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Writer says allies knew about 9/11 beforehand
By TONY FREEMANTLE
WHY AMERICA SLEPT:
The Failure to Prevent 9/11.
By Gerald Posner.
Random House, $24.95; 256 pp.
Cover
Hindsight, as we well know, is 20/20.
There are few events that, viewed through the prism of time, could not have been prevented or ameliorated if warnings had been heeded, connections established, priorities shifted.
Such is certainly the case with the awful events of Sept. 11, 2001. For years leading up to the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, numerous opportunities to thwart our enemies, or apprehend them before they could do us harm, were squandered.
Many of these miscues -- some inadvertent, some simply appalling -- are well-known and have been extensively documented in books and news reports in the two years since the attacks. Gerald Posner, a Wall Street lawyer turned investigative writer, provides ample new evidence of them in Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, his latest work.
Ironically Posner, who is best-known for his book debunking the conspiracy theories that stick to the John F. Kennedy assassination like flies, breaks significant new ground in this sad tale by creating a conspiracy theory.
Prominent figures in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, countries that are nominally our friends, knew beforehand that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida was planning an attack on important American targets, Posner reveals. They did not know which targets, but they knew the date, and they apparently did not warn us.
Not only that. The Saudis, Posner claims, had a secret deal with bin Laden going back to 1991 and approved by Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's intelligence chief, that they would finance his holy war and not extradite him as long as he kept his jihad off Saudi soil.
The Pakistani connection involved a high-ranking air force officer, Mushaf Ali Mir. Posner says that in a 1996 meeting, Mir, who had close ties to Islamic extremists in the Pakistani intelligence agency, promised bin Laden protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaida. This arrangement had been "blessed" by the Saudis, he says.
Posner drops this bombshell in the last chapter of his book. Up to that point, all he has done is add to the bulging dossier of evidence that someone -- the intelligence community, the White House, Congress -- was asleep at the switch in the years leading up to the most coordinated and devastating terrorist attack in history.
What makes this book worth reading begins with the arrest, in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad early on March 28, 2002, of Abu Zubaydah, a close associate of bin Laden and the source on the Pakistan/Saudi Arabia/al-Qaida connections. It is a riveting account of the wounding, arrest and interrogation of Zubaydah, who is believed to have been behind several executed and planned attacks, including the one on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
Gravely injured, Zubaydah was uncooperative, despite the use of "quick-on, quick-off" painkillers. His interrogators hoped that feeding the painkillers into his intravenous drip when he started talking, and stopping it when he stopped talking, would induce the recalcitrant captive to start telling them what he knew.
When that didn't work, the Americans transferred him to a base in Afghanistan where a room was made to look like a Saudi torture chamber. Two Arab-American special forces members posed as Saudi questioners.
"His reaction was not fear, but instead relief," Posner reports. "The prisoner, who had been reluctant even to confirm his identity to his American captors, suddenly started talking animatedly. He was happy to see (the supposed Saudis), he said, because he feared the Americans would torture and then kill him."
Zubaydah told his interrogators to call Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz to vouch for him, and he gave them the prince's home number. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah said. Prince Ahmed, a nephew of King Fahd, was the head of a Saudi publishing empire and was known in the West as the owner of the Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem.
The telephone number checked out, but the interrogators told the drugged Zubaydah they did not believe him, and in an effort to convince them of his veracity, the captive unleashed a torrent of information about the links among Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and al-Qaida. Posner's source, an unnamed investigator, calls the information "the Rosetta Stone of 9/11."
"He was essentially trying to play his `Get Out of Jail Free' card," the investigator told Posner. "He spoke to them (the fake Saudi interrogators) as if they were the ones in trouble if they did not take him seriously. And he was anxious to have his information confirmed before we (the Americans) returned."
Zubaydah said money was funneled to al-Qaida through channels other than Prince Ahmed. These channels included two other nephews of King Fahd -- Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir -- and Zubaydah again supplied their private phone numbers.
And then he dropped his bombshell: Both Mir, the Pakistani officer, and Prince Ahmed knew that the 9/11 attack was "scheduled for American soil for that day."
Shortly after that, Zubaydah learned he had been duped, and he clammed up. He is still in U.S. custody.
Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan assured the United States that the allegations were "false and malicious," Posner writes. Without clear proof, and with the conflict in Afghanistan and the looming war with Iraq on the American agenda, "creating an international incident" over the matter was "out of the question."
And here comes the conspiracy theory, which Posner concedes could be pure coincidence.
Less than four months after Zubaydah's revelations, Prince Ahmed died at the age of 43 of a heart attack. The next day, Prince Sultan died in a single-car accident while on his way to his cousin's funeral. A week later, Prince Fahd died of thirst, according to the official account, while on a trip to the Saudi province of Ramaah. Prince Turki was dismissed as the Saudi intelligence chief before 9/11 and is currently Saudi ambassador to Great Britain.
And in Pakistan, seven months later, an airplane believed to be in good mechanical order, flying in good weather, crashed in the country's northwest provinces, killing everyone on board, including Mir and a slew of his closest confidants.
"It's interesting that we can't talk to most of the people that Zubaydah named because they all died after he told us about them," Posner's source says. "But it does make a lot of us wonder what these people might have known about 9/11 and failed to tell us."
It makes us wonder, too.
Tony Freemantle is a reporter for the Chronicle.
Writer says allies knew about 9/11 beforehand
By TONY FREEMANTLE
WHY AMERICA SLEPT:
The Failure to Prevent 9/11.
By Gerald Posner.
Random House, $24.95; 256 pp.
Cover
Hindsight, as we well know, is 20/20.
There are few events that, viewed through the prism of time, could not have been prevented or ameliorated if warnings had been heeded, connections established, priorities shifted.
Such is certainly the case with the awful events of Sept. 11, 2001. For years leading up to the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, numerous opportunities to thwart our enemies, or apprehend them before they could do us harm, were squandered.
Many of these miscues -- some inadvertent, some simply appalling -- are well-known and have been extensively documented in books and news reports in the two years since the attacks. Gerald Posner, a Wall Street lawyer turned investigative writer, provides ample new evidence of them in Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, his latest work.
Ironically Posner, who is best-known for his book debunking the conspiracy theories that stick to the John F. Kennedy assassination like flies, breaks significant new ground in this sad tale by creating a conspiracy theory.
Prominent figures in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, countries that are nominally our friends, knew beforehand that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida was planning an attack on important American targets, Posner reveals. They did not know which targets, but they knew the date, and they apparently did not warn us.
Not only that. The Saudis, Posner claims, had a secret deal with bin Laden going back to 1991 and approved by Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's intelligence chief, that they would finance his holy war and not extradite him as long as he kept his jihad off Saudi soil.
The Pakistani connection involved a high-ranking air force officer, Mushaf Ali Mir. Posner says that in a 1996 meeting, Mir, who had close ties to Islamic extremists in the Pakistani intelligence agency, promised bin Laden protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaida. This arrangement had been "blessed" by the Saudis, he says.
Posner drops this bombshell in the last chapter of his book. Up to that point, all he has done is add to the bulging dossier of evidence that someone -- the intelligence community, the White House, Congress -- was asleep at the switch in the years leading up to the most coordinated and devastating terrorist attack in history.
What makes this book worth reading begins with the arrest, in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad early on March 28, 2002, of Abu Zubaydah, a close associate of bin Laden and the source on the Pakistan/Saudi Arabia/al-Qaida connections. It is a riveting account of the wounding, arrest and interrogation of Zubaydah, who is believed to have been behind several executed and planned attacks, including the one on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
Gravely injured, Zubaydah was uncooperative, despite the use of "quick-on, quick-off" painkillers. His interrogators hoped that feeding the painkillers into his intravenous drip when he started talking, and stopping it when he stopped talking, would induce the recalcitrant captive to start telling them what he knew.
When that didn't work, the Americans transferred him to a base in Afghanistan where a room was made to look like a Saudi torture chamber. Two Arab-American special forces members posed as Saudi questioners.
"His reaction was not fear, but instead relief," Posner reports. "The prisoner, who had been reluctant even to confirm his identity to his American captors, suddenly started talking animatedly. He was happy to see (the supposed Saudis), he said, because he feared the Americans would torture and then kill him."
Zubaydah told his interrogators to call Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz to vouch for him, and he gave them the prince's home number. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah said. Prince Ahmed, a nephew of King Fahd, was the head of a Saudi publishing empire and was known in the West as the owner of the Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem.
The telephone number checked out, but the interrogators told the drugged Zubaydah they did not believe him, and in an effort to convince them of his veracity, the captive unleashed a torrent of information about the links among Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and al-Qaida. Posner's source, an unnamed investigator, calls the information "the Rosetta Stone of 9/11."
"He was essentially trying to play his `Get Out of Jail Free' card," the investigator told Posner. "He spoke to them (the fake Saudi interrogators) as if they were the ones in trouble if they did not take him seriously. And he was anxious to have his information confirmed before we (the Americans) returned."
Zubaydah said money was funneled to al-Qaida through channels other than Prince Ahmed. These channels included two other nephews of King Fahd -- Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir -- and Zubaydah again supplied their private phone numbers.
And then he dropped his bombshell: Both Mir, the Pakistani officer, and Prince Ahmed knew that the 9/11 attack was "scheduled for American soil for that day."
Shortly after that, Zubaydah learned he had been duped, and he clammed up. He is still in U.S. custody.
Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan assured the United States that the allegations were "false and malicious," Posner writes. Without clear proof, and with the conflict in Afghanistan and the looming war with Iraq on the American agenda, "creating an international incident" over the matter was "out of the question."
And here comes the conspiracy theory, which Posner concedes could be pure coincidence.
Less than four months after Zubaydah's revelations, Prince Ahmed died at the age of 43 of a heart attack. The next day, Prince Sultan died in a single-car accident while on his way to his cousin's funeral. A week later, Prince Fahd died of thirst, according to the official account, while on a trip to the Saudi province of Ramaah. Prince Turki was dismissed as the Saudi intelligence chief before 9/11 and is currently Saudi ambassador to Great Britain.
And in Pakistan, seven months later, an airplane believed to be in good mechanical order, flying in good weather, crashed in the country's northwest provinces, killing everyone on board, including Mir and a slew of his closest confidants.
"It's interesting that we can't talk to most of the people that Zubaydah named because they all died after he told us about them," Posner's source says. "But it does make a lot of us wonder what these people might have known about 9/11 and failed to tell us."
It makes us wonder, too.
Tony Freemantle is a reporter for the Chronicle.
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