Comments on: Conyers to Mukasey: So You Did Spin Shamelessly, Didn’t You?

By: KevinFenton

KevinFenton — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:26:14 +0000

It wasn’t just one call and the person the hijackers in the US were speaking to was in Yemen, not Afghanistan. The phone was registered to Ahmed al-Hada, an al-Qaeda operative deeply involved in the 1998 embassy and 2000 USS Cole attacks. His daughter was married to Khalid Almihdhar, one of the Pentagon hijackers, and the NSA started monitoring them in 1998, if not before.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Lawrence Wright says:

“The NSA, not wanting to bother with applying to the FISA court for permission to distribute essential intelligence, simply restricted its distribution. For example, in San Diego, Mihdhar made eight calls to the Hada phone to talk to his wife, who had just given birth, which the NSA did not distribute at all. There was a link chart on the wall of the “bullpen” - the warren of cubicles housing the I-49 squad - showing the connections between Ahmed al-Hada’s phone and other phones around the world. It provided a map of al-Qaeda’s international reach. Had the line been drawn from the Hada household in Yemen to Hazmi and Mihdhar’s San Diego apartment, al-Qaeda’s presence in America would have been glaringly obvious.”
The Looming Tower, pp. 343-4

The eight calls mentioned by Wright are from/to a phone in one of the hijacker’s apartments between February and June 2000. There are other calls, made from other phones and at other times (including after the Cole bombing). One key question here is how many calls did the NSA intercept but fail to trace and why?

The 9/11 Commission knew about this, but failed to point it out properly in their report (there are two cryptic mentions of the calls on pages 87-88 and 222). Why did they do that?

By: JamesJoyce

JamesJoyce — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:19:36 +0000

The dysfunctional logic of American’s leaders acting as fascist is reprehensible. Protecting “corpo aristocrats” and business interests opposed to the constitution and the Republic. Gross!!!!!

911 preventable? They had the “intel” and still failed America… as they fail America today!

By: nightlight

nightlight — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:03:09 +0000

For some perverse reason I can’t explain, I was reading the 911 Commission Report the other day and came across this on page 248 in Chapter 7:

The month of August was busy, as revealed by a set of contemporaneous Atta-Binalshibh communications that were recovered after September 11.

My eyebrows went up . . . What kind of communications? How were they “recovered”? Why are the contents of other communications simply and matter-of-factly included in the 9-11 Commission’s narrative, while this one has this odd descriptor?

It certainly sounds like an admission of hoovering to me. If so, how did they know the contents of the other conversations yet not act upon them? Was it only a matter of too few translators? Any reason other than that leads to unsettling conclusions all around.

By: bmaz

bmaz — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:31:45 +0000

If you read this post, and all the little links in it, it pretty much covers every detail you seek.

By: JTMinIA

JTMinIA — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:18:25 +0000

How can the Admin promise to cover all loses? I thought only Congress had the power to spend money.

Or am I still thinking in terms of a gov’t with three branches? … silly me.

By: looseheadprop

looseheadprop — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:04:14 +0000

BTW, I got a blast email form Leahy today saying he wants the Senate to revist the FISA bill and make it look just like the House Bill.

It may be PR, but it’s the kind I like to hear

By: bmaz

bmaz — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:25:59 +0000

The latter, plus a corresponding promise by the Administration to cover any losses and costs of defense incurred by the telcos.

By: JTMinIA

JTMinIA — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:15:26 +0000

Why aren’t they worried? Is it because they are Too Big to be Sued (a fully-owned subsidiary of Too Big to Fail) or are they safe behind some secret piece of paper where the Administration promises — cross my heart and hope to die (i.e., we’ll take the fall) — that it was all legal?

By: bmaz

bmaz — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:09:25 +0000

I don’t believe they are all that worried about it; in fact they have pretty much said so. It is only the Administration that has been having apoplectic fits. Quite frankly, if I were the telcos, I would not trust the Administration to carry my precious water; they simply are not competent nor trustworthy enough. As long as I had indemnification, I would want to fight for myself.

By: JTMinIA

JTMinIA — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:02:48 +0000

Yes, that’s close to the kind of substitution I meant. I think it was Specter’s amendment, maybe Whitehouse’s, maybe the two of them together. The idea, I thought, was to eliminate any financial argument against moving forward. But if also makes the case harder to investigate, then forget it.

But my point was more that the telecoms might see any chance for protection as waning and, therefore, might push Jello (in particular) to compromise. That would be a nice sign.