500 Days

by Kurt Eichenwald

  Next, the document lays out specific details for how members of this group should communicate with each other. But it includes no instructions on the use of e-mail, which had become a popular means of communication by al-Qaeda in 1995. Mass-market e-mail services first became available in 1992, and exploded in usage the following year.

  More important is that the document describes a fax machine as a “modern” device. That technology was in wide usage by the mid-1980s, and by the mid-1990s, as Internet usage was booming, was hardly considered “modern.”

  Then, phone booths. The Manchester Manual lays out instructions on how to use phone booths to escape detection when a member of the organization fears that his home line is tapped. The very description is, at least for the modern technological age, ancient history. There is no mention of cellular phones, which did not come into wide usage until the late 1990s.

  Historical references in the document make it clear that it was written sometime after October 1990. In a section giving descriptions of previous assassination attempts—both successful and unsuccessful—it mentions the terrorist killing of Rifaat El-Mahgoub, the speaker of the Egyptian parliament, who was murdered on October 12 of that year.

  All of these factors combined show that the document could have been written only between late 1990 and sometime in the middle of that decade. There is, however, another piece of data that the Middle Eastern intelligence agency officials I spoke with say has led to their conclusion that the manual was written no later than August 1993.

  The document mentions every assassination attempt of an Egyptian interior minister from 1987 through 1990. However, another took place in August 1993, in the unsuccessful attempt to kill Hassan al-Alfi. The intelligence officials’ analysis is that, if written in 1994 or later, the document would not have ignored the most recent attempt on an Egyptian interior minister while exploring the earlier attempts in such detail.

  All of that information—plus an estimate on the length of time it took to handwrite the almost two-hundred-page document—has led the foreign intelligence group to conclude that the manual was written in either 1991 or 1992. Those are the only dates that would account for both the timing of the 1990 assassination and the descriptions of the existing technology.

  2. The time line and al-Qaeda: By the time of the October 1990 assassination of El-Mahgoub, al-Qaeda was in a shambles. Bin Laden had been in Saudi Arabia for months; while he still had his Arab fighters in numerous locations, most of his time was spent fomenting discord in Yemen, much to the dismay of the Saudi royal family. His relationship with Zawahiri and the Egyptians had unraveled, as each pursued different goals—a critical piece of information in the later analysis of the document.

  Then, in April 1991, bin Laden moved to the Sudan and began reconstituting al-Qaeda. He was flush with cash, paying millions to help support the government there and to finance training camps. He remained wealthy until March 5, 1994, when he was cut off by his family. Again, the dates when he had wealth will be important in this analysis, as will be obvious below.

  3. The abilities of the group that composed the Manchester Manual: Unlike al-Qaeda, the group that used the document had limited ability to obtain basic equipment that bin Laden had used for years, according to intelligence sources.

  The evidence is again in the text of the document, when it refers to fax machines. Those would be unlikely to be used, the document says, because of the group’s limitations. “Considering its modest capabilities and the pursuit by the security apparatus of its members and forces, the Islamic Military Organization cannot obtain these devices.”

  I do not have the original document, but an Arabic translator I consulted said that the term capabilities used behind the word modest is probably an English approximation. Most likely, the translator said, the correct translation would be more akin to limited means, a reference to financial condition. Of course, that translation cannot be offered as anything other than a probability, but even in English, it seems to be the most likely meaning. However, if the Arabic words are about a lack of an operational ability to obtain the technology, that would not change the fact that this is a description of a group that was different from al-Qaeda at that time. And again, al-Qaeda had fax machines by the time bin Laden traveled to the Sudan

  There is one other indication that the group that wrote the manual was financially strapped: The document cautions that special operations (it specifies assassinations, kidnapping, bombings, and others) pose the risk of draining the group financially. This would not have been a challenge facing al-Qaeda before March 2004, long after the Manchester Manual appears to have been written. In other words, al-Qaeda was rich; the group that wrote the Manchester Manual was poor.

  4. The operations of the organization: This is the most decisive evidence in establishing that the Manchester Manual has nothing to do with al-Qaeda: Not only does the operation of the group differ dramatically from that of al-Qaeda; it in fact does the opposite of what bin Laden called for in his organization.

  Start with training. From its beginning, al-Qaeda maintained training camps, financed by bin Laden. Indeed, there were separate camps, some for early recruits and others for more advanced members. Nothing like this existed for the group that wrote the Manchester Manual. In fact, their training was conducted in places selected by lower-level individual trainers.

  The Manchester Manual instructs individuals to set up their training facilities away from police stations and public establishments. (This was not a requirement for al-Qaeda camps; in Afghanistan, one was just off the main airport at Kabul. In the Sudan, no attempt was made to hide them from the police or government officials, whose operations were financed by bin Laden.) They are told that no one but the trainers and the trainees should know the location of the place, and that it should be suitable for the kind of training being provided. This also differs from al-Qaeda—with that group, individual trainers don’t get to decide the methods of training. Instead, those techniques are established by a military council. Finally, the document says that all signs of training should be hidden once the lessons are completed. Al-Qaeda never made any serious attempt to hide its facilities; that is why they were so easy for the Americans to bomb.

  The organization of the group that wrote the Manchester Manual also differs from al-Qaeda. There is no mention of the various committees that run bin Laden’s network. Instead of a military committee of al-Qaeda, the entire group in the Manchester Manual is called the “military organization,” which is run by commanders and an advisory council, a much looser structure.

  The document also lists the requirements for someone to become a member of the organization. While they are similar to those listed in al-Qaeda’s founding documents from 1988, they are not the same. There are no requirements that the member be recommended by a trusted aide, that he follow the rules without question, or that he has to be well mannered, as was contained in the original declarations prepared for al-Qaeda in 1988.

  5. Military training: The organization that wrote the Manchester Manual was militarily unsophisticated; al-Qaeda was not. The document provides a written description about using weapons, but only the most basic—handguns, rifles, and small explosives—are described.

  The first step described in the use of weapons is that the member needs to go buy one. But this would not be necessary for a member of al-Qaeda, which has long maintained weaponry that far exceeds those of some small armies. With bin Laden’s group, the weapons are provided to the members, not the other way around. The purchaser described in the Manchester Manual also had to arrange for a place to store the weapons; al-Qaeda maintained its own weapons caches, including some dug into mountains.

  The first weapon listed is a pistol. The manual offers a history of the pistol, and then discusses the benefits and disadvantages of both the automatic pistol and the revolver. Then, for several pages, it describes different ways to hold either a pistol or a revolver, the position a person should assume, where to place
a finger, and so on. Alongside the descriptions are hand-drawn pictures.

  The idea that al-Qaeda members would buy their own weapons and then learn how to use them by reading a manual would probably leave bin Laden laughing. Al-Qaeda trainees do not learn how to fire a gun by reading about it in a book; they attend the camps, are provided with the weapons, and then are guided through their usage one step at a time. They engage in practice against sophisticated targets, and then are taught how to use their weapons in raids.

  The next weapon described in the manual is the rifle, and again, the document provides a history and step-by-step instructions on how to hold and fire it.

  The next sets of weapons are the most basic: knives and blunt objects and poisons. All of the poisons mentioned come from beans, roots, and plants—there is nothing about cyanide, strychnine, or the other most deadly substances connected to al-Qaeda by American intelligence.

  Then, bombs. The document provides a description of how to assemble a fuse with a blasting cap, but then says nothing about the actual explosives required or how the detonation device should be attached. It is as if the document gave instructions on how to turn a key in a car, but not how to drive.

  Those are all the weapons described, and they are nothing like the al-Qaeda arsenal. There is no mention of how to use Stinger missiles, antiaircraft systems, grenade launchers, assault rifles, cluster bombs, Uzi machine guns, or any of the other deadly weapons that were possessed by al-Qaeda. Indeed, if this document was, against all evidence, written after 1993, at that point bin Laden was already paying millions of dollars in an attempt to purchase nuclear weapons; al-Qaeda had long ago passed the “gun, rifle, and fuse-explosive” stage.

  6. Goals of the organization: By 1990, the United States had established operations in Saudi Arabia as part of the first Iraq War. Bin Laden’s focus was on driving out the Americans; his goals were directed at outside enemies and remained that way for two decades.

  The Manchester Manual says nothing about the situation in Saudi Arabia. Instead, its goals are quite different: to topple the “apostate rulers” of the Middle East and establish an orthodox caliphate. In other words, this group wanted to overthrow Arab governments that were not sufficiently Muslim and establish an Islamic regime.

  This division of goals—fighting outside enemies or toppling Arab leaders—was the same issue that was splitting bin Laden and Zawahiri at that time. Bin Laden, as I mentioned, wanted to confront the Americans, Zawahiri wanted to overturn the Egyptian government. As a result of that disagreement, the two were not working together when this document was written. If this difference of opinion could divide Zawahiri and bin Laden, it is hard to understand how any government official could conclude that the al-Qaeda leader had suddenly adopted the goal he opposed.

  Finally, there is one bit of information that is crippling to the idea that the Manchester Manual is an al-Qaeda document. The terror group maintained a vast collection of books and documents in its library based in Afghanistan; many of al-Qaeda’s planners and fighters—the ones who would supposedly depend on the “tactics” in the Manchester Manual—consulted the information in that library. But according to two former al-Qaeda members I spoke with, the Manchester Manual was not included in the library. Indeed, that reality was made quite clear in the interrogations at Guantanamo of Abu al-Libi, the operations chief of al-Qaeda. The information is described in the detainee assessment of Abu al-Libi. The primary sources of information from the library that were used to teach guerrilla tactics, al-Libi told his interrogators, were translated military training manuals from the United States armed forces; in other words, the main reading material for learning fighting tactics came from America, not the Middle East. Other influential books from the library, al-Libi said, were translations of Mao Zedong’s works on guerrilla warfare; these were widely used in al-Qaeda training camps. Indeed, excerpts from Mao’s writings were distributed among al-Qaeda members in small pamphlets titled “The War of the Week.”

  If not al-Qaeda, then who wrote the document? While the specific identity will remain educated guesswork, it is relatively easy to narrow it down to a group of interrelated and, at times, contentious organizations.

  The references in the Manchester Manual to an organization called the Ministry of Interior Affairs is significant in determining its provenance. Contrary to the statements of both American and British officials, the sections in the document about interrogation are not instructions on how to handle all official questioning. Instead, they are very specific about the method of dealing with questioning from the ministry. In the introduction to the section on interrogations, the manual says: “The agency that conducts the interrogation is the government’s questioning apparatus that belongs to the Ministry of Interior Affairs. The officers of that apparatus graduate from the police academy.”

  The writers of the document then make it clear that they are discussing the security sector in the country where they reside. It states, “In our country, that apparatus has no values or code of ethics. It does not hesitate to use all kinds of torture” (emphasis added).

  The name of the government agency—Ministry of Interior Affairs—helps to narrow down the possibilities of which country the writers are discussing. This type of agency goes by different names in different countries—Ministry of Interior, Ministry for the Interior and Public Health, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Department of Home Affairs, and so on. The Middle Eastern governments that name this group the Ministry of Interior Affairs are Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.

  At the time the manual was written, Sudan had adopted an Islamic legal code and was tolerant, and even supportive, of fundamentalist groups; none of that matches the descriptions in the document. Afghanistan, of course, was in chaos and there was no settled “apostate ruler” to overthrow. Egypt and Saudi Arabia remain the only two nations that fit the depiction of the government and the name of its security agency.

  But, as I mentioned before, there is nothing in the manual about Saudi Arabia or America, the focus of bin Laden’s ire in the early 1990s. Instead, the focus of the manual is Egypt. Every terrorist attack it depicts involves that country and its officials.

  The descriptions include mention of the groups involved, including the covert section of the Muslim Brotherhood and a fundamentalist organization called al-Najun min al-Nar (the government translates this to mean “[those who have] escaped the fire,” but I am told the better translation is “rescued from the fire”). These are organizations that were working to replace the Egyptian regime with an Islamic state.

  Only one of the examples listed in the Manchester Manual is given without naming any group as the perpetrator. This attack, the assassination of El-Mahgoub, is also by far the most detailed. For example, it describes the precise number of minutes that separated two convoys of cars, the attempts to flee on motorcycles, the actions of one of the terrorists when a motorcycle broke down, the circumstances surrounding the shooting of a police officer during the men’s flight, and the fact that the identity of the officer was subsequently learned. In essence, the writers of this document had more direct information about the El-Mahgoub attack than about any other. By all appearances, the writers had personal or direct knowledge of the attack of the Egyptian official, additional evidence suggesting that this was written by an Islamist group in Egypt. Also, several individuals mentioned in the manual are cited as “brothers”—every one that I could gather information about was arrested or executed by Egyptian authorities.

  The manual provides an extremely detailed description of the process of arrest and interrogation—what building a suspect is taken to, then where he is moved, and so on. The Middle Eastern intelligence officials said that those descriptions exactly match the process used in Egypt. For this and many of the reasons mentioned above, the officials said there is no doubt that this document is about Egypt.

  The philosophy espoused by the writers also offers clues as to their identit
y. At the beginning of the manual’s first chapter, the writers make reference to the “state of ignorance” subsuming Arabic society and how the young were lured into this state by the apostate rulers dangling community clubs, fancy clothes, and other Western amenities to persuade them to abandon fundamentalist Islam. This is, almost verbatim, the philosophy espoused by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian intellectual who served as the philosophical patron saint of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country. The document then cites Ibn Taymiyyah, the religious scholar from the Middle Ages who served as an intellectual foundation for the beliefs of the Muslim Brotherhood.

  All of the attacks described in the document were committed by the military unit of the Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-twentieth century or by some of the violent offshoots of that organization that mostly took root in the late 1980s.

  The organization refers to itself twice as Jemaah Islamiyah. The government correctly translates this to mean “the Islamic group,” but apparently without recognizing that Jemaah Islamiyah is the name of an Egyptian terrorist organization. Jemaah has been in operation since the 1970s and is the largest militant Islamist group in Egypt. It is a radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its spiritual leader, Omar Abdel-Rahman, known in the United States as “the blind sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in an American prison following his conviction on conspiracy charges involving terrorist plotting.

  There is additional evidence suggesting the manual may be connected to Jemaah. The assassination of El-Mahgoub, which is the one described in the greatest detail, was linked to followers of Rahman. That would help to explain how the writers of the manual knew so much about that attack.