Report: Sept. 11 plot planned for 3 years

United Press International ^

[RCW2001]

Report: Sept. 11 plot planned for 3 years

From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
Published 6/19/2002 9:38 AM

WASHINGTON, June 19 (UPI) -- The Sept. 11 plot was probably planned by al Qaida as far back as 1998, intelligence officials reportedly told a congressional panel on Tuesday.

The Washington Post and The New York Times said in their Wednesday editions that the planning probably began shortly after al Qaida bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Lawmakers attended a closed session with top intelligence officials on Tuesday, and another closed-door session was expected Wednesday. Public testimony might be presented as early as next week.

A joint congressional committee is investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

This committee was told that new intelligence obtained post-Sept. 11 has given better understanding of al Qaida, the Times said.

Testimony on Tuesday came from CIA Director George Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the National Security Agency.

Lawmakers who attended the Tuesday session told the Post that Hayden was asked about allegations that the NSA had intercepted al Qaida communications about the Sept. 11 attacks ahead of time, but had failed to translate them until after the attacks. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala, told the Post that Hayden responded to the panel's queries.

As to Hayden's replies, Shelby told the Post only that the NSA gathers a huge volume of data, is able to translate only a fraction, and that only a fraction of that fraction is disseminated.Copyright © 2002 United Press International

[AmericanInTokyo]

Their biggest ally? Naive American bureaucracy, Open Borders and a joke for Immigration-system.

[KissOfTheSith]

>The Sept. 11 plot was probably planned by al Qaida as far back as 1998, intelligence officials reportedly told a congressional panel on Tuesday.

Hmmm. Are these the same "intelligence" officials who didn't stop 9/11 from happening?

Are these the same "intelligence" officials who stood by for years and years while American politicians said time and time again that terrorists aren't soldiers, they are just criminals who will be prosecuted on a case by case basis?

All these "intelligence" people who -- if we believe the accepted version of events -- are so utterly incompetent that they allowed a large scale, global conspiracy like 9/11 to succeed should be intelligent enough to know what the word "seppuku" means.

-- KotS

[1Old Pro]

We had a muslum connected to this tied to pilot lessons at a local airport back in 1991!

[Norman Conquest]

Obviously, it's still all W's fault. But how will the press explain that to the sheeple?

[poet]

"Lawmakers attended a closed session with top intelligence officials on Tuesday, and another closed-door session was expected Wednesday.

Why not a public session? Oh, I forgot, in the interests of National Security we can't allow the public to hear what really went wrong after the fact! clinton's involvement may be discovered and we can't have that.

[Tuco-bad]

Sept. 11 plot planned for 3 years

You must be very proud of your "friends".

[JohnMac]

My question is, what did Clinton do about terrorism after the embassy bombings and the USS Cole? In follow-up to that, what did Clinton do about anything other than his appetite for women?

[justshutupandtakeit]

No, their biggest ally was the Clinton administration and the RATS in Congress. The latter still are.

[KissOfTheSith]

>My question is, what did Clinton do about terrorism after the embassy bombings and the USS Cole?

"In the early morning hours of 23 October 1983, a truck loaded with explosives crashed through the security perimeter of the United States Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. In the explosion that followed, 241 U.S. Military personnel were killed and 80 seriously wounded.These young people, on a mission of peace in a land stricken by violence, were killed as they slept. Twenty-one (21) of the young American victims of this cowardly act were returned to the United States and were buried near one another in Section 59 of Arlington National Cemetery. Near their gravesites is planted a Cedar of Lebanon tree which commemorates their sacrifice. They are remembered here in grateful appreciation of their sacrifice on behalf of freedom."

Ronald Wilson Reagan 40th President of the United States (January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989)

The totally effing stupid US response to terrorism does NOT rest with Klinton. It goes back many generations, and has encompassed both decent republicans, and scummy 'rats.

The real bad guys are WHOEVER worked out that policy of saying terrorists are "criminals" and should be treated as such...

-- KotS

[steve-b]

The Washington Post and The New York Times said in their Wednesday editions that the planning probably began shortly after al Qaida bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

That is, after they became convinced that the US wouldn't do anything about their outrages. Thanks, Bill....

[aught-6]

WHAT did Clinton know and WHEN did he know it?

[hobbes1]

The real bad guys are WHOEVER worked out that policy of saying terrorists are "criminals" and should be treated as such

Ummm, that change in policy, can be traced to the Clinton ADministration. all Prior terrorist acts were recognized as State sposnored,but in a cynical manuever to have his cake and eat it too, they started (93 WTC) branding them as loosely organized conspiracists, so that they could catch and prosecute some to look like they were doing something, but never have to go to War to punish a State Actor...

[HassanBenSobar]

the NSA gathers a huge volume of data, is able to translate only a fraction, and that only a fraction of that fraction is disseminated.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate the scale of the problem. The NSA deals with TERABYTES of reports from various sources. How long will it take one analyst to browse 1 Gb of data, searching for a tiny clue? That's like reading every text file you can fit on a CD rom, and most of it is nebulous. How will this analysts talk to a thousand of his buddies and effectively connect the dots? Oh, and the analysts have to have perfect memories, because next week, another Gb of data falls on the desk. Read up! Meanwhile, we need translators for virtually EVERY language to crank out accurate english versions of foriegn-gathered intel---in similar volume.

Seriously, the NSA (and the CIA, the FBI, the DIA, etc, etc, etc) are ready to shell out megabucks for people with smart solutions to this problem. But the solutions are not easy to come by at all. It's a lot easier to blame 'bureaucracy', bad policy, and other human failings...but that's just sound and fury compared to the REAL problem.

[Pagey]

The Sept. 11 plot was probably planned by al Qaida as far back as 1998, intelligence officials reportedly told a congressional panel on Tuesday.

And they Still haven't called upon Former FBI Chief Louis Freeh before their panel? Hmmm,I wonder WHY?

[KissOfTheSith]

>Seriously, the NSA (and the CIA, the FBI, the DIA, etc, etc, etc) are ready to shell out megabucks for people with smart solutions to this problem. But the solutions are not easy to come by at all.

Before people start crying over the daunting tasks faced by our intelligence agencies, let's all remember that they've been getting more money per year over the last 50+ years than many countries operate off of per year.

Also, let's remember that although Babal Fish might not be the cat's meow, in the world of high-end auto-translators, there are some magical things out there. (The IBM commercial where the phone translates the little girl's english in real time is just an example of what is known about... If the Japanese actually do have stuff MUCH better than that -- as the rumors go -- then our black ops people should have stuff also very good. And really really good INDEX programs have been around for a long time...)

Finally, if tin foil lunatic fringe organizations like the Larouche people are able to keep pretty accurate tabs on the world situation, including the serious flash points and the serious flash people, then I don't think Americans are really expecting too much of their "intelligence" agencies to do an equal or better job.

-- KotS

[HassanBenSobar]

With all due respect, you are sorely mistaken. Completely general auto-translators still suck (in fact they practically don't work at all). Autotranslators 'work' like toys on limited-domain areas, with significant help from human translators. And by the way, what countries do you suppose have invested R&D on translation programs? Primarily European ones, certainly not middle eastern. There's a long, long way to go on this technology. Making it worse is the fact that much of the information is intercepted voice communications, which have to be translated into text before even the simplest auto-translators can go to work.

Money or not, the technology is not there yet.

[McGavin999]

There has GOT to be a computer that could help with this. If there isn't, there should be.

[HassanBenSobar]

Computers help but a lot more work in computational linguistics is needed before translations improve. The best things out there are 'latent semantic indexing' and 'tie stemming' which can help (roughly) translate at a word-level for pretty general domains. Robust techniques for phrase- and sentence-level meaning translations aren't there yet. It's a very thorny problem. Lots of PhDs have been banging away at it and progress is slow.