Patterns of Global Terror 2006

I normally refrain from political commentary here, but it's hard to ignore the ramifications of the 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism. According to the U.S. State Department, 20,498 people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide. In 2001, the year of the September 11 attacks, that figure was 3,547 (based on an overly high estimate of 9/11 fatalities).

The numbers are even less forgiving on close analysis. Excluding September 11, the death toll in 2001 was 547. In 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, the total was 725. Excluding Iraq, the 2006 death toll was 7,158.

So when you subtract the two factors that most skew the comparison, global terrorism was still 13 times higher in 2006 than in 2001, and nearly 10 times higher than before the invasion of Iraq.

There can be no question now that U.S. policy has utterly failed to make the world safer, and that the West has made no headway in the "War on Terrorism." Terrorism is now far more deadly and widespread than it was on Sept. 12, 2001.

The Bush Administration's own statistics indict its policy. A major change in course is needed. Now.

Read the full report

Labels: Weblog

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J.D. Cash: Strassmeir Worked For The FBI

I've taken the unusual step of linking an external story from the front page of the site. J.D. Cash and Roger Charles of the McCurtain Gazette have published a story saying an unnamed source and a government document confirm that Andreas Strassmeir was working for the FBI and German intelligence in some capacity during the period around the Oklahoma City bombing.

Strassmeir was associated with militia groups in the U.S. over the course of several years. Timothy McVeigh called him prior to the bombing, and a variety of reports have linked him to the plot and to a gang of white supremacist bank robbers known as the Aryan Republican Army.

I don't have access to the sources cited by Cash and Charles, but their reporting has been consistently solid and their details have on several occasions been confirmed in documents obtained by INTELWIRE through independent channels.

I've included links to a few INTELWIRE reports on Strassmeir and the ARA below.

Newest McCurtain Gazette story

INTELWIRE Reports:

McVeigh Called Strassmeir Before Bombing

Andreas Strassmeir Interrogation

Strassmeir Links in Militia Informant Files

Newly Released Documents Expand View of OKC Informants

Labels: American-Terrorists, OKBOMB, Weblog

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New Documents Expand View of Informants In Oklahoma City Bombing

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

FBI and investigative documents filed in court yesterday shed new light on protected government informants within the militia and white supremacist movements around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Attorney Jesse Trentadue is suing the FBI for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. His interest in the case was prompted by the apparent murder of his brother while in federal custody, which Trentadue believes is connected to the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing (previous story).

Monday's filing revealed new evidence implicating members of a bank robbery gang known as the Aryan Republican Army, which may have played a role in the attack (previous story).

Shawn Kenney, a member of the gang and an FBI informant, had his criminal record "actively erased," according to an affidavit by former Cincinatti police officer Matthew J. Moning, who investigated the ARA, also known as the Midwest Bank Robbers.

The FBI recovered devices used to build improvised explosives, including the explosives themselves, blasting camps and rocket launchers, among other items, Moning said.

Another FBI informant close to the ARA was Scott McCarthy, according to a 2006 Congressional probe of the bombing (story and full text). The report, written by U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, claimed the Justice Department was "unwilling to permit" investigators to speak with McCarthy.

Further questions were raised about McCarthy in a 2007 affidavit from Peter Langan, who along with Richard Lee Guthrie Jr. (story and documents) masterminded the Midwest Bank Robbers' $250,000 crime spree from 1993 through 1996.

Currently serving a federal prison sentence for his role in the ARA, Langan claimed in the affidavit that he suspected Guthrie, McCarthy and gang member Scott Stedeford were involved in the bombing, along with Mark Thomas, a Pennsylvania neo-Nazi.

In his 1997 trial for conspiracy related to the ARA's crime spree, Thomas claimed Guthrie told him that McCarthy "took out the Murrah building."

Thomas pled guilty and received a light sentence for his role in the bank robberies. He was released from prison on January 16, 2004. According to the Trentadue filing, Thomas is now also a protected federal witness.

Previous document releases revealed the existence of several federal informants who provided information related to the bombing (previous story).

INTELWIRE document requests under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed additional informants within the militia movement who were in a position to provide information about other figures linked to the bombing, including German national Andreas Strassmeir, a friend of the ARA who was security director at a white supremacist compound known as Elohim City (previous story).

One figure close to the bombing conspiracy was Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer whom Terry Nichols has accused of being a government informant and an active participant in the bombing plot (story).

Included in the Monday filing was a memorandum on Moore prepared by a private investigator for Nichols' defense team. Entitled "The Enigma of Roger Moore," the lengthy document outlines a number of unanswered questions regarding Moore involvement with the OKC conspirators.

Officially, prosecutors argued during the trials of McVeigh and Nichols that Nichols had robbed Moore of guns and valuables in November 1994 and used the proceeds to fund the bombing conspiracy. Nichols, later found in possession of items stolen from Moore, later admitted to carrying out the robbery.

In November 2006, Nichols alleged that Moore was an FBI informant and that he had provided explosives to McVeigh for use in the bombing.

The investigator's document included in Monday's filing outlines a series of allegations concerning Moore's alleged involvement with the FBI, including some information from published accounts and some information which was not previously disclosed.

The document says a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette spoke with an informant who alleged Moore was involved in the Iran-Contra affair in South Florida during the mid-1980s. Several documents obtained by INTELWIRE also point to connections between various militia figures and Iran-Contra (story).

Moore was the subject of an ATF investigation into explosives trafficking in May 1989, according to the memorandum. The investigation involved 100 pounds of C-4 explosives. The case was "suddenly dropped at almost the same time it was initiated, without any explanation offered in the written reports," the document said.

The report also cited numerous inconsistencies and seeming contradictions in Moore's handling of the November 1994 robbery and his subsequent accounts of the incident.

The filing also includes a 2004 letter from Terry Nichols to Attorney General John Ashcroft outlining allegations against Roger Moore, a drawing by Nichols of discrepancies in descriptions of the bomb used in the Oklahoma City attack, and a memo recording a conversation with a worker at the Southern Poverty Law Center concerning intelligence about McVeigh's militia links.

The documents filed Monday include:

Memorandum and overview by Jesse Trentadue

FBI 302 interrogation of Kevin McCarthy

Terry Nichols 2004 letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft accusing Roger Moore of complicity in the bombing

Memorandum: The Enigma of Roger Moore

Affidavit of Matthew J. Moning

Affidavit of Peter Langan

Terry Nichols drawing of discrepancies in accounts of the bomb design used in Oklahoma City

1995 FBI teletype on OKC Bombing informants

1/16/96 memo describing information obtained from the Southern Poverty Law Center

Labels: American-Terrorists, INTELWIRE-Exclusive, OKBOMB, Richard-Lee-Guthrie

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Latest American Al Qaeda Was Known To FBI For Years Before Arrest

When announcing the arrest and indictment of Christopher Paul, an alleged American al Qaeda member, Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, boasted of the investigation's great success.

"Our persistence and determination in the pursuit of this case should serve as a strong warning to any American who considers joining forces with our enemy," said Wainstein.

"This case exemplifies the necessity of cooperation in order to fight terrorism," said U.S. Attorney Gregory Lockhart. "The sharing of information was crucial to this effort."

What might have been missed amid all this backslapping is the fact that Paul has been known to the FBI for at least seven years and likely longer. But the investigation only began four years ago, and Paul is only now being charged.

According to the indictment, Abu Malek has been involved with al Qaeda since 1989. In the interim, numerous al Qaeda suspects and informants have been rolled up by the FBI -- and one of them identified Abu Malek as a black American member of al Qaeda in open court in the 2001 case of U.S. v. bin Laden (excerpt below).

Kherchtou is the witness described on page four of the indictment as "a former personal pilot for Usama bin Laden." Kherchtou began talking with the U.S. in the late 1990s and formally became a cooperating witness in 2000.

But the trail goes back even further. According to the indictment, Paul traveled to Croatia at least once in 1993, and in February 1993, he applied for a passport in Vienna claiming his had been lost or stolen.

Paul's travels correspond to trips to Vienna, Bosnia and Croatia in January and February 1993 by Clement Hampton-El, a member of the Brooklyn terrorist cell responsible for the World Trade Center bombing.

Hampton-El was carrying money to and from Bosnia, which was being funneled through al Qaeda-linked charities based in Austria.

The trips received some amount of scrutiny from the FBI at the time, but according to media reports, U.S. officials were generally warned off investigating charities sending aid to Bosnia by the Clinton administration, which wanted to provide off-the-books assistance to Muslims in Bosnia who were being slaughtered in ethnic cleansing campaigns during the 1990s.


Excerpt:


1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
2 ------------------------------x

3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

4 v. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023

5 USAMA BIN LADEN, et al.,

6 Defendants.

7 ------------------------------x

8
New York, N.Y.
9 February 26, 2001
9:50 a.m.
10

11



2 Q. What about, there were a number of black Americans who

3 were in Khartoum in those years, is that correct?

4 A. Americans?

5 Q. Some black Americans?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. One of them was Abu Malek?

8 A. No, he wasn't in Khartoum.

9 Q. He was not in Khartoum?

10 A. I don't know him.

11 Q. Was he in Afghanistan or Pakistan?

12 A. I knew a guy called Abdouh Malek, an American, but he was

13 in Pakistan and since then -- he didn't visit Sudan.

14 Q. Was he Al Qaeda?

15 A. I believe so.

16 Q. But you are not sure?

17 A. No.

18 Q. In fact, you told the agents when they asked you about Abu

19 Malek that you did not know whether he was an Al Qaeda member.

20 A. Abu Malek or Abdou Malek?

21 Q. I guess there might be two people. There is an Abu Malek?

22 A. Abu Malek, I don't know him.

23 Q. There is an Abdou Malek?

24 A. Abdou Malek yes.

25 Q. Did you tell the government when you first were talking


SOUTHERN DISTRICT REPORTERS (212) 805-0300
1378
12qkbin1
Kherchtou - cross

1 about different people who were members of the Al Qaeda, who

2 you did not think were members of Al Qaeda, who you did not

3 know were members of Al Qaeda, you said to the government that

4 you did not whether Abdou Malek was a member of Al Qaeda, is

5 that correct?

6 A. I don't remember that. If I said, that is correct.

7 Q. So you don't know if he was, is that correct?

8 A. Yes.

Labels: Bosnia, Sarajevo-Ricochet, Weblog

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Gitmo Detainees Vol. 1 Sourcebook Released

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

The Gitmo Detainees Sourcebook, Volume One, contains more than 200 pages of tribunal transcripts related to high value detainees at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, as well as an unclassified list of all known detainees. Transcripts include Mustafa Al-hawsawi, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Walid Bin Attash (aka Khallad), Al Nashiri Abd Al Rahim Hussein Mohammed, Ammar Al Baluchi, Hambali (rjduan Bin Isomuddiiu), Mohd Farik Bin Amin (aka Zubair), Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep (aka Lillie), and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

The INTELWIRE Sourcebook Series provides collections of documents, court records and exclusive material. INTELWIRE Sourcebooks are ideal for counterterrorism professionals searching for primary source data; authors and journalists seeking to fact-check stories and books; and involved terrorism readers who want to get their information straight from the souce. INTELWIRE Sourcebooks provide professional research products at a price anyone can afford.

Current titles include Ali Mohamed, The Siege at Mecca, the Benevolence International Foundation (The Creation of Al Qaeda) and the Who's Who in Terrorism (Winter 2006).

Sourcebooks scheduled for later this year include: Al Qaeda's Millennium Plot, The Anwar Sadat Assassination, U.S. intervention in Bosnia, Siege at Mecca Vol. 2, and more.

Labels: Benevolence-International-Foundation, Bosnia, INTELWIRE-Exclusive, Sarajevo-Ricochet

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Mohammed Jamal Khalifa Sourcebook Vol. 1 Released

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

INTELWIRE has released the Mohammed Jamal Khalifa Sourcebook, Volume One -- more than 150 pages of primary source material and exclusive analysis concerning Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, an alleged terrorist financier.

Documents include declassified U.S. and Philippines government records, rarely seen court records, and exclusive prisoner and INS reports from Khalifa's 1994 arrest in San Francisco and subsequent deportation. These documents are among the core sources for INTELWIRE reports concerning Khalifa.

INTELWIRE reports and documents contained in this volume also shed new light on Khalifa's January 2007 assassination in Madagascar.

Labels: INTELWIRE-Exclusive, Jamal-Khalifa

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Bilal Philips Background

Islamic cleric Bilal Philips has been in the headlines lately, after the Australian government barred him from entering the country to speak at a conference. Philips, who has publicly condemned terrorism for the record, was linked to several figures involved in the 1993 World Trade Center conspiracy. Philips was involved in converting U.S. soldiers to Islam during and after the Gulf War. Names from that Saudi government-sanctioned program appear to have redirected to terrorist recruiter Clement Hampton-El. The details are here.

Labels: Weblog

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Four arrested for stealing identity of Bin Laden Brother-in-Law

Police in Madagascar arrested four Africans for ID theft, forgery and using credit card information stolen from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden who was killed there in January, according to published reports. INTERPOL -- which monitored Khalifa prior to his death -- was brought in on the case. As I have previously reported, al Qaeda has a track record of identity theft, but that's not necessarily the case here.

Labels: Weblog

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