Posted on 05/16/2002 8:03:50 AM PDT by callisto
If you don't recall seeing the blaring post-9-11 headline "Clinton Warned on Bin Laden Hijack-Kamikaze Plot," it's not because your memory is failing. In fact, the big media mostly ignored the story - in marked contrast to today's wall-to-wall coverage of news that President Bush received a pre-9-11 CIA briefing on a possible bin Laden hijack plot. And while the warning transmitted to Bush gave no inkling that bin Laden planned to transform U.S. airliners into flying bombs and slam them into American office buildings, in fact, Clinton administration intelligence officials were in the possession of detailed information on an al Qaeda conspiracy to hijack several U.S. airliners - including a plan to crash one of the planes into the Pentagon or CIA. It was called "Operation Bojinka," a 1995 plot hatched by an al Qaeda cell in the Philippines with an eye towards blowing up 12 American airliners. Some would be booby trapped with bombs like Pan Am 103, others hijacked like the four U.S. jets commandeered on 9-11 and crashed into buildings. Though the mainstream press never demonstrated much enthusiasm for the story, Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine detailed what the Clinton administration knew - and when it knew it - for NewsMax.com last October. Citing a Sept. 13 Agence France-Presse report, Irvine noted that Philippine Police Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon had uncovered the plot to "plant bombs in U.S. airliners and hijack others to crash them into buildings like the CIA headquarters." "Razon said (the plot) was found on the computer of Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center," Irvine reported. "He had fled to Pakistan, but his laptop was found in the apartment he shared with his accomplice, Abdul Hakim Murad. Razon said both were agents of Osama bin Laden." A later Agence France-Press report noted: "Among targets mentioned (in Yousef's computer files) was the World Trade Center in New York..... CIA offices in Virginia and the Sears Tower in Chicago." Picking up where Irvine left off, the Washington Post quoted a Filipino investigator, who said that as he watched the attack on the World Trade Center on television he exclaimed in horror, "It's Bojinka. We told the Americans everything about Bojinka. Why didn't they pay attention?" Chief Police Superintendent Avelino Razon told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Philippine intelligence report was passed on to the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Joint Task Force on Terrorism. "It was not given credibility. Otherwise, it could have prevented the destruction of the World Trade Center," he explained. The Clinton FBI was in full possession of all the frightening facts on Bojinka, but did nothing. Instead, as Reed Irvine revealed, the bureau assured Congress that everything was under control. "In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on Terrorism in February 1998, 'Bojinka' - which means 'big bang' - was described by Dale L. Watson, chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section of the FBI, only as a plot to blow up 'numerous U.S. air carriers.' "He said that the FBI had identified 'a significant and growing organizational presence' of foreign terrorists in the United States. He swore the bureau had them under control." The Clinton FBI counterintelligence chief told the Senate that as a result of the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 the FBI had developed an 'enhanced capability' to track terrorist activities. Is it likely that U.S. intelligence possessed this much information on al Qaeda plans to slam planes into U.S. buildings - and didn't tell President Clinton? Actually it is, if you believe the account of his former CIA Director James Woolsey, who said Clinton never bothered to meet with him during his stint as the nation's intelligence chief. What about other administration officials, like Attorney General Janet Reno, who certainly should have known about Bojinka? There Clinton may also have an alibi. During all of 1998 - the same year FBI counterintelligence briefed Congress on the al Qaeda hijack plot - Clinton met with his Cabinet exactly twice: Once in January to lie to them about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and again in August to come clean about the affair. Want to know more about why U.S intelligence missed the 9-11 clues during the Clinton years. Get your copy of NewsMax.com's "Off the Record" interview with FBI whistleblower Gary Aldrich.
That's a bit much.
Darn straight!
Bill, "Bojinka" Clinton had the helm when the USS Cole was bombed. A good chief executive would have wanted ALL intelligence on terrorist plans and activity and investigate all leads. Did "Bojinka"? Of course not.
You people that love the "Great Fake President", Bill, "Bojinka" Clinton need to come to grips that he was only PLAYING president and not acting AS a president. 9/11 is the historical Albatross around Bojinka's neck, for eternity.
So you're blaming Clinton for not being in power on 9/11 and stopping the terrorists who were funded by Bin Laden?Where did you get the idea that I was blaming Clinton for not being in the power on 911. Personally I thank God that he wasn't in charge. He is a piss-poor example of American Presidents IMHO. Now, I do blame him for ignoring the problem and for using Bin laden as a tool for the public's diversion from his Leminsky mess. He sold out our country and it's national secrets for campaign donations. I can't wait until further revelations of Clinton's misdeeds.[/sarcasm]That's a bit much
That didn't happen. I was on the front lines in 1998 along with hundreds of others, including Sen. Inhofe, and Long Beach Naval Station was NOT turned over to COSCO control. They do have a presence there since we trade with China, but they don't control the port.
However, we have a Democrat for Transport Secretary and Jane Garvey (also dem) as Administrator of the FAA. Garvey is NOT a pilot but an attorney. Would the American Bar Assn. choose an airline pilot for its president just because one is a "Good Administrator"? I think not!
As for the entry of A-rabs through California's Chinese Port, I haven't seen anything yet and I don't expect to read it in the Left Angeles Times.
On Dec. 19th, 2000, the day after the electoral college elected George Bush...Clinton went to the UN and insisted (against Kofi's wishes!) that they threaten the Taliban one more time....giving them 30 days 'til further sanctions would be placed on the Afghani people if they didn't hand over Osama. Why would Clinton egg on the Taliban and set a time limit of Jan. 19th, inaugeration eve, for the deadline? What kind of a person would put his personal vengence ahead of the nation's security?
I recall that there was lots of confusion over transition to power issues, during the compressed timeframe caused by the Florida vote count fiasco. As slick had detuned all intelligence gathering efforts, perhaps the lack of information pass-thru could be placed at the hands of "ficticious chads"
May 13, 1996
Web posted at: 11:35 a.m. EDT
From Correspondent Brian Jenkins
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Jury selection began in New York Monday in the federal trial of three men accused of plotting to bomb 11 planes headed for the United States on a single day in 1995.
Ramzi Yousef is charged with masterminding the plot. He also will be tried later this year, accused of planning the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Four men are already serving life in prison for that crime.
The alleged plot was discovered in the Philippines in January 1995, when a fire broke out in a Manila apartment 200 yards from the Vatican's embassy, a week before the arrival of Pope John Paul II.
Police were shocked by what they found inside: a smoking mixture of explosives in a sink, street maps and garments like those worn by the Pope's entourage, suggesting a plot to kill the Pontiff.
They also say they found computer disks containing detailed plans to blow up U.S. airliners.
The alleged plot involved leaving bombs on flights that would take off from Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore.
Vince Cannistraro, former director of the CIA's Counter terrorism Division calls it, "Extraordinarily ambitious, very complicated to bring off, and probably unparalleled by other terrorist operations that we know of."
Kenneth Timmerman, director of the Middle East Data Project, believes the sophistication of the plot is a sign the intelligence agency of another country is behind it.
Some see the hand of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein; others the government of Iran.
Fingerprints on a bomb recipe notebook found in the burned apartment convinced the FBI that the brains behind "Project Bojinka" was Yousef, a young engineer born in either Iran or Pakistan, also accused in the World Trade Center bombing.
Authorities think Yousef flew out of New York just hours after that explosion, later launched a failed plot in Thailand to bomb an Israeli consulate, and wound up in the Philippines.
The FBI believes he staged a test for Project Bojinka in December 1994, leaving a bomb under a seat on a Philippine Airlines flight, killing a Japanese tourist.
According to Cannistraro, "His particular, peculiar evil genius was to devise a method of putting together a liquid explosive that could not be detected by the security apparatuses in effect at most airports at that time."
"This is somebody who is really a world class operator. . And I don't think we have seen someone like this, as accomplished as this, ever," said Timmerman.
Yousef was finally caught in Pakistan, and the FBI brought him back to New York.
Philippine police captured his co-defendant, Abdul Hakim Murad when he tried to clean out the apartment in Manila. He was a childhood friend of Yousef in Kuwait.
A third defendant, Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghani, was arrested in Malaysia last December.
Lawyers for the three men say their trial might take three or four months.
They may or may not have come through long beach, but the security agencies in the US, ie FBI, DEA, CIA, Customs and Immigration, are in my mind paid to be parinoid, that is what should keep them on their toes. When they stop being parinoid, people die.
Now the Chinese have presence over some of Long Beach, they also control both ends of the Panama Canal and have a lease for 50 years (so they a'int goin nowhere), they also own and control the container port, harbour and airport in Freeport, Grand Bahama, The Bahamas. That for your info is only 56 miles from the US coast.
Now what happened in the past, happened, and the only thing we can do about it, is to ensure the people in the right places are on their toes ever single minute of ever single day and should be paid accordingly, and if they mess up, they should be held accountable, but as I have said previously, they need to get parinoid.
If they do not, then the entire world will feel the consequences in the very near future.
The big DOT that the media is still ignoring today.
And Ari Fleischer's comments today showed absolutely no sense of any of this in today's WH press briefing.
Keep looking, leftist media.
bump for the rest
No one mentions the obvious. The world and the press were notified in 1995 about Project Bojinka and the desire by Al Qaeda to crash airplanes into buildings including the WTC.
All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking. You take a plane--people were worried they might blow one up, but they were mostly worried that they might try to take a plane and use it for release of the blind sheik or some of their own people.
Anyway, below is the salient part of Ari's briefing today.
Did anybody see "Crossfire" tonight? I'm concerned this is all going to be laid on Bush when Clinton was the one who first heard of Bojoinka in 1995. Carville asked whether Bush should lay out everything he knew beforehand to the public immediately, or let it come out in dribs and drabs, as it has. (Couldn't help wondering whether he's trying to get Mary some help.) But I vote for the former.
It will be interesting to see what happens if there are congerssional hearings, as all the democrats now seem to want. It may come back to haunt them.
In the meantime, I hope people will write to Congress and journalism organizations asking the feds for full disclosure as soon as possible. It can only help.
*********************
Q Two on this point. You say information about the threat of hijacking goes back many years. It has been a recurring theme from time to time. Was this August report the first time that this President received an intelligence briefing that linked the prospect of a hijacking to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda?
MR. FLEISCHER: John, I cannot speak and will not speak about everything the President hears in his intelligence briefings, since I'm not in the room when he has his CIA briefing in the morning. But the general knowledge of hijackings has, as I indicated, long been a concern to the government, including this one.
Q So this information is conveyed to the President by the CIA in early August. And you say the concept then was that it was vague and general, and that the idea that this would be a traditional hijacking. Was there no discussion of the previous arrests in the Philippines, information shared with the United States government about people who said, perhaps not reliable, but who said that there was a plan to hijack a plane and fly it into the CIA briefing? Any discussion about arrests in France, where people said there was a plan to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower?
MR. FLEISCHER: What you're asking about is the so-called dots, and whether or not it was possible for anybody in the government to connect all those dots. And the simple answer to that is, as a result of September 11th, our government learned a lot of things. There were a lot of lessons to be learned, and a lot of changes were made as we evolved from a nation at peacetime to a nation at war.
And as we became a nation at war, the President made a series of changes involving how he receives his information, and involving how we protect the United States. I want to walk you through a couple of those changes that were the result of our nation being attacked.
Q I understand the changes, but was there not enough threshold evidence to think of the threat of using a plane as a bomb?
MR. FLEISCHER: Again, the question is, how does the government connect the dots. And the answer to that question is the series of steps that the President took as a result of the lessons learned from the attack. And those actions were, one, the creation of the Office of Homeland Security, led by Governor Ridge, to pull information together from the various agencies.
The President changed the morning briefings, so the morning briefings, for the first time, began with both the FBI Director and the CIA Director present to share information fully with the President. The FBI reorganized -- the FBI reorganized to an entity that was set up not only now to catch criminals, and find evidence and prosecute them in a court of law, but to prevent the United States from being attacked. A major change that could only result -- as a result of, unfortunately, an attack on our country.
The very fact that we have gone to war is a change. And finally, a recognition by the Congress that the tools available to the intelligence community and to the FBI were not sufficient. And that's why the Congress, to its credit, passed the Patriot Act, giving the administration and the intelligence community and the FBI greater resources to fight terrorism. Those were a series of changes that we made together with the Congress.
Q Are you suggesting that before these changes there was no way to connect those dots, Ari?
MR. FLEISCHER: Goyal?
HILLARY CLINTON SHOULD BE CAREFUL WHAT SHE WISHES FOR. . .
THE REAL PROXIMATE CAUSE OF 9/11
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In a Senate speech, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called on Mr. Bush to "come before the American people at the earliest possible time to answer the questions so many New Yorkers and Americans are asking." The New York Times, Democrats Say Bush Must Give Full Disclosure
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I hate to even appear to give Dems political ammunition in their unfair accusations, but the administration has to square these facts for their own good. Facing the reality of Bojinka will establish whether the administration knew but intenionally dismissed the info or whether their intelligence services hid it from them and they were naive.
We are not done yet.
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ASHINGTON, May 16 ó After months of unstinting support for President Bush's handling of the war on terror, leading Congressional Democrats changed course today and demanded full disclosure of what Mr. Bush was told last summer about the danger of terrorist hijackings. They also called for a broad public inquiry into what the government knew before Sept. 11.