When the Soviets invaded Pakistan, el-Hage, inspired by Azzam’s sermons, left the United States and went to Pakistan to aid his Muslim brothers. Taking the alias Abed al-Sabour al-Lubnani (the Lebanese) and serving as an aide to Azzam, he translated military books for fighters to use and performed administrative work. While working for Azzam, he met the young Osama bin Laden, and the two formed a relationship.
In 1985 el-Hage returned to the United States, and a year later he graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He married an eighteen-year-old American Muslim named April, moved to Arizona, and, in 1989, became a naturalized U.S. citizen. El-Hage traveled regularly back to Peshawar to work for bin Laden.
Essam al-Ridi was born in Egypt in 1958 and spent his childhood in Kuwait. He studied engineering in Karachi, Pakistan, but civil unrest prevented him from finishing his degree, so he moved to Texas, where he enrolled in the now-defunct Ed Boardman Aviation School, in Fort Worth. Returning to Kuwait, he was unable to find a job, so he moved back to the United States and worked as an instructor at the flight school.
Ridi met Abdullah Azzam first in Pakistan and then again at a Muslim American Youth Association convention in the United States. Ridi had helped organize the convention, and Azzam was one of the guest speakers. They stayed in touch, discussing how Ridi could help in Pakistan, and eventually they both traveled there. Ridi spent his first night at Azzam’s house and at some point met the Afghani mujahideen leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.
Ridi’s time in Pakistan was marked by perpetual dissatisfaction and the desire to return to the United States, about which he spoke repeatedly to Azzam. He wasn’t sure that his services were actually required in Pakistan, so eventually he asked Sayyaf, “Will my help be needed here, or can I help from the United States?” When Sayyaf asked him to describe his skills, he replied, “I know how to fly and travel around the world.”
“There is no need for flying,” Sayyaf told him, “but we need someone to travel and ship things.”
For eighteen months Ridi procured items for the mujahideen—such as night vision goggles from the United States and range finders from England. He was traveling every fifteen to twenty days, visiting countries from Japan to Kuwait. He complained to Azzam several times, telling him that he couldn’t do it alone much longer, and Azzam always said there was no one to spare to help him.
In 1985, having adopted the alias Abu Tareq in Afghanistan, Ridi weighed his options. His Egyptian passport was about to expire, and as this was what allowed him to travel, he needed to get it renewed; but he had never stopped looking for an excuse to leave Pakistan. He resented people like bin Laden—rich outsiders who controlled decision making—but when he raised such objections, he was ignored. In the end he returned to the United States and resumed work as a flight instructor in Texas.
When he left, he told Azzam: “I’m not needed here, and I’m not in line with the ideology. It will be best if I move back home, but I’ll still provide the help you need.” Resettled in the United States, he continued to purchase items for the mujahideen, packing them in Wadih el-Hage’s luggage for el-Hage—who had partially assumed the role Ridi had abandoned—to take back to Pakistan. On occasion, Ridi semi-reluctantly traveled back to Afghanistan, as in 1989, when the mujahideen had difficulty adjusting the scope on long-range .50-caliber sniper rifles he had purchased in the United States and shipped to them. The fighters’ unfamiliarity with the weapons forced a trip whose sole purpose was for Ridi to show them, in person, how to fix the sights.
Initially Ridi’s reservations about bin Laden made him wary of working with him; he viewed himself as a purist and continued to be suspicious of the wealthy Saudi who had no military experience, only very deep pockets, and who nonetheless saw himself as a military leader. Ridi stayed true to his promise to Azzam to remain on call, however, and whenever bin Laden or other mujahideen wanted him to procure what they needed—and usually it was Wadih el-Hage who phoned with instructions—he would do so, traveling around the world for equipment, some of which is reportedly still being used by al-Qaeda.
Ihab Ali, known for his operational alias, Nawawi, was another Egyptian who moved to the United States with his family, attending high school in Orlando, Florida. Inspired by Azzam, he traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. He trained at the Airman Flight School, in Norman, Oklahoma, before traveling to Sudan to join up with bin Laden, to whom he, like Ridi, had been introduced by Azzam, in Afghanistan.
At the time, the U.S. government knew that individuals like these three men were traveling to Afghanistan, but because of American support for the mujahideen, they were not stopped, as they were committing no crime. While the men didn’t know each other well in the United States, they met abroad and built relationships with each other and with other Arab mujahideen, such as bin Laden.
The United States government played a major role in supporting the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. American involvement was in no small part driven by Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson, of Texas, who pushed for the Pentagon to send surplus cash to Afghanistan. Many American intelligence officials and political leaders believed that striking a blow to the Soviets in Afghanistan would deliver the United States a big cold war victory. CIA director William Casey believed that the fight needed to be waged in the third world. Under his guidance the CIA did everything it could to support the mujahideen, even printing translations of the Quran in the hope of encouraging people in Uzbekistan and other countries to rise up against the Soviets.
The United States used Pakistan as a conduit to the mujahideen, distributing weapons and money. Pakistan was a willing helper, as President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who had seized power in a 1977 military coup, didn’t want the Soviets on his border. It was in Pakistan’s interest to have a friendly Afghanistan instead.
Ironically, while the United States was supporting one group of Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, the mid-1980s saw a rise in religiously motivated terrorist attacks against American citizens and interests. In 1983, Hezbollah suicide attacks on marine barracks in Lebanon killed more than 250 Americans. Hijackings by terrorists elsewhere in the Middle East also claimed American lives.
To address the growing threat, in 1984 Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 138, “Combating Terrorism.” The director of Central Intelligence (DCI) established the Counterterrorism Center the following year. At first it focused largely on Hezbollah and secular leftist terrorist groups, rather than emphasizing Muslim Brotherhood–inspired groups. A new, interagency committee on terrorism was also formed by the National Security Council.
While these changes were being made, however, U.S. aid to the mujahideen continued to increase. The CIA also committed support to guerrilla attacks in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and to a Pakistani intelligence initiative to recruit Muslims worldwide to fight with the mujahideen.
The biggest problem was that Washington did not have a strategy in place for what would happen after the Soviet withdrawal in 1988. Instead, Washington’s focus was on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War, along with the fall of the Soviet Union. Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, was busy setting up a Nairobi cell to arm and train Somali warlords to fight the U.S. troops deployed to the country.
I often met with John to discuss terrorism matters, and his focus never shifted; he was married to his work and to the FBI. Pat D’Amuro used to get annoyed when John would call him every hour during investigations to ask questions and micromanage. Pat wanted him to ease up and give him a break. John’s reply didn’t vary: “You have to let it consume you; there is no break.” Years later, during the USS Cole investigation, when I was the case agent and John was out of the country, I understood how Pat felt. John called me every hour; and he told me, as he had told Pat, that I needed to let it consume me.
To John the reality was simple: “The bad guys work nonstop, so do we.” To be in John’s trusted inner circle you needed to give your all, as he did, or you were out. People who were
pushed out resented John for it. I understood their anger—it’s natural to want to spend time with your family—but I saw John’s perspective, too: we were in a race against the clock.
What upset other people about John was that he liked to be the center of attention. During a dinner at Cité with Pat D’Amuro and another agent, Kenny Maxwell, who much later succeeded Pat as head of the JTTF, John repeatedly referred to New York as “my city.” Kenny—Irish, like John—had lived in New York his entire life. John, born in Atlantic City, had worked mainly in Chicago and Washington, DC.
Kenny told John, “This is my city. You’re from Chicago.” John didn’t like the insinuation, and soon the two Irish guys were yelling at each other and Pat had to calm them down. Anybody who didn’t acknowledge John’s need to be center stage or who tried to outshine him might be told off for it.
John was killed on 9/11 in the World Trade Center, and stories came out afterward about his messy personal life. He was a complicated human being, but as a boss, I never saw anything but the best from him—and I worked with him on many high-profile cases. I never saw his personal life affect his work or judgment.
In April 1988 the Soviets announced that within nine months they would withdraw from Afghanistan. The question for the mujahideen, after celebrating their victory, was what should come next. Some decided to stay in Afghanistan and use it as a base of operations for jihad elsewhere. Others returned home, seeing their religious duty as having been fulfilled and wishing to resume normal lives. Many went off in search of new conflicts—in places like Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, and Algeria.
Those who decided to stay gathered in Peshawar to decide upon their next steps. They were in agreement that the network they had built to fight the Soviets shouldn’t be allowed to collapse, and that the momentum should be maintained, so they set up a new group, called The Base—al-Qaeda in Arabic—to coordinate their actions. Bin Laden was chosen as the leader of the new group, which had a defined structure, with a shura, or advisory, council, along with military, political, financial, security, religious, and media committees. His rise to prominence was in large part due to his wealth and fund-raising ability, which brought him friends, influence, and power among the mujahideen.
Among the mujahideen leaders there was disagreement over direction and priorities. MAK head Abdullah Azzam, who had been bin Laden’s mentor, wanted to focus on rebuilding Afghanistan, and then to support the Palestinians against Israel. Bin Laden, however, wanted to focus on “the head of the snake,” namely the United States—a position he was supported in, and encouraged to take, by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had considerable influence among Egyptian Islamists. Zawahiri was one of the leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the underground group aimed at creating an Islamic state in Egypt and then using Egypt as a launching pad for jihad against the West. In 1980 he had traveled to Pakistan to join the Afghan jihad, believing that his group could obtain in Afghanistan the training they needed for success in Egypt.
Bin Laden and Zawahiri bonded and had great use for each other: Zawahiri and his group found bin Laden’s financial support and network indispensable, and bin Laden, in turn, was attracted to Zawahiri’s sense of direction and his experience. After warning bin Laden of his need for enhanced security, Zawahiri offered his own men as protection; hence the al-Qaeda leader came to be surrounded by Egyptians, who helped shape his and his organization’s focus.
Among the Egyptians was Amin Ali al-Rashidi, known as Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri—he acquired the name al-Banshiri in Afghanistan, where he had fought in an area called the Panjshir Valley. Banshiri was a former Egyptian police officer who became al-Qaeda’s military commander. His deputy, Tayseer Abu Sitah, better known as Mohammed Atef or by his al-Qaeda alias Abu Hafs al-Masri (al-Masri meaning “the Egyptian”), had also served as a police officer. The fact that someone like Abu Sitah operated under multiple names shows the complexity of trying to unravel the identities of everyone in the group.
The head of al-Qaeda’s religious committee was Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, who took the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi. He was a Kurd who had fought in Saddam’s army and alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan, where the two became close friends. While Abu Hajer wasn’t a cleric—he was an engineer by training, and had memorized the Quran—bin Laden believed that he was a pious figure, and he loved to hear him recite passages from the Quran. The Islamic thinkers whom Abu Hajer liked to quote included Qutb and Ibn Tamiyyah.
The disagreement between Azzam and bin Laden ended on November 24, 1989, when an improvised explosive device (IED) that had been placed under Azzam’s car killed him and his two sons. Responsibility was never assigned, but it was suspected that Zawahiri was connected. While before Azzam’s death Zawahiri had denounced him in public, after his death he pretended that they had been the best of friends.
Bin Laden, as head of al-Qaeda, wasn’t supreme over all mujahideen; al-Qaeda was only one among many Sunni groups vying for dominance. Another leader offering a vision was Omar Abdul Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh,” so called because childhood diabetes had left him sightless. Rahman led al-Gamma’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), a rival of Zawahiri’s group. Others influential in Afghanistan were Ramzi Yousef and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who operated independently and had no desire to be under bin Laden’s command.
When bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990, he was welcomed as a hero among ordinary people, but the Saudi regime was wary, having grown concerned about his actions. He was seen as a troublemaker, having worked in 1989, for instance, on a plot to overthrow the Marxist government in South Yemen.
The ultimate break between bin Laden and the royal family came when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Bin Laden told the royals that he and his army of mujahideen could defend the kingdom, but his offer was rebuffed, as the Saudis knew that bin Laden and his band of fighters would be no match for Saddam’s army. Instead they welcomed U.S. troops to fight Saddam.
Bin Laden was furious at being spurned, and at the royals for allowing “infidel” troops into Saudi Arabia. He publicly denounced the royal family. They took away his passport as a form of punishment, but in the spring of 1991, with the help of sympathizers in Saudi Arabia, he made it to Peshawar. He was later securely transported, by an Egyptian named Ali Mohamed, to Sudan.
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Osama Air
Bin Laden’s move to Sudan was not a hasty decision or one made strictly under duress. Years before 1991, he had begun to realize that the Saudi regime was growing increasingly frustrated with him, and he had started considering other locations. When the tipping point came and the Saudis tried to silence him by confiscating his passport, he already had a new base lined up.
One option had always been to return to Afghanistan, where he had flourished in the past; another was to set up a new base in Sudan. In 1989, when the National Islamic Front (NIF) took control of Sudan in a coup, declaring a desire to turn Khartoum into the center of an international Islamic network, the NIF sent an invitation to bin Laden to move his organization to the country. It was then that he began to consider Sudan seriously.
He sent operatives, led by Abu Hajer, to meet with the new Sudanese leaders and evaluate the country’s suitability as a base of operations. Abu Hajer came back with a positive report, telling bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members that the NIF leaders were devout Muslims and that al-Qaeda would have the necessary freedom to operate effectively from the country. Abu Hajer also brought back books written by NIF religious leader Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, whom al-Qaeda members tended to mistrust because he had studied at the Sorbonne. Abu Hajer said: “Studying in Europe doesn’t make someone a bad person. Turabi is a noted scholar. He has memorized the Quran, he knows a lot about Islamic law, and in fact for forty years he served da’wa”—the act of inviting others to study Islam, sometimes with the aim of converting them.
Bin Laden made a deal with Turabi and the Sudanese authorities whereby they would give al-Qaeda the freedom to operate, and
in exchange he would invest in the country and help the regime fight Christian separatists in the south. Once the deal was finalized, bin Laden sent Jamal al-Fadl (then his secretary) and others to prepare for his arrival. It was in 1991 that the preparations were completed and the move accomplished.
Every Thursday after the sunset prayer, all al-Qaeda members in Khartoum gathered at one of the farms the organization owned to hear a lecture given by bin Laden or someone else on jihad and on the organization’s mission. At the first such meeting, bin Laden told his followers that their mission in Sudan would be to build al-Qaeda, eventually turning it into an international network that would not only support others waging jihad but which would be capable of launching its own operations. From 1992 to 1995, as events such as the first Gulf War and the conflict in Somalia shaped the narrative of the terror network, operatives undertook the large-scale procurement of equipment and supplies that began to mark al-Qaeda’s institutional and operational evolution.
Essam al-Ridi was at his home in Texas when the phone rang on a fall day in 1993.
“As-Salamu Alaykum, my brother.” He recognized the voice as belonging to Wadih el-Hage. El-Hage had offered the traditional greeting: Peace be upon you.
“Wa Alaykum as-Salam, Abu Abdallah Lubnani,” Ridi replied, returning the greeting. “How are you?”
“Alhamdu lelah,” el-Hage replied: Praise be to God. “And yourself?”
“Alhamdu lelah.”
“So why are you calling, my friend? What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a message from the sheikh.”
“I guessed as much,” Ridi replied with a hearty laugh. It was usually with some request from bin Laden that his old friend el-Hage called him these days.
“So what can I do for Abu Abdullah?” Ridi continued, referring to bin Laden by one of his aliases: the father of Abdullah. Abdullah is the name of bin Laden’s eldest son, and referring to him thus was an expression of respect, as it’s considered a great honor in the Muslim world to have a son.
The Black Banners Page 5
