Sajid also dispatched militants for missions in Britain and in Virginia, where authorities later convicted Americans who were part of a group known as the "paintball jihadis" and who were fellow trainees of Brigitte, the book says. A French court convicted Brigitte on terrorism charges and sentenced him to nine years in prison.
In 2006, Bruguiere went to the Pakistani port city of Karachi to investigate a suicide bombing that had killed 11 French naval contractors three years earlier. Pakistani security officials were uncooperative and hostile, he asserts.
"French officials in Pakistan were the target of threats and physical intimidation: a way of dissuading us from returning," he writes.
The George W. Bush administration underestimated the threat in Pakistan largely because it was distracted by the war in Iraq, Bruguiere says. He says U.S.-French tensions over Iraq did not harm anti-terrorism cooperation, and he writes about his many friends and allies in U.S. law enforcement.
But Bruguiere says he warned U.S. officials that the war would worsen Islamic extremism. He dismisses former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as "men who did not understand the Arab world" and "felt invested with a quasi-divine sense of mission."
At the same time, Bruguiere shares with U.S. conservatives a deep suspicion of Iran. Attacks by Iranian operatives in France and elsewhere show that Tehran's security apparatus is the "real heart of power," the book says.
Iran has used systematic deception to manipulate Western diplomats in talks about its nuclear program, while preparing a global terrorist infrastructure that could be used in a confrontation with the West, Bruguiere charges.
Iran also could strike in unexpected ways in remote places such as West Africa or Latin America, where Tehran's longtime ally Hezbollah has an entrenched presence, Bruguiere warns.
"These networks . . . are able to create circumstantial alliances with drug cartels operating in Colombia and Mexico," the book says, referring to the convergence of extremists and traffickers as "a complex configuration of threats directed at the United States."
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rotella@latimes.com
