October 25, 2006: Al Qaeda has "issued" a new "how to" manual for members, and wannabes. It's English title is "Myth of Delusion," and it was written, it is believed, by an Egyptian terrorist; Mohammed al-Hakaymah. The document is only available in Arabic, on pro-terrorist web sites. It's basically a cut and paste job. Not a lot of top-secret stuff here, and a lot of healthy paranoia about the dangers of using cell phones or the Internet. Lots of practical advice on how to deal with Western interrogation techniques, and how to take advantage of Western legal systems and how to manipulate the Western media.
But at the same time, "Myth of Delusion" is so named because the document also tries to convince prospective, and existing, terrorists, that Western, especially American, intelligence organizations are not as effective as many Moslems believe they are. This notion of "CIA invincibility" in the Moslem world has been around for a long time, and it's difficult to overcome decades of delusions, when trying to gain new recruits. That's why the September 11, 2001 attacks were so important to Islamic terrorists everywhere. These attacks showed that the CIA/FBI/ and so on, was not invincible. But since then, the CIA and FBI have done enormous damage to terrorist organizations, so this manual is an attempt to counteract that reality.
Much attention is paid to the dangers of using cell-phones or the Internet. There is also a lot of information on how the CIA recruits, and uses, spies inside terrorist organizations. While much of this activity has not made the news, several terrorist organizations have been penetrated. This is known because not everyone in these compromised outfits was arrested. Those that got away either had suspicions, or proof, that one of their own flipped them to the cops. Keeping terrorists from getting to know more about these moles is one reason the CIA does not want the arrested ones to have lawyers. Some of these lawyers have been caught, and in a recent case, convicted, or passing information from captured terrorists, back to those still on the loose. The more terrorists know of Western espionage techniques, the harder they are to track down.
