CIA met with Bin Laden 2 months prior to 9/11?

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html

Has any major American media outlet ever reported this?

<Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.
The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.

Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA.

The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. He was recalled to Washington soon afterwards.>

[RBHam]

1. Where were you two years ago?

We covered all this then. Too many people refused to believe it then, they'll continue to refuse to believe it now. Hell, Dick Cheney could confess on tape and they'd still be in denial.

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2. Not here

I didn't join DU until 2003 and didn't start posting regularly until Clark entered the race.

[ComerPerro]

5. Scary, isn't it?

Sorry to lack enthusiasm. But, as the poster below said, "Why do you think folks here are so jaded"

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6. It sure is

:scared:

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7. Do you know any good websites about the BFEE?

n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

10. It's not just BFEE, but an amazing resource is

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/index2.html. Read the 9/11 complete timeline and outlines, sourced to mainstream cites. Organized by DUer Paul Thompson. The indispensible 9/11 website. And Daniel Hopsicker has done great investigative work on 9/11, mostly by following the trail in Florida. His site is http://www.madcowprod.com/

[fla nocount]

3. Not yesterday's news, not even last year's news,

Why do you suppose folks around here are so jaded? We've know this for years (more than two). Osama was (is) a CIA op and his Daddy sits at a board table with Poppy and like Hinckley's is a lifelong friend. Get a grip on the last forty years.......these people are thugs on a world scale. They also control everything most of us see, hear and read on a daily basis. Scary stuff indeed but hardly news.
For example, Oswald wasn't really all that good a shot.

[ComerPerro]

4. Yes, Its old news, and no, no one in the US has discussed it

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8. Did foreign countries report and discuss this?

n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

9. It's shocking what goes underreported. For instance:

Mohammed Atta attended the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force in Alabama. Saeed Alghamdi studied at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. At least three other alledged 9/11 hijackers received training at secure US military installations.

This was reported as early September 16, 2001 by The New York Times, but has since been flushed down the official memory hole.

Lt. Col. Steve Butler was vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute while Alghamdi was a student. In a letter published May 26, 2002, Butler charged "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain." Butler was removed from his position and threatened with court martial.

According to its web site, the Defense Language Institute provides foreign language services to "Department of Defense, government agencies and foreign governments" to support "national security interests and global operational needs." Why was Alghamdi there?

Fifteen of the alledged hijackers received visas through Jeddah, bin Laden's home, headquarters of the bin Laden family business and Osama's Saudi base before his expulsion. Michael Springman, a 20-year veteran of the State Department who was stationed to Jeddah, says he was repeatedly ordered to approve unqualified visa applicants: terrorists who received training in the United States by leave of the CIA. "The State Department did not run the Consulate in Jeddah. The CIA did."

Why did 15 of the 9/11 hijackers obtain visas from a bureau run as a CIA operation?

A CBC radio interview with Springman, from January 19, 2002, can be heard here: http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm . He claims his decisions to deny visas to unqualified applicants were frequently overturned for "national security reasons." In the interview, he claims he was told the CIA was working with bin Laden through the Jeddah office as a channel to send al Qaeda recruits to the United States for training as terrorists. He bluntly asserts that this partnership didn't end with the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and continued as late as September 11, 2001. Springman raised hell, and lost his job. Why would the CIA be helping bin Laden send terrorists into the US after the Soviet defeat? Springman: "It's only a few thousand dead, and what's that against the greater gain for the United States in the Middle East?"

Springman, 20-year State Department veteran, suggests that those who died on September 11 "may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives."

http://www.madcowprod.com/index5.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/offi-j21.shtml
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=104&row=1
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/02/521.shtml
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm

[fla nocount]

11. You go friend.

Google challenge

type in

O'Neil FBI bin Laden WTC

or

Bush Brown Brown Harriman Hitler

Take a lunch, say goodbye to the wife and kids.....you'll be away awhile.

[ComerPerro]

13. Ouch

Those are two potent searches....


Damn

[FreakinDJ]

12. I remember that report

It was later categorical denied. Good report but it needs witnesses to come forth

[RBHam]

14. LeFigaro stands by it.

The CIA denies it.

Who do YOU believe?

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15. French intelligence

Do they still stand by it?

[Minstrel Boy]

16. French Intelligence leaked

the story. I'm not sure what they have said publically. I wouldn't be surprised if they denied it. They never went on the record with it; they just wanted to get the story out there. A denial would be par for the course. Hell, even bin Laden himself denied it, when asked by a Pakistani journalist. (I think Osama's exact words were "ah, a time for politics...z'an absurd assinuation." :) )

French Intelligence is, I believe, considered to be the best Western Intelligence in the Middle East.

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17. Really?

Better than the CIA and Mossad?

[9215]

18. Some people involved:

Apparently OBL arrived on July 4, 2001 on a flight from Qetta, Pakistan to an American Hospital in Dubai and spent July 4-11 there.
Bernard Koval was the CEO of the Hospital and Doctor Terry Callaway attended to OBL. Callaway has refused all questions.
Another person involved is Larry Stevens.

Richard Labeviere, author of "Terror Dollars" (about illegal Al Qaeda accounts), wrote the story about OBL's kidney operation.