Author: Sam Koritz

If the FBI could carry out a pre–Sept. 11 sting operation against Hamas that included the use of no-warrant wiretaps, dummy companies, informants, overseas recruitment, etc., why weren’t those same aggressive techniques used against al Qaeda?

One possibility is that US support for international jihadis’ fight against Slavs gave anti-American jihadis unusual protection.

For example, Sept. 11 terror duo Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were photographed in January of 2000 at an al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, where it’s believed the bombing of the USS Cole was planned. Carrying Saudi passports, they then entered the US, and rented an apartment in San Diego, where their suspicious behavior (no furniture, frequent payphone visits, etc.) caught the attention of their neighbors. This promted A&A to find a new place to live: strangely enough, they moved in with a “tested asset” of the FBI who was tasked with investigating Hamas. (According to a report in Die Zeit, “Deadly Mistakes,” FBI agents actually interviewed the informant while the al Qaeda hijackers-to-be were in other rooms of the same apartment.) Despite the asset’s terror-investigating experience, he apparently failed to notice his roommates’ suspicious behavior.

When not taking flying lessons or contacting suspected terrorist organizations overseas the pair openly associated with FBI terror suspects such as Omar al-Bayoumi. Bayoumi liked the pair so much that shortly after they arrived in Los Angeles he drove them to San Diego, installed them in his apartment building, and paid their first month’s rent and security deposit. According to the Wall Street Journal ("Riyadh Paid Man Linked to Sept. 11 Hijackers"):

"The FBI first opened a counterterrorism investigation on Mr. Bayoumi in September 1998 and discovered he was in contact with several other people under scrutiny, the congressional report says. That inquiry was closed in 1999 for unknown reasons. Following a search of Mr. Bayoumi’s residence at one point, the FBI concluded that ‘he is providing guidance to young Muslims and some of his writings can be interpreted as jihadist.’"

Another friend of the pair was Osama Basnan, an open supporter of al Qaeda. About two months after Bayoumi began aiding the hijackers, his wife cashed the first of numerous cashier’s checks totaling tens of thousands of dollars. These checks were given to her by Basnan’s wife, who had received them, in turn, from the Saudi ambassador’s wife, Princess Haifa. While living in the United States Bayoumi was paid a salary by the Saudi civilian aviation department, which is run by Princess Haifa’s father. His pay reportedly spiked around the time he began aiding the hijackers.

Almidhar enjoyed international travel, and was overseas during the Cole bombing, which he’s suspected of participating in. In 2001 the CIA added Almidhar to their watch list. Still, he was able to meet with terror leader Mohamed Atta and then reenter the United States using the government’s “express visa” program for people with Saudi passports. It’s been reported that 3 of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have entered the US under this program, which started in June, 2001, and that no one who applied for a visa under this program was denied one – and this at a time when everyone from the FAA to Aghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud was warning of a coming terrorist attack.

Michael Springman was the head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during the Afghan jihad of the ’80s. Springmann:

“In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General’s office. I was met with silence.

“What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.

“The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department’s faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed.”

Shortly after Almidhar returned to the US, in the summer of 2001, the CIA asked the FBI to apprehend him and Alhazmi. The FBI’s failure to do so is particularly surprising since Alhamzi was listed in the San Diego phone book, so just dialing 411 might have worked.

A New York FBI field agent testifying before Congress:

“Briefly, ‘the wall,’ and implied, interpreted, created, or assumed restrictions regarding it, prevented myself and other FBI agents working a criminal case out of New York field office from obtaining information from the intelligence community regarding Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi in a meeting on June 11, 2001. This resulted in a series of e-mails between myself and the FBI H.Q. Analyst working the matter. In my e-mails, I asked where this new wall was defined. I wrote on August 29, 2001: ‘Whatever has happened to this, someday someone will die, and, wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective in throwing every resource we had at certain problems.'”

See Mark Ames’ “America’s Dangerous Chechnya Game Aided 9/11 Terrorists” for another take on this theme.

What’s this about opponents of the PATRIOT Act being “Anti-American“?

Liberty-leaching PATRIOT actors claim that the Sept. 11 attacks succeeded because US spies and secret police were hamstrung by excessive caution and concern for civil liberties. How then to explain, for just one example, the antics of the FBI’s Phoenix, Arizona office? The Justice Dept is investigating charges that Arizona FBI agents incautiously used informants and terror suspects to benefit private businesses the agents were running on the side. It gets even more incautious (and weirder):

“[Former FBI asset Harry] Ellen, a Muslim convert, testified he was taking a trip to the Gaza Strip to bring doctors to the region in summer 1998 when [Arizona FBI agent Kenneth] Williams [of flight schools warning fame] asked him to provide money to a Hamas figure. Williams wanted ‘the transfer of American funds to some of the terrorist groups for violent purposes,’ Ellen testified to the immigration court in a closed June 2001 session. …”

“Ellen testified that Williams told him he hoped the transfer would lead to more money exchanges through terror groups but Ellen refused to earmark money for terrorism. He testified he later learned another FBI operative had offered Hamas and Palestinian figures larger amounts for terrorist attacks.”

(“FBI sent money to Hamas,” Associated Press)

And (surprise, surprise), even back in the pre-PATRIOT days it was FBI policy record suspects without their permission and without a warrant:

“Arizona businessman Harry Ellen testified he permitted the FBI to bug his home, car and office, allowed his Muslim foundation’s activities in the Gaza Strip to be monitored by agents, arranged a peace meeting between major Palestinian activists and gained personal access to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat during more than four years of cooperation with the FBI. … Ellen, stepson of an Air Force intelligence officer, had worked for U.S. intelligence since the 1970s as an ‘asset,’ a private citizen paid to provide information or conduct specific tasks. … The court testimony shows Ellen allowed his home, office and car in Arizona to be bugged so the FBI could listen, without a warrant, to visiting Palestinians or Americans if they discussed illegal activity. The FBI said it commonly uses such recordings. ‘Consensual monitoring does not require a warrant. In cases where the FBI conducts consensual monitoring, the one party is aware he is being recorded,’ it said. …”

(And what are we to make of this surprising quote, from the New York Times’ article, “F.B.I. Agents Are Examined for Tactics With Hamas“?: “We probably have a million people in Israel who provide us with intelligence on the Israelis but we can probably count on two hands the number of people we have in Palestine who can provide us with intelligence about the Palestinians.”)

– Fewer than 15% of Iraqis view US forces as liberators.

– Bush: Iraq Part of ‘Global Democratic Revolution‘

– A Canadian who the CIA sent to Syria says he was tortured.

Jack “Islamic Revival” Wheeler’s list of those belonging to “The Anti-American Right” includes Antiwar.com advisor Jon Utley, who he claims “…has simply gone around the bend in his hatred for everything America does in terms of foreign policy and everything the Bush administration does, foreign and domestic.”

One person’s around-the-bend hatred for Bush is another’s consistent opposition to destructive policies, however. In August 2001, Antiwar.com posted an article by Utley that criticized Clinton’s military interventionism and had this to say about Bush:

“…the best defense is ‘to give foreigners less offense,’ in the words of Ivan Eland at CATO. Already under President Bush we seem much less ready to go about bombing other nations as Clinton did. Except for Palestine and Iraq, no blood is being shed by American bombs.”

A mere month before the Sept. 11 attacks, Utley presciently warned that the combination of military intervention overseas and lack of civil defense preparedness at home made America “immensely vulnerable to terrorists who would give up their lives for a mission.”

“This missing element, not wanting Americans to think that there may be consequences to our killing foreigners, seriously affects civil defense. …

“Still, the government is now spending $10 billion yearly on civil defense, most of it going to protect government personnel and installations. But very little, only some 2%, is going for civilian medical preparations. … For details on legal and medical preparedness, please see our handout, ‘Preparing for the Terrorist Threat,’ published in Insight Magazine last January 15th. …

“The Pentagon and CIA are surely the most juicy targets for any terrorist, but American bases overseas are easier – and more likely – targets now. …

“However, as Jude Wanniski has written, no one controls mad fanatics. Very possibly any major American city could be targeted by those consumed with hate against us. A dirty bomb could contaminate much of a major city. A small tactical nuke (of which many are reportedly missing from Russian bases) would take out 4 or 5 city blocks; new breakthroughs in biology may develop truly horrendous agents of selective death. Or just plain suicide truck bombers with dynamite in a tunnel could wreak havoc upon us. In truth, we are immensely vulnerable to terrorists who would give up their lives for a mission. …

“WHAT YOU CAN DO…
· Go to your Congressman’s town hall meetings and ask him the embarrassing questions about our interventions overseas and ask for civil defense.
· Start a movement asking that our military send guards to protect key bridges and reservoirs and electric stations. The real threats are here, not overseas.”

And check out this interesting article (with photo above), “Rogue Statesman,” about Wheeler’s Afghan jihad buddy Dana Rohrabacher.

(To be fair to Wheeler, though, he did warn about the dangers of funding Hekmatyar.)

The state of the federal government’s finances shifted from large deficit to large surplus over the course of the 1990s, in an extraordinary turnaround that would not have been possible without the defense cuts. …

One important consequence of this substantial decline in government borrowing, a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 transformed into a 2000 surplus of $236 billion, was a fall in long-term interest rates set in the U.S. Treasury bond market – particularly in the later 1990s when investors woke up to the fact that the government was actually retiring some of its outstanding debt. For borrowing by the government crowds out borrowing by the private sector by competing for funds provided by investors. This may sound esoteric, but it had important ramifications because other interest rates depend on long-term government bond yields. For example, it became much cheaper for home buyers with lower mortgages rates or companies planning to borrow money for investment as federal surpluses grew during the ‘90s. While economic textbooks have long pointed out the existence of crowding out, budget deficits had been around for so long by the end of the Cold War that nobody could really remember what it was like when there had last been a lot less competition for funds in the capital markets from the government. …

Defenses’ share of total government spending dropped from 28 percent at the end of the 1980s to 16 percent in 1999. …

Throughout the second half of the decade, interest rates in the United States stayed low, investment in new businesses and technologies boomed, and the economy experienced its longest expansion since records began with a significant increase in the productivity trend. …

The peace dividend, then, has been large and significant. This should come as no surprise. War is not an inherently productive activity, to say the least. This points to a rather pessimistic conclusion about the likely impact of the resumption of war, and one that could, like the Cold War, be long drawn out and spread its tentacles throughout civilian life. After all, uncertainty about the world outlook is likely to keep investment spending lower than it might otherwise have been, as businesses opt for taking fewer risky bets on demand for their products or services. The new concern, not only in America but worldwide, about security, and higher insurance premiums, will raise businesses’ costs. Even a small increase in costs can have a big impact on investment decisions and on international trade. Some specific industries – the airlines and tourism, for example – have been badly affected by the terror attacks. And there may be other ramifications, such as a drop in immigration to the United States, reversing a flow of skills and energy that had enormously benefited the economy during the 1990s.

– Diane Coyle, Sex, Drugs and Economics

“Bush sees hope in Philippines’ past — He compares it to vision of Iraq’s future” but “The Philippines ‘Liberator’ Was Really a Colonizer.”

The Prez said the USA “liberated the Philippines from colonial rule…. America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people.”

The problem is that before liberating the Philippines the US killed over 100,000 Filipinos and colonized the islands for decades. Hopefully there’s a different plan in place for Iraq.

The arguments of today’s unilateralist interventionists — aka neocons — are similar to some of the Philippines annexationists’. It’s been pointed out that the neo-cons are (radical) not conservative. Turns out they’re not too neo either.

Senator Orville H. Platt (R – Connecticut) in the U. S. Senate, January 9, 1899:

“… I believe that we have been chosen to carry forward this great work of uplifting humanity on earth. From the time of the landing on Plymouth Rock in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, in the spirit of the Constitution, believing that all men are equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, believing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we have spread that civilization across the continent until it stood at the Pacific Ocean looking ever westward….”

Similarly, the analyses of the paleo-conservative, isolationist and libertarian adversaries of the neocons resemble many of those of the pre–Cold War anti-imperialists.

There’s an excellent and huge web resource on this subject: the weirdly-named BoondocksNet.com.