Unwelcome Truths (Able Danger, OKC, 9/11)

http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Cucullu/20050815CuculluUnwelcome.html

In mid-19th century America a political party sprung up called the Know Nothing Party. It got its name from a trait that more than a century later would be called “plausible deniability.” Know Nothings - when asked a relevant question - would deny knowledge of the subject. It bemuses us as a quaint eccentricity from a distant time until we realize that we’re doing the same thing today. Recent revelations about covert Able Danger operations conducted in the US against terrorism are forcing certain people to deal with subjects that they had thought swept fully under the carpet.

Because most of the culprits in this astonishing story of willful ignorance are either Democrats - most especially members of the administration of disgraced President Clinton - or are media liberals, the story is likely to be buried until it explodes on Internet publishing, blogs, and talk radio. But this culpability exceeds even the usual gap between left and right in that it includes many in the so-called “realist” wing of the Republican Party and Republican liberals (aka, “centrists” and “moderates” in the MSM).

By now you will have read many summaries of a recently released Able Danger report. The Able Danger operation is described by former CIA operative and terrorism expert Wayne Simmons as “one of our best covert operations.” The operation he continues, was expert at “using open source intel to locate and identify Islamic terrorists.” We can only surmise that a gold mine of information lies yet unrevealed. The latest result was neatly addressed by NY Post columnist Deborah Orin who wrote tellingly of the incredible ineptitude of the highly-touted and endlessly self-absorbed 9/11 Commission. Staffers - perhaps even the self-promoting Commissioners themselves - intentionally ignored Able Danger reports that were delivered on at least two separate briefings, that provided detailed intelligence on terrorist Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers years prior to the September 11 attack.

There are several factors - none flattering to the Commission - that might explain this appalling lapse. John Podhoretz summaries them neatly: “So was the [911 Commission] staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?” Options b and c are tightly related. Then high-ranking Clinton Justice Department appointee Gorelick wrote the infamous “wall” memo that forbade interagency coordination of matters involving internal terrorism investigations. Specifically DOD and CIA were prohibited from exchanging relevant information with FBI. This produced much of the harmful lack of intelligence coordination that the Commission then used arrogantly and paternalistically to criticize the Executive Branch - particularly the Bush administration, even though most of the problems arose during Clinton and earlier. Regardless, the eventual outcome of the Able Danger bombshell will tarnish the image the 9/11 Commission burnished so brightly for itself.

But the really upsetting matter is Podhoretz’s first note. It requires a deeper reading. The Commission was “protecting” its interpretation of Mohammad Atta’s international and domestic US travels. Key in this “interpretation” in the minds of GOP foreign policy “realists,” Clinton supporters, and Bush haters, is the necessity to de-link any ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda operations. After all, in the endless cacophony of criticism against the Iraq War, the two steady drumbeats have been failure to find WMD, and no links between Saddam and the September 11 attack. Till now they have acted in the manner of modern day Know Nothings by deliberate misinterpretations of a series of reports including the 911 Commission’s, and WMD reports by David Kay and Charles Dueffler.

However the unimpeachable Able Danger report, reluctantly acknowledged to be correct by 911 Commission staffers, may well blow the lid off the ability of the Know Nothings to continue to cloak the truth. For the movements of Atta prior to the terrorist attack, if acknowledged, will support statements by the Czech Republic that link Atta, and hence the al Qaeda attack on America, irrefutably to Saddam’s covert intelligence operatives. This is something that surfaced very soon after the attack. The former Czech deputy foreign minister, later ambassador to the UN, gave statements that he personally expelled a high raking Iraqi embassy official in Prague for being a covert foreign intelligence agent after the latter was discovered having met with Atta in the international lounge at the Prague airport in August 2001. There the Iraqi transferred a large amount of cash to Atta, sufficient to fund the completion of the September 11 attack.

Despite cruel pressure from MSM, the hard left, and the US State Department and CIA, the Czechs insisted that their report was correct. Former Congressman John LeBoutellier was furious at the Bush administration for bowing to CIA pressure to discount the Czech report because it verified a vital deadly connection within the covert terrorist community. Now it appears as if the Czechs were right. Don’t hold your breath waiting for apologies to be forthcoming from previous critics.

By acknowledging the Iraq-al Qaeda ties, not only to terrorism in general but to the September 11 attack in particular the anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-expansion of democracy and freedom assaults by the critics are suddenly muted. In fact, the war becomes completely acceptable under any and all circumstances. This outcome is so repugnant to the hard left that it will justify even the most extraordinary suppression of evidence or promulgation of an outright lie in order to achieve its ends.

Furthermore, if the Iraq-al Qaeda ties in one attack are proved then we must dig deeper and investigate the possibility of previous links and previous attacks. This brings us to the Oklahoma City bombing, a too-hasty FBI investigation, and political pressure to close the case once the “perfect” perpetrators were arrested. Who other than Tim McVeigh could have been a more ideal catch? A disgruntled white male redneck, ex-military, supporter of the Branch Davidians, who read neo-Nazi books, McVeigh so represented the left’s worldview that the investigation was halted before it began. Janet Reno, perennial willing accomplice to the Clintons, ordered the FBI to cease work after McVeigh and Terry Nichols were in custody.

Gutsy Oklahoma City reporter Jayna Davis conducted her own contemporary investigation that she details in her excellent book The Third Terrorist, in which she tells of highly suspicious Iraqi behavior in Oklahoma City. Further, she was stunned when the FBI and other law enforcement agencies smugly dismissed her findings and insisted that they had solved and closed the case. For its part, the FBI was happy to wrap up a case quickly without the need to delve into foreign terrorist matters. It was more expeditious to cut away and discard loose ends than to pursue them. Acknowledgement that Iraq and al Qaeda were involved in the bombing would have necessitated a major military response to the attack that the Clinton administration wanted to avoid. As long as the event could be covered by the criminal justice system - as had the 1993 World Trade bombing - Clintons foreign policy aims were accommodated.

Continued investigation by Davis showed that the top Iraqi in question was a former senior Iraqi Republican Guard officer with close Saddam regime ties. Further some of the members of the Iraqi group that fled Oklahoma City when the bombing of the Murrah Building took place moved to the Northeast. One later took a job at Logan International Airport in Boston, the location of two September 11 hijackings. He disappeared after that attack.

The Know Nothing philosophy is harming America, and has become intolerable. It is long overdue for America to sweep away the obfuscating cloud brought on by ludicrous political correctness and the incessant bleating of the Know Nothings. A core principle of war is that in order to win, you must know yourself and know your enemy. We must insist that the truth be surfaced, discussed, analyzed, and acted upon. Continual suppression of essential facts emboldens our enemies and makes us increasingly vulnerable to subsequent attack.

Able Danger reports must be made public to the extent possible, and we must have a reinvestigation of the series of terrorist attacks on America, preferably without the irrational partisanship that has markedly hurt our war effort to date. That may necessitate some harsh words from the White House toward certain opposition politicians and toward the media. It also requires radical reform of the dysfunctional State Department, CIA, FBI, and any other of the Executive Branch agencies that consider themselves a separate branch of government. The American people can handle the truth.

Curious about North Korea? Learn more in Gordon’s best-selling book Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became the Evil Twin, Lyons Press available at bookstores now

Former Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born into a military family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work, Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is based in large part on his extensive experience in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman. [website] [go to Cucullu index]

Gordon Cucullu Recommends Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror Thomas McInerney & Paul E. Vallely

In in 1998, an Arab intelligence officer, who knows Saddam personally, predicted in Newsweek: "Very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis." The Arab official said these terror operations would be run under "false flags" --spook-speak for front groups--including bin Laden's organization.

Then there were the predictions by an Iraqi with ties to Iraqi intelligence, Naeem Abd Mulhalhal, in Qusay's own newspaper several weeks before the attacks that stated bin Laden would “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House and ”bin Laden would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” (referencing a second IRAQI sponsored attack on the World Trade Center). Another reference to New York was “[bin Laden] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) which identified New York, New York as a target. Mulhalhal also stated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer." which references an airplane attack.

The Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabic also cited the cooperation between Iraq, bin Laden and Al December 1998 editorial, which predicted that “President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama Bin-Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.” This info is in the link provided below. How could these people have had foreknowledge without Iraq being involved?

Source for this info

Warning...slow loading .pdf file. This was from a lawsuit filed against Iraq after 9/11...the court ruled against Iraq.

There was also another lawsuit filed by the family of John O’Neill (a former FBI agent who captured Ramzi Yousef after the 1993 WTC bombings) after he died in the WTC on 9/11. His personal files from his years of traveling around the world investigating al-Qaeda are were used as evidence in the lawsuit. The evidence includes documents unearthed in the headquarters of the Mukhabarat (Iraq's intelligence service) and information gleaned from the interrogation of both al-Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners. (Link below). It also quotes Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, who stated in October 2000 that Iraq had been wanting to carry out terrorist attacks, and that the Iraqi military had been in contact with Osama bin Laden.

Click Here

We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Weekly Standard: The Mother of All Connections

List of newspaper article in the 90's which mention the world's concern regarding the growing relationship between OBL and Saddam: