Chapter 1: Pictures Don''t Lie An aide drew the curtains as the official took the CD out of his bag. The ground rules were clear: everything I would see or be told was for background purposes; I couldn''t report this for CNN; I couldn''t even tell anyone else this meeting took place. The date was December 12, 2002. "This is highly classified, Maria," he said. "No copies exist outside of the military command." He pulled the CD out of its case, inserted it into the computer, and clicked the mouse. Seven files appeared on the computer screen. He clicked on one of the icons, and a black-and-white photograph appeared.
taken from 7,000 feet in the air, it showed the Philippines'' southern island of Mindanao, huge tracts of forests making it extremely easy to see where the trees had been cleared and the land put to use. "Let me explain," he said, pointing to a large, developed clearing with many structures. "This was the main Abubakar complex" -- referring to Camp Abubakar, a sprawling complex and set of terrorist training camps that had been highly active for several years, despite one major government crackdown in 2000. The camps were run by the MILF, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, for al-Qaeda and its associate groups. One of the camps, named Camp Palestine, was an exclusive Arab facility; another, named Camp Hodeibia, was for Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda''s network in Southeast Asia. "Camp Hodeibia was set up with al-Qaeda''s help in 1994." He clicked on another icon. "When we looked through our files, we found this area had been photographed at the time.
This is what it looked like. You can see here" -- using the mouse to point to a long rectangular shape -- "this long building is the barracks. Here, outside, you can see the clearing and something like an outdoor track which they set up. This must be their main area for training. Around the outskirts of the clearing, you can see a smaller series of structures, houses." "Can we get closer?" I asked. The official clicked on the mouse to zoom in closer. Now I could see the marks of the tracks and what seemed like fencing delineating the perimeter.
"Okay, that was in 1994," he said, closing the file. "Now look what happened in 2000." In six years, the camp had grown significantly. Large swathes of trees had been uprooted to link the small original oblong area through a thick tunnel-like corridor to another large clearing farther south. It looked as if there was a T cut out of the forests, its base slightly enlarged and bulging. I used the mouse to zoom the picture in and saw that the running tracks had been moved from the original spot in 1994 to this bulge-like clearing to the south. At the base of the T was a small circular tract of land with several small structures and one rectangular building at its southernmost tip. "See how they expanded?" he asked.
Using the mouse, he traced the route. "Here, these trees were cleared to make room for this expansion. It''s twelve by sixteen kilometers here. There are two bridges inside the camps. Here" -- using the mouse to point to a small sticklike structure -- "and here. And here''s the football field. So we know as early as 1994, Hashim Salamat [the head of the MILF] had funding." "But that''s so early.
Couldn''t the Filipinos have set that up on their own?" I asked. "No. No. Impossible. Hashim can''t do it alone. That place is very inaccessible. Whoever made this had to have a lot of money and support. Look, it''s in the northernmost, northeast portion of Abubakar.
" In 2000, Philippine President Joseph Estrada had declared all-out war on the MILF and attacked the complex. But it had not been a successful war, and it was abandoned by his successor''s regime. "Are the al-Qaeda camps still operating?" I asked. "I can''t say they''re al-Qaeda," the official replied coyly. "But can I? Would I be accurate if I did?" "We know there are foreigners there. A lot of Indonesians, Arabs, Middle Easterners," he replied. It was the intelligence I had been searching for. Despite the fact that the American war on terror was more than a year old, despite the Bali bombing, there were active al-Qaeda camps in the Philippines.
I took a deep breath. "Is the Philippines doing anything about it?" "No. We''re in peace talks now, right?" he answered, his voice heavy with irony. No Philippine government official wanted to say al-Qaeda. The evidence was filtering from its neighbors: more than a hundred al-Qaeda-linked terrorists had been arrested in Southeast Asia, and most of them confessed they had trained in camps in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion, or in the Philippines. "Ask your friend, Madam President," he added.
When Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took office on January 20, 2001, she pulled the military back and reversed the policy of her predecessor, saying she believed the way to lasting peace with the MILF was to negotiate. "Look," he said, taking the mouse. "This" -- holding it up -- "is Abubakar. Then up here" -- putting down a water bottle top -- "is Hodeibia. Then there''s a huge mountain, and you get to Bushra in Lanao del Sur." In several intelligence documents, I had seen lists of foreigners training in three MILF camps, including Camp Bushra. One named fourteen men -- from Indonesia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. That report was dated August 24, 2001.
Years before that and until today, thousands of Islamic militants, Filipinos and foreigners, have learned terrorist techniques in more than twenty-seven camps set up by the MILF in the southern Philippines. These training courses are not just patterned after the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan; they are run with al-Qaeda''s support and leadership. He clicked on the mouse again. "In Bushra, there are three camps, here -- 1, 2, 3. See them? One of them is Palestine, but we don''t know which one. But here, this is target 1." "When was this a target?" I asked. "During the war.
" "In 2000?" "Yes," he said. "This is area 1" -- using the mouse to encircle it -- "this is area 2, and there''s area 3. Area 3 is supposed to be the main camp, Bushra proper. You can see it''s obliterated." All that remained was a clearing. No structures. "Area 2 is also obliterated." Then he clicked and enlarged area 3.
"Now area 3 -- that still exists. There are structures still there, and the camp seems to be in relatively good condition, meaning someone is taking care of it." "It''s still being used?" I asked. "Yes." Incredible. One year earlier, I had wagered with several friends there would be an attack in Indonesia before the end of 2002 because government denial allowed the terrorists to work in peace. When the Bali bombings killed more than two hundred people on October 12, 2002, it was in spite of many signals that authorities had documented of a growing threat. Bali could have been prevented.
The Indonesian police had had the names of every single one of the Bali plotters well in advance. But political gamesmanship -- courting moderate Muslims by ignoring extremists -- had prevented anyone from taking action. Now I had the same churning feeling at the pit of my stomach. The lessons hadn''t been learned. Indonesia may now be arresting terrorists, but the key American ally in the region, the Philippines, remained in denial about the existence of terrorist training camps. The terrorists still have a place to train and gather. If they can do that, another attack is certain. Long before the United States was ever aware of it, Osama bin Laden had declared war on America in Southeast Asia, his first attempt to expand his influence.
In 1988, he sent his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa to the Philippines to set up a financial infrastructure of charities and other organizations. Khalifa married a local woman and integrated into Filipino society, often asking politicians and Manila''s elite to sit on the boards of his charities. In fact, he had the help of the Saudi Arabian embassy to establish his first charity. That was phase one. A few years later, in 1994, when the financial support network was in place, bin Laden activated phase two by sending in several cells of expert terrorists. It is no coincidence that every single major al-Qaeda plot since 1993 has had some link to the Philippines: the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; the 1995 Manila plot to bomb eleven U.S. airliners over Asia; the 1998 bombings of U.
S. embassies in East Africa; the attack on the U.S. naval destroyer, the USS Cole, in 2000; the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the plot to truck-bomb U.S. embassies and Western interests in Southeast Asia in 2002; the Bali blasts later that year, and the J. W. Marriott Hotel attack in August 2003.
In 1994, one Filipino investigator picked up the underground movements and began to warn of an alarming trend he had discovered. Colonel Rodolfo "Boogie" Mendoza had combined hundreds of wiretaps and countless man-hours of surveillance into a 175-page report on the infiltration of local Muslim groups by international terrorists. It documented the dramatic 150 percent rise in terrorist acts from 1991 to 1994; the boom of madrassas, or Muslim religious schools (1,308 in number), and mosques (2,000); and a watch list of Arab nationals Mendoza believed were involved in spreading radical, jihadist ideas from the Middle East. The statistics were alarming. His watch list alone -- those names he believed were connected to international terrorist groups -- had more than 100 names on it. The countries with the largest Muslim p.