White House releases bin Laden memo

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
White House releases bin Laden memo
78
Sat, 04-10-2004 - 7:46pm

Presidential briefing was at center of Rice's testimony.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush.briefing/index.html


The White House declassified and released Saturday the daily intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush a month before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.


Portions of the intelligence report dealing with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and dated August 6, 2001, have been redacted for national security reasons, the White House said.


The memo, titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States," had been described by the White House as a largely historical document with scant information about domestic al Qaeda threats.


The memo includes intelligence on al Qaeda threats as recent as three months before the attacks.


More.......... http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush.briefing/index.html


Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in US

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/index.html


The following is a transcript of the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.


Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. 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 U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service.


An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. 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 U.S.


Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.


Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed 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 U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-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 U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.


PDF file of transcript. You can see the areas deleted. It appears very sketchy, as if pages are missing, JIMO.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/images/04/10/whitehouse.pdf

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 6:22pm
Here's one from THE GUARDIAN from 1999 during the Clinton administration linking Saddam to Al Qaeda: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,314700,00.html

Saddam link to Bin Laden

Terror chief 'offered asylum' in Iraq?

US says dealings step up danger of chemical weapons attacks

By Julian Borger in Washington

Saturday February 6, 1999

The Guardian

Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 6:28pm
There are plenty of Al Qaeda cells in various part of the world and leaders who wink at their existence. Indonesia comes to mind (http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0501/p01s04-woap.html), Somalia too (http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/BG1526.cfm), but we haven't invaded those countries. Please note the dates on the links I have provided. They pre-date the attack on Iraq. Many Americans listened to their commander-in-chief and made the link in their own minds between the 9/11 hijackers and Iraq. He knew what he was doing when he gave those speeches. I loathe that kind of manipulation and deception. That's not the stuff of a healthy democracy but weird things happen when people and their leaders feel threatened.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 6:33pm
Interesting. Where's it from?

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 7:08pm
Bin Ladin didn't accept--from the same link:

<>

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The INC has had a very spotty history of accurate intelligence. Ahmed Chalabi, its leader was the source for much of the information about the state of the Iraqi infrastructure and how the US would be received. It served INC interests very well to have the US involved, somehow or other, in changing the regime in Iraq.



<>

This is probably the most promising of the lot but it still doesn't prove that a link was established directly between bin Laden/Al Qaeda and SH, leading to Saddam's participation in 9/11.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-13-2004 - 8:14pm
It's true that there was a widespread perception that Iraq had nasty stuff. But the voices that raised doubts were squelched and the weapons inspectors and the UN were pooh-poohed as ineffective and irrelevant. Remember?

Nobody really seems to know what happened to the weapons but bear in mind that we provided the technology for them in the first place. US meddling messes stuff up. It backfires, plays in strange ways. Libya under Khaddafi was already working towards normalizing relations. They wanted to get rid of economic sanctions largely because their economy were hurting so badly from those sanctions after Lockerbie. Invading Iraq might have expedited the process but Libya had already started repudiating some of its past stances.

If you want to get nitty gritty, let's consider why Iraq, but not North Korea? They have been working on a far more advanced nuclear weapons program than Iraq and they have the wherewithal to deliver with their missiles--to the mainland of the United States. We seem, at least at this point, to be trying diplomatic means there. Why didn't we do the same in Iraq? And if you're gung ho on meddling with other nations--I have a whole passle of questions. Who decides what dictators go? How do you do it? Who pays for it? Where does it stop? What happens if we make a mistake? Do you remember Vietnam? Do you remember the price we paid for it? Are you willing to pay that price--your own life or the life of someone you love dearly?

I think that some people think of the American lives lost through military measures as a a vast amorphous "them". There is no "them" in the military. The lives lost, bodies maimed, minds traumatized--those are real people with real families who want to know why that sort of damage is being done to their beloved children, spouses, siblings, parents. Don't ever, EVER forget that!

Gettingahandle, mother of a US Army soldier



Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 9:53am
This is what is so amazing to me. You ask for proof. I provide you proof, and you don't believe your own eyes. I believe your mind is already made up. If Saddam himself confessed I believe that you would say that we coerced the confession and wouldn't believe it, so why bother?

I did spend some time looking up some very interesting old evidence for you this morning, but after reading this I wonder if I should have wasted my time.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 10:16am
It's from the New York Post. I didn't provide a link because it's more than seven days old so you have to pay to read it. Here is the link to the archives if you want to look it up: http://pqarchiver.nypost.com/nypost/search.html

The original research came from a very detailed article in the Weekly Standard. It is very long but worth the read. If I were you and had a son in the military I would be interested in reading it. Here's a link:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/033jgqyi.asp

...What, then, did the Bush administration say about this relationship before the war? Which parts of that case, if any, have been invalidated by the intelligence gathered in the months following the conflict? What is this new "evidence," cited by Gore and others, that reveals the administration's arguments to have been embellished? Finally, what if any new evidence has emerged that bolsters the Bush administration's prewar case?

The answer to that last question is simple: lots. The CIA has confirmed, in interviews with detainees and informants it finds highly credible, that al Qaeda's Number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met with Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad in 1992 and 1998. More disturbing, according to an administration official familiar with briefings the CIA has given President Bush, the Agency has "irrefutable evidence" that the Iraqi regime paid Zawahiri $300,000 in 1998, around the time his Islamic Jihad was merging with al Qaeda. "It's a lock," says this source. Other administration officials are a bit more circumspect, noting that the intelligence may have come from a single source. Still, four sources spread across the national security hierarchy have confirmed the payment.

In interviews conducted over the past six weeks with uniformed officers on the ground in Iraq, intelligence officials, and senior security strategists, several things became clear. Contrary to the claims of its critics, the Bush administration has consistently underplayed the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Evidence of these links existed before the war. In making its public case against the Iraq regime, the Bush administration used only a fraction of the intelligence it had accumulated documenting such collaboration. The intelligence has, in most cases, gotten stronger since the end of the war. And through interrogations of high-ranking Iraqi officials, documents from the regime, and further interrogation of al Qaeda detainees, a clearer picture of the links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is emerging...


iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 10:24am
I just re-read your post. Again I tell you that we all know that there is no direct link from Saddam to 9-11. Saddam was clearly linked to Al Qeada, though. Al Qeada was the group who murdered 3000 of our innocents at one time and are working to murder more of us. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam hated us and was clearly linked to this terrorist group that also hated us. It was not safe for us to allow Saddam to continue to build his weapons program. That should be very clear, but politics and skeptisism has blinded many people to clear and convincing evidence contrary to their own fervent beliefs.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 10:51am
I think we differ in our opinion of "proof" and shudder to think of you on a jury. Seems to me that you'd have your mind made up before you heard the evidence and would only listen to things that back up your preconceptions. It's not unusual to do that--Dubya's people appear to have done that from the get-go. Of course, it also seems as though they see the US as judge, jury and executioner. But when lives are on the line and so much is at stake, waging a pre-emptive war is like punishing someone with the death penalty. If you believe you MUST resort to such a draconian measure, make damn sure you've got your facts straight. Proof must be overwhelming and beyond question.

I would like to remind you that over 600 troops have died, 3000+ have been injured and many, many more have seen things that will haunt them until the day they die. How about the families of our troops? Shall I tell you about the mental toll of having a loved one in harm's way? How about all the Iraqi casualties, women and children included? And then there are the billion of dollars that have gone into the war effort. What will it take to reconstruct Iraq? All that for weapons that seem to have vanished into thin air, and an equally tenuous link between Hussein and bin Ladin that seems to have come to naught. There is no proof of a link between 9/11 and SH. Hussein is out of action but unrest and violence have not departed Iraq.

Does that mean you shouldn't look for more links online or that we should give up looking for weapons? Probably not. IF there truly is stuff lying around with toxicity/radiation capable of killing and hurting large numbers of people, it should certainly be recovered and destroyed if possible. I also think that there's a lot to learn every day, online and in other ways--much of learning is incidental. I look for something in particular but get distracted along the way by something altogether different.

Today is my day to run errands so I won't be posting as much as I did yesterday. I thank you for your offer of prayer for my son. Neither he, nor I, would ever reject the kindness and human compassion of another. I pray for all our troops, their families and their loved ones. And I pray that the people of Iraq will have civil order, peace, and freedom soon.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2003
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 10:57am

Ok, so if we are going to raid an remove any regime that has connections and funding to Al Queda why are we not going after the one that gives them 100x more money and support than Iraq ever did?

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