August 14, 2003

Germany tipped CIA about Sept 11 pilot

This story, from the German press, is a reminder of
how irrelevant the coverage of the "US mainstream news
media" has become on the issue of what did not happen
prior to 9/11...The questions are quite simple...What
did the _resident hear in the August 6th 2001 daily
intelligence briefing? What did White House au pair
Condi Rice do with the Clinton-Gore national security
council plan to crush Al-Qaeda? Has the _resident ever
heard the name of John 0'Neil and does he have any
comment for the record on the PBS Frontline
documentary "The Man Who Knew Too Much"? There's just
a few...You will not hear them from the Sunday morning
propapunditgandists or from the Stepfordized White
House "press corp."


http://www.expatica.com/germany.asp?pad=190,205,&item_id=33442

Germany tipped CIA about Sept 11 pilot

13 August 2003 HAMBURG - The US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) had one of the September 11, 2001 terror
pilots under surveillance as early as March 1999 after
a tip from German security services, according to
joint investigative reports in Germany.

The weekly magazine Stern and the first German public
television channel ARD, in reports to be published and
aired on Thursday, focus on Marwan Alshehhi, who
piloted the Boeing plane which crashed into the south
tower of the World Trade Centre.

How Alshehhi then managed to slip from the view of the
CIA is the focus of the reports by ARD and Stern,
details of which were provided Deutsche
Presse-Agentur, DPA in advance on Wednesday.

The joint investigative reports said that in January
1999, Germany's security agency BfV first noted the
name of a man named "Marwan" after he had placed calls
with Haydar Sammar, a German-Syrian living in Hamburg,
who had been under surveillance since 1993.

Two months later, in March 1999, the BfV passed the
information about Marwan on to the CIA, which then
also began keeping surveillance on him, ARD and Stern
reported.

The reports said the CIA had detailed information
about Marwan Alshehhi, and the fact that he was from
the United Arab Emirates and studying in Germany.

The CIA had his cellphone number and knew that he was
in contact with Haydar, whom the Americans had
suspected of being al-Qaeda's contact man in Germany.

The reports add to the growing evidence of mistakes
made at the CIA and other security agencies in the
United States in failing to detect the plot by the
suicide plane hijackers.


DPA

Posted by richard at August 14, 2003 11:55 AM