[TheOtherOne]

Very interesting.

[VOA]

PC used by al-Qaida leaders reveals 4 years of terrorism

I just love how these ultra-extreme-fundamentalist Islamics bring themselves to
use the souless tools of the Great Satan.
Not only are they terrorists, they are big fat hypocrites.

[snopercod]

Users of the computer evidently didn’t make much use of e-mail.

Gee, according to the FBI, the terrorists were using the internet to send messages...

[usconservative]

And yet another piece of evidence is tossed onto an already heaping pile.

Still, some Muslim Arabs deny that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. Methinks these must be the inbred "Arkansas" version of Islamic Trailer Trash.

[SolitaryMan]

Interesting. We need to bring charges against Bill Gates and Microsoft for assisting terrorists. < /sarcasm>

[NC Conservative]

Was Algore called in to pull up the old emails?

[csvset]

Why did a hard drive with “important documents relating to the company” get lost in Sudan?

Hmm.. I wonder where that hard drive wound up?

[Mixer]

The memo laments al-Qaida’s sluggishness in realizing the menace of these weapons, noting that “despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply.”

All along the media has been asked not to provide certain information over the airwaves. Hopefully a report like this will make them see why.

[jrlc]

Anyone who has any doubts that Radical Islam is like a cancer should read this article. Cancer cells need to be killed. No doctor worries about the free speech rights of cancer cells.

[foreshadowed at waco]

This is one terrific article...I sure do hope that a lot of information was left behind by these swarmy creeps so that we can put together a really effective plan for ripping their web apart one section at a time...it will also serve a purpose if we can lay bare the baseness of their everyday operations in order to wake up the Muslim world...especially the video footage of prayers and chants accompanying the WTC bombing...that should be part of the eventual WTC memorial...Muslims around the world need to stop making excuses for these killers and they need to teach their children what hate can do or the hate will turn back on them BIG TIME!!!

[DTwistedSisterS]

"4 Years Of Terrorism".... 4 years ago was CLINTON! Hmmmmm, maybe if he would've taken him 7 years ago we wouldn't HAVE this problem!!!

[anniegetyourgun]

This is very significant news.

[aristeides]

Another headache was al-Qaida’s relationship with the Taliban. A July 1998 report stored in the computer details what seems to have been a near rupture in relations between Afghanistan’s then leaders and bin Laden’s network. Addressed to Ayman — apparently Zawahri — the report describes an angry meeting between the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and “Abu Abdullah.” This could be a reference to bin Laden, since that was one of his aliases. The report blames the quarrel on a “bankrupt failure to achieve any real external victory.” It warns that Arabs operating in Afghanistan risk losing access to their training camps, just as they were earlier expelled from Sudan, bin Laden’s main base until 1996.

This confirms a report I read earlier that, just before Clinton bombed the aspirin factory in Khartoum and the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan in August 1998, the Taliban were engaged in serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia about handing bin Laden over to the Saudis.

According to that report, one of the effects of Clinton's bombing of those camps was to derail those negotiations and solidify the relationship between bin Laden and the Taliban. I believe that this was one of the results of the bombing that Clinton intended. I remember reading reports of the evacuation of U.S. embassy dependents from Pakistan and of non-governmental organization people from Pakistan and Afghanistan in the day or two before that bombing, because an imminent American attack was expected (our embassies in East Africa had been bombed two weeks before.) I read those reports in the Indian and Pakistani press on line. Surely Clinton was well aware that bin Laden would be well away from those camps.

[aristeides]

In October 1998, shortly after U.S. cruise missiles slammed into an al-Qaida training camp in retaliation for the Africa embassy bombings, the Kabul computer was used to create letterhead for a fictional company, Challenge for Media Services, and to draft letters to ABC, CNN and CBS. Each was signed Dr. Mohammed Atef and offered a business deal: cash for film of bin Laden and his bomb-destroyed training camp at Khost in eastern Afghanistan.

Peter Bergen, then of CNN, has said that he corresponded with Atef at that time.

[aristeides]

Though written under Al-Siri’s name, the letter, according to the Kabul computer’s internal properties, which give the user’s name in Arabic, was crafted by Mohammed Zawahri. It is unclear whether this refers to Zawahri, who is known to speak French and sometimes goes by the alias “Abu Mohammed,” or possibly to his brother, Mohammed Zawahiri, a fellow Islamic militant who helped set up a terror cell in Albania in the 1990s.

Odd that the letter should have been written in "clumsy French." Upper-class Egyptians learn fluent French, so I would think that the upper-class and highly educated Ayman Zawahiri, who lived in Geneva for years, (and presumably also his brother) would be able to write good French.

[aristeides]

Looks as if the planning for the Masud hit was done in Kabul. Whatever Belgian and Dutch cells may have done in carrying out the plan, it looks as if they did not devise it.

Al Qaeda's operations seem to have been remarkably centralized. Which hopefully means that, by wiping out its base (and hopefully its leadership,) we cripple its ability to act.

[MizSterious]

"A Wall Street Journal reporter acquired them for $1,100, copying hundreds of files and getting some of them translated from the Arabic. U.S. officials confirm the authenticity of the files, most protected by passwords, and say they provide a trove of information about the inner workings of the secretive organization. "

Does this particular chain of custody bother anyone besides me? The WSJ copies files before turning it over to the U.S. authorities apparently--and given some of western journalism's past fiascos, one can only hope they didn't accidentally or deliberately erase or change any of the files thereon.

[VeritatisSplendor]

This is one of the most spectacular "scoops" I have ever seen. Bravo for the WSJ!

[PA Engineer]

Bump for later reading.

[beckett]

From the article: And, after the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, a congratulatory message to Zawahri praised “what you did and all the works and the labors that you did to plague the enemy of God.” The message, stored in the computer as a Microsoft Word document, is signed “Abu Yaser.”

Yasser Arafat, by chance?