london-daily.co.uk
Excerpt:
It should be noted that the FBI kept them on the most recently issued lists despite knowing that these individuals are still alive and were not involved in these terrorist acts in any way. The list is strewn with sentences like "Possible Saudi national", "Possible resident of" and "Believed to be a pilot". If a portion of these identities have been forged, should the possibility of them all being forged not also be considered?
The first list which the FBI issued stated that Hani Hanjour is "believed to be a pilot," but the second list published on September 27 by the FBI does not identify Hani Hanjour as
being "believed to be a pilot". The other four suspected hijackers of American Airlines
flight #77 which crashed into the Pentagon are also not listed as being pilots. This raises
the question of who actually flew the plane into that strategic part of the Pentagon, if not
Hani Hanjour?
There are other discrepancies which are worthy of mention. The Arab News carried a
story on September 23, wherein Muhammad Salim Al-Hamzi, father of Nawaf and Salim
al-Hamzi, said the pictures of his sons distributed by the FBI were ?fabricated?. The
pictures of his boys which the father issued the Saudian paper clearly differed from those
issued by the FBI, although both showed pictures of Arab men.
It would be interesting to know why the hijackers had gone to great lengths to forge
identities of men who were alive and accredited as being pilots when it is known that they
were only boarding the planes as civilians. Who would benefit from them being identified as
being certified pilots by trade?
It also seems as if the suspects, whoever they were, were trying to implicate some
sort of Saudia Arabian collusion in the attack, judging by the large number of forged Saudi
identities involved in the case.
Saeed Alghamdi, Mohald Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, Waleed Alshehri and Ahmed
Alnami have either been exempted from involvement in these attacks or their identities are
being seriously questioned. As for others such as Amer Kamfar and Adnan and Amer
Bukhari, their names have ceased being mentioned as possible suspects, one of whom had
died approximately two years ago.
The official passenger manifests which the airlines have issued for all four of the
airplanes do not contain one Arab name. Although the airlines might have been requested
by US intelligence to omit this information in their publicized passenger lists, knowing the
actual list of the passengers? names would help explain many of the aforementioned
irregularities.
In a September 21 BBC article entitled ?The last moments of Flight 11?, a brave flight
attendant named Madeline Amy Sweeney made a desperate telephone call which ?has
provided new details of the last moments of Flight 11 before it hit the World Trade Center.?
Sweeney spoke of there being only four hijackers, whereas the FBI list shows that
there were five. Describing what ?appears to conflict with previous information?, the BBC
article noted that ?the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the
hijackers' names.?
Indeed, the more that we learn about the list of suspected hijackers, the more
mysterious things become. Perhaps nothing is more so than the actual personalities and
lives of the suspects themselves. Rather than getting the idea that these people who were
supposed to be religious extremists were actually devout people, one is led to believe that
they were in fact more interested in partying and womanizing.
On September 13, the Associated Press reported: ?Three men spewed anti-American
sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed the night before the terrorist
attacks.?
John Kap, a Daytona Beach strip club manager ?told FBI investigators the men in his
bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards.?
"They were talking about what a bad place America is. They said 'Wait 'til tomorrow.
America is going to see bloodshed,''' the owner of the strip bar was quoted as saying.
Furthermore, Kap said that he gave the FBI their credit card receipts, photocopied
driver's licenses, a business card left by one of the suspects and most amazingly, a copy
of a Koran that one of the men had left at the bar. The article mentions that the FBI
requested that Kap not reveal the men's names publicly.
These facts truly boggle the mind when we consider that these suspects are supposed
to be religious fanatics who are willing to die for their faith the next morning. Anybody who
has the slightest acquaintance with the Islamic tradition would know that an impious
Muslim, even if he were somehow to fall into the sways of lap dances and drinking, would
never be so blasphemous as to bring in a Koran with him and leave it behind at a bar.
These religious fanatics, had supposedly been hiding their tracks for anywhere up to
five years, and in the last days before the attacks, they suddenly began doing everything
they could to be noticed and remembered, leaving behind a plethora of evidence in their last
days.
Things become even more astonishing and contradictory. While these men were busy
collecting exorbitant bar tabs and blurting out what they had apparently kept secret for
years, according to the letter which the FBI published, they were also to keep a rigorous
program of worship, contemplation and preparation in what the letter calls the ?Last night.?
We are to believe that while they were coming down from their alcoholic frenzy, they
were also to ?purify? their hearts by forsaking their beds, standing up ?to pray throughout
this night?.
They are told that during this last night: ?You should pray, you should fast?, although it
is known that Muslims start their fast at dawn and break their fast at sunset, not fasting by
night and eating by day. This truly is a mysterious insertion.
?Continue to recite the Koran? and ?Obey God?, they are told.
In fact, this letter is so scattered with obvious flaws that it caused the UK based
Independent?s Robert Fisk to write an article entitled, ?What Muslim would write: 'The
time of fun and waste is gone?? In it, Fisk declares that the FBI issued letter was, ?Fearful,
chilling, grot-esque - but also very, very odd.?
?If the handwritten, five-page document which the FBI says it found in the baggage of
Mohamed Atta, the suicide bomber from Egypt, is genuine,? the Middle East expert added,
?then the men who murdered more than 7,000 innocent people believed in a very exclusive
version of Islam - or were surprisingly unfamiliar with their religion.?
The universal Islamic opening phrase of "In the name of God, the most merciful, the
most compassionate? is also written as ?In the name of God, of myself, and of my family''
at the beginning of the letter. Experts on Islamic studies have said that in the monotheistic
tradition of Islam, this phrase is extremely erroneous and absolutely unheard of.
Fisk adds: ?No Muslim - however ill-taught - would include his family in such a
prayer. Indeed, he would mention the Prophet Mohamed immediately after he mentioned
God in the first line.? Those who specialize in Islamic studies have explained that this
opening line of ?In the name of God? would be followed up with the invocation that God
send his peace and blessings upon the Prophet Mohamed.
It would read something like this: ?In the name of God, and may His peace and
blessings be upon Prophet Mohamed.? Citing numerous deficiencies in the letter, Fisk says
that it ?raises more questions than it answers.?
The Washington Post says the FBI found another copy of "essentially the same
document'' in the debris of the flight which crashed in Pennsylvania. The copy which the
FBI issued was found in Mohamed Atta?s luggage. If we were able to understand how a
suicide hijacker would bring luggage with him on his final mission, then we might also be
able to understand how he would put his final instruction letter in this bag which happened
to be diverted and found by FBI authorities.
It has been reported that there was a link between the two reputedly heavy drinkers,
Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, and a Lebanese man by the name of Ziad Jarrah.
Nonetheless, there again appears to be an incongruity between the supposed lifestyle that
a religious extremist would live, and the lifestyle that Ziad Jarrah lived.
His uncle, Jamal Jarrah, was quoted in a September 16 Independent article as saying,
?He was so normal. His personality and his life bore no relation to the kind of things that
happened. He led a very normal life. He had girlfriends, he went to nightclubs, he went
dancing sometimes.?
The article notes that everyone who knew Ziad had the same thing to say about him,
?that Ziad was a happy, secular youth, that he never showed any interest in religion and
never visited the mosque for prayers, that he liked women even if he was at times reserved
and shy.?
Live in girlfriend for five years, nightclubs, drinking, dancing, a secular youth who
didn?t visit mosques for prayers and in other reports, was not interested in politics; this
does not fit the image of a zealot ready to kill and die for his faith. Then again, the media
has reported that his Turkish girlfriend declared that he disappeared for a while and went to
Afghanistan.
In an exclusive telephone conversation which occurred in the presence of the Saudi
Arabian Arab News Staff?s Ibrahim Awadh, a highly concerned Jamal Jarrah spoke to
Ziad?s Turkish girlfriend Asl, in Hamburg, Germany. Originally reported on September 21,
the article asserts: ?He repeatedly asked her: ?Did you ever see Muhammad Atta or
anyone else who appeared on the list of suspected hijackers??
He continued: ?Do you think Ziad knew anyone of them? We want a clear reply from
you because we all are worried and want to know the facts,? he said. But Asl was
emphatic in her denials. She continued weeping: ?Listen, Jamal. You know we were about
to get married. Ziad was a jovial and kindhearted gentleman. I loved him with all my heart,
and we were preparing to return to Lebanon for our wedding.?
Asl denied agency reports that she said Ziad diasappeared mysteriously for about
one-and-a-half months and that she was told he went to Afghanistan. She said with
anger: ?From where (do) they get all this? It is all lies. I did not speak with anyone. The
police did not allow me to talk with anyone, even on the telephone. I am speaking to you
now in the presence of police,? she confirmed.?
On September 20, the Telegraph reported that she is now under ?witness protection.?
In an interesting development, on September 18, Ha?aretz reported that five Israelis
had been detained ?for what the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] has described as
"puzzling behavior" following the terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York?.
The eminent Israeli newspaper quoted one of the unnamed detainee?s mothers as
saying that they had been arrested approximately four hours after the attack on the Twin
Towers while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's building. She
added, ?They thought that because he has citizenship of a European country as well as of
Israel that he was working for the Mossad."
They were spotted by one of the neighbors who called the police and the FBI, because
he saw them ?videotaping the disaster and shouting in what was interpreted as cries of joy
and mockery.? The men are ?expected to be deported sometime soon?, the article added.
This story otherwise went unnoticed in the media, except that CNN originally reported that
they were men of Middle-Eastern origin.
The Telegraph reported on September 16 that the Israeli Mossad had actually ?warned
their counterparts in the United States last month that large-scale terrorist attacks on
highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent.?
The article noted that ?two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military
intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the
existence of a cell of as many as 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation.?
It added that, "They had no specific information about what was being planned but
linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds
for suspecting Iraqi involvement," said a senior Israeli security official.
This story has been flatly denied by the FBI. The Associated Press carried a story on
September 20 in which the FBI rebuffed a similar claim which had been written in the Los
Angeles Times with FBI spokesman Bill Harlow saying, ?That is utter nonsense?.
The FBI is also being tight lipped about a story which the Washington Post reported
on September 27 and also confirmed by Ha?aretz, that Odigo, a New York based
instant-messaging firm with offices in Israel, had confirmed ?that two employees received
text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists
crashed planes into the New York landmarks.?
Micha Macover, CEO of the New York based company with offices in Israel, said two
workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack, informed the
company's management about the warnings. The management contacted the Israeli
security services, which consequently brought in the FBI.
Odigo has a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact
other Odigo users, although Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, said he
had not received reports of there being other recipients of the message. The company
declined to reveal the exact contents of the warning.
In a front page article which appeared only one day before the tragic attacks, The
Washington Times affirmed that an official 68-page report prepared by 60 US Army
officers at the US Army?s School for Advanced Military Studies warned of Mossad?s
capability to target the United States. The report mentioned that the Israeli intelligence
agency was ?ruthless and cunning? and ?a wildcard?.
It would be interesting to know how Mossad came to learn that ?large-scale terrorist
attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent?, as reported by
Philip Jacobson in Jerusalem. As well, perhaps American investigators can clarify how
Odigo could have been alerted to these attacks two hours prior to their occurrence and why
the FBI have failed to publicize this crucial lead as it has done for other Middle Eastern leads.
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