In other Blackwater news, the German government said Monday it knew nothing about a report that the CIA and Blackwater had planned a secret operation to assassinate a German-Syrian man in Hamburg linked to the September 11 attacks. According to the magazine Vanity Fair, in 2004 the CIA sent a team from Blackwater to Germany to kill Mamoun Darkazanli, who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda. The hit team reportedly tracked Darkazanli for weeks, but Washington authorities ended up calling off the assassination. Vanity Fair also reported that the CIA considered having Blackwater assassinate A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.