Perhaps he is bin Laden's real mentor/idol.
[link|http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/newjohnson.html|
INTERVIEW: Larry C. Johnson]

A former CIA officer, Johnson was deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993. In this interview, conducted September 12, 2001, he explains why our perception of Osama bin Laden and his organization may be wrong, what we know about bin Laden's involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings and the 2000 USS Cole attack, and the degree of warnings leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the U.S.
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Help me understand who is Imad Mughniyah?

Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah security chief, planned and directed some of the most astonishing terrorist operations until bin Laden came along. The bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks [in 1984], which until yesterday had caused the largest loss of life in any single terrorist attack against the United States, the hijacking of TWA 847, and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, the kidnapping of several Americans that were held hostage in Lebanon for a while, such as Terry Anderson.

So this is an individual who continues to operate in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, continues with ties to Hezbollah, continues to be supported and protected by the Iranian intelligence organization. And here he is meeting with bin Laden. And, according to the source, ... the basis of the plea bargain is that everything he's saying in this is true, that bin Laden modeled himself after Mughniyah. ...

And what did we learn about their relationship and how well connected they have become?

Well, we learned publicly in the trial that there's a relationship that was not probed. And we do not know what's in the sealed parts of the indictment. This much is known. There's a sealed indictment in the United States against Imad Mughniyah that still has not been brought public. So the fact that those two are tied together, when you step back and look over the last 20 years of all the significant terrorist attacks against the United States in which Americans were killed or injured, you discover -- I ran the numbers -- it's roughly 72 percent of all Americans killed and wounded in international terrorist attacks since 1968 have been carried out by these two individuals, Mughniyah and bin Laden.

So, we're not looking at a global threat. We're not looking at multiple groups. This notion that all terrorists want to kill Americans, not true. If that's true, why haven't FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] and ELM [National Liberation Army of Bolivia] been out attacking American targets and killing Americans? They'll blow up oil pipelines, but they shy away from killing Americans. Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey, no compunction about killing Turks in Europe. Very hesitant to kill Americans in Europe or in Turkey.

What about Hamas and Hezbollah? Even Hamas with its suicide bomb killing, would kill Americans who happened to be onboard buses, but not because they were Americans. And they reached a point at which, [with] the death of Americans and such, they backed away from the suicide bombing campaign.

The only one who's really been consistent with his actions to kill Americans has been bin Laden over the last eight or nine years, and those who have affiliated themselves with him.