FOIA: U.S. Airport Employees Ties to Terror

Posted on March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 by Denise Simon

US airport employees had ties to terror, report says

FNC: A dozen employees at three U.S. airports were identified as having potential ties to terrorists, according to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FOX 25’s Washington Bureau.

But those 12 workers are just a fraction of 73 private employees at nearly 40 airports across the nation flagged for ties to terror in a June 2015 report from the Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office.

FOIA requests identified two employees at Logan International Airport in Boston, Mass., four employees at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia and six employees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington.

The 2015 report did not reveal where the 73 workers were employed.

The Transportation Security Administration did not have access to the terrorism-related database during the vetting process for those employees, according to the report.

The TSA pushed back on the report as a whole, however, in a statement to FOX25.

“There is no evidence to support the suggestion by some that 73 DHS employees are on the U.S. government’s consolidated terrorist watch list,” national spokesman Michael England wrote in a statement.

*****

Meanwhile, perhaps ‘some’ of the items in the Senate Gang of 8 Immigration Reform Bill should have been passed…..

Outmoded U.S. immigration system poses security risk: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities’ lack of progress in automating their systems is compromising border security, making it more difficult to process people seeking to get into the country, a report said on Tuesday.

“We may be admitting individuals who wish to do us harm, or who do not meet the requirements for a visa,” John Roth, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, told a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

The report from Roth’s office, released on Tuesday, said immigration officials expect it will take $1 billion and another three years, 11 years into the effort, to move from a paper-based system to automated benefit processing.

U.S. lawmakers have been calling for a tighter visa system since the November Paris attacks and December San Bernardino shootings. In Paris, some of the militants were Europeans radicalized after visiting Syria, and a California attacker had been admitted on a fiance visa.

They want to ensure that potential militants cannot enter the United States under programs, such as the “visa waiver” granted citizens of most western countries.

Roth told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that workers processing millions of applications for immigrant benefits work with a system “more suited to an office environment from 1950 rather than 2016.”

He said some green cards and other immigration documents had been mailed to wrong addresses, or printed with incorrect names, which meant they could have fallen into the wrong hands.

The poor quality of electronic data that is kept makes it more difficult to engage in data matching, to root out fraud and identify security risks, Roth said.

Shipping, storing and handling over 20 million immigrant files costs more than $300 million a year, he added.

The report also said the EB-5 visa program, which admits investors who spend $500,000 or $1 million in the United States, depending on the area, may not be subject to close enough scrutiny to ensure Americans’ safety.

The current system also allows “known human traffickers” to use work and fiance visas to bring victims into the country, the report said.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the committee’s chairman, said the modernization was too slow and expensive. “It should not take years and years and billions and billions of dollars,” he said.

Paris Brussels Arrests, Terror Plot Foiled

Posted on March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 by Denise Simon

Paris Terror Plot Foiled as Police Arrest Four People in Raid

Bloomberg: French authorities said they foiled a possible terror plot with the arrest of three men and a woman in the Paris area a day after a counter-terrorism raid in Brussels left one gunman dead and several police officers injured.

The arrests came Wednesday in the 18th arrondissement in the north of the French capital and in the suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, according to a judicial spokeswoman who asked not to be identified in line with government policy. French officials suspect the four posed an imminent threat and at least one may have been planning an attack in Paris, she said. French television TF1 reported the information earlier.
The investigation led by French intelligence services focuses on a known Islamist militant convicted two years ago after being prevented from traveling to Syria in 2012. His female partner was also arrested, along with two Turkish brothers.
French authorities are questioning the four and examining seized computers. While no weapons were discovered, ammunition for a Kalashnikov rifle was found on site, she said.
The counter-terrorism raids in Paris and Brussels follow from the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in the French capital. The terror threat in France has been rising since Islamic radicals murdered journalists at magazine Charlie Hebdo and Jewish customers at a kosher supermarket in January of last year.

****

DailyMail in part: An AK-47 rifle, and electronic equipment including a USB stick and computer files, were found during the dawn raid.
French intelligence officers have been questioning the suspects at their headquarters in the city tonight. Police later said the four suspects had been under surveillance on suspicion of a ‘possible’ attack, with one source adding: ‘You can’t at this stage talk about a plan of imminent attack.’
The arrests were carried out at dawn in two Paris districts, as well as Saint Denis, the scene of a massive raid after the November 13 Paris attacks.
TF1 reported that two French brothers of Turkish origin – identified as Aytac and Ercan B – were among the suspects. Another Frenchman Youssef E., 28 has been identified as a suspect.

TF1 said he was a known Islamist and had already been sentenced to five years in prison in March 2014 after being arrested with two others as they tried to leave France to fight in Syria.
He was was released from prison in October and had been under house arrest since February 29. There are reports that his companion was also arrested in the dawn raid.
It comes a day after a man suspected of having links to the Paris massacre in November was gunned down in a Brussels after a shoot-out with police.

Belgian investigators are still hunting two suspects who fled an apartment one day after a police sniper killed the gunman holed up inside. Authorities found a stock of ammunition and an ISIS flag there, officials said.
Four officers were wounded in Tuesday’s joint French-Belgian raid in a Brussels neighbourhood and related searches.
Prosecutors on Wednesday released without charges two men they held in the wake of the raid, leaving the hunt on for two suspects who have not been identified. Prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said they ‘are being actively sought’.
The dead man was identified as an Algerian man living illegally in Belgium, Mohamed Belkaid, whose only contact with authorities appeared to be a two-year-old theft charge, said Thierry Werts, a Belgian prosecutor.
ISIS fanatics murdered 130 people in the French capital on November 13 when they targeted bars and restaurants, the Stade de France stadium and the Bataclan music hall in a wave of gun and suicide bomb attacks.
In November, the mastermind behind the Paris terror plot was killed during a special forces siege on a flat in Saint Denis, close to where four arrests were made today.

Kremlin Operation: Russian KGB Tactics Growing in Europe

Posted on March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 by Denise Simon

Putin’s Hand Grows Stronger as Right-Wing Parties Advance in Europe

Nazi-style immigrant and EU bashing is in hot demand. Russia’s Syria move will make it hotter.

Bloomberg: A growing pro-Kremlin contingent in Europe, likely emboldened by Russia’s decision to withdraw most of its forces from Syria, is tipping popular sentiment further toward President Vladimir Putin.

The most pressing of the issues vital to Putin is European Union sanctions against Russia, introduced in the wake of Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014. It’s hard to say whether the EU can preserve unity on the subject for much longer, said Petras Vaitekūnas, the former Lithuanian foreign minister, who advises the Ukrainian Security Council.

“I expect big problems with that, and with our ability to repulse Putin’s onslaught,” he said.

Ten days ago, yet another far-right party supporting Russia gained a foothold in an EU country, this time Slovakia. People’s Party, Our Slovakia won 8% of the vote in national elections, joining a burgeoning club including Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.

The far-right parties, which often stem from neo-Nazi groups and sport crypto-fascist insignia, are the most visible layer of the pro-Russia camp in Europe. With Europe engulfed in a migrant crisis sparked by the war in Syria, their anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric is in hot demand across the continent, particularly in the east. Party leaders are frequent guests in Moscow, and many of them are closely linked to Russia’s own reactionary networks. Together, they are nudging the political mainstream toward radical nationalism, which these days often comes hand in hand with pro-Russian sentiment.

The leader of Our Slovakia, Marian Kotleba, has a penchant for Nazi-style uniforms and harsh rhetoric aimed at the Roma, or Gypsies. He took Russia’s side in the Ukraine crisis, sending a letter of support to the pro-Moscow leader, Viktor Yanukovych, a month before he was ousted in the country’s 2014 revolution.

Such groups help Russia create what Anton Shekhovtsov, a Vienna-based expert on Europe’s far right, calls an echo chamber of narratives, amplified as they bounce around news outlets and social media, increasingly becoming part of conventional thinking. He cites such narratives as “Sanctions are useless,” “Russia is an important trade partner,” and “Europe slavishly succumbs to the U.S.”

For now, the anti-sanction opposition consists of smaller countries, such as Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, and Cyprus. While voicing their reservations, they don’t dare stand against the majority. “But it only requires one large EU country to upset the balance,” Shekhovtsov said.

In fact, one large country already has moved that direction. In December, Italy blocked the automatic rollover of the sanctions, which increases the possibility of their being lowered in one of the coming renewal rounds. The large pro-Russian camps in France and Germany are adding to the chorus of skepticism.

Another milestone in relations between Russia and the EU is a Dutch referendum on the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine due on April 6. It started off as a prank by an anti-establishment group. Now, polling shows support for rejecting the agreement. The results of the vote will be non-binding, but its symbolism is great — it was this agreement that triggered the crisis in Ukraine in 2013.

When, the following year, a missile hit a Malaysian airliner flying over Ukraine, 193 out of 298 passengers on board were Dutch citizens. The government of the Netherlands blamed Russia for fomenting war in Ukraine, but many in the country share the view expressed by the leader of the country’s largest far-right party, Geert Wilders, who called the Ukraine crisis a “mess” caused by the EU.

Russian relations themselves are rarely much of an election issue. They certainly weren’t in the Slovak voting, Carnegie Endowment scholar Balasz Jarabik noted. Instead, the campaign was focused largely on the migrant crisis, with incumbent center-left prime minister, Robert Fico, embracing the same kind of anti-migrant rhetoric as his right-wing rivals. Still, the result is a more Russia-friendly parliament in a country that is taking over the EU presidency in July.

Even before the election, Slovakia was among the nations that voiced skepticism about the sanctions on Russia, which are renewed every six months, with the next decision due in June. Fico has called them ineffective and counterproductive.

Most Europeans see the conflict in Ukraine as local, said Vaitekūnas, the adviser to the Ukrainian Security Council, “but I can see it expanding and touching upon the members of the EU and NATO.” The EU is too weak and disunited to answer global challenges such as those posed by Russia, he said.

Russian media networks that target Western audiences, such as RT and Sputnik, are promoting everything from anti-immigrant sentiment to “Brexit,” a British exit from the EU. The focus of what Vaitekūnas calls this “weaponized information” effort is now shifting to Germany, he said.

There, the next election may precipitate the downfall of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has welcomed immigrants and was instrumental in shaping the EU’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. On Sunday, Merkel’s Christian Democrats suffered serious losses in regional elections, while the new far-right anti-immigrant AfD party made big gains.

**** Russia is gaming while the Gulf States led by Saudi is continuing to side with Israel. Why? Hezbollah and Syria and for the United States to take notice.

In part:

Alternet: Why has Saudi Arabia now gone after Hezbollah? After all, Hezbollah has been involved in Syria for the past five years. Unable to take on the Russians and come to terms with altered reality, Saudi Arabia has decided to target Hezbollah, hoping that this will pique the enthusiasm of the United States (via Israel). But the U.S. is in a bind. It is pledged to UN Security Council resolution 1701, which is about the management of the Lebanese-Israeli border. UN peacekeepers maintain that border, working closely with Hezbollah, on its terrain. The UN cannot denote Hezbollah a terrorist organization if it means to maintain the integrity of its 1701 operations. This gives the U.S.—which already sees Hezbollah as a terrorist group (under Israeli urging)—pause to escalate the situation. Saudi Arabia’s tantrum cannot be taken seriously in Washington. Nothing good will come of it.

Russia will now remove a substantial section of its military force from Syria. But it will remain at its naval and air bases, monitoring the ceasefire and watching to see if it needs to intervene once more.

It has made its point. At the same time the Russians have placed air-defense batteries along the northwestern section of the Syrian border, which has prevented Turkish air incursions into this sector. These batteries will not be removed. They are monuments to the new reality.

Another Dead by a Non-Citizen

Posted on March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 by Denise Simon

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —

A man was arrested and charged with one count of murder after officers said he shot and killed his former supervisor at a landscaping business near The Avenues Mall on Wednesday.

Ezequiel Lopez, 24, who is not a U.S. citizen, told police he planned to shoot 55-year-old Andrew Little at B&L Landscaping because he felt disrespected by him.

Little was a supervisor and 20-year employee at the landscaping business. Officers said Lopez shot Little once in the back.

A bullet also grazed Little’s cheek. There was a struggle, then Lopez’s gun malfunctioned.

Little died at the scene.

Lopez heard sirens and tried to run.

Joshua Curry worked with Lopez and said he grabbed his gun from his car after he heard his co-workers yell “active shooter!” He said he held Lopez at gunpoint until police arrived.

Officers said Lopez shot Little because he thought Little treated him differently than other employees.

Lopez worked at the business for six years. He’d recently been moved to a different work group from Little’s.

Officers said Lopez is not a U.S. citizen and it will be up to Immigrations to investigate.

Curry said Lopez had problems with everyone with whom he worked and recently had been picking random fights with his co-workers.

***** Then a deported cartel member in Nashville:

Previously Deported Leader of Honduran Drug Group Arrested In Nashville

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Months of work by narcotics detectives assigned to the Specialized Investigations Division led to today’s takedown of a Nashville heroin distribution group with ties to Honduras.

The alleged leader of the Nashville group, Victor Cardoza-Martinez, 24, admits to being a felon who had previously been deported from the United States.

This investigation began in mid-2015 after the police department received information that this group was distributing heroin and methamphetamine in the South Nashville area. Extensive surveillance was conducted and multiple undercover buys were made from the group.

This morning, contemporaneous search warrants were executed at a number of locations, including 5319 Nolensville Pike, apartment D-107 (where Cardoza-Martinez was arrested), 298 Cedarcreek Drive, 331 Wallace Road, 535 Raymond Street, 885 Irma Drive, 268 Coral Court, and 365 Paragon Mills Road. Seizures included $10,717 cash, 7 vehicles, 7.5 ounces of methamphetamine, 6 ounces of heroin and 15 grams of cocaine.

At the 365 Paragon Mills apartment location, Carlos Ochoa, 26, was pulling out in a 2009 Infiniti sedan as officers arrived. Ochoa quickly accelerated, crossed the street and crashed the Infiniti into a tree line. Ochoa kicked his way out of the vehicle and fled on foot. Officers arrested him minutes later on Tampa Drive. Cocaine packaged for resale was recovered from the vehicle wreckage.

The 7 persons charged in this case are:

-Victor Cardoza-Martinez, who is charged with engaging in a heroin distribution conspiracy and 3 counts of selling methamphetamine. His bond is set at $300,000.

-Walter Chinchilla, 21, of 885 Irma Drive, who is charged with engaging in a heroin distribution conspiracy. His bond is set at $150,000.

-Juan Bonilla, 30, of 331 Wallace Road, who is charged with engaging in a heroin distribution conspiracy. His bond is set at $150,000.

-Ruby Perez, 23, of 885 Irma Drive, who is charged with engaging in a heroin distribution conspiracy. Her bond is set at $150,000.

-Josselyn Caceres-Barahona, 22, of 365 Paragon Mills Road, who is charged with possessing cocaine for resale.

-Carlos Ochoa, 26, of 4404 Tennessee Avenue, who is charged with possessing cocaine for resale, evading arrest, leaving the scene of a crash, and driving without a license.

-Fredy Reyes, 20, of Bridgeway Circle (not yet in custody), named in an outstanding warrant charging that engaged in a cocaine conspiracy.

The Specialized Investigations Division continues to make heroin interdiction a priority, fully realizing that heroin abuse is both a law enforcement issue and a public health threat. Heroin overdoses and deaths are significant concerns in cities across America, large and small, Nashville included.

Court: Iran Ordered to Pay $10.5 Billion

Posted on March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 by Denise Simon

This should have been part of the Iran nuclear talks, yet nothing was to convolute the matter including missiles, prisoners and historical terror. Today, Europe recognized the Iranian violations but refuse to do anything. A world further divided.

Netanyahu demands world powers punish Iran for ‘Israel must be wiped out’ missile tests

DN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on world powers to punish Iran after the country test-fired two ballistic missiles emblazoned with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” in Hebrew.

Netanyahu said he instructed Israel’s Foreign Ministry to direct the demand to the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — the countries that signed the deal lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard test-launched the ballistic missiles last week, the latest in a series of recent tests aimed at demonstrating Iran’s intentions to push ahead with its missile program after scaling back its nuclear program under the deal reached last year.

Following last week’s missile launches, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Iran to “act with moderation,” and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the launches were “provocative and destabilizing.” Meanwhile, Russia says no new UN sanctions on Iran over missile tests.

Now to the 9-11 case:

Iran Told to Pay $10.5 Billion to Sept. 11 Kin, Insurers

Bloomberg: Iran was ordered by a U.S. judge to pay more than $10.5 billion in damages to families of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to a group of insurers.

U.S. District Judge George Daniels in New York issued a default judgment Wednesday against Iran for $7.5 billion to the estates and families of people who died at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It includes $2 million to each estate for the victims’ pain and suffering plus $6.88 million in punitive damages.

Daniels also awarded $3 billion to insurers including Chubb Ltd. that paid property damage, business interruption and other claims.

Earlier in the case, Daniels found that Iran had failed to defend claims that it aided the Sept. 11 hijackers and was therefore liable for damages tied to the attacks. Daniels’s ruling Wednesday adopts damages findings by a U.S. magistrate judge in December. While it is difficult to collect damages from an unwilling foreign nation, the plaintiffs may try to collect part of the judgments using a law that permits parties to tap terrorists’ assets frozen by the government.

The case is In Re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 03-cv-09848, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

In case you did not read the 9-11 Commission Report:

Read below about Iran/Hezbollah & 9/11 hijackers’ travels, see pp. 240-241 of the 9/11 Commission Report.

For a deeper dive and for sure the reprehensible decisions by Barack Obama and John Kerry to legitimize Iran, keep reading below if you dare.

CIS: On July 23, 2001, a former senior Iranian intelligence officer,Abolghasem Mr. Mesbahi,learned that Iran’s plan to strike the United States had been activated. Mr. Mesbahi knew it was important and real because he had worked on this plan previously, when he had helped set up Iran’s intelligence service, the MOIS, as far back as the mid-1980s. Mr. Mesbahi – known outside Iran as one of a core of “Assassins”- told German intelligence, which had given him protected status as a key witness in German prosecutions of brutal Iranian assassinations of dozens of dissidents.

On Aug. 13, 2001, Mr. Mesbahi received greater specificity as to the plot. The coded messages from former colleagues inside Iran revealed that the longtime plan to crash civilian airliners into American cities had been activated. Again, the officer told his German handlers, who responded that they would convey the information – we do not know if they did or to whom or exactly what information they might have passed on – and the Germans would let Mr. Mesbahi know if there were any developments. On Aug. 27, 2001, Mr. Mesbahi once more received confirmation that the plan was in motion, and the messages indicated a German connection. The 9/11 Commission would later confirm that key 9/11 liaison Ramzi Binalshibh and pilots Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah were all German residents leading up to Sept. 11.

After Sept. 11, Mr. Mesbahi approached an American he knew was well-versed in Iranian affairs and told him of his foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 plan and how the plot to crash the then existing Boeing 747 aircraft into New York, Washington and Chicago had evolved in Iran years prior. The Pentagon, White House and World Trade Center had been on the hit list. Back in the 1980s, Iran had decided, he said, that to defeat the United States, it needed to engage in asymmetric warfare.

Mr. Mesbahi is one of three Iranian defectors in a case that took eight years to develop. His affidavit remains under seal in a case in which a judgment was signed late last month in New York federal court, Havlish v. Iran,which establishes that the joint enterprise of Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. His testimony has been deemed credible by former CIA Middle East undercover officers and supervisors Clare Lopez and Bruce Tefft, also experts in the case representing Sept. 11 victim’s families. Mr. Mesbahi had direct contact with Iran’s leaders during the 1980s and early 1990s, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mr. Mesbahi held many positions in Iran’s intelligence service, including running espionage out of the Iranian Embassy in France (France expelled him) and later for all of Western Europe. It was Mr. Mesbahi’s good friend, Saeed Emami, also a top official in the MOIS, who warned Mr. Mesbahi that he was slated for assassination in the mid-1990s upon his falling out with hard-liners.

On May 14, 2001, the overseer of Iran’s intelligence apparatus, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, wrote to the head of Iran’s intelligence operations on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader about the pending plot that became Sept. 11. The document shows the following: (1) direct connectivity between Iran’s supreme leader’s intelligence apparatus and al Qaeda; (2) knowledge and support for a large upcoming operation connecting Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the planned attack; and (3) the Iranian government’s goal to “damage America’s and Israel’s economic systems, discredit [their] institutions … as part of political confrontation, undermining [their] stability and security.” Specifically, the document states “support for al-Qaeda’s future plans,” cautioning “to be alert to the negative future consequences of this cooperation [between Iran and al Qaeda]” and the “expanding the collaboration with the fighters of al Qaeda and Hezbollah … no traces must be left that might have negative and irreversible consequences.”

The document is an attachment in the Havlishcase in the expert affidavit of Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman, who has written extensively on Mr. Mesbahi, Iran and Hezbollah and has deep connections to Israeli intelligence. Before Mr. Bergman, Iran expert Ken Timmerman also made this document public.

How did Iran get involved with al Qaeda? According to the Lopez-Tefft affidavit and other expert affidavits in the case, as well as convicted former Osama bin Laden bodyguard Ali Mohamed, the alliance began in 1993 in Khartoum, Sudan, in a meeting between Iranian and Hezbollah leadership with al Qaeda leadership to bridge the Shiite-Sunni gap and address common goals of defeating Israel and the United States. A direct working relationship was created between Iran’s MOIS; Hezbollah’s operational chief and key liaison with Iran, Imad Mughniyah; Osama bin Laden; and other senior al Qaeda leadership. Mughniyah himself was responsible for more than 100 terrorist incidents until his assassination in Syria in 2008.

Much of the al Qaeda training was carried out in camps in Iran run by MOIS and Mughniyah. In addition to training, al Qaeda received blueprints and drawings of bombs, manuals for wireless equipment, intelligence training, travel facilitation, operational guidance and much more. Hezbollah was a role model for al Qaeda, with more direct attacks and diversity of attacks against American property and Americans than any other terrorist organization, from the 1983 Marine barracks and American Embassy bombings in Lebanon to the torture deaths of senior CIA officials. Inside Iran, al Qaeda was directed carefully, providing all varieties of material support in the successful attacks in the late 1990s on the USS Cole, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. embassies in Africa. (Iran and Hezbollah’s involvement in these other incidents has been referenced previously in federal prosecutions in U.S. courts. Khobar Towers, for example, was conducted by Saudi Hezbollah with direct support from Iran and knowledge of al Qaeda. The USS Cole and African bombings were carried out by al Qaeda with support and direction from Iran and Hezbollah.) The more al Qaeda proved its ability, the more attention Iran gave.

Iran already had conceived the Sept. 11 plot. al Qaeda became the perfect proxy. Not only was terrorist travel facilitation provided to al Qaeda by Iran generally, as described by the 9/11 Commission in its final report, but Mughniyah himself accompanied at least some Sept. 11 hijackers into Iran after the hijackers obtained the U.S. visas that would assure their entry into America, as I describe at length in my affidavit in the Havlish case. Yet Iran needed credible deniability. The May 2001 memo acquired by Mr. Bergman shows that Iran’s operational strategy clearly delineated that its leadership demanded a “hands off” approach about any involvement in terrorist acts committed against the United States. Iran knew a direct assault against America could mean a devastating U.S. response.

In the mid-1980s, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, labeled the plot “Shaitan dar Atash”meaning “Satan in Fire” or “Satan in Hell.” “Satan” was the code word for the United States. Plots included the use of chemical bombs, “dirty” bombs; attacks on power plants, gas stations, and oil tankers; as well as the plot that became Sept. 11. According to Mr. Mesbahi, at least one hijacker, Majid Moqed, who supported the terrorist operation on American Airlines Flight 11 (north tower of the World Trade Center) was housed at the Hotel Sepid, a MOIS safe house in Tehran. Mr. Mesbahi also relates that Iran was able to obtain an Airbus simulator and Boeing software from China for exactly the type of plane that eventually was used in the plot.

For the past 10 years, our foreign policy has been skewed toward heading off al Qaeda terrorist activities and dealing with the regimes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet we now know, after all these years, that al Qaeda might never have carried out the Sept. 11 attacks but for Iran and Hezbollah. The 9/11 Commission gave America the details on how Iran’s proxy, al Qaeda, managed to carry out the Sept. 11 plot and detailed what it could of Iranian involvement – having come across relevant intercepts indicating Iranian involvement at the National Security Agency two weeks before the statutory close of the commission. The commission recommended a further look into Iran and Sept. 11 on Page 241 of the final report, stating: “After 9/11, Iran and Hezbollah wished to conceal any past evidence of cooperation with Sunni terrorists associated with al Qaeda. A senior Hezbollah official disclaimed any Hezbollah involvement in 9/11. We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government.” But it was never done.

Rep. Peter T. King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, would like to reconvene a 9/11 Commission. He has a point. Answers are essential, however embarrassing they may be. As Iran gets cozy with South America, is said to be months away from nuclear warhead capability and is known to continue to plot against the United States, nothing less grave than our national security is at stake.

Further reading on the case is here also.