9/11 Commission, Londonistan, and Day of 9/11 - Additions to the 9/11 Timeline as of October 19, 2008
Several of this week's new entries focus on the 9/11 Commission, in particular its Executive Director Philip Zelikow, who offered public support for the invasion of Iraq in 2002, but did not want the commission to investigate false claims of links between 9/11 and Iraq. After the commission's investigation started, one staffer was sent to review CIA documents, and another, Warren Bass, was sent to review NSC material. Bass came to favor the account of events in the Bush Administration in the summer of 2001 given by counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke over that given by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. However, Zelikow distrusted Clarke and tried to protect his friend Rice; it was these ties to Rice which caused both Bass and Commissioner Bob Kerrey to threaten to quit the commission, although neither of them made good on their threat.
In Londonistan, in the late 1990s British intelligence informer Abu Hamza established militant training camps in Britian that were run by ex-soldiers and monitored by the British police. He also ran London's Finsbury Park mosque, where an Algerian spy was unmasked in 1998, and encouraged his followers to take up global holy war. Britain was a financial base for the global Islamist movement and millions were raised there, with a great deal of help from Abu Hamza, who told his followers it was OK to steal from non-Muslims and openly encouraged them to pledge their loyalty to Osama bin Laden. His assets were frozen in 2002, but this did not stop him from being involved in a property transaction two years later.
A contributor to the 9/11 Timeline was recently successful with an FOIA request for FAA phone calls on the day of 9/11 and a couple of new entries have been added thanks to this. The military liaison at New York Center was informed of the hijacking of flight 175 about a minute before it crashed into the WTC and American Airlines and the FAA discussed the hijacking of Flight 77 for a third time shortly after this. Regarding flight 93, the military liaisons at the FAA were reportedly told it was hijacked before 10:00 a.m., and the military liaison at Cleveland Center learned of the hijacking before 10:07. In addition, United Airlines later claimed to the FAA that the plane was over Maryland, although it is thought never to have reached that state.
Finally, computerization of Air National Guard operation centers in 1997 allowed simulations for training and exercises.
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Kevin...
Who coined the term Londonistan? Is it a common term in play by various intelligence shops?
Is there a benefit to identifying London as Londonistan? If the term is being used behind the scenes by intel shops, that's one thing, but lay-persons describing a city with the intent of flavoring perception is another.
Frankly, if British Intelligence wasn't running and protecting half of these guys, there wouldn't be a situation to perceive;
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2006/07/our-shameless-government-on-77.html
"The covenant of security, whose existence has been conceded by former British intelligence officials like Crispin Black, consisted of a tacit understanding with radical Islamist networks (some directly and openly associated with al-Qaeda) allowing them to have free reign inside the UK on condition that they refrain from attacking British targets and focus any terrorist activity outside the UK. But the covenant alone was and is not the whole story. The rest of it concerns Britain's (and the West's) active cooperation with radical Islamist networks to pursue key strategic and economic interests in regions of central geopolitical significance, particularly the Balkans, Central Asia and Northwest Africa (although there are more, these are the most relevant to 77). This international policy has obvious domestic ramifications, in that domestic networks tied to groups considered nominally useful to certain foreign policy objectives have therefore been protected from normal law-enforcement procedures."
French Intelligence
The term Londonistan is generally thought to have been coined by French intelligence, and reflects the number of Islamist radicals in the British capital, as well as their co-operation with the local security services there. The category, which you can find here:
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timelin...
is called Londonistan because the term signifies collusion between the UK and Islamist radicals and that's what the category is about.
The French were really mad because Britain was basically harbouring radicals who were involved in attacks on France. Check the case of Rachid Ramda, who was involved in metro bombings in Paris; it took ten years to get him extradited from Britain (from 1995 to 2005). It doesn't take ten years to extradite somebody to France, but the MSM in Britain seems to assume this is just because of excessive civil liberties protections. Imagine it took Afghanistan 10 years to extradite Osama, would we buy that, put it down to the justified complications of the Afghani legal code? It's not just the French who were mad, there were also complaints by the US and the Saudis, for example.
Basically, the vast majority of the radical leaders, if not all of them, were working with the security services, either MI5 and/or special branch, plus maybe MI6 in some cases. The three main leaders were Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri (you can check the separate categories for them under the "Possible al-Qaeda linked moles or informants" meta-category on the homepage), and they all worked with the security services. Other militant leaders also worked for the security services. If you took away the people who worked for the security services, there would be practically no structure left to the movement, just a clump of low-level people milling about.
The quote you provided from Ahmed absolutely nails it. Mostly, the MSM attributes the growth of the radical Islamist movement in the UK to inattentiveness by the security services (who were allegedly too focused on Northern Ireland to pay proper attention) and excessive civil liberties. A few alternative writers point out the covenant of security. However, the covenant of security does not fully explain it. These radicals were allowed to operate (and perhaps helped?) because they were in line with the west's geopolitical aims. Bosnia is a great example of this - the muj were used against Serbia, a client of Russia. Funding was also going from the UK to the muj in Chechnya, who were also fighting Russia. This was great for the UK and the west. We didn't want to get our hands dirty at the start of the Bosnian war, so we let a bunch of proxies based in the UK fight the Russians and we had deniability. The situation was probably the same in the US, radicals (think the Blind Sheikh) were allowed to operate because they helped the US's geopolitical aims (anti-communism was one of their prime attributes).
What's worrying about this is that whenever the issue got up to the level of the cabinet in Britain, the cabinet decided right. For example Home Secretary Michael Howard told Osama he could not live in London in the mid-1990s and Home Secretary David Blunkett campaigned against Abu Hamza in the early 2000s. So who formulated this policy and who was running it?
Thanks.
I was looking at the term as a casual net surfer who might take offense. I think you have provided some important context.
I think it's a common misconception
Maybe it is something to do with Melanie Philips writing a book called Londonistan. Philips does actually mention the authorities were aware of the extremists and actually worked with them, but mostly puts it down to the intelligence services being pre-occupied with Northern Ireland and not aware of the threat potential of Islamist terrorists - these are the same people who just used radical Islamists to beat one of the world's two superpowers in Afghanistan. Philips occasionally has an original idea or makes a good point, but she also subscribes to a grab-bag of the usual crap and is not highly rated in some circles.
Aw c'mon Kevin...
I can't add anymore to #16. It's filled to the rim. :D
Do these people deserve to know how and why their loved ones were murdered? Do we deserve to know how and why 9/11 happened?
There is lots more.
I'm not even half way through The Commission. Zelikow firing one of the Saudi connection investigators was also a big deal, but I haven't go to that yet.