Stardate 20021114.1450

(On Screen): Several readers have written to point me to an article referenced by Charles Johnson which presents an interview with an "allegedly" high-ranking member of al Qaeda, who proceeds to make all kinds of grandiose claims about the state of that organization and the threat it represents to the US.

Among other startling claims, are these:

• They have 5,000 "first rank" operatives around the world, 500 of which are in the US. (A "first rank" operative is claimed to have been living in the US for more than 10 years, who is primed and waiting for orders before launching various kinds of attacks. The implication is that normal ways of looking for hostiles would not detect such an operative.)
• They have already smuggled 7 nuclear warheads into the US and have prepositioned them inside the seven largest US cities. The warheads are ex-Soviet ones obtained on the black market at a price of about $200 million each, which al Qaeda was able to raise because of the strong network of donors it has.
• Some of their sponsors are European nations who are consciously and actively supporting them because they hope that the US will be destroyed.

I'm afraid I'm totally skeptical about any of this. First, it looks a bit as if someone is tossing around buzzwords without fully understanding what they mean. For example, the article says:

Al-Usuquf says that the bombs were bought on the black market: five from the former USSR and two from Pakistan. The five Russian heads "are from T-3 missiles, also known as RD-107, and their power is around 100 kilotons each, that is five times the Hiroshima bomb. The Pakistani ones are less powerful, something around 10 kilotons each."

Actually, the RD-107 was a rocket engine developed in the 1950's. It isn't a missile or a warhead. (This kind of lapse is reminiscent of the pictures of Bert appearing in protest banners featuring bin Laden.)

As to the reference to "T-3 missiles" I can find no evidence that any such thing has ever existed. The Federation of American Scientists has a series of pages which list all past and present Soviet missiles and it doesn't mention any such thing. In fact, there isn't a T-anything; that's not the way they're designated, by the Soviets, the Russians, the Europeans, the Americans or anyone else.

The FAS used to have a page which listed the bombs themselves, giving things like yield and technology but it's not online any more and I can't seem to find anything like that anywhere else. (Here, for example, is an equivalent list of American weapons.) So while I can't conclusively prove that "T-3" is not a designation for a Russian or Soviet nuclear warhead, I do think that it is not, since googling for it turns up nothing useful.

But that's not the main reason I'm skeptical about this. If they actually had the kind of organization and weapons in place that they claim, or even anything remotely resembling it, then they would already be making attacks against us. Given the barbarism of the attack of September 11, 2001, it's really difficult to believe that if they actually did have seven nukes preplaced in American cities that they would not have actually set at least one of them off by now. If they really did have 500 "first class" operatives in the US primed to make attacks, you'd think that 40 or 50 of them would have actually moved.

Why, with all this massive force ready to go, didn't they retaliate for our direct attacks on al Qaeda in Afghanistan? When we were destroying the core of their organization, and killing or capturing hundreds or thousands of their supporters through bombing and ground combat, and kicking them out of their best safe haven and destroying the facilities they had there? When we were actively hunting them in the mountains, and bombing their caves?

Where were they in the weeks following the original attack last year? Where were they on September 11, 2002? Where were they when the UN passed the anti-Iraq resolution? Where have the retaliations been for each and every thing we've done which has been counter to their political goals?

Why did they even bother with hijacking commercial aircraft last year, if they had a force like this?

Why have we seen no attacks at all? It's impossible to believe that if al Qaeda actually had the capabilities described here that they would not have used at least some of them by now. Instead, what we've been getting is pathetic cases like Richard Reid (the shoe bomber).

The closest thing we've actually seen since the beginning of the war to the kind of thing this organization might do was the shootings in Washington, DC; and even that turned out to be the work of an isolated villain. John Muhammad spontaneously caused more terror in the US than al Qaeda as an organization has managed over the last 12 months. There are a lot of very easy things such operatives could do, requiring negligible resources, which would cause havoc in this country and none of it has happened. (And no, I have no intention of going into details. I do not want to give anyone ideas.)

All I can conclude is that this is just talk. Talk is cheap. Anyone can describe a huge and dangerous organization, and for a lot of the last year various people who have claimed to represent al Qaeda have been making various grandiose claims about how the organization was strong and powerful and how it was going to massively retaliate against us Real Soon Now. But look at all the real and symbolic dates which have passed by without any action by them; why would they wait?

I do not for a moment claim that all the danger has been dissipated and that we can ignore al Qaeda completely. There can be no doubt that eventually they're going to make another attempt at us. But I do not find the claims made by this person even slightly plausible, and I am not worried about the possibility of seven pre-placed nukes in our cities. We may in future be threatened by nukes, but these particular ones are smoke and mirrors, the result of grand lies by someone hoping to scare the crap out of Americans and to reignite support amongst the Arabs and Muslims for an organization which was deeply crippled by last year's war in Afghanistan and by the shadow war around the world since then.

Given that San Diego would likely be one of the seven targets they would choose if they actually had such a capability (and Los Angeles certainly would be) , I will pay the price if I'm wrong, because I have no intention of changing my lifestyle in any way in response to this article.

In the classic movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly the character Tuco says at one point, "If you're going to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." Restraint is not a notable trait of al Qaeda; if they could shoot they'd be shooting. As long as they're talking, it's probably because they're out of ammunition.