U.S.-Born al-Qaida Spokesman Caught

Adam Gadahn, 31, reportedly held in Pakistan

Al-Qaida spokesman Adam Yahiye Gadahn is seen in a 25-minute video-recording posted online Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Al-Qaida’s media arm As-Sahab. (Photo credit: SITE Intelligence Group via AFP — Getty Images)

NBC News and The Associated Press via MSNBC.com
March 7, 2010

KARACHI, Pakistan – Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida, has been captured in Pakistan, government sources said Sunday.

Gadahn was arrested in recent days, two officers who took part in the operation told The Associated Press. A senior government official also confirmed the arrest. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

An intelligence source confirmed the report to NBC News, adding that Gadahn was detained in Sohrab Goth, a suburb of Karachi, and was later moved to the capital Islamabad.

The arrest is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington. It follows the recent detentions of several Afghan Taliban commanders in Karachi.

Gadahn moved to Pakistan in 1998, according to the FBI, and is said to have attended an al-Qaida training camp six years later, serving as a translator and consultant for the group.

A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He was also charged with two counts of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. …

Gadahn was last known to be in Southern California in 1997 or 1998. His mother says she last spoke to him by phone in March 2001. At the time he was in Pakistan, working at a newspaper, and his wife was expecting a child. …

Al-Qaida has used Gadahn as its chief English-speaking spokesman, and he has called for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. In one video, he ceremoniously tore up his American passport. In another, he admitted his grandfather was Jewish, ridiculing him for his beliefs and calling for Palestinians to continue fighting Israel.

The last person in the U.S. convicted of treason was Tomoya Kawakita, a Japanese American sentenced to death in 1952 for tormenting American prisoners of war during World War II. President Eisenhower later commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. …

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3/8/10 Update

American al-Qaida Suspect is Not Spokesman

March 8, 2010

KARACHI, Pakistan – Pakistani officials have reversed course on a recently captured American suspected of being a member of al-Qaida, saying the man is not the terror network’s U.S.-born spokesman, as they initially believed.

The man arrested in the southern city of Karachi was first identified as al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn, the most wanted American in the terrorist network. But authorities said Monday it was a case of mistaken identity and that they have a different American in custody.

Pakistani intelligence officials instead identified him as Abu Yahya Majadin Adam, a name similar to one listed on the FBI’s Web site as an alias for Gadahn, the 31-year-old man who has appeared in several al-Qaida videos threatening the West since 2001. …

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Gadahn’s Last Hurrah

Note: Earlier today, I decided not to give Adam Gadahn any credence by propagating his latest screed on this site. Now, however, with news of Gadahn’s arrest, I can trumpet his swan song.

Update

Reports of Gadahn’s arrest have been greeted with skepticism by U.S. intelligence officials, who believe it may be a case of mistaken identity.

Al-Qaida Calls on U.S. Muslims to Attack America

Adam Gadahn, seen in these undated file photos released by the FBI. The American-born Al-Qaida spokesman called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood in a video posted on a radical Islamic web site on Sunday, March 7, 2010. Gadahn, who was raised in California, describes Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims. (Photo credit: AP File / Photos released by the FBI)

By Patrick Quinn

March 7, 2010

CAIRO – Al-Qaida’s American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood.

In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.

“Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” he said.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, was dressed in white robes and wearing a white turban as he called for attacks on what he described as “high-value targets.”

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County.

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage,” he said, an assault rifle leaning up against a wall next to him.

Gadahn has been wanted by the FBI since 2004 and two years later was charged with treason. There is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

He has in the past posted videos and messages calling for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. His location is unknown, but he is believed to be somewhere along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Hasan has been charged in the Nov. 5 shooting that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist remains paralyzed from the chest down after being shot by two civilian members of Fort Hood’s police force.

“Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers,” Gadahn said.

In the latest video, Gadahn said those planning attacks did not need to use only firearms like Hasan, but could use other weapons. “As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a limited budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon.”

Gadahn said fighters should target mass transportation systems in the West and also wreak havoc “by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media.”

He recommended finding ways to shake “consumer confidence and stifle spending” and noted that even unsuccessful attacks, such as the failed attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, can bring major cities to a halt.

“I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam,” Gadahn said.

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Related reports on this site

Christmas Terrorism Alert (Dec. 25, 2009)

Heartbreak at Ft. Hood (Nov. 5, 2009)

Tom Ridge Terror Threat Claim (Aug. 21, 2009)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — March 7, 2009

Upon assuming the presidency, Barack Obama said ending the war in Iraq would require a new definition of victory, but experts said ending the war might not mean a peace dividend for the ballooning U.S. defense budget. (Photo credit: AP / Charles Dharapak)

Iraq Exit Will Be Long and Hard

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that with the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq in sight, the cost of leaving had begun to be measured in financial, logistical, and — above all — political terms, with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq estimated to cost hundreds or billions of dollars.

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Pentagon Shooter Had History of Mental Illness 

Parents say they warned authorities about his behavior

A psychiatrist says John Patrick Bedell tried to self-medicate his bipolar illness with marijuana, inadvertently making his symptoms more pronounced. (Photo credit: Washoe County Jail via AP)

NBC News and The Associated Press via MSNBC.com
March 5, 2010

HOLLISTER, Calif. – The California man who was killed in a shootout with Pentagon police had a history of mental illness and had become so erratic that his parents reached out to local authorities weeks ago with a warning that he was unstable and might have a gun, authorities said Friday.

It’s still unclear why John Patrick Bedell opened fire Thursday at the Pentagon entrance, wounding two police officers before he was fatally shot. The two officers were hospitalized briefly with minor injuries.

Bedell was diagnosed as bipolar, or manic depressive, and had been in and out of treatment programs for years. His psychiatrist, J. Michael Nelson, said Bedell tried to self-medicate with marijuana, inadvertently making his symptoms more pronounced.

His parents reported him missing Jan. 4, a day after a Texas Highway Patrol officer stopped him for speeding in Amarillo, according to the missing person’s report. …

Cross-country odyssey

The 36-year-old Bedell returned to his parent’s home Jan. 18, telling them “not to ask any questions” about where he had been. But he left after that, and his parents didn’t know where he went. …

The Bedell family put out a statement Friday saying they were “devastated as a family by the news.”

Video Officials: Gunman acted alone (NBC Nightly News, March 5, 2010) – John Patrick Bedell’s  frequent Web rants reveal a deeply disturbed man. NBC Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reports. (03:13)

“We may never know why he made this terrible decision,” the statement said. “One thing is clear though — his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character.”

The San Jose Mercury News reported Bedell attended San Jose State University and was enrolled in fall 2009 in the graduate electrical engineering program. He did not enroll for 2010. A professor remembered him as one of the best circuit design students in his class, the newspaper said.

Investigators were trying to unravel a bizarre series of Internet postings that suggested Bedell was fascinated with conspiracy theories, computer programming, the science of warfare and libertarian economics.

Curiously, Bedell also proposed in 2004 that the Pentagon fund his own research on smart weapons. The 28-page proposal outlined his idea for DNA nanotechnology research that might “provide significant new capabilities for the Department of Defense and the individual warfighter.”

That document is the first tangible link to surface connecting Bedell and the Pentagon.

Dressed to kill?

On the day of the attack, Bedell left his green, 12-year-old Toyota in a nearby mall parking garage.

The 6-foot tall software devotee approached the Pentagon entrance Thursday evening wearing a jacket, dress shirt and pants, seeming like any other end-of-the-day commuter.

Bedell, the officials say, opened fire with a 9 mm handgun just five feet from the nearest officer, Marvin Carraway. Fellow officer Jefferey Amos ran out of a nearby guard booth to confront Bedell, as did a third, unidentified officer. All three officers gave chase and fired at Bedell, who was struck in the head and left arm. …

Officers praised

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday called the two wounded officers to express his “appreciation for their service, their bravery and their professionalism,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell. …

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings [link added].

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself [link added]. …

 Related video

Was Pentagon shooter angry at government? (MSNBC Hardball, March 5, 2010) – NBC News terrorism analyst Roger Cressey discusses the possible motives behind 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell’s  fatal shootout at the Pentagon. (04:41)

Anger at America turns deadly (MSNBC Dylan Ratigan, March 5, 2010) – Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center offers his take on the gun attack outside the Pentagon, populist anger, and anti-government violence. (05:53)

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Related story

Homeland Security: More ‘Lone Wolves’ Circulating in U.S.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano cites danger in sole extremists; Organized hate groups on rise too

There has been a lone wolf attack against the government in each of the first three months of this year. In February, Joseph Stack, infuriated with the Internal Revenue Service, made a suicide flight in his plane into the agency’s offices in Austin, Texas. One IRS worker was killed. (Photo credit: Jana Birchum/Getty Images)

By David Kerley

March 6, 2010

The man who opened fire at the Pentagon Thursday is part of a growing pattern in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. John Patrick Bedell is described as an angry “lone wolf.”

Bedell, according to family and friends, was mentally ill and a marijuana user. But he also had extreme views about the government, and he laid out those feelings in audio postings on the Internet. …

There has been a lone wolf attack against the government in each of the first three months of this year. In February, Joseph Stack, infuriated with the Internal Revenue Service, made a suicide flight in his plane into the agency’s offices in Austin, Texas. One IRS worker was killed.

In January, Johnny Lee Wicks lost a case in court appealing a cut in his Social Security benefits. Wicks opened fire in the courthouse killing a security guard. Wicks was shot dead by other guards.

Napolitano talked about these “lone wolves” just a week before the Pentagon shooting.

“We have seen an increase in the lone wolf type attacks, which, from a law enforcement and investigation perspective, are the most challenging. Why? Because by definition they’re not conspiring. They’re not using the phones, the computer networks, or any — they’re not talking with others any other way that we might get some inkling about what is being planned,” the secretary told a House of Representatives sub-committee.

But a leading civil rights group says there has also been an alarming increase in the number of organized hate groups.

The recession and government spending is fueling the growth, Potok says.

“I think these are all prompted by the rise of Obama to power and these real changes that are happening around us. People are really angry and hurting out there, and many of them feel quite ready to take action,” he says.

But Potok has created controversy because he has taken his theory a step further linking some of these ideas to the Tea Party movement.

“While I don’t think it’s fair to say the Tea Party movement as an entity is an extremist movement, I don’t think there is any doubt at all that it’s a movement that is shot through with radical ideas, with conspiracy theories and in many instances with real racist feelings about non-white people, ” he writes. …

Anti-government “patriot groups,” militias also on the rise.

——

Anger in America: Topical reports on this site

Extremism Explodes in America (March 3, 2010)

Bachmann Conspiracy Nation (Feb. 20, 2010)

Condemning Beck and Bachmann (Nov. 19, 2009)

Anger in America (Oct. 31, 2009)

Economy and Obama Volatile Mix (April 16, 2009)

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SIDEBAR

Iran’s Ahmadinejad: September 11 Attacks a ‘Big Lie’

March 6, 2010

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks a “big lie” used by the U.S. as an excuse for the war on terror, state media reported.

Ahmadinejad’s comments, made during an address to Intelligence Ministry staff, come amid escalating tensions between the West and Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. …

“September 11 was a big lie and a pretext for the war on terror and a prelude to invading Afghanistan,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state TV. He called the attacks a “complicated intelligence scenario and act.”

The Iranian president has questioned the official U.S. version of the Sept. 11 attacks before, but this is the first time he ventured to label it a “big lie.”

In 2007, New York officials rejected Ahmadinejad’s request to visit the World Trade Center site while he was in the city for a U.N. meeting. The president also sparked an uproar when he said during a lecture in New York that the causes and conditions that led to the attacks, as well as who orchestrated them, still need to be examined.

At the time, he also told Iranian state TV the attacks were “a result of mismanaging and inhumane managing of the world by the U.S,” and that Washington was using Sept. 11 as an excuse to attack others.

He has also questioned the Sept. 11 death toll of around 3,000, claiming the Americans never published the victims’ names.

On the 2007 anniversary of the attacks, the names of 2,750 victims killed in New York were read aloud at a memorial ceremony.

Related reports on this site

Iran Now a ‘Nuclear State’ (Feb. 11, 2010)

Psychological Profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (June 11, 2009)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personality profile

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — March 5, 2009

Rush Limbaugh (Photo: The Associated Press)

Republican Leaders Cower

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that top Democrats believed they had struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party.

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“Patriot” Groups, Militias Surge in Number in Past Year

Southern Poverty Law Center
March 2, 2010

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Antigovernment “Patriot” groups – militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy – came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight. 

The SPLC documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Their numbers grew from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009, an astonishing addition of 363 new groups in a single year. Militias – the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement – were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009. 

The report, “Rage on the Right,” is the cover story in the Spring 2010 issue of the SPLC’s quarterly investigative journal Intelligence Report.

Video

Patriot groups have been fueled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy and an array of initiatives by President Obama that have been branded “socialist” or even “fascist” by his political opponents.

“This extraordinary growth is a cause for grave concern,” said Intelligence Report editor Mark Potok. “The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.”

The Patriot movement has made significant inroads into the conservative political scene, according to the new report. “The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism,” the report says.

Unlike the 1990s, the Patriot movement’s central ideas are being promoted by people with large audiences, such as FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota [links added]. Beck, for instance, reinvigorated a key Patriot conspiracy theory – the charge that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is secretly running concentration camps – before finally “debunking” it. 

The growth of Patriot groups comes at a time when the number of racist hate groups stayed at record levels – rising from 926 in 2008 to 932 in 2009, according to the report. The increase caps a decade in which the number of hate groups surged by 55 percent. The expansion would have been much greater in 2009 if not for the demise of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a key neo-Nazi network whose founder was arrested in October 2008. 

There also has been a surge in “nativist extremist” groups – vigilante organizations that go beyond advocating strict immigration policy and actually confront or harass suspected immigrants. These groups grew from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 in 2009, a rise of nearly 80 percent.

These three strands of the radical right – the hate groups, the nativist extremist groups, and the Patriot organizations – are the most volatile elements on the American political landscape. Taken together, their numbers increased by more than 40 percent, rising from 1,248 groups in 2008 to 1,753 last year.

There are already signs of radical right violence reminiscent of the 1990s. Right-wing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers since Obama’s inauguration. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the president. Most recently, as recounted in the new issue of the Intelligence Report, a number of individuals with antigovernment, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases.

The hate groups listed in this report include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, Klansmen and black separatists. Other hate groups target gays or immigrants, and some specialize in producing racist music or propaganda denying the Holocaust.

A list and interactive, state-by-state map of active hate groups can be viewed here.

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Related media

Video

Number of hate groups reach record level (The Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC, March 2, 2010) — According to a new report, militias and other extremist groups increasing 244 percent in 2009. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center and radio host Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express discuss. (08:33)

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Related reports on this site

Bachmann Conspiracy Nation (Feb. 20, 2010)

Town Hall Face (Photos: Landov, AP, Getty Images / Newsweek)

Conspiracy theories have long been a fixture on the political landscape, with political paranoia most virulent among politically marginalized sectors of the polity. So, with Democrats holding the reins of power, it stands to reason that the right fringe has become the prime repository of collective craziness.

Condemning Beck and Bachmann (Nov. 19, 2009)

Rage Grows in America: Anti‑Government Conspiracies

November 2009

Introduction: A Year of Growing Animosity

Since the election of Barack Obama as president, a current of anti-government hostility has swept across the United States, creating a climate of fervor and activism with manifestations ranging from incivility in public forums to acts of intimidation and violence.

Hate groups including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan have grown since Barack Obama was elected president. (Image: NBC News)

What characterizes this anti-government hostility is a shared belief that Obama and his administration actually pose a threat to the future of the United States. Some accuse Obama of plotting to bring socialism to the United States, while others claim he will bring about Nazism or fascism. All believe that Obama and his administration will trample on individual freedoms and civil liberties, due to some sinister agenda, and they see his economic and social policies as manifestations of this agenda. In particular anti-government activists used the issue of health care reform as a rallying point, accusing Obama and his administration of dark designs ranging from “socialized medicine” to “death panels,” even when the Obama administration had not come out with a specific health care reform plan. Some even compared the Obama administration’s intentions to Nazi eugenics programs. … Full story

Bachmann Rebuked for Nazi Image (Nov. 12, 2009)

Sign displayed at U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call on Congress” anti-health care reform rally in Washington, D.C., Nov. 5, 2009. The sign reads, “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany — 1945.” (Photo credit: Lee Fang / ThinkProgress)

Anger in America (Oct. 31, 2009)

Bachmann Heads Teabaggers (Sept. 13, 2009)

Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks at a Tea Party at Lake George in St. Cloud, Minn., after a town hall meeting, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009. (Photo credit: Jason Wachter / St. Cloud Times)

Invitation to Tea Party headlined by Michele Bachmann

Bachmann: “Slit Our Wrists” (Sept. 2, 2009)

Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks to a luncheon crowd at the Denver Athletic Club, Aug. 31, 2009 (Photo credit: Jason Kosena / The Colorado Statesman)

In a speech filled with urgent and violent rhetoric, Bachmann … drew a clear line on health care reform.

“You’re either for us or against us on this issue,” she said. …

At times, Bachmann’s legislative briefing sounded more like the plot of a slasher movie.

“Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom,” she said. “And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up and take this one on.”

While Bachmann didn’t ask this audience to “rise up” against President Barack Obama’s tyrannical rule, they stood anyway and applauded when she announced she was No. 1 on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s list of “top targets.” …

Economy and Obama Volatile Mix (April 16, 2009)

An April 2009 Homeland Security intelligence estimate warns that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country’s first black president to recruit new members and incite anti-government violence.

Bachmann Call for Armed Revolt? (March 24, 2009)

On March 21, 2009 Rep. Michele Bachmann said that she wants people in Minnesota “armed and dangerous” on the issue of an energy tax, “because we need to fight back” and “having a revolution every now and then is a good thing.”

Obama, Economy Fuel Hate Groups (Feb. 28, 2009)

A cross and swastika are burned at an event called Hated and Proud in Nebraska in July 2008. (Photo credit: Southern Poverty Law Center / CNN)

Obama Racist Backlash (Nov. 16, 2008)

Racial incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama, including schoolchildren chanting “assassinate Obama,” racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars, and Black figures hung from nooses, are shattering the post-election illusion of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — March 3, 2009

History repeats? Job hunters mass for $4 a day work in 1935 and the line unwinds outside a New York City job fair in February 2009. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

U.S. Economy in Depression?

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that according to some economists, a Depression doesn’t have to be Great, with bread lines, rampant unemployment, and a wipeout in the stock market; the economy can sink into a milder depression — the kind spelled with a lowercase “d” — and it may be happening now.

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BREAKING NEWS . . . February 18, 2010 . . . 11:31 a.m. CT

Small Plane Crashes into Texas Office Building

The Associated Press via MSNBC.com
Feb. 18, 2010

AUSTIN, Texas – A small plane crashed Thursday into a multistory office building in Austin, causing a fire and sending black smoke billowing from the seven-story structure, officials said.

The Associated Press, citing what it described as a “source,” said the crash didn’t appear to be terrorism. …

[Commentary: The building reportedly houses one or more federal agencies, so the possibility exists that this incident could be an intentional act.]   

The plane hit the Echelon Building, which is located on a major highway north Austin.

Several fires were burning from the second to the fourth floors, KXAN reported. Crews used ladder trucks and hoses to battle the blazes.

The IRS, CIA and FBI all have offices in the complex where the building is located, though it was not clear if they are in the building that was hit. The FBI said its office was not in the building that was struck. …

A witness who described himself as a small-aircraft pilot told KXAN-TV that he witnessed the accident from the parking lot of a nearby restaurant.

“It was really low,” he said. “He brushed along a parking lot light … (and) shot right across the road. It was going really fast. … It sounded like the engine was on full blast. Then it whacked in-between the first and second floor.” …

Tucker Thurman was driving to work when he said he saw a small plane flying very low over the highway. He said he saw it then bank heavily to the right before heading into the building. …

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

——

UPDATE

Officials: Texas Plane Crash Targeted Feds

‘Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different’

Video

Joe Stack’s final act (NBC Nightly News, Feb. 18, 2010) – As investigators and journalists raced to piece together a picture of the suspected pilot who crashed into a Texas building early Thursday, a story of growing frustration and rage emerged. NBC’s Pete Williams reports. (02:01)

The Associated Press via MSNBC.com
Feb. 18, 2010

AUSTIN, Texas – ”If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, ‘Why did this have to happen?’ The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.”

So began a lengthy, rambling anti-government Web message believed posted by a Texas man suspected of crashing his small plane into an office building housing IRS employees.

The man, identified by federal law enforcement officials as Joseph Stack, 53, was a software engineer who had a long-running grudge with the Internal Revenue Service, whom he referred to in the screed as “thugs and plunderers.”

The Web message was dated Thursday and signed “Joe Stack (1956-2010).”

Hours after posting it, Stack set fire to his home, drove to a municipal airport, got into his single-engine Piper Cherokee and deliberately crashed it into a multistory office building, authorities said. …

Slide presentation

Austin plane crash

At least two people were seriously injured and a third person — a federal employee who worked in the building — was unaccounted for, fire officials said.

The crash caused a raging fire that sent black smoke billowing from the seven-story Echelon Building. The fire was extinguished hours later.

At an afternoon news conference, Austin police Chief Art Acevedo said the crash “appears to be an intentional act.”

“It would appear to be by a sole individual, and it appears this individual was targeting federal offices inside that building,” Acevedo said.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said in a statement that the crash was “a cowardly act of domestic terrorism.” The police chief, however, said he preferred to describe it as “a criminal act by a lone individual.”

The FBI was taking over the investigation.

About 190 IRS employees work in the building, and IRS spokesman Richard C. Sanford the agency was trying to account for all of its workers.

Violence ‘the only answer’

The pilot, listed in FAA and property records as Andrew Joseph Stack III of Austin and identified by law enforcement sources as Joseph Stack, apparently had a long-running dispute with the IRS.

Associated Press In a statement posted on the Web early Thursday morning, Joseph Stack appeared to blame the IRS for the loss of tens of thousands in savings and retirement money over the years.

A long message posted on a Web site registered to Stack outlined a litany of problems with the IRS and said violence “is the only answer.”

The Web site was taken offline Thursday afternoon by the hosting company at the request of the FBI.

A senior law enforcement official told NBC the saga began Thursday morning, when police received a domestic disturbance call at Stack’s house, about six miles from the crash site. When they responded, they discovered that the man had lit a fire in his house and fled. They said he went to the Georgetown Municipal Airport, got into his small plane and took off.

A short time later, the plane crashed into the office building about 30 miles away. …

House fire

Elbert Hutchins, who lives one house away from Stack’s home in a quiet, tree-lined middle-class neighborhood, said the house caught fire about 9:15 a.m. He said a woman and her teenage daughter drove up before firefighters arrived.

“They both were very, very distraught,” said Hutchins, a retiree who said he didn’t know the family well. “‘That’s our house!’ they cried ‘That’s our house!’” …

The Echelon Building is next to a major highway in north Austin, and the crash started fires on several floors of the hulking black building. Dozens of windows were blown out and vehicles traveling on a nearby highway paused to look.

Thirteen people were treated at the scene and two people were taken to a hospital with serious injuries, Austin fire officials said. Their condition wasn’t immediately known.

A third person, a federal employee, was unaccounted for. “The prospects are not very positive for that person,” Acevedo said.

Thao Nguyen / AP Authorities say Joseph Stack set fire to his home before crashing his plane.

Pilot’s background

According to California Secretary of State records, Stack had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies that ultimately were suspended by the state’s Franchise Tax Board.

He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, Calif., but that business license was suspended in 2004 for nonpayment of back taxes totaling $1,153, KCRA-TV in Sacramento reported. Another company, Prowless Engineering Inc. was suspended in 2000 for failure to file a 1994 tax return, according to KCRA.

Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies.

According to records, Stack apparently moved to the Austin area around 2003 and ran Embedded Art, a small, independent software firm specializing in “process control and automation” and “complex software engineering development tasks.”

In his 3,200-word statement posted on the company’s Web site early Thursday morning and later taken down, Stack appeared to blame the IRS for the loss of tens of thousands in savings and retirement money over the years.

Administrative records show the Web site was registered to Joe Stack of San Marcos, Texas, in 2006.

‘Unthinkable atrocities’

Stack said his “nightmare” with the federal government dated to the early 1980s.

In one passage, Stack writes: “That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their ‘freedom’ … and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.”

He also wrote: “Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?

Toward the end, he wrote, “I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different.  I am finally ready to stop this insanity.  Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.” …

The IRS Web site said an office of its EP Team Audit Program is located in the building where the plane crashed. The group, known as EPTA, examines employee benefit plans with 2,500 or more participants, according to the Web site. …

Video Act of desperation shocks Austin (NBC Nightly News, Feb. 18, 2010) — Texas officials are continuing to investigate the apparently deliberate plane crash early Thursday that injured more than a dozen people – two seriously. NBC’s Janet Shamlian reports. (00:49)

Played in country band

Stack lived in a 2,500-square-foot house in North Austin with wife Sheryl and her daughter, who is about 12, the Austin Statesman reported, citing friends, neighbors and county records.

He played bass in the Billy Eli Band [link added], an Austin alt-country band, according to friends.

Michael Cerza, who played drums in the band with Stack, told the Statesman, “My impression of Joe was a kind, quiet, not at all brooding or taciturn person.”

“I didn’t sense anything boiling under the surface. There was no indication in his actions or his words that he would harm anyone.”

Stack’s wife and daughter were believed to be in a neighbor’s house being assisted by the Red Cross. When reporters went to the door, an FBI agent answered, the newspaper reported. …

——

Related content

Read Stack’s full statement posted on Web site

Newsweek: Is anti-government violence on the rise?

Newsweek: A history of recent anti-tax violence

——

Anger in America: Topical reports on this site

Condemning Beck and Bachmann (Nov. 19, 2009)

Anger in America (Oct. 31, 2009)

Economy and Obama Volatile Mix (April 16, 2009)

Obama, Economy Fuel Hate Groups (Feb. 28, 2009)

Obama Racist Backlash (Nov. 16, 2008)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — February 19, 2009

‘Craziest Interview’ in U.S. History

Video

Bachmann strikes (out) again (MSNBC, Feb. 18, 2009) — Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., took a new stand against President Barack Obama when she claimed the stimulus bill was just a payoff for those who supported him throughout the election. The Nation’s Chris Hayes discusses (07:14)

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that some Republican politicians were taking credit in their home districts for stimulus money coming their way, even though they voted against it, but that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann went the extra mile by claiming the stimulus bill was nothing but a payoff for those who supported President Barack Obama during his election campaign.

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Obama Adviser Raps ‘Political Football’ on Terror

Partisan second-guessing of failed jet bombing is unfair, says John Brennan

Video

Brennan ‘tiring’ of ‘political football’ over terror (NBC Meet the Press, Feb. 7, 2010) — Deputy national security adviser John Brennan discusses the political dispute over the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab with NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” (06:03)

Feb. 7, 2010

WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday that lawmakers and others are using national security to score political points and defended the handling of the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner.

Deputy national security adviser John Brennan complained that politicians, many of them Republicans, were unfairly criticizing the administration for partisan purposes and second-guessing the case with a “500-mile screwdriver” that reaches from Washington to the scene of the abortive attack in Detroit.

Brennan said he had personally briefed top Republican lawmakers on Christmas night about the arrest of accused bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and that none of them raised objections.

“There’s been quite a bit of an outcry after the fact, where again, I’m just very concerned on behalf of counterterrorism professionals throughout our government, that politicians continue to make this a political football and are using it for whatever political or partisan purposes,” he said. …

Republicans have been outspoken in criticizing the administration for treating Abdulmutallab as a civilian and reading him his rights to remain silent and retain a lawyer.

Brennan said that Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, was treated no differently than any other terror suspect arrested on U.S. soil and that the FBI and others involved in his arrest acted appropriately.

“I think those counterterrorism professionals deserve the support of our Congress,” he said. “And rather than second-guessing what they are doing on the ground with a 500-mile screwdriver from Washington to Detroit, I think they have to have confidence in the knowledge and the experience of these counterterrorism professionals.” …

Brennan spoke on NBC television’s “Meet the Press.”

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Related report 

Anti-Terrorism Chief Rebukes Politicians Who Use Cases as Talking Points

By Walter Pincus and Ed O’Keefe

February 8, 2010

Excerpts

President Obama’s senior counterterrorism adviser on Sunday criticized politicians for using terrorism situations such as the Detroit bombing case as a “political football.”

But leaders of the Republican Party, among the harshest critics of the handling of the Detroit incident, on Sunday disputed John O. Brennan’s remarks.

Republican House and Senate members have questioned why Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day bombing attempt, was not treated as an enemy combatant instead of being questioned for 50 minutes by the FBI and later given his Miranda rights.

Former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in her speech Saturday night before the Tea Party convention, said the Obama administration sees “no downsides or upsides to treating terrorists like civilian criminal defendants. But a lot of us would beg to differ.”

Without citing individuals, Brennan, a longtime CIA official and now White House deputy national security adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “Quite frankly, I am tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football. They are going out there, they are unknowing of the facts, and they are making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality.”

Brennan said that on Christmas night he had briefed four senior House and Senate Republicans about Abdulmutallab, who was “in FBI custody” and at that point “talking” and “cooperating.” He said that at no point did any of the four — Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate Republican minority leader; Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), ranking GOP member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader; and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking minority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — raise concerns about Abdulmutallab being placed in military custody or being Mirandized.

Brennan said “quite a bit of an outcry after the fact” led him to be “concerned on behalf of the counterterrorism professionals” that politicians are using the issue for partisan purposes, whether they be Democrats or Republicans.

On Sunday, all four Republicans took issue with Brennan’s characterization of their Christmas night conversations. …

During the “Meet the Press” interview, Brennan said the right thing had been done on Christmas, but he made clear that the administration may be rethinking that decision. He said the president had ordered a new look at the processes “and whether or not we can enhance and strengthen them, and that’s what we’re looking at right now.”

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Related reports on this site

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is seen in this undated handout, distributed by IntelCenter on December 28, 2009, and attributed to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. (Photo credit: IntelCenter — Handout / Reuters)

Underwear Bomb: No Smoking Gun (Jan. 3, 2010)

Yemen Link in Airline Terror Plot (Dec. 26, 2009)

Christmas Terrorism Alert (Dec. 25, 2009)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — February 8, 2009

The Pentagon is reviewing 18 deaths in conjunction with a contractor’s electrical work, including that of Staff Sgt. Christopher Everett, seen in the photograph next to his mother, Larraine McGee of Huntsville, Texas. (Photo credit: Susan Walsh / AP)

Electric Sacrifice in Iraq

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that defense contractor KBR Inc. had been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

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Palin E-Mails Reveal a Powerful ‘First Dude’ 

In Sarah Palin administration, her spouse was active in state business

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that the first gentleman, Todd Palin,  exchanged with state officials draw a picture of his influence on policy in the Sarah Palin administration. Other e-mails are still being withheld by the state of Alaska. (Photo credit: Robyn Beck / AFP — Getty Images file)

By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
Feb. 6, 2010

Bill Dedman Investigative reporter

Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the “first dude.” But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin’s two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate.

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor’s husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.

You can read all those e-mails in msnbc.com’s searchable online archive, created in cooperation with a legal services company, Crivella West. We’re still going through the documents, and invite readers at msnbc.com to search for themselves, connect the dots with public issues, and send us an e-mail with your own analysis.

While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.

The 243 still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production,  marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary. Also withheld: a discussion of how to reply to “media questions about Todd Palin’s work and potential conflict of interests.”

‘That gossip crap bugs me’

 The e-mails that were released open a curtain on the behind-the-scenes preoccupations of the Palins, particularly the flash points of family and the media, personal finances and state finances.

• The governor coached her staff on how to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the mansion to hook up her new tanning bed.
• Palin and her staff stewed over the refusal of the state Public Safety Department to provide a plane so the children could fly to Todd’s family’s home in Dillingham; after all, they were going to attend a bill signing, so the travel requests could be justified. Sarah Palin called the decision “outrageous,” and an aide said it provides “a great excuse to privatize” the governor’s jet service.
• The manager of the Palins’ travel schedule searched for a public event to use as justification (“I just need one”) to charge the state for an airplane flight for Palin’s daughter, Willow, who made the trip but had missed the event given as its justification.
• When Sarah Palin complained that the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner wrote a critical editorial after she did them the favor of meeting with the editorial board, Todd Palin advised the press chief to “take the news miner [sic] off the press release address list for a few days, see how long it takes them to realize their not on the list.”
• “Man, that gossip crap bugs me,” Sarah Palin wrote after the Anchorage Daily News wrote about mansion repairs in its Alaska Ear political column. “Any time it has anything to do with home or family, it’s irritating.” A press aide apologized, saying the columnist did not call to check out stories before publishing. The residence director added, “Reminds me of junior high school, where hormonal teenagers are always looking for the drama. … I’ll do my best to avoid giving them any news nuggets.”

The Palins did not respond to several requests by msnbc.com to discuss Todd Palin’s role in state government. After this article was published, an attorney for the Palins, Tom Van Flein, said in an e-mail Friday to NBC News that Todd Palin’s role as an “active advisor” to his wife should come as no surprise “to most Alaskans, and to the millions of people who read “Going Rogue,” Palin’s autobiography. …

Private e-mail accounts

Many of the e-mails on public policy issues that msnbc.com reviewed were written using private e-mail accounts on Yahoo and other services. The governor and her top aides set up accounts outside the state system, supposedly outside the reach of the public records laws. Outside accounts also helped avoid any violation of the state law against using public resources for campaigning.

Todd Palin’s e-mail address at that time was named for his hobby as a four-time champion driver in the 1,971-mile Iron Dog snow machine races: fek9wnr@yahoo.com, or Iron Dog winner.

The governor wrote mostly from gov.sarah@yahoo.com and sometimes from gov.palin@yahoo.com, until that account was cracked in September 2008 by an anonymous Internet user, who boasted that he figured out the answers to her Yahoo security questions by browsing her Wikipedia page. A 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee, David C. Kernell, was indicted and is awaiting trial; he was an Obama supporter and the son of a Democratic state legislator. …

Of the e-mails released this week, dozens have information redacted, or blanked out, sometimes leaving little more than a subject line. …

Often the governor wasn’t included on Todd Palin’s e-mails at all. The staff went straight to him, or he went straight to the staff. …

Confidential information

Todd Palin also often served as a conduit for information to flow from one part of state government to another. When a friend or campaign aide’s spouse got a state job, he was often notified. At other times, he notified the governor’s office.

Sometimes information from outside flowed through him to the government. In one instance, the e-mails show, Todd Palin sent confidential financial information from his longtime employer, the oil and gas company BP, to a lawyer for the state, which does a lot of business with BP. …

The Palins did not reply to a message from msnbc.com sent to their spokeswoman and another to the company that manages Sarah Palin’s speaking engagements. Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak Saturday evening at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, where her bio describes her as a champion of “ethics reform and transparency in government,” themes of her campaign for governor. …

‘Shadow Governor’

Todd Palin’s frequent presence in the governor’s office led some in Juneau to call him the “Shadow Governor.” But it had never been clear, at least to the public, what roles he played.

He did receive scrutiny for his role in the so-called Troopergate case, in which he and the governor were accused of seeking to have her former brother-in-law fired from the state police force. …

When msnbc.com, other news organizations and citizens of Alaska sought Palin e-mail records after she was named the Republican vice presidential running mate in August 2008, the state initially quoted a cost as high as $15 million for state technicians to find the e-mails, for state interns to print out the e-mails one at a time, for state lawyers to read them to determine what information could be withheld, and for a print shop to photocopy them. 

That’s still the laborious approach the state has taken, at what it says is a cost of more than $500,000 in staff time, but the prices it is charging have come down considerably. The state charged msnbc.com only $323.58 for the records released this week. …

Video

‘First Dude’s’ influence exposed (NBC Nightly News, Feb. 5, 2010) – E-mails show former Governor Sarah Palin’s husband Todd played a major policy role behind the scenes. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports. (03:30)

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Related reports

‘Tea party’ movement faces uncertain future (AP, Feb. 5, 2010) — Tea parties” popped up last spring in small towns and big cities alike as disillusioned Americans — many never before involved in politics — protested the $787 billion economic stimulus measure, Wall Street bailouts and Obama’s health care plan. Since then, local leaders have struggled over the coalition’s direction. There’s even dispute over the name’s origin: It was drawn from the 1773 tax revolt, or it’s an acronym for “taxed enough already.” … Full story

Video: Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Speech at the Gaylord

Palin: America ready for ‘another revolution’ (MSNBC, Feb. 6, 2010) — Sarah Palin says, ‘America is ready for another revolution,’ during her speech at the ‘tea party’ convention. Watch her entire speech. (41:15)

Bachmann Heads Teabaggers

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) speaks at a Tea Party at Lake George in St. Cloud after a town hall meeting, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009. (Photo credit: Jason Wachter / St. Cloud Times)

Background report

The Personality Profile of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin

Following is the abstract of an investigation of Sarah Palin’s personality characteristics and leadership style, conducted at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, directed by Aubrey Immelman.

Sarah Palin’s most prominent personal attribute is a dominant, dauntless quality. Her profile also indicates ambitious, outgoing, and contentious tendencies. Palin’s constellation of personality patterns is congruent with several personal qualities associated with success in politics, including assertiveness, determination, ambition, and personal charisma. The combination of ambitious, dominant, dauntless, and outgoing patterns in Palin’s profile suggests an “ambitious competitor” personality composite.

Andrea Schiebe, Angela Rodgers, and David Wutchiett present their research on “The Personality Profile of Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin” at the 44th annual Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference, College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, Minn., April 18, 2009 (Supervisor: Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D.)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — February 6, 2009

Video

Steep rise in soldier suicides (MSNBC, Feb. 5, 2009) — 24 soldiers committed suicide in January 2009, more than were killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. John Soltz of VoteVets.org discusses. (02:53)

Army: Stunning Spike in Suicides

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that the Army was investigating an unexplained and stunning spike in suicides during the month of January. The count was said to be likely to surpass the number of combat deaths during the same period reported by all branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the fight against terrorism.

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Report says Al-Qaeda Still Aims to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction Against U.S.

Video: Security

WMD report gives government failing grade (Jan. 26, 2010) — A new report warns that the U.S. government is far behind in preparing for a biological or nuclear attack by terrorists. NBC’s Pete Williams reports. (01:50)

By Joby Warrick

January 26, 2010

Excerpts

When al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off a planned chemical attack on New York’s subway system in 2003, he offered a chilling explanation: The plot to unleash poison gas on New Yorkers was being dropped for “something better,” Zawahiri said in a message intercepted by U.S. eavesdroppers.

The meaning of Zawahiri’s cryptic threat remains unclear more than six years later, but a new report warns that al-Qaeda has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological or even nuclear weapon.

The report, by a former senior CIA official who led the agency’s hunt for weapons of mass destruction, portrays al-Qaeda’s leaders as determined and patient, willing to wait for years to acquire the kind of weapons that could inflict widespread casualties.

The former official, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, draws on his knowledge of classified case files to argue that al-Qaeda has been far more sophisticated in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction than is commonly believed, pursuing parallel paths to acquiring weapons and forging alliances with groups that can offer resources and expertise.

“If Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants had been interested in . . . small-scale attacks, there is little doubt they could have done so now,” Mowatt-Larssen writes in a report released Monday by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The report comes as a panel on weapons of mass destruction appointed by Congress prepares to release a new assessment of the federal government’s preparedness for such an attack. The review by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism is particularly critical of the Obama administration’s actions so far in hardening the country’s defenses against bioterrorism, according to two former government officials who have seen drafts of the report.

The commission’s initial report in December 2008 warned that a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction was likely by 2013.

Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year CIA veteran, led the agency’s internal task force on al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and later was named director of intelligence and counterintelligence for the Energy Department. His report warns that bin Laden’s threat to attack the West with weapons of mass destruction is not “empty rhetoric” but a top strategic goal for an organization that seeks the economic ruin of the United States and its allies to hasten the overthrow of pro-Western governments in the Islamic world.

He cites patterns in al-Qaeda’s 15-year pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that reflect a deliberateness and sophistication in assembling the needed expertise and equipment.

He describes how Zawahiri hired two scientists — a Pakistani microbiologist sympathetic to al-Qaeda and a Malaysian army captain trained in the United States — to work separately on efforts to build a biological weapons lab and acquire deadly strains of anthrax bacteria. Al-Qaeda achieved both goals before September 2001 but apparently had not successfully weaponized the anthrax spores when the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan forced the scientists to flee, Mowatt-Larssen said. …

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Related reports on this site

Al-Qaida’s Next High-Value Target (Jan. 18, 2010)

Osama bin Laden Personality Profile (Dec. 6, 2009)

Ayman al-Zawahiri Personality Profile (June 3, 2009)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — January 26, 2009

Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed, of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, in Minneapolis. (Photo credit: Matt Eich / Aurora for Newsweek)

Minnesota Somalis Jihad-Bound?

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that counterterrorism officials and the FBI were investigating whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups were actively recruiting in the United States. Officials said as many as 20 Somali-Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 had left their Minneapolis homes since 2007, apparently bound for Somalia.

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Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Pakistani Taliban until he was killed in a U.S. missile strike in August 2009, said in March last year his group was planning an attack on the White House that would “amaze” the world.

“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone after identifying the White House as one of the targets in an interview with local Dewa Radio.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, shown in a 2008 photo, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in August 2009. (Photo credit: The Washington Post / Associated Press)

Although Mehsud has never been directly linked to any terrorist mission outside Pakistan, attacks launched by his terror network in recent years have widened in scope and ambition.

The Pakistani Taliban has links with al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban militants who have launched attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

According to a recent report in the Washington Post,

Mehsud’s death served as the apparent source of inspiration for the Jordanian suicide bomber and al-Qaeda double agent whose Dec. 30 attack at an American base in eastern Afghanistan killed seven CIA officers and contractors.

In a chilling videotape released posthumously … by the Pakistani Taliban and broadcast on regional TV channels, bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi [link added], 32, called on Muslim holy warriors worldwide to avenge Mehsud’s death by attacking U.S. targets.

“We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud,” Balawi said on the tape, using the title that means leader of the Muslim faithful. “We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside.”

The videotape confirmed the Pakistani Taliban’s central role in the bombing and exposed its close links with al-Qaeda and with the Afghan Taliban. It suggested an unexpected degree of coordination, capability and shared ambition among the three movements that some experts here said may force the United States to reassess its regional and even global counterterrorism strategy.

We learned on 9/11 that al-Qaida has the motive and the means to strike targets inside the United States. Moreover, al-Qaida has a pattern of repeating attacks deemed failures on the first attempt.

For example, after the first World Trade Center bombing on February 26, 1993 failed to bring town the north tower, al-Qaida launched the vastly more sophisticated attack of September 11, 2001 — eight years later — which brought down both the north and the  south tower.

Similarly, shoe bomber Richard Reid’s unsuccessful attempt three days before Christmas in 2001 to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner was replicated — eight years later — by the 2009 Christmas Day attack by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Against that background, it’s important to remember that the intended target of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Penn. on 9/11 — though never unequivocally confirmed — was either the White House or the United States Capitol.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report (2004), Osama bin Laden’s favored targets were the White House, the Pentagon, and the Capitol. Furthermore, the 9/11 Report notes that Bin Laden told 9/11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh to advise hijack ringleader Mohamed Atta that he preferred the White House over the Capitol as a target.

Ultimately, neither the White House nor the Capitol was hit on 9/11. Now, more than eight years later, it must be assumed both locations are urgent priorities on al-Qaida’s high-value target list.

Related reports

Pakistani Taliban vows White House assault
(AP, March 31, 2009)

Possible new al-Qaida threat?
(MSNBC, Jan. 14, 2010)

Video

U.S. intelligence points to a new possible threat from Yemen-based al-Qaida against the United States. NBC’s Pete Williams reports. (01:36)

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1/31/10 Breaking News Update

Head of Pakistani Taliban reportedly killed (AP, Jan. 31, 2010) — The Pakistani army said it was investigating reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died from injuries sustained in a U.S. drone missile strike in mid-January. The army’s announcement came shortly after Pakistani state television reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries. … More (scroll down)

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Related reports on this site

Yemeni Clerics Threaten Jihad (Jan. 14, 2010)

New Details in CIA Bombing (Jan. 10, 2010)

Balawi Fit Suicide Bomber Profile (Jan. 5, 2010)

CIA Zawahiri Team Decimated (Jan. 4, 2010)

Afghan War Expands to Region (Oct. 8, 2009)

Taliban Leader Vows Revenge (Oct. 5, 2009)

White House Attack Will “Amaze” (March 31, 2009)

Taliban, al-Qaida Up the Ante (Sept. 21, 2008)

Al-Qaida Threatens New Attacks (Sept. 20, 2008)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — January 18, 2010

The Best and Worst of Bush
Photo gallery of memorable moments from a controversial presidency

Exit Stage Right: The Bush Legacy

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I considered how George W. Bush might restore his legacy upon leaving office in a climate where 98 percent of historians view his tenure as a failure and only 13 percent of Americans believe he helped solve the country’s problems.

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Haitians in U.S. Illegally are Allowed to Stay 

Obama administration gives temporary reprieve because of deadly quake

Bodies of earthquake victims lie outside the morgue in Port-au-Prince, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010. (Gregory Bull / AP)

Jan. 15, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration said Friday it will allow Haitians who are in the United States illegally to remain because of this week’s catastrophic earthquake.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted the temporary protected status on Friday, two days after she temporarily halted deportations of Haitians, even those already in detention. The protection is available only to Haitians already in the country as of last Tuesday, when the quake struck their home island. They will be allowed to stay and work for 18 months.

Act of compassion

Napolitano told reporters that the temporary legal status is an act of compassion. …

Temporary protected status is granted to foreigners who may not be able to return safely to their country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict or other reasons.

Haitians in the United States illegally have pleaded for years for permission to stay, work and send money home to their loved ones in need after disasters at home, the treatment the federal government gave Central Americans in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch devastated their region.

The Haitians have been denied despite four tropical storms in 2008, massive floods almost every other year since 2000 and the long-running political strife that has prompted thousands to seek asylum in the United States.

 About 30,000 Haitians have orders to leave the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Many others are appealing their cases. Thousands of others live underground. …

Federal law permits Homeland Security to grant [illegal] immigrants temporary protected status in the event of a natural disaster or civil war. …

‘Backdoor to granting amnesty’

Those who favor a stricter U.S. immigration policy have in the past vehemently opposed giving temporary protected status because they argued it is a backdoor to granting amnesty. TPS given to Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Hondurans following Mitch was extended repeatedly for more than a decade, presumably long after those countries were able to rebuild. About 350,000 Central Americans have the designation, as do about 950 Somalis and Sudanese in the United States since 2001 and 2004.

“TPS was invented for this kind of situation, but it has been turned into something much more permanent” said Mark Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies. “And while we probably should grant TPS to Haitians who were here before the earthquake, we really need to make sure it’s temporary.”

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1/25/10 Update

Debate Grows in Aftermath of Quake: Should U.S. Let More Haitians Immigrate?

A man stands in a crowd of several hundred people hoping to gain access to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince on Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. (Photo credit: Julie Jacobson / AP)

By Amy Goldstein and Peter Whoriskey

January 25, 2010

Excerpts

[...]

Now that the earthquake’s initial shock is giving way to the realities of trying to cope in the ruins, a growing number of Haitians — and their relatives in the United States — are starting to chafe under the Obama administration’s edict to resist, as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has put it, “an impulse to leave the island and to come here.”

The tension between U.S. policy and the desperation to leave is spawning a debate in Washington over whether the government should let more Haitians in. Immigration advocates and several members of Congress have begun pressing the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to ease the rules. So far, the focus is on two groups: Haitians with relatives legally in the United States and a few hundred injured children who, in the judgment of doctors doing relief work in Haiti, could die without sophisticated medical care.

In the first days after the Jan. 12 quake, Napolitano announced that the government would admit Haitian children already on the cusp of adoption and that it would allow Haitians who were in the United States illegally to stay for 18 months. The administration has not eased restrictions for children newly orphaned or injured by the disaster, Haitians who had already been seeking U.S. visas, or any other earthquake victims who want to come. …

[A] groundswell is building in favor of letting certain Haitians emigrate. Advocates’ immediate focus is Haitians who, before the disaster, had applied — and in some cases been approved — for a kind of visa available to foreign relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents.

About 19,000 Haitians have pending applications for such visas, according to DHS. Nearly 55,000 Haitians have been approved for family visas but are on waiting lists to enter because Congress has set limits on how many may come each year, the State Department says. Given the quotas, “it can take years and years for families to be reunited,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.

A spokesman for Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services said the agency would “put at the head of the line” applicants for relative visas from Haiti. But he and a State Department spokeswoman acknowledged that quicker visa approvals would not mean those Haitians could enter the United States more quickly unless Congress alters the quotas — something lawmakers are not discussing.

Lavinia Limon, president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said that letting Haitians join U.S. relatives would relieve at least some of the humanitarian burden in Port-au-Prince. The United States, she said, has airlifted foreigners out of other emergencies, such as Albanians from Kosovo and refugees from the Vietnam War.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors tighter controls on immigration, countered that “poverty and underdevelopment can’t be criteria we use to pick immigrants. There are too many of them.” And he said that Haitian earthquake victims could consume U.S. social services and displace American workers — without generating enough income to send back to Haiti “to make a difference” there.

Still, Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that if the United States doubled for the next five years the 25,000 Haitians who have been coming to the United States annually, it would substantially increase the remittances sent back, providing critical help as the nation tries to rebuild. Such help streaming home to families is more reliable and more likely to be spent efficiently than the ebb and flow of foreign aid, he said. Abrams suggested that to satisfy critics of increased immigration, the United States could offset the influx of Haitians by temporarily slowing immigration from elsewhere.

Among Haitians and their U.S. relatives, Limon predicted, pressure on U.S. immigration policy will escalate in the coming weeks and months. “You need a boat, a captain, money. Nobody has that,” she said. “But in two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, they will.” …

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Related report

Fear of chaos grows in Haiti’s capital … Looters roam streets of Port-au-Prince; death toll mounts …

Click for the latest news:

Gerald Herbert / AP

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — January 15, 2010

War on Terror ‘Mistaken’

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that British foreign secretary David Miliband said the phrase “war on terror” — though capturing the urgency of the situation immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — is ultimately “misleading and mistaken,” because it gives the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

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Reconstructing the CIA Bombing 

January 10, 2010

The Dec. 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA personnel and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, is still under investigation. Here is the sequence of events, according to government officials who have been briefed on the attack.

Click on graphic to open new window and click again for full-size image
Credit: Washington Post Staff reports / R. Jeffrey Smith, Julie Tate, and Cristina Rivero

CIA Bomber Struck Just before Search

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima

January 10, 2010

Excerpts

The Jordanian doctor arrived in a red station wagon that came directly from Pakistan and sped through checkpoints at a CIA base in Afghanistan before stopping abruptly at an improvised interrogation center. Outside stood one of the CIA’s top experts on al-Qaeda, ready to greet the doctor and hear him describe a way to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri [link added], the organization’s No. 2 and a man long at the top of U.S. target lists.

The Jordanian exited the car with one hand in his pocket, according to the accounts of several U.S. officials briefed on the incident. An American security guard approached him to conduct a pat-down search and asked him to remove his hand. Instead, the Jordanian triggered a switch.

A sharp “CLMMMP” sound coincided with a brief flash and a small puff of smoke as thousands of steel pellets shredded glass, metal, cement and flesh in every direction.

A moment that CIA officials in Washington and Afghanistan had hoped would lead to a significant breakthrough in the fight against al-Qaeda instead became the most grievous single blow against the agency in the counterterror war.

Virtually everyone within sight of the suicide blast died immediately, including the al-Qaeda expert, who led the CIA team at the base; a 30-year-old analyst; and three other officers. Also killed were two American security guards contracted by the agency, a Jordanian intelligence officer and the car’s driver. At least six others standing in the carport and nearby, including the CIA’s second in command in Afghanistan, were wounded by pellets that had first perforated the vehicle. …

Full story

New video released of CIA bomber (MSNBC, Jan. 9, 2009) — New video released to Pakistani TV shows the Jordanian doctor who killed seven CIA employees in a suicide attack in Afghanistan saying all jihadists must attack U.S. targets. NBC Jim Maceda reports. (02:43)

CIA Bomber Calls for Attacks on U.S. in Video

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, shown in a 2008 photo, was killed in a U.S. strike in August 2009. (Photo credit: The Washington Post / Associated Press)

By Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan

January 10, 2010

Excerpts

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — When a missile from an unmanned U.S. aircraft in August killed Baitullah Mehsud, leader of a violent crusade for radical Islam in Pakistan’s tribal northwest, U.S. and Pakistani officials thought they had scored a major blow against the forces of jihad.

But Mehsud’s death served as the apparent source of inspiration for the Jordanian suicide bomber and al-Qaeda double agent whose Dec. 30 attack at an American base in eastern Afghanistan killed seven CIA officers and contractors.

In a chilling videotape released posthumously Saturday by the Pakistani Taliban and broadcast on regional TV channels, bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi [link added], 32, called on Muslim holy warriors worldwide to avenge Mehsud’s death by attacking U.S. targets.

“We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud,” Balawi said on the tape, using the title that means leader of the Muslim faithful. “We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside.”

The videotape confirmed the Pakistani Taliban’s central role in the bombing and exposed its close links with al-Qaeda and with the Afghan Taliban. It suggested an unexpected degree of coordination, capability and shared ambition among the three movements that some experts here said may force the United States to reassess its regional and even global counterterrorism strategy.

The tape also indicated that Mehsud’s successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, a man in his 20s who was shown on the tape with Balawi in an undisclosed location, has matured into a full-fledged terrorist operative in his own right. …

‘To kill Americans’

It was not clear how or why the Jordanian Balawi, an Arabic-speaking doctor whose family lives in Turkey, came to identify so strongly with Baitullah Mehsud, a reclusive tribal leader from a remote area of Pakistan.

A Taliban official reached by telephone Saturday in the conflicted tribal area of North Waziristan said Balawi had first come to the region eight months ago and approached “our Arab friends,” meaning al-Qaeda operatives based in the Taliban sanctuary, who the official said were initially suspicious.

Later, the official said, Balawi met with local Taliban leaders and was taken to their trainer, Qari Hussain, to learn how to detonate a suicide bomb. He said the Jordanian was “desperate to kill Americans to take revenge for his Arab freedom fighters,” as well as for Mehsud. “He was a great asset for us.”

Experts on the Taliban and security issues in Pakistan said the U.S. assassination of Mehsud had helped raise the Pakistani’s profile in the international Islamist terrorist movement and possibly inspired Balawi to focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan as a target area.

Mehsud, who had a reputation for ruthlessness, emerged from a tribal leadership struggle to lead a fanatical Islamist militant movement in northwestern Pakistan several years ago. In 2007, he formed an alliance of five pro-Taliban groups and was said to command about 5,000 fighters.

Pakistani and U.S. officials say Mehsud was behind several major terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi in December 2007 and the suicide bombing of a Marriott hotel in Islamabad [link added] in September 2008. …

Growing al-Qaeda ties

Mehsud reportedly broke with some of his key aides over the use of suicide bombings and had one of them shot dead. At the same time, his growing reputation made him a hero among young militants, and he was accorded iconic status in some segments of the Pakistani media.

Still, Pakistani experts said, the United States was slow to grasp Mehsud’s growing ties with al-Qaeda and its global ambitions. It was not until early 2009 that U.S. intelligence officials began launching drone attacks against Mehsud’s tribal sanctuary in South Waziristan. …

When Hakimullah Mehsud emerged as the militants’ new leader, some Pakistani experts described him as even more ruthless than the elder Mehsud, but his apparent role in helping Balawi still came as a surprise. Experts in Pakistan said the Jordanian also received logistical help from the Haqqani network, an independent Afghan Taliban group with close ties to al-Qaeda that operates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

“This was a sophisticated operation that took a lot of long-term planning and coordination,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and security analyst. “Look at these links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This is becoming globalized in a dangerous way, and it may mean that the Americans have to rethink their entire anti-terrorism policy.”

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1/16/10 Update

In Afghanistan Attack, CIA Fell Victim to Series of Miscalculations About Informant

‘Desperation’ led CIA, Jordan to trust bomber

Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi killed seven CIA officers and contractors, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and a driver when he blew himself up at a CIA facility in Afghanistan, on Dec. 30, 2009. (Photo credit: The Associated Press)

By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick

January 16, 2010

Excerpts

AMMAN, JORDAN — He was an ambitious young doctor from a large family who had a foreign wife and two children — details that officers of Jordan’s intelligence service viewed as exploitable vulnerabilities, not biography.

Early last year, the General Intelligence Department picked up Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi after his pseudonymous postings on extremist Web sites had become increasingly strident. During three days of questioning, GID officers threatened to have Balawi jailed and end his medical career, and they hinted they could cause problems for his family, according to a former U.S. official and a Jordanian official, both of whom have knowledge of Balawi’s detention.

Balawi was told that if he traveled to Pakistan and infiltrated radical groups there, his slate would be wiped clean and his family left alone, said the former U.S. official, whose more detailed account of the GID’s handling of Balawi was generally corroborated by the Jordanian official, as well as by two former Jordanian intelligence officers.

Balawi agreed, and as the relationship developed, GID officers began to think that he was indeed willing to work against al-Qaeda.

This belief was the first in a series of miscalculations that culminated Dec. 30 when Balawi stepped out of a car at a CIA facility in Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. CIA officers allowed Balawi, who was wearing a vest packed with explosives and metal, to enter the base without a search. Then he detonated his load, killing seven CIA officers and contractors, a Jordanian intelligence officer and a driver.

Jordanian and U.S. officials have since concluded that Balawi was a committed extremist whose beliefs had deep intellectual and religious roots and who had never intended to cooperate with them. In hindsight, they said, the excitement generated by his ability to produce verifiable intelligence should have been tempered by the recognition that his penetration of al-Qaeda’s top echelon was too rapid to be true.

Senior CIA and GID officials were so beguiled by the prospect of a strike against al-Qaeda’s inner sanctum that they discounted concerns raised by case officers in both services that Balawi might be a fraud, according to the former U.S. official and the Jordanian government official, who has an intelligence background.

The Americans took over the management of Balawi from the Jordanians sometime in the second half of 2009, dictating how and when the informant would meet his handlers, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officers. Agency field officers faced unusual pressures from top CIA and administration officials in Washington keyed up by Balawi’s promise to deliver al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current and former officers said.

But a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, rejected assertions that the CIA had abandoned caution. “No one — not in Washington, not in the field — let excitement or anticipation run the show,” the official said. The GID’s approach was more subtle than simple blackmail, the official added. “Persuasion works better than coercion, and that’s something the Jordanians understand completely,” the official said. “The caricatures of clumsy, heavy-handed approaches just don’t fit.”

‘A Salafi jihadi since birth’

Balawi, 32, trained as a physician at Istanbul University in Turkey and worked at a clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. He was married to a Turkish journalist, who has written admiringly of al-Qaeda’s leader in a book titled “Osama bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East.”

In the past four years, using the pseudonym Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, Balawi wrote on extremist Web sites and gained renown. He trumpeted calls for martyrdom.

“My words will drink of my blood,” he wrote, one of a number of statements suggesting an ambition to move beyond rhetoric.

“If you read his articles, you understand he is a Salafi jihadi since birth,” said Hasan Hanieh, an author and former Islamic radical, referring to a purist strain of Islam known as Salafism. “They go to the core of his beliefs. Over years, I could see this type of person moderate, but such a person does not become an agent. Never.”

The Jordanian official with an intelligence background, who has studied Balawi’s writings since the attack, reached the same conclusion.

“If you read him in Arabic, there is a texture and a spirit that says he is a true believer,” the official said. “I would have tested this man 20 times to believe him once.” …

He began to produce credible and compelling information about extremists, and the GID turned over the operation’s management and the resulting intelligence to the CIA while allowing its officer, Capt. Sharif Ali bin Zeid, to remain as a conduit to Balawi, officials said.

As the information continued to flow, the agency was able to exploit it for operations in Pakistan, officials said. Belief in Balawi grew.

“First, the guy had extremist credentials, including proven access to senior figures,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “Second, you had a sound liaison service that believed they’d turned him and that had been working with him since. And third, the asset supplied intelligence that was independently verified. You don’t ignore those kinds of things, but you don’t trust the guy, either.”

In September, six months after Balawi’s arrival in Pakistan, U.S. and international intelligence officials described what they said was their growing success in penetrating al-Qaeda’s senior ranks, which allowed improved targeting of insurgent locations in Pakistan. …

Al-Qaeda ‘dangle’ operation

Balawi appears to have been what in espionage terms is called a “dangle” held out by al-Qaeda.

“This is a very well-thought-out al-Qaeda operation,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence officer. “Every dangle operation is a judgment call. It has to be significant enough so that the Jordanians and, in this case, the CIA knows it’s real. . . . That’s always the key in running a dangle operation: How much do you give to establish bona fides without giving up the family jewels?”

Indeed, tactical successes made possible by Balawi’s information appear in retrospect to have been sacrifices by al-Qaeda to get closer to its ultimate target: the CIA.

“They would give up a lot to get at the CIA,” said a former Jordanian intelligence officer.

After the attack, the Pakistani Taliban released a video of Balawi accompanied by its leader, but officials suspect al-Qaeda directed the bombing.

Case officers’ qualms

Both American and Jordanian case officers raised questions last year about the speed with which Balawi appeared to have inserted himself into a position where he could obtain such intelligence, according to the former U.S. official familiar with Balawi’s detention.

Al-Qaeda is deeply suspicious of new volunteers, and especially so of Jordanians because of repeated attempts by GID to penetrate the organization, according to former Jordanian intelligence officials. There are no Jordanians in bin Laden’s inner circle, and some who have risen to prominence, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the slain leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, were given assignments far from the leadership.

Al-Qaeda security and intelligence officers rigorously vet new arrivals and subject them to a host of tests before they reach “even the third circle around the leadership,” as a former Jordanian intelligence official put it.

“Their first instinct is to suspect,” this former official said. “They check and double-check his background. They watch him eat and sleep and pray, for signs. They analyze everything. That’s how they have survived since 9/11. And after all that, if they believe him, he won’t get near the inner circle.”

Balawi, however, appeared to have done just that, offering information on Zawahiri. The Jordanian provided “irrefutable proof,” including “photograph-type evidence,” that he had been in the presence of al-Qaeda’s leaders, according to a senior intelligence official. Some Jordanian and U.S. officials now question whether such an encounter ever occurred. But they say that if it did, it was an elaborate piece of staging by Balawi’s true handler.

“It was briefed to the White House and to Centcom,” a U.S. official said, referring to U.S. Central Command. “This was a high profile. The Bush and Obama White Houses had vowed to kill him [bin Laden]. What a political victory it would be.” …

“There was desperation to get the fruit,” [a Jordanian] official said. …

——

1/23/10 Update

C.I.A. Deaths Prompt Surge in U.S. Drone Strikes

By Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt

January 23, 2010

Excerpts

WASHINGTON — Since the suicide bombing that took the lives of seven Americans in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, the Central Intelligence Agency has struck back against militants in Pakistan with the most intensive series of missile strikes from drone aircraft since the covert program began.

Beginning the day after the attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, the agency has carried out 11 strikes that have killed about 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani news reports, which make almost no mention of civilian casualties. The assault has included strikes on a mud fortress in North Waziristan on Jan. 6 that killed 17 people and a volley of missiles [link added] on a compound in South Waziristan last Sunday that killed at least 20.

“For the C.I.A., there is certainly an element of wanting to show that they can hit back,” said Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal, an online publication that tracks the C.I.A.’s drone campaign. Mr. Roggio, as well as Pakistani and American intelligence officials, said many of the recent strikes had focused on the Pakistani Taliban and its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who claimed responsibility for the Khost bombing.

The Khost attack cost the agency dearly, taking the lives of the most experienced analysts of Al Qaeda whose intelligence helped guide the drone attacks. Yet the agency has responded by redoubling its assault. Drone strikes have come roughly every other day this month, up from about once a week last year and the most furious pace since the drone campaign began in earnest in the summer of 2008.

Pakistan’s announcement on Thursday that its army would delay any new offensives against militants in North Waziristan for 6 to 12 months is likely to increase American reliance on the drone strikes, administration and counterterrorism officials said. By next year, the C.I.A. is expected to more than double its fleet of the latest Reaper aircraft — bigger, faster and more heavily armed than the older Predators — to 14 from 6, an Obama administration official said. [...]

[Concerns about the threat from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban] only heightened after the attempted Dec. 25 bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner. While that plot involved a Nigerian man sent by a Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, intelligence officials say they believe that Al Qaeda’s top leaders in Pakistan have called on affiliates to carry out attacks against the West. [...]

After the Khost bombing, intelligence officials vowed that they would retaliate. One angry senior American intelligence official said the C.I.A. would “avenge” the Khost attack. “Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day,” the official said at the time, speaking on the condition he not be identified describing a classified program.

Today, officials deny that vengeance is driving the increased attacks, though one called the drone strikes “the purest form of self-defense.”

[Comment: It would be bad policy if CIA operations were driven by vengeance rather than strategic and tactical objectives to advance vital U.S. national security interests.]

Officials point to other factors. For one, Pakistan recently dropped restrictions on the drone program it had requested last fall to accompany a ground offensive against militants in South Waziristan. And tips on the whereabouts of extremists ebb and flow unpredictably. [...]

The strikes, carried out from a secret base in Pakistan and controlled by satellite link from C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia, have been expanded by President Obama and praised by both parties in Congress as a potent weapon against terrorism that puts no American lives at risk. That calculation must be revised in light of the Khost bombing, which revealed the critical presence of C.I.A. officers in dangerous territory to direct the strikes. [...]

Critics have contended that collateral civilian deaths are too high a price to pay. Pakistani officials have periodically denounced the strikes as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty, even as they have provided a launching base for the drones.

The increase in drone attacks has caused panic among rank-and-file militants, particularly in North Waziristan, where some now avoid using private vehicles, according to Pakistani intelligence and security officials. Fewer foreign extremists are now in Miram Shah, North Waziristan’s capital, which was previously awash with them, said local tribesmen and security officials.

Despite the consensus in Washington behind the drone program, some experts are dissenters. John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military, said, “The more the drone campaign works, the more it fails — as increased attacks only make the Pakistanis angrier at the collateral damage and sustained violation of their sovereignty.” [...]

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore, said public opposition had been declining because the campaign was viewed as a success. Yet one Pakistani general, who supports the drone strikes as a tactic for keeping militants off balance, questioned the long-term impact.

“Has the situation stabilized in the past two years?” asked the general, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Are the tribal areas more stable?” Yes, he said, Baitullah Mehsud, founder of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed by a missile last August. “But he’s been replaced and the number of fighters is increasing,” the general said.

——

Related reports on this site

Missiles Pound bin Laden Refuge (Jan. 17, 2010)

Balawi Fit Suicide Bomber Profile (Jan. 5, 2010)

CIA Zawahiri Team Decimated (Jan. 4, 2010)

Afghan War Expands to Region (Oct. 8, 2009)

Taliban Leader Vows Revenge (Oct. 5, 2009)

White House Attack Will “Amaze” (March 31, 2009)

Taliban, al-Qaida Up the Ante (Sept. 21, 2008)

Al-Qaida Threatens New Attacks (Sept. 20, 2008

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — January 10, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama on Friday, Jan. 9, 2009 nominated Leon Panetta, left, as CIA director, and retired Adm. Dennis Blair, right, as National Intelligence director. (Photo credit: Mandel Ngan / AFP — Getty Images)

Obama: U.S. Will Not Torture

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that President-elect Barack Obama, in announcing his nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA director and Adm. Dennis Blair as national intelligence director, said his administration would not compromise its ideals to fight terrorism and that he had instructed his nominees to honor the Geneva Conventions.

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