Terrorists operated in Tucson

A terrorist network operated in Tucson as early as the mid-1980s and provided al-Qaida with early leaders and support, according to a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The assessment comes from Phoenix-based FBI special agent Kenneth Williams, author of the so-called "Phoenix memo," which revealed that radical Muslim students were taking aviation classes at U.S. schools for terrorist ends.

During testimony to a congressional committee last year, made public in a 900-page report by the committee in July, Williams said his "investigative theory" was that terror suspects lived in Tucson even before the creation of al-Qaida and that they kept returning to the state.

"These people don't continue to come back to Arizona because they like the sunshine or they like the state," Williams testified. "I believe that something was established there and I think it's been there for a long time. We're working very hard to identify that structure."

The House and Senate intelligence committees reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed witnesses to determine whether the intelligence community should have predicted the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Their report points out several instances where the country's intelligence community gathered critical information but either failed to share it with the appropriate people or did not recognize its value. The report concludes that none of the information identified the exact time and place of the attacks.

With the second anniversary of 9/11 approaching this week, the report describes Arizona as a source of continuing concern because of the network set up by former Tucson resident Wadih El-Hage - believed to have been a personal assistant to al-Quaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Referring to Williams, the report says, "The agent believes that El-Hage established a bin Laden support network in Arizona that is still in place."

Arizona officials concur that a network remains in place, noting that they launched a multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force after the attacks.

"I think that that is not possible, but probable," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said.

Since the mid-'80s or earlier, at least four people with leading roles in terrorism against the United States have called Tucson home.

* Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour attended the UA in 1991. Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted the American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, also lived in Mesa and took aviation classes in Scottsdale.

* El-Hage, who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1998 car bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. In 2001, he was sentenced to life in prison. He lived in Tucson from 1987 to 1992.

* In 1993, Essam Al-Ridi bought a T-39 twin engine Sabreliner ex-Air Force training jet for bin Laden at a Tucson boneyard. Al-Ridi paid about $200,000 for the plane, which was purchased to transport missiles between Pakistan and the Sudan.

* Wa'el Hamza Jelaidan co-founded al-Qaida with bin Laden in the late '80s. State records show he was president of the Islamic Center of Tucson from 1984 to 85. He left Tucson in 1986 and was believed to have gone to Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet Union's invasion.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was on the joint inquiry. Kyl said while clues were missed, he doesn't believe the intelligence community had the full picture.

Kyl expressed concern, however, that so many al-Qaida operatives lived in Tucson.

"There were questions asked about why we weren't able to infiltrate. Our way of looking at these folks prior to 9/11 was not as refined as it is now," Kyl said.

Dupnik said despite the Tucson connections, he had little knowledge before Sept. 11 of what is now the country's top enemy.

"Prior to 9/11, I was not familiar with the term al-Qaida," Dupnik said. "Local law enforcement did not get involved in foreign intelligence."

"Nine/11 caught all law enforcement with their pants down insofar as intelligence," Dupnik said. "We didn't have an intelligence unit that could handle these things. We do now."

Arizona ties of some people linked with terrorism might be no more than coincidence, in the view of people close to Tucson's Arab community.

Anne Betteridge, director of the UA's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, said the school programs and the area's weather are beacons that bring Arabs to Tucson. There are simply some very fine programs at the university that are attractive to people, Betteridge said. "The climate is another issue that people have brought up."

Betteridge doesn't see Tucson playing a large role in terrorism. However, with Tucson's out-of-the way location and small-town feel, terrorists trying to remain out of sight may have felt safe in Old Pueblo.

"Maybe people feel this is a place a little off the radar for law enforcement," she said.

Dupnik said the 8,000-member Muslim community has not offered help to local lawmen looking to end the suspected support network.

"They don't have much interest in coming forward," he said. "Law enforcement has not received any substantial help from the Islamic community."

Muhammad As'ad, the administrator at the Islamic Center of Tucson, said the close-knit community distrusts outsiders. And, he said, a lack of information coming from Muslims may only mean they have no intelligence to offer.

"It's a culture. They are wary of outsiders," As'ad said. "People are closed-mouth. They have to be."

Phoenix-based FBI spokeswoman Susan Herskovits said the bureau would not comment, citing national security concerns and ongoing investigations. She also said Williams is not making himself available for interviews.

Law enforcement did not keep up with the threat in Arizona or around the country, the congressional report found.

* The government passed on opportunities to prevent at least two of the hijackers from entering the country despite their attendance at a terrorist planning session in Malaysia in early 2000.

* Numerous warnings beginning in 1995 that terrorists wanted to hijack U.S. planes were not acted upon.

* The intelligence community was not well-equipped to counter the rising threat posed by terrorists to the U.S. homeland, the report said. In fact, some FBI field offices throughout the country had "only a passing familiarity with the very existence of Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaida prior to September 11," the report states.

"Until the very end of our term in office, the view we received from the bureau was that al-Qaida had limited capacity to operate in the United States and that any presence here was under surveillance," Sandy Berger, former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, testified before the committee.

Since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which has not been directly tied to bin Laden, al-Qaida inflicted serious casualties against Americans.

In 1998, car bombs at two U.S. embassies in East Africa killed 240 people, including 12 Americans. In October 2000, terrorists sidled up against the USS Cole and blew a hole in its side, killing 17 sailors.

And in Arizona, former residents had ties to three of those four terrorist attacks.

* Hanjour studied English at the UA in the early '90s. He went back to his native Saudi Arabia, later returning to live and train in the Phoenix area.

* El-Hage spent several years in Tucson and eventually settled in the Dallas area where he was arrested and charged with conspiracy in the 1998 Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, embassy bombings. He was convicted and sentenced in 2001 to life in prison.

* Nawaf Al-Hazmi, a Sept. 11 hijacker on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon, lived with Hanjour. He, along with future hijacker Khalid Al-Mihdhar, attended a meeting in January 2000 in Malaysia with a key planner in the Cole bombing.

The congressional report does not disclose what was discussed at the meeting. It was after that meeting when the CIA failed to put Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar on the U.S. State Department watchlist, which would have prohibited the two from entering the country. They came to the United States about a week after the Malaysia meeting.

One person who did make connections was Williams, an FBI agent who works counterterrorism. The Phoenix agent sent an eight-page memo on July 10, 2001, to agents in the Radical Fundamentalist Unit, the bin Laden unit and the New York field office. In the memo, Williams expresses concern that bin Laden was sending students to U.S. aviation schools to learn how to fly and conduct future terror attacks. Only three of the eight people who received the memo read it, according to the report.

He recommended that the FBI seek authority to obtain visa information on individuals with visas attending aviation schools. Only one of the eight people Williams has questions about is identified.

That man, Zakaria Soubra, attended Embry Riddle University in Prescott and was the subject of the memo. The names of the other individuals are blacked out.

Williams testified to the inquiry that his suspicions grew when he observed Soubra driving a car registered to one of two men questioned in 1999 for touching the cockpit door of an America West Airlines plane in Columbus, Ohio.

The two men, one an Arizona State University student, the other Muhammad Al-Qudhai'een, a Tucson resident, were handcuffed and taken off the plane. Al-Qudhai'een was picked up by the FBI in June and held on a material witness warrant. He was recently deported to Saudi Arabia.

At least one of the individuals in the memo was an associate of Hanjour and may have evaluated Hanjour's flying skills before the attacks. The unnamed individual was a flight instructor. Another individual mentioned is also connected to al-Qaida and was arrested in a safehouse in Pakistan last year, the report states.

"Phoenix has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the state of Arizona," Williams wrote.

"These individuals will be in a position in the future to conduct terror activity against civil aviation targets."

As'ad said the government has not shown that Tucson or Arizona is home to a radical band of Muslims bent on destroying America.

"To me, it's a coincidence," As'ad said. "I don't see any smoke. I don't see any fire. I see only coincidences."

Sounds like a perfect situatation for islamofascist sleeper agents to serve as the northern end of a terrorist smuggling pipeline. "Abdul the moderate muslim" living in Arizona could be providing transportation, comms, documents, maps, cash etc. for jihadists coming over the border.

As well as weapons and explosives, obtained over a longer period of time and cached for use in the US until their fellow active operatives get across the US southern border. Most of them, anyway.

Some of them have been here quite a while, have "hands off" status granted by various domestic political or intelligence community contacts, and are themselves veterans of Islamic terror campaigns elsewhere, as per one notorious Arizona-based example in particular.

If they spring a 911/Madrid level attack in October, and let it become known that the terrorists came in over the broken border, Bush will be toast. Shame he's so blind to this danger, in his eagerness to Hispander.

If they spring a 911/Madrid level attack in October

Or on 09/11 2004, as a combination anniversary and pre-election present, hoping for results like the ones they accomplished in Madrid.

They should be watching every mosque that's within 200 miles of either border very very carefully ---- the mosques are perfect headquarters for terrorists entering the USA.

Much will depend on the type of attack, in order for it to be blamed squarely on George Bush (if the terrorist motive is to throw the election to Kerrey).

A large scale "assault rifle massacre" right after the AWB sunsets would fit the bill perfectly. Or a series of snipers like the DC snipers, firing "assault weapons."

The "moderate muslim" sleepers in Tucson would be perfect for arranging the legally purchased weapons and logistics. The shooters could walk over the border with nothing incriminating on them at all. If some are stopped, they just play dumb as "economic migrants."

The entire attack would then be blamed on Bush, for the open border, and the legal "assault weapons." Give ABCNNBCBS a month to hammer him 24/7, and Bush would be toast.

The "moderate muslim" sleepers in Tucson would be perfect for arranging the legally purchased weapons and logistics. The shooters could walk over the border with nothing incriminating on them at all. If some are stopped, they just play dumb as "economic migrants."
The entire attack would then be blamed on Bush, for the open border, and the legal "assault weapons." Give ABCNNBCBS a month to hammer him 24/7, and Bush would be toast.

Especially if that kind of attack happened during the Republican Convention or on the 9/11 or other significant anniversary.

Especially if it were to take place in Bush's home state, to cries of "Why, he can't even protect those in his home state."

But it probably won't be the sort of attack that an armed citizen might be able to forestall. Too many armed citizens in Texas who could throw leaden monkeywrenches in the works.

My optimal scenario calls for the terrorists taking over a high vis tourist attraction, which can't be assaulted by HRT. I'm thinking of something like the Seattle Space Needle. A dozen terrorists with AKs and a few 50 calibers (all legally purchased by their "moderate muslim" support cell in the USA).

Either that, or simply turn loose the ten shooters in ten cities, to do spray and run "assault weapon" attacks on malls, sports arenas etc. Fire off a mag into a crowd and haul ass. Ten "DC Snipers" going on at the same time in ten cities, only killing dozens a day until they're cornered and killed.

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