A challenge

Here's a challenge for you guys.

Find a news article or document dated before January 2001 that has the words "al Qaeda" in it, refering to that particular "international terrorist network." Surely if al Qaeda's tentacles are so far reaching, there must have at least something mentioned of them before January 2001. I'd imagine it would take at least a couple of years to establish such a huge network with numerous sleeper cells in every country etc.

And no, not any articles dated after January 2001 talking about the al Qaeda before 2001.

Go ahead, do it. You'll get a cookie if you find any!

Easy.

archives.cnn.com...

"U.S. and Yemeni investigators have said they suspect the attack might have been orchestrated by Al Qaeda, the organization headed by bin Laden"

Just poke around a bit and I'm sure you could find one too.

Where's my cookie?

[edit on 11/20/05 by redmage]

yeah, in all fairness, many people thought there would be a war soon on the horizon after the bombing of the USS Cole in yemen, turns out they were right. who knew right?

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
yeah, in all fairness, many people thought there would be a war soon on the horizon after the bombing of the USS Cole in yemen, turns out they were right. who knew right?

Yup.

Hey, wait a minute, back off man the cookie's mine!

Where's my cookie?

Originally posted by redmage
Easy.

archives.cnn.com...

"U.S. and Yemeni investigators have said they suspect the attack might have been orchestrated by Al Qaeda, the organization headed by bin Laden"

Just poke around a bit and I'm sure you could find one too.

Where's my cookie?

[edit on 11/20/05 by redmage]

Ya, I just found that one myself, it's kind of close to January 2001 (refering to that court case where the US wanted to prosecute bin Laden for some embassy bombings). But well, ok, here ya go:


EDIT: Found another one in October of 2000.

Ok, so I found three articles about al Qaeda in 2000, earliest one in October, but nothing before that, not yet at least.


New Challenge
The person who finds a article containing the word "al Qaeda" refering to the "international terrorist network" dated in early 2000 or before, will get my "Way Above" vote, AND then I will shut up about this.

[edit on 20/11/2005 by SwearBear]

Originally posted by SwearBear
What about "sufficently" after January 2001, like a few months. I myself couldn't find any, yet.

Oh, there's plenty of those.

*Homer voice* Mmmmmmm, cookies.

Here we go:

August 28, 1998
Web posted at: 8:31 p.m. EDT (0031 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A second suspect in the deadly August 7 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya faced charges in a New York courtroom Friday, and law enforcement officials said he has provided new information linking the attack to Osama bin Laden.
.....................

Odeh told the FBI that he had trained in a number of camps affiliated with al Qaeda, an international terrorist group allegedly led by bin Laden, U.S. officials told CNN. Odeh also told the FBI that he believed al Qaeda had carried out the Nairobi bombing and another blast at the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

edition.cnn.com...

U.S. charges bin Laden, aide with murder in Africa bombings
State Department offers $5 million reward
November 4, 1998
Web posted at: 7:12 p.m. EST (0012 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The United States formally charged Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden and a military aide with murder Wednesday, in a federal indictment blaming them for the deadly twin attacks on American embassies in East Africa.

The 238-count indictment, returned in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accuses bin Laden and his alleged military chief, Muhammad Atef, of plotting and carrying out the attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998. Those blasts killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured thousands more.

Both men are fugitives, and the State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to their capture. If found and convicted, both men could face the death penalty.
edition.cnn.com...

Reputed leader of group that killed Sadat indicted in embassy blasts

Khaled al-Fawwaz
June 17, 1999
Web posted at: 12:13 a.m. EDT (0413 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The reputed leader of the terrorist organization that killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was indicted Wednesday on conspiracy charges in last year's U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

The indictments of Ayman al-Zawahiri and another defendant, Khaled al-Fawwaz raise to 15 the number of people charged in last August's bombings that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans in Kenya.

Al-Zawahiri is believed to be in Afghanistan with the suspected mastermind of the bombings, Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

Prosecutors charge that al-Zawahiri merged his outlawed Egyptian group, Al-Jihad, with bin Laden's terrorist organization, al Qaeda, in February 1998 to oppose non-Islamic governments with force and violence.
edition.cnn.com...

It's not that Al-Qaeda didn't exist, it's that they didn't do anything dramatic enough pre-9/11 to really be noticed by Joe Public. The idea that Al-Qaeda was unheard of before 9/11 is an example of what it takes for people to notice problems.

search.cnn.com...

[edit on 20-11-2005 by AgentSmith]

Agent Smith gets the BIG cookie!

As usual, our members rise to the occasion. They also seem to have a sweet tooth.

Hail AgentSmith! You got my vote as promised.

[edit on 20/11/2005 by SwearBear]

Originally posted by AgentSmith
Here we go:

August 28, 1998

A little late but since I got three........

Here's a cookie Smith

Thank you everyone!
Can anyone think of any other news archives? I guess that information is slightly restricted because it's only in more recent years that everything has been written up and archived on the internet isn't it?
When I looked on Google News it only went back a couple of months for some reason.

Originally posted by AgentSmith
When I looked on Google News it only went back a couple of months for some reason.

Yeah, I noticed that too so I went to CNN and checked their personal archives.

We could always check ABC, NBC, CBS, ugh FOX, etc. directly.

I deffinately took the gold medal in the dash, 13 mins to finish another thread I was reading, find this one, and get results; but you took the gold in the mile!

I still have a hard time believing the al Qaeda is what they say it is.

The US embassy bombings in East Africa took place in 1998 and the US gov't wanted to prosecute bin Laden, and then they used laws that were meant to prosecute organized crime groups like the Mafia, where being a member of this group is cruical.
So they found this sudanese militant who was in bin Ladens little group back in the day, he then happily, in exchange of safe haven in the US and a few hundred grand, drew up this picture about al Qaeda, basicly saying it's an all powerful international terrorist network, that bin Laden is the leader of it and so forth.
Even Blair said in a interview on Fox News that "al Qaeda isn't a organisation, it's a way of working."

I'll try to find some articles before those embassy bombings, perhaps I'll find some, perhaps not.


EDIT: Well I couldn't find anything on al Qaeda before the embassy bombings in 1998, but I found a article on CNN two months before the embassy bombings, where they talked about bin Laden and a group of his followers.
In that article bin Laden had vowed to wage a holy war against Americans and westerners in the mid-east.
www.cnn.com...

So two months before the attacks it was "bin Laden and a group of his followers", then a few days after the attacks it's "the international terrorist network al Qaeda led by bin Laden."


[edit on 20/11/2005 by SwearBear]

Well, I've done alot of searching (U.S. and international news archive databases) and it appears that the 08/28/98 incident, while supprisingly widely reported (by archives that go back that far), is the earliest publically reported use of the title "al Qaeda", by name, in the press.

Newspapers' archives seemed the most fruitfull as their archives, in general, went back the furthest.

Not posting any links cause they were all the "same" story, and, many newspapers only showed the first paragraph without a subscription.

Hindsight being 20/20 there are a few, very few, archives that go back to around '95 and they could possibly turn up Bin Laden by name, just not "al Qaeda" as an organization.

So the real challenge is to find a reference of "al Qaeda" dated pre 08/28/98.

SwearBear
So two months before the attacks it was "bin Laden and a group of his followers", then a few days after the attacks it's "the international terrorist network al Qaeda led by bin Laden."

Exactly.

If we changed the date/started a new challenge starting pre 08/28/98 I think we'd really be on to something.

While many 08/28 links can be provided, I think we may have discovered the "birth" of "al Qaeda".


[edit on 11/20/05 by redmage]

I have a copy of Esquire magazine, Dated April 1999 that has an interview with Osama Bin Laden in it. I'm just posting this here, as I found it very interesting, and if you can get hold of back copies of Esquire, it's is IMO worth a look. Oh, and al Qaida [sic] is mentioned by name.

Originally posted by redmage
If we changed the date/started a new challenge starting pre 08/28/98 I think we'd really be on to something.

While many 08/28 links can be provided, I think we may have discovered the "birth" of "al Qaeda".

As an avowed conspiracy theorist I feel compelled to point out that articles and dates placed upon the internet can be manipulated to create the illusion that situations existed at some time in the past, when, in fact, they did not come into being until some later time.

There is also the problem that the Internet is fairly young, this may be a job for National Archives... over to you!

That is an excellent question. Who ever thought of that moniker was a big Star Wars fan. It was just an intelligence database of known freedom fighters from Afghanistan.

Have you noticed that anyone killed these days can be labeled Al Quaeda.

Originally posted by KhieuSamphan
As an avowed conspiracy theorist I feel compelled to point out that articles and dates placed upon the internet can be manipulated to create the illusion that situations existed at some time in the past, when, in fact, they did not come into being until some later time.

Very true but when a story is corroborated by so many sources here (U.S.) and abroad, it does lend credence.

I'm simply stating that with, having now seen, so many sources dated 08/28/98 (and nothing earlier) that this is a very probable date for the public press unveiling of the title "al Qaeda" in referring to Bin Laden's "followers".