9/11- The French knew about it well in advance
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-896448@51-892780,0.html
(Gold9472: This is the translated original version.)
4/18/2007
It's an impressive mass of documents. From afar, it looks like a university thesis. Up close however, there is nothing to see. Red stamps stating, "Confidential- defence"� and "Strictly for federal use"� are on each page. On the top left, there is a royal blue logo- that of the GDES, the General Directorate of External Security, the French Secret Service. In total, there are 328 classified pages. Notes, reports, summaries, maps, diagrams, charts, and satellites pictures. All of it dedicated exclusively to Al Qaeda, its leaders, sub-leaders, hideouts and training camps. And its financial benefactors as well. And what's more, it is nothing less than the essence of GDES reports between July 2000 and October 2001. A real encyclopedia.
Following several months of enquiry regarding this very unique documentation, we contacted the headquarters of the GDES. On the 3rd April, the current chief of staff, Emmanuel Renoult, welcomed us on site, in the enclosure of their Tourelles site in Paris. Having run through the 328 pages that we placed on his desk, he cannot prevent himself from deploring such a leak, while nevertheless letting us know that these documents do represent more or less the entirety of what the GDES produced on the subject during this crucial period. However, it is more or less impossible to draw from him the slightest comment about it. It is too sensitive.
It is true that these chronicles of the Secret Service on Al Qaeda, with their various revelations, do raise certain questions. And first off, a surprise: the large number of notes specifically relating to Al Qaeda threats against the USA, only months before the suicide attacks in New York and Washington. 9 whole reports on the subject between September 2000 and August 2001. Among this is one summary note, 5 pages long, headed, "Project to hijack planes by radical Islamists"�, marked"¦ 5th January 2001! 8 months before 9/11, the GDES reported tactical discussions, happening since the start of 2000 between Osama Bin Laden and his Taliban allies, regarding hijacking American commercial airliners.
Pierre Antoine-Lorenzi, chief of staff for the head of the GDES until August 2001, today running a company specialising in crisis management (Serenus Consulting), runs through these 328 pages in front of us, and falls on this note as well. He hesitates, takes the time to read it, and admits, "I remember this. One must bear in mind,"� he specifies, "that until 2001, the hijacking of an airplane did not have the same import as it did post-2001. Back then, it meant forcing the plane to land at an airport in order to negotiate. People are used to dealing with that."� Which gives us useful perspective to understand why this alert from the 5th January did not entail any reaction from the people it was sent to- those with executive power.
From January 2001, the administration within Al Qaeda was, nevertheless, pretty transparent to both the eyes and ears of French spies. The authors of the document even detail disagreements between the terrorists on the specificities of the hijacking they were envisaging. But they were never in any doubt regarding their intention. Provisionally, the Jihadists favoured capturing a plane going from Frankfurt to the USA. They drew up a list of seven potential airline companies.
2 were finally chosen by the 9/11 criminals: American Airlines and United Airlines. In the introduction to the note, the author states, "According to Uzbek information services, the project for the hijacking of a plane seems to have been discussed at the start of 2000 at a Kabul meeting between representatives of Osama Bin Laden's organisation.
Thus the Uzbek spies informed the French agents. At the time, the opposition of the fundamentalist Muslims to the pro-American regime in Tashkent was grouped under the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the IMU. A military faction of this group, led by a certain Taher Youdachev, had joined up with the camps in Afghanistan, and sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden, promising him to export his jihad to central Asia. Military documents, and correspondences from the IMU, found in the Afghan camps of Al Qaeda, attest to this fact.
Alain Chouet kept this episode in his mind. Up until October 2002, he led the Service of Security Information, a sub division of the GDES, tasked with following the movements of terrorists. According to him, the credibility of the Uzbek sources is based in the contacts formed by General Rachid Dostom, one of the main Afghan warlords, also of Uzbek origin, and who thus fought against the Taliban. In order to placate his protectors in the security services of neighbouring Uzbekistan, he sent some of his men to infiltrate into the heart of the IMU, right up to the command structures of the Al Qaeda camps. It was thus that he informed his friends in Tashkent, knowing that such information would then pass to Washington, London or Paris.
The formulation of the French note from January 2001 shows clearly that other sources were involved in the gathering of information on the plans of Al Qaeda. According to a well-oiled plan in Afghanistan, the GDES was not content with exchanges between friendly Secret Service pals. In order to truly pierce the secrets of the camps, it firstly manipulated and "sent back"� young Jihadist candidates from the suburbs of major European cities. Secondly, it sent servicemen to be close to the Northern Alliance of Commander Massoud. And on top of that, there were also the satellite telephone intercepts.
A source close to Pierre Brochand, the current head of the GDES, has assured us that the service had its own "Osama Bin Laden"� cell at least since 1995. The 5th January alert simply catalysed a tested system. Alain Chouet, having asked us to specify that he was keeping quiet in the name of French institutions, remained laconic, but clear: "It is rare that one sends out a document and doesn't get anything back."� All the more since the said document follows, and precedes multiple reports from the GDES supporting the credibility of the war-like threats coming from Osama Bin Laden.
In its note, the GDES reckons that there is no doubt of the desire of Al Qaeda to put an attack against an American target into practice: "In October 2000, Osama Bin Laden attended a meeting in Afghanistan during which the decision, on principle, to carry out this attack was restated."� On the 5th January, the dice had been thrown, and the French knew about it"¦ And they weren't the only ones.
End Part I
