Government Complicity in the 9/11 Attacks, Part 3

Official American aid to the plotters

 

Immigration rules were broken and watch lists ignored

 

Reportedly, all of the Saudi hijackers received their visas to come to the USA at the US consulate in Jeddah.  The consulate previously funneled "terrorists" to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and the progressive Afghan government, and still is a "pipeline," according to Michael Springmann, head of the consulate's Visa Bureau from '87 to '89, and is now a lawyer in DC (all quotes cited in WOF).  He told Newsnight on the BBC that "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.  These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country."  Springmann pointed out in a CBC Radio One interview that reportedly all of the Saudi hijackers received their visas to enter the US from the Jeddah consulate.  He also noted that a conspirator in the February 1993 WTC bombing, Sheikh Abdurrahman, received "his visa from a CIA case officer in Sudan."  Springmann even went so far as to say the government must have been complicity in 9/11, "either through omission or through failure to act." 

 

Alleged plot leader Atta was tracked as a possible terrorist by the FBI in 2000. In January 10, 2001 he was allowed back into the USA on a tourist visa, although he had already violated his visa, and he even told immigration officials in January that he was taking pilot classes, though he had the wrong visa for this.  He entered the US three times in 2001, on an expired visa from 2000.  The NYT reported that Israel warned the US that Atta plotted terrorism, prior to the issuance of the tourist visa.           

 

Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi, mentioned above, were allowed to travel without any problems from their known connections to al Qaida terrorism.  After meeting in Malaysia with Atta and KSM, something Malaysian security found the CIA surprisingly uninterested in (though the Commission says the opposite), the pair were allowed without problems back into the USA.  By then they were listed as possible terrorists.  They were visited in San Diego by up to five of the alleged hijackers and later lived with an FBI informant.  They were on an FBI watch list and given a high priority by the CIA, but they were not stopped.  They were not undercover, and used their own social security numbers, credit cards, etc., and were in the local phone book. 

 

Sabotage by the FBI leadership

 

The FBI leadership seemingly intended to sabotage several investigations that connected to the hijacking plot. In Phoenix, FBI agent Ken Williams, began investigating a group of Middle Eastern men at a pilot school, starting in 2000.  In early 2001 he was moved to an arson case. In early July, after he had been reassigned to the flight school investigation, he wrote the now famous Phoenix Memo.  Williams suggested that the FBI begin monitoring suspicious activities at all flight schools, suspecting that al Qaida might be preparing something.  The leadership said there was a lack of resources for this, yet in 1995 there was a broad investigation following warnings that al Qaida might want to use passenger planes to attack the CIA's headquarters.  In 1994 a retiring Phoenix agent also complained about headquarters' relations with local investigations of terrorism. 

 

The Phoenix Memo was sent to Supervisory Special Agent Dave Frasca, then head of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) and possibly controlling the connected bin Laden unit as well.  Frasca did not circulate the Memo, which hurt the Moussaoui investigation.  The official story is that Frasca was not aware of the Memo before the 11^th.  Ruppert thinks Frasca is a CIA covert operative in the FBI, considering Frasca's role in hindering several investigations related to 9/11.  The Memo became known to the public in May 2002, at which point FBI Director Mueller classified it, and tried to prevent even the Senate 9/11 panel from reading it.  Frasca held his position from 1999 to 2002, when he was promoted.      

 

In Minneapolis the FBI was warned by a flight school that a student, French and Algerian citizen Zacarias Moussaoui, might be involved in terrorism.  He was arrested on immigration charges after August 15^th.  The local FBI wanted a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop and other affects.  The FISA court almost never turns down a warrant request.  Minneapolis' request was sent to FBI headquarters, where it was stopped by the FBI Deputy General Counsel.  It was judged to be too weak a case after RFU agent Marion "Spike" Bowman removed French security information linking Moussaoui to Chechens Islamists linked to al Qaida.  The Phoenix Memo would have been helpful in supporting the local agents' request, but it had not been circulated.  Even the 9/11 Commission admits that further investigation of Moussaoui might have prevented the attacks.  In May 2002 Minneapolis Special Agent Colleen Rowley released a letter sharply criticizing the FBI leadership and came close to accusing headquarters of assisting al Qaida.  Rowley simultaneously sent her letter to Congress, so Mueller was not able to keep the letter classified.  Mueller later admitted that an agent "at a high-level meeting" wondered if Moussaoui planned to fly a hijacked airplane into the WTC (from the New York Post).  The FBI later gave Bowman an award for "exceptional performance" (O&C).

 

Also in 2002, an FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, revealed that the FBI was shielding a possible spy and apparently threatened and then fired Edmonds because of her complaints.  First there were issues of classified material being removed from the building and supervisors telling her to work slowly so the office could request more funds.  It became very serious when Edmonds witnessed a Turkish-American co-worker, Melek Dickerson, allegedly protecting a Turkish group under investigation, of which Dickerson herself was a member.  Dickerson is married to a US Air Force (USAF) major who Edmonds contends was also involved with the Turkish organization.  Dickerson became the translator for material from the group, tried to get Edmonds to join, and threatened her.  Edmonds found that Dickerson was deleting, not translating, or defining as unimportant information regarding terrorism and spying.  Supervisor Mike Feghali aided in hiding information from an agent who requested that a document be re-translated.  In another case, an FBI informant previously in Iranian intelligence, monitoring Afghanistan, warned in the spring of 2001 that an aerial attack was being planned in months, but Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Fields said agents were not to reveal the intelligence and Mueller did not act on the warning.  Reportedly Mueller was surprised that the Commission did not question him on this lead.  Dickerson and others under investigation hurriedly left the US in 2002 and there was no criminal investigation.  Feghali was promoted to be in charge of the Arabic translation groups.  Edmonds sued the FBI over a Freedom of Information Act denied and the Justice Department for wrongful firing.  Ashcroft requested a gag order, based on damage to state secrets, to limit what Edmonds could reveal, on Mueller's request.  Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton dismissed Edmonds lawsuit challenging the gag order, after delaying the hearing four times.  Allegedly Edmonds was often tailed by government agents. 

 

In 1998 in Chicago, agent Robert Wright Jr. began investigating a wealthy Saudi immigrant suspected of giving up to $3 billion dollars to al Qaida.  Wright thought his case was uncovering more, and it was the only investigation to have seized assets (Rubicon), yet it was ended in January 2001.  In June he wrote a memo accusing the FBI leadership of "merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred" (UPI, May 30, 2002).  After Wright went public, with David Schippers representing him, the FBI harassed Wright and refused to allow him to discuss the contents of his unpublished memoir.  At the same time Mueller said he welcomed criticisms.  The Chicago Board Options Exchange was the source of a lot of the insider trading regarding 9/11.         

 

Earlier, in March 2000, there was another possible case of the FBI shielding al Qaida.  Emails captured with the Carnivore system regarding an al Qaida related case were deleted by the bin Laden unit and the International Terrorism Operations Center.  Allegedly a technician deleted the files because emails from innocent third parties had been collected.  This destruction of evidence would be a very serious crime, since the emails were collected under a FISA warrant, and Michael Ruppert speculates that it is ridiculous to think that the wanted emails and those accidentally intercepted would have been kept together. 

 

Despite the detention and harassment of thousands Arab and Muslim Americans by the government after 9/11, there has seemingly been less than a full attempt to identify the culprits.  A future article will show how many Saudis believed to have connections to al Qaida were allowed to leave the country within days after 9/11, with little screening.  October 10^th the FBI ended its 9/11 investigations, allegedly "the most exhaustive in its history," and one official said "we're not trying to solve a crime now" (quoted in WOT).  

 

The hijackers trained at government facilities

 

Not only were the alleged hijackers being tracked by many intelligence agencies, there is also evidence that some of them were actually trained by the US military.  According to Knight-Ridder, Atta trained at the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montogomery, Alabama, Abdulaziz al Omari trained at the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and Saeed al Ghamdi trained at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.  Three hijackers trained at the Pensacola Naval Station in Florida, according to Newsweek.   

 

There might also be a government connection to one of the two private pilot schools in Venice, Florida where most of the hijackers began study.  At 2am on 9/12 the FBI was searching these two schools.  Rudi Dekkers bought the Huffman Aviation school at about the time the alleged hijackers moved to Venice.  A witness at the airport said "I've always had my suspicions about the way he breezed into town out of nowhere.  Just too many odd little things.  For example, he has absolutely no aviation background as far as anyone can tell.  And he evidently has no use for, or knowledge of, FAA rules and regs" (WOT).  Allegedly, Huffman was given a free hand by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the local Venice police were told to ignore the company.  Dekkers is from the Netherlands, where he was indicted for financial crimes.   By 9/14, the FBI had cleared Dekkers of suspicion, despite his testimony in contradiction with that of officials at other involved flight schools. 

 

There is evidence that Huffman Aviation is connected to the CIA or other agencies.  Huffman provides a hangar for Britannia Aviation, seemingly a front company.  Britannia was contracted to operate a large maintenance operation at Virginia's Lynchburg Regional Airport, over a successful local company.  It was later revealed that Britannia "is a company with virtually no assets [the company's worth was $750 dollars], employees, or corporate history" and it "did not even possess the necessary FAA license" for the maintenance it contracted to do (WOF).

 

Huffman also has a long standing relationship with Caribe Air, providing maintenance.  Caribe Air operates around the Caribbean and is allegedly a CIA front (for more about CIA aviation front companies, see the article on US torture flights in the fall 2006 issue of Alliance!). Caribe's planes in Mena, Arkansas were seized by the government over drug trafficking, using up to 20 planes to move billions of dollars in drugs, at one point.   

 

Uncertainty about the identity of the hijackers

 

It is even as yet unproven if the hijackers were the people the government has named.  Six or more of the people named are alive and well in several Arab countries.  Waleed al Shehri, allegedly on American Flight 11, is a Royal Air Maroc pilot in Casablanca, Morocco.  Ahmed al Nami was an administrative supervisor for Saudi Arabian Airlines at the time, not on United Airlines Flight 93.  Saeed al Ghamdi, also named as a hijacker on UA 93, was in Tunis for 10 months training to fly the Airbus.  According to the Saudi Embassy in DC, Salem al Hazmi (allegedly on Flight 77) is an engineer at a petrochemical facility in Yanbou, and Mohand al Shehri and Abdulaziz al Omari are also reportedly falsely accused.  The Commission did not answer these reports.  Some of the identifications are based on surprising coincidences, such as the finding of Satam al Suqami's passport in Manhattan, supposedly having fallen from AA Flight 11.   

 

There is also evidence against the alleged hijackers having been on the hijacked flights.  The passenger lists have been released and do not include anyone with an Arabic name (Loose Change II documentary).  According to Thierry Meyssan, the author of L'Effroyable Imposture (The Horrifying Fraud, titled The Big Lie in the English version, 2002), the released passenger lists indicate that there must have been fewer hijackers than the Administration says.  Reasons to doubt descriptions by passengers will be covered in the next article.     

 

Another oddity is the behavior of the alleged hijackers.  For example, it has been reported that Atta ate pork, drank, used cocaine, got lap dances, lived with a prostitute in Florida, and gambled, yet he is supposed to have been a fundamentalist suicide terrorist.  The contents of two of his bags, which were not loaded on the plane, reportedly because of a missed connecting flight, are also odd.  They include his passport, will, international driver's license, Boeing flight simulation manuals, a Koran, a religious tape, and a memo about mental preparation for the other hijackers (O&C, The Big Lie).  These and other behaviors could be explained, but they are not what one would expect of fanatical fundamentalists.   

 

Fake evidence against bin Laden

 

The US government has very easily been able to finger Osama bin Laden for the attacks, but there is actually little hard evidence.  One main piece of evidence given is a video (released December 13, 2001) allegedly of bin Laden and others meeting in Kandahar November 9^th.  The bin Laden in the video is obviously an imposter, because his facial features are different, and he writes with the wrong hand and wears a gold ring (from the documentary Loose Change II), which would not be proper to a Muslim fundamentalist.  An earlier tape was mentioned November 10^th by the Sunday Telegraph.  Meanwhile, shortly after the attacks a statement was sent to al-Jazeera, purportedly from bin Laden, disavowing involvement in the attacks.  This might be fake also, but it gives reason for doubt.   

 

As a future article will show, the USA seemingly does not want to capture bin Laden, having passed on many chances, and reportedly there have even been recent meetings between US officials and bin Laden.  Osama bin Laden is a convenient enemy, giving the US and its allies an excuse to carry out other objectives.  It is also apparently untrue that bin Laden no longer has ties to the wealthy and well-connected bin Laden family and the Saudi government (who are in turn very connected to the Bush family and others in the Administration).