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Copyright � 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The U.S. ignored foreign warnings, too
John K. Cooley
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
The road to Sept. 11
ATHENS When the hubbub about what the White House did or didn't know before
Sept. 11 dies down, Congressional or other investigators should consider the specific
warnings that friendly Arab intelligence services sent to Washington in the summer of
2001.
Jordan and probably Morocco advised U.S. and allied intelligence that Al Qaeda
terrorists controlled by Osama bin Laden planned major airborne terrorist operations
in the continental United States.
After verifying the authenticity and content of those messages, Washington-based
investigators should find out how seriously they were considered and what defensive
operational conclusions, if any, were drawn.
First, the Jordan case. Since the early 1990s, that kingdom's well-organized and
efficient intelligence service, the General Intelligence Division (GID), has carefully
tracked the CIA-trained or Pakistan-trained guerrillas - or terrorists, or freedom
fighters, or whatever you choose to call them - who survived their victorious 1979-89
war to expel the Soviet invaders from Afghanistan.
On returning to their homelands, thousands of these Arab veterans organized
Islamist uprisings or supported civil wars - in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, the Philippines
and Indonesia - or carried out specific terrorist acts (cinemas in Jordan; the World
Trade Center in New York in 1993).
Jordan's GID hunted the returned fighters, capturing and bringing to justice several
who became active terrorists. The GID aided the U.S. government in countless ways,
even helping U.S. law enforcement officers to apprehend Al Qaeda and other
operatives who had formed cells in the United States or Canada.
Sometime in the summer of 2001 GID headquarters in Amman, Jordan, made a
communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relayed its
contents to Washington, probably through the CIA station at the U.S. Embassy in
Amman.
To be doubly sure that the message got through, it was passed through an Arab
intermediary to an Iranian-born German intelligence agent who was visiting Amman
at the time.
The text stated clearly that a major attack was planned inside the continental United
States. It said aircraft would be used. But neither hijacking, nor, apparently, precise
timing nor targets were named. The code name of the operation was mentioned: in
Arabic, Al Ourush al Kabir, "The Big Wedding."
When it became clear that the information about the intercept was embarrassing to
Bush administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had
been any such warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away
from their earlier confirmations.
As for the Moroccan case, last November a French magazine and a Moroccan
newspaper simultaneously reported a story that has since met a wall of silence.
The reports said that a Moroccan secret agent named Hassan Dabou succeeded in
infiltrating Al Qaeda. Several weeks before Sept. 11, the story ran, he informed his
chiefs in King Mohammed VI's royal intelligence service that Osama bin Laden's men
were preparing "large-scale operations in New York in the summer or autumn of
2001." The warning was said to have been passed on to Washington.
Dabou was said to have told his bosses in Rabat that bin Laden was "very
disappointed" by the failure of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in
February 1993 to topple the towers.
Though Dabou won bin Laden's confidence at first, according to an unnamed French
intelligence agent cited in the reports, after he was invited to the United States to
tell
his story he lost contact with Al Qaeda, curtailing his ability to help prevent Sept.
11.
Nonetheless, the story goes, he was given asylum and a new identity in the United
States and is said to be helping out in the "war on terror."
The first of these cases has been authenticated by this reporter. The second remains
to be proved beyond doubt. But the moral of both is that no U.S. administration
should ever downgrade or dismiss the help it gets from friendly countries, Arab or
otherwise.
The writer, an American foreign correspondent, is author of �Unholy Wars: America,
Afghanistan and International Terrorism,� which will appear in a third, updated edition
this summer. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright � 2002 The International Herald Tribune
End<{{{
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