Former officials: Al-Qaida still likely to use WMD (AP)

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier, Ap Intelligence Writer – Thu Jul 28, 6:31 pm ET

ASPEN, Colo. – A chemical or biological attack by al-Qaida and its offshoots remains a threat, despite the killing of terror leader Osama bin Laden, top former U.S. counterterrorist officials said Thursday.

"We still have pockets of al-Qaida around the world who see this as a key way to fight us," especially the offshoot in Yemen, Mike Leiter, the just-retired director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum. "The potential threat from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is very real."

Leiter said the new breed of terrorists understands that killing a few Americans can cause as much fear as the massive plots bin Laden backed.

"The most likely ... are simple forms of chemical or biological weapons" rather than a nuclear attack, Leiter said, using the poison ricin as an example of something that's easily made.

"Is it going to kill many people? No. Is it going to scare people? Yes," he said.

"Bin Laden was really prioritizing the big attack," Leiter added. "Some of them may have fantasies about pulling off another 9/11," but his affiliates realize they can affect U.S. strategy and society with smaller scale attacks.

"Anwar al-Awlaki gets that," Leiter said, naming the U.S.-born radical cleric of the Yemeni branch. And so do other offshoots, like the Pakistani Taliban, which sent a bomber to try to blow up a car in the middle of Times Square a year ago, he said.

With bin Laden gone, Leiter and former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin both predicted new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri launch similar smaller scale campaign.

"Zawahiri will probably favor smaller targets," McLaughlin told the audience. "Bin Laden did not."

Leiter and McLaughlin both said Zawahiri's core al-Qaida was weaker after bin Laden's killing.

"I think it is now possible ... to actually visualize, to imagine its collapse," McLaughlin said, speaking of the original core group. But he warned against underestimating Zawahiri or his followers.

"He's not as charismatic ... but he may be more disciplined, he said, adding that Zawahiri is a physician who has long been interested in using weapons of mass destruction to attack.

"What we will know is there has been no successful inbound attack since 9/11 that we can attribute directly to al-Qaida," added Charles Allen, who has held multiple top positions at the CIA over the years. "But we can see this metastasized network linked by Internet that is self-sustaining across the world."

Leiter said the trove of information, including inter-al-Qaida communications, taken from bin Laden's compound where he was killed by U.S. commandoes showed the group already was struggling.

He said the documents revealed bin Laden was not the CEO of a large multinational corporation, as analysts thought, but the "slightly out of touch coordinator of a broad dysfunctional family who, frankly, were operating on their own agendas more than his."

But he said al-Qaida and the other groups still have enough organization and staff to keep attacking.

Leiter warned that intelligence and military leaders had to figure out how to keep their staff members, who joined after Sept. 11 to track and fight terrorists in war zones, from getting bored and leaving, because while the U.S. may be drawing down its military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-terror war is far from over.

"Smaller scale terrorist attacks are with us for at least the foreseeable future," Leiter said.

"This is going to happen," Allen added.

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US accuses Iran of 'secret deal' with al-Qaida (AP)

By MATTHEW LEE and BRADLEY KLAPPER, Associated Press Matthew Lee And Bradley Klapper, Associated Press – Thu Jul 28, 6:21 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration accused Iran on Thursday of entering into a "secret deal" with an al-Qaida offshoot that provides money and recruits for attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Treasury Department designated six members of the unit as terrorists subject to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. intelligence community has in the past disagreed about the extent of direct links between the Iranian government and al-Qaida. Thursday's allegations went further than what most analysts had previously said was a murky relationship with limited cooperation.

David S. Cohen, Treasury's point man for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran entered a "secret deal with al-Qaida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory." He didn't provide any details of that agreement, but said the sanctions seek to disrupt al-Qaida's work in Iraq and deny the terrorist group's leadership much-needed support.

"Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today," Cohen said in a statement. "We are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran's unmatched support for terrorism."

Treasury said the exposure of the clandestine agreement would disrupt al-Qaida operations by shedding light on Iran's role as a "critical transit point" for money and extremists reaching Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"This network serves as the core pipeline through which al-Qaida moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia," it said..

Treasury said a branch headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil was operating in Iran with the Tehran government's blessing, funneling funds collected from across the Arab world to al-Qaida's senior leaders in Pakistan. Khalil, the department said, has operated within Iran's borders for six years.

Also targeted by the sanctions is Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, appointed by Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida's envoy in Iran after serving as a commander in Pakistan's tribal areas. As an emissary, al-Rahman is allowed to travel in and out of Iran with the permission of government officials, the statement claimed.

The sanctions block any assets the individuals might have held in the United States, and bans Americans from doing any business with them.

No Iranian officials were cited for complicity in terrorism. The others targeted were Umid Muhammadi, described as a key planner for al-Qaida in Iraq's attacks; Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari and Abdallah Ghanim Mafuz Muslim al-Khawar, Qatar-based financial supporters who've allegedly helped extremists travel across the region; and Ali Hassan Ali al-Ajmi, a Kuwait-based fundraiser for al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The action comes a day after the top U.S. commander for special operations forces said al-Qaida is bloodied and "nearing its end," even as he warned that the next generation of militants could keep special operations fighting for a decade to come.

Navy SEAL Adm. Eric T. Olson said bin Laden's killing on May 2 was a near-fatal blow for the organization created by bin Laden and led from his Pakistan hide out. He said the group already had lost steam because of the revolts of the Arab Spring, which proved the Muslim world did not need terrorism to bring down governments, from Tunisia to Egypt.

Treasury's public allegations against Iran may reflect part of a strategy to expand the pressure on smaller, less well-established offshoots of al-Qaida as the weakening of the group's leadership threatens to make its activities more disparate. Washington already has re-focused much attention on al-Qaida's Yemen-based branch, which has attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound jetliner and cargo planes in recent years.

But the exact nature of Iran's relationship with al-Qaida remains disputed in Washington, with different branches of the intelligence community disagreeing about whether Iran is supporting al-Qaida as a matter of policy, according to one U.S. official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Some hardline militants backing al-Qaida, members of Islam's majority Sunnis, see the Shiite Islam dominant in Iran as heretical, and they view Tehran's regional ambitions as a greater threat than the West. Sunni insurgents in Iraq have used car bombs and suicide attacks against Shiite targets, killing thousands since 2003, as well as targeting Shiite militias allied to Iran.

Since 2001, Iran has appeared a somewhat reluctant host for senior al-Qaida operatives who fled there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, keeping them under tight restrictions. After an initial period of cooperation with the West, Iran now seems to be a more comfortable haven even if it remains on the edge of al-Qaida's orbit.

Western officials point to the release earlier this year of an Iranian diplomat who was held for 15 months after being kidnapped by gunmen in Pakistan.

In negotiations for the diplomat's freedom, they say Iran promised better conditions for dozens of people close to Osama bin Laden who were being held under tight security. These included some of the terror chief's children and the network's most senior military strategist, Saif al-Adel.

Still, the life of the al-Qaida-linked exiles in Iran continues to be very much a blind spot for Western intelligence agencies. Few firm details have emerged, such as how much Iran limits their movements and contacts.

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AP Interview: Ex-CIA chief on al-Qaida after Osama (AP)

DUBLIN – The killing of Osama bin Laden will spur the al-Qaida terror network to back off his grandiose plans for more 9/11-style attacks in favor of more frequent, smaller strikes on easier targets, former U.S. spy chief Michael Hayden forecast Monday.

Hayden, who directed both the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush, also emphasized that the smartest way for America to monitor its enemies would be to keep targeting aides, not the kingpins directly.

"Let's say someone was trying to spy on the NSA. They would have been silly to target me. I don't use the phone much," Hayden told The AP on the fringe of an intelligence-gathering conference in Ireland.

"My communication's mostly face to face, one on one. No, you should target my secretary. You want to know what's going on? Tap her phone," he said in a phone interview.

Hayden was the main speaker Monday at an annual forum organized by the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies of Erie, Pennsylvania. During the interview he said the West was better off with Osama bin Laden dead than in custody — even though a living bin Laden represented a potential gold mine of intelligence.

He cautioned that the May 2 killing of the al-Qaida chieftain would speed the terror network's current transition to a higher volume of less sophisticated attacks.

"The common instinct from intelligence officers is that capture is always better than kill. But in this one particular case, even me as a career intelligence officer, I'd say that capturing him (bin Laden) would have been very problematic," Hayden said.

"Bin Laden in American custody would have made almost all Americans, Britons, many others in the West, all of them targets for al-Qaida retribution because we had bin Laden in our custody."

He said evidence emerging from the computer and paper records seized at bin Laden's Pakistan hideaway suggest a commander determined to repeat the epic scale and mass slaughter of early al-Qaida attacks, even though more rigorous security has made such strikes exponentially harder to pull off.

Al-Qaida under bin Laden's direction was "committed to the high-casualty attack against an iconic target: the World Trade Center, embassies in East Africa, multiple airliners over the Pacific or Atlantic," Hayden said.

"Future attacks are going to be more numerous — but less complex, less well organized, less likely to succeed, and less lethal if they do succeed. I think the killing of bin Laden will accelerate that change."

The 66-year-old Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general, served as NSA director 1999-2005 and as CIA director 2006-2009. The NSA oversees phone-tapping and other electronic surveillance at home and abroad using the warrantless powers of the Patriot Act, while the CIA seeks to track America's enemies using satellite and drone footage and a network of spies.

The deployment of remotely controlled drone aircraft to monitor suspected al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and, unofficially, in Pakistan was "an absolute war-winner," he said.

The drone footage delivered "an unblinking stare" that allows intelligence analysts to learn the comings and goings of a Khyber Pass village "as well as their own hometown."

"The drones provide us exquisite intelligence to target individuals who have leadership positions in al-Qaida and to deplete their bench of expertise," he said.

He said planting CIA agents or informers into the center of a terrorist operation was "incredibly slow moving" and meant "working in ambiguous legal areas." He said the ideal informant was someone, such as a message courier, who was privy to a terror cell's activities but not a direct participant.

Hayden said the ethical dilemma of a spy's life could be summed up by the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song: To live outside the law, you must be honest.

"The contradictory point is this. Dishonest people spy for money. On one level, spying is inherently dishonest. You're in the business of getting someone to betray the inner workings of their organization in strict confidence to you," he said.

Hayden said the sharing of anti-terror intelligence among America's myriad security and law-enforcement agencies had to be carefully controlled, partly because improved surveillance and eavesdropping powers have created an overwhelming tsunami of data.

"Most people couch this as good versus evil: Sharing intel is good and restricting it evil. Well, let me tell you, sharing everything can lead to an army private releasing hundreds of thousands of documents onto the internet," he said, referring to last year's mass publication of nearly 500,000 U.S. Army field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks.

Hayden rejected any suggestion that the NSA and CIA should merge. He compared the idea to forming a joint team of soccer and cricket players "just because they both use a ball and play on grass."

___

Online:

Mercyhurst College conference, http://globalintelligenceforum.com/

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White House unveils retooled plan to hunt al-Qaida (AP)

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier, Ap Intelligence Writer – Wed Jun 29, 7:08 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The United States will push ahead with more targeted drone strikes and special operations raids and fewer costly land battles like Iraq and Afghanistan in the continuing war against al-Qaida, according to a new national counterterrorism strategy unveiled Wednesday.

The doctrine, two years in the making, comes in the wake of the successful special operations raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in May, and a week after President Barack Obama's announcement that U.S. troops will begin leaving Afghanistan this summer.

The document is a purposeful departure from the Bush administration's global war on terror. The worldwide hunt for terrorists that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks focused first on Afghanistan, and small numbers of al-Qaida are still active there.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said the reworked doctrine acknowledges the growing threat of terrorism at home, including al-Qaida attempts to recruit and attack inside the United States.

Brennan told a Washington audience Wednesday that more resources would be spent on the fight at home to spot would-be militants and their recruiters.

"Our best offense won't always be deploying large armies abroad, but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us," Brennan said at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The operations Brennan describes are almost solely the province of the intelligence and military special operations agencies, especially the CIA and elite forces of the Joint Special Operations Command that worked together to carry out the bin Laden raid, but also including the special operations trainers that work with host nations' militaries.

As for threats from abroad, Brennan said the strategy relies on "surgical" action against specific groups to decapitate their leadership and deny them safe havens, and rejects costly wars like Iraq and Afghanistan that bleed the U.S. economically and feed al-Qaida's narrative that America is out to occupy the Muslim world. He said the U.S. would work whenever possible to help host countries fight al-Qaida so the U.S. didn't have to, just as it was currently trying to hand over responsibility to the Afghans.

Brennan, who is a former CIA officer, did not make specific mention of the covert armed drone program that targets militants in Pakistan and, on rare occasions, in countries like Yemen. But he referred to the administration's work to rush what he called "unique capabilities" to the field, an oblique reference to classified programs like the stepped-up construction of a CIA drone-launching base in the Persian Gulf region to use the unmanned aircraft to hunt militants in Yemen.

Bush White House veteran Juan Zarate questioned the wisdom of singling out al-Qaida as the main American enemy, "inadvertently aggrandizing them when they are in decline, by making them the focus of the strategy."

He also questioned the decision to "focus very mechanically on al-Qaida," with less emphasis on the violent Islamic ideology that drives the group. "You might miss a movement that is developing or ... evolving into a global platform" like al-Qaida, said Zarate, former White House deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.

Zarate also said out that although the Obama administration may be dropping the world "global" from the war on terror, it still seems to be targeting terror cells on almost every continent.

Retired Brig. Gen. Russ Howard, who was credited with helping inspire the Bush administration's pre-emptive strike doctrine, said the message the strategy sends to allies is that the U.S. does not want to be involved if the going gets too expensive, as in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"Nations will question whether U.S. will be a reliable ally because we've just said we won't get involved with anything new, and we won't stay" where we already are, said Howard, founding director of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy.

In another apparent swipe at the Bush administration, Brennan said his White House was using every "lawful tool and authority available" in the fight against terrorists, describing Obama's rejection of the Bush White House's interrogation of terror suspects by methods such as waterboarding.

"The United States of America does not torture," Brennan said, "and it's why he (Obama) banned the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which did not work. "

Brennan repeated the administration's mantra that it wants to "safely" close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after either prosecuting terror suspects in the U.S. or by military commissions, or by releasing them to their home nations.

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Saudi trial opens for 85 suspected al-Qaida agents (AP)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia's state news agency says 85 suspected members of al-Qaida accused of taking part in a deadly 2003 terrorist attack have gone on trial in a Riyadh court.

The SPA news agency says some of the defendants were charged with carrying out car bombings on three Riyadh housing compounds for foreigners that killed more than 30 people. Others were charged with attacking security forces, weapons possession, bomb making and armed robbery.

SPA did not say when the men were arrested or why they facing trial now, eight years after the attacks.

However, it claimed their arrest had foiled several plots to bomb two air bases and residential compounds in the eastern region.

It said security forces had confiscated videos documenting some of the defendants' operations.

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Al-Zawahri succeeds bin Laden as al-Qaida leader (AP)

CAIRO – Osama bin Laden's longtime second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, has taken control of al-Qaida, the group declared Thursday, marking the ascendancy of a man driven by hatred of the United States who helped plan the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Zawahri is considered the organizational brain of the terror group, highly skilled at planning and logistics. Analysts said he could set his sights on a spectacular attack and on building up al-Qaida's already robust presence in Yemen to establish his leadership credentials.

His fanaticism and the depth of his hatred for the United States and Israel are likely to define al-Qaida's actions under al-Zawahri's tutelage. In a 2001 treatise that offered a glimpse of his violent thoughts, al-Zawahri set down al-Qaida's strategy: to inflict "as many casualties as possible" on the Americans.

"Pursuing the Americans and Jews is not an impossible task," he wrote. "Killing them is not impossible, whether by a bullet, a knife stab, a bomb or a strike with an iron bar."

Al-Zawahri's hatred of America was also deeply personal: His wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. airstrike following the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks.

The Egyptian-born al-Zawahri had been expected to inherit al-Qaida's leadership, although the delay in announcing his succession led some counterterrorism analysts to speculate about a power struggle following the May 2 killing of bin Laden in a U.S. raid in Pakistan.

"The general command of al-Qaida, after completing consultations, declares Abu Mohammed, Ayman al-Zawahri, God help him, the one leading the group," said a statement attributed to al-Qaida and posted on militant websites, including several known to be affiliated with the group.

It gave no details about the selection process but said the choice of al-Zawahri was the best tribute to the memory of the group's "martyrs."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. will pursue the new al-Qaida leader just as it did bin Laden.

"As we did both seek to capture and succeed in killing bin Laden, we certainly will do the same thing with Zawahri," he said at a news conference in Washington.

Al-Zawahri, who turns 60 on Sunday and has a $25 million bounty on his head, takes control of al-Qaida at a time when it is struggling to stay relevant in the face of popular uprisings across the Arab world that are demanding Western-style democracy instead of the pan-Islamic nation sought by Islamists.

Still, the lawlessness gripping Yemen, a poor Arabian Peninsula nation, offers al-Qaida a rare opportunity to gain a strategic foothold in the Arab world, bringing it a step closer to the ability to export its extremist brand of Islam to the region.

"He will send his best fighters and organizers there," said Abdel-Rehim Ali, an Egyptian expert on terrorism and extremist Islamic groups. "Yemen is the closest target and a great start for al-Zawahri to realize his dream of an Islamic emirate."

Al-Qaida militants and their allies in Yemen already have taken advantage of the turmoil there to seize control of towns in the south and strike deals with local garrisons to train with weaponry and live openly.

Al-Zawahri, a trained surgeon who hails from an upper-middle-class Cairo family, lacks the populist appeal of his late boss, throwing into doubt whether he would be able to lure young Muslims, particularly in the West, to join al-Qaida's cause.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said al-Zawahri lacks the "peculiar charisma" of bin Laden and said there is suspicion about him among militants because he is Egyptian.

Still, what he lacks in personal magnetism al-Zawahri makes up for with rock solid ideological conviction and organizational and logistical skills, qualities that may have spared al-Qaida a swift demise following its expulsion from Afghanistan in 2001.

It's not clear how much consensus there was over al-Zawahri's succession, but two U.S. officials said he was not a popular choice. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Al-Zawahri and his backers seemed to understand that, so instead of declaring himself bin Laden's successor in his first public video eulogizing the slain al-Qaida leader, al-Zawahri waited for a call by fellow jihadis, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and al-Qaida expert at the Brookings Institution. The idea was to create the impression of popular support, he said.

U.S. officials said they'll be watching for signs that al-Zawahri is a leader in name only, with affiliates branching out even more on their own.

They noted that communications captured in the attack on bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed al-Qaida's Yemeni branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, argued against bin Laden's idea of spectacular attacks in the U.S. and in favor of smaller operations.

But al-Zawahri's lack of universal acceptance within the organization, analysts said, could give him added incentive to stage a spectacular attack against a prestige target, most likely American, to boost his leadership credentials.

"He must already be planning a big attack to convince the skeptics that he is qualified as a leader," said Khalil al-Anani, an expert on Islamic groups from Durham University in Britain. "He will be under pressure to do that, and quickly."

Al-Zawahri pledged earlier this month to avenge the slaying of bin Laden and to continue the terror network's campaign against the U.S. and other Western interests.

"He was a given leader from the outset. But he doesn't have the same iconic status or personality as bin Laden," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terror analyst at the Royal Swedish Defense College. "He will focus on attacking the West in a big way. To avenge (bin Laden's death), but also to make himself ... even more effective and relevant."

The son of an Egyptian family of doctors and scholars, al-Zawahri's father was a pharmacology professor at Cairo University's medical school and his grandfather was the grand imam of al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's supreme seat of learning.

He has a long history of radicalism, beginning at age 15 when he founded an underground cell of high school students to oppose the Egyptian government. He later merged his cell with other militants to form Egypt's Islamic Jihad.

Al-Zawahri was arrested in connection with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and served three years in prison. Many Egyptians remember him as the young man who stuck his head against the bars of the defendants' cage in a Cairo courtroom to answer Western reporters' questions in fluent English.

Upon his release, he headed to Afghanistan in 1984 to fight the Soviets, where he linked up with bin Laden. He later followed the al-Qaida leader to Sudan and then back to Afghanistan, where they found a safe haven under the radical Taliban regime.

Soon after came the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, followed by the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, an attack al-Zawahri is believed to have helped mastermind.

Al-Zawahri has worked in the years since to rebuild al-Qaida's leadership on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Al-Qaida has inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.

The CIA came close to capturing him in 2003 and killing him in 2004 — both times in Pakistan. In December 2009, they thought they were again close, only to be tricked by a double agent who blew himself up, killing seven CIA employees and wounding six more in Khost, Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban welcomed the appointment of al-Zawahri and vowed to fight alongside the terror group against the U.S. and "other infidel forces" around the world.

"We share the same path with al-Qaida. We are allies," Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Al-Zawahri has been in hiding for nearly 10 years and is widely believed to be near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He has appeared in dozens of videos and audiotapes in recent years, increasingly becoming the face of al-Qaida as bin Laden kept a lower profile.

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AP writers Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, Karl Ritter in Stockholm and Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.

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British targets found near body of al-Qaida leader (AP)

LONDON – The Ritz Hotel in London and the elite private school Eton were among a handful of possible British terror targets that a senior al-Qaida leader was considering before he was killed in Somalia last week, a British security official said Thursday.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, was killed when he failed to stop at a routine checkpoint outside of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the 38-year-old's death a "significant blow to al-Qaida, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

British officials have said they see al-Qaida affiliates in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as being a significant threat to British interests.

"He was a fairly big player, but there is nothing to suggest that any reconnaissance had been done or that any of the attacks were imminent," a British security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

It was not exactly clear how officials found the information on the British targets. There was no immediate evidence to suggest that Mohammed was working with British contacts or that he even understood where some of the intended targets were.

Amber Aldred, a Ritz spokeswoman, would not say whether extra security staff had been put on alert but said the hotel took security and threats seriously. The hotel has been named as a possible target in several terror plots in recent years.

Eton College, Britain's most elite private school where Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians have been educated, is an hour outside of London.

Officials would not disclose details of the plots or other British targets, but said "now that he has been taken out, there's even less risk."

British intelligence officials have said dozens of youths have traveled to Somalia in recent years to attend terror training camps. Few have returned.

In 2009, a 17-year-old suicide bomber from the London suburb of Ealing blew himself up in a car bomb attack at a hotel in central Somalia, killing more than 20 people. Two Somali asylum-seekers were also among four men convicted of the failed attempts to bomb the London transport system on July 21, 2005 — just two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters during morning rush-hour attacks in London on July 7.

Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Islands, is also believed to have played a key role in the 2002 attack on the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa that killed 13 people, and the failed missile strike on an Israeli charter flight on the same day.

He had been on the run for more than a decade.

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Cassandra Vinograd contributed to this report from London.

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UN separates al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions (AP)

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press – Fri Jun 17, 4:11 pm ET

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Friday to treat al-Qaida and the Taliban separately when it comes to U.N. sanctions, a move aimed at supporting the Afghan government's reconciliation efforts and more effectively fighting global terrorism.

The council's adoption of two resolutions symbolically severs al-Qaida and the Taliban, which were previously tied in the same U.N. sanctions regime, and recognizes their different agendas.

While Al-Qaida is focused on worldwide jihad against the West and establishment of a religious state in the Muslim world, Taliban militants have focused on their own country and have shown little interest in attacking targets abroad.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said in a statement that the council had taken "important steps" to respond to the evolving and distinct threats posed by al-Qaida and the Taliban.

"The United States believes that the new sanctions regime for Afghanistan will serve as an important tool to promote reconciliation, while isolating extremists," she said. It should also send "a clear message to the Taliban that there is a future for those who separate from al-Qaida."

At the same time, Rice said, al-Qaida and its associates will now be the focus of a separate, strengthened sanctions regime and will continue to face tough and comprehensive sanctions.

"The United States remains committed to disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaida using every weapon at our disposal," she stressed.

The Security Council imposed sanctions against the Taliban in November 1999 for refusing to send Osama bin Laden to the United States or a third country for trial on terrorism charges in connection with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The sanctions — a travel ban, arms embargo and assets freeze — were later extended to al-Qaida. In July 2005, the council extended the sanctions again to cover affiliates and splinter groups of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been making peace overtures to members of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan for five years and sheltered al-Qaida before being driven out of power in the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. The Taliban have long demanded removal from the sanctions list to help promote reconciliation.

The U.S. and Afghan governments have said that they are willing to reconcile with Taliban members who renounce violence, embrace the Afghan constitution and sever ties with al-Qaida.

The current U.N. sanctions list for both al-Qaida and the Taliban includes about 450 people, entities and organizations, including roughly 140 with links to the Taliban.

The Afghan government has asked a U.N. panel to take about 50 Taliban figures off the sanctions list. The sanctions committee was expected to rule on the requests this week, but diplomats said the council extended the deadline until July 15 to give delegations more time to consider the information provided by the Afghan government in support of the delisting requests.

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US declares al-Qaida fundraiser a global terrorist (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has designated as a terrorist an al-Qaida commander and fundraiser believed to be playing a key role in the group's powerful Yemen-based branch.

The State Department said Othman al-Ghamdi (AHT'-mahn al-GEHM'-eh-dee) has worked with other members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to plan and stockpile weapons for attacks.

A statement said he identified himself in a video last year as an operational commander. He appeared alongside the group's military leader Qasim al-Rimi (KAZ'-eem al-REE'-mee) and operative Fahd al-Quso (fahd al-'KOO-zoh). Al-Quso is wanted in connection with the 2000 USS Cole bombing.

The United Nations also included al-Ghamdi on a sanctions list Thursday. As a result, he is subject to an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo around the world.

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Brennan says Somali action setback for al-Qaida (AP)

WASHINGTON – President Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism says the death of an al-Qaida operative behind the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania is a huge setback for the terrorist organization and its allies.

A Somali minister earlier Saturday said officials in that country have determined that a man killed by security forces on Tuesday was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed.

John Brennan says the death provides a measure of justice to people who lost loved ones in the attacks. Brennan commended the efforts of the Somali government forces, saying they struck a significant blow against those in the region seeking to carry out terrorist attacks.

The blasts killed 224 people. Most were Kenyans. Twelve Americans also died.

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Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets (AP)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Eileen Sullivan And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press – Fri May 20, 10:46 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where bin Laden was killed nearly three weeks ago, was little more than an al-Qaida fantasy. But the FBI and the Homeland Security Department issued a confidential warning to police and the energy industry Thursday. The alert, obtained by The Associated Press, said that al-Qaida had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships, had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed an explosion would create an "extreme economic crisis."

Bin Laden's documents also revealed that in February 2010, the terror group identified New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago as important cities that should be attacked; and it eyed specific dates, including the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Christmas, July Fourth and the State of the Union address, according to a similar alert issued Friday, obtained by the AP. There is no information indicating that there are plots involving these cities, dates and tactics under way.

"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement Friday. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

With about half the world's oil supply moving on the water, industry and security experts have warned for years that such an attack would be a jolt to global markets. That's particularly true if terrorists carried it out in one of the narrow waterways that serve as shipping chokepoints.

"You start blowing up oil tankers at sea and you're going to start closing down shipping lanes," said Don Borelli, senior vice president of the Sufan Group security firm and a former FBI counterterrorism agent in New York. "It's going to cause this huge ripple through the economy."

Still, even if al-Qaida were able to blow up one of the supertankers that move oil around the globe, it would barely dent the world's oil supply, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, who has been trading oil contracts since the futures market opened on the Nymex in 1983. A tanker holds about 2 million barrels, or enough to supply world demand for about a half hour.

The terrorist threat to oil infrastructure is nothing new. Members of a British terror cell that hoped to hijack trans-Atlantic airplanes in 2006 had also made plans to attack oil and gas targets in Britain. And al-Qaida's franchise in Yemen has attacked pipelines.

Thurdsay's alert was significant mostly because it linked the scheme directly to bin Laden, meaning the idea probably has circulated among al-Qaida's most senior leaders.

The government encouraged companies to continue random screening, to warn employees about possible threats and to establish procedures for reporting suspicious activity. But there was no immediate effect on oil markets, and both shippers and security officials said it was business as usual on the water.

"This has been a possibility on everyone's minds for some time now," said Bill Box a spokesman for the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners. "Everyone is aware of what might happen."

Shippers have been on particular alert as threats of piracy have increased along the African coast. In 2008, Somali pirates captured the Sirius Star supertanker and held it for ransom. In 2007 the Japanese tanker the Golden Nori was hijacked carrying 40,000 tons of the highly explosive chemical benzene. Intelligence officials initially worried that terrorists might try to crash the boat into an offshore oil platform or use it as a gigantic bomb, but it proved to be another attack by pirates seeking ransom.

Then in 2010, two groups of pirates got into a shootout while arguing over the ransom for the Maran Centaurus, threatening to turn the ship into a massive fireball.

Pirates have had success with a relatively low-tech strategy. They fire at a ship to get it to slow down, then pull alongside in skiffs. Using lashed-together ladders or grappling hooks, the pirates climb on board with guns. Many ship owners are reluctant to have armed guards onboard, since the cargo is so flammable that sailors are even forbidden to smoke.

Somali pirates take the ships for money. The information taken from bin Laden's compound after he was killed May 2 suggests al-Qaida was interested in adapting that strategy to terrorize.

The U.S. has warned for years that such an attack in a narrow waterway, such as the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, would immediately send oil prices higher.

In Asia, concerns have centered on the continent's key oil chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, located between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Last year, an Indonesian al-Qaida affiliate set up a training camp at the beginning of the strait, leading to speculation about an attack there and prompting Singapore to issue a warning.

"The good thing is that boats don't move that fast. It gives you plenty of time to interdict," said Crispian Cuss, the program director at Olive Group, one of the biggest private security companies in the Middle East. "If a vessel was hijacked by an al-Qaida organization and headed toward a major port, the authorities would not let that vessel get anywhere near that port."

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Follow Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/esullivanap and http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

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Sullivan reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Chris Kahn in New York; Cassandra Vinograd, Raphael Satter, David Stringer and Meera Selva in London; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakistan; Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Katharine Houreld in Nairobi contributed to this story.

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