[I don't have a URL to a free version of this article. --Declan] --- PC apparently used by al-Qaida leaders reveals details of four years of terrorism By Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins THE WALL STREET JOURNAL KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 31 — Last May, someone sat down at an IBM desktop here and typed out a polite letter to a bitter foe of al-Qaida, the anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. The writer tapped at the computer for 97 minutes, according to its internal record, then printed out the fruit of his labor: a request for an interview with Massoud, to be conducted by "one of our best journalists, Mr. Karim Touzani." ON SEPT. 9, two men posing as journalists, one carrying a passport in the name of Karim Touzani, detonated a hidden bomb as they interviewed Massoud. The legendary Afghan commander was mortally wounded. Two days later came the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Now, as al-Qaida, the group blamed for all of those lethal attacks, is uprooted from its Afghan sanctuaries, it is leaving behind cyber-fingerprints. The letter to Massoud is one of hundreds of text documents and video files in a computer evidently used for four years by al-Qaida chieftains in Kabul. Its hard drive is a repository for correspondence with militant Muslims around the world, portraying al-Qaida bosses struggling to administer, inspire and discipline the sprawling global organization. Dating from early 1997 through this fall, the files paint a picture of both ghoulish ambitions and quotidian frustrations within an organization that, despite its medieval zealotry, sometimes mimicked a multinational corporation. Memos refer to al-Qaida as "the company" and its leadership as "the general management." [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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