911 Truth

Dear Sirs!
Dear Mr. Kucinich!

As I have learned from this link below you are open for proof that 911 was
an inside job.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/5981#new

I do my very best to provide you only with one one aspect out of hundreds
that points to that conclusion, the dubios role of al-Hazmi and al-Midhar,
both alleged terrorists on 911.

Oct. 9, 2006, saw the release of leading D.C. muckrakers Susan and Joe
Trento's latest mind-blowing work on "national security."
"Unsafe at Any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating
9/11, and the Shocking Truth about Aviation Security Today" made 60
Minutes. The book savages the incompetence and "eye candy" of the
Transportation Security Administration. This is not a book you want to
read on a long flight: It turns out the "no fly" lists are pathetically
inaccurate. The Trentos' report that the CIA regularly lets known
terrorists fly as a tactic to try to catch more of them.
Some of the Trentos' findings were too hot for 60 Minutes. The book's
blockbuster revelation is that the Pentagon kamikaze Flight 77 terrorist
crew was led by two agents of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID)
of Saudi Arabia: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Sound familiar?
They should. They are the same two guys Peter Lance found being protected
from Able Danger by top brass at the Pentagon. This same duo lived in San
Diego with an FBI informant. The same duo took money from the wife of Bush
friend Saudi Prince Bandar.

http://www.alternet.org/story/45726/

Bob Graham, "Intelligence Matters"

White House intercedes for FBI informant

In his book, Senator Graham writes that the FBI concealed from the joint
congressional committee the fact that its paid informant, Abdussattar
Shaikh, had established a close personal relationship with the two
hijackers. (Shaikh is reported to have confirmed that al-Bayoumi was a
Saudi intelligence agent). When the committee staff discovered Shaikh's
role and the committee issued a subpoena to question him under oath, the
FBI and Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to serve the subpoena.

Graham in his book cites a memo that a senior FBI official wrote to him
and the Republican co-chair of the intelligence panel, Rep. Porter Goss, a
Florida Republican, declaring, "the administration would not sanction a
staff interview with the source [Shaikh]. Nor did the administration agree
to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena or a notice of deposition on the
source."

Graham writes that this was the only time he had ever heard of the FBI
refusing to serve a congressional subpoena. He comments: "We were seeing
in writing what we had suspected for some time: the White House was
directing the cover-up."

Nor was this the only evidence of a cover-up. When the congressional panel
released the report on its investigation, 28 pages were classified on the
orders of the White House, their contents blacked out. All of the material
dealt with the Saudi role in 9/11.

Then there was the extraordinary action taken by the Bush administration
in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, allowing chartered
planes to ferry some 140 prominent Saudis-including at least a dozen of
Osama bin Laden's relatives-to Boston for evacuation to Saudi Arabia. The
pick-up flights were organized at a time when all non-military and
non-emergency aviation had been grounded by government order. Bin Laden's
relatives were allowed to leave the country with little or no questioning
by the FBI.

Why the extreme measures taken to deflect any investigation into the Saudi
connection to the terrorist attacks?

Many-most prominently Craig Unger in his book House of Saud, House of Bush
and Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11-have highlighted the
intricate web of political and financial ties that bind the Bush family to
Saudi interests. These are undoubtedly real-there is ample evidence that
Saudi money underwrote George W. Bush's failed business ventures-and
played a significant role in the administration's political calculations.

Others have pointed to the strategic role played by Saudi oil in the US
economy. Again, this is clearly a major consideration within US ruling
circles, where there is little stomach for a policy that could further
destabilize the crisis-ridden Saudi monarchy.

But there is another, and more immediately compelling reason for
suppressing any investigation into the Saudi connection. It inevitably
raises two questions: Why would Saudi intelligence assist the 9/11
hijackers; and, given its longstanding and intimate ties to the CIA, how
could it be that its actions were unknown in Washington?

The nature of the ties between the Saudi and US intelligence
establishments merit closer scrutiny. They were solidified in the
US-backed war against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan, beginning in
1979 and continuing through the 1980s. The US poured billions of dollars
in arms and financing into this war, most of it funneled through the ISI,
the Pakistani intelligence agency.

The Saudi regime established what amounted to a matching fund for the
anti-Soviet guerrillas, many of whom were brought to Afghanistan by
Islamist forces in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden served as the Saudi
regime's personal emissary in this cause, helping to organize, train and
equip Arab volunteers for the Afghan war.

The court papers filed by Cantor Fitzgerald charge that the Saudi monarchy
directly and indirectly funded and controlled charity and relief
organizations that in turn financed Al Qaeda. The lawsuit further alleges
that the Saudi government knowingly employed Al Qaeda operatives, provided
them with safe houses and false documents, and assisted them in obtaining
weapons and military equipment.

“This uninterrupted financial and material support and substantial
assistance enabled the Al Qaeda defendants to plan, orchestrate and carry
out the Sept. 11 attacks,” the lawsuit states.

The Port Authority’s announcement on the lawsuit came close on the heels
of renewed charges by Florida Senator Bob Graham that the Bush
administration orchestrated a cover-up of Saudi involvement in the
September 11 attacks.

In a newly released book, “Intelligence Matters”, Graham asserts that
“evidence of official Saudi support” for at least some of the
hijackers is “incontrovertible.” Graham is the ranking Democrat and
former chair of the Senate intelligence committee that carried out a joint
congressional investigation into 9/11 with its counterpart in the House of
Representatives.

...

After landing in Los Angeles in January 2000, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were
met by Omar al-Bayoumi, an employee of the Saudi civil aviation authority.
US investigators have concluded that al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence
agent. Al-Bayoumi invited the pair to move to San Diego, where he found
them an apartment, provided them with money and helped enroll them in
flight school.

It has been reported that al-Bayoumi served as conduit for thousands of
dollars in funding for the future hijackers sent by Princess Haifa, the
wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US and a close
confidante of the Bush family. Al-Bayoumi’s monthly paycheck as a
contractor for Saudi civil aviation—for which he did no discernable
work—rose from $465 to $3,700 after he began assisting the two Al Qaeda
operatives.

Why the extreme measures taken to deflect any investigation into the Saudi
connection to the terrorist attacks?

Many—most prominently Craig Unger in his book House of Saud, House of
Bush and Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11—have highlighted the
intricate web of political and financial ties that bind the Bush family to
Saudi interests. These are undoubtedly real—there is ample evidence that
Saudi money underwrote George W. Bush’s failed business ventures—and
played a significant role in the administration’s political
calculations.

Others have pointed to the strategic role played by Saudi oil in the US
economy. Again, this is clearly a major consideration within US ruling
circles, where there is little stomach for a policy that could further
destabilize the crisis-ridden Saudi monarchy.

But there is another, and more immediately compelling reason for
suppressing any investigation into the Saudi connection. It inevitably
raises two questions: Why would Saudi intelligence assist the 9/11
hijackers; and, given its longstanding and intimate ties to the CIA, how
could it be that its actions were unknown in Washington?

The nature of the ties between the Saudi and US intelligence
establishments merit closer scrutiny. They were solidified in the
US-backed war against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan, beginning in
1979 and continuing through the 1980s. The US poured billions of dollars
in arms and financing into this war, most of it funneled through the ISI,
the Pakistani intelligence agency.

The Saudi regime established what amounted to a matching fund for the
anti-Soviet guerrillas, many of whom were brought to Afghanistan by
Islamist forces in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden served as the Saudi
regime’s personal emissary in this cause, helping to organize, train and
equip Arab volunteers for the Afghan war.

The movement now known as Al Qaeda was spawned through the interaction of
these three intelligence agencies—the CIA, the ISI and the Saudis.

The Saudi connection to Al Qaeda clearly remained intact.

As for Pakistan's ISI, immediately after September 11, it was reported by
the Times of India that its chief, Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, had ordered $100,000
wired from Dubai to the Florida bank account of hijacker Mohamed Atta.
Other reports quoted FBI officials as confirming the Ahmed-Atta
connection.

Curiously, the very morning that the hijacked passenger planes were
crashing into New York's Twin Towers, Gen. Ahmed was attending a Capitol
Hill breakfast meeting hosted by Senator Graham and Rep. Goss. (The
Republican congressman and former CIA agent is now the Bush
administration's nominee for CIA director.) The general returned to
Pakistan on an abortive US-dictated mission to pressure the Taliban
government in Afghanistan to extradite Osama bin Laden. He was removed
from his post shortly thereafter.

The 9/11 commission, like the congressional panel that Graham co-chaired,
chose not to deal with the role played by Gen. Ahmed-as well as other
senior members of the Pakistani military-as Al Qaeda patrons.

In his book, Senator Graham himself poses the question of why the
congressional committee was denied access to the San Diego FBI informant.
"The most obvious answer is that the informant was a big embarrassment,"
he writes. "Was the informant using the FBI? Was the FBI's informant
program so shallow that the Bureau didn't discover that its own informant
was personally close to these hijackers?"

He then goes on to suggest in deliberately obscure terms a "far more
damning possibility" that could explain the government's intervention:
"...perhaps the informant did know something about the plot that would be
even more damaging were it revealed, and that this is what the FBI is
trying to conceal."

What "damning" information about the 9/11 conspiracy could the informant
have known? Graham does not answer his own question. Was it the
involvement of the Saudi government? Or was it that elements within the US
state apparatus knew of plans for an impending hijacking and allowed them
to go forward?

Would not the arrival of two young Saudis, speaking next to no English and
enrolling in flight school, have merited a mention to Shaikh's FBI
handlers, who reportedly met with him as the future hijackers sat in the
next room?

Three years after the attacks, no one has been held accountable for what
on its face is the most catastrophic failure of national security and
intelligence in US history. The question is: Was it a failure, or was a
decision taken to permit a terrorist attack on US soil in order to provide
the pretext for implementing plans for wars abroad and repressive policies
at home that had been drawn up well in advance of September 11, 2001?

Given the still unexplained refusal of FBI headquarters to heed urgent
memos from local offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis about Islamist
immigrants taking flight training and direct warnings of the danger of
terrorist hijackings, the lack of any serious response from the Bush
administration to both external and internal warnings of imminent Al Qaeda
attacks on US soil, and the de facto stand-down of US air defense forces on
the day of the attack, the least plausible explanation for the Bush
administration's sabotage of the 9/11 investigations is one that excludes
government complicity in the events of that day.

The Bush administration has dismissed Graham's account of the suppression
of any investigation into Saudi ties to 9/11 as "bizarre conspiracy
theories."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/911-s16.shtml

Al-Midhar was well known to the CIA. US intelligence knew his name,
passport number and other personal details long before his appearance in
Malaysia. The CIA also knew that Al-Midhar had long had a Multiple Entry
Visa to the US, which he obtained at the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia. It was valid until April 6, 2000.
Al Midhar unknowingly brought the CIA with him to Malaysia. The Saudi
citizen and his clan had long been in the agency's sights. Al-Midhar's
father-in-law owned an apartment in the Yemeni capital San'a which served
as an Al Qaeda safehouse. The apartment was an important node in the
terror organization's network. Information about operations from around
the world converged there. And therefore investigators were in the
picture.
The FBI had landed on this apartment as early as the end of August 1998.
At the time they were tracking down the perpetrators of the bombings of
the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Suicide commandos blew up the US
government buildings almost simultaneously, killing 223 people and
injuring 5,000. Shortly after the attacks, a fax claiming credit was sent
to London. The FBI managed to trace its origin to Baku, in Azerbaijan.
From there the trail led directly to Al-Midhar's father-in-law's apartment
in Yemen. The FBI successfully placed the house and telephone under
surveillance. A member of the suicide squad called Al-Midhar's
father-in-law from Kenya and said "Tell them that I haven't started the
journey". The attacker lost his courage seconds before the attack and
jumped out of the car which contained the bomb. Shortly thereafter the FBI
agents recorded another call. This time it was from a satellite telephone
assigned to Osama bin Laden. Since then the CIA had also been monitoring
Al Midhar's brother-in-law's telephone. And so the agency learned of the
planned meeting in Malaysia a month in advance.

Los Angeles, January 15, 2000 After the rendezvous with the one-legged
bin-Atesh, al-Midhar and al-Hazmi left Kuala Lumpur separately. Al-Midhar
headed toward Los Angeles with a stop in Bangkok. His accomplice traveled
there by way of Hong Kong. The security precautions and controls at LAX at
the time were as strict as never before. A month earlier an Algerian Al
Qaeda member was arrested at the US-Canadian border with 50 kilos of
explosives in the trunk of his car. The Algerian was on his way to Los
Angeles where he intended to blow up the airport on New Year's Eve.
But al-Midhar and al-Hazmi presumably knew about none of that, as they
gave their information to the immigration control. Both had US visas, in
their own names, which the CIA were familiar with. The immigration
officers didn't give them any trouble and the computer terminals gave no
indication that the two Saudi citizens were involved with terrorists.
Because for still inexplicable reasons neither the CIA nor the FBI
informed either the INS or the State Department that the two were not
innocent students. This may well be the most fateful error in a whole
chain of failures and mishaps that ultimately led the American security
agencies to give a free pass to the eventual September 11 attackers.
Al-Midhar and al-Hazmi presumably already had a clear assignment when they
arrived in Los Angeles. Only the place, time and exact game plan for the
attacks were still unclear. They both stayed briefly in Los Angeles and
went on to San Diego where they rented an apartment. At the Parkwood
Apartments, a 175 unit complex, they rented number 127. Al-Hazmi signed
the lease. They apparently weren't the least concerned about being
discovered. There were no signs that they tried to disguise their
identities. Al-Hazmi got a telephone line and allowed his address and
number to appear in the local directory. He bought a 1988 blue Toyota
Corolla for $3,000 and registered the car in his own name.
In May 2000, four months after arriving in the US, Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar
called on a San Diego flying school. The both took a six-hour theory class
at the Sorbi Flying Club. They didn't make a secret of the fact that they
wanted to learn how to fly Boeings as soon as possible. But first they had
to start with small Cessnas. The very first flight was a disaster. The
terrorists were exceptionally maladroit, they had no talent for flying
planes. As al-Hazmi was preparing to land under the instructor's guidance,
al-Midhar panicked, and started praying loudly."Nothing's going to come of
this," said the instructor. He refused to train them both.
…

Al-Midhar also went back to the US. After it became clear that he and
Al-Hazmi weren't going to become pilots, his assignment was to coordinate
the planning for the attacks. But first he had to take care of his ability
to stay in the country. His visa was running out. On July 7, 2000 he went
to see the INS. Shortly before that CIA headquarters in Langley received
yet another explicit notice from its Malaysia station that the Al Qaeda
terrorist al-Hazmi had already entered the U.S. in January. But in Langley
they stayed calm. Al-Hazmi wasn't designated for investigation, and neither
the FBI, the State Department, nor the INS were informed. Consequently,
nobody had any reason to be suspicious when al-Hazmi applied to extend his
visa, giving his address in San Diego. His wish was granted.

San Diego, September 2000 The neigbors in San Diego grew suspicious.
Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar lived in the apartment complex for eight months and
still didn't have any furniture. They slept on the floor and regularly made
calls from phone booths even though they had a phone in their apartment.
The two Saudis apparently noticed the skeptical glances of their
neighbors. They terminated the lease and moved in with Abduss Attar
Sheikh, a Muslim they met at the Mosque in San Diego. This friend, a
retired English teacher, rented them a room and helped them open a bank
account and get Internet access.
As it turned out, the retiree was also helping out the local FBI. He was
providing the police information on militant Muslims in San Diego. His
contact officer regularly visited him at home. Al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were
in the house during some of these visits. Sheikh quickly closed the living
room door at such moments so his boarders wouldn't find out about his
activities as an informer. Neither the informer nor his officer had any
idea that the two young men were Al Qaeda terrorists.
Al-Midhar moved out after six weeks. He told his host that he was
returning to his wife and children in Saudi Arabia. In fact he was
involved in an act of terrorism. On October 12, 2000 a suicide squad
carried out an attack on the naval ship USS Cole in Aden harbor. A dinghy
packed with explosives rammed into the port side of the ship. 17 US
soldiers died, 38 were wounded. The CIA assumes that al-Midhar took part
in the attack.
Al-Hazmi remained in San Diego for the time being, still living with the
FBI informant. The latter never had any idea what was going on while the
worst act of terrorism in American history was being prepared in his
house. Al-Hazmi would sit at the computer and spend hours surfing the
Internet. He told his landlord he was looking for a wife, preferably a
Mexican. The informer tried to teach al-Hazmi a few Spanish phrases, like
"Que pasa?"
At the end of December 2000 al-Hazmi also left the house in San Diego. He
moved in with his fellow countryman Hani Hanjur in Mesa, Arizona. Hanjur
had been living in the US since 1996 and earned his license at a flight
school in Scottsdale. After al-Hazmi and al-Midhar's flight training
didn't work out, Hanjur would now fill the role for the trained pilot.
But the pilot still needed some actual flying time. So he tried to take a
few lessons at a flight school in Phoenix. Despite the fact that he had
been in the States for several years, his English was so bad that the
flight school operator assumed that he couldn't have had a valid pilot's
license. He assumed the license certificate was a forgery and notified the
FAA. But the suspected license turned out to be genuine.
…
On July 4 al-Midhar returned to the US on Saudi Arabian Airlines flight 53
after an absence of several months. Shortly before that, while still in
Saudi Arabia, he extended his US visa until October 3, 2001. Although the
CIA had in the meantime implicated him in the attck on the Cole, he had no
problems entering the US. He presented his Saudi passport, which was in his
own name, and on his immigration form gave his local address as the
Marriott Hotel in New York. He subsequently made his way to Arizona to see
al-Hazmi and others.
…
Langley, August 23, 2001. The Israeli Mossad intelligence agency handed
its American counterpart a list of names of terrorists who were staying in
the US and were presumably planning to launch an attack in the foreseeable
future. According to documents obtained by Die ZEIT, Mossad agents in the
US were in all probability surveilling at least four of the 19 hijackers,
among them al-Midhar. The CIA now does what it should have done 18 months
earlier. It informs the State Dept., the FBI and the INS.
The names al-Midhar and al-Hazmi are promptly put on an investigation
list, as probable members of Al Qaeda. al-Midhar is expressly noted as a
probable accomplice in the USS Cole attack. The first acknowledgement
arrives quickly. The INS writes that according to its information, both
men are currently in the US.
Now both men are pursued vigorously. On his entry into the US al-Midhar
gave his address as the Marriott Hotel in New York. FBI agents visited all
the chain's hotels in the New York area, without success.
One of the FBI agents on the case called headquarters in Washington and
asked for reinforcements. He wanted to expand the investigation for
al-Midhar. The agent properly assessed the danger that al-Midhar posed. He
had already been working on the USS Cole investigation for months.
In this context he had met with his colleagues from the CIA once and
al-Midhar's name slipped out. Now that he reads this name in the
investigation file, with the note that al-Midhar was implicated in the
Cole attack, the FBI agent became angry with his CIA colleagues. They had
previously withheld this detail from him.
But his anger increases when his own headquarters declines to give him
additional support. The attorneys at the FBI's National Security Law Unit
made very clear that the law prescribes a strict wall between intelligence
and police investigations. And the search for al-Midhar has now returned to
being an intelligence matter."someday someone will die – and wall or not
– the public will not understand why we were not more effective and
throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems'." one frustrated FBI
agent writes to his headquarters on August 29, 2001."Let's hope the
National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then,
especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL [Usama bin Laden], is
getting the most protection."

http://www.antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=2305

Michael Springmann, head US consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,
later claims that during this period he is repeatedly told to issue visas
to unqualified applicants. He turns them down, but is repeatedly overruled
by superiors. Springmann loudly complains to numerous government offices,
but no action is taken. He is fired and his files on these applicants are
destroyed. He later learns that recruits from many countries fighting for
bin Laden against Russia in Afghanistan were funneled through the Jeddah
office to get visas to come to the US, where the recruits would travel to
train for the Afghan war. According to Springmann, the Jeddah consulate
was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence agents.
This visa system may have continued at least through 9/11, and 15 of the
19 9/11 hijackers received their visas through Jeddah, possibly as part of
this program. [BBC, 11/6/2001; Associated Press, 7/17/2002; Fox News,
7/18/2002]

Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi, and Khalid Almihdhar obtain US
visas through the US Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. [US Congress,
7/24/2003] All three are already “al-Qaeda veterans” and
battle-hardened killers. Almihdhar’s visa is issued on April 7, and he
thereafter leaves and returns to the US multiple times until April 6,
2000. [Stern, 8/13/2003] Nawaf Alhazmi gets the same kind of visa; details
about Salem are unknown. The CIA claims the hijackers then travel to
Afghanistan to participate in “special training” with at least one
other suicide bomber on a different mission. The training is led by
Khallad bin Attash. The CIA will learn about Almihdhar’s visa in January
2000 (see January 2-5, 2000). The Jeddah Consulate keeps in its records the
fact that Nawaf and Alhazmi obtain US visas several days before Almihdhar,
but apparently these records are never searched before 9/11. [US Congress,
7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file]

May 21, 2002: Fraudulent Consular Staff Admits to Providing Hijackers with
Visas

Abdulla Noman, a former employee of the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers got their visas, says that he
took money and gifts to provide fraudulent visas to foreigners. He pleads
guilty and is convicted. About 50 to 100 visas were improperly issued by
Noman from September 1996 until November 2001, when he was arrested.
However, a former visa officer in Jeddah, Michael Springmann, has claimed
in the past that the Jeddah office was notorious for purposefully giving
visas to terrorists to train in the US (see September 1987-March 1989).
[Associated Press, 5/21/2002]

US Consulate, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Office participated in the following
events as a passiveparticipant:
July 4, 2001: Hijacker Who Should Have Been on Watch List Re-enters US
Without Difficulty

Hijacker Khalid Almihdhar reenters the US. The CIA and FBI have recently
been showing interest in him, but have still failed to place him on a
watch list of US-designated terrorists. Had he been placed on a watch list
by this date, he would have been stopped and possibly detained as he tried
to enter the US. He enters on a new US visa obtained in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, on June 13, 2001. [US Congress, 7/24/2003 pdf file] The FBI notes
that he returns just days after the last of the hijacker “muscle” has
entered the US, and speculates that he returns because his job in bringing
them over is finished. [US Congress, 7/24/2003 pdf file]

Khalid Almihdhar ... simply listed ‘Hotel’ as his US destination—no
name, no city, no state but no problem getting a visa.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=us_consulate,_jedda...

"Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by
western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and
funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of
Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the
computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and
trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

Exclusive: The Informant Who Lived With the Hijackers
NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau’s informants had a close
relationship with two of the hijackers

By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK

Sept. 16 issue — At first, FBI director Bob Mueller insisted there was
nothing the bureau could have done to penetrate the 9-11 plot. That
account has been modified over time—and now may change again. NEWSWEEK
has learned that one of the bureau’s informants had a close relationship
with two of the hijackers: he was their roommate.

THE CONNECTION, JUST discovered by congressional investigators, has
stunned some top counterterrorism officials and raised new concerns about
the information-sharing among U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence
agencies. The two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were
hardly unknown to the intelligence community. The CIA was first alerted to
them in January 2000, when the two Saudi nationals showed up at a Qaeda
“summit” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. FBI officials have argued
internally for months that if the CIA had more quickly passed along
everything it knew about the two men, the bureau could have hunted them
down more aggressively.

But both agencies can share in the blame. Upon leaving Malaysia, Almihdhar
and Alhazmi went to San Diego, where they took flight-school lessons. In
September 2000, the two moved into the home of a Muslim man who had
befriended them at the local Islamic Center. The landlord regularly prayed
with them and even helped one open a bank account. He was also, sources
tell NEWSWEEK, a “tested” undercover “asset” who had been working
closely with the FBI office in San Diego on terrorism cases related to
Hamas. A senior law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK the informant never
provided the bureau with the names of his two houseguests from Saudi
Arabia. Nor does the FBI have any reason to believe the informant was
concealing their identities. (He could not be reached for comment.) But
the FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent appears to have been at least
aware that Saudi visitors were renting rooms in the informant’s house.
(On one occasion, a source says, the case agent called up the informant
and was told he couldn’t talk because “Khalid”—a reference to
Almihdhar—was in the room.) I. C. Smith, a former top FBI
counterintelligence official, says the case agent should have been keeping
closer tabs on who his informant was fraternizing with—if only to seek
out the houseguests as possible informants. “They should have been
asking, ‘Who are these guys? What are they doing here?’ This strikes
me as a lack of investigative curiosity.” About six weeks after moving
into the house, Almihdhar left town, explaining to the landlord he was
heading back to Saudi Arabia to see his daughter. Alhazmi moved out at the
end of 2000.
In the meantime, the CIA was gathering more information about just how
potentially dangerous both men were. A few months after the October 2000
bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, CIA analysts discovered —in their
Malaysia file that one of the chief suspects in the Cole attack— Tawfiq
bin Attash—was present at the “summit” and had been photographed
with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. But it wasn’t until Aug. 23, 2001, that the
CIA sent out an urgent cable to U.S. border and law-enforcement agencies
identifying the two men as “possible” terrorists. By then it was too
late. The bureau did not realize the San Diego connection until a few days
after 9-11, when the informant heard the names of the Pentagon hijackers
and called his case agent. “I know those guys,” the informant
purportedly said, referring to Almihdhar and Alhazmi. “They were my
roommates.”

But the belated discovery has unsettled some members of the joint House
and Senate intelligence committees investigating the 9-11 attacks. The
panel is tentatively due to begin public hearings as early as Sept. 18,
racing to its end-of-the-year deadline. But some members are now worried
that they won’t get to the bottom of what really happened by then.
Support for legislation creating a special blue-ribbon investigative
panel, similar to probes conducted after Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy
assassination, is increasing. Only then, some members say, will the public
learn whether more 9-11 secrets are buried in the government’s files.
—with Jamie Reno

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the_informant_who_lived_with_the_hijackers.htm

The other two members of this "Brooklyn cell," Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf
al-Hamzi, "fought together as Islamist warriors in Bosnia in 1995." Al
Mihdhar also fought in Chechnya. The CIA & FBI followed these two all over
the globe for years before 9-11.
Judge Brinkema's order specifically mentioned that the US government must
provide Moussaoui's attorneys with all documents about "Khalid al-Midhar
and Nawaq Alhazmi, whose presence in the United States was known to
federal officials before the attacks." In January 2000, these two
hijackers attended the MEETING THAT SPAWNED 9/11, which was "monitored by
the Malaysian secret police at the CIA's request." After this, Khalid
al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi headed for San Diego. As Daniel Hopsicker
reported in THE SECRET WORLD OF 9.11, these two hijackers were "living in
[Abdussattar Shaikh's] house in San Diego while [he was] operating at the
same time as a confidential informant for the FBI." One of the neighbors,
"Marna Adair, told the FBI that the polite, clean-shaven [Mohammed] Atta
was frequently at the home of Abdussattar Shaikh between August and early
December of 2000." There is no shortage of witnesses, who Moussaoui's
attorneys could call, who could testify about how the Bush administration
tried to cover up the extent of their knowledge of these two hijackers,
when they lived in San Diego. When al-Midhar and Alhazmi arrived in San
Diego, they also received generous assistance from a Saudi support
network. It came out in Senator Graham's book that this was the reason for
the Bush administration's insistance that those "27 pages" of the
congressional 9-11 report remain classified. "[the Bush] administration
and CIA...insisted that the details about the Saudi support network that
benefited two hijackers be left out of the final congressional report."
The 9-11 Commission's response to this amounted to "there's nothing to it,
let's move on." Some of this money to the hijackers was traced back to the
Saudi royal family through the Riggs Bank:
"Turns out that some of the money al-Bayoumi received was from Princess
Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi Ambassador Bandar Bin Sultan, and
daughter of the late King Faisal. The money then ended up in the hands of
Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi for monthly living expenses while
they rented rooms in the home of the FBI informant.
The checks from Princess Haifa were drawn on Riggs Bank in Washington D.C.
One of the chief officers of Riggs Bank is Jonathan Bush, an uncle of
President George W. Bush."

According to documents in the 9-11 lawsuit, Burnett v. al Baraka, "Nawaf
al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar received funding from Omar al Bayoumi
(a/k/a Abu Imard), a Saudi national who paid their house rent in San
Diego....Omar al Bayoumi was Assistant to the Director of Finance for an
al Baraka company, Dallah Avco." Dallah Avco is subsidiary of Saleh
Abdullah Kamel's Dallah Albaraka Group. Kamel and his Dallah Albaraka are
listed on the Golden Chain, a list of Al Qaeda financiers. This document
from the Arnaout case, was found in the Benevolence International
Foundation office in Bosnia. This fits in with the history of the The CIA
and Riggs Bank
"The relationship with the CIA could prove problematic because it could
cast a different light on the bank's dealings with two U.S. foreign-policy
allies, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, Saudi ambassador to Washington.
Given the intelligence connections to Riggs, prosecutors could be faced
with proving that the bank's failure to disclose financial activity by the
foreign officials wasn't implicitly authorized by parts of the U.S.
government."

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=294...

Terrorists, Arms Dealers, & Ghosts in Malawi

“There’s a secret world all around us,” a legendary CIA agent tells
a young recruit in “Overworld,” L.J.. Kolb’s eye-opening account of
growing up as the son of an American spy. “You just don’t see it
unless you know where to look.”

April 11,2005 -Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

Crucial details in the biography of "Professor” Abdussattar Shaikh, the
San Diego man called the "best chance to uncover the Sept. 11 plot before
it happened” by the Joint Congressional 9.11 Intelligence Committee, are
untrue, mis-leading, or false, a MadCowMorningNews investigation has
discovered.

Like the senior Al-Qaeda operative just indicted for planning to blow up
U.S. financial landmarks, alleged to have operated freely in this country
using his student status "as cover to conceal the true purpose of his
subsequent trips to the United States," the true identity of Shaikh, a key
witness to the 9.11 conspiracy, is shielded from view by bogus claims of
academic employment and status.

The practice of using Universities to provide cover for foreign nationals
in the U.S.—either as terrorists or as U.S. intel assets, or
both—appears to have been widespread; so widespread in San Diego, at
least, that the San Diego FBI’s own confidential informants were engaged
in it.

An image boost from a friendly media outlet

The man who had two hijackers living in his house in San Diego while
operating at the same time as a confidential informant for the FBI was
identified in wire reports as “a retired professor of English at San
Diego State,” and “Vice President for International Projects at
American Commonwealth University.”

Yet a visit to the various locations around San Diego where he was said to
have worked reveals that Abdussattar Shaikh never taught at San Diego
State, has never been a Professor of English, and possesses a phony PhD
from a bogus diploma mill run by people with U.S. military and
intelligence connections.

The "University" for which he was said to be Vice President for
International Projects does not, in fact, exist.

Also: "Abdussattar Shaikh" is not his real name.

The Secret World of 9.11

In the gap between what happens and what gets reported lies the secret
history. In sunny San Diego, we discovered, it was visible almost
everywhere you looked.

Just as a handful of highly-suspect flight schools in Florida provided
“cover” for Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre, a handful of bogus
“Universities” in San Diego provided a cloak of legitimacy to a number
of suspected terrorists.

The “University” for which Shaikh was supposed to have handled
“international projects,” American Commonwealth University, no longer
existed at the time in question. It had been forced out of business by
state regulators.

But even during its brief life it existed only as a mail drop, one of a
number of interlocking diploma mills. Its old address in a non-descript
office building alongside the 805 freeway in San Diego also 'housed' a
clutch of other faux citadels of learning: Golden Gate University, Huron
International University, and the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, all
presumably carrying on the murky legacy of Amer-Comm U.

The scam schools are run by a cast of characters, many of who play
reoccurring roles as what might be called "serial scammers." Yet they
can't be totally dismissed as scam artists: some of them have U.S.
military and intelligence connections.

Shaikh’s supposed “employer,” American Commonwealth University, for
example, began life as William Lyon University, named for and founded by
retired Air Force General William Lyon, a big wheel in California
Republican circles as Chairman of the GOP’s “Team California Victory
2004” and a member of a group of wealthy, high-powered Orange County's
Republicans called “The New Majority.”

So Shaikh was an FBI informant, housing at least three suspected
terrorists. When the post- 9.11media spotlight swung his way he was said
to work for a non-existent University with Republican and mil-intel
connections.

Until now, this sham cover story has gone unquestioned in America's
no-longer-very-damn free press.

Huh. Imagine that.

The San Diego Union Tribune Spins the Shaikh

Consider how Shaikh was presented to the American people in the media:
The Associated Press labeled Shaikh “a retired San Diego State
University English teacher.” The Los Angeles Times said he was “a
retired professor in suburban San Diego.”

Shaikh’s description as “prominent Muslim leader and former San Diego
State University English professor” was based on initial reporting by
the hometown San Diego Union-Tribune.

“The retired San Diego State University English professor said he often
invites students to live in his five-bedroom house for companionship and
to learn other cultures and languages,” said the Sept 16,2001 San Diego
Union Tribune.

It wasn’t true. They admitted the error in a correction.

“Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh was misidentified as a retired San
Diego State University professor in a story Sunday. In fact, he is a
retired educator who taught at Mesa and Miramar colleges and American
Commonwealth University in San Diego. The Union-Tribune regrets the
error.”

But the damage had been done, and in most subsequent stories Shaikh was
called a “San Diego Professor,” which was apparently all that was
necessary to deflect any closer scrutiny.

Newsweek dubbed him a "tested undercover asset." He was labeled a "trusted
informant for the FBI."

What no U.S. media outlet has reported (until now) is that Abdussattar
Shaikh is nothing of the kind. The American people weren't even told his
real name, we discovered. A profile on Indian-born Shaikh in his hometown
Indian newspaper India-West reported Shaikh's real name is "Abdussattar
Chhipa."

When people change their names, its nearly always for a reason.

"State-Sponsored Crime can be highly efficient."

We contacted the California Bureau of Private Postsecondary and Vocational
Education enquiring about Abdussattar Shaikh’s PhD. Deborah Godfrey asked
us to hold while she checked, then came back and said there was nobody by
that name in her records.

“There is no definitive source for records from that ‘school,’”
she stated. “ The transcripts I have came from someone’s garage.”

At one time both ‘schools’ cited in Shaikh’s resume—American
Commonwealth and United States International University—had been run by
Dr. Richard Crews, an M.D. from Harvard, whose pedigree includes stints as
Chief of Psychiatry at Womack military hospital and "Chief of Mental
Hygiene Consultation Services” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of
America’s Special Forces.

Being "President" of bogus Universities must have suited him: in addition
to the two already mentioned, he helmed Columbia Pacific University, which
awarded Mars & Venus’s John Gray his doctorate in snake-oil, which the
California Attorney General denounced as a fraudulent "diploma mill" when
he shut it down in the late ‘90’s.

But not without a fight.

A sticky GOP wicket

“At one time there was no law in this field at all,” explained
California’s Deborah Godfrey.

“When we first tried to take action against Columbia Pacific, all the
way back in 1989 we immediately encountered the wrath of then-Governor
Pete Wilson. There was an atmosphere full of reprisals. We were attacked
just for doing our jobs, accused of being vindictive."

When Governor Wilson appointed a task force to investigate the industry,
we learned, it was packed with owners of the bogus schools.

Dr. Richard Crews was the chairman of the committee.

Helping to explain this laissez-faire Republican attitude toward crime
might have been a story we found detailing Gov. Wilson’s flying around
on private jets which had been paid for by special interest groups. All
but one of the biggest contributors seemed predictable: the California
Winegrape Growers, the California Independent Oil Producers, Merchants and
Manufacturers Assn. of California.

Named right along with these traditionally big-spending lobbyists,
however, was tiny (read: non-existent) William Lyon University, which soon
thereafter changed its name to American Commonwealth University, the
moniker trotted out by Shaikh's FBI handlers to provide their boy Abdu
with a plausible legend, or 'cover.'

Why did clean-cut Pete Wilson go to bat for a bunch of scam schools ten
years ago? Was it just for the cash? A free ride on one of General Lyon's
jets? (Lyon owns Martin Aviation, the FBO and biggest charter operator at
John Wayne Airport.)

Might Wilson and Orange County GOP big-wig Gen William Lyon be playing
parts in some larger operation, one which necessitated having a few
'diploma mills' on hand?

Despite bad publicity, the cluster of phony universities in San Diego
soldiered on, staying one step ahead of flat-footed state bureaucrats by
scattering to places like Montana and Wyoming, and changing their names
faster than you can say "CIA front." They seem rather like the hundreds of
tiny “airlines” through which the CIA once concealed the biggest
airline in the world.

For example, Columbia Pacific, John Gray’s alma mater, has also been
“Columbia Commonwealth University,” and “Commonwealth Pacific
University," and is still in operation, as best we can tell, under a
charter from Malawi, a country in Africa tucked in between Mozambique,
Zambia, and Tanzania.

Technocrats come from all over the globe today, but Malawi has not, to put
it charitably, been known for a strong tradition of educational
achievement. In fact, Malawi's President-for-Life was just in the news for
refusing to move into his country's new $300 million Presidential palace,
because he reportedly believed it was haunted.

How technocratic is that?

"Bribes replaced apples a long time ago."

If Abdussattar Shaikh isn't who authorities claimed he is...who is he?

The answer to that questions remains unknown. And we're only just learning
of Shaikh's curious association with another shadowy Middle-eastern man
living in San Diego...Sam Koutchesfahani, an Iranian exile and arms dealer
for the Shah.

When the Peacock Throne went pffft Koutchesfahani moved to San Diego,
where as one of a large number of Iranians-in-exile, many with former CIA
ties, he turned his attentions to a variety of enterprises. Sam's included
infiltrating Middle Eastern men into the U.S. illegally...for the better
part of a decade.

“For more than six years in the 1990s, people from the Middle East came
to San Diego County on bogus student visas,” reported a September 21,
2001 San Diego Union-Tribune story headlined “Terrorists may have
exploited student visas.”

“Through an underground network led by a Rancho Santa Fe man, nearly 100
Middle Easterners paid local community college teachers and administrators
for counterfeit admission papers and grades, which allowed them to get
student visas.”

(The final figure was "more than 200," according to Sam's plea bargain.)

“At the center of the scam was a Rancho Santa Fe man, Sam
Koutchesfahani, whose family roots and wealth were deep in Iran. He
pleaded guilty to tax evasion and fraud and was sentenced to a year in
prison. Koutchesfahani was the owner of a rented house in Rancho Santa Fe
where 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult took their lives in 1997.”

"Sam & Fifi at the Moonlight Beach Lodge."

Koutchesfahani, according to court documents, bribed college and
university instructors in the San Diego area to procure phony student
visas for middle-eastern men he was helping insert into the U.S.

Could that have been part of Abdussattar Shaikh's job description too? If
not, we are forced to believe the government's story, which portrays him
as just the unluckiest sumbitch in recent American history.

"Unwittingly" housing two of the 19 terrorist hijackers... how unlucky is
that?

We learned of a link between Shaikh and Koutchesfahani from a man who
worked at a motel in Encinitas during the mid-90’s. While he worked
there it had been sold to a group, which included Koutchesfahani, led by a
Lebanese man who apparently has so far completely escaped scrutiny, Tamer
Tamer Salomah.

Here we recalled the convenience store in Venice where Mohamed Atta and
Marwan hung out, abandoned the day after the 9.11 attack by its owner, who
was also Lebanese.

Today Joe Cicchese is the general manager of a hotel and convention center
complex in Corvallis, Oregon. Ten years ago, while going to school in San
Diego and working as a motel clerk, he met Sam Koutchesfahani.

“I just happened upon your article where you mentioned Sam
Koutchesfahani, with the Heaven's Gate cult in his home and all,” he
wrote us.

“I worked for Sam and his wife Fifi in 1994-95. Back then they were
using the last name of Fahani. The motel was called the Moonlight Beach
Lodge. It has changed names twice since; today its called the Portofino
Inn. When Tamer bought the place, he brought Sam in to work on the
premises. Sam said he was "a silent partner" so his name may not appear on
the title.”

We lost no time in phoning Mr. Cicchese to ask for his recollections.

A violent character in a dubious enterprise

Said Cicchese, “Neither one of them knew how to run a hotel. That’s
what I told the FBI when I contacted them in October 2001 with info on Sam
and his bribes to admit middle-eastern students to Universities in San
Diego they did not qualify to attend. But I never heard back from them on
whether or not my info proved fruitful.”

So, who was Sam Fahani/ Koutchesfahani?

“He told me he did arms deals for the Shah,” Cicchese replied. “And
I believed it, because he was a really violent character. He and I didn’t
get along too well, because I didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t know
the first thing about motel management.”

“Then one day he called me into his office because he was pissed about
something,” Cicchese continued, “ and he told me he was going to beat
me with a tire iron.”

“Later that day I had to leave the front desk for some reason, and I saw
Sam walking towards me up the center drive running through the motel, and
he had a tire iron in his hand!”

“And a customer came up to him and asked him about something, and Sam
kept looking back and forth between the customer and me the whole time he
talked with him. If that customer hadn’t stopped him, I think he was
going to hit me with it.”

If neither Tamer nor Sam knew anything about motels, why did they buy it?

“I heard them talking about using it to house some students,” Cicchese
explained. “Tamer taught at some international University in San Diego
with a lot of foreign students, and they were going to use the motel to
house them.”

We asked, “United States International University?”

Cicchese said, “Yeah. That’s the one.”

So one link between Sam Koutchesfahani and Abdussattar Shaikh is
participation in some kind of covert operation involving bogus
universities in San Diego.

Clunker cars on campus at Auld Lang Syne

We discovered that Koutchesfahani also boasts a bogus PhD as well. He has
a doctorate in psychology (we like to think that perhaps his specialty is
anger management) from a diploma mill called “Newport University.”

A story in the June 09, 1996 SALT LAKE TRIBUNE contained this description
of the campus of "Newport University:"

“A couple of clunker cars sit in the driveway of a 40-year-old brick
house, which sits squarely in a commercial zone: a hardware store in back,
an equipment-rental company in front and a McDonald's expanding up the
street.”

”The back yard has an old cedar fence, a rusting clothesline and an
overgrown shade tree. Inside the house, a secondhand desk, some office
chairs, bookshelves and a pair of torch lamps are assembled in the living
room…”

”Welcome to Newport University, Utah's newest private college.”

But there is yet another, even more incredible link between the two men:
Both worked for the San Diego FBI as confidential informants. In court
documents in his bribery case we learned to our astonishment that at
exactly the same time he was renting a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe to the
Heaven’s Gate cultists, Sam Koutchesfahani worked as a confidential
informant for the San Diego FBI.

So if nowhere else, Shaikh and Koutchesfahani’s paths crossed in the
waiting room of the San Diego FBI, which we picture as looking as strange
and exotic as the Wookie Bar from Star Wars.

For a “lone cadre slipping through Europe and America unnoticed,” as
Hedrick Smith lied in the opening of PBS’s Front Line documentary on
the 9.11 attack, the hijackers didn't associate with just the poor
nobodies you'd expect them to...

Just like in Venice, the people the terrorists in San Diego hung out with
were anything but poorly-connected.

More competition for Unluckiest Sumbitch

The San Diego FBI office has endured much embarrassment since the 9.11
attack. They admitted they had been searching for Al-Midhar and Alhazmi
since August because of suspected connections to Osama bin Laden.

Three other suspected terrorists who rented rooms in his home—Omer
Bakarbashat, Ramez T. Noaman and Yazed Al-Salmi—were arrested as
material witnesses in the ongoing terror investigation.

Congressional investigators allowed that they had some problems with the
veracity of Shaikh’s statements. And news reports began to sound
slightly less sure about him:

"Little is known about the 65-year-old, Indian-born Shaikh, who has
declined several interview requests by The Associated Press, other than to
deny his neighbors' reports that suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta visited
his home.”

But at least three of his neighbors stepped forward to say they'd seen
Mohamed Atta at his home on several occasions. So it was soon clear that
the Indian-born Shaikh was lying about his meetings with Atta, just as
he'd lied (and vociferously) about working for the FBI as a confidential
informant.

Neighbor Marna Adair told the FBI that the polite, clean-shaven Atta was
frequently at the home of Abdussattar Shaikh between August and early
December of 2000. Adair said she identified a photograph of Atta on Sept.
17 to FBI agents who visited her home and showed her three pages of
photos.

Adair, a homemaker whose door is about 50 feet from Shaikh's house and
gives a clear view of the driveway, said she is "positive" she saw Atta.

Another neighbor, Deborah Fortner, remembered seeing Atta as well. "He
was the one that was scary. He's got these piercing eyes. That's something
you never forget about him."

The FBI was forced to admit to the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 911
that “the hijackers may have known the informant [Shaikh] months earlier
than the informant admitted.”

Like the after-image of innocent people hanging out of 100th story windows
in the World Trade Center on the morning of the attack, questions about
Shaikh persisted.

But somehow Shaikh’s ‘cover’ held.

Clues to the real story about the hijackers who lived in San Diego were
visible in the first stories filed from there about the city’s role in
the 9.11 plot. It was a story about “students:”

“Prominent Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh said he thought he was
offering shelter to students from Saudi Arabia studying English,”
reported the Sept 15, 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune. “FBI agents are
trying to piece together the many aspects of the hijackers' lives in San
Diego.”

Every news account quoted Bill Gore, head of the San Diego FBI office,
denying that Shaikh was a suspect. He was not suspected of knowingly
harboring the terrorists, Gore told reporters.

Who knows? Maybe the FBI was trying to piece together some of the “many
aspects of the hijackers lives…”

Just not all of them.

http://www.madcowprod.com/04112005.html