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Does anyone else remember the impeached *Crinton saying, as the twin towers burned, that *he knew EXACTLY who did the deed? (Keep in mind - 9/11 was the SECOND attack on the WTC...)

Clinton Was Warned of bin Laden Hijacking Plot
PRNewswire
Monday, July 19, 2004

NEW YORK -- In its final report due out this week, the 9-11 Commission will disclose new evidence suggesting that the hard-line Islamist clerics who now exercise near total control over Iran directed their border guards to help jihadists coming from Afghanistan.

And sometime between October 2000 and February 2001, eight to 10 of the "muscle" hijackers of the September 11 plot were among those who benefited, reports Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the July 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, July 19).

That conclusion -- the strongest evidence yet of a relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda -- is one of the most surprising findings to emerge in the commission's report, which also found there was no "collaborative, operational" relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda and amounts to a blistering critique of the performance of the CIA, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and a host of other agencies, reports Isikoff.

According to a December 2001 memo buried in the files of the National Security Agency, obtained by the commission, Iranian officials instructed their border inspectors not to place Iranian or Afghan stamps in the passports of Saudi terrorists traveling from Osama bin Laden's training camps through Iran. Such "clean" passports undoubtedly would have helped the 9/11 terrorists pass into the United States without raising alarms among U.S. Customs and visa officials, sources familiar with the report tell Newsweek.

The 9-11 Commission report emphasizes there is no evidence suggesting that Iranian officials had advance knowledge of the September 11 plot. Still, the report raises new, sharper questions about whether the Bush administration was focused on the right enemy when it decided to remove Saddam Hussein.

The NSA memo adds to a large accumulation of intelligence indicating that Iran has had more suspicious ties to Al Qaeda than Iraq did. Among those who once had a base in Iran: Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, allegedly the No. 1 terrorist in Iraq today.

Warning Went to Clinton

Among the report's other new disclosures: Bill Clinton also got a strong warning that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes. On Dec. 4, 1998, Clinton was presented with a President's Daily Brief (PDB) with the eye-catching title "Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack U.S. Aircraft and other attacks," Newsweek has learned.

The PDB, which has just been declassified, was prompted by a British intelligence report that the son of the Egyptian "blind sheik" Omar Abdel- Rahman -- who had been convicted of a plot to blow up New York City landmarks -- proposed to hijack airplanes and ransom the passengers in exchange for his father's release.

Curiously, the same information turned up 20 months later, in the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB presented to President Bush, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." One White House official suggested that the existence of the earlier PDB was evidence that President Bush was never properly informed by the outgoing Clintonites about the full depth of the Qaeda threat.

"This was never briefed to us," said the official about the 1998 PDB. Clinton officials dismiss this, saying the timing of the declassification is likely an effort to blunt criticism that Bush bears primary responsibility for failing to avert 9/11.

Clinton officials say they acted aggressively, placing New York City airports on maximum alert, but no evidence ever turned up establishing that the plot was real.

The 9-11 report is destined to be picked apart by partisans seeking political ammunition against either the Clinton or Bush administrations. The report criticizes both for failing to respond to the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in October 2000, especially in light of multiple intelligence briefings strongly pointing to Qaeda complicity.

To correct pre-9-11 intelligence failures by the CIA, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies, the report recommends the creation of a national-intelligence director who would serve as an "intelligence czar" with budgetary authority over the entire U.S. intelligence community. But some administration and intel officials are already deriding the plan as bureaucratic box-drawing.

Grimly, what the new 9-11 report makes clear is that nearly three years into the war on terror, America is still not close to understanding the enemy, reports Isikoff. And despite recent portrayals of bin Laden as a man hunted and on the run, U.S. counterterrorism officials now say the threat today from Al Qaeda may be just as serious as in the summer of 2001.

The warnings are based on unusually high-quality intelligence emanating from the Afghanistan- Pakistan border near Waziristan, where top al Qaeda leaders are said to be hiding. "This is absolutely real," says one senior U.S. counterterrorism official. "We feel very confident that they are trying hard to attack us inside the United States before the election and that some of the operatives are already here."