Bin Laden's network, Asia's groups
not a good fit, ex-intelligence officer says
By Jim Lea, Stars and
Stripes
If reports that Osama bin Laden or his followers were in Japan before
the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States are true, it was to target U.S. military bases,
a former Air Force intelligence officer said.
While bin Laden has operatives in several Pacific and Southeast Asia
nations, it’s unlikely he or other Islamic terrorist groups have connections in North
Korea, said Dewey Brackett.
Bin Laden also apparently has no ties to the remnants of the Japanese
cult Aum Shinrikyo, which unleashed a deadly sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway in 1995,
said Brackett, author of “Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo,” a book on the
attack.
“Aum Shinrikyo was a bunch of crackpots who claimed to be
religion-based, but were not,” Brackett said. “Tying up with the remnants of Aum
would be a danger to bin Laden, and he just wouldn’t do that.”
“What these groups do when they’re planning attacks is
select several targets, then decide which will be the most effective in furthering their
aims,” he said.
There were reports that bin Laden followers entered Japan before the
Sept. 11 attacks. Brackett said there also are rumors in the intelligence community that
bin Laden entered the country earlier.
The rumors “could be a campaign of misinformation to hide their
true intent,” Brackett said.
Brackett, who also lectures on terrorist groups, helped set up the
first counterintelligence course for the Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field,
Fla. He also served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines
during his Air Force career.
Brackett said that it’s “highly unlikely” bin Laden
has ties to North Korea.
“That’s the world’s last surviving communist state,
and the Islamic terrorist groups are anti-communist,” he said. “It’s a very
remote place and, besides, one must ask ‘what’s in a tie-up for North
Korea?’” North Korean leader Kim Jong Il “has nothing to gain from being
linked to Islamic terrorists.”
North Korea is on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Pyongyang is trying to be removed from the list so economic sanctions against North Korea
will be removed.
But, Brackett added, bin Laden does have operatives in the
Philippines, Malaysia, southern Thailand and Indonesia as well as the Middle East, Europe
and Africa.
Getting into nearly any country was easy for terrorists before the
U.S. attacks, he said. “They have money and access to all the documents they need.
“If they went directly to a destination from someplace where
terrorists are known to be based, it might raise some eyebrows” among immigration
inspectors, he said. “But if they traveled by a circuitous route, moving from country
to country, then heading to their intended destination from someplace like Germany or
France using forged documents, they’d probably get through.”
If the U.S. administration and its allies are successful in capturing
or killing bin Laden, he said, “New York and Washington were only the beginning of
our problems. While we think of him only as an evil man, many Muslims in the world look at
him as a patriot.
“They look at him as though he’s Robin Hood. Our asking the
Taliban to hand him over is like asking people to turn Robin Hood over to the Sheriff of
Nottingham.”
Brackett said he believes there won’t be any more aircraft
hijackings, at least for awhile. “Security at airports around the world has been
upgraded so incredibly that it would be extremely difficult to get any suspected
terrorists through now.”
The next attacks could be aimed at the U.S. communications or power
sectors, and they could be more horrific than New York and Washington, Brackett said.
“Eventually, they’re going to turn to chemical and
biological weapons. Those things aren’t easy to make, but we know [Iraqi leader]
Saddam [Hussein] used sarin against the Kurds. Saddam is friendly with bin Laden.
“...Those things are out there,” he said. “We look at
5,000 people being killed in New York as astounding. The deaths from anthrax, smallpox or
sarin would be many times that.”
Brackett said there has been a change in terrorist philosophy over
recent years. “Before, they were political, and the incidents they caused were done
just to make a statement. Now, the basis is religion. Bin Laden and people like him are
devout, fundamentalist Muslims. They don’t like us. They don’t like our
lifestyle and they don’t like our support for Israel.
“Now, they’re out for revenge,” he said.
While the Quran teaches that innocent people should not be killed,
“the Quran, like the Bible, is open to interpretation,” he said. “Now they
believe they’re cleansing the world.”
Naoko Sekioka contributed to this report.
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