WP: 1998 Memo Cited Suspected Hijack Plot by Bin Laden

[huckleberry]

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 18, 2004; Page A17

A secret intelligence document prepared for President Bill Clinton in December 1998 reported on a suspected plot by Osama bin Laden to hijack a U.S. airliner in an effort to force the United States to release imprisoned conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks.

The one-page declassified version of the President's Daily Brief dated Dec. 4, 1998, contains chilling information -- gleaned by the CIA from several sources -- indicating that al Qaeda was working with U.S.-based operatives of its deadly ally, the Egyptian group Gama at al-Islamiyya, in the purported hijacking plot.

snip

When it is released this week, a report by the presidential commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will include the newly declassified document and a previously declassified PDB dated Aug. 6, 2001. It will also contain details of what Philip D. Zelikow, the commission's executive director, described yesterday as an "energetic response" to the hijack threat information by the Clinton administration, including its efforts to determine whether the plot reports were true.

snip

Though the CIA and other government agencies were clearly aware of the hijack threat, and though the Federal Aviation Administration distributed a circular referring to it in the summer of 2001, a White House official said yesterday that the Bush national security team was not apprised by the outgoing Clinton administration about the intelligence report on a suspected hijack plot to free Rahman.


more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58615-2004Jul17.html

[thebigidea]

1. if the O'Reilly set runs with this to bash Clinton...

... I'm going to die laughing.

The only response to that would be: August 6th. PDB. Crawford. Vacation.

[glitch]

2. Good old Steno Sue - I wonder what her bank accounts look like

Does she have any Cayman Island accounts? Is it all for money or is there idealogy involved?

Just curious.

[fearnobush]

9. Could they look like this?

Halliburton Uses Cayman Islands for Contract in Terrorist State
2004-07-02 00:04 (New York)

Halliburton Uses Cayman Islands for Contract in Terrorist State

(Published in Bloomberg Markets magazine.)

By David Evans
July 2 (Bloomberg) -- On April 13, 2003, President George W.
Bush accused Syria of having weapons of mass destruction. ``We
believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,'' he said on the
South Lawn of the White House.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, appearing on CBS's
``Face the Nation'' the same day, said busloads of Syrians were
sent to Iraq to kill Americans. ``Reasonable people don't want to
be associated with a state that's on a terrorist list,'' Rumsfeld
said. ``Who in the world would want to invest in Syria?''
Six weeks later, on May 31, Devon Energy Corp., an Oklahoma
City-based oil and gas producer, entered a partnership with the
Syrian government to spend $17 million to search for oil in
Syria, according to company filings with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission.
Theodore Kattouf, then U.S. ambassador to Syria, attended
the contract signing in Damascus. Devon channeled the business
through a Cayman Islands subsidiary.
Devon's work in Syria didn't mark the first time a U.S.
company won a contract through a Cayman subsidiary in what the
U.S. called a terrorist state. A Halliburton Co. subsidiary sold
$33.6 million in products and services to Iran in 2001, according
to filings with the SEC.
Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive officer of
Houston-based Halliburton, an energy services and engineering
company, from 1995 to 2000.

Iran Off Limits

Iran is blacklisted by the U.S. as a terrorist state, which
means U.S. companies are forbidden from accepting contracts from
Iran. The Halliburton unit that won the contract in Iran was
incorporated in the Cayman Islands and therefore wasn't subject
to U.S. law, Halliburton says.
``All of Halliburton's business is clearly permissible under
applicable U.S. laws and regulations,'' says Wendy Hall, a
Halliburton spokeswoman. ``If Congress decides to change the laws
and provisions, Halliburton will, of course, comply.''
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says that before he was vice
president, Cheney usually opposed economic sanctions. ``He
believed they were rarely effective and they often discriminated
against American companies,'' he says.
In February, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, chaired by
Republican Charles Grassley, sent a letter to the Treasury
Department asking if Halliburton was being investigated for
violating U.S. sanctions.
The committee also wrote letters to ConocoPhillips and
General Electric Co. asking about their revenue from terrorist
states, including Iran and Syria.

`Seal Those Doors'

``If these companies are going through the backdoor to
invest in terrorist nations, Congress must take action to
immediately close, lock and seal those doors,'' said Senator Max
Baucus, 62, of Montana, the senior Democrat on the committee.
The Finance Committee didn't challenge Devon's contract with
Syria. Congress and President Bush put restrictions on U.S.
companies working in Syria -- such as barring exports from the
U.S. to Syria, except for food and medicine -- without banning
them from working in that country.
``We entered Syria with the support of the U.S.
government,'' says Brian Jennings, 43, Devon's chief financial
officer. Jennings says that by using a Cayman subsidiary in
Syria, the company can finance that operation with profit earned
in China without first paying U.S. taxes on it.

13 Cayman Subsidiaries

Halliburton is the 30th-largest military contractor, with
fiscal 2001 federal contracts of $534.2 million, according to a
March study by the General Accounting Office, the auditing arm of
Congress. Halliburton has 13 subsidiaries in the Caymans, two in
Liechtenstein and two in Panama.
General Electric, the world's largest company by market
value, has sold locomotives in Syria; in Iran, it sold medical
equipment, provided oil and gas services and contracted to build
hydroelectric generators, according to the Senate Finance
Committee.
ConocoPhillips, the largest U.S. oil refiner, runs a gas
processing plant in Syria, the committee said. ``We comply
strictly with U.S. law in sales to Iran,'' says GE spokesman Gary
Sheffer. ``If Congress decides to change the law, we'll comply.''
ConocoPhillips spokesman Sam Falcona says the company often
talks with U.S. officials to keep up with the rules. ``We are in
full compliance with the letter and spirit of U.S. laws,'' he
says.

[Rose Siding]

3. Gore's report on air safety was prescient

It included a suggestion for locks on cockpit doors, among other things.

White House Commission on
Aviation Safety and Security
FINAL REPORT
TO
PRESIDENT CLINTON

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE, CHAIRMAN
FEBRUARY 12, 1997

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin%7E1.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. When was there any time to work on any of this?

Clinton was too busy defending himself against Starr, and a whole range of RW myopic maniacs during that particular time.

[grasswire]

5. why is this woman still employed?

I'd love to lob a big fat tomato her direction.

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

6. steno sue

worse than faux.

[wellst0nev0ter]

7. Steno Sue Can't Blame Clinton

If I read correctly, the memo didn't specify the date, time and proper astrological alignments of when the terror attacks are supposed to happen :eyes:

[thebigidea]

8. (said while twitching, blinking, and shaking head violently ala Rice)

"It was... a purely historical memo... I believe..."

[ET Awful]

10. They can try to say whatever they like about Clinton, BUT . . .

They won't change this: "an "energetic response" to the hijack threat information by the Clinton administration, including its efforts to determine whether the plot reports were true."

Bush's boys didn't even give a lackluster response, let alont an energetic one.