Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Talk of 'Hitting Americans' And Making Nerve Gas; -- Files outlining al Qaeda efforts to launch a
Spats Over Salaries, Rent program of chemical and biological weapons, code-
named al Zabadi, Arabic for curdled milk. As part of
A Guide to "The Company' the plan to develop a "home-brew nerve gas,"
By Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins members were given a long reading list that included
Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal a study titled "Current Concepts: Napalm."
KABUL, Afghanistan - Last May, someone sat -- A video file in which Osama bin Laden speaks for
down at an IBM desktop here and typed out a polite 23 minutes, focusing on what he calls America's anti-
letter to a bitter foe of al Qaeda, the anti-Taliban Muslim crusade_and mentioning the Sept. 11 attacks.
leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. The writer tapped at Another video shows a top al Qaeda cleric and
the computer for 97 minutes, according to its internal spokesman, Sheikh Abu Gaith, appearing to
record, then printed out the fruit of his labor: a acknowledge al Qaeda responsibility for the strikes.
request for an interview with Mr. Massoud, to be "God Almighty has enabled our brothers to carry out
conducted by "one of our best journalists, Mr. Karim these strikes," he says, "and make the enemies of God
Touzani." taste what they made our brothers taste."
On Sept. 9, two men posing as journalists, one ~ A letter in which a militant using the name Abu
carrying a passport in the name of Karim Touzani, Yaser stresses that "hitting the Americans and Jews
detonated a hidden bomb as they interviewed Mr. is a target of great value and has its rewards in this
Massoud. The_legendary Afghan commander was life and, God willing, the afterlife." The letter as
mortally wounded. Two days later came the suicide addressed to top al Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-
attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Zawahri and the author says he has written to Mr. bin
Laden separately.
The Wall Street Journal appointed lawyer, Tamar Birckhead, says she is "not
Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. aware of any evidence" linking him to any terrorist
group or individual.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Terror Tour: How al Qaeda Agent Scouted Attack Whether Mr. Reid was in fact the scout or the
Sites In Israel and Egypt similarity between his activities and "Abdul Ra'uffs"
is simply coincidence, the computer file on the
Account on Kabul Computer Matches Travels of scouting mission provides a striking view inside al
Reid, The Alleged 'Shoe-Bomber' Qaeda's workings. The lengthy report is among more
than 1,750 text and video files on the hard drives of
Photographing Tall Buildings two computers that a looter offered for sale to a
By Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins Kabul computer merchant. The looter said he got
Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal them from an office al Qaeda abandoned as its
Taliban protectors were fleeing Kabul in mid-
November. A Wall Street Journal reporter acquired
KABUL, Afghanistan - Less than a month before them for $1,100.
hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, al Qaeda chieftains
received a report spelling out "exceptionally good A Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal article described
opportunities" for terrorism in Israel and Egypt. some of these files, including some from 1999 that
Among the suggested targets: tall buildings and outlined al Qaeda efforts to build germ and chemical
planes. weapons. Other files were protected by passwords
and encryption that were much harder to crack, but
the Journal has now managed to access some of these
The report, found on a computer used by Osama bin as well, and has translated them from Arabic.
Laden's lieutenants in the Afghan capital, details a
7 target-scouting mission by an operative who flew
from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv on El Al with a "new They contain no clear reference to the Sept. 11
British passport. After traveling arnnnd TsraeK he attack in New York and Washington. But the files
went to Egypt by bus and then to_jjrj;Ivj5a' provide new details about al Qaeda's meticulous
Pakistan by air. planning, its global roster of operatives and its
security procedures in the period just before the
attack. The contents include:
The report calls the peripatetic operative "brother
Abdul Ra'uff." As it happens, his travels bear a
striking similarity to those of Richard Reid, the -- A file that names 170 al Qaeda members. A
airline passenger who allegedly tried to set off significant portion of the names, say U.S. officials
explosives hidden in his shoe during a trans-Atlantic who have examined the computer files, weren't
flight on Dec. 22. Mr. Reid went to the same known to law-enforcement and security agencies triaT
countries, in the same order, and also got a new have long sought to identify bin Laden acolytes.
passport in Amsterdam just before setting out on El
Tuesday, July 2, 2002 The Wall Street Journal has pieced together the
story of how this happened from interviews with
Terrorist's Odyssey: Saga of Dr. Zawahri Islamist activists and investigators, court files and
Illuminates Roots Of al Qaeda documents contained on an al Qaeda computer found
Terror in the Afghan capital of Kabul. It illuminates the
evolution, motives and also weaknesses of what is
Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter's today America's principal enemy.
Focus To America and bin
Laden
Through apocalyptic violence and a cult of secrecy,
Sojourn in a Russian Prison Islamic militants torment the West with the specter of
By Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison a highly disciplined and unshakably united foe. In
reality, they have regularly been torn by venomous
policy disputes, personal feuds and repeated failures.
DERBENT, Russia — On a winter night five years The Sept. 11 cataclysm both masked and flowed from
ago, Ayman al-Zawahri slipped into Russia across a militant Islam's truest feature: disarray and an
narrow wedge of land between the Caspian Sea and inabilitjrto take and hold power in almost any Islamic
the Caucasus Mountains. Dr. Zawahri, now country since Iran in 1979.
America's most wanted man after Osama bin Laden,
was on a risky clandestine mission as head of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a militant group that was Islamists preaching revolution in Egypt and
spattered, battered and nearly bankrupt after years on elsewhere were in retreat, not ascendancy. Attacking
America, Dr. Zawahri hoped, would reinvigorale~ana
unite their cause. His story shows from the inside
how the down-on-his-luck Egyptian Jihad leader
His purpose: to scope out Chechnya as a possible came to link up with Osama bin Laden and contribute
sanctuary for his wounded cause. Traveling in a a critical arsenal of terrorist skills and manpower to
minivan with two confederates, he came equipped the cause.
with $6,400 in cash, a fake identity as a businessman,
a laptop computer, a satellite phone, a fax machine
and a small library of medical textbooks. Jreed from Russian jail in May 1997, Dr. Zawahri
found refuge in Afghanistan, ynkinp his fortunes tq
Mr. bin Laden. Egyptian Jihad, previously devoted to
His plans quickly unraveled. After a night of furtive the narrow purpose of toppling secular rule in £gypt,
travel, the Egyptian trio ran into a Russian roadblock became instead the biggest component of al (jaeda
on the outskirts of this ancient walled city. Police, and major agent of a global war against America. Dr.
seeing they had no visas, handed them over to tjie Zawahri became Mr. bin Laden's closest confidant
Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet version of and talent scout.
the KGB. Dr. Zawahri spent the next six months in a
crumbling jail, fretting that the Russians would
discover his true'identity and lock him up for years or "Zawahri was cornered. He had nowhere to go. He
send him back to Egypt to face likely execution. joined with bin Laden because he needed protection,"
says Hani al-Sebai, a former Egyptian Jihad activist
who spent time in a Cairo jail with Dr. Zawahri in
In the end, his cover held, and he was freed. Still, 1981.
Dr. Zawahri's brush with disaster, previously known
to only a few Islamist chieftains, forced a critical
change in his lethal planning. It also set the stage, Eight months after the Russian fiasco, Dr. Zawahri
ultimately, for Sept. 1 1 and the global war now under and Mr. bin Laden annnnncsH an fllljance dedicated
way between America and terrorists under the banner to killing Americans, a task they called the "duty of (
of al Qaeda. Instead of C h f?hn)"iii every Muslim." ' /
the locus of his terrorist plotting. Ajid_Ameiica,_not
The Wall Street Journal considered the Taliban leader a bumpkin, and their
Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. work was stymied by the near-medieval
backwardness of the place.
Friday, August 2, 2002
Strained Alliance: Al Qaeda's Sour Days in "This place is worse than a tomb," wrote a bin
Afghanistan Laden associate from Egypt to comrades back home,
after checking out Afghanistan. The country, he said
Fighters Mocked the Place; Taliban, in Turn, Nearly in a message stored on a computer found by The
Booted Out bin Laden Wall Street Journal in Kabul, "is not suitable for
work."
A Fateful U.S. Missile Strike
By Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins
The Taliban, in turn, grumbled that Mr. bin Laden
was arrogant, publicity- seeking and disrespectful.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- In April 1998, shortly after The rift ran so deep that some of his entourage of
Osama bin Laden called on Muslims everywhere to Arab revolutionaries expected to get booiCd uul uf
slaughter Americans, a group of senior U.S. officials Afghanistan, as they had been earlier from Suctan.
traveledjo the Afghan capital to try to break the ice Indeed, by the summer of 1998. according to a
with the Saudi exile's Taliban hosts. former Saudi intelligence chief. Mullah Omar had
Mr hjn Laden packing.
Monday, November 11, 2002 Since the Sept. 11 attacks, radical Islam's use of
technology has stirred both scrutiny and fear. The
Uploading Terror: How al Qaeda Put Internet in White House has warned that video footage of Mr.
Service Of Global Jihad bin Laden could hold encrypted messages. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation has called for
With Sites in China, Pakistan, A U.K.-Based Web vigilance against hacking into the computers that
Master Kept 'the Brothers' control vital services. Some experts have wondered if
Abreast terrorism might even lurk in pornographic Web sites,
with instructions embedded in X-rated photos.
Disney and Wildlife Film Clips
By Andrew Higgins in London, Karby Leggett in
Guangzhou, China, and Alan The Milestones of Holy War site signals much more
Cullison in Washington modest cyber-skills. Al Qaeda operatives struggled
with some of the same tech headaches as ordinary
people: servers that crashed, outdated software and
In February 2000, an Egyptian merchant here in the files that wouldn't open. Their Web venture followed
commercial hub of southern China asked a local a classic dot-corn trajectory. It began with
Internet firm for help in setting up a Web site. After excitement, faced a cash crunch, had trouble with
lengthy haggling over the fee, he paid $362 to accountants and ultimately fizzled.
register a domain name and rent space on a server.
The Wall Street Journal these occurred in places with large Muslim
Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. populations, not in Mr. Yusufs "land of infidels."
This suggests that his own attack, apparently targeted
Monday, December 30, 2002 at either America or a European country, has either
been aborted for some reason or still lies ahead. The
Suicide Watch: Al Qaeda Acolyte, One of Many, Central Intelligence Agency doesn't know where Mr.
Vows To Die for the Cause Yusuf is. Saudi Arabia, too, has nothing to say about
his whereabouts.
Elusive Agents Like Mr. Yusuf Confound Efforts to
Judge Progress in War on
Terror His failure so far to act, although a relief to officials
in Washington and Riyadh fearful of yet another
Macabre Poems for bin Laden Saudi making headlines with terrorist bloodletting,
By Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins points to a conundrum at the core of the war on
terrorism: How can the U.S. gauge victory or defeat
against an enemy that often remains unseen until it
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Faisal al-Yusuf, a 26- strikes? It is a question of critical importance as
year-old computer programmer, had one small son America prepares for a possible new war against Iraq
and, by his own account, one big ambition: to and diverts its military and intelligence resources
slaughter "infidels" on behalf jrf Osama bin Laden. toward the defeat of Saddam Hussein, a conventional
foe with tanks and territory, instead of al Qaeda's
invisible legions.
"By the time you receive this will, I will be in the
craws of birds, God willing, after performing a
martyrdom operation against the land of infidels," he Al Qaeda's footsoldiers "are walking time bombs.
wrote late last year in a suicide note to his wife in You only find them when they explode," says
Saudi Arabia. "This operation will, God willing, turn Mohsen al-Awaji, a former soil scientist turned
the tide for Islam and Muslims." Islamist activist who was jailed twice by Saudi
authorities in the 1990s for his radical views.
America, he says, is "not fighting a country or a
At the time, Mr. Yusuf was in Afghanistan. He had - government but ghosts."
arrived there three months earlier from Saudi Arabia,
where he had done programming work for Saudi
companies and Islamic charities. By the time he Over the past year, Washington has measured its
wrote his note, the Taliban regime was crumbling success against al Qaeda largely by counting the
under U.S. bombs and al Qaeda was preparing for the scalps of terrorist chiefs. It has failed to get Mr. bin
future, mobilizing kamikaze recruits and making Laden "dead or alive" as promised by President Bush
plans beyond Afghanistan. but has killed or captured many other senior
operatives, including a self-declared architect of the
Sept. 11 plot and al Qaeda's military chief. President
Dettgfrte&at his "nomination" for a suicide mission, Bush keeps a scorecard with names and pictures,
Mr. Yusuf, writing under a jihad alias, composed a crossing them off as they fall. "We're making good
series of macabre poems and asked Mr. bin Laden to progress. Slowly but surely, we're dismantling the al
read them in public "after I die in the battle against Qaeda network," he said earlier this month.
the enemies of religion." One of these said: "Just one
push on the trigger and I'm finished, and disfigured is
the face of the enemy." Its title: "Going to God." Perhaps more revealing, however, is the yardstick
set by Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants in messages
stored on a computer they used in Afghanistan and in
Thirteen months later, Mr. Yusuf has yet to strike. statements issued since Sept. 11 through Arab media
He wasn't among the terrorists who this year blew up and the Internet. The internal messages, placed on the
themselves - and more than 200 other people - in computer shortly before U.S.-backed Afghan troops
attacks on a synagogue in Tunisia, U.S. Marines in seized Kabul on Nov. 13, 2001, include
Kuwait, a nightclub in Indonesia, a French oil tanker communications from Mr. bin Laden to Mullah
off Yemen and, most recently, a hotel in Kenya. All Omar, the Taliban leader. It couldn't be determined