Al Qaeda Used Hotmail To Plan Attacks

(CBS/AP)  In the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, alleged al Qaeda operations mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed intended to use his free Hotmail account to direct a U.S.-based operative to carry out an attack, according to a guilty plea agreement filed by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri in federal court.

The document shows how al Qaeda, at least in 2001, embraced prosaic technologies like pre-paid calling cards, public phones, computer search engines and simplistic codes to communicate, plan and carry out its operations.

Al-Marri also surfed the Internet to research cyanide gas, using software to cover his tracks, according to the document filed Thursday in federal court in Peoria, Ill. He marked the locations of dams, waterways and tunnels in the United States in an almanac. The government claims this reflects intelligence that al Qaeda was planning to use cyanide gas to attack those sites.

As a result of his guilty plea, al-Marri could be sentenced up to a maximum 15-year term in federal prison.

In a stipulation of facts filed as part of the plea agreement, al-Marri admitted that he trained in al Qaeda camps and stayed in terrorist safe houses in Pakistan between 1998 and 2001. There, he learned how to handle weapons and how to communicate by phone and e-mail using a code.

After arriving in the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001 — a day before al Qaeda's long-plotted terror strikes in New York and Washington — Al-Marri stored phone numbers of al Qaeda associates in a personal electronic device.

He used a "10-code" to protect the numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number, according to a person close to the investigation.

In a 10-code, eight becomes a two, for example. Other al Qaeda members used the same code, according to the plea agreement.

Al-Marri sent e-mails to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Hotmail account — HOR70hotmail.com — addressed to "Muk" and signed "Abdo." The details of that code were included in an address book found in an al Qaeda safehouse in Pakistan.

An attempt by The Associated Press to reach that address did not indicate the account had been closed, but it went unanswered.

FBI investigators learned from their (pre-CIA torturing) interviews of Abu Zubaydah in 2002 that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was known to all as "Muktar," and that he (Mohammed) had been the primary planner of 9/11, reports CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn.

Al-Marri initially tried to use a Yahoo e-mail account to contact Mohammed, but it failed to go through. So he switched to Hotmail as well. When al-Marri arrived in the United States, he created five new e-mail accounts to communicate with Mohammed, using the 10-code to send him his cell phone number in Peoria.

From September to November, al-Marri tried and failed to contact members of al Qaeda in Pakistan using prepaid calling cards and public phones, sometimes traveling 160 miles to use a different phone.

Also revealed in the plea agreemend is that al-Marri used the jihad nickname "Abdul-Rahman al-Qatari," and provided al Qaeda with his family contact information in case he was killed or "martyred" during an al Qaeda mission. Al-Marri came to the U.S. with his wife and five children; they now live in Saudi Arabia, as do a number of his siblings, Hirschkorn reports.

Al-Marri was arrested in December 2001, three months after entering the U.S. on a student visa. He was shortly thereafter declared an "enemy combatant" and taken into military custody.

The "enemy combatant" designation was dropped when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Illinois.

Suspected as an al Qaeda sleeper agent, he was held without charge for more than five years. His attorneys say he was tortured while in military custody. There is no indication in the plea agreement that al-Marri ever made contact with other alleged al Qaeda agents inside the United States.

Al-Marri admitted that before entering the U.S., he met and had regular contact with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and with Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who allegedly helped the Sept. 11 hijackers with money and Western-style clothing.

[iDragon13]

The internet was created at CERN so that scientists could communicate ideas quickly with one another. Just and FYI for those who can't get Al Gore out of your head.

[inventagod]

What a bunch of BS.
Guess the Bu$h/CIA/Oil bunch are pretty much done covering their tracks...
When do we do the REAL 9/11 investigation?
There is no statute of limitations on treason...

[mike18881]

trust_me, your so full of it, get over your butt whopping, and join in with making the U.S.A the country is should be.

[whitemale08]

9/11 was an attack by the Anglo/Dutch/Saudi world financial interests that make up the British Empire or what used to be called the British East India Company.

After the derivatives bubble blew-out from the so-called 'tech boom', the financiers/oligarchs of the world were ready to bring in a police state because no politician would've been a sucker for bailing out WebVAn, for instance.

So Bush was steered and pressured into creating the next big derivatives bubble and that was collaterizing sub-prime housing and consumer credit. That swallowed the last bubble and the intent was to create a banking crisis that definitely would fine plenty of suckers in Washington to not only bail them out but to allow the corporate fascist takeover of the United States.

Folks, the next step is get us to pay for it by massive austerity all packaged up as a 'green economy'.

It has nothing to do with pollution because Congress could pass laws at anytime to deal with any polluter, no it's to create the very next worthless derivatives and credit-default swaps bubble but this time it will be fatal and genocidal in its very nature.

[vagabundocosmico]

It sure beats, chat rooms.

I guess now they could cover their tracks by releasing worms and viruses, and communicate via other people's internet connections.

[Slrman-21001573651763300012869]

Mrjoshcan... *** are you on about? Talk about incomprehensible text. The run-on sentences and total nonsense makes you look like a faker and an idiot. No wait! Not LOOK like, proves, it!

[mrjoshcan]

All across the US, millions of struggling American families are paying profoundly to survive, and tightening belts trying to use e-mail protocol such as Microsoft's Outlook Express. These entrepreneurs are actually receiving electronic mailings from clients everywhere, all over the world. Because scrupulous Agency is actually intercepting and blocking e-mails, free communication over the Internet is not possible, like it was also not possible for Mastermind Al Qaeda departmentally Hotmailed working class of honest business advocates in the US to make any really substantial money on the Internet. "We do not think that Microsoft is totally the rat here," says a current executive at Gigglygoo, Incorporated, a maker of highly trigonometrical - Copyright - integral Algorithmic Data Structures, and/or similarly progressive radicand nomenclature to generate what's referring to as - Microbiological Triangulation Probability. Then also, a company filed for Bankruptcy during a prior administrations technological industrialization. Also stating "scrupulous Agency is not allowing free communications in order to nourish a business culture via e-mail, and intercepting electronic mail, believed sent and received from all over the world." In that sense, e-mail when it is working is less for profit and non- profit, and also the fact that computers in which, besides fundamentally the spending, leading by example at least don't understand, are hurting economic hopes for the Americans people. "We really don't want tattered labour solarizing more Microsoft coded Swine cultures, hereinto, pandemic at no measly McDs' $5.00 dollar an hour," and "when they gonna fix Outlook," mentioned software analytic programme spokeswomen for Gigglygoo's corporate legalities.

[ikestarnes]

Blame it on Al Gore, he never should have invented the internet.

[realnews12]

It is just a matter of time before they take up Obamas invite to do it again!

Posted by Trust_me_ at 8:05 PM : May 1, 2009

What kind of ridiculous comment is that ?!

[Trust_me_]

It is just a matter of time before they take up Obamas invite to do it again!