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Early Infiltrations

Examining how and exactly when al Qaeda began operating on U.S. soil

By J.M. BERGER
(C) 2002-2003, INTELWIRE.com

In the late 1980s, the first wave of al Qaeda agents entered the United States.

In the early stages, this silent invasion consisted of foot soldiers, low-end operatives and a few key individuals trained in subterfuge.

The list included Ali Mohamed, a native of Egypt, who later became a sometime CIA informant and a U.S. Army sergeant at Fort Bragg, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mohamed served in the Army until 1989, when he moved to California.

During the early 1990s, he traveled extensively in personal service to Osama bin Laden, handling sensitive tasks like training the terrorist kingpin’s bodyguards, always returning to his home base in Santa Clara, a Silicon Valley town near San Francisco.

Bodyguards weren’t his only students; Ali Mohamed also helped train a terrorist team in paramilitary techniques back in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal and others. Some of his students would bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.

Another operative who entered the country in the late 1980s was Wadi El-Hage, a bin Laden agent whose later prosecution formed the core of 1998’s groundbreaking U.S. vs. bin Laden. In the federal prosecution, El-Hage was named one of bin Laden’s co-conspirators in embassy bombings overseas. El-Hage was known to other al Qaeda operatives in the country at the time. The Benevolence International Foundation kept personnel files on El-Hage, which were seized by the federal government in 2002.

Mohamed and El-Hage worked together at times, according to the bin Laden indictment. El-Hage moved to U.S. in 1978, but left to fight for the mujahideen in Afghanistan. He returned to the U.S. in 1985, and subsequently operated out of Tuscon, Ariz., and later Arlington, Texas, according to media reports and testimony in the bin Laden case.

From these locations, like Ali Mohamed, he traveled the globe in the service of al Qaeda. In 1989, according to various sources, El-Hage became a U.S. citizen. That same year, during a Muslim conference in Oklahoma City, according to PBS Frontline, he met Mahmud Abouhalima, who was later convicted in the World Trade Center bombing.

Abouhalima tried to buy guns from El-Hage. According to Frontline, El-Hage procured guns for Abouhalima, buying them from his brother-in-law, John Ray, who is described by Texas Monthly as a “sometime gun dealer who had also served in military intelligence.” El-Hage later testified that Abouhalima never picked up the guns and he re-sold them through a classified ad.

Another figure with al Qaeda connections, the New York City-based Abouhalima frequently wore a NRA cap, according to The Age of Sacred Terror, a recent book on al Qaeda. He was among the agents who trained in marksmanship under Ali Mohammed, by several accounts.

Abouhalima and El-Hage weren’t the only terrorist operatives to dabble in America’s gun culture during this period. Pakistan native Mohammed Asrar bought and sold weapons at gun shows no later than 1994. Asrar pleaded guilty in Texas to immigration and weapons charges in 2001. Local authorities recently told the media that a federal grand jury was investigating Asrar for possible al Qaeda connections, but no charges have emerged so far.

More recently, Hezbollah member Ali Boumelhem shopped for weapons at gun shows in Grand Rapids, MI, and elsewhere, then tried to smuggle the weapons to his terrorist colleagues overseas. He was convicted in 2001 on arms trafficking charges, according to the New York Times. And in a much-publicized recent case, IRA operatives were arrested for buying weapons at a gun show held at the Fort Lauderdale armory.

Guns shows in Grand Rapids and at the Fort Lauderdale armory figure prominently in the Oklahoma City bombing narrative, as will be seen later in this story.

In North Carolina, a young college student was studying engineering, a skill which he would later put to deadly use. Little is currently known about Khalid Shaikh Mohammad's activities during his time in two North Carolina schools, but the events of his later life would become internationally notorious, and directly relevant to this investigation.

Another future Manila plotter was in the United States taking pilot training in the early 1990s. Abdul Hakim Murad came to the U.S. in November 1991, according to the Schenectady Times Union and other sources. He trained as a pilot in Glenville, NY, about four hours from Buffalo (where Timothy McVeigh was working as a security guard at the time). He traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., scouting locations for a terror attack and allegedly chose the World Trade Center as the ideal target. He also trained as a pilot in San Antonion, Texas, and New Bern, N.C. He left the country some time in 1992.

In addition to its infiltrators already on the ground, al Qaeda began to actively recruit American citizens during this period, according to U.S. vs. bin Laden. al Qaeda wanted Americans for their passports, which allowed them to travel freely through much of the world.

One aspect of the recruitment campaign involved rallies and conferences in various U.S. cities, including Oklahoma City and Kansas City, according to terrorism expert Steve Emerson and others. Rallies in these cities highlighted Muslim extremist views. At one rally in Kansas City, a masked Hamas terrorist allegedly appeared as a guest speaker.

Kansas City was also home to Mohamed Loay Bayazid during this period. Bayazid attemped to obtain uranium for al Qaeda in 1992-1993, for use in a so-called "dirty bomb," a radiological dispersal device. By 1994, Bayazid was operating as "president" of the Benevolence International Foundation, and in December of that year, he was detained while traveling with Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, alleged founder of the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law. Frequently charged with putting cash into the hands of al Qaeda's terrorist operatives, Bayazid will re-enter this narrative forcefully in days following the beginning of the Oklahoma City bombing plot.

While these soldiers and spies settled in the United States, al Qaeda’s financiers set up charities and companies around the world, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Manila, the Philippines. Once built, these financing infrastructures were also transplanted to the United States.

One of the best known cases is the Benevolence International Foundation, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 2001 and 2002. Benevolence has a complex history which traces to Osama bin Laden along several paths.

In 1987, the year before the formal institution of al Qaeda, wealthy Saudi Sheik Adil Abdul Galil Batargy founded the Islamic Benevolence Committee in both Saudi Arabia and Peshewar, Pakistan. According to the U.S. government, one of IBC’s purposes was to raise funds in Saudi Arabia to support the efforts of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the cause to which bin Laden had devoted the last decade of his life.

At about the same time, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa was dispatched to the Philippines by Osama bin Laden personally. Khalifa is bin Laden’s brother-in-law and is considered one of his most trusted aides.

Once in Manila, Khalifa set up a variety of shell organizations designed to fund the creation of the Abu Sayyaf Group and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, two Islamic separatist terror organizations which continue to plague Philippine authorities.

Khalifa created both shell corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including charities. Around 1989, Khalifa created the Benevolence International Corporation, which purported to be an import-export company and later repositioned itself as a charity, according to the Far East Economic Review.

The Far East Economic Review (a publication of the Wall Street Journal) cites BIC as the direct predecessor to BIF. The U.S. indictment of BIF’s executive director makes the same claim about IBC. Both statements are very likely correct.

Batargy, the founder of IBC, and Khalifa, the founder of BIC, were each known associates of Osama bin Laden, and moved in the same circles and cities in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Pakistan. Two BIF-related indictments (U.S. vs. Benevolence International Foundation, and U.S. vs. Arnaout) make it clear both men had very close ties to the U.S. Benevolence. The two almost certainly know each other.

Batargy took the lead in creating the successor group, the Benevolence International Foundation, starting around 1992 and continuing through 1993, transferring the assets of IBC to BIF, according to the indictments, and positioning the organizations as essentially one. At the same time, Khalifa closed down the Benevolence International operation in Manila, and refocused his efforts on another charitable group, the International Islamic Relief Organization.

Batargy designated Enaam Arnaout to lead the newly christened Benevolence International Foundation in its U.S.-based incarnation.

Arnaout was a Syrian-born associate of bin Laden’s, according to the U.S. government. Arnaout denied knowing bin Laden when first charged but subsequently admitted the two had met.

Arnout had spent the last several years in Pakistan, puportedly studying Islam. Reports by the Chicago Tribune and charges by the federal government suggest that his real mission was directing Afghan resistance fighters in battle both inside Afghanistant and from the Pakistan border, a claim also advanced by the U.S. government. Arnaout was allegedly responsible for procuring weapons and supplies, and administering the operation of training and operations camps in the region.

In 1989, Arnaout hosted one of Osama bin Laden’s wives for a week at his home in Pakistan, according a federal indictment. The government says Arnaout directed the flow of resources and weapons, akin to a middle manager in the al Qaeda chain of command.

Arnaout moved to the United States in the early 1990s, moving to Florida with his U.S. born wife. By his own account he spent his first few years in the U.S. selling used cars. He got a Florida driver’s license in 1990 and lived in Titusville, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, other media reports and public records.

According to the Arnaout indictment, Batargy stepped back from leading BIF in the early 1990s, after the organization began to attract negative attention in other countries. In or about 1992, Arnaout took over operational control of BIF, as the foundation incorporated in the U.S. and in Canada. The move was officially ratified on paper on March 15, 1993, after which Batargy took a subsidiary role.

Arnaout hired an outspoken Palestinian activist named Adham Hassoun to open Benevolence’s first U.S. offices in South Florida. Hassoun leased space in Plantation, Fla., in February 1993.

It was an interesting month to be living and working in South Florida.

In January and February of 1993, while al Qaeda operatives built the beginnings of a financial stronghold in Plantation, Fla., two of the last decade’s most notorious terrorists were approaching critical junctures in their respective lives, just a short drive of BIF’s offices at 150 S. University Drive.

Five minutes down the road, a young ex-convict named Jose Padilla was working behind the counter at a Taco Bell and taking his first tentative steps toward Islam.

And about 20 more minutes down the road, Timothy McVeigh rolled into town and began working the local gun show circuit while staying at his sister‘s Plantation home.