James Charles
(Cont'd) Washington’s Darkest Secret
Wed Apr 6, 2005 05:49
64.140.158.22
It has been reported elsewhere that Osama bin Laden said that he was involved in some of the planning for 9/11. It was bin Laden, for example, who vetoed a plan involving crashing 10 or more planes into buildings all over the United States at one time as being too complicated. He also approved the final plan although not specific targets, the men who were to carry it out and even suggested a few names to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker and the field man responsible for overseeing the operation.
More to the point, bin Laden did this around the time of George Tenet’s Sunday trip to President Bush’s ranch in Texas.
Also, it was bin Laden who personally approved sending money to the US to fund the operation, and at least one published report traces the money from Atta’s Florida bank back through a series of European and Middle Eastern banks to a financial institution in Dubai, which was controlled by the man who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. According to the French journalist Bernard-Henri Levy, that man also happened to be working for the Pakistani security services at the time he was helping bin Laden move money to Florida and Atta’s bank account, as well as when he ordered and helped carry out Pearl’s assassination.
Given the relatively senior position the mole occupied in bin Laden’s organization, it is likely that he knew and tipped off his CIA handlers about the coming attack.
“It’s unlikely that he knew a date or specific targets,” said one person familiar with how moles operate, especially because bin Laden did not know, “but he sure as hell knew that multiple planes were going to be crashed into several buildings, sometime in September.”
“If he didn’t,” claimed another former intelligence official, “then we were wasting whatever money the CIA was paying him. That’s why you work so hard to recruit and nurture a mole, hold their hands, educate their children if need be and wait so long for them to be in a position to help: To give you just this kind of critical information five or 10 or 20 years from now.”
Piecing together what was is known to be facts, what is speculated about by reliable insiders on what type of al Qaeda secrets were learned through the mole, the way moles are run by the agency and the remarkable coincidence of the timing between the Tenet-Bush meeting in Crawford, several hypothesis can be constructed.
1. The coming attack. It is viewed by insiders as entirely likely that the CIA director told President Bush in August that al Qaeda was planning an immediate attack using commercial airplanes as guided missiles. Tenet could not give the president targets or a date, but he did have a name: Mohammad Atta, and there was sufficient information available to beef up airport and cockpit security and do a much closer job of screening passengers as they boarded flights.
All of this could have been done without signaling to al Qaeda that the US had penetrated its innermost circles. For example, the government apparently knew of Atta and at least some of the others involved in the plot by sometime in late August. Their names could have been sent to every airline flying into the US, especially domestic carriers. “No one would have noticed a thing,” said a former CIA insider. “Just one more name on a list.”
2. A manhunt. Had the CIA given the name of Zacharias Moussaoui to the FBI, chances are that the request from the Minneapolis field office to get a warrant permitting searching Moussaoui’s computer would have been granted. The 9/11 Commission report severely reprimanded all of the nation’s intelligence agencies for not sharing more information, more quickly. But even with the stone walls between competing bureaucracies slowing the flow of information, the president could have -- and should have -- told the CIA director to get whatever information he has over to the FBI, and quickly.
“If the president couldn’t direct that action be taken, than either he is totally useless or the various agencies are really good at playing bureaucracy turf games,” said a retired CIA employee. “It sounds like there was some of each going on in August 2001.
Bush also could have directed Tenet to provide information to immigration officers. Without revealing to anyone why it was being done, a nationwide manhunt could have been launched for Atta and the others known to the government as being inside the US. After 9/11, it turned out that most of the hijackers had violated their visas, and could have been detained and deported. At least one person, Atta, was probably in violation of US banking laws and regulations. It could have been positioned as a routine immigration roundup, thus not tipping off anyone in Afghanistan or elsewhere that an insider was funneling information to Washington.
3. Likely targets. If someone told an ordinary citizen of average intelligence that terrorists plan to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings, it wouldn’t take them very long to come up with a likely list of targets a terrorist probably would want to hit that would shake the world: The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Capitol and White House, perhaps the Sears Tower or the Standard Oil building in Chicago, maybe CIA headquarters. It’s not that long a list. From there, it would be relatively easy to figure out when during the day such an attack would be likely to cause the greatest harm, both to life and property as well as to the psyche of the city where the devastating attack took place.
Why was none of this done?
The reports from both the 9/11 Commission and the Silberman Commission blamed problems of terrorist attacks on US soil and the “dead wrong” assessment of WMDs in Iraq on a combination of locked-in conventional wisdom, bureaucratic turf wars, thick silo walls between government departments and agencies, and a handful of other reasons. Yet the 9/11 Commission was unequivocal in stating that it was within the government’s power to have prevented the horrific attacks that mild, sunny morning in September 2001.
But with the existence of a mole inside al Qaeda increasingly likely, then there is a much more serious, insidious and sinister possibility: That George W. Bush knew at least a month before the attacks that they were going to occur, and chose to do nothing to stop them.
The question for Americans -- especially those in Congress -- to ask is, “Why didn’t he?” Who stood to gain from the devastation and death? Who would benefit in the aftermath of the attacks? What would be the long-term opportunities that opened up, and for whom, by a successful al Qaeda attack on the United States?
The possible answers are almost too frightening to contemplate.
James Charles is a freelance investigative journalist and writer who lives in Toronto. His next book is Life In The Dominion: An Ex-Pat American’s Affectionate Look At Living In Canada. Reach him by e-mail at: TheCurmudgeon382@hotmail.com. Andrew Romack contributed reporting to this article. Copyright © 2005 by James Charles. All rights reserved. This article may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05/Charles0405.htm
More to the point, bin Laden did this around the time of George Tenet’s Sunday trip to President Bush’s ranch in Texas.
Also, it was bin Laden who personally approved sending money to the US to fund the operation, and at least one published report traces the money from Atta’s Florida bank back through a series of European and Middle Eastern banks to a financial institution in Dubai, which was controlled by the man who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. According to the French journalist Bernard-Henri Levy, that man also happened to be working for the Pakistani security services at the time he was helping bin Laden move money to Florida and Atta’s bank account, as well as when he ordered and helped carry out Pearl’s assassination.
Given the relatively senior position the mole occupied in bin Laden’s organization, it is likely that he knew and tipped off his CIA handlers about the coming attack.
“It’s unlikely that he knew a date or specific targets,” said one person familiar with how moles operate, especially because bin Laden did not know, “but he sure as hell knew that multiple planes were going to be crashed into several buildings, sometime in September.”
“If he didn’t,” claimed another former intelligence official, “then we were wasting whatever money the CIA was paying him. That’s why you work so hard to recruit and nurture a mole, hold their hands, educate their children if need be and wait so long for them to be in a position to help: To give you just this kind of critical information five or 10 or 20 years from now.”
Piecing together what was is known to be facts, what is speculated about by reliable insiders on what type of al Qaeda secrets were learned through the mole, the way moles are run by the agency and the remarkable coincidence of the timing between the Tenet-Bush meeting in Crawford, several hypothesis can be constructed.
1. The coming attack. It is viewed by insiders as entirely likely that the CIA director told President Bush in August that al Qaeda was planning an immediate attack using commercial airplanes as guided missiles. Tenet could not give the president targets or a date, but he did have a name: Mohammad Atta, and there was sufficient information available to beef up airport and cockpit security and do a much closer job of screening passengers as they boarded flights.
All of this could have been done without signaling to al Qaeda that the US had penetrated its innermost circles. For example, the government apparently knew of Atta and at least some of the others involved in the plot by sometime in late August. Their names could have been sent to every airline flying into the US, especially domestic carriers. “No one would have noticed a thing,” said a former CIA insider. “Just one more name on a list.”
2. A manhunt. Had the CIA given the name of Zacharias Moussaoui to the FBI, chances are that the request from the Minneapolis field office to get a warrant permitting searching Moussaoui’s computer would have been granted. The 9/11 Commission report severely reprimanded all of the nation’s intelligence agencies for not sharing more information, more quickly. But even with the stone walls between competing bureaucracies slowing the flow of information, the president could have -- and should have -- told the CIA director to get whatever information he has over to the FBI, and quickly.
“If the president couldn’t direct that action be taken, than either he is totally useless or the various agencies are really good at playing bureaucracy turf games,” said a retired CIA employee. “It sounds like there was some of each going on in August 2001.
Bush also could have directed Tenet to provide information to immigration officers. Without revealing to anyone why it was being done, a nationwide manhunt could have been launched for Atta and the others known to the government as being inside the US. After 9/11, it turned out that most of the hijackers had violated their visas, and could have been detained and deported. At least one person, Atta, was probably in violation of US banking laws and regulations. It could have been positioned as a routine immigration roundup, thus not tipping off anyone in Afghanistan or elsewhere that an insider was funneling information to Washington.
3. Likely targets. If someone told an ordinary citizen of average intelligence that terrorists plan to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings, it wouldn’t take them very long to come up with a likely list of targets a terrorist probably would want to hit that would shake the world: The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Capitol and White House, perhaps the Sears Tower or the Standard Oil building in Chicago, maybe CIA headquarters. It’s not that long a list. From there, it would be relatively easy to figure out when during the day such an attack would be likely to cause the greatest harm, both to life and property as well as to the psyche of the city where the devastating attack took place.
Why was none of this done?
The reports from both the 9/11 Commission and the Silberman Commission blamed problems of terrorist attacks on US soil and the “dead wrong” assessment of WMDs in Iraq on a combination of locked-in conventional wisdom, bureaucratic turf wars, thick silo walls between government departments and agencies, and a handful of other reasons. Yet the 9/11 Commission was unequivocal in stating that it was within the government’s power to have prevented the horrific attacks that mild, sunny morning in September 2001.
But with the existence of a mole inside al Qaeda increasingly likely, then there is a much more serious, insidious and sinister possibility: That George W. Bush knew at least a month before the attacks that they were going to occur, and chose to do nothing to stop them.
The question for Americans -- especially those in Congress -- to ask is, “Why didn’t he?” Who stood to gain from the devastation and death? Who would benefit in the aftermath of the attacks? What would be the long-term opportunities that opened up, and for whom, by a successful al Qaeda attack on the United States?
The possible answers are almost too frightening to contemplate.
James Charles is a freelance investigative journalist and writer who lives in Toronto. His next book is Life In The Dominion: An Ex-Pat American’s Affectionate Look At Living In Canada. Reach him by e-mail at: TheCurmudgeon382@hotmail.com. Andrew Romack contributed reporting to this article. Copyright © 2005 by James Charles. All rights reserved. This article may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05/Charles0405.htm
Main Page - Wednesday, 04/06/05
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]
