Tag: Jordan

16 December 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Jamal Khalifa

 

Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law is arrested in Morgan Hill, California.

Muhammed Jamal A. Khalifa, a Saudi, is arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He had been sentenced to death in Jordan for plotting to assassinate Jordanian government officials and planting bombs in two movie theaters, explosions which injured 11 people. He had entered the U.S. on December 1.

Khalifa (aka Jalal Khalifat, Gamal Khalifat, Mohammad J.A. Khalifah, Jamal Khalifah, Abdallah Khalifah Abu Bara, Abudul Barashid, Abu Salah), born 1 February 1957 in Medina, Saudi Arabia, is thought to be the brother-in-law to Osama bin Laden. (One of his four wives is a sister of bin Laden). He is believed at the time to have been living for the previous six or more years in Manila, and to be the leader of a terrorist cell in the Philippines (and involved in the so-called “Bojinka” plotting to kill the Pope and bomb U.S. airliners.)

Khalifa was deported in May to Jordan but was later acquitted of all charges and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia. The famed “28 pages” from the 9/11 Commission later speculates that the Saudis “bought off” the Jordanians for the return of Khalifa. As the report states, “Khalifa now works for a Riyadh-based NGO and travels and operates freely.”

6 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Further increasing the level of anxiety about terrorist attacks during the Millennium transition, Jordanian authorities arrest 16 alleged terrorists who were accused of planning attacks on the John the Baptist’s shrine on the Jordan River and the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman. George Tenet later wrote: “The Jordanian intelligence service, through its able chief, Samikh Battikhi, told us that individuals on the team had direct links to Usama bin Ladin.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 125)

The CIA Counterterrorist Center circulates an intelligence report, according to Tenet: “accepting the theory that UBL [Osama bin Laden] wants to inflict maximum casualties, cause massive panic, and score a psychological victory, then UBL may be seeking to attack between 5 and 15 targets on the Millennium. Because the U.S. is UBL’s ultimate goal… we must assume that several of these targets will be in the U.S. …”

Over the next weeks, the CIA and allied intelligence services would launch operations in 55 countries against 38 separate targets to disrupt plots in the making and to arrest terrorists under surveillance. But there is no question that once the Millennium passed without incident, the intensity of these efforts would generally decline. And they had little impact on al Qaeda central.

Of note, the same Radisson hotel was one of three hotels in Amman later attacked within a half an hour of each other on the night on November 9, 2005. There, suicide bombers killed over 50 and wounded over 100.

30 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Abu Zubaydah

 

The so-called “Millennium Plot” is first detected, leading to the arrest of numerous plotters in Amman, Jordan. Jordanian intelligence uncovered the al Qaeda plot to attack the Radisson Hotel as well as other sites on the night of December 31/January 1, linking local extremists to Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda operative then-considered to be Osama bin Laden’s top terrorist planner.

When Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002 (and severely injured in a fire fight), he was characterized as “chief of operations” for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s “number three” with the assumption that he was the main 9/11 planner. He wasn’t of course—that was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But he would go on to be the first captive to be water boarded and tortured at CIA black sites.

As an interesting aside: after 9/11, many would report that Abu Zubaydah made a mistake and said in an intercepted telephone call that “the grooms are ready for the big wedding,” a tip-off which U.S. intelligence had already determined was a reference to an attack. (The Cell, p. 214) The 9/11 Commission reported, though, that Zubaydah actually said “the time for training is over.” (9/11 Commission, pp. 174–175).

Somehow then—and even now—terrorism experts think it is effective to stress that al Qaeda operatives make mistakes, or they don’t understand Islam, or were “failures”—such as that the Hamburg Three did poorly in pilot training—to delegitimize when none of those things seem to make a bit of difference in their ability and willingness to continue to attack. Nor do they dissuade others from joining their ranks.

2 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The 24/7 millennium threat surge begins at the CIA and throughout the intelligence community. The threat of a terrorist attack over the millennium celebrations, together with any threats associated with the Y2K computer rollover, become the top priority for the entire intelligence community.

The CIA creates an elaborate disruption campaign against al Qaeda and other cells of terrorists, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, and indeed Jordanian officials arrested a number of terrorists linked to al Qaeda.

Between November and the millennium, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and other elements of the government’s counter-terror apparatus worked overtime and on supplemental budgets, both of which would have profound effects later on activities in 2000 as more secure funding was sought and the primary counter-terrorism personnel adjusted to “normal” schedules.

Did the millennium itself justify the resources? And did the government pay the price for its focus on stopping a single terrorist strike (and then relaxing once it did)? One will never know, but the effect of anniversary warnings—whether it be July 4th before 9/11, or September 11th—ever since has served to focus more attention on tactical and short-term interdiction rather than the big picture.