By early 2001, the plot had advanced to the point where KSM was ready to review a list of targets with bin Laden. The emir, or prince, of al Qaeda insisted they hit the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol, at a minimum. But bin Laden also gave KSM latitude to hit other targets as well, including the White House, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and a foreign embassy of his choosing in Washington, D.C. When Mohammed Atta (one of the Egyptian cell commanders who would eventually hijack American Airlines Flight 11 and fly it into one of the World Trade Center towers) suggested hitting a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, bin Laden agreed to add the target to the list.
“After the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, I decided that explosives and bombs could be problematic, and so I focused on using airplanes as weapons,” KSM told interrogators. “The most attractive targets were high buildings, both for their relative ease of targeting as well as for the symbolic impact. Bin Laden expressed his desire to simultaneously hit the Pentagon, the White House, and the U.S. Capitol building.”209
Bin Laden personally and specifically chose the cell leaders to carry out the operation. But it was KSM whom bin Laden trusted for all the operational details. It was KSM, for example, who designed the rigorous training regime each cell member would undergo, including basic physical conditioning, English lessons, and instruction in how to conduct a hijacking, how to disarm an air marshal, and the use of explosives. The men also were required to butcher sheep and camels as practice for killing anyone who got in their way on board the planes.
It was KSM who gave the cell commanders the cash they needed for the mission. It was KSM who helped his men acquire “clean” passports without Pakistani and Afghan stamps. He told them where in the U.S. to live. He told them what to study (more English and how to fly a jumbo jet). He forbade them to speak to other Muslims while in the U.S., lest they be tempted to confide their plans to someone they might consider a kindred spirit. He told them how to communicate with headquarters.
Everything was “compartmentalized.” Only KSM, bin Laden, and a handful of other al Qaeda senior operatives knew all the details.
As the time of the operation approached, KSM said bin Laden kept pushing for faster action. Three times bin Laden pressured him to launch sooner, but KSM insisted they were not quite ready. That summer, for example, bin Laden heard that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was heading to the White House. He urged KSM to move fast in order to kill Sharon and President Bush and their top advisors at the same time. But again KSM resisted, saying his team was close but still not ready to strike. Moreover, KSM believed the final decision on choosing a strike date should be in the hands of the senior cell commander to whom he had given this authority.
Thus, it was not until August that KSM himself finally learned of the date of the operation. He immediately informed bin Laden. But he was horrified that as the date of the attack approached, bin Laden began telling colleagues and even high-level visitors to his camp in the mountains of Afghanistan that something big was coming. KSM urged bin Laden not to say anything more or risk compromising the operation.
Eventually, of course, the 9/11 attacks were carried out and were actually far more successful than either bin Laden or KSM had imagined. “We sat down to calculate the amount of losses within the enemy and we expected the number to be those inside the plane, and for the [World Trade Center] towers, the number of people that the plane would actually hit,” bin Laden told friends at a November 2001 dinner in Kandahar that was recorded on someone’s personal video camera and later recovered by U.S. intelligence. “I was the most optimistic of all because of my expertise in this profession and in this business. I said the fuel on the plane would melt the iron and the iron would lose its properties.” Bin Laden said he had predicted that the building would be destroyed from the point of impact upward. But the total destruction of the buildings, he said, “was a lot more than we expected.”210
Bin Laden formally claimed credit for the 9/11 attacks in 2003 during an eighteen-minute video released to the Al Jazeera news network. In the tape, the al Qaeda leader said he decided “we should destroy towers in America” because “we are a free people . . . and we want to regain the freedom of our nation.”211
KSM later shed more light on his and bin Laden’s motivations. According to the notes of his interrogations, “Sheikh Mohammed said that the purpose of the attack on the Twin Towers was to ‘wake the American people up.’ Sheikh Mohammed said that if the target would have been strictly military or government, the American people would not focus on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people and America’s self-serving foreign policy that corrupts Arab governments and leads to further exploitation of the Arab [and] Muslim peoples.”212
What Al Qaeda Really Wants
During his military tribunal at Gitmo, KSM admitted that he was not only responsible for the 9/11 attacks but also the mastermind of “second wave” attacks and other planned mega-attacks in the United States, Israel, and around the globe. In a written statement given to interrogators, KSM went on to confess to no fewer than thirty-one separate terrorist attacks. Some had already been carried out. Others were foiled by U.S. and foreign security forces or by KSM’s arrest. Each provided a sobering insight into what Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network really want:
1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation.
2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.
3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl. . . .
4. I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.
5. I was responsible for the Filka Island Operation in Kuwait that killed two American soldiers.
6. I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals.
7. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:
Library Tower, California
Sears Tower, Chicago
Plaza Bank, Washington State
The Empire State Building, New York City
8. I was responsible for planning, financing, and follow-up of operations to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Port of Singapore.
9. I was responsible for the planning, training, surveying, and financing for the operation to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.
10. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter.
11. I was responsible for the surveying, planning, and financing for the bombing of suspension bridges in New York.
12. I was responsible for planning to destroy the Sears Tower by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it or around it.
13. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the operation to destroy Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building, and Big Ben on British soil.
14. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of many nightclubs frequented by American and British citizens on Thailand soil.
15. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruction of the New York Stock Exchange and other financial targets after 9/11.
16. I was responsible for the planning, financing, and surveying for the destruction of buildings in the Israeli city of Elat by using airplanes leaving from Saudi Arabia.
17. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of American embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.
18. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruction of the Israeli embassy in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Australia.
19. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruc
tion of an Israeli El-Al Airlines flight on Thailand soil departing from Bangkok Airport.
20. I was responsible for sending several mujahadeen into Israel to conduct surveillance to hit several strategic targets deep in Israel.
21. I was responsible for the bombing of the hotel in Mombasa that is frequented by Jewish travelers via El-Al airlines.
22. I was responsible for launching a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missile on El-Al or other Jewish airliner departing from Mombasa.
23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few nightclubs frequented by American soldiers.
24. I was responsible for providing financial support to hit American, Jewish, and British targets in Turkey.
25. I was responsible for surveillance needed to hit nuclear power plants that generate electricity in several U.S. states.
26. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing to hit NATO headquarters in Europe.
27. I was responsible for the planning and surveying needed to execute the Bojinka Operation, which was designed to down twelve American airplanes full of passengers. I personally monitored a round-trip, Manila-to-Seoul Pan Am flight.
28. I was responsible for the assassination attempt against President Clinton during his visit to the Philippines in 1994 or 1995.
29. I shared responsibility for the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II while he was visiting the Philippines.
30. I was responsible for the training and financing for the assassination of Pakistan’s President Musharraf.
31. I was responsible for the attempt to destroy an American oil company owned by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on the Island of Sumatra, Indonesia.
The Ultimate Objective
As horrifying as these operations were, they pale in comparison to what al Qaeda has been praying for and planning for at least a decade: acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—ideally nuclear weapons—to be used against the United States to kill between four and ten million Americans.
Asked in 1998 if al Qaeda had nuclear or chemical weapons, bin Laden told Time magazine that “acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so.”213 The timing of that statement was significant, for 1998 was the year that Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.
Since then, many more disturbing details have emerged about bin Laden’s feverish hunt for WMDs and his deep-rooted belief that Allah has commanded him to use them to kill Christians and Jews. In the summer of 2002, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born spokesman for al Qaeda, posted the following statement on the Internet: “Al-Qa’ida has the right to kill four million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds of thousands.”214 In May 2003, al Qaeda unveiled a fatwa from a leading Saudi cleric that sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. and permitted the killing of up to ten million Americans.215
In 2007, FBI director Robert Mueller made the following statement at a conference on nuclear terrorism: “By some estimates, there is enough highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles to construct thousands of nuclear weapons, and it is safe to assume that there are many individuals who would not think twice about using such weapons. The economics of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide nuclear material to the highest bidder, and that material will end up in the hands of terrorists. Al Qaeda has demonstrated a clear intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 1993, Osama bin Laden attempted to buy uranium from a source in the Sudan. He has stated that it is Al Qaeda’s duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And he has made repeated recruiting pitches for experts in chemistry, physics, and explosives to join his terrorist movement.”216
Former CIA director George Tenet at first wasn’t sure just how seriously to take bin Laden’s WMD threats. But over time, he became convinced. He now believes that bin Laden’s top priority is to acquire nuclear weapons and detonate them inside the United States.
“Although we had his own statements to give us great concern, the consensus inside and outside our own government could be boiled down to this: ‘Guys in caves can’t get WMD,’” Tenet wrote in his 2007 memoirs, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. “But this was an issue about which we could not afford to be wrong. So soon after 9/11, I directed CIA’s CTC [Counterterrorism Center] to establish a new capability to focus exclusively on terrorist WMD. . . . We began to review the historical record. We combed our files and sent teams around the world to share our leads and ask foreign intelligence services about information in their possession. We interrogated al-Qa’ida prisoners and pored over documents found in safe houses and on computers captured in Afghanistan. What we discovered stunned us all. The threats were real. Our intelligence confirmed that the most senior leaders of al-Qa’ida are still singularly focused on acquiring WMD. Bin Laden may have provided the spiritual guidance to develop WMD, but the program was personally managed at the top by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Moreover, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that al-Qa’ida had clear intent to acquire chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) weapons, to possess not as a deterrent but to cause mass casualties in the United States.”217
“Of all al-Qa’ida’s efforts to obtain other forms of WMD, the main threat is the nuclear one,” Tenet stressed. “I am convinced that this is where [bin Laden] and his operatives desperately want to go. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains, and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history. Such an event would place al-Qa’ida on a par with the superpowers and make good on bin Ladin’s threat to destroy our economy and bring death into every American household. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we could count on the fact that the Soviets, just like us, wanted to live. Not so with the terrorists. Al-Qa’ida boasts that while we fear death, they embrace it.”218
Chapter Ten
Terror High
How the Radicals are infiltrating the U.S. and Europe
How serious is the Radical threat today?
Many Americans—perhaps most—simply have no idea how aggressively Radicals are trying to infiltrate the United States, recruit Americans into terrorist cell groups, and gather the weaponry they need to pull off catastrophic attacks inside this country. Consider, then, a case that occurred not that long ago right here in Washington, D.C., the city Lynn and my boys and I call home.
Meet Ahmed Ali
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was born in 1982, three years after the Iranian Revolution. His family moved to the Washington, D.C., area when he was four years old, and he was raised in Falls Church, Virginia. He studied at an Islamic school in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated with honors in 1999, having been named his class’s valedictorian.
Sometimes I wonder if I ever crossed paths with him, or if my wife or kids did. On the outside, Ahmed seemed like a poster child for the Reformers—a friendly, bright, successful young Muslim American man who seemed to love his country, love his family, and be eager to pursue his dreams of building a life for himself in a land of liberty. But things are not always what they seem. On the inside, Ahmed was a Radical in the making, seething with hatred.
In the fall of 1999, Ahmed entered the University of Maryland to study electrical engineering. The following year, however, he changed his mind. He transferred to the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia to study Islamic law and theology and quickly gravitated to those who shared his belief that Islam was the answer and jihad was the way. In 2002, not long after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ahmed joined a clandestine al Qaeda cell group operating inside the kingdom.
Ahmed was a recruiter’s dream come true. He had full American citizenship, an American passport, and a respectable cover as a university student. His al Qaeda handlers quic
kly sent him for training in the tradecraft of terror, including firing various weapons, building and detonating explosives, and forging documents. Then they told him to return to the U.S., marry a Christian woman, and assimilate into the community. They also told him he would be provided with operatives to carry out spectacular attacks.219
Like a scene from one of the novels I was writing at the time, the plot Ahmed and senior al Qaeda leaders were developing half a world away involved a conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States and trigger apocalyptic destruction in the nation’s capital. Ahmed told friends he believed George W. Bush was “the leader of the infidels.”220 He and his colleagues, therefore, planned to use multiple snipers and suicide bombers to kill the president, while other al Qaeda sleeper cell operatives simultaneously hijacked planes outside the U.S. and used them to launch kamikaze attacks against American targets.221 What was more, Ahmed met with a high-ranking al Qaeda leader who asked him to research the feasibility of attacking nuclear power facilities inside the U.S. homeland.222 The goal: to unleash horrors equivalent to actually having their own weapon of mass destruction.
But for the grace of God and the hard work of Homeland Security officials at home and abroad, the plots might very well have succeeded. In the summer of 2003, after a series of terrorist bombings throughout Saudi Arabia, authorities there launched a series of raids against suspected Radical compounds throughout the country. Swept up in the dragnet was Ahmed, although the Saudis were not specifically looking for him and were barely aware that he existed, much less posed a threat. Once the Saudis began interrogating him, however, it quickly became evident just how serious a suspect they had in their hands, and they turned him over to U.S. officials.
At Ahmed’s trial, Justice Department lawyers argued that he had “joined an al Qaeda terrorist cell . . . in order to engage in jihad against the United States.”223 What’s more, they described the case as “one of the most dangerous terrorist threats that America faces in the perilous world after September 11, 2001: an al Qaeda operative born and raised in the United States, trained and committed to carry out deadly attacks on American soil.”224
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