Travel
It should by now be apparent how significant travel was in the planning
undertaken by a terrorist organization as far-flung as al Qaeda. The story of
the plot includes references to dozens of international trips. Operations
required travel, as did basic communications and the movement of money. Where
electronic communications were regarded as insecure, al Qaeda relied even more
heavily on couriers.
KSM and Abu Zubaydah each played key roles in facilitating travel for al
Qaeda operatives. In addition, al Qaeda had an office of passports and host
country issues under its security committee. The office was located at the
Kandahar airport and was managed by Atef. The committee altered papers,
including passports, visas, and identification cards.106
Moreover, certain al Qaeda members were charged with organizing passport
collection schemes to keep the pipeline of fraudulent documents flowing. To this
end, al Qaeda required jihadists to turn in their passports before going to the
front lines in Afghanistan. If they were killed, their passports were recycled
for use.107 The operational mission training course taught operatives
how to forge documents. Certain passport alteration methods, which included
substituting photos and erasing and adding travel cachets, were also taught.
Manuals demonstrating the technique for "cleaning" visas were
reportedly circulated among operatives. Mohamed Atta and Zakariya Essabar were
reported to have been trained in passport alteration.108
The purpose of all this training was twofold: to develop an institutional
capacity for document forgery and to enable operatives to make necessary
adjustments in the field. It was well-known, for example, that if a Saudi
traveled to Afghanistan via Pakistan, then on his return to Saudi Arabia his
passport, bearing a Pakistani stamp, would be confiscated. So operatives either
erased the Pakistani visas from their passports or traveled through Iran, which
did not stamp visas directly into passports.109
