Free Republic

Exclusive film of suicide pilots at Bin Laden’s HQ See the video live from noon today (Link to front page) FILM of the ringleader of the September 11 hijackers reading his “martyrdom” will inside Afghanistan at Osama Bin Laden’s headquarters has emerged five years after the Al-Qaeda outrage. It is the first time that a videotape has appeared of Mohammed Atta — who flew an American Airlines plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center — at a training camp in Afghanistan. It fills in a significant gap in the timing of the build-up to the attacks on...

A video shows two of the world’s most infamous terrorists joking and laughing while filming their ‘death wills’ at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan. The journalist and author Yosri Fouda explains the terrible significance of the new find See the video from noon today Two bearded young men laugh and joke for the camera. They appear relaxed, well groomed, intelligent; they might be high-achieving students quietly celebrating an exam success. They look at a piece of paper and laugh some more. What is so funny? Certainly not the piece of paper. There is Arabic script on it. Easily decipherable...

Over the years, historians and dramatists will produce many, many versions of "The Path to 9/11." If Bill Clinton wishes in the future to complain about historical inaccuracies, I suggest he first answer one question: What handwritten notes, and by whom, were on the three copies of classified documents (out of five) that Sandy Berger chose to steal and cut up with scissors in 2003, smack in the middle of the 9/11 commission's investigation? When we know the answer to that question, Bill, then and only then will you be entitled to complain about historical inaccuracies in the record.

Lopez: In sum, how many times did Bill Clinton lose bin Laden?Miniter: Here's a rundown. The Clinton administration:1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.7. Objected to...

FBI Agents Say Phone Records Link Illinois Student to Sept. 11 TerroristsBy Mike Robinson Associated Press WriterPublished: Mar 20, 2002 CHICAGO (AP) - FBI agents searching telephone records have linked a 36-year-old Illinois student to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to newly unsealed court papers. Ali Salem Kahlah Al-Marri has not been charged with any role in the Sept. 11 attacks and his lawyer, Richard Jasper Jr., questioned the link. Al-Marri was arrested Jan. 28 and is being held in New York on a federal charge of unlawful possession of more than 15 credit...

Sunday August 20th, 2006 informationliberation.com The Secret World of Mohamed Atta: An Interview With Atta's American Girlfriend (InformationLiberation) Exclusive 19-minute interview with Amanda Keller, Mohamed Atta's erstwhile American girlfriend, refuting..."all sworn testimony given by a Pentagon official last week (sic) at the Able Danger hearing, who said the U.S. had not identified Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11."...The ranks of U.S. Government Agencies with unacknowledged awareness of Mohamed Atta's pre-9/11 activities in the U.S. have been steadily swelling. The DEA had Venice Airport under 24-hour surveillance before 9/11. They filmed everyone who entering or exiting Airport from a camera installed in...

Two recent news items provide a certain insight: First Item: “A group of Muslim and Arab-Americans, frustrated by what they say is the climate of suspicion and fear that dogs their re-entry into the United States from trips abroad, sued the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. yesterday, demanding that the courts protect their civil rights. The seven main plaintiffs in the class action suit assert that both the United States Congress and the federal government are ignoring the plight of innocent Americans harassed repeatedly because of problems with the terrorist watch list.

CHAPEL HILL - A man charged with trying to kill students at the University of North Carolina by driving through a popular campus gathering spot says in a series of letters he does not deserve punishment. He also talks about his youth in Charlotte, referring at one point to a school fight he said he started at Myers Park Traditional Elementary School. And he refers to Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, aqs "one of my role models." Mohammed Taheri-azar is accused of driving a Jeep Cherokee into a crowd of students gathered at...

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and head on over to TKS for the best summation of Able Danger as things presently stand. Or stay here and I'll summarize it for you. In very, very brief summation: The 9-11 commission did know about Able Danger; some of its staff were briefed on it twice, and the information got to some but not all of the commissioners What seems increasingly likely, based on the TKS summary and others, is that the commissioners who knew of Able Danger dismissed it because its Mohammed Atta timeline didn't agree with theirs. That in and...

The transcript from United Air Lines Flight 93 cockpit voice recorder played for the the jury in Zacarias Moussaoui's case in their consideration of whether or not he should be sentenced to death following his September 11th terror conviction. http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/flight93transcript.pdf Special Coverage: U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/terrorism/cases/index.html#moussaoui

WELDON CALLS PRESS CONFERENCE IN ADVANCE OF WEDNESDAY’S ABLE DANGER HEARING WASHINGTON, Feb 13 - U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, will hold a press conference on Tuesday, February 14th at 12:00 p.m. in the House Radio/TV Gallery in advance of Wednesday’s House Armed Service joint subcommittee hearing on the Able danger - a Department of Defense planning effort prior to 9/11 tasked to identify and target the linkages and relationships of Al-Qaeda worldwide. Weldon plans to highlight much of his work over the past 9 months on Able Danger,...

A SYDNEY man allegedly telephoned the suspected leader of al-Qa'ida in Spain – Abu Dahdah – seeking help to move a "brother" and his family throughout Europe. The allegation about former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal – made in documents tendered in Mr Dahdah's terrorism trial – contradicts claims by him that he had never spoken to the alleged terror chief, or even knew who he was. As more details of a network of alleged terror supporters in Australia emerged yesterday, it has been claimed a second Australian named in the Spanish court documents, Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran, was...

It's been four years of bad news for flight attendants. First, 9/11 happened. Then, they were laid off. With airline bankruptcies like Northwest's, they are being laid off again. Now, in another blow, the movie, "Flight Plan," is hitting theaters, tomorrow. Starring Jodie Foster, it's an outrageous piece of propaganda and incredible display of the irresponsible. I'm embarrassed to say that a very distant cousin of mine--Charles J.D. Schlissel--is executive producer of this outrage. The J.D. must stand for "Just Despicable." If you're a freedom-loving American like me, the rotten tricks of this movie will disgust you. If you want...

It’s hard to understand the silence that has fallen on the investigation into the terrorism scare triggered by the anthrax attacks shortly after 9/11. I’m not at all a conspiracy buff, but this case is just filled with coincidences that have caused much speculation that the anthrax letters were a follow-up terrorist attack carried out by Islamic terrorists tied to the 19 Muslims directly involved in 9/11. There is no new public information I know of, however,

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with GSN on August 23, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the military intelligence operative who collaborated with Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) to draw worldwide attention to the Able Danger intelligence unit, described Able Danger’s origins, explained how it tracked terrorists as they visited individual mosques around the world, discussed the CIA’s refusal to cooperate with the program, acknowledged the supporting technical role played by the Raytheon Company, and described Able Danger’s ultimate demise.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - A Defense Department inquiry has found three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes, Pentagon and military officials said Thursday. But the officials said investigators who reviewed thousands of documents and electronic files from a secret counterterrorism planning unit had not found the chart itself, or any evidence the chart ever existed. The officials acknowledged that documents and electronic files created by the unit, known as Able Danger, were destroyed under standing orders that limit the military's...

The background: On April 21, 2001, the CIA's liaison officer at the U.S. Embassy in Prague was briefed by the Czech counterintelligence service (known by its Czech acronym, BIS) about an extraordinary development in a spy case that concerned both the United States and the Czech Republic. The subject of the briefing was Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the consul at Iraq's embassy in Prague. .... So when al-Ani replaced Salim at the Iraq Embassy in Prague in 1999, both the United States and the Czech Republic wanted him closely watched in case he had a similar assignment. The BIS...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret defense intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks. The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement today that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for...

Many people have e-mailed asking for my opinion on the emerging Operation Able Danger story--in which army intelligence personnel were barred from notifying the FBI about Mohammed Atta. While I agree that the Pentagon lawyers who stopped the Able Danger operatives from notifying the FBI are culpable, and their behavior is an outrage, my take is different from most conservative commentators. I really don't think the FBI would have acted on the information. Instead, today, we'd be sweeping under the rug yet more ineptitude by the, unfortunately, "lead agency" in the War on Terror. Let's look at what the FBI...

In its latest response to the report that it failed to account for the Able Danger report, the 9/11 Commission spokesman indicates the report was inconsistent with the INS records as to the date of Atta's entry into the US. Of course, the very idea of considering INS entry records dispositive is itself a howler to anyone who pays attention.Aside from the sloppiness of the controls at our borders and the inadequacy of the INS' record keeping, we know that Atta's April 2001 entry upon which the Commission apparently relies, is itself mysterious. He is recorded as having entered twice...