How the U.S. nearly nabbed Ghailani Three Years Ago, and who he really is

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. Ghailani was described by eyewitnesses in Liberia as the one who largely stayed at the safe house in Liberia, while Fazul went into the bush to bring back the diamonds. In late June 2001 he left Liberia in the company of Aafia Siddiqui, the al Qaeda courier now wanted by the FBI. Togehter with Fazul, the three went to Pakistan, where they stayed at the Shaharah-e-Faisal hotel before continuing on to Quetta, where their trail was lost (P. 76).

It will be interesting to see what U.S. intelligence services ask him when they get him in custody, and if they will ever make the Liberia part of that testimony public.