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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.”
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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.
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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.
Becomes still more interesting below the fold »»
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.
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
REFERENCES ::
- Judith Miller Is a ZIONIST SHILL ◊ by neoconnedagain
- Miller, Mylroie, and the Anti-Saddam Wurlitzer: A Thirteen Year Odyssey ◊ by BooMan
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.
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.
Why were the terrorists shielded?
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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.
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.
REFERENCES ::
Al-Qaeda and Mohammed Atta in Europe —
- WTC 9/11 Verdicts in Spain Today
- Al Qaeda in Germany – Hamburg
- Mamoun Darkazanli – CIA link
- al-Qaeda passé? ◊ by Oui
- Shocking 9/11 Revelations ◊ by BooMan
Tue Aug 9th, 2005 at 07:51:48 AM PST - The Failings of the 9/11 Commission ◊ by BooMan
Sat Aug 20th, 2005 at 12:08:41 PM PST
1. Conspiracy Indictment Next?! – Josh Marshall TPM Agrees ¶ DoJ Press Release
2. Mr. X Is David Wurmser ME Advisor to VP Cheney ¶ Link to ISA John Bolton
3. White House Awaits Grand Jury News ¶ It’s Rove … Lawrence O’Donnell
4. DeLay :: Gotcha – Fingerprints et al! ¶ Abramoff & Bob Ney
5. Prosecutor Fitzgerald Zeroes In :: Cheney – CIA Feud!
6. CIRCLE CLOSED :: Neocons – AIPAC – Shill Reporter ¶ Laurie Mylroie – Benador Associates
7. As Time Evolves :: Neocon Think ¶ A DEEP THROAT?
8. THIS IS MAJOR! ¶ Our Reichstag’s Fire
9. Israel and AIPAC Accused in Spy Case of Franklin, Pentagon Analyst
10. U.S. District Court Indictment Larry Franklin & AIPAC Directors
11. Judith Miller :: A Need To Know Basis
12. Judith Miller :: Libya – Gaddafi – Poindexter
Oui, Oui !!! Bien Fait, Oui !!!
Merci mille fois pour votre bon travail!!!
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Trying to see the pic of the larger puzzle.
Will Patrick Fitzgerald combine the CIA Valerie Plame leak with WHIG and shill reporting on Iraq War?
«« click on pic for MSNBC story »»
Patrick Fitzgerald – The Prosecutor Never Rests
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That would be quite an achievement. I guess it ultimately comes down to how much he values the lives of himself and his family. He is taking on some pretty entrenched very well-heeled powers here. How fearless is this man? I hope he continues to inspire fear in the hearts of all wicked men (“evildoers.”)
We need to plumb the relationships between Miller/Mylroie/Libby and OSP and AIPAC/ Indicted Israeli Spy Lawrence Franklin.
Twice our favorite femmes fatales sounded a false alarm on Iraq (1990 & 2002)
I’m really going to puke if we find articles about the need to strike Qaddafi/Libya crafted by Miller & Mylroie in the mid-eighties…
This is interesting:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pathtowar.html
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It remains difficult to stay separated from conspiracy and propaganda from both sides. IMO this link crosses the line in writing that can be seen as anti-semitic. A linked article can be written on its own merit and I will check it out, but reading the presentation on the page I get an uneasy feeling.
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I agree, but it does appear to have links to some “credible” news sources, especially the British dailies.
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SURPRISE – as per request for neoconnedagain
Added two new comments ::
▼ ▼ ▼ A MUST READ
Hot Damn!!! Too predictable. This is further evidence that the NYT’s knew exactly who they were allowing to spread lies over the fold, time after time.
How does the NYT not know one of their writers is an advocate, not a journalist? They clearly know she has an agenda. A cursory search of her books & articles makes it quite clear that Judy is advocating not reporting.
So, who or what is Jude advocating for? And, why is this not part of the story?
So OUI when shall we co-author a book on the seemingly disparate, but truly connected neoconservative scandals? Is your e-mail public?
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Read some of her excellent biographies, very telling.
Many journalists have warned, perhaps because she has won a Pulitzer prize, she has become protected for editor’s criticism. I always wonder how the beheading of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearle in Pakistan effected the American journalists working in the Mideast. Judith Miller is politically active in Aspen Institute and Middle East Forum, a right-wing organization.
From her first day at the Times, Miller’s life and work have been hard to separate, which for a reporter is both a strength and a weakness. “She’s a passionate person–she gets caught up in her sources passionately,” one of her Times colleagues told me. Friends from her earliest days in Washington noted that she didn’t surround herself with people her own age. She sought out the best and brightest at the city’s highest levels, dating Larry Sterne, the Washington Post‘s foreign editor, and hanging out with the defense gurus Richard Perle and Walter Slocum. “These people were powerful. But they were also interesting, and Judy liked talking to them. She is curious and enthusiastic,” says one friend from this period.
And she got caught up in her coverage of the Middle East. It was a passion she acknowledged in the introduction to her 1996 book on Islam, God Has Ninety-Nine Names: “While I have tried to keep an open mind about traditions and cultures that differ from my own, I make no apology for the fact that as a Western woman and an American, I believe firmly in the inherent dignity of the individual and the value of human rights and legal equality for all. In this commitment, I, too, am unapologetically militant.”
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I found that biography to be too sympathetic. The author seems to apologize for her willful disinformation peddling by arguing that she was a passionate competitor that just got “caught up” in the scene.
One telling pass is the clipped title the author puts forth for her earlier work, which was fully titled “GOD HAS NINETY NINE NAMES : Reporting from a Militant Middle East.” “God has 99 names” is rather innocuous; the full title is more suggestive of an agenda…again.
This Carl Bernstein article from ’77 is fascinating:
http://www.unknownnews.net/hh030102.html
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As far as I remember, sharing confidential info is only permitted on a need to know basis. Just because a colleague has an equivalent status, you do not share confidential information unless it’s needed for his job.
“The fundamental intellectual assumptions that have guided our Intelligence Community’s approach to managing national security information for half a century may be in some respects crucially flawed,” he writes.
Along the way, he challenges some longstanding practices that are so deeply-rooted that no one normally thinks to question them, such as the application of the “need to know” standard for sharing information.
“It may not be true,” Sen. Shelby proposes radically, “that information-holders — the traditional arbiters of who can see ‘their’ data — are the entities best placed to determine whether outsiders have any ‘need to know’ data in their possession. Analysts who seek access to information, it turns out, may well be the participants best equipped to determine what their particular expertise and contextual understanding can bring to the analysis of certain types of data.”
But information sharing is not exactly the solution either, “inasmuch as ‘sharing’ connotes ownership by the party that decides to share it, an idea that is antithetical to truly empowering analysts to connect all the right ‘dots’.”
Discussion yesterday :: read on »»
By Ivo Daalder @ America Abroad
Having now waded through The Times’s articles on Judy Miller, one new fact struck me as particularly bizarre — Miller, by her own admission, was cleared to see secret information as part of her assignment as an “embedded” reporter in Iraq.
I had no idea journalists could receive security clearances — and I had no idea that the mainstream media would allow their reporters to have such clearances. After all, one of the most important obligations of a person receiving security clearances is not to reveal that information at any time, while one of the most important obligations of a reporter is precisely to reveal information the public has a need and right to know.
Can someone explain why this glaring conflict of interest is acceptable?
Some expert comments – read on »»
<embedded>
«« click on pic for TIMEline
The critics
Bill Vann (WSWs) suggested that Miller’s listing as a speaker for the Middle East Forum, a right-wing lobbying group, could be a violation of Times ethics guidelines, which barred reporters from participating in groups that seek to shape public policy.
Soon after, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reported on a conflict within the Times staff. Quoting an irate e-mail from Baghdad bureau chief John Burns concerning a Chalabi story that he had assigned to another reporter, Kurtz included some of Miller’s response, shedding even more light on how dubious her sources might have been: “I’ve been covering Chalabi for about 10 years. . . . He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper.” More troubling still, it turned out, the army unit in which she was embedded was “using Chalabi’s Intel and document network for its own WMD work.” [6]
No accountability–not then, not now
As Vice President Dick Cheney candidly admitted during the first Gulf War, when he served as defense secretary, “I do not look on the press as an asset. Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed.” [17] During the second Gulf conflict, more than 600 reporters were “managed” as “embeds,” agreeing to sign contracts with the military limiting when and what they could report. Each was able to provide a small slice of the war almost instantaneously; access was good, and the general feeling was that it worked well for both sides. [18] But were they able to draw the line between propaganda and journalism?
Daniel Pipes – Middle East Forum – Judith Miller
The article having leapt from The Times’ front page, my dissection of it below will not be the first. Any reading of the piece should perhaps occur in light of Miller’s relationship with the Middle East Forum, run by the controversial Daniel Pipes, who has been in the news of late as a Bush nominee to the congressionally chartered U.S. Institute of Peace. A non-profit, the forum was founded in 1994.
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SURPRISE!
Special note to neoconnedagain – as per request ::
The links of Judith Miller with the Pentagon are not new. In 1986, she wrote numerous articles on Libya, thus contributing to a massive disinformation campaign on Gaddafi which was coordinated by Admiral John Poindexter. Bob Woodward has written a major article in the Washington Post on this strategy.
By Arthur L. Liman
August 16, 1998
When John Poindexter And Oliver North took the stand in the Iran-Contra hearings, they kept the lid on a Presidential scandal far more serious than today’s. [Monica Lewinski scandal – Ed.]
Poindexter :: TIA Darpa Project – Resignation Letter 2002
You Did The Crime, Now Serve The Time
by Habib Siddiqui – Tuesday August 09 2005
“The role of a good reporter is like that of an intelligence analyst who digs for the truth, and not of a stenographer who simply reports what he/she hears without verification.”
Miller was essentially the megaphone for disseminating Bush administration’s `intelligence’ and in promoting its agenda on Iraq. Indeed, she wrote the first article, entitled «Threats and Responses : The Iraqis ; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts», on Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme, mentioning “aluminium tubes” that could be used for nuclear weapons. That was on September 7, just a few days after Vice-President Cheney delivered the first speech in which he presented Iraq as Washington’s next target.[10] [Interestingly, the forged documents on Niger uranium mystery first surfaced in Italy, via an Italian journalist who works for the Berlusconi-owned Panorama magazine.[11] Was Berlusconi asked to help Bush and Blair “fix” the intelligence to start war in Iraq, and the forged Niger documents were his government’s contribution? [12]]
Miller’s links with the Pentagon are not new. In 1986, she wrote numerous articles on Libya, thus contributing to a massive disinformation campaign on Muammar Gaddafi which was coordinated by Admiral John Poindexter.[13] During the first U.S.-led war in the Persian Gulf, Miller co-wrote a book with Laurie Mylroie, titled Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf. Miller and Mylroie have both been clients of Eleana Benador, whose PR firm has represented many leading pro-war figures that have appeared prominently on television and in other public venues. She has also worked closely and uncritically with Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, in developing her reports on Iraq.
Miller is also an old professional acquaintance of Godfrey Grima, a Maltese Fleet Street-trained journalist, who has been writing for The Financial Times for several years. Miller and Grima met several times on assignments in Libya, Poland, the US and Italy.
In the interview, which was published in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was bluntly asked by Miller (tipped-off by the US intelligence services) whether he had alerted the Libyans to the attack.
Dr Mifsud Bonnici explained that he had personally informed Gaddafi that unauthorised fighter planes had just crossed southwards over Maltese territory and he had felt duty-bound to alert Libya since it was a friendly neighbouring country and because Malta had responsibility for air traffic control in the central Mediterranean.
Judith Miller: 3 Decades of Disinformation ◊ by Grand Moff Texan
Fri Jul 8th, 2005 at 13:00:32 PDT
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Thu Nov 3rd, 2005 at 06:44:18 AM PST
I get the shivers reading material on this website: I’ll do a DNS & WhoIs to check its origin.
I have a vague recollection this event was reported but not pursued in MSM – perhaps useful to check a site like Daily Kos.
RELATED DIARIES ON BASRA ::
Thu Sep 29th, 2005 at 03:42:26 PM PST
Sun Sep 25th, 2005 at 02:28:26 AM PST
Sat Sep 24th, 2005 at 01:55:16 PM PST
Wed Sep 21st, 2005 at 02:25:47 PM PST
Mon Sep 19th, 2005 at 06:56:10 AM PST
Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 09:35:56 PM PST
«« click on pic to enlarge
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
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CFR – Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow
Is getting rid of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein essential to the war against terrorism? To encourage a debate on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy, the Council on Foreign Relations organized a webcast on U.S. policy toward Iraq as part of its series, “America’s Response to Terrorism”.
The debate on U.S. policy toward Iraq between Leon Fuerth and Richard Perle was webcast on January 22, 2002. Council president Leslie Gelb moderated.
Israel political pressure forces producer change at CNN
Middle East Forum Nonprofit Organization with Daniel Pipes
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY