Inside the Nuclear Terror Plot that Never Happened
Former Guantanamo prosecutor Michael Lebovitz takes readers inside an al-Qaeda terrorism case that never got to trial.
In the spring of 2003, CIA counter-terror officials were literally freaking out over intelligence reports suggesting that al-Qaeda might be plotting to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the United States. They even had, or thought they had, a key suspect in the plot: Saifullah Paracha, a gregarious Pakistani businessman with high level connections in Islamabad who just happened to own an import export firm in New York City.
Notwithstanding that Paracha was a lawful U.S. resident, the CIA wanted him rendered to a black site and subjected to torture. “We MUST have paracha arrested without delay and transferred to CIA custody using enhanced measures,” the operations chief for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Mission center wrote in an email at the time.
The long forgotten story of Paracha and the feared al-Qaeda nuclear plot is revisited with fascinating new details by Michael Lebovitz, a former Guantanamo prosecutor, in his new book, Second Wave:. Inside Al Qaeda’s Post-9/11 Attack Plan and America’s Secret Effort to Stop It.
