By Carol Grisanti and Robert Windrem, NBC News
In a rare move, one of al-Qaida's highest-ranking leaders has conducted an on-camera interview with a journalist and, in the process, called for the destruction of Pakistan's government.
It was the first time since 2002 that any top al-Qaida official has taken the security risk of sitting down for an interview with a bonafide journalist.
Abu Mustafa al-Yazid, an Egyptian whom U.S. intelligence officials have identified as the al-Qaeda's third highest-ranking official, sat for an interview with Najeeb Ahmad, a reporter for Geo TV. Geo TV is a private Pakistani television channel.
In the interview, Yazid, also known as Sheikh Saeed, called for the destruction of Pakistan's government which he said had "betrayed" the jihadis. Yazid swore that al-Qaida would recapture Afghanistan. And he reiterated al-Qaida's position that "all Americans, not just the American government" are the enemies of Islam.
The interview took place in Khost in eastern Afghanistan. Ahmad, the Geo reporter, is the president of the Karachi Press Club and said he used a Palestinian intermediary to arrange the interview. It took three months to arrange and took place a few days ago, Geo said. Ahmad traveled to Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where he was given dark glasses and driven to the interview site, according to Geo who called the interview "a worldwide exclusive".
Veteran Operative:
Yazid is a veteran al-Qaida operative. He was involved in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1982, and befriended al-Qaida's No. 2, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, while in Egypt. Yazid joined the Afghan jihad in 1998, after first linking up with Osama Bin Laden in Sudan.
U.S. officials have said that Yazid rose to his current position within the past year. Prior to that, he had been "chief financial officer and leader of al Qaeda's finance committee," said the officials. Some U.S. investigators believe he was the ultimate source of the money wired to Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the 9-11 hijackers, before the September 11th attacks.
Indeed, in the 9-11 Commission report, the authors described Yazid (referred to as Sheikh Saeed) as a "chief financial manager" who opposed the plan to attack the U.S. on 9-11.
"Mullah Omar is reported to have opposed this course of action for ideological reasons rather than out of fear of U.S. retaliation. He is said to have preferred for al Qaeda to attack Jews, not necessarily the United States. KSM [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] contends that Omar faced pressure from the Pakistani government to keep al Qaeda from engaging in operations outside Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's chief financial manager, Sheikh Saeed, argued that al Qaeda should defer to the Taliban's wishes. Another source says that Sheikh Saeed opposed the operation, both out of deference to Omar and because he feared the U.S. response to an attack," according to the 9-11 Commission report.
Yazid succeeded Abu Ubaida al-Masri, who died of hepatitis in Pakistan, about a year ago.
Ben Venzke, an expert on al-Qaida propaganda, says that Yazid is "the most senior person who is publicly visible" in al-Qaida today.
In the recent television interview, Yazid says the government of Pakistan has done the most harm to Islam of any Islamic state. The mujahadeen protected Pakistan from the Soviet Army and then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf "betrayed us," he said. Musharraf, he told Geo, had allied himself with "the modern day pharaoh and violated our trust." He added, as Bin Laden has stated since 1998, that "all Americans are our enemy now not just the American government."
Yazid swore that al-Qaida will retake Afghanistan, and he and claimed in an interesting bit of bureaucratic rivalry that al-Qaida is not a creation of Bin Laden but has its roots in Egypt. al-Qaida and Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged in June 2001.
Yazid confirmed that al-Qaida was responsible for the June suicide bombing at the Danish Embassy in Islamabad. A Saudi terrorist came from Mecca to "avenge the Prophet" for Danish cartoonists' "blasphemy," Yazid said. "We insured there was no collateral damage," he claimed.
Rare Interview:
This is the first interview of an al-Qaida leader since May 2002, when two key figures in the 9-11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, were questioned by a reporter for the al Jazeera television network. That interview aired months later, on the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. (Pakistani forces in Karachi arrested bin al-Shibh in Karachi a day before the interview was broadcast.)
The U.S. has long targeted al-Qaida's third-highest-ranking officials, because they believe the men who occupy that position are the chief operational officers of the terrorist group. Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote in his book that the No. 3 is al-Qaida's director of international operations. "In particular, our focus was on the individuals in charge of planning operations against the United States," Tenet wrote.
Unlucky Number 3:
Since 2001, the U.S. has killed or captured five of the terror group's Number 3s:
--In November 2001, U.S. fighter jets bombed the hideout of Mohammed Atef in Kabul, killing him.
--In February 2002, CIA and Pakistani intelligence officials captured Abu Zubaydah in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad, following a gunfight in which Zubaydah was severely wounded.
--In March 2003, CIA and Pakistani intelligence officers captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
--In May 2005, Pakistan intelligence officers captured Abu Faraj al-Libi as he rode a motorbike through a cemetery in the Pakistani city of Mardan. (Haithem al-Yemeni, a potential successor to al-Libi, was killed by a Predator in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border a week later).
--In December 2005, Hamza Rabia, Abu Faraj's successor, was killed in a Predator attack in the village of Asorai, in western Pakistan near the town of Mirali.
Today, U.S. officials say that the current No. 3, Yazid, is a target of the U.S. as well.
