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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