The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [233]
“Jihad against America?”: al-Hammadi, “The Inside Story of al-Qa’ida,” part 8, March 26, 2005.
172 “a large-scale front”: ibid., part 5, March 23, 2005.
173 nine hundred people: United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2004, April 2005.
Carlos the Jackal: interviews with Tim Niblock and Hassabullah Omer. Ken Silverstein, “Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America’s War on Terrorism,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2005.
in exchange for weapons: Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, “Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in al-Qaeda,” Washington Post, October 14, 2003.
175 Ibn Tamiyyah had issued a historic fatwa: testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden, et al.
9. The Silicon Valley
176 “awesome symbolic towers”: Osama bin Laden interview with Tayser Alouni, al-Jazeera, October 2001, translated by CNN.
Little Egypt: Kepel, Jihad, 301.
177 issued a fatwa: interview with Tom Corrigan.
“descendants of apes”: Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 26.
“cut the transportation”: ibid, 185.
bin Laden was financially backing: interview with Tom Corrigan.
World Trade Center bombing: interviews with Frank Pellegrino, David Kelley, Lewis Schiliro, James Kallstrom, Joe Cantemessa, Richard A. Clarke, Thomas Pickard, Pascual “Pat” D’Amuro, Mark Rossini, Mary Galligan, and Tom Corrigan.
178 sodium cyanide: Reeve, The New Jackals, 43.
dirty bomb: ibid., 147.
tourists felt: ibid., 12.
hospital casualties: ibid., 15.
179 Zawahiri appeared on the speaker circuit: There is considerable dispute about the exact date of Zawahiri’s trip to the United States, or whether there was more than one. Ali Mohammed, the FBI’s main source on this matter, told investigators that Zawahiri traveled to Brooklyn in 1988 in the company of Abu Khaled al-Masri, which is an alias for Mohammed Shawki Islambouli, the brother of the assassin of Anwar al-Sadat, and who was on the shura council of al-Jihad. As for the California trip, Mohammed says it took place in 1993 before the World Trade Center bombing, which occurred on February 26. Zawahiri’s host in California, Dr. Ali Zaki, however, says he met Zawahiri once, in 1989 or 1990. There is also court testimony in Egypt by Khaled Abu al-Dahab, another member of al-Jihad who lived in California. “Ayman al-Zawahiri came to America to collect donations,” Abu al-Dahab told a court in Cairo in 1999. Abu al-Dahab gave the date of Zawahiri’s trip as late 1994 or 1995. For this narrative, I have chosen to accept the FBI version of the travel dates.
According to Dan Coleman, Zawahiri paid a visit to the mujahideen’s Services Bureau branch office in Brooklyn in 1988. The office on Atlantic Avenue was run by one of Zawahiri’s men in al-Jihad, Mustafa Shalabi. Two years later, Shalabi got into a dispute with Zawahiri’s old rival, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, over money. The blind sheikh wanted to use the funds the center raised to support the international jihad. Shalabi wanted the money to go into the Islamist rebellion against Egypt. He refused to relinquish control of the account. In March 1991 someone entered Shalabi’s apartment in Brooklyn, beat him, strangled him, and stabbed him more than thirty times—a murder that has never been solved.
Bern, Switzerland…real name: interview with Jack Cloonan.
martial artist: interview with Mark Rossini.
180 the government rightly suspected: Benjamin and Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, 123.
already a member: plea, U.S. v. Ali Mohamed.
the Cairo station: interview with Jack Cloonan.
probably a plant: interview with Michael Scheuer.
sponsored by the agency: Paul Quinn-Judge and Charles M. Sennott, “Figure Cited in Terrorism Case Said to Enter US with CIA Help,” Boston Globe, February 3, 1995.
180 the transatlantic flight: Peter Waldman, Gerald F. Seib, Jerry Markon, and Christopher Cooper, “The Infiltrator: Ali Mohamed Served in the U.S. Army—and bin Laden’s Circle,” Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2001; Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, The Cell, 141.
181 pursuing a doctorate: Bergen, Holy War, 129.
Kinko’s: interview