Audio Version

Osama bin Laden

At our last symposium on the threat of radical Islam, the keynote speaker was Hamid Mir, the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri since the September 11, 2001 attacks, having done so on three separate occasions, once in the caves of Tora Bora.

During the two days that Mr. Mir was present at the event, I was lucky enough to have had several semi-private conversations with him and to hear his presentation. Quite honestly, what he said – and his statements were delivered with his assurances that the information was first-source, directly from the mouths of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri (he supplied pictures of the meetings in which we see bin Laden, adorned with an AK-47, Zawahri at his side and Mir – what he said disturbed me to the point of sleeplessness.

Paraphrasing Mr. Mir, Osama bin Laden explained to him that the initial contingent of terrorists dispatched to the United States had numbered forty-eight and their mission was a two event mission, the first being the attacks of September 11, 2001. Mir pointed out that we know the exact locations of 20 of the primary contingent; 19 are dead having disintegrated in the fireballs created at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville and the twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui is imprisoned at the SuperMax federal facility in Colorado.

But what of the remaining twenty-eight?

The second element of the initial two-stage plan was the element that made me lose sleep. It also explained the mission of the twenty-eight remaining al Qaeda operatives.

Mir went on to say that Osama bin Laden is obsessed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bin Laden believes the United States, and all it’s people, should experience, first-hand, nuclear holocaust for what he says are America’s “crimes.” Mir said that when bin Laden had spoken of this nightmare he had even given it a name, the American Hiroshima.

With a seriousness that left a sold-out room silent to the point of hearing a pin drop, a room filled with members of our government intelligence community and law enforcement, Mir told us all that Osama bin Laden said, point blank, that the second element in the original two-stage plan is to detonate a nuclear device within the borders of the United States.

Evidence to his obsession with Nagasaki and Hiroshima is given in his recently released videotape. And I quote:

“The genocide of people and their holocausts took place at your hands...and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.”

In a 1998 fatwa bin Laden said:

“The Americans started it and retaliation and punishment should be carried out following the principle of reciprocity, especially when women and children are involved. Through history, America has not been known to differentiate between the military and the civilians or between men and women or adults and children. Those who threw atomic bombs and used the weapons of mass destruction against Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the Americans. Can the bombs differentiate between military and women and infants and children?”

The key words here are, of course, his references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but, more importantly, his declaration that “retaliation and punishment should be carried out following the principle of reciprocity.”

It should be pointed out here that one of the remaining 28 al Qaeda operatives from the initial contingent, Adnan el Shukrijumah, who is on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List, has been sighted several times since 9/11 in Canada, South America, Mexico and more recently in California and Florida. This is significant because el Shukrijumah is al Qaeda’s nuclear whiz-kid, their nuclear expert and the one hand-picked by Osama bin Laden to mount a nuclear terror strike within the borders of the United States.

Radical Islam’s Establishment in the US

Today, the federal government has identified 72 terrorist organizations with thousands of operatives existing and operating within the borders of the United States. These organizations include Hezbollah, Hamas, Abu Sayyaf, Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al Fuqra, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda – to name but a few. They have set up regional headquarters in Boston, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Tampa, Washington DC and over 38 other cities around the country. They are raising, laundering and funneling money back to the Middle East to support their terrorist organizations.

Madrasas
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Islamic schools known as madrasas have been of increasing interest to analysts and to officials involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, Central, and Southeast Asia. Madrasas drew added attention when it became known that several Taliban leaders and Al Qaeda members had developed radical political views at madrasas in Pakistan, some of which allegedly were built and partially financed through Saudi Arabian sources. These revelations have led to accusations that madrasas promote Islamic extremism and militancy, and are a recruiting ground for terrorism. Others maintain that most of these religious schools have been blamed unfairly for fostering anti-U.S. sentiments and argue that madrasas play an important role in countries where millions of Muslims live in poverty and the educational infrastructure is in decay.

Mosques
Most U.S. mosques are local initiatives, started by groups of Muslims seeking a place to worship together. They are usually explicitly Sunni or Shi'a. The mosque is often run by an elected board that hires or fires the imam (similar to a Christian minister or priest) and decides which national Islamic federation(s) to support. In many areas, a mosque may be dominated by whatever group of immigrants is the largest. Sometimes the Friday sermons, or khutbahs, are given in languages like Urdu or Arabic rather than English. Areas with large Muslim populations may support a number of mosques serving different immigrant groups or varieties of belief within Sunni or Shi'a traditions. At present, many mosques are served by imams imported from overseas, as only these imams have certificates from Muslim seminaries. This sometimes leads to conflict between the congregation and an imam who speaks little English and has little understanding of American culture. Some American Muslims have founded semi aries in the US in an attempt to prevent such problems.

Educational Institutions
It can be argued that the atmospheres prevalent on American university campuses lend themselves to students exploring a plethora of ideology - both mainstream and extreme - while experiencing limited opportunities to explore the consequences and ramifications of those ideologies in "real life" scenarios. Radical Islamists and those who sympathize with them have targeted American universities as recruiting grounds, their targets being students, educators and, to a lesser extent, administration officials.

Prisons
An increasing number of inmates within the prison system of the United States are converting to Islam, many identifying with the radical ideologies. Many experts contend that this makes prisons in the US perfect recruiting grounds for potential Islamist terror operatives.

Jammat al-Fuqra & Islamberg

And a recent research-oriented investigation by Dr. Paul Williams indicates that there may be jihadi training camps right here in the United States.

In his initial examination of what was presented to the public as an Islamic retreat, he found that a Pakistani-based terror group, Jammat al-Fuqra, had established what appeared to be a communal Islamist jihadi training compound at Islamberg, New York. Dr. Williams relates a common sentiment held by residents living in proximity to the compound. And I quote:

“Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of ‘retaliation.’ ‘We don’t even dare to slow down when we drive by,’ one resident said. ‘They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can’t even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that?’”

The Islamberg compound is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or “community of the impoverished,” an organization that seeks to "purify" Islam through violence.

Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the US, including the US prison system.

Federal investigators uncovered evidence that linked both the “DC Sniper,” John Allen Muhammed and “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid to the group and reports surfaced that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded in the process of attempting to obtain an interview with Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

Dr. Williams’ research also indicated that compounds identical to the one found in Islamberg, New York can be found in Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, Oklahoma, California and Washington State.

Dr. Williams’ research was the catalyst for a FOX News Channel expose on the very same compounds, an expose that validated and verified Dr. Williams’ conclusions. Since the discovery of these compounds, the FBI has taken the initiative to shut some of them down. But the truth be told, no one really knows how many have been established or how many more have been established since our government has become aware of their existence.