-Caveat Lector-
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-11-2002/vo18no05_didweknow.htm
This reminds me of FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor before it happened! ---
Bill
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Did We Know What Was Coming?
by William Norman Grigg
The September 11th terrorist attacks required extensive planning. Our
intelligence services knew enough to have responded better.
John Philip Walker Lindh, better known as the "American Taliban," is accused
of conspiring with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network to kill American
citizens. According to the federal criminal complaint, Lindh's role in the
terrorist conspiracy "began in May or June of 2001." It was then that Lindh
"agreed to attend an al-Qaeda training camp for additional and extensive
military training, knowing that America and its citizens were the enemies of
bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that a principal purpose of al-Qaeda was to fight
and kill Americans." While at the training camp, Lindh allegedly learned that
"bin Laden had sent forth some fifty people to carry out twenty suicide
terrorist operations against the United States and Israel."
Significantly, the indictment does not accuse Lindh of actively participating
in the terrorist plot. During a visit with senior al-Qaeda official Abu
Mohammad Al-Masri, the self-exiled American was invited to take part in
"operations against the United States and Israel." Lindh allegedly declined
to carry out terrorist missions, choosing instead to fight on the front lines
of the Taliban's civil war with its Northern Alliance rivals.
The case against Lindh rests heavily on proving that he had foreknowledge of
al-Qaeda's plot to commit mass murder. To make that case it is not necessary
to prove that Lindh actually killed Americans, or that he had specific
knowledge regarding the target of the attack, or the means by which it would
be carried out. The burden on the prosecution is to validate its conspiracy
theory against Lindh by proving that the defendant knew the attack was
coming, and freely chose to associate with the terrorist cabal who plotted
the atrocity.
Federal authorities will be much more eager to prosecute Lindh than to
question how he was able to penetrate to the very core of Osama bin Laden's
terrorist network. This eccentric, alienated California teenager fascinated
with radical Islam managed to do what highly skilled intelligence
professionals supposedly could not: Insinuate himself so deeply into al-Qaeda
- even meeting "The Evil One" himself on one occasion - that he obtained
critical intelligence about the forthcoming attack on America.
Lindh stands accused of hideous crimes. But from the federal government's
perspective, Lindh is dangerous for another reason: His success as an
infiltrator underscores the consummate failure of our hugely expensive
"intelligence community" to protect our nation from foreign attack.
But the trial could pose an even graver threat to the intelligence community
if it prompts the public to think seriously about the charges against the
"American Taliban." What if it can be demonstrated that federal authorities
responsible for defending our nation knew as much about the impending
terrorist attack as Lindh did? What would be the political, moral, and legal
liabilities of officials who were in possession of such knowledge, and failed
to act upon it?
FBI Whistleblowers
As we will show, the feds knew no later than June that an attack from bin
Laden was coming. By August it had identified several key co-conspirators,
and had one in custody. And two days after the attack Chicago attorney David
Schippers - a lifelong Democrat who was chief investigative counsel in the
Clinton impeachment - disclosed that he had attempted to warn Attorney
General John Ashcroft about the coming attack.
As previously reported in this magazine ("OKC Bombing: Precursor to 9-11?" in
our January 28, 2002 issue), Schippers told a Pittsburgh radio audience on
September 13th that he had learned from FBI agents in Minnesota and Chicago
that a massive terrorist attack had been planned for lower Manhattan. He had
developed this information six weeks before the Black Tuesday atrocity.
However, Justice Department officials repeatedly spurned Schippers' attempts
to provide the information to Ashcroft; one of them reportedly sneered, "We
don't start our investigations at the top." This is a curious objection,
given Schippers' credentials and professional standing - and given that
Ashcroft himself had warned in June that "Americans are a high-priority
target for terrorists."
Three veteran federal law enforcement agents confirmed to THE NEW AMERICAN
that the information provided to Schippers was widely known within the Bureau
before September 11th. Because these individuals face possible personal or
professional retaliation, they agreed to speak with us on condition of
anonymity. Two of them, however, have expressed a willingness to testify
before Congress regarding the views they have shared with us.
"I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was coming," a former FBI
official with extensive counter-terrorism experience commented to THE NEW
AMERICAN. "Within 24 hours [of the attack] the Bureau had about 20 people
identified, and photos were sent out to the news media. Obviously this
information was available in the files and somebody was sitting on it." This
former FBI agent noted that before Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called
"Twentieth Hijacker," was detained in Minneapolis, he had undergone flight
instruction in Oklahoma, "where we know that Arab terrorist networks have
been established for many years."
An active federal counter-terrorism investigator told THE NEW AMERICAN that
it was well known "all over the Bureau, how these [warnings] were ignored by
Washington.... All indications are that this information came from some of
[the Bureau's] most experienced guys, people who have devoted their lives to
this kind of work. But their warnings were placed in a pile in someone's
office in Washington.... In some cases, these field agents predicted, almost
precisely, what happened on September 11th. So we were all holding our breath
… hoping that the situation would be remedied."
According to the former FBI agent quoted above, the Bureau could have
prevented the Black Tuesday massacre if it had adequately investigated the
Middle East connection to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.* This assessment is
supported by another former FBI agent who spoke with this magazine.
"We knew that there were Arab terrorist groups working in Oklahoma during the
mid-1990s, but nothing was done about it," he recalls. "We were constantly
getting information about terrorist groups working in the area, and it would
be put in what was called a ‘zero file.' Once you sent it in, you were never
told to act on it. And you were never told to follow up on it." Nor were the
agents allowed to share that intelligence with state and local police: "We
had a dissemination form that we could use in sharing intelligence with local
law enforcement. We'd have to get clearance to give the information out. And
this led to a favorite saying of administrative people in the Bureau: ‘This
is on a need to know basis, and the locals don't need to know.'"
"This is pretty appalling," comments the first former agent. "The FBI has had
access to this information since at least 1997. We're obviously not doing our
job. I never expected to see something like this happen in our country, but
in a way I wasn't shocked when it did. There's got to be more to this than we
can see - high-level people whose careers are at stake, and don't want the
truth coming out.... What agenda is someone following? Obviously, people had
to know - there had to be people who knew this information was being
circulated. People like [the Black Tuesday terrorists] don't just move in and
out of the country undetected. If somebody in D.C. is taking this information
and burying it - and it's very easy to control things from D.C. - then this
problem goes much, much deeper.... It's terrible to think this, but this must
have been allowed to happen as part of some other agenda."
Negligence - or Worse?
When one talks of hidden agendas behind the official story of the Black
Tuesday attack, he can expect to be denounced as a "conspiracy theorist." In
fact, President Bush himself condemned such supposedly irresponsible talk
during his November 10th address to the UN General Assembly. "We must speak
the truth about terror," insisted the president. "Let us never tolerate
outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th -
malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists
themselves, away from the guilty."
The president's denunciation of "conspiracy theorists" was echoed in a
January 14th "news analysis" by James Rosen, a Washington correspondent for
the McClatchy News Service. "Even in the wake of unspeakable evil, some
people can't leave bad enough alone," groused Rosen. "While the vast majority
of Americans accept their government's claim that Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda network launched the attacks, a number of boisterous malcontents are
peddling alternative explanations."
It hardly detracts from the guilt of bin Laden and his henchmen to point out
that there are plausible "alternative explanations" to the government's
account of Black Tuesday - namely, that our conscientious federal law
enforcement and security agencies were caught completely off-guard by an
attack they could not prevent. There is evidence that the feds knew of bin
Laden's impending terrorist strike no later than June. And we know for
certain that by August, federal authorities had identified several key
co-conspirators, and had one in custody.
On June 23rd, air industry officials received a remarkably detailed warning
about a threat from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network to use airliners to
attack Americans. Citing a report from the Arabic-language MBC satellite
television channel, the AirlineBiz.com news service reported: "In recent
years, U.S. citizens have found themselves the target of several attacks by
the terror network of Osama bin Laden. One such attack involved a plot to
destroy 12 U.S. airliners in Asia. A jury found Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the
alleged mastermind of the scheme, and two other defendants, guilty on all
counts. Yousef is also the alleged mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the
World Trade Center...."
The scheme to use jetliners as terrorist weapons, called "Project Bojinka,"
had been uncovered by police in the Philippines in 1995, and the details had
been provided to American law enforcement officials. (See "Could We Have
Prevented the Attacks?" in our November 5, 2001 issue.) The significance of
bin Laden's threats was not lost upon Bob Monetti, president of the Victims
of Pan Am Flight 103, which was destroyed by a terrorist bomb in 1988. "I
hope the airlines are watching this situation closely," declared Monetti.
"The airlines are at risk. They need to take all appropriate measures and
counter-measures to ensure the safety of their passengers."
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