AL QAEDA IS A MYTH

[jonnygemini]

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city's (Birmingham) central mosque, called Tony Blair a "liar" and "unreliable witness" and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators.

He said that Muslims "all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa'eda".

this story popped today and really backs up the perspective of the BBC show "Power of Nightmares" I posted a while ago:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/28/nas28.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/28/ixnewstop.html


Here is a link to a free download of the BBC show:
www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

[Os3y3ris]

Wouldnt surprise me.

[jonnygemini]

wow...Do they really think they're the slickest turd in the toilet bowl?? Al Qaeda serves the governments and bloodlines it claims to fight against...

www.infowars.com/articles/London_attack/mastermind_mi6_asset.htm

The Dud Bombers of 21/7, the patsies, have all been rounded up along with 18 others currently under questioning, yet the so called "mastermind" is allowed to go free and is protected time and time again by MI5, MI6, FBI and CIA. The same thing happened in 93 with the WTC bombing, 95 with the OKC bombing, 01 with 911 and its happening again, its the same type of operation EVERYTIME.

The July 29 edition of FOX News Channel's Day Side programme revealed that the so called mastermind of the 7/7 London Bombings, Haroon Rashid Aswat, is a British Intelligence Asset. Former Justice Dept. prosecutor and Terror expert John Loftus revealed that the so called Al-Muhajiroun group, based in London had formed during the Kosovo crisis, during which Fundamentalist Muslim Leaders (Or what is now referred to as Al Qaeda) were recruited by MI6 to fight in Kosovo.

Loftus stated that "...back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started."

We have previously revealed how former MI5 officer David Shayler has alleged, and French intel sources have corroborated, that the MI6 paid a Libyan al-Qa'ida cell £100,000 in 1995 to assassinate colonel Qaddafi. The use of the group that has come to be known as "Al Qaeda" as assets by Intelligence services the world over is well documented.

The London Independent also reported 2 days before the London Bombings how MI5 has previously used so called Al Qaeda operatives as informants, allowing them to be left alone as a trade off.


Former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus on Fox's Day Side

This only came to light when Bisher al-Rawi was captured by the CIA and taken to the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. The original Independent link has now mysteriously been removed.

John Loftus went on to spell out that British Intelligence and the US dept of Justice had protected Haroon Rashid Aswat: "Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon... we've just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat... , apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence"

Haroon Aswat, the so called mastermind of the London bombings with Radical cleric Abu Hamza al Masri in a London cab on Jan. 20, 1999.

This information is startling and again highlights how Al Qaeda exists as an organized body only where the intelligence services have created, funded and employed it. Loftus points out that several weeks before the London Bombings, Aswat was again located by the South African Intel agency but again allowed to slip away, this time to London:

"He was a British intelligence plant. So all of a sudden he disappears. He's in South Africa. We think he's dead; we don't know he's down there. Last month the South African Secret Service come across the guy. He's alive...the Brits know that the CIA wants to get a hold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn't arrested when he lands, he isn't arrested when he leaves... He's on the watch list. The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man."

Loftus' information is backed up by the New York Times and CNN who reported on this incident also.

We have seen this many times before and have continued to expose this kind of activity. Mr Aswat is not the only "Al Qaeda operative" who has been protected While in the US - the 19 9/11 hijackers and their associate Zaccharias Moussaoui seem to have been as well. FBI Agent Robert Wright blew the whistle on obstruction of counterterrorism investigations targeting Hamas and al-Qaeda before 911. The sabotage by the highest levels in the FBI of Coleen Rowley's desperate attempt to investigate Moussaoui, for instance, is a striking parallel to the "hands-off" order regarding Aswat, and it's far from being the only one. The CIA met with Bin Laden in July 2001 in a Dubai hospital where he was being treated for Kidney problems. They gleaned detailed information regarding possible massive terror attacks on the US, yet Bin Laden was allowed to slip away (either that or he passed away). Bin Laden is or was a known CIA Asset.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mysteriously arrested as the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 plot, was granted a visa to enter the US just six weeks before the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. The American Al Qaeda operative, Iyman Faris, who planned to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge was also revealed to be an FBI operative. We also have several other reports staing how the men used as hijackers on the planes on 911 were monitored before the event and allowed to enter the US. They were even trained at US flight schools.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed


After 911 these so called terrorists have been allowed to go on with business as usual, despite the "war on terror" and in many instances have been protected. It seems that the authorities find it more useful to restrict the liberties of law abiding citizens by introducing draconian restrictive laws such as the Patriot act and Free speech zoning, whilst allowing those they label as terrorists to go undetected.

Haroon Rashid Aswat allegedly left London for Pakistan on July 6, one day before the London bombing. He was then arrested in Pakistan, but released AGAIN within 24 hours. He reportedly traveled to Zimbabwe and then Zambia, where he may have been arrested again (conflicting reports). Why does the so called mastermind of 7/7 keep being released and allowed to slip away? It the same type of operation over and over again.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: The July 29 edition of FOX News Channel's Day Side programme:

MIKE JERRICK [FOX NEWS]: John Loftus is a terrorism expert and a former prosecutor for the Justice Department. John, good to see you again. So real quickly here, have you heard anything about this Osman Hussain who was just picked up in Rome? You know that name at all?

JOHN LOFTUS: Yeah, all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.

JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?

LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat.

JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.

LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.

JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.

LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him. And this has been a real source of contention between the CIA, the Justice Department, and Britain.

JERRICK: MI6 has been hiding him. Are you saying that he has been working for them?

LOFTUS: Oh I'm not saying it. This is what the Muslim sheik said in an interview in a British newspaper back in 2001.

JERRICK: So he's a double agent, or was?

LOFTUS: He's a double agent.

JERRICK: So he's working for the Brits to try to give them information about Al-Qaeda, but in reality he's still an Al-Qaeda operative.

LOFTUS: Yeah. The CIA and the Israelis all accused MI6 of letting all these terrorists live in London not because they're getting Al-Qaeda information, but for appeasement. It was one of those you leave us alone, we leave you alone kind of things.

JERRICK: Well we left him alone too long then.

LOFTUS: Absolutely. Now we knew about this guy Aswat. Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon.

JERRICK: So they indicted his buddy, right? But why didn't they indict him?

LOFTUS: Well it comes out, we've just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat.

JERRICK: Hello? Now hold on, why?

LOFTUS: Well, apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence. Now Aswat's boss, the one-armed Captain Hook, he gets indicted two years later. So the guy above him and below him get indicted, but not Aswat. Now there's a split of opinion within US intelligence. Some people say that the British intelligence fibbed to us. They told us that Aswat was dead, and that's why the New York group dropped the case. That's not what most of the Justice Department thinks. They think that it was just again covering up for this very publicly affiliated guy with Al-Muhajiroun. He was a British intelligence plant. So all of a sudden he disappears. He's in South Africa. We think he's dead; we don't know he's down there. Last month the South African Secret Service come across the guy. He's alive.

JERRICK: Yeah, now the CIA says, oh he's alive. Our CIA says OK let's arrest him. But the Brits say no again?

LOTFUS: The Brits say no. Now at this point, two weeks ago, the Brits know that the CIA wants to get a hold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn't arrested when he lands, he isn't arrested when he leaves.

JERRICK: Even though he's on a watch list.

LOFTUS: He's on the watch list.The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man.

JERRICK: And then takes off the day before the bombings, I understand it--

LOFTUS: And goes to Pakistan.

JERRICK: And Pakistan, they jail him.

LOFTUS: The Pakistanis arrest him. They jail him. He's released within 24 hours. Back to Southern Africa, goes to Zimbabwe and is arrested in Zambia. Now the US--

JERRICK: Trying to get across the--

LOFTUS: --we're trying to get our hands on this guy.

JERRICK: John, hang around. I have so many questions now.

LOFTUS: Oh, this is a bad one....

[commercial break]

JERRICK: On the phone with us, Mansoor Ijaz; Mansoor you know very well here at Fox News Channel and Dayside. Mansoor, real quickly here, you spent so much time in London, you're probably not that as impressed as I am about how fast Scotland Yard has worked on this case. So impressive, so successful. Why?

MANSOOR IJAZ: Well there are two things that a lot of domestic intelligence agencies don't around the world. One is an extraordinarily detailed database of information, and that database is buttressed by the fact that they have these photos, the graphic images of the faces of the people that they were looking for. So it saved them a lot of time when they got the forensic evidence, like fingerprints or other things that indicated where they could actually go find these people. Because remember, there was a lot of data left on the stuff these guys left behind from the failed bombing attack, and that's what helped to really unravel the cell. Now--

JERRICK: I guess--go ahead, Mansoor.

IJAZ: Now I think there's one very important thing that I think everybody needs to know. And that is that the cellular structure that this new breed of Al-Qaeda people have is such that there is not a clear indication that they all knew each other as much as it is that they had some sort of central control still sitting outside of the framework. Whether that's in a foreign country or a place that is removed from Britain and other place in Europe, that's what we're still looking for. But it's very clear now that these cellular structures were operating independent of each other, but with knowledge that something else was in fact planned in the pipeline.

JERRICK: Real quick, Mansoor. In that regard, maybe a ringleader could be this Haroon Aswat. What do you know about him?

IJAZ: Well, he's a pretty bad guy, and I think your previous guest gave the best assessment of who he is. He's the right hand man of the Al-Muhajiroun leader in London, and has been organizing and planning for some time. And I don't want to minimize the effect of the arrest in Rome, because what that indicates is that the cellular structure is elsewhere and we all know that Italy is a big target on their list.

JERRICK: OK, speaking of him, back to the comments by our John Loftus a little while ago. A question from the audience for you, John. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi Mr Loftus. I recently read a book by Morris Dees called The Gathering Storm , and it talks about extremist militia groups in the United States and how they might be manipulated by some people's rhetoric, very similar to Aswat in London. What do you think the US is doing to prevent terrorist attacks on our own soil that happen--

JERRICK: You're worried about it here?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, sir.

LOFTUS: The US government's doing a great job. We arrested the New York branch of Al-Muhajiroun two years ago. We found the subway bombers with the plans to blow up two different subway stations in New York City. The rest of the group is under surveillance. But the US was used by Al-Muhajiroun for training of people to send to Kosovo. What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started.

IJAZ: Which is by the way why we know so much about them right now.

LOFTUS: Yes, I'm afraid so. The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook, the head of Al-Muhajiroun, he sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo, Haroon was 31 years old, he came on about 1995.

JERRICK: OK. Here's another question for you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, John. With the quid-pro-quo relationship that London obviously had with these terrorists early on, what changed that caused them to all of a sudden get away from the you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone situation?

LOFTUS: The Israelis say that the truce went on for years. Guys from Al-Muhajiroun for example would bring suicide bombers to Israel to blow up Mike's Place. There was a definite link there. And yet the trainer, Sadiki Al Kahn, was able to go back to Britain and not be touched. What the Israelis believe happened is that Usama Bin Laden got desperate, and he said burn all our bridges--let's turn on the British. Break the truce, start the bombs.

JERRICK: Speaking of Usama Bin Laden, Mansoor, real quickly, maybe Scotland Yard and those folks over there, the Brits, should be looking for Usama Bin Laden. They seem to be so successful.

LOFTUS: The British police do a remarkable job.

IJAZ: Well, that's an interesting comment. The fact of the matter is, when you're dealing with it in your own backyard, and you have the computer infrastructure set up in such a way that you can immediately track these kinds of things that are in your backyard, it's a very different game from tracking them on places where we don't even have mountain maps any more of how the whole thing looks. So that's really what the fundamental problem is. If you'll permit me, I just want to, Mike, make one other very quick point.

JERRICK: Mansoor, can you hang over, do you have time hang over for a 30-second break here? John Loftus, got to cut you loose but thanks for the info. Boy, interesting stuff John...

[commercial break]

JERRICK: We have some more information from our Mansoor Ijaz, Fox News Foreign Affairs Analyst. Mansoor, still on the phone with me?

IJAZ: Yeah, I'm here with you Mike.

JERRICK: Talk about your information from British intel.

IJAZ: Well, let's not characterize the sources quite that way, but I've talked to some people who are analyzing what came out of the raids today, and there's a great deal of concern about the fact that there may be in fact a desire of these cells to move beyond transit systems as the target. And what specifically they found was evidence that indicates they're looking at now places where there are large collections of people, where they can actually take shopping bags and other large carrying bags of sorts without raising a lot of suspicion. Obviously shopping malls come immediately to mind, but it's important for everybody to know that London was planning on having a large I think it's a City Fair or something like that, I don't know what exactly it's called. They've now decided to go ahead with that, but it's obviously going to be much more scrutinized than it would have been before. Now London doesn't in general have a lot of large shopping malls, but they do have large concentrations of people in places at certain times during the week, and that's what apparently now has become the target, one of the new targets of these terrorist cells.

JERRICK: So Mansoor, when you hear that we have four for four, or four for five of these 7/21 bombers, nobody should fool themselves. This thing isn't over.

IJAZ: That is precisely the point I wanted to make sure everybody understood--that the authorities, the people that are worried about this and that are analyzing the data out of what they're getting in these raids, are basically saying we may have just hit the tip of the iceberg. This is not over by a long shot.

JERRICK: Mansoor, thank you for making that perfectly clear. Talk to you soon.

[SAMURAI36]

os3y3ris said:

Wouldnt surprise me.

The fact is though, that it WOULD surprise alot of the rest of the world.

[jonnygemini]

Sam7 that is exactly my point...while we may keep up on the regular flow of news backing up this perspective...Many do not and get all angry and surprised should you dare bring this up in conversation...I am just amazed how the "powers that be" allow detailed info on their nefarious activities to leak out so soon after they con the populace into buying into the "mainstream story"...

Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00
nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/politics/09intel.html?ex=1281240000&en=bc4d02afa0a46012&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

August 9, 2005
Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.

The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.

A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.

The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.

Mr. Weldon first spoke publicly about the episode in June, in a little-noticed speech on the House floor and in an interview with The Times-Herald in Norristown, Pa. The matter resurfaced on Monday in a report by GSN: Government Security News, which is published every two weeks and covers domestic-security issues. The GSN report was based on accounts provided by Mr. Weldon and the same former intelligence official, who was interviewed on Monday by The New York Times in Mr. Weldon's office.

In a telephone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon said he was basing his assertions on similar ones by at least three other former intelligence officers with direct knowledge of the project, and said that some had first called the episode to his attention shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 19 hijackers, only Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the Central Intelligence Agency before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the F.B.I. until the spring of 2001.

Mr. Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work of the Able Danger team.

The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.

"Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al Qaeda targets," the former defense intelligence official said.

He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the former intelligence official said.

The unit, which relied heavily on data-mining techniques, was modeled after those first established by Army intelligence at the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center, now known as the Information Dominance Center, at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official said.

Mr. Weldon is an outspoken figure who is a vice chairman of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. He said he had recognized the significance of the episode only recently, when he contacted members of the military intelligence team as part of research for his book, "Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America and How the C.I.A. Has Ignored It."

Mr. Weldon's book prompted one veteran C.I.A. case officer to strongly dispute the reliability of one Iranian source cited in the book, saying the Iranian "was a waste of my time and resources."

Mr. Weldon said that he had discussed the Able Danger episode with Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and that at least two Congressional committees were looking into the episode.

In the interview on Monday, Mr. Weldon said he had been aware of the episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, when members of the team first brought it to his attention. He said he had told Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, about it in a conversation in September or October 2001, and had been surprised when the Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the operation.

Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Special Operations Command, said no one at the command now had any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings. If the program existed, Colonel Taylor said, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" on which only a few military personnel would have been briefed.

During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.

He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.

The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that "the software put them all together in Brooklyn."

According to the commission report, Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi were first identified in late 1999 or 2000 by the C.I.A. as Qaeda members who might be involved in a terrorist operation. They were tracked from Yemen to Malaysia before their trail was lost in Thailand. Neither man was put on a State Department watch list before they flew to Los Angeles in early 2000. The F.B.I. was not warned about them until the spring of 2001, and no efforts to track them were made until August 2001.

Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.

The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.

The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.

Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.

"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Mr. Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."

As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.

"The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were," Mr. Felzenberg said.

Philip Shenon and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.

[jonnygemini]

wow...from CBS news disinfo division
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/17/terror/main781949.shtml

An Army intelligence officer says his unit was blocked in 2000 and 2001 from giving the FBI information about a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included Mohamed Atta, the future leader of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said the small intelligence unit, called "Able Danger," had identified Atta and three of the other future Sept. 11 hijackers as al Qaeda members by mid-2000.

"We recognized there are linkages and patterns of linkages to the al Qaeda leadership," Shaffer said on CBS News' Early Show. "That's what our primary concern was at the time."

He said military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI.

"We were trying to find a way to bring the Special Operations Command folks together with the FBI folks in Washington so they could discuss the potential impact of having these individuals in the United States," Shaffer told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "Part of the problem with that was, the lawyers didn't allow us to properly go after, either by intelligence collection or by allowing the FBI to to look at these guys, because they were here legally.

"And there was a big issue regarding the fact that these foreign nationals were here in the United States doing things which were, in my judgment, questionable, based on their linkages to the al Qaeda leadership," Shaffer added. "But because they were here legally, again, the lawyers really did not want us going after any information or dealing with them whatsoever at this point in time."

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks left the Able Danger claims out of its official report. Shaffer doesn't think the panel was given all the information his team had gathered.

"I spoke to the officer recently who actually physically took two briefcase-size packages of documents over to them," Shaffer said. "I can tell you for a fact that was probably 1/20th of the actual hard copy documents and probably none of the actual data. The 2.5 terabytes of data used for the project. I don't believe they got all the documents. I don't believe they pressed properly to get all the documents."

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, has said the Sept. 11 commission did not adequately investigate the claim that four of the hijackers had been identified more than a year before the attacks.

Former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said last week that the military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up.

Shaffer rejected that remark. "Leaving a project targeting al Qaeda as a global threat a year before we were attacked by al Qaeda is equivalent to having an investigation of Pearl Harbor and leaving somehow out the Japanese," he said.

[UniverseSeven]

BUMP

[jonnygemini]

September 17, 2005 -- More revelations emerge that Bush administration is protecting Osama Bin Laden. Intelligence sources are reporting that reports that Osama Bin Laden is seriously ill and requires medical attention are part of a neo-con disinformation campaign to divert attention away from the fact that the crafty "Al Qaeda" leader is never far away from his ex-U.S. Air Force T-39 twin engine Sabreliner, bought in 1993 from the Davis Monthan Air Force Base "boneyard" outside of Tucson, Arizona. The plane was purchased for $200,000 by Essam al Ridi to be used to ship missiles between Bin Laden's home base of Sudan and Pakistan. French intelligence documents show that in 1993 Bin Laden was still under "operational control" of U.S. and British intelligence. Furthermore, the plane sale was made to Bin Laden after National Security Agency intercepts of the Sudanese mission to the U.N. proved that two Sudanese diplomats were working with Bin Laden to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.


The Three Amigos: More details of Bin Laden and his U.S.-provided plane emerge

Bin Laden's Sabreliner was, according to an ex-CIA source, retrofitted at an ex-CIA base in Marana, Arizona by Evergreen International, an airline company with close ties to the CIA. Evergreen currently operates the base as the "Evergreen Air Center."

Bin Laden's Sabreliner is now reportedly secretly stashed at a Pakistani military airbase, which means that Bin Laden is in Pakistan with the knowledge of President Pervez Musharraf (and likely his close "ally" George W. Bush). The ex-CIA source also revealed that, as the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook revealed shortly before his untimely death, "Al Qaeda" is nothing more than a CIA list of arms dealers, mercenaries, drug dealers, and terrorists used by the United States and the Saudis in the Mujaheddin war against the USSR. One of the most notorious heroin and cocaine dealers was Mohammed Atta, the lead 911 hijacker and someone frequently used as a prized and reliable courier by U.S., British, and Saudi intelligence.

www.waynemadsenreport.com/

[jonnygemini]

Officer barred from telling Senate about 9/11/01 intelligence

By Kimberly Hefling
Associated Press

The Department of Defense forbade a military intelligence officer to testify Wednesday about the work of a secret military unit that identified four 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, according to the man’s attorney.

In written testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, attorney Mark Zaid, who represents Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said the Pentagon also refused to permit testimony there by a defense contractor that he also represents.

The Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hear testimony about the work of a classified unit code named “Able Danger.”

In his prepared remarks, Zaid was ready to say on behalf of Shaffer and contractor John Smith that Able Danger, using data mining techniques, identified four of the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11, 2001 — including mastermind Mohamed Atta.

“At least one chart, and possibly more, featured a photograph of Mohamed Atta,” Zaid said in his prepared remarks.

Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Defense Department spokesman, said Wednesday that open testimony would not be appropriate.

“We have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in any public forum,” he said.

Swiergosz said no individuals were singled out not to testify.

“There’s nothing more to say than that,” Swiergosz said. “It’s not possible to discuss the Able Danger program because there are security concerns.”

On three occasions, Able Danger personnel attempted to provide the FBI with information, but Department of Defense attorneys stopped them because of legal concerns about military-run investigations on U.S. soil, Zaid said in his prepared remarks, encouraging the panel to locate a legal memorandum that he said Defense Department attorneys used to justify stopping the meetings.

Zaid also charged that records associated with the unit were destroyed during 2000 and March 2001, and copies were destroyed in spring 2004.

Rep. Curt Weldon. R-Pa., who was the first to come forward to assert that Able Danger had identified Atta and three others as being members of an al-Qaida cell, was also scheduled to testify.

If Weldon is correct, the intelligence would change the timeline for when government officials first became aware of Atta’s links to the terrorist network al-Qaida.

Former members of the Sept. 11 commission have dismissed the “Able Danger” assertions.

Pentagon officials had acknowledged earlier this month that they had found three people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition to Shaffer, another military officer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, has come forward to support Weldon’s claims. He was not on Wednesday’s witness list.

www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1116662.php

[jonnygemini]

He did it: Rumsfeld kills revelations on Mohamed Atta
[Here's a nice hot smoking gun for you]


Is this one of those smoking gun type of things? Can't say for sure ... too much smoke!

"Able Danger" was the secret Pentagon program that identified Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks -- the same program the Bush administration dismantled and destroyed a few months before the Sept. 11 operation was completed.

Today, Pentagon officers who worked on the secret data-mining program were to testify before Congress on the very hot subject. Donald Rumsfeld took care of that. All details will remain secret.

Why must Donald Rumsfeld keep this secret? Why was this damning evidence kept from the 9/11 Commission? What is the Bush Administration so desperate to hide?

It must be something of potentially devastating consequences for those hiding the information.

The Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee accused the Pentagon on Wednesday of stonewalling an inquiry into claims that the U.S. military identified four September 11 hijackers more than a year before the 2001 attacks.

The Defense Department barred several witnesses from testifying at a judiciary committee hearing and instead sent a top-level official who could provide little information on al Qaeda-related intelligence uncovered by a secret military team code-named Able Danger.

"That looks to me like it may be obstruction of the committee's activities, something we will have to determine," said the panel's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Specter also complained that the Pentagon delivered hundreds of pages of documents related to Able Danger late on the eve of the hearing, giving his committee staff no time to review the material.

"The American people are entitled to some answers," Specter said. "It is not a matter of attaching blame. It is a matter of correcting errors so that we don't have a repetition of 9/11."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon considered Able Danger to be a classified matter and declined to participate when the judiciary committee chose to hold an open hearing.

Obstruction. Will Rumsfeld be jailed for this obstruction? Who will jail him? More importantly, if additional obstruction comes from the White House to protect their man from prison or the courtroom, who will jail them?

www.sploid.com

[jonnygemini]

Update: Cheney killed testimony on Pentagon knowing Atta
[Rumsfeld got the order from 'cobweb,' otherwise known as Dick Cheney]

The White House pulled the plug on 'Able Danger' testimony.

The word I got from him was that contrary to popular knowledge, Rummy didn't pull the plug on the witnesses, it came from "Cobweb", which is just a little -- OK, a lot higher up the chain.

Here's what I know. Spector is being "allowed" this little foray basically to keep Weldon quiet. Like I said before, "Give him his hearing and maybe he'll go away". There are people -- active -- who want this to go away and how the power to make it go away.

I know that everyone is clamering for more and indeed you have some of the families of 9/11 victims and others demanding answers. But unless the WH walls come crumbling down, it isn't going to happen. The MSM isn't picking up on the story (a little CIA/MSM/CYA going on IMHO), thus the majority of the public isn't catching on -- thus no interest outside of bloggers and the principles.

[jonnygemini]

macsmind.blogspot.com/2005/09/able-danger-great-summer-story-2.html

Early today I watched the 'Spector House' Able Danger hearings on CSPAN.

I watched closely, because at 8am, my cell was buzzing, a call from a friend. I had asked him to get some clarification on Shaffer's story that Rummy told 'em not to testify. The word I got from him was that contrary to popular knowledge, Rummy didn't pull the plug on the witnesses, it came from "Cobweb", which is just a little - OK, a lot higher up the chain.

Here's what I know. Spector is being "allowed" this little foray basically to keep Weldon quiet. Like I said before, "Give him his hearing and maybe he'll go away". There are people - active - who want this to go away and how the power to make it go away.

I know that everyone is clamering for more and indeed you have some of the families of 9/11 victims and others demanding answers. But unless the WH walls come crumbling down, it isn't going to happen. The MSM isn't picking up on the story (a little CIA/MSM/CYA going on IMHO), thus the majority of the public isn't catching on - thus no interest outside of bloggers and the principles.

So my take is that we'll have more 'revelations', 'hearings, etc, but that's about it. Weldon's book will sell a lot of copies.

The fact is that - and catch my drift - there are people that feel that keeping the truth at bay is better at this time than to "let it all hang out."

A sham, yeah. Incredible, yeah that too. But it won't be the first time and it's likely not to be the last.

Just my two cents.

UPDATE: I posted this when the story began appearing. During my stint (AI), we were governed by Army Field Manual 2, which has a paragraph:

"US Code, Executive Orders, DOD Directives, and Army Regulations contain specific guidance regarding prohibition on the collection of intelligence information on US citizens, US corporations, and resident aliens. These laws and regulations include criminal penalties for their violation. Any PIO directed against US citizens should undergo competent legal review prior to their initiation." FM 2, US Army, May 2004.

PIO is short for Police Investigative Operation. Here's the point:, If no legal review was sought BEFORE Able Danger began poking around - it was a MAJOR NO-NO. Thus, while the idea was correct, the operation itself may have violated applicable laws, regs, etc. Just additional thought and makes sense that primarly AI was involved in the destruction of the documents (which was done incidently according to regulation).

UPDATE: II Andy McCarthy over at the Corner:

"What is unfolding here is an embarrassing story. Data mining efforts harvested some information on US persons (essentially, citizens and permanent resident aliens) in the course of investigating al Qaeda (and later, Chinese proliferation). But Atta was not a US person. There was no impropriety in collecting information on him, nor does it smack of any McCarthy-era list-making – these are the lists everyone knows we are allowed to make and should be making. There is no question that al Qaeda was being investigated by other arms of government at that time – and that such lists were being made."

That is incorrect for the reasons stated above IF Atta's status was "Resident Alien", see the FM 2 reference above.

But further:

"It is, moreover, alleged that, even though the documentation had been destroyed, an Able Danger briefing was given to Gen. Shelton (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) in January 2001. And it came up in a briefing given to Stephen Cambone – then a top advisor to Sec’y Rumsfeld and now undersecretary for intelligence – in around March 2001.

Weldon testified this morning that two weeks ago, at an informal briefing to House members, a Pentagon lawyer said that there had been no need to get special clearance to destroy Able Danger materials because they were open-source, not classified. Now, the Pentagon is blocking the Senate from conducting its oversight function by claiming it is worried about disclosure of classified information – even to the point of declining to allow witnesses to testify in closed session.

Finally, Weldon repeated today that he told then-Deputy National Security Adviser (now NSA) Steve Hadley about Able Danger and gave him a chart with Atta on it right after the 9/11 attacks. He added today that Rep. Dan Burton came with him to see Hadley on that occasion. He also reported that Hadley conceded to him, in a conversation about 3 months ago, that he recalled Weldon providing the chart. Yet, we have still not heard a word from Hadley – who could have put a lot of these claims and counter-claims about the credibility of the witnesses to rest weeks ago by simply confirming or denying Weldon’s version of events."

Exactly, and their absence is telling. Moreover, one man, General Schoomaker, who ran the program (with that plussed up Weldon funding) could solve a lot just by speaking up. He hasn't, and he won't.

You can also forget about Shelton talking (loves that pension too much).

Cpt's Thoughts, Tom Mcguire.

[UniverseSeven]

VIDEO
www.infowars.net/Pages/Aug05/020805Aswat.html


Haroon Aswat…FBI agent threatens former USDA federal agent, now staff reporter for The New Criminologist.

Published on 25 September 2005 | Author BERRY-DEE, Christopher.

www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=-1677497717

[jonnygemini]

Osama Who? Media Begins the “Protect bin Laden Campaign!”

Last night 60 Minutes (CBS) took part in a campaign to make the public think that catching Osama bin Laden is not important. You may see this message in many forms over the next few months. This, to me, indicates that Osama is indeed being protected by the US. We never intended on getting him. The media is now getting the public opinion in line. This speaks volumes.

Keep in mind that if he is reported killed or caught, we will never be given direct access to him (or his body) for the purpose of verifying his identity. Based on what we have seen for 5 years we must raise our level of skepticism towards this most untrustworthy administration. Think about it!

Link to 60 Minutes Piece: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/23/60minutes/main881268.shtml

Reference:
Bush/bin Laden Ties: tvnewslies.org/html/bin_laden_ties.html
The 9/11 Cover Up: tvnewslies.org/html/covering_up.html

Quotes from the 60 Minutes piece:
“Is it all that important to find him?” asks Safdar. “Even if he’s taken out tomorrow, his ideology is not going to come to an end. So, I don’t think that he’s that important that we should be overly concerned about his being dead or alive.”

It is not important that bin Laden be captured, he says, because, “What’s going to happen? Sentiments, they are going to get further aggravated, but their ideology will continue. It’s not going to stop here.”

But Pakistani President Musharraf does not disagree: “These troops are not certainly on a trail of one man and that’s all they are doing,” he says. “They are fighting terrorism, wherever it is. If Osama happens to be there incidentally, he will be killed or captured.”

[jonnygemini]

FDNY Chaplain Resigns After 9/11 Remarks

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago

The fire department's new Muslim chaplain abruptly resigned Friday after saying in a published interview that he believes something other than al-Qaida hijackers brought down the World Trade Center.

"It became clear to him that he would have difficulty functioning as an FDNY chaplain," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told reporters an hour before Imam Intikab Habib was to be officially sworn in. "There has been no prior indication that he held those views."

Habib told Newsday in an interview published Friday that he was skeptical of the official version of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, which killed 343 firefighters.

"I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone," he told the newspaper.

"It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours," he said. "Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?"

The 30-year-old Guyana native joined the department as chaplain on Aug. 15 after the FDNY's Islamic Society recommended him for the part-time position, which pays $18,000 a year.

Scoppetta said Habib, who was educated in Islamic law in Saudi Arabia and preaches at a New York mosque, had appeared qualified and passed a background check.

Habib made his comments after Newsday asked him whether he thought firefighters would object to a chaplain trained in Saudi Arabia. The country was home to 15 of the 19 men who hijacked four jets on Sept. 11, 2001, crashed two of them into the trade center towers and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.

"There are so many conflicting reports about it," the newspaper quoted Habib as saying. "I don't believe it was 19 ... hijackers who did those attacks." He said he didn't know who was responsible for the attacks.

"It's sad," said Kevin James, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel. "We had no idea those were his views. He's entitled to his opinion but he's not the right person for the chaplain."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg welcomed Habib's resignation.

"The remarks were offensive and the mayor is satisfied that the chaplain has resigned," mayoral spokesman Ed Skyler said.

Some have blamed the destruction of the trade center on a U.S. or Israeli plot designed to whip up support for attacks on Muslim countries. In 2003, New Jersey eliminated Amiri Baraka's position as poet laureate after he wrote a poem suggesting Israel had advance knowledge of the attacks.