Thread: So many problems.

Where to begin.

French "knew in 2001 al Qaeda was planning hijack" - Yahoo! News

That is a link to an article in Reuters. I saw it yesterday in Fox. And will reprint it at the end of my post.

Here are my questions:

Why wasn't this article on CNN? yesterday and today they printed some pretty trivial stuff amidsts the story of the virginia shooting. But why skip this one? This is not news but Oprah's surprise at her own salary is?

Why have we had whole threads about the lack of connection between 9/11 and OBL? The French intel clearly connected it to OBL.

Also why wasn't this included in the official 911 commission report?


"Mon Apr 16, 10:02 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - 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.
The attacks on U.S. cities that eventually took place on September 11, 2001 killed almost 3,000 people.
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.
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 that 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.
Le Monde said the documents showed the French believed bin Laden was still receiving help from family members and senior officials in Saudi Arabia ahead of September 11, 2001, despite attempts to clamp down on the network after al Qaeda's attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998."

I didn't hink that it would have mattered. I mean US intelligence probably have some clues that it wa sabout t happen but they ignored the threat.

Originally Posted by merjoem32

I didn't hink that it would have mattered. I mean US intelligence probably have some clues that it wa sabout t happen but they ignored the threat.

Probably, based on the amount of intelligence reports they received, they either didn't get around to checking it out, or didn't consider it to be credible.

Originally Posted by merjoem32

I didn't hink that it would have mattered. I mean US intelligence probably have some clues that it wa sabout t happen but they ignored the threat.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I wouldn't be so hard on US intelligence, at the time a plane hijack as the article says wouldn't have meant flying planes into buildings. The US knew El Queadar were active and wanted to strike at an American target, there just didn't know where.

It was known long before 2001 that Al Qaeda was actively gunning for the US.

Originally Posted by Migi e!

It was known long before 2001 that Al Qaeda was actively gunning for the US.

Very true. The French knew something was in the wind, hell so did we. Nobody ever thought it would be that brash an attack. Don't be angry with the French.

I didn't really post this article because of the intelligence that may or may not have been available before 911.

What I am saying is that the intel has been available all along and it has been ignored since then.

It was ignored when people were saying that there was no connection between OBL and 911.

It was ignored when the 911 report was written.

And it was ignored by CNN when the French brought it up on Monday.

Who says there is no connection between Osama bin Laden and 911? I know people are having trouble linking Iraq to 911.

Originally Posted by splansing

Who says there is no connection between Osama bin Laden and 911? I know people are having trouble linking Iraq to 911.

The only people who say the first thing are those who think 911 was an "inside job". As for the second, yeah...I agree with the naysayers on that one.

Originally Posted by sid2112

Very true. The French knew something was in the wind, hell so did we. Nobody ever thought it would be that brash an attack. Don't be angry with the French.

I wasn't talking about the French, i was talking about the people in the know here.