Posted on 10/21/2001 12:59:26 PM PDT by t-shirt
CIA Reportedly Gets Authority to Hunt Down Bin Laden
October 21, 2001 8:48 am EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush last month gave the CIA it broadest authority yet to conduct lethal covert action against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition. The newspaper, quoting unidentified senior government officials, said Bush signed an order, known as an intelligence finding, that directed the CIA to undertake to sweeping and deadly covert action against bin Laden and his network.
The finding specifically called for the destruction of bin Laden and al Qaeda, who are the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Post said.
"The gloves are off. The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-Sept. 11 are now underway," the newspaper quoted a senior official as saying.
The finding also gave the CIA an additional $1 billion to apply toward its anti-terror campaign, most of which will fund covert action aimed at taking out bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure, the Post said.
The operations were to include a high degree of coordination between the CIA and military units, to give Bush the power to rapidly dispatch troops based on the newest and best information from the intelligence agency.
Soon after the attacks, in which hijackers crashed commercial airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush said bin Laden was "wanted dead or alive."
Though all U.S. presidents since Gerald Ford have signed an executive order prohibiting the CIA or other agencies from getting involved in political assassinations, there is agreement among some CIA and White House lawyers that the ban does not apply in time of war, the newspaper said.
EXPLANATION OF NATIONWIDE ALERT OCT. 11
The Post also said that a highly classified daily CIA report known as the "Threat Matrix," which includes the rawest and newest intelligence on credible threats, was the reason the FBI on Oct. 11 issued a national alert of impending terrorist action.
Vice President Dick Cheney told the newspaper the decision to warn the public based on information from the threat matrix was among the administration's hardest tasks.
"You have to avoid falling into the trap of letting it be a cover-your-ass exercise. If you scare the hell out of people too often, and nothing happens, that can also create problems," he said.
"Then when you do finally get a valid threat and warn people, and they don't pay attention, that's equally damaging," he said.
The Post also reported that the CIA and FBI had been given a new break in their pursuit of al Qaeda leaders overseas. The agencies have had limited access to a man believed to be a top bin Laden lieutenant who was arrested in a foreign country, which the paper did not identify.
The man, who was arrested along with five other al Qaeda members, has various aliases including Abu Ahmed and is "a significant player," the paper quoted a senior Bush official as saying.
Ahmed has not given investigators any information about future terrorist operations, but the paper said he did deliver some details about the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aebc4a26794.htm
Great! I'm all for it.
You are admitting here on FR that you know terrorists who are illegally in the United States. And they feel comfortable with you to share their secrets.
Come back with another identity. This one is shot.
A supporter of terrorism with the audacity to post on FR. Did you get your sweets for 9/11? Shame at best.
Great -- The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is loosed.
I was not expecting you to so openly admit to supporting terrorist. Do you meet at your home. Does the FBI know?
Great. How do you identify the illegal aliens?
(2)And rearming our pilots as they were before the evil 1968 gun Control Act was passed.
OK, but (a) it should be in the context of making cabin access MUCH harder (armored bulkhead, secured hatch, small drawer for passing food and drink, give the pilots their own bathroom) and (b) enough training to ensure proficiency.
The evil law was by crooked politicians over one mass shooting in Texas brought on by a shooter who was heavily on pychotropic drugs and under psychiatric care/experimentation when he commited his mass murders. And for 30 years the record was sealed and keep secret, while the FBI bold faced lied for over 30 years that on Aug. 1, 1966, sniper Charles Joseph Whitman was not on psychiatric or pschotropic mind altering drugs.
Do you have proof of this? I'd like to see it. IIRC, the 1968 Gun Control Act was in reaction to the 1968 wave of assassinations (RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. being just the two most prominent)--Whitman, IIRC, was in 1964, not 1966.
Once the FBI and government was finally forced to release the record it was clear that Whitman was on pschotropic mind altering drugs and under psychiatric , as have most of the mass random shooters since 1966 that have been used to passed gun control.
Gee, someone under psychiatric care and prescribed medication doing something crazy. Never would even THINK that something like that would happen.
Was he actually ON his meds at the time, or had he reduced or stopped taking his medication? That is a frequent cause of serious trouble for those on psychotropic medication.
Welcome to the America that decided that the crazy person's "right" to be crazy out in public outweighed the right of everyone else to be safe and secure from aforesaid crazy lunatic by locking him up in the loony bin. Now I have to walk past stark evidence of the decline of Western Civilization just to get to work.
(3)Repealing the 1968 Gun Control Act
Mentioned this one already.
(4)Most importantly the solution is not passing any new anti-terror laws which violate our God given, Bill of Rights protected rights and freedoms as Americans! Giving up our rights only increases our chances of becoming victims of terror by enemies--foriegn and domestic enemies.
Fine polemics.
As I recall, the ban on assassinations involved foreign leaders, not terrorists. People like Bin Laden have always been fair game.
The ban is on "assassination," it doesn't identify which targets are in or out of bounds.
Second, the FBI has been whisking aliens off the streets for the 20 years that I know of. These aliens were not allowed to contact anyone, had a secret trials with secret evidence.
Now, you make quite an explosive statement--but one that I happen to know to be true. Yes, there IS a court in DC that handles classified evidence. And, yes, many foreign nationals have been thrown out of the country based on such evidence. (Here's a hint: if the evidence itself is classified, that means it's Signals Intelligence or SIGINT--i.e., Osama bin Laden's satellite phone calls to and from the scumbag up for deportation.) It's generally agreed that the full panoply of Constitutional rights are limited to US CITIZENS, and that foreign nationals are granted very limited rights--there is no "right" for a foreign national to stay in this country.
How do I know? After they are deported, they buy a fake passport off the black market and come back and tell us what happened.
So, let me get this straight. You know foreign nationals who were deported for involvement in terrorist organizations. You know that they come back into this country with false passports. You know this because when they come back, they hang out with you and talk to you very freely. I'm with Sabramerican: you mind explaining your relationship to these people? Because you have just 'fessed up to knowing terrorists on a social basis. People who hang out with people whom they know to be scumbags tend to be of great interest to law enforcement.
How do you know this? I find it hard to believe that someone would tell a member of the media "I'm in this country with a phony passport".
Or do you know these folks personally?
He was taking large amounts of his psychotropic medication at the time.
About ten years ago, I learned that a coworker of mine was paranoid schizophrenic when he decided he didn't need to keep taking his lithium carbonate (because he felt so much better). Man, THAT was an exciting night!
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