U.S. Congress was on al-Qaida's Sept. 11 hit list, says al-Jazeera reporter

Associated Press ^ | 9-9-02 | ALAA SHAHINE

[Oldeconomybuyer]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sep 09, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- The U.S. Congress was the fourth American landmark on al-Qaida's Sept. 11 hit list and the terror group also considered striking U.S. nuclear facilities.

The claims were made in an interview conducted in a secret Pakistani location between a correspondent from pan-Arab satellite station al-Jazeera and two fugitive Sept. 11 plotters.

Al-Jazeera's Yosri Fouda told The Associated Press on Sunday that al-Qaida, the terror network headed by Osama bin Laden, contacted him to arrange an interview with wanted terrorists Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh in June.

Bin Laden, the Saudi dissident whose whereabouts remain unknown despite intensive U.S.-led efforts to find him, is the chief suspect behind last year's attacks on New York's World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon building in Washington.

Fouda said he has waited until now to air the interview - it is scheduled to appear Thursday on the pan-Arab satellite station - because he wanted to include it in a documentary marking the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

A videotape of bin Laden released by U.S. officials in December for many established al-Qaida's responsibility for Sept. 11. Fouda's interviews with Mohammed and Binalshibh established the link even more clearly.

Fouda wrote about the interview for London's Sunday Times in a story that appeared this week. He told the AP he approached the Times to publicize the documentary.

In his Times article, Fouda wrote that he learned during the interviews that the U.S. Congress had been al-Qaida's fourth Sept. 11 target. Hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, while one crashed in a Pennsylvanian field after passengers apparently stormed the hijackers.

U.S. officials regard Mohammed as one of the highest-ranking al-Qaida leaders still at large and believe he is still planning attacks against U.S. interests. U.S. officials say Binalshibh belonged to a Hamburg-based cell led by Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian-born suspected lead Sept. 11 hijacker.

"I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee and Ramzi (Binalshibh) is the coordinator of the 'Holy Tuesday' operation," Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. Sept. 11, 2001 fell on a Tuesday.

Mohammed said planning for the attacks began 2 1/2 years before Sept. 11 and that the first targets considered were nuclear facilities.

We "decided against it for fear it would go out of control," Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. "You do not need to know more than that at this stage, and anyway it was eventually decided to leave out nuclear targets - for now."

Fouda, the Egyptian reporter and host of al-Jazeera's investigative program 'Top Secret,' said he flew to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and from there to Karachi on al-Qaida instructions. In Karachi, he was taken blindfolded and via a complicated route to an apartment where he met the two men he recognized as Mohammed and Binalshibh.

Fouda, speaking by telephone from London, said al-Qaida operatives told him not to bring any electronic equipment - including a camera or recorder - to the interview. The al-Qaida members videotaped the interview but instead of sending a copy of the video as promised, sent him only the audiotape, he said.

At one point while being led to the meeting, Fouda said he thought he was going to meet bin Laden. Speculation has been rife that the al-Qaida leader may be in Pakistan after fleeing U.S. attempts to kill or catch him in neighboring Afghanistan.

Fouda said during the two days he spent talking to the two, Mohammed once referred to bin Laden in the past tense and that a sense of disarray led him to believe bin Laden could be dead.

Fouda also learned Atta, the chief hijacker, had been a sleeper operative in Germany since 1992 and started detailed planning with a 1999 meeting in Afghanistan with other sleepers.

Once in America, Atta communicated with higher ranking al-Qaida officials via e-mail, Fouda wrote. But when he had determined everything was ready, he telephoned Binalshibh in Germany to tell him the date, using a riddle that referred to the shapes of the numbers 9 and 11.

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster, has drawn world attention with its broadcast of interviews with and statements by bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

[Gunslingr3]

Anyone remember that September 11th First Lady Laura Bush was at the Capitol, scheduled to speak at a hearing on Education in the Senate in which Hillary Clinton would be attending. The press built up the coming 'show down', and then events overtook that headline. As I recall, the First Lady was evacuated from the Capitol building only after the Pentagon was hit.

[ravingnutter]

FYI...

We may soon see the part of the iceberg that is below the water line... In the last couple of days, we've heard about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda quartermaster who is said to have plotted the Sept. 11 attacks and financed the hijackers with money. He is also said to be a close associate and even relative of Ramzi Yousef, who is presently sitting in the federal slammer for the first World Trade Center bombing.

If we buy Laurie Mylroie's painstaking investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — as Paul Wolfowitz and James Woolsey evidently do — that concludes that Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence agent, and if we know that a relative of Yousef's was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot, the question arises: Why wouldn't we think that Saddam was involved in both attacks on the World Trade Center?

Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was visited at one of his palaces by Osama bin Laden in the '80s. A decade later, Saddam's son Uday met with bin Laden, and Saddam gave him money. "He gave to Osama bin Laden," says Parisoula Lampsos, who says she was Saddam's mistress for 30 years. "He gave to Palestine."

NY Post Story

[demnomo]

Even after numerous video-taped confessions and gloating from Al Qaeda members regarding 9/11, the majority of Muslim morons the world over will keep denying that Arabs, Muslims or the "religion of peace" (which condones lying to, looting from, cheating, extorting, raping, enslaving, and murdering infidels who refuse to convert to Islam) had anything to do with it. It was the Jews! Always the Jews! Blame the Jews! (Yeah, right.)

Even after an Al Qaeda leader praises and points out Mohammad Atta as being "a wonderful" instigator of 9/11, Atta's psychotic old man continues to claim that his psychotic son is alive and well here on earth. Muslims are insane. Muslims are liars. Anyone who actually believes in that illogcal, deceiving, hate-filled, women-degrading, repressive, freedom-denying, violent religion is a nutcase, plain and simple.