28jan02
Onder de kop 'September 11, 2001: No Surprise' schrijft onderzoeksjournalist Russ Kick een uitgebreid artikel vol feiten die erop wijzen dat de Amerikaanse autoriteiten meer wisten of hadden kunnen weten over de aanslagen op 911. In het artikel staan de bronnen keurig vermeld en onderaan presenteert Kick maarliefst 53 noten.
 

'The US has the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Secret Service, and a host of other intelligence and security agencies. These agencies employ Echelon, which monitors the majority of electronic communication in the world; Carnivore, which intercepts email; Tempest, a technology that can read a computer monitor's display from over a block away; Keyhole satellites that have a resolution of four inches 1; and other spy technologies, probably most of which we don't know about. In 2001, the US spent $30 billion on intelligence gathering and an additional $12 billion on counterterrorism. 2  With all of these resources, and more, we're supposed to believe that the government didn't have the slightest inkling that terrorists were planning to attack the United States, much less hijack planes and send them careening into major landmarks.

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Let us build the case slowly, starting with the more general warning signs that were allegedly missed. Gradually, we shall move up the evidence ladder, to the indications that the US knew what was about to happen.

[...] on September 10, 2001, the Congressional Research Service issued a report titled “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors.” This prescient report stated: “Signs continue to point to... a rise in the scope of threat posed by the independent network of exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.... Osama bin Laden's network, which is independently financed and enjoys safe haven in Afghanistan, poses an increasingly significant threat to US interests in the Near East and perhaps elsewhere.” Finally, the clincher comes when the report reveals ominous signs “that the network wants to strike within the United States itself.”

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Chartered by the Department of Defense and supported by Congress and the White House, the US Commission on National Security/21st Century (originally called the National Security Study's Senior Advisory Board) is a blue-ribbon panel charged with examining how the US can best protect itself and its citizens, both at home and abroad. Chaired by two former Senators, the Commission includes a who's who of the military-industrial complex: a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, a retired general and former NATO commander, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former Secretary of Defense and Energy and Director of the CIA, a former US Ambassador to the UN, and many others. They spent several years traveling to 25 countries, interviewing over 100 experts, and otherwise conducting important research, which was completely ignored.

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[Vorige week zondag was in een herhaling op Canvas een documentaire te zien waarover Kick schrijft:] '[...] Steven Emerson is an investigative journalist whose 1994 PBS documentary Jihad in America exposed the existence of Muslim terror networks in the US. In early 1997, Emerson said: “[The threat of terrorism] is greater now than before the World Trade Center bombing [in 1993] as the numbers of these groups and their members expands. In fact, I would say that the infrastructure now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States.” With Daniel Pipes, Emerson plainly wrote at the end of May 2001 that bin Laden's group, al Qaeda, is “planning new attacks on the US.” This information appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which is read by all manner of politicians, executives, and other movers and shakers.
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When it comes to experts who predicted attacks on the US, no one was more on-target than Yossef Bodansky [...] So, who is Bodansky? What does it matter if some guy warned of what would happen in a little-known book published in 1993 by a small, independent publisher? Because he's not some obscure, self-proclaimed expert – he happens to be the Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in the US House of Representatives. He works for and has the ear of the US Congress. Yet somehow they had absolutely no idea that terrorists would strike the US or that they'd use hijacked planes as weapons.'

Director of CIA Warned of US Being Attacked
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Arabic Newspaper in London Was Warned of Attacks
[...] If the staff of a paper in Britain knew, why didn't any intelligence agents?

State Department Warning 15
On September 7, 2001, the State Department issued a “worldwide caution” which said: “American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.”
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Airline Industry News Service Warned of Attacks
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San Francisco's Mayor and Multiple FAA Warnings
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Salman Rushdie Grounded a Week Before the Attacks
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Islamic Militant Who Masterminded the 1993 WTC Bombing Had Plans for Crashing Passenger Jets into US Buildings19
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Feds Knew About Pilot Training
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Previous Attempts to Turn a Passenger Plane into a Weapon
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Plane Terror at the G8 Summit 22
[...] According to three sources – Prime Minister Fini, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Russian President Vladimir Putin's bodyguard service – the threat to kill Bush (and possibly other leaders) came from Osama bin Laden.
[De Volkskrant van 8 december: 'Mubarak waarschuwde VS voor terreuraanslag     BEIROET - De Egyptische president Hosni Mubarak heeft de VS twaalf dagen voor de aanslagen van 11 september gewaarschuwd dat er 'iets zou gebeuren'. Hij verklaarde dat vrijdag in een interview met een Libanese krant. 'We verwachtten dat er iets ging gebeuren en informeerden de Amerikanen.' Hij verklaarde niets geweten te hebben over doelwitten en geschokt te zijn geweest over de schaal van de aanslagen.'].

FAA Pleads Ignorance, Despite Its Own Reports
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Two Hijackers Were Being Investigated (Half-Heartedly) Before the Attacks 24
As of August 21, 2001, the CIA, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service knew that two associates of bin Laden were in the country. One of them had been seen on videotape talking to a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen (also thought to be the work of al Qaeda). These two men – Khalid Al-Midhar and Salem Alhamzi – are listed as two of the hijackers of American Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon.
The FBI was unable to trace the two men. Not that they apparently gave it their all. The suspects were known to have lived in the San Diego area (one of them even attended college there), yet the agents didn't ask the Los Angeles field office for help until one or two days before the 911 attacks. And according to FBI Special Agent Jeff Thurman in San Diego, they didn't contact the San Diego office itself until two days after the attacks.

Authorities Detained Men Plotting Terror in New York in June
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The CIA Was Surveilling the Lead Hijacker in Germany 26
From January to May 2000, Mohamed Atta – considered the ringleader of the hijacking teams – lived in Frankfurt, Germany, where the CIA had him under surveillance. (According to the German news magazine Focus, the agents didn't tell German authorities about Atta, who came to the US in June 2000 to take flying lessons.) This is in stark contrast to the statements of authorities, who claim that as of Atta's entry into the US in January 2001, they had no idea he was involved in terrorist activity.
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Bin Laden's Terrorists Were Being Monitored by US Intelligence 27
What are we to make of the fact that the CIA intercepted bin Laden's men making a celebratory phone call just after the attacks? Had the US been unable to monitor al Qaeda's calls before September 11, but miraculously managed to start intercepting calls on that very day? Of course not. Based on just this information, we can deduce that US intelligence had been monitoring the terrorists' communications before the fateful day.
We also have direct proof that this is so. On September 10, 2001, US intelligence agencies intercepted a call between “bin Laden supporters in the United States and senior members of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization” in which they discussed an impending “big attack.” This comes from an unnamed source the Washington Times identified as “a senior administration official.”
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Even if these messages were too vague and/or too late to help prevent the attacks, they do tell us one crucial thing: Despite official claims to the contrary, the US was monitoring the conversations of al Qaeda bigshots in Afghanistan and bin Laden's followers in America. Certainly, these two conversations taking place a year apart couldn't have been the only time the terrorists discussed the operation over compromised communications channels.
We also know that bin Laden's supporters were being monitored by German intelligence based on this report from CNN: “German intelligence services intercepted a phone call September 11 after the terrorist attacks on the United States in which two followers of Osama bin Laden applauded the deadly assaults, a German intelligence official said.... The official said the phone call did not originate in Germany or any other European nation, but refused to identify the country or region.”

Bin Laden Himself Was Being Monitored by a “Foreign Intelligence Service”
“In two days you're going to hear big news and you're not going to hear from me for a while.” That was the tip-off bin Laden gave to his stepmother on
September 9, 2001. According to NBC News, this phone call was intercepted by a “foreign intelligence service.” 28
Thus, we know that 1) it was possible to intercept bin Laden's communications, despite US statements that his communications are either encrypted or made through non-electronic means; and 2) some intelligence agency picked up bin Laden's warning of a big event on September 11, after which he would be incommunicado.

The World Trade Center Bombers Warned of More Strikes Against the World Trade Center
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Bin Laden Spoke of Launching a Second Attack on the World Trade Center
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Other Warnings From bin Laden
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Warnings from Bin Laden's “Associates”
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Security at the WTC Was Increased in Mid-August 33
According to journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair – publishers of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch – a man who worked at the World Trade Center told them that “security was heightened three weeks ago [before the attacks], including the introduction for the first time of sniffer dogs and the physical search of all trucks prior to their being waved into the entrance from the street.”
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The US Should Have Been Expecting a Pre-emptive Strike
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Powell and Cheney Admit a Lot but Not All
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What Else Did Officials Know?
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Florida National Guard Activated Four Days Before the Attacks
In what might be a case of ESP, Florida Governor Jeb Bush – who is, of course, the president's brother – called up his state's National Guard on September 7, 2001.
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Domain Names Revealed Terror Attacks
From mid-June to mid-July 2000, at least seventeen Internet domain names were registered which indicated when and where the attacks were to occur. Among the Web addresses: “attackontwintowers.com,” “nycterroriststrike.com,” “pearlharborinmanhattan.com,” “terrorattack2001.com,” “worldtradetowerattack.com,” and “wterroristattack2001.com.” Unfortunately, the names were allowed to expire, so tracking the people who bought them may not be easy.
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People Knew Beforehand About Attacks 40
Reports have been swirling that ordinary people, mostly Arab-Americans in New York City, knew about the attacks before they happened. FBI agents have told the media that they're tracking down numerous people who spoke of the impending attacks in the New York area, confirming that such warnings occurred. A veteran NYPD investigator said that numerous Arab-Americans in New York had heard that the attacks were going to happen. “The officer said the story 'had been out on the street,' and the number of leads turning up was so 'overwhelming' that it was difficult to tell who had heard about the attacks from second-hand sources and who had heard it from someone who may have been a participant,” according to the Journal News of Westchester, New York.
A police detective in Brooklyn said that investigations of numerous Middle Easterners who didn't show up for work at the WTC on September 11 are “a serious and major priority.” The Independent of London reported: “Dozens of members of a mosque in the Bronx told the FBI they had also been given a vague warning to stay out of lower Manhattan.”
Three incidents of which we know details involve schoolchildren (which makes sense, since kids are notoriously poor judges of when to keep their lips buttoned). On September 10, 2001, a fifth-grader in a Dallas suburb made a startling declaration to his teacher: “Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose.” The boy was absent from school on September 11 and 12.
A school district official “said the boy is multiracial but that she does not believe his ethnicity includes a Middle Eastern background,” according to the Houston Chronicle. The paper further notes: “Two charities in the neighboring suburb of Richardson have been investigated in the past for possible ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations.”
In another incident, this one in Jersey City, a pupil at an unnamed school had warned people to stay away from lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11. Several hijackers lived in Jersey City.
Even more to the point, one week before the attacks, a Brooklyn high school freshman pointed out a classroom window at the WTC towers and said to the class and his teacher: “Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week.” The boy's family had recently immigrated from Pakistan.
Minutes after the 911 attacks, school officials told the authorities about the student's correct prediction. On September 13, the FBI and NYPD interviewed the boy, his brother, and their father. After the interviews, the father promptly left the country for Pakistan, leaving the rest of his family behind.

Iraq's Actions Indicated Something Big Was About to Happen 41
Two weeks before the attacks, Saddam Hussein put his military on its highest state of alert, something he hadn't done since the Gulf War a decade earlier. He also hid in his network of bunkers and moved his wives out of their palatial residence in Baghdad. What makes this so suspicious is that Hussein had no apparent reason for declaring a red alert and going into hiding. A US intelligence official commented: “He was clearly expecting a massive attack and it leads you to wonder why.”

Things become clearer when you realize that Hussein “had been providing al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, with funding, logistical back-up and advanced weapons training,” according to an investigation by the Daily Telegraph. According to the London newspaper: “The CIA is understood to have evidence that Mohammed Atta, one of the suicide bombers, met an Iraqi intelligence officer earlier this year in Prague.... In the past four months at least three high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officials – among them Hassan Ezba Thalaj, a veteran officer with a reputation for ruthlessness – have visited Pakistan to meet representatives of al-Qaeda. Previous visitors have taken large sums of money with them, including Ahmed al Jafari, a senior Baghdad intelligence officer who took £420,000 [$598,000] 18 months ago. Other funds have been forwarded via banks in Lebanon.”

Russian Media Warned of a Huge, Destabilizing Attack on the US 42
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Anonymous Person(s) in Cayman Islands Warned of Attack
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David Shippers Tried to Warn the Federal Government 44
David Shippers [sic: Schippers] is the attorney who led the impeachment case against President Clinton. Whether or not you agree with his politics, Shippers is definitely not a fringe figure. He's a heavily connected Washington insider. In interviews since the attacks, he has told of trying to warn members of Congress and the Attorney General about planned attacks to be carried out by Islamic terrorists. Understandably cagey about his sources, Shippers has said that he learned that the plan involved detonating a suitcase nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan and using hijacked commercial airliners to ram the White House and Capitol building. (Obviously, his sources weren't 100 percent accurate, but they were certainly close.) For months he tried to get John Ashcroft, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and others to listen. They would initially express interest – sometimes even approaching him – but then he'd never hear from them again.
Shippers is now representing several outraged FBI agents who say they learned about the attacks ahead of time, but were forbidden by superiors from doing anything about them. Often, they specialized in Muslim terrorism but were pulled off their beats when they uncovered important information.

Iranian Detainee Warned US 45
[...] Mere hours before the 911 attacks commenced, the 29-year-old begged to fax a letter to President Bush. He was denied the chance.
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Israel Warned the US
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Russia Warned the US
Agence France-Press reports: “The Russian intelligence service had warned Washington several times in the past of the possibility of terrorist strikes on US soil, the head of the service, Nikolai Patrushev, said yesterday. 'We had clearly warned them,' said Mr. Patrushev, who is head of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. He added that their US counterparts 'did not pay the necessary attention' to their warnings, the Interfax news agency reported.” 47

German Intelligence Says the US Knew of Attacks
According to the highly respected German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, members of German intelligence confirmed that US, UK, and Israeli intelligence agencies had indeed picked up on the plot by Muslim terrorists to hijack jetliners and crash them into US landmarks. (Israel was targeted, as well.) Using the global snooping system of Echelon, these countries knew six months in advance about the 911 attacks. The German sources said US intelligence took the threats very seriously and increased surveillance of the terrorists. The problem allegedly was that they couldn't agree on a way to prevent the attacks. 48

The Philippines Warned the US
As mentioned earlier in this article, authorities in the Philippines uncovered Project Bojinka, the radical Muslim plot to ram hijacked jets into American landmarks and to blow up eleven US airliners in two days. They turned over this information to the FBI. It is not known what, if anything, the feds did with it. The Washington Post writes: “Watching the attacks in New York and Washington unfold on television earlier this month, an investigator here gasped, 'It's Bojinka.' He said later: 'We told the Americans everything about Bojinka. Why didn't they pay attention?'” 49

Ex-Officials Admit of Knowledge of the Coming Attacks
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The Final Piece of the Puzzle: CIA Director George Tenet Knew What Was Coming
The most damning quote of all comes from an on-the-scene bulletin from National Public Radio on the morning of September 11. Congressional correspondent David Welna was reporting from the Capitol building as it was being evacuated: “I spoke with Congressman Ike Skelton – a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee – who said that just recently the director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack – an imminent attack – on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected.” 53

Conclusion: The US Knew
So there you have it. Numerous government reports predicting strikes on US soil. Experts and officials predicting the same thing. Warnings from the State Department and the FAA. The discovery of Project Bojinka. Previous attempts at using hijacked commercial aircraft as weapons of mass destruction. The FBI's prior knowledge of terrorists training at pilot schools in the US. Threats by the 1993 WTC bombers and bin Laden himself to take out the World Trade Center. Members of al Qaeda, including some of the hijackers and bin Laden, under surveillance beforehand. Heightened security at the WTC in August. Activation of the Florida National Guard. Domain names that advertised the attacks. Direct warnings from several countries and individuals. Prior knowledge among people on the street. Word from German intelligence that the US knew about the specific plans six months in advance. Admissions from ex-officials that this wasn't a surprise. And finally, a Congressman admitting that the Director of the CIA had just warned of “an imminent attack on the United States of this nature.”

Case closed.

Endnotes
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Russ Kick is the editor of You Are Being Lied To, and other books.'