Kahane was a great comfort to the many working-class Jews who were forced to leave Arab lands between 1948 and 1973—often with no compensation for their seized property and nothing more than the clothes on their backs. By contrast, more than one million Muslims live peacefully in Israel, protected by its laws and voting in its elections. As for the Palestinians who fled their homes in 1948, Kahane pointed out, they were not deported by any government but left fearing that Israelis would do to them what they would do to the Jews if the power positions were reversed. To this day, millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps supported by the United Nations and Western governments, while there is no provision (except by Israel) for the throngs of Jews displaced from Arab lands.
Still, to many Israelis and Americans, Kahane sounded less like a humanitarian than a provocateur. Kahane’s views on Israel could be sufficiently captured by this line: “No guilt, no apologies, and the hell with the rest of the world.” It is not hard to see why KSM would want Kahane dead.
KSM later admitted to his CIA interrogators that he planned to murder Kahane. That remark was put into the CIA’s top-secret interrogation memos, which were later reviewed by Dieter Snell and other members of the 9/11 Commission staff. The 9/11 Commission Report, which noted KSM’s desire to kill Kahane in a single line, immediately dismissed KSM’s claim as “uncorroborated,” adding that it “may be mere bravado.”61 Perhaps. But the simple fact is that the U.S. government does not know whether KSM was involved, even indirectly, in Kahane’s assassination. In fact, there are good reasons to believe KSM was telling the truth about his murderous intent toward Kahane.
Virtually all of the players in the 1990 Kahane assassination would reappear in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which KSM funded and his nephew orchestrated. This cannot be a coincidence, yet to this day it has largely been ignored by investigators.
As Kahane stepped from the podium at New York’s Marriott East Side Hotel, a man approached him, smiling.62 The smiling stranger pulled out a chrome-plated.357 Magnum handgun and shot Kahane in the chest and in the head. Kahane was pronounced dead within the hour.
The smiling assassin, El Sayyid Nosair, ran for the exit. He was chased by Irving Franklin, a seventy-three-year-old man. Nosair stopped, turned, and shot at Franklin, grazing his leg.
On the street, Nosair urgently looked for his getaway car, a taxi driven by Mahmud Abouhalima.63 Later, Abouhalima would be the driver for the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. He was also a parttime driver for the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, a longtime associate of Osama bin Laden, who was later convicted of a wide-ranging plot to blow up New York City landmarks. KSM met Abdel Rahman during one of his visits to Pakistan in the early 1990s.
But Nosair got into the wrong taxi.
Inside a strange cab, Nosair ordered the driver to speed through a red light. The cabbie refused. Nosair shoved open the taxi door and burst onto Lexington Avenue. On the sidewalk, he ran into Carlos Acosta, an armed detective for the U.S. Postal Service. Nosair shot him in the arm, and Acosta returned fire, hitting Nosair in the neck. Nosair was taken to the same hospital as Kahane.
Investigators later examined an amateur video made during Kahane’s speech and identified a man in the crowd as Mohammed Salameh.64 Most likely, Salameh was there to witness Nosair’s “heroic deed.” Salameh, one of Nosair’s cousins, was later part of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, supervised by KSM’s nephew and sidekick Ramzi Yousef.
Nosair; his getaway driver, Abouhalima; and his accomplice in the crowd, Salameh, were each questioned by police. But the investigators never realized the significant connections among them (they lived in the same apartment buildings, worshipped at the same mosque, and each had ties to terrorists).
Nosair’s history should have raised more questions by investigators. Nosair, who had worked for New York City’s water department until he was let go in 1990, partly for trying to convert his coworkers to Islam, had bombed a Greenwich Village gay bar, Uncle Charlie’s, in April 1990, but wasn’t linked to that crime until 1995.65 Nosair said he objected to homosexuality because it violated Islamic tenets. Four days before killing Kahane, Nosair was spotted meeting with the Blind Sheikh. “They were deep in conversation.”66 Radical Islam would have been a legitimate angle of investigation in the Kahane assassination, but New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Borelli ordered investigators to “abandon any broad conspiracy theory.”67 Abouhalima and Salameh were never charged.
Instead, the NYPD detectives treated the Kahane murder as the act of a random crackpot. So, the more than forty boxes of evidence that police collected from Nosair’s Cliffside, New Jersey, apartment were not translated for his trial and were never presented in court.
Nosair maintained that he was “framed by a guy with a yarmulke.”
Denied key evidence, the jury was so confused, it acquitted him of the murder but convicted him of illegal possession of the gun that killed Kahane. Who shot the assassin’s gun that Nosair possessed, the jury never explained. The terrorism angle was not really considered at the time.
Nor did the FBI treat it as a terrorism case. “I was in charge of bureau operations at the time,” Buck Revell said, “and I never received any information that the assassin of Meir Kahane was connected with any sort of organization that might have a terrorist agenda.”68
One problem was analytic. The FBI and New York Police Department’s intelligence units were used to looking for terrorists who were disciplined and operated inside rigid, hierarchical organizations. The Kahane murder was essentially free-form, put together by a group of relatives and friends who attended the same mosque. It was a new pattern, one they weren’t yet accustomed to spotting. And no one asked why Nosair had decided to target Kahane. That trail, if pursed, might have led to the Blind Sheikh and eventually perhaps to KSM.
Another problem: most of the seized evidence wasn’t carefully scrutinized until years later. Part of the reason was bureaucratic infighting. The FBI seized twenty-four of the forty boxes of evidence from the New York Police Department. Two days later, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office got the evidence from the FBI. The officials spent so much time fighting over who had control of the evidence taken from Nosair’s apartment that no one actually looked inside the boxes.69
What was in them? Investigators found manuals for making bombs, newspaper articles about assassinations, and piles of Arabic-language documents. Among the papers was a bomb-making formula “almost identical to the one used at the World Trade Center.”70 In the evidence collected in Nosair’s apartment were pages from U.S. Army manuals—some marked TOP SECRET—translated into Arabic. The manuals seem to have been stolen from U.S. Special Forces.
How did Nosair, a former city worker with no military background, come to have Arabic translations of secret U.S. Army manuals? Years later, FBI agents and New York City police officers would learn that Khalid Ibrahim, who had run a fund-raising operation for Osama bin Laden’s various groups since 1989,71 introduced Nosair to Ali Mohammed, an instructor for the U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg in New Jersey.
Mohammed, a former Egyptian army officer, did more than give Nosair manuals; he gave him training. Mohammed often hosted Nosair as well as two future World Trade Center bombers (Ibrahim Elgabrowny and Mahmud Abouhalima) at firing ranges in New Jersey and Connecticut. The future bombers returned the favor. One of the demands made after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was the release of Nosair from prison.
Ali Mohammed, meanwhile, met frequently with bin Laden in Sudan and later Afghanistan.
The Blind Sheikh was tied to both Nosair and the World Trade Center bombers—and he seems to have been influential in choosing the twin towers as an appropriate target. He had written several fatwas authorizing Muslims to “rob banks and kill Jews,”72 like Kahane. His sermons were even more direct. He called for attacks on America and other Western countries, telling his followers to “destroy their economy, burn their compa
nies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land.”73
Indeed, many of the World Trade Center bombers met one another through the blind cleric’s Al-Salam mosque, a dark, dirty series of rooms located over the Sultan Travel Agency, at 2484 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City.74 The Blind Sheikh had been tried and acquitted three times in Egypt for the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat, Egypt’s president who made peace with Israel; he was also a spiritual adviser to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group that killed Sadat and merged with Al Qaeda in 1998.
Finally, it appears that it was the Blind Sheikh who first gave KSM the idea for attacking the World Trade Center. His 1992 fatwa, which quickly became legendary in jihadi circles, warned Muslims not to attack the United Nations building (it would turn too much of the world’s opinion against the Islamic cause), recommending the World Trade Center as a better target.
The Blind Sheikh’s fatwas did not attract much interest among American intelligence officials, but they were closely studied by one analyst working for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. I spoke with this analyst on the condition of anonymity. He explained that the Blind Sheikh’s fatwa recommending the World Trade Center as a target had had a huge impact in jihadi circles in the early 1990s. Attacking the World Trade Center immediately became “a fixed idea inside Al Qaeda” and related groups, he told me. “That fatwa gave KSM the idea for the World Trade Center,” he said.75
Is it possible that KSM passed along the idea of targeting Kahane to the Blind Sheikh, who in turn told Nosair and Abouhalima? There is an old saying in intelligence circles: there are no coincidences.
With the Kahane plot set in motion, KSM could return to his studies. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering on December 18, 1986,76 having earned his degree in less than three years.77
Upon graduation, KSM quickly left the country for Pakistan, where his brothers and Ramzi Yousef’s father waited for him in Quetta, a town near the Durand Line, which divides Pakistan from Afghanistan. (Other relatives of KSM’s had moved to Iran.)
KSM learned more than a little broken English and a lot of engineering in America. He learned from his arrest and other traffic run-ins with the authorities that America’s police are governed by laws and procedures that give the accused an array of rights. This is something the clever game player could exploit. He learned that there was a well-integrated Muslim community that could be helpful to operatives, as long as it did not know that it would be aiding terror attacks. (This would be useful intelligence for the San Diego cell in the 9/11 attack’s early stages.) He learned from the Blind Sheikh that the World Trade Center was a religiously acceptable (and even desirable) target.
Unfortunately, none of these lessons would go to waste.
3
Searching for War
Above the smoke and dust of Pakistan’s Jalozai refugee camp loomed a mud-walled fortress, ringed with razor wire and machine-gun emplacements. From its high walls you could look down the Khyber Pass and see the peaks of Afghanistan, where war had displaced almost two million people since 1979.
A small car wormed and bounced its way up to the main gate, a mud-brick arch guarded by young men with new beards and old Kalashnikovs.
A sign in English and Arabic read, THE UNIVERSITY OF DAWA AND JIHAD (see photo section). Dawa means “call,” and suggests a religious duty, while jihad means “holy war.” This strange, fortified campus, built with Saudi money, was fueled by Saudi ideology and manned by Muslims from across the Arab world.
The driver rolled down his window as a guard leaned in. Zahid Shaikh Mohammed explained that his brother, the wiry kid in the passenger seat, was there to meet the emir.
The gate opened and the car rolled into the sandy compound. It was a motley collection of buildings. A rare luxury winked in the sun: new air conditioners were stuck into the faces of the decrepit structures. In one courtyard, young men shouted during a synchronized martial drill.
At a main building, KSM and his brother Zahid explained again that they were there to see Sheikh Sayyaf.
Zahid had spent the past few years getting to know everyone of consequence in Pakistan. Zahid was running operations for the Committee for Islamic Appeal, a Kuwait-based charity that aided Arabs fighting in Afghanistan. The committee was one of the largest charities active in the region and had considerable clout.1 Sheikh Sayyaf was one of his most important contacts.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan warlord who spoke perfect Arabic, ran the University of Dawa and Jihad and headed the Hizbul-Ittihad El-Islami (Islamic Union Party), which briefly unified the various Arab factions fighting the Soviets. Among the university’s donors were Osama bin Laden and a host of Saudi and Persian Gulf–state Arab sheikhs.
Zahid introduced KSM to a vigorous man with intense, coal-black eyes and a beard that hung from his jaw to the center of his chest, falling in thick black ringlets. The beard was as famous as the man, a raffish signature known throughout the jihadi world. From out of that beard would come words that would change KSM’s life.
Increasingly, KSM’s future seemed to lie in Pakistan. Most of his family had moved there while he was studying in the United States. His brothers, uncles, and cousins were scattered across Pakistan and were involved in various capacities in the war against the Soviets. Some made bombs, some carried messages. Along the border with Afghanistan, the only work was “war work.”2
KSM had arrived in Pakistan when the anti-Soviet jihad was at its peak. The Saudi government was spending roughly $1 billion per year to transport, equip, and train fighters from across the Arab-speaking world. Arab governments had obliged the Saudi effort by emptying their jails of Islamist radicals, who were released on the sole condition that they depart immediately for Afghanistan. In short, the Arab world was exporting its problem people and making a problem for the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan at the same time. Once in neighboring Pakistan, these radicals were met by the followers of Sheikh Sayyaf, Osama bin Laden, or others and given food, housing, military training, and ideological indoctrination. Those who lived through the Afghan jihad ended up with valuable combat experience and a network of like-minded contacts that stretched from Indonesia to Algeria. Far from exhausting the jihadi threat to Arab states through the fight against the Soviets, ultimately the Afghan jihad created a much more able foe, one that was more confident, more professional, and more global in its reach.
Meanwhile, American contributions—another $1 billion—flowed to seven different Afghan factions (but not to Osama bin Laden or other Arab jihadis). Two CIA station chiefs responsible for managing the Afghan war in the 1980s, Bill Peikney and Milton Bearden, told me that no U.S. funds went to bin Laden or other Arab groups.3 Marc Sageman, a CIA case officer working under Bearden in Islamabad, agrees, adding that he didn’t even meet any Arabs.4 The CIA was focused on funding the Afghans.
The flood of funds meant that Pakistan’s borderlands were awash with arms and men eager to use them. For KSM, it was a tremendous opportunity.
Sheikh Sayyaf greeted him with tea in handleless glass cups.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf allowed himself no luxuries (except, incredibly, a nightly game of tennis on a dry-mud court). He had established a network of perhaps a dozen military-style training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The rite of initiation into the jihad was attending one of Sheikh Sayyaf’s camps.
But first, KSM had to win the approval of the sheikh himself. KSM’s education, deep ideological understanding, and extensive family connections to the jihadi network quickly met with Sayyaf’s approval.
Sheikh Sayyaf sent KSM to the Sada camp, in eastern Afghanistan. 5 Its name means “echo,” and it was formed to handle the overflow from Khaldan camp, the first large-scale terror training facility in Afghanistan. The camp was overseen by Abu Burhan al-Iraqi, a burly, bearded man who had briefly worked for Saddam Hussein’s government. (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Iraq’
s Al Qaeda wing until his death in June 2006, attended the same camp.) 6
Sheikh Sayyaf’s camps were populated mainly by Muslims from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other parts of Southeast Asia. This was no accident. Recruits tended to cluster where their countrymen had studied. This was not out of blind national or regional loyalty but a function of the fact that recruiting tends to flow along family trees and other social networks. The Asians generally spoke English, not Arabic, so the clustering effect of recruitment also made it easier for Sayyaf to appoint instructors that they could understand. The harsh conditions—the cold nights (a shock to tropical recruits) and the cold, grain-based meals (another shock), combined with the rigorous regime of exercise and prayer—forged close bonds among the men.
One man in particular would have an enormous impact on KSM’s fate. His name was Abdurajak Janjalani. After returning to the Philippines, he would establish the Abu Sayyaf terror group (named after their Afghan patriarch) and invite Ramzi Yousef to train his men in bomb making. At the Sada camp, KSM also met a man we now know as Hambali, a leading Indonesian terror leader. These relationships would later draw both KSM and Ramzi Yousef to Indonesia and the Philippines, the sites of some of their boldest plans.
After a three-month stint at the training camps in Afghanistan, KSM was summoned by Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of Osama bin Laden. Azzam was a Palestinian-Jordanian who had been educated at Egypt’s famous Al-Azhar University and later taught in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He was a fiery speaker who traveled across the Middle East, Europe, and America, raising money and men for jihad. His passion and his eloquence could move men to quit their studies, leave their jobs, and travel far from their wives—just to have a chance to die for the cause of Islam. His speaking power was similar to that of John Wesley and other eighteenth-century evangelicals who could bring solid skeptics to tears in twenty minutes and order them to action in sixty minutes. Azzam was like Wesley in another way: devoutly religious people couldn’t understand his appeal. KSM’s classmate told me he found Azzam boring.
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