as how al-Qaeda is set up with regard to its affiliate groups and how they operate within the framework of the International Islamic Front. It's quite sad when CNN with one al-Qaeda video library can do a better job than people inside of government with access to classified US information.

• No mention whatsoever of the Kateebat al-Mujahideen battalion in the Bosnian Third Army in the Balkans or their assistance by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. This is a hole in US counter-terrorism policy during the early 1990s big enough for Godzilla to walk through.

• No mention of Midhat Mursi, his chemical weapons experiments, or Project al-Zabadi and the WMD committee.

• A complete whitewashing of known facts as to Saudi Arabia's role in international terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular doesn't exactly leave one with a great deal of confidence regarding the commission's findings concerning people like Omar al-Bayyoumi.

• The roles of the Sudanese, Iranian, and Pakistani governments (or Liberia and Burkina Faso in with regard to European intelligence reports) or at the absolute least elements within them as far as al-Qaeda is concerned are completely ignored or substantially omitted. I would have an accepted an omission of the Iraqi role, since this is an area of some controversy these days. The other three governments' roles aren't an area of controversy, and if they are then US intelligence is screwed up far worse than I would have ever imagined.

Now, so I don't come off of overly critical, let me just say that certainly by media standards it is a pretty thorough look at al-Qaeda and definitely contains some extremely interesting and new information. If this were one of the hundreds of al-Qaeda expert books that have appeared on shelves since 9/11, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but this isn't, it's an official statement by a government committee.

And if our intelligence is this bad, then that's just plain scary.