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The Embassy Bombings
As early as December 1993, a team of al Qaeda operatives had begun casing
targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a former
Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s,
enlisted in the U.S.Army, and became an instructor at Fort Bragg. He had pro-
vided guidance and training to extremists at the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn,
including some who were subsequently convicted in the February 1993 attack
on the World Trade Center. The casing team also included a computer expert
whose write-ups were reviewed by al Qaeda leaders.
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The team set up a makeshift laboratory for developing their surveillance
photographs in an apartment in Nairobi where the various al Qaeda opera-
tives and leaders based in or traveling to the Kenya cell sometimes met. Ban-
shiri, al Qaeda's military committee chief, continued to be the operational
commander of the cell; but because he was constantly on the move, Bin Ladin
had dispatched another operative, Khaled al Fawwaz, to serve as the on-site
manager. The technical surveillance and communications equipment
employed for these casing missions included state-of-the-art video cameras
obtained from China and from dealers in Germany. The casing team also
reconnoitered targets in Djibouti.
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As early as January 1994, Bin Ladin received the surveillance reports, com-
plete with diagrams prepared by the team's computer specialist. He, his top mil-
itary committee members--Banshiri and his deputy, Abu Hafs al Masri (also
known as Mohammed Atef)--and a number of other al Qaeda leaders
reviewed the reports. Agreeing that the U.S. embassy in Nairobi was an easy
target because a car bomb could be parked close by, they began to form a plan.
Al Qaeda had begun developing the tactical expertise for such attacks months
earlier, when some of its operatives--top military committee members and sev-
eral operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them--were sent
to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.
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The cell in Kenya experienced a series of disruptions that may in part
account for the relatively long delay before the attack was actually carried out.
The difficulties Bin Ladin began to encounter in Sudan in 1995, his move to
Afghanistan in 1996, and the months spent establishing ties with the Taliban
may also have played a role, as did Banshiri's accidental drowning.
In August 1997, the Kenya cell panicked. The London Daily Telegraph
reported that Madani al Tayyib, formerly head of al Qaeda's finance committee,
had turned himself over to the Saudi government.The article said (incorrectly)
that the Saudis were sharing Tayyib's information with the U.S. and British
authorities.
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At almost the same time, cell members learned that U.S. and
Kenyan agents had searched the Kenya residence of Wadi al Hage, who had
become the new on-site manager in Nairobi, and that Hage's telephone was
being tapped. Hage was a U.S. citizen who had worked with Bin Ladin in Afgha-
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THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
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