A summary of the evidence that Al Qaeda attempted to assassinate George Walker Bush on September 11

The Longboat Observer ^ | Shay Sullivan

[SlickWillard]

In recent days, there's been a flurry of activity on the Longboat Key incident. Yeoman's work was performed last fall, by Shay Sullivan, of the Longboat Observer, and a lone web blogger, Daniel Hopsicker, has also pursued the story. At Mad Cow Productions, Hopsicker asks

Atta and Al-Shehhi's presence on Longboat Key just days before the President's arrival raise a number of disturbing questions. The most pressing is also the most obvious. What were terrorists doing on Longboat Key?

A recent FreeRepublic chat thread addressed this question. Here we review the evidence.

Let's start with the work of Shay Sullivan:

Possible Longboat terrorist incident
September 26, 2001, by Shay Sullivan
At about 6 a.m. Sept. 11, Longboat Key Fire Marshall Carroll Mooneyhan was at the front desk of the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort as Bush prepared for his morning jog. From that vantage point, Mooneyhan overheard a strange exchange between a Colony receptionist and security guard. A van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent had pulled up to the Colony stating they had a “poolside” interview with the president, Mooneyhan said. The self-proclaimed reporters then asked for a Secret Service agent by name. Guards from security relayed the request to the receptionist, who had not heard of either the agent or plans for an interview, Mooneyhan said. The receptionist gave the phone over to a nearby Secret Service agent, who said the same thing — no one knew of an agent by that name or of any poolside interview. The agent told the occupants of the van to contact the president’s public relations office in Washington, D. C., and turned them away from the premises, Mooneyhan said.
http://www.longboatobserver.com/showarticle.asp?ai=1874
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/537744/posts

Hunt for terrorists continues
October 03, 2001, by Shay Sullivan
Longboat Key police Chief John Kintz said two reports marked “confidential” and generated by his department last week were indeed tips for the FBI. He would not discuss their contents, beyond acknowledging that they contained suspicions relevant to the Sept. 11 terrorism. But sources outside the police department confirmed that one of the reports involves a pair of men of Middle Eastern descent who rented an apartment on Longboat Key through Twin Shores Inc., at 3740 Gulf of Mexico Drive. The two men paid $9600 in cash for an extended stay. Their presence and their absence a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks drew the attention of neighbors, who contacted police but asked to remain anonymous.
http://www.longboatobserver.com/showarticle.asp?ai=1923

Two hijackers on Longboat?
November 21, 2001, by Shay Sullivan
If three eyewitnesses are correct, terrorist hijacker Mohamed Atta came to the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites-Longboat Key Sept. 7 — the day the media announced President George W. Bush would be coming to the area Sept. 11 to speak at a Sarasota school. Atta may have been there to meet a second hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehhi.
http://www.longboatobserver.com/showarticle.asp?ai=2172

Next we examine Al Qaeda's September 9, 2001 assassination of their archnemesis, General Ahmad Shah Massood, commander of the Northern Alliance rebels in Afghanistan.

Fallen Fighter? Afghan Opposition Leader Believed Killed, Intelligence Sources Say
September 10, 2001
The main opposition leader standing in the way of the Taliban's total control of Afghanistan is believed dead, U.S. intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS. Ahmad Shah Massood died in a Russian-made helicopter en route to the hospital after a suicide bomber set himself off in his office on Sunday, the sources say. The assassins are said to have gained access to Massood by posing as television reporters, and their bomb was either hidden in a video camera or wrapped around the cameraman's body... The attack is believed to have taken place while Massood was giving interviews to two Arab journalists in his office in the far north of Afghanistan. The cameraman carried the bomb, while his partner reportedly got cold feet seconds before the bomb blast and tried to bolt. He was shot and killed. The cameraman died in the blast. A close aide to Massood was also said to have been killed.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/afghanistan010910_massood.html

Afghan opposition leader's fate unclear
September 10, 2001
There is continuing confusion over the condition of the main commander of the anti-Taleban forces in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Masood, who was attacked on Sunday.... Mr Masood was giving an interview to two Arab journalists in Afghanistan's northern Takhar province when a bomb went off. It had been concealed in a video camera. A spokesman for Mr Masood, quoted by AFP, said the blast "killed the two Arabs and slightly injured the commander".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1534629.stm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/519398/posts

Help From The Inside
October 4, 2001
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden was blamed for the assassination of United Front leader Ahmad Shah Massood by the only survivor of the suicide bombing that killed him. The statement came during a taped interview for Deutsche Welle television in Berlin. Massood was 18 inches from where two men posing as journalists detonated a bomb hidden in a television camera. The eyewitness, Masood Khalili, said he had been serving as a translator on Sept. 9 for an interview between Massood and two men with a television camera when the camera exploded. "The interview started, they (asked) what is the situation in Afghanistan. The commander started to say one word, then the bomb blasted," said Khalili, the United Front's ambassador to India, who is hospitalized in Germany. "Unfortunately, the commander was martyred by these terrorists of Osama bin Laden and the enemy of the world." he said. Of six people in the room when the bomb detonated, Khalili said only he survived.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/01/attack/main313077.shtml

Finally, let's recall William Langley's excellent catalogue of the events of September 11:

Revealed: What really went on during Bush's 'missing hours'
December 12, 2001, by William Langley
Now, on the morning of his 234th day in office, a light, warm breeze was slipping in from the ocean, and, after breakfast, Bush led his Secret Service crew on a four-mile run around the nearby Serenoa golf links. On his return to the Colony, the President showered, changed into a lightweight, dark blue suit, and, still glowing from the morning's exertion, sat down for the first routine intelligence briefing of the day. It was 8am... His first stop of the day was to be at the Emma E Booker Elementary School in Sarasota - a 25-minute drive from the Colony... At 8:42, [the presidential] motorcade crossed back to the mainland on Highway 41... Mr. Bush arrived at the school, just before 9am, expecting to be met by its motherly principal, Gwen Rigell. Instead he was pulled sharply aside by the familiar, bulky figure of 51-year-old Karl Rove, a veteran political fixer and trusted aide of both Mr Bush and his father, George Sr. Mr Rove, a fellow Texan with an expansive manner and a colourful turn of phrase, told the President that a large commercial airliner (American Flight 11) had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/16/wbush16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/12/16/ixhome.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/591614/posts

We are left with two possibilities:

1) The Longboat Key fire marshal, Carroll Mooneyhan, learned of the September 9 assassination of General Masood, decided to fabricate a similar story, and had the ear of Shay Sullivan by September 26. Local ne'er-do-wells got in on the action, and by November 21, Shay Sullivan had been duped by a small army of phonies and con-artists.

2) The accounts of the people of Longbeach Key are both honest, and accurate, and Al Qaeda did mount an operation to assassinate George Walker Bush on the morning of September 11, 2001. A band of Al Qaeda men showed up at 6:00 AM on the morning of September 11, pretending to appear for an early morning interview with the President [in the style of C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, or The Today Show's Katie Couric], and hoped for an assassination in the 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM time frame.

If the latter, then Al Qaeda's plan looked something like this:

1) 6:00 AM Arrive at Colony Beach & Tennis Resort, and assassinate George Walker Bush in the 7:30AM - 8:30AM time frame.
2) 7:59 AM Depart Boston's Logan International Airport, on American Airlines Flight 11, and hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, at 8:45 AM.
3) 8:02 AM Depart Newark, N.J., on United Airlines Flight 93, planning to hit the U.S. Capitol Building in the 9:30 AM timeframe, with some large target, like the Pentagon, as an alternate. [This plane's takeoff was delayed by forty minutes, to 8:42 AM, and the plane eventually crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:06 AM.]
4) 8:14 AM Depart Boston's Logan International Airport, on United Airlines Flight 175, and hit the south tower of the World Trade Center, at 9:03 AM.
5) 8:20 AM Depart Washington's Dulles International Airport, on American Airlines Flight 77, planning to hit the White House in the 9:30AM time frame, with the Pentagon as an alternate target. [This plane circled the White House, then hit the Pentagon, at 9:37 AM.]

Had they been successful, they would have duplicated, in a span of about one hour, three of the greatest tragedies in this nation's history: Cockburn & Cochrane's torching of Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814, John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, on April 14, 1865, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [December 7, 1941]. Furthermore, they might very well have triggered a third world war.

[SlickWillard]

Theorists might also be interested in this related thread:

FBI Lurkers: Could the Terrorists Have Used Iridium to Learn the Air Force One Codes?

[SlickWillard]

Thanks for the link.

[dirtboy]

In recent days, there's been a flurry of activity on the Longboat Key incident. Yeoman's work was performed last fall, by Shay Sullivan, of the Longboat Observer, and a lone web blogger, Daniel Hopsicker, has also pursued the story. At Mad Cow Productions, Hopsicker asks

So one website quotes the other as proof. Some proof...

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[SlickWillard]

So one website quotes the other as proof. Some proof...

Follow the links, and read the articles. That's why I went to all the trouble of indexing them for you. Hopsicker recently interviewed the bar maid, Darlene Sievers, and she's sticking by her original story, as told to Shay Sullivan, i.e. that Atta was in her Longboat Key bar, on the night of September 7.

The key to all of this is the fire marshal, Carroll Mooneyhan. Either he's lying, or it's very likely that Al Qaeda attempted to assassinate George Bush.

[Selara]

Fascinating. Thank you for the information, the links and the care you took to present the information.

[mombonn]

I choose to put this into the tin foil category. Everything else was planned waaaaaay in advance, and practiced six ways to sundown.

To include assassinating President Bush would be next to impossible, imho. His trip to FL wasn't announced that much in advance for them to factor that into the hijackings.

Remember, he was just back from his much-maligned vacation on the ranch.

[Itzlzha]

I choose to put this into the tin foil category. Everything else was planned waaaaaay in advance, and practiced six ways to sundown.

To include assassinating President Bush would be next to impossible, imho. His trip to FL wasn't announced that much in advance for them to factor that into the hijackings.

Remember, he was just back from his much-maligned vacation on the ranch.

I would like to be able to put this in the Tin-Foil category as well...

However, having the report say the Islamazis asked for a SPECIFIC Secret Service Agent by name, and the recent FBI flap over the MUSLIME agent who has refused to "spy" on other MUSLIMES gives me that familiar inner sensation that I have learned to listen to and trust over the years...

Is there any report of the name they asked for, and does/did said agent exist?

After the assasination on 10 Sep. of Ahmad Shah Massood, and the WAY they did it...it sets off my spider-sense BIG time...

[Nita Nupress]

The key to all of this is the fire marshal, Carroll Mooneyhan. Either he's lying, or it's very likely that Al Qaeda attempted to assassinate George Bush.

I don't know if he's lying or not, but I'm satisfied he's there. I just found some old articles where he's mentioned as an "arson investigator," "fire chief," etc.

[Notforprophet]

To include assassinating President Bush would be next to impossible, imho. His trip to FL wasn't announced that much in advance for them to factor that into the hijackings.

Those Islamic terrorist b@stards trained to fly those airliners while in Florida, and I'm sure they had a support network there. I think it is entirely plausible that they might have tried this assisination plan. They certainly had people in Florida. And with the success of the Masood assasination, they might have figured Allah would give them a mighty victory over GW Bush as well.

You have to remember... these al Quaeda sh!ts are fantically religious and believe Allah will grant them all kinds of crazy things. And they're not afraid to die attempting a major blow against the infidel.

[mombonn]

I agree with your thoughts regarding the FL connection, but come back to the thought that assassinating the President was NOT part of the plan. At best, it could have been the "cherry on top".

They were planning this long before President Bush took office. His schedule was not a part of the larger plan. Why would they target the WH in addition to him rather than the Capitol if that was their plan?

To plan multiple strikes on significant targets could be planned far in advance. To include the assassination of a President could not, given the changeable nature of his schedule.

[eno_]

Brilliant post!

But as for Iridium, I'd bet: a) AF1 uses military geosynchronous sats, and not Iridium; b) AF1 code words were obtained through humint, which begs the question "Does Al Quaida have moles?" Heck, if Whitey Bulger from Somerville Massachusetts could buy a few FBI agents, ya think Osama woudn't even try?

[VaBthang4]

"The self-proclaimed reporters then asked for a Secret Service agent by name. "

Uhh.....what was the name?

[VaBthang4]

I read the iridium link.

Pretty disturbing, however I doubt Air Force One codes would be discussed VIA a rented Sattelite considering we have plenty of our own to use.

Unless Al Qaeda had [has] someone in the loop who used the Arab owned Sat to transmit information knowing that someone would be intercepting the traffic. It would actually be a smart move.

But I would say that the story about a grip of sandfleas showing up for a supposed interview and asking for a specific agent is bothersom. Considering the performance of some of our other SS types since 9/11 I dont put it past Al Qaeda to have tried to get at one or two of them.

(With that said....I have a hard time believing that Secret Service Agents just shrugg off unscheduled interviewers that show up at the Presidents Hotel. I would think they would check that out promptly with agents on site and not give some pass the buck message.)

This agent could have been a source for old codes....if indeed codes were used to transmit any threats on the President or Air Force One.

I will say that throwing the President on a plane and flying him to a military base in the midwest was a whole lot of overkill unless there was a "specific" credible threat recieved that day. I know what Ari said but at the time I didnt give it much weight.....now I may.

If there was no specific and credible threat that day then Fighters and Helos could have protected the plane as it sat on a tarmac in Florida with the President aboard, so there was a reason to get it airborne and out of dodge.

[womanvet]

To include assassinating President Bush would be next to impossible, imho. His trip to FL wasn't announced that much in advance for them to factor that into the hijackings.

It was known well in advance in Sarasota...and those b@st@rds did their air training in Venice, less than 20 minutes by car from Longboat Key. AND, Tampa, one hour to the north, is probably one of the biggest centres of islamo-terrorists in the USA.

IMO, there was plenty of notice -- the fact that it was unsuccessful just shows that they didn't plan it long enough in advance.

[teresat]

The biggest question is the name of the secret service agent that the middle eastern men asked for by name. Doesn't the receptionist or the security guard remember it? Something doesn't seem right... I thought secret service agents basically were anonymous.

[The Great Satan]

I've no idea if there is anything to this story, but remember that Atta was supposedly running around to target destinations to program their coordinates into a GPS unit: Source: Records suggest Atta in NYC on Sept. 10. So throw that in the blender, and let me know if you come up with anything.

[Let's Roll]

"IMO, there was plenty of notice -- the fact that it was unsuccessful just shows that they didn't plan it long enough in advance"

Exactly - the opportunity came up and they tried to take it. Hopefully they won't ever have enough time to plan in advance - I don't know about b/4 9/11, but the President's itinerary is always announced last minute now.

[SlickWillard]

Official: bin Laden Ordered Killing
August 16, 2002, by Kathy Gannon [Associated Press Writer]
A former Taliban official says Osama bin Laden personally ordered the assassination of Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood in an attempt to cripple the northern alliance days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Massood, military chief of the northern alliance and the most charismatic figure in the anti-Taliban movement, was mortally wounded Sept. 9 when two suicide attackers posing as television reporters exploded a bomb during an interview in the northern Afghan town of Khodja Bahauddin. Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, one of the founders of the Taliban and the Islamic militia's one-time intelligence chief, told The Associated Press that bin Laden had ordered two suicide bombers diverted from a trip to Indonesia to carry out the mission... Khaksar, who broke with the Taliban after the fall of Kabul in November, said the Taliban leadership was convinced bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, he said, al-Qaida seemed invincible. "Their morale was high," Khaksar said. "They believed Osama was strong because the world was afraid of him."
http://www.herald-sun.com/firstnews/37-257645.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/734163/posts