Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Imagine this, you live in a regular apartment complex, nothing special, but there's that one unit that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. They never open their curtains. There's individuals coming and going. They don't exactly look like a family. And you realize you never saw anyone move in. There is no furniture truck that pulled up outside. No one says hello to you from this unit in the morning. You've never had small talk with anyone inside of the unit. You don't even know how many people are actually in this unit. Right. This is not paranoia. This is potentially the signs of how terrorists live covertly in everyday neighborhoods. Today on the watch floor, we're going to be discussing how Al Qaeda chooses a safe house. And we're going to go back to just their own doctrine. We're going to use an old manual and read straight from it, called the Manchester Manual, will explain what it taught terrorists then, how some of these tactics have evolved over time and what you can look for. Because an attack doesn't begin at an explosion, it's so much more boring. It begins with a lease. Today is a conversation about something terrorists obsess over, but we hardly ever give it a second thought. It's where do I live when I'm planning an attack. Obviously you're not going to be in a training camp. You sure as heck aren't going to be in a cave in the west. You're going to be in an apartment in a short term rental in what we like to call a safe house. Al Qaeda doesn't improvise this. They wrote the playbook on it. When you understand what terrorists are actually looking for, how they choose it, how they protect it, and how they operate inside of these places, you can recognize the warning signs long before a plot becomes operational. This isn't about fear, it's about foresight. It's the same behaviors designed to help terrorists blend in that gives us indicators and warnings. We notice something. They can expose themselves early by making these mistakes. Because every attack has this preparation phase and every plot has infrastructure. And that infrastructure leaves breadcrumbs. Obviously, if I'm going to sign a lease, there's a name to the lease, potential sponsors who financially are helping me, emails, addresses, etc. I've now created a paper trail. Today we're going to walk through how Al Qaeda teaches their operatives when and where to live, how to run these safe houses, what this really means for the public. Heck, if you're in this industry and Maybe a property manager in health. Anyone can look at the way this occurs and really prevent something bad from happening. We all can notice when something doesn't exactly fit right when there's one outlier in an entire neighborhood. How did terrorists pick a safe house in the first place? In May of 2000, British authorities raided what looked like a normal apartment in Manchester. Even though I feel like there's not a lot of normal apartments in Manchester. But there was no explosives laid out, there was no weapons cache. It wasn't some dramatic scene. But what they found was far more dangerous. It was a digital training document saved on a laptop. It would first be kind of coined the Manchester Manual. It was called the Al Qaeda Handbook. And then of course, because Al Qaeda makes fabulous titles, here's what they originally named it. Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants. I guess we're the tyrants in that case. You know, this wasn't propaganda, it wasn't ideology. It wasn't kind of the normal religious theory that you think about. It was operational guidance, right? Step by step instructions on how to live and blend in in places like New York, London, Madrid. This apartment at the time belonged to actually a Libyan terrorist. His name was Anas Al Libbey. And the British government had granted him asylum. So he was able to live safely in the United Kingdom while he plotted and planned and supported Al Qaeda's external operations. He's most famous for his involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings at the time. So when they went into his apartment and they searched this computer file, it wasn't actually super significant. They didn't really take time to realize what they had. But then, of course, all that changed after nine. Eleven happened a year later, because then everyone got very focused on, hey, we need to prosecute these terrorists, we need to bring them to trial. We need to start putting out some of this terrorist literature because we need to use it in our cases. So there was a case in New York City regarding the embassy bombings, and that's when we first saw the Manchester Manual. Because it had been in Arabic, they then translated it to English, used it in this court case, and then it went online for all of us to see. That's when a lot of people realized, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is pretty massive. I just want to walk through the key elements of it. It was an 18 chapter operational handbook. It talked about urban terrorism tactics, counter surveillance, how to resist during interrogations, recruitment. And then today's topic. How do you find the best safe house? One of the most detailed sections is this Piece, because as you can imagine, it's even more important to Al Qaeda than a weapon. If you have a safe place to plot and plan from, that is the biggest piece of an equation to carrying out a successful attack. Now, Al Qaeda didn't exactly call them like a safe house. That's just a term we like to use in the West. But they called them bases, right? This was a base of operations. That word really does matter. It's not where you sleep for a night or two. It's not some temporary hideout like in the movies, you know, it's again, that word we said earlier, infrastructure. You know, the base is where operatives meet. It's where they keep documents, including some of their extra identity documents. Right? A terrorist might have four different passports. Well, he doesn't keep the other three where he lives every day. He'll keep it and stored in this operational safe house. It's where they sit down and plan pre attack surveillance. It's where all the pieces of the attack are plotted and planned. When they discuss what IEDs do we have to build how many. And it's a good place to hide other operatives if they're moving through the area. And it's just a way to kind of like hide quietly in the noise going on all around you. Before we dive into the manual, I want to quickly explain to you how this safe house was exposed. It was essentially routine policing. So it was in a neighborhood where there was a lot of student housing. There was like shared buildings, you know, hosting a lot of different activity. There were young men coming and going all the time, and, and it really was a place you didn't look at twice. So there wasn't some massive intelligence breakthrough or like some tip that came in the last minute, just officers started to notice irregular behavior. The residents who lived there didn't have a lifestyle that matched with other people in the area. They had technology, but then it didn't fit the COVID stories. And then they had movements that just stood out and weren't the same as a lot of these other students in the area who had standard schedules for class. When they noticed these changes, they did the most important thing. They followed up. They decided to rate this location. Now when they went there, like I said, it wasn't really anything flashy. They really just got a bunch of computer files. It wasn't because they thought, oh, this unit has terrorists. It was because, hey, there's inconsistencies here. There's strange patterns and we shouldn't ignore them. The same pattern repeated just after the attacks that Occurred in Paris and Brussels in 2015. You know, when they ended up finding these safe houses, they weren't remote hideouts. They weren't on, like, mysterious compounds. They literally found the apartments they were renting through algorithms, right? So they went on a site to look for an apartment. They put in what they were looking for, and the algorithm spit out, here's the best locations to rent. So then it was the same thing. It was good police work, not some sort of intelligence tip. You know, neighbors reported unusual comings and goings at these locations. The renters used some false documents, and then their cover stories kept changing for why they needed the unit or why they were living there. The landlords were getting kind of strange payments that didn't really add up. Right. It wasn't how normal occupants paid their rent. And law enforcement just quietly collected these flags over time. Right. And then put the dots together. So you have to remember how terrorists live is pretty ordinary, but the patterns in which they live can be very different than everyday people. And that's what you look for. Safe houses aren't just something where you go kick in a door. You're like, that has to be where it is. You have to put in all this time and effort and look for these patterns to emerge. And that was done really well in this case. And it's something where we have to remember these lessons from the past and employ them again. Because the terrorists still use a lot of the same tradecraft. Let's kind of walk through what that looks like. Pulled straight from the Manchester Manual. So to Al Qaeda, this is like a logistical problem to choose the right safe house. So in the early stages, what they say is the best way to success is to just pick an apartment in an urban environment. Right? That's where you start. Because cities provide a lot of coverage. There's people of every walk of life. There's a lot of noise, a lot of movement. You're almost pretty anonymous in these cases. Here's a useful way to think about it. A tiger doesn't go and disappear when it needs to hide. It just hides in the tall grass. Urban life is like the tall grass. So you're not really going somewhere exotic. This can happen next door to us. So when we go to the Manchester Manual, it's almost like there's a checklist, and I'm going to read through every element of that. First is you look for location, you then look for access. You then make sure it will have the right cover. You look for an area that has a lot of noise. You Think through the makeup of the neighbors. When you make this decision, the guidance is blunt. You choose an apartment where people can come and go completely unnoticed. You're not isolated in some place where everyone's going to be suspicious about why a couple people use that location. Another thing they like to get into is ground units are preferred. Nothing to do with views or anything. It just gives you the fastest way out if you need to evacuate. Also, newer neighborhoods are a priority because if people lived in an area for a long time, they notice who's new, they get curious about it. And you don't want that. You want to just blend in with the noise. It's kind of this thought like you're focused on secrecy over comfort. And then when you first move in, you replace the locks. You make some sort of controlled access system yourself. You limit who comes to the location. There's no unnecessary visitors, right? There's no women coming to these locations. There's no kids coming to these locations. When you're there, you really focus on what you're talking about. There's a lot of counterintelligence baked in. And most importantly, you're doing your best not to attract any unwanted attention from the outside. Any kind of curiosity or questions like puts you in a difficult situation if you're a terrorist. I mean, good tradecraft is boring and they understand that. Now a really great example of this is the Homburg cell. If you remember, you know, they were connected to the 911 attacks. Well, I want to play a quick clip from the Hamburg cell. This is a cell that had Mohamed Atta in, who is really the ringleader on the ground during 9 11. And you're going to see, you know, just a normal, ordinary apartment in Hamburg. They were posing as students at the time. You know, there was no like weapons, they weren't on like some secret compound. You know, they were just roommates. They had books, computers, you know, just normal furniture. It's like these safe houses can be completely forgettable on the face value. So let's roll that clip.
- [16:13]
B
Their base of operation was here, 54 Marion Strasse in Hamburg. The apartment was sparsely furnished. One of its few concessions to the modern world was a high speed Internet connection. In private conversations, the men called their base Dar Al Ansar, the house of the followers. Here they would watch videotapes of Muslim radicals calling for a holy war against the United States. They referred to the US as America, the Satan and the head of the snake. Voices often became so loud, neighbors complained about the noise. The leader of the group was Mohammed Atta.
- [17:13]
A
So you saw that. I mean, some of the most famous terrorists in the world stayed in that location and it's completely unremarkable. Let's talk through a few more things they did right once they moved into this apartment, as we see with the Manchester manual. First you need to create hidden storage in these locations again for things like documents. I told you, the extra passports, et cetera. Even the terrace will have full on attack plans for what they're carrying out. It's actually surprising how many things are in written form. Another thing is they have to of course, pre plan the escape routes. In practice doing it as a team or with each of the individuals who filter into this location. Another is they have to establish some sort of coding system, you know, for when people come or they come to the door. They let them in and the same thing happens. You know, if there's any sort of devices, you know, it's best to actually keep a phone that only stays in that unit. Well, what's the protocol for when it rings and how we answer it? As we all know, especially with a cell phone, you know, you also get a lot of spam, right? So you really need a plan for all these things. And terrorists think through every single detail when it comes to how to maintain, you know, these safe houses, you know, in a manner where they will look just like ordinary locations. It's when the terrorists start failing at looking normal is where they really get vulnerable and they start to make mistakes. And when you think about it, if you compromise a safe house, you might not just compromise the cell, you might compromise an entire network. So this is almost like a home run in counterterrorism if you can find these locations. I first want to jump into what's changed though. We've been talking about this manual that's 20 years old. Obviously there's been changes in technology the terrorists have benefited from. And we mentioned one to you right after the Brussels and Paris bombings we learned, oh, terrorists just use algorithms to get those apartments right. You put in your criteria, it spits out the perfect location. And that's amazingly useful in this case. Another thing is you could just book these short term rentals online. In the past, Al Qaeda had to get these long, cumbersome lease agreements. They might have had to take a location for a year or two. Like those days are gone. Another thing is so many things are cashless or you can pay through alternative means. Like you could pay through bitcoin for different short term rentals. And then also there's a Lot of high turnover in these locations because they're meant for people to keep them as a crash pad or for a short period of time, depending on what industry they're in. So you have to then look for additional behaviors. One could be the same person keeps renting the unit, but different people are showing up in it. That's interesting, especially if they maybe have different cover stories. It's not like a rental for a company and it's their employees coming through it all the time. Another thing is kind of late night comings and goings, maybe meetings at strange times that don't make sense, and then any kind of story that I need this apartment in some way for my job. But then you're not seeing other pieces, you know, of them carrying out that activity. Now they can use all this trade craft, but if they're not living along these cover story lines and you're paying attention, that can come out and be something that exposes them very quickly. Now we've talked through what's in the manual, how technology has improved on some of this. You've seen a couple of these safe houses. So let's say you're at a point, something is off. I want to report it to authorities. This is where the public really has to step in. Law enforcement can't be everywhere. They don't even know in most cities that they're looking for these safe houses. They aren't even where these cells exist. And they can just be operating down the street from a police department. So you have to get involved and you to be aware. And here's the key things that if you notice them, you should report them. The apartment seems unused, but then there's people there. They don't have the normal activities of random families living in apartments. Getting up in the morning, going to work, bringing the kids to school, walking the pets. Another thing is there's a lot of short term visitors and people stopping by at odd hours. They never seem to engage or interact or make relationships with any of the neighbors nearby. They never participate in the local community gatherings. They're not even using the resources there. They might not be using the pool or the gym. They have these cover stories as running businesses, but. But you have never really seen their business. They don't have a vehicle with the insignia on it. They've never handed you any kind of business card. There's sudden changes of the people in this location. You saw three of the same people and then come Friday there's four completely different people. That little bit matters. Another thing is deliveries are coming to this location, but they don't match the COVID that you were told for the business these individuals were in. And lastly, they have, like, excessive security practices. We live in this normal, boring neighborhood. There's not even crime going on here. And they have all these added layers of security that should at least get you thinking, hey, they are concerned that somebody is noticing them or somebody is a threat to them. Why are they almost paranoid in this case? When you report these locations and let's say law enforcement puts these pieces together, you help in some way, even if nobody knows what's going on. It might come to a point where a landlord's like, I'm tired of dealing with this unit. So they're afraid forcing the individuals to relocate, it increases the opportunity for them to make mistakes. It takes a base away from the network and it really can delay operations because it's this kink. They never planned for this. Prevention matters. We want to get ahead of these things long before we hear sirens and they're like, oh, my gosh, it's happening again. So it's really powerful to understand how this works. And then you can kind of flip it on its head. Terrorist attacks don't begin again, like I said, with explosions. They begin with these leases, keys, locks, cover stories, boring everyday routines. And when you understand the terrorists are starting to feel comfortable in these environments, they feel that, wow, the plan we put together is working. It almost emboldens them. And we want them to know our communities are hard targets. You don't get to have a base here, like, we're watching you, we're going to come after you. This has been the watch floor. Stay alert, stay grounded, and stay aware.