Military

DATE=10/03/2002

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01202

TITLE=AL-QAIDA MANHUNT

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: The ongoing Al-Qaida manhunt. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: The hunt for Al-Qaida terrorists continues worldwide. Police, intelligence and military forces from South Asia to Europe and the United States have captured several key leaders and a small army of foot soldiers from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. [B-roll shown. Natural sound in background.] In September, Pakistani commandos raided an apartment in Karachi, where terrorists were suspected of hiding. In a fierce gun battle, two terrorists were killed and five were captured, among them, Ramzi Binalshibh. Just days before, Binalshibh had appeared in a videotaped broadcast by al-Jazeera television, bragging of his role in organizing the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Binalshibh is now in U-S custody, as is another al-Qaida leader, Abu Zubaida, who was captured in Pakistan in March. But other al-Qaida leaders are still unaccounted for, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden himself. How goes the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists? I'll ask my guests, Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert at the RAND corporation; Elaine Shannon, correspondent for Time magazine; and Matthew Levitt, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

How was Ramzi Binalshibh found, Bruce Hoffman?

Hoffman: Well, from the accounts that one sees, through Pakistani intelligence and cooperating with the United States.

Host: Now did they know that Ramzi Binalshibh was in the apartment that the Pakistani commandos went to raid?

Hoffman: That I couldn't tell you.

Host: Elaine Shannon, do you have much idea whether this search was specifically for Ramzi Binalshibh or whether he was found accidentally?

Shannon: Well, the initial report said, as you're alluding to, that they didn't know who they had exactly. But then we've heard some things about electronic communications being intercepted. We do know that Binalshibh gave this interview to al-Jazeera in Karachi and they sort of went on and on about him. And apparently he stuck around, which was not smart.

Host: Matt Levitt, how important was his capture?

Levitt: His capture was critical, I think, more in terms of understanding what happened on September 11th than in terms of really making a huge crack in the al-Qaida network. I don't think he was one of, you know, the top five people of al-Qaida, but he clearly was one of the most important people related to the September 11th attacks. And one of the most frustrating things is that more than a year later, there are still tremendous gaps about what we know and don't know about that horrific day.

Host: Bruce Hoffman, what do we know about Binalshibh's role in the nine-eleven attacks?

Hoffman: Well, certainly he's the clearest indication that he was the twentieth hijacker, because he made several attempts to attain a visa and enter the United States and when his efforts to get a visa were foiled he then became, I think, a key linch pin insofar as funneling money to the hijackers in the United States. As Matt suggests, that has a lot of answers that he can provide that can really fill in the pieces.

Host: One of the pieces that has been perplexing to investigators, Elaine Shannon, has been what Mohammed Atta was doing in Spain shortly before the nine-eleven attacks. Is it believed that he met with Binalshibh there?

Shannon: Yes, as far as I know, they haven't found a hotel clerk or anybody who said "yeah, I saw those two having dinner and here's what they talked about or put them together at all visually. But both of them were in the same area at the same time and it makes sense that they would meet. There are also some money transfers. Binalshibh sent money to Atta's group through Marwan al-Shehhi. He also sent money to Zacarias Moussaoui and there's a lot we don't know about what this guy was up to.

Host: Matt Levitt, is the government going to learn more about Zacarias Moussaoui's role while he's being prosecuted here in the United States through Binalshibh?

Levitt: I think so and certainly the government hopes so and I think that's one of the reasons why the Moussaoui case was recently postponed again. And it's a concern for both the defense and the prosecution that material will come out that will make it more difficult to have a fair trial. And it's not just from Binalshibh. There are other individuals out there, the Al-Jazeera interview that we've been talking about was also with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He's a critical individual because he, we now believe, also has a good deal of information about September 11th. But we also know that he is intimately connected to a host of other al-Qaida terrorist operations and had already been on the F-B-I's most wanted terrorist list. So, he's one of the people, especially now that we have Binalshibh that we're going to be looking for very carefully.

Host: Does it make it easier to find the Khalid Shaikh Mohammeds and the other outstanding al-Qaeda fugitives when you're able to capture people like Binalshibh, Bruce Hoffman?

Hoffman: Yes, I think you keep adding pieces to the puzzle, of course. Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed both gave the interview to Al-Jazeera, so they obviously were recently in contact with one another. I think the key here, too, is that we don't know what exactly Moussaoui's role in the hijacking and follow-up plots was. We've maintained that he was the twentieth hijacker. He himself has alluded to that he wasn't in fact the twentieth hijacker. He's admitted he's a follower of bin Laden, that he's a member of al-Qaida, but said that [being a hijacker] wasn't his mission. So, certainly Binalshibh, possibly, one hopes can shed light on that as well.

Host: Elaine Shannon, it's said that not only was Binalshibh captured with four other al-Qaeda terrorists, but also that some five or four laptop computers were discovered at the apartment where Binalshibh was captured. How important are those kinds of finds? The laptop computers that may have records in them for these kinds of investigations?

Shannon: That's even better than people sometimes, because people lie. And well, computers can lie too, but you can certainly go in there and find a lot of detail. I was absolutely fascinated to look at the Al-Jazeera interviews because they talked about Atta's communications with Binalshibh and the little code that they used. That could help investigators discover the channels that were being used to communicate. Maybe these channels are still being used or variations of them and the little code could help decipher other communications that they have and they don't know what to make of.

Host: Matt Levitt, what are investigators able to do in terms of looking at records of e-mails in the average computer when they're doing an investigation.

Levitt: This is actually what we do really well and there's a lot that can be done. Like Bruce said, it's really pieces of a puzzle and they all begin to fit together. It's also a domino effect -- one thing leads to the next. A great example was the plot that was foiled in Sinagpore. Based on information that was uncovered in Afghanistan, including videos and documents -- it's unclear if they were hard documents or computer files -- investigators were able to determine that there was a plot targeting U-S embassies and other interests in Singapore that led to the arrest of thirteen terrorists there and foiled that plot. The computers, like you said, they don't lie. And they give you all kinds of information. Not only the information you were looking for, but often, even the more important information that you didn't know to look for. And that I think is why you're finding these waves of arrests in Europe, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. And waves of information that's coming and leading to other individuals who are still out there.

Host: Bruce Hoffman, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said that Binalshibh, though he was only captured recently is already cooperating with investigators and interrogators and that he is talking. How likely is that to be true and how true is the information that he is likely to be giving to his interrogators at this point?

Hoffman: Well, that's the beauty of getting a big fish or comparatively big fish like him. Even though he's not in the highest leadership echelon of al-Qaida, nonetheless he's someone who has an enormous amount of information. This is facilitator. He's a linch pin. He's an operator. And in that sense he's beneficial not just for the information that he may or may not be providing -- willingly or unwillingly -- but also, it enables us to camouflage or disguise often the sources of our information. It enables us to spread disinformation, as it were, to force the terrorists to look over their shoulders, to be worried that we might be the next knock on the door, and therefore to derail or to make it more difficult for them to actually plan and plot attacks. So in that sense it's a tremendous benefit when you scoop up one of these guys because they're useful not only for the information they can provide but how we can use them and how we can portray our use of them.

Host: Elaine Shannon, as more and more people with some seniority in al-Qaida are captured, how much effort is there to use one against the other to check their stories one against the other?

Shannon: Well, of course they [U-S officials] won't talk about this, but from what I understand, there are a number of people that turned state's evidence, in the old phrase, early on that have been helpful. Ahmed Ressam, who was caught up trying to bring explosives across the Canadian border into Seattle to go bomb Los Angeles airport -- he's talked about seeing Moussaoui and some of the people at the camps. There's a young man named "Sammy" [Mohammed Mansour] Jabarah who was brought up in Canada, he's a Canadian citizen, Kuwaiti by birth. He was involved in the Singapore plot. The F-B-I has him now because he got shipped over here. And I think he was able to put together some information about some of the other people involved in plots in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and some of the other nations which led to that orange alert the other day.

Host: Let's talk a little bit about that. Matt Levitt, the man captured in South Asia, Omar al-Faruq, started giving information. Who is he and what role did he have in al-Qaida?

Levitt: The first thing that's important here is it wasn't just from him. It was multiple sources. It was corroboration that there was in fact a hard threat at that period. And there were a number of things going on and I'm sure that they weren't only human sources. And the other thing, before we move on, is I think it's critical to understand that we do in fact play information off. We learn information from one detainee and you can use it against another. So in a sense, it's almost not so important. You don't need to be so worried that they're feeding you disinformation as long as you are confident enough in your analytical ability to then corroborate that information. If you look at what we learned with Abu Zubaida, he's clearly given some very good information, information that reportedly led to the arrest of the [alleged] dirty bomber Jose Padilla. But on the other hand, he also told us that we should shut down all our banks in the Northeast on every other Tuesday and all these other threats that clearly had nothing to do with anything. So there's a lot going on. Omar Faruq is a great example of someone that we got our hands on and gave us very good information that we were then able to corroborate through other sources that led to the raising of the alert to an orange alert on the anniversary of September 11th.

Host: Bruce Hoffman, what information did Omar al-Faruq give? What threat did he tell about?

Hoffman: What I thought was the most interesting of his information was that he painted a picture that even of an organization that even with the most terrible beating that they've been subjected to in Afghanistan that is still essentially functioning, that still has some command and control apparatus, particularly in Southeast Asia. And that despite the loss of its training camps, of its operational bases and of its headquarters, it's still functioning in one fashion or another.

Host: Elaine Shannon, what does that tell us about how al-Qaida is operating these days and how they're trying to reorganize themselves?

Shannon: As Bruce says, what al-Faruq described is a very clever organization. They had made plans for what we call continuity of government. "If I'm arrested, then so and so takes over." Al-Faruq told us very detailed information about here's where we get the explosives, we've got tons of it. Here's what we paid for it. Here's who's in charge -- many countries, many operatives, very organized, very sophisticated organization. It also shows us how he, as an Arab representative from al-Qaida, was to get together with the indigenous extremists or anti-government groups to make one big dangerous coalition.

Host: And this was in Indonesia or throughout South Asia?

Shannon: Throughout the region.

Host: Matt Levitt, when these attacks were discovered, it led to an alert here in the U-S. How is the U-S dealing with this information to not just find other al-Qaida operatives but to raise the level of security in the U-S?

Levitt: Well, when we go from one alert level to another, there are small steps we take. I think it's mostly for the population, to show that we're on top of things, that we're doing things. The difference between yellow and orange, frankly, is not such a tremendous deal. I think it's also significant that they were brave enough to lower the threat [level] as soon as they felt they could. And often, there's a concern that people are going to feel politically that there's a cost, because what happens if you lower the threat alert and then there's an attack tomorrow? We're getting a lot more sophisticated in terms of how we understand the threats and how we react to them. The bottom line is it will be a hardening of possible targets and a raising of our alert level.

Host: Elaine Shannon, there were recently arrests in the U-S of a group of men that were accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper cell. Tell us a little bit about who these men were and where they were arrested, and what for.

Shannon: This was in Lackawanna, five of them .

Host: Lackawanna is where?

Shannon: Upstate New York. It's near Buffalo New York. It's in western New York. All eight of the individuals who were arrested are Yemeni-American. Seven of them were born in the United States of Yemeni heritage, of Yemeni parents. Some of them had traveled back and forth and lived in the Persian Gulf, Yemen, or some of the other states. One of them is a naturalized citizen. There was one of them who is still at large, Kamal Derwish is his name, he's in Yemen, is said to have come to town and he attracted a following of young men who wanted to talk about religion, the Koran, and about the fundamentalist way. He hasn't been charged with a crime but they're looking for him because they think he sucked these other guys into going first to Pakistan to study religion and then going to Afghansitan where they attended an [al-Qaida] training camp. And they saw Osama bin Laden in June and July of 2001. Then they came back to Buffalo, the F-B-I asked them -- they'd heard that they'd gone -- and several of them, according to the F-B-I, lied to them. They said, no they'd only gone to Pakistan. So now they're charged with material support for terrorism.

Host: Bruce Hoffman, how does an investigation of this sort go in the United States as opposed to when people are captured perhaps in Afghanistan or other places.

Hoffman: A lot of it, I think is often obscured. When you look at the indictment itself, it's very general against these individuals. And I think the reason is that obviously there's a large amount of electronic intercepts, monitoring going on of phone calls, e-mails and so on that sheds light on the case and fleshes out the case but can't be revealed in court, especially when you're dealing with American citizens. There are restraints and rules involved that make that type of interception far more difficult if not impossible.

Host: So, these men were under surveillance for some time?

Hoffman: Well, one gets the impression that there's obviously much more there than the indictment. So, you assume, yes, its surveillance and it's also very sensitive means of attaining information that if they revealed it in open court would obviously affect other investigations.

Host: Matt Levitt, one of the things that people have talked about of the downside of the success of the effort in Afghanistan was that at least in Afghanistan, al-Qaida forces were all in one place, could be targeted. But due to the quick success in Afghanistan, now al-Qaida is spread all around the world. Where are al-Qaida forces at this point finding the most success hiding?

Levitt: A case that we've highlighted already is Southeast Asia. And I think what that example highlighted on the anniversary of September 11th as we alluded to earlier, is that the call went out from the command and control as it was falling apart in Afghanistan that said, go out and do things on your own. And what we know about al-Qaida is that it was very patient and it would plan things way in advance, years in advance. And there's no question that al-Qaida has operational plans that it can take off the shelf and execute and that it has local means of getting explosives and local recruits that it can call upon who have been to the training camps and gone back home. That was the concern about these guys near Buffalo. So, certainly Southeast Asia is a hot spot and it's not just Indonesia. Malaysia and Singapore are of great concern also.

Host: How is the financing, Bruce Hoffman, being managed now that al-Qaeda is dispersed? Do the individual cells have to come up with their own money at this point?

Hoffman: That was always part and parcel of some of the al-Qaida operations. Al-Qaida functions on multiple operational levels. You had a highly professional operation such as September 11th where the operatives were obviously well-funded, to the extent that a few days before September 11th, they were returning money that was unused back to their paymasters in the Arabian [Persian] Gulf. On the other hand, you have a case like Ahmed Ressam, who was dispatched to the United States and given twelve-thousand dollars [$12,000] in seed money and told to raise the rest of his operational funds however he can, whether it's petty criminality -- swiping laptops and cell phones. So it's a mixture of things. I think money is funneled to them but also they raise money on their own.

Host: Elaine Shannon, who are the operatives in al-Qaida now who pose the most threat?

Shannon: Well, as we talked about, the F-B-I and C-I-A would really, really like to get their hands on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He was the uncle of Ramsi Youssef, the master of the [1993] World Trade Center bombing, and he's charged in New York with being a conspirator in a plot to bomb about eleven or twelve American airliners flying out of the Philippines toward the United States. And then of course, [Ayman al] Zawahiri is another one.

Host: Zawahiri is?

Shannon: The top lieutenant of bin Laden. Then there's some other middle level people: a guy who calls himself [Tawfiz Attash] Khallad, mastermind of the [U-S-S] Cole bombing. There's another person in that category, a man named Mustafah Ahmad who's a paymaster. There are a couple of paymasters in the nine-eleven case. And all of these would be useful not only about nine-eleven but what's next.

Host: Well, Matt Levitt, what about Osama bin Laden?

Levitt: I really don't think that he's the key. And I know that that's a minority opinion, but I really don't think that he's the key. He has created a significant enough organization that with or without him, as we're seeing right now, it continues to function. And there are other people out there also who are functioning. We believe that the military security committee right now is being run out of eastern Iran.

Host: Let's actually, quickly about that, how much information is there about what's going on in Iran, Bruce Hoffman?

Hoffman: Well, we certainly know that al-Qaida members sought sanctuary there and fled across the border to Iran. There's varying reports of what exactly their activities are now, whether it's a permissive environment for them to function and to plan or whether they're just squirreled and hiding. So we don't really have a complete picture.

Host: We only have a couple of seconds left. Elaine Shannon, do you think Osama bin Laden is alive or dead at this point?

Shannon: I'm with these guys. It almost doesn't matter. There's so many people who know how to do it, who know how to get together a plot and who really don't like us.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have. I'd like to thank my guests for today: Bruce Hoffman of the RAND corporation, Elaine Shannon of Time magazine, and Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.