PARIS (AP) - Nine months before al-Qaida slammed airliners into the World Trade Center, French intelligence suspected the terror network was plotting a hijacking _ possibly involving a U.S. airline _ and warned the CIA, former French intelligence officials said Monday.But the French warning hinted at a plot in Europe, not the United States, and there was no suggestion of suicide attacks or multiple planes. One former official said al-Qaida may have leaked misinformation to divert intelligence agencies from the bigger, deadlier plot to come on Sept. 11, 2001.
The warning was another example of how intelligence agents sensed al-Qaida was hard at work in the months leading up to Sept. 11 but were unable to piece together fragmented warnings into a coherent plot.
Le Monde first reported the story Monday as it published excerpts of 328 pages of classified documents from France's main foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE. One note, dated Jan. 5, 2001, reported that al-Qaida was plotting a hijacking.
Details were vague.
"It wasn't about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot," Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency's director, told The Associated Press. "It was a note that said, 'They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies.'"
Le Monde printed a copy of part of the note. In early 2000 in Kabul, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden met with Taliban leaders and armed groups from Chechnya and discussed the possibility of hijacking a plane after takeoff in Frankfurt, Germany, the note said, citing Uzbek intelligence.
The note listed potential targets: American, Delta, Continental, and United airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also mentioned a "US Aero," but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.
Two of the carriers, United and American, were targeted on Sept. 11.
CIA spokesman George Little said Le Monde's article "merely repeats what the U.S. government knew and reported before Sept. 11 _ that al-Qaida was interested in airliner plots, especially hijackings."
"The article does not suggest that U.S. or foreign officials had advance knowledge of the details surrounding the Sept. 11 plot," he said. "Had the details been known, the U.S. government would have acted on them."
The Sept. 11 Commission and a joint congressional inquiry into the attacks have described vague warnings of potential threats in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.
The 9/11 commission said that, as the year began, the CIA started receiving "frequent but fragmentary" threat reports. Among other warnings, the intelligence community sent out a March 2001 terror threat advisory about a heightened threat of Sunni extremist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel and other interests.
| AoS note: apologies to Bobby -- I was doing a minor edit and accidentally deleted the article with your comments. I was able to replace the article text but your comments are gone. Mea culpa! |