Al-Qaida trained 70,000 to 120,000 terrorist, Graham says

[UpInArms]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/13/national1531EDT0505.DTL

A congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists were trained by al-Qaida and some are still in the United States, Sen. Bob Graham, D- Fla., said Sunday.

<snip>

Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, was the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee when the investigation was completed last year. He has criticized the administration repeatedly for delaying release of the report. He said Sunday the administration has approved inclusion of the estimate of al-Qaida's terrorist training in the final report.

Graham said that estimate shows that the Bush administration "lost focus" when it turned its attention to war with Iraq.

...more...

[GeronimoSkull]

1. and Graham dined with Mohammed Atta's moneyman

what's up, Bob?

[salin]

4. Strong claim - never heard that before

got links? Til see some info sounds rather dubious to me.

[lkinsale]

5. I think he's probably talking about Mahmood Ahmed

In one of the stranger twists of 9/11, Graham and others were in a meeting with Ahmed in D.C., discussing bin Laden, when the planes hit.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/mahmoodahmed.html

August 28-30, 2001: Senator Bob Graham (D), Representative Porter Goss (R) and Senator John Kyl (R) travel to Pakistan and meet with President Musharraf. They reportedly discuss various security issues, including the possible extradition of bin Laden. They also meet with Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. Zaeef apparently tells them that the Taliban want to solve the issue of bin Laden through negotiations with the US. Pakistan says it wants to stay out of the bin Laden issue. All three are meeting with ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed in Washington at the time of the 9/11 attacks

What to make of it? Who knows. There were rumors that Ahmed gave money to Mohammed Atta, but possibly those are "Indian propaganda."

It's quite strange, and another unfollowed trail in the press, it would seem.

[RedSock]

6. fbi said ahmed paid atta

September 11, 2001 (H): At the time of the attacks, ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed is at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R) (Goss is a 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing). The meeting is said to last at least until the second plane hits the WTC. (Washington Post, 5/18/02) Graham and Goss later co-head the joint House-Senate investigation into the 9/11 attacks, which has made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" of Bush knowledge before 9/11. (Washington Post, 7/11/02) Note Senator Graham should have been aware of a report made to his staff the previous month that one of Mahmood's subordinates had told a US undercover agent that the WTC would be destroyed (see Early August 2001). Evidence suggests Mahmood ordered that $100,000 be sent to hijacker Mohamed Atta (see Early August 2001 (D)). Also present at the meeting were Senator John Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi (all or virtually all of the people in this meeting also met in Pakistan a few weeks earlier (see August 28-30, 2001)). Senator Graham says of the meeting: "We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan." The New York Times mentions bin Laden specifically was being discussed. (Vero Beach Press Journal, 9/12/01, Salon, 9/14/01, New York Times, 6/3/02)


the fbi later confirmed the money transfer and ahmed resigned quietly shortly thereafter.

this and so much more at:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/index.html

[lkinsale]

7. Well, just to keep the DU record straight...

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/mahmoodahmed.html

October 7, 2001: ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed is replaced in the face of US pressure after links are discovered between him, Saeed Sheikh and the funding of the 9/11 attacks. Mahmood instructed Saeed to transfer $100,000 into hijacker Mohamed Atta's bank account prior to 9/11 (see Early August 2001 (D) or June 29, 2000-September 18, 2000; it hasn't been reported which $100,000 money transfer this refers to). This is according to Indian intelligence, which claims the FBI has privately confirmed the story.

(italics and boldface mine)

I'm not defending the guy, he's obviously a slime and it wouldn't be any surprise to hear that he was directly involved, but it appears from this site that the FBI has not openly confirmed this. I don't have any other links about it.

It is truly a very suspicious?/weird?/coincidental? incident (Ahmed's presence in the U.S. at the time of the attacks.)

It's just another reason why we're in more danger because we've taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan/Pakistan, IMO. While Condi/Rummy/Bush are paddling as hard as they can to make us believe there are nukes in Iraq, no telling what's going on in Pakistan. Where they already have nukes.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

9. But none of this demonstrates Graham's complicity in the matter

so what's the point?

[lkinsale]

10. No particular point, was just clarifying what I think Geronimo meant ...

about "dining with Atta's moneyman."

[GeronimoSkull]

11. Thanks lkinsale

Here's some more on the topic:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html

[lkinsale]

12. Now that I look this all over, I think the point is...

To support the "Bush Knew" 9/11 question.

I'm interested, because my man Graham was so intimately involved in the sequence of events...and because he has been vociferous about getting that 9/11 report out in the open and accusing the admin of stonewalling and classifying too much.

That's one thing about the Notebooks. Graham knows what he did, who he talked to and what was said. With great precision.

I do not want to start rumors, but...if it turns out Bush did know, hey, you heard it here. ;)

[matt819]

2. I hate to rain on this parade

After all, Graham is right. Shrub failed to keep his eye on the ball, as he fails to keep is eye on any one thing for long, and certainly no longer than it takes to become hard to understand.

But I have a little heartburn with Graham's numbers, and that kind of stuff can end up biting you on the butt.

Anything is possible, of course, and certainly there were tens of thousands of Mujahideen trained by the Pakistanis, US, and others during the 1980s, when all were joined in an effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.

If these numbers are included in the numbers reportedly trained by al-Qaida, then maybe there is some merit in Graham's assertions.

If, however, the report is taking a look at al-Qaida training of terrorists in post-Soviet Afghanistan, and after the first Gulf War, then you are looking at basically a ten-year period (one more assumption, that the report is looking at 9/11 as the end date for al-Qaida being in a position to train terrorist).

Okay, so now we may be looking at 10 years during which 70,000 to 120,000 people were trained as terrorists, or at least received some form of military/guerilla training that could be applied in terrorist attackes. That's 7,000 to 12,000 per year. Now, once again the assumptions come in. If we're talking about mostly illiterat and uneducated Afghans, then maybe this is possible. But you have to wonder about the extent to which these sorts of individuals pose a threat to Americans or American interests, especially those in the U.S., i.e., mounting another 9/11 style attack. I would argue that the threat is limited. Do these people pose threats along the lines of the U.S. Cole attack? Sure, but, frankly, a few hundred or even a few thousand such trained terrorists would do the trick, and assertions that there are upwards of 100,000 such trained terrorists out there strikes me as hyperbole, and more appropriate to this administration than to a democratic candidate for president.

The same reasoning applies to the prospective terrorists that pose a larger threat to the U.S. in the U.S., like the Saudis who mounted the 9/11 attacks. Are there 70,000 trained terrorists who can pull this off? Unlikely. Rather, I suspect that there may be a cadre of highly trained people who have the capacity to operate in the U.S., like the Saudis who in fact made friends with their American neighbors during their stay here prior to 9/11. So, once again, the 70,000 - 120,000 number is more hyperbole and fear-mongering and detracts from Graham's argument, which is that shrub lost interest and failed to contain the threat before moving on to conduct a pre-emptive war on Iraq based on lies.

[lkinsale]

3. Here's the whole of what Graham said--basically what you are saying

Meet the Press, July 13

SEN. GRAHAM: It's not getting rid of the Saddam Hussein regime. It's the fact that we've taken our focus off the major threat to the lives of Americans in terms of foreign forces, and that is al-Qaeda and the other international terrorist groups. Those are the ones who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11. Those are the ones who have the will and capacity.

We're about to issue a report, I hope, before the end of this month, if the administration will finally get through its approval process. One of the statements that they, as of today, are allowing to be in this final report, is that over the existence of al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 persons in the skills and arts of terrorism: 70,000 to 120,000. We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some of them were placed inside the United States. Some of them are in the United States today. That, in my judgment, is the principal threat to the lives of the people of the United States. We lost focus. We allowed al-Qaeda to regroup and regenerate. They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far, none of them in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia.

MR. RUSSERT: How many al-Qaeda operatives would you estimate are in the U.S.?

SEN. GRAHAM: I have an estimate of that but I can't tell you, but it is a significant number.

MR. RUSSERT: In the thousands?

SEN. GRAHAM: It is a significant number.

*******

I really don't see that his argument is undermined. He is, after all, quoting what he is allowed to quote of he knows of the 9/11 report that is about to be released. It seems difficult to say what's "hyperbole" and what's not in a case like this. I doubt that many voters are going to be saying, "Oh, I know more about al Queda numbers than the 9/11 commission, and I think that's exaggerated." (Of course that's the beauty of the admin keeping so much classified.)

But his point, as I hear it, is that we have seriously dropped the ball on our most realistic threat, and in fact have increased the threat by going after Iraq instead. While I've always thought Bush's Iraq adventure and WMD claims sounded exaggerated, these statements about al Queda seem pretty reasonable to me. Whether they trained 100k or 10k people, it only took 19 in the right place at the right time.

[fla nocount]

8. Graham has been a schill and whore

for Big Sugar and developers for so long at the state level that I wouldn't put it past him to act as a schill and whore for the CIA and intelligence community at the national level. I smell him trying to run against Bushco on the fabricated terror platform as the Dem alternative to * while ignoring the economy. Shrub and Graham have that in common, they're both corporate whores.........do you want yours from a massive and enviromentally insensitive herbivore or from an ass? Not much of a choice if you ask me.

Graham has no credibility with anyone that can string seven days together and remember what happened on each one. The man is owned by last century's values, tear up his phone number and move on, he's a part of the problem.

[KG]

13. as a pres. candidate, graham is wrong for america.

fortunately he doesn't have a chance at the nomination.