[A-List] France Warned CIA Ahead of 9-11

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi]

Report: France knew of al-Qaida hijack plot Intelligence reports ahead of
9/11 were handed over to CIA, 

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Updated: 1 hour, 3 minutes ago PARIS - French secret services produced nine
reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the al-Qaida
threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft, the
French newspaper Le Monde said on Monday. 

The newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents that
showed foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden’s network and were
carefully tracking its moves. 

One document prepared in January 2001 was entitled, “Plan to hijack an
aircraft by Islamic radicals,” and said the operation had been discussed in
Kabul at the start of 2000 by al-Qaida, Taliban and Chechen militants. 

The hijack was meant to happen between March and September 2000 but the
planners put it back “because of differences of opinion, particularly over
the date, objective and participants,” Le Monde said, citing the report. 

The attacks on U.S. cities that eventually took place on Sept. 11, 2001
killed almost 3,000 people. 

Specifics not known Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had
been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had
ever been made in the official U.S. September 11 Commission, which produced
its findings in July 2004. 

The newspaper quoted a former senior official at France’s DGSE secret
service agency as saying that, although France thought a hijack was being
planned, the DGSE did not know that the plot involved flying aircraft into
buildings. 

“You have to remember that a plane hijack (in January 2001) did not have
the same significance as it did after Sept. 11. At the time, it implied
forcing a plane to land at an airport and undertaking negotiations,” said
Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi. 

Le Monde said the documents showed the French believed bin Laden was still
receiving help from family members and senior officials in Saudi Arabia
ahead of Sept. 11, 2001, despite attempts to clamp down on the network
after al-Qaida’s attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. 



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