Replies

“Avoiding Surprise,” September 7, 2007
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070907/COMMENTARY/109070018/101

“The CIA is a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are hell on artists, which is OK if you’re pushing pencils but not OK if you are puzzling through an intricate design. The September 11 plot was an intricate design.

Intelligence is an art — a grand, interpretive collusion of linguistics, geography, mathematics, history, theology, psychology, physics, metaphysics and every other human means of analysis and explanation. Former CIA Director James Schlesinger nailed it in October 2003 when he said: “But major organizational change [of U.S. intelligence agencies] is not the salvation. I would submit the real challenge lies in recruiting, fostering, training and motivating people with insight.”
...
So-called “future studies” try to analyze trends and from those analyses anticipate crises. Intelligence, diplomatic, financial and security capabilities, if timely applied, may resolve or mitigate the problems. These kind of studies are useful only at the “large-scale,” however. Stopping any single terrorist strike is another matter. Only gumshoe detective work, steady, tedious monitoring of terrorist suspects and the political will to either arrest or kill terrorists before they strike will stop a particular attack —maybe.
***
Extreme civil libertarians bemoan the “police state.” However, an “aware state” isn’t a police state. What constitutes an aware state? One where individual citizens know their own liberty and safety requires community action.”

The CIA’s December 4, 1998 PDB to President Clinton explained that Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin, was planning an attack using aircraft and other means on the United States and that he was expecting to travel to the United States in making preparations. After Bojinka, which can be thought of as the origin for the 911 planning, Islambouli had been in a cell with KSM in planning the attacks. KSM came to be head of the cell planning to use weaponized anthrax on the United States. Therefore, it is important to understand who Islambouli knew.

Now the surest way to know who he knew would be to go back to the late 1970s leading up to Sadat’s assassination and study membership in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad cells at the universities.

But the story also can fruitfully be picked up a decade later in the context of Islambouli’s ongoing connection on a routine basis to Brooklyn, NY.

One 1992 memo from the Peshawar office read:

“The military wing of the Jihad seals its news with success everywhere. However, the matter is the hands of the leadership to form the Islamic government to manage the country.

* ... (Amir of Jamiyat Al Islamiya, Afghanistan) informed us that the USA warned the Mujaheed to stop the military operations. And, in reply to this, he confirms: ‘Till we have reached oall our goals’. ... we would not accept any party to enter our affairs and dictate us their points of views.”

...
* Engineer Hikmatiyar confirmed that we will not give to any foreign power the right to form our own government in Afghanistan.

Sheik Abdel-Rahman would visit Islambouli in Pakistan from Brooklyn in 1989 and during the early 1990s. It was not until April 1993, upon a crackdown on the foreign fighters, that Islambouli and Zawahiri had to move their operations into Afghanistan. Islambouli moved a scant 100 miles.

In 1992, Mohammed Islambouli,was in regular fax contact from his Peshawar Mujahedeen Office in Peshawar, Pakistan and the Brooklyn Al-Kifah office.

Even back then, moreover, there was a connection between Brooklyn and the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines.
(GMU biothreat analysis student has seen the translated FBIS newspaper articles at fas.org that mentions the early involvement of the Moro National Liberation Front. )

For example, a 1992 memo read:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

...
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the Moro National Liberation Front,”2nd Infantry Divsion” Bangsamoro Armed Forces endorses the developments, program and projects of:

AL-KIFAH REFUGEE CENTER INC.
P.O. Box - 294, Brooklyn NY 11217
Telephone No. 718 797-9207

We urge you to support them and to support them and to contribute to their developments, programs and projects in order that they may do their part in accomplishing our jihad and mission of raising the World of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and the Message of our Prophet Muhammad (saw) to the Highest.

Thank you and may Allah bless your efforts in His Noble efforts....

A November 24, 1992 memo read:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY that according to the records of this office, that Mr. Abdul Zindani had shown his sincerity, loyalty, and devotion to his work and noble project as Chairman of:

AL-KIFAH REFUGEE CENTER OF AMERICA
P.O. Box - 294, Brooklyn NY -11217
Telephone No. 718-797-9207

We urge you to help all kinds of support needed to all concern Islamic movements, specially our Muslim Mujahideed around the Globe including those in Bosnia Herzegovinia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Kurdisn, Burma, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Lebanon, India, Trinidad, Somalia and Bangsamoro in Southern Philippines.”

The United States government in its indictment of the Vanguards of Conquest spokesman in London (who is yet to be transferred to the US for prosecution) explained that on July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar spoke to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.” In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged: “Following his arrest, Abdel Rahman urged his followers to wage jihad to obtain his release from custody. For instance, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, Abdel Rahman stated that it was the duty of all Muslims to set free any imprisoned fellow Muslims, and that “[t]he Sheikh is calling on you, morning and evening. Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! ... It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.”

His list is a pretty concise summary of the terrorist actions taken over the next decade.

The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman - - was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions.