The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [42]
After leaving the Egyptian army, Mohamed had worked as a security adviser to both EgyptAir and the CIA. He had moved to the United States, married an American woman, Linda Sanchez (whom he met on his first flight over), and acquired U.S. citizenship. In 1986 he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Fort Bragg, where he lectured on Islamic culture and politics.
He took a leave from the army to train “brothers in Afghanistan,” a hiatus for which the army granted approval, and he also regularly took leave to help EIJ and al-Qaeda, on missions ranging from training bin Laden’s bodyguards to helping plan operations. The guides and maps that he had initially taken and photocopied from the U.S. Army proved so useful in training al-Qaeda and EIJ members that Mohamed eventually refashioned much of the material into his own pamphlet. He was known in al-Qaeda circles under the alias Abu Mohamed al-Amriki (“the American”)—a tribute to his successfully duping the CIA and the U.S. military.
In May 1993 Mohamed attempted to join the FBI as a translator, admitting to the agent in San Jose who interviewed him that he had connections to a terrorist group in Sudan. The name al-Qaeda meant little to the agent, but he referred the matter to the Department of Defense. Years later, when the bureau requested a transcript of the DoD’s subsequent conversation with Mohamed, the DoD said that it had been lost.
Among the operatives working with Mohamed in 1994 in Nairobi was Anas al-Liby. Born in Tripoli and identifiable by a scar on the left side of his face, Liby joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after standout performances at various training camps. Apart from his considerable computer skills, he rose to become one of the terrorist group’s most efficient operatives and often trained other members. With Mohamed and Liby in Nairobi, but for a different purpose, was L’Houssaine Kherchtou. A Moroccan who was one of al-Qaeda’s earliest recruits, Kherchtou was training in a flight school in Nairobi to become bin Laden’s personal pilot.
The three men knew each other well, as both Kherchtou and Liby had been among a group of select new al-Qaeda trainees to whom Mohamed had taught surveillance in Afghanistan a few years earlier. Liby, in turn, had trained the group in the use of computers for operational purposes.
Posing as tourists, in December 1993 Mohamed and his team conducted surveillance of different sites in Nairobi, including the U.S. Embassy and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The men also surveyed possible British, French, and Israeli targets. Khalid al-Fawwaz paid for the team’s expenses and equipment as they took pictures, monitored traffic and crowds, and learned where security cameras and guards were positioned. Kherchtou’s apartment in Nairobi often served as a makeshift darkroom, and when the team completed their surveillance they wrote up a report, which included their recommendations for where to strike. In their view, the best option was to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
They traveled to al-Qaeda headquarters in Khartoum and briefed bin Laden on their findings. He agreed with their assessment, and after studying the map they had drawn of the U.S. Embassy, he pointed to a spot along the perimeter of the building and told everyone gathered, “Here’s where a truck can be driven in for a suicide attack.”
Al-Qaeda was organized so that different cells were responsible for different parts of an operation. Often one cell would set up cover businesses in a country, another would conduct surveillance of targets, a third would carry out the attack, and a fourth would clean up afterward. This separation helped ensure that if one cell were compromised, other operatives would be safe.
Having succeeded in their part of the operation, Ali Mohamed and his cell