Напруження при осьовому розтягу (стиску)

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Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T-shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But ‘KSM’, as he was always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside the USA?

The answer, according to KSM’s confessions and the intense US investigation that followed, is yes. It is not known where the authorities took KSM. He now probably resides in an exceedingly Spartan jail cell in some friendly Arab country, perhaps Jordan.

He has probably not been tortured, at least in the traditional sense. Interrogation methods, usually involving sleep deprivation, have become much more refined. He probably did not tell all he knew. Qaeda chieftains are schooled in resisting interrogation, and informed sources said that at first KSM offered up nothing but evasions and disinformation. But confronted by the contents of his computer and his cell-phone records, he began speaking more truthfully. According to intelligence documents, many of the names, places and plots have checked out.

KSM revealed the 9/11 hijackers were all foreign nationals – mostly Saudis, led by an Egyptian – who infiltrated the United States by obtaining student or tourist visas. To foil the heightened security after 9/11, Al Qaeda began to rely on operatives who would be harder to detect. They recruited US citizens or people with legitimate Western passports who could move freely in the United States. They used women and family members as “support personnel”. And they made an effort to find African-American Muslims who would be sympathetic to Islamic extremism.

The plotters were apparently scheming to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, destroy an airliner, derail a train and blow up a whole series of gas stations. Fortunately, American law enforcement has been able to nip these plots in the bud. The methods used to crack the Qaeda cells, while effective and understandable under the circumstances, raise uncomfortable questions about legal means and ends.

Many of the Qaeda operatives have not been arrested or charged with a crime. The Justice Department is reluctant to throw terror suspects into the American criminal-justice system, where they can avail themselves of lawyers and use their rights to tie prosecutors into knots (the alleged “20^th hijacker” of the 9/11 plots, Zacarias Moussaoui, has succeeded in bringing his criminal prosecution to a grinding halt.) Rather, the Justice department has essentially been working in the shadows. FBI agents confronted some of the suspects directly and convinced them that it would be in their interest to work with the government without getting their own lawyers. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently told Congress that the Justice Department had obtained criminal plea agreements with more than 15 individuals who are cooperating with the government, leading to “critical intelligence” about Qaeda safe houses and recruiting tactics. But others – including some of those identified by KSM – may have been “turned” by the Feds. “You can’t say they have been arrested,” said one official. Some of the terror plotters confronted by the bureau have been secretly squirreled away in hotel rooms, living around the clock under FBI surveillance and working with the authorities to identify other Qaeda plots inside the country.

The cooperating witnesses have “given us a few leads” about “where to look”, said one official, but, as yet, not the major finds. That may be because Al Qaeda, like any successful terrorist organization, is carefully “compartmented”. Different cells are kept apart. Some top investigators have a nagging suspicion that KSM just fed his investigators the small fry to divert investigators from the really big – and deadly – plots. “The problem is,” said the senior official, “we don’t know what we don’t know.”

Still, the Feds have learned a great deal more than the public record suggests. Ashcroft continually gives lurid speeches about the enemy within. But the evidence from criminal prosecutors has been underwhelming. The Buffalo Six (later, Seven) rounded up as a terror cell looked more like some hapless jobless American Muslims who had been lured into a Qaeda training camp on a pilgrimage to Pakistan.

Intelligence officials say, however, that they are in some ways more worried about lone wolves who have only distant ties to Al Qaeda. “My concern is what we are seeing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” one top official told NEWSWEEK, – “the solo fanatic suicide bomber, or a “non-aligned mujahedin.” These are the lost souls who wandered through Al Qaeda’s Afghan training camps in the 1990s and have gone on to create their own cells. They may pose a more imminent threat than the kind of top-of-the-line, well-trained operatives who carried out the complex 9/11 hijack plan.

Canada seems to be heaven for those folk. American authorities fret that the Canadians allow sleepers to walk the streets until they are compelled to take legal action. US Justice Department officials have not been reticent. By putting suspects in what one top law-enforcement official described as a “kind of limbo detention” – especially living with FBI agents who could charge them at any time – the Feds are pushing the legal envelope. “We are making this up as we go along,” said the official. When FBI agents confront Qaeda suspects, they give them a choice: cooperate or face the consequences, which could include a life in prison and possibly even the death penalty. (Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock declined to discuss any specific cases, but said that the department has deployed legal tactics that have been “historically used in organized crime and drug cases and proven effective in breaking down conspiracies.”) One lever the Feds currently lack is the threat of expulsion from the United States. Some administration officials would like to amend the law to allow prosecutors to strip terror suspects of their naturalized citizenship and deport them.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

Find the following quotations in the text and comment on them.

1. ‘He has probably not been tortured, at least in the traditional sense. Interrogation methods, usually involving sleep deprivation, have become much more refined.”

2. “The methods used to crack the Qaeda cells, while effective and understandable under the circumstances, raise uncomfortable questions about legal means and ends.”

3. “FBI agents confronted some of the suspects directly and convinced them that it would be in their interest to work with the government without getting their own lawyers.”

4. “American authorities fret that the Canadians allow sleepers to walk the streets until they are compelled to take legal actions.”

5. “When FBI agents confronted Qaeda suspects, they gave them a choice: cooperate or face the consequences, which could include a life in prison and possibly even the death penalty.”

18. Analyze the facts given in the article very carefully and prepare a short speech as if you were taking part in a debate on the problem of dealing with arrested members of terrorist groups or those suspected of terrorist activities. (Should they be tortured so that they reveal the information they possess? Should they be given a chance of getting a lawyer when their activities are investigated or should they be deprived of that right? Etc.)

First act as if you were in favour of tightening up investigation methods and then as if you were against it. You must be prepared to support both points of view.

While preparing the speech follow the procedure suggested in the similar task of Unit 7.

Vocabulary 2