ederal investigators have received evidence that some Middle Easterners in the New York area were warned ahead of time to stay out of lower Manhattan the morning of Sept. 11, the Daily News has learned.Posted on 10/12/2001 2:20:46 AM PDT by sarcasm
ederal investigators have received evidence that some Middle Easterners in the New York area were warned ahead of time to stay out of lower Manhattan the morning of Sept. 11, the Daily News has learned.
The FBI was able to confirm several such warnings occurred but has been unable to discover the source of the warnings.
Agents with the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force have interviewed school officials in Jersey City and Brooklyn and questioned members of a Bronx mosque about the warnings, sources told The News.
James Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI's New York office, confirmed that agents were looking into several reports of warnings that preceded the attack against the World Trade Center.
"Among the e-mails and tips we received are a number of reports of people overhearing people boasting about or warning about coming attacks," he said.
Suspicious Comments
He declined to discuss specifics and would not say whether any of the 600-plus people detained in the terror probe were questioned about pre-attack warnings.
But officials and sources familiar with the investigation said the incidents include the following:
Jersey City school administrators confirmed that several days before the attack, a student of Middle Eastern descent issued a vague warning not to travel into lower Manhattan the morning of Sept. 11.
Joanne Kenny, associate superintendent of the Jersey City public schools, said, "Crisis staff determined that comments made or notes written were serious enough so we called the juvenile bureau of the Jersey City police and they followed up."
Sources Not Found
Jersey City police did not return calls seeking comment, but a source said the matter wound up being investigated by the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force.
Kenny wouldn't discuss the nature of the warning or reveal the name of the student who made the comment. But a source said federal authorities investigated the matter and could not determine the source of the warning.
"They ran into a dead end, and whoever may have given the warning denied it," the source said.
In the Bronx, federal investigators received reports about a similar warning at a mosque, sources said. The sources would not reveal the name of the mosque.
Sources with the Joint Terrorist Task Force questioned dozens of members of the mosque, many of whom told agents they had been given a vague warning to stay out of lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, sources said.
One source said investigators again hit a dead end when the mosque's hierarchy denied having prior knowledge of the attack.
The source pointed out that in years past, law enforcement had received tips about warnings to stay away from specific locales and of planned attacks that never materialized.
"There's a cry-wolf aspect to this that you need to put this in context," the source said.
At Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School, the FBI was notified that a Pakistani student in a bilingual class "made a comment to a teacher the week prior about the twin towers," said Karen Finney, spokeswoman for the Board of Education.
Finney would not reveal the nature of the comment, but the Journal-News of Westchester reported yesterday that the student pointed at the tower during a heated political argument and declared, "Look at those two buildings. They won't be here next week."
School officials would not release the name of the student, but said he was still attending classes at New Utrecht. They said they notified New York police and that the matter was turned over to the FBI.
"I don't know what the status of the FBI's investigation is," Finney said.
Original Publication Date: 10/12/01
Exactly! Now let's assume that some members of law enforcement were tipped off. Let's even go further and speculate what would have happened if they acted on this information. If they had removed Arabs from flights that day, thereby preventing these attacks, the outrage from the muslim community and the left would have been thunderous! Mohommad Atta would've been a poster-boy for the ACLU who in turn whould have howled how racist law enforcement is for daring to think that law-abiding Arabs could be terrorists! How dare we arrest this man on speculation? How dare we assume that this innocent man of color was taking flying lessons for anything other that personal enrichment?
Why was it so easy to arrest and convict McVeigh? Easy. Law enforcement was not hogtied by Political Correctness.
Sadly, it will likely take one or two more attacks on US soil before this country finally puts to rest this absurd "but the muslims are our friends" delusion.
Yes a good defense is critical and we need to get rid of the terrorists living here. I think there's one other thing they can do---and it might make some of the so-called moderates come out against the terrorists. They don't care much about the USA, but we should get them where it might hurt. We should tell the world that one more terrorist act done and we will flatten Mecca. Put the ball in their court, it will be up to them to save Mecca by turning in potential terrorists.
Could you please explain this comment!
dennisw, Lent, BenF, Thinkin' Gal -- did any of you hear this?
They don't need to use force, the rate that Westerners are committing self genocide through abortion and choosing self over family vs. the birthrate of the Islamic world will ensure they'll capture dominance soon enough.
Oh, but circumstances seem a little different.
Two Jews were allegedly warned by messages over an instant-messaging network. They didn't know where the messages came from, and anyone can send messages to any ID they know about. It's a bit similar to if I sent you an anonymous email - I could write whatever I wished, and from whatever motive I wished.
On the other hand, here we have several instances, I think, of mid-eastern folks predicting this was going to happen, and their identity as well as the circumstances is known.
Either you must admit that these cases are fundamentally different, or you are perhaps an adherent of the "4000 jooos didn't show to work that day" school.
Also, please see #21. This thing is going to get very ugly, and will probably result in a war between "civilizations." If so, bets are off on everything. Asia will be destabilized, globalization will be hit in the head, and somebody's going to pay - wonder if it will be a bunch of guys riding donkeys and camels in the desert and yodeling?
From: United Press International
Oct 12, 2001
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A list of 370 individuals related to the Sept. 11 inquiries, complied jointly by the FBI and European security agencies, has been distributed to central banks and government financial authorities in countries that have agreed to cooperate with the financial war on terrorism, United Press International learned Thursday.
The list, which provides the clearest road map so far to the unprecedented global manhunt for links to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was obtained by UPI after it was inadvertently posted on the Rahoitustarkastus, RATA or "Financial Supervision Authority" Web site in Finland. Within 24 hours, it was withdrawn from the public domain.
More than 300 of the names on the list come from American sources, mostly with U.S. addresses or Social Security numbers. Other lists with British, French, Dutch, Belgian and German addresses, provided by the relevant national security authorities, are then tacked onto the end of the 22-page spreadsheet.
Administration sources told UPI Thursday that a list of "close to 400 names" had been circulated to European authorities, with a request for financial and other searches. Diplomatic sources said the list had initially been circulated to them from the U.S. Justice Department.
Twelve of the names on the German list come from the port city of Hamburg, where Mohammed Atta, who flew the American Airlines airliner into the north tower of the World Trade Center, lived and studied.
Contact addresses for Atta in the United States are given on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC and on Bonnie Ridge Road Drive in Baltimore, Md. One of Atta's supposed U.S. telephone numbers has been disconnected. Another number was registered to the Cabrini Medical Center in New York City, who had no record of a patient of that name. Another was a Verizon cell phone, whose subscriber was "temporarily not accepting calls."
One of the names on the Hamburg list, who also has a contact address in Silver Spring, Md., is listed as "Contact Person bin Laden," with a further note identifying them as both "suspect" and as "witness."
The list represents a unique snapshot, at one moment in time (and dated by the Finns to Oct. 3), of an unprecedented international enquiry. The list has since been refined, FBI sources told UPI, and narrowed down.
But more than any "official" government statement, the document gives an idea of the enormity of the problem facing federal and international investigators. The European Central Bank and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision forwarded the list to financial agencies around Europe, hoping for a massive trawl through more than 200 million bank accounts in countries across Europe.
But the FBI and other security authorities could identify the nationalities of only 163 of the 370 suspects, all of whom had Arab names.
Many of the individuals have aliases, and some have up to 20. Mohammed Atta, , had nine aliases. Hani Hanjur, one of the hijackers killed in the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon, had five aliases, and at least two U.S. Social Security numbers. Others have as many as five Social Security numbers.
Those whose minorities were identified come from: Abu Dhabi (2), Afghanistan (2), Algeria (5), Bangladesh (2), Egypt (7), France (6), Germany (3), Great Britain (1), Eritrea (1), Holland (2), India (3), Indonesia (1), Iraq (1), Ireland (1), Israel (1), Jordan (3), Kenya (1), Kuwait (5), Lebanon (4), Libya (1), Morocco (5), Pakistan (2), Saudi Arabia (59), Somalia (1), Syria (5), Qatar (3), Tunisia (4), the United Arab Emirates (3), and Yemen (4).
Two of the possible suspects were born in the United States, in St. Louis and Denver. One had the prophetic e-mail address, "LAST_DAY_11@hotmail.com. mailto:LAST_DAY_11@hotmail.com." It is noteworthy that the list contains no Turks, Iranians, Omanis, Filippinos, nor any suspects from the Central Asian nations of the former Soviet Union.
None of the "22 Most Wanted" suspects whose names were released by the U.S. Justice Department Wednesday is on the financial watchlist. Lotfi Riassi, the Algerian pilot who is thought to have helped in flight training, and who was arrested by British police last month, also figures on the list, with an address in Arizona.
The FBI was unable to identify the nationality of 207 of its listed suspects, 56 percent of the total. With the exception of the two Americans, all of the suspects had to apply for American visas in their home countries. Yet the spreadsheet's sparse information seems to indicate that the FBI has apparently been unable to locate the information that these applications would normally contain. A number of entries contain a name only. Yet many others give dates and places of birth, various addresses and phone numbers and email addresses in the United States.
Nineteen hijackers perpetrated Sept. 11 atrocities. One unnerving factor of the list is that at least 77 of those on the list lived at locations in close proximity to flight schools, several of which were already identified with the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Forty seven of the suspects on the list apparently lived at one point in Vero Beach, Fla., where the Flight Safety International Academy is located, and where at least two of the hijackers studied.
Five more lived in Daytona Beach, where the Embry-Riddle Flight School is located, where another hijacker signed up for classes.
Five suspects were listed at a Lemon Grove, Calif., address, where there are eight flight schools within a twelve-and-a-half mile radius of the town another eight suspects are listed at San Diego addresses, less than eight miles away.
Suspects are associated with Lackland AFB, Texas, and the U.S. Army Logistics Med Center in Vero Beach, Fla., military facilities.
A rumour is one thing. A muslim currently explaining to the FBI how he was in a position to say that those two towers "wouldn't be there next week" in front of his class and teacher is something different :).
Please define "all".
My guess is that it will take about three more major strikes to penetrate the steel wall of political correctness that currently paralyzes this nation from protecting itself.
MM
But as I read through the many articles on these topics, I often wonder how different the world would be had our government been concentrating on the more obvious enemies, instead of spying on its own good citizens. Resources might have been put to better use that way. And yes, there is ample evidence that they knew who the bad guys were.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.