The source for the recent alarm about possible terror attacks planned on financial targets in DC, New York and New Jersey may be a trove of documents and computers seized by Pakistani forces during the arrest of the Tanzanian al Qaeda suspect a week ago, the Washington Post reports. In particular was found evidence of sophisticated surveillance of specific buildings, including by al Qaeda operatives posing as couriers and delivery men:

The fresh intelligence that led to yesterday's extraordinary terror alert comes from documents discovered after Pakistani and U.S. forces broke up an al Qaeda cell in Gujrat, Pakistan, eight days ago, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday.

One of the men arrested in that raid led authorities to the documents, which contained the startling details of al Qaeda surveillance of corporate and government targets in Washington, New York and New Jersey.

Officials from several U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies huddled virtually round-the-clock Friday, Saturday and Sunday to discuss the fast-emerging information, government sources said, assembling intelligence from the arrested al Qaeda operatives and translating and culling through the documents.

"This is definitely a nail-biter," one law enforcement official said.

The information that emerged confirmed that al Qaeda continues to plan operations and conduct surveillance against targets inside the United States . . .

It was unclear yesterday whether the new documents, which a senior U.S. intelligence official called "a treasure trove," were plucked from two laptop computers recovered from the hideout in Gujrat where the al Qaeda operatives were arrested after a shootout July 25 . . .

The joint Pakistani-U.S. raid netted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as five other Pakistani and African al Qaeda suspects. U.S. intelligence sources said the most important new information came not from Ghailani but from one of the other al Qaeda associates, who led them to the cache of documents in recent days . . .

Another senior U.S. intelligence official said the new information comprises a virtual playbook of the tradecraft al Qaeda surveillance teams use. It details, for example, the use of phony couriers and delivery people to get inside the buildings, intelligence officials said.

This is really one of the most insightful pieces I've read about al Qaeda operations planning in a while. Worth reading.

UPDATE: On his superb blog, WaPo reporter and author of Blood from Stones, Douglas Farah writes that the U.S. nearly nabbed Ghailani three years ago, in Liberia, where Ghailani was then living under the protection of Charles Taylor:

In November 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency had multiple source, reliable intelligence reports that it could score a major blow against the al Qaeda network that had just carried out 9-11. Their reports said Khalfan Ghailani, the senior al Qaeda operative arrested last week in Pakistan, was hiding out in Gbatala, Liberia, under the protection of Charles Taylor. This was just two weeks after my initial story on al Qaeda's ties to the blood diamond trade. Gbatala was the ultra-secure base of Taylor's ill-named Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), housed right next door to Taylor' s sprawling private farm.

With virtually no forces in the area, the Pentagon ordered a small U.S. Special Forces team carrying out a training operation in neighboring Guinea, to prepare a snatch operation. With Ghailani were three other suspected al Qaeda terrorists, including Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, Ghailani's partner in the West Africa diamond buying operation. The two had also worked together in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa. The other two were not identified.

The team prepared its mission and was placed on high alert. But, with no other assets on the ground and no one in the area who spoke Krio or was not obviously a foreigner, final reconnaissance and recognition of the target was not able to be achieved. After about a week, the group stood down, and were rotated to a different location. (For more details, see pp. 82-83 of Blood From Stones). It would have been a different al Qaeda today if the operation had been able to proceed and had nabbed the two. Fazul went on to participate in the Mombasa bombings and other attacks. Ghailani returned to Afghanistan after West Africa, then resurfaced in the al Qaeda cell in Pakistan that was planning multiple attacks on the United States.

Ghailani was one of several al Qaeda operatives from the East Africa operational wing of al Qaeda to move to West Africa in the weeks following the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi . . .

Talk about the nexis of failed states and terrorism. It couldn't be more explicit in this case, which Farah has done more to expose than anyone and which still seems to be meeting resistance in some quarters.

Posted by Laura at August 2, 2004 12:31 AM