| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"*Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
26 Aug 2005 02:06:57 PM |
| Object: |
What a mess BJ Clinton left America in |
Able Danger: The Strange Spanish Interlude
The 9/11 Commission claimed to have discounted the testimony of Captain
Scott Phillpott in July 2004 on Able Danger specifically because of his
assertion about when his team identified Mohammed Atta as a potential
al-Qaeda terrorist in the United States. The official timeline for the
Commission on Atta starts on June 3, 2000, when INS records the first of
only three entries for Atta in Newark, New Jersey. Captain Phillpott insists
that his team ID'd Atta in the US in January or February 2000, months
earlier.
I covered the timeline issues in my Daily Standard column and in my
follow-up post yesterday. I argued that the Commission's weak sourcing for
the Atta timeline, essentially based on nothing but INS records and the
testimony of two captured terrorists, reopens not only the question of when
Atta first established his cell here but the long-debated Czech intelligence
that has Atta meeting with the Iraqis in Prague. While we have information
that the Commission apparently did not -- that the Germans had captured
Iraqi spies working an extensive operation during the same time the AQ
plotters worked on the 9/11 attack in Germany -- their stated reasons for
discounting the Prague meeting and its critical Iraqi connection include
relying on Atta's supposed habit of traveling under his own name.
However, the trip to Spain that Atta undertook in July 2001 creates new
problems. Atta went to Spain twice, actually; when he met Ramzi Binalshibh
in January 2001 in Germany, he traveled through Madrid to get there. The
second time on July 7, Atta traveled to Zurich but stayed in Spain, as far
as anyone can tell.
But why Spain? The terrorists knew Germany much better than Spain, and
presumably could find better cover there. The Commission, predictably,
relied on one source for the answer -- Atta's co-conspirator, Ramzi
Binalshibh (page 244):
In early July, Atta called Binalshibh to suggest meeting in Madrid, for
reasons Binalshibh claims not to know. He says he preferred Berlin, but that
he and Atta knew too many people in Germany and feared being spotted
together. Unable to buy a ticket to Madrid at the height of the tourist
season, Binalshibh booked a seat on a flight to Reus, near Barcelona, the
next day. Atta was already en route to Madrid, so Binalshibh phoned Shehhi
in the United States to inform him of the change in itinerary.
Atta arrived in Madrid on July 8. He spent the night in a hotel and made
three calls from his room, most likely to coordinate with Binalshibh. The
next day, Atta rented a car and drove to Reus to pick up Binalshibh; the two
then drove to the nearby town of Cambrils. Hotel records show Atta renting
rooms in the same area until July 19, when he returned his rental car in
Madrid and flew back to Fort Lauderdale. On July 16, Binalshibh returned to
Hamburg, using a ticket Atta had purchased for him earlier that
day.According to Binalshibh, they did not meet with anyone else while in
Spain.
So we have the two terrorists going into unfamiliar territory at the height
of tourist season, when making travel arrangements are the most difficult.
In fact, Binalshibh had to contact Shehhi to recast the arrangements after
Atta had already left. Why go through all of this hassle, unless (a) there
were other people that Atta needed to meet, and/or (b) Germany was too
dangerous for Atta? The Spanish government insists that Atta met with more
than just Binalshibh in that trip, a fact that the Commission only includes
as a footnote on page 530. They discount this information even though the
Spaniards used it to indict several people on terror charges, preferring the
testimony of Binalshibh instead.
If the meeting was only between Atta and Binalshibh, why risk operating in
the open in unfamiliar territory to make that connection? Atta probably
thought that after the German arrests, Germany was no longer safe for him to
visit. Indeed, as far as is known, Atta never returned to Germany after the
arrests of the Iraqi spies. He flew around it but never in or through it.
His risk of operating in a new country -- the Commission report itself
mentions no travel through Spain in its report before July 2001 for any of
the plotters -- had to have been outweighed by other considerations, and not
the thin excuse that Binalshibh offered.
Either Atta had more than one meeting scheduled for Spain, which would
explain his 12-day absence from the United States just when he should have
been organizing the muscle hijackers and training them for their roles, or
he had good reason to avoid Germany, and probably both. If Atta went to
Prague, Iraqi spy Samir al-Ani could have told him that the network had been
sufficiently disrupted by German counterintelligence that he could not
safely operate there again.
Again, this hypothesis would fit the known facts better than the Binalshibh
explanation, which makes Madrid a whim on the part of Atta, and one
Binalshibh blithely indulges despite the risk that excessive travel places
on himself. It also highlights the real possibility that Iraqi intelligence
had connections to the plot and the plotters in at least some support
capacities.
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| User: "Server 13" |
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| Title: Re: What a mess BJ Clinton left America in |
26 Aug 2005 02:11:06 PM |
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*Harry Hope wrote:
Able Danger: The Strange Spanish Interlude
The 9/11 Commission claimed to have discounted the testimony of Captain
Scott Phillpott in July 2004 on Able Danger specifically because of his
assertion about when his team identified Mohammed Atta as a potential
al-Qaeda terrorist in the United States. The official timeline for the
Commission on Atta starts on June 3, 2000, when INS records the first of
only three entries for Atta in Newark, New Jersey. Captain Phillpott insists
that his team ID'd Atta in the US in January or February 2000, months
earlier.
I covered the timeline issues in my Daily Standard column and in my
follow-up post yesterday. I argued that the Commission's weak sourcing for
the Atta timeline, essentially based on nothing but INS records and the
testimony of two captured terrorists, reopens not only the question of when
Atta first established his cell here but the long-debated Czech intelligence
that has Atta meeting with the Iraqis in Prague. While we have information
that the Commission apparently did not -- that the Germans had captured
Iraqi spies working an extensive operation during the same time the AQ
plotters worked on the 9/11 attack in Germany -- their stated reasons for
discounting the Prague meeting and its critical Iraqi connection include
relying on Atta's supposed habit of traveling under his own name.
However, the trip to Spain that Atta undertook in July 2001 creates new
problems. Atta went to Spain twice, actually; when he met Ramzi Binalshibh
in January 2001 in Germany, he traveled through Madrid to get there. The
second time on July 7, Atta traveled to Zurich but stayed in Spain, as far
as anyone can tell.
But why Spain? The terrorists knew Germany much better than Spain, and
presumably could find better cover there. The Commission, predictably,
relied on one source for the answer -- Atta's co-conspirator, Ramzi
Binalshibh (page 244):
In early July, Atta called Binalshibh to suggest meeting in Madrid, for
reasons Binalshibh claims not to know. He says he preferred Berlin, but that
he and Atta knew too many people in Germany and feared being spotted
together. Unable to buy a ticket to Madrid at the height of the tourist
season, Binalshibh booked a seat on a flight to Reus, near Barcelona, the
next day. Atta was already en route to Madrid, so Binalshibh phoned Shehhi
in the United States to inform him of the change in itinerary.
Atta arrived in Madrid on July 8. He spent the night in a hotel and made
three calls from his room, most likely to coordinate with Binalshibh. The
next day, Atta rented a car and drove to Reus to pick up Binalshibh; the two
then drove to the nearby town of Cambrils. Hotel records show Atta renting
rooms in the same area until July 19, when he returned his rental car in
Madrid and flew back to Fort Lauderdale. On July 16, Binalshibh returned to
Hamburg, using a ticket Atta had purchased for him earlier that
day.According to Binalshibh, they did not meet with anyone else while in
Spain.
So we have the two terrorists going into unfamiliar territory at the height
of tourist season, when making travel arrangements are the most difficult.
In fact, Binalshibh had to contact Shehhi to recast the arrangements after
Atta had already left. Why go through all of this hassle, unless (a) there
were other people that Atta needed to meet, and/or (b) Germany was too
dangerous for Atta? The Spanish government insists that Atta met with more
than just Binalshibh in that trip, a fact that the Commission only includes
as a footnote on page 530. They discount this information even though the
Spaniards used it to indict several people on terror charges, preferring the
testimony of Binalshibh instead.
If the meeting was only between Atta and Binalshibh, why risk operating in
the open in unfamiliar territory to make that connection? Atta probably
thought that after the German arrests, Germany was no longer safe for him to
visit. Indeed, as far as is known, Atta never returned to Germany after the
arrests of the Iraqi spies. He flew around it but never in or through it.
His risk of operating in a new country -- the Commission report itself
mentions no travel through Spain in its report before July 2001 for any of
the plotters -- had to have been outweighed by other considerations, and not
the thin excuse that Binalshibh offered.
Either Atta had more than one meeting scheduled for Spain, which would
explain his 12-day absence from the United States just when he should have
been organizing the muscle hijackers and training them for their roles, or
he had good reason to avoid Germany, and probably both. If Atta went to
Prague, Iraqi spy Samir al-Ani could have told him that the network had been
sufficiently disrupted by German counterintelligence that he could not
safely operate there again.
Again, this hypothesis would fit the known facts better than the Binalshibh
explanation, which makes Madrid a whim on the part of Atta, and one
Binalshibh blithely indulges despite the risk that excessive travel places
on himself. It also highlights the real possibility that Iraqi intelligence
had connections to the plot and the plotters in at least some support
capacities.
More made-up crazyass republicrap.
"The following are all uncontroversial facts reported in the mainstream media:
On or about Jan. 20th, 2001, as the Clinton administration transitioned
to the Bush, NSC chief Sandy Berger briefed Condi Rice extensively on the
terrorism threat posed by bin Laden, telling her she would be spending
more time on this threat than she ever imagined. At the Dept. of Defense,
William Cohen was performing the same courtesy for Don Rumsfeld, again
with a sharp reminder of the terrorist threat in the form of a hand-written
letter to Rumsfeld containing the phone numbers of people in the Pentagon
Rumsfeld needed to speak to directly on the subject. On Jan. 26th, the CIA
confirmed to the new Bush administration that bin Laden and Al Qaeda were
responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole which killed 17 American
sailors.
The response of the Bush administration was to cease Predator drone
surveillance flights to track bin Laden, reassign the cruise-missile
equipped submarine stationed in the Indian Ocean with the specific mission
of targeting bin Laden, reassign the AC-130 gunships on scramble alert that
could be on top of bin Laden after a six hour flight, suspend the special
forces operations targeting bin Laden already based in Uzbekistan for the
purpose thanks to a treaty signed by Bill Clinton.
In May, June and July, the sole remaining Clinton appointee, CIA Director
Tenet, was frantic with concern over incoming intelligence indicating a huge
terrorist attack on American soil. Vice-President ***** Cheney was head
of a
new counter-terrorism task force, yet held no meetings. Attorney General
John Ashcroft refused FBI requests for hundreds of new agents to be assigned
to counter-terrorism; his concerns were drugs and pornography, yet in late
July he stopped flying commercial airliners due to a "threat assessment."
The general threat assessment was considered to be the most severe in decades
according to CIA's Tenet; members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were
briefed on the situation on July 5th.
Also in July, an Arizona FBI agent wrote the 'Phoenix Memo,' expressing
concern about possible Al Qaeda members taking flying lessons in this
country towards the end of terrorist attacks. One of the two FBI officials
to see it before the attacks was New York counter-terrorism chief John
O'Neill; contemporaneous with the timing of this memo was O'Neill's remarks
to the authors of 'Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth,' wherein O'Neill expressed
his outrage with the Bush administration's thwarting of counter-terrorist
efforts in the interests of protecting its Saudi sponsors. John O'Neill
would soon quit the FBI in disgust, only to die at his new job as chief of
security at the WTC.
Also in July, the FAA rescinded the rule allowing airline pilots to be armed,
a rule that had been in force since 1961.
August found George W. Bush 'vacationing' for the entire month in rural
Texas, while ***** Cheney similarly spent the month in rural Wyoming. On
August 1st actor James Woods as flying from Logan to Los Angeles, sharing
1st class with four Middle Eastern men, who ate nothing, drank nothing,
read nothing, nor slept the entire flight, only making occasional low
comments to one another. Woods remarked to the flight attendant that 'These
guys act like they're going to hijack the plane,' and once the plane landed
he repeated his concerns to the FAA. All four men were hijackers on Sept.
11th. On Aug. 6th, Bush himself was apparently finally briefed about the
specific threat of attacks on American soil. His vacation continued. On Aug.
17th, the Minneapolis FBI office arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, on the basis
of an expired student visa and very curious pilot training requests. FBI
field agents at this office were convinced of Moussaoui's intentions as a
terrorist, and repeatedly tried to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act) warrant to search his computer. In early Sept., French
Intelligence informed both the CIA and the FBI that Moussaoui had Al Qaeda
connections. A FISA warrant remained ungranted against Moussaoui, even
though under Clinton and Janet Reno no FISA request had been refused.
As an interesting aside, before 9/11 Ashcroft was known to put in 3 1/2 day
work weeks at the Dept. of Justice. In the early months of the administration,
FBI agents flew to Ashcroft's home in rural Missouri to obtain his signature
on a wire-tap for a terrorism investigation. Ashcroft was so displeased to
see the agents, he had them stand out in the cold while he sat in his pickup
to read and sign the documents.
On Sept. 4th, Cheney's counter-terrorism task force met for the first time.
According to the Pentagon's liaison for terrorism, Gen. Kerrik, Clinton's
had met almost weekly, but with Bush he "didn't see that same kind of focus."
On Sept. 10, Diane Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
briefed on July 5th, asked ***** Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby when
the administration would start focusing on these terror threats which had
so pre-occupied CIA's Tenet, the most severe in decades - she was told it
would have to wait another six months.
So, obviously, it's all Clinton's fault.
Pre-9/11 And The Bush Administration. It's All Clinton's Fault, Right?
by Kent Southard
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