- * RICE CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have
predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked
airplane as a missile." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
5/16/02
-
- * FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally
"received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin
Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could
include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the
Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes
as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]
-
- * RICE CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference
to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had
been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001.
She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his
keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer."
[Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
-
- * FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was
not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste
disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing
does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the
briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
-
- * RICE CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat
spikes were so high.we were at battle stations." National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
-
- * FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11,
Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for
the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic
Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the
department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence
and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno,
called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'"
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly
classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States."
[Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]
-
- * RICE CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that]
the administration focused on this before 9/11." National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 * FACT: President Bush and Vice President
Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened
one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't
feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington
Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]
-
- * RICE CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called
for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground
forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
-
- * FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is
nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion
plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage:
"Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan
called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?"
Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11."
[Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
-
- (The above five sets of claim vs fact quotes from Moveon.org)
-
- "We Should Have Had Orange or Red-Type of Alert
in June/July of 2001"
-
- By Eric Boehlert Salon.com 3-26-4
-
- A former FBI translator told the 9/11 commission that
the bureau had detailed information well before Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists
were likely to attack the U.S. with airplanes.
-
- A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security
clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles
Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had
detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving
airplanes was being plotted.
-
- Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded
warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds,
told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June
or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds
is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge
of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after
reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice where she said, we had
no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might
use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a
lie."
-
- Edmonds' charge comes when the Bush White House is trying
to fend off former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's testimony
that it did not take serious measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism,
and al-Qaida specifically, in the months leading up to 9/11.
-
- Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen
who has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators.
She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the
FBI, making $32 an hour for six months, beginning Sept. 20, 2001. She was
assigned to the FBI's investigation into Sept. 11 attacks and other counterterrorism
and counterintelligence cases, where she translated reams of documents
seized by agents who, for the previous year, had been rounding up suspected
terrorists.
-
- She says those tapes, often connected to terrorism, money
laundering or other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have
made apparent that an al- Qaida plot was in the works. Edmonds cannot talk
in detail about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department
gag order since 2002.
-
- "President Bush said they had no specific information
about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there
was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on
the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already
in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the
threat we're facing."
-
- Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in
February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about
FBI investigations, documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the
commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert
Mueller is scheduled to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him
real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive
legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on
major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been
used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific
terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no,"
she insists.
-
- Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the
whistle on the FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown
into the spotlight as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related
information, often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct,
security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit, including
supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the crucial post-9/11
period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its next annual budget.
As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was harassed at the FBI. She
was fired in March 2002.
-
- Litigation followed, and in October 2002, Attorney General
John Ashcroft asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
to dismiss the Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking
the rarely used state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign
policy and national security interests of the United States." Ashcroft's
move was made at the request of Mueller.
-
- During a 2002 segment on "60 Minutes" exploring
Edmonds' initial charges of FBI internal abuses, Sen. Grassley was asked
if Edmonds is credible. "She's credible and the reason I feel she's
very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot
of her story," he said.
-
- The Inspector General's office then launched an investigation
into Edmonds' charges and told her to expect a finding in the fall of 2002.
The report has yet to be released. Edmonds suspects if it is ever publicly
released Ashcroft will demand that it be immediately classified. "They're
pushing everything under the blanket of secrecy," she says.
-
- That's why she felt it was so important to appear before
the 9/11 commission: "It's the only hope I have left to get this issue
added to the public domain."
-
- http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/index_np.html
-
- GW Bush's "Had known..." defense is a recurring
pattern that comes up as his routine response to various scandals. If you
look through his public statements throughout his political career you'll
find he uses this had known line a lot................
-
-
- Dubya Hits Clarke Account NY Post 3-26-4
-
- "President Bush insisted yesterday he had no advance
warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and challenged the assertions of
a former aide who accused him of not placing a high enough priority on
pursuing al Qaeda prior to the tragedy.
-
- "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes
to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every
asset, every power of the government, to protect the American people,"
Bush said at a New Hampshire campaign stop, appearing with Cheryl McGinnis,
the wife of a pilot killed in the attacks."
-
- "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes
to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power
to protect the American people." -GW Bush CNN 5/17/02
-
- http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/17/bush.sept.11/
-
-
- Prior Hints Of September 11-Style Attack
-
- Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings CBS News 5-17-22
-
- "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom
Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives ...
into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."
--1999 federal report
-
- (CBS) Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis
prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists
could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the
Pentagon.
-
- "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom
Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4
and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned
a suicide hijacking before it happened.
-
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/20020517-1.html
-
- "The American people know this about me, and my
national security team, and my administration: Had I known that the enemy
was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have
done everything in my power to protect the American people. We will use
the might of America to protect the American people." -White House
press release 5/17/2002
-
- http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cnn04079.htm
-
- "I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold
it had I known," he said during his 1994 campaign for governor.
-
- http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?file=article&name=News&op=modload&sid=583
-
- "Surrounded by Air Force Academy cadets at a Rose
Garden ceremony, the president earnestly declared that "had I known
that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning,
I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people."
National Security Advisor Condeleeza Rice echoed similar sentiments at
a White House briefing. After acknowledging that the president had "general"
information about Al Qaeda plans to hijack American airlines, she pleaded
that he and his advisors had no idea that hijacked airplanes would be used
as missiles to crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, her
implication being that such an idea was so outlandish it was beyond comprehension."
-
- ------------------------
-
- EXCERPT from: Is terrorism's threat overblown? (National
Affairs).(Column) USA Today (Magazine), Jan, 2003, by Scherer. John L.
-
- "Al Qaeda had planned attacks in London, Paris,
Marseilles, Strasbourg, Singapore, and Rome, but most of the conspirators
were arrested a short time after the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, no one
had hijacked an aircraft in the U.S. using a "real" weapon in
almost 15 years, although crashing planes into structures is not new. The
Israelis shot down a Libyan jetliner they said was headed for a building
in Tel Aviv in the 1980s. A Cessna 150 fell 50 yards short of the White
House in September, 1994. French commandos prevented a jumbo jet, hijacked
in Algeria by the Armed Islamic Group, from crashing into the Eiffel Tower
the following December. In the mid 1990s, terrorist Ramzi Yousef plotted
to have his friend Abdul Hakim Murad fly a light plane loaded with chemical
weapons into CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., or to have him spray the
area with poison gas. A Turkish hijacker attempted to crash an aircraft
into the tomb of former Pres. Kemal Ataturk in Ankara in 1998. With enhanced
security on at airports and passengers on commercial airliners who will
react to any danger, this threat has diminished." ------------------------
-
- Evidence Bush Knew of Attack Before it Happened..........
-
- ABC NEWS What Happened?
-
- Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11 Lawmakers Want
Public Inquiry 5-16-2
-
- The Bush administration defended its handling of the
information about possible hijackings of American planes by Osama bin Laden'
s terrorist network as congressional leaders called for a public inquiry
into what White House officials knew and how they responded. White House
officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President
Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network
might try to hijack American planes, and that information prompted administration
officials to issue a private warning to transportation officials and national
security agencies."
-
- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/warningmemo020516.html
-
-
- More evidence from thousands of websites showing they
knew of the attack beforehand.............
-
- http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=340_0_1_0_C
http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/911bush.html http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/LEV212A.html
http://www.septembereleventh.org/
-
-
- 9/11 Probers Say Agencies Failed To Heed Attack Signs
-
- Washington Post 9-19-2
-
- "U.S. intelligence agencies received many more indications
than previously disclosed that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was
planning imminent "spectacular" attacks in the summer of 2001
aimed at inflicting mass casualties." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36754-2002Sep18.html
-
- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/printable303601.shtml
CBS News Ashcroft Flying High WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001 Fishing rod in
hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri
Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News
Correspondent Jim Stewart. In response to inquiries from CBS News over
why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of
commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat
assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel
only by private jet for the remainder of his term. "There was a threat
assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines,"
an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however,
would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it."
-
- http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/15/bush.sept.11/index.html
Bush briefed on hijacking threat before September 11 CNN May 16, 2002 "President
Bush's daily intelligence briefings in the weeks leading up to the September
11 terror attacks included a warning of the possibility that Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda network would attempt to hijack a U.S.-based airliner,
senior administration officials said Wednesday."
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115
Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September
11 that was ignored September 7, 2002 "Weeks before the terrorist
attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored
warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning
a huge attack on American soil."
-
- http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0110/S00008.htm
Bin Laden's Relatives Evacuated From NYC Tuesday, 2 October 2001, 8:29
am Article: The Scoop Editor "Patrick Tyler of the New York Times
is reporting from Washington: "In the f irst days after the attacks
on Sept. 11, the Saudi Arabian ambasador to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn
Sultan, supervised the urgent evacuation of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's
extended family from ther United States fearing they might be subjected
to violence." " The young members of the bin Laden clan were
taken under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then
flown to Washington, from which they left the United States on a private
charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks."
-
- Heads-Up To Ashcroft Proves Threat Was Known Before 9/11
June 3, 2002 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/gate/archive/2002/06/03/hsorensen.DTL
-
- Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts June
3, 2002 "Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week
before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages
of executing a significant operation against an American target, President
Hosni Mubarak said in an interview on Sunday." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/national/04WARN.html
-
- U.S. Ignored Warnings From French May 28, 2002 "A
key point in unraveling why the FBI failed to follow up leads on Al Qaeda
terrorism now centers on the Bureau's contemptuously brushing aside warnings
from French intelligence a few days before 9-11." http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway2.php
-
- FROM http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=39828
-
- Claim vs. Fact: Administration Officials Respond to Richard
Clarke Interview
-
- March 22, 2004 Download: DOC, RTF, PDF
-
- Bob Boorstin's Column: The Canary in the Coalmine
-
- In the wake of Richard Clarke's well-supported assertions
that the Bush Administration neglected counterterrorism in the face of
repeated terror warnings before 9/11, the Bush Administration has launched
a frantic misinformation campaign - often contradicting itself in the process.
-
- CLAIM #1: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities
to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was
moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." - National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01
marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with
an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says
"principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat."
No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. - White House Press Release,
3/21/04
-
- CLAIM #2: "The president returned to the White House
and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is
no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." - National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and
Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to
9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the
Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force
against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11."
Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising
that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks,
and said "we don't know" if there is a connection.
-
- CLAIM #3: "[Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism
business over to the cybersecurity side of things." - Vice President
Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: "Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration,
to be the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President's
principle counterterrorism expert. He was expected to organize and attend
all meetings of Principals and Deputies on terrorism. And he did."
- White House Press Release, 3/21/04
-
- CLAIM #4: "In June and July when the threat spikes
were so high.we were at battle stations.The fact of the matter is [that]
the administration focused on this before 9/11." - National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11,
Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for
the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic
Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the
department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence
and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno,
called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'"
- Washington Post, 3/22/04
-
- CLAIM #5: "The president launched an aggressive
response after 9/11." - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
3/22/04
-
- FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request
for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget
document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts
as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI
requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after
the attacks." - Washington Post, 3/22/04
-
- CLAIM #6: "Well, [Clarke] wasn't in the loop, frankly,
on a lot of this stuff." - Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: "The Government's interagency counterterrorism
crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or "CSG")
chaired by Dick Clarke met regularly, often daily, during the high threat
period." - White House Press Release, 3/21/04
-
- CLAIM #7: "[Bush] wanted a far more effective policy
for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout
the spring." - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: "Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would
direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic
attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security
Council to review these efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took
place." By comparison, Cheney in 2001 formally convened his Energy
Task Force at least 10 separate times, meeting at least 6 times with Enron
energy executives. - Washington Post, 1/20/02 , GAO Report, 8/22/03, AP,
1/8/02
-
- CLAIM #8: All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack,
a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. - Deputy National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley, 3/22/04
-
- FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into
9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained
a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United
States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives."
The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government
officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired
and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information
suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various
locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
[Joint Congressional Report, 12/02] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml
-
- Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings
-
- CBS NEWS WASHINGTON, May 17, 2002
-
- "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom
Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives ...
into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."
1999 federal report
-
- (CBS) Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis
prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists
could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the
Pentagon.
-
- "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom
Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4
and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
-
- The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government
had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.
-
- "Had I know that the enemy was going to use airplanes
to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power
to protect the American people," Mr. Bush told U.S. Air Force Academy
football team members who were visiting the White House on Friday. It was
his first public comment on revelations this week that he was told Aug.
6 that bin Laden wanted to hijack planes.
-
- CBS Senior White House Correspondent Bob Schieffer reports
that other top officials were less forthcoming. The usually talkative Attorney
General John Ashcroft just stared when reporters asked him about the terror
warnings. FBI Chief Robert Mueller also refused to comment.
-
- White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration
was aware of the 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the
National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence
on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence
pointing toward a specific plot but rather included assessments about how
terrorists might strike.
-
- "What it shows is that this information that was
out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody," Fleischer acknowledged.
-
- Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman
of the National Intelligence Council when the report was written, said
officials long have known a suicide hijacking was a threat.
-
- "If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane
into a missile, nobody would have ruled that out," he said.
-
- Democrats and some Republicans in Congress Friday raised
the volume of their calls to investigate what the government knew before
Sept. 11.
-
- "I think we're going to learn a lot about what the
government knew," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during an appearance
in New York. She said she was unaware of the report created in 1999 during
her husband's administration.
-
- Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate
Judiciary and Finance committees, demanded the CIA inspector general investigate
the report, which
-
- he called "one of the most alarming indicators and
warning signs of the terrorist plot of Sept. 11."
-
- Meanwhile, court transcripts reviewed by The Associated
Press show the government had other warning signs between 1999 and 2001
that bin Laden was sending members of his network to be trained as pilots
and was considering airlines as a possible target.
-
- The court records show the FBI has known since at least
1999 that Ihab Mohammed Ali, who was arrested in Florida and later named
as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa,
had been sent for pilot training in Oklhhoma before working as a pilot
for bin Laden.
-
- He eventually crashed a plane owned by bin Laden in Sudan
that prosecutors alleged was used to transport al Qaeda members and weapons.
Ali remains in custody in New York.
-
- In February 2001, federal prosecutors told a court they
gained information in September 2000 from an associate of Ali's, Morrocan
citizen L'Houssaine Kherchtou, that Kherchtou was trained as an al Qaeda
pilot in Kenya and attended a meeting in 1993 where an al Qaeda official
was briefing Ali on Western air traffic control procedures.
-
- "He (Kherchtou) observed an Egyptian person who
was not a pilot debriefing a friend of his, Ihab Ali, about how air traffic
control works and what people say over the air traffic control system,"
then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a New York court.
-
- "And it was his belief that there might have been
a plan to send a pilot to Saudi Arabia or someone familiar with that to
monitor the air traffic communications so they could possibly attack an
airplane perhaps belonging to an Egyptian president or something in Saudi
Arabia."
-
- That intelligence is in addition to information the FBI
received in July 2001 from its Phoenix office that a large number of Arabs
were training at U.S. flight schools and a briefing President Bush received
in August of that year suggesting hijacking was one possible attack the
al Qaeda might use against the United States.
-
- The September 1999 report, entitled "Sociology and
Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?" described
suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks the al
Qaeda might seek for a 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in
Afghanistan.
-
- The report noted an al Qaeda-linked terrorist first arrested
in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing had suggested such a mission.
-
- "Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the
CIA headquarters," the report said.
-
- Bush administration officials have repeatedly said no
one in government had imagined such an attack.
-
- "I don't think anybody could have predicted that
... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane
as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
-
- The report was written by the Federal Research Division,
an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for federal agencies.
-
- "This information was out there, certainly to those
who study the in-depth subject of terrorism and al-Qaeda," said Robert
L. Worden, the agency's chief.
-
- "We knew it was an insightful report," he said.
"Then after Sept. 11 we said, 'My gosh, that was in there.'"
-
- Gannon said the 1999 report was part of a broader effort
by his council to identify the full range of attack options of U.S. enemies.
-
- The vice president has repeatedly asked Congress not
to investigate the intelligence failures. But with the new commotion, the
White House now says it will cooperate with an investigation if it's done
the right way.
-
- ©MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Associated Press and Reuters Limited contributed to this report.
|
