Posted on 05/07/2003 6:30:22 AM PDT by truthandlife
FBI agents interrogating captured al-Qaeda operatives now suspect there was a plan to hijack a fifth jet on 11 September to attack the White House.
Debriefings with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the terror plot, and its suspected chief financier, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, have led to the new theory.
"Many, many people are saying many interesting things," a senior FBI official was reported as saying.
The interviews are being conducted as part of the probe into alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui.
Court papers from defence lawyers and a United States district judge show that prosecutors in the case are investigating evidence that the French Moroccan was part of a plot to hijack a fifth plane targeting the White House.
But the FBI official said it was hard to verify the details. "You have contradictory information coming from people you think would know, so you start to think that somebodys shading it," one said.
Some of the details come from briefings with Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, an al-Qaeda suspect who allegedly sent money to Moussaoui and some of the 19 suicide hijackers.
Moussaoui has said that Bin al-Shibh confessed to the fifth jet theory under pressure from the CIA, according to court papers made public last week.
Moussaoui was taking flying lessons in Minnesota when he was arrested on immigration charges three weeks before the 11 September strikes. He is the only person charged in the US in connection with the terror attacks and faces the death penalty if convicted.
The 34-year-old, who formerly lived in Brixton, south London, has admitted being a member of al-Qaeda but always denied any involvement in the attacks.
He has said that Bin al-Shibh, who was captured last September in Pakistan, can verify his story.
The case may be moved to a military tribunal after a deadlock between the defence and prosecution over whether Moussaoui should be allowed to see classified US government documents.
At the time of his arrest FBI agents found flight manuals for the Boeing 747-400, a flight-simulator computer program, binoculars, two knives, fighting shields and a laptop computer.
They later learned that French intelligence officials suspected Moussaoui of involvement with Islamic extremists.
The FBI team applied to Washington for a special warrant to go into Moussaouis computer but were turned down. A disc later turned out to contain information about spraying pesticide from a plane.
Moussaoui and the 11 September hijacker Mohammed Atta both researched using crop dusters for what might have been a biochemical attack.
Just as many of us have suspected. It is a good thing for Muslim extremists that it failed. More hostile Mid-East regimes would have disppeared by now.
General concensus seems to be that the Capitol was that plane's target. The one that hit the Pentagon actually overflew the White House, but - from the air - the White House is hard to see. The canopy of trees and foliage and the height of surrounding buildings makes it tricky to pick out.
IMO, it would now be virtually impossible for a small prop-driven aircraft to hit the WH - it would be brought down by a number of means before it got there.
Michael
For once, they were right.:)
and exavtly who is not attacking the countries that support this stuff? From my point of view we have removed a government in Afghanistan that defeated the Soviet Union, and we have removed the most openly belligerent Arab leader.
Most importantly, we have removed the democrat party from contention.
And who has made more progress in this operation: Bush, or all the presidents before him?
EACH COUNTRY HAS ITS OWN TIMETABLE!
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