By the Book

Discovered Terrorist Handbook From 1998 Attacks on US Embassies Instructs Al-Qaida Insiders on How to Run Their Operations

by Scott Pelley
CBS 60 Minutes II
February 20, 2002
[transcript]

SCOTT PELLEY, co-host:

We were surprised to hear about the terrorists who struck September 11th--how they lived among us, preparing for years--but it turns out we shouldn't have been surprised. We knew al-Qaida was infiltrating the United States, we knew how it was doing it, and we knew that whatever it was planning, it was going to be big. We knew all of that in 1998. '98 was the year al-Qaida bombed two American embassies in East Africa. The FBI investigation of that was a big success. Al-Qaida insiders became informants, and a terrorist training manual was found. The embassy bombers were convicted in New York last May, but no one paid much attention then. As we first reported in September, though, many of the tactics of the 9/11 hijackers were foretold. It seems that they ran their operation by the bin Laden book. (Footage of bin Laden video)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Bin Laden himself seems to know the al-Qaida training manual chapter and verse. In this video tape-recorded after September 11th, he brags about how al-Qaida kept the hijack plan secret, even from the men who would die in the attacks. From the translation, bin Laden says, 'We asked each of them to go to America, but they didn't know anything about the operation; not even one letter. But they were trained, and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.' Then bin Laden says, 'Those who were trained to fly didn't know the others; one group of people did not know the other group.'

(Footage of video; manual; manual's translated title; translation of fifth lesson)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) It is classic al-Qaida security doctrine, and it's all in the training manual found during the embassy bombing investigation. Written in Arabic, it's titled "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants." The fifth lesson says cell members should, 'not know one another, so that if a cell member is caught, the other cells would not be affected,' and work would proceed normally.

(Aerial footage of destroyed US Embassy; rescue efforts; manual)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) If you think this is familiar, it's not the World Trade Center. This is the US Embassy in Nairobi. The bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were stunning for some of the same reasons that September 11th was such a shock here at home. There was no hint of a warning, and the bombings, 400 miles apart, were precisely coordinated. Two hundred and twenty-four were killed; 12 of them Americans. The investigation turned up the terrorist training manual.

Mr. CARL HERMAN (Defense Attorney): It covered just the gamut of--of--of all types of situations in terms of doing surveillance, how to resist torture, how to inflict torture. It's a primer on how to be involved as a terrorist.

(Footage of Herman and Pelley)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Carl Herman was appointed by the court to defend one of the bombers at sentencing. He saw the testimony and the evidence.

Mr. HERMAN: When you go through the manual, you start to see things that--or get a foreshadowing of things that were to take place.

PELLEY: When you saw what happened on September 11th, what did you think?

Mr. HERMAN: When I saw the plane heading for the World Trade Center, I--I knew, you know, who the people were. I didn't know the exact people on the plane, but I could describe them. I mean, I'd--I've seen them.

PELLEY: This was the al-Qaida you came to know three years before.

Mr. HERMAN: This was certainly 100 percent consistent with what we'd seen that al-Qaida was capable of.

PELLEY: And you knew they were capable of it. Now everybody else does.

Mr. HERMAN: I think you're right. Yeah.

(Footage of destroyed embassy; aerial footage of destroyed World Trade Center)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) The US Embassy bombings showed al-Qaida was capable of slipping terrorists into a country years in advance, unnoticed, just as the hijackers of September 11th did here.

Mr. MICHAEL CHERKASKY: We had a very good picture that we were being secretly invaded by the--our enemy.

PELLEY: 'Secretly invaded'?

Mr. CHERKASKY: Yes, sir.

(Footage of Cherkasky; police helping woman in 1993)

PELLEY: Michael Cherkasky helped lead the investigation of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Today, he heads Kroll, a corporate security firm.

Mr. CHERKASKY: The bombing of the embassies wa--was--was investigated by a terrific team of--of federal investigators and prosecutors, and they obtained enormous amounts of information, which, in fact, very clearly tell--told us that people had been put into the United States, planning long-term destruction of the United States. Sleepers were here. They did not look like these religious zealots, which--which we might be looking for. They looked like Americans. They looked like the diversity of Americans.

(Photos of hijackers; manual with section translated)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) They looked like the description in the book. From lesson eight titled Member Safety, 'Have a general appearance that does not indicate Islamic orientation'; no beard, for example. 'Carry falsified personal documents and know all the information they contain. Do not travel with wives. A wife with an Islamic appearance attracts attention.'

Mr. HERMAN: They would shave their beards. They would carry cigarettes. They would wear cologne. They'd carry, you know, regular types of magazines, and no one would suspect that they were part of a--of a terrorist organization.

PELLEY: And the al-Qaida organization tells them that's OK; breaking the rules is OK because it's all in the service of the Jihad.

Mr. HERMAN: It's--it's--it's very ironic because it breaks every rule that they've ever been taught in terms of how they follow their religion. But their allegiance to bin Laden trumps their religious teachings.

(Bank and airport photos of hijackers; photos of Atta and Al-Shehhi; manual; translation of excerpt from lesson four)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) The hijackers of September 11th shaved and carried false personal documents. The men known as Mohamad Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were seen in a bar. The book covers much more than appearance. There are instructions on how to lie to immigration officials, how to hold a gun, build a bomb, even where to live. Lesson four, Apartments and Hiding Places: 'It is preferable to rent apartments on the ground floor to facilitate escape. In a newer apartment, avoid talking loud because prefabricated ceilings and walls do not have the same thickness as those in old ones.'

Ms. JESSICA STERN (Researcher): They thought very carefully about how to have their operatives live in enemy territory for many years.

(Footage of Stern)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Jessica Stern advised on terrorism at the White House, and now interviews Islamic extremists for her research at Harvard.

The manual advises, 'It is preferable to rent apartments in newly developed areas, where people don't know one another.'

Ms. STERN: These terrorists really know how to exploit our weaknesses. They know that we are an atomized society, where people often don't know their neighbors. They know that about us, and they took advantage of it.

PELLEY: You know, what that tells me is they know us pretty well.

Ms. STERN: Yes, they've--they've done their homework. They--they take intelligence, surveillance very seriously.

PELLEY: During the investigation of the US Embassy bombings, three al-Qaida terrorists turned informant and explained how they lived by the book. Two witnesses were Houssaine Kherchtou and Jamal al-Fadl. We can't show you their pictures because now they're in the federal witness protection program, but their testimony painted a portrait of terror that no one in the courtroom is likely to forget.

Truck bombs were used at the embassies, but there was discussion at the trial of other weapons of mass destruction that they were interested in acquiring.

Mr. HERMAN: Right. Yeah. Yeah, we heard testimony from--from Mr. al-Fadl about efforts to obtain uranium in--in Africa in 1993-1994. The value of the uranium was--was $1 1/2 million. The impression is that the deal never went through, but we know seven or eight years ago that this organization was actively seeking to obtain uranium for, obviously, a--a nuclear bomb.

PELLEY: But they had settled on a price.

Mr. HERMAN: Right.

PELLEY: They had come up with a sample.

Mr. HERMAN: Absolutely.

PELLEY: They were trying to figure out how to test the sample. It had gotten that far.

Mr. HERMAN: Absolutely, and they had the money to--to make the purchase.

(Footage of crop duster)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) The other informer, Kherchtou, says he was being trained to fly, specifically a crop duster.

Mr. HERMAN: That theme co--came up frequently at our trial, people training as--as pilots. Bin Laden seemed to have a fascination with--with--with pilots, with planes. He seemed to be very concerned about that.

(Footage of crop dusters; Cherkasky)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) The hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center were also concerned about crop dusters. They were asking a lot of questions about them in Florida. After September 11th, crop dusters were grounded across the nation for fear of a chemical or biological attack. Former prosecutor Mike Cherkasky says that we've known for years about al-Qaida's interest in planes.

Mr. CHERKASKY: There had been in--information in the mid-'90s that they had had a--a plot to--to--to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower. So after that, I think there was information that the flight training schools were being used to train prospective--potentially prospective pilots. Now the--it--was that information good enough to act on? It's always easy to second-guess and look back, but certainly when you look at the cumulative information that we had, we understood that we had a grave threat and certainly had a grave threat with the use of airplanes.

(Footage of rescue dog; search site)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) In the investigation of the US Embassy bombings, there was a third member of al-Qaida who cooperated with the government, and we can show you his picture.

Mr. ALI MOHAMED: (From videotape) My name is Ali Mohamed. I'm a former Egyptian officer.

(Footage of Mohammed; training video)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Back in the 1980s, Ali Mohammed was a member of an Islamic extremist group and came under the suspicion of the CIA, but he had no trouble getting into the US and joining the Army. While at Ft. Bragg, he made this training video on the ways of the Middle East for US forces. A few years later, al-Qaida put him in charge of casing the US Embassy in Nairobi.

Mr. HERMAN: He says he was with Osama bin Laden in a room. There was a diagram of the embassies in--in Kenya, the American Embassy, and he says Osama bin Laden reached over and pointed to a place on the diagram, and that's exactly where the bomb truck went.

PELLEY: The disturbing moral of the story about the embassy bombing trial is that we know a lot about this organization, and it's not enough.

Mr. HERMAN: I was impressed with the efforts that the United States government had made, the CIA, the FBI. They knew a lot, but they didn't know enough to prevent the--the bombings in--in Africa, and now three years later, they didn't know enough to--to stop the bombings at the World Trade Center.

(Footage of Cherkasky; Pelley)

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Mike Cherkasky, who helped prosecute the World Trade Center bombers of 1993, says we've been ignoring some obvious lessons.

We didn't learn in '93.

Mr. CHERKASKY: We sure didn't.

PELLEY: We didn't learn from the embassy bombings.

Mr. CHERKASKY: We didn't. Well, we didn't learn sufficiently, you're right. They were learning quicker. Their curve was quicker than ours.

PELLEY: What do we know now?

Mr. CHERKASKY: We know, to a virtual certainty, that people are trying to destroy us. They're willing to do ou--anything. Things that are--are unimaginable to us, they're willing to do, and that we have a war in the United States.

PELLEY: In the embassy bombing case last May, one man, Ali Mohamed, pleaded guilty. Four others were convicted by a jury. On September 11th, they were all being held in New York's Metropolitan Corrections Center, six blocks from the World Trade Center.

Copyright 2002

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