Washington's WTOP-FM reports that a Libyan former terrorist and onetime associate of Osama bin Laden is telling his story of the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks. According to him, it was a miscalculation of enormous proportions:
"I'm 100 percent sure they had no clue about what was going to happen," says Noman Benotman, who was head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the summer of 2000.
"What happened after the 11th of September was beyond their imagination, " says Benotman, who adds that al-Qaida thought the U.S. was a "paper tiger." . . .
[Bin Laden deputy Ayman al] Zawahiri laughed when [Benotman] warned those at the 2000 meeting that the U.S. response would be swift, hard and long, Benotman says.
Benotman attributes al-Qaida's overconfident attitude to the United States' response to al-Qaida attacks on its in embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1998.
Zawahiri, according to Benotman, expected only a missile attack.
"When they attacked the embassies in East Africa, they estimated the U.S. launched 75 cruise missiles and eight people got killed. So they said this time, maybe they will launch 200 and they laughed about this."
Benotman's assessment is backed up by a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was active in the fight against al-Qaida.
The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says "several captured terrorists have said publicly that al-Qaida never expected the towers to fall. Their goal was to frighten people and impact the U.S. economy, so they really didn't plan for the massive response the U.S. launched."
WTOP quotes a non-anonymous ex-CIA man, Michael Scheuer, who doubts Benotman's sincerity and thinks he's saying these things because Libya's dictator, Muammar Gadhafi, "is holding a hammer over his head"--though it's not clear why it's in Gadhafi's interests for Benotman to say the things he's saying.
Scheuer adds: "I would like to believe that bin Laden was shocked and dismayed by what we did after 9/11, but I come hard up against an awful lot of evidence that that's exactly what he wanted."
We could be wrong, but this view of bin Laden's limitless cunning has always struck us as naive. We would also point out that bin Laden is as impressed with Scheuer as vice versa. In 2007, as NPR.org notes, the al Qaeda chief was quoted as saying the following: "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer." It could just be that Scheuer is praising bin Laden as repayment for this blurb--or in the hope of getting another one.
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