US Attorney General
John Ashcroft announced this morning that on
May 8, 2002, US Justice Department agents arrested an American
al-Qaeda operative, as he disembarked at Chicago
O'Hare International Airport from
Karachi, Pakistan via
Switzerland. While in the region, he and others were allegedly conspiring to research, construct and detonate a radioactive 'dirty bomb'. When arrested, al-Muhajir was carrying more than $10,000 cash, possibly withdrawn from a Swiss account. According to Defense Dept. spokesmen, 'the plan', such that it was, floundered in its most elementary planning stages. Attempts to smuggle material had been abandoned, with the suspects then intending to try stealing parts from various universities and medicals labs within the US (
Reuters, 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect Not Cooperating', June 11, 2002). "This a a great
PR move for the FBI & CIA," said Michael Levi of the
Federation of American Scientists, in response to the arrest.
Ashcroft made the announcement while still in
Moscow, stating "We have captured a known
terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or dirty bomb, in the United States." The suspect, Abdullah Al Mujahir is being held by military police at the
Goose Creek naval base,
South Carolina, and despite US
citizenship is now being treated as an
enemy combatant (i.e. he can be
held, without charges, until hostilities cease and questioned without a lawyer). Mujahir is a former Chicago
Latin Kings street
gang member, and formerly named Jose Padilla.
1 He converted to Islam while after serving a prison term in Florida (for a
road rage incident) in 1995. At the time, he and his girlfriend worked in the hotel service industry in
Broward County, Florida, where he frequented a local mosque, the Darul Uloom Institute. Sometime after this, he was recruited (possibly as early as 1997), and allegedly met with al-Qaeda leaders in Egypt. For more than two years, he lived in Egypt, then travelled to Afghanistan & Pakistan to visit various
madrasa under
Taleban control. In 2001, he was returned to the United States to perform survey activities, where he would be permitted to travel freely on account of his citizenship and passport. The intelligence that led to Mr Mujahir’s arrest apparently came from captured
al-Qaeda leader
Abu Zabaydah during recent interrogations.
2
As noted above, a "dirty bomb" is much less sophisticated than a
nuclear weapon, as it it uses a conventional explosion to spread radioactive material in a populated area. Considered fairly simple to build, the biggest challenge is acquiring the correct substances and assembling them safely. Damage estimates are mostly theoretical. A
Centre for Defence Information report stated a
TNT casket of spent fuel from a nuclear power station, detonated in Manhattan, might kill 2,000 and leave thousands more
contaminated (
B. Blair, What If Terrorists Go Nuclear? , http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/nuclear.cfm). Al Mujahir was apparently trained in explosives while at terrorist camps in
Lahore & Afghanistan as early as 1998, and returned again in 2001
(BBC: Profile: Abdullah al-Mujahir: http://news.bbc.co.uk: June 11, 2002).
The closest call publically reported to date with such a weapon was in 1995, when Islamic separatists from
Chechnya placed a 32 kg "dirty bomb" using
Caesium 137 in
Ismailovsky Park, a popular tourist site in Moscow. It was recovered and destroyed before detonation, but Chechen forces claim they have still captured large caches of
radioactive material from former Soviet labs. The
timing of the announcement is not unrelated to US-Russian
negotiations now underway over funding the long-term security of all former Soviet nuclear stocks and research; the primary reason for Ashcroft`s current mission to Moscow. Ashcroft also heavily stressed the cooperative nature of the arrest, citing close
CIA,
FBI and
Department of Justice involvement, which follows closely last week`s sweeping proposals by
Bush to create a new cabinet-level
Department of Homeland Defense with a wide anti-terror mandate. However, the president's spokesman,
Ari Fleischer, asserted that absolutely no
political considerations were involved in timing the sudden announcement, over a month after the arrest.
3
Notes:
1 One would think a nice, boring name would be retained, along with passport & citizenship, if you
really wanted to make a go at destroying your motherland, but apparently the 31 year old
Brooklyn-born
Puerto Rican ex-gang banger
* felt the tense political climate required a
name change, and that his new anti-American ethos would be better carried out under a Moslem name. This alias, presumably, along with the
charges he`d originally been jailed for (FBI officials said he was arrested five times in Chicago for assault and other crimes ca. 1985-1991), and the sudden international flights to the
Middle East, actually managed to tip off an embassy official in
Karachi when he reported his
passport stolen in February and applied for another.
CIA were shadowing him from then on, while
FBI agents began questioning various
al-Queda officials already in custody about Mujajir. (
Washington Post: An Unusual Odyssey
U.S.-Born Latino Turns Islamic Terror Suspect: http://www.washingtonpost.com : June 11, 2002 & Al Muhajir Alleged to Be Scouting Terror Sites, June 12, 2002).
* If the terrorist sprees of the 1970s in Europe are any indicator, Padilla (Jose's childhood nick was "
Pucho," or pudgy) and
John Walker Lindh are only the first wave of Americans who will go this route. The new
islamist cool, in other words, has already replaced
gangsta and the
Militia Movement as the
ne plus ultra of disenfranchised male rebellion. Call it
terrorist chic.
2 These are the same interrogations which last week corroborated that
Mohammed Atta and his cell members had all actually sought loans from the US government itself to purchase
crop duster planes (
Reuters, Sept. 11 Hijacker Sought Loan to Buy Plane, http://www.reuters.com, June 6, 2002). The story was 'leaked' to ABC's
World News Tonight who interviewed Johnell Bryant, a U.S.
Department of Agriculture loan officer in Homestead, Florida. Atta reportedly came to her office and explained his organization wanted a small plane, which it planned to refurbish with chemical holding tanks. He asked about U.S. landmarks, inquired about Washington, mentioned bin Laden and outlined the structure and goals of the
al-Qaeda network, in May 2000. Ms. Bryant never reported anything to her superiors or
law enforcement, even after Atta offered to buy an aerial photograph of Washington on her office wall, asked her about security at the
World Trade Center and what she knew of Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles, and showed particular interest in the open-topped Texas Stadium. According to
Abu Zubaydah, one of bin Laden`s chief co-ordinators now held by the US in Pakistan, it was this failure to secure small planes that forced the cell to move to the riskier hijacking plan. In the following weeks,
Marwan Al-Shehhi,
Ahmed Alghamdi and
Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan al Qadi Banihammad, all of whom died in the 2001 WTC attack, tried to get similar agricultural development loans.
"He mentioned
al-Qaeda, he mentioned
Osama bin Laden," said Bryant. "I didn't know who Osama bin Laden was … He could have been a character on
Star Wars for all I knew." In the end however, after an hour-long discussion, she refused his loan request due to his non-US
citizenship. The refusal angered Atta, and he asked her how she would like to see the destruction of the US capital, pointing to the picture on the wall. Byant finishes her interview with the following statement: "...the scary thing is, is that they look like you and I. Not necessarily as, as, as an American, but they just look like people.
They don't, they don't look like an evil monster." The story, and this last phrase in particular, follows on the
June 3, 2002 launch of
The NSA's information security awareness campaign: complete with WWII-era posters (
Loose Lips Can Sink Ships -- Again :
NSA Launches Ad Campaign Urging Secrecy :
http://www.adage.com/images/random/lips01_big.jpg).
3During a late April
interrogation of
Abu Zubaydah, the former
field commander of
al-Qaeda, the CIA learned of the ploted delivery of a "dirty" bomb in the United States. When smuggling was deemed to difficult, assembly on US soil was proposed. See Walter Pincus,
Washington Post,
Agency Teamwork, Bin Laden Aide's Clues Led to Arrest, June 11, 2002, Page A09, and Patrick E. Tyler,
A Message in an Arrest,
New York Times,
June 10, 2002.
Other sources:
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt : "Face to Face With Atta", June 6, 2002 - The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ : "US foils al-Qaeda 'radioactive bomb' plot", June 10, 2002 - Ananova: http://www.ananova.com/news/ : "Al-Qaida suspect arrested" - New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com : "U.S. Arrests American Accused of Planning 'Dirty Bomb' Attack" - The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk : "Al-Qaida 'dirty' bomb plot thwarted" and "US to interrogate 'dirty bomb' suspect" - National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/ : "U.S. says it has arrested man suspected of plotting terrorist attack"