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'al-Qaeda memo' 6/8/01: Full text

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  • 'al-Qaeda memo' 6/8/01: Full text

    US 'al-Qaeda memo': Full text

    The following is the full text of the intelligence briefing of 6 August 2001, prepared for President George W Bush, concerning the al-Qaeda threat to the United States.

    It was declassified on 10 April.

    Three sections were edited, the White House said, to "protect the names of foreign governments that provided information to CIA".




    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For the President Only
    Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US

    Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate (Osama) Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America".

    After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a ...(edited)... service.

    An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told a ... (edited) ... service at the same time that Bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

    The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.

    Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation.

    Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

    Ressam says Bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

    Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.

    Bin Laden associates surveilled our embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

    Al-Qaeda members - including some who are US citizens - have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

    Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

    A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

    We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (edited)... service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other US-held extremists.

    Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

    The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related.

    The CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3617289.stm
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  • #2
    I can't believe this is what all that questioning was about.
    No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
    I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
    even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
    He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

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    • #3
      My personal view is that the 9/11 commission is an exercise in proving that people have perfect hindsight.

      My only caveat to that is Dr Rice did portray this document as being a dissertation on historical evidence, which was naive if there were plans to release it because there are enough words that are referring to ongoing stuff and of course it mentions hi jacking and New York. Its fuel for opponents if nothing else.
      at

      Comment


      • #4
        Given the political climate and red tape that would have had to be cut through even had Bush pressed for solutions like the Patriot act the 9/11 attacks STILL would have happened before they were fully implemented. It took that actual event to wake people up to the fact that they were vulnerable to terrorist attacks and break down the partisan walls and acctually work together. Just look at Bill Clintons headaches when he bombed those bases in afganistan prior to 9/11, all those "wag the dog" and "a certain intern" arguements.
        Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

        -- Larry Elder

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