General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award].
Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express.
But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent.
That is the animation of this medallion.
For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.
"Duty, Honor, Country"
Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do.
They build your basic character.
They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense.
They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you.
It is the story of the American man-at-arms.
My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed.
I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words.
He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom.
He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image.
No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication.
All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment.
But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle.
For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution.
Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
This does not mean that you are war mongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers:
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here.
My days of old have vanished, tone and tint.
They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were.
Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday.
I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of
...The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
I bid you farewell.
Showing posts with label US Army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Army. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sleeper Terrorist in the US Army
Al-Qaeda terrorist duped FBI, Army
By JOSEPH NEFF and JOHN SULLIVAN
Raleigh News & Observer
October 24, 2001
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Ali Mohamed lived a double life that seemed more fiction than fact. He served in the heart of the U.S. military at Fort Bragg and in the inner circle of Osama bin Laden's Islamic fundamentalist terrorists' network.
Long before he was arrested in connection with the 1998 car-bombing attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, there were questions about Ali Mohamed, a retired U.S. Army sergeant. He had puzzled fellow soldiers with his haughty attitude toward America and avowed Islamic fundamentalist beliefs.
Now, as the United States wages war on terrorism, the case of Mohamed shows what the CIA and FBI are up against: terrorist operatives who weave themselves into the fabric of America.
After al-Qaeda's car-bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, it became clear where Mohamed's allegiance lay. Investigators linked Mohamed to the attacks, which killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500. He was arrested 34 days later and has since pleaded guilty and described his central role in the attack.
Although law enforcement and intelligence agencies collected information on Mohamed, they assembled the pieces of the puzzle too late - after the embassies had been bombed.
"He was an active source for the FBI, a double agent," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and director of counterterrorism at the State Department during the elder Bush's administration.
The FBI "did a lousy job of managing him," Johnson said. "He was holding out on them. He had critical information years ago and didn't give it up."
The FBI declined to be interviewed for this article.
So just who is this educated soldier, fluent in at least four languages, who trained at Fort Bragg and taught Green Berets about the Middle East? And how did he move back and forth between an outwardly normal immigrant's existence and the hidden world of al-Qaeda?
Mohamed's relationship with the FBI and intelligence services remains wrapped in secrecy. His plea agreement is sealed, as are many of the court documents and much of the testimony. Mohamed was expected to testify - but did not - at the trial at which the four others were convicted. Mohamed and his lawyer have declined all interview requests.
But a picture emerges from court documents, interviews, trial transcripts and published accounts.
Born in Alexandria in 1952, Mohamed joined the Egyptian army in 1971. With a bachelor's in psychology and two years of training at Egypt's military academy, he rose to major in the Egyptian Special Forces.
Sometime in the early 1980s, after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in the Camp David accords, Mohamed joined the fundamentalist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
About this time, the Egyptian army sent Mohamed to Fort Bragg for special forces training - common for officers from countries the United States regards as friendly. Training beside U.S. Green Berets, he learned how to command elite soldiers on difficult missions such as special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency operations. After four months, he received a diploma with a green beret on it.
Returning home, he served in the Egyptian army for three more years. In 1984, he left to work as a security expert for Egypt Air - and started to make contact with the CIA.
"This individual approached the CIA to offer information," a U.S. official told The News & Observer, speaking on condition that no further identification be provided. "Some time later, we found out he was talking to known terrorists and had identified himself as a CIA agent. We felt him to be untrustworthy, and we put him on the State Department watch list."
The CIA also warned other U.S. government agencies about Mohamed and urged them to detain him if possible, the official said.
The next year, 1985, Mohamed managed to get a visa to enter the United States. One year later, he enlisted as a regular soldier in the U.S. Army at the age of 34. He was assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg.
Fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English, Mohamed brought extensive knowledge of the Arab world. Though officially a supply sergeant, he spent much of his time teaching soldiers about the Mideast.
Robert Anderson, a retired lieutenant colonel, remembers him vividly. Anderson said Mohamed made no secret of his religious views.
"He had identified himself as a fundamentalist, but after I interviewed him I identified him as a fanatic," said Anderson, who lives in Fayetteville, N.C.
Mohamed's beliefs were not just talk.
In 1988, he told Anderson and others that he was using his leave to join the war in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation. The United States was then secretly supporting the Afghan rebels and supplying them with weapons; but it was highly irregular, if not illegal, for an active-duty U.S. soldier to fight in a foreign war. If the Soviets captured him and learned his identity, it would embarrass the United States and further aggravate international tensions.
Anderson said he submitted an intelligence report to his superiors two weeks before Mohamed departed, but it was ignored.
Mohamed returned about a month later, Anderson said. He had clearly lost weight, suggesting that the trip had been strenuous.
"He comes back and brings me a belt from a Russian special forces soldier that he said he killed," Anderson said.
Anderson wrote up a second report and again heard no response.
X...X...X
Near the end of his tour at Fort Bragg, Mohamed apparently got busier in his work with terrorist groups. Documents from court cases show that he traveled on weekends to New Jersey, where he trained other Islamic fundamentalists in surveillance, weapons and explosives.
He continued this training after he was honorably discharged in 1989 with commendations in his file, including one for "patriotism, valor, fidelity and professional excellence."
Mohamed spent the next five years in the Army Reserves. For nine years after he left active duty, until his arrest in 1998, Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries, court records show.
It was through his contacts with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad that he met bin Laden, but the date is not clear. It may have been in 1991, when Mohamed again went to Afghanistan to fight. That year, Mohamed helped move bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan.
Mohamed was soon handling some of bin Laden's most sensitive security matters, details of which he made public during his guilty plea. After a failed 1994 assassination attempt on bin Laden, Mohamed trained the inner circle of bodyguards for the Saudi exile.
He handled security when bin Laden moved his al-Qaeda entourage from Sudan back to Afghanistan in 1996, as well as when bin Laden met the Hezbollah chief who had directed the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
Mohamed also gave basic explosives training for al-Qaeda soldiers in Afghanistan in 1992 and translated training manuals from English to Arabic. In 1993, he trained Somali clansmen in the months leading up to a battle that took the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers.
Mohamed taught the terrorists how to create cell structures that preserved secrecy and how to move undercover in Western countries. He taught surveillance techniques: how to case targets, photograph them and write attack plans.
And he played a central role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. In the early 1990s, he set up a cell there to support al-Qaeda's operations in Somalia. In late 1993, al-Qaeda ordered Mohamed to scour Nairobi for targets that would avenge the U.S. involvement in Somalia.
Mohamed conducted surveillance of the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. Agency for International Development and two French facilities.
It wasn't until August 1998 - four years later - that Mohamed's partners parked a truck full of plastic explosives outside the embassy. The blast killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500.
Within two weeks, FBI agents led a squad of 10 into Mohamed's apartment in Sacramento, Calif., where they copied computer files and photographed documents.
The evidence they found of Mohamed's terrorist activities included documents from his cell in Kenya and materials on how to run terrorist cells and penetrate security cordons. Mohamed was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Sept. 10, 1998. He was arrested as he left the grand jury room.
At the request of the U.S. Attorney, federal judges kept the arrest secret for almost a year. Much of the case remains sealed.
Mohamed would have come first to the attention of the FBI in late 1990 after the murder of the Rabbi Meier Kahane, a radical Jewish leader. When authorities searched the home of El Sayyid Nosair, who was charged with Kahane's murder, they found U.S. Army training manuals, videotaped talks that Mohamed delivered at the Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, an operation plan for Operation Bright Star and other materials marked "Classified" or "Top Secret."
Mohamed, who often stayed in New Jersey with Nosair, was the source of these documents. The documents didn't surface during Nosair's 1991 trial when he was acquitted of killing Kahane, but they did in 1995 when Nosair was convicted of conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993.
The FBI has acknowledged in court filings that its agents interviewed Mohamed several times after he left active duty.
Defense lawyers and many other observers believe that Mohamed, who has not yet been sentenced, is now cooperating with the United States, though the government has never confirmed this. When he is sentenced, he could receive as little as 25 years under his plea agreement.
Mohamed has not spoken in public since his guilty plea, but his prior statements carry warnings to the country in whose military he served.
"He knows, for example, that there are hundreds of 'sleepers' or 'submarines' in place who don't fit neatly into the terrorist profile," a 1997 FBI report said. "These individuals don't wear the traditional beards and don't pray at the mosques."
By JOSEPH NEFF and JOHN SULLIVAN
Raleigh News & Observer
October 24, 2001
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Ali Mohamed lived a double life that seemed more fiction than fact. He served in the heart of the U.S. military at Fort Bragg and in the inner circle of Osama bin Laden's Islamic fundamentalist terrorists' network.
Long before he was arrested in connection with the 1998 car-bombing attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, there were questions about Ali Mohamed, a retired U.S. Army sergeant. He had puzzled fellow soldiers with his haughty attitude toward America and avowed Islamic fundamentalist beliefs.
Now, as the United States wages war on terrorism, the case of Mohamed shows what the CIA and FBI are up against: terrorist operatives who weave themselves into the fabric of America.
After al-Qaeda's car-bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, it became clear where Mohamed's allegiance lay. Investigators linked Mohamed to the attacks, which killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500. He was arrested 34 days later and has since pleaded guilty and described his central role in the attack.
Although law enforcement and intelligence agencies collected information on Mohamed, they assembled the pieces of the puzzle too late - after the embassies had been bombed.
"He was an active source for the FBI, a double agent," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and director of counterterrorism at the State Department during the elder Bush's administration.
The FBI "did a lousy job of managing him," Johnson said. "He was holding out on them. He had critical information years ago and didn't give it up."
The FBI declined to be interviewed for this article.
So just who is this educated soldier, fluent in at least four languages, who trained at Fort Bragg and taught Green Berets about the Middle East? And how did he move back and forth between an outwardly normal immigrant's existence and the hidden world of al-Qaeda?
Mohamed's relationship with the FBI and intelligence services remains wrapped in secrecy. His plea agreement is sealed, as are many of the court documents and much of the testimony. Mohamed was expected to testify - but did not - at the trial at which the four others were convicted. Mohamed and his lawyer have declined all interview requests.
But a picture emerges from court documents, interviews, trial transcripts and published accounts.
Born in Alexandria in 1952, Mohamed joined the Egyptian army in 1971. With a bachelor's in psychology and two years of training at Egypt's military academy, he rose to major in the Egyptian Special Forces.
Sometime in the early 1980s, after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in the Camp David accords, Mohamed joined the fundamentalist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
About this time, the Egyptian army sent Mohamed to Fort Bragg for special forces training - common for officers from countries the United States regards as friendly. Training beside U.S. Green Berets, he learned how to command elite soldiers on difficult missions such as special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency operations. After four months, he received a diploma with a green beret on it.
Returning home, he served in the Egyptian army for three more years. In 1984, he left to work as a security expert for Egypt Air - and started to make contact with the CIA.
"This individual approached the CIA to offer information," a U.S. official told The News & Observer, speaking on condition that no further identification be provided. "Some time later, we found out he was talking to known terrorists and had identified himself as a CIA agent. We felt him to be untrustworthy, and we put him on the State Department watch list."
The CIA also warned other U.S. government agencies about Mohamed and urged them to detain him if possible, the official said.
The next year, 1985, Mohamed managed to get a visa to enter the United States. One year later, he enlisted as a regular soldier in the U.S. Army at the age of 34. He was assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg.
Fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English, Mohamed brought extensive knowledge of the Arab world. Though officially a supply sergeant, he spent much of his time teaching soldiers about the Mideast.
Robert Anderson, a retired lieutenant colonel, remembers him vividly. Anderson said Mohamed made no secret of his religious views.
"He had identified himself as a fundamentalist, but after I interviewed him I identified him as a fanatic," said Anderson, who lives in Fayetteville, N.C.
Mohamed's beliefs were not just talk.
In 1988, he told Anderson and others that he was using his leave to join the war in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation. The United States was then secretly supporting the Afghan rebels and supplying them with weapons; but it was highly irregular, if not illegal, for an active-duty U.S. soldier to fight in a foreign war. If the Soviets captured him and learned his identity, it would embarrass the United States and further aggravate international tensions.
Anderson said he submitted an intelligence report to his superiors two weeks before Mohamed departed, but it was ignored.
Mohamed returned about a month later, Anderson said. He had clearly lost weight, suggesting that the trip had been strenuous.
"He comes back and brings me a belt from a Russian special forces soldier that he said he killed," Anderson said.
Anderson wrote up a second report and again heard no response.
X...X...X
Near the end of his tour at Fort Bragg, Mohamed apparently got busier in his work with terrorist groups. Documents from court cases show that he traveled on weekends to New Jersey, where he trained other Islamic fundamentalists in surveillance, weapons and explosives.
He continued this training after he was honorably discharged in 1989 with commendations in his file, including one for "patriotism, valor, fidelity and professional excellence."
Mohamed spent the next five years in the Army Reserves. For nine years after he left active duty, until his arrest in 1998, Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries, court records show.
It was through his contacts with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad that he met bin Laden, but the date is not clear. It may have been in 1991, when Mohamed again went to Afghanistan to fight. That year, Mohamed helped move bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan.
Mohamed was soon handling some of bin Laden's most sensitive security matters, details of which he made public during his guilty plea. After a failed 1994 assassination attempt on bin Laden, Mohamed trained the inner circle of bodyguards for the Saudi exile.
He handled security when bin Laden moved his al-Qaeda entourage from Sudan back to Afghanistan in 1996, as well as when bin Laden met the Hezbollah chief who had directed the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
Mohamed also gave basic explosives training for al-Qaeda soldiers in Afghanistan in 1992 and translated training manuals from English to Arabic. In 1993, he trained Somali clansmen in the months leading up to a battle that took the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers.
Mohamed taught the terrorists how to create cell structures that preserved secrecy and how to move undercover in Western countries. He taught surveillance techniques: how to case targets, photograph them and write attack plans.
And he played a central role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. In the early 1990s, he set up a cell there to support al-Qaeda's operations in Somalia. In late 1993, al-Qaeda ordered Mohamed to scour Nairobi for targets that would avenge the U.S. involvement in Somalia.
Mohamed conducted surveillance of the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. Agency for International Development and two French facilities.
It wasn't until August 1998 - four years later - that Mohamed's partners parked a truck full of plastic explosives outside the embassy. The blast killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500.
Within two weeks, FBI agents led a squad of 10 into Mohamed's apartment in Sacramento, Calif., where they copied computer files and photographed documents.
The evidence they found of Mohamed's terrorist activities included documents from his cell in Kenya and materials on how to run terrorist cells and penetrate security cordons. Mohamed was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Sept. 10, 1998. He was arrested as he left the grand jury room.
At the request of the U.S. Attorney, federal judges kept the arrest secret for almost a year. Much of the case remains sealed.
Mohamed would have come first to the attention of the FBI in late 1990 after the murder of the Rabbi Meier Kahane, a radical Jewish leader. When authorities searched the home of El Sayyid Nosair, who was charged with Kahane's murder, they found U.S. Army training manuals, videotaped talks that Mohamed delivered at the Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, an operation plan for Operation Bright Star and other materials marked "Classified" or "Top Secret."
Mohamed, who often stayed in New Jersey with Nosair, was the source of these documents. The documents didn't surface during Nosair's 1991 trial when he was acquitted of killing Kahane, but they did in 1995 when Nosair was convicted of conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993.
The FBI has acknowledged in court filings that its agents interviewed Mohamed several times after he left active duty.
Defense lawyers and many other observers believe that Mohamed, who has not yet been sentenced, is now cooperating with the United States, though the government has never confirmed this. When he is sentenced, he could receive as little as 25 years under his plea agreement.
Mohamed has not spoken in public since his guilty plea, but his prior statements carry warnings to the country in whose military he served.
"He knows, for example, that there are hundreds of 'sleepers' or 'submarines' in place who don't fit neatly into the terrorist profile," a 1997 FBI report said. "These individuals don't wear the traditional beards and don't pray at the mosques."
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