by Adrian Levy
59. Ibid.
60. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
61. Also killed was Zachariah al-Tunisi, who allegedly fired a rocket-propelled grenade that brought down one of the two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Somalia in 1993.
62. Saif often told new recruits the story of Abu Hamza al-Masri, who in 1993 as a new recruit to Al Qaeda picked up a vat of liquid explosives without knowing they had been cooked. The bomb detonated as he carried it, blinding him in one eye and severing both of his hands—which were replaced with metal hooks. He sought asylum in London but was extradited to the United States to stand trial on terrorism offenses in 2012. He was convicted to life imprisonment in 2014. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
63. Saif al-Adel’s real name was Mohammed Salah al-Din Zaidan. For more biographical information about him, see Harmony Project, “Al-Qaida’s (Mis)adventures in the Horn of Africa,” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, ctc.usma.edu/v2/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Al-Qaidas-MisAdventures-in-the-Horn-of-Africa.pdf.
64. Author interviews with Mahfouz. Saif wrote of his lax attitude toward study in an online eulogy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi entitled “Jihadist Biography of the Slaughtering Leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” Also see five letters published online, available at www.jihadica.com/al-qa%E2%80%99ida-revisions-the-five-letters-of-sayf-al-%E2%80%98adl/.
65. Zarqawi had traveled to Afghanistan once before, in 1989, arriving too late to fight in the Soviet war. He had gone home to Jordan, tried to launch himself as a terrorist, and ended up behind bars with the Salafist scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.
66. Urs Gehriger, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: From Green Man to Guru,” a three-part series originally published in German by Die Weltwoche, October 6, 2005. An English translation is available at www.signandsight.com/features/449.html.
67. Author interview with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Amman, Jordan, December 2016. Also interviews with those who knew Zarqawi or spent time with Maqdisi in prison, including Marwan Shehadah, Dr. Munif Samara, Fuad Hussein, Hassan Abu Haniyah, Yousuf Rabbaba, Amman, Jordan, October 2014 and September and December 2016.
68. Saif al-Adel, “Jihadist Biography of the Slaughtering Leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” online publication. Author interview with Abu Yusuf, who helped Zarqawi establish this camp, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
69. Ibid. Also see www.jihadica.com/al-qa%E2%80%99ida-revisions-the-five-letters-of-sayf-al-%E2%80%98adl/.
70. Fuad Hussein interviewed Zarqawi’s friend and deputy Iyad al-Toubasi for Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation in 2005. Toubasi said the convoy in which he traveled was “three hundred to four hundred vehicles.” Author interviews with Fuad Hussein, Amman, October 2014.
71. Al Jazeera America, “Original Documents: The Abu Zubaydah Diaries,” December 3, 2013, america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2013/11/original-documentstheabuzubaydahdiaries.html.
72. Al-Zawahiri referred to the death of his wife and two children in a letter to Zarqawi in 2006 and in several Al Qaeda videos from 2011 onward. Details also came from author interviews with Mahfouz, who was elsewhere in Afghanistan at the time but learned information from his Al Qaeda brothers.
73. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
74. Ibid.
75. The text of this interview with Al Jazeera correspondent Yussef al-Shuli, which was broadcast on December 14, 2001, can be found at “Terror in America (29) Al Jazeera Interview with Top Al-Qa’ida Leader Abu Hafs ‘The Mauritanian,’ ” Middle East Media Research Institute, December 14, 2001, www.memri.org/reports/terror-america-29-al-jazeera-interview-top-al-qaida-leader-abu-hafs-mauritanian. Abu Hafs the Mauritanian was Mahfouz’s Al Qaeda kunya.
76. Mahfouz ended with a stark warning. Al Qaeda was ready to use any weapons against America, including weapons of mass destruction: “Let the Americans fear the worst possible scenario when they use any unconventional weapons.”
77. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
78. These were the instructions he gave them, according to his interview with the authors.
79. A graphic of this area was widely published at the start of the Tora Bora operation and can be seen here: edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid3.htm.
80. Author interviews with General Javed Alam Khan and Robert Grenier.
81. Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar.
82. Author interview with Dr. Amin al-Haq, Islamabad, February 2015. Abu Zubaydah described his work at Khaldan in his diaries; see “The Abu Zubaydah Diaries.”
83. His staying inside the cave while others fought was described by several Tora Bora survivors who were later interrogated at Guantánamo Bay, including Dr. Ayman Batarfi, whose interrogation summary can be read on “Gitmo Files,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/627.html. Also see “Abu Zubaydah Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, 2007; “Khalid Sulaymanjaydh Al Hubayshi Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, 65–73; and “Noor Uthman Muhammed Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, p. 15.
84. Author interview with Lieutenant General Ali Jan Aurakzai, Rawalpindi, June 2014.
85. Several U.S. Special Forces operatives who fought at Tora Bora subsequently wrote books, including Gary Berntsen, coauthor of Jawbreaker, and Dalton Fury, Kill Bin Laden (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008).
86. A maneuver backed by Delta Force specialists on the ground, and the CIA specialists who were with them.
87. “Gitmo Files: Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/627.html.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibn Sheikh had a storied, complicated history of assisting and resisting Al Qaeda. A well-organized fighter from Libya, he had run Khaldan, one of the first mujahideen training camps set up with CIA cash during the 1980s, before becoming close to Osama. In more recent times, Ibn Sheikh had rejected Osama’s dictatorial style and Mokhtar’s rumored Planes Operation. Khaldan camp closed down in 2000, the year before 9/11. “Abu Zubaydah Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, 2007; “Khalid Sulaymanjaydh Al Hubayshi Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, 65–73; “Noor Uthman Muhammed Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript,” Department of Defense, p. 15.
90. Author interviews with Bruce Riedel, who said that Sir Hilary Synnott, then serving as British high commissioner to Pakistan, told him that he thought the chances of war between India and Pakistan were “fifty-fifty,” Washington, 2014–2015.
91. Author interview with General Rashid Qureshi, Islamabad, June 2015.
92. Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar; also author telephone interview with Grenier.
93. Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2013). Also author interviews with Riedel, Washington, D.C., 2014–2015, and General Musharraf, Karachi, February 2015.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Pam O’Toole, “Karzai: King’s Powerful Pashtun Ally,” BBC News Online, November 2, 2001.
2. Author telephone interview with James Dobbins, January 2016; also see “Filling the Vacuum: The Bonn Conference,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/withus/cbonn.html.
3. Author telephone interviews with Dobbins and Ryan Crocker, October 2014.
4. Author interviews with Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, Nouakchott, December 2014, January and June 2015.
5. Author interviews with Mahfouz, who was with S
aif al-Adel. Also referenced by Saif in his five letters posted online and available at www.jihadica.com/al-qa%E2%80%99ida-revisions-the-five-letters-of-sayf-al-%E2%80%98adl/. See “Al-Qa’ida Member Recalls US Bombardment, Accuses Taliban of Betrayal,” World News Connection, October 29, 2003, accessed here: web.archive.org/web/20040610170428; www.why-war.com/news/2003/10/29/alqaidam.
6. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
7. Ibid.
8. Abu Zubaydah’s diaries, dated from 1990 to 2002 and recovered in the U.S. and Pakistani raid that captured Zubaydah on March 28, 2002. Translated by the U.S. government and released to Al Jazeera by a former U.S. intelligence official. Al Jazeera America, “Original Documents: The Abu Zubaydah Diaries,” December 3, 2013, america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2013/11/original-documentstheabuzubaydahdiaries.html.
9. M. Ilyas Khan, “Profile of Nek Mohammed,” Dawn, June 19, 2004.
10. The Pakistani extremist groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jundullah were also involved.
11. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
12. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 9/11 Commission Report, Washington, July 22, 2004, www.9-11commission.gov/report/. “The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni–Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah.” According to the report, many of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 hijackers transited through Iran but “after 9/11, Iran and Hezbollah wished to conceal any past evidence of cooperation with Sunni terrorists associated with al Qaeda.”
13. “Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile,” Library of Congress, December 2012.
14. Dexter Filkins, “The Shadow Commander,” New Yorker, September 30, 2013.
15. Account of Mahfouz’s journey to Iran from author interviews with Mahfouz, Nouakchott. There are some claims that Mahfouz traveled to Iran with Abu Walid al-Masri, formerly of Al Jazeera. He denied this to the authors, but for more on Mahfouz and al-Masri possibly traveling together to Iran, see “Treasury Targets Al Qaida Operatives in Iran,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, January 16, 2009, www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp1360.aspx.
16. A full analysis of these tapes can be found in Flagg Miller, The Audacious Ascetic: What the Bin Laden Tapes Reveal about Al-Qa’ida (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
17. The letter was addressed to “Abu Obadiah.”
18. Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (London: W. F. Howes, 2009). For more on Hubayshi see “Gitmo Files: Khalid Sulaymanjaydh Al Hubayshi,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/155.html.
19. Osama had studied economics at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. See Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Allen Lane, 2006), for more details of his early life.
20. Author interview with Abdullah Anas, London, October 2014. Also author interviews with Huthaifa Azzam, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
21. Wright, The Looming Tower.
22. Among the first arrivals was Hamza Shamali, a Jordanian national. He described his experiences to the authors in interviews conducted in Irbid, Jordan, December 2016.
23. Ali Soufan, The Black Banners (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011). Also author interviews with Soufan, New York, October 2014.
24. His real name was Walid bin Attash, see “Gitmo Files: Walid Muhammad Salih Bin Attash,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/10014.
25. Author interview with Dr. Amin al-Haq, Islamabad, February 2015.
26. Associated Press, “Afghan Warlord: We Helped Bin Laden Escape,” November 1, 2007. More details of the exfiltration operation in Tim Lister, “Osama Bin Laden’s Escape: A Tale of Subterfuge and Hard Cash,” CNN, April 28, 2011. Also Imtiaz Gul, Pakistan: Before and After Osama (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2012).
27. When he heard on January 1. “The Abu Zubaydah Diaries.”
28. Testimony of Abdul Rabbani from “Gitmo Files,” Wikileaks, wikileaks.org/gitmo/prisoner/1461. Rahman said Saad bin Laden, his wife, and his son lived at a Karachi safe house from January to June 2002. Sometimes he would go with KSM to one of Rabbani’s safe houses, D-255, Block 13 D1, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi. Rabbani met Saad there. Tariq Road was where the bin Laden passports were later found.
29. This box was kept at the home of another brother in the network, called Abu Shem.
30. Author interviews with bin Laden family members. Amal also talked about this to the Abbottabad Commission. Abbottabad Commission report, Al Jazeera Investigation Unit, “Document: Pakistan’s Bin Laden Dossier,” Al Jazeera, July 8, 2013. The final report was never published, but an unauthorized draft was leaked and is available to view here: www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/binladenfiles/.
31. Amal and Maryam talk about their time in Karachi in the Abbottabad Commission report. Also author interviews with bin Laden family members and Maryam’s family members.
32. Author interviews with bin Laden family members and Maryam’s family members.
33. This group was led by commander Abu Laith al-Libi, who had been fighting at Kandahar airport.
34. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
35. The Mauritanian bought his way into Iran with a “ton of cash,” according to U.S. officials, “Treasury Targets Al Qaida Operatives in Iran.”
36. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
37. Ibid.
38. “Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile,” Library of Congress, December 2012.
39. Karen McVeigh, “Former al-Qaida OperativeTurned Informant Testifies in Abu Hamza Trial,” Guardian, April 28, 2014.
40. Ibid. Also, Benjamin Weiser, “At Trial of Bin Laden Relative Witness Describes Meeting 9-11 Mastermind,” New York Times, March 12, 2014.
41. Farah Stockman, “Bomb Probe Eyes Pakistan Links. Extremist May Have Influenced Reid,” Boston Globe, January 6, 2002.
42. The best investigation into Pearl’s murder, one supported by his family, is via the Pearl Project, conducted by staff and students at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Its findings can be accessed here: pearlproject.georgetown.edu/.
43. Author interview with Khalid Khawaja, Islamabad, August 2006.
44. David Kohn, “Sheik Gilani: CBS’ Man in Pakistan Tracks Him Down,” 60 Minutes, March 13, 2002.
45. The Pearl Project.
46. This account was drawn from material collated by the Pearl Project, details provided by Khalid Shaikh Mohammad to his lawyers at Guantánamo, and an account that Saif al-Adel gave to Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed during their incarceration in Iran and repeated by Mahfouz during interviews with the authors.
47. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad referred to this conversation during an interrogation session at Guantánamo Bay.
48. The Pearl Project.
49. AFP, “Over Rs.230 Billion Illegally Collected in Karachi Annually: DG Rangers,” June 11, 2015. Author interviews with Tariq Pervez, Islamabad, 2010 and 2014, and Lahore, 2015.
50. Author phone interviews with Robert Grenier, March 2015.
51. “The Abu Zubaydah Diairies.”
52. Ibid. Zubaydah also sneered at the Americans involved in the raid, writing: “A group of Americans came and photographed the location, or they photographed themselves with their weapons, at the location. (Rambo). Just like in Afghanistan, at the end of the movie, the American soldier appears and films the movie. And he would be t
he hero, Rambo.”
53. Author interview with General Javed Alam Khan, Rawalpindi, May 2015; and telephone interviews with Robert Grenier. Also Grenier’s book 88 Days to Kandahar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
54. Grenier, 88 Days to Kandahar.
55. Ibid.
56. Author telephone interview with Ryan Crocker, October 2014.
57. Daniel Larison, “Crocker on Diplomacy with Iran and the ‘Axis of Evil,’ ” American Conservative, November 4, 2013.
58. Author interview with Ryan Crocker.
59. Multiple author interviews with Mahfouz, also online writings of Saif al-Adel.
60. This sentiment is also expressed by Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, another member of Al Qaeda’s shura, in a letter to his former Al Qaeda brother Abu Walid al-Masri (Mustafa Hamid), who wrote a similar thing in a pamphlet he published online in 2010. Abu al-Khayr’s letter to Abu Walid was found at Abbottabad and declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on March 1, 2016. It is dated August 22, 2009, and can be read here: www.dni.gov/index.php/resources/bin-laden-bookshelf?start=3.
61. The Pearl Project, assets.documentcloud.org/documents/27969/pearlmanuscript.pdf.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. In author interviews with General Hamid Gul, conducted in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, 2006–2015, he frequently described Hafiz Saeed as his best friend.
2. Abu Zubaydah refers to his brother studying in Faisalabad in volume two of his diaries, in an entry from 1991, when he was already well ensconced with jihadists in Peshawar. Abu Zubaydah’s diaries, dated from 1990 to 2002 and recovered in the U.S. and Pakistani raid that captured Zubaydah on March 28, 2002. Translated by the U.S. government and released to Al Jazeera by a former U.S. intelligence official. Al Jazeera America, “Original Documents: The Abu Zubaydah Diaries,” December 3, 2013, america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2013/11/original-documentstheabuzubaydahdiaries.html.
