From the thread referenced in my previous post:
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Ashcroft Flying HighCBS News, 7/26/01 -- less than 7 weeks before 9/11http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtmlIn response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft as traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.
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Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.
A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member ...
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Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."
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Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probesCNN, 1/29/02http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/inv.terror.probe/index.htmlPresident {sic} Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation.
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Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President {sic} Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request.
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Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was ignoredThe Independent (UK), 9/7/02http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115Weeks 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.
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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 that the United States would react with destructive rage.
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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.
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"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."
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The emissary went first to the Americans, travelling across the border to meet with 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.
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Taliban warned US, UNBBC, 9/7/02http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2242594.stmThe minister was deeply worried that the US military would react with deadly vengeance against Afghanistan.
As he put it, al-Qaeda, the Taleban's guests, were going to destroy the guest house.
One of his former aides told me how he had been sent to issue warnings.
He went first to the American consulate in Peshawar in Pakistan, then to the United Nations. But neither warning was heeded.
One US official explained why :
"We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff," he said.
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Treasury Denies Report on Hijacker :
U.S. Treasury Department Denies Report That Bank Flagged Funds Transfer to HijackerABC News, 5/23/02http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20020523_2026.htmlThe U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday vehemently denied a U.N. report that Mohamed Atta, one of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, received a transfer of funds into his U.S. account which was flagged by his bank.
According to Wednesday's U.N. report, the bank filed a "suspicious transaction report" with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ...
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The U.N. report was prepared by an expert group, authorized by the Security Council to monitor implementation of new sanctions against Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida terror network, and Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.
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Aides: Bush Knew of Hijacking Threat Before Sept 11Reuters, 5/15/02(archived at
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0515-06.htm )
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration received intelligence that Osama bin Laden could be plotting to hijack U.S. aircraft, prompting it to put security agencies on alert, the White House said Wednesday.
"The information the president {sic} got dealt with hijackings in the traditional sense, not suicide bombers, not using planes as missiles," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said of the intelligence, which was presented to President {sic} Bush last summer.
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The disclosure followed reports that an FBI agent urged the bureau to investigate Middle Eastern men enrolled in U.S. flight schools several months before Sept. 11, even naming bin Laden, who Washington later accused of masterminding the attacks.
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What Bush KnewNewsweek, 5/27/02Last week Rice declared, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking"; in other words, using passenger jets as hostages. In fact, the government had ample reason to believe that Al Qaeda was no longer interested in traditional terror. The CIA had learned as early as 1995 that Abdul Hakim Murad, an associate of '93 WTC plotter Ramzi Yousef, had talked about plunging an airliner into the CIA building. Italian authorities had warned of a similar bid at last June's Genoa summit of the G8 leaders - and they ringed the area with surface-to-air missiles, with CIA cooperation {
much more in next cites -- this is a HUGE point}.
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When, in January 2001, Berger gave Rice her handover briefing, he covered the bin Laden threat in detail, and, sources say, warned her: "You will be spending more time on this issue than on any other." Rice was alarmed by what she heard, and asked for a strategy review. But the effort was marginalized and scarcely mentioned in ensuing months as the administration committed itself to other priorities, like national missile defense (NMD) and Iraq.
John Ashcroft seemed particularly eager to set a new agenda. In the spring of 2001, the attorney general had an extraordinary confrontation with the then FBI Director Louis Freeh at an annual meeting of special agents in charge in Quantico, Va. The two talked before appearing, and Ashcroft laid out his priorities for Freeh, another Clinton holdover (though no friend of the ex-president's), "basically violent crime and drugs," recalls one participant. Freeh replied bluntly that those were not his priorities, and began to talk about terror and counterterrorism. "Ashcroft didn't want to hear about it," says a former senior law-enforcement official.
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{On Sept. 10}, Ashcroft submitted his budget request, barely mentioning counterterrorism.
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The Hijackers We Let EscapeNewsweek, 6/2/02A few days after the Kuala Lumpur meeting, NEWSWEEK has learned, the CIA tracked one of the terrorist, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the meeting {of bin Laden's followers in Malaysia} to Los Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States as he pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived in the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.)
Yet, astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which could have turned them away at the border, nor did they notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terorrists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools - until the morning of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.
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NEWSWEEK has learned that when Almihdhar's visa expired, the State Department, not knowing any better, simply issued him a new one in June 2001 - even though by then the CIA had linked him to one of the suspected bombers of the USS Cole in October 2000. The two terrorists' frequent meetings with the other September 11 perpetrators could have provided federal agents with a road map to the entire cast of 9-11 hijackers.
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The CIA is forbidden from spying on people inside the United States. Had it followed standard procedure and passed the baton to the FBI once they crossed the border, agents would have discovered that Almihdhar and Alhazmi weren't just visiting California, they were already living there. The men had moved into an apartment in San Diego two months before the Kuala Lumpur meeting.
The CIA's reluctance to divulge what it knew is especially odd because, as 2000 dawned, U.S. law-enforcement agencies were on red alert, certain that a bin Laden strike somewhere in the world could come at any moment. There was certainly reason to believe bin Laden was sending men here to do grave harm. Just a few weeks before, an alert Customs inspector had caught another Qaeda terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to cross the Canadian border in a rental car packed with explosives. His mission: to blow up Los Angeles airport.
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Could it have been stopped?60 Minutes II, 5/8/02http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/08/60II/main508362.shtmlA month before September 11th, the FBI hauled in a French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui. He's now in jail -- the only person charged in the attacks. Prosecutors call him 'the 20th hijacker'.
We now know that, back in August, Moussaoui's possessions contained evidence that would expose key elements of the Setember 11th conspiracy. The FBI didn't search Moussaoui's things because it says it didn't have enough evidence for a search warrant. Critical evidence was in the hands of French intelligence. The FBI says that if that evidence exists, the Bureau never received it.
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FBI Agent Alleges Moussaoui RoadblocksNY Times, 5/23/02http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Moussaoui.htmlWASHINGTON (AP) -- An FBI agent accused her Washington headquarters of erecting a "roadblock" to the pre-Sept. 11 investigation of terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Her letter immediately prompted an internal investigation.
Agent Coleen Rowley, a lawyer in the Minnesota office that arrested Moussaoui last August, divulged in her letter that local agents became so frustrated with FBI headquarters that they broke from their chain of command and notified the CIA about the suspect before Sept. 11.
The local agents were reprimanded for doing so, Rowley alleged in a rare letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller that also was sent Tuesday to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"When, in a desperate 11th-hour measure to bypass the FBI HQ roadblock, the Minneapolis division undertook to directly notify the CIA's counterterrorist center, FBI HQ personnel chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval," she wrote in the 13-page letter, excerpts of which were obtained by the Associated Press.
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FBI Slowed Moussaoui Probe, Field Office SaysWashington Post, 5/27/02http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A531-2002May23.html Rowley said Minneapolis investigators had significant evidence of Moussaoui's ties to terrorists, including corroboration from a foreign source that Moussaoui was dangerous, sources said.
But agent Dave Rapp and other investigators still faces resistance from headquarters staff, who determined that investigators did not have enough evidence to even ask a judge for warrants to search Moussaoui's computer under routine criminal procedures or a special law aimed at terrorists, Rowley said in the letter.
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More than a month before Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges, Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams wrote the July 10 memo to FBI headquarters outlining his investigation of Islamic radicals enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescot, Ariz. He cited bin Laden by name and raised the possibility that his terror network was using U.S. flight schools as a training ground.
Williams' suggestion that the FBI canvass U.S. flight schools was rejected within weeks by mid-level managers {sic} in the FBI's counter-terror division, who decided they lacked the manpower to pursue it. The memo was not shared with agents investigating Moussaoui after he was arrested Aug. 16 and was never given to any other intelligence agency {sic}.
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FBI official: Top brass held back own agentsSeattle Times, 5/24/02http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134460617_moussaoui24.html{Rowley} complained that FBI officials in Washington had changed the warrant request so that it would be more easily rejected by the FBI office that handles such requests.
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French expand on Moussaoui's travel, likely roleSeattle Times, 7/28/02http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134501908_mous28.htmlThe comments by the French officials are significant because they go beyond what had been disclosed about Moussaoui's ties to al-Qaida. One French official also said the French told U.S. authorities in late August that Moussaoui, arrested Aug. 16 while in flight training in Minneapolis, was a member of al-Qaida.
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A Second Attack Planned
French Authorities: Moussaoui Plotted Another Series of AttacksABC News, 9/5/02http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/moussaoui020905.htmlOne year ago today, in Paris, FBI and CIA agents got a full briefing on Moussaoui's terror background from their counterparts at the French Ministry of the Interior in Paris.
In his first interview on the subject, former French Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant told ABCNEWS the French gave the Americans a complete dossier on Mousaoui.
"We did not hold back any information," said Vaillant. "This is the essential point I want to communicate to you. There was nothing held back."
The French say they told the United States they had tracked Moussaoui for years, from his student days in London to his time in Osama bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan to his membership in an Algerian terror group that had planned to fly a hijacked Air France jet into the Eiffel Tower in 1994.
The FBI acknowledges there was a meeting but denies it received any such specific information at that time. Later, the information showed up in the Justice Department indictment of Moussaoui as conspirator of the Sept. 11 attacks, for which he faces the death penalty.
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French Suspect Moussaoui in Post-9/11 PlotNY Times, 7/28/02http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/national/28TERR.htmlUnder federal law, the bureau would have been required to show that Mr. Moussaoui was tied to a specific terrorist group to obtaina warrant for the search. Bureau agents in Minnesota have said they thought the French information was sufficient for the warrant, and they have criticized their superiors at the bureau's headquarters for blocking their efforts to obtain it.
When agents search Mr. Moussaoui's belongings after Sept. 11, they found videotapes on flying two types of 747 aircraft and data on crop-dusting. They also found the telephone numer in Hamburg, Germany, for a roommate of Mohamed Atta, who is thought to have been the ringleader in the Sept. 11 plot, information that might have pointed them toward some of the hijackers.
In interviews this week, the French officials said their inquiries showed that Mr. Moussaoui had close ties with Al Qaeda and that elements of the network that helped the Sept. 11 hijackers probably supported him.
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F.B.I. Agent Says Superior Altered Report, Foiling InquiryNY Times, 5/24/02http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/national/25INQU.html WASHINGTON, May 24 - A senior F.B.I. agent in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today.
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Officials who have seen Ms. Rowley's letter say it accuses the supervisor of altering the application to play down the significance of information provided by French intelligence officials about Moussaoui's links to Islamic extremists.
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Agent's Role in Inquiries is QuestionedNY Times, 5/25/02http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/politics/26FBI.htmlWASHINGTON, May 25 - A bipartisan broup of senators has demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation explain why a senior agent who had access to two important strands of counterterrorism information never put the information together {allegedly} in a way that might have helped thwart the Sept. 11 attacks.
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"This was worse than dropping the ball. This was bureaucrats at headquarters actively interfering with an investigation that had a terrorist in hand."
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Government officials said today that Kenneth Williams, the Phoenix F.B.I. agent who had warned about the flight schools in a July 10 memorandum, had sent the memorandum directly to the attention of Mr. Frasca. Mr. Frasca was also the liaison in Washington for the Minnesota field office' requests about Mr. Moussaoui.
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Agent shared concerns with CIA
FBI's suspicion about flight students was no 'hunch,' sources saySan Jose Mercury News, 5/23/02http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/nation/3320240.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp WASHINGTON - A Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memo last year warning about suspicious Middle Easterners at flight schools had developed detailed information before Sept. 11 linking Arizona students to Osama bin Laden and to a radical British Islamist group, and shared some of this concerns with the CIA, law enforcement sources said Wednesday.
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His review also determined that one of the Arizona flight-school students appeared to have communicated through an intermediary with one of bin Laden's top aides -- Abu Zubeida -- and that several of the students under suspicion had links to a radical group called Al-Muhajiroun. The Britain-based group is dedicated to the establishment of a global Islamic state and has vocally supported bin Laden and other terrorists.
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Administration officials say they had no tangible warnings that could hve led them to predict that an attack was imminent ...
But the new details suggest for the first time that the CIA may have had advance knowledge of some of the suspicions generated from Arizona. The details also appear at odds with authorities' contention that Williams was only pursuing "a hunch" -- not actual evidence -- in warning about the risk of flight schools.
"This was not a vague hunch," according to a congressional source familiar with a classified briefing that Williams gave to lawmakers. "He was doing a case on these guys. He put in all the history about this pattern of radical Muslims and Osama links to Arizona. He talked about fatwas targeting U.S. airports. He noted that one guy was asking about airport security -- that's specific information, not guesswork."
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F.B.I. Was Warned It could Not Meet Terrorism ThreatNY Times, 6/1/02http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/01/national/01INQU.html WASHINGTON, May 31 - A top secret report warned top officials of the F.B.I. in the months before Sept. 11 that the bureau faces significant terrorist threats from Middle Eastern Groups like Al Qaeda but lacked enough resources to meet the threat, senior government officials said.
The internal assessment, one of the bureau's most closely held documents, found virtually every major F.B.I. field office undermanned in evaluating and dealing witht eh threat posed by groups like Al Qaeda, the officials said.
The document, called the Director's Report on Terrorism, provided detailed recommendations and proposed spending increases to address the problem, officials who have seen it said.
Despite this assessment, the bureau failed to win an increase in the Justice Department spending request submitted shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks. On Sept. 10, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected a proposed $58 million increase in financing for the bureau's counterterrorism programs. But a Justice Department official said today that the director's report was not provided to Mr. Ashcroft's budget staff {sic}.
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Meanwhile, officials said that after the Bush administration came into office, top Justice Department officials did not initially see the urgent need to upgrade counterterrorism. In August, officials said, the bureau's acting director, Tom Pickard, met with Mr. Ashcroft on a supplemental financing request for counterterrorism, but was turned down.
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... and then there's that "couldn't imagine 'planes as missiles'" lie that Rice (et al) drug out after info about the 8/6 Crawford briefing came to light. See the following stories for *proof* that their statements were absolute, bald-faced lies. These stories concern the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, on July 20-22 of 2001. This was less than three weeks before the Crawford Briefing :
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Italy: Bush Targeted at G8Newsday, 9/19/01http://www.newsday.com/ny-woital192372601sep19.storyRome - A possible assassination attempt on President {sic} George W. Bush - using a commercial plane - was uncovered by Italy's secret services at July's Group of Eight summit, Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini said yesterday.
Fini, interviewed for a television program, said Italian forces shut down airspace above Genoa and positioned surface-to-air missiles at the airport.
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Plot to assassinate Bush - reportsCNN, 7/9/01http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/20/russia.binladen/index.htmlOsama bin Laden has threatened to assassinate U.S. President {sic} George W. Bush at the G8 summit meeting in Italy, the head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service has said, according to reports.
The Associated Press said Yevgeny Murov was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying: "Bin Laden is threatening the American president {sic}, but we know what international terrorism is today and therefore all the bodyguard units concerned are preparing for this.
"We view the threats as totally serious, but hope that with joint efforts we can solve all the problems."
The Group of Eight summit is meeting between July 20-22 in Genoa, Italy. ...
Murov -- Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief bodyguard -- did not elaborate on the threats. He said agents from Russia's Federal Body guard Service had travelled to Genoa to coordinate with their counyerparts from the other nations taking part in the summit to investigate the threats.
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Genoa braces for G8 summitCNN, 7/18/01http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/17/genoa.security/The Italian authorities' security measures also include the positioning of surface-to-air missiles at Genoa's Christopher Columbus airport. Dubbed the SPADA, the land-based system consists of missiles capable of a range of 15 kilometres (9.3 miles).
The ministry said the decision to install the missiles is not excessive.
"There's no excessive precaution," military spokesman Alberto Battaglini told Reuters. "The measure ... is merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion during the summit."
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The official G8 Summit Web site said it was not so much violence by the demonstraters that they feared most, but "the possibility of a terrorist attack."
The head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service has warned of a plot by terrorist Osama bin Laden to assassinate George W. Bush at the summit and the U.S. President {sic} may be staying at U.S. Camp Darby military base in Livorno or offshore on the American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to avoid any terrorist risk.
The other leaders of the world's most industrialized nations -- the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, plus Russia -- are also staying offshore on a luxury cruise liner, the "European Vision," chartered by the Italian government at a reported cost of $2.89 million.
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... and then there's this :
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The Informant Who Lived With the HijackersNewsweek, 9/16/02NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau's informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers: he was their roommate.
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