Dr. Nafeez Ahmed provides us with an overview of the role played by US military and intelligence practices in the creation of terrorism, particularly Al-Qaeda. He tells us about the status of investigations into the Blair government’s complicity with the Bush administration in supporting the invasion of Iraq. He discusses possible factors behind Americans’ long-held denial and dismissal of dark US foreign policy practices as conspiracies. Mr. Nafeez talks about the Obama administration, the ongoing posture of US corporate interests and the desire to dominate world energy supplies, the so-called liquid bombing plot and how it was mythologized in the US, and more.

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and has taught courses in contemporary history and international relations theory at the University of Sussex. His Doctoral thesis investigated the radicalization processes and dynamics of violent conflict in the context of hierarchical social systems in the modern world. Dr. Ahmed has also published extensively on international security issues, including The London Bombings; The War on Truth; Behind the War on Terror; and The War on Freedom. He has been an expert commentator for BBC News 24, BBC World Today, Al-Jazeera English, among others. He is currently advising the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on engaging British Muslim communities. Visit Dr. Nafeez’ website.

Here is our guest Nafeez Ahmed unplugged!

 

 Interview with Dr. Nafeez Ahmed [75:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The US and UK intelligence communities have known for decades of al-Qaeda’s presence in Yemen. The presence, however, is not simply peripheral to the question of international terrorism. US intelligence investigations into major terrorist attacks such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, as well as  9/11 (among others) have consistently revealed that Yemen has been used by al-Qaeda as a central communications hub for the coordination of transnational terrorist activities – with the tacit (and often not-so-tacit) complicity of the Yemen government.

In fact, abundant evidence from the History Commons shows that the National Security Agency has, and continues to, monitor al-Qaeda communications in Yemen extensively. But from 1996 all the way through to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the NSA consistently failed (in violation of mandatory security protocols) to share the detailed mountains of intercept evidence on Osama bin Laden’s activities thus obtained with the rest of the US intelligence community, despite repeated urgent requests from the CIA in the context of then ongoing terrorism investigations. After 9/11, however, much of this information became public knowledge – the US thus has extensive and intimate understanding of al-Qaeda’s activities in Yemen, and their direct connection with the execution of terrorist attacks against US and Western targets. The failures that facilitated the 25^th December 2009 crotch bombing must be understood against this background – how could the same loopholes remain open now?… unless our relationship with the terrorists is a little more complicated than officials would like us to believe.

Al-Qaeda & the 1994 North-South Civil War

A US Congressional Research Service (CRS) document – Yemen: Background and US Relations (7^th July 2009) – by Jeremy M. Sharp, Middle East analyst in the foreign affairs, defense and trade division, provides a few surprisingly candid snapshots of all this, and the ambiguous response of the US to it all:

“The Republic of Yemen was formed by the merger of the formerly separate states of North Yemen and South Yemen in 1990. In 1994, government forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh put down an attempt by southern-based dissidents to secede from the newly unified state… since the 1980s, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has tolerated the presence of radical Islamists in the country and has used their presence to bolster his credibility among Islamist hardliners… During the 1994 civil war, President Saleh dispatched several brigades of ‘Arab Afghans’ to fight against southern late secessionists. In the mid to 1990s, Yemeni (and many foreign) militants, many with ties to Al Qaeda, began striking targets inside the country.” (pp. 1-2)

During this period, in which bin Laden’s mujahideen networks were mobilised by the north to consolidate its control over the south, President Saleh was supported by the United States. Tufts University historian Professor Gary Leupp writes: “During the 1994 civil war in the country, the U.S. had backed the current leadership against the ‘leftist’ opposition. (So had anti-U.S. Muslim fundamentalist factions, whom the leadership cannot now afford to alienate.)”

Notably, during the same period, as I and others have documented extensively, the US was busy covertly sponsoring the mobilisation of bin Laden’s networks in Azerbaijan, Dagestan and Chechnya, and the Balkans.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen in Context: the Pentagon’s Saudi-Backed ‘Redirection’ Strategy

The CRS report continues: “Overall, Islamist terrorist groups are not strong enough to topple President Saleh’s regime, but most analysts consider them capable of successfully striking a high value target, such as an oil installation…” (p. 5) It goes on to note that in January 2009, al-Qaeda militants in Yemen “announced that the Saudi and Yemeni ‘branches’ of Al Qaeda were merging under the banner of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which formerly had denoted militants responsible for the wave of terrorist violence that swept Saudi Arabia from 2003 through 2007.” The report also notes that many militants are coming in not only from Saudi Arabia but from Iraq. (p. 6)

But who was responsible for the expansion of Saudi militant activity? A few years back, Seymour Hersh answered that question in the New Yorker, when he reported that since around 2003, the CIA and Pentagon have ‘redirected’ US policy by funnelling millions of dollars via Saudi Arabia to al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunni extremist groups across the Middle East and Central Asia, as part of a bid to counter Iranian Shi’ite influence. Alex Cockburn was the first to report on the early US Presidential Finding – uncontested by Republican and Democratic representatives – that this funding has amounted to at least $400 million. The “black” operation aimed at isolating Iran was also confirmed by ABC News. Hersh went on to quote one of his sources, a US government consultant, explaining that Prince Bandar and other Saudi officials had assured the White House as follows: Read more ?

Pepe Escobar shares with us his background and experience as a roving journalist for over three decades. He provides us with an overview of President Obama’s recent trip to China, relevant analysis of ordinary Chinese people’s point of view and reaction, and China’s political and economic position today within the global context. Mr. Escobar discusses energy issues and the current struggle over the resource-rich Central Asia-Caspian regions as the new battle ground for the competing interests of Russia, China, Europe, and the United States, including various strategic alliances currently under way to tap into this oil-gas rich region. He talks about the absence of real coverage of the Eurasia region by the US media, the rarely-discussed and often obscured facts and realities involving the Bagram Prison in Afghanistan, and more!

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He is an investigative journalist with three decades of experience in covering politics and conflicts around the globe. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering stories and cases from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Mr. Escobar has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of three must-read books: Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, and Obama Does Globalistan.

Here is our guest Pepe Escobar unplugged!

 

 Interview with Pepe Escobar [65:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

A week after the September 11th attacks, FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan flew back from Yemen to New York where convicted al Qaeda spy Ali Mohamed had been brought up from custodial witness protection in Florida to the M.C.C. (federal jail) in Lower Manhattan. 

Rushing from the airport and desperate to learn what Ali might have known about the attacks that killed 2,976, Cloonan got to the prison around 11:00 p.m.

“I walked in and I had him pulled out,” Cloonan said in an interview for my Ali Mohamed biography Triple Cross. “I said, ‘How’d they do it?’ and he wrote the whole thing out—the attack, as if he knew every detail of it. He [had] conducted training for Al Qaeda on how to hijack a plane.

“’This is how you get a box cutter on board. You take the knife, you remove the blade and you wrap it in [redacted] and put it in your carry-on luggage.’ They’d read the FAA regulations. They knew four inches wouldn’t go through. ‘This is how you position yourself,’ he said. ‘I taught people how to sit in first class. You sit here and some sit here.’ He wrote the whole thing out.”

On 9/11 the hijackers who flew AA Flight 77 into the Pentagon were reported to have used box cutters. Three of the muscle hijackers who stormed the cockpit and took that plane were Khalid al-Midhar and the al-Hazmi brothers, Nawaf and Salim. Later it was revealed that Khalid and Salim had obtained their fake ID’s (used to board the plane) at Sphinx Trading, the same tiny Jersey City Mailbox store that had been on Patrick Fitzgerald’s radar since the 1995 “Day of Terror” trial. (see Part I)- (Highlight ‘Part I’: link to part I)

As bin Laden’s trusted security advisor Ali Mohamed almost certainly knew of the planes-as-missiles operation that KSM was executing by 1998. Khalid Sheikh’s nephew, Ramzi Yousef, had conceived the plot in Manila in 1994; the year Ali stayed in bin Laden’s own house in Khartoum as he trained his bodyguards.  By 1997 Mohamed was living part time in Kenya with Wadih El-Hage, bin Laden’s personal secretary. Read more ?

In its firestorm of coverage, the mainstream media has overlooked a potential link between the two biggest domestic terrorism stories of the day: the shootings at Ford Hood and the decision by the Justice Dept. to try accused 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York City.

Five time Emmy-winning former ABC News correspondent and HarperCollins author Peter Lance shines a light on the man who may well be the greatest enigma in the “war on terror.”

His name is Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, aka Ali Amirki or “Ali the American,” the ex-Egyptian Army officer who penetrated the CIA (briefly) in 1984, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg from 1987 to 1989 and the FBI where he served as an informant from the early 1990’s, interacting with top federal prosecutors and Special Agents as he trained the cell responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and “Day of Terror” plots. Earlier he moved Osama bin Laden’s entourage from Afghanistan to Khartoum, set up the al Qaeda training camps in the Sudan, trained the Saudi billionaire’s own personal bodyguard and later served as the principal plotter in al Qaeda’s five year mission to blow up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ali Mohamed was the ticking time bomb at Fort Bragg who should have redefined the Army’s rules for uncovering traitorous Islamic radicals in the ranks 20 years before Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan went on his alleged rampage at Fort Hood.

But more importantly, for all the critics who think trying KSM in the Southern District of New York is a bad idea, Ali Mohamed could represent the Feds’ best witness at trial; insuring once and for all that Khalid Shaikh will finally be brought to justice.

The spy who hid in plain site

In the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. A member of the radical Egyptian Army unit that murdered President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Mohammed escaped prosecution, but he was later purged from the Egyptian military due to his radical Islamic views.

In 1983 he caught the attention of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, five years before the doctor with the spectacles and go-tee joined bin Laden to form al Qaeda. Al Zawahiri saw Ali as the espionage agent he needed to penetrate the U.S. Read more ?