USS 'Cole' bombers tunnel out of Yemeni jail By Kim Sengupta 07 February 2006 A major international hunt is under way for 23 al-Qa'ida activists who escaped from their prison in Yemen by digging a 460ft tunnel to emerge in the woman's section of a mosque. Interpol has issued a global security alert warning that the escapers - including men who had carried out attacks on the American warship USS Cole and the French oil tanker Limburg - were a "clear and present danger to all countries". The jailbreak was seen as a significant propaganda coup for Islamist groups and a severe blow to Yemen's attempts to portray itself as a strong ally of the West in the "war on terror". Guards at the high-security prison, which also served as the military intelligence headquarters, were being questioned by police. There is widespread suspicion that the audacious escape could not have succeeded without the help of officials in Yemen, the country Osama bin Laden's family came from. The news of the escape came as 15 other alleged Islamists went on trial in Yemen on terrorism charges and as reports emerged of increasing presence of Islamist fighters in the region. Yemen was long regarded as a haven for Muslim militants and had seen a series of abductions of foreigners by armed gangs. Following the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US, facing an ultimatum from Washington, the Yemeni government announced it was cracking down on extremists and carried out a number of arrests. Diplomats in the capital, Sanaa, spoke of "serious errors" that allowed the escape to take place and the probable culpability of Yemeni officials. Opposition parties blamed the government. Ali al-Safari of the Communist Party said: "Nobody, not even al-Qa'ida, could have done this alone." Mohammed al-Sabri, of the Nasserite Party, added: "This is a serious setback and puts the country in a very embarrassing position. This has implications not just for Yemen, but all countries in the region." Among the fugitives were Jamal al- Badawi, Fawaz al-Rabihi and Abu Assem al-Ahdal. Badawi was convicted of bombing the USS Colefive years ago, in which 17 sailors were killed. Last year Badawi's death sentence was commuted to 15 years' imprisonment. This was his second jailbreak. He had escaped while awaiting trial in 2003 and was subsequently recaptured. Rabihi was sentenced to death over the attack on the Limburg two years ago when a Bulgarian crew member was killed and 90,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Aden. Ahdal is believed to be al-Qa'ida's deputy leader in Yemen. The prisoners are thought to have made their way out of the mosque on Thursday night and then used the cover of worshippers leaving after Friday prayers to disappear. The secretary general of Interpol, Ronald Noble, asked the Yemen government to provide any relevant information to law enforcement agencies in other countries. He said that unless they were caught soon "they will be able to travel internationally and to ... engage in future terrorist activities". Comment: This should bring some interesting developments since many "connected" people have been saying for some time that Al-Qaida was not involved, that it was Israel's MOSSAD that pulled off the USS Cole attack to blame it on Muslim extremists.

Flashback: USS Cole Bombers Sentenced to Death BBC 29 Sept 04 A Yemeni court has sentenced two men to death over the bomb attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 people in 2000. Suspected ringleader Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is currently in US custody, and Jamal Mohammed al-Badawi, were both given the death penalty. Four others were given between five and 10 years in jail for the attack, blamed on Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. In October 2000, two attackers rammed the destroyer with a small boat laden with explosives in the port of Aden. Appeal The defendants cried out "Allahu Akbar" [God is great] when the sentence was delivered. "This is an unjust verdict, this is an American verdict," yelled Badawi, a Yemeni in his 30s. His brother told the Associated Press news agency that all the men were likely to appeal against their sentences. Saudi-born Nashiri was the only defendant not in court in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. He is being held in an undisclosed location by the US, after he was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in October 2002 and handed over to Washington. He has been described as al-Qaeda's chief of naval operations at the time and its operations chief in the Gulf. US officials say he is a close to bin Laden, and suspect him of involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Suicide bombers Fahd al-Qusaa, who the court heard filmed the USS Cole attack, was given 10 years in jail. Maamoun Msouh was given eight years for helping fund the attack and assisting Badawi. Ali Mohamed Saleh and Murad al-Sirouri were both sentenced to five years in prison for forging identification documents for one of the suicide bombers. Some of the suspects escaped from a Yemeni jail in a break-out in May 2003, but were later re-captured. Seventeen US sailors were killed and at least 40 people were wounded in the attack, which took place as the USS Cole was refuelling on 12 October 2000. The Yemeni suicide bombers, Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa, packed their small boat with up to 500lb (225 kg) of high explosives, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the Cole. The Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer was considered one of the US Navy's most advanced warships. It has since been repaired and is back in service.

Flashback: The USS Cole bombing against the backdrop of Israeli "Black Propaganda" Operations by Michael Gillespie 2000 Many in the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States are inclined to suppose that Israel may be responsible for the terror-bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemen port city of Aden on October 13. Although few Americans would suspect Israel, a trusted U.S. ally, of such a dastardly act, they may well be wrong while better informed and more experienced Arab and Muslim observers may be correct. The Israeli intelligence agencies have a long history of carrying out what have been called "black propaganda" operations. Such covert actions are designed to create suspicion and inflame animosity between Israel's perceived enemies in the Middle East and Americans. While Israel's deadly surprise attack on the USS Liberty on June 6, 1967, is now widely viewed as having been carried out for the purpose of keeping the USS Liberty's electronic monitoring capabilities from uncovering and reporting to Washington on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)'s military preparations in advance of the attack on the Golan Heights, which would have allowed the Johnson administration to apply diplomatic pressure to forestall the IDF's aggression against Syria, there are many other clear examples of Israeli intelligence agencies engaging in "black propaganda" for the purpose of damaging the public image of Arabs and Arab states and organizations and fomenting trouble between Arabs and Arab states and organizations and the U.S. government. Lets look at just three examples. The hi-jacking of the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro by "Palestinian terrorists" was later reliably reported by former IDF arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe in his 1992 book, Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network, to have been ordered and funded by Mossad. Ben-Menashe revealed that Israeli intelligence organizations regularly engaged in "black operations," espionage activity designed to portray Palestinians and others in the worst possible light. "An example," wrote Ben-Menashe, "is the case of the 'Palestinian' attack on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That was, in fact, an Israeli 'black' propaganda operation to show what a deadly, cutthroat bunch the Palestinians were." According to Ben-Menashe, Israeli spymasters arranged the attack through "Abu'l Abbas, who, to follow such orders was receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons. Abbas . . . gathered a team to attack the cruise ship. The team was told to make it bad, to show the world what lay in store for other unsuspecting citizens if Palestinian demands were not met. As the world knows, the group picked on an elderly American Jewish man in a wheelchair, killed him, and threw his body overboard. They made their point. But for Israel, it was the best kind of anti- Palestinian propaganda." It should be noted that in April 1996, Abbas returned to Gaza and in a show of support for Yasser Arafat apologized for the hi-jacking and the killing of the American Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer without mentioning him by name, saying, "The hi-jacking was a mistake, and there were no orders to kill civilians." Abbas made no mention of Mossad involvement in the hi-jacking according to the April 23, 1996 Associated Press report. The attack by over 150 U.S. warplanes on Libya, on April 14, 1986, which caused great destruction and over 40 civilian deaths including that of Col. Qaddafi's adopted daughter, was carried out only after Mossad field agents entered Libya in February of 1986 and placed a "Trojan" radio transmitter there to broadcast false signals, according to former Mossad field officer Victor Ostrovsky writing in The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda in 1994. The spurious signals duped American intelligence officials monitoring the broadcasts causing them to believe the Libyan government was sponsoring terrorism in Europe and was responsible for the deadly April 5, 1986, terror-bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin which took the lives of two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. Reports that Spanish and French intelligence agencies were not fooled by the Israeli "Trojan" transmitter broadcasts lend credence to suggestions that American intelligence officials may have been unable to resist political pressure for retaliation or perhaps exercised judgment that was influenced by Israeli sympathies. If, as it appears, Libya was not responsible for the bombing of the Berlin night spot and the loss of three lives, the question of who was remains unanswered, as does another obvious question: Was it the Mossad? Ostrovsky also revealed Israeli espionage that occurred on American soil, in Washington, DC. in 1979. In his scathing 1990 expose, By Way of Deception: A Devastating Insiders Portrait of the Mossad, Ostrovsky reported that Mossad agents bugged the home of a Middle Eastern diplomat during the administration of Jimmy Carter in order to embarrass the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, after Young sought to establish informal talks with PLO representatives. When Young met with the unofficial United Nations PLO representative Zehdi Labib Terzi "accidentally" in the home of a friendly diplomat, Kuwaiti Ambassador Abdalla Yaccoub Bishara, listening devices planted surreptitiously and without Terzi's knowledge by Mossad field officers recorded every word of the diplomats conversation. The incident soon became front-page news in the Zionists' most prominent U.S. propaganda organ, The New York Times, and President Carter caved in to public pressure and asked for Young's resignation. Thus, that early effort to establish relations between the U.S. government and the PLO became a footnote in history when, on September 23, 1979, Young resigned from his position. Young, an African American, has never since served in the upper levels of government. Quite apparently, the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence organizations have long enjoyed the ability to operate more or less freely in the United States and around the world. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attempted to rein in Israel's intelligence organizations activities in the USA with an investigation of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the early 1990s. The ADL, which is nothing less than the Mossad's right arm in the U.S.A. disguised as a civil rights monitoring organization, was forced to curtail its operations for a period of time during the 1990s following the limited success of the investigation, which the FBI, bowing to political pressures, passed on to the Office of the San Francisco District Attorney. Press accounts of the FBI/SFDA investigation were limited relative to the obvious importance of the story, and some major American news organizations simply ignored the ADL spy scandal altogether. The remarkable effectiveness of Israel's current propaganda campaign against Palestinians makes it abundantly clear that Israel's intelligence assets in mainstream broadcast news organizations, most of which are subsidiaries of Zionist-owned or managed entertainment industry conglomerates, are able to exert consistent and heavy influence on, if not absolute control over, the public discussion here in the USA and abroad about almost all matters related to Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East. Sadly, it is all too true, as Charlie Reese, a lonely voice of reasoned outrage at the Orlando Sentinel, recently wrote: "Palestinians won't get their freedom until Americans get theirs." Let us all hope that the president-elect of the United States, George W. Bush, has not forgotten that renegade Mossad officers cooked up a crack-pot plan to assassinate a former U.S. president--his own father--in 1991 at the Madrid peace conference after the senior Bush was courageous enough to try to pressure the government of Israel to end the establishment of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands by withholding approval of $10 billion dollars worth of loan guarantees for Israel. It is widely reported that the Bush family places a premium on loyalty. Perhaps the new president will have noted that Israel has been anything but a loyal ally of the United States of America and will be able to make some appropriate and long overdue adjustments in U.S. Middle East foreign policy, regardless of what domestic political pressures may demand in the way of a public facade. Freelance Investigative Journalist and Commentator Michael Gillespie writes about Politics and Media for Media Monitors Network (MMN). His work also appears frequently in the popular Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Comment: The final paragraph, written before 9-11, is quite interesting for a number of reasons: Let us all hope that the president-elect of the United States, George W. Bush, has not forgotten that renegade Mossad officers cooked up a crack-pot plan to assassinate a former U.S. president--his own father--in 1991 at the Madrid peace conference after the senior Bush was courageous enough to try to pressure the government of Israel to end the establishment of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands by withholding approval of $10 billion dollars worth of loan guarantees for Israel. It is widely reported that the Bush family places a premium on loyalty. Perhaps the new president will have noted that Israel has been anything but a loyal ally of the United States of America and will be able to make some appropriate and long overdue adjustments in U.S. Middle East foreign policy, regardless of what domestic political pressures may demand in the way of a public facade. So much for that hope. It has since become abundantly clear that the son is NOT the father, and if MOSSAD thought that there was any chance of Dubya changing the rules, they sure got him over the barrel on 9-11. Read Laura's new book: 9-11: The Ultimate Truth for the scoop.

Flashback: Iraq - Bin Laden USS Cole bomb link Julian Borger in Washington The Guardian Thursday October 19, 2000 Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorist operations and a respected expert on Middle Eastern terrorism, said the timing, location and method of the attack - the sophistication of the bomb - an estimated 272kg of high explosive shaped and placed within a metal container to channel the blast and penetrate the armoured hull of the USS Cole - suggested the involvement of a state. Investigators in Yemen yesterday uncovered evidence suggesting the bomb attack on the warship USS Cole had been a meticulously organised conspiracy, which a leading US terrorism expert said may have been the first joint operation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Under an overcast sky at the Norfolk naval base in Virginia, President Clinton led thousands of US servicemen in mourning the 17 victims of last week's blast, as the state department warned that more attacks against US citizens could be on the way in the Middle East or Turkey. In Aden, Yemeni police and FBI agents were examining a flat apparently rented by the bomb makers four days before the attack. Bomb-making materials were found in the flat, which was rented by two non-Yemeni Arabs, at least one of whom had a Gulf accent, local residents said. They kept a fibre glass boat parked nearby. It was not clear whether the missing suspects were the two men who manoeuvred their small boat alongside the USS Cole and blew themselves up, or whether they were technicians spirited out of the country after the attack. Paying tribute to the Cole victims, Mr Clinton said: "To those who attacked them we say: You will not find a safe harbour. We will find you and justice will prevail. America will not stop standing guard for peace, for freedom or stability in the Middle East or around the world." Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorist operations and a respected expert on Middle Eastern terrorism, said the timing, location and method of the attack pointed to Bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda. He said it was the only group in the area which has issued a fatwa (a religiously inspired death sentence) against US and British citizens. Bin Laden, a Saudi national based in Afghanistan, has Yemeni family roots and close links with some of the local tribal warlords. A few weeks before the attack, he distributed a video in which he issued familiar calls for a holy war against the "forces of evil". He was wearing Yemeni tribal costume and a Yemeni dagger. "He's puckish like that. On one hand he does not want to give out his address, but on the other hand, he likes to let his followers know he is leading the fight," Mr Cannistraro said. He argued that the sophistication of the bomb - an estimated 272kg of high explosive shaped and placed within a metal container to channel the blast and penetrate the armoured hull of the USS Cole - suggested the involvement of a state. "The Iraqis have wanted to be able to carry out terrorism for some time now," Mr Cannistraro said. "Their military people have had liaison with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and could well have supplied the training." He said the theory was still speculative but was consistent with the series of recent contacts between Baghdad and the Bin Laden organisation. Harvey Kushner, a terrorism expert at Long Island University, said there was reason to believe Bin Laden had been investigating ways of launching attacks by sea. "He's been looking around for small, personal submarines. One of his relatives in the United States had an order in for one of these personal submarines, and it was stopped," Mr Kushner said. Other terrorism experts agreed the boat bomb was a significant technical advance on earlier terrorist attacks, such as the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years ago. The bodies of six of the US sailors killed in the blast were still being extracted from the wreckage left by the blast, which punched a 12-metre hole in the ship. Investigators in Aden were studying video surveillance tapes of the port from the hours leading up to the attack.

USS Cole Attack: Practice run for the coming Iran 'False Flag' Judicial-inc To start the war on Iran, Israel will probably stage a 'False Flag' attack on the US fleet in the Persian Gulf. After the initial attack, the war will quickly escalate. This website attempts to explain the technique used to attack the USS Cole, and how it was a 'Test Run' for a possible upcoming attack on a carrier that is based in Bahrain. What happened On 2000, the USS Cole was sent to Yemen to refuel, and it was struck by a small boat that had a massive explosive charge. Normally, these ships are refueled at sea by oil tankers, but someone in the Pentagon ok'ed this. Who would send a high-tech ship into Yemen - alone - with anti-American feelings running rampant there? The Attack Vehicle A SEPTAR (Sea Borne Powered Target) was used. Only a sophisticated small craft could attack the USS Cole Shape Charges Experts all confirmed that the massive damage, the Cole received, required a shape charge or missile. Western intelligence operatives feel there is no way that a group of stray terrorists, would have the technical knowledge, the shape charge, or the detailed intelligence on the Cole's arrival, to carry out such an attack like that. Thus, experts conclude that professional intelligence operatives, were the only ones who could have carried out this operation. The Mossad is the world's foremost intelligence agency, when it comes to staging terror attacks, and they have a long history of doing cunning false-flag terror attacks, that appear to be things other than what they really are. Damage The amount of damage, implies the boat was specially constructed with the shape charge and barrel built into the hull. This wasn't two Arabs in their backyard. Only a specialist state, like Israel, has the access and specialization to conjure up attack methods like this for terror. Timing The Cole had just arrived and was docking. This means the attackers had inside intel and the operation was pre-planned. Cohen Defense Sec Cohen sent the USS Cole into Yemen. Tommy Franks,who is Jewish, was in charge of the area Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, was called before an angry committee about the Cole. They wanted to know who negotiated the contract to refuel Navy ships at Aden. He said the decision to refuel in Yemen, which is designated as a "safe haven for terrorists" in the State Department's annual report on terrorism, was based on "operational as well as geo-strategic factors and included an assessment of the terrorist and conventional threats in the region." Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Salih In an interview President Salih said: ..."That Israel might be responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole." O'Neill Sent To Investigate O’Neill was considered a top-notch investigator, and was known for his pugnacity. He was barred by U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, from that country. That dispute reportedly involved a struggle between the State Department, which sought to preserve relations with Yemen, and the FBI, represented by O’Neill, who wanted access to Yemeni suspects. Bodine blocked investigation O'Neill was a little too competent of an investigator, and things were pointing to Israel. That's when the US Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, had O'Neill barred from that country. from that country. Albright jumped on the USS Cole bandwagon. It appeared that Albright helped Bodine, by appealing to Louie Freeh, FBI director, to remove O'Neill. Obviously, the Cole attack was meant to create animosity towards Arabs, and to also act as a dry run for an upcoming Persian Gulf false flag attack. Sec. Cohen would have you believe this attack was a couple of angry Arabs that happened to have a box of dynamite in their garage, who decided to take out an Aegis-class cruiser. The Cole attack involved Pentagon moles co-operating with Israel, to carry it out. With the Cole attack, you needed to be able to direct the ship into Yemen - have the equipment ready - access to shape charges - have an ingenious small high-speed boat that could stand a chance against a very trained crew on a heavily-armed state-of-the-art military vessel, etc. This leads us to believe that an initial false-flag attack, might be an Israeli attack on the fleet as it is anchored in Bahrain. As the US retaliates, Iran will be at full alert while the fleet tries to escape. The real battle will be in the Straights of Hormuz and could escalate to a Nuclear retaliation. Comment: Notice the remarks about "shape charges" and think a minute. If you go to the page linked to view the graphics, you will see the damage done to the USS Cole. Where else have we seen damage of that shape and size??? A nice, deep hole about 13/14 feet in diameter... Penetrated through a steel hull Navy ship... Take your time...

Egyptian Ferry Disaster: Does Mysterious Fire Point to Sabotage? Judicial-inc. Feb 2006 The Official Story 'Witnesses' say the ship caught fire minutes after leaving port, but the Captain sailed on for two hours as the fire blazed. Other anonymous witnesses say the Captain commandeered the first lifeboat, as women and children stood by. The ferry sailed on for two hours listing to the side. Then it just went onto its side, and within five minutes it had sunk. The Story Is Too Convoluted To Be Believed The ship caught fire within minutes of leaving Duba, but the Captain sailed on. When the fire got out of control, the Captain commandeered a lifeboat, and the ship developed a mysterious list, and quickly rolled over. This is set in the same tone as Egyptair 990, where NY newspapers said a pilot went insane, and dove a Boeing 767 into the ocean, as he screamed "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar" (God is great). What Really Happened The Israeli Mossad probably loaded a truck full of phosphorus and magnesium, which are extremely difficult to put out, onto the ferry. They used this to start a massive fire when the ship was between ports. This was most likely used in conjunction with a small bomb, near a boiler, on the starboard side. Israel had ships in the area, but Egypt told them to stay away. The ship had recently had maintenance work done to it in an Israeli port. Crew members battled the blaze, but it kept reigniting, they said. Wash Post report: "Ahmed, the maintenance crewman, said he fought fire with sea water pumped into the ship through hoses. The fire would go out and revive, Ahmed said. "We couldn't figure out the cause," he added in a low murmur." The ship developed a list, and within minutes it rolled over.

Survivors Say Egyptian Ferry Was on Fire Before Sinking: Fire was impossible to extinguish! By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, February 5, 2006 Ahmed, the maintenance crewman, said he fought fire with sea water pumped into the ship through hoses. The fire would go out and revive, Ahmed said. "We couldn't figure out the cause," he added in a low murmur. The long battle against inextinguishable flames had a fatal consequence, Ahmed concluded: "The water wasn't draining. Pumps weren't working right." HURGHADA, Egypt, Feb. 4 -- The smell of oily smoke reached the passenger deck of the Alsalam Boccaccio 98, and engineering student Isra Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman asked the crew what was amiss. Crew members said it was just a little fire down below. We're taking care of it, they said. Later, there was more smoke, more questions, more reassurances. Finally, around 1 a.m. Friday, black smoke billowed from the ferry's vehicle deck and the Boccaccio 98 began to list to the right. Desperately, the crew and captain ordered passengers to gather on the left. In a matter of minutes, the ship sank in the Red Sea. Passengers and crew -- about 1,400 people, in all, officials said -- threw themselves overboard and scrambled to find rubber dinghies drifting in the roiling waters. None of the 10 larger lifeboats, each of which could hold 100 people, was lowered into the water. "The crew and captain never said abandon ship. They kept reassuring us until the end. By then, it was every passenger for himself," said Abdul-Rahman, who was convalescing here Saturday from a harrowing night at sea. Abdul-Rahman was one of about 400 survivors. About 200 bodies have been retrieved from the sea. Another 800 people are missing and probably dead, Egyptian authorities said. At least 20 of the passengers were children. It was a preventable disaster, survivors said Saturday. Passengers and crew members interviewed at Hurghada General Hospital, which overlooks the sea, said that the fire and efforts to put it out eventually caused the sinking but that there had been plenty of time to turn back before the ship went down. Flames broke out less than two hours after the ferry, a 35-year-old vessel owned by El Salam Maritime Transport Co., had set out from the Saudi port of Duba. The captain insisted on heading west toward his destination on Egypt's shore, Safaga. For several hours, the ship continued to sail as fires flared repeatedly. Within 60 miles of the Egyptian coast, it sank. "If we had only gone back to Saudi Arabia," said Abdul Rahman, 17, with a sigh as she huddled under a hospital blanket. She was returning to Egypt from a visit to her father, who works, like thousands of Egyptians, in oil-wealthy Saudi Arabia. "The captain's word is law," said Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed, a maintenance crew member who was told to help put out the flames. The captain, identified by Ahmed and others as Sayyed Omar, was seen jumping overboard as the Boccaccio 98 listed. During the ordeal, survivors said, no one received instructions for inflating the rubber life rafts, which hold about 25 passengers and were contained in buoyant barrels. Egyptian rescuers took up to 18 hours to pick up some of the survivors. The sinking was not announced until 12 hours after the ship had lost contact with land. Ahmed, the maintenance crewman, said he fought fire with sea water pumped into the ship through hoses. The fire would go out and revive, Ahmed said. "We couldn't figure out the cause," he added in a low murmur. The long battle against inextinguishable flames had a fatal consequence, Ahmed concluded: "The water wasn't draining. Pumps weren't working right." Tamer Fikreh Hakim, a ship restaurant worker, said: "Drains were blocked by cargo. The ship was filling up." In effect, the pair said, the Boccaccio 98 sank itself. As smoke grew heavier, passengers milled on the upper deck, and some quarreled with crew members about whether to don life jackets. "Some crew said, just relax, go to your room," said Shabaan Ragat Shabaan, a driver who worked in Saudi Arabia during the annual Islamic pilgrimage season and was on his way home to Alexandria. Eventually, most people put on vests, added Ashraf Sayyed Mohamed, another driver. "They couldn't stop us," he said. "People began to panic." As smoke began to visibly pour from the rear of the ship, "everyone was running around asking what to do. The captain said nothing. The crew, though, they began to put on life jackets, too," Mohamed said. "We're not foolish," said Abdul-Rahman. "All the people rushed to the deck and begged the captain to turn back. He refused. He contacted no one. He was crazy!" When the ship rolled to the right, people began to shout, "It's tilting, it's tilting," witnesses said. "We of the crew know that if the ship leans 20 degrees, it's finished. It took only a few minutes. The captain told everyone to go to port side, but it meant nothing," said Hakim, the waiter. Then passengers tumbled into the Red Sea. Abdul-Rahman, wearing the black robes of pious Muslim women, bobbed in her life vest until she spotted a dinghy. "Some of the people knew how to inflate them. You know, pulling a strap and all that," she said. The drivers Shabaan and Mohamed, who are both 36, swam to a raft inflated by a crew member. They saw one lifeboat afloat upside down; desperate passengers tried to turn it over. They failed. "I began to see some bodies face down," said Shabaan. Hakim clung to a railing as the ship went down, waiting for the water to rise closer before leaping into the sea. People who were sliding off grabbed his legs and scratched his face. "They were pulling me. I held on and asked God for strength," he said in the hospital, his cheeks and knees marked with abrasions. In the water, he joined Ahmed, 32, the maintenance crewman, and more than 20 others aboard a dinghy. They were soon overwhelmed by 30 more people, and the dinghy began to sink. Fikreh Hakim, 29, said "the passengers were up to their necks in water" when he spied a floating barrel, swam to it and inflated another raft. Abdul-Rahman said she saw a ship pass close enough to help not long after the sinking. "But it didn't stop," she said. "Only God was looking out for me or anyone." When found, the survivors' rafts were pulled toward Egyptian naval ships and boats sent by El Salam Maritime. Survivors were treated at the hospital in Hurghada, a nearby military hospital and one in Safaga, 30 miles south. In their ward, the drivers made plans for returning to Saudi Arabia. "What can we do?" Shabaan said. "There's no real money in Egypt." The equivalent of a few dollars lay on a bed stand next to him, drying. Hakim, who was spitting up phlegm and water, was evidently worried about his reputation. "Tell them," he called across the ward to Ahmed, "that the crew helped the passengers." A message on El Salam's Web site denied that the captain and top officers escaped by lifeboat and abandoned passengers. The officers "are until this moment missing either dead or alive," the statement said. "None of the lifeboats have been used to evacuate passengers or crew members since the vessel listed and capsized. Only life rafts have been used for the passenger evacuation." Company officials said the search for survivors will go on. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Saturday that he was following the rescue operation closely, the official MENA news agency reported. There was no immediate government explanation for the late announcement of the sinking or for the initial rejection of British and U.S. help. Egyptian officials at first turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a U.S. Navy offer to send a P-3 Orion maritime patrol plane, wire services reported. Then Egypt requested both the Orion and the warship be sent, but called off the ship, deciding it was too far away, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown of the U.S. 5th Fleet, headquartered in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain. Mubarak ordered his government to pay about $5,200 in compensation to the family of each of the dead and about half that to each survivor. At about the same time as the announcement, hundreds of relatives and friends of the missing stormed the port of Safaga in hopes of forcing authorities to provide information. During an all-night vigil, they had only been read a passenger list.

Intel Expert Says 9-11 Looks Like A Hollywood Show By Christopher Bollyn December 16, 2001 European Spooks Say Mideast Terrorists Needed State Support “European intelligence experts dismiss the Bush ‘war on terrorism’ as deception and reveal the realpolitik behind the bombing of Afghanistan.” BERLIN — In Germany, where war plans for Afghanistan were already being discussed in July [2001] and where several of the “Arab hijackers” lived and studied, intelligence experts say the terror attacks of Sept. 11 could not have been carried out without the support of a state secret service. Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told American Free Press that “the deathly precision” and “the magnitude of planning” behind the attacks would have needed “years of planning.” Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the “fixed frame” of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a “loose group” of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were “state organized actions.” Andreas von Bülow served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag (German parliament) from 1969 to 1994, and wrote a book Im Namendes Staates (“In the Name of the State”) on the criminal activities of secret services, including the CIA. Von Bülow told AFP that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending. “You don’t get the higher echelons,” von Bülow said, referring to the “architectural structure” which masterminds such terror attacks. At this level, he said, the organization doing the planning, such as Mossad, is primarily interested in affecting public opinion. The architectural level planners use corrupt “guns for hire” such as Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist who von Bülow called “an instrument of Mossad,” high-ranking Stasi (former East German secret service) operatives, or Libyan agents who organize terror attacks using dedicated people, for example Palestinian and Arab “freedom fighters.” The terrorists who actually commit the crimes are what von Bülow calls “the working level,” such as the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked the planes on Sept. 11. “The working level is part of the deception,” he said. [Added note: This tactic is called a “false flag operation” or a “false flag recruitment”, used by both the CIA and Mossad for purposes of propaganda.] “Ninety-five percent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation,” von Bülow said, which is widely propagated in the mainstream media creating an accepted version of events. “Journalists don’t even raise the simplest questions,” he said, adding, “those who differ are labeled as crazy.” Both Werthebach and von Bülow said the lack of an open and official investigation, like congressional hearings, into the events of Sept. 11 was incomprehensible. Horst Ehmke, who coordinated the German secret services directly under German Prime Minister Willi Brandt in the 70s, predicted a similar terrorist attack in his novel, Torches of Heaven, published last year, in which Turkish terrorists crash hijacked planes into Berlin. Although Ehmke had long expected “fundamentalist attacks”, when he saw the televised images from Sept. 11, he said it looked like a “Hollywood production.” “Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service,” Ehmke said, although he did not want to point to any particular agency. “The most important thing in the struggle against terrorists, who are abusing religion, is the battle for the soul of the people and the nations,” Ehmke said. “If this isn’t resolved successfully, the 21st century could be bloodier than the last.” A former Stasi agent who had warned the German secret service of terror attacks in America between Sept. 10-20 told AFP that a high ranking Stasi chief named Jürgen Rogalla, who is “an airplane terror specialist,” was probably involved in the attacks along with Abu Nidal. Both Nidal and Rogalla work with the Mossad, the former agent told AFP. Nidal, was said to be in Baghdad, and is a “leading officer for some Mossad agents.” The agent said that Nidal was “involved directly” in the events of Sept. 11. Sept. 11 was preparation for a larger attack on the United States, which is part of “an old plan,” the agent said. Based on prior knowledge of this plan, the agent said that more attacks are imminent and that aircraft carriers may be targeted next. Rogalla was responsible for “turning NATO men” to spy for the East. One of the East’s NATO spies, Reiner Rupp, known as “Topaz,” provided Stasi and the Russians with the organization’s highest secrets until he was discovered in 1993 by the BND, the German intelligence agency. “Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.” — U.S. official quoted in Carl Cameron’s Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11. Terror investigation blocked Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the [unelected] Bush administration blocked Secret Service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim. In a recently published book, Bin Laden, la Verite Interdite (“Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth”), the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the FBI’s deputy director John O’Neill resigned in July [2001] to protest official obstruction of his investigation of terrorism. O’Neill had been in charge of national security in New York. While with the FBI, O’Neill led an investigation of Osama bin Laden and had forecast the possibility of an organized attack by terrorists operating from within the country. O’Neill had investigated the USS Cole bombing in Yemen, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, FBI agents working under O’Neill captured Ramzi Yousef, a suspected lieutenant of bin Laden, who was among those convicted for the World Trade Center bombing. O’Neill was considered a top-notch investigator and was known for his pugnacity. He was barred by U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine from that country. That dispute reportedly involved a struggle between the State Department, which sought to preserve relations with Yemen, and the FBI, represented by O’Neill, who wanted access to Yemeni suspects. O’Neill, 49, was hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center following a 25-year career with the FBI and died on Sept. 11, the first day of his new job. O’Neill reportedly died after reentering the building to assist others. Brisard said O’Neill told them that “the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” [Added note: The unelected Bush regime is full of oil industry people, and the Bush family has long been involved in the oil business. George Bush Senior was also Director of the CIA under President Ford, from 1974-76.] Bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military strikes against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, according to The Guardian of London. The warnings to the Taliban originated at a four-day meeting of senior Americans, Russians, Iranians and Pakistanis at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July. The meetings took place under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. The three Americans at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Karl “Rick” Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the State Department until 1997. There were other meetings arranged by Vendrell in which “representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present,” according to the French authors. “Some times, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.” The Berlin conference was the third meeting since November 2000 arranged by Vendrell. As a UN meeting, its official agenda was supposedly confined to trying to find a negotiated solution to the civil war in Afghanistan, ending terrorism and heroin trafficking, and discussing humanitarian aid. “Carpet of gold – or bombs” The U.S. government’s primary objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime in order to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, the French authors wrote. Until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime “as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia,” from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean, they said. “The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that,” the book says. When the Taliban refused to accept U.S. conditions, “this rationale of energy security changed into a military one.” “The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn’t help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan,” said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who attended the meetings. During the “6 plus 2” meeting in Berlin in July [2001], the discussions turned around “the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid,” Naik said on French television. “And the pipe lines from Kazakstan and Uzbekistan would have come,” he added. Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the U.S. representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. “Simons said, ‘either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.’ The words Simons used were ‘a military operation,’ ” Naik said. “At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,’ ” Brisard said in an interview in Paris. According to the book, the Bush government began to negotiate with the Taliban in February [2001], soon after coming into power. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the CIA.