The USA's collaboration with al Qaida
Does the government really want to arrest or kill Osama bin Laden?
By now it is obvious that many US allies in the Middle East and Near East are at least partly supporting al Qaida, even after 9/11. More shocking is the evidence that the US government itself is still supporting its Islamist Cold War allies. The article in the last issue showed that the US encouraged fundamentalism and helped form what became al Qaida in an attempt to overthrow the Afghan revolutionary government and the later Soviet intervention. That article also laid out evidence that the USA allowed Black Tuesday to happen and seemingly helped facilitate it, which provided a public rationale for the Bush Administration's plans in Afghanistan and Iraq. Examples suggesting US complicity are the ease with which the named hijackers were able to enter, live in, and leave the US, even after being listed as terrorists or tied to known terrorists, the FBI leadership's interference with terrorism investigations before 9/11, lack of funding for counterterrorism efforts, the fact that intercepted al Qaida communications were received and allegedly not translated and not shared within the government, and the fact that the attacks could happen at all despite numerous credible and detailed forewarnings. Add to this the fact that some officials took precautions as if they knew attacks were coming on 9/11/2001 and the fact that Black Tuesday is exactly what elements in the Bush Administration needed to implement their plans, as they admitted in a 2000 report from the Project for a New American Century and elsewhere. Below is more evidence that the "War on Terror" is not really about dismantling al Qaida. Instead elements in the US are still shielding the terrorists who carried out 9/11.
The US turned down numerous offers for the extradition or trial of bin Laden
The Clinton and Bush Administrations again and again refused offers of information from other governments. Some of these offers might have been disingenuous, but if they were serious they could have much weakened or even stopped al Qaida long ago. Many offers from Sudan, where bin Laden lived during much of the 90's, were rejected. In 1995 Sudan offered its extensive files on bin Laden and over 200 al Qaida leaders, financial information, and other intelligence, allegedly "an inch and a half" of documents (Guardian, 9/30/01). In April 1996 the US again rejected the Sudanese offer, as did the UK's MI6 foreign intelligence agency. Sudan said MI6 could send someone to Sudan the next day after accepting Sudan's offer. In May 2000 a CIA and FBI team went to Sudan to confirm that it was not supporting terrorists. Despite being found innocent, Sudan was not removed from the USA's list of 'state terrorists,' and again it rejected Sudan's information about al Qaida. In June 1995 the US blamed Sudan and Hassan al Turabi, the Speaker of the National Assembly and a prominent leader, for supporting an alleged al Qaida plot to kill the president of Egypt in Ethiopia. In March 1996 the US wanted Sudan to expel bin Laden. Sudan offered to extradite bin Laden for trial, allegedly even directly to the US, but this was declined because of a lack of evidence against him at the time. Richard Clarke, former CIA Director Tenet, and the 9/11 Commission deny this, though the Commission found that Saudi Arabia was considered. Allegedly the US asked Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to take bin Laden, but was rebuffed, and wanted bin Laden sent anywhere other than Somalia (cited in The Terror Timeline). Sudan told the US bin Laden was going to Afghanistan, where he would be out of their control.
The Clinton Administration ignored Sudan's offers and instead destroyed a vital pharmaceutical plant in Al-Shifa, supplier of 60% of Sudan's medicines, in August 1998. Three days earlier the Administration rejected an FBI request to take up Sudan's offer to extradite two alleged al Qaida members who had entered Sudan and were thought to be targeting the US embassy. Sudan held the men for three more weeks and then lost track of them in Pakistan. June 13, 2002 Sudan arrested an al Qaida member who admitted to trying to use a missile to shoot down a US aircraft leaving Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; our Saudi allies had refused to arrest the man.
The Taliban also seemingly wanted to cooperate with the US against bin Laden. Kabir Mohabbat is an Afghan-American who facilitated talks in 1999 between the US and Afghanistan on bin Laden. Mohabbat says the Taliban would extradite bin Laden to a third country or the International Court of Justice if the US would ease the sanctions on the Taliban. Allegedly Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said at a meeting in Frankfurt, Germany that "You can have [bin Laden] whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him" (Reuters, 6/5/04). A German European Parliament representative who was also involved speculated that the US did not want to negotiate with the Taliban, and so passed up the offer.
About 21 meetings were held in Washington that involved Rahmatullah Hashimi, representing the Taliban, and mid-level State Department officials, Afghanistan watchers, and journalists, from March to September 2001. The Taliban offered to send bin Laden to a third party, but the Americans wanted to get bin Laden directly. Some of those in attendance thought the Taliban were negotiating honestly, others not. Laila Helms, the Taliban's public relations director and daughter of a former CIA director, said the Taliban offered to detain bin Laden and allow the US to assassinate him in Afghanistan. In June 2001 Mullah Omar expressed interest in settling the dispute over bin Laden to lift the UN sanctions he said were killing Afghans. In September, after the attacks, ISI Director Ahmed and others negotiate with the Taliban, which he says refused to extradite bin Laden. A senior Taliban official said that actually Ahmed counseled the Taliban to protect bin Laden and for al Qaida to use guerilla tactics against the US.
In September and October 2001 two Islamist parties in Pakistan apparently got bin Laden and Mullah Omar to agree to a proposal that bin Laden be held in Peshawar, Pakistan and tried or extradited to the US by an international tribunal. Pakistani President and military coup leader Musharraf turned down the offer because "he could not guarantee bin Laden's safety" (the Mirror, 7/8/02).
In March 2001 Russia presented a "breathtaking" and "unprecedentedly detailed report" on bin Laden to the UN's Security Council, that reportedly contained enough information to locate him, as well as information on Pakistani government support. It apparently located all of bin Laden's facilities and listed many of his allies (Jane's Intelligence Review, 10/5/07).
Evidence of cooperation between the US military and al Qaida
Alliance! covered the charge that several of the 9/11 hijackers received training at US military facilities and the US backing of the Afghan counterrevolution, starting before the Soviets intervened, in the last issue. But that is not the US military's only possible involvement with al Qaida.
Ali Mohamed was an Egyptian-American former Army sergeant and Middle East expert at the Army's John Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, until the 90's and was involved in al Qaida terrorism. He was an Egyptian special forces soldier until he was discharged for religious extremism in 1984, allegedly having joined Islamic Jihad. While in the Egyptian army, he received Green Beret training in the US. He applied to be a CIA asset after being discharged, then employed by Egypt Air as a security consultant, but was refused as unreliable and later watch listed, meaning he should have been banned from coming to the USA. Instead he later was given permission to immigrate to California, married an American and became a citizen and sergeant by 1986. The CIA did not respond to WSJ questions about its relationship to Mohamed, but a friend of Mohamed's in San Jose, Ali Zaki, told the paper "Everyone in the community knew he was working as a liaison between the CIA and the Afghan cause" (11/26/01).
While on leave from the military, he engaged in combat with Soviet forces in Afghanistan and met bin Laden, then certainly a US ally, allegedly with CIA backing. An article in North Carolina's News & Observer newspaper (10/24/01) pointed out that "it was highly irregular, if not illegal, for an active-duty U.S. soldier to fight in a foreign war," and the military did not care about his terrorism connections after being told two weeks before Mohamed's trip by another Ft. Bragg officer. He honorably left the military in 1989, but was in the Army Reserves for 5 more years. In 1993 he was arrested by Canada, but released after they were told by the FBI that he was working for the Americans (Globe and Mail, 11/22/01). He was tried in 1995 and it was revealed that he had stolen US special forces papers. He allegedly trained Islamists at camps in New York or New Jersey, bin Laden's security personnel and the terrorists who blew up two US embassies in east Africa in 1998, and in late 1998 he was arrested and sentenced for his participation in that plot, which he admitted in 2000. He was allegedly detained without sentence in an undisclosed location and was not called to testify in the bombings trial, though he confessed. Many of the legal documents are sealed and Mohamed and his lawyers are silent. Reportedly, the explosives used in the bombings were US supplies given to the Afghan mujahideen (Le Figaro, 10/31/01). Simultaneously, he was providing intelligence to the FBI between '93 and '98. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed goes into detail on Mohamed in The War on Freedom.
Below is coverage of the US military's strange failures to destroy al Qaida in the Afghanistan War, even when they allegedly had bin Laden cornered in a cave at Tora Bora and bin Laden escaped by helicopter.
Shielding those charged with al Qaida ties
In one of the first cases of protecting violent Islamists, the government apparently shielded Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, the so-called "Blind Sheikh," who was convicted of assisting in the 1993 bombing of the WTC, which allegedly would have felled the towers if done the way they planned. In July 1990 Abdul-Rahman came to the USA on a tourist visa given to him by a secret CIA operative, despite Abdul-Rahman having been on a terrorism watch list for three years. Reportedly Abdul-Rahman was an integral part of the CIA and Pakistani battle against Afghanistan and the USSR, despite being openly focused on toppling the governments of the USA and Egypt. He was allegedly involved in a plot to kill Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat. Bin Laden might have been paying for Abdul-Rahman's stay in the US.
In November 1990 Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defense League, a Zionist international terrorist group based in the US, listed by the FBI in 2001, was assassinated, possibly with the involvement of Abdul-Rahman. The assassin had documents about a terrorist group, al Qaida, and attacks on tall American buildings, which allegedly were not translated for years. The NYPD said the assassin acted alone and the prosecution did not use their best evidence, so the assassin, Egyptian-American El Sayyid Nosair, was acquitted, though convicted for lower crimes and sentenced to 22 years imprisonment. An FBI agent told ABC News (8/16/02) that "The fact is that in 1990, myself and my detectives, we had in our office in handcuffs, the people who blew up the World Trade Center in '93. We were told to release them." Bin Laden helped fund Nosair's defense. Abul-Rahman was connected to the terrorists who shot a group of foreign tourists in Egypt in November 1992 and was only charged and convicted of crimes after the first WTC attack. In 1993 an FBI agent told the Village Voice (3/30/93) that Abdul-Rahman is "hands-off. It was no accident that the sheikh obtained a visa and that he is still in the country. He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA."
Apparently the FBI had some control over the deadly 1993 bombing plot. Undercover FBI agent Emad Salem, a main witness in the trial of the bombers, told the NYT (10/28/93) that the FBI was aware of the plot and could have swapped the explosives for fakes, but decided not to. Some of the terrorists were trained by the CIA, and it admitted in an internal communication that the CIA is "partly culpable" for attack (Independent, 11/1/98).
In December 1994 bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, was arrested in the USA. He was carrying literature on terrorism and was charged with funding the Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization in the Philippines and being linked to the Bojinka suicide hijacking plot. Warren Christopher, Clinton's Secretary of State, pushed for the transfer of Khalifa to Jordan, where his conviction for giving money to a group that carried out bombings in the country had been overturned. A second trial let Khalifa go free. A CIA Counter Terrorism Official analyst called "Khalifa's deportation unreal" (cited in The Terror Timeline).
The CIA and DoD were reportedly against trying to capture Islamic Jihad and al Qaida leader Mohammed Atef in an unguarded hotel in Khartoum in 1998. A former CIA offical alleges that it was considered too difficult, yet the CIA carried out reconnaissance in 1998 there. By the time the government decided to capture him after all, the opportunity had been lost.
The World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) has been directly linked to terrorism, including the alleged 9/11 hijackers, and advocates killing Americans, Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, according to testimony to the 9/11 Commission. The Pakistani government ended WAMY activity in its territory and India and the Philippines identified WAMY as a funder of terrorists. Between February and September 11, 1996, WAMY's US branch director, Abdullah bin Laden (Osama's brother or cousin and not the bin Laden family spokesman with the same name), and his brother Omar were investigated by the FBI. A classified document about the case covered in the media indicates that the case involved espionage, murder, and national security. The WAMY investigation was restarted after 9/11 and still not listed as a terrorist group by the government in 2004. WAMY's US office was at 5613 Leesburg Pike in Falls Church, Virginia, and four alleged hijackers lived at 5913 Leesburg Pike while bin Laden was in charge of the office.
Abdullah bin Laden was also on the board of a charity that Bosnia accused of funding Chechen guerillas. According to BBC journalist Greg Palast's book (mentioned above), the Clinton Administration shielded WAMY and others who were supporting Bosnian Muslim forces in the Yugoslav civil wars. The Republican Party Committee in 1997 produced a report blaming Clinton for making Bosnia a safe zone for Islamist terrorists connected to the 1993 WTC bombing. Swiss journalist Richard Laberviere wrote in his 2000 book, Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam, that terrorist groups linked to bin Laden were "nurtured and encouraged by elements of the U.S. intelligence community, especially during the Clinton years" that al Qaida "was protected because the network was designed to serve U.S. foreign policy and military interests." He also wrote that the Clinton Administration thought they could control al Qaida and that even if it did go against the US, "they figured the US would gain more from it in the long run." Many also allege that the US and al Qaida cooperated in supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army, Kosovar Albanians being traditionally Muslim and Serbia traditionally Christian. This would seem to mirror the mutually beneficial relationship between Islamist guerillas in Afghanistan and the Carter, Reagan, and G.H.W. Bush administrations that helped propel the attacks on Americans, Europeans, Australians, and others in the 90's and today.
The conservative legal observer Judicial Watch faulted the Clinton Administration with ignoring terrorist financial fronts in the US. For example, the Islamic African Relief Agency allegedly sent money to Mercy International, which used it to acquire vehicles used in the East African embassy attacks and was connected to the person who supplied a cell phone bin Laden allegedly used in those attacks. Despite this, the State Department gave the IARA two grants equal to $4.2 million dollars that same year (November 5, 2001 report, available at www.judicialwatch.org). According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement Jonathan Weiner, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates did not cooperate with the US in stopping terrorist financial dealings, claiming to have found none (NPR, 11/21/01). On the Saudis, Bush said at a press conference that "As far as the Saudi Arabians go, they've been nothing but cooperative." Many people in and out of government say that the Saudis receive preferential treatment from the US and that they have become even more sacrosanct under Bush.
Allegedly counterterrorism became a top priority for the FBI in a 5-year plan issued in May 1998, but no extra people or money were deployed. About 6% of the FBI's agents (153 out of 27,000) were tasked with counterterrorist efforts between 1998 and 9/11/01. Only one strategic analyst was focused on al-Qaida. According to the 9/11 Commission, many local branches were not aware of the threat from al-Qaida, shortly before to 9/11. All of this was while the FBI received $4.3 billion dollars related to terrorism. May 1998 is also when a National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, was hired and joined the National Security Council. The FBI's special bin Laden unit was established three years (1999) after the CIA created its bin Laden unit (1996), but the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit was created in March 1994. The leadership of these units later seem to have obstructed investigations, such as the pre-9/11 investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, which in theory could have further exposed the hijackers.
Thirty-five to forty CIA agents were in the bin Laden unit prior to 9/11, with five strategic analysts dedicated to studying al Qaida. In December 1998 then CIA Director George Tenet circulated a "declaration of war" against al-Qaida, but there was not much of a shift in US resources to fight al Qaida, though more money was appropriated for it. In 2001 millions of dollars appropriated had not been spent. Tenet himself did not do much to implement his spring 1999 counterterrorism plan, according to Alterman and Green's book, The Book on Bush - for example, he did not consult with the FBI.
In March 2000 FBI agent Robert Wright (author of the squelched Phoenix Memo, on possible terrorists receiving flight training in Arizona), backed up by fellow agent Barry Carmody, other investigators, and Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, accused Muslim FBI agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz of shielding Muslim criminal suspects. Wright was referring to refusal to cooperate in investigating a possible financial connection between New Jersey company BMI Inc, a rich Saudi, Yassin al-Qadi, and the East African embassy bombings. Carmody accused Abdel-Hafiz of also hindering investigation of University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian's alleged connections to terrorism (see www.freesamialarian.com). Al-Arian has since been convicted and imprisoned as a political prisoner for supporting Palestinian resistance groups. Abdel-Hafiz was then promoted to head all FBI investigations in Saudi Arabia, but suspended in February 2003 when the allegations became too high-profile. Rightist Fox News host Bill O'Reilly says that the FBI threatened to fire Wright if he spoke about his allegations, one hour before he was to be on Fox News on March 4, 2003.
Also that March Republican Senator Phil Gramm blocked a bill combating terrorist money laundering, impacting offshore banks. The bill passed 31 to 1 in the House Banking Committee, but Gramm prevented a vote in his Senate Banking Committee. The Bush Administration has acted similarly to protect methods used for terrorist financing, as well as by rich capitalists. In May 2001 the US ceased cooperating with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Financial Action Task Force, the main global anti-money laundering agency.
The investigation of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen was blocked over personal animosities if not worse reasons. John O'Neill, the Irish-American Special Agent in Charge for National Security at the FBI's NY office, 1997-2001, led a team of 200 FBI agents doing on-site investigation, but was reportedly hindered by restrictions and problems with the US ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine. According to the 9/11 Commission, she persuaded Yemen to allow armed US agents into the country, but "clashed repeatedly" with O'Neill. He reportedly had a rapport with Yemeni officials, but the Yemenis also reportedly called his team "Rambos" and refused to allow them to carry large firearms. O'Neill's superior inquired about the friction and found that only Bodine was opposed to O'Neill's work, but within weeks O'Neill was forced out, and the FBI contingent was reduced to around 50 agents before November. In June 2001 terrorism concerns forced the rest to leave. In July O'Neill said concern for oil, Saudi Arabia, and the possibility of Taliban cooperation in the Afghan pipeline project were hindering investigation of Islamist terrorism. O'Neill resigned from the FBI, in part because of the interference with his work, but one of his last acts was to send the FBI team back to Yemen because Bodine was leaving, and they arrived shortly before 9/11. Bodine was briefly an administrator of an Iraqi region, despite her actions in Yemen, and was later fired, seemingly over job performance, according to Thompson. O'Neill was killed in the attack on the WTC, where he was the security head, and some speculate that a group in the US government engineered his death, as will be discussed in the third article of this series.
In August 2001 the US decided not to capture a person thought to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, a deputy leader of al Qaida and the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who was receiving medical treatment in San'a, Yemen. Allegedly they passed up the chance because they were not sure it was al-Zawahiri, but they now regret this (ABC News, 2/20/02).
Nabil al-Marabh was possibly involved in 9/11, apparently having been in contact with some of the hijackers, sent them money, possibly helped them forge identification papers, and lived with al Qaida members. He was arrested but the Federal government did not charge him with terrorist activities and he was later deported to Syria. He arrived in Boston in 1989 and received military training at an al Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 1992. His roommate was arrested by Syria in October 2000 and said al-Marabh was with al Qaida. Between March 2001 and June 27, 2001 there was a warrant for his arrest after he violated his probation for having attacked a roommate. On September 11, 2000 he received a license in Michigan to drive tractor trailers carrying hazardous substances.
Al-Marabh was arrested sneaking in to the US from Canada, with false documents, and he apparently had done that repeatedly. He was directly deported to Canada, where he was imprisoned for two weeks and told other prisoners that he was communicating with the FBI. He skipped deportation proceedings after being released. September 19th he was arrested in Illinois. FBI agents thought he helped the hijackers get fake identification and launder money, but he pled guilty to entering the US without permission and went to prison for 8 months. The Federal prosecutors said "at this time" they had no evidence of al-Marabh having links to terrorism (WP, 9/4/02). The presiding judge said he did not trust the plea bargain, but could not block it.
Fellow prisoners say that al-Marabh said several things indicating that he did want to carry out terrorism, such as blowing up a tunnel in NYC as a suicide bomber. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald prepared a case against him for lying to the FBI, but was told to drop it to shield sources of intelligence, as were prosecutors in Detroit. After his eight-month sentence, al-Marabh was held in Chicago where Federal prosecutors wanted to detain him as a material witness, but the request was dropped and he was deported to Syria. The FBI admitted in the deportation documentation that it was not sure al-Marabh was not a terrorist and would not continue to be overseas. In June 2004 several Democratic and Republican senators complained to Ashcroft about this discrepancy, asking why al-Marabh was being sent to what they called a sponsor of terrorism.
This is different from the treatment of many Americans and visitors who were arrested or investigated for having Muslim or Arab names, held on any charges the government could find, and in many cases mistreated by their jailers. At least one person died in prison. Over 1200 mostly Muslim non-citizens were arrested for minor immigration violations and held for up to several months.
The US and German governments withheld evidence in the trial of Moroccan Mounir el Motassadeq, resulting in the overturning of his sentence of 15 years in prison for involvement in the 9/11 plot. For example, the US did not allow Ramzi bin al-Shibh (a Yemeni in Germany who supposedly coordinated the attacks and was reportedly captured by Pakistan September 11, 2002) or Mohammed Haydar Zammar (charged with recruiting Atta's cell and captured by Germany but held by his native Syria, where he was wanted and possibly tortured) to testify. Zammar is a German citizen and being investigated by Germany, but after he was arrested by Morocco in October 2001, the German government was not told and only found out from the media in June 2002. This is similar to the CIA's unilateral kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Italy who was being investigated by Italian security.
According to journalist Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker magazine (9/30/02), would be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui's lawyers and some FBI officials were very surprised that no plea bargain to gain more information was offered. One Federal defense lawyer said "I've never been in a conspiracy case where the government wasn't interested in knowing if the defendant had more information – to see if there wasn't more to the conspiracy." Allegedly this situation happened because Ashcroft wanted Moussaoui executed. The government also tried to prevent Moussaoui from calling Ramzi bin al-Shibh as a witness, which could have resulted in the case being thrown out and difficulty prosecuting bin al-Shibh (AP, 7/14/03).
Refusing to find bin Laden
As the above shows, the US gave up opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden and his allies before 9/11, when he was known to be a major organizer of terrorism. For example, reportedly while bin Laden was secretly receiving medical treatment in Dubai in July 2001 he received a CIA agent and the CIA's former or current proxy, the ISI, seems to be protecting al Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nor have they captured or killed him since then, and officials have made statements that make the failures in Afghanistan seem explainable as intentional failures.
Whether the Bush Administration wanted 9/11 to happen or not, they are lying about focusing on counterterrorism, which has been one of their main selling points since the attack. Repeatedly candidate Bush said things like "I will put a high priority on detecting and responding to terrorism on our soil," referring mainly to "weapons of mass destruction" (National Guard Magazine, 9/00). September 13, 2001 Bush said "The most important thing for us is to find Osama bin Laden. It's our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." He admitted "I knew [bin Laden] was a menace and I knew he was a problem"…"I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency" (WP, 5/17/02). March 13, 2002 Bush said "I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I don't really care. It's not that important. It's not our priority" (quoted by Ruppert). Meanwhile terrorism increased worldwide and allegedly al Qaida is now almost as strong as it was in 2001.
The Clinton Administration shielded terrorists, but comparing Clinton's actions and those of Bush before 9/11, you can see who acted most unconcerned. For example, Richard Clarke had a detailed plan in December 2000, similar to one he presented in 1998, to stop al Qaida over 3-5 years, but it was not implemented because Clinton was on his way out. The Bush Administration received the proposal in January, but waited until September 4, 2001 to approve a very similar plan, though the general sense in 2001 was that a major terrorist attack was imminent. Clarke was also demoted, giving him less access to decision makers. A former Clinton and Bush NSC member, Thomas Maertenson, attributed Bush's failure to politics: "They really believed their campaign rhetoric about the Clinton administration. So anything [they] did was bad, and the Bushies were not going to repeat it" (cited in The Terror Timeline). According to then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, concern about terrorism was put "farther to the back burner" under Bush (cited in The Book on Bush). Future viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer, said February 26, 2001 that the Administration was ignoring terrorism (AP, 4/29/04). It cannot be denied that failure to stop terrorism benefited members of the Bush Administration politically and financially.
Reportedly Bush's first attorney general was opposed to looking at terrorism and argued with FBI Director Louis Freeh about discussing. Acting FBI Director Tom Pickard said "Before September 11th, I couldn't get half an hour on terrorism with Ashcroft. He was only interested in three things: guns, drugs, and civil rights" (quote from the book, The Cell, 8/02). September 10th Ashcroft said the FBI did not need $58 million more dollars for anti-terrorism efforts, and he cut a preparedness grant program by more than half. The FBI wanted to improve its anti-terrorism investigations by adding 149 field agents, 200 analysts, and 54 translators. June 2001 Chicago FBI agent Robert Wright, a leading investigator of terrorist funding in the US, said in a memo that: "The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected international terrorists living in the United States." In May 2001 Ashcroft told Congress "our No. 1 goal is the prevention of terrorist acts" (from The Book on Bush).
Several other top members of Bush's cabinet appeared nonchalant about terrorism. In May 2001 Cheney was assigned to head a task force on what is now called "homeland defense," but it was just hiring staff in September, and was to report to Congress October 1st. Democratic Senator Gary Hart implied to Salon in April 2004 that Cheney was trying to block counterterrorism proposals from a bipartisan commission Hart helped lead that January. He also said then National Security Adviser Rice seemed unconcerned about terrorism when he spoke to her September 6, 2001. Rice was to speak on 9/11/01 about future threats, but a leaked copy did not refer to bin Laden, al Qaida, or any other Islamist terrorist organization, only referring to state terrorism, such as from Iraq. At the Administration's first Deputy Secretary meeting on counterterrorism, April 30, 2001, then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was opposed to focusing on al Qaida, instead wanting to focus on Iraq, according to Richard Clarke saying: "I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden. Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?" While they were saying this, many branches of the government were receiving warnings from seemingly credible sources, such as US allies, and government agencies were carrying out drills that mirrored what actually occurred on 9/11. The government seemingly wanted the attack or the Bush Administration cannot protect the American people from terrorist acts it knows will occur.
Along with the Taliban and allied ISI members who were allowed to escape from US and Northern Alliance forces during the Afghanistan War, bin Laden and many al Qaida members were allowed to escape with them or separately. In early November a large al Qaida convoy left Kabul under cover of darkness. According to an Afghan businessman: "We don't understand how they weren't all killed the night before because they came in a convoy of at least 1,000 cars and trucks. It was a very dark night, but it must have been easy for the American pilots to see the headlights. The main road was jammed from eight in the evening until three in the morning" (London Times, 7/22/02). In late October the US noticed al Qaida forces gathering in Jalalabad, and around the time when then convoy above left Kabul, they thought bin Laden was there too. An intelligence official said it was "obvious from at least early November" that al Qaida would try to escape from Afghanistan there and "All of this was known, and frankly we were amazed that nothing was done to prepare for it" (Knight Ridder, 10/20/02). Reportedly most of the group was able to flee. Kabul fell November 13th, ending a reputed US plan to work with a faction of the Taliban. The next day Jalalabad fell, but 1000 or more al Qaida and Taliban soldiers fled to Tora Bora. The airport was attacked by the US, but seemingly the convoy was left alone. Around this time others were escaping to Pakistan by air from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
There are two routes from Tora Bora to Pakistan and apparently the US bombed one but the other was open for weeks. On November 16th about 600 al Qaida and Taliban personnel escaped, followed by about 1000-1500 more, possibly including the top al Qaida leaders in Afghanistan, while the US considered the situation. There may have been 2000 personnel at Tora Bora, but only 21 were found alive. British military leaders told the NYT (9/30/02) that "American commanders had vetoed a proposal to guard the high-altitude trails, arguing that the risks of a firefight, in deep snow, gusting winds, and low-slung clouds, were too high." Once in Pakistan they were free, because that is an area only indirectly controlled by the central government. Local militias aided in the operation, but they are suspected to be friends of bin Laden from the Afghan civil war and so were really on his side.
An anonymous special forces soldier based at Ft. Bragg told the Fayetteville Observer (8/2/02) that special forces trapped bin Laden in a certain cave on November 28th, but while waiting for orders two helicopters came and left towards Pakistan. This has not been confirmed, but some believe bin Laden escaped around then, though others think he had already fled or did so on November 30 or December 1. There were many Afghan accounts of black helicopters evacuating al Qaida leaders at night (Newsweek, 8/11/02). Thompson's timeline notes that when the story was released several Ft. Bragg soldiers died and between June 2002 and 2004 five soldiers (three of whom were special forces personnel just back from Afghanistan) and their wives died in what have been called murder-suicides (Independent, 8/2/02). The Daily Telegraph of Britain said the Battle of Tora Bora was looking more and more like "a grand charade" (2/23/02). Rumsfeld denied April 17th, 2002 knowing whether bin Laden was at Tora Bora or not (USA Today, 4/18/02)
British media reported an alternative story, that bin Laden had been boxed into a 30-mile area in the south, but escaped in the time it took to capture Kandahar without Northern Alliance troops. In mid-November Ismail Khan, a warlord out of Heart in northwest Afghanistan, said his forces could have captured al Qaida and the Taliban, but the US did not want the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance to go into the pro-Taliban Pashtun areas in the south. Reportedly Hamid Karzai agreed to allow Taliban leader Mullah Omar to escape in return for Taliban surrender, but the US rejected it, though Omar still escaped. Allegedly the US let Omar escape again December 9, 2002 because of fears of killing civilians after a June operation that killed 34, though many Afghan and Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces since then.
In February 2002 the focus was switched from Afghanistan to the planned invasion of Iraq.
General Tommy Franks, in charge of Central Command, 2001-2003, said in his first wartime press conference that "We have not said that Osama bin Laden is a target of this effort"…"What we are about is the destruction of the al-Qa'eda network, as well as the…Taliban that provide harbor to bin Laden and al-Qa'eda" (USA Today, 11/23/01). Britain's Daily Mirror (11/16/01) was told by a US official that "casting our objectives too narrowly" threatened "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr bin Laden was captured." The result of the occupation of Afghanistan and the rest of the "War on Terror" has been the strengthening of al Qaida, more terrorism against civilians worldwide, continued freedom for bin Laden, and the massacre of civilians and freedom fighters by the US and its allies. MIT political scientist Barry Posen said after the Battle of Toral Bora: "This is disturbing – a war on terror that doesn't focus on the terrorists" (cited in The Book on Bush).
Other leads rejected by the US
Besides allegedly ignoring 9/11 warnings, the government overlooked other offers of evidence. For example, Belgium found and translated a major al Qaida textbook in March 1995, but a former CIA agent says the CIA did not see it until 1999, because it did not want to face its role in the Afghan civil war, which gave birth to al Qaida.
Information on Saudi government crimes, which presumably could include support for terrorism, was refused in 1994. The First Secretary of the Saudi Mission to the US, Mohammed al-Khilewi, defected and sought asylum in the USA. He met with an assistant US attorney and two FBI agent and offered 14,000 Saudi documents on royal corruption, violation of human rights, and funding of terrorism, including funding of Iraq's nuclear weapon program. According to journalist Greg Palast, writing in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the FBI agents had been ordered to decline "evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on U.S. soil."
An analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Judie Sirrs, traveled undercover to Northern Alliance territory and gathered evidence on the connections between bin Laden, other rich Saudis, the Taliban, and al Qaida. This included allegations that the oil company Unocal helped bankroll the Taliban conquest of Kabul. Sirrs seems to have wanted the US to increase support for the Northern Alliance, thinking it could easily defeat the Taliban with more support, and she thought the US relied too much on the ISI. Reportedly she had proper permission for the trip, but she was arrested as a spy when she came back. She was cleared of spying but lost her access to secret documents and later resigned from the DIA.
Supposedly the US has trouble getting on the ground human surveillance of al Qaida, but there is good cause to doubt this. For example, John Walker Lindh, a Californian of European descent who was relatively new to Islam and not trained in infiltration was able to join al Qaida and enroll in a training camp in Afghanistan after being in Pakistan for six months. At the camp he learned details about 9/11. Jack Roche, a white Muslim from Australia went to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Malaysia, and was able to train with explosives, meet bin Laden, Atef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Hambali/Riduan Isamuddin, and others, and was entrusted with funds to organize an al Qaida branch in Australia. The US embassy in Australia and Australian intelligence ignored him, which Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, a Bush ally, admits was a "very serious mistake" (quoted in The Terror Timeline). Roche is now in prison for 9 years for planning to blow up an Israeli embassy, with al Qaida.
The FBI was slow to investigate a Quincy, Massachusetts software company, Ptech, Inc., that served the White House, military, FAA, FBI, IRS, and NATO, and has or had officers with ties to al Qaida and possibly Hamas. Yacub Mirza was on Ptech's board, and he was a high ranking official in several fundamentalist groups the US believes supported terrorism. Ptech Vice President and Chief Scientist Hussein Ibrahim was also vice chairman of BMI, an investment company that no longer exists and also the target of investigation. BMI laundered money from Yassin al-Qadi to the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, according to an FBI affadavit. al-Qadi is on a list of twelve Saudi capitalists the CIA secretly listed as benefactors of al Qaida. al-Qadi invested in Ptech since 1994, and several of its Boston employees told the FBI that al-Qadi was the funder of Ptech, but reportedly the FBI sat on the information and did not inform the Treasury Department inquiry into al-Qadi. Apparently the FBI did not act on further allegations in June 2002. At that time WBZ-TV Boston began investigating Ptech, but was asked by Federal agencies to wait three months before broadcasting their report. The station says the FBI investigation of Ptech began that August, and Ptech was raided December 5, 2002 (cited Thompson's The Terror Timeline). A website hosting company, the InfoCom Corporation, was raided in Texas just before 9/11, possibly a similar case of terrorism links between technology companies in the US and fundamentalist terrorists.
According to Michael C. Ruppert, writing in his book Crossing the Rubicon (for more, see www.fromthewilderness.com), bin Laden may have a major advantage that allows him to access US and foreign government and banking systems. In 2001 it was reported that FBI spy Robert Hanssen sold a copy of the PROMIS software to the Russian mafia, who then sold it to bin Laden. PROMIS is software for collecting and analyzing information in databases and was stolen from the Inslaw Corporation by the
US government in the early 80's. The software was then given to countries such as Israel and Canada, but with a feature allowing secret access by the US to sensitive government information and manipulation of financial dealings. If the program really has these capabilities and al Qaida has it, then al Qaida's success against the US is more understandable without invoking collaboration. An article on From the Wilderness alleges that Ptech engineered a version of PROMIS and was connected to al Qaida. By October 2001 US intelligence organizations claimed they were no longer using PROMIS, because it had been compromised by Hanssen.
Israel and 9/11
Israeli warnings to the US about the 9/11 plot were apparently ignored, but that is not the full extent of the publicly known Israeli actions regarding 9/11. The Saudi minister investigating 9/11 blamed Israel for it, though there is good evidence that at least a faction of the Saudi monarchy supports al Qaida's goals and strategy. February 6, 2001 eleven men from Afghanistan with Israeli passports were arrested by India as they were trying to go to Bangladesh. India concluded that this was a Mossad (Israeli intelligence) attempt to infiltrate al Qaida by an unexpected route (The Week, 2/6/00). Apparently beginning the month before, hundreds of Israeli spies posing as art students in the USA began attempting to penetrate government agencies, especially the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and military bases, and this was poorly covered by the media.
The surveillance of the DEA may relate to the control of the US market for the illegal drug Ecstasy by Israeli organized crime. A DEA Office of Security Programs report from June 2001 that was leaked to the media says the spies are trying to disrupt DEA investigations of the Israeli mafia. April 30, 2001 Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City was named as a possible target of the so-called art student spy ring. Up to that time almost 120 Israeli spies had been captured and about 20 more were caught before 9/11. By November 60 or more Israelis had been arrested for immigration violations, and many were also being held for national security concerns. May 7, 2002 a moving truck was stopped for speeding late at night near Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Oak Harbor, Washington, and a police dog indicated explosives residue in the truck and on one of the two men. Traces of TNT and the plastic explosive RDX were found inside. The FBI said the Israelis, both unauthorized travelers and one carrying a modified passport, were not involved with explosives, just a cigaratte lighter. Weeks later the involved Seattle FBI office was burgled, including the evidence room. According to the Palm Beach Post (3/11/02) the DEA report said the spies were all former Israeli soldiers, most having specialized in intelligence, spying on telecommunications, and explosive work.
May 9th two Israelis fled arrest and were found with fake papers in Tennessee. May 27th two tried to infiltrate an Atlanta military base, possibly carrying explosives. Salon showed that, of the two Israeli universities the spies claimed to have come from, one was nonexistent, and the other had no art students (5/7/02). A government official suggested to Salon that the poorly disguised DEA infiltration could be cover for other operations, like spying on al Qaida in the USA.
December 12-15 Fox News linked the spying to 9/11, but then withdrew it from its website after pressure from American Zionist groups. The British Jane's Intelligence Digest (3/15/02) printed "It is rather strange that the U.S. media seems to be ignoring what may well be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks – the alleged breakup of a major Israeli espionage operation in the U.S.A." The Justice Department denied the existence of the spying on March 6, 2002.
Some of the spies appear to have been spying on the hijackers. The German newspaper Der Spiegel said (10/1/02) "a horde of Israeli counter-terror investigators, posing as students" spied on the hijackers. Five lived near Atta and Marwan Alshehhi and two other accused hijackers in Hollywood, Florida, before being deported in April 2001, unlike the future hijackers themselves. At one point Atta lived at 3389 Sheridan St., only hundreds of feet from Israeli agents living at 4220.
On 9/11 it is well known that five Israelis were arrested after they were seen filming, seemingly with glee, the destruction of the WTC from the roof of their company, Urban Moving Systems, by Liberty State Park in New Jersey. One man had $4700 dollars in his sock, one had two passports, and they had a box cutter and a map marking certain places. The Israelis, Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari, and Yaron Shmuel, were held for 71 days and later released, claiming they were tortured, and one told ABC News (6/21/02) that they were told to "document the event." The FBI thought at least two were Mossad agents and some of them were in a national security database (ABC News, 6/21/02). The owner of the company, Dominick Suter, was questioned 9/12 and the premises searched, but he fled by 9/14.
September 29-30th 6 more Israelis were arrested in the Midwest and had photographs and information on a Florida nuclear powerplant, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, box cutters, etc. FBI investigators were outraged that the Israelis were released before being questioned. October 16th Moshe Elmakias and Ron Katar were arrested for illegal dumping, from a van labeled Moving Systems Incorporated. They were in possession of an undated video with many shots of the Sears Tower, another target al Qaida is known to have considered. Ayelet Reisler was with them and had contradictory identification (Philadelphia Mercury, 10/18/01).
Many people are now also aware some Israeli citizens were forewarned about 9/11. September 4th the North American office of Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. (49% owned by the government of Israel) was relocated from the 16th floor of WTC to Norfolk, Virginia. The move's date was publicized half a year before. Over 200 employees moved out and around 10 remaining survived. Perhaps coincidentally, the eighteen employees of the Israeli company ClearForest were there also, but the four of five at work on Black Tuesday survived. Those were the only Israeli companies located in the WTC on its final day, according to Terror Timeline. Two hours before the attack, two workers in Odigo, Inc.'s Research and Development facility near Tel Aviv, Israel were warned, and possibly others. Odigo is among the biggest instant messaging providers and the WTC was two blocks from its main office. Odigo reported the message to the FBI, but no one has been named and Odigo has not released the actual message.
A former Israeli special operations soldier and founder of an electronics company was sitting near accused hijacker Satam Al Suqami on American Airlines Flight 11, and was shot or stabbed by Suqami.
In an 'unfortunate' remark, former and now current rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 9/11 that "It's very good. Well, not very good, but it will generate sympathy" (NYT, 9/12/01), which relates to the many 'wars on terror' launched by many countries on their domestic opponents after 9/11, yet another benefit of 9/11 for reactionaries (mostly friends of the US government) the world over.
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