I heard the sound of a Jet plane and looked out the window... it was coming right at us... There was an explosion....The building shook. Within seconds, you could see debris coming towards the window. So we just ran toward the emergency exit. The stairways were crowded and smoky. The lower 10 to 15 floors were flooded, so we were walking through water as firemen were walking up. We saw dozens of people jumping out of the building. Some of them were on fire. People whose bodies were burnt skinless were fleeing, looking for any way out. There were screams, cries. Everyone was running -cops, firefighters, civilians. I ran into the street, and watched in horror as six people either fell or jumped, dropping like dolls from the upper floors. Suddenly the top of the tower just shattered into thousands of pieces. The walls peeled away. The entire structure, once standing over 100 floors tall, folded into itself like a house of cards. Then the smoke came billowing down the streets like a solid wall of darkness and debris coming right at you...it scared the shit out of me. The cops started yelling, "Get back! Run! Get away!" I ran inside a hotel. Everything went black outside, because of the dust. People were screaming and diving for cover. Others wandered around like ghosts, covered in dirt and weeping. ***** THE MIND OF THE TERRORIST The terrorist is a predator. He probes for weakness. His goal is to instill fear in a people so that he can enforce obedience and submission. Terror is a form of propaganda. It is a political weapon. Through inflicted death (and the promise of more deaths to come), the terrorist hopes to conquer all opposition. The uncertainty of death becomes an unceasingly pounding fear. Terrorism shocks the system, wears one down, forces one to recoil in horror and to submit. It is a form of violence that attacks the soul. By committing an act of terror, the terrorist looks to gain mastery over the spirits and minds of the people. And, when terror is followed by yet more terror, the psychological effect can be calculated with an almost mathematical precision. Terrorism that occurs at the workplace, in the streets, on the playground, will almost always achieve a degree of submission and fear of additional attacks, unless opposed by equal terror. The terrorist and his cohorts will see each death and each act of unspeakable violence as a victory for his cause. Cruelty and brutal strength can make a lasting impression, leading almost always to capitulation. Terror is the most effective form of politics. To rule effectively, the terrorist must make his targets feel fear and terror. Uncertainty is essential. They must never know if or when they or their loved ones will be maimed or murdered. They must always feel at risk of death, that the iron hand of terror may strike at any moment. They may be attacked any time, at any place-having dinner, making love, kissing their children good night. The important thing is spreading terror is an overwhelming and contagious fear of horrible injuries and death. Through the uncertainly of terror, the people become afraid to continue their everyday routines, paralyzed by incomprehensible anxiety. Thus, they become more compliant, helping a terrorist achieve his agenda. Targets of such repeated acts of calculated, institutionalized terror, will surrender, because capitulation offers the possibility of salvation. What does a terrorist think? "I win by making them afraid." "We must kill and kill again, so that our people may live. It is us, or them." "By using the most horrific of methods to kill our enemies, my men are creating a new society with new values. The death and maiming of civilians, of women and children, become mere weapons to instill terror over a greater cross-section of the society. My followers will become members of a new elite-- those who have committed atrocities through the use of terror in order to fulfill the will of god. By ordering my followers to engage in acts of terror, they become closer to me and closer to each other. They will be bound to a brotherhood. Loyalty would be sealed in blood." ******* ****** THE MIND OF THE SUICIDAL TERRORIST "It is a good day to die." Any terrorist who relies on suicide to achieve his aims, believes himself to be a soldier who is dying for a cause. During World War II, the Japanese kamikaze pilots used their planes as guided missiles to strike U.S. warships. The pilots were willing to defend their country. Likewise, soldiers who stand and fight till no man is left standing, fight to defend their country. In the Middle East, the suicide bomber believes he too, is fighting for his country -- the establishment of a Palestinian state But he also believes he is fighting the enemies of god. Yet the suicide bomber differs from the Kamikaze and the soldier. He is not interested in killing soldiers, but civilians. He has no qualms about destroying the innocent. Women and children are viable, even desirable targets. By bringing the war off the battlefield and into homes, work, and public spaces, the suicide bomber tries to spread terror. Suicide bombers are usually young men with little hope for anything other than a dismal future filled with hatred violence. Some are lonely and some thirst for glory. They are often in their late teens and 20s. Most, but not all, are highly religious. Prospects are recruited from mosques and religious institutions, and are led to believe that by killing themselves and others, they will go straight to paradise, where they will be seated in honor, next to God. According to Islamic tradition, and as taught by "suicide teacher" Mohammed el Hattab, "He who gives his life for Islam will have his sins forgiven and will highest state of paradise: 70 virgins who will love him and him alone." Eternal sexual bliss is one of the rewards of martydom. Most of the bombers are affiliated to the Palestinian militant groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The Islamic Jihad also runs a summer school for young boys. The curriculum? Little boys are taught the benefits of becoming suicide bombers. The boys learn that is it is good to kill and that it is good to die. Mohammed, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, proudly displays a picture he has drawn of himself with explosives strapped to his body. Mohammed says he is eager and ready to blow himself to pieces if it means killing Jews. "I want to liberate Palestine and be part of the revolution. I want to be a martyr!" Hasan, a 12-year-old boy also wishes to be a martyr: "I will make by body a bomb that will blast the flesh off the Zionists. I will blow teir bodies into little pieces." "We are teaching the children that suicide bombing is the only thing that can frighten the Israeli people. We are teaching them that we have the right to kill Jews," said Islamic Jihad member Mohammed el Hattab, one of the teachers. "Childen come up to me and say, "Conduct another boming and free our country," says Sheik Hasan Yosef, one of the leaders of Hamas. In the elementary schools and kindergartens founded by Hamas, thre are signs on the wall which read: "The chilren are the martyrs of tomorrow. A posters on the walls at Islamic University in the Gaza City proclaim: "Israel has nuclear bombs. We have human bombs." In the classes, young boys and young men are taught and repeatedly reminded that Israel is "illegally occupying our land" and that Jews are racists who treat the Palestinians with ruthless barbarism. Mohammed el Hattab and Sheik Hasan Yosef say that there are hundreds of Palestinian "freedom fighters" who aspire for martyrdom by blowing themselves up, killing Jews, and "dieing for their country." Their hope is to free their homeland by driving out the Jews, who, the United Nations says is illegally occupying their country. Israeli officials believe that Hamas has several dozen young men, ages 18 to 23, who have been recruited, trained, and who eagerly await orders to carry out these sucidie attacks. From the perspective of the Palestinians and other Arab peoples, Israel began the 1967 war, conducted a sneak attack on surrounding Arab countries, and has ever since been occupying the Gaza strip and the West Bank--Palestinian land that Israel captured in 1967. These groups, like the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia'a militant group Hezbollah, are acutely media-conscious. Their targets and the timing of their terrorist attacks are meticulously planned to achieve the maximum public impact. Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed guerrilla force based in southern Lebanon is suspected of involvement in the 1983 bombings against the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and the U.S. Embassy. In 1986, Hezbollah hijacked a TWA airliner with the intention of crashing it into buildings in Tel Aviv. The leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, as well as several other potential suspect organizations denied involvement with the assaults. The spiritual leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, denied any connection with the attacks, saying, "Our battle is on the Palestinian land." Two other radical Palestinian groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, denied any involvement in these terrorists attacks on America. There is no strong evidence to suggest that the members of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, played any role in the terrorist attack on the citizens of the United States. The same is not true of Hezbollah, which also goes by the name of Islamic Jihad. The U.S. government strongly suspects that Hezbollah was directly involved in the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. The purpose of these bombings was not drive U.S. forces from Lebanon. They succeeded. Despite blustery rhetoric, the Reagan administration cut their losses and pulled their forces from this Muslim country--thus driving home a lesson to all terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah: terrorism works. Yet, there are numerous other candidate organizations including Abu Sayyaf, the Armed Islamic Group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Al-Jihad, Mujahedin-e Khalq, Palestine Liberation Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and al-Qa'eda which is led and financed by Osama bin Laden. According to the U.S. State Department, what these groups all have in common are their often fanatical Islamic beliefs and anti-American anti-Western sentiments. Because of their fanatical anti-western views, it is possible that each were involved to varying degrees, thus making them all coconspirators. The least likely to have played a role in the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon is Abu Sayyaf. The stated goal of Abu Sayyaf is the establishment of an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines and the overthrow of the pro-Western government curently in power. Likewise, there is little evience to suggest particiption by the Armed Islamic Group which is headquartered in Algeria. They began their terrorist activities after the pro-Western military establishment of Algiers voided the electoral victory of the country's largest Islamic opposition party in 1992. Their stated goal is to make Algeria an Islamic state. However, groups that may have been involved or participated or provided aid or support include the Palestine Liberation Front which is headquartered in Iraq, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which is located in Syria. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has participated in numerous international terrorist attacks Israel and moderate Arab states, whereas the Palestine Liberation Front is directly responsible for the attack on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985. Both share the goal of Independent Palestinian state, a goal which they believe can only be achieved by the destruction of Israel and, by proxy, Israel's only ally, the United States. As noted, the Palestine Liberation Front which is headquartered in Iraq, which the U.S. devastated during the Gulf War. The leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, has also offered a million dollar reward to anyone who shoots or brings down a U.S. plane--a reward that could be promised to the families of any terrorist who successfully hijacks a U.S. plane and extracts revenge on America for the devastation caused by the Gulf War. The promise of significant financial rewards to the families of suicide bombers is in fact believed to be a powerful incentive to those who carry out suicide bombings in Israel. And Saddam Hessein has promised to financially reward the families of suicide bombers. According to former CIA Director James Woolsey, Saddam, in fact, has been linked to terrorist attacks against the United States, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And, the best predictor of the future, is the past. Although a senior U.S. official has reported that there is no evidence which directly links Iraq to the September 11th attack. Yet, that is not exactly true. One of the hijacker's who hijacked Flight 11, Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officers earlier this year. The question remains: What role, if any did Iraq and Saddam Hussein play in the attack on America? Yet another likely co-conspirator is the terrorist organization, Harakat ul-Mujahidin which is fanatically anti-West and anti-American. One of the leaders, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, in fact cosigned Osama bin Laden's fatwa (religious decree) against the United States, calling for a holy war against America. Harakat ul-Mujahidin is also believed responsible for the hijacking of an Indian aircraft in December 2000. Its stated goal is ending India's control of disputed region of Kashmir and the establishment of a pure Islamic state. Al-Jihad is a shadowy group, with operatives and agents in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen, and the United Kingdom. Al-Jihad is responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Sadat was killed, in part, because he signed a peace treaty with Israel, and because of his pro-western views. Al-Jihad mainains a close association with bin Laden and its stated goals include the verthrow of the current Egyptian government and the establishment of an Islamic state. The stated goal of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, is to overthrow Egypts pro-Western government and create an Islamic state. However, the leader of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is in jail for the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center. Moreover, intelligence sources report that Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya has received considerable financial support from Osama bin Laden and militants in Iran. Bin Laden and his organization, al-Qa'eda, may well be the linch-pin and the key to unraveling who orchestrated, planned, and executed the attack on America. Like other Islamic-terrorist groups, the stated goal of al-Qa'eda and bin Laden is to expell non-Muslims from Muslim countries and overthrow U.S.-allied regimes in the Arab world. In February 1998, bin Laden said it was the duty of all Muslims to kill U.S. citizens and their allies. ****** Osama bin Laden has published two religious orders seeking to justify violence against Western interests in the Middle East. The first was a document entitled, "Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War." Written in August 1996, it was published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper that bin Laden has often used to communicate his views. The text presented here was translated by the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, a pro-bin Laden organization, and posted on the Internet in October 1996.

The second order, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, was published in February 1998.

DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST THE AMERICANS OCCUPYING THE LAND OF THE TWO HOLY PLACES

(EXPEL THE INFIDELS FROM THE ARAB PENINSULA)

A MESSAGE FROM USAMA BIN MUHAMMAD BIN IN LADEN TO HIS MUSLIM BRETHREN ALL OVER THE WORLD GENERALLY AND IN THE ARAB PENINSULA SPECIFICALLY

Praise be to Allah, we seek His help and ask for his pardon. we take refuge in Allah from our wrongs and bad deeds. Who ever been guided by Allah will not be misled, and who ever has been misled, he will never be guided. I bear witness that there is no God except Allah-no associates with Him- and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and messenger.

{O you who believe! be careful of -your duty to- Allah with the proper care which is due to Him, and do not die unless you are Muslim} (Imraan; 3:102), {O people be careful of -your duty to- your Lord, Who created you from a single being and created its mate of the same -kind- and spread from these two, many men and women; and be careful of -your duty to- Allah , by whom you demand one of another -your rights-, and (be careful) to the ties of kinship; surely Allah ever watches over you} (An-Nisa; 4:1), {O you who believe! be careful- of your duty- to Allah and speak the right word; He will put your deeds into a right state for you, and forgive you your faults; and who ever obeys Allah and his Apostle, he indeed achieve a mighty success} (Al-Ahzab; 33:70-71).

Praise be to Allah, reporting the saying of the prophet Shu'aib: {I desire nothing but reform so far as I am able, and with non but Allah is the direction of my affair to the right and successful path; on him do I rely and to him do I turn} (Hud; 11:88).

Praise be to Allah, saying: {You are the best of the nations raised up for -the benefit of- men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah} (Aal-Imraan; 3:110). Allah's blessing and salutations on His slave and messenger who said: (The people are close to an all encompassing punishment from Allah if they see the oppressor and fail to restrain him.)

It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.

The people of Islam awakened and realised that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").

Under the present circumstances, and under the banner of the blessed awakening which is sweeping the world in general and the Islamic world in particular, I meet with you today. And after a long absence, imposed on the scholars (Ulama) and callers (Da'ees) of Islam by the iniquitous crusaders movement under the leadership of the USA; who fears that they, the scholars and callers of Islam, will instigate the Ummah of Islam against its' enemies as their ancestor scholars-may Allah be pleased with them- like Ibn Taymiyyah and Al'iz Ibn Abdes-Salaam did. And therefore the Zionist-Crusader alliance resorted to killing and arresting the truthful Ulama and the working Da'ees (We are not praising or sanctifying them; Allah sanctify whom He pleased). They killed the Mujahid Sheikh Abdullah Azzaam, and they arrested the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmad Yaseen and the Mujahid Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman (in America).

By orders from the USA they also arrested a large number of scholars, Da'ees and young people - in the land of the two Holy Places- among them the prominent Sheikh Salman Al-Oud'a and Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali and their brothers; (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). We, myself and my group, have suffered some of this injustice ourselves; we have been prevented from addressing the Muslims. We have been pursued in Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan, hence this long absence on my part. But by the Grace of Allah, a safe base is now available in the high Hindukush mountains in Khurasan ; where--by the Grace of Allah-the largest infidel military force of the world was destroyed. And the myth of the super power was withered in front of the Mujahideen cries of Allahu Akbar (God is greater). Today we work from the same mountains to lift the iniquity that had been imposed on the Ummah by the Zionist-Crusader alliance, particularly after they have occupied the blessed land around Jerusalem, route of the journey of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) and the land of the two Holy Places. We ask Allah to bestow us with victory, He is our Patron and He is the Most Capable.

From here, today we begin the work, talking and discussing the ways of correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general, and the Land of the two Holy Places in particular. We wish to study the means that we could follow to return the situation to its' normal path. And to return to the people their own rights, particularly after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the religion of the people. An injustice that had affected every section and group of the people; the civilians, military and security men, government officials and merchants, the young and the old people as well as schools and university students. Hundred of thousands of the unemployed graduates, who became the widest section of the society, were also affected.

Injustice had affected the people of the industry and agriculture. It affected the people of the rural and urban areas. And almost every body complain about something. The situation at the land of the two Holy places became like a huge volcano at the verge of eruption that would destroy the Kufr and the corruption and its' sources. The explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar is a warning of this volcanic eruption emerging as a result of the sever oppression, suffering, excessive iniquity, humiliation and poverty.

People are fully concerned about their every day livings; every body talks about the deterioration of the economy, inflation, ever increasing debts and jails full of prisoners. Government employees with limited income talk about debts of ten thousands and hundred thousands of Saudi Riyals . They complain that the value of the Riyal is greatly and continuously deteriorating among most of the main currencies. Great merchants and contractors speak about hundreds and thousands of million Riyals owed to them by the government. More than three hundred forty billions of Riyal owed by the government to the people in addition to the daily accumulated interest, let alone the foreign debt. People wonder whether we are the largest oil exporting country?! They even believe that this situation is a curse put on them by Allah for not objecting to the oppressive and illegitimate behaviour and measures of the ruling regime: Ignoring the divine Shari'ah law; depriving people of their legitimate rights; allowing the American to occupy the land of the two Holy Places; imprisonment, unjustly, of the sincere scholars. The honourable Ulamah and scholars as well as merchants, economists and eminent people of the country were all alerted by this disastrous situation.

Quick efforts were made by each group to contain and to correct the situation. All agreed that the country is heading toward a great catastrophe, the depth of which is not known except by Allah. One big merchant commented : '' the king is leading the state into 'sixty-six' folded disaster'', (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah"). Numerous princes share with the people their feelings, privately expressing their concerns and objecting to the corruption, repression and the intimidation taking place in the country. But the competition between influential princes for personal gains and interest had destroyed the country. Through its course of actions the regime has torn off its legitimacy:

(1) Suspension of the Islamic Shari'ah law and exchanging it with man made civil law. The regime entered into a bloody confrontation with the truthful Ulamah and the righteous youths (we sanctify nobody; Allah sanctify Whom He pleaseth).

(2) The inability of the regime to protect the country, and allowing the enemy of the Ummah - the American crusader forces- to occupy the land for the longest of years. The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition, particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified heavy spending on these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy of the country. Expensive deals were imposed on the country to purchase arms. People asking what is the justification for the very existence of the regime then?

Quick efforts were made by individuals and by different groups of the society to contain the situation and to prevent the danger. They advised the government both privately and openly; they send letters and poems, reports after reports, reminders after reminders, they explored every avenue and enlist every influential man in their movement of reform and correction. They wrote with style of passion, diplomacy and wisdom asking for corrective measures and repentance from the "great wrong doings and corruption " that had engulfed even the basic principles of the religion and the legitimate rights of the people.

But -to our deepest regret- the regime refused to listen to the people accusing them of being ridiculous and imbecile. The matter got worse as previous wrong doings were followed by mischief's of greater magnitudes. All of this taking place in the land of the two Holy Places! It is no longer possible to be quiet. It is not acceptable to give a blind eye to this matter.

As the extent of these infringements reached the highest of levels and turned into demolishing forces threatening the very existence of the Islamic principles, a group of scholars-who can take no more- supported by hundreds of retired officials, merchants, prominent and educated people wrote to the King asking for implementation of the corrective measures. In 1411 A.H. (May 1991), at the time of the gulf war, a letter, the famous letter of Shawwaal, with over four hundred signatures was send to the king demanding the lift of oppression and the implementation of corrective actions. The king humiliated those people and choose to ignore the content of their letter; and the very bad situation of the country became even worse.

People, however, tried again and send more letters and petitions. One particular report, the glorious Memorandum Of Advice, was handed over to the king on Muharram, 1413 A.H (July 1992), which tackled the problem pointed out the illness and prescribed the medicine in an original, righteous and scientific style. It described the gaps and the shortcoming in the philosophy of the regime and suggested the required course of action and remedy. The report gave a description of:

(1) The intimidation and harassment suffered by the leaders of the society, the scholars, heads of tribes, merchants, academic teachers and other eminent individuals;

(2) The situation of the law within the country and the arbitrary declaration of what is Halal and Haram (lawful and unlawful) regardless of the Shari'ah as instituted by Allah;

(3) The state of the press and the media which became a tool of truth-hiding and misinformation; the media carried out the plan of the enemy of idolising cult of certain personalities and spreading scandals among the believers to repel the people away from their religion, as Allah, the Exalted said: {surely- as for- those who love that scandal should circulate between the believers, they shall have a grievous chastisement in this world and in the here after} (An-Noor, 24:19).

(4) Abuse and confiscation of human rights;

(5) The financial and the economical situation of the country and the frightening future in the view of the enormous amount of debts and interest owed by the government; this is at the time when the wealth of the Ummah being wasted to satisfy personal desires of certain individuals!! while imposing more custom duties and taxes on the nation. (the prophet said about the woman who committed adultery: "She repented in such a way sufficient to bring forgiveness to a custom collector!!").,

(6) The miserable situation of the social services and infra-structure especially the water service and supply , the basic requirement of life.,

(7) The state of the ill-trained and ill-prepared army and the impotence of its commander in chief despite the incredible amount of money that has been spent on the army. The gulf war clearly exposed the situation.,

(8) Shari'a law was suspended and man made law was used instead.,

(9) And as far as the foreign policy is concerned the report exposed not only how this policy has disregarded the Islamic issues and ignored the Muslims, but also how help and support were provided to the enemy against the Muslims; the cases of Gaza-Ariha and the communist in the south of Yemen are still fresh in the memory, and more can be said.

As stated by the people of knowledge, it is not a secret that to use man made law instead of the Shari'a and to support the infidels against the Muslims is one of the ten "voiders" that would strip a person from his Islamic status (turn a Muslim into a Mushrik, non believer status). The All Mighty said: {and whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are the unbelievers} (Al-Ma'ida; 5:44), and {but no! by your Lord! they do not believe (in reality) until they make you a judge of that which has become a matter of disagreement among them, and then do not find the slightest misgiving in their hearts as to what you have decided and submit with entire submission} (An-Nissa; 4:65).

In spite of the fact that the report was written with soft words and very diplomatic style, reminding of Allah, giving truthful sincere advice, and despite of the importance of advice in Islam - being absolutely essential for those in charge of the people- and the large number who signed this document as well as their supporters, all of that was not an intercession for the Memorandum . Its' content was rejected and those who signed it and their sympathisers were ridiculed, prevented from travel, punished and even jailed.

Therefore it is very clear that the advocates of correction and reform movement were very keen on using peaceful means in order to protect the unity of the country and to prevent blood shed. Why is it then the regime closed all peaceful routes and pushed the people toward armed actions?!! which is the only choice left for them to implement righteousness and justice. To whose benefit does prince Sultan and prince Nayeff push the country into a civil war that will destroy everything? and why consulting those who ignites internal feuds, playing the people against each other and instigate the policemen, the sons of the nation, to abort the reform movement. While leaving in peace and security such traitors who implement the policy of the enemy in order to bleed the financial and the human resources of the Ummah, and leaving the main enemy in the area-the American Zionist alliance enjoy peace and security?!

The advisor (Zaki Badr, the Egyptian ex-minister of the interior) to prince Nayeff -minister of interior- was not acceptable even to his own country; he was sacked from his position there due to the filthy attitude and the aggression he exercised on his own people, yet he was warmly welcomed by prince Nayeff to assist in sins and aggressions. He unjustly filled the prisons with the best sons of this Ummah and caused miseries to their mothers. Does the regime want to play the civilians against their military personnel and vice versa, like what had happened in some of the neighbouring countries?!! No doubts this is the policy of the American-Israeli alliance as they are the first to benefit from this situation.

But with the grace of Allah, the majority of the nation, both civilians and military individuals are aware of the wicked plan. They refused to be played against each others and to be used by the regime as a tool to carry out the policy of the American-Israeli alliance through their agent in our country: the Saudi regime.

Therefore every one agreed that the situation can not be rectified (the shadow cannot be straighten when its' source, the rod, is not straight either) unless the root of the problem is tackled. Hence it is essential to hit the main enemy who divided the Ummah into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion. The Zionist-Crusader alliance moves quickly to contain and abort any "corrective movement" appearing in the Islamic countries. Different means and methods are used to achieve their target; on occasion the "movement" is dragged into an armed struggle at a predetermined unfavourable time and place. Sometime officials from the Ministry of Interior, who are also graduates of the colleges of the Shari'ah, are leashed out to mislead and confuse the nation and the Ummah (by wrong Fatwas) and to circulate false information about the movement. At other occasions some righteous people were tricked into a war of words against the Ulama and the leaders of the movement, wasting the energy of the nation in discussing minor issues and ignoring the main one that is the unification of the people under the divine law of Allah.

In the shadow of these discussions and arguments truthfulness is covered by the falsehood, and personal feuds and partisanship created among the people increasing the division and the weakness of the Ummah; priorities of the Islamic work are lost while the blasphemy and polytheism continue its grip and control over the Ummah. We should be alert to these atrocious plans carried out by the Ministry of Interior. The right answer is to follow what have been decided by the people of knowledge, as was said by Ibn Taymiyyah (Allah's mercy upon him): "people of Islam should join forces and support each other to get rid of the main "Kufr" who is controlling the countries of the Islamic world, even to bear the lesser damage to get rid of the major one, that is the great Kufr".

If there are more than one duty to be carried out, then the most important one should receive priority. Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. No other priority, except Belief, could be considered before it; the people of knowledge, Ibn Taymiyyah, stated: "to fight in defence of religion and Belief is a collective duty; there is no other duty after Belief than fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion. There is no preconditions for this duty and the enemy should be fought with one best abilities. (ref: supplement of Fatawa). If it is not possible to push back the enemy except by the collective movement of the Muslim people, then there is a duty on the Muslims to ignore the minor differences among themselves; the ill effect of ignoring these differences, at a given period of time, is much less than the ill effect of the occupation of the Muslims' land by the main Kufr. Ibn Taymiyyah had explained this issue and emphasised the importance of dealing with the major threat on the expense of the minor one. He described the situation of the Muslims and the Mujahideen and stated that even the military personnel who are not practising Islam are not exempted from the duty of Jihad against the enemy.

Ibn Taymiyyah , after mentioning the Moguls (Tatar) and their behaviour in changing the law of Allah, stated that: the ultimate aim of pleasing Allah, raising His word, instituting His religion and obeying His messenger (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is to fight the enemy, in every aspects and in a complete manner; if the danger to the religion from not fighting is greater than that of fighting, then it is a duty to fight them even if the intention of some of the fighter is not pure i.e . fighting for the sake of leadership (personal gain) or if they do not observe some of the rules and commandments of Islam. To repel the greatest of the two dangers on the expense of the lesser one is an Islamic principle which should be observed. It was the tradition of the people of the Sunnah (Ahlul-Sunnah) to join and invade- fight- with the righteous and non righteous men. Allah may support this religion by righteous and non righteous people as told by the prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM). If it is not possible to fight except with the help of non righteous military personnel and commanders, then there are two possibilities: either fighting will be ignored and the others, who are the great danger to this life and religion, will take control; or to fight with the help of non righteous rulers and therefore repelling the greatest of the two dangers and implementing most, though not all, of the Islamic laws. The latter option is the right duty to be carried out in these circumstances and in many other similar situation. In fact many of the fights and conquests that took place after the time of Rashidoon, the guided Imams, were of this type. (majmoo' al Fatawa, 26/506).

No one, not even a blind or a deaf person , can deny the presence of the widely spread mischief's or the prevalence of the great sins that had reached the grievous iniquity of polytheism and to share with Allah in His sole right of sovereignty and making of the law. The All Mighty stated: {And when Luqman said to his son while he admonish him: O my son! do not associate ought with Allah; most surely polytheism is a grievous iniquity} (Luqman; 31:13). Man fabricated laws were put forward permitting what has been forbidden by Allah such as usury (Riba) and other matters. Banks dealing in usury are competing, for lands, with the two Holy Places and declaring war against Allah by disobeying His order {Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury} (Baqarah; 2:275). All this taking place at the vicinity of the Holy Mosque in the Holy Land! Allah (SWT) stated in His Holy Book a unique promise (that had not been promised to any other sinner) to the Muslims who deals in usury: {O you who believe! Be careful of your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains (due) from usury, if you are believers * But if you do (it) not, then be appraised of WAR from Allah and His Apostle} (Baqarah; 2:278-279). This is for the "Muslim" who deals in usury (believing that it is a sin), what is it then to the person who make himself a partner and equal to Allah, legalising (usury and other sins) what has been forbidden by Allah. Despite of all of the above we see the government misled and dragged some of the righteous Ulamah and Da'ees away from the issue of objecting to the greatest of sins and Kufr. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").

******** Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders
World Islamic Front Statement< Osama bin Laden has published two religious orders seeking to justify violence against Western interests in the Middle East. The first was a document entitled, Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War. The statement presented here was published in February 1998.

23 February 1998

Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin

Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt

Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group

Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan

Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh

Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."

On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God."

This is in addition to the words of Almighty God: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty God said: "O ye who believe, give your response to God and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that God cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty God also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of God, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For God hath power over all things."

Almighty God also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

*******

Several months after Osama bin Laden declared holy war on the United States in August 1996, an Arab journalist trekked up to his hide-out, 8,000 feet high in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. Why, he asked the fugitive Saudi millionaire and terrorism financier, had there been no immediate attacks to back up the threats?

"If we wanted to carry out small operations, it would have been easy to do," bin Laden told the reporter. "The nature of the battle requires good preparation."

In the 10 years before his emergence last week as the prime suspect in the deadliest terrorist attack in history, bin Laden, 44, has described his goals, grievances and tactics in great detail in a series of statements and interviews. Taken together, these statements provide insight into an ideology that seems abhorrent and even crazy to the vast majority of Americans but has been carefully crafted to appeal to the disgruntled and dispossessed of the Islamic world.

Elements of the attacks in New York and Washington were foreshadowed by bin Laden's explanations of his vision and methods. One of his themes, for example, is the importance of guerrilla warfare, as opposed to frontal combat with a more powerful enemy. Another is the need for lengthy preparation. Meticulous planning -- sometimes for as long as three or four years -- has been a hallmark of terrorist operations associated with bin Laden, including the 1998 bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa and the destruction of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, last year.

At the heart of the bin Laden opus are two declarations of holy war -- jihad -- against America. The first, issued in 1996, was directed specifically at "Americans occupying the land of the two holy places," as bin Laden refers to his native Saudi Arabia, where 5,000 U.S. troops have been stationed since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The two holy places are Muslim shrines at Mecca and Medina.

In 1998, he broadened the edict to include the killing of "Americans and their allies, civilians and military . . . in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although the first attacks directly associated with bin Laden took place in Saudi Arabia, Somalia, East Africa and Yemen, he made clear all along that he planned to bring his war to the American homeland. The battle will "inevitably move . . . to American soil," he told ABC News reporter John Miller in May 1998, shortly after publication of the second edict.

In return for joining the jihad against America, bin Laden promises his followers an honored place in paradise, in accordance with the statement in the Koran that "a martyr's privileges are guaranteed by Allah." True Islamic youths, bin Laden argued in his 1996 decree, know that their rewards from fighting the United States will be "double" their rewards from fighting other countries. Their only aim in life, he has told Americans, is "to enter paradise by killing you."

Against U.S. Presence

The pivotal date in bin Laden's emergence as a sworn enemy of the United States is 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War. The son of a fabulously wealthy Saudi construction magnate, he had just returned home to Saudi Arabia after a decade fighting alongside the Afghan mujaheddin in their CIA-funded insurrection against the Soviet army. He was enraged to discover that "American crusader forces" were "occupying" his homeland.

In the American view, U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia to liberate the neighboring state of Kuwait, which had been invaded by the armies of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. After the Gulf War ended, U.S. forces, which had not been stationed in Saudi Arabia before the war, remained on a semi-permanent basis to train the Saudi air force and police forces and protect the kingdom from further Iraqi mischief.

Bin Laden, along with an increasingly vocal Saudi opposition, saw the matter quite differently. In their view, the presence of foreign forces was an intolerable affront to 1,400 years of Islamic tradition, dating back to an injunction from the prophet Muhammad that there "not be two religions in Arabia." They argued that responsibility for defending the kingdom should fall on the Saudi government, which had poured billions of dollars into the military, rather than on Western "crusader forces."

Despite controlling 11 percent of the world's oil supply, Saudi Arabia was beginning to feel the effects of an increasingly serious economic crisis, caused by falling oil prices and widespread corruption. Bin Laden tied all this to the presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil and the "unjustified heavy spending on these forces" by the Saudi government. "The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition," he wrote in his 1996 declaration of jihad.

Two years later, in the 1998 decree, described by Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis of Princeton University as "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose," bin Laden charged that Americans had declared war on Muslims. "For more than seven years the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases in the peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples."

In bin Laden's war, the goal of expelling the "Judeo-Christian enemy" from the holy lands of Islam should be met first on the Arabian peninsula. His next priority is Iraq, which for 500 years was the seat of the most powerful Islamic state, or caliphate. A distant third on this agenda is Palestine, site of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which Muslims believe was the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Bin Laden's view of America is almost the mirror opposite of America's view of him. In his opinion, he and his supporters are waging a just war against American "terrorism." Terrorist acts committed by Americans, according to bin Laden, include the "occupation" of Saudi Arabia, the "starving" of up to a million Iraqi children because of U.N. sanctions, the withholding of arms to Bosnian Muslims in their war against Christian Serbs, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.

Terrorism, bin Laden told ABC News in 1998, can be both "reprehensible" and "commendable."

"In today's wars," he said, "there are no morals. [Americans] rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists."

Bin Laden's declarations of jihad draw on a radical interpretation of Islam that is contested by most Muslims. In medieval times, Islamic jurists differed on the moral permissibility of using poisoned arrows and poisoning enemy water supplies, what Lewis describes as "the missile and chemical warfare of the Middle Ages." But at no point, Lewis wrote in a 1998 article for Foreign Affairs, do basic Islamic texts even consider "the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders."

Traditionally, responsibility for declaring a jihad rested with a community of scholars and theologians known as the ulema. But according to Khaled Abou el Fadl, an Islamic law expert at UCLA, the collapse of centralized authority in the Islamic world has led to a "moral and political vacuum" in which virtually any Muslim can declare a jihad. He added, however, that according to Islamic tradition, a religious decree, or fatwa, of the kind issued by bin Laden is "nonbinding" on other believers.

'Myth of the Superpower'

What Americans view as bin Laden's megalomania -- the conviction that he and a relatively small band of followers can defeat a superpower -- has its origins in the humbling of the Soviet superpower in the mountains of Afghanistan. In a CNN interview in 1997, he said that "the myth of the superpower was destroyed not only in my mind but also in the minds of all Muslims" as a result of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of mujaheddin.

Bin Laden's contempt for America seems even greater than his contempt for the Soviet Union. "The Russian soldier is more courageous and patient than the U.S. soldier," he told the London-based Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, in 1996. "Our battle with the United States is easy compared with the battles in which we engaged in Afghanistan."

As examples of alleged American cowardice, bin Laden frequently cites the case of the withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the withdrawal from Somalia after the 1993 killings of U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu. Bin Laden also has paid a great deal of attention to the symbolism of his targets. In a video that circulated widely in the Arab world earlier this year, he bragged of the attack on the USS Cole by a boat filled with explosives in Aden harbor in October 2000. The destroyer had the "illusion she could destroy anything," but was itself destroyed by a tiny boat, bin Laden said.

"The destroyer represented the West, and the small boat represented Muhammad," he boasted, according to a transcript of the videotape supplied by Peter Bergen, author of "Holy War Inc.," a forthcoming book about bin Laden.

Bin Laden also has the resources and the international connections to successfuly carry out such an attack. Although located in Afghanistan, al-Qa'eda and bin Laden have agents in Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Canada, Chechnya, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, UnitedKingdom, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and, most importantly, the United States. Bin Laden not only has the resources and the international connections, but he and his organization have been implicated in numerous well planned military and terrorist attacks on United States interests, including

Several months after Osama bin Laden declared holy war on the United States in August 1996, an Arab journalist trekked up to his hide-out, 8,000 feet high in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. Why, he asked the fugitive Saudi millionaire and terrorism financier, had there been no immediate attacks to back up the threats?

"If we wanted to carry out small operations, it would have been easy to do," bin Laden told the reporter. "The nature of the battle requires good preparation."

In the 10 years before his emergence last week as the prime suspect in the deadliest terrorist attack in history, bin Laden, 44, has described his goals, grievances and tactics in great detail in a series of statements and interviews. Taken together, these statements provide insight into an ideology that seems abhorrent and even crazy to the vast majority of Americans but has been carefully crafted to appeal to the disgruntled and dispossessed of the Islamic world.

Elements of the attacks in New York and Washington were foreshadowed by bin Laden's explanations of his vision and methods. One of his themes, for example, is the importance of guerrilla warfare, as opposed to frontal combat with a more powerful enemy. Another is the need for lengthy preparation. Meticulous planning -- sometimes for as long as three or four years -- has been a hallmark of terrorist operations associated with bin Laden, including the 1998 bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa and the destruction of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, last year.

At the heart of the bin Laden opus are two declarations of holy war -- jihad -- against America. The first, issued in 1996, was directed specifically at "Americans occupying the land of the two holy places," as bin Laden refers to his native Saudi Arabia, where 5,000 U.S. troops have been stationed since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The two holy places are Muslim shrines at Mecca and Medina.

In 1998, he broadened the edict to include the killing of "Americans and their allies, civilians and military . . . in any country in which it is possible to do it."

Although the first attacks directly associated with bin Laden took place in Saudi Arabia, Somalia, East Africa and Yemen, he made clear all along that he planned to bring his war to the American homeland. The battle will "inevitably move . . . to American soil," he told ABC News reporter John Miller in May 1998, shortly after publication of the second edict.

In return for joining the jihad against America, bin Laden promises his followers an honored place in paradise, in accordance with the statement in the Koran that "a martyr's privileges are guaranteed by Allah." True Islamic youths, bin Laden argued in his 1996 decree, know that their rewards from fighting the United States will be "double" their rewards from fighting other countries. Their only aim in life, he has told Americans, is "to enter paradise by killing you."

Against U.S. Presence

The pivotal date in bin Laden's emergence as a sworn enemy of the United States is 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War. The son of a fabulously wealthy Saudi construction magnate, he had just returned home to Saudi Arabia after a decade fighting alongside the Afghan mujaheddin in their CIA-funded insurrection against the Soviet army. He was enraged to discover that "American crusader forces" were "occupying" his homeland.

In the American view, U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia to liberate the neighboring state of Kuwait, which had been invaded by the armies of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. After the Gulf War ended, U.S. forces, which had not been stationed in Saudi Arabia before the war, remained on a semi-permanent basis to train the Saudi air force and police forces and protect the kingdom from further Iraqi mischief.

Bin Laden, along with an increasingly vocal Saudi opposition, saw the matter quite differently. In their view, the presence of foreign forces was an intolerable affront to 1,400 years of Islamic tradition, dating back to an injunction from the prophet Muhammad that there "not be two religions in Arabia." They argued that responsibility for defending the kingdom should fall on the Saudi government, which had poured billions of dollars into the military, rather than on Western "crusader forces."

Despite controlling 11 percent of the world's oil supply, Saudi Arabia was beginning to feel the effects of an increasingly serious economic crisis, caused by falling oil prices and widespread corruption. Bin Laden tied all this to the presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil and the "unjustified heavy spending on these forces" by the Saudi government. "The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition," he wrote in his 1996 declaration of jihad.

Two years later, in the 1998 decree, described by Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis of Princeton University as "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose," bin Laden charged that Americans had declared war on Muslims. "For more than seven years the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases in the peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples."

In bin Laden's war, the goal of expelling the "Judeo-Christian enemy" from the holy lands of Islam should be met first on the Arabian peninsula. His next priority is Iraq, which for 500 years was the seat of the most powerful Islamic state, or caliphate. A distant third on this agenda is Palestine, site of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which Muslims believe was the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Bin Laden's view of America is almost the mirror opposite of America's view of him. In his opinion, he and his supporters are waging a just war against American "terrorism." Terrorist acts committed by Americans, according to bin Laden, include the "occupation" of Saudi Arabia, the "starving" of up to a million Iraqi children because of U.N. sanctions, the withholding of arms to Bosnian Muslims in their war against Christian Serbs, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.

Terrorism, bin Laden told ABC News in 1998, can be both "reprehensible" and "commendable."

"In today's wars," he said, "there are no morals. [Americans] rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists."

Bin Laden's declarations of jihad draw on a radical interpretation of Islam that is contested by most Muslims. In medieval times, Islamic jurists differed on the moral permissibility of using poisoned arrows and poisoning enemy water supplies, what Lewis describes as "the missile and chemical warfare of the Middle Ages." But at no point, Lewis wrote in a 1998 article for Foreign Affairs, do basic Islamic texts even consider "the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders."

Traditionally, responsibility for declaring a jihad rested with a community of scholars and theologians known as the ulema. But according to Khaled Abou el Fadl, an Islamic law expert at UCLA, the collapse of centralized authority in the Islamic world has led to a "moral and political vacuum" in which virtually any Muslim can declare a jihad. He added, however, that according to Islamic tradition, a religious decree, or fatwa, of the kind issued by bin Laden is "nonbinding" on other believers.

'Myth of the Superpower'

What Americans view as bin Laden's megalomania -- the conviction that he and a relatively small band of followers can defeat a superpower -- has its origins in the humbling of the Soviet superpower in the mountains of Afghanistan. In a CNN interview in 1997, he said that "the myth of the superpower was destroyed not only in my mind but also in the minds of all Muslims" as a result of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of mujaheddin.

Bin Laden's contempt for America seems even greater than his contempt for the Soviet Union. "The Russian soldier is more courageous and patient than the U.S. soldier," he told the London-based Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, in 1996. "Our battle with the United States is easy compared with the battles in which we engaged in Afghanistan."

As examples of alleged American cowardice, bin Laden frequently cites the case of the withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the withdrawal from Somalia after the 1993 killings of U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu. Bin Laden also has paid a great deal of attention to the symbolism of his targets. In a video that circulated widely in the Arab world earlier this year, he bragged of the attack on the USS Cole by a boat filled with explosives in Aden harbor in October 2000. The destroyer had the "illusion she could destroy anything," but was itself destroyed by a tiny boat, bin Laden said.

"The destroyer represented the West, and the small boat represented Muhammad," he boasted, according to a transcript of the videotape supplied by Peter Bergen, author of "Holy War Inc.," a forthcoming book about bin Laden.

The attack on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center has in Laden's fingerprints all over it. They were meticulously planned with military precision and carried out by individuals directly linked to his organization. Indeed, as recently as June of 2001, he boasted that a horrific attack wold soon take place in the United States, and in the final days of August, Israel's Intelligence Agency, the Mossad warned U.S. officials that as many as 200 terrorists linked to bin Laden had slipped into the country to prepare a major assault in the United States. Two weeks later, on September 11, 2001, war was declared on America. ****** "We were sitting in our office on the 86th floor. We have a wonderful view. I was checking my e-mail, when Joe pointed toward the window and exclaimed: "What the hell?" It was a jet. A big Boeing. It was coming toward us... toward the towers... it seemed to get suddenly bigger, and louder... I could hear the scream of the engines... it was above us now and then... wham! There was this tremendous jolt and an incredible explosion which made our office rock back and forth. I could hear the building creaking as it swayed. We were frozen, stunned. Then, like confetti, all this stuff began falling past our windows... pieces of metal and concrete and glass... and then, oh my god--was that a woman! I was stunned. Then the phone rang. It was surreal. The lights were still on. The computers were still on. Yet all this stuff was still falling past our window... including, I couldn't believe it... another body...this time, a man! "Let's get the hell out of here," I yelled, and we ran out into a fog of thick billowing black smoke. Fire! We ran to the stairwell and there were already people hurrying down, some of them badly burned... no hair, no eyebrows... their skin raw and smoking. It was ghastly. And yet, everyone seemed so calm. Down, down, down we went but then we stopped. Why were people coming back up? A door was locked. There was no way down! The only way out would be to go back up and try another stairwell. ***** OSAMA BIN LADEN & AL-QAEDA Osama bin Laden, multi-millionaire son of a Saudi construction magnate, believes he is a champion of the poor and the oppressed. To fulfill his mission of cleansing the holy lands of Jews and Americans, Osama created a worldwide terrorist organization, al-Qaeda. Years ago bin Laden issued a fatwa, or holy war edict, against the United States. According to Bin Laden, it is his God-given mission to commit mass murder in the name of freedom, justice, and Allah. "Every American man is my enemy." To fulfill this quest, he has sought to kill not only military personnel but civilians. In his eyes, every American man woman and child are a potential target. The terrorist leader first aligned himself with the mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He provided arms, funds, and training, and is credited by the leaders of Afghanistan with having provided major assistance in driving the communists out of their country. America too, is credited with playing a major role in the war against the Soviets, and with the destruction of the Afghanistan capital, Kabul, and the impoverishment of Afghanistan people. In the early 1970s. Afghanistan was being activley considered for international aid and assistance. "A model for development," recalled Amir Usman, a Pakistani ambassador Afghanistan. "The Americans built the Kabul-Torkham road leading east to Pakistan and the Russians built the road to the Amu Darya leading north to the then-Soviet Union. It was a happy coexistence." However, the ulterior aims and goals of the United States was not so much to aid in the development of Afghanistan, but to drive out or at least greatly diminish Soviet influence. But, in 1973, the Soviets gain the upper hand, when a series of coups brought down King Mohammed Zahir Shah and a Marxist leadership came to power in 1978. The people of Afghanistan are conservative Muslims, and the atheist Marist control of their nation was viewed as an insult to god. They resisted and sought to overthrow the Marxist and bring King Mohammed Zahir Shah back to power. There ensued a decade-long war of national resistance. The United States began pouring money and arms into Afghanistan, $2 billion during the 1980s; funds and equipment which not only helped forced the Soviet forces withdrawl in 1989, but which left the country in a shambles. American aid contributed to the destruction of Afghanistan. Indeed, many Arabs believed that American did not really want the Soviets to pull out, but wished only to keep Soviet forces bogged down and bleeding. Once the Soviet forces withdrew, American funds disapeared. With the end of the "Cold War" America completely lost interest in Afghanistan. The country has been destroyed and the people were left with poverty and despair--fertile ground for a fundamentalist Islamic ressurgence and those offering a better life, Taliban movement which eventually took power in Kabul. Islamic fundamentalism is an anethma to the West, and the Clinton administration, which was in power at that time, sought to undermine and began to openly attack the Taliban government and to lobby against international financial aid for Afghanistan. Despair turned to hatred for the West, and for America, whose anti-Arab policies, many Arabs believed, were being dictated by the incredible number of Jews working in the Clinton administration. "Politics makes strange bedfellow." Yet, just as a "bedfellow" may awake in the morning only to recoile at those he or she chose to allow into their bed, the U.S. government are now also aghast at the choices they made. Like Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noreiga, Ho Chi Minh, Osama bin Laden had once been a very dear friend. The CIA had long ago climbed into bed with Osama bin Laden, and provided him and many other "terrorists" with funding and aid. Now like so many other "friends," Osama bin Laden and the terrorists sponsord by the U.S. have turned against us. Osama bin Laden had come to the aid of the people of Afghanistan in their war to drive out the Soviet dicatorship. But unlike the U.S. which liked to kiss and run, Osama bin Laden stayed. Osama bin Laden and many others the U.S. now brands "terrorists" had been proclaimed by the Reagan administration as "valiant and courageous Afghan freedom fighters." It was not just praise, but money and arms that the U.S. lavished on those who would soon become our "enemies." Indeed, the CIA recruited "freedom fighters" from throughout the Islamic world. Provided them with funds, arms, and training in terrorist tactics, and then instructed to go forth and wrack havock. Laden was particularly attractive to the CIA, due to the close ties to the Saudi royal family, maintained by his wealthy father. With his connections, his wealth, and U.S. support, Osama bin Laden was welcomed into the arms of the power elite throughout much of the Arab world, which in turn enabled him to extend his own power and reach. Bin Laden had always been warry of U.S. support for Israel's anti-Arab policies, and he was chagrined when the people of Afghanistan were abandoned by the U.S. to their fate. but he did not begin to turn against his former "friend" and benefactor, until the onset of the Gulf War. Bin Laden was of two minds regarding the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Although he opposed Iraq's invasion and called for a pullout, he also believed that Saddam Hussein had been entrapped by the U.S., and suckored into invading Kuwait, because he believed he had received a "green light," from the U.S. and Bush (senior) administration. Bin Laden was also opposed to using U.S. military forces to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, and appealed on Arab leaders, including the Saudi leadership to rely on native fighters. Bin Laden, like millions of other Arabs, was outraged when the Saudi leadership turned Saudi Arabia over the U.S. military. Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's homeland, was soon overwhelmed by more than half a million American troops--many of which were there to stay: Permanently. Saudia Arabia, a small desert kindgdom, is the home of Mecca--Islam's most holyest of sites, and now the holy lands had been invaded by America. What was worse? Arab armies under Saddam Hussein invading and conquering a neighboring Arab country which had been artificially severed from Iraq by the British when they occuppied these lands in the early 1900s? Or Americans invading and now occupying the Holy lands, and now refusing to leave. Worse, although the American media made light of it, an incredible number of innocent men, women, and children--Arab men women and children--were killed by American-led forces during the Gulf War. Adding insult to injury, the death of tens of thousands of civilians was dismissed by the Bush administration as "collateral damage." From the perspective of ben Laden, and millions of other Arabs, it was clear that the U.S. did not even consider Arabs to be human beings. Dead Arabs, dead children, dead women, were "collateral damage." Then there were the continuing anti-Arab policies of the Bush and Clinton administration, who sought to punish the people of Iraq by imposing economic sanctions which destroyed the Iraq economy and led to the death by malnourishment of thousands of Iraqi children. In the eyes of many Arabs, America had declared war on the Arab peoples. Bin Laden turned against America and he was able to find many Muslim recruits who were willing to wage war against "the Great Satan." Osama bin Laden has always believed that the American government encouraged Sadam Hussein in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, to use the maneuver as an excuse to destroy the Iraqi people and to set up military bases in Arabic lands. It was following the U.S. led attack on Iraq that bin Laden first began espousing his rabid anti-American rhetoric. He has since repeatedly vowed to wage an all-out terrorist war against the United States and its allies. Bin Laden's terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, has established paramilitary terror cells across the globe. It is one of the few non-governmental organizations with the capability and funds to execute missions of mass murder and mayhem such as the terrorist attacks on America In January 1995 members of al-Qaeda planed to plant bombs on 11 U.S. jetliners. The plan was for the bombs to go off as these jets were flying over the Pacific. Fortunately the plot was discovered and foiled. In 1998 he organized his first successful attack on American targets: The U.S. embassies in embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. Some 224 people died in the bombings of these two U.S. embassies. American intelligence reported that other attacks had been planned for the U.S. embassies in Uganda and Albania. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who has been indicted by a U.S. District Court in New York for his alleged role in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, is believed to have trained in Afghanistan with bin Laden. The Clinton administration retaliated against this act of terrorism by launching Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan as well as a milk formula factory in Sudan. The results were ineffective and costly. A number of tents were destroyed and about 20 men, mostly Pakistani militants, were killed at a cost of 1 million dollars a missile. Bin Laden escaped. During the U.S. millennium celebrations, bin Laden's group also planned to launch multiple terrorists strikes over multiple days. These plans however, were foiled. Ahmed Ressam, a native of Algeria was caught soon after he entered the United States from Canada and was later convicted of attempting to plant explosives in key sites in the Los Angeles area. He later admitted he had been acting on orders received from bin Laden's organization. Bin Laden struck again on October 2000, when a small boat filled with explosives rammed the USS Cole as it was entering the harbor in Yemen. Dozens of sailors were badly burned and injured. Seventeen were killed. Soon after this deadly attack, bin Laden filmed himself reciting a victory poem about the Cole bombing, and issued a call to arms: "To all the Mujah: Your brothers in Palestine are waiting for you; it's time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts the most." Despite these failures, the terrorists in bin Laden's organization have learned from their mistakes. They formulate their tactics by watching how their adversaries react to feints and threats. They probe for gaps and weaknesses to take advantage of any Achilles' heels they discover, for the purpose of destruction. These terrorists know they are being watched and will sometimes "leak" their plans to attack in order to observe how the America reacts to defend itself. In this way they acquire the information necessary to avoid our defenses. In addition, bin Laden's organization decided to test commercial airline security in the United States. They targeted Los Angeles International airport. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian citizen living in Montreal, Canada, placed a dummy suitcase near a ticket counter and another near a crowded area, to determine how long it took for airline security or one of the thousands of passengers passing through the terminal to become suspicious. After studying and probing for weaknesses in the domestic airline industry for at least 8 years, bin Laden's people decided that they had learned enough. They were now ready to act. Weaknesses in security and defense had been detailed, studied, and documented. Targets were identified. They set in motion the plans for what would become the worst terrorist attack in American history. Boston's Logan Airport was the ideal target. Its proximity to the New York area and planes were constantly departing from the airport. A wide bodied fuel-loaded commercial airplane became the perfect bomb, well-suited for a kamikaze-type attack on New York's World Trade Center. Logan was also notorious for its inattentiveness to security. During a single two-year period there had been over 136 violations. Security was so poor that the port authority and the major airlines at Logan were fined a total of $178,000 for lapses in security. The airlines themselves had demonstrated that it was ridiculously easy to smuggle in knives, guns, and pipe bombs. Globe Aviation Services Corp. of Irving, Texas, and Huntleigh USA Corp. of St. Louis were responsible for operating the security checkpoints for the two airlines at Logan. During tests, security checkpoints routinely failed to detect the presence of weapons and other smuggled contraband. In 1999, a teen-age boy was able to circumvent the checkpoints altogether. He strolled across the tarmac, settled into an empty seat on a British Airways jet, and flew to London. U.S. airports are usually guarded by poorly trained, poorly paid, and poorly motivated guards. Lethal weapons are commonly allowed to pass through baggage X-ray machines without challenge, even when easily identified. As the terrorists realized, airline security was little more than a formality. As summed up by David Stempler, President of the Air Travelers Association, a Washington-based lobbying organization for airline passengers, "We created a facade of security. The reality is that we did not perceive that we had much of a risk in this country. We had a system that was set up for failure." The procedures were designed to meet government regulations and to assure the public it was safe to fly. This complacency would have fatal consequences. The terrorists knew that airport security would not hamper their mission. They would use threats, a few knives, and the element of surprise to accomplish their aims. Their weapon: Long-range passenger aircraft heavily laden with jet fuel that could be diverted to fly directly into the and the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the emblems of American military and financial power. This would be the second attack on the World Trade Center. The 1993 bombing did not achieve the desired effect. It was not destructive enough. This time, they would learn from their mistakes. Terrorists had previously attempted to bring down the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. New York City and the Trade Center were targeted for several reasons. New York was believed to be a "Jewish city". It was heavily populated and one of the most recognizable cities in the world. The World Trade Center, the heartbeat of lower Manhattan, was viewed as a symbol of America's wealth. Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, and Ramzi Yousef, spent several months planning the attack. They fashioned their bomb using $3,000 worth of common ingredients. It was loaded into a rented Ryder van driven from Jersey City, through the Holland Tunnel. The van was left in an underground parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Knowing what was about to happen, they ran. Yousef didn't remain in New York to savor the "triumph." He immediately grabbed a flight at John F. Kennedy Airport, flew to Frankfurt Germany, and then made his way to Afghanistan. Abouhalima was too excited to flee. Instead he went to Tower Records in downtown Manhattan and waited in the classical music section for the explosion. Mohammad Salameh also waited and watched. And then, the bomb exploded. Although the World Trade Center shook and trembled, it did not collapse. Although thousands were injured, only six people were killed. The terrorists were embittered and angered. Mohammad Salameh was so disgusted by the results, he disobeyed orders from his group and returned to the Ryder truck rental office in Jersey City; he demanded that his deposit on the van be returned. He was immediately arrested. Two years later, master terrorist Ramzi Yousef who had planned the bombing, was also apprehended. Following his capture, when FBI agents flew fugitive Ramzi Yousef back to New York to face justice, he glanced down at the World Trade Center and frowned. "See," an FBI agent said as he pointed out the protruding skyscrapers from the helicopter that was transporting Yousef to a Manhattan jail, "the Twin Towers are still standing." Yousef replied, "They wouldn't be if I had enough money and explosives." Other terrorist organizations had drawn the same conclusions: Enough money and explosive power could transform Yousef's cataclysmic dream into a horrific reality. Eight years later, on September 11, 2001, hell would rain down from the skies. Two fuel laden jets enroute from Boston to Los Angeles were hijacked and then hammered into the Trade Center, collapsing the New York landmark and altering the lives of Americans forever. Less than an hour later, yet another aircraft, that had departed from Washington's Dulles Airport, would become a guided missile aimed at the heart of American's military might, the Pentagon. ***** "I had been late for work and was hurrying from the subway to the World Trade Center, where I work for Lehman Brothers. Suddenly the sky exploded...then it began raining glass and bits of concrete... and... and body parts... There were body parts for blocks... And jumpers. Tons of them. People jumping and falling who were on fire... burning alive...It was surreal. Every time you looked up somebody else was jumping. You could see person after person going straight down, no floating or anything. It's the sickest thing I've ever seen in my whole life... I stood there dazed, in shock. Then I realized there were people all around me who were badly hurt, who had been struck by the falling glass and concrete. A young women in pearls, high heels and a short dark skirt lay on the street, blood flowing from her head which had been crushed by a piece of falling concrete. And there was a man, in a three-piece suit, on his knees, his face and hands bloody. There were children who had been slashed and stabbed by falling glass. It was a nightmare...It was like hell. And when I looked up, again, there were people jumping and falling falling... it was like a bad dream... a nightmare... it was horrible.. horrible. ***** ***** The attack was planned with military precision, and would involve agents and operatives on three continents, directed from bin Laden's terrorists camps in Afghanistan. In the mountains of Afghanistan, in safe houses in Germany and Canada, and in small cities in Florida, the hijackers prepared for the coming apocalypse. Pilots uniforms were stolen from an airport in Rome. Pilots received flight training in America. Forged runway passes gave terrorist agents access to Boston's Logan Airport. Detailed studies of the power of airline fuel were completed and airport security was analyzed and concluded to be easily penetrable. And, from previous hijackings it was already well-known that airline pilots were specifically trained to fully cooperate with hijackers. It was a meticulous operation. The core attack team included 19 men. They were mostly Saudis and Egyptians, and most appear to have been members of the Islamic Jihad and al-Gamaa al-Islamiya-- the central core of bin Laden's Praetorian Guard in the internationally based Al-Qaeda. Most of these men were veterans of previous terrorist attacks. Two of the hijackers, Salem Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar were on a special terrorist-watch list given to Border Patrol and INS agents on August 21, 2001. Khalid Al-Midhar, was videotaped and captured when he met with one of the suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000 terrorist attack of the USS Cole. On September 11, Khalid Al-Midha and Salem Alhamzi would later take part in the hijacking of American Arlines flight 77 --- which crashed into the Pentagon. Although the INS and Border Patrol had been alerted, both men legally entered the United States on business visas. The "Marriott Hotel" in New York was listed as their official residence. Another hijacker, Mohamed Atta, 33, was a student who took part in the bombing of a bus in Israel in 1996. Atta also entered the United States legally, and attended two different flight training schools in Florida. These men, well-educated and disciplined, were willing to die in order to strike at the foes of Islam and rid their Muslim lands of American influence. Their weapon would be mass murder and terrorism. The attack, brilliant in its conception, would be years in planning. When carried out, the operation would be audacious, incredibly well coordinated, and diabolical in its execution. It would be a spectacular triumph unequaled in the world of terrorism. Indeed, as early as last year, bin Laden and his followers are said to have been boasting about preparations for major attacks against the United States that would be nothing like the world had ever seen. Was anyone listening? Tuesday's terrorist kamikaze attacks on the financial and military centers of the United States were planned and carried out by many of the same "Afghan Arabs" who were implicated in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. They had the same terrorist support networks and shared the same fanatical religious and political ideology as that of Sheik Abdul Ahmed Rahman, who languishes in prison following the first attack on the World Trade Center. These men would also be linked directly to Osama bin Laden. In December of 1999, an Algerian terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, was apprehended at the U.S.-Canadian border. He had orders to assist in the bombing of Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations. The plot was defeated when Ressam was caught trying to enter Washington state from Canada in a car loaded with explosives. He too, was linked with bin laden. Ahmed claimed he took his orders from Haydar Abu Doha, who had close ties to bin Laden. Haydar Abu Doha, who was arrested recently on terrorism conspiracy charges, is a key figure in bin Laden's network. According to prosecutors, in 1998, he met with the terrorist leader in Afghanistan, "to discuss cooperation and coordination between al-Qaeda and a group of Algerian terrorists whose activities Abu Doha coordinated and oversaw." Together the two groups would coordinate terrorist attacks on America-- including American airports and commercial jet liners. As part of a plea-bargain, Ahmed gave FBI agents a bone chilling warning. He and others had received special training in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. The curriculum: urban warfare, assassination, sabotage, hijacking, and the destruction of the U.S. infrastructure. Targets included airports, airlines, the financial markets, New York City, Washington DC., the White House, and the Pentagon. bin Laden, he warned, would soon unleash an incomprehensible horror upon the people of the United States. In May, Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would lead a task force in reviewing programs to protect the United States from "the threat of weapons of mass destruction." He also announced the creation of an Office of National Preparedness to deal with terrorist attacks. The Cheney task force, however, did not seem to make much progress. Also bogged down was the establishment of the Preparedness Office, due to bureaucratic infighting between the Department of Justice and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The "task force" was leaderless, rudderless, and had become essentially deaf and dumb to the accumulating evidence, including warning from leaders in congress,that the U.S. was at risk for a major terrorist attack. But what of the CIA? The FBI? The National Security Agency, and the numerous other government organizations whose mission is to ferrit out information on terrorist attacks inorder to protect the citizens of this country? Why were they caught unawares? Or were they? As admitted (and then denied) by senior administration intelligence offcials, Israeli intelligence services including the Mossad, became aware, in August of 2001, that Osama bin Laden was planning a large-scale terror attack on America, though they did not know exactly what or where his targets would be. "Everybody knew about a heightened alert, and knew that bin Laden was preparing a big attack," admitted the official on conditions of anonymity. Mark Regev, Israel's ambassador to the United States also admitted that: "Israel routinely shares with the U.S. intelligence information concerning the field of counter terrorism. We also have been watching bin Laden, and people were aware of the threat he poses." Following the September 11 attacks, the Los Angeles Times also reported that Israel's Mossad has passed on warning to U.S. officials that as many as 200 terrorists linked to bin Laden had slipped into the country and were preparing to launch a major assault in the United States. When confronted with the startling revalation, however, the CIA officially denied receiving advance warning: "That is utter nonsense," responde Bill Harlow, CIA spokesman. CIA denials were seconded by senior Israeli government officials: "There was no specific information about the intention to carry out such an attack," the official said. Is it true there was no advanced warning? Bin Laden had been boasting that an attack would soon be launched. A reporter with ties to bin Laden informed U.S. officials that an attack was immenent, and bin laden and his organization has been "under constant surveilance" by agents working for the United States. In fact, a dozen different individuals that the FBI maintains on a "watch list" and who are under some form of surveilance, shared the same U.S. addresseses and may have been living with several of the hijackers. Eight of those 12 being watched, were also pilots--which raises the possibility that these suicide hijacking teams either had backup crews, or that more hijacking are in the works for the near future. Specifically, 8 of those on the FBI's watch list lived at the same address given as hijackers Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi. Hamza and Ahmed were on the jet that hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. All shared a dormitory at Flight Safety International, a flight school in Vero Beach. Six of those on the watch list are pilots certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Yet another certified pilot on the FBIs watch list shared an address in Daytona Beach with Waleed Alshehri a hijacker on the flight that struck the north Tower of the World Trade Center, and Saeed Alghamdi, a hijacker on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. Waleed Alshehri and his brother Wail Alshehri, also shared yet another address with a woman living in Hollywood, Florida who was also on the "watch list." And, she shared their surname: Alshehri. A Coral Springs man who was also on the FBI's watch list shared the same address as Marwan Al-Shehhi and Mohamed Atta both of whom participated in the hijackings. Mohamed Atta had also been implicated in previous terrorists attacks, and earlier in the year he had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer. Atta, along with two other hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Salem Alhamzi, had also been linked to bin Laden. Five of the men on the watch list who were are also pilots also used the same residential address. Five men being watched. All five begin to live together. All five are pilots. Nobody gets suspicious. This address in Vero Beach, was also less than two miles away from either other men on the watch list, who also lived together and were pilots or undergoing pilot training. Even more astounding, 18 men on the FBI's watch list lived in the Vero Beach area, minutes away from the others, and these men too were pilots or undergoing flight training. These people were on a "watch list." They were supposed to be "watched." Their activities and those they associated with were supposed to be duly noted and investigated. Five of these men end up living together at one address, 8 others at a second address, they lived a few miles away from each other and 18 more men on the "watch list." They associate with a known terrorist with links to bin Laden, all are studying to become pilots or are already pilots, yet the U.S. intelligence officials who were supposed to be watching them, never became suspicious? In fact, not only were almost all of the hijackers associating with those on the "watch list, but two of them, Atta and Marwan by law, should have never been granted visas or allowed into the country as they had been linked by German authorities to Islamic extremists and the bin Laden organization, whereas Atta was suspected of involvement in the 1986 terrorist attack in Israel. Bin Laden's operation has also been under constant surveillance. Indeed as reprted bu Bob Woodward and Vernon Loeb in the Washington Post: "The CIA has been authorized since 1998 to use covert means to disrupt and preempt terrorist operations planned abroad by Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden under a directive signed by President Bill Clinton and reaffirmed by President Bush this year, according to government sources." Even more astounding, during the first days of September, 2001, a little over a week before the September 11 attack, an Iranian awaiting deporation from Germany, and seeking asylum in America, relayed a warning to United States security agencies, including the CIA and the White House. He warned that in about one week, bin Laden was planning on launching a horrific terror attack on America, more nightmarish than the world has ever seen. He made an additional 14 calls to the American authorities in the days immediately before the attack. The FBI dismissed his warnings as lacking credibility. From the evidence so far made public, it is difficult to understand why the United States was taken completely unawares. From the perspective of many in the intelligence community, the failure to detect and circumvent this attack, the failure to seriously the numerous reports of an immenent massive attack, is not just inexcusable, but evidence of incompetence at the highest levels of the U.S. Government. In fact, some have argued that the behavior of the U.S. government was criminally negligent.

Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the United States and abroad, according to interviews and court testimony.

Three days after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III described reports that several of the hijackers had received flight training in the United States as "news, quite obviously," adding, "If we had understood that to be the case, we would have -- perhaps one could have averted this."

A senior government official yesterday acknowledged law enforcement officials were aware that fewer than a dozen people with links to bin Laden had attended U.S. flight schools. However, the official said there was no information to indicate the flight students had been planning suicide hijacking attacks.

"We were unable to marry any information from investigations or the intelligence community that talked to their use of this expertise in the events that we saw unfold on the 11th," the official said.

Connections between terrorists and flight training include the following:

¥ In 1996, two flight school operators said last week, FBI agents visited them to obtain information about several Arab pilots connected to a Pakistani terrorist eventually convicted of plotting to bomb U.S. airliners.

The flight schools, Coastal Aviation of New Bern, N.C., and Richmor Aviation of Schenectady, N.Y., were two of four that provided flight training to Abdul Hakim Murad in the early 1990s, according to Philippine authorities. Murad was arrested in Manila in 1995 and later convicted in New York of plotting to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific, then crash a suicide plane into CIA headquarters.

¥ In 1998, FBI agents questioned officials from Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., about a graduate later identified in court testimony as a pilot for bin Laden, according to Dale Davis, the school's director of operations.

¥ This year, the trial of bin Laden associates for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania yielded documents containing several references to flight schools and bin Laden pilots.

¥ Two weeks before the Sept. 11 attack, Davis said, FBI agents returned to Norman seeking information about another Airman student, a French-Moroccan dropout who had entered the country on a visa sponsored by the flight school. The man, Zacarias Moussaoui, had been detained in Eagan, Minn., on an immigration violation after he tried to purchase time on a jet simulator -- even though he had never flown solo in a single-engine aircraft.

One government witness in the embassy-bombing trial, Essam al-Ridi, testified that he had taken classes and taught at the now-defunct Ed Boardman Aviation School in Fort Worth. Al-Ridi also said that in the mid-1990s, he purchased a used Saber-40 aircraft on bin Laden's behalf for $210,000 in Tucson. Another witness in the same bombing trial, L'Houssaine Kerchtou, testified that he was sent to a flight school in Nairobi and later served as a pilot for bin Laden.

The issue of how U.S. authorities processed early warning signs that terrorists were taking advantage of the flight school system is certain to be examined in the aftermath of the attack. Suzanne E. Spaulding, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorism, a congressionally appointed task force, said, "In hindsight, we can see how all these things [flight school connections] might be relevant and important." But, she said, "it is harder on a day-to-day basis. There is no question that technology could help sort information."

Since the attack, the FBI has extended its investigation to dozens of flight schools coast to coast, including some of the same schools it visited in the years before the attack. According to law enforcement officials and press reports, the 19 suspected terrorists received flight training from at least 10 U.S. flight schools. At least 44 people sought by the FBI for questioning received some flight instruction.

Dietrich L. Snell, who helped prosecute Murad, said that although the Pakistani terrorist attended four U.S. flight schools, it would have been difficult for the FBI to connect the schools to the kind of terrorist attack that occurred Sept. 11.

Murad, he said, had indicated that he wanted to use his flight training to become a commercial pilot until he was recruited by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a bin Laden operative who also plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"I think that because Murad had been trained as a pilot it's tempting in hindsight to say that the bureau should have known," said Snell. "But I think they were missing any link that would have connected the flight schools to this kind of terrorism."

The Murad investigation showed that Murad and Yousef were planning to employ five-man teams to smuggle bombs on to 12 planes operated by United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines during a two-day period in 1995. Prosecutors for the U.S. government described the plot as "one of the most hideous crimes anyone ever conceived."

Murad confessed to authorities that part of his planned role in the terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley.

Richard Kaylor, manager of Richmor Aviation, said the FBI was first alerted to the Schenectady flight school after a Richmor business card was discovered in Murad and Yousef's Manila apartment.

Kaylor said two FBI agents came to interview him about Murad in 1996. He said he provided information about Murad and two other student pilots, both of whom lived with Murad. Kaylor said the three men had come to Schenectady after a stint at Alpha Tango Flying Services in San Antonio.

Kaylor said four FBI agents returned Friday to Richmor to question him about a Turkish student who had received his private pilot's license last year. But Kaylor said it was unclear whether the agents were aware that he had been interviewed five years earlier.

Whether officials at Alpha Tango were also interviewed in 1996 is unclear. The flight school's owner, Hamid Afzal, could not be reached for comment. After the Sept. 11 attack, Afzal contacted the FBI about names on a published list of suspects, believing some of the hijackers might also have taken instruction at Alpha Tango, according to a report in the San Antonio Express-News.

Paul Proctor, the former owner of Coastal Aviation, another school Murad told investigators he had attended, said he could not recall whether the convicted terrorist had received his commercial pilot's license from his facility. But he said he "wouldn't be surprised," because an FBI agent searched his files about the same time agents were visiting Richmor.

Proctor said that the FBI agent never disclosed the purpose of the visit, but that he asked to see the files for students of Arab descent. The agent collected names, passport information and flight training records, according to Proctor. As the agent was finishing, Proctor said, "I made a little comment about hijacking an airplane or terrorism. He said, 'Don't even say that.' That was obviously what he was looking for."

Proctor, whose company ceased operations in 1997, said he had already been suspicious about a specific group of Arab students, two of whom had arrived at the school on North Carolina's coast from New York City in a taxicab. The students already had private pilots' licenses and had come to the school to receive advanced training to fly multi-engine aircraft, Proctor said.

The day after the students completed their training and left, Proctor said, he discovered that a $12,000 instrument radio pack -- including automatic direction finder, navigation aids and transponder -- was missing from one of his single-engine Cherokee Archers. Proctor said he never reported the theft to police because he believed he had little hope of recovering the equipment.

About three years later, FBI agents visited Airman Flight School in Oklahoma to inquire about Ihab Ali Nawawi, a bin Laden associate whose name surfaced during the trial for the 1998 embassy bombings. Dale Davis, the flight school's director of operations, said Nawawi obtained his commercial pilot's license from Airman in the early 1990s, then traveled to another school in Oklahoma City to qualify for a rating to fly small business aircraft.

In testimony during the embassy bombing trial, al-Ridi, the government witness, described Nawawi as a pilot for bin Laden. Al-Ridi testified that he met Nawawi in Khartoum at a time when Nawawi had just graduated from flight school in the United States and had begun to work for bin Laden.

From searches in San Antonio to arrests in France, the largest investigative hunt in U.S. history expanded ever outward last week, producing a vast haul of information about the terrorist assault on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center -- and glimpses of a suspected network of conspirators.

Federal agents by the thousands spent the week searching apartments, tracking bank documents and deciphering e-mail records to extract information about the terrorists who caught the country by surprise. Details emerged of their travels and financial dealings, along with revelations about possible hijacking plans that went unfulfilled.

Abroad, authorities in France, England and Germany sought or detained potential witnesses as investigators tracked the movements of the plotters back and forth across the Atlantic. At home, investigators focused on myriad sites, from an apartment building in Jersey City to a hospital in San Antonio to a Gold's Gym in Greenbelt.

Twelve days into the probe, about a dozen material witnesses were in custody, a grand jury was meeting in White Plains, N.Y., and no charges had been filed directly connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Nuggets of information emerged that fueled fresh queries.

Were terrorists planning to use trucks in their designs, given that several men detained last week had sought truck licenses or truck-driving lessons -- and one had obtained a permit to haul hazardous waste?

Were other hijackings in the works? Federal investigators found box-cutters on at least two more airplanes searched after the attacks. Two men on another flight -- scheduled to fly from Newark to San Antonio via St. Louis -- the day of the assaults were later arrested carrying box-cutters.

Were the hijackers or any of their associates employed in the airline industry or able to access secure airport areas? A bag left behind at Boston's Logan International Airport by Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers, included airline uniforms. Two men arrested in Detroit last week had previously worked for an airline food service.

If public attention during the first days of the investigation focused largely on the 19 men identified as hijackers, last week an array of new names was added to the list of potential accomplices.

One of the most interesting was Nabil Almarabh, a former Boston taxi driver with links to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi crusader identified by President Bush as the mastermind of the hijackings. Over the past 18 months, U.S. Customs Service agents established that Almarabh had financial dealings with two of the hijackers, law enforcement authorities said.

Leads begat leads. Hunting for Almarabh, investigators failed to find him in a certain Detroit apartment. But when they raided the apartment, they discovered three men who possessed false identification documents, a notation about an American military base in Turkey and crude drawings of airplane flight paths.

The FBI also arrested a San Antonio radiologist, describing him as a material witness with valuable information. Authorities who confiscated computers he used at a University of Texas hospital would not comment on news accounts that said Al-Badr Mohammed H. Al-Hazmi was connected through financial dealings to the hijacking plot.

Investigators have compiled much, yet the complexity of the puzzle can be symbolized by a lone detail: FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III conceded Thursday that the true identities of some of the 19 hijackers remain unknown.

To create confusion and avoid detection, the hijackers may have doctored names and concocted aliases. Sometimes that was as simple as changing a letter or two in English spellings of Middle Eastern names.

At least two assumed the identities of Saudi Arabian citizens whose passports went missing years ago in Denver and Cairo, the Saudi embassy reported. Others shared e-mail accounts and credit cards, moving frequently between residences, states and countries.

Investigators recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. Passengers who made farewell calls from the airliner had said they intended to charge the hijackers in an attempt to retake the plane. Cockpit microphones captured shouts in English and Arabic, but investigators remain unsure what happened.

"There are screams in the background. But I don't think it is conclusive on what happened to cause the jet to crash," a government official said yesterday. The recording and the data recorder are still being analyzed.

The FBI and a bevy of intelligence services are trying to connect the dots between the hijackers and others who may have supported them. One intriguing dot is Zacarias Moussaoui, a native of France arrested Aug. 17, four weeks before the attacks, in Minnesota. His capture has gained fresh significance in hindsight.

Managers of a flight school in Eagan, Minn., alerted the FBI on Aug. 13 to a man who had never flown solo in a single-engine plane yet wanted training on a Boeing 747 simulator. Moussaoui told officials at the Pan Am International Flight School that he didn't care about takeoffs or landings. He just wanted to learn to steer.

Federal authorities detained Moussaoui for suspected visa violations and prepared to deport him. An agent said that intelligence groups studied him, but had no context in which his odd request made sense. Law enforcement officials acknowledged yesterday that they had been warned at least 10 days before the attacks by French intelligence that Moussaoui was a suspected terrorist.

Aicha Moussaoui told a French magazine that her son converted to a strict form of Islam while living in Britain in the 1990s. She called it a "real brainwashing."

One aspect of Moussaoui's movements offers tantalizing suggestions about how the hijackers communicated, choosing e-mail over telephones much of the time. Moussaoui traded cyber messages with a separate flight school for five months without giving his name, signing his missives "zuluman tangotango."

Since the attack, government agencies have subpoenaed e-mail records and contacted experts in computer programming and encryption for help in navigating the ways the conspirators used the Internet to communicate. For several years, intelligence organizations have had evidence that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network embedded information in e-mails and Web sites.

Librarians reported that hijackers used public computers in the weeks before the crime. In Delray Beach, Fla., librarian Kathleen Henman said three hijackers monitored her as they surfed, making sure that she could not see their work. The FBI seized computers from Delray Beach and Broward County and requested computer lab sign-in sheets from Sherwood Regional Library in Fairfax County.

A twist that strengthened the appearance that the hijackers had help was a series of false bomb threats made against airliners and air traffic control facilities as the hijacked planes headed toward their targets.

Closer to Washington, suburban Maryland was the base of operations for the American Airlines Flight 77 hijackers in the weeks before Sept. 11. The FBI traced the five men to a pair of budget motels on Route 1 in Laurel. Hani Hanjour, the suspected pilot of Flight 77 when it turned toward the Pentagon, paid an instructor at Freeway Airport in Bowie to guide him on three flights in August.

And all five hijackers, within two weeks of their assault, spent time lifting weights at Gold's Gym in Greenbelt. Three of the men bought temporary memberships, while the other two joined them on occasion,.

They resisted a gym employee's pitch to enroll for a longer stretch. In all fairness, U.S. intelligence agencies have foiled numerous terrorist plots, including the plan to bomb targets in the United States and the Middle East on New Year's Day last year. "Many terrorism cells have been rolled up in many countries, and this has often been done quietly," said Daniel Benjamin, who worked in the Clinton White House. In 1992, the CIA foiled a plot by bin Laden agents to purchase highly enriched uranium from the "Russian Black Market." Again , in 1993, the CIA, working in concernt with Russian intelligence agents uncovered a plot by bin Laden associates to buy radioactive materials and "suit case nukes" from Chechen rebels. However, Russian General Alexander Lebed, later admitted that 43 "suitcase nukes" --nuclear bombs small enough to fit in a suitcase-- had nevertheless disapeared and could not be accounted for. In September of 1998, the CIA and FBI, in a joint operation, prevented associates of bin Laden from obtaining nuclear materials. Mamdough Mahmud Salim, an aide to Bin Laden had been negotiating to purchase $1.5 million dollars worth of high grade uranium, and, a "suitcase nuclear bomb." He was arrested in Munich, Germany "Unfortunately, if just one conspiracy succeeds," Daniel Benjamin continued, "it looks as if America has fallen down on the job." The other problem is that there are so many plotters and dozens of terrorists groups which share a fanatical hatred for the United States. The list of major players in the world of terrorism include Ayman Zawahiri, leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Zawahiri was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death for the 1981 assassination of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat. Ayman Zawahiri has often appeared side by side with bin Laden. Then there is "Abu Zubaydah" or Mohammed Hussein Zein-al-Abideen, a Palestinian who hails from Gaza. At one time, Abu Zubaydah worked as bin Laden's chief executive officer. He served as a key contact for several terrorist cells operating out of Western Europe and the Balkans in the 1990s. The Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, another terrorist group with ties to bin Laden, hijacked an Air France plane on Christmas Eve 1994. The terrorists intended to blow it up over Paris. The plane got as far as Marseille, where it stopped for refueling. Fortunately, it was stormed by French commandos, and the passengers freed. Still, three people were killed. According to Richard Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Syria and who presently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations: "There are a whole flock of organizations that don't necessarily follow bin Laden's orders. Many terrorist organizations have never even had contact with him." Still, because of his wealth and especially his fame, new recruits are easy to attract. In Pakistan and other Arabic countries, T-shirts and turbans bearing the image of Osama bin Laden are popular items. In the open markets you can purchase fake $50 bills with his picture and the phrase "In Osama We Trust." Posters with his image and the words: "World Hero" quickly sell out. His cassettes and CDs in which he teaches that "Every American man is my enemy," are best seller. "Osama has become like a god for the Muslim people," said Kamal Hussein, 23 "America should be warned: American blood will flow in the streets." The followers of Osama, the god, and those who wish to joiin his movement, due so because he offers prestige and power. The large pools of disenfranchised, unemployed young adults who view the United States and Israel with outrage, anger and hate are willing converts to his movement, particularly in that his rhetoric is delivered with all the fire and brimstone of a fundamentalist evangalist. His, is a religious movement. And America is the Great Satan. “A typical candidate is a young man from a religious home, first approached in the mosque, then recruited, tested and trained to be a walking bomb,” says terrorism expert Brian Jenkins. “They are acting in their view with the approval of God.” And yet, the Koran, the Islamic holy book, forbids suicide. Most Moslem clerics condemn the suicide bombers. Yet many others see suicide by boming to be a heroic act. Some applaud because they desire the sweet wine of revenge. In addition to those with a deep committment to God, recruiters also seek out desperate young men drowing in a sea of poverty, hopelessness and anger. A 19-year-old Palestinian Samir Toubasi, was apprehended with a 22-pound bomb strapped to his back outside a disco. Why would he want to kill himself and so many young Israelis? “I lost my job, my future, my hope. Then Israeli soldiers killed my friend. I too wanted to die.” But he didn't want his death to be in vein. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to do something for his people. He also wanted revenged. In Israel, Palestinian men who are taken into custody are often tortured by the authorities. It is Israel government policy to assassinate Palestinian men "suspected" of orchestrating terror attacks. There are no courts, no lawyers, no trials, just summary judgements: execution. The Israelis use bombs, missiles, tanks, and helicopter gun ships to carryout these assassinations with little or no concern for "collateral damage" i.e. the killing of innocent civilians or women and children who may be in the same vehicle, building or room as the "target." Arabs view these acts as cowardly declarations of war. In their view, Arabs are willing to die for their cause. Israeli's hide behind billion dollar weaponry which can kill from a safe distance. And every death, every injury at the hands of the Israeli authorities fuels Arab rage. And this rage is directed not just at Israel, but against America, Israel’schief ally. Indeed, Israel has called upon America to provide logistical support in their war against Islamic extremists and help ferreting out those who will be targeted for assassination. America has obliged. From the perspective of the Arab extremists, terrorists, and "freedom fighters," America has Arab blood on its hands, and America and Israel are therefore legitimate targets for terror. Because of his power and prestige, other terrorists groups actively seek his support and his blessing. Prior to bin Laden, most terrorist organizations had to seek funding and resources from outlaw nation-states if they wanted to engage in high-scale terrorism. Bin Laden makes that unnecessary. He is massively wealthy. bin Laden is known to run terrorist training camps in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar, Kunar, Paktia, and Kandahar provinces, where hundreds of deep mountain caves offer countless hide-outs. Some of these caves could even withstand an attack by an atomic bomb. Moreover, even the terrorists camps that are situated in the most inaccessible mountainous regions are interlinked and can communicate and send messages world-wide via high technology satellite dishes and satellite telephones. bin Laden's terrorist tentacles even extend into America itself. The FBI and CIA knew that bin Laden has numerous supporters and maintains strong family ties with the Arab community in Boston, where the two planes used in the World Trade Center attacks were hijacked. One of bin Laden's brothers has established a scholarship at Harvard, and another relative owns condominiums in Charlestown. In addition, bin Laden associates are known to have found work as Boston cab drivers, including those who deliver and pick up passengers bound for Boston's Logan Airport. In fact, two of the hijackers, Ahmed Alghamdi and Saeed Alghamdi lived in Massachusetts and had obtained Massachusetts driver's licenses; Ahmed Alghamdi in Cambridge, and Saeed Alghamdi in Salem. And, they had been previously identified by Intelligence sources as having direct ties to bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Ahmed Alghamdi had been living in Massachussetts since 1990. bin Laden terrorist cells have also been identified in Santa Clara, California--the heart of Silicon Valley, as well as Brooklyn, Tucson, south Florida, Providence, Rhode Island, Arlington, Texas, and South Florida. One of the hijackers, Mohald Alshehri owned a luxurious condo at a private golf club in Hamletin Delray Beach, Florida. Over 30,000 Muslims make their home in south Florida, over 20,00 of whom are foreign born. According to U.S. officials it is standard procedure for the bin Laden organization to plant agents in a community with orders to blend in. In preparing for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, bin Laden agents rented houses, married local women, and lived in nearby communities for years prior to the attack. These same men also acted as spys, gathered data and information on potential targets, and establish a local network that could help them with the attack. The bin Laden organization is said to have at least 3,000 hard core members world wide. At least five hard core groups of bin Laden sympathisers, are knownto have been operating in the United States for the last five year. In 1994, one of the September 11 hijackers, Waleed Alshehri moved to the U.S. and settled in Daytona Beach, Florida. He and obtained a Social Security card that same year. However, in 1999, he moved to Virgina, and immediately made his neighbors nervous. ''There were always people coming and going,'' said Diane Albritton, a neighbor who lives across the street. ''Arabic people. Some of them never uttered a word; I don't know if they spoke English. But they looked very focused. We thought they might be dealing drugs, or illegal immigrants.'' Mr. Shehri also had a pilot's license. Hani Hanjour, one of the hijackers who commandeered the jet which struck the Pentagon, had been living in Arizona since 1996. He in fact, appears to have been planted in the U.S. soon after the plot was launched. In 1996, Hani Hanjour paid for and received pilot training at CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. Six month before the attack, he inquiried about the possibility of receiving additional training on multi- engine planes. He was turned down, partly because of his attitude. He was perceived as a "difficult" person to train with. Two other hijackers, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, apparenlty lived in San Diego for a number of years--San Diego havin a large Muslim community. They also rented a room in Lemon Grove, San Diego, from Abdussattar Shaikh, co-founder of San Diego's Islamic Center. On September 11, they joined Hani Hanjour in the hijacking of American Flight 77 which they crashed into the Pentagon. Another hijacker, Salem al-Hamzi, lived in San Antonio, Texas. Yet another, Waleed al-Shehri lived in a rented house in Vienna, Virginia. U.S. officials have discovered that many of these groups and individuals residing in America have financial links to bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qa'eda, which are maintained through banks located in Europe and the Middle East, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. However, according to government officials, it is impossible to make a move on these groups and their associates, as they have entered the country and have not been involved in illegal activities since they arrived--which is not exactly true. Mohamed Atta and Al-Shehhi were barred by law from entering the U.S., beause of their links to Islamic terrorist groups. Atta was implicated in a terrorist attack in Israel. Atta had also been arrested Because bin Laden operatives have established roots in numerous American cities, candidates for terrorist training can be literally plucked from the streets of America, and turned into walking time bombs, eager to do bin Laden's bidding, and to achieve victory for Islam through martyrdom. One of the terrorists Saeed Alghamdi, who commandeered one of the Jets in the kamikaze attack of September 11, had been in the United States since 1993. These operative, that is, U.S. residents from Islamic nations, not only recruit, but raise and provide money for "the cause." However, what exactly the "cause" might be or what exactly the money might be used for, is often a mystery to those willing to lend support. “Usually the local people aren’t aware of the broader aims, or maybe they just know a tiny part of the operation,” says James Philips of the Heritage Foundation. “But they’re orchestrated by a guiding hand who often leaves the country before the terrorist attack occurs.” Many of these fund raising groups have been under investigation by the FBI. Many private individuals, again U.S. resident from Islamic nations, also donate to the "cause." Sometimes they step forward to assist bin Laden or other terrorists groups, because they are sickened and outraged by what they believe to be America's support for Israeli "terrorism" and atrocities against Palestinians. “These people can seem like perfectly ordinary, law-abiding citizens until the call to ‘jihad’ — holy war — comes,” says Judith Miller, an expert in terrorism. Yet another source of funding has come from none other than the United States government. Not only did many of the hijackers learn how to fly a plane in U.S. schools of aviation, but the United States government may have been providing the financing that made these attacks a reality. Soon after taking power, President George W. Bush inexplicably ordered a change in U.S. policy toward the Aphganistan government, and began making plans to provide financial aid to Afghan poppy farmers. Despite the fact that Afghanistan is a major source for heroin and opium, U.S. drug enforcement officials announced that drug production was on the decline. On May 17, a $43-million grant Afghanistan was announced by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell--an announcement that left international drug experts stunned. The signal was clear: The United States was not only willing to turn a blind eye to Osama bin Laden and Afhanistan's support for his terrorist activities, but America was willing to fund it. In fact, U.S. intelligence has known for years that the revenue from drug sales was a direct source of revenue for bin Laden and his organization. Several of the hijackers living in south Florida were in fact suspected by neighbors to be drug dealers. Dealing in drugs provided bin Laden with millions of dollars in income that he could lavish on his terrorist operations. And, just as the flow of drug profits began to decline, thus threatening his ability to fund his far flung operations, the United States stepped in. Bin Laden now had a new source of income: the United States government, to the tune of $43 million dollars. WHY NOT ASSASSINATE BIN LADEN Members of the U.S. Congress are now pushing to make assassination legal and to use it as a weapon against terrorism. bin Laden would be number one on the assassination hit list. Unfortunately, assassination is not really a viable option. bin Laden moves about in secrecy and has innumerable hideouts. "We just don't have the kind of intelligence on bin Laden we need to guarantee a successful mission," says Paul Bremer, former U.S. ambassador for counter-terrorism during the Reagan administration. "You can't go on yesterday's information." Analysts agree, even if bin Laden was assassinated, the U.S. would remain subject to terrorist attacks carried out by his followers or other independent terrorist organizations. There would be retaliation. In fact, bin Laden already has contingency plans in place, in case he was killed or captured. He has assigned leading leadership positions in his organization, al-Qa'eda, to his two top deputies: Muhammed AteAyman, and al-Zawahiri, a physician and leader of an Egyptian terrorist group, al-Jihad. In 1995, al-Jihad massacred of 62 people, many of them tourists, in Luxor, Egypt. AteAyman and al-Zawahiri are believed to have played major roles in the planning and execution of the attacks on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, and the September 11 kamikaze attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. "Muhammed AteAyman and al-Zawahiri are the tactical men responsible for the day-to-day operations," says terrorism expert Neil Livingstone, CEO of GlobalOptions, a Washington-based crisis-management company. "You can't take out a Bin Laden and think that's the magical solution. He's got his team in place." Unfortunately, bin Laden and his team are not the only terrorist group in town. Even wiping out his entire terrorist network would not put a stop to terrorist attacks on innocent people. The legacy of his organization would spawn other terrorist groups. In addition, there are many groups who completely shun publicity and prefer to remain hidden in the shadows. Moreover, once an attack is plotted, the leaders of other terrorists groups are seldom consulted or completely informed over what is about to take place. Often the men directly responsible for the attack have only been told enough in order to accomplish their aspect of the mission. bin Laden's terrorist organization consists of cells, or battle groups, that are only pieces of a larger system. Together they constitute a network of semi-independent operatives and agents which include: recruiters, teachers, trainers, clerics, suicide bombers, technical advisers, and so on. Even many of the men working within the same terrorist battle group do not know each other, and do not know the identity of the person they are communicating with. Agents may be ordered to carry out a task but have no idea why, or even from whom the orders came from. In this way, even if the members of a particular terrorist cell are captured, the plot can still move forward. "If you compromise one cell, you don't take down the entire organization," said Frank Cilluffo, a policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Terrorism is hydra-headed. If an arm or a leg is chopped off, another one would replace it. "When these people are captured ... or when a suicide bomber kills himself, there are other volunteers to take their place," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counterterrorism at the CIA. Even when terrorists are captured, or when a suicide bomber kills himself, there are other volunteers to take their place. There are hundreds of young men who would readily die for Islam and to achieve martyrdom. These plotters have a lot of different operatives on the ground who never know the full details of a plan. They might also rely on local people to do the scout work so that even if one or two are caught, it is difficult for government intelligence to piece together the entire plot. A lot of these planned attacks may also be set in motion and called off at any one time. Meanwhile, the plotters are watching, learning, and probing for weakness. And what they learned was that one of our greatest weaknesses was the U.S. commercial airline industry. How easy it would be, they realized, to take over planes and then aim them at American landmarks. The attack would be unprecedented in scope and sophistication. The coordinated assault on America's political, military, and financial capitals would wreak havoc and catch the United States government completely off guard -- despite a massive law enforcement and intelligence network which exist solely to detect and thwart such attacks. The terrorists had done their homework. The American government would be completely unprepared for the possibility that jetliners would be hijacked for the purpose of being used as fuel-laden guided missiles. Now came the next step: Training the pilots whose mission would be to fly and crash these planes into their anticipated targets of the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and the White House--home of the President of the United States.