From Russia
September 12, 2001 Wednesday
Islamists with Afghan links behind US attacks: Russian intelligence
Russia's domestic intelligence agency said Wednesday it suspected an Islamist group with links to Afghanistan's Taliban and Chechen rebels was behind the attacks on New York and Washington.
The ITAR-TASS news agency quoted FSB (ex-KGB) officials as saying the group, Jamaat al-Islami, was responsible for both Tuesday's kamikaze passenger plane attacks and a series of 1999 bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk.
The 1999 attacks in Russia claimed the lives of some 230 people, and were blamed on Islamists linked to rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.
The officials said possessed significant financial and logistical resources.
The US's top suspect of the unprecedented suicide attacks is Afghan-based Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.
September 12, 2001, Wednesday
Russian intelligence warns CIA that more attacks imminent - internet publication
SOURCE: Ren TV, Moscow, in Russian 0900 gmt 12 Sep 01
Text of report by Russian Ren TV on 12 September
Presenter Yelena Meshcheryakova Russian intelligence agents know the organizers and executors of the terrorist attacks in the USA.
They are Usamah Bin-Laden's organization, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and the Taleban Afghan government. According to the internet publication news.ru, Russia's foreign intelligence special envoy told the CIA that there were at least two Uzbeks among the suicide terrorists. Our security services are warning the USA that what happened on Tuesday is just the beginning, and that the next target of the terrorists will be an American nuclear facility.
September 13, 2001, Thursday
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE DID NOT WARN U.S. ABOUT PREPARATIONS FOR NEW TERRORIST ATTACKS
MOSCOW. Sept 13 (Interfax)- Press secretary of the director of Russia's External Intelligence Service (SVR) Tatiana Samolis, talking to Interfax on Thursday, denied reports by a number of media outlets that an SVR representative met with the CIA director to hand over materials on preparations for new terrorist attacks at a number of U.S. nuclear, space, and other strategic facilities.
"No transfer of materials, or the meeting itself, has taken place," the press secretary said.
September 15, 2001 Saturday
Moscow had warned US of possible terrorist strikes: FSB
Russian intelligence services had warned Washington several times in the past of the possibility of terrorist strikes on US soil, the head of the service, Nikolai Patrushev, said Saturday, quoted by Interfax.
"We had clearly warned them," said Patrushev, who is head of the FSB (ex-KGB). He added that their US counterparts "did not pay the necessary attention" to their warnings.
Washington has named Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, currently living in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime, as the number one suspect thought to be behind Tuesday's carnage in the eastern United States.
Patrushev said the FSB knew exactly where bin Laden was until Tuesday, but that he had since left his base.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who is currently in Armenia, said Saturday of the terror attacks: "Evil must be punished."
A wave of unprecedented terrorist attacks hit the United States on Tuesday, when hijackers took over four planes, plowing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon in suburban Washington.
A fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania; officials have estimated that more than 5,000 died in the attacks.
September 18, 2001 Tuesday
AFTER THE ATTACK; FOREIGN AFFAIRS; Russia Mulls Options to Help U.S.; Diplomacy: Moscow talks with Central Asian allies. Its aid could be critical in military action against terrorists in Afghanistan.
... Russian officials have long blamed that insurgency on terrorists with financing from the Middle East, including Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, whom U.S. officials suspect was behind last week's terrorist strikes. On Monday, Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB--the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB--announced that it had discovered a compact disc in a weapon cache in Chechnya that contained operational information and piloting instructions for Boeing 737 aircraft. All four aircraft that crashed last week in the U.S. were made by Boeing.
Information about the discovery has been passed to the United States and other Western intelligence agencies, an FSB spokesman said, but he did not say when the cache was discovered or when the information was provided.
"We know that the people who had it are part of the group of an Arab mercenary who has contacts with Osama bin Laden," FSB spokesman Alexander A. Zdanovich said. "And we know that a number of rebels and representatives of Osama bin Laden have been to Chechnya and may now be in the Pankissi" Gorge, an area in Georgia bordering Chechnya.
Kremlin spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky suggested that in the past, the West has unwisely dismissed Russian intelligence warnings.
"Unfortunately, for some reasons, this information was not regarded seriously enough in the West," he said. "Maybe it was not perceived as a direct threat to the life and safety of Western citizens."
...
September 19, 2001, Wednesday
Russian Secret Agencies: Bin Laden Might Be Involved in U.S. Attacks
Russian special services have found circumstantial evidence of international terrorist Osama bin Laden's complicity in last week's terror attacks against the U.S. and offered them to Washington, Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.
"We have made whatever data we have about the attacks available to U.S.," an anonymous official from Russian intelligence services was quoted as saying.
On the other hand, he said, direct evidence is lacking for proving Laden's guilty.
There is also evidence that one of the culprits in the attacks had fought on the rebel side in Chechnya, he disclosed.
On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov stated that Russia is ready to provide the United States with all necessary information it has for finding out real criminals.
