Imminent Threat? Report Suggests Terror Operatives ‘In Place,’ Possibly in America

ABCNEWS ^ | April 18 , 2004 | Pierre Thomas

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

W A S H I N G T O N, April 18 — U.S. intelligence officials have uncovered evidence of a potential terrorist attack, ABCNEWS has learned.

Like many such tips, it is vague, but the government is disturbed enough that it held a rare conference call with local police to warn them.

The intelligence, received a week ago but secret until now, is from known Muslim extremists who suggested an attack — possibly in the U.S. — was imminent, and that operatives were already "in place," sources tell ABCNEWS.

"I think it's very clear from what we're seeing right now is that the bad guys, the al Qaeda, is getting very creative, that they are active and that they are going to continue to try and hit us," said Jerry Hauer, a former emergency management official and now an ABCNEWS consultant.

On the Lookout

The primary area of concern is so-called soft targets. Police were told to be on the lookout for surveillance of landmarks, and for suspicious items left in malls, subway stations or other large gatherings.

On Friday, April 9, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security held a rare secure conference call with police in dozens of major cities.

By Saturday, April 10, a classified bulletin was sent out warning that groups affiliated with al Qaeda might be planning attacks in the U.S. on the scale seen in Madrid last month.

"I think what they're doing here is acting what they feel is responsibly," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent and now and ABCNEWS consultant. They want to "get the information out, [saying] 'We don't want to be criticized for holding onto stuff, even if it's non-specific.' You have to get it out.

Chasing Down Leads

Intelligence agencies from around the world are chasing down leads to verify the threat.

Sources tell ABCNEWS the information is not specific enough to raise the national threat level from yellow to orange. In addition, officials have not seen a huge surge in intelligence information.

However, officials were concerned enough by who was giving the information that they passed it to local police.

[dila813]

Attack is on 611, June 11th.

911 311 611 1211

Next attack is due on 611, these guys like numbers.

[Travis McGee]

If there is a "Madrid" in the USA, and the terrorists walked in from Mexico, then Bush is finished. Done. Cooked.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They could come in thru Canada, just as likely, how would we know which way?

[Travis McGee]

If the Madrid case is an example, they will leave clues all over, and their movements will be traced. Dud bombs, cell phones, explosives traced etc. If they walked over a border, (Canada or Mexico) to enter the USA, millions of swing voters will say, "what are 130,000 troops doing in Iraq, while our borders are a sieve to terrorists?

And that will be the end of George W. Bush's presidency. I can't understand why he fails to perceive this.

[Euro-American Scum]

If there is a "Madrid" in the USA, and the terrorists walked in from Mexico, then Bush is finished. Done. Cooked.

Why these ragheads weren't shipped home on the first available transport after 9/11 escapes me.

[MarMema]

BTT

[WhiteyAppleseed]

Read online somewhere that an official in a foreign country was ordered to issue visas based on shaky applications, so the open borders idea, though an issue that is real, doesn't seem very plausible.

Why not also watch the stock market for evidence of insider trading? Who stands to make five million off an airline diaster?

[WhiteyAppleseed]

I did a google search of "rahman obstruction", a search precipitated by the Gorelick memo, other evidence, and came up with this, though the links I clicked on did not take me to these words: July 1990: Despite being on a terrorist watch list, radical Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman enters the US on a "much-disputed" tourist visa issued by an ...

[WhiteyAppleseed]

Also found this: In her testimony, Kleinberg says, "It has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once. This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: they were lucky over and over again." She points out the inside trading based on 9/11 foreknowledge, the failure of fighters to catch the hijacked planes in time, hijackers getting visas in violation of standard procedures, and other events, and asks how the hijackers could have been lucky so many times. http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/main/AAadvanceinfo.html

[WhiteyAppleseed]

As well as this:

May 21, 2002 (C): Abdulla Noman, a former employee of the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers got their visas, says that he took money and gifts to provide fraudulent visas to foreigners. He pleads guilty and is convicted. About 50 to 100 visas were improperly issued by Noman from September 1996 until November 2001, when he was arrested. However, a former visa officer in Jeddah, Michael Springman, has claimed in the past that the Jeddah office was notorious for purposefully giving visas to terrorists to train in the US. (see 1987-1989). [AP, 5/21/02] If this is true, then was Noman "the fall guy" to provide a cover story?

[WhiteyAppleseed]

And this:

May 22, 2002: At least half of the 48 Muslim radicals linked to terrorist plots in the US since 1993 manipulated or violated immigration laws to enter this country and then stay here. Even when the terrorists did little to hide violations of visa requirements or other laws, INS officials failed to enforce the laws or to deport the offenders. The terrorists used a variety of methods. At the time they committed their crimes, 12 of the 48 were illegal immigrants. At least five others had lived in the US illegally, and four others had committed significant immigration violations. Others were here legally but should have been rejected for visas because they fit US immigration profiles of people who are likely to overstay their visas. [USA Today, 5/22/02] Experts later strongly suggest that the visa applications for all 15 of the Saudi Arabian 9/11 hijackers should have been rejected due to numerous irregularities (see October 23, 2002).

[WhiteyAppleseed]

This is embarrassing:

July 19, 2002: Faced with growing criticism of its Visa Express program (see May 2001 (H)), the State Department early in July 2002 decides merely to change the name of the program. When that fails to satisfy critics, the program is abandoned altogether on July 19. The Visa Express program allowed anyone in Saudi Arabia to apply for US visas through their travel agents instead of having to show up at a consulate in person. [Washington Post, 7/11/02] Mary Ryan, the head of the State Department's consular service that was responsible for letting most of the hijackers into the US, is also forced to retire. It has been pointed out that Ryan deceived Congress by testifying that "there was nothing State could have done to prevent the terrorists from obtaining visas" (see October 21, 2002 and October 23, 2002). However, after all this, Ryan and the other authors of the Visa Express program are given "outstanding performance" awards of $15,000 each. The reporter who wrote most of the stories critical of Visa Express is briefly detained and pressured by the State Department. [Washington Times, 10/23/02, Philadelphia Daily News, 12/30/02]

[WhiteyAppleseed]

Truly embarrassing:

October 21, 2002: The General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, releases a report asserting that at least 13 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were never interviewed by US consular officials before being granted visas to enter the US. This contradicts previous assurances from the State Department that 12 of the hijackers had been interviewed. It also found that, for 15 hijackers whose applications could be found, none had filled in the documents properly. Records for four other hijackers, including Atta, could not be checked because they were accidentally destroyed (see October 23, 2002). [Washington Post, 10/22/02] The State Department maintains that visa procedures were properly followed. In December 2002, Senators Jon Kyl (R) and Pat Roberts (R) state in a report that "if State Department personnel had merely followed the law and not granted nonimmigrant visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers in Saudi Arabia ... 9/11 would not have happened." [AP, 12/18/02]

[WhiteyAppleseed]

In the late 1980s, Pakistan's President Benazir Bhutto, feeling the mujaheddin network has grown too strong, tells President George Bush Sr., "You are creating a Frankenstein." But the warning goes unheeded. [Newsweek, 9/24/01] By 1993, the President of Pakistan tells Egyptian President Hasni Mubarak that Peshawar is under de facto control of the mujaheddin, and unsuccessfully asks for military help in reasserting Pakistani control over the city. Thousands of mujaheddin fighters return to their home countries after the war is over, and engage in countless acts of terrorism. One Western diplomat notes these thousands would never have been trained or united without US help, and says "The consequences for all of us are astronomical." [Atlantic Monthly, 5/96] September 1987-March 1989: Michael Springmann, the head US consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, later claims that he is "repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants." He turns them down, but is repeatedly overruled by superiors. Springmann loudly complains about the practice to numerous government offices, but no action is taken. He eventually is fired and the files he has kept on these applicants are destroyed. Springmann speculates that the issuing of visas to radical Islamic fighters continued until 9/11. He says he later learns that recruits from many countries fighting for bin Laden against Russia in Afghanistan were funneled through the Jeddah office to get visas to come to the US. They would then train for the Afghan war in the US. He says the Jeddah consulate was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence agents. Springmann suggests that this visa system may have continued until present day, and that the 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers getting their visas through Jeddah (see May 21, 2002 (C)) could have been a part of it (see also October 21, 2002 and October 23, 2002). [BBC, 11/6/01, AP, 7/17/02, Fox News, 7/18/02]

From the link previously posted.

[boris]

They've been 'in place' for a decade or more.

[eno_]

Why these ragheads weren't shipped home on the first available transport after 9/11 escapes me.

Travis is right. We are building an irksome domestic surveillance system to monitor every law-abiding person who has not taken up a fake identity, while leaving our borders open to a huge wave of illegals. Terrorists can easily hide among the illegals, and use the huge fake ID industry to get legit-looking documents.

On top of all that, after losing even more freedom to government surveillance, we are not even one bit more secure than before.

[Dog]

However, officials were concerned enough by who was giving the information that they passed it to local police.

This sure gets my attention..........do we have a mole in the Al Qaeda network?

[Redleg Duke]

"If there is a "Madrid" in the USA, and the terrorists walked in from Mexico, then Bush is finished. Done. Cooked."

You don't care where anyone comes from...you just want the President "finished"! With all of the hatred in you, you just have to be a DU troll!

[eno_]

We'd better have more than one by now. But the sad truth may be we have none, and everything we know is from communication intercepts. At least the NSA p0wNz the global telephone network.