Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...worst-case scenario is that he may have been associated with the Taliban - in which case this might be the first time they have tried to attack U.S. interests outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the Taliban have joined al-Qaeda in taking the fight to the West, then counterterrorism and law-enforcement authorities will need to greatly expand the scope of their operations, at home and abroad. "If he's Taliban, then it greatly expands the universe of people you want to put under surveillance," says Bill Rosenau, a counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp...
...other hand, If Zazi is an al-Qaeda operative, it would challenge the belief that Osama bin Laden and his cohort, on the run from American drones, no longer have the ability to strike on the U.S. mainland. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden...
...many liberal Democrats, the USA Patriot Act and the state secrets privilege represent twin controversial monuments to the post-Sept. 11 secrecy of the Bush era. The Patriot Act, which Congress passed just weeks after al-Qaeda's attacks and reauthorized in 2006, created sweeping new powers for the federal government that some critics on the left, as well as some on the right, see as unnecessarily broad at best and unconstitutional at worst. And in court, the Bush Administration frequently invoked the state secrets privilege - the right to withhold information that compromises national security - to block civil litigation...
Apart from Zazi's Afghan background, counterterrorism experts will be especially keen to know about his associations in Pakistan. The FBI says Zazi has admitted he spent time at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 2008, receiving training in weapons and explosives. If that is true, then Zazi could be a very valuable source of information on how al-Qaeda trains jihadis now. What U.S. counterterrorism officials know about jihadi training camps is based mostly on intelligence gleaned after al-Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan were overrun in 2001. Relatively little is known about the camps in Pakistan, which...
...Zazi met or trained with terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistan border, any insights we glean could add considerably to our ever expanding base of knowledge on al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. "That's a good thing for us and very bad thing for our enemies...