Loose threads and loose ends

1. Buried in this Claudia Rosett article is a little background about bin Laden and Sudan.

By 1996, remember, bin Laden had been run out of Sudan, and seems to have been out of money. He needed a fresh bundle to rent Afghanistan from the Taliban, train recruits, expand al Qaeda's global network, and launch what eventually became the 9/11 attacks.
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Now let's talk facts. In 1996, Sudan kicked out bin Laden. He went to Afghanistan, arriving there pretty much bankrupt, according to the 9/11 Commission report. His family inheritance was gone, his allowance had been cut off, and Sudan had confiscated his local assets.

If Rosett is correct, then this bolsters Gerald Posner's case that Sudan wanted better relations with the US and was willing to take steps against bin Laden. The Clinton administration rejected the offer which they believed was not sincere. Sandy Berger and Susan Rice of the NSC were the key players in rebuffing Sudan.

2. The overture from Sudan is one more subject Berger might have been researching in the Archives.

3. Rice is currently a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry.

4. Almost all of the intelligence that critics think "pointed" to the 9/11 attacks was older in 2001 than the intelligence used to raise the threat level this week. Ramzi Yousef and KSM first outlined the suicide hijacking plot in Manila in 1994-- nearly seven years before the WTC atrocity. (Yousef was CAPTURED in 1995). Yet critics who blame the FBI for not connecting those dots are now certain that three year old intelligence has no value.

5. After writing about Diane Dean, i should have at least mentioned Captain Aida Fariscal. She is the policewoman in Manila whose instincts were triggered by the report of a small fire in the apartment rented by a couple of Pakistanis. Her follow-up investigation broke up Yousef's bojinka plot and his plan to kill the Pope. Once against, dedicated cops on the front line are worth more than high-level meetings that discuss the nature of the plan to be submitted for approval to implement the policy currently under discussion.

6. When KSM escaped from Qatar he went to Prague. Before Atta left Germany for the US, he went to Prague. Maybe the Prague connection doesn't go from Al Qaeda to Iraq, but that city seems to have some attraction to the terrorists. I hope that we are still trying to work with the Czechs and that our brusque dismissal of the Atta/Iraq connection has not hurt intelligence cooperation.


Why America Slept: The Reasons behind Our Failure to Prevent 9/11