Hijinks Hijackers Jihadis: CIA Told Yemen to Release CIA Asset al-Awlaki

[grarpamp]

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/22/cia-yemen-al-qaeda-anwar-al-awlaki/

Leaks Show CIA Pressured Yemen To Release Al-Qaeda Leader & Agency
Asset Anwar al-Awlaki

Authored by Alexander Rubinstein

Explosive new recordings released by the Houthi government of Yemen
pile more earth atop mountains of existing evidence of the US
government’s support for the very same terrorists it has claimed to be
waging war against for nearly two decades.

The Moral Guidance Department, a branch of the Yemeni Armed Forces of
the revolutionary Houthi government of Yemen published last week a
number of secret documents and phone calls from the former regime of
longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

    LEAKED: Former CIA Director George Tenet implores then-Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh to release Anwar al-Awlaki, who would
become a top leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from prison
in connection to the bombing of the USS Cole.

    Read more: https://t.co/y35voroWLC pic.twitter.com/E1Ja8YF50i
    — Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) March 22, 2021
https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/1373945533312696320

Two phone calls between former president Saleh and the former director
of the CIA George Tenet were released. A Yemeni government official
has confirmed to me that the calls took place in 2001.

In the calls, the former CIA director can be heard pressuring Saleh to
release a detained individual involved in the bombing attacks on USS
Cole in October of 2000, which left 17 dead and 37 injured.

In the call, Tenet is asked by Saleh’s translator about the name of
the individual in question. "I don’t want to give his name over the
phone,: Tenet tells him.

Saleh notes that the FBI team tasked with the USS Cole investigation
had already arrived in Sana’a, and asks Tenet if the FBI personnel
could meet with him to discuss the matter. Tenet refuses, saying "this
is my person, this is my problem, this is my issue... The man must be
released."

"I’ve talked to everybody in my government; I told them that I was
going to make this call," Tenet says. As Saleh’s translator is
delivering Tenet’s message to the president, the CIA director cuts him
off and says that the man in question "must be released within 48
hours."

"After 50 days, this must stop," he says. Major General Abdul Qadir
al-Shami, the deputy-head of the Yemeni Security and Intelligence
Service, confirmed to Houthi media that the person in question was
dual American-Yemeni citizen imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, a top leader of
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who was killed in Yemen in
2011 by a CIA drone strike.

Houthi media says al-Shami "pointed out that the Americans used to
train their individuals in Yemen and send them abroad to carry out
operations for them, and then affix the accusation to Yemen as an
excuse to come under the cover of fighting those individuals."

Another document from the State Department dated 1998 highly suggests
US interests in establishing a military presence in Yemen around the
sea of Aden. Saudi-born Ali al-Ahmed of the Gulf Institute, a leading
expert on Saudi politics and terrorism, told me that he is not at all
surprised by the phone call between George Tenet and Yemen’s former
president.

"I’ve been saying this for a long time," al-Ahmed told me. "People
that think that these organizations; al-Qaeda, ISIS, are organic,
non-state-backed organizations are either lying or are completely
stupid. The fact that ISIS had all these American weapons, they didn’t
come from thin air. This was part of a plan. The same thing with
al-Qaeda; the fact that this organization which has been attacked all
over the world continues to survive 20 years on, and spread, it’s not
by accident. It’s done by security and intelligence organizations in
Washington, D.C. and in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and by Ali
Abdullah Saleh."

"This recording," he said, "fits the bill; that Anwar al-Awlaki and
others, they were sometimes knowingly or unknown being used as a
tool."
The Tenets of Tenet

George Tenet is the second-longest serving director of the CIA.
Originally brought in to the post by Bill Clinton, he oversaw the Bush
administration’s response to the September 11 attacks.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, after Tenet asked for the
Saudi’s help with Osama bin Laden prior to the attacks, the Saudi’s
response was so encouraging that Clinton made Tenet "his informal
personal representative to work with the Saudis on terrorism," which
included at least two trips to Riyadh.
George Tenet is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush

Following the 9/11 attacks, Tenet authorized the CIA’s use of
waterboarding and other torture methods.  Tenet told 9/11
investigators that he had not met with President Bush in the month
prior to the attacks, but was later corrected by a CIA spokesman that
same evening, who said he did.

A CIA Inspector General inquiry accused Tenet of failing to do enough
to prevent the attacks, saying "by virtue of his position, [Tenet]
bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan
was ever created" despite the CIA knowing of the dangers presented by
al-Qaeda.

"Many of the difficulties that were listed in that report today - the
inability to share information, the lack of people to support and run
operations against Osama bin Laden - those were problems that were
brought to Mr. Tenet's attention as early as 1996 and he never did
anything about them," Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's
Osama bin Laden unit, told the BBC.

Tenet was "too busy schmoozing with foreign leaders… that he forgot
that his job was to manage the intelligence community," former CIA
analyst Ray McGovern has said.

According to journalist Bob Woodward, who interviewed George Bush
himself for his book "Plan of Attack," Tenet and his deputy presented
the president with satellite footage purported to show weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. Unimpressed, Bush asked whether "this is the best
we’ve got?" Tenet then leapt from the couch, raised his arms, and told
the president it was a “slam dunk!”

When Bush challenged him again, Tenet repeated "The case, it's a slam dunk."

According to Woodward: "I asked the president about this and he said
it was very important to have the CIA director – 'Slam-dunk is as I
interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go
through the hoop.' Others present; Cheney, very impressed."
Hijinks with the Hijackers

Anwar al-Awlaki has been perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the
so-called War on Terror; even after the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, al-Awlaki enjoyed free travel between Western countries like
the United States and the United Kingdom and Yemen. He was killed in a
CIA drone strike in Yemen in 2011, a likely-illegal targeted killing
of an American citizen with little to no precedent.

Al-Awlaki’s name has appeared in connection with a plethora of
terrorist attacks against Western targets and, in addition to the now
apparent ties to US intelligence, had held relationships with
suspected Saudi intelligence officers.

Anwar al-Awlaki would, according to a fellow student at Colorado
State, spend his off time in the summer training with the US-funded
and equipped Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the precursor of al-Qaeda, the
Taliban, and ISIS. The Afghan militants were funnelled $20 billion by
the CIA in Operation Cyclone, with Osama Bin Laden being a main
benefactor, in order to fight off the Soviets defending the
then-socialist government.

By 1996, al-Awlaki was recruiting Muslims in the United States to take
up arms in foreign lands as he encouraged a young Saudi student to "to
travel to Chechnya to join the jihad against the Russians." He did,
and was killed in fighting in 1999.

Though the record holds many discrepancies, al-Awlaki’s place of birth
is said to be in New Mexico. Conservative journalist Paul Sperry
writes in his book, "federal law enforcement records I have obtained
indicate that he was born in Aden, Yemen, on April 21, 1971, and first
came to the U.S. as a Yemeni citizen on a J-1 research-scholar visa on
June 5, 1990." Meanwhile, "a search of state vital records in New
Mexico turns up no birth certificate."

Al-Awlaki’s now-revealed status as a CIA asset may help explain this
discrepancy and how — if it’s true that al-Awlaki was not born in the
U.S. — he wound up with citizenship. Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar’s father,
was a Fulbright Scholar who studied in New Mexico and later worked for
the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Anwar Al-Awlaki moved from Denver to San Diego and became the Imam at
the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque. There, he held court with Nawaf
al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Hani Hanjour, all three of whom would
go on to hijack the planes that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, Hanjour’s older brother
claimed Hani had gone to Afghanistan "in the late 1980’s, as a
teenager, to participate in the jihad and, because the Soviets had
already withdrawn, worked for a relief agency there." Even Ali
al-Ahmed, a leading critic of Saudi Arabia, says the propaganda
campaign promoting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan deluded him when he
was very young. "It was part of a plan," he said.

Meanwhile, Hazmi and Mihdhar had joined up with the Bosnian Mujahideen
following the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia, a conflict which saw
the Clinton administration and the Pentagon oversee clandestine
foreign arms shipments Islamists fighting in the dirty war. Hazmi and
Mihdhar were even granted Bosnian citizenship to fight there. Al-Qaeda
operative and "principle architect of the 9/11 attacks" according to
the 9/11 Comission Report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had "also spent
time fighting alongside the mujahideen in Bosnia and supporting that
effort with financial donations."

As I have previously reported, the Brooklyn-based Al-Kifah Afghan
Refugee Center, "a front for Maktab al-Khidamat, an organization
co-founded by Osama bin Laden" was used by the CIA in Operation
Cyclone to send young American Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, and
continued to be used by the Clinton administration to recruit young
fighters to the war in Bosnia.

"The Bosnian War drew extremists of all types from all over the world.
The El Mujahid, the unit of foreign mujahideen fighters in Bosnia,
videotaped themselves committing war crimes against Serbs including
beheadings and torture," Lily Lynch, co-founder and editor-in-chief of
Balkanist Magazine, told me. "There are also reports that the
mujahideen terrorized the local Bosniak population by making aid
contingent upon radical conversion."

"Unfortunately, much of the discussion of the crimes committed by El
Mujahid in Bosnia has been led by Islamophobes with a wider political
agenda, usually anti-immigration," she continued. "This has prevented
an honest and complete coming to terms with the crimes of the past,
including those very real and documented crimes committed by the
mujahideen."

Al-Awlaki was under investigation by the FBI in 1999 and 2000 after
they learned he "may have been contacted by a possible procurement
agent for Osama Bin Laden," according to the 9/11 Comission Report.
Additionally, al-Awlaki had "been visited by Ziyad Khaleel, an
al-Qaeda operative who purchased a battery for Osama bin Laden’s
satellite phone, as well as by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the
so-called blind Shaykh."

Around this period of time, al-Awlaki was the vice-president of the
Charitable Society for Social Welfare, a money-funneling front for
al-Qaeda. One contact of al-Awlaki’s in San Diego was Omar al-Bayoumi,
who introduced al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi to him. Al-Bayoumi was
presented in the 9/11 Commission Report as a "good Samaritan,"
according to mainstream media reports, who wanted to help fellow
Saudis al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, who had previously been surveilled by
three governments at the request of the CIA before showing up in San
Diego.

However, the "28 pages" of the congressional "Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist
Attacks of September 11" that had long been withheld from the U.S.
public until they were declassified 13 years later following lobbying
by victims of the terrorist attacks, strongly indicate that al-Bayoumi
was a Saudi intelligence officer. Additionally, former US intelligence
official Richard Clarke has speculated that he was also a CIA asset.
The 28 pages note that the "FBI discovered that al-Bayoumi has ties to
terrorist elements as well."

Al-Bayoumi, who was on the payroll of the Saudi monarchy via a third
party company, set up al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi with an apartment. That
very same day, four phone calls took place between al-Bayoumi and
al-Awlaki.

Another "close associate" of al-Bayoumi and yet another suspected
Saudi intelligence officer — and friend of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi —
Osama Basnan, had been investigated by the FBI in 1993 for his support
for Osama Bin Laden, contacts with the Bin Laden family, and holding a
party in 1992 for the Blind Shaykh, another Afghan Mujahideen figure
who worked with the CIA and Osama Bin Laden. The Blind Shaykh died in
prison in 2017 for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center.

Money sent to Basnan from members of the Saudi Royal Family had made
its way into al-Bayoumi’s pockets. The two had called each other
"roughly 700 times" over the period of one year. Basnan would later
brag that he did more to help the 9/11 hijackers than al-Bayoumi to an
FBI asset.

News reports from 2003 note how "FBI officials continue to downplay
any possible culpability on the part of Omar al-Bayoumi, Anwar
Al-Awlaki or Osama Basnan." Al-Bayoumi and Basnan’s extremism wasn’t
acknowledged by US authorities until the long-withheld 28 pages were
released in 2016.

During al-Awlaki’s time in San Diego, when he wasn’t getting busted
for trying to pick up prostitutes or starting failed business
ventures, he held frequent, closed-door meetings with al-Hazmi and
al-Mihdhar until he went on what he told reporters was a "sabbatical"
through "several countries" in 2000, the year that the USS Cole was
bombed.

Some time the following year, al-Awlaki resettled just outside Falls
Church, Virginia, and became the imam at a local mosque. He was
followed by the three hijackers: Hanjour, al-Hazmi, and al-Mihdhar,
and an associate of his set them up with an apartment in Alexandria.
Additionally, one accused key planner of the 9/11 attacks, Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, the so-called "20th hijacker" currently held in Guantanamo
Bay, had al-Awlaki’s phone number in his personal contact list when
his apartment was raided in the days following the attacks.

Freedom of Information Act requests have furnished the public with
under-reported documents showing when the FBI investigated al-Awlaki’s
Visa transactions, an entry for "Atta, Mohammed -- American West
Airlines, 08/13/2001, Washington, DC to Las Vegas to Miami" turned up.
Mohammed Atta is widely described as the "ringleader” of the September
11 attacks.

The flight referenced was one of Atta’s so-called "surveillance
flights." Logs for flights of two more hijackers — one of the
al-Shehri brothers and Satam al-Squami, also appear in the disclosed
Visa investigation documents. The FBI has denied having evidence of
al-Awlaki purchasing plane tickets for the hijackers.

By this time, al-Awlaki was becoming a somewhat prominent figure, with
up to 3,000 people regularly showing up for his Friday services, and
with CD box set lectures becoming popular. He went back briefly to San
Diego in August 2001 and reportedly told a neighbor "I don’t think
you’ll be seeing me… Later on you’ll find out why."

One frequent attendee at al-Awlaki’s lectures was Gordon Snow,
then-FBI Director of Counterintelligence for the Middle East. Snow had
recently been "assigned to assessment, protection, and investigative
support missions after the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen."
Al-Awlaki was also around this time serving as the Muslim chaplain at
D.C.’s George Washington University.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, "al-Awlaki was one
of Washington DC’s go-to Muslim sources, considered a moderate Islamic
voice with positive views of the United States and the West who did
not shy away from publicly condemning Islamist terrorism and the 9/11
attacks" according to a research paper published by the Homeland
Security Digital Library.  In highly-public remarks, he was condemning
the attacks, but just days after he was giving comments to Islamic
websites blaming Israel and claiming the FBI had placed the blame on
any passenger on those flights with Muslim-sounding names.

Though it was then not known that al-Awlaki was the "spiritual leader"
of some of the hijackers, the New York Times, National Public Radio,
and the Washington Post among others, went to him as their default
Muslim voice.

"I think that in general, Islam is presented in a negative way. I mean
there’s always this association of Islam and terrorism when that is
not true at all, I mean, Islam is a religion of peace" he told the
Washington Post as they recorded him from the passenger seat of his
car in November 2001. In a subsequent video, al-Awlaki downplays the
crimes of the Taliban, saying "the US is kind of demonizing the
Taliban, and it’s true, the Taliban have made a lot of mistakes in the
past, but the Northern Alliance isn’t really any better."

Around this time, al-Awlaki would become the first imam in history to
conduct a prayer service in the U.S. Capitol. Between September 15,
2001 and September 19th, 2001, the FBI interviewed al-Awlaki four
times according to FBI documents.
Al-Awlaki being interviewed by the Washington Post

"The FBI told the 9/11 Commission and Congress that it did not have
reason to detain Awlaki," according to a later article by the
Washington Post.

Within months of the attacks and following a vetting process,
al-Awlaki was invited to a luncheon with military brass at the
Pentagon as a "moderate Muslim" to hold dialogue with as part of move
to reach out to Muslim community members.

Despite his support in high places, al-Awlaki left the United States
in 2002 with the Falls Church mosque citing a "climate of fear and
intimidation." He would spend the next years in the United Kingdom
before returning to Yemen. But he made a stop back in the U.S. in
2002, flying in on a Saudi Arabia Airlines flight with a Saudi agent
accompanying him at the connecting airport on his way to JFK,
according to law enforcement documents obtained by Paul Sperry.

With an arrest warrant out on him for passport fraud, federal agents
detained al-Awlaki upon his return. But a federal judge had rescinded
the arrest warrant that very same day, allowing al-Awlaki to walk
free. He’d go back to northern Virginia and meet with Ali al-Timimi, a
radical cleric who was later arrested for recruiting 11 Muslims to
join the Taliban, to talk to him about getting young Muslims to take
up jihad.

Even al-Timimi thought something was suspect, reportedly wondering "if
Mr. Awlaki might be trying to entrap him at the FBI’s instigation,"
according to his friends. Al-Awlaki left again on a Saudi flight
without incident, however, Sperry claims, citing law enforcement
documents, that he had another warrant out for his arrest based on an
investigation against terrorism financing by the U.S. Treasury
Department. That claim has been corroborated by government documents
which reveal that FBI agent Wade Ammerman ordered that the warrant be
bypassed.

By the time 9/11 Commission Investigators tried to interview al-Awlaki
in 2003, they were unable to locate him, according to the report. And
yet, documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal that
al-Awlaki was exchanging emails and voice messages with an FBI agent
that year. One document has an FBI agent writing to another "Holy
crap, [redacted] isn't this your guy? The [imam] with the
prostitutes."

Another document has an FBI agent complaining of the 9/11 Commission’s
"numerous and unrelenting" attempts to access al-Awlaki. Another memo
dated within days of al-Awlaki’s return to the U.S. to meet with
al-Timimi has al-Awlaki’s name in the subject line in addition to
"Synopsis: Asset reporting."
The Candide of Jihad

When al-Awlaki started preaching in London, his rhetoric took a
decidedly more extremist turn with frequent denunciations of
non-Muslims and calls for martyrdom. He would relocate to Yemen where
he would lecture at a university in Sana’a run by Sheik Abd-al-Majid
al-Zindini, who was later designated a terrorist by the U.S. and
fought with Osama bin Laden, with U.S. support during Operation
Cyclone in Afghanistan.

In 2006, al-Awlaki was arrested again in Yemen for participating in a
al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. military attaché and a Shia teenager.
FBI agents would interview him in prison about the 9/11 attacks. After
a while, some U.S. officials were "disturbed at the imprisonment
without charge of a United States citizen" and "signaled that they no
longer insisted on Mr Awlaki’s incarceration, and he was released,"
according to the New York Times.

Following his release in Yemen, al-Awlaki started his own website and
his far-reaching online rhetoric became even more extremist and
supportive of attacks against the United States. He also started being
featured in videos published by al-Qaeda itself and has been dubbed
the "bin Laden of the internet."

His name would begin to increasingly surface in connection to
high-profile terrorist attacks on Western targets: Abdulhakim Mujahid
Muhammad, the perpetrator of a drive-by shooting on a US military
recruiting office in Arkansas, claimed to be dispatched by AQAP and
carried al-Awlaki’s literature; Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 and injured
30 at Fort Hood, had attended al-Awlaki’s lectures at the Falls Church
mosque and exchanged up to 20 emails with him leading up to his attack
(al-Awlaki later described Hasan as a "hero"); Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, the failed "underwear bomber," is believed to have met
with him weeks prior in Yemen; a New Jersey man by the name of Sharif
Mobley who killed a Yemeni hospital guard after he was captured in a
raid against al-Qaeda had made contact with al-Awlaki and went to
Yemen to seek him out; and the 2010 attempted Times Square bomber had
contact with him.

A full list of all the people arrested for trying to support al-Qaeda
who had contact with al-Awlaki, or those who attempted to carry out
terrorist attacks who were inspired by al-Awlaki, would be too long
for this article. "Al-Awlaki's sermons and recordings have been found
on the computers of at least a dozen of [sic] terror suspects in the
U.S. and Britain," CNN reported in 2010. Al-Awlaki is considered to
have helped inspire the Boston Marathon bombing, the 2015 attack in
San Bernardino, California, and the shooting at the Orlando Pulse
Nightclub.

In 2010, al-Awlaki was placed on the U.S. kill list, he then made his
way onto the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Global
Terrorists, and then the United Nation Security Council’s list of
individuals associated with al-Qaeda.

The following year, the CIA finally liquidated its own former asset
with a drone strike.

"The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al-Qaeda's most active
operational affiliate. He took the lead in planning and directing
efforts to murder innocent Americans," President Obama said at the
time. Two weeks after the killing of al-Awlaki, another drone strike
ordered by Obama killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar’s American-born
16-year-old son. Six years later, President Trump ordered a raid that
killed Nawar al-Awlaki, the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar.
Best Frenemies Forever

Yemen has suffered six years of devastating war since revolutionary
Houthi forces took over the capital in September of 2014 from
then-President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the former vice president of
longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is widely considered to be a
puppet of Saudi Arabia. The war was exacerbated by the introduction of
foreign forces and foreign air power to the conflict, most notably by
the Saudi-led coalition’s entry on March 25th, 2015.

Six years on, the war has produced what experts have been calling the
worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world, with the United Nations
estimating that 80 percent of the Yemeni population in severe need of
humanitarian assistance including 12 million children. While the U.S.
has repeatedly pounded AQAP in Yemen with bombs, they are not entirely
enemies. The Saudi coalition, which the U.S. is a part of, is at war
with the revolutionary Houthi government, and therefore shares a
purpose in the country with al-Qaeda: expelling the Houthis from
power.

"The coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaeda fighters, paying some to
leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons,
equipment and wads of looted cash," the Associated Press reported in
2018. "Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself."

"Key participants in the pacts said the U.S. was aware of the
arrangements and held off on any drone strikes," according to AP. In
fact, the coalition actively recruits them because they are considered
formidable on the battlefield, the outlet says before continuing to
detail al-Qaeda figures playing key roles in major militias backed by
the United Arab Emirates, another coalition partner.

And since the U.S. has sent billions of dollars in weapons to the
coalition to fight the Houthis, it should come as little shock that
al-Qaeda militias are parading around Yemeni city streets in U.S.-made
MRAP armored vehicles. Saudi expert Ali Al-Ahmed told me that the U.S.
can justify its presence in Yemen by supporting al-Qaeda and then
saying that AQAP is a great threat to America.

He said the "idea that Muslims are our enemies, we need to bring them
down, take their wealth and keep them fighting each other" was started
by Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of Operation
Cyclone, but was mainly supported in the beginning by Qatar.

He added: "they even had to overthrow the government of Pakistan to
get this policy through. They made Pakistan into this arm to carry out
this thing with Brzezinski."

"Al-Qaeda and ISIS would not survive without state support, including
the U.S., and they do it because it serves their interests. Not the
interests of the U.S., but of those in power and the companies that
make money off this," he said.

Al-Ahmed describes al-Qaeda as a useful tool for U.S. intelligence and
other actors to achieve their geopolitical goals. He tells me a story
of a Jordanian carpenter who was pressured and bribed to join al-Qaeda
in their effort in Syria against the government of Bashar Assad, with
American, British, and Jordanian intelligence officers offering him
whatever he wanted to go.

He didn’t want to go, and so they threatened him. Eventually, al-Ahmed
describes, he went, came back and was quickly "taken out" upon his
return.
Anwar al-Awlaki pictured with the so-called "underwear bomber."