In an e-mail I just received, Prof. Juan Cole writes:
In one of those little mysteries that pops up so frequently in the Middle East, it transpires that Jordanian security operatives came to the Radisson earlier in the day and escorted Israeli tourists from the hotel.
The Jordanian secret police are very good about penetrating these Islamist cells, and the logical conclusion is that they got wind of an attack specifically on Israelis, not realizing that the operatives intended to hit the hotels in general. (I misread this item the first time around and thought it was Israeli security that evacuated the Israeli tourists. Sorry.)
Update [2005-11-10 10:27:1 by susanhu]: Thanks to Planet B, we’ve learned that Haaretz has retracted this story entirely: “No truth to report of Israeli evacuations before Amman bombs.” (I wonder what is really true. It could be that the Jordanians feared repercussions if their citizens knew of the Israeli evacuation.)
More below:
[From earlier post] Maybe Porter Goss et al. should recruit Jordanian security operatives to help ferret out any real (as opposed to hyped) terrorist cells. (Maybe, for all we know, they have recruited some of these secret police. The drawback is that their tactics in extracting information can be horrific and brutal. But, on the intel side, they might be a great help.) (Note: Raw Story also has the Haaretz story link.)
P.S. CNN just reported that two of the suicide bombers were Iraqis who came into the hotel, had drinks in the bar and chatted with people.