He knew al Qaeda was sponsoring flight training for terrorists. He knew of at least one specific terrorist operation centered on a suicide airplane attack. And he knew at least three terrorist pilots personally.
He was linked to at least one of the specific schools visited by the 9/11 hijackers. He knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston's Logan Airport.
And Mohamed was one of the primary sources for the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."
Almost all of these investigative leads were discovered, reviewed and then forgotten or dismissed by the FBI prior to September 11. Even after the attacks, after the law enforcement investigation and two independent probes of pre-9/11 intelligence failures, virtually none of this material has been presented to the public in coherent form.
BUILDING EXPERTISE
Ali Mohamed joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad some time around 1984; he reported to Ayman Al-Zawahiri. His very first terrorist assignment was design strategies to hijack planes from the Cairo airport.[4]
Over the course of the next several years, Mohamed refined his techniques and pass them on to others. By 1992, he was formally training al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan in hijacking techniques, including where to sit and how to smuggle small weapons onto planes -- including utility knives like those used in the September 11 plot.[5]
Mohamed trained terrorists on behalf of al Qaeda in locations from Afghanistan to New Jersey, from London to Somalia. Ramzi Yousef -- who with his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed came up with the first draft of the 9/11 plan -- was a student at al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps during the years Mohamed was teaching hijacking tactics there.[6]
His uncle traveled in and out of Pakistan during the same period, although his precise movements are somewhat less thoroughly documented.
Screen shot from Intelfiles DVD STK1
While in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, Mohamed wrote the core al Qaeda training manual, a compendium of information on how to commit terrorist acts that would later become known as the Encyclopedia of Jihad. Many of Mohamed's trainees were eventually taught to be trainers themselves.
THE OTHER PILOTS
Hijacking was only part of the story, however. Mohamed was also directly linked pilots recruited by and trained for al Qaeda.
At least three of Mohamed's close associates were trained as pilots.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
