Abu Hafs al-Masri: Former Egyptian policeman and member of al-Jihad who was al-Qaeda’s military commander after the death of Abu Ubaydah. His real name is Mohammed Atef. One of bin Laden’s closest advisors, he was killed by an American air strike in November 2001.
Abu Hajer al-Iraqi: Former Iraqi military officer and electrical engineer who joined the jihad in Afghanistan and became a close advisor of bin Laden’s in Sudan. Although not theologically trained, he was head of the al-Qaeda fatwa committee and rendered two opinions that justified violence against American forces and the killing of innocents. Currently in an American prison after stabbing a prison guard with a sharpened comb. His real name is Mamdouh Mahmoud Salem.
Abu Jandal: Like bin Laden, Abu Jandal is a Saudi citizen of Yemeni extraction. In 2000, he became bin Laden’s chief bodyguard in Afghanistan. Delivered the bride price to Yemen to secure bin Laden’s fifth wife. Captured by Yemeni authorities after the USS Cole bombing, he became a significant source for the FBI. Currently free from custody, he lives in Yemen.
Abu Rida al-Suri: Businessman from Damascus who immigrated to Kansas City, then joined the jihad in Afghanistan in 1985. He is allegedly the author of the handwritten notes of the August 11, 1988, meeting in which the organization of al-Qaeda is first openly discussed. Later, he became bin Laden’s friend and business advisor in Khartoum, where he still lives and operates a candy factory. His real name is Mohammed Loay Baizid.
Abu Ubaydah al-Banshiri: Former Egyptian policeman who gained a reputation on the battlefield in Afghanistan before Zawahiri introduced him to bin Laden. He became al-Qaeda’s first military commander. Died in a ferry accident in Lake Victoria in May 1996. His real name is Amin Ali al-Rashidi.
Saif al-Adl: Al-Qaeda’s military commander since 2002. It is unclear what his real name is. He may be Mohammed Ibrahim Makkawi, a former Egyptian military officer. Thought to be in hiding in Iran.
Abdullah Anas: Algerian mujahid who fought with Ahmed Shah Massoud and married Abdullah Azzam’s daughter. Worked in the Services Bureau with Osama bin Laden and Jamal Khalifa. Perhaps the greatest warrior of the Arab Afghans. His real name is Boudejema Bounoua. Currently lives in London, where he serves as an imam at the Finsbury Park mosque.
John Anticev: FBI agent on the I-49 squad who obtained the crucial telephone number in Yemen belonging to Ahmed al-Hada, which served as an al-Qaeda switchboard.
Mohammed Atta: The Egyptian leader of the 9/11 hijacking team; pilot of American Airlines Flight #11 that struck the World Trade Center.
Abdullah Azzam: Charismatic Palestinian cleric who founded the Services Bureau in Peshawar in 1984. His fatwa summoning Muslims to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began the Arab involvement in that war. He was assassinated on November 24, 1989, a crime that has never been solved.
Mahfouz Azzam: Ayman al-Zawahiri’s mother’s uncle; the family patriarch and longtime lawyer and political figure in Cairo. He was Sayyid Qutb’s protégé and later his attorney. He still lives in Helwan, Egypt.
Umayma Azzam: Ayman al-Zawahiri’s mother. She still lives in Maadi, Egypt.
Ahmed Badeeb: Osama bin Laden’s former teacher at the Thagr School, Badeeb became Prince Turki’s chief of staff. After the Afghan jihad, Badeeb became chairman of the board of United Press International. He is now a businessman in Jeddah and ran a losing campaign in the first municipal elections in that country in 2005.
Saeed Badeeb: Prince Turki’s director of analysis and Ahmed Badeeb’s brother; now retired and living in Jeddah and Washington, D.C.
Hasan al-Banna: Founder and Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood; murdered by Egyptian authorities in 1949.
Khaled Batarfi: Neighbor and boyhood friend of Osama bin Laden in Jeddah; now an editor at Al-Medina newspaper and frequent columnist for Arab News.
Ramzi bin al-Shibh: Member of the Hamburg cell who oversaw the 9/11 plot. Captured in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002, and is now in American custody in an undisclosed location.
Abdullah bin Laden: Osama’s oldest child, now living in Jeddah and working for a division of the Saudi Binladin Group.
Abdul Rahman bin Laden: Son of bin Laden and Umm Abdullah and born with a birth defect called hydrocephalus, which has caused him permanent mental damage. He now lives with his mother in Syria.
Mohammed bin Laden: Creator of the Saudi Binladin Group and father of the bin Laden dynasty. Born in Rubat, in the Hadramout section of Yemen; as a young man left Yemen for Ethiopia and made his way to Arabia in 1931. Died in 1967 at the age of fifty-nine in an air crash in southern Saudi Arabia.
Osama bin Laden: Born in Riyadh in January 1958; became a fund-raiser for the Afghan jihad after the Soviet invasion in 1979; founded al-Qaeda in 1988. Whereabouts unknown.
Steven Bongardt: FBI agent and member of the I-49 squad, now teaching at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
Richard A. Clarke: Former counterterrorism coordinator in the National Security Council. Clarke retired from government in 2003 and became the best-selling author of Against All Enemies. He is also the founder of Good Harbor Consulting.
Jack Cloonan: Former member of the I-49 squad who handled Jamal al-Fadl and Ali Mohammed. Now president of Clayton Consultants, a risk-management firm specializing in negotiating kidnappings, and a consultant for ABC News.
Daniel Coleman: FBI agent and member of the I-49 squad who became the representative of the New York office of the FBI at the CIA’s Alec Station in 1996. There he opened the first case on bin Laden in 1996, and his interrogation of Jamal al-Fadl exposed the al-Qaeda network. Now retired from the bureau, Coleman works for Harbinger, a company that provides training for law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies.
Essam Deraz: Egyptian filmmaker and bin Laden biographer who chronicled the Arab Afghans in 1988. Currently lives in Cairo.
Anna DiBattista: Former girlfriend of John O’Neill; now working for the Marriott Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Fadl: Titular leader of al-Jihad during Zawahiri’s imprisonment and later in Afghanistan, until he resigned in 1993—reputedly to become a shepherd in Yemen. His real name is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, although he writes under the name Dr. Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Salam. He is now in prison in Egypt.
Jamal al-Fadl: Sudanese secretary for bin Laden in Khartoum who became al-Qaeda’s first defector when he stole $110,000 and fled into the embrace of American authorities. Testified in the New York trial of four al-Qaeda members in the embassy bombings case, United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. Currently in the witness protection program somewhere in the United States.
Turki al-Faisal: Born February 15, 1945, youngest son of King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz. Educated primarily at the Lawrenceville School and Georgetown University, although he dropped out after the 1967 Six Day War. Became head of Saudi intelligence, where he held the Afghan file during the jihad against the Soviets. Served as the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom before assuming the same role in Washington, where he now resides.
Patrick Fitzgerald: Former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, involved in the prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center, and was chief counsel in the successful prosecution of al-Qaeda members involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Currently the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, he is best known for his investigation of the Valerie Plame affair.
Louis Freeh: Director of the FBI from 1993 to 2001; now serves as vice chairman and general counsel at the credit card company MBNA, in Wilmington, Delaware.
Stephen Gaudin: FBI agent and member of the I-49 squad who interrogated Mohammed al-‘Owhali. He is now in the bureau’s Boston office.
Ahmed al-Hada: Yemeni mujahid who fought in Afghanistan and later provided the telephone in Sanaa that became the al-Qaeda switchboard. His daughter Hoda married Khaled al-Mihdhar. Currently in Yemeni custody.
Nawaf al-Hazmi: 9/11 hijacker who died at the age of twenty-five on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. A wealthy Saudi who grew up in Mecca, Hazmi trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and fought in Bosnia and Chechnya before becoming a part of the 9/11 plot. He attended the January 2000 meeting in Malaysia and entered the United States on January 15, 2001.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Afghan Pashtun commander during the anti-Soviet jihad who initiated the Afghan civil war in 1992. Took refuge in Iran after the Taliban took power in 1996. Currently leading an insurgency against the Afghan government, which has charged him with war crimes.
Valerie James: Former girlfriend of John O’Neill; lives in New York City, where she is president of Valerie James Showroom, Inc., representing fashion designers.
Wa’el Julaidan: Close ally of Abdullah Azzam in the Services Bureau in Peshawar. Born in Medina in 1958, he studied at the University of Arizona. Became very close to bin Laden. Later worked for a Saudi charity, the Muslim World League, that was established to help Afghan refugees. Now lives in Jeddah.
Zaynab Ahmed Khadr: Daughter of Zawahiri’s friend Ahmed Saeed Khadr and Maha Elsamneh, Zaynab grew up in Peshawar and Afghanistan with the bin Laden and Zawahiri children. Now divorced, she lives with her mother and her children in Canada.
Jamal Khalifa: Born September 1, 1956, in Medina, Khalifa became friends with bin Laden while they were both students at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. After graduation, Khalifa became a biology teacher in Medina, until he decided to join the jihad in Afghanistan in 1985. The following year he married bin Laden’s older half-sister Sheikha. In 1988, he moved to Manila to establish a branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization. The FBI alleges that he raised money for the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines, but he has never been charged. He was acquitted in Jordan of involvement in various terrorist plots. Now lives and works as a businessman in Jeddah.
Khallad: Mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. His family is from Yemen, but he grew up in Saudi Arabia, where he knew bin Laden. He joined the jihad in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen, eventually losing a foot in a battle against the Northern Alliance. He became a part of the al-Qaeda security team. His real name is Tewfiq bin Attash. Now in U.S. custody.
Jamal Khashoggi: Longtime Saudi journalist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who covered the Arab Afghans in the jihad against the Soviet occupation. Khashoggi served as an emissary from bin Laden’s extended family, who were seeking to have him renounce violence and return to the Kingdom during his Sudanese exile. After 9/11, Khashoggi distinguished himself by being one of the few Saudis to acknowledge the cultural responsibility that led to the tragedy; later, he was appointed editor of Al-Watan, the Kingdom’s largest daily, but was fired after publishing articles and cartoons that criticized the religious establishment for supporting violence. Now serves as Prince Turki’s media advisor in Washington.
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Pashtun warlord who was the finest strategist of the Afghan cause. After helping to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, he joined the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani as defense minister in 1992. When Rabbani’s government collapsed and the Afghan civil war began, Massoud became head of the Northern Alliance, a group of mujahideen leaders who opposed the Taliban. Bin Laden arranged to have him assassinated on September 9, 2001.
Khaled al-Mihdhar: A member of a distinguished family from the Hadramout that traces its lineage back to the Prophet Mohammed, Mihdhar grew up in Mecca. He married Hoda al-Hada, the daughter of the mujahid whose phone in Sanaa would prove to be so critical in understanding the scope of al-Qaeda. Mihdhar came to the United States in January 2000; he left for a period of time, presumably to shepherd the remaining 9/11 hijackers coming from Saudi Arabia; then he returned to the United States on July 4, 2001. He died in the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 when it struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. He was twenty-six years old.
Ali Mohammed: Egyptian double agent who joined al-Jihad while he was in the Egyptian army. Ordered by Zawahiri to penetrate American intelligence, he worked briefly for the CIA in Hamburg, Germany, before joining the U.S. Army, where he was stationed at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The manuals he smuggled out of there became the foundation of al-Qaeda’s training and tactics. Mohammed cased the U.S. embassies in East Africa and trained bin Laden’s bodyguards. He is now a cooperative witness in U.S. custody, awaiting sentencing in his guilty plea in the embassy bombings case.
Khaled Sheikh Mohammed: The architect of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed is uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After growing up in Kuwait, Mohammed earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at North Carolina A&T in 1986. He then went to Peshawar, where he became a secretary of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan warlord favored by the Saudis. Met bin Laden in 1996, where he presented a portfolio of plans for attacking the United States. Captured in Pakistan in 2003, he is now being held by American authorities in an undisclosed location.
Zacarias Moussaoui: French Moroccan al-Qaeda operative sent to the United States to participate in an unspecified operation. Pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy and was sentenced to a lifetime of solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.
Imad Mugniyah: Head of Hezbollah’s security service who designed the 1983 suicide car bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut in 1983; met with Zawahiri and bin Laden in Sudan and provided training for al-Qaeda. He remains under Iranian protection.
Hosni Mubarak: President of Egypt since 1981.
Shukri Mustafa: Leader of the Takfir wa Hejira movement in Egypt. Executed in 1978.
Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil: Taliban foreign minister who later surrendered to American forces and then joined the government of Hamid Karzai.
Gamal Abdul Nasser: Leader of the 1952 Egyptian revolution; fiery nationalist who transformed politics in the Arab world. He and Sayyid Qutb had radically differing views on the future of Egypt—a difference that eventually led Nasser to have Qutb executed in 1966. Nasser died of a heart attack four years later.
Azza Nowair: Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife. She died in an American air strike in November 2001.
Mullah Mohammed Omar: One-eyed mystic who founded the Taliban in 1992 and essentially ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the invasion by allied forces in 2001. His whereabouts are unknown.
John O’Neill: A native of Atlantic City, New Jersey, O’Neill became a special agent of the FBI in July 1976, assigned to the Baltimore office. He went to FBI headquarters in April 1987, where he supervised investigations of white collar crime. In 1991, he was appointed assistant special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the bureau; then in 1995 he returned to headquarters to be the chief of the counterterrorism section. He was appointed special agent in charge of the National Security Division in the FBI’s New York office on January 1, 1997. He resigned from the FBI on August 22, 2001; the next day he started work as the World Trade Center’s chief of security. He was fifty years old when he died on 9/11.
Mohammed al-‘Owhali: Convicted bomber of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; now in an American prison serving a life sentence.
Thomas Pickard: Acting director of the FBI from June 25, 2001, until September 4, 2001. He retired two months later.
Mohammed Qutb: Sayyid Qutb’s brother, also a widely read author and thinker; took refuge with other members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia after spending time in Egyptian prisons. Became a popular speaker at forums where bin Laden was exposed to his teachings. Still lives in Mecca.
Sayyid Qutb: Islamist writer and educator who wrote Milestones, among many other important works. Nasser hanged him in 1966.
Burhanuddin Rabbani: Islamic scholar who served as president of Afghanistan from 1992 until 1996, when the Taliban took over. He briefly seized office again after the Taliban were deposed, but handed over power to Hamid Karzai’s interim government in December 2001. He now serves as an elected representative in Afghanistan’s parliament.
Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman: The “blind sheikh” who led the Islamic Group in Egypt and was the spiritual leader of al-Jihad. Imprisoned with Zawahiri and other Egyptian militants following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Eventually convicted of plotting to destroy New York City landmarks, he is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
Ahmed Ressam: Algerian who trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan; captured in December 1999 as he tried to enter the United States from Canada carrying a load of explosives in his trunk. His evident goal was to blow up the Los Angeles airport.
Mark Rossini: Former actor from Queens who became a private detective before joining the FBI. Assigned to the I-49 squad, he replaced Dan Coleman at Alec Station. He is now the special assistant to the assistant director, office of public affairs, at FBI headquarters.
Amal al-Sada: Osama bin Laden’s fifth wife. They married in 2001 when she was fifteen. They are thought to have one child together. She is living with her family in Yemen.
Anwar al-Sadat: Former president of Egypt, assassinated by al-Jihad in 1981.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf: Afghan warlord who trained as a cleric at Cairo’s al-Azhar university. Was bin Laden’s Afghan sponsor and the Saudis’ favored commander. He is currently a political leader in Afghanistan.
Michael Scheuer: CIA veteran who opened Alec Station in 1996 and ran it until he was relieved of duty in 1999. Writing anonymously after his retirement, he penned the exposés Through Our Enemies’ Eyes and Imperial Hubris.
Shafiq: Teenage mujahid who saved bin Laden’s life in the battle of Jalalabad.
Ali Soufan: Lebanese American FBI agent who was the case agent on the USS Cole bombing. His interrogation of Abu Jandal in Yemen after 9/11 led to the identification of the hijackers. Now working as a security consultant for Giuliani Partners in New York.
Mary Lynn Stevens: Former girlfriend of John O’Neill, she is now the vice president of the Pentagon Federal Credit Union Foundation, an organization that assists soldiers and marines who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yazid Sufaat: Malaysian businessman who worked with Zawahiri in Afghanistan to propagate anthrax spores. The January 2000 meeting between the USS Cole bombers and the 9/11 hijackers took place in his condominium in Kuala Lumpur. He also wrote a letter of recommendation for Zacarias Moussaoui. He is in Malaysian custody.
Medani al-Tayeb: Former treasurer of al-Qaeda. He married bin Laden’s niece; lost a leg in Afghanistan; quit al-Qaeda in the early nineties and returned to live in Jeddah.
Hassan al-Turabi: Ideological leader of the 1989 Islamic revolution in Sudan. In and out of confinement since then, he now lives at home in Khartoum.
Issam Eldin al-Turabi: Son of Hassan al-Turabi, and bin Laden’s friend during his stay in Sudan, Issam is a businessman and well-known horse breeder in Khartoum.
Umm Abdullah: Osama bin Laden’s first wife, whom he married in 1974 when she was fourteen. She is from Syria, the daughter of bin Laden’s mother’s first cousin. She is the mother of eleven of his children. Her given name is Najwa Ghanem. She now lives in Syria.
Umm Ali: Osama’s wife from the Gilaini family in Mecca. She bore him three children. She asked for a divorce in 1996 and now lives in Saudi Arabia.
Umm Hamza: Married Osama in 1982 and bore him one child. She is from a distinguished family in Jeddah and has a Ph.D. in child psychology. She is thought to be with Osama.
Umm Khaled: From the Sharif family in Medina, she holds a Ph.D. in Arabic grammar and taught at the city’s Education College. She and Osama have three daughters and a son. She is thought to be with Osama.
Dr. Ahmed el-Wed: Takfiri Algerian doctor who worked in the Kuwaiti Red Crescent hospital in Peshawar with Zawahiri and Dr. Fadl; went back to Algeria after the jihad to become one of the founders of GIA.
Mary Jo White: Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Ramzi Yousef: Mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The nephew of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Yousef was born in Kuwait in 1968; studied electrical engineering in Wales. Created elaborate plots to assassinate Pope John Paul II and President Bill Clinton and to blow up eleven American airliners simultaneously. Finally captured in Pakistan in 1995, he is in an American prison serving a life sentence plus 240 years.
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri: Leader of al-Jihad and the ideological leader of al-Qaeda. Born in Cairo on June 19, 1951, Zawahiri started a cell to overthrow the Egyptian government when he was fifteen years old. Imprisoned after Sadat’s assassination in 1981 and convicted of dealing in weapons, he was released three years later. He fled to Saudi Arabia in 1985, and the following year moved to Peshawar, where he and Dr. Fadl rebuilt al-Jihad. After the end of the war against the Soviet occupation, Zawahiri relocated his movement to Sudan, where he waged a campaign against the Egyptian government, resulting in the near total destruction of his organization. In 1996 he moved to Afghanistan and engineered a merger of al-Jihad with al-Qaeda. He is the author of several books, notably Bitter Harvest and Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner. His whereabouts are unknown.
Hussein al-Zawahiri: Ayman’s youngest brother, an architect, was rendered by the CIA and the FBI to Egypt, where he was questioned and eventually released in August 2000. He now lives in Cairo.
Mohammed al-Zawahiri: Ayman’s younger brother, who became deputy emir of al-Jihad. An architect by training, he set up the al-Jihad cell in Albania. He resigned from the organization in 1998. He was reputedly captured by Egyptian authorities in Dubai in 2000 and later executed in prison.
Dr. Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri: Ayman al-Zawahiri’s father, a professor of pharmacology at Ain Shams University, who died in 1995.
Montassir al-Zayyat: Islamist lawyer in Cairo who was imprisoned with Zawahiri. He eventually wrote a biography of Zawahiri, The Road to al-Qaeda.