Free Republic

AP: FBI Sent Hamas Money in Clinton Days JOHN SOLOMON Associated Press WASHINGTON - While President Clinton was trying to broker an elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the FBI was secretly funneling money to suspected Hamas figures to see if the militant group would use it for terrorist attacks, according to interviews and court documents. The counterterrorism operation in 1998 and 1999 was run out of the FBI's Phoenix office in cooperation with Israeli intelligence and was approved by Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI officials told The Associated Press. Several thousand dollars in U.S. money was sent to suspected...

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...

At the top-of-the-hour newsbreak it was reported a "material witness" being held since Sept related to the 9/11 attacks has gone missing. His lawyer has reported he has no information on the whereabouts of his client. The client has not been seen since last Wednesday morning when he appeared in NY to give testimony. He was told then, apparently, that he faced charges back in San Diego for falsifying information on his application for asylum. The suspect is a student at San Diego State University.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is demanding Congress investigate US Airway's removal last week of six imams from one of its flights. The Muslim-rights group claims the imams, who were behaving suspiciously, posed no threat. It's "very, very inappropriate to treat religious leaders that way," a spokesman fumed. According to CAIR, imams are as harmless as Buddhist monks and deserve no less respect. Tell that to flight attendant Kimberly Banducci. According to police reports I've obtained, the Delta Air Lines veteran was assaulted by a Muslim cleric in a bizarre attack aboard a flight from Miami International Airport three years...

WASHINGTON - Counterterror officials suspect that an Arab student linked to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have cased the presidential ranch in Crawford, Tex. - six months before the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Al-Gurashi and three other Arab men suspected of close ties to hijacker Hani Hanjour rented a car in Phoenix and drove to Freeport, Tex., in March 2001, intelligence and law enforcement sources say. They are believed to have stopped near President Bush's ranch to assess security for a possible terrorist attack, the sources told the Daily News. Al-Gurashi, a 28-year-old Saudi who attended Arizona State University,...

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

NZ deports man with links to 9/11 Saturday Jun 10 07:30 AEST The New Zealand government is expected to confirm a Saudi Arabian man linked with a September 11 hijack pilot has been deported from the country because he was a security threat. The man spent four months in New Zealand before being expelled as a national security risk, the Weekend Herald reports. The paper said the American-qualified pilot, Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, 28, came into New Zealand in February on a student visa, saying his dream was to become a commercial airline pilot and he needed an English language...

Man with links to 9/11 pilot deported 10 June 2006 A man the Government says had a direct link with a September 11 terrorist has been deported from New Zealand because he was a threat to national security. Immigration Minister David Cunliffe confirmed today Yemeni national, Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, was deported because his continued presence in New Zealand posed a threat. "He was directly associated with persons responsible for the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001," Mr Cunliffe said in a statement. He was deported under the rarely used Section 72 of the Immigration Act...

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...

Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace. by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners. The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended...

May 23 — A paid FBI informant told ABCNEWS that three years before Sept. 11, he began providing the FBI with information about a young Saudi who later flew a hijacked passenger plane into the Pentagon. Aukai Collins, the informant, said he worked for the FBI for four years in Phoenix, monitoring the Arab and Islamic communities there. Hani Hanjour was the hijacker Collins claimed to have told the FBI about while Hanjour was in flight training in Phoenix. Twenty hours after ABCNEWS first requested a response, the FBI issued an "emphatic denial" that Collins had told the agency anything...

PATERSON, N.J. (AP) - Secret evidence presented in a closed court session alleged that a man who sold fake IDs to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers had closer ties to terrorism than previously revealed, according to transcripts released Tuesday. In the end, authorities found no evidence to bring terrorism charges against Mohamad El-Atriss, and U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said Tuesday that El-Atriss "is not considered a threat to national security by us." In a plea bargain, El-Atriss was sentenced in March to five years' probation and fined $15,000 for selling phony documents. El-Atriss and his lawyer on Tuesday...

Visas that Should Have Been Denied A look at 9/11 terrorists’ visa applications. The cover story in National Review's October 28th issue (out Friday) details how at least 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers should have been denied visas — an assessment based on expert analyses of 15 of the terrorists' visa-application forms, obtained exclusively by NR. In the year after 9/11, the hand-wringing mostly centered on the FBI and CIA's failure to "connect the dots." But that would not have been a fatal blow if the "dots" had not been here in the first place. If the U.S....

ASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — An F.B.I. account of the Sept. 11 plot disclosed today that Mohamed Atta, known to other hijackers as the "boss," met monthly with an associate before the attacks. The account also told of how one hijacker coordinated the so-called muscle hijackers who kept passengers on the airliners at bay.The account said a hijacker who crashed into the Pentagon and who was tracked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the months before the attacks, Khalid al-Mihdhar, organized the travel to the United States for the hijackers who helped seize the flights and who in some instances...

h5>February 16, 2002 Man Tied to Hijacker Is Convicted of Lying By REUTERS HOENIX, Feb. 15 — A Saudi Arabian who lives in Arizona has been convicted in federal court of lying to the F.B.I. about his link to a hijacker who flew an airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The Saudi, Faisal al-Salmi, 34, was found guilty on Thursday of one count of making false statements in denying any knowledge of the hijacker, Hani Hanjour. The jury in Federal District Court here took about 90 minutes to reach the verdict after a two-day trial. Mr. Salmi faces ...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Three more held in UK; Arrests Trio Questioned At High-security Police Station Paul Kelso The Guardian (London); Guardian Home Pages, Pg. 4 September 24, 2001 British police were yesterday investigating the possibility that the al-Qaida terrorist network is active in the UK, as anti-terrorist branch officers continued to question three people of Arab extraction arrested at the weekend. French police arrested three men in possession of what investigators believe is uranium-235, a material used in the construction of atomic weapons. The uranium is ...

MILWAUKEE (AP) Federal authorities have found seven people in Wisconsin suspected of bribing U.S. embassy officials in the Persian Gulf to obtain illegal visas. Six of the seven don't appear to have terrorist ties, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis D. Schmitz. He said little is known about the seventh person, Ahmad Abed Atia, 23, who had been living in Milwaukee. Atia was uncooperative with investigators and has been transferred to Chicago on a federal visa fraud charge, Schmitz said. The seven are part of a larger group of foreigners from Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh suspected to have paid at...

<p>Federal authorities have detained a Jordanian man they believe was a roommate of at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers after a raid at a Southeast Baltimore home.</p> <p>Rasmi Al-Shannaq was taken into custody early Monday, apparently for overstaying his visa, according to law enforcement sources and news reports. He is believed to have lived last year with two of the hijackers who were on board American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.</p>

A San Diego State University student from Yemen regularly dined and prayed with three San Diego-linked hijackers and helped them obtain Social Security cards, driver's licenses, flight school information and rides from Los Angeles International Airport, according to court records made public yesterday. The 18-page document, part of the immigration-fraud case against former material witness Mohdar Abdallah, was filed late Monday by federal prosecutors. It is the first public record to detail Abdallah's relationships with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour, who were aboard the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Abdallah "had provided substantial assistance...