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zoltan907 ago

I didn't have the chance to read shoosh's comment before it was deleted, but since it seems to have been about the Iraq war, I'd like to share something about that. About a month or so before 9/11, I read an article on the London "Times" website about how numerous foreign intelligence services had warned the U.S. that they had picked up information that Al Qaeda was planning to fly planes into buildings. According to the article, some terrorist cells were thought to be already in the U.S., taking flight lessons. A flight instructor from a school in Florida was quoted. Apparently, the White House had tightened security in April because it expected some kind of attack, but when an attack didn't happen, security was loosened again. At the time, I considered posting the article on Usenet, but I didn't, because I thought it might be seen as fear-mongering. I found it interesting that no one in the U.S. media was talking about it, considering that it was published in one of the world's major newspapers.

About a month later, the 9/11 attacks happened, and I was suspicious about how the Bush administration immediately started talking about Iraq and Saddam Hussain, when the article had stated that all of the intelligence agencies had warned Bush about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. I wish I had thought to immediately retrieve that article, but I waited until years later to look for it, and by that time, the "Times" website was behind a paywall. I searched for pre-9/11 articles that mentioned Al Qaeda and planes, but couldn't find the one I was looking for. It occurred to me then that perhaps someone in the Blair government asked or told the "Times" to remove the article from its website because that article would likely contradict the "bad intelligence" claim, and Blair was one of the only world leaders to support the Iraq war.

When I last visited the "Times" website, I didn't even see a Search field. Is the Search function available only to subscribers? I doubt that the article is still available online. To find it, I would probably have to go to the university library and browse through their microfilm.