NextGov, 11 Dec 09: The release of the open government directive could change intelligence agencies’ policies that deny Internet access to nonclassified data that is currently available only in hard copy or only to government personnel, say some Washington transparency advocates.
While many federal agencies already have started implementing parts of the guidance the White House issued on Tuesday, the CIA is still reviewing the document.
The directive, which President Obama announced the day after he took office in January, establishes deadlines for agencies to comply with specific initiatives aimed at making the business of government more transparent and accountable to the public. . . . .
AP, 14 Dec 09: A Chicago terrorism suspect knew in advance about the deadly Mumbai terror attacks — and offered congratulations to the killers, federal prosecutors charged Monday.
Papers filed in federal court in Chicago say Tahawwur Hussain Rana learned an attack was about to happen while traveling days before the Nov. 26, 2008 start of the carnage that left 166 people dead.
Rana, a Chicago businessman, is charged with providing material support to terrorists. Prosecutors say after the Mumbai attacks, he told an alleged co-conspirator, David Coleman Headley, to pass along his congratulations to the terror group for its excellent planning and preparation.
“Rana was told of the attacks before they happened and offered compliments and congratulations to those who carried them out afterwards,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Collins wrote in the court filing.
The filing also charges that in a secretly recorded conversation in September 2009, Rana and Headley discussed possible attacks on a number of other sites in India: Somnath, a temple; Denmark, Bollywood, a reference to the Indian film industry, and Shiv Sena, a political party with strains of Hindu nationalism. . . . .
GOVERNMENT’S THIRD MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR DETENTION PENDING TRIAL
US v Tahawwur Hussain Rana
2nd Chicago terror suspect knew about Mumbai attack
ABC7 Chicago, 14 Dec 09: A Chicago travel agent and terror suspect had advance knowledge of last year’s deadly three-day attack on Mumbai, India according to newly filed documents by federal prosecutors in Chicago.
Tahawwur Hussain Rana Rana, a Chicago travel agency owner and owner of an Illinois goat slaughterhouse, is heard on a secret tape recording admitting that he knew Pakistani terrorists were going to assault hotels and public buildings according to the government. . . . .
. . . . . The government’s motion describes how Rana had learned of the pending Mumbai attack during an in person meeting with Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, aka “Pasha,” a former Pakistani military officer who has been accused with Headley in connection with a Danish terror plot. Prosecutors say Rana and Pasha met in Dubai and discussed the Mumbai attacks before they took place. . . . . .
FrontPage, 14 Dec 09: Moorthy Muthuswamy and Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I’d like to talk to both of you today about the Yemeni Koran. Moorthy Muthuswamy, let’s begin with you. Tell us about this Yemeni Koran and what it signifies.
Muthuswamy: In 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana’a, in Yemen, a gravesite containing a mash of old parchment pages was discovered. It became clear that this parchment hoard is an example of what is sometimes referred to as a “paper grave.” In this case, the site was the resting place for tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different parchment codices of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.
Using a technique called “carbon dating,” some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard were dated back to the seventh and eighth centuries, or Islam’s first two centuries. Until now, three ancient copies of the Koran were said to exist. One copy in the Library of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, and another in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, date from the eighth century. A copy kept in the British Library in London dates from the late seventh century. But the Sana’a parchment pages are even older. Moreover, these pages are written in a script that originates from the Hijaz—the region of Arabia where the prophet Muhammad purportedly lived. This makes the Yemeni Korans not only the oldest to have survived, but one of the earliest copies of the Koran ever.
In 1981, the first scientific undertaking to study the Yemeni Koran was initiated by a group headed by Gerd-R. Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin and his group recognized the antiquity of some of the parchment fragments. Their preliminary inspection revealed unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Interestingly, some of the sheets were also palimpsests—versions very clearly written over even earlier, washed-off or erased versions.
To quote Puin:
“So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God’s unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana’a fragments will help us to do this.”
The idea that the Koran is the literal Word of God, perfect, timeless, and permanent, is crucial to Islam, in particular, to the Islamists at the forefront of spreading sharia and jihad. However, some of the Sana’a fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Indeed, this evidence compels one to conclude that the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution rather than simply the Word of God as revealed in its entirety to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
This explosive ramification has made the State of Yemen reluctant to give further access to the Sana’a fragments. Fortunately, before the door was shut to Western scholars, another German academic, Graf von Bothmer, made 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments.
FP: Robert Spencer, so the Yemeni Koran points to the fact that the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution. Give us your view of the meaning and significance here.
Spencer: Moorthy is quite right: the idea that the Koran is perfect and uncreated, with no textual variants, is central to Islamic proselytizing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the Koran “was memorized by Muhammad and then dictated to his companions. The text of the Qur’an was cross-checked during the life of the Prophet. The 114 chapters of the Qur’an have remained unchanged through the centuries.” This idea is also central to the worldview of jihadist groups. Osama bin Laden bragged in his 2002 letter to the American people that the Koran “will remain preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Qur’an is the miracle until the Day of Judgment.” . . .
. . . . Muthuswamy: The importance of the Yemeni Koran is that it was an independent discovery; it physically exists and is distinct from the Islamic doctrines presently in use.
Political Islam faces ideological difficulties with the likes of the Sana’a fragments pointing to the textual evolution of the Koran. Furthermore, as Robert insightfully observes, other inconsistencies in the contemporary Koran and the Hadith accentuate these difficulties.
The challenge ahead lies in utilizing this breach to decisively break the back of Islamic radicalism.
Whether it is the latest, in the form of the Fort Hood massacre or the previous 9/11 attacks, there is one common theme: the armed jihads were carried out by mosque-going pious Muslim men who claimed to be driven by Islamic doctrines.
Recently, much progress has been achieved by applying statistical analysis to the Islamic doctrines themselves in order to understand why pious Muslims are waging jihad on unbelievers. Specifically, we now understand that about sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. Get this: about seventy five percent of Muhammad’s biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers. . . . . .
Foreign Policy/Oleg Kalugin, 11 Dec 09:
Gen. Kalugin is an instructor at the CI Centre.
I was the head of the KGB’s foreign counterintelligence branch when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The fateful order to send our military into such difficult terrain was by no means a foregone conclusion. Before Soviet leaders made the final call, we wrung our hands, considered our options, and argued among ourselves. Here is the inside story of how that wrenching decision was made.
At the time, I viewed Afghanistan as a country within the Soviet sphere of interest and thought we had to do whatever possible to prevent the Americans and the CIA from installing an anti-Soviet regime there. How wrong I would turn out to be.
My first and only trip to Afghanistan came in August 1978. Four months earlier, a pro-Communist coup headed by Noor Mohammad Taraki had overthrown the government of Mohammad Daoud, killing him and his family. Moscow had not been overjoyed by news of the coup, for in Daoud we had enjoyed a stable ally and relative peace along our southern border.
Reports soon began to filter back to KGB headquarters in Moscow of growing Islamic opposition in Afghanistan to the new Taraki regime. My KGB colleague Vladimir Kryuchkov and I were then sent to Kabul on a fact-finding mission. Our objectives included signing a cooperation agreement between the Soviet and Afghan intelligence services.
What we found on the ground was not encouraging. Kabul struck me as a big village, with worse poverty than I had seen on my prior visits to India. We had wanted to visit the southeastern city of Jalalabad, but Afghan officials said it was not safe — a troubling signal that the situation was less rosy than our hosts portrayed it.
Kryuchkov and I proceeded to meet the Afghan leaders who had slaughtered their opponents to gain power, and who later would die by the sword themselves.
Taraki, who had co-founded Afghanistan’s Communist party in 1965 and personally ordered the murder of Daoud, was by then a fragile, stooped old man. In his advancing age, he struck me as a fuss-budget given to general utterances, and I saw then that he didn’t have the physical strength or the political backing to continue to lead the country for long.
The man who eventually would depose Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, was a far more physically impressive figure. Amin was a dark, handsome man with glittering eyes. He was the shrewdest and most literate of the officials I met in Afghanistan, and when we discovered that we had both studied in New York at Columbia University, we hit it off immediately. We spoke to each other in English and reminisced about old haunts and familiar landmarks in the Big Apple. When we parted he gave me a big hug and invited me back as his personal guest. (I would never get the chance. The following year, KGB special forces troops gunned down Amin at the presidential palace as Soviet troops took over the city.)
In several meetings during that 1978 visit, I spoke with top officers from the Afghan police and state security, instructing them on how to fight the growing CIA presence in Kabul and throughout the country. The Afghans had almost no experience with the Americans, and I told them, among other things, about how to follow and eavesdrop on American intelligence agents. We later provided them cameras and electronic listening equipment.
“You have lots of American agents here and good opportunities to work against them,” I told the Afghan security officers. “We’ll do everything we can to help you.” Throughout the visit, we were treated as elder brothers, and I left feeling that, although opposition was growing, the situation was relatively well in hand.
After that trip, I returned to Moscow, where on the orders of KGB chief Yuri Andropov, I drew up a plan of active measures and general strategy for Afghanistan. My list included the following ideas:
- The Afghans should gather evidence on the training of Islamic guerrilla groups in Pakistan and then publicly accuse Pakistan of unleashing aggression against the Afghan people.
- The Afghan leadership should send a letter to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini professing support for the Iranian revolution and expressing hope the two governments will work closely together.
- The rebels in the Herat area should be declared mercenaries of U.S. imperialism and world Zionism, as well as remnants of the overthrown Iranian monarchy.
- American citizens suspected of CIA affiliations should be expelled from Afghanistan.
- Pro-government clergy should address the people and rallies should be held among youth, workers, and peasants in support of the revolution.
- Popular militias and committees “In Defense of the Revolution” should be established.
- The rebels’ rear should be raided to destroy their radio transmitters, bases, and munitions warehouses.
- More pro-Taraki radio stations must be created inside the country and the number of Afghan broadcasts from stations inside the Soviet Union should be increased.
- Soviet advisers should be sent into Afghanistan, reconnaissance flights over Afghanistan should be increased, and Soviet troops on the Afghan border should be reinforced and put on combat alert.
However, as would soon be evident, Afghanistan would not bend to our will. In the fall of 1979, after Amin murdered Taraki, the situation in Afghanistan was clearly deteriorating.
KGB officers on the ground argued that if Moscow did not intervene more aggressively, Amin would surely be overthrown and an Islamic government installed. I attended a meeting of KGB intelligence and Soviet military intelligence in which the GRU [Soviet military intelligence] chief, General Ivashutin, argued strenuously for an invasion. “There is no other alternative but to introduce our troops to support the Afghan government and crush the rebels,” he said.
Still, Andropov remained against the introduction of troops. Only under pressure from Defense Minister Dimitri Ustinov did he reluctantly come around to the view that the Soviet military would have to invade.
From that moment on, the KGB played a pivotal role in the events in Afghanistan. Indeed, all intelligence information — from the GRU, the KGB, and the foreign ministry — had to be funneled through KGB intelligence before being presented to the Politburo in Moscow.
That was a serious mistake. My KGB colleagues began filtering out bad news, exaggerating our achievements, and telling then-general secretary of the Communist party Leonid Brezhnev and the Politburo what they wanted to hear. It only prolonged the war and the suffering.
Unfortunately, the pivotal decision to invade Afghanistan was one we could not take back.
Atlanta Journal Constitution, 14 Dec 09: A federal judge on Monday sentenced Ehsanul Islam Sadequee to 17 years in prison for terrorist offenses, saying the 23-year-old Roswell man viewed truth, justice and the American way as his “anti-Christ.”
“You used our country to advance your self interest and your distorted view of the world,” U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey sternly told Sadequee before imposing sentence. “If there is any contradiction to God’s will, I would say you are it.”
As he did at his trial in August, Sadequee represented himself at sentencing. He quoted often from the Quran, saying that all authority belongs to Allah. Sadequee was convicted of four counts, including conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Pakistani-based terrorist organization.
Duffey scolded Sadequee for never expressing remorse for any of his actions. His case, the judge said, provided “not just a glimpse into the dark side” of terrorism, but “a full portrait.”
Sadequee’s beliefs, the judge said, were “chillingly displayed” on videos Sadequee and his co-defendant Syed Haris Ahmed made of Washington-area landmarks. As the two men drove by the Pentagon, Sadequee turned the camera onto the military complex and can be heard saying reverently, “This is where our brothers attacked.”
Those comments, Duffey told Sadequee, were “without any regard to those innocent fathers and mothers and children who were on the plane that crashed into that building.” . . . .
. . . . “This is not about your faith,” Duffey told Sadequee. “This is about the rule of law in our country, which you say does not apply to you and what you pronounced today will never apply to you.”
[Actually, it IS about Sadequee's faith--his adherence to Islamic Sharia Law over the US Constitution and American laws.]
