US homeland security chief Tom Ridge defended the timing of recent terror alerts in the United States, saying the 'shocking new detail' of Al-Qaeda reconnaissance of US buildings compelled officials to act immediately(AFP/Getty Images/File/Stephen Chernin)
Here is the original link (can't make it clickable because I am using html to show pic above):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040809/photos_pl_afp/040809143419_sblje1tt_photo0
And people wonder why anyone would question the motivations of some (many) in the media...
Anyone here game to attend the next summit with me? ;)
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Monday, August 09, 2004
Al-Qaeda plans to hold summit near Afghan-Pak border, plots new strikes
Press Trust of India/Agence France Presse
New York, August 9: High-level al-Qaeda operatives from around the world had been travelling to Afghanistan-Pakistan border apparently to hold summits that had an uncanny resemblance to the Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 which firmed up plans for September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, a media report said on Monday.
For several months, it said, the US government had been picking up reports from its spies, electronic intercepts, and "liaison services" (friendly intelligence services) of a Qaeda plot to strike the American homeland before the November elections.
But no one seemed to know the essential details: what were the targets? When would al-Qaeda strike? And were the attackers already in the United States? "We are in the midst of al-Qaeda efforts to attack the US on a scale as big or larger than 9/11," John Brennan, chief of the Terrorist Threat Integration Centre, the inter-agency operation that consolidates threat, information and produces the President's daily threat report, was quoted as saying.
Newsweek reports that the arrest of Qaeda operative Abu Issaal-Britani came after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), the 9/11 mastermind who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003, gave up his name during interrogations.
Al-Britani is a Pakistani-born militant who holds a passport from the United Kingdom. Better known as Esa-al-Hindi, he was dispatched by KSM - and, possibly, Osama bin Laden himself - to case targets in New York City, Newsweek said.
According to a secret FBI report quoted by the magazine, al-Hindi Since 9/11, al-Hindi, the magazine said, has been living in Britain at least some of the time and was the subject of on-and-off surveillance. After the Pakistani and CIA captured Qaeda operative Mohammed Neem Noor Khan in mid-July, al-Hindi’s name popped up again potentially as a central player in the "pre-election" plot.
Newsweek reports that al-Hindi was apparently the author of some of those detailed surveillances of the five financial institutions named in the alert. Though the casing was done before 9/11, the CIA was able to determine that the reports were actually written up after the attacks - and that someone called them up on Khan's computer as recently as January.
The magazine says that someone accessed what one senior government official guardedly referred to as "preparatory material" as recently as two or three weeks ago.
A senior US intelligence official told the weekly that the British did not know al-Hindi’s whereabouts when his name came up in the meetings of top officials two weekends ago. Indeed, they were worried that he might actually accelerate plans to strike once his casing reports were revealed.
In another development, according to the document, al-Hindi noticed that a local British imam employed African-American bodyguards with families in Montana.
"KSM tasked him with travelling to Montana to recruit the bodyguards' family members," according the report.
© 2004: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=34823
Aholes!