FBI Agents Missed Chance To Stop Atta, Informant Says

ABC News:

On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.

Read the whole story: ABC News

Comments

[nofanofheliumman]

10:01 AM on 09/12/2009

The same "sting mistake" happened before the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. That was so widely known that a TV movie was made about it.

Portland, Oregon was substituted for New York City and I believe Peter Gallagher was in the lead role as the FBI agent.

This current story doesn't surprise me at all.

[RedDogBear]

12:48 AM on 09/12/2009

Hey folks, if you want an example of pathetic censorship check out this HuffPo article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-crittenden/teaching-our-kids-about-9_b_282260.html

I've tried posting some very moderate comments trying to encourage people to think about the causes of 9/11, that it wasn't just "evil doers" and even the most innocuous comment that emphasizes the point that violence is never an appropriate solution but we still need to understand the cause disappears into the ether. Maybe its because I had a bit too much wine with dinner but this really pisses me off. I believe in this country and I think it stands for some pretty cool things and one of the most essential is freedom of speech.

[harriettubman]

12:39 AM on 09/12/2009

And not one head rolled in the Bush administration over this and other breaches of security against this country!!!

[BannedInBoston]

09:45 PM on 09/11/2009

Bush quote: "It's true because I believe it."

I actually saw/heard Bush says this on live TV. I can't remember the context but I think it had to do with his self-justification for _invading and occupying _Iraq. His remark kind of stuck with me, not only as a memorable "Bushism" but also for the following reason.

I think many people subscribe to this insidious logical fallacy. But folks, just consider. Something is not true BECAUSE you believe it. Quite the opposite ought to be the case. You ought to believe something because it's true.

I later linked Bush's remark up with another comment, this time by a Republican Senator (or former Senator). Brownback, I think. "Believe in something even if it's wrong."

I dunno. These two statements taken together may reflect what's wrong with Republican thinking and a lot of Americans' thinking in general. I would call it "belief in belief". And if you think about it, you can see how it leads to being dogmatically wrong in many cases about many things.

Including the fact that ALL conspiracy theories are somehow "_crazy". I would be the first to agree that many conspiracy theories are, at best, way off base. But most does not equal "all" -- and the point of studying these, especially with regard to nine one one, is to determine BOTH which ones are and which ones are not. ("_Crazy", that is.)

[letsmakesense]

12:34 AM on 09/14/2009

. But most does not equal "all ''
Exactly
Take a look at JFK murder, Gulf of Tolkin excuse for 1,000,000 dead Vietnamese plus 60,000 USA , Oklahoma bombing or WMDs.
Those are not crazy conspiracy theories.
That 2 planes pulverized 3 skyscrapers with box cutters is.
Thanks Anna.

[Paramendra Bhagat]

05:41 PM on 09/11/2009

Monday morning quarterbacking?

[Ro2dawn]

03:30 PM on 09/11/2009

Why isn't the national media reporting on this? Sibel Edmonds has finally been ungagged and is testifying in an Ohio court about the bribes the Turkish government paid to our esteemed politicians. Sibel was gagged during the term of the Bush administration from speaking about her discoveries while working as an FBI translator. Go to Bradblog and hear some of her testimony. Brad is sitting in this week for Mike Malloy this week. Sibel is schedule to be on this show tonight.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7374

[RedDogBear]

04:45 PM on 09/11/2009

That is really interesting about Sibel, it will be great to hear what she has to say although I don't expect a very deep interview on the Tonight Show, its a start.

Here are some past interviews with her on DemocracyNow.org

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/8/10/did_speaker_hastert_accept_turkish_bribes
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/4/29/whistleblowers_from_vietnam_to_9_11

[Pleidian]

04:55 AM on 09/12/2009

Yes that deposition is very interesting -- this time I actualy think it will filter into the mainstream, although not for some time.

Sibel Edmonds is a very imoprtant whistleblower.

[fijisailor]

02:15 PM on 09/11/2009

The evidence was removed from the twin towers but the places where the pieces don't fit are at WTC bldg 7 and the Pentagon. Any investigations should begin with these buildings.

[BannedInBoston]

09:54 PM on 09/11/2009

All the evidence is by now in the hands of the people who were utlimately responsible for "letting it happen". Talk about "covering your tracks"! Also keep in mind that the people behind this operation are professionals. And one of the things being a professional in this area includes is covering your tracks.

[Blaster]

01:42 PM on 09/11/2009

We the people of the United States Eight years after 9/11 Lost a lot we were shaken down by the Bush Admin and now are country once united and now harmfully divided. God bless the Americans who died on 9/11 and our troops who died for a worthless Iraq war they must be crying in heaven today.

[SimplyAmazed]

01:12 PM on 09/11/2009

"But because Atta and his men were suspicious of the FBI undercover operative, and secretive, Assaad says his FBI agent handlers sent him after the easier target"

If only Assaad had been good enough at his job to NOT make Atta suspicious of him, maybe the attacks could have been averted. The Bureau's only failure in this was using someone who was so clearly unable to carry out his duties.

[iMissMollyIvins]

02:24 PM on 09/11/2009

I can't imagine why Atta and his terrorist brothers would be suspicious of people they didn't know, especially at a time when he and his minions were actively preparing for an unprecedented attack.

[SimplyAmazed]

02:27 PM on 09/11/2009

Of course they were, and that is why agents are supposed to be trained well enough to defeat that. This one, obviously, was not.

[leftintheoven]

01:10 PM on 09/11/2009

It's a clear case of the Bush and the Dick. They kept us safe for the last 7.5 years of their administration. Ya can't count the first 8 months cause the Bush hadn't decided to be the Decider yet. Heheheheheh. . . . .So that proves they are better at national security than President Obama. It says so right here. See?! No, look. . .

[iMissMollyIvins]

02:28 PM on 09/11/2009

It's 2:30 p.m. on 9/11/2009 and we haven't been successfully attacked by any terrorist group since President Obama's inauguration - the Obama Administration has already done a better job at keeping us safe than Bush/Cheney.

[hardrain77]

12:59 PM on 09/11/2009

This was how 9/11 was pulled off. Middle management was not allowed to do there jobs because their higher ups were pressuring them to back up. They were getting political heat to keep things like the FBI's Able Danger program or the surveillance of Moussai in Minn. by Colleen Rowley, or what Sibel Edmonds knew a secret. Why they did that really remains classified knowledge to this day.

[naturallight]

11:37 AM on 09/11/2009

In that they were NOT ALLOWED to do their jobs by the POLITICAL appointees? Sure, you betcha! Because they were incompetent? No way.

[OpposingViewpoint]

11:48 AM on 09/11/2009

Justice Dept. rules and guidelines did indeed impede the efforts to track these individuals into the US. But incompetence and agency rivalries also played a major role in the failures leading up to 911 and in large part, that incompetence continues even today. Just an example to support the incompetence contention, check out FBI agent Nancy Floyd, her informant Emad Salem. Nancy had the '93 perps in her sights prior to the '93 event in lower Manhattan but due to incompetence and utterly contemptible inner-agency rivalries, the FBI failed to prevent Yousef and his cohorts from carrying out the first towers b0m*ing. Check it out, you too will be shocked. I have read the official FBI 302's obtained through the FOIA, they are truly troublesome indeed.

[RedDogBear]

10:53 AM on 09/11/2009

As I read through the comments here its a nice little microcosmic view of how we on the left love to get into circular firing squads. Here is one more solid piece of evidence that the Bush administration was massively incompetent and (at the very least) failed to prevent the largest attack on US soil ever. And are we talking about that? Most of us aren't. Half are busy calling anyone who questions the Bush official story whitewash tin foil hat weenies. The other half think that anyone who doesn't believe that the towers were brought down by controlled nano-technology (really someone proposes that) are all part of the Cheney-Illuminati-Zionist conspiracy. Don't label people, use reason and facts and remember whether they made it happen or were criminally incompetent the Bush administration was to blame.

[ThermoChemist]

01:00 PM on 09/11/2009

As the saying goes "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up".

Even IF the Bush/Cheney Admin was perfectly innocent of anything/everything up to that morning, their actions and behavior "after the fact" are very suspect..!

[1] First, we need to overlook the FACT that Dubya was reluctant to officially sanction/authorize a 9/11 Panel (it was finally done at the bequest of 9/11 families; How's that for being Presidential, huh?). Didn't he care about investigating what truly happened..?

The commission convened on November 26, 2002 (441 DAYS after the attack) and their final report was issued on July 22, 2004. [nearly 3 years after 9/11?]. In 2004, the 9/11 Commission submitted 41 recommendations to the Administration and Congress. [Years later, MANY of those recommendations STILL were NOT implemented by Bush..! Didn't he care about keeping America safe?]

[2] If one listened to the Dubya Admin, 9/11 was the greatest catastrophe to befall America since Pearl Harbor. So,why:
-- were investigative teams kept from fully investigating until the following year?
-- did the government "disappear" the evidence [ie. the steel] of this great crime...? [I think a bulk of it went to China]

[3] Why were Cheney / Bush / Rice reluctant to give their testimonies for so long (and with conditions)..?

[OpposingViewpoint]

01:46 PM on 09/11/2009

[4] Why was the 911 Commission permitted to look back no farther than 1995 in their investigation? The first TC event ocurred in 1993. The two events are inarguably linked, many of the same players were involved.
[5] Why was Jamie Gorelick appointed to the commission? Many have said her legal edicts and opinions were a fundamental factor in the intelligence failures leading to 911. One of Gorelicks more vocal critics, Andrew McCarthy a former prosecutor in the SDNY, is on record as having said, " Gorelick belongs in the witness chair, not on the commissioner's bench.

With no experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million. During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbinger of the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick.

In 2002 Business Week interviewed Gorelick concerning the health of FNMA. She responded, "We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions."

Less than a year later regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses."

[RedDogBear]

03:45 PM on 09/11/2009

"So,why:
-- were investigative teams kept from fully investigating until the following year?
-- did the government "disappear" the evidence [ie. the steel] of this great crime...? [I think a bulk of it went to China]
[3] Why were Cheney / Bush / Rice reluctant to give their testimonies for so long (and with conditions)..?"
There is a straight forward answer to all those questions. 9/11 was due to massive incompetence by Bush/Cheney. Further being the immoral incompetent people that they are the last thing they wanted was an honest investigation that exposed their incompetence and culpability. The sad thing is that you are inadvertently helping them by diverting discussion away from their incompetence toward conspiracy theories that have little or no basis in fact. It makes it easier for the MSM (which is also complicit in not exposing their incompetence) to brand anyone who wants to pin blame on them as "conspiracy nuts".

[sweetwhine]

01:16 PM on 09/11/2009

Answer me this then, how is it we invade a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11?

We attacked our own for a privilege few.

[OpposingViewpoint]

02:02 PM on 09/11/2009

Answer me this then, how is it we invade a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11?

Answer: Because we rolled over when we heared Jr. promise Sr. " Don't worry daddy, I'll get the s0b's for you". As a country, we did nothing. We allowed it to happen, the MSM sanctioned it by their silence. What I want to know is, will we allow it to happen again?

[RedDogBear]

02:20 PM on 09/11/2009

First of all I will more than willingly concede that Cheney/Bush are evil SOB's who would kill or torture just about anyone if they thought it would help their evil schemes. Saying someone would do something is not proof that they did it, not even close. Also, proving that someone benefited from an event (which again I completely agree Cheney/Bush did from 9/11) is not proof that they caused it, not even close. What you need to do is come up with some solid evidence that they actually planned or executed the attack and I'm sorry the evidence I've seen toward that (and I explain some of my objections in the threads below) is not convincing. And the worst thing that I see, which is the point I was trying to initially make here, is that we spend so much time arguing about demolitions and missiles, that we loose focus of the bigger picture, whether by incompetence OR design it was the fault of Cheney/Bush.

[lvdragonlady]

10:24 AM on 09/11/2009

This surprises anyone, why? Everyone knows the FBI has their own agenda and it is not always beneficial for America.

[ResistanceisFutile]

10:06 AM on 09/11/2009

Watching the towers and surrounding buildings fall, tell the whole story. Believe your eyes and not the lies. These were controlled demolition.

[texmike]

11:58 AM on 09/11/2009

If that whole event was staged by our government, then a massive amount of coordination had to have been involved and a ton of people would've had to be in on it.

When someone credible who would've been privy to knowledge of such a plot begins talking (and think about it - somebody with details could make a fortune selling that story if they were believable; why haven't they yet?), then maybe I'll consider buying into your theory.

[ResistanceisFutile]

12:15 PM on 09/11/2009

Did I implicate anyone in particular?

Watch a hundred controlled demolitions and then watch the towers and surrounding buildings come down.

Anyone with the kind of information you want tying everything up in a neat package would have to have been involved.

Unless there is a real Congressional Investigation willing to give such a witness immunity we will have to wait as evidence dribbles forth. No insider would make a cent from their story.

[RedDogBear]

12:16 PM on 09/11/2009

I don't believe in the conspiracy theories but I also love to just argue so texmike I don't find your particular counter-argument that convincing. IF there was such a conspiracy then anyone who was going to spill the beans would have to worry about getting killed if they did. In fact if you look at the historical record after the JFK assassination there were hundreds of "strange" deaths of people who were witnesses and journalists. Also, again using the JFK assassination as a model it is a LOT easier to get a book published that supports the official story than contradicts it.