The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  “What happens in al-Qaeda guesthouses?” I asked.

  “On entering the guesthouse you give in all your valuables—your money, passport, and all forms of ID—and they give you a nickname, usually linked to where you’re from. They tell you that you’re giving in all your valuables and ID so that if you’re killed or caught, your captors won’t know who you are.” He said that his nickname was Abu Zaid Maghrebi and that he had also picked up the alias Abu Talal.

  “What camp did you train in?”

  “Al-Farouq.” The camp turned out many of al-Qaeda’s premier fighters.

  “What did you learn there?”

  “How to use regular firearms, antiaircraft weapons, and other basic guerrilla warfare skills.”

  “Who were your trainers?” I asked, and thus the debriefing went. After al-Farouq, Kherchtou had attended the Abu Bakr Sadeek camp, also located near Khost. It was run by Khalid al-Fawwaz—we were very familiar with him from Operation Challenge. With Kherchtou at Abu Bakr Sadeek was Odeh, operating under the alias Marwan.

  Kherchtou went on to tell us about how he was trained, at one point, by Ali Mohamed, Zawahiri’s man in the U.S. Army. Abu Hafs had told him in advance that “Abu Mohamed al-Amriki is very strict, and you have to be patient with him. He often uses bad words and is not an observent Muslim, but he’s very skilled.”

  Kherchtou was later sent to Kenya to learn how to fly, so that one day he could become bin Laden’s personal pilot. While in Nairobi attending flight school, he helped operatives who were passing through Kenya on their way to Somalia and other locations. Sometimes on trips between Nairobi and Khartoum he was given money to take to operatives in Kenya; the largest sum was ten thousand dollars.

  Kherchtou filled in for us where Junior had left off. This was 1999, and Junior had left in 1996. Those were important years for al-Qaeda, so the information Kherchtou gave us was priceless.

  On September 21, 1999, we flew with Kherchtou to the United States, and other agents were waiting for us at the airport. We took Kherchtou to an undisclosed location, and I went home, exhausted. As soon as I got there, the phone rang. An FBI agent was calling from the site. “Ali, Joe wants to speak to you—he’s insisting.”

  “Okay, put him through.”

  “Hi. Ali?” I heard Kherchtou’s voice.

  “Hi, how are you?”

  “I’m good, but where are you?”

  “I’m at my home, resting.”

  “But these people are asking me questions and talking about plans for me, and I want you to be here to advise me.”

  “My friend, I need to get some rest and see my family tonight. I’ve been away from them for a while. But tomorrow I will come and see you.”

  The next day I drove to the safe house. As I walked through the door Kherchtou jumped up and greeted me with a big hug. He was clearly nervous about being in the United States and was unsure how things would work out. I was a friendly face he had come to trust.

  We chatted and discussed the trials for the East African embassy bombings, for which he would serve as a witness. I also gave him a copy of the writings of the Lebanese American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, whom we had discussed a few days earlier. His face lit up. “Thank you, Ali, so much.”

  Kherchtou went on to serve, alongside Junior, as a star witness in the East African embassy trials, ensuring the conviction of four al-Qaeda terrorists—men he had previously worked with. Because of his cooperation, he was not sentenced; as we had promised, he was indeed put in the Witness Protection Program.

  The last time I saw him was immediately after the USS Cole was bombed, on October 12, 2000. We had debriefed him before we headed to Yemen to see if he knew anyone who might be involved. “I wish I could come with you to help investigate,” he told me as we parted.

  “I know, but you can help from here,” I told him. “Keep telling us anything you think of.”

  7

  * * *

  Millennium Plot

  After 1996, when he was back in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden focused on remodeling al-Qaeda. In Sudan, the group had primarily acted as a sponsor of terrorism through bin Laden’s business enterprises. Now bin Laden worked specifically and in detail on building al-Qaeda into an international terrorist organization that launched attacks under its own name. He built a network of safe houses and training camps across Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the group acquired a more intricate structure and became better organized.

  At the same time, bin Laden still tried to use non–al-Qaeda groups to further his aims. He recognized that al-Qaeda’s stated goal of expelling infidels from the Arabian Peninsula had limited appeal to many of the would-be terrorists who were flocking to Afghanistan for training. Many of the Islamic groups that sent their fighters to the country—such as those from Libya, Morocco, and Algeria—didn’t care about America. Their focus was on the immediate enemy: their governments back home, which they accused of being insufficiently Islamic. These groups utilized non–al-Qaeda training camps like Khaldan and focused their efforts on overthrowing their home governments. Mostly takfiris in their outlook, they knew bin Laden’s record of using non–al-Qaeda operatives and resented his use of their operatives to further his aims.

  Khaldan predated al-Qaeda, having been established during the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. Neither its external emir, Abu Zubaydah, nor its internal emir, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby, was a member of al-Qaeda, and these emirs prized their independence. Khaldan was known to be an independent camp. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby’s responsibility was running it, while Abu Zubaydah—who had built a reputation as a top terrorist facilitator in Afghanistan—helped recruits and camp graduates with travel documents, funds, and safe houses.

  While bin Laden understood why other groups, wary of al-Qaeda poaching their members, distanced themselves from him, he still wanted to have a connection with them. He thought that in the future they could perhaps work together and, more importantly, that their aims of hitting their domestic governments could mesh with his aims—especially if those countries had American or Western targets in them. Therefore, while he avoided getting directly involved with the members of other groups, he decided to support these operatives and the camps they attended indirectly. He funneled funds to non–al-Qaeda camps—including Khaldan—and delegated people who were associated with him to build relationships with Khaldan-trained operatives. One such operative was Khalil Said al-Deek.

  An American Palestinian of Jordanian descent, born in Jenin, on the West Bank, Deek got a diploma in computer science in the United States and operated under the alias Abu Ayed al-Phalastini (“the Palestinian”). He had close connections to the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman, and was involved in a group that in 1992 planned to strike at targets in Los Angeles; the plot fell apart because Deek left the group to fight in Bosnia. He later fought in Afghanistan, where he fell in with bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda members.

  Because of his U.S. citizenship, Deek was able to travel freely in the West and most of the world. He formed links with al-Qaeda cells and Islamic groups in Gaza, Turkey, Pakistan, the UK, and elsewhere. In Britain he liaised with the al-Qaeda cell led by Khalid al-Fawwaz and worked with the British Pakistani operative Mozzam Begg to collect funds for Afghanistan.

  Using his computer skills, Deek put together an electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Jihad—a multivolume manual created by Afghani-based mujahideen in the 1980s—and gave copies of the CD to operatives who were planning attacks. In Afghanistan he maneuvered among other groups and independent camps to see who could be of use to al-Qaeda. He formed a close relationship with Abu Zubaydah. It was a natural friendship: the two had similar backgrounds (they were both Jordanian Palestinians) and similar ideas about Islamic extremism. Through this relationship, al-Qaeda money and ideas flowed easily into the Khaldan camp.

  Among other close connections was one that Deek formed with veteran fighter Khadr Abu Hoshar. Abu Hoshar had joined the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the late 1980s an
d fought against the Soviet Union. When he returned to Jordan he got involved in a terrorist group, the Army of Mohammad, that planned to launch operations to overthrow the Jordanian government—which the group viewed as being insufficiently Islamic.

  After a stint in prison for plotting against the government, Abu Hoshar traveled between Yemen and Syria and established a cell with like-minded takfiris. They espoused the teachings of Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, a radical cleric based in Jordan who advocated, among other takfiri principles, that Sharia law was the only valid law, and that any who failed to uphold it were infidels. Abu Hoshar’s main partner in this cell was a fellow Palestinian Jordanian named Raed Hijazi, whom he had met in May 1996 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

  Hijazi, born in California to Palestinian Jordanian parents but raised in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, immersed himself in Islam and became radicalized with help from a local mosque in California. The mosque helped him travel to Afghanistan and gain admission to Khaldan, where he took classes in weapons and explosives. He learned quickly and became a skilled operative, acquiring the aliases Abu Ahmed al-Amriki (for the country of his birth) and Abu Ahmed al-Howitzer—because of his proficiency in operating the artillery device. Hijazi also developed relationships with Deek and Abu Zubaydah, and together the four men began plotting attacks within Jordan.

  The idea was to bomb Christian, Israeli, and American targets in Jordan in the year 2000. They settled on attacking the Christian holy sites of Mount Nebo and the site along the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized; the border crossing with Israel; and the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman—all of which they calculated would be packed with visiting tourists for the millennium. If successful, they would then launch a second wave of attacks.

  Most of the coordination for the plot took place in Pakistan and was led by Deek and Abu Zubaydah. The planners met in the al-Iman Media Center in Peshawar, which was run by Deek. He was assisted by a convert to Islam from California, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who operated under the alias Azzam the American and later became a spokesman for al-Qaeda.

  Abu Hoshar and Hijazi recruited members for their cell in Jordan, Turkey, and Syria; more operatives came via Deek’s center. Some were al-Qaeda members; others were not. Most were Jordanians or Palestinian Jordanians, and what united them was a desire to carry out an operation in Jordan. As Western targets were going to be attacked, al-Qaeda sent operatives to help, and Deek indirectly funneled money from bin Laden to the group. The non–al-Qaeda members didn’t know that al-Qaeda money was supporting the operation; they believed, instead, that Deek’s funding came from independent donors.

  Abu Hoshar and Hijazi’s planning got delayed when Abu Hoshar was arrested upon his return to Jordan from Syria and put in jail for eighteen months for plotting against the regime. During his imprisonment, Hijazi returned to the United States and started driving a cab in Boston, apparently to raise additional money for the plot.

  After Abu Hoshar was freed in 1998, the two began gathering supplies and training operatives. The group also raised money through robberies and the sale of fraudulent documents in Jordan. Hijazi traveled back and forth between Jordan, London, and Boston to help gather supplies and bring in money. In London he was supported by another Palestinian radical, Abu Qutadah, a self-described cleric whose takfiri fatwas had already resulted in the slaughter and murder of many Muslims around the world, especially during the 1990s Algerian civil war.

  Using his U.S. passport, Hijazi traveled to the UK, where he met al-Qaeda operatives and purchased walkie-talkies that would be used as remote-control detonators for the bombs, along with other materials for the plot. While in London, Hijazi also stopped in at the American Embassy to renew his U.S. passport.

  After getting everything he needed from London, he left England and went to Israel, and from there he traveled by bus to Jordan. He entered at the northern border crossing that the group was planning to attack, in order to case the route, and took notes on a map of the area.

  To gather explosives without attracting attention, Hijazi got a license to work as a jeweler—so that he could legally purchase nitric acid and other chemicals needed for bomb making. (The bombs were to be similar in structure to the one built by Ramzi Yousef in 1993.) Deek gave them a CD copy of the Encyclopedia of Jihad, which offered instruction in building bombs.

  They rented a house in Marka, Amman, a poor neighborhood, and dug a hole to hide the chemicals they were accumulating. It took them two months to get it deep enough—they told neighbors they were building an extra bathroom. They collected weapons and detonators, along with fraudulent documents to use in the attacks. Hijazi also owned a farm that they used as a location to test explosives without people hearing and getting suspicious. A year of acquisition and hoarding—they bought only small quantities at a time in order to avoid attracting attention—finally produced the necessary cache of matériel.

  The operatives who were to be used in the attack were sent to Abu Zubaydah’s Khaldan camp for training. Operatives who couldn’t travel to Afghanistan were taken to Syria and then to Lebanon; from there they were transported to training grounds by a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), using IDs belonging to Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

  In June 1999, Abu Hoshar sent Hijazi and three others to Abu Zubaydah for advanced explosives training. After the training was completed, Hijazi traveled to Syria. He planned to wait there until December 6, at which point he’d enter Jordan. The operation would take place during Ramadan: Muslims who are martyred during that time, according to radical Islamist lore, are promised a special place in heaven.

  October 1999. The waiter had just put my steak down in front of me when my pager went off. The page was from FBI special agent and vetveteran al-Qaeda expert Dan Coleman, at the JTTF. I told Heather, my girlfriend (later, my wife), that I’d be right back—we were in the middle of a Saturday night dinner in Union Square, in downtown Manhattan—and I went into a phone booth at the back of the restaurant to call Dan.

  “Ali, there’s something going on in Jordan. You have to fly there tomorrow,” he said quickly, in his usual direct-with-no-small-talk manner, and wished me good luck. He couldn’t give me any details about the operation; the line at the restaurant was not secure. I returned to Heather and told her we’d need to finish up dinner, as I had to go abroad in less than twelve hours.

  At JFK Airport the next morning I met Pat D’Amuro, who would be leading the mission for the first few days. We flew to Amman and were met at the airport by Scott Jessee, the FBI representative in Tel Aviv. (The FBI back then did not have a representative in Jordan, so all matters were covered operationally by the Tel Aviv office.) I knew Scott well from my time in Pakistan, where we’d crossed paths, and I was glad to have him as part of the team; he is a very effective operative.

  After checking in with the embassy and getting briefed [3 words redacted], we all went to the headquarters of the Jordanian intelligence agency, Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah—the General Intelligence Directorate (GID). The GID headquarters is marked by a black flag and an inscription, in Arabic, of their motto: “Justice has come.” It was not our first time meeting Saad al-Khair, the famed GID chief (then deputy chief), and his team. We had worked with them before and had been much impressed by their knowledge and operational skills. We had confidence that our investigation would be a success.

  Saad was known to be a savvy and straightforward operative, as well as someone you didn’t want to be on the wrong side of. Just mentioning his name put fear into the hearts of would-be offenders and others who had made the mistake of crossing him. Tall, handsome, always immaculately dressed, courteous and a real gentleman—and with a cigar almost always in his hand—Saad reminded me of the good foreign intelligence official you’d see helping James Bond in a movie. He was sharp and could read people well, and he had no time for people who played games with him or lied to him. His distinctive smile seemed to say: you can’t fool me.

  Saad understood the human
mind and human nature, and he used his intelligence to outwit his enemies. He told me how he personally went undercover to disrupt threats, apprehend killers, and serve justice to those who threatened his beloved Jordan. Saad passed away in December 2009 after suffering a heart attack, and his stories still resonate. He will always be dear to my heart. One story—made famous by the journalist and novelist David Ignatius and in the movie Body of Lies—has Saad handing a phone to a jihadist whom he is trying to persuade to cooperate. On the line is the jihadist’s mother. When she hears her son’s voice, she starts thanking him and praising him, which confuses him. Finally, she says: “Thank you so much for the television and money you sent me. You’re such a good boy.” In a moment he understands that Saad has sent his mother these gifts, telling her that they are from her son, and he begins to cry. He realizes that he can cooperate with Saad and reveal the identity of his accomplices and have his mother continue to think he’s been helping her, or he can refuse to cooperate and break her heart—as she’ll find out he hasn’t really sent her money and a television. He decides to cooperate.

  Saad and the Jordanians briefed us on the plot, which they were in the early throes of uncovering: a Jordanian cell was planning to attack Western targets in Amman at the stroke of the new millennium. One of the key suspects was Khadr Abu Hoshar. The FBI was being brought in because the targets were also U.S. interests and because U.S. citizens were involved: Khalil Deek and Raed Hijazi.

  Working nonstop with the Jordanians on uncovering the plot, we were quickly impressed with the caliber of their agents. They were expert at monitoring suspects in Jordan and had developed leads tracking the operatives involved from Afghanistan and across the Middle East. We told them what we had learned about al-Qaeda from operations in the UK, Albania, and elsewhere, and they, in turn, taught us a lot about al-Qaeda’s worldwide operations. The Jordanians left no stone unturned in protecting their country from potentially devastating attacks.