The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [248]
On March 3, 2004, Shah and Saeed took a train from New York’s Penn Station to Plattsburgh, and I met them the following day. Shah tried to impress me by telling me about his training in jujitsu and knife and stick fighting, and he said that he was “blessed” to have studied with a mujahid who had fought in Malaysia in 1969. He also showed me his prayer beads, which he said could be used as a weapon to strangle someone.
I told Shah that his application was promising, as many brothers had been arrested in Afghanistan and were in Guantánamo, and we needed new trainers. Shah then made the case for accepting Sabir as well, who he said was a “very, very, very close friend”; they had known each other for more than twenty years. He said Sabir used to be a student in one of his martial arts classes, and that he had “got the spirit.” I told him I’d check with the brothers in light of his recommendation.
An undercover mission requires emotional and psychological preparation, as you are pretending to be someone you aren’t. You experience competing emotions as you develop a relationship with the targets—they trust you, and you become their “friend.” You see their good side as well as the evil side. At the same time, you are using what they say to lock them in jail. You do it, of course, to protect the public from the death and destruction such people want to inflict.
With Shah, as my cover story was that I was a recruiter for bin Laden, I was reversing the usual scenario and playing this situation as if he had to work to gain my trust. It would have been unusual for bin Laden’s personal representative to need to impress a wannabe al-Qaeda member, and the plan worked. He tried hard to establish his credentials with me, and it was clear that my presence made him nervous, as he felt he was mixing with an important terrorist.
On March 11, Saeed met Shah in his apartment in New York to deliver the message that I wished to meet “Doctor Rafiq” in Florida. On April 1, I met Shah in Orlando, Florida. Shah apologized and said that Sabir had had to leave the country for a family emergency. (He would be back, Shah said, on April 12.) I told Shah that I had spoken to the brothers about him, and that I had vouched for him. In light of his recommending Sabir, it was an acceptable risk for me to meet his friend. As Shah and I drove to a hotel where he was staying, because I wasn’t familiar with the area, I accidentally missed the exit, so I took the next one and backtracked. Shah smiled at me and said, “I know what you’re doing: You’re trying to ensure we aren’t followed.”
“I have to do what’s necessary,” I replied. (The surveillance team later told me that they were worried about what was happening, and were debating whether to intervene but decided to hold off.) We arrived at his hotel and took a walk, and as we passed a little girl who was on her father’s shoulders—she must have been less than two years old—she smiled at Shah and he smiled back. “She likes you,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied with a smile, and then he paused, and his expression turned serious, and he added, “but if needed, I could slit her throat.”
I asked Shah to make a martial arts demonstration video for al-Qaeda and to prepare a syllabus. He said he wanted to train in camps in Afghanistan to learn about “chemical stuff” and how to use “explosives and firearms.” He also said that he had trained many brothers who had gone to Afghanistan, including the individual whose number was found in his car and was known by authorities to have gone there.
Shah said he had wanted to start a martial arts school in New York just for Muslims, but that it wouldn’t be permitted, as it would be viewed as discriminatory. What he planned to do instead was to create a “social club,” because then “I can use the highest level of discrimination.”
Before we parted, we discussed using a code to communicate in the future.
I had series