Author: Sam Koritz

I was channel-surfing a few days ago & I saw an alarming local news alert. 200 pounds of explosives had been stolen from a heavily fortified secret government arms depot.

Why were they announcing this? Obviously because they had no leads and hoped for assistance from the public. As expected, a concerned citizen phoned in some information; an arrest was made & the suspect confessed.

“Suspect admits he participated in explosives theft”

“The materials included electric and non-electric blasting caps, various types of detonator cord, smokeless powder, grenades and grenade-type devices, assorted ammunition, binary explosives, and C-4 military explosives.”

The criminal mastermind? A 40-something-year-old drug addict with no fixed address.

The heavily fortified bunker?

“Broken alarm, security failures aided break-in”

There were no regular patrols or security cameras at the site. Locks on the steel doors to the five bunkers where the explosives were kept could be cut away with a torch. The alarm system inside the bunkers was broken for some time, with the full knowledge of the Sheriff’s Office bomb squad, according to Horsley.

“They kept trying to fix it. It never got fixed,” Horsley said.

It was still broken over the Fourth of July weekend, when police believe Michael Alexander Allan, 46, got a vehicle through a series of locked gates and used an acetylene torch to cut the locks off the thick, steel bunker doors. Stolen were 200 pounds of volatile explosives and blasting caps, enough to conduct several terrorist attacks, such as car bombings.

Allan was arrested in Union City on Wednesday night and much of the explosives was recovered.

Horsley said he had not been informed about the broken alarm, but declined to say who on his staff knew about the problem. No disciplinary action is planned.

“I can’t blame someone for a technical problem that they were incapable of fixing,” Horsley said. …

Exactly who is responsible for security at the site is unclear. The San Francisco Police Department, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and FBI all store property there, and security was described as a “shared responsibility.” The Sheriff’s Office recently eliminated a patrol in the area during budget cuts. …

Most of the 3,410 pounds of high explosives stolen last year were from companies with blasting permits. With little commercial resale value, the only motivation for such items is curiosity or criminal purposes, he said.

A ton or two of high explosives can do a lot of damage but a nuclear device might do more. Unfortunately, experts estimate that it will be several years before nuke-sensing equipment is installed to check containers entering US ports. And nukes are a-proliferating. The top guy at the International Atomic Energy Agency says that Abdul Khan, the (reportedly Islamist) father of Pakistan’s nuke program, had nuke-related contact with 20 governments and “large companies.”

“ElBaradei: Pakistan gave nuclear know-how to at least 20 countries”

Meanwhile (according to a report in The New Republic), Pakistani officials claim that the Bushies are turning a blind eye to Khan’s past proliferation in exchange for Pakistan’s capturing or killing a major al Qaeda leader just before the US election. (As I’ve noted elsewhere, Khan’s proliferating ways were known long before they were stopped.)

“PAKISTAN FOR BUSH – July Surprise?”

“Diplomatic and intelligence sources” leaked to the press this week the allegation that the Bushies, overruling the Pentagon and CIA, released Saudi terror suspects in exchange for that nation’s quiet support for the Iraq war. (Backstory for Fox News fans: As part of a Saudi and US government covert program requiring plausible deniability, money was funneled through charity organizations and given to jihadists fighting in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was one of those jihadists and, more often, one of the fundraisers. The Saudi government claims to have stopped funding bin Laden in 1989 but right up to, and perhaps after, 2001 al Qaeda received funds from the pre-1989 jihad funding charities. Iraq, on the other hand, is not known to have funded or armed al Qaeda at any time.)

“Saudis freed Britons in a secret swap of prisoners”

Which brings to mind the fact that last month the Tampa International Airport contradicted the Bushies and confirmed that on Sept. 13, 2001, when most US air traffic was grounded, 3 young Saudis – including one sharing a hijacker’s last name – accompanied by an ex-cop and an ex-FBI agent, flew to Kentucky, and then out of the USA. (The cop & agent returned to Florida.)

“TIA now verifies flight of Saudis”

And, last but not least, AG Ashcroft has squelched the testimony of a former FBI translator who wants to go public with information about alleged infiltration of the Pentagon, State Dept., and FBI, citing “certain diplomatic relations for national security.”

“Our Broken System”

It’s really a matter of trust.

I just got back from seeing Moore’s anti-Bush cinematic editorial. Rather than review it I’ll comment on issues already raised on this site, starting with Eric Garris’s blog posting, “Sorry, I didn’t like it.”

“I got to the theater early to beat the crowds (not so much for the matinee), full of anticipation.”

I had serious reservations about Moore’s last film Bowling for Columbine (for one thing, I didn’t like Moore’s rudeness to Charlton Heston while he was a guest in Heston’s house) so I wouldn’t say I was full of anticipation but I’d heard and read enough about F9/11 that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hate it. I tried to see it twice this week in the evening and it was sold out both times, so today, a week after it opened, I went to a matinee early and was able to get tickets before it sold out.

“The movie opens with Moore’s version of the ‘stealing’ of the 2000 election by the Bush family. Regardless of one’s opinion of this event, it should be clear that this was the weakest opening he could have gone for in terms of actually convincing those not predisposed to hate GW Bush.”

I thought the dreamlike Gore near-victory rally opening was effective. I realized watching it that the past few years have seemed politically nightmarish: 9/11, to start with; then the cover-ups and lies, invasions, PATRIOT Act, and color-coded terror warnings; the hyperventilating, hyperactive, irrational jingoism; the perverse, 1984-ish hatred of France; ‘liberventionism’; the rehabilitation of imperialism and big government; the overstaying of the half-hearted-welcome of the disgusting, arrogant, faces, voices, and body language of Bush (his famous sneer), Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice (“I believe the title was ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,'” indeed. Why don’t you check on that and get back to us tomorrow. And, by the way, I have another document here. I believe it’s called “The Negligent Perma-Hawk Condoleezza Rice is Fired Effective Immediately”); the neocons and the debate about the neocons; John Ashcroft, who I wouldn’t trust with my houseplants, never mind the nation’s liberty and security; and let’s not forget the rise of the androids on Fox News and their copycats on those other channels.

F9/11’s election-stealing segment gave examples of conflict of interest, a relevant and recurring theme. The news shows were counting Florida as a Gore win until Fox News called it for Bush; the person at Fox who made this decision was a first cousin of one of the candidates. The woman who ran Bush’s campaign was also the state of Florida official responsible for the election. Bush I had appointed judges who voted for a Bush II presidency (in apparent violation of the conservative principle of state’s rights).

“He then spends about 20 minutes on the ‘Saudi connection,’ which actually struck me as quite racist.”

Racist? Moore shows images of Bushies with Saudi VIPs while criticizing the connections between Bushies and Saudi VIPs. Later he shows footage of happy Iraqis before the US invasion, then suffering Iraqis after the invasion. He clearly intends for us to view Iraqis sympathetically. This is an anti-racist message (something like: in the Middle East, as in the United States, most people are good but the rich and powerful aren’t to be trusted) unless Iraqi and Saudi Arabs are viewed as being members of different races. And we know that Americans have trouble distinguishing between Iraqis and Saudis on even a national basis (a fact lamentably demonstrated by the confusion over which country’s nationals attacked us on 9/11), so obviously they’re considered members of the same race.

(Note: this blog message originally contained a short, poorly-expressed comment that angered some readers. Rather than explain and re-hash what was meant to be a minor point, I’ve deleted the few sentences. – SK)

“Occupation made world less safe, pro-war institute says.”

The US and British occupation of Iraq has accelerated recruitment to the ranks of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and made the world a less safe place, according to a leading London-based think-tank.

The assessment, by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), states that the occupation has become “a potent global recruitment pretext” for al-Qa’ida, which now has more than 18,000 militants ready to strike Western targets.

“More Treasury agents track Castro than Bin Laden”

April 30, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money, documents show. … Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations.

“INTERVIEW: Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate”

The most significant information that we were receiving did not come from counter-terrorism investigations, and I want to emphasize this. It came from counter-intelligence, and certain criminal investigations, and issues that have to do with money laundering operations.

You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one. In certain points – and they [the intelligence community] are separating those portions from just the terrorist activities. And, as I said, they are citing “foreign relations” which is not the case, because we are not talking about only governmental levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money. When you do that the picture gets grim. It gets really ugly.

…if, and when this issue gets to be, under real terms, investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally.

…I have seen several, several top targets for these investigations of these terrorist activities that were allowed to leave the country–I’m not talking about weeks, I’m talking about months after 9/11.

… When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it’s extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it’s what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don’t hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It’s extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap — money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That’s what I’m trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it’s getting into somebody’s political campaign, and somebody’s lobbying. And people don’t want to be traced back to this money.

…I’m very disappointed with Senator Grassley’s office and his staff members. They initially were very supportive. But what I am getting from their office every time I call is, “Well this issue is under the Inspector General,” and that their hands are tied. And then I press further and ask, “Well, what do you mean, ‘our hands are tied’? Who’s tying your hands? Untie it. Let’s get it untied.” They don’t have any response. They say, “Well, this issue is very complex, and as you know, it is being investigated.” And I’m not seeing any issue being investigated. What I’m seeing is that this issue is being covered up, and relentlessly being covered up, in consideration of “state privilege,” which people are calling “the neutron bomb of all privilege.”

“Bank fined $25 million over Saudi accounts”

Federal regulators fined Riggs Bank a record $25 million on Thursday for allegedly violating anti-money laundering laws in its handling of tens of millions in cash transactions in Saudi-controlled accounts under investigation for possible links to terrorism financing.

The civil fine against the midsize Washington bank with a near-exclusive franchise on business with the capital’s diplomatic community is the largest ever imposed on a financial institution for such violations, experts said. …

The FBI and regulators have investigated, for possible connections to terrorism financing, large cash transactions in Riggs accounts controlled by Saudi diplomats.

The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, recently asked the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks to examine Saudi transactions totaling tens of millions at Riggs and FleetBoston Financial Corp.

“Riggs Bank deserves every penny of this huge fine,” Grassley said in a statement Thursday. “Banks have a patriotic duty, not to mention legal requirement, to report suspicious activity. When banks look the other way, they put our national security at risk. Whether it’s through incompetence, negligence or greed, they are allowing terrorists to funnel their blood money through the system.”

Grassley said members of the bank’s board of directors should be held to account for failing to exercise their watchdog role over Riggs’s operations.

Riggs previously was accused by Treasury regulators of failing to comply with a law requiring banks to notify the government of suspicious transactions.

“Web Site Cites Bush-Riggs Link”

A political Web site written by a Democratic operative drew attention yesterday to the fact that President Bush’s uncle, Jonathan J. Bush, is a top executive at Riggs Bank, which this week agreed to pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering. Jonathan Bush, who is a major fundraiser for his nephew, was appointed in 2000 to run Riggs Investment Management Co.

“Report assails U.S. nuclear security effort — Sense of urgency missing, study sponsor says”

Less fissile material was secured in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years just before, according to the Harvard report. Half the equipment dispatched to Russia nearly four years ago as a fast, interim solution remains in warehouses, uninstalled because of bureaucratic disputes. …

Basic security improvements have not been made at dozens of facilities in Russia, where more than 60 percent of the country’s plutonium and weapons- grade uranium is kept, the General Accounting Office has warned. In a more recent report, the GAO said U.S. government facilities are also vulnerable to an increased risk of terrorism.

“Al-Qaeda almost ready to attack United States, Ashcroft says”

—–

A San Francisco composer, Bryant Kong, has put the found poetry of Donald Rumsfeld to music.

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

— Donald Rumsfeld from a Dept. of Defense briefing in Feb. 2002

Kong explains: “A lot of the poems have to do with information and control of information. They’re running the war like a public relations campaign, and then they run into trouble when the facts don’t match the story that they’re trying to sell.”

———-

Crown Prince Alexander II is trying to drum up US investment for Serbia. He visited San Francisco a few days ago and was interviewed by Mark Simon of the Chronicle (Warning: contains inaccuracies and propaganda):

“Prince sees double standard in foreign policy — He says U.S. left Serbia for lack of oil”

… [Serbia is] unable to shake itself free from a succession of international demands that the current democratic government turn over war criminals to a tribunal, demands largely backed by the United States, Crown Prince Alexander II said in an interview at The Chronicle.

Similar requirements were not made of the fledgling democracies in Afghanistan or Iraq, he said, and now Serbia is struggling to gain international attention and support for an economy ravaged by 40 percent unemployment and a depleted infrastructure that cannot rebuild the nation.

“There is more money for war than peace. We don’t have oil. Oil is becoming more important than people,” said Alexander….

Serbia was burdened with “bad management, poor leadership, sanctions, isolation and bombings. You put all that together and on the fifth of October, the bank was broke,” Prince Alexander said.

“Then Sept. 11 happens, just as we’re trying to put our ship in order, and everybody rushes off to Afghanistan and, then, eventually, Iraq, and we’re sort of left to fend on our own.”

There are “dual standards” being applied, he said. When Serbian leadership tried to hold an international conference to seek help for its problems, they were told they first had to turn over Milosevic to an international court.

“Why wasn’t this standard applied to Afghanistan in handing over Taliban and al Qaeda leaders? Why did aid go to Iraq when Saddam Hussein hadn’t been caught yet?

“These are dual standards, and this is flawed foreign policy,” he said.

Alexander, 60, was born in London, where his family had taken refuge during World War II. He wants to revive his title as king in a constitutional monarchy, like England or Spain, where the king serves as a nonpolitical, unifying symbol.

The crown prince, educated in American and English schools and fluent in five languages, served as a captain in an English military unit, seeing duty in the Middle East, Italy and Germany.

With his military background, he said he understood the United States would need only three weeks to complete its invasion of Iraq, “and then the problems would start.” Previous U.S. sanctions against Iraq helped unify the nation behind the Hussein regime. The post-invasion presence of U.S. military “the people of Iraq feel is an occupation. …

Across the page was the hilariously titled article, “Pentagon to flood Iraq with vast supply of guns” — no chance that will go wrong. Unfortunately, the only online version of this article I can find has is boringly titled, “U.S. arms bound for Iraq — Shipments will include tens of thousands of guns.”

“Next Door to Mohammed Atta”:

The Mossad apparently warned their American counterparts several times about the terrorists, especially about al-Midhar. … Apparently not until shortly before September 11 did the CIA recognize that al-Midhar was dangerous and asked law enforcement agencies to look for him.

“FBI Agent Was Prevented From Relaying Warning on 9/11 Hijackers“:

More than a year before 9/11, CIA officials prevented an FBI agent working with the CIA from passing vital information to his agency on two suspected al Qaeda members — men who later would become Sept. 11 hijackers.

U.S. officials told ABCNEWS the agent wanted to warn his FBI bosses about a gathering in Malaysia where al Qaeda suspects Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi met with suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen.

After the meeting, CIA officials learned Al-Midhar and Alhamzi had visas to enter the United States, the U.S. officials said. …

“If that information [got] disseminated, would it have had an impact on the events of 9/11?” asked Jack Cloonan, an ABCNEWS consultant who previously worked as an FBI agent assigned to pursue members of al Qaeda. “I’m telling you that it would have.” …

Al-Midhar left the United States and came back just two months before 9/11 attacks — no questions asked. He arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, using his own name.

Also see “Blinking Red,” “Did Al Qaeda Exploit Government Jihad Support?,” and “Preserved in Amber, Blind to Terror.”

“White House saw chain of reports on bin Laden – ‘The system was blinking red,’ CIA chief told panel” [by Dana Priest, Washington Post]:

In January 2001, two surveillance photographs from the Kuala Lumpur meeting were shown to an informant who was helping both the CIA and FBI. He helped them understand that Al-Midhar was at the meeting along with a man identified as “Khallad” — who by then was known to have planned the Cole bombing. But “we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Midhar or his traveling companions,” the report noted.

Also, contrary to the previous testimony of CIA Director Tenet, the agency did not tell the FBI about this discovery until late August 2001, according to the report.

Al-Midhar had left the United States in June 2000 but had plans to return.

“It is possible that if, in January 2001, agencies had resumed their search for him” or placed him on a terrorist watch list, “they might have found him” before he applied for a new visa in June 2001, the report said.

In mid-May 2001, during the height of threat reporting, a CIA official went back through the Al-Midhar files, discovered he had a U.S. visa and that Alhazmi had come to Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000.

The agency did not tell the FBI about this discovery until late August 2001.

“FBI Agent Urged Search for Hijacker – Request Was Turned Down Before Attacks, Panel Is Told” [by Dan Eggen and Dana Priest, Washington Post]:

On Sept. 11, after the World Trade Center was struck, the FBI agent and his colleagues received the passenger manifests from the four fatal flights. Yesterday he told the panel that he yelled angrily: “This is the same Almihdhar we’ve been talking about for three months!“

Mid-May 2001: during the height of threat reporting.

Al-Midhar applied for a new visa in June 2001.

“The easy path to the United States for three of the 9/11 hijackers” [by Edward T. Pound, US News & World Report]:

Three of the hijackers in the September 11 terrorist attacks obtained visas in Saudi Arabia through a brand-new program designed to make it easier for qualified visa applicants to visit the United States, an American government official said tonight.

The Visa Express program, put in place just four months before the attacks, allowed the three hijackers to arrange their visas through a State Department-designated travel agency, the official says. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers obtained their U.S. travel visas in Saudi Arabia.

None of the three men, the American government official says, was ever questioned by U.S. consular officers in Saudi Arabia. Each took his travel papers and passport to a commercial travel agency, which submitted the applications to the State Department.

Visa Express “is a bad idea,” says Jessica Vaughan, a former consular officer. “The issuing officer has no idea whether the person applying for the visa is actually the person (listed) in the documents and application.” …

Of the 15 hijackers who obtained their non-immigrant visas in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. official says, 11 received them before the Visa Express program was put into place, in June. The three Saudi nationals who obtained visas through the express program were:

… Khalid al-Midhar, 25, who, the Justice Department says, arrived in the U.S. in July 2001, traveling on a business visa. The FBI believes that al-Midhar was one of five men who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

The official says that the names of the four men–and the names of all the hijackers who obtained their U.S. visas in Saudi Arabia–were run through the State Department’s CLASS database (for Consular Lookout and Support System). The database contains regularly updated records and intelligence information on foreign nationals. “There was no derogatory information in the files,” the official said. …

As the terrorist attacks demonstrated, the information contained in CLASS was far from adequate. …

The names of the hijackers were run through the State Department’s database. There was no derogatory information in the files.

“Panel Clears Handling of Bin Laden Kin on 9/11,” [by MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times]:

The six chartered flights that rushed scores of Saudi citizens out of the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were handled properly by the Bush administration, the independent commission investigating the attacks said in a statement on Tuesday.

A flight on Sept. 20, 2001, carried 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Osama bin Laden, according to the statement. But all 142 passengers on the flights, mostly Saudi citizens, were screened by law enforcement officials, the statement said, to ensure that they were not security threats and not wanted for questioning. The flights were “dealt with in a professional manner” by the government, the commission said. …

Among other critics, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said last September that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave may have had ties to terrorism. “This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get,” he said.

But according to the statement, the F.B.I. checked “a variety of databases” and searched the aircraft. The statement said that it was not clear whether anyone checked a watch list maintained by the State Department, but that a check after the departure showed no matches.

“FBI let ‘top targets’ leave U.S. after 9-11” [by Paul Sperry, WorldNetDaily]:

“As far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States,” [FBI Director] Mueller testified in June 2002 before the joint congressional inquiry into 9-11.

The congressional panel, however, found that some of the hijackers had contacts with more than a dozen FBI persons of interest who helped them find housing, open bank accounts, obtain drivers licenses and locate flight schools, among other things. Some of their facilitators were Saudi nationals. Details of Saudi activities were censored from the final 9-11 report by the White House.

In one of her more explosive queries, Edmonds, the former FBI translator, suggests she has information the FBI allowed “several top targets of FBI investigations related to support networks of terrorist activities” leave the country after the 9-11 attacks “without ever being questioned.”

Newsnight transcript, BBC News

Michael Springman [former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia]:

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. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can’t be looking into some Saudi connections?

RICE [from Transcript of Rice’s 9/11 commission statement]: The threat reporting to which we could respond was in June and July about threats abroad. What we tried to do for — just because people said you cannot rule out an attack on the United States, was to have the domestic agencies and the FBI together to just pulse them and have them be on alert.

ROEMER: So, Dr. Rice, let’s say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was. We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We’ve gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody — nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices. We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this. And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don’t have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat. Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al Qaeda in the country, and still, the FBI doesn’t do anything. Isn’t that some of the responsibility of the national security advisor?

—–

RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” … The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don’t think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States.

de·ter·mi·na·tion
the act of deciding definitely and firmly; also : the result of such an act of decision

like
to wish to have

—–

RICE: It did not warn of attacks inside the United States.

“Bin Laden determined to strike in US“: … Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.” After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington…. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told – – service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike. … Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

—–

RICE: It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information.

Bin Laden determined to strike in US: Al Qaeda members — including some who are U.S. citizens — have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. … A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks …FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. … CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or [sic] bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

—–

RICE: It had a number of discussions of — it had a discussion of whether or not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in the United States — Ressam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations under way.

“Seattle an al-Qaida target? Local security officials left out of loop,” by PAUL SHUKOVSKY, The Seattle Post Intelligencer: But the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office at the time said yesterday that he never heard of any such investigations. And retired agent Charles Mandigo added that no one ever informed him of threats to the prison or the courthouse.

Mandigo is not alone:

· The chief district judge who presided over Ressam’s case said that his courthouse said no one told him his courthouse was under threat.
· A deputy U.S. marshal charged with courthouse security said no one informed the Marshal’s Service about the danger.
· An assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Ressam said he never heard a thing about it. A federal anti-terrorism agent said if there was an investigation into threats against the courthouse and the prison, no one told the local joint terrorism task force.

—–

“We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001,” by Eric Boehlert, Salon.com: Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. “Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That’s an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it’s a lie. …[T]here was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should’ve alerted the people to the threat we’re facing. … I’m hoping the commission asks him [FBI Director Robert Mueller] real questions — like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who’d been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn’t say no.”

RICE: … And I said, “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon” — I’m paraphrasing now — “into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.”

As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, “I could not have imagined,” because within two days, people started to come to me and say, “Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this.”

—–

LEHMAN: Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?

RICE: I was not. And I’m not sure that that was known at the center.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the U.S. Marshal program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic flights?

RICE: I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the red team in FAA — the red teams for 10 years had reported their hard data that the U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective and was usually down around 10 percent for 10 straight years?

RICE: To the best of my recollection, I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the transit-without- visa-waiver and pay the airlines extra money and come in?

RICE: I learned about that after September 11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its internal security enforcement budget?

RICE: I was not made aware of that. I don’t remember being made aware of that, no.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?

RICE: I do not believe I was aware of that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware — to shift a little bit to Saudi Arabia — were you aware of the program that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews?

RICE: I learned of that after 9/11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the activities of the Saudi ministry of religious affairs here in the United States during that transition?

RICE: I believe that only after September 11 did the full extent of what was going on with the ministry of religious affairs became evident.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the extensive activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country [sic], including right here in the United States?

RICE: I believe we’ve learned a great deal more about this and addressed it with the Saudi government since 9/11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi Arabia had and were you told that they had in their custody the CFO and the closest confidant of al Qaeda — of Osama bin Laden, and refused direct access to the United States?

RICE: I don’t remember anything of that kind.