Death by Car Bomb in Damascus

...embassy and U.S...

...But what virtually all of the coverage in the major media in recent days omits is this: Imad Mugniyah was a vital ally of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda...

...But Kenneth Timmerman, the author of Countdown to Crisis, has written and stated repeatedly that knowledgeable intelligence offi cials have told him one of them was Imad Mugniyah himself...

...And there is evidence of their collaboration throughout the decade...

...As we shall see in a moment, we have the testimony of a top al Qaeda operative that the two men conferred in Sudan in the early 1990s...

...Then on June 25, 1996, the terrorists struck again...

...An investigation into the matter was left to the 9/11 Commission, which reported some new evidence but refrained from drawing any fi rm conclusions...

...W as Imad Mugniyah involved in the September 11 attacks...

...15 provided more details, calling the evidence of al Qaeda’s involvement “strong but indirect...

...Before meeting Mugniyah, bin Laden and his agents did not have the expertise to carry out such attacks...

...And to this day Iran harbors one of the senior al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the attacks...

...Imad Mugniyah’s relationship with Osama bin Laden began in the early 1990s, when al Qaeda’s CEO was living in Sudan...

...He would eventually turn up in Pakistan, where he was captured one year later...

...Iran supplied Egyptian [Islamic] Jihad with weapons...

...The German investigators who uncovered Binalshibh’s trip know little about his time in Iran—why he went, who he met with, and whether or not he went on to Afghanistan to meet al Qaeda’s senior leadership...

...A who’s who of terrorists set up shop...

...interrogators ask him about these travels...

...The travel of this group was important enough to merit the attention of senior fi gures in Hezbollah...

...The type of training described by Mohamed took place not only in Sudan, where hundreds of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah operatives had built terrorist training camps, but also in Lebanon and Iran...

...Other fl ights taken by the hijackers during this period originated or ended in Iran...

...government...

...The U.S...

...Terror chieftains like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri seek the limelight with their frequent and widely disseminated diatribes...

...On November 19, 1995, an al Qaeda truck bomb hit the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan...

...Mugniyah’s fi ngerprints on al Qaeda’s terror can best be seen in the aforementioned August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania...

...There is another twist...

...The truth is we do not know...

...Scores of Iraqi and Iranian intelligence offi cers relocated to Sudan, and Turabi made sure they mingled with his other imported terrorists...

...The martyrdom cult that plagues the world today was already manifest in his earliest attacks in Beirut in 1983...

...On January 31, 2001, he landed at Tehran International Airport...

...Finally, someone—we cannot be sure who, as of this writing—got him...

...government...

...on multiple occasions he dismissed the importance of any theological disagreements...

...The Commission found that bin Laden appeared to have been planning a similar attack in the months prior to the Khobar bombing, and shortly after the strike he was congratulated by his fellow al Qaeda members...

...Just months after Mugniyah’s operatives had killed hundreds of American servicemen, America’s forces were ordered out of wartorn Lebanon...

...Death by Car Bomb in Damascus A founding father of Islamic terrorism gets his just deserts BY THOMAS JOSCELYN Late Tuesday night in Damascus, Imad Mugniyah, senior terrorist of Hezbollah, was killed in a car bomb explosion...

...Two of the hijackers fl ew from Iran to Kuwait in October, and two others fl ew to Iran from Bahrain in November...

...Binalshibh, in particular, had ties to Iran that the Commission did not explore...

...Just days before the publication of its fi nal report, the 9/11 Commission made a startling discovery...

...san al-Turabi...

...The 9/11 Commission did not name the senior Hezbollah offi cials who may have coordinated the hijackers’ travels...

...He is the author, most recently, of Iran’s Proxy War Against America (Claremont Institute...

...Then, “in the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security...

...Nonetheless, the Commission reported some of the fi ndings in a section provocatively titled “Assistance from Hezbollah and Iran to al Qaeda...

...Most accounts have gotten the details of his early career right...

...With Turabi’s help, bin Laden began meeting with senior Iranian and Hezbollah offi cials...

...Mohamed said that Mugniyah agreed to help: Hezbollah provided explosives training for al Qaeda and [Egyptian Islamic Jihad...

...But contemporaneous analyses also pointed the fi nger at al Qaeda...

...Others have denied that collusion between the Shiite Mugniyah and the Sunni bin Laden was possible...

...According to Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker, one of the al Qaeda members who called to congratulate bin Laden was Ayman al Zawahiri...

...Most accounts have ignored Mugniyah’s ties to al Qaeda...

...There is a lengthy history of collaboration between Mugniyah and al Qaeda...

...Yet, some still insist that Mugniyah’s Hezbollah and bin Laden’s al Qaeda could not possibly work together...

...Six months later,” Baer says, “we found out that one of bin Laden’s most dangerous associates was calling one of Mugniyah’s offi ces in Beirut...

...Hezbollah’s bombing of the American embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, and its follow-on attack on the U.S...

...None of the press accounts this past week called for further inquiry by the U.S...

...embassies in two African nations in 1998 and the four simultaneous airplane hijackings on September 11, 2001...

...From the fi rst, the NIF had radical designs for the world...

...Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks...

...Indeed, law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the globe hunted Mugniyah for nearly 30 years...

...Not Mugniyah...

...Indeed, Ahmed al Ghamdi, one of the al Qaeda hijackers of United Airlines Flight 175, and “a senior Hezbollah operative” shared a fl ight into Beirut in November...

...This retreat left an indelible impression on the minds of many in the Middle East, including Osama bin Laden, then in his mid-twenties...

...In 1989, Turabi, along with General Omar al-Bashir, now president of Sudan, orchestrated a coup in which Sudan’s regime was overthrown...

...As George Tenet would note in his autobiography, At the Center of the Storm, Turabi “reportedly served as a conduit for Bin Laden between Iraq and Iran...

...The 9/11 Commission noted: “Hezbollah offi - cials in Beirut and Iran were expecting the arrival of a group during [mid-November 2000...

...We do know, however, that—as the 9/11 Commission concluded—the issue requires further investigation...

...Like al Ghamdi, some of the other hijackers traveled to Iran through Hezbollah’s home turf—Lebanon...

...All this we know from the 9/11 Commission’s report and the testimony of the terrorists themselves...

...As terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna explains in Inside Al Qaeda, al Qaeda took its inspiration for this modus operandi directly from Hezbollah...

...According to Crewdson, Binalshibh returned to Germany on February 28, 2001...

...A close reading of the 9/11 Commission Report, however, along with legal documents produced by the Clinton administration, the trial testimony of two known al Qaeda terrorists, and a variety of other sources, tells a different story...

...As a factual matter, that is not true...

...The commissioners were, for the most part, satisfi ed, concluding that they “found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack...

...Saif al-Adel, who was promoted to the third-highest position inside al Qaeda shortly after the September 11 attacks, was among them...

...Al Fadl elaborated: “I saw one of the tapes, and he tell me they train about how to explosives big buildings [sic...

...There is no real dispute over Iran’s and Hezbollah’s role in the attack...

...If you had not heard of Mugniyah before, there is a good reason...

...Yet they left the matter open: “We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S...

...Fadl replied, “They say westerns [sic...

...Indeed, there is already evidence to suggest that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s and Ramzi Binalshibh’s denials are not credible...

...In response to the 1983 attacks in Beirut, America recoiled from the fi ght...

...Al Fadl went on to list the names of some of those who received Hezbollah’s training...

...It is clear, however, that Mugniyah’s and bin Laden’s t?te-?-t?te in Sudan had lasting effects...

...Bin Laden has described America as a “weak horse,” one that will fl ee any fi ght, and he is fond of citing the experience in Lebanon as proof of America’s supposed weakness...

...But they “deny any other reason for the hijackers’ travel to Iran...

...I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mugniyah, Hezbollah’s chief, and bin Laden...

...Binalshibh replied that he had not...

...One Associated Press account described Mugniyah as “a Shiite Muslim not known to be connected to the Sunni al Qaeda...

...That same offi cial “planned to assist individuals in Saudi Arabia in traveling to Iran during November...

...Mohamed explained: I was aware of certain contacts between al Qaeda and [Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad] organization, on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side...

...And Turabi welcomed the leading state sponsors of terrorism as well...

...Not only did these hijackers use Iran as a transit hub, but Hezbollah offi cials may have assisted their movements...

...Al-Adel is still wanted by the FBI for his role in the embassy bombings...

...James Risen of the New York Times mentioned in passing that “there is evidence of contacts between [Mugniyah and bin Laden],” including “at least one meeting in the 1990s, possibly to discuss a terrorist relationship...

...Mugniyah’s Hezbollah trained some of the terrorists who executed the plot...

...Because this discovery came at the last minute, the Commission could not fully investigate the leads or give them appropriate prominence in the report...

...Marine barracks on October 23 were seminal events in the history of terrorism...

...All of this was highly suggestive, but we may never know for sure whether or not the Khobar Towers bombing was a joint operation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah...

...Mugniyah is now dead, but his infl uence on modern Islamic terrorism is alive and well...

...Bin Laden agreed with the Iranian assessment that the enemies of the West should come together...

...Within weeks of the bombing, for example, the CIA produced a report titled “Khobar Bombing: Saudi Shia, Iran, and Usama Bin Ladin All Suspects...

...intelligence community had collected evidence, of which the Commission was previously unaware, demonstrating Iran’s and Hezbollah’s possible complicity in al Qaeda’s terrorism...

...There is ample evidence of contacts and collaboration throughout the historical record...

...Al Fadl said he was told the “training is very good” and his colleague brought “some tapes with him...

...prosecutors that he had talked to one of his fellow al Qaeda terrorists about his training in Lebanon...

...The Iranians granted Binalshibh’s visa request...

...But the CIA refused to allow commissioners or staff to interview any of the al Qaeda agents in CIA custody...

...In its 1998 indictment of al Qaeda, Clinton administration prosecutors charged that al Qaeda had forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with representatives of the government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States...

...Thus, bin Laden had powerful motives for seeking out Mugniyah, the mastermind behind the Beirut operations...

...Six days before 9/11, Crewdson reported, Binalshibh once again traveled from Germany to Iran, thereby evading capture in the wake of al Qaeda’s most spectacular attack...

...Jamal al Fadl also told U.S...

...In its place, Bashir and Turabi installed their own National Islamic Front (NIF) party...

...According to Baer, al Qaeda and Mugniyah stayed in contact afterwards as well...

...According to the 9/11 Commission, the al Qaeda delegation included “top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell...

...As described by 9/11 Commissioners Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton in their book Without Precedent, the evidence included “connections between al Qaeda, Iran and the 9/11 hijackers...

...The 9/11 Commission reported that “senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives...

...If it were left to the mainstream media, then, Mugniyah’s role in the history of al Qaeda’s terror would be only a vague matter for speculation...

...An unnamed associate of Mugniyah’s accompanied them on the Beirut-to-Iran leg of their trip...

...Years after the meeting described by al Fadl, the Clinton administration recognized that an alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda had blossomed in Sudan...

...The Commission reports that a “senior operative of Hezbollah” traveled to Saudi Arabia in October 2000 “to coordinate activities there...

...Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and a series of hijackings and kidnappings throughout the 1980s and early 1990s...

...Bin Laden’s benefactor at the time was a charismatic Sunni Islamist ideologue named HasThomas Joscelyn is a terrorism researcher, writer, and economist living in New York...

...But until last week he always escaped, leaving behind him a bloody trail...

...Fitzgerald followed up, “Who did they describe the enemy as being...

...According to Bob Baer, a long-time CIA agent who tracked Mugniyah for years, there is evidence that Mugniyah facilitated the travel of one of the al Qaeda operatives responsible for the attack...

...Al Qaeda hijacker Kahlid al-Mihdhar— whom the CIA had observed at an al Qaeda planning session in January 2000—“may have taken a fl ight from Syria to Iran, and then traveled further within Iran to a point near the Afghan border” in February 2001...

...The Commission recommended “further investigation,” but no such investigation has been started...

...At the heart of this “alliance” was the personal relationship between Mugniyah and bin Laden...

...According to Mohamed, bin Laden was interested in forcing American troops out of Saudi Arabia the same way Mugniyah had forced them out of Lebanon...

...The CIA tried to assuage any concerns over Iranian involvement by relying on al Qaeda’s supposed denials...

...Also, the strike on the Marine barracks coincided with a simultaneous attack on a headquarters for French paratroopers in Beirut...

...In a few short years, Turabi’s Sudan became a hub for international terrorists of all stripes...

...In an exchange with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on February 6, 2001, al Fadl explained that the Iranians talked about how “we have to come together and we have to forget the problem between each other and each one he should respect the other because our enemy is one and because there is no reason to fi ght each other...

...And the State Department’s analysts produced a similar report of their own, noting that bin Laden’s rhetoric raised the possibility that “he may have played a role...

...Why did Binalshibh repeatedly travel to Iran...

...Among the al Qaeda trainees sent to the Bekaa Valley in 1993 were some of the perpetrators of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania...

...The same month, three other hijackers—Wail al Shehri, Waleed al Shehri, and Ahmed al Nami—“traveled in a group from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then onward to Iran...

...Mugniyah, however, was well known in counter terrorism circles...

...Instead, Turabi envisioned a grand, Manichean clash of civilizations in which the Muslim world stood united against its common Western foes, especially America...

...Thus, with respect to al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, embassy bombings we know the following: The bombings were modeled on Mugniyah’s earliest attacks...

...The assassination of Mugniyah has been widely reported in the press...

...In November 2000, Salem al Hazmi, one of the American Airlines Flight 77 hijackers, traveled to Beirut...

...Since the 9/11 Commission could not interview the hijackers themselves about their travels, the commissioners wanted to question such ringleaders as were in American custody...

...both have been well documented...

...Al Qaeda has come to be known for coordinated suicide missions (e.g., the simultaneous bombings of U.S...

...Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the plot’s mastermind, and Ramzi Binalshibh, al Qaeda’s point man for the 9/11 plot, “confi rmed that several of the 9/11 hijackers … transited Iran on their way to or from Afghanistan, taking advantage of the Iranian practice of not stamping Saudi passports...

...The differences between Sunnis and Shiites were not insurmountable in Turabi’s eyes...

...Al Qaeda learned that lesson all too well...

...In addition, “they also deny any relationship between the hijackers and Hezbollah...

...While the evidence of Iranian involvement is strong,” the 9/11 Commission’s fi nal report reads, “there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown...

...In See No Evil, Baer explains that shortly the attack American intelligence learned: “Mugniyah’s deputy had provided a stolen Lebanese passport to one of the planners of the bombing...

...Mugniyah’s terror showed the world that fanatics willing to kill themselves and others for their cause can change the course of history...

...A truck bomb hit the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia killing 19 American servicemen...

...Some will dismiss out of hand any attempt to connect Mugniyah and bin Laden, convinced that the Sunnis of al Qaeda are incapable of collaborating with the Shiites of Hezbollah and Iran...

...Until recently, only a handful of photos of him were publicly available, and he never gave interviews...

...They marked the fi rst time Islamic suicide bombers had attacked signifi cant American targets...

...And there remain disturbing questions about his possible involvement in the attacks of September 11...

...Those al Qaeda strikes were directly modeled on Mugniyah’s earliest attacks...

...More than three years after the 9/11 Commission published its fi nal report and more than six years after the 9/11 attacks, we are still not certain of Mugniyah’s, Hezbollah’s, and Iran’s possible role...

...Instead, he was something of a ghost, confi ned to the terrorist underworld since the early 1980s, quietly doing the bidding of his masters, the Assad family in Syria and the mullahs in Iran...

...One question on the application was, “If you are passing through Iran in transit have you obtained entry visa for your next country of stay...

...It was a fi tting death for a founding father of Islamic terrorism, a man who himself had built many bombs...

...On his handwritten application, Binalshibh checked a box indicating that the purpose of his visit was tourism or pilgrimage to one of Iran’s holy sites...

...In December 2000, as fi rst reported in July 2004 by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball and the Chicago Tribune’s John Crewdson, Binalshibh applied for a four-week visa at the Iranian Embassy in Berlin...

...Did U.S...

...His role in the kidnapping and torture death of William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut in 1984, had earned him special enmity...

...They have noted Mugniyah’s role in some of the fi rst Islamist terrorist attacks against the United States, including the bombings of the U.S...

...The Commission’s Staff Statement No...

...Years later, during the trial in New York of those responsible for al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, former al Qaeda operative Jamal al Fadl described one such meeting...

...Uncertainty over al Qaeda’s involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing lingered for years...

...That the two men met was made clear by Ali Mohamed, a top al Qaeda operative in the early 1990s, who testifi ed at the embassy bombings trial that he had arranged a sitdown in Sudan between the aspiring jihadist bin Laden and Mugniyah...

...The evidence demonstrated that “8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi ‘muscle’ operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001...

...Instead, as Kean and Hamilton relate, the commissioners referred this “deeply troubling” matter to the terrorists’ interrogators, who returned an answer “just in time” for its inclusion in the 9/11 Commission’s fi nal report...

...Today, he lives in Iran, under the protective custody of the mullahs...