America in Ashes?

The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike. Where a nuclear attack once may have been beyond the capacities of stateless terrorists, that is no longer the case. One need only consider Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of 9/11 and chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who revealed under intensive interrogation-including the much-maligned tactic of waterboarding-that a nuclear attack against the United States was a top priority for al-Qaeda.According to the New York Daily News and its sources, the captive KSM told his interrogators that Osama bin Laden was planning a “nuclear hell storm” in America. Normally such a lurid claim would be disbelieved by our “inside-the-box” intelligence officers, but KSM’s recovered laptop had corroborating details.The agents learned that the chain of command for this new operation went simply: bin Laden, his terrorist doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, a mysterious scientist named “Dr. X,” and an operational coordinator. The scientist turned out to be Dr. A.Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, national hero, and nuke material proliferator extraordinaire. The operations ringleader was known as “Jafer the Pilot” (Jaffer al-Tayyar). This ID was corroborated by former al-Qaeda No. 3 Abu Zubaydah when he himself was waterboarded.Dr. Khan’s input was important: One month before 9/11, according to The Washington Post, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met around a blazing campfire with Pakistani scientists from an A.Q. Khan-affiliated group called Umma Tameer-E-Nau, to discuss how al-Qaeda could build a nuclear device themselves and ship it to a target.The night meeting went well. 'Jafer the Pilot" is the nom de guerre of U.S. citizen Adnan el-Shukrijumah. Young, intelligent, fluent in multiple languages and a trained jet pilot who had apparently been in flight schools with Mohammed Atta, Shukrijumah had studied and worked with other jihadis at the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at McMaster University in Canada. But one day all the terrorists disappeared from campus forever.John Loftus of WABC news reported on November 7, 2003, that in the immediate wake of Shukrijumah and his fellow travelers’ disappearance, 180 pounds of uranium ended up “missing” from the reactor. Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, who interviewed Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11, reported bin Laden saying that one of the founders of al-Qaeda, Anas el-Liby, had helped the Pilot haul out the stash of uranium.McMaster U. has always insisted that no material was ever missing from the reactor, but instead claims that low-grade radiological material did turn up missing from their pharmacological/medical labs at the time. Paul Williams, author of The Day of Islam, published the Loftus-Mir assertions in his book and elsewhere. For his trouble, he was promptly sued by the University for $4,000,000. The suit is still pending.But the Pilot and his atomically-inclined friends had not gone to live in a cave somewhere in Waziristan like their bosses had. Shukrijumah had much work to do for his “American Hiroshima” plan, which would detonate actual nuclear bombs in seven American cities at once. Paul Williams surmises that Osama bin Laden’s increasingly messianic pronouncements over the airwaves are psychologically tied up with his expectations of the nuclear destruction of the Great Satan—with bin Laden himself as the prophesied Mahdi, the fiery culmination of 1,600 years of Islamic history.Whatever pangs of conscience remaining to the plotters as they contemplated burning millions of women and children alive was thoroughly assuaged by bin Laden’s diplomacy. The supremo had duly arranged for a compliant mullah to issue a fatwa, which expressly authorized the destruction of the United States of American in clouds of atomic ash. Entitled “A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels,” and dated May 2003, this fatwa can be read online by all the faithful. FBI chief Robert Mueller has also said that there is a “clear intent” by al-Qaeda to acquire and use nuclear weapons against the United States. As far back as 1993, said Mueller, Osama bin Laden had attempted to buy uranium from a source in the Sudan. Why should we expect him to stop in the last 15 years? One thing is certain: homicidal doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri's made a decision when KSM was captured: Cancel that planned mass cyanide gas attack in the New York subway system. He told the operational plotters to stand down because "we have something better in mind,” which would presumably suck up all the resources then available to him. What would be “better” than a mass cyanide attack in a confined urban rush-hour space? There is only one thing more murderous.Unfortunately, even in 2004, the American intelligence services tasked with protecting the country seemed about as prepared for the Pilot as they were for the Hamburg Cell of 9/11. One full year after KSM spilled his guts in a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director John Mueller issued a joint press conference that everyone should be on the lookout for five exceedingly dangerous terrorists. Adnan al-Shukrijumah, the Pilot, was first on the list. Director Mueller called him the “Next Mohammed Atta.” The American Hiroshima plan was not specifically mentioned, presumably to prevent panic in the country.It turns out that the Pilot himself need not have been panicked. Several days after the press conference naming Shukrijumah, a certain Samuel Mac, the manager of a Denny’s restaurant in Avon, Colorado, became uneasy as he served two “demanding, rude and obnoxious” patrons at his restaurant. One of them looked, for all the world, like the guy he remembered was in the Ashcroft-Mueller press conference’s first poster: Adnan the Pilot. The other one, wolfing down a health-conscious chicken sandwich and a salad, looked like the guy the FBI said was Abderraouf Jdey, the head of al-Qaeda’s cell in Toronto. They said they were traveling cross-country.From behind his counter, Mr. Mac looked at these patrons again. He figured at least Washington, D.C., would have an FBI office, so he called there. The agent who answered the phone was uninterested and referred him to the Denver office. Calling this number, Mr. Mac was left with an endless loop of voice mail. The purported al-Qaeda officials eventually strolled out of the restaurant and took off. Five hours later an agent from the Denver field office called back, took a few perfunctory notes, and said he’d pass the info along. Mr. Mac thoughtfully preserved the plates and utensils the men had eaten with, but no one ever bothered to come over and collect them for DNA evidence, or interviewed any of the restaurant’s employees. So much for the national “Be on the Lookout” alert.The Pilot quickly resurfaced in Waziristan province, Pakistan, home of Osama and Dr. Zawahiri. In April 2004, according to Paul Williams’ sources in the FBI, where Williams had worked as a consultant, this turned out to be a “pivotal planning session” for the American Hiroshima plot, much as Kuala Lumpur in 2000 was the final planning session for the 9/11 plot. Mohammed Babar, an indicted terrorist, was also present. (Babar’s Islamic Thinkers Society had held placards while demonstrating outside the Israeli consulate in 2006, helpfully saying, “The Mushroom Cloud is On Its Way.”)Thus funded and instructed, the Pilot flew to Honduras the next month, where he met with jefes of the violent street gang MS-13 (Mara Salvatruchas) and was noticed by the café owner, who had seen newspaper pictures of that Ashcroft-Mueller press conference. The Honduran security ministry confirmed Shukrijumah’s presence there, and also the Pilot’s multitude of calls then to France, the USA, and Canada.Why was the Pilot meeting with MS-13 gang leaders? The answer became painfully obvious that summer, when he was seen again in Mexico in late August 2004, near “terrorist alley” in Sonora, the main thoroughfare for illegal aliens into the United States. MS-13 was the Pilot’s new supply chain and courier of nuclear material for the bombs he was setting up. The Pilot was now moving around at will, with no hindrance, all through Latin America. U.S. intelligence got another too-late break in November, when Sharif al-Masri, an al-Qaeda official working directly with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, was snatched and questioned by interrogators.
Al-Masri told his American captors that his bosses had arranged for nuclear supplies for bombs to be shipped into Mexico and thus into the USA with the help of the MS-13 street gang. This created a new sense of urgency, because on November 1st, Mexican officials reported that a man looking very similar to Adnan al-Shukrijumah had just stolen and flown off with a Piper PA Pawnee crop duster near Mexicali, destination unknown.
Since 2005, the Pilot has vanished from sight.
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By Christopher S. Carson
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As in the days of Noah....