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Posted on 08/13/2005 9:03:35 AM PDT by TVenn
NEW intelligence reports suggesting that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta arrived in the US in late 1999 or early 2000 - six months earlier than previously thought - are likely to spark a reassessment of public servant Johnelle Bryant's incredible story of a face-to-face meeting with the terrorist.
In an extraordinary 2002 interview later branded a hoax by some media -- including the ABC's Media Watch -- Ms Bryant claimed to have met Atta in late April or early May of 2000 when she worked as a loan officer with the US Department of Agriculture's farm services agency in Florida.
Ms Bryant, who was medically retired from the department last year, said Atta had tried to apply for a $US650,000 US government loan to buy a six-seat, twin-engine aircraft that he wanted to convert to a crop duster.
In her interview with the US's ABC network, Ms Bryant told how Atta became angry when told he was ineligible for the loan and how he became fixated with an aerial photo of Washington DC hanging on her office wall.
When told the picture was not for sale, Ms Bryant said Atta became "very bitter".
"I believe he said: 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it'."
But despite some independent support for her claims, Ms Bryant's account was dismissed as a fake on the grounds that Atta did not get a visa to enter the US until May 18, 2000, and did not arrive until June 3 that year on a flight from Prague that landed at New Jersey's Newark airport.
Her claims were ignored in last year's 9/11 commission report on the events leading up to the terrorist attacks. The commission accepted the advice of US immigration authorities that Atta did not arrive until June 2000.
But revelations that a military intelligence unit known as Able Danger believed Atta had actually arrived in the US in late 1999, or at the latest very early in 2000, have lent new credibility to Ms Bryant's claims, while at the same time raising questions about the exchange of intelligence between US security agencies.
Investigations are now under way into what was done before September 11, 2001, about Able Danger's identification of Atta and three of the other future hijackers as members of an al-Qa'ida cell operating in the US and why the 9/11 commission also chose to ignore the unit's intelligence findings.
Republican congressman Curt Weldon has accused the commission of ignoring material that would have forced a rewriting of the September 11 events.
Spokesman Al Felzenberg admitted this week the commission had been sceptical when an Able Danger officer briefed it in July last year and said Atta had been in the US in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed he had not entered until June 2000.
"The information that (the officer) provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing," he said. "There was no way that Atta could have been in the US at that time."
But British columnist Mark Steyn, who wrote an opinion article for The Australian last month describing Ms Bryant's meeting with Atta as "the defining encounter of the age", claims US immigration did not keep then -- and still does not keep now -- reliable and comprehensive records of entry by foreigners.
"It (US immigration) cannot authoritatively state the date of Atta's first visit to the US," Steyn said. "If you choose to believe June 3, 2000, as the definitive date of his first visit, that's basically an act of faith. There were a number of sightings of Atta in the US before that time, in Florida and elsewhere."
In his column Steyn attacked Ms Bryant for failing to realise the danger Atta represented because of political correctness.
"She knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one," he wrote.
In her interview, Ms Bryant said Atta had threatened to cut her throat and initially didn't want to deal with her because she was a woman.
But she said: "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from. I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation to our country as easy for him as I could."
Ms Bryant recognised Atta from a newspaper photograph after the 9/11 attacks and defied Agriculture Department orders in telling her story to the media.
"The American people, the public, need to be aware that if these men can walk into my office, they can walk into your office, they can walk into anyone's office," she said.
Ms Bryant could not be reached for comment this week but Bob Epling, president of Community Bank of Florida, which let office space to the agency Ms Bryant worked for, said he had no doubt Atta visited the premises.
He said Ms Bryant had referred Atta to the "agriculture-friendly" CBF. "Atta was 15 steps away from walking into our loan department and making an application," Mr Epling said yesterday. "He chose not to."
Shoot, even I remember this.
bump
BTTT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/531840/posts
FBI checking whether terrorist sought a loan to buy crop-duster plane
I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from. I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation to our country as easy for him as I could."
Liberalism as psychosis, exhibit 38748783393A.
Okay that kinda explains why Mark Steyn would come down on her...
I didn't understand when it mentioned that in the article...but, I still think she did good when she went against the Ag. Department after 9/11 to talk about the incident...only to be dismissed as a kook!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/532375/posts
Robert Epling of Community Bank of Florida said he's been told that Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers, sought a USDA loan for a crop-duster. The USDA is a tenant in the bank, which checked its files about Atta at the request of the FBI.
"We understand he was turned down" at the USDA "and they referred him to us," said Epling. A loan officer at the bank remembered a phone call from someone inquiring about crop-dusters, an unusual request because there are so few of the planes left in the area, Epling said. Nothing came of the inquiry from the unnamed person.
James Lester, an employee of South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade, told the FBI that Atta was among the men who in groups of two or three visited the crop-dusting firm nearly every weekend for six or eight weeks before the attacks.
Atta was a persistent questioner and "I recognized him because he stayed on my feet all the time. I just about had to push him away from me," Lester said
I remember this, because its covered in Savages book "The Enemy Within"
How many times has Bunny Greenhouse been up to Capital Hill, compared to this woman?
Brainiac...
Click the picture...
http://www.nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus061002.asp
Like many others, I read with sinking heart about Johnell Bryant, the Department of Agriculture official to whom the 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta applied for a loan — he wanted to buy a crop-duster, for purposes that need not now be guessed. According to the New York Times, “[Ms. Bryant] told Atta that he could not have a loan of $650,000 to buy a twin-engine, six-passenger plane, which he wanted to equip with a very large tank. He then became agitated . . . and asked [Bryant] what was to keep him from slitting her throat and stealing money from the safe behind the desk in her Florida office.”
But Johnell Bryant didn’t kick Atta out of her office or call the police. She jollied him. And “later in their meeting, . . . [Atta] told her he wanted to buy an aerial picture of Washington that hung in her office. He pulled out a wad of cash and threw money on her desk, even after she said she would not sell it. He asked about the White House and Pentagon, and she pointed them out.”
He praised al Qaeda to her, and also its leader, Osama bin Laden. According to Bryant, Atta “mentioned that this man would someday be known as the world’s greatest leader.” The terrorist went on to ask about various American cities, and specifically mentioned that the football stadium used by the Dallas Cowboys had “a hole in the roof.” He also wondered whether “he would be able to visit various landmarks in Washington, since he was not a citizen. ‘I told him that there wouldn’t be a problem with that, that there is security inside of most of the buildings,’ . . . but it would be like that in airports.”
Today, Bryant says, “Should I have picked up the telephone and called someone? . . . I don’t know how I could possibly expect myself to have recognized what the man was. And yet sometimes I haven’t forgiven myself.”
Compare this woman's vivid recollection, and the events she relates, with the 9/11 Commission's reliance on staff collected "facts", and tell me who's more credible?
NATIONAL DESK | June 7, 2002, Friday
TRACES OF TERROR: THE RINGLEADER; U.S. Official Says She Met Central Figure in 9/11 Plot
By TINA KELLEY (NYT) 524 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 24 , Column 5
ABSTRACT - Agriculture Department official Johnell Bryant says Mohamed Atta, man believed to have been ringleader of terrorist attacks of Sept 11, asked him for loan in April or May 2000 to buy crop-duster and questioned her about security at World Trade Center and buildings in Washington; says he also spoke to her about Al Qaeda and praised Osama bin Laden; photo (M)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,729049,00.html
Hijacker 'applied for US plane loan'
Staff and agencies
Friday June 7, 2002
Excerpt
A US government official has claimed that September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta applied for a $650,000 government loan to buy a small plane and fit it with a large chemical tank one and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington.
Johnell Bryant, a loan officer at a US department of agriculture office in south Florida, said Atta visited her in the spring of 2000, saying he had just arrived from Afghanistan and hoped to get his pilot's licence and buy a plane to use for charter flights and for crop dusting.
"He wanted to finance a twin engine six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats," Ms Bryant told ABC's World News Tonight programme in an interview broadcast last night.
"He said he was an engineer, and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
She told ABC the televised interview was against the wishes of her bosses. ABC says she passed a lie detector examination.
Ms Bryant said Atta used his real name when she interviewed him.
"I spelled it A-T-T-A-H, and he told me, 'No, A-T-T-A, as in 'Atta boy!'" Ms Bryant said.
She said she rejected Atta for a loan because he was not a US citizen, and then reported a bizarre conversation with the terrorist.
Gorelick was placed on the 911 commission with the sole purpose of keeping the facts of Atta and her memo not to allow FBI and CIA to share intelligence a secret from the committee. She was there to guide the committee the way the Clintonista's wanted it guided.
She told[Bryant] ABC the televised interview was against the wishes of her bosses. ABC says she passed a lie detector examination.
Maybe it is time for Al Felzenberg to get a lie detector examination.
The fact that she is liberal backs up her story. She doesn't seem to be one that would discredit the Bush blaming 9/11 report.
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