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Excerpt - GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, July 24 (Reuters) - A driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday. "Our policy at the time was not to read Miranda rights," FBI special agent Robert Fuller said in testimony at the U.S. military commission trial of Salim Hamdan on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Fuller was referring to the Miranda v. Arizona U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1966, which held that potential criminal suspects in custody...

Afghan Fundamentalism: The Role of the U.S., Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia David Storobin, Esq. - 12/12/2004 Victor Boot was a graduate of Military Institute for Foreign Languages in Moscow, a known school for Russian intelligence. He was the son of the son-in-law of foreign Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who initiated the Russian policy of secretly assisting Islamic terrorists. In 1997, Boot arrived in the United Arab Emirates for the first time. From UAE, it was easier for Boot to funnel Russian weaponry to Afghanistan. In June 2001 - less than three months before September 11 - Pakistani intelligence described...

Bin Laden happy with September 11 toll, war court told Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:58pm EDT By Jim Loney GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver overheard the al Qaeda leader saying he was happy about the death toll in the September 11 attacks and thought the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down, according to one of the driver's interrogators. The evidence by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, was meant to support the case by prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal that the driver, Salim Hamdan, was close to...

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday in an attempt to draw a link between Salim Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

THESE days in Peshawar, where al-Qaeda was founded 20 years ago, the only glimpse of Osama bin Laden comes on little green packets of safety matches strewn around town by American officials (see picture). They bear the portrait of the world’s most wanted man, along with the promise that America will pay up to $5 million for information leading to his capture. It is an appropriate image. Like one of these matches, Mr bin Laden caused a flash with the September 11th attacks on America in 2001, then vanished into smoke, leaving a burning trail of militancy stretching from Indonesia...

Speaking at a Town Hall Meeting in New Mexico today, July 15, 2008, Sen. John McCain vowed to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice for his crimes against America . . . (see video) This is the kind of grit and determination we need in a President. John McCain has the resolve and strength to do what he says he will do. This is the McCain who needs to keep showing up at every appearance on the campaign trail, and on television.

UNIDENTIFIED gunmen shot and killed a brother-in-law of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid on his home in Madagascar, his brother said. Malek Khalifa told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television that the aim of the killers appeared to have been to rob his brother, Jamal Khalifa, who mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar.

Lebanese Sunni Cleric Sheikh Maher Hamoud: I Admire Bin Laden, But Would Not Have Sanctioned 9/11 Attacks – Except for Those on Pentagon, CIA HQ, and White House Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese Sunni cleric Sheikh Maher Hamoud, which aired on NBN, a TV channel affiliated with the head of the Amal movement, Nabih Berri, on July 7, 2008. Sheikh Hamoud, imam of Al-Quds mosque in Sidon, Lebanon, has given interviews to Western journalists, [1] and has received financial support from former Australian mufti Taj Din al-Hilali. [2] Sheikh Hamoud is the scion of a prominent Sidon...

Pakistan's foreign minister has ruled out allowing military personnel from the United States, or any other foreign country, in Pakistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. Mahmoud Qureshi said on Saturday that the country's new government had not permitted any such operation in the regions bordering Afghanistan and never would. Bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. "Our government's policy is that our troops, paramilitary forces and our regular forces are deployed in sufficient numbers. They are capable of taking action there. And any foreign intrusion would be counter-productive,"...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in interview excerpts released Friday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should be executed, if he is ever captured alive. The Illinois Senator told CNN that the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001 should face the full weight of US and global justice. "I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty," Obama said. "I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes, but I certainly think plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach." "I think this is a big hypothetical, though...

Defense officials are criticizing what they say is the failure to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because of timidity on the part of policy officials in the Pentagon, diplomats at the State Department and risk-averse bureaucrats within the intelligence community. Military special operations forces (SOF) commandos are frustrated by the lack of aggressiveness on the part of several policy and intelligence leaders in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top henchmen, who are thought to have hidden inside the tribal areas of Pakistan for the past 6½ years. The focus of the commandos' ire, the...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

THIS is Osama Bin Laden’s school-age son, who yesterday continued his father’s mission of hate — with a POEM begging for Britain to be destroyed. Baby-faced Hamza Bin Laden — just 16 but already dubbed the Crown Prince of Terror — also ranted in his evil ode that the US and our other allies must be wiped out. The teen declared in his demented ditty to fanatics: “Accelerate the destruction of America, Britain, France and Denmark.”

The United States has a standing agreement with Pakistan that CIA-operated Predator drones may strike Osama bin Laden's hide-out without prior permission from Islamabad, according to people familiar with the arrangement. One source said the free hand - an exception in a country politically sensitive to U.S. counterterrorism operations - was granted by President Pervez Musharraf early in the war if the U.S. locates bin Laden in Pakistan's rugged tribal areas, where he is thought to be hiding.... DRONE

SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper planning to expose internal debate surrounding 'highly classified Pentagon order'; Special Operations forces hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING.... Thats the Story from drudge, OMG if the Times is gonna report this... Good GOD.... This is Huge. ( yea and Series) This is NOT a good thing for national Security and I am just a housewife. Even I can see and call a Traitor, a Traitor, but the Editor and the signing off authority that Prints this, to bee seen by the...

WASHINGTON: Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to authorize the Pentagon's Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda. Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden's terror network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies. The new plan,...

SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper is planning to expose a 'highly classified Pentagon order' authorizing Special Operations forces to hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING....

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann today on a conference call noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said he didn't want to make Osama bin Laden a martyr. "The last I checked, a martyr is someone who dies for a cause or someone who is killed for a cause," Scheunemann said. "It seems that Senator Obama is ruling out capital punishment."

Senator Obama is obviously confused about what the United States Supreme Court decided and what he is calling for. After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in U.S. civilian courts to dangerous terrorist detainees, he is now running away from the consequences of that decision and what it would mean if Osama bin Laden were captured. Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg war trials. Unfortunately, it is clear Senator Obama does not understand what happened at the Nuremburg trials and...

...here I was in the back of a beat-up car, blind-folded with a black fabric hood over my head, dust filling my lungs as we speed down the bumpy, mountainous back roads of the Afghanistan – Pakistan border. I was about to meet the most wanted man on Earth. I had been summoned by Usama bin Laden.....

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts, a privilege opposed by John McCain. Responding to questions from The Examiner, Sen. John Kerry and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said bin Laden would benefit from last week's Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts. “If he were to be brought back,” Clarke said of bin Laden, “the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus.”...

In an ABC News interview Monday Night Barack Obama when questioned stated “What we know is that in previous terrorist attacks, for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated,” Obama said adding, "And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and...

An Islamic charity with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban is now collaborating with an unlikely new partner: UNICEF, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund.UNICEF has signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a Saudi charity of massive scope that keeps branches in more than 20 countries and has over 100 offices worldwide. According to UNICEF, it will be teaming with the charity’s domestic Saudi branch to “promote children’s rights, health, equality and education,” in the oil-rich kingdom — but the organization has been doing more than just charity work. The U.S. Treasury Department...

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House. Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source. Bush arrives in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe. He will have tea with the Queen...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Osama bin Laden's former driver may not go on trial this summer at Guantanamo after all. The military lawyer for Salim Hamdan says the Supreme Court ruling on the rights of Guantanamo prisoners is likely to at least delay the Yemeni's war crimes trial. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer told The Associated Press he will file a motion to dismiss the war crimes charges against Hamdan based on the court's finding that Guantanamo prisoners have constitutional rights. The defense lawyer said Wednesday he will argue that Hamdan was denied his constitutional right to a speedy...

The report of a Predator-launched missile strike in the Mohmand region of Pakistan follows a strike three weeks ago in the Bajaur area just to the north. Check out satellite imagery of the areas in question. This is some of the baddest of the badlands in Pakistan, and a great place to hide if you are Osama bin Laden. Or maybe it used to be. Local Taliban leader Umar Khalid recently signed a peace deal with Pakistan and has stated that there are no foreign fighters in the area. After the missile strike, maybe he's right.

June 9, 2008 WASHINGTON — The leader of the tribal confederation that has fought to expel Al Qaeda from most of Iraq's Anbar province is offering his men to help gin up a rebellion against Osama bin Laden's organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Osama Bin LadenNew Yorkers last week were reminded yet again of the horrors of the 9/11 attacks, when their unrepentant mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arraigned in Guantanamo Bay. But few are aware a tectonic shift has taken place beneath the headlines in the wider war on terrorism - one that could within a few years significantly lower the likelihood of terror returning to New York's streets. This is because Al Qaeda has gotten itself into hot water with the one constituency that it cannot afford to alienate: its fellow jihadists.Over the past year, a growing number of very consequential...

Don't look now, but evidence of progress in the war on terror is just about everywhere. Last week CIA director Michael Hayden noted some U.S. accomplishments for the Washington Post: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally." USA Today: Attacks in Iraq are "down 70 percent since President Bush ordered a U.S. troop increase, or 'surge,' early last year." The New Yorker's Lawrence Wright devoted a long essay to Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, onetime mentor to Ayman al Zawahiri, who now criticizes his former protégé and Osama bin...

The Dubai-based satellite TV channel Al Arabiya is reporting that Osama Bin Laden has been “located� by US intelligence in the Kararakoram – a mountain range that spans the borders of Pakistan, the Kashmir and China (K2 is one of its peaks). There was a high-level meeting last week in Doha including General Petraeus, the recently-nominated Commander of US Central Command, and it is reasonable to speculate that – if there is truth to the report – it flows from this piece of intelligence. Whether the latest rumours about the tracking down of OBL have foundation will quickly become apparent....

PESHAWAR: Matchboxes carrying Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden’s photograph are in circulation in Peshawar city, advertising huge rewards from the US government in return for information about Osama. “Contact the nearest US embassy or consulate, if you have any information about Osama Bin Laden,” says the text written in Urdu on one side of the matchbox containing 30 sticks. Postal and email addresses for sharing of information with the US government have also been given on the other side of the matchbox, which also mentions the web-site www.heroes.net for further information. The inside text states Bin Laden is wanted...

The US is making "a big and continual push" to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, but his demise will not end the organization's menace, CIA Director Michael Hayden said in an AP interview. The CIA equally is interested in those jockeying to replace bin Laden in what he predicted will be a "succession crisis." "It will be really interesting to see how that plays out. The organization is a lot more networked than it is ruthlessly hierarchical," Hayden said. "How do you pick the next overall leader?" A number of Egyptians are now part of al-Qaida's top echelon and...

A top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud has rejected reports that al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and other leaders are hiding in his region. "The al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden is dead, and the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, are not in our territory," he said in an interview broadcast by a satellite television network. Funeral prayers have been said for Osama bin Laden over the years with one reported by a Pakistani news organisation, and another in an Egyptian newspaper as far back as December 2001. This report quoted an official of the Taliban saying that he had suffered serious...

Dubai, 26 May (AKI) - (by Hamza Boccolini) - Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the K2 mountains of northern Pakistan, according to sources cited by Arabic television network, Al-Arabiya. The report also said US secret services were intending to drive him out in a major military operation encompassing the northern Pakistani tribal areas. According to the Dubai-based network, in the past few days US security and military officials had a top-level summit at a military base in the Qatari capital, Doha, to plan an operation to hunt for the al-Qaeda leader. General David Petraeus, the US...

Is Osama bin Laden a rebel against the Saudi Arabian ruling class or a model member of it? That question lurks behind “The Bin Ladens,” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer Steve Coll. The world’s most famous terrorist owes his fortune and his standing to a family business that Coll calls “the kingdom’s Halliburton.” Like Halliburton, the Saudi Binladin Group specializes in gigantic infrastructure projects. Government connections are the key to the family’s wealth. So you would assume they would react with unmixed horror to a radical son, like the duchess in the Noël Coward song: You could have...

The jihadist revolt against bin Laden. Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since Al Qaeda had moved to...

The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike. Where a nuclear attack once may have been beyond the capacities of stateless terrorists, that is no longer the case. One need only consider Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of 9/11 and chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who revealed under intensive interrogation -- including the much-maligned tactic of...

Most of these clerics and former militants, of course, have not suddenly switched to particularly progressive forms of Islam or fallen in love with the United States (all those we talked to saw the Iraqi insurgency as a defensive jihad), but their anti-Al Qaeda positions are making Americans safer. If this is a war of ideas, it is their ideas, not the West's, that matter. The U.S. government neither has the credibility nor the Islamic knowledge to effectively debate Al Qaeda's leaders, but the clerics and militants who have turned against them do. Juan Zarate, a former federal prosecutor and...

If He Succeeds as He Has in Iraq It Could Reshape Presidential Race WASHINGTON — The general whose successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq reshaped the Republican primary, David Petraeus, will now turn his attention to hunting down Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Pakista General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee here that is weighing President Bush's proposal to promote him to head of the Central Command that one of his first actions would be to visit Pakistan and meet with leaders there to discuss strategies for taking back control of the tribal border provinces where Osama bin...

America in Ashes?By Christopher S. CarsonFrontPageMagazine.com | 5/23/2008 The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike. Where a nuclear attack once may have been beyond the capacities of stateless terrorists, that is no longer the case. One need only consider Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of 9/11 and chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who revealed under intensive interrogation --...

Osama bin Laden released a new audio message last week in which he termed the Palestinian issue the "core reason" for al-Qaida's war against the West, and a major impetus for the 9/11 attacks. This is the second time in less than six months that he has tried to put Israel center stage: In December, he issued an audiotape threatening to "expand our jihad" to Israel in order to "liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." Yet in reality, Israel has never been of much interest to al-Qaida. Thus it is crucial to...

What is missing from the Bin Laden Tapes? Where is Adam Gadahn? Evan Kohlmann over at the Counterterrorism Blog has a great analysis and Bill Roggio amplifies as well as answers the questions about the missing American Jihadi...

Arab Leaders Who Collaborate with the West Are "Wolves [Preying on] Sheep" Following a general message to all Muslims, bin Laden addresses the Egyptian people, saying: "Our heroic brothers in Egypt must strive to lift the siege [on Gaza], because only they live next to [Gaza's] borders. They [must also] depose this cruel... and arrogant hard-hearted [ruler, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak]... who is like Pharaoh and Haman." In the message, bin Laden urges young Muslims "to study the reasons for the [Arab countries'] failure to liberate Palestine until now and to learn their lessons." According to him, this failure is...

Osama bin Laden released a new message on Sunday denouncing Arab leaders for sacrificing the Palestinians and saying the head of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah did not really have the strength to take on Israel. In his second audio message in three days focusing on the Palestinians, the al-Qaida leader said the only way to liberate Palestine is to fight the Arab regimes that are protecting Israel. And he called on Muslim militants in Egypt to help break the blockade of Gaza. Bin Laden said Muslims should ignore the Islamic prohibition against raising arms against fellow Muslims, claiming it...

Osama bin Laden released a new message on Sunday accusing Arab leaders of sacrificing the Palestinians and calling on Muslim militants in Egypt to help break the blockade of Gaza. Bin Laden called Arab leaders "agents of the crusaders" and "wolves" in the audio message posted on an Islamic militant Web site where al-Qaida leaders have issued past statements. He portrayed the citizens of Arab nations as herds of sheep who have been handed over to the wolves to look after them. "Every day, the herd wishes the wolves would stop preying on it," he said. "Those (Arab) kings and...

Bin Laden to issue "very strong" message: website Sun May 18, 2008 9:31am EDT DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden will issue a "very strong" statement to Muslims across the world soon, an Islamist website said on Sunday. "A very strong statement to the Islamic nation by the lion of Islam sheikh Osama bin Laden," read a banner posted on the al Qaeda-linked website. The website said the statement would be issued "soon", without giving further details. Such messages usually appear within 72 hours. In his latest message, posted on Friday to mark Israel's 60th anniversary, bin Laden vowed to...

DUBAI, May 18 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden will issue a "very strong" statement to Muslims across the world soon, an Islamist website said on Sunday. "A very strong statement to the Islamic nation by the lion of Islam sheikh Osama bin Laden," read a banner posted on the al Qaeda-linked website. ~ snip ~

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden vowed Friday to fight Israel for the liberation of the Palestinians, claiming their cause is at the heart of al-Qaida's holy war with the West. The terrorist leader's third statement this year was released to coincide with the Jewish state's 60th anniversary and came out as President Bush was wrapping up his visit to Israel to celebrate the occasion. "We will continue our struggle against the Israelis and their allies," bin Laden said in a 10-minute audio posted on an Internet site used frequently by al-Qaida. "We are not going to give up an...

Excerpt - DUBAI, May 16 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden vowed in an audio tape marking Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations to continue the fight against the Jewish state and its allies and not give up an inch of Palestinian land. "We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on earth," the al Qaeda leader said in the tape posted on an Islamist website on Friday. Bin Laden said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the heart of...

An radical jihadist Web site has announced that a new message from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is forthcoming. A banner announcing the message says he will address the 60th anniversary of Israel. His message is titled, "The reasons for the struggle in the remembrance of the 60th anniversary of the rising of the occupier nation of Israel." Developing...