8 ms·

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

by s_q_b 11y ago

mirimir 11y ago
The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Not long after 9/11, there were reports that Mossad agents (the "art students", as I recall) had been tailing the 9/11 terrorists. Almost all of whom were Saudis. But I've seen no credible reports that any of them knew what was planned. And yes, those pages might be very interesting.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Well, some of those pages have been leaked by the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND), because some of the attackers lived in Germany before and it was a priority for them. Funnily, one of the attackers used to have a small internet cafe in my city before he learned to fly an airplane.
- s_q_b 11y ago
  The NSA also had a tap on the Yemeni safe house where the attackers were calling to coordinate. The hijackers even stayed in Laurel, Maryland, from which you can literally see Alpha and Bravo. Yet the 9/11 commission only spent three visits and a paltry amount of time up at Fort Meade and NBP, anecdotally because the commute to the Fort is too long. Edit in reply: No, they never put the intelligence together. See here for a not-terrible summary: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/13/the-al-qaeda-switchboard http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/13/the-al-qaeda-sw...
  - mirimir 11y ago
    So did the NSA know what the attackers were going to do? I find it very hard to imagine that the NSA and/or CIA would have let the attacks happen, even to protect key assets and methods. Maybe they had compromised some Mossad communication channel. Or maybe they had a double agent. But what would have been worth the risk to DC and NYC?
    - toyg 11y ago
      More likely, they had taps but did not know what they were talking about. It was widely reported that, pre-9/11, Arabic translators were scarce in most Western intelligence services including the US, since their traditional focus were Russian, Eastern-European languages, and Chinese. You just need basic informal codes for most logistic purposes (which would be mostly "I've done this, I've done that" to confirm timings and prepare the next steps, rather than "I will hijack a plane and crash it into NYC" which would have been agreed beforehand) to make it very difficult for people who might not know all the intricacies and slang of regional Arabic varieties. So the NSA might have known these people were learning to fly and maybe even preparing a hijack, but until 9/11 this was not dramatic -- if and when the hijack happened, they would have been expected to fly to Cuba or something and then dealt with. Pre-9/11, airplane hijacks had become rare since their '80s and '70s heydays, maybe there was some complacency (as in "yeah these guys will never manage it, and even if they do, we'll likely get most passengers back safely anyway, let them play"). Or at least that's what a sharp Occam's razor would suggest.
      - mirimir 11y ago
        OK, that makes sense. And maybe the NSA and CIA weren't talking, either.
      - dorfsmay 11y ago
        Old style hijack had become rare because police forces around the world made sure that you couldn't come out a winner, you typically get killed. Hijacker are at a disadvantage: limited resources, stuck in a small space easy to surround. The fact that the 9/11 highjackers had planned to die as part of the hijack was a game changer.
        matwood 11y ago
        Exactly. A 9/11 style attack is also a single time event. Now that passengers know the outcome, they simply will not let it happen again. The only possible method would be to turn an existing pilot into a suicide killer.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    This one?[0] > Indeed, some of the C.I.A.’s best information about Al Qaeda came from the F.B.I. In 1998, F.B.I. investigators found an essential clue—a phone number in Yemen that functioned as a virtual switchboard for the terror network. The bombers in East Africa called that number before and after the attacks; so did Osama bin Laden. The number belonged to a jihadi named Ahmed al-Hada. By combing through the records of all the calls made to and from that number, F.B.I. investigators constructed a map of Al Qaeda’s global organization. The phone line was monitored as soon as it was discovered. But the C.I.A., as the primary organization for gathering foreign intelligence, had jurisdiction over conversations on the Hada phone, and did not provide the F.B.I. with the information it was getting about Al Qaeda’s plans. So was the NSA also monitoring the Hada phone? Or maybe providing technical support for the CIA? [0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent
- hartpuff 11y ago
  > The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world?
  - mirimir 11y ago
    The better to learn how US airspace worked?
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    >Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world? Because there are more flight schools in the US than anywhere else, and if you want to do some flying in US airspace, those are in the best position to teach how it works, what controls there are, how to avoid them, etc.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Most flight training in the world is done in the US, by a wide margin. Because of that, they would probably stick out much less doing it here than trying to do it in one of the few EU airline training facilities.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Not only that, but for the plot to work, the hijackers had to start from within the US. Implanting them in the US long before the attacks made it easier for them to reliably get to their target airports the day of the attack. In a sense, the comment upthread litigates the whole idea of a "sleeper cell."
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Is that the right word? Validates? mitigates?
- ck2 11y ago
  Everyone also forgets the twin towers were already successfully attacked several years earlier by a huge bomb in the basement. Anything about the world trade center should have lit up intelligence reports like a christmas tree.
- tootie 11y ago
  The CIA most definitely knew and refused to share that information with the FBI. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent
  - prostoalex 11y ago
    There's a good reason for lack of sharing as both Aldrich Ames (CIA) and Robert Hanssen (FBI) ended up providing much more sensitive information to the adversary than their rank qualified them for. The agencies seem to be on the cycle of high compartmentalization -> criticism for lack of sharing -> low compartmentalization -> major spy scandal -> high compartmentalization.
    - tootie 11y ago
      Those guys committed treason by sharing with the Soviets. I don't see how that's relevant. The reason for the wall is because they have conflicting mandates.
      - prostoalex 11y ago
        The natural response of each agency to prevent such massive information losses in the future is to limit the amount of information available, make it accessible only on the need-to-know basis, and introduce bureaucracy into the information retrieval process by keeping the logs and requiring sign-offs.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > The CIA ... very likely knew ... They definitely knew something: A month before the attacks they gave President Bush a briefing titled: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike...
rtpg 11y ago
Serious question but are the contents likely to be anything more than "SA money ended up in AQ hands"? I can't imagine too many bombshells being able to remain classified.
- XorNot 11y ago
  And also how many times has that happened to the US recently anyway?
tome 11y ago
> I want those pages. What would you do with them? Surely you can't believe that keeping them secret protects an ally to the expense of America? Surely it's much more likely that keeping them secret protects an ally to the benefit of America.
- revscat 11y ago
  There is significant differences in what exactly the phrase "to the benefit of America" means. In matters that fall under the purview of the Department of State, that far too often means "to the benefit of American or international corporations", with no regard for either environmental concerns or what is to the economic benefit of the American poor and middle classes.
  - tome 11y ago
    I agree entirely, but that is somewhat different from the flavour of the other comments on this topic which seem to be suggesting something quite different (unless I am getting a completely wrong impression).
- aback 11y ago
  Which "America" is the one that benefits from secrecy? America depends on an informed populace in order to guide its representative government. Feed the population lies and hide secrets, and break democracy.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  You're asking for an act of faith in murderers, assassins and spies, people who believe that public scrutiny is a nuisance. The whole point of a democracy is that "what benefits America" must be determined by an active conversation amongst the public. The idea that a few individuals can decide what is best for our "national security" is antithetical to any notion of democracy.
nickbauman 11y ago
I think we generally know what's in those pages. Seymour Hersh (multi Pulitzer winning journalist who, among other things, uncovered the Mi Lai Atrocities) broke the story that the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin was mainly an attempt by the US to cover up the deep ties between OBL and the Saudi government. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-...
- tptacek 11y ago
  To say that Hersh's story about the OBL Killing is controversial, especially among journalists, would be understating it quite a bit. The London Review Of Books is not a conventional outlet for Hersh's investigative journalism (he's a regular at The New Yorker, which has one of the more notoriously elaborate fact checking apparatuses in the industry) and not Hersh's first choice for publishing that story.
  - testerooooooo 11y ago
    Or maybe the NewYorker refused to publish it as a favour to their TLA friends. Maybe...
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Normally I would be more skeptical. But the assertions Hersh is making about this is so far beyond the "official" narrative, you can't seriously think someone with Hersh's reputation would just make that up? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Who said he made anything up? I think the conventional wisdom here is that he is just wrong.
      - 11y ago

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

by s_q_b 11y ago

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

mirimir 11y ago

The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Not long after 9/11, there were reports that Mossad agents (the "art students", as I recall) had been tailing the 9/11 terrorists. Almost all of whom were Saudis. But I've seen no credible reports that any of them knew what was planned. And yes, those pages might be very interesting.

kuschku 11y ago
Well, some of those pages have been leaked by the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND), because some of the attackers lived in Germany before and it was a priority for them. Funnily, one of the attackers used to have a small internet cafe in my city before he learned to fly an airplane.
s_q_b 11y ago
The NSA also had a tap on the Yemeni safe house where the attackers were calling to coordinate. The hijackers even stayed in Laurel, Maryland, from which you can literally see Alpha and Bravo. Yet the 9/11 commission only spent three visits and a paltry amount of time up at Fort Meade and NBP, anecdotally because the commute to the Fort is too long. Edit in reply: No, they never put the intelligence together. See here for a not-terrible summary: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/13/the-al-qaeda-switchboard http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/13/the-al-qaeda-sw...
- mirimir 11y ago
  So did the NSA know what the attackers were going to do? I find it very hard to imagine that the NSA and/or CIA would have let the attacks happen, even to protect key assets and methods. Maybe they had compromised some Mossad communication channel. Or maybe they had a double agent. But what would have been worth the risk to DC and NYC?
  - toyg 11y ago
    More likely, they had taps but did not know what they were talking about. It was widely reported that, pre-9/11, Arabic translators were scarce in most Western intelligence services including the US, since their traditional focus were Russian, Eastern-European languages, and Chinese. You just need basic informal codes for most logistic purposes (which would be mostly "I've done this, I've done that" to confirm timings and prepare the next steps, rather than "I will hijack a plane and crash it into NYC" which would have been agreed beforehand) to make it very difficult for people who might not know all the intricacies and slang of regional Arabic varieties. So the NSA might have known these people were learning to fly and maybe even preparing a hijack, but until 9/11 this was not dramatic -- if and when the hijack happened, they would have been expected to fly to Cuba or something and then dealt with. Pre-9/11, airplane hijacks had become rare since their '80s and '70s heydays, maybe there was some complacency (as in "yeah these guys will never manage it, and even if they do, we'll likely get most passengers back safely anyway, let them play"). Or at least that's what a sharp Occam's razor would suggest.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      OK, that makes sense. And maybe the NSA and CIA weren't talking, either.
    - dorfsmay 11y ago
      Old style hijack had become rare because police forces around the world made sure that you couldn't come out a winner, you typically get killed. Hijacker are at a disadvantage: limited resources, stuck in a small space easy to surround. The fact that the 9/11 highjackers had planned to die as part of the hijack was a game changer.
      - matwood 11y ago
        Exactly. A 9/11 style attack is also a single time event. Now that passengers know the outcome, they simply will not let it happen again. The only possible method would be to turn an existing pilot into a suicide killer.
- mirimir 11y ago
  This one?[0] > Indeed, some of the C.I.A.’s best information about Al Qaeda came from the F.B.I. In 1998, F.B.I. investigators found an essential clue—a phone number in Yemen that functioned as a virtual switchboard for the terror network. The bombers in East Africa called that number before and after the attacks; so did Osama bin Laden. The number belonged to a jihadi named Ahmed al-Hada. By combing through the records of all the calls made to and from that number, F.B.I. investigators constructed a map of Al Qaeda’s global organization. The phone line was monitored as soon as it was discovered. But the C.I.A., as the primary organization for gathering foreign intelligence, had jurisdiction over conversations on the Hada phone, and did not provide the F.B.I. with the information it was getting about Al Qaeda’s plans. So was the NSA also monitoring the Hada phone? Or maybe providing technical support for the CIA? [0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent
hartpuff 11y ago
> The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world?
- mirimir 11y ago
  The better to learn how US airspace worked?
- ptaipale 11y ago
  >Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world? Because there are more flight schools in the US than anywhere else, and if you want to do some flying in US airspace, those are in the best position to teach how it works, what controls there are, how to avoid them, etc.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Most flight training in the world is done in the US, by a wide margin. Because of that, they would probably stick out much less doing it here than trying to do it in one of the few EU airline training facilities.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Not only that, but for the plot to work, the hijackers had to start from within the US. Implanting them in the US long before the attacks made it easier for them to reliably get to their target airports the day of the attack. In a sense, the comment upthread litigates the whole idea of a "sleeper cell."
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Is that the right word? Validates? mitigates?
ck2 11y ago
Everyone also forgets the twin towers were already successfully attacked several years earlier by a huge bomb in the basement. Anything about the world trade center should have lit up intelligence reports like a christmas tree.
tootie 11y ago
The CIA most definitely knew and refused to share that information with the FBI. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/the-agent
- prostoalex 11y ago
  There's a good reason for lack of sharing as both Aldrich Ames (CIA) and Robert Hanssen (FBI) ended up providing much more sensitive information to the adversary than their rank qualified them for. The agencies seem to be on the cycle of high compartmentalization -> criticism for lack of sharing -> low compartmentalization -> major spy scandal -> high compartmentalization.
  - tootie 11y ago
    Those guys committed treason by sharing with the Soviets. I don't see how that's relevant. The reason for the wall is because they have conflicting mandates.
    - prostoalex 11y ago
      The natural response of each agency to prevent such massive information losses in the future is to limit the amount of information available, make it accessible only on the need-to-know basis, and introduce bureaucracy into the information retrieval process by keeping the logs and requiring sign-offs.
hackuser 11y ago
> The CIA ... very likely knew ... They definitely knew something: A month before the attacks they gave President Bush a briefing titled: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike...

rtpg 11y ago

Serious question but are the contents likely to be anything more than "SA money ended up in AQ hands"? I can't imagine too many bombshells being able to remain classified.

XorNot 11y ago
And also how many times has that happened to the US recently anyway?

tome 11y ago

> I want those pages. What would you do with them? Surely you can't believe that keeping them secret protects an ally to the expense of America? Surely it's much more likely that keeping them secret protects an ally to the benefit of America.

revscat 11y ago
There is significant differences in what exactly the phrase "to the benefit of America" means. In matters that fall under the purview of the Department of State, that far too often means "to the benefit of American or international corporations", with no regard for either environmental concerns or what is to the economic benefit of the American poor and middle classes.
- tome 11y ago
  I agree entirely, but that is somewhat different from the flavour of the other comments on this topic which seem to be suggesting something quite different (unless I am getting a completely wrong impression).
aback 11y ago
Which "America" is the one that benefits from secrecy? America depends on an informed populace in order to guide its representative government. Feed the population lies and hide secrets, and break democracy.
astazangasta 11y ago
You're asking for an act of faith in murderers, assassins and spies, people who believe that public scrutiny is a nuisance. The whole point of a democracy is that "what benefits America" must be determined by an active conversation amongst the public. The idea that a few individuals can decide what is best for our "national security" is antithetical to any notion of democracy.

nickbauman 11y ago

I think we generally know what's in those pages. Seymour Hersh (multi Pulitzer winning journalist who, among other things, uncovered the Mi Lai Atrocities) broke the story that the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin was mainly an attempt by the US to cover up the deep ties between OBL and the Saudi government. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-...

tptacek 11y ago
To say that Hersh's story about the OBL Killing is controversial, especially among journalists, would be understating it quite a bit. The London Review Of Books is not a conventional outlet for Hersh's investigative journalism (he's a regular at The New Yorker, which has one of the more notoriously elaborate fact checking apparatuses in the industry) and not Hersh's first choice for publishing that story.
- testerooooooo 11y ago
  Or maybe the NewYorker refused to publish it as a favour to their TLA friends. Maybe...
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Normally I would be more skeptical. But the assertions Hersh is making about this is so far beyond the "official" narrative, you can't seriously think someone with Hersh's reputation would just make that up? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Who said he made anything up? I think the conventional wisdom here is that he is just wrong.
    - 11y ago