T1 B18 WSJ Articles Fdr- Entire Contents- WSJ Printouts- 1st Pgs Scanned for Reference- Fair Use 275

8/14/2019 T1 B18 WSJ Articles Fdr- Entire Contents- WSJ Printouts- 1st Pgs Scanned for Reference- Fair Use 275

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12/31/01 W SJ A l12/31/01 Wall St . J . A 12001 WL-WSJ 29681987P a g e l

The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.Mo nday, December 31, 2001

Files Found: A Computer in Kabul Yields a ChillingArray Of al Qaeda MemosTalk of 'Hitting Americans' And M aking Nerve G as;Spats Over Salaries, Rent

A Guide to "The Company 'By Alan Cullison an d Andrew HigginsStaff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

The computer files don't appear to detail th e plottingof Sept. 11 or to contain an y clear plans fo r futureattacks. B ut hundreds of documents , ranging from th emurderous to the mundane, illuminate issues bearingon America's war on terrorism. A mo ng them:

-- Files outlining al Qaeda efforts to launch aprogram of chemical and biological weapons, code-named al Zabadi, Arabic for curdled milk. As part ofthe plan to develop a "home-brew nerve gas,"members were given a long reading list that includeda study titled "C urrent Concepts: Napalm ."

KABUL, Afghanistan - Last May, someone satdown at an IBM desktop here an d typed out a politeletter to a bitter foe of al Qaeda, the anti-Talibanleader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Th e writer tapped atthe computer for 97 minutes, according to its internalrecord, then printed out the fruit of his labor: arequest for an interview with Mr. Massoud, to beconducted by "one of our best journalists, Mr. K arimTouzani."

-- A video file in which Osama bin Laden speaks for23 minutes, focusing on what he calls America's anti-Muslim crusade_and mentioning the Sept. 11 attacks.Another video shows a top al Qaeda cleric an dspokesman, Sheikh Ab u Gaith, appearing toacknowledge al Qaeda responsibility for the strikes."God Almighty has enabled our brothers to carry outthese strikes," he says, "and make the enemies of Godtaste what they made our brothers taste."

On Sept. 9, two men posing as journalists, on ecarrying a passport in the name of Karim Touzani,detonated a hidden bomb as they interviewed Mr.Massoud. The_legendary Afghan commander wasmortally wounded. Two days later came the suicideattacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Now, as al Qaeda, the group blamed for all of thoselethal attacks, is uprooted from it s Afghansanctuaries, it is leaving behind cyber-fingerprints.The letter to Mr. Massoud is one of hundreds of textdocuments and v ideo files in a comp uter evidentlyused fo r four years by al Qaeda chieftains in Kabul .It s hard drive is a repository fo r correspondence withmilitant Muslims around th e world, portraying alQaeda bosses struggling to administer, inspire an ddiscipline th e sprawling global organization.

Dating from early 1997 through this fall, the filespaint a picture of both ghoulish ambitions an dquotidian f rust rat ions within an organization that,despite it s medieval zealotry, sometimes mimicked amult inat ional corporation. Memos refer to al Qaedaas "the company " and its leadership as "the generalmanagement."

~ A letter in which a militant using the name AbuYaser stresses that "hitt ing th e Americans an d Jewsis a target of great value and has its rewards in thislife and, God willing, th e afterlife." Th e letter asaddressed to top al Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri and the author says he has written to Mr. binLaden separately.

A memo referring to a "legal study" on "thekilling of civilian s." The writer, ackn owledging thisis "a sensitive issue," says he has found ways to keep"the enemy" f rom using th e kil l ing of "civilians,specifically women and children," to undermine themilitants' cause.

How a computer apparently stuffed with al Qaedasecrets came to light involves a combination ofhappenstance and the opportunism of war in acountry schooled for 20 years in conflict and chaos.Th e -desktop wa s installed in a two-story brickbui ld ing in K a b u l that wa s used bv al Oaeda as anoffice, according to a looter who says he grabbed itand a Compaq laptop from th e office. H e says he

entered the building, which is now occupied byNorthern Alliance soldiers, after a November U.S.bombing raid killed several senior al Qaeda officialsCopr. West 2003 N o Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt . Works


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1/16/02 WSJ A l1/16/02 Wall St. J. A l2002 WL-WSJ 3383036Page 1

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The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c ) 2002, Dow Jones & Com pany , Inc.Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Terror Tour: How al Qaeda Agent Scouted AttackSites In Israel and Egy ptAccoun t on Kabul Com puter Matches Travels ofReid, The Alleged 'Shoe-Bomber '

Photographing Tall BuildingsBy Alan Cullison an d Andrew HigginsStaff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

KABUL, Afghanis tan-Less than a month beforehijacked airplanes slammed into the World TradeCenter and the Pentagon, al Qaeda chieftainsreceived a report spelling ou t "exceptionally goodopportunities" for terrorism in Israel and Egypt.Among the suggested targets: tall buildi ng s andplanes.

The report, found on a computer used by Osama bi nLaden's lieutenants in the Afghan capital, details atarget-scouting mission by an operative who flewfrom Amsterdam to Tel Aviv on El Al with a"newBritish passport. After traveling arnnnd T s r a e K hewent to Egypt by bus and then to_jjrj;Ivj5a'Pakistan by air.

The report calls the peripatetic operative "brotherAbdul Ra'uff." As it happens, his travels bear astriking similarity to those of Richard Reid, theairline passenger who allegedly tried to set offexplosives hidden in his shoe during a trans-Atlanticflight on Dec.22. Mr. Reid went to the samecountries, in the same order, and also got a newpassport in Amsterdam just before sett ing out on El

U.S. intelligence officials, who have reviewed thecomputer files, believe that "Abdul Ra'uffs" trueidentity "may well be" Mr. Reid, as one puts i t. Asenior Israeli intelligence official says Israel is"positive" M r. Reid had been sent to Israel by alQaeda to scope ou t possible targets.

M r. Reid is now in a Massachusetts jai l on a chargeof interfering with a fl ight at tendant . His court-

appointed lawyer, Tamar Birckhead, says she is "notaware of any evidence" linking him to any terroristgroup or indiv idual .

Whether Mr. Reid was in fact the scout or thesimilarity between his activities and "Abdul Ra'uffs"is simply coincidence, the computer file on thescouting mission provides a striking view inside alQaeda's workings. The lengthy report is among morethan 1,750 text an d video files on the hard drives oftwo computers that a looter offered fo r sale to aKabul computer merchant. The looter said he gotthem from an office al Qaeda abandoned as i tsTaliban protectors were fleeing Kabul in mid-November. A Wall Street Journal reporter acquiredthem fo r $1,100.

A Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal article describedsome of these files, inc luding some from 1999 thatoutlined al Qaeda efforts to build germ an d chemicalweapons. Other files were protected by passwordsan d encryption that were much harder to crack, butthe Journal has now managed to access some of theseas well, and has translated them from Arabic.

They contain no clear reference to the Sept. 11attack in New York and Washington. But the filesprovide ne w details about al Qaeda's meticulousplanning, i ts global roster of operatives and itssecurity procedures in the period just before th eattack. The contents include:

-- A file that names 170 al Qaeda members. Asignificant portion of the names, say U.S. officialswho have examined the computer files, weren'tknown to law-enforcement an d security agencies triaThave long sought to identify bin Laden acolytes.

- A report on a planned operation to "gatherintelligence about American soldiers who frequentnightclubs" along the U.S.-Canada border and aboutIsraeli diplomatic missions in Canada. It requestsinformation on "obtaining preparatory devices forexplosives from inside Canada."

A pr imer on coding an d enc ryp t ion of documents .Other files outline procedures fo r transmitt ingmessages via Pakis tan.

Copr . Wes t 2003 N o Claim to Orig. U.S. Go vt. Works


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7/2/02 W SJ Al7/2/02 Wall St. J. A 12002WL-WSJ 3399560Page 1

The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c ) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.Tuesday, July 2, 2002

Terrorist's O dyssey: Saga of Dr. Zaw ahriIlluminates Roots Of al QaedaTerrorSecret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned K ey Plotter'sFocus To America and binLaden

Sojourn in a Russian PrisonBy Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison

DERBENT, Russia On a winter night five yearsago, Ayman al-Zawahri slipped into Russia across anarrow wedge of land between the Caspian Sea andthe Caucasus Mountains. Dr. Zawahri, nowAmerica's most wanted man after Osama bin Laden,wa s on a risky clandestine mission as head ofEgyptian Islamic Jihad, a militant group that wasspattered, battered and nearly bankrupt after years on

His purpose: to scope out Chechnya as a possiblesanctuary for his wounded cause. Travel ing in amin ivan with two confederates, he came equippedwith $6,400 in cash, a fake identity as a businessman ,a laptop com puter, a satelli te phone, a fax machinean d a small l ibrary of medical textbooks.

His plans quickly unraveled. After a night of furtivetravel, the Egyptian trio ran into a Russian roadblockon the outskirts of this ancient walled city. Police,seeing they had no visas, handed them over to tjieFederal Security Service, the post-Soviet version ofth e K G B . Dr. Zawahri spent th e next si x months in acrumbling ja i l , frett ing that th e Russians woulddiscover his true'identity and lock him up for years orsend him back to Egy pt to face likely execution.

In the end, his cover held, and he was freed. Still,Dr. Zawahri's brush with disaster, previously knownto only a few Islamist chieftains, forced a criticalchange in his lethal planning. It also set the stage,ul t imately , fo r Sept. 11 and the global war now underwa y between Am erica and terrorists under the bannerof al Qaeda. Instead of C hf?hn)"iii

Egypt, became th e target.

The Wall Street Journal ha s pieced together th estory of how this happened from in terviews withIslamist activists and investigators, court files anddocuments contained on an al Qaeda computer foundin th e Afghan capi ta l of Kabul . It i l luminates th eevolution, motives and also weaknesses of what istoday America's principal enemy.

Through apocalyptic violence and a cult of secrecy,Islamic militants torment the West with the specter ofa highly disciplined and unshakably united foe. Inreality, they have regularly been torn by venomouspolicy disputes, personal feuds an d repeated failures.The Sept. 11 cataclysm both masked and flowed frommilitant Islam's truest feature: disarray and aninabilitjrto take an d hold power in almost any Islamiccountry since Iran in 1979.

Islamists preaching revolution in Egypt andelsewhere were in retreat, not ascendancy. AttackingAmerica, Dr. Zawahri hoped, would reinvigorale~anaunite their cause. His story shows from the insideho w the down-on-his-luck Egyptian Jihad leadercame to link up with Osama bin Laden and contributea critical arsenal of terrorist skills an d manpower tothe cause.

Jreed from Russian jail in May 1997, D r. Zawahrifound refuge in Afghan i s tan , y n k i n p hi s fortunes tqMr. bin Laden. Egyptian Jihad, previously devoted toth e narrow purpose of toppling secular rule in gyp t ,became instead the biggest component of al (jaedaan d major agent of a global war against America. Dr.Zawahri became Mr. bin Laden's closest confidantan d talent scout.

"Zawahri was cornered. He had nowhere to go. Hejoined with bi n Laden because he needed protection,"says Hani al-Sebai, a former Egyptian Jihad activistwho spent time in a Cairo jail with D r. Zawahri in1981.

Eight months af ter th e Russian fiasco, Dr. Zawahr iand Mr. bi n Laden annnnncsH an fllljance dedicatedto killing Americans, a task they called the "duty of (every Mus l im. " ' /th e locus of his terrorist plott ing. A jid_Ameiica,_notCopr . West 2003 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works


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11/11/02 W SJ Al11/11/02 Wall St . J .A 12002 WL-WSJ 3411334Page 1

The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Com pany, Inc.Monday, November 11, 2002

Uploading Terror: H ow al Qaeda Put Internet inService Of Global JihadWith Sites in China, Pakistan, A U.K.-Based WebMaster Kept 'the Brothers 'Abreast

Disney and Wildlife Film ClipsBy Andrew Higgins in London, Karby Leggett inGuangzhou, China, and AlanCullison in Washington

In February 2000, an Egyptian merchant here in thecommercial hub of southern China asked a localInternet firm for help in setting up a Web site. Afterlengthy haggling over the fee, he paid $362 toregister a domain na me and rent space on a server.

Chen Rongbin, a technician at Guangzhou TianheSiwei Information Co., and an aide went to theEgyptian's apartment. They couldn't fathom what theclient, Sami Ali, was up to. His software andkeyboard were all in Arabic. "It just looked likeearthworms to us," M r. Chen says.

Al l he could make out was the site's address:"maalemaljihad.com." Mr. Chen had no idea thatmeant "M ilestones of Holy War." Nor that Ch ina, oneof the world's most he avily policed societies, had jus tbecome a launchpad for the dot-corn dreams - anddisappointments of Osama bin Laden's terrornetwork.

In th e months that fo l lowed, Arab mil i tants inAfghanistan, a radical cleric l iving on welfare inLondon , a textile worker in Karachi, Pakistan, andothers pitched in, laboring to marry moderntechnology with the theology of a seventh- centuryprophet. Their home page, featuring two swordsmerging to form a winged missile, welcomed visitorsto the "special W eb site" of Egyptian Is lamic Jihad, aviolent group at the core of al Qaeda. A few clicksled to a 45-page justification of "martyrdomoperations," j ihad j a rgon fo r kamikaze terrorism. Itexplained that kil l ing "infidels" inevitably causedinnocent casualties because "it is impossible to kill

them separately."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, radical Islam's use oftechnology has stirred both scrutiny and fear. TheWhite House ha s warned that video footage of Mr.bin Laden could hold encrypted messages. TheFederal Bureau of Investigation has called forvigilance against hacking into the computers thatcontrol vital services. Some experts have w ondered ifterrorism might even lurk in pornographic Web sites,with instructions embedded in X-rated photos.

The Milestones of Holy W ar site signals much moremodest cyber-skills. Al Qaeda operatives struggledwith some of the same tech headaches as ordinarypeople: servers that crashed, outdated software an dfiles that wouldn't open. Their W eb venture followeda classic dot-corn trajectory. It began withexcitement, faced a cash crunch, ha d trouble withaccountants and ultimately fizzled.

But the project also illuminates the elusive contoursof al Qaeda's strengths: far-flung outposts of support,a talent fo r camouflage and a knack fo r staying intouch using tools both sophisticated an d simple.Though driven from Afg hanista n, al Qaeda still hasmany hiding places, many channels ofcommunication and - beasts Mr. bin Laden's seniorl ieutenant, Egyptian Islamic Jihad chief A y m a n al -Zawahri - many means ofattack.

Al Qaeda chiefs communicate mainly by courier,sa y U.S. officials. But their underlin gs make wide useof computers: sending e-mail, joining chat rooms andsurfing the Web to scout out targets and keep up withevents. Since late last year, U.S. intelligence agencieshave gathered about eight terabytes of data oncaptured computers , a volume that , if printed out,would make a pile of paper over a mile high. The risean d eventual demise of maalemaljihad.com piecedtogether from interviews, registration documents andmessages stored on an al Qaeda computer The WallStreet Journal obtained in Kabul -- provides an insidegl impse of this scattered, sometimes f umbl ing , bu thighly versatile fraternity.

Using Microsoft Front Page an d other software,militants in Afghanis tan devised graphics andassembled content , packag ing hundreds of text, audioand video files for display on the Web. Because ofCopr. West 2003 No C laim to Orig . U.S. Gov t. Works


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12/20/02 W SJ A 112/20/02 Wall St . J. A 12002 WL- WSJ 103129360

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The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Co mpa ny, Inc.Friday, D ecember 20, 2002

Friend or Foe: The Story of a Traitor to al QaedaM ur k y Loyalties in Yemen Undo the Betrayer, WhoFinds Himself B etrayed

Ominous Words Before 9/11By Andrew Higgins an d Alan Cullison

SANAA, Yemen Fed up after tw o decades ofIslamist plotting, th e veteran Egyptian militantdecided to ji l t th e jihad. In early 1998, he walked intothe heavily guarded offices of Yemen's intelligenceagency, th e Political Security Organization, with astartling proposal: He could help unravel Osama binLaden's network.

He disclosed the hiding places in Yemen of foreignterrorists, including one who would shortly becomeMr. bin Laden's chief lieutenant. He described theextremists' weaponry, security an d violent plans fo rthe future. He revealed the locations of al Qaedaencampments in and around Marib, a desert regionscattered with ruins of the biblical kingdom of Sheba.

But instead of cracking down on the mili tants ,members of Yemen's security service tipped themoff. Mr. bin Laden's acolytes grabbed their turn coat,grilled him about hi s treachery an d made plans tosend him to Afghanistan to be killed. What shouldhave been a triumph in a shadowy struggle againstterrorism became an intelligence coup for theterrorists. Safe in Yemen, they went on to launch astring of attacks there, from th e bombing of the USSCole to an assault on a French oil tanker, th eLimburg, this fall.

On Nov . 3, more than four years after th e warningabout camps in Marib, th e desert region was targetedfo r a lethal assault ~ not by the Yemenis but by theCentral Intelligence A gency. M onito ring satellite-telephone chit-ch at, the CIA tracked tw o T oyotascarrying suspected al Qaeda members across th edesert. A n unmanned U.S . spy plane then fired aHellfire missile that incinerated six people, includingQaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a Yemeni suspected ofhelping organize th e Cole attack.

The missile strike blew a hole in a diplom aticfacade, as well. After Sept. 11, President Bush gaveth e world a simple choice: "Either you are with us oryo u ar e with th e terrorists." Yemen -- Mr. bin Laden'sancestral homeland -and other hotbeds of Islamistsentiment such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia declaredthemselves "wi th us." Their leaders pledgedunequivocal support for the struggle against alQaeda. But within these nations' bureaucracies, not tomention their citizenries, the lines of loyalty arefuzzy.

The U.S.-Yemen relationship is unusually delicatetoday, after the U.S. asked Spain's navy last week tointercept a North Korean ship heading for Yemen andcarrying hidden Scuds. Those were th e missiles madefamous in the Gulf War when Iraq, which wasbacked by Yemen, lobbed Scuds at Israel. After atense diplomatic exchange, Washington reluctantlypermitted Yemen, which said it was the customer forthe Korean Scuds, to take delivery of them.

Over the past year, Yemen has detained hundreds ofmilitant suspects, told clerics to purge extremismfrom education and warned the public of terrorism'scost to its economy. State-run radio broadcasts a skit-ridiculing jihad hotheads. Yet months after Sept. 11,al Qaeda still looked to Yemen as a haven. KhalidSheikh Mohammed, a suspected mastermind of thehijack attacks, spoke this spring of plans to regroupin Yemen, according to an al Qaeda operativecaptured by the U.S. And at Yemen's PSO, officerswho monitored extremists when th e organizationbetrayed the info rm ant remained at their posts.

Most unset t l ing of all, transcripts of monitoredconversations raise the possibility that a Yemenisecurity operative knew of the Sept. 11 attacks beforethey took place. Much mystery surrounds thissecurity officer-first because of indications he wasth e case officer who betrayed the infor ma nt, andsecond because he has suddenly vanished. H is familyin Yemen claims Egyptian agents grabbed him. SomeIslamists claim the CIA has him now. The CIA, as isit s policy, won ' t comment .

An accoun t of divided allegiances within th eYemeni bureaucracy i l luminates th e m u d d lehampering the h u n t for al Qaeda. It's a story based onCopr. West 2003 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Go vt. Wor ks


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12/30/02 W SJ A 112/30/02 Wall St. J. Al2002WL-WSJ 103129821

Pagel

The Wall Street JournalCopyright (c ) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.Monday, December 30 , 2002

Suicide Watch: A l Qaeda Acolyte, One of M an y ,Vows To D ie for the CauseElusive Agents Like Mr. Yusuf Con found Efforts toJudge Progress in War on

TerrorMacabre Poems for bin LadenB y Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Faisal al-Yusuf, a 26-year-old computer programmer, had one small so nand, by his own account, one big ambition: toslaughter "infidels" on behalf jrf Osama bin Laden.

"B y the time you receive this will, I will be in thecraws of birds, God willing, after performing amartyrdom operation against the land of infidels," hewrote late last year in a suicide note to his wife inSaudi Arabia. "This operation will, G od willing, turnthe tide for Islam and Muslims."

A t the time, Mr. Y usuf w as in Afg hanistan . He had -arrived there three months earlier from Saudi Arabia,where he had done programming work fo r Saudicompanies an d Islamic charit ies. By the time hewrote his note, the Taliban regime was crum blin gunder U.S. bombs an d al Qaeda was preparing for thefuture, mobil izing kamikaze recrui ts an d makingplans beyond Afghanistan.

Dettgfrte&at his "nominat ion" for a suicide mission,M r. Yusuf , writing under a jihad alias, composed aseries of macabre poems and asked Mr. bin Laden toread them in public "after I die in the battle againstthe enemies of religion." One of these said: "Just onepush on the trigger and I'm f in ished, an d disfigured isthe face of the enemy." Its title: "Going to God."

Thirteen months later, M r. Yusuf has yet to strike.H e wasn ' t among th e terrorists who this year blew upthemselves - andmore than 200 other people - inattacks on a synagogue in Tunisia, U.S. Marines inKuwai t , a nightc lub in Indonesia, a French oil tankerof f Yemen and, most recent ly, a hotel in K e n y a . All

these occurred in places with large Muslimpopulations, not in Mr. Yusufs " land of infidels."This suggests that his own attack, apparently targetedat either America or a European country, has eitherbeen aborted fo r some reason or still lies ahead. TheCentral Intelligence Agency doesn't know where Mr.Yusuf is. Saudi Arabia, too, ha s nothing to say abouthi s whereabouts.

H is failure so far to act, although a relief to officialsin Washington an d Riyadh fearful of yet anotherSaudi making headlines with terrorist bloodletting,points to a conundrum at the core of the war onterrorism: How can the U.S. gauge victory or defeatagainst an enemy that often remains unseen until itstrikes? It is a question of critical importance asAm erica prepares for a possible new war against Iraqand diverts its military and intelligence resourcestoward the defeat of Saddam Hussein, a convent ionalfoe with tanks an d territory, instead of al Qaeda'sinvisible legions.

Al Qaeda's footsoldiers "are walking time bombs.You only find them when they explode," saysMohsen al-Awaji, a former soil scientist turnedIslamist activist who was jailed twice by Saudiauthorities in the 1990s for his radical views.America, he says, is "not fighting a country or agovernment but ghosts."

Over the past year, Washington ha s measured itssuccess against al Qaeda largely by counting thescalps of terrorist chiefs. It has failed to get Mr. binLaden "dead or alive" as promised by President Bushbu t has killed or captured many other senioroperatives, i nc lud ing a self-declared architect of theSept. 11 plot and al Qaeda's military chief. PresidentBush keeps a scorecard with names and pictures,crossing them off as they fall. "We're making goodprogress. Slowly but surely, we 're d ismant l ing the alQaeda network," he said earlier this mo nth.

Perhaps more revealing, however, is the yardstickset by Mr. bin Lad en a nd his lieutenants in messagesstored on a computer they used in Afghanistan and instatements issued since Sept. 11 through Arab mediaan d the Internet. The intern al messages, placed on thecomputer shortly before U.S.-backed Afghan troopsseized Kabul on No v . 13, 2001, includecommunica t ions from Mr. bin Laden to M u l l ahOmar , th e Taliban leader. It couldn ' t be determinedCopr. West 2003 N o Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works

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