Cheryl Mills, the Firewall for Hillary’s SpyNet

Cheryl Mills: The Woman Who Knew Too Much?

The New York Times reports that Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s long-time henchwoman will not be joining the Presidential campaign now presumably in the final stages of formation. Why? Perhaps Mills is, to borrow a phrase from Alfred Hitchcock, the woman who knew too much.

Mills, who was the State Department’s counselor and chief of staff during the entirety of Hillary’s tumultuous tenure, is up to her waist in the Benghazi matter, where the overwhelming evidence is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put politics before the security and safety of U.S. citizens serving their country in that hell-hole.

Earlier this month, Judicial Watch obtained emails  through a federal lawsuit which contained multiple references to the, “so-called Benghazi Group. A diplomatic source told Fox News that was code inside the department for the so-called Cheryl Mills task force, whose job was damage control.”

Clearly Clinton, and Obama, were concerned about the “optics” and potential political fallout of the al-Qaeda 9/11 assault on the Benghazi consulate where four Americans were murdered less than 60 days from election day. The emails show Mills “running interference internally during the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.”

Specifically, Mills instructed then State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland “to stop answering reporter questions about the status of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was missing and later found dead.” Nuland quickly demurred.

This is the same Nuland who objected to the original Benghazi talking points drafted by the CIA because they included references to the al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia and to previous CIA warnings about terror threats in Benghazi. Nuland worried that any mention of the the CIA warnings “could be used by Members [of Congress] to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that? Concerned …”

Surely Nuland was given guidance by Mills.

Mills continued the cover-up by telling State Department employees to obstruct the 2013 congressional investigation. In June, 2013 Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya during the Benghazi attack, testified to Congress that Mills was “personally instructed to allow the RSO [Regional Security Officer], the acting deputy chief of mission, and myself to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz.”

In true Clinton form, Hicks said in a September 2013 interview that as a result of cooperating with Congress he was “punished” and “shunted aside, put in a closet,” not receiving a new assignment from State.

Like Nixon and his White House tapes, Hillary is now arguing that the e-mails are her personal property and she should decide what the American people get to read. While serving as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton no doubt sent and received countless emails pertaining to personal issues with no relevance to State Department issues via her private account. But Supreme Court precedent in the Nixon case seems clear: she doesn’t get to decide what to release and what not to.

What does this have to do with Ms. Mills? Mills is the trusted aide who reviewed the e-mail to decide which e-mails to erase. Mills joined Hillary in eschewing government e-mail so e-mails between her and her boss are illegally kept from public view  when they conducted public business.

Mills has another darker distinction. When the Palm Beach police seized the address book of convicted billionaire pedophile and friend of Bill, Jeffrey Epstein, they found the cell phone and personal e-mail address for Mills.

What did Hillary know of Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls? What did Hillary think Bill was doing when he and his now disaffected wingman Doug Band visited Epstein’s palatial Palm Beach home where neighbors say the POTUS partied until the wee hours with scores of women who were dropped off by limousine after the arrival of the presidential motorcade.

What did Hillary think Bill was doing on Epstein’s hedonistic island retreat where he was seen in the company of two 17 year-olds flown in from New York for the former Presidents amusement? Perhaps Mills can tell us.

Mills is a member of the Clinton Foundation’s Board of Directors, now under fire for taking millions from foreign governments, particularly those in the Middle East who oppress women and deny them the most basic human rights. Perhaps Mills has seen the e-mails that show the self-dealing nexus between Hillary’s stint at State and the avalanche  of cash the Clintons have scammed from foreign powers for a charity that spends more on luxury travel for the Clintons and a huge staff of political retainers than they do on charitable works to help actual people.

Pine not for Ms. Mills. As the Clintons demonstrated when they placed Epstein’s pedophilic pimp Ghislaine Maxwell in a job at a non-profit funded by the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons sometimes buy silence. Maxwell was granted immunity for her role in procuring underage girls for Epstein to molest. She was present when Bill partied in both Palm Beach and on Epstein’s orgy island, his private retreat in the carribean. Like Mills, Maxwell knows too much.

Or perhaps Mills should be concerned. Cheryl Mills figures into every scandal dogging Hillary Clinton and probably a few we don’t know about yet. As they did with James Carville, Dick Morris, Doug Band, and others the Clinton’s have no problem discarding staff when they are no longer useful. But sometimes, as in the case of former Clinton Security Chief Jerry Parks who knew chapter and verse on Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes and whose brutal murder goes unsolved, those who know too much are silenced.

**** As an aside, my buddy Larry Klayman, at Freedom Watch filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for operating a criminal enterprise, charges of racketeering.

 

Remember that Senate Immigration Bill? Background…

Barack Obama pushed hard for the House to pass the Senate immigration bill. It was dead on arrival and with good reason. But there is a lil bit of history that somehow was never fully revealed.

The Senate immigration bill: Here’s what you need to know Months after their Jan. 28 announcement of a tentative compromise on immigration reform, the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has finally unveiled its bill, or at least a summary of the proposal. It includes sweeping changes in treatment of both existing undocumented workers and aspiring immigrants.

Here are the key points, culled from summaries in the Post and Politico as well as the actual bill summary, posted by Talking Points Memo here. A good cheat sheet  is here.

There are several key items in this bill which has stalled however, there is a danger in coming months that new lifelines may be provided. Here is a disturbing sample inside the bill.

Six months after the bill’s passage, the Department of Homeland Security would have to submit two plans, one outlining a strategy for reducing traffic over high-risk areas on the Mexican border, and another for increasing fencing. The bill appropriates $3 billion for the department to carry out the first plan (through better drone surveillance and more border patrol officers, among other things) and $1.5 billion for it to carry out the latter. The National Guard would be allowed to be deployed to the border, and 3,300 new customs agents hired. If, by the fifth year the bill is in effect, 90 percent of crossers aren’t being apprehended and 100 percent of the border isn’t being surveilled, the bill would establish a commission of four border-state governors and add another $2 billion in security funding. The bill also requires the establishment of an electronic exit checking system at airports and sea ports in order to track the movements of visa holders. The real kicker on the influence of items in this bill must be noted. Put your seat belt on….Ask some hard questions of these names as you read below.

October 29, 2013

The Soros-funded National Immigration Forum (NIF) organized today’s “fly-in” of some 600 people to lobby House Republicans to pass the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill (which Senator Rubio himself has now disavowed).
It started with a two-hour teach-in at the U.S Chamber of Commerce, with the usual suspects saying the usual things. (Watch it here.) I couldn’t stomach the whole thing, but there were some amusing bits: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, said that we need immigration because our population is declining (in fact, even with zero immigration — zero — our population would continue to increase for generations, beyond which projections are meaningless).
Also, Tony Massif, lobbyist for California agribusiness, said that if we we don’t import more stoop labor from abroad, then we’ll have to import more food, meaning our enemies would “control our food supply.” (You know, because all that corn and wheat in the Midwest is being hand-harvested by Guatemalan peasants.)
Speakers were also pretending that amnesty and increased immigration were conservative initiatives by claiming that environmentalists and labor unions are responsible for the opposition to the Schumer-Rubio bill when, obviously, they’re among the bill’s chief backers. Anyway, that’s all boilerplate and hardly worth commenting on, as much as it might irk me. But I got to thinking about the groups hosting this thing and thought it’d be interesting to match up their principals and supporters with the Forbes 400 list.
Turns out that “Billionaires for Open Borders” isn’t just a catchy name — it’s the reality. Joining Soros (#19 on the Forbes 400) in backing today’s lobbying effort are a broad collection of his fellow billionaires. One of the co-hosts was Partnership for a New American Economy. Among the group’s co-chairmen: Michael Bloomberg (#10 on the Forbes 400), Steve Ballmer (#21), Rupert Murdoch (#30), Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#161), and Bill Marriott (#296). Another co-host was Fwd.us, founded by Mark Zuckerberg (#20) and including among its supporters Bill Gates (#1), Eric Schmidt (#49), Reid Hoffman (#103), John Doerr (#184), Stanley Druckenmiller (#184), John Fisher (#193), Barry Diller (#260), Sean Parker (#273), Jim Bryer (#352), Mark Pincus (was #212 in 2011, but fallen off since), Matt Cohler (worth a measly $400 million, but on the Forbes Future 400 list), Fred Wilson (#16 on Forbes Midas List of top tech investors), Ron Conway (#41 on the Midas List), and Richard Kramlich (#73 on the Midas List). That’s not to mention a whole list of mere multi-millionaires and even billionaires who didn’t make the cut. To adapt WFB’s famous quip, I’d rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston phone directory than the Forbes 400 List. JUST DAMN….

Hamas, War Crimes and the DC Fundraiser

Gaza FRThe very left leaning organization known as Amnesty International, which enjoys financial support from Open Society, a George Soros organization has come to admit that Hamas was steeped in war crimes in Gaza last year.   What is most shocking however, is a planned fundraising event in Washington DC for Hamas.

Location Rock Creek Park- Intersection of 16th St. NW & Kennedy St. NW, Washington DC 20011

Date & Time Saturday, May 16 2015 7:00 AM

Gaza sponsors

 

Hamas guilty of war crimes in Gaza clash, Amnesty Internat’l charges

HAIFA, Israel – A horrific missile attack that killed 11 children in Gaza during last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, for which Israel was broadly condemned at the time, was actually caused by a Palestinian missile misfiring and killing its own people, Amnesty International charged in a report released Thursday.

“In the deadliest incident believed to have been caused by a Palestinian armed group during the conflict, 13 Palestinian civilians – 11 of them children – were killed when a projectile exploded next to a supermarket in the crowded al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza on 28 July 2014, the first day of Eid al-Fitr,” Amnesty’s report said. “The children had been playing in the street and buying crisps and soft drinks in the supermarket at the time of the attack.”

“Although Palestinians have claimed that the Israeli military was responsible for the attack, an independent munitions expert, who examined the available evidence on behalf of Amnesty International, concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket.”

The report highlights the fact that the blast could not have been caused by a drone attack or as the result of Israeli shelling. The crater was too shallow, it said, while “its circumference was too wide to have been caused by a tank shell.”

“Palestinian armed groups, including the armed wing of Hamas, repeatedly launched unlawful attacks during the conflict killing and injuring civilians,” said Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. “In launching these attacks, they displayed a flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law and for the consequences of their violations on civilians in both Israel and the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s insistence from the start that the 13 deaths were caused by one of Hamas’ own missiles going astray was generally disregarded as Hamas rushed to accuse Israel. Even repeated testimony from an Italian journalist in Gaza at the time that indicated a number of journalists were convinced the deaths had been caused by a Hamas shell, failed to persuade most people that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) was telling the truth.

The journalist, Gabriele Barbati, tweeted, “International journos [journalists] say: feeling today’s massacre in Shaati beach playground #gaza was misfired rocket by Hamas or factions.” The following day he added, “@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it”.

Barbati subsequently fled for his life from Gaza once his tweets were noticed by Hamas, but later that day tweeted again, “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children y’day in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.”

Amnesty also made note of “other violations of international humanitarian law by Palestinian armed groups during the conflict, such as storing rockets and other munitions in civilian buildings – including UN schools – and cases where Palestinian armed groups launched attacks or stored munitions very near locations where hundreds of displaced civilians were taking shelter.”

The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, which against the wishes of the U.S. and others, intends to apply for membership of the International Criminal Court, next week, may be liable for this and other war crimes committed by Palestinians during the war if accepting ICC jurisdiction. The PA officially became jointly responsible for Gaza as part of the unity government with Hamas on June 2, 2014, some 5 weeks before the conflict began.

Earlier this week, in a special report, FoxNews.com highlighted a new documentary revealing Hamas’ pride at training child soldiers released ahead of an imminent decision by the EU on whether or not to re-instate Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organization that lapsed three months ago due to an EU technicality.

Thursday’s report is the third of four from Amnesty International detailing the human rights organization’s opinion of events in Gaza during the 2014 war. The first two reports mainly focused on the activities of the IDF and included strong criticisms of the Israeli military and accusations of “callous indifference “ and “war crimes”, which were again mentioned by Philip Luther. “The fact that Palestinian armed groups appear to have carried out war crimes by firing indiscriminate rockets and mortars does not absolve the Israeli forces from their obligations under international humanitarian law,” he said.

Luther added, “The devastating impact of Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians during the conflict is undeniable, but violations by one side in a conflict can never justify violations by their opponents.”

Israel disputes the number and status of the casualties, suggesting that independent analysis of the names of the 2,000 Palestinians reportedly killed shows that nearly 50 percent of the dead were actually combatants. Amnesty has suggested the figure is nearer a quarter. To date, there has been no reaction from Hamas to today’s highly critical report, and across Palestinian media there appears not to have been any coverage of the issue.

“Unlike Hamas, Israel is vigorously investigating its conduct, aiming to draw lessons and minimize civilian harm,” a spokesperson for Israel’s Embassy in London told the Jerusalem Post. “Meanwhile, Hamas continues to incite terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, boast of building new cross-border assault tunnels, and test-fires rockets, in preparation for further violence against Israelis.”

The fourth and final report from Amnesty into the 50-day conflict is expected later this year and will focus on allegations of Hamas’ executions and summary killings of opposition supporters, and anyone else who questioned their rule of the Islamist enclave during hostilities.

An Iranian Defection During Nuke Talks

Pro-Hassan Rouhani Iranian editor defects while covering nuclear talks in Lausanne

Amir Hossein Motaghi says he no longer sees any “sense” in his profession as he could only write as he was told

A close media aide to Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has sought political asylum in Switzerland after travelling to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West.

Amir Hossein Motaghi, who managed public relations for Mr Rouhani during his 2013 election campaign, was said by Iranian news agencies to have quit his job at the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA).

He then appeared on an opposition television channel based in London to say he no longer saw any “sense” in his profession as a journalist as he could only write what he was told.

“There are a number of people attending on the Iranian side at the negotiations who are said to be journalists reporting on the negotiations,” he told Irane Farda television. “But they are not journalists and their main job is to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.

“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more.” Mr Mottaghi was a journalist and commentator who went on to use social media successfully to promote Mr Rouhani to a youthful audience that overwhelmingly elected him to power.

But he was also subject to the bitter internal arguments within the Iranian regime. One news website claimed he had been forced in to report to the ministry of intelligence weekly, and that he had been tipped off that he might be subject to arrest had he returned to Tehran.


He is said to have been a friend of Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American reporter for the Washington Post who has been detained in Tehran, and to have campaigned privately for his release.

ISCA, which has come under fire from regime hardliners critical of Mr Rouhani, issued a statement denying that Mr Motaghi was in Lausanne to report for it.

“Amir Hossein Motaghi had terminated his contribution to ISCA and this news agency has not had any reporter at the nuclear talks, except for a photojournalist”, it said.

However, critics said Mr Mottaghi was “prey of the exiled counter-revolutionaries” and had gone to Lausanne with the sole purpose of seeking refugee status in Switzerland.

In his television interview, Mr Mottaghi also gave succour to western critics of the proposed nuclear deal, which has seen the White House pursue a more conciliatory line with Tehran than some of America’s European allies in the negotiating team, comprising the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany.

“The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he said. ***

Meanwhile the clock is ticking to have a final framework agreement and both sides are saying there are some sticking points. But what is most chilling, is this interim agreement may NOT even be a written document with signatures but rather an oral gentlemen’s agreement. That requires repeating, an oral agreement with a handshake. Never has any world leader trusted Iran and John Kerry is asking the P5+1 to consider that? You be the judge.

 

So, What did bin Ladin Have in his Files…

Hundreds of thousands of documents were gathered at the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan that belonged to Usama bin Ladin. To date, only 17 have been released however, some others were accessible during a recent trial in New York.  Here is a sampling.

The Bureaucracy of Terror

New Secret Documents Reveal al Qaeda’s Real Challenges

By: Jennifer R. Williams

A new trove of documents that were among those seized in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, were presented recently during the trial of Abid Naseer at the Brooklyn federal district court.

The documents—which consist of correspondence between Osama bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders—reveal the state of the global terror operation in the months leading up to bin Laden’s death. They paint a picture of an organization crippled by the U.S. drone campaign, blindsided by the Arab Spring, and struggling to maintain control over its affiliates—and yet still chillingly resolute in its mission to strike inside the United States.

The documents offer some insight into the effectiveness of U.S. counterterrorism efforts against al Qaeda. They also, believe it or not, provide a few laughs.

DRONES WORK

First, the documents support the argument that U.S. President Barack Obama and other proponents of the drone program have made that the strikes are effective and that the U.S. drone program is heavily constrained.

The letters show that the tactic of targeting top al Qaeda leaders had profoundly crippled the organization. In one letter, Atiyya, a key Al Qaeda leader and strategist who was killed not long after these letters were written, laments to bin Laden, “The mid-level commands and the staff members are hurt by the killings. Compensating for the loss is going slowly, God grants aid, and the ongoing war of espionage does not give us much chance…Our current view of the situation: we need to reduce operations and activities, focus on ‘persevering and survival.’ We will focus on defensive security (counterespionage) by focusing on striking the spy plane bases using special operations, and on patience, persistence, hiding as well as decreasing our presence at least this year because it is an important year.”

The documents also provide some support for Obama’s argument that the United States does not undertake drone strikes casually but rather only after substantial deliberation. One letter states, “As we see it, based on our analysis, they are constantly monitoring several potential, or possibly confirmed targets. But they only hit them if they discover a valuable human target inside, or a gathering, or during difficult times (like revenge attacks for example).” However, this last part about “revenge attacks” does call into question the argument Obama and others have made that “America does not take strikes to punish individuals.

Because drone strikes have been effective and because the United States targets them carefully, al Qaeda operatives have taken to restricting their own movement, staying inside, and avoiding gathering in large groups—all activities that are fairly integral to running a successful terrorist organization. It’s not easy to train legions of recruits on how to fire RPGs, build bombs, and shoot guns with any accuracy when you have to stay inside the house and can’t have more than five people gathered together at one time.

THREE CHEERS FOR THE NSA

The documents also reveal that the NSA is doing a really good job. Just to be clear, I’m not just saying this because I work for “Noted NSA Apologist Benjamin Wittes,” editor in chief of Lawfare. I’m saying it because the overwhelming theme that pervades these letters is the organization’s inability to communicate as a result of the NSA’s ever-watchful eyes. Because signals intelligence (SIGINT) collected by the NSA plays a critical role in the CIA’s targeted killing program, al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere are basically unable to use any kind of digital communication. In one letter, bin Laden warns Atiyya:

As for anything dangerous, we should never use any modern devices, especially for the external operations. Also, just because something can be encrypted doesn’t make it suitable for use. The enemy can easily monitor all incoming letters to areas where there are Mujahidin and can access all their messages. As you know, this science is not ours and is not our invention. That means we do not know much about it. Based on this, I see that sending any dangerous matter via encrypted email is a risky thing. It is expected that whoever made the program can open the encrypted letters no matter how it’s encrypted. Encrypting a message is done so that the general public is not able to open the message.

However, in wars and with the capabilities of countries, particularly the one with expertise in these fields, we should not depend on encryption…We should only send letters through people to deliver them to the right person.

When you’re trying to manage a terrorist organization that spans the globe and can’t go outside or convene gatherings, not being able to use digital communications is a death blow.

It is also amusing to note that al Qaeda seems to have thought that the United States was putting “harmful substances or radiation” that “can’t be seen by the eye” on the paper money destined for al Qaeda’s hands. To protect against the poison, al Qaeda members wrote of taking the money to “banks in the big city” and going through a series of currency exchanges. It might sound like a silly, minor detail, but undertaking such elaborate security measures every time any money is received means money cannot be transferred though the organization at a sustainable speed. And every second al Qaeda loses is another second counterterrorism and intelligence agencies have to try and uncover and disrupt the next attack.

Even so, perhaps al Qaeda should have known better about U.S. operations, given all the classified documents made available by Wikileaks. However, it seems that al Qaeda—or at least bin Laden—only found out about Wikileaks thanks to the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Bin Laden then issued the following instructions:

Please dedicate some brothers to download the files that were leaked out of the Pentagon in regards to Afghanistan and Pakistan so that they can be translated and studied because it contains information about the enemy’s policies in the region. The Defense Secretary mentioned that these documents were leaked and that they would affect the war negatively.

Would al Qaeda still have wanted to look at the Wikileaks documents even if Robert Gates hadn’t made this statement about them? Probably. Would the group have done it right away? Who knows. But when the U.S. secretary of defense publicly announces the unauthorized release of a trove of information on “intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures” and warns that “the battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners,” it pretty much guarantees that the terrorists are going to make examining those documents a priority. Gates made his statement on July 29, 2010. The letter ordering the creation of a dedicated team of operatives tasked with poring over the documents is dated August 7, 2010. For an organization with severely limited communications capabilities, that’s pretty quick.

However the group interpreted the documents, it didn’t like how things were going. Morale was low. Operatives were afraid of poison. They couldn’t call their families, rumors of the deaths of comrades couldn’t be confirmed quickly or reliably, and the top leadership—including the charismatic individual who likely inspired the fighters to join the cause in the first place—couldn’t maintain regular contact with the foot soldiers. All of these factors led to poor performance and even defections. Several of the letters to bin Laden include statements strongly urging him to write to this commander or that operative. One letter says, “As you can see, the brothers in Somalia are suggesting that you write a message to brother Hasan Zahir Uways encouraging him, raising his morale and his commitment…” Another letter implores bin Laden:

Sheikh, I have asked you before for tapes for us, which we could preserve, about past, your life, and all…We insist on it. We consider it a duty. Dear Shiekh, some small audio messages just for the brothers here, too. We will play the recordings for them to hear, no one will take a copy. Then we will keep the recordings in our archives or destroy them according to your orders. The people need it: to reassure them about assignments and so on, to advise them to obey, be patient and steadfast, to lifting morale and give good news. May God rest his soul, al-Jawfi used to say, “I am with Osama bin Laden, but not with Al-Hafiz Sultan or Khalid al-Habib or Mahmud.” We have others like him…

THE REAL THREAT

Counterterrorism and security officials lie awake at night worrying about the threat of a terrorist group like al Qaeda using chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear warfare. That is understandable, of course—such an attack would be horrific, and the United States should make sure that its counterterrorism efforts include measures to mitigate such threats.

But these latest al Qaeda documents should serve as a reminder that terrorists don’t need weaponized bubonic plague or ricin to sow terror, and that if the United States focuses too much on terrorists with high-tech weapons or synthetic virus, it just might miss the guy with the kitchen knife in his carry-on.

One letter reports that “one of the main impediments to our work”—their “work” being carrying out terrorist attacks—“is that the brother is unable to carry out his work due to lack of the required tools (materials – weapons); hence, we had to contemplate new methods to obtain the tools or invent new methods of execution.” The letter explains that one of the ways they “tried to resolve this obstacle” was to “Guide the brothers toward new methods like using the simplest things such as household knives, gas tanks, fuel, diesel and others like airplanes, trains and cars for killing tools.”

The point is not that al Qaeda operatives wouldn’t love to get their hands on a nuclear weapon or launch some incredibly sophisticated bioterror attack—of course they would. The point is that getting that stuff is really hard. Why waste millions of dollars trying to buy nuclear material on the black market just to end up being sold a bunch of junk from an undercover CIA officer when you can build a homemade pressure-cooker bomb using materials you can buy at Bed Bath & Beyond and Home Depot and still manage to shut down a major American city?

Similarly, training recruits to operate in the West is hard. To pull off a successful terrorist attack in the United States or Western Europe, the terrorist has to be able to stay under the radar of generally very capable security and intelligence services. That means that the terrorist needs to first be able to get into the country, and then once in, to blend in relatively well and move around without drawing unnecessary attention. The terrorist probably also needs to be able to handle small arms or build a basic bomb without blowing off his own hand in the process. That requires training.

The problem is that taking frequent, extended trips to places like Pakistan or Somalia, where such training takes place, would almost certainly bring an individual to the attention of the security services back home. Therefore, recruits have to keep trips relatively short and infrequent (maybe even going only once). That doesn’t give them a whole lot of time to learn how to be good terrorists.

In fact, according to one letter, a new recruit might only be able to get what one unfortunate Western trainee apparently got: “Theoretical” explosives training. The letter reports:

Regarding the other brothers, they are new brothers whom we sent in haste to avoid any breach in their security or the expiration of their documents or their residence permits. We had trained them the best we can within the limits of time and circumstances (as an example, the moment one of the brothers reached us, the war in Mas’ud started. His residence permit was for two months. He spent one month of it on the road and waiting. He was in siege with us for two weeks during which he took a theoretical course in explosives. He went back prior to the expiration of his residence permit and for needing the time to travel). We have not heard any of their news due to communications difficulties at our side and to the strict monitoring on their side.

For some reason, it doesn’t seem like al Qaeda ever heard back from that particular recruit.

THE FAR ENEMY

One of bin Laden’s goals in creating al Qaeda was to reorient the broader jihadist movement away from fighting local regimes and toward attacking the United States. Thus, when a local jihadist group in Somalia or Yemen or somewhere else takes on the al Qaeda name and becomes an official affiliate, part of the deal is that the group is supposed to start prioritizing strikes against the United States over attacks on its home country.

Understandably, some local jihadist groups aren’t too thrilled with the idea of giving up the fight against a tyrant actively imprisoning and torturing their members to focus on Americans, nor are they at all optimistic that doing so is the best way to go about inspiring their fellow countrymen to rally to their cause.

In one letter, Atiyya diplomatically tries to explain to bin Laden, his boss, that the whole “stop fighting the local regime and focus on the Americans” thing isn’t going over so well with the guys in Yemen:

Regarding Yemen, my dear Sheikh, what you say is good and you go into depth about it, I ask God to add to your knowledge, wisdom, and soundness…However, I hope that you focus on the current situation and its particulars…Now, we are faced with the reality of how to act wisely and how to bring in our youth and men…Let us focus on the means and mechanisms for implementing your ideas, may God bless you. Issue: That we should strike the Americans, but not strike the apostates; we have explained our opinion, and you know it. Regarding the matter of completely retreating from the battle: It is dangerous and destructive as well…The young men want to go to the “front” and want “operations.” They bring up operations, opportunities, monitoring (surveillance and reconnaissance) to the command every day.

Translation: “The kids want to go play soldiers and shoot at stuff, not sit in a safe house for three years planning an operation that some other guys will end up carrying out in some American city they’ve never heard of. So, maybe cool it on the ‘Death to America’ shtick.”

It wouldn’t be surprising if bin Laden had gotten a little tired of the aforementioned kids by the end.

Part of what made bin Laden so admired by those who fought with him in the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan was the fact that, even though he came from a wealthy family and could have been living a life of leisure back in Saudi Arabia, he chose instead to come to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan and fight in miserable conditions on behalf of his fellow Muslims.

But Bin Laden was something of a one-off. In general, spoiled rich kids make lousy terrorists.

Much has been said of late about the thousands of foreign fighters who have traveled to wage war with the Islamic State—most of whom are from the Middle East. But if any of those kids are like some of the foreign fighters from the Gulf Arab countries who went to Pakistan to “fight” alongside al Qaeda, the Islamic State may find itself dealing more with entitled brats than dedicated warriors. One letter has this rather comical report from Atiyya to bin Laden:

We have some other problems…like dissent and lack of discipline from some young men (from the [Arabian] Peninsula, Kuwait and other places), who do as they wish and roam in the markets. They are not associated with any group and they have no obedience. Sometimes, some of them participate in jihad with some of the Taliban factions, while others make no contribution to jihad. A solution to the problem they represent has escaped us, but we are still trying. God grants success.”

It seems that the Islamic State has found a rather effective solution to this problem—it just kills the recruits who don’t behave. Yet another instance of the Islamic State being so brutal that it somehow manages to make al Qaeda look like the “nice jihadists” (they’re not actually very nice).

SUPPORT NETWORK

Al Qaeda and other jihadists claim that they are fighting to free Muslims from the oppression of corrupt apostate dictators and the imperialist West, both of which, they argue, steal the wealth that rightfully belongs to all Muslims and leave them languishing in poverty and despair. Of course, it isn’t clear how beheading humanitarian aid workers who traveled from their safe, comfortable homes in the West to a terrifying war zone in order to provide relief to suffering Muslims is supposed to be a furtherance of that lofty goal.

Nevertheless, many al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups—including the Islamic State—do provide services in the areas in which they operate. In a letter to Atiyya, bin Laden writes:

I have an opinion that I would like you to study, and if you like it, forward it to the brothers in Somalia. The idea is to encourage a delegation of trusted Somalia tribal leaders to visit some businessmen and ulema [religious scholars] in the Gulf to brief them about the living conditions of Muslims in Somalia and how their children are dying of extreme poverty, to remind them of the their responsibilities towards their Muslim brothers, to describe the suffering of people there using photos and statistics from the aid organizations, and to inform them that the unfortunate and the impoverished are waiting for a simple effort on their part to save the lives of their children (these impoverished Muslims are the most deserving of the Ummah’s [Muslim community’s] funds that are being hoarded by the Gulf Princes). [emphasis in original]

Bin Laden goes on to discuss detailed engineering plans for raising the water levels of the river to irrigate the lands, strategies for securing the funding needed to carry out this project (none of which involve crime or terrorism, incidentally), and even which crops should be planted in the newly irrigated land to provide the Somali people with long-term food security.

Imagine you’re a desperately impoverished Somali barely able to feed your family, and you find out that the leaders of the “terrorist” group who just took over your village have been having these kinds of discussions about how best to improve life for you, your family, and your community. That is one reason why some people in some places support some of these groups, even though they’re terrorists.

The good news (from a counterterrorism perspective) is that these groups tend to pair the provision of services with tyrannical rule, extremely strict laws that often run counter to longstanding local customs, and brutal punishments for those who violate the laws. Eventually, the locals get tired of it. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) found that out the hard way, and the al Qaeda leadership has since tried to impart this lesson to its affiliates. In that same letter, bin Laden urges, “I also hope that you remind the brothers in Somalia to show lenience…They should seek in each group the neutrality of whoever accepts to be nonaligned. There are obvious reasons for this, one of which is so that they do not become a card in the hand of the adversaries; and any provocation from our side will push them closer to the enemies.” However, it seems that AQI’s successor organization, the Islamic State, didn’t fully absorb the lesson, and only time will tell if it will face the same backlash from the local population that AQI did.

REAL THREATS

Occasionally, the letters veer into the bizarre, or, rather, the even more bizarre. While members of Congress still debate whether climate change even exists, al Qaeda is actively pursuing strategies to mitigate the future consequences of it:

You don’t fail to notice that due to climate change, there’s drought in some areas and floods in others. The brothers in Somalia must be warned so that they can take the maximum precautions possible. This lays on the shoulders of the leadership more than on the residents living along the rivers and valleys.

One of these precautions is to establish an alert system to warn the families and establish an advanced observation point on the upper part of the river to warn people when heavy rainfall and flooding occur using a wireless device.

This letter also included a note at the bottom: “Attached is a report about climate change, especially the floods in Pakistan. Please send it to Al-Jazeera.” It may seems surprising that one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist groups in the world is more open minded about science than some in the United States, but it is not actually all that shocking, considering that for centuries, the Islamic world was a wellspring of scientific and technological achievement.

And al Qaeda seems to think it has even more knowledge and intellectual property to offer. The shadowy international terrorist organization whose leaders and members are wanted criminals in just about every country in the Western world and many outside it is evidently very concerned with securing legal protection for its intellectual products.

In a discussion about making a video to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, bin Laden writes:

Regarding the question of copyrighted material for Al-Jazeera and Al-Sahab [Al Qaeda’s media arm], Zaydan should negotiate with Al-Jazeera to have the video footage copyrighted for them while the text and audio copyrights be for Al-Sahab. What this means is that some questions will be on the video while others will be only in audio format. Anyway, continue negotiating until a satisfactory result for Al-Sahab is achieved and keep us posted about the progress of the negotiations.

There’s just something so fantastically absurd about an organization that is entirely comfortable justifying the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, yet is concerned over the reproduction or distribution of original creative content without express written permission. One wonders how al Qaeda even thought it would protect its rights. Sue Al Jazeera for copyright infringement?

Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get more bizarre, there’s this from bin Laden:

  • We are still waiting for the replies to what came in our last letter and that contained the nomination of a qualified brother to be in charge of a big operation inside of America.
  • If you have any brother who is knowledgeable about poetry, please let us know about it; and if you have any books about types of poetry, please send it to me.

That’s right: bin Laden goes directly from a note about finding someone qualified to carry out a massive terrorist attack inside the United States to asking if anyone has any poetry they can send him. Because after a long day of planning to strike fear into the hearts of the infidels, sometimes a guy just wants to take a relaxing bubble bath and read some Emily Dickenson. (Presumably he planned to respect all intellectual property protections on the poetry.)

Of course al Qaeda isn’t all fun and games—there’s a lot in the letters about perpetrating attacks inside the United States, discussions about relations with the Pakistani military, commentary on the Arab Spring, and various bureaucratic minutiae. And these letters offer only a partial glimpse into the organization at a particular time in history. Many more documents were collected during the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad than have been declassified by the U.S. government, and one must assume that the letters that have been released were released for a reason (and vice versa). Quite a lot has happened since bin Laden’s death, including the rise of the Islamic State, which is now engaged in a battle against al Qaeda for the leadership of the broader jihadist movement—a battle that, at the moment, it seems to be winning.

Still, the documents do provide a look at the internal dynamics of al Qaeda, and as anyone who has ever been involved with a sizeable bureaucracy well knows, change often comes at a glacial pace in large organizations; in all likelihood, al Qaeda today still faces the same kind of organizational problems and operational challenges revealed in these documents. This means that although it remains a threat, the al Qaeda of today is a far cry from the beast we faced on 9/11.