Word: masterminds
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Defining moment: Combs staked his claim as a marketing mastermind with the buzz generated by his 28th-birthday bash and its allstar videotaped invite...
...Musharraf has no doubt that al-Qaeda ordered the three assassination attempts. The mastermind, he says, was a Libyan named Abu Faraj Farj who is hiding "somewhere in the mountains," probably near Afghanistan. But Musharraf has been forced to delay taking on domestic extremists because of their complicated history with the Pakistani government and army. Some militant organizations now allied to bin Laden were once clandestinely funded and supported by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to wage war in Afghanistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir. (In the case of the Kashmir conflict, Pakistan has always denied giving...
...leaders seem to be stepping in to fill the vacuum, and one in particular is emerging as a prime focus of the terrorist hunt. He is Abu Faraj Farj, a Libyan, who, Musharraf has alleged in an interview with TIME, was the "mastermind" behind two plots to assassinate him last December. U.S. officials tell TIME that Farj, 30, is thought to have taken on much of Mohammed's role: devising plans for terrorist attacks inside the U.S. and directing al-Qaeda agents and helpers to that end. "He's big," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. "He's a major player...
...reports based on questioning of two top al-Qaeda operatives. It was a victory for the Germans - except that the testimony seems to exonerate el-Motassadeq. Ramzi Binalshibh, the only surviving member of the core Hamburg cell that carried out the attacks, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected 9/11 mastermind, were questioned independently. Both men claimed el-Motassadeq was not a member of the cell, which included Binalshibh and three hijackers, according to copies of the reports reviewed by Time. But the U.S. agent who wrote the report warns that their statements "may have been meant to influence as well...
...micromanager who wanted to hit the White House and personally chose all of the "muscle" hijackers. There are telling details about the lives and passions of the hijackers. For example, the 9/11 scheme nearly foundered several times over the terrorists' personal tribulations. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the plot's mastermind, became enraged when one hijacker-in-waiting flew home to Yemen after the birth of a child. Mohammed wanted him dropped from the operation, but bin Laden refused. When the wayward Nawaq Alhazmi grew lonely waiting for orders in San Diego, Mohammed allowed him to search for a wife...