Inside the Revolution

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Zawahiri, however, pushed back hard. The Palestinian issue was important, he argued, but al Qaeda was not ready. Liberating Palestine was simply too difficult for their next mission. Yes, Allah would be with them, but they had to play it smart. They needed to find more donors. They had to recruit more jihadists. They needed to build their organization and gain more experience. Moreover, they needed to focus on toppling apostate Arab leaders such as those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. If they could surround the Jews with Islamist states and muster a massive army of mujahadeen, not just a ragtag band of blessed but exhausted warriors, then they could pull off something truly spectacular.

  Both men competed vigorously for bin Laden’s attention and resources. With his Palestinian background, bin Laden was sympathetic to Azzam’s vision. But his heart was with Zawahiri. He certainly wanted to help liberate Jerusalem and destroy the Jewish and Christian infidels that had created and were actively supporting the modern State of Israel. But he wanted more. He now had a vision of building the largest and most aggressive Radical jihadist organization in the world. He wanted to take down the United States. And he agreed with Zawahiri that this would take more time and planning than Azzam, apparently, had patience for.

  Azzam was deeply offended. He believed bin Laden would not have become the rock star of Sunni Radicals if it had not been for him, and he resented Zawahiri’s claim to his protégé’s time and affections.

  Zawahiri, in turn, was livid. He worried that Azzam was trying to hijack al Qaeda and could, in the process, doom them to failure. Zawahiri was not about to let that happen. Something had to give.

  On November 24, 1989, the problem was solved. Azzam and his two sons were killed by a roadside bomb on the way to a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan. No one ever claimed credit. But the tensions were no more.

  Building a Movement

  For the next decade, bin Laden and Zawahiri built the “company” of their dreams.

  When opportunities arose to recruit new men, they took advantage.

  In the summer of 1989, for example, they watched General Omar al-Bashir seize power in a military coup in Sudan, and they noticed that Bashir was close with Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi, a radical Sunni cleric. Before long, it became clear that Bashir was dramatically changing Sudan’s course from a historic alliance with Libya—led by Moammar Ghaddafi, a secular Arab nationalist—to a daring new alliance with the revolutionary mullahs in Iran.189

  Bin Laden and Zawahiri were impressed. Deciding this was a man and a regime with which they could do business, they flew to Khartoum, met with Bashir, and offered to help set up new terrorist recruitment and training bases, working side by side with the Iranians. Bashir readily agreed, and for years, bin Laden and many of his top advisors actually lived in Sudan.

  The al Qaeda leadership was also on the lookout for opportunities to give their “employees” experience in attacking infidels in high-profile ways, which was good for publicity and thus allowed more fund-raising and recruiting. In 1992, they noticed that U.S. Navy ships en route to Somalia were docking in Yemen’s port city of Aden for refueling and to give the American sailors a short breather before going back into harm’s way. Bin Laden, whose father was originally from Yemen, was enraged. He ordered his team to hit the Americans, and on December 29, 1992, al Qaeda launched its first terrorist attack, bombing two hotels in Aden. No Americans were actually killed in the operation, but the Navy did stop making port visits there for a while. Bin Laden considered it a small but important first victory. The Americans, he concluded, were weaker than most Muslims thought.

  Throughout 1992 and 1993, al Qaeda funneled money, weapons, and even some personnel into Somalia, a country they considered Muslim territory. “In 1993, bin Laden issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for Somalis to attack U.S. forces and drive them out of the country,” recalled James Phillips, the senior Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a D.C.–based think tank.190

  Phillips has also noted that al Qaeda members were suspected of teaching the Somalian militia “how to shoot down U.S. helicopters by altering the fuses of rocket-propelled grenades so that they exploded in mid-air. This tactic [was] developed by the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviets.”191

  As former Delta Force commander Jerry Boykin has noted, the al Qaeda operation in Somalia proved phenomenally successful in terms of propaganda, fund-raising, and recruiting after Washington was seen as cutting and running following the “Black Hawk Down” events.

  “After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished,” bin Laden would later gloat in an interview on American television. “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. . . . America had entered [Somalia] with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world . . . [but] the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled. . . . I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered; so was every Muslim.”192

  “Kill Americans . . . and Their Allies”

  By 1996, Sudanese officials were under pressure from the U.S. and the Saudis not to harbor al Qaeda any longer, and President Bashir told bin Laden he had to leave. Unable to return to his home country due to all his rhetoric denouncing the Saudi royal family, bin Laden and his team returned to the mountains of Afghanistan, where they were warmly received by the leadership of the Taliban, the Radical Islamic group that had recently seized control of Afghanistan.193

  Buoyed by early successes and once again in a secure base of operations, bin Laden, now thirty-nine, revealed the object of his fondest wishes and most fervent prayers. He issued a formal “Declaration of War against the United States” on August 23, 1996.

  O you who believe, be careful of your duty to Allah. . . .

  It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity, and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators. . . . [Muslim] blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. . . . Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, the Philippines . . . Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. . . .

  The latest and the greatest of these aggressions . . . is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places [referring to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia] by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. . . .

  Today, your brothers and sons [the al Qaeda forces] . . . have started their Jihad in the cause of Allah, to expel the occupying enemy from [Saudi Arabia]. . . .

  A few days ago the news agencies reported that the Defense Secretary of the Crusading Americans [William Perry] said that “the explosion at . . . the Khobar [Towers]194 had taught him one lesson: that is, not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists.” We say to the Defense Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter and shows the fears that have enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983? . . . You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time [when] 241 mainly Marine soldiers were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you leave Aden in less than twenty-four hours!

  But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia, where—after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post–Cold War leadership of the New World Order—you moved . . . 28,000 American soldiers into Somalia. However, when tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat, and your dead with you. . . . You have been disgraced by Allah, and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the heart of every Muslim and a remedy to the chests of believing nations to see you defeated in the
three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden, and Mogadishu.

  [Our forces] have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you [Americans]. . . . The most honorable death is to be killed in the way of Allah.195

  Clearly bin Laden’s objective at that point was to drive the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. But over the next two years, he came to the conclusion that hitting Americans solely on the Arabian Peninsula was a mistake. Thus, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued a new fatwa declaring that every Muslim in the world was now obligated to attack and kill Americans anywhere and everywhere and to liberate not only Saudi Arabia but Jerusalem and Palestine as well.

  We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim [nations], leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.196

  Going Operational

  The fatwas were not mere bluster. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their team began to make good on their threats as well.

  First, they accelerated their training of as many jihadists as they possibly could, both for their own organization and for other Radical groups. According to U.S. intelligence insiders, between the time bin Laden moved his operations to Afghanistan and the deadly attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, al Qaeda trained between ten and twenty thousand jihadists in their camps.197

  “In addition to training fighters and special operators, [al Qaeda’s] network of guesthouses and camps provided a mechanism by which [bin Laden and his senior leaders] could screen and vet candidates for induction into its own organization,” noted The 9/11 Commission Report. “From the time of its founding, al Qaeda had employed training and indoctrination to identify ‘worthy’ candidates. Al Qaeda continued meanwhile to collaborate closely with the many Middle Eastern groups—in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, and elsewhere—with which it had been linked when bin Laden was in Sudan. It also reinforced its London base and its other offices around Europe, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.”198

  Second, they began to launch actual operations against U.S. interests outside of Saudi Arabia.

  On the morning of August 7, 1998, two truck bombs exploded in front of the U.S. embassies in the African cities of Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, within minutes of each other. The Nairobi attack killed twelve Americans and 201 others, mostly Kenyan citizens, and injured some five thousand more. The attack in Tanzania killed eleven people, though none of them turned out to be Americans. Bin Laden did not hesitate to take credit for the attacks. He said publicly that if calling for jihad against Americans and Jews “is considered a crime,” then “let history be a witness that I am a criminal.”199

  In December of 1999, Jordanian officials intercepted a phone conversation between senior al Qaeda operatives and members of a jihadist cell group based in the Hashemite Kingdom. They were hatching a plot they referred to as “the day of the millennium.” Jordanian police units moved quickly, arresting sixteen terrorists who were planning to launch a chemical weapons attack by releasing hydrogen cyanide in a crowded movie theater in the capital of Amman, blow up tourists at the SAS Radisson Hotel in Amman, and attack Christian pilgrims at John the Baptist’s shrine along the Jordan River.200

  On October 12, 2000, al Qaeda used a small fishing boat to launch a suicide bombing attack against the USS Cole, a billion-dollar guided-missile destroyer, in the port of Aden, Yemen, which was once again being used by U.S. Naval forces. Seventeen American sailors were killed, and another forty were wounded in the blast, which tore a massive hole in the side of the ship, nearly sinking it. Bin Laden’s senior staff had wanted to hit an oil tanker or some other commercial ship, but the al Qaeda terror master insisted they target an American warship.201

  All the while, however, senior al Qaeda operatives were planning the most daring and deadly attack on U.S. soil in history.

  Chapter Nine

  Unleashing the Islamic Bomb

  What bin Laden and al Qaeda really want

  On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka “KSM”)—al Qaeda’s chief of external operations and the co-mastermind with bin Laden of the 9/11 attacks—was arrested in a daring raid near Islamabad, Pakistan.

  The operation was led by CIA and Pakistani operatives who had been hunting KSM for years. It constituted the capture of the highest-ranking al Qaeda leader to that point. After being interrogated extensively by U.S. officials on multiple occasions over many months, KSM was eventually brought back to the United States to face a military tribunal at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Eventually, previously classified notes of his interrogations were made available to the public.202 So was the transcript of his interrogation by military prosecutors at Gitmo.203 For me, reading both documents felt like I was actually sitting in the room with sheer evil, comparable perhaps to being in the presence of Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler, men clearly plagued by demons, spiritual or emotional or both. It was also a chilling window into the mind and heart of Osama bin Laden, who approved everything KSM did.

  When I say evil, what I mean is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed expressed absolutely no remorse for the fact that he has personally helped murder, maim, and injure well over ten thousand people in his lifetime. To the contrary, he was proud of it. He eagerly described all of the terrorist actions against innocent civilians that he planned and executed, up to and including the 9/11 attacks, as well as those following. At one point, he even boasted about cutting off the head of a Wall Street Journal reporter he had taken hostage in the months following 9/11. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” he told U.S. officials without shame. “For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”204 If this is not evil, I do not know what is.

  One thing that certainly emerged from KSM’s testimony was a clear and deeply disturbing portrait of the planning process that led up to September 11, 2001, and the deaths of nearly three thousand people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The story really begins back in 1996, around the time bin Laden issued his declaration of war against the United States. KSM said he met with the Sunni terror master in the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, and laid out his dream. He wanted enough men and money to hijack ten planes inside—not en route to—the United States and unleash them on kamikaze missions of murder and terror into American cities.

  Having just met the man, bin Laden was hardly convinced KSM could pull off such a mission, but he was intrigued. And the more he learned about KSM, the more he liked.

  Born in Pakistan sometime in 1964 or 1965, KSM was raised in Kuwait in a devout, fundamentalist family. He became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of sixteen and, much like bin Laden, became convinced at an early age that violent jihad was the only way to restore the glory of the Muslim world. KSM had fought with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. He had fought against the West with the jihadist forces in Bosnia. And he had helped raise money for both causes.

  But there was something else about this Radical that drew bin Laden to him: he had lived in the United States and understood how to operate in an “infidel” environment. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, after graduating from high school, “KSM left Kuwait to enroll at Chowan College, a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. After a semester at Chowan, KSM transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. . . . KSM earned a degree in mechanical engineering in December 1986.”205

  Bin Laden also appreciated KSM’s fanatical desire to kill as many Americans as possible. KSM and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef—three years his junior—had helped plot and execute the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.206

  So bin La
den agreed to let KSM begin researching such an operation in more detail, but only if he would help al Qaeda design and launch other high-profile terrorist attacks, an assignment KSM accepted with relish. Over the next few years, he developed “Operation Bojinka,” a plot to hijack as many as a dozen jumbo jets in the Philippines and throughout Asia and then blow them up over the Pacific en route to the United States.207 While the operation was foiled by police in Manila before it could be executed, it did give KSM extensive insight into how best to get men and weapons on board planes and how to handle many of the logistical questions that were bound to come up.

  Meanwhile, he successfully masterminded the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa. This impressed bin Laden and convinced him that KSM was not only serious about killing Americans but tactically savvy enough to pull off a complex operation in multiple cities on another continent.

  “I Swear Allegiance to You for Jihad”

  In April of 1999, KSM—who typically operated not in Afghanistan but out of Pakistan, Kuwait, or other parts of the Middle East and Asia—was back in the caves of Tora Bora, meeting with bin Laden and trying to persuade him and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri to embrace his audacious scenario. This time, bin Laden gave the green light, saying he believed the plot could work and that KSM had the organization’s blessing and financial backing.

  Thrilled, KSM set out to recruit the right men—that is, those capable of successfully entering the United States and living there undetected, capable of keeping their mouths shut, capable of training for a mission that they would not be told the final details of until the last possible moment, and—perhaps most important—capable of murder. KSM later told interrogators that he required each man selected to pledge the following oath of loyalty to bin Laden personally: “I swear allegiance to you, to listen and obey, in good times and bad, and to accept the consequences myself; I swear allegiance to you for jihad, and to listen and obey, and to die in the cause of God.”208