> Part of the evidence is that bin Laden made a phone call that says that an
> attack would take place
> in two days. This evidence was discovered AFTER the attacks. This makes
> absolutely no sense to me. I posted a source earlier that said that a call
> to bin Laden's mother had been intercepted in which he said that there would
> be an attack in two days. Surely this makes more sense. The call was
> intercepted at the time that it was made. It would be known then wouldn;t
> it. What gives?
It's my impression that large amounts of intercepted data, communications, etc. are accumulated and archived electronically to be analyzed at a later date (reviewed methodically and comprehensively in some cases, or more likely on an as-needed basis owing to the overwhelming volume of material collected). It's therefore not inconceivable that on learning of the attacks the intelligence services then went back and sifted through the raw data obtained throughout the region to locate and compile the specific relevant material. One might surmise that a figure like bin Laden might have a bit more hands-on attention on a day-by-day basis, but given the supposed difficulty in pinning him down (his frequent moves, etc.), that may be asking a lot. And tracking him from the other end, i.e. the phone on his wealthy mum's bedside table in Saudi Arabia, might pose its own challenges - or not. Who knows.
And regardless of the above - even if some agent in the field *did* hear bin Laden mumbling something on the line about an imminent attack in two days - what do you do, having absolutely no specific idea of what he's referring to? Shut down the entire U.S. air travel system (fat chance, with no specific articulated threat to airports)? Tell everyone in the U.S. to drink bottled water for two days until all the systems can be tested? Post guards at nuclear power plants? Strip search the entire cast of the touring Muppets stage show? My impression is that various governmental agencies have been getting hints and thinly-veiled threats on a regular basis for some time, hence the peculiar level of anxiety evident in various state department memos, travel advisories, etc. over the past few years.
> The picture the evidence gives is that bin Laden is something like the CEO
> of a terrorist organisation and as such of course he is involved in planning
> major attacks. But if he is how is it that intelligence sources are unable
> to to know what is going on?
As has been mentioned elsewhere, it seems the closer one gets to bin Laden, the more likely it is that whatever communiques he's generating are being hand-carried from the place of origin to some other location (cf. Fisk) and then relayed to successive locations and the ultimate destination(s). This does not make for easy tracking, notwithstanding the theoretical efficacy of echelon systems and the like.
> Furthermore one of the hijackers is said to
> have been involved both in the USS Cole attack in some way and in one of the
> embassy bombings. Surely you would think that intelligence sources would be
> keeping good track of this guy. How could he come to the US and take part
> in a hijacking undetected? The evidence does not make intellligence services
> look even minimally competent.
It's exceedingly easy for people in the know, and especially an organization with the resources of bin Laden's, to obtain forged passports and all manner of false documentation. And there are, or have been at any rate, innumerable entry points to the U.S. for those with enough cash to cover the basic exigencies (i.e., not Mexican migrant workers). The Canadian border strategy that the hijackers apparently employed was a good one.
I think it's astounding that so many people think the U.S. intelligence services should have known about the attacks. I'll be shocked if the next one doesn't catch us just as much by surprise, even if it happens in just 30 days and we're all still yapping about New York and losing sleep over it at the time. The only salient factor that might have tied the hijackers together prior to WTC is their perceived ethnicity, which they "share" with millions of other U.S. citizens.
All of the other things that we now see as being common threads - the flying instruction, the crop dusters, etc. would have been extremely hard to catch in a large, spread-out, multi-ethnic country such as the U.S. without some kind of psychic prescience of what was going to happen, or wide-spread, oppressive racial profiling owing to suspicion based on some earlier incident and the requisite citizen compliance and participation in same - unlikely even now, notwithstanding the isolated incidents here and there and idiotic "towel-head" comments. As I mentioned earlier, barring foreknowledge of the events as they occurred, tracking the movements of all the individuals we now see as being potential players in the saga would have been exceedingly unlikely without enormous resources being brought to bear *on the ground* - day-to-day, real-time movement tracking of hundreds if not thousands of suspicious individuals. It's one thing to have a database and be able to say so-and-so has previously been linked to bin Laden and is now living in Germany, etc., but another thing entirely to track him so closely as to confound his ability to obtain false papers and slip out of the country at night on a moment's notice. Or whatever. It's hard.
And right now, six guys may be sitting in a garage somewhere methodically packing vials with toxic substances and making jokes about something or other as the radio plays quietly in the corner and they sit working away into the night.
But where are they? Idaho? Tarpon Springs? Evanston, Illinois? Really, how could we have any idea?
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/ dave /