A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial by Steve Hendricks Page A
Authors: Steve Hendricks
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turn by other cells, some of which the police broke up too, only to see them succeeded by others. The terrorists—Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians—were replicable. They were also growing savvier.
“Do you see this?” the police heard an instructor of sorts lecture his terrorist pupils in Milan. He was holding up a mobile phone. “This was created by an enemy of God. You can’t imagine how many operations this has made fail and how many arrests it has caused. . . . It’s nice. You can use it to communicate. It’s fast. But it causes you huge problems. They created it, and they know how to intercept it.”
Increasingly the terrorists avoided phones, and when they had to use them they tended to divulge little and to prefer either pay phones or mobile phones that they could discard after a few calls. Sometimes they communicated via e-mail or instant-messaging Web sites in short, coded phrases. To minimize the number of times their e-mails bounced from server to server (each bounce giving eavesdropping agencies a chance to intercept them), a terrorist might save a message in the draft folder of an online e-mail account, which terrorists elsewhere would check. After reading the drafts, they would delete them, then save their own drafts of reply. The system was an advance on the traditional dead drop, in which spies left messages for one another in the hollows of trees or niches of buildings. If the terrorists needed to speak in person, the smarter ones took a walk in a wide park or sat on the back of a bus with a roaring engine. On the sidewalk, they stopped abruptly to let potential tails pass them by or dropped scraps of paper while hidden comrades watched to see if anyone picked them up. If a meeting was in progress at a safe house, a lookout might loiter among the hangabouts in a kebab shop or pace the street hawking cheap umbrellas. To indicate to meeting-goers that a building was not under surveillance, a towel might be hung out a window or a shade half drawn. Some of the terrorists had learned their tradecraft, as spies call their techniques, from jihad manuals, while others had learned in the training camps of Afghanistan or Bosnia or from veterans of those camps. Austere experience had also taught veterans to reduce life to what was strictly necessary for the cause. Their apartments often had neither chairs nor tables, they slept on prayer mats or bare mattresses, they did not dress their walls or equip their kitchens, and they had no books, save the book. They were the heirs of Sparta not Athens.
Their work continued and extended Shaaban’s. They falsified documents, recruited and sent warriors to training camps, and laundered millions of euros. In the home of one abettor of terrorism, police found € 200,000 in cash. The terrorists of Milan did not seem primarily interested in attacking Italy or even Western Europe, but there were exceptions. A young Tunisian later told police that the leaders of his cell had him scout half a dozen potential targets in Italy. One was a U.S. military barracks in Mondra-gone, near Naples, which he watched for two weeks to learn how a truck with explosives might be driven inside. He was also ordered to assess whether it would be better to attack a particular Carabi-nieri station in Milan or the city’s police headquarters. To study the former, he picked a fight with the doorman of a nearby building, then called the Carabinieri emergency number and asked for help. The Carabinieri took him to their station to make a statement, which gave him the chance to see how cars were admitted to the central courtyard, where floor upon floor of offices stood exposed. He decided that although the target was tempting, the turn into the courtyard was too tight for a car bomber to get up enough speed to ram his way in. The police headquarters, on the other hand, sat on a street well suited for bombing. On another assignment, he was sent to a disco to see if he could enter with a
“Do you see this?” the police heard an instructor of sorts lecture his terrorist pupils in Milan. He was holding up a mobile phone. “This was created by an enemy of God. You can’t imagine how many operations this has made fail and how many arrests it has caused. . . . It’s nice. You can use it to communicate. It’s fast. But it causes you huge problems. They created it, and they know how to intercept it.”
Increasingly the terrorists avoided phones, and when they had to use them they tended to divulge little and to prefer either pay phones or mobile phones that they could discard after a few calls. Sometimes they communicated via e-mail or instant-messaging Web sites in short, coded phrases. To minimize the number of times their e-mails bounced from server to server (each bounce giving eavesdropping agencies a chance to intercept them), a terrorist might save a message in the draft folder of an online e-mail account, which terrorists elsewhere would check. After reading the drafts, they would delete them, then save their own drafts of reply. The system was an advance on the traditional dead drop, in which spies left messages for one another in the hollows of trees or niches of buildings. If the terrorists needed to speak in person, the smarter ones took a walk in a wide park or sat on the back of a bus with a roaring engine. On the sidewalk, they stopped abruptly to let potential tails pass them by or dropped scraps of paper while hidden comrades watched to see if anyone picked them up. If a meeting was in progress at a safe house, a lookout might loiter among the hangabouts in a kebab shop or pace the street hawking cheap umbrellas. To indicate to meeting-goers that a building was not under surveillance, a towel might be hung out a window or a shade half drawn. Some of the terrorists had learned their tradecraft, as spies call their techniques, from jihad manuals, while others had learned in the training camps of Afghanistan or Bosnia or from veterans of those camps. Austere experience had also taught veterans to reduce life to what was strictly necessary for the cause. Their apartments often had neither chairs nor tables, they slept on prayer mats or bare mattresses, they did not dress their walls or equip their kitchens, and they had no books, save the book. They were the heirs of Sparta not Athens.
Their work continued and extended Shaaban’s. They falsified documents, recruited and sent warriors to training camps, and laundered millions of euros. In the home of one abettor of terrorism, police found € 200,000 in cash. The terrorists of Milan did not seem primarily interested in attacking Italy or even Western Europe, but there were exceptions. A young Tunisian later told police that the leaders of his cell had him scout half a dozen potential targets in Italy. One was a U.S. military barracks in Mondra-gone, near Naples, which he watched for two weeks to learn how a truck with explosives might be driven inside. He was also ordered to assess whether it would be better to attack a particular Carabi-nieri station in Milan or the city’s police headquarters. To study the former, he picked a fight with the doorman of a nearby building, then called the Carabinieri emergency number and asked for help. The Carabinieri took him to their station to make a statement, which gave him the chance to see how cars were admitted to the central courtyard, where floor upon floor of offices stood exposed. He decided that although the target was tempting, the turn into the courtyard was too tight for a car bomber to get up enough speed to ram his way in. The police headquarters, on the other hand, sat on a street well suited for bombing. On another assignment, he was sent to a disco to see if he could enter with a
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