Posted on 04/03/2006 5:23:48 PM PDT by Calpernia
Talking about it just now, eyespy remembered Nichols was in the Philippines at the university the same time Yousef Ramzi was there. Don't we have docs linking Iraq to Abu Sayef in the Philippines? When was Iraqi IIS in the Philippines?
Has anyone heard from Padilla lately? I mean, I know the Supreme Court hasn't heard from him, but has anybody else heard from him?
It seems I read that the wires to the fuel pump are outside the tank which means no explosion from fuel.
self ping
bttt
Thanks. When I get a chance, I'll read up on it.
Great catch, thanks for the ping!!!!!!
I cannot believe that these docs have sat so long with so little attention given to them, Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard has been dogging these things and I read somewhere recently that President Bush rattled someones cage about getting these out as well (Negraponte??)
Good job to the FReepers taking on some of the translating as well...at least I feel I can trust the findings!!!
BTTT
bookmark to myself
If you believe that we had nuclear missiles in Kuwait prior to the Iraqi invasion, you probably believe that Bush planned 911 - so I will not attempt to reason with you.
Thanks Calpernia and Peach.
Linking OC to Islamic terror is something the left must supress. First because they want to minimize the Muslim threat and second because they get to demonize the American right. When they protest the Patriot Act, wiretaps or the Iraq war they always bring up the "homegrown right wing threat" of terrorism like OC.
Nonsense they're all run by nasty white guys from Idaho
bookmark for later
The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.
In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here. [My note: AD info?]
Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.
It falls directly into the AD timeline. In that same post, I note that what Sandy Berger stole was the versions of the after action report:
The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.
Therefore, they were never provided to the Commission, as evidenced by the Commission Report footnotes (#769):
46. NSC email, Clarke to Kerrick,“Timeline,”Aug. 19, 1998; Samuel Berger interview (Jan. 14, 2004). We did not find documentation on the after-action review mentioned by Berger. On Vice Chairman Joseph Ralston’s mission in Pakistan, see William Cohen interview (Feb. 5, 2004). For speculation on tipping off the Taliban, see, e.g., Richard Clarke interview (Dec. 18, 2003).And to what does footnote (46) refer? On p. 117, Chapter 4, we find this:
Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise missiles. Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed. Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20–30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin. (46)How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger's testimony.
Then the Clarke/Kerrick memo peaked my interest and I found this (#784):
Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.
Ramzi Yousef (1993 WTC) and Terry Nichols crossed paths in the Phillipines. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was Yousef's uncle. It is interesting to note that Yousef entered the United States on an Iraqi passport and had been known among the New York fundamentalists as "Rashid, the Iraqi". Another name that could be thrown into the mix is Abdul Rahman Yasin, a U.S. citizen who moved to Iraq in the 1960's and returned to the U.S. in 1992. After the 1993 WTC bombing, Yasin fled to Iraq and was given monthly salary and housing by Saddam Hussein's regime.
Bookmarking
Another investigation that was covered up. Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson was in Command of the DIA during this period. They suppressed info that could have prevented the USS Cole attack. From my research:
Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote to all DIA personnel this week to explain the protest resignation of a DIA analyst in October. The analyst, Kie Fallis, quit the day after the USS Cole was attacked by suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen. Mr. Fallis charged that a report he had written on the threat of a terrorist attack in Yemen was suppressed by senior DIA officials.Mr. Fallis also uncovered terrorist info related to 9/11:Mr. Fallis' resignation letter stated that he had "significant analytic differences" with DIA superiors over a terrorist threat assessment produced in June.
U.S. intelligence officials said there were warnings, but they arrived too late. The National Security Agency issued a report shortly after the Cole was bombed warning of attacks in the region —too late to be useful.
Adm. Wilson said he asked the Pentagon inspector general (IG) to investigate Mr. Fallis' charges. In an awkwardly worded statement, the three-star admiral said on Wednesday the IG "found no evidence to support the public perception that information warning of an attack on Cole was suppressed, ignored or even available in DIA." What about the private perception?
The admiral's statement drew smirks from several intelligence officials. It relied on a dodge often used by intelligence analysts to dismiss unwelcome information. Saying there is "no evidence" —like that presented to a court of law — is often used to mask the fact there is lots of intelligence to the contrary that spooks would rather not talk about in public.
One piece of the puzzle that Mr. Fallis uncovered was an intelligence report about a secret meeting of al Qaeda terrorists in a condominium complex in Malaysia in January 2000.Information obtained after September 11 identified two of them as Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who would be on American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. They met with a former Malaysian army captain, Yazi Sufaat, described by Malaysian authorities as a key link in Southeast Asia for al Qaeda, who later would be tied to the bombing of the Cole.
What alarmed U.S. intelligence at the time was that Malaysian security officials traced the men to the Iranian Embassy there, where they spent the night.
Confirmed. I had that info in my files. See my post #97 on this thread for details.
Emad Salem, the FBI informant - also the government's key witness in the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and ten followers accused of plotting to blow up the UN, an FBI office and two tunnels - was a hopeless confabulator by his own admission. And a loaded one: Salem was paid a million dollars for his testimony.
The Egyptian bodyguard for Sheik Rahman admitted under questionning that he had lied for years about his past. He boasted to his FBI handlers that he had been an intelligence officer in the Egyption army, when in fact, Salem said, he had been a lowly technical officer. He freely offered that on one occasion, as the New York Times reported in March 1995, he even lied under oath in a criminal trial in Manhattan, saying he had been wounded trying to protect President Anwar Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated in 1981.
Defense attorney William Kunstler investigated and discovered that Salem was a lieutenant colonel in the Egyptian army, an unreliable witness, one who never stopped working for the Egyptian government. Kunstler grumbled that Salem - a bigamist with one wife in New York and another in Egypt - was devoid of character: He divulged that he had had amnesia since January of 1992, and that he had been going to a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Stein to help him with this situation...
It was devolved under questionning that Mr. Salem had received a quarter million to one million dollars for his services as an FBI informant. In one meeting with FBI, Agent John Anticev - secretly taped by Salem - had an argument over escalating expenses:
Anticev: ... It's like a little out of the ordinary.
Salem: Okay. Alright. I don't think it was. If that's what you think guys, fine, but I don't think that because we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A. and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant...
Defense attorney Ron Kuby listened to the tape and commented: We have received information that [Salem] was visually observed at the scene of the bombing shortly after the bombing took place. Shortly after that, he was admitted to the hospital, suffering from an ear problem that was consistent with exposure to blast. The mastermind is the government of the United States."
Apart from the compensation that Salem received as an FBI asset, he was also funded, according to Kunstler, by other sources linked to foreign governments, including money from an organization founded [by] Rabbi Meir Kahane.
He's just a dirty son-of-a-bitch, Kunstler opined.
So were the zealots in Rahmanís Koran-happy wrecking crew. Four of the bombers were convicted in 1994 on charges of conspiracy, possession of explosives and assault. The defendents confessed that they were incited to murder by US support for Israel. Ramsey Yousef, the bomb plots mastermind, proclaimed at his sentencing hearing in January 1998: Yes, I am a terrorist and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government."
Sheik Omar Rahman was one of three spiritual guides on Yousef's cratered path through life. Though the cleric had been placed on the national watch list, he entered the US with ease, thanks to a much-disputed visa issued to him by a CIA agent. Robert Freidman wrote that Rahman was infamous throughout the Arab world for his role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat.
Egypt: The government was gripped by a civil war with Islamic warriors, including hundreds of CIA-trained guerrillas in the Afghan struggle. The main contender for power was an army led by fundamentalist Mohammed Shawky al-Istambouli, brother of Khalid al-Istambouli, an army lieutenant. Khalid and Ayman Zawahiri, both assets of the CIA, led the death squad that murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. This faction spun-off from a larger army, the Dawa and Sharia, the umbrella group for all Mujahedins fighting in the war against Soviet Russia, covertly sponsored by the U.S. French, British and Israelis. Al-Istambouli traveled to Peshawar, the Mujahedin base of operations, in 1983, and transfered funding from Iran to Afghanistan. Al-Istambouli was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court in December 1992 for plotting to overthrow Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government and kill Egyptian leaders...
The charge that the Sheik operated with CIA sanction comes from a number of sources, including an anonymous government official who leaked that a CIA officer assigned as a consular official approved the Sheik's visa from the Sudan after the consulate approved it, according to the New York Times on July 14, 1993. Egyptian President Mubarak suggested that the visa had been issued to Rahman as a payoff for "services" rendered.
The Atlantic Monthly reported in 1996 that early off, "the sixty or so CIA and Special Forces officers based [in Afghanistan] considered [Rahman] a "valuable asset," according to one of them, and overlooked his anti-Western message and incitement to holy war because they wanted him to help unify the mujahideen groups..."
"The sheik has been a CIA agent since his days in Afghanistan," Mubarak told Egypt's al-Gomhuria newspaper. "He still earns a salary."
Researcher Paul Thompson has compiled a sourced timeline for the Internet that dispells the notion that Rahman was an independent operator:
Abdul-Rahman was heavily involved with the CIA and [Pakistan] ISI efforts to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and became famous traveling all over the world for five years recruiting new mujaheddin. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/96] He is infamous throughout the Arab world for his alleged role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat. Abdul-Rahman immediately begins setting up a terrorist network in the US. [Village Voice, 3/30/93] He is known to have befriended bin Laden while in Afghanistan, and bin Laden secretly pays Abdul-Rahman's US living expenses. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/96, ABC News, 8/16/02] Abdul-Rahman's ties to the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in later 1990 is ignored. As one FBI agent says in 1993, he is hands-off. It was no accident that the sheik got a visa and that he's still in the country. He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA. A very high-ranking Egyptian official says Abdul-Rahman continues to assist the CIA in recruiting new mujaheddin after moving to the US. This official says, 'We begged America not to coddle the sheikh.' Egyptian intelligence warns the US that Abdul-Rahman is planning new terrorist attacks, and on November 12, 1992, terrorists connected to him machine-gun a busload of Western tourists in Egypt. But still he lives freely in New York City. [Village Voice, 3/30/93] He is finally arrested in 1993 and convicted for assisting in the 1993 WTC bombing. [Atlantic Monthly 5/96]
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REFERENCES:
1) Anon., N.Y. Terror Trial Witness Tells What a Liar He Was, San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, March 8, 1995.
2) Transcript of Paul DeRienzo's interview with William Kunstler, Broadcast on WBAI in New York on August 3, 1993.
3) Tape transcript concerning Salem's expenses: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3c830e34de.htm
4) James S. Adam, Troubling Questions in Troubling Times, October 5, 2001. http://www.serendipity.li/wot/adam.htm
5) 'Proud terrorist' gets life for Trade Center bombing, CNN report, US News Story Page, January 8, 1998. http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/08/yousef.update/index.html
7) Robert J. Freidman, The CIA and the Sheikh, Village Voice, March 30, 1993.
8) Mary Ann Weaver, Blowback, The Atlantic Monthly, May 1996.
9) Paul Thompson, Complete 911 Timeline: Incompetence, bad luck, obstruction of justice, Project: Complete 911 Timeline, Open-Content project. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeli ne&theme=incompetence
http://www.mipt.org/usvsalameh2cirapp081997.asp
THE COMPONENTS FOR THE BOMB CAME FROM ALLIED SIGNAL, INC. :
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term, 1997
(Argued: December 18 & 19, 1997 Decided: August 04, 1998 )
Docket Nos. 94-1312, -1313, -1314, -1315
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