GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — In announcing last week that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri had been killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, President Biden described the long-wanted terrorist as “a mastermind” behind the USS Cole bombing in 2000.
Mr Biden also said al-Zawahri was “deeply involved in the planning” of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
There is no doubt that al-Zawahri was the leader of a terrorist movement whose global jihad killed thousands. He was deputy to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and took over the organization in 2011.
But for the sake of historical accuracy, Mr. Biden’s words go far beyond how the government and terrorism scholars have described al-Zawahri’s record with regard to these two particularly notorious attacks.
Mr. Biden’s portrayal of al-Zawahri as a key plotter of the 9/11 attacks was echoed in numerous reports on his speech, including in The New York Times. But it surprised counterterrorism experts, as did the characterization of al-Zawahri’s role in the Cole bombing.
The remarks also raised new questions in the 9/11 and USS Cole death penalty cases, which have been mired in pretrial hearings for more than a decade. On Friday, lawyers in both cases said they had formally requested evidence from prosecutors to back up Mr. Biden’s claims.
Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer who worked with Islamist fighters fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later wrote several books on terrorist networks and radicalization, said he was intrigued by Biden’s portrayal of al-Zawahri and wondered where the alleged role came from. of.
“Zawahri is a legitimate target,” he said on Tuesday, a day after the president’s speech. “But the justification they gave yesterday was inaccurate. I doubt it. I highly, highly doubt it.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, defended Mr Biden’s characterization of al-Zawahri’s record of specific attacks as accurate. The Justice Department had accused al-Zawahri, along with Bin Laden and many others, of conspirators in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the official noted, adding that the government saw “a direct line between that and Al-Qaeda”. major attacks in 2000, 2001 and beyond.
In a briefing with reporters shortly before Mr. Biden delivered his remarks, another senior administration official described al-Zawahri as “bin Laden’s deputy during the 9/11 attacks,” which is not disputed. This official did not mention the Cole.
Prosecutors from the Federal Civil Court and the Guantánamo Bay Military Commission System have filed multiple indictments against al-Qaeda operatives accused of helping plot the Cole bombing. These documents are dozens of pages long, laying out the government’s understanding of the participants, meetings, financial transfers and other moves that constituted the plot.
They do not present al-Zawahri as the mastermind of the operation, a suicide bombing carried out by two men in a skiff that killed 17 American sailors.
A Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is described in a death penalty case at Guantánamo Bay. A CIA profile at the time of his transfer in 2006 called him “the local mastermind and responsible for the October 2000 bombing”. His charges name al-Zawahri as one of 26 participants in an al-Qaeda plot to commit acts of general terrorism, but not as the mastermind.
A military indictment filed in 2012 against five Guantánamo detainees accused of plotting the September 11 attacks only mentioned al-Zawahri for his joint declaration of war with bin Laden in 1998, when describing the group’s history.
Hours after President Biden’s announcement, former President Barack Obama used similar language on Twittercalling al-Zawahri “one of the masterminds” of the September 11 attacks.
But defense attorneys said the language did not match descriptions of the case at Guantánamo.
“The 9/11 charges, discovery and evidence make almost no mention of al-Zawahri,” said James G. Connell III, a capital defense attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi, Khalid Shaikh’s nephew. Mohammed, who is commonly described as their architect of the attack.
The lead military defense attorney in the Cole case, Navy Capt. Brian L. Mizer, said al-Zawahri appeared in preliminary evidence only as an al-Qaeda deputy, not as a person who played a specific role in the operation.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated al-Qaeda during the period surrounding both attacks, said al-Zawahri was not the operational mastermind of either plot. But as a top leader, he said, al-Zawahri helped set the strategic direction for al-Qaeda’s main actions during this period.
“He was involved in green light operations and advised bin Laden,” Soufan said.
Specifically, Mr. Soufan said, there is evidence that at a meeting of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership council, some opposed the 9/11 plot, fearing repercussions for their safe haven in Afghanistan, but al-Zawahri supported bin Laden’s desire to move forward. .
Emile Nakhleh, a retired senior intelligence officer and director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, said al-Zawahri was absolutely a big target. “We’re not putting $25 million on the head of a small fish,” he said.
But he considered al-Zawahri to be more of an “al-Qaeda strategic thinker”.
The senior administration official who defended Mr Biden’s remarks also pointed to comments by Kirk Lippold, who was in command of the Cole at the time of the attack. Mr Lippold told a news program last week that al-Zawahri, along with bin Laden, had been “intimately involved in the planning”.
But Mr. Lippold, who declined to comment for this article, cited no specific basis for portraying al-Zawahri as intimately involved in the planning. In his 2012 memoir of the incident, “Front Burner: Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole,” Mr. Lippold mentioned bin Laden about two dozen times but did not mention al-Zawahri.
Mark Fallon, who was the commander of a Navy task force that investigated the Cole bombing and later oversaw investigations into the military commission system, said he recalled speculation that al -Zawahri could have been involved in the planning of both attacks, but he was unaware. evidence supporting a direct link.
“It’s just not a factual account they’re telling,” he said. “It’s a talking point.”