Posted on 09/27/2001 3:52:39 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
`Red flags all over the place'
Warning signs look obvious now
BY LENNY SAVINO
Herald Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- In hindsight, the warning signals were obvious. Law enforcement officials knew that, in 1995, two associates of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden had talked about crashing a plane into CIA headquarters outside Washington. Egypt and Italy had warned the CIA that bin Laden was plotting to fly an airplane into last June's economic summit in Genoa, Italy.
The FBI knew that bin Laden associates were taking flying lessons at U.S. schools. One school in Minnesota warned that one of its Arab students was interested only in learning to steer a commercial airliner, not in how to take off or land. French authorities identified the man, Zacarias Moussaoui, as a terrorist weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Finally, bin Laden's al Qaeda organization had tried and failed to blow up the World Trade Center, and his associates have a pattern of learning from their mistakes and trying again, as they did after a failed attempt to blow up the U.S. Navy destroyer The Sullivans. Armed with better explosives and training, they hit another destroyer, the USS Cole.
Two weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed more than 6,000 people, intelligence and law enforcement officials are asking themselves why no one connected the dots.
``Somehow, it fell between the cracks,'' said one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the Pentagon and World Trade Center investigations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``We had red flags all over the place.''
Officials say they never had enough intelligence information to predict or pre-empt the Sept. 11 attacks, but concede they had enough pieces of the puzzle to be more alarmed about whether bin Laden was planning to use some kind of airplane as a bomb.
``We've had indications this was coming for some years,'' said Rusty Capps, who retired after 21 years with the FBI, where he was the first manager of its national counterintelligence awareness program.
Analyzing and assessing terrorist threats is the responsibility of the government's Counter Terrorism Center, located at CIA headquarters but staffed by officials from the intelligence community, the FBI and other agencies.
The center was created in the mid-1980s, but since 1996 its top targets have been bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. In fact, after bin Laden issued an edict that year urging all Muslims to take arms against U.S. soldiers, the center has had a bin Laden task force.
The CIA and FBI declined to comment on events preceding the Sept. 11 attacks and what mistakes may have been made, but privately a number of intelligence officials conceded there was an intelligence and analytical failure of what one called ``Pearl Harbor proportions.''
Paul Moore, an FBI counterintelligence analyst for 21 years who's now retired, said there are several reasons that FBI and CIA analysts couldn't piece together what now seems obvious: ``Analysts look at probabilities, not possibilities. They don't look at the ways of attacking the Capitol. They look at ways of how it would most likely be attacked based on prior attacks.''
Thus, because no U.S. landmarks such as the Pentagon or the World Trade Center had been attacked by a commercial airliner hijacked by suicide bombers, analysts would not consider such scenarios.
Herald staff writer Nancy San Martin contributed to this report.
For Education And Discussion Only. Not For Commercial Use.
Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Some choose wisely, some don't.
That's real nice but there are no specifics. What kind of attack, where, which cells within the US are involved? Again, this is a big country, it's one thing to find out Israel is being targeted for something big enough to involve 200 terrorists, it's another for the US.
Considering that the CIA already had a written outline of the attack, acquired when Ramsi Yussef and his partner were arrested, and already had under suspicion some of the bin Laden people involved, you would wonder why they didn't round up the "usual suspects" and sweat something out of them as to what was going to happen.
Two things here. 1 - there doesn't seem to have been any info that linked the outline they got from Yussef to the "lead" from Mussad before the attack. That alone would have been great. 2 - this is America, we don't round up the usual suspects, and we shouldn't. Arresting people before we have evidence that they are doing something illegal and sweating them out is how bad places do things. As every terrorist expert has said for many years, our level of freedoms hieghtens our vulnerability, and that's one of the freedoms that really increases our vulnerability.
Do the Mossad and French intelligence have to come over here themselves and round up and question the known members of the bin Laden organization for us?
They should stay clear. We don't arrest people because of "links", and if we ever do everything we've ever fought for is lost. If they want to treat everyone in their country like suspects that's their perogative, in America we need evidence BEFORE we arrest.
Just got done looking at the personal photos of someone from the WTC. It's enough to take your breath away. Hurts the heart, big time.
April 1, 2001 - Fatal brain disorder annihlating S.C. eagles -- about gravity, the truth and which way is up, and who lost it:
"On a research trip near Aiken three years ago, scientists saw a bald eagle hanging upside down from a tree, its head cocked and wings extended beyond the white feathers around its beak. After 10 minutes, the bird glided away, grabbed another tree branch, and again hung upside down by a claw. This behavior went on for more than an hour, as the bird flew from tree to tree, before finally crashing to the ground in the woods."August 23, 2001 - Marauding eagle sinks its talons into toddler :
"A young bald eagle swoops down on three-year-old Kayla Finnon on Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, hooking its claw into her back. The girls father managed to pull her away and she did not need medical treatment.The eagle, which is believed to be about a year old, has been harassing beachgoers along the eastern coast and appears to be particularly eager to join in ball games. Wildlife experts said that the problem had been made worse by holidaymakers offering it food so that they could take photographs."
July 23, 2001 Experts: Fireball Leaves Burnt Rock :
A meteor or fireball with a trumpet-shaped tail falls in the Northeast, even burning the rock, the foundation.Then there was a "Knock, Knock!" and the towers fell. America asked, "Who's there?" But most didn't get the right answer. They missed the message. (Real Audio) (Win streaming audio)Joe 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand; 2 A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
Ps 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
There was a warning here on Sept. 3, 2001 as well, before the towers fell.
Isa 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
[Note to Unbelievers: This is all brand new...I've left out all the other previously posted warnings so this is not spamming.]
"``Analysts look at probabilities, not possibilities... -- Of course, I was also under the impression that we had more creative sorts working in intelligence, able to think outside of the box, covering possibilities as well as likelihoods. If the information contained in this article had been posted, even in pieces, here on FreeRepublic, I'm sure alert readers would have seen the possibilities -- and it's not even our job!!
Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
But Thou, O God, wilt bring them down to the pit of destruction; Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in Thee. -- Ps. 55: 22-23Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Thy bottle; Are they not in Thy book?
Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call; This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise, In the Lord, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? -- Psalm 56: 8-11
People do forget so easily...don't they?
There will be no publicity in the national media about the warnings received by the CIA. The CIA controls the media to the extent that such things can be kept off the air and out of newpapers at will.
Operation Mockingbird is alive and well.
I'm saying it happens every day in this country regardless of the current situation. Apparently, some people are just learning this.
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