Is Al Qaeda That Stupid, or Do They Really Think We Are That Stupid?

[spooked911]

From a NY Times article this morning on foiled terror plots:

"Mr. Mohammed envisioned carrying out a new plot on targets in the West Coast in 2002, after the Sept. 11 attacks."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/politics/07prexy.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1128686427-lMYfPCdFbCC52ij1y1qpIg&pagewanted=all

The article earlier says this was a hijacked airplane plot:

"a failed effort in 2002 to use hijacked airplanes to attack "targets on the West Coast,""

and apparently there was

"a similar plot on the East Coast in 2003."



Okay. What does this really mean? What is going on here?

First, I will make one key assumption-- after 9/11, a true plot by terrorists to hijack airplanes and take them over simply would not work. First, security was heightened and passengers were screened better. Second, other passengers on an aircraft would not sit passively if a few poorly armed Arabs tried to take over a plane. Third, we have to assume that the FAA and the US Air Force would get their act together, and would intercept a hijacked airplane in a timely manner. This is all according to the official story, of course.


What do these other hijacking plots after 9/11 tell us?

There are only two real possibilities:
1) Al Qaeda (represented by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed here) is simply stupid and delusional to think they could "pull off" another hijacking attack, or
2) Al Qaeda is simply a fake organization whose job is to dream up "terror plots" that can then be co-opted by Western intelligence agencies for their own ends.

Of course, these are not mutually exclusive and it is likely that Al Qeada has both delusional and fake elements.

What this story says about the US media and the US public-- that they fall for this garbage-- is another question entirely.

An interesting issue is how much Bush knows these plots are bogus, or whether he has been kept in the dark and believes all this stuff about Al Qaeda.

*I think actually that Al Qaeda terrorists did NOT hijack planes and pilot them into the targets on 9/11.

[skeeterbit]

1. Oooh..

This sounds like MIHOP!

[spooked911]

2. welcome to DU!!!!!!!

:toast: :party:

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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

[philb]

4. I agree; and its also known that if there is a real terrorist version of

al-Qaeda, it has been infiltrated; so at a minimum there are both of the versions you describe. Likely the only actual terrorist orientation is at the local level in some places where individuals and groups have been alienated by actual or perceived injustices.

If bin Laden is still alive, which doesn't seem likely to me; there has been a long time connection between he and people in the U.S. and Pakistani Gov'ts so its not clear at what point they are working together or not.

[Lilith Velkor]

5. They Really Do Think We Are That Stupid

And at this point, I'm not so sure they are wrong.

[StrafingMoose]

6. Good question indeed

But al-Qaeda doesn't even need to think them up:

The report, which reads in parts like a fantastical "spy vs. spy" manual, will also advocate tagging key terrorist figures with special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth; creating a special SWAT team to reptitiously find and destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons all over the world; and creating a "red team" of particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the United States so the government can plan to thwart them.

That's from Rumsfeld P2OG 'pro-active' terrorist catchers. They push the 'terrorists' into attacking so they can catch them or... 'fail' to catch them and say they need 10 more billions $$ for the P2OG program...

"Hey what's your job?"
"I make up MASCAL scenarios, which are particularly evil, and I get a good pay for it". :D

LINK

[philb]

8. Weren't both the 93 WTC bombing and Ok.City bombing failed

sting operations? Weren't there paid Gov't people who were part of the operations? I think I remember seeing that.

[StrafingMoose]

9. Dunno about OKC...

But the WTC '93 attacks did have an informer in the plot. Emad Salem (or Emad Ali Salem) was dumbfounded to see such inaction to prevent the bombings on the part of the FBI, he even asked one of his handler

"You think it's a good idea to meet Mr., ah, the President, Bill Clinton, to let him know?"

From the NY Times:

[spooked911]

10. Nice reprint! The the first WTC bombing was definitely MIHOP!

The FBI informant who was part of the sting operation wanted to make a fake bomb and the FBI forced him into making a real bomb-- the went that went off in the basement of the WTC.

[StrafingMoose]

12. Here's another

I've got alot of these NY Times articles if you're interested

[Kevin Fenton]

13. Informer

The FBI had an informer inside the group that did the WTC 1993 bombings but the special agent in charge had an argument with him about wearing a wire and testifying in court and the FBI gave him notice before lead bomber Ramzi Yousef arrived in the country and the WTC plot was hatched (actually, it seems that Yousef came as a replacement for Salem). It seems he might have mentioned the Yousef plot to his handler in his last meeting, but he didn't know any details and her boss had already decided he was no good, so he ignored it.

[StrafingMoose]

14. Excerpt from Salem's tape, interesting:

Salem: "Eveything was submitted with ... "
FBI Handler: "Yea, uh..."
Salem: "... and now it's questionnable."
FBI Handler: "It's not questionnable, it's like a bit out of ordinary."
Salem: "Ookay."
FBI Handler: "You know, to..."
Salem: "Alright..."
Salem: "I don't think it was, if that's what you think that's fine, I don't think that because we was starting already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center, it was built by eh eh eh supervising - supervision from the Bureau and the DA (?) and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb started to be built. By who? By your 'confidential informers', what a wonderful great case! And then he puts his head in the sand I said 'Oh no no' that's not true he is sonofabitch Ok"
FBI Handler: "Well..."
Salem: "It's built with a different way in another place and that's it."

I have the full MP3 here that was aired on WBAI radio. The FBI seems to suggest Salem was not reliable, but hearing what he tells Anticev about the plot he seemed to know alot and Anticev (or the FBI handler in the tape) doesn't react like "WTF are you saying?!" -- he seems to rather accept the reality Salem is communicating to him about the plot.


http://nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/SalemWBAI.mp3

[Kevin Fenton]

15. Salem

"I don't think it was, if that's what you think that's fine, I don't think that because we was starting already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center, it was built by eh eh eh supervising - supervision from the Bureau and the DA (?) and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb started to be built. By who? By your 'confidential informers', what a wonderful great case! And then he puts his head in the sand I said 'Oh no no' that's not true he is sonofabitch Ok"
Salem is obviously mad and the handler is trying to calm him down. I guess Salem is mad because he had his money stopped and the cell he had previously penetrated did the attack, which the FBI would have stopped if they'd listened to him.

His English is obviously not great and it's hard to tell exactly what he means all the time, although it's relatively easy to catch the general drift.

"and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb started to be built. By who? By your 'confidential informers', what a wonderful great case! And then he puts his head in the sand I said 'Oh no no' that's not true he is sonofabitch Ok"
"By who?" means by who the FBI was informed, not by who the bomb was built. Salem is the confidential informer who informed the FBI. The sonofabitch is his handlers' boss who wanted him to wear a wire and forced him out.

The 1993 WTC bombing is just a cockup by the FBI, whereas 9/11 is a cockup and a coverup.

[StrafingMoose]

16. Yup

That's why Salem taped his conversation with the FBI handlers -- to protect him from being finger pointed and scapegoated.

By I wonder if he misposke when saying 'confidential informers' instead of 'confidential informer'. I mean, Hosni Mubarak was quoted as saying Abdel Rahman (the blind Sheikh) always was on the CIA payroll. Dismissing this by saying a present Egyptian president is 'just' a conspiracy nutjob would be quite rushing to conclusions.

[Kevin Fenton]

17. Blind Sheikh

My understanding of the blind Sheikh's relationship with the CIA is that there was no direct contact between them, but, because of his attitude to jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, they turned a blind eye to what he was saying about the US and even pulled strings for him behind the scenes (like enabling him to stay in the US). In this way the CIA helped the 1993 WTC bombers, but I don't think they had specific foreknowledge.

[StrafingMoose]

18. re...

Maybe the CIA didn't, but the FBI did on this one. Anyways, what's odd is that Rahman was on a terror watchlist when he got his visa by the CIA in Sudan.

Under pressure at home, he moved to the United States in 1990 after receiving a visa at the U.S. embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum—which, U.S. officials later said, was issued in error, since he was already on a watchlist of suspected terrorists.

The CIA had, according to an old NY Times article titled "C.I.A. Officers Played Role In Sheik Visas", received as much as 7 requests made by him, but turned him down only once.

Although he was widely known for his connection to the Sadat assassination, Mr. Abdel Rahman was not placed on a State Department watch list of those ineligible for entry to the United States until 1987. At least one and perhaps two of his visa applications were nevertheless approved by the C.I.A. officers even after he was added to that list of 2.7 million foreigners

...

American officials had acknowledged last week that the diplomat at the United States Embassy in Khartoum who signed the May 1990 visa request that allowed Mr. Abdel Rahman to enter the United States was in fact a C.I.A. officer.

...

Altogether, the officials said, it is clear that C.I.A. officers granted Mr. Abdel Rahman three visas, in Cairo in 1986 and 1987 and in Sudan in 1990.

Of course, both articles suggest the usual line about 'errors', 'mistakes' and 'failures'. But that's a hell lot of mistakes altough.

And 'diplomats' are also swapable for 'CIA officers' :P

[Kevin Fenton]

20. I agree with you here

The CIA were definitely smoothing Rahman's path because they thought what he was doing was useful (until he tried to knock the WTC down that is).

[StrafingMoose]

21. Yes

But, I'm just wondering what 'good' the CIA thought he could be doing in the US _after_ the 79-89 war though.

Maybe for that Kosovo thing...

[Kevin Fenton]

7. Bush says

If Bush says something, that doesn't make it true.

The 2002 plot (if there really was one) was probably just the old 9/11 follow-up plot (the one Moussaoui was involved in). The original idea was to have it done quickly after 9/11, but some of the pilots dropped out and ZM was obviously arrested in August 2001, so it got delayed. What's the worst that could happen if a hijack failed - that they would crash the plane?

If they said that one of the two plots (the 2002 one) was connected to AQ's leadership, does that mean the other one (the 2003 one) wasn't?

[spooked911]

11. You're right that Bush could be lying except that counter-terrorism

people seemed to buy the story-- fwiw.

I would think a real smart terrorist group would try a new type of attack, but you're right in the sense that what did they have to lose by another hijacking except supposedly expendable operatives.

[philb]

19. Remember that majority of pilots said alleged hijackers didn't fly planes

majority of both military and commercial pilots on record say the alleged hijackers aremed with plastic knives and box cutters, with trained pilots many with military training behind locked doors, and several airline stewardesses in each plane with communications with the pilots, etc. could not have hijacked 4 planes without the pilots mashing a button to warn FAA. Also, that the pilots could have prevented the hijackers takeover easily by maneuvers of the plane; and 2 of the pilots had warning to be on lookout for such.