Author: Jack Kelley
Publication: USA Today
Date: September 18,
2000
Washington - U.S.
intelligence agencies have obtained computer-disk copies of a six-volume
manual that was used by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden to train recruits
at his terrorist camps in Afghanistan, USA TODAY has learned.
The 1,000-page manual,
called the Encyclopedia and written in Arabic, contains information on
how to recruit followers, conduct terrorist operations and assemble bombs
similar to those that destroyed U.S. embassies in East Africa in
1998, killing more than 200 people, according to senior U.S. intelligence
officials.
A U.S. federal
court has indicted bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan, in connection with
the embassy attacks. He denies any involvement.
Spokesmen for the CIA
and FBI declined comment, but other intelligence officials call the manual
a "gold mine" of information on bin Laden's tactics. They say they
hope to use it to help slow or disrupt terrorist operations overseas.
"That manual is a briefing
book on 'how to conduct terror' and is no different than what (militant
Islamic groups) Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran would use," says Ken Katzman,
a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service, the investigative
arm of Congress.
The manual in CD-Rom
form was recently given to the CIA and the FBI's Washington headquarters
by Jordanian intelligence officials.
They seized it from one
of 16 men arrested in Jordan last December for allegedly planning attacks
in Israel and Jordan for New Year's.
Lt. Ziad Hajaya,
a computer expert at the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, told
a closed military court in Amman, Jordan, last year that one of the seized
disks included information on "explosives and manufacturing explosives,
toxic and heavy weaponry," according to court documents obtained by USA
TODAY.
U.S. officials
say they have "positively confirmed" it was distributed by bin Laden in
his terrorist camps along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
