KSM's Sleeper Agents Posed a Serious Threat

(Analyst's note: A long, but interesting and troubling read.)

By: Thomas Joscelyn

You would think the identification and arrest of sleeper agents working for al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and operating on U.S. soil in 2003, is a success story our intelligence and law enforcement agencies can rightly trumpet, no? Not according to Peter Bergen, who is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a national security analyst for CNN.

.... The newly declassified documents, as well as other evidence, make it clear that intelligence gained during KSM's coercive interrogations led to the identification of at least three al Qaeda sleeper agents who operated on U.S. soil. They are: Uzair Paracha, Adnan El Shukrijumah and Iyman Faris.

There may have been more, but we cannot know for certain because substantial portions of the documents released on August 24 remain redacted. In any event, we know a fair amount about these three and, contrary to Bergen's claim, Faris was not the only one of them who intended to "wreak havoc in America."