U.S.: Saudis Still Filling Al Qaeda's Coffers
From ABC News
Excerpt: Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda.

"If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News.

Despite some efforts as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, Levey says Saudi Arabia has dropped the ball. Not one person identified by the United States and the United Nations as a terror financier has been prosecuted by the Saudis, Levey says.

"When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations, and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism because it is," Levey says.

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Labels: al qaeda, Saudi

Able Danger

Fear of Backlash Kept pre-9/11 data from FBI
From the Washington Times
Excerpt: Pentagon lawyers, fearing a public-relations "blow back," blocked a military intelligence unit from sharing information with the FBI that four suspected al Qaeda terrorists were in the country prior to the September 11 attacks, after determining they were here legally, a former Defense Department intelligence official says.
Members of an intelligence unit known as Able Danger were shut out of the September 11 commission investigation and final report, the official said, despite briefing commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI...
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Former Flight School Owner says US Intelligence Failure Ruined His Life
From the Herald Tribune (SW Florida)
Excerpt: ...The revelation had particularly strong ties to Venice because Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who each piloted a hijacked jetliner into the World Trade Center, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation, a flight school that operated out of Venice Municipal Airport.

Huffman’s former owner, Rudi Dekkers, was angered that the government may have known about Atta but never shared it with the FBI or other agencies who could have stopped the terrorists.

“We are civilians here. We’re supposed to be protected, and we apparently were not,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers claims the fallout from unwittingly training the terrorists cost him his business, his reputation and his marriage. Huffman closed six months after the attacks.

“Everywhere I come, they say, ‘Are you not that guy that trained terrorists?’” said Dekkers, who now lives in Naples. “I am without a job right now. I have no income anymore. My life was destroyed.”
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Labels: al qaeda, FBI, pentagon, September 11