US military team tried to alert FBI about attack in 2000
UPDATED: 08:52, August 18, 2005
A US military intelligence team had tried to alert the FBI in 2000 about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, but its efforts had been blocked by US military lawyers, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The newspaper quoted Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a veteran Army intelligence officer, as saying that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with FBI agents to share its information.
But according to Shaffer, US military lawyers forced members of Able Danger to cancel three scheduled meetings with the FBI at the last minute because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
The information that Able Danger tried to pass on to the FBI might have led to Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned, Shaffer said.
Shaffer also told the newspaper that he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to gather information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, Internet sites and paid search engines like LexisNexis.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.people.com.cn/200508/18/eng20050818_203177.html
BAGHDAD, Aug 17 (KUNA) -- Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Jabr said Wednesday that four people were caught in the vicinity of the three major bombs that were detonated in Baghdad and killed close to 75 people while injuring 95.
Among the dead were 20 women and five members of the Iraqi police while the injured included dozens of women and 11 policemen.
The four suspects had remote controls that could have been used in detonating the bombs.
"The suspects are still being questioned," the minister said in a news statement.
A committee has been formed to investigate the circumstances of the entry of small cars to the Nahda bus station, where one of the attacks took place.
Iraqi Presidential Spokesman, Kamram Qaradaghi, had condemned the attacks and so did a spokesman for the Iraqi government, Laith Kubba.
For his part, newly-appointed British Ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, deplored the attacks in a talks show Wednesday.
"I don't think what is required is more troops, more coalition troops. This is going to take a sustained effort; I think we have seen a short term increase in terrorist activity. We think the trend over last few months has been relatively stable, we see a consistent level of attacks, with some days worse than others," he said about the escalation of violence.