Plea Deal Reveals Simple Technological Tools Used to Plot Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks

Associated Press: In the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, alleged Al Qaeda operations mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed intended to use his free Hotmail account to direct a U.S.-based operative to carry out an attack, according to a guilty plea agreement filed by Al Saleh Kahlah al-Marri in federal court.

The document shows how Al Qaeda, at least in 2001, embraced prosaic technologies like pre-paid calling cards, public phones, computer search engines and simplistic codes to communicate, plan and carry out its operations.

Al-Marri also surfed the Internet to research cyanide gas, using software to cover his tracks, according to the document filed Thursday in federal court in Peoria, Ill. He marked the locations of dams, waterways and tunnels in the United States in an almanac. The government claims this reflects intelligence that Al Qaeda was planning to use cyanide gas to attack those sites.

As a result of his guilty plea, al-Marri could be sentenced up to a maximum 15-year term in federal prison.

In a stipulation of facts filed as part of the plea agreement, al-Marri admitted that he trained in Al Qaeda camps and stayed in terrorist safe houses in Pakistan between 1998 and 2001. There, he learned how to handle weapons and how to communicate by phone and e-mail using a code.

After arriving in the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001 — a day before Al Qaeda's long-plotted terror strikes in New York and Washington — Al-Marri stored phone numbers of Al Qaeda associates in a personal electronic device.

He used a "10-code" to protect the numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number, according to a person close to the investigation.

In a 10-code, eight becomes a two, for example. Other Al Qaeda members used the same code, according to the plea agreement.

Al-Marri sent e-mails to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's hotmail account — HOR70@hotmail.com — addressed to "Muk" and signed "Abdo." The details of that code were included in an address book found in an Al Qaeda safehouse in Pakistan.

An attempt by The Associated Press to reach that address did not indicate the account had been closed, but it went unanswered.

Al-Marri initially tried to use a Yahoo e-mail account to contact Mohammed, but it failed to go through. So he switched to Hotmail as well. When al-Marri arrived in the United States, he created five new e-mail accounts to communicate with Mohammed, using the 10-code to send him his cell phone number in Peoria.

From September to November, al-Marri tried and failed to contact members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan using prepaid calling cards and public phones, sometimes traveling 160 miles to use a different phone.

Al-Marri was arrested in December 2001, three months after entering the U.S. on a student visa. He was shortly thereafter declared an "enemy combatant" and taken into military custody.

The "enemy combatant" designation was dropped when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Illinois.

Suspected as an Al Qaeda sleeper agent, he was held without charge for more than five years. His attorneys say he was tortured while in military custody. There is no indication in the plea agreement that al-Marri ever made contact with other alleged Al Qaeda agents inside the United States.

Al-Marri admitted that before entering the U.S., he met and had regular contact with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and with Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who allegedly helped the Sept. 11 hijackers with money and Western-style clothing.

Anarchists have a Long and Nasty History

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

We forget how much terrorism, assassination, and mayhem there was during a time we think of as a long peace. It is worthwhile to explore the similarities between that period and our own. ....

Former 'enemy combatant' pleads guilty in Illinois

PEORIA, Ill. – A man whose case sparked a furious legal debate over whether the government can hold terrorism suspects indefinitely entered a surprise guilty plea, admitting to training in al-Qaida camps and coming to the nation's heartland a day before Sept. 11.

Ali al-Marri, 43, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of conspiring to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization. A second charge of providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization was dropped. ....

Pakistan: Singer murdered in honor killing

She was killed either for engaging in the un-Islamic practice of pursuing a singing career, or for engaging in the un-Islamic practice of divorcing and remarrying, thereby sullying her family's honor.

"Female Pakistani Singer Killed In Peshawar," by Kristin Deasy and Sharifa Esmatullah for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 29 (thanks to Pamela): sharia

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Ayman Udas, a rising female vocalist in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, was shot at her home, allegedly by her own brothers.

Her death has rattled the city's jittery artistic community, as local musicians and dancers in Peshawar -- a city renowned for its vibrant artistic life -- face increasing pressure as the region falls under greater Taliban influence.

Some attributed Udas's death to the Islamist militants, but her husband told reporters that his wife was killed because she broke family traditions.

A beautiful woman in her early 30s and mother of two, Udas recently remarried after a divorce. Her two brothers, Alamgir and Ismail, disapproved of her divorce, remarriage, and her artistic career, all of which disgrace a family's name in conservative Islamic society.

Note to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: "conservatives" don't generally murder their sisters who divorce, remarry, and pursue singing careers.

The honor killing, an ancient tradition in which a male family member kills a female to "save" the family name, took place on April 27 at the family's home while Udas's husband was out picking up milk. He immediately took the case to the authorities, who have made no arrests but raided several locations in search of the suspected killers....

Meanwhile, Artists are coming under direct threat in Taliban-controlled areas. In January, a dancer's bullet-ridden body was left in the center of Swat Valley's capital of Mingora -- not far from where Udas grew up -- with a note warning locals that "un-Islamic voices" will no longer be tolerated.

Are they all Misunderstanders of Islam in Mingora? Is there no Muslim there able or willing to raise a protest against this in the name of the authentic, peaceful Islam that we all must believe in in the West on pain of charges of "Islamophobia"?

Pamela Geller has added Ayman Udas to her haunting gallery of photos of victims of honor killing. These women must be remembered, and decent people must stand up and say, No more.

Torture? No. Except...

(Compiler's note: Must read article.)

by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.

Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."

Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.

Asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a Washington Post report that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.