Posted on 09/13/2001 6:25:00 AM PDT by Lex
A Vast Conspiracy Hatched in the Dark?
September 12:
Given the scale in time and dimensions of this last appalling conspiracy against America, none of DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts can explain how it came to fruition without any Western intelligence community noticing what was going on. The pre-planning must have taken years and involved hundreds if not thousands of strategists, activists, helpers, spotters, couriers, sleepers, controllers and spiritual leaders – and their families. Large sums of cash must have moved between countries.
And indeed, on Wednesday, scant hours after the shocking disasters in New York and Washington, the FBI was bursting with newfound information. It swung into action, knowing exactly where to lay hands on crowds of suspects in Boston and Florida. In record time, its agents had identified all the hijackers, estimating three to six on each of the passenger planes involved.
At least two of the hijackers were on the authorities’ “watch listâ€. Most were Egyptian or Saudi nationals. There was evidence to connect the conspiracy to the Saudi tycoon-terrorist ex-Saudi Osama Bin Laden. After all, there cannot be many organizations in the world capable of recruiting 12 to 24 volunteer suicides – and the odds are that it will be based in the Arab and Moslem world.
Even before finding the black boxes, the FBI knew that out of five targets, the terrorists hit two, the Twin Towers landmark, and missed three. They had been aiming for the White House, the President’s Maryland resort at Camp David and the presidential Boeing, Air Force One. Instead they hit the Pentagon and a place in Pennsylvania.
In record time, the investigators discovered that two of the hijackers were Egyptians, who took private flying courses in Venice, Florida, and that a dense network of Jihad Islami and Bin Laden cells flourished undisturbed in many of America’s cities. Suddenly, too, thousands of Boston’s Logan airport personnel were suspected of abetting in the conspiracy after exactly 800 staff name-tags were found to have gone missing last year. The FBI has now identified five Arab men as suspects, two of them believed to have entered the US and Canada and made several trips to “case†Logan.
But how did the terrorists make it to the two flights armed with knives and cans of mace? Hundreds of suspected accomplices are to be detained for interrogation in Boston and Florida.
All these discoveries, certain to be followed by many more, came tumbling out after the multiple disaster, raising the question of why were they not made before? Why did no one in the vast security administration of the United States raise the alarm?
The only logical answer to this, in the view of DEBKAfile ’s intelligence experts, is that the system was muffled, disarmed from the inside. Osama Bin Laden or perhaps the senior partner of his Qaeda (“The Baseâ€) group, the fundamentalist Egyptian Jihad Islami, must have been able to plant agents inside the US military and intelligence services.
It would not be the first time.
DEBKAfile ’s counter-terrorist experts recall the extraordinary appearance of the Egyptian-American Ali Mohamed, 48 as state witness at the trial in the Manhattan County court last April of the ring which carried out the 1988 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Daar e-Salaam, causing 224 deaths, including 12 Americans. As one of Bin Laden’s chief lieutenants, Mohamed’s testimony enabled the US government to use the trial for building a comprehensive indictment against the entire Bin Laden terrorist machine. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the conspiracy, but was let off the death sentence.
An expert in the art of “invading the Western society†targeted for terrorism, he was a skilled double agent. Mohamed became a naturalized US citizen and penetrated the US army’s Special Forces facility at the Fort Bragg, and given the rank of US sergeant.
During his army stint, Mohamed organized and built up the pervasive network of Islamic “societies†operating with apparent innocuous intent in so many corners of America, with an anti-American agenda, which is far from pious. They provide the infrastructure to support Islamic fundamentalist terrorist dedicated to “opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violence†- in the prophetic words of the US prosecutor at the embassy trial.
Bin Laden was charged in absentia with endorsing a fatwah, or religious decree, ordering devout Muslims to kill Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world.
Copyright © 2001
Authorities, and experts, are quick to say how expensive this was and how much planning was involved in order to cool down the population. They don't want to strike the "can happen at any time" fear with the GP.
Either that, or they are wishfully thinking.
Because of the abandonment of public life by Christians, you now have Islamic fundamentalists battling government fundamentalists! Who will win? Not the fed.
Mexico's National Security Adviser Adolfo Aguilar Zinser made the sensational announcement that Islamic terrorist organizations have a presence along the U.S. border and may be making contacts with Mexican guerrilla groups.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.