More Fun from Back Issues of Newsweek - 1/10/2000

[ET Awful]

I'm unable to find this on line, but I have the issue in front of me on my desk, so typing directly from that issue (I'll simply type some excerpts of what was in the news in January of 2000). I'm too lazy right now to type the whole article in (besides, that would violate the "4 paragraphs" rule).

The Future of Terrorism

In many countries, when police want to clear the streets of any dangerous characters, they "round up the usual suspects" and put them in jail. In the United States, the FBI engages in a more discreet practice known as knock-and-talk. At dawn last Thursday, the day before New YEar's Eve, FBI agents in a half-dozen cities across the country knocked on the doors of about 50 people whose phone numbers had shown up in the phone records of Ahmed Ressam, the 32 year-old Algeiran who had been caught earlier in December smuggling a carload of bomb-making material into the United States. Only a few arrests were made, mostly for immigration violations, and only in one place, a section of Brooklyn known as Little Pakistan, did the raid look like a scene form the movies. There a counterterror force clad in black pullover masks and body armor ran, shouting, into an apartment building to arrest Abdel Ghani, an alleged co-conspirator of Ressam's. The main purpose of the knock-and-talk dragnet, FBI sources said, was to let any terrorist know that the government would be watching closely at the turn of the millenium. . . . .

. . . . top officials believe there is a loose network of Islamic extremists planning terrorist attacks in the United States - and those are just the ones they know about.

__________

It goes on in that vein for a while giving some decent information, and then we encounter this paragraph near the end of the article . . .

___________


Both Ressam and Ghani may be low-level "mules" assigned to transport the bombs so others may set them off. The FBI is looking for a large rplot, possibly tied to bin Laden. Investigators say that Ressam recenlty visited an Afghan training camp believed to be controlled by bin Laden. An FBI document that was described to Newsweek claims that attendees at a conference of terrorists in Afghanistan in November 1997 - co-hosted by bin Laden - inclued "U.S. attendees" from New York, Illionois, Indiana and North Caroline. All expenses, the document notes, were paid for by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban group.

Does that mean bin Laden has a network ready to strike? In Washington, where funding for counterterrorism has almost doubled, to $10 billion, in the last five years, and where the CIA and FBI, after years of feuding, are cooperating better, the answer is: nobody really knows . . . .

___________

So, we have a Newsweek article from January of 2000 saying that not only is the cooperation better between the FBI and CIA, but that funding for antiterrorism efforts has more than doubled. . . all under Clinton's watch.

Once again, it kind of gives lie to the bullshit arguments we hear about Clinton not doing anything and about his administration blocking cooperation between the FBI and CIA eh?

[Al-CIAda]

1. 'Bin Laden must have had a mole in the FBI" -Coleen Rowley nt

[ewagner]

2. Good catch

In other words, all the crap about Clinton's failures in regard to terrorism are pure Repuke revisionism.....like always......

[ET Awful]

4. One of my co-workers found a 1/2 dozen or so back issues of

Newsweek when she was getting ready to move. She brought them in to show people as a curiosity, and I snapped them up after everyone was done.

Some great stuff in some of them :) One issue about Clinton's acquittal, one about Y2K stuff (which is the same issue I quoted above), one about JFK, Jr.'s plane crash, etc. All have some interesting articls that are pertinent today.

[ironman202]

3. this FBI practice was very common back in the 60's

they kept files of the usual suspects in every town, and if the president or something was going to that town, they'd round them all up for a few days and charge them with Mopery with Intent to Creep or Attempted Suspicion.