Top Secret Document made public - 33 communications about 9/11attack

[The Straight Story]

(Moderator please note - this is not a thread about 9/11 mihop/lihop, it is about our government, in general, not being able to function and work together and talks about more than 9/11 - but since it is mentioned-and is a focus of the document-I wanted to mention it. This is a clear case of how poorly our government has run under bush regime and more grounds for impeachment - if you feel this is better off in 9/11 group then please move, but I wanted to stress this more than 9/11 here)

2. Finding: During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community
experienced a significant increase in information indicating that Bin Ladin and al-
Qa’ida intended to strike against U.S. interests in the very near future.

Discussion: The National Security Agency (NSA), for example, reported at least
33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack in 2001. Senior U.S.
Government officials were advised by the Intelligence Community on June 28 and July
10, 2001, that the attacks were expected, among other things, to “have dramatic
consequences on governments or cause major casualties” and that “ttack preparations
have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”

-----

4. Finding: From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the
Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were
contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This
information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or
collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.

Discussion: the information often sketchy, the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did
receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons. For
example, the Community received information in 1998 about a Bin Ladin operation that
would involve flying an explosive- laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001,
about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. The
FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several
others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part
apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community
and to other agencies].

The Transportation Security Administration, for example, advised the Committees
that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had not received three of these reports,
that two others were received by the FAA but through State Department cables, and that
one report was received by the FAA, but only after September 11, 2001. Many
policymakers and U.S. Government officials apparently remained unaware of this kind of
potential threat and the Intelligence Community did not produce any specific assessments
of the likelihood that terrorists would in fact use airplanes as weapons. For example,
former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified before these Committees that:
I don’t recall being presented with any specific threat information about an
attack of this nature or any alert
highlighting this threat or indicating it was any more likely than any other.
That testimony is consistent with the views publicly expressed by the current
National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, shortly after the September 11 attacks.
Similarly, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz testified that he
had not been made aware of this type of potential threat:

I don’t recall any warning of the possibility of a mass casualty attack using
civilian airliners or any information that would have led us to contemplate
the possibility of our shooting down a civilian airliner.
Even within the Intelligence Community, the possibility of using aircraft as
weapons was apparently not widely known. At the FBI, for instance, the FBI Phoenix
field office agent who wrote the so-called “Phoenix memo” testified that he was aware of
the plot to crash a plane into CIA Headquarters, but not the other reports of terrorist
groups considering the use of aircraft as weapons. The Chief of the Radical
Fundamentalist Unit in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division also confirmed, in an Joint
Inquiry interview, that he was not aware of such reports.

5. Finding: Although relevant information that is significant in retrospect regarding
the attacks was available to the Intelligence Community prior to September 11,
2001, the Community too often failed to focus on that information and consider and
appreciate its collective significance in terms of a probable terrorist attack. Neither
did the Intelligence Community demonstrate sufficient initiative in coming to grips
with the new transnational threats. Some significant pieces of information in the
vast stream of data being collected were overlooked, some were not recognized as
potentially significant at the time and therefore not disseminated, and some
required additional action on the part of foreign governments before a direct
connection to the hijackers could have been established. For all those reasons, the
Intelligence Community failed to capitalize fully on available, and potentially
important, information. The sub-findings below identify each category of this
information.
of “the Bojinka Plot” in the Philippines, discussed later in this report.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/part1.pdf

Basically speaking as I read over this I see how inept our government has (and is) being run.

Things like this:
Despite having all this information, and despite the republication of CTC
guidance regarding watchlisting procedures in December 1999 (see Appendix, “CTC
Watchlisting Guidance – December 1999”), CIA did not add the names of these two
individuals to the State Department, INS, and U.S. Customs Service watchlists that are
used to deny individuals entry into the United States.

WTF is wrong with our intelligence community?

[Warpy]

1. It sounds like the field agents were doing their jobs

but the political patronage appointees running the agencies had their heads WAY up their butts and the administration was ignoring the real threat while dreaming of glory in Iraq.

It's very typical of this bunch, dreaming and magical thinking while ignoring the very real problems rushing headlong toward them (and us).

[autorank]

2. Recommended!

[The Magistrate]

3. In Short, Sir,

All the pug-marks of a classic bureaucratic cock-up.

[The Straight Story]

5. Still reading the whole report, it only gets worse

Clinton did try to kill bin ladin too.

The military was so picky on intelligence it wanted to know what side of the door hinges were on, which was more info than intel had, and the military was not wanting to help out in many ways to get bin ladin.

It just keeps getting worse...

[The Magistrate]

12. The Military Apparat, Sir

Rather famously did not like President Clinton. There is no doubt in my mind some elements of the military and security services did not want to be instruments of any success for him. Unfortunately, we have long since reached a point where knowledge of the elements of court intrigue, thought to be gone with the passing of old imperiums, are essential to understanding the workings of our government today.

[The Straight Story]

15. The more I read about intelligence failures

the more I agree.

Let's say someone told you that terrorists were thinking of hijacking planes and using them as weapons, you think you might alert a lot of people? Why the heck was this not plastered all over the media? It seems like people in power let us down - and hard.

Time to remove those who have failed - fire them, and hire people who can do the job.

[The Magistrate]

18. They Have An Odd History, Sir

In most instances in the twentieth century, certainly, when a nation has been catastrophically surpised by an enemy action, the files of its intelligence services proved to have held abundant predictive information on the matter, that was ignored or misinterpeted for various reasons. Other things were considered more important; information was sequestered by turf consideratiions; the man at the top did not want to hear about it, and so on and so forth.

The last thing an intelligence service would do, though, is make a public warning. It goes against the grain of the business, and the risk of looking foolish should notyhing happen is far too great.

[EVDebs]

34. Greg Palast reported on the NSA's pre 9-11 'Policy Shift'

See No Evil: What Bush Didn't (Want To) Know About 9/11
TomPaine.com
Saturday, March 1, 2003
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=195&row=1

""Despite these tantalizing facts, Abdullah and his operations were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their working agents. Just a dumb SNAFU? Not according to a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity. After Bush took office, he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off-limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations -- at least before 9/11 -- began to die.""

NSA's PRE-9/11 'POLICY SHIFT' was away from OBL toward Bush's domestic 'enemies' (read US citizens exercising lawful right to dissent). BTW, the old '73 war plans of Nixon to seize Saudi oilfields were simply shifted and tweaked to 30 years later and moved to Iraq's oilfields.

[RBHam]

14. The Pentagon covered up Able Danger because they're implicated.

Are you saying that the Joint Chiefs are buffoons?

My guess is that "Operation Nudge Armageddon" found a more receptive response from George W Bush than "Operation Northwoods" did from John F Kennedy...

And Mr. Bush is no John Kennedy...

With all due respect, I don't believe in coincidence or incompetence in this matter.

Or did you receive an anthrax warning as well?

[The Magistrate]

19. You May Believe What You Wish, Sir

But you cannot have sufficient knowledge of that classified program to state as fact what have just stated.

Anyone who has more than a nodding acquaintance with military history will have no trouble with the idea that generals in high position can indeed be buffoons; indeed, it could be argued that is the general case rather than the exceptional one.

Is your closing remark, Sir, intended as an accusation my views are the result of intimidation in some form?

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seemslikeadream]

22. quest for truth

:hi:
for my journal

Thanks The Straight Story

Top Secret Document made public - 33 communications about 9/11attack
(Moderator please note - this is not a thread about 9/11 mihop/lihop, it is about our government, in general, not being able to function and work together and talks about more than 9/11 - but since it is mentioned-and is a focus of the document-I wanted to mention it. This is a clear case of how poorly our government has run under bush regime and more grounds for impeachment - if you feel this is better off in 9/11 group then please move, but I wanted to stress this more than 9/11 here)

2. Finding: During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community
experienced a significant increase in information indicating that Bin Ladin and al-
Qa’ida intended to strike against U.S. interests in the very near future.

Discussion: The National Security Agency (NSA), for example, reported at least
33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack in 2001. Senior U.S.
Government officials were advised by the Intelligence Community on June 28 and July
10, 2001, that the attacks were expected, among other things, to “have dramatic
consequences on governments or cause major casualties” and that “ttack preparations
have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”

-----

4. Finding: From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the
Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were
contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This
information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or
collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.

Discussion: the information often sketchy, the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did
receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons. For
example, the Community received information in 1998 about a Bin Ladin operation that
would involve flying an explosive- laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001,
about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. The
FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several
others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part
apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community
and to other agencies].

The Transportation Security Administration, for example, advised the Committees
that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had not received three of these reports,
that two others were received by the FAA but through State Department cables, and that
one report was received by the FAA, but only after September 11, 2001. Many
policymakers and U.S. Government officials apparently remained unaware of this kind of
potential threat and the Intelligence Community did not produce any specific assessments
of the likelihood that terrorists would in fact use airplanes as weapons. For example,
former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified before these Committees that:
I don’t recall being presented with any specific threat information about an
attack of this nature or any alert
highlighting this threat or indicating it was any more likely than any other.
That testimony is consistent with the views publicly expressed by the current
National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, shortly after the September 11 attacks.
Similarly, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz testified that he
had not been made aware of this type of potential threat:

I don’t recall any warning of the possibility of a mass casualty attack using
civilian airliners or any information that would have led us to contemplate
the possibility of our shooting down a civilian airliner.
Even within the Intelligence Community, the possibility of using aircraft as
weapons was apparently not widely known. At the FBI, for instance, the FBI Phoenix
field office agent who wrote the so-called “Phoenix memo” testified that he was aware of
the plot to crash a plane into CIA Headquarters, but not the other reports of terrorist
groups considering the use of aircraft as weapons. The Chief of the Radical
Fundamentalist Unit in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division also confirmed, in an Joint
Inquiry interview, that he was not aware of such reports.

5. Finding: Although relevant information that is significant in retrospect regarding
the attacks was available to the Intelligence Community prior to September 11,
2001, the Community too often failed to focus on that information and consider and
appreciate its collective significance in terms of a probable terrorist attack. Neither
did the Intelligence Community demonstrate sufficient initiative in coming to grips
with the new transnational threats. Some significant pieces of information in the
vast stream of data being collected were overlooked, some were not recognized as
potentially significant at the time and therefore not disseminated, and some
required additional action on the part of foreign governments before a direct
connection to the hijackers could have been established. For all those reasons, the
Intelligence Community failed to capitalize fully on available, and potentially
important, information. The sub-findings below identify each category of this
information.
of “the Bojinka Plot” in the Philippines, discussed later in this report.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/part1.pdf

Basically speaking as I read over this I see how inept our government has (and is) being run.

Things like this:
Despite having all this information, and despite the republication of CTC
guidance regarding watchlisting procedures in December 1999 (see Appendix, “CTC
Watchlisting Guidance – December 1999”), CIA did not add the names of these two
individuals to the State Department, INS, and U.S. Customs Service watchlists that are
used to deny individuals entry into the United States.

WTF is wrong with our intelligence community?

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mirandapriestly]

35. You got it...nt

[Psephos]

4. Cool post - wow, talk about a S.N.A.F.U. n/t

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Straight Story]

7. As I posted elsewhere, in 2000 pentagon had a simulation of plane hitting

it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=77532&mesg_id=77532

[beam me up scottie]

8. I thought this wasn't about MIHOP?

:eyes:

[The Straight Story]

9. It's not

The point was - they were aware of the dangers, to the point of planning around them.

Also a good report on iraq and intelligence failure:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.html

[beam me up scottie]

10. Right, that's why you helped plug a MIHOP video and linked to the

conspiracy forum.

It all makes sense now.

[The Straight Story]

11. I did not plug it

and B: I linked my own thread there, which showed intelligence (to some degree as this thread supports) saw the potential disaster coming and still little was done about it.

And what did they learn?

In that link I gave you read Feinstein's comments - we bungled Iraq intelligence as well. This AFTER we made huge mistakes by not deploying the intelligence we had about planes and attacks.

MIHOP? Not a fan. I see the whole ordeal as being one big screw up by idiots in government.

[mirandapriestly]

36. The US Army page is MIHOP?

now DU has you for a moderator?

[cynatnite]

13. What I'm reading out of this so far wasn't an intelligence failure...

It was a failure of the administration. I haven't read far into this...only about ten pages. This was on page eight:

Some Community personnel described the increase in threat reporting as
unprecedented, at least in their own experience. The Intelligence Community advised
senior policymakers of the likelihood of an attack but, given the non-specific nature of
the reporting, could not identify when, where, and how an attack would take place.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in his testimony, described his recollection
of the threat and the U.S. Government’s response:

We issued between January and September nine warnings, five of them
global, because of the threat information we were receiving from the
intelligence agencies in the summer, when George Tenet was
around town literally pounding on desks saying, something is happening,
this is an unprecedented level of threat information. He didn’t know where
it was going to happen, but he knew that it was coming.

*********

Also, while doing some reading, I found this old, but interesting article. It was very enlightening.

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/11/wsept11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html

******

I still think the intelligence community is getting a raw deal over 9/11 and the war. Every mouthpiece on TV blames bad intelligence when most of what I have read says otherwise.

[The Straight Story]

17. Agree to a point

I do fault them for not getting more word out though.

An interesting search on http://www.google.com/unclesam to do is:

wtc redacted

Which is how I found this and other reports (try other terms like ladin hijack).

There is also this:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0337/chap4.htm

In immediate response to 9/11, the Bureau shifted a large amount of its work effort into the counterterrorism area. As shown in Exhibit 4-1, <b>between late July and October 2001,</b> agent work effort in the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) increased dramatically while all other programs experienced decreases.
(which has numerous charts on what the fbi was doing, hours worked, etc)

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SpiralHawk]

21. kick

eom

[stefanski]

24. kick

wow. it seems unreal. incompetence? i don't know...

it seems odd that all this "incompetence" has never been punished...

in fact, for many, they've been rewarded and promoted...

strange.

[Roland99]

25. Criminal negligence on the part of this administration to heed warnings.

But, Ashcroft was sure to keep his sorry ass safe by flying charter instead of commercial aircraft starting in July, 2001.

[killbotfactory]

27. They knew an attack was coming, that much is obvious.

Did they do anything besides trying to keep their own asses safe?

[killbotfactory]

26. WTF?

So we didn't have "specific" information (time, place, method), but there were red flags being raised, and an attack was expected. Did the government do anything? Did they step up security anywhere? Does not having a time, place and method mean absolutely nothing could be done? Did they even tell the CIA to put more resources into trying to find out what was up?

[The Straight Story]

28. It seems like some just did not care

it is gross negligence and no one got fired for it. So many warning signs and they could not, or would not, put the pieces of the puzzle together. Too many heads in some ways.

Reminds me of star wars and the empire. Too much bureacratic red tape so the emperor removes it all in the name of peace. So now, instead of fixing problems, we are putting more departments under Homeland Security (a term first coined in clinton era but rejected due to implications of how it sounded) and power is getting consolidated.

It behooves the govt to find where things broke down and why and fix those in a manner that does not trample our rights - they had they info, that was working right, they just did too little with it. Thier fix (if it is one) is overkill.

[killbotfactory]

29. I guess they were too busy trying to sell us the missle defense sheild

AKA Star Wars Part Deux
AKA Pork Barrel Military Spending A Go-Go!

[bpilgrim]

33. it seems like some wanted to turn a blind eye at minimum

looks like LIHOP at best and MIHOP to me

peace

[Kablooie]

30. Did the government WANT to do anything?

A terrorist attack would be the perfect excuse to get rid of Sadaam's regime.
Attacking Sadaam was obviously the number one priority of this administration so they would do anything they could to make it happen.

[Disturbed]

31. PNAC Neo Fascists needed a "New Pearl Harbor".

The Bush Regime ignored all the warnings. I report. You decide.

[mistertrickster]

32. In 1994, French pilots foiled a plot to hijack an Air France jet and fly

it into the Eiffel Tower by Al Qaeda.

"I don't know anyone who thought that terrorists would hijack a plane and use them as missiles," Condi Rice.

Then there is the unexplained warnings that people like John Ashcroft got to stay out of commercial aircraft at the end of July . . .

"There's something happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mrs. Jones." Bob Dylan

On edit--here's a link for the French incident: http://www.unews.com/media/paper274/news/2002/09/16/News/911-Panel.Looks.Forward.Reflects.Back-274388.shtml?norewrite200603252312&sourcedomain=www.unews.com

[RBHam]

37. FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN PROBES BEFORE 11 SEPTEMBER

FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN PROBES BEFORE 11 SEPTEMBER
The Guardian (London)
Wednesday, November 7, 2001

2001 Project Censored Award Winner


Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
by Greg Palast and David Pallister

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.

FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.

The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected terrorist organisation".

WAMY members deny they have been involved with terrorist activities, and WAMY has not been placed on the latest list of terrorist organisations whose assets are being frozen.

Abdullah, who lived with his brother Omar at the time in Falls Church, a town just outside Washington, was the US director of WAMY, whose offices were in a basement nearby.

But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis".

They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan.

"There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."

Only after the September 11 attacks was the stance of political and commercial closeness reversed towards the other members of the large Bin Laden clan, who have classed Osama bin Laden as their "black sheep".

more...
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=103&row=0

[alfredo]

38. K&R