French "knew in 2001 al Qaeda was planning hijack"

[133724]

PARIS (Reuters) - French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al Qaeda threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden's network and were carefully tracking its moves.

<snip>

Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004.

The newspaper quoted a former senior official at France's DGSE secret service agency as saying that, although France thought a hijack was being planned, the DGSE did not know that the plot involved flying aircraft into buildings.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1612543820070416?feedType=RSS

[soothsayer]

1. EVERYONE warned us. Egypt, France, I think mebbe Russia. At least

that's what we were told in the early days after 9-11. Where'd all that go---down the memory hole?

[Kagemusha]

2. To be perfectly blunt, the denial was always about flying planes into buildings

There was no denial that the US knew Al Qaeda hoped to hijack planes. There was no denial that allies of the US had told the US that Al Qaeda hoped to hijack planes. Memory hole? The only thing that fell down the memory hole is that this IS NOT NEWS. It would be news if France had told the US that Al Qaeda wanted to fly planes into buildings. The last paragraph quoted makes plain France did not because it knew no such thing. And there, the story should end.

[HamdenRice]

6. It is potentially blockbuster news -- here's why

This is news because of the specificity of the material that Le Monde has obtained. While there were vague reports that French intelligence had warned US intelligence, Le Monde has now obtained 358 pages of documents from French intelligence, including, it seems, the specific reports handed over to the US. There were nine intelligence reports provided by the French to the US, the last of which is dated August 2001.

It is also hinted in the press coverage that French intelligence actually penetrated AQ. That would be very big news as well.

According to the press coverage, on Monday Le Monde ran a story that summarized the first of these reports, and plans on running more stories on the other documents.

In other words, this is a developing story. We will soon know exactly what the French told the US. The big question in this developing story is how specific the French warnings were. For the first time since 9/11 we will know exactly what a foreign intelligence agency told the US. Previously, all we knew about what foreign intelligence agencies had provided the US came through the heavily redacted presidential daily briefings that were provided to the 9/11 Commission.

Oddly, Le Monde's French language website does not seem to have this coverage. All we have so far is other newspapers reporting about what Le Monde reported, presumably in its paper version in France.

If anyone finds the reporting on the Le Monde website, please be kind enough to provide a link.

[Igel]

17. And, oddly, the big blockbuster news is that

the French were saying the same thing Rice said the US believed--perhaps because the US believed France? Perhaps you expect the French documents to say something dramatically revealing. Shucks. Hasn't happened. And that's not really news to a lot of people.

AQ wanted to hijack planes. Everybody assumed they'd hijack them if not stopped, perhaps kill a few people, and then negotiate for something. You know, the Palestinians' schtick. It's nice the French basically said the same thing as *: "Fly planes into buildings? Who knew?" Apparently the French intelligence folk and the CIA are about as smart.

The other news is that French had Uzbek informants. Obviously not very complete or faithful Uzbek informants, because they didn't say the important bit: Crash planes into buildings. It is curious, though: Uzbeks?

[JackRiddler]

11. Funny how the CIA was conducting a drill on the morning of Sept. 11th...

simulating a plane crash into the headquarters of the National Reconaissance Office near DC. This was not the first such simulation, the Pentagon having rehearsed a mass casualty event back in October 2001 to practice response... to a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

And how NORAD was simultaneously on the morning of 9/11 holding wargames involving hijacking scenarios, such that the air traffic controllers and other defenders' first responses were always to wonder if the real hijackings were part of the hijacking simulation. Funny how NORAD had already wargamed the scenario of planes crashing into high-value targets a couple of times since 1999 (says USA Today, that organ of the tinfoil brigade).

I wonder what kind of information might lead to that confluence of, as you say, unimaginable wargame scenarios.

But no one could have imagined - least of all the French, who stormed the cockpit of a hijacked plane parked in Marseilles in 1996 after they learned the hijackers intended to fly it into the Eiffel Tower. Whatever would make them think of such a possibility in 2001?

June 2001 - reports spread in MSM including Time mag of Osama Bin Ladin planning to crash a plane into George Bush's hotel or else the location of the upcoming G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. Anti-aircraft guns are placed around Genoa and the airport is closed.

(March 2001 - even a TV show, "The Lone Gunmen" imagines as the plot for a 1-hour episode the CRASHING of a hijacked passenger plane into the WORLD TRADE CENTER in New York.)

BUT REMEMBER: NO ONE COULD HAVE IMAGINED!

What anyone might have imagined is a peripheral question.

I'd like to know what the French KNEW. How did they know such a plot was in the works? Who was the source? Did they know the names of any of the potential terrorists? What were these names? Where they given to the US? What other information was passed along?

All else is wishful thinking about how things "should" be or what can be "imagined."

[Kagemusha]

12. Well, I would love to know more about the NORAD stuff.

THAT is something that has genuinely dropped into a black hole and is presumably classified left, right and center.

As for the usual "no one could have imagined" thing re: flying into buildings, that always struck me as silly - not because there's evidence the French laid it out nice and slow, but because the idea of the National Security Advisor not even having a clue about the possibility just from the powers of her own supposedly highly intelligent mind, boggles the imagination.

[bobthedrummer]

37. On 9-11-2001 STRATCOM, the US SPACE COMMAND and NORAD

were all participating in exercises involving simulations of aircraft crashing into buildings as aircraft were crashing into buildings, these exercises had names including GLOBAL GUARDIAN and VIGILANT GUARDIAN.

These were annual command level exercises, I don't believe the coincidence theory about them.

[Individualist]

15. "the story should end"?

http://tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_warnings.html

www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq36.html

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-bojinka.htm

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml

There are many more articles citing the fact that the US was given specifics about planes being used to attack buildings. All one needs to do is search the 'net.

[Kagemusha]

23. Um, then you're just proving that it's not news or new.

But by all means, take my words out of context and vent. I'm not stopping you.

[melody]

18. And there, the story should begin

If the Feds had beefed up security to stop the hijacking, it would have severely curtailed the ability for those individuals (whomever they were) to fly said airplanes, thus crashing them into buildings. The #1 terror target in the US was the World Trade Center -- the scenario of crashing planes into it was constantly discussed. Flying those planes (particularly ones newly taken off and thus full of fuel) into buildings would have been an obvious inference to any thinking individual.

We're talking about the deaths of three thousand people. The "story" should NEVER end.

[petgoat]

20. Ah, case closed. The thing is, France DID know that al Qaeda

wanted to fly airplanes into buildings, because they had
frustrated such a plot on the tarmac on Christmas Eve
in 2004. An al Qaeda affiliated group wanted to fly a
plane into Eiffel Tower.

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010924_1_n.shtml

[Chemical Bill]

29. Sorry...

G8 summit may have been Bin Laden target

Rory Carroll in Rome, Jon Henley in Paris and Brian Whitaker
Thursday September 27, 2001
The Guardian

Two months before the attacks on New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden may have been contemplating an aerial attack against world leaders assembled in Genoa for a G8 summit.
Rumours that the terrorist suspect planned to pack an aircraft with explosives and launch it at the Ducal palace containing George Bush have been given weight by the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.

<snip>

On a state visit to Paris, the president told French media that Egypt's intelligence services had intercepted plans for "an aeroplane stuffed with explosives" to plunge into Genoa. A warning was passed to the US, he said.

When they installed a missile defence system at Genoa's airport in July and enforced a no-fly zone, the Italian authorities were derided, but now they feel vindicated.

<more>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,558918,00.html

The Italians took the threat of aircraft crashing into buildings seriously, two months before 9/11.

Bill

[John Q. Citizen]

3. The accused hijackers and their associates were being protected by

people in the US government.

Look at the FBI agent who tried 50 or 60 times to get his boss to clear his request to get a warrent for Moussaou's computer.

That is one of many many investigations thwarted from on high.

[meldroc]

9. Yep. The Bush Adminstration was warned dozens of times.

The FBI raised the biggest stink they possibly could, and it was ignored.

On top of that, we have the delays in NORAD and scrambling of Air Force jets, the funkiness about Building 7, and Bush's very real connection to the Bin Ladens.

It was definitely a LIHOP. A Reichstag Fire.

[truedelphi]

10. Your point needs to be drummed at many times until people get it.

"one of many many investigations thwarted from on high"

War games on 9/11 in which there were to be graphic simulations of planes flying into American landmarks.


Towers that fall to the ground at roughly the speed of gravity.

Debris at Ground Zero many many times less than what it should be -except so much of the Twin Towers was vaporized into dust that avalanched into the adjoining streets (Remember the footage of people running for the lives away from the avalanche of clouds of dust?)

[John Q. Citizen]

19. My opinion is that the protection and aid given to the accused hijackers

is the best evidence left.

All the physical evidence from the towers and #7 is gone, as is all the evidence from any of the impact sites.

So while I think it's highly unlikely that 3 sky scrappers suffering from 3 random events all experienced total rapid global collapse, in terms of evidence it remains just highly unlikely, but not provable.

Also, the information Sybil Edmonds has and the information Indira Singh has is very relevant and useful.

[underpants]

26. Massad was *IN* the US looking for them. Putin called himself

Putin later retracted that but then he also said that "another party" contacted him about hitting the US troops that were clearly going to go to AFghanistan but he said he declined the offer. Putin said that standing next to W at Camp David and in front of the entire press corp. THAT went down the memory hole too.

[JackRiddler]

4. Jordan correctly named the operation, "The Big Wedding"

Russia according to Jane's Defense provided a warning reinforced by a message from the president to the effect that 25 would-be pilots were already in the US planning an attack.

The Israeli Mossad provided the names of the four alleged ringleaders on a list of 19 (!) al-Qaeda terrorists preparing an attack in the US.

Pentagon surveillance program Able Danger identified the same four ringleaders as an al-Qaeda cell preparing an attack in the US. It was shut down.

Atta & Co. were under surveillance by the CIA in Germany right up until their departure for the US. The CIA attempted to recruit one member of the Hamburg cell.

Two of the alleged ringleaders spent two months living under the roof of an FBI informant in San Diego whose name is classified in the 9/11 Commission, although he has been named in the media (Abudssattar Shaikh).

FBI investigations that could have uncovered the alleged hijackers were obstructed, those responsible were promoted.

Atta supposedly never entered the US before June 2000 yet was seen in the months prior by various witnesses cited in MSM - acting very conspicuously - and identified as being in the US prior to June 2000 by Able Danger.

Hypothesis: The alleged hijackers enjoyed a veil of protection while in the United States.

Able Danger Round-up

August 2005: An annotated, comprehensive archive of articles on admissions that Mohamed Atta and three of the other alleged 9/11 hijacking ringleaders were under surveillance by military intelligence a year before September 2001. More proof that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash; and why there is far more to the story than The New York Times has reported...
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050830191215604

(...)

To review: German authorities fed the CIA information about the Hamburg cell. Without telling the Germans, the CIA independently observed the Hamburg cell in Germany, at least until Atta and al-Shehhi left for the United States. Once they were in the United States, Able Danger identified Atta and al-Shehhi and was blocked from passing their names to other agencies. The Mossad knew about them, and passed their names to the CIA. The CIA was on the tail of Almidhar and Alhazmi before they came to the US, and spied on them at the Kuala Lumpur conference that supposedly initiated the 9/11 attacks. That pair stayed in San Diego with an FBI informant, but the FBI says it didn''t know. They were only put on the general watch-list in August 2001. On Sept. 11, the FBI immediately knew which flight schools to visit to pick up the trail of Atta & co. Finally, the FBI timeline suggests Atta was in two places at once in the spring of 2000.

No matter where Mohamed Atta went, someone was spying on him. But the official story would have us believe each of these surveillances was an isolated incident, and that the failure to stop 9/11 was due to a series of oddities, coincidences and close calls, with no pattern behind it all except for bureaucratic intransigence.

Now recall the long-known accounts of how FBI officials at the Islamic Radicals Unit prior to Sept. 11 actively obstructed and killed field investigations that could have led to the alleged 9/11 perpetrators. (See links to stories here.) Add in the stories of high-level foreign intelligence warnings from various countries, including specific information that the United States would be attacked using hijacked planes directed against prominent targets. Add the widespread knowledge that 9/11 was imminent among individuals who tried to warn the United States, and the reports of insider trading based on prior knowledge of the 9/11 events.

There is an explanation for these facts that is simpler than the official theory of luck for the hijackers and stupidity in government. The alternative hypothesis holds that a network ensconced within multiple US and allied foreign agencies was aware of the alleged 9/11 plotters'' movements, and acted to protect them by blocking information flows and suspending investigations.

[JackRiddler]

34. kick & kick

[liberal N proud]

5. Lets not let anyone forget that the Clinton Admin told the bu$h regime

to do something about bin Laden.

But the bu$h regime was too worried about the missing W keys on their keyboards.

[thereismore]

7. Noone could have anticipated that the French would taddle-tale. nt

[AzDar]

8. LIHOP, baby....casus belli. n/t

[rec_report]

13. K&R. n/t

[KansDem]

14. Bush knew: Why do you suppose he sat and did nothing when told by Andy Card...

...that we were under attack?


Bush knew...

[bobthedrummer]

16. It was LIHOP

[HamdenRice]

21. French readers: Here is the link to the Le Monde story

My French has deteriorated dramatically so it's going to take me a while to digest it:

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-896448,0.html

[Kagemusha]

24. I looked it over...

My French reading ability is pretty robust in spite of all efforts to consign it to history. :) Anyway, some aspects...

- The French point out that the significance of various aspects was a lot more apparent after 9/11 than before it. French intel had expectations about what was normal for terrorists and expected normality more often than not.

- Al Qaeda terrorists had a lot of robust arguments about the means to use. Their intent was never in doubt, only the methodology.

Thing is, that was clear several years ago.

- It was clear to French intelligence that Osama was a bad man planning bad things in the time prior to 9/11.

- The last page notes various other subjects covered, like the Al Qaeda financial network, the limits of Saudi influence in Afghanistan, and heavy skepticism that the Saudi royals were doing nearly as much as they could have against Osama.

Makes a nice story, but the pile of documents seems to simply be adding volume to the details that were known years ago, as I see it...

[zbdent]

22. How much do you want to bet that some freepiot will try to blame the

French for 9/11 ... for not telling the Bush administration?

You know they're sure to try to pull that one off ...

:puke:

[JackRiddler]

25. This is what certain other quarters do with the Israelis...

even though they provided very specific, actionable information, it's implied they didn't and are therefore responsible. Bullshit.

The interesting questions, the only interesting questions for the start: How did all these countries know? Where was the information coming from, in each case? What exactly was the information, in each case? When we know that, we'll know what else to ask (who ended up knowing what when, and who didn't know what why?)

[Supersedeas]

27. the 9/11 Commission was a joke...still is...just ask Dimson

[The Count]

28. Here's a flasf-film on that

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/chainsaw.htm
http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/heknew.htm

the best one referring French intelligence:
http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/startrek.htm

[HamdenRice]

30. Here's some blockbuster info from the Le Monde story...

The Le Monde article states:

Selon lui, la crédibilité du canal ouzbek trouve son origine dans les alliances passées par le général Rachid Dostom, l'un des principaux chefs de guerre afghans, d'ethnie ouzbek lui aussi, et qui combat alors les talibans. Pour plaire à ses protecteurs des services de sécurité de l'Ouzbékistan voisin, Dostom a infiltré certains de ses hommes au sein du MIO, jusque dans les structures de commandement des camps d'Al-Qaida. C'est ainsi qu'il renseigne ses amis de Tachkent, en sachant que ses informations cheminent ensuite vers Washington, Londres ou Paris.

The public now knows, I think for the first time, an important source of western intelligence agency information about the 9/11 plot. The google computer generated translation which you can read in the 9/11 Forum does not quite convey the meaning of the paragraph.

The French were getting their intelligence from the notorious Uzbek warlord in Afghanistan, Gen. Rashid Dostum. According to the article, Uzbekistan had a militant Islamic movement which was unhappy with the pro-American Uzbek government. These Islamic militants went to Afghanistan for terrorist training by AQ and an Uzbek radical Islamic organization, the MIO, was set up.

Dostum was under the protection of Uzbekistan's intelligence agency. (According to most sources, pre 9/11 he was living in Turkey.) According to the le Monde article, to please his protectors, Dostum had some of his men pretend to be Uzbek radicals, and they infiltrated the command structure of the MIO in the AQ camps.

This is quite a revelation, because most press reports, based on government sources, claim that the west had few or no "human intelligence" operatives (ie human spies) on the ground within AQ. Of course there were Pakistanis but we were told they were unreliable, uncooperative or unforthcoming because they were actual Islamic radicals themselves. This places intelligence operatives who are members of the organization of a warlord who is a client of Turkish, Uzbek, French and US intelligence right inside the AQ camps. The article says that intelligence flowed right out of the AQ camps through the MIO infiltration, via Gen. Dostum, to Washington, London and Paris. The old excuse -- that our Pakistani intelligence resources were too unreliable and of dual loyalty for us to know what was happening in the AQ camps -- no longer holds water.

In other words, AQ was much more heavily infiltrated by western affiliated, non-Pakistani intelligence assets than we had been led to believe.

Dostum, btw, received a huge amount of negative press coverage toward the climax of the US invasion of Afghanistan. You may remember that after a mass surrender of Taliban fighters after the seige of Kunduz, Dostum had the prisoners locked in shipping containers and transported. Deprived of food and water for days, they began clawing at each other to drink the sweat off of each other's bodies. When they shouted that they were dying of thirst, Dostum had his soldiers fire into the shipping containers, allegedly killing thousands.

[JackRiddler]

35. Very interesting!

Especially in light of how Dostum was then made into the enemy after the US occupation of Iraq.

I have a feeling someone will be translating all this stuff sooner or later and look forward to it.

Osama wasn't divorced from everyone in his family, or from his old contacts. His outfit was closely tied up with ISI and infiltrated by multiple agencies. Many of the Mujahedeen operations coincided with interests of Western intel agencies, as in former Yugoslavia and Chechnya. Some of "his" leading agents like Ali Mohamed were working for "us." The US was getting information about the movements of the alleged 9/11 perps and keeping them under observation itself. The mode of attack was so "imaginable" that it was "coincidentally" being rehearsed by the CIA and military on 9/11/2001 itself.

When all this gets left out of the official investigations, that's a cover-up. And I have a right to speculate what it means without artificially limiting the possibilities to the reassuring fairy tale of mass serial total incompetence by everyone (all of whom were then promoted, even as the most important whistleblowers were disciplined and fired).

More than this, however, we the people have the right to the answers and the duty to demand them, knowing that when such important information is withheld (even as 9/11 is used as the excuse for every atrocity in our name), we no longer have anything but tyrants in charge.

[JackRiddler]

39. Correction to my post 35...

Uzbekh warlord and former communist supporter Dostum was declared an enemy after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 (not Iraq, as I mistakenly wrote above).

[Dr Ron]

31. Response to conservative spin

Conservatives are twisting history to blame Clinton and ignore how Bush ignored multiple warnings. I have a post debunking this at Liberal Values:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=1407

[Rex]

32. They allowed it to happen, the BFEE needed 9/11 to distance the

2000 selection. Worked like a charm for the BFEE. Up until Iraq and Katrina.

[Blue_Tires]

33. k+r

[bobthedrummer]

36. Many Americans knew and were shut down by politically appointed

gatekeepers at strategic positions throughout the corrupted system.

The FBI's Collen Rowley and her teammates knew, as the buildup to a long planned invasion of Iraq proceeded a Democratic Congressman from Kansas, Dennis Moore, got some mention of that on record in June 2002
http://www.moore.house.gov/nr.asp?nr_id=221

Sibel Edmunds was hired to translate and review previous translations for accuracy from a number of compartmented reports-many of those reports were warnings that were disregarded. She talked to Amy Goodman about this in 2004.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/1616221

KICK.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

38. Besides this story, the French warned the FBI about Moussaoui before 9/11

If they'd followed up on the tips, the FBI might have discovered the actual plot to fly planes into buildings in NYC.