Comments on: Another Possibility with Mukasey’s 9/11 Story

By: KevinFenton

KevinFenton — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:18:25 +0000

Hi EmptyWheel, I have been researching this issue for years. I can tell you that the two hijackers involved were Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi (both on American 77, which hit the Pentagon), there was not just one call, but several (and they were intercepted by the NSA, which drafted dispatches to the US intelligence community about some of them), that the safe house was not in Afghanistan, but Sana’a, Yemen (Tel: 967 1 200 578), and it was run by a guy named Ahmed al-Hada, Almihdhar’s father-in-law. It was also not just a safe house, it was al-Qaeda’s main global communications hub and Osama himself placed dozens of calls to it. In addition, it was involved in the embassy bombings and the attack on the Cole, as was Almihdhar. And this was all known before 9/11.

We made a detailed timeline, which you can find here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch....._yemen_hub

That’s a lot of reading, so you can find a summary here:
http://www.iraqtimeline.com/blog/?p=41

Sorry for putting this response here (when it really belongs somewhere slightly different), but I’m new to this site and was having problems accessing some parts (problems just a problem with my computer or something).

By: jjjones

jjjones — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:02:12 +0000

From N.N. Taleb’s remarkable book “Fooled By Randomness”, in a section called Skills in Predicting Past History.

“A more vicious effect of such hindsight bias is that those who are very good at PREDICTING the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future, and feel confident about their ability to do so. This is why events like those of September 11, 2001, never teach us that we live in a world where important events are not predictable—even the Twin Towers’ collapse appears to have been predictable THEN.”

By: Minnesotachuck

Minnesotachuck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:29:43 +0000

As I recall from Kitty Kelly’s and Kevin Phillips’ books on the Bush family, GHWB’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Bush, came from the Cleveland area. The majority of the family fortune, however, was the doing of his maternal grandfather, George Herbert Walker, who originally came from St. Louis. Walker was the one who originally owned the Kennebunkport property.

By: GeorgeSimian

GeorgeSimian — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:45:02 +0000

It’s a pretty lame response. Kind of the Bush legal team special, where they reference their own reference, rather than any actual event or fact.

By: klynn

klynn — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:41:11 +0000

Yep, you are quite correct in the financial history. And yes, was originally Ohio based (along with Conn), seeing as Ohio held the largest number of patents in the 1850’s and was a manufacturing and research boom time for the state. As far as W is concerned, I think the mentally of the family since WWII has been a huge social impact on him along with the cultural impact of the Texas oil $$$.

The blue-blooded Connecticut and Ohio Bushes have been sharing private rail cars with the reclusive Rockefeller and sending their scions to Yale since before the Civil War. One of those many inconvenient truths that Mr. Bush has tried to hide with his barbecues, brush clearin’ and retractable Texas twang.

Loved that quote! Spot on!

By: Minnesotachuck

Minnesotachuck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:40:01 +0000

I don’t think there’s much question that the Bush-Cheney Cabal was looking for an excuse to gin up an excuse to invade Iraq from January 21, 2001, onward. However, I think you’re overlooking a few factors that support your “weak hypothesis.”
1) There was a powerful reality distortion field surrounding the neocons who made up most of the national security team of the incoming administration as a result of the group-think that permeated (and still permeates) that crowd.
2) One element of that field was the operating assumption that the Clinton national security team were a bunch of bumbling idiots, and that therefore anything the out-goers thought was a serious threat wasn’t, and vice versa. Thus the blowing off of Richard Clarke et al as he buttonholed everyone in sight about al Qaeda and bin Laden “as if his hair was on fire,” as someone was quoted as saying.
3) While Philip Shennon in his book The Commission, makes a pretty strong case that the CIA had acquired considerable useful and specific knowledge that something was up (contrary to the preconceived conclusion that Zelikow did his best to convey in the Commission’s report), they were responsible for one huge fuck-up, early in 2000 IIRC, in not passing on the information had about several attendees at the Malaysia planning meeting coming to the USA through Los Angeles. Had that info found its way to the State Dept and the FBI and those guys nailed either at the point of entry or later in country, the plot might have been blown. That’s definitely not a certainty, however.

Regarding Pearl Harbor, I read a lot of stuff about that over the years, and in general my personal view is that FDR may have been trying to entice Japan into doing something stupid but that he never expected them to hit Pearl Harbor first. More likely the Philippines. PH was enabled by the same kind of unconscious comm snafus we saw at 9/11.

By: maryo2

maryo2 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:37:20 +0000

Take the time to stop by MadCowMorningNews and read about Mohammed Atta. Note: MadCow may be too out-there for some.

The site says that Atta was followed for years. The NSA had files on him that they destroyed based on advice from NSA counsel. (similar to destroying the torture tapes) We don’t know what the Bush Administration knew before 9-11, so we can’t rule out that 9-11 was easily avoidable and we should wonder if the Bush Administration was complicit.

What has the Bush Admin done since 2001 to suggest that they could not possibly have been complicit? = a short list

What has the Bush Admin done since 2001 to suggest that they might possibly have been complicit? = a long list

By: JimWhite

JimWhite — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:14:10 +0000

Glenn has just put up a post with a response from a DOJ spokesperson.

By: LS

LS — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:12:02 +0000

“Al-Jehani, identified by some as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations in the gulf region, appeared cradling a Kalashnikov in a famous al-Qaeda martyrdom video found in an Afghanistan safe house in 2001.”

http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....hix-sphere

By: LS

LS — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:05:11 +0000

I think Mukasey in confused…the only references I’ve heard to a safe house in Afganistan had to do with Qatani (sp) and others after 9/11 not before…the Qatani torture transcript refers to a safehouse in Afganistan.