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| Europe | |
| Report: Al Qaeda Claims Credit for Madrid Blasts | |
| 2004-03-11 | |
| Fox News -- just hit the ’Net. Al Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibilty for a series of bombings Thursday that left at least 190 people dead and 1,240 wounded. According to wire reports, Al-Quds Al-Arabi — a London-based Arabic newspaper — reported the terrorist organization said it was behind the the 10 bombs that rocked three Madrid train stations during the height of the morning rush hour. . . . After an emergency Cabinet meeting, a somber Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called the attacks "mass murder" and vowed to hunt down the attackers. He reaffirmed his policy of not negotiating with ETA. "No negotiation is possible or desirable with these assassins who so many times have sown death all around Spain," Aznar said. He has the right idea. Viva Espana! Mansoor Ijaz, a foreign-affairs analyst for Fox News, said the attacks had many of the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation. He said it was evidence the pan-Islamic terror organization may be "joining hands with local terrorists."
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| Posted by:Mike |
| #14 Remember, you can make a reasonable one-time-pad just by ensuring both sides have copies of the same CD. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-3-11 8:41:46 PM |
| #13 I don't know the answer to all of your questions, in large part because I don't have access to anything outside of open-source intelligence ;) While most (as in 90%, it seems) of the remaining top leaders are based out of Iran, I don't think that they'd be issuing claims of responsibility to begin with, they're far too plotting Dire Revenge(TM) to concern themselves with such things. So they delegate it to their subordinates - the regional operators - to see to this kind of stuff after the booms occur. A fair number of the regional ops seem to be based out of more or less "safe" places like Pankisi, Mindanao, Sulawesi, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Sudan, ect from which they can send and receive messages without any fear of action against them by the authorities. Also, in the case of claims of responsibility, a bonafide al-Qaeda frontman like the late Yandarbiyev in Qatar, al-Hawali in Saudi Arabia, Mullah Krekar in Norway, Captain Hook in the UK, et al wouldn't care if the US intercepted the message - the US already knows damned well who they are but is unable to deal with them cuz of politicks, so they can do as they please. Keep in mind that most of the "bin Laden" or "al-Qaeda politburo" statements throughout 2002 claiming credit for various attacks on US and allied nations were written by one ideologue, Yousef al-Ayyeri, from the comfort of his villa in Saudi Arabia In this particular case, some reports are saying that it was a letter, others an e-mail. If it was an e-mail, presumably the al-Quds editors would be able to test its reliability using one particular standard the same way their al-Majallah equivalents did in May 2003. Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj and Thabet bin Qais's gloatings about coming attacks looked a lot more credible after the major bombings in Riyadh, Chechnya, and Casablanca - I'm assuming the al-Quds folks are using the same standard here. Also, the jihadi grapevine is hardly an accurate thing - the intended al-Qaeda attacks, IMO, were intended to nail us on X-Mas (hence the flight delays), not on February 3, but it is a general barometer that the Londonistan crowd was anticipating a major attack on the US, perhaps involving airliners. Another thing that I've noticed (and Saad al-Faqih over at MIRA is remarkably up-front in this regard) is that since the London crowd is pretty much the HQ of the group's political wing is that they understand the group's core strategy as far as being willing to ally with anybody who hates the US as much as they do, certainly better than a good number of pundits I've seen on TV. As far as the Net goes, I think they use it in addition to human couriers, not as a substitute for it. And any type of Hotmail arrangement that I discussed earlier would generally require knowing the folks that you're talking to online before leaving to another country. As far as what 11A5S brought up, go search for Mohammed Mansour Jabarah and you'll see that such a code already exists. More to the point, the type method I outlined above is one that is exceedingly difficult to track given that no actual message is sent to begin with - it all stays in the Draft folder. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-3-11 5:08:40 PM |
| #12 LH: You can't discount the possibility that these guys have developed "one-time" pads with pre-arranged duress codes. A message from Julie Smith to Maria Espinoza that they'll meet in the New Delhi train station on April 4th, could mean to execute the op. A misspelling could indicate that it was sent under duress. Given that these messages would be sent from the very places that backpackers would normally be sending them, internet cafe's, I think that it would be pretty easy to use the internet securely. And that's just something that I dreamed up. There's bound to be others. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-3-11 4:51:46 PM |
| #11 and lets say, for the sake of argument, that the CIA has a mole in Iranian Intell. HE could be sending the messages to Londonistan. Or, given the nature of the internet, he doesnt need to be in Iran at all. someonee could send an email from Langley, coded to look like it came from Iran (with the cooperation of various internet backbone firms) Seems to me that without actual human couriers, comm is impossible. This isnt just a couple of guys shooting emails back and forth - these are guys who have the full brainpower (such as it is) of western intell working against them. Internet comm simply cant be reliable under those circumstances. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-3-11 4:36:26 PM |
| #10 Ok so they use the stegawhatevergraphy to send a message from wherever in Iran the Operational directors are to Londonistan - Since they know NSA is probably trying to check every internet communication moving in or out of Iran for Stegawhatever, they just say - something big will happen on 3/11 (also a gfoo dprecaution if the recipient in London is arrested, or is turned, or is just sloppy) So when the boom happens on 3/11 as promised, Abu from HuT, say, calls Al Quds and says AQ did it. OK. But what if Abu at HuT's rival across the street decides that he doesnt accept leadership from the ops director in Iran - heck, how does he know who has the other end of the line, how does he know he isnt getting a message from Iranian Intelligence, who may REALLY (as far as he knows) really have the AQ ops in custody? And so he starts listening to some other AQ operative on the loose - in say Yemen, or wherever. How does Al Quds know that whos really passing on messages from HQ in Iran, and whos playing games? And how the heck does ANYONE - Londonistan, Al Quds, or us - know who's really on the other end of the line in Iran? |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-3-11 4:30:44 PM |
| #9 I concur. However, CAIR exists in the US, not in London, IIRC. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-3-11 4:28:03 PM |
| #8 Dan, Dont forget CAIR in your list of 'front groups'.... Looks like its time to bring back the Spanish Inquisition...... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-11 4:15:56 PM |
| #7 Communication within the network has been disrupted ... to a certain degree, but they still use the internet and other means like human couriers to communicate. One common trick employed by the cells is registering a Hotmail or Yahoo! account and then sharing the password between 2 or more people and writing messages back and forth in the Draft folder. Since no message is actually sent, there's no message that is actually sent for the US to intercept. Another method employed is sending images with messages encoded inside of them. This isn't exactly rocket science either - there is software right now that'll let you do it. My guess is that the London groups knew that something big was going to happen in Europe through the jihadi rumor mill (a la the February 3 attack that was supposed to wipe out the US) but they didn't know exactly what so that if they were ever arrested. This basically seems to have been what happened with regard to 9/11 and is the whole basis behind monitoring terrorist chatter to begin with. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-3-11 4:08:23 PM |
| #6 Ok dan, and how do they get word from HQ? (this is rhetorical, if you knew youd be telling people other than me) I mean havent we disrupted comm networks?? And it has to be fast, since this just happened. Presumably the Londonistan groups werent told in advance (now THAT would be terrible tradecraft - AQ operates on need to know, IIUC) And how does Al Quds know for sure which groups are bona fide in contact with headquarters, and which are just making claims to boost their own importance? Im not heading anywhere in particular with this, just reflecting on the implications and ambguities of saying "al qaeeda claimed X" when in actual fact some group of London based Jihadis made the claim on AQ's behalf. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-3-11 4:00:21 PM |
| #5 The money for these ops has to come from: 1. Saudi Arabia's varous royal nutcases 2. Iran 3. Drugs The drug connections are tough ones to disrupt. They are significant, getting more significant, but my intuition says they are secondary to 1 and 2. So dealing with 1 and 2 is going to be the issue that we will have to face to stop the Islamic terrorists and their carnage. The question is HOW and WHEN and NOT IF. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-3-11 4:00:06 PM |
| #4 question asked and answered "The five-page e-mail claim, signed by the shadowy Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, was received at the paper's London offices" In other news, Al Quds also reports that Dr Zawahiri sent it info on how to get cheap prescription drugs, on low mortgage rates, and on a new way to enlarge the male organ. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-3-11 3:54:50 PM |
| #3 Al-Qaeda has front orgs throughout the UK like HuT, al-Muhajiroun, Supporters of Sha'riah, FIS, the ARC, MIRA, ad infinitum. Any one of them could have made the call to al-Quds without them compromising the security of the Iran-based leadership. This assumes, moreover, that the call didn't come from a country like Qatar, where the interior minister is on Binny's payroll. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-3-11 3:53:41 PM |
| #2 So who is it who calls Al Quds and makes the claim, and how does Al Quds verify that he represents Al Qaeeda? Im serious - Binny is either dead or or on the run, Zawahiri is presumably on the run in Pakland or Afghan, and the operatives in Iran are supposedly under in custody, and the guys in europe are low level (and presumaby deep under cover) So if abu from Kabobs 'r us calls up an Arabic paper in London do they just accept that? or was it a call from Teheran? |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-3-11 3:51:12 PM |
| #1 He said it was evidence the pan-Islamic terror organization may be "joining hands with local terrorists." How is this new? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-3-11 3:47:08 PM |