Convenient Terrorist

After the failed Millennium Attacks, Abu Zubaydah went on the run. The FBI and the CIA were both looking for him, and the RAND Corporation also began investigating Abu Zubaydah. From the information they had on hand, RAND created a biography of Abu Zubaydah which was then used by CIA and FBI operatives in the field. The problem was that most of RAND’s information was completely wrong.

• Had been recruited in the 1980s by Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Al-Zawahiri (a commander of Al Qaeda)

After extensively interviewing Abu Zubaydah’s family and studying his personal diaries, we now know that every point from the RAND file noted above is completely wrong. Abu Zubaydah didn’t grow up in Palestine; he grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was never in Hamas, and did not meet Al-Zawahiri in his youth. He did not fight the Soviets in the late 1980s—he was still in high school in Saudi Arabia at that time. He was not in Al Qaeda, let alone their chief of operations. And he was never married.

Red flags should have been raised by these discrepancies when (after his eventual capture) the Pakistani media reported that the Taliban leadership was stating that the United States had captured “the wrong Abu Zubaydah.” It is also evident that someone in the CIA still had questions about Abu Zubaydah’s capture. Shortly after, Abu Zubaydah went into CIA custody and was rendered to a classified location for interrogation, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, which was tasked with questioning Abu Zubaydah, did not immediately send anyone to interrogate him because they did not believe it was the correct Abu Zubaydah who had been captured. When interrogation did finally begin, his answers led many in the CIA to wonder whether they had the right person. However, none of this resulted in any substantive reevaluation by the CIA. Instead, Abu Zubaydah was simply counted “a tough egg to crack.” The CIA concluded that he was lying to them intentionally. This, eventually, led to the decision to torture Abu Zubaydah.

It has never before been reported, but the fact is there were indeed two Jihadi Abu Zubaydahs.

The other one was named Maher Abu Zubayda, and they were cousins. Intelligence agencies, in a rush and unaware of this, had conflated their Abu Zubaydahs when piecing together dossiers. Discrepancies that should have been red flags were never raised because the CIA and FBI did not communicate effectively with one another, and because, before 9/11, both agencies did not have enough staff fluent in Arabic available to analyze critical information in the case.

There are other signs of a ball being dropped, too. Government documents concerning Abu Zubaydah spell his name several different ways. For example, some government documents spell his name Abu Zubaydah, while others list him as Zubaida, or Zbaida.

The name “Abu Zubaydah” is the family name of a large tribe with roots in Palestinian ancestry. Every member of that tribe could and likely did use the name “Abu Zubaydah” when culturally necessary and appropriate. Many individuals in Palestine and in the West Bank with origins in this family still use the name. The name itself is not common per se, but can be traced to the village of Yabna in Palestine that many claim as an ancestral home. The inhabitants of Yabna were uprooted by the Israeli military in 1948.65 The “Abu Zubaydah” family was among the scattered. Today, the family populates the Gaza Strip in the refugee area of Bureij. It has been established that Zayn (the Abu Zubaydah in custody) and Maher share a common origin. Their use of the name “Abu Zubaydah” illustrates that their connection is likely through this Palestinian tribe. There does remain one striking difference between Zayn’s (the Abu Zubaydah in custody), and Maher’s use of the “Abu Zubaydah” name. While Abu Zubaydah typically spelled his name in English as “Abu Zubaydah” or “Abu Zubaida,” Maher usually spelled his name in English as “Abu Zubaida” or “Abu Zbaida.” Both spellings are derived from the same Arabic name, “ images

” which can be translated into English in many different ways. However, so long as the main vowels are present in the spellings, the name is always translated back to the aforementioned Arabic name. It is clear that both Zayn’s and Maher’s spellings share the main vowels. Thus, despite the difference of English spelling chosen by Zayn and Maher, both names reflect the one proper way to spell the name in Arabic. According to Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy and Research Senior Fellow, Ghalib Mahmoud (who is from Palestine and is fluent in Arabic) the difference in spellings of the name does not indicate that they are from different families or tribes; in fact it reveals the opposite. As Ghalib stated in an interview:

“In considering the Palestinian tribe connection shared between Zayn and Maher as well as the fact that their spellings of the family name ‘Abu Zubaydah’ does not represent a separate origin, it becomes apparent that it could be possible to conflate, confuse, and combine the lives and identities of these two men.”

To avoid any confusion going forward, we will refer to the Abu Zubaydah in custody at Guantanamo as Abu Zubaydah, and Maher Abu Zubaydah simply as Maher.

Like Abu Zubaydah, Maher was born in Saudi Arabia. He is also the same age as Abu Zubaydah. However, Maher and his family moved to the Gaza Strip when he was still quite young. As a teen, Maher became active with Hamas, later met Al-Zawahiri, and joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). He traveled to Pakistan the late 1980s and fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet army. All of which matches the biographical information of the Abu Zubaydah the US was looking for.

Maher drops off the radar then, but reappears in the United States in 1994, on a student visa. He had listed an address in San Jose, California, just three blocks from where a known Al Qaeda spy named Ali Mohammed was living.

Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, known as Ali Mohammed, had infiltrated the United States intelligence community while simultaneously working for Osama bin Laden. He worked under the direction of Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri66 (“al-Zawahiri”) as both an Egyptian EIJ agent, and a United States Army Sargent. Ali Mohamed—with the help of a colleague named Khaled Abu el-Dahab67 (“el-Dahab”)—created an Al Qaeda cell based in Santa Clara, California. Mohamed would later plead guilty to a role in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.68

The son of an Egyptian soldier,69 Mohamed was born June 3, 1952.70 Mohamed, who himself joined the Egyptian army in the early 1980s, was known for his both his great intelligence and physical strength.71 While a member of the Egyptian army, Mohamed participated in a soldier exchange program with the United States Green Berets,72 allowing him to travel to Fort Bragg and receive training in guerilla warfare.73 Upon his return, Egypt experienced a regime change, and Mohamed, who let his frustration about how the Egyptian military was being run become public, was dismissed.74

After he was let go from the Egyptian Army, Mohamed became a security consultant for Egyptian Air.75 He simultaneously joined the EIJ working directly with al-Zawahiri, thus beginning his career as one of the most infamous double agents of our era.76 Mohamed went to the Egyptian government in Cairo and offered his services as infiltrator of the EIJ, despite actually being a member of EIJ.77 Mohamed also went to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and offered to go undercover and infiltrate mosques suspected of fomenting terrorist activities.78 However, the CIA eventually learned of Mohamed’s dual identity, dismissed him, and saw that he was placed on a US Department of Justice (DOJ) watch list.79

Despite being on the watch list, Mohamed was still able to legally obtain a United States visa and permanently relocate to the United States.80 While on a flight bound for California, Mohamed met an American woman named Linda Sanchez. After a short courtship, the pair married and relocated to Santa Clara.81Mohamed enlisted in the United States army, where he was quickly promoted to sergeant and once again returned to Fort Bragg.82 This time, Mohamed was assigned to a Special Forces unit.

Then, during a joint US and Egyptian training mission in 1987, Egyptian officials took US Army officials aside to warn them that they believed Mohamed was a Muslim extremist.83 Based on this tip, the US Army elected to remove Mohamed from Special Forces upon his return to Fort Bragg. Even so, he was still permitted to remain in the Army.84 In 1988, Mohamed informed his superior officer that he planned on using an upcoming leave to fight in the Afghanistan War against the Soviets.85 Despite being explicitly directed not to do so, Mohamed traveled to Afghanistan and joined the fight anyway, eventually returning to Fort Bragg with a Soviet belt as a trophy.86 His superiors were displeased, but no action was taken against him, and he was never censured.

In the early 1990s, Mohamed became connected to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda through his involvement with EIJ.87 Mohamed would continue to work closely with bin Laden, and conducted military and basic explosives training for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan whenever he was able. He also provided Al Qaeda with training documents stolen from the U.S. Army.88 He became central to Al Qaeda’s plan to infiltrate the United States.89

After living in San Jose for one year, Maher moved to Florida in 1995 to attend flight school, and soon received his pilot’s license. It is still unclear precisely which flight school he attended, but it is known that Maher lived just one mile from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Flight School in Daytona Beach, Florida, and just two and a half miles from one of the 9/11 highjackers, Waleed Al-Shehri. Maher also regularly visited a strip club in Daytona Beach called the Pink Pony, which was frequented by several of the 9/11 hijackers.

On August 11, 1995, while still in Florida, Maher got married after a very short courtship. Maher’s wife (who has requested to remain anonymous and unnamed) was nice, good looking, and spoke English. But she was also young and naive. Maher’s wife believed he was in the US on a student visa. He told her he was from Saudi Arabia, though she noticed that he had Jordanian travel documents. Soon after they were married, she began to suspect that her husband had misrepresented himself in more than one important way. She said that, in public, Maher would act like a drunk, boisterous American, but at home he would become strict, religious, and stern. He concealed from her the fact that he had a pilot’s license, and that he sometimes worked as a pilot. Meanwhile, they were living in poverty. While Maher told his wife they could barely afford food, she saw bank statements in his name seeming to indicate that he had thousands of dollars squirrelled away. However, the statements were in Arabic—which she could not read—so she was never entirely sure. Maher seemed terrified that he would be deported to Jordan, and told his wife that he believed he would be killed by the Jordanian government if that happed. She stated that he would often leave her alone for days and weeks at a time, never indicating where he was going. She said he only had one friend. (Years later, when shown several photos of random US citizens by the US government, she positively identified Ali Mohamed as Maher’s lone friend.) In the year 2000, Maher abandoned her completely, and did not inform her where he was going or why. Days after 9/11, the FBI pulled her out of work and questioned her for hours about Maher.

According to FOIA-accessible FBI documents, after Maher abandoned his wife, he moved to Montana. There, he bought a large ranch with six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in traveler’s checks. The FBI believed that, for years, Al Qaeda had wanted to ignite massive forest fires in Montana and other Plains states. It was also suspected that Al Qaeda might attack dams or other infrastructure points in those areas.

The Fort Peck Dam was just twenty miles from Maher’s ranch. One of the largest and most important dams in the United States, it has been estimated that if the Fort Peck Dam failed, thousands of acres of farmland would be rendered unusable by flooding.

Maher’s Montana neighbors would later characterize him as a quiet man who often visited the diner and library in the nearest town. The librarian said that Maher would sit in the library for hours writing and studying books about Fort Peck Dam.

On September 10, 2001, an explosion occurred on Maher’s ranch, and the house on the property burned down. Before the fire department could respond, Maher left the property. A week later, on September 19, 2001, Maher was arrested at a Best Western in Miles City, Montana, by border patrol agents. He had several firearms in his possession. Within hours of Maher’s arrest, the FBI blocked all entrances to the Fort Peck Dam, and began to conduct an investigation. (The authors of this book have made several attempts—through FOIA requests and direct FBI contacts—to discover additional details about this investigation and what it revealed. All attempts and requests have been denied. In each case, national security issues were cited, with no further explanation given.)

After his arrest, Maher was moved to a federal holding facility in Billings where he was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and multiple immigration violations. On March 28, 2002—just one day after his cousin, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in Afghanistan—Maher was convicted on these charges. He spent six months in a federal holding facility in Washington State, and was then deported. Court documents do not reveal what country he was deported to.

While Maher was in custody, the FBI was investigating the 9/11 attacks in an investigation codenamed PENTTBOMB (short for Pentagon World Twin Towers Bombing). The PENTTBOMB began just hours after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and became the largest FBI investigation ever conducted. Simply, the goal of PENTTBOMB was to learn the identities of everyone behind these terrorist attacks. FBI documents show that Maher was a suspect in the PENTTBOMB investigation. Even so, the information that a man named Abu Zubaydah (Maher) was arrested and in custody in the US never flowed their way. It was certainly never made available to the CIA and FBI agents risking their lives on the ground in Pakistan looking for Abu Zubaydah.

After Maher was deported, it was almost ten years before his new location began to reveal itself. In 2012, Abu Zubaydah’s defense team received a letter from a man in Jordan named Mahmoud explaining in great detail that an “Abu Zubaydah” had been spotted in a prison just outside of Amman, Jordan, in 2005. This could not have been same the Abu Zubaydah that had been captured in Pakistan, because in 2005 he was then in a CIA rendition site in Poland. Before he could be questioned further by Abu Zubaydah’s defense team, it was reported to them that Mahmoud was killed in a CIA drone strike.

It becomes increasingly clear, the harder one looks into this, that issues of identity become central to our attempts to understand Abu Zubaydah’s fate, who he is, and how he arrived there. Whether the CIA had any sense of this—and when they had it—is another question entirely.