ark og ulandskr201103-3.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brought to Light by 9/11

Has 9/11 changed anything for American Africa-policy?

KR: Only in that the US has started paying attention to the place: they certainly realize that you can’t let places like Somalia just exist as a failed state – that you have to get involved. Recently, we saw that Powell, before he came to Madrid to the Iraqi donor conference, made a stop in northern Kenya to talk about the Sudan peace talks. For the Secretary of State to make a stop in Kenya in the middle of the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan – that is pretty telling. Sudan is a place Osama bin Laden used a base in the past: they want to make sure the government resolves the conflict.

It appears that the government of Sudan contacted the US about Osama bin Laden before the bombings in Kenya – but without State Department being interested at the time?

KR: Apparently, he wasn’t even indicted for anything in the US, so they could not legally arrest him, even if the Sudanese offered to turn him over.

But that legal detail would matter less now?

KR: Now it wouldn’t matter at all.

There was a lack of active interest on the part of the State Department?

KR: …and the White House: nobody was on the ball regarding terrorism. The 9/11 Commission which is investigating these things in the States will have an amazing report if they go back far enough. Early 1995 I wrote a story from the Philippines where I was then based. This story was about a plot by Moslem extremists to kill the pope during his visit to the Philippines and to simultaneously blow up five or six American jet liners over the Pacific. And nobody paid any attention to that story – including my editor. One of the people involved in that story was Ramzi Yousef who [had already been] involved in the World Trade Center [attack in 1993] and of course it was then discovered that he was linked to Al-Qaida and bin Laden.

At the time, partly they just thought this was some fanciful plot the Philippinos where concocting, partly it was like “Oh, Richburg’s gone crazy over in the Philippines”, so it never got the play it deserved at the time. But it was a pretty serious plot: the police raided [Ramzi’s] apartment where they found maps of the pope’s route, explosives and priest’s outfits – so these people where probably going to strap explosives to themselves disguised as priests in order to get close to the pope and detonate. And they found maps and schedules for United Airlines, American Airlines, and all these airliners.

This was the plan that was later transformed into 9/11?

KR: To me that was the genesis of 9/11: it was the use of airliners as weapons, and it was also the simultaneous nature of it. That is the Al-Qaida trademark: that it’s coordinated. On September 11 when the planes hit the Twin Towers I went back into my notebooks – I keep every notebook I ever had – and I found all my interviews I did for that story in 1995, and so we had a decent little story saying “this goes back at least to that plot”. If I knew that, just being some journalist sitting in the Philippines how come the US government didn’t keep an eye on these guys?

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Photo (illustration): BrunoInBaghdad.com

Photo (portrait):
Francesca Luk