Issue No. 603
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Heritage |
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Question begging
The official version of events on 11 September and after leaves many questions unresolved. Galal Nassar ponders some of them
On the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon we still find ourselves with more questions than answers. Many of these questions pertain to the still-unexplained mystery of the collapse in US national security that helped make these events possible.
In technical and practical terms, the attacks of 11 September were highly complex operations. Essentially, they entailed penetrating US national security, as well as, more specifically, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which has the technical and human capacity to monitor every metre of US territory. An operation on the scale of the 11 September attacks would have required no fewer than a 100 specialists in training, surveillance, execution and backup, and preparations would have taken no less than a year. Bin Laden and his forces, meanwhile, were under constant CIA surveillance.
Riddle number one pertains to the North American Air Force Command (NORAD), which is equipped with a radar system that can monitor every movement of aircraft at Russian bases. Why, then, was NORAD unable to counter the attacks on the US, especially since one of the hijacked planes had actually sent a distress signal to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)? This signal, moreover, had been picked up by the Andrews Air Force Base, which possesses a unique defence system and two emergency airplanes that can be in the air in under three minutes. Nevertheless, no one sounded the alert, and no action was taken. Perhaps this also explains why it took ten hours for the US president himself to get air bourne.
All the hijacked planes took off between 7.58 and 8.10am. The first plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers at 8.45am, which is to say that it had been flying off course for 46 minutes. According to the US intelligence community, amateur pilots would require 15 years experience to fly independently for such a length of time. In addition, the pilot flying the aircraft would have had to have been highly experienced in order to perform a U- turn to manoeuvre the plane into position to strike its target. It has further come to light from the flight paths of the hijacked planes that the pilots knew something of American air-defence locations and training.
Planning and precision timing were also of the essence in this complex assault, which was clearly masterminded by someone familiar with the military concept of "target escalation". Looking at the progression of attacks, the first plane (Flight 11) struck its target 46 minutes after take-off, with the second (Flight 175) hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center 67 minutes after take- off. This 20 minute difference between the two attacks offers proof that the planes were flown by expert pilots, indeed, by air-force pilots with combat experience. There must have been a group monitoring the results of the first strike, then allowing sufficient time for fire-fighters and rescue teams to enter the building in order to augment the losses.
The same principle applies to the third strike on Washington. The aircraft that hit the Pentagon left Dulles Airport at 8.10am, reaching its target at 9.43am. The fact that this international airport is only ten minutes flying time from the Pentagon begs the question of why there was a 45- minute delay after the second strike on New York? Why hit the helicopter pad in particular? Were the attackers waiting for the greatest possible number of Pentagon officials to arrive in order to handle the emergency in New York, perhaps in the hope of picking off Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the joint chief of staff in one go as they landed?
The fourth plane took off at 8.01am and crashed near Pittsburgh at 10.10am. In the two-hour interim, it had gone to Cleveland and back, cruising off its flight path, without relying on the instructions of air-traffic control or on satellite signals. Its target was the White House, which it was to strike at 10.30am when President Bush was expected to be in his office.
The most damning proof of a total breakdown in US security during these events was that Bush and his aides knew almost immediately that the US security network had been penetrated. As a result, not even Bush's closet aides knew of his whereabouts for extensive periods on 11 September. What is known is that he left Florida for the Parksdale Air Base in Louisiana, and that he put US forces around the world on alert at 10.45am. Then he flew to another air base, this time in Nebraska, before returning to Washington aboard a military aircraft at 6.54am the following morning in order to deliver his address to the nation at 8.40am. Why all that time away from the seat of power? He must have realised that the US security apparatus, with its annual budget of $150 billion, its immense technology and rapid-response capacities, had been severely compromised.
From 23 to 26 May this year, representatives of the intelligence agencies of 39 nations held an extraordinary meeting in St Petersburg. The proceedings of this meeting are secret, as are the identities of its approximately 100 participants, some of whom hailed from the Arab world. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss counter-terrorism in the wake of 11 September. However, in spite of the meeting's tight agenda, discussion apparently turned to accusations levelled against US security, attention focusing on unanswered questions coming out of the 11 September attacks.
Firstly, how could it have been possible for 20 kamikaze pilots to spend nearly a year on US territory -- reconnoitering, coordinating, making contacts, withdrawing funds from banks, receiving transfers from abroad, leaving to Spain and Germany and coming back again -- without US intelligence having the faintest notion of what they were up to? Where does the fault for this lie? Does it lie with the security personnel, with US information- gathering techniques, or with the bureaucracy of the US national security establishment, essentially the FBI? Or does the flaw reside in the non-existent cooperation, even at the most minimal level, between the various branches of the intelligence community, at the head of which is the CIA headed by George Tenet?
Secondly, in a post-11 September period that has seemed like something out of the film Apocalypse Now, how did the US and its allies, including the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, some Afghan Pashtuns, the Russians, Indians and Pakistanis, let enemy number one -- Osama Bin Laden -- and his chief aides get away? What really happened in the caves of Tora Bora? Did Bin Laden escape from Afghanistan immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington, or did he flee after the beginning of the US bombardment on 7 October 2001? If so, where did he flee to -- to the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistani border, or through Pakistan to elsewhere? Perhaps he fled to Iran's border province with both Afghanistan and Pakistan, as US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has suggested on several occasions, hinting also at the possibility of the Biqa' Valley in Lebanon as a possible refuge for Al- Qa'eda leaders. Or, did Bin Laden manage to make his way to a Gulf country, having procured a false identity and in disguise, as German intelligence suspects? Then, too, where are his 20 sons and daughters and his four wives? Where are Ayman El-Zawahri, Suleiman Abu Gheith, Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, Ramzi Al-Shiba and the Al-Qa'eda treasurer Sheikh Said?
Thirdly, how did Al-Qa'eda manage to mend its ranks so quickly, mounting an operation against French defence experts and engineers in Pakistan earlier this year that claimed 11 lives and then a further operation against the US consulate, claiming another 14? Who is sheltering and colluding with Al-Qa'eda, supplying the organisation with material support and information? Will the restructuring of the US security apparatus and its alliances with more than 50 intelligence agencies around the world be enough to close the net around Bin Laden and the other Al-Qa'eda chiefs?
According to Al-Qa'eda detainees in Morocco, Bin Laden is still alive and issuing instructions to his followers to strike the US and Jewish institutions. His orders, they say, have triggered a series of bombings in Karachi and elsewhere. The detainees have also said that they fled Tora Bora in Afghanistan on Al-Qa'eda instructions, and that the Al-Qa'eda operatives who had once used the caves dispersed in Asia, Europe, the Gulf, Africa and Turkey, leaving the US to bomb empty caves while they prepared themselves for further assaults against the US and the West in general. Before leaving, they took an oath of allegiance to Bin Laden and dedicated themselves to martyrdom through suicide operations.
Finally, there are two further questions. How valid are the reports leaked from the US Embassy in Rome that US Special Forces are closer than ever to Bin Laden's hideout on the Pakistani-Afghan border? Secondly, is it true that Afghan President Hamid Karzai knows the whereabouts of the former Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar, but that he is concealing this information from his US allies as a result of pressure from the Pashtun leaders who share power with him? Would capturing the Taliban leader and engineering his death or handing him over to the US deliver a fatal blow to the current Afghan administration, precipitating chaos in the country?
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