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Mid-May-December 2000: Almihdhar and AlhazmiReceive Late Night Visits at FBI Informer’s House

While living with FBI informer Abdussatar Shaikh (seeMay 10-Mid-December 2000),hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi receive strange late night visits, as theydid in their previous apartment in San Diego. (Fox 9/16/2001

) The visits are seen by their neighbors. For instance, one neighbor says, “There was always a series of cars driving upto the house late at night. Sometimes they were nice cars. Sometimes they had darkenedwindows. They’d stay about 10 minutes.” (Cloud 10/1/2001) The two hijackers are alsoreportedly visited by Mohamed Atta and Hani Hanjour at this time (see Mid-May-December 2000

).

Mid-May -December 2000: Atta and HanjourReportedly Visit Fellow Hijackers at FBI Informer’sHouse

Abdussattar Shaikh’™s house in Lemon Grove,



California.

[Source: Newsweek]

While Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi are livingwith FBI informer Abdussattar Shaikh in San Diego (seeMay 10-Mid-December 2000

),they are apparently visited frequently by Mohamed Atta, as well as Hani Hanjour,according to neighbors interviewed after 9/11. (KGTV 10 (San Diego) 9/27/2001;Hettena 9/29/2001; Brandon 9/30/2001;KGTV 10 (San Diego) 10/11/2001;Puit and Kalil 10/26/2001) However, Shaikh will deny Atta’s visits and the FBI will not mentionthem. (Hettena 9/29/2001

) Shaikh will also deny having met Hanjour, but the 9/11Commission will say that it has “little doubt” Shaikh met Hanjour at least once. (9/11Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 518) The two San Diego-based hijackers also receive a seriesof mysterious late night visits at this time (see Mid-May-December 2000

).

May 17, 2000: Bush Allegedly Says He Will TakeSaddam Hussein Out

Osama Siblani.

[Source: Publicity photo]

Presidential candidateGeorge W. Bush allegedly tells Osama Siblani, publisher of an Arab Americannewspaper, that if he becomes president he will remove Saddam Hussein from power.“He told me that he was going to take him out,” Siblani says in a radio interview onDemocracy Now! almost five years later. Siblani will also recall that Bush “wanted to goto Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime animminent and gathering threat against the United States.” As Siblani will later note, as a presidential candidate Bush has no access to classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs. (Democracy Now! 3/11/2005

)

May 17, 2000-May 2001: Bin Al-Shibh US VisasRejected, Possibly Because of Ties to USS

Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

[Source: FBI]

During these months,Hamburg al-Qaeda cell member Ramzi bin al-Shibh tries several times to get a US visa, but all his attempts fail, some possibly due to a link to the USS

Cole

bombing. In 2000,he tries to a get a visa three times from Germany, and once from Yemen, but all theseattempts fail. He may also make a fifth attempt in May 2001, although the 9/11Commission will not include that in their final report. One of the applications says he will be visiting Agus Budiman, a Hamburg associate, in Washington (seeOctober-November 2000). (Lichtblau and Williams 10/24/2001; Abuza 12/24/2002;9/11 Commission 8/21/2004, pp. 11-15; McDermott 2005, pp. 209

) Most accounts claim that bin al-Shibh is refused a visa on economic grounds based on fears that he will overstay his visaand work in the US. One official later suggests it was “only by luck” that he was turned

down. (CBS News 6/6/2002;Finn 7/14/2002) However, Bin al-Shibh is in Yemen during the two months before the bombing of the

Cole

in that country, and investigators later conclude that he may have been involved in that attack (seeAround September 15-16 andOctober 10-21, 2000andOctober 12, 2000

). Possibly for this reason other accounts notethat, as the London Times will put it, he was “turned down on security grounds.”(Kennedy 9/9/2002) Newsweek will later report, “One senior law-enforcement officialtold Newsweek that bin al-Shibh’s efforts to obtain a US visa were rebuffed because of suspicions that he was tied to the bombing of the USS

Cole

.” (Lichtblau and Williams10/21/2001;Thomas 11/26/2001;BBC 9/14/2002) In addition, Al Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda will say that according to his US intelligence sources, bin al-Shibh’s visas were“turned down because he was implicated in the USS

Cole

attack.” (TBS Journal 10/2002)But no journalist will ever question why this information didn’t lead to the unraveling of the 9/11 plot. Not only is there the obvious visa connection to Ziad Jarrah while he istraining at a US flight school, but also during this same time period bin al-Shibh wiresmoney to Marwan Alshehhi, Zacarias Moussaoui, and others, sometimes using his ownname. (CBS News 6/6/2002

) It is unclear how the US would know about his ties to the bombing at this time, though it’s possible that the consular official who reviews his fourthattempt in Berlin in October/November 2000 sees that al-Shibh entered Yemen one day before the attack and leaves shortly after it (see Around September 15-16 and October 10-21, 2000). (9/11 Commission 8/21/2004, pp. 15)

May 22, 2000: German Intelligence Notices Hijackers’Associate Traveling Monitored Route

Hamburg cell member Mounir El Motassadeq leaves Germany for Afghanistan and histravel is immediately reported to the German authorities because he is on a watch list (seeMarch 2000). Motassadeq, an associate of Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, and ZiadJarrah, flies from Hamburg to Karachi, Pakistan, via Istanbul. At least two of thehijackers had previously traveled this route to Afghanistan (see Late November-EarlyDecember 1999). Although Turkish intelligence is aware that radicals from Germanytravel to Afghanistan via Turkey, it is not clear whether they pick up the travel byMotassadeq (see1996). There are two versions of German intelligence’s reaction to thistrip. An early 2003 article in Der Speigel will say that the intelligence report only givesMotassadeq’s destination as Istanbul, so there are no consequences for him. However, alater article in Stern magazine will say, “Naturally, the officials know that Istanbul is nothis real destination but only the usual stopover on his way to Afghanistan, to the camps of Osama bin Laden.” (Cziesche, Mascolo, and Stark 2/3/2003;Laabs 8/13/2003

)

May 30, 2000: US Military Blueprint Calls for ‘Full-Spectrum Dominance’ of Entire World

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