The Double Intelligence Miss in Times Square
More Terrorist Attacks Expected in American Cities
The failed attempt to blow up a car bomb in Times Square at the heart of Manhattan, New York, Saturday night May 1 was the fourth time in seven months that America’s intelligence and security agencies had missed thwarting a terrorist operation.
It also represented an operational and intelligence breakthrough for the Pakistan-based Al Qaeda-Taliban terror machinery in its first moves to terrorize the United States on American soil.
On November 5, 2009, U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 US military and security personnel and wounded another 30 at the world’s largest military base, Fort Hood.
That was the first miss. US Army and intelligence authorities knew all about the major’s radicalization, his contacts with al Qaeda in Yemen and the plan he was entrusted with for a jihadi operation inside the United States, but nothing was done to stop him carrying it out.
A month later, on Christmas Day, the 24-year-old Nigerian, Umar Abdul Mutallab, tried and failed to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear as his Northwest Airlines Flight 253 came in to land at Detroit, Michigan.
Mutallab’s journey started in Somalia. He collected the explosives in Yemen. From there, he flew to Accra, Ghana, connecting to Lagos international airport in Nigeria and on to Amsterdam, where he boarded the US-bound flight.
Although the US embassy at Lagos had been alerted, Abdul Mutallab waltzed through the full array of security and intelligence checkpoints positioned at the airports he passed on three continents. Like in Time Square, it was only the malfunctioning of the detonator he carried which averted a major calamity.
From failed Xmas bombing to assassination of CIA agents
Five days after that near-miss, on December 30, 2009, the Jordanian physician Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a double agent acting for the CIA and serving the Pakistani Taliban, showed his true colors too late by blowing himself up among a group of senior Central Agency operatives stationed in Afghanistan when they met at their Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost – Eastern Afghanistan. Seven elite American agents and a Jordanian officer were killed.
The American agents neglected to take the must rudimentary precautions necessary when interviewing a double agent. The result was the deadliest attack the CIA had suffered in a quarter of a century.
Again, like the Time Square incident, the Khost attack could have been foreseen and forestalled, because the writing was on the wall, or rather, its virtual version was – on the Internet.
Fifteen months earlier, on March 28, 2009, Baitullah Mehsud, at 35, supreme commander of Taliban- Pakistan (Tehrik-i-Taliban – TTP), gave interviews to Pakistani news outlets and international wire services claiming credit for a string of terrorist attacks – one in Lahore, in which 30 police recruits were killed, and suicide bombings against security forces in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Bannu.
Mehsud said these attacks were the Taliban’s revenge for the US drone strikes in the tribal areas of Waziristan, adding to an AFP interviewer: “There will be more such attacks, including strikes inside the US. Very soon we will take revenge from America, not only in Afghanistan but in Washington, which will amaze the entire world.”
Pakistani Taliban dismissed as having no global interests
Almost two months later, 13 months before the attempted attack in Times Square, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 396 of May 15, 2009, wrote under the heading: Taliban Spreads its Wings outside Afghan-Pakistan Theater:
In the view of DEBKA-Net-Weekly counter-terrorism sources, a secret directive from Osama bin Laden to start training groups of Taliban fighters, under the supervision of (Ayman) Zawahiri, for operations in countries outside Afghanistan and Pakistan, has only recently come to light.
At the time, American security sources said they knew of no such Taliban capability.
But some weeks later, US and Western security elements involved in the undercover war on al Qaeda and its offshoots, discovered that around February and March, bin Laden’s instructors had begun running courses for small elite Taliban groups to operate in countries outside their home terrain of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
They were being drilled for the same sort of massive attacks as Lashkar e-Taibe carried out in Mumbai, India, last November, in which 166 people were killed.
The Western intelligence working hypothesis, that Taliban was a local movement with no interest in al Qaeda’s global offensive, no longer holds true, said our sources. The fanatical rulers of Afghanistan, which the US-led anti-terror offensive ousted in 2001, today pose a major menace to Pakistan and are branching out as a senior partner in al Qaeda’s international jihad.
Washington initially rejected this development and said there was no evidence of any Taliban capability for carrying out attacks inside the United States.
Crossing the Atlantic from Barcelona
But they had conveniently forgotten at least one instance of the TTP’s proven covert capabilities in West Europe.
On Jan. 19, 2008, twelve of its operatives were arrested in Barcelona, Spain for conspiring to blow up the city’s subway system. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the time: “The Barcelona cell appears to have ties to a terrorist training network run by Baitullah Mehsud.”
So why were American security authorities now so resistant to the proposition that, in the intervening two years, the Pakistani Taliban had taken the next step and crossed the Atlantic?
As for Baitulllah Mehsud, he was killed by a CIA drone at his South Waziristan stronghold in South Waziristan on August 5, 2009, only to be succeeded as commander of the Taliban in Pakistan by his son Hakimullah Mehsud.
Months went by and another US drone then went for Hakimullah, striking a compound in the Shaktoi district where he was thought to be spending the night in the early hours of January 14, 2010. The agency sought revenge for the murder of seven CIA agents two weeks earlier, under the orders of the new TTP chief.
Pakistan’ military intelligence, the Inter-Service Intelligence Agency reported him dead, but the Americans were not so sure.
One US intelligence official stated, “We’ve seen no evidence he was killed, nor do we hear chatter of a leadership crisis in the Taliban ranks.” The New York Times reported nonetheless that US intelligence was 90% certain the new TTP leader was dead and, in late February and early March, US intelligence sources came around to accepting his death and replacement with a successor.
But they were wrong.
Taliban claims taken with a grain of salt
Four weeks ago, in early April, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s counterterrorism sources report, the targeted Haikimullah Mehsed began showing signs of life and not only that, he was reported deep in preparations for punishing the Americans for trying to kill him.
From that point on, the road ran in a straight line to US counter-intelligence failure No. 4, the car bomb in Times Square, about which the TTP chief left no room for speculation.
On April 4, the Tehrik-i-Taliban recorded Hakimullah saying: “God willing, very soon in some days or a month’s time, the Muslim (community) will see the fruits of the most successful attacks of our fedayeen in the USA. The main targets of our fedayeen are American cities. This good news will be heard within some days or weeks. Inshallah we are successful!”
This tape was not brought to the attention of the American or Western public at the time. So deep was US intelligence in denial of the Taliban’s capacity for striking on American soil, that they did not listen when its top commander gave them advance notice of a terrorist operation, a piece of bravado never dared even by its partner, al Qaeda.
The claim of “full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA” by Qari Hussain Mehsud, Taliban’s top bomb-maker, was harder to ignore after it was aired 24 hours before the smoking bomb appeared on Times Square on an audiotape accompanied by images released on April 30, on a YouTube website called the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.
And still, US intelligence sources advised taking the Taliban connection to the incident with a grain of salt.
US intelligence needs to urgently reassess Taliban’s capabilities
That was two own goals against American intelligence bodies, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s counter-terror sources.
It was luck rather than any branch of US anti-terror intelligence which saved the bustling center of New York from potential disaster. Their official stubborn adherence to a misconception made them deaf to the advance warnings the Taliban posted on April 4 and April 30, a failure even greater than the lapse which permitted the Nigerian extremist to come dangerously close to blowing up an American airliner last Christmas.
But it is not yet over. Our counterterrorism experts note that on both tapes, TTP leaders warned clearly that the Manhattan car bomb was not a one-off, but one of a series of attacks in American cities. The Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad‘s capture Tuesday, May 4, at JFK airport, where he was taken off a flight to Dubai just before take-off, did not nullify the Taliban threat and may even have heightened it.
It is only a matter of time now until other cells or networks planted by Hakimullah Mehsud in America are activated to continue his mission of jihad and vengeance. The captured suspect’s claim to his interrogators that he acted alone means nothing because that is what all Taliban operatives are instructed to say if apprehended.
The Times Square bomb, even though it failed to detonate, makes Hakimullah Mehsud the most dangerous radical Muslim to emerge on the international terror stage since Osama bin Laden staged the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.
This youthful (31), charismatic and dynamic terrorist chief, with his aptitude for tactical thinking and first-rate intelligence resources at his command, is a cut above most commanders of al Qaeda’s offshoots, franchises and related groups.
Hakimullah’s feats against Western intelligence and counter-terror agencies are adding up and it would repay them to take him a lot more seriously.
America’s stake in the forthcoming US-led Kandahar offensive in June has shot up since a smoking bomb car was discovered off Broadway, New York, Saturday, May 1.
Little did President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and their strategists imagine – when they put the finishing touches on their new military strategy and surge plan for Afghanistan in December 2009 – that they would have to reckon with Pakistani Taliban terrorists fighting back inside American cities. Now, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s source, they must decide whether to bring the offensive on the key southern Afghan city and Taliban stronghold forward from its June date, or postpone it.
(See DNW 443 of April 30: Afghanistan Veers out of Control – When Do US-Taliban Endgame Talks Begin?)
Before sending US Marines to fight for Kandahar, the war planners in Washington must determine how many terrorists Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullahh Mehsud is holding ready to strike US targets in Afghanistan and activate in America.
The young terror chief, faithful to the plan conceived by his late father, Baitullah Mehsud – before he was killed by a US drone – is in the process of widening the Afghanistan War, first bringing Pakistani cities into its orbit, then major urban centers in the United States.
The assembled explosive device left in a parked SUV on Times Square proved he means business.
Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said in a videotape aired 24 hours earlier on Friday, April 30, that operations were afoot to strike a “jaw-breaking blow to Satan USA.” His boss, Hakimullah, referred to suicide bombers in the speech he taped on April 4.
Will Obama rethink his Afghan War strategy?
As president of the United States, Barack Obama faces a new challenge not experienced by his predecessor. During the five years (from 2003 to 2008) in which George W. Bush waged war against al Qaeda in Iraq, he was confident that the conflict was bound by Iraq’s borders, albeit with logistical support from Syria, and never threatened to spill over into the United States.
Under the Obama administration, however, the Afghanistan War is taking a devastating toll on Pakistan and, for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, Taliban’s arm has grown long enough to reach inside America. Whatever strategy he may opt for in the multiple Afghan war arenas, the US president must know that this peril is here to stay, even though tactical scenarios may vary.
Should Taliban leaders Omar Mullah and Hakimullah Mehsud find themselves with their backs to the wall in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they may respond by stepping up the TTP’s terrorist offensive in the United States. But the opposite prospect may have the same result: The longer the Taliban can sustain the war stalemate, like the standoff in the southern Afghan town of Marjah in Helmand province, and the broader their areas of control in the two countries, the greater their appetite may be for disseminating death and destruction inside America.
Whichever scenario plays out, our Washington and counter-terror sources stress that the Taliban can bring terror to American with very modest, easily obtainable, resources – as President Obama and Hakimullah Mehsud both appreciate. Three or four “successful” suicide attacks or bombings in the heart of major American cities would suffice to turn the tide of popularity against the president, especially now that more than half the American public figures that the Afghanistan War is no longer winnable.
Can the CIA match the Taliban’s international spread?
The president also recognizes that the Pakistani Taliban and Hakimullah are more than America’s match in the intelligence war on terror. While US undercover services can keep track of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, they know nothing about the scale of TTP infiltration in the United States.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report that the May 1 near-disaster on Times Square found US undercover agencies more or less on top of the tasks of weeding out lone wolf terrorists trying to enter the United States. But they have never been programmed to contend with an encroaching terrorist organization, one that is backed from afar by an irregular army organization with a logistics system based in two war-torn countries, i.e. Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On Monday, April 26, five days before the sputtering car bomb turned up in Manhattan, Central Intelligence Director Leon Panetta announced his organization would be spending many millions of dollars in the coming five years to improve intelligence-gathering, upgrade technologies and bring analysts closer to spies in the field. The plan renewed the agency’s year-old goal to increase the number of analysts and overseas operatives fluent in another language – the lack of which impaired the performance of military and civilian intelligence officers in the Afghanistan and Iraq arenas.
However, this plan had to be shredded before it left Panetta’s desk.
The CIA is rushed off its feet, with little time to spare for recruiting all these case officers. It has its hands full with the war against Taliban and the attempts of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to spirit terrorists into the United States. Panetta will have to spread thin the inadequate pools of professional operatives working in the Afghanistan, Pakistani and Iraqi war arenas; one part must be diverted to surveillance of international transport routes to and from the United States from the Middle East, Europe and Asia; another used as back-up for extended FBI monitoring of ex-Pakistani communities in America.
Painful adjustments for Obama and the CIA
To perform these tasks effectively, the US intelligence community must radically rethink its evaluation of the Taliban and its global capabilities, acknowledging that its refusal to recognize these capabilities came close to letting Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad escape. He was pulled off a jet bound for Dubai in the nick of time, only because some members of that community were not blinded by the ruling misconception.
His new homeland war-front also obliges President Obama to review his policy toward Islamabad.
If until now, US-Pakistani cooperation in military and intelligence matters was, at best, limited and shot through with mistrust – particularly on the part of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI – Washington must now ask itself how much genuine cooperation can be expected from Islamabad in a showdown with Pakistani Taliban elements plotting terrorist attacks in America.
Outwardly, the Pakistanis are falling over themselves to help in the American investigation. But when it comes to the crunch, the US may find closed doors in Islamabad, as Britain did after British Muslims of Pakistani descent plotted a string of terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow. It was then that the UK government found practical Pakistani cooperation dwindling sharply, with no chance of permission for British agents to infiltrate Taliban strongholds.
In his first comment after Faisal Shahzad was arrested in connection with the Times Square bomb car, President Barack Obama said Tuesday, May 4: “The American people can be assured that the FBI and their partners in this process have all the tools and experience they need to learn everything we can. That includes what, if any, connection this individual has to terrorist groups. And it includes collecting critical intelligence as we work to disrupt any future attacks.”
This reassurance was timely, but his remark, “That includes what, if any, connection this individual has to terrorist groups,” was odd, considering that Shahzad had admitted to his interrogators that he had trained in bomb-making at camps in Waziristan, the Taliban’s home base.
Was President Obama choosing his words to cover himself against any future discovery that the suspect had past ties with American intelligence before working for Taliban? Or, even worse for his purpose, was Shahzad a double agent who went bad? If so, he would have been the third Muslim double agent recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Taliban or Al Qaeda ranks – only to betray his American handlers.
The first such double agent was an American, David Coleman Headley of Chicago, original Pakistani name Daood Gilani, whom US intelligence recruited to infiltrate Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Qaeda’s special operations branch in Pakistan. He was soon employed as the terrorists’ operations scout and planner of attacks in the United States, India and Denmark. His work on their behalf during 2007 made Headley a key accomplice in the massive terrorist siege of Mumbai in November 2008, in which 166 people died, including all but one of the perpetrators, and hundreds were wounded.
(Thursday, May 6, an Indian court sentenced the only surviving gunman Mohammed Ajmal Kasab to death by hanging)
At least two CIA double agents crossed the lines
Even after his part in the Mumbai outrage was discovered, US intelligence let him return to India four months later in March 2009, hoping he would keep faith and bring back an inside view of Pakistani terrorist activity. But Headley used his freedom to revert to his former services to the L-e-T, selecting targets for their attacks, performing advance reconnaissance, plotting the terrorists’ getaway routes and arranging for weapons hideouts close to target.
In October 2009, his American handlers, for reasons not fully known, put a stop to Headley’s run as a double agent and arrested him.
The next double agent to turn coat not only betrayed his American handlers, but murdered them. The Jordanian doctor Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was drafted as an undercover line into the inner workings of Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. On Dec. 30, 2009, Balawi set up a rendezvous with top CIA personnel at their base near Khost and blew himself up killing seven American agents. (See the first item in this issue).
If Faisal Shahzad proves to be the third American agent in two years to have crossed the lines and worked for Al Qaeda and Taliban, the CIA will have suffered extreme damage on a scale that recalls their unfortunate duels with the Russian KGB and GRU military intelligence in the ’80s and ’90s.
Some DEBKA-Net-Weekly intelligence and counterterrorism sources in the West and the Middle East have begun considering this theory, drawing on an number of possible clues:
Did Shahzad fake the bombing incident?
One: Why did Faisal Shahzad blaze a wide trail leading to himself before parking the SUV, packed with gasoline, propane, fertilizer and fireworks, on Times Square? His purchase of a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder for $1,300 on April 24 through an ad on eBay was quickly discovered. And why did he neglect to hide himself and the bomb vehicle from the security cameras studding the area, before abandoning it off Broadway?
In fact, he made every effort to attract attention: He parked in a no-parking zone, switched the flashers on, clumsily hid the original identification number on the engine block, and left a bunch of keys in the ignition which included the key to his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut and his white Isuzi Trooper. Finally, he changed his shirt in plain view of the security cameras, right after getting out of the car and leaving it smoking, where it was bound to catch someone’s notice very soon.
No terrorist would act like this in a major operation unless he wanted to be caught.
On the other hand, there may have been reason in his rhyme.
For instance:
1. If he was indeed a double agent loyal to US intelligence, he may not have seriously intended to cause an explosion, but only to rig it so that it would be discovered before it went off and caused untold harm. He needed the ensuing worldwide publicity to convince his Taliban handlers thousands of miles away of his bona fides. The more they trusted him, the deeper he would be able to burrow inside their upper echelons and serve his US intelligence controllers. His deliberately amateurish assembly of the device may have been part of this plan. Or –
2. Faisal meant to go through with a real bombing attack in the heart of New York, but wanted his American handlers, the CIA or the FBI, to identify him as the culprit, and so perform a double service for his real masters, the Taliban – to kill a great many Americans and to show he could outwit US intelligence on their behalf.
Why did Shahzad not head straight for the nearest airport?
Two: Instead of heading straight to the airport and boarding the first plane flying out of New York well ahead of the hue and cry – or departing the city by some other means – Shahzad felt confident enough to go home first and stay there until Monday night, May 3, when he drove in another car to JFK and bought a ticket to Pakistan via Dubai for cash.
So why didn’t the New York police and federal security personnel, who had his home under surveillance from Sunday night, arrest him there and then?
And why, seven hours after being red-flagged on the no-fly list, was he was still allowed Monday afternoon to pack at leisure, leave the house, drive to the airport, undergo security checks and board Emirates Flight 202 bound for Dubai? Were it not for an alert Customs and Border Protection clerk, who noted his name had been added to the no-fly list when the Emirates plane with Shahzad aboard was already taxiing away from the gate, Shahzad would have got clean away.
Was his near-escape due to major security holes in airport security? That’s hard to buy. After all, he was not just a regular passenger whom no one suspected, but a person who had been under heavy federal surveillance for twelve hours.
In the 53 hours and 20 minutes between the bomb car’s discovery and Shahzad’s arrest, could the several hours’ break in physical surveillance be explained by negotiations of an unknown nature going on between him and US investigators?
After claiming credit for NY car bomb, Taliban spokesman calls it a US plot
Three: Shahzad’s putative association with US intelligence may go back twelve or thirteen years. He first arrived in America aged 18, after growing up in Peshawar and Karachi as the privileged son of a Pakistani air vice marshal who retired in the 1990s.
Young Shahzad appears to have attended a university program in Pakistan that was affiliated with the University of Bridgeport, from 1997. He also attended a program in Karachi affiliated with Southeastern University, a private, nonprofit school in Washington that shut down last year after losing its accreditation.
In 2000, he enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, where he received a bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering and an MBA.
In January 2002, the authorities said, Shahzad got an H1-B visa for skilled workers. He then married an American citizen named Huma Mian, and in January 2006, was granted a green card.
A year ago, on April 17, he became a naturalized US citizen at a ceremony before a federal magistrate in Bridgeport. His wife and two children meanwhile left for Pakistan.
During all those years, he traveled back and forth between the United States and Pakistan, saying he was visiting his family. He used three passports, one American and two Pakistani documents in his possession. His last trip to his homeland was in February, when he admitted he had undergone bomb-making training in Waziristan, the tribal area which is home to Taliban strongholds.
Four: Finally, Thursday, May 6, after Taliban chiefs had claimed credit for the Time Square incident, the Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq, suddenly came forward to deny that Faisal Shahzad was “part of our network” while praising his action as a “noble deed.”
Tariq said that the failed Times Square car bombing was a plot “hatched by the US and its allies to trap Muslim and Pushtun youth in terrorist activities” – a hint that Shahzad had been recruited to set this trap.
The Taliban spokesman vowed “new zeal and style” in attacks to be launched against the US and its allies.
Activists, he said, had been sent to the United States and European countries to launch further attacks soon.
On Wednesday, May 5, Iran launched its biggest ever naval and military war exercise, calling it “Great Prophet” or “Judgment Day.” The drill under the command of the Iranian Navy commander, Rear Admiral, will last eight days and cover a quarter of a million square kilometers – from the big Iranian naval base of Chah Bahar in the Arabian Sea near Pakistan, to the Gulf of Aden and the shores of Somalia in the West, and the Red Sea straits off Yemen northwest of Iran.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian and military sources reveal that the war games have five principal goals, which Tehran has not published:
- As a demonstration to US, Gulf and Israeli governments that Iran has solved all the military issues besetting its shores in a potential war. Tehran aims to show its forces are capable of seizing control of the Persian Gulf and repelling or neutralizing all the military forces and fleets present there, including the US Fifth Fleet and its command headquarters in Bahrain.
- As a warning to the West and its Arab neighbors that, if war breaks out, Iran will seize command of all the oil export routes out of the Gulf, primarily the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Aden.
- As a corollary to the naval drill last week, which Tehran saw as having aptly demonstrated the first two objectives, Iran is now moving on to the main stage of the new “Great Prophet” maneuver, the seizure of parts of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden by its naval and air forces.
For the first time in its contemporary history, Iran is flexing muscle to assert its dominance of the northern reaches of this ocean. An official spokesman made it clear Wednesday, May 5, that the war games would be conducted in the Sea of Oman and “all the strategic waterways connecting it to the Persian Gulf.”
Practices for breaching a naval blockade against Iran -
Iranian strategists believe that control of a large segment of the Indian Ocean and passageways to the Red Sea will not only enable Iran to cut American Persian Gulf units from their sources of supplies and reinforcements, but also isolate the huge American Camp Justice base complex on Diego Garcia and make it vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
(See DNW 443 of April 30: “Work at feverish pace to prepare logistic base on Diego Garcia.)
The first two days of the maneuver (Wednesday and Thursday, May 5-6), were devoted to drilling the breaching and breaking of a naval blockade potentially thrown up by the United States when sanctions fail to have any effect and backed by allied British, French, Italian and German fleets.
Iranian leaders are plainly bracing for their relations with Washington to continue to deteriorate up to and including an eventual military showdown.
This line of thinking colored the remarks of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday, May 4, in New York, when he warned that more UN sanctions would not stop Iran’s nuclear program but permanently wreck its relations with the United States.
“Relations with the United States might never be repaired if new sanctions were imposed against us,” the Iranian president said.
To underscore the weight of its military options against the United States, the Islamic Republic has invested the bulk of its might in the Judgment Day war game – most of its marines, special operations units and commandos, almost all its warships, submarines and air force and an array of new weaponry for dazzling potential enemies.
Western military observers monitoring the maneuver were surprised to find Iran’s borders almost stripped suddenly of their regular guard units; they had been diverted to the Persian Gulf maneuvers far from home, along with the bulk of Iran’s armed forces.
The Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has finally decided not to run in the 2011 presidential election. He has begun handing the reins of government over to his son and anointed successor, Gemal (Jimmy) Mubarak, 52.
(See DNW 437 of March 19: Mubarak has Cancer, Presidential Powers are in the Process of Transfer).
Gemal Mubarak, who officiates as General Secretary of the ruling NPD’s Policy Committee, has taken charge of day-to-day presidential business, while Mubarak Sr. retains key foreign policy and security affairs – though not for much longer.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Western intelligence sources in Cairo report that the president is weak in health after undergoing major surgery in Germany in early March. In the process of removing his gallbladder, cancerous cells were discovered in his stomach. The German doctors told Mubarak that, at his age, these cells are not overly aggressive and the disease is treatable in a way that allows him to carry on a normal lifestyle for an unknown period of time in the hope that the disease does not metastasize and spread to other parts of the body.
But a “normal life-style” depends on his retirement from presidential duties and enjoying complete rest. The doctors warned him that the strains of the presidency could stimulate the cancerous cells and make them more aggressive.
Most Middle East visitors who saw him in the last few days described him as looking frail. He moves very slowly with great effort and has just had a hearing aid fitted after partially losing his hearing. Most of his time since the operation, Mubarak spends at the presidential retreat at Sharm el Sheikh in southern Sinai. The speech he delivered in Cairo Thursday, May 6, was his first appearance in the capital since he returned from Germany on March 17 and he appeared in public to calm rumors about his failing health.
Washington snubs ElBaradei’s bid for the presidency
A few hours later, he was back in Sharm. There, he is attended by personal aides who help him keep the presidential bureau functioning and ministers, bureaucrats and officials at arm’s length.
The president’s reclusiveness and absence from the capital is causing political unrest in Cairo.
Monday, May 3, Egyptian police beat up anti-government protesters out on the streets to demand an end to the country’s 30-year emergency laws restricting civil liberties. Several hundred black-uniformed riot policemen pushed back about 150 protesters who tried to break through a security barrier in downtown Cairo. Police using night sticks set about members of the pro-reform youth April 6 movement, which backs the unofficial candidacy of former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed El Baradei, starting a major scuffle.
El Baradei’s supporters organized the protest to try to cover for the failure of their leader’s mission to Washington last week.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Washington, he asked to meet Obama administration officials to try and to persuade them to back his campaign to amend the Egyptian constitution before next year’s presidential election in order for him to stand as a candidate.
But all he found in Washington was closed doors.
They were shut by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Jim Jones in an unusual, well-orchestrated move against a once towering international figure.
El Baradei had to make do with an appearance before an audience of Egyptian academics at American universities, who gathered to hear him speak at Harvard University.
By brushing off ElBaradei and his ambitious bid to enter Egyptian politics as a presidential candidate, the Obama administration signaled the ruling echelons in Egypt that Washington fully backed Jimmy Mubarak as his ailing father’s successor.
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