Free Republic

LIKE MANY GREAT SPY STORIES, this one begins with a brief, mundane scene whose significance only becomes apparent later on. Around lunchtime on February 1, 2000, a man dropped a piece of paper near a table in a Middle Eastern restaurant outside Los Angeles and paused long enough to strike up a conversation with two Arabic-speaking men dining nearby. It would take FBI agents nearly 20 years to understand the full meaning of that small event. The man who dropped the piece of paper was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset, recently declassified FBI documents show. And the two Arabic-speaking...

The FBI released late Saturday a newly declassified document related to its investigation into the planning of the 9/11 attacks and the possible role Saudi officials may have played...

Shortly after Islamists attacked America on 9/11, then-Senator Joe Biden demanded that the United States should send a taxpayer-funded, "no strings attached" gift of $200 million to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bombshell report has revealed. In the weeks following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Biden reportedly said that "this would be a good time" to hand over a huge chunk of tax dollars to the Iranian regime while America was in mourning.

In a small windowless cell lit by a single light bulb, Louai al-Sakka sits isolated from the world and fellow inmates for 24 hours a day. His concrete box is in the bowels of Kandira, a high-security F-type prison 60 miles east of Istanbul, which was built to house Turkey's most dangerous criminals. The prison has been criticised by human right groups such as Amnesty International. The guards control everything, including the cell's light switch. Sakka's only visitor is Osman Karahan, a lawyer who shares his fervent support for militant Islamic jihad. Since being convicted as an Al-Qaeda bomb plotter...

The 28-page section of the 9/11 report detailing Saudi involvement in the September 11, 2001 jihad attacks have finally been released (albeit with substantial portions still redacted), and it is now clear why one President who held hands with the Saudi King and another who bowed to him worked so hard all these years to keep these pages secret: they confirm that the 9/11 jihad murderers received significant help from people at the highest levels of the Saudi government. The report states that Omar al-Bayoumi, who “may be a Saudi intelligence officer,” gave “substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mindhar and...

The American-born Jihadist cleric Anwar Awlaki likely played an important support role in the September 11 attacks nearly ten years ago, according to a new book that examines the threat of home-grown terrorism. The book, “The Next Wave,” by Fox News national security reporter, Catherine Herridge, reveals new documents that find Mr. Awlaki was nearly arrested after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon for providing false information on his passport application. Today Mr. Awlaki is one of the leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki is also the only known American citizen on a...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days. The FBI denied Rossini...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A University of Idaho graduate student who is under investigation for suspected terrorism ties obtained unauthorized access to a campus lab containing radioactive material, court documents allege. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national working on his computer science doctoral degree, quietly moved his student office from the Computer Science Department into the school's engineering isotope lab, apparently without his adviser's knowledge, according to the documents. "The investigation of Sami Al-Hussayen has, from its outset, been focused on suspected material support to terrorism, particularly to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network," FBI agent Michael Gnecknow said in the...

INGAPORE, Jan. 25 — Shortly after the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, a 30-year- old Indonesian traveling on a false Filipino passport slipped into this tightly controlled city-state carrying a plan to strike back at America. His mission, investigators say, was to activate a "sleeper cell" of Islamic militants who had long been waiting for a call from Al Qaeda's leaders in Afghanistan. This group, which had been loosely organized for eight years, began planning to blow up the embassies of the United States, Israel, Australia and Britain, the investigators say. The plot was foiled when 13 ...

Bomb Scare At Tucson Grocery Store Jenny Rose KGUN9 News An explosive situation tied up the intersection of Prince and Campbell for hours after someone found a bomb at a grocery story. Jenny Rose has the latest. http://www.kgun9.com/NewsArticle/tabid/111...38/Default.aspx

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has extended for two more years the imprisonment of a terror suspect linked to al-Qaeda's attempts to produce chemical and biological weapons, saying he has more information about terrorist operations. Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained biochemist and former Malaysian army captain, was arrested in late 2001 as he returned home from Afghanistan, where officials say he was working on a biological and chemical weapons program for al-Qaeda that was ended by the U.S.-led war. Since then, he has been held without trial under Malaysia's Internal Security Act on accusations of being a member of Jemaah...

AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact...

Many people have e-mailed asking for my opinion on the emerging Operation Able Danger story--in which army intelligence personnel were barred from notifying the FBI about Mohammed Atta. While I agree that the Pentagon lawyers who stopped the Able Danger operatives from notifying the FBI are culpable, and their behavior is an outrage, my take is different from most conservative commentators. I really don't think the FBI would have acted on the information. Instead, today, we'd be sweeping under the rug yet more ineptitude by the, unfortunately, "lead agency" in the War on Terror. Let's look at what the FBI...

War on Terror 9/11 commission members want claim on Atta pursued WASHINGTON – Members of the commission that uncovered the government's failures to share intelligence among agencies before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want to know whether U.S. defense intelligence officials knew for more than a year that four of the hijackers were part of an al-Qaeda cell but failed to tell law enforcement. Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the now-disbanded commission, said Tuesday that members of the Sept. 11 commission could issue a statement by the end of the week after reviewing claims that defense intelligence officials had identified ringleader...

The links between Nick Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui, once described as the 20th hijacker of 9/11, opened now room for new speculations, if there are deeper ties between the OKC Bombing'95 and 9/11, than thought before. Apparently Berg knew also Moussaoui's roomates. One of them was Mujahid Menepta, who is connected to both 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 OKC bombing. But Menepta wasn't arrested in Summer 2001, when Moussaoui got caught. The FBI waited until after Sep11th.Why?Berg, Moussaoui and the OK bombing tieshttp://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=269 By Ewing20012004/5/24 On May 18th, 2004, according to Newsmax, Nick Berg's family insisted that...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The terrorist believed to have flown a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, obtained a California driver's license without providing the required Social Security number for identification, officials are acknowledging for the first time. Nawaf Alhazmi then used that license when he registered for the flight training that enabled him to pilot the doomed airliner. Alhazmi used a loophole, since closed, in California law that allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign drivers without Social Security numbers to use a generic number in its place. Even some foreign citizens with Social Security numbers skirted the...

Let's imagine it's August 2001. And let's pretend that the Clinton Justice Department never erected the procedural war that, to borrow the words Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick wrote in 1995, went "beyond what is legally required" in obstructing communications between the FBI's intelligence division and its criminal investigators. As a result, let's say the FBI connects its dots. When an intelligence agent realizes terrorists Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (two of the eventual 9/11 hijackers) are in the country and asks the Bureau's criminal division for help in locating them, headquarters encourages a cooperative effort instead of turning him...

TIA now verifies flight of Saudis The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly. By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer Published June 9, 2004 The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, better known as the 9/11 Commission, sent a list of questions to Tampa International Airport. It appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight. TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left. The...

<p>Washington, Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The FBI is investigating whether terrorists plotted to seize more than the four jetliners commandeered last week for deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said.</p> <p>The U.S. is broadening the largest criminal investigation in FBI history and is concerned about further attacks, he said. Authorities have detained 75 people on immigration charges, up from 49 as of yesterday, and investigators believe associates of the 19 hijackers may still be in the U.S. The FBI has received more than 96,000 tips, including many that are redundant or contradictory, Ashcroft said.</p>