Hakimullah Mehsud: Dead or Alive? by Diana Mukkaled

For the third time in a matter of months, contradictory statements have been issued by the Pakistani authorities and the CIA on the one hand, and the Pakistani Taliban movement on the other. As soon as Islamabad announces the killing of Pakistani Taliban Chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is also an Al Qaeda ally and the prime suspect of a series of bombings and security operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban rushes to release a video or voice recording on the internet featuring Mehsud refuting claims of his death and emphasizing that new operations are on the way. Mehsud’s fate was a source of controversy over the past period after some reports indicated that he was the target of two drone attacks.

When the Pakistani authorities distribute photos of raids on mountainous areas to confirm the elimination of the Pakistani Taliban leadership, the movement reacts by releasing footage to refute claims that the man has been killed.

Therefore, as battles and bombings continue on the streets, the media war is never far away from the AfPak front in the style of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

It seems that the repetitive announcement of Mehsud’s killing serves as a tool to make him reappear again, and he, in fact, responds to this, unaware of the intentions of the authorities inside or outside of his country. The man loves the images and the media and is probably attempting to imitate Osama Bin Laden in his performances and his appearances in front of the camera, and admires the stories of Osama’s cruelty and tyranny towards his opponents and victims.

In dealing with the media, Hakimullah Mehsud relies on the expertise he acquired as spokesman for his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud. This role made him a well-known character as a result of his direct contact with journalists and the numerous interviews he gave. He seldom refrains from giving interviews and is at the forefront of the Taliban scene in the Waziristan province following the assassination of former leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Even in the video recording that featured the Jordanian suicide bomber Humam al Balawi, who blew himself up at a US base in Khost killing a number of CIA agents at the beginning of this year, Hakimullah Mehsud appeared next to him as if he were the godfather of that operation, even though al Balawi planned the operation alone (and this came to light later). But al Balawi wanted to butter up the Pakistani Taliban.

Both announcements (of the killing and the denial) show an apparent use of modern tools of communication as part of a battle that should first start with verifying whether or not it’s worth engaging in. To make the media a tool for exchanging messages in such an overt manner is to move away from the real professional essence of what the media is intended for. But it seems that this is not the case when it comes to the issue of the Taliban.

Is it down to the media to carry out this task? Is exclusiveness more important than verifying news? Or should verification and the truth take precedence over the matter of getting a scoop?

Al-Qaeda is a Wounded but Dangerous Enemy by Joby Warrick, Peter Finn, and staff researcher Julie Tate

In the past six weeks, Americans have witnessed two jarringly different — but completely accurate — views of al-Qaeda’s terrorist network. One image was that of terrorist leaders being hunted down and killed by satellite-guided, pilotless aircraft. The other was of an agile foe slipping past U.S. defenses and increasingly intent on striking inside the United States.

New assessments of al-Qaeda by the top U.S. counterterrorism experts offer grounds for both optimism and concern a year after President Obama took office. Officials say al-Qaeda’s ability to wage mass-casualty terrorism has been undercut by relentless U.S. attacks on the network’s leadership, finances and training camps. But even in its weakened state, the group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt, analysts say.

The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner — both examples of the low-tech approach — have raised the fear level in Washington and across the country. Some terrorism experts say the worst could be still to come as a wounded jihadist movement thrashes about in search of a victory.

“The noose is tightening, and al-Qaeda’s leadership is accelerating efforts that were probably in place anyway,” said Andy Johnson, former staff director of the Senate intelligence committee and now national security director for the Washington think tank Third Way.

In the past year, Johnson said, the “good guys have been scoring the points,” killing key al-Qaeda leaders and disrupting multiple plots. But pressure on al-Qaeda in Iraq and Pakistan has forced terrorist operatives to flee to new havens, such as Yemen, and step up the search for weaknesses in Western defenses. While battered, “the enemy is unwavering and determined,” he said.

On Target

The U.S. ability to strike al-Qaeda’s nerve center was on display recently with news of the apparent death of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, a close ally to al-Qaeda in the lawless frontier along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Hakimullah Mehsud, who suffered severe injuries in a missile strike in mid-January, was the second leader of the group to find himself in the path of a CIA Predator aircraft in the past six months. He also was closely linked to the Dec. 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province.

U.S. drones have struck al-Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan 12 times this year, putting the Obama administration on a course to surpass 2009’s record-setting 53 strikes, according to a tally by the Web site Long War Journal.

In testimony before two congressional panels last week, top U.S. intelligence officials said the campaign has shaken al-Qaeda’s core leadership, the small band of hardened terrorists led by Osama bin Laden. The attacks, combined with a successful squeeze on al-Qaeda’s cash supply, have impeded the group’s ability to launch ambitious, complex terrorist operations on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

“Intelligence confirms that they are finding it difficult to be able to engage in the planning and the command-and-control operations to put together a large attack,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But intelligence officials also warned lawmakers of worrisome new evidence of al-Qaeda’s ability to adapt. In an annual “threat assessment” to Congress, spy agencies described the emerging threat as more geographically dispersed and also low-tech, favoring lone operatives and conventional explosives.

‘Short-term plots’

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who presented the assessment to House and Senate panels, said the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit is emblematic of an evolving threat that relies on “small numbers of terrorists, recently recruited and trained, and short-term plots.” The new tactics are less spectacular but also much harder to detect and disrupt, he said.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is a Western-educated young man who was apparently recruited because he had a U.S. visa and no record of ties to terrorist groups. Officials say that he was trained and equipped by one of al-Qaeda’s rising affiliates, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and that he had a bomb made of a common military explosive sewn into his underwear, deliberately designed to thwart the kinds of safeguards put in place after 9/11.

The foiled plot came on the heels of the Fort Hood shooting rampage. That attack, and the arrest of an Army major apparently inspired by al-Qaeda, crushed the widely held perception that Americans were immune from the kind of violent home-grown extremism seen in Muslim enclaves in Western Europe. Blair acknowledged that intelligence agencies are newly concerned that Americans may be traveling overseas for training and returning to the United States to carry out terrorist strikes.

“A handful of individuals and small, discrete cells will seek to mount attacks each year, with only a small portion of that activity materializing into violence against the homeland,” he said.

Blair testified that he thought another attempted strike by terrorists was “certain” in the next six months. The assertion was a response to a question by the Senate intelligence panel’s chairman, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), about the likelihood that al-Qaeda would try to launch a major attack on Americans in the near future. But Blair also suggested that the rash of news about terrorist plots in recent weeks has created a false impression that the threat is new.

“We have been warning since September 11 that . . . al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists remain committed to striking the United States,” he said. “What is different is that we have names and faces to go with that warning. We are therefore seeing the reality.”

Terrorism experts and administration officials have described the Dec. 25 bombing attempt as a wake-up call that helped expose gaps in security that are now being addressed. But some analysts say the dramatic successes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan may have led U.S. officials to miss signs that the terrorist threat was morphing in new directions. Now the administration is scrambling to respond to both threats at once, said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University terrorism expert and senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“Until Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the prevailing assumption was that we could fight and win by drone attacks. But the threats are diverse and spreading,” Hoffman said. “Both administrations — Bush and Obama — had a tendency to focus on one threat, one enemy, emanating from one place. The use of predators in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a very effective tactic. But it’s a tactic, and it’s not a substitute for a strategy.”

Tale of a Would-Be Spy, Buried Treasure, and Uncrackable Code by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

One night in June 2001, Brian Patrick Regan drove out to Pocahontas State Park in Virginia and walked through the muggy darkness into the woods.

The former Air Force sergeant wore a backpack on his bearish 6′5″ frame; a sawed-off shovel handle stuck out of the top as he made his way along soft creek beds, avoiding hiking trails. Inside the pack was a night-vision monocle and a pile of classified material he had stolen from his longtime employer, the National Reconnaissance Office — the US agency that manages the nation’s spy satellites.

After he had walked about 10 minutes, Regan stopped and surveyed the tall oaks and maples. He lowered his pack, pulled out the shovel, and laid a plastic sheet on the ground. Then he began to scoop out a series of holes, carefully piling the dirt on the sheet so as to leave behind no sign of the dig. From his backpack he grabbed a stack of packages wrapped in garbage bags and placed one in each hole. The bags were stuffed with thousands of documents containing information about Libyan missile sites, Iraqi air defenses, and US spying operations in China and Iran. The material would have revealed exactly what the US knew about those countries. It was, Regan thought, the kind of information that could start a war.

Regan’s letter had so many errors in it he became known as the the spy who couldn’t spell.

He buried each parcel and packed up the leftover dirt in the plastic sheet. After filling each hole, he walked over to a nearby tree and hammered in some roofing nails. Then, using a GPS device, he captured the coordinates of each package and jotted them down. His work done for the night, the 38-year-old father of four trudged back to his car.

Two months later, on August 23, Regan told his supervisor he was heading off for a week’s vacation in Orlando with the wife and kids. Instead, at about 4 pm, he drove to Dulles Airport to catch a flight to Zurich, where he planned to meet with Iraqi and Chinese embassy officials and hoped to sell his trove to the highest bidder. After going through security, he boarded a crowded airport shuttle bus to get to his gate. As the doors were closing, an FBI agent named Steven Carr and one of his colleagues pushed their way through the crowd to the front of the bus and grabbed Regan.

When officials searched the aspiring spy, they found a paper tucked under the insole of his right shoe. On it were written the addresses of several Iraqi and Chinese embassies in Europe. In a trouser pocket they discovered a spiral pad in which Regan, who had been trained in cryptanalysis by the Air Force, had written 13 seemingly unconnected words — like tricycle, rocket, and glove. Another 26 words were written on an index card. In his wallet was a paper with a string of several dozen letters and numbers beginning “5-6-N-V-O-A- I …” And in a folder Regan had been carrying, they found four pages filled with three-digit numbers, or trinomes: 952, 832, 041, and so on. The spiral pad, the index card, the wallet note, and the sheets of trinomes: The FBI suddenly had four puzzles to solve.

Two days later, Carr’s group gathered with prosecutors and NRO agents in a conference room at the FBI’s Washington, DC, field office to try to decipher the cryptic jottings and notes. They began with one very good clue.

Regan had been under surveillance for months, after a foreign source passed on a letter from an unidentified US intelligence official offering to sell information. The letter was riddled with misspellings like “enprisioned” and “esponage,” which led the FBI to look for a bad speller within the intelligence community. Regan, who was dyslexic, became the prime suspect. He would later be known as the spy who couldn’t spell.

On the morning of his arrest, hidden cameras had photographed him at his desk as he browsed Intelink, the intelligence community’s private intranet, while scribbling in a spiral pad. From those photos and a log of his online activity, the agents surmised that the string of 13 words on the pad somehow related to the image of a Chinese missile site visible on his screen minutes after he logged in. Perhaps the words represented the coordinates of the site.

The first word was tricycle; the first digit of the latitude of the Chinese site was 3. Comparing the other words to the digits, Carr thought he saw a pattern. Words like post and tree that referred to tall, single objects might signify 1; motorcycle (two wheels) and switch (binary on-off positions) would be 2; weapon — evocative of a revolver with six chambers — could be 6. In encoding the coordinates, Regan seemed to have adopted a strategy frequently employed by dyslexics: using images to remember text.

Carr tested the theory with another document found in Regan’s wallet — a Post-it note with his Ameritrade account number, followed by “hand, tree, hand, car.” The group in the conference room watched as Carr dialed Ameritrade’s toll-free number from a speakerphone and punched in Regan’s account number. When prompted for the PIN, he entered 5154. “I gained immediate access,” Carr says.

They applied the same principle to the 26 words on the index card and decoded two other sets of coordinates. (Some terms were less obvious than others — Las Vegas represented 7, as in “lucky 7.”) These turned out to be locations of Iraqi surface-to-air missiles in the northern no-fly zone that had been imposed after the first Gulf War. Informing the Iraqis that the US knew about those systems meant they would be moved, making American planes patrolling the zone more vulnerable to attack. This did not sit well with Carr, a former military helicopter pilot.

Top
Secrets

When Brian Regan was arrested at Dulles Airport, he was carrrying papers containing different types of encrypted messages. To figure out what serets he was selling and where they were hidden, investigators had to crack three kinds of codes.

Mnemonic Code

FBI agents found a spiral pad and an index card on which were written seemingly random words like tree and glove. They realized that each image suggested a number — a common device used by dyslexics like Regan. Tripod, for instance, would be the number 3. The numbers turned out to be the coordinates for Iraqi and Chinese missile installations.

The Caesar Shift

A scrap in Regan’s wallet contained a string of letters and numbers. FBI cryptanalyst Daniel Olson checked to see if the message was coded in an ancient method of enciphering used by Julius Caesar: He shifted all the letters forward in the alphabet one place at a time and eventually uncovered the addresses of several Swiss banks.

The Book Code

Regan had also filled several pages with three-digit numbers, or trinomes. Olson suspected they pointed to words in a book — another venerable system. But which book and in what way? After his conviction, Regan revealed that he’d used his junior high yearbook — but he couldn’t recall how. Together he and Olson tried to crack the code.

As potentially valuable as these coordinates were, they were just a tease. Regan hoped to use them to impress his foreign partners and win their trust. According to letters found on his computer — addressed to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and others — the real promise was a huge stash of hidden material that he was offering for $13 million. The question now: Where had Regan hidden the stash? The agents figured that the key to finding it was in the other coded documents they’d seized at the airport — the alphanumeric string and the list of trinomes. They sent the documents to the National Security Agency, where cryptanalysts spent hundreds of hours on the two remaining puzzles. The result: nothing. Failure.

In a February 2002 report, the NSA admitted that its team of more than a dozen people had made almost no progress. And with code work mounting after the September 11 attacks, the report noted, analysts had less time to spend on the Regan papers. In a move that would begin one of the most unusual pursuits in the history of American code-breaking — one that would remain largely unreported until now — the job was assigned to a rising star in the FBI, a cryptanalyst named Daniel Olson.

Olson has a round, clean-shaven face, gray eyes, and blond hair. He talks fast and moves swiftly, as if his internal rhythm were just a little quicker than everyone else’s. In his office at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, the shelves are lined with videotapes of Hollywood thrillers involving code-breaking or the FBI: films like Manhunter and The Falcon and the Snowman. A display cabinet showcases relics of his profession, like a mechanical encoding device from World War II.

The son of a military man, Olson, now 40, joined the National Guard to pay for college and was eventually trained in code-breaking at the Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. In an intense 12-week course, he learned the intricacies of different ciphers and code systems, from those used in medieval wars to encryption schemes invented by Russian mathematicians during the 1920s and 1930s.

Cryptography is often a game of linguistic hide-and-seek, and the best players use a combination of disciplined logic and creative thinking. The first step in classic code-breaking is frequency analysis, which can help expose the rules that were used to convert the original message into gibberish. That’s because in every language, some letters and words — such as e and the in English — are used more often than others, and simple coding schemes often retain those patterns.

But a good code provides no statistical clues; the letters and numbers seem completely random. An example of such a system is the so-called onetime pad formerly used by KGB agents. Each spy had a pad with a unique key that specified how to translate a given text. For instance, the first word would be transformed by one number sequence, the second by a different number sequence, and so on. No statistical pattern would remain, because the letter e might be turned into m at one point in the message and t at another.

Other codes are based on a book — a novel or volume of history, for example — known to the sender and recipient. During the American Revolution, traitor Benedict Arnold wrote coded letters to the British Army in which each word was represented by a set of numbers indicating the page, line, and specific position where the word could be found in an agreed-upon book. To make codes even more difficult to crack, code makers sometimes mix junk — irrelevant words or letters — into the enciphered text, thus adding statistical noise to the signal.

Olson left active military duty in 1992 to finish college and began working with the FBI in 1997. By 2001, he had decoded hundreds of secret messages from prison gangs, drug traffickers, pimps, and gambling rings. His record was stunning, and his colleagues considered him just the man to tackle Regan’s gobbledygook.

It took Olson only a couple of weeks to decode the first puzzle, the note from Regan’s wallet that began “5-6-N-V-O-A-I …” It turned out to have been enciphered using a trick made famous by Julius Caesar in which all the characters in the message are shifted by a certain number of positions in the alphabet. Lining up the message on one end of a slide board, Olson shifted the letters by one place, then two places, and so on, checking the other end of the slide board each time to see if he got anything readable.

After 25 shifts down the alphabet — it would have taken just one shift in the opposite direction — the first line of text, “N-V-O-A-I-P-G …” resolved to “M-U-N-Z-H-O-F B-A-N-H-O-F -S-T-R,” which looked German. Shifting the numbers down one place as well, then doing an Internet search on the result, Olson found that it was the Zurich address for the Swiss bank UBS. The second line read out as Bundesplatz 2 in Bern, the location of another Swiss bank. Both were followed by a string of numbers that Olson eventually realized were the geographical coordinates of the two sites. When investigators later confronted Regan with the decoded addresses, he admitted that he had planned to have his clients hand him cash in the banks so he could deposit the money then and there.

But the final puzzle, the four pages of trinomes, continued to stump Olson. He could tell by certain patterns that they weren’t just random numbers; there was clearly a purpose at work. The first digit of each trinome could be any number from 0 to 9, the second was limited to 1 through 5, and the third was either 1 or 2. Regan had also rewritten some numbers and corrected others.

Olson suspected that it might involve a book code, and forensic experts at the lab examined a novel and a dictionary that Regan had with him at the time of his arrest. They looked for fingerprints to determine which pages he had touched most. They shined a special light on the pages to search for invisible ink. Olson focused on words that Regan had marked with a dot. Nothing made sense.

Meanwhile, Regan and his secrets were locked in a jail cell in Alexandria, Virginia, where he awaited trial. He knew that his legal fate would be sealed if the buried packages were found. So he tried to confuse the code-breaking effort, writing random three-digit numbers on papers and allowing them to be discovered by jail staff.

Olson wasn’t thrown off by the trick. He quickly saw that these scribblings were statistically different from the trinomes he was working on. But he also wasn’t any closer to cracking the code. He had filled entire notebooks working on possible solutions, practically memorizing the numbers in the process. He even had dreams filled with trinomes. His record was fabulous, but now he was struggling to solve perhaps the most important case of his career. He was going to need a partner — and a rather unlikely one at that.

Born into a blue-collar family, Brian Regan struggled to read and write in school. “Brian grew up feeling stupid, comparing himself to other kids because of the grades he got,” says David Charney, a psychiatrist who interviewed and counseled Regan in jail. Regan’s lumbering frame, social ineptitude, and slowness made him seem a bit like Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

He seemed to find confidence, though, when he joined the Air Force. As he climbed the ranks, he set about educating himself by listening to audiobooks borrowed from libraries. Obsessed with self-improvement, he wrote notes to himself that he scattered throughout his house and car. “Every day do a little studying towards your goal.” “Open mind to learn and grow.” “Repetition is the mother of skill.” He took courses in sociology and economics at community colleges.

In 1999, as Regan neared the 20-year service limit for officers of his rank, he was worried about money. With a wife still working on a nursing degree and four kids to send to college, his military pension would fall far short of his needs. He owed $116,000 on his credit cards, and he fretted that he wouldn’t find a civilian job.

Regan drifted into espionage almost by accident. One day, he came across a hidden locker at the office and wondered if he could make use of it. Soon he was squirreling away classified documents. “It was his self-invented retirement income,” Charney says.

When his trial began in January 2003, prosecutors, led by Patricia Haynes and James Gillis, cast Regan as a conniving traitor who deserved the death penalty. His own lawyers painted him as a bumbling misfit living out a spy fantasy. The lead defense attorney, Nina Ginsberg, cited spelling errors in the letters to Hussein and Qaddafi as evidence of a mind more childish than scheming. She suggested that the baffling papers with numbers were “meaningless documents intended perhaps to look like code.” That, she argued, was why no one had decoded them.

But the jury was persuaded by Olson’s analysis of the number strings, which showed that they clearly weren’t random. Regan was found guilty on three counts of attempted espionage and sentenced to life in prison.

The conviction meant that the mystery of the trinomes might finally be solved. In a deal with the government to protect his wife from charges and get himself out of solitary confinement, Regan agreed to help retrieve the hidden documents. It was good news for Olson: He had failed to crack the code himself, but at least he’d learn the solution.

On March 21, the day after Regan’s sentencing, Carr and other officials from the FBI, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Department of Justice sat down to debrief Regan. Right away, he confessed that he had buried thousands of documents in state parks. His plan, he said, had been to offer the information to foreign governments. Once a deal had been struck, Regan would deliver the coordinates of the hiding places to his client, who would go dig them up. The scheme allowed him to avoid the riskiest part of espionage: the exchange.

There were 19 caches in all, he told the agents — 12 in Virginia’s Pocahontas State Park and seven in Maryland’s Patapsco Valley State Park. (The latter contained photos and CD-ROMs along with documents.) The trinomes that had frustrated Olson were the encrypted latitudes and longitudes of the 12 Virginia sites.

It turned out that the encryption had indeed been based on a book code — an NRO phone list. But there was no need to work it all out, Regan told the investigators. They only had to drive north on I-95 to exit 12A, walk up along the shoulder of the exit ramp, and dig up a plastic toothbrush container he had buried against the fence. On a piece of paper rolled up inside, they would find the 12 coordinates for the secrets buried in the Virginia park. He had written them in plain text and buried them in case he ever lost the encrypted pages. In the same container, investigators would find another paper with encoded coordinates for the Maryland sites.

Carr and his colleagues found the toothbrush container and quickly tracked down the Virginia packages. Each coordinate provided the location of a tree that Regan had marked on one side with a series of roofing nails. The package was buried on the opposite side. Within a couple of days, they had dug everything up.

The Maryland packages were another matter. Their locations were also encrypted by trinomes, and Regan revealed that the key to deciphering them was his school yearbook. But when Carr gave him the yearbook, he drew a blank. It had been three years since Regan invented the coding scheme, and he simply could not remember it. Carr believed him: After receiving a life sentence, there was no reason for Regan to play games. Olson was back on the case.

On an April morning in 2003, US marshals led Regan — handcuffed and dressed in a green prison jumpsuit — into a conference room in the basement of the Alexandria courthouse where his trial had been conducted.

The marshals unshackled Regan, and he sat down across from Carr and Olson. As always, he stared blankly ahead. On the conference table lay Regan’s personal copy of his yearbook: the 1977 edition from Mill Lane Junior High in New York, its green hardbound cover darkened by grime. Inside were rows and columns of mug shots of the graduating class with a name printed below each photo. Some kids were geeky-looking, some were freckled, some looked like Robert Plant wannabes. And there was the young Regan himself, with slightly droopy eyes, neatly combed hair, and a handsome smile. Some of his classmates had scrawled messages portraying him as a dolt. “Can’t believe you graduated!” one said.

Olson watched silently as Regan paged through the yearbook. The encrypted Maryland message lay on the table — a string of trinomes interspersed with two-digit numbers attached to an A like “13A” and “16A.” At the top of the page he had typed, “Number One.” This was a reference to his own picture in the yearbook, Regan guessed. But how that related to the trinomes, he had no idea. “He’d think and think; he’d start doing things on paper that I had already done — and get nowhere,” Olson says.

Shortly before lunch the pair focused on the alpha-numeral 13A, which appeared seven times in the message. Perhaps, they surmised, it appeared once for each of the seven buried packages. Olson thought about it, then counted 13 pictures forward from Regan’s. He came to a picture labeled “Mystery Man,” a photo of a student sporting a monster mask, on which Regan had written the name Frank. No other first name in the book began with F, and Olson suspected the letter was important. Perhaps it, and therefore all of the 13As, stood for “feet.”

That seemed right to Regan, and the discovery revealed the rule for decoding every one of the two-digit numbers attached to an A. They just had to count that number of places from Regan’s picture and take the first letter of the name of the person they landed on. Since 11A led to Cindy and 40A led to Donna, the sequence 11A 40A translated to “CD” — a compact disc. Soon they decoded other such sequences, converting them, for example, to “SP” for “small package” and “LP” for “large package.”

But even with part of the puzzle worked out, Regan still couldn’t remember how to interpret the nearly 200 three-digit numbers that made up the bulk of the message. One curious aspect was that the A-marked numerals stopped appearing about three lines before the end, leaving a long final string of three-digit numbers that didn’t seem as random as the ones above. “Think about it, Brian,” Olson said at the end of the grueling day. “Why did things change?”

The following Monday, Carr got a phone call from an officer at the prison: “Mr. Regan asked me to tell you that he has the solution.” It wasn’t clear when or how the breakthrough occurred. But the long brainstorming session with Olson and the solitude of his cell seemed to have unlocked Regan’s mind.

The numbers at the end of the message were neither junk nor code. They were coordinates — more precisely, the digits after the decimal point for each latitude and longitude, written in unencoded plain text. (The whole-number portion of the coordinates were unnecessary, since that would be the same anywhere in the park: 39 degrees north, -76 west.) Regan had thought that putting them in the message would be the equivalent of hiding them in plain sight. He remembered, too, how to decode the trinomes in the body of the document: You had to count the number of letters in names at specified positions, perform a couple of complex calculations, and then look up the final number on a conversion table consisting of a simple digit sequence that Regan had memorized. This would give you, among other things, the number of feet from the tree each package was buried. The scheme was inspired by Manhunter, a movie in which a serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy uses a book code to communicate with Hannibal Lecter.

Agents used the coordinates to locate the seven trees in Maryland that Regan had marked with roofing nails. With shovels and backhoes, they began to dig. Horseback riders wandered by, watching curiously. When a jogger asked about the work, Carr answered that it was an archaeology project. One person called the state park office to ask if they were building a Walmart.

They dug for weeks but failed to find a single package. “We could have put a Lincoln Continental into some of the holes we excavated,” Carr says. And so, one morning in late May, Carr and dozens of other federal agents and SWAT team members drove with Regan to Patapsco. It was drizzling. Regan stepped out of an SUV wearing red sweat pants and a poncho, one hand shackled to his waist. As he walked through the woods, stepping over fallen logs, he scanned the trees around him, occasionally squinting and scratching his stubble.

“I was scared that he’d toss himself into the river,” Carr says. But Regan calmly surveyed the scene, cocking his head now and then. Suddenly, he stopped and pointed at a spot more than 20 feet from one of the trees. “I buried it right there,” he said. Carr was skeptical. “I’m like, ‘Brian, I can’t remember what tree I peed on five minutes ago. How can you remember a spot you were at three years ago?’”

The agents dug 2 feet and struck gold: a package of compact discs. For three years, they had sat there inside a waterproof bag, a mother lode of military secrets noticed only by worms. It turned out that, unlike in Virginia, Regan had dug holes behind the tree opposite the tree with the nails in it. Soon the FBI had recovered all seven packages.

As they drove Regan back to prison, Carr and his colleagues stopped at a McDonald’s. Regan ordered a Quarter Pounder. The SWAT team guys urged him to take advantage of the opportunity, and Regan ended up eating three hamburgers.

But the law enforcement men were unable to bond with the convicted spy; Regan simply ate and stared quietly ahead. You could see why the kids at his junior high school had said he was lucky to graduate. How easy it was, Carr thought, to look at him and think that he was stupid. And how wrong.

Soldier Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. in Pakistan by Jane Perlez, Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pir Zubair Shah from Islamabad, and Elisabeth Bumiller and Eric Schmitt from Washington

A suicide attack in Lower Dir killed three Americans.

The soldiers were among at least 60 to 100 members of a Special Operations team that trains Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques, including intelligence gathering and development assistance. The American service members are from the Special Operations Command of Adm. Eric T. Olson.

At least 12 other American service members have been killed in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001, in hotel bombings and a plane crash, according to the United States Central Command, but these were the first killed as part of the Special Operations training, which has been under way for 18 months.

That training has been acknowledged only gingerly by both the Americans and the Pakistanis, but has deliberately been kept low-key so as not to trespass onto Pakistani sensitivities about sovereignty, and not to further inflame high anti-American sentiment.

Even though the United States calls Pakistan an ally, the country, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, has not allowed American combat forces to operate here, a point that is stressed by the Pentagon and the Pakistani Army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan.

Instead, the Central Intelligence Agency operates what has become the main American weapon in Pakistan, the drones armed with missiles that have struck with increasing intensity against militants with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the lawless tribal areas.

The American soldiers were probably made targets as a result of the drone strikes, said Syed Rifaat Hussain, professor of international relations at Islamabad University. “The attack seems a payback for the mounting frequency of the drone attacks,” Professor Hussain said.

If the American soldiers were the targets, the attack raised the question of whether the Taliban had received intelligence or cooperation from within the Frontier Corps.

The three soldiers were killed, and two other service members wounded, in the region of Lower Dir, which is close to the tribal areas. According to police officials in the region, the armored vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a suicide bomber driving a car. Earlier reports from Pakistani security officials said the soldiers had been killed by a roadside explosive device.

To disguise themselves in a way that is common for Western men in Pakistan, the American soldiers were dressed in traditional Pakistani garb of baggy trousers and long tunic, known as shalwar kameez, according to a Frontier Corps officer. They also wore local caps that helped cover their hair, he said.

Their armored vehicle was equipped with electronic jammers sufficient to block remotely controlled devices and mines, the officer said. Vehicles driven by the Frontier Corps were placed in front and behind the Americans as protection, he said.

Still, the Taliban bomber was able to penetrate their cordon. In all 131 people were wounded, most of them girls who were students at a high school adjacent to the site of the suicide attack, the Lower Dir police said.

The soldiers were en route to the opening of a girls school that had been rebuilt with American money, the United States Embassy said in a statement. The school was destroyed by the Taliban last year as they swept through Lower Dir and the nearby Swat Valley, where a battle raged for months between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban called reporters hours after the attack against the Americans and claimed that his group was responsible.

The Pakistani Army currently occupies Swat, and in an effort to strengthen the civilian institutions there and in Dir, some of the American service members on the Special Operations team have been quietly working on development projects, an American official said.

The presence of the American military members in an area known to be threaded with Taliban militants would also raise questions, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat and Dir.

Mr. Aziz said it was odd that American soldiers would go to such a volatile area where Taliban militants were known to be prevalent even though the Pakistani security forces insisted that they had been flushed out.

The usual practice for development work in Dir and Swat called for Pakistani aid workers or paramilitary soldiers to visit the sites, he said.

The Americans’ involvement in training Frontier Corps recruits in development assistance was little known until Wednesday’s attack.

“People are going to be very suspicious,” said Mr. Aziz, who is now involved in American assistance projects elsewhere. “There is going to be big blowback in the media.”

An American development official said that encouraging the Frontier Corps to become expert in humanitarian aid was an important part of the trainers’ counterinsurgency curriculum.

Last summer, for example, the American military trainers helped distribute food and water in camps for the more than one million people displaced from the Swat Valley by the fighting, the official said. But that American assistance, too, was kept quiet.

The 500,000-strong Pakistani Army led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the standard-bearer of Pakistan’s strong sense of nationalism, is resistant to the appearance of overt military assistance, least of all from the unpopular Americans, that would make the army look less than self-reliant on the battlefield.

Over the last several years, as the Qaeda-backed insurgents increased their hold on Pakistan’s tribal areas and used their base to attack American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the United States military asked for permission for combat soldiers to operate in the tribal zone, according to American officials. Pakistan rebuffed the requests, they said.

Whether American soldiers are based in Pakistan is often raised by Pakistani politicians, students and average Pakistanis, many of them suspicious of American motives.

The question of the presence of American soldiers in Pakistan is also prompted by the fact that the American military provides important equipment to the Pakistani Army, including F-16 fighter jets, Cobra attack helicopters and howitzers.

Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said 12 other service members had been killed in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001. The three soldiers who died Wednesday had been assigned to a Special Operations command in Pakistan. But he said they were not commandos from the elite Delta Force or Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. The United States has about 200 military service members in Pakistan, Captain Hanzlik said.

The three names of the soldiers killed were not released Wednesday because United States military officials were still notifying the next of kin.

Bloody Friday: Anti-Shia Terror Violence Hit Karachi Again! by Animesh Roul

On the Chehlum day (40 days after the day of Ashura), Pakistan’s port city Karachi has witnessed twin bomb explosions that killed almost 25 people and scores of them injured, mostly from the monitory Shia community. The first explosion occurred in the afternoon when a remote controlled VBIED (Vehicle borne Improvised explosive device) exploded near a passenger bus carrying 30 to 40 Shiite mourners. Initial reports suggested that the blast was a suicide attack and the biker’s suicide jacket contained 15-20 kg of explosive material. However, later officials played down it as remote controlled IED blast.

The second blast, the more strategic one, took place outside the emergency ward at the Jinnah Hospital where injured were being shifted for treatment. Nearly 11 people got killed in the hospital blast which also damaged vehicles at the vicinity. Another live bomb has been recovered from the premises of Jinnah Hospital and later it was defused by the bomb disposal squad. The hospital bombing was carried out only to maximize damage and inflict fear among the relatives of the injured and among the emergency responders (doctors and nurses).

Surprisingly enough, both the attacks took place despite tight security measures were in place for Chehlum Processions across the city. Late December Ashura blast in Karachi had claimed nearly 45 lives. Then, Pro-Taliban elements and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) outfit were blamed for the attack. However, no groups have taken resposibilty for Friday’s (Feb 05) twin blasts so far.

Karachi has a history of ethnic tensions, targeted killings and sectarian violence.

Ruling Yemen Gets Even More Complicated by Jeffrey Fleishman and Haley Sweetland Edwards

Reporting from Cairo and Sana, Yemen

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who once described ruling Yemen as dancing on the heads of snakes, has stayed in power for three decades through a clever mix of money, tribal ploys and government corruption.

But Saleh’s political capital is shrinking and his wiles are straining as Yemen struggles with a civil war in the north, secession troubles in the south and a battle against an Al Qaeda affiliate that has drawn the United States into a new front against the terrorist network.

As with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the U.S. regards Saleh more as a skilled operator than a trusted ally. For years, Washington paid sporadic attention and sent little aid to Yemen, but that changed after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day.

Top American intelligence officials told Congress this week that Yemen’s terrorist network was a major threat to U.S. interests. The Obama administration is now warily increasing money and commitment to an Arab leader criticized for manipulating crises for political gain and tolerating militants as long as they unleashed their jihad in other countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Saleh is always maneuvering,” said AbdulSalam Qarari, deputy editor of Afaq Gadidah magazine in Sana, the capital. “He creates crises so he can play with them and use them for his interests.”

The 67-year-old Saleh, who wears a meticulous mustache and suits of muted colors, is facing increasing pressure amid tumbling oil revenues, a water shortage and the government’s diminishing grip on tribal lands scattered widely across mountains and deserts.

Saleh has long been adept at deciphering his country’s moods and passions. In recent years, however, he appears to have spent less time tending to national problems than on fortifying his family’s hold on power, most notably by preparing his son Ahmed, chief of the Special Forces and the Yemen Republican Guard, to succeed him.

The president’s political style follows that of other Arab leaders, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who create facades of democracy while ruling as strongmen over states that run on patronage. In addition to his son, relatives holding key positions include his half-brother Mohammed, commander of the air force, and his nephews Tarek, head of the Presidential Guard, and Amar, deputy chief of Yemen’s National Security Bureau.

“Saleh’s a very good politician, but he hasn’t understood that there is a big change in our society,” said Mohammed AbdulMalik Mutawakel, a leader in a federation of opposition parties. “He used to manage the public in three ways: by satisfying with money, by using force, and by propaganda. All these tactics are ineffective now. He has no money. He is already using all the force he has. And with propaganda? People will believe him once, twice, but no one will believe him now.”

What troubles the West is Yemen’s strategic location in the crosscurrents where the Al Qaeda-plagued Horn of Africa meets the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. It is only in recent months, with increased U.S. pressure, that Yemen has moved to rout Islamic militants.

Airstrikes against Al Qaeda bases and training camps have reportedly killed more than 60 militants since mid-December. The U.S. is expected to double its military and counter-terrorism aid to about $150 million.

Saleh’s critics accuse him of exploiting Al Qaeda and other threats to attract foreign money, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. Yet, at the same time, he shows independence from the West for fear of angering a populace disdainful of U.S. regional intervention.

It is a tricky strategy of a man playing both sides. Saleh recently said he would open a dialogue with Al Qaeda militants who renounce violence. The overture was received well at home but it left doubts in the West about the president’s zeal to destroy militant networks.

In 2006, Yemen’s police and security forces were suspected of helping more than 20 extremists escape from prison. That took pressure off Saleh’s government from radical Islamic Salafi voices, but now some of those escapees are fighting alongside a resurgent Al Qaeda group.

The fighting with the terrorist network and Houthi Shiite rebels in the north is the result of years of ineffectual government efforts to stem creeping dangers. The military campaigns have not diverted attention from malnutrition, corruption, failing schools, joblessness and other problems in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world.

Money has a tendency to disappear in Yemen. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted at a conference on Yemen in London last week that only a portion of $5.2 billion in international pledges to the country have been delivered, in part because of fear that the money will be misspent.

Reports by U.S. organizations and others have found systemic government corruption that includes thousands of “ghost workers,” kickbacks to officials for government contracts and bribes to judges. A U.S. report described Yemen as a “bandit” state where one-third of the country’s 100,000 soldiers exist only on paper, allowing their politically connected commanders to reportedly pocket extra salaries and sell guns and munitions on the black market.

“Grand corruption is not a tangential problem in Yemen. Rather, it is the glue that keeps things in place,” states the 2006 report prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The president’s “political mandate is nonexistent. The international attention and money and support may make him stronger in one way, but that’s not enough,” said Naif Gunas, a spokesman for Yemen’s parliamentary opposition coalition. “The power of the president depends on two elements: the military and the tribes. . . . But he has become less powerful with the tribes. They consider him a thief and oppose his bad politics.”

Al Qaeda is trying to capitalize on Saleh’s vulnerability. The organization has encouraged intermarriage of militants and tribal women, and casts itself as a champion of tribal rights.

In an audiotape released last year, Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, called upon the Yemeni tribes to protect Al Qaeda members, as their tribal “brothers” in Pakistan and Afghanistan had done. Tribes are tough to sway, though, and some clan leaders consider Islamic militants more of a liability than an unpopular president, even if he provides them with fewer paved roads and hospitals.

But strikes on Al Qaeda cells on tribal lands have infuriated sheiks. In one instance, a tribe in Marib province fired antiaircraft rounds at government forces that attacked the house of a militant leader. The assault was regarded as an affront to the sheik whose duty is to protect the kinsmen on his land.

“The confrontation is now open,” said Abdulelah Haider Shaeya, a Yemeni journalist covering militant networks. “Not the government versus Al Qaeda, but the government versus the tribesman.”

For years, Saleh, a former tank officer, has manipulated the incestuous nature of Yemen tribes and politics. He came to power in a divided Yemen in the late 1970s and became president of a unified country in 1990. But his talent for buying loyalty and taming enemies with favors is less assured these days.

“Saleh is in trouble,” Mutawakel said. “The U.S. will demand results and he’ll have to deliver, but I don’t know how.”

Assessing the Militant White Separatist Movement[1] by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Madeleine Gruen

Today the militant white separatist movement faces leadership and organizational challenges: after the deaths and arrests of significant movement leaders over the past decade, it is fractured and appears poorly led. Further, the movement’s recruitment and training capabilities appear relatively crude, and it lacks a unified ideological outlook. However, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the American white separatist movement will remain incapable of orchestrating violence on a large scale. A confluence of factors producing discontent with the status quo are likely to bolster the movement, including the present economic crisis, the migration of jobs overseas, and the fears and concerns produced by demographic trends that suggest whites will become a minority in the United States by 2050.[2]

Indeed, most observers believe there has been an increase in support for the white separatist movement in recent years. This article assesses the current state of the movement by evaluating its operating environment, the competing strategies of top-down leadership and leaderless resistance, circulation of the movement’s core doctrine, training and access to weapons, and tactical and strategic successes.

Operating Environment

An important factor that will contribute to an extremist group’s success is a favorable operating environment. An environment is considered favorable if it provides the qualities necessary for a group or movement to sustain operations, and to eventually achieve its objectives. Some factors include a population that is ideologically supportive, and from which the movement may recruit members; a safe haven or protection from adversaries (in this case, the U.S. government); ability to train operatives; and the ability to access weapons and material necessary to launch attacks.

The environment in which the white separatist movement operates is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, the overall social tide in America appears to be moving against an agenda of white separatism or white supremacy. This is reflected, among other things, in the fact that the voting public elected an African-American president who hung his campaign platform on the concepts of hope and change. Further, demographic measurements show the country will only become more ethnically and racially diverse over time.

But paradoxically, the movement can also draw strength from these factors. Demographic trends give rise to fears and concerns in segments of the white population; in some ways Obama’s election has magnified rather than diminished racial tensions; and political issues that have drawn people to the white separatist movement (such as immigration and gun control) have only been thrown into sharper relief. Moreover, the economy remains sick, with seventeen states having an unemployment rate of over 10%.[3] The poor economic future that whites face as the country changes has long been a theme that movement leaders believe draws people to white separatism. As one movement publication, The Truth at Last, stated:

Immigrants are flooding into our nation willing to work for the minimum wage (or less). Super-rich corporate executives are flying all over the world in search of cheaper and cheaper labor so that they can “lay off” their American employees…. [M]any young White families have no future! They are not going to receive any appreciable wage increases due to job competition from immigrants-meaning both legal and illegal immigrants![4]

Similarly, Bobby Norton of the Aryan Nations told researchers Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile in the 1990s: “I think the economy is going to get really bad so that’s also going to bring a lot of suffering on us but it is going to make our ranks swell.”[5] It is obvious why the movement would focus on the economy: as conditions worsen, the U.S. government may lose the population’s support. Pockets may become increasingly disgruntled and prone to aggressive, possibly even violent, expression of discontent. Riots may lead to government crackdowns, which would further erode trust in government. We spoke recently with Tom Metzger, a veteran of the white separatist movement and founder of the White Aryan Resistance, who sees even riots within the black community as a possible call to action for white separatists. “We’re waiting for the system itself to tip,” he said. “They’re the ones who are going to become more brutal, more oppressive.” Hypothesizing that the unemployment rate among African-Americans in the Detroit area would lead to unrest, Metzger said: “The government will come in and show its face. That will be the ‘go’ signal for us to defend ourselves.”[6]

Unlike such militant Islamist groups as al-Qaeda, the white separatist movement is unlikely to have a solid base of operations or clearly assigned field bases from which to maintain a sustained military campaign. This will impede the implementation of any long-term strategy.

Leadership vs. Leaderless Resistance

Over the past decade, most of the high-profile leaders of the white separatist movement have either died or been incarcerated, including William Pierce, founder of the National Alliance (NA) and author of influential novel The Turner Diaries; Richard Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations; and Matthew Hale, leader of the World Church of the Creator (now known as the Creativity Movement). Many of the larger groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and NA have lost members as a result of the void in leadership, or have fragmented due to infighting.

T.J. Leyden, author of Skinhead Confessions: From Hate to Hope and former member of the Hammerskin Nation, says the KKK is now considered “a joke” in the white separatist movement. Among other reasons for this, it is no longer a unified organization and its various branches cannot agree on leadership, strategy, or tactics. Some separatists believe the KKK is not doing anything to further “the cause,” but is merely collecting membership dues. Leyden observes that the movement’s contemporary leaders are, overall, less educated than the leaders of ten or twenty years ago. Further, Leyden assesses that the movement is disjointed in terms of ideology, methods of operation, and even strategic objectives-a condition, he says, that could be resolved with the emergence of strong leadership.[7]

The void in charismatic and conspicuous leadership within the white separatist movement may in part be due to specific strategic choices. It may be that the white separatist movement has moved away from a hierarchical, pyramid-style organizational model to a more flexible model that resembles a “chain network.”[8] This would suggest the adoption of leaderless resistance as a strategy, something that certain key white separatist intellectual leaders have advocated for some time.[9] The leadership void clearly cannot be completely attributed to a strategy of leaderless resistance: too many within the movement are skeptical of such an organizing principle. But leaderless resistance does offer some clear advantages: among other things, it minimizes the chance of white separatists being netted by a RICO prosecution, makes it more difficult for lawyers like Morris Dees to bring civil lawsuits against the movement,[10] and makes infiltration with informants more difficult.

Circulation of Core Doctrine

Another condition that can be seen as a weakness in the white separatist movement is the lack of circulation of new ideas, and lack of effort to package the core ideology in fresh ways. At one time, the white separatist movement was on the cutting edge of new and alternative media. One example is the production and distribution of white power music, which helped the movement maintain currency with younger generations. Another was the success of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, which had 300,000 paid subscribers to its flagship publication at its height in the early 1980s, while “410 radio stations broadcast Liberty Lobby’s daily program.”[11]

To be sure, the movement does make use of some vibrant means of social networking. The National Socialist Movement (NSM), for example, runs a social networking site at www.newsaxon.org. It offers users the opportunity to create personal home pages, participate in polls, access white separatist-interest blogs, videos, and other forms of new media. But while social networking and the ongoing production of white power music continue to be effective indoctrination tools, there is little evidence of further innovation.

Training and Access to Weapons and Explosives

It has frequently been suggested that hate groups have a larger presence in the military than ever before. Multiple reasons have been given for this claim. For hate groups, there would be a clear advantage to military enlistment: military experience would give white separatists more sophisticated tactical capabilities, including knowledge of urban warfare strategy, bomb-making, firearms, intelligence collection, and counter-intelligence operations. This would be of special value because, as previously noted, the white separatist movement lacks a natural geographical safe haven. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) contends that “thousands of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists” are currently serving in the armed forces.[12] Tom Metzger concurs that there are many white separatists in the military, but says it is impossible to give a precise number because many supporters do not overtly advertise their affiliations.[13]

Over the past year, white separatists have been involved in many violent crimes, most of which have been categorized as inter-gang violence. The weapons of choice in these incidents were mostly small arms, knives, metal pipes, sledgehammers, brass knuckles, and the like.[14] As Metzger wrote:

We are becoming a knife and ‘edged blade’ society. Carry a legal length knife and know how to use it. Box cutters come in all sizes and are a good defense item. They are disposable and cheap, and are more easily explained. In a pinch, there are dozens of weapons lying around: rocks, bottles, bricks, lumber, anything just lying around. In a riot with the JDL a few years ago a comrade used a floor standing ashtray to nearly beat a Jew attacker to death. A carpenter carries tools of the trade. Hammers are deadly. An auto mechanic carries tools; a pipe wrench can ruin the day of an attacker. Almost anything feasibly can be used as a weapon. Pencils or ballpoint pens used properly will also ruin an attackers [sic] day.[15]

In recent years, there have been isolated cases of white separatist movement supporters seeking to fabricate or obtain weapons of mass destruction. In December 2008, Amber Cummings shot her husband, James Cummings, in the head twice as he slept. The subsequent investigation revealed that James had subjected his wife to years of abuse, and that he had dark obsessions with child pornography, Adolph Hitler, and Nazi memorabilia.[16] Investigators also recovered the component parts of a radiological dispersal device, as well as bomb-making instructions. Amber Cummings told police that her husband was very upset over Barack Obama’s election, and her comments suggested that he may have intended to attack the newly-elected president. While it did not appear that Cummings was a member of any white separatist organization at the time of his death, his wife confirmed that he had “been in contact” with groups. Investigators found a completed application for NSM member in Cummings’s home.[17]

In 2004, Tennessee farm hand Demetrius Van Crocker sought to purchase the ingredients to make Sarin gas. He described himself to an FBI undercover agent as a former member of NSM, and said he intended to attack federal courthouses. He claimed he was not a “ruthless murderer,” but felt action had to be taken against the government. In a recorded conversation, Crocker said he dreamed of setting off a dirty bomb at the U.S. Capitol, and wanted a helicopter license so he could bomb black neighborhoods or spray them with poison gas.[18] Regarding the prospect of “collateral” deaths, Crocker said:

It can’t be helped. And the way things is now, everybody hollered about what Timothy McVeigh done, and I said, well, I don’t like the government, anything associated with the government-a building. I don’t want my kids around it, cuz I know how I feel about the government, you know? And you top all that now. They ain’t gotta worry about home terrorists.  Look at the [sic] al-Qaeda. I mean, would you want your kids around a government building right now? School’s bad enough.[19]

Tactical and/or Strategic Successes

To date, white separatists have not had a true strategic success, an identifiable moment that moved them closer to achieving their political objectives. It remains to be seen whether their operational capabilities grow to the point where they can experience strategic successes. Though movement adherents continually perpetrate violent crime, their attacks have done little to further their cause-and in fact, some of these actions can be viewed as detrimental to the movement.

89-year old James von Brunn, who died in a prison hospital on January 6, 2010, opened fire in Washington, D.C.’s United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2009, killing security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns. Von Brunn was a long-time fixture in the white separatist movement, running a web site called Holy Western Empire that promoted the idea of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the “white gene pool.” Rather than resulting in celebration among white separatists, the event resulted in consternation about Von Brunn’s apparent lack of a “game plan,” and concerns about a crackdown on white nationalists. One representative comment on the popular white separatist chat forum Stormfront read:

What happened to grandpa, why did he snap? Maybe he didn’t like the idea of winding up in an old folks [sic] home. It seems he was a vet. He must have forgot [sic] all his training. There was no planning in his attack, no mass kill, no massive destruction, one for one? At least McViegh [sic] went out with a bang, and the Hero Robert Matthews[20] had a game plan.[21]

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to assess the current status of the white separatist movement.  Four possibilities are:

1.      The white separatist movement is a loaded gun that is simply waiting for a strong leader to pull the trigger by unifying the disparate factions. It has the capabilities and intentions to instigate major violence in the United States, but requires command and control in order determine the right moment to act, and in order to carry off attacks in a sustained and protracted way.

2.      The white separatist movement is more unified than it appears on the surface in terms of its strategy and objectives, and the trigger will be pulled once a clear and universally understood “tipping point” becomes apparent to supporters. Social and economic conditions in the U.S. could degrade to the point where there is such a clear moment for action. Organized group factions and “lone wolves” will act in a “swarming” fashion once the “go” sign is evident.

3.      The white separatist movement is not unified and does not have the ability to pose a sustained threat to national security at present, but its cause has been fueled by the bad economy and growing immigrant population in the United States. Whites who currently would not consider participating in the movement may feel compelled to become more active in the future.

4.      The white separatist movement is disjointed because its ideology, strategy, and objectives are not consistently defined, and there is no real innovation in propaganda methods. The movement will fail to make a significant political impact because the tide of American sentiment is shifting away from white separatist-type grievances. They do not have the capacity or capability to artificially degrade support for the government. Individual members or small groups may become impatient that the “white revolution” will not occur in their lifetime, and their frustration will compel them to commit random acts of violence that will be horrible, but will not serve to further the movement’s cause as a whole.

The white separatist movement has a substantial support base in the United States, and the current economic and political climate appears to favor its growth. Regardless of which of these hypotheses prove true, the bottom line is that groups and individuals who embrace hatred as an ideology are dangerous. Over the past nine years that the U.S. has battled Islamist terrorism, authorities have learned to “listen to the rhetoric.” The same principle must be applied to racist groups in the United States.

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[1] In dealing with violent racially-based American movements-as when dealing with terrorist groups who claim their inspiration from Islam-there is a significant question about what to call them. We employ the term “white separatist” because it seems to best convey the dominant present goals of the movement: rather than seeking a racially diverse state with the white race at the top, movement members are more interested in producing a homogenous state consisting only of non-Jewish whites. Of course, there also continue to be supremacist strains within the movement as well.

[2] See Jeffrey Passel & D’Vera Cohn, “Immigration to Play a Lead Role in Future U.S. Growth,” Pew Research Center, Feb. 11, 2008.

[3] Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor, “Current Unemployment Rates for States and Historical High/Lows,” accessed Jan. 27, 2010.

[4] Quoted in Betty A. Dobratz & Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile, The White Separatist Movement in the United States (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 115.

[5] Ibid., p. 259.

[6] Authors’ telephone interview with Tom Metzger, Dec. 22, 2009.

[7] Authors’ telephone interview with T.J. Leyden, Dec. 12, 2009.

[8] See John Arquilla & David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited),” Networks and Netwars (Washington, DC: RAND, 2001), p. 7.

[9] For a key text in this regard, see Louis Beam, “Leaderless Resistance,” The Seditionist, Feb. 1992; see also the article on leaderless resistance in this issue.

[10] Morris Dees is the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has brought a series of landmark lawsuits against racist organizations and individuals.

[11] Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009), p. 32. For much more on the Liberty Lobby, see George Michael, Willis Carto and the American Far Right (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2008).

[12] Letter from J. Richard Cohen, Chief Executive Officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center, to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, July 7, 2006.

[13] Authors’ telephone interview with Tom Metzger, Dec. 22, 2009.

[14] See the Anti-Defamation League’s Action Center for Extremism web site for a comprehensive description of incidents involving hate groups in the past year, available at http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/default.htm (accessed Jan. 7, 2009).

[15] Tom Metzger, “Mini-Manual for Survival,” The Insurgent, Apr. 2003.

[16] Clarke Canfield, “Maine Woman Avoids Prison for Killing Husband,” Associated Press, Jan. 7, 2010.

[17] Walter Griffin, “Dirty Bomb Parts Found in Slain Man’s Home,” Bangor Daily News, Feb. 10, 2009.

[18] “Anti-Government White Supremacist Guilty,” Associated Press, Apr. 14, 2006.

[19] John Branston, “Homegrown Terrorist,” Memphis Flyer, Apr. 20, 2006.

[20] Robert Jay Mathews was a founding member of the group The Order, which engaged in a string of robberies as well as counterfeiting operations designed to fund the white separatist movement in the early-to-mid 1980s. The Order was also responsible for the murders of one of its own members for “talking too much” and Denver radio show host Alan Berg. Mathews died in 1984 after a 36-hour standoff with police in Washington.

[21] Posting by Bohemianh, June 10, 2009.

Terrorist Dropouts: Learning From Dropouts by Micheal Jacobson

When I served on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, one of our primary tasks was to assemble the story of how al Qaeda’s plot developed. One of the aspects of the plot on which we focused our attention was, therefore, the movements, activities, and associations of the 19 hijackers. The basic question we struggled to answer was how al Qaeda persuaded 19 young men to participate in an attack that would result in their certain death. Although al Qaeda’s “success” on this front was rather startling, the organization failed to convince all of the initial would-be attackers to go through with their plot. Why not? The stories of the individuals selected for the 9/11 attacks who backed out, even in the face of pressure from the terrorist group, have received little attention in the media or among policymakers, but could teach us important lessons for thwarting future attacks.

While Mohamed Atta, the hijackers’ operational leader, is now a household name, Mushabib al-Hamlan and Saud al-Rashid are far less well known. These two young Saudis were selected by al Qaeda’s leadership to participate in the attacks and left the training camps in Afghanistan to return home to Saudi Arabia to obtain visas for travel to the United States. Both, however, were beset by second thoughts after arriving in Saudi Arabia. After getting his visa, Hamlan contacted his family despite clear instructions not to do so by his al Qaeda handlers. When Hamlan found out that his mother was ill, he decided not to return to Afghanistan — even in the face of repeated follow-up pressure by al Qaeda. This included a personal visit at the Saudi college Hamlan had by then returned to from Khalid al-Zahrani, an associate from the training camps who was sent by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, to convince Hamlan to come back.

Rashid’s story might illustrate even more dramatically the role that family can play in the dropout process. According to KSM, Rashid may have bailed on the plot because his family found out about his involvement in it and confiscated his passport.

In the summer of 2001, al Qaeda confronted an even larger potential challenge to the operation when Ziad Jarrah, who went on to pilot Flight 93, was deliberating about whether to withdraw from the operation, in part because of Jarrah’s “troubled” relationship with Atta. In what was an “emotional conversation,” according to the 9/11 Commission, Ramzi Binalshibh — the Hamburg-based liaison between the cell and the al Qaeda leadership — was able to persuade Jarrah to stay the course.

Given that we can’t kill or capture every potential terrorist, developing a better grasp of this “dropout phenomenon” is critical for the United States and its allies’ counterterrorism efforts, particularly in shaping the myriad counter-radicalization programs springing up in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

There are plenty of candidates for study. Despite al Qaeda’s reputation for ferocity, secrecy, and esprit de corps, the organization has been plagued by desertions since its earliest days. More recently, key ideologues and leaders have turned against the group, challenging al Qaeda’s vision for global jihad. And al Qaeda is hardly alone among the global jihadi groups in suffering from defections. Some of its affiliates have experienced important losses as well, ranging from foot soldiers to key leadership personnel.

The recent defections of prominent leaders, clerics, and ideologues from al Qaeda could have a profound long-term effect on the organization. The most prominent of these defectors is former Egyptian Islamic Jihad head Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (also known as Dr. Fadl). Al Qaeda often cited Dr. Fadl’s treatises as ideological justification for its actions, but he has since firmly renounced Osama bin Laden and has written a new book rejecting al Qaeda’s message and tactics.

Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), also publicly turned his back on jihad and played a key role in persuading other key figures in the organization to renounce al Qaeda as well. In September 2009, six leaders of the LIFG issued recantations challenging al Qaeda’s global vision for jihad in a 400-plus-page book titled Corrective Studies in Understanding Jihad, Accountability and the Judgment of the People.

Dr. Fadl, Benotman, and the other leaders who have defected all cite al Qaeda’s inaccurate interpretation of Islam as a major factor in their decision to abandon the cause. In his treatise, Dr. Fadl called al Qaeda’s jihadism reprehensible, arguing that it violates Islam and sharia law. In 2007, Benotman wrote a public letter to al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri — after years of criticizing the group privately — arguing that al Qaeda’s tactics violate Islam’s call for the protection of “man’s religion, life, mind, offspring, and wealth.” In this letter, Benotman called for al Qaeda to cease its military operations, sentiments repeated in the LIFG’s renunciations of al Qaeda in 2009.

Benotman also had more practical differences with bin Laden over the direction of the global jihadi movement and claims to have asked the al Qaeda amir to get out of the terrorism business at a 2000 summit, realizing that they were fighting a losing battle. Benotman thought al Qaeda’s sole focus on the United States as the “head of the snake” would hurt the efforts of groups such as the LIFG to overthrow the apostate Arab regimes, which Benotman viewed as the real problem afflicting the Muslim world. Benotman later said that he made a “clear-cut request” to bin Laden to stop attacking the United States because it would “lead to nowhere,” but bin Laden disregarded his concerns. After the 9/11 attacks, Benotman resigned from his position in the LIFG, concerned that the United States would likely respond to the attack by not only targeting al Qaeda, but his organization as well.

For midlevel al Qaeda operatives and foot soldiers, petty grievances have often played a larger role in their decision to turn their backs on the organization. Disagreements over money, for example, have led some terrorists to consider their inadequate compensation as a sign of unfair treatment. Take the case of Jamal al-Fadl, a Sudanese national, who was one of the first members of al Qaeda during its years in Sudan and played a role in the organization’s unsuccessful efforts in the early 1990s to procure uranium. Fadl was displeased with his salary at the time — he received $500 a month, as opposed to Egyptian members, who were paid $1,200 monthly. In response, he began embezzling funds, stealing approximately $100,000 from al Qaeda. When bin Laden learned of Fadl’s actions, he ordered him to repay the money. After repaying about $30,000, Fadl fled, fearing retribution if he did not repay the full amount.

L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a Moroccan who joined al Qaeda in 1991 and trained to serve as bin Laden’s personal pilot, had similar complaints. Kherchtou became bitter after one of bin Laden’s aides turned down his request for $500 to cover the cost of his wife’s cesarean section. His anger grew when al Qaeda paid the expenses of a group of Egyptians who were sent to Yemen to renew their passports. “If I had a gun,” Kherchtou later testified, “I would shoot [bin Laden] at that time.” When the organization moved to Afghanistan, Kherchtou refused to follow, thus violating his oath to bin Laden. Kherchtou was also embittered after bin Laden ordered his followers to cut back on spending. He thought that bin Laden — a notoriously rich Saudi — was being stingy. Kherchtou and Fadl went on to serve as key U.S. government witnesses in early 2001 in the trials for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa.

The departure of a senior leader in a jihadi organization can undermine its legitimacy and cripple its operational capacity. Dr. Fadl’s recantations caused approximately 600 to 700 members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad to abandon political violence, according to Omar Ashour, an expert on the group.

Benotman also played a constructive role in convincing imprisoned LIFG members to renounce their jihad against the Libyan government. He traveled to Libya more than 25 times over a two-year period to convince the jihadists to recant. In the end, his efforts paid off: The LIFG recantations had a major impact on the organization’s rank and file, with the vast majority endorsing the shift away from jihad, according to terrorism expert Paul Cruickshank.

Although the defections of lower-level operatives and foot soldiers may not have the same impact on the organization as that of a leader, their effect should not be underestimated. An operative who can provide detailed information to governments about a group’s members, plans, and operations can cause serious harm to the group and put a terrorist organization on the defensive. A great deal of the U.S. government’s knowledge about al Qaeda prior to 9/11, for example, came from Fadl and Kherchtou.

As governments begin to shift away from a military-dominated approach to combating terrorism, they should increasingly focus on how to prevent individuals from going down the path toward radicalization and terrorism. What is clear is that the radicalization process is complex: Reasons for joining terrorist and extremist groups vary widely, and a recruit’s trajectory rarely follows a linear path. Given the unique path to radicalization — and increasingly deradicalization and disengagement — that each individual travels, it is not surprising that a “one size fits all” approach is unlikely to succeed. Governments must be flexible and creative as they seek to encourage terrorists and extremists to defect from these organizations or abandon their support for these dangerous causes.

Programs springing up around the world have already begun to chip away at the terrorist and extremist narrative. But it will be difficult for the United States and its allies to effectively counter extremist ideology without better understanding all aspects of the radicalization cycle, including why and how people are drawn to terrorist and extremist organizations, and why people have walked away. If we increase our focus on this process now, with any luck, we will have many more cases of terrorist dropouts to study in the future.

Haiti Rewired’s Mission Statement by Evan Hansen

Quake-ravaged Haiti faces a long-term emergency, one that will not end in a few weeks when the media frenzy dies down. And it’s clear the crisis will require more radical solutions than short-term relief groups can provide.

Will foreign aid to Haiti fail this time? Or will the tragedy bring with it a chance to reboot one of the world’s poorest countries — and rethink the the traditional ways of delivering aid and development? Port-au-Prince may be effectively razed and rebuilt from the ground up, and many other communities will be starting over from scratch.

Paradoxically, the disaster may prove to be a unique chance for an architectural and communications reboot of an entire country.

That’s why we’ve created this community, Haiti Rewired. We believe that better answers to the difficult questions could be created through the collaboration of technologists, researchers, geographers, infrastructure specialists, aid groups and others. Our writers and editors can aggregate information, report new stories and add to the discussion, but the focus of this effort is squarely on the thoughts, plans and actions of our contributors.

We don’t have the answers. But we want to test (five) simple principles that could transform not only Haiti, but the world’s response to crisis.

1. Collaboration. The events unfolding in Haiti bring together an unusual coalition: non-governmental organizations, the military, international organizations, state actors. To avoid waste, duplication of effort and confusion, they will have to break down cultural and institutional barriers, and start sharing everything: imagery, sensor data, on-the-ground intel. Old models of classification and need-to-know must be dumped.

2. Transparency. Haitians are rightly disillusioned with aid: promises unfulfilled by donors, corruption and graft by officials, a general lack of accountability when it comes to aid. While there may always be inefficiency, waste and corruption must be tackled. It might not sound like the most important element of the recovery, but we need data-based metrics. Funding will be tracked; aid will be measured; disclosure shall be the rule.

3. Innovation. Solutions for Haiti’s problems will have to blend time-tested ideas with new ways of doing things that have been enabled by technology. Transparency and collaboration have become radically easier with new communication and networking technologies. On the other hand, these same tools can fail us during major disasters. How can we incorporate and build new technological systems for Haiti that are both efficient and resilient?

4. Design. Rebuilding Haiti will be a test in the politics of architecture. How can planners, urbanists, architects, construction companies and local authorities come together to design a better Port-au-Prince on the rubble of the earthquake?

5. DIY. The old model of The Development Set — highly paid expat consultants who jet around from crisis to crisis — needs to be jettisoned. This could be rebuilding on the cheap and that could be a good thing. Empowering local communities, avoiding Beltway banditry and giving communities control of their own affairs might generate real results. Can smarter, locally rooted ideas provide immediate shelter for thousands in need and lay the foundation for the city’s seismic, social and economic future?

In the short term, the story is about survival: basic needs like food and first aid. But as the weeks turn to months, any sustained relief effort that wants to leave Haiti better off will have to solve a host of difficult technological, infrastructural and architectural problems. How should food and water be distributed? What type of communications infrastructure works best during the emergency and thereafter? What types of housing can be built quickly? How can health care triage be improved?

The specific answers to those questions — the networks that get pressed into service, the apps that get built — will pattern the future of Haiti. Can foreign countries come together with Haitians to build effective, resilient infrastructure for a country that’s long needed it?

We know from the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami that the old models for creating and distributing information about rebuilding won’t work. A monthlong flood of information, money and particular kinds of aid fades quickly as newsier news shoulders aside the still-unfolding long story. But once the story has moved on, we plan to be here.

We hope you will, too.

When Yemen Meets Gaza by Matthew Levitt

The Christmas Day pants bomber traveled a well-worn path to global terrorism: through Yemen. From the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in the Gulf of Aden, to the role key Yemenis played in the September 11 plot, to the increasingly prominent role of Yemen-based leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf country has long been a terrorist hot-spot. Now, a small number of Yemeni jihadists have reportedly joined others from Syria, Egypt, France, and Belgium to fight a new war on an old battlefront: Gaza.

According to intelligence officials, up to a few dozen foreign fighters have entered Gaza from Yemen and other Middle Eastern and European countries. Some are experienced fighters there to provide training, while others seek to be trained and experience jihad. Some of the Europeans have even reportedly “come with their credit cards” and financed jihadist activities while in Gaza.

The influx is beginning to have an effect on what has traditionally been a local jihad. Groups such as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade weave Palestinian nationalism and radical Islamism together but limit their operations to the Israeli-Palestinian front. Now, under the influence of more worldly jihadists, some Palestinian fighters are signing up for groups inspired by al Qaeda, fighting not for Palestine but for the whole Muslim umma.

Al Qaeda-inspired jihadist groups in Gaza have maintained a local operational focus on Israel and Gaza, but have tied their attacks to global issues like the Danish cartoon crisis or the incarceration of a jihadist ideologue in Britain. The fear among U.S. and Israeli intelligence is that such a “glocal” ideology is serving as a bridge between Palestinian nationalism and al Qaeda’s global jihadist ideology. The former theoretically allows for a two-state solution; the latter requires adherents to wage violent jihad against all infidels and apostates until the creation of an Islamic state.

Hamas in Gaza — by engaging in secular politics, failing to institute sharia law, and cracking down on fellow Palestinians who attack Israel or threaten its rule — has created a vacuum that global jihadist groups, often populated by disgruntled Hamas operatives, have been keen to fill. Even so, membership in Gaza’s global jihadist groups is estimated to be in the low hundreds. But while their capabilities are limited, they think big. In July 2008, Israeli intelligence successfully thwarted a plot against former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by one such group.

Jaish al-Islam is infamous for its involvement in the kidnappings of BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007. Jund Ansar Allah’s activities came to the foreground in mid-August 2009, when security forces from the Hamas-run government in Gaza, together with members of Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades terrorist wing, raided a mosque affiliated with the group and engaged in protracted gun battles with its followers. The clashes, which left 24 people dead and 130 wounded, followed a Friday sermon by the extremist cleric Sheikh Abd al-Latif Musa condemning the Hamas government and announcing the establishment of an Islamic emirate in Palestine.

Since al Qaeda-inspired groups threaten Hamas’s authority, it is no surprise that Hamas has cracked down on them. What is surprising is that such groups have failed so far to connect more formally with al Qaeda, given al Qaeda’s recent antipathy to Hamas and its history of incorporating local conflicts into its global jihadist campaign.

Al Qaeda likely remains unconvinced of the ideological commitment of groups like Jaish al-Islam, whose leader, Mumtaz Dughmush, is better known for his criminal past than his religious zealotry. Al Qaeda may also have concerns about the survivability of such groups, and it may be waiting patiently for groups to establish themselves before accepting them into the fold of its global jihadist movement.

Some have argued that the existence of al Qaeda-inspired groups in Gaza means that Hamas is no longer the worst option and that Israel should engage with Hamas without preconditions, lest al Qaeda take over. In fact, the global jihadist groups in Gaza lack grassroots support and are in no position to challenge Hamas’s authority as the governing entity, let alone take over the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Hamas remains at the heart of the problem. Despite Hamas’s ideological differences with al Qaeda leaders and its violent crackdown on global jihadists in Gaza, its own radicalization has ironically created an ideal springboard for still more extreme radicalization. When one ideologically motivated suicide bomber becomes a role model, all ideologically motivated suicide bombers become role models.

The question now is how the meeting of Gazan radical Islamic extremism and the nihilistic ideology of global jihad will play out. Add the influx of a small number of capable foreign fighters, and one is left with a disturbing quandary: What happens when Yemen comes to Gaza?