Archived Article
Hearts Of Darkness
Jan. 17, 2002
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Keith "Jack" Idema, a Green Beret, talks with Dan Rather
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In the last few weeks, those soldiers have searched abandoned al Qaida sites and come out with an array of bomb-making manuals, training pamphlets and other documents. Most chilling of all, reports Dan Rather, is a newly discovered training camp tape, shown exclusively on 60 Minutes II Wednesday night.
The seven hours of videotape, which show how al Qaida trains its recruits, were shot sometime last year at a [terrorist training] facility about 30 minutes from downtown Kabul. [The full seven hours has only been given to US intelligence agencies].
In it, recruits drill relentlessly, learning the ins and outs of assassination, kidnapping and murder. With instructors looking over recruits’ shoulders, al Qaida trainees practiced working with weapons that can take dozens of lives in just seconds, learned the tricks of terrifying innocent people and were schooled in the best way to take control of a building.
One segment shows a drive-by shooting, where recruits are trained to overtake a car and kill everyone inside. Another shows a practice attack on a building: victims are disoriented with stun grenades, guards are killed, and hostages are quickly rounded up. Recruits shout commands in English - a sign they would like to take scenes like this to the West.
The tapes also show that something else was part of the terrorist training at that camp, something outsiders have never seen before. It records planning sessions where recruits were briefed on complicated ways to get close to world leaders and kill them.
In the session, the instructors and students speak Arabic as they plan an assassination, but a translator tells CBS News that “the person to be assassinated is a writer who blasphemed against Allah and his prophet. The beginning signal of the operation is when the driver opens the trunk. Two men with Kalashnikovs come out and fire.”
In another segment, al Qaida works on an elaborate scheme to kill an Arab prince playing golf. One is instructed to carry weapons in his golf bag and tee off near the proposed target. Off the golf course, but close by, an accomplice waits with a rocket launcher for the leader to give the signal. “He gives the signal to begin by dropping his hat,” says the translator.
60 Minutes II obtained these tapes from Keith Idema, a former member of the U.S. Special Forces. He is a Green Beret. Known in Afghanistan as "Jack," he says he went to Afghanistan as a civilian military adviser to the Northern Alliance. He was with them as they pushed towards Kabul.
“When they came across the Shomali Plain to this compound,” Idema says, “they found a lot of documents. They had gotten some tapes right away but they were scared to bring the tapes forward. And they were scared to tell anybody they had them.”
Although Northern Alliance soldiers had described the training tapes to him, Idema says he was surprised when he finally took a look. [It took months for Idema to find all of the al-Qaida training tapes, which he calls the 8mm VideoX al-Qaida Training Tapes.]
“When I looked at these tapes, I said, ‘My God, this is the same kind of stuff that we did in 1980,” he says referring to the United States’ elite military units. “So are their skills as good as ours? As good as the U.S. special operations community? The answer is no. Clearly, man for man, we’d wipe them out. But they’re not coming against us; they’re coming against regular civilians and that’s clear in their training. They don’t use military tactics. Their training is not as sophisticated as ours, but it’s not designed to be.”
Gen. Gary Harrell, senior commander on the ground at Bagram air base, has served in every major American conflict in the last two decades, including Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War and Somalia.
He watched the al Qaida tape carefully twice, but said he could not comment.
He did say, however, that he thought al Qaida was still active.
“As an effective organization, I think that they are seriously degraded,“ he says. “And it does seem to me that a lot of them want to be some place other than Afghanistan now. I think that's an indicator … we have a lot of work still to do. Afghanistan is not the end; it’s the beginning.”
Harrell was a squadron commander on a mission in Somalia that ended with 18 American special operations soldiers being killed in a brutal gunbattle, begun when a Blackhawk helicopter was shot from the sky.
Bin Laden says his fighters were responsible for the battle in Somalia, a vicious introduction for Americans to al Qaida and a preview of how hard it is to fight an invisible, ever-changing enemy.
He agrees it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in a country where people, in effect, turn a turban around in an instant. “At the risk of sounding flippant,” he says, “one way you tell is, if they're shooting at you, they're not friendly.”
The videotapes make it easier to identify the enemy; dozens of al Qaida faces are shown uncovered, clear and close up. The trainees are comfortable enough to talk directly to the camera, comfortable enough to joke, to wrestle, and to sit down for dinner, to fall asleep.
The recruits appear to have come from just about everywhere. Most are young and many are inept. But others appear battle-hardened and eager for more. In recent months, some of those recruits may have become prisoners, taken into custody by Northern Alliance soldiers who surrounded al Qaida strongholds.
While the al Qaida tapes show the how, they do little to explain the why.
“One of the differences," says Gen. Harrell, “has been that the al Qaida and the Taliban - their attitude is very different than what you might think of as normal combatants. “If you take a child at a very young age and pump a lot of hate into him, and tell them that Americans are evil, then you get a person who is different from the way that you and I think.”
An example is the al Qaida cameraman who spent hours carefully recording would-be terrorists as they learned how to kill. Off duty, he used the same camera to make chilling home movies…as he passed on to his children his love for guns and his hatred for the West.
In one scene, the voice behind the camera cajoles some children playing with guns: “Who are you going to fight? The infidels? Shoot. Come on, shoot.”
İMMII, CBS Worldwide Inc, All Rights Reserved.
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE JULY 4, 2005
CIA Confirms that Journalists Lied in Idema Case !
According to AIM journalist Sherrie Gossett,
"I asked the CIA about the Al-Qaeda tapes. They said they never did voice verification on them and had not performed authentication processes on them. I asked if they had copies of the tapes, and they wouldn't answer. I asked if they planned on or would run authentication processes on them, and they also wouldn't answer."
We would assume that there are some journalists in a some serious trouble over this. If not, there should be.
Finally, someone has told the truth in Jack's case about something, anything. Her name is Sherrie Gossett at Accuracy in Media, and where she was once chastised for false reporting, Ms. Gossett went back and double and tripled checked the facts reported by journalists Stacy Sullivan and Mariah Blake.
Sullivan and Blake, reporting for New York Magazine and Columbia Journalism Review, made claims that the CIA determined Jack's al-Qaida training tapes were fake. These claims were made by LTC Robert C. Morris, "Sir" Edward Artis, and FOX News, all of which had been sued by Jack of theft and interference with the protected tapes, and they made these statements through third party sources, or direct to these journalists, to hurt Jack's credibility and maliciously paint him as a fraud.
Sherrie Gossett at Washington, DC based AIM (Accuracy In Media) decided to contact the CIA herself. Her CIA responses match EXACTLY what Jack has been saying since day one. The CIA doesn't have time to do voice analysis unless it is for real-time HUMINT intelligence purposes; the CIA is not going to admit having the tapes Jack gave them (think FOIA and other legal ramifications), the CIA doesn't waste time authenticating anything for journalists, who they, like all of us in Special Ops, hate, and lastly, we will state for the record, and as confirmed by US, the CIA didn't need to confirm authentication, they knew they were real and already had several featured terrorists in custody.
Therefore, if A is opposite B, and A is true, then B is false. Conclusion: NY Magazine and the others lied.
Ms. Gossett has graciously provided this information to Jack's attorneys in the sole interest of "accuracy in media." This is a women who obviously actually believes in the credo Accuracy In Media. SuperPatriots.US had Ms. Gossett pegged wrong, and we offer our apologies and thanks to her for standing up against a sea of lemmings.
__________________________________
For Verification of this story, contact:
Sherrie Gossett, Associate Editor
Accuracy in Media
4455 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite #330
Washington, D.C. 20008
Phone: (202) 364-4401 [x-106]
Fax: (202) 364-4098
Osama bin Laden and his network of terrorists are believed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center as well as other terrorist acts against America. Follow their shadowy path from desert training camps to the epicenter of human tragedy.
America's first strike against terrorism focuses on Afghanistan - a mountainous nation ruled by a radical Islamic militia called the Taliban. But more importantly the country is accused of harboring Osama bin Laden, claimed to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.
"They don't use military tactics. Their training
is not as sophisticated
as ours, but it's not
designed to be."
"Jack"
Keith Idema, a former member of the
U.S. Special Forces
By land, sea and air, the United States and allies employ their military might to engage terrorist networks in combat. Discover the new battlefields and follow America's war on terrorism.
Below Not Part of Original Archive
A Personal Message From Jack Idema to: Stacy Sullivan, Mariah Blake, New York Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review and all the other people and media trash that slandered Dan Rather, Jack, and the al-Qaida tapes:
Dan Rather is the most honorable man I have ever known. He is honest, he is brave, and he is a gentleman. These people that have accused him of intentional errors regarding that "Bush memo" are the same people that quoted false and fabricated documents in my case. They are the same people that used false sources, fictional events, and lies to hurt us. They claimed that the al-Qaida videotapes were fake and Dan aired these "fake tapes." They failed to mention that every major network in the world aired the tapes, every major magazine, and every major newspaper wrote about them. They also failed to tell you that the Army's top Delta Force operator didn't think they were fake, and neither did any one of a dozen intelligence agencies. It was a scam- a scam by these sleaze mongers to impugn the integrity of a great man they could never hope to even shine the boots of. Each of these people will answer for this in front of a jury one day, and I will not stop until I have brought them to justice and the world knows that they were the liars and thieves and both Dan and I are vindicated.
If you want to know more about their lying sources, none of which have a viable military or counter-terrorist credential to their name, just visit that section of the site. Ed Artis, one "source," has already been ordered by a court to stop his comments, and if he makes another press statement, even a factual one, he will be held in criminal contempt in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The same justice is just a short distance away from meeting those journalists that lied to the American public.
Courage Forward,
Jack
July 4, 2005 Update:
According to sources at the Pentagon, Ed Artis is now claiming he NEVER told NY Magazine that the tapes were fake or that Jack Idema committed ANY crime.
We see lawsuits on the radar screen for NY Magazine, Sullivan, Blake, and Columbia School of Journalism.