Mossad and 9/11

By Gordon Thomas

Anti-Semitic conspiracists plan to flood the internet to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 attacks by resurrecting the old canard that Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, knew in advance of the attack – and did not warn the CIA and FBI.

The conspiracists say that the attack on the Twin Towers was a “false flag” operation organised by Mossad as part of an ongoing attempt by Israel to launch a war against its Muslim “enemies”.

The fact is that Mossad warned that an attack was impending.

From the day bin Laden’s suicide bombers partly destroyed the World Trade Center in 1993, Mossad had placed him at the top of its own list of most wanted terrorists. Its deep-cover field agents had picked up “whispers in the wind” that bin Laden was planning “something big,” said one report. Another spoke of a “strong rumour bin Laden is planning a Hiroshima type attack.” Still another revealed a flight simulator being used in an al-Qaeda training camp near Kabul. Then came the news that bin Laden had been trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons.

While Mossad analysts tried to connect the dots, the reports were also passed on through the long-established back channel to the CIA. The Pentagon was asked to evaluate the threat of an air strike. One of its analysts, Marvin Cetron, wrote, “Coming down the Potomac, you could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House.” Another analyst, Martin Clefran, was told “look we can’t manage a crisis until it is a crisis”.

Before 9/11, there was a feeling in Washington that Mossad was once more crying wolf, that it had a vested interest in promoting Islamic fundamentalism as a threat because it feared its terrorists and wanted to persuade the United States that it also faced a similar threat. By the time Efraim Halevy, head of Mossad before 9/11, had come into office, dutifully read the files on terrorism threats, and seen the reaction to Mossad’s warnings, he had decided that, in the words of one of his senior officers, “there was no point in pushing against a bolted door.”

However, Haleavy confirmed to me that Mossad “had sent several warnings in the week prior to September that an attack was coming” and cited “credible chatter” Mossad agents had picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. In his diplomatic way, he implied that the growing turf war between the FBI and CIA in 2001 was one reason why the warnings were ignored Both agencies had concrete evidence that al-Qaeda was an increasing threat: one of its operatives had been stopped at the last moment from flying a hijacked plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and intel had emerged at Langley, indicating bin Laden was planning an air strike against the economic summit it Italy earlier in 2001. But the sense of paralysis and denial, compounded by the growing turf war between the FBI and the CIA, had continued to hold the U.S. intelligence community in its grip

After 9/11 Haleavy recalled the “hot line from Langley was superheated”. A dozen calls a day from George Tenet, then the CIA chief.

In one call Haleavy had snapped: “Where was your electronic surveillance?” to Tenet, who was facing intense criticism himself and wanted to know how much Mossad had known about the impending attack.

As conspiricists continue to spin their lies, the reality is that Mossad tried to warn the United States. As some choose to attack past events, those in the intelligence world need to continue to improve contact and sharing of vital information.