Cooperativeresearch - One new entry that may go some way to explaining the mystery surrounding al-Qaeda’s communications hub in Yemen, which was called by the 9/11 hijackers from the US and monitored by the NSA, highlights a section of Bob Woodward’s last book that says the CIA obtained domestic phone and financial information to support “Black Ops”.

However, the corporate CEOs that provided the information started to complain after 9/11. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed exploitation of monitored calls to the hub by Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi could have prevented 9/11, but Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell claimed the US did not detect the communications.

One of the members of the al-Qaeda cell that bombed the US embassy in Nairobi, L’Houssaine Kherchtou, appears to have become an informer for the British intelligence service MI6 before the bombing. After the bombing, MI6 debriefed him, but failed to inform the FBI of the information it gained. When he was finally turned over to the FBI two years later, the Bureau extracted a full confession by treating him well, and he told them al-Qaeda was interested in air traffic procedures.

In Afghanistan, in May 1979 the CIA began working with mujaheddin leaders chosen by the ISI, which the US knew was supplying the Taliban with weapons by late 1996. By this time the CIA was aware the ISI was funding a radical group linked to Osama bin Laden and that the Taliban were keeping bin Laden’s camps open. A year later, the US became aware that the Taliban was paying the Pakistani government in drugs.

Osama bin Laden, whose wife and sons received Sudanese passports, issued an audio tape praising 9/11 hijacker Waleed Alshehri in September 2007, after which terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said it would be better to let him issue videos - they might be the best chance of finding him.

Miscellaneous entries include a dubious warning al-Qaeda may strike LA and Chicago shopping malls, the operative who was supposed to video the bombing of the USS Cole oversleeping and missing it, and al-Qaeda’s desire for war in Iraq. In addition, future 9/11 Commissioner Lee Hamilton did not cover himself in glory in the October Surprise investigation, various explanations were offered for the Pentagon exit hole, and the Guantanamo Bay tribunals descended into chaos.

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