DOJ: Iraq Had No Al Qaeda Affiliates (Working Thread on KSM Indictment)
As Eric Holder said, he had the December 14, 2009 indictment of KSM and the other 9/11 defendants unsealed. Here is the indictment.
Page 3: Note in their description of why al Qaeda targeted the US, they make no mention of Palestinians, even though they were mentioned explicitly in the Fatwa?
Page 3: Note the list of al Qaeda affiliates in paragraph 4. Note what’s missing? Iraq.
Page 4: The indictment says Muhammad Atef was “responsible for supervising the terrorist training of al Qaeda members.” I take this as an implicit admission they were lying about Abu Zubaydah for all those years (though on page 5, they do list Khalden and Derunta as campes which al Qaeda “sponsored, managed, and financially supported”).
Page 4: The indictment lists KSM, Walid Bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi as members of the media committee.
Page 5: Note the reference to “assorted training manuals.” We’ve always seen discussion of one manual, the Manchester manual. I find the reference particularly interesting given that Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell justified their torture based on what they read in an unspecified manual.
Page 6: The description of the manuals includes this, which served as justification for torture:
Al Qaeda provided counter-interrogation training to its personnel, which, among other things, required captured operatives to lie to authorities to prevent detection of an ongoing plot.
Page 8: Note how they reference Moussaoui:
In 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui, a co-conspirator not named as a defendant herein, traveled to the United States and took pilot and jet-simulator training in Oklahoma and Minnesota.
Page 9: They make no mention of Mohammed al-Qahtani among the list of hijackers, intended or not.
Page 14: KSM trained hijackers to use short-bladed knives by killing sheep and camels.
Page 15: The indictment describes which flights Walid bin Attash tested cockpit safety (in Asia). The sourcing on this is rather interesting–for example, how did they learn that Attash had a Leatherman on his January 2000 Malaysian flight? The question is particularly interesting given that we should expect they would not use anything that came from the defendants here, so as to avoid any torture taint.
Page 16: It’s actually really helpful that they list what flight each hijacker eventually ended up on–it really helps you to see how the Hamburg cell ended up on the planes. I wish the 9/11 Report had done that!
Pages 18-19: Some of the details on overseas financing are quite interesting (particularly given my discussion about SWIFT this morning).
Page 20: Again, the level of detail for KSM’s actions raise interesting questions about source. Also, note that KSM’s order to send $$ to the hijackers post-dates (April 2001) the list of transfers on the previous pages.
Page 20: I’m particularly curious about this mention.
In or about mid-April 2001, KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED expressed frustration to RAMZI BIN AL-SHIBH that a hijacker was not traveling to the United States sooner.
Particularly given the detail, I wonder whether the hijacker in question was al-Qahtani (who tried to enter the country on August 3, 2001).
Page 23, 24: Note the list of precisely how many calls the hijackers made to al-Hawsawi and bin al-Shibh, but not what was said.
Page 25: Did we know KSM applied for an entry visa on July 23, 2001?
Page 25: Note they include payments to Moussaoui.
Page 26: Ah, we finally get reference to al-Qahtani, named as “Co-Conspirator 1” in the indictment.
Page 27: Note the stupid, gratuitous reference to “Reagan National Airport” but not to “McCarren International Airport” in Las Vegas.
Page 27: They describe the knife Moussaoui had when he was arrested (a Leatherman).
Page 27: Paragraph 145 doesn’t provide the date or the method by which the hijackers told KSM of the date of the attack, even though it has been reported. This seems an unnecessary exclusion of legally collected NSA information.
Page 29: They seem not to know precise details of how bin al-Shibh got from Spain on September 5 to Dubai on September 9, 2001.
Page 32: Note the reference to a post-9/11 meeting between bin al-Shibh, al-Hawsawi, and Osama bin Laden that was taped. Have we seen this tape?
Page 36-37: Count 4, Violence on and Destruction of Aircraft, applies only to Flights 11 and 175 (the two WTC flights). Anyone know why?
Page 37: Count 5, Conspiracy to Commit Aircraft Piracy, continues through March 1, 2003, when they captured KSM. (Now that I check, so does Count 3.)
Page 40: Counts 7 and 8 are murder charges tied to unnamed Federal Officers who were at WTC. Given the number of first responders who died, these two officers could be anyone. But remember that CIA’s office got destroyed in the WTC attack, though none of their personnel were reported to have died. [Update: Ron Brynaert has suggested these two are probably FBI Special Agent Lennie Hatton and Secret Service Master Special Officer Craig Miller, who ran into the towers to help with rescues. Both are listed among the rest of the victims in the WTC list.]
Page 41: The indictment alleges that the accused continued in their conspiracy to kill Americans up to the filing of the indictment.
Page 43: There’s a weird hodge podge of acts included in Count 10 to substantiate the conspiracy to kill Americans. Notably, it includes KSM and Ali Abdul Aziz conspiring in November and December 2001 to attack planes with shoe bombs (Richard Reid made his attempt on December 22, 2001). But they don’t allege anything with regards to Jose Padilla. Nor wrt Iyman Faris or Majid Khan, both plots KSM allegedly reported.
Pages 45-80 have the list of all the victims of the attack (along with the two anonymous officers listed in Counts 7 and 8). I think that’s the most impressive part of the indictment, seeing the list of names like that.
That appears to be not very inventive, after-the-fact justification. Does the DoJ or DoD think al Qaeda invented the idea of lying to one’s captors? Mr. McCain wouldn’t even believe that; I’m sure he tried mightily to lie and half-lie to his. I don’t suppose Al Capone told the whole truth to the Feds either; otherwise, he would have been in the slammer or the chair for a lot more than tax evasion.
As for the related idea that such training precludes the effectiveness of non-torture questioning, I don’t think the literature bears that out.
As for the reliability of tortured disclosures, Malcolm Nance and others have been outspoken: water-boarding and other forms of torture work on everybody, even the most hardened, often quite quickly. What’s revealed is anything the victim can think of that will make his torturers stop, a response interrogators could easily manipulate through leading questions. The truth might be in there somewhere. But good lucking finding it, putting it in the right context, and using it in a timely way, let alone getting it admitted into any responsible court of law.
Why would they want to justify the torture in the indictment? Presumably they did not intend to use as evidence anything resulting from the torture.
And doesn’t saying that the accused were taught to lie cast doubt on anything they did say to the interrogators?
Pardon me if I opine that torture had little to do with seeking the truth.
Go watch the first season of 24. You’re clearly misinformed.
Boxturtle (hundreds of TV channels available as well as the internet and they had to do their OWN torture?)
You may not believe this,but I have never watched 24.(Not my idea of entertainment.)
However, what IS interesting to me is the background on Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather Tommy Douglas,who is credited with bringing the Canadian healthcare sysytem into being,among other notable accomplishments.
Incidentally he was originally a minister before becoming a politician.
Good Wiki on Douglas,btw.
I’m sure that if questioned about the lack of an Iraq AQ chapter, the DoJ response will be “Of course there’s AQ in Iraq. We just didn’t need to specify everything”.
And nobody will notice that the DoJ answer will not have been issued under oath or in a sworn document like the document that does NOT list AQ in Iraq.
Boxturtle (The difference between a cynic and a realist is that the cynic is right more often)
They’re being very careful NOT to use information obtained from prisoners who were in military custody. Almost as if they fear that evidence might be challenged.
Now comes the interesting part: discovery. The government must restrict embarassing information without giving the defense lawyer something they could challenge in a real court. I think that’ll be a tightrope. They MUST reveal all exculpatory evidence and failure to do so could be enough to get in front of a real judge.
And if I’m the defense, I’m going to challenge every peice of evidence and make them prove it wasn’t obtained under torture or as a result of torture.
But KSM wants to plead guilty. The commission would be VERY inclined to accept that plea. Will KSM’s lawyer stand in the way? Can he, even?
Boxturtle (Okay, the game has been defined. Let’s play!)
I wonder why KSM wants to plead guilty.
If it’s just so that he can make himself a martyr, won’t he be more of a martyr if he is convicted after he makes a shambles of the trial? And in the process won’t he do a lot to discredit the U.S.?
Why isn’t that what he would want?
In the court of public opinion, he’s giving us all the rope to hang ourselves. And we’re falling for it. Land of truth and justice, ha. The American Way is to lie and cheat and Calvinball until you win. See? We make it all up, sock puppet theater. If we had no glass jaw, we’d be glad of a fair court trial with all the Constitutional due processes. Obama’s already decided that we can’t win fair and that the Constitution is a national hazard.
A totally superficial comment here. I haven’t delved into anything. I see headlines here that KSM gets a military commission. Then I look over at Huffington Post. Headline there now is “White House Flips On Tribunals” with subhead of “Professed 9/11 Mastermind to Face Military Commission.” And the picture looks like a CIA Osama bin Laden lookalike. WTF? Did I miss something? Is Osama bin Laden being charged here? Like, if Cheney was still writing the news I wouldn’t be surprised to see a picture of Saddam Hussein… but Obama? Osama?
Well,this MUST be the new meme that is being disseminated amidst the media.
Earlier I saw on MSNBC a newsreport that flashed the same photo that is on Huff&Puff Post. And like you,I thought it was OBL,until I realized the story was about the KSM trial being moved.
I don’t EVER recall seeing a photo of KSM looking like this before today.
If I were paranoid,I’d say some subliminal PR is at work .
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was fat and swarthy when he was captured, and this guy is older and skinny and not wearing orange. I don’t think KSM has worn anything but orange in years. But if you check the photo properties, it’s labeled KSM.
Well, it could have been a photo BEFORE he was in custody–but the similarity between OBL and KSM is stunning ..and after all this time,not a coinkydink ,either.
Ok, I’m weirded. I just did a google images search of KSM, and that photo shows up uncropped in an Andy Worthington article from 2009, Torture And Futility: Is This The End Of Military Commissions At Guantanamo? with the caption:
Family members? Does the ICRC know where his kids are?
Over on wikipedia, I don’t see that photo, but there’s a photo I’ve never seen before labeled “Khalid sheikh Mohammed from an FBI wanted poster” that could be a younger photo of the older guy on HuffPo — but still doesn’t look to me like the guy we’ve all seen on the couch being captured. That photo also shows up on History Commons, I see via the image google, though the image google does not lead me to that photo on wikipedia where it is now front and center and I don’t find Andy Worthington’s photo. Like I said, I’m weirded. Makes me think of earlier stories I’ve read about fake OBL videos, and an Asian story about KSM being killed long ago. Smoke and mirrors?
Well, I guess you’ll have to attend the military tribunal in Gitmo for an up close and personal comparison.*G*
I’m shocked! Shocked, I say! /s
Another quickie drive by – “The question is particularly interesting given that we should expect they would not use anything that came from the defendants here, so as to avoid any torture taint”
DOJ has consistently been taking the position in the habeas cases that they can “clean team” torture evidence and get it in that way.
True. Obviously they didn’t w/Ghailani, but then they didn’t have to. Though they tried to w/that one witness.
Comparing w/the 9/11 Report, it appears the “killing sheep and camels” comes from KSM.
So they do appear to have planned to use info from him.
Would you agree that whatever KSM stuff they were/are going to use against him would come from “clean” communications intercepts (email, phone calls, etc.) and not from the
tortureinterrogation sessions?No. Because I don’t know how you get stuff like killing the camel another way, and it is clearly sourced to KSM himself in the 9/11 Report.
I’m just thinking that the prosecutors were given strict instructions to not use any material from the
tortureinterrogation sessions. Even the sessions after 2004.Perhaps I’m being naive here, but I’m postulating that the prosecutors, if they could, would avoid any stuff from KSM’s sessions.
Or perhaps the DOJ folks who actually won out were those who believed enough time had passed after KSM’s torture that they could still use KSM’s own words against him.
I could go either way. *g*
They’re not going to list any Padilla material in the indictment for at least two reasons: Padilla’s appeals are still going on, Padila was tortured. And a third – I’ll bet he was wiretapped while here in the States. And a fourth – it’s not germane to the 9/11 plot.
Though, to be fair, para 209 does mention KSM being lashed up with the Reid shoe bombing. But Reid’s case (like Moussaoui’s) is completed and he has no appeals left.
Padilla’s crime has nothing to do with the attacks he allegedly had planned.
And it’s not just Padilla that’s not listed; neither are Majid Khan or Iyman Faris. Faris has no appeals left.
Every time I hear someone refer to Padilla, I think of John Walker Lindh….and Jessalyn Raddack. What a story…and so rarely even mentioned.
Do you happen to know if the discovery in the Lindh case is sealed?
I do know that a part of the deal that Chertoff offered,and Lindh accepted, was that there would be a gag order in place for Lindh to not speak of his experiences at the hands of the US military.
This was news to me as well. It brings up the question of whether KSM intended to stay in the US and be a 9/11 hijacking participant, or whether he was intending just to visit and check out the status of his plans and his 9/11 crew.
Fox sure has a way of putting things, don’t they?
Boxturtle (Nope, no bias there!)
There are a bunch of stories out there on KSM’s new look, e.g., http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/09/09/osama-bin-laden-reborn-al-qaeda-kingpin-models-himself-on-bin-laden-115875-22547429/ I’m sure if you’re patient, one of these stories will appear on HuffPo in the Style section.
ROFLMAO!
Your link starts out,
and then you can scroll down and compare his drunk before with his sheikh after.
And I’m thinking, do swarthy drunks pluck their eyebrows? And change where their eyebrows peak? Because the skinny now guy has way bushier eyebrows that peak differently. Same guy? I doubt it.
Also, I’m remembering a story on HuffPo a ways back where the photo they posted of bin Laden was a fake, and they got called on it and it was recanted — I think the source for their story walked it back. I couldn’t find it when I googled, though; my browser crashed. I hate it when that happens.
Found it:
HuffPo 1/15/10, updated 3/18/10: New Osama Bin Laden PICTURES: FBI’s Digitally-Enhanced Images Of How He May Look Today (PHOTOS)
(I left a Mr. Potato Head comment)
Followed up by HuffPo 1/19/10: Gaspar Llamazares, Spaniard Used In Bin Laden Picture, Rejects US Apology
Well, just me being fascinated… Pull up the 9/9/10 Mirror story, the 1/15/10 HuffPo story, and HuffPo’s current front page, and size the windows and line up all the KSM and OBL photos to compare — these guys all have the same nose, and their right eye is larger than their left. The Mirror story credits the new KSM photo to The Mohammed Family. It’s funny that the Mr. Potato Head OBL nose the FBI put on Gaspar Llamazares doesn’t look at all like OBL’s nose.
Great quote. Fits here nicely!
EW,
PG 3 will come back to haunt the US internationally.
SDNY indictment. AA77 would be EDVA, UA93 EDPA. Only indict for the crimes in your district.
The charge is conspiracy. As long as the court has jurisdiction (and proper venue) over one of the overt acts of the conspiracy, can’t any and all overt acts of the conspiracy be charged in the same indictment?
They could. But leaving out that charge gives them another “bite at the apple”. As long as some significant element of the charge (such as occurring in a different venue) exists, it isn’t double jeopardy. Have seen people prosecuted on State charges, then Federal charges that way.
Nope.
They indict the Pentagon and PA flights, too. Just not in this one charge.
Isn’t KSM also supposed to have tied Aafia Siddiqui to the conspiracy during his interrogation? Nothing about her in the indictment either?
Note the timing as well as the money amounts from pages 25-26:
This is a very curious set of events. The questions that arise to me are:
1. Why did KSM attempt to enter the US?
2. What was so critical to KSM that he had Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh send $14,000 to Zacarias Moussaoui?
3. What was Zacarias Moussaoui intending to do with that $14,000?
It was late in the 9/11 hijack planning cycle for Zacarias Moussaoui to be using that $14,000 for more flight training, so why the large amount of money?
And based on the above, it sure seems that KSM thought Zacarias Moussaoui was of critical importance to Al Qaeda’s plans, but for what?
I didn’t see any mention of the $100,000 ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad allegedly had Saeed Sheikh wire Atta.
Could any of the wire transfers of money that the indictment refers to have any connection with that alleged transfer by ISI?
I’m not up on that ISI money transfer. Any links to substantiate it? I’m not doubting you. I just hadn’t heard/read about it.
General Mahmud Ahmad:
That link to the Times of India no longer works, but I saw the article at the time.
The Wall Street Journal also reported the allegation (something I also remember seeing at the time), as is confirmed by this Wikipedia entry on Gen. Mahmud Ahmed:
Ta for that interesting info!
What could such payments have been for? Maybe so that the hijackers could at the last moment give money to loved ones?
That $14,000 is a fair chunk of money in one piece. At least based on the Indictment, that was far more than what Mohammed Atta was given in one fell swoop. And he had 20 or so folks with him to support.
From page 20:
(My Bold)
The thing is that Zacarias Moussaoui was getting that $14,000 in a big chunk, whereas Mohammed Atta was getting his money in smaller, less detectable amounts.
Like you, I’m wondering what Zacarias Moussaoui was to do with that $14,000.
And why at this late stage in the 9/11 hijack plot.
And why just before Zacarias Moussaoui got sent that $14,000 was KSM trying to get himself a visa for entering the US.
I should have Wiki’d first. *g* A wee bit of Wikipedi’ing and one gets this:
Though this explains some of the money, I’m still floundering with Zacarias Moussaoui for a couple of reasons.
One is the timing of his funding immediately after KSM’s attempt to get a US visa failed. Another is the large amount of money transferred seemingly defying Al Qaeda’s own prohibition against large money transfers. And last,but not least, paying cash in the large amounts of hundred dollar bills for his flight training which again seems to defy Al Qaeda’s need for secrecy.
This last part of the Wikipedia entry for Zacarias Moussaoui seems bogus based on the KSM US visa attempt and KSM’s insistance on that large $14,000 money transfer to an “untrustworthy” associate:
No, I think here’s what happens:
Atta and bin al-Shibh meets. Atta (who suspects the phones are bugged) tells al-Shibh that he and Jarrah can’t get along. So they panic, and KSM tries to go to the US (so does Ali, btw, but he was rejected for a visa too). When that fails they presumably dumped a lot of $$ to try to get Moussaoui up to speed.
So Moussaoui would have been Jarrah’s replacement but Atta and Jarrah worked it out (though it’s unclear whether before or after Moussaoui got picke dup).
Another excellent interpretation! KSM was panicking and Moussaoui was a last resort.
Probably not. Starting at page 28, the Indictment shows that beginning the first part of September, 2001, the “excess” funds were being shipped back to the originators.
Per the 9/11 Report Jarrah and Atta were fighting at that time.
So it may be that KSM was going to go try straighten that out.
Good hypothesis! I wonder what KSM told his
torturersinterrogators about his attempted US visit?If he told them, it was presumably AFTER the worst of the torture, since in 2004 they appear not to have known about it.
Page 36-37: Count 4, Violence on and Destruction of Aircraft, applies only to Flights 11 and 175 (the two WTC flights). Anyone know why?
No. But:
—might the intervention of passengers on United93 complicate the argument?
—Hani Hanjour’s weak connection to the Hamburg cell?
The camel killing, btw, is sourced to a KSM interrogation from February 23, 2004. So almost a year after the worst of his torture.
That was after KSM’s waterboarding torture sessions, but still at various CIA black sites, so I’d imagine he wasn’t completely through with other parts of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogations”.
Why isn’t any testimony given after torture tainted by the earlier torture? After all, any later interrogation conducted later — at least implicitly — carries with it the threat of a resumption of the torture if the testimony is deemed unsatisfactory.
Note, the 9/11 Report cites “late April communications associated w/KSM” that come from a CIA analysis from September 11, 2003.
That may be where the focus on April dates here comes from.
Also, wrt Moussaoui, KSM gave bin al-Shibh Moussaoui’s email before he went to Malaysia for a meeting w/Atta that never happened. So in June, he wasn’t part of Atta’s team yet, but they were obviously considering him.
You know it seems to me they’ve got a good deal of KSm stuff, but maybe not Bin al-Shibh stuff.
Interesting. Deliberately missing or just don’t have it?
Perhaps KSM, who has been described as a talkative BS’er, just was overly stricken with diarrhea of the mouth and keyboard in comparison to Bin al-Shibh.
Not using stuff that appears in the 9/11 Report.
Mind you, his lawyers are challenging his fitness for trial. KSMs are not.
So it may be they believe they can enter the KSM stuff from 2004 and beyond, but suspect they’d get into more trouble w/al-Shibh based on fitness.
While the fitness issue is still unresolved, and might cause the prosecutors trouble, there still seems to be an abundance of direct evidence against Ramzi bin al-Shibh such as this from his Wikipedia entry:
How sweet, because that’s exactly what the U.S. instructs its captured prisoners to do. And why not, because the U.S. taught Ali Mohamed and others all about their resistance to exploitation strategies (A.M. at Ft. Bragg itself).
Meanwhile, I’ve posted my own take on the Holder/Obama turn-about: Why the U.S. Wants Military Commission Show Trials for 9/11 Suspects.
You don’t commit torture or hold show trials if what you’re interested in is learning and/or revealing the truth.
Got Netflix? Watch MI-5 (AKA “Spooks”), Season 5, Episode 2. The Brits describe the events that we are living through in the U.S., a coup to erase democracy, a “blink of the eye in history”, as one character says.
Now back to our scheduled programming.
lysias@31
this is most interesting,
but what do we make of it?
was pakistan responsible for the wtc attack?
partially responsible?
if not, what?
ISI has a long history of being used as an instrument of the CIA.
Thanks as always to the incomparable Marcy W. and her always brilliant analysis.
However, once again she seems to take for granted that KSM and the others were guilty one way or another of terror activities against the US.
I’d like to see the evidence she relies on.
How about an analysis of why Eric Holder today said: we give up. It’s military commisssions. What he was saying is that they have no evidence against KSM or the others.
Even the PBS Newshour (for god’s sake) analysis pointed out that the Obama administration waited and waited throughout 2009 until Congress finally got the hint in 2010 and said: no legitimate trials.
So Obama breathes a sigh of relief. He came into office understanding that there was no evidence against KSM–for the simple reason he didn’t do anything, so how was he, Obama, going to proceed?
Simple, stall for time until it was impossible to give him a fair trial.
Ronald Bleier
rbleier at igc dot org