The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [238]
men bunked nearby: interview with Rahimullah Yusufzai.
trade in honey: interview with Peter L. Bergen.
Electricity: Mohammed el-Shafey, “Son of al-Qai’da Financier: ‘Lived Next to bin Ladin’s Family, Who Disliked Electricity and Called for Austerity,’ ” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, April 16, 2004.
no international telephone: Robert Fisk, “Small Comfort in bin-Ladin’s Dangerous Exile,” Independent, July 11, 1996.
Americans were monitoring: Actually, according to Jack Cloonan, U.S. intelligence did not learn about the phone until 1997.
He was suspicious: “Biography of Usamah bin-Ladin, Written by Brother Mujahid with Minor Modifications,” Islamic Observation Center, April 22, 2000. Translated by FBIS.
killed in an ambush: Burke, Al-Qaeda, 156.
taught his wives: “The Story of the Arab Afghans from the Time of Arrival in Afghanistan Until Their Departure with the Taliban, Part 3,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 10, 2004. Translated by FBIS.
230 “We don’t want subversive”: Tim McGirk, “Home Away from Home,” Time, December 16, 1996.
beaten and tortured: Rashid, Taliban, 49.
“Women you should”: from appendix 1 of ibid., 217ff. Rashid reproduced the Taliban decrees that had been translated from Dari and passed to reporters. He left the grammar and spelling as in the original. Statistics of female employment come from Anna Mulrine, “Unveiled Threat,” U.S. News and World Report, October 15, 2001.
231 “unclean things”: Amy Waldman, “No TV, No Chess, No Kites: Taliban’s Code, from A to Z,” New York Times, November 22, 2001.
“Beatle-ly”…“her home will be marked”: ibid.
only animals that survived: interview with Bahram Rahman.
“Throw reason”: Burke, Al-Qaeda, 111.
232 overloaded ferry: testimony of Ashif Mohamed Juma, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden, et al.
234 “You are not unaware”: Osama bin Laden, “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” Al-Quds al-Arabi, August 23, 1996.
235 secretary for…Sayyaf: interview with Yosri Fouda.
poorly trained: Fouda and Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, 116.
month in the Philippines: interview with Frank Pellegrino.
“Bojinka”: 9/11 Commission Report, 488 n. Previous reports have erroneously stated that the term was a Serbo-Croatian word for “big bang.”
236 Haruki Ikegami: Reeve, The New Jackals, 79.
did not know Yousef: interview with Jamal Khashoggi, who says bin Laden “swore” to him that he did not know Yousef. Yousef did spend time in al-Qaeda camps and safe houses in 1989, however, and may have been in Peshawar at the same time that bin Laden was mediating the civil war in Afghanistan. Coll, Ghost Wars, 249. Mohammed Saleh, the Al-Hayat correspondent in Cairo, told me that Ramzi Yousef and bin Laden met in Pakistan, but he would not reveal the source of this information.
sent a messenger: Reeve, The New Jackals, 76.
sent to bin Laden diagrams: interview with Michael Scheuer.
kill Pope John Paul II: Reeve, The New Jackals, 86.
training pilots: 9/11 Commission Report, 149.
14. Going Operational
237 Khobar Towers: interviews with John Lipka, Dale Watson, Jack Cloonan, and anonymous political officer in Riyadh; Freeh, My FBI, 11ff. Kenneth M. Pollack, in personal communication, writes, “The Saudis fully concurred with our conclusion that Iran was behind Khobar Towers. I never heard the slightest hint that they believed al-Qa’eda was responsible. However, because they had begun their rapprochement with Tehran—and especially after Muhammad Khatemi’s election in Iran—it was our strong sense that they did not want us to be able to reach that definitive conclusion for fear that we would either want to mount a retaliatory strike against the Iranians or feel compelled to do so.” Richard A. Clarke and Steven Simon have expressed similar sentiments in interviews. The 9/11 Commission, however, leaves open the possibility of a connection between the Khobar Towers bombing and al-Qaeda, saying that there was “strong but indirect evidence