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| Terror Networks |
| Court documents reveal al-Qaeda tutorial |
| 2006-04-02 |
| Call it al-Qaida 101. Over the last three years, captured Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has given his CIA jailers a tutorial on the inner workings of his network's clandestine tradecraft - and how to keep members in line. Mohammed's terror seminar is detailed in a 58-page summary of his CIA interrogations that was entered last week in Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial. Lesson one is loyalty. For command and control of its fanatics, al-Qaida has revived the almost medieval rite of "bayat," described as a "solemn spiritually bonding commitment to obey the commands of a single leader, or emir." That emir, of course, is Osama bin Laden. To become "made" in al-Qaida, a member would vow to bin Laden, "I listen to you, to listen and obey, and to die in the cause of God," Mohammed told his interrogators. Lesson two: Keep it simple. Mohammed scoffed at the bureaucratic system in Western intelligence agencies. "I know the materialistic Western mind cannot grasp the idea ... but we do not submit written reports to higher-ups," he said. Mohammed said he would travel for days to brief bin Laden. "I conducted the Sept. 11 operation by submitting only oral reports," Mohammed boasted. "Sometimes I scratched my notes on a small piece of paper 10-cm long," the size of a playing card. "But in the end, the operation was a success." Secrecy is also vital to al-Qaida's survival. "When four people know the details of an operation, it is dangerous," Mohammed explained. "When two people know, it is good. When just one person knows, it is better." The vow of "bayat" allowed Mohammed to send most of the 19 members of the Sept. 11 teams to the United States without telling them why. He said one top operative helping the hijackers was sent to the United Arab Emirates and told to send them money. "I never told him anything about the nature of the (Sept. 11) operation," Mohammed wrote. As an example of the "need to know" rule, Mohammed said that 10 of the "muscle" hijackers on Sept. 11 were trained by butchering sheep and camels with Swiss army knives. They were also taught when and how to assault an airplane cockpit. To make sure even the hijackers didn't know what was being planned, they also learned to hijack trains and blow up trucks and buildings. Another rule was to keep your enemies guessing. "We sent meaningless letters of a few lines. We spoke nonsense on the telephone," Mohammed said, assuming someone was watching and listening. Mohammed conceded that sometimes simple wasn't good. He admitted his frustration in trying to teach Muhammad al-Qahtani to use telephone codes and e-mail. But Qahtani was valuable because he was one of the few al-Qaida members who had a U.S. visa. When Qahtani arrived at a Florida airport in 2001, he acted so suspiciously that he was sent back on the next plane. Mohammed concluded that Qahtani was "too much of a bedouin" - a desert tribesman - to function well in the West. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |