IRAN's 9/11 Connection

Irans Role in 9/11 Attack

www.newsmax.com
Ken Timmerman

Irans Role in 9/11 Attack
(Sept 10, 2008)

    In an auspicious passage that went virtually unreported at the time,
    the 9/11 Commission revealed in July 2004 that they now have evidence
    suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi muscle operatives traveled
    into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.

    The muscle operatives were the 9/11 hijackers who overpowered airline
    crew members, slit their throats, and terrorized passengers so the
    al-Qaida pilots could seize control of the airliners and fly them into
    their targets.

    The Commissioners concluded that there was strong evidence that Iran
    facilitated the transit of al-Qaida members into and out of
    Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11
    hijackers.

    We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S.
    government, the Commissioners wrote.

    This heavily-redacted passage in the July 2004 final report of the
    9/11 Commission provided a tantalizing glimpse into the information
    gathered by the U.S. intelligence community mainly from national
    technical means on Irans material involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

    And yet, until now it has been widely ignored by the intelligence
    community, Congress, and most of the press.

    I first revealed the inside story of what the 9/11 Commission found
    out about Irans involvement in the 9/11 plot in my 2005 book Countdown
    to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.

    Among other things, I discovered from sources on the Commission that
    the senior Hezbollah operative who accompanied the al-Qaida muscle
    hijackers on flights from Saudi Arabia and Beirut to Tehran was none
    other than Irans star terrorist, Imad Fayez Mugniyeh.

    Either Mugniyehs presence on those flights was hard evidence that Iran
    was actively and materially involved with the future al-Qaida
    terrorists, or it was a remarkable coincidence, the 9/11 Commission
    report stated.

    [Editor's Note: Read Irans Arch-Terror Master Killed in Syria Go Here
    Now].

    I also interviewed a former Revolutionary Guards Colonel who gave
    paramilitary and intelligence training to al-Qaida terrorists at a
    specialized training camp in Iran before 9/11.

    Former FBI assistant director Oliver Buck Revell tracked Mugniyeh
    during the 1980s because of his involvement in the deadly bombings of
    the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, among other
    attacks.

    Mugniyeh is more dangerous and has killed more people and tortured
    more people than any other terrorist, Revell told me earlier this
    year.

    Whenever hes under pressure, he goes to Iran. Hes the creature of the
    IRGC [the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps]. Hes the international link
    between Hezbollah and the IRGC.

    Not long after the 9/11 attacks, Deputy Secretary of State Richard
    Armitage called Mugniyehs Hezbollah the A-Team of terrorists, and
    maybe al-Qaida is actually the 'B' team.

    Armitage never accused Hezbollah or Mugniyeh of involvement in the
    attacks, but was referring to their twenty-five-year history of
    killing Americans.

    Mugniyeh was assassinated on February 12, 2008, when he turned on the
    ignition of his Mitsubishi Pajero in a highly-secure neighborhood of
    Damascus, Syria. He had just left a meeting with the head of Syrian
    intelligence, Rostam Ghazali, and with a senior Iranian intelligence
    officer.

    Most commentators speculated that Mugniyeh had been assassinated by
    the Israelis, because of his ongoing role as Hezbollahs military
    chief. But a Newsmax source close to Hezbollah speculated that he had
    been killed by the Iranians.

    Haj Radwan [a nom de guerre for Mugniyeh] knew too much, and had
    outlived his usefulness to the Iranians, the source said.

    New York Times reporter Philip Shenon also examined Irans involvement
    in the 9/11 plot in his recent book, The Commission, which details the
    political infighting among the staff and commissioners as they debated
    whether to apportion blame between the Clinton and Bush
    administrations for missing the signs of the impending attacks.

    But Shenon like the published 9/11 commission report itself falls
    short of naming Imad Mugniyeh as the senior Hezbollah operative who
    was Irans liaison with al-Qaida.

    A senior member of the 9/11 Commission staff confirmed this
    information to me again just a few months ago. You mean, someone
    doesnt know it was Mugniyeh? he told me.

    Despite the Commissions calls for further investigation into Irans
    role in the 9/11 attacks, no agency of the United States government
    has delved into this subject in the four years since the report was
    published.

    The boxes of highly-classified documents detailing what the
    intelligence community learned about Irans involvement with al Qaeda
    many of which were identified in footnotes to the pages of the report
    dealing with Iran were returned to their originating agencies once the
    Commission completed its work, where they have been forgotten like an
    old aunt dying of dementia.

    Imad Mugniyehs ties to al-Qaida go back at least to 1993, according to
    Osama bin Ladens former bodyguard, Ali Mohamed.

    Mohamed, an Egyptian special forces officer who came to America in the
    1980s and enlisted in the U.S. Army, was later considered a
    confidential informant by the FBI as they were investigating the first
    World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

    At the same time he was talking to the FBI, however, Mohamed was
    traveling back and forth to Sudan, where bin Laden had moved in the
    early 1990s.

    Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy interviewed Mohamed at
    one point when he was still a confidential informant. The more I
    listened to him, the more Im thinking, this guy is not a witness, hes
    a terrorist! he told me.

    Mohamed was arrested later for his role in the 1998 bombings of the
    U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and ultimately made a plea
    bargain with the U.S. government.

    During his allocution at his sentencing hearing in October 2000, he
    revealed his personal knowledge of Irans early ties to his boss, Osama
    bin Laden.

    I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mugniyeh,
    Hezbollahs chief, and bin Laden, Mohamed told the court.

    That meeting took place in 1993, and was a historic terrorist summit
    that laid the ground work for a cease fire between Shiite Muslim Iran
    and the radical Sunnis of Bin Ladens organization, according to former
    ABC news reporter and author, Peter Lance.

    Hezbollah provided explosives training for al-Qaida and al Jihad. Iran
    supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons, Mohamed said at his sentencing
    hearing.

    Egyptian Jihad was the al-Qaida component run by Ayman al-Zawahri, the
    man who is still wanted in Egypt for master-minding the 1981
    assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

    Zawahri is bin Ladens top deputy. He was also the al-Qaida operative
    who had the best connections with Iran, former Iranian intelligence
    officers tell Newsmax.

    Earlier this week, however, al Jazeera reported receiving a copy of a
    90-minute video by Zawahri that blasted Irans leadership for
    co-operating with the Americans in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Those bitter words may have been a ploy aimed at disguising al-Qaidas
    long-standing ties to Iran, and at reassuring al-Qaida foot-soldiers
    that the terrorist group had not lost the war in Iraq, but had been
    undermined or sabotaged by fellow Muslims.

    The 9/11 commission also described an al-Qaida team that traveled to
    Iran to receive training in explosives after the initial 1993 meeting
    between bin Laden, Mugniyeh, and an Iranian general in Khartoum.

    Bin Laden reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use
    truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in
    Lebanon in 1983, the Commission report states.

    Mugniyeh designed the twin truck bombs that killed the marines and
    another 68 French soldiers in October 1983. Fifteen years later,
    al-Qaida pulled off a similar attack, hitting two U.S. embassies in
    Africa with truck bombs that exploded just minutes apart but in
    different countries.

    Irans role in the 9/11 conspiracy remains one of the best kept secrets
    of the United States government.

    Al-Qaida also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the
    Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist
    group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their
    perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States,
    the original 1998 indictment against bin Laden for the Africa embassy
    bombings revealed.

    But the passage was redacted in later versions of the indictment,
    perhaps to conceal intelligence sources.

    I revealed key details of the Iran/al-Qaida relationship in "Countdown
    to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran."

    Top al-Qaida leaders, including Ayman al Zawahri and Saad bin Laden,
    traveled to Iran in early 2001 to win Iranian cooperation in the 9/11
    plot, according to an Iranian eyewitness of those meetings. Top among
    their requests were assistance in getting al-Qaida operatives into and
    out of Afghanistan without being detected by U.S. intelligence
    networks in Pakistan.

    The CIA was warned of Irans growing ties with al-Qaida, and of Irans
    intention to carry out a massive terrorist operation against the
    United States jointly with al-Qaida, by an Iranian defector who walked
    into the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan in July 2001. The CIA
    dismissed the warning and called the defector a fabricator.

    Not long before 9/11, a private company used as a front by Iranian
    intelligence purchased a Boeing 757/767/777 simulator through
    commercial contacts, according to another Iranian defector who had
    personal knowledge of the companies and individuals involved in the
    purchase. Iran did not then, and does not today own such aircraft. The
    planes hijacked on 9/11 were Boeing 757s and Boeing 767s.

    Several al-Qaida operatives convicted of terrorist crimes in Europe
    have said in open court that before 9/11 they were ordered to get
    travel documents from Iranian embassies in Europe and to travel
    through Iran to reach Afghanistan as a means of eluding U.S.
    surveillance.

    The United States government detected a rat line set up by Iran to
    evacuate several hundred al-Qaida terrorists and their families from
    Afghanistan to Iran in late 2001 and early 2002. The Iranians used
    army helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, and convoys of Nissan Patrols
    for the al-Qaida rat line.

    Since then, Iran has continued to provide shelter, sanctuary, training
    and other material support to al-Qaida operatives and served as a rear
    base for al al-Qaida operations in neighboring Iraq.

    U.S. negotiations with Iran in early 2003 fell apart after Iran
    refused to hand over Saad Bin Laden and other top al-Qaida operatives
    then living in Iran.

    The U.S. severed all contacts with Iran in May 2003, after they
    intercepted orders from al-Qaida operatives in Iran to a cell in Saudi
    Arabia to initiate a bloody wave of terrorist attacks in Riyadh that
    the Saudis called their 9/11.

    Imad Mugniyeh was Irans chief liaison to al-Qaida both during the
    preparation phase of the 9/11 plot, and afterwards.

    Several sources report that Osama bin Laden visited Iran to meet with
    senior government leaders in November 2004.

    Despite this wealth of evidence, the conventional wisdom within the
    U.S. intelligence community continues to assert that Iran did not
    assist al-Qaida because of the religious differences between them.

    The conventional wisdom is idiotic, former CIA Director R. James
    Woolsey told me.

    I dont remember what so-called expert was saying that Shia Islamists
    will never cooperate with Sunni Islamists or with secular terrorists,
    but Ive thought this line of reasoning on totalitarians was wrong
    since I was a sophomore in college, Woolsey said.

    Since 2006, the U.S. military has discovered Iranian-made weapons with
    Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and has documented Irans active assistance
    to Sunni groups.

    Today, it is well known that Iran has been transferring weapons to the
    Taliban and thus to whatever is left of al-Qaida sleeping with the
    Devil, so to speak because it suits their larger political purpose of
    attacking America, said Edward Luttwak, a senior associate at the
    Center for Security and International Studies in Washington, DC.

    © 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


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