By Anthony C Heaford, 08 August 2020
Looking through my reports about my 1997 meetings with al Qaeda in Yemen I have seen some errors and contradictions. One example is I’ve given two different dates (one in April 2015 and another in May 2015) for when I realised that the man introduced to me as ‘the Engineer’ was in fact Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
To try to clarify the correct chronology of my research and reporting I am publishing (below) original, dated emails that I have sent to the British Counter Terrorism Command (aka S.O.15) and one other email I sent to Private Eye magazine in February 2015. The email to Private Eye magazine is my first evidenced record of my having spoken about my suspicions about my 1997 visit to Yemen.
09 February 2015 - In this email my primary concern is my conversations in Yemen about hijacked planes being used as missiles to attack the World Trade Centre. I incorrectly say my visit was in 1998 but I correctly note the al Qaeda front company name, Yempak. I also speculate about links to Saudi and Pakistan. Private Eye never acknowledged or replied to this email but I did discuss it with their defence correspondent extensively; that was the late Paul Vickers who died in October 2017, three months after I had exposed his lies in a report about the British army guarding opium harvesting that Private Eye published in June 2015.
21 April 2015 - This is my first documented report to British Counter Terrorism Command / SO15. I had been telephoning the CTC with this information for about three weeks at this point and it was only through my persistence that I was able to get an SO15 email address to send the attached photo to. My impression was that CTC / SO15 did all they could to avoid me emailing them with my claims and evidence. When I first sent this (at 10:53 hours) it was rejected because the attachment size was too big. This email (sent at 11:02 hours) was not rejected. In it I have corrected my visit date to 1997, again name the company Yempak and speculate about a Saudi link. My focus is on my conversations with a guide about hijacked planes being used as missiles to attack the World Trade Centre. I incorrectly say the guide accompanied me on a “couple of occasions” when in reality I had only met him once. CTC / SO15 have never acknowledged or replied to this email.
24 April 2015 - In my second email to CTC / SO15 I confirm the date of my visit as September 1997, advise the name of the customer’s purchase agent (spelt as Long Gulf Trading, but actually called Longulf Trading) and name my employer at the time (redacted). I had got the purchase agent’s name after phoning my former employer and asking the original salesman to check their customer data base for me. It is likely he gave me the date of my visit too. That was the last time my former employer has assisted me in my research; since then they have obstructed all my efforts to establish the facts in this matter. I also admit to SO15 that “i feel a bit of a crack pot” because of the nature of my claims, but the fact that I still submitted them demonstrates my underlying but not yet validated concerns. Again CTC / SO15 have never acknowledged or replied to this email.
04 May 2015 - My third email to CTC / SO15 contained an attached .pdf report titled: “Yempak installation compressed”. The “compressed” refers to the file size, i.e. I had reduced the .pdf so that it would be accepted by the SO15 email address. This .pdf contains my first speculation that ‘the Engineer’ was in fact Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It also contains my photos from Yemen, my diary entries, my customer data base entry for YemPak and a google earth image of the YemPak factory that I had also found. Again CTC / SO15 have never acknowledged or replied to this email.
Link to the “Yempak installation compressed” .pdf file, as sent to CTC / SO15 on 04 May 2015 is here
Link to the “Yempak installation compressed” .pdf file, as sent to CTC / SO15 on 04 May 2015 is here