Al Qaeda ate at Bennigans and worked out at Gold’s Gym

James Bamford on DemocracyNOW!

October 14, 2008

Amy Goodman talks with James Bamford, an American bestselling author and journalist who writes about United States intelligence agencies. Bamford drops a bomb shell (which doesn’t seem to warrant a follow-up question from Ms Goodman) about how the 9/11 plotters set-up shop within eye site (sans trees – 6.1 miles) of NSA Headquarters, worked out at the nearby Gold’s Gym, shopped at the nearby Safeway and ate at the same restaurants as NSA employees.

Direct link to MP3 File
20081014_amygoodman_jamesbamford.mp3

AMY GOODMAN:

Jim Bamford, can you talk about how the NSA picked up the very first clues about the 9/11 attacks well before the 9/11 attacks?

JAMES BAMFORD:

Well, the very first clue to the 9/11 attack occurred in late December 1999, when the NSA picked up a message from a house in Yemen. The house was being used by bin Laden as his operations center. He didn’t have much capability to operate out of Afghanistan, so all the phone calls, all the messages, email and all that would go to this house in the city of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. NSA had been eavesdropping on that house for a number of years, and in late December 1999, it picked up a particular intercept, picked up a particular phone conversation.

And the phone conversation said that-send Khalid and Nawaf to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting. So, NSA picked that up, and they-first of all, they figured that Nawaf and Khalid had to be very important potential terrorists, because they were being assigned by bin Laden out in Afghanistan to go to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. That seemed like a terrorist summit meeting. NSA gave that information to the other intelligence agencies, and the CIA set up a surveillance in Kuala Lumpur, and then they lost them in Kuala Lumpur.

After they lost them, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi went to California. They got in without any problem. NSA, even though they had the last name of Nawaf al-Hazmi in their computers, they never bothered to check, so they both got in without any problem into the United States. They went down, and they lived in San Diego. And they began calling back and forth to that house in Yemen, the house that NSA was eavesdropping on. So NSA is picking up their conversations to the house in Yemen, translating them and then sending out the conversations to-or summaries of the conversations to the CIA without ever telling anybody that they were in the United States. And they were in the United States for almost two years. Al-Hazmi was there from January 2000 to September 2001. And again, they’re communicating back and forth; NSA is picking up but not telling anybody that they’re in the US.

AMY GOODMAN:

Explain, Jim Bamford-

JAMES BAMFORD:

And it got so bad-

AMY GOODMAN:

You say that they set up their final base of operations almost next door to the NSA headquarters in Laurel, Maryland?

JAMES BAMFORD:

Well, that’s the ultimate irony, was they eventually travel across country from San Diego, and they set up their final base of operations-these are the-this is the crew that was about to attack the Pentagon-about a month before, they set up their base of operations in Laurel, Maryland, of all places, that happens to be the same city that NSA is headquartered. So they set up their base of operations in this Valencia Motel, and almost across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is NSA headquarters. The director’s office is on the eighth floor, and, except for some trees, he could almost see the motel where they’re staying. So, NSA is over there trying to find terrorists, and here is the 9/11 terrorists sitting right opposite the NSA on the other side of the parkway making their final plans.

Mohamed Atta flew there for summit meetings. And they had to take three hotels at one point to put all the people there. So, as NSA is looking for them, they’re having their final summit meetings there, and they’re walking around the Safeway, they’re exercising in Gold’s Gym, they’re eating in the restaurants there, they’re mingling with NSA employees. That’s NSA’s company town. It’s just the ultimate irony that here you have the terrorists and the eavesdroppers living side by side in the month before the final attack.

Source:
http://www.democracynow.org

Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Griffin’s meritorious effort to raise public awareness and understanding

Former Chicago and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, who in 2009 was appointed by President Barack Obama to direct an important executive branch office, had in 2008 co-authored an article containing a plan for the government to prevent the spread of anti-government “conspiracy theories.” Arguing that such theories are believed only by groups suffering from “informational isolation,” he advocated the use of anonymous government agents to engage in “cognitive infiltration” of these groups in order to introduce “cognitive diversity,” with the aim of breaking them up.

Noting that Sunstein’s proposal has evoked condemnations from across the political spectrum–not least because it, being similar to the FBI’s COINTELPRO of the 1960s, would be illegal–David Ray Griffin focuses on the fact that Sunstein’s primary target is the conspiracy theory advocated by the 9/11 Truth Movement. Examining Sunstein’s charge that this theory is both “harmful” and “demonstrably false,” Griffin uses both satire and overwhelming evidence to show that this twofold charge applies instead to what Sunstein calls “the true conspiracy theory” about 9/11-namely, the “theory that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11.”

October 14, 2008 – DemocracyNow

James Bamford describes the NSA’s subcontracting to Israeli firms for mass surveillance of U.S.-based electronic communications.