[lbo-talk] The 'Al Qaeda' Industry

Joseph Wanzala jwanzala at hotmail.com
Sun Oct 17 10:55:52 PDT 2004


The question was: "What is the clear connection between Zarquawi, Bin Laden, the Chehens, Moslems in Cape Town and Sudan and Zanzibar, Arab radicals in Paraguay and Ecuador, Moslems in the Balkans and China, the PLO etc. - the point is that there isn't and the 'war on terror' is predicated on the assumption that this is one large integrated entity." You haven't dealt with the full scope of the question. And I was not saying there is not a connection, I was problematizing the nature of those connections - and even as your post shows, the connections are not clear - and this begs the question - why was the US government not anxious to follow up on 'actionable intelligence' that "could have prevented the terror attacks on September 11th."

Joe W.


>From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] The 'Al Qaeda' Industry
>Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 10:25:07 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>--- Joseph Wanzala <jwanzala at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>What is the clear
> > connection between Zarquawi, Bin Laden, the Chehens,
>
>I must have linked to this article like 50 times now.
>
>You Say "Terrorist", Washington says "Shuttup"
>By Mark Ames ( editor at exile.ru )
>
>Last December, an incredible piece of evidence emerged
>in the indictment of accused 9-11 terrorist Zacarias
>Moussaoui.
>
>While most of the media and Capitol Hill were focused
>on the CIA and FBI's failure to "connect the dots," a
>crucial clue has still been left unexplored: the Al
>Qaeda-Chechnya connection. If the US Government had
>been willing to explore the Chechen Connection, it
>could have prevented the terror attacks on September
>11th.
>
>Buried in the middle of the June 6th Washington Post
>article "Hill Probers Upgrade Evidence Gathered From
>Moussaoui" was proof that the failure to uncover the
>terrorist plot was not just a matter of poor
>coordination, but rather a direct result of deliberate
>U.S. foreign policy.
>
>I'm going to quote a large chunk of the article here
>because it is so stunning, and because it has hitherto
>been so grossly overlooked.
>
>A bit of background: on August 16th, 2001, Moussaoui
>was arrested in Minneapolis on immigration charges
>after an official at the Pan Am International flight
>school told the FBI he feared Moussaoui was planning a
>hijacking. Over the next few weeks, Minneapolis FBI
>agents tried to convince Washington to give them a
>warrant to search Moussaoui. Washington refused. The
>local agents' frustration reached such a pitch that
>they even went to CIA for help, for which they were
>upbraided by Washington.
>
>Here is why they couldn't get the warrant:
>
>"The main point of the dispute [between the
>Minneapolis FBI branch and Washington] was the value
>of information gathered about Moussaoui, a French
>national who had entered the United States in early
>2001, and whether there was enough evidence to secure
>a warrant to search his belongings.
>
>"The FBI received information from French
>intelligence, for example, including interviews with a
>family that blamed Moussaoui for inciting their son to
>fight and die with Muslim rebels in Chechnya, sources
>said.
>
>"In her letter to Mueller, Rowley wrote that the
>French reports 'confirmed his affiliations with
>radical fundamentalist Islamic groups and activities
>connected to Osama bin Laden.' She argued that agents
>had enough evidence in hand 'within days' of
>Moussaoui's arrest to provide probable cause for a
>warrant.
>
>"Headquarters officials, however, insist that the
>French information detailed no direct ties between
>Moussaoui and any designated terrorist group, a
>requirement for obtaining a FISA [Foreign Intelligence
>Surveillance Act] warrant. The Chechen rebels, while
>believed to have links with bin Laden, were not
>considered a terrorist group by the State Department.
>
>"'The angle we consistently had with the French was
>the Chechnya angle,' one U.S. official said. 'There
>were no specifics about affiliations with al Qaeda, no
>reports of being in the [al Qaeda] camps in
>Afghanistan - nothing.'
>
>"In the end, lawyers at FBI headquarters declined to
>approve the Minneapolis request for such a warrant. It
>wasn't until Sept. 11, hours after the suicide
>attacks, that the FBI sought and obtained a search
>warrant, although it came from a criminal court rather
>than the intelligence panel.
>
>"The evidence they allegedly found included a computer
>disk containing information related to crop-dusting;
>the phone numbers in Germany of Ramzi Binalshibh, an
>al Qaeda fugitive who allegedly helped finance the
>plot; and flight deck videos from an Ohio store where
>two of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta and Nawaf Alhazmi,
>had purchased the same equipment.
>
>"...One of the most tantalizing pieces of information
>was correspondence identifying Moussaoui as a
>'marketing consultant' for a Malaysian computer
>technology firm, Infocus Tech. The letters were signed
>by 'Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director,' and stipulated
>that Moussaoui was to receive a $2,500-per-month
>allowance.
>
>"That connection, it now appears, could have proved
>critical. Sufaat, a Malaysian microbiologist, provided
>his Kuala Lumpur condominium for a 'terrorism summit'
>attended by Alhazmi and another Sept. 11 hijacker,
>Khalid Almihdhar, in January 2000, according to CIA
>and FBI officials [who monitored the summit]. The
>gathering was also attended by a man later identified
>as one of the leading suspects in the October 2000
>bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
>
>"...Knowledge of Sufaat's letter to Moussaoui would
>have disclosed a possible al Qaeda connection, but it
>remained unexamined while the Minneapolis agents tried
>and failed to obtain a search warrant."
>
>In other words, had America agreed to list the Chechen
>separatists as "terrorists," as the Russians have been
>urging them to do since 1999, the warrant would have
>been immediately obtained and evidence of the plot
>possibly uncovered. This was America's best chance of
>foiling the September 11th attacks. However, official
>U.S. policy has refused to recognize the Chechen
>separatists as terrorists linked to Al Qaeda - despite
>the incredible wealth of evidence proving the
>connection. The Moussaoui evidence shows that
>America's policy of refusing to view the Chechen
>separatists as "terrorists" was directly responsible
>for the failure to pursue Moussaoui. This was not mere
>human error or bureaucratic inefficiency. It was the
>result of a carefully-designed policy worked out by
>the Bush Administration.
>
>http://www.exile.ru/153/feature_story.html
>
>
>
>=====
>Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
>
>
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