Introduction: The program begins with an FBI informant’s contention that the Bureau missed a chance to interdict 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta’s activities. As we have seen in our many visits with the heroic Daniel Hopsicker, Atta was part of an intelligence/fascist milieu in Florida that was, past a point, untouchable to law enforcement.
Welcome to Terrorland
Very, very disturbing in light of Hopsicker’s investigations is news that a large, sophisticated aviation network is linked to Latin American and African drug smuggling networks, as well as Muslim Brotherhood networks associated with al-Qaeda.The network is flying Boeing 727 jets, capable of carrying up to 10 tons of cargo. They are returning to the Americas, with cargo. The possibility that they could, ultimately, ferry-in WMD’s is an unsettling but very real prospect.
Turning to the crash of Air France flight 447, the program notes that the plane appears to have broken up in mid-air, suggesting the possibility of a bomb. Two of the victims of the crash are noteworthy for present purposes. Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer had been battling the overlapping arms and drug trade in South America, two areas in which the nexus of organized crime and Islamist terrorism may be found. There were also reports of possible Islamic militants on board the doomed aircraft.
Much of the program deals with the GOP/Muslim Brotherhood/terrorist axis. After noting that President Bush entertained Faizul Khan–an imam who ministered to the Fort Hood shooter and who is closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood milieu, the program turns to the topic of GOP kingpin Grover Norquist. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Norquist, one of the major architects of the GOP/Muslim Brotherhood link, dismissed any notion that Islamists are a threat as a concoction of “The Israel Lobby.”
Program Highlights Include: Muslim gangs’ control of the British underworld; the U.S. Attorney in New York’s decision to merge investigations of drug trafficking and Islamic terrorism; GOP senatorial hopeful Tom Campbell’s support for Sami al-Arian; 9/11 hijackers’ imam Anwar Awlaki’s close association with Major Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter.
1. The program begins with an FBI informant’s contention that the Bureau missed a chance to interdict 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta’s activities. As we have seen in our many visits with the heroic Daniel Hopsicker, Atta was part of an intelligence/fascist milieu in Florida that was, past a point, untouchable to law enforcement. Whether the bureau bungled or was deliberately put off the trail of Atta and company is a subject for speculation.
On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.
In an exclusive interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he was sent by the FBI to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.
“There was something wrong with these guys,” Assaad, a 36-year-old Catholic native of Lebanon who pretended to be an Islamic extremist, says. . . .
. . . According to Assaad, Shukrujumah, whose father ran the mosque, invited the undercover FBI operative to meet him at his home, but the FBI told him to stay away. Instead, Assad says the agency assigned him to set up and sting what he calls wannabe terrorists, ending any hope of infiltrating the real al Qaeda terrorists.
Former national security official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, said the case is “yet another example of the way the system broke down prior to 9/11.”
“If the system had worked,” Clarke said, “we might have been able to identify these people before the attacks.”
2. Listeners familiar with Hopsicker’s work will find the following article genuinely chilling. The above-mentioned fascist/intelligence milieu was deeply involved with drug-smuggling. The possibility that a WMD might find its way into one of the rogue network’s aircraft–perhaps a 727–is a chilling possibiltiy. Note that in the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk, the United States is destroyed by terrorist attacks using WMD’s smuggled in through drug networks!
In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called “the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11.“The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa’s most unstable countries.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, was ignored, and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat.
The clandestine fleet has grown to include twin-engine turboprops, executive jets and retired Boeing 727s that are flying multi-ton loads of cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of al Qaeda are believed to be facilitating the smuggling of drugs to Europe, the officials say.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been held responsible for car and suicide bombings in Algeria and Mauritania.
Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans for ransom, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments.
The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tons of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funneled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe.
An examination of documents and interviews with officials in the United States and three West African nations suggest that at least 10 aircraft have been discovered using this air route since 2006. Officials warn that many of these aircraft were detected purely by chance. They caution that the real number involved in the networks is likely considerably higher.
Alexandre Schmidt, regional representative for West and Central Africa for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, cautioned in Dakar this week that the aviation network has expanded in the past 12 months and now likely includes several Boeing 727 aircraft.
“When you have this high capacity for transporting drugs into West Africa, this means that you have the capacity to transport as well other goods, so it is definitely a threat to security anywhere in the world,” said Schmidt.
The “other goods” officials are most worried about are weapons that militant organizations can smuggle on the jet aircraft. A Boeing 727 can handle up to 10 tons of cargo.
The U.S. official who wrote the report for the Department of Homeland Security said the al Qaeda connection was unclear at the time.
The official is a counter-narcotics aviation expert who asked to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak on the record. He said he was dismayed by the lack of attention to the matter since he wrote the report.
“You’ve got an established terrorist connection on this side of the Atlantic. Now on the Africa side you have the al Qaeda connection and it’s extremely disturbing and a little bit mystifying that it’s not one of the top priorities of the government,” he said.
Since the September 11 attacks, the security system for passenger air traffic has been ratcheted up in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world, with the latest measures imposed just weeks ago after a failed bomb attempt on a Detroit-bound plane on December 25.
“The bad guys have responded with their own aviation network that is out there everyday flying loads and moving contraband,” said the official, “and the government seems to be oblivious to it.”
The upshot, he said, is that militant organizations — including groups like the FARC and al Qaeda — have the “power to move people and material and contraband anywhere around the world with a couple of fuel stops.”
The lucrative drug trade is already having a deleterious impact on West African nations. Local authorities told Reuters they are increasingly outgunned and unable to stop the smugglers.
And significantly, many experts say, the drug trafficking is bringing in huge revenues to groups that say they are part of al Qaeda. It’s swelling not just their coffers but also their ranks, they say, as drug money is becoming an effective recruiting tool in some of the world’s most desperately poor regions.
U.S. President Barack Obama has chided his intelligence officials for not pooling information “to connect those dots” to prevent threats from being realized. But these dots, scattered across two continents like flaring traces on a radar screen, remain largely unconnected and the fleets themselves are still flying.
THE AFRICAN CONNECTION
The deadly cocaine trade always follows the money, and its cash-flush traffickers seek out the routes that are the mostly lightly policed.
Beset by corruption and poverty, weak countries across West Africa have become staging platforms for transporting between 30 tons and 100 tons of cocaine each year that ends up in Europe, according to U.N. estimates.
Drug trafficking, though on a much smaller scale, has existed here and elsewhere on the continent since at least the late 1990s, according to local authorities and U.S. enforcement officials.
Earlier this decade, sea interdictions were stepped up. So smugglers developed an air fleet that is able to transport tons of cocaine from the Andes to African nations that include Mauritania, Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.What these countries have in common are numerous disused landing strips and makeshift runways — most without radar or police presence. Guinea Bissau has no aviation radar at all. As fleets grew, so, too, did the drug trade.
The DEA says all aircraft seized in West Africa had departed Venezuela. That nation’s location on the Caribbean and Atlantic seaboard of South America makes it an ideal takeoff place for drug flights bound for Africa, they say.
A number of aircraft have been retrofitted with additional fuel tanks to allow in-flight refueling — a technique innovated by Mexico’s drug smugglers. (Cartel pilots there have been known to stretch an aircraft’s flight range by putting a water mattress filled with aviation fuel in the cabin, then stacking cargoes of marijuana bundles on top to act as an improvised fuel pump.)
Ploys used by the cartel aviators to mask the flights include fraudulent pilot certificates, false registration documents and altered tail numbers to steer clear of law enforcement lookout lists, investigators say. Some aircraft have also been found without air-worthiness certificates or log books. When smugglers are forced to abandon them, they torch them to destroy forensic and other evidence like serial numbers.
The evidence suggests that some Africa-bound cocaine jets also file a regional flight plan to avoid arousing suspicion from investigators. They then subsequently change them at the last minute, confident that their switch will go undetected.
One Gulfstream II jet, waiting with its engines running to take on 2.3 tons of cocaine at Margarita Island in Venezuela, requested a last-minute flight plan change to war-ravaged Sierra Leone in West Africa. It was nabbed moments later by Venezuelan troops, the report seen by Reuters showed.
Once airborne, the planes soar to altitudes used by commercial jets. They have little fear of interdiction as there is no long-range radar coverage over the Atlantic. Current detection efforts by U.S. authorities, using fixed radar and P3 aircraft, are limited to traditional Caribbean and north Atlantic air and marine transit corridors.
The aircraft land at airports, disused runways or improvised air strips in Africa. One bearing a false Red Cross emblem touched down without authorization onto an unlit strip at Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone in 2008, according to a U.N. report.
Late last year a Boeing 727 landed on an improvised runway using the hard-packed sand of a Tuareg camel caravan route in Mali, where local officials said smugglers offloaded between 2 and 10 tons of cocaine before dousing the jet with fuel and burning it after it failed to take off again.
For years, traffickers in Mexico have bribed officials to allow them to land and offload cocaine flights at commercial airports. That’s now happening in Africa as well. In July 2008, troops in coup-prone Guinea Bissau secured Bissau international airport to allow an unscheduled cocaine flight to land, according to Edmundo Mendes, a director with the Judicial Police.
“When we got there, the soldiers were protecting the aircraft,” said Mendes, who tried to nab the Gulfstream II jet packed with an estimated $50 million in cocaine but was blocked by the military.
“The soldiers verbally threatened us,” he said. The cocaine was never recovered. Just last week, Reuters photographed two aircraft at Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Guinea Bissau — one had been dispatched by traffickers from Senegal to try to repair the other, a Gulfstream II jet, after it developed mechanical problems. Police seized the second aircraft.
FLYING BLIND
One of the clearest indications of how much this aviation network has advanced was the discovery, on November 2, of the burned out fuselage of an aging Boeing 727. Local authorities found it resting on its side in rolling sands in Mali. In several ways, the use of such an aircraft marks a significant advance for smugglers.
Boeing jetliners, like the one discovered in Mali, can fly a cargo of several tons into remote areas. They also require a three-man crew — a pilot, co pilot and flight engineer, primarily to manage the complex fuel system dating from an era before automation.
Hundreds of miles to the west, in the sultry, former Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, national Interpol director Calvario Ahukharie said several abandoned airfields, including strips used at one time by the Portuguese military, had recently been restored by “drug mafias” for illicit flights.
“In the past, the planes coming from Latin America usually landed at Bissau airport,” Ahukharie said as a generator churned the feeble air-conditioning in his office during one of the city’s frequent blackouts.
“But now they land at airports in southern and eastern Bissau where the judicial police have no presence.”
Ahukharie said drug flights are landing at Cacine, in eastern Bissau, and Bubaque in the Bijagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 80 islands off the Atlantic coast. Interpol said it hears about the flights from locals, although they have been unable to seize aircraft, citing a lack of resources.
The drug trade, by both air and sea, has already had a devastating impact on Guinea Bissau. A dispute over trafficking has been linked to the assassination of the military chief of staff, General Batista Tagme Na Wai in 2009. Hours later, the country’s president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, was hacked to death by machete in his home.
Asked how serious the issue of air trafficking remained for Guinea Bissau, Ahukharie was unambiguous: “The problem is grave.”
The situation is potentially worse in the Sahel-Sahara, where cocaine is arriving by the ton. There it is fed into well-established overland trafficking routes across the Sahara where government influence is limited and where factions of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have become increasingly active.
The group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, is raising millions of dollars from the kidnap of Europeans.
Analysts say militants strike deals of convenience with Tuareg rebels and smugglers of arms, cigarettes and drugs. According to a growing pattern of evidence, the group may now be deriving hefty revenues from facilitating the smuggling of FARC-made cocaine to the shores of Europe.
UNHOLY ALLIANCE
In December, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told a special session of the UN Security Council that drugs were being traded by “terrorists and anti-government forces” to fund their operations from the Andes, to Asia and the African Sahel.
“In the past, trade across the Sahara was by caravans,” he said. “Today it is larger in size, faster at delivery and more high-tech, as evidenced by the debris of a Boeing 727 found on November 2nd in the Gao region of Mali — an area affected by insurgency and terrorism.”
Just days later, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials arrested three West African men following a sting operation in Ghana. The men, all from Mali, were extradited to New York on December 16 on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman are accused of plotting to transport cocaine across Africa with the intent to support al Qaeda, its local affiliate AQIM and the FARC. The charges provided evidence of what the DEA’s top official in Colombia described to a Reuters reporter as “an unholy alliance between South American narco-terrorists and Islamic extremists.”
Some experts are skeptical, however, that the men are any more than criminals. They questioned whether the drug dealers oversold their al Qaeda connections to get their hands on the cocaine.
In its criminal complaint, the DEA said Toure had led an armed group affiliated to al Qaeda that could move the cocaine from Ghana through North Africa to Spain for a fee of $2,000 per kilo for transportation and protection.
Toure discussed two different overland routes with an undercover informant. One was through Algeria and Morocco; the other via Algeria to Libya. He told the informer that the group had worked with al Qaeda to transport between one and two tons of hashish to Tunisia, as well as smuggle Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi migrants into Spain.
In any event, AQIM has been gaining in notoriety. Security analysts warn that cash stemming from the trans-Saharan coke trade could transform the organization — a small, agile group whose southern-Sahel wing is estimated to number between 100 and 200 men — into a more potent threat in the region that stretches from Mauritania to Niger. It is an area with huge foreign investments in oil, mining and a possible trans-Sahara gas pipeline.
“These groups are going to have a lot more money than they’ve had before, and I think you are going to see them with much more sophisticated weapons,” said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment Strategy Center, a Washington based security think-tank.
NARCOTIC INDUSTRIAL DEPOT
The Timbuktu region covers more than a third of northern Mali, where the parched, scrubby Sahel shades into the endless, rolling dunes of the Sahara Desert. It is an area several times the size of Switzerland, much of it beyond state control.
Moulaye Haidara, the customs official, said the sharp influx of cocaine by air has transformed the area into an “industrial depot” for cocaine.
Sitting in a cool, dark, mud-brick office building in the city where nomadic Tuareg mingle with Arabs and African Songhay, Fulani and Mande peoples, Haidara expresses alarm at the challenge local law enforcement faces.
Using profits from the trade, the smugglers have already bought “automatic weapons, and they are very determined,” Haidara said. He added that they “call themselves Al Qaeda,” though he believes the group had nothing to do with religion, but used it as “an ideological base.”
Local authorities say four-wheel-drive Toyota SUVs outfitted with GPS navigation equipment and satellite telephones are standard issue for smugglers. Residents say traffickers deflate the tires to gain better traction on the loose Saharan sands, and can travel at speeds of up to 70 miles-per-hour in convoys along routes to North Africa.
Timbuktu governor, Colonel Mamadou Mangara, said he believes traffickers have air-conditioned tents that enable them to operate in areas of the Sahara where summer temperatures are so fierce that they “scorch your shoes.” He added that the army lacked such equipment. A growing number of people in the impoverished region, where transport by donkey cart and camel are still common, are being drawn to the trade. They can earn 4 to 5 million CFA Francs (roughly $9–11,000) on just one coke run.
“Smuggling can be attractive to people here who can make only $100 or $200 a month,” said Mohamed Ag Hamalek, a Tuareg tourist guide in Timbuktu, whose family until recently earned their keep hauling rock salt by camel train, using the stars to navigate the Sahara.
Haidara described northern Mali as a no-go area for the customs service. “There is now a red line across northern Mali, nobody can go there,” he said, sketching a map of the country on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint pen. “If you go there with feeble means ... you don’t come back.”
TWO-WAY TRADE
Speaking in Dakar this week, Schmidt, the U.N. official, said that growing clandestine air traffic required urgent action on the part of the international community.
“This should be the highest concern for governments ... For West African countries, for West European countries, for Russia and the U.S., this should be very high on the agenda,” he said.
Stopping the trade, as the traffickers are undoubtedly aware, is a huge challenge — diplomatically, structurally and economically.
Venezuela, the takeoff or refueling point for aircraft making the trip, has a confrontational relationship with Colombia, where President Alvaro Uribe has focused on crushing the FARC’s 45-year-old insurgency. The nation’s leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, won’t allow in the DEA to work in the country.
In a measure of his hostility to Washington, he scrambled two F16 fighter jets last week to intercept an American P3 aircraft — a plane used to seek out and track drug traffickers — which he said had twice violated Venezuelan airspace. He says the United States and Colombia are using anti-drug operations as a cover for a planned invasion of his oil-rich country. Washington and Bogota dismiss the allegation.
In terms of curbing trafficking, the DEA has by far the largest overseas presence of any U.S. federal law enforcement, with 83 offices in 62 countries. But it is spread thin in Africa where it has just four offices — in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa — though there are plans to open a fifth office in Kenya.
Law enforcement agencies from Europe as well as Interpol are also at work to curb the trade. But locally, officials are quick to point out that Africa is losing the war on drugs.
The most glaring problem, as Mali’s example shows, is a lack of resources. The only arrests made in connection with the Boeing came days after it was found in the desert — and those incarcerated turned out to be desert nomads cannibalizing the plane’s aluminum skin, probably to make cooking pots. They were soon released.
Police in Guinea Bissau, meanwhile, told Reuters they have few guns, no money for gas for vehicles given by donor governments and no high security prison to hold criminals.
Corruption is also a problem. The army has freed several traffickers charged or detained by authorities seeking to tackle the problem, police and rights groups said.
Serious questions remain about why Malian authorities took so long to report the Boeing’s discovery to the international law enforcement community.
What is particularly worrying to U.S. interests is that the networks of aircraft are not just flying one way — hauling coke to Africa from Latin America — but are also flying back to the Americas.
The internal Department of Homeland Security memorandum reviewed by Reuters cited one instance in which an aircraft from Africa landed in Mexico with passengers and unexamined cargo.
The Gulfstream II jet arrived in Cancun, by way of Margarita Island, Venezuela, en route from Africa. The aircraft, which was on an aviation watch list, carried just two passengers. One was a U.S. national with no luggage, the other a citizen of the Republic of Congo with a diplomatic passport and a briefcase, which was not searched.
“The obvious huge concern is that you have a transportation system that is capable of transporting tons of cocaine from west to east,” said the aviation specialist who wrote the Homeland Security report.
“But it’s reckless to assume that nothing is coming back, and when there’s terrorist organizations on either side of this pipeline, it should be a high priority to find out what is coming back on those airplanes.”
3. Turning to the crash of Air France flight 447, the program notes that the plane appears to have broken up in mid-air, suggesting the possibility of a bomb.
Autopsies revealing fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, coupled with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic, strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air.
With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean’s surface, the top French investigator expressed optimism about discovering what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions — far from land in very deep waters — “one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation.”
French investigators are beginning to form “an image that is progressively less fuzzy,” Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris.
“We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days,” Arslanian said. “We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism. ... (but) it is premature for the time being to say what happened.”
A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners said that fractures were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far.
“Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures — arm, leg, hip fractures — it’s a good indicator of a midflight break up,” said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the US National Transportation Safety Board.
“Especially if you’re seeing large pieces of aircraft as well.”
The pattern of fractures was first reported by Brazil’s O Estado de S Paulo newspaper, which cited unnamed investigators. The paper also reported that some victims were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns.
That lack of clothing could be significant, said Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington, who is a former accident investigator. “In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away.”
Casey also said multiple fractures are consistent with a midair breakup of the plane, which was cruising at about 10,500m when it went down.
“Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall — even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect,” Casey said. “Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess.”
When a jet crashes into water mostly intact — such as the Egypt Air plane that hit the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from New York in 1999 — debris and bodies are generally broken into small pieces, Ciacco said. . . .
“Autopsies Suggest Downed Jet Broke Up in Sky” [AP]; stuff.co.nz; 6/18/2009.
4. Two of the victims of the crash are noteworthy for present purposes. Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer had been battling the overlapping arms and drug trade in South America, two areas in which the nexus of organized crime and Islamist terrorism may be found. Were the victims becoming overly troublesome to some of the mangers of these arenas of black commerce?
Of particular significance in this context is the so-called tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina–a major area where Islamist terrorism, the arms traffic, drug smuggling and fascist elements overlap.
Note, also, that weapons left over from African civil wars and Brazilian companies that had purchased European munitions companies. For veteran listeners to this show, the German/Latin American link will bring to mind the Bormann capital network.
Ardgentina: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod
Amid the media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France’s ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world’s most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.
Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio’s sprawling favelas.
Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.
Buenos Aires-born Dreyfus had been living in Rio since 2002, where he and his sociologist wife worked with the Brazilian NGO Viva Rio.
“Pablo will be remembered as a gentle and sensitive man with an upbeat sense of humour,” said the Small Arms Survey. “He displayed an intellectual curiosity and a determined work ethic that excited and enthused all who worked with him.”
According to the International Action Network on Small Arms Control (IANSA), Dreyfus’s work was instrumental in the introduction of landmark small arms legislation in Brazil in 2003. Under this legislation, an online link was created between army and police databases listing production, imports and exports of arms and ammunition in Brazil.
Dreyfus was an advocate of the stringent labelling of ammunition by weapons firms, arguing that by clearly identifying ammunition not only by its producer but also its purchaser, the likelihood of weapons being sourced by criminals from corrupt police or armed forces personnel is greatly reduced.
Though a Brazilian referendum on the right to bear arms was rejected in 2005, Viva Rio says the campaign should be considered a success because half a million weapons were voluntarily handed in to the authorities. Anti-gun activists put the referendum defeat down to fears criminals would circumvent the law and continue to gain access to small arms the usual way — through Paraguay and other bordering countries. This was not an irrational fear: until 2004, when Paraguay bowed to Brazilian pressure, even foreign tourists were allowed to purchase small arms simply by presenting a photocopy of their identity card. Dreyfus knew that many of the weapons from the so-called tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina were reaching Rio drug gangs.
When unidentified gunmen made off with a stash of hand grenades from an Argentine military garrison in 2006, Dreyfus deplored what he said was lax security at military depots across the world. “If a supermarket can keep control of the amount of peas it has in stock, surely a military organisation could and should be able to do the same with equal if not greater efficiency with its weapons,” he said. “The key words are logisitics, control, security.”
When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of Ipanema and Sao Corrado, “not in the favelas”.
In a recent report posted on the Brazilian website Comunidade Segura (Safe Community), Dreyfus noted that the Brazilian arms firm CBC (Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos) had become one of the world’s biggest ammunition producers by purchasing Germany’s Metallwerk Elisenhutte Nassau (MEN) in 2007, and Sellier & Bellot (S&B) of the Czech Republic in March. This would not be particularly noteworthy but for the fact that CBC’s exports had tapered off in recent years due to legislation restricting exports to Paraguay, arms that often found their way back into Brazil and on to the Rio drug gangs — the “boomerang effect”, as Dreyfus called it. “The commercial export of weapons and ammunition from Brazil to the bordering countries stopped in 2001,” wrote Dreyfus. “CBC lost commercial markets in Latin America, but Brazil won in public security.”
However, manufacturers from other countries had moved in to fill the void, and before its purchase by CBC, S&B was already “one of the marks most currently apprehended” by Brazilian police. Dreyfus said that, in view of the fact the Czech Republic was bound by the EU Code of Conduct on weapons exports — which states that EU countries must “evaluate the existence of the risk that the armament can be diverted to undesirable final destinations”, CBC should “consider the risk that some of these exports end up, via diversions, feeding violence in Brazil”.
Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.
Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight against evil.
5. There were also reports of possible Islamic militants on board the doomed aircraft.
A French submarine with advanced sonar equipment began searching yesterday for the flight recorders of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic last week, killing all 228 passengers and crew.
It was claimed yesterday by the French weekly L’Express that two names on the flight’s passenger list “correspond to people known for links to Islamist terrorism” by French intelligence services.
The French nuclear submarine Emeraude was sent to the area to hunt for the aircraft’s “black box” flight-data recorders, which might help to explain the disaster. They are believed to lie on the ocean floor.
The Air France flight is believed to have run into trouble when it hit a violent storm midway over the Atlantic Ocean.
Problems with air-speed sensors have become one of the focal points of the inquiry.
But other causes have not been ruled out. . . .
” ‘Suspect Names’ Air France Flight”; timeslive.co.za; 9/1/2009.
6. Under-reported is the profound connection between Islamism and organized crime. There is an entire chapter in “Dollars for Terror” by Richard Labeviere titled “Islamist Deal-Making and Organized Crime.” Our visits with Daniel Hopsicker have highlighted this link, to an extent.
In fact, much of the income derived by groups like Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist cadres comes from arms and drug sales.
A chilling article from the UK underlines the extent to which Muslim gangs dominate the British underworld. Although they are described as not being religious by members, one should bear in mind the economic support that groups like this have, and the extent to which that influence is amplified by their alliance with Muslim Brotherhood subgroups.
NB: “Asian” in popular British lexicon generally refers to people from Pakistan and India, not Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.
In traditional Islamic headgear, Asian ex-gang member Amir poses with his sword and issues the stark warning: “Britain’s underworld belongs to the Muslims.”
The 21-year-old, whose organisation turned over thousands of pounds a day from drug-dealing and credit card scams, claims a post‑9/11 fear of terrorism has allowed Muslims to develop a stranglehold on our criminal community.
Through Islam, he says, they have numbers which cannot be matched, and rival gangs are being forced out by ruthless Islamic criminals who only deal with each other.
They recruit black and white members in Britain’s jails, tempting them to convert to Islam in exchange for a cushier life inside.
Once released, the converted cons have access to an entirely new network of Muslim criminal contacts — and are trusted because they pray to Allah.
Amir claims that Britain’s underworld will soon be completely dominated by Islamic gangs — and he says the West’s paranoia over terrorism is to blame. “People don’t f*** with us because they think we’re all in al-Qaeda,” he explains.
“Our status in the criminal hierarchy changed literally the day the Twin Towers went down.
“From then, Asians have been associated with terrorism. People, including other criminals, think if you’re Asian you’ll blow up a Tube train or bomb an aeroplane.
“In the past 20 years we’ve capitalised on that. If we’re going to be thought of as extremists, why not use that fear?
“The reality is that Asian gangs don’t give much of [a] toss about religion, but with Islam comes fear, and with fear comes power. . . . ”
“How Muslims Took over the British Underworld” by Nick Francis; The Sun [UK]; 2/15/2010.
7. The United States attorney in Manhattan is merging the two units in his office that prosecute terrorism and international narcotics cases, saying that he wants to focus more on extremist Islamic groups whose members he believes are increasingly turning to the drug trade to finance their activities.
The United States attorney in Manhattan is merging the two units in his office that prosecute terrorism and international narcotics cases, saying that he wants to focus more on extremist Islamic groups whose members he believes are increasingly turning to the drug trade to finance their activities.
Some Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies have long pointed to what they say are the symbiotic relationships that sometimes exist between terrorist groups and narcotics traffickers, from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Hezbollah in the Middle East to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
But the move by the United States attorney, Preet Bharara, comes as United States officials have suggested that some members of Islamic extremist groups, including Al Qaeda and some of its affiliates, are more frequently turning to the drug trade — as well as kidnapping and other criminal activities — to help finance their operations.
It is, they say, partly a response to increased pressure on other financial sources, like Islamic charities and private donors.
By merging the units, Terrorism and National Security and International Narcotics Trafficking, Mr. Bharara said he is combining two groups that have developed many of the same skills — working overseas, often using classified information, to build complex cases against sophisticated targets.
The new unit, he said, would be better able to bring drug charges to bear against some terrorists, as well as use a new law that gives federal drug agents the authority to pursue narcotics and terrorism crimes committed anywhere in the world if they can establish a link between a drug offense and a terrorist act or group. . . .
8a. Sadly, observations like this come almost exclusively from a handful of conservative blogs and commentators, some of whom are willing to set forth the Bush/GOP/Islamist connection. The Bush administration and the GOP are profoundly connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and a funding apparaus that has supported al Qaeda, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Typifying this disturbing relationship is the visit of Faizul Khan to the White House.
Faizul Khan was one of the primary spiritual mentors to Major Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter)!
. . . In 2003 and 2004, President Bush asked Faizul Khan, who is affiliated with the Saudi-funded Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and serves on the board of directors of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), to give the blessing. This year, the Justice Department officially labeled ISNA as a U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement aiming to establish a global Islamic empire, and also as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas fund-raising Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development trial still awaiting a verdict in Dallas. . . .
“Guess Who Came to Iftar for Dinner?” by Diana West; townhall.com; 10/05/07.
8b. He (Khan) is also linked to the milieu of the institutions targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002! Khan’s (and Hasan’s) mosque is linked to the Amana Mutual Fund, whose founder–Yaqub Mirza–set up the institutions raided on 3/20/2002.
One of the directors of the Amana Mutual Fund is Talat Othman, a former director of Harken Energy, a close personal friend and political adviser to both Presidents Bush, the man who delivered a Muslim benediction at the 2000 Republican convention, a director of Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute, and the man who interfered on behalf of the individuals and institutions targeted by the 2002 Green Quest raids!
. . . We’ve also learned that, before his transfer to Ft. Hood last year, Hasan served as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, and regularly attended Friday prayer at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md.
The Silver Spring clerics have issued formal statements condemning the carnage at Ft. Hood. But Imam Faizul Khan, long the main prayer leader at the mosque and a friend of Hasan, said he never believed Hasan capable of such an act. . . . And Khan is a leading board member of the Islamic Society of North America — the main Wahhabi-lobby group in the United States, established by Saudi Arabia to impose extremism on American Muslims. ISNA has a long and disgraceful record of promoting radical Islam.
On the roster of the ISNA board (listed on its Web site), the Silver Spring center’s Imam Faizul Khan is the fourth member under its president.
But the mosque has worse associations. On its own Web site (mccmd.org), it promotes a Sharia-based financial product — the Amana Mutual Fund, put together by the Wahhabis at the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), in northern Virginia.
Federal antiterrorism agents raided IIIT in the Operation GreenQuest raids of 2002. That operation remains an ongoing inquiry; IIIT and the Amana fund are still under investigation. Convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian is still in US federal custody because of his refusal to give evidence about the Virginia Wahhabi ring caught in GreenQuest. . . .
“Take a Look at Hasan’s Old Mosque” by Stephen Schwartz (New York Post; 11/7/2009)
8c. Khan appears to have had a significant relationship with Hasan, for whom he was looking for a wife.
. . . Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said. . . .
9. Another of the imams who ministered to Hasan was Mr. Awlaki, who also “ministered” to some of the 9/11 hijackers.
. . . Who is Anwar Nasser Awlaki? Investigators now suspect he was a key facilitator and advisor, and possibly even a surviving field commander, for the 9/11 cell that hit the Pentagon. He’s also an American citizen. They suspect he knew details of the plot and girded the al-Qaeda terrorists’ resolve to carry it out. Evidence is strong that he was enlisted to, at a minimum, hold the hijackers’ hands and take their temperature as they moved closer to Zero Hour. In short, he’s (if as yet unoffiicially) an unindicted 9/11 co-conspirator, and he remains at large.
Three of the hijackers of that uniquely all-Saudi cell that torpedoed the Pentagon spent time at the Saudi-connected Awlaki’s mosques in both San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia, where he served as prayer leader. The phone number for the Falls Church mosque–Dar al-Hirjah Islamic Center, controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and closely tied to CAIR–was found in the Hamburg, Germany, apartment of one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh. . . .
The Muslim Mafia by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry; WND Books [HC]; Copyright 2009 by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry; ISBN 9781935071105; pp. 62–63.
10. Criticism of GOP kingpins Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, architects of the Islamic Institute (a Muslim Brotherhood adjunct to the GOP), has been sparse. A continuing tragedy is that much of that sparse criticism comes from members of the conservative community, who have retained enough integrity to manifest outrage against the GOP’s alliance with the very Muslim Brotherhood elements against which the Republicans’ amen chorus rails.
One conservative willing to break with her milieu is Pamela Geller, a former editor of the New York Observer and editor of the Atlas Shrugs website. She recently noted Grover Norquist’s continuing activities on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood’ jihadists.
The Freedom Defense Initiative, a new organization I started with author and scholar Robert Spencer, hosted its inaugural event to an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 19. But this event was at CPAC, not of CPAC. Could this be because of the influence of conservative kingmaker and power-broker Grover Norquist, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC? The only event concerning the war on America at CPAC was worse than nothing at all: It was an Islamic propaganda (taqiyya) presentation entitled “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror.” Its message was that “real conservatives” don’t support the war on terror because it is a creation of the “Israeli lobby.”
How did CPAC come to this?
Grover Norquist’s ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes — who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005 — are very active in “Muslim outreach.” Just six weeks after 9/11, The New Republic ran an exposé explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the White House on September 26, 2001 — to show how Muslims rejected terrorism. . . .
It was Norquist who ushered these silver-tongued jihadists into the Oval Office of an incurious president after the worst attack ever on American soil. Instead of Hamas, Hezb’allah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, and Wafa Sultan should have been advising the president. Instead, at that September 26 meeting, Bush declared that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” It was a critically important, historic incident. What should have been the most important teaching moment of the long war became a propaganda tool for Islam. A singular opportunity was squandered, and the resulting harm is incalculable.
Bush did this because he trusted Norquist, who vouched for these Muslim leaders. Yet “the record suggests,” wrote Foer, “that [Norquist] has spent quite a lot of time promoting people openly sympathetic to Islamist terrorists.” And this continued for years. . . .
So it is no surprise that CPAC 2009, like CPAC 2010, had nothing addressing the war we are actually engaged in. This is due to the influence of Norquist, Keene, and Suhail Khan, a CPAC board member. According to Discover the Networks, Khan “has repeatedly been a featured speaker at MSA, ISNA and CAIR events” — that is, the Muslim Students Association, Islamic Society of North America, and Council on American-Islamic Relations, three groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamic organization dedicated to establishing the rule of Islamic law and the subjugation of infidels worldwide.
Grover Norquist almost singlehandedly ushered Islamic supremacist leaders into America’s highest levels of government — subversives, the Islamic fifth column. He gave them unparalleled access. Why didn’t Gaffney’s revelations, and those that preceded and followed his exposé, end Norquist’s influence among conservatives? Why does he still have so much power? . . .
“Grover Norquist’s Jihad” by Pamela Geller; American Thinker; 3/4/2010.
11. Next, the broadcast touches on the remarkable Ptech company and one of its principals, Yaqub Mirza (architect of the institutions raided in the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.) Ptech–inextricably linked with the milieu of the Muslim Brotherhood and the 9/11 attacks–designed the threat assessment software architecture for the Air Force, the FAA and the Department of Energy (which oversees the country’s nuclear power plants).
The company where a convicted former Shrewsbury man worked was in the news recently when an officer of the company was arrested after arriving last week at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
Buford George Peterson, a former Somerville resident living in South Korea, was the chief financial officer of PTech, a Quincy software company. Mr. Peterson, along with Oussama Abdul Ziade, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, are charged in a 2007 indictment indictment stemming from a January 2002 $650,000 loan application to the Small Business Administration to help small businesses struggling because of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. . . .
12. Another GOP politician running interference for individuals from the milieu of the Operation Green Quest raids is Senatorial candidate Tom Campbell. Campbell has supported Sami al-Arian, the investigation of whom led to the Operation Green Quest raids.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell is facing a potentially crippling controversy over his past defense of a fired Florida professor with ties to terrorists and his inconsistent statements regarding what he knew and when about the man’s actions.
Dogged for weeks by criticism over his defense of Sami Al-Arian, who later pleaded guilty to aiding terrorists, Campbell has denied knowing about the man’s incendiary past, which included nods to Islamic jihad and calls for “death to Israel.” He also said that his dealings with Al-Arian occurred before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
But Campbell, who was then a Stanford law professor, wrote a letter on Al-Arian’s behalf months after the Sept. 11 attacks that casts doubt on his claims of ignorance about Al-Arian’s radicalism.
“His inconsistent statements are particularly damaging because it creates a credibility problem,” said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. . . .
[...] FTR #705 [...]
Here’s an update on the seemingly never-ending investigations into events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The bad news in the update is that part of this seemingly never-ending investigation was quietly formally ended last year despite a mountain of open questions. Open questions including questions about why the investigations haven’t been more thoroughly pursued:
Prompted by a September 3 executive order by President Biden requiring a declassification review of 9/11 documents, the FBI released last week a more complete (less censored) version of an important 2012 report. And in this document dump we also learned that the FBI formally close its investigation into 9/11 on May 27 of this year. The closing of the investigation, known as Operation Encore, was not previously publicly disclosed. It followed a re-examination of the case file in 2019 and 2020 “to identify any missed leads, opportunities, or investigative actions which may advance the case.” That reopened investigation did not identify any additional groups or individuals responsible for the attack.
So the FBI’s investigation into 9/11 is formally closed. And therefore formally a giant joke, as the second excerpt from the Florida Bulldog below describes. Because in the flood of less-redacted documents just released by the FBI, we’re getting more details on who they investigated and what kinds of conclusions were ultimately arrived at. And while this updated version of the 2012 report does help answer some questions, it still doesn’t answer basic questions like why certain areas of investigation were never meaningfully pursued. Like the indictment Mohdar Abdullah, one of the roommates of the San Diego hijacker cell. For some reason that indictment never happened despite multiple witnesses and extensive evidence putting Abdullah in the middle of the plot. He also happened to be one of the figures in the 9/11 plot directly interacting with suspected Saudi intelligence agents and was a family friend and associate of Anwar Alawki. Might those inconvenient associations have anything to do with Abdullah escaping without an indictment? These are just some of the massive questions raised by the latest 9/11 document dump. A document dump that, in this case, was ostensibly intended to help close the book on the investigation :
“Prior to closing the investigation on May 27, the FBI says it re-examined the case file in 2019 and 2020 “to identify any missed leads, opportunities, or investigative actions which may advance the case.” That effort, the FBI document says, included re-interviews of various individuals located throughout the United States.”
There were some re-interviews and an re-examination. And then the FBI re-closed the case, having learned nothing new apparently:
It’s not the most exciting conclusion, but an ironically fitting one. Ironically fitting because as the following Florida Bulldog piece describes, this same FBI document dump includes a less-redacted version of the FBI’s 2012 report that should, if anything, act as a call for an investigation into this investigation to determine why so many important leads were apparently ignored or dismissed. In particular all of the leads surrounding Mohdar Abdullah. Why is the FBI taking a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ approach to someone who appeared to be involved with the plot going back to at least June of 2020?:
“Until Biden’s order, the FBI had kept secret all other documents about Operation Encore, and many other 9/11 records. Trump administration Attorney General William Barr even swore personally under oath last year that those records needed to be hidden because they were a ‘‘state secret’’ whose release would likely cause “significant harm to national security.””
Bill Barr’s sworn under oath that these were state secrets likely to cause “significant harm to national security”. What is under this highly classified rock? Well, we got more or a peak following Biden’s release order. But there’s still quite a bit that remains a secret and major questions remaining unanswered. Questions like why the indictment the FBI sought against Mohdar Abdullah never happened and why the FBI was ultimately unable to make a prosecutable case. The FBI initially sought to indict Adbullah, and clearly had abundant evidence of his deep involvement in the 9/11 plot. And yet the indictment never happened. Why? We still don’t know:
First, there’s the multiple witnesses tying Adbullah to the plot, starting with the fellow inmates who claim Abdullah basically admitted to his involvement in the plot. And yet prosecutors cast doubt “about their value as witnesses”:
One of those inmates, Ellsworth Black, even passed two polygraph tests and agreed to testify about what he heard. Black was cellmate with Omar Basharat, a roommate of of Abdullah and two of the hijackers in San Diego for a time. Black spoke direct with Abdullah in the cell yard. So Black claims to have heard more or less open admission of involvement or knowledge of the plot from both Basharat and Adbullah and passed to polygraph tests. Why did prosecutors cast doubt on his value as a witness?
Then there’s Adbullah’s ex-wife, a 16 year old Muslim convert who married him literally the day before 9/11. She initially claimed Abdullah spent 9/11 at her residence, where he displayed extreme agitation and disappeared for about two weeks before being taken into custody by the FBI. This is what she apparently told FBI agents during a January 2011 interview. A month later, when FBI agents return for a follow up interview, she recants it all. It’s like Mohammed Atta and Amanda Keller all over again. Investigators reportedly viewed her reversal as deceptive. So it’s not as if the FBI doesn’t have ongoing suspicions about Abdullah’s involvement in the plot:
Finally, there’s the June 10, 2000, security video from LAX showing Abdullah with not just known figures in the plot but what appears to be an addition suspected Yemeni cell that was involved in the planning. Intriguingly, when shown this video, where al Mihdhar is seen speaking with an unknown individual, Abdullah reportedly had feelings of being used and lied to by al Mihdhar and al Hazmi. And then, in 2014„ Abdullah reportedly underwent a polygraph examination in Sweden that was deemed inconclusive. Is a story about Adbullah being an unwitting pawn being used as the reason for not indicting him? Interestingly, he was apparently questioned again this year by the lawyers for the 9/11 Families and was described as “an interesting witness. He had a lot to say.” But what he had to say was classified. It’s a compelling mystery:
And that brings us to the big obvious questions in the case of the missing indictment against Mohdar Abdullah: is the fact that he was a family friend and associate of Anwar Alawaki (Aulaqi) part of the extreme sensitive of this? There’s a number of questions about who Awlaki was ultimately working for. Are we looking at a double agent kind of situation? And of course there’s the never ending questions about what sort of protection is being run for the Saudi government’s involvement in all of this:
So as we can see, at least the FBI’s component of the seemingly endless 9/11 investigation did indeed come to an end about six months ago. Case closed. As long as you ignore all the open questions. Especially the growing number of questions about the investigation itself that seemingly never get answered.
Is the 9/11 investigation the investigation that never ends? Or the investigation that never actually happened? Those questions were again raised recently following a pair of releases of previously classified documents related to the investigation. Documents that only add to the growing pile of evidence pointing towards a direct role played by Saudi intelligence in organizing those attacks.
First, as the following Insider piece from last week describes, there was a pair of FBI documents declassified back in March that make it effectively impossible to continue to deny that Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi was working on behalf of Saudi intelligence.
Recall how we learned back in November that the FBI has quietly formally closed “Operation Encore” in May of 2021, which was the FBI’s last remaining investigation into the 9/11 attacks. The investigation focused on three men — Fahad Al-Thumairy, Omar Al-Bayoumi, and Musaed Al-Jarrah — suspected of provided or directed others to provide Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar with “assistance in daily activities, including procuring living quarters and assistance with assimilating into Southern California.” None of the three men were ultimately charged, and yet documents released indicated that the FBI had extremely compelling circumstantial evidence of their involvement in the plot.
Also recall how we’ve previously seen how US-born al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was not just serving as a kind of spiritual advisor to the San Diego cell of the hijackers, but he may have been involved in what looked like a Saudi-government-sponsored ‘dry run’ two years before 9/11. Al-Awlaki was, of course, later killed in a US drone strike in 2011.
Finally, recall the bizarre May 2020 story, where the FBI accidentally publicly released Musaed Al-Jarrah’s name in an FBI document that was redacted by apparently neglected to redact Jarrah’s name. And in doing so basically admitted that the FBI knew back in 2012 that these individuals were working on behalf of the Saudi government. That partially-redacted documented admitted that FBI agents had uncovered evidence that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by a third individual (al-Jarrah) whose name was blacked out. The families of the 9/11 victims sued to get that third name (al-Jarrah’s) publicly released. Ironically, the partially-redacted FBI document was written in support of a move by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to block the release of these names under the premise that doing so would cause “significant harm to national security.” So the FBI has more or less admitted that it’s long know that the figures involved with the San Diego hijacker cell were working on behalf of the Saudi government. It’s an open secret.
And that brings us to the newly released documents that only further confirm what we’ve long known: Back in March, the FBI declassified a memo confirming that, yes, Bayoumi was receiving a monthly stipend from Saudi intelligence. According to the June 14, 2017 memo, Bayoumi was tasked with gathering information “on persons of interest in the Saudi community” and passing the intelligence to Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador at the time. A second declassified FBI memo reports that confidential source told the FBI that there was a “50/50 chance” that Bayoumi had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and “assisted two of the hijackers while residing in San Diego.”
Then there was the release of a trove of documents by British courts last month in response to lawsuits by the families of 9/11 victims. It turns out the British seized quite a bit of material from Bayoumi following the attacks. That includes a home video showing a party hosted by Bayoumi where two of San Diego cell hijackers can be seen. It also includes footage of Bayoumi warmly greeting and embracing Al-Awlaki. But what is perhaps the most damning evidence release by the British courts was a drawing found on one of Bayoumi’s notepads showing a plane descending towards an object in the distance and a math formula that appears to be a method for calculating distances. In other words, a method for calculating how to guide a plane towards an object.
So has all of this damning evidence changed the official stance of the 9/11 investigators? Well, not the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission Phillip Zelikow, who told reporters that he remains skeptical that Bayoumi knew anything about the plot or that he was working for Saudi intelligence. Zelikow even went on to suggest that maybe Zelikow was working as a paid informant working against the hijackers. In other words, Zelikow insists that Bayoumi wasn’t working for the Saudis, but if he was it was to help the Saudis fight al Qaeda. Yep. Keep in mind that Zelikow was tasked with chairing a commission to investigate the origins of the COVID19 outbreak last year. Good luck to those investigators.
Ok, first, here’s an Insider piece describing how the recently declassified memos further confirm the long held suspicions about direct Saudi government involvement in the 9/11 attacks. And also describes how these further confirmations will not in any way change the official conclusions held by figures like Philip Zelikow:
“The release of these new documents comes at an inconvenient time for the Biden administration. The US wants cheap oil, continued rights for military bases, and a revived nuclear deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia wants to end all discussion of the state-sponsored murder of Jamal Khashoggi and a free hand to pursue its brutal proxy war in Yemen. The last thing either country wants is a renewed debate over the Saudi role in 9/11. “The sad truth is that because of geopolitical issues, especially petroleum, we’ll never go after the Saudis or hold them accountable,” said Rossini, the former FBI agent.”
Yes, the sad truth is that no matter how much evidence comes out of Saudi government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the US government will refuse to ever seriously demand some sort of accountability. It’s becoming empirically proven with each new release of damning evidence that results in nothing. No matter how compelling the evidence ultimately is, like a 2017 FBI memo that concluded that Omar Bayoumi was tasked with gathering information “on persons of interest in the Saudi community” and passing the intelligence to Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador at the time. The Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, was directly involved with the pre-911 organizing of the hijackers. This is basically now an established fact, established as late as 2017. A second FBI memo was also released about a source who told the FBI there’s a 50/50 chance Bayoumi was aware of the 9/11 plot and assisted the hijackers. And here we are in 2022 with this information finally coming out about the FBI’s conclusion that Prince Bandar was directly involved with the organizing of the 9/11 hijacker cells and nothing is going to come of it:
But the evidence of Bayoumi’s direct involvement in the plot is far more specific than just the FBI agents’ assessments. Documents recently released by British authorities regarding their investigation of Bayoumi included a diagram in Bayoumi’s possession depicting a planed descending towards a target and a formula used to calculate distances to the target. So Bayoumi was hosting the hijackers and had diagrams of math formulas showing planes hitting targets. You almost couldn’t come up with more compelling circumstantial evidence:
And yet, despite all that we’ve seen, 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow continues to express skepticism that Bayoumi knew about the plot or had any involvement with Saudi intelligence. Even Zelikow’s co-chair, Thomas Kean, acknowledges Bayoumi “was definitely involved” with the Saudi government. It’s a naked cover-up:
Again, don’t forget that Zelikow was tasks with chairing a commission to investigate the COVID19 outbreak. So whatever conclusion that commission arrives at will presumably be the conclusion Zelikow sticks to no matter what.
Now, regarding all the documents released about Bayoumi recently released by British courts, note that there was more than just those damning drawings with planes hitting targets and math formulas. The British courts also released a number of home videos, including a party host by Bayoumi that included two of the hijackers along with footage of Bayoumi warmly embrace none other than al-Qaeda-affiliated US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was later killed in a US drone missile strike. Keep in mind that al-Awlaki was known to have served as a kind of spiritual mentor for the hijackers and and may have been involved in what looked like a Saudi-government-sponsored ‘dry run’ two years before 9/11. So a US citizen cleric was playing a key role in the plots, Bayoumi was clearly an associate of this cleric, and the US government eventually killed this cleric, a US citizen, in a controversial overseas drone missile strike. You have to wonder what’s under that rock. It’s a reminder that the US government’s extreme sensitivity around Bayoumi’s investigation probably have something to do with the many open questions about the US government’s relationship with, and subsequent killing of, Anwar al-Awlaki:
“The declassified records pertain to a long-secret investigation, code named “Operation Encore,” which centered on the two hijackers who lived in San Diego and who may have assisted them. ”
It was the long-secret “Operation Encore” investigation that was the source of these documents declassified by British courts last month. As we’ve seen, the Operation Encore investigation was quietly formally closed in May of 2021 despite a mountain of unanswered questions. So while we may get more declassified documents from that investigation, there won’t be any new investigative conclusions. The case is closed and all of this information was intended to remain a secret. At least in the US. But the British government investigated Bayoumi too and it was the British courts that decided ultimately release it. Given that Operation Encore has already been closed by FBI, you have to wonder if the UK’s own investigation into this matter has also been formally closed:
And as this British court ordered release of documents confirms, the FBI concluded unequivocally in 2017 that Bayoumi was connected to Saudi intelligence. It was no longer an open question:
Even one of the FBI agents who worked on Operation Encore, Danny Gonzalez, shared with the media that he had determined that Bayoumi worked for Saudi intelligence. But what is truly damning is how FBI agent Ken Williams wrote a memo before 9/11 warning about potential terrorists taking flight lessons in Arizona. And in this memo Williams has already determined that Bayoumi was involved and was an employee of the Saudi government. In other words, all the these revelations years later about Bayoumi being a Saudi government employee aren’t really revelations. The FBI knew pre-911:
Then there’s the released home video showing Bayoumi warmly embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, who is known to have also assisted the San Diego hijacker cell. The damning evidence just keeps piling up:
Finally, note how there’s still apparently quite a bit the FBI knows about Bayoumi that they aren’t releasing:
So let’s hope the British courts also have access to all those documents the FBI continues to hold under seal. Maybe they’ll see the light of day someday. Not that it will make a difference.
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, did it make a sound? It’s a matter of semantics. But how about if the tree falls and lots of people are around to hear it but they just don’t seem to have the ability to notice or care. Did it still make a sound? That’s the depressing meta-question raised by the latest utterly damning series of 9/11 revelations. The latest in a series of revelations for years now pointing in the same grim direction: not only did US and Saudi intelligence know the 9/11 hijackers were preparing an attack but the attacks were, in fact, the product of a joint US-Saudi intelligence operation. An operation that perhaps went horribly awry. Or maybe went entirely as planned. We have no idea since a real investigation has never been allowed.
But what we can say with confidence at this point is that the CIA and FBI both knew about the presence of the 9/11 hijackers on US soil, knew their al Qaeda ties, and repeatedly took steps to ensure field agents didn’t bust them. That’s the utterly damning conclusion we can take from the latest round of revelations, this time from a 21-page declaration bey Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the investigation into the 9/11 defendants. As we’re going to see, that 21-page memo is filled with claims from both FBI and CIA sources Canestraro talked to who all a pre‑9/11 pattern of blocking attempts to identify and stop the 9/11 hijackers. In particular, numerous agents from Operation Encore, the post=9/11 investigation into possible Saudi involvement in the attacks.
Recall how we learned back in November 2021 that the FBI has quietly formally closed “Operation Encore” in May of 2021, which was the FBI’s last remaining investigation into the 9/11 attacks. The investigation focused on three men — Fahad Al-Thumairy, Omar Al-Bayoumi, and Musaed Al-Jarrah — suspected of provided or directed others to provide Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar with “assistance in daily activities, including procuring living quarters and assistance with assimilating into Southern California.” None of the three men were ultimately charged, and yet documents released indicated that the FBI had extremely compelling circumstantial evidence of their involvement in the plot.
Also recall how we’ve previously seen how US-born al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was not just serving as a kind of spiritual advisor to the San Diego cell of the hijackers, but he may have been involved in what looked like a Saudi-government-sponsored ‘dry run’ two years before 9/11. Al-Awlaki was, of course, later killed in a US drone strike in 2011.
And then there’s the bizarre May 2020 story, where the FBI accidentally publicly released Musaed Al-Jarrah’s name in an FBI document that was redacted by apparently neglected to redact Jarrah’s name. And in doing so basically admitted that the FBI knew back in 2012 that these individuals were working on behalf of the Saudi government. That partially-redacted documented admitted that FBI agents had uncovered evidence that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by a third individual (al-Jarrah) whose name was blacked out. The families of the 9/11 victims sued to get that third name (al-Jarrah’s) publicly released. Ironically, the partially-redacted FBI document was written in support of a move by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to block the release of these names under the premise that doing so would cause “significant harm to national security.”
Finally, there was the March 2022 declassification of an FBI memo that confirms that, yes, Omar Al-Bayoumi was indeed receiving a monthly stipend from Saudi intelligence. According to the June 14, 2017 memo, Bayoumi was tasked with gathering information “on persons of interest in the Saudi community” and passing the intelligence to Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador at the time. A second declassified FBI memo reports that confidential source told the FBI that there was a “50/50 chance” that Bayoumi had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and “assisted two of the hijackers while residing in San Diego.” At this point so much of the mystery has been revealed that the biggest remaining mystery is why there hasn’t been more of a public outcry over these revelations.
And yet, despite all we’ve learned, there’s still more to learn. And the more we learn, the more damning it all looks. It’s a pattern that continues with the release of the new 21-page declaration that makes it very clear we’re looking at a massive coverup with many huge yet-to-be-answered questions. Questions that are increasingly focused on the activities of Alec Station, the joint FBI/CIA operation tracking Osama bin Laden set up in 1996. As we’re going to see, Alec Station wasn’t a normal unit. For starters, it was tasked with both intelligence gathering AND asset recruitment, which is not normal protocol. Beyond that, the ‘analysts’ at the unit were routinely sending out orders to case officers in the field, which is described as completely outside normal CIA protocol.
But it’s not the unusual command structure of Alec Station that has people pointing fingers at the unit. It’s the fact that the unit was repeatedly blocking FBI and CIA agents from actually identifying and pursuing the 9/11 hijackers as they were operating inside the US. And this includes blocking actions that took place in the months and weeks leading up to 9/11 as FBI agents became aware of the al Qaeda ties to the ‘San Diego cell’ of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar with the assistance of al-Bayoumi. In one very damning instance, an FBI agent who stumbled upon an “electronic communication” from FBI headquarters on August 21, 2001, that identified al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar as being in the US contacted the Alec Station FBI agent who wrote the memo, Dina Corsi, and was ordered by Corsi to immediately delete the memo. Then next day, this agent was on a conference call between Corsi and the FBI’s bin Laden unit chief where “officials at FBI headquarters” explicitly told this agent to “stand down” and “cease looking” for al-Mihdhar, claiming the bureau intended to open an “intelligence gathering investigation” on him. Two days after this meeting, Alec Station finally informed the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were in the US.
And that’s just one of the damning claims Canestraro collected from a number of FBI and CIA agents compiled in this 21-page declaration. Claims that paint a picture of CIA and Saudi protections for the 9/11 hijackers. The kind of picture where, at best, this was a counter-intelligence operation that went horribly awry. That’s the best spin on the situation at this point. It’s so damning that, of course, almost no one is talking about it. Because that’s how we roll:
“Obtained by SpyTalk, the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials. Many agents who spoke to Canestraro headed up Operation Encore, the Bureau’s aborted, long-running probe into Saudi government connections to the 9/11 attack.”
A 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, the lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions which oversaw the investigation into the 9/11 hijackers. That document is at the heart of this damning new report and based heavily on the agents who headed up Operation Encore, the long-running FBI investigation into potential Saudi involvement in 9/11 that was quietly shuttered in 2021. As we saw, the closing of Operation Encore coincided with some document dumps that raised even more questions about Saudi involvement and questions about a coverup. And now here we are with a 21-page report from the person who oversaw the investigation into the 9/11 hijackers citing those Operation Encore agents and arriving at the conclusion that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers were part of a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation. It just keeps getting worse:
But the covered up findings are Operation Encore are just one part of this story. A post‑9/11 chapter. There’s also all the pre‑9/11 events that sure look mightily suspicious with the benefit of hindsight. Or even suspicious at the time, like Alec Station, the joint FBI-CIA investigation set up to track Osama bin Laden that had the unusual task of both gathering intelligence and recruiting assets:
And it’s that pre‑9/11 story about Alec Station’s curious behavior and the post‑9/11 coverup of Saudi involvement that bring us to the remarkable pre‑9/11 surveillance of Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar and their mysterious relationship to US-based Saudi government “ghost employee” Omar al-Bayoumi. Recall how retired FBI agent Danny Gonzalez, who worked on Operation Encore, told CBS News back in the fall of 2021 that he believed Omar al-Bayoumi was part of the hijackers US-based support network. And here we find that the CIA and NSA were closely monitoring an “operational cadre” within an al Qaeda cell that included al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. That close monitoring included tracking the two to a Jan 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where CIA operatives broke into al-Mihdhar’s hotel room and discovered a multi-entry US visa. Cables indicated that the CIA claimed this information was immediately passed to the FBI, and yet we are now learning that Alec Station expressly forbid its FBI agents from doing so. Alec Station was covering up the from the FBI the reality that this al Qaeda operative has a multi-entry US visa. This is the constellation of facts that had FBI agent “CS‑3” concluding that al-Bayoumi’s contact with the hijackers and support thereafter “was done at the behest of the CIA through the Saudi intelligence service” and that Alec Station’s explicit purpose was to “recruit Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar via a liaison relationship”, with the assistance of Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate. It’s hard to get a more damning set of revelations given the circumstances:
And “CS‑3” isn’t the only agent who arrived at that conclusion. A CIA case officer within Alec Station, “CS-10”, agreed that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had some sort of relationship to the CIA through al-Bayoumi. Beyond that, this agent claims to have been baffled that Alec Station was tasked with penetrating al Qaeda in the first place which, again, points to the curious nature of Alec Station’s dual roles in both intelligence gather and asset recruitment. Beyond that, “CS-10” observed CIA analysts at Alec Station issue orders to case officer in the field despite such analysts normally lacking such authority, an observation shared by “CS-11”, an Alec Station CIA operations specialist. So even some of the CIA agents at Alec Station are concurring that this was a very unusual unit operating outside of normal CIA protocols. Which raises an obvious question: were these really CIA analysts? Or were those roles just a cover? Was Alec Station effectively operating as a cover for something else?
But it’s not just the FBI and CIA agents assigned to Alec Station who are now raising red flags about the nature of that entity. A joint FBI-CIA informant, Aukai Collins, recounts how he was prevented from pursuing an invitation to go undercover into bin Laden’s camps. The FBI was all in favor of the idea, but the CIA blocked it, saying “there was no way the US would approve an American operative going undercover into Bin Laden’s camps.” As Collins puts it now, “Something just hadn’t smelled right…To this day I’m unsure who was behind September 11, nor can I even guess… Someday the truth will reveal itself, and I have a feeling that people won’t like what they hear”:
Adding to the damning evidence that the CIA was somehow running cover for these al Qaeda operatives is an exchange recounted by an FBI counter-terror officer codenamed “CS-15”: according to this agent, CIA and FBI analysts from Alec Station met with senior FBI officials including representatives from the FBI’s al Qeada unit. The CIA shared three photos of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar attending that Kuala Lumpur meeting in January of 2000, but they obscure the identities of one of them and refused to answer any questions about where the photo came from. As the article describes, this looks like a dangle designed to find out what the FBI already knew. A dangle seemingly designed to probe the US’s defenses against this al Qaeda cell three months before 9/11:
And while it appears that, pre‑9/11, this was primarily a CIA coverup, that coverup appears to have become much broader post‑9/11 and may have included senior FBI officials in the weeks leading up to 9/11. For example, there’s the claims of “CS-23”, a former FBI agent who testified that, post‑9/11, FBI headquarters and its San Diego field office quickly learned of “Bayoumi’s affiliation with Saudi intelligence and subsequently the existence of the CIA’s operation to recruit” al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, but “senior FBI officials suppressed investigations.” But far more damning are the claims of “CS-12”, who attended that June 2001 meeting where the CIA made that apparent dangle to the FBI. According to CS-12, they stumbled upon an “electronic communication” from FBI headquarters, which identified Hazmi and Mihdhar, and noted they were in the US on August 23, 2001. CS-12 then contacted the FBI analyst at Alec Station who authored the memo, Dina Corsi, which resulted in or si ordered them to delete the memo “immediately”. The next day, CS-12 was on a conference call between Corsi and the FBI’s bin Laden unit chief, where “officials at FBI headquarters” explicitly told “CS-12” to “stand down” and “cease looking” for Mihdhar, claiming the bureau intended to open an “intelligence gathering investigation” on him. Again, this was less than three weeks before 9/11:
Then, days after 9/11, CS-12 contacts Corsi with information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, and Corsi responds with an additional photo from the same Jan 2000 Kuala Lumpur surveillance operation, but this photo hadn’t been presented at the June 2001 FBI-CIA ‘dangle’ meeting. And as CS-12 puts it, had they shown that photo it would have created a much greater FBI response as they could have confidently linked al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar to the USS Cole bombing. Corsi had no explanation for why this intelligence wasn’t shared earlier:
Finally, regarding the intriguing possibility that Alec Station was, itself, a front for some sort of deeper intelligence operation which might explain the ability of its ‘analysts’ to issue orders to case officers in the field, note how the unit’s leadership was effectively rewarded with promotions and played leading roles in the post‑9/11 investigation. An investigation whose conclusions were based in large part on the confessions extracted from people in Gitmo. And look at that: it turns out Alfreda Frances Bikowsky of Alec Station was put in charge of interrogating suspects:
A might large tree just fell in the woods with lots of people around to hear it. And yet, it’s as if nothing happened. No response. No matter how loud the whistle is blown, there’s never a response. No one actually cares. We’ll see what additional evidence comes forward. But at this point it’s pretty clear that more evidence isn’t going to make a difference. At least not for the generation of people who actually lived through 9/11. Unpacking the implications of this investigation is just beyond what the US is capable of grappling with at this point in time. Who knows how future generations will interpret these matters but no major revisions for our collective understanding of 9/11 just isn’t going to happen. In keeping with tradition.
How many more major 9/11 revelations are we still in store for? That’s one of the many disturbing questions raised by a new TMZ documentary examining one of the most significant and long-overlooked chapters of 9/11: the 5th plane.
As we’re going to see, the story of the 5th plane isn’t new. It’s been mentioned for years despite never making it into the 9/11 Commission Report. But as the numerous interviews in new TMZ documentary makes clear, this was a very real incident. There really was ALMOST a 5th hijacker plane, United Flight 23, scheduled to take off from JFK Airport in New York to Los Angeles. It was only the fact that all US airspace was quickly shut down following the initial plane strikes that United 23 was kept on the ground. The plane was reportedly in the process of taking off right when that happened.
So what was it that leads to the conclusion that this plane was almost hijacked? Well, for starters, the crew was already getting weird vibes from four young Arab men in first-class who seemed extra anxious to just take off. Then, after the grounding, the cabin crew reportedly barricaded themselves inside the cabin and reported to ground crews their concerns about the four men, who quickly fled the airport following the return of the plane to the terminal. Box cutters and al Qaeda documents were apparently found in their baggage. All of their was described to the FBI and yet none of their made it into the 9/11 Commission report.
All of the above details were actually reported back in 2011 in Wilmington (Delaware) News-Journal, featuring interviews above Delaware Air National Guard’s first female general, Carol Timmons, who was the first officer on United 23. As Timmons puts it, she and the rest of the crew were repeatedly interviewed by the FBI. And yet somehow none of this made it into the 9/11 Commission report. Why is that?
Well, that brings us to the TMZ documentary, which adds a couple damning new details. First, it appears that two uniformed people running into the plane cabin 20 minutes after the plane was brought back to the terminal and evacuated. Authorities quickly arrived and found the hatch leading to the belly of the plane left open. Intriguingly, box cutters were also apparently found in the seat pockets of the first class seats in the United plane adjacent to flight 23.
And, of course, this is all now part of the context of the recent revelations found in Don Canestraro’s 21-page declaration filled with details pointing towards a joint CIA/FBI intelligence operation based out of Alec Station that was shepherding and protecting the 9/11 hijackers from law enforcement. Context that presumably explains why the 5th plane became the unmentionable plane as far as the 9/11 Commission was concerned:
“Four passengers in first class aroused suspicion shortly after they boarded. The flight attendants say one of the passengers was a man disguised as a woman. The purser [first class flight attendant] tells us those passengers did not eat meat, and there were only 2 fruit plates in the galley. She wanted to get more fruit plates so the passengers could eat, and it triggered a heated argument ... with one of the passengers insisting, “We do not want to eat. We don’t need food. We want to take off ... We just want to go.””
Umm....how did this story escape notice until now? A man dressed as a woman in first class? One of four men behaving erratically? This seems like the kind of incident that should have garnered major attention.
And then we get to this ominous detail: twenty minutes into the grounding of the plane, two uniformed people were seen running into the now-evacuated plane and apparently left open the hatch that leads to the belly of the plane. It’s odd, but it’s the fact that someone put box cutters in the first-class seat pockets of the adjacent United plane that turns this into a major mystery. A still unresolved major 9/11 mystery:
So how is it that this story is only coming out how? And thanks to TMZ, no less? Well, that’s just it: this isn’t the first time this story has bubbled up. For example, back in 2011, this same story was covered in the Wilmington (Delaware) News-Journal and included interviews of the first officer of United Airlines Flight 23, Carol Timmons, who by 2011 the Delaware National Guard’s first female general. And as Timmons described, that flight was on the verge of taking off before the airport was shut down. At that point, the cabin crew barricaded themselves inside the cockpit and relayed their concern about four young Arab men in first-class who became agitated when the takeoff was canceled. The four men fled from the plane when it returned to the terminal and box cutters and al Qaeda documents were later found in their luggage. Yep. This was quietly reported in 2011. And then forgotten for another dozen years until TMZ picked it back up:
“Why wouldn’t the U.S. government want to report the incident? Why didn’t the 9/11 Commission mention it in their official report? Were they concerned about panicking the public? Were they trying to apprehend the four passengers who fled? Why maintain official silence about the incident a decade later?”
Why wasn’t any of this in the 9/11 Commission? How could such a massive addition to the story have just been left out? Especially when this is coming from the crew members themselves? What is it about these four hijackers that was so sensitive they couldn’t even be mentioned? This is about a thwarted hijacking, after all. On one level you would expect authorities to tout the quick response in shutting down the US airspace as having saved this plane. But nope. No mention. Despite box cutters and al Qaeda documents later being found in their baggage:
So we now know that the CIA and FBI were protecting and trafficking the 9/11 hijackers and we can now add the mysterious 5th plane to the mix. A 5th plane that may have had box cutters preemptively planted on them in advance by colleagues of the same uniformed figures who scrambled to remove them. Bumbling colleagues apparently, if it really is the case that they had the wrong plane. It underscores how part of what we appear to be looking at here is a major coverup of a massive scandal. And, in part, a massive coverup of a major covert fumble.
Following up on the 9/11 “Fifth Plane” United 23 revelations and the circumstantial evidence pointing towards an inside job involving airline or airport staff preemptively planting box cutters on planes, it’s worth taking a look at a September 11, 2022 report by The Florida Bulldog — the entity that filed the initial FOIA request that resulted in the FBI’s 2016 disclosure of Operation Encore — that includes interviews of United 23 Captain Thomas Mannello as well as United’s east coast dispatcher that day, Ed Ballinger. And while this report includes some very interesting additional details on the United 23 incident, it’s the fact that United 23 appears to be just one of multiple additional planes that were targeted for a hijacking that day that’s the biggest revelation. Importantly, as the report reminds us, these aren’t new revelations either. In fact, there were mainstream media reports about box cutters being found in the first class seats of planes in the immediate post‑9/11 investigations on planes in Boston and San Diego too. As one government official put it to Time Magazine two weeks after 9/11, “These look like inside jobs.”
That’s all part of the context of the still unaddressed recent revelations about the apparent protection and trafficking of 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi by the CIA/FBI fusion task force at Alec Station: There were presumably more hijacker cells that got away. Which raises the obvious question as to whether or not they were allowed to get away. What kind of protective role did these FBI/CIA units play in ensuring no one truly followed up on investigating these almost-hijacked planes? Over two decades later we still have no idea. What we do know now is that we are still dealing with a massive coverup. The kind of coverup that looks more and more damning with each new belated revelation. And more and more covered up with each revelation too:
“Those records, largely and inexplicably ignored by the nation’s mainstream media, reveal stunning new facts about the involvement of Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs officials operating out of Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington. The FBI’s conclusion: Saudi government officials knowingly provided support for the first two al Qaeda hijackers to enter the U.S. via Los Angeles International Airport 20 months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.”
Over two decades later, stunning 9/11 revelations are still being released. To a giant collective *yaaaawn* from the mainstream media. It’s been seven years since Operation Encore was first made public by the FBI in 2016, but no one seems to actually care about this story, despite each round of revelations painting a darker and darker picture. It’s a remarkable form of collective apathy. All the more remarkable when we see one piece of evidence after another hinting at a much large plot involving more planes. Evidence like box cutters found on multiple grounded planes in the days after 9/11. Not just United 23. Evidence that points towards 9/11 involving a massive “inside job” component that included airline/airport staff at multiple major airports:
And this evidence of a much broader attack isn’t something that only emerged years later. It was part of our initial understanding of the 9/11 plot, with reports quoting US officials pointing to these planted box cutters and stating that “These look like inside jobs.” And yet somehow that was all forgotten and just fell down the memory hole:
That’s all part of what makes the mystery of United Flight 23 so important: this is the grounded flight for which we have the most compelling evidence and witness accounts. But Flight 23 appears to be only one of multiple planes that were intended to be hijacked that day. In other words, any real public exposure of the United 23 investigation is an invitation for more scrutiny into the much larger potential scope of the 9/11 plot. Beyond that, it’s an invitation to ask what happened to the passengers acting unusually on those planes? Where they ever tracked down and interviewed? Or were they perhaps allowed by the FBI to leave the country? Those questions remain unanswered, in part because the 9/11 Commission report makes no mention of United 23 at all. Don’t forge that we are told al Qaeda documents were found in their baggage. So how does the Commission justify leaving out this crucial incident? Well, according to Commission staff member Miles Kara, it was all just a coincidence and there was nothing to see here:
Why on earth did the 9/11 Commission engage in what now appears to be a blatant coverup of a much broader plot? Well, again, we return to the “inside job” aspect of this incident: box cutters were found in the first class pockets on the plane next to United Flight 23. Again, don’t forget the accounts of two uniformed men racing to the then-evacuated United 23 plane. Authorities quickly arrived and found the hatch leading to the belly of the plane left open, as if someone was looking for the planted box cutters. That’s part of Captain Mannello’s recounting of being asked about the tail number of his plane, 6002, which was parked next to 6001 where box cutters were found. As Mannello speculates, perhaps “someone made a mistake” and put them on the wrong plane. Perhaps. But that question has clearly been deemed some sort of national security threat. It can’t be asked:
Finally, we get this other troubling detail: a flight attendant on Flight 175 called United’s San Francisco maintenance office at 8:52 am to report that the plane’s pilots had been murdered and that hijackers were flying the aircraft. But because they used a GTE air phone the call was automatically routed to maintenance and somehow the message wasn’t passed along to Ed Ballinger, the Chicago-based dispatcher in command for all of United’s coast-to-coast flights. Ballinger only ended up issuing his warning to pilots to be on guard for a hijacking at 9:24. There are plenty of possible explanations for the 32 minute gap, but given that we’re dealing with an “inside job” scenario it would be interesting to get some clarity on the nature of that delay. But, of course, avoiding clarity is like the paramount priority with this investigation:
Again, there are plenty of potential innocent reasons for the delays in relaying that information. But what about this overall coverup? What possible innocent reason is there for what is now a multi-decade coverup that looks worse and worse the more we learn? We’ll presumably never get a real explanation. Should the full scope of the evidence ever be revealed it will come long after everyone involved is long dead at this rate. Hopefully future generations will have a capacity to absorb the implications of these events and the subsequent coverup. Because we obviously can’t handle it, which is perhaps the most depressing 9/11 revelation of them all.
So when the CIA and FBI at Alec Station were running cover for the San Diego 9/11 hijacker cell — a cell receiving support from Saudi government employees — what about all the 9/11 hijackers in South Florida? What kind of Saudi government support was there for the South Florida cell? And what about the FBI and CIA at Alec Station, what sort of cover were they were providing to the South Florida cell? And how does this all tie into apparent the official cover up of Daniel Hopsicker’s reporting on Amanda Keller and the months she spent living with in Venice, Florida, with Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi in the spring of 2001?
It’s that nest of still major outstanding 9/11 questions that brings us to the following Miami Herald article from September 8, 2021. It’s a ’20 years later’ retrospective article looking back on the legacy left behind in South Florida by the terror cell. A legacy of lingering unanswered questions. That’s part of what makes this article so grimly fascinating. It’s basically a summary of 20 years of FBI 9/11 cover ups.
And at the center of those lingering questions is the mystery of the Sarasota family that suddenly vanished back to Saudi Arabia two weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Abdulazzi al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, left their home so quickly with their small children that they even left dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms. Recall how Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, was an adviser to Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the nephew of former Saudi King Fahd. As following article notes, FBI agents discovered phone statements and gate records for the family’s gated community linking the house to some of the hijackers including Mohamed Atta. Huffman Aviation was just a few blocks away from the home. Recall how Hopsicker revealed that the phone records for Atta’s Venice-based phone were missing from January to May of 2001 despite evidence showing the phone was active during this period.
In April 2013, the FBI released a summary report of its Sarasota investigation thanks to lawsuits by the Florida Bulldog. While the summary report redacted the names of the Sarasota family and hijackers they interacted with, it was clear it was Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi that the report was referring to. Intriguingly, the report also refers to a third unnamed person who was living with Atta and Shehhi at the time. It’s not clear what the timeframe is for when this third unnamed person was living with the hijackers, but if this was in the spring of 2001 that was align exactly with the period they allegedly spent with Keller. In 2015, the 128-page 9/11 Review Commission Report was release. The FBI used it as an opportunity to discredit its own 2013 summary report, describing it as “poorly written” and “wholly unsubstantiated”.
The the Florida Bulldog sued the US government again in 2015, and in 2016 the government released a heavily redacted 2012 FBI report revealing that its agents in New York had been exploring the possible prosecution of an unnamed suspect for providing material support to the hijackers. The suspect’s name was redacted but declassified information indicated this was in relation to the San Diego cell of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. As former Florida senator Bob Graham pointed out at the time, “This has never been disclosed before and it’s to the contrary of everything the FBI has produced so far that has indicated that 9/11 is history...It’s interesting that it took them 11 years to get there, and a FOIA to get this information to the public.” Days after this redacted 2012 FBI summary report was release, the FBI’s Tampa office released a statement from the agent in charge that said the Saudi family had been interviewed and “there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot.” The FBI statement also claimed the agency had provided all the information in the Sarasota probe to a congressional joint inquiry.
Fittingly, the FBI’s response to this Miami Herald article is the same as ever: the bureau “still stands by our original findings [of no Saudi family connection in the Sarasota probe] as reported to the 9/11 Commission and [Congress’] Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.” It’s just cover up after cover up. It never ends, no matter how many revelations get exposed.
And that enduring coverup in the face of all the stunning revelations over the past 22 years is why we have to ask: How does Hopsicker’s explosive and still denied reporting on the hijackers’ time in Venice tie into this ongoing and blatant coverup of the Sarasota 9/11 mystery? As Hopsicker made clear, a lot of effort went into obscuring that history. Phone records don’t scrub themselves. So given that we’ve already learned about the FBI/CIA running cover for the San Diego cell — a cell that had Saudi government support — and given that the FBI appears to be engaging in an ongoing an blatant cover up of what it discovered in Sarasota, we have to ask: was the FBI/CIA Alec Station fusion center running cover for the Sarasota cell too and would Amanda Keller’s story reveal this? We don’t know for sure yet, but that would explain the gross blatant cover up that’s been run for over two decades now:
“Yet 20 years later, despite seemingly exhaustive probes by Congress, the 9/11 Commission, the 9/11 Review Commission and the FBI, murky mysteries remain about the al-Qaida terror cell’s operations. The first puzzle piece is in Sarasota, where at least one FBI report found that 9/11 plot leader Mohamed Atta and two other hijackers visited the gated community of a Saudi Arabian family, who hurriedly left their home just two weeks before the attacks. The second piece is across the country and suggests that two more cell members in Southern California may have been assisted by government employees of Saudi Arabia, home country of 15 of the 19 men who died in the suicide mission.”
While a number of major mysteries still loomed large over the official 9/11 narrative, it was the mystery of Saudi government support for the hijackers that arguably looomed largest. Twin mysteries, with evidence pointing towards Saudi government support in both San Diego and Sarasota. And while quite a bit has subsequently been revealed in recent years about the damning evidence the FBI has collected regarding the Saudi assistance for the San Diego cell, much less is known about the kind of Saudi government assistance given to the hijackers in South Florida, which is especially notable given how many of the hijackers were operating in South Florida, with up to 14 of the 19 hijackers now known to have spent time in South Florida. And it’s an area of mystery that, of course, aligns exactly with the numerous Sarasota-based revelations uncovered by Daniel Hopsicker.
It’s also rather notable that the official narrative is still vague enough it’s “up to 14 of the 19 hijackers” and not more definitively known. But it’s the fact that the entire story of the sudden disappearance of a Sarasota family two weeks before the attack was only revealed a decade after the attacks thanks to Dan Christensen, the independent investigative journalist behind the Florida Bulldog that underscores just how little official interest there was in the Sarasota-Saudi connection. And a decade after Christensen broke that story, there’s still been almost nothing officially revealed about the Sarasota story. We’ve learned about the Saudi support for the San Diego cell. But still almost nothing about the Sarasota support. It’s the kind of information blackout that points towards something truly horrific hiding under this 9/11 Sarasota rock:
But part of what makes this story so explosive isn’t the new revelations. It’s the fact that so many old explosive revelations have already come and gone with virtually no official explanation or even comment from the FBI and other agencies implicated in what is now a blatant cover up. Like the fact that Christensen’s initial revelations back in 2011 were met with no comment by the Justice Department and gross deception by the FBI. These aren’t secrets that officials have yet to deny or distort. The denials and distortions have been ongoing for years now. At least for the revelations already revealed:
In 2013, those 2011 denials by the FBI about the Sarasota family were again exposed by Christensen. More precisely, Christensen’s lawsuit. The FBI released a heavily redacted summary report on the Sarasota investigation exposing ties between the Sarasota family unnamed hijackers that fit the description of Atta and al-Shehhi. And then we get to this very interesting detail: that summary report mentioned a third unnamed person who was living with Atta and al-Shehhi in Sarasota. Someone not described as a hijacker. In other words, someone fitting the description of Amanda Keller, who allowed Atta and al-Shehhi to live with her and her boyfriend during their time in Venice in the spring of 2001. A time that, as Hopsicker laid out, the trail of Atta and al-Shehhi was actively scrubbed from the official record. While evidence showed the phone Atta used in Venice was active until May of 2001, the released records for that phone only went up to late January, shortly before Atta first met Keller. The FBI then attempted to discredit that summary report in a 2015 128-page 9/11 Review Commission report by attacking the credibility of its own agent who wrote it, calling it “poorly written” and “wholly unsubstantiated”. That agent didn’t exactly get the ‘Oswald treatment’, but that’s still pretty brutal all things considered.
And not just brutal for the agent. We are continually reminded that there is something explosive being hidden here. So explosive that the FBI will throw its own under the bus to cover it up. It’s a reminder that Hopsicker’s exclusive and ground-breaking reporting on the 9/11 Sarasota story presents potentially critical evidence for understanding these FBI disclosures years later. Or to put it another way, we can’t really understand these disclosures without understanding Hopsicker’s reporting. It’s just as vital today as ever, in part because it’s barely been digested in the first pace:
And note how part of what appears to have been animating former Senator Bob Graham’s activism on this front was the fact that he was privy to notorious 28-page chapter on the Saudi government’s involvement that was censored from the public 2002 congressional report. 28-pages that were eventually released by President Obama in 2016. And while those 28 pages didn’t contain a clear indictment of the Saudi government’s support of the 9/11 hijackers, it did did confirm that Saudi government employees knew the hijackers in the San Diego/LA area. Flash forward to the revelations from earlier this year about the FBI/CIA unit in Alex Station running cover for the San Diego cell hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, and we can see how those 28-pages — long held secret — were just a taste of the revelations to come. It’s a theme on this story. For all the explosive awful revelation belated released, what remains hidden is even worse:
And all that brings us to one of the biggest lingering questions that remains unanswered: so if Saudi government agents have been shown to have provided support for the San Diego hijacker cell of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, what kind of Saudi government support was there for the large number of hijackers in South Florida? It’s a question that has the mystery of that Sarasota family at the center of it. All the more so when, as Graham pointed out in 2016, it turns out the San Diego support network and the Sarasota family both suddenly fled the US right around the same time, two weeks before the attacks. So when we learned in 2016 that the FBI had been covering up the fact that its agents in New York had been actively exploring the prosecution of a larger support network for al-Midhar and al-Hazmi back in 2012, we have to ask if this larger hijacker support network included the Sarasota family and support for the South Florida cell. Along with all the follow up questions about why the prosecutions never happened and why it was all hidden in the first place:
Finally, note the FBI’s response to all of this reporting back in September of 2021: an ongoing denial of all of these revelations. It really is gaslighting at this point:
It’s an unspeakable chapter of history. Even when the damning documents are released, they end up discredited and denied. But perhaps the saddest part of all is just how wildly effective this out-in-the-open cover up has been. It’s been decades of this now, each revelation more damning than the last, and it doesn’t appear the US society has the capacity to actually care about it. At least not outside of the 9/11 victims families still carrying this torch. It raises the sad question of how this whole investigation will ultimately end: with the truth never being revealed? Or with the truth finally being revealed but no one actually caring one way or another? Along with the follow up question of which of those scenarios is sadder.
Was Nawaf al-Hazmi operating in South Florida for part of 2001? If so, that would be quite the revelation considering the mega-revelation we had earlier this year about the Alec Station FBI/CIA fusion center running cover for al-Hazmi and potentially trying to recruit him. Even more so if it turns out al-Hazmi may have been staying with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the two figures at the heart of the mystery around the ‘missing months’ with Amanda Keller and the preposterous ‘second Mohamed’ narrative.
And that brings us to the following part of old articles, still available via ProQuest. The first article below, a September 4, 2011, Palm Beach Post article, gives a ’10 years after’ perspective from the South Florida communities where the hijackers lived. A perspective that includes an awareness of just how little is officially known. As the article describes, the official record of what the hijackers did there is “scant”, with little more than a disjointed collection of anecdotes from local residents. That was the case 10 years after the attacks (20 years, too).
The article includes an anecdote of a police officer who visited the Delray Beach apartment where a number of the hijackers were living at the time in the weeks before the attack. A neighbor’s dog had bitten Mohamed Atta’s hand and called the police to check on him and make sure he wasn’t going to have her dog put down. The officer recounts seeing a group of the would-be hijackers sitting at a table.
Another anecdote includes a man informing the local Belle Glade police department about an interesting experience he had with a group of the hijackers asking him about renting a crop duster. The man complained that nothing ever happened despite his complaint and even brought it up with Rick Hornsby of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office absorbed the Belle Glade police department in 2006). Hornsby said he looked into Lee’s complaints and found that “nothing was recorded...Nothing was made official.” It’s emblematic of the state of the affairs of the investigation: the anecdotes include anecdotes about how the investigations into the hijackers seemingly never happened.
So with the revelation of the Alec Station running cover for the ‘San Diego’ cell, and the still open question about what Alec Station was doing in relation to the large number of hijackers operating in South Florida, we also have to ask: what kind of cover was being run for the South Florida hijacker cells?
And that brings us to another very interesting set of details that can still be found in a September 24, 2001, Palm Beach Post article. In particular, the details found in an “unpublished correction” at the top of the article. An unpublished correction as follows:
Yes, according to this unpublished correction, Marwan al-Shehhi never lived in Delray Beach, despite the paper’s earlier reporting that yes indeed he lived in at the Hamlet Country Club in Delray Beach. In addition, the correction asserts that Nawaf al-Hazmi never lived in South Florida despite his listing a Delray Beach address when applying for a Florida drivers license.
So with all of the covering up of the Atta/al-Shehhi/Amanda Keller nexus, coupled with the revelations about Alec Station running cover for al-Hazmi, what are we to make of the fact that the FBI was refuting Delray Beach residences for both al-Shehhi and al-Hazmi?
Ok, first, here’s that September 4, 2011, Palm Beach Post article. Notably, while the Palm Beach Post version is only available via ProQuest, there’s still a September 5, 2011, version published in the Seattle Times...which doesn’t include the part about how the Belle Glade records of the crop duster incident are missing. So here’s an excerpt from the original report,
including the part about how the record of crop duster incident no longer exists:
“The official record of what the hijackers did in South Florida is scant. Despite an intense investigation of their activities here, very little information has been made public. So even after 10 years, there’s still nothing more than a disjointed collection of anecdotal snapshots from those who crossed their paths.”
It’s one of the enduring 9/11 mysteries: why is the official record of what the hijackers did in South Florida so scant? What’s the possible explanation? That was the question implicitly asked by this Palm Beach Post article nearly ten years after the attacks. Asked but not really answered. Instead, we’re left with a collection of anecdotes from local residents. Anecdotes that included reporting suspicious activities to local law enforcement, like Willie Lee’s report to the now-defunct Belle Glade police department about the hijackers’ interest in renting a crop duster. As Lee describes, he called the Belle Glade police but nothing ever came of it:
Now here’s a part that didn’t make it into the September 5, 2021, Seattle Times version of this article that’s still available online: Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Hornsby’s recounting of how all of the documentation of William Lee’s reports to the Belle Glade Police Department about Atta and al-Shehhi’s bizarre interest in crop dusters were unrecorded. “Nothing was made official,” as Hornsby put it. Now, it’s obviously possible that the lack of records are due to sloppy police work or lax record keeping policies. And then there’s the fact that the Belle Glade police department was later merged with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office in 2006. Maybe those records got lost in the shuffle? Maybe. But it’s hard to just accept sloppy record-keeping as the explanation outright when there’s an active and ongoing cover up of the official record on the South Florida cell. The fact that these details were left out of the still WWW-available Seattle Times version of this article doesn’t exactly quell suspicions either:
And with that disappearing police report in mind, here’s a September 24, 2001, Palm Beach Post report that’s still available via ProQuest.com that contains some very interesting ‘corrections’ on the South Florida whereabouts of Atta and al-Shehhi in particular. Interestingly, while the Palm Beach Post reported that Marwan Al-Shehhi lived at the Hamlet Country Club in Delray Beach, the FBI insisted that he lived in Hollywood, Florida. This ‘correction’ was one of two unpublished corrections in this article.
The second correction had to with with Nawaf al-Hazmi. Yes, there was evidence indicating he too had been in South Florida. Evidence in the form of a South Florida drivers license that listed an address on Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach. The FBI was listing addresses in New Jersey and Los Angeles for al-Hazmi, but not the Delray Beach address.
Both of these details are posted in the ‘unpublished correction’ at the top of this article. So given that we’ve now learned, 22 years later, that ‘Alec Station’ was running cover for al-Hazmi and possibly trying to recruit him as an asset, what does it tell us the FBI was apparently trying to refute the notion that both al-Hazmi and al-Shehhi were living in Delray Beach at one point? Is al-Hazmi’s activity with Atta and al-Shehhi in South Florida part of the reason Amanda Keller’s story had to be covered up:
“The scant information released by the FBI, the possibility of identity manipulation by the terrorists and the popularity of several of the names used by the terrorists in the Arab world raise the possibility that many of the facts reported about Al-Shehhi’s life, and the other terrorists’ lives, are illusions, created by terrorists to confuse American law enforcement and the public.”
Scant information and the possibility of identity manipulation. Yeah, that sounds about right for this story. Keep in mind that the report where Amanda Keller recants her earlier claims and absurdly asserts that it was a mysterious ‘second Mohamed’ who lived with her was published just three days before this, so the notion of identity manipulation was very much in the air at that point. Similarly, the idea that Mohamed Atta was Marwan al-Shehhi’s cousin or uncle was getting reported at the time, neither of which ever panned out:
And then we get to these very interest details: first, the article recounts how Atta and al-Shehhi trained at Huffman Aviation in Venice. Next, we are told, they came to the Broward and Palm Beach counties, with residents of Hollywood, FL, reporting seeing them living there for a few months ending in June or July (months that notably seem to immediately follow and not overlap the mysterious four month period in early 2001 period when Atta and al-Shehhi were allegedly living with Amanda Keller, but instead follow that period).
And then we get this very interesting detail: according to neighbor Grace Milline, who lived across the street from the apartment al-Shehhi might have occupied at one point, several of the hijackers tried to pick up women. And then we get an unnamed neighbor claiming that a woman lived in the an apartment with al-Shehhi. We aren’t told who this neighbor is or which apartment they are referring to, but it would be interesting to know of any other people this mystery woman could be other than Amanda Keller. Was this unnamed neighbor perhaps referring to the Sandpiper Apartments where Keller, Atta and al-Shehhi allegedly lived for four months? Was Keller still hanging out with them in the summer of 2001?
Adding to the mystery about which particular apartment that mystery neighbor was referring to where the mystery woman lived with al-Shehhi is this “unpublished correction” to the article: While the Palm Beach Post reported that al-Shehhi lived at the Hamlet Country Club in Delray Beach, the FBI was apparently refuting that Delray Beach address. But that’s the only instance of the FBI refuting that a hijacker was living in Delray Beach. Records show Nawaf al-Hhazmi had a Florida drivers license with a Delray Beach address. But the FBI was apparently refusing any Florida residence for Alhazmi entirely. Note that we were told the hijackers obtained Florida drivers licenses legally, with al-Hazmi getting his license on June 25, 2001, listing “the same address as two other suspected hijackers”. So records showed that Nawaf al-Hawzmi — one of the hijackers the ‘Alec Station’ FBI and CIA fusion center was running cover for in the months leading up to 9/11 — was using a South Florida address at some point, but the FBI was refuting this possibility at the time. So were al-Shehhi and al-Hazmi living in the same Delray Beach apartment at one point? If so, the FBI really doesn’t want us to know about it:
Then there’s this mysterious “third man” who was having drinks with Atta and al-Shehhi just four days for the attacks at a Hollywood, FL, bar. Who is this third man?
Finally, regarding the ambiguity on how many times they may have left the country, don’t forget one of the other ‘Alec Station’ revelations: they were tracking the international travel of al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar as they met with al-Qaeda operatives in Malaysia, and initially prevented CIA from informing the FBI that the two were back in the US after their Malaysia meeting. In other words, the still unresolved role Alec Station played in running cover for the hijackers is presumably part of the reason there was so much ambiguity over how many times they might have left the country:
There’s no shortage of disturbing anomalies in the story of what happened, both before and after the attacks. Lots of lots of anecdotes. These hijackers may have kept a low profile, but not so low they didn’t leave an impression. And that brings us to what we don’t see in these: anecdotes of Atta and al-Shehhi during the crucial ‘missing four months’ from Feb-May 2001, where they were supposedly already out of the Venice/Sarasota area despite everything we heard from Amanda Keller. We’ve heard lots of anecdotes about what hijackers were up to in South Florida...starting in June of 2001.
Where are the detailed anecdotes about what they were up to in the spring of 2001? Oh wait, there was that one Atta anecdote from April of 2001: the one about how he traveled to Prague to secretly meet with an Iraqi agent. You know, the fake anecdote used as pretext for the invasion of Iraq. So there was at least one anecdote from that period.
We’ve long know that Saudi intelligence operatives were assisting the 9/11 hijackers during their time in the US, in particular the assistance given to the ‘San Diego’ of Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar by presumed Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi. That just keeps getting confirmed, including the remarkable revelation released by the British government last year showing how al-Bayoumi possessed a diagram depicting a plane descending toward a target on the horizon. And thanks to the revelations earlier this year, we know that the Alec Station CIA/FBI fusion station was apparently tracking al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar with the hope of flipping them into double agents insider al Qaeda. So if the CIA was trying to flip al Qaeda agents who were getting assistance from Saudi intelligence, what exactly was Saudi intelligence — or perhaps other intelligence agencies — telling the CIA about the ‘flippability’ of these al Qaeda agents? It’s one of the many massive questions still lingering over this story. A question that seems to grow more massive with each revelation point towards both Saudi intelligence and the CIA running pre‑9/11 cover for these operatives while they were living and training in the US.
Questions that bring us back to the many remarkable claims made by two of the FBI agents who were assigned to Alec Station during the months leading up to 9/11: Mark Rossini and Doug Miller. As Rossini and Miller have recounted in a number of interviews over the years, when they discovered al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were back in the US in July of 2001, they were directly blocked by the CIA agents at Alec Station from informing the rest of the FBI. And as we’re going to see, the explanation Rossini recounts hearing from a CIA officer for why the FBI couldn’t be informed with rather remarkable: CIA officer Michael Anne Casey told Rossini that, “this was not a matter for the FBI. The next al-Qaeda attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia and their visas for America are just a diversion. You are not to tell the FBI about it. When and if we want the FBI to know about it, we will.”
Yes, the al Qaeda operatives’ time spent in US learning to fly planes was all a diversion, according to Alec Station’s CIA staff, and the real attack is going to happen somewhere in South East Asia. It’s the kind of ‘explanation’ for why the FBI can’t be informed that raises a dizzying number of questions. But perhaps the most pertinent questions is who was the target of this diversion? Keep in mind part of the context of this explanation given to Rossini: al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were tracked by the CIA to an al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, home of the 88-story tall Petronas Twin Towers. Were those towers the targets of CIA’s ‘Southeast Asia’ plot? Was Malaysian intelligence the target of this diversion? And just how many different intelligence agencies were there tracking this al Qaeda network?
And that question of how many different agencies were there tracking this network brings us to another interesting admission: according to an anonymous senior CIA officer who was assigned to Alec Station, the CIA officers running the show were not just young and inexperienced but they were likely receiving bad intelligence from other spies. As they put it, “I don’t think they ever personally talked to anybody...They just worked in their office in tennis shoes....They probably got a source through liaison. So their source [on the hijackers] might have been someone in the Saudi service who said they are talking to somebody, or someone in the Jordanian service who said he was talking to someone. As far I was concerned, they were a bunch of lying pieces of sh it. So they could’ve done that.” So Saudi, or maybe Jordanian, intelligence was feeding the CIA staff at Alec Station BS, according to the anonymous senior CIA official assigned to the unit. There’s echoes of Ali Mohamed here.
As we’re also go to see, Richard Clark, the national security advisor during the attacks, also concurred that some sort of al Qaeda recruitment operation was taking place. As Clark told reporters, “What I was told at the time was that they were going to try, for the first time, to get sources on the inside.” Clark went on to recall an emergency July 10, 2001, meeting at the White House with then-CIA Director George Tenet and the CIA’s counterterrorism leaders Cofer Black and Rich Blee, where there was no mention of the presence of al Qaeda operatives on US. Why no mention? The way Clark puts it, the “only conceivable reason that I’ve been able to come up with” is that they were running an illegal domestic operation to recruit al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi. And they didn’t want the FBI to get involved.
So the way Clark sees it, the operation run out of Alec Station was effectively so illegal it had to be completely obscured and covered up after the attacks. And as we’re going see, Rossini not only claims that the CIA ordered him to not mention any of this to congressional investigators, but a CIA officer was actually sitting in the room when Rossini was providing his testimony.
Was 9/11 really, ultimately, a matter of young inexperienced CIA agents botching their recruitment effort? A recruitment effort that involved allowing a terrorist network to train inside the US for well over a year to gain the piloting skills needed to carry out an attack in Southeast Asia? If so, that’s kind of wildly scandalous.
And yet it’s hard to accept that as a complete answer, as damning an answer as ‘we were facilitating an attack elsewhere but got hit ourselves instead. oops’ really is as an apparent explanation. For all of the focus on al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, we still have learned almost nothing about what kind CIA awareness of the South Florida cell around Mohamed Atta, the apparent ring leader of the operation. Nor have we ever received a satisfying explanation for the mysterious Sarasota Saudi family who appears to have played a similar role to the role al-Baymoumi was playing in San Diego and who, like al-Bayoumi, similarly suddenly fled the country in an apparent panic weeks before the attacks.
Nor does this ‘flipping al Qaeda’ narrative neatly fit with the whole Amanda Keller story and her accounts of Atta networking with figures like Wolfgang Bohringer. Or the intense near-immediate crackdown on Keller and her story less than two weeks after the attacks. Something she witnessed was hyper sensitive to the US national security state. Was it evidence that confirms this ‘flipping al Qaeda agents, but then it went awry’ narrative? Or belies that narrative? We still don’t know.
Ok, first, here’s a September 9, 2021, NorthJersey.com article, published nearly 20 years later to the day, recounting the extensive paper trail left by the hijackers in the North Jersey area during their time in the US. A paper trail that includes visits and stays from by al-Hazmi and Atta, all using their real names. In other words, they weren’t actually hiding themselves during their time in the US or really obscuring their movements at all. Which, again, raises all sorts of questions about just how closely was Alec Station tracking this network’s movements inside the US. An al Qaeda network that was being assisted by Saudi intelligence on US soil and seemingly wasn’t really doing anything to hide itself from the entities tracking it:
“But examining that story now, as America commemorates the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, reignites one of the most persistent and controversial mysteries of that tragic day: How did 19 men from the Middle East — most of whom barely spoke English — manage to pull off such a deadly mission without being detected?”
Yes, it’s quite a mystery two decades later: how did the hijackers manage to spend so much time in the US actively plotting the attacks without being detected? Which, of course, brings us to the real mystery here. That being the mystery of how the CIA knew about the presence of suspected al Qaeda operatives in the US without informing the FBI. A mystery that became far less mysterious following all of the allegations about the higher-ups at the FBI and CIA blocking that information, like the 2015 allegations of FBI agent Mark Rossini that we are going to look at below. Or the the revelations this year about the Alec Station operation likely trying to recruit Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. But even that revelation still left us with the lingering mystery about what the FBI and CIA may have known, and been hiding, about the rest of the hijackers’ activities in the US. Because as we now know, the hijackers were all moving around meeting each other during their time in the US. Like the fact that al-Hazmi got his drivers license in Florida listing a South Florida address. How aware was the CIA and FBI to the larger networking taking place around al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar? It’s a question that looms ever larger when we factor in the still unresolved mystery and apparent cover up around Amanda Keller’s time with Mohammed Atta. That’s all part of the context of these recollections — reported in 2021, 20 years later — of the extensive trail of data left by the hijackers discovered seemingly only after they succeeded in operating under the radar. Because if they weren’t actually under the radar, it seems pretty obvious that anyone tracking the movements of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar could have been made aware of this much larger network. They were leaving trackable trails under their real names in real-time across the US:
And note how this article published on September 9, 2021 — almost exactly 20 years after the event — maintained the narrative that the CIA — which is barred from domestic US operations — simply lost track of the al-Qaeda operatives it was tracking internationally whenever they would arrive back in the US and and merely ‘botched’ the hand off of that crucial information to the FBI. A narrative that turns the events described the FBI agents like Mark Rossini about how they were blocked by senior FBI and CIA leadership from passing that information along into a simple ‘botching’, but also a narrative that preceded the 2023 revelations about Alec Station likely angling to recruit at least some of the hijackers, the presumed pretext for blocking the information sharing with the FBI about al-Qaeda operatives living and engaging in flight training inside the US. It’s an example of both how much has been revealed but ignored and how much remains covered up:
But when we look more closely at Rossini’s allegations, note what else he alleges: that his CIA colleagues at the time told him the arrival of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi was not a sign of an attack on America but a diversion. Instead, the CIA believed that the next al-Qaeda attack would take place in South East Asia. Keep in mind that both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi attended flight school while they were in the US. So the CIA was apparently willing to allow al-Qaeda operatives obtain flight training in the US while under the belief that these operatives were involved with a plot targeted South East Asia, because they were hoping to eventually recruit them? It’s a scenario that begs the question: so what exactly did the CIA think this Southeast Asian plot was going would be? Might it involve crashing planes into buildings? Let’s not forget that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were tracked by the CIA in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a city with its own symbolic twin towers. Was the CIA tracking these two al Qaeda operatives and hoping to recruit them while under the suspicion that they were learning to fly planes into South East Asian towers? Because it kind of looks that way given the available facts:
Now let’s take a closer look at what exactly Rossini recalled being told by the Alec Station CIA officers about the terrorists on US soil they were ordering Rossini to stay quiet about. As we can see in the following 2015 Newsweek article, Rossini talked about how CIA officer Michael Anne Casey told him, “this was not a matter for the FBI. The next al-Qaeda attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia and their visas for America are just a diversion. You are not to tell the FBI about it. When and if we want the FBI to know about it, we will.”
So when the FBI was belated informed about the presences of al-Qaeda terrorists on US soil weeks before 9/11, that was presumably done at the CIA’s behest. Which raises the question: did the CIA actually want the FBI to find these hijackers? Or did the CIA know an attack was just weeks away and had confidence that the FBI wasn’t going to be able to find and disrupt the operation in time, making the disclosure a kine of preemptive ass-covering maneuver?
But Rossini isn’t the only figure making amazing claims in this article. An unnamed senior CIA officer who worked at Alec Station and former national security advisor Richard Clark both appear to agree that the CIA was trying to covertly recruit al Qaeda operatives. The senior CIA officer tried to characterize the situation as a bunch of rookie operatives given too much power to conduct an operation they lacked the experience to wisely conduct, in particular when it came to believing the intelligence they were hearing from other intelligence services. As they put it, “I don’t think they ever personally talked to anybody...They just worked in their office in tennis shoes....They probably got a source through liaison. So their source [on the hijackers] might have been someone in the Saudi service who said they are talking to somebody, or someone in the Jordanian service who said he was talking to someone. As far I was concerned, they were a bunch of lying pieces of sh it. So they could’ve done that.” So according to this unnamed senior Alec Station officer, it was junior agents taking bad advice from ‘somebody’ — maybe someone in Jordanian intelligence, they suggest — while trying to recruit al-Qaeda operatives that led to disaster.
Richard Clark is a bit more candid, suggesting that the CIA was running an illegal operation on US soil that it was trying to hide from the rest of the government. As Clark has told reporters, “What I was told at the time was that they were going to try, for the first time, to get sources on the inside.” And yet Clark can also recall an emergency July 10, 2001, meeting at the White House with then-CIA Director George Tenet and the CIA’s counterterrorism leaders Cofer Black and Rich Blee, where there was no mention of the presence of al Qaeda operatives on US. Why no mention? The way Clark puts it, the “only conceivable reason that I’ve been able to come up with” is that they were running an illegal domestic operation to recruit al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi. And they didn’t want the FBI to get involved.
So both Clark and this anonymous senior CIA official assign to Alec Station roughly back up Rossini’s version of events and agree that flipping al Qaeda operatives was one of the CIA’s goals pre‑9/11, with the CIA official also suggesting that the Alec Station crew was getting bad intelligence about these potential double agents from some Middle Eastern intelligence agency. Which would suggest the CIA was fine with allowing al Qaeda operatives to get flight training in the US — with the assistance of Saudi intelligence operatives like Omar al-Bayoumi — so they could attack tall buildings in South East Asia. Which would be incredibly scandalous if true. Too scandalous to ever publicly admit:
“That the CIA did block him and Doug Miller, a fellow FBI agent assigned to the “Alec Station,” the cover name for CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, from notifying bureau headquarters about the terrorists has been told before, most notably in a 2009 Nova documentary on PBS, “The Spy Factory.” Rossini and Miller related how they learned earlier from the CIA that one of the terrorists (and future hijacker), Khalid al-Mihdhar, had multi-entry visas on a Saudi passport to enter the United States. When Miller drafted a report for FBI headquarters, a CIA manager in the top-secret unit told him to hold off. Incredulous, Miller and Rossini had to back down. The station’s rules prohibited them from talking to anyone outside their top-secret group.”
As we can see, Mark Rossini and Doug Miller — two of the FBI agents assigned to Alec Station — got as far as drafting a report for FBI headquarters about they learned from the CIA that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — known al-Qaeda operatives at that point — held multi-entry that would allow them back into the US. But a CIA manager, Michael Anne Casey, forced them to back down. Because as Casey put it, the true target of their attack was somewhere in South East Asia and their time in was just a diversion. Yes, a diversion. Taken at face value, it’s hard not to conclude that the CIA was complicit in allowing operatives use the US as not only a ‘diversion’, but a ‘diversion’ that would allow them to acquire piloting skills. Which, again, raises the question: so did the CIA expect this South East Asia attack to include hijacking planes and flying them into buildings? Because it sure sounds like that’s not only the case but that the CIA was out to protect the diversion these assumed terrorists were perpetrating with their time in the US:
But also keep in mind one of the implicit questions raised by the whole ‘diversion’ language: who was the target of this diversion? Or to put it another way, just how many different entities were there tracking the movements and activities of these hijackers? Al Qaeda presumably wasn’t carrying out a diversion for the CIA with its US-based network. Was Malaysian intelligence tracking this al Qaeda cell? Who else?
Well, of course, there was another very significant player tracking this network. Trafficking and directly assisting: Saudi intelligence. As we’ve see, we don’t really have to ask whether or not Saudi intelligence was assisting the ‘San Diego’ cell of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. Evidence of assistance by presumed Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi is extensive at this point, as is strong circumstantial evidence that the Saudi family of interest in Sarasota, Florida, visited by Mohamed Atta was also provided direct assistance.
And that brings us to the still remarkable comments from former national security advisor Richard Clarke: When describing the possible rationales for why it was that the CIA blocked the sharing of information about al-Qaeda operatives on US soil, the only explanation Clarke comes up with is that the CIA was running an illegal operation on US soil and didn’t want Congress to know about it. It’s the kind of explanation that just reverberates with profound questions. Sure, part of the ostensible explanation is that the CIA was trying to cultivate double agents inside al Qaeda. But that explanation really doesn’t explain the ‘diversion’ that the CIA was trying to protect. as the CIA allied with Saudi intelligence in setting up some sort of terror attack in South East Asia? Because that’s abhorrent if true. But abhorrent or not, a scenario like that is where the available evidence points:
Also note the comments from a former unnamed Alec Station CIA officer: the folks making the calls were just frequently junior analysts who eschewed the advice of their elders. A lack of wisdom that manifested in the form of taking ill-advised intelligence from a variety of sources they shouldn’t have trusted. Sources like “someone in the Jordanian service who said he was talking to someone”. In other words, this senior CIA agent involved the Alec station is suggest the junior agents were making calls but made them poorly based on Middle Eastern intelligence partners. Or as the senior agent put it, “I don’t think they ever personally talked to anybody...They just worked in their office in tennis shoes....They probably got a source through liaison. So their source [on the hijackers] might have been someone in the Saudi service who said they are talking to somebody, or someone in the Jordanian service who said he was talking to someone. As far I was concerned, they were a bunch of lying pieces of sh it. So they could’ve done that.” It’s a strangely vague recollection from a senior CIA officer for how things played out:
Finally, note how Rossini and Miller never ended up sharing their experiences with congressional investigators. Why? Because the two agents were told by the CIA not to say anything to the investigators. And when they were interviewed, a CIA official was sitting in the room monitoring their testimony. The full scope of what Alec Station was up to was kept a secret from congress under orders from the CIA. That’s a clue as to what we are looking at here:
So we can see how, with Alec Station, we have an operation that is so wildly scandalous on its own it can never possibly be honestly discussed publicly due to the massive reputational damage that would be incurred by the US government. And possibly illegal too, as Richard Clark pointed out.
And that’s part of what makes the ‘we tried to recruit them but it didn’t go as planned’ narrative so...convenient. Because if one was planning an operation that could NEVER EVER be revealed, running that operation through something like Alec Station would be a great way to do it. Layer upon layer of national security excuses already in place for why the truth can never be revealed. It’s like a diabolical application of some sort of spy game theory. If you can identify a morally egregious operation that can never be revealed under any circumstances ever, what else can you slip into that operation?
The picture keeps getting dark with each new revelation. And each new ‘oops!, we didn’t mean for that to happen’ explanation for all the ‘dropped balls’ in the months leading up to 9/11. Dropped balls that increasingly appear to have been intentionally dropped as part of the joint CIA-FBI illegal domestic operation seemingly running cover for the 9/11 hijacker on US soil. Apparently all as part of some sort of ‘diversion’ in anticipation of an al-Qaeda attack expected somewhere in Southeast Asia, according to the CIA agents working in Alec Station.
So with evidence increasingly pointing towards the CIA and FBI effectively ensuring the 9/11 hijackers were going to receive their flight training in the US unencumbered, and with the specific focus on protecting the suspected terrorist status of the two ‘San Diego cell’ members Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar — ostensibly so the CIA could flip them to double agents — it’s worth looking at some of the still remarkable details that emerged in the post‑9/11 investigations. Details that sure sound remarkable familiar with the many mysterious still swirling around the story of Mohamed Atta and Amanda Keller.
For starters, it turns out that a professor who rented al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar rooms in his home for several months in 2000 was himself an active FBI undercover informant. Not only that, but this professor was explicitly tasked by the FBI with keeping an eye on the Saudi youth community. Incredibly, it appears the professor never told the FBI the identities of the two men living with him and the FBI agent assigned to this professor never inquired.
Keep in mind that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were holding private meetings with none other than Anwar al-Awlaki at this time. Also keep in mind that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were the two figures who ‘happened to meet’ Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi upon their arrival in San Diego. In other words, by the time they ended up renting a room from this professor in the fall of 2000, they were already under the protection of Saudi intelligence and presumably also the CIA (presumably in coordination with Saudi intelligence).
And then we get to some details that were revealed in Senator Phil Graham’s congressional investigation into the attacks: while the professor characterized the two renters as very quiet and highly pious young men who kept to themselves, Graham’s investigation got a very different picture. One of wild partying wand going out to night clubs and strip clubs. Al-Hazmi even wanted to marry a stripper at one point.
So what’s the explanation for the FBI missing how one of its own assets rented a room to two of the hijackers? Well, according the conclusions of the various FBI or the inspector general’s reports, the FBI was more focused on drug trafficking. Which, of course, is a reminder of the fact that federal agents busted a Lear Jet belonging to Rudy Dekkers with 43 pounds of heroin in July of 2000. Which raises the question: was Dekkers’s drug trafficking activities — which he was busted for in 2012 — somehow acting as a kind of diversion of its own? Something to keep the FBI in ‘hands off’ mode while the CIA’s illegal terror operation plays out? We don’t know, but the more revelations we get the more we have to ask.
Ok, first, here’s a September 2002 report about the then-new revelation about the FBI informant renting rooms out to two of the hijacker. A “tested” asset who was working closely with the FBI at the time. It was the kind of significant revelation that seems to get more significant with each new revelation:
“Newsweek magazine reports that Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi lived with a “tested” undercover “asset” who had been working closely with the FBI office in San Diego.”
A “tested” undercover “asset” who had been working closely with the local FBI office. That’s who Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi rented a room from at one point in 2000. This was discovered all the way back in 2002. By congressional investigators. Which is another way of saying that the FBI already knew about this but waited for congressional investigators to find out:
And note how the FBI agent assigned to this roommate never asked about the identities of the two men renting a room from this undercover asset. Two roommates who just happened to be under CIA surveillance at the time over their al Qaeda ties. It was an apparent oversight that became incredibly convenient for the 9/11 plot when the CIA finally sent out that belated August 23, 2001, memo naming these two specifically as possible terrorists:
And all of this was known as far back as 2002. Flash forward to the following September 2011 interview of KPBS Investigative Reporter Amita Sharma on the lives al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar lived during their time in San Diego, and we find some extremely interesting additional details. Details that sound very familiar to the ‘this never happened’ story around Mohamed Atta and Amanda Keller.
Now, according to the FBI-informant professor who rented the pair of hijackers rooms in his home for a time in 2000, the two were extremely pious and religiously conservative and lived quiet lives. Notably, this professor was explicitly tasked by the FBI with keeping an eye on the Saudi youth living in the area. Keep in mind that the religious activities of the two hijackers at the time included private meetings with Anwar al-Awlaki.
But according to the findings of Senator Phil Graham, a very different picture emerges. One of wild partying and going out to nightclubs and strip clubs. Al-Hazmi even wanted to marry a stripper at one point, according to Graham’s findings.
And then Sharma points to this extremely interesting detail from Graham’s investigation: part of the alleged reason the FBI ‘dropped the ball’ so extensively in keep an eye out for terrorists is that it was focused on drug trafficking. Which, of course, is a reminder that Rudy Dekkers was running a heroin trafficking operation.
Now, on the one hand, it seems like the inclusion of a drug trafficking operation with your illegal domestic terror-related operation is just asking for more trouble. But if it really was the case that the FBI’s ‘focus on drug trafficking’ was somehow systematically blinding the agency to a domestic terrorist operation the CIA wanted to keep hidden, that raises all sorts of questions about the decision to have the South Florida terror cell training at Huffman Aviation. Was commingling an illegal domestic terror operation with drug-trafficking a way of keeping the whole this more hidden from domestic law enforcement? And what about the San Diego cell? Was there some sort of drug trafficking angle there we never learned about? We still don’t know. But the more we learn about the CIA and FBI senior leadership running cover for the hijackers, the more we have to ask:
“CAVANAUGH: We have two differing reports of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi while they were here in San Diego. Some people say they were quiet and they kept to themselves. Others say they went wild while they were here.”
Two completely different reports of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi: one report — from the professor who rented them the rooms — of pious individuals who kept to themselves, and another report — from Senator Phil Graham’s congressional investigation — of party animals who went wild. Al-Hazmi even apparently wanted to marry a stripper according to Graham. It’s a juxtaposition that sure sounds awfully reminiscent of the Mohamed Atta/Amanda Keller story that also allegedly never happened:
And note how the professor renting the rooms wasn’t just a random FBI informant. He was specifically tasked with keeping an eye on the Saudi youth in the San Diego area. Which makes their private meetings with Anwar al-Awlaki at the time all the more remarkable:
And then we get to this very interesting seeming explanation for why it was that the FBI had so little interest in men living with their FBI asset tasked with keeping an eye on the Saudi youth in the community: the FBI was allegedly too focused on drug trafficking. Which, of course, brings us back to the whole story of Rudy Dekkers and heroin trafficking operation taking place at Huffman Aviation. A story that effectively confirmed with the 2012 arrest of Dekkers in Houston on drug trafficking charges. So with at least some of the hijackers training at a facility where drug trafficking was taking place, was drug trafficking used as a kind of ‘don’t look for terrorists’ cover for this operation? Let’s not forget that all signs are at this point that the CIA was running what was effectively an illegal domestic operation. Was the inclusion of drug traffickers part of that effort to ‘officially’ hide what was happening by giving the FBI an excuse to view the operation with special drug-related blinders?
This is also a good time to keep in mind that it was 1998 when the CIA publicly acknowledged its direct role in the Iran-Contra crack cocaine trafficking operations. So, again, we have to ask if there was some sort of ‘hands off, just observe and wait’ kind of protocol that kicks in for drug trafficking operations? Was the FBI getting hints that certain drug traffickers had CIA ties and should be given a wide berth? It’s just some of the many still unanswered questions hanging over this story. Questions that simultaneously grow more and more stale with time, and yet more and more urgent with each shocking revelation and their shocking implications.
It was the big story of the Israel/Gaza conflict this week. The big revelation about what Israel knew and when it knew it. And just the latest revelation, following a series reports on the massive ‘intelligence failures’ that led up to the October 7 surprise mass terror strike. Right away, we were told about ignored warnings from Egyptian intelligence that resulted in a redeployment of Israeli forces away from Gaza to the West Bank. Then we learned about how Israel actually had a high level mole near Hamas’s leadership who was exposed just days before the attack. And then we learned that even the US intelligence community apparently decided to stop tracking Hamas in recent years, with new ambitions of recruiting Hamas as assets against ISIS taking hold. When references to ‘9/11-style intelligence failures’ the entire time.
So, perhaps fittingly given the ‘9/11-style intelligence failure’ theme of the narratives that have taken hold, we are now learning that Israel was well aware of Hamas’s plans for years now, going back to 2016 when the first plans for something on the scale of October 7 were revealed.
The most recent playbook for the attack was a 40-page document given the codename “Jericho Wall” by Israeli intelligence. The plans included the kind of full spectrum assault that Israel experienced on October 7. The document is said to have been widely circulated among Israeli intelligence officials, but was determined to be beyond Hamas’s capabilities. And yet, in July, a Unit 8200 actually picked up on an intense, daylong training exercise Hamas conducted that appeared similar to what was outlined in the Jericho Wall blueprint. A senior Hamas commander was observing the training exercise. Her concerns were brushed off by a colonel as a “totally imaginative” scenario not indicative of Hamas’s capabilities.
Yes, in less than two months, the narrative has already gone from “Israel had no idea this was coming” to “actually, Israel had extensive warnings this was coming, but brushed them off as fantastical.” How will the narrative evolve from here? We’ll see, but the fact that we now know this wasn’t actually a surprise attack is presumably not going to do anything to quell suspicions that this was an attack welcomed by the extremists in the far right Netanyahu coalition government.
It’s that fact that this was an Israeli government run by far right extremists who probably welcome this broader conflict and yet somehow managed to oversee this amazing ‘intelligence failure’ that brings us to one of the parallels here to the pre‑9/11 ‘intelligence failures’ that hasn’t received much attention over the last 22 years, but is only becoming harder and harder to ignore as time go by: the person running the ‘Alec Station’ CIA/FBI fusion center tasked with tracking al Qaeda is himself an open fascist. That would, of course, by Michael Scheuer, the original station chief for Alec Station who held that position until 1999. Flash forward to today, and Scheuer regularly calls for mass violence against Democrats and other leftist. Calls for mass violence that are only growing louder as we get closer to the 2024 election cycle. In fact, back in July, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro went on Scheuer’s podcast for an interview during which Scheuer expressed the sentiment that the 2nd Amendment is needed “to take care of these vermin” who “rigged” elections. So when Trump was calling for the mass jailing of “vermin” last month, he was echoing Mike Scheuer.
In addition, it also turns out Scheuer’s future wife was one of the analyst working with Scheuer at Alec Station. Alfreda Bikowsky was recruited there in the late 90s as chief of operations and set out to expand what “operation” could mean. Instead of just recruiting foreign nationals, operations also meant “figuring out who it is that we should be looking for, who they’re connected to,” according to Bikowsky. Recall how one of the unusual aspects of how Alec Station operated that was seen as a conflict of interest by many is how ‘Alec Station’ wasn’t just running cover for al-Hazmi but also possibly trying to recruit him as an asset. That combination of surveillance and recruitment wasn’t standard and might lead to situations where the agency is conflicted about what intelligence it can share with the rest of the intelligence community. But it was how Alec Station operated and Mike Scheuer’s future wife (they got married in 2014) is the person who played a key role in that unusual arrangement. In fact, Bikowsky is named by whistleblowers as one of the key figures who blocked the sharing of information about the 9/11 hijackers. Post‑9/11, Bikowsky went on to become a central person in the CIA’s black site interrogation programs.
Yes, the guy running Alec Station until 1999 is, today, an open fascist calling for mass political violence. And his now-wife has been named as one of the figures who ran cover for the 9/11 hijackers, effectively protecting their terror operation from US law enforcement. It’s one of many interesting things about the 9/11 intelligence failure that hasn’t received much attention over the past couple of decades, in part because it wasn’t clear at first just what a fascist nut job Michael Scheuer was going to become. But that’s clear now.
So with revelation that Israel’s far right government in fact knew about Hamas’s but somehow just brushed them off as fantasy, resulting in a massive conflict likely welcomed by many of these same extremists, amid growing comparisons to the ‘9/11-style’ intelligence failures that took place, it’s probably now a good time to finally recognize the extremist politics behind some of key people involved.
Ok, first, here’s an excerpt of that big NY Times report on the latest round of revelations. Revelations that happen to directly contradict the ‘we had no idea this was coming’ initial narrative we’ve been told this whole time:
“Officials would not say how they obtained the Jericho Wall document, but it was among several versions of attack plans collected over the years. A 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum viewed by The Times, for example, says, “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory.””
The Jericho Wall document was like a smoke detector sounding off. But it was far from the first sign of smoke. Documents detailing some sort of massive attack of this nature have been obtained by Israeli intelligence as far back as 2016. So when we are told that Israeli senior intelligence officers were inclined to casually dismiss the warnings signs in the Jericho Wall document as more aspirational than concrete, it’s important to realize that they weren’t just dismissing the warnings in Jericho Wall. They were also dismissing all of those prior warnings that include the fact that Hamas had purchased sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers and drones and significantly increased the size of its fighting force:
But that Jericho Wall document wasn’t the only recent warning sign of something big coming. A far more concrete warning came in the form of July 6, 2023, Unit 8200 analyst who learned about senior Hamas commanders observing commando training exercises in line with the Jericho Wall plans. As she noted, during the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan:
Finally, there’s the inevitable comparison to the 9/11 intelligence failures. Comparisons that almost never incorporate the full scope of what we have learned over the past two decades about the nature of those ‘failures’:
And while there is indeed a number of parallels with the 9/11 Intelligence failures, it’s worth noting one rather superficial similarity: gender. It was a female Unit 8200 analyst who raised these ignored Jericho Wall warnings, just as it was a largely female team at Alec Station who were tasked with tracking and identify the al Qaeda threat pre‑9/11. Or at least that’s the narrative that’s taken hold. Again, it’s superficial. As we’ve seen, the Alec Station CIA/FBI fusion station was apparently tracking 9/11 hijackers al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar with the hope of flipping them into double agents insider al Qaeda. And as former FBI agent Mark Rossini claims, it was the CIA team at Alec Station who blocked him from notifying the rest of the FBI about the presence of al Qaeda hijackers on US soil. According to Rossini, CIA officer Michael Anne Casey told Rossini that, “this was not a matter for the FBI. The next al-Qaeda attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia and their visas for America are just a diversion. You are not to tell the FBI about it. When and if we want the FBI to know about it, we will.” If anything, based on the evidence available today, it looks like the Alec Station team effectively ran cover for the 9/11 hijackers.
But that’s not the narrative that’s taken hold. Instead, we’ve gotten a narrative about how the women of Alec Station warned the US intelligence community about the looming 9/11 plot, but were ignored. A narrative that is getting another boost with the publication of a new book on this chapter of history, an excerpt of which was recently published in The Atlantic. And while most of the article delivers the standard narrative — that one of the Alec Station analysts put together the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing warning of an impending attack that was ignored by the Bush administration — that ignores all the moves Alec Station was making to block the dissemination of knowledge of the 9/11 hijackers, the article does point towards an aspect of this story that’s received very little attention over the years: the head of Alec Station until 1999, Michael Scheuer, is today an open fascist calling for mass political violence.
In addition, it also turns out Scheuer’s future wife, Alfreda Bikowsky, was one of the analyst working with Scheuer at Alec Station. Bikowsky set out to expand what “operation” could mean, so instead of just recruiting foreign nationals, operations also meant “figuring out who it is that we should be looking for, who they’re connected to,” according to Bikowsky. Recall how one of the unusual aspects of how Alec Station operated that was seen as a conflict of interest by many is how ‘Alec Station’ wasn’t just running cover for al-Hazmi but also possibly trying to recruit him as an asset. That combination of surveillance and recruitment wasn’t standard and might lead to situations where the agency is conflicted about what intelligence it can share with the rest of the intelligence community. But it was how Alec Station operated and Mike Scheuer’s future wife (they got married in 2014) is the person who played a key role in that unusual arrangement. In fact, Bikowsky is named by whistleblowers as one of the key figures who blocked the sharing of information about the 9/11 hijackers. Post‑9/11, Bikowsky went on to become a central person in the CIA’s black site interrogation programs.
So the guy running Alec Station until 1999 is, today, an open fascist calling for mass political violence. And his now-wife has been named as one of the figures who ran cover for the 9/11 hijackers, effectively protecting their terror operation from US law enforcement. It’s one of many interesting things about the 9/11 intelligence failure that hasn’t received much attention over the past couple of decades, in part because it wasn’t clear at first just what a fascist nut job Michael Scheuer was going to become. But that’s clear now. Which is why it’s probably worth asking, belatedly, what role fascist extremism may have played in the US’s many pre‑9/11 ‘intelligence failures’:
“The day of the attacks, the CIA staff evacuated headquarters, except for people in the counterterrorist center. The women there, who thought that a plane might be headed for Langley—and for them—felt a mixture of fear, anger, failure, resentment, and guilt. In the coming years, they worked to prevent more attacks and to track down the perpetrators, particularly bin Laden. One team member, Jennifer Matthews, died in that effort, killed alongside colleagues when a suicide bomber infiltrated the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. Some, like Cindy Storer and Barbara Sude, continued hunting terrorists for many years, until they retired. Gina Bennett was still at the CIA when bin Laden was found and killed on May 2, 2011, and stayed on for years after that. Freda Bikowsky, who went on to direct the “global jihad” unit, married Michael Scheuer in 2014 (she now goes by Alfreda Scheuer). Scheuer, meanwhile, was eased out of Alec Station in 1999 and left the agency in 2004, after growing more and more outspoken about the Iraq War and other issues. He went on to create a blog where he has expressed admiration for QAnon, claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, supported mob violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, and called for the killing of journalists and Democratic politicians, among other extremist views. (“He bears no resemblance to the man I knew,” Bennett told me.)”
Michael Scheuer, the former head of Alec Station, is an open fascist. That seems like an underappreciated aspect of the history of the 9/11 ‘intelligence failures’. Scheuer is described by his colleagues as having always been “a little nuts”. What kind of “a little nuts” are we talking about? A little fascist nuts? Because his contemporary fascism didn’t come from nowhere:
It’s also rather noteworthy that the Alec Station analyst who ended up marrying Scheuer, Alfreda Bikowski, is the same person who reportedly expanded the definition of “operations” to include “figuring out who it is that we should be looking for, who they’re connected to.” Recall how one of the unusual aspects of how Alec Station operated that was seen as a conflict of interest by many is how ‘Alec Station’ wasn’t just running cover for al-Hazmi but also possibly trying to recruit him as an asset. That combination of surveillance and recruitment wasn’t standard and might lead to situations where the agency is conflicted about what intelligence it can share with the rest of the intelligence community. But it was how Alec Station operated and Mike Scheuer’s future wife is the person who played a key role in that:
So to get a sense of just how openly fascist Mike Scheuer has gotten these days, here’s a MediaMatters report from back in July where Scheuer tells Fox News Jeanine Pirro the 2020 elections were “rigged and he thanks God that “the Second Amendment remains in the Constitution because I don’t know how else to take care of these vermin.” That’s when, when Trump called for the mass jailing of Democratic “vermin” last month, he was echoing Michael Scheuer from July. Which raises the grimly interesting question as to whether or not Scheuer is going to be serving in the next Trump administration. Because when it comes to appeal to the vengeful Donald Trump we see today, Scheuer is certainly putting together one hell of a resume:
“Toward the end of the interview, Scheuer said that the 2024 election won’t make “any difference” since 2020 and 2022 “were rigged … without question.” He then told her: “What happens then when things don’t change? I think, you know, I praise God every night that the Second Amendment remains in the Constitution because I don’t know how else to take care of these vermin.””
Mike Scheuer has clearly mastered the kind of fascist dog-whistling that defines politics in the Trump era. Again, is he planning on working for the second Trump administration? Perhaps as some sort of purge master? Time will tell, but Scheuer stopped hiding his politics a while ago.
And yet there’s still the question of when exactly he adopted these politics. Was Scheuer a closet fascist in 1990s while working at Alec Station? How about Alfreda Bikowsky? And what about her politics today? Does she share her husband’s political blood lust? Unpleasant questions, no doubt, but the kinds of questions that should probably be asked at some point. And here we are, with Israel facing a disturbing array of questions with a number of parallels to this same dark chapter in the 9/11 ‘intelligence failures’. Might as well ask them them now that Mike Scheuer is agitating for mass slaughter. Better later than never.