[iwar] [fc:Sleeper.Agents'.Not.Just.Arabs,.But.Also.Europeans]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-22 06:43:23
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 06:43:23 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Sleeper.Agents'.Not.Just.Arabs,.But.Also.Europeans]
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Sleeper Agents' Not Just Arabs, But Also Europeans

Manuals Instruct Recruits How to Assassinate, Kidnap, Obtain False Documents, Aliases

October 21, 2001 12:53pm

NEW YORK, Oct.  21 /PRNewswire/ -- An estimated 20,000 men have gone
through the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and have moved on to
dozens of countries around the world, and U.S.  law enforcement
officials estimate that there are perhaps a thousand people in the
United States who have ties to terrorist organizations abroad, Newsweek
reports in the October 29 issue (on newsstands Monday, October 22). 
Experts talk about "sleepers," secret agents who have burrowed deep into
American life, as invisible and lethal as anthrax. 

Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and a host of Newsweek
correspondents report that Al Qaeda is a rainbow coalition.  Along with
almost every other nationality, the Al Qaeda training camps have
attracted blond, blue-eyed Swedes and Germans.  Lost youth of any race
or nationality can be drawn to Islam's certainties.  Once in the mosque,
they can become bait for traveling Imams preaching Jihad.  With its
cultlike qualities, Al Qaeda has become a catchall for the disaffected. 

The global terror network is deep.  Since September 11, the FBI's
manhunt has rounded up more than 800 people, but only 10 have been
linked in any way to the hijackings, and those ten aren't talking. 
Rooting them out is going to be exceedingly difficult and clues are
always better in hindsight.  One FBI official noted that the bureau's
Phoenix, Ariz., field office cabled headquarters last summer about an
unusual number of Arabs who seemed to be taking flight lessons.  "But
that was all they could tells us -- Jeez, there are a lot of Arabs
taking flying lessons!" said the official. 

Federal investigators also tell Newsweek that Mohamed Atta, the
ringleader, visited Norfolk, Va., site of a huge U.S.  Navy base, at
least twice in February and April.  The Feds believe that Atta was
scoping out an aircraft carrier as a target.  And while Atta and most of
the other Sept.  11 hijackers were not sleepers in the pure, cold-war
sense -- they were not passively waiting to be "awakened" by an order
from their spymasters, but instead had a mission -- investigators are
beginning to have a better feel for the variety, cunning, and
determination of the terrorists who may be living, literally, next door. 

In France, police are concerned about a half-dozen cases of "missing
sons" who told their families they were going to fight "in Bosnia in the
Muslim struggle" and have not been heard from since.  Officials now
think that some of them may have found their way to Afghanistan and,
once there, were essentially taken prisoner or brainwashed as cultists. 
"The leaders in these camps separate out the strong from the weak," says
one French authority.  "Those who are strong go on to fight and perhaps
become leaders themselves.  The weak may be simply eliminated."

The training appears to be thorough.  Some Al Qaeda operatives take
their learning with them in a handy manual.  A mixture of Quran quotes
and practical tips for killing, the handbook has lessons on kidnapping
and assassination using rifles and pistols; assassination using
explosives; and assassination using poisons and cold steel.  There is
training in code and training in the proper posture for shooting someone
("the body should be normal, not tense, and the joints relaxed, not too
tight, not too lose"). 

The manual also instructs Al Qaeda fighters to lay low, not to visit
mosques or publicly praise Allah and it teaches them how to obtain false
documents and aliases.  With war being waged on the Taliban, a flood of
refugees has resulted.  Some of them are holy warriors, who pay $20,000
to $30,000 to so-called travel agents, professional smuggling syndicates
who set them up with new identities and passports. 

Some operatives aid the cause by offering money.  Federal investigators
know that Omar al-Bayoumi helped pay the rent on the San Diego apartment
for two of the American Airlines Flight 77 hijackers.  They also know
that al-Bayoumi is well educated and ambitious.  In completing an
application for admission to a doctoral program at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, he listed himself as "assistant to the director
of finance" at Dallah AVCO, an aviation services company in Saudi
Arabia.  The FBI is investigating possible ties between Dallah AVCO and
the Al Qaeda network.  Asked about these ties by Newsweek, Dallah AVCO's
owner, Saudi Billionaire Saleh Abdullah Kamel, responded, "This is not
true at all." U.S.  intelligence suspects that wealthy Saudis are
funding Islamic extremist groups. 

Thomas writes that the various civil wars pitting Muslims against
infidels around the world offer a perfect proving ground for jihad.  In
fact, a videotape obtained by Russian intelligence shows a muscular
black man, speaking with perfect English, discussing how he left his
work as a phys-ed trainer in Manchester and joined the mujahedin
fighting the Russians in Chechnya.  "We will have victory like there was
in Afghanistan," he says, "and we will have total Islamic law.  Not only
in Chechnya, but reaching as far as Moscow, New York, and Washington,
D.C." Another video shows some rebels discussing the attack on the World
Trade Center.  Says one: "It seems that America, between two oceans,
cannot defend itself.  With a few small knives you can take hundreds of
thousands of lives.  The Americans are hiding the real number of
casualties so we won't celebrate."

(Read Newsweek's news releases at

<a href="http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com">http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com>  Click 
"Pressroom.")

Newsweek On-line survey - Click Here

<a href="http://www.mediamarkinteractive.com/prnewswire/">http://www.mediamarkinteractive.com/prnewswire/>

SOURCE  Newsweek

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