This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/260
Terrorists may be posing as families with children to carry out attacks
August 30, 2004
MIM: While the country is bracing for planned terrorist attacks, a way of combatting them can be taking a closer look at the flight 587 crash and the evidence which points to the fact that what was labelled an accident could have been the largest attack on American soil since 9/11 carried out by a shoe bomber who suceeded where Richard Reid failed.
To mistake or mislabel acts of terrorism as accidents or criminal acts sabotages the war on terror by making it harder to render judgements as to whether the perpetrators are part of of global strategy or just unstable individuals who are venting their rage. Failure to distinquish between warfare and random acts of violence means that signs of extremist tendencies in individuals could be ignored or underestimated until after they culminate in an attack .
The initial reluctance on the part of the Russian authorities to label the simultaneous plane crashes in Russian terrorism points to a worrying trend where the obvious is denied for reasons ranging from political correctness to refusal to admit gross negligence and to take responsibility for glaring intelligence and security failures .
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Why Did American Airlines 587 Crash?
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=14864
American Airlines 587 crashed soon after taking off from
Given the U.S. government's record of preferring not to call a terrorist act by its rightful name – and especially its shameful reluctance to do so in the case of EgyptAir 990, brushing aside the truth in deference to Egyptian sensibilities – I have had my suspicions about the accidental nature of AA 587's crash. When Al-Qaeda on a website in May 2004 claimed the plane's fall as an attack, however, I paid it little attention, for just about anyone can claim just about anything on a website.
But now comes a wisp of evidence to suggest that AA 587's demise was in fact not an accident but an operation carried out by Al-Qaeda. This information has a complex pedigree:
· It is recounted in a top secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service report written in May 2002 and made public on Aug. 27, 2004 by
· Its source is Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 22-year-old from
· Jabarah in turn is reporting on what he heard from
So, the information that follows is not exactly rock-hard, but it is a real lead.
And this is it:
the
Jabarah claimed Jdey used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 but Jdey was apparently a master of aliases (they include Abd Al-Rauf Bin Al-Habib Bin Yousef Al-Jiddi, Abderraouf Dey, A.
Comments:
(1) The authorities should go caarefully through security videotapes from
(2) AA 587's crash preceded Richard Reid's attempted bombing by over a month, so the heightened alert for shoe bombs was not yet in place when AA 587 went down.
(3) If AA 587 did go down in an act of suicide bombing, it means that there was at least one major terrorist success on the
(4) If it was terrorism, one has to wonder about the efficacy or purpose of violence that is so obscure it is interpreted as a transportation accident. Killing 265 people only has effect if it terrorizes; an accident is shrugged off as an impersonal tragedy. As in so many other cases, the purposes of these aggressive acts can only be guessed at. (
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
From www.danielpipes.org |
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1116943.htm]
TONY EASTLEY: The US Government has gone public with it's fears that al-Qaeda operatives, some possibly posing as families travelling
with children, may be plotting a major terrorist attack within the United States.
US Government officials have put the nation on alert for the summer holiday period and declared the next five months,
all the way up to the Presidential election, as "prime time" for a terrorist attack.
Despite the alarm though, the US Attorney General John Ashcroft said there were no plans to raise the terrorist threat levels.
From Washington John Shovelan reports.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The United States Attorney General John Ashcroft says the Government has "credible intelligence from multiple sources" that al-Qaeda is determined to launch an attack within the next few months.
The attack he says could be linked to the G8 summit in Georgia, or the Republican and Democratic Party conventions.
JOHN ASHCROFT: This disturbing intelligence indicates al-Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The intelligence which forced the administration to go public today, does not contain any specific timing, method or place
of an attack.
But Mr Ashcroft and other government officials say al-Qaeda's plan to attack may be near complete and the
intelligence is highly credible and that operatives may already be in the United States.
JOHN ASHCROFT: Al-Qaeda is a resilient and adaptable organisation known for altering tactics in the face of new
security measures.
Intelligence sources suggest that ideal al-Qaeda operatives may now be in their late twenties or early thirties, and
may travel with a family to lower their profile.
Our intelligence confirms al-Qaeda is seeking recruits who can portray themselves as Europeans.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Appearing jointly with the FBI Director Robert Mueller, they released pictures of seven people
who they say represent a clear and present danger.
ROBERT MUELLER: Abderraouf Jdey appears in a martyrdom video that was seized in Afghanistan.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The unexpected warning refocuses the national attention on terrorism, the issue that President Bush
has made the central theme of his re-election campaign.
JOHN ASHCROFT: We are winning the war on terror, but we should never forget that it is a war.
Fighting terrorists is a tough business. I have faith that Americans will continue to be equal to the task.
JOHN SHOVELAN: Some police and fire fighting union representatives, supporting Democrat contender
John Kerry for President, claim the timing of today's threat report was suspicious because of the President's recent poor poll results.
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan, denied there was a political aspect to warning.
SCOTT MCLELLAN: In terms of now, you have the memorial day weekend coming up. That kind of kicks off
the summer time period for us. And the intelligence we've been receiving indicates that terrorists may want
to attack us during this time period.
JOHN SHOVELAN: The President of the International Association of Firefighters Harold Schaitberger said the
intelligence had been in the Government's hands for weeks.
John Shovelan, Washington.
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by Daniel Pipes
Wall Street Journal
November 24, 1999
The crash of EgyptAir's Flight 990 has exposed searing differences between Egyptians and Americans. From the U.S. point of view, the inquiry seems straightforward. Figuring out what went wrong means analyzing the evidence and coming up with the best explanation for the disaster. The American public generally trusts the naval recovery squads, transportation specialists and law-enforcement officers to do their job.
Not so the Egyptian public. Egypt's population profoundly mistrusts its government, and reasonably so given its long history of dictatorship and deception. Egyptians almost universally believe in conspiracy theories, and they nearly always blame the same three culprits: the British, the Americans and/or the Jews. In June 1967 President Gamal Abdel Nasser was caught on tape suggesting to King Hussein of Jordan that the two leaders falsely claim that U.S. and British forces had helped Israel defeat their armies. In 1990, when Egypt's tomato crop went bad, rumor had it that an Egyptian minister of agriculture who was one-quarter Jewish had sabotaged it by importing sterile seeds from Israel.
Conspiracy thinking can be found anywhere, but in the Middle East it dominates at the highest levels of the government, the media, the academy and the religious establishment. And Flight 990 is a particularly inviting target for conspiracy theorists. It carried 33 top Egyptian military officers, plus it originated in New York, the city with the world's largest Jewish population. That's enough to convince many Egyptians that someone purposely brought down the plane to harm Egyptian interests.
Not for a second do Egyptians accept the idea that a relief pilot, Gamil al-Batouti, had intentionally nose-dived the plane. They cannot imagine that a pious Muslim and former military officer should have caused such humiliation to his family and his country. When Americans try to interpret Batouti's much-repeated statement, "I put my faith in God's hands," Egyptians see bias against Islam.
Thus Egyptians have been engaged in a surreal debate over whether the culprit was Israeli, American or both. An Egyptian without access to Western media has almost no way of knowing that there is a serious case against Batouti.
The government mostly blames America. The managing editor of the government newspaper Al-Jumhuriya muses about a U.S. surface-to-air missile, or maybe a laser ray, bringing down the airliner. Mahmud Bakri explains in Al-Musawwar, a government-run weekly, how the airliner strayed into a no-fly zone and was instantly destroyed to keep some deadly military information secret. Or maybe, he speculates, New York air traffic controllers intentionally sent the plane in harm's way, a line of reasoning Mr. Bakri finds convincing because Jews "have strong networks of communication at U.S. airports."
Egypt's transportation minister told a parliamentary committee that Boeing, maker of the 767 that crashed, was making a scapegoat of Egypt: "It's the airline production company which tried to defend itself." Added one member of Egypt's parliament: "This 'accident' was deliberate, and the target was the large number of military [officers] onboard the plane."
Opposition dailies mostly blamed Israel. "Evidence of Mossad Involvement in Blowing Up the Egyptian Airliner," screams a huge red banner across the front page of Al-Arabi. The chief editor of Al-Wafd writes on the front page of his newspaper that "Israel's fingers are not far away" from the crash, reasoning that the Jewish state could not pass up the opportunity to eliminate 33 U.S.-trained Egyptian military officers.
That a plane crash arouses such powerful and hostile sentiments in Egypt points to two conclusions. First, 20 years of formal peace with Israel has done next to nothing to improve Egyptian attitudes toward its neighbor.
Second, although Washington is handling the crash inquiry very carefully so as to respect Egyptian sensibilities, such sensitivity cannot contain a brewing crisis. Despite what the State Department likes to calls a "long and close friendship" with Egypt that goes back a quarter century, the gap dividing Egyptians and Americans is huge and perhaps widening. In investigating the crash Washington must follow the truth wherever it leads. And given the larger troubles the investigation has exposed, the U.S. should take a close look at its relationship with Cairo, which has been on autopilot for too long.
Title: Al Qaeda lists successes since 9/11 on Global Islamic Media; Includes 2001 downing of American Airlines flight 587 that went down over Queens
Source: Northeast Intelligence Network
URL Source: http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/
Published: May 28, 2004
Author: Northeast Intelligence Network
Post Date: 2004-05-28 17:18:30 by ds2004
28 May 2004 - Al Qaeda lists successes since 9/11 on Global Islamic Media; Includes 2001 downing of American Airlines flight 587 that went down over Queens
In a stunning revelation to the Global Islamic Media Group this morning, Al Qaeda has revealed that they were responsible for the downing of American Airlines flight 587 over Queens in November 2001.
The article, published this morning on Global Islamic Media's Yahoogroup, lists the successes that Al Qaeda has achieved since the attack on America in September 2001. Al Qaeda has previously claimed credit for all of the other attacks on the list. The cause of the AA flight 587 crash is still listed by the FAA as accidental, with no indications of terrorism.
The following list itemizes the attacks that they are claiming:
Downing of the American Airlines plane over the Queens district of New York (City) on the 26th day of Shaban in the (Islamic) year 1422, equivalent to November 12th, 2001, killing 265 passengers as well as residents of that district.
Bali nightclub attack in Indonesia that killed more than 200.
Attack on Djerba, Tunisia Jewish temple, killing 20 German Jews.
Attack at Faylakah in Kuwait.
Attack on the French tanker Limburgh in Yemen.
Attacks on Mombasa in Kenya against Jewish tourists, who were attacked in the their hotel, and the unsuccessful attack on the El Al airline with two missiles.
Attack on the Marriott Hotel in the Indonesian capital
Attacks in eastern of Riyadh, on residential districts where Americans and other westerners live
Electrical power blockouts in the northern portions of America and the southern areas of Canada
Electrical power blackouts in Great Britain.
Attacks in Istanbul against the Jewish synagogues.
Attachs in Istanbul battles against the British bank and the British consulate, in which the British consul was killed.
Battle of Badr Riyadh in the residential complex
Attack on the United Nations building in Baghdad in which Sirgo Des Milo, Kofi Annan's envoy, was killed
Attacks in Nasserya against the Italian forces
Attacks in Casablanca
Attempted assassination of a dangerous ally of America, Pervez Musharraf
Attacks in Madrid against three trains, killing 200 and injuring more than 1500 injured,
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http://www.danielpipes.org/pf.php?id=431
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
July 9, 2002
On the 4th of July, an Egyptian immigrant to the United States who believes in wild conspiracy theories about Jews, is known for his great "hate for Israel," and has possible ties to al Qaeda, armed himself to the teeth and assaulted the Israeli airline counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two.
It is obvious why Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet targeted Jews in a highly visible place on so prominent a date: to engage in terrorism against Israel.
But one important institution - the U.S. government - claims not to know Hadayet's goals. An FBI spokesman has said that "there's nothing to indicate terrorism." Another FBI official said of Hadayet: "It appears he went there with the intention of killing people. Why he did that we are still trying to determine." Possible causes named include a work dispute and a hate crime.
Sure, law enforcement should not jump to conclusions, but this head-in-the-clouds approach is ridiculous. It also fits a well-established pattern. Consider three cases of terrorism in the New York City area:
And despite all the "world-has-changed" rhetoric following the horrors of last September, Western officialdom continues to pretend terrorism away.
Work dispute, hate crime, road rage, derangement, post-traumatic stress, industrial accident ... these expressions of denial obstruct effective counterterrorism. The time has come for governments to catch up with the rest of us and call terrorism by its rightful name.
Good news: the FBI did "catch up with the rest of us" and did call terrorism by its rightful name. On April 12, 2003, over nine months after the murders, the Associated Press ran this story:
By Paul Chavez
Los Angeles (AP) - An Egyptian immigrant who opened fire inside Los Angeles International Airport committed an act of terrorism, but he did it alone and was not tied to any terrorist organizations, federal officials have determined.
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, 41, killed two people at the ticket counter of El Al, Israel's national airline, and wounded several others in the July Fourth attack before he was fatally shot by an airline security guard.
The Department of Justice had withheld characterizing the shooting while federal agents launched a worldwide probe. They determined it was terrorism related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, said Matthew McLaughlin, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles.
"The investigation developed information that he openly supported the killings of civilians in order to advance the Palestinian cause," McLaughlin said.
The FBI findings, made several months ago, were recently approved by the Justice Department. McLaughlin said Friday that his office was told not to issue a news release but was given permission to confirm the finding if asked.
The investigation found that Hadayet had become increasingly militant in recent years. Just weeks before the shooting, he bought the weapons used in the attack, closed his bank accounts and sent his family overseas. At the time, Hadayet, who lived in Irvine, was $10,000 in debt, and his limousine businesses was struggling, authorities said.
From www.danielpipes.org |
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/260