- In the April 19
issue, American Free Press reported on the little-noticed
point that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the purported chief of
operations of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, had told U.S.
interrogators that the Sears Tower in Chicago was also an
intended Al Qaeda target-a significant fact in light of
evidence that Israeli operatives taken into custody on U.S.
soil after the 9-11 terrorist attacks were carrying detailed
videotapes of the Sears Tower. This week AFP follows up and
details the little-known background of Mohammed.
-
- SECOND IN A SERIES
-
- There is one detail
about Al Qaeda's alleged chief of operations Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed that, while reported in the media, never receives
the focus it deserves: Mohammed is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef,
the reported brains behind the first 1993 terror bombing of
the World Trade Center and who has often been "linked" by
some sources to the bombing of the Murrah Building in
Oklahoma City in 1995.
-
- There has been
widespread belief that Mohammed's nephew, Yousef, may have
been a secret asset of Israel's intelligence service, the
Mossad. In addition, it is a most uncomfortable fact that
Yousef worked closely with a reported Mossad asset, Ahmad
Ajaj, in the first bombing of the World Trade Center.
-
- So the question is
whether Mohammed, like his nephew and longtime collaborator,
has actually been a deep-cover Mossad asset operating inside
an Arabic and Muslim network. Let's look at some facts.
-
- For years, there have
been questions as to Yousef's ethnic or cultural background,
not to mention his identity. He has variously been described
as an "Iraqi" or as a Kuwaiti national or as a Baluchi from
Pakistan.
-
- At the time Yousef
was claiming to be an Iraqi, during his period operating in
New York just prior to the first World Trade Center attack,
there were Arabs who doubted it. However, for those who were
eager to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to both attacks on the
World Trade Center and, as some continue to do today, to the
Oklahoma City bombing, Yousef's claim of Iraqi heritage has
been convenient.
-
- According to an
investigative report by Emily Fancher, of Columbia
University's Graduate School of Journalism: "Yousef's
identity was never settled in court." So the truth is that
not even the United States government has actually-at least
officially-determined if Yousef really is an Arab or a
Baluchi or a Muslim.
-
- What makes this
little-reported anomaly so interesting is that a formerly
secret CIA assessment, dated March 1979, of Israel's foreign
intelligence and security services, reported, candidly, that
it is a long-standing policy for Israeli intelligence to
disguise Jews as Arabs. The CIA report stated:
-
- One of the
established goals of the intelligence and security services
is that each officer be fluent in Arabic. A nine-month,
intensive Arabic language course is given annually . . . to
students. . . .
-
- As further training,
these Mossad officers work in the [Israeli-controlled Arab
lands] for two years to sharpen their language skills. . . .
-
- Many Israelis have
come from Arab countries where they were born and educated
and appear more Arab than Israeli . . .
-
- By forging passports
and identity documents of Arab and western countries and
providing sound background legends and cover, Mossad has
successfully sent into Egypt and other Arab countries
Israelis disguised and documented as Arabs or citizens of
European countries. . . .
-
- These persons are
also useful for their ability to pass completely for a
citizen of the nation in question.
-
- The Israeli talent
for counterfeiting or forging foreign passports and
documents ably supports the agent's authenticity.
-
- As if that were not
enough to raise suspicions, on Sept. 29, 1998, Israeli
journalist Yossi Melman, writing in Israel's Ha'aretz,
revealed:
-
- Shin Bet agents, who
worked undercover in the Israeli-Arab sector in the 1950s,
went as far as to marry Muslim women and have children with
them, in an attempt to continue their mission without
raising suspicion.
-
- So the question
remains: are the individuals known as Mohammed and Yousef
really who they say they are, and are they really Arabs or
Baluchis or Muslims at all?
-
- And if the
uncle-and-nephew team really are Arabs and Muslims, the fact
that the nephew, Yousef, was working closely with a reported
Israeli intelligence asset in the first WTC attack is still
noteworthy indeed, particularly since the Israeli asset in
question was himself an Arab.
-
- Here are the facts
about Yousef's Mossad connection to the first WTC tragedy
first revealed by investigative reporter Robert I. Friedman
in the August 3, 1993, article in The Village Voice, an
independent left-wing New York weekly whose reports on this
topic have been referenced by American Free Press.
-
- Friedman reported
that Yousef's traveling companion and close collaborator,
Ajaj, a 27-year-old West Bank Palestinian held in federal
custody for conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center, may
have been a Mossad mole.
-
- Ajaj was arrested at
Kennedy Airport on Sept. 1, 1992, after he arrived on a
Pakistani International flight from Peshawar carrying a
forged Swedish passport and bombmaking manuals. He was taken
into custody, and subsequently pleaded guilty to entering
the country illegally. Ajaj's traveling companion was Yousef.
-
- Although the FBI
identified Ajaj as a senior intifada terrorist with links to
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization,
Kol Ha'ir, a respected Hebrew-language weekly published in
Jerusalem, reported that Ajaj was never involved in intifada
activities or with Hamas or even the Palestine Liberation
Organization.
-
- Instead, according to
Kol Ha'ir, Ajaj was a petty crook arrested in 1988 for
counterfeiting U.S. dollars out of East Jerusalem. Ajaj was
convicted of counterfeiting charges and then sentenced to
two-and-a-half years in prison.
-
- According to
Friedman, writing in The Village Voice: "It was during his
prison stay that Mossad, Israel's CIA, apparently recruited
him, say Israeli intelligence sources. By the time he was
released after having served just one year, he had seemingly
undergone a radical transformation."
-
- Friedman reported
that Ajaj had suddenly become a devout Muslim and an
outspoken hard-line nationalist. Then, Ajaj was arrested for
smuggling weapons into the West Bank, supposedly for El
Fatah, a subdivision of the PLO.
-
- But Friedman says
this was actually a sham. Friedman's sources in Israeli
intelligence say that the arrest and Ajaj's subsequent
deportation were "staged by Mossad to establish his
credentials as an intifada activist. Mossad allegedly
'tasked' Ajaj to infiltrate radical Palestinian groups
operating outside Israel and to report back to Tel Aviv.
Israeli intelligence sources say that it is not unusual for
Mossad to recruit from the ranks of common criminals."
-
- After Ajaj's
"deportation" from Israel, he showed up in Pakistan where he
turned up in the company of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen
rebels in Afghanistan.
-
- This could point
further toward Ajaj working for the Mossad, for according to
the September 1987 issue of Covert Action Information
Bulletin the funding and supply lines for the Mujahideen
were not only the "the second largest covert operation" in
the CIA's history, but it was also, according to former
Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky (writing in The Other Side
of Deception) under the direct supervision of the Mossad.
-
- According to
Ostrovsky: "It was a complex pipeline, since a large portion
of the Mujahideen's weapons were American made and were
supplied to the Muslim Brotherhood directly from Israel,
using as carriers the Bedouin nomads who roamed the
demilitarized zones in the Sinai."
-
- After Ajaj's ventures
with the Mujahideen, he popped up in New York and purported
to befriend members of a small so-called "radical" clique
surrounding Sheikh Abdel-Rahman who was accused of being the
mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
-
- On Feb. 26, 1993, the
day of the World Trade center bombing, Ajaj was "safe" in
federal prison serving a six month sentence for entering the
country on a forged passport. Later, then, he was indicted
for conspiracy in the WTC bombing.
-
- "If Ajaj was
recruited by Mossad [Freidman's emphasis], it is not known
whether he continued to work for the Israeli spy agency
after he was deported. One possibility, of course, is that
upon leaving Israel and meeting radical Muslims close to the
blind Egyptian sheikh, his loyalties shifted," writes
Friedman.
-
- "Another scenario is
that he had advance knowledge of the World Trade Center
bombing, which he shared with Mossad, and that Mossad, for
whatever reason, kept the secret to itself. If true, U.S.
intelligence sources speculate that Mossad might have
decided to keep the information closely guarded so as not to
compromise its undercover agent," writes Friedman.
-
- Columbia University's
Emily Fancher reported that Robert Precht, a defense lawyer
for one of Ajaj's co-defendants in the WTC trial, said: "We
felt that there were unseen actors behind this. Neither
defense lawyers nor the government knew who it was."
-
- It's probably no
coincidence, considering that when Yousef was finally taken
into custody, according to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian
Parr, "he was friendly, he seemed relaxed and he actually
seemed eager to talk to us." That's precisely what one might
expect from an Israeli agent, doing his job, spreading the
Al Qaeda legend for the benefit of his Israeli sponsors.
-
- The possibility of a
high-level FBI cover-up of Israeli involvement in the first
World Trade Center attack must be considered inasmuch as the
former head of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force, who was
a key player in the first WTC investigation, was Neil
Herman.
-
- After leaving the
FBI, Herman temporarily assumed the post of the
then-recently deceased Irwin Suall, longtime director of
"fact finding" for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai
B'rith. _
- _____
-
- "I am only one, but I
am one.
- I cannot do
everything, but I can do something.
- And because I cannot
do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I
can do.
- What I can do, I
should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will
do."
- ---Edward Everett Hale
