Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam

[TeeYiYi]

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 14/12/2003)
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.

More (requires registration): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/14/ixnewstop.html

TYY
 

[TeeYiYi]

1. Didn't take long for this angle to surface. :eyes: ......n/t

TYY

[loudnclear]

25. Didn't take long for our intel to set this up.

They will do a good job.

[La_Serpiente]

2. Someone already posted the article here

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said.

The right wing mediawhores will be all over this for the next couple of weeks. I am not going to believe this until we find out where the intelligence came from. There is too much disinformation out there, and this could be another one of it.

[TeeYiYi]

15. ??? . . .

Where?

TYY :eyes:

[Exultant Democracy]

3. If this is true then the CIA is full of shit

The CIA has stated that they have been able to backtrack Atta's movement for well over half a year before the 9/11 attacks.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

23. I think we all know which "intelligence analysts" are being cited in...

...this work of fiction. They report to the Defense Department, and are known as the OSP...NeoCon PNACer mouthpieces all the way.

The CIA, as much as I personally dislike the organization, has been correct in their assessments of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[mhr]

4. This Smells Like Propaganda!

eom

[Capt_Nemo]

5. Yeah, right! And Atta brought with him Uranium from Niger

and documents signed by George Galloway... :eyes:

But then again this is the Torygraph...

[durutti]

26. Whatever came of those documents?

I know that the CSM ones were debunked, but what about the Telegraph?

[Capt_Nemo]

38. As far as I know the Galloway docs also turned out to be forgeries

[jonoboy]

6. UK Telegraph= Conrad Black=Rupert Murdoch=Lies Lies Lies

[warrior1]

8. Isn't

this the same bull shit they debunked over a year ago. Hell we should just crown little george king of the world.

[Racenut20]

7. Looks like more fabrication from Rummy's man Chabli

I am not sure how to spell that. Sounds like a French Wine doesn't it. How could this admin trust that?

[Robb]

Yeah, this is so absurd

As said upthread, if this little tidbit of outrageously convenient intelligence is solid, then thousands of pieces of intel and the CIA's analysis is not.

[pistoff democrat]

9. Emphasize Bush/Saudi Ties -

the 19 (or 20)of 9/11 were almost all Saudis...and where's OSAMA? and how much is DICK Cheney making on all of this?

[suegeo]

30. osama?

Isn't he the alleged 9.11 terrorist that the United States trained back in the 1970s and 80s?

[Mokito]

36. Who?

nt

[Philosophy]

10. It would have been more believable if they left the uranium out

On the same memo? That's too much - the items aren't even remotely related...except in the propagandized minds of Americans. Sounds like a story from The Inquirer.

[underpants]

27. Gee in one little document they found all that? Was a red bow on it?

Yeah the uranium part set the BS meter off.

[teryang]

31. Why not tell a big one?

Uranium Niger, yeah that's the ticket. I read that far and didn't need to read any further, either.

[okieinpain]

28. exactly, way way way too convenient

[Booberdawg]

11. Oh, Bullshit!

[jab105]

22. thats what i was thinking...

n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

12. Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by the US govermnent

Mohammed Atta attended the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force in Alabama. Saeed Alghamdi studied at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. At least three other alledged 9/11 hijackers received training at secure US military installations.

Lt. Col. Steve Butler was vice chancellor for student affairs while Alghamdi was a student. In a letter published May 26, 2002, Butler charged "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain." Butler was removed from his position and threatened with court martial.

According to its web site, the Defense Language Institute provides foreign language services to "Department of Defense, government agencies and foreign governments" to support "national security interests and global operational needs." Why was Alghamdi there? Why did he enter the US through a visa office run as a CIA operation?

Fifteen of the alledged hijackers received visas through Jeddah, bin Laden's home, headquarters of the bin Laden family business and Osama's Saudi base before his expulsion. Michael Springman, a 20-year veteran of the State Department who was stationed to Jeddah, says he was repeatedly ordered to approve unqualified visa applicants: terrorists who received training in the United States by leave of the CIA. "The State Department did not run the Consulate in Jeddah. The CIA did."

A CBC radio interview with Springman, from January 19, 2002, can be heard here: http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm. He claims his decisions to deny visas to unqualified applicants were frequently overturned for "national security reasons." In the interview, he claims he was told the CIA was working with bin Laden through the Jeddah office as a channel to send al Qaeda recruits to the United States for training as terrorists. He bluntly asserts that this partnership didn't end with the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and continued as late as September 11, 2001. Springman raised hell, and lost his job. Why would the CIA be helping bin Laden send terrorists into the US after the Soviet defeat? Springman: "It's only a few thousand dead, and what's that against the greater gain for the United States in the Middle East?"

Springman, 20-year State Department veteran, suggests that those who died on September 11 "may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives."

It wasn't Saddam who trained them. It was the United States.

http://www.madcowprod.com/index5.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/offi-j21.shtml
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=104&row=1
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/02/521.shtml
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm

[MrPrax]

29. Trained by Abu Nidal...that's the key

IN the public's mind, the only terrorist that has any cache for 'international' terrorism is Abu Nidal.
So it fits the master narrative...links to Iraq and links to the Palestinians
Patrick Seale's book Gun for Hire claims, among other things, that Nidal was 'penetrated' by Mossad and encouraged to kill off moderates and attack targets that would through the Palestinian cause into embarassment.
Personally I think if you can create 'super' terrorists and publicize them (bider-meinhof, red brigades, al-queda, abu nidal) then it adds camouflage to state terror tactics that can be easily attributed to these 'terrorist' groups...
Also this 'propaganda' is necessary given the US cases against a lot of these 'masterminds' is being either thrown out or the judicial arm is asking for Shrub's gang to start providing proof...
http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/83976.php

[Rainbows]

32. Thank You Minstrel ...

You saved me the time of posting four of five of you URLS. But what a dis-imformation campaign they have set up to cure all their ills. Niger urananium and the sixteen words, al Qaeda link and caught red handed facilitating the attack on the WTC and Pentagon. Wonder why they didn't include the 'made in USA anthrax' that made its way into congressional offices at the same time and make it a clean sweep, a Grand Slam. Tis sad, 80% of Americans will believe it, after it is beat to death and revived again and again, in our 'liberal' media.

[SheilaT]

13. I thought Atta

was in Prague that summer. At least that was one dumb story being thrown around a while back.

[htuttle]

17. The FBI says he was in Florida that summer

That's what (well, one of the things that) originally debunked the Prague story. They have his car rental receipts, hotel bookings, etc... for that whole time period tracked.

[AngryAmish]

14. Atta + Uranium?!?

I would sooner beleive the Weekly World News Headline:
"Saddam and Osama Adopt Bat Boy"

[jmcgowanjm]

16. Con Coughlin -the Judith Miller of the Telegraph

Lt. Col. al-Dabbagh, cases of WMD warheads were shipped under cover of darkness to front-line units, including his own, near the end 2002, the Telegraph reported Sunday.
Above is some of Coughlin's work.

Stay with Kupferberg on the Legend of 911

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/121103Kupferberg/121103kupferberg.html

[Cooley Hurd]

18. This has ben debunked...

<snip>
Spring
An April 28 Newsweek report sought to kill the story for good. According to the story, the Czechs had, months earlier, quietly acknowledged that they "may have been mistaken about the whole thing." After a lengthy search, the FBI had found no evidence that Atta was even in Prague in April 2001. Following the Newsweek report, the Times reversed itself a second time, citing a senior administration official who said the FBI and CIA had both firmly concluded that no such meeting had occurred.

A week later on the Times Op-Ed page, Safire remained undeterred, referring to "skillful manipulation by anonymous sources whose policy agenda is never revealed to readers" (though Safire didn't reveal his sources, either). Safire also drew on new confirmations from Czech officials, although in fact the messages were mixed: The Czech interior minister and the envoy to the United Nations stuck with their story that the meeting took place, but the chief of foreign intelligence voiced strong doubts.

Summer
Though the latest wave of news stories says the meeting never happened, the Bush administration reportedly isn't ready to abandon the story. The Los Angeles Times reported in early August that the administration had decided to back the story over the doubts of the FBI and CIA. But an intelligence official told the LAT that there was no new evidence of a meeting between Atta and al-Ani, and the CIA had not been asked to re-evaluate the case. On Aug. 22, Newsweek said that the only evidence remains the "uncorroborated claim" of a Czech informant who says he saw the two men together on April 9, 2001. But, who needs evidence? According to Newsweek, when an FBI agent recently told Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that the meeting was "unlikely," Wolfowitz grilled him until he agreed it was technically possible, since the FBI can't cite Atta's whereabouts on April 9.

</snip>

Mohammed Atta was in the US during the time when he wa supposed to be in the Czech Republic. He left a paper trail of credit card receipts...

[FreakinDJ]

19. The timing is too perfect

for this type of message and supposed proof.

This is more like resurrection of George the Great Leader of the Free world

[UpInArms]

20. thanks for the humor this morning

I needed the laugh!

Let's see - Atta is now the "mastermind" - what happened to Osama bin forgotten - or Sheik Mulla Omar - or Khalidad (sp?)

how quickly the sands do shift to the Niger (debunked) connection -

and didn't SH offer up Nidal to the US? - oh but he died - see:

http://www.iap.org/abunidal.htm

However, the Iraq’s deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz told reporters in Baghdad on Tuesday that the man had committed suicide after Iraqi security agents confronted him with damning evidence of his collusion with Iraqi opposition figures based in Damascus.

Iraqi sources said Abu Nidal had sneaked into Iraq from Iran last year on a forged passport but the authorities soon discovered his presence and placed him under house arrest.

The sources added that he later was caught contacting “external parties” conspiring against Iraq.

this badly penned piece of propaganda should get a "consumate lie" award.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. This is a real steaming pants-load...simply incredible.

[durutti]

24. Extremely Dubious

It's the Telegraph, and the source is an Iraqi "opposition" tool.

I expect this story to be debunked within a few days.

[0007]

34. No doubt about it!

[xxqqqzme]

33. a HAND written memo

and they found this where...hidden in Saddam's briefcase? (which he was using as a pillow while in hiding) shirt pocket?

Amazingly convenient & handy, dandy.

[Mokito]

35. Here comes Wondermemo...

...to save the day.

And what a timing!

One single memo that confirms just about every (debunked) allegation the *administration made...how f$ck$ng convenient!

[Fovea]

42. We gotta get Karl off the Clancy

and into Grisham or somebody even less predictable.

[seasat]

37. There was an former Iraqi General selling forged memos after the war.

He tried to sell one to British paper stating that an antiwar legislator had recieved payment from Sadaam. However, it was found to be a bad forgery. I think it was among the group that another british journalist claimed to have found in a box laying out in the open in the defense ministry. Y'all remember the memo that had the white out over the words Al Queda. I think, (if memory is correct) that they traced it back to the Iraqi General and mention of those documents quietly died out in the press. I'd be willing to guess that these new documents are from the same group or a new round of forgeries.

[seasat]

39. Here's the link to the story on the forgeries.

CS Monitor Story

A former Iraqi general was profiting from forgeries. I wonder if he is the same source used in this article.

[bvar22]

40. I heard that the note was written in crayon .

The notebook paper it was written on was covered in jelly smears and pretzel crumbs.

[Matilda]

41. Aabout as authentic as Murdoch's "Hitler Diaries" IMHO

n/t

[JCMach1]

43. Utter rubbish

...eom

[Sideways]

44. Con Is Aptly Named

And his writing is so fucking shitty to boot. AARRGGGHHHH. Atta ate my fucking homework too..so there!!!