The face of the new terror threat: Younis Tsouli alias (in Arabic) Irhabi 007 = (in English) "terrorist 007
Last Friday, FBI Director Robert Mueller, III, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on how the threat we are facing is changing and I’ll bet most of you know nothing about his speech nor about the 22 year old British citizen known in Arabic as Irhabi 007, translated in English as “terrorist 007.”
This speech by FBI Director Muller is being cited by many as significant because he doesn’t usually go public but in this situation, I think he really wanted to alert everyone to the changing nature of what we are facing. A decade ago, those seeking training and mentoring in terrorism including bomb making, weapons and tactics, and how to establish a terrorism base had to travel to a camp in Afghanistan or link up with facilitators around the world to learn their deadly trade. No more. It’s all out there, on the same communications channel fueling our e-mails, our You-tube fascination, and our online obsessions: the internet.
I am trying to unravel, as best I can, the open source elements of this Irhabi 007 and show it in a visual fashion, how significant this is. But think about this: 22 year old Younis Tsouli, a British citizen, known on the internet as the above “Irhabi 007, operating out of his basement apartment, a key facilitator for Al Qaeda in Iraq. has been connected to:
n the Toronto 17: 17 Canadian citizens accused of plotting a series of truck bomb attacks against Canadian targets who possessed 3 tons of ammonium nitrate, the same type of explosives that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, with only 1 ton
n Two US born college students in Atlanta accused of surveillance of multiple targets in Washington, who had traveled to potential training locations, and meetings with the above Toronto 17. Their videos were seized on Tsouli’s computer in England
n A Swedish citizen of Bosnian descent, Mirsad Bektašević , living in Bosnia who had explosives and bomb making videos when captured , recruited young Muslims worldwide to go to Iraq and fight us, and was the link to Tsouli and the reason he was captured: his computer hard drive and cell phone on Sarajevo gave up the elusive Irhabi 007
A 22 year old citizen, of (arguably) our closest ally, was facilitating the training of multiple terrorist cells around the world. He was doing it unpaid. He was doing it out of his house. He operated for years in a brazen fashion on the net and the only reason he was caught was because a computer and cell phone was seized in Bosnia. We have a defense and intelligence system that employs tens of thousand of hard working, well meaning, and ill suited professionals trying their best to deal with youthful, foreign born terrorists and their facilitators operating out of cyber café’s, virtually, with very few “operating bases.”
If we don’t embrace change, innovation, and new ways of thinking and operating, our Cold War bureaucracy will remain ineffective. Much more to follow….but what if there is 1,000 Irhabis out there....or 10,000???