* The FBI and CIA failed to disclose that Jdey was detained ( with biology textbooks) at the same time as Zacarias Moussaoui and then released.
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
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Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 25, 2012
This entry was posted on January 25, 2012 at 11:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: *** 2001 anthrax attacks, *** Amerithrax, *** FBI anthrax investigation, Abderraouf Jdey, al Qaeda and anthrax, Zacarias Moussaoui. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
DXer said
2 Canadians Tied to Terrorist Plots
RESPONSE TO TERROR
Citizens: Tunisian-born men are suspected of planning suicide missions against the U.S. They are at large and considered ‘extremely dangerous.’
January 26, 2002|ERIC LICHTBLAU | TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON — U.S. authorities drew their first firm link Friday between Canada and Al Qaeda-trained terrorists since the Sept. 11 hijackings, identifying two Canadian citizens who are suspected of plotting suicide attacks against America.
The two Tunisian-born men, a known Al Qaeda operative and his associate, are thought to have left Canada some months ago and are on the lam, law enforcement officials said.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said he did not know whether the men might be in the United States. Even so, he urged the public to be on the lookout for the pair. The Justice Department released photographs of the men, Al Rauf bin Al Habib bin Yousef Al-Jiddi, 36, and Faker Boussora, 37. Ashcroft said they should be considered “extremely dangerous.”
Although Ashcroft’s repeated terrorist-related warnings since Sept. 11 have drawn criticism from some quarters as excessive and somewhat alarmist, the attorney general and his advisors said in releasing the new photos that the public should have as much information as possible and use “vigilance and common sense” to help deter attacks.
The identification of the pair will likely focus renewed attention on security concerns in Canada, which some critics branded a “Club Med for terrorists” in 1999 after an Algerian-born resident tried to sneak into the U.S. with a trunkload of explosives.
Jiddi represents the first Al Qaeda operative “positively identified” as a citizen of Canada since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, said Dan Brien, a spokesman for the Canadian solicitor general.
“To this point, we haven’t had any evidence of a link between Canada and the events of Sept. 11,” Brien said. “There’s a lot of interest in [Jiddi and Boussora] because now there’s a name and a face. We’ve been saying for some time that there are people involved in terrorism in this country–as there are in every industrialized country in the world. Our job is to bring them to justice and make sure they don’t carry out their terrorist acts.”
Jiddi was one of five suspected Al Qaeda operatives identified in videotaped messages of anti-American martyrdom that the U.S. military found in the rubble of a top Osama bin Laden aide’s home in Afghanistan some weeks ago.
Ashcroft identified the other four operatives publicly last week, but authorities had been unable to put a name with Jiddi’s face until they matched him to a suicide letter also found in the rubble.
With the aid of Canadian law enforcement, U.S. officials traced Jiddi to Montreal, where he apparently lived after his arrival in Canada in 1991 until recently. He became a Canadian citizen in 1995. U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials said they believe he left the area several months ago, but it is not known whether it was before or after Sept. 11.
Boussora, an unlikely looking terrorist suspect, with a boyish face and what Ashcroft called “prominent ears,” was described as a known associate of Jiddi who authorities believe may be traveling with him.
Boussora is also a Canadian.
Montreal was also the home in the late 1990s of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be terrorist whose plot to bomb LAX in December 1999 was thwarted when he was discovered at the U.S. border north of Seattle with explosives in his car. It was later revealed he had trained at two jihad terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
Comment:
Liam isn’t afraid of wolves.
DXer said
Here is the testimony of a true hero in the 911 saga, FBI Agent Harry Samit. Before joining the FBI as a Special Agent and being assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force, he had been a former student
and instructor at the Top Gun School. For years, he served as a Naval intelligence officer tasked with analyzing threats to the country. Years of experience and expertise supported the alarm he
was communicating to FBI HQ in seeking a FISA warrant to get into Moussaoui’s laptop. Upon hearing that Moussaoui had no aviation rating and yet was taking the expensive course at Pan Am
(and Moussaoui wasn’t interested in learning how to land), he and others knew there was good reason to be alarmed. Agent Samit did all he could to avoid 9/11. Given Moussaoui’s connection to Abu Khattab was known, any suggestion that there was not grounds for a warrant under the standard for FISA is not well-founded.
On 9/10, Agent Samit was comforted by a colleague who explained that he will have done all he could.
On this question of Moussaoui’s arrest — and where Jdey was arrested at the same time with biology textbooks — Agent Samit might know and be able to explain the details. Or Eileen Rowley.
For example, in the snippet below he explains that Moussaoui was driving a Subaru.
Was the companion al-Attas?
Al-Attas, too, if interviewed might be able to describe anything he knows about Jdey being arrested at the same time — but the released. Of course. Mowf, who had been head of the CTC at the time and kept the secret of Jdey’s arrest from the public for 10 years, could also.
1 Q. Did he give you any type of information about whether
2 Mr. Moussaoui was associated with any type of car?
3 A. He did. He was able to describe a sedan and give a partial
4 license plate and a color of the license.
5 Q. All right. Did he tell you the make of the car?
6 A. He did.
7 Q. What kind of car was that?
8 A. Subaru.
9 Q. All right. And did you learn from Mr. Prevost if
10 Mr. Moussaoui was traveling alone or with somebody else?
11 A. Mr. Prevost indicated that Mr. Moussaoui had a companion.
12 Q. And did he give you any further information about that
13 companion at the time?
14 A. He was able to describe him as a male, dark complected, with
15 dark hair.
DXer said
Q. Did you tell the FAA the things that Mr. Moussaoui told you
8 on August 16 –
9 A. We did. We were only able to report what he told us.
10 Q. Had Mr. Moussaoui told you the things that in the statement
11 of facts he admitted in front of this Court, for example, that he
12 was part of a plot to fly planes into buildings, could you have
13 supplied that information to the FAA on September 5 as well?
14 A. Absolutely. It would have gone much sooner, obviously, but
15 yes, we would have been in a position to do that.
16 Q. Well, why would it have been smoother? What would you have
17 done?
18 A. We would have notified them immediately, along with other
19 members of the intelligence community, FBI headquarters, FBI New
20 York. Within minutes of Mr. Moussaoui disclosing any of those –
21 answering any of those questions truthfully, that information
22 would have been forwarded to, to every member of the intelligence
23 community, and especially the FAA.
DXer said
25 Q. Now, did you continue to try to accumulate the information
1 that you had gotten through your French legat and from the Central
2 Intelligence Agency in terms of pursuing your FISA warrant?
3 A. Yes. It was, it was the obsession of our squad, of the Joint
4 Terrorism Task Force, was doing just that.
5 Q. When you say obsession, could you tell us what do you mean by
6 that?
7 A. I mean that on the basis of the interviews that Special Agent
8 Weess and myself had done on the 16th and the 17th, we were
9 convinced that Mr. Moussaoui was involved in some type of plot,
10 and so all of our energies were directed at accumulating whatever
11 was required, evidence or intelligence, to get into his belongings
12 and search them for information as to what was going to happen.
13 Q. Now, at some point, your request to get a FISA search warrant
14 was denied by your headquarters; is that right?
15 A. Yes, sir.
16 Q. Okay. Do you know approximately when that was?
17 A. Approximately August 28.
18 Q. All right. At the time that your request for a search
19 warrant was denied, could you explain to us what was the extent of
20 the information that you had available that connected you to a
21 terrorist organization?
22 A. Yes, sir.
23 Q. Or Mr. Moussaoui, I’m sorry.
24 A. Yes, sir. We had information from our legat in Paris that
25 Mr. Moussaoui had recruited this fighter for the Chechens who had
1 since been killed in Chechnya, that that fighter, in fact, was
2 connected to Ibn Khattab, who was the leader of the Chechen
3 fighters.
4 The CIA was able to confirm that information and also to
5 provide information that Ibn Khattab and Usama Bin Laden had a
6 relationship.
DXer said
Amerithrax represents the greatest intelligence analysis failure in the history of the United States because the failure so closely parallels the intelligence analysis leading up to 9/11 — and the lesson of 9/11 should have been sufficient to avoid the same mistake in Amerithrax.
DXer said
Q. Now, on August 30, did you get additional information back
4 through your French legat?
5 A. Yes, sir.
6 Q. And did you get specific information about Mr. Moussaoui’s
7 fundamentalism?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Could you describe what the extent of the information was
10 about his religious views?
11 A. That he was extreme, that he was — had espoused violence,
12 that he attempted to recruit and convert others to both the
13 extreme view of Islam and to violence, and that he had followed
14 closely the Wahabi sect of Islam.
DXer said
Q. All right. Now, specifically about this information that is
12 in paragraph 6, where Mr. Moussaoui has admitted that he dealt
13 directly with Bin Laden and Abu Hafs, what kind of questions would
14 you have asked perhaps about Bin Laden and Abu Hafs and al Qaeda?
15 A. I would have asked what his purpose for being in the United
16 States was, what they had asked him to do, who else they had asked
17 to do it, his means of communicating with them, the amount of
18 money they provided him.
Comment: Abu Hafs is Atef, to whom Dr. Zawahiri wrote memos discussing the status of the anthrax planning and program.
DXer said
21 Q. Could you tell us what it is that you told Mr. Moussaoui?
22 A. We informed Mr. Moussaoui that his story hadn’t added up,
23 that he had not given us a satisfactory explanation for his
24 reasons for being in the United States, his reasons for coming to
25 Minnesota to take flight training, the fact that he had so much
908
1 money, the fact that his flight training and the purpose and the
2 ends to that flight training did not make sense for any kind of
3 practical aviation rating, that we understood that he was an
4 Islamic extremist, that he talked about violence before, and we
5 asked him to identify his associates and what his plan was.
DXer said
Q. Okay. Now, did you again during this second day of
2 interviews, did you ask him about the source of his funding again?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And could you tell us why it is that you did that again?
5 A. The issue remained the same from the day before. He had not
6 provided a wholly convincing explanation for where he was able to
7 come up with that amount of money.
8 Funding is very important to terrorism investigators
9 because, not just the source that allows us to identify
10 associates, but it also gives an indication of what the plan may
11 be. It is a very important article of any criminality for us to
12 determine it.
13 Q. And did he indicate to you any further discussions about
14 where he had gotten his money from?
15 A. He did.
16 Q. And what was that?
17 A. He named, he indicated it was from friends and associates.
18 Q. And did you press him again on details of who those friends
19 were?
20 A. We did. We pressed him on them, again, reminding him that it
21 seemed very strange that people who had provided him with such a
22 large sum of money, that he couldn’t even name.
DXer said
Moussaoui initially was taken to INS center on 8/16 and then on 8/17 was taken to the Sherburn County jail.
899
1 A. Previously, yes. And he had been transported back up by then
2 to the immigration office.
3 Q. And at any point did you put the two of them in the same jail
4 together?
5 A. No, sir.
6 Q. We’re going to talk about another interview of Mr. Moussaoui,
7 but when you were done with that, did you send Mr. Moussaoui back
8 to Carver or did you send him to a different jail?
9 A. At the conclusion of the interviews on the 17th,
10 Mr. Moussaoui was sent to a different jail.
11 Q. And what jail was that?
12 A. Sherburn County Jail.
13 Q. All right. Now, after you got done talking to Mr. al-Attas,
14 did you have an occasion to speak with Mr. Moussaoui?
15 A. We did. We, as we had agreed the night before, we
16 reinterviewed Mr. Moussaoui.
17 Q. All right. And at that time did you — how long did you
18 interview him?
19 A. Approximately two hours.
20 Q. All right.
21 A. One to two hours.
22 Q. And at that time when you first started, did you readvise him
23 of his Miranda rights as you did the previous day?
24 A. We did. We reminded him that that was still in effect.
25 Q. And at that time was Mr. Moussaoui interested in talking to
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
“… on the grounds that he is still alive …”
There’s a pickle for you.
FBI says he’s alive and won’t respond to FOIA requests. Only way to prove he’s dead is to prove that he actually did commit suicide when he downed American Airlines 587. But to do that, you’ll need FOIA documents to prove:
(i) Jdey’s martyrdom video was not just for fun;
(ii) The explosive residue on AA587 really is identical to that found in the bombs used by Nagayeva and Dzhebirkhanova and in the bomb that R. Reid tried to use; and
(iii) that AQ guys were just joking when they said that Jdey brought AA587 down.
DXer said
The FBI caught Bulger by focusing on his wife. Perhaps they should catch Jdey by catching Mr. Boussara whose ears give him a distinctive look. There was a report that they were seen entering Turkey in June 2002. So that’s a possibility.
Separately, there was an unconfirmed report that he had and Adnan El-Shukrijumah were spotted on Route 302 in Mass and Maine — the alert issued in September 2003.
We meed a full bio on him done by the someone like Stewart Bell who interviews classmates and neighbors, figures out the detail of his detention in August 2001 etc. Or maybe the former head of the CTC should explain the details. Does he get the credit for making the disclosure or for having kept the information from the public for 10 years?
DXer said
The FBI, by response dated January 11, 2011, denied a FOIA request for documents relating to her arrest on the grounds of Jdey’s privacy rights — on the grounds that he is still alive.