Free Republic

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

War on Terror San Diego FBI team denies it missed chance to thwart 9/11 San Diego FBI officials, bracing for a congressional report that criticizes their handling of an informant who rented rooms to two Sept. 11 hijackers, said yesterday they could not have uncovered the plot with the information they had at the time. Officials acknowledged for the first time that an informant, whom they refused to identify, had provided the first names of two men who would later become hijackers, the Associated Press reported. But the names did not raise any red flags before the terror attacks. "There...

German investigators say they have evidence that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two accomplices trained at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000. They have also established a clear link between Al Qaeda and a recent attack on a Tunisian synagogue, a top official said. The timing of the Afghanistan training, outlined yesterday by a senior investigator, provides the strongest evidence so far that plans for the attacks on the United States were worked out there. Less than six months after leaving Afghanistan, Mr. Atta and the other two men...