Before 9/11, Warnings on Bin Laden

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - More than three years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, American diplomats warned Saudi officials that Osama bin Laden might target civilian aircraft, according to a newly declassified State Department cable.

The cable was one of two documents released Thursday by the National Security Archive, a research organization at George Washington University that obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. The other was a memorandum written five days after the 2001 attacks by George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, to his top deputies, titled "We're at War."

The June 1998 cable reported to Washington that three American officials, the State Department's regional security officer, an economics officer and an aviation specialist had met Saudi officials at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh to pass along a warning based on an interview Mr. bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al Qaeda, had just given to ABC News.

They said he had threatened in the interview to strike in the next "few weeks" against "military passenger aircraft," mentioning surface-to-air missiles. The cable said there was "no specific information that indicates bin Laden is targeting civilian aircraft," but added, "We could not rule out that a terrorist might take the course of least resistance and turn to a civilian target."

Part of the Tenet memo had been reported previously in Bob Woodward's 2002 book, "Bush At War." The eight-paragraph Tenet letter was a call to arms, declaring "a worldwide war against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations" and saying that the effort would require "our absolute and total dedication."

What I do know is this: UBL has a whopping bounty on his head and some of the best trained, highly motivated professional killers that the world has ever seen (both military and private) on his trail.

Any one of his minions can win the 9mm Lottery with one well-placed bullet and a phone call to Uncle Sam. He is either the luckiest fugitive in world history, or something else is happening that we don't know about.

Wrong - He is simply surviving because of his location - In the NW Frontier of Pakistan - Some of the most brutal terrain on earth (where no "private type" bounty-hunters would dare operate). And where conducting professional military Ops is a nightmare.

But we'll get him -

Regards,

And by the way, Zarqawi remains alive in Iraq with just a big of a bounty on his head and we have over 155,000 + U.S. Soldiers there - Plus Intel sources that far out value what we have in the Afghan/Pak border regions -

I couldn't agree more. His head on a pike would go a long way towards answering the question at hand. However, if he's been hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, way out in the middle of feudal tarritory that not even the Pakistani government could access (if they wanted to), how in the hell does he get his dialysis? Maybe we should see if the French have been selling some battery-powered portable dialysis machines to Pakistan
lately. That would shed some credence on the theory that bin Laden is still alive. Anyone who believes that Pakistan is really trying to stop al-Qaeda and other Islamo-fascists is off their rocker anyway.

The 2001 document echoed an earlier memo about Al Qaeda that Mr. Tenet had sent on Dec. 4, 1998, to top C.I.A. officials and other intelligence agencies, stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort." But the national 9/11 commission concluded last year that the 1998 memo had "little overall effect" on mobilizing the agencies to fight terrorism.

Tenet's memo was in the first days of December 1998 - what else happened in the first days of December 1998 ?

DECEMBER 1998 early : (BIN LADEN RECEIVES THE FATWA FROM THE HIGH COURT OF AFGHANISTAN PERMITTING THE USE OF WMD AGAINST AMERICAN CIVILIANS) MR. BODANSKY ...The first key event took place in the first days of December last year, in that when bin Laden received the fatwah, a religious decree from the high court of Afghanistan, the leading Ulama -- religious court -- permitting, among other things, the use of weapons of mass destruction against innocents -- against American civilians. Terrorists in the past have had weapons of mass destruction -- never in the quantity and quality of bin Laden's -- and we'll go into that in a few minutes. The important thing is never have they had any authorization to use them. And this is the first time, considering the fact that bin Laden is the guest of the Taliban, he is seeking permission, justification or legitimization to use these weapons from the same group of learned individuals that also guide the Taliban is of extreme importance. ---NATIONAL PRESS CLUB 8/6/99 "...PRESS CONFERENCE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB MORNING NEWSMAKER WITH YOSSEF BODANSKY, AUTHOR; SUBJECT: INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM NATIONAL PRESS CLUB WASHINGTON, D.C. 10:00 A.M. EDT FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1999 via ALAMO-GIRL'S DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON ; SECTION: BREACH OF TRUST; SUBSECTION: TERROR; Revised 1/8/01

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