{"id":8593,"date":"2015-05-29T06:29:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T11:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8593"},"modified":"2015-05-29T06:29:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T11:29:01","slug":"al-qaeda-syria-boss-says-that-his-so-called-khorasan-group-doesnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8593","title":{"rendered":"Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His &#8216;So-called Khorasan Group Doesn&#8217;t Exist&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/05\/28\/called-khorasan-group-doesnt-exist\/\" target=\"_blank\">Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His &#8216;So-called Khorasan Group Doesn&#8217;t Exist&#8217;<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>In early September 2014, an Associated Press\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/article\/ap-enterprise-al-qaidas-syrian-cell-alarms-us\">story<\/a>\u00a0quoted unnamed U.S. officials discussing an\u00a0imminent threat\u00a0from\u00a0a previously\u00a0unknown, Syria-based terror\u00a0outfit\u00a0called\u00a0the \u201cKhorasan Group.\u201d U.S. officials told the AP that the jihadist group was stocked with\u00a0al Qaeda veterans and was plotting imminent attacks\u00a0against U.S.-bound airline flights. Officials also\u00a0suggested\u00a0that the level of danger posed by the group\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/isis-terror\/isis-isnt-alone-khorasan-group-may-pose-bigger-threat-u-n209586\">exceeded that of ISIS<\/a>, the militant group which now\u00a0controls much of Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Weeks later, after similarly breathless coverage of the so-called Khorasan Group from the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em>, CNN, NBC News, CBS News and others, American\u00a0airstrikes against Syria commenced, including strikes that were said to have specifically\u00a0targeted this shadowy new\u00a0organization.<\/p>\n<p>In the immediate aftermath of the\u00a0strikes, something remarkable happened. American officials\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2014\/09\/28\/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria\/\">almost immediately<\/a>\u00a0began retracting\u00a0their claims about\u00a0the level of danger posed by the Khorasan Group. FBI Director James Comey, addressing previous assertions that the group posed\u00a0an imminent threat to\u00a0American interests, said,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what that word means \u2026 \u2018imminent.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After the airstrikes had commenced, reports began to surface that no\u00a0identifiable Syrian activists within the country had ever heard of such an organization. Days after the U.S. initiated military operations within Syria, it became increasingly unclear whether\u00a0the \u201cKhorasan Group\u201d itself actually existed.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, the head of al Qaeda\u2019s affiliate in Syria gave the clearest indication yet that the group is a fabrication.\u00a0In an interview conducted with Al Jazeera Arabic, Abu Muhammad al Jolani, the head of Jabhat al Nusra,\u00a0said the following:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His &#8216;So-called Khorasan Group Doesn&#8217;t Exist&#8217; In early September 2014, an Associated Press\u00a0story\u00a0quoted unnamed U.S. officials discussing an\u00a0imminent threat\u00a0from\u00a0a previously\u00a0unknown, Syria-based terror\u00a0outfit\u00a0called\u00a0the \u201cKhorasan Group.\u201d U.S. officials told the AP that the jihadist group was stocked with\u00a0al Qaeda veterans and was plotting imminent attacks\u00a0against U.S.-bound airline flights. Officials also\u00a0suggested\u00a0that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,3932,1239,446,447,5819,776],"class_list":["post-8593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-al-qaeda","tag-al-nusra","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-khorasan","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8594,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593\/revisions\/8594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}