Tag: the war of terror

THE “TERRORIST,” THE RAPIST, AND ME

THE FBI STING had elements of a B-movie production. Federal agents used a car chop shop in Seattle that was an FBI front, placed a prayer rug and a copy of the Quran inside the office, and designated it the scene for the final bust. The FBI’s informant was a registered sex offender named Robert Childs, who had told agents that his friend Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif had a vague plan for a terrorist attack on a military base in Washington state. The FBI furnished Childs with weapons, including assault rifles and grenades.

At the chop shop, Childs met with Abdul-Latif and his friend Walli Mujahidh, who had a mental illness, and showed them the weapons he’d acquired for their supposed attack. The guns and grenades had been disabled, and hidden FBI cameras captured Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh holding rifles, even though neither man knew how to use them. “He didn’t even understand how to work the breech,” Childs would later tell me, referring to Abdul-Latif’s inability to load the firearm.

Suddenly, FBI agents, dressed in tactical uniforms, tossed in a smoke grenade and charged toward the men; they handcuffed Childs as part of the show.

“When the feds rushed in, I knew it was Robert Childs,” Abdul-Latif later told me. “I knew he’d set us up.” As Abdul-Latif saw it, Childs had manipulated and betrayed him for money. The FBI, meanwhile, described Childs as valiant. “But for the courage of the cooperating witness, and the efforts of multiple agencies working long and intense hours, the subjects might have been able to carry out their brutal plan,” Laura Laughlin, then the FBI’s special agent-in-charge in Seattle, said in a 2011 press release. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer later described Childs as “the unlikely hero” of the bust.

After years of talking to both men and sorting through conflicting claims, I can finally explain the origins of this high-profile case that the FBI and the Justice Department have misrepresented to the public and the courts. The FBI hired a convicted sex offender as an informant, even as a rape kit with his DNA sat untested on a shelf. They paid him $90,000 to set up his friend and his friend’s mentally ill buddy in a terrorism plot concocted from nothing more than an over-the-top statement by Abdul-Latif, landing both Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh in prison. A decade later, Childs is in prison as well, serving a life sentence for the crime documented by the rape kit that the Seattle Police Department left untested for 13 years.

Last winter, with nothing left to lose, Childs contacted Abdul-Latif and me to come clean about the FBI terrorism sting he’d helped engineer.

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The Pentagon Proclaims Failure in its War on Terror in Africa

America’s Global War on Terror has seen its share of stalemates, disasters, and outright defeats. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, the United States has watched its efforts implode in spectacular fashion, from Iraq in 2014 to Afghanistan in 2021. The greatest failure of its “Forever Wars,” however, may not be in the Middle East, but in Africa.

“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated,” President George W. Bush told the American people in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, noting specifically that such militants had designs on “vast regions” of Africa.

To shore up that front, the U.S. began a decades-long effort to provide copious amounts of security assistance, train many thousands of African military officers, set up dozens of outposts, dispatch its own commandos on all manner of missions, create proxy forces, launch drone strikes, and even engage in direct ground combat with militants in Africa. Most Americans, including members of Congress, are unaware of the extent of these operations. As a result, few realize how dramatically America’s shadow war there has failed.

The raw numbers alone speak to the depths of the disaster. As the United States was beginning its Forever Wars in 2002 and 2003, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in Africa. This year, militant Islamist groups on that continent have, according to the Pentagon, already conducted 6,756 attacks. In other words, since the United States ramped up its counterterrorism operations in Africa, terrorism has spiked 75,000%.

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Israeli Knesset Passes Draconian Amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Law Criminalizing “Consumption of Terrorist Publications”

“One of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset which invades the realm of personal thoughts and beliefs and significantly amplifies state surveillance of social media use. Adalah will petition the Supreme Court to challenge this law.”

Today, 8 November 2023, the Israeli Knesset passed an amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Law introducing a new criminal offense, namely the “consumption of terrorist materials”, with a maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment. The amendment passed by a 13-4 majority.

The law amends Article 24 of Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Law to include a new offense, specified as the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization”. This offense carries a penalty of up to one year’s imprisonment. The “specific publications” referred to in the law encompass expressions of praise, support, or encouragement of terrorist acts, direct calls to commit an act of terrorism, as well as documentation of an act of terrorism. Additionally, the bill designates Hamas and ISIS (the Islamic State) as the terrorist organizations to which this offense applies. The amendment also grants the Minister of Justice the authority to declare additional terrorist organizations for the purpose of this article, with the concurrence of the Minister of Defense and the approval of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee. The law was passed as a temporary order valid for two years.

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America’s War Economy and the Urgent Call for Peace in the Middle East

On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said. Rare public opponents of the drive to war at the time, they wrote with level-headed clarity:

“We foresee that a military response would not end the terror. Rather, it would spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives, and new acts of terrorism… Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and cooperatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law… and work for justice at home and abroad.”

Twenty-three years and more than two wars later, this statement reads as a tragic footnote to America’s Global War on Terror that left an entire region of the planet immiserated. It contributed to the direct and indirect deaths of close to 4.5 million people, while costing Americans almost $9 trillion and counting.

The situation is certainly different today. Still, over the last few weeks, those prophetic words, now 22 years old, have been haunting me, as the U.S. war machine kicks into ever higher gear following the horrific Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and the brutal intensification of the decades-long Israeli siege of civilians in Gaza. Sadly, the words and actions of our nation’s leaders have revealed a staggering, even willful, historical amnesia about the disastrous repercussions of America’s twenty-first-century war-mongering.

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COUNTERTERROR DIRECTOR USED HAMAS ATTACK TO JUSTIFY MASS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM RENEWAL

DURING A SENATE briefing last week, a federal counterterrorism official cited the October 7 Hamas attack while urging Congress to reauthorize a sprawling and controversial surveillance program repeatedly used to spy on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

“As evidenced by the events of the past month, the terrorist threat landscape is highly dynamic and our country must preserve [counterterrorism] fundamentals to ensure constant vigilance,” said Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christine Abizaid to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, after making repeat references to Hamas’s attack on Israel.

She pointed to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the U.S. government to gather vast amounts of intelligence — including about U.S. citizens — under the broad category of foreign intelligence information, without first seeking a warrant.

Section 702 “provides key indications and warning on terrorist plans and intentions, supports international terrorist disruptions, enables critical intelligence support to, for instance, border security, and gives us strategic insight into foreign terrorists and their networks overseas,” Abizaid said. “I respectfully urge Congress to reauthorize this vital authority.”

The controversial program is set to expire at the end of the year, and lawmakers sympathetic to the intelligence community are scrambling to protect it, as some members of Congress like Sen. Ron Wyden push for reforms that restrain the government’s surveillance abilities. According to Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, plans are underway to prepare a stopgap measure to preserve Section 702 of FISA as a long-term reauthorization containing reforms is hammered out. 

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Son of Long-Time CAIR Adviser Siraj Wahhaj and Three Others Convicted on Terrorism Charges – was Training Children for Terror Attacks in U.S. Cities

On October 17, 2023, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against the son of a controversial Brooklyn imam, Siraj Wahhaj, who was on a list of people who “may be alleged as co-conspirators” to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Younger Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, his sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhanah Wahhaj, and Subhanah’s husband, Lucas Morton, were convicted on the charges including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, providing material support to terrorists, and conspiracy to murder an officer or employee of the United States.

Additionally, they were convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death, and kidnapping resulting in death. A fifth defendant, Jany Leveille, pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and being in possession of a firearm while unlawfully in the United States.

The case originated from the disappearance of a three-year-old boy, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, who was abducted by his father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, from Georgia. The family took the child to a remote compound in New Mexico, where they subjected him to daily spiritual exorcisms. Tragically, Abdul-Ghani died less than two weeks after arriving in New Mexico. The group believed that Abdul-Ghani would return as Jesus Christ to pass judgment on corrupt institutions, including the FBI, the military, and other government and financial institutions.

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The Mind-Breakers: the Case of Ramzi Bin al-Shibh

On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) forces raided several houses in Karachi, hunting for suspected members of Al Qaeda. In one of the incursions, the Pakistanis captured a young Yemeni man named Ramzi bin Al-Shibh. Three days later, the Pakistanis turned Bin al-Shibh and Hassan bin Attash, a 17-year-old Saudi, over to the CIA, who renditioned the pair into what was known as the Dark Prison outside Kabul, where, according to an account Bin al-Shibh later gave to the International Red Cross, he was stripped of his clothes, denied food and water and kept shackled from the ceiling in a painful position for the next three days while loud music was blasted into his cell.

This was just the opening act in the prolonged torture of Ramzi Bin al-Shibh that took him to torture chambers in at least seven different countries in four years– Afghanistan, Jordan, Morocco, Poland, Gitmo, Romania, and Lithuania–and left Bin al-Shibh a broken man, psychologically shattered and physically depleted.

After four days in the Dark Prison, al-Shihb was apparently transferred to the Wadi Sir site in Amman, Jordan, where he was interrogated and tortured by the GID (Jordanian intelligence). According to a Human Rights Watch report, the torture included “electric shocks, long periods of sleep deprivation, forced nakedness and being made to sit on sticks and bottles.”

From Jordan, Bin al-Shihb was flown to Morocco, where he was held in a CIA-financed prison near Rabat for the next five months and regularly interrogated by both the CIA and Moroccan intelligence. Many of these sessions were recorded, and the tapes sent back to Langley. In 2005, the CIA ordered all of the interrogation tapes of “high-level detainees” destroyed, but two years later two videotapes and an audio tape of Bin al-Shihb’s interrogation were discovered under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. The Agency had twice told a federal judge that no tapes of Bin al-Shihb’s interrogation existed.

Part of the CIA’s Operation Greystone, which authorized the Agency to hold suspected terrorists in secret prisons and rendition them back and forth to other countries, the Moroccan black site was a kind of way station, where prisoners could be warehoused and interrogated, then shuttled to another site. Bin al-Shibh, who was already beginning to show signs of extreme mental distress, was kept in the Moroccan prison for five months before being shipped to Poland. He would return here two more times in the following four years. Bin al-Shihb’s psychological instability would deteriorate with each new stop in the Agency’s torture archipelago. People the CIA considered “high-value detainees” were kept on the move, from one black site to another, in large part to keep them out of reach of the US courts and international human rights investigators, a shell game with human beings. By the time Bin al-Shihb had been captured and hidden away, our old friend the late Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights had already filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of the “secret prison” at Guantánamo.

By the CIA’s own account, Bin al-Shibh had been one of their most cooperative detainees, talking freely. The videotapes from Morocco show calmly him answering questions while sitting at a desk. One former interrogator derisively described Bin al-Shihb as “folding like a wet suit.” In the 9-11 Commission Report, Bin al-Shihb’s interrogation is cited 119 times. Only Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is referenced more often.

Nevertheless, while Bin al-Shibh was detained in Rabat, the CIA was busy planning a much more aggressive approach to extract information from him, a routine of torture and abuse that would become the model for the Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” These methods were designed by psychologists like Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who had taken oaths to heal minds and then capitalized ($81 million in payments from the CIA) on fracturing them.

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The CIA’s Unpunished Torturers

When I joined the C.I.A. in January 1990, I did it to serve my country and to see the world.  I believed at the time that we were the “good guys.”  I believed that the United States was a force for good around the world.  I wanted to put my degrees—in Middle Eastern studies/Islamic theology and legislative affairs/policy analysis—to good use.  

Seven years after joining the C.I.A., I made a move to counterterrorism operations to stave off boredom.  I still believed we were the good guys, and I wanted to help keep Americans safe.  My whole world, like the worlds of all Americans, changed dramatically and permanently on Sept.11, 2001.  Within months of the attacks, I found myself heading to Pakistan as the chief of C.I.A. counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.  

Almost immediately, my team began capturing Al-Qaeda fighters at safehouses all around Pakistan.  In late March 2002, we hit the jackpot with the capture of Abu Zubaydah and dozens of other fighters, including two who commanded Al-Qaeda’s training camps in southern Afghanistan.  And by the end of the month, my Pakistani colleagues told me that the local jail, where we were temporarily holding the men we had captured, was full.  They had to be moved somewhere.  I called the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center and said that the Pakistanis wanted our prisoners out of their jail.  Where should I send them?

The response was quick.  Put them on a plane and send them to Guantanamo.  “Guantanamo, Cuba?” I asked.  “Why in the world would we send them to Cuba?”  My interlocutor explained what, at the time, sounded like it had been well thought out.  “We’re going to hold them at the U.S. base in Guantanamo for two or three weeks until we can identify which federal district court they’ll be tried in.  It’ll be Boston, New York, Washington, or the Eastern District of Virginia.”  

That made perfect sense to me.  The U.S. is a nation of laws.  And the country was going to show the world what the rule of law looked like.  These men, who had murdered 3,000 people on that awful day, would go on trial for their crimes.  I called my contact in the U.S.  Air Force, made the arrangements for the flights and loaded my handcuffed and shackled prisoners for the trip.  I never saw any of them again.

The problem is that U.S. leaders, whether they were at the White House, the Justice Department or the C.I.A., never really intended any of these men to face trial in a court of law, being judged by a jury of their peers.  The fix was in from the beginning.  

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How 9/11 Bred a ‘War on Terror’ from Hell

The day after the U.S. government began routinely bombing faraway places, the lead editorial in The New York Times expressed some gratification.

Nearly four weeks had passed since 9/11, the newspaper noted, and America had finally stepped up its “counterattack against terrorism” by launching airstrikes on al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military targets in Afghanistan. “It was a moment we have expected ever since September 11,” the editorial said. “The American people, despite their grief and anger, have been patient as they waited for action. Now that it has begun, they will support whatever efforts it takes to carry out this mission properly.”

As the United States continued to drop bombs in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s daily briefings catapulted him into a stratosphere of national adulation. As The Washington Post’s media reporter put it: “Everyone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse… America’s new rock star.” That winter, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Tim Russert, told Rumsfeld: “Sixty-nine years old and you’re America’s stud.”

The televised briefings that brought such adoration included claims of deep-seated decency in what was by then already known as the Global War on Terror. “The targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see,” Rumsfeld asserted. And he added, “The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.”

Whatever their degree of precision, American weapons were, in fact, killing a lot of Afghan civilians. The Project on Defense Alternatives concluded that American air strikes had killed more than 1,000 civilians during the last three months of 2001. By mid-spring 2002, The Guardian reported, “as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the U.S. intervention.”

Eight weeks after the intensive bombing had begun, however, Rumsfelddismissed any concerns about casualties: “We did not start this war. So understand, responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they’re innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.” In the aftermath of 9/11, the process was fueling a kind of perpetual emotion machine without an off switch.

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Was 9/11 The Beginning Of The End Of The American Empire?

Was 9/11 the beginning of the end for America? In the 22 years since the attacks, I’ve begun to worry that the answer to that question is “yes.”

It spawned the worst and most destructive foreign policy in the country’s history. The government response to 9/11 birthed the constitutional abomination that is the modern warrantless surveillance state. The Patriot Act enabled the government to weaponize its vast resources against its own people.

Bush’s failed foreign policy led directly to Obama’s presidency, and indirectly to Biden’s, both of which are responsible for diminishing the U.S. at home and abroad, militarily and economically. After two failed forever wars that wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, our government is now desperately trying to foment a potentially nuclear forever war against Russia.

Meanwhile, all the massive surveillance powers claimed by the U.S. after 9/11 are being ruthlessly deployed against American political enemies of the regime via the most insidious censorship-industrial complex the world has ever seen.

And then there’s the crippling legacy of debt enabled by America’s response to 9/11. Not content to spend trillions on poorly thought out invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, our leaders spent as thoughtlessly at home, creating insane amounts of new entitlements, while doing nothing to put the country on a sound financial footing.

And where are we today? The ruling political party is criminalizing its opposition and attempting to throw its top political opponent and his supporters in prison, all under the guise of “democracy.”

While the national unity in the days after the towers fell was unfortunately fleeting, the changes to the country, its laws, and its leaders were not. Perhaps there’s no better example of this than watching the man who scoffed during a presidential debate at the notion of America engaging in global “nation-building” suddenly declare that it was America’s mission to spread democracy to the ends of the earth with the “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

It is clear that 9/11 spawned the most destructive foreign policy in modern American history. Instead of simply eliminating the Taliban and the terrorist havens in Afghanistan — an objective that had largely been achieved by the end of 2001 — the U.S. government insisted on grafting Western democracy onto the people of Afghanistan. Without 9/11, there is no 20-year forever war in Afghanistan that ends with China in control of an American airbase and the Taliban in control of tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment and weapons.

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