Nick Fielding

The US search for al-Qaeda figures Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and Ramzi bin al-Shibh focuses on the city of Karachi, Pakistan, culminating in the capture of bin al-Shibh there on September 11, 2002. Accounts differ, but at some point in mid-2002 Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda allegedly interviews bin al-Shibh and KSM in Karachi (see April, June, or August 2002). In 2003, Fouda will write a book about 9/11 with London Times reporter Nick Fielding. In the book, they will speculate why bin al-Shibh was arrested in Karachi on September 11, 2002, only a few months after the interview (see September 11, 2002), and within two days of when Fouda’s report (with audio from bin al-Shibh but not KSM) is first broadcast (see September 8-11, 2002): “Al Jazeera’s broadcasts probably confirmed what intelligence agencies already suspected, namely that bin al-Shibh and [KSM] were hiding in the Karachi area. That information would have been enough to justify the deployment of massive electronic resources in the area.” The authors further claim that, according to unnamed intelligence sources, while the NSA’s Echelon satellite network intercepts communications all over the world, the network’s “real strength” is that it “can concentrate huge resources into one specified area.” A source close to US intelligence will tell the authors: “Bin al-Shibh was apparently caught because he was a geek who was too willing to get onto his [satellite phone] and his e-mail. He thought he was too clever and had been getting away with things for too long.” Declassified Russian intelligence reports say that US intelligence satellites oscillate in their orbit in a way that allows the satellites to pick up the same satellite phone signals from slightly different angles and thus take bearings to identify the precise locations of the calls. The authors will further say that sources close to the NSA have dismissed the idea that bin al-Shibh was located by an electronic voice print based on his voice in the Al Jazeera interview, as such a technique is very hard to do, especially since his voice was electronically altered. [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 184] Three years after the book by Fouda and Fielding is published, a book by Ron Suskind will claim that this intensive US surveillance of Karachi begins not because of bin al-Shibh’s voice in the interview, but because shortly after the interview takes place, Fouda tells his superiors at Al Jazeera that the interview had been in Karachi, and this information gets passed on to US intelligence (see June 14, 2002 and Shortly After). This would have given US intelligence several months to home in on bin al-Shibh’s location instead of just two days (see September 9, 2002). KSM apparently makes it out of Karachi without being captured, and he will be captured elsewhere in Pakistan in early 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003). However, just one day after the interview with Fouda is aired, there are reports that KSM was captured in Karachi in June 2002, close to the time the interview is said to have taken place (see June 16, 2002).