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| The Investigation |
| Cole killer may have been involved in 9-11 |
| 2001-09-23 |
It now appears that the same men who masterminded the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 may be tied to the attacks. Since January 2000, the CIA had been aware of a man named Tawfiq bin Atash, better known in terrorist circles as "Khallad." A Yemeni-born former freedom fighter in Afghanistan, Khallad assumed control of bin Laden's bodyguards and became a kind of capo in Al Qaeda. According to intelligence sources, Khallad helped coordinate the attack on the Cole. These same sources tell Newsweek that in December 1999, Khallad was photographed by the Malaysian security service (which was working with the CIA to track terrorists) at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. There, Khallad met with several bin Laden operatives. One was Fahad al Quso, who, it later turned out, was assigned to videotape the suicide attack on the Cole. Another was Khalid al-Midhar, who was traveling with an associate, Nawaf al-Hazmi, on a trip arranged by an organization known to U.S. intelligence as a "logistical center" and "base of support" for Al Qaeda. Those two men -- al-Midhar and al-Hazmi -- were listed among the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner that dive bombed into the Pentagon. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |