For years, Guantanamo Bay detainee Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has been known as one of al-Qaida's most important moneymen. And maybe he really did know how to funnel cash. But new material contained in WikiLeaks's "Gitmo Files" indicate everything else Baluchi did, he did with extreme incompetence. Turns out nepotism doesn't work any better in the terrorism game than it does in business or in politics.

As the 9/11 Commission documented years ago, Baluchi very ably got money from al-Qaida's central authorities into the pockets of the 9/11 hijackers. Before his 2003 capture in Pakistan, he even helped his uncle get cash to Hambali, a premiere Indonesian terrorist.

But when Baluchi tried to step up his game, he embarrassed himself and jeopardized al-Qaida.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed got taken into custody in March 2003. He had big plans in the works: attempts to blow up Heathrow Airport, the U.S. consulate in Karachi and a variety of U.S. targets (including gas stations or, possibly, oil refineries). Baluchi sought to carry his uncle's banner once KSM got popped.

Big mistake. Baluchi didn't make it two months before getting taken into custody. That's because the story told in Baluchi's Gitmo File shows him oblivious to some very obvious surveillance. In October 2002, just weeks after one of the first big arrests of al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan, he meets with a terrorist named Asif Zahir, who wants to give Baluchi 10 tons of ammonium nitrate for the explosives used in the Karachi plot. "Zahir was arrested after meeting with detainee," the Gitmo File notes. But his supplier's bust doesn't cause Baluchi to change any of his patterns.

A few months later, Baluchi gets approached by someone named Jabir, who claims he can hook Baluchi up with more explosives. Baluchi tells him to lay low for a few months and then give him the stash while assigning agents to case out their targets. But when Baluchi reestablishes contact in April 2003, it's his downfall. "On the day detainee and [associate] Walid bin Attash were supposed to receive the explosives," the File reads, "they were both arrested."

The Karachi plot was foiled. Authorities took 330 pounds of explosives and detonators. Baluchi's Gitmo File notes that he was arrested with "potassium cyanide poison" hidden on his person. If he meant to kill himself rather than be caught, he failed at that, too.

It's unclear whether Zahir and Jabir were targets of surveillance or snitches. But Baluchi's choice of associates shows how little he picked up from his uncle about facilitating terrorism. A businessman named Saifullah Paracha – later a detainee at Guantanamo himself – advised Baluchi on "methods to smuggle chemicals" into the United States. He needed to teach Baluchi the basics: "detainee told [Baluchi] that radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the US would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country."

The signs of Baluchi's unfitness for being more than a terrorist moneychanger were on display years before his 2003 flameout. Way back in 1996, when he was a student, Baluchi heard about al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and expressed interest in attending, "but could not fit the training around his studies." Taking a closer look, he felt he "would not be very successful with the training." But instead of concluding the terrorist life wasn't for him, he asked his uncle to pull some strings, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed put Baluchi to work moving money around.

By all accounts, Baluchi succeeded at that. But Khalid Shaikh Mohammed might have reflected on his nephew's lack of discipline and discouraged him from attempting anything more sophisticated. The two of them have had nearly seven years in detention to reflect on that mistake.

Photo: Globalsecurity.org

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