'DIRTY BOMBER' HUNT

New York Post ^ | 1/10/04 | NILES LATHEM

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a worldwide manhunt for al Qaeda's master bombmaker, who may be building a "dirty" bomb and other new devices for terror attacks inside the United States, sources said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials told The Post it was new information about the activities of Egyptian-born bomb maker Midhat Mursi, in part, that led the Bush administration to secretly dispatch Department of Energy radiological detection teams to New York and four other cities over New Year's Eve.

[FormerACLUmember]

Nah, the rat party says, there is no reason to be in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Let's leave this to th UN.

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[gortklattu]

they had warnings bout airliner attacks about a year prior to their delivery. Hopefully they can stop another attack by acting responsibly.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a worldwide manhunt for al Qaeda's master bombmaker, who may be building a "dirty" bomb and other new devices for terror attacks inside the United States...

...Egyptian-born bomb maker Midhat Mursi.

He is believed to have gone underground before or during the 2001 Afghanistan war and is considered the most wanted al Qaeda figure after Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
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Pay no attention to the appeasers in the press, bad guys.

Sincerely, the US Military

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If you want on or off my, Calpernia, and xzin's Pro-Coalition ping list, please Freepmail one of us. Warning: it is a high volume ping list on good days. (Most days are good days).

[alnick]

What warnings are you talking about?

[aculeus]

Bump.

[Calpernia]

Ping

[Alamo-Girl]

Bump!

[blackie]

'DIRTY BOMBER' HUNT ~ Bump!

[PhilDragoo]

Some documents indicated Mursi was exchanging information with Palestinian and Hezbollah bomb makers - including some who helped design the shoe bomb carried aboard a Paris-to-Boston flight by Richard Reid in 2001, sources said.

Palestinian and Hezbollah bomb makers--

Arafat, Assad and Khamenei should be toast, histoire.

You are either with us or against us--there is no gray (Arnold terminated him).

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

there is no gray (Arnold terminated him).

Do you do taglines? (^:

[Valin]

Latenight I REALLY need to get to bed bump

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Morning, Valin. I wouldn't dare have a computer in my bedroom. (^:

[Coop]

they had warnings bout airliner attacks about a year prior to their delivery. Hopefully they can stop another attack by acting responsibly.

That has to be one of the more ridiculous comments I've seen in a long time. You're reading about a terrorist wanting to attack us with WMD, and the only thing you can do is criticize "them?"

BTW, the airline attack info was c. 1996. And having knowledge of a general threat does not help stop a specific attack. Except of course if one is a psychic keyboard critic.

[Coop]

AQ flag

[gortklattu]

It's not a ridiculous comment, it's rational.

They knew that "bin Laden's cronies" were learning to fly airliners and weren't interested in learning how to land or take off. What's that tell you?

It told me that they were going to use the aircraft as Kamikazi's.... that's what they did. All they had to do is not allow the hijackers into the cockpit. Aerobatics or anything else, prevent their entering the cockpit.

So, with a general threat, you have a preventive measure.

[gortklattu]

Read my above post...

[piasa]

They knew that "bin Laden's cronies" were learning to fly airliners and weren't interested in learning how to land or take off. What's that tell you?

The "wasn't interested in learning how to land or take off" claim is attribited to press reports on Moussaoui's arrest - which came in mid August 2001- less than 30 days prior to 9/11... not a year before. The press didn't claim he "wasn't interested in taking off"- they said he was interested in learning to steer, not to land. As it happens, this claim by the press was FALSE, completely opposite of the truth. Moussaoui had indeed expressed an interest in landing:

In his e-mail message, Mr. Moussaoui conceded his lack of experience but suggested that he was more interested in training than in earning professional certification. "In a sense, to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot," he wrote of his goals. He was vague about which of the "big airliners" interested him the most, ticking off a list that ranged from a Boeing 747 to an Airbus A-300 and saying that his choice for training would "depend on the cost and which one is easiest to learn." But he was specific in the skills he hoped to master.
"The level I would like to achieve is to be able to takeoff and land, to handle communication with ATC," he wrote, referring to air traffic control, "to be able to successfully navigate from A to B (JFK to Heathrow for example)."--- by Jim Yardley, The New York Times , February 8, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/08/national/08HIJA.html

What really concerned the instructors in Minnesota wasn't an alleged aversion to instruction on takeoff and landing - it was that he lacked a pilot's license and paid $10,000 or so just for what looked to them at first like an ego trip on a 747 flight simulator but later like he was trying to pack in TOO MUCH training, not too little. A guy just wanting a joy ride in a simulator wouldn't be as interested as Moussaoui was in learning so much detail and instructors gre suspicious:

"The instructor, Mr. Rosengren said, immediately became concerned and wondered why someone who was not a pilot and had so little experience was trying to pack so much training into such a short time." ------ by Jim Yardley, The New York Times , February 8, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/08/national/08HIJA.html

Moussaoui was also too interested in learning communications protocols to be a mere thrill seeker.

The Feds couldn't get him on terrorism - it's legal to buy time in a flight simulator and to blow money on flight traing, and Moussaoui made no claim he wanted to be a certified pilot. In fact, he just wrote that he wanted a thrill ride, which isn't unusual for bored people with too much money. The school had had doctors and lawyers do that before. The only thing the Feds had to go on was that he overstayed his visa. They could detain him for that but since FISA denied them a warrant they weren't going to get approval to waterboard the guy on an overstayed visa or for being wealthy enough to blow a wad of cash on a joy ride. That's why the INS and not the FBI arrested him the day before he was scheduled for his first "trip" in the flight simulator.

The FBI later inquired to see if there were any more details on Moussaoui to be found abroad , and received French reports that one of Massaoui's acquaintances had fought in Chechnya. But on Moussaoui there wasn't much, and there was no evidence linking him to a specific terrorist group or hostile government. Without such proof, given the composition of the court at the time, the FISA requirements couldn't be met and so the info on his laptop was legally out of reach until 9/11 made the FISA courts more open minded, and the info on cropdusting on his computer disc would have been found. Not that cropdusting intel would have been much forewarning of 9/11's hijackings. Moussaoui's mission wasn't to hijack anything on 9/11. His mission was quite different.