Big FBI 9/11 coverup in Saudi Arabia

[paulthompson]

Please read this entry of mine first, then keep Abdel-Hafiz in mind when the read the article below it. How could Time magazine miss everything written about him in the past?!

Does anyone here really find this just more "incompetence" and not a deliberate attempt to hinder and coverup a real 9/11 investigation?


March 21, 2000 - "Complaints About FBI Agent Are Ignored, Dubious Agent Promoted to Head FBI Investigations in Saudi Arabia"
FBI agent Robert Wright, having been accused of tarnishing the reputation of fellow agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, makes a formal internal complaint about Abdel-Hafiz. FBI agent Barry Carmody seconds Wright's complaint. Wright and Carmody accuse Abdel-Hafiz, a Muslim, of hindering investigations by openly refusing to record other Muslims. The FBI was investigating if BMI Inc., a New Jersey based company with connections to Saudi financier Yassin al-Qadi, had helped fund the 1998 US embassy bombings. (Wall Street Journal, 11/26/02; ABC News, 12/19/02) Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner and other FBI agents back up the allegations against Abdel-Hafiz. (ABC News, 12/19/02;) Carmody also claims that Abdel-Hafiz hindered an inquiry into the possible terrorist ties of fired University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian by refusing to record a conversation with the professor in 1998. (Tampa Tribune, 3/4/03) Complaints to superiors and headquarters about this never get a response. (Fox News, 3/6/03) Furthermore, "Far from being reprimanded, Abdel-Hafiz (is) promoted to one of the FBI's most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country." (ABC News, 12/19/02) Abdel-Hafiz is finally suspended in February 2003, after his scandal is widely reported in the press. (Tampa Tribune, 3/4/03) Bill O'Reilly of Fox News claims that on March 4, 2003, the FBI threatens to fire Wright if he speaks publicly about this, one hour before Wright is scheduled to appear on Fox News. (Fox News, 3/4/03)


Who Blew the Leads?

The Saudis get blamed for not revealing more after 9/11. Maybe they said more than the FBI took in

by Adam Zagorin
Time
June 27, 2005
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1074148,00.html


In the wake of 9/11, Saudi authorities came under criticism in the U.S. for sluggishness in investigating the attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Now it appears that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the slackness with which leads were pursued. According to several former employees of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, the FBI legal attaché's office housed within the embassy was often in disarray during the months that followed 9/11. When an FBI supervisor arrived to clean up the mess, she found a mountain of paper and, for security reasons, ordered wholesale shredding that resulted in the destruction of unprocessed documents relating to the 9/11 investigations. A letter obtained by Time confirms that the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the matter.

In 2001 the FBI's Saudi office comprised a secretary and two agents--Wilfred Rattigan and his lieutenant, Egyptian-American Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. They also oversaw six nearby countries. The FBI sent reinforcements within two weeks of 9/11, but it appears that the bureau's team never got on top of the thousands of leads flowing in from the U.S. and Saudi governments. In a June 6 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Senate Judiciary Committee renewed a request for information about allegations that the FBI's Riyadh office was "delinquent in pursuing thousands of leads" related to 9/11.

When the senior FBI supervisor was sent to the Riyadh office nearly a year after 9/11, she found secret documents literally falling out of file drawers, stacked in binders on tables and wedged behind cabinets, according to an FBI briefing to Congress. The process of sending classified material to the U.S. had fallen so far behind that a backlog of boxes, each filled with three feet of paper containing secret, time-sensitive leads, had built up. Since embassies must be prepared for the possibility of a hostile takeover, the rule is that officials should need no more than 15 minutes to destroy all their sensitive documents. Accordingly, the supervisor ordered the shredding of hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages, many of them related directly to the ongoing 9/11 investigation, an FBI briefer told Congress.

In a statement to Time last week, the FBI said the shredded material was "duplicative" or "only informational." But the Judiciary Committee's letter cites reports that some of the documents "had not been translated or reviewed." Or copied, according to several former Riyadh embassy employees. The result, they say, was that over two or more months, agents had to go back to Saudi security officials to try to obtain copies of what had been destroyed. "It was leads, suspicious-activity material, information on airline pilots," says an employee. In a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Bassem Youssef, the FBI's previous No. 1 in Riyadh, Mueller conceded that there were problems in the office after 9/11.

[Kevin Fenton]

1. What piqued my interest most was

"It was leads, suspicious-activity material, information on airline pilots,"
Why was the FBI investigation into 9/11 in Riyadh collecting information on airline pilots? Weren't the four pilots who allegedly flew the planes supposed to have trained on small aircraft in the US?

The idea that Al-Qaeda would launch a major attack without properly trained operatives - on the off-chance they might get lucky - is one that has always left me cold. I'd give my back teeth to know if these airline pilots were still alive.

[paulthompson]

2. I've always believed...

That at least some of the 9/11 hijackers we know, including the pilots, were in the US only to lay a false trail to hide the real players in the plot. There was a last minute switch, which is why for instance the picture of Hani Hanjour at the airport that morning looks nothing like him. There are literally thousands of flight training schools around the world where they could have gotten trained just as well, and then come into the country a few weeks or days earlier, and succeeded just as well. Hell, al-Qaeda had complete control over the Afghan national airline, Ariana, and in fact did train operatives to fly real jumbo jets right in Afghanistan (the guys trained there were probably the real pilots).

Yet the hijackers in the US left this huge damning trail wherever they went, doing everything in their own names, and even always ordering take out pizzas with credit cards. Keep in mind one of the quotes from an FBI investigator in my timeline that is something to the effect, "Everything we found about the hijackers, they meant for us to find."

The official investigations have been nothing but cover ups, and one thing they've covered up is just how much US intelligence knew about some of the hijackers before 9/11. I've counted about eight that were known by name before 9/11, and there's probably a lot more info we don't know about. Most people have forgotten about this stuf. For instance, this entry:

Spring 2001
US Customs Investigate Two Hijackers Before 9/11"
A US Customs Service investigation finds evidence that Nabil al-Marabh has funneled money to hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam Al Suqami. (Cox News Service, 10/16/01; ABC News, 1/31/02) By summer, Customs also uncovers a series of financial transactions between al-Marabh and al-Qaeda agent Raed Hijazi. (New York Times, 9/21/01; Associated Press, 11/17/01)

The Mossad gave the US a list of 19 terrorists in August 2001 - we know four of the names were of the hijacker leaders, but probably the entire list was the exact same 19 in the plot. And that should come as no surprise, because the Mossad had been watching them for months.

It's highly probable that the hijackers were being watched all along by the US, too. For instance, media reports that Atta was being followed by the CIA in Germany. Or reports that Ramzi bin al-Shibh wasn't allowed into the US because of his involvement in the USS Cole attack - how could they know this and not notice that he was roommates with Atta, Alshehhi, and others?! Or the CIA asking UAE to stop and check on Ziad Jarrah as he passed through Dubai (and Jarrah freely telling them he was on his way to Florida to train in flight schools). These guys were on the radar screen in a big way, and allowed to proceed no matter what they did. They acted as if they were operating with complete impunity, for instance Atta and Al-shehhi stalling a Cessna on a major runway at the Miami International Airport and simply walking away and taking a taxi cab home, which normally should have gotten them kicked out of flight school. So many examples like this, for instance, every single one of their visa applications being a complete joke and yet they get in without a problem (with immigrations experts saying that even by the standards of the time the odds of that happening by chance were simply incredible).

It's another lie that the hijackers all had clean criminal records. Some in fact had very long records of terror connections before they got in the US. So it makes no sense for these guys to be running around the US for months or even years in advance doing what they could just as easily have done anywhere else in the world, unless they knew they didn't have to worry about being caught and that in fact they were safer in the US than anywhere else.

That's what I think. The hijackers were being protected by some top secret clandestine operations branch of a US intellligence agency (probably the CIA), and that branch made sure they had a "get out of jail free" card whenever any other law enforcement stumbled across them, including other parts of its own agency. That's why, for instance Daniel Hopsicker has undercovered strong evidence that the flight schools they attended were actually CIA fronts and there's that curious evidence of so many of them training at US military bases.

Now, there are two ways one can go with this. One, al-Qaeda knew about secret US cooperation with terrorists under the guise of sending mujahedeen and the like to fight for US interests in places like Bosnia and Chechnya, and they decided to use that underground railroad of sorts against the US. There's a long history of this. I haven't put it in my timeline yet, but all through the 1990s the US was secretly flying Muslim fundamentalists into Bosnia on C-130's in the middle of the night, to fight Serbia. Al-Qaeda knew they had the perfect way to strike at the US with nearly zero chance of being caught, by piggybacking on some extremely dodgy and illegal US covert operations. Or two, this rogue intelligence branch decided to use this secret connection with terrorists to allow an attack on the US to succeed, for larger foreign policy purposes and other goals, and deliberately allowd this piggyback method to be used as part of that.

I think the weight of the evidence is the latter. It was far too obvious not only that they were here, but what they were doing, for instance, the Egyptian warning that 20 al-Qaeda agents were in the US and training on light aircraft for a terror mission. However, I'll concede there's still a slim chance it could be the former. Either way, it would explain a lot of the so-called "incompetence" and need for a thorough coverup afterwards.

[Kevin Fenton]

3. Various

If I were Al Qaeda I would do it like this:
I would send most of the reconnaisance and muscle in on the "underground railroad" (in my mind there's no doubt it existed and that it was used). Given the absence of proper pilots, nobody is ever going to work out what the real plan is - looking at where they were a couple of months before the attack (north Florida, San Diego, San Antonio, etc.) I would have imagined there was going to be a USS Cole-style attack in San Diego plus some sort of truck bomb at CENTCOM in Tampa and maybe some other stuff. I might even wait for the explosives to come in over the border before I started rolling the whole group up. I'd then bring the pilots in later and they'd only meet up with the others shortly before the off.

One thing I noticed was that Moussaoui was training for a 747 (wasn't Hanjour as well?), which seems the logical choice for suicide hijackers, being the biggest plane. The only way I can explain the switch to smaller aircraft is that when the pilots showed up they said they didn't have experience with 747s and wanted smaller planes. Perhaps this would explain why some of the routes seem less than ideal - they were cobbled together in a hurry.

Just because the picture is not of Hanjour, doesn't mean he wasn't on the plane. There seems to have been two hijackers in each cockpit, I guess one of them is a proper pilot and the other (the "first officer") is the less good pilot who did the reconnaisance.

[paulthompson]

10. There are several flaws with your plan...

as opposed to how it turns out. For one, there was no fake plan meant to throw US intelligence off their trail. You would think the guys in the US would fake doing one thing, and then have another team come in and do something else, but in fact what they faked was exactly what transpired. For instance, many times that summer they flew back and forth across the US, getting practice on the very types of flights and planes they would later use.

There was no switch from 747s. Their interest was in 757s and 767s all along and that's what they always trained for (those two planes are very similar to each other, but different from 747s). Moussaoui by his own repeated admission was part of a later follow up plot. It appears to have involved a 747 flying from London to New York.

Your KSM theory doesn't work either, because they repeatedly telegraphed when the hijacking was going to happen. Associates of the hijackers began buying tickets to leave Germany in mid-August (a few days before Moussaoui's arrest, by the way) and they were all largely gone a few days before 9/11. There was even a larger alert by al-Qaeda for everyone to come back to Afghanistan by Sept. 10 if they could, and they moved the training camps a few days in advance, too. How much more obvious could they get?!

Operational security was horribly poor, as evidenced by captured messages like "the match begins tommorrow." Heck, even bin Laden told his step-mother on a cell phone when the attack would happen (and that was recorded too)! And of course, the NSA was recording Atta talk to KSM all summer, and recorded the final thumbs up from KSM the day before.

There's no evidence that they were trying to put forth some other story, like an explosives attack or something - they were remarkably consistent and vocal about what they were doing (heck, Alshehhi boasted exactly what they would do to a random librarian back in 2000). Bin Laden was even boasting in public speeches in mosques about the 20 martyrs on a mission, and the thousands who would die in America.

It's basically like they didn't even care about getting caught, because they knew they wouldn't.

[Kevin Fenton]

20. More Credible Second Layer Targets

OK, so the idea with the 747's was stupid and the second layer targets I suggested (CENTCOM and San Diego) weren't very credible, because it was known when the attack would be and the hijcakers were nowhere near them on the day, but I think the idea has some merit.

I've been asking myself the following questions:
Why were all/most of the practice flights cross-country? If the aim was just to watch what happens on a flight, why not go, say, from Orlando to New York and back, I can't see they can get specific route information from just sitting on a plane. Besides, on 9/11 the planes never left the northeast, what's the point of going all the way to the west coast each time?

Why were all the 9/11 flights cross-country? There are plenty of planes in the US flying to destinations other than on the west coast, there are also lots of international flights (an intercontinental flight on a 767 would have more fuel), why not use these? If the planes had arrived at their destinations, they would have done so at more or less the same time, is this significant? Plus, 3 (4 if you count United 23) were going to the same place.

Why does Atta check baggage for the plane (I'm not sure if the others do too)? If they've been so sloppy in everything else, why would they remember this little detail? And if it's not a coincidence that Atta's bags get left behind, does the CIA open them? What do they expect to find there? Why are the uniforms inside? Is this something else the CIA are supposed to find?

I assume the underground railroad is used because is the only way to get so many people into the country. If they could have swapped teams at the last minute, they would have, but they couldn't (although I think they got 4/5 proper pilots in without it being noticed).

If Al Qaeda use the underground railroad, then they must assume the CIA are going to work it out (it's a CIA covert action programme after all), so they must have some sort of plan? What is it? The only option I can see is double bluff. The only two other explanations for their actions are that they're incredibly stupid or that it's all done with the government's approval (or the approval of some people in power).

Double bluff:
The hijackers arrive in the US and start indicating they're going to do suicide hijacks, but the CIA registers them and doesn't believe it because the information is obtained too easily (what intelligence agency believes easily obtained information?) and because, without the real pilots, it's implausible. So the CIA looks for a second layer, but it looks through the prism of previous events.

More credible second layer targets:
LAX and San Francisco Airport
Are the people who are warned not to fly warned because of the planes or because of the airports?

One of the warnings seems real odd:
"Eight hours prior to the attacks, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown receives a warning from “my security people at the airport,” advising him to be cautious in traveling. Later reports claim that this is because someone saw the State Department warning of September 7, which focused on the threat to military personnel in Asia. Brown is scheduled to fly to New York the next morning. The source of the warning, and why it was personally issued to Brown, remains unknown."

San Francisco is some distance from the centre of the action, Willie Brown was not one of the generals and United 93 was scheduled to arrive there that day.

As for LAX, there is a reason the CIA might have suspected the plot was directed against it (aside from the fact the hijackers kept visiting it):
"Zubaida asked Ressam to send him original Canadian passports to help Zubaida “get people to America.” Zubaida “wanted an operation in the US” and talked about the need to get explosives into the US for this operation, but Ressam makes it clear this was a separate plot from the one he was involved with."
"Questioned shortly after 9/11, Ressam will point out that given what he's already told his US interrogators, the 9/11 attacks should not be surprising. He notes that he'd described how Zubaida talked “generally of big operations in US with big impact, needing great preparation, great perseverance, and willingness to die.” Ressam had told of “plans to get people hired at airports, of blowing up airports, and airplanes.”"

If the CIA didn't find the real pilots, then I think they would really go for this.

BTW, surely, just because KSM never came to the US, doesn't mean he never bought a ticket. Perhaps he did and they found out about it. I wonder when and where he might have been scheduled to arrive.

[paulthompson]

25. I'm glad...

Kevin, to discuss these issues with you. Although I disagree with the way you strongly support the incompetence hypothesis, you have shown critical thinking and the ability to back up your arguments, unlike the usual incompetence supporters here, who seem mentally closed to looking at any evidence they don't like.

First off, if you're planning on hijacking a transcontinental plane, it makes sense to me to practice on transcontinental routes. You learn the rhythms, like when meals are served, when people can walk around, etc... But that's not all they did. Apparently one of their flights was to Minnesota, leading to some speculation they were meeting Moussaoui there.

As for Atta's baggage, I strongly suspect that one reason for his trip to Portland was so he could have this baggage checked through and fail to make the transfer onto the right plane in Boston. The contents are like a laundry list to point investigators where to go, but make no sense as something to take on a hijacking (from my tlimeline):

They contain a handheld electronic flight computer, a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft, two videotapes relating to “air tours” of the Boeing 757 and 747 aircraft, a slide-rule flight calculator, a copy of the Koran, Atta's passport, his will, his international driver's license, a religious cassette tape, airline uniforms, a letter of recommendation, “education related documentation” and a note to other hijackers on how to mentally prepare for the hijacking.

Why would you take this kind of stuff with you if you thought it was all going to be destroyed in a ball of flames? Are they supposed to watch the videos on flying Boeings in the few minutes before the hijacking starts? These bags were discovered within hours, and gave the FBI some of their very first leads, all but screaming to the FBI where to go and what to do. Generally, they dropped flight manuals and Korans behind in an almost comical fashion, one guy even going to a bar, paying with a credit card, and leaving a Koran at the bar! They left a trail of evidence so wide that the FBI could announce the who, what, where, when, and why of the attack within days.

I don't put much stock in the Willie Brown warning. I think it may have just been coincidental. He didn't put enough stock in it to actually cancel his plane. The one I find most significant is the Salman Rushdie warning. The FAA actually confirmed that they had strong suspicions a hijacking would take place that week, strong enough to ban Rushdie from flying, domesticaly only (a very key clue), but not strong enough to give a warning to anyone else, or take any extra safety precautions!

Why? Remember the fatwa on Rushdie's life. He wasn't just an ordinary famous guy. To have him killed would have been a huge and unexpected propaganda coup for al-Qaeda. I theorize the LIHOPers wanted the attack to go forward, but didn't want to give al-Qaeda that extra gift.

The Rushdie warning is incredibly damning, because it shows at least some people in the US government knew something was in the wind, and did nothing, warned no one. Keep in mind the kinds of things the FAA sent out general warnings about in the past. They sent out warnings based on no evidence of a plot whatsoever. For instance, during Ressam's trial, they put out a warning noting that al-Qaeda might want to time an attack to the trial. No evidence, just prudent speculation.

Yet the FAA told Rushdie's publisher they had "intelligence of something about to happen" the week of 9/11, and they put out no warning to airport security, airplane pilots, the military, etc...?!

Your double bluff makes no sense. Even if you thought there was a bluff, you would cover your bases and protect against the bluff, if you were wrong. If the FAA or US intelligence had any hint of a hijacking attack, but say, got the wrong city, they would have put out a general warning to all cities anyway. Or even just a warning to that city! But there's no hint of any warning whatsoever, nor of adding air marshalls to suspect routes, the setting up fighter patrols, etc... They would have done other things like put at least Alhazmi and Almihdhar on domestic no-fly lists. They even updated the domestic no-fly list with six new names on Aug. 28, four days after those two guys were put on the international no-fly list, and their names weren't added to it.

Time and time again, the most logical explanation is they knew when the attack was going to happen, and let it happen.

By the way, I'd be curious to get your feedback on my posts #11, 13, and 14.

[spooked911]

28. The warning to Salman Rushdie is interesting-- I wonder if he was warned

away because if he was killed in the 9/11 attacks, then the attacks would have been seen as more of a crazy attempt to get him perhaps-- than an attack on America? Also, wasn't the fatwa issued by Iran? Perhaps the LIHOPers didn't want the attacks to be blamed on Iran?

[Kevin Fenton]

29. Incompetence

I wouldn't call it the incompetence hypothesis. I think the CIA was averagely smart, but the hijackers were real smart. I'd call it the real smart hijacker hypothesis.

My point about the transcontinental planes is why do the planes have to be transcontinental, why not hijack international planes or planes from, I don't know, Boston to Miami, or Atlanta, or Dallas. My original idea was that there are more security checks on international flights, but the hijackers seem to have made several international flights, Atta even came here, and that the longer the flight, the more the fuel, but when I do my sums, I don't think a couple of thousand gallons of fuel makes much difference. Three of the planes are going to LAX, on which the millenium plot was centred and I think this is something the CIA would notice and are supposed to notice.

Orgy of Evidence
"Everything we found about the hijackers, they meant for us to find."
You can place any meaning you want into this comment, but I suppose the FBI investigators knew what they were talking about and I take it at face value.
I agree that the trail the hijackers left is obvious. If the hijackers are genuine, why were they leaving obvious clues? If the hijackers wer e fake, why were the clues they were leaving so obvious that the FBI had their doubts about them? One possibility I have entertained is that, as no intelligence agency ever believes any information it gets easily, the hijackers were feeding the CIA with a deception they expected to find and overcome, and then they were feeding them with something else, which the CIA thought was the real thing, but wasn't (perhaps a repeat of the millenium plot against LAX).
The explanation that the hijackers were just not very good (because they weren't or because they knew they didn't have to be) does not work for me, because the FBI investigator quoted above thinks otherwise for very clearly defined reasons which I agree with - they knew what they were doing.
I can't see how the Portland-baggage-misses-plane explanation tallies with carelessness. Atta spent the last night of his life in Portland, Maine, just so his bag would be left at Boston airport and the investigators would find all the other pointless evidence he left? What's the point of that? Why not just leave a note in the car? Why are the airline uniforms in the bag anyway - they play no role in the hijack? It seems to me that he was working real hard to maintain the deception until the end.

Rushdie
"I theorize the LIHOPers wanted the attack to go forward, but didn't want to give al-Qaeda that extra gift."
Eh? If Rushdie got knocked off (and let's face it he's never going to top Children of Midnight) then wouldn't that be kind of popular in the Muslim world? Instead of feeling absolute sympathy with the US, wouldn't Muslims be saying, "Well, it's real bad, but at least they got that bastard Rushdie." If anybody wanted a clash of civilisations they should have moved heavan and earth to ensure that Rushdie was the first guy to be killed. If it was done by some rogue group of CIA officers, why would they warn an aging author - thereby comprising the secrecy of what they were doing? The same applies the CIA/drug smuggling connection (although you could claim the Rushdie warnings are just a coincidence and that there really was a group of rogue CIA officers).

"Even if you thought there was a bluff, you would cover your bases and protect against the bluff, if you were wrong."
Not if you think you have seen through the bluff. Surely, this is the entire point of a double bluff - the bases don't get covered. Without the real pilots, the bluff is completely implausible, that's why it's rejected so strongly.

"If the FAA or US intelligence had any hint of a hijacking attack, but say, got the wrong city, they would have put out a general warning to all cities anyway. Or even just a warning to that city! But there's no hint of any warning whatsoever,"
I don't think it's a hijacking, I think it's the airport(s). They have tickets to LA and SF, they can't get off in Memphis. I suppose there must be "reception committees" in LA and SF.

"nor of adding air marshalls to suspect routes,"
Again, the bluff is that the attack will be at the airport. Why would the CIA involve an organisation like the air marshalls? They would be bound to cock it up somehow.

[Kevin Fenton]

4. I've just realised why they didn't roll it up

KSM got a US visa on 23 July. They thought he was going to come in to direct the final stage of the plan. They didn't want to arrest the other gang members they had under surveillance - what could they have done, thrown them out of the country for immigration violations? - and miss out on the main man. They thought KSM was going to stick his head in the trap and then they'd spring it shut. I have to admit, as ruses go, it's a pretty good one.

[spooked911]

7. The intelligence agencies at some level knew an attack was in the works

so why would they take the chance of the whole thing getting out control? For instance, the terrorists could have crashed a plane into congress or into the whitehouse or into a nuclear plant, causing all sorts of unforeseen problems. Instead, even though they were horrible, the attacks were relatively limited-- into predictable targets such as the WTC and into a lightly occupied wing of the Pentagon.

This is why the 9/11 attacks had to be controlled in some way-- most likely the hijacked planes were either swapped with drones (ala Northwoods) or were piloted by remote control.

[Kevin Fenton]

8. Different attack

The CIA was expecting a different attack. It couldn't pick them up yet - what could they be charged with? Jaywalking? The CIA had to wait and try to catch them redhanded - with some sort of evidence that they were going to do something really bad. Just deporting them for immigration violations would be even more risky - they would probably just go bomb some embassy. The CIA must have thought there were going to do some sort of truck bomb attack and, as they hadn't got any explosives yet, there was no imminent risk. Also, KSM got a US visa in July - through the notorious visa express programme in Saudi - the CIA would have expected him to arrive and, seeing as he was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, they wouldn't have wanted to blow the chance of getting him - that would have been a great success for the CIA.

It's a classic double bluff by Al Qaeda - most of the guys come in through the underground railroad and make themselves obvious to the CIA and Mossad. The CIA thinks they're crap and have them all nicely under surveillance - it's been lulled into a false sense of security. But the proper pilots come in separately, they meet up and that's it.

Just imagine the faces at Langley. "Hey, look at these passenger manifests, aren't these the guys we've been following for the last 5 months?"

If Cheney and Rumsfeld had known there were only two more planes and that one of them was crap and the other was only going to hit the Pentagon, which can't be knocked down by an aeroplane, then they wouldn't have taken the risk of delaying interceptors. The delay is because they don't know and only put two and two together just before 9:00.

[spooked911]

15. The CIA knew the terrorists were going to flight schools

so why would they think the attack would be with a truck bomb? Come on. The CIA also knew of the Bojinka plot.

I really think you give Al Qaeda too much credit for being super tricky and not enough credit to our intelligence agenices to know what was going on.

On what basis besides 9/11 is there evidence that Al Qaeda is so brilliant?

[Kevin Fenton]

21. OK, so the idea's not perfect

Perhaps truck bomb is not the best idea in the world. But maybe something at LAX and San Francisco airport - that is where they were going after all. The CIA also knew of the millennium plot to attack LAX (and Logan Airport in Boston as well, I think). Surely, they're more likely to make the connection to that than to something 6 years old, especially as the Millennium guy they caught told them Al Qaeda was planning an independent similar attack.

They had years to develop the plot and it seems really well crafted. As for the CIA, when have they ever been right about anything?

I would say the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole were pretty well run attacks, wouldn't you?

[paulthompson]

26. couple of thoughts

> As for the CIA, when have they ever been right about anything?

First, I would argue there are many different CIA's, different branches with different purposes (for instance, covert ops vs. analysis). And what we think of failures are often successes from another point of view. For instance, their gross failure to predict the fall of the Soviet Union and wildly overestimating the strength of Russia's military, was actually a success in terms of building up their own power, the US military's power, and a whole host of other policy goals. They did these kinds of things willfully, for instance everyone knew the Russians would send the same weapons in circles in parades to boost up their numbers, but the parade watchers would dutifully be "fooled" because they wanted a big Russian threat as well. In fact, the very people most responsible for these failures, like Wolfowitz and Perle, are the people in the highest power positions today.

>I would say the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole were pretty well run attacks, wouldn't you?

No. Actually very poorly planned. The USS Cole was actually the second try - the first on the USS The Sullivans in the same port failed with the little dingy filled with explosives sank before it could reach the target. The African embassy bombings was actually supposed to hit three embassies, but the attack on the Ugandan embassy was a complete failure. The others were only partial successes. For instance, one of the guys attacking the Kenya embassy got cold feet at the last second, hopped out of the suicide vehicle, survived, was caught, talked, and caused the whole thing to unravel to investigators.

In fact, the 9/11 plot was such a leap for al-Qaeda that there's no way they could have done it alone. I see the ISI's assistance every step of the way. They are a competent intelligence agency capable of pulling off something of this magnitude. Note the info I have in another post here of pilots being trained in Afghanistan by a Pakistani general. Note Atta having a Pakistani fighter pilot as a roommate. Note ISI involvement in the money transfers, and much, much more.

One big reason for all the trickery was to hide ISI involvement in the plot. Another big reason was to protect the hijacker's associates in the US. There are other reasons, too.

As a result, it behooves both the US and al-Qaeda to keep up the same false story to this day. Al-Qaeda needs to hide Pakistan's role in the attack, and the US does too (since Pakistan is supposedly a close ally). In fact, now that I think about it, it's a similar kind of situation with both the US and Russia together maintaining the mutual lie of a vast overestimate of Russia's military for decades, for different domestic reasons.

[spooked911]

27. All excellent points that make a lot of sense. Thanks.

Now, unless I missed this being answered somewhere else-- is Al Qaeda a really nasty drug ring that hides behind a guise of Islamic fundamentalism or are they suicidal Islamic fundamentalists that make money by dealing drugs or are they something else?

[Kevin Fenton]

30. CIA, etc.

The only person I saw who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union was Russell Grant. My understanding is that the problems were in the provinces - the provincial party bosses just weren't sending accurate reports (they were bumping up the numbers) to Moscow and the politburo was fooled, too. Unless the CIA had people in a fair number of provinces going over the numbers, there's no way they could have predicted the USSR's economy would fall.

USS Cole
I don't know what you're standards are for terrorists, but I was brought up with the IRA and I think that merely attempting an attack on a warship shows amazing chutzpah, at the very least. And I think getting it right at merely the second go shows quite a high degree of skill.

African Embassies
Yes, one of the attacks failed completely, and the other two were only partially sucessful. Nevertheless, other terrorist organisations usually go for much softer targets (kidnapping errant journalists, etc.). The ambition is breathtaking and the ability is pretty good.

Yes, the ISI is involved some way (but "every step of the way"? that's a pretty farreaching claim) and this is one of the reasons the US government doesn't want an investigation. I guess Saudi is too, and that's another reason.

[stickdog]

23. Truck bomb? What about Moussaoui who was already in custody?

What about the CIA-front flight schools these guys attended?

What about the ridiculously clumsy "crop duster" plot Atta supposedly tried to pull off using federal loans or some such idiocy?

[Kevin Fenton]

24. Only way I can explain it

PT says Moussaoui was involved in some sort of follow up plot.

I'm just suggesting it might have been a double bluff. The hijackers realise the CIA will find out they're here so first they offer it the idea that they're going to do the actual 9/11 plot, but the information is too easily acquired and without proper pilots it seems implausible, so the CIA keeps digging and finds (or thinks it finds) something else underneath it, like another try at the millennium plot (OK, truck bomb wasn't the best idea). The millennium plot was centred on LAX, the millennium plot guy did say they would try again, the hijackers made numerous flights from east to west landing at LAX and that was where 3 of the 4 planes (plus maybe United 23) were going on 9/11.

There's other stuff to keep the CIA guessing like the crop duster thing and lots of drugs.

[Borg]

12. I offer you the third way

The Saudi-Connection you mentioned, is an understatement (in my opinion).

The Muslim fundamentalist military operations in Bosnia happened under control of Saudi Arabian and Iranian forces. Osama Bin Laden had been a leading member of the muslim coalition forces. Though he seemed to be banned from his country, he organized the violence against the serbs, as a part of a covered NATO action.

Radical islamic groups tried to overcome the whole nordafrican region (Egypt, Lybia, Algeria, Sudan and Chechenia) with finance and troops from Saudia Arabia.
But since 1998 something happened und the U.S. government changed its policy. Gaddafi left the Arabian Liga and is back in the civilized world now and an enemy of Saudi Arabia. Sudan has stopped its muslim fundamentalist policy in 1996 and removed the muslim leader Hasan Turabi.

My conclusion is:
The Saudi Arabian Nation tried to dominate the whole arabian and parts of the Balkan and Asia area in the nineties and lost this fight all along the line. Maybe the U.S. government since 1998 tries to liquidate the last arabian and taliban soldiers ? I'm not sure.

[spooked911]

18. Interesting idea. I guess the key is whether OBL is a pan-arabist who

really wants to re-establish the caliphate, or whether he is a dirty drug dealer who supports radical Islamists for his own agenda, or whether he is really a patsy with grand schemes who is used by western intelligence.

It is all very confusing, but my sense is that western intelligence, particularly the US and Brits, use radical Islamics as a tool to destabilize countries in the middle east that they think are threatening-- particularly secular democratic leaders.

[spooked911]

6. Question--- the CIA clearly knew an attack was coming

and probably the FBI did too.

Why would they let suicidal maniacs pilot planes around the country?

Isn't it more likely that the planes were controlled remotely in some fashion rather than take the chance that the hijackers would crash the plane someplace that was not part of the plan-- such as CIA headquarters, the whitehouse, congress, etc.

What is beyond dispute is that at least some people in the US intelligence agencies knew exactly what kind of attack was coming and they did nothing to stop it. The question is-- why would they let the attacks go forward in an uncontrollable and unpredictable manner?

This is the essence of the "MADE it happen on purpose" argument.

[Kevin Fenton]

9. FBI doesn't know

The reason the whole thing was kept secret from the FBI is because Al Qaeda had penetrated the "underground railroad" covert action programme - the CIA wouldn't have wanted the FBI sniffing round a failed CIA programme and they thought they had it all under control.

Because the real pilots were kept separate until the last minute, the CIA had no idea there would be a series of plane hijackings and were expecting something different.

The CIA must have thought the attacks couldn't go forward without some sort of materiel - for example explosives (maybe smuggled across the Canadian border as was the case in the failed millennium plot) or chemicals which would be sprayed by small planes on CENTCOM and/or other targets (a la that Bond film where the baddie tries to rob Fort Knox).

Given that none of the terrorists they were watching could fly a jetliner, why would the CIA have expected suicide airliner hijacks? It's the last thing they would have expected.

The 19 names really were pulled out of a drawer, but the names of the actual pilots are missing. The reason the passenger manifests have not been published is not that some of the names might not be on them, but that there would be other names on them, like this Flight Lieutenant Atif bin Mansour Khaled CNN mentioned.

[spooked911]

19. What about David Schippers and FBI agent Robert Wright?

Robert Wright is a whistleblower and knew something was up about 9/11. He issued warnings about the attacks before finally quitting the bureau.

Schippers says FBI agents came to him with very specific info about the attacks on the WTC. Schippers says he tried to warn people in the government and they wouldn't listen.

Plus, there was some sort of FBI mole who must have known about the attacks since he shut down investigation into Moussaoui and into the Arabs at flight schools.

Also, a FBI informant rented an apartment with two hijackers in San Diego!

See this site for more about the FBI and 9/11:
http://www.newswithviews.com/public_comm/public_commentary16.htm

The FBI was definitely in on 9/11, at some level.

[Kevin Fenton]

22. Being kept out of it

My point is that the CIA starved the FBI of information so that they have a hard time joining the dots together, not that they don't know anything at all. I'm suggesting the reason nobody listened to Schippers was because they thought the real attack was the cover for something else (maybe LAX, Logan + San Francisco airports). The reason the Moussaoui investigation is shut down is that the Bureau would go trampling all over the CIA operation and make a mess of it.

I can see there are problems with the idea, but there does seem to have been some sort of warning at San Francisco airport and it would explain why Atta checks a bag through to LAX from Portland, why the CIA takes it off and opens it and why there are uniforms inside.

[spooked911]

5. Brilliant! If you don't know what else to do, just destroy documents!

Typical FBI incompetence/obstruction.

[paulthompson]

11. Let's look...

Let's look at a just a few of the warnings we know about. How about this one?

September 9, 2001
"Osama Tells His Stepmother That Big News Will Come in Two Days"
It is later reported that on this day, bin Laden calls his stepmother and says, "In two days, you're going to hear big news and you're not going to hear from me for a while." US officials later tell CNN that "in recent years they've been able to monitor some of bin Laden's telephone communications with his (step)mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded." (New York Times, 10/2/01) Stepmother Al-Khalifa bin Laden, who raised Osama bin Laden after his natural mother died, is apparently waiting in Damascus, Syria, to meet Osama there, so he calls to cancel the meeting. (Sunday Herald, 10/7/01) They had met periodically in recent years. Before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother. The next day government officials say about the call, "I would view those reports with skepticism." (CNN, 10/2/01)

Tell me, after that one warning alone, how US intelligence could not have known the date of the attack. Nobody has made the claim that this wasn't translated in time, because the notion of not translating messages from bin Laden himself within an hour or so (as the NSA could do with priority messages) is ludicrious.

Yet, did the US take any precautions whatsoever around Sept. 11? Did they warn airlines, airport security, NORAD, etc? If they thought it was a ground attack, did they warn state and local law enforcement? No. They did nothing, except warn a few people they didn't want to die, like the generals who were going to fly that day.

There were other blatant clues, too, like this one:

Early September 2001
"Bin Laden's Intercepted Phone Calls Discuss an Operation in the US Around 9/11 Date"
According to British inside sources, "shortly before September 11," bin Laden contacts an associate thought to be in Pakistan. The conversation refers to an incident that will take place in the US on, or around 9/11, and discusses possible repercussions. In another conversation, bin Laden contacts an associate thought to be in Afghanistan. They discuss the scale and effect of a forthcoming operation bin Laden praises his colleague for his part in the planning. Neither conversation specifically mentions the WTC or Pentagon, but investigators have no doubt the 9/11 attacks were being discussed. The British government has obliquely made reference to these intercepts: "There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release." These intercepts haven't been made public in British Prime Minister Tony Blair's presentation of al-Qaeda's guilt because "releasing full details could compromise the source or method of the intercepts." (Sunday Times, 10/7/01)

Again, how could one miss such a blantant clue from bin Laden himself?

or this one:

September 10, 2001
"NSA Monitors Call as Mohammed Gives Final Approval to Launch Attacks"
Mohamed Atta calls Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Afghanistan. Mohammed gives final approval to Atta to launch the attacks. This call is monitored and translated by the US, although it is not known how quickly the call is translated, and the specifics of the conversation haven't been released. (Independent, 9/15/02)

and doubtless there were other clues that still remain largely classified, like this one:

Early September 2001
"NSA Intercepts Phone Calls from bin Laden's Chief of Operations to the US"
The NSA intercepts "multiple phone calls from Abu Zubaida, bin Laden's chief of operations, to the United States." The timing and information contained in these intercepted phone calls has not been disclosed. (ABC News, 2/18/02)

I'll bet Zubaida was calling Atta and the other hijackers - who else would he be calling in the US at that time, if not someone in on the plot? The US knew full well the importance of Zubaida as operational manager at this time.

And the calls kept coming in and getting recorded, like these:

Early September 2001
"Phone Call Warning of Big Event in the US in Coming Days Is Just One of Many Such Warnings Recorded by CIA"
A few days before 9/11, an Islamic radical named Mamdouh Habib is in Pakistan and calls his wife in Australia. Her phone is being monitored by Australian intelligence. In the conversation he says that something big is going to happen in the US in the next few days. He is later arrested after 9/11 and is held by the US in the Guantanamo prison before finally being released in 2005. He will be released because his captors eventually decide that he didn't have any special foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 plot. He had been in Afghanistan training camps and had picked up the information there. The New York Times paraphrases an Australian official, "Just about everyone in Kandahar (Afghanistan) and the Qaeda camps knew that something big was coming, he said. 'There was a buzz.' " (New York Times, 1/29/05) Furthermore, according to The Australian, this call "mirrored several other conversations between accused terrorists that were tapped around the same time by the Pakistani Internal Security Department on behalf of the CIA." This was part of what the CIA called a sharp increase in "chatter" intercepted from operatives in terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the days just before the attacks, alluding to an imminent big event. (Australian, 2/2/05)


They were recording Zubaida's calls, KSM's calls, bin Laden's calls, Atta's calls, etc... and as far as we know, NONE of these guys were throwing off false leads. If that were the case at all, there would be news stories trumpeting it up the yin yang to help explain why the plot wasn't stopped.


The only way to preserve the notion that at least part of US intelligence didn't have foreknowledge and completely fail to take even the most elementary safeguards to protect against an attack is if most or all the above stories are complete falsehoods. There's no way one could get messages from bin Laden himself giving a rough day of attack and not at least send out internal government warnings about it (especially if the same message was echoed all the way down to the lowliest al-Qaeda operatives), unless you didn't really want to stop that attack. There is simply no humanly possible way one could be that incompetent.

[paulthompson]

13. By the way...

Here's an interesting little tidbit I haven't put into my timeline yet (there's so many - I need volunteer help!):

The London-based Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Thursday that the Taliban forced an Afghan pilot and a retired Pakistani general to train 14 young Arab, Afghan, and Pakistani radicals how to fly in Afghanistan. The group was said to have left Afghanistan a year ago and to carry European passports.

Fox News, 9/14/01
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34250,00.html

But when I do, I'll tie it in with this bit:

October 1, 2001
"Taliban Possibly Trained Pilots in Afghanistan"
It is reported that "a worldwide hunt is under way for 14 young Muslims said to have been trained in secret to fly Boeing airliners at an air base in Afghanistan. A senior pilot for the Afghan state-owned airline Ariana has told how he and four colleagues were forced by the Taliban regime to train the men who are now thought to be hiding in Europe and the United States. The fourteen men, seven of whom are said to speak fluent English, are described as 'dedicated Muslim fanatics' who spoke of being involved in a holy war. They are thought to have left Afghanistan a year ago. All had close links with the Taliban and some had fought for the regime." (Evening Standard, 10/1/01)

What happened to these 14 guys???

Search my timeline for information on Ariana airlines. It's stunning. For instance, this entry:

Mid-1996-October 2001
"Ariana Airlines Becomes Transport Arm of al-Qaeda"
In 1996, al-Qaeda assumes control of Ariana Airlines, Afghanistan's national airline, for use in its illegal trade network. Passenger flights become few and erratic, as planes are used to fly drugs, weapons, gold, and personnel, primarily between Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Pakistan. The Emirate of Sharjah, in the UAE, becomes a hub for al-Qaeda drug and arms smuggling. Typically, "large quantities of drugs" are flown from Kandahar, Afghanistan, to Sharjah, and large quantities of weapons are flown back to Afghanistan. (Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01) About three to four flights run the route each day. Many weapons come from Victor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer based in Sharjah. (Los Angeles Times, 1/20/02) Afghan taxes on opium production are paid in gold, and then the gold bullion is flown to Dubai, UAE, and laundered into cash. (Washington Post, 2/17/02) Taliban officials regularly provide terrorists with false papers identifying them as Ariana Airlines employees so they can move freely around the world. A former National Security Council official later claims the US is well aware at the time that al-Qaeda agents regularly fly on Ariana Airlines, but the US fails to act for several years. The US does press the UAE for tighter banking controls, but moves "delicately, not wanting to offend an ally in an already complicated relationship," and little changes by 9/11. (Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01) Much of the money for the 9/11 hijackers flows though these Sharjah, UAE, channels. There also are reports suggesting that Ariana Airlines might have been used to train Islamic militants as pilots. The illegal use of Ariana Airlines helps convince the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in 1999, but the sanctions lack teeth and do not stop the airline. A second round of sanctions finally stops foreign Ariana Airlines flights, but its charter flights and other charter services keep the illegal network running. (Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01)

For years, al-Qaeda was blatantly transporting drugs, gold, al-Qaeda operatives, weapons, etc... on Ariana, and the US knew this, and let it happen. I can only conclude that there were too many important people and countries involved for the US to really want to stop it. For instance, its estimated that half of Pakistan's GNP is based on the drug trade, one way or another. The country would completely collapse if the trade was stopped. The drugs largely flowed to the Persian Gulf, and it seems rich and influential Arab princes were in on making billions. Many of these same guys, like the Crown Prince of the UAE, where the drugs came in, regularly went falcon hunting with bin Laden in Afghanistan, and probably brought back more drugs every time they came home from a trip there (as indeed reports have alleged).

I think the real secrets we have to uncover about the 9/11 plot have to do with drugs. For all we know, a cover story for the 9/11 hijackers might have been as low level players in the Ariana drug network, one that that the US allowed to flourish because our key allies in the Middle East were making billions off of it, or because the CIA itself was involved in that drug trade, as they were in Vietnam, Central America, and other places.

But in any case, I see Ariana as key, both for the training of the real pilots, and larger geopolitical reasons, like why al-Qaeda had so many influential friends. The opium and heroin coming out of Afghanistan was worth $100 billion a year - that's no chump change.

[paulthompson]

14. Another by the way....

Interestingly enough, the guy in charge of many of the drug flights out of Afghanistan, Victor Bout, the world's biggest illegal arms dealer, is now contracted by the US military to fly materiel in and out of Iraq. This has been repeatedly exposed by the media, and then his front companies merely change names, and his role continues. Google his name - it's wild stuff.

Here's the only thing I have on him so far:

October 1996
"Arms Dealer Aligns with Taliban and ISI"
Russian arms merchant Victor Bout, who has been selling weapons to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance since 1992, switches sides, and begins selling weapons to the Taliban and al-Qaeda instead. (Guardian, 4/17/02; Los Angeles Times, 1/20/02; Los Angeles Times, 5/17/02) The deal comes immediately after the Taliban captures Kabul in late October 1996 and gains the upper hand in Afghanistan's civil war. In one trade in 1996, Bout's company delivers at least 40 tons of Russian weapons to the Taliban, earning about $50 million. (Guardian, 2/16/02) Two intelligence agencies later confirm that Bout trades with the Taliban "on behalf of the Pakistan government." In late 2000, several Ukrainians sell 150 to 200 T-55 and T-62 tanks to the Taliban in a deal conducted by the ISI, and Bout helps fly the tanks to Afghanistan. (Montreal Gazette, 2/5/02) Bout formerly worked for the Russian KGB, and now operates the world's largest private weapons transport network. Based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bout operates freely there until well after 9/11. The US becomes aware of Bout's widespread illegal weapons trading in Africa in 1995, and of his ties to the Taliban in 1996, but they fail to take effective action against him for years. (Los Angeles Times, 5/17/02) US pressure on the UAE in November 2000 to close down Bout's operations there is ignored. Press reports calling him "the merchant of death" also fail to pressure the UAE. (Financial Times, 6/10/00; Guardian, 12/23/00) After President Bush is elected, it appears the US gives up trying to get Bout, until after 9/11. (Washington Post, 2/26/02; Guardian, 4/17/02) Bout moves to Russia in 2002. He is seemingly protected from prosecution by the Russian government, which in early 2002 will claim, "There are no grounds for believing that this Russian citizen has committed illegal acts." (Guardian, 4/17/02) The Guardian suggests that Bout may have worked with the CIA when he traded with the Northern Alliance, and this fact may be hampering current international efforts to catch him. (Guardian, 4/17/02)

I need to add a lot more about him, including reports that one US agency was all set to catch him shortly after 9/11, but Condi Rice called the operation off, saying they had "bigger fish to fry." Who could possibly be bigger fish that Victor Bout? Here's a snip from a New York Times article about him:

"Bout leaned forward. 'I woke up after Sept. 11 and found I was second only to Osama.' He put his hand on the papers. The truth, he said, was much bigger than his personal story. 'My clients, the governments,' he began. Then, 'I keep my mouth shut.' Later he said, 'If I told you everything I'd get the red hole right here.' He pointed to the middle of his forehead."

http://italy.peacelink.org/disarmo/articles/art_2385.html

Isn't it awfully strange that the US is still dealing with this man? Boy, you'd almost think the CIA was working with him to smuggle drugs out of Afghanistan and is STILL working with him or something! (sarcasm alert) His right hand man is actually a 20-year US army special operative currently living openly in Dallas, Texas (he's been harrassed a bit in recent months, but still not arrested). How much more obvious can one get?

[spooked911]

16. fascinating!

[Kevin Fenton]

33. Yes, this is really interesting

and I think it's terrible and the US and the other civilised nations should do something against it, but, surely, this stuff goes on all the time. A couple of years ago a guy was caught selling uranium out of his car boot at a garage down the road from us.
As far as concerns the hypocrisy of US policy (or perhaps "policies" would be the correct term), then you're preaching to the converted.

[spooked911]

17. I definitely think you're right that a cover story for the hijackers was

that they were simply drug dealers. That would fit with Hopsicker's findings very well. And would explain why the CIA would look the other way.

On the other hand, wouldn't the CIA have some idea whether these hijackers were just dealers as opposed to psychopathic drug dealers? It is hard to see drug dealers also being a suicidal Islamic fanatics. Perhaps the suicidal fanatics were switched into the operation at a late point in place of the drug dealers? But then, were the suicidal fanatics trained to fly jet airplanes?

[Kevin Fenton]

32. Makes a lot of sense

This mostly seems to add up to me, although if you
"can only conclude that there were too many important people and countries involved for the US to really want to stop it."
I can conclude that maybe the US not really having a clue about Afghanistan at that time played something of a part as well.

I imagine drugs must be involved somewhere, but exactly where, I don't really know.

As for the hijackers' cover being as "low level players in the Ariana drug trade" then that makes sense at a certain level, but I can't really see how it could fool anybody about why they were on the planes headed for the west coast on 9/11. If the warnings were as obvious as you say, then what's the hijackers excuse for being on the planes on D Day?

[Kevin Fenton]

31. Sold a dummy

".. surprise is one of the cardinal principles of war. Every military academy and staff college in the world teaches the need to acheive surprise - and to guard against it - to every single student of the miltary art. Despite this, thč military appears to have been caught out with almost predictable regularity. Is the failing one of endemic stupidity or of an opponent's cunning?
"The answer is both. Just as every military commander hopes not to be taken by surprise, potential adversaries strive equally hard with every trick and resource to mislead, to deceive and to catch the enemy unawares. To avoid being surprised, commanders rely on intelligence and their intelligence staffs. Sometimes they are successful, sometimes not. On the success of intelligence hinges a military commander's reputation; and very often the future of his country and its population as well."
Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-ups

You can't have it both ways. Either the ISI's fingerprints are all over the attack and it's a proper operation with a deception built in, or the ISI plays only a marginal role and the hijackers are hopeless and need protection. Surely, a deception should be mostly true (otherwise it's incredible), but with just a couple of key facts changed. To me, this seems to be the case here.
Intelligence needs to answer the questions: who, by what means, where, when? I'm suggesting the CIA got 1.5 out of 4.

[Dancing_Dave]

34. MY GOD HOW STUPID CAN TIME WRITERS AND READERS BE???

You might as well give up Paul, you're just never going to find the truth about 9/11 in the MSM, it will just never surface in all the stupid deceptive propaganda our corporate media calls "news". If you want to make any progress towards figuring out what really happened, you just have to get out on the web with everyone else who's making any real progress towards figuring out what happened. You will have to learn some physics and history and engineering and fire statistics and demolition techniques and whatever else may be relevant to the deepest consideration of the issues of WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON 9/11, just like we all have. It isn't easy, we aren't all both math and physics geniuses like Einstein and historical geniuses like WEBSTER TARPLEY ( http://www.waronfreedom.org/praise.html )...oh, yeah and great communicators like David Griffin to. No it isn't a bit easy for any of us to master all the specialties needed to have a reasonably clear and undeluded view of what really happened on 9/11/2001. But there is no other way, and the sooner you stop wasting time on the stupid misleading propaganda sources, the sooner you will begin to figure out what really happened.