2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake

NY Times reports:
Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

Dr. Bruce Jessen joined his Air Force colleague to build a thriving business that made millions of dollars selling interrogation and training services to the C.I.A.

A former Air Force explosives expert and a natural salesman, Dr. Jim Mitchell and his colleague had no expertise on Al Qaeda and had never conducted an actual interrogation. But they had psychological credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.

So “Doc Mitchell” and “Doc Jessen,” as they had been known in the Air Force, helped lead the United States into a wrenching conflict over torture, terror and values that seven years later has not run its course.

Dr. Mitchell, with a sonorous Southern accent and the sometimes overbearing confidence of a self-made man, was a former Air Force explosives expert and a natural salesman. Dr. Jessen, raised on an Idaho potato farm, joined his Air Force colleague to build a thriving business that made millions of dollars selling interrogation and training services to the C.I.A.

Seven months after President Obama ordered the C.I.A. interrogation program closed, its fallout still commands attention. In the next few weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to decide whether to begin a criminal torture investigation, in which the psychologists’ role is likely to come under scrutiny. The Justice Department ethics office is expected to complete a report on the lawyers who pronounced the methods legal. And the C.I.A. will soon release a highly critical 2004 report on the program by the agency’s inspector general.

Col. Steven M. Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator and intelligence officer who knows Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen, said he thought loyalty to their country in the panicky wake of the Sept. 11 attacks prompted their excursion into interrogation. He said the result was a tragedy for the country, and for them.

“I feel their primary motivation was they thought they had skills and insights that would make the nation safer,” Colonel Kleinman said. “But good persons in extreme circumstances can do horrific things.”

For the C.I.A., as well as for the gray-goateed Dr. Mitchell, 58, and the trim, dark-haired Dr. Jessen, 60, the change in administrations has been neck-snapping. For years, President George W. Bush declared the interrogation program lawful and praised it for stopping attacks. Mr. Obama, by contrast, asserted that its brutality rallied recruits for Al Qaeda; called one of the methods, waterboarding, torture; and, in his first visit to the C.I.A., suggested that the interrogation program was among the agency’s “mistakes.”

The psychologists’ subsequent fall from official grace has been as swift as their rise in 2002. Today the offices of Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the lucrative business they operated from a handsome century-old building in downtown Spokane, Wash., sit empty, its C.I.A. contracts abruptly terminated last spring.

With a possible criminal inquiry looming, Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen have retained a well-known defense lawyer, Henry F. Schuelke III. Mr. Schuelke said they would not comment for this article, which is based on dozens of interviews with the doctors’ colleagues and present and former government officials.

In a brief e-mail exchange in June, Dr. Mitchell said his nondisclosure agreement with the C.I.A. prevented him from commenting. He suggested that his work had been mischaracterized.

“Ask around,” Dr. Mitchell wrote, “and I’m sure you will find all manner of ‘experts’ who will be willing to make up what you’d like to hear on the spot and unrestrained by reality.”

A Career Shift

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, Dr. Mitchell had just retired from his last military job, as psychologist to an elite special operations unit in North Carolina. Showing his entrepreneurial streak, he had started a training company called Knowledge Works, which he operated from his new home in Florida, to supplement retirement pay.

But for someone with Dr. Mitchell’s background, it was evident that the campaign against Al Qaeda would produce opportunities. He began networking in military and intelligence circles where he had a career’s worth of connections.

He had grown up poor in Florida, Dr. Mitchell told friends, and joined the Air Force in 1974, seeking adventure. Stationed in Alaska, he learned the art of disarming bombs and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology.

Robert J. Madigan, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska who had worked closely with him, remembered Dr. Mitchell stopping by years later. He had completed his doctorate at the University of South Florida in 1986, comparing diet and exercise in controlling hypertension, and was working for the Air Force in Spokane.

“I remember him saying they were preparing people for intense interrogations,” Dr. Madigan said.

Military survival training was expanded after the Korean War, when false confessions by American prisoners led to sensational charges of communist “brainwashing.” Military officials decided that giving service members a taste of Chinese-style interrogation would prepare them to withstand its agony.

Air Force survival training was consolidated in 1966 at Fairchild Air Force Base in the parched hills outside Spokane. The name of the training, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, or SERE, suggests its breadth: airmen and women learn to live off the land and avoid capture, as well as how to behave if taken prisoner.

In the 1980s, Dr. Jessen became the SERE psychologist at the Air Force Survival School, screening instructors who posed as enemy interrogators at the mock prison camp and making sure rough treatment did not go too far. He had grown up in a Mormon community with a view of Grand Teton, earning a doctorate at Utah State studying “family sculpting,” in which patients make physical models of their family to portray emotional relationships.

Dr. Jessen moved in 1988 to the top psychologist’s job at a parallel “graduate school” of survival training, a short drive from the Air Force school. Dr. Mitchell took his place.

The two men became part of what some Defense Department officials called the “resistance mafia,” experts on how to resist enemy interrogations. Both lieutenant colonels and both married with children, they took weekend ice-climbing trips together.

While many subordinates considered them brainy and capable leaders, some fellow psychologists were more skeptical. At the annual conference of SERE psychologists, two colleagues recalled, Dr. Mitchell offered lengthy put-downs of presentations that did not suit him.

At the Air Force school, Dr. Mitchell was known for enforcing the safety of interrogations; it might surprise his later critics to learn that he eliminated a tactic called “manhandling” after it produced a spate of neck injuries, a colleague said.

At the SERE graduate school, Dr. Jessen is remembered for an unusual job switch, from supervising psychologist to mock enemy interrogator.

Dr. Jessen became so aggressive in that role that colleagues intervened to rein him in, showing him videotape of his “pretty scary” performance, another official recalled.

Always, former and current SERE officials say, it is understood that the training mimics the methods of unscrupulous foes.

Mark Mays, the first psychologist at the Air Force school, said that to make the fake prison camp realistic, officials consulted American P.O.W.’s who had just returned from harrowing camps in North Vietnam.

“It was clear that this is what we’d expect from our enemies,” said Dr. Mays, now a clinical psychologist and lawyer in Spokane. “It was not something I could ever imagine Americans would do.”

Start of the Program

In December 2001, a small group of professors and law enforcement and intelligence officers gathered outside Philadelphia at the home of a prominent psychologist, Martin E. P. Seligman, to brainstorm about Muslim extremism. Among them was Dr. Mitchell, who attended with a C.I.A. psychologist, Kirk M. Hubbard.

During a break, Dr. Mitchell introduced himself to Dr. Seligman and said how much he admired the older man’s writing on “learned helplessness.” Dr. Seligman was so struck by Dr. Mitchell’s unreserved praise, he recalled in an interview, that he mentioned it to his wife that night. Later, he said, he was “grieved and horrified” to learn that his work had been cited to justify brutal interrogations.

Dr. Seligman had discovered in the 1960s that dogs that learned they could do nothing to avoid small electric shocks would become listless and simply whine and endure the shocks even after being given a chance to escape.

Helplessness, which later became an influential concept in the treatment of human depression, was also much discussed in military survival training. Instructors tried to stop short of producing helplessness in trainees, since their goal was to strengthen the spirit of service members in enemy hands.

Dr. Mitchell, colleagues said, believed that producing learned helplessness in a Qaeda interrogation subject might ensure that he would comply with his captor’s demands. Many experienced interrogators disagreed, asserting that a prisoner so demoralized would say whatever he thought the interrogator expected.

At the C.I.A. in December 2001, Dr. Mitchell’s theories were attracting high-level attention. Agency officials asked him to review a Qaeda manual, seized in England, that coached terrorist operatives to resist interrogations. He contacted Dr. Jessen, and the two men wrote the first proposal to turn the enemy’s brutal techniques — slaps, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and waterboarding — into an American interrogation program.

By the start of 2002, Dr. Mitchell was consulting with the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center, whose director, Cofer Black, and chief operating officer, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., were impressed by his combination of visceral toughness and psychological jargon. One person who heard some discussions said Dr. Mitchell gave the C.I.A. officials what they wanted to hear. In this person’s words, Dr. Mitchell suggested that interrogations required “a comparable level of fear and brutality to flying planes into buildings.”

By the end of March, when agency operatives captured Abu Zubaydah, initially described as Al Qaeda’s No. 3, the Mitchell-Jessen interrogation plan was ready. At a secret C.I.A. jail in Thailand, as reported in prior news accounts, two F.B.I agents used conventional rapport-building methods to draw vital information from Mr. Zubaydah. Then the C.I.A. team, including Dr. Mitchell, arrived.

With the backing of agency headquarters, Dr. Mitchell ordered Mr. Zubaydah stripped, exposed to cold and blasted with rock music to prevent sleep. Not only the F.B.I. agents but also C.I.A. officers at the scene were uneasy about the harsh treatment. Among those questioning the use of physical pressure, according to one official present, were the Thailand station chief, the officer overseeing the jail, a top interrogator and a top agency psychologist.

Whether they protested to C.I.A. bosses is uncertain, because the voluminous message traffic between headquarters and the Thailand site remains classified. One witness said he believed that “revisionism” in light of the torture controversy had prompted some participants to exaggerate their objections.

As the weeks passed, the senior agency psychologist departed, followed by one F.B.I. agent and then the other. Dr. Mitchell began directing the questioning and occasionally speaking directly to Mr. Zubaydah, one official said.

In late July 2002, Dr. Jessen joined his partner in Thailand. On Aug. 1, the Justice Department completed a formal legal opinion authorizing the SERE methods, and the psychologists turned up the pressure. Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times.

The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up. Higher-ups from headquarters arrived and watched one more waterboarding before agreeing that the treatment could stop, according to a Justice Department legal opinion.

Lucrative Work

The Zubaydah case gave reason to question the Mitchell-Jessen plan: the prisoner had given up his most valuable information without coercion.

But top C.I.A. officials made no changes, and the methods would be used on at least 27 more prisoners, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

The business plans of Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen, meanwhile, were working out beautifully. They were paid $1,000 to $2,000 a day apiece, one official said. They had permanent desks in the Counterterrorist Center, and could now claim genuine experience in interrogating high-level Qaeda operatives.

Dr. Mitchell could keep working outside the C.I.A. as well. At the Ritz-Carlton in Maui in October 2003, he was featured at a high-priced seminar for corporations on how to behave if kidnapped. He created new companies, called Wizard Shop, later renamed Mind Science, and What If. His first company, Knowledge Works, was certified by the American Psychological Association in 2004 as a sponsor of continuing professional education. (A.P.A. dropped the certification last year.)

In 2005, the psychologists formed Mitchell Jessen and Associates, with offices in Spokane and Virginia and five additional shareholders, four of them from the military’s SERE program. By 2007, the company employed about 60 people, some with impressive résumés, including Deuce Martinez, a lead C.I.A. interrogator of Mr. Mohammed; Roger L. Aldrich, a legendary military survival trainer; and Karen Gardner, a senior training official at the F.B.I. Academy.

The company’s C.I.A. contracts are classified, but their total was well into the millions of dollars. In 2007 in a suburb of Tampa, Fla., Dr. Mitchell built a house with a swimming pool, now valued at $800,000.

The psychologists’ influence remained strong under four C.I.A. directors. In 2006, in fact, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, pushed back against the C.I.A.’s secret detention program and its methods, the director at the time, Michael V. Hayden, asked Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen to brief State Department officials and persuade them to drop their objections. They were unsuccessful.

By then, the national debate over torture had begun, and it would undo the psychologists’ business.

In a statement to employees on April 9, Leon E. Panetta, President Obama’s C.I.A. director, announced the “decommissioning” of the agency’s secret jails and repeated a pledge not to use coercion. And there was another item: “No C.I.A. contractors will conduct interrogations.”

Agency officials terminated the contracts for Mitchell Jessen and Associates, and the psychologists’ lucrative seven-year ride was over. Within days, the company had vacated its Spokane offices. The phones were disconnected, and at neighboring businesses, no one knew of a forwarding address.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 15, 2009
An article on Wednesday about two former military psychologists who designed the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program in 2002 misstated the credentials of an Air Force officer who criticized the interrogation methods but suggested that the two psychologists had acted out of patriotic motives. The officer, Steven M. Kleinman, is a career intelligence officer and former interrogator; he is not a psychologist and is not “Dr. Kleinman.” (He has master’s degrees in strategic intelligence and forensic sciences, but does not have a doctorate.)

Book Bin: "War And Indecision: Inside The Pentagon At The Dawn of The War on Terrorism by Douglas Feith

At the Washington Times, John Weisman writes:

There is a lot to recommend "War and Decision," Douglas J. Feith's apologia of his 2001-2005 tour as Donald Rumsfeld's under secretary of defense for policy. Few books have chronicled the labyrinthine, cutthroat process of policy-making from the inside in as detailed a manner as has Mr. Feith. Mr. Feith is also a fine writer. But the most important contribution "W&D" makes to the growing body of literature about Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war on terror and why it should be required reading in schools of public service and government was probably inadvertent on Mr. Feith's part.

"W&D" should be widely read so we never again make the mistakes Mr. Feith and his fellow Pentagon, State Department, CIA and White House senior political staffers made during their planning and execution of the Iraq war, or their tunnel vision abandonment of a successful Afghan campaign that has condemned us to near stalemate and a rejuvenated, opium-funded Taliban. It is obvious Mr. Feith is bright. His vacuity about the real world, however, is shocking.

But not unexpected. Mr. Feith's entire professional life has been spent either in the practice of law or the development of public policy. Thus, he comes off as the textbook example of someone to whom process is more important than victory. Mr. Feith loses sight of the real battlefields — the ones on which soldiers die — in favor of the paper wars fought between competing factions of bureaucrats.

This is a fatal flaw during wartime. Winston Churchill — one of Mr. Feith's heroes — understood this truth. To Churchill, victory meant everything. And if it took head-cracking and tossing process out the window to achieve victory at all costs, so be it. Mr. Feith doesn't think that way. For Mr. Feith, process is all.

There are also some gaps in "W&D." But then Mr. Feith, like the lawyer he is, is prone to buttressing his position with pointillist details and citations while leaving out anything that might give aid and comfort to opposing counsel. He is hugely antagonistic toward CIA. Thus, CIA's many flaws get ample verbiage in "War and Decision." Its accomplishments do not. Even when they deserve to.

Take for example Mr. Feith's timeline "Afghanistan and the War on Terror, September 2001-December 2002." He cites October 7 as the beginning of the Afghan war and October 19th as "First entry into Afghanistan of U.S. Special Ops Forces." Neither Mr. Feith's timeline nor his prose mention the fact that CIA's JAWBREAKER team led by veteran CIA operations officer Gary C. Schroen hit the ground in Afghanistan at 2:45 PM (Local time) on 26 September, 2001, more than three weeks before the first Green Beret.

Mr. Feith never explains that JAWBREAKER, which carried millions of dollars to buy the Northern Alliance's assistance, both paved the way for the Army's special operations personnel, and worked hand in glove with its SF partners to marshal indigenous forces that killed and captured large numbers of Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants.

Equally jarring is Mr. Feith's wide-eyed assertion that his colleague Paul Wolfowitz made "an important contribution" by proposing the concept that Green Beret forces "make contact with the Afghan Northern Alliance and any other potentially cooperating local forces" to act as force multipliers. What is mind-boggling about his assertion is that Mr. Feith appears to have no idea that Green Berets have been acting as force multipliers for decades. Indeed, they are doing exactly that in Afghanistan right now.

Maybe it's naive, but one expects that under secretaries of defense will have at minimum a rudimentary working knowledge of military doctrine and capabilities. Mr. Feith seems not to, which becomes even more than frightening given his wide swath of responsibilities under Secretary Rumsfeld.

Another example of Mr. Feith's real-world ignorance is evident in his coverage of Secretary Rumsfeld's "Strategic Thoughts" paper, Mr. Rumsfeld's "conception of a global war on terrorism." In a nutshell, the Rumsfeldian concept was to get state sponsors of terrorism to alter their behavior through an asymmetric stick-and-carrot combination of military threat, political pressure, humanitarian aid and the use of NGOs.

Again, Mr. Feith's wide-eyed, 'gee whiz' reaction belies the fact that this approach is essentially the same one employed in the 1980s by such counterterrorist pioneers as Adm. James A. Lyons, Jr., who as CINCPACFLT balanced the projection of awesome American sea power with the subtle threat of special forces and humanitarian assistance of the hospital ship USNS Mercy, or Duane R. Clarridge, creator and first chief of CIA CounterTerrorist Center, whose effective asymmetric campaign against the Abu Nidal Organization combined covert action, diplomacy, and PSYOP elements to put Abu Nidal out of business. Seems to me that one vital part of policy-making is knowing when you've invented the wheel, and when you haven't. Once again, Mr. Feith seems clueless.

Mr. Feith does a fair amount of score-settling in "W&D." He repeatedly goes after CIA for its shoddy work, politicized leadership and flawed analysis. And he hits CIA for its inability to gather human-sourced intelligence. "We knew the CIA's coverage of Iraq was spotty," Mr. Feith writes, "though it wasn't until after Saddam's ouster that we learned how pathetically scant its sources in Iraq were."

But even here Mr. Feith's puzzlement is troubling, because as far back as 2001, CIA alumni (including veteran Middle East Clandestine Service officer Robert Baer in his memoir "See No Evil") had gone public about CIA's dearth of human sources in Iraq and the bloodshed and turmoil that would follow any regime change. Did no one in Mr. Feith's office — including Mr. Feith's trusted staffer Chris Straub — who had actually traveled to Northern Iraq with Mr. Baer in the 1990s — read any of these articles or books?

Mr. Feith does have a nice way with words. He portrays former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage as "A hulking bodybuilder with a foghorn voice [who] cultivated the persona of a stereotypical longshoreman union enforcer." Nicely done and spot-on accurate. To Mr. Feith, Mr. Armitage is a constant roadblock to effective policy.

So is Mr. Armitage's boss, SECSTATE Colin Powell, who comes off as insincere and ineffective when it comes to pushing the administration's positions. Mr. Feith is convinced that if Mr. Powell had arm-twisted the Europeans — especially the French and the Germans — and had put his prestige on the line with the Turks pre-invasion, things might have gone differently. And CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks (who according to Bob Woodward's 2004 book "Plan of Attack" once referred to Mr. Feith as "the [expletive] stupidest guy on the face of the earth"), is castigated mainly for his inattention to post-war planning in Iraq.

Here, I must quibble. In his criticism of Gen. Franks, Mr. Feith is far too kind.

There are also fascinating enlightenments. Mr. Feith relates how SECDEF Rumsfeld wrote a pre-war memo listing all the possible calamities that could befall the United States in Iraq. It is unsettling to realize that most of Mr. Rumsfeld's list, which came to be known as the "Parade of the Horribles," came true. And Mr. Feith admits straight up that neither he nor Mr. Rumsfeld nor anyone else anticipated "post regime violence of the type that we encountered in the insurgency . . ." The evidence was there of course, but no one wanted to see it.

And if there was ever any doubt that the Bush administration became so fixated on Iraq that it allowed its initial success in Afghanistan to wither from inattention, Mr. Feith provides a smoking gun. All one has to do is check the index of his book for "Afghanistan." After page 165 of a tome that runs 674 pages there are but three passing citations. Obviously in Mr. Feith's mind, and by extension the administration's, Afghanistan was no longer a matter of consequence once the decision to invade Iraq was made. Once again, process trumped victory. Quel dommage.

John Weisman's most recent CIA novel, "Direct Action," is currently available from Avon Books. He can be reached at blackops@johnweisman.com.

Racist Attacks On Obama Growing More Heated

Southern Poverty Law Center's HateWatch reports, "Racist Attacks on Obama Growing More Heated":

With the selection of Barack Obama as the first black Democratic nominee for president seeming more possible by the day, racists and white supremacists are posting increasingly ugly and even threatening remarks on the Internet.

“OBAMA WILL DIE, KKK FOREVER,” concludes a Feb. 15 post by “Rodney” to a blog run by a person identified only as Strider333. Above that signoff, Rodney wrote: “The KKK or someone WILL assassinate Obama! If we get a NIGGER President all you NIGGER’s [sic] will think you’ve won and that the WHITE people will have to bow to you[.] FUCK THAT.”

On traditional white supremacist and neo-Nazi sites (for instance, here and here), there are lengthy discussion threads about what would happen if Obama were elected president. Dozens of those posts are derogatory and employ all kinds of racist slurs. Others speculate that such an Obama victory would kick off a race war between whites and blacks. And some even raise the possibility that he could be assassinated. But talk like that is rare and extremely careful — probable evidence that the “white nationalists” who inhabit these sites are deeply concerned that their comments are being monitored by law enforcement for any criminal threat relating to the presidential race. In fact, Obama reportedly received federal Secret Service protection unusually early in the campaign season because of concerns about a racially motivated attack.

The most heated anti-Obama talk appears to be on Internet sites that allow people to post messages anonymously. One such site, JD Underground, is a list ostensibly devoted to lawyers, although further details were not available. It has carried a particularly venomous thread, entitled “Nigger President,” that has stretched from January into this month.

“I’m hoping someone will do his public duty of putting a bullet through Obama’s head,” said a poster identified as “Kill Da Nigga.” Another poster suggests “bring[ing] back lynchings” and concludes with a warning: “LOOK OUT NIGGER. THE KLAN IS GETTING BIGGER!!!!!!” And a third, using the screen name “amerikkkan,” says only, “The deep south is making plans.”

Padilla Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison

The New York Times reports:

Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who was once accused by the government of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States, was sentenced on Tuesday to 17 years and four months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to help Islamic jihadist fighters abroad.

The sentence was more lenient than the federal sentencing guidelines recommended and was a blow to the government, which had requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Mr. Padilla, 37.

In explaining her decision, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court in Miami acknowledged the gravity of the crimes Mr. Padilla had committed. But she questioned the range and impact of the conspiracy, saying that there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere or that their actions had resulted in death or injury to anyone.

She also noted that defendants in other well-known American terrorism cases had received life sentences for more heinous crimes, including Zacharias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Terry L. Nichols, who was convicted of murder in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Over the objections of prosecutors, Judge Cooke gave Mr. Padilla credit for time served during his 3 1/2-year detention in a South Carolina military brig following his arrest in 2002 on suspicions that he had been involved in the “dirty bomb” plot, allegations the government eventually discarded.

During that detention, Mr. Padilla was subjected to prolonged isolation and intensive interrogations in conditions that the judge called “harsh.” The conditions, she said, “warrant consideration in the sentencing.”

The sentences, following a three-month trial and a seven-day sentencing hearing, brought to a close the latest chapter in Mr. Padilla’s extraordinary legal odyssey, which began with his arrest in May 2002 at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

John Ashcroft, who was then the attorney general, announced Mr. Padilla’s capture, saying that Mr. Padilla was part of an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive “dirty bomb” intended to cause “mass death and injury.”

After his detention in South Carolina, Mr. Padilla was transferred to civilian custody in Miami in 2006 and added to the conspiracy case of two men of Middle Eastern descent, Ahmad Amin Hassoun, 45, a computer programmer of Palestinian descent, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 46, an engineer and school administrator originally from Jordan.

The three were accused of belonging to a North American terrorism support cell that provided money, recruits and supplies to Islamic extremists around the world.

Defense lawyers contended that the men were involved in humanitarian missions to help persecuted Muslims in places like Bosnia, Chechnya, Lebanon and Somalia.

The government’s main evidence against Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a lengthy criminal record, was an application form that prosecutors said he had filled out to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

Last August, a federal jury here in Miami convicted the three of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country, and of two lesser counts of material support.

On Tuesday, the judge also gave lenient prison sentences to Mr. Padilla’s two co-defendants in the case, both of whom were, like Mr. Padilla, eligible for life in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Mr. Hassoun, who recruited Mr. Padilla in a Broward County mosque, received 15 years and eight months in prison. Mr. Jayyousi, who was said to be a financier and propagandist for the cell, received 12 years and eight months.

Lawyers for the three men vowed to appeal the sentences and verdicts in the case but were in something of a victorious mood on Tuesday following the sentencings.

“It’s definitely a defeat for the government,” said Jeanne Baker, a lawyer for Mr. Hassoun.

William Swor, a lawyer for Mr. Jayyousi, criticized the length of his client’s sentence. “The government has not made America safer nor promoted the rule of law,” he said. “The government has just made America less free.”

The government’s lawyers did not speak to the media at the courthouse, but in a statement issued by the United States Attorneys Office in Miami, Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, said the case had been brought to “a successful conclusion.”

“The defendants’ North American support cell has been dismantled and can no longer send money and jihadist recruits to conflicts overseas,” Mr. Wainstein said.

But Mr. Padilla’s mothers, Estela Lebron, said in comments to the media outside the courthouse that the Bush administration had waged a misguided prosecution against her son, calling it “insane.”

“He’s a human being and an American citizen,” she told reporters. “he’s not a terrorist.” She added: “This is the way they’re spending our money? ‘Hello?’ ”

Mr. Padilla’s detention became the centerpiece of a heated debate about the Bush administration’s approach to prosecuting terrorism.

Administration officials had long maintained that some terrorism suspects could be properly handled only with military detention and trials by military commissions, not in the civilian justice system. But the verdict against Mr. Padilla seemed to undercut the administration’s insistence and, in the eyes of critics of the administration’s approach, proved that the criminal justice system should have handled the case in the first place.

Campaigns Turn To Pakistan

Candidates stress fighting terrorism

McClatchy reports:

The presidential campaign erupted Friday into a full-blown debate over how best to stabilize Pakistan as candidates vied in the few days before Thursday's Iowa caucuses to show who was best prepared to lead the fight against terrorism.

In the wake of Thursday's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates spent much of Friday laying out specific policies they'd follow now -- or, for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and two former Republican governors, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, trying to convince voters that they're qualified to play in that league.

The rivals with thicker foreign-policy resumes offered detailed blueprints of how they would deal with Pakistan. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former United Nations ambassador, struck first, telling a Des Moines audience that the United States should give Pakistan "not one penny more until [President Pervez] Musharraf is gone and the rule of law is restored."

Most Democratic candidates wouldn't go that far; New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a multi-part plan to restore stability but stopped short of calling for Musharraf's ouster.

"I don't think the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all," Clinton said as she visited Story City. "They have disbanded an independent judiciary. They have oppressed a free press."

She called for a "full, independent, international investigation."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., urged putting new pressure on Musharraf to hold "fair elections as soon as possible," while Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., a senior Foreign Relations member, urged that Pakistan's elections be postponed.

The fight was not just over ideas -- it was over foreign policy pedigree, too.

Dodd took aim at Clinton, questioning her experience.

"It isn't enough to be sitting on the sidelines, watching your husband deal with these problems over the years," Dodd said. And he termed Richardson's call for Musharraf to resign "a dangerous idea."

GOP backs Musharraf

The Republican debate had a different tone. Most candidates were more willing to tolerate, and in some cases even praise, Musharraf, while they painted Democrats as unsteady and weak.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to call for him [Musharraf] to step down now," former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson told CNN on Friday. "I hope that we as candidates out here don't start lobbing these ideas that get plenty of attention but are not very sound. This is a serious matter. It's going to be with us for some time, and we need to be deliberate in our approach to it because we have several interests involved."

Arizona Sen. John McCain said, "You're going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf, that he hasn't done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military, and he did get the elections."

Romney stressed his experience as a business executive -- saying he could put together "a great team" to help manage crises -- while Huckabee linked the assassination to illegal immigration, saying it highlighted the importance of securing the nation's borders by building a fence along the Mexican border.

Do U.S. Prisons in Iraq Breed Insurgents?

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

American officials have detained thousands of insurgents in the months since the surge of forces began this spring, in an effort that most agree has improved security in Iraq. But now the commander of the American detention facilities in Iraq is wondering aloud if holding all those detainees is breeding a "micro-insurgency" and asking whether it's time to begin releasing thousands of people.

The two main detention facilities operated by the US military in Iraq, at Camp Bucca near Basra and Camp Cropper in Baghdad, have swollen to hold nearly 30,000 detainees. That's not the 40,000 individuals Army Gen. David Petraeus allotted for when American forces began to implement the Baghdad security plan this spring. But it may be too many, says Marine Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, who oversees detainees for the US-led force.

Holding thousands of "moderate detainees," marked by green jumpsuits at Camp Bucca, runs counter to the notion of winning over a population in a classic counterinsurgency, he says. General Stone believes many of these Iraqi insurgents were never motivated by anything more than money and most only desire to live peacefully. Many can be safely released back to society, back to their families and in their neighborhoods without straining security or their communities, he says.

Stone believes that there should be debate about how many detainees US forces continue to hold and how many should now be freed.

"I am of the strong viewpoint that there is [now] enough confidence in the process that I'm a champion for releasing those for whom the process has worked and who are essentially a reduced security threat to the coalition," says Stone in a phone interview from Camp Bucca.

Indeed, the nature of the war may be shifting. The Pentagon's quarterly assessment of security and stability in Iraq, released on Tuesday, shows that violence is down across the country. Roadside bombings, for example, have dropped by 68 percent since June.

Stone, a Marine reservist who has headed a number of software development firms, is known for his passion and deliberate approach to understanding the nature of insurgencies. He is calling attention to the issue because he thinks it's time to rethink holding so many detainees at this phase of the war. As the commander of detention operations, he can provide input on the release of detainees through a new board process, but the commanders in the field who send individuals to him have the ultimate input on whether someone should be held or let go. But some commanders are resistant to letting detainees go.

Stone, who doesn't participate in field operations, recognizes that his perspective is from "inside the wire."

Commanders whose troops detain insurgents and other criminals for activities against their own men may have another way of looking at it.

"I'm not on the ground looking at their situation, and they're not in the detention facility seeing these people," says Stone.

He made an impassioned plea recently when Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway paid a visit to Bucca in November. General Conway came away impressed with the programs Stone has implemented there and is concerned that the growing number of detainees doesn't make sense anymore.

"If you roll up 150 guys in a village and you don't have probable cause, you've just created 150 little terrorists," says Conway, who says the US must review the process.

"I think there has to be more of a reason to hold a detainee or, send them away," says Conway.

In many ways, Iraq's increased security could be attributed to higher numbers of detainees. But much of the success stems from the changing attitudes of Iraqi citizens toward their own security and, to a lesser extent, their views of the American presence.

"You're always worried about 'Do you have the right guys?'" says Brig. Gen. Joe Anderson, chief of staff for the Multi-National Corps Iraq. The American military has been releasing as many as 80 detainees per week, and is looking to release more, says General Anderson, who notes that releasing detainees and getting them back to where they belong is "a major logistical task."

"You don't just open the gates and let them go," he says. "It is a deliberate methodical operation."

General Petraeus is deeply concerned about fighting the insurgency in Iraq, both on the ground and inside the walls of detainee facilities, says a senior military official in Baghdad. In the meantime, holding Iraqis is all about "legitimacy," says the official.

"We're not out arresting Iraqis [at random], we're out detaining individuals for whom we have reasonable grounds [to believe] that they are an imperative for security in Iraq," says the official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. "Everything we do is within the law."

After the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the US military transferred many detainees to Bucca and set about creating a model prison system.

Since arriving in April, Stone is credited for spearheading an innovative detainee program in which education, respect, and vocational and religious programs are a primary focus.

Stone brought imams from Baghdad to teach detainees, many of whom are illiterate, about the teachings of the Koran with the aim to foster a more moderate outlook among the population.

For the first time, detainees participate in boards that allow them to better understand why they are being held under lock and key, Stone says, to getting them to learn how their conduct affects their situation.

Stone says that on his watch, more than 3,000 detainees have been released using his methods. So far, he's seen a very slight recidivism rate and only a few former detainees were recaptured and brought back to the detention facility.

There are still hard-core insurgents and terrorists living inside the yards. In contrast to the green-clad detainees determined to be more moderate, those individuals are given red jumpsuits to wear and are largely segregated from the rest of the detainee population. Amber-colored jumpsuits indicate the wearer is "changing" to a more moderate stance.

But Bucca has had its problems, giving rise to Stone's concern that if not done right, a microinsurgency could be growing within the American-run facility, an irony that has emerged as the facility grows.

Before Stone took command, there was a riot in March, followed by another in May, that may have involved as many as 10,000 detainees. There are also a series of tunnels that have been dug in and outside the facility that have been used, in some cases, to target guards, Stone says.

Wolfowitz Back in Government?

The Bush administration has offered the former World Bank president a new public service position.

At Newsweek, Mike Isikoff reports:

Don't ever say the Bush administration doesn't take care of its own. Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank—amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend—he's in line to return to public service. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. "We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job," said one senior official.

Wolfowitz, now a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, will replace former senator Fred Thompson, who quit over the summer to run for president. Although officials declined to say how Rice came to choose him, Wolfowitz began his government career in the 1970s in the State Department as an arms-control expert; he forged a relationship with Rice during the 2000 presidential campaign, when they both served as top foreign-policy advisers to the then candidate Bush. But his selection has raised more than a few eyebrows within State because he'll be providing advice on some of the same issues that critics say the administration got spectacularly wrong when Wolfowitz was pushing the case for the Iraq War at the Pentagon. (One of the department sources called the appointment "amazing.") At least Wolfowitz, who did not return calls seeking comment, will have like-minded company: other panel members include Robert Joseph, the former National Security Council official in charge of Iraq WMD intelligence, and ex-CIA director James Woolsey, both strong allies during the Iraq debate.

The sources said Wolfowitz has already accepted Rice's offer to fill the part-time position, though it won't be announced until the completion of a standard check for conflicts of interest. But he won't have to worry about any complaints from pesky Democrats. The position doesn't require Senate confirmation.

Al-Qaida 'Rolodex' Found in Iraq Raid

UPI reports:

A September raid near the Syrian border uncovered what U.S. military officials term "an al-Qaida Rolodex" of hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq.

A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad has confirmed to CNN that the raid netted documents listing the identities of more than 700 foreign fighters believed to have entered the country in the past year.

The official said the documents, along with other intelligence, indicated that as many as 60 percent of the foreign fighters were from Saudi Arabia and Libya, CNN reported.
White House spokeswoman Nikki McArthur said the United States continued to work with countries in the region to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

"These statistics remind us that extremists continue to go to Iraq because they do not want the United States nor the Iraqis to succeed in establishing a democracy there that is an ally in the way on terror," McArthur told CNN.

Top Bush Homeland Security Adviser Resigns

CQ reports:

Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush’s top homeland security adviser since 2004, has resigned, the White House said Monday.

Townsend joins a laundry list of top-level officials to leave the administration in Bush’s second term, including political guru Karl Rove, press secretary Tony Snow, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
As assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, Townsend was a key player in the administration’s efforts to fight terrorism.

“Fran has always provided wise counsel on how to best protect the American people from the threat of terrorism,” Bush said in a statement. “We are safer today because of her leadership.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Townsend has been discussing her departure with the president for months, and left to “pursue some private-sector opportunities.

“She does intend to remain very active in the public debate about counterterrorism, and especially the tools that she believes policymakers and the intelligence community and the Justice Department officials and others across the government need in order to beat back the very determined enemy that we face,” Perino said.

She said no replacement has been named, and Townsend would stay at her post through the holiday season.

Saudi Lawyer Reports Harassment After Defending Rape Victim

AFP reports:

A Saudi lawyer and human rights activist said on Wednesday that a court in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom withdrew his licence after he objected to a ruling which penalised a female rape victim.

Abdurrahman al-Lahem told AFP that the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif banned him from handling the rape case and confiscated his lawyer's licence because he challenged the verdict.

"The ministry of justice also summoned me to appear before a disciplinary committee" during the first week of December, Lahem said.

Last year, the court in Al-Qatif sentenced six Saudi men accused of raping the woman to between one and five years in jail while sentencing the woman to 90 lashes, Lahem said.

He said he appealed the ruling at the Higher Judicial Council, which ordered a retrial.

In a new ruling on Wednesday, the court toughened the sentences against the six men to between two and nine years in prison. But it also sentenced the woman to six months in jail and 200 lashes.

Lahem and other activists saw the sentences handed to the accused, who were armed when they assaulted the woman, as too lenient in a country where rape can carry the death penalty.

The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia's minority Shiite community, to which the woman belongs. The accused are Sunnis, the dominant community in the Gulf country which applies a rigorous Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism.

Lahem said there was no apparent reason for the justice ministry's decision to refer him to a disciplinary committee.

He said the move might be due to his criticism of some judicial institutions, and "contradicts King Abdullah's quest to introduce reform, especially in the justice system."

Abdullah last month approved a new body of laws regulating the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, which rules on the basis of sharia, or Islamic law.

2007 Deadliest for U.S. in Afghanistan

Afghan passengers are seen transported by a taxi vehicle in Mazar-e- Sharif the provincial capital of Balkh province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Sameer Najafizada)

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Six U.S. troops were killed when insurgents ambushed their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan, officials said Saturday. The attack, the most lethal against American forces this year, made 2007 the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

The troops were returning from a meeting with village elders late Friday afternoon in Nuristan province when militants attacked them with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, Lt. Col. David Accetta told The Associated Press.

"They were attacked from several enemy positions at the same time," said Accetta, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the U.S. military. "It was a complex ambush."

The six deaths brings the total number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year to at least 101, according to a count by the AP. That makes this year the deadliest for Americans here since the 2001 invasion, a war initially launched to oust Taliban and al-Qaida fighters after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, but one that has evolved into an increasingly bloody counterinsurgency campaign.

The death toll mirrors the situation in Iraq, where U.S. military deaths this month surpassed 850, a record high since the 2003 invasion there.

Three Afghan soldiers were also killed in Friday's ambush, while eight Americans and 11 Afghans were wounded. The 14 total U.S. casualties was the highest number of wounded and killed from a battle in Afghanistan this year, Accetta said.

"With Sunday being Veterans Day, this is a reminder of the sacrifices that our troops and our Afghan partners make for the peace and stability of the Afghan people," Accetta said.

Overall violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the Taliban's ouster. More than 5,800 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence, according to an AP count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

In Friday's fight, aircraft and troops using artillery or mortars at nearby outposts fired on the militants' positions, Accetta said. It wasn't immediately clear how many militants were involved in the ambush, he said.

Afghan passengers are seen transported by a taxi vehicle in Mazar-e- Sharif the provincial capital of Balkh province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Sameer Najafizada)

Mohammad Daoud Nadim, Nuristan deputy police chief, said the ambush happened in the remote province's Waygal district, about 40 miles from the border with Pakistan, which militants are known to use as a sanctuary. Nadim said he had no information on any casualties among the militants.

Arabs and other foreign fighters from Chechnya and Uzbekistan are known to operate in the Nuristan region, but the region's governor, Tamin Nuristani, blamed the attack on Taliban militants. Nuristani said the combined troops searched two houses after the meeting with village elders and were ambushed after while walking to their base afterward.



Nuristan province has seen heavy fighting in recent months. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and 13 wounded by a militant ambush in July, while militants disguised in Afghan army uniforms wounded 11 U.S. troops and killed two Afghan soldiers in August.

The attack on Friday was the deadliest incident for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since a Chinook crashed in February in Zabul province, killing eight Americans. Officials ruled out enemy fire as the cause of that crash.

Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago

ABC News reports:

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning.

The alert said al Qaeda "hoped to disrupt the U.S. economy and has been planning the attack for the past two years."

Law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com that the FBI received the information in late September and declassified it yesterday for wide distribution.
The alert, like similar FBI and Department of Homeland Security terror alerts issued over the past five years at holiday times, raised questions about the credibility of the information.

The bulletin acknowledges that U.S. intelligence officers are uncertain as to whether the information is real, and intelligence officers say there is a concern that it could be "disinformation."

Law enforcement officials at three different agencies told ABCNews.com the FBI alert was based on a source who has proved reliable in the past.

The source reportedly had only "indirect access" to al Qaeda and word of the actual threat came to U.S. intelligence officers "through a lengthy chain" of contacts.

With the shopping season approaching, however, the FBI officials decided it was necessary to share the information.

For the past few years, jihadist chat rooms have regularly posted comments from anonymous individuals who have suggested or boasted about similar plans to attack such soft targets as shopping malls.

"Out of abundance of caution, and for any number of other reasons, raw intelligence is regularly shared within the intelligence and law enforcement communities -- even when the value of the information is unknown," said Special Agent Richard Kolko. "In the post-9/11 era, sharing information is our top priority. Al-Qa'ida messaging has clearly stated they intend to attack the U.S. or its interests; however, there is no information to state this is a credible threat. As always, we remind people to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities."

"We have no credible, specific information suggesting an imminent attack," a DHS official said.

7 Are Acquitted in Madrid Bombings

Suspects in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people awaited their verdicts Wednesday on the outskirts of Madrid.

The NY Times reports:

The National Court on Wednesday convicted three men of murdering 191 people and wounding more than 1,800 in the 2004 Madrid bombings. But three other men, who were accused of being the organizers, were found not guilty of direct involvement in the attacks, the most deadly carried out by Islamic radicals on European soil.

The three-judge tribunal court acquitted a total of seven suspects and found 18 others guilty of lesser charges related to the attacks, including belonging to a terrorist organization.

The sentences ranged from 3 to almost 43,000 years, although under Spanish law, the maximum anyone is forced to serve is 40 consecutive years. One defendant was released during the trial for lack of evidence.

Many Spaniards were shocked that the focal suspects were not convicted of the most severe charges.

The verdicts closed a sprawling trial that over the course of five months brought 29 defendants, nearly 50 lawyers and 350 witnesses to a temporary courtroom on the outskirts of Madrid.

The trial promised the first taste of justice to those wounded in the attacks and the relatives of those killed on March 11, 2004, when blasts from 13 sports bags stuffed with explosives and nails tore through four trains carrying people from mainly working-class suburbs to the city center.

Those who believed that prosecutors had produced enough evidence to convict the main suspects of the most serious charges were disappointed.

Isabel Presa, who lost her youngest son in the blasts, told reporters outside the courtroom, “I’m not a judge or a lawyer, but this is shameful, outrageous.”

According to Reuters, Ms. Presa said the attacks had “condemned me and my husband to a life sentence, and these people get off scot-free.”

Counterterrorism experts said the verdict underscored the difficulty of building a solid case against people accused of inspiring or directing Islamist foot soldiers, and who belong to diffuse groups with little formal structure.

The bombings were carried out by a group of North African Islamists that intersected with a band of petty criminals whose ringleader, Jamal Ahmidan, had become radicalized in a Moroccan jail. Seven of the main suspects, including Mr. Ahmidan, blew themselves up in a Madrid apartment when they were surrounded by the police three weeks after the attacks, and four others are believed to have fled.

Without a case strong enough to convict those suspected of being organizers, the prosecutors failed to prove a connection between the group that carried out the attacks and international Islamists with links to established organizations, like the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.

The counterterrorism experts said the verdicts reflected the challenges faced by police forces and judges as they seek to imprison those accused of international terrorism: the preponderance of circumstantial evidence rather than concrete proof; problems with evidence translated from Arabic and with evidence collected by other countries; unreliable witnesses; and the absence of confessions — none of the 28 defendants confessed.

“It is a point of pride to be able to try people in a courtroom, with full constitutional guarantees,” Fernando Reinares, an expert in international terrorism at the Royal Elcano Institute, said. “But in Spain there is space for debate about whether we need to adapt our judicial legislation and culture to confront international Islamist terrorism.”

Roland Jacquard, head of the International Observatory on Terrorism in Paris, said prosecutors had encountered similar difficulties in countries like Germany, where people accused of complicity in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were acquitted for lack of evidence.

He said: “We need to find a legal formula that would give evidence of the masterminds’ responsibility, and not only of the responsibility of the operatives. It is always easier to arrest someone who has imprints of explosives on his hands.”

Javier Gómez Bermudez, the presiding judge on the tribunal, sentenced Jamal Zougam, 34, a Moroccan whom witnesses saw on one of the trains that was later bombed, to more than 30,000 years in prison for charges including murder. Mr. Zougam owned a shop where most of the phone cards used in the mobile phones that detonated the explosives were bought.

The tribunal gave a similar sentence to Otman el-Gnaoui, 32, a Moroccan who helped transport the explosives used in the attacks, and to José Emilio Suárez Trashorras, 30, who was convicted as a “necessary accomplice.” Mr. Suárez, a former miner from northern Spain, supplied the stolen dynamite used in the bombings in exchange for drugs.

But the tribunal acquitted Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who was accused of being a March 11 organizer. Last year, he was convicted in an Italian court of conspiracy to participate in international terrorist activities.

The other defendants who were accused of being organizers, Hassan el-Haski and Youssef Belhadj, were acquitted of any such role and convicted of belonging to a terrorist group.

In written arguments released Wednesday, the tribunal said tapes of telephone conversations made by the Italian police and provided as evidence against Mr. Ahmed did not prove his participation in the plot. Prosecutors said Mr. Ahmed was caught boasting that he was “the thread behind the Madrid plot,” but the translation from the Arabic was disputed by Spanish translators in the Madrid court.

The tribunal also said a piece of paper found in Mr. Ahmed’s Milan apartment, bearing the words “martyr,” “honey” and “11-03-04” — the European rendering of the date of the attack — was not conclusive evidence.

Mr. Reinares, the expert on terrorism, said the tribunal appeared to have been very strict in its definition of admissible evidence. “It seems he has not admitted the extraordinary mass of circumstantial evidence,” Mr. Reinares said. “This kind of evidence is crucial when you are trying members of a nebulous group of international terrorists.”

Auditors Find Security Upgrades at Several Nuclear Sites Are Lagging

The NY Times reports:

More than a year after Congress told the Energy Department to harden the nation’s nuclear bomb factories and laboratories against terrorist raids, at least 5 of the 11 sites are certain to miss their deadlines, some by many years.

The Energy Department has put off security improvements at some sites that store plutonium because it plans to consolidate the material at central locations, but the Government Accountability Office said in a Senate briefing that that project was also likely to lag. A copy of the briefing materials was provided to The New York Times by a private group, the Project on Government Oversight, which has long been pushing for better security at the weapons sites.


Danielle Brian, the group’s executive director, said that although the deadline set by Congress was tight, if the Energy Department “had taken seriously consolidating and making this an expedited effort, they wouldn’t be having these problems now.”

Robert Alvarez, an adviser to the energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said there was wide agreement that centralizing the fuel was a good idea. But Mr. Alvarez added, “There’s a lot of pushback about moving fissile materials from a site, because then you lose a portion of your budget and prestige.”

The Energy Department declined requests for an interview, but Michael Kilpatrick, a deputy chief at the department’s Office of Health, Safety and Security, said in a statement that the steps under way were “further enhancements and better protection to some of the most secure facilities in the country.”

But Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has taken a particular interest in nuclear security, said in a statement, “The department seems to think that the terrorist threat to its nuclear facilities is no more serious than a Halloween prank, as evidenced by its failure — more than six years after the 9/11 attacks — to do what it must to keep our stores of nuclear-weapons-grade materials secure.” Mr. Markey said the delay was unsurprising but unacceptable.

One site that will miss its deadline by years is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which holds a large stock of weapons-usable uranium. The laboratory plans to dilute the uranium, but that will take until 2015, the auditors found.

Two other sites that will miss their deadlines are operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for weapons security. The agency was established in 1999 after a number of security breaches in the weapons complex, and in January its director was forced to resign because of other security lapses.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Energy Department changed its “design basis threat,” the description of the attacking force against which the weapons sites should prepare their defenses. The details of this design basis threat are classified, but the new definition specifies a larger and more capable group of attackers.

To emphasize the importance of the preparations, Congress wrote into law that the Energy Department sites should submit plans on how the department would meet the requirements. Recognizing that much of the department’s work runs far behind schedule, Congress specified that if a delay were necessary, it would have to be approved by the secretary or deputy secretary of energy.

An unclassified version of the Energy Department’s first report to Congress, in July 2006, said that more than $420 million had been spent in the previous three years in an “aggressive” program. Among the changes was giving security officers armored vehicles and large-caliber weapons. That change reduced “the need to hire more security officers to account for the expected attrition that would be a natural result of the increased adversary force.”

The department has rewritten its design basis threat several times. Mr. Kilpatrick said in his statement that all sites now met the 2003 version of the design basis threat and were working toward the current version, set in 2005.

The Energy Department told Congress in 2006 that six sites would meet the 2008 deadline. But the accountability office said that one of those, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, would not make the deadline.

The Energy Department said work at the five other sites would be completed later; those are the Nevada Test Site, the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, the Idaho National Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Y-12, a weapons site in Tennessee.

The G.A.O. said in July that the Idaho National Laboratory would not be done until 2013, four years later than the Energy Department’s estimate.

Most Bombs Missed By Screeners at Airports

USA Today reports:


Security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY.

Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows.

At Chicago O'Hare International Airport, screeners missed about 60% of hidden bomb materials that were packed in everyday carry-ons — including toiletry kits, briefcases and CD players. San Francisco International Airport screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed about 20% of the bombs, the report shows. The TSA ran about 70 tests at Los Angeles, 75 at Chicago and 145 at San Francisco.

The report looks only at those three airports, using them as case studies to understand how well the rest of the U.S. screening system is working to stop terrorists from carrying bombs through checkpoints.

The failure rates at Los Angeles and Chicago stunned security experts.

"That's a huge cause for concern," said Clark Kent Ervin, the Homeland Security Department's former inspector general. Screeners' inability to find bombs could encourage terrorists to try to bring them on airplanes, Ervin said, and points to the need for more screener training and more powerful checkpoint scanning machines.

In the past year, the TSA has adopted a more aggressive approach in its attempt to keep screeners attentive — the agency runs covert tests every day at every U.S. airport, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said. Screeners who miss detonators, timers, batteries and blocks that resemble plastic explosives get remedial training.

The failure rates at Los Angeles and Chicago are "somewhat misleading" because they don't reflect screeners' improved ability to find bombs, Howe said.

TSA chief Kip Hawley, responding to previous reports about screeners missing hidden weapons, told a House hearing Tuesday that high failure rates stem from increasingly difficult covert tests that require screeners to find bomb parts the size of a pen cap. "We moved from testing of completely assembled bombs … to the small component parts," he said.

Terrorists bringing a homemade bomb on an airplane, or bringing on bomb parts and assembling them in the cabin, is the top threat against aviation. "Their focus is on using items easily available off grocery and hardware store shelves," Hawley said.

A report on covert tests in 2002 found screeners failed to find fake bombs, dynamite and guns 24% of the time. The TSA ran those tests shortly after it took over checkpoint screening from security companies.

Tests earlier in 2002 showed screeners missing 60% of fake bombs. In the late 1990s, tests showed that screeners missed about 40% of fake bombs, according to a separate report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The recent TSA report says San Francisco screeners face constant covert tests and are "more suspicious."

Bush Administration Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

Firm Says Bush Administration's Handling of Video Ruined Its Spying Efforts

The Washington Post reports:

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.

The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the first new video message from the group's leader in three years. In it, a dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.

Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE's claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the company's methods.

SITE -- an acronym for the Search for International Terrorist Entities -- was established in 2002 with the stated goal of tracking and exposing terrorist groups, according to the company's Web site. Katz, an Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s, has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest.

"We were able to establish sources that provided us with unique and important information into al-Qaeda's hidden world," Katz said. Her company's income is drawn from subscriber fees and contracts.

Katz said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual release.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in scouring terrorists' networks for information and messages, and some have questioned the company's motives and methods, including the claim that its access to al-Qaeda's network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE's decision -- as described by Katz -- to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it with intelligence analysts.

"It is not just about getting the video first," Venzke said. "It is about having the proper methods and procedures in place to make sure that the appropriate intelligence gets to where it needs to go in the intelligence community and elsewhere in order to support ongoing counterterrorism operations."

Games Industry Discovers Gitmo, Hunger and Other Serious Issues

A new breed of computer games -- so-called "serious games" -- has been developed to help interest and educate young people about the world's political conflicts.

A screenshot of the "Gone Gitmo" game on Second Life: a continuation of the teach-in using new media.

Der Spiegel reports:

They sit onboard an airplane with their hands and feet restrained. Black hoods have been pulled over their heads. Guards roughly push them around until they are delivered to a dog-pound-like area fenced in with barbed wire. Now it is time to wait. There is no formal indictment, no lawyer -- and no escape.

That is roughly what one plot in "Gone Gitmo," a digital recreation of life in the US prison camp in Guantánamo, looks like. "Gone Gitmo" is part of the online phantasy world Second Life.

A virtual penal camp in the midst of a hedonist dreamworld that lures hundreds of thousands of pleasure-seeking computer users by means of shopping malls and nudist beaches -- is that not tasteless? "On the contrary," says Nonny de la Peña, a California-based activist who was involved in developing the politically inflected game. "It's not our playworld that's a scandal, but the conditions inside the real Guantánamo."

De la Peña is documentary film director whose works are shown mainly at small festivals. She hopes the online gulag will help her to reach young Americans who prefer playing computer games to attending demonstrations. To her, the Guantánamo simulation is something like a new-media update of the traditional teach-in.

An entire gamut of so-called "serious games" is hitting computer stores this fall -- games that are serious, challenging and politically correct. The 3D strategy game "Global Conflicts: Palestine," for example, which goes on sale in mid-October, involves the player assuming the role of a journalist doing research in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The player-reporter's task is to find out what is fueling the conflict and whether Israeli security forces are reacting appropriately to terrorist attacks. Instead of hunting monsters or gunning down enemies, players need to assemble -- by mouseclick -- a halfway plausible report on the basis of a plethora of mutually contradictory sources.

"Of course it's a game for a niche market," says Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, a Copenhagen-based professor of media studies. "But the niche is growing rapidly. We hope to be able to sell the game to 1,000 schools and 30,000 private customers for use in political education."

"Games for Change"

The new genre is expanding. The conference "Games for Change" was held for the fourth time in New York in June. It's the kind of gathering that sees computer programmers, political science professors and even World Bank and United Nations employees talking with each other.

A screenshot from the political game "Global Conflicts: Palestine."

But many serious games still suffer from serious teething troubles. Sometimes they seem too trivial and sometimes as wooden as an interactive Sunday sermon. "Darfur is Dying," for example, invites players to imagine themselves as refugees in western Sudan forced to hide from the brutal Janjaweed militias. The game was developed at the University of Southern California with the support of firms such as Reebok and MTV. It is neither particularly exciting, nor does it shed light on the conflicts behind the genocide.

"Food Force," on the other hand, is considered one of the most successful political games. It is distributed free of charge by the UN World Food Progam and is not meant to shake people awake by means of shock effects; rather, it is designed to offer insight into the complex world of famine relief. The player's task is to reduce food scarcity on a fictitious island -- despite financial bottlenecks, enemy rebels and numerous practical constraints.

Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPB) is also introducing a computer game at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. The game, called "Genius - In The Center of Power," was developed in cooperation with the textbook publisher Cornelsen and resembles a blend of the simulated civilizations of "SimCity" and Social Studies 101.

Players can take on the persona of a politician of their choice and then campaign for the offices of mayor or prime minister. Their success is measured by the degree to which they keep their campaign promises. "In this way, we want to convey a basic understanding of how democracy works," says Arne Busse, who is responsible for the development of political-educational games at BPB. Next, he is planning to develop games for young people with immigrant backgrounds.

Of course, not even the best software can substitute for political discussions; at best they can encourage such debates and provide them with facts. The virtual Guantánamo prison, for example, regularly transforms into an Internet lecture theater where legal experts explain the US Constitution.

"When I conduct a teach-in on Second Life, I'm able to show films, present documentaries and let eyewitnesses speak-- and I reach people all over the world," says the well-known and controversial Mark Denbeaux, 64, a law professor at Seton Hall University, in New Jersey. He also works as a lawyer for Guantánamo prisoners.

Denbeaux hopes to reach a wider audience by means of the seminars he presents in the pixel-prison: "The pioneer spirit on the Internet," he says, "almost reminds me of the rallies held by the civil rights movement in the 1960s."

U.S. Plans Biggest Terror Drill Ever

Global Research reports:

The nation is preparing for its biggest terrorism exercise ever next week when three fictional "dirty bombs" go off and cripple transportation arteries in two major U.S. cities and Guam, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Yet even as this drill begins, details from the previous national exercise held in 2005 have yet to be publicly released - information that's supposed to help officials prepare for the next real attack.

House lawmakers were expected to demand answers Wednesday, including why the "after-action" report from 2005 hasn't been made public. Congress has required the exercise since 2000, but has done little in the way of oversight beyond attending the actual events.

Next week will be the fourth Top Officials exercise - dubbed TOPOFF. The program costs about $25 million a year and involves the federal government's highest officials, such as top people from the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

"The challenge with TOPOFF is not the exercise itself. It's to move as quickly as possible to remedy what perceives to be the problems that are uncovered," former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with AP this week.

Ridge, who launched his own security consulting company on Monday, said he's a big fan of the TOPOFF exercises. But he said "it's not acceptable" that the review from the 2005 exercise is still not released publicly.

The House Homeland Security emergency communications, preparedness and response subcommittee was holding a hearing Wednesday on the terrorism exercise program.

This year's TOPOFF will build on lessons learned from previous exercises, according to the Homeland Security Department, which runs the program. The agency said the Oct. 15-19 exercise would be "the largest and most comprehensive" to date.

According to an internal department briefing of next week's exercise obtained by AP, a dirty bomb will go off at a Cabras power plant in Guam; another dirty bomb will explode on the Steel Bridge in Portland, Ore., impacting major transportation systems, and a third dirty bomb will explode at the intersection of busy routes 101 and 202 near Phoenix.

Local hospitals and law enforcement agencies will be involved in the "attacks" by the dirty bombs, which are conventional explosives that include some radioactive material that would cause contamination over a limited area but not create actual nuclear explosions.

"Lessons learned from the exercise will provide valuable insights to guide future planning for securing the nation against terrorist attacks, disasters and other emergencies," according to the department's Web site.

The after action report from TOPOFF 3, which deals with issues that came up in the 2005 exercise, is supposed to identify areas for improvement. That report is still going through internal reviews.

According to a brief summary of the 2005 exercise - marked For Official Use Only, but obtained by AP - problems arose when officials realized the federal government's law for providing assistance does not cover biological incidents.

The exercise involved a mustard gas attack from an improvised explosive device in Connecticut and the release of the pneumonic plague in New Jersey. This caused certain federal disaster programs to be unavailable to some residents suffering from the attack, according to the summary.

A 2005 Homeland Security inspector general report suggested the department start tracking the lessons learned from these exercises.

And a 2006 White House report on Hurricane Katrina criticized the department for not having a system to address and fix the problems discovered in the TOPOFF exercises.

"The most recent Top Officials (TOPOFF) exercise in April 2005 revealed the federal government's lack of progress in addressing a number of preparedness deficiencies, many of which had been identified in previous exercises," according to the White House.

Previously, a more detailed version of lessons-learned from TOPOFF 2, held in 2003 was not released to states for security reasons.

Germans Relying on Pakistani Interrogation Methods

Aleem Nasir was interrogated in Pakistan and then picked up by the German police when he landed in Frankfurt.

Der Spiegel reports:

German prosecutors attempting to prove a salesman guilty of al-Qaida membership have been relying on the results of his interrogation in Pakistan. He says his testimony was extracted by means of torture.

When Aleem Nasir returned from Pakistan on Aug. 25, an unusual VIP service was waiting for him at Frankfurt Airport: A police car took the dealer in semi-precious stones directly to a clinic in Mainz, where he was given a blood test and his hand and arm were photographed. The 45-year-old, who lives in Germersheim in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, was far from overjoyed about this unexpected medical examination. After all, the investigators were hoping for a diagnosis that would hardly be favorable to him: They were hoping to prove him a terrorist.

The enforced medical examination had been requested by the Office of the Federal Prosecutor, which had been given carte blanche by Ulrich Hebenstreit, an investigative judge at Germany's Federal Court, in early August. According to a court order written with apparent haste, the examination was intended to prove that Nasir had spent time in an al-Qaida training camp in northern Pakistan. It was alleged that he had attempted to mix "250 grams (8.8 ounces) of potassium nitrate with red phosphorus" and "injured his right hand and arm" when the dangerous concoction exploded.

But so far, the attempt to secure evidence from Nasir's body has not yielded the unambiguous results that had been hoped for. And now the investigators face another problem: The tip-off about Nasir's alleged handling of explosives came from the notorious Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who interrogated him in Islamabad in June. Nasir says the ISI men, some of them masked, beat him "until I could no longer stand it." The interrogations would routinely begin with between three and five punches and slaps. He was held in an ice-cold cell in a special prison with just five cells run by Americans, Nasir says. In the end, he says, he gave a false testimony just to get out of there.

The allegations are explosive -- particularly in Germany. It is the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that German authorities have based the core part of an ongoing terrorism case on the results of questionable interrogation methods. The evidence comes from a country that Amnesty International accuses of carrying out "arbitrary arrests" and of not paying much heed to suspects' basic human rights, particularly terror suspects. Former inmates report having been tortured, says Amnesty. And the German Foreign Ministry also calls the human rights situation in Pakistan "as problematic as ever."

'Forbidden Fruits Marked with Blood'

The case is adding fire to a debate in Berlin about where exactly the line should be drawn in the fight against terrorism, and about whether German authorities "profited from forbidden fruits still marked with dried blood," as Wolfgang Wieland, a member of the opposition Green Party, puts it. A parliamentary commission is currently exploring this question in the Bundestag. In 2006 the chancellery already prohibited Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), from carrying out interrogations in countries such as Syria and Pakistan.

Has Germany's Chief Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms tolerated her staff making use of testimonies extracted by torture?

Since then investigators have continued to evaluate information coming from dubious sources. But using such information in preliminary proceedings was considered taboo -- even for officials working for Germany's Chief Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms. This led the prosecutors to shred US files containing interrogation statements by Ramzi Binalshibh -- the alleged chief logistician behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks -- when it transpired the CIA sometimes uses interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," which involves submerging the prisoner in water. The transcripts of a visit German investigators paid the Syrian-born German citizen Mohammed Haydar Zammar in Damascus were also not used in German proceedings -- because Zammar, another al-Qaida member, had been interrogated in Syrian prisons.

The federal prosecutors have strayed from this clear principle in the case of Nasir, even if Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries from the Social Democrat Party (SPD) presents sophisticated arguments to show it is all just a matter of following an "investigative lead." Zypries does not believe a precedent has been set.

The behavior of the investigators also reveals how much they suspect Nasir -- and how difficult it would be to prove him guilty. The father of four was born in Pakistan, is married to a German and has been a German citizen since 1992. The German authorities have considered him a "danger" for some time. Indeed, federal prosecutors had already investigated Nasir once before when he allegedly remarked, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, that such attacks would now occur "everywhere, including Germany." The investigation didn't lead to a conviction.

So the Germans were of course excited when they heard about Nasir's arrest in Pakistan on June 18, 2007. He simply corresponds too well to the image German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of the Christian Democrat Party (CDU) has been conjuring up for months: that of German Islamists' Pakistan connection.

While Nasir himself admits to having been in Wana, a city in the lawless region of Pakistan widely held to be an al-Qaida stronghold, he also says all he did there was purchase lapis lazuli. And in fact he was carrying 25 kilograms (55 lbs) of the semi-precious stones when he was arrested.

The ISI reports, on the other hand, state that Nasir admitted to having been invited to a training camp by an al-Qaida functionary, Abdul Rehman, and that while there he mixed the explosives correctly the first time around, and injured himself during his second attempt. According to the ISI, Nasir also provided al-Qaida with binoculars and night vision devices in addition to transporting money for the group.

Another statement by Nasir illustrates just how closely Germany and Pakistan have cooperated on this case -- if the statement is true. Nasir says that his Pakistani interrogators repeatedly showed him photographs of Fritz Gelowicz. The German convert to Islam was part of the Islamist cell recently discovered (more...) in Germany's Sauerland region, which is accused of planning terror attacks in the country. The images of Gelowicz -- mostly photos taken while he was under observation -- come from the German prosecutors' files. Nasir says he did not encounter German investigators in the prison where he was held. "But," he adds, "my interrogators had been fully briefed by the German authorities."