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US officials knew Al-Qaeda planned plane attacks: whistle-blower
yahoo news ^ | 4/2/04

Posted on 04/02/2004 8:05:05 AM PST by finnman69

LONDON (AFP) - US officials knew months before September 11, 2001 that Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s Al-Qaeda network was planning to use aircraft to carry out a terrorist attack, a former FBI (news - web sites) translator has alleged.

Sibel Edmonds told the Independent newspaper, in an interview published Friday, that a claim by US President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s national security advisor Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) that there had been no such warnings was "an outrageous lie".

The former translator with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation said that she had discussed her claims during a three-hour closed-door session with a US commission looking into the September 11 attacks.

"There was general information about the time frame, about methods to be used -- but not specifically about how they would be used -- and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks," Edmonds said.

"There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities -- with skyscrapers."

The 33-year-old Turkish-American translator said that, based on documents she had seen during her time with the FBI, after September 11, it was "impossible" that US intelligence officials had no forewarning of the attacks.

In a significant about-face, Bush agreed Tuesday to let Rice testify before the independent bipartisan commission looking into September 11 attacks, in which three airliners were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon (news - web sites) in Washington.

A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

The Independent reported that the White House had sought to silence Edmonds and had obtained a gagging order from a court.

Edmonds emerged as a whistle-blower in July last year when, on the CBS television network, she alleged that FBI officials deliberately slowed down the translation of September 11-related documents to make it appear that the department was sorely understaffed.

Edmonds was among many language experts who had responded to appeals for translators in the days following September 11. She was tasked with translating documents and recordings from FBI wire taps.

From the documents she saw, she told The Independent, it was clear that there was sufficient information in spring and summer of 2001 to indicate that an attack was being planned.

"President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11 and that is accurate but only because he said September 11," Edmonds told the Independent.

There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

The most damning criticism of the Bush administration has come from former White House anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, who has alleged that it failed to give the Al-Qaeda threat enough priority.

Clarke, who left the White House last year, testified before the September 11 commission, shortly after the publication of his memoirs which were highly critical of the Bush administration's counter-terrorist efforts.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911; 911commission; bushknew; sibeledmonds
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To: finnman69
"There was general information about the time frame, about methods to be used -- but not specifically about how they would be used -- and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks," Edmonds said.

now comapre that to this statement:

"President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11 and that is accurate but only because he said September 11," Edmonds told the Independent.

She contradicts herself.

21 posted on 04/02/2004 8:20:22 AM PST by finnman69 (cum puella incedit minore medio corpore sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos)
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To: lilylangtree

22 posted on 04/02/2004 8:20:46 AM PST by Diogenesis (If you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us)
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To: finnman69
This woman, the Turkish-American translater, was fired from her job for incompetence. She's sued to get her job back. She's also made statements that the CIA was trying to get her through mind control. In short, she is a nutcase.

Remember that the AFP is a French news source on the left (naturalment). That's all you need to put this Yahoo story, that comes from AFP.

Gald I could be of service.

Congressman Billybob

Click here, then click the blue CFR button, to join the anti-CFR effort (or visit the "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob" thread). Please do it now.

23 posted on 04/02/2004 8:21:15 AM PST by Congressman Billybob (www.ArmorforCongress.com Visit. Join. Help. Please.)
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To: finnman69
This woman, the Turkish-American translater, was fired from her job for incompetence. She's sued to get her job back. She's also made statements that the CIA was trying to get her through mind control. In short, she is a nutcase.

Remember that the AFP is a French news source on the left (naturalment). That's all you need to put this Yahoo story, that comes from AFP.

Gald I could be of service.

Congressman Billybob

Click here, then click the blue CFR button, to join the anti-CFR effort (or visit the "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob" thread). Please do it now.

24 posted on 04/02/2004 8:21:21 AM PST by Congressman Billybob (www.ArmorforCongress.com Visit. Join. Help. Please.)
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To: lilylangtree
Don't forget February and March were wasted since Gore's refusal to admit defeat delayed Bush's administration from getting to work.
25 posted on 04/02/2004 8:22:06 AM PST by finnman69 (cum puella incedit minore medio corpore sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos)
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To: finnman69
earlier thread on this topic too, worth a peek, some good comments

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1108765/posts
26 posted on 04/02/2004 8:22:26 AM PST by adam_az (Call your state Republican party office and VOLUNTEER FOR A CAMPAIGN!!!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Therein lies a big part of the problem. There is no doubt that the events of 911 could have been prevented. There was an intelligence failure, just as there was at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Bulge. But I don't recall reading about any clamor to remove FDR or Eisenhower for those fiascoes.

The blame, if it is to be apportioned, IMHO goes to the mid level FBI management, who was directly responsible for investigating these kinds of threats, and the heads of both the FBI and CIA. If there were any honor in government, both those men would have resigned shortly after 911 with public apologies to the President saying "I failed you". But that never happens in government, does it?
27 posted on 04/02/2004 8:23:34 AM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: finnman69

Sibel Edmonds
28 posted on 04/02/2004 8:24:32 AM PST by finnman69 (cum puella incedit minore medio corpore sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

29 posted on 04/02/2004 8:24:46 AM PST by adam_az (Call your state Republican party office and VOLUNTEER FOR A CAMPAIGN!!!)
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To: All
The latest video shows Osama Bin Ladin swearing an oath on the Qu'ran that he warned Bush in advance of the airplane attack with a Kerry for president sign in the background.
Whose the next rat to come out of the woodwork? There is a credibility and motive dilemma here.
30 posted on 04/02/2004 8:25:25 AM PST by BipolarBob (Your secrets safe with me and my friends deep inside the earth.)
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To: GreatOne
"Fine, we had info that airplanes were going to be used as missles to hit targets in several cities. Now, what do you do with that info? Can't alert the public, as there would either be a massive shrug, or maybe even unneeded damage done to the airline industry. And what cities are you going to protect? Without specific dates and targets, this info is worthless."

Take it one baby step farther, Great One. Before 9/11, the very paradigm of hijackers actually piloting an aircraft didn't exist. You can have all the so-called "credible" evidence in the world that says that this type of attack is going to occur - and you flat out won't believe it - because nothing even remotely approaching it had ever occured previously. Up until that time, every single hijacking that had occured ended with the aircraft returning safely to earth. Yes, some people died in other hijackings, but not as a result of the plane flying into fixed objects. If Mohammed Atta had himself told you what his plans were, you would have LAUGHED.

And then 9/11.

Michael

31 posted on 04/02/2004 8:26:39 AM PST by Wright is right! (It's amazing how fun times when you're having flies.)
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To: finnman69
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Filipino's bust about 5 of 6 terrorists (most likely AL Quida) who were on their way to do this in the mid to late 90's. The media doesn't seem to want to mention that this was common knowledge for years.
32 posted on 04/02/2004 8:26:48 AM PST by Dead Dog
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To: All
9-11 was not the first time the Trade Center got hit...and there were 8 years, not 8 months to take care of this. But the first hit was never advertised as an "Act of War" although it was just that.

So why didn't Clinton go to the UN like Bush did and go into Afghanistan? Did he even call Kofi?

After, 9-11, Clinton said he wishes he was in charge for 9-11. Well, he was in charge for the first hit. Just a little ironic that he could have been an effective President but chose to be a defective President. His Legacy will be "The worst President".

33 posted on 04/02/2004 8:28:14 AM PST by Sacajaweau (God Bless Our Troops!!)
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To: finnman69
wonder why she's been so silent for so long then?
34 posted on 04/02/2004 8:28:16 AM PST by Jon Alvarez
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To: Congressman Billybob
mind control? where did she say that?
35 posted on 04/02/2004 8:29:08 AM PST by Pikamax
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To: finnman69
   
Friday, April 02, 2004
Make Comment View Comments Printable Article

The Left's Big Lie About Condi

By PowerLineBlog.com
PowerLineBlog.com | March 29, 2004

To an extent that, in my judgment, has no precedent in American history, the contemporary Democratic party has defined itself as a party of hate. The current frenzy over the self-contradictory and in some instances patently false claims of Richard Clarke has shown the Democrats at their most vituperative.

A case in point is Paul Begala's recent hysterical attack on Condoleezza Rice on CNN's Crossfire. Begala said:

[Dr. Rice] began this week with an op-ed in "The New York Times" [Ed.--actually, the Washington Post] in which she says among other things that there was no intelligence on a plot to use airplanes.

Now we have a former FBI translator who says that's false. She also said that the plan for al Qaeda before 9/11 included military attacks. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage also under oath said, no, that was false. So she told two lies in 500 words. Can you name me two lies in Dick Clarke's 50,000 word book? I haven't found any.

BLACK: Most people -- most people in this town, Republican and Democrat alike, believe her and trust her.

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: No, they don't. She's a liar. She lied twice in "The Washington Post" op-ed.

Those are, of course, very strong words--or at least, they used to be, before the Democratic Party went around the bend. Here is what Rice said in her Post article:

Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived. It focused on the crucial link between al Qaeda and the Taliban. We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime.

Begala calls Rice a liar because Richard Armitage, in his testimony before the terrorism commission, "under oath said, no, that was false." Armitage, of course, said no such thing. He never referred to Rice's op-ed in his testimony, and was never asked whether he agreed with her account or not. Here is what he did say:

POWELL: So we discussed it with all of the experts who were in the previous administration and stayed over. We then brought in our new people. Mr. Armitage came in after 2 months. General Taylor came over after a while. A lot of people came in, and we put together a more comprehensive policy and we reached the conclusion in early September that it might come to that and we have to understand that we might have to go in and take this kind of large-scale military action if that was the only way to eliminate this threat.

ARMITAGE: The record I have of our discussions in the deputies, in the July time frame where we began to discuss actually using military measures if all the rest was not successful, that's a long way from having a plan, a military plan, but these were things that as the secretaries indicated, we talked about, we debated, and we realized eventually we were going to have to have in our quiver.

Now, how does Armitage's testimony (or Powell's) prove that Rice is a liar? She said: "We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime." Powell said: "we reached the conclusion in early September that it might come to that and we have to understand that we might have to go in and take this kind of large-scale military action if that was the only way to eliminate this threat." Armitage said: "[W]e began to discuss actually using military measures if all the rest was not successful, that's a long way from having a plan, a military plan, but these were things that as the secretaries indicated, we talked about, we debated, and we realized eventually we were going to have to have in our quiver."

Armitage and Powell said, in different words, the same thing as Rice: the Bush administration decided to develop a plan to use military force if al Qaeda could not otherwise be dislodged from Afghanistan. No sane person could conclude that "Armitage under oath said, no, that was false."

Some will defend Begala on the ground that he is mentally unbalanced, and argue that his type of fanaticism does not typify the Democratic Party. But I cannot agree. Begala seems to me to be typical of the modern Democratic Party--a party that makes Joe McCarthy look calm, reasonable and scrupulous.

UPDATE: Rice's second lie, as characterized by Begala, was "that there was no intelligence on a plot to use airplanes." Here is what Rice actually wrote:

Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists. The FAA even issued a warning to airlines and aviation security personnel that "the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States, remains a concern."

Begala says that, "Now we have a former FBI translator who says that's false." Begala is referring to Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds is not new to celebrity; in October 2002, she appeared on 60 Minutes and launched sensational criticisms of the FBI's translation department. She claimed that her supervisor had told her to translate slowly, if at all, so that the agency's budget would be increased. She said that many of her co-workers were incompetent, and that one of them had deliberately failed to translate important documents and tried to recruit Edmonds into a terrorist front organization; this same co-worker, according to Edmonds, threatened to kill Edmonds and her family.

Two months ago, Edmonds gave an interview to a fawning Gail Sheehy in which she repeated her allegations against the FBI, and talked about putting her story about the translators' inefficiency and incompetence into the hands of the terrorism commission. In that interview, she also suggested that when she reported the alleged threat against her and her family to Dale Watson, then the FBI's executive assistant director, Watson induced Turkey's intelligence service to interrogate Edmonds' sister in Istanbul.

The FBI fired Edmonds in 2002, and she sued the agency. Her case is now pending. She told Sheehy that when she was fired, agents told her she would be sent to prison if she hired a lawyer not approved by the agency, and that she is frequently followed by FBI agents.

Begala did not refer, however, to what Edmonds told 60 Minutes or Sheehy. Rather, he relied on an article that appeared in Salon earlier today, in which Sibel Edmonds says:

We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available. Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie...President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate. But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand....

Several basic points should be made here. First, Edmonds is far from a reliable witness. There is considerable reason to believe, in fact, that she is a nut, and at a bare minimum, she has an enormous axe to grind. To simply assume on the basis of her statements that Condoleezza Rice is a "liar" is ridiculous.

Second, it seems extremely odd that Edmonds has never made this claim before. She became a celebrity by bashing the FBI on 60 Minutes and elsewhere, and Ed Bradley certainly would have tried to draw out any negative information she could provide about the FBI and the Bush administration. It is very hard to believe that she just forgot to mention that she had seen documents indicating that the Bureau had a warning that airplanes were to be used as weapons by Arab terrorists.

Third, Edmonds went to work for the FBI after September 11. They put her to work translating documents, and as far as the public record shows, that is all she ever did. Documents indicating a plot to use airplanes as weapons would be relevant only if they were translated before September 11; there was, we know, a large backlog of documents, wiretap intercepts and so on that were translated after that time even though they may have been collected prior to the attacks. While it is possible that Edmonds could have seen previously-translated materials, reviewing such materials was not part of her job, and she has given no explanation of how and why she allegedly came across them.

Fourth, it is not even clear to what extent Edmonds contradicts Rice. Rice said that "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." It is not clear whether she meant that "we," the White House, had received no such intelligence, or that no such report had ever been obtained by anyone in any law enforcement agency.

More fundamentally, the whole point is immaterial. Rice says that while "we" didn't get a report on using airplanes as missiles, there was concern about possible hijackings, and the FAA issued a warning to the airlines. It is not clear what, in addition, would or could have been done if the tactic of flying planes into buildings had been foreseen. It is worth remembering that in September 2001, airports were just about the only places in the United States that had any security at all. And that security appeared to be effective; the era of airplane hijackings had ended years before, after passenger screening was introduced. The principal terror threat was considered to be truck bombings, as in Beirut, Oklahoma City, and the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Indeed, that continues to be true, as there is still no effective defense against such attacks.) Planners could reasonably have thought that air travel was the one area where the threat of terrorism had been effectively addressed.

In short, Begala's characterization of Rice as a "liar" can only be seen as a manifestation of crazed partisanship, and another sign of the decline of the Democratic Party.


36 posted on 04/02/2004 8:31:34 AM PST by finnman69 (cum puella incedit minore medio corpore sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos)
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To: finnman69
Clarke is living out the axiom that if you yell the lie long and loud enough, people will believe you.

It DOES have Clinton written all over it.

As to this translator, she was hired after nine eleven, and saying that the administration knew is ridiculous, considering that she previously stated that the Arab FBI translators CHEERED when news of the WTC attack came through.

We are being fed a bunch of Stalinist propaganda, truly not seen since the Nazi/Soviet era, all with the idea of sinking Bush.

One hopes that Condi and Bush will TAKE THEIR GLOVES OFF for once and recognize the evil they are fighting is at HOME.

The collusion of the media on this stuff is also frightening. We are living in some weird alternate universe of a political horror film.

Just makes me run to church, where the real power(s) of intercession and pointed prayer are anyway. Fascinating to watch our country self destruct while the first truly Christian film to come out of Hollywood in decades is becoming the biggest blockbuster of all time.

But the really strange issue is how the Bushies want to box by Marquis of Queensbury rules and the Clintoon/Kerryites are using PLO tactics.
37 posted on 04/02/2004 8:33:10 AM PST by CalifornianConservative
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To: SoCal Pubbie
We keep leaving out the INS....and updating Airline Security which the Dems negotiated with the airlines and deemed tooo expensive. Simple door bars would have changed the terrorists plans.
38 posted on 04/02/2004 8:33:55 AM PST by Sacajaweau (God Bless Our Troops!!)
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To: mikegi
Did the papers she "saw" name the exact day and time these attacks would occur?
39 posted on 04/02/2004 8:34:17 AM PST by AngieGOP
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To: finnman69
and had obtained a gagging order from a court.

WTF is a "gagging order"?

40 posted on 04/02/2004 8:36:45 AM PST by Mr. Buzzcut
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