People's Democracy

THE official line of the Bush administration that September 11 took them completely by surprise was torn to shreds as a spate of revelations brought home the truth that the biggest terrorist attacks on US soil could have definitely been prevented. These revelations led one to believe that the American intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, consciously chose to allow the terrorists to carry out their task and that the US government welcomed the impending terrorist attack as a convenient pretext for the launching of a long-planned campaign of American military aggression.

As the revelations about advance warnings and prior knowledge kept pouring in, the government has launched a massive cover-up. US president George W Bush termed the calls for appointment of a bipartisan commission, modeled on the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of John F Kennedy, as a "distraction" which might "jeopardize our intelligence-gathering capacity". Vice President Dick Cheney has warned the Senators and Congressmen, who are calling for a thorough probe, saying that such calls would give "aid and comfort" to the enemy.

Though a joint session of the House and Senate intelligence committees began taking testimony from June 4 on the performance of the US intelligence agencies in the period leading up to the September 11 attacks, Bush may well succeed in the cover-up as the congressional investigation is nothing but a fraud. "Both the personnel of the committee and the procedures it has adopted demonstrate that both parties-Republican and Democrats, together with the White House, seek to protect the power and authority of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies." commented one news report.

Among the revelations of the past fortnight, the most damaging one to Bush administration came from Newsweek magazine which reported in its latest issue that CIA had identified two of the future suicide hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, as early as January 2000. It got wind of an al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur held in January 2000, and in coordination with Malyasian intelligence service, followed the terrorists and photographed them. A few days after this meeting, CIA tracked one of the terrorist Nawaf, as he flew to Los Angeles. It later knew that Khalid Almihdhar also was on the same flight.

Knowing well they were linked to al-Qaeda and that they had just attended a major planning meeting, the CIA chose neither to alert the FBI to track their movements in the US nor inform the INS which could have prevented their entry into the country. "During the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their real names, obtaining driver’s licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools—until the morning of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.", stated the Newsweek report. FBI has now come out with a detailed chart showing how they could have uncovered the entire plot of the al-Qaeda hijackers and nab all 19 of them if only CIA had alerted them in January 2000.

Though the Bush administration is now trying to portray this as a mere "failure to connect the dots", it is clear there is much more to it. The report in a French daily, Le Figario describing how Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official while undergoing treatment for chronic kidney infection in the American hospital in the United Arab Emirates last July ( see p-12 of People’s Democracy, November 18, 2001 issue) exposes the close links the CIA had with al-Qaeda.

Another major new evidence that high-level government officials deliberately turned a blind eye to advance warnings of the September 11 terrorist attacks came in a detailed letter from a top FBI official Colleen Rowley in Minneapolis. She sent this on May 22 to FBI headquarters and to the US Senate. In her 13-page memo she named specific individuals in FBI headquarters who served to "blockade" the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, now charged as a co-conspirator in the September 11 suicide hijacking. Time magazine published excerpts of this letter in their recent edition.

An official at FBI headquarters actually changed the text of the formal request filed by the Minneapolis office for authorization to begin an investigation into Moussaoui under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The effect of the alteration was to make it less likely to win approval from the secret court that handles such applications, Rowley charged in her letter.

As Rowley detailed in her letter, officials at FBI headquarters rebuffed several urgent requests from the Minneapolis office, claiming there was not sufficient evidence that Moussaoui was connected to a foreign terrorist organization. They maintained this stance even after French intelligence sources reported on August 27 that Moussouai had connections to an Islamic fundamentalist killed in Chechnya as part of a force recruited by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization.

Such authorizations are routinely given, but in this particular case the FBI headquarters did everything possible to deny it. This frustrated the agents to no end and as one press report said some agents even joked "Osama seems to have penetrated into FBI headquarters also."

To say the least, the role of FBI top brass is puzzling.

Bush administration, shortly after assuming office, slowed down investigations of al-Qaeda and terrorist networks in Afghanistan in order to deal with the Taliban on oil. When it failed to make a breakthrough, it made full-fledged plans to launch an offensive to remove Taliban and put in their place a pliable ruler. NBC News reported last week that on September 9- two days before the attack on WTC and Pentagon- Bush had on his desk a draft presidential directive which "outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the September 11 attacks". This draft was prepared through a process of consultation over many months, involving the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and other security agencies.

Another point where Bush was caught lying - and ultimately forced to confess-was about receiving any prior warnings. Till eight months after the attacks, the White House spokesman and other officials kept on repeating that they had no prior warnings about these attacks. But CBS News broke the story on May 15 that Bush had received a CIA briefing on August 6, five weeks before the attacks, which suggested that an airplane hijacking by terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden was an imminent possibility. This story led to many demands from various quarters for a full-scale congressional inquiry.

White House spokesman had to admit that Bush did receive the briefing but there was absolutely no idea that the hijacked planes could be used as missiles. Even this lie was countered by citing the Genoa G-8 summit experience. After warnings from number of sources that a hijacked airplane filled with explosives might be crashed into the conference building, the Italian authorities deployed anti-aircraft guns and banned local flights. Bush spent his nights on a US navy warship in the harbor, because of security concerns. The summit was held in July 20-22, 2001. Yet the spokesman was saying that they had no idea the airplanes would be used as missiles.

Inspite of receiving briefing one month in advance, Bush had not initiated any preventive measures at the airports. There was total inaction. With the kind of revelations coming, it will be hard to believe that this inaction was due to incompetence. More probably, it could have been a deliberate inaction. But the unraveling of the reasons for this deliberate inaction may take much more effort.