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Posted on 06/21/2002 5:09:36 AM PDT by RaceBannon
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| AP World Politics |
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By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS - The FBI ( news - web sites) said it is investigating a Nevada man's claim that he picked up a conversation in Arabic on his cell phone during which someone said there would be a "hit" on the "day of freedom."
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Borst said agents have interviewed the man who reported the conversation, Michael Hamdan, and planned to question him again Friday.
Hamdan, 54, said he's a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Lebanon and speaks Arabic.
Hamdan said he was trying to call his wife on his cell phone Saturday when he heard Arabic voices.
"They said in Arabic, not even a word of English, 'We are in the city of corruption, the city of prostitution, the city of gambling, the city of unbelievers,'" Hamdan told The Associated Press late Thursday. '"We are going to hit them on the day of freedom.'"
Hamdan said the call lasted about 90 seconds before the line went dead. He said he believes the men were talking about July Fourth.
"I was frozen, absolutely cold," Hamdan said. "I was sweating. I couldn't believe what I heard."
Hamdan said he reported what he heard to the FBI early Sunday morning.
Hamdan, who is married and has two children, described himself as a semiretired businessman. He said he moved to the United States in 1976.
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Wander if there's a way to get hold of his Frequent Flyer miles ;-)
As for cross-talk: it's rare in Vegas, according to my deep-cover sources there. That cross-talk in Arabic would just happen to hit the phone of one of the few folks in Vegas that could understand it is way beyond my comfort zone.
This guy may have heard this conversation, but if he did, it wouldn't have been al-Qaida. Possibly it's something planned by some two-bit terrorist wannabe.<<
OR:
(just a theory) The plan has been thoroughly laid out and is ready to be implemented, and the phone call was made simply to inform another member of al Quaida. Not that hard to believe.
Al-Qaeda is effective because they have good OPSEC. That means NOT discussing stuff this explicitly over a cell phone--they'd just say something like "Yo, Abdul, your car's fixed. Pick it up at the shop."
This reads more like a bad piece of fiction (a ripoff of Sorry, Wrong Number, to be exact).
And I still find it amazing that this piece of crosstalk JUST happened to hit the phone of a guy who speaks Arabic, and that it was understandable.
My paranoid side says that the guy is deliberately inserting a false alarm to distract or decoy law enforcement.
Yes, this could be any city in the blue zone and not necessarily Vegas. The District of Columbia is much more corrupt than Vegas. In Las Vegas, everything is just what it appears to be and nobody is trying to deceive you (except the occasional pit boss who slips one of the aces into his shirt pocket.) D.C on the other hand, is the home of deception and ruthless political "blood sport". I'd rather be in Vegas any day.
/john
It would be frightening to have suicide bombers, car bombers, etc all over the country.
It kind of sends the message that they are everywhere.
I have two cell phones - an analog and a digital. I get crosstalk all the time, especially on the digital, and it's perfectly intelligible.
By the way, this is illegal, but if you have a television with an analog UHF tuner, it's easy to intercept cellular calls around channel 80. One side will come in clearly, and sometimes the sidetone will allow the other side to be heard too.
Bingo. They are very well disciplined. They know better than to discuss ops through an insecure means.
The thought occured to me that WE may have leaked (or fabricated) this story to throw THEM off for whatever reason. But I'm probably all wet (too many Clancy novels lately). Myself, I intend to have a glorious 4th, eating and visiting with family and friends whilst extending a warm middle finger towards Mecca.
a) This happens a lot more often than network hiccups.
b) It goes a long way to explaining why an Arabic speaker happened to end up hearing a conversation in Arabic. It was probably someone he knows, or, perhaps, an Arabic-speaking merchant he has dealt with recently so his number was on the call list of the phone that accidentally dialed him.
As for the content of the call, I believe more in FBI incompetence than I do in Al Quaida opsec. A whole bunch of random towelheads seemed to know 9/11 was coming (kid in school pointing to towers and saying they will be gone, funny short activity in the market). Still, the most likley thing of all is that he is making it up.
But you might be right: Voicestream's network was all F-ed up along 495 this morning. And don't get me started about how well GPRS works in the U.S.
When a cell phone "speed dial" button is pushed inadvertently, and yours is the phone dialed, you pick up and hear any conversation happening near that one, inadvertently dialed cell phone. It's not a two-way TELEPHONE converstaion, it's a converstation taking place between two people in the vicinity of the inadvertently dialed cell phone!
Even if totally false, the scary thing is that it is all plausible.
Stay vigilent, and stay armed!!
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