Ashcroft: 18 Hijackers Involved in Attack (How Could So Many CarryOut Plot Undetected?ClintonHelp?)

WASHINGTON -- Searchers found the black box of one hijacked airliner in Pennsylvania and received a signal from the black box of the plane that crashed at the Pentagon, officials said today. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the FBI was working on "thousands and thousands of leads" in the investigation of Tuesday's terror attacks.

Search crews will not be able to retrieve the black box at the Pentagon, which could contain information about the last minutes of the hijacked commercial jetliner, until they are able to enter the collapsed area of the Pentagon, where the plane's fuselage rests.

They were to begin moving into the collapsed area sometime tonight, said Arlington County Fire Capt. Scott McKay.

While there have been no arrests, Ashcroft said, authorities have interviewed many people in connection with the hijacking of four airliners and the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

A total of 18 hijackers were on the planes, Ashcroft said. There were five on each of two planes and four each on the other two. All have been identified, officials said.

He said he had was heartened by the public's interest in tracking down those responsible.

Authorities seized this rental car at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. Two suspects in Tuesday's terrorist attacks had left this car behind and caught a flight to Boston.

Ashcroft said the FBI's 800-number hot line had received 2,055 calls. In addition, its Web site had received more than 22,700 tips, he said.

He noted that authorities were still searching for the flight-data and cockpit voice recorders of all four planes that crashed -- two in New York, one at the Pentagon and the other in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Earlier, the Justice Department said that at least one hijacker on each plane was trained at a U.S. flight school and that well over 50 people may have been involved in the hijackers' well-financed operation.

A number of people that could be involved in the plot were detained overnight for having false identifications, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said earlier Thursday. She declined to say how many were detained or where they are being held.

Officials are close to releasing the names and possibly the country of origin of the hijackers. Nearly all have been identified, Tucker said.

The FBI's massive investigation stretches from the Canadian border to Florida, where some of the participants learned how to fly commercial planes before the attacks. Tucker said flight schools in more than one state were involved in the training of the hijackers, several of whom had pilots' licenses.

Multiple cells of terrorist groups participated in the operation and the hijackers had possible ties to countries that included Saudi Arabia and Egypt, said law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Officials said authorities were gathering evidence that the terrorist cells may have had prior involvement in earlier plots against the United States, and may have been involved with Saudi exile Osama bin Laden. That includes the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and the foiled attack on U.S. soil during the millennium celebrations.

In Florida Thursday, FBI agents were interviewing three Saudi Arabian flight engineers who are taking classes at Flightsafety International's flight school in Vero Beach, Fla., company spokesman Roger Ritchie said. He declined to name the engineers.

The school does not have simulators for Boeing 767 and 757 aircraft such as the ones involved in Tuesday's attacks, Ritchie said.

Thomas Quinn, a New York-based spokesman for Saudi Arabian Airlines, said many of the airline's pilots came to the United States for flight training.

About 40 of the people involved in the attacks have been accounted for, including those killed in the suicide attacks, but 10 remain at large, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing an unidentified source with knowledge of the investigation.

Some of those involved in the plot left suicide notes, but they are not believed to have been the hijackers, a government source told The Associated Press. It's unclear whether those who left the notes actually killed themselves.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- From the outset, the culprit seemed obvious. Who else but Osama bin Laden had the means, the organization and the fanaticism required to pull off the terrorist acts at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Osama Bin Laden

And indeed, by late afternoon Tuesday, the Bush administration confirmed that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were prime suspects.

He is widely regarded as the world's most dangerous man. He is thought to have been behind the twin bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 that claimed the lives of 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Those numbers pale alongside the anticipated toll from Tuesday's attacks on symbols of American commercial and military might.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said FBI and intelligence officials told him the attacks were ''well-planned over a number of years, planned by real pros and experts. ... Their belief is, at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden's signature.''

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., asked whether bin Laden's group is the likely perpetrator, said, ''I don't know if there's any other organization that had the capability to carry out such a coordinated series of attacks.''

Bin Laden's obsessive anti-Americanism has never been in doubt. ''I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans,'' bin Laden was once quoted as saying.

He has declared all U.S. citizens to be legitimate targets of attack. CIA Director George Tenet has said bin Laden has demonstrated a capability to plan ''multiple attacks with little or no warning.''

His road to international pariah status has been helped along by his strong organizational skills and a warchest inherited from the family construction company.

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, bin Laden drew inspiration from Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. He had dreams of similar revolts in other Muslim countries.

Less than a year later, the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan provided another turning point. He despised the notion of people he considered to be infidels controlling a Muslim country and joined forces with the Afghan resistance.

Ironically, this commitment put him on the same side as the United States, which shared bin Laden's contempt for the Soviets and spent millions trying to liberate Afghanistan from them.

The Afghanistan experience enabled bin Laden and the many followers he recruited to hone the skills they needed for future struggles once the Soviets were evicted in early 1989.

His disdain for the monarchy in his Saudi homeland turned into outright opposition in 1990 when the kingdom invited hundreds of thousands of American and other foreign troops into the country after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

Saudi Arabia was betraying the faith by accepting help from western infidels, bin Laden believed, and he set about to drive the United States from the Middle East.

He lived a nomadic existence for several years, having been deported by a number of Islamic countries before finding a haven in Afghanistan. President Bush said Tuesday the United States ''will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.''

Operating from damp caves infested with scorpions and rats, he plotted against the world's only superpower. Aside from the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, he also is believed by U.S. officials to be responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and last year's bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

He has proved to be an elusive target. President Clinton was so eager to liquidate bin Laden that he ordered more than 70 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at his hideaway in Afghanistan in 1998. All fell wide of the mark. A $5 million FBI bounty on his head has yet to produce results. And despite two rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions, the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan refuse to turn him in.

BOSTON (AP) -- Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has strong family ties and a group of supporters in Boston, where the two hijacked airliners that demolished the World Trade Center took off.

One of bin Laden's brothers set up scholarship funds at Harvard, while another relative owns six condominiums in an expensive complex in the Charlestown section of Boston. Two bin Laden associates once worked as Boston cab drivers, including one who was jailed in Jordan on charges of plotting to blow up a hotel full of Americans and Israelis.

Bin Laden's ties to Boston are now being closely scrutinized as authorities focus their investigation on terrorist cells with possible ties to him, said Robert Fitzpatrick, the former second-in-command at the FBI's Boston office.

"The activity of this group here is obviously significant," Fitzpatrick said Wednesday.

Investigators are interviewing drivers from Boston Cab Co., where two known associates of bin Laden once worked, to see if they had ties to baggage handlers, who in turn may have supplied weapons to the hijackers, Fitzpatrick said.

"They are going to look at the cab drivers again -- since they are predominantly Middle Eastern -- and they are going to look at a possible link between them and the baggage handlers," Fitzpatrick said, based on his information from law enforcement colleagues.

"They could thwart the security by having a baggage handler put the material aboard the plane. That link is being investigated."

Last year, the FBI investigated the Boston activities of the two cab drivers, Bassam A. Kanj, a Lebanese native, and Raed M. Hijazi, a Palestinian. The men were tied by investigators to separate military and terrorist plots allegedly financed by bin Laden.

Kanj, 35, was killed in Lebanon last year in an attack against the Lebanese army. Hijazi was charged in Jordan with plotting a New Year's Day 2000 hotel bombing.

Bin Laden, a rich Saudi exile who is believed to be living in Afghanistan, also has had family members living in the Boston area for the past decade.

In 1994, one of his brothers, Sheik Bakr Mohammed bin Laden, made a large donation to Harvard Law School to fund visiting scholars to do research in Islamic legal studies.

Harvard Law spokesman Michael Armini would not disclose the amount of the gift, but typically it takes about $1 million to establish a research fellowship. The sheik established a second scholarship at the Harvard School of Design.

Harvard officials were quick to distance the school from Osama bin Laden, emphasizing that he has no role in the scholarship programs.

"This is in no way connected to Osama bin Laden, who has been ostracized from his family and from Saudi Arabia," Armini said. "The purpose of this gift was to foster mutual understanding between the western and Islamic legal worlds."

Stephen Walt, a professor of international politics at the JFK School of Government at Harvard, likened the relationship of the bin Laden brothers to that of University of Massachusetts President William Bulger and his brother, reputed mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, who is among the FBI's 10 Most Wanted.

"I think that bin Laden is responsible for his action, but his brother is not responsible for Osama's actions, and vice versa," Walt said.

Another relative, Mohammed M. bin Laden, owns six condominiums in the ritzy Flagship Wharf condominium complex in Charlestown. His relation to bin Laden could not immediately be determined. A woman who answered the telephone at the management company for the complex refused to answer questions.

The condos were bought in the mid-1990s and range in assessed value from $296,000 to $877,000, The Boston Globe reported.

Juliette Kayyem, a former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, said Boston has several factors that may have attracted bin Laden's supporters.

"Our proximity to the Canadian border and Boston being a big city where people can hide is likely why Boston became the center," Kayyem said. "Also being on the Eastern Seaboard, we have wide-bodied jets with large fuel tanks. When you don't have other weapons, that's your weapon."

WASHINGTON -- The dozen or so Islamic terrorists who pulled off the plot to strike at America's nerve centers in New York and Washington spent months, if not years, researching, planning and coordinating the surprise attacks, U.S. security officials say. And they did it completely in secret, using the world's most sophisticated telecommunications equipment, some secured by advanced encryption technology that most armies don't have.

First, you have to appreciate the high degree of communications activity their mission required at each stage.

In researching their targets, the terrorists picked ones relatively easy to hit at high air speeds, yet ones that would produce big casualties and provide symbolic blows to American morale. They had to pick airports close by, with weak security. They had to find jets with enough heft and wingspan and fuel to cause major damage, yet not so large that they required extra crew.

The Boeing 757s and 767s they hijacked were big, but all had just two pilots and no flight engineers, making it easier for terrorists to take the cockpits. And the heisted jets were from the same family of aircraft, obviating additional cockpit training.

They also apparently studied passenger traffic patterns of airlines in order to pick flights with relatively few people aboard. All four flights had light passenger loads. The Boeing jets have roughly 160-seat capacities, yet American Flight 11 carried 81 passengers; American Flight 77, only 58; United Flight 175, 56; and United Flight 93, a skeletal 38.

More key, the terrorists needed to select transcontinental flights with big fuel loads to turn the planes into giant petro-bombs. All four flights were bound for California. They also had to know flight patterns, and how to blind air-traffic controllers to the hijackings by turning off the planes' transponders, which send such warning signals, among other aviation information.

In planning the attack, they had to fashion weapons that they could sneak past airport security. Transportation Department officials think that they may have hedged their bets and even planted security people on the inside at Logan and Dulles airports, so that guards would look the other way when they came through metal detectors at the terminals.

The kamikaze pilots also had to log many hours on computer flight simulators with high-level graphics capability, to practice hitting their targets at full throttle. A Continental Airlines captain, who's flown both 757s and 767s, told WorldNetDaily he thinks they may have even added the World Trade Center and Pentagon to the simulator's visual database.

"At the airspeed of those strikes, which hit their targets dead on, the hand-eye coordination demands would be too high for casual flying skill -- with, or without, an autopilot engaged," he said.

They had to practice, moreover, navigating the jets to abruptly change their course, by as much as 180 degrees in some cases, after take-off. Flying them at low altitudes was also something they had to work on.

Finally, in executing their murderous missions, the 12 or so terrorists had to coordinate their activities, flawlessly, within a roughly two-hour stretch. And, for the most part, they did. They all got to the airport on time, they all got through security, they all boarded their flights, they all hijacked their flights and, with the exception of one group, they all hit their targets.

Pulling off such a complex plot would have generated an inordinate volume of communications -- whether by radio, cell phone, land line, fax or modem -- among the terrorists, among their Middle-Eastern sponsors and among commercial contacts here and abroad.

But somehow eavesdroppers at the super-secret National Security Agency -- with their billion-dollar satellite "birds" and other surveillance technology -- were deaf, dumb and blind to the wicked plot.

"The real issue in this tragedy is how the hell were these people able to plan and coordinate such a strike over a period of months without the NSA intercepting their signals?" demanded Peter M. Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department.

Leitner, who reviews commercial license applications for exports of some of the most sophisticated military-related technology, thinks he knows the answer.

"The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.

Leitner says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security.

"Syria is a terrorist-supporting nation," he said. "They provide infrastructure to bastards like [Osama] bin Laden. They provide backup and support and communications abilities to these terrorist cells."

So what kind of gear has Syria -- and likely bin Laden, by way of Syria -- gotten from America?

"We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said.

Spread-spectrum radios, originally designed for military use only, change their frequency constantly.

"Bin Laden's cells aren't having any trouble communicating anymore," Leitner said.

Bin Laden, the world's No. 1 terrorist and the Pentagon's chief suspect in Tuesday's attacks, is known to use portable satellite telephones, advanced encryption cell phones and other encrypted telephony equipment, as well as secure computer networks -- all compliments of U.S. technology, Leitner says.

"If people are worried about how these people were able to coordinate and communicate something like this -- which had to be pretty extensively coordinated -- without it being intercepted, it's because of the crap we've been selling these people," he said.

"How can you penetrate their networks when you can't even eavesdrop on their conversations?" he said.

"You can't stop them when they're coming right at your building," he said. "But, damn it, you should be able to stop them months in advance by breaking up their networks."

Leitner posits that the NSA wasn't able to detect the Islamic terrorists' plot because of the "high quality of the communications gear that they've been acquiring over the last couple of years, thanks to the Clinton administration's decontrols on advanced telecommunications equipment."

Terrorists' secured telecom gear "makes it infinitely more difficult to get even early warning signs" about their activities, he said.

Tuesday's attacks took the entire U.S. government, including the intelligence community, by surprise.

"We had no specific warning of the U.S. attacks," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee.

The Pentagon issued an alert of "Threat Con Alpha" the day before the attack, which meant that no threats were on the horizon. The same alert was issued the morning of the attack.

Asked Tuesday if he had any inkling of the plot, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dodged the question: "We don't discuss intelligence matters."

Three weeks ago, some overseas papers quoted bin Laden saying that a major strike against the U.S. was coming soon. But there were no specifics. And bin Laden reportedly sent an e-mail to unknown government sources three days ago warning holy hell would break out. But again, he didn't say how, when or where.

Still, it's baffling that the U.S. intelligence community didn't pick up, early on, any specifics of the complex and long-planned plot through electronic intercepts and signals intelligence.

But it's actually not that baffling, Leitner asserts, against the backdrop of loose government controls on dual-use telecom exports.

"I've testified to Congress that it will take serious numbers of body bags before we wake up to the need to tighten dual-use export controls," he said. "Unfortunately, we've got them now."

"This is so tragic and yet so preventable," he said. "Now we're going to have to knock out their [terrorist] camps, just like we had to bomb the Iraqi's several times now to try to take out the fiber-optics network that the Chinese are installing in Iraq's air-defense systems."

"Yet, it was the Clinton administration that gave the Chinese the technology to give to Iraq," he noted.

In June, Leitner was asked by the Commerce Department to OK a new round of exports of dual-use telecom equipment to Syria. He denied the request, and was asked to reconsider. He denied it again, arguing in a letter to Karen Vogel, the Commerce export licensing officer who requested the approval, that:

"Doing so vastly upgrades the C3 and C41 systems of the Syrian military and Intelligence Services. My concerns are also obviously compounded by the fact that Syria is one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism."

Leitner continued: "Since an 'upgraded telecom infrastructure' will also greatly facilitate Syrian planning, coordination, secrecy and execution of terrorist acts, as well as direct military communications, I see absolutely no basis for any position other than a denial."

Vogel argued in an earlier letter that her request came on the heels of eight previous approvals of licenses for similar exports to Syria.

"There's still a lot of things inside the government involving national security that have just got to be changed," Leitner said.

Another senior Pentagon official who specializes in counterterrorism says his own faith in the U.S. intelligence community has been shattered.

"This full-court press by terrorists blows the hell out of the line that we've been hearing for years from the intelligence community that if they try anything big, we'll know about it and warn you. Anything bigger than a couple of people, don't worry, we'll know about it," he said. "Well, I guess they didn't."

How could 18 men, all with ties to terrorist organizations, make it through FBI srutiny and airport security?

Not that hard with the joke security we have at airports, plus they exploited three facts:

1. Our security model was based on preventing Cuban lone-gunman hijacks and Lockerbie bombings, NOT suicide attackers

2. No one figured knives could be used to successfully hijack a plane, but should have thought of this scenario

3. Just like with schools, once terrorists get ANY weapon into a disarmed environment, they are in control. We have to fight very hard to alter this idiocy in American "security" policy.

Conveniently Once Again A Series of Murderous Attacks Benefitted Clinton:

Breaking: US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001

Source: United States House of Representatives (Official US Govt Website, Actual Subpoena)

Published: Subpoena issued September 6, 2001 Webposted 1st here September 8, 2001 Author: United States House of Representatives

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To United States Department of Justice Serve: Attorney General John Ashcroft

You are hereby commanded to produce the things identified on the attached schedule before the

full committee on Government Reform

of the House of Representatives of the United States, of which the Hon.

Dan Burton is chairman, by producing such things in room 2157 of the

Rayburn Building, in the city of Washington, on

September 11, 2001, at the hour of 5:00 PM

To Danleigh Halfast or US Marshals Service

to serve and make return.

Witness by my hand and seal
of House of United States, at the city of Washington, this
6th day of September, 2001

(signed)Dan Burton
Chairman

----------------------------------------------------------------

To see actual subpoena:

http://www.house.gov/reform/letters/ashcroft_subpoena.pdf

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God bless the Congress of the United States of America and the Government Reform Committee in particular!
I just happened to decide to go to the House Website tonight and found this!

The United States House of Representatives if ordering US Attorney General Ashcroft to hand over all the criminal evidence from Clinton and Janet Reno Administration related criminal investigations.

1 Posted on 09/08/2001 01:41:21 PDT by t-shirt

Now is the time for ALL TRUE Americans to UNITE and stand behind President Bush!
Any political differences should be put aside during this time of America's darkest hours.
UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL

God Bless America!
V is for VICTORY!
What We as Americans Can Do
1) Pray
2) Check the Red Cross website for what supplies are needed.
3) Fly the American Flag!
4) Be prepared to make some sacrifices BUT continue to live your everyday life.
DO NOT LET TERRORISTS THINK THEY HAVE CHANGED OUR LIVES!
5) Support our military and law enforcement.

NEVER talk to ANYONE
in person, on a phone line, in an e-mail, in a chat room,
on an internet instant messenger or post on any forum
any military troop movement information or law enforcement information
that would endanger our troops or hinder law enforcement efforts.

LOOSE LIPS SINKS SHIPS!

Have you ever come in through one of the tourist entries from Canada? They could bring the entire Russian Army through and no one would notice.

This nation has history of being free. The power structure of this nation has never taken to government control and regulation of the movement of people. It was founded on freedom and every one was expected to defend himself.

But full freedom is dangerous.. real dangerous.. and you obviously don't like it. You have two choices. There are the right wing Hitler type nations of the Muslims. And there are the left wing states of socialism. Both provide the security and total control you desire. You are not unusual. Like many people you would rather be safe than free. And that is fine. People should be allowed to exchange freedom for security. They just shouldn't be able to exhcange my freedom for their security.

I think Cuba would be a wonderful place for you. You would feel so secure and safe, and no one will ever crash a plane into Fidel's Trade Center. The Cuban state will have the dope on every person that moves or even tries to enter the nation or even move from one village to another. You can be assured that no terrorist will ever attack you at any time. No one will visit your village with out the government's permission. You will be expected to report on anyone that is not supposed to be there. No one will be armed and you will be completely safe as long as you obey. I suspect you are very good at obeying. Men who crave security always are.

You really need to go there. It is your kind of place. Just ask Janet Reno... she knows.

FBI Ignored Warnings of Fanatical Student Pilot NewsMax.com Wires

Friday, Sept. 14, 2001

PARIS - The FBI apparently ignored warnings from French security sources that a French-Algerian with an avid interest in flight training was a known extremist linked to Osama bin Laden, France's Europe 1 radio reported today, citing French security sources.

Europe 1 reported the FBI arrested a Franco-Algerian near Boston last August after he was found with several passports. Most were false, according to the report, but one was real. The station did not identify the suspect, who reportedly is 31 years old. But the man possibly had relations with the hijackers.

According to the radio, the FBI contacted French security agents. The French identified the man as a known Islamist militant belonging to an Afghan-Pakistani group affiliated with bin Laden.

"He was taking flying lessons," said Europe 1 reporter Frederic Helbert, in a later interview with UPI. Helbert said he got the information from sources close to France's counter-terrorism department.

"But his instructors thought there was something strange because he was asking so many questions to his instructors about the planes from the big companies, and so on," Helbert said.

The flight school - Helbert was unable to name it or locate its whereabouts in the United States - reportedly told the FBI about the man's suspicious behavior. U.S. investigators apparently found flight manuals at the man's apartment, Helbert said.

The man was jailed, Europe 1 said. But the American security "machine" failed to follow up on the case, Helbert said - at least not fast enough.

"There were no more calls, no more requests," Helbert said, citing French security sources describing the FBI's lack of follow-up.

Separately, anti-terrorism prosecutors in Paris have opened a preliminary inquiry into possible connections between Islamist extremist cells in France and Tuesday's terrorist strikes on the United States, Le Monde reported in its Thursday afternoon edition.

The inquiry follows a separate investigation opened in Paris Monday into "an association of wrongdoers" linked to the arrest of suspected militants in Germany last December.

France was hit in the mid-1990s by a wave of terrorist strikes by Algerian Islamist extremists, in retaliation for Paris' support of the Algerian government during the country's bitter civil war.

Some Algerian extremists are considered narrowly focused on overthrowing the military-backed government in Algiers. But counter-terrorism experts believe others are linked to shadowy international terrorist groups.

More recently, French investigators have been puzzling over the killing of a lawmaker in Beziers by Safir Bghioua, a 25-year-old man of Arab origin. Police are trying to figure out how the young man came to possess a stash of weapons, including rocket launchers. But they have reportedly found no evidence Bghioua has any links to Islamist extremists.

(United Press Story)

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An Iranian, waiting to be deported from Germany, warned several times the FBI that the attack would be this week -