‘I
know some people who might be able to provide you with something Top Secret.’ Yosri Fouda and Al- Jazeera- Journalism as terrorism by other means
‘I
know some people who might be able to provide you with something Top Secret.’
Yosri Fouda, Investigative Journalist and Al Jazeera London Bureau Chief is visiting Islamabad Pakistan after completing his documentary on the plight of Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay camp. Or is he in London? Or?
Whatever the location or the date of the call which Fouda has never clarified, the caller claims he is ' impressed with his show. ' In another version Fouda received a cellphone call claiming 'I'm a viewer of your show,' offering Fouda an interview with ‘a very important person’ and ‘top secret information'.
The anonymous caller asks for his personal fax number and hangs up. A few days later Fouda received the fax message.
'As a journalist you would only dream about it. This is the sort of people who would track you down whenever they wanted a message out. …It sounds like a surreal experience until this moment. Sounds like I was dreaming, they chose me. ...I had a hunch they would go through Al Jazeera. These are the sort of people you don’t really track down …you can only dream of it.’
The caller phoned again. 'Are you ready to go to Islamabad?'
'Yes absolutely' Fouda replied recalling : 'They were proud of their ability to contact and invite a well-known journalist, even if for just a cup of tea'.
Through an al Qaeda cut out or in Fouda's terms an ‘intermediary’ or 'mediators’, Fouda received a three page fax proposing ‘story ideas, locations and personalities’ …an outline ‘of what they would like the program to be like’ or another version ‘they prepared a few facts and details to tell the world through me’.
The outline was written by terrorist Ramzi Bin Alshibh, the co-coordinator and money mover for the 9 11 attacks as Fouda claimed: 'I later learned Ramzi Bin Alshibh passed it to the intermediary who made the contact’.
So far Fouda's narrative reads like a spy novel:
'One of their mediators gave me a call. He called me when I was in London wondering if I was doing anything to go with the first anniversary. Of course I checked the credibility of the caller and I took the decision’.
How did Fouda check the 'reliability 'of the anonymous Al Qaeda caller remains unclear. Or is he being unduly modest?
Fouda’s account of the two day ‘interview‘ with the terrorist masterminds was broadcast on Al Jazeera TV in two parts in September 2002 and published in the London Sunday Times and syndicated papers. Viewers and readers only heard Bin Alshibh’s voice as the terrorists later decided they would not allow vision as Fouda later 'explained':
'When I left they kept my tapes of the two interviews because they wanted to black out their faces and then they promised to send the tapes of the two interviews - a little more than an hour for each. But nothing came, finally I got an audio tape of my interview with Ramzi (Bin Alshibih) and that’s what I built my documentary around along with some of the material I remembered from our conversations and other material I had.’
Fouda became a media celebrity with a difference; he was flattered to be chosen by Osama bin Laden:
'They said it was bin Laden who picked my name because he liked my show. So in that sense it was flattery to be thought of in such a manner’ or another version: ‘I must admit I was flattered when they said Yosri Fouda kept his word'.
Fouda in a masterly display of journalistic independance, accepted the conditions set down by the terrorists:
'Khalid outlined the conditions for my interviews. I was not to mention how we communicated, nor reveal their ‘true’ code names’.
Journalists are not noted for religiosity. But Fouda swore allegiance on the Koran to conceal the terrorist’s identities:
‘When they ask you what we now look like, you will say we have not changed at all since the photos they will show you were taken.’
or another version:
… ‘I was to say they looked exactly like the photos in circulation that I would be shown. Then I was asked to place my right hand on the Koran and solemnly swear to this’.
Perhaps Fouda did not realize that
Khalid Sheikh Muhammad regarded him as an agent and as his case officer moved
quickly to establish control over him. Such are the perils of investigative
journalism.
As there were no independent witnesses to the meeting and all the audio and video recording equipment was provided by the terrorists, what other al-Qaeda ‘secrets’ did Fouda keep? Had he in effect, wittingly or unwittingly sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda?
Al Qaida would have known Fouda was a graduate of Cairo University, a matrix of Islamic terrorism for decades and that he subtlely seeded anti Israeli conspiracy theories into his programs to millions of Middle East viewers. From the terrorist’s point of view, Fouda was the ideal access agent or the ideal media asset, or perhaps both.
In either case it is clear: Al Qaeda regarded Fouda as an agent.
The contacting arrangements Fouda agreed to were identical to spy tradecraft and are used by intelligence agencies world -wide. Fouda was instructed by the anonymous phone caller to travel to Karachi, Pakistan and then to Islamabad, Pakistan. Or... As he was blindfolded he cannot claim to know.
As Fouda recalled ' they were very careful'. Fouda received instructions to proceed in short unpredictable phone calls and then an instruction: 'take the night flight to Karachi’ at a particular time, wear loose fitting Pakistani clothing and go to a specified hotel in Karachi. At the last minute, the anonymous guides directed him to an alternate hotel. After waiting two nights in a hotel undergoing renovation, a knock came on the door:
'I’m the mystery caller,’ the visitor said. He had his first piece of good news for Fouda. Osama bin Laden was alive.
'Sheikh Abu-Abdullah [bin Laden], God protect him is alive and well, is an avid viewer of your channel’.
‘How does the sheikh watch us now’? Fouda asked.
'Do not worry, Brother Yosri, Sheikh Osama, God protect him is alive and well. Whatever he misses he gets on tape’.
Brother Yosri was concerned that Friday should be reserved for prayers:
‘My contact called me at the hotel I was staying in to arrange a meeting time. Since it was Friday I suggested we meet in the mosque either before or after the prayer and he said to me: “No! No! No! Don’t leave the hotel’ and I said: “But it’s Friday and there are the prayers. And he said, 'No, no, no! God will forgive you.' But I think their sense of dispensation was derived directly from the idea that they were engaged in jihad (holy struggle’) .Now you know, in jihad there are certain liberties allowed...’
There are certain liberties allowed with jihad but not with Al Qaeda tradecraft rules for clandestine meetings as Fouda recalled:
'I thought they were very well trained and professional…more careful and more professional (than intelligence operatives) in trying to make me lose my sense of direction. The way they messed about with me. I didn’t expect them to be so sophisticated’.
Fouda was instructed to leave the hotel by the back door and take a taxi to another part of the city where he met another Al-Qaeda contact and was given a password. After ‘stopping for a mango juice’ or more likely to conduct counter surveillance, the unidentified contact made three visits to a telephone box and gave his revised orders to travel to another safe house by motorized rickshaw.
On the outskirts of Karachi, Fouda and his driver stopped beside a broken down car. He had been given another password 'Lahore'. He was bundled in another car and driven round the city, another recognised spy maneuver.
A second contact placed two balls of thick cotton wool over his eyes and provided him with sunglasses to conceal the cotton wool. He was then driven to another Al Qaeda safe house.
Was Fouda Afraid?
'No. I would be considered as far as they were concerned, more on their side. I had a strong feeling that they would actually care about my safety so that I would come back and do the program they wanted. I made sure I gave them the feeling that I am all theirs.'
Waiting at the top of the stairs was master terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohamed who removed the balls of cotton from Fouda's eyes and the sunglasses and led him into an empty flat where less than a meter away was 9 11 'co-ordinator' Ramzi Bin al Shibh sitting surrounded by laptop computers and cellphones.
‘ Brother Yosri...it is ok now,’ Khalid said. ’You can open your eyes'.
‘Recognize
us yet?' Khalid asked as Bin
Alshibh shook his hand warmly and
said ’You will - when intelligence dogs turn
up at your door’.
‘They say you are terrorists,' Fouda blurted out.
Bin Alshibh offered him an ‘inviting smile’, Fouda recalled:.
‘It was Ramzi Bin Alshibh who made an enduring impression on me. His philosophy is very much like Bin Laden’s. He also has the Sheikh's (bin Laden’s) serene charm, zest and religious knowledge.’ and 'Ramzi caused the greatest impression. He has the severe (sic) charisma, the vitality and the religious knowledge'...This is out future bin Laden'.
But Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, reportedly chief financial officer for Al Qaida global operations and known as MUKHTAR (‘the authorized one’) was in charge. As Fouda later wrote, they were proud of the 9 11 terrorist attacks and called for 'a thousand more'. Fouda was impressed with the terrorists sang froid:
'They are right.' Khalid replied calmly. ‘That is what we do for a living. If terrorism is to throw terror into the heart of your enemy and the enemy of Allah, then we thank Him, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, for enabling us to be terrorists.’
‘Did you do it?' Fouda asked.
‘I am the head of the Al Qaeda Military committee, and Ramzi (Bin Alshibh) is the co–coordinator of the Holy Tuesday Operation’ Khalid replied.
‘And yes we did it.’
'About two and half years before the holy raids on Washington and New York’… Khalid continued.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad outlines Al Qaida targetting of US Nuclear facilities
‘We decided to start planning for a martyrdom operation inside America. As we were discussing targets, we first thought of striking a couple of nuclear facilities but decided against it for fear it would go out of control.'
'Could you more specific?' Fouda asked.
'You do not need to know more at this stage’, Khalid replied, ‘and anyway, it was decided to leave out nuclear targets for now’.
‘What do you mean 'for now''?
'For now means ‘for now’, Khalid replied.
Fouda also provided another version in which the terrorists told him an attack on on a nuclear facility 'was later ruled out for navigational reasons'. 'Navigational reasons'? Please explain!
In a lengthy interview with Professor Schleifer of The American University [Cairo : Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal Fall (Winter 1992), Fouda gave another account:
'Khalid said that the first thing that jumped into their minds was striking at a couple of nuclear facilities but they dropped this idea for now, being concerned that it ‘might get out of hand’. He wouldn’t elaborate on that. But when I asked him what do you mean by 'for now’ He said: for now means “for now'.
Schleifer: 'So that means that Khalid, who is still at large, was implying that al Qaeda reserved the right to blow up nuclear facilities in the future?'
Fouda: 'Absolutely. That’s exactly what I got from him and I think he wanted to underline this.'
In plain words, from mid May/June 2002 to September 9 2002, Fouda withheld information given to him by the Al Qaeda planners of the 9 11 terrorist attacks of a nuclear attack threat against the United States.
Taqiyya Television or 'I lied'
Perhaps Fouda was engaging in Taqiyya television. What happened to the ethical imperative of investigative journalism, which Fouda refers to? Namely, the public's right to know? The American people would be understandably concerned that Al Qaida planned a nuclear attack.
In his interview with Professor S. Abdallah Schleifer, Fouda
also openly stated he ‘lied
‘in his documentary and newspaper accounts about the true date of his
interviews with the terrorists:
Fouda: 'I mentioned both in my article in The Sunday Times Magazine and in my documentary – that I met them in June.'
Schleifer: 'So?'
Fouda: 'I lied.'
Schleifer: 'Really?'
Fouda. 'Yeah.'
Schleifer: 'But you’re going to come clean with TBS right?'
Fouda: (laughter): 'Yes, of course I lied. I lied because I needed to lie. I'll tell you why. Because I thought, maybe, even expected, that if something went wrong and I needed to get in touch with them…the people that I met then and the people around them, they would be the only ones who would know I met them a month earlier than I let on.'
‘I can tell you now', Fouda said in a subsequent interview with the Adham Center ‘That this (June 2002) was the actual time of the interview, which we intentionally obscured in our own Al-Jazeera reports to protect our go-between in Karachi’.
Fouda is apparently admitting to deception of Al-Jazeera’s claimed 35 million viewers in the Middle East, 15 million viewers outside the Arab world, 35-45 million satellite viewers, about 3-4 million Arab speakers in Europe and 175,000 cable viewers in North America and the estimated 78% of houses in the West Bank with access to Al-Jazeera.
Fouda's narrative is classic taqiyya. According to his own accounts the Al-Qaeda go-between was (a) anonymous and (b)'he checked him out' when first contacted. Curiously, his employer, Al-Jazeera in early September 2002 identified the 'anonymous caller' to Reuters News Agency as Al Qaeda liaison officer, Abu Bakr, presumably related to one of the four righteous caliphs.
And the reason for Fouda's three month delay in broadcasting and publishing his account of the meeting?
Predictably there are many Fouda versions:... ‘because I needed time to check the interviewer's account.’ Check with with Al Qaeda? Another version is that he delayed the program as he wanted to include it in a documentary marking the first anniversary of the September attacks. There are so many contradictory accounts that the truth may have been forgotten, or buried.
History is irony. Fouda’s reporting assisted and inspired
the
American search for Khalid Sheik Mohammed (right), captured
03:00 02 March 2003 on the second floor of a two story villa in Rawilipindi 9
miles south east of Islamabad, Pakistan and Ramzi Binalshibh, (left) captured on
09 November 2002 Karachi, Pakistan. Both men are in US custody undergoing
interrogation.
Breathless
in Karachi
Late in the afternoon of 21 April 2002 Fouda recalled:
‘I packed my bags before joining Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Ramzi bin Alshibh for a last prayer before saying goodbye. The atmosphere was bizarredly [sic] emotional…Ramzi hugged me closely….'
The terrorists and the journalists had sworn on the Koran, eaten kebabs, rice dishes and salads and prayed together five times a day each day. Although Binalshibh lectured him on the evils of smoking, Fouda later gushed.
‘They look very human. They were very nice to me, very generous to me. I mean the thing is they needed me. They needed to pass a message though me, a journalist, who happened to be me’.
As Khalid Sheikh Mohammad escorted the blindfolded Fouda down the stairs he exclaimed:
‘You know what! You would make the perfect terrorist…I mean, look at yourself! You are young, intelligent, highly educated. Well organized, you speak good English, you live in London, and you are single. You remind me in a sense of brother Atta’.
Fouda knew he was receiving the highest praise, although a variant explanation could be Mohammad was recruiting him into Al Qaida:
‘How do you respond to such a comment? It needed a delicate reply. so I said, ‘One of Allah’s dearest blessings is that no human being can read the minds of their fellow human beings.’
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad thoughtfully provided him with souvenirs of his visit including CD roms, cassettes and a documentary titled ‘The New Crusade’ which justified the killing of Muslims. Even to Fouda ‘it was chilling’.
The
most touching gift from Mohammad to Fouda was a three minute video disc of the
beheading of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Khalid
wanted him to distribute in Fouda’s understated words ‘a video of the
beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl’.
Did Fouda know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave the assassination team the instructions that led to Pearl’s murder?
According to information held by the Pakistan police, Fazal Karim a former Mujahdin fighter in Afghanistan who witnessed Pearls' murder identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the person who slashed Pearl's throat.
The last video image of Pearl features his bleeding head severed from his body, dangling.
Al -Jazeera and Yosri Fouda have pioneered a new form of journalism: Journalism as terrorism by other means.
SOURCES: Readers are advised there are often variations in time and location in Fouda's accounts of his interviews with Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Quotations above are the most consistent used by Fouda.
Interview, Professor S. Abdallah Schleifer and Fouda - available at ' Covering Al –Qa’adia, Covering Saddam' TBS Transnational Broadcasting Studies [9] Winter-Fall 2002. pp 1-13. TBS The Adham Center for Television Journalism The American University in Cairo, 11511, Cairo, Egypt. www .tbsjournal.com/.fouda.html.
' Watching Daniel Pearl Die: Internet's Brave New World'. Posted Friday 7 June 2002. Chicago Tribune. Readers are advised that the 3 minute video of Daniel Pearl's beheading referred to above can be accessed on www.bostonphoenix.com. Non-Muslims may find the video of Pearl's beheading disturbing.
|
Previous editorials |
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| Lakemba's terrorist connections: The 'axis of evil' in Australia | ||
| Australia’s Mufti Sheikh Hilaly meets Hezbollah in Lebanon | ||
| Pakistan-born Faheem Khalid Lodhi, aka Abu Hamza, charged | ||
| Lakemba, Australia: A great place for transnational terrorists | ||
| Sydney’s Sheikh Feiz and his students | ||
| The Al Qaeda CI /CE challenge | ||
| ASIO management and Willie Virgil Brigitte’s dark terrorist network in Australia | ||
| Australia’s Islamic fundamentalist Sheikh Mohamed Omran’s Mystery Train | ||
| Al Qaeda and Islamic rules on espionage | ||
| REVIEW: INSIDE AL QAEDA: How I infiltrated the World’s deadliest terrorist organisation | ||
| ANDREW WILKIE: ONA and Australia’s Progressive Intelligence Officer | ||
| Al-Jazeera –‘Taqiyya Television’- Begins in Australia | ||
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4th March 2003 |
Yosri Fouda of Al Jazeera meets Saddam Hussein and the Director of Iraqi Intelligence: Why? Fouda - A contaminated source | |
| Yosri Fouda and Al- Jazeera- Journalism as terrorism by other means | ||
| Taqiyya and kitman: The role of Deception in Islamic terrorism | ||
| 6th November 2002 | A noted Anglican theologian discusses the ‘Terrorist Threat’ | |
| 31st October 2002 | Implications of the Washington ‘sniper case’: A scenario for US-Iraq war-time terrorism | |
| 19th October 2002 | Bali and Australian Intelligence Failure: ASIO / ONA / DFAT / DIO Directors should be dismissed | |
| 6th October 2002 | Terrorism with a return address: The nuclear suitcase bombs threat | |
| 23rd September 2002 | In the name of Allah, the wise and the merciful | |
| 19th August 2002 | Intelligence (mis)management : The Platitude Masters versus intelligence analysts | |
| 10th May 2002 | Record of conversation between (deleted) Australian Intelligence Officer and USIO | |
| 10th March 2002 | The Assassination of Daniel Pearl: Islam hates “The Other” | |
| 11th February 2002 | Australia's most sophisticated Anti-American Elite Organisation: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) | |
| 15th January 2002 | The neutralisation of intelligence: The rise of the legal mystique, the decline of intelligence capability and the rise in terrorism | |
| 25th November 2001 | Interview with Professor I C Comfort, Professor of Multicultural Law and Inter Ethnic Jurisprudence | |
| 10th November 2001 | Lakemba's Sheik Hilaly:Australia’s anti-semitic multicultural Mufti with many masks | |
| 26th October 2001 | Muslim fundamentalism: the false comfort of illusions | |
| 19th October 2001 |
One thousand Bin Ladens: Inflammatory Australian Muslim Web Site - pro Bin Laden and pro Taliban |
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| Psycho-linguistic warfare and Terrorism: the use of ‘BUT’ | ||
| 12th October 2001 | The methodology of theories of conspiracy | |
| 7th October 2001 | The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Propaganda: War by other means | |
| 30th September 2001 | Bin Laden in Australia | |
| 26th September 2001 |
BIN LADEN'S war against the United
States of America and the West |
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| 21st September 2001 | Australia: elite anti US opinion |
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