Tag: Mohammed Atef

29 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Khalden terrorist training camp

 

Mohammed Atta travels from Hamburg, Germany to Karachi, Pakistan via Istanbul, spending the night in Turkey. Despite the African embassy bombings in August 1998, American military retaliation, and CIA covert operations, he and his compatriots have no trouble reaching Afghanistan.

Atta is already the leader of the Hamburg Four, and together with Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh, they travel to Kandahar and then on to Khalden camp, where they meet with the al Qaeda operational commander Abu Hafs (Mohammed Atef) and Osama bin Laden. Abu Hafs spotted them immediately as special, according to various accounts, especially the three who would go on to pilot the 9/11 planes (Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah). They were educated, had technical skills, could speak English, and had learned how to live in the West. They also came from countries—Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates—where they wouldn’t have trouble obtaining U.S. visas. By the time they leave Afghanistan, they have their broad assignments.

4 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda lieutenants are indicted in the Southern District of New York.

The unsealed indictment, resulting from the African embassy bombings, included bin Laden; al Qaeda operational chief Mohammed Atef; Wadih El Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (also known as Harun Fazul); Mohamed Sadiq Odeh; and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali. Both bin Laden and Atef are added to the Department of State Rewards Program.

The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hizballah. The original sealed indictment, according to the 9/11 Commission (p. 128) had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” Interestingly, this language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq was dropped from the final indictment filed in November 1998.

Upon the indictment, a threat advisory was sent by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) headquarters to all immigration inspectors at ports of entry. It warned of possible infiltration into the United States by radical Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to bin Laden. It calls for “hard” inspections of certain visitors from Middle Eastern countries. It seems to have no effect whatsoever.

CIA director George Tenet would later write: “I can’t imagine this fazed him in the least since he was living comfortably in his Afghan sanctuary.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 109)

12 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
The bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen

 

In Aden, a small bomb-laden boat approaches the destroyer USS Cole at midship and the two suicide bombers detonate their explosives, killing 17 sailors and injuring at least 40 others.

The destroyer, en route to the Persian Gulf, was making a prearranged fuel stop, part of a Central Command (CENTCOM) initiative to improve relations with the Yemen government. The blast ripped a hole in the side of the USS Cole approximately 40 feet in diameter. The attack occurs without warning, and the Navy vessel was never warned to expect a terrorist attack.

The subsequent FBI investigation revealed that the USS Cole bombing followed an unsuccessful attempt on January 3, 2000, to bomb another U.S. Navy ship, the USS The Sullivans. In this earlier incident, the boat sank before the explosives could be detonated. The boat and the explosives were salvaged and refitted, and the explosives were tested and reused in the USS Cole attack.

The “story” of the aftermath, favorable to a supposedly do-no-wrong FBI, is later told in Lawrence Wright’s Looming Tower, and the attack becomes an emotional debating point in the Bush-Gore presidential election. The outgoing Clinton administration is reluctant to retaliate against al Qaeda—the clear perpetrator—because an election is just a month away. But the Bush administration also does not take any military action, told by the CIA that it did not have enough “proof” of al Qaeda direction.

Yemeni authorities establish that Tawfiq bin-Atash (known as Khallad), who had been a trainer at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and worked as an Osama bin Laden bodyguard, was not only one of the commanders but that he had been present at the January 2000 meeting of al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia. Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, the San Diego duo who would go on to be “musclemen” on 9/11, were also present.

According to the 911 Commission Report (p. 191), back in Afghanistan, bin Laden anticipated U.S. military retaliation and ordered the evacuation of al Qaeda installations, fleeing to the desert area near Kabul, then to Khowst and Jalalabad, and eventually back to Kandahar. In Kandahar, he rotated between five to six residences, spending one night at each residence. In addition, he sent his senior advisor, Mohammed Atef, to a different part of Kandahar and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Kabul so that all three could not be killed in one attack.

In writing his autobiography, George Tenet says that “neither our intelligence nor the FBI’s criminal investigation could conclusively prove that Usama bin Ladin and his leadership had had authority, direction, and control over the attack. This is a high threshold to cross… What’s important from our perspective at CIA is that the FBI investigation had taken primacy in getting to the bottom of the matter.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 128).