CIRCLE CLOSED :: Neocons – AIPAC – Shill Reporter ¶ Laurie Mylroie – Benador Associates

The Saddam-911 Link Confirmed
By Laurie Mylroie
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 11, 2004

Important new information has come from Edward Jay Epstein about Mohammed Atta’s contacts with Iraqi intelligence.  The Czechs have long maintained that Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, met with Ahmed al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official, posted to the Iraqi embassy in Prague. As Epstein now reports, Czech authorities have discovered that al-Ani’s appointment calendar shows a scheduled meeting on April 8, 2001 with a “Hamburg student.”

<snip>

So Many Errors: the Clinton Years

Opinion polls show that most Americans still believe Iraq had substantial ties to al Qaeda and even that it was involved in 9/11. Yet among the “elite,” there is tremendous opposition to this notion. A simple explanation exists for this dichotomy. The public is not personally vested in this issue, but the elite certainly are.

<snip>

Former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke is a prime example of this phenomenon. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when President Bush asked him to look into the possibility of Iraq’s involvement, Clarke was “incredulous” (his word), treating the idea as if it were one of the most ridiculous things he had ever heard.  On September 18, when Deputy National Security Adviser Steven Hadley asked him to take another look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, Clarke responded in a similar fashion.

… Clarke’s adamant refusal to even consider the possibility of an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks represents an enormous blunder committed by the Clinton administration.

Bush 41: A War Left Unfinished

The claim that Iraq was involved in 9/11 is also strongly opposed by some senior figures in Bush 41.  They include former National Security Council Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, who wrote in the summer of 2002, “There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.”  

Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks carries serious implications for judgments about the way that Bush 41 ended the 1991 war.  As will be recalled, after 100 hours of a ground war, with Saddam still in power and Republican Guard units escaping across the Euphrates, Bush called for a cease-fire.  Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed for that decision, and Scowcroft backed him, although it was totally unnecessary, and many Arab members of the coalition were astounded at the decision.

To err is human.  And if one errs, one should correct the mistake and move on.  The prevailing ethos, however, is quite different, even when serious national security issues are involved.  Extraordinarily rare is a figure like Dick Cheney …

<snip>

In taking on and eliminating the Iraqi regime, Bush corrected a policy blunder of historic proportions.  His decision for war was both courageous and necessary.  Now, he needs to make it clear just why that decision was made.

Laurie Mylroie was adviser on Iraq to the 1992 campaign of Bill Clinton and is the author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department tried to Stop the War on Terror. (HarperCollins)  She can be reached through  http://www.benadorassociates.com.

CIRCLE CLOSED!
See my latest diary ::
As Time Evolves :: Neocon Think – A DEEP THROAT?
Sat Oct 15th, 2005 at 01:25:42 AM PST  ◊  did anyone read diary – no comments added?

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Mideast: On Target — the Analysts  

• Elliot P. Chodoff
• Yisrael Ne’eman
• Nir Boms  

Hamburg Al-Qaeda Cell – Watchlist
Atta was on a watchlist of German Intelligence since 1998, Darkanzali as well.

Darkanzali refuses to testify at German 9/11 trial

Update (11/03/2004): This article also doesn’t reveal, that Darkanzali visited with the alleged Sep11th hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, the same Hamburg mosque. According to Chicago Tribune and german DER STERN, in 1999 CIA officer Thomas Volz was seeking to turn Darkazanli into a spy. Atta was on a watchlist of German Intelligence since 1998, Darkanzali as well. However, both FBI and CIA ignored Darkanzali after Sep11th.

Witness to testify at Germany’s retrial of 9/11 suspect

XinhuaNet -November 1, 2004

BERLIN, Nov. 1 (Xinhuanet) — A newly arrested German businessman with suspected al-Qaeda links, will testify this week at the retrial of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Mounir El Motassadeq.

Source INN Report

9/11 Hijackers Seen In Wedding Video

Marwan al-Sheehi, far right, is believed to have been the hijacker who flew United Flight 175 into the south tower of the World Trade Center. He is seen in video of 1999 wedding in Hamburg, Germany.

BERLIN May 7, 2003 (CBS News/AP) — A wedding video shot in a Hamburg mosque has been broadcast for the first time and shows grainy scenes of Sept. 11 al Qaeda suicide pilots celebrating with other alleged plotters, possibly including suspects still not formally identified.

The video of the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji being celebrated in a large room at the al Quds mosque — suspected as a recruiting center for al Qaeda operatives — has been in the hands of investigators since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, the Bahaji wedding video provided investigators critical links between the suicide hijackers and other suspected members of the Hamburg cell.

Attorney General John Ashcroft cited the video at a news conference with German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Oct. 31, 2001. Ashcroft noted that Zakariya Essabar, a Moroccan who left Germany on Sept. 6, 2001, and remains at large, appeared along with Ziad Jarrah, suspected pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and Marwan al-Shehhi, suspected of piloting a jet into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Atta Under Surveillance by CIA and Mossad

Why were the terrorists shielded?
.
WSWS August 10, 2005 — There have been repeated accounts, particularly in the German media, about Atta being under surveillance by the CIA while he was living in Hamburg, and about this surveillance continuing after he shifted his activities to the United States in the summer of 2000, apparently by the Israeli secret service Mossad (the CIA not being permitted to conduct its own surveillance operations on US soil).

Reports were carried by the television network ARD, the magazine Der Spiegel, and major daily newspapers like the Berliner Zeitung and Die Zeit. Their accounts, have the CIA beginning surveillance of Atta in Hamburg in January 2000, following him during a trip to Frankfurt, where he purchased chemicals that could be used in making explosives. Right up to the point where he visited the US embassy in Berlin, on May 18, 2000 and obtained an US entry visa. Atta flew to the United States from Prague, capital of the neighboring Czech Republic, on June 3, 2000.

Both Der Spiegel and Die Zeit reported that Mossad kept Atta under surveillance while he was attending flight school in south Florida in 2000 and early 2001. At one point, after a trip to Europe, Atta was stopped by a customs officer when re-entering the US at Miami International Airport, because his visa was invalid. Nonetheless, he was allowed in.

Finally, on August 23, 2001, Mossad presented to the CIA a list of 19 named Islamic fundamentalist terrorists living in the United States and said to be planning an imminent attack. Aside from the chilling coincidence in the number–19 Islamic fundamentalists participated in the September 11 attacks–the Israeli list actually named four of the future hijackers, including Mohammed Atta.

The Hamburg Connection
BERLIN BBC News August 19, 2005 — German prosecutors said the Hamburg cell consisted of eight members: three suicide pilots, three logistical planners and two others whose role remains vague, but who might also have become suicide pilots. The cell was active and embarking on the plot to attack US targets by the summer of 1999, the prosecutors said.

Shared apartment
Mohammed Atta, a wealthy Egyptian, is believed to have been a key figure in the Hamburg cell, but also the ringleader of all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers.

In 1996, Motassadek signed Atta’s will along with Abdelghani Mzoudi, a fellow Moroccan who was acquitted by the same Hamburg court in February.

Mr Mzoudi shared a Marien Street apartment in Hamburg with Atta and suspected top al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh, who is in US custody. Mr Binalshibh claimed in a television interview to have been a mastermind behind the 9/11 plot. Along with Atta, the Hamburg-based suicide pilots were identified as Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.

Motassadek operated a bank account under Shehhi’s name – allegedly used to fund flight lessons in America and provide the expenses for American visa applications for the group. Shehhi, from the United Arab Emirates, and Jarrah, from Lebanon, also lived in the Marien Street flat at various times.

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