Yusef al-Ayeri

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Yusef al-Ayeri or Yusuf Bin Saleh al-`Ayeri' (?-2003; known by a number of aliases, including Arabic for "Swift Sword") was a Saudi Arabian member of Al-Qaeda, and head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula. According to Ron Suskind's One-percent Doctrine, he was the mastermind of a planned cyanide gas attack on New York City subways (which was canceled shortly before it was to happen).

Before his death, he also wrote a number of strategic documents on Al-Qaeda:

"First, it was discovered that this al-Ayeri was behind a Web site, al-Nida, that U.S. investigators had long felt carried some of the most specialized analysis and coded directives about al Qaeda's motives and plans. He was also the anonymous author of two extraordinary pieces of writing -- short books, really, that had recently moved through cyberspace, about al Qaeda's underlying strategies. The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula After the Fall of Baghdad, written as the United States prepared its attack, said that an American invasion of Iraq would be the best possible outcome for al Qaeda, stoking extremism throughout the Persian Gulf and South Asia, and achieving precisely the radicalizing quagmire that bin Laden had hoped would occur in Afghanistan. A second book, Crusaders' War, outlined a tactical model for fighting the American forces in Iraq, including "assassination and poisoning the enemy's food and drink," remotely triggered explosives, suicide bombings, and lightning strike ambushes. It was the playbook."^[1]

Al-Ayeri was killed in 2003 in a gun-battle with Saudi security forces as part of the crackdown on Islamic insurgency in Saudi Arabia.