Mohammed Atta and two more 9/11 hijackers had spent considerable time in the German city of Hamburg, before they moved to the United states. Several others from this so-called “Hamburg cell” of al-kaida were complicit in the planning, but were unable to go to America.
Would have been nice if those men were caught early. My own cousin John was a ny firefighter. He was working search and rescue on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001 when a third building fell. He lost his helmet. And years later it was returned to him.
It was very difficult on that day to reach him on the phone or reach his colleagues to check if he was alive and well.
He could have died that day. And then followed the so called war on terror, which caused a staggering number of deaths and harmed the US’s reputation. And from the first moment Russian propaganda tried to further damage America’s reputation, and tried to get Europe and the muslim world to abandon America.
And this whole mess could have ben prevented years earlier in a German city. Hamburg.
At the time of the al kaida Hamburg cell a man was responsible for security in the city named Olaf Scholz from the left social democratic party. He is currently the chancellor. He used to be very pro-Russia. In his early days he visited soviet east Germany multiple times, was treated like a very important person. And he was very anti-america.
On the day of 9/11 alarm bells were ringing in Hamburg. The suspect Mohammed atta had actually lived at Marienstraße 54. Over the course of the night, eight appartments were raided.
The responsible bureaucrats said this was all an unfortunate coincidence. Yes, these terrorists did visit the radical al-kuds-mosque, but you know. Noboy saw this coming. In late 1999 Atta and and three members of the cell visited Afghanistan to join jihad and get training. But these men had not really been on anybodys radar.
So 9/11 happened, the war on terror, Russia tries extra-hard to ruin Americas reputation. And the german chancellor at the time, Gerhard schröder, wo was very close to Russian president Putin, wanted to move Germany away from the US and closer to Russia. Schröder is from the same party as olaf scholz who was responsible for security in hamburg.
These al-kaida people met with Osama bin Laden himself and swore their loyalty to him. Mohamed Atta was chosen by Bin Laden as the leader of the group that would attack America; Atta would contact Bin Laden several more times before the attacks. The men then returned to Germany to enroll in flight training school, and later moved on to flight training schools in the United States at the recommendation of one of their instructors based in Germany.
Many al-Qaeda members lived in the Hamburg apartment at various times. In all, 29 men listed the apartment as their home address while Mohamed Atta’s name was on the lease. Reportedly, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed visited the apartment repeatedly.
One bug could have blown the entire group. Just one listening device. Which costs next to nothing.
It says German intelligence monitored the apartment, but did not find any evidence against the residents. You know there is way around German law for surveillance purposes: You tell the Brits or the Americans: There are some guys there. We don’t have enough yet to plant listening devices. If only somebody could magically listen to what’s happening inside that stupid apartment. And then if evidence just happens to land in our special inbox that would be great.
In Hamburg, Atta was intensely drawn to al-Quds Mosque which adhered to a “harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and resoundingly militant” version of Sunni Islam.
Atta also started and led a prayer group, which Ahmed Maklat and Mounir El Motassadeq joined. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also there. Many al-Qaeda members lived in Attas apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, and others.
On 22 March 2000, Atta was still in Germany when he sent an e-mail to the Academy of Lakeland in Florida. He inquired about flight training, “Dear sir, we are a small group of young men from different Arab countries. Now, we are living in Germany since a while for study purposes. We would like to start training for the career of airline professional pilots. In this field, we haven’t yet any knowledge but we are ready to undergo an intensive training program (up to ATP and eventually higher).” Atta sent 50–60 similar e-mails to other flight training schools in the United States.
On 17 May Atta applied for a United States visa. The next day, he received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa from the United States embassy in Berlin. Atta had lived in Germany for approximately five years and also had a “strong record as a student”. He was therefore treated favorably and not scrutinized.
On 6 June 2002, ABC’s World News Tonight broadcast an interview with Johnelle Bryant, former loan officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in south Florida, who told about her encounter with Mohamed Atta. This encounter took place “around the third week of April to the third week of May of 2000”, before Atta’s official entry date into the United States (see below). According to Bryant, Atta wanted to finance the purchase of a crop-duster. “He wanted to finance a twin-engine, six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats,” Bryant told ABC’s World News Tonight. He insisted that she write his name as ATTA, that he originally was from Egypt but had moved to Afghanistan, that he was an engineer and that his dream was to go to a flight school. He asked about the Pentagon and the White House. He said he wanted to visit the World Trade Center and asked Bryant about the security there. He mentioned Al Qaeda and said the organization “could use memberships from Americans”. He mentioned Osama bin Laden and said “this man would someday be known as the world’s greatest leader.” Bryant said “the picture that came out in the newspaper, that’s exactly what that man looked like.”[59][60] Bryant contacted the authorities after recognising Atta in news reports
On 23 August, Atta’s driver license was revoked in absentia after he failed to show up in traffic court to answer the earlier citation for driving without a license.[78][79] The same day, the Mossad gave his name to the CIA as one of 19 US residents suspected of planning an imminent attack against the United States; only four of the names are publicly known, the others being fellow 9/11 hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
In 2005, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Congressman Curt Weldon alleged that the Defense Department data mining project, Able Danger, produced a chart that identified Atta, along with Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Marwan al-Shehhi, as members of a Brooklyn-based al-Qaeda cell in early 2000.
The French knew Zacarias Moussaoui and warned about him.
Catherine Kiser from the American FBI Learned from FBI Special Agent Harry Smit: An Algerian with a French passport and an expired visa named Zacarias Moussaoui wanted to learn to fly a Boeing 747 without take-offs and landings. They couldn’t get a FISA court order to search his laptop. For three weeks, Kiser tried desperately to get the investigation rolling.
Previously, FBI agent Ken Williams sent a report to the FBI’s special divisions about radicalism and bin Laden: There was an entire al-Qaeda network of flight schools. The special department took that lead, stuffed it into a pile of 3,000 other clues and assigned two people to the pile.
Responsible Counterterrorism Director Dale Watson was Deputy Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center. He later went to Booz Allen Hamilton.
Robert Baer, ex-CIA explained the core problem before 9/11. High ranking moles, traitors, had compromised American intelligence, domestically and internationally. People like Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. They had sold information to Russia. Robert Baer and others suspect that there were even more moles.
Such traitors were theoretically able to shield mohammed atta and his people. Sabotage the FBI investigations. Germany has always had a fundamental problem with moles working for Russia.
