Word: atta
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...Last week Saudi officials announced the arrest of 13 al-Qaeda operatives believed to be planning attacks on U.S. military installations. American officials acknowledged that Syria has detained Mohammed Heidar Zammar, a German national of Syrian origin believed to be a recruiter for the Hamburg cell that produced Mohamed Atta (see box). But the arrests of low-level operatives won't necessarily lead the U.S. closer to bin Laden. Some counterterrorism officials believe that al-Qaeda has no middle management, which helps ensure that vital information does not flow beyond bin Laden's closest lieutenants. "There may be a command...
...still out there," says a top FBI official. "Padilla is one symptom of the fact that the core group is still around. They're able to communicate and move money around." The foot soldiers will not necessarily be Arab, nor will there always be a disciplined mastermind like Mohamed Atta leading them. The next attacker could be a man with a Midwestern accent, or a man who makes up for his lack of aplomb with sheer rage. He could be someone like Padilla, whose metamorphosis--from a pudgy Catholic boy to a radical Muslim accused of conspiring to kill...
...flight school months after the others had completed their training. (They have a darker worry: that he was on an entirely different suicide mission and that his cell mates are still at large.) And the survey of flight schools proposed by Williams would have had a hard time identifying Atta and his cadre, who were done with school and gearing up for Sept...
Driven into exile by the Taliban, first in 1997 and again in 1998, Dostum returned to Afghanistan last spring to join Jamiat commander Ustad Atta Mohammed in leading anti-Taliban forces in the hills south of Mazar. But last year's wartime alliance has soured. Tensions between Dostum and his northern rival--who also now prefers to be seen in elegantly tailored business suits--have centered on control of Mazar. Capital of the north and key to the area's agricultural, oil and gas wealth, the city once dominated by Dostum has fallen increasingly under Jamiat's sway. Failure...
MAZAR-I-SHARIF The country's most celebrated warlord, Uzbek ABDUL RASHID DOSTUM has long been a strongman in the north. Though he still commands some 7,000 troops, lately his influence has been eroded by the rising power of Tajik USTAD ATTA MOHAMMED, whose force of 5,000 controls much of Mazar. Sporadic clashes between the rival factions have been temporarily defused...