Posted on 03/09/2003 6:53:32 AM PST by Wallaby
Edited on 03/09/2003 7:11:49 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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One unnerving detail in the biography of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whose alleged career killing Americans was cut off Saturday by his arrest in Pakistan, shows that he is very familiar with the U.S. society he evidently hates: He went to college in North Carolina.
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"To this day it doesn't make any sense." |
"He was very quiet, but friendly when we talked," recalls Sammy I. Zitawi, a classmate at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University in Greensboro, where Mohammed earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986. "He was religious. He always wore a beard. ... He was one of the ones we called 'the mullahs' as a sort of joke, a nickname."
When Zitawi heard last fall that his old acquaintance was the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist plots, his reaction was "total shock," he says. "To this day it doesn't make any sense."
Mohammed's years in America are part of a striking pattern among the terrorists of al-Qaida: Many have lived in the Western societies they now despise.
"They come from relatively affluent backgrounds," says John Calvert, a historian at Creighton University in Omaha who studies Islamist ideology. "They're well-educated. They're fluent in a Western language. But there's something about Western politics, Western culture, that makes them uneasy."
(Admin Moderator's note: excerpted per Washington Post/LA Times settlement.)
GRAPHIC: Photo(s), Suspected al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed earned an engineering degree in 1986 at a North Carolina college.; ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Three accused in terror activity were educated in North Carolina
GREENSBORO, N.C. The suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks graduated from North Carolina A&T State University 17 years ago, the school confirmed Tuesday.
"We have confirmed that he was a student at N.C. A&T," she said. In December, school officials said records showed a Khalid A. Mohammed graduated in 1986, but declined to address whether it the same person as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Campus records show Mohammed gave a post office box for his address while attending N.C. A&T. David Klett, a mechanical engineering professor, had said in December he advised Mohammed. Klett was the undergraduate coordinator of N.C. A&T's mechanical engineering program for about a year when Mohammed enrolled in 1984. "He didn't stick out," Klett said. Klett said Mohammed's name was unfamiliar to him until a Los Angeles Times reporter visited his office last fall with a photo of Mohammed released by the FBI. The picture of a bearded Arab man triggered a memory.
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"That blew me away," Klett said. "I couldn't believe one of our students was wanted for terrorist activities." Mohammed was born in Kuwait and came to the United States in 1984 to attend Chowan College in Murfreesboro. He was there for only the spring semester of 1984, the school said, before transferring to N.C. A&T. Mohammed is alleged to have organized the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed some 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. He was linked to a 1995 plot to bomb trans-Pacific airliners and crash a plane into CIA headquarters and to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mohammed, who is in his late 30s, is perhaps the most senior al-Qaida member after Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. N.C. A&T also graduated Mazen Al-Najjar, who spent more than 3 1/2 years in jail on secret evidence linking him to terrorists. He was deported last August to an undisclosed Arab country. After earning a master's degree in industrial engineering from N.C. A&T in 1984, Al-Najjar taught at the University of South Florida in Tampa with his brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian. The two men founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, a now-defunct Islamic think tank that was raided by the FBI in 1995. Al-Arian was arrested last month with seven others on charges that they established up a terrorist cell at the university and funneled support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the government says has killed more than 100 people in Israel and its territories. Al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait, said he is a victim of post-Sept. 11 hysteria. He earned master's and doctoral degrees at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in the early 1980s. Wajeh Muhammad, treasurer of the Islamic Center of the Triad, said he recalls both Al-Arian and Al-Najjar fondly. They were all part of a Muslim-American community with common interests in reading, writing, good food and better conditions for Palestinians living in the Middle East. "I had high admiration for both of them," Muhammad said. Badi Ali, president of the Islamic Center of the Triad, said Middle Eastern students have attended universities in the Greensboro and Raleigh areas because both cities have been accepting. "We have a wonderful school, and we have graduated over 40,000 people who have made a difference across the country and the world," said Mable Scott, N.C. A&T's chief spokeswoman. "After they graduate, we hope and pray they do what's best." |
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PROFESSOR RECALLS NOW NOTORIOUS A&T STUDENT
The last time N.C. A&T got so many calls from the national media, the university was unveiling a statue of the Greensboro Four, four students who refused to leave a whites-only lunch counter and launched the sit-in movement.
Instead, they want to know about A&T graduate Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a suspected terrorist with a $25 million bounty on his head who was arrested Saturday a world away from the leafy Greensboro campus. A few other media sources have inquired about a second man, also an engineering graduate, Mazen Al-Najjar. Federal authorities have tried to link Al-Najjar to a Palestinian group responsible for suicide bombings against Israel. Both Mohammed and Al-Najjar got engineering degrees in the 1980s, when the historically black A&T apparently had attracted some Middle Eastern students. But the two men's time at A&T did not overlap, and it is not known if the two knew each other. Federal authorities say Mohammed was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They also say he was involved in several significant al-Qaida operations - the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the recent bombings of a synagogue in Tunisia and a nightclub in Bali. When he was arrested early Saturday in Pakistan, federal officials said Mohammed was plotting attacks against targets in the U.S. and the Arabian peninsula. Mohammed was born in Kuwait and came to the United States in 1984 to attend Chowan College in Murfreesboro. Media reports say he was there for only a semester before coming to A&T, which issued him a mechanical engineering degree in December 1986. A&T records show he gave a post office box for his address. A public records search shows that Mohammed might have lived in an apartment complex on Montrose Drive, off of West Market Street. Professor David Klett knew of Mohammed. Klett had been the undergraduate coordinator of A&T's mechanical engineering program for about a year when Mohammed enrolled in the summer of 1984. The mechanical engineering professor briefed incoming transfer students on A&T's rules and assigned them to a permanent adviser. Klett also taught a thermodynamics class in which Mohammed enrolled. Klett on Monday recalled Mohammed as "a low-key person. He didn't stick out."
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Klett might not have recalled Mohammed at all except for a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, who came by Klett's office last fall with a list of 1986 A&T graduates and a picture of Mohammed sent out by the FBI. The name rang no bells. But the picture of a bearded Arab man triggered a memory. "That blew me away," Klett said. "I couldn't believe one of our students was wanted for terrorist activities." Klett was not quoted in the Los Angeles Times story, which ran in December. But the story, a profile of Mohammed, describes A&T's Middle Eastern students at the time as a group apart, one that lived off campus and shared soccer games and frequent dinners. Fewer than 300 A&T students back then came from overseas, A&T records show. Mohammed was reportedly what fellow students called a "mullah," a Muslim who prayed five times a day and adhered strictly to the Quran's prohibition against alcohol, adultery and other vices. Though former friends told the Times that Mohammed was studious and private, he also was friendly and capable of laughter. Friends said he appeared to hold no anti-American views at the time. Klett said Monday he does not recall Al-Najjar. School records show he entered A&T in the spring of 1983. Al-Najjar was there two years and got his master's degree in industrial engineering in Dec. 1984. He finished his studies the semester before Mohammed arrived there, records show. Al-Najjar is the brother-in-law of Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor who was indicted last month for allegedly running the American arm of a group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Federal authorities charged Al-Arian and seven others on Feb. 20 with 50 criminal counts. Among them were conspiracy to kill and maim people abroad and to provide support and money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian also has North Carolina ties. He got his master's and doctoral degrees at N.C. State in the early 1980s. Al-Najjar, deported from the U.S. in August on immigration charges, was not among those charged last month. However, several perjury and obstruction of justice charges in the federal indictment stemmed from testimony in Al-Najjar's immigration hearing in 2000. Also, the federal indictment mentions Al-Najjar's wife as being married to an unindicted coconspirator - presumably Al-Najjar. Wajeh Muhammad, treasurer of the Islamic Center of the Triad, says he recalls both Al-Arian and Al-Najjar fondly. He met them - and another one of those indicted, former Greensboro resident Mohammed Tasir Hassan Al-Khatib - shortly after moving here in the early 1980s. They were all part of a Muslim-American community with common interests in reading, writing, good food and better conditions for Palestinians living in the Middle East. "I had high admiration for both of them," Muhammad said of Al-Arian and Al-Najjar. "Especially for Sami. He is a leader in the civil rights movement and a respected professor." The charges against them, Muhammad added, are "absolutely not true." Klett said he does not know why so many Middle Eastern students were attracted to the school in the 1980s. But he suspects that a few students who had good experiences at A&T told others back home, who came to Greensboro to get an education. Back then, Klett said, the Kuwaiti government paid its citizens to attend universities in the United States. Engineering seems to be a draw because, perhaps, of Kuwait's oil production. "I think they found the campus very hospitable," Klett said. "Then it was word of mouth." Badi Ali, president of the Islamic Center of the Triad, said the Greensboro and Raleigh areas have long had a history of acceptance of and tolerance toward Muslims and Palestinians. It is the recent history that has drawn the attention of "NBC Nightly News" and "Inside Edition," which sent camera crews to A&T's campus Monday. The Wall Street Journal, ABC radio and USA Today also have called looking for information. "It's been very busy," said Mable Scott, A&T's chief spokeswoman. Scott never tires of talking about A&T except, perhaps, on a day when reporters call not to talk about the Greensboro Four but about terrorists. "We have a wonderful school, and we have graduated over 40,000 people who have made a difference across the country and the world," said a weary-sounding Scott. "After they graduate, we hope and pray they do what's best." |
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Capture hits home for N.C. colleges
GREENSBORO, N.C. In the seven-story brick building named for astronaut Ronald McNair, fresh flowers adorn a bronze bust of the school's biggest hero, the man who died in the 1986 Challenger tragedy.
Now the school is also known for a decided anti-hero, alleged al-Qaida plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who graduated in 1986. At McNair Hall, which houses the school's engineering department, one professor mused Monday about how he might have inadvertently trained Mohammed for terrorism. "I was in complete disbelief," said David Klett, an engineering professor who advised and taught Mohammed in the mid-'80s. "How could this be? It's a shock." Klett taught Mohammed thermodynamics _ the basics of power plants, combustion reactions and jet engines. "We try to train our students to be problem-solvers," Klett said. "Just that in itself would have been useful to him. It's hard to say what courses he drew most heavily from. I think he found useful the overall education he got in this department." Others who taught Mohammed at A&T, or at Chowan College in Murfreesboro, which Mohammed also attended, were equally stunned. "He is responsible for the lives of 3,000 people. It makes you feel terrible," said Garth Faile, chairman of the science department at Chowan. "At the time he was like any of our other students. He could just have easily won the Nobel. " Kuwaiti-born Mohammed, 37, is said to have masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been linked to several incidents including the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen.
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Tiny Chowan College, a small Baptist school, offered Mohammed his first glimpse of the West. "He was a B-type student," Faile said. "He was "very conscientious." At the time, Chowan was a two-year college. Mohammed went from there to A&T in order to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering. He was one of the first students to take classes in the newly built McNair Hall. Classmate Sammy Zitawi described him as a quiet, unassuming man. "He kept very much to himself," said Zitawi, also a native of Kuwait who sometimes met Mohammed for coffee or lunch at a Burger King. In the 1980s, it was not unusual to hear Arabic on spoken on campuses at Chowan or A&T. Clayton Lewis, former dean of students at Chowan, said he actively recruited international students to diversify the institution. He said area colleges became somewhat of a magnet for students from oil-rich lands who naturally wanted to pursue careers in engineering.
Though Chowan required students including Mohammed to attend weekly Christian services, the school also tried to accommodate the needs of Muslim students, Lewis said. "We provided a place for them to worship on campus," he said. "I remember we all got along very well." He said sometimes the shoes of student worshippers, left outside in accordance to tradition, would be swiped and thrown in the lake as a prank pulled by the locals on the "Abbie Dahbies," as the Arabs were known. Mohammed met with a more serious atmosphere at A&T when he enrolled in 1985. He was part of a sizeable Middle Eastern contingent, who watched soccer instead of football, socialized mostly among themselves and lived off campus.
Mohammed graduated Dec. 18, 1986, in a class of 28 mechanical engineers, almost a third of whom were Arabs. He left North Carolina for Pakistan. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported that he went to work as secretary to an Afghan warlord. He also reportedly taught at a university and a nearby refugee camp in Peshawar. His first known involvement in terrorism was in 1992, when he sent money to his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who was plotting the first attack of the World Trade Center. Seventeen years after Mohammed left North Carolina, few remain on either campus who have personal recollections of him. Still, it was difficult to brush aside the man considered the world's biggest threat. Lewis, the former dean at Chowan, wondered aloud how his school might have turned out such evil. "I would love to talk to this man now," he said. "I would like to know what causes a person to go this way." Moni Basu writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. |
Exactly my first thought after reading it, too.
If you think our lab dances are hot, you should see what the Society of Women Engineers can do with test stand, flourescent lights, some oil and a wind tunnel!
They come from relatively affluent backgrounds,"
I wonder how many times this Ron-Jeremy-lookalike (and probaby wannabe) was repelled by American women?
I have always heard about "hell hath no fury...", but Sheesh, I thought that applied to women only.
...and, no, ladies, I am not blaming this on you or anything like that
Well, as someone who remembers going to a NY University branch in the 60's, where they liked to bill themselves as an International school, easy commute from NYC, there were Syrians, Eqyptians, Iranians (who called themselves Persians) and if I recall correctly, Miss Japan. Quite an eclectic group of students.
These were the days when we were in close contact with the Shah of Iran, and it seemed that Iranians with money wanted their sons and daughters educated in America.
I remember going out with two of them but honestly don't remember what their religion was. They may have been muslim. One of them announced on the first coffee date that he was betrothed and would return home to marry. There was no second date.
The second was something of a ladies' man, had an apartment with 2 other guys off campus, and I remember there were some stories about wild parties. I didn't go out with this one again either - while he was pre-med as was I, it was obvious he was only out for one thing, and I wasn't.
Interestingly, he later became an American citizen and competed in skiing, representing America in the Olympics.
To this day, I beat most people at Backgammon - thanks to having played with the ME's at my college - the only thing I can look back at as having learned about or from them!!
Let's not forget our homegrown terrorists,either. Jesse Jackson went to school in Greensboro.
But I'll bet the Society of Women Engineers are HOTTIES!
Did anyone else find the Hoagland op-ed ('9/11 Mysteries in Plain Sight') in the today's Washington Post interesting?
It should be given its own thread . . .
How did al Qaeda, within two or three years, go from obscurity to becoming super-terrorists capable of blowing up U.S. embassies, warships and skyscrapers with astonishing precision? And what are the links between 9/11 and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 by Ramzi Yousef, who authorities say is Mohammed's nephew?The captured viper also knows the answer to another question that should not be rushed past just because it is obvious: Why did he choose to hide in Rawalpindi, which is the headquarters of Pakistan's military and Inter-Service Intelligence agency, and which is immediately adjacent to the Pakistani diplomatic capital of Islamabad, where Ramzi Yousef was captured in 1995?
The U.S. media and government officials describe Mohammed and Yousef as "masters of disguise," and then assume they are who they say they are this time. There is scant reason to be so trusting. When Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy sentenced Yousef to life plus 240 years in 1998, he said: "We don't even know what your real name is."
Why two men from the remote and ungoverned Pakistani province of Baluchistan who grew up in Kuwait would devote their lives to killing Americans is a mystery. How they acquired prodigious masterminding skills and, at least in Mohammed's case, rabid Islamic fanaticism after lives of intellectual mediocrity and pleasure-seeking, also is a mystery. So is their connection, if any, to al Qaeda at the time of the first World Trade Center bombing. So is their instinctive flight in extremis to the power centers of Pakistan.
Mohammed migrated from the identity of small-time freelance terrorist to the top ranks of bin Laden's ultra-secretive band not long after the 1993 bombing resulted in the breakup of Yousef's U.S. network. Could al Qaeda have been the target of a takeover operation by an intelligence service with good legend-manufacturing skills and a great, burning desire for revenge on the United States?
That is a question U.S. investigators should push more actively. In "Study of Revenge," author Laurie Mylroie sketches the strong ties that Iraq's intelligence services have developed in Pakistani Baluchistan. And the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad has been publicly identified by Secretary of State Colin Powell as a center for contact with al Qaeda.
According to the LAT, KSM's father was an Imam, his mother had a job laying out dead Muslim women at the Kuwaiti mosque, and his brother was a leader of the (extremist) Muslim Brotherhood at the University of Kuwait. At least two brothers of Mohammed (who didn't attend school in the U.S.) were killed as Mujadeen.
The assertion that Mohammed (if it's the same guy) "grew bitter in the West" is laughable.
Secondly, the AP infers that Mohammed's education was paid for by the Kuwaiti government: "the Kuwaiti government paid its citizens to attend universities in the United States. Engineering seems to be a draw because, perhaps, of Kuwait's oil production," but the LA Times story infers that he was not a citizen of Kuwait (which Kuwait now contends), because his parents were born in Pakistan (Baluchistan), and Kuwait does not confer citizenship on foreign workers. Mohammed's first passport was from Pakistan, and he returned to Pakistan, not Kuwait, after college -- which would seem to confirm Kuwait's contention.
It was assumed that Mohammed's family paid for his education in the LA Times story, but there are no facts as yet to confirm that.
I wonder if either college has records of where the tuition came from?
Here’s a link to the December LA Times story (which appears to be the basis for all subsequent stories), published in the “Black Voices” affiliate of the LA Times:
Black College grad is a high-ranking Al Qaeda member: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man believed to be behind 9/11, hides in plain sight -- and narrowly escapes capture in Pakistan.
Not surprising that the subject of Black Muslims is not raised, but it does expose the reason why Arab Muslims attended a small Baptist college: Chowan waived the English proficiency requirement. They would start there, gain some basic English, and move on to A&T.
If JJ is A&T’s most illustrious graduate, you’d have to seriously question their academic standards.
The English equivalency waiver made Chowan a conduit for Arab and Pakistani students. The president of Chowan said in recent TV interviews that he was promoting “international understanding,” but it's more likely that they, like many other small colleges, were/are more motivated by the financial windfall of paid-in-advance cash tuitions that foreign students offer -- whether they attend class or not.
As far as the motivation people disposed to violence, I understand them fine.
Bingo.
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ANGELA P. SWINSO, Staff Writer News & Record (Greensboro, NC) TRIAD/STATE, Pg. BH2 May 17, 1994, Tuesday, HIGH POINT EDITION GREENSBORO Some N.C. A&T State University students wanted a black studies program. They fought for it, and eventually, it was approved. UNCG student Sammy X Webb wanted to hear Khalid Muhammed speak. The university wouldn't pay for it, so he paid for it himself.
"In a political system, if you go to the people and they can't do it, you have to do it yourself," said Webb. He financed Muhammed's February visit to UNCG through a private company he formed called the Black Endowment Fund Promotions.
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"A campus is supposed to represent diversity. I'm a black Muslim. Why can't someone that represents my interest speak on campus?" William Buster, a junior history education major at A&T and a member of the History Club that spearheaded a successful battle for a mandatory black studies program, said sometimes students need to stand up for what's best for them, and not wait for university officials to make decisions. "I honestly feel that the administration does not have the black student's best interest at heart," said Buster, who was also a part of a group that approached chancellors from five predominantly black schools with concerns about last year's $ 310 million state universities improvement bond referendum. "I feel in a way that they have come to the idea that black universities have outlived their usefulness." But Willie Muhammed, a 1969 graduate of A&T, said although students have been taking stands on issues for years, things are a little different in the '90s. "The condition that they are found in today, somebody had to take a stand to put them in that condition," Muhammed said. Though he said he's pleased to see students make a difference, there should be more participation among students. "All of the governing organizations on campus should have one purpose, one plan and one voice." |
Indeed. That is the strongest statement suggesting anybody recognized this fellow, and it's *very* weak. Note also that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted in New York seven years ago for his co-authorship, with WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, of "Project Bojinka," a plot to blow up eleven US airliners in flight over the Pacific in one day of terror. According to the New York Times, US intelligence "knows a great deal about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." And yet, to judge from these articles, his supposed classmates are only now hearing that he's a terrorist. Didn't the FBI check to see if the INS ever granted a visa to a "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed"? Something doesn't add up.
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