...Mohamed [w]as a man who was important in al Qaeda and personally close to Osama bin Laden.
1 He was also intimate and important to U.S. intelligence, although one would never guess this from the
9/11 Commission Report.
2 Finally, he was the principal trainer for the al Qaeda terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and destroyed it eight years later.
Mohamed, who worked at times for the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army, was in the 1980s a sergeant on active duty with the Fifth U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg.
3 In 1989, while still on the U.S. Army payroll, he was training candidates at the al-Kifah Center for al Qaeda's jihad.
4 Special Forces had since the 1950s been training foreign nationals in terrorism, both at Fort Bragg and also in Germany.
5 Only in 2006 did the American public learn that in Afghanistan he trained al Qaeda terrorists in how to hijack airliners -- including "how to smuggle box cutters onto airplanes."
6
Ali Mohamed was known in the al Qaeda camps as Abu Mohamed al Amriki -- Father Mohamed the American.
7 A member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, he swore allegiance in 1984 to that group's cofounder, the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became a top aide to bin Laden. (It was on al-Zawahiri's instructions that Mohamed first infiltrated U.S. intelligence services; and in addition, Mohamed helped al-Zawahiri to enter America in 1993 and 1994 to raise money).
8 The
9/11 Commission Report mentioned Ali Mohamed and said that the plotters against the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were "led" (their word) by Ali Mohamed.
9 That is the report's only reference to him, although it is not all the commission heard.
U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who had negotiated a plea bargain with Mohamed, testified at some length about him to the 9/11 Commission:
Ali Mohamed...trained most of al Qaeda's top leadership -- including Bin Laden and Zawahiriand most of al Qaeda's top trainers. Mohamed taught surveillance, countersurveillance, assassinations, kidnaping, codes, ciphers and other intelligence techniques. Mohamed surveilled the American embassy in Nairobi in 1993. And he was well trained to do it: Mohamed spent 17 years in the Egyptian military (with commando training and experience in embassy security). He left the Egyptian army to join the United States Army and was stationed at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg from 1986 to 1989, when he became an United States citizen. He gave some training to persons who would later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he arranged Bin Laden's security in the Sudan in 1994 after an attempt on Bin Laden's life, and he visited the al Qaeda cell in Kenya. From 1994 until his arrest in 1998, he lived as an American citizen in California, applying for jobs as an FBI translator and working as a security guard for a defense contractor.
10
Interesting as Fitzgerald's information was, what he omitted was far more interesting. To begin with, Mohamed was not just an FBI job
applicant. He was an FBI
informant, from at least 1992 if not earlier.
11 Furthermore, from 1994 "until his arrest in 1998 [by which time the 9/11 plot was well under way], Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries."ƒ’†€™ƒ€*â‚„ƒ’â‚*ƒ¢â €š¬â€ž¢ƒ’†€™ƒ€š‚¢ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â€š¬… ¡ƒ€š‚¬ƒ’₦ƒ€š‚¡ƒ’†€™ƒ€*â‚ „ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â‚š‚¬ƒ€‚¡ƒ’†€™ƒ¢â €š¬…¡ƒ’â‚šƒ€š‚
12 Shortly after 9/11, Larry C. Johnson, a former State Department and CIA official, faulted the FBI publicly for using Mohamed as an informant, when it should have recognized that the man was a high-ranking terrorist plotting against the United States. In Johnson's words, "It's possible that the FBI thought they had control of him and were trying to use him, but what's clear is that they did not have control."ƒ’†€™ƒ€*â‚„ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â‚š ‚¬ƒ€‚¡ƒ’†€™ƒ¢â€š¬…¡ƒ’â‚šƒ €š‚
13
Mohamed's contacts with U.S. intelligence antedated his relationship to the FBI. In the early 1980s Mohamed was employed by CIA in Germany as ƒ’†€™ƒ€*â‚„ƒ’â‚šƒ€š‚¢ƒ’†€ ™ƒ€š‚¢ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â‚š‚¬ƒ€‚¡ƒ’â‚ šƒ€š‚¬ƒ’†€™ƒ¢â€š¬‚¦ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â ‚š‚¬ƒ€â‚“contract agent," then dismissed as a security risk.
14 Despite being on a State Department watch list, he was able to return to America in 1985 (on what an FBI consultant has called "a visa program controlled by the CIAƒ’†€™ƒ€*â‚„ƒ’‚¢ƒ¢â‚š‚¬ƒ €‚¡ƒ’†€™ƒ¢â€š¬…¡ƒ’â‚šƒ€š‚ ") and obtain a job as a defense industry security officer with American Protective Services in Sunnyvale, California.
15 As mentioned already, in 1986 he became a sergeant with U.S. Army Special Forces.
16
For someone on a watch list to be admitted in the United States on a special visa program suggests that he may have been already recruited as a U.S. intelligence agent. What happened next is even more suggestive: In 1988, he apparently used his leave [from the U.S. Army] to take an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. Upon achieving the rank of sergeant, he received an honorable discharge from the army three years after joining.
17 It is not unheard of for members of the U.S. armed forces to violate regulations and join other armies, but this is nearly always in order to operate for the United States in a covert capacity.
18 The public has since been told that Mohamed, while on a leave from the U.S. Army, went to Afghanistan and trained “the first al-Qaeda volunteers in techniques of unconventional warfare, including kidnappings, assassinations, and hijacking planes." ...
19 This was in 1988, one year before he left active U.S. Army service and joined the Reserve.
In 1993, Mohamed had been detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver airport, when he inquired after an incoming al Qaeda terrorist who turned out to be carrying two forged Saudi passports. Mohamed immediately told the RCMP to make a phone call to the United States. The call, to Mohammed's FBI handler, John Zent, secured his release.
20 The FBI-directed release of Mohamed by the RCMP affected history. The encounter took place before Mohamed flew to Nairobi, photographed the U.S. Embassy in December 1993, and delivered the photos to bin Laden. According to Mohamed's negotiated confession in 2000, after the 1998 bombing of that embassy, "Bin Laden looked at the picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber."
21
However, the 9/11 report is utterly silent about Mohamed's links to CIA and the FBI. It is clear the report's authors did not want to admit that as late as 1998 the U.S. government had continued to work with and protect a trainer of al Qaeda terrorists, even after al Qaeda had already launched a lethal attack against U.S. citizens in the first World Trade Center bombing.
In August 2006 there was a
National Geographic TV special on Ali Mohamed.
22 This presentation should be taken as the next official fallback position on Ali Mohamed, because John Cloonan, the FBI agent who worked with Fitzgerald on Mohamed, helped narrate it. Here's what TV critics wrote about its contents: "Ali Mohamed manipulated the FBI, CIA and U.S. Army on behalf of Osama bin Laden. Mohamed trained terrorists
how to hijack airliners, bomb buildings and assassinate rivals. [D]uring much of this time Mohamed was...an operative for the CIA and FBI, and a member of the U.S. Army.
23 ... Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989, training radical Muslims who would go on to assassinate Jewish militant Meir Kahane and detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant while writing most of the al Qaeda terrorist manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa.
24 That Mohamed trained al Qaeda in hijacking planes and helped write the al Qaeda terrorist manual is confirmed by Lawrence Wright, who has seen U.S. government records.
25
According to Cloonan, Mohamed was also familiar with the 9/11 plot. "I don't believe he was privy to all the details, but what he laid out was the attack as if he knew every detail," Cloonan said in the
National Geographic documentary. "This is how you position yourself. I taught people to sit in first class." Mohamed described teaching al Qaeda terrorists how to smuggle box cutters onto airplanes."
26 If these latest revelations about Ali Mohamed are true, then:
1. A key planner of the 9/11 plot, and trainer in hijacking, was also an informant for the FBI.
2. This operative trained the members for
all of the chief Islamist attacks inside the United States, the first World Trade Center bombing, the New York landmarks plot, and finally 9/11 -- as well as the attacks against Americans in Somalia and Kenya.
3. And yet for four years Mohamed, already named as an un-indicted conspirator, was allowed to move in and out of the country. Then, unlike his trainees, he was allowed to plea-bargain.
27 As of March 2007, Ali Mohamed had not yet been sentenced for any crime.
28
....
ALI MOHAMED AND THE 9/11 PLOT
Did the U.S. government (including the CIA) continue to use Mohamed as an informant, even after 1998 when he was under arrest? According to Berger, "Mohamed was one of the primary sources for the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily brief (PDB) entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.""ƒ’â‚šƒ€š‚
51 But Mohamed may have supplied this information before his arrest, as much of the relevant information in the PDB would appear to date from 1998 or earlier. At the heart of the August 6 brief was a disguised double reference to Mohamed himself: Al-Qaida members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qaida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ [Egyptian Islamic Jihad] member lived in California in the mid-1990s."ƒ’â‚šƒ€š‚
52
Ali Mohamed is simultaneously one of the two found guilty in the embassies plot (the other was his friend Wadih el-Hage) and also the EIJ member who lived in California.
53 CIA, in its warning to President Bush about Mohamed's "support structure," did not reveal that he had been in federal custody for almost three years. But Berger, who was a researcher for the
National Geographic show, adds flesh to the possibility that Mohamed's "support structure" was capable of helping to create 9/11: "Ali A. Mohamed ... knew al Qaeda was sponsoring flight training for terrorists. He knew of at least one specific terrorist operation centered on a suicide airplane attack. And he knew at least three terrorist pilots personally. He was linked to at least one of the specific schools visited by the 9/11 hijackers. He knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston's Logan Airport.
54 ... Whether or not Mohamed knew the particulars of the 9/11 plot, he knew a lot. Businesses and institutions exploited by Mohamed and his close associates were re-used by virtually all of the 9/11 hijackers as they prepared for the attack."
55
What is clear is that shortly after 9/11, Mohamed readily confessed to FBI Agent Cloonan that he had taught al Qaeda terrorists how to hijack airplanes. Such powerful admissions against self-interest are hard to explain without some unusual immunity having been conferred upon him. Even harder to explain is the fact that Mohamed has not to date been sentenced for the crimes to which he had confessed earlier.
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT'S PRAISE FOR THE HANDLERS OF ALI MOHAMED
The 9/11 report, summarizing the convictions of Mohamed's trainees for the World Trade Center bombing and New York landmarks plots, talks of "this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort."
56 It says nothing about the suppressed evidence found in Nosair's house, including "maps and drawings of New York City landmarks," which if pursued could have prevented both plots from developing in the first place.
What explains the 9/11 report's gratuitous and undeserved praise for the "superb" effort of Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI in the New York landmarks case? Did the report's authors recognize that this was an especially sensitive area, which if properly investigated would lead to past U.S. protection of terrorists? This question returns us to Peter Lance's charge that Fitzgerald had evidence before 1998 to implicate Mohamed in the Kenya embassy bombing, yet did nothing and let the bombing happen. Did U.S. authorities have advance evidence before the 9/11 attack, and again do nothing?
As a first step all U.S. agencies should release the full documentary record of their dealings with Ali Mohamed, the FBI and CIA informant who allegedly planned the details of the airline seizures. Of particular relevance would be everything to do with Mohamed's December 1994 interview with authorities after the subpoena that he ignored, one month before he applied successfully to work with the Burns International Security Company. Only a full investigation of these facts will satisfy those who accuse members of the U.S. government of assisting the 9/11 plot or of failing to prevent 9/11 from happening.
57
The 9/11 Commission probably knew more about this situation than they let on. It cannot be just a coincidence that the person they selected to write the staff reports about al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot, and to conduct the relevant interviews, was a man who had a personal stake in preventing the full truth about Mohamed from coming out. This man was Dietrich Snell, who had been Fitzgerald's colleague in the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's office, and had helped Fitzgerald prosecute Ramzi Yousef. It was Snell who presumably drafted the praise for the superb effort by his former colleague Fitzgerald and the FBI. Of the nine people on Snell's team, all but one had worked for the U.S. government, and all but two for either the Justice Department or the FBI.
58