Tag: Osama bin Laden

14 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

 

A year before 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is appointed head of all media operations for al Qaeda. Between then and the attacks, he works with London and other Arab-based media in transmitting statements and distributing videos and cassettes.

The 34-year-old Pakistani national, who was raised in Kuwait and went to college in the United States, was by then an experienced operator for Osama bin Laden, having worked in Islamic aid organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan during and after the Soviet occupation and then playing a hand in various plots, including the 1998 African embassy bombings.

Though indicted for terrorist conspiracy in 1996 by the Southern District of New York (for a plot to blow up American airliners over the Pacific), and even after a failed rendition attempt by the FBI, he is not a household-name terrorist, not even amongst CIA analysts, FBI investigators, or experts. And yet he is now universally accepted to have been the conceiver of the airline plot and the “teacher” of the Hamburg Three (Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah) with regard to operational security and preparing their year-and-a-half long preparations in the United States.

8 October 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The State Department first designates al Qaeda (al-Qa’ida) a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the first new such designation of an organization since the list was created two years earlier. It says: “Al-Qaida, led by Usama bin Ladin [sic], was added because it is responsible for several major terrorist attacks, including the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.”

The FTO designation was created after the Oklahoma City domestic bombing (in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) to combat the possibility, as stated by the Congress, that “foreign terrorist organizations, acting through affiliated groups or individuals, raise significant funds within the United States, or use the United States as a conduit for the receipt of funds raised in other nations.”

The initial FTO list was issued in 1997 included 30 organizations, but not al Qaeda. Why it was not included in the original 30 organizations has to do with a formal processes and arcane criteria and definitions that result in a mix of organizations (including, for instance, the IRA) being listed as FTOs.

3 October 1993

Posted on by William Arkin
Black Hawk Down

 

In two days of fighting in urban Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 U.S. Army special operations personnel (Rangers and Delta Force operators) die and over 70 are wounded in a failed raid to capture warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. Some 500 Somalis also die in two days of fighting, and three Black Hawk helicopters are lost.

Many would later say that the Pentagon, under Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, was responsible for the incident, denying earlier military requests for additional equipment and then failing to provide backup as the disaster unfolded. Though the Clinton administration inherited the failed Somalia “peacekeeping” operation from the George H.W. Bush administration, Aspin would later admit that he made a mistake in not providing more support for U.S. forces there, and he offered his resignation in December as a result of his decision-making here, after less than a year as secretary.

It was only much later that al Qaeda’s involvement in Somalia was understood. It is now generally agreed that al Qaeda operatives “trained” Somali militia (though what substantive aid they provided is unclear). Osama bin Laden later takes credit for the American deaths and though that is an exaggeration, there is no question that the subsequent U.S. withdrawal influenced al Qaeda views of American weakness.

Mark Bowden’s account of the raid, Black Hawk Down, was a bestselling book and 2001 movie

2 October 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The CIA readies an operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, secretly training and equipping approximately 60 military commandos supplied by the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) establishment.

The covert action, approved by President Clinton, includes a quid pro quo, that Pakistan would train and prepare the commandos and conduct the operation, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed with Pakistan’s nuclear testing.

The plan is briefed and supposedly ready to go, but it is then aborted because on October 12, Pakistan Army General Pervez Musharraf takes control of the country in a military coup. Most would later say that no ISI-sponsored operation would have been successful given that the organization was filled with Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.

30 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Predator RQ-1 drone

 

The Taliban issue a press statement saying that an unknown aircraft was seen over Kandahar. CIA-operated Predator drones had started flights over Afghanistan on September 7, flying from an airfield in Uzbekistan.

The satellite-equipped, bulbous-nosed RQ-1 Predator (an enhanced version of the CIA’s Gnat-750) was a newer innovation that allowed the drone to fly beyond the line of sight of ground stations controlling the drones. A year after the satellite-version was introduced, the drone made its first combat debut in hostile airspace, flying near-daily reconnaissance missions over former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Kosovo), then flying from an airfield in Albania.

In December 1998, the CIA first proposed a covert action to use an armed Predator to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Director George Tenet thought the program too risky to be approved on his authority alone and he brought it before the NSC for discussion. The Council gave a go-ahead for development of the capability, but the White House decided to retain control over authorizations for any lethal strikes. Predator development continued to move forward. Flights over Afghanistan are only occasional in September 2000 as the testing program to fire a Hellfire missile from the drone moves forward under Air Force aegis in Nevada. Despite the conclusion that the Predator spotted bin Laden in its first flights (see September 28), the 12-flight covert action is terminated before the end of the year. Predators would not return to the skies of Afghanistan until after 9/11.

29 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Rifa'i Ahmed Taha

 

Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Rifa’i Ahmed Taha appear on Al Jazeera with the son of Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian “the blind Sheikh,” calling for his release from American prison. The Blind Sheikh’s 1995 trial involved a group of New York-based terrorists in the so-called “Landmarks” case (or the “Days of Terror”), plans to blow up the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and other New York landmarks. The Egyptian was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison under the rarely used Sedition Act of 1918.

The Al Jazeera video, aired numerous times starting on September 21, is believed to have been filmed sometime in the spring of 2000. It includes a direct warning by Zawahiri. “Enough of words,” he says, “it is time to take action against the iniquitous and faithless force which has spread troops through Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.”

By 2000, the al Qaeda leader and the two leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)—Zawahiri and Taha—are practically joined as one, and the leadership of al Qaeda is dominated by Egyptians. But bin Laden’s influence should not be underestimated. By all accounts, he was successful in getting Zawahiri and the EIJ to focus away from attacks on the Cairo regime and more on international (that is, American) targets. Two weeks after Al Jazeera airs this video, the Navy destroyer USS Cole is attacked in Yemen.

Zawahiri would go on to lead the last remnants of al Qaeda with the killing of bin Laden in 2011. Taha was reported killed in a US drone strike in Syria in 2016.

28 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Tarnak Farm

 

A mythical pre-9/11 event gains traction, after the first two missions of an unarmed Predator reconnaissance drone are flown over Afghanistan on September 7 and 8. In review of the videos of the flights, the CIA comes to believe that Predator drones captured images of Osama bin Laden, “a tall man dressed in white robes,” during the overflights.

The 9/11 commission says that the conclusion was made after-the-fact. The drone imaged Tarnak Farms in Kandahar, a former Soviet agricultural collective taken over by al Qaeda. “A group of 10 people gathered around him [the tall man] were apparently paying their respects for a minute or two,” the report says.

CIA director George Tenet sends the video to the White House. White House terrorism specialist Richard Clarke wrote to national security advisor Sandy Berger that there was a “very high probability” bin Laden had been located. President Clinton is then shown the video. It is a mythical event, and not provable one way or another; bin Laden is never to be sighted again in Afghanistan, not before or after 9/11. The lore associated with locating bin Laden fed acceleration of an armed version of the Predator drone and a year of covert action to come up with various schemes to capture or assassinate him while at his Tarnak Farms residence east of the city.

22 September 1998

Posted on by William Arkin
Mullah Omar: Qandahar centric; controls military and funds; close ties to UBL and ISID; increasingly suspicious of Rabbani's supporters; key supporters—Foreigh Minister, Governor of Herat, Governor of Mazar-e Sharif

 

Three years before 9/11, the Taliban diplomatic envoy is expelled from Saudi Arabia over the refusal of the government in Kandahar to hand over Osama Bin Laden.

After the African embassy bombings in August 1998, Washington sought Saudi Arabia’s help in forging a break between the Taliban and bin Laden, specifically in getting Mullah Omar to eject bin Laden from the country.

Prince Turki bin Faisal (also known as Turki al-Faisal)—head of Saudi intelligence and bin Laden’s earlier sponsor during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—went to Afghanistan to meet with Omar, head of the Taliban. The meeting is the stuff of legend, the powerful Saudi prince being not just rebuffed and insulted, but treated with less than princely dignity, and leaving in a swirl of robes.

When the Taliban ambassador was expelled from Riyadh, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah happened to be in the United States on a visit and met at the White House with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. He reported on the earlier Turki visit to Afghanistan and expressed Saudi frustration with the unorthodox regime. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t formally break off diplomatic relations with the Taliban until September 25, 2001.

14 September 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The United States formally warns the fledgling Taliban regime in Afghanistan (through a diplomatic demarche) that it will hold it responsible for any terrorist attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda—that is, so long as the Taliban continues to provide sanctuary to the group and to Osama bin Laden.

The government in Sudan receives similar warnings.

A month after the twin attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan William Milam meets with Taliban representatives. They tell him that it “against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Ladin [sic] should he be sent to Saudi Arabia.” (911 Commission Report, p. 121) It is neither the first nor the last overtures to the Taliban regime regarding bin Laden. In fact, quite astoundingly, we are still negotiating with them today, despite a 20-year war in Afghanistan.

12 September 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Osama bin Laden

 

Osama bin Laden, an obscure 37-year-old ideologue from Saudi Arabia, began to write a series of open letters as “The Committee for Advice and Reform” to then-King Fahd, to prominent princes and religious figures in the country, and to “the people of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.”

The publicly-shared letters, written between 1994 and 1998, begin to express bin Laden’s worldview and radicalism, first in publicly speaking out about the situation in Saudi Arabia, and second, in laying out a set of grievances that prevent Arab fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan from returning to their home countries (with the end of the Soviet occupation).

Seven years before 9/11, bin Laden talks of the insults and “apostasy” of American military forces deployed to Saudi Arabia after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and even accuses King Fahd of “wearing a cross.” He addresses corruption in the country, the uneven application of Shariah law, what he claims are overtures and accommodations with Israel, and even the poor state of the Saudi armed forces, given how much money Saudi Arabia has spent on arms.

“The gulf crisis [the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait] revealed the lack of preparedness, the need for [foreign] troops, and the ineptitude of its leadership. All of these shortcomings exist in spite of the astronomical amounts that have been spent on the military,” bin Laden wrote—all accurate portrayals and a reality that persists to this day as demonstrated in the disastrous Saudi-run war in Yemen.

“The regime also imported Christian women to defend it, thereby placing the army in the highest degree of shame, disgrace, and frustration,” bin Laden wrote, references to his own brand of fundamental Islam—what would become central to al Qaeda ideology.

The letters are rhetorical, inflammatory, and inaccurate to the Western reader but also a clear indictment of the family Saud and other Arab rulers. The letters in many ways are as erroneous as they are prescient in laying out bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s grievances, but they are also so obscure in their focus and references that they were hardly noticed in the West. They form a rich source, and yet were little known, even after al Qaeda’s early attacks on America, certainly a missed opportunity to understand what drove so many to take up arms in this new brand of international and anti-American terrorism.