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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Hijackers connected to Albanian terrorist cell
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. intelligence officials are investigating ties between the
terrorists who carried out suicide airliner attacks and associates of Osama
bin Laden based in Albania.
The connections were described as support for the terrorist operation to
hijack U.S. commercial jetliners and crash them into the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
No further details of the support could be learned.
One official said intelligence reports about the Albanian connection to
the attacks is one of several leads being pursued overseas by the CIA and
other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Bin Laden and his organization, al Qaeda, are believed to have small
groups of terrorists or supporters in 50 to 60 nations, including Albania,
according to U.S. officials.
Asked if getting bin Laden is the U.S. goal, Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell told reporters yesterday that "we are after the al Qaeda network."
"It's not one individual," Mr. Powell said. "It's lots of individuals,
and it's lots of cells. ... Osama bin Laden is the chairman of a holding
company. And within that holding company are terrorist cells and
organizations in dozens of countries around the world."
The administration's war on terrorism will "start with that one
individual" — bin Laden.
"It will not be over until we have gotten into the inside of this
organization, inside its decision cycle, inside its planning cycle, inside
its execution capability, and until we have neutralized and destroyed it,"
Mr. Powell said. "That's our objective."
Albania is one of several places U.S. intelligence agencies are focusing
their resources — from human agents to electronic eavesdropping.
Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden associates have been based in Tirana,
Albania's capital, as well as in at least two other towns in the small,
formerly communist nation, U.S. officials said.
Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been
supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region, including members of the
Kosovo Liberation Army. Intelligence officials have said there are reports
that KLA members have been trained at bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden and his Islamic extremist group, al Qaeda, are the main
suspects in last week's terrorist attacks.
As of last year, the group operated a residence in Tirana, and the CIA
has been pressing Albania's government to expel all associates of the Islamic
terrorists.
According to U.S. officials, bin Laden gained a foothold in Albania in
1994 by portraying himself to the government there as a wealthy Saudi
national who was in charge of a humanitarian agency that could help Albania.
Albanian intelligence believes terrorists have benefited from the theft
of some 1,000 blank Albanian passports that were stolen during riots in 1997,
according to a 1998 report in the London Sunday Telegraph.
Since the attack, the FBI has detained 49 persons, many of whom appear
to be of Middle Eastern descent. Four of the detainees were are identified as
"material witnesses" to the Sept. 11 attacks. None has been identified by
nationality and the passports they used to enter the United States also have
not been identified.
In 1998, U.S. and Albanian authorities broke up an Islamic terrorist
cell in Albania and arrested two members of the bin Laden group.
The CIA was able to obtain a large quantity of documents and computer
equipment that led to further arrests. Two members of the group, Egyptian
nationals, were turned over to anti-terrorist police in Egypt that year.
"Bin Laden's group has a network in Albania," said former CIA
counterterrorism official Vince Cannistraro.
"This looks like the support operation [for the U.S. attacks] was
worldwide," he said of reports of the Albanian connection.
Albanian Police Chief Bilbil Mema told Agence France-Presse on Thursday
that Albania had ceased to be a safe haven for terrorism. "In Albania there
is no longer an Islamic threat," Mr. Mema was quoted as saying. "This country
is no longer a refuge for Islamic terrorists."
Albanian security and intelligence authorities, in cooperation with the
CIA, had "successfully led operations aimed at destroying the network that
Islamic terrorists have attempted to establish in this country," Mr. Mema
said.
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