[sonsofliberty2000]

Admin: This may either be new info, or old, but I am unsure. So please move if you must, but thought this could be useful.

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Patriot Paradox

[South40]

When Did Clinton Know of Plots to Use Planes as Weapons?

He probably didn't...he was too busy boinking portly interns and defending perjury charges to do his job.

[dandelion]

Damn straight. Hit it hard, hit it often, and Google the h*ll out of it.

[Enterprise]

All I can add is that I remember reading in the 90's that the Philippine Government had foiled a plot to use several jetliners in suicide missions. I would bet heavily that the Clinton Administration knew about the plot.

[TigersEye]

I think Clintoon was too busy collecting campaign contributions from China in exchange for ICBM guidance technology and MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles; ie warheads) technology to notice what terrorists were up to.

[swilhelm73]

Googling is the way to go.

IIRC, the Phillipines tortured a captured Islamist and got among other things from him that they were planning on using airliners as bombs against the US.

The Clinton administration was immediately informed, but discounted the information, chiefly, or as least so they would later claim, because information extracted via torture is unreliable.

That is true in general, however, everything else squeezed out of the terrorist turned out to be true.

Yet *another* failure on the part of Clinton and Clarke from the decade of ignoring the terror threat.

[sonsofliberty2000]

Ping

[kevao]

Throughout the 1990s, we were led to believe that Clinton was brilliant and knew everything. So he must have missed this one, or compartmentalized it away. Could be he was just too busy getting a hummer when that bit of info landed on his desk.

Maybe you should ask him. But be sure to put him under oath first!!!

[CalKat]

In the 1990s, I think most people in government and/or intelligence knew of plots to fly airplanes into buildings. There was the Bojinka plan to crash planes into Sears Tower, WTC, CIA headquarters (I think) and some other buildings in the US. There was the plan to crash the hijacked airliner into the Eiffel Tower. It's not like no one could have imagined it, it had been out there for a couple years.

[piasa]

I think this answers your question:

JANUARY 1995: (BOJINKA, PHILLIPPINES AIRLINER PLOT INDICTMENT, MOHAMMED) Plotters were indicted in the Southern District of NY in January, 1995, the US learned of the plot based in Manila to bomb 12 commercial jumbo jets of US carriers flying Asian-Pacific routes. The following defendant is included in the Indictment returned in the Southern District of NY: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed -Whitehouse.gov news release 20011010-1.html

JANUARY 1995 : (PROJECT BOJINKA, PHILIPPINES) (According to the German paper 'Die Welt') AFP - Western secret services knew as far back as 1995 that suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden planned to attack civilian sites using commercial passenger planes, German newspaper Die Welt said. Quoting sources close to western intelligence services, Die Welt said authorities did not take seriously the threat of the plan, known as Project Bojinka. Phillipine police, investigating a possible attack against Pope John Paul II on a visit to Manila, found details of the plan in a computer seized in an apartment used by three men who were part of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. It provided for 11 planes to be exploded simultaneously by bombs placed on board, but also in an alternative form for several planes flying to the United States to be hijacked and flown into civilian targets. Among targets mentioned was the World Trade Centre in New York, which was destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States that killed thousands. Other targets mentioned were CIA offices in Virginia and the Sears Tower in Chicago, Die Welt said. The plot re-surfaced during the trial in NY in 1997 of Pakistani Ramsi Youssef, the mastermind of the attack on the WTC in 1993. (* My note : The computer seized by Philippine police was that of 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, who got to watch his dream of destroying the WTC become reality from a luxury prison cell (complete with TV) in Colorado.)

Speaking of 1995:

1995 : (IRANIAN-LINKED CONSPIRACY TO ATTACK US TARGETS) According to later [1997] reported comments by Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, a senior Iranian intelligence officer, Brig. Ahmad Sherifi, and a local cell of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization were linked in a "conspiracy" to attack U.S. targets in 1995- "Khobar Towers Bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia," the Washington Post, June 25, 1996

1995 : (PHILLIPPINES AIRLINER PLOT FOILED, BOJINKA, ISAMUDDIN, MOHAMMED, HAMBALI, KHAN, YOUSEF, MURAD) Foiled plot to bomb 12 U.S. airliners. FBI named Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as suspect. Al Qeada plot to blow up 12 US jetliners over the Pacific Ocean foiled by a freak accident and fire in in the Manila apartment that served as the group's bomb factory.; financed by Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, 37 - better known as Hambali - who has also been linked to two Sept 11 hijackers. One of the plotters later told investigators in the Philippines that the ultimate plan had been to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into government buildings in Washington - a plan that foreshadowed the Sept 11 plot. Involved with Khan - Hambali's business partner - in the plot to bomb the 12 planes was Ramzi Yousef, who was also found guilty in the 1993 truck bombing of the WTC, and Pakistani Abdul Hakim Murad.

1995 : (BIN LADEN MEETS IRAQI INTELLIGENCE AGENTS IN SUDAN) Bin Laden again met with Iraqi intelligence officers in 1994 and 1995 in the Sudan. At these meetings, bin-Laden and Iraqi intelligence secret service director Faruq al-Hijazi agreed to work together on terrorist projects directed against the U.S. - Findlaw, Ashton, et al. v. al Qaeda

1995 : (CLASSIFIED DIAGRAM OF US W-87 NUCLEAR WARHEAD GIVEN TO PRESS; IT WAS PRINTED IN US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT : INVESTIGATION QUASHED BEFORE IT LED TO HAZEL O'LEARY?) "Someone at the Department of Energy gave a classified design diagram of the W-87 nuclear warhead to U.S. News & World Report magazine which printed it in its July 31 issue that year. Representative Curt Weldon is still trying to get answers about how this leak was investigated and what was determined. He has good reason to believe the investigation was quashed because it was going to lead straight to President Clinton's Energy Secretary. "

1995 : (RAHMAN CONVICTED NY TUNNEL PLOTS, WTC 1 ATTACK) Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was convicted for "directing others to perform acts" such as plotting to bomb bridges, tunnels and buildings in New York City, in the words of the trial judge. That case showed him to be a central figure for the Islamic extremists who carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and, later, for some of those involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. - "FBI Wary of Investigating Extremist Muslim Leaders: Agency May Rethink Hesitancy on Religious Figures," By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A04

FEBRUARY 27, 1995 : (IRAN, US) "Iranian sources confirmed Tehran's desire and determination to strike inside the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government in the near future," said a Feb. 27, 1995, terror warning by the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The warnings became increasingly specific as to the possible location, type of attack and likely dates. "These strikes are most likely to occur either in the immediate future or in the new Iranian year - starting 21 March 1995," the congressional task force predicted. U.S. intelligence monitored a series of meetings and conferences between senior officials of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other terror organizations in mid-February 1995 in which the subject of killing Americans on U.S. soil came up, officials said. During these conferences, known terrorists made specific mention of Congress and the White House as "institutions that are great enemies of the Islamist movement," according to a congressional warning. "This is a deviation from past discussions beyond referring to the U.S. as a single entity to pointing to specific branches of government as their true enemies," it added. Around the same time, the FBI received intelligence from the Philippines that two men later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had been arrested as they were plotting to blow up U.S. airliners. The men planned to hijack one airliner and crash it into the CIA, Pentagon or White House, documents show. The marshal's warning explained that Islamic extremists had issued a fatwa to kill marshals personnel or strike their buildings because of an episode at the end of the World Trade Center bombing trial in which deputy marshals accidentally stepped on a copy of the Koran during a scuffle. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/702985/posts

MARCH 1995 : (US EMBASSY EMPLOYEES MURDERED IN PAKISTAN - SEE WTC 1 BOMBING ) American employees of the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan killed in response to arrest of suspect in the first WTC bombing.

MARCH 20, 1995 : (JAPAN, AUM CULT, WMD TERRORISM, SARIN NERVE GAS ATTACK) Japanese terrorists of the Aum (or Aum Shinrikyo) cult, which believes that the end of the world is imminent, released Sarin nerve gas into Tokyo subway trains. 12 killed and approximately 5,000 to 6,000 injured. 10/95 Japanese government revoked Aum's classification as a religious organization, but decided not to invoke a law that would have outlawed the organization. Suspect Shoko Asahara, who founded the cult in 1987, imprisoned by the Japanese government. *
Twelve civilians killed and thousands injured in a Sarin nerve gas attack on the Kasumigaski subway station in the centre of Tokyo, Japan. The Aum Shinrikyo cult were blamed for the attack which involved placing gas containers in subway stations and trains. A major police clamp down on the cult followed the attack with its leader Shoko Asahara being arrested two months later. The previous June seven people died and one hundred and fifty were injured in a gas attack in Matsumoto, Japan, also perpetrated by the Aum. In that attack, the gas was sprayed from tanks in a van in an attempt to assassinate a judge. Subsequent investigation identified the gas as Sarin nerve agent.* Twelve civilians killed and thousands injured in a Sarin nerve gas attack on the Kasumigaski subway station in the centre of Tokyo, Japan. The Aum Shinrikyo cult were blamed for the attack which involved placing gas containers in subway stations and trains. A major police clamp down on the cult followed the attack with its leader Shoko Asahara being arrested two months later. The previous June seven people died and one hundred and fifty were injured in a gas attack in Matsumoto, Japan, also perpetrated by the Aum. In that attack, the gas was sprayed from tanks in a van in an attempt to assassinate a judge. Subsequent investigation identified the gas as Sarin nerve agent.

MARCH 20, 1995 : (JAPAN : AUM SHINRIKYO CULT ATTACKS TOKYO SUBWAY SYSTEM WITH SARIN GAS, KILLING 12 AND SICKENING THOUSANDS) The guru of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) doomsday cult, Shoko Asahara, masterminded the sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system on March 20, 1995. Twelve people were killed and 2,500 sickened. - "The biowar threat: Jordanian ‘mastermind’ sought," by Ed Blanche, The Daily Star , April 29 2003

APRIL 19, 1995 : (OKC BOMBING)

and so on- this was a very busy year for terrorism & the Pakistani nuclear proliferation problem.

[nutmeg]

Thanks for the ping. I haven't had a chance to read this in-depth yet, but on the surface, this sure looks interesting. I'll ping a few FRiends here before I have to logoff for the night.

[nutmeg]

ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

[nutmeg]

ping

[ladyinred]

There are many books out there that document threats sent to the Clinton White House. But not to worry, Bubba met with that oh so bipartisan commission yesterday and waxed eloquently about all of it with them behind closed doors. I just know he admitted his failures don't you? HAH!

[MCFujiTanker]

I remember seeing the airline suicide stuff from the PI and most people at the time blew if off as rantings from the Clancy Novel (where the JAL pilot crashed a 747 into a joint session of Congress). I see stacks of "what ifs" everyday. You can wring your hands to death, what's past is past, just don't make the same mistake twice. Now we know we have to deal with these new "kamikaze's". That's why a "Maginot Line" defense doesn't work. We have to hunt everyone of these bastards down and kill them. They can not be allowed to have sanctuary anywhere, period. We need to nail as many as we can in Iraq, while they're out in the open, not hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan. The insurgents there have no superpowers sending unlimited supplies down a Ho Chi Minh trail. Let's crush them without mercy while we have the military over there to do it..

[Eva]

Bill probably didn't know anything. On the other hand Hillary probably knew.

[malia]

I'm confused. I usually link to news/current events. Tonight I went to "latest" and this is where I found this article. Later wanted to look again and couldn't find it, remembered I had been to "latest" and sure enough there it was. I don't understand. But anyway this is very interesting and should be where all can read.

[Jim Robinson]

Lots of tinfoil and jumping to conclusions on this old thread, but it's an interesting read:

Catastrophic intelligence Failure - Clinton's Bin Laden GATE
Accuracy in Media | September 24, 2001 | Cliff Kincaid - Reed Irvine

Posted on 09/29/2001 1:10:15 PM PDT by majordivit

CATASTROPHIC INTELLIGENCE FAILURE

In 1995, the CIA and the FBI learned that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as bombs to attack important targets in the U.S. This scheme was called Project Bojinka. It was discovered in the Philippines, where authorities arrested two of bin Laden's agents, Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad. They were involved in planting a bomb on a Philippine airliner. Project Bojinka, which Philip-pine authorities found outlined on Abdul Murad's laptop, called for planting bombs on eleven U.S. airliners and hijacking others and crashing them into targets like the CIA building.

The hijacking part of the plan got less attention than the planting of bombs. It required aviators like Japan's kamikaze pilots who were willing to commit suicide. Bin Laden had no such pilots in 1995, but he set out to train young fanatics willing to die for him to fly airliners. Abdul Murad, whose laptop had revealed the plan, admitted that he was being trained for a suicide mission. Bin Laden began training pilots in Afghanistan with the help of an Afghan pilot and a Pakistani general.

Project Bojinka was known to the CIA and the FBI. It was described in court documents in the trial in New York of Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Murad for their participation in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Since the CIA had been mentioned as one of the targets in Project Bojinka, it should have had an especially strong interest in any evidence that bin Laden was preparing to carry it out. The most obvious indicator, and one that should have been watched most carefully, was the recruitment of young, dedicated followers to learn to fly American airliners. That would require keeping a close watch on flight schools where that training is given.

[snip]

Damage Control

President Bush has fingered bin Laden as a prime suspect but also says countries which harbor terrorists will be held accountable. The Clinton administration identified seven state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan—but bin Laden is reported to have thousands of followers and terrorist cells in 50-60 countries, including the U.S. The Washington Post published a long article about bin Laden's worldwide activities, noting his presence in places like NATO- and U.N.-occupied Bosnia and Kosovo, but failed to explain how this occurred under the watchful eye of the Clinton administration.

Bob Woodward of the Post co-authored a September 14 front-page article insisting that the CIA has been authorized since 1998 to use covert means to disrupt bin Laden's operations under a presidential directive signed by Clinton. This article had the earmarks of a damage control operation on the part of the U.S. officials who worked with bin Laden's followers in the Balkans and now realize that their efforts have backfired. CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl aired a similar report on September 16, adding the tantalizing tidbit that Clinton may have authorized bin Laden's apprehension or assassination. Virtually admitting she had been leaked this information by former Clinton officials, Stahl said "there are people in Washington who want the American people to know they have not been asleep at the wheel in the war on terrorism and, even though there may have been some failures, they have been trying."

The Clinton administration's soft-on-terrorism policy actually began when it blamed the 1993 World Trade Center bombing on individual terrorists, not on any state. Evidence to the contrary has been assembled in the important book, Study of Revenge, by Laurie Mylroie, that the mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was in fact an Iraqi agent. The book was published by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Press at a time when Vice President Dick Cheney was vice-chairman of the AEI board of trustees.

James Woolsey, who served as a CIA director under Clinton, has also become an advocate of the view that Iraq was behind the first World Trade Center bombing. Woolsey notes that James Fox, the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994, believed in the Iraqi connection. "And indeed," Woolsey adds, "ever since Fox's ouster, federal prosecutors and the White House have hewed to the line that most terrorist attacks on the United States are either the products of ‘loose networks' of folks who just somehow come together or are masterminded by the mysterious and unaccountable bin Laden. Explicit state sponsorship, especially by Iraq, has not been on the agenda."

Woolsey says intelligence and law enforcement officials would be well-advised to consider the possibility that the recent attacks, "whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others—were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein." However, on NBC's Meet the Press on September 16, just five days after the new attacks when investigations were still presumably underway, Cheney seemed to arbitrarily rule out an Iraqi role.

[snip]


The commission didn't explain why the Clinton administration failed to pursue a foreign connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. Convicted bomber Terry Nichols had connections to the Philippines, where Muslim terrorists are very active. Middle East analyst Laurie Mylroie believes the government of Iraq was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Stephen Jones, lawyer for the other convicted bomber, Timothy McVeigh, also believes Iraq was ultimately behind the plot.


[snip]



The Attack on the USS Cole

The establishment media helped the Clinton administration put on a good face in the aftermath of the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. 60 Minutes aired an interview with Clinton's "terrorism czar" Richard Clarke, who was responsible for counter-terrorism at the National Security Council. He told Lesley Stahl that the U.S. was trying to determine who staged that attack, and suggested it may have been committed by Osama bin Laden. He also warned that terrorists have infiltrated the U.S. and that it was just a matter of time before American territory was the site of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. If this was true, it was because Clinton had allowed such a situation to develop. But that's not the conclusion Stahl came to. Bin Laden took credit for the attack on the Cole but no retribution was ever exacted for that. Mylroie says Iraq probably assisted in this attack.

The Clinton administration's handling of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia became a subject of some controversy in the media. Bin Laden was suspected of bankrolling this terrorist incident, which left 19 American servicemen dead and scores injured, and which was reportedly carried out with Iranian government support. The evidence connecting Iran to the plot was the subject of a report by John McWethy of ABC World News Tonight, who cited overwhelming evidence of Iranian involvement. He said the evidence included U.S. intercepts of Iranian communications and admissions of Iranian involvement by the bombers themselves. McWethy said the bombers were recruited by Iran during a trip to an Islamic meeting in Syria, took religious training in Iran, and terrorist training in Lebanon. Kenneth R. Timmerman has also cited evidence of an Iranian link to the Khobar Towers bombing. However, Saudi Arabia was reluctant to provide evidence on the Iranian role, and the Clinton administration put the blame on Osama bin Laden. Still, no retaliation was ordered. The August 2, 1996 USA Today identified a network of 11 different terrorist-training facilities in Iran, citing classified U.S. intelligence documents. Yet no U.S. action was ever been taken by Clinton against those camps.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/535793/posts

[Jim Robinson]

U.S. Long Underestimated Qaeda's Scope, Officials Say
The New York Times ^ | June 9, 2002 | JUDITH MILLER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.


Posted on 06/08/2002 1:38:38 PM PDT by sarcasm


ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.

As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.

In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying to determine whether the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. overlooked a possible Qaeda connection to the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. The United States has still not officially blamed Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden for that operation.

Law enforcement officials acknowledged this week that they did not know how and when Al Qaeda was created, or whether it was connected to a tangled array of terrorism plots and plotters, including Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani who told the police in the Philippines in 1995 of a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II, blow up 12 American jetliners over Asia and fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/696886/posts

[gitmo]

I wonder if the CIA director mentioned it to Clinton on one of the two times Clinton met with him.

[Poincare]

If you do the research you will find that Nixon knew very well that terrorists, even domestic anti-war terrorists, had the passenger-plane-as-weapon in their arsenal.