MOURNING in AMERICA |
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September, 2001 - CNN | Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef escaped at the time, but agents caught his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, who told them a chilling tale.
"Murad narrated to us about a plan by the
Ramzi cell in the continental U.S. to hijack a commercial plane and ram it
into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and also the Pentagon," said
Rodolfo Mendoza, a Philippine intelligence investigator.
They said they passed that information on to the FBI in 1995, but it's not clear what was done with it.
On September 11, two hijacked commercial jets slammed into the World Trade Center, collapsing the towers. Another jet hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Authorities believe that fourth jet may have been headed for the Capitol or the White House. Thousands were killed in the attacks.
On September 17, FBI Director Robert Mueller
insisted the agency had "no warning signs" of the attacks.
Murad was a pilot who admitted he had been
trained in Afghanistan as well as the United States. Bin Laden, a Saudi native,
lives in Afghanistan.
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