This past Monday’s Wall Street Journal led with an astounding story about a personal computer that had apparently been used by Al Qaeda terrorists to plot the September assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. The computer’s hard drive also reportedly contained bioterrorism information and a 23-minute video clip of Osama bin Laden denouncing the United States and enthusing over the September 11 attacks.

How the computer came to be acquired by the Journal is a pretty amazing story in itself.

The article — by staff reporters Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins — offers a few details. A "Journal reporter" purchased the IBM desktop computer, as well as a Compaq laptop, in Kabul for a total of $1100 after being told that they had been looted from an Al Qaeda office following a US bombing raid. The article goes on to say that US officials confirmed the authenticity of the files, "and say they provide a trove of information about the inner workings of the secretive organization."

Intrigued, I sent e-mails to both reporters. Cullison, the paper’s Moscow correspondent, temporarily ensconced in Washington, wrote back within a few hours.

"I was in need of a computer, because the one that the Wall Street Journal issued me was smashed when the car I was taking over the Hindu Kush Mountains lost its brakes and rolled," Cullison said. "I was looking for one, and was much more interested in this laptop and the hard drive [from the IBM] when I heard it was used by al Qaeda."

The Journal’s foreign editor, John Bussey, says that Cullison had been covering the Northern Alliance for about a month and a half when his computer was destroyed. Several weeks ago, after the liberation of Kabul, Bussey says Cullison went computer shopping and was told that the IBM and the Compaq had been used in the headquarters of bin Laden’s chief strategist, Mohammed Atef, who died in a bombing raid in November. Cullison purchased the equipment and was reportedly able to determine rather quickly that there was at least some evidence on the IBM’s hard drive that Al Qaeda files were indeed present.

At that point, Bussey says, Journal editors realized they had to notify the US government. "Who knows? Maybe there’s a calendar of upcoming events," Bussey explains. The Journal negotiated with the Department of Defense to turn over the computers in Kabul the next day. Before the handover, Bussey says, Cullison and Higgins managed to copy the contents of the IBM hard drive onto Journal equipment, although they were unable to get past the Compaq’s password-protection scheme.

Working with the copied contents of the hard drive, Cullison, Higgins, translators, and a computer expert hired by the Journal spent eight days combing through the files and preparing Monday’s story. Defense Department officials, meanwhile, verified the authenticity of those files. The Compaq, though, yielded nothing: government computer experts were able to crack the password, but reported that all the files had been erased.

"Sometimes chance and happenstance play an incredible part in an incredible story," Bussey says.

So will there be more from the Al Qaeda computer files? "I’ll tell you later on," Bussey says, then adds that he wants the Journal’s computer expert to take another look at the Compaq: "Is the laptop stuff really erased? We’ll have to see."

Issue Date: January 3 - 10, 2002

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