The biggest news story of the year 2002—though none of the ‘year-in-review' media round-ups mentioned it—was the disappointing failure of the American government to bring to justice the man they say was responsible for the mass murder, on September 11, 2001, of almost 3000 human beings.
President George W. Bush hasn't done what he promised to do in front of cheering World Trade Center rescuers in his visit at Ground Zero.
But don't hold your breath waiting to see this news on the Fox Report any time soon…
We've got 24-hour News Channels up the ying-yang in America these days… but apparently no longer much in the way of news.
And just as it did a month after the September 11th attack— just as the serious questioning began—the media has once again shifted focus.
Then it was anthrax…
Now we’re in a "Showdown with Saddam."
Lester Holt says so.
It now appears increasingly likely that one of History’s Greatest Crimes—the September 11 terrorist attack—is being (successfully) followed by one of History’s Greatest Cover-Ups.
Still, although President Bush is careful to avoid mentioning his name these days, Osama Bin Laden is still on the minds of many Americans.
Their thinking on the subject is Biblically-simple…
They want his head.
"Somebody killed 3000 of our people. Whoever did it’s going to pay."
Their logic seems flawless. If someone is murdered in church in front of the whole congregation, the parishioners in attendance are going to feel a sacred obligation to help bring the killer to justice. Run bake sales to pay for police overtime.
Because almost the entire American nation was 'in church' that sad September day in New York City, we naively assumed that our Government felt the same way we do.
We thought bringing Osama to justice, especially once we'd seen his gleeful acceptance of responsibility, was our Government’s whole objective in Afghanistan.
We were wrong.
Amazingly, the actions taken by CIA and American military commanders in Afghanistan, as reported in the New York Times, do not reflect an emphasis on rigorous pursuit of bin Laden.
Turns out, they reflect anything but.
In a front page article (10-month Afghan Mystery: Is Bin Laden Dead or Alive?) on Sept. 30, 2002, the Times reported that people who were on the ground in Afghanistan during the siege of Tora Bora believe that American commanders did not act with anything like the zeal you'd expect from people whose mission was hunting down America's Most Wanted Man.
American forces in Afghanistan, the Times reported, "have not been helped by the suspicion here at Tora Bora, where bin Laden was all but trapped, that indecisiveness on the part of American commanders, or perhaps reluctance to risk casualties, may have helped him (bin Laden) escape."
Say what? Run that by us again.
From the people who brought you Vietnam?
"If (bin Laden) fled to Pakistan," the article continues, "he did so over snow-choked mountain trails that were not blocked by American or other allied troops until after the bombing—an oversight that some of the allies point to as having squandered the best opportunity of the war to snare America's most wanted man." (italics ours.)
Don't they teach that in General's school? Cut 'em off, then bomb the shit outta them?
"Within weeks high-ranking British officers were saying privately that American commanders had vetoed a proposal to guard the high-altitude trails, arguing that the risks of a firefight, in deep snow, gusting winds and low-slung clouds, were too high," said the article.
Low-slung clouds? The snow was too deep?
"Similar accounts abound among Afghan commanders who provided the troops stationed on the Tora Bora foothills—on the north side of the mountains, facing the Afghan city of Jalalabad," continued the Times story.
"Those troops played a blocking role that left the Qaeda fugitives only one escape route, to the south, over the mountains to Pakistan."
One Afghan commander told the Times of pleading with Special Forces officers to block the trails to Pakistan.
"Their attitude was, 'we must kill the enemy, but we must remain absolutely safe," said warlord Hajji Zaher. "This is crazy."
It seems inconceivable that Special Forces troops would back down or insist on remaining absolutely safe in a fight to capture the leader of the forces that attacked America on Sept 11. So an order to 'stand down,' if one was given, must have come from above…
Consequently, the biggest news story of the year just past, the failure to bring to justice the chief criminal in the September 11 attack, is not, strictly speaking, the worst thing we're talking about here.
Because what if the failure of capture bin Laden was willful?
A few things we know about Mohamed Atta
As the year 2002 passed into history I was checking into the Wellesley Inn in Naples, FL., and asking the girl at the front desk if she could rent me the same room that terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta had stayed in.
I could see that she considered it an unusual request.
Very few people know—it has been reported nowhere we've seen—that Mohamed Atta was ever in Naples, FL., a slick resort town 100 miles down the road from the terrorist’s better-known haunts in Venice.
According to credible eyewitnesses we've interviewed, Atta was in Naples hanging out at a flight school called Ambassador Aviation, which by some strange coincidence is also owned by ‘Magic Dutch Boy’ Rudi Dekkers and his partner Wallace J. Hilliard, the same duo who own the terror flight school in Venice.
If Atta spent time in Naples not accounted for in the official chronology, where else might he have spent time that we don't know about?
(By 'we' I mean the American people. The FBI, which flooded Florida with hundreds of agents, presumably already knows.)
40 years ago, in the ‘bad old days’ of secrecy in government, the Warren Commission at least had to tell the American public where Lee Harvey Oswald was living in the months before the Kennedy Assassination.
Now even that bit of noblesse oblige is a thing of the past.
Which is why we found ourselves retracing the steps of a man who was secretly bent—the whole time he was among us—on murdering as many of us as he could.
Did the desk clerk remember Atta staying here? She did.
Had the FBI visited the hotel? They had.
Did she recall which room Atta stayed in? Yes…
Did he order any movies from Spectravision?
What's the Islamic 'take' on soft porn?
"We don't want to be known as a terrorist destination resort."
Before the desk clerk could answer, the hotel’s Assistant Manager of Operations (said his lapel badge) appeared from an office behind the front desk with a pointed request:
No more questioning hotel employees about the terrorist ringleader’s stay, please.
We had heard this before. We're in a state of alert—we can't remember which color—called Cadre Information Lockdown.
An idle thought: where do they find space to store all the news they hold back?
It must require huge warehouses, probably the size of football fields, at secret military installations. Area 51, maybe.
We wonder if we're crazy to have such thoughts. But soon we will discover U.S. Senator's who feels pretty much the same way.
Why should knowing where Atta was while in the U.S., and with whom, pose a threat to our great Homeland, or its righteously-defended Security?
Why is terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta still such a a phantom in the American mind? He moved in and out among us for years, according to some who knew him.
Where are the pictures?
Mohamed Atta, O.J. Simpson, and the death of the free press
If you do a search for images of Atta at Google, what you get, mostly, is 500 or so different croppings of that one same famous 1000-yard stare mug shot.
We want to see snapshots of Atta in Vegas. We want to see him in Key West on surveillance cam.
We know he was there, and when. He had his picture taken there too, during a drunken late nite pub crawl through Key West.
The picture is of Atta, two friends, and a drag queen, standing in front a nightclub with a transvestite revue called Diva's.
Having your picture taken with a drag queen while in Key West, it was explained to us, is like having your picture taken kissing the Blarney Stone while in Ireland.
Something to prove you were there.
A picture of Atta and a drag queen would be worth a fortune. Why hasn't anyone tried to sell one to the National Enquirer? What's up with that?
Speaking of the Enquirer, we'd like to see that anthrax-ed tabloid put a journalistic task force on Mohamed Atta like they did on O.J. Simpson. Put someone like Dominick Dunne on the case.
And then compare their results with those of the FBI….
Our money would be on the Enquirer.
The search for answers had brought us to Naples, FL. There are people there who knew Mohamed Atta, and interacted with him on a frequent basis.
Interfaced with the Hamburg cadre.
Both Dutch and American, we think of these people as the ‘players.' Our dream would be to get one of them talking some night after a few drinks, or several bottles of good champagne.
Then sneak in a few questions, quiet-like.
"Look at it this way: we still don't know who killed Kennedy."
Late one night in Naples, bored in our hotel room, we found ourselves idly leafing through the hotel's Guestbook, wondering if Atta had done the same thing.
We know he would probably have enjoyed the list of 'Traveler Safety Tips.'
Heading the hotel's top ten safety tips: "Blend in!"
Another top ten pick: "If you see any suspicious activity, please report your observations to the management."
Everybody has to pitch in. Even hotels.
Last week Sen. Bob Graham of the Congressional Intelligence Committee said, "I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States."
Pressed for details by reporters, Graham said, "Most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified… It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the National Archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now."
It’s been 475 days since several billion of us watched 3000 of our number perish in gruesome and terrible ways.
Remember, how if you strained your eyes you could make out individual people through the smoke on the upper floors? How bad was it up there to make leaping out of windows seem like the better alternative?
U.S. networks, though not those overseas, cut away on the pretext that it was just too horrible to air. Nobody wants to watch people dropping out of 100th story windows and free-falling down onto Wall Street like so much human confetti.
Not first thing in the morning.
We read somewhere that if you fall from a great height, like, say, out of a 100th story window, that you're dead before you hit the ground, because your the heart stops.
We don’t believe it.
Later that same day NBC anchor Brian Williams—he of the oft-remarked unnatural tan—said: "There will be many people asking tonight just what it is we are getting for all those tens of billions of dollars being spent on intelligence."
475 days later this question still seems valid.
And now we have others as well.
