OCTOBER 18, 2001

Sentencing of Four Al-Qaeda Members Convicted of Bombing U.S. Embassies

[...]

     In the previous year, on October 20, 2000, a former U.S. Army sergeant, Ali Mohamed, pled guilty to assisting in the 1998 plot to bomb the U.S. embassies. Mohamed, a 48-year-old native of Egypt, implicated Usama bin Laden in the plot, stating that in 1993, he was asked by bin Laden to survey potential U.S. targets in Nairobi. In a statement to the court, Mohamed said, “these targets were selected to retaliate against the United States for its involvement in Somalia.”
 [...]

     The bombings at the U.S. embassies on August 7, 1998, resulted in 214 deaths, including those of 12 Americans. During the trial, the jury heard evidence that Mohamed assisted with the construction of the bomb that exploded in the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, and Al-Owhali drove the bomb in a vehicle and parked it at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. From the beginning, Usama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network were viewed as orchestrating the bombings. In order to carry out the attacks, Al-Owhali and Mohamed attended weapons and explosive training at an Al-Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. For their direct involvement in the attacks, government attorneys had originally sought the death penalty for Mohamed and Al-Owhali; this marked the first time the U.S. Government had sought the death penalty for individuals charged with committing acts of international terrorism.

BUT ALI MOHAMED ACTUALLY WENT FREE. (box below)

Amazing FBI History of Ali Mohamed

In September 1985, Muhamad wangled admission into the United States over a CIA veto. After running him as a double agent for four years, the CIA and FBI decided to (publicly) oppose his entry to the US.  Nonetheless, the Egyptian ex-intelligence officer gained entrance.  In fact, he was quickly accepted into the US army, where he carved out one of the most bizarre military careers in that army’s history.

From Fort Bragg, although only a sergeant, he came and went as he pleased, his commanders reporting they had no control over his movements. During his disappearances, he sometimes traveled to Afghanistan and fought the Russian army alongside the Afghan mujaheddin; at others, he stayed in New York and drilled Muslim terrorist groups, some of whose members later took part in the first attack on the TwinTowers in 1993.

In November 1989, after being awarded American citizenship – again over CIA objections - Ali Muhammad resigned from the US army and devoted himself full time to al Qaeda, as one of Osama bin Laden’s senior operations officers.

In past reports, DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly have cited their Intelligence and counter-terror sources on bin Laden and al Qaeda operations in which Muhammad was actively involved:

1. The 1993 attack, the first, on the WorldTradeCenter

2. The planning for the 12-airliner hijack in the Far East. Had this attack come off, a dozen airliners would have blown up over twelve American cities, including New York and Washington.

3. The 1993 Mogadishu battle, the first confrontation between al Qaeda soldiers, who fought alongside Somali insurgents, and US special forces. It ended in the worst US military defeat after Vietnam.

4. The 1993-1994 wholesale transfer of the al Qaeda network’s operational headquarters from Afghanistan to Sudan. Bin Laden was located there up until 1996, when he returned to Afghanistan, with more help from Ali Mohammed.

It is a little known fact that the al Qaeda move to Sudan was tacitly encouraged by the Clinton administration, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who calculated that close Saudi and Egyptian intelligence surveillance would keep the Saudi-born Islamic fundamentalist under control.

They miscalculated badly. Instead of letting his wings be clipped, bin Laden used his three years in East Africa to spread them far and wide through the Arabian peninsula, Ethiopia and Somalia, with the following results:

A. The network’s undercover terror cells proliferated, dispersed widely around the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, Eastern Africa and the Balkans – primarily Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. His organization joined forces with the regional and local networks of the Egyptian Jihad Islami headed by Dr. Ayman Zuwahri, to form the deadliest, widest-reaching terror organization ever known.

B. These joint cells carried out the abortive 1995 assassination attempt on the life of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa; the 1996 Khobar Towers blast in which 18 US troops were killed and 500 injured, and the devastating strikes against US East African embassies in Nairobi and Daar es-Salaam, that left 234 victims dead and more than 5000 injured.

Another of their joint endeavors was the ramming of the USS Cole on 12 October2000, in AdenHarbor. Nineteen US servicemen died and hundreds were injured.

One fine day after the embassies attack, Ali Muhammad turned himself in to the US authorities voluntarily, demanding only a guarantee that he would not face the death sentence.  (His whereabouts since pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to kill US citizens everywhere are currently unknown.)

Ali Muhammad’s history demonstrates that US intelligence bodies employed, collaborated with and maintained some level of operational relations with at least one central al Qaeda figure. For at least seven years from 1991 to 1998, the Egyptian terrorist was bin Laden’s operational right hand.

That being so, how could Jim Pavitt claim in a lecture last April at DukeUniversity – quoted at length by the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on April 17 – that the CIA had never had any tactical intelligence on the Islamic networks? This claim in no way supports Fleischer’s argument that the administration lacked the equipment for “connecting the dots” into an operationally viable picture.

DEBKAfile’s counter terror and counterintelligence experts raise a couple more questions:

It stands to reason that Ali Muhammad was not the only Middle Eastern fundamentalist to be admitted to the US army; he must have been one of a group activated according to some concept.  But who activated them? Who allowed them to enter the United States and who had enough clout to overrule a CIA veto?  Who decided to place this Egyptian Muslim in a US special forces facility?  And on whose authority was this Egyptian member of a US special forces unit allowed to travel freely round the world, including Afghanistan, and back, without once being detained at any American airport?

Cheney's `Spoon-Benders'
Pushing Nuclear Armageddon
regarding "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory"

As Jon Ronson reported, "In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah. Ziad just turned up at the US 1 Fitness Center one day and said he had heard that Bert was good. Why Ziad chose Bert, of all the martial arts instructors scattered around the Florida shoreline, is a matter of speculation. Maybe Bert's uniquely occultic reputation preceded him, or perhaps it was Bert's military connections. Plus, Bert had once taught the head of security for a Saudi prince. Maybe that was it."

Ziad Jarrah presented himself as a Lebanese businessman, who traveled a great deal and wanted to protect himself. "I liked Ziad a lot," Rodriguez later told Ronson. "He was very humble, very quiet. He was in good shape. Very diligent." Rodriguez taught Jarrah "the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you'd die for, a do-or-die desire." Rodriguez added, "Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it's there. And if you do believe it it is there. Yeah, Ziad believed it. He was like Luke Skywalker."

Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months, and gave him copies of several knife-fighting books he had written. Jarrah shared them with a friend, Marwan al-Shehhi, who boarded with him at the Panther Motel and Apartments in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah (allegedly) took control of United Airlines flight 93, and crashed it in a field in Pennsylvania. Marwan al-Shehhi commandeered United Airlines flight 175 and crashed it into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.