September 11, 2001: The French Knew Much About
It
By Guillaume Dasquié
Le Monde -Monday 16 April 2007
04/17/07 "
Le Monde" --- - It's an impressive mass of documents.
From a distance, one would imagine a doctoral thesis. On closer
inspection: nothing of the kind. Red stamps
"Confidential-Defense" and "Strictly National Usage" on every
page. At the top on the left, a royal blue logo: that of the
DGSE, Direction générale des services extérieurs [General
Directorate for Foreign Services], the French secret services.
In total, 328 classified pages. Notes, reports, syntheses and
summaries, maps, graphs, organization charts, satellite photos.
All exclusively devoted to al-Qaeda, its leaders, its
seconds-in-command, its hide-outs and training camps. Also to
its financial supports. Nothing less than the fundamentals of
the DGSE reports compiled between July 2000 and October 2001. A
veritable encyclopedia.
At the end of several months of investigation of this very
special documentation, we contacted DGSE headquarters. And on
April 3, the present chief of staff, Emmanuel Renoult, received
us there, within the confines of the Tourelles garrison in
Paris. After thumbing through the 328 pages that we set on his
desk, he can't keep himself from deploring such a leak, all the
while allowing us to understand that the packet represents
virtually the entirety of DGSE production on the subject for
this crucial period. On the other hand, it was impossible to
draw the least comment from him on the substance of the
material. Too sensitive.
It's true that these secret services chronicles about al-Qaeda,
with their various revelations, raise many questions. And at
first, a surprise: The high number of notes devoted exclusively
to al-Qaeda's threats against the United States, months before
the suicide attacks in New York and Washington. Nine whole
reports on that subject between September 2000 and August 2001,
including a five-page summary entitled, "Airplane Hijacking
Plans by Radical Islamists," and dated ... January 5, 2001!
Eight months before September 11, the DGSE reports therein
tactical discussions conducted between Osama bin Laden and his
Taliban allies from the beginning of 2000 on the subject of
hijacking American commercial airliners.
Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, chief of staff to the DGSE director up
until August 2001, and today the president of a company
specialized in crisis and influence strategies (Serenus Conseil),
reviews these 328 pages in front of us and also stops short when
he comes to that memo. He hesitates, takes the time to read it
and admits: "I remember that." "You have to remember," Mr.
Lorenzi elaborates, "that in 2001, hijacking an airplane didn't
mean the same thing as it did after September 11. At the time,
it implied forcing a plane to land at an airport to conduct
negotiations. We were used to dealing with that." A useful
perspective to understand why that January 5 alert didn't
provoke any reaction from its recipients: the pillars of
executive power.
As of January 2001, the al-Qaeda leadership nonetheless showed
itself to be transparent to the eyes - and ears - of French
spies. The redactors even detailed disagreements among the
terrorists over the practical modalities of the planned
hijacking. They never questioned their intention. Provisionally,
the jihadists favored capturing an airplane between Frankfurt
and the United States. They established a list of seven possible
companies. Two would finally be chosen by the September 11
pirates: American Airlines and United Airlines. In his
introduction, the author of the memo notes, "According to the
Uzbek intelligence services, the airplane hijacking plan seems
to have been discussed at the beginning of 2000 during a Kabul
meeting of representatives from Osama bin Laden's
organization...."
Consequently, Uzbek spies informed French agents. At the time,
the opposition of Muslim fundamentalists to the pro-American
regime in Tashkent united the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,
the MIO. A military faction of this group, led by a certain
Taher Yudachev, joined the Afghanistan camps and swore
allegiance to Osama bin Laden, promising him he would export his
jihad to Central Asia. MIO military leaflets and correspondence
discovered in al-Qaeda's Afghan camps attest to that.
Alain Chouet remembers this episode. Until October 2002, he
directed the Security Intelligence Service, a DGSE subdivision
charged with following terrorist movements. According to him,
the credibility of the Uzbek channel devolves from the alliances
formed by General Rashid Dostom, one of the main Afghan
warlords, himself of Uzbek ethnicity, who was then fighting the
Taliban. To please his protectors in the neighboring Uzbek
security services, Dostom infiltrated some of his men into the
heart of the MIO, right up to the command structures of the
al-Qaeda camps. That's how he informed his friends in Tashkent,
knowing that the intelligence would then make its way to
Washington, London and Paris.
The formulation of the January 2001 French memorandum clearly
indicates that other sources were corroborating this
intelligence about al-Qaeda's plans. In accordance with a
well-oiled machine in Afghanistan, the DGSE did not limit itself
to exchanges with friendly foreign secret services. To penetrate
the secrets of the camps, it, on the one hand, manipulated and
"turned" young jihad candidates from the suburbs of Europe's
great cities. On the other, it sent men from Commandant
Massoud's Northern Alliance. This, without even counting
satellite telephone intercepts.
An intimate of Pierre Brochand, the present DGSE boss, assured
us that the service had "an Osama bin Laden cell" from at least
1995. Consequently, the January 5 alert was based on a tried and
tested system. Alain Chouet, after asking that we specify that
he was not expressing himself in the name of French
institutions, remained laconic, but clear: "It is unusual to
pass a paper on without double-checking." All the more so in
that the paper in question follows and precedes many DGSE
reports buttressing the credibility of Osama bin Laden's warrior
incantations.
In its memo, the DGSE finally deems that al-Qaeda's desire to
execute its act of piracy against an American airplane was
absolutely certain: "During the month of October 2000, Osama bin
Laden attended a meeting in Afghanistan during which the
decision in principle to conduct this operation was sustained."
It's January 5, 2001; The dice have been thrown; the French know
it.... And they are not the only ones.
As with all intelligence mentioning risks against American
interests, the memo was passed on to the CIA by the DGSE's
service for foreign relations, responsible for cooperation
between allies (since renamed liaisons service). Its first
recipient is Paris CIA Station Head Bill Murray, a French
speaker with a John Wayne physique, since returned to the United
States. We were able to make contact, but Mr. Murray did not
want to respond to our requests. Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, whose
responsibilities at the DGSE then covered questions relative to
cooperation with foreign agencies, cannot conceive that the
intelligence should not have been handed over to him. "That is
typically the type of information that is passed along to the
CIA. It would even have been a professional error not to have
done so."
On the other side of the Atlantic, two former CIA agents who
specialized in al-Qaeda, and whom we solicited, did not remember
any specific alerts sent by the DGSE. Neither Gary Berntsen, a
member of the agency's operations directorate from 1982 to 2005,
nor Michael Scheuer, former head of the bin Laden team at CIA
headquarters, remembered specific intelligence from the DGSE.
In Washington, Congress's commission to investigate September
11, in its final report published in July 2004, emphasized the
inability of the FBI, the CIA and Immigration Services to
aggregate the scattered data concerning certain members of the
September 11 commandos. At no time did the commission mention
the possibility that as of January 2001, the CIA could have
passed intelligence from the French secret services about Osama
bin Laden's tactical choice to organize American airliner
hijackings on to the US government.
Beyond that, the most staggering thing about reading the DGSE's
328 pages comes perhaps from the juxtaposition of the memos that
warn of certain threats - like that of January 2001 - with those
that describe the organization's operation very early on and in
minute detail. As of July 24, 2000, with the redaction of a
thirteen-page report entitled "Osama bin Laden's Networks," the
gist appears in black on pale yellow - the color of DGSE
originals. The context, anecdotal details, and all strategic
aspects related to al-Qaeda are already there. Quite often,
subsequent documents settle for firming them up. Thus, the
theory of bin Laden's death - which enjoyed a certain success in
September 2006 - in this memo of July 24, 2000, takes on the
intonations of a well-known, but nonetheless well-founded
refrain: "The former Saudi, who has lived for several years
under precarious conditions, unceasingly moving from camp to
camp, also suffers from renal and dorsal problems.... Recurrent
rumors declare his imminent death, but he seems not to have
changed his habits up until now."
On an aerial snapshot taken August 28, 2000, DGSE agents locate
a key man, very close to Osama bin Laden. His name: Abu Khabab.
This pyrotechnist of Egyptian origin, known for having taught
the science of artisanal explosives to generations of jihadists,
constitutes a theoretically high-priority target. In two
biographical notices about him from October 25, 2000 and January
9, 2001, the DGSE enumerates the intelligence exchanged with the
Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and Egyptian security services about
him. Everything about his trips and his moves was known.
The same thing is true for Omar Chabani, the emir, according to
the DGSE, charged with supervising all the Algerian militants
who came to Afghanistan. Thanks to him, during the year 2001,
al-Qaeda made infrastructures available to the Salafist Group
for Preaching and Combat (SGPC), the Algerian terrorist movement
whose historic head, Hassan Hattab - a former bin Laden ally -
subscribed to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's national
reconciliation policy in 2006 - which provoked the ire of the
SGPC's younger generations. The latter resumed the armed
struggle that their elders had relinquished the previous
October, proclaiming themselves a new SGPC - renamed al-Qaeda
for the Islamic Mahgreb - which seems to be responsible for the
April 11 attacks in Algiers.
On the periphery of the operational aspects of al-Qaeda's
workings, these DGSE documents propose a second look at its
leaders' political connections. One example: In a February 15,
2001 memorandum devoted in part to the risks of attacks against
the French military base in Djibouti, the authors refer to the
presence of Osama bin Laden's representative for the Horn of
Africa, Nidal Abdul Hay al Mahainy, in the country. The man, who
arrived there May 26, 2000, had met with no less a personage
than "the president of the Djibouti Republic."
But it's Saudi Arabia above all that appears as a constant
preoccupation with respect to the sympathy outside Afghanistan
from which Osama bin Laden benefited. The DGSE reports explore
his relations with the country's businessmen and various
organizations. Certain Saudi personalities have proclaimed their
hostility to al-Qaeda, but, obviously, they have not convinced
everyone. Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi remembers French intelligence
officials' frame of minds well: "The DGSE had great difficulty
definitively believing that he no longer had any relationship
with the Saudi monarchy because he was proscribed. It was
difficult to accept."
The July 24, 2000 memorandum mentions a $2.4 million payment in
favor of the al-Qaeda leader made by the International Islamic
Relief Organization (IIRO), a structure placed directly under
the trusteeship of the Muslim World League, itself considered a
policy instrument of the Saudi ulemas. It took until August 3,
2006, however, for the IIRO offices to figure on the American
Treasury Department's official list of organizations financing
terrorism. During the course of that month of July 2000, two
years after the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam attacks, the authors of
this memo doubted the sincerity of the positions proclaimed by
the bin Laden family itself: "It seems more and more likely that
Osama bin Laden has maintained contact with certain members of
his family, even though the family, which directs one of the
biggest public works companies in the world, has officially
disowned him. One of his brothers seems to play the role of
intermediary in his professional contacts and in the monitoring
of his affairs." According to Mr. Lorenzi, it was the recurrence
of these doubts and more specifically the IIRO's ambivalence
that would lead the DGSE to mobilize along with the Quai d'Orsay
in 1999, when French diplomats proposed an international
convention against the financing of terrorism to the United
Nations.
Another memo from the French secret services, dated September
13, 2001, and entitled "Factors in Osama bin Laden's Resources,"
reiterates these suspicions about the Saudi bin Laden Group, the
family empire. It also presents a powerful banker, once close to
the royal family, as the historic architect of a banking system
that "seems to have been used to transfer funds from the Gulf to
the terrorist." An annex to this memorandum of September 13,
2001 lists the assets supposedly under Osama bin Laden's direct
control. Surprise: In the middle of the known structures that
the "Sheikh" managed in Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia and Bosnia, a
hotel situated in Mecca in Saudi Arabia still figures in 2001.
Alain Chouet expresses real skepticism about the Riyadh
authorities' desire to apprehend Osama bin Laden before
September 11: "His forfeiture of Saudi nationality was a farce
... to my knowledge; no one did anything at all to capture him
between 1998 and 2001." As this memorandum from October 2, 2001
attests: "The departure of Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of the
Saudi secret services: a political eviction" - reveals the
underside of this spectacular demotion just before September 11.
The authors emphasize "the limits of Saudi influence in
Afghanistan.... During Prince Turki's recent trips to Kandahar,
he did not succeed in convincing his interlocutors to extradite
Osama bin Laden."
And six years later? In an ample DGSE report dated June 6, 2005
that we were able to peruse and entitled "Saudi Arabia, A
Kingdom in Danger?" French agents draw up a more positive report
of the Saudi regime's initiatives against al-Qaeda. Some
paragraphs still betray persistent fears, however. The French
secret services are still anxious about the penchant for holy
war shared by several Saudi doctors of the faith.
This article was first published at www.trouthout.org
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