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SOURCE: http://www.independent.co.uk/

Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was
ignored By Kate Clark in Kabul 07 September 2002

Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was
ignored

Germans 'foil US base attack'

Police hold 16 after two Afghan attacks
Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United
Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was
planning a huge attack on American soil.

The warnings were delivered by an aide of Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban Foreign
Minister at the time, who was known to be deeply unhappy with the foreign militants in
Afghanistan, including Arabs.

Mr Muttawakil, now in American custody, believed the Taliban's protection of Mr bin Laden
and the other al-Qa'ida militants would lead to nothing less than the destruction of
Afghanistan by the US military. He told his aide: "The guests are going to destroy the
guesthouse."



The minister then ordered him to alert the US and the UN about what was going to happen.
But in a massive failure of intelligence, the message was disregarded because of what
sources describe as "warning fatigue". At the same time, the FBI and the CIA failed to take
seriously warnings that Islamic fundamentalist students had enrolled in flight schools
across the US.

Mr Muttawakil's aide, who has stayed on in Kabul and who has to remain anonymous for
his security, described in detail to The Independent how he alerted first the Americans and
then the United Nations of the coming calamity of 11 September.

The minister learnt in July last year that Mr bin Laden was planning a "huge attack" on
targets inside America, the aide said. The attacks were imminent and would be so deadly
the United States would react with destructive rage.

Mr bin Laden had been in Afghanistan since May 1996, bringing his three wives, 13
children and Arab fighters. Over time he became a close ally of the obscurantist Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Mr Muttawakil learnt of the coming attacks on America not from other members of the
Taliban leadership, but from the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir
Yildash. The organisation was one of the fundamentalist groups that had found refuge on
Afghan soil, lending fighters for the Taliban's war on the Northern Alliance and benefiting
from good relations with al-Qa'ida in its fight against the Uzbek government.

According to the emissary, Mr Muttawakil emerged from a one-to-one meeting with Mr
Yildash looking shocked and troubled. Until then, the Foreign Minister, who had
disapproved of the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Bamian earlier in the year, had
no inkling from others in the Taliban leadership of what Mr bin Laden was planning.

"At first Muttawakil wouldn't say why he was so upset," said the aide. "Then it all came
out. Yildash had revealed that Osama bin Laden was going to launch an attack on the
United States. It would take place on American soil and it was imminent. Yildash said
Osama hoped to kill thousands of Americans."

At the time, 19 members of al-Qa'ida were in situ in the US waiting to launch what would be
the deadliest foreign attack on the American mainland.

The emissary went first to the Americans, travelling across the border to meet the consul
general, David Katz, in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, in the third week of July
2001. They met in a safehouse belonging to an old mujahedin leader who has confirmed to
The Independent that the meeting took place.

Another US official was also present ­ possibly from the intelligence services. Mr Katz, who
now works at the American embassy in Eritrea, declined to talk about the meeting. But
other US sources said the warning was not passed on.

A diplomatic source said: "We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff. When people keep
saying the sky's going to fall in and it doesn't, a kind of warning fatigue sets in. I actually
thought it was all an attempt to rattle us in an attempt to please their funders in the Gulf, to
try to get more donations for the cause."

The Afghan aide did not reveal that the warning was from Mr Muttawakil, a factor that
might have led the Americans to down-grade it. "As I recall, I thought he was speaking
from his own personal perspective," one source said. "It was interesting that he was from
the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but he gave no indication this was a message he was
carrying."

Interviewed by The Independent in Kabul, the Afghan emissary said: "I told Mr Katz they
should launch a new Desert Storm ­ like the campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait ­ but this
time they should call it Mountain Storm and they should drive the foreigners out of
Afghanistan. They also had to stop the Pakistanis supporting the Taliban."

The Taliban emissary said Mr Katz replied that neither action was possible. Nor did Mr Katz
pass the warning on to the State Department, according to senior US diplomatic sources.

When Mr Muttawakil's emissary returned to Kabul, the Foreign Minister told him to see UN
officials. He took the warning to the Kabul offices of UNSMA, the political wing of the UN.
These officials heard him out, but again did not report the secret Taliban warning to UN
headquarters. A UN official familiar with the warnings said: "He appeared to be speaking in
total desperation, asking for a Mountain Storm, he wanted a sort of deus ex machina to
solve his country's problems. But before 9/11, there was just not much hope that
Washington would become that engaged in Afghanistan."

Officials in the State Department and in UN headquarters in New York said they knew
nothing about a Taliban warning. But they said they would now be looking into the matter.

Mr Muttawakil is now unavailable for comment ­ he handed himself in to the Afghan
authorities in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan last
February. He is reported to be in American custody there, one of the few senior members
of the Taliban regime the US has managed to arrest.

As America steadily broke the Taliban's military machine last autumn, there were no
Taliban defections. Apart from Mr Mutawakil's one vain attempt to warn the world, the
Taliban remained absolutely loyal to their leader's vision.

of course i do, but since no one else is promoting any discussion about the state of the nation, i welcome all the people that disagree with me. at least it gets people thinking.

if i posted the opposite view point than the one i have been, and posted conservative ideas, no one would care enough to respond.

i am a catalyst.

Naw, Rick is a nice guy who has his political feelings leaning a little too far to the left, but otherwise he loves Hummingbirds and Jazz.......so he ain't all bad, just his rants on GWB and the good guys! Charlie

a huge part of the problem in coordinating the information in advance was that there had been some "economies" put into effect during the prior administration that made effective communication even more difficult than it had to be ... during the 90's it became all the rage for certain politicos to curry favor with their consituencies by proclaiming the cold war over and claiming the need for intle and defense to be so reduced that muscle and sinew were cut from their structure in addition to "fat" ...

those same cost slashers now point the finger of guilt and blame at GWB, while knowing full-well their boy Slick had a big hand in creating the shortfall ...

Least you forget.

Clinton changes tune on Iraq?
Cheney points out ex-president said one thing 4 years ago, another now

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 9, 2002
12:48 p.m. Eastern

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

Former President Clinton may be criticizing plans by the current administration to invade Iraq, but four years ago his rhetoric against Saddam Hussein was as strong as President Bush's, Vice President ****** Cheney pointed out on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Host Tim Russert yesterday played a videotape clip of Clinton offering some advice to the new administration on fighting terror: "Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on September the 11th," Clinton said. "Osama bin Laden did. And as far as we know, he's still alive. We might do more good for America's security in the short run and at a far less cost by beefing up our efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere to flush out the entire network and to find him. We know they still have a terrorist network around the world. And we're already kind of changing the subject here, looking at Saddam Hussein, who's not going anywhere."

Cheney smiled wryly after watching the clip.

"I brought along a little piece of paper with me, Tim," he said. "You always have props, so I brought one with me this morning, in terms of the issue of Iraq. This goes back – the president asked the nation to consider the question: 'What if Saddam Hussein fails to comply? We fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of sanctions and ignore the commitments he's made. Well, he will conclude that the international community's lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on doing more to build an arsenal of devastating destruction. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow. The stakes,' he says, 'could not be higher. Some way, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal.' Bill Clinton, 1998, on Saddam Hussein."

Cheney added: "Now, this was for him, supposedly, a top priority four years ago. There was a great deal of stirring around on it, a lot of debate, resolutions passed by the Congress. Tom Daschle talking about the need to use military force to deal with the threat that Saddam Hussein represented. Of course, what happened is nothing happened. And now four years later, we find ourselves in a situation where the situation has gotten worse. He has gotten more capability. And we're going to have to deal with this situation. But the suggestion that President Clinton made last night, I think – I mean, obviously we continue the war on terror. Obviously, we continue the pursuit of Osama bin Laden. We're heavily engaged in Afghanistan. None of that's going to change, and we'll continue to do that as we go along. But we can no longer ignore the threat that Bill Clinton himself talked about four years ago."