Prosecutors: Saudi man planned attack for years

Moved by 9/11 and speeches by Osama bin Laden, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari for years had secretly planned to launch a terrorist attack in the U.S., prosecutors allege.

In his journal, the college student from Saudi Arabia who studied chemical engineering in Texas described a plan to travel to New York City, place bombs in several rental cars for remote detonation and leave the vehicles in different places during rush hour, according to court documents released Thursday.

"After mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for jihad," or holy war, Aldawsari wrote in the journal, according to the documents filed by prosecutors.

Aldawsari was expected to appear in federal court Friday, two days after his arrest on a charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

The 20-year-old bought explosive chemicals online as part of a plan to hide bomb materials inside dolls and baby carriages to blow up dams, nuclear plants or the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush, the Justice Department said Thursday.

"As we lay out in this affidavit, there were a range of targets being contemplated," Robert Casey, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said. "I can't speak to his state of mind or the priority in his mind of any of the range of targets we think we discovered."

Aldawsari, who was legally in the U.S. on a student visa, studied chemical engineering at Texas Tech University until January before transferring to a nearby college to study business.

The White House said President Barack Obama was notified about the alleged plot before Aldawsari's arrest.

It was not immediately clear whether Aldawsari had hired a lawyer. Telephone numbers that Aldawsari had provided to others were not working Thursday. No one answered the buzzer or a knock on the door at the address listed as Aldawsari's apartment near the Texas Tech campus.

A federal public defender in Lubbock, David Sloan, said he would be at Friday's court appearance in case U.S. Magistrate Nancy Koenig needed to appoint him to represent Aldawsari.

The case outlined in court documents was significant because it suggests that radicalized foreigners can live quietly in the U.S. without raising suspicions from neighbors, classmates, teachers or others. But it also showed how quickly U.S. law enforcement can move when tipped that a terrorist plot may be unfolding.

"We think we have neutralized any other threats or imminent harm surrounding the actions that he's charged with, but the investigation is continuing," Casey said.

Aldawsari wrote that he was planning an attack even before coming to the U.S. on a scholarship, the court documents say. He said he was influenced by bin Laden's speeches and he bemoaned the plight of Muslims.

Federal authorities said they learned of the plot after a chemical company, Carolina Biological Supply of Burlington, N.C., reported $435 in suspicious order by Aldawsari to the FBI on Feb. 1.

Separately, Con-way Freight, the shipping company, notified Lubbock police and the FBI the same day with similar suspicions because it appeared the order wasn't intended for commercial use. Within weeks, federal agents had traced Aldawsari's other online purchases, discovered extremist posts he made on the Internet and secretly searched his apartment, computer and e-mail accounts and read his diary, according to court records.

Neighbors in Lubbock said they didn't remember seeing Aldawsari but noticed an unusual number of people in the hallway the day of his arrest.

"That's so scary," said Sally Dierschke, a 21-year-old senior at Texas Tech. "That's my neighbor. ... Of course, I'm scared."

Ahmid Obaidan, a senior at Tennessee State University who also is from Saudi Arabia, met Aldawsari in Nashville, Tenn., when Aldawsari was studying at an English language center at Vanderbilt University.

"He was quiet. I thought he was a good guy," Obaidan said.

The FBI said the North Carolina company reported the attempts to purchase 1.3 gallons of phenol, a chemical that can be used to make the explosive trinitrophenol, also known as TNP, or picric acid. Aldawsari falsely told the supplier he was associated with a university and wanted the phenol for "off-campus, personal research," according to court records. Frustrated by questions, Aldawsari canceled his order and later e-mailed himself instructions for producing phenol, the documents say.

TNP, the chemical explosive that Aldawsari was suspected of trying to make, has approximately the same destructive power as TNT. FBI bomb experts said the amounts in the Aldawsari case would have yielded almost 15 pounds of explosive. That's about the same amount used per bomb in the London subway attacks that killed scores of people in July 2005.

Prosecutors said that in December, he bought 30 liters of concentrated nitric acid for about $450 from QualiChem Technologies in Georgia, and three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid that are combined to make TNP. The FBI later found the chemicals in Aldawsari's apartment as well as beakers, flasks, wiring, a Hazmat suit and clocks.

A Saudi industrial company, which was not identified in court documents, was paying Aldawsari's tuition and living expenses in the U.S.

Casey declined to go into why the arrest occurred when it did.

"We just felt it was the right time," he said.

___

Goldman reported from Washington.

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Libyan oil ports, terminals mostly halted: sources

Crude oil shipments from Libya, the world's 12th-largest exporter, have almost halted because of reduced production, a lack of staff at ports and security concerns, industry sources said.

A violent uprising against leader Muammar Gaddafi's 41-year rule has deterred some shippers from sailing to Libya, with some vessels refusing to dock at Libyan ports or turning back en route. Bad weather in the Mediterranean has also disrupted operations, the sources said.

"It is a combination of disruptions and bad weather," said an oil trader with an oil company that buys Libyan oil.

The turmoil in Libya and the prospect of the loss of its 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil exports have sent oil prices soaring. Brent crude rose to almost $120 a barrel on Thursday, the highest since 2008.

"The captain of the tanker we chartered refused to go to Libya," said a source with a major oil company. "He said he was concerned about the security of the port."

"You can't get into those ports. There is zero communication," said another buyer of Libyan crude. "We've heard reports of vessels turning around."

Libya exports crude from ports and terminals including Ras Lanuf, Zuetina, Marsa el Hariga, Brega, Bouri, Es Sider, Zawia and Mellitah.

Industry sources said on Friday that the Es Sider terminal was in operation and some sources said that the Zawia terminal and Mellitah were operating, but closed due to the weather.

Libya normally produces about 1.6 million bpd of high-quality oil, or almost 2 percent of world output. Between 30 percent and 75 percent of output has been shut down due to the turmoil in the country.

(Reporting by Emma Farge, Jonathan Saul, Ikuko Kurahone and Christopher Johnson, writing by Alex Lawler; editing by Keiron Henderson)

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Deja vu: Russia, US at odds over missile defense

Talks between the U.S. and Russia over a new anti-ballistic missile system for Europe are stuck on a key point, with Moscow demanding to jointly run the system and the U.S. refusing to yield.

Russia is insisting on shared control of the missile defense program with the U.S. and NATO, which President Barack Obama has flatly opposed because it would essentially give Russia responsibility for protecting NATO from nuclear missile threats. The U.S. is offering Moscow a more limited role.

After years of opposition, Russia agreed last fall at least to talk about cooperating on the anti-ballistic missile plan for Europe, which the U.S. says may one day be needed if Iran develops nuclear weapons. Experts from both sides are scheduled to report on details of the proposal to defense ministers in July.

But Moscow has refused so far to budge from its demand for joint control, and has been keeping up the rhetorical pressure. In late November, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said if the U.S. and NATO can't reach an agreement on missile defense Russia may deploy new offensive weapons, triggering a new arms race.

Early this month, a Russian deputy foreign minister warned anything less than a "joint system" could lead Russia to withdraw from the recently-ratified New START treaty and to "take other measures, including military-technical measures."

Russia's U.S. Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, told an industry-sponsored conference here this week that the two sides still haven't come up with a good understanding of how a joint program would work, warning that his country wasn't interested in "cloning" decisions already made by the U.S.

Referring to Russian fears that the missile defense system could target Russian warheads, Kislyak said Moscow is determined to maintain a strategic nuclear balance with the West.

"We want to be reassured that whatever you do there doesn't undermine the stability of deterrence, because deterrence is still with us," Kislyak said Wednesday at the Nuclear Weapons Monitor Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Washington. "We haven't reached a state ... between our two countries that would allow us to abolish it. We would like to see it happen. But that's going to be a long way (off)."

The U.S. and NATO have proposed sharing radar and other early warning data, but Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, the top U.S. arms control negotiator, told the industry summit that Obama has decided that "NATO will protect NATO, and that's the bottom line as far as we're concerned."

The issue could make or break the deal.

"The hardest question on missile defense in the end is who pulls the trigger," said Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution, a veteran of U.S. arms control negotiations and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He nevertheless thinks that an agreement can be reached.

The White House had hoped that the New START treaty limiting U.S. and Russian strategic weapons, which took effect Feb. 5, would be a springboard to further arms deals, including deeper cuts in strategic forces as well as reductions in short-range nuclear weapons and non-deployed warheads.

U.S. officials say that new limits on the strategic arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, which between them control 90 percent of the world's deployed nuclear arms, are crucial to efforts to halt the spread of those weapons and promote disarmament worldwide.

Both U.S. and Russian officials have been vague about the details of Russia's proposal for a joint missile defense system, which Medvedev has called a "sectoral" defense.

But independent Russian military expert Alexander Golts said the plan would give Russia responsibility for intercepting missiles headed across its territory toward Europe, while NATO would be responsible for missiles headed across its territory toward Russia.

The apparent aim is to ensure that NATO's interceptors aren't aimed at Russian ICBMs, where they might cripple Russia's ability to respond to a first strike from the West.

Golts said the Kremlin may recognize that the U.S. could never agree to such a scheme but has adopted this position as a bargaining tactic. Russia's bottom line, he said, may be an agreement by the U.S. not to deploy ship-based missile interceptors in the Arctic region, where in theory at least they could shoot down Russian strategic ICBMs headed for U.S. targets.

"If Americans are honest when they say that this missile defense is not aimed at Russian nuclear potential, why not?" Golts said.

Experts say U.S. missile defense systems aren't capable of posing a serious threat to Russia's nuclear missiles, and are intended to protect against future any missile threats from Iran and North Korea. But Russia has said that it is concerned the current systems will develop into a full-scale missile shield.

Russia isn't the only country skeptical of U.S. missile defense goals.

"The Chinese are very, very concerned about missile defenses," said Sharon Squassoni of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "A moderately effective missile defense, which we don't have yet, could really neutralize their nuclear capability and they know that. .We have to do this with the Russians because we're going to have to do this with the Chinese later on."

Despite the impasse, several current and former U.S. officials expressed confidence the U.S. and Russia eventually will find a compromise and strike a deal.

"We believe that we both have systems that can augment each other," Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said this week. She added that the New START treaty had created an environment "where we can work to make sure that NATO is protecting NATO, Russia is protecting Russia."

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