Posted on 11/29/2001 9:07:47 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
His [Ali Mohamed's] new friends back home in California took for granted that Mr. Mohamed was helping the Central Intelligence Agency in its proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. At the time, the anti-Soviet jihad was a world-wide cause among Muslims. "Everyone in the community knew he was working as a liaison between the CIA and the Afghan cause, and everyone was sympathetic," says Ali Zaki, a San Jose, Calif. obstetrician who was close to Mr. Mohamed and his American wife, a medical technician named Linda Sanchez. The CIA declines to comment.
Nor were Muslims in California surprised when Mr. Mohamed showed up there with Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman Zawahri [sic] on a fund-raising tour in the early 1990s, says Dr. Zaki, who co-hosted Dr. Zawahri on the trip. Dr. Zawahri, an Egyptian surgeon and now al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, has been known for years as one of secular Egypt's most-wanted foes.
Dr. Zaki says he didn't know Dr. Zawahri's real identity when he visited California. Mr. Mohamed had described him as "a physician who was taking care of over one million people in Afghanistan," Dr. Zaki says. "I was asked to escort him while he did fund raising for the Kuwaiti Red Crescent. Was that a crime?"
I think I've read that Dr. Zawahiri was still visiting this country and fund-raising in the mid-90's.
Fred Mertz says this WSJ article was posted here on FR on Monday, but neither of us has been able to find the thread. It's the same article in which Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman is reported to have told one of his co-conspirators: "The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years."
Here's link to WSJ article on Ali Mohamed: Sergeant served U.S. and bin Laden
Btw, the WSJ article has another interesting paragraph that mentions Sgt. Mohamed's interest in scuba diving (an interest that may have been transferred to the hijackers? were they his pupils? I haven't found in the article yet what year Mohamed went federal prison)...
...When prosecutors in the Trade Center conspiracy trial wanted to speak with [Mohamed], agents, working through an intermediary, tracked him to a safe house in Nairobi. He told authorities he had taken a job in the scuba-diving business -- failing to mention his involvement in the surveillance of al Qaeda targets.
I see that gumbo posted the link in #10. Thanks gumbo!
Although, SCUBA is not part of the SF qualification course, most A Team members are SCUBA trained (Army School in Key West, FL) within a year or two of assignment. Some attend the Navy's Underwater Demolitions course for training - one of my friends attended both. So, yes, underwater training is quite common in the SF community.
Interesting. It it likely a domestic terrorist wouldn't have to look thru the papers to know who people in Congress were, as they would already know who was who in our govt. In otherwards they were picked at random. Here's the rub though: because the media tends to focus on Democrats and ignore Republicans, that policy might be the very thing that resulted in the anthrax being sent mostly to Democrats.
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