Posted on 08/15/2002 10:43:29 AM PDT by OKCSubmariner
I suppose it is possible the four schools mentioned in the Washington Post article included the Dubai school. I would still like the name of the Texas school to tie up the loose ends.
"Mr. Murad, who was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and convicted in New York on charges of conspiring to blow up 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific simultaneously, received flight training at schools in New York, North Carolina, California and Texas."
Also another Bin Laden associate did train at the Norman, Oklahoma Airman flight school according to the article:
"F.B.I. agents renewed their investigation of flight schools in earnest in 1998, after the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bureau uncovered evidence then that a man tied to Mr. bin Laden, Ihab Ali Nawawi, working as a cabdriver in Orlando, Fla., had received training at the Norman flight school."
For completre article go to:
http://www.policetalk.com/presept2.html
F.B.I. Knew for Years About Terror Pilot Training
By PHILIP SHENON
NY Times 5/18/02
WASHINGTON, May 17 — The F.B.I. had been aware for several years that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network were training pilots in the United States and elsewhere around the world, according to court records and interviews at flight schools and with federal law enforcement officials.
The F.B.I. knew by 1996 of a specific threat that terrorists in Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's network, might use a plane in a suicide attack against the headquarters of the C.I.A. or another large federal building in the Washington area, the law enforcement officials acknowledged. But the officials said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had discounted the possibility of a suicide attack using planes, partly because it had largely failed to draw together evidence gathered piecemeal over the years that Al Qaeda pilots were training here.
Last week, the F.B.I. acknowledged the existence of a memorandum written last summer in which an agent in its Phoenix office urged his superiors to investigate Middle Eastern men who had enrolled at American flight schools and who might be connected to Mr. bin Laden. However, the Phoenix memorandum was not the first warning that terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda had interest in learning to fly.
In his 1996 confession, a Pakistani terrorist, Abdul Hakim Murad, said that he planned to use the training he received at flight schools in the United States to fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., or another federal building.
> Information from Mr. Murad's confession formed a basis for an analysis prepared for United States intelligence agencies in 1999. The analysis warned that bin Laden terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
Additionally, a flight school in Oklahoma that provided training last year to Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, had been under scrutiny by the F.B.I. in 1998 after the discovery that another former student had been linked to the bombing that year of two American embassies in East Africa, attacks attributed to Al Qaeda.
The school, the Airman Flight School in Norman, has cooperated with the F.B.I. Congressional investigators say they are only now compiling a detailed chronology of what was known about potential terrorists receiving flight training here as Congress evaluates whether the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies failed to recognize signs that might have allowed the government to prevent the September attacks.
At least six of the Sept. 11 hijackers received flight training in the United States. The Phoenix memorandum, along with the disclosure this week that President Bush was warned in August of the possibility that Al Qaeda might be planning hijackings, have been seized on by lawmakers as evidence that the government missed signals of the coming attacks.
Spokesmen for F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, as well as for its field offices in New York and Oklahoma City, which investigated individual flight schools over the years, had no comment on the issue. Lewis Schiliro, who retired two years ago as the bureau's assistant director in charge of its New York office, said in an interview that his agents had tried to follow up on information about the flight schools whenever possible. But he said that while the F.B.I. worried that Al Qaeda might hijack commercial planes, "never once did we really focus on the use of a plane as a weapon" and that it would have been "very difficult to connect the dots."
The F.B.I. did not alert other federal agencies about many of the results of its flight school investigations. The Phoenix memorandum, in fact, was sent to the Central Intelligence Agency only in recent weeks.
The bureau's failure to alert other agencies is expected to be a focus of Congressional investigations into intelligence failures before Sept. 11. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a prominent critic of the F.B.I. and a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement today that "it's clear the intelligence community had information about terrorist threats and hijacking years before the F.B.I. agent in Phoenix sent his warning memo — that makes it even more indefensible that the F.B.I. failed to deal with the Phoenix memo last summer."
Law enforcement officials acknowledged that the F.B.I. never ordered a comprehensive investigation of flight schools before Sept. 11, even as individual F.B.I. offices were gathering compelling evidence about links between students trained at the schools and Al Qaeda.
In response to the uproar after the disclosure of the August warning to Mr. Bush, White House officials insisted that they had no serious evidence last summer that Al Qaeda was considering a suicide hijacking. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center," Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on Thursday.
But since at least the mid-1990's, law enforcement officials have known that some terrorist organizations were considering suicide attacks using commercial jets. In 1994, French investigators have said, a group of Algerian hijackers seized a Paris-bound Air France flight and planned to crash it into the Eiffel Tower or blow it up over Paris. The plot was foiled when French commandoes stormed the plane.
In 1995, Mr. Murad, the Pakistani pilot tied to Mr. bin Laden, was captured, and under interrogation by Philippines intelligence officers working with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., American law enforcement officials said, he confessed on video to his role in the plot to bomb airliners over the Pacific. The American officials said he also acknowledged he had planned to fly a plane packed with explosives into the C.I.A. headquarters or another federal building. Details of the plan had been shared with F.B.I. headquarters by the middle of 1996
Mr. Murad's plot was noted in a 1999 federal report suggesting that Al Qaeda might hijack an airliner with the intention of crashing it into the Pentagon or another government building. The intelligence report, which was prepared for the National Intelligence Council, was widely shared within the government and has long been available to the public over the Internet.
As a result of Mr. Murad's arrest, law enforcement officials said, F.B.I. agents visited flight schools in upstate New York and North Carolina to gather records on his training. If there was discussion of a broader investigation of flight schools, they said, it was probably scuttled by the July 1996 explosion of a T.W.A. jumbo jet off Long Island, which forced many of the F.B.I.'s most experienced counterterrorism specialists off their regular duties. Terrorism was suspected at first, but government safety experts later blamed mechanical problems.
F.B.I. agents renewed their investigation of flight schools in earnest in 1998, after the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bureau uncovered evidence then that a man tied to Mr. bin Laden, Ihab Ali Nawawi, working as a cabdriver in Orlando, Fla., had received training at the Norman flight school. Mr. Nawawi remains in federal custody even now, although he has not been charged with conspiring in the embassy bombing.
Brenda K. Keene, the flight school's admissions director, said in an interview that Mr. Nawawi received training in the early 1990's and that the records of his enrollment had been routinely destroyed long before an F.B.I. agent visited the school in 1998 to ask to see them.
Still, Ms. Keene said, the school could provide assistance to the bureau since an instructor remembered Mr. Nawawi as a student. She said that the bureau refused to tell the school why they were investigating Mr. Nawawi, and F.B.I. officials were equally tight-lipped when they returned to the school last August — three years later — looking for information on another student, Mr. Moussaoui.
Other Qaeda pilots figured in the embassy bombing trial. In open court, the Justice Department offered detailed testimony from Qaeda pilots about how they were recruited to fly for the network. A key prosecution witness, Essam al Ridi, an Egyptian-born pilot, testified that he had bought a plane in Arizona at Mr. bin Laden's request and flown it to Sudan, where Al Qaeda maintained a terrorist base.
Another witness, L'Houssaine Kherchtou, a former Qaeda member from Morocco, said he was sent to flight school in Kenya at Mr. bin Laden's request in the mid-1990's and later served as his personal pilot. Mr. Kherchtou testified that Al Qaeda had wanted him to learn how to fly both private planes and crop-dusting equipment — apparently, his testimony suggested, for legitimate agricultural reasons at a Sudanese farm that doubled as one of Mr. bin Laden's terrorist bases. "They wanted to have somebody who already has a license and can fly crop-dusting," he recalled.
After Sept. 11, investigators discovered that Al Qaeda had plotted to use crop-dusting planes to disburse chemical or biological weapons. While there was no suggestion in the trial that Al Qaeda was training or recruiting pilots for suicide hijackings, a review of thousands of pages of the trial transcript shows that Mr. bin Laden was personally involved in efforts to train pilots and obtain planes for use by his network
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ed Note: The FBI empty suits in Washington were the de-facto co-conspirators in the terror bombings of 9/11. They were charged to protect the public but neglected to prevent the terrorist operation through failure after failure to share information, contact other federal and state agencies, and to play their routine game of surveillance and investigaiton so as to appear "smart" when the President asked questions.
In fact, by failing to properly brief the President, they were derelict. With all their "experts", counter-terroism bureaus, they failed miserably. The ground level FBI agents, the career officers did their jobs. The empty suits in Washington, the FBI politicians, were the failures. The blood of the dead from the WTC and Pentagon are on their hands. If that sounds inflamatory, that is the intent.
To safely and permanently archive the entire thread for this or some other article you would want to download the thread to a CD or DVD ROM especailly since picture and doc files requiring a lot of storage are also on these threads.
Of course, FR itself serves as a temporary, but not secure or permanent, archive for discussion threads.
Also please read all replies #139 to #145 and reply #150. Very, very important
Also please read all replies #139 to #145 and reply #150. Very, very important
OKC Bombing victim family member Kathleen Treanor said on Fox News Hannity Progam last night that she has now been told that McVeigh and Nichols were in fact trained by AL Qaeda. Treanor discussed this with former Senator Alfonse DAmato from New York who was filling in for Hannity.
John Miller, author of "The Cell", who interviewed Bin LAden in 1998 was also on Hannity last night. Miller told D'Amoto that the FBI knew of the plot to bomb the Tanzanian and Kenyan embassies nine months before but badly mishandled stopping the bombings. I noted the FBI foreknowledge and connivance over the embassy bombings in my article for this thread.
Abdul Murad told the FBI in early 1995 about four flight schools in the US to be used for ALQaeda training for terror missions. The FBI checked with these schools starting not in 1998 or 1999 but starting in 1995. Two of the flight schools have admitted talking to the FBI about these matters going back to 1995!. I have sources from CNN news and from Columbia Journalism school on this .
A man closely resembling James Rosencrans was seen with Gary Hunt in OKC for a week before the OKC bombing. They appeared to be working on construction inside the Murrah building (Tom E Hunt of Fed Protective Services told me construction was going on). The FBI confiscated surveillance cameras near where Hunt and Rosencrans were seen by the witness who was interviewed by the FBI.
Rosencrans looks a little like (similar hair but taller and thinner) the maintenance worker, Harvey Norris who was with the Gary Hunt look alike, Danny Payne (building Engineer for the Journal Record building across the street from Murrah) in front of the Murrah building at 9:18 on April, 1995 caught on KFORTV video.
Jane Graham who worked for HUD at Murrah saw Gary Hunt in the stairwell of the Murrah building at 8am on APril 1995. Hunt has been identified by motel witnesses and gas station witnesses near the Murrah building with Roesencrans before the OKC bombing. Rosencrans and Hunt both travelled from Arizona before the OKC bombing.
Hunt negotiated with Koresh and the BATF at Waco. Hunt knew McVeigh and had contacts at Elohim city, the FBI infiltrated compound in eastern OK linked to the bombing plot and German Andreas Strassmeier as well as Peter Ward (FBI informant seen with Rosencrans at Travelers AId and in McVeigh motel room at the Dreamland in KAnsas).
The FBI has been protecting Rosencrans and Hunt since 1995. Rosencrans, Fortier's neighbor, testified against McVeigh at the Fed Grand Jury in OKC in July 1995. He dumped fertilizer near his residence in Arizona shortly after the OKC bombing and he was allowed by the FBI to keep proceeds from pawning guns stolen from Roger Moore, the gun dealer in Arkansas.
Hunt sent out a memo on April 19, 1995 saying that children killed in Iraq was one of the motives for the OKC bombing. Hunt publicly advocated blowing up Federal building well after 1995 but was never touched by the FBI . Hunt was allowed by the FBI to be a provacateur to encourage McVeigh and others.
There are three witnesses who have come forward recently to claim that the Iraqi suspect Al Hussaini was escorted to OKC from Boston by a well dressed man named Khalid in November 1994. Khalid Mohammed was also in the Phillipines in 1994 and early 1995 living in an apartment with his nephew, Ramzi Yousef at the time of the meetings with Terry Nichols. Khalid has already been named by the FBI as a mastermind of the 1993 and 9/11 attacks. The FBI has known about Khalid's involvement in the OKC bombing plot since Februrary 1995 or earlier by Youseffs computer and Abdul Murads confessions.
A well dressed Khalid Mohammed (an even possibly Egyptian Zawahiri, Laden top Lieutenant) may have been escorted by Samir Khalil (Hussaini’s employer in OKC tied to Hamas) at the motel in OKC on October 30, 1995 where McVeigh previously had met with Al Hussaini and Melvin Lattimore . The motel owner said that Khalil's guest was traveling from California to Canada via OKC.
Khalid allegedly was paid three times by Samir Khalil's secretary in OKC before the OKC bombing according to what BlueDOgDemo posted on FR on Nov 3, 2001.
I have personally asked Jayna Davis attorney Davisd Schippers to confirm (or rule out) BlueDogDemo’s scalims. BlueDog has been on the payroll of Jayna Davis since at least early 2002 after receiving a very substantial donation from a Chicago benefactor who passed away last week. The benefactor also contributed a significant sum to David Schippers for some of his efforts according to a representative for the benefactor.
Wali Khan was part of the Abu Sayeff group who met with Terry Nichols in the Phillipines to plan the OKC bobming. Nichols wife, MArife Torres and her sister introduced Nichols to Wali Khan in the Phillipines who set up the meetings with Yousef. Wali Khan was very close to Bin Laden according to what Laden told john Miller ina 1998 interview.
Wali Kahn was also close to Bin Ladens brother in law Khalifa who also helped set up the Benefit and Relief Charity Organization in Chicago (HAmas training cells in CHicago). Jose Padilla, the radiation bomb plotter, was introduced to the Chicago based carity by his friend Hassoun in the early 1990s while he lived close to Mcveigh in Florida. Padilla looks similar to an OKC bobming John Doe.
I know it's a certain amount of bother to do this, but would you consider making a new posting, leading with the information in #170 and including all the information & links honway and others have contributed, to make for more concise reading? I for one have a bit of difficulty following multiple-hundred reply postings and assimilating all the diverse information contained within them.
In any event- good job!
The FBI's connivance increases the coinkadink factor.
"REcent national attention focused on the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center ( EMRTC), a part of Tech, when it was awarded a $1.2 million contract from the Federal Aviation Administration to develop a center for counter terrorism research in explosives. According to Van Romero, director of EMRTC, proposal of the creation of this center came just after the Oklahoma City bombing. Bombings such as the one against American military personnel in Saudi Arabia and aircraft crashes like TWA Flight 800 and ValuJet Flight 592, make this research all the more crucial.
Romero says the FAA contract will enable them to build simulated sections of wide bodied aircraft and test explosives to see how aircraft respond. This research, coupled with a similar project with McDonnell Douglas Corp., is aimed at finding ways to make aircraft more explosion resistant.
The center has been involved in studies and tests of explosives for military and industry in the past, and often works with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Department of Transportation. Romero says they are also teaming up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law and fire departments in the area of forensics training. 3 Posted on 07/20/2001 04:49:07 PDT by rubbertramp rubbertramp(I couldn't post to the thread....but will resurrect it....it is very interesting)
The following is from...www.public-action.com/911/psyopsnews
VAN THE MAN CHANGES HIS TUNE ..by Fintan Dunne
No, not Van Morrisson the singer. But, Van 'the man' Romero. The man in the right place, at the right time.
Van Romero is vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMTech). The Socorro university has levered itself into one of the elite sites in the world for the study of explosives and terrorism, attracting nearly $10 million a year in federal money for programs that test explosives for US and foreign agencies. On the morning of the attacks, Romero and Tech's finance vice president Denny Peterson, were near the Pentagon.
They had come to Washington to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech, leaving them very conveniently located to grab NMTech's slice of the imminent cleanup operation. Because New Mexico Tech offers counter-terrorism training of police and fire first responders to terrorism attacks in the United States!
Within hours Romero was telling the Albuquerque Journal that the collapse of the twin towers could have been caused by a small amount of explosive put in more than two points in each of the towers.
"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said.
And Romero should know. After all Van is a demolition expert and a former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies the effects of explosions on buildings.
Nevertheless, ten days later Romero had changed his mind. Not only that, but the Albuquerque Journal changed their story too. They altered the original web page about Romero's views. It now shows his revised views first. Check it here.
GREEN CHILI STEW AT THE PENTAGON
New Mexico Tech's success is due in no small part to the advocacy of local Republican representative Joe Skeen, who has lobbied relentlessly on Tech's behalf to lucrative effect.
Skeen has contacted Israeli representatives about the prospect of having a detachment of fighter aircraft stationed in New Mexico. Israelís request is under review by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Meanwhile, Tech's terrorism first responder training is under the auspices of the public /private National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (i.e. military-industrial complex).
You can find Tech-trained first responders right now at the Pentagon scene. They are busy cleaning-up, in every sense of the word. Skeen has 'hung out with the guys' back at their training camp in the NMTech counter-terrorism facility. So naturally he soon followed Romero to Washington, where he called by the Pentagon crash scene to encourage the NMTech crew.
Skeen asked if there was anything he could do to make their task easier and the crew responded by asking if there was any green chili in the D.C. area. Skeen said yes and had New Mexico green chili stew delivered to the hotel where the crew is staying.
"These are the people who have the toughest duty in cleaning up the devastation left by the barbaric acts of terrorists last week," Skeen said. "We owe the people involved in the clean up... a great deal of thanks and gratitude." Indeed. We owe them a great deal of money also.
Tech will gain substantially from domestic counter-terrorism if Joe Skeen has his way. He wrote to President George Bush and relevant federal government agency officials thus: "Guarding against terrorist attacks must be the centerpiece of our plan and New Mexico, particularly New Mexico Tech University, has excellent technical resources in counter-terrorism."
Skeen proposed that the university triple within 60 days its domestic preparedness first responder training. Skeen said New Mexico Tech is prepared to initiate training for Sky Marshals at Roswell Airpark which has a variety of commercial jet liners ranging from 737 to 747 for hands-on training purposes.
"Dr. Dan Lopez, the President of New Mexico Tech has assured me, that all of these resources and any others identified by the government can be made available immediately to our government and I will do all in my power to help you and our country in managing this crisis,'' Skeen noted in his letter to the president.
Are you getting the picture?
Marife Torres and her sister knew Wali Khan Amin Shah in the Phillipines and introduced Terry Nichols to Wali Khan. Khan later introduced Nichols to Ramzi Yousef(10993 WTC bombing) in the Phillipines. Wali Khan was extemely close personally to Bin Laden and helped set up Abu Sayeff in the Phillipines for Bin Laden.
Khan was one of the men behind (he financed the group and Abu Sayeff))the planning and meetings for the OKC bombing in the Phillipines involving Nichols, Ramzi Yousef, John Lebney,Abdul Murad and Khalid Mohammed. Khan was also involved in the planning to crash hijacked airliners into US scyscrapers and the Pentagon (shades of 9/11)that was on Ramzi yousef's computer and revealed by interrogation of Khan in 1996 by the FBI and by Murad in Feb 1995. Khan was involved in two plots to assasinate Clinton and one plot to kill the Pope.
One of The plots to assassinate CLinton supported by Khan and Bin Laden is beleived to be related to FBI foreknowledge and the linguists the FBI requested to come to OKC from the military right before and after the OKC bombing. Alss Peter Langan, was taken out of jail by the FBI and Secret Service in late 1994 to infiltrate groups and individuals believed associated with MCveigh who were plotting to assassinate CLinton (Bin LAden and domestic teror groups working together in the US). At least that is what the Secret Service and FBI told the authorities in Georgia when Lanagan was taken out of jail.
Khalid was a mastermind behind 1993 WTC, OKC and 9/11 attacks. There are three witnesses in OKC I am told who now say that a well dressed man named Khalid escorted the Iraqi suspect to OKC in Nov 1994 from Boston to work with McVeigh.BlueDogDemo reported on FR last year that Khalid was paid by the Iraqi (Hussaini)suspect's employer, Samir Kahlil, three times in OKC.
MCveigh could have called and spoken to Murad,Khan,Khalid Mohammed or Ramzi Youseff in the Phillipines prior to the bombing.
I have added materially to the initial article with updates in replies #170 and #177. Interesting info on Dale Watson is in replies #111-188. Honway and others have posted incredibly good background information which makes this thread a "keeper".
I have been advised that David Schippers was Not paid any money by the Chicago benefactor who did donate to Jayna Davis efforts. Evidently the benefactor's publicist was incorrect when the publicist informed me of the benefactors donation to Schippers. My apologies to David Schippers.
For more information on the U.S. government's program to resettle former Iraqi soldiers in the U.S please see the following thread, in particular replies 66,68,70,73,75,82,84,85,92,95.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/726050/posts?q=1&&page=51
Another FBI Agent Blows the WhistleNew evidence FBI quashed another terror probe before 9/11
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