Posted on 10/18/2010 10:58:26 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Earlier today, I served as a panelist at an FDD event on the current warnings about an al Qaeda plot in Europe. The panel, moderated by Clifford D. May, also featured Frank Cilluffo of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute and Tom Joscelyn of both FDD and LWJ. This entry is excerpted from my remarks.
At the outset, it is important to note that a large number of reports inevitably surface after a major terror attack, arrest, or (in this case) unraveling plot that end up being inaccurate. That is the nature of how intelligence develops in any case, and is compounded by the lenses through which sources who speak to the media view the subject they are studying. Thus, some of the information in these reflections may still be imperfect -- but this represents the best description of what we know as of this writing.
First, this was a real plot—or perhaps it is more accurate to say plots. The key source of information was Ahmed Sidiqi, an Afghan German, who was detained in Kabul in July and subsequently questioned at the Bagram Airfield. Sidiqi told interrogators that he met with senior al Qaeda leader Younis al Mauretani in the tribal areas of Pakistan; Mauretani was planning multiple "Mumbai-style" attacks on European countries. Sidiqi was part of a group of jihadis sometimes called the "Hamburg group" but referred to as "The Tourist Group" by German intelligence. The Associated Press reports: "Siddiqui left Hamburg in March 2009 together with a group of 10 other jihadis known to German intelligence officials as the 'The Tourist Group' to seek paramilitary training at a terror camp in Pakistan's lawless border region with Afghanistan, German authorities said.
(Excerpt) Read more at longwarjournal.org ...
Pam Geller has this: “France Warned Islamic Attack Imminent”
How can we trust a President that witholds critical warnings about upcoming attacks scheduled to disrupt the midterm elections?
This coming attack will rival the 9/11 events. Beware of the six US cities where UBL has now warned Moslems to leave. Google the UBL transcript in order to find the text of his warnings. I think UBL has warned about this most likely 'dirty bomb' attack three times.
How can we trust a President that witholds critical warnings about upcoming attacks scheduled to disrupt the midterm elections?
This coming attack will rival the 9/11 events. Beware of the six US cities where UBL has now warned Moslems to leave. Google the UBL transcript in order to find the text of his warnings. I think UBL has warned about this most likely 'dirty bomb' attack three times.
'Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union – including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads. In addition, documents captured in Afghanistan show al-Qaida had plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased on the black market.
Besides trying to detonate its own nuclear weapons already planted in the U.S., military sources also say there is evidence to suggest al-Qaida is paying former Russian special forces officers to assist the terrorist group in locating nuclear weapons formerly concealed inside the U.S. by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Osama bin Laden's group is also paying nuclear scientists from Russia and Pakistan to maintain its existing arsenal and assemble additional weapons with the materials it has invested hundreds of millions in procuring over a period of 10 years.
The plans for the devastating nuclear attack on the U.S. have been under development for more than a decade. It is designed as a final deadly blow of defeat to the U.S., which is seen by al-Qaida and its allies as "the Great Satan."
At least half the nuclear weapons in the al-Qaida arsenal were obtained for cash from the Chechen terrorist allies.
At least nine major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington, have been mentioned as prime targets for the al-Qaida nuclear terrorists.'
All good points to follow.
Too add:
If the koranimals pull their children out of schools, get ready.
How can we trust a President that witholds critical warnings about upcoming attacks scheduled to disrupt the midterm elections?
This coming attack will rival the 9/11 events. Beware of the six US cities where UBL has now warned Moslems to leave. Google the UBL transcript in order to find the text of his warnings. I think UBL has warned about this most likely 'dirty bomb' attack three times.
'Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union – including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads. In addition, documents captured in Afghanistan show al-Qaida had plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased on the black market.
Besides trying to detonate its own nuclear weapons already planted in the U.S., military sources also say there is evidence to suggest al-Qaida is paying former Russian special forces officers to assist the terrorist group in locating nuclear weapons formerly concealed inside the U.S. by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Osama bin Laden's group is also paying nuclear scientists from Russia and Pakistan to maintain its existing arsenal and assemble additional weapons with the materials it has invested hundreds of millions in procuring over a period of 10 years.
The plans for the devastating nuclear attack on the U.S. have been under development for more than a decade. It is designed as a final deadly blow of defeat to the U.S., which is seen by al-Qaida and its allies as "the Great Satan."
At least half the nuclear weapons in the al-Qaida arsenal were obtained for cash from the Chechen terrorist allies.
At least nine major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington, have been mentioned as prime targets for the al-Qaida nuclear terrorists.'
How can we trust a President that witholds critical warnings about upcoming attacks scheduled to disrupt the midterm elections?
This coming attack will rival the 9/11 events. Beware of the six US cities where UBL has now warned Moslems to leave. Google the UBL transcript in order to find the text of his warnings. I think UBL has warned about this most likely 'dirty bomb' attack three times.
'Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union – including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads. In addition, documents captured in Afghanistan show al-Qaida had plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased on the black market.
Besides trying to detonate its own nuclear weapons already planted in the U.S., military sources also say there is evidence to suggest al-Qaida is paying former Russian special forces officers to assist the terrorist group in locating nuclear weapons formerly concealed inside the U.S. by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Osama bin Laden's group is also paying nuclear scientists from Russia and Pakistan to maintain its existing arsenal and assemble additional weapons with the materials it has invested hundreds of millions in procuring over a period of 10 years.
The plans for the devastating nuclear attack on the U.S. have been under development for more than a decade. It is designed as a final deadly blow of defeat to the U.S., which is seen by al-Qaida and its allies as "the Great Satan."
At least half the nuclear weapons in the al-Qaida arsenal were obtained for cash from the Chechen terrorist allies.
At least nine major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington, have been mentioned as prime targets for the al-Qaida nuclear terrorists.'
Nine Years After 9/11, Is Al-Qaeda's Threat Overrated? (NO! MSM and Rats living in pre-9/11 mindset)
Not seeing anything at Debka....?
Why the US leak now hinting al Qaeda's Headley was a double agent?
DEBKAfile Special Report October 16, 2010, 9:57 PM (GMT+02:00)
Saturday, Oct. 16, apparently out of the blue, the powers-that-be in Washington released a new revelation to the local media (first to the Washington Post): Five years ago, David Coleman Headley's wife informed the FBI that her Chicago-based husband was a key figure in the planning and preparation of the terrorist plot that killed 174 people in Mumbai, including six Israelis, in 2008.
Her tip preceded the attack by three years.
She was revealed as having given three interviews to FBI agents in which she related that Pakistan-born Headley was an active operative in Al Qaeda's most effective affiliate, the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taibe, had trained in its Pakistan camps and shopped for night-vision goggles and other equipment.
His wife came forward, according to the reports, after a domestic dispute that resulted in Headley's arrest in 2005. She described him as bragging of working as a paid informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency while he trained with terrorists in Pakistan.
Federal officials did not deny this suggestion. They were quoted as saying the FBI looked into the tip but declined to say if any action was taken.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly has followed the Headley case from its outset.
On Nov. 22, 2009, on the first anniversary of the Mumbai outrage, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 422 reported under the caption: Al Qaeda in America: A Chicago Master-Cell Plots Attacks in India and Denmark:
An undoubtedly authentic al Qaeda-linked terror cell has been uncovered in Chicago. Approximately five years after 9/11, a group of former Pakistani Islamists, some of them US citizens, set up shop in a Chicago grocery store. The FBI discovered the group had been working for at least three or four years with one of al Qaeda's operational arms, Lashkhar-e-Taibe, as master planners of overseas operations - though not so far in their adopted homeland.
From this headquarters they mapped out a series of plots against overseas targets in conjunction with the Pakistan-based terrorist organization. Their latest target was to have been the Danish newspaper which ran a series of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in 2005 which enraged Muslims worldwide.
This year, on April 2, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 439 discussed the possibility of Headley's employ by the US as an undercover double agent:
India finds it hard to believe that US terror experts were ignorant of Headley's role as key man in the planning and selection of targets for the attack [in Mumbai] and the dispatch of the Lashkar-e-Taibe terrorists for its execution.
These suspicions have led New Delhi to the supposition that Headley was a double or triple agent working for US intelligence, Pakistani's Inter-Services (military) Intelligence - ISI and also al Qaeda.
While Washington did indeed tip off Indian intelligence to the impending Mumbai attack two months in advance, the Indians now suspect that it withheld information which could have prevented the attack so as not to expose Headley.
debkafile's counter-terror sources wonder what the motivation was behind the release of a supposition that was widely aired in Israel and India at the time. Two possible answers are suggested here:
One: The federal authorities are anxious to distract American public attention from the court procedures beginning last week in the case of the Palestinian-American Major Nidal Malik Hasan accused of murdering 13 US servicemen at Fort Hood base on Nov. 5, 2009 and responsibility for the most deadly Islamist terrorist attack every staged in a US military installation.
Several of the soldiers wounded in the attack, some very seriously, disclosed that their US base commanders had ordered them then and there to hold back testimony of jihadi terror and erase video photos of the attack recorded on their cell phones. No visual evidence of the attack has therefore survived - only the testimony of witnesses, one of whom confirmed that throughout his shooting rampage, Nidal never stopped shouting Allah is Great!
Our sources also confirm that the emergence of a Palestinian terrorist willing to carry out a massacre inside the United States is highly embarrassing for the Obama administration at a time when its diplomats are working hard to revive peace diplomacy in the Middle East.
2. The US administration came under heavy fire for the unspecific, imprecise terror alert the State Department issued the whole of Europe on Oct. 3 against Mumbai-style multiple terror attacks. Three weeks later, most counter-terror agencies in Europe are certain the alert was unfounded and hurt Washington's credibility.
By releasing new data on the Headley case, the Americans hope to prove to the Europeans that they have learned their lesson from the Mumbai atrocity and were no longer repeating the mistake of disregarding incoming tips.
Their warning to Europe was based on information garnered from the jailed German al Qaeda operative Ahmad Wali Siddiqui. This time it was taken seriously.
See #10.
This Administration is selectively censoring and releasing selected information....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.