Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - 9/11 Fifth Anniversary: Discuss Our Leaders' Versions of What They Did That Morning

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Originally Posted by stevo

So Kalid Sheik Muhammed, captured in pakistan shortly after the 9/11 whose just been transfered to gitmo is a patsy? a stooge? I understand that it could have been undertaken by no one other than the 19 hijackers, but just because it could have happened that way doesn't mean it did. For the 19 hijackers to have been the be-all and end-all in the attacks on 9/11 they would have had to have left there message somewhere? No? I would imagine there would be some evidence that points to them being independent of any other group. Instead they left it up to the survivors to tell the world why. It doesn't seem logical to me that 19 people would commit a terrorist act, kill themselves along with thousands others and not leave behind a message, but rely on an unrelated terrorist group - al qaeda to give explination and advance their own agenda.

The reports are that Khalid was not captured until March, 2003. Please consider that you do not know what you think that you know, and that your government feeds the press bullshit, and that Mr. Cheney appears to have told "untruths" about the "camp" at "Kermal", to justify the invasion of Iraq, even though it was the US that was well documented to have take a "hands off" approach to the camp. The camp is established to have been in a Kurdish controlled area that the US had access to, not Saddam and his government.

If Cheney is still misleading us about the Saddam al-Qaeda "connection", and
Bush misled us, last week about the "value" of Zubadayah, consider that I know less than you do, about Khalid, and I think I've looked into reports about him, more vigorously than you probably have:

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http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/t...e_911_timeline
(Near the bottom of the page...)
.....
March 1, 2003: Mohammed Reportedly Arrested in Pakistan, But Doubts Persist

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is reportedly arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003] Officials claim that he is arrested in a late-night joint Pakistani and FBI raid, in which they also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the purported main financer of the 9/11 attacks. [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] However, some journalists immediately cast serious doubts about this arrest. For instance, MSNBC reports, “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan” [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] There are numerous problems surrounding the US-alleged arrest of Mohammed:
bullet Witnesses say Mohammed is not present when the raid occurs. [Guardian, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003]
bullet There are differing accounts about which house he is arrested in. [Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/1/2003]
bullet There are differing accounts about where he was before the arrest and how authorities found him. [Washington Post, 3/2/2003; Time, 3/1/2003; New York Times, 3/4/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003]
bullet Some accounts have him sleeping when the arrest occurs. [New York Times, 3/3/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003; Reuters, 3/2/2003]
bullet Accounts differ on who arrests him—Pakistanis, Americans, or both. [CNN, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/3/2003; London Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/3/2003]
bullet There are previously published accounts that Mohammed may have been killed in September 2002. [Daily Telegraph, 9/16/2002; Christian Science Monitor, 10/29/2002; Asia Times, 10/30/2002; Los Angeles Times, 12/22/2002; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003; Asia Times, 3/6/2003]
bullet There are accounts that he was captured the year before. [Daily Times (Lahore), 9/9/2002; Times of India, 9/9/2002; Associated Press, 9/16/2002; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003] These are just some of the difficulties with the arrest story. There are so many problems with it that one Guardian reporter says, “The story appears to be almost entirely fictional.” [Guardian, 3/6/2003]

Entity Tags: Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Federal Bureau of Investigation
March 10, 2003: Dubious Arrest Video Raises Question of Mohammed-ISI Connection

One week after the purported arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan, the ISI show what they claim is a video of the capture. It is openly mocked as a bad forgery by the few reporters allowed to see it. [ABC News, 3/11/2003; Reuters, 3/11/2003; Pakistan News Service (Newark, CA), 3/11/2003; Daily Times (Lahore), 3/13/2003] For instance, a Fox News reporter says, “Foreign journalists looking at it laughed and said this is baloney, this is a reconstruction.” [Fox News, 3/10/2003] Other information about the arrest also raises questions about his relationship with the ISI. At the time of Mohammed’s alleged arrest, he was staying in a neighborhood filled with ISI officials, just a short distance from ISI headquarters, leading to suspicions that he’d been doing so with ISI approval. [Lateline, 3/3/2003] One expert notes that after his arrest, “Those who think they have ISI protection will stop feeling that comfort level.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003] Journalist Robert Fisk reports, “Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is ‘handed over’ by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001.” [Toronto Star, 3/3/2003]

Entity Tags: Taliban, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
March 27, 2003: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Says Moussaoui Not Involved in 9/11

The Washington Post reports that information obtained from interrogations of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further undermines the government’s case against Zacarias Moussaoui for his alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Apparently, Mohammed told his interrogators that Moussaoui was not part of the 9/11 hijacker group, but was in the US for a second wave of attacks that were planned for early 2002. Details of any such plan have not been revealed. Legal experts agree that at the very least, “on the death penalty, [this information] is quite helpful to Moussaoui.” In spite of Mohammed’s revelations, the government still feels that it can convict Moussaoui of being involved in a conspiracy with al-Qaeda. [Washington Post, 3/28/2003] .....

.....June 16, 2004: 9/11 Commission Gives Account of Prisoner Interrogations

The 9/11 Commission releases a new report on how the 9/11 plot developed. Most of their information appears to come from interrogations of prisoners Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a key member of the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell. In this account, the idea for the attacks appears to have originated with Mohammed. In mid-1996, he met bin Laden and al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan. He presented several ideas for attacking the US, including a version of the 9/11 plot using ten planes (presumably an update of Operation Bojinka’s second phase plot (see February-April 1995).). Bin Laden does not commit himself. In 1999, bin Laden approves a scaled-back version of the idea, and provides four operatives to carry it out: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Khallad bin Attash, and Abu Bara al Taizi. Attash and al Taizi drop out when they fail to get US visas. Alhazmi and Almihdhar prove to be incompetent pilots, but the recruitment of Mohamed Atta and the others in the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell solves that problem. Bin Laden wants the attacks to take place between May and July 2001, but the attacks are ultimately delayed until September. [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] However, information such as these accounts resulting from prisoner interrogations is seriously doubted by some experts, because it appears they only began cooperating after being coerced or tortured. For instance, it is said that Mohammed was “waterboarded” (see September 11, 2002) a technique in which his head is pushed under water until he nearly drowns. Information gained under such duress often is unreliable. Additionally, there is a serious risk that the prisoners might try to intentionally deceive. [New York Times, 6/17/2004] One CIA report of his interrogations is called, “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s Threat Reporting—Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/23/2004] The commission itself expresses worry that Mohammed could be trying to exaggerate the role of bin Laden in the plot to boost bin Laden’s reputation in the Muslim world. [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] Most of what these prisoners have said is uncorroborated from other sources. [New York Times, 6/17/2004]

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Terry McDermott, Josh Meyer and Patrick J McDonnell, Tribune Newspapers Los Angeles Times
KARACHI, Pakistan
Section: News
Publication title: Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Dec 24, 2002. pg. 4

Senior Pakistani and American intelligence officials say the operational commander of Al Qaeda, the man who planned the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, narrowly avoided capture in a raid that took his two sons into custody here.

It was one of at least half a dozen missed opportunities over eight years to seize Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is described by intelligence analysts on three continents as the man most responsible for Al Qaeda's continuing terrorist attacks.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has had Mohammed's two young sons in custody since September. One senior U.S. investigator said authorities came "within moments" of capturing Mohammed in the same raid.

Pakistani intelligence officials said that in recent months they have seen evidence that Mohammed, even as he has been on the run, has been aggressively directing terrorist cells.

"Despite being so much in danger, he has not gone into hibernation or [made efforts] to hide," one senior Pakistani official said. "He is trying to protect what they have. He would like to consolidate first and then rebuild on the same edifice. And he is doing that. He remains active."

Mohammed has been linked to attacks against the U.S. as far back as 1993, but his importance in the overall Al Qaeda structure became clear only after Sept. 11, U.S. officials say. Now, some officials say, stopping Mohammed is at least as important as capturing Osama bin Laden, perhaps more.

Mohammed, believed to be 37, has traveled the world as one of the chief designers of Al Qaeda, using Egyptian, Qatari, Saudi, British and Kuwaiti identities. He has used more than three dozen aliases. He is said to speak Arabic with a Kuwaiti accent and to be fluent in Urdu, the principal language of Pakistan, and English, acquired in part as he studied for a mechanical engineering degree at a college in North Carolina.

He communicates with Al Qaeda cells around the world by courier, e-mail, coded telephone conversations and shortwave radio; German intelligence agents say that when he was forced to retreat to rural hide-outs he sent messages by donkey.

Even at the height of the U.S. bombing campaign against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mohammed planned, staffed and directed new terrorist attacks, according to intelligence documents. Mohammed planned a bombing campaign in Southeast Asia that was scheduled to occur late in 2001, according to the documents.

Mohammed the Pakistani, as the Asian bombers knew him, housed a young Canadian recruit named Jabarah for weeks in his Karachi apartment, instructing him on communication protocols--e-mail passwords, telephone codes. He then sent him to coordinate and finance the bomb squads. With just a few days' notice, Mohammed delivered $50,000 to the recruit to pay for bombmaking materials. The money was delivered in packs of $100 bills at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the intelligence documents.

That plot was foiled, but Mohammed's intimate involvement in it underscores his leadership in building the terrorist networks of that region, including the cell responsible for the recent attack in Bali, Indonesia, in which nearly 200 people died.

It is the same role U.S. investigators believe he has played around the world. If bin Laden has been the architect of Al Qaeda, they say, Mohammed has been its engineer.

Al Qaeda members in custody have told interrogators that Mohammed had operational cells in place in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks and that he was the principal proponent within Al Qaeda of developing radioactive "dirty bombs," according to European intelligence officers.

The FBI acknowledges that it underestimated Mohammed's significance for years, a senior FBI agency official said. "He was under everybody's radar. We don't know how he did it. We wish we knew. He's the guy nobody ever heard of. The others had egos. He didn't."

Although born in Kuwait, Mohammed is a Pakistani national whose family is from Baluchistan, an area that straddles Pakistan's borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Mohammed was born in 1965, according to records, and raised in Fahaheel, south of Kuwait City. His oldest brother, Zahed, attended Kuwait University and was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a militant pan-Arab organization that functioned as an underground opposition throughout the region.

A man who knew the family said a group called the Islamic Association of Palestinian Students also was formed on campus then; one of its leaders went on to become head of the political bureau of the militant Islamic group Hamas. That was the initial politicization of Mohammed, the friend said.

Mohammed attended high school in Kuwait then left for college in the United States. He enrolled first at Chowan College, a tiny Baptist school in eastern North Carolina.

Chowan did not require the English proficiency exam then widely mandated for international students. Foreign enrollees often spent a semester or two at Chowan, improved their English and then transferred to four-year universities. By 1984, Chowan had a sizable contingent of Middle Easterners.

Mohammed spent just a semester at Chowan, then transferred to North Carolina A&T, a historically black college in Greensboro. He was a part of a group of Arab students there that other Middle Easterners called the "mullahs" because of their religious zeal.

`In the mosque all the time'

Students who recall Mohammed describe him as studious and private, a devotee of the library and Allah, but friendly enough in a casual way and capable of a laugh.

"All anyone knows about him is that he was in the mosque all the time," said Faisal Al-Munifi, who studied mechanical engineering at the same time as Mohammed.

He didn't spout anti-Western or anti-American rhetoric. "Something must have happened later that caused that feeling," said Badawi Hindieh, who knew Mohammed at Chowan and Greensboro. "I never remember him saying anything like that."

Mohammed earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the end of 1986 and is believed to have left the United States for Pakistan, where he joined two older brothers active in the Afghan resistance in Peshawar. A man who knew the three brothers said Mohammed emulated Abed, who was more militant than Zahed, who ran a Kuwaiti charity organization.

Mohammed taught at a university established by an Afghan warlord and at an adjacent refugee camp, according to a friend. His brother Abed was killed in an explosion either in battle or in a jihad training camp in 1989, friends said.

Mohammed's first known involvement in terrorism occurred in 1992, when he sent money to his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, as Yousef was in New Jersey preparing to bomb the World Trade Center.

He and Yousef later teamed up on plots in the Philippines to assassinate the pope and President Bill Clinton and to place bombs aboard a dozen U.S. airliners. Those plots were foiled by authorities in 1995. Mohammed escaped and moved to the Persian Gulf, according to American investigators.

Investigators say Mohammed spent the next year building and maintaining a fundraising network in the gulf.

"Throughout the region, there was this classic sort of money collector--the guy who was hanging out at the mosque, checking out the scene, basically casing the mark, who would invariably be some old guy with lots of money. A religious guy, probably. The collector would come up alongside him, make his pitch very persistently and the mark would write him a check," said one American official who worked in the gulf region throughout the 1990s.

"Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a collector, a guy who would collect the money from the street collectors. . . . A guy in the Philippines would call a guy in Dubai who would call Khalid Sheik Mohammed. It would be a chain of telephone calls and Khalid would send the money."

Misdirected attention

U.S. understanding of Islamic terrorism then was inchoate. Al Qaeda was barely on the screen. Potential state-sponsored terrorism was deemed more dangerous, so more attention was given to Iran, which had become the chief international proponent of Islamist goals.

Mohammed lived openly in the Persian Gulf region. "He wasn't even using an alias," one official said. U.S. agents tracked him through Italy, Egypt, Singapore, Jordan, Thailand, the Philippines and Qatar. In Qatar, American officials say, he stayed as the guest of a member of the country's ruling family, Abdullah bin Khallad al- Thani, who was then the country's minister of religious affairs.

"Abdullah bin Khallad had a farm outside of [Doha]. A lot of these guys had what were basically gentlemen's truck farms. It was a hobby. Grow cabbages, raise ducks," said one U.S. official. "So he has this farm and he always had a lot of people around, the house was always overstaffed, a lot of unemployed Afghan Arabs. . . . There were always these guys hanging around and maybe a couple of Kalashnikovs in the corner."

U.S. intelligence figured out that one of the guys on the farm was Mohammed. A grand jury in New York had indicted Mohammed for the Manila airliner plot, and a debate occurred on what exactly to do about it.

FBI Director Louis Freeh met with Qatar officials seeking permission to arrest him. One FBI official said months passed without approval, even though Qatar acknowledged that Mohammed was there. At one point, according to documents, Qatar told the U.S. they feared Mohammed was constructing an explosive device. They also said he then possessed more than 20 passports; still, they delayed granting U.S. permission to seize him.

Some officials felt strongly that the U.S. should act as quickly and with as much force as necessary to capture him. Others were more wary. A meeting was called in Washington in early 1996. Caution prevailed.

"That D.C. meeting . . . struck me as one of the great lessons in politics," said a person who attended the meeting. "Here was this opportunity to get this bad guy, and we didn't do it. The Qatar government had no interest in screwing up its fragile relationship with us. If we had gone in and nabbed this guy, or just cut his head off, the Qatari government would not have complained a bit.

"Everyone around the table for their own reasons refused to go after someone who fundamentally threatened American interests. . . . The FBI can't go anywhere overseas without the CIA providing the intel, the DOD providing the logistics and military muscle in the event we have to shoot our way in. And none of that happened."

Another participant said the real obstacle was the Pentagon, which feared another "Black Hawk Down" debacle and insisted the "snatch and grab" job would require hundreds if not thousands of troops.

In the end, rather than sending a kidnap squad, Freeh sent a letter to the Qatari government. By the time permission was granted, Mohammed was gone.

He is thought to have fled to Afghanistan, where he joined Al Qaeda and eventually rose to its highest ranks.

"Look at what has happened in the last six years--you would have to assume that he played a role in everything from that point on," said Neil Herman, a former top FBI counterterrorism officer. "He is right there. He is a common denominator. If he had been caught in 1996, who knows what could have been prevented?"

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Originally Posted by politicophile

Yes! That is an excellent comparison. You and I agree that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Why do we not agree about the lack of a connection between the Bush administration and the 9/11 hijackers?

Nice "wording", politicphile. You posted that comment, and I know that you know that the controversy and suspicion is not about ["the Bush administration and the 9/11 hijackers?"]....it's about whether the Bush administration has disclosed or hidden, what it knew about the details of the 9/11 attack, before it happened, how it handled air defense that day, how it reacted and managed the entire government response to the attacks, vs. it's public statements, and how sincere it was (and is...) about doing what is neccessary to find out what went wrong with the governments handling or pre-attack intelligence, and the response that day, and what improvements to make to lessen the government failures that happened before, during, and after the attack, related to the attack. A first, good faith, test for the Bush administration, in the aftermath of the attacks, would have been to support a full, independent investigation into what happened.

Instead, we got threats and stonewalling, and resistance to co-operation from them, and then....to justify an invasion of Iraq, we got outright lies, from them, all the way up to Cheney's lies, just this past sunday.

It might be because the same administration that tried to prevent an official, independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks, refused to testify publicly, under oath, before the commission, refused to co-operate with the investigation of the 9/11 commission, that was convened, over the administration's objections, and refused to accept key findings of the 9/11 Commission....(example: That there was no connection the resulted in co-operation....between Saddam's Iraqi government, an al-Qaeda.)

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in509096.shtml
Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel

May 23, 2002

(CBS) President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11.

Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees. .......

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http://www.politicsnj.com/Siemaszkiewicz122101.htm
"Senators Press for an Inquiry on U.S. Intelligence Lapses" reported the New York Times today (12/21/01). Reportedly, "Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat of Connecticut, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, introduced legislation to create a 14-member, bipartisan commission with subpoena power to make a full accounting." Also, "earlier this week Senators Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, introduced a similar bill to create a 12-member board of inquiry. It, too, would have subpoena power." Senator Robert Torricelli is quoted as saying, "An event of this magnitude historically cannot occur without people demanding some accountability and some review of how it happened and what failed."

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http://www.wanttoknow.info/020204newsweek
February 4, 2002

Dick Cheney was on the line, and it wasn't to chitchat. The vice president rarely calls the Senate leader--a Democrat he dismisses as an "obstructionist"--so Tom Daschle knew the topic was important when he hurried into his Capitol office. What he heard was a plea, and a warning. The Senate will soon launch hearings on why we weren't prepared for, and warned about, September 11. The intelligence committee will study the matter, but mostly behind closed doors. Cheney was calling to pre-emptively protest public hearings by other committees. If the Democrats insisted, Bush administration officials might say they're too busy running the war on terrorism to show up. Press the issue, Cheney implied, and you risk being accused of interfering with the mission. Daschle was noncommittal and, after the call, unmoved. "Intelligence is just a piece of it," he said. "People need to know what happened."

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http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLI....terror.probe/
Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes

January 29, 2002 Posted: 9:26 PM EST (0226 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.

The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation.....

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in509702.shtml
Poll: What Did The President Know?
Public Split On How Much Government Knew About Threats Before 9/11

NEW YORK, May 21, 2002
........Is Administration Telling The Public All It Knew Before 9/11?
Telling entire truth 21%
Hiding something 65
Lying 8

43% think the Administration is hiding something the public needs to know....

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http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLI...inger.resigns/
Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission

Friday, December 13, 2002 Posted: 6:52 PM EST (2352 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Facing questions about potential conflicts of interest, Henry Kissinger resigned Friday as chairman of the September 11 commission.

.......Kissinger's appointment was criticized by some who said he was too close to powerful national and international figures to be independent. In an editorial published November 29, The New York Times suggested the White House chose him "to contain an investigation it has long opposed.".........

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...437267,00.html
9-11 Commission Funding Woes
Questions arise concerning the administration's funding of the congressional investigation into the September 11th attacks
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER

Posted Wednesday, Mar. 26, 2003
Is the Bush White House trying to put the brakes on the congressional panel created last fall to investigate 9-11 attacks? Sources tell TIME that the White House brushed off a request quietly made last week by the 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, to boost his budget by $11 million. Kean had sought the funding as part of the $75 billion supplemental spending bill that the president just requested to pay for war with Iraq. Bush's recent move has miffed some members of the 9-11 panel.

Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the panel's top Democrat, requested additional funding in a letter to the administration last week. The money was to pay for a staff of about sixty and their resources. Kean plans to field a separate task force for each of nine areas that the law establishing the commission requires it to investigate. The panel has until the end of May 2004 to complete its work, but it will spend the $3 million it was originally allotted by around August 2003 — if it doesn't get the supplement....

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
9/11 Panel Unlikely to Get Later Deadline
Hearings Being Scaled Back to Finish Work by May; Top Officials Expected to Testify

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 19, 2004; Page A09

President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.

A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.

With time running short, the 10-member bipartisan panel has already decided to scale back the number and scope of hearings that it will hold for the public, commission members and staffers said. The commission is rushing to finish interviews with as many as 200 remaining witnesses and to finish examining about 2 million pages of documents related to the attacks. .

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http://www.voicesofsept11.org/911ic/...04/022604b.php
NY Times - February 26, 2004
Bush to Limit Testimony Before 9/11 Panel
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday.

The commission, which has 10 members and is bipartisan, said in a statement that it had also been informed by the White House that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had rejected its request that she testify in public about the intelligence reports that reached her desk before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Democratic members of the panel said the administration's moves raised new questions about its willingness to cooperate with the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the 2001 attacks. The White House initially opposed creating the panel.

Republican Congressional leaders have criticized the investigation's pace. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said he would not support and might block any legislation that extended the life of the panel, which is scheduled to complete its work in May.

The commission called on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to reconsider their decision against meeting with all 10 members of the panel.

"President Bush and Vice President Cheney have agreed to meet privately with the chair and vice chair but prefer not to meet with all members," the statement said, referring to the chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey; and vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat and former House member from Indiana. "We hope the president and the vice president will reconsider."

The panel said it was "disappointed" by Ms. Rice's decision not to testify at a public hearing, adding, "We believe the nation would be well served by the contribution she can make to public understanding of the intelligence and policy issues being examined by the commission."

Ms. Rice has submitted to several hours of questioning at a private session. Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the decision against public testimony was made at the recommendation of administration lawyers who warned of separation-of-powers issues.

"Based on law and practice, White House staff members have not testified before legislative bodies," Mr. McCormack said, "and this is considered a legislative body."

The commission's statement suggested that the panel had received promises of greater cooperation from former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who have agreed to meet in private with all members. Ms. Rice's predecessor, Samuel R. Berger, is scheduled to testify in public next month.......

Rice refuses to testify under oath, before the 9/11 commission:

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../i_ins.00.html
Condoleezza Rice Refuses to Testify

Aired March 29, 2004 - 17:00:00 ET
.......ED BRADLEY, "60 MINUTES": you can talk to us and other news programs, why can't you talk to the commission in public and under oath?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify. I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle here ... it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress...........

.......BLITZER: Former Clinton White House Special Counsel Lannie Davis sees it very differently.

LANNIE DAVIS, FMR. WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL COUNSEL: Wolf, it's deja vu all over again. We made the same arguments in the Clinton White House and ultimately we surrendered and Sandy Berger testified on the China matter, campaign finance.

Sooner or later, transparency wins out over that principle. You might as well do it earlier rather than later.

BLITZER: The White House insists critical constitutional issues are at stake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an issue of principle. Separation of powers is of constitutional dimension.

DAVIS: Voluntarily appearing in front of a congressional committee in public does not violate separation of powers...........

Quote:

http://www.voicesofsept11.org/911ic/...04/040204.html
Bush Aides Block Clinton's Papers From 9/11 Panel

By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 1 — The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton administration documents had been withheld because they were "duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they were "highly sensitive" and the information in them could be relayed to the commission in other ways. "We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," Mr. McClellan said.

The commission and the White House were reacting to public complaints from former aides to Mr. Clinton, who said they had been surprised to learn in recent months that three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of files the former president was ready to offer the commission had been withheld by the Bush administration. The former aides said the files contained highly classified documents about the Clinton administration's efforts against Al Qaeda.

The commission said it was awaiting a full answer from the White House on why any documents were withheld......

Quote:

http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintell...panelisnt.html
Panel Isn't Going Away -- It's Going on the Offensive
By Doyle McManus and Maura Reynolds
Times Staff Writers
July 23, 2004

WASHINGTON — Blue-ribbon committees usually produce long reports that assign blame, and then go quietly out of business.

But Thursday, the commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 boldly defied those rules: It refused to assign blame — and, more importantly, it refused to go out of business.

The commission's 10 members said they planned to spend the next 12 months traveling the nation demanding that politicians carry out most of their 41 recommendations. ......

............The president received Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, at the White House on Thursday morning and praised the commission for "making very solid, sound recommendations."

"I assured them that where government needs to act, we will," Bush said.

But Bush and his aides appeared to resist the commission's plea for quick action.

"People should recognize that we're talking about pretty fundamental changes here," national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said. "It only makes sense to try and understand the implications of them before you rush headlong one way.".............

NIST has not yet determined why WTC7, the only tall, steel framed structure ever to collapse as a result of fire damage, did fall....less than 8 hours after fire broke out in the building. It's been five years since that building collapsed, and the NIST "finidings" are at least a year behind schedule. Even though architects and fire code planners throughout the world, have a compelling "need" to find out why WTC7 collapsed, NIST decided not to increase it's staff when it was tasked by the US government, to determine why WTC towers 1, 2, and 7 collpased, almost at a free fall speed, on 9/11 2001.

Other indications that there are "too many holes", in the administration's version of what happened on 9/11, can be found in this thread's OP, and in my other posts on this thread. The most compelling argument, is...that when it comes to "live or death" matters, the official statements of the Bush administration have been disproved too many times, as outright lies, or deliberately misleading propaganda:

Quote:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in607356.shtml
Clarke's Take On Terror
What Bush's Ex-Adviser Says About Efforts to Stop War On Terror

March 21, 2004

......In the 60 Minutes interview and the book, Clarke tells what happened behind the scenes at the White House before, during and after Sept. 11.

When the terrorists struck, it was thought the White House would be the next target, so it was evacuated. Clarke was one of only a handful of people who stayed behind. He ran the government's response to the attacks from the Situation Room in the West Wing.

"I kept thinking of the words from 'Apocalypse Now,' the whispered words of Marlon Brando, when he thought about Vietnam. 'The horror. The horror.' Because we knew what was going on in New York. We knew about the bodies flying out of the windows. People falling through the air. We knew that Osama bin Laden had succeeded in bringing horror to the streets of America," he tells Stahl. After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer." Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously......

......For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.

Clarke relates, "I began saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.' Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, 'No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'

"And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."

Clarke went on to add, "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."

When Stahl pointed out that some administration officials say it's still an open issue, Clarke responded, "Well, they'll say that until hell freezes over."........

.........Hadley asserts Clarke is "just wrong" in saying the administration didn't go to battle stations.

<h3>As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."

When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual witness,"</h3> Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."

Hadley maintained, "Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone; their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists."Does Clarke think that Iraq, the Middle East and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power?

"I think the world would be better off if a number of leaders around the world were out of power. The question is what price should the United States pay," says Clarke. "The price we paid was very, very high, and we're still paying that price for doing it."

"Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country. He had been saying this. This is part of his propaganda," adds Clarke.

"So what did we do after 9/11? We invade an oil-rich and occupy an oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin Laden's propaganda. And the result of that is that al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second-generation al Qaeda have been greatly strengthened."

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14824384/site/newsweek/
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2006

Sept. 13, 2006 - The claim that terrorist leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi spy a few months before 9/11 was never substantiated, but that didn’t stop the White House from trying to insert the allegation in presidential speeches, according to classified documents....

.....On TV last Sunday, however, Cheney said: “We’ve never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11.”

Host Tim Russert then asked him: “And the meeting with Atta did not occur?”

Cheney replied: “We don’t know. I mean, we’ve never been able to, to, to link it, and the FBI and CIA have worked it aggressively. I would say, at this point, nobody has been able to confirm …”

According to former senior intelligence officials, when the White House sent to the CIA its first proposed version of the now-famous United Nations speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell outlining the U.S. case against Saddam, the 48-page draft—which the officials say they believe was largely written by Scooter Libby—included prominent references to the Atta-in-Prague anecdote. Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, told a hearing organized by congressional Democrats earlier this year that one of the most dramatic moments in the preparation for the speech occurred in Tenet’s conference room at CIA headquarters. Powell was reading through the speech as part of a final rehearsal before leaving for New York. According to Wilkerson’s account, as Powell proceeded, Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national-security adviser (who is now the national-security adviser) asked what happened to the Atta-in-Prague story, which Powell had omitted. According to Wilkerson, Powell replied, “We took it out, and it’s staying out.”

According to portions of the new Senate report that were not censored, the anecdote about Atta meeting Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence station chief, in Prague originated with a “single source” for Czech intelligence. Investigations by the CIA and FBI determined that in the years before 9/11, Atta had indeed visited Prague on at least two occasions. But according to a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency paper quoted in the Senate report, investigators trying to substantiate the single-source claim about Atta’s 2001 Prague meeting found “no photographic, immigration or other documentary evidence” to back it up. Investigations by the FBI and CIA also turned up evidence that Atta was in the United States on days shortly before and shortly after the alleged Prague meeting. The CIA also turned up information indicating that for most of the day the alleged meeting occurred, Atta’s alleged Iraqi interlocutor, al-Ani, was not even in Prague but rather was visiting a city about 60-90 minutes away. Al-Ani also denied to U.S. interrogators after the U.S. invasion of Iraq that he had ever met with Atta in Prague, or anywhere else.

Even after most career intelligence operatives and analysts had begun to doubt the credibility of the Atta-in-Prague story, some administration hard-liners still were touting it as a possible Saddam-9/11 smoking gun and scrounging around for scraps of corroboration. In a secret briefing prepared for delivery to White House officials including Hadley and Libby in September 2002, officials working for Douglas Feith, then the hard-line head of the Pentagon’s policy development branch, included a special slide about the purported meeting that included an allegation that “several workers at Prague Airport identified Atta following 9/11 and remember him traveling with his brother Farhan Atta.” When earlier versions of the same briefing were presented to CIA officials and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, however, the Prague slide was not included. Several former intelligence officials who worked directly on investigations of Saddam’s alleged Al Qaeda ties said that they had never heard of the allegation about Atta’s brother, even though defense officials claimed this had been reported through normal intelligence channels. In a footnote to their new book, Isikoff and Corn report that Atta had two sisters, but no brother.

While some senators did dispute whether references to the censored CIA cable about Atta in Prague should be included in their new report, all but one Republican member of the Intelligence Committee voted to endorse the more sweeping conclusions comparing pre-war and postwar intelligence findings about Saddam and Al Qaeda. Among the findings: Saddam’s dealings with Al Qaeda were tentative and wary rather than collaborative, and Saddam’s intelligence service once warned him that the United States might try to make up or exploit any Iraqi links to Al Qaeda for propaganda purposes.

In a section of the Senate report that is not questioned by administration supporters on the committee, investigators also produce strong new evidence undermining a key section of Powell’s U.N. speech, in which the secretary of State claimed that the presence in Baghdad, during the spring and summer of 2002, of alleged Al Qaeda associate Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi demonstrated evidence of a possible relationship between Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda. The new Senate report says that after the U.S. invasion, American personnel in Baghdad discovered evidence that Saddam’s government considered Zarqawi an outlaw and made unsuccessful efforts to track him down and capture him. Postwar investigations turned up no evidence Saddam’s government ever had friendly dealings with Zarqawi, who later gained worldwide notoriety as the beheader of U.S. hostages and self-proclaimed leader of jihadi forces in post-Saddam Iraq.

Please read the last paragraph in the preceding quote box, before continuing:

In a post earlier this week, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...24&postcount=3
I offered at least 16 news reports, many with links, that contradicted VP Cheney's comments, last sunday, to Tim Russert, on national TV, with regard to Cheney's "answer", that invasion of Iraq was justified, because

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
.....Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda......
.......we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02......

.........Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda......

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html
<img src="http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/images/iraq_header_final.gif">
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
..... But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39
<img src="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/powell-slides/images/39-350h.jpg">
Slide 39

POWELL: You see a picture of this camp. ....

..... Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.......

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/in...st/06ANSA.html
C. J. Chivers

Dateline: ERBIL, Iraq, Feb. 5
Threats and Responses: Northern Iraq
Section: A
Publication title: New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Feb 6, 2003. pg. A.22

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's assertion today that Islamic extremists were operating a poisons training camp and factory in northern Iraq appeared to surprise Kurdish officials, who greeted the claim with a mix of satisfaction and confusion.

The officials were pleased to hear an American effort to discredit their Islamist enemies, and to sense momentum toward war to unseat Saddam Hussein. But some also wondered if the intelligence Mr. Powell presented to the United Nations Security Council was imprecise.

As part of his presentation to the Security Council, Mr. Powell said a terrorist network run by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an operative of Al Qaeda, had ''helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.''

As he spoke, a monitor displayed a photograph with the caption: ''Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory, Khurmal.''

The network that Mr. Powell referred to appeared to be Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group controlling a small area of northern Iraq. Ansar has been accused of dispatching assassins and suicide bombers, of harboring Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan and of training several hundred local fighters.

The secular Kurdish government has been battling the group since 2001, and, since December, there have been indications that Mr. Zarqawi may have spent time in Ansar's territory last year.

But no Western officials had gone as far with claims of Ansar's danger as Mr. Powell did when he showed a photograph of the Khurmal factory. Mr. Powell also said that Baghdad has a senior official in the ''most senior levels'' of Ansar, a claim apparently intended to build a case that Baghdad is collaborating with Al Qaeda and, by extension, in a chemical factory.

Some here quickly seconded Mr. Powell's opinion. ''We have some information about this lab from agents and from prisoners,'' Kamal Fuad, the Parliament speaker, said.

But Mr. Powell's assertion also produced confusion tonight. One senior Kurdish official, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who is familiar with the intelligence on Ansar, said he had not heard of the laboratory Mr. Powell displayed.

''I don't know anything about this compound,'' he said.

Kurds also questioned whether Mr. Powell was mistaken, or had mislabeled the photograph. Khurmal, the village named on the photo, is controlled not by Ansar al-Islam but by Komala Islami Kurdistan, a more moderate Islamic group.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is allied with Washington and has been hosting an American intelligence team in northern Iraq for several months, maintains relations with Komala. It has been paying $200,000 to $300,000 in aid to the party each month, in an effort to lure Komala's leaders away from Ansar.

So Mr. Powell's photograph raised a question: Is the laboratory in Komala's area, meaning the Kurdish opposition might have inadvertently helped pay for it, or has the United States made a mistake?

''My sources say it is in Beyara,'' one Kurdish official said. ''Not in Khurmal.'' Ansar has a headquarters in Beyara, a village several miles from Khurmal.

Abu Bari Syan, an administrator for Komal Islami Kurdistan, the party that controls Khurmal, took an even stronger stand about Mr. Powell's claim. ''All of it is not true,'' he said.

Quote:

http://www.rcfp.org/behindthehomefro...20030210a.html
Associated Press Newswires
Copyright 2003. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, February 8, 2003

Islamic militants show press the camp Powell called poison site
By BORZOU DARAGAHI
Associated Press Writer

SARGAT, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the
camp in northern Iraq a terrorist poison and explosives training center,
a deadly link in a "sinister nexus" binding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

But journalists who visited the site depicted in Powell's satellite
photo found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed
Kurdish men, video equipment and children - but no obvious sign of
chemical weapons manufacturing.

"You can search as you like," said Mohammad Hassan, a spokesman for
the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which controls the camp and
the surrounding village. "There are no chemical weapons here."

Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties to al-Qaida, says the camp
serves as its administrative office for Sargat village, living quarters
and a propaganda video studio.....

........During his appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday,
Powell displayed a satellite photo of this camp, which was identified as
"Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal."

Powell said the camp was run by al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan
who were under the protection of Ansar al-Islam here in the autonomous
Kurdish area of Iraq in a region beyond Saddam Hussein's control.

But Powell maintained that a senior member of Ansar al-Islam was a
Saddam agent, implying a tenuous link between Baghdad and the terrorists
who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Western journalists were brought to this camp, with its distinctive
polygon-shaped fencing and nearby hills, by the Islamic Group of
Kurdistan, a moderate Muslim organization which maintains good relations
with Ansar al-Islam.

The compound, accessible by a long dirt road, is in a village of
several hundred people at the base of the massive Zagros mountains
separating Iraq from Iran.

Security appeared lax at the compound, whose jagged barbed-wire
perimeter matched a satellite photograph Powell displayed in his
Security Council presentation.

As evidence that the camp serves as a housing area, child-sized
plastic slippers could be seen in the doorways. A refrigerator had been
turned into a closet and filled with colorful women's clothes. The most
sophisticated equipment seen at the site was the video gear and
makeshift television studio Ansar says it uses to make its propaganda
films.

Ansar officials speculated that Powell was misled in his accusations
of a poison factory by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two
parties governing the autonomous northern Kurdish section of Iraq. Ansar
has been at war for two years with the PUK.

"Everything Powell said about us is untrue," said a man calling
himself Ayoub Hawleri. Other Kurds referred to him as Ayoub Afghani, who
manufactures explosives for suicide bombers.

"He was just repeating the PUK's lies," Ayoub said.

The Patriotic Union said Powell's allegations about the poison
laboratory were correct and it was in the Sargat compound in an area
accessible only to those who had come from Afghanistan and had "ties to
al-Qaida." A PUK spokeswoman said Saturday that Ansar could have moved
the facility before the journalists got there.

Though Ansar officials allowed the journalists access to the site,
they did not permit reporters to talk to anyone except two designated
Ansar officials.

Hawleri said he was shocked and surprised after watching Powell's
speech, which said Ansar harbored Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a suspected
al-Qaida operative and alleged assassin of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley
in Jordan last year.

"The first time I even heard of al-Zarqawi was on television," he
said.

The name on the photo Powell showed to the world was Khurmal, a
nearby town that is under the control of Islamic Group of Kurdistan.

Islamic Group denies there is such a camp at Khurmal and believes
Powell's satellite photo evidence misidentified the site's location.

An official at the equivalent of the local social security office
said the Sargat compound is in the district of Biyare, near the town of
Biyare where Ansar has its headquarters.

Before taking journalists to Sargat, Islamic Group took them to
Khurmal to show them the camp was not there.

Group official Fazel Qaradari said he welcomed the large contingent
of Western media to "see for themselves" that there is no such factory
in Khurmal.....

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200306040...alsealarm.html

False Alarm?
Terror Alert Partly Based on Fabricated Information

By Brian Ross and Jill Rackmill
ABCNEWS.com

Feb. 13 [2003]— A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

.......It was only after the threat level was elevated to orange — meaning high — last week, that the informant was subjected to a polygraph test by the FBI, officials told ABCNEWS.

"This person did not pass," said Cannistraro.

According to officials, the FBI and the CIA are pointing fingers at each other. An FBI spokesperson told ABCNEWS today he was "not familiar with the scenario," but did not think it was accurate.

Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted. .........

Do you trust what the Bush administration tells you, politicophile, and why would you?