The CIA and Albanian intelligence recruit an informer knowledgeable about al-Qaeda in the Balkans. The informer, whose name is Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, but is known as Abu Omar, is recruited by a special unit of the Albanian National Intelligence Service (ShIK) created at the behest of the CIA. An officer in the unit, Astrit Nasufi, will say that the unit is actually run by a CIA agent known as “Mike” who is based on the US embassy in Tirana, Albania, and who teaches them intelligence techniques. The CIA and ShIK are worried about a possible assassination attempt against the Egyptian foreign minister, who is to visit Albania soon, so about twelve radical Egyptians, members of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad, are detained beforehand. Nasr is not on the list, but is detained because of a link to a suspect charity, the Human Relief and Construction Agency (HRCA). He is held for about 10 days and, although he initially refuses to talk, ShIK has a “full file” on him after a week. He provides information about around ten fellow Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya members working for HRCA and two other charities, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, both of which will be declared designated supporters of terrorism after 9/11. However, he says there are no plans to kill the Egyptian foreign minister, as this would mean Albania would no longer be a safe haven for fundamentalist Muslims. The intelligence Nasr goes on to provide is regarded as good quality and includes the identities of operatives monitoring the US embassy and entering and leaving Albania. The CIA is most interested in monitoring former mujaheddin joining the Bosnian Muslims, and Nasr also provides intelligence on Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya branches in Britain, Germany, and Italy, in particular the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, which is a base for mujaheddin operations in the Balkans and is raided by the Italian government around this time (see Late 1993-December 14, 1995). Even though cooperation appears to be good, after a few weeks Nasr suddenly disappears and the CIA tells ShIK that Nasr has moved to Germany. [Chicago Tribune, 7/2/2005] Nasr will later surface in Italy and will become close to Islamic militants in Milan (see Summer 2000), but will be kidnapped by the CIA after 9/11 (see Noon February 17, 2003).
August 30, 1995: NATO Launches Bombing Campaign Against Bosnian Serbs
“Operation Deliberate Force,” a massive NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, begins. [CNN, 8/31/1995]
September 1995: Raid Does Not Stop Bosnian Charity Front Controlling Illegal Weapons Pipeline
German and Austrian police raid the Vienna, Austria, office of the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA). Investigators fill three vans with documents, enabling them to gain a full picture of the illegal weapons network the TWRA has been running. But by this time, TWRA appears to be winding down most of its activities. The need for TWRA’s smuggling routes greatly declined after a direct weapons pipeline opened between Iran and Bosnia with the tacit approval of the US. But the raid results in no charges and TWRA’s Vienna office remains open. One Austrian investigator will later say, “They did a lot of talking here but as long as they did not move weapons through our territory, we could not arrest them.” [Washington Post, 9/22/1996] Authors J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins will later question that rationale, noting that, “The TWRA ledgers, however, gave a full accounting of the transfer of huge sums for arms trafficking through the First Austrian Bank.” The Bosnian government officially shuts down TWRA after the Austrian raid, but in fact it remains open and active in Bosnia, and continuing to ship weapons. In fact, TWRA will still remain open and active there and elsewhere long after 9/11 (see January 25, 2002). The US government has yet to take any official action against TWRA as well. [Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 143]
September 1995: New Islamic Terror Network Threatens Western Democracies, Warns Book by Israeli Leader Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, publishes a short book calling on Western nations to unite against terrorism, called Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists. [New York Times, 11/5/1995; New York Times, 11/22/1995; Netanyahu, 2001] In the book, Netanyahu describes his long personal involvement in counterterrorism. He served in Israel’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and participated in freeing airline hostages in 1972. [New York Times, 4/20/1999] His brother Jonathan was also a member of Sayaret Maktal and was killed during the rescue of hostages at Entebbe in 1976. [BBC News, 7/3/2006] Netanyahu created an institute devoted to counterterrorism research and named it after his brother. The Jonathan Institute organized a major international conference in 1979 attended by, among others, Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) and George H. W. Bush. [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 63-65] The new terrorist network, warns Netanyahu, was born at the end of the Afghan War among Arab Mujahedeen veterans. “The Soviet Union completed its withdrawal from Kabul in 1989,” he writes, “and the Islamic resistance forces have since dispersed.… [T]he Islamic resistance won, offering proof of the innate faithful supremacy of Islam over the infidel powers. In many cases these providential warriors have since been in search of the next step on the road to the triumph of Islam. Often they have had to move from country to country, having been denied the right to return to their home countries for fear that their excessive zeal would find an outlet there. Since the end of the war in Afghanistan, an international Sunni terrorist network has thus sprung into being, composed in the main of Islamic veterans and their religious leaders.… It is this group which is associated with bombers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.” [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 80-81] Netanyahu also warns of the spread of Jihadist groups among Muslim communities in Western countries. For example, El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant who murdered an Israeli rabbi in New York in 1990 (see November 5, 1990), was a follower of Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, who immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. The bombers involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack were also followers of Abdul-Rahman. After the attack, investigators re-examined files found at Nosair’s home. One document said, “We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God… by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization, such as the tourist attractions and the high buildings of which they are so proud.” [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 94]
September 1995: Britain’s Domestic Intelligence Agency Opens File on Bin Laden
MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, opens a permanent file on Osama bin Laden. However, MI5 still believes bin Laden is a terrorist financier rather than a leader, and the source of his wealth is a “mystery.” [Daily Telegraph, 10/5/2009] MI6 is Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, and presumably it would be more knowledgeable and concerned than MI5 about a foreign threat like bin Laden.
September-October 1995: Unocal Obtains Turkmenistan Pipeline Deal
Oil company Unocal signs an $8 billion deal with Turkmenistan to construct two pipelines (one for oil, one for gas), as part of a larger plan for two pipelines intended to transport oil and gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistan. Before proceeding further, however, Unocal needs to execute agreements with Pakistan and Afghanistan; Pakistan and Ahmed Shah Massoud’s government in Afghanistan, however, have already signed a pipeline deal with an Argentinean company. Henry Kissinger, hired as speaker for a special dinner in New York to announce the Turkmenistan pipeline deal, says the Unocal plan represents a “triumph of hope over experience.” Unocal will later open an office in Kabul, weeks after the Taliban capture of the capital in late 1996 and will interact with the Taliban, seeking support for its pipeline until at least December 1997. [Coll, 2004, pp. 301-13, 329, 338, 364-66]
September 1, 1995: American Columnist Mocks European ‘Failure’ to Lead Europe
Paris-based American columnist William Pfaff writes with regard to NATO’s bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs (see August 30, 1995): “The humiliation of Europe in what may prove the Yugoslav endgame has yet to be fully appreciated in Europe’s capitals. The United States today is again Europe’s leader; there is no other. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations tried and failed to convince the European governments to take over Europe’s leadership.” Pfaff’s words will later be cited approvingly by Richard Holbrooke in his book, “To End a War.” Holbrooke will recall that the “[p]ress and public reaction was highly positive” to the operation. [Holbrooke, 1999, pp. 102-103]
September 1, 1995: Judge’s Ruling Ensures that Ali Mohamed Does Not Have to Testify in Trial, Even Though Prosecution Knows Where He Is
Defense counsel for El Sayyid Nosair, one of the militants accused in the “Landmarks” bomb plot (see June 24, 1993) along with the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, applies for a missing witness instruction for double agent Ali Mohamed. The counsel, Roger Stavis, believes that it would benefit his client to have Mohamed testify, because Mohamed worked for militants connected to Abdul-Rahman as well as the FBI (see 1990), CIA (see 1984), and US army (see 1986). Therefore, Stavis might be able to use Nosair’s connection with Mohamed to convince the jury that Nosair was acting on the instructions of an agent of the US government. Stavis has been attempting to contact Mohamed with no success for some time, although the prosecution is in contact with him where he lives in California (see December 1994-January 1995). Under federal law, a trial judge can give a missing witness instruction if one party at a trial wants a witness to testify but cannot find him, whereas the other party can find him but does not seem to want him to testify. Based on such an instruction, the jury can then decide that the party that could find him, but did not get him to testify, did so deliberately because it thought the testimony would be damaging to it. Author Peter Lance will later comment that, given the circumstances, “Stavis had every right to expect that jury charge,” but Judge Michael Mukasey merely responds, “I don’t think a missing witness charge on that gentleman is warranted and I am not going to give one.” Lance will comment that by failing to grant the missing witness instruction, Mukasey helps “bury the significance” of Mohamed, and conceal his role in Islamic militancy from the public. [Lance, 2006, pp. 208; Raw Story, 9/25/2007] President Bush will later appoint Mukasey to be the US attorney general (see November 8, 2007).
September 13, 1995: Muslim Militant Rendered by CIA in Croatia, Then Killed in Egypt
Talaat Fouad Qassem, 38, a known leader of the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), an Egyptian extremist organization, is arrested and detained in Croatia as he travels to Bosnia from Denmark, where he has been been living after being granted political asylum. He is suspected of clandestine support of terrorist operations, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993). He also allegedly led mujaheddin efforts in Bosnia since 1990 (see 1990). In a joint operation, he is arrested by Croatian intelligence agents and handed over to the CIA. Qassem is then interrogated by US officials aboard a US ship off the Croatian coast in the Adriatic Sea and sent to Egypt, which has a rendition agreement with the US (see Summer 1995). An Egyptian military tribunal has already sentenced him to death in absentia, and he is executed soon after he arrives. [Associated Press, 10/31/1995; Washington Post, 3/11/2002, pp. A01; Mahle, 2005, pp. 204-205; New Yorker, 2/8/2005] According to the 1999 book Dollars for Terror, two weeks before his abduction, Qassem was in Switzerland negotiating against Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Some Muslim Brotherhood exiles were negotiating with the Egyptian government to be allowed to return to Egypt if they agreed not to use Muslim Brotherhood Swiss bank accounts to fund Egyptian militant groups like Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, but Qassem and other radicals oppose this deal. So the removal of Qassem helps the Muslim Brotherhood in their conflict with more militant groups. [Labeviere, 1999, pp. 70-71]
Shortly Before October 1995: FBI Learns KSM Traveling to Sudan and Qatar
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) goes to Sudan, but he is soon discovered there by the Sudanese intelligence agency. Sudan is facing increasing trouble with Western countries due to its reputation as a terrorist haven, so KSM is told to leave and given a few weeks to move on. Later in the year, Sudanese intelligence tells an FBI agent about KSM’s recent visit and also reveals that he was headed to Qatar (where he has already been based for several years 1992-1996). By October 1995, the FBI tracks KSM to a certain apartment building in Qatar, but he will escape capture (see October 1995). [Miniter, 2003, pp. 85-86]
