FBI FOREKNOWLEDGE: Flight school says FBI trailed suspect prior to hijackings

FBI Director Robert Mueller continued to insist yesterday that federal authorities had no reason to suspect Islamic extremists were training at US flight schools before last week's suicide hijackings, even as more evidence surfaced raising questions about those assertions.

The vice president of a flight school in Oklahoma told The Boston Globe yesterday that three weeks before Tuesday's suicide hijackings, FBI agents interviewed him about a suspected terrorist who had trained at the school.

Dale Davis, the vice president of Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., said FBI agents showed up at the facility asking questions about Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in Minnesota last month after he tried to get flight simulator lessons on flying a commercial-size jet.

In addition, Davis said that FBI agents visited his flight school two years ago to ask questions about a former student who had been identified by federal authorities as an associate of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident who is the prime suspect in organizing last week's hijackings.

Davis also said that two of the men who hijacked two flights out of Boston's Logan Airport last week, including Mohamed Atta, who investigators believe was the ringleader of the Boston hijackings, had visited the Norman flight school last year before deciding to attend one in Florida.

At a Washington briefing yesterday, Mueller repeated his assertion, first made Friday, that federal authorities had no inkling that terrorists were using US flight schools to acquire the training they needed to take the controls of commercial airliners as they did on Tuesday.

''There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country,'' he said.

But the Globe reported Saturday that federal authorities have known for at least three years that two associates of bin Laden had trained in the United States as airline pilots.

The link between the Al-Qaeda terror group, allegedly led by bin Laden, and US flight schools emerged earlier this year at the trial of four men charged with the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. At that trial, during which FBI agents were called as witnesses, an associate of bin Laden testified that he went to a flight school in Texas.

Prosecutors introduced evidence that a second associate of bin Laden, Ihab Ali Nawawi, had trained at Airman Flight School, as did Moussaoui, who is now being held in New York for questioning on suspicion that he is an associate of the hijackers.

In a telephone interview, Davis confirmed that the FBI had suspicions about Moussaoui at least three weeks before last week's disaster.

The questions FBI agents posed to him appeared to be about whether Moussaoui could have been a terrorist, Davis said, including whether the alleged Algerian militant had ever made any ''extreme comments'' about the United States.

When asked why they were inquiring about Moussaoui, Davis said, the agents replied that ''he had done something very bad.''

Davis said FBI agents had visited his school just two years earlier to inquire about Ihab Ali Nawawi, who took flight training there in 1993 and was later charged in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa, which were blamed on bin Laden's group.

Davis also confirmed that Atta and another suspected hijacker, Marwan al-Shehhi, visited Airman Flight School, staying overnight at the school's dormitory in the nearby Sooner Inn, before deciding to train at another facility.

''They did a school visit in July of 2000 but went elsewhere for whatever reason,'' Davis said.

The Los Angeles Times yesterday quoted an unidentified federal official saying that Moussaoui asked only for lessons on ''steering, not landing'' and cheered when he watched a news account of the suicide hijackings at the jail in Minnesota where he has been held since last month.

Two other suspects being held for questioning in New York, Aybu Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, who had been living in New Jersey, were taken into custody on a train in Fort Worth, Texas, and arrested after police found they were carrying box cutters similar to those used by some of the hijackers. Investigators believe the hijackers in Tuesday's attack used box cutters because the tool's plastic handle would not set off metal detectors at airport security checkpoints.

While authorities have not identified a fourth suspect being interrogated in New York, CNN yesterday said that the man is a doctor from San Antonio, and that Azmath and Khan may have been heading to his home there to hide. CNN said the man attended the same flight school in Arizona as one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

A neighbor told The New York Times that one of the four men who lived in the apartment that Khan and Azmath listed as their home worked for the Saudi consulate in New York. That represents another lead for investigators, who already believe that the hijackers exploited Saudi connections to gain access to the United States and go about their business without attracting undue law enforcement attention.

The Globe reported Friday that some of the hijackers had used affiliations with Saudi Arabia, the United States' staunchest Arab ally, to gain access to the United States and flight schools with less scrutiny from US authorities.

Most of the terrorists who commandeered the four planes last week trained at flight schools in Florida, gaining the aeronautics training they later used to kill thousands. According to flight instructors, foreign students with Saudi backing receive only cursory inspection by the US State Department before they are granted visas to come here.

Investigators in Boston, meanwhile, have identified a third car believed to have been used by the 10 men who hijacked two planes out of Logan International Airport. The car was found parked at Logan Airport and was rented from a local Dollar Rent a Car franchise.

Previously, investigators had identified two cars rented from the Boston office of Alamo Rent a Car. One of the cars was found in a Logan parking lot, while the other had been left in Portland, Maine, by two suspected terrorists before they boarded a flight they allegedly used to connect with the doomed American Airlines Flight 11. Investigators believe the car found in Portland was used by Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, who sat next to Atta in the business class section of Flight 11.

An FBI report first obtained by Der Spiegel shows that when agents went through one of Atta's bags, which did not make the transfer from a connecting flight from Portland, Maine, they found airline uniforms.

Investigators are trying to determine if Atta or any of his associates used the uniforms to gain access to areas of Logan Airport that would normally be secure, sources said. They are also trying to determine if the uniforms were connected to a break-in last April at the Hotel Nazionale in central Rome, in which two American Airlines pilots said they were robbed of their uniforms, badges, and airport access badges.

Investigators say they are still examining whether the hijackers had inside help among ground staff at Logan Airport, even though it appears they simply carried on the box-cutters and other knifelike objects they apparently used to take control of the planes.

FBI agents continue to show an interest in the Flagship Wharf condominium complex, where bin Laden's brother owns six luxury units. Some members of the bin Laden family live in the building, and Boston Police have maintained a full-time guard detail there since Wednesday.

Bin Laden is estranged from his family, which has denounced his extremist views, but police are worried that the family or its property could face the sort of vigilante violence that has been visited on many Muslims and their businesses across the United States since the suicide hijackings.

Sharon Grancey, the head of the Flagship Wharf condo association, declined to comment. But a resident said the FBI has visited the complex several times since last Tuesday.

''They've been in and out of the building,'' said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

CBS News reported that a federal grand jury has been empaneled in New York to investigate the suicide hijackings. The grand jury will sit in suburban White Plains because the federal court in Lower Manhattan is still closed because of the attack.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday that associates of the hijackers may still be in the United States.

Ashcroft's warning in part explained why it took several days for most airports, and even longer for Boston's Logan Airport, to open last week after Tuesday's suicide hijackings.

Ashcroft made his remarks during a briefing in Washington as he sought congressional support for a package of new antiterrorism legislation, and as FBI agents interrogated the four men in custody in New York.

Also yesterday, Mueller acknowledged that the investigation is being hampered by a lack of investigators who speak Arabic.

''We have had a language shortage for a period of time,'' he said. ''I don't think it would be just the FBI. I think it's a number of federal agencies.''

The FBI director refused to say how many people have been arrested in the probe.

''There are a number of material witness warrants that have been issued. They are sealed in most cases, and I cannot give you direct numbers,'' Mueller said.

But he spoke of the enormous scope of the probe, saying that the FBI has had 47,000 tips received over the Internet, while a telephone hotline has produced 7,800 tips. He said that the FBI's field offices have generated an additional 26,000 leads.

Mueller said there were 500 investigators at FBI headquarters in Washington, representing 32 federal, state, and local agencies, running down all of the tips and leads. Mueller said that 49 people who have been stopped and questioned in the course of the investigation have been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Click Photo:

Habib Zacarias Moussaoui

Enemies and "Assets"
FBI Foreknowledge

"Yousef(Afghan terrorist Ramzi Yousef) was convicted on September 8, 1996 of plotting a 48-hour campaign of bombings against American commercial flights over the Pacific Ocean. The campaign would have targeted a total of 12 jetliners and as many as 4,000 passengers. Yousef is also accused of carrying out the December 11, 1994 bombing of a Philippine jetliner that killed a Japanese passenger, as well as plotting to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Yousef met Abouhalima in Afghanistan in 1988, and it was Abouhalima who brought the Afghan terrorist to the United States in September 1992 on behalf of Sheik Omar's network.

Shortly after Yousef's arrival, the FBI subpoenaed two dozen of Sheik Omar's followers and questioned them about the sheik, Nosair, and Abouhalima. However, no arrests were made, no grand jury investigation was launched, and the FBI chose to downgrade its scrutiny of Omar's network -- just as plans were being finalized for the Trade Center bombing. This curious decision is even more peculiar in light of the fact that the FBI had obtained intelligence on the network's capabilities and intentions from Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian Army officer and FBI informant who served as Omar's security guard.

Salem's relationship with the FBI was turbulent, and there were suggestions of impropriety in his personal contacts with FBI handler Nancy Floyd. However, he had repeatedly warned the FBI that Nosair was running a terrorist ring out of his prison cell, and he had supplied detailed descriptions of the Sheik Omar network's plans. But the FBI was doubtful of Salem's reliability and severed its contacts with him seven months before the bombing.

In the aftermath of the Trade Center bombing, the FBI renewed its association with Salem, paying him a reported $1 million to infiltrate Sheik Omar's group once again. Salem secretly recorded many of his conversations with law enforcement agents, including exchanges in which it was revealed that the FBI had detailed prior knowledge of the Trade Center bomb plot. According to Salem, the FBI had planned to sabotage the Trade Center bomb by replacing the explosive components with an inert powder. The October 28, 1993 New York Times reported that in one conversation Salem recalled assurances from an FBI supervisor that the agency's plan called for "building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who [were] involved in [the plot]." However, the supervisor, in Salem's words, "messed it up."

Salem recalled that when he expressed a desire to lodge a protest with FBI headquarters, he was told by special agent John Anticev that "the New York people [wouldn't] like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, DC." Unappeased, Salem rebuked Anticev: "... you saw this bomb went off and you ... know that we could avoid that.... You get paid, guys, to prevent problems like this from happening."

Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of the depth of the FBI's knowledge of the Sheik Omar network came after the World Trade Center bombing, when the Bureau employed Salem's services as an informant once again. As the Wall Street Journal reported, from March to June 1993 Salem "helped organize the 'battle plan' that the government alleged included plots to bomb the United Nations and FBI buildings in New York, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels beneath the Hudson River. Working with a charismatic Sudanese man named Siddig Ali, a follower of Sheik Omar, Mr. Salem recruited seven local Muslims to scout targets, plan tactics and obtain chemicals and electrical parts for bombs...." By the time the FBI closed in on the plotters on June 23rd, it had literally hours of videotapes documenting the conspiracy in intimate detail -- including footage of conspirators mixing fertilizer and diesel fuel to build a bomb.

Predictably, defense attorneys for Sheik Omar and his followers insisted that Salem's actions amounted to entrapment. While the court rejected this defense, the FBI's proficiency at using Salem to assemble a radical Muslim terrorist cell is unsettling, to say the least. Clearly, Salem knew his way around the sheik's network, and was well-versed in the techniques of terrorism; just as clearly, the FBI knew how to make use of Salem's abilities. It is difficult to believe that the FBI was incapable of cracking down preemptively on the sheik's followers before the Trade Center bombing."
[End of Partial Transcript]

Strange Links Between the Downing of TWA Flight 800, the Bombing of The World Trade Center,
the Bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, and Osama bin Laden

Yousef's lawyer, Bernard V. Kleinman, said by phone that his client has had conversations with McVeigh through the fence and also as they have been moved from their cells to the recreation area. "They talk about innocuous things like the movies," Kleinman said. "They don't talk about anything that they shouldn't be talking about".

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The Philippines is the basis an interesting link between Ramsey Yousef and the bombing of the World Trade Center, Terry Nichols and the bombing of the Murrah Building, Osama bin Laden and the downing of TWA Flight 800.

April 25, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 700
A prosecutor in Denver said yesterday that the "hate-filled" mastermind of the bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was involved in a Right-wing plot ...... McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, is expected to suggest that a foreign government, "probably Iraq" hired "a Middle Eastern bombing engineer" to detonate the explosion with the help of neo-Nazis. In a court petition, lawyers say the attack was "contracted out" through an Iraqi base in the Philippines and it was "possible that those who carried out the bombing were unaware of the true sponsor".

Was Stephen Jones on the right track and what was behind the evidence he wanted to introduce into the McVeigh trial but could not? Some clues may lie in another link with the Phillipines that involved McVeigh's co-conspirator Terry Nichols .....

November 22, 1994 (See NY Times December 24, 1997)
Terry Nichols left for a 59 day stay in the Phillipines. He left letters, with his ex-wife, Lana Padilla, explaining what to do in case he died. Three days after he returned on January 16, 1995, he was sharing a motel room in Kansas with Mr. Mc.Veigh.

What was the purpose of this visit? Why was he so concerned that he might die? Did he meet with Ramsey Yousef, who at the same time was testing a plan to blow up airliners in the Philippines and who was later convicted in the bombing of the World Trade Center? Did Nichols receive training there on how to construct and detonate large bombs? Was he fearful that there could be an accident during his training?

December, 1994 (See TIME magazine July 29, 1996)
Ramsey Yousef tests his plan for attacking U.S. carriers by boarding a Philippine Airlines flight on the first leg from the Philippines to Japan. He carried with him the components of a bomb, unassembled in his carry-on bag. On board he assembled the bomb, which was made of gun cotton, a nitroglycerine solution packed into a contact-lens bottle. He tucked the bomb under a cushion and left the plane after its first stop in the Philippine city of Cebu. Two hours later the device exploded killing a passenger.

Cebu is the city where in July 1990 Nichols travelled to find a mail-order bride and met Marife Torres. He was 35, she was 17 and they were married there on November 20, 1990. (NY Times December 24, 1997)

An associate of Ramsey Yousef, Edwin Angeles, had been arrested in the Phillipines where he was contacted by McVeigh's attorney, Stephen Jones. Angeles linked Nichols (a.k.a. 'the farmer') to Yousef in a meeting on the island of Mindanao. In his book 'Others Unknown', Jones describes that at a meeting in Davao, Angeles met an American who introduced himself as 'the farmer'. Among those present at the meeting were Ramsey Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. The meeting was to discuss terrorism and Murad, Khan and Yousef would later be defendants in the plot to blow up twelve U.S. airliners. All were convicted on September 5, 1996 and are in American prisons. On April 19, 1995, Murad told his guard in his New York cell that the Oklahoma city bombing was the work of Islamic Jihad.

But back to Yousef and the World Trade Center bombing where we find a link also between him and Iraq .....

September 15, 1996 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition) Issue 480
According to Dr Mylroie, the attempt to blow up the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on February 26, 1993 .... was an act of Iraqi state- sponsored terrorism conducted by proxies. After studying the telephone records and document archives from the trial, she has concluded that the mastermind said to be behind the bombing, a shadowy figure called Ramsi Yousef, was working for Iraqi intelligence. The Justice Department did not address this issue in the official investigation. It concluded that the bombing was the work of Islamic fundamentalists loyal to a blind Egyptian cleric. Jim Fox, then head of the New York FBI office, suspected Iraqi involvement but says that the Washington headquarters refused to look at the evidence.

The use of proxies seems to be a common trait among terrorist organizations and Nichols acting as a proxy for the Iraqis would parallel a similar proxy situation in France involving French citizens ......

November 27, 1997 The New York Times
Forty people accused of helping Algerian Islamic militants plant bombs that killed eight people and wounded more than 170 in Paris in 1995 went on trial this week. They are charged with conspiracy to support a terrorist campaign to get the French government to drop support for the Algerian government......... The defendants .... were arrested two years ago, after French commandos and the police killed one of the suspected ringleaders of the bombings, Khalid Kelkal, near Lyons and arrested hundreds of Algerians or people of Algerian origin suspected of being part of an underground support network for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group in France. ...... Three of the defendants in this trial -- identified as Joseph Jaime, David Vallat and Alain Celle -- are French citizens who converted to Islam and underwent military training in Afghanistan, prosecutors said.

And British Nationals have been directly linked to Osama bin Laden acting as proxies to attack targets in Aden. In the British case, however, they were apparently attracted by the excellent beaches .....

January 5, 1999 The Electronic Telegraph Issue 1320
Evidence was mounting yesterday that the three British tourists killed in Yemen last week were the first casualties of Operation Desert Fox. As fear grew of more revenge attacks, it emerged that the "jihadists", holy warriors who seized the 16 Westerners, had apparently done so after failing to blow up the British consul in the port of Aden in southern Yemen. That plan was thought to have been a direct reprisal for the air strikes - making the three Britons the unwitting casualties of Tony Blair's inseparable alliance with Bill Clinton. Last night, British diplomats were trying to establish details about links between the Westerners' kidnappers and about five Islamic fundamentalists caught in Aden on Dec 23. They were carrying bombs and automatic weapons. The diplomats will want to focus in particular on suggestions by the Yemeni authorities that some of the bombers were travelling on British passports. All five bombers allegedly admitted they were under the command of Abu Hassan, the leader of the kidnapping team. ..... At the forefront of demands for revenge against Britain and America is the exiled Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who reportedly trained the Yemeni kidnappers. He called on Islamic fighters to drive both powers from the Middle East, claiming that the air strikes were undertaken at the behest of Israel.

More... PRESS HERE

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