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Posted: May 18, 2002

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Did Bush Know?
:: Warning Signs of 9-11 and Intelligence Failures ::

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

This is an edited version of Chapter 4 from the explosive 400-page exposé, "The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001", by the leading British political scientist and human rights activist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in Brighton, UK. This book was featured on Barry Zwicker’s MediaFile documentary series, ‘The Great Deception: The War on Terrorism – An Alternative View?’, Vision TV, Canada (February 4, 2002): "The most complete book I know of, at this time, summarizing the relevant background and foreground intersecting upon the events of September 11, 2001."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

:: Chapter 4. Warning Signs of 9-11 and Intelligence Failures ::

“What is happening in the United States took me by surprise. I anticipated that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, there would be an enormous hue and cry to find out what went wrong. There has been no hue and cry in the United States. No recriminations, nothing even similar to what happened after Pearl Harbor in 1941… The United States has drawn a veil of silence over the issue of intelligence failure.”

Wesley Wark, Canadian Intelligence Expert and Consultant to the Privy Council Office of Canada on Intelligence Policy
(Globe & Mail, 18 December 2001)

“We’ve been focusing on this perpetrator Osama bin Laden for 3 years, and yet we didn’t see this one coming,” said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of CIA counter-terrorism operations. A U.S. Air Force General described the attack as “something we had never seen before, something we had never even thought of.” FBI Director Robert Mueller further declared that “there were no warning signs that I’m aware of.” Senior FBI officials insisted that in terms of intelligence warnings received prior to 11th September: “The notion of flying a plane into a building or using it as a bomb never came up.”[1] According to this official version of events, no one in the Bush administration had the slightest idea of the identities of those who orchestrated the 11th September attacks, the nature of their plans, or their targets.

Contrary to these prolific claims, there is compelling evidence that the U.S. intelligence community had extensive forewarning of the 11th September attacks on New York and Washington. Further evidence suggests that the attacks may, in fact, have been in the interest of certain elements of the Bush administration (see Chapter VII).

Using Planes as Bombs

The Pentagon commissioned an expert panel in 1993 to investigate the possibility of an airplane being used to bomb national landmarks. Retired Air Force Col. Doug Menarchik, who organised the $150,000 study for the Defense Department’s Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, recalled: “It was considered radical thinking, a little too scary for the times. After I left, it met a quiet death.” Other participants have noted that the decision not to publish detailed scenarios issued to some extent from fear that this may give terrorists ideas. Nevertheless, a draft document detailing the results of the investigation was circulated through the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Senior agency officials decided against a public release.[2]

The veracity of the Pentagon’s “radical thinking” was confirmed in 1994 when there occurred three attempted attacks on buildings using airplanes. The first, in April of that year, involved a Federal Express flight engineer facing dismissal.

Having boarded a DC-10 as a passenger, he invaded the cockpit, planning to crash the plane into a company building in Memphis. Fortunately, he was overpowered by the crew.

The second attempt occurred in September. A lone pilot crashed a small plane into a tree on the White House grounds, just short of the President’s bedroom.

The third incident occurred in December. An Air France flight in Algiers was hijacked by members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)— who are linked to Al-Qaeda—aiming to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. French Special Forces stormed the plane on the ground.[3]

Al-Qaeda’s Plans: Project Bojinka

Western intelligence had been aware of plans for such terrorist attacks on U.S. soil as early as 1995. Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had detailed information about the possible use of hijack/suicide attacks by terrorists connected to Osama bin Laden. The New York Times reported that:

“In 1994, two jetliners were hijacked by people who wanted to crash them into buildings, one of them by an Islamic militant group. And the 2000 edition of the FAA’s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation, published this year, said that although Osama bin Laden ‘is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so,’ adding, ‘Bin Laden’s anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.’”[4]

Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community was aware of bin Laden’s specific intentions to use hijacked civilian planes as weapons. In this regard, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that:

“The FBI had advance indications of plans to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as weapons, but neither acted on them nor distributed the intelligence to local police agencies. From the moment of the September 11th attacks, high-ranking federal officials insisted that the terrorists’ method of operation surprised them. Many stick to that story. Actually, elements of the hijacking plan were known to the FBI as early as 1995 and, if coupled with current information, might have uncovered the plot.”[5]

Details of these advanced indications have been noted in a report by the respected German daily, Die Welt: “Western secret services knew as far back as 1995 that suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden planned to attack civilian sites using commercial passenger planes.” Quoting sources “close to western intelligence agencies,” the newspaper reported that: “The plan was discovered in January 1995 by Philippine police who were investigating a possible attack against Pope John Paul II on a visit to Manila…

“They found details of the plan in a computer seized in an apartment used by three men who were part of Bin Laden’s al‑Qaeda network. It provided for 11 planes to be exploded simultaneously by bombs placed on board, but also in an alternative form for several planes flying to the United States to be hijacked and flown into civilian targets. Among targets mentioned was the World Trade Center in New York, which was destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States that killed thousands.”

This plot “re-surfaced during the trial in New York in 1997 of Pakistani Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993... [The] U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and CIA would have known about the plan at the latest at this time.”[6] As the Washington DC-based Public Education Center (PEC) observes, “Federal investigative sources have confirmed that Murad”—who was “a close confidant and right-hand man to Yousef, who was convicted of crimes relating to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center”—“detailed an entire plot to dive bomb aircraft in the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, VA.” along with other U.S. buildings. “Yousef independently boasted of the plot to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr and FBI agent Charles Stern on an extradition flight from Pakistan to the United States in February 1995,” continues the PEC report. “The agents later testified to that fact in court… [T]he plan targeted not only the CIA but other U.S. government buildings in Washington, including the Pentagon.”[7]

Rafael M. Garcia III, Chairman/CEO of the Mega Group of Computer Companies in the Philippines, who often works with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in his field of expertise, was involved in the intelligence operation that uncovered Project Bojinka. Garcia was responsible for the decoding of Yousef’s computer. “This was how we found out about the various plots being hatched by the cell of Ramzi Yousef. First, there was the plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II,” he observes. “Then, we discovered a second, even more sinister plot: Project Bojinka, or a Yugoslav term for loud bang.[8] This was a plot to blow up 11 airlines over the Pacific Ocean, all in a 48-hour period. The planes would have come from Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila…

“Then we found another document that discussed a second alternative to crash the 11 planes into selected targets in the United States instead of just blowing them up in the air. These included the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia; the World Trade Center in New York; the Sears Tower in Chicago; the TransAmerica Tower in San Francisco; and the White House in Washington, DC… I submitted my findings to NBI officials, who most certainly turned over the report (and the computer) either to then Senior Superintendent Avelino Razon of the PNP [the Philippine National Police] or to Bob Heafner of the FBI… I have since had meetings with certain U.S. authorities and they have confirmed to me that indeed, many things were done in response to my report.”[9]

The World Tribune similarly reports, citing an intelligence source involved in the Philippine operation, that: “The hijacked aircraft were to be crashed into structures in the United States, including the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon, the Transamerica tower in San Francisco and the Sears Tower in Chicago.”[10] Paul Monk, Senior Fellow at the Australian Thinking Skills Institute and a Professor at the Australian Defense University, cites “confidential sources” in Manila and Washington detailing that: “Project Bojinka was an AQ [Al-Qaeda] plan to hijack eleven airliners simultaneously, exploding many of them at various places over the Pacific, but flying at least two of them into major federal government buildings in the United States. The flights to be hijacked were specified. They were all United Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Delta flights…

“The plan has been masterminded by one Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested in Islamabad in the wake of Murad’s interrogation. Both Murad and Yousef were extradited to the United States, tried and convicted for complicity in the 1993 attack on the WTC. The date of Yousef’s conviction was 11 September 1996. From that point, given the fascination terrorists have with anniversaries, 11 September should surely have become a watch date.”[11]

Detailed elaboration on this matter is provided by the Washington DC-based media watch group, Accuracy In Media (AIM). AIM has harshly criticised the media for largely ignoring the U.S. intelligence community’s advanced knowledge of Project Bojinka:

“In 1995, the CIA and the FBI learned that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as bombs to attack important targets in the U.S. This scheme was called Project Bojinka. It was discovered in the Philippines, where authorities arrested two of bin Laden’s agents, Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad. They were involved in planting a bomb on a Philippine airliner. Project Bojinka, which Philippine authorities found outlined on Abdul Murad’s laptop, called for planting bombs on eleven U.S. airliners and hijacking others and crashing them into targets like the CIA building…

It required aviators like Japan’s kamikaze pilots who were willing to commit suicide. Bin Laden had no such pilots in 1995, but he set out to train young fanatics willing to die for him to fly airliners. Abdul Murad, whose laptop had revealed the plan, admitted that he was being trained for a suicide mission. Bin Laden began training pilots in Afghanistan with the help of an Afghan pilot and a Pakistani general.

Project Bojinka was known to the CIA and the FBI. It was described in court documents in the trial in New York of Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Murad for their participation in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Since the CIA had been mentioned as one of the targets in Project Bojinka, it should have had an especially strong interest in any evidence that bin Laden was preparing to carry it out. The most obvious indicator, and one that should have been watched most carefully, was the recruitment of young, dedicated followers to learn to fly American airliners. That would require keeping a close watch on flight schools where that training is given.”[12]

Post-Bojinka Intelligence Gathering

And indeed, the surveillance of flight schools is exactly what subsequently occurred, indicating that the threat posed by Project Bojinka was not dismissed—rather, it was taken seriously and used as the basis for intensive intelligence gathering. As Garcia testifies, in meetings with “certain U.S. authorities… they have confirmed to me that indeed, many things were done in response” to the findings of Project Bojinka.[13] The Washington Post, noting the plans outlined in Project Bojinka, reported that: “Since 1996, the FBI had been developing evidence that international terrorists were using flight schools to learn to fly jumbo jets.” This evidence began to accumulate shortly after the FBI learned of Project Bojinka. “A foiled plot in Manila to blow up U.S. airliners and later court testimony by an associate of bin Laden had touched off FBI inquiries at several schools, officials say.”[14] It should be noted that this report indicates that Al-Qaeda’s plans for Project Bojinka were considered by U.S. intelligence to be a credible threat, and thus “touched off” further investigations.

Early in the same year, U.S. officials had identified crop-dusters and suicide flights as potential terrorist weapons. Elaborate steps were adopted to prevent an attack from the air during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. U.S. aircraft were deployed to intercept suspicious aircraft in the skies over Olympic venues, while agents monitored crop-duster flights within hundreds of miles of downtown Atlanta. According to Woody Johnson, head of the FBI’s Atlanta office at the time, law enforcement agents fanned out to regional airports throughout northern Georgia “to make sure nobody hijacked a small aircraft and tried to attack one of the venues.” From 6th July to 11th August, when the Games ended, the FAA had banned all aviation within a one-mile radius of the Olympic Village where athletes were resident. Aircraft were also ordered to stay at least three miles away from other sites, beginning three hours before each event until three hours after each event ended.[15] These extensive measures in 1996, in response to the general threat of a possible terrorist attack, should be duly noted—there is a stark contrast between these measures and the almost total lack of preventive measures in response to warnings of the 11th September attacks.

By 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration’s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation noted the threat posed by bin Laden, recalling that a radical Muslim leader living in British exile had warned in August 1998 that bin Laden “would bring down an airliner, or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States.” The 2000 edition of the annual report, published early in 2001, reiterated concerns that although bin Laden “is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so… Bin Laden’s anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.”[16]

Meanwhile, the surveillance of Al-Qaeda operatives on U.S. soil continued. Between 2000 and 2001, the CIA had made the FBI aware of the names of about 100 suspected members of bin Laden’s terrorist network thought to be headed to, or already in, the United States. A 23rd August 2001 cable specifically referred to Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who were allegedly aboard the hijacked airplane that crashed into the Pentagon.[17]

Six months before 11th September, U.S. agencies became aware through authoritative intelligence warnings that bin Laden was planning to implement Project Bojinka soon. Three months later, these warnings were repeated. The warnings were, again, not dismissed. On the contrary, the U.S. intelligence community took the reports very seriously. Newsbytes, an online division of the Washington Post, reported in mid-September that:

“U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals at least three months ago that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture, according to a story in Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

The FAZ, quoting unnamed German intelligence sources, said that the Echelon spy network was being used to collect information about the terrorist threats, and that U.K. intelligence services apparently also had advance warning. The FAZ, one of Germany’s most respected dailies, said that even as far back as six months ago western and near-east press services were receiving information that such attacks were being planned. Within the American intelligence community, the warnings were taken seriously and surveillance intensified, the FAZ said.”[18]

The last comment—“Within the American intelligence community, the warnings were taken seriously”—is crucial. It clearly indicates that in response to the ECHELON warnings, the entire U.S. intelligence community—all U.S. intelligence agencies—were on alert for a Project Bojinka-style attack, and consequently intensified surveillance. The New Yorker further reports that according to Richard A. Clarke, U.S. National Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the White House, about ten weeks before 11th September, the U.S. intelligence community was convinced that a terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda on U.S. soil was imminent. Seven to eight weeks prior to the 11th September attacks, all internal U.S. security agencies were warned of an impending Al-Qaeda attack against the Untied States that would likely occur in several weeks time. This warning coincided with the second ECHELON warning cited before:

“Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. ‘It all came together in the third week in June,’ Clarke said. ‘The C.I.A.’s view was that a major terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks.’ On July 5th, Clarke summoned all the domestic security agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase their security in light of an impending attack.”[19]

It is apparent then that all U.S. intelligence agencies were fully expecting an impending attack by Al-Qaeda by the beginning of July 2001, and moreover that the U.S. intelligence community was aware that “terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American… culture.” In other words, the U.S. intelligence community was anticipating a Project Bojinka-style attack. Among the buildings identified as “symbolic of American culture” in Al-Qaeda’s Project Bojinka plans, known by U.S. intelligence, was the World Trade Center. That the WTC was an extremely likely target is further clear from the fact that operatives linked to Osama bin Laden had previously targeted the Twin Towers in a failed bombing attempt. As a consequence, the entire domestic intelligence and security apparatus seems to have been alerted to increase relevant security and surveillance.

Warnings of the impending attack continued to be received thereafter. Approximately 4 weeks prior to 11th September, the CIA received specific information of an attack on U.S. soil. The Associated Press reports that: “Officials also said the CIA had developed general information a month before the attacks that heightened concerns that bin Laden and his followers were increasingly determined to strike on U.S. soil.” A CIA official affirmed that: “There was something specific in early August that said to us that he was determined in striking on U.S. soil.” AP elaborates that: “The information prompted the CIA to issue a warning to federal agencies.”[20]

It was further revealed by a United Press International (UPI) report by U.S. terrorism correspondent Richard Sale on ECHELON’s monitoring of bin Laden and other terrorist groups that:

“The targets of Echelon center on the penetration of the major components of most of the world’s telephone and telecommunications systems. This could cover conversations NSA targets. Also included are all the telexes carried over the world’s telecommunications networks, along with financial dealings: money transfers, airline destinations, stock information, data on demonstrations or international conferences, and much more.”

ECHELON’s effectiveness against bin Laden’s network was further revealed in relation to a case against him in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, illustrating that the National Security Agency was able to penetrate bin Laden’s most secure communications. The case, Sale noted, “is based mainly on National Security Agency intercepts of phone calls between bin Laden and his operatives around the world—Afghanistan to London, from Kenya to the United States.”

The technology had been used since at least 1995. Ben Venzke, Director of Intelligence and Special Projects for iDefense, a Virginia information warfare firm, is also quoted: “Since Bin Laden started to encrypt certain calls in 1995, why would they now be part of a court record? ‘Codes were broken,’ U.S. officials said, and Venzke added that ‘you don’t use your highest levels of secure communications all the time. It’s too burdensome and it exposes it to other types of exploitation..’” The UPI report clarifies that much of the evidence in the case had been obtained in ECHELON intercepts subsequent to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.[21] Given that U.S. officials “believe the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks probably began two years ago,” information on preparations for the attacks should have been available to, and picked up by, ECHELON.[22]

Confirmation that U.S. intelligence had been successfully monitoring Al-Qaeda’s communications right through to the aftermath of 11th September came from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican with wide contacts in the national security establishment. On the day of the attacks, Hatch stated that the U.S. government had been monitoring Osama bin Laden’s communications electronically, and had thus intercepted two bin Laden aides celebrating the attacks: “They have an intercept of some information that included people associated with bin Laden who acknowledged a couple of targets were hit.”[23]

ABC News further reported that shortly before 11th September, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted “multiple phone calls from Abu Zubaida, bin Laden’s chief of operations, to the United States.” The information contained in these intercepted phone calls has not been disclosed.[24]

Given that ECHELON was monitoring Osama bin Laden and Al‑Qaeda, and even breaking their secure codes, the implications are alarming. As Canadian social philosopher Professor John McMurtry of Guelph University, Ontario, has noted in this connection:

“The pervasive Echelon surveillance apparatus and the most sophisticated intelligence machinery ever built is unlikely not to have eavesdropped on some of the very complicated organisation and plans across states and boundaries for the multi-site hijacking of planes from major security structures across the U.S.—especially since the suicide pilots were trained as pilots in the U.S., and the World Trade Centre had already been bombed in 1993 by Afghan ex-allies of the CIA. Since the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, is himself an ex-CIA operative in Afghanistan, and his moves presumably under the intensest scrutiny for past successful terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in 1998, one has to reflect on the connections.”[25]

Air Authorities Were Warned of Bojinka

It is worth noting here that around the time of the first ECHELON warnings, near the end of June 2001, Airjet Airline World News also issued a warning, specifying Project Bojinka: “During the trial a Secret Service agent testified that Yousef boasted during his extradition flight to New York that he would have blown up several jumbo jets within a few weeks if his plan had not been discovered. The government said the defendants even devised a name for their airline terror plot named, ‘Project Bojinka’… The airlines are at risk—They need to take all appropriate measures and counter-measures to ensure the safety of their passengers.”[26] The White House National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, had also given direct warning to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to increase security measures in light of an impending terrorist attack in July 2001.[27] The FAA refused to take such measures.

Former Federal Air Safety Inspector Rodney Stich, who has 50 years of experience in aviation and air safety, had warned the FAA about the danger of skyjacking, specifically highlighting the fact that cockpit doors weren’t secure, and further that pilots should be allowed to carry basic weapons. The FAA refused to implement his suggestions, and when it became apparent the threat was real, they blocked efforts to arm pilots, or to place air marshals on planes, among other security measures. In an extensive study of the subject, Stich observes that:

“Federal inspectors… had years earlier reported the hijacking threat and the simple inexpensive measures to prevent hijackers from taking control of the aircraft. Numerous fatal hijackings further proved the need for urgent preventative measures. Instead of taking the legally required corrective actions, arrogant and corrupt FAA management personnel destroyed official reports of the dangers and the need for corrective actions; warned air safety inspectors not to submit reports that would make the office look bad when there is a crash related to the known problems; threatened inspectors who took corrective actions or continued to make reports—even though crashes from these uncorrected safety problems continued to occur.”[28]

The Los Angeles Times corroborates this assessment: “Federal bureaucracy and airline lobbying slowed and weakened a set of safety improvements recommended by a presidential commission—including one that a top airline industry official now says might have prevented the Sept. 11 terror attacks…

“The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, created in 1996 after TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island, N.Y., recommended 31 steps that it said were urgently needed to provide a multilayered security system at the nation's airports... The Federal Aviation Administration expressed support for the proposals, which ranged from security inspections at airports to tighter screening of mail parcels, and the Clinton administration vowed to rigorously monitor the changes. But by Sept. 11, most of the proposals had been watered down by industry lobbying or were bogged down in bureaucracy, a Times review found.”[29]

The U.S. government thus bears direct responsibility for this state of affairs, by consistently failing to comply with its avowed responsibility to “rigorously monitor” and enforce the required changes. Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel of Judicial Watch, the Washington-based legal watchdog, comments that: “It is now apparent—given the near total lack of security at U.S. airports and elsewhere—that the U.S. government has not been forthright with the American people…

“During the last eight years of scandal during the Clinton administration, and the first eight months of the Bush Administration, reports this morning confirm that little to nothing was done to secure our nation’s airports and transportation systems as a whole—despite warnings. Instead, cosmetic reform of education, social security, taxes, and other less important issues were given precedence. In addition, the American people were led to believe that appropriate anti-terrorist counter measures were being taken. Instead of telling the truth so the problems could be addressed, politicians painted a rosy picture in order to be elected and re-elected.”[30]

This is clearly more than a case of incompetence. This systematic inaction, despite escalating warnings of a terrorist threat to the U.S. from the air, indicates wilful and reckless negligence of the highest order on the part of the U.S. government, rooted in sheer indifference to the potential loss in American lives.

Intensification of Surveillance After Confirmation of Bojinka Plans

It is against this backdrop that the multiple intelligence warnings of an impending terrorist act by bin Laden’s operatives should be assessed. Clearly, on the basis of the 1995 revelations about Project Bojinka, coupled with the authoritative warnings in 2001 from America’s own ECHELON network among others, “the American intelligence community” was aware that bin Laden was planning imminent attacks on U.S. soil through the hijacking of civilian airliners to be used as bombs against key buildings “symbolic of American culture.” Among the buildings in Washington and New York known to be on bin Laden’s list of targets was the World Trade Centre.

Project Bojinka, in other words, was underway. U.S. intelligence agencies subsequently intensified their surveillance, and in doing so began tracking suspected terrorists. This indicates that the U.S. intelligence community had intensified surveillance by its various agencies in direct response to fears of a Project Bojinka-style attack on U.S. soil, orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

It is appropriate then to consider in more detail the findings of this surveillance. WorldNetDaily, the Internet news service of the U.S.-based non-profit Western Journalism Center, reports some pertinent revelations in this respect:

“The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies also knew that two of the hijackers were in the country, according to the Los Angeles Times. They were on a terrorist watch list. But the airlines were not notified… The FBI had several terrorists under surveillance, according to the Oct. 1 issue of Newsweek. They intercepted communications just prior to Sept. 11 that suggested something very big was about to happen… Still, there were more clues. Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested after flight trainers tipped off the feds that he wanted to learn how to fly a 747 but wasn’t interested in takeoffs or landings. Zacarias was traveling on a French passport. When contacted, the French government reported that he was a suspected terrorist [linked to Osama Bin Laden].”[31]

Reuters reported in relation to Zacarias that: “The FBI arrested an Islamic militant in Boston last month and received French intelligence reports linking him to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden but apparently did not act on them,” a French radio station said on Thursday…

 “Europe 1 radio reported that U.S. police arrested a man with dual French and Algerian nationality who had several passports, technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. The man had been taking flying lessons, it added. Asked for information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, French security services provided a dossier clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with bin Laden.”[32]

At the time of his arrest, Zacarias had been in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. It was on 26th August that the FBI headquarters was informed by French intelligence that Zacarias had ties to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Despite the confirmation of his involvement in bin Laden’s terrorist network, a special counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed the information against him, but concluded there was insufficient evidence that he represented a threat. The Minnesota flight school, Pan Am International Flight Academy, where Zacarias had been training, also warned the FBI in no uncertain terms.

As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, “Moussaoui raised suspicions at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Egan [Minnesota]” when he attended the Academy in August 2001 to learn how to fly jumbo jets. He “first raised eyebrows when, during a simple introductory exchange, he said he was from France, but then didn’t seem to understand when the instructor spoke French to him… Moussaoui then became belligerent and evasive about his background… In addition, he seemed inept in basic flying procedures, while seeking expensive training on an advanced commercial jet simulator.”[33]

Even the flight school’s own employees “began whispering that he could be a hijacker.” Director of Operations at the Academy John Rosengren recounts how Zacarias’ instructor was “concerned and wondered why someone who was not a pilot and had so little experience was trying to pack so much training into such a short time… ‘The more he was able to talk to him, the more he decided he was not pilot material… There was discussion about how much fuel was on board a 747-400 and how much damage that could cause if it hit anything.’”[34] So the instructor contacted the FBI, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

 “An instructor at a Minnesota flight school warned the FBI in August of his suspicion that a student who was later identified as a part of Osama bin Laden’s terror network might be planning to use a commercial plane loaded with fuel as a weapon, a member of Congress and other officials said yesterday. The officials, who were briefed by the school, said the instructor warned the FBI in urgent tones about the terrorist threat posed by the student, Zacarias Moussaoui.

According to U.S. Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, the instructor called the bureau several times to find someone in authority who seemed willing to act on the information. His warnings could not have been more blunt. Oberstar noted that: ‘He told them, ‘Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?’

Congressional officials said the account by the school, the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, outside Minneapolis, raised new questions about why the FBI and other agencies did not prevent the hijackings… [The flight instructor] was a former military pilot who grew suspicious after encounters in which Moussaoui was belligerent and evasive about his background and because he was so adamant about learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet despite his clear incompetence as a pilot. Moussaoui, 33, was arrested in August on immigration charges. But despite the urging of the school and federal agents in Minnesota and despite a warning from the French that Moussaoui was linked to Muslim extremists, FBI headquarters resisted opening a broader investigation until after Sept. 11.”[35]

Indeed, the U.S. government actively prevented a further investigation from being conducted. Local FBI investigators in Minneapolis had immediately viewed Zacarias as a terrorist suspect and sought authorisation for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant in order to search the hard drive of his home computer. The government’s Justice Department plus top FBI officials blocked an FBI request for a national security warrant to search Zacarias’ computer, claiming that FBI agents lacked sufficient information to meet the legal requirements to justify the warrant. The block remained in place even after the notification from French intelligence that Zacarias was linked to bin Laden.[36]

According to ABC News, however, at the time the Justice Department justified the refusal of a warrant by claiming that there was insufficient evidence connecting Zacarias to any known terrorist group: “Moussaoui was taken into custody on August 16, but to the outrage of FBI agents in the field, headquarters was slow to react and said he could not be connected to any known terror group.”[37] This was despite the information from French intelligence demonstrating the latter’s links to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. While some law enforcement officials justify the block as a legal necessity, others strongly disagree that such justification has any real basis in law. “That decision is being questioned by some FISA experts, who say it’s possible a warrant would have been granted,” reported Greg Gordon. “The special court that reviews FISA requests has approved more than 12,000 Justice Department applications for covert search warrants and wiretaps and rejected only one since the act was passed in 1978, according to government reports.”[38] MS-NBC has similarly reported that:

“…other law enforcement officials are equally insistent that a more aggressive probe of Moussaoui—when combined with other intelligence in the possession of U.S. agencies—might have yielded sufficient clues about the impending plot. ‘The question being asked here is if they put two and two together, they could have gotten a lot more information about the guy—if not stopped the hijacking,’ said one investigator.”[39]

 The New York Times comments that the Moussaoui case “raised new questions about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies did not prevent the hijackings.”[40]

The U.S. response to Mohamed Atta, the alleged lead hijacker, was even more extraordinary. The German public TV channel, ARD, reported on 23rd November, 2001, that Mohamed Atta was subject to telephone monitoring by the Egyptian secret service. The latter had found that Atta had made at least one recent visit to Afghanistan from his home in Hamburg, Germany. The FBI had also been monitoring Atta’s movements for several months in 2000, when he traveled several times from Hamburg to Frankfurt and bought large quantities of chemicals potentially usable in making explosives. Atta’s name had also been mentioned in a Hamburg phone call between Islamic fundamentalists monitored by the German police in 1999.[41]

In January 2001, Atta was permitted reentry into the United States after a trip to Germany, despite being in violation of his visa status. He had landed in Miami on 10th January on a flight from Madrid on a tourist visayet he had told immigration inspectors that he was taking flying lessons in the U.S., for which an M-1 student visa is strictly required. Jeanne Butterfield, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, points out that: “Nine times out of 10, they would have told him to go back and file [for that status] overseas. You’re not supposed to come in as a visitor for pleasure and go to work or school.”[42]

PBS’ Frontlines also takes note of “The failure of the INS to stop the attack’s ringleader, Mohamed Atta, from entering the U.S. three times on a tourist visa in 2001, even though officials knew the visa had expired in 2000 and Atta had violated its terms by taking flight lessons.”[43]

This failure should be evaluated in context with the fact that Atta had been under FBI surveillance for stockpiling bomb-making materials. Furthermore, Canadian TV reported that Atta had already been implicated in a terrorist bombing in Israel, with the information passed on to the United States before he was first issued his tourist visa.[44]

Yet despite these blatant terrorist connections, Atta was still allowed into the United States freely, and made repeated trips to Europe, each time returning to the U.S., and being admitted by U.S. customs and immigration without obstructionnot because visa regulations were lax, but because they were willfully violated. The London Observer notes in surprise that Atta:

“… was under surveillance between January and May last year after he was reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and for biological warfare… The U.S. agents reported to have trailed Atta are said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their investigation. The disclosure that Atta was being trailed by police long before 11 Sept