Archive for September, 2009

NEW YORK — An Afghan immigrant who received explosives training from al-Qaida went from one beauty supply store to another, buying up large quantities of hydrogen peroxide and nail-polish remover, in a chilling plot to build bombs for attacks on U.S. soil, authorities charged Thursday. Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old shuttle driver at the Denver airport, was indicted in New York on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Investigators found bomb-making instructions on his computer’s hard drive and said Zazi used a hotel room in Colorado to try to cook up explosives a few weeks ago before a trip to New York. The extent of Zazi’s ties to al-Qaida was unclear, but if the allegations prove true, this could be the first operating al-Qaida cell to be uncovered inside the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Over the past few days, talk of the possible plot set off the most intense flurry of national terrorism warnings since the aftermath of 9/11. Prosecutors said they have yet to establish exactly when and where the Zazi attacks were supposed to take place. But Attorney General Eric Holder said in Washington, “We believe any imminent threat arising from this case has been disrupted.” A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday that Zazi had associates in New York who were in on the plot. Zazi was arrested in Denver last weekend and was charged along with his father and a New York City imam with lying to investigators. Authorities said in the past few days that they feared Zazi and others might have been planning to detonate homemade bombs on New York trains, and warnings went out to transit systems, stadiums and hotels nationwide. Explosives built with hydrogen peroxide killed 52 people four years ago in the London transit system. They are easy to conceal and detonate, and last week’s warnings asked authorities to be on the lookout for them. A law enforcement official said Thursday that authorities had been so worried about Zazi

— and that his Sept. 10 trip to New York City coincided with a visit by President Barack Obama — that they considered arresting him as soon as he reached the city. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues. Zazi left a Denver court Thursday without commenting and will be transferred soon to New York. He and his lawyer have denied he is a terrorist. In unrelated terrorism cases elsewhere around the country Thursday:

— Michael C. Finton, a 29-year-old man who idolized American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, was arrested after attempting to detonate what he thought was a bomb inside a van outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill., officials said. FBI agents had infiltrated the alleged plot months ago.
— A 19-year-old Jordanian was arrested after placing what he thought was a bomb at a downtown Dallas skyscraper, federal prosecutors said. The decoy device was provided by an undercover FBI agent. Federal officials said the case against Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, is unrelated to the Illinois case.

— Two North Carolina men under arrest since July on international terrorism charges were also accused by prosecutors of plotting to kill U.S. military personnel. In the Zazi case, a government motion seeking to deny bail laid out a chronology of the alleged scheme, which prosecutors said had been in the works for as much as a year. The court papers filed in Brooklyn federal court also refer to “others” who bought bomb materials with Zazi.

According to prosecutors’ account, Zazi — a legal U.S. resident who immigrated in 1999 — began plotting as early as August 2008 to “use one or more weapons of mass destruction.” That was when he and others traveled from Newark, N.J., to Pakistan, where he received the explosives training, prosecutors said. Within days of returning from Pakistan in early 2009, he moved to the Denver suburb of Aurora, where he used a computer to research homemade bomb ingredients and to look up beauty supply stores where he could buy them, according to prosecutors. During the summer, Zazi and three unidentified associates bought “unusually large quantities” of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a flammable solvent found in nail-polish remover — from beauty supply stores in the Denver area, prosecutors said. A second law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said associates of Zazi visited Colorado from New York to help him buy the chemicals. The official said they used stolen credit cards to make the purchases and then returned to New York. Security video and receipts show that some of the purchases were made near a Colorado hotel, according to court papers. On Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi checked into a suite at the hotel with a kitchen and a stove, the papers say. He tried to contact an unidentified associate “seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives.”
“Each communication,” the papers say, was “more urgent than the last. … Zazi reportedly emphasized in the communication that he needed the answers right away.”
FBI explosives testing later found residue in the vent above the stove, authorities said.

On Sept. 8, court papers say, Zazi searched the Internet for home improvement stores in Queens before driving a rental car for a two-day trip to the city. The visit triggered a series of searches in Denver and New York City over the past two weeks. Authorities seized backpacks, cell phones and a scale in recent raids on a Queens neighborhood that Zazi visited. And beauty supply store employees in New York and the Denver suburbs said authorities had been there recently asking whether anyone had come in buying a lot of hydrogen peroxide or acetone. Zazi’s father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, and the imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, also appeared in court Thursday. Mohammed Zazi, 53, was ordered freed under court supervision in Denver until an Oct. 9 hearing. Afzali, who was accused of tipping off the Zazis to the federal probe against them in a tapped telephone call, was released in New York on $1.5 million bail.
Afzali’s attorney, Ron Kuby, denied his client knew anything about a plot. ”Obviously, the government would not be consenting to bail if it thought he was involved in a terrorism conspiracy,” he said.

Source

NEW YORK—Alarmed by persistent anti-American sentiment and rising Taliban influence in Pakistan, the Obama administration hailed Thursday’s Senate vote to triple foreign aid to the country. Passage of the bill that will provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion in aid a year over the next five years coincided with a meeting in New York of major supporters of Pakistan co-chaired by President Barack Obama. “The United States is firmly committed to the future that the Pakistani people deserve, a future that will advance our common security and prosperity,” Obama said in remarks prepared for the meeting and released by the White House. The timing of the Senate vote was deliberate, said U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. He said Obama announced the vote to the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” meeting held on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly. “It was the only spontaneous applause in the meeting,” Holbrooke said. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon were also in attendance. Without referring to the vote, Zardari told Obama and other leaders that Pakistan was grateful for their help and would continue to fight extremism and promote democracy despite major challenges. “The stakes could not be higher,” he said in prepared remarks released by his delegation. “My nation is willing to pay the price.”

The bill passed the Senate on a voice vote. The House could pass the measure as early as Friday, clearing the way for Obama’s signature and the provision of the assistance, which focuses on democratic, economic and social development programs. The bill also authorizes “such sums as are necessary” for military aid to Pakistan. That assistance is tied to the government showing it is cooperating in efforts to dismantle nuclear weapons-related supplier networks and that it is committed to fighting terrorist groups. In addition, the government must show that its security forces are not subverting the political or judicial processes of the country. Holbrooke said the commitment to Pakistan shown by U.S. lawmakers, along with an upcoming but as-yet unscheduled trip to the country by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, could be critical in turning around rampant anti-American sentiment. “We recognize that Pakistani public opinion on the United States is surprisingly low given the tremendous effort the United States is making to lead in the international coalition in support of Pakistan,” he said. He declined to discuss in detail reports that the Taliban are gaining strength inside Pakistan from which they are launching attacks into Afghanistan, but he said it was a matter of ongoing concern.

Later, Clinton and Holbrooke met with Zardari and top Pakistani officials. Clinton told Zardari that Thursday had been “very successful.” Zardari replied that the success had been a “collective effort.” Holbrooke said that before Clinton heads to Pakistan, possibly in late October, the U.S. would be looking in particular at helping the government address energy and infrastructure crises that have angered many Pakistanis and raised domestic tensions. “These are serious problems and they contribute to instability,” he said. Source

WASHINGTON — The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure. The grim assessment is contained in a 66-page report that the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30, and which is now under review by President Obama and his top national security advisers. The disclosure of details in the assessment, reported Sunday night by The Washington Post, coincided with new skepticism expressed by President Obama about sending any more troops into Afghanistan until he was certain that the strategy was clear. His remarks came as opposition to the eight-year-old war within his own party is growing. General McChrystal’s view offered a stark contrast, and the language he used was striking. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes. A copy of the assessment, with some operational details removed at the Pentagon’s request to avoid compromising future operations, was posted on The Post’s Web site. In his five-page commander’s summary, General McChrystal ends on a cautiously optimistic note: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

But throughout the document, General McChrystal warns that unless he is provided more forces and a robust counterinsurgency strategy, the war in Afghanistan is most likely lost. Pentagon and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy say General McChrystal is expected to propose a range of options for additional troops beyond the 68,000 American forces already approved, from 10,000 to as many as 45,000. General McChrystal’s strategic assessment could well fuel the public anxiety over the war that has been fast increasing in recent weeks as American casualties have risen, allied commanders have expressed surprise at the Taliban’s fighting prowess, and allegations of ballot fraud Afghanistan’s recent presidential elections have escalated. In a series of interviews on the Sunday morning talk shows, Mr. Obama expressed skepticism about sending more American troops to Afghanistan until he was sure his administration had the right strategy to succeed. “Right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?” Mr. Obama said on CNN. “When we have clarity on that, then the question is, O.K., how do we resource it?”

Mr. Obama said that he and his top advisers had not delayed any request for additional troops from General McChrystal because of the political delicacy of the issue or other domestic priorities. “No, no, no, no,” Mr. Obama said when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether General McChrystal had been told to sit on his request. Mr. Obama said his decision “is not going to be driven by the politics of the moment.” In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Obama said his top priority was to protect the United States against attacks from Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. “Whatever decisions I make are going to be based first on a strategy to keep us safe, then we’ll figure out how to resource it,” the president said. “We’re not going to put the cart before the horse and just think by sending more troops we’re automatically going to make Americans safe,” he said. Mr. Obama and his advisers have said they need time to absorb the assessment of the Afghanistan security situation that General McChrystal submitted three weeks ago — a separate report from the general’s expected request for forces — as well as the uncertainties created by the fraud-tainted Afghan elections.

“General McChrystal’s strategic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan is a classified pre-decisional document, intended to provide President Obama and his national security team with the basis for a very important discussion about where we are now in Afghanistan and how to best to get to where we want to be,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Sunday night in a statement. In his report, General McChrystal issues a withering critique of both his NATO command and the Afghan government. His NATO command, he says, is “poorly configured” for counterinsurgency and is “inexperienced in local languages and culture.” “The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF’s own errors,” General McChrystal says, referring to NATO, “have given Afghans little reason to support their government.” The general also describes an increasingly savvy insurgency that uses propaganda effectively and is using the Afghan prison system as a training ground. Taliban and Qaeda insurgents represent more than 2,500 of the 14,500 inmates in Afghanistan’s overcrowded prisons. “These detainees are currently radicalizing non-insurgent inmates,” the report concludes.

Mr. Morrell declined to comment on details of the assessment. Until Sunday, details of General McChrystal’s report had not been made public. Members of Congress were briefed on the reports and allowed to read copies of it in secure offices on Capitol Hill, but the lawmakers were not allowed to take notes. The Afghan government has about 134,000 police officers and 82,000 soldiers, although many are poorly equipped and have little logistical support. General McChrystal has also signaled that he will seek to unify the effort of American allies that operate in Afghanistan, and possibly to ask them to contribute more troops, money and training. Military officers said Sunday that General McChrystal had effectively completed his formal request for forces, and was prepared to send the proposal up through his hierarchy for review by Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the Middle East; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

BlackWater started its operations in 2007 in Pakistan. Since then, it has been involved in many under cover operations and establishment of offices in Pakistan. After changing its name to XE Worldwide, the mercenary army has penetrated in Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi. This report reveals the covert operations that Blackwater is performing in Pakistan.

Sen. John McCain says more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan, insisting that the longer it takes to send them, “the more Americans will be put at risk.” The Arizona Republican told CBS’ “Early Show” on Wednesday that the strategy to defeat insurgents in Afghanistan was in place, and said President Barack Obama was “very strong” in March about what needed to be done, AP reported. Now, McCain says, “It’s clear we need additional troops.” Critics at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill have called on Obama to fulfill an anticipated request for more troops from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. White House officials, however, say they are unsure that a troop increase in Afghanistan will help in the fight against al-Qaida terrorists. Source