from 2002: Taleban 'warned US of huge attack'
An aide to the former Taleban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, has revealed that he was sent to warn American diplomats and the United Nations that Osama bin Laden was due to launch a huge attack on American soil.
Neither organisation heeded the warning, which was given just weeks before the 11 September attacks.
The aide said he had urged the Americans to launch a military campaign against al-Qaeda but was told that this was politically impossible.
Mr Muttawakil, who was known to be deeply unhappy with the Arab and other foreign militants in Afghanistan, learned of Osama bin Laden's plan in July.
The attack was imminent, he discovered, and it would be huge. Bin Laden hoped to kill thousands of US citizens.
...
The information had come not from other members of the Taleban but from the leader of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, Tohir Yuldash, who had found refuge in Afghanistan and had good links with al-Qaeda.
The minister was deeply worried that the US military would react with deadly vengeance against Afghanistan.
...
He went first to the American consulate in Peshawar in Pakistan, then to the United Nations. But neither warning was heeded.
One US official explained why:
"We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff," he said.
"When people keep saying the sky's going to fall in, and it doesn't, a kind of 'warning fatigue' sets in."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2242594.stm
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