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Top 1715. May 12, 2002 11:50 AM

» Steven_Russell - new arms cache under a bush destroyed Sun. morn, Day 218

New Afghan arms cache found

12may02

BAGRAM AIR BASE: British-led coalition forces have made another major weapons discovery in an operation to hunt down al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan, a spokesman said today.

Colonel Ben Curry said the cache had been discovered yesterday around four kilometres south of a cave complex where British troops discovered 20 truckloads of ammunition and weaponry two days earlier.

Bomb disposal experts blew most of that cache up and handed over the rest to the Afghan interim administration.

The newly discovered arms dump "contained approximately 60 107mm rockets, 100 82mm mortar rounds and 12 boxes of 12.7mm heavy-machine-gun ammunition", Curry said.

"This cache was destroyed this morning by a bomb disposal team.

"The thing that alerted us most about this cache was its position. It appeared to be hastily positioned, literally underneath a bush, which I would suggest would make it either a ready-use cache or something that someone ditched while they were moving rapidly away."

Curry said that weapons had also been found near a major road in eastern Afghanistan.

"A culvert under the main Khost to Gardez road contained a few RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) rounds and some small-arms ammunition. These munitions were destroyed in a controlled demolition."

The British-led Operation Snipe entered its 15th day today and Curry said around 80 to 85 per cent of the target area in southeastern Afghanistan had now been covered by the 1000-odd troops taking part.

There had still been no contact with opposition fighters, he said, but "the search for AQT (al-Qaeda/Taliban) personnel, assets and infrastructure continues".

Curry added that the forces had experienced no hostility from locals during the operation and had even been offered tea and bread.

Agence France-Presse

-- posted by Steven_Russell

<img src="http://www.suite101.com/files/mysites/jen12/defense2002-cover.gif" width=204 height=228 align="left">Spreading the Wealth

Top 1716. May 12, 2002 10:35 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: The New Arsenal

More on Defence Spending Report in WSJ:

Small and midsize companies across the country see homeland security as their way to get a piece of the Pentagon pie

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

Eighteen months ago, Versar Inc., a small environmental and counterterrorism consulting company in Springfield, Va., started an effort to quadruple its laboratory space by 2004.

Those plans, like so much else, were thrown into disarray by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that left people all over the country feeling suddenly vulnerable to bioterrorism.

Now, with lawmakers weighing President Bush's call for tens of billions of dollars in imminent homeland-defense spending -- and even greater amounts on the horizon -- Versar is racing to make sure it gets a piece of the pie. Construction crews have been working round-the-clock to complete the building project far earlier than planned. The new facility, capable of testing for anthrax, smallpox and other agents, is expected to be operational by early April.

"We're seeing the beginnings of a ramp-up in homeland-defense spending the likes of which this country has never seen," says James Dobbs, Versar's general counsel and vice president. "There is an absolutely tremendous amount of money that will be spent on this now that you have an entire country -- and an entire government -- focused on homeland security." In addition to federal outlays, state and local governments are expected to spend heavily to better prepare for emergencies.

Indeed, the impact of the next big defense boom will extend well beyond such large contractors as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. Across the country, thousands of small and midsize companies are dusting off old domestic-security proposals and developing new ones in an attempt to cash in on what they hope will ultimately be hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on homeland security.

For example, Air Structures Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., is trying to convince government officials that fortified versions of its vinyl domes would be ideal for quarantining Americans infected with diseases like smallpox after a bioterror attack. PointSource Technologies LLC of Escondido, Calif., is hoping to win a government contract for a sensor it is developing that the company says will be able to detect biological agents in the air or water. And Siebel Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., is pitching its consumer-information tracking software to the federal government as a way of tracking potential terrorists.

'Tip of the Iceberg'

The companies have reason to be optimistic. The Bush administration's budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 calls for a record $37.7 billion in homeland-defense spending, almost double the level in the current fiscal year. The biggest winners would include the government agencies devoted to aviation security, whose funding would more than triple to $4.8 billion from $1.5 billion, and those defending against biological terrorism, whose funding would more than quadruple, to $5.9 billion from $1.4 billion. Support for local "first responders" to disasters, including police and firefighters, would skyrocket to $3.5 billion from $300 million.

The final numbers for the coming fiscal year could be higher. The budget is in the hands of lawmakers in both houses of Congress, and with polls showing domestic security is a top concern among voters this election year, many observers expect Capitol Hill to open the government spigot even wider.

Either way, the Bush administration is almost certain to call for even bigger budget increases in subsequent years. The White House Office of Homeland Security, led by Tom Ridge, is working on a strategic plan that will contain new spending initiatives and budget increases, officials say. The report will be released later this year.

"Companies will do well this year, but the real windfall lies down the road," says Phil Anderson, the head of the homeland-security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. "We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg."

That prospect has brought executives from hundreds of companies to Washington in recent months to pitch their wares.

In late February, Rep. Gil Gutknecht held a "Technology and Terrorism" session on Capitol Hill that featured demonstrations of biometric technologies -- which record an individual's unique physical traits, such as handprints and facial features -- from companies like Visionics Corp. of Minnetonka, Minn., and biological and chemical detection hardware from Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. of St. Paul, Minn.

Traditional defense contractors are also trying to get a piece of the action. Some, such as industry giant Raytheon Co. of Lexington, Mass., have gone so far as to appoint their own homeland-security directors, charged with leading their efforts to win lucrative government contracts.

New Tricks

Large companies like Raytheon are trying to persuade governments that technologies and hardware developed with an eye toward military engagements on distant shores can also be used to defend the U.S. against terrorism.

"We feel that many of our products and technologies can easily migrate from the military world to the homeland-security arena," says Raytheon spokesman David Shea, though he acknowledges that marketing products to state and local governments has been a difficult adjustment for the military contractor. "These are new markets for us," he says. "It's simply not our usual way of doing business."

Still, the company has high hopes that several of its military offerings will have wide appeal for state and local government officials. The company is pitching products like hand-held thermal-imaging devices, developed for the military, that firefighters can use to see through haze or into collapsed buildings.

Raytheon officials also have high hopes for sport-utility vehicles the company is outfitting with advanced computers and communications equipment that would help first responders to the scene of a large-scale terrorist attack to track and direct police, fire and medical personnel. The company demonstrated the trucks' capabilities earlier this month at a training exercise that featured local and regional police, firefighters and paramedics in a small town in Oklahoma, where memories of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building have been sharpened by recent events.

Meanwhile, officials of Science Applications International Corp., San Diego, have told federal officials that the company's robots, originally developed for military use, could be used to help look for survivors in areas contaminated by biological or chemical weapons, or in disaster areas, like the World Trade Center site immediately after the buildings collapsed, that may be unsafe for human rescuers.

And officials of Northrop Grumman Corp., of Los Angeles, say some of their technology could be used in so-called smart cards that are difficult to forge and contain biometric and other personal identification information, as part of a national ID system for citizens or foreigners living in the country. The company also is pitching its military surveillance aircraft for use in patrolling the skies around nuclear facilities or other sensitive sites.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Mr. Ridge, says the Office of Homeland Security has been receiving a steadily increasing flow of corporate visitors trying to sell such products.

"There are some companies that have had these projects for a long time but are only aggressively pitching them now, and there are some that are developing entirely new ideas," he says. A team of policy analysts in the office reviews each submission with an eye toward identifying promising ideas or technologies worth forwarding to other agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"They can see that there's a large amount of money in this," Mr. Johndroe says. "It's a great business opportunity for them."

A look at Versar's finances shows just how big an opportunity it could be. Since Sept. 11, the company has rung up more than $2 million in revenue from anthrax tests for the federal government and dozens of companies in Washington and New York, where many of the anthrax cases occurred. Before the scare, the company had been making $20,000 a month from such testing.

New Contracts

Versar, which has worked with the Pentagon for more than 15 years on issues related to chemical warfare, recently signed a $260,000 contract to supply the Marine Corps with protective suits for its Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force. The company also recently signed a $250,000 contract with the U.S. Air Force Academy to conduct a terrorism vulnerability study for the institution's campus in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Versar has been working to sharply increase its supply of protective suits, gloves and hoods in anticipation of a flood of orders from hospitals and first responders. It has boosted its own production of such equipment while also trying to purchase as much as it can from outside suppliers, says Mr. Dobbs, the general counsel.

Versar, which recently bought the http://www.homelanddefense.com and http://www.homelanddefense.net Web addresses as a focus for its strategic shift, has begun bolstering the manpower at its consulting arm, which performs vulnerability studies and helps companies and governments implement initiatives designed to secure their facilities against terrorist threats.

The new homeland-security business already has boosted Versar's bottom line significantly. Earnings for the fourth quarter more than doubled from the year-earlier period to $661,000.

--Mr. Dreazen is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

Subscribe to WSJ & Barron's Online @ http://www.wsj.com

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 1717. May 12, 2002 11:10 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: The New Arsenal

More on Defense Spending on Old vs New from 5/20 Newsweek:

<img src="http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/98a2..." width=330 height=264 align="left">
The Crusader (top), a rolling, 40-ton artillery gun and the Global Hawk (below), the unmanned aerial vehicle that can reach an altitude of over 60,000 feet

Choose Your Weapons

Rumsfeld’s bid to kill the Crusader is the first step in his campaign to modernize the military-the opening shot in a long war with his own troops

By John Barry
NEWSWEEK

May 20 issue — George W. Bush never served in Congress, and he doesn’t feel especially at home around rank-and-file members. When he wants to charm or scold Capitol Hill, he tends to call on House and Senate leaders and let them spread the word. But when House Republicans started complaining in January that the president was skimping on the Defense budget, Bush quietly summoned members of the Armed Services Committee to the White House to clear the air.

SITTING AROUND THE CABINET Room table, Bush and Dick Cheney promised to make good on their campaign pledge to modernize the military with a new generation of advanced weapons—and said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would lead the way if Congress would only quit its carping. “You have to give Rumsfeld more freedom,” Cheney told them. “Dick’s right,” Bush cut in. “Let him do his job.” According to a White House official who was in the room, Bush told the lawmakers that Rumsfeld had his blessing to kill off aging or unneeded weapons programs to free up dollars for innovation. At the top of Rumsfeld’s hit list: the Crusader, an $11 billion big-gun program still in its infancy—and a favorite of several Capitol heavyweights. The meeting was over. But the showdown was just beginning.

As promised, last week Rumsfeld unceremoniously declared the Crusader dead. “Our country needs an Army that is mobile, lethal and deployable,” he said on Wednesday. Crusader critics complained the rolling, 40-ton artillery gun was a slow and heavy cold-war relic in an age of smaller-scale, mobile combat. Predictably, members of Congress—including many Republicans—were miffed, and are fighting the decision. “The Defense Department is afflicted with hubris,” says one Senate Republican. “They are intoxicated by their success in the war on Afghanistan and don’t feel like they need to have much to do with Congress.”

It’s not the first time Rumsfeld has heard a comment like that. His prickly, impatient manner has made him plenty of enemies in Washington. Before September 11, Rumsfeld’s combative stewardship of the Pentagon provoked so much criticism that officials speculated he would be the first cabinet secretary to quit. But after the terrorist attacks, that same imperious style made Rumsfeld an unlikely wartime celebrity among the public, which saw him as tough and plain-spoken. Now Rumsfeld intends to use his new clout to push the Pentagon and Congress to overhaul the armed forces.

TOUGH OPPOSITION

Of course, every Defense secretary in memory has made a similar pledge, with less than impressive results. Rumsfeld has an advantage: the backing of a popular wartime president. But he will face much tougher opposition when, as he plans, he goes after more entrenched weapons systems, especially sacred combat aircraft. As one top Senate aide put it, “The Crusader is the low-hanging fruit.”

The Crusader fight is at least in part about a cautious Army clinging to what it knows best: heavy tanks and big guns. (In a bit of Beltway intrigue, the Army was caught lobbying for the program on Capitol Hill—at least until Rumsfeld got wind of it, and a mid-level aide to Army Secretary Tom White obligingly resigned.) And it is certainly about the time-honored practice of congressmen fighting to protect lucrative military contracts in their home states. The Crusader’s strongest backers, Rep. J. C. Watts and Senators Jim Inhofe and Don Nickles, all Republicans, are from Oklahoma, where the gun would have been built.

But the Army wanted Crusader for another reason: Rumsfeld’s still-evolving ideas about the likely shape of future wars have left it uncertain about its mission. Last year Rumsfeld downgraded the “two major-theater wars” scenario that has structured the military since the end of the cold war, and asked the Pentagon to focus on new threats as well. But the military is still waiting for the civilians at Defense to spell out just what that means. Should war planners put their dollars into large-scale combat or small? And do they have five years or 20 to prepare? Unsure of the answer, the brass opted to develop a wide range of weapons.

First conceived in 1994—in response to the gulf war, not the cold war—the Crusader would clip along at up to 40 miles per hour, pausing to fire rocket-propelled shells at targets more than 25 miles away. In short, it would be useful in large-scale battlefield fighting, a kind of war that currently seems unfashionable but may be necessary in the future (think Iraq).

Rumsfeld is convinced that the war in Afghanistan shows the new way the military must fight. Not with a traditional Desert Storm buildup, but using precision strike weapons—guided by only a handful of U.S. forces on the ground. In that scenario, the Crusader would be utterly out of place. Rumsfeld wants to spend the Crusader’s dollars to fund what he sees as weapons of the future, like Global Hawk and Predator, the high-flying drones used effectively in Afghanistan. To replace Crusader, his team is looking at Excalibur, a satellite-guided shell with great accuracy. Looking further out, the Army is doing concept studies on a new family of light, fast combat vehicles.

Rumsfeld’s also girding for mightier bureaucratic battles to come. Last week his acquisitions chief warned that other popular new systems, including the Marine Corps’s tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, could be canceled unless its technical glitches are fixed. And Rumsfeld has ordered the Air Force to look at cutting by half its order of the short-range F-22. The Crusader’s backers on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, aren’t quite ready to give up. Late last week the House passed a bill that would keep the gun alive at least until next year, giving the Army time to complete an analysis of possible alternatives. The Senate might pass a similar delay, says one Armed Services staffer. Not because anyone thinks it’ll help save the weapon—but “to teach Rumsfeld to mind his manners.”

With Tamara Lipper and Eleanor Clift in Washington

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/s...

Top 1718. May 13, 2002 6:53 PM

» Steven_Russell - firefight 50 km north of Kandahar, Sun., eve., Day 218

thanks Jen. damn arrogant politicians.

Monday, 13 May, 2002, 18:58 GMT 19:58 UK

US forces in Afghan gun battle

Allied forces are still searching the region

US special forces have killed five people in a gunfight north of the Afghan city of Kandahar, the Pentagon has said.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US troops were fired on when they launched a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda or Taleban compound.

It is the first reported encounter between coalition and opposing forces in weeks.

There were no American casualties, Mr Rumsfeld said.

US Marine Captain Steven O'Connor said the special forces team was shot at as it approached the compound on Sunday evening. The team then returned fire.

"Five of those individuals in the compound fired on the US personnel so we returned fire and killed the five and took 32 detainees," he said.

He said the compound at Dehrawd, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the former Taleban stronghold of Kandahar, was a suspected sanctuary for senior al-Qaeda and Taleban personnel.

Mr Rumsfeld said the coalition sweeps for Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters were continuing and would continue.

Recent operations by US, Canadian and British forces had not come across any resistance, he said, although they had uncovered what he described as "non-trivial" caches of weapons.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/s...

Top 1719. May 13, 2002 6:59 PM

» Steven_Russell - July 4 nuke attack plot

Terrorists plan nuke attack 'for July 4'

Publication Date: 13 May 2002

ISLAMIC terrorists are planning an attack on a US nuclear power plant to coincide with the July 4 Independence Day celebrations, it was reported today.

US intelligence sources told the Washington Post that they were taking the threat seriously.

The claims coincide with other recent reports that two al-Qaida terrorists are planning an attack in the US using radioactive material in a conventional bomb.

The paper said the threat indicated that an unidentified Islamic terrorist group is planning to attack Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear facility, or another nuclear facility in the north east.

News of the plan followed earlier intelligence obtained from Abu Zubaydah (31), who was captured on March 28.

Zubaydah is considered a key lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and the organiser of terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan.

The detained al-Qaida operations chief revealed that two of his terrorists were planning an attack.

But some doubt has been cast on the Zubaydah claims.

"He seems to be supplying some good information to enhance his credibility," said one official. "On the other hand, it could be part of a larger deception effort."

-- posted by Steven_Russell

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/s...

Top 1720. May 13, 2002 7:06 PM

» Steven_Russell - rocket attack on Brit Marines foiled at Gardez

Monday, 13 May, 2002, 07:49 GMT 08:49 UK

Marines targeted by al-Qaeda rockets

Royal Marines in eastern Afghanistan have been the target of an attempted rocket attack.
Two rockets, on crude self-timers, were aimed at the operating base of British troops in mountains near Gardez, in the Paktia province.

The rockets were set to fire when water had emptied from containers.

The attempt was foiled after a local warlord, Sherzaz, discovered the 107mm rockets 7km (4 miles) southeast of the marines' base and informed British troops.

Marines say it is possible it was al-Qaeda or Taleban fighters still left in the area and not found by Operation Snipe.

Marine Lieutenant Colonel Ben Curry said the warlord's motives for informing the Marines about the rockets are unclear.

He could have had a genuine concern for the welfare of the British commandos or might have been trying to curry favour, he said.

It is the first time during Operation Snipe that British forces have been aware of being targeted.

British commanders say the rockets were not accurately aimed and may not have hit the marines' position if fired, but they described the discovery as significant.

Lieutenant Colonel Curry said the rockets were wired to a timer to allow the assailants to escape before they exploded.

"[The timer] was dripping. It's a serious incident," he said.

"I'm not saying they would have actually landed on the forward operating base because it's a fairly inaccurate weapons system."

The operating base is the centre for re-supplying the troops in the mountains and refuelling the helicopters which carry them.

It is also a staging post for the marines and some were passing through the position on their way back to the headquarters in Bagram.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 1721. May 13, 2002 9:08 PM

» JenL_2 - Ahmed Abdel Sattar - US postal worker

From the report above on Indictment of Lynne Stewart, attorney for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman for acting as his messenger to terrorist groups:

Two of her co-defendants — Mohammed Yousry, 45, who accompanied Stewart as an Arab-speaking interpreter when she visited Abdel-Rahman in prison, and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 42, a postal worker described as a “surrogate” for Abdel-Rahman — also pleaded not guilty. The third co-defendant, Yassir Al-Sirri, former head of the London-based Islamic Observation Center, is in British custody on previous charges.

But the plot becomes even more convoluted ......this report on Ahmed Abdel Sattar, accused surrogate for the blind Sheik and his involvement in the assassination of Gen. Ahmed Shah Massoud.... from 5/13 Washington Post & published at MSNBC.com:

<img src="http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/3551..." width=130 height=170 align="left">Ahmed Abdel Sattar, in a July 1993 file photo

New clue in Afghan leader’s assassination

U.S. postal worker’s letter tied to Massoud slaying

By Steve Fainaru and Brooke A. Masters
THE WASHINGTON POST

Authorities believe a U.S. postal employee in custody here helped draft a letter of introduction that may have been used by two men who posed as journalists to assassinate a leading opposition figure in Afghanistan last fall, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case.

A SUMMER 2001 conversation about the letter allegedly surfaced in hundreds of hours of wiretaps involving Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 42, the official said. Authorities charged last month that Sattar had served as the New York-based “communications center” for an Egyptian terrorist group directed by a blind Muslim cleric from his U.S. prison cell.

Sattar has not been charged with involvement in the Sept. 9 slaying of Gen. Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, which long fought the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the Egyptian national who allegedly drafted the letter with Sattar, Yassir Sirri, has been charged in London with conspiring to murder Massoud. Sirri has denied involvement.

The U.S. official said authorities remain uncertain whether Sattar knew the letter would be used in the attack on Massoud, which took place in Northern Afghanistan two days before the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on Washington and New York.

“It’s clear that this was a letter for these two guys,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “But how much Sattar knew about the mission isn’t clear.”

MAXIMUM SECURITY

Sattar’s lawyer, Kenneth A. Paul, declined to comment, citing a court order that prohibits him from discussing specific evidence. Sattar, he said, is being held in a maximum security unit at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, and has been permitted neither a family visit nor a phone call since his arrest.

The conversation about the letter, first reported in the New York Post, adds another dimension to the case against Sattar, who was described in last month’s indictment as “a surrogate” for the imprisoned cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up several New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center.

Sattar’s arrest was overshadowed by charges filed the same day against Abdel-Rahman’s lawyer, Lynne F. Stewart, but authorities regard Sattar as potentially more important to the ongoing federal terrorism probe. (A translator, Mohammed Yousry, also was arrested in the alleged conspiracyto provide material support to a terrorist organization. Sirri was indicted but was already in custody.)

Authorities believe the case of Sattar, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came here from Egypt in 1982, provides a window on the domestic activity of global terror networks and a way to understand the relationships between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization and other extremist groups such as Abdel-Rahman’s Gama’a al-Islamiyya, or the Islamic Group. Satar has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Sattar arranged contacts with global terrorists, disseminated propaganda and helped prepare at least one fatwa, or religious edict, that offered a moral rationale for committing violent acts, the indictment alleged. “He was the IG’s [Islamic Group’s] point man in North America,” said the federal official. “He served as a communications facility for their worldwide network. He’s very important.”

ACCESS TO SECURE AREAS OF JFK

Friends and family of Sattar said they are anxious to hear what the tapes reveal. Up to now, they said, the charges make little sense given the U.S. government’s approach to Sattar over the past decade. On more than one occasion, the FBI tried unsuccessfully to recruit Sattar as an informant, his wife, Lisa, says.

Until 1997, Sattar had government clearance as a paralegal to visit Abdel-Rahman in federal prisons. Even as the government was tapping his phone, Sattar, a 13-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, was drawing a $40,000 salary for a job with the main post office on Staten Island that included picking up priority mail from secure areas of John F. Kennedy International Airport. That job ended when he was abruptly transferred to a desk job at a remote branch on Staten Island after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“This is what I don’t understand: If he was a suspect for this long, why did they let him go here and here and here and here?” asked Mohamed Nabeel Elmasry, a close friend of Sattar’s who worked with him as a paralegal on Abdel-Rahman’s defense team. “Why did they let him have access to all these sensitive areas?”

Authorities said they waited to arrest Sattar because of the vast amounts of information they were gathering — not just about him, but also about high-level members of the Islamic Group.

“It wasn’t just Sattar we were listening to,” the federal official said. “We were listening to everybody. It was a gold mine.”

Sattar, often described as soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, was in many ways quintessentially American. He lived in a three-bedroom apartment on Staten Island with his Chicago-born wife and their four children. He supplemented his income by selling baby formula at night.

In a used Plymouth Voyager, he took his family on post office picnics to Six Flags in New Jersey and to historic sites in Washington and Philadelphia. He went to ballgames at Yankee Stadium and pounded stainless steel pots with his wife when the Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship.

‘THEY’VE GOT NOTHING’

A registered independent, he voted for Ralph Nader for president, his wife said.

Paul Phillips, president of Staten Island Branch 83 of the American Postal Workers Union, said Sattar recently told him, “I’ve got to be innocent, because the FBI has been following me for 10 years and they’ve got nothing.”

But even after Abdel-Rahman’s conviction, Sattar never hid his devotion to the cleric, or his views on U.S. policy. A frequent spokesman for the Islamic movement, he told “Frontline” in 1999 that he viewed the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as “part of a war” against Islam that had been “declared by the American government.” He called bin Laden “an inspiration” and said he had “sympathy for people who hate, or, let’s say . . . understanding of why people show their hate toward the United States.”

Phillips said copies of the “Frontline” interview circulated among employees of the Staten Island post office. Even before Sept. 11, he said, some colleagues shunned Sattar while others tried to engage him. “People who worked the closest with him had the least concern,” Phillips said. “He came across as a family guy who went to his mosque and did his job. If somebody needed a door opened or there was a woman on the other side of the counter who needed help with a package, he was always, ‘Oh, let me help you with that.’ You wanted to like him, but you always knew there was this other side.”

Authorities opened a wiretap on Sattar’s home phone under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to monitor suspected spies and agents of foreign terrorist organizations. Paul, Sattar’s lawyer, said evidence recently turned over to the defense suggests the wiretaps may go back as far as seven years.

According to Sattar’s indictment, an Islamic Group leader requested Sattar’s assistance in expanding the organization’s presence in the United States in early 1999. The group had taken responsibility in 1997 for a massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which 58 tourists and four Egyptian security officers were shot and hacked to death. Before fleeing, the assailants scattered leaflets demanding Abdel-Rahman’s release; one was inserted into the slashed corpse of a victim, according to Sattar’s indictment.

The indictment alleged several contacts between Sattar and the Islamic Group: In 1999, it said, Sattar held telephone conversations with a group leader, Rifa’i Taha Musa, debating the effectiveness of a cease-fire the organization had declared.

On Oct. 3, 2000, the indictment said, Musa called Sattar and discussed a fatwa that Musa had written in Abdel-Rahman’s name.

‘FIGHT THE JEWS’

The next day, Sattar allegedly called Sirri — the Egyptian charged in London with conspiracy to murder Massoud — and read him the edict, entitled “Fatwa Mandating the Bloodshed of Israelis Everywhere.” It appeared the next day on a Web site run by Sirri, according to the indictment.

The edict called on “brother scholars everywhere in the Muslim world to do their part and issue a unanimous fatwa that urges the Muslim nation to fight the Jews and to kill them wherever they are.”

In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that it had purchased a looted IBM desktop computer in Kabul that had apparently been used by leaders of al Qaeda. Among the documents on the computer’s hard drive was a letter written last May requesting an interview with Massoud.

The request, the Journal reported, carried the name of Yassir Sirri of the Islamic Observation Center in London. But the computer indicated it had been written by a user named Mohammed Zawahiri, a possible reference to bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri, according to the paper.

The U.S. official familiar with the recorded conversations between Sirri and Sattar said “at least one” was clearly about the contents of an interview request to be sent to Massoud. On the tape, the official said, the two men “can be heard discussing in some detail how to write such a letter and how it should read,” with Sattar commenting on certain passages.

Massoud was mortally wounded by a bomb hidden inside a television camera that was detonated during an interview. Many authorities believe the Sept. 9 assassination was a preemptive strike on the primary opposition leader in advance of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The U.S. official said there is no clear evidence linking Massoud’s slaying to Sept. 11, nor is there evidence suggesting that Sattar or Sirri had advance notice of those attacks. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, announcing the indictments of Sattar and the others on April 9, noted that the indictment did not include information related to Sept. 11 and said, “I think it’s safe to assume that there is not any that would be likely to be forthcoming.”

In an interview last week, Lisa Sattar said her husband was home sleeping on his day off when the first plane struck the World Trade Center. After she woke him up, they both sat transfixed. At first, she said, Sattar screamed for the safety of his children, who were already at school, then he merely stared.

“It was like someone turned him off,” she said. “It was like there was no more Ahmed. He was like a zombie. He wasn’t anything.”

After it became known that the suspected hijackers were Muslim, she said, Sattar told her: “Oh my God, that’s it. Do you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to live a life of hell.”

“He was right,” she said.

Sattar called work and said he was taking the rest of the week off for his safety. He told his family to stay in the apartment. When he returned to work the next week, according to Phillips, the union president, Sattar was asked by the postmaster to transfer to a remote location on Staten Island. He agreed.

“Two of the people that worked in his facility lost a brother or a son, and they felt that the emotions were very high,” Phillips said. Before the transfer, Phillips said, Sattar had picked up priority mail for Staten Island at a secure location at JFK airport twice a week, but Phillips said he did not believe Sattar was allowed out on the tarmac. A spokeswoman for the U.S. postal inspector did not return phone calls.

Lisa Sattar said the FBI had followed her husband for years. But after the Sept. 11 attack, agents became a constant presence, following him even as he drove the children on their paper route.

Asked whether she believed in her husband’s innocence, Lisa Sattar said: “They make it sound like he was running some kind of major operation out of my home. It’s very unlikely, really unlikely.” Among other things, she said, that would be illogical, because she and her husband believed for years that their phones were tapped.

On the morning of April 9, Sattar was summoned to the main Staten Island post office. He confidently told colleagues the meeting was to give him his old job back. Instead, he was arrested.

“Something doesn’t click here,” Lisa Sattar said. “All the clearances he had, and the way they waited. If there are conversations from 1999 and 2000, why wait so long? I don’t understand it.”

Staff researcher Margot Williams and staff writer Christine Haughney contributed to this report.

My oh my....hard to follow all the threads in that article....the blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman directing terrorist activity from his US jail cell - aided by his attorney Lynne Stewart, his translator Mohammed Yousry and surrogates, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Yassir Al-Sirri....the connection between Sattar & Sirri and the assassination of Gen. Ahmed Shah Massoud....and the evidence against them obtained from wire-taps and the al-Qaeda computer purchased by a WSJ journalist in Afghanistan.......OK Got That??......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Interview with Ahmed Sattar

Top 1722. May 13, 2002 10:15 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Ahmed Abdel Sattar - US postal worker

More on Ahmed Abdel Sattar...

from the article above...

OK - here's the 1999 Sattar Frontline interview at PBS.org...

An Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, Sattar acted as a paralegal for the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Al Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks in the mid-1990s. Sattar explains why many in the Islam world agree with bin Laden and oppose the United States - either violently or peacefully. Sattar also answers questions about bin Laden's Egyptian allies and their alleged connections to terrorist events.

In early April 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Sattar was one of four people indicted for providing material support to the Islamic Group, an Egyptian terrorist organization. Ashcroft said Sattar had served as a "surrogate" for Rahman. In the video except below from FRONTLINE's 1999 interview with Sattar, correspondent Lowell Bergman asks him if it's true, as the U.S. government says, that Sattar speaks "with two faces," never revealing the face of someone who is willing to commit or promote acts of terrorism.

Most Americans watch television and remember Anwar Sadat as Barbara Walters' friend, who smokes pipes, speaks very good English, and who seems very civilized. But to you, how did you feel when he was assassinated?

<img src="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/..." width=110 height=110 align="left">I felt good. It was a shock to me at first because I never expected the pharaoh to be assassinated in front of his army.

The pharaoh?

Sure, the pharaoh, yes. And but really, after absorbing the shock, I said, "Well, that was well done."

Because?

Because of what he did. What the Western mentality does not understand that your measurement is different ... your measurement of good and bad. Yes, President Sadat was a media star as what you said. Civilized, smoking a pipe, always referred to Barbara Walters as "my friend Barbara," and "my friend Carter," ... they were all his friends. But what did he do to the normal man in the slums of Cairo or in upper Egypt? He deceived them. When he signed the peace treaty with Israel, he promised, "This will be the end of suffering ... Things will change dramatically for the Egyptian people." He promised democracy, freedom, and people believed him.

And Mubarak is more of the same?

Mubarak I believe he is worse. Sadat was a smart man. Mubarak is just a puppet. A military man, he does not think. He just takes orders and does it.

Does what? Repress the people?

Repress the people. What he does, you know, it's not necessarily in the interest of the people as whole. And when I'm talking about people, I'm not talking only about Egyptian. Egyptian is just a part of the Islam world or Arab world. He's not farsighted, he's just a near sighted man. He thinks by obeying Americans or taking American orders and just run on those, and that will take him somewhere. And unfortunately, it is not getting him anywhere.

One of the things that we've noticed in trying to make sense of the embassy bombings and the bin Laden story is that there seems to be a number of Egyptians prominently involved. There are Egyptian allies within who stand next to him when he's on camera and makes his statements. Why? Where do they come from?

Egyptian opposition to the Egyptian regime. Egyptian opposition to American influence throughout the Islamic world. Egyptian opposition to American occupation of Muslim land.

American occupation of Muslim land? Where?

Saudi Arabia. Anywhere.

You've been here for sixteen years.

Yes.

... Why would some of your fellow Egyptians resort to violence against the government of Egypt?

To answer this question, we have to go back to what happened in Egypt in the past ... twenty-five, thirty years. ... Right after 1967 war, people were into identity crisis. Looking for their identity. [Nasser] told us that we are Arabs. He told us that we are Egyptian, the grandson and daughters of the pharaohs, the great people. ... I'm talking about the government here.

This is the Arab Nationalist government of Nasser?

Yes, of Nasser. You impose socialism on us. Sometimes some kind of communism, when your relationship was good with the Soviet Union. [Then later it became] "This is all wrong, so let's just put capitalism in effect." [But] this is all foreign ideas. This all imported ideas.

Socialism, capitalism...

Socialism, capitalism, communism. A man in the street, he does not understand what Marx said, or what Lenin said. But, you know, if you told him about what [Mohammed] said, he will totally understand and agree with you. So, why don't we try this? This was a trend in Egypt at this time. People started [to] resort to religion. . .

People were disillusioned with socialism, with communism, with capitalism, and they returned to the Muslim, Islamic roots that they came from.

Exactly, exactly. Now, [until] the mid '80s actually, it was very effective, with the whole Islamic activists were all over everywhere. And this posed a threat to the government of Egypt.

You were affected by this.

I was, definitely I was. As a younger man growing up in Egypt in the seventies ... in the '80s, looking around me, hav[ing] no hope in a country where I was born and raised, seeing things deteriorating to a level that will not be acceptable by anybody. There was no other way except [turning] to Islam ideology, to believe in it and to try to change things through it.

When you say in ways that no one would accept, what do you mean? Give me an example.

... People graduating college cannot find a job. Hundreds of thousands, even millions. People who reach the age of thirty, thirty-five cannot find an apartment to rent. Poverty was everywhere. Dictatorship.

Even though that Mubarak was ... preach[ing] democracy ... in reality there is no democracy whatsoever. ... Absolute dictatorship. With only difference that [the US is] giving him $2.8 billion a year [to] oppress the people more.

The United States gives $2.8 billion in our tax money?

Yes.

So, to the people who are involved, let's say with bin Laden, ... they feel the United States is the friend of their enemy.

Yes, they do. ... The American government has one enemy ... the Islamic movement all over the world, whether it's armed struggle or peaceful ... . I mean, you can see it. You can see it from Algeria to Afghanistan.

United States is at war.

Yes, to a certain extent, yes.

With Islam.

Yes, even though that President Clinton would say differently. But who believes him? He said he never had sex with Monica, so I mean, you want me to believe that he's not at war with Islam?

The World Trade Center, the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, are really part of a war?

Yes. I look at it, yes, it is a part of a war. A war declared by the American government. And some people try to react. And their reaction comes out sometimes as acts like this. The World Trade Center, or the embassy bombing in Nairobi and [the assassination of] Sadat. ...

You're going to see the same feeling everywhere in a Muslim country toward Americans right now. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, everywhere you go, you're going to have the same feeling that there is a war declared by the West on Islam, and in particular, the United States of America on Islam. And ... something has to be done about it. [The] reaction ... could be like the bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It could be some demonstrations in front of American embassies throughout the Islamic world that we saw before. Could be kidnapping of Americans.

In Yemen, for instance.

In Yemen, and let's not forget in Iraq. ... What bothers me really [is what has] happened to the relationship between America and the Islamic world. I remember as a kid in Cairo, 1973, when President Nixon came to visit Egypt for the first time. Thousands of people ... went out to greet him, and cheer him. ...

Because America was seen as hope?

America was seen as hope. America was seen as an oasis of democracy. ... It's preaching of freedom [of] religion, freedom of expression. [It was] the land of milk and honey to those people. People looked at you here, that you are the hope of the world. This picture, 25 years later, has changed dramatically. Now, the people, especially in the Arab and Islamic world, look at you the same way they look at the British and the French occupation forces in the mid-30s and '40s. You are an empire that will do anything to oppress people outside the United States borders.

How can you say that? When Iraq was going to invade Kuwait, a Muslim country, and Iraq threatened Saudi Arabia, we sent our troops to defend you.

Well, yes, we really appreciate it very much. You send your troops to defend us. Nobody asked for the American troops to go there. You went there to protect your own interest. You went there to protect some corrupted regimes that are working against their own people. You went there not to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and if you did, it would have been very, very nice of you. But you decided not to, so you can keep a foot and a hand into Syria. You did not go there for the people or for the Arabs or the Muslims. ... Why you didn't intervene in Kosovo where Muslims--not ethnic Albanians, this is not an ethnic Albanian thing, this is Christian crusaders against Muslim--when Muslims have been slaughtered like this? So, do not give me that you were there to protect the people. ... If you want to protect the regime of King Fahd, that's a different story. But your policy in this area has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the people.

To some people looking in, you would look ungrateful. We have our young people there in the middle of a desert in Saudi Arabia willing to give their lives. And you're saying you don't want them there.

No. We don't want them there. Get out. ... Leave us alone. ... For the longest time since 1991 'til now, [the US says], "We send our troops, we send our sons and daughters to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia. Once it's over, we will get out, once the threat is over, we'll get out." And you get on the other hand, some American officials like Defense Secretary Cohen, and Defense Secretary Cheney before him [saying] on American TV, "We will not get out as long as we have interest in this area." ... This is not a statement by helping force, this is a statement by an occupying force. ...

So, when bin Laden says these things, there are many people in the Islamic world who agree?

Absolutely. ...

When we were in the Sudan, Hussein al Turabi and other people said the reason the US can send cruise missiles to the Sudan, to Afghanistan, to Iraq is because the US government doesn't have to explain to its people that there are people who live here--"We're just dark skinned Muslims, we're not people to you."

True. ... To the average American on the street, they didn't care. It was like watching a movie. ... It was just like a video game, watching the smart bombs as they called them, going down from an airplane. ... It's like my kid, when he sits and plays a video game, he kills hundreds of people, and he does not get the sense of that he's doing anything wrong. Same thing ... . In the Gulf War, we took 250,000 people. And we did not feel ashamed of ourselves. That tells you that there's something is wrong here. Something morally wrong when you kill this many people, and you don't feel ashamed.

People listening will say the people who bombed the World Trade Center or Nairobi embassy killed or injured innocent people.

Yes.

Don't they feel ashamed?

I'm not going to say how the people who committed this act feel because I really don't know how they feel, okay? But what I am going to say ... [is] the World Trade Center bombing became an excuse ... to oppress Muslims here, at least in this country.

Yes, but this is a personal question. You are a Muslim, you have sympathy for the people who feel alienated from the United States. You feel some solidarity with the Islamic opposition [in Egypt]. When something like the World Trade Center happens, or the Nairobi bombing or the Dar es Salaam bombing, do you feel ashamed?

I will condemn it, and I did. Because you know, killing innocent people, it's not the way. Even though I might agree with your ideas of opposition and the principle. But killing innocent people is not going to be the solution. [In the] same way that I condemn the killing of Iraqi children, of Sudanese in the Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Company ... . Killing is killing, it doesn't matter where it happened. I will condemn it to the full extent.

When the US government says that the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam have been masterminded by a man named Osama bin Laden and his worldwide network--you're smiling...

I have a smile, because it seems like this is the same old story happening again, and again, and again. American government don't get it. ... The American government [is] deceiving the American people. They're not telling them what's really going on. You can kill Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow. You can arrest him and put him on trial in New York or in Washington. ... Tomorrow you will get somebody else, his name probably will be different, Abdullah, or Muhammad. ... It's not going to end. Until you, take a hard, and a good look at your policies in the Islamic world and the Muslim world, as long as you're supporting dictators like Mubarak ... as long as you are giving aid to regimes that [are worse] to their people than Saddam Hussein, things will get ugly, and you cannot control the emotion of people when you are tortured in Egyptian prison by an American trained Egyptian officer. He is torturing you, and he is bragging that he was in the United States getting his training, when the equipment that he is using is American made. ...

You've been close to the [Muslim] community here. Is there the feeling that bin Laden has a network of people? Or, is he just a symbol of an inspiration to these people?

I believe that he is just a single inspiration to people. I believe that you give him an image of an activist all over the world. You know, his network is working here, and his network is working there. And he will do this, and he will do that. He's the most dangerous man in the world ... .This is nonsense. The man is hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. And you're still making a big deal out of him.

Have we made him into sort of a folk hero?

I believe you did. ... Last year, if you asked the average man on the street of downtown Cairo ... who was the son of bin Laden, he would have not known. Now, ask a five or six year old, who's Osama bin Laden, they'll tell you exactly who is Osama bin Laden. He is our hero. This is how he is going to put it to you. A man, a single man is standing up to the only super power in the world. You made a hero out of him.

I sense you have some admiration for him.

I have an admiration for anybody who will stand up to a tyrant and tell him, "You are a tyrant" whether this tyrant [is a] man named [Mubarak] or [the] government of the United States of America.

Of course, he had some reputation in Saudi Arabia before because of his activities in the Afghan War.

Yes.

How important was the Afghan war to this movement of Islamic liberation?

It was very important. ... There [was] a Muslim country occupied by another power and thus the Muslim people who need[ed] ... help, and [the young people] flew there, and they fought side by side, and ... they put this idea into practice, that we are Muslims before anything else. ...

You're one religion, one country, one government, one society. The Afghan War put that into practice.

Put that into practice. So, people from all over the Arab world, especially the Arab world, went there and fought there side by side for the Afghanis. ... And that was a great thing. That gave them a sense of pride. "Well, we can do things. We can achieve things." ... The Afghan mujahedeen ... were fighting [an] occupying force, ... the Soviet Union, the second military power in the world, [and] some people ... were fighting with AK47s and some hand grenades, and defeated them. Nobody can imagine this. ... It was a dream come out to life. And why not do it somewhere else?

You mean, if you can defeat the evil empire. . .

Yes, if I can defeat the evil empire, I can defeat anybody else. ...

You've told us that you have a very close relationship with the "blind sheik."

Yes.

[Note: Interviewer is referring to Sheik Omar Abdel Al Rahman who was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks. Al Rahman is serving a life sentence. Investigators also suspected him of being involved with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, but did not have sufficient evidence to charge him in that case.]

He is your friend, your associate?

<img src="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/..." width=231 height=165 align="left">My friend, my mentor, my sheik, my imam, my father...

That [relationship] must make you a suspect...?

It does. I've been pointed at, or suspected of being a terrorist. I've been called that by law enforcement agencies in this country. I've been followed days and nights, under surveillance 24 hours a day sometimes. I've been visited by FBI agents in my job trying to prejudice my co-workers against me. My life was dramatically changed because of my relationship with the sheik. To me, am I a terrorist? Nope. I am a father. I am a man who believes in his religion. ...

But you believe, as does the sheik, that armed opposition to the government of Egypt, the friend of the United States, is justified.

When it is in self defense, yes. The young people in Egypt did not raise the arms except to defend themselves. From 1984 to 1991-92, more than 80 of Egyptian or Islamic leaders in Egypt were assassinated on the streets of Egypt by the government. It was a broad daylight assassination. And when you take arms in your hand and defend yourself, this is legitimate. But the problem is now where can we go from there. Because once the genie out of the lamp, there is no control on it. You cannot control it.

It would be correct to say that, as does the sheik, you have sympathy for those who conspired to bomb the World Trade Center or the embassy in Nairobi?

I cannot say that I have sympathy for the bombers. I never said that. The sheik never said that. I have sympathy for the people who show hate, or let's say I have some kind of understanding of why people show their hate toward the United States, for the government of the United States.

But I would suspect that law enforcement in the United States, the counterterrorism task force here in New York, believes that you know a lot.

They do?

That you know a lot of people who also know a lot.

I do.

And that you could help them figure out who has been involved in these various acts.

This is where we don't agree. ... An act like the World Trade Center or Oklahoma City Bombing or the bombing in the embassy in Nairobi does not need many people to do it. Could be Joe Shmoe and another person with him, like in Oklahoma City. Could be four or five people like in the World Trade Center.

So, acts like this, nobody will walk on the street and say, "Yeah, I'm going to do such and such." The law enforcement thinks that everybody, if you have an association with Mahmoud Abouhalima, oh, you know Mahmoud Abouhalima, so you have to be part of the conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center. ...

... Some of the people who have been identified as suspects in Nairobi, some of the Egyptians whose names we've seen who have not been apprehended--it seems to be a whole group of people who have not been apprehended who were a step above the people who were on the ground.

I'll tell you something. When the World Trade Center occurred here, the American government released a list. 173 names. And they called them co-conspirators of people who were living in this country, and people living abroad. 173 names. So, let's not just jump to conclusions because the American government, you know, released a name that he must be a part of it. 173.

Ramzi Yousef, the American government does not know until now what's his real name. The reports you guys made, about him, that he was in the Philippines, going to bars and drinking and going out with women. This is not an Islamic act, if you know us, the so-called fanatics, or fundamentalists or whatever you want to name them. We don't do that. ... You don't know his real name until now. You don't know where he came from, whether he was born in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Kuwait. Is he an Iraqi citizen or Kuwaiti or Pakistani? And money-wise ... they don't know where Ramzi was getting his money from. The thing is to convince the American people that this person is dangerous. This is one person you have to make a connection, you have to make a whole group so you can sell the idea. So, everybody knows everybody, everybody cooperating with everybody, to destroy us, and to destroy our way of living.

Well, one of the things that's come up is that there was a bombing in Nairobi, and a bombing in Dar es Salaam on the same day, similar kinds of bombs, showed some coordination, more than three or four people involved. And it turns out, a large number of the people identified are Egyptians. When we ask the question, "Why Egyptians?" we are told because the Egyptian opposition, the Islamic Jihad of Egypt and other organizations, have a lot of experience. More experience probably than most organizations in armed resistance.

No, I can't say that. ...

Well from the Muslim Brotherhood to the present, they have been in struggle with the secular governments of Egypt. They've managed to survive through all kinds of repression. They've managed to inflict casualties ... on the street in Egypt.

That's just recently. I really don't know how to explain why too many Egyptians--if what you're saying is true by the way--why too many Egyptians' name[s] appeared [in connection with the embassy bombings]. ... Amar Zorohi. ... He's in Afghanistan with bin Laden, does ... this make him anything? That makes him guilty of blowing up?

No, but newspapers in the Arab community in London and elsewhere report that there is some discussion amongst the Islamic opposition in Egypt about whether or not they should stay alive with bin Laden. This has been a controversial decision because it makes the United States their direct enemy.

That's true, and I told you before, when bin Laden formed his front to fight the crusaders and the Jews, the Islamic group said, "We are not part of it." ... And they pulled out of it completely. This is the biggest opposition group in Egypt. They said we are out.

Out, but sympathetic.

Out, but of course, sympathetic. But I'm not going to use or to agree about the methods or the things that you are doing.

Would you condemn it?

Do I condemn the bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam? Of course I do.

Would you help the authorities to figure out who did it?

If they want the truth, yes. And I told them this long, long time ago. I said, "If you want the truth, yes, we will help you as Muslims in this country." But unfortunately, you don't want the truth. You want somebody to [lie] to you and deceive you. And then, give you at the end, you know, what you want to hear. I'm not willing to sell myself and my soul to you. ...

Just for the record--Ahmed Salem is the informant?

Ahmed Salem is the informant, yes.

He's Egyptian.

Yeah.

Former military man.

A double agent, if you want to put it this way.

Who helped put the sheik away in the [New York City] landmarks case?

Yes.

Some would say he created the [New York City] landmarks plot.

Absolutely. He wrote the story, made the scenario, and directed the whole show, and there's a profit, a million and some dollars. And unfortunately, they just were so dumb. It's unbelievable.

You mean, the guys we saw on the video?

No, no, ... I'm talking about the FBI agents. They were so stupid. I mean, at the beginning, the guy was just playing them anyway he wants. And right after the World Trade Center, just, they said, "Hey, you have to come and save us here." He was just, you know, feeding them information that did not exist. ...

We did hear that you were the real thing. I mean, when I asked about you, I was told you were right on the edge of the whole thing. I don't know if they're convinced that you're a conspirator or what you are--this is the government of the US--they said that you would speak to us with two faces, articulate, intelligent, peaceful, but that beneath that is another face that is willing to commit acts of violence or promote them, but that you would never show that to us.

The American government, or the intelligence community, can think whatever they want. If you're not with them, you are against them. I was offered to work for them. [They] tempted me with money, and tried to put the fear in me by [saying], "We're going to send you to prison for the rest of your life." It didn't work. I will show you that I don't believe in killing innocent people. And I truly don't. Last time I had a gun in my hand was in 1981 when I left the Egyptian army, never had anything to do with guns after that.

Do I plead in self-defense? Yes, I do. Do I promote in self-defense? Yes, I do. I'm not going to stand up or sit down and you smack my right cheek, and I give you the left one. No, you smack my right cheek, I will punch you right in the face. This is it. And if you see something wrong with that, that's too bad... Keep away from me, and I will keep away from you. This is the way I believe. Many people don't like that; that's their opinion, too. They're entitled to it. They say many things about me. ... You have something against me, come forward with it. You have something else, that you don't like, that I practice my rights as an American citizen in this country, you did not give me this right. There is people before you who fought in this country, and were called terrorists. They fought, and gave me and gave you that same right. And I will practice it so full. And I will protect it also when it comes to the time when I see somebody is trying to take it away from me and my kids.

What is a terrorist?

There is a very thin line between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. ... A terrorist who, somebody does something that you don't agree with, a freedom fighter is somebody who does something that I agree with. ... George Washington was called a terrorist. Menachem Begin, originally who was wanted by the British government, [was] called a terrorist. Anwar Sadat, your hero, was called a terrorist by the British. You know, he actually spent a months or years in prison. So, today's terrorist is tomorrow's freedom fighter. Or today's freedom fighter could be tomorrow's terrorist. And it's proven by the Afghanis' experience. During that year, they were freedom fighters, now they are terrorists. ...

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Coalition Widens Its Ocean Manhunt

Top 1723. May 14, 2002 10:13 AM

» JenL_2 - al Qaeda - Cargo Ship Alert

This from 5/14 NYPost.com:

U.S. COAST GUARD ISSUES AL QAEDA WARNING

By NILES LATHEM

The Coast Guard has issued an urgent warning to law enforcement agencies that as many as 25 terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network have sneaked into the United States aboard cargo ships, it was revealed yesterday.

Law enforcement officials confirmed a report on Fox News Channel that the Coast Guard alerted federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that it has received credible intelligence information that terrorist stowaways have entered "on prominent cargo vessels."

more detail from 3/14 New York Times:

By JAMES DAO (New York Times)

ON BOARD U.S.S. JOHN C. STENNIS, in the Arabian Sea, March 14 - The United States and its allies have intensified their search for Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders in the waters off Pakistan and Iran, convinced that an American-led offensive in eastern Afghanistan has eliminated a major terrorist haven and forced the Taliban and Al-Qaeda commanders to flee. In the northern Arabian Sea, the allies have assembled the largest naval force since World War II. More than 100 warships from a dozen nations, along with helicopters, reconnaissance planes and fighter jets, are combing the ocean for signs of senior Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Each day, the allied forces track hundreds of vessels, from lumbering oil tankers to tiny fishing boats, questioning their captains and sometimes dispatching heavily armed boarding parties to check cargo holds and photograph crews. On a few occasions, teams of Navy Seals have been sent to investigate suspicious ships.

Despite the size of the armada, however, not a single Taliban or Al-Qaeda commander has been found. It is a testament, Navy officials acknowledge, to the difficulty of trying to locate a few dozen fugitives inside a watery box stretching from eastern Pakistan to the Gulf of Oman - an 80,000-square-mile region roughly the size of Kansas. The allied armada includes ships from Britain, Germany, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and Japan. The United States provides the most ships, about 35. "It can be like searching for a needle in a haystack," said Lt. Kelly Hinderer, the mission commander on a P-3 Orion surveillance plane assisting the interdiction operation. But senior Navy commanders contend that the huge manhunt has pressured Al-Qaeda commanders to stay in Afghanistan or to try to flee over the rugged mountains into Pakistan, where government troops are watching the border. As the remaining Al-Qaeda and Taliban havens are destroyed in Afghanistan, some commanders will probably try to escape by boat, Navy officials say.

"There is a deterrent effect that is hard to measure," said Rear Adm. James M. Zortman, commander of the JOHNC. STENNIS carrier battle group, which is overseeing the interdiction operation. "If we can disrupt their travel routes and force them into less-easy, less-developed lanes, that may aid us in flushing them to the surface." The coalition's task has been complicated by the abundance of wily smugglers who have plied these waters for centuries. Allied commanders recently became aware of a Pakistan-based people-smuggling ring that, for less than $100 a person, has been transporting impoverished workers from Pakistan and Afghanistan across Iran and the Strait of Hormuz to fill menial jobs in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. On Tuesday, a Canadian frigate that was patrolling the Gulf of Oman rescued 45 Pakistani and Afghan men who had been left adrift by the smugglers on a small ship without food or water for six days. The men told the Canadians they had started their journey in Karachi six weeks before and had been within 50 miles of their destination, Oman, when one of the ships in their party capsized, killing 34 men. Cmdr. Jim Heath, captain of the Canadian frigate H.M.C.S. VANCOUVER, said investigators were convinced that none of the men were connected to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. But he said the rescue underscored the relative ease with which smugglers operate in the region. Since November, the allied coalition has been closely watching about two dozen merchant ships that have ties to Al-Qaeda. This year, the allies expanded their operation to include questioning every merchant vessel. In the past few weeks, the coalition has become more aggressive about boarding the small fishing boats, known as dhows, that crowd the coastline and that are popular vehicles for smugglers. Since February, the coalition has also expanded its presence in the Gulf of Oman, which smugglers from Iran can cross in less than a day. American officials say this could become an escape route for leaders of Al-Qaeda. Coalition ships also patrol as far south as the Horn of Africa, on the lookout for Al-Qaeda fighters who might be trying to reach Somalia or Yemen by ship. The allied armada, though it has been likened to a blockade, is more like a traffic checkpoint on the lookout for drunken drivers. Allied ships hail passing merchant vessels by radio and ask them about their cargo, destination and registry. The answers are transmitted to a command center on the STENNIS, where they are checked against a database. Incomplete or incorrect answers could lead to a search. So could refusal to answer, though Navy officials say virtually all of the 3,500 ships queried to date have cooperated. But even cooperative ships can be randomly boarded.

"It's like a cop on the beat," said Capt. James P. Wisecup, commander of Destroyer Squadron 21, who is managing the interdiction program. "After a while, you figure out who belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn't." The Decatur, an Arleigh Burke- class destroyer, is one of those beat cops. From his captain's chair, Cmdr. Victorino G. Mercado can view radar tracks from across the Arabian Sea that show every ship and aircraft in the region. Infrared and night vision scopes also allow his crew to monitor distant ships in the dark. He has 24 sailors trained to board ships armed with shotguns and 9-millimeter pistols. "If you just talk and don't board, there's not a deterrent," Captain Mercado said. On board the P-3 planes that help guide the coalition ships, each mission commander carries a thick three-ring binder marked "secret" that contains photographs and descriptions of the more than two dozen merchant vessels that have been linked to Al-Qaeda. But not many of those ships have made recent appearances in the Arabian Sea. "When we look back in 5 to 10 years, we'll know if we succeeded," Captain Wisecup said. "All we can do now is try our best to keep the pressure on."

and some background from Financial Times....

Al-Qaeda: After Afghanistan

Agencies fear extent of al-Qaeda's sea network

By Andrea Felsted and Mark Odell
Published: February 21 2002 | Last Updated: March 7 2002

US military ground and air forces in Afghanistan have so far taken centre stage in the war against terrorism. But beyond the headline-grabbing land campaign, a much broader effort is underway at sea, reflecting growing concerns about the infiltration of the murky world of global shipping by the al-Qaeda network.

In the most overt sign of international cooperation in the war on terrorism seen so far, some 90 warships from countries including the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Japan and Bahrain - under the command of the US Fifth Fleet - are patrolling the waters around the Arabian Peninsula and off the coasts of Pakistan and east Africa.

One of the main tasks of this huge armada is to cut off the most likely escape routes for al-Qaeda members attempting to flee Afghanistan and gather intelligence on the maritime-based logistic network believed to have been developed by the terrorists.

This display of naval firepower is concentrated on just one facet of al-Qaeda's use of the shipping industry. Western intelligence agencies suspect the maritime capabilities of the terrorist organisation extend much further.

There is strong evidence to support claims that Osama bin Laden and his associates have built up a dedicated al-Qaeda fleet of small freighters, operating on the fringes of the industry. But it is not the vessels under direct control of al-Qaeda which authorities consider pose the greatest risk to international security.

There is widespread concern that an organisation capable of the suicide hijackings of airliners could readily adapt these capabilities to major shipping targets.

The entire shipping industry went onto high alert following the hijackings of four US commercial jets in September. In the worst case scenario, terrorists could load a nuclear device, most likely a "dirty bomb" made of nuclear material wrapped around conventional explosives, onto a cargo ship and detonate it in a major port.

These concerns were illustrated in December when British anti-terrorist specialists intercepted and boarded the Nisha, an Indian-owned bulk carrier, in the English Channel. It was bound for sugar refinery in Silvertown, near London's Canary Wharf financial district.

The authorities claimed to be acting on a tip that the ship was carrying "terrorist materials" but three days of searching found nothing and it was allowed to dock at the Thames terminal in early January.

After the events of September 11, doomsday scenarios like these cannot be discounted but maritime security experts believe the biggest threat comes not from terrorists taking direct control of ships, but from adapting a standard shipping container as a weapon.

The scale of the problem is immense, with around 35m of these boxes estimated to be in use around the world. Organised crime has for years abused loopholes in the loose regulatory system, which makes it both impossible to track the movements of this boxes or to verify the contents.

"The container is a Pandora's Box," said one senior US shipping official. "The threat is what has happened to the box before it goes on to the ship . . . We have to be able to detect whether the box has ended up in the wrong hands."

Maritime security experts agree that the current system, which allows containers to move around the globe almost completely unhindered will need to change. Some 13m containers enter the US every year and although inspections have been stepped up only about 2 per cent are physically inspected.

"The first time a container is used as a weapon we will start wondering what is in all the other boxes," said Stephen Flynn, a commander in the US Coastguard and a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York.

The US is so concerned about this threat that will bring the issue up at the G8 summit in June and has already put forward proposals to counter terrorism in the industry through the United Nations' International Maritime Organisation.

Shipping containers do not only make potential weapons. Organised crime syndicates specialising in human trafficking use purpose-built containers designed to carry around 20 people hidden behind "false cargo".

The extent to which al-Qaeda could use this method to move personnel around the world became apparent last October, when Italian police found an Egyptian national inside a shipping container fitted out as a makeshift home.

Rizik Amid Farid, 43, was discovered during a routine inspection at the transhipment hub of Gioia Tauro, southern Italy, of a ship en route from Egypt to Toronto.

He was held by the authorities as a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist after being found with items including a laptop, two mobile phones, cameras, a Canadian passport and a certificate saying he was an aircraft mechanic.

It was this type of discovery that prompted the Pentagon to launch the "Leadership Interdiction Operation" (LIO) in the Indian Ocean last November, bringing together an array of seapower from across the globe.

The Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet, whose area of command stretches across 7.5m square miles from Kazakhstan to Somalia, warned all shipping, particularly those operating off the coast of Pakistan, that they could be intercepted, boarded or destroyed in search for bin Laden and his network.

By early February, US security forces had boarded just eight vessels under LIO and found nothing as struggle to separate criminal from terrorist activity. One UK defence source said: "The scale of smuggling in the Indian Ocean is much greater than originally believed with organised crime playing a major part."

The lack of success by coalition naval forces in apprehending any terrorist suspects underscores the scale of the task facing the authorities in tracing Al-Qaeda's links to shipping.

The secrecy that pervades the industry, making it so attractive to criminals has proven equally alluring to terrorist networks and so frustrating to investigators.

The main obstacles to transparency is the convoluted ownership structure, commonplace throughout the industry, and the lack of effective regulation in many parts of the world.

In many cases a ship is registered with a company which is simply a brass plate on a door in an offshore domicile. Ships can also be registered under so-called "flags of convenience," in countries such as Belize, Honduras, Liberia and Panama.

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) allege these registers have lax standards of safety and training and no restrictions on the nationality of the crew.

In many cases ships are simply not registered or registered using false information. It is also possible for vessels to "disappear" from a register altogether.

These vessels may find it difficult to enter ports in the developed world, they are unlikely to be prevented from calling at smaller ports in parts of the world with less stringent controls.

David Cockroft, secretary general of the International Transport Federation, says: "The whole shipping business is based on false identities. Shipowners head the list using shell companies but false identities and qualifications are part of the mix too."

There are real fears that terrorists could easily pose as seafarers by obtaining false documentation and rudimentary maritime training.

Mr Cockroft claims he obtained a first officer's certificate issued by Panamanian authorities for $4,000, despite having no maritime experience.

It is in this netherworld that al-Qaeda's fleet of vessels is thought to operate. US naval sources confirm the existence of a list of vessels but insists it is "fluid" and updated regularly.

Industry insiders believe the fleet could be anywhere between 10 to 80 vessels strong made up chiefly of small freighters below 1,000t.

US investigators have uncovered clear evidence of that al-Qaeda operatives were buying vessels seven years ago.

Wahid El-Hage, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism conspiracy charges in 2001 for his role in Al-Qaeda's bombing of the US embassies in East Africa, bought a tramp freighter, named Jennifer in April 1994.

The ship appears to have continued carrying legitimate cargoes around the Red Sea before it reportedly sank off the Omani coast two years ago.

The wreck of the ship, by then called Sky 1, was never found.

and it's even worse than that ....the bin Laden family and bin Laden himself is greatly involved in the shipping container industry - both ownership of shipping container fleets and construction of shipping container ports around the world. This from 10/28 Seattle Times:

Big hole in nation's defenses: our ports

(excerpt)

Osama bin Laden maintains a secret shipping fleet flying a variety of flags of convenience, allowing him to hide his ownership and transport goods, arms, drugs and recruits with little official scrutiny, according to recent reports and court testimony. In 1998, one of bin Laden's cargo freighters unloaded supplies in Kenya for the suicide bombers who weeks later destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2