Tuesday, December 14, 2010

FBI says AL Qaeda's American Spokesperson Urges Reversion to "Leaderless Resistance" tactics

This from the FBI's October National Security Threat Awareness Bulletin:

(U) Californian Adam Gadahn, Al Qaeda's American mouthpiece, urged wannabe terrorists in a new
video to act alone instead of trying to join cells attempting 9/11-type spectacular strikes. Gadahn, also
known as Azzam the American, was born in 1978. He is a native of southern California and has appeared
in several videotapes for Al-Qaeda since 2004. Wearing a shaggy beard and with an AK-47 rifle within
reach, Gadahn hailed Hasan, Abdulmutallab and Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, who also acted
alone on behalf of the Pakistani Taliban. Gadahn urged individual violent jihad in a 40-minute tape,
which endorsed an Al Qaeda ally's call last week for sympathizers to mimic the Ft. Hood killings and
attempted bombings over Detroit last Christmas and in Times Square in May. "To my Muslim brothers
residing in the states of the Zio-Crusader coalition ... know that Jihad (holy war) is your duty as well,"
Gadahn said in a the Arabic language video. He addressed Muslims in "emigrant communities like those
which live on the margins of society in the miserable suburbs of Paris, London and Detroit, or are from
those arriving in America or Europe to study in its universities or seek their daily bread in the streets of its
cities …"You have an opportunity to strike the leaders of unbelief and retaliate against them on their own
soil, as long as there is no covenant between you and them," he added in the 48 minute, 20 second video,
produced by Al-Qaeda media arm As-Sahab.
(U) Gadahn urged Arabs to launch "heroic operations similar to the invasion of the American consulate in
Peshawar and the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad," in their cities and capitals. However, "it
is obligatory to avoid harming Muslims and destroying their properties" when carrying out such attacks,
he said in Arabic, with the video providing English subtitles. Six Pakistanis were killed in an April attack
on the US consulate in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. In June 2008, a car bomb exploded
outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad killing at least eight people, including a Dane, and wounding
about 27 others. Gadahn also called on Muslims to attack "American military bases spread across the
(Arabian) Peninsula, the Gulf, the Levant countries and elsewhere... like the one carried out by Major
Nidal Hasan," the US Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas,
killing 13.
(U) The message is significant because Osama Bin Laden's operational goal has long been to kill
hundreds, if not thousands, in simultaneous multiple attacks on US targets with cells of extremists - and
Gadahn speaks for Al Qaeda. In October, the Yemeni spin-off of Bin Laden's terror network, Al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula, released a slick 74-page online "magazine" called "Inspire" with essays by
Yemeni-American imam Anwar al-Awlaki urging individual jihad. The Gadahn tape and AQAP
publication were obtained by the SITE Intelligence Group.
(U) The Gadahn tape may be evidence of Al Qaeda, under massive pressure in Pakistan's tribal areas from
a CIA drone blitz, being emasculated if it's giving a stamp of approval to AQAP's call for "lone wolf"
attacks, one expert said. Awlaki was in contact with and inspired Army Major Nidal Hasan, accused of
murdering a dozen at the Texas base, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber who
almost blew up a plane Christmas Day last year. The AQAP how-to manual offered suggestions for
individual mass murder, such as gunning down feds atWashington lunchtime eateries and welding blades
to the grill of a large truck to "mow down" crowds on a street. "Here you are in the battlefield, just like
the heroes before you," said Gadahn, who is under federal indictment for treason.

No comments:

Post a Comment