Playing Offense
The inside story of how U.S. terrorist hunters are going after al Qaeda
Next to fall was Ramzi Binalshibh, paymaster for the 9/11 hijackers. In September raids, the U.S.-Pakistani teams nabbed Binalshibh and others in Karachi. Along with their quarry they found three satellite phones, five laptop computers, wads of cash, and a small arsenal.
Weeks later, Moroccan prisoners at Gitmo began a chain reaction that struck another blow against al Qaeda. The detainees gave up details of an active cell in Morocco; within weeks, authorities busted the group, thwarting its plans to bomb U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar. The Moroccan cell, in turn, led investigators to Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, a top operative who ran al Qaeda's operations on the Saudi peninsula. In October, they found Nashiri, the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, hiding in the United Arab Emirates, planning a series of naval strikes. Nashiri soon broke; he even let officials listen in as he called his associates. The result: A CIA Predator drone found the chief of his cell in Yemen, driving with four of his men on an isolated road. A Hellfire missile blasted apart their car, killing all.
Al Qaeda and its allies struck back in the fall of 2002. First came the October attack on a French oil tanker in Yemen. A week later: the Bali bombings, the worst single act of terrorism since 9/11, killing more than 200 people. Then on November 28, suicide bombers in Mombasa, Kenya, struck an Israeli-owned hotel, killing 16, while others nearly brought down an Israeli airliner with shoulder-fired missiles.
But the pressure on al Qaeda was unrelenting. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months," declared CIA Director George Tenet in December. And in March of this year, a U.S.-Pakistani team racked up the biggest prize yet. When they picked up the trail of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed this spring, investigators thought they might have found the path to bin Laden himself. KSM, as he was called, had taken over as al Qaeda's chief of operations. Diabolically clever, he was known within al Qaeda as "the Brain" and is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks and a half-dozen other operations.
Mohammed, a 38-year-old Pakistani, was nabbed on March 1. "KSM," observed Cofer Black, "is like getting their chief of staff." Making the haul even better was KSM's companion: Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, an al Qaeda bagman who had wired cash to the 9/11 hijackers. With Hawsawi, agents found bank ledgers, the names of couriers and financiers, more phone numbers, and safe-house addresses. Investigators found an array of new suspects to track down, including more than a dozen sympathizers in America, Spain, and Switzerland. By spring of this year, the Pakistanis were arresting al Qaeda suspects almost weekly. The fight has been costly: Ten Pakistani soldiers lost their lives while raiding a safe house, and at least 10 others have been injured in the campaign. "We always say we captured these people, but that's not entirely true," says a U.S. official. "The first guy through the door is a Pakistani."
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