"Senior Pentagon officials were warned not to let the USS Cole dock in Yemen two days before terrorists attacked the ship five years ago killing 17 sailors"? What else is new? At first, it was a mystery as to why Clinton would throw the USS Cole into that sea of sharks in that Yemen port and leave them there like a sitting duck. Then we found out about a strategic prize called Socotra.
GERTZ: PENTAGON SOUGHT SPY POST OFF YEMEN COAST- October 14, 2000: "The desire for a secret intelligence base on Socotra is one reason the Pentagon chose to risk U.S. ship visits to a potential terrorist hot spot, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity." During the 1980s, the Soviet Union used Socotra to monitor "communications and military activities throughout the Arabian peninsula, the Red Sea and the India Ocean," in this oil-rich region. And Clinton wanted this prize on the proverbial "Grand Chessboard." Operatives from the CIA's "mujahideen" operations against the Soviet Union just happened to be in the neighborhood. It didn't take very long for USS Cole investigators to track this down. According to this Nov. 20, 2000 - AP report:
"The sources said the main accomplice was in charge of the operation in Yemen and coordinated between different cells involved in the attack. He reportedly told Yemeni investigators he received his orders from a man in the United Arab Emirates described as an Arab veteran of the U.S.-backed guerrilla war to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan... The sources also said two small American government planes left Aden for the United States Wednesday and Thursday carrying documents related to the case...
Ed Badolato, a former U.S. government anti-terrorism official, said the plotters were organized in cell structures that point to at least three militant Islamic groups: Egypt's al-Gamaa al-Islamiya; Afghan war veterans linked to America's No. 1 terror suspect, Osama bin Laden; or homegrown Yemeni groups...
Both the Egyptian group, which aims to overthrow its country's secular government, and bin Laden's followers have historically had strong ties to Yemen, where they have found support among Yemenis able to provide them fake travel and identification documents either out of sympathy for their cause or simply for cash."
"Egypt's al-Gamaa al-Islamiya"? Well, how about that! Who was this group's "spiritual leader" in Brooklyn, New York? Indictments were just not enough"Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman..., who is blind, was a leader of Gamaat Islamiyaa (the Islamic Group), Egypt's largest militant organization. Although he had been sentenced in absentia for terrorism in Egypt and was on a State Department watch list, he had moved to New York. Rahman was nabbed in June 1993 as nearly a dozen followers mixed explosives in a Queens garage. In a single day, the sheik's followers intended to bomb the Lincoln and Holland tunnels as well as the United Nations headquarters, FBI headquarters and the George Washington Bridge... Federal investigators determined that Rahman preached at Brooklyn's al-Farooq Mosque, where a Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden, had set up the "Mekhtab al Khidmat,"or the Afghan Services Bureau. The al-Kifah Refugee Center, an international organization that insiders said was the precursor to al-Qaida, also was operated from the mosque."
Rahman didn't show up in Brooklyn by accident. During the CIA’s Jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Rahman received four visas from "CIA agents acting as consular officers at American embassies in Khartoum and Cairo." The Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn became Rahman's "defacto headquarters," which gave birth to "the string of jihad offices that had been set up across America with the help of Saudi and American intelligence.” After the Cold War, in 1993, this "Al-Kifah, or Struggle, Refugee Center in New York, which used to recruit and raise funds for Mujahedeen headed for Afghanistan...announced it was switching its operations to Bosnia." In 1992, the GHW Bush administration decided that Izetbegovic was their man to lead the Bosnian "jihad." US Ambassador Warren Zimmerman promised Izetbegovic "all political, diplomatic and military aid" if he would renege on the Lisbon peace agreement. Of course, Izetbegovic welcomed this generous offer. The GHW Bush & Clinton administrations then "pulled the strings from the background, encouraging the world-wide Moslem agitation in favor of Izetbegovic." Many of these "strings" were from the Bin Laden network. In fact, one of the USS Cole suspects Jamal al-Badawi, "admitted to investigators that he trained in bin Laden's guerrilla camps in Afghanistan and was sent with bin Laden's forces to fight in Bosnia's civil war."
"Shaffer said that Atta, an Egyptian, had been linked to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Sheik Omar Ahmed Abdul Rahman, know as the 'Blind Sheik'"? This also came out in this Times-Herald reported dated Sept. 22, 2005: Testimony barred by Pentagon. During this time frame of Able Danger's operation from 1999 to 2001, Rahman's followers were still using that Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. This came out in the al-Moayad case, which takes us back to Yemen. From April 7, 2003:
The al-Farooq mosque was recently in the news when federal prosecutors announced charges alleging that a radical Yemeni cleric -- who in 1999 appeared at the mosque to raise money, allegedly for needy families -- in fact helped funnel millions of dollars to al-Qaeda. According to Justice Department officials, Sheikh Muhammad Ali Hasan al-Moayad told a federal informant that money he took in at the mosque went to Osama bin Laden.... Al-Farooq first became a major source of revenue for terrorist groups in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, the late Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a key figure in the latter-day international jihad movement, addressed a conference at the mosque, exhorting the faithful to carry out holy war wherever they are. Azzam's Alkifah Refugee Center -- a bogus charitable organization that ran a nationwide network out of the mosque -- was involved in both fundraising and recruitment for terrorist operations. In 1990, al-Farooq was taken over by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric who had just come to the United States from Egypt, and who for a while effectively commanded the jihad movement here."
Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad claimed that his relations with Bin Laden "dated to the years when bin Laden was battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan, a cause they shared with the United States." But al-Moayad also "helped funnel Islamist fighters to al-Qaida in Bosnia," which is also a "cause they shared with" the US "intelligence community." "Rahman is also Egyptian"? According to a BBC report on Egyptian Islamic Jihad [EIJ], Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman "is the spiritual leader of the group." And "Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the hijackers, is a known member of EIJ." This makes sense in light of Mohammed Atta's life with the Muslim Brotherhood, from "womb to tomb." Daniel Hopsicker revealed this: Mohamed Atta Senior in U.S. Two Weeks Before 9.11 Attack. Note from my comments on that thread that Mohammed Atta's father, Mohammed El-Amir, is a prominent Cairo attorney and known member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed Atta joined an engineering syndicate, which "was an unofficial base for the Muslim Brotherhood." A former CIA officer let this slip out to Seymour Hersh: "At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood...He went through Spain in touch with the Brotherhood in Hamburg.”
One of Atta's Hamburg contacts was Mamoun Darkazanli, who is "alleged to have been bin Laden’s confidant since 1997 and to have conducted business deals for al-Qaeda in Germany, Spain and Kosovo." Mohammed Atta's own "lessons ranged beyond the Koran to include the Muslim struggle, or jihad, in Palestine, Chechnya and Kosovo." That was convenient. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) training camps in Albania were "run by Osama bin Laden, and various other foreign mujahedeen" and also by the "CIA and British intelligence...while the CIA seems to have provided monetary support." It came out in the Kifah Wael Jayyousi case, that Rahman's followers had an elaborate network to "to raise money and recruit Muslim extremists to fight in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Somalia." That certains fits in with Atta's "lessons." It is not all surprising that Able Danger could have found multiple "links" between Rahman, the Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn & Mohammed Atta.
"Atta was not believed to be in the U.S., however, when he came to the attention of the team"? We know that Mohammed Atta was in the United States, in fact in the Brooklyn area, during the time frame of Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission evidently figured that nobody would bother to check this out. This is from AP - December 9, 2001
"NEW YORK -- Mohamed Atta, suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings, rented rooms in New York City in the spring of 2000 with another hijacker, a federal investigator says... Investigators confirmed that Atta and the second man stayed in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and are trying to identify anyone who may have provided support to the men.
Atta's trail in Brooklyn began with a parking ticket issued to a rental car he was driving, said a senior Justice Department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity...
Neither official would elaborate on Atta's activities in New York or identify the hijacker who accompanied him.
However, Marwan Al-Shehhi, a hijacker believed to be a relative of Atta's, entered the United States at about the same time. Atta and Al-Shehhi are believed to have been at the controls of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.
Atta, an Egyptian with ties to Islamic fundamentalists in Germany, flew to Newark, N.J., on June 2, 2000 from Prague in the Czech Republic, Czech authorities have said. The trip is his earliest confirmed visit to the United States.
The U.S. investigator said Atta and another hijacker briefly rented a room in Brooklyn in late spring 2000. They also answered a ``Room for Rent'' classified advertisement placed by a landlord in the Bronx, and also lived there, the investigator said. Authorities have interviewed landlords at both locations, the investigator said.
Also, witnesses have identified Atta as a frequent visitor at a Paterson, N.J., apartment rented by other hijackers six months before the attack. By July 2000 Atta and Al-Shehhi were taking pilot lessons at a flight school in Venice, Fla.
Atta has emerged as a central figure among the hijackers. In the months before the terror attacks he was seen in Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, California and Nevada with the men who went on to hijack four jetliners on Sept. 11..."
If Atta's June 2000 visit to Prague doesn't seem to fit into this narrative, this is because it doesn't. As I said in this post, Re: [REPOST] MEETING THAT SPAWNED 9/11, this "hijacker meets Saddam's agent in Prague" story was fabricated for obvious reasons. Then when this was revealed to be a hoax, this was explained away as just "mistaken identity," as opposed to a fabrication to sell the war in Iraq. A witness did confirm that Atta was in San Diego at the residence of FBI informant Abdussattar Shaikh "between August and early December of 2000." This is the same FBI informant, who provided housing for hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi. These two had "fought together as Islamist warriors in Bosnia in 1995." These four, Atta, Al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi were identified by Able Danger as member of a "Brooklyn cell." See: Reports: 9/11 clue hid in Tampa. Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Conway said: "We said in discussing Able Danger, (it) could inadvertently reveal classified information"? Even if this Able Danger information isn't "classified," this does demonstrate that these hijackers were well known to the US "intelligence community," long before 9-11 during two administrations. If Able Danger only involved the Clinton administration, the Pentagon in the present administration wouldn't be so determined to block testimony on Able Danger."