On Wednesday Sept. 5^th, German police stopped a major terrorist attack. The planned bomb consisted of 730 kilogramms of hydrogen peroxide to be mixed with other chemicals. The explosive power would have been equivalent to 550 kilogramms of TNT. The IHT reports the possible targets were the Ramstein US Air Force Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport. The suspects had been under observation for 10 months, the chemicals had been clandestinely rendered harmless by German authorities. What caused the final arrest? Two things: 1) they had just recieved a call from north Pakistan urgently ordering them to follow through within 14 days. 2) a local village policeman blew the surveillance cover by literally telling them at a routine road stop that they were on a watch-list. German intelligence immediately knew the policeman had blown their cover. How? They had bugged the car [Spiegel, rough translation].
posted on Sep 8, 2007 - View this thread

Transcript of the most recent Osama bin Laden tape. [pdf]
posted on Sep 7, 2007 - View this thread

Osama bin Laden, littérateur and new-media star. A thought-provoking analysis of bin Laden's adept use of Koranic language and the Internet by Bruce B. Lawrence, an Islamic scholar at Duke who edited a new anthology of bin Laden's public statements called Messages to the World. The Western media -- says the millionaire mass-murderer formerly trained as a useful ally by the CIA via Pakistan's ISI -- "implants fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media are doing!" Know thy enemy. [via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted on Nov 3, 2005 - View this thread

“What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.” A flattering portrait of 'Bin Laden general' Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the 4th Al-Qaida #3 man captured so far.
posted on May 8, 2005 - View this thread

A story that seems to be good news no matter what side of the 'war' you're on. The dragnet around Bin Laden is reported to be closing quickly, and currently stands, says the Sunday Times, at about 30 squares mile. So, what happens next? (via Plastic.com)
posted on Nov 18, 2001 - View this thread

Just think of what could be if Bin Laden gets his hands on this stuff. Makes you wonder what he has in the tool shed.
posted on Sep 20, 2001 - View this thread

Discovery Channel's Show on Terror Anyone see this show? I thought it was informative but rather over dramatic....
posted on Sep 20, 2001 - View this thread

Robert Fisk about his meetings with Bin Laden in the French newspaper Le Monde. Two interesting quotes (in a poor translation by me):
"A few years later [after 1994] I met in Moscow an old Soviet intelligence officer, who had been a few months in Afghanistan to try to organize the liquidation of Bin Laden, just like the Americans try to do today. According to him, he didn't succeed because the men of Bin Laden couldn't be bribed. Nobody wanted to betray him."
"The Arabs are so mad about the injustices that have come to them from the Americans, that they don't need orders from Afghanistan. Inspiration could be enough. I have asked myself, when I saw last week the images from New York, if Bin Laden wasn't as amazed to see them as I was. If he has television, that is..."
posted on Sep 18, 2001 - View this thread

bin Laden has a mentor?
posted on Sep 14, 2001 - View this thread

A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence. From the Atlantic an inside look at the non-existence of US intelligence in the Afghanistan region: Unless one of bin Ladin's foot soldiers walks through the door of a U.S. consulate or embassy, the odds that a CIA counterterrorist officer will ever see one are extremely poor.
posted on Sep 13, 2001 - View this thread

Osama Bin-Laden confederate due to be sentenced tomorrow. Saudi citizen Mohammed al'Owhali, convicted for arranging the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa, is due to be sentenced on September 12, 2001. From indications, that would be at the US Courthouse in Foley Square, which is about a mile from the World Trade Center. A possible reason for the timing?
posted on Sep 11, 2001 - View this thread