Using Planes as Bombs
The Pentagon commissioned an expert panel in 1993 to investigate the
possibility of an airplane being used to bomb national landmarks.
Retired Air Force Col. Doug Menarchik, who organised the $150,000
study for the Defense Department's Office of Special Operations and
Low-Intensity Conflict, recalled: "It was considered radical
thinking, a little too scary for the times. After I left, it met a
quiet death." Other participants have noted that the decision not to
publish detailed scenarios issued to some extent from fear that this
may give terrorists ideas. Nevertheless, a draft document detailing
the results of the investigation was circulated through the Pentagon,
the Justice Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Senior agency officials decided against a public release.[2]
The veracity of the Pentagon's "radical thinking" was confirmed in
1994 when there occurred three attempted attacks on buildings using
airplanes. The first, in April of that year, involved a Federal
Express flight engineer facing dismissal.
Having boarded a DC-10 as a passenger, he invaded the cockpit,
planning to crash the plane into a company building in Memphis.
Fortunately, he was overpowered by the crew.
The second attempt occurred in September. A lone pilot crashed a
small plane into a tree on the White House grounds, just short of the
President's bedroom.
The third incident occurred in December. An Air France flight in
Algiers was hijacked by members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)- who
are linked to Al-Qaeda-aiming to crash it into the Eiffel Tower.
French Special Forces stormed the plane on the ground.[3]
Al-Qaeda's Plans: Project Bojinka
Western intelligence had been aware of plans for such terrorist
attacks on U.S. soil as early as 1995. Both the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had
detailed information about the possible use of hijack/suicide attacks
by terrorists connected to Osama bin Laden. The New York Times
reported that:
"In 1994, two jetliners were hijacked by people who wanted to crash
them into buildings, one of them by an Islamic militant group. And
the 2000 edition of the FAA's annual report on Criminal Acts Against
Aviation, published this year, said that although Osama bin Laden 'is
not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation
and the wherewithal to do so,' adding, 'Bin Laden's anti-Western and
anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant
threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.'"[4]
Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community was aware of bin Laden's
specific intentions to use hijacked civilian planes as weapons. In
this regard, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that:
"The FBI had advance indications of plans to hijack U.S. airliners
and use them as weapons, but neither acted on them nor distributed
the intelligence to local police agencies. From the moment of the
September 11th attacks, high-ranking federal officials insisted that
the terrorists' method of operation surprised them. Many stick to
that story. Actually, elements of the hijacking plan were known to
the FBI as early as 1995 and, if coupled with current information,
might have uncovered the plot."[5]
Details of these advanced indications have been noted in a report by
the respected German daily, Die Welt: "Western secret services knew
as far back as 1995 that suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden
planned to attack civilian sites using commercial passenger planes."
Quoting sources "close to western intelligence agencies," the
newspaper reported that: "The plan was discovered in January 1995 by
Philippine police who were investigating a possible attack against
Pope John Paul II on a visit to Manila.
"They found details of the plan in a computer seized in an apartment
used by three men who were part of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. It
provided for 11 planes to be exploded simultaneously by bombs placed
on board, but also in an alternative form for several planes flying
to the United States to be hijacked and flown into civilian targets.
Among targets mentioned was the World Trade Center in New York, which
was destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States
that killed thousands."
This plot "re-surfaced during the trial in New York in 1997 of
Pakistani Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the attack on the World
Trade Center in 1993... [The] U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
and CIA would have known about the plan at the latest at this
time."[6] As the Washington DC-based Public Education Center (PEC)
observes, "Federal investigative sources have confirmed that
Murad"-who was "a close confidant and right-hand man to Yousef, who
was convicted of crimes relating to the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center"-"detailed an entire plot to dive bomb aircraft in the
headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, VA."
along with other U.S. buildings. "Yousef independently boasted of the
plot to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr and FBI agent Charles
Stern on an extradition flight from Pakistan to the United States in
February 1995," continues the PEC report. "The agents later testified
to that fact in courtS [T]he plan targeted not only the CIA but other
U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon."[7]
Rafael M. Garcia III, Chairman/CEO of the Mega Group of Computer
Companies in the Philippines, who often works with the National
Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in his field of expertise, was involved
in the intelligence operation that uncovered Project Bojinka. Garcia
was responsible for the decoding of Yousef's computer. "This was how
we found out about the various plots being hatched by the cell of
Ramzi Yousef. First, there was the plot to assassinate Pope John Paul
II," he observes. "Then, we discovered a second, even more sinister
plot: Project Bojinka, or a Yugoslav term for loud bang.[8] This was
a plot to blow up 11 airlines over the Pacific Ocean, all in a
48-hour period. The planes would have come from Seoul, Hong Kong,
Taipei, Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila.
"Then we found another document that discussed a second alternative
to crash the 11 planes into selected targets in the United States
instead of just blowing them up in the air. These included the CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia; the World Trade Center in New
York; the Sears Tower in Chicago; the TransAmerica Tower in San
Francisco; and the White House in Washington, DC... I submitted my
findings to NBI officials, who most certainly turned over the report
(and the computer) either to then Senior Superintendent Avelino Razon
of the PNP [the Philippine National Police] or to Bob Heafner of the
FBIS I have since had meetings with certain U.S. authorities and they
have confirmed to me that indeed, many things were done in response
to my report."[9]
The World Tribune similarly reports, citing an intelligence source
involved in the Philippine operation, that: "The hijacked aircraft
were to be crashed into structures in the United States, including
the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon, the Transamerica
tower in San Francisco and the Sears Tower in Chicago."[10] Paul
Monk, Senior Fellow at the Australian Thinking Skills Institute and a
Professor at the Australian Defense University, cites "confidential
sources" in Manila and Washington detailing that: "Project Bojinka
was an AQ [Al-Qaeda] plan to hijack eleven airliners simultaneously,
exploding many of them at various places over the Pacific, but flying
at least two of them into major federal government buildings in the
United States. The flights to be hijacked were specified. They were
all United Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Delta flights.
"The plan has been masterminded by one Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested
in Islamabad in the wake of Murad's interrogation. Both Murad and
Yousef were extradited to the United States, tried and convicted for
complicity in the 1993 attack on the WTC. The date of Yousef's
conviction was 11 September 1996. From that point, given the
fascination terrorists have with anniversaries, 11 September should
surely have become a watch date."[11]
Detailed elaboration on this matter is provided by the Washington
DC-based media watch group, Accuracy In Media (AIM). AIM has harshly
criticised the media for largely ignoring the U.S. intelligence
community's advanced knowledge of Project Bojinka:
"In 1995, the CIA and the FBI learned that Osama bin Laden was
planning to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as bombs to attack
important targets in the U.S. This scheme was called Project Bojinka.
It was discovered in the Philippines, where authorities arrested two
of bin Laden's agents, Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad. They were
involved in planting a bomb on a Philippine airliner. Project
Bojinka, which Philippine authorities found outlined on Abdul Murad's
laptop, called for planting bombs on eleven U.S. airliners and
hijacking others and crashing them into targets like the CIA building.
It required aviators like Japan's kamikaze pilots who were willing to
commit suicide. Bin Laden had no such pilots in 1995, but he set out
to train young fanatics willing to die for him to fly airliners.
Abdul Murad, whose laptop had revealed the plan, admitted that he was
being trained for a suicide mission. Bin Laden began training pilots
in Afghanistan with the help of an Afghan pilot and a Pakistani
general.
Project Bojinka was known to the CIA and the FBI. It was described in
court documents in the trial in New York of Ramzi Yousef and Abdul
Murad for their participation in the bombing of the World Trade
Center in 1993. Since the CIA had been mentioned as one of the
targets in Project Bojinka, it should have had an especially strong
interest in any evidence that bin Laden was preparing to carry it
out. The most obvious indicator, and one that should have been
watched most carefully, was the recruitment of young, dedicated
followers to learn to fly American airliners. That would require
keeping a close watch on flight schools where that training is
given."[12]
Post-Bojinka Intelligence Gathering
And indeed, the surveillance of flight schools is exactly what
subsequently occurred, indicating that the threat posed by Project
Bojinka was not dismissed-rather, it was taken seriously and used as
the basis for intensive intelligence gathering. As Garcia testifies,
in meetings with "certain U.S. authorities... they have confirmed to me
that indeed, many things were done in response" to the findings of
Project Bojinka.[13] The Washington Post, noting the plans outlined
in Project Bojinka, reported that: "Since 1996, the FBI had been
developing evidence that international terrorists were using flight
schools to learn to fly jumbo jets." This evidence began to
accumulate shortly after the FBI learned of Project Bojinka. "A
foiled plot in Manila to blow up U.S. airliners and later court
testimony by an associate of bin Laden had touched off FBI inquiries
at several schools, officials say."[14] It should be noted that this
report indicates that Al-Qaeda's plans for Project Bojinka were
considered by U.S. intelligence to be a credible threat, and thus
"touched off" further investigations.
Early in the same year, U.S. officials had identified crop-dusters
and suicide flights as potential terrorist weapons. Elaborate steps
were adopted to prevent an attack from the air during the Summer
Olympic Games in Atlanta. U.S. aircraft were deployed to intercept
suspicious aircraft in the skies over Olympic venues, while agents
monitored crop-duster flights within hundreds of miles of downtown
Atlanta. According to Woody Johnson, head of the FBI's Atlanta office
at the time, law enforcement agents fanned out to regional airports
throughout northern Georgia "to make sure nobody hijacked a small
aircraft and tried to attack one of the venues." From 6th July to
11th August, when the Games ended, the FAA had banned all aviation
within a one-mile radius of the Olympic Village where athletes were
resident. Aircraft were also ordered to stay at least three miles
away from other sites, beginning three hours before each event until
three hours after each event ended.[15] These extensive measures in
1996, in response to the general threat of a possible terrorist
attack, should be duly noted-there is a stark contrast between these
measures and the almost total lack of preventive measures in response
to warnings of the 11th September attacks.
By 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration's annual report on
Criminal Acts Against Aviation noted the threat posed by bin Laden,
recalling that a radical Muslim leader living in British exile had
warned in August 1998 that bin Laden "would bring down an airliner,
or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States." The 2000
edition of the annual report, published early in 2001, reiterated
concerns that although bin Laden "is not known to have attacked civil
aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so...
Bin Laden's anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his
followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to
U.S. civil aviation."[16]
Meanwhile, the surveillance of Al-Qaeda operatives on U.S. soil
continued. Between 2000 and 2001, the CIA had made the FBI aware of
the names of about 100 suspected members of bin Laden's terrorist
network thought to be headed to, or already in, the United States. A
23rd August 2001 cable specifically referred to Khalid Al-Midhar and
Nawaq Alhazmi, who were allegedly aboard the hijacked airplane that
crashed into the Pentagon.[17]
Six months before 11th September, U.S. agencies became aware through
authoritative intelligence warnings that bin Laden was planning to
implement Project Bojinka soon. Three months later, these warnings
were repeated. The warnings were, again, not dismissed. On the
contrary, the U.S. intelligence community took the reports very
seriously. Newsbytes, an online division of the Washington Post,
reported in mid-September that:
"U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals at
least three months ago that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning
to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important
symbols of American and Israeli culture, according to a story in
Germany's daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
The FAZ, quoting unnamed German intelligence sources, said that the
Echelon spy network was being used to collect information about the
terrorist threats, and that U.K. intelligence services apparently
also had advance warning. The FAZ, one of Germany's most respected
dailies, said that even as far back as six months ago western and
near-east press services were receiving information that such attacks
were being planned. Within the American intelligence community, the
warnings were taken seriously and surveillance intensified, the FAZ
said."[18]
The last comment-"Within the American intelligence community, the
warnings were taken seriously"-is crucial. It clearly indicates that
in response to the ECHELON warnings, the entire U.S. intelligence
community-all U.S. intelligence agencies-were on alert for a Project
Bojinka-style attack, and consequently intensified surveillance. The
New Yorker further reports that according to Richard A. Clarke, U.S.
National Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the White House, about
ten weeks before 11th September, the U.S. intelligence community was
convinced that a terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda on U.S. soil was
imminent. Seven to eight weeks prior to the 11th September attacks,
all internal U.S. security agencies were warned of an impending
Al-Qaeda attack against the Untied States that would likely occur in
several weeks time. This warning coincided with the second ECHELON
warning cited before:
"Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al
Qaeda attack. 'It all came together in the third week in June,'
Clarke said. 'The C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was
coming in the next several weeks.' On July 5th, Clarke summoned all
the domestic security agencies-the Federal Aviation Administration,
the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
and the F.B.I.-and told them to increase their security in light of
an impending attack."[19]
It is apparent then that all U.S. intelligence agencies were fully
expecting an impending attack by Al-Qaeda by the beginning of July
2001, and moreover that the U.S. intelligence community was aware
that "terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use
as weapons to attack important symbols of American culture." In
other words, the U.S. intelligence community was anticipating a
Project Bojinka-style attack. Among the buildings identified as
"symbolic of American culture" in Al-Qaeda's Project Bojinka plans,
known by U.S. intelligence, was the World Trade Center. That the WTC
was an extremely likely target is further clear from the fact that
operatives linked to Osama bin Laden had previously targeted the Twin
Towers in a failed bombing attempt. As a consequence, the entire
domestic intelligence and security apparatus seems to have been
alerted to increase relevant security and surveillance.
Warnings of the impending attack continued to be received thereafter.
Approximately 4 weeks prior to 11th September, the CIA received
specific information of an attack on U.S. soil. The Associated Press
reports that: "Officials also said the CIA had developed general
information a month before the attacks that heightened concerns that
bin Laden and his followers were increasingly determined to strike on
U.S. soil." A CIA official affirmed that: "There was something
specific in early August that said to us that he was determined in
striking on U.S. soil." AP elaborates that: "The information prompted
the CIA to issue a warning to federal agencies."[20]
It was further revealed by a United Press International (UPI) report
by U.S. terrorism correspondent Richard Sale on ECHELON's monitoring
of bin Laden and other terrorist groups that:
"The targets of Echelon center on the penetration of the major
components of most of the world's telephone and telecommunications
systems. This could cover conversations NSA targets. Also included
are all the telexes carried over the world's telecommunications
networks, along with financial dealings: money transfers, airline
destinations, stock information, data on demonstrations or
international conferences, and much more."
ECHELON's effectiveness against bin Laden's network was further
revealed in relation to a case against him in a U.S. District Court
in Manhattan, illustrating that the National Security Agency was able
to penetrate bin Laden's most secure communications. The case, Sale
noted, "is based mainly on National Security Agency intercepts of
phone calls between bin Laden and his operatives around the
world-Afghanistan to London, from Kenya to the United States."
The technology had been used since at least 1995. Ben Venzke,
Director of Intelligence and Special Projects for iDefense, a
Virginia information warfare firm, is also quoted: "Since Bin Laden
started to encrypt certain calls in 1995, why would they now be part
of a court record? 'Codes were broken,' U.S. officials said, and
Venzke added that 'you don't use your highest levels of secure
communications all the time. It's too burdensome and it exposes it to
other types of exploitation..'" The UPI report clarifies that much of
the evidence in the case had been obtained in ECHELON intercepts
subsequent to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.[21]
Given that U.S. officials "believe the planning for the Sept. 11
attacks probably began two years ago," information on preparations
for the attacks should have been available to, and picked up by,
ECHELON.[22]
Confirmation that U.S. intelligence had been successfully monitoring
Al-Qaeda's communications right through to the aftermath of 11th
September came from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative
Republican with wide contacts in the national security establishment.
On the day of the attacks, Hatch stated that the U.S. government had
been monitoring Osama bin Laden's communications electronically, and
had thus intercepted two bin Laden aides celebrating the attacks:
"They have an intercept of some information that included people
associated with bin Laden who acknowledged a couple of targets were
hit."[23]
ABC News further reported that shortly before 11th September, the
U.S. National Security Agency intercepted "multiple phone calls from
Abu Zubaida, bin Laden's chief of operations, to the United States."
The information contained in these intercepted phone calls has not
been disclosed.[24]
Given that ECHELON was monitoring Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and
even breaking their secure codes, the implications are alarming. As
Canadian social philosopher Professor John McMurtry of Guelph
University, Ontario, has noted in this connection:
"The pervasive Echelon surveillance apparatus and the most
sophisticated intelligence machinery ever built is unlikely not to
have eavesdropped on some of the very complicated organisation and
plans across states and boundaries for the multi-site hijacking of
planes from major security structures across the U.S.-especially
since the suicide pilots were trained as pilots in the U.S., and the
World Trade Centre had already been bombed in 1993 by Afghan
ex-allies of the CIA. Since the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, is
himself an ex-CIA operative in Afghanistan, and his moves presumably
under the intensest scrutiny for past successful terrorist attacks on
two U.S. embassies in 1998, one has to reflect on the
connections."[25]
Air Authorities Were Warned of Bojinka
It is worth noting here that around the time of the first ECHELON
warnings, near the end of June 2001, Airjet Airline World News also
issued a warning, specifying Project Bojinka: "During the trial a
Secret Service agent testified that Yousef boasted during his
extradition flight to New York that he would have blown up several
jumbo jets within a few weeks if his plan had not been discovered.
The government said the defendants even devised a name for their
airline terror plot named, 'Project Bojinka' The airlines are at
risk-They need to take all appropriate measures and counter-measures
to ensure the safety of their passengers."[26] The White House
National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, had also
given direct warning to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to
increase security measures in light of an impending terrorist attack
in July 2001.[27] The FAA refused to take such measures.
Former Federal Air Safety Inspector Rodney Stich, who has 50 years of
experience in aviation and air safety, had warned the FAA about the
danger of skyjacking, specifically highlighting the fact that cockpit
doors weren't secure, and further that pilots should be allowed to
carry basic weapons. The FAA refused to implement his suggestions,
and when it became apparent the threat was real, they blocked efforts
to arm pilots, or to place air marshals on planes, among other
security measures. In an extensive study of the subject, Stich
observes that:
"Federal inspectors... had years earlier reported the hijacking threat
and the simple inexpensive measures to prevent hijackers from taking
control of the aircraft. Numerous fatal hijackings further proved the
need for urgent preventative measures. Instead of taking the legally
required corrective actions, arrogant and corrupt FAA management
personnel destroyed official reports of the dangers and the need for
corrective actions; warned air safety inspectors not to submit
reports that would make the office look bad when there is a crash
related to the known problems; threatened inspectors who took
corrective actions or continued to make reports-even though crashes
from these uncorrected safety problems continued to occur."[28]
The Los Angeles Times corroborates this assessment: "Federal
bureaucracy and airline lobbying slowed and weakened a set of safety
improvements recommended by a presidential commission-including one
that a top airline industry official now says might have prevented
the Sept. 11 terror attacks...
"The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, created
in 1996 after TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island, N.Y.,
recommended 31 steps that it said were urgently needed to provide a
multilayered security system at the nation's airports... The Federal
Aviation Administration expressed support for the proposals, which
ranged from security inspections at airports to tighter screening of
mail parcels, and the Clinton administration vowed to rigorously
monitor the changes. But by Sept. 11, most of the proposals had been
watered down by industry lobbying or were bogged down in bureaucracy,
a Times review found."[29]
The U.S. government thus bears direct responsibility for this state
of affairs, by consistently failing to comply with its avowed
responsibility to "rigorously monitor" and enforce the required
changes. Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel of Judicial
Watch, the Washington-based legal watchdog, comments that: "It is now
apparent-given the near total lack of security at U.S. airports and
elsewhere-that the U.S. government has not been forthright with the
American people...
"During the last eight years of scandal during the Clinton
administration, and the first eight months of the Bush
Administration, reports this morning confirm that little to nothing
was done to secure our nation's airports and transportation systems
as a whole-despite warnings. Instead, cosmetic reform of education,
social security, taxes, and other less important issues were given
precedence. In addition, the American people were led to believe that
appropriate anti-terrorist counter measures were being taken. Instead
of telling the truth so the problems could be addressed, politicians
painted a rosy picture in order to be elected and re-elected."[30]
This is clearly more than a case of incompetence. This systematic
inaction, despite escalating warnings of a terrorist threat to the
U.S. from the air, indicates wilful and reckless negligence of the
highest order on the part of the U.S. government, rooted in sheer
indifference to the potential loss in American lives.
Intensification of Surveillance After Confirmation of Bojinka Plans
It is against this backdrop that the multiple intelligence warnings
of an impending terrorist act by bin Laden's operatives should be
assessed. Clearly, on the basis of the 1995 revelations about Project
Bojinka, coupled with the authoritative warnings in 2001 from
America's own ECHELON network among others, "the American
intelligence community" was aware that bin Laden was planning
imminent attacks on U.S. soil through the hijacking of civilian
airliners to be used as bombs against key buildings "symbolic of
American culture." Among the buildings in Washington and New York
known to be on bin Laden's list of targets was the World Trade Centre.
Project Bojinka, in other words, was underway. U.S. intelligence
agencies subsequently intensified their surveillance, and in doing so
began tracking suspected terrorists. This indicates that the U.S.
intelligence community had intensified surveillance by its various
agencies in direct response to fears of a Project Bojinka-style
attack on U.S. soil, orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.
It is appropriate then to consider in more detail the findings of
this surveillance. WorldNetDaily, the Internet news service of the
U.S.-based non-profit Western Journalism Center, reports some
pertinent revelations in this respect:
"The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies also knew that
two of the hijackers were in the country, according to the Los
Angeles Times. They were on a terrorist watch list. But the airlines
were not notified... The FBI had several terrorists under surveillance,
according to the Oct. 1 issue of Newsweek. They intercepted
communications just prior to Sept. 11 that suggested something very
big was about to happen... Still, there were more clues. Zacarias
Moussaoui was arrested after flight trainers tipped off the feds that
he wanted to learn how to fly a 747 but wasn't interested in takeoffs
or landings. Zacarias was traveling on a French passport. When
contacted, the French government reported that he was a suspected
terrorist [linked to Osama Bin Laden]."[31]
Reuters reported in relation to Zacarias that: "The FBI arrested an
Islamic militant in Boston last month and received French
intelligence reports linking him to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin
Laden but apparently did not act on them," a French radio station
said on Thursday...
"Europe 1 radio reported that U.S. police arrested a man with dual
French and Algerian nationality who had several passports, technical
information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. The man had been
taking flying lessons, it added. Asked for information by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, French security services provided a dossier
clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with bin
Laden."[32]
At the time of his arrest, Zacarias had been in possession of
technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. It was
on 26th August that the FBI headquarters was informed by French
intelligence that Zacarias had ties to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Despite the confirmation of his involvement in bin Laden's terrorist
network, a special counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed
the information against him, but concluded there was insufficient
evidence that he represented a threat. The Minnesota flight school,
Pan Am International Flight Academy, where Zacarias had been
training, also warned the FBI in no uncertain terms.
As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, "Moussaoui raised
suspicions at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Egan
[Minnesota]" when he attended the Academy in August 2001 to learn how
to fly jumbo jets. He "first raised eyebrows when, during a simple
introductory exchange, he said he was from France, but then didn't
seem to understand when the instructor spoke French to him... Moussaoui
then became belligerent and evasive about his background... In
addition, he seemed inept in basic flying procedures, while seeking
expensive training on an advanced commercial jet simulator."[33]
Even the flight school's own employees "began whispering that he
could be a hijacker." Director of Operations at the Academy John
Rosengren recounts how Zacarias' instructor was "concerned and
wondered why someone who was not a pilot and had so little experience
was trying to pack so much training into such a short time... 'The more
he was able to talk to him, the more he decided he was not pilot
material... There was discussion about how much fuel was on board a
747-400 and how much damage that could cause if it hit
anything.'"[34] So the instructor contacted the FBI, as the San
Francisco Chronicle reported:
"An instructor at a Minnesota flight school warned the FBI in August
of his suspicion that a student who was later identified as a part of
Osama bin Laden's terror network might be planning to use a
commercial plane loaded with fuel as a weapon, a member of Congress
and other officials said yesterday. The officials, who were briefed
by the school, said the instructor warned the FBI in urgent tones
about the terrorist threat posed by the student, Zacarias Moussaoui.
According to U.S. Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, the
instructor called the bureau several times to find someone in
authority who seemed willing to act on the information. His warnings
could not have been more blunt. Oberstar noted that: 'He told them,
'Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?'
Congressional officials said the account by the school, the Pan Am
International Flight Academy in Eagan, outside Minneapolis, raised
new questions about why the FBI and other agencies did not prevent
the hijackings... [The flight instructor] was a former military pilot
who grew suspicious after encounters in which Moussaoui was
belligerent and evasive about his background and because he was so
adamant about learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet despite his clear
incompetence as a pilot. Moussaoui, 33, was arrested in August on
immigration charges. But despite the urging of the school and federal
agents in Minnesota and despite a warning from the French that
Moussaoui was linked to Muslim extremists, FBI headquarters resisted
opening a broader investigation until after Sept. 11."[35]
Indeed, the U.S. government actively prevented a further
investigation from being conducted. Local FBI investigators in
Minneapolis had immediately viewed Zacarias as a terrorist suspect
and sought authorisation for a special counterintelligence
surveillance warrant in order to search the hard drive of his home
computer. The government's Justice Department plus top FBI officials
blocked an FBI request for a national security warrant to search
Zacarias' computer, claiming that FBI agents lacked sufficient
information to meet the legal requirements to justify the warrant.
The block remained in place even after the notification from French
intelligence that Zacarias was linked to bin Laden.[36]
According to ABC News, however, at the time the Justice Department
justified the refusal of a warrant by claiming that there was
insufficient evidence connecting Zacarias to any known terrorist
group: "Moussaoui was taken into custody on August 16, but to the
outrage of FBI agents in the field, headquarters was slow to react
and said he could not be connected to any known terror group."[37]
This was despite the information from French intelligence
demonstrating the latter's links to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
While some law enforcement officials justify the block as a legal
necessity, others strongly disagree that such justification has any
real basis in law. "That decision is being questioned by some FISA
experts, who say it's possible a warrant would have been granted,"
reported Greg Gordon. "The special court that reviews FISA requests
has approved more than 12,000 Justice Department applications for
covert search warrants and wiretaps and rejected only one since the
act was passed in 1978, according to government reports."[38] MS-NBC
has similarly reported that:
"...other law enforcement officials are equally insistent that a more
aggressive probe of Moussaoui-when combined with other intelligence
in the possession of U.S. agencies-might have yielded sufficient
clues about the impending plot. 'The question being asked here is if
they put two and two together, they could have gotten a lot more
information about the guy-if not stopped the hijacking,' said one
investigator."[39]
The New York Times comments that the Moussaoui case "raised new
questions about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other
agencies did not prevent the hijackings."[40]
The U.S. response to Mohamed Atta, the alleged lead hijacker, was
even more extraordinary. The German public TV channel, ARD, reported
on 23rd November, 2001, that Mohamed Atta was subject to telephone
monitoring by the Egyptian secret service. The latter had found that
Atta had made at least one recent visit to Afghanistan from his home
in Hamburg, Germany. The FBI had also been monitoring Atta's
movements for several months in 2000, when he traveled several times
from Hamburg to Frankfurt and bought large quantities of chemicals
potentially usable in making explosives. Atta's name had also been
mentioned in a Hamburg phone call between Islamic fundamentalists
monitored by the German police in 1999.[41]
In January 2001, Atta was permitted reentry into the United States
after a trip to Germany, despite being in violation of his visa
status. He had landed in Miami on 10th January on a flight from
Madrid on a tourist visa-yet he had told immigration inspectors that
he was taking flying lessons in the U.S., for which an M-1 student
visa is strictly required. Jeanne Butterfield, Executive Director of
the American Immigration Lawyers Association, points out that: "Nine
times out of 10, they would have told him to go back and file [for
that status] overseas. You're not supposed to come in as a visitor
for pleasure and go to work or school."[42]
PBS' Frontlines also takes note of "The failure of the INS to stop
the attack's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, from entering the U.S. three
times on a tourist visa in 2001, even though officials knew the visa
had expired in 2000 and Atta had violated its terms by taking flight
lessons."[43]
This failure should be evaluated in context with the fact that Atta
had been under FBI surveillance for stockpiling bomb-making
materials. Furthermore, Canadian TV reported that Atta had already
been implicated in a terrorist bombing in Israel, with the
information passed on to the United States before he was first issued
his tourist visa.[44]
Yet despite these blatant terrorist connections, Atta was still
allowed into the United States freely, and made repeated trips to
Europe, each time returning to the U.S., and being admitted by U.S.
customs and immigration without obstruction-not because visa
regulations were lax, but because they were willfully violated. The
London Observer notes in surprise that Atta:
"...was under surveillance between January and May last year after he
was reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in
Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and for
biological warfare... The U.S. agents reported to have trailed Atta are
said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their
investigation. The disclosure that Atta was being trailed by police
long before 11 September raises the question why the attacks could
not have been prevented with the man's arrest."[45]
Atta also appears to have been under continual surveillance by the
FBI. He was among the suspected terrorists linked to bin Laden
training at U.S. flight schools, which the FBI had already known
about for years. As the BBC observed: "The evidence... reinforces
concerns that the international intelligence community may have known
more about Atta before September 11 than was previously thought, but
had failed to act."[46]
There was a similar lack of response in relation to other suspected
terrorists under U.S. surveillance. Human Events reported that:
"The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies knew about the
presence of at least two of the terrorists in the United States, but
failed to get the information to airlines. Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq
Alhamzi, who were on Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, were already on
the so-called watch list. But federal officials failed to notify
airline officials who might have been able to stop at least one of
the terror attacks, reports the Los Angeles Times."[47]
The CIA and FBI knew three weeks before the attacks that these two
hijackers, including one with a link to the bombing of the U.S.
destroyer Cole in October 2000, were in the United States. Yet
despite being on a terrorism watch list, which details individuals
banned from entering the country due to their apparent links to
terrorist activities, they were neither barred from entry into the
U.S. nor apprehended later. The Washington Post has further pointed
out, incredulously, that more than 50 people were probably involved
in preparations for the operation within the U.S.-without agencies
doing anything about it:
"The scattered details that have emerged about the plot put this
failure in stark relief: More than 50 people were likely involved,
Justice Department officials have said, and the plot required
extensive communications and planning to pull off. The group's
size-not to mention the complexity of its endeavor-should have
offered many opportunities for intelligence infiltration. Yet the
conspirators proceeded unmolested. What is striking is how safe these
people apparently felt, how unthreatened by law enforcement. Some of
the terrorists were here for long periods. They left and entered the
country unimpeded. Some were reportedly on the so-called 'watch
list,' a government catalogue of people who ostensibly are not
permitted to enter the country. Yet this apparently caused them no
problems."[48]
Further corroborative revelations have surfaced, indicating the
extent of the FBI's failure to act. According to reports in Newsweek,
the Washington Post and the New York Times, after 11th September U.S.
military officials gave the FBI information "suggesting that five of
the alleged hijackers received training in the 1990s at secure U.S.
military installations."[49] Newsweek has further elaborated that
U.S. military training of foreign students occurs as a matter of
routine, with the authorisation-and payment-of respective
governments, clarifying in particular that with respect to training
of Saudi pilots, "Training is paid for by Saudi Arabia." The
hijackers, we should note, were almost exclusively Saudi; 15 of the
19 hijackers were Saudis, mostly from wealthy families:
"U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests
five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in
Tuesday's terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military
installations in the 1990s. Another of the alleged hijackers may have
been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in
Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The
fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air
Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force
pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon
source... NEWSWEEK visited the base early Saturday morning, where
military police confirmed that the address housed foreign military
flight trainees... It is not unusual for foreign nationals to train at
U.S. military facilities. A former Navy pilot told NEWSWEEK that
during his years on the base, 'we always, always, always trained
other countries' pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it was
Iranians. The shah was in power. Whoever the country du jour is,
that's whose pilots we train.'
Candidates begin with 'an officer's equivalent of boot camp,' he
said. 'Then they would put them through flight training.' The U.S.
has a long-standing agreement with Saudi Arabia-a key ally in the
1990-91 gulf war-to train pilots for its National Guard. Candidates
are trained in air combat on several Army and Navy bases. Training is
paid for by Saudi Arabia."[50]
Knight Ridder news service provided more specific details of the
findings. Mohamed Atta had attended International Officers School at
Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama; Abdulaziz Alomari had
attended Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force base in Texas;
and Saeed Alghamdi had been to the Defense Language Institute in
Monterey, California.
The U.S. government has attempted to deny the charges despite the
name matches, alleging the existence of biographical discrepancies:
"Officials stressed that the name matches may not necessarily mean
the students were the hijackers because of discrepancies in ages and
other personal data." But measures appear to have been taken to block
public scrutiny of these alleged discrepancies. On 16th September,
news reports asserted that: "Officials would not release ages,
country of origin or any other specific details of the three
individuals." This situation seems to have continued up to the time
of writing.
Even Senate inquiries into the matter have been studiously ignored by
government law enforcement officials, who when pressed, have been
unable to deny that the hijackers were training at secure U.S.
military installations. When Newsweek reported that three of the
hijackers were trained at the secure Pensacola Naval Station in
Florida, Senator Bill Nelson faxed Attorney General John Ashcroft
demanding to know if it was true.
When queried by investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker about
Ashcroft's reply, a spokesman for Senator Nelson explained: "In the
wake of those reports we asked about the Pensacola Naval Air Station
but we never got a definitive answer from the Justice Department. So
we asked the FBI for an answer 'if and when' they could provide us
one. Their response to date has been that they are trying to sort
through something complicated and difficult."
Hopsicker also queried a major in the U.S. Air Force's Public Affairs
Office who "was familiar with the question," and who, unlike U.S. law
enforcement, believed that the matter was clear-cut. She explained
the Air Force's official 'denial' as follows: "Biographically,
they're not the same people. Some of the ages are 20 years off." But
when questioned to illustrate the specific discrepancy, she was
forced to admit there was none. Hopsicker relates that: "'Some' of
the ages? We told her we were only interested in Atta. Was she saying
that the age of the Mohamed Atta who attended the Air Force's
International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base was
different from the terrorist Atta's age as reported? Um, er, no, the
major admitted." Hopsicker asked if he could contact the other
alleged "Mohamed Atta" who is supposed to have been confused with the
hijacker, who had trained at the International Officer's School at
Maxwell Air Force Base, to confirm that they were, in fact, two
different individuals. The major declined without explanation,
stating that she did not "think you're going to get that information."
By mid-October 2001, the FBI's investigations into these matters were
being wrapped up, although no specific answers to this issue,
palatable enough to be released to the public, were found. "On Oct.
10, FBI Agents were ordered to curtail their investigation of the
Sept. 11 attack in an order describing the investigation of the
terrorist hijackings as 'the most exhaustive in its history,'"
reported Hopsicker. "'The investigative staff has to be made to
understand that we're not trying to solve a crime now,' said one law
enforcement official...
"The order was said to have met with resistance from FBI agents who
believed that continued surveillance of suspects might have turned up
critical evidence to prove who orchestrated the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Officials said FBI Director Robert
Mueller, who was sworn in last month, believed that his agents had a
broad understanding of the events of Sept. 11. It was now time to
move on."[51]
The simple question brought up by these revelations is, how did
terrorists receive clearance for training at secure U.S. military and
intelligence facilities, and for what purpose?
As early as three days after the 11th September attacks, FBI Director
Robert S. Mueller III claimed that these findings were new and had
not been known by the FBI previously. The Washington Post noted that
he had: "described reports that several of the hijackers had received
flight training in the United States as 'news, quite obviously,'
adding, 'If we had understood that to be the case, we would
have-perhaps one could have averted this.'"[52] But astonishingly,
the same Post article illustrated that Mueller had lied about the
FBI's lack of knowledge. The Post reported in the same article that,
contrary to the FBI Director's initial testimony, the FBI had in fact
known for several years that terrorists were training at U.S. flight
schools-yet, absolutely nothing had been done about it:
"Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected
terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight
training at schools in the United States and abroad, according to
interviews and court testimony. A senior government official
yesterday acknowledged law enforcement officials were aware that
fewer than a dozen people with links to bin Laden had attended U.S.
flight schools."[53]
A report for the Online Journal by Daniel Hopsicker, former Executive
Producer of a business news show airing internationally on NBC,
confirms that:
"Authorities are probing the European business associations of a
Venice flight school owner, whose school at the Venice airport
trained the nucleus of foreign national terrorist pilots, looking for
possible links to international organized crime groups... Three of the
airliners involved in the September 11 terrorist attack-two in
Manhattan, and one wrested to the ground over Pennsylvania-were
piloted by terrorists who had trained at two flight schools at the
Venice, Florida airport."[54]
"Almost all of the terrorist pilots," Hopsicker reports, "received
their initial training in Venice," at either of two flight schools
owned respectively by Arne Kruithof and Rudi Dekkers. "Together,
these two schools trained the core cadre of foreign terrorist
pilots." But U.S. intelligence allowed this training to continue
unimpeded, even amidst escalating warnings of a terrorist attack on
U.S. soil through the use of hijacked civilian airplanes, and despite
having monitored the terrorists for several years. "The FBI was
swarming Huffman Aviation by 2 a.m., just 18 hours following the
attack. They removed student files from two schools at the Venice
airport: Huffman Aviation and the Florida Flight Training Center just
down the street," owned by the above two individuals.
Indeed, it appears that the reason the FBI was able to move so
quickly is that "federal authorities have been aware for years that
suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving
flight training at schools in the United States." Hopsicker further
observes:
"Experts have been wondering how a conspiracy of such size and
duration could have gone unnoticed by U.S. intelligence agencies and
law enforcement. At least 15 of the far-flung network of terrorist
pilots got their money from the same (so far-unnamed) source. While
in the Venice area last year, the terrorist suspects opened checking
accounts during the summer.
We called someone who used to work at something like the CIA. 'How
could the agency not have known about 15 foreign pilots all paid from
one source?' He chose his words carefully. 'I would assume that they
did know. It would seem almost impossible for them not to.'"[55]
Hopsicker also points out that the suspicious background and
activities of Rudi Dekkers, the owner of Huffman Aviation where most
of the terrorists who went on to implement the 11th September attacks
were trained, are worthy of a further intelligence inquiry. There are
a number of glaring anomalies noted by Hopsicker, a few of which are
mentioned here. Dekkers' chronology of his flight training of
hijackers Atta and Al-Shehhi, for instance, directly contradicts the
testimony of other flight instructors at Jones Aviation Flying
Instructors, Inc.
Additionally, "Dekkers had purchased his aviation school at just
about the time the terrorist pilots moved into town and began their
lessons," according to an aviation employee at Venice Airport.
Another observer at the Airport admitted: "I've always had some
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 had
no use for, nor knowledge of, FAA rules and regs." Special Operations
Commando leader from the nearby McDill Air Force Base observed:
"Rudi's greedy, and when you're greedy you can be used for
something."[56]
According to law enforcement officials, Dekkers has also reportedly
been recently indicted in his native country, Holland, on financial
charges that may include fraud and money laundering.[57] Yet despite
his dubious background, activities and connections, in addition to
his role in training most of the terrorists responsible for 11th
September, he does not appear to have been investigated by the FBI.
Indeed, his innocence seems to have been presumed from the outset:
"Forty-eight hours after the Sept. 11 attack, a flight school owner
named Rudi Dekkers, known to have trained virtually the entire
terrorist pilot cadre... seemed impervious to suspicion."[58]
Most intriguing in this whole affair is the revelation of a Venice
Airport executive, as reported by Hopsicker, that Britannia Aviation,
which operates from a hangar at Rudi Dekker's Huffman Aviation at
Venice Airport, had a "green light" from the Justice Department's
Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA), and that the local Venice
Police Department "had been warned to leave them alone." Britannia
Aviation had been awarded a five-year contract to run a large
regional maintenance facility at the Lynchburg, Virginia, Regional
Airport. At the time of the award, virtually nothing was known about
the company. When Britannia was chosen over a respected and
successful Lynchburg company boasting a multi-million dollar balance
sheet and more than 40 employees, aviation executives there began
voicing concerns to reporters at the local newspaper.
"... it was discovered that Britannia Aviation is a company with
virtually no assets, employees, or corporate history. Moreover, the
company did not even possess the necessary FAA license to perform the
aircraft maintenance services for which it had just been contracted
by the city of Lynchburg... When Britannia Aviation's financial
statements were released after prodding by the local aviation
community, they revealed Britannia to be a 'company' worth less than
$750."
It also emerged that the company had, according to one of its
executives Paul Marten, "for some time been successfully providing
aviation maintenance services for Caribe Air, a Caribbean carrier,"
that Hopsicker notes is, in fact, "a notorious CIA proprietary air
carrier which, even by the standards of a CIA proprietary, has had a
particularly checkered past...
"Caribe Air's history includes 'blemishes' like having its aircraft
seized by federal officials at the infamous Mena, Arkansas, airport a
decade ago, after the company was accused by government prosecutors
of having used as many as 20 planes to ship drugs worth billions of
dollars into this country."
Yet as already noted, an executive at Venice Airport informed
Hopsicker that a DEA source at the airport "reluctantly told me that
Britannia had a 'green light' from the DEA at the Venice airport,
whatever that means. He also said the local Venice Police Department
(which has mounted round-the-clock patrols at the airport since
Sept.11) had been warned to leave them alone."
Why does Britannia-a company reportedly with CIA connections that is
operating illegally out of the same flight school which trained
Al-Qaeda hijackers-have a "green light" from the Justice Department's
DEA, and effective immunity from local police inquiries? Daniel
Hopsicker comments that: "The new evidence adds to existing
indications that Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre's flight
training in this country was part of a so-far unacknowledged U.S.
government intelligence operation which had ultimately tragic
consequences for thousands of civilians on September 11...
"Far from merely being negligent or asleep at the switch... the
accumulating evidence suggests the CIA was not just aware of the
thousands of Arab student pilots who began pouring into this country
several years ago to attend flight training, but was running the
operation for still-unexplained reasons...
It was 'Islamic fundamentalist' Osama bin laden who cloaked his
covert activities under the cover of religious charities. Were we now
discovering that our own government intelligence agencies used the
same ruse? What was going on here? ... [W]hy did a transparent dummy
front company like Paul Marten's Britannia Aviation have a 'green
light' from the DEA? A green light for what?"[59]
The above accounts certainly show that although U.S. intelligence
agencies were aware of Al-Qaeda terrorists training in U.S. flight
schools, and had apparently been surveilling their activities for
years, they did not attempt to apprehend them-despite the escalating
warnings of an imminent attack by Osama bin Laden's operatives. This
was a consequence of a decision by the FBI command. ABC News reported
that only a few weeks before the attacks in early August, the FBI
office in Phoenix alerted FBI headquarters to the unusual influx of
Arab students with Al-Qaeda connections training at local flight
schools. This warning was ignored.[60] It therefore appears that
Mueller had attempted to mislead the public about the scope of the
FBI's knowledge.
However, his admission that such knowledge could have empowered the
U.S. to avert the attacks, taken into account with the fact that the
FBI did indeed possess such knowledge, brings up the pertinent
question of why the FBI failed to do so, despite being perfectly
capable of doing so, according to the FBI Director's own indirect
admission. In what seems to be an attempt to explain away the FBI's
rather shocking inaction, while Osama bin Laden's terrorist lackeys
were undergoing extensive training at U.S. military facilities,
financed by Saudi authorities as Newsweek reports-and while
innumerable credible warnings received by the U.S. intelligence
community repeatedly predicted air attacks on "symbols of American
culture" by bin Laden-linked terrorists, via the hijacking of
civilian planes-the senior U.S. government official cited above
claimed that "there was no information to indicate the flight
students had been planning suicide hijacking attacks." The Post
recorded him as follows: "We were unable to marry any information
from investigations or the intelligence community that talked to
their use of this expertise in the events that we saw unfold on the
11th."[61]
In this context, to interpret the FBI's failure to act as mere
incompetence, compounded by bureaucracy, strains the limits of
reason. It also flies in the face of the most elementary methods of
intelligence gathering. As demonstrated in the preceding
documentation, there was abundant intelligence information predicting
an imminent attack by Al-Qaeda operatives on U.S. soil. Moreover,
this information indicated that Osama bin Laden was orchestrating the
hijacking of civilian planes to be used as bombs against key U.S.
buildings in Washington and New York. Reports show that this
information was "taken seriously" by "the American intelligence
community." Hence, U.S. intelligence agencies were already well aware
that plans to implement Project Bojinka were in progress-and had
accordingly intensified surveillance in direct response.
The FBI and the CIA had known quite specifically that key targets of
the plan were buildings constituting "symbols of American culture"
located in Washington and New York, including the World Trade Centre.
Furthermore, as a consequence of surveillance, the FBI had known for
several years that suspected terrorists with ties to bin Laden were
undergoing training at U.S. flight schools and secure U.S. military
facilities-and in the latter case, with high-level U.S. military
clearance, financed by the Saudi Arabian government. Marrying this
information together, as we have done here, clearly demonstrates that
the obvious course of action was to apprehend, interrogate and follow
up investigations into the Al-Qaeda operatives under surveillance,
particularly those training at U.S. flight schools.
Yet nothing of the sort was done. Despite being under direct
surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community during 2000 and
2001-surveillance which intensified after receipt of credible
warnings of an imminent Project Bojinka-style attack by
Al-Qaeda-these hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, were allowed to
travel freely into and out of the U.S. They were apparently granted
high-level clearance to undergo military training at secure U.S.
facilities with Saudi government funding as well.
The freedom with which Al-Qaeda operatives entered and left the U.S.
should be understood in the context of testimony from Michael
Springmann, former head of the Visa Bureau at the U.S. Consulate in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between 1987 and 1989. Springmann, has had 20
years of experience in the U.S. government, and is now a practising
lawyer in Washington DC. He stated on BBC's 'Newsnight' 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."[62]
In another interview with CBC's Radio One, he stated that according
to confirmation he received from U.S. government officials, the
"CIA was recruiting terrorists to fight against the then Soviets."
Osama bin Laden, moreover, "was their asset, and was working with
them." There were "as many as a hundred" recruits, people "with no
ties to any place in particular... Afghanistan was the end user of
their facilities. They were coming to the U.S. for training as
terrorists. The countries that had supplied them did not want them
back." Springmann testified that CIA officials had consistently
violated State Department regulations to issue visas to these people.
"CBC: Does this demonstrate a relationship between the CIA and Osama
Bin Laden dating back as far as 1987?
"SPRINGMANN: That's right, and as you recall, they believe that this
fellow Sheikh Abdurrahman who was tied to the first New York World
Trade Center bombing had gotten his visa from a CIA case officer in
the Sudan. And that the 15 or so people who came from Saudi Arabia to
participate in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon had gotten
visas through the American consulate general in Jeddah.
"CBC: So what does that suggest, that this pipeline was never rolled
up, that it's still operating?
"SPRINGMANN: Exactly. I thought that it had been, because I'd raised
sufficient hell that I thought that they'd done it. I had complained
to the Embassy in Riyadh, I had complained to diplomatic security in
Washington, I had complained to the General Accounting Office, I had
complained to the State Department Inspector-General's Office, I had
complained to the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department
and apparently the reverberations from this were heard all over the
State Department.
"CBC: If what you say may be true, many of the terrorists who
allegedly flew those planes into those targets, got their U.S. visas
through the CIA and your U.S. consulate in Jeddah. That suggests a
relationship ongoing as recently as obviously September. But what was
the CIA presumably recruiting these people for as recently as
September 11th?
"SPRINGMANN: That I don't know. And that's one of the things that I
tried to find out through a series of Freedom of Information Act
requests starting ten years ago. At the time the State Department and
the CIA stonewalled my requests. They're still doing so.
"CBC: If the CIA had a relationship with the people responsible for
September 11th, are you suggesting therein that they are somehow
complicit?
"SPRINGMANN: Yes, either through omission or through failure to act...
By the attempts to cover me up and shut me down, this convinced me
more and more that this was not a pipedream, this was not
imagination...
"CBC: But when you take the events of 87, when visas were being
issued to people unqualified for them, it suggests that happened
again to the same people responsible for the attacks on New York and
Washington, that's a quantum leap. How do you justify that?
"SPRINGMANN: For all I know, for all we know, this may have not been
the intended consequence, it could've been a mistake, it could've
been a misjudgment. Or for all we know, it could've been an effort
to get the U.S. directly involved in some fashion. I mean it's only a
few thousand dead and what's this against the greater gain for the
United States in the Middle East?
"CBC: But you're quite sure that Mohamed Atta and others had their
visas issued in Jeddah?
"SPRINGMANN: Well this is what I was told by reading an article in
the Los Angeles Times."[63]
Despite Springmann's prolific warnings and complaints that had
alerted the State Department to his opposition to these events, the
U.S. government responded not by rolling up the pipeline, but by
opening it up even further. This occurred in the face of increasing
evidence of Saudi connections to terrorism. The St. Petersburg Times
reports that: "After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the visa situation
became murkier. FBI agents complained that their Saudi counterparts
hampered investigations into terror attacks, including a 1996 bombing
on Dhahran that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. The Americans also
suspected that the Saudi monarchy was doing little to root out
terrorism on Saudi soil and to stop anti-American threats...
"Yet, instead of tightening visa requirements, the U.S. government
made it easier for Saudi visitors to come to America. Under a program
called U.S. Visa Express, introduced four months before the Sept. 11
attacks, Saudis were allowed to arrange visas through 10 travel
agencies-often without coming to the U.S. Embassy or consulate for
interviews."[64]
We should recall that these preposterous measures, which are in stark
violation of the State Department's mandatory regulations for the
issuing of visas, were instituted by the Bush administration at a
time when the U.S. intelligence community was on alert for an
imminent Al-Qaeda attack. This is not an issue of the supposed need
to tighten borders further, but of why existing regulations were
ignored and violated. Furthermore, it is a matter of record that U.S.
intelligence was already well aware at this time that key figures in
the Saudi establishment supported Osama bin Laden's terrorist network
(See Chapter VI). Indeed, Springmann himself had warned the State
Department repeatedly that unqualified applicants were being issued
U.S. visas by the CIA. Yet, the U.S. government apparently allowed
the fraudulent visa arrangement to continue, unabated.
High-Level Government Blocks on Intelligence Investigations
There is good reason to believe that the FBI's failure to apprehend
suspected terrorists, who were linked to bin Laden and operating
within the U.S., was the result of high-level blocks from the FBI
command and Justice Department. Evidence for this comes from the
authoritative testimony of U.S. attorney David Philip Schippers,
former Chief Investigative Counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary
Committee, and head prosecutor responsible for conducting the
impeachment against former President Bill Clinton. His long record of
impeccable expertise and extensive experience makes him a highly
credible source.[65]
Two days after the attacks, Schippers went public in an interview
with WRRK in Pittsburgh, PA., stating that he had attempted to warn
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, along with other federal
officials, about the terrorist attacks weeks before they occurred. He
stated that he had received information from U.S. intelligence
sources, including FBI agents, that a massive attack was being
planned by terrorists, targeting the financial arteries of lower
Manhattan. Schippers had attempted to bring this information to the
attention of John Ashcroft, six weeks before the tragedy of Black
Tuesday.[66] Schippers went public again in October 2001, reiterating
that, several months prior to September, impeccable sources in the
U.S. intelligence community, including agents of the U.S.
government's law enforcement agency, the FBI, had approached him with
information about the impending attacks.
According to Schippers, these agents knew, months before the 11th
September attacks, the names of the hijackers, the targets of their
attacks, the proposed dates, and the sources of their funding, along
with other information. At least two weeks prior to 11th September,
the FBI agents again confirmed that an attack on lower Manhattan,
orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, was imminent. However, the FBI
command cut short their investigations into the impending terrorist
attacks and those involved, threatening the agents with prosecution
under the National Security Act if they publicised information
pertaining to their investigations.
The agents subsequently sought the council of David Schippers in
order to pressure elements in the U.S. government to take action to
prevent the attacks. Schippers warned many Congressmen and Senators,
and also attempted to contact U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
without success, managing only to explain the situation to a
lower-ranking Justice Department official who promised a return call
from Ashcroft the next day. The Attorney General did not return the
call despite the gravity of the situation. Schippers is now legally
representing one FBI agent in a suit against the U.S. government in
an attempt to subpoena their testimony, so that he can legally speak
about the blocked investigations on public record. In a Talk Radio
interview on the Alex Jones Dhow, based in Austin, Texas, Schippers
stated:
"Have you ever heard of Yossef Bodansky? ... He is the guy that wrote
the book about Bin Laden. He was hooked up with some Congressional
leaders in the House-kind of an unofficial, for lack of a better
word, a strike force, a task force on terrorism [Bodansky was
Director of the U.S. Congress' Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare (Ahmed)]. They sent out a warning on February
19, 1995, saying there was going to be a massive attack by the
terrorists in the heartland of the United States and it was going to
be a federal facility. Everybody ignored it. By the way, I have seen
that warning... I don't have it in front of me so I can't go into the
specifics of it too heavily but at the same time, there was in that
warning that there was going to be a massive attack in Washington -
it took them six years to do it. The targets were going to be
Washington, the White House and the Capitol Building - and that they
were going to use airliners to attack them."[67]
In an interview with Geoff Metcalf on WorldNetDaily, Schippers
clarified this as follows:
"I [had] information indicating there was going to be a massive
attack in lower Manhattan [from FBI sources]. I couldn't get anybody
to listen to me... about a month-and-a-half before Sept. 11. The
original thing that I heard-and you might ask Mr. Bodansky about
that... He was one of the people behind the warning that came out Feb.
19, 1995, and this was the [original] warning that I saw: that there
was going to be an attack on the United States by bin Laden's people,
that the original target-and this is the way it reads-the original
target was supposed to be the White House and the Capitol building,
and they were going to use commercial airliners as bombs."[68]
Alex Jones commented in his interview with the former Chief Counsel:
"Now later you got it from FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota that
there was going to be an attack on lower Manhattan." David Schippers
responded by explaining how his subsequent warnings were ignored:
"Yes-and that's what started me calling...
"I started calling out there. First of all, I tried to see if I could
get a Congressman to go to bat for me and at least bring these people
out there and listen to them. I sent them information and nobody
cared. It was always, 'We'll get back to you,' 'we'll get back to
you,' 'we'll get back to you.' Then I reached out and tried to get to
the Attorney General, when finally we got an attorney general in
there that I would be willing to talk to. And, again, I used people
who were personal friends of John Ashcroft to try to get him. One of
them called me back and said, 'Alright I have talked to him. He will
call you tomorrow morning.' This was like a month before the
bombing..."[69]
The call never came. In an interview with the Eagle Forum of Illinois
concerning the evidence of a terrorist attack, "this time on the
financial district in south Manhattan," Schippers stated: "Five weeks
before the September 11 tragedy, I did my best to get a hold of
Attorney General John Ashcroft with my concerns. The best that I
could do was get in touch with an underling in that office who told
me that all investigations start out at lower levels such as
his."[70] The Washington DC-based public interest law firm Judicial
Watch which investigates and prosecutes government corruption and
abuse, reported in mid-November 2001 that it was joining forces with
Schippers to represent his FBI Special Agent against the U.S. Justice
Department:
"... an active FBI Special Agent filed a complaint last week concerning
FBI/Justice Department interference in and mishandling of terrorist
investigations. The FBI Special Agent, who wishes to remain anonymous
at this time, alleges that he was retaliated against when he
continued to push for and pursue certain terrorist investigations
over the objections of his FBI and Justice Department supervisors.
The FBI Special Agent, who is represented by Judicial Watch and David
Schippers, Esq., filed the complaint last week with the Justice
Department's Office of Inspector General (IG) and Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR).
Based on the evidence, the FBI Special Agent believes that if certain
investigations had been allowed to run their courses, Osama bin
Laden's network might have been prevented from committing the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which resulted in the deaths of
nearly 5,000 innocents. Judicial Watch is requesting a full scale,
independent investigation into its client's concerns and seeks to
hold accountable those responsible for preventing the full
investigation of terrorist activity here in the United States and
abroad."[71]
David Schippers elaborated on these matters towards the end of
February 2002 in an interview with this author. He confirmed that
U.S. intelligence had "established the sources of the money flow of
bin Laden" as early as 1996, but by 1999 intelligence officers began
facing fundamental high-level obstructions to their investigations
into these matters. Schippers is maintaining the anonymity of his
sources to avoid undue pressure on them from elements in government
and intelligence agencies.
The earliest warning of attacks was issued by the U.S. Congress' Task
Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in February 1995, which
specified in general terms that Al-Qaeda was planning a terrorist
attack on lower Manhattan, through the use of hijacked civilian
planes as bombs. According to Schippers, the same individuals who
issued this authoritative warning had been working ever since on
uncovering further information on the same threat. He stated that the
warning "had started out just a general threat, but they narrowed it
and narrowed it, more and more with time," until the "same people who
came out with the first warning" informed him in "May 2002" that "an
attack on lower Manhattan is imminent." Schippers elaborates that
these U.S. intelligence officers had approached him as a result of
"growing frustration" at the higher echelons of the intelligence
community who were refusing to take action in response to the
imminent threat to U.S. national security.
In addition to the several FBI agents who had spoken to Schippers
directly, other U.S. intelligence sources told him that "there are
others all over the country who are frustrated, and just waiting to
come out." The frustration of these intelligence officers, Schippers
explained, was because of the obstructions of a "bureaucratic elite
in Washington short-stopping information," with the consequence that
they have granted "terrorism a free reign in the United States."
Schippers was also able to confirm the specific nature of some of the
FBI investigations, which had been cut short under high-level orders,
noting for instance that the agents who had approached him claimed
that "they had Atta [the chief hijacker] in their sights." The agents
also claimed to have been aware of the names and activities of "very
strange characters training at flight schools," which they had
attempted to "check out."
Such investigations were blocked from above, to the fury of agents on
the trail of individuals who appear to have gone on to perpetrate the
atrocities of 11th September-including chief hijacker Mohammed Atta
himself. There was simply no adequate justification for these blocks,
legal or otherwise, the agents argue, adding that the obstructions
came down for no apparent reason. Accordingly, one of them remarked
to Schippers that "if they had been permitted to follow through with
their investigations, 9-11 would never have happened."[72]
The conservative New American magazine has also interviewed several
FBI agents who have corroborated Schippers' testimony. In a March
2002 report, the magazine reported that:
"Three veteran federal law enforcement agents confirmed to THE NEW
AMERICAN that the information provided to Schippers was widely known
within the Bureau before September 11th. Because these individuals
face possible personal or professional retaliation, they agreed to
speak with us on condition of anonymity. Two of them, however, have
expressed a willingness to testify before Congress regarding the
views they have shared with us."
A former FBI official with extensive counterterrorism experience told
the magazine: "I don't buy the idea that we didn't know what was
coming." He referred to the extraordinary speed with which the FBI
had produced detailed information on the attack and the hijackers
responsible: "Within 24 hours [of the attack] the Bureau had about 20
people identified, and photos were sent out to the news media.
Obviously this information was available in the files and somebody
was sitting on it."
Another active FBI counter-terrorism investigator stated that it was
widely known "all over the Bureau, how these [warnings] were ignored
by Washington... All indications are that this information came from
some of [the FBI's] most experienced guys, people who have devoted
their lives to this kind of work. But their warnings were placed in a
pile in someone's office in Washington... In some cases, these field
agents predicted, almost precisely, what happened on September 11th.
So we were all holding our breath, hoping that the situation would be
remedied."
The first former FBI agent's further damning comments to the New
American are particularly worth noting:
"This is pretty appalling. The FBI has had access to this information
since at least 1997. We're obviously not doing our job. I never
expected to see something like this happen in our country, but in a
way I wasn't shocked when it did. There's got to be more to this than
we can see-high-level people whose careers are at stake, and don't
want the truth coming out... What agenda is someone following?
Obviously, people had to know- there had to be people who knew this
information was being circulated. People like [Al-Qaeda terrorists]
don't just move in and out of the country undetected. If somebody in
D.C. is taking this information and burying it-and it's very easy to
control things from D.C.-then this problem goes much, much deeper...
It's terrible to think this, but this must have been allowed to
happen as part of some other agenda."[73]
It should be noted here that high-level blocks were also placed on
FBI and military intelligence investigations of possible terrorist
connections related to members of the bin Laden family and
Saudi royals. The London Guardian has elaborated that U.S.
intelligence had faced high-level blocks in their investigations into
bin Laden terrorist connections:
"FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were
prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations
into members of the bin Laden family in the U.S. before the terrorist
attacks of September 11...
U.S. intelligence agencies... are complaining that their hands were
tied... They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush
administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had
been told to 'back off' from investigations involving other members
of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links
to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. 'There were
particular investigations that were effectively killed.'"[74]
The documentation provided previously, in tandem with David
Schippers' revelations regarding the detailed information possessed
by U.S. intelligence on the 11th September terrorist attacks and who
was planning them, is damning evidence that, in spite of sufficient
information, there was deliberate inaction, in line with high-level
Bush administration directives. Indeed, this inference is
corroborated by a report in The Herald which notes the FBI's arrest
of alleged Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui "at a Minnesota
flight school in August last year, and a July report from the
agency's Phoenix, Arizona, office which warned that Middle Eastern
students" who "had a connection to Osama bin Laden" were "enrolling
for flying lessons in considerable numbers...
"U.S. lawmakers remain astounded that the Phoenix memo and
Moussaoui's arrest failed to set alarm bells ringing at FBI
headquarters, even after one agent speculated at a high-level meeting
that Moussaoui might have been taking lessons to enable him to crash
an aircraft into the World Trade Centre in New York."[75]
We should ask, of course, on what basis did the FBI agent assert at
this high-level meeting the possibility that the World Trade Centre
in New York would be the target of a hijacking suicide attack by a
suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist? Only a few days prior to the 11th
September attacks, FBI agents in Minnesota recorded in an official
internal FBI document that Zacarias "might be planning on flying
something into the World Trade Center."[76]
In context with the documentation discussed previously, it is clear
that the agents did not do so randomly in an information
vacuum-indeed, this is not how intelligence operates. On the
contrary, there was very precise information available to the FBI and
other intelligence agencies on Al-Qaeda's Project Bojinka plans,
specifying targets in Manhattan, which provided reasonable grounds to
believe that the World Trade Centre was the most probable target of
an imminent Al-Qaeda attack. The Herald report illustrates, however,
that although this information was widely known and discussed in the
U.S. intelligence community-including the top strata-further
investigation and preventive measures were blocked under "high-level"
directives.
Multiple Intelligence Warnings Converged on 11th September
As September neared, multiple authoritative intelligence warnings
surfaced with increasing intensity, warning of a terrorist attack
against the U.S. We should recall that in response to ECHELON's
warnings, U.S. intelligence agencies were already on alert for
evidence of a very specific Project Bojinka-style operation, which
would target key buildings in Washington and New York. The White
House National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, based on
CIA confirmation, had alerted all domestic security and intelligence
agencies of an impending Al-Qaeda attack, to be implemented in
several weeks time, at the beginning of July. According to Chief
Investigative Counsel David Schippers, U.S. sources had informed him
as early as May that the intelligence community had credible
information of an imminent attack targeting the "financial district
of lower Manhattan," and that intelligence officers throughout the
country were frustrated by high-level blocks on investigations and
information. The FBI appears to have had specific information
indicating that the World Trade Centre was thus the most probable
target. Against this background, the multiple warnings of an
impending attack by Osama bin Laden from a variety of credible
authorities should have increasingly reinforced the overall
intelligence confirmation of the attacks. USA Today reports that:
"Since passenger-filled commercial planes slammed into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon 5 weeks ago, a conventional wisdom has
emerged that the terrorist attacks were so extraordinary that they
couldn't have been predicted...
In fact, a growing mountain of evidence suggests that the hijackings
not only were imaginable, they also were foreshadowed. The Bush
administration received what Secretary of State Colin Powell
describes as a 'lot of signs' throughout the summer that terrorists
were plotting U.S. attacks. Among them: al-Qa'eda mentions of an
impending 'Hiroshima' on U.S. soil."[77]
The London Telegraph reported a few days after the 11th September attacks that:
"Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their
counterparts in the United States last month that large-scale
terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland
were imminent...
The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the
Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in
August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many
of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation... [They] linked
the plot to Osama bin Laden."[78]
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leading actor in the new
international coalition against terrorism and a close ally of
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, informed interviewers on
MS-NBC that the Russian government had warned the U.S. of imminent
attacks on airports and government buildings in the strongest
possible terms for several weeks prior to the 11th September
attacks.[79] These warnings were quite specific in that they
indicated the hijacking of airplanes to be used against civilian
buildings. According to Russian press reports, Russian intelligence
had notified the U.S. government of air attacks against civilian
buildings and told them that 25 pilots had been specifically trained
for the suicide missions.[80]
French intelligence had also warned their U.S. counterparts of an
impending attack in September. The respected French daily Le Figaro
reported that:
"According to Arab diplomatic sources as well as French intelligence,
very specific information was transmitted to the CIA with respect to
terrorist attacks against American interests around the world,
including on U.S. soil. A DST [French intelligence] report dated 7
September enumerates all the intelligence, and specifies that the
order to attack was to come from Afghanistan."[81]
According to the London Independent, the U.S. government "was warned
repeatedly that a devastating attack on the United States was on its
way." The newspaper cited an interview given by Osama bin Laden to a
London-based Arabic-language newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, in late
August. At about the same time, tighter security measures were
ordered at the World Trade Center, for unexplained reasons.[82]
Further confirmation of the impending attacks came from the
occurrence of other very specific warnings. Three days after the
terrorist attacks, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein pointed out that:
"Bin Laden's people had made statements three weeks ago carried in
the Arab press in Great Britain that they were preparing to carry out
unprecedented attacks in the U.S."[83]
In the summer of 2001, an Iranian man phoned U.S. law enforcement
and warned of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the
week of 9th September. German police confirmed the calls, but further
stated that the U.S. Secret Service refused to reveal any further
information on the matter. The caller's identity has not been
disclosed.[84]
According to MS-NBC, in the week before 11th September, a caller to a
Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent
attack on the U.S. by bin Laden. The identity of the caller has not
been disclosed.[85]
The U.S. also received an authoritative warning from the Egyptian
President, a U.S. ally and close friend of the Bushes, which was
based on the country's intelligence. The Associated Press reported
that:
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he warned the United States
that 'something would happen' 12 days before the Sept. 11 terror
attacks on New York and Washington... 'We expected that something was
going to happen and informed the Americans. We told them,' Mubarak
said. He did not mention a U.S. response."[86]
Another authoritative warning came from Garth L. Nicolson, Chief
Scientific Officer and Research Professor at the Institute for
Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, California. Nicolson has been
called to testify as an expert before the U.S. Senate in relation to
Department of Defense investigations of Gulf War chemical and
biological incidents.[87] Professor Nicolson testified that:
"My wife, Dr. Nancy Nicolson and I received at least three warnings
of the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The nature of these
warnings (the specific site, date and source) indicated to us that
they were credible. We have many contacts in the retired intelligence
community, including Special Forces, and domestic and foreign
intelligence services. Mostly these were individuals that we assisted
with their health problems from the Gulf War, Vietnam or other
conflicts.
The most dramatic source was a Head of State of a North African
country. This occurred during a visit to Tunisia in July 2001. This
head of state was travelling under cover and met with us at our
hotel. He warned us as to the correct date and one of the targets,
the Pentagon. We were not given any information as to the method or
any other targets.
The information was passed on to the Director of Policy, DoD, the
National Security Council, the leadership in the House of
Representatives and the Inspector General of the U.S. Army Medical
Corps, who happened to be visiting us a month or so before Sept. 11.
To our knowledge no action was ever taken on this information. There
has been some mention in the press that others also warned the U.S.
Government that on Sept. 11, 2001 there would be a terrorist attack
on U.S. soil. I do not know if any of the information from our
sources or other sources was ever taken seriously by the National
Security Council."[88]
Yet another warning from multiple intelligence agencies just before
11th September put the American intelligence community on alert. The
New York Times reported:
"One intercept [of bin Laden's communications] before the Sept. 11
attack was, according to two senior intelligence officials, the first
early warning of the assault and it set off a scramble by American
and other intelligence agencies... That message, which was intercepted
by the intelligence services of more than one country, was passed on
to the United States, officials from three countries said. '... we
assumed it would be soon,' a senior intelligence official said."[89]
On 7th September, the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide alert
warning that "American citizens may be the target of a terrorist
threat from extremist groups with links to [Osama bin Laden's]
al-Qaeda organization." According to ABC News, the "report cited
information gathered in May that suggested an attack somewhere was
imminent."[90] It is worth reiterating here that Schippers was
notified in the same month by key figures in the U.S. intelligence
community, who had been working on the Al-Qaeda threat for years,
that the attacks would target lower Manhattan. These reports show
that U.S. intelligence agencies were on alert for an imminent attack
by bin Laden very shortly before 11th September. Moreover, U.S.
intelligence had privately anticipated that lower Manhattan would be
the target.
Given the previous multiple warnings from various intelligence
agencies, compounded and reinforced by the findings of America's own
intelligence network, it is clear that bin Laden's Project
Bojinka-style plan, to which the U.S. was alerted only a few months
earlier, was soon to be implemented. The World Trade Center was among
the known targets of Project Bojinka. Additionally, 11th September
was the anniversary of the conviction of Ramzi Yousef for the first
World Trade Center bombing several years ago.
According to Philippine Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon, "U.S.
federal officials were aware of Project Bojinka and... the Philippines'
crack terrorist team was continuing to work closely with them... 'I
remember that after the first World Trade Center bombing Osama bin
Laden made a statement that on the second attempt they would be
successful,' Razon stressed. He said they could have chosen to carry
out the attack on September 11, to mark the anniversary of Yousef's
conviction for the first attack several years ago."[91] As previously
noted, Australian analyst Paul Monk points out that 11th September
should have been a "watch date."
According to Newsweek, the FBI, which as noted previously already had
many terrorists under surveillance, were intercepting their
communications. Shortly before 11th September they wrote comments
such as: "There is a big thing coming," "They're going to pay the
price," "We're ready to go."[92]
Just before the attacks, U.S. intelligence received information from
Osama bin Laden himself that something "big" would happen on 11th
September. NBC News reported at the beginning of October that Osama
bin Laden had phoned his mother two days before the World Trade
Center attacks and told her: "In two days you're going to hear big
news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while." According to
NBC, a foreign intelligence service had recorded the call and relayed
the information to U.S. intelligence.[93]
The convergence of these multiple warnings would have reinforced
earlier warnings, thus clearly indicating that Project Bojinka was to
be implemented in September, with some information-including the
admission of bin Laden himself-specifying 11th September in no
uncertain terms. In particular, we should remind ourselves of the
testimony of David Schippers, which was based on information received
from FBI agents-that amid these multiple warnings, and on the basis
of its own intensive surveillance and intelligence gathering
operations, the FBI had specific details of an impending air attack
on civilian buildings in lower Manhattan in September 2001. Yet
nothing was done.
Further indication of the extent of the American intelligence
community's forewarning, particularly in relation to the specific
timing of its planned execution, can be found from analysis of
financial transactions before 11th September. Only three trading days
before 11th September, shares of United Airlines-the company whose
planes were hijacked in the attacks on New York and Washington-were
massively "sold short" by as yet unknown investors.
This was done by buying dirt-cheap "put" options, which give the
owner a short-term right to sell specific shares at a price well
below the current market-a long-shot bet. When the stock prices
unexpectedly dropped even lower, in response to the terrorist
attacks, the options multiplied a hundredfold in value, making
millions of dollars in profit. These "short" options plays are a sure
sign of investors with foreknowledge of an event that would occur
within a few days, and drastically reduce the market price of those
shares. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that:
"Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they
made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept.
11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades
and market data. The uncollected money raises suspicions that the
investors-whose identities and nationalities have not been made
public-had advance knowledge of the strikes.
... October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly
unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a
total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each
representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each [a price of less than one
cent per share, on a total of 230,000 options]. Those options are now
selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called 'put'
options outstanding [representing 231,300 shares and a profit of
$2.77 million] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.
... The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank
Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant
Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some
of these options..."[94]
But the United Airlines case was not the only dubious financial
transaction indicating, in the Chronicle's words, "advanced knowledge
of the strikes." The Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute
for Counterterrorism documented the following transactions related to
11th September, involving American Airlines-whose planes were also
used in the attacks-and other companies with offices in the Twin
Towers:
"Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw
purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call
options... Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people
with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these 'insiders'
would have profited by almost $5 million.
On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought
on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was
no news at that point to justify this imbalance;... Again, assuming
that 4,000 of these options trades represent 'insiders,' they would
represent a gain of about $4 million [the above levels of put options
were more than six times higher than normal].
No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange
in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the
World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought
in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an
average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's
share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the
attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought
based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers
could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw
12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before
the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252
contracts per day [a dramatic increase of 1200%]. When trading
resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that
11,000 option contracts were bought by 'insiders,' their profit would
have been about $5.5 million.
European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re,
Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with
exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster [AXA also owns more than 25%
of American Airlines stock]."[95]
These multiple, massive and unprecedented financial transactions
point unequivocally to the fact that the investors behind these
trades were speculating in anticipation of a mid-September 2001
catastrophe that would involve both United Airlines and American
Airlines, and offices in the Twin Towers-a clear demonstration of
their foreknowledge or involvement in the 11th September attacks.
Ernest Welteke, President of the German Bundesbank, has concluded
that it is certain that a group of speculators knew the attack was
coming. According to the New York Times, he stated: "There have been
fundamental movements in these markets [i.e. the airlines], and the
oil price rise just ahead of the attacks is otherwise
inexplicable."[96]
The London Times reports that the U.S. government has a similar
perspective: "American authorities are investigating unusually large
numbers of shares in airlines, insurance companies and arms
manufacturers that were sold off in the days and weeks before the
attacks. They believe that the sales were by people who knew about
the impending disaster."[97]
But as noted by U.S. investigative journalist and former Los Angeles
Police Department (LAPD) narcotics detective Michael C. Ruppert, who
rose to fame for uncovering the CIA role in drug-running operations
in the 1980s, and who has been interviewed by both the House and the
Senate for his expertise on CIA covert operations: "It is well
documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades-in real
time-as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic
moves contrary to U.S. interests."[98] The UPI also reported that the
U.S.-sponsored ECHELON intelligence network closely monitors stock
trading.[99]
The London Times further points out that the UK Financial Services
Authority (FSA) is a "stock market watchdog" possessing a
"transaction monitoring department that checks suspicious share
movements." The FSA, however, has not issued any informative
statement on the investigation into the share movements before 11th
September: "The FSA would not comment on its instructions from the
CIA."[100] In other words, there are both intelligence and civilian
monitoring systems that monitor share transactions for the express
purpose of tracking suspicious movements, and which, therefore, would
have received warning. Elaborating, Ruppert observes that:
"It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many
other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using
highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis
software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just
such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001
to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent
stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have
confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least
this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance
warning of imminent attacks."[101]
Ruppert further describes the CIA's tracking of financial
transactions as follows:
"One of the primary functions of the Central Intelligence Agency by
virtue of its long and very close history of relationships with Wall
Street... the point where the current executive vice president of the
New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a
mandate to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look
for anomalous trades, indicative of either economic warfare, or
insider currency trading or speculation which might affect the U.S.
Treasury, or, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, to look for
trades which indicated foreknowledge of attacks like we saw.
One of the vehicles that they use to do this is a software called
Promis software, which was developed in the 1980s, actually 1979, by
Bill Hamilton and a firm called INSLAW, in [the] Washington D.C.
area. And Promis is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had
the ability to integrate a wide range of databases using different
computer languages and to make them all into one readable format. And
secondly, in the years since, Promis has been mated with artificial
intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect trades
that are anomalous, as a result of those projections.
So, as recently as last year, I met with members of the RCMP [Royal
Canadian Mounted Police] national security staff, who came down to
Los Angeles where I am, who are investigating stolen applications of
Promis software and its applications, and we reconfirmed at that time
that, not only the U.S., but Israel, Canada, and many other countries
use Promis-like software to track real-time trades in the stock
markets to warn them of these events."
However, he clarifies that such software is not necessary for
intelligence agencies to note the ominous implications of the trades
going on shortly before 11th September:
"The key evidence was the trades themselves, the so-called put
options and the short selling of American Airlines, United Airlines,
Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and a couple of reinsurance companies
in Europe, which are just really off the maps. You wouldn't need
software to look at these trades and say, 'Oh my God, this is
directly connected to the World Trade Center.'
Herzliyah, International Policy Institute in Israel which tracks
counter-terrorism, also tracks financial trading. That's a clear cut
sign about how closely the two are related. And their reports are
very clear that between September 6 and 7 the Chicago Board Options
Exchange, CBOE, saw purchases of 4,744 put options on UAL, but only
396 call options. On September 10, the day before the attacks, 4,516
put options were placed on American Airlines, against only 748 calls,
calls being bets that the stock will go up, puts being that the stock
will go down. No similar trading in any other airlines occurred on
the Chicago Exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
That means that someone had advance knowledge that only the stocks of
these two airlines would be adversely impacted. Had it just been an
industry-wide slump, then you would have seen the same kind of
activity on every airline, not just these two. But what is also very
anomalous, very out of whack here, is the fact that the number of put
options placed, that the level of these trades was up by 1,200
percent in the three days prior to the World Trade Center
attacks."[102]
The Wall Street Journal reported some disturbing developments in the
investigation into this suspicious share trading at the beginning of
October 2001. The ongoing investigation by the Security and Exchange
Commission had by then been joined by a U.S. Secret Service probe
into purchases of an exceptionally large number of five-year U.S.
Treasury notes, just prior to the attacks. Among the Treasury note
transactions was a single $5 billion trade. The Journal points out
that:
"Five-year Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event
of a world crisis, especially one that hits the U.S. The notes are
prized for their safety and their backing by the U.S. government, and
usually rally when investors flee riskier investments, such as
stocks."[103]
The day after the Journal report came out, chief of the FBI's
financial crimes unit Dennis Lormel attempted to downplay the
significance of these trades, claiming in testimony before a
Congressional committee that "To date there are no flags or
indicators" showing that terrorists used strategies such as "short
selling" to profit from the 11th September attacks.[104] However, FOX
News cited German central bank president Ernst Welteke, who explained
toward the end of September that "a study by his bank strongly points
to 'terrorism insider trading' not only in shares of heavily affected
industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold
and oil."[105] Admitting that there has been a great deal of
"speculation and rumours," Welteke also stated that "there are ever
clearer signs that there were activities on international financial
markets which must have been carried out with the necessary expert
knowledge."[106]
Similarly, USA Today cited co-founder of PTI Securities Jon Najarian,
described as an "active player" on the Chicago Board Options
Exchange, confirming that: "The volumes were exceptional versus the
norm."[107] Principal of Broadband Research John Kinnucan commented:
"I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of
following the markets, particularly the options markets."[108] As
CBS 60 Minutes reported: "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon
before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in
the U.S. stock options market."[109]
These trades strongly suggest that certain well-connected and wealthy
investors had advance knowledge of the attacks. To date, both the
Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FBI have been
tight-lipped about their investigation of the trades. "The SEC and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation have said nothing about their
investigation into suspect trades," according to the San Francisco
Chronicle.[110] Indeed, the FBI appears to have taken measures to
block public knowledge of the progress of the investigation.
The Investment Dealers Association (IDA), a trade association for the
Canadian securities industry, posted on its web site an SEC list of
38 stocks. The SEC had requested Canadian security firms to
investigate suspicious trading in these stocks between 27 August and
11 September 2001. But as soon as U.S. officials became aware that
the full list of stocks had been posted online, they demanded the
removal of the list from the Investment Dealers Association's site.
The IDA complied, but reporters were able to copy the list before its
removal.[111]
The list of stocks includes the parent companies of American,
Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, United and U.S. Airways, as
well as Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, aircraft maker
Boeing and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Several insurance
companies are on the list-American International Group, Axa, Chubb,
Cigna, CNA Financial, John Hancock and MetLife. Several giant
companies that were former tenants in the World Trade Center were
also on the list: the largest tenant, investment firms Morgan
Stanley; Lehman Brothers; Bank of America; and the financial firm
Marsh & McLennan. Other major companies on the list were General
Motors, Raytheon, LTV, WR Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American
Express, Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup and Bear Stearns.[112]
A probe of suspicious stock trading in these companies would attempt
to isolate the investors, or group of investors, involved therein,
thus uncovering those who had foreknowledge of the attacks.
Why did U.S. officials object to publication of a list of stocks in
which suspicious trading occurred? Moreover, why have the results of
the investigation so far, and any progress being made, not been made
public?
Given that there are both intelligence and civilian systems that
monitor share transactions for the express purpose of tracking
suspicious movements, and given further that the transactions just
prior to 11th September were so unprecedented, massive and specific,
these systems would have received advance warning. These monitoring
systems would also have clearly pointed to a specified time for the
attacks as occurring between early and mid-September. U.S.
intelligence would have been alerted as early as 7th September that
American and United Airlines, along with the World Trade Center, were
potential targets. The question remains, again, as to why nothing was
done in response.
The London Independent has noted in relation to such events that: "To
the embarrassment of investigators, it has also emerged that the firm
used to buy many of the 'put' options-where a trader, in effect, bets
on a share price fall-on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998
by 'Buzzy' Krongard, now executive director of the CIA."[113]
There is, indeed, abundant evidence discussed by Ruppert that the
relationship between Wall Street and the CIA is akin to a 'revolving
door.' For instance, elaborating on the Independent's observations,
Ruppert notes that one of the key firms involved in the put options
for United Airlines, Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, was until 1998
managed by A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. Before then, until 1997, Krongard
was Chairman of the investment bank AB Brown, which was acquired by
Banker's Trust in 1997. He then became, as part of the merger,
Vice-Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown. He joined the CIA in 1998
as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet, to be later promoted to CIA
Executive Director by President Bush in March 2001. BT was acquired
by Deutsche Bank in 1999, forming the single largest bank in Europe.
Ruppert has also documented other crucial details relating to the
interrelationship between the CIA, banks and the brokerage world.[114]
Long-standing links between Western intelligence and finance appear
to have been instrumental in the foreknowledge of certain
corporations about the attacks. Veteran U.S. journalists Alexander
Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair reported in their respected current
affairs newsletter, Counterpunch, that "an internal memo was sent
around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo on September 10 advising all employees
of a possible terrorist attack. It recommended all employees to avoid
any American government buildings."[115]
11th September Warnings Were Not Ignored by U.S. Authorities
Indeed, there is evidence that the threat was not ignored, at least
not in certain selected respects. The San Francisco Chronicle
reported one day after the attacks that Mayor Willie Brown received a
phone call eight hours before the hijackings from what he described
as his air security staff, warning him not to travel by air:
"For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss
came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his
airport security-a full eight hours before yesterday's string of
terrorist attacks-advising him that Americans should be cautious
about their air travelS Exactly where the call came from is a bit of
a mystery. The mayor would say only that it came from 'my security
people at the airport.'"[116]
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was booked to fly from the Bay area
to New York City on the morning of September 11.[117] Clearly, it
seems that certain high-level U.S. security authorities anticipated
some sort of grave danger, and believed it to be urgent, threatening
and certainly real enough to inform a U.S. City Mayor about to catch
a flight to New York-but not the general public.
The London Times reported that the famous novelist, Salman Rushdie,
received a similar warning to avoid U.S. and Canadian airlines.
According to Rushdie's own testimony, the warning came directly from
the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Times reports:
"The author Salman Rushdie believes that U.S. authorities knew of an
imminent terrorist strike when they banned him from taking internal
flights in Canada and the U.S. only a week before the attacks. On
September 3 the Federal Aviation Authority made an emergency ruling
to prevent Mr Rushdie from flying."[118]
Another news report records that "the FAA has confirmed it stepped up
security levels relating to Rushdie," but "the airlines weren't
willing to upgrade their security" in relation to the wider
public.[119] It is public knowledge that Rushdie is under 24-hour
protection of UK Scotland Yard's Special Branch, and that all his
travel plans are approved by the MI5 for domestic travel within the
UK, and by the MI6 for international travel. The MI5 and MI6 are the
British equivalent of the American CIA. Clearly, it appears that
British intelligence anticipated a grave danger, under the guidance
of U.S. authorities, and believed it to be urgent, threatening and
real enough to inform Rushdie-but once again not the general public.
Another report points to the Pentagon's dubious role. Newsweek
reported that on 10th September 2001, the day before the attacks, "a
group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for
the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."[120] An
earlier report by Newsweek, published two days after the attacks,
referred to the same event in more detail:
"S the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a
particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before
the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why
that same information was not available to the 266 people who died
aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic
on the Hill."[121]
Apparently, top Pentagon officials had known not only of an imminent
threat to "security" in relation to their "travel plans," but had
even anticipated its exact timing and taken measures to protect
themselves-but not the general public. Together, these reports
strongly suggest that high levels of the U.S. military intelligence
community knew something very significant-and took it seriously.
It is noteworthy that these reports also strongly suggest
foreknowledge among high-level elements of the U.S. military
intelligence community, that attacks would occur mid-September, and
even more specifically on the 11th of that month. As WorldNetDaily
editor and veteran American journalist Joseph Farah rightly observes:
"Now, you're probably wondering why Willie Brown and Salman Rushdie
[and senior Pentagon officials] are more important to the U.S.
government than you and me and Barbara Olson. I'm wondering the same
thingS
These selective warnings-and I have no doubt there were many more we
have not yet heard about-suggest strongly that the FBI, CIA and other
federal agencies had the information, knew something big was up,
something that involved terrorist attacks on airliners, but failed to
disclose the information to the airlines and the flying public in
general. I think heads should roll at the FBI and CIA. I think there
ought to be an investigation into what the FAA knew and when it knew
it. I think, once again, the federal government has neglected its
main responsibility under the Constitution-protecting the American
people from attack."[122]
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a political analyst and human rights
activist, specializing in Western foreign policy and its impact on
human rights. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy
Research & Development (IPRD), an independent, interdisciplinary,
non-profit think tank based in Brighton, UK, and author of "The War
on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001,"
from which this is excerpted with permission.