Notes taken for the Book “Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11” by
Paul L. Williams.

A Letter To America by Osama bin Laden

Some American writers have published articles under the title “On What Basis Are We Fighting?” These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others that were not. Here we wanted to outline the truth-as an explanation and warning- hoping for Allah’s reward, seeking success and support from Him.

While seeking Allah’s help, we form our reply on two questions directed at the Americans:

Why are we fighting and opposing you?
What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

You attacked us in Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than eighty years. The British handed over Palestine with your help and your support to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than fifty years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killings, expulsions, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leader of its criminals. And, of course, there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime that must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price and pay it heavily.

I t brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with you or them on this alleged fact is accused of Anti-Semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be unto him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all the prophets, including Abraham, Moses Jesus and Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all). If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this . . .

You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya; the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir; and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of these countries attack us on a daily basis . . .

You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is, indeed, the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands; and you besiege our sanctities to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when three thousand of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital and you have agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.

These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us except jihad, resistance, and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century that we will then leave her to live in security and peace???

You may dispute that all of the above does not justify aggression against civilians for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake. This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom and its leaders in this world. For this reason, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice that stems from their agreement to its policies, Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of Palestinian lands, and the continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinian people. The American people have the ability and choice to reject the policies of their government and even to change it if they want.

The American people are the ones who pay the taxes that fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies that occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets that ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. In this way, the American people remain the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish through their elected candidates. Also, the American army is part of the American people. It is these very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us. The American people are the ones who employ both their men and women in the American forces that attack us. This is why the American people cannot be innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and the Jews against us.

Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permissions and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. When they destroy our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. If they steal our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And when they kill our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to and what do we want from you?

The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam: the religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with him, and complete rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions that contradict with this religion. He sent t down His Prophet Muhammad (peace be unto him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets and makes no distinction between them (peace be unto them all).

It is to this religion that we call you: the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honor, purity and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoying the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s word and religion reign supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their color, sex or language.

It is the religion whose book – the Koran – will remain preserved and unchanged, after the other divine books and messages have been changed. The Koran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring forth a book like the Koran or even ten verses like it.

The second thing to which we call you is a demand to stop your oppression, lies, immorality, and debauchery that have spread among you. We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor and purity and to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest. We call you to all this that you may be freed from that in which you have become enmeshed; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation – lies that your leaders spread among you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have descended.

It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind. You are a nation who, rather than ruling by the shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature that affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator . . .

You are the nation that permits Usury that has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and all aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense: precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread among you, in the face of which neither your sense of honor nor your laws object. Who can forget your President Clinton’s immoral acts committed in the official Oval Office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he “made a mistake,” after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and be remembered by nations?

You are a nation that permits gambling in all its forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools, calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly or indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are abased on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the pasts. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man that you brought them Aids as a Satanic American invention.

You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Ktyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.

Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaign with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control you r policies, media and economy.

That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war!!! How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.

The freedom and democracy that you espouse is for yourselves and for the white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and governments that you call your “American friends.” Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them to attack them with tanks and guns to imprison them and torture them _ a new lesson from the “American book of democracy.”

Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries that you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else whom you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of international law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than fifty years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

As for war criminals that you censure and for whom you form criminal court, you shamelessly ask that your own war criminals be granted immunity! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq. These crimes will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed and bombs were dropped on mosques, causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the mujahadeen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Janqi fort and killing more than one thousand of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at your hands and the hands of your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

You have claimed to be the vanguards of human rights and your Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues annual reports containing the statistics of those countries that violate any human rights. However, all these things vanished when the mujahadeen hit you. You then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands of Muslims and Arabs and took them into custody with neither reason nor court trial nor even disclosing the names. You issued newer, harsher laws. What happened in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values. It screams in your faces. You hypocrites, what is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?

Thirdly, we call you to take an honest stance with yourselves – and I doubt you will do so – to discover that you are a nation without principles or values, and that the values and principles to you are something that your merely demand from others – not that to which you yourself must adhere.

Fourthly, we call you to stop supporting Israel; to stop your support of the Indians in Kashmir and the Russians against the Chechens; and to stop your support of the Manila government against the Muslims in the southern Philippines.

Fifthly, we call you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for the sake of goodness, guidance and righteousness that you do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and methods of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

Finally, we call upon you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of subjugation, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for war with the Islamic Nation – the Nation of Monotheism that puts complete trust in Allah and fears none other than him – The Nation that is addressed by the Koran with these words: “Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of the believing people and remove the anger from their hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is all knowing and all wise” (Koran 9:13 -14).

The Islamic Nation is the Nation of Honor and Respect: “But honor, power and glory to Allah, and to his Messenger (peace be unto him) and to the believers” (Koran 3:139).

The Islamic Nation is the Nation of Martyrdom, the Nation that desires death more than you desire life: “Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from his bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that no fear will come upon them and that they will not grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers
(Koran 3:169 – 71).

The Islamic Nation is the Nation of Victory and Success that Allah has promised: “It is he who has sent his Messenger (Muhammad, peace be unto him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all other religions, even though the polytheists hate it” (Koran 61:9); “Allah has decreed, ‘Verily, it is I and my Messengers who shall be victorious.’ Verily, Allah is all-powerful, all-mighty” (Koran 58:21).

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil empires like yourself – the Nation that rejects your attacks – wishes to remove your evils and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its being, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness to which we call them, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade that Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the mujahadeen, fleeing to your homes in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall and economic bankruptcy.

This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to their questions. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?

November 24, 2002



Enter bin Laden in May 1996, a few months before the Taliban takeover of Kabul He had been deported from Sudan at the insistence of the United States and arrived in Jalaabad on board a Hercules C – 130 cargo plane that had been specially outfitted for him, his wives, his children, and 150 al Qaeda associates.12 Bin Laden wasted no time in establishing an alliance with Mullah Omar and the Taliban in Kabul. The alliance was forged for a variety of reasons. First, bin Laden was a great hero of the Afghan holy war. He had engaged in bloody hand-to-hand combat with Soviet soldiers at Jaji, near the Pakistani border, in 1986, and at Shaban in 1987. In 1989, bin Laden took part in the Jalalabad airport battle, where he was hit by shrapnel and earned his stripes as a mujahed (“holy war warrior”). He had earned these stripes under fire, not in a salon or a conference center.13 What’s more, he freely gave of his funds to recruit thousands of fighters, organize their transport, establish training camps, build fortifications along the Pakistani border, and dig tunnels that stretched for hundreds of miles throughout Afghanistan so that the fighters could get close to Northern Alliance soldiers without showing themselves.14

A second reason for the alliance was the fact that bin Laden was a Sunni brother who was seeking refuge under the Pashtun code of milmastia, or hospitality – a code that demanded the Taliban to protect bin Laden and his associates even at the risk of their own lives.15

Finally, bin Laden could provide the funds necessary for the defeat of the Northern Alliance and the conquest of Afghanistan. These funds would come from selling drugs through the ties that al Qaeda had make with Turkish officials and the Sicilian Mafia, not from bin Laden’s personal fortune.16

According to the terms of the agreement, bin Laden would take over the poppy fields that Hekmatyar had been forced to abandon. He would establish sophisticated laboratories near Kabul and reopen the trade route to the West. The bubas and the Sicilian Mafia, knowing that Number Four heroin was worth one hundred times more than Number Three, were more than happy to invest in the proposed venture. For this reason, bin Laden’s first recruits, upon landing in Kabul with his entourage, were not soldiers from the mujahadeen but chemists from the former Soviet Union, who had joined the growing horde of unemployed workers. At the same time, bin Laden approached, through intermediaries, major landowners in the opium growing districts of Afghanistan with offers to buy “all the opium they c could grow.”22

Within months the facilities were up and running as the civil war continued to rage throughout the country. The laboratories soon became capable of producing five thousand metric tons of heroin a year, making bin Laden the world’s largest supplier of the new international drug of choice. By 1997, the poppy harvest in Afghanistan soared to 3,276 tons of raw opium, and revenues began to pour into the coffers of al Qaeda at a rate estimated between $5 billion and $16 billion a year.23 By 1998, the National Household Survey discovered 149,000 new heroin users throughout the United States who required treatment for their addiction. Eighty percent of the new addicts were under the age of twenty-six. The average new addict was spending from $150 to $200 a day to maintain his habit.24 While the drug trade increased to new highs in the United States, it began to boom beyond belief in Europe. From 19096 to 2001, the Europeans consumed more than fifteen tons of heroin a year – twice the amount that was sold in America. The source of the new supply was no secret. “Terrorism, organized crime, and the illegal trade are one interrelated problem,” Abdurakhim Kakharov, a deputy interior minister of Tajikistan, told a congressional committee in Washington on September 6, 2001. “The terrorist groups and the drugs are exported from the same source- Afghanistan.25

The information about the nuclear suitcases that are meant to destroy the United States of America came from Boris M and Alexy D, two members of the Chechen Mafia from Little Odessa. The Russian émigrés appeared unrestrained, almost feral, in their behavior. They chain-smoked Marlboros in nonsmoking areas of restaurants, consumed vodka like soda pop as the drove their stolen Mercedes S-Class from place to place, and spouted sexual obscenities – replete with gestures implying fellatio, cunnilingus, or masturbation – to various women they encountered on the street and in shopping malls and office buildings. Short and quick, they move like ferrets. With their rounded shoulders and skinny arms covered with homemade tattoos, their physical presence was unimpressive, almost comic, until you noticed their scarred faces, their broken teeth, and their incredibly pale eyes like those of wild animals – wolves from the steppes- piercing and unblinking eyes that displayed no spark of civility or compassion.

Boris and Alexy never seemed to wash their hair, clean their nails change their clothes, or trim their facial hair, including the nicotine-stained mustaches that covered their thin lips. To complement their unkempt appearance, they emitted mechanical laughter at regular intervals as though they were dong imitations of Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death for their own amusement.

The two Russians came to northeastern Pennsylvania to settle a business matter for their boss in Coney Island. Wiseguys from Pittston, purported members of the Bufalino crime family, had tried to act tough with some well-heeled Russian businessmen over a real estate deal concerning timeshares in New York City. Believing they had been cheated out of $750,000, the Pittston thugs traveled to the Big Apple, made a lot of threats, and slapped a few faces. The wiseguys thought they had straightened the matter out and returned to Pittston to await the arrival of a courier with the cash. But neither the courier nor the check arrived.

Instead, Boris and Alexy reportedly showed up at the headquarters of a capo of the Bufalino clan, with Colt Anacondas stuffed in their pants, The capo had stiff knees and he never buckled under pressure – not even when feds placed him in a hot seat over some hits in Philadelphia. But the two Russians, with their ice-cold eyes and Richard Widmark routines, gave him a case of the jitters. He dropped his tough guy act and became nice and polite.

After the capo graciously forgave the debt, Boris and Alexy became regular visitors to northeastern Pennsylvania as part of a stolen car ring. Members of the ring combed the inventory of junkyards throughout the country for late-model foreign and domestic cars – Cadillac Escalades and Eldorados, Lincoln Navigators and Town Cars, BMW Roadsters, Chevy Corvettes, Jaguars, Ferraris, and Porsche Boxsters. They preferred vehicles that insurance companies wrote off as total wrecks – vehicles that could be purchased for a thousand or two in cash. They hauled the wrecks, which were the same models as their stolen cars, to garages and chop shops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They switched serial numbers, repainted the stolen cars, washed titles by transferring ownership across state lines, and sold the choice cars to a clientele of yuppies who wanted to project an image of wealth and success for a bargain-basement price. It was a neat and highly lucrative scheme. Since some of the largest junkyards in the country are located among the abandoned coal mines of Scanton, Boris and Alexy discovered northeastern Pennsylvania to be highly advantageous for their unique line of work.1

The two Russians, along with other members of the Mafia from Little Odessa, were also involved in drug trafficking. They dealt almost exclusively in heroin that flowed into the United States from the harbor city of Gdansk, Poland. The drugs came to Poland from opium merchants in Turkey, who obtained the product from the Helmand and Nangarhar provinces of Afghanistan. There farmers cultivated the poppy fields and harvested the crops, which they sold to the drug lords, who operated the laboratories where the flowers were cut to extract the gum, and where the gum was refined into high-quality Number four heroin – the preferred drug of choice for the American and European markets. Boris and Alexy didn’t know or care where the drugs came from. They only knew that the Scanton/Wilkes-Barre airport in Avoca, a place that hosts only one major airline, had international arrival/departure status and few customs officials, making it a prime place for drugs to enter the country. For many years, Rik Luytjes, one of America’s most successful drug dealers, purportedly operated a flight of cargo planes called Air America to import millions of tons of cocaine into Avoca without any airport official ever batting an eye, let alone opening any of the crates of “choice Colombian” that bore the image of Juan Valdes and his mule.2

In 1996, David Z and his Mafia associates in Chechnya allegedly purchased a shipment of Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs), or “nuclear suitcases,” from former KGB officials who preferred perestreika (the Russian word for “shoot-out”) to perestroika (Mikhail Gorbachev’s word for “reform”). The compact nukes represented the most desirable weapons for customers from such countries as Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and representatives of the World Islamic Front who wanted a big bang for their buck. The Chechen Mafia purportedly sold twenty nuclear suitcases in Grozny to representatives of Osama bin Laden and the mujahadeen. For the weapons, bin Laden paid $30 million in cash and two tons of heroin that had been refined in his laboratories in Afghanistan. The street value of the heroin was in excess of $700 million.

News of the sale was not only conveyed to US officials by Russia’s Federal Security Service but also leaked to the press. The story appeared on August 16, 1998, in the London Times,3 and, several weeks later, in such publications as the Jerusalem Report, Al-Watan Al-Arabi, Muslim Magazine, and Al-Majallah (London’s Saudi weekly).4

In 2002, Al-Majallah published an update, claiming that bin Laden had succeeded in obtaining a total of forty-eight nuclear suitcases from the Russian Mafia over the course of several years.5 This claim was supported by reports from Israeli intelligence that al Qaeda agents purchased twelve to fifteen kilos of uranium-235 six months before September 11 from Semion Mogilevich, a shadowy Ukrainian-born Jew who rules over a vast crime empire of arms trafficking, money laundering, drug running, and white slavery. For the additional nukes, Mogilevich reportedly collected more than $75 million from bin Laden and his associates.6

The nuclear suitcases were originally designed to serve as tactical rather than strategic weapons for use against NATO targets in time of war. They were not really suitcases, but suitcase –sized nuclear devices, which could be fired from grenade or rocket launchers or detonated in public buildings, shopping malls, arenas, or stadiums for sporting events. One weapon placed in the center of a major metropolitan area was capable of instantly killing several hundred thousand civilians while exposing millions of others to lethal gamma rays.7

Some of these weapons were smuggled into the United States by Soviet agents and buried at scattered, remote locations. “There is no doubt that the soviets stored material [including nuclear suitcases] in this country.” Curt Weldon (R-PA), chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, said. “The question is what and where.”8

In attempting to verify the reports of the buried nukes, FBI director Louis Freeh ordered a team of nuclear technicians to excavate several areas around Brainerd, Minnesota, where Soviet spies were believed to have forward-deployed several suitcases in case of war.9

Diggings began at additional sites after KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, who served as a chief archivist for the agency, informed British intelligence that secret stockpiles of tactical nuclear devices were buried in upstate New York, California, Texas, and Minnesota.10

Mitrakhin’s information was supported by Col. Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking military spy to defect from the Soviet Union and the leading confidential source on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Lunev told a congressional committee in January 2000 that nuclear suitcases had indeed been buried in the United States, although he could not pinpoint the exact locations. Such information remains secret, Lunev said, because Russian military leaders continue to believe that a nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States remains “inevitable.” He concluded his testimony by saying: “And just now what we are talking about, location of technical nuclear devices, these places we have selected extremely carefully for a long, long period of time, and to believe it is possible to find these places just like that without using extremely, extremely large resources of the country, I don’t think that it would be realistic until the Russian government, which still has the keys to these locations, will disclose their locations.”11

The number of weapons buried in the United States and Europe remains anyone’s guess. But Soviet scientists produced more than seven hundred nuclear suitcases during the 1960s and 1970s and hundreds more during the 1980s. The first SADMs were very expensive to maintain and too heavy for practical use. They had to be carried in crates that measured 4 feet by 2.5 feet with a weight that exceeded eight hundred pounds. During the 1970s, the weapons were streamlined so that they could be transported in cases measuring 2 feet by 1.5 feet with a weight of 320 pounds. These modified nukes consisted of three coffee-can-sized aluminum canisters that had to be connected by a crew of five-a commander, a radio officer, and three army technicians-before detonation.12

During the 1980s, Soviet and US nuclear technicians respectively made refinements until the weapons came to measure 24 inches by 16 inches by 8 inches with a weight of less than sixty pounds, a single agent could now transport the device from place to place in a suitcase to cause a significant “event.” Each small “suitcase” contained at least one kiloton of fissionable plutonium and uranium. The plutonium and uranium were kept in separate compartments and connected to a triggering mechanism that could be activated by a clock or a call from a cell phone.15

The small Soviet nukes, however, lacked the safety systems to prevent unauthorized use. To rectify this problem the weapons were equipped with electronic combination locks that could be opened and operated only by SPETSNAZ (Soviet Special Forces) personnel. As added security, they were placed under the care of the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, a unit responsible for executive protection, rather than the Ministry of Defense. For this reason, the weapons never appeared on the list of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.16 Few in the United States, including the ambassadors engaged in disarmament talks with Russian officials, knew of their existence.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian army units, tired of polishing their ICBMs and rotating their nuclear weapons, decided to manifest the new spirit of capitalism by stripping the weapons down into economically attractive parcels and selling them to the highest bidders. By 1993, over 6,430 reports of stolen weapons, ranging from assault riles to tanks, were filed by the Russian Defense Ministry. By 1998, the ministry received more than seven hundred reports of nuclear material being sold to various buyers within and outside of Mother Russia.17

Many Russian army officers were becoming incredibly rich. On the black market, a kilo of chromium-50 sold for %25,000; cesium-137 for $1 million; and lithium-6 for $10 million, all of which are needed to build nuclear weapons.18

Former members of the KGB, which had been replaced by the FSB, also took part in the sale of goodies from the Soviet arsenal. These agents could provide buyers with some of the most highly prized items, including the nuclear suitcases that had been place in their care. Such sophisticated weaponry would be of little use to rogue nations or terrorist groups without technical expertise. But as Russia transformed itself from a superpower to a third world nation in less than six years, such technology was becoming readily available. By 1996, more than three thousand unpaid and disillusioned Russian scientists with expertise in the construction and maintenance of weapons of mass destruction left the country. Some went to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Others obtained lucrative employment with al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups. By 1996, the likelihood of a nuclear device exploding in America increased to a red alert level- the highest since the Cuban missile crisis.19

In 1998, Alexander Lebed, the former Russian security secretary under Boris Yeltsin, met in a closed-door session with members of the US House of Representatives and admitted that forty nuclear suitcases had disappeared from the Russian arsenal and could be in the hands of Muslim extremists. Lebed said that he was able to confirm the production of 132 suitcases and could account for only 48. When asked the whereabouts of the other 84 suitcases, Lebed replied: “I have no idea.” He went on to testify that he did not know how many suitcases had been produced throughout the Cold War, but said that the later models of the small atomic demolition munitions were “ideal weapons for nuclear terror.”22

The weapons that Lebed described, according to physicist Carey Sublette of the Nuclear Weapon Archive, are based on a nuclear design concept called linear implosion. This concept is that an elongated (football-shaped), lower-density subcritcal mass of material can be compressed and deformed into a critical, higher-density spherical configuration by embedding it in a cylinder of explosives that are initiated at each end. As the detonation progresses from each end toward the middle, the fissile mass is squeezed into a supercritical shape. Any 155 mm artillery shell, if shortened by omitting the nonessential conical ogive and fuse, would fit diagonally in Lebed’s suitcase.26 The device would by capable of producing an explosive yield of ten kilotons –enough to wipe away much of New York City-if the fusion was boosted by a thin beryllium reflector with a thickness no greater than the core radius. Sublette believes that the weapons could be further refined to fit into an attaché case.27


On August 7, 1998, as proof of the earnestness of his intent, bin Laden ordered the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 234 people, twelve of them American, and wounding over five thousand others. The plans of al Qaeda operatives to bomb a third US embassy – this one in Kampala, Uganda – was prevented by a tip from a CIA informant.9

Thirteen days later, on August 20, US forces retaliated by firing a host of cruise missiles at al Qaeda residential and military complexes. The United States also targeted the al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant near Khartoum, believing it to be a laboratory for the production of the deadly nerve agent VX.10

But the key terrorist leaders were not gathering in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and other al; Qaeda leaders were not in the camps at Khost. They were safe and secure in a Pakistani madrassah. Although the missiles did hit bin Laden’s camps, the only casualties were locals and some low-level militants.12

The US attack was more than a resounding dud – several of the bombs even failed to detonate upon impact. It proved to be a rallying call to Muslims throughout the Middle East for the holy war. The camps contained five mosques to provide religious services not only to the mujahadeen but also to local villagers. Four mosques were destroyed, leaving “the burned pages of two hundred Korans” throughout the area. Pictures of the bombed mosques and burned pages were distributed throughout the Muslim world. “America has invited death upon itself,” Mauvi Fazlur Rehman Khalil, head of Harakat ul-Ansar, told the press. “If we don’t get justice from the world court we know how to get our own justice.”15

The missile attack served a further purpose. It strengthened the bonds between al Qaeda and the Taliban. Prior to the bombings, the relationship between bin Laden and Mullah Omar was strained to the limit. Mullah Omar, who was seeking international recognition for his government in Afghanistan, did not appreciate bin Laden’s repeated calls for violence against Americans.18

In the wake of the attack, money poured into al Qaeda’s coffers from Islamic charitable and humanitarian organizations throughout the world. By 1998, the Global Relief Foundation in Chicago, knowingly or unknowingly, began raising more than $5 million a year for bin laden and his holy war against the United States. Many American “charities” with official tax-exempt status collected millions that would go toward the jihad and the destruction of the United States. These charities included the Hatikva Center, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Al-Wafa Humanitarian Organization, and Benevolence International in Chicago.25

On September 23, President Bush held a highly confidential telephone conversation with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. The seventy-minute conversation resulted in an earthshaking shift in the global balance of power that would have a profound impact on bin Laden and the course of the war on terror. Putin gave the nod for US forces to enter Afghanistan and central Asia with tactical nuclear weapons. These weapons, according to the agreement, were to be deployed under the following circumstances:

• If bin Laden first employed nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons against US troops within the Little Pamir and Hindu Kush regions of Afghanistan

• If Taliban fighters used chemical or biological weapons against Pakistan in retaliation for the US invasion

• If Muslim terrorist groups with ties to al Qaeda launched assaults using weapons of mass destruction against US military or civilian targets

• If using nuclear weapons proved to be the only means to prevent heavy American combat casualties

In exchange for his consent, Putin gained Bush’s approval of the use of similar nuclear weapons in and around Chechnya. By the end of September, Russian bombers carrying neutron bombs were deployed to military air bases in Stavropol, north of Chechnya, Godowta in Georgia to the south, and northern Osetia, west of the troublesome provice.7

China’s reaction to this development was instantaneous. Tactical nuclear missiles and aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs were reportedly transported to bases in the Xinjiang region (formerly Turkestan) of northwest China bordering on the central Asian states and Afghanistan. Long Chinese military convoys thundered down the Krakoram road to the Chinese-Afghan-Pakistani borders. The trucks, according to intelligence sources, also contained equipment for detecting and decontaminating areas that fell under attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.8 Chinese officials were clearly aware that the outbreak of nuclear warfare in a neighboring country might have disastrous consequences for Chinese citizens who inhabited bordering towns and villages.

As Americans sat glued to their televisions sets for the latest word on the war on terror, few were aware that the doomsday card had been played and the world’s three great powers – the United States, Russia, and China – were scrambling to get their nuclear weapons in place.

The annual four-day Soldier of fortune Exposition, held in mid-September, is a unique event. After enrolling at a registration desk in a resort casino, participants board buses to venture into the Nevada desert (120 miles from the heart of Las Vegas), where they fire machine guns at junk cars and trucks, engage in pugil-stick combat with instructors disguised as members of the mujahadeen, and participate in night maneuvers with paint-ball guns and with rubber knifes caked with re dye that leave “cuts” on the skin of enemy opponents.

Hundreds of vendors offer a highly unique assortment of goods and gifts: . . . . . . Heckler & Koch self-loading pistols, double-action Mausers, Walther military pistols, selective-fire Berettas, AMT Hardballers, Colt Pythons and King Cobras, Webley pocket pistols, Smith and Wesson Service revolvers, Uzis, double-action Spectres, BMX weapons that can be used as submachine guns or grenade launchers, M16s, Vietcong K-50Ms, Giat sniping rifles, and Browning antitank machine guns.

And it is here – not within the offices of the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security – where one can obtain firsthand information about bin Laden, the regrouping of the Taliban, and the plans of al Qaeda for the next 9/11.

Such information albeit not all of equal accuracy, comes from some of the mercenaries who meander through the crowds of gun geeks and rednecks in perfectly tailored and impeccably pressed Armani suits. They are middle-aged (between forty and fifty) with ramrod-straight comportment and barely an ounce of fat on their bodies. Many have served in such places as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bosnia, and Albania. They come to the convention not to fire machine guns or to participate in the candy-ass maneuvers. They are here to seek contracts with military corporations from Australia, South Africa, England, and Alexandria, Virginia. Some are former Green Berets, SEALs and Rangers. The standard fee for their services is fifteen thousand dollars a month plus expenses.

These unsmiling and mysterious figures do not present themselves as soldiers for hire, “mercs,” or paid assassins. They call themselves “repairmen.” There is a good reason for the subterfuge. Any US citizen who enlists in a foreign army without written approval from both the secretary of defense and the secretary of state must forfeit his US citizenship. The Geneva Convention, in a 1979 protocol, stripped captured mercenaries of the title and protection of POW and sanctioned their execution without appeal to an international court of law as war criminals.1


One such repairman at the 2003 expo was Bill Reed (not his real name). He was forty-two with a weathered face, steel gray eyes behind Ray-Bans, closely cropped hair, and a neatly manicured black mustache. He had recently returned from a trip to Pakistan for a military organization in Pretoria, South Africa. His objective was to purchase weapons for that military organization. The weapons were to be used for covert operations in Angola and Sierra Leone. Due to the existing UN arms embargo, the weapons that Reed acquired had to be transferred by rogue Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) officers to Islamabad, where they would be packed in cartons, labeled as construction parts, transported by truck to the port city of Karachi, and shipped on Arab freighters to Freetown.

For the trip, Reed was trained incorrect protocol for dealing with the mujahadeen, including agents of al Qaeda. Indeed, only by adhering to the protocol could any Westerner hope to emerge alive from the gun factories and weapon bazaars of the North-West Frontier Province.

1. Do not make sexual remarks about women or tell an off-color joke. Maintain a sober and serious manner. Speak only when necessary.
2. Make no flippant mention of religion. Above all, do not smile or appear flippant when mentioning the Koran or the name of the Prophet.
3. When anyone mentions the name or the title of the Prophet Muhammad, the servant and messenger of Allah, you must cry out the invocation “Salla-Liahu alaihi wasalam” (May Allah bless him and give him peace”) or the equally valid “alaihi-s-salam” (“Peace be with him”). Failure to show such reverence could result, at best, in a severe flogging or, at worst, should you be considered an apostate or blasphemer, in the removal of your tongue.
4. Do not wear anything that has Jewish or Christian significance, such as a cross or the Star of David. Anyone who wanders among Muslim tribes sporting such thing s could be beheaded.
5. Do not squeeze hands when shaking them. Tightening your grip around an outstretched hand is an act of aggression. After shaking hands, touch your chest ass a gesture of submission and respect.
6. Never touch an agent of al Qaeda or a member of any other Islamic terrorist group with your left hand. The Muslims wash their privates and wipe their backsides with this hand. It is deemed unclean.
7. Never pass food with your left hand. Such a disrespectful act committed in the presence of certain emirs could result in amputation.
8. Never urinate in the presence of Muslim fundamentalists. This, too, is a sign of disrespect. Always sit or squat when emptying your bladder.
9. Never blow your nose in the presence of people who live by a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Such an act is a grievous insult.
10. Never eat while walking around- not even a candy bar. This is a sign of inhospitality and disrespect.
11. Never take photographs without permission. Above all, never take pictures of women, the infirm, or the elderly.
12. Never gaze at a woman, not even in passing. When a woman, even one dressed in full burqa, appears before you, cast your eyes to the ground.
13. Avoid gazing at another man, even in passing. A Muslim terrorist might assume you are gay, and all homosexuals are an abomination before Allah.
14. Never express admiration for any object belonging to a terrorist. This will compel the terrorist to give the object to you as a gesture of hospitality. He will only be able to reclaim the object by your demise.
15. Never drink alcoholic beverages in any Islamic country or express thirst for a beer while crossing the desert. This shows disrespect for the teachings of the Prophet
16. Avoid pointing your toes at a host. Such an action implies a threat.
17. Never wear your shoes in a Muslim shrine. If invited to the hut or tent of a member of the mujahadeen, immediately remove your shoes at the entranceway.
18. Never violate the Holy Day of Friday by loud and impious behavior.
19. Never carry religious tracts or objects of religious devotion (such as a rosary or a prayer book). Such things will imply that you intend to proselytize the Christian faith.
20. Never read a book with a lurid title or a magazine with lewd content.


Military corporations impart these instructions to all “repairmen” that are contracted for services in Muslim countries.3

Reed knew that if a problem arose there was one last resort for staying alive among the mujahadeen. No ceremony is involved in becoming a Muslim. All you need to do is to recite these words in Arabic, “Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Llah, wa ashhadu anna Muhammad rasulu Llah” (“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet”). Once you proclaim these two tenets of the Islamic faith, you are not required to produce further proof of your faith and conviction. This means that neither bin Laden nor any member of his terrorist organization may spill a drop of your blood.

In Bara and Teerah, two villages where people lived in mud huts without such luxuries as electricity or running water, Afridi chieftains offered state-of-the-art, long-rang weapons for sale, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles. One even claimed to have access to a pair of Tomahawk AGM-86Ds, 550 mile-per-hour “smart” bombs – that had been a “present” from the CIA to help the Afghan rebels repel the Soviet invaders. The asking price fore the Tomahawks that could be launched from land, air, or sea with a range of 1,553 miles was 96 million rupees ($3 million in US currency).

Such a claim seemed preposterous – almost as preposterous as the turbaned figure in a shalwat kameez, attempting to negotiate a multimillion-dollar arms deal before an open campfire in the wilds of the North-West Frontier. The chieftain, according to Reed, went on to say that Russian, Pakistani, and Chinese scientists were training al Qaeda “Suicide bombers” in the means of detonating the nuclear suitcases and other nuclear devices. One such training cell, the chieftain said, remains located in an area called Markash, 140 miles north of Gilgit, near the borders of Tajikistan and China.11

Reed discovered tidbits of relevant information during his journey, including the present whereabouts of Osama bin Laden; The great warrior, he was assured, remains in the small village of Dir, about fifty miles from the Afghan border on the Kunar Provice.12