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Did Bush Know?
They Tried To Tell Us:
Foreign Intelligence Warnings Before 9-11
by Paul Thompson
The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9-11 is now finished, but the findings that
have been released fail to mention any warnings from foreign governments. The
US mainstream media also has paid little attention to warnings from foreign governments.
Yet
there were so many warnings - from both our friends and enemies alike - often specifically suggesting the targets or method of
attack. In at least one case, the warnings actually mentioned hijackers by name. This type of communication between intelligence agencies
normally occurs in secret, so one can only wonder what additional warnings
or details were provided to us that have never been made public.
No
US publication has ever put all the various foreign government warnings in one
place; even Internet skeptics of Bush have paid scant attention to this issue.
Here, for the first time, is such a list of warnings.
First, General Warnings
- In
late 2000, British investigators teamed up with their counterparts in the Cayman Islands and began a yearlong probe of three
Afghan men who had entered the Cayman Islands illegally. [Miami
Herald, 9/20/01, Los
Angeles Times, 9/20/01] In June 2001, the Afghan men were overheard discussing hijacking
attacks in New York City, and were promptly taken into custody. This information was forwarded
to US intelligence [Fox
News, 5/17/02]. In late August 2001, shortly before the attacks, an anonymous letter to a Cayman radio
station alleged these same men were al-Qaeda agents "organizing a major
terrorist act against the US via an airline or airlines." [Miami
Herald, 9/20/01, Los
Angeles Times, 9/20/01, MSNBC, 9/23/01]
- In
late July 2001, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil
learned that Osama bin Laden was planning a "huge attack"
on targets inside America. The attack was imminent, and would kill thousands, he learned
from the leader of the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was
closely allied with al-Qaeda at the time. Muttawakil sent an emissary to pass this information
on to the US Consul General, and another US official, "possibly from the
intelligence services." Sources confirmed that this message was received,
but supposedly not taken very seriously, because of "warning fatigue"
arising from too many terror warnings. [Independent,
9/7/02, Reuters, 9/7/02]
- Also
in late July 2001, the US was given a "concrete warning" from Argentina's
Jewish community. "An attack of major proportions" was planned
against either the US, Argentina, or France. The
information came from an unidentified intelligence agency. [Forward,
5/31/02]
- An
undercover agent from Morocco successfully penetrated al-Qaeda. He learned that
bin Laden was "very disappointed" that the 1993 bombing had not toppled
the World Trade Center, and was planning "large scale operations in New
York in the summer or fall of 2001." He provided this information to the US
in August 2001.�[Agence France Presse, 11/22/01,
International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02,
London Times,
6/12/02]
-
Hasni Mubarak, President of Egypt, maintains that in the beginning of September 2001 Egyptian
intelligence warned American officials that al-Qaeda was in the advanced stages
of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within
the US. [AP, 12/7/01, New
York Times, 6/4/02] He learned this information from an agent working inside
al-Qaeda. [ABC News,
6/4/02]
Warnings the
Attack Will Come from the Air
Many
warnings specifically mentioned a threat coming from the air.
- In 1999, British
intelligence gave a secret report to the US embassy.�The report stated that
al-Qaeda had plans to use "commercial aircraft" in "unconventional
ways", "possibly as flying bombs."�[Sunday
Times, 6/9/02] On July 16, 2001, British intelligence passed a message to
the US that al-Qaeda was in "the final stages" of preparing a terrorist
attack in Western countries. [London
Times, 6/14/02] In early August, the British
gave another warning, telling the US to expect multiple airline hijackings from
al-Qaeda. This warning was included in Bush's briefing on August 6, 2001. [Sunday
Herald, 5/19/02]
- In
June 2001, German intelligence warned the US, Britain,
and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial
aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols which
stand out." Within the American intelligence community, "the warnings
were taken seriously and surveillance intensified" but "there was
disagreement on how such terrorist attacks could be prevented." This warning
came from Echelon, a spy satellite network that is partly based in Germany.
[Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01,
Washington
Post, 9/14/01]
- In
late July 2001, Egyptian intelligence received a report from an undercover agent
in Afghanistan that "20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four
of them had received flight training on Cessnas." To the Egyptians, pilots of
small planes didn't sound terribly alarming, but they passed on the message
to the CIA anyway, fully expecting Washington to request information. "The request
never came." [CBS,
10/9/02] Given that there were 19 hijackers and four pilots (who trained
on Cessnas) in the 9-11 plot, one might think this would
now be a big news item. But in fact, the information has only appeared
as an aside in a CBS "60 Minutes" show about a different topic.
- In
late summer 2001, Jordan intelligence intercepted a message stating that a major
attack was being planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used. The
code name of the operation was Big Wedding, which did in fact turn out to be the codename
of the 9-11 plot. The message was passed to US intelligence through several
channels. �[International
Herald Tribune, 5/21/02, Christian
Science Monitor, 5/23/02]
- Russian
President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that he ordered his intelligence agencies
to alert the US in the summer of 2001 that suicide pilots were training for
attacks on US targets. [Fox
News, 5/17/02] The head of Russian intelligence also stated, "We had
clearly warned them" on several occasions, but they "did not pay the
necessary attention." [Agence France-Presse,
9/16/01] The Russian newspaper Izvestia claimed that Russian intelligence
agents knew the participants in the attacks, and: "More than that, Moscow
warned Washington about preparation for these actions a couple of weeks before
they happened." [Izvestia, 9/12/02]
- Five
days before 9-11, the priest Jean-Marie Benjamin was told by a Muslim of a plot to attack the US and Britain using hijacked airplanes
as weapons. He wasn't told time or place specifics. He immediately passed what
he knew on to a judge and several politicians in Italy. Presumably this Muslim confided
in him because Benjamin has done considerable charity work in
Muslim countries and is considered "one of the West's most knowledgeable
experts on the Muslim world." [Zenit,
9/16/01]
Benjamin
has not revealed who told him this information, but it could have come from
a member of the al-Qaeda cell in Milan, Italy. This cell supplied forged documents
for other al-Qaeda operations, and wiretaps show members of the cell were aware
of the 9-11 plot. [Los Angeles Times, 5/29/02,
Guardian, 5/30/02, Boston Globe, 8/4/02]
For instance, in August 2000, one terrorist in Milan was recorded saying to
another: "I'm studying airplanes. I hope, God willing, that I can bring
you a window or a piece of an airplane the next time we see each other."
The comment was followed by laughter [Washington
Post, 5/31/02]. In another case in January
2001, a terrorist asked if certain forged documents were for "the brothers
going to the United States," and was angrily rebuked by another who told
him not to talk about that "very, very secret" plan. [Los
Angeles Times, 5/29/02] In March 2001, the
Italian government gave the US a warning based on these wiretaps. [Fox
News, 5/17/02]
What
Did Israel Know?
But
the most remarkable warnings of all came from Israel. The issue of Israeli foreknowledge
of 9-11 is highly controversial. The story is too complicated to go into detail
here, but a number of respected publications (for instance, Fox
News, 12/12/01, Forward,
3/15/02, ABC
News, 6/21/02, Salon,
5/7/02, Ha'aretz,
5/14/02, Le Monde, 3/5/02, Reuters,
3/5/02,
AP, 3/5/02,
AP, 3/9/02,
Cox News, 3/5/02,
Guardian, 3/6/02,
Independent, 3/6/02,
New York Post, 3/6/02,
Jane's Intelligence
Digest, 3/15/02)
have written about an Israeli "art student" spy
ring operating in the US for several years before 9-11. The name "art student"
is used because most of these scores of spies were posing as college
art students. There have been suggestions that some of these Israeli spies lived
close to some of the 9-11 hijackers. For instance, a US Drug Enforcement Administration
report from before 9-11 noted that Israeli spies were living in the retirement
community of Hollywood, Florida at 4220 Sheridan Street, which turned out to
be only a few hundred feet from lead hijacker Mohamed Atta's residence at 3389 Sheridan
Street (see the DEA
report, 6/01).�Israeli
spies appear to have been close to at least ten of the nineteen 9-11 hijackers.
[Salon, 5/7/02]
In fact, Forward, the most widely circulated publication in the US targeting
the Jewish audience, has admitted the spy ring existed, and that its purpose
was to track Muslim terrorists operating in the US. [Forward,
3/15/02]
Some
have claimed that the existence of this spy ring shows that Israel was behind
the 9-11 attacks, an argument that is beyond the scope of this essay. But if
the mainstream media is to be believed, Israel gave the US several specific
warnings of the 9-11 attacks. In the second week of August 2001, two high-ranking
agents from the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, came to Washington
and warned the CIA and FBI that 50 to 200 al-Qaeda terrorists had slipped into
the US and were planning an imminent "major assault on the US" aimed
at a "large scale target" [Telegraph,
9/16/01, Los
Angeles Times, 9/20/01, Ottawa
Citizen, 9/17/01
Fox
News, 5/17/02].
Near
the end of August, France also gave a warning that was an "echo" of
Israel's. [Fox
News, 5/17/02]
In
October 2002, the story broke in Europe and Israel that on August 23, 2001,
the Mossad had given the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US. The Mossad had said that
the terrorists appeared to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. It is
unknown if these are the same 19 names as the actual hijackers, or if the
number is a coincidence. However, the four names on the list that are known are names
of the 9-11 hijackers: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and
Mohamed Atta. [Die Zeit, 10/1/02, Der
Spiegel, 10/1/02, BBC,
10/2/02, Ha'aretz,
10/3/02] These are also probably the four most important of the hijackers (and
two of the pilots). From them, there were many connections to the others.
The CIA had already been surveilling three of them overseas the year before,
and two, Alhazmi and Almihdhar, were put on a watch list the same day the Mossad
gave this warning. [AFP,
9/22/01, Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01,
Observer,
9/30/01,
New
York Times, 9/21/02]
Such
detailed warnings of exact names fit in well with the reports that Israeli
spies were tracking the hijackers for months before 9-11. Yet, as Jane's Intelligence
Digest put it, "It is rather strange that the US media seems to be ignoring
what may well be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks..."
[Jane's Intelligence
Digest, 3/13/02] The spy ring story did get a little coverage in the US,
but more recent stories claiming that Israel knew the exact names of at
least some of the hijackers hasn't been reported here at all. Perhaps the
story is too controversial for the US media to touch?
Conspicuous
in Their Absence
So
many countries warned the US: Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands,
Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, and Russia. Yet the
two countries in the best position to know about the 9-11 plot - Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan - apparently didn't give any warning at all.
The
ties between wealthy Saudi figures and al-Qaeda are many, and too complicated
to go into here. But it is interesting to notice that, while discussing the
resignation of Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of the Saudi intelligence agency,
the Wall Street Journal has speculated that the Saudi Arabian government may
have had foreknowledge of 9-11: "The timing of Turki's removal - August
31 - and his Taliban connection raise the question: Did the Saudi regime know
that bin Laden was planning his attack against the US? The current view among
Saudi-watchers is that this is doubtful, but that the House of Saud might have heard
rumors that something was planned, though they did not know what or when.
An interesting and possibly significant detail is that Prince Sultan, the defense
minister, was due to visit Japan in early September, but canceled his trip
for no apparent reason two days before his planned departure.
[Wall
Street Journal, 10/22/01] In
fact, that same Prince Sultan appears to have rejected a chance to warn the
US. In August 2001, a military associate of a Middle Eastern prince passed information
to former CIA agent Robert Baer about a "spectacular terrorist operation"
to take place shortly. He also gave Baer a computer record of around 600 secret
al-Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But when Baer tried to give this
information to Prince Sultan, he was rebuffed. Baer gave the information to
the CIA as well, making this apparently yet another ignored warning. [Financial
Times, 1/12/02, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the
CIA's War on Terrorism, Robert Baer, 2/02, pp.
270-271, Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September
11, Bill Gertz, pp. 55-58]
The
story of Pakistan's direct involvement in 9-11 is another topic beyond the scope
of this essay. One example will suffice. The Wall Street Journal reported in
October 2001 that Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of the Pakistani intelligence
agency Inter-Services Intelligence, ordered $100,000 be given to Mohamed Atta
in the US. The Journal further noted that the FBI had confirmed this information.
[Wall Street Journal,
10/10/01] So perhaps it's not surprising that Pakistan wouldn't warn the
US what its intelligence chief was up to. But again, this information did reach
the US through other means. On July 14, 1999, Randy Glass, a thief turned government
informant, was wiretapping a meeting in New York City in which he was trying
to sell military equipment to some Pakistanis as part of a sting operation.
During the meeting, a Pakistani intelligence agent pointed to the World Trade
Center and said to Glass, "Those towers are coming down." Glass recorded
this on tape, and passed this and other disturbing evidence to his local congressperson,
senator, and others. Senator Bob Graham has admitted his office received such
a warning from Glass before 9-11.
[Palm Beach Post, 10/17/02]
What
Defenses?
From this list, one can see there were many warnings specifying the type of attack,
a general timeframe, and the location as either New York City or the World Trade Center.
And this list only includes warnings from foreign governments, and
excludes warnings from the US itself: its own communications intercepts, individuals
with foreknowledge, suggestions from similar attacks, and the knowledge of American intelligence agents on
the track of al-Qaeda. We know that US intelligence was suffering
"warning fatigue" from so many notifications of an upcoming al-Qaeda attack. One
would think that, based on these warnings, the US would have
dramatically increased its security.
But in fact, while the US recently had over 100 fighters defending the US, the number was reduced in
1997 to save money. By 9-11 there were supposedly only 14 fighters protecting
the entire US, and most of those were focused on drug interdiction. Of the
14, only four were in the greater vicinity of New York or Washington. Supposedly,
on 9-11 there was not a single plane on alert within 100 miles of either city.
With so many warnings suggesting an imminent attack would come from the air and/or
target important, symbolic buildings, why weren't New York,
Washington and other probable target areas defended with fighters or antiaircraft
batteries? There was an antiaircraft battery permanently stationed on top of
the White House, but inexplicably it wasn't used to shoot down Flight 77, which
flew low over the White House before making a sharp turn and hitting the Pentagon.
[Dallas
Morning News, 9/16/01, Newsday,
9/23/01] The US government has not claimed it improved ground security before
9-11 at places like the Pentagon and World Trade Center either.
In
case there was a failure of imagination, Italy had just set an example two months
before 9-11 on how to respond to a terrorist threat: After receiving a warning
that a summit of world leaders in the city of Genoa would be targeted by al-Qaeda, they conspicuously
defended the city with increased police, antiaircraft batteries, and constantly flying
fighter jets. Apparently the press coverage of the defenses
caused al-Qaeda to cancel the attack. President Bush could hardly have failed
to notice, since he took the unusual step of sleeping on board a US aircraft
carrier during the summit. [BBC,
7/18/01,
CNN, 7/18/01,
Los
Angeles Times, 9/27/01]
Conclusion
One single warning should have been enough to take precautions, but with so many
warnings coming in, how can inaction be explained as mere incompetence? Yes, it is often difficult to
know which terrorist threats are real, and what information
to trust. But if the US couldn't take seriously warnings from close allies like
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and so on, then what were they waiting for? What would they
have taken seriously? And where is the outrage, the investigation? As can be seen with the recent
Congressional inquiry, the typical US government response has been to ignore
these foreign government warnings altogether, or to say they were lies. On October
17, 2002, CIA Director Tenet claimed that the only warnings "where there was
a geographic context, either explicit or implicit, appeared to point
abroad, especially to the Middle East." [Congressional
Intelligence Committee, 10/17/02] On May 16, 2002, National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice stated to the press: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that
these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center,
take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an
airplane as a missile." She added that "even in retrospect" there
was "nothing" to suggest that. [White
House, 5/16/02] On
June 7, 2002, President Bush stated, "Based on everything I've seen, I
do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th."
[Sydney
Morning Herald, 6/8/02]
Either
the Bush Administration is lying, or most of America's close allies are. So why
hasn't Congress investigated these foreign intelligence claims? Why hasn't a single mainstream media article connected all these dots,
or given these warnings the coverage they deserve? Either
some people within the US government knew the 9-11 attack would happen and did nothing,
or some people within the US government failed
to heed advice from a dozen foreign governments and properly defend the US from
attack. Perhaps both. These people should be removed from office on the grounds of gross incompetence, or face the legal
consequences of aiding and abetting terrorism. It seems clear that there are people
who fear an investigation, and that that is why these dots are left unconnected.
Ultimately, we are all in grave danger if these same officials
continue to be in charge of protecting us from terrorist attacks.
Paul Thompson is author of The Complete 9/11 Timeline, which will be published as a book later this year. Also available is an abridged form of the timeline, which is a good place to begin.
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