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France warned U.S. of 9/11
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goMac
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Apr 16, 2007, 04:58 PM
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...12543820070416

"French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al Qaeda threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden's network and were carefully tracking its moves.

One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled "Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals", and said the operation had been discussed in Kabul at the start of 2000 by al Qaeda, Taliban and Chechen militants.

The hijack was meant to happen between March and September 2000 but the planners put it back "because of differences of opinion, particularly over the date, objective and participants," Le Monde said, citing the report.

Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004."

Freedom fries, indeed. Perhaps the France haters owe France an apology.
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:01 PM
 
Interesting. Le Monde is quite a respectable source too.

I'd like to hear the US government's response to this.
     
voodoo
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Interesting. Le Monde is quite a respectable source too.

I'd like to hear the US government's response to this.
"We couldn't imagine the terrorist evildoers would ever think of something as horrible as that and I don't recall seeing this French report."



V
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Interesting. Le Monde is quite a respectable source too.
http://www.honestreporting.com/artic...and_Beyond.asp

By Tom Gross
The Wall Street Journal Europe
June 2, 2005
A French court last week found three writers for Le Monde, as well as the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking decision, the Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece published in Le Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped up anti-Semitic opinion.

The writers of the article, Edgar Morin (a well-known sociologist), Daniele Sallenave (a senior lecturer at Nanterre University) and Sami Nair (a member of the European parliament), as well as Le Monde's publisher, Jean-Marie Colombani, were ordered to pay symbolic damages of one euro to a human-rights group and to the Franco-Israeli association. Le Monde was also ordered to publish a condemnation of the article...
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by goMac View Post
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...12543820070416

"French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al Qaeda threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the French daily Le Monde said on Monday.

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden's network and were carefully tracking its moves.

One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled "Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals", and said the operation had been discussed in Kabul at the start of 2000 by al Qaeda, Taliban and Chechen militants.

The hijack was meant to happen between March and September 2000 but the planners put it back "because of differences of opinion, particularly over the date, objective and participants," Le Monde said, citing the report.

Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004."

Freedom fries, indeed. Perhaps the France haters owe France an apology.
This is nothing new. The US had plenty of warning. After there was no attack against the G8 meeting in Italy over the summer, the Bush administration ceased to take any warnings seriously.
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by voodoo View Post
"We couldn't imagine the terrorist evildoers would ever think of something as horrible as that and I don't recall seeing this French report."



V
Is that like: "nobody could have predicted the levies would break?"
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
I'd like to hear the US government's response to this.
The warning that someone might do something with an airplane at some point in a five-month window? What could you possibly do with a warning like that? This doesn't shrink the haystack enough to make finding the needle appreciably easier.
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
This is nothing new. The US had plenty of warning. After there was no attack against the G8 meeting in Italy over the summer, the Bush administration ceased to take any warnings seriously.
As did the other nations… This is not new news.

This is a recurrence of unverifiable data that surfaces and contains very little actionable details.

From the article:
The newspaper quoted a former senior official at France's DGSE secret service agency as saying that, although France thought a hijack was being planned, the DGSE did not know the plot involved flying aircraft into buildings.

"You have to remember that a plane hijack (in January 2001) did not have the same significance as it did after September 11. At the time, it implied forcing a plane to land at an airport and undertaking negotiations," said Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi.
This is not a silver bullet to solve 9/11, this is not Bush letting it happen and this is not any information that has not been covered before.

Move along… Tin Foil hats are on the 3rd floor.
     
voodoo
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Apr 16, 2007, 05:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Is that like: "nobody could have predicted the levies would break?"
Oh yes.

V
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Apr 16, 2007, 06:08 PM
 
Have we forgotten "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."
     
nonhuman
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Apr 16, 2007, 06:18 PM
 
Good point. We probably shouldn't be paying much attention to the press in a country where they don't even have freedom of speech.
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 06:45 PM
 
What are you, a self hating Jew?
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 06:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atomic Rooster View Post
What are you, a self hating Jew?
Are you really talking to vmarks? He is not in the least a self-hater.

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Apr 16, 2007, 08:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: View Post
Move along… Tin Foil hats are on the 3rd floor.
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goMac  (op)
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Apr 16, 2007, 08:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: View Post
This is not a silver bullet to solve 9/11, this is not Bush letting it happen and this is not any information that has not been covered before.
No, my point wasn't that Bush could have stopped 9/11 with this information. I was wondering why there is all this hate directed towards France when apparently they infiltrated Al Queada and were feeding us information.
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Apr 16, 2007, 08:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium View Post
The warning that someone might do something with an airplane at some point in a five-month window? What could you possibly do with a warning like that? This doesn't shrink the haystack enough to make finding the needle appreciably easier.
Yes...yes...what could they have done? They certainly couldn't have briefed the FAA so that flight crews could alter their "always cooperate" standard operating procedure. They certainly couldn't have started reenforcing cockpit doors. I'm sure it would have been foolhardy of them to start looking at foreign nationals training at US flightschools--oh, actually that would have been unnecessary, as they could've just paid attention to those flight schools that reported suspicious behavior...kind of like how they could've listened to the local FBI guys who had the so-called "20th hiijacker" in custody before the attack.

Sorry, 9/11 was completely preventable and the Bush administration dropped the ball, but then, why wouldn't they when 9/11 turned out to be the "new Pearl Harbor" that their PNAC think-tank people were praying for to give them free reign to carry out their agenda.
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 08:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Yes...yes...what could they have done? They certainly couldn't have briefed the FAA so that flight crews could alter their "always cooperate" standard operating procedure. They certainly couldn't have started reenforcing cockpit doors. I'm sure it would have been foolhardy of them to start looking at foreign nationals training at US flightschools--oh, actually that would have been unnecessary, as they could've just paid attention to those flight schools that reported suspicious behavior...kind of like how they could've listened to the local FBI guys who had the so-called "20th hiijacker" in custody before the attack.

Sorry, 9/11 was completely preventable and the Bush administration dropped the ball, but then, why wouldn't they when 9/11 turned out to be the "new Pearl Harbor" that their PNAC think-tank people were praying for to give them free reign to carry out their agenda.

Hell! Why didn't bush put more cops at VT this morning? It was completely preventable!! There have been shootings everywhere the past decade....how could Bush have let this happen? The warning signs were all there!
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 08:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Hell! Why didn't bush put more cops at VT this morning? It was completely preventable!! There have been shootings everywhere the past decade....how could Bush have let this happen? The warning signs were all there!
This is a really, really bad analogy.
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Apr 16, 2007, 10:37 PM
 
Damn those America-hating French! Why can't they just mind their own business?
     
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Apr 16, 2007, 11:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Or... they could have locked up everyone in the country! That would have stopped 9/11!

Geeze, you tin-foil hat Bush-bashers. No one's "something might happen, somewhere, at some time" warning short of actual details of the actual plot could have prevented 9/11. The people ultimately responsible for 9/11 are the terrorists who plotted and pulled it off, no one else.

And by the way, virtually every time since 9/11 when law enforcement has busted up terror plots before they've happened, you tin-foil hat wearing Bush-blamers have screamed "Wahh! They just made it up! There was no terror plot! They just framed some innocent Muslims! Fascism! Unreasonable fears! Wahhh!"

I've no doubt what-so-ever that the entire tin-foil hat crowd would say the EXACT same thing, and be championing the 9/11 terrorists as innocents, had they been caught beforehand.
     
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Apr 17, 2007, 05:12 AM
 
This from Fokknews, one of the prawdest news sources in Amaraca: ( )

--

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > WORLD
Report: France Told U.S. of Al Qaeda Hijack Plot Before 9/11

Monday, April 16, 2007

PARIS — France's foreign intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that Al Qaeda was preparing a hijacking plot likely to involve a U.S. airplane, former intelligence officials said Monday, confirming a report that also said the CIA received the warning.

Le Monde newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents on Usama bin Laden's terror network that were drawn up by the French spy service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001. The documents included a Jan. 5, 2001, intelligence report warning that Al Qaeda was at work on a hijacking plot.

Click here to read the Le Monde article (in French).

Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency's director at the time, said he remembered the note and that it mentioned only the vague outlines of a hijacking plot — nothing that foreshadowed the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"It wasn't about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot," Lorenzi told The Associated Press. "It was a note that said, 'They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies."'

The Sept. 11 commission's report on the four hijacked flights has detailed repeated warnings about Al Qaeda and its desire to attack airlines in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

In a version declassified last September, the report shows that the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence unit received "nearly 200 pieces of threat-related information daily from U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, CIA, and State Department."

The French warning, part of which was published in Le Monde, detailed initial rumblings about the plot.

In early 2000 in Kabul, Afghanistan, bin Laden met with Taliban leaders and members of armed groups from Chechnya and discussed the possibility of hijacking a plane that would take off from Frankfurt, Germany, the note said, citing Uzbek intelligence.

The note listed potential targets: American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also included a mention of "US Aero," but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.

Two of the airlines, United and American, were targeted months later on Sept. 11.

Lorenzi said details of the threat would certainly have been passed along to the CIA, though he was unable to specifically confirm that they had been.

"That's the kind of information concerning a friendly country that we communicate," he said. "If you don't do it, it's an error."

He also stressed that officials could not say whether the plot they outlined in January 2001 was an early warning about the attacks to come in September.

At the time, Lorenzi said, officials had heard echoes only about a standard hijacking — they had no idea Al Qaeda planned to slam planes into buildings, let alone the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Uzbek officials apparently tipped off the French about the plot. Alain Chouet, a former top anti-terrorism official within the DGSE, said that an Afghan warlord from the Uzbek community who was fighting the Taliban at the time had sent men to infiltrate Al Qaeda camps — and their information was passed down the chain to Western intelligence officials.

Confirming information in Le Monde, Chouet said such intelligence was likely checked out before it was put into a note. He also said that to the best of his knowledge, "all identified threats, even indirect and minimal ones, were passed in both directions" between the CIA and the CGSE.
FOXNews.com - Report: France Told U.S. of Al Qaeda Hijack Plot Before 9/11 - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News
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Millennium
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Apr 17, 2007, 09:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Yes...yes...what could they have done? They certainly couldn't have briefed the FAA so that flight crews could alter their "always cooperate" standard operating procedure. They certainly couldn't have started reenforcing cockpit doors.
No, they couldn't. The warning only mentioned hijacking planes; there was nothing about using the planes as weapons. Therefore, there was no reason to believe that any alteration of the "always cooperate" procedure would have been necessary.
Sorry, 9/11 was completely preventable...
Only with the benefit of hindsight, not any of the information we had before then. There's a lot that can be laid at Bush's feet, but it is grossly unfair to blame him for not being clairvoyant.
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Apr 17, 2007, 01:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE View Post
Or... they could have locked up everyone in the country! That would have stopped 9/11!
Why not? Worked for the Japanese-Americans.
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Apr 17, 2007, 02:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium View Post
No, they couldn't. The warning only mentioned hijacking planes; there was nothing about using the planes as weapons. Therefore, there was no reason to believe that any alteration of the "always cooperate" procedure would have been necessary.

Only with the benefit of hindsight, not any of the information we had before then. There's a lot that can be laid at Bush's feet, but it is grossly unfair to blame him for not being clairvoyant.
I think there's plenty of evidence that they didn't take the threat as seriously as they should have. Terrorist attempts were foiled during the Clinton administration, and other attempts were foiled after 9/11. These terrorists aren't that bright. You don't have to be clairvoyant. You just have to care about national security. Many of us have believed for a long time that this administration is utterly incompetent. Now, after the war in Iraq and hurricane Katrina, everyone else seems to think so too. If they were more competent, I believe they could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
     
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Apr 17, 2007, 08:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
Hell! Why didn't bush put more cops at VT this morning? It was completely preventable!! There have been shootings everywhere the past decade....how could Bush have let this happen? The warning signs were all there!
Oh, give me a break.

Usually whenever someone has nothing to post except some flippant hyperbole it means they're desperate not to face the facts. The facts were that the FBI's bloat and apathy coupled with an administration that did not heed warnings allowed 9/11 to happen. Bush is culpable. I think Clinton is culpable. The FBI sure as hell is culpable. Stop defending the indefensible.
     
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Apr 17, 2007, 08:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium View Post
No, they couldn't. The warning only mentioned hijacking planes; there was nothing about using the planes as weapons. Therefore, there was no reason to believe that any alteration of the "always cooperate" procedure would have been necessary.

Only with the benefit of hindsight, not any of the information we had before then. There's a lot that can be laid at Bush's feet, but it is grossly unfair to blame him for not being clairvoyant.
I beg to differ. The United States has been far too apathetic about Al Quaida, from Clinton through Bush. Clinton should have done something. Bush should've done something. As to specific evidence that was ignored, it never made it all the way up the chain of command, no. But the commanders should have been making the pursuit of that evidence a priority. It would not have taken clairvoyance to prevent 9/11, just vision and leadership. A proactive executive branch could have prevented this tragedy. So, again, we were failed on many, many levels and 3,000 Americans paid the price.

And now, because of similarly incompetent leadership from Bush, Iraq and the world are paying too.
     
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Apr 17, 2007, 08:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE View Post
Or... they could have locked up everyone in the country! That would have stopped 9/11!

Geeze, you tin-foil hat Bush-bashers. No one's "something might happen, somewhere, at some time" warning short of actual details of the actual plot could have prevented 9/11. The people ultimately responsible for 9/11 are the terrorists who plotted and pulled it off, no one else.
One argument is that Bush has been completely incompetent at everything else he has done. Therefore he was probably also incompetent in his handling of terrorism prior to 9/11. Makes sense to me. Nobody can seriously argue that Bush has handled Iraq well, or that he handled Hurricane Katrina, or a million other things.

I've no doubt what-so-ever that the entire tin-foil hat crowd would say the EXACT same thing, and be championing the 9/11 terrorists as innocents, had they been caught beforehand.
You've been wrong many times before, and you'd have been wrong with this supposition too. But I guess you are just posting for the excuse to call people names, as usual. eGore and the tin-foil-hat crowd.
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Apr 17, 2007, 09:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
I beg to differ. The United States has been far too apathetic about Al Quaida, from Clinton through Bush. Clinton should have done something. Bush should've done something. As to specific evidence that was ignored, it never made it all the way up the chain of command, no. But the commanders should have been making the pursuit of that evidence a priority. It would not have taken clairvoyance to prevent 9/11, just vision and leadership. A proactive executive branch could have prevented this tragedy. So, again, we were failed on many, many levels and 3,000 Americans paid the price.

And now, because of similarly incompetent leadership from Bush, Iraq and the world are paying too.
Sorry, I have to call BS.

While well stated, this is academic hindsight and fancy platitudes.

You grossly over-simplify the process, tie it up neat, fold the corners symmetrically and stick a bow on top. You place a priority on it in retrospect. It is highly doubtful you or anyone in the community would have know to flag X, Y and Z info and hi-priority because it screamed catastrophe. There is a constant stream of threats, you can only pursue so much. They aren't all Jack Bauer.

It is not like they have recorded calls confirming a meet-up at Kennedy and flight numbers.

The actual intelligence gathering and parsing it into actionable categories is not like solving a galactic conundrum in the last 5 minutes of a Star Trek episode.

There were no specifics, no persons identified, no timetable narrowed in any specific manner and little else. Mutterings, ramblings and tidbits. Nothing more.
     
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Apr 17, 2007, 10:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
I beg to differ. The United States has been far too apathetic about Al Quaida, from Clinton through Bush. Clinton should have done something. Bush should've done something.
Ah, the classic liberal cry of "Do More!" with no idea on what to do.

But as it happens, Clinton did want to Do More. Specifically, he wanted to plant wiretap devices in every phone in the nation; you may have heard of this referred to as the Clipper Chip. Congress gave that idea the smackdown it richly deserved.
As to specific evidence that was ignored, it never made it all the way up the chain of command, no. But the commanders should have been making the pursuit of that evidence a priority.
Evidence that there was no reason to believe existed? What are we talking about here; random searches of homes and businesses? Have you never heard of the Fourth Amendment? Neither has Bush, apparently, but even he has not gone that far.
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Apr 17, 2007, 11:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by Millennium View Post
Ah, the classic liberal cry of "Do More!" with no idea on what to do.

But as it happens, Clinton did want to Do More. Specifically, he wanted to plant wiretap devices in every phone in the nation; you may have heard of this referred to as the Clipper Chip. Congress gave that idea the smackdown it richly deserved.

Evidence that there was no reason to believe existed? What are we talking about here; random searches of homes and businesses? Have you never heard of the Fourth Amendment? Neither has Bush, apparently, but even he has not gone that far.
Hardly. I've said several things. Ah, the typical conservative gambit of ignoring whatever's inconvenient in another's argument. I have an idea, let's not play these "watch me pigeon hole you as a liberal/conservative" games. I thought we were both above it.

As I said, there are a number of sound measures that the FAA could have taken (and has since) that would have prevented 9/11 had the Clinton or Bush administrations taken seriously any of the REPEATED intelligence reports indicating that Al Qaida was intent on hijacking planes and crashing them.

Likewise, a serious focus on the threat from the top or from within the FBI would've unjammed several obstacles that prevented clear evidence at lower levels of law enforcement from floating up the channels. There was also the Bin Laden taskforce in the CIA, who the rest of the agency was treating like nutjobs because they were so on edge.

What was that one guy's name again? He tried and tried to get the Bush administration to listen to him, but after the G8 threat didn't materialize he was marginalized. Then he accepted a private position, as a security analyst for the WTC. You can guess what happened to him. Damn...what was his name?
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 12:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by BRussell View Post
I think there's plenty of evidence that they didn't take the threat as seriously as they should have. Terrorist attempts were foiled during the Clinton administration, and other attempts were foiled after 9/11. These terrorists aren't that bright. You don't have to be clairvoyant. You just have to care about national security. Many of us have believed for a long time that this administration is utterly incompetent. Now, after the war in Iraq and hurricane Katrina, everyone else seems to think so too. If they were more competent, I believe they could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
so your argument is the terrorists are dumb so we should be able to catch them?

Maybe the 9/11 terrorists were intelligent? What do we do about the smart ones?
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 03:03 AM
 
Anyone remember the big reports that came out right after 9/11, that the terrorists were planning to hijack crop dusters and poison large populations?

Something tells me that following all these reports, the government was more worried about dusters than civilian planes becoming missiles before September 11th.
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 07:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
so your argument is the terrorists are dumb so we should be able to catch them?

Maybe the 9/11 terrorists were intelligent? What do we do about the smart ones?
The argument was founded in partisanship in the first place. As soon as I read; "terrorist attacks were foiled during the Clinton Administration..." I knew I smelled a rat. I seem to recall a couple of "biggies" that weren't foiled during the Clinton Administration. People are still looking at this as right and left as opposed to right and wrong. It's all Bush's fault and you're a "Bushie" if you even hint anything to the contrary. After all, this is Progressive thinking at its finest.

It never ends...
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Apr 18, 2007, 08:46 AM
 
Um, ebuddy, don't you do the same thing there at the end.
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 11:04 AM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
so your argument is the terrorists are dumb so we should be able to catch them?

Maybe the 9/11 terrorists were intelligent? What do we do about the smart ones?
My argument is what I typed in my post: You didn't need clairvoyance, you just needed to care about national security.

An example: We caught Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 plotters, in August 2001. He had plenty of information with him linking him to the 9/11 plot. The government didn't care, despite people's "hair being on fire" and sending around memos saying "bin Laden determined to strike inside US." The terrorism specialists knew about the heightened chatter and threat, but the political people in the government didn't care. They had another agenda, and all that terrorism nonsense was something Clinton's people were obsessed with. So they ignored the FBI agents raising red flags about Moussaoui.

It is my belief that if they had cared about it, if they had listened to their counter-terrorism people, they could have caught these guys.
     
ebuddy
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Apr 18, 2007, 06:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Um, ebuddy, don't you do the same thing there at the end.
I apologize as not everyone would recall the Calling All Progressives thread from long ago that I've used as the brunt of many jokes here. That particular thread was a call to Progressives on how to address the numerous points made by those opposed to their ideals. The thread was basically comprised of; "Republicans are stink butt, monkey-face, Bushie, poopy-heads..." I've used this as the template for "Progressive" thinking here on MacNN ever since. I truly have no problem with diversity of ideals and honest debate, but it would not have been evident to the casual reader in this thread.

So... yes, I am guilty of the same error for the fact that I did not make this clear. I appeared to have been railing against progressive ideology in general when my point was against Progressive ideology as represented here.
ebuddy
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 07:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: View Post
Sorry, I have to call BS.

While well stated, this is academic hindsight and fancy platitudes.

You grossly over-simplify the process, tie it up neat, fold the corners symmetrically and stick a bow on top. You place a priority on it in retrospect. It is highly doubtful you or anyone in the community would have know to flag X, Y and Z info and hi-priority because it screamed catastrophe. There is a constant stream of threats, you can only pursue so much. They aren't all Jack Bauer.

It is not like they have recorded calls confirming a meet-up at Kennedy and flight numbers.

The actual intelligence gathering and parsing it into actionable categories is not like solving a galactic conundrum in the last 5 minutes of a Star Trek episode.

There were no specifics, no persons identified, no timetable narrowed in any specific manner and little else. Mutterings, ramblings and tidbits. Nothing more.
We had Moussaoui in custody! No specifics, indeed. We had more than one flight school report the 9/11 hijackers as suspicious. We were tracking Atta and lost him. These are not tidbits.

The entire intelligence community, from the President down, failed us. They don't deserve your defensive evasions on their behalf. The victims, however, deserve accountability.

We should have learned the lessons we learned after 9/11 from previous attacks and prevented this tragedy. You can deny it all you want to avoid having to blame Bush, but it's disingenuous and on some level, deep down, I suspect you know it.

I voted for Clinton, but I'm big enough to look frankly at his actions and condemn them for contributing to 9/11. I suggest you take the same unabashed look at this administration.
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 07:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by BRussell View Post
My argument is what I typed in my post: You didn't need clairvoyance, you just needed to care about national security.

An example: We caught Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 plotters, in August 2001. He had plenty of information with him linking him to the 9/11 plot. The government didn't care, despite people's "hair being on fire" and sending around memos saying "bin Laden determined to strike inside US." The terrorism specialists knew about the heightened chatter and threat, but the political people in the government didn't care. They had another agenda, and all that terrorism nonsense was something Clinton's people were obsessed with. So they ignored the FBI agents raising red flags about Moussaoui.

It is my belief that if they had cared about it, if they had listened to their counter-terrorism people, they could have caught these guys.
Amen.
     
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Apr 18, 2007, 10:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
We had Moussaoui in custody! No specifics, indeed. We had more than one flight school report the 9/11 hijackers as suspicious. We were tracking Atta and lost him. These are not tidbits.

The entire intelligence community, from the President down, failed us. They don't deserve your defensive evasions on their behalf. The victims, however, deserve accountability.

We should have learned the lessons we learned after 9/11 from previous attacks and prevented this tragedy. You can deny it all you want to avoid having to blame Bush, but it's disingenuous and on some level, deep down, I suspect you know it.

I voted for Clinton, but I'm big enough to look frankly at his actions and condemn them for contributing to 9/11. I suggest you take the same unabashed look at this administration.
A) Your examples add up to nothing unless you use a retrospective position.

B) How exactly am I defending an administration? I am pointing out zealous over-simplification on your part. But, you have already decided, so I am probably wasting an effort… so ignore my question.
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 12:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: View Post
A) Your examples add up to nothing unless you use a retrospective position.
No, they're simply pieces to a puzzle that could, if not "would," have added up if they'd been looking. My point, yet again, is that the administration and the intelligence community as a whole were not looking. They were not preparing for a scenario that they reasonably should have predicted, seeing as the Jordanians already helped us break up one plot to fly hijacked planes into Times square. The warnings were clear.

Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: View Post
B) How exactly am I defending an administration? I am pointing out zealous over-simplification on your part. But, you have already decided, so I am probably wasting an effort… so ignore my question.
It sure seemed like you were defending Bush. But I supposed I can get "zealous" when discussing the way in which incompetance and bureacratic inefficiency allowed 3,000 of my countrymen to be killed by pathetic little medievalists and then launched the world into a period of conflict and uncertainty. Yeah, when that sort of thing happens and was so clearly preventable, I guess I get "zealous."

Protection is the fundamental job of government. Our government didn't do its job. Heads should have rolled, and yes, Bush's should've been one of them.


P.S. The whole "oh, you've made up your mind and aren't worth talking to, but I shall post this one last time in some vain effort to have the last word" maneuver is a little obvious. Let's not, shall we.
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 01:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by BRussell View Post
My argument is what I typed in my post: You didn't need clairvoyance, you just needed to care about national security.

An example: We caught Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 plotters, in August 2001. He had plenty of information with him linking him to the 9/11 plot. The government didn't care, despite people's "hair being on fire" and sending around memos saying "bin Laden determined to strike inside US." The terrorism specialists knew about the heightened chatter and threat, but the political people in the government didn't care. They had another agenda, and all that terrorism nonsense was something Clinton's people were obsessed with. So they ignored the FBI agents raising red flags about Moussaoui.

It is my belief that if they had cared about it, if they had listened to their counter-terrorism people, they could have caught these guys.
wait wait wait wait....

So let me get this straight.....stopping terrorism is as simple as caring about national security?!

You're telling me that all we have to do is care and all the specifics will work themselves out?
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 03:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
wait wait wait wait....

So let me get this straight.....stopping terrorism is as simple as caring about national security?!

You're telling me that all we have to do is care and all the specifics will work themselves out?
In this case, yes, absolutely. It was the lack of taking the issue seriously that led them to ignore the warnings. If, from the top down, they had sent out the message to be on alert, I have no doubt that they would have, at the very least, connected the dots with Moussaoui.
     
Helmling
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Apr 19, 2007, 04:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by Snow-i View Post
wait wait wait wait....

So let me get this straight.....stopping terrorism is as simple as caring about national security?!

You're telling me that all we have to do is care and all the specifics will work themselves out?
Yeah, sure, that's what he's saying. Don't pretend to be stupid, it's not an effective rhetorical technique. If you don't have anything substantive to say about his very clear points, then maybe that says something about your position.

It's like this: Somebody throws a rock through your window with a note that says "we will get you." Your wife tells you that she has seen a black car following her. Your young daughters says she saw a strange man at the playground taking pictures of her who ran away when a teacher went to go see who he was.

Now, me and BRussel, we'd take steps to ensure our family's safety--call the police, discuss what to do with our kids if a stranger approaches, beef up the alarm system, etc. You, apparently, would do nothing and when your kids are abducted you say to yourself, "well, I didn't have any specific information about what they were going to do, so there was nothing I could have done."
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 05:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
It's like this: Somebody throws a rock through your window with a note that says "we will get you." Your wife tells you that she has seen a black car following her. Your young daughters says she saw a strange man at the playground taking pictures of her who ran away when a teacher went to go see who he was.
That's a really dumb example in relation to this, because it's way too specific.
A better example would be- thousands of people are throwing rocks through your window with vague, veiled threats all the time, every day, day in, day out. Of those thousands, which do you sort out to take seriously, vs. which are just the usual cranks that nothing will ever come of. If you go by historic example, you'd conclude that one of the threats that threatens to steal your car, the perps would just take it, chop it up, and sell the parts (IE, what usually happens with a stolen car)- you wouldn't conclude that they're going to take it, and drive it full speed into an office building to kill as many people as possible.

You and BRussel are just using the age old 20/20 hindsight in order to falsely blame Bush (typical), when the truth is, before 9/11 the threat of hijacking a plane meant something completely different than the plot that actually occurred.
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 06:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Yeah, sure, that's what he's saying. Don't pretend to be stupid, it's not an effective rhetorical technique. If you don't have anything substantive to say about his very clear points, then maybe that says something about your position.

It's like this: Somebody throws a rock through your window with a note that says "we will get you." Your wife tells you that she has seen a black car following her. Your young daughters says she saw a strange man at the playground taking pictures of her who ran away when a teacher went to go see who he was.

Now, me and BRussel, we'd take steps to ensure our family's safety--call the police, discuss what to do with our kids if a stranger approaches, beef up the alarm system, etc. You, apparently, would do nothing and when your kids are abducted you say to yourself, "well, I didn't have any specific information about what they were going to do, so there was nothing I could have done."
Bush should have immediately ordered some kind of profiling. Student visas and travel from Arab countries should have severely restricted a quietly put in place. Wiretapping of suspects in this country should have been increased as well. We should have immediatley begun to profile all air travelers and begun search and inspections of all travelers immediately. The Democrats, knowing of the threat, would have immediately gone along with the plan. After all,
the World Trade Center had already been bombed once under Clinton, and there were probably already the same plans put in place by the Democrats, just not implemented yet. Then Bush got elected and he just ignored the threat.
     
ebuddy
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Apr 19, 2007, 06:38 PM
 
Your profiling and wiretapping would work. El Al is proof of that. Political paralysis is what we have here.
ebuddy
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 07:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE View Post
That's a really dumb example in relation to this, because it's way too specific.
A better example would be- thousands of people are throwing rocks through your window with vague, veiled threats all the time, every day, day in, day out. Of those thousands, which do you sort out to take seriously, vs. which are just the usual cranks that nothing will ever come of. If you go by historic example, you'd conclude that one of the threats that threatens to steal your car, the perps would just take it, chop it up, and sell the parts (IE, what usually happens with a stolen car)- you wouldn't conclude that they're going to take it, and drive it full speed into an office building to kill as many people as possible.

You and BRussel are just using the age old 20/20 hindsight in order to falsely blame Bush (typical), when the truth is, before 9/11 the threat of hijacking a plane meant something completely different than the plot that actually occurred.
Not at all. We KNEW they were trying to hijack airplanes and either crash them into cities as weapons or dive bomb them into the sea to kill all onboard. How is that not specific enough for you? You guys act like nothing is actionable unless Al Qaida schedules an f'ing appointment.

"Hello, CIA, we were wondering if you'd prepare for an attack on June 18th?...Oh, no good for you? Well, how about something in the fall, say September."

I mean, really, guys...why are you so determined not to see this? You're right that before 9/11 the idea of hijacking was something different--and that THAT idea had not changed inside the intelligence community and our leadership despite ample warning is the very failure of vision in the last two administrations that I'm trying to point out.
     
Helmling
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Apr 19, 2007, 07:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Orion27 View Post
Bush should have immediately ordered some kind of profiling. Student visas and travel from Arab countries should have severely restricted a quietly put in place. Wiretapping of suspects in this country should have been increased as well. We should have immediatley begun to profile all air travelers and begun search and inspections of all travelers immediately. The Democrats, knowing of the threat, would have immediately gone along with the plan. After all,
the World Trade Center had already been bombed once under Clinton, and there were probably already the same plans put in place by the Democrats, just not implemented yet. Then Bush got elected and he just ignored the threat.
I'll use Orion's silly post to talk about Clinton a little bit, since some people have insinuated that the only object here is to blame Bush. In Clinton's defense, there was supposedly a "package" of possible responses to Al Qaida left for the incoming Bush administration by his national security team. That packet was rejected in favor of developing a more comprehensive strategy in regard to terrorism, a strategy that didn't materialize until after 9/11 unfortunately. I suspect the Clinton package was weak tea, like the fire-and-forget cruise missile retaliation to the African embassy bombings.

Clinton, of course, had a chance to kill Bin Laden but passed because it would also risk alienating the UAE, who had some sort of nobles visiting the Afghan camp when we pinpointed Bin Laden's position. Clinton has since claimed that he had a "virtual obsession" with Al Qaida. When will that guy learn to stop lying? Clinton's foreign policy was dictated entirely by the fear of Americans in body bags. If it had been hundreds of Americans killed in Africa, then I bet we would have seen some actual evidence of this supposed "obsession" of his.
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 07:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Not at all. We KNEW they were trying to hijack airplanes and either crash them into cities as weapons or dive bomb them into the sea to kill all onboard. How is that not specific enough for you? You guys act like nothing is actionable unless Al Qaida schedules an f'ing appointment.
Cite your sources, please. (I really want to know that we knew beforehand).
     
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Apr 19, 2007, 07:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by Helmling View Post
Not at all. We KNEW they were trying to hijack airplanes and either crash them into cities as weapons or dive bomb them into the sea to kill all onboard. How is that not specific enough for you?
You simply made that up, right here, on the spot. The report says nothing of the sort. That's how it's not specific enough.

Islamic radicals have ALWAYS had plans to hijack planes, and have pulled off numerous ones since the early 1970's. Just a "warning" that says 'Islamic radicals plan to hijack planes' is kind of like a big, "Well, no freakin' duh." The only information that would have changed anything would have to have been SPECIFIC information on the ACTUAL plot of 9/11. That never happened, and you can stop pretending it did.

You guys act like nothing is actionable unless Al Qaida schedules an f'ing appointment.
Oh please. That's been you lefty kooks over virtually EVERYTHING to do with terrorism SINCE 9/11, let alone before it.
( Last edited by CRASH HARDDRIVE; Apr 19, 2007 at 08:03 PM. )
     
 
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