9-16-2001 - A DELEGATION IS ON THE WAY TO PAKISTAN TO TELL THE TALIBAN THEY HAVE 3 DAYS TO HAND OVER OSAMA BIN LADEN OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES
WHAT IS THIS RED STREAK?
MYSTERY OBJECT CAUGHT ON TAPE MOMENTS AFTER SECOND TOWER HIT
A flying mystery object was captured on video just moment after a second aircraft crashed into New York's World Trade Center, it can be revealed.
Stills from a video taken by GAMMA PRESS USA -- showing the twin towers from an east angle -- clearly show an unknown object moving at a 90 degree angle to the second plane's flight path.
Was a military jet following the second plane? Is the object a radar-guided missile that was fired at the airliner -- but arrived seconds late? Is the object a post-event distortion by a GAMMA PRESS editor? Could the image be a giant piece of debris racing toward the horizon?
The mystery surrounding the video intensified in and out of official government over the weekend.
A close examination of the footage appears to first show the object flashed by sunlight -- above the left tower -- a full 10 seconds after impact of the second airliner. The mystery object quickly streeks across the the back of the right tower before swooping down at a rapid clip and out of the camera's frame.
The video featuring the mystery object has so far failed to catch the attention of the nation's main press.
It should be noted that no reports from countless bystanders or other video footage has backed up the GAMMA video, which was running at FOXNEWS.COM as of Sunday evening [ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34238,00.html Scroll to: Video, the attack: East angle 2nd plane hits tower.]
NOTE: I didn't find it, but you can watch all the others
Lease owner committed to project, though not exact replicas
September 14, 2001: 7:58 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The developer who led the group that purchased the World Trade Center's 99-year lease in July 1999 for $3.2 billion from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he is committed to help rebuilding the center, according to a published report Friday.
New York-based Larry Silverstein told the Wall Street Journal, "It would be the tragedy of tragedies not to rebuild this part of New York." Silverstein said any rebuilding plans will wait until the grieving process is over. He also said four of his employees remain missing.
Although Silverstein said he is ready to rebuild, he did say he is not committed to creating exact replicas of the towers, acknowledging tenants may be reluctant to relocate in such prominent buildings, according to the paper.
Once all of the missing are accounted for, Silverstein told the newspaper, he will concentrate on the insurance, lease and legal issues resulting from the attack. "It's going to take huge amounts of time to deal with the magnitude of the paper issues," he said, adding that the 99-year lease is insured against terrorism.
"The city is not dead and can't be allowed to die," Silverstein told the Journal. "We owe [rebuilding] to our children and to our grandchildren."
With 20% of lower Manhattan office space in ruins, real estate is scarce
September 14, 2001: 1:51 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Even as rescuers continue digging through the rubble of New York's shattered World Trade Center, companies big and small are scrambling to find new office space beyond the heart of the world's financial center.
Office space in New York already was hard to come by before Tuesday's attack that destroyed the 110-story twin-towers and damaged several surrounding buildings at the World Trade Center.
"When you lose more than 16 million square feet of real estate in half a day...there's obviously a very intense search going on in this city and throughout this region," said Walter Smith, executive vice president of operations at Hartz Mountain Industries Inc., New Jersey's biggest real estate investment trust.
Firms are scrambling for new office space after terrorists slammed two jets into the World Trade Center Tuesday, killing thousands.
The looming question for businesses once the grieving is done is whether to remain in downtown Manhattan or to relocate out of the city, spreading facilities out among several properties instead of concentrated in one vulnerable area.
"I think clearly the necessity of getting back to business is certainly foremost on everybody's mind. They're looking for desk space to accomplish that," said Mitchell Hirsch, CEO of Mack-Cali Realty Corp., one of the country's biggest real estate investment trusts. "I see a paradigm shift to some degree with companies making some long-term commitments due to uncertainty in the marketplace. They'll have less concentration in one or two locations. I'm definitely sensing that."
Hirsch and other real estate executives said Friday they have fielded overwhelming numbers of inquiries from former World Trade Center tenants scrambling for office space simply to keep their businesses operable.
One corporate real estate executive who asked not to be identified said his telephone began lighting up with calls within five minutes of Tower 2's collapse Tuesday.
Many companies are leasing space in New Jersey, where several already lease existing space from major realty firms.
"I don't think anybody truly understands what the conditions of all these other buildings are downtown yet. If that's true, then you have companies that have to make hard strategic decisions," one source said.
However, others believe downtown Manhattan will remain the vibrant hub of the financial district once the recovery is complete, something experts have said is likely to take years.
Hartz Mountain's Smith is among those who believe companies will remain in lower Manhattan, but believes they will branch out more to the surrounding metropolitan region.
When you lose more than 16 million square feet of real estate in half a day...there's obviously a very intense search going on in this city and throughout this region.
Walter Smith - Hartz Mountain Industries
"I believe that New York City is still vibrant. I think New York will still be the financial center. Today's communications technology allows firms to cast a wider umbrella under which firms would be able to locate people in and conduct business with what is bound to remain in Manhattan," Smith said.
About 27.5 million square feet of commercial office space, or 20 percent of the space available in lower Manhattan, has been destroyed or damaged, a real estate services firm said Friday. That could leave large corporations such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley little choice but to search outside the city for sufficient space to house their massive operations.
Several businesses in "Silicon Alley," the Internet technology development center just north of the Financial District, are offering prime office space to displaced firms for free until they can get back on their feet.
Stephen Swerdlow, president of the eastern division of C.B. Richard Ellis, one of the biggest U.S. real estate firms, told CNNfn Friday that, ironically, significant amounts of office space have opened up in New York as a result of the slowing economy. But six months ago, there was nothing to be had.
Still, the available space is in small pockets, suitable for small to mid-size firms, and not the trading floors, newsrooms and other large open spaces needed by major companies, according to a report in Friday's New York Times.
New York-based Grubb & Ellis said Friday that about 15.5 million square feet of the real estate was in the seven buildings destroyed in the blast, including 4.8 million square feet in each of the two towers of the trade center. Another 12 million square feet was in 16 buildings surrounding the trade center, including the three most prominent buildings that comprise the World Financial Center.
The firm estimated that 25.5 million square feet of office space is available for lease or purchase in Manhattan, although very little of it is the type of open space predominant in the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings. Another 22 million square feet was estimated to be available in the suburban counties surrounding New York City.
Larry Silverstein, the developer whose group bought the World Trade Center's 99-year lease in 1999 from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he is committed to help rebuilding the center, according to a published report Friday.
But Silverstein, whose group paid $3.2 billion for the lease, told the Wall Street Journal that he is not necessarily committed to building exact replicas of the towers.
Saturday September 15 6:50 PM ET
Pentagon Repairs to Cost Well Over $1 Billion
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Saturday it would cost ``hundreds of millions'' of dollars to repair the damage after a hijacked jetliner struck its 48-year-old Pentagon headquarters.
That comes on top of a $758 million modernization program, already under way, to upgrade and strengthen the world's largest office building, said Lee Evey, director of the ongoing renovation.
The Defense Department on Saturday awarded an initial $145 million contact to Chantilly, Virginia-based Hensel Phelps Construction Co. to rebuild the damaged portions of the Pentagon.
``With the award of this contract we can begin immediate repairs to the Pentagon and make the necessary improvements that will keep it operating for the next 50 years,'' Evey said.
Evey spoke as clean-up and search crews continued to work in a fire-blackened part of the Pentagon, shattered and burned when hijackers crashed the jet into the building as part of a coordinated attack on America.
Modernization of the first wedge of the five-sided building had recently been completed and the aircraft smashed into that section, causing heavy damage there.
But Evey said damage in the renovated area was not nearly as bad as to the older area. And he suggested that lives were saved by new steel girders and a sprinkler system.
``This was a terrible tragedy and people lost their lives. But I am here to tell you that had we not undertaken this effort in the building, this could have been much, much worse,'' he said.
``We undertook a significant amount of work to try to make the building much more blast resistant than it was prior to renovation.''
The complete renovation project, begun in 1994, will not be completed until at least 2012. And it could take several years alone to complete repairs to the damaged area, Evey said.
The renovation will include new girders throughout the structure and two-inch thick windows, in addition to modern communications and other systems.
Although the building eventually collapsed in the area where the airliner hit, the official said, the damage was mitigated because of steps by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make the Pentagon more resistant to explosion.
He spoke as searchers continued to probe the rubble for remains of 188 people who are unaccounted for, including 64 aboard the airliner. More than 80 bodies have been recovered, but virtually all will require identification by forensic experts.
The Pentagon on Saturday reduced its estimate of the number missing by one, after learning that a civilian employee had been a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center.
Hensel Phelps and other firms on the renovation team would remove debris, demolish Pentagon sections down to the columns and floor slabs, and then rebuild space equivalent to more than two Empire State Buildings, Evey said.
'Black Boxes' Found in Pentagon Rubble-Official
No More Survivors Expected as Pentagon Reopens (KPRC, Houston)
Two Black Boxes Found at Pentagon (ABCNEWS.com)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Both black boxes from a hijacked jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon were found by searchers in the rubble on Friday, a Pentagon official said.
The flight data and voice data recorders have been turned over to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration),'' Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman told Reuters.
The boxes could be instrumental in getting information about the short flight of the American Airlines jetliner that was commandeered by hijackers shortly after it left nearby Dulles International Airport en route to Los Angeles.
It crashed into the headquarters of the U.S. military with 64 passengers and crew on board.
Rumsfeld Says Pentagon Casualty Estimates Too High
Washington Reacts to the Pentagon Attack (ABCNEWS.com)
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military's massive Pentagon headquarters, ripped by a terrorist strike, reopened for limited business on Wednesday as rescue teams pressed a perilous search for an estimated 200 or more missing defense workers.
Smoke from the blackened concrete structure drifted over Washington and a stubborn roof fire continued to burn more than 24 hours after a hijacked fuel-laden airliner slammed into a corner of the five-sided building on Tuesday morning.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters on Wednesday that earlier estimates by fire officials that as many as 800 workers could be unaccounted for were apparently much too high.
``From everything that we currently know, the estimate that has been widely reported is considerably high. I hope and pray that it is,'' he said at a Pentagon news conference.
``It is folly to try to pretend there is a number before there is a number,'' Rumsfeld added after officials of the armed services said privately that perhaps about 200 military and civilian workers were missing in addition to 64 persons on the airliner.
The Defense Department said in a statement that the area where the aircraft struck and burned sustained such catastrophic damage that ``anyone who might have survived the initial impact and collapse could not have survived the fire that followed.''
SEARCH TEAMS MOVE INTO RUBBLE
But four special ``Urban Search and Rescue Teams'' of about 60 members each began moving into parts of the damaged area on Wednesday's afternoon to shore up unstable wreckage and allow for a thorough search for possible survivors.
The hijacked American Airlines' jetliner's ``black box'' instrument package, containing data on its flight path from nearby Dulles International Airport on what was to be a flight to Los Angeles, was still buried in the unstable rubble.
``It's like a game of pick-up sticks,'' Chief Mike Tamillow of the First Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department told Reuters. ``If you pull out the wrong one they could all come crashing down. That's exactly what we're were trying to prevent.''
The Pentagon, the world's largest government building across the Potomac River in Virginia, was evacuated after Tuesday morning's devastating strike, but several thousand of the 23,000 military and civilian workers who normally work at the Pentagon returned to the job on Wednesday.
Shortly before noon EDT, with concern growing that the fire might spread further in the wooden structure under the slate roof, many people began to leave the building on what Pentagon officials called a ``false alarm'' that an order had been given to evacuate. Those who had left quickly returned.
Rescue workers ran briefly from the damaged area outside at about the same time when an unidentified aircraft was reported to be approaching Washington. But that, too, was a false alarm
Tuesday's attack coincided with other hijackings that toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, where thousands are believed to have perished.
MILES OF CORRIDORS CLOSED
Nearly half of the 17 miles of Pentagon corridors remained shut for safety reasons, however, and officials said many of the 23,000 military and civilians who work there daily would not report on Wednesday because of damage to a large wedge of the building.
``The Pentagon is up and functioning,'' Clarke told a news conference. But other officials said that a major portion of the building was shut down for safety.
Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Chief Edward Plaugher, coordinating the firefighting operation, told reporters that it would take ``many, many days'' to search for possible survivors and recover the bodies of the dead.
Officials said it was important to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the military of the world's only superpower was seen unbowed by the terrorist strike.
One section of the five-story building, built during World War Two and never attacked during the decades of the Cold War, collapsed and burned.
A portable morgue and field hospital were set up on a highway next to the building.
Rescuers probed as far as they could but ``obviously in the collapsed areas, that will have to take place at a later time, after we have made the building safe,'' Plaugher said.
The plane used in the attack was an American Airlines Boeing 757 that took off from Washington's Dulles Airport bound for Los Angeles before it was diverted. It carried 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots.
U.S. forces worldwide were put on the highest alert -- force protection condition Delta -- meaning extra guards, restrictions on personnel movement and other precautions.
Fire-Blackened Pentagon Reopens for Business
No More Survivors Expected as Pentagon Reopens (KPRC, Houston)
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon , torn and fire-blackened by an airborne terrorist attack, reopened for curtailed business on Wednesday as rescue workers pressed the search for as many as 800 victims.
Smoke from the massive concrete structure drifted over Washington, but defense and firefighting officials said fires from a hijacked airliner that slammed into a corner of the five-sided building on Tuesday were nearly under control.
The world's largest government building across the Potomac River in Virginia was evacuated after Monday morning's devastating strike, but thousands of workers streamed back to work on Tuesday.
The attack coincided with other hijackings that toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, where thousands are believed to have perished.
Nearly half of the 17 miles of Pentagon corridors remained shut for safety reasons, however, and officials said many of the 23,000 military and civilians who work there daily would not report on Wednesday because of damage to a large wedge of the building.
``We are open for business,'' said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. ``The search and rescue operation is ongoing.''
MILITARY UNBOWED
Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Chief Edward Plaugher, coordinating the firefighting operation at the Pentagon, placed the death toll at between 100 and 800 people. He told reporters early on Wednesday that it would take ``many, many days'' to search for survivors and recover the bodies of the dead.
Officials said it was important to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the military of the world's only superpower was seen unbowed by the terrorist strike.
One section of the five-story building, built during World War Two and never attacked during the decades of the Cold War, collapsed and burned.
Sixty-four persons were aboard the airliner that slammed into the building and burst into flames. But officials were unsure how many of the nearly 800 workers assigned to the damaged wedge were at work when the aircraft struck.
``The building is still under active fire involvement,'' Plaugher said, as a crescent moon shone over one end of the building and smoke rose from the other.
More than a dozen bodies were removed from the rubble early on Wednesday and rescue teams with search dogs stood by to go into the damaged area when the fires were out. A portable morgue and field hospital were set up on a highway next to the building.
RESCUE WORKERS PROBE BUILDING
Rescuers probed as far as they could but ``obviously in the collapsed areas, that will have to take place at a later time, after we have made the building safe,'' Plaugher said.
Rumsfeld, who briefly helped with the rescue operation, said later it would be ``beyond comprehension'' that anyone on board the plane could have survived.
He said the total number of casualties, including those who had been working in the building, was not yet clear, but added: ''It will not be few.''
The plane used in the attack was an American Airlines Boeing 757 that took off from Washington's Dulles Airport bound for Los Angeles before it was diverted. It carried 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots.
One passenger aboard the doomed aircraft told her husband by cellular phone just before the crash that hijackers had taken over the plane brandishing knives and had herded the passengers and crew, including the pilot, to the back of the plane.
U.S. forces worldwide were put on the highest alert -- force protection condition Delta -- meaning extra guards, restrictions on personnel movement and other precautions.
Defense Department officials said no one had so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, even though many U.S. politicians and pundits suspected Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), who lives in Afghanistan and is accused of other attacks on American facilities.
``OUR ARMED FORCES ARE READY''
Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to discuss possible U.S. retaliation for the attacks, saying, ``I have no intention of discussing what comes next but make no mistake, our armed forces are ready.''
But a senior Pentagon official told Reuters the U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise, which was about to sail home after being replaced in a rotation in the Gulf, had been told to remain in place and await further orders.
Rescue teams assembled on the lawns, highways and parking lots around the Pentagon. At one point one of the firemen planted an American flag on a tall pole in the blackened debris just outside the smoking building, prompting an emotional cheer from the military and rescue officers outside the building.
The regular Pentagon helicopter pad was strewn with debris from the plane and the explosion and was not usable. Helicopters were landing and taking off from a cordoned-off area nearby.
Arlington firefighter Derek Spector, head of the first unit that arrived on the scene, stumbled out of the building two hours after the incident, exhausted and blackened by smoke.
``We got there, and the whole side of the building was in flames. It's terrible in there,'' Spector told Reuters.
Pentagon security officer George Clodfelter, whose uniform was stained with blood, said he pulled a woman and her infant out of a window close to the impact site and they were shaken but unhurt.
Muslims, Arabs Fear Backlash
For local Arabs and Muslims, the pain of this week's terrorism is intensified by fear of their own safety and that of their children.
NewsCenter 5's Kelley Tuthill reports that a Quincy Islamic center has reported receiving threatening calls and harassment of Muslim girls at local schools.
The incidents are the latest in an apparent backlash against people of Arabic descent and Muslims.
Weymouth police say that Wednesday night, someone poured gasoline over a service station pump and then ignited it with a cigarette. The fire was quickly contained, but detectives are now investigating whether those responsible targeted the station because its owner is Lebanese.
"First of all it's not going to be tolerated," Weymouth police Capt. Jim Thomas said of the incident. "Second, if that's the way they handle it, they're no better than the terrorists who smacked into the World Trade Center. As far as I'm concerned, a bunch of faithless and gutless nightriders."
Threatening calls have prompted a police presence outside the Islamic Center of New England in Quincy. Arsonists burned down the center in 1990.
"When you mention Muslims, you are talking about 70,000 Muslims here in the area," Islamic center director Imam Talal Eid said. "When you mention Arabs, you are talking about 30,000 Arabs. Many of those people are hard-working people, they are decent citizens, and they enjoy the same rights of any citizen in America."
Some local Muslims reported that schoolgirls who cover their heads have been harassed at school.
"Unfortunately, us Muslims are threatened twice," Leyla Merhamo of Quincy said. "Once because of what's happening. All our kids are American as much as all the other kids. And all of them under the threat that's coming from outside. And the double problem is that we are under threat by the people coming from inside. It's like adding insult to injury."
In a phone call to the New York governor and mayor, President Bush (news - web sites) said that there are many Arabs who love the flag as much as any other American.
"We must be mindful that as we seek to win the war, we treat Arab-Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve," Bush said.
A window at a Quincy convenience store was smashed Thursday. In Huntington, N.Y., a woman was nearly run down by a man who threatened to kill her for "destroying my country." In Bridgeview, Ill., about 300 demonstrators tried to march on a mosque before being turned back by police.
Did we do it to ourselves?
By Gary Val Tenuta
September, 15, 2001
While the "mainstream" news is giving us the "official" version of recent events, various "alternative" news sources are bringing out information which is not being reported elsewhere in the media. Some of what I've received in the past couple of days is pretty radical stuff, claiming the WTC attack was an "inside" job, a covert conspiracy, perpetrated by the American arm of a cabal of "global elitists". In other words, factions within our own government in an effort to, among other goals, finally establish a reason for declaring a "state of national emergency" (which President Bush has just signed into effect). Such a declaration is the key which unlocks the door to the establishment of Martial Law and the suspension certain freedoms otherwise guaranteed by the Constitution. This scenario has been one of the favorites of "conspiracy theorists" for a long time. Briefly, it goes like this:
Organizations such as the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council On Foreign Relations are the working arms of a relatively small but immensely rich and powerful group of people at the top of the pyramid. This group is often referred to as the "Illuminati". The goal is the establishment of the long prophesied "New World Order", as suggested by the Latin phrase on the mysterious "Great Seal" on the American dollar bill (and as publicly referred to by former President George Bush only a few short years ago). Recently, conspiracy theorists have suggested that America, with it's Constitution and Bill of Rights, has been a constant thorn in the side of the Illuminati and has stifled the progress of their intended goal of global control. In other words, just too damn much independence.
When one thinks about, it seems paradoxical that, on the one hand, America would have a Constitution intended to guarantee its independence and freedoms and, on the other hand, would openly display a seal of the Illuminati - whose goal is the opposite of independence and freedom - on the front of its paper currency. The answer to the paradox, according to the Conspiracy Model, is that there has been a conflict of interest between two opposing factions within the American system from the beginning. The Constitution and the Great Seal are the symbols of this ongoing conflict.
While all of this seems utterly preposterous, rediculous, and unbelievable to most Americans whose world view is pretty much created for them by the news media, there exists evidence which can be interpreted as supportive of this theory. Most of such evidence is not all that hard to find but it's usually somehow glossed over and, some would say, "suppressed" by the news media. The effect, then, is that such information becomes lost in the smoke-and-mirrors barrage of other news and information continually poured into the consciousness of the average American through TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers. This barrage of news and information is "controlled" by "someone" and engineered to create whatever picture the Illuminati wants us to have in our minds. In other words, the mainstream media is used as a mechanism of propaganda distribution or what the conspiracy theorists are more likely to call "mind control". The argument that this idea couldn't possibly be true rests on the belief in what we call "freedom of the press". The conspiracy answer to that is to say freedom of the press is a relative term. It seems relative to how widely influential any given medium might be. This would explain why so called "alternative" newspapers, which are only read by a small minority of citizens, can get away with some of the things they publish. Same with some radio talk shows. These are allowed to exist as they do in order to maintain the "illusion" of freedom of the press. Meanwhile, the big, multi-billion dollar, mass audience, mainstream media is controlled from behind the scenes by operatives of the Illuminati. Witness, for example, the nightly news on TV. On any night, in any city, in any state, on every channel, the same slant on the same stories is being broadcast in nearly the same verbage as if "packaged" by some unknown source, read from teleprompters by newscasters who, for the most part, even look and speak like clones of someone's idea of what newscasters should look like and how they should sound when they talk, right down to the subtle nuances of their body language and facial expressions. This control is done so covertly that not even those being controlled know it's happening. The chain of command is so long and complex that by the time it gets from the "generals" down to the "privates" in the Illuminati organizational chart, the privates are indistinguishable from the average working man and woman who just follow instructions, do their job, get paid, and go home to their family. In other words, America, at all levels of its work force and economic and political machinery, has been infiltrated by Illuminati operatives posing as ordinary average citizens.
The recent attack on the World Trade Center has, once again, brought out the conspiracy theorists. This time, however, they may be acquiring more converts from the ranks of the former non-believers. But even the converts will only have arrived after kicking and screaming because the idea that America is somehow responsible for the attack on its own people is just too hard to swallow. A sane person can't possibly look at the horror of that attack and even begin to contemplate the possiblity that we could have done it to ourselves. So what is it about this event that has triggered even the slightest suspicion in otherwise reasonable, patriotic, flag waving citizens? One of the things I keep hearing from people is their surprise at how quickly the alleged perpetrators and "terrorist support factions" are being identified and rounded up by our intelligence forces. "It just seems too convenient", some are saying. It's almost as if the identification and capture of "suspects" has been a little too quick and easy. If we're that good, that well trained, that efficient, that organized, then how did this all happen in the first place? Part of the answer to that question may be found in the following article published by WorldNet Daily, one of the more credible of the "alternative" news sources now established on the internet. The information in this article is the kind of thing I mentioned earlier that seems to get lost in the barrage of "controlled" news which most citizens are being inundated with on TV and in the mainstream press in general. While the article focuses mainly on the questionable decisions of the Clinton administration, decisions which undoubtedly aided the perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there is plenty to go around as the Republican administrations have also contributed to such decisions. This is why the "Grand Conspiracy Theory", as we might call it, holds that in terms of the "Bigger Picture" there is no difference between the two political parties. While, in fact, there are indeed differences between the two parties in the conventional sense, the conspiracy theory holds that both parties are only pawns in the greater game and both are subject to the covert control of the people at the top of the pyramid (the one symbolized on your dollar bill), the Illuminati.
Just moments ago, as I write this, FOX news reported that the section of the Pentagon which was demolished by the hijacked plane "just happened" to be a section undergoing reconstruction in the ongoing multi-billion dollar refurbishing project which has been underway for some time. Was this just a coincidence or was it planned? If planned, it would be a way of portraying massive damage while utilizing the least vunerable section of the Pentagon to "stage" this act of terror and destruction.
Also, just moments ago, I received information, although not yet verified, that the video footage we've all seen of the Palestinians in the streets celebrating the attack on America is actually old footage from 1991 when the Palestinians were celebrating the invasion of Kuwait. Again, at this moment, that information is unconfirmed. However, if found to be true, it's one more thing adding considerable fuel to the conspiracy fire.
Does any of this make sense? Can any of it be true? Are we living in the Land of Oz where our perception of reality is controlled by the man behind the curtain? Do we need to wake up and realize we're not in Kansas anymore? Or is the conspiracy theory merely a clever concoction of conveniently coincidental bits of information? Where does coincidence end and intentional planning begin? Upon examination of the available information, it's not so easy to decide. But I leave it up to you to do just that.
Article From WorldNetDaily.com :
By Paul Sperry
September 12, 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.WorldNetDaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24466
WASHINGTON -- The dozen or so Islamic terrorists who pulled off the plot to strike at America's nerve centers in New York and Washington spent months, if not years, researching, planning and coordinating the surprise attacks, U.S. security officials say. And they did it completely in secret, using the world's most sophisticated telecommunications equipment, some secured by advanced encryption technology that most armies don't have.
Where did they get such state-of-the-art, military-related gear?
First, you have to appreciate the high degree of communications activity their mission required at each stage.
In researching their targets, the terrorists picked ones relatively easy to hit at high air speeds, yet ones that would produce big casualties and provide symbolic blows to American morale. They had to pick airports close by, with weak security. They had to find jets with enough heft and wingspan and fuel to cause major damage, yet not so large that they required extra crew.
The Boeing 757s and 767s they hijacked were big, but all had just two pilots and no flight engineers, making it easier for terrorists to take the cockpits. And the heisted jets were from the same family of aircraft, obviating additional cockpit training.
They also apparently studied passenger traffic patterns of airlines in order to pick flights with relatively few people aboard. All four flights had light passenger loads. The Boeing jets have roughly 160-seat capacities, yet American Flight 11 carried 81 passengers; American Flight 77, only 58; United Flight 175, 56; and United Flight 93, a skeletal 38.
Fewer passengers, fewer heroes to worry about.
More key, the terrorists needed to select transcontinental flights with big fuel loads to turn the planes into giant petro-bombs. All four flights were bound for California. They also had to know flight patterns, and how to blind air-traffic controllers to the hijackings by turning off the planes' transponders, which send such warning signals, among other aviation information.
In planning the attack, they had to fashion weapons that they could sneak past airport security. Transportation Department officials think that they may have hedged their bets and even planted security people on the inside at Logan and Dulles airports, so that guards would look the other way when they came through metal detectors at the terminals.
The kamikaze pilots also had to log many hours on computer flight simulators with high-level graphics capability, to practice hitting their targets at full throttle. A Continental Airlines captain, who's flown both 757s and 767s, told WorldNetDaily he thinks they may have even added the World Trade Center and Pentagon to the simulator's visual database.
"At the airspeed of those strikes, which hit their targets dead on, the hand-eye coordination demands would be too high for casual flying skill with, or without, an autopilot engaged," he said.
They had to practice, moreover, navigating the jets to abruptly change their course, by as much as 180 degrees in some cases, after take-off. Flying them at low altitudes was also something they had to work on.
Synchronized terrorists
Finally, in executing their murderous missions, the 12 or so terrorists had to coordinate their activities, flawlessly, within a roughly two-hour stretch. And, for the most part, they did. They all got to the airport on time, they all got through security, they all boarded their flights, they all hijacked their flights and, with the exception of one group, they all hit their targets.
Pulling off such a complex plot would have generated an inordinate volume of communications -- whether by radio, cell phone, land line, fax or modem -- among the terrorists, among their Middle-Eastern sponsors and among commercial contacts here and abroad.
But somehow eavesdroppers at the super-secret National Security Agency -- with their billion-dollar satellite "birds" and other surveillance technology -- were deaf, dumb and blind to the wicked plot.
"The real issue in this tragedy is how the hell were these people able to plan and coordinate such a strike over a period of months without the NSA intercepting their signals?" demanded Peter M. Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department.
Leitner, who reviews commercial license applications for exports of some of the most sophisticated military-related technology, thinks he knows the answer.
"The technology that would allow these terrorists to mask their communications was given away, hand over fist, by the Clinton administration," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.
Leitner says the previous administration rubber-stamped the shipment of top-end military-related telecommunications equipment to Syria, which is on the FBI's list of sensitive countries that pose a threat to U.S. security.
"Syria is a terrorist-supporting nation," he said. "They provide infrastructure to bastards like [Osama] bin Laden. They provide backup and support and communications abilities to these terrorist cells."
So what kind of gear has Syria -- and likely bin Laden, by way of Syria -- gotten from America?
Spread-spectrum radios
"We're giving them spread-spectrum radios, which are almost impossible to break into. We're giving them fiber optics. We're giving them a high level of encryption. We're giving them computer networks that can't be tapped," Leitner said.
Spread-spectrum radios, originally designed for military use only, change their frequency constantly.
"Bin Laden's cells aren't having any trouble communicating anymore," Leitner said.
Bin Laden, the world's No. 1 terrorist and the Pentagon's chief suspect in
Tuesday's attacks, is known to use portable satellite telephones, advanced encryption cell phones and other encrypted telephony equipment, as well as secure computer networks -- all compliments of U.S. technology, Leitner says.
"If people are worried about how these people were able to coordinate and communicate something like this -- which had to be pretty extensively coordinated -- without it being intercepted, it's because of the crap we've been selling these people," he said.
"How can you penetrate their networks when you can't even eavesdrop on their conversations?" he said.
"You can't stop them when they're coming right at your building," he said. "But, damn it, you should be able to stop them months in advance by breaking up their networks."
Leitner posits that the NSA wasn't able to detect the Islamic terrorists' plot because of the "high quality of the communications gear that they've been acquiring over the last couple of years, thanks to the Clinton administration's decontrols on advanced telecommunications equipment."
Terrorists' secured telecom gear "makes it infinitely more difficult to get even early warning signs" about their activities, he said.
Tuesday's attacks took the entire U.S. government, including the intelligence community, by surprise.
"We had no specific warning of the U.S. attacks," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee.
Complete surprise
The Pentagon issued an alert of "Threat Con Alpha" the day before the attack, which meant that no threats were on the horizon. The same alert was issued the morning of the attack.
"We got no word of anything," Leitner said.
"We weren't warned of anything," another Pentagon official told WorldNetDaily.
Asked Tuesday if he had any inkling of the plot, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dodged the question: "We don't discuss intelligence matters."
Three weeks ago, some overseas papers quoted bin Laden saying that a major strike against the U.S. was coming soon. But there were no specifics. And bin Laden reportedly sent an e-mail to unknown government sources three days ago warning holy hell would break out. But again, he didn't say how, when or where.
Still, it's baffling that the U.S. intelligence community didn't pick up, early on, any specifics of the complex and long-planned plot through electronic intercepts and signals intelligence.
But it's actually not that baffling, Leitner asserts, against the backdrop of loose government controls on dual-use telecom exports.
"I've testified to Congress that it will take serious numbers of body bags before we wake up to the need to tighten dual-use export controls," he said. "Unfortunately, we've got them now."
"This is so tragic and yet so preventable," he said. "Now we're going to have to knock out their [terrorist] camps, just like we had to bomb the Iraqi's several times now to try to take out the fiber-optics network that the Chinese are installing in Iraq's air-defense systems."
"Yet, it was the Clinton administration that gave the Chinese the technology to give to Iraq," he noted.
The Bush administration apparently hasn't woken up, either.
Wake-up call
In June, Leitner was asked by the Commerce Department to OK a new round of exports of dual-use telecom equipment to Syria. He denied the request, and was asked to reconsider. He denied it again, arguing in a letter to Karen Vogel, the Commerce export licensing officer who requested the approval, that:
"Doing so vastly upgrades the C3 and C41 systems of the Syrian military and Intelligence Services. My concerns are also obviously compounded by the fact that Syria is one of the foremost state sponsors of terrorism."
Leitner continued: "Since an 'upgraded telecom infrastructure' will also greatly facilitate Syrian planning, coordination, secrecy and execution of terrorist acts, as well as direct military communications, I see absolutely no basis for any position other than a denial."
Vogel argued in an earlier letter that her request came on the heels of eight previous approvals of licenses for similar exports to Syria.
"There's still a lot of things inside the government involving national security that have just got to be changed," Leitner said.
Another senior Pentagon official who specializes in counterterrorism says his own faith in the U.S. intelligence community has been shattered.
"This full-court press by terrorists blows the hell out of the line that we've been hearing for years from the intelligence community that if they try anything big, we'll know about it and warn you. Anything bigger than a couple of people, don't worry, we'll know about it," he said. "Well, I guess they didn't.
Jack Perrine | Athena Programming | 626-798-6574
________| 1175 N Altadena Dr | ____________
Jack@Minerva.com | Pasadena CA 91107 | FAX-398-8620
DEBKA-Net: 'Terrorists' Poised for Second Wave of Attacks on US Targets
GMP20010915000195 Jerusalem DEBKA-Net-Weekly E-mail-Text in English 14 Sep 01
[Unattributed report: "Prevent the Second Wave First"]
The FBI's coast-to-coast dragnet on the trail of the terrorists behind the deadly airliner suicide attacks in America will need to do much more than put together a case for crimes committed. The agency will have to move fast into the area of terror prevention, so that America is not caught off-guard again. Prevention was where US security fell down most tragically, allowing terrorist suicides to use airliners as weapons of mass destruction against New York's landmark World Trade Center and America's military nerve center, the Pentagon in Washington. Advance intelligence on the appalling crimes to come was nil. And when that first first-line defense failed, the second-line barrier, security, was likewise non-existent.
But it is not over. The threat against America's president, its ruling institutions, its financial and military might is still palpable. Indeed, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror experts, reporting from US security and Israeli intelligence sources, the Islamic militants obeying Saudi multimillionaire terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, the radical Egyptian Jihadi Islami, Iraqi military intelligence and other Middle East groups, stand poised for a second wave of horrendous attacks. An estimated 30 to 50 suicide- killers are waiting inside America for their orders to strike. This time, while aiming as before for the President, the White House and Capitol Hill, they will also go for a broad spectrum of what they consider strategic targets, such as airports, oil fields and oil installations, sensitive military and intelligence facilities, warships and carriers. The last were indeed ordered out to sea shortly after the assaults on Tuesday.
Aware that flushing out the terrorists in waiting, many of whom may be US nationals, is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, US leaders quickly resorted to a short cut. They turned to allies, in and outside NATO, in the arena in which America fell down most signally: advance intelligence. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, a comprehensive round of discreet telephone calls went out Wednesday from President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet. The calls went to German Chanellor Gerhard Schroeder, British premier Tony Blair, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, Indian prime minister Bihari Vajpayee and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. They were all asked to have their counter-terror and security agencies pool intelligence with their counterparts in Washington, sharing every scrap of information on international terror movements in support of the American effort to eradicate the blight. This was the first, logical, brick in the international anti-terror coalition, which Secretary Powell proposed setting up Wednesday.
Aside from France, who posed conditions, and China, who has yet to reply, all the other leaders promised every assistance and full cooperation. Within hours, rough crosschecking of US intelligence data with the flow from foreign colleagues was enough to strongly confirm the second wave thesis. It also indicated that the masters of international terror intend landing their second blow while the American government and people are still recovering from the first. They will not wait for the United States to get itself and its anti-terror coalition organized for a tough retaliatory war.
Can they overcome the limitations of US law and the tradition of zero-casualties to bend all of US resources to the ruthless fight against international terrorism -- even when some of its lairs are buried inside America? Who are the anti-terror coalition partners referred to by Powell? The US must now turn back to Europe, whence only a month ago it began removing its military stores to Indian Ocean bases, as part of a major shift of US military orientation to Asia. That shift will have to be reversed. What happened on Tuesday has marginalized the new US military single-front doctrine that hinged on a national missile shield. Fighting international terrorism calls for five fronts and a shield against terror.
At this point, three questions present themselves, which DEBKA-Net-Weekly will attempt to answer with the help of its military, counter-terrorism and intelligence sources:
Questions:
1. How did a group or groups of terrorists get away with constructing inside America an operational support structure capable of disrupting the country's political, military and financial systems?
2. How did US intelligence come to miss the common thread running through the entire string of major terrorist attacks in the last decade (excepting the terrorist campaign in Israel), and fail to snap that thread? Moslem extremists, mostly linked to the Middle East, committed them all, acting invariably against a single target: America. This is plain even at a cursory glance at those outrages: The truck bomb under the Twin Towers in 1993 -- the first time the World Trade Center was targeted; the ambush against US Marines six months later in Mogadishu, Somalia -- to go down as the worst US military humiliation after Vietnam; the truck-bomb that destroyed US military dormitories in the Khobar Towers, E. Saudi Arabia in 1996 -- aimed against Saudi royal ties with Washington; the US embassy bombings in the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals in 1998, and the crippling of the USS Cole in Aden port in October 2000.
3. How did the many American intelligence bodies and those of its allies fail to detect a colossal terrorist assault in the making?
Answers:
1. The terrorist support structure inside America
The groundwork of the Islamic terror movement was laid in America 25 years ago, when Jimmy Carter was president and his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, came up with a master plan for wielding religion as a sharp-edged Cold War instrument against the Soviet empire and secular communism. He pressed all three monotheistic faiths into service: Christendom, by supporting the election of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla as the first Polish Pope, to whip up Polish Catholic fervor against the Russian domination of Eastern Europe; Jewry, by exploiting the burning desire of 4 million Jews living in Soviet lands to go to Israel -- or at least be allowed to practice their faith -- to foment dissidence among the oppressed minorities in the Soviet empire; Islam, to raise up the Moslem peoples of Asia, Asia Minor and the Indian subcontinent in revolt against Soviet expansionism and send destabilizing shoots into the USSR. To stem that process - and also in fear of Khomeini's 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran - the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Brzezinski, who had been waiting for that moment, pounced. The United States actively stirred the Moslem world into battle to save the fundamentalist Afghans from the communist unbelievers. With the help of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, America established an elaborate recruitment and training organization, called Maktab al-Khidmat (The Office of Services), with branches all over the Moslem world, though chiefly in the Middle East, but also in America. On the recommendation of the Saudi royal house, the United States placed at the head of this office a rich young Saudi, scion of one of the most affluent families in the kingdom, called Osama Bin Laden. The CIA knew everything there was to know about the talented young leader except for one thing: his true religious bent.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly, digging deep into Bin Laden's roots, has come up with the name of his first mentor, an obscure Palestinian sheikh who lived in Hableh near Tulkarm and Jenin, called Abdallah Azzam, who founded an Islamic liberation movement called Haraketh al-Tahariyeh al-Islami. This sheikh, for the first time in the 20th century, called for an Islamic struggle on a global, not merely a national, footing. He urged Moslems to fight for world domination and the eclipse of infidel rule. Although a Palestinian himself, Azzam mocked Yasser Arafat's PLO as inconsequential. This doctrine actuated Bin Laden in founding his Al Qaeda (The base) fundamentalist, militant movement a decade ago. It is his guiding light to this day. After close to a decade of fierce, debilitating combat in Afghanistan, the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, its defeat on the battlefield a key element in the collapse of the USSR, fully vindicating the Brzezinski doctrine. The Moslem volunteers who fought there, known popularly as the "Afghan Arabs", returned to their home countries, including Western Europe and the United States. Many severed their ties with Bin Laden. Others kept the faith and even handed it on to the next generation. Bin Laden stayed on in Afghanistan. After defeating one secular superpower, he resolved to abide by the Azzam doctrine and tackle the survivor, the United States of America. The nucleus of Bin Laden's following expanded over the years. Today it reaches into many corners of the world. These disciplined fighting men, trained in urban and mountain guerrilla warfare, are scattered round many American cities, still loyal to their leader.
The Egyptian Jihad Islami, the group responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, is the second major group of Islamic radicals planted in the United States. While often persecuted in Egypt, these zealots fought outstandingly in Afghanistan, to be rewarded for their services with US visas for their families to settle in New York, Jersey City, Chicago and Florida.
After the Afghanistan war ended, these soldiers joined their families.
Bin Laden and the Egyptian group in Afghanistan transplanted their close tactical rapport to American soil, where it flourished. Bin Laden, who suffers from assorted chronic ailments, made the Egyptian Jihad Islami leader, Ayaman Al Zawahar, who is a medical doctor, his personal physician and most trusted confidant. When he founded his Al Qaeda movement in 1990 or 1991, he made Al Zawahar his senior lieutenant and chief operations officer.
By this stroke, the Saudi tycoon-terrorist recruited one of the most dangerous and effective arms of the Islamic terrorist movement, while the Egyptian group linked itself to the operational networks of the fierce "Afghan Arabs".
The highly potent three-way alliance forged between Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the "Afghan Arabs" living overtly as civilians in many parts of the United States and the West, and the operational arm of the Egyptian Jihad Islami, is the engine galvanizing contemporary international terrorism.
2. Missing the Moslem link
Growing strong inside the US and Canada for 11 years, that three-way alliance perfected its awesome capability for wreaking monstrous damage. By penetrating deep into US counter-intelligence systems, their agents were on hand to blind and disable the security and protection systems guarding the US President, the White House, the Pentagon and the international airports dotted round the country. US intelligence agencies consistently deny any such penetrations -- most emphatically in the case of counter-intelligence.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, those denials hold true - on the face of it. There is no way Moslem terrorists can get a foot through the door of US counterintelligence. On the other hand, it is possible for a US counterintelligence officer to serve as a double agent for his own and an alien service that is close to Bin Laden's network. US agencies' blanket denial of any such possibility is one of the factors contributing to Bin Laden's success on the American scene.
A case in point is that of Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer caught spying for the Russians in 1994 and sentenced to spending his life in prison. The CIA indictment asserts he began spying for Moscow in 1985. In fact, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts assert his career began in 1972 when, as a young operative posted in Istanbul, he was recruited for Moscow by none other than the notorious British spy, Kim Philby.
It was Philby who built the first Western counterintelligence nets in the Arab world, weaving them also into the Moslem fundamentalist labyrinth, for the CIA and the British MI6. At the same time, the British mole also helped the Russians penetrate those nets and pervert them to counter Brzezinski's religious war in the Moslem arena. Western agents were "turned" so as to help Moscow and Moslems radical groups alike.
An American-Egyptian called Aly Mohamed has been incarcerated in a high-security US penitentiary for the last two years, after testifying at the 1998 embassy bombings trial last April. He was subsequently sentenced in camera to life imprisonment for his role in that disaster. Why were the proceedings against Aly Mohamed kept under tight wraps? Because in open court, he might spill the beans to the American people of how the Bin Laden network turned Aldrich Ames round to act inside US intelligence and its military on its behalf. His account would shed light on how an Islamic terrorist ring came to operate in New York with impunity. As one of Bin Laden's senior operations officer in Al Qaeda, Mohamed was implicated in the 1993 attempt to blow up the Twin Towers in New York. Before that, as a young man in Cairo who joined Egyptian intelligence, he served in a department in charge of surveillance of Islamic radicals. Instead of reporting on them, he and his superior officer, Abd Al-Latif Al-Somer, fell under the influence of Jihad Islami leader Ayaman Al Zawahar. Instead of alerting President Anwar Sadat to the threat against his life from those zealots, they both joined the conspiracy to assassinate the Egyptian president in 1981. Al-Somer was executed for his crime. Mohamed escaped scot-free. Earlier, because his weakness for women kept him chronically short of cash, Mohamed decided that if he could serve two masters, Egyptian intelligence and the Moslem radicals, why not a third. He approached the CIA station in Cairo and offered his services.
Mohamed next turns up in the United States in 1985, visa in hand. A year later, he is enlisted to the US army's Special Forces facility at Fort Bragg and given the rank of sergeant. His duties include instructing US elite anti-terrorist combat fighters in conditions of warfare in the Middle East and a Moslem environment. He also gives lectures on the roots and ways of Islamic fundamentalism.
As of 1987, he began disappearing from base for long periods, claiming he was on secret US missions in Afghanistan. Some of his superior officers became suspicious and complained, but were told to back off. That order was handed down on the authority of Aldrich Ames, then head of FBI/CIA program, the highest and most secret US coordinating counterintelligence body. In November 1989, the Egyptian obtained his release from the US army.
From 1990-1993, he joined Bin Laden in training terrorist operatives in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Between courses, he returned to America to lay the foundations of the Islamic terrorist ring that struck this week in Boston, New York and Washington. In those years, he set up important terrorist cells in South Florida, where suicide pilots trained as pilots 12 years later. DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that Aly Mohamed is only one of the many Egyptian Jihad Islami zealots recruited over many years by US intelligence to help fight Islamic terrorism.
He was certainly not the only covert terrorist to be accepted into the US military, where he pretended to serve American interests while actually working for Bin Laden. There must be hundreds like him, experts in the arts of the double agent, who have invaded US security bodies, just as he penetrated an elite US military unit. From the inside, these hidden agents of terror were in position to disarm surveillance and blind authority to one of the most horrendous terrorist crimes in human history.
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence can reveal, one or more whistle-blowers tried in the years 1997 and 1998 to alert Clinton administration officials associated with national security adviser Sandy Berger and secretary of state Madeleine Albright to the hidden menace. Though armed with evidence, they were brushed off, told that an anti-Moslem hue and cry would damage the close US-Egyptian friendship and the progress of the Israel-Palestinian peace process.
3. Caught off-guard by the terrorist conspiracy
Deception and diversion are keywords in Osama Bin Laden's well-scripted battle plan to topple symbols of U.S. financial and military might.
Assessing just how they were fooled by the exiled Saudi-born millionaire-turned-terrorist, anti-terrorism experts and Western intelligence agencies can point to an strange, unsourced item published on August 8 by the RIA Novosty news agency in Moscow.
The report said the Taleban government in Afghanistan had appointed Bin Laden commander-in-chief of its armed forces - not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan.
The Taleban maintain several thousand recruits with weapons training and some 8,000 members among the Afghan refugees in northwest Pakistan, especially in the Peshawar region.
The report did not go unnoticed by intelligence experts in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem, who traded information but could reach no consensus on what it all meant.
Bin Laden, they knew, has prided himself on maintaining a low profile. For the past decade, his mysterious ways have nourished the psychological threat he has posed to the West and the Arab world. It has also kept him out of harm's way.
The experts could not figure out what prompted his personal friend, Mullah Mohammed Omar, supreme leader of the Taleban government to offer him the post. Both men go back a long time, to the mid-1980s, when they used to pray together in the Karachi mosque.
It wasn't Bin Laden's only surprise.
A week early, in mid-August, intelligence experts scratched their heads over another piece of information.
They learned that Jumma Mamangani, an Uzbeki, had been appointed Bin Laden's right-hand man and his chief operations officer in the Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's terrorism experts report that Mamangani had, until three years ago, commanded the Moslem Army for the Liberation of Kyrgyzstan and managed to take over parts of the Batkan valley in eastern Kyrgyzstan, where he could threaten the approaches to the capital city of Bishkek. At the beginning of the year, Mamangani left Kyrgyzstan and moved to Afghanistan, where Bin Laden gave him the command of three Al Qaeda special forces training camps near the cities of Jalalabad, Farmada and Daronta.
The post had always been reserved for the al-Zawahar family, leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. But after the terror world's wedding of the century last year -- in which Bin Laden's son married Ayaman Al Zawahar's daughter -- things changed.
Al-Zawahar, chief of the Egyptian Jihad Islami, became Bin Laden's deputy and heir and, in a break with tradition, no one from the Egyptian terror family got the coveted operations officer post.
U.S., Russian and Israeli terrorism experts were perplexed and concerned.
But at the end of August, when the first reports of Mamangani's appointment reached Washington, the terrorism experts breathed a sigh of relief. No one even raised the possibility that these unusual personnel changes at the very top of bin Laden's organization pointed to any strategic moves that might be worth thinking about. No one thought these changes might presage preliminary preparations by bin Laden and the heads of his group for a new far-reaching military operation, such as the hijacking of U.S. commercial airliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's terrorism experts report that several hours after Tuesday's attacks, bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy went into hiding. It was if the earth had swallowed them. The only leader who remained in the field to command bin Laden's men and bases was his new operations officer, Mamangani.
Now, terrorism experts understand.
It was Al Zawahari who personally commanded past operations such as a 1995 assassination attempt against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia and the ramming, with an explosives-filled raft, of the U.S.S. Cole last October.
But by appointing an operations officer from Asia Minor, bin Laden and the Egyptian radical leader created a red herring to divert the attention of the experts and Western intelligence agencies to that region.
Russian president Vladimir Putin mentioned it to U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld just two weeks ago in Moscow. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon spoke about it with Putin last week when he visited him in the Kremlin.
Putin even sent a special emissary to Washington to meet CIA director George Tenet and explain the dangers which Moslem countries in Asia Minor and northern China -- home to a Moslem minority of no less than 60 million people -- would face as a result of Mamangani's appointment. Asia Minor was on everyone's mind. No one gave a thought to New York and its twin towers.
[Description of Source: Jerusalem DEBKA-Net-Weekly E-mail-Text in English -- Independent, electronic magazine focusing on international terrorism, security affairs, and espionage] http://www.debka.com/
Date: 9/16/2001 6:33:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rainlyre@lanset.com (Kimber5)
-----Original Message-----
From: Georg [SMTP:GEORGF@IWAY.NA]
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 6:30 AM
To: IssuesJL@yahoogroups.com
The decision was made today at 4:12 EST. The targets have been identified. "Scapegoat" as it is unofficially known within the State Department will occur while Americans are sleeping on September 17, 18 or 19, depending upon the last political considerations, that could broaden this "New War," and weather conditions affecting military operations. The night-time aspect for Americans also provides for "spin" should the strikes not yield the expected results.
To reinforce the image of a superpower, there will be multiple strikes to satisfy the American populace's demands for retribution. These scapegoat strikes will occur almost simultaneously in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq. Iran is still being considered at this time but is not expected to be part of the initial series of reprisals. Algeria has a substantial terrorist base but is also not expected to be part of the initial strike, as long as it cooperates in removing its terrorist elements on its own.
The Delta Force and other armed components will be involved for clean-up operations after aerial bombardments in order to satisfy photo-ops, a necessary part of New Rome's appetite for victorious gladiators. These will be beamed across the U.S. and the so-called free world to reinforce the impression of American might. As always, American casualties are expected to be light.
Behind the scenes, Israel has been notified that the U.S. is fully cognizant of its involvement in co-opting various cells of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization for the purpose of engaging the United States in resolving the Palestinian question in Israel's favor. The Mossad is solely responsible for the Twin Towers tragedy, using misguided Arab fundamentalists who believed they were following Osama bin Laden's instructions. Israel is in the process of being "convinced" that its best course of action requires certain important concessions to the Palestinian Authority. While public opinion still favors Israel in the U.S. and across the world, the government is prepared to "salt" that world view with missives similar to the one you are now reading should they refuse.
"Scapegoat" is being perpetrated for you. It has nothing to do with reality. But Israel, which originated the concept of scapegoating, understands the import of what is soon to occur. The Mossad f--cked up. Israel and its people, unfortunately, are the ones that will have to pay.
Wulfe N. Straat,
The Beast on the Street
By Scott Hogenson and Jim Burns
CNSNews.com Reporters
September 14, 2001
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\\Nation\\archive\\200109\\NAT20010914c.html
(CNSNews.com) - The United States has given more than $117 million in assistance to Afghanistan so far in Fiscal Year 2001, according to the United States Agency for International Development.
The aid to date includes millions of tax dollars for mostly humanitarian relief both in Afghanistan and in support of Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan. As of July 9, 2001, the total amount of financial assistance was $117,869,525, according to USAID.
International terrorist Osama bin Laden, the man thought to be responsible for masterminding Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is thought to be taking refuge in Afghanistan.
Earlier Friday, religious leaders of the Taliban called on Muslims around the world to unite against America, as the specter of U.S. retaliation for the September 11 terror attack grows.
Already, the U.S. is negotiating with Pakistan for assistance in launching an American military strike against bin Laden and his cohorts in Afghanistan.
The United States is currently trying to communicate with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban faction. "We have ways of talking with them and we're exploring those ways now," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.
According to a July Information Bulletin by the USAID, the American assistance has taken the form of humanitarian aid in response to an ongoing drought in the country, as well as assistance for Afghans displaced by continued fighting by the Taliban, which USAID estimates controls 90 percent of the territory in Afghanistan.
The bulletin noted that as of July 9, American aid amounted to more than $14.4 million from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance; $22.5 million from the agency's Food for Peace program; $61.2 million worth of American wheat through the U.S. Department of Agriculture; $16.4 million through the State Department's Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration; $2.8 million for a joint State Department/Department of Defense program to locate and remove land mines; and $569,525 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to fight polio via a United Nations program.
"Two key factors have deepened Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis," the July bulletin noted. "The Taliban made substantial new territorial gains in August and September 2000, including the September 6 capture of Taloqan, which had been a Northern Alliance stronghold as well as the provincial capital of Takhar. Afghanistan has also suffered the effects of a debilitating drought that followed two successive years of inadequate rainfall."
While federal spending for aid to Afghanistan in the current fiscal year spans both the present and previous U.S. administrations, the Bush administration has been responsible for sending on June 17 a five-person Disaster Assistance Response Team to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan, as well as a February 2 disaster declaration for Afghan refugees in Pakistan issued by then U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan William B. Milam.
A February 6, 2001 statement by USAID said, "The U.S. is the largest single donor of assistance to Afghans, and has a long record of providing such assistance. In the last year, the U. S. government has contributed approximately $115 million to Afghans, with USAID providing approximately $35.5 million in assistance.
Susan Phalen, a spokesperson for USAID in Washington, said that in Fiscal Year 2001, USAID funded two different programs for Afghanistan.
"One of them is the food program and the other one is through the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). It is basically going for drought relief, shelter, tents and blankets, health programs and that sort of thing," said Phalen. "The food program for fiscal year 2001 is $27.7 million. 1.9 million of that is money that is directed to Afghan refugees living in Pakistan."
The amount of assistance for Afghanistan this year is markedly higher than in the previous year. During Fiscal Year 2000, Phalen said, "the OFDA money is $6.42 million and the Food For Peace money is $14 million."
"In 1999, the OFDA number is 2.79 million dollars and the Food For Peace number is 6.4 million," said Phalen.
Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif), who sits on the House International Relations Committee, said Friday "We will have to go on the attack abroad. There will probably be a military strike in the near future. Given the likelihood of Osama bin Laden's involvement, Afghanistan is a probable target."
While the notion of targeting Afghanistan militarily is a high profile issue in Congress, the issue of sending U.S. tax dollars to the Afghans is less pronounced.
Royce spokesman Bryan Wilkes said the congressman had not considered the issue of U.S. aid to Afghanistan or whether to change the level of aid to the country.
Sun Sep 16 2001 13:03:07 ET
New York -- In the most wrenching decision of George W. Bush's life on Tuesday, sources tell TIME, the President had to decide whether to authorize the military to shoot down planes, loaded with civilians, if they proved to be threats.
Bush spoke with Vice President Dick Cheney every 30 minutes, according to TIME magazine's Monday's issue (on newsstands Sept. 17). The two men were concerned that passenger flights still heading toward Washington might be part of the terrorist plot. Bush ordered the pilots "to do whatever was necessary with planes that refused to respond to commands to divert [from] the city," according to a top Cheney aide.
Among the news items from TIME's Monday issue:
*An American Airlines agent at the airport in Dulles, VA tells TIME how two polite young men of Arab origin waiting in the coach line handed over one-way, first-class, prepaid $2,400 tickets. "Oil money," thought the agent, as he laughed to himself that the young (around 20), inexpensively-dressed brothers, Nawaq Alhamzi and Salem Alhamzi, were such infrequent flyers that they didn't know they could check-in at the empty first-class counter. One spoke some English, the other, none. TIME senior foreign correspondent Johanna McGeary writes that some leads suggest a phase-two operation, maybe involving car bombs, TIME reports.
*When a fire fighter's body is found, "there is a dead silence," says fireman Jeff Silver, 34. Anthony Novello, 26, co-owner of Nacirema Environmental Services, has found a severed hand with a wedding band on it; his employees have found a fire fighter whose neck had snapped so badly he was looking backward, and a dead infant strapped into a car seat in a driverless vehicle. Remains are put into one of 30,000 body bags and shipped in refrigerated trucks to the medical examiner's office in midtown Manhattan for identification, reports TIME's Christine Gorman. Families of the missing have been asked to fill out a seven-page form, and samples of their own DNA, along with the victim's toothbrush, razor or comb for their DNA.
*To quiet grumbling about the 10 hours it took for Bush to return to the White House, officials belatedly leaked an account that Air Force One had been targeted, report Cheney vouched for the report. "I got the data, and it was real and credible," he told an aide. Law-enforcement sources say the White House exaggerated the threat and put the Secret Service and other agencies in the position of having to back up a hyped story. From Air Force One, Bush asked the Pentagon his options for immediate air strikes. But with intelligence offering nothing more than a pinprick: "We could have made only the rockets bounce," a military source says: Bush started working the phones to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.
*The President sent Karl Rove to tell Major League Baseball and the National Football League to start playing again. "Bush responded like a CEO trying to get back to business," TIME's White House Correspondents Jay Carney and John Dickerson report.
*Sources tell TIME the U.S. has asked Pakistan for use of its ports, "the plainest indication that Washington intends a substantial military action against Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan," according to Michael Elliott, TIME editor-at-large.
*The Taliban has little intention of giving up Osama Bin Laden, reports TIME's Hannah Bloch from Islamabad. "He was friend in a time of need," Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil told Bloch. "It would be very much cowardly to leave him at this stage in his life."
*Also, the U.S. is considering reaching out to Libya and Iran (which in the past have sponsored terrorism), "The last army to successfully march through Afghanistan was led by Alexander the Great," Elliott writes. Just one man, an army doctor, survived when a British force of 17,000 retreated from Kabul in 1842. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 and left defeated 10 years later. "Instead of invasion, as soon as the U.S. gathers credible intelligence on [Osama] bin Laden's whereabouts, expect a combination of air power and special forces on the ground," writes Elliott. Early retaliation is likely to be limited to Afghanistan, Elliott concludes.
END
Jerusalem Post Staff and Ap
JERUSALEM (September 16) - About 1,500 Palestinians, many supporters of Hamas, marched in a Gaza Strip refugee camp Friday, burning Israeli flags and carrying a large poster of Osama bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire who US Secretary of State Colin Powell has named a key suspect in last week's terror attacks in the United States.
After the rally, plainclothes Palestinian policemen questioned several journalists, including members of foreign news agencies, and confiscated videotape, film, and other camera equipment. An Associated Press Television News video was among the materials taken, and an AP photographer was warned by officials not to publish pictures of the bin Laden poster.
AP protested and demanded the return of the video and other material.
The journalists were told police would review the material before deciding whether or not to release it.
Palestinian Authority officials refused to comment on the record and did not respond immediately to AP's protest.
The Palestinian Police said in a statement that the rally in the Nusseirat refugee camp took place without a permit.
"The Palestinian Police confiscated media material which documented illegal acts," the statement said.
Earlier last week, Palestinian Police stopped camera teams and photographers from covering a rally in Nablus in which several thousand Palestinians celebrated the attacks in the US. Palestinian officials said the demonstration did not represent widespread Palestinian opinion.
According to one source, the Reuters correspondent in Nablus not only agreed to the PA demand not to document the rally, but attempted to press his AP counterpart to follow suit. He was unable to reach him in time. The AP cameraman later received death threats.
By Benjamin Spillman
The Desert Sun
September 16th, 2001
Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, on Friday warned that the country should prepare for a fight against international terrorists that will likely include personal sacrifice, the use of ground troops overseas and the risk of retaliation against civilians by the enemy.
In a wide-ranging interview, Bono gave dire warnings of an immediate future she predicted could include intense scrutiny of airline passengers, a national system of fingerprinting and identification cards and the specter of chemical and biological attacks on the United States.
Priorities: She also expressed confidence that Congress was prepared to follow President Bush to war and said that the economic impact of recent terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and commercial airliners are not a high priority.
Bono, who plans to return to the Coachella Valley in time for a prayer vigil tonight, said the issues Congress will face upon her return are the most challenging of her lifetime.
"I think the most important thing here is for the American people to realize that it is really in their hands," Bono said. "I think it is important that members of Congress always recognize that national security is the No. 1 priority, even if it is not No. 1 in polling data."
Bono said she was at her Virginia home Tuesday watching news reports that hijackers crashed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center when she felt the impact of a third jet crash into the Pentagon.
Even before the Pentagon crash, Bono feared Washington, D.C., was in danger. She was on the telephone with her fiancé, Glenn Baxley, a Jackson, Wyo., businessman, when the impact occurred. "I told him I was already concerned about the Capitol. I hung up the phone and then I felt the explosion at the Pentagon and knew my worst fears were right," she said.
Sense of danger: Bono said there was initial shock, fear and chaos but never a sense that the government’s chain-of-command was in danger.
"Everything here is on such a high state of alert and security is so tight," Bono said. "I can only imagine it must feel like being on a military base at war time."
Bono indicated that she expects Washington and the rest of the nation to be jittery for some time.
When she returns to the Capitol she will prioritize support for measures that increase security at national landmarks, airports and other places. "The key here is to crack down. I think people are going to have to recognize that some of their conveniences are going to be gone," Bono said. "Whether we are talking about national ID cards I don’t know, or fingerprinting of everybody, I don’t know where we are going to go with security. I’m glad to show my identification where I need to go."
The Senate Friday night authorized President Bush to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those who carried out assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but stopped short of giving him open-ended power to wage future military strikes against terrorists.
Also, in rapid succession the House and Senate approved $40 billion in emergency aid to the victims of the assaults and to help with recovery efforts.
The first $20 billion will be used for investigations, increased transportation security and military retaliation, among other things. The administration will need to submit a proposed plan for the use of $10 billion, while $10 billion will be available for use at will.
In addition to tax dollars, Bono said she accepts the possibility that thwarting terrorism will cost the lives of men and women in the military and put American civilians at risk of retaliation. "If that is what it takes to rid our world of these terrorists then, yes, I support it," Bono said.
When asked whether ridding the world of terrorists can be accomplished without the death of some troops and risking civilian lives she replied, "No, I don’t think that."
Protracted wars on foreign soil would not only result in a human toll, however. An economist at the University of California, Riverside said he expects the attacks will greatly damage the American economy. Sarkis Joseph Khoury, who specializes on international banking and investing, said investors worldwide turn to the United States economy as a beacon of strength.
He said the most important thing the government can do is assure the public that it is stable.
"The question is how long will all that last," said Khoury of the impending fight against the attackers. "What will happen to the price of oil if we bomb (some place) out of existence? All of these things are very unpredictable."
So far, the oil producing nations of the Middle East have pledged to support anti-terrorism efforts and to maintain an ample supply of oil flowing throughout the crisis.
Bono said she hasn’t given much thought to the economic implications of the attacks. "But I’ll start worrying about that next week, perhaps."
Benjamin Spillman can be reached at 778-4643 or by e-mail at Benjamin.Spillman@thedesertsun.com
Cheney Says U.S. Gave Orders to Shoot Down Airliners
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Immediately after last Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush ordered U.S. military pilots to shoot down incoming commercial airliners over Washington if they did not divert, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday.
``The president made the decision ... that if the plane would not divert, if they wouldn't pay any attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out,'' Cheney told NBC's ''Meet the Press'' program.
``People say that's a horrendous decision to make. Well it is,'' Cheney said.
But he said the United States ``absolutely'' would have been justified to act on those orders if it could have prevented the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington that left more than 5,000 dead or missing.
``You've got an airplane full of American citizens, civilians, captured by terrorists and are you going to, in fact, shoot it down, obviously, and kill all those Americans aboard?'' Cheney said.
``Well, you have to ask yourself, if we had had combat air patrol up over New York and we'd had the opportunity to take down the two aircraft that hit the World Trade Center, would we have been justified in doing that? I think, absolutely, we would have.''
``As it turned out, we did not have to execute on that authorization,'' Cheney said. ``But there were a few moments when we thought we might.''
Cheney did not say exactly when the president issued the orders to shoot down any non-responsive commercial aircraft, a decision first reported by Time magazine minutes before the Cheney interview on NBC.
Pentagon spokesman Adm. Craig Quigley said the president's authorization had been reviewed since Tuesday, but declined to describe the current ``rules of engagement'' for U.S. pilots.
``Our pilots are very thoroughly briefed on the rules of engagement. Our air crews had been given -- and continue to be given -- specific rules of engagement as to how they are to handle themselves in the air,'' he said, without elaborating.
Cheney said the U.S. military had in effect implemented a ''flying combat air patrol'' over Washington, putting up F-16 fighter jets, AWACS radar planes and tanker aircraft.
It would be up to Bush to decide if that policy would be made permanent, Cheney said.
He noted he had strongly urged Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the attacks, to delay his return to Washington because the situation was so uncertain.
Bush flew to a military base in Louisiana and then another in Nebraska under tight security and near total secrecy on Tuesday as the White House scrambled to protect him after the attacks.
Flying at times with a fighter at each wingtip, Bush's Air Force One aircraft later on Tuesday took him back to Washington, where he spoke to the nation on television as the government tried to keep him safe using combat troops, an armored vehicle and an underground bunker.
Cheney described the decision to authorize a shoot-down of hijacked commercial airliners as ``the toughest decision'' made by the administration the day of the attacks.
Unidentified Aircraft Cause Concern At Nuclear Plant
Officials were quick to act Saturday night when unidentified aircraft started flying low over the Duke Power's Oconee Nuclear Station in Seneca around midnight.
The Oconee County Sheriff's Department called out state officers and the Highway Patrol.
"(The concern was over) three helicopters that have been flying around this area. But the Shaw Air Force Base dispatched a couple of F-16s that have been in the area monitoring things. That's where we stand at this point," sheriff James Singleton said Saturday night.
Since Tuesday's terrorist attacks, security has been heightened at the nuclear plant.
As of Sunday morning, Duke Power officials said that there is no threat at the plant.
Indian investigating agencies handed over detailed maps and information of terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan to the FBI, news reports said yesterday.
The Indian Express reported that most of the documents were part of voluminous dossiers maintained on Afghan mercenaries operating in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
They provide details of terrorist training camps in Asababad, Sarkanar, Ghazni, Jalalabad, Khost, Paktya and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
One document was said to be the opening page of the 2001 diary of Al Dawa, a small radical Islamic group. It proclaims: "Yesterday we saw Russia being dismembered. We will see US and Israel burning in the flames of jihad (holy war)".
Another page calls for young recruits, stating: "The pledge calls for jihad, in the name of Allah, at all costs and in all seasons, against Israel, India, US, Russia, UK and Serbia."
These documents focussed on Afghan mercenaries and their links with Pakistan-based groups.
They also contained "irrefutable evidence" of how Pakistan and bin Laden had been working in tandem to mobilise and support Muslim separatist groups in Kashmir, the report said.
The Sun-Herald
Pakistan agrees to full list of demands
Pakistan has agreed to the full list of US demands for a possible attack on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers who shelter suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's agreement was conveyed by President Pervez Musharraf in a meeting with US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin.
This includes a US request to base a multinational force in Pakistan.
Pakistan has also agreed to the use of its airspace in a strike on Afghanistan by a multinational force, and to co-operate in intelligence gathering, according to a senior US official and sources in Pakistan.
They have also agreed to cut off fuel supplies to Afghanistan.
US Embassy officials are not available for comment.
"We have received the US demands but I am not authorised to give the details," said presidential spokesman, Rashid Qureshi.
Musharraf, a military leader who seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, met twice with his senior commanders since the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Pakistan's Cabinet and the National Security Council are due to meet to formulate a formal response to the United States, the sources said.
They say the United States is seeking a "comprehensive strike" to wipe out the Taliban and a network of suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has told the Taliban that a massive US strike is in the making, Pakistani military sources said. They say that despite the warnings, the Taliban are unwilling to change their stance on bin Laden, whom they have sheltered since 1996.
Story filed: 08:24 Saturday 15th September 2001
U.S. Embassy in France Was a Target - Radio
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A French radio station reported on Saturday that one of the militants arrested in Belgium this week was suspected of planning to attack the U.S. embassy in Paris.
Belgian authorities declined to comment on the report by Europe 1 radio, but Brussels public prosecutor's office said one of those arrested in Belgium was Tunisian and had been charged with intent to destroy a building with explosives.
In Paris, a French judicial source told Reuters that investigators probing the risk of attacks on U.S. interests in France were interested in the suspect. The French probe began before Tuesday's suicide terror attacks in the United States that have entombed thousands in the wreckage of buildings.
Europe 1 radio said the man was one of six suspected extremists arrested in Brussels and Rotterdam on Thursday as European police forces joined to crack down on possible guerrilla networks.
``He is a fundamentalist of North African origin, in his 30s, and was trained in Pakistan,'' the radio said.
``According to our information, (he) was planning a series of attacks on American interests in France, notably the United States embassy in Paris.''
The radio station said two French magistrates specializing in combating terrorism would travel to Brussels on Monday to consult on the case.
Brussels public prosecutor's office said on Thursday police had arrested two suspects in the wealthy suburb of Uccle, home to many embassies and diplomats, and found two Uzi machine pistols during searches.
Two other men were detained in Brussels but later released. Police also seized documents.
On Saturday, a spokeswoman at the same office confirmed one of the two men was a Tunisian and the second a Belgian of North African descent who had been charged with conspiracy.
Police carried out further house searches in connection with the arrests in a Brussels suburb on Saturday and seized documents, the spokeswoman said.
Major Developments in Terrorist Attacks
By The Associated Press,
Recent developments related to Tuesday's terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and crash of jetliner in Pennsylvania:
- Pakistani senior officials will visit Afghanistan to warn the Taliban that it faces a massive assault if it does not hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States.
- Bush meets with top advisers at Camp David in virtual council of war; urges nation to get on with life but warns that it will be different.
- Reservist call-up dubbed ``Operation Noble Eagle.'' As of midnight Saturday, only the Coast Guard had begun mobilization.
- By Sunday, 180 confirmed dead at World Trade Center ruins, with 115 identified; the number of missing grows to 5,097. Pentagon death toll remains at 188.
- Second man arrested in New York as material witness.
- The State Department says it is willing to consider welcoming Iran into an international coalition to fight terrorism. Talks would be first between the two countries in more than two decades.
- Vice President Dick Cheney suggests the CIA change its policy of not paying operatives with ties to terrorist groups; says agency needs ``unsavory characters'' on its payroll to improve intelligence.
- As Americans attend Sunday services, Pope John Paul II says he is ``heartbroken,'' and urges restraint in efforts to find the terrorists. A local choir near Rome sings ``Blowin' in the Wind'' and waves an American flag.
- Two are killed and dozens injured as 50,000 Hindu nationalists march in a Muslim area of southern India, shouting slogans against Pakistan and the Taliban in a protest of terrorist attacks in the United States.
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Sunday, September 16, 2001
WASHINGTON — Saudi millionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden has moved amid U.S. plans to retaliate for the suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
Bin Laden is hiding in the Kandahar area of Afghanistan, diplomatic sources said. They said the Saudi national left for his new location immediately after the suicide attacks on Sept. 11, Middle East Newsline reported.
The sources said Bin Laden's movements have been tracked by satellite as well as by agents within Afghanistan. They said Bin Laden continues to enjoy the protection of the ruling Taleban movement.
Aug. 23: Bin Laden back underground as Pakistan sides with U.S.
Russia is cooperating with the U.S. investigation and its Foreign Intelligence Service reportedly provided inormation on Islamic groups that worked for Bin Laden.
The Moscow-based Izvestiya daily said this included Jamiyat Al Islamiya, with links to both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Russian intelligence agency said the group is preparing new attacks on U.S. installations with the help of a pool of 400 suicide bombers.
On Saturday, Iran closed its border with Afghanistan. Officials in Teheran said the move came amid the assessment that the United States would soon attack Afghanistan and that thousands of Afghans would seek to enter Iran.
The United States is organizing a military force to respond to last week's attacks. Over the weekend, President George Bush authorized a mobilization of 50,000 reserves, including logistics troops, emergency medical personnel and air support personnel.
Washington is focusing on winning diplomatic, intelligence and even military support from its allies in Europe and the Middle East. Officials said virtually every national leader who has dealt with the United States is being contacted.
"We are asking all the nations to join together to use political action, diplomatic action, economic action, legal action, law enforcement action," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "and if necessary, join with us as appropriate and if necessary in military action when we have identified the perpetrators and decided what military action might be appropriate. And so there is a lot that we can do."
Arab diplomats said many Arab League members are willing to help the United States. But they said this would not include participation in any military action.
Officials: Government failed to react to FAA warning
September 16, 2001 Posted: 6:15 PM EDT (2215 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Following Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and for at least 12 minutes after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned the military's air defense command that a hijacked airliner appeared to be headed toward Washington, the federal government failed to make any move to evacuate the White House, Capitol, State Department or the Pentagon, which was the eventual target of the attack, senior Defense Department officials told CNN.
Only after the 9:38 a.m. impact into the side of the Pentagon were other government buildings evacuated, including the White House and the Capitol.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) at Peterson Air
Force Base in Colorado was informed by the FAA at 9:25 a.m. that
American Airlines flight 77 might have been hijacked and appeared headed
toward Washington.
Military officials at NORAD ordered fighter jets from Langley Air Force
Base in Virginia to intercept the flight, but neither the FAA, NORAD,
nor any other federal government organ made any effort to evacuate the
buildings in Washington.
Officials at the Pentagon said that no
mechanism existed within the U.S.
government to notify various departments
and agencies under such circumstances.
Officials also told CNN that President
George W. Bush had not given authorization to the Defense Department to
shoot down a passenger airliner until after the Pentagon had been struck.
Officials at the Pentagon also said that they were never made aware of
the threat from hijacked United Airlines flight 93 until after it
crashed in Pennsylvania.
The informed defense officials laid out a
timeline of the events surrounding the
series of terrorist attacks as follows: (Times are EDT and reflect
actual, rather than
scheduled departure times of flights.)
--7:59 a.m.: American Airlines flight 11
takes off from Boston's Logan International Airport.
--8:14 a.m.: United Airlines flight 175 takes off from Boston's Logan
International Airport.
--8:20 a.m.: American Airlines flight 11 stops transmitting IFF beacon
signal while over the Hudson River.
--8:20 a.m.: American Airlines flight 77 departs Dulles International
Airport near Washington.
--8:38 a.m.: Boston air traffic center notifies NORAD that American
Airlines flight 11 has been hijacked.
--8:43 a.m.: FAA notifies NORAD that United Airlines flight 175 has been hijacked.
--8:44 a.m.: Otis Air National Guard Base in Mass. orders to fighters scrambled.
--8:46 a.m.: American Airlines flight 11 strikes the World Trade
Center's north tower.
--8:47 a.m.: NORAD informed of the plane striking the World Trade Center.
--8:50 a.m.: United Airlines flight 175 deviates from its assigned
flight path.
--8:52 a.m.: Two F-15 Eagles take off from Otis ANG Base in effort to
intercept hijacked plane(s) after first plane has struck the World Trade Center.
--9:02 a.m.: United Airlines flight 175 strikes the World Trade Center's
south tower (F-15 fighter jets from Otis ANG Base are still 70 miles away.)
--9:25 a.m.: FAA notifies NORAD that United flight 77 may have been hijacked.
--9:27 a.m.: (approximate time) NORAD orders jets scrambled from Langley
Air Force Base in Virginia to head to intercept United Airlines flight 77.
--9:35 a.m.: Three F-16 Fighting Falcons take off from Langley AFB
headed toward Washington area.
--9:37 a.m.: American Airlines flight 77 is lost from radar screens.
--9:38 a.m.: American Airlines flight 77 strikes the Pentagon.
--9:49 a.m.: F-16 fighter jets arrive over Washington, D.C. to perform
Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over city. (The fighters broke the sound barrier
and traveled supersonic at 720 knots to Washington, making the
approximately 130 miles in 14 minutes.)
The following timeline is for United Airlines flight 93, scheduled to
fly from Newark International Airport to San Francisco. The flight
crashed in Pennsylvania.
--8:42 a.m.: United Airlines flight 93 takes off from Newark
International Airport.
--9:16 a.m.: FAA informs NORAD that United Airlines flight 93 may have
been hijacked.
--9:40 a.m.: Transponder signal from United flight 93 ceases and radar
contact is lost.
--10:02 a.m.: After a review of radar tapes, a radar signal is detected
near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.