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Iranian Man in Germany Warned of Attack (WasAllowed to Ring WhiteHouse &CIA,Wasn't TakenSerious)
REUTERS ^ | 3:23 a.m. ET | Reuters Staff

Posted on 09/14/2001 1:57:59 AM PDT by t-shirt

September 14, 2001

Iranian Man in Germany Warned of Attack

- Justice Source

By REUTERS

Filed at 3:23 a.m. ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - An Iranian man in Germany had warned German and U.S. authorities about a global danger less than a week before the terror attacks in the United States, justice ministry sources said on Friday.

The man, who was in custody in the northern city of Hanover awaiting deportation, had insisted on ringing the White House to warn them of the danger.

``The man was allowed to ring the White House, but there, as well as at the CIA, he was not taken seriously,'' an official from the justice ministry of Lower Saxony told Reuters under condition of anonymity.

The official said authorities in Germany believed the Iranian was mentally ill.

The official said the justice ministry was informed of the man and his warnings on Wednesday, the day after hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office said it would issue a report on the matter later in the day.

One newspaper said the man was now being interviewed by German authorities and by the CIA.

The official said there was still doubt, even after the attacks, that the man really knew about the plot.

Germany has become a focal point for investigations into Tuesday's attacks after it emerged three of the suicide hijackers may have belonged to a Hamburg-based extremist group committed to attacking symbolic U.S. targets.

German authorities have to decide on Friday about whether to keep in custody an airport worker as they extend a probe into a German link to the terror attacks.

Reports of a second man being held were denied by the federal prosecutors office on Friday.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events
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To: Black Jade
Wasn't a German nationalist involved in the OKC bombing as well?

Yes.

41 posted on 09/14/2001 4:11:03 AM PDT by Fighting Falcons
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To: Fighting Falcons
Wasn't a German nationalist involved in the OKC bombing as well? Yes.

Please cite:

I think your claim isn't factual.

42 posted on 09/14/2001 4:13:52 AM PDT by dbbeebs
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To: DB
Gee Mike, do you think terrorism is illegal in Germany?

I would imagine that terrorism against Germany is illegal in Germany just like terrorism against Afghanistan is illegal in Afghanistan. DUH!

The official said authorities in Germany believed the Iranian was mentally ill.

The Germans didn't seem too interested, however, in investigating the possibility of terrorism against the USA even though they knew that Anti-American groups are present in Germany.

We know Afghanistan is a problem through direct assistance to terrorists. But in this case we must also beware of the stupidity of our so-called friends.

43 posted on 09/14/2001 4:36:59 AM PDT by Mike Darancette
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To: dbbeebs
Andrew Strassmeiler. I know I butchered his last name.
44 posted on 09/14/2001 4:40:43 AM PDT by Fighting Falcons
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To: Mike Darancette
Germany does not knowingly harbor terrorist regardless of the country the terror is directed. To make comparisons between Germany and Afghanistan as being similar makes my point. Duh…
45 posted on 09/14/2001 4:43:57 AM PDT by DB
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Comment #46 Removed by Moderator

To: t-shirt
he was not taken seriously

This may not be a true statement. On September 7, the Dept of State had a worldwide travel advisory at their website. The announcement, however, did not include the United States. The announcement was changed Sept 12.

47 posted on 09/14/2001 4:49:03 AM PDT by The Truth Will Make You Free
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Comment #48 Removed by Moderator

To: freedom_from_socialism
Belive me folks, Osama Bin Laden is also Anti-Iran. These muslims butcher each other.

Notice that Iranian regime is more moderate that it is commonly assumed and it suuportive of Russian efforts to suppress the terrorism in Chechnya. Also Iran together with Russia support Northern Aliance in Afganistan.

49 posted on 09/14/2001 5:01:48 AM PDT by A. Pole
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To: Mike Darancette, t-shirt
Why not? Because of the easily demonstrable inferiority; when compared to ours; of their cultural, intellectual and moral achievements, many Europeans, after all, hate us as much or more as do the Arabs, The Asians, the Africans, the DemocRATS -- and the products of our own schools and colleges and universities! [And, because of their habit of arming our enemies, present us almost as big a threat!]

Hesperophobia
On blaming the Jews.

By John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor

September 13, 2001 5:00 p.m.

Back in 1982 there were some horrible massacres at two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Christian Lebanese Arabs actually did the killing; but the Israeli army was in the neighborhood, and was responsible, at some theoretical level, for keeping the peace in the zone that included the camps. Because of this, the Israelis took much of the brunt of the world's outrage at the killings. Commenting on these events, the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, remarked in disgust: "Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews!"

I've been getting the same feeling from some of my e-mail. The fundamental reason America is under attack by Arab terrorists, several dozen people want me to know, is that the U.S. supports Israel. And the only reason we do that, several of them have said, or hinted, is because of the political power of the Jewish lobby here in the U.S.A. A few of my correspondents have expressed themselves more ... bluntly than that. Put it this way: While I have not yet encountered the word "bloodsuckers" (perhaps my readership isn't "diverse" enough), some of this stuff comes pretty close — though I should say in fairness, most is argued on cold national-interest grounds. At any rate, a lot of people feel that the mass killing of Americans by Arab terrorists is all the fault of Israel and those American politicians who, for low and disreputable motives, or from sheer blindness to America's true ideals and interests, support her. Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.

Setting aside the statistical certainty that some of the dead Americans are Jewish (as, in high statistical probability, some were of Arab origins), and at the risk of yet more ill-tempered or abusive e-mails, I am going to declare that I don't think these recent outrages can be blamed on the Jews, nor even on pro-Israel American politicians. The root phenomenon is not American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs: The root phenomenon is hesperophobia.

This word was coined by the political scientist Robert Conquest. Its roots are the Greek words hesperos, which means "the west" and phobos, which means "fear," but which when used as an English suffix can also carry the meaning "hate." Hesperophobia is fear or hatred of the West. [While I'm in the classical stuff, by the way, I committed a breach of good manners in my last posting by inserting a Latin tag without translation. I am sorry. Oderint dum metuant means "Let them hate us, so long as they fear us." Seneca rebuked Cicero for saying it, though it seems to have been current among educated late-republican Romans.]

Here is the news: A lot of people out there hate us. The name "Durban" mean anything? In China, in India, in Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, in Africa, and in the Arab countries, European civilization — the West — is widely hated. Matter of fact, quite a lot of Europeans and Americans hate it, too, as you will know if you spend much time on college campuses.

I can't see any strong reason for believing that if the state of Israel were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, hesperophobia would disappear with it. Not even just Arab hesperophobia would decline. A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from "Frank," i.e. crusader. Arabs don't hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them, and similarly humiliated peoples, we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. Neither the Arabs nor the Chinese, for example, have yet been able to attain rational, constitutional government. For a devastating look at the paleolithic condition of politics and society in the Arab world, I strongly recommend my colleague David Pryce-Jones's book, The Closed Circle.

The 1991 Gulf War showed how little has changed since those first encounters. Here were the armies of the West: swift, deadly, efficient, equipped and organized, under the command of elected civilians at the head of a robust and elaborate constitutional structure. And here were the Arabs: a shambling, ill-nourished, shoeless rabble, led by a mad gangster-despot. (That was their Arabs. There were also, of course, our Arabs — the Kuwaitis and Saudis, cowering in their plush-lined air-conditioned bunkers being waited on by their Filipino servants while we did their fighting for them.) Final body counts: the West, 134 dead, the Arabs, 20,000 or more. The superiority of one culture over another has not been so starkly demonstrated since a handful of British wooden ships, at the end of ten-thousand-mile lines of communications, brought the Celestial Empire to its knees 150 years earlier. The Chinese are still mad about that: They are still making angry, bitter movies about the Opium Wars. A hundred and 50 years from now, the Arabs will not have forgotten the Gulf War.

If you haven't spent some time in its company, the depth, and bitterness of hesperophobia in these cultures is hard to imagine. As Thomas Friedman points out in today's New York Times, Palestinian suicide bombers do not target yeshivas, synagogues, or religious settlements. They go for shopping malls or Sbarro's outlets. Sure, they hate the Jews, but they hate the West as much, or more.

Israel is not a cause of any of this, except to the degree that Israeli culture is essentially Western. If the present state of Israel were inhabited by Christian Lithuanians or Frenchmen, the hatred would be nearly as intense. Nearly, not completely: Hatred of the Jews has been built into Arab-Moslem culture since the time of Mohammed. There is a tale you will hear from Arab apologists that the Jews were contented and well treated in the old Arab-Moslem empires. This is nonsense: More often than not, they were treated like swine. For a true account, read Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, or Gil Carl Alroy Behind the Middle East Crisis. From the Arab point of view, Israel, or any Western state on "Arab land," is an outrage, an illegitimate creation, a crusader state. The fact that the Jews had a wealthy and powerful nation on that land three thousand years ago counts for nothing. Israel is, from the point of view of most Arabs, an alien graft that must not be allowed to "take." It is a reminder of what can barely be thought of without acute psychic pain: the squalid, hopeless, irredeemable inferiority of one's own culture by comparison with another.

So, so, so, is this any of America's business? What are we doing, meddling in the Middle East? Where is our interest? Well, U.S. politicians must speak for themselves, but if I had any position of authority in any Western nation, I would be urging full support for Israel, and I am not Jewish. (Following my Passover column, in fact, a lot of NRO readers, along with at least one ex-editor of The New Republic, believe I am an anti-Semite.) It's a matter of cultural solidarity. We of the West must hang together, or else we shall hang separately. American isolationists simply do not understand how much we are hated in other places.

What, after all, does the Buchananite program offer us, if carried through? We have no troops in Israel to be withdrawn. If we withdraw our aid, the Israelis will be less able to defend themselves against the Arabs. Should we just let the free market take over, U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to them cash on the nail? Apparently not: Several of my correspondents have explained to me that what so enrages the Arabs is the sight of their people being killed "by American weapons." Oh. No weapons, then (and presumably we should try to repatriate the ones they already have — lots of luck with that, guys). But if we don't arm the Israelis, who will? While other hesperophobic countries — China, for example — are gleefully arming the Arabs and other Israel-haters like Iran, and pocketing the profits?

And the end of it all will be ... what? Inevitably, without our support, it will be the destruction of Israel. They are so few, and the Arabs so many. The Arabs will overwhelm that tiny state, and there will be such an orgy of massacre as has not been seen since the Rape of Nanking. And we shall be doing ... what? Watching it on our TVs, with a six-pack and a bucket of Nacho chips in hand? That's the Buchananite vision? If so, it is a vision of cowards and fools, and I want no part of it.

Israel's culture is ours. She is part of the West. If she goes down, we have suffered a defeat, and the howling, jeering forces of barbarism have won a victory. You don't have to be Zionist, nor even Jewish, to support Israel. You don't have to be in the pocket of the Israeli congressional lobbies, or a suck-up to "powerful pro-Zionist interests." You don't have to pretend not to notice the occasional follies and cruelties of Israeli policy. You don't have to forget about the U.S.S. Liberty or Jonathan Pollard. You just have to think straight. You just have to understand that the war between civilization and barbarism is being fought today just as it was fought at Chalons and Tours, at the gates of Kiev and Vienna, by the hoplites at Marathon and the legions on the Rhine. It is, as you have heard a thousand times, this past few days, a war; and the thing about war is, you have to take sides, and close your eyes to your allies' imperfections for the duration. There isn't any choice. What happened this week was not, or not only, an act of anti-Americanism, anti-Israelism, or anti-Semitism.

It was in part all those things: but more than anything else, it was an act of hesperophobia.

50 posted on 09/14/2001 5:04:46 AM PDT by Brian Allen
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To: DB
Story said:
Germany has become a focal point for investigations into Tuesday's attacks after it emerged three of the suicide hijackers may have belonged to a Hamburg-based extremist group committed to attacking symbolic U.S. targets.

You said:
Germany does not knowingly harbor terrorist regardless of the country the terror is directed.

You are telling me that the USA knew of this group but Germany didn't?

51 posted on 09/14/2001 5:10:40 AM PDT by Mike Darancette
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To: t-shirt
See now, all this liberal media, psychologists and CIA talk heads yaketing out their mouthes like madames and gay monsieurs at a whore house keep disrupting the normal algorithm of intelligence gathering and preparedness. THis is KGB enacted. Whyam I not surprized this guy was detained as mentaly ill. Heck, the so called republicans in the US are considered rednecks in Germany, believe it or not. Every single German or French or European I met called Republicans rednecks.
52 posted on 09/14/2001 5:10:49 AM PDT by lavaroise
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To: Mike Darancette
We have groups here such as the KKK.

The key being KNOWINGLY.

When the KKK terrorize someone here or abroad and we know about it we go after them hard. We spend significant time and money trying to monitor these people.

Germany is the same.

Afghanistan is not the same.

53 posted on 09/14/2001 5:24:49 AM PDT by DB
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To: Brian Allen
Hesperophobia

I'll have to remember that word. But, does it explain the French?

54 posted on 09/14/2001 5:25:48 AM PDT by Mike Darancette
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To: timestax
The CIA sure wasn't doing its' job! eh How do we fire all the CIA and hire new people??!

Hands tied by the Torecelli ammendment?

55 posted on 09/14/2001 5:28:52 AM PDT by b4its2late
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To: DB
The key being KNOWINGLY.

If Germany did not know, I'll buy that - But if these folks are involved I expect to see smoking ruins and dead bodies.

And, of course, Afghanistan (TALIBAN) knows about Bin-Ladin and supports him.

56 posted on 09/14/2001 5:37:13 AM PDT by Mike Darancette
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To: dbbeebs
>>I'm aware that the US sometimes supports terrorists. Do you feel any better now?<<

No. I just want all these "nuke every country into glass that ever supported any terrorists because they have no innocent civilians" people to face up to this reality,and tell me if this means we should nuke ourselves.

57 posted on 09/14/2001 5:41:36 AM PDT by sneakypete
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To: t-shirt
"The official said there was still doubt, even after the attacks, that the man really knew about the plot."

He may have had a dream about the attack, however, if he was willing to give his identification then some amount of seriousness should have been given to him.

Our people are trying to cover Clintons butt for reducing our intelligence systems. Putting a cop on the street in New York is not the same as having a spy in Eygpt or Palestine.

58 posted on 09/14/2001 5:42:21 AM PDT by B4Ranch
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To: Mike Darancette
I'd rather they let us do that to the perps.
59 posted on 09/14/2001 5:44:17 AM PDT by DB
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