Cable says Afghan leader warned that bin Laden was planning U.S. attack

[NNN0LHI]

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/11/06/massoud.cable/

How much did Afghan leader know?

Cable says Massoud learned bin Laden was planning U.S. attack

From Mike Boettcher
and Henry Schuster
CNN
Friday, November 7, 2003 Posted: 0304 GMT (11:04 AM HKT)

(CNN) -- Assassinated Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massoud had "limited knowledge" of a planned attack against the United States and was warning the West of the threat, according to a newly declassified cable from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.

Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban's main opposition, was killed September 9, 2001, by a bomb inside a video camera during an interview at his headquarters with two Tunisian al Qaeda operatives posing as journalists.

The cable, written in November 2001, was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (Text of cable, PDF)

It was based on an interview with a classified source and reads:

"Through Northern Alliance intelligence efforts, the late commander Massoud gained limited knowledge regarding the intentions of the Saudi millionaire, Usama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, al-Qaida, to perform a terrorist act against the U.S., on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

The heavily edited DIA document does not specify what it meant by "limited knowledge," and the portion that follows the reference is blacked out.

more

[Minstrel Boy]

1. And not only Massoud was sounding the alarm,

even the Taliban itself was:

"Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115