By Gordon Thomas

Anti-Semitic conspiracists plan to flood the internet to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 attacks by resurrecting the old canard that Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, knew in advance of the attack – and did not warn the CIA and FBI.

The conspiracists say that the attack on the Twin Towers was a “false flag” operation organised by Mossad as part of an ongoing attempt by Israel to launch a war against its Muslim “enemies”.

The fact is that Mossad warned that an attack was impending.

From the day bin Laden’s suicide bombers partly destroyed the World Trade Center in 1993, Mossad had placed him at the top of its own list of most wanted terrorists. Its deep-cover field agents had picked up “whispers in the wind” that bin Laden was planning “something big,” said one report. Another spoke of a “strong rumour bin Laden is planning a Hiroshima type attack.” Still another revealed a flight simulator being used in an al-Qaeda training camp near Kabul. Then came the news that bin Laden had been trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons.

While Mossad analysts tried to connect the dots, the reports were also passed on through the long-established back channel to the CIA. The Pentagon was asked to evaluate the threat of an air strike. One of its analysts, Marvin Cetron, wrote, “Coming down the Potomac, you could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House.” Another analyst, Martin Clefran, was told “look we can’t manage a crisis until it is a crisis”.

Before 9/11, there was a feeling in Washington that Mossad was once more crying wolf, that it had a vested interest in promoting Islamic fundamentalism as a threat because it feared its terrorists and wanted to persuade the United States that it also faced a similar threat. By the time Efraim Halevy, head of Mossad before 9/11, had come into office, dutifully read the files on terrorism threats, and seen the reaction to Mossad’s warnings, he had decided that, in the words of one of his senior officers, “there was no point in pushing against a bolted door.”

However, Haleavy confirmed to me that Mossad “had sent several warnings in the week prior to September that an attack was coming” and cited “credible chatter” Mossad agents had picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. In his diplomatic way, he implied that the growing turf war between the FBI and CIA in 2001 was one reason why the warnings were ignored Both agencies had concrete evidence that al-Qaeda was an increasing threat: one of its operatives had been stopped at the last moment from flying a hijacked plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and intel had emerged at Langley, indicating bin Laden was planning an air strike against the economic summit it Italy earlier in 2001. But the sense of paralysis and denial, compounded by the growing turf war between the FBI and the CIA, had continued to hold the U.S. intelligence community in its grip

After 9/11 Haleavy recalled the “hot line from Langley was superheated”. A dozen calls a day from George Tenet, then the CIA chief.

In one call Haleavy had snapped: “Where was your electronic surveillance?” to Tenet, who was facing intense criticism himself and wanted to know how much Mossad had known about the impending attack.

As conspiricists continue to spin their lies, the reality is that Mossad tried to warn the United States. As some choose to attack past events, those in the intelligence world need to continue to improve contact and sharing of vital information.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two former FBI officials were charged Friday with lying to Congress about their involvement in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the latest in a series of splashy and politically charged actions the Justice Department has undertaken ahead of next month’s midterm contests.

Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, former leaders of a since-disbanded task force set up to counter foreign election interference, appeared in federal court in Washington, where their lawyers pressed for a speedy hearing to contest allegations their clients lied to lawmakers by saying that they did not participate in FBI investigations of Biden.

The prosecution, a rare Department of Justice criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled and peculiar saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race. It also comes amid a broader, backward-looking effort by FBI Director Kash Patel, who before taking over the nation’s premier law enforcement agency was a harsh critic of it, to scrutinize high-profile episodes from the bureau’s recent past that for years have animated President Donald Trump’s conservative base.

Floris’ attorneys called her “a patriot” and said she has “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years.”

“Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”

Attorneys for Benavides accused the government of bringing “baseless criminal charges against him in a transparently political complaint.”

“This is another sad day for the Department of Justice,” his lawyers said in an emailed statement. “But now we are in court, and the truth will come out: Brad Benavides is a true patriot who devoted his career to protecting this country and its people. These charges are a disgrace.”

A criminal complaint comes just before the midterms

The case was filed less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 elections via criminal complaint, which means prosecutors have not yet presented the allegations to a grand jury for an indictment. The Justice Department has repeatedly struggled in high-profile cases to convince grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments.

During the former FBI employees’ court appearance, both defense attorneys and the judge noted the unusual move to charge the case through a complaint, which is more often used by prosecutors when they have an urgent need to take people into custody because, for example, they present a danger or a risk of flight.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui remarked that it is “rare that we have charges this old coming in this nature,” and over the objections of prosecutors who pushed for more time, set a preliminary hearing for next Tuesday, citing what he said was the “sword of Damocles” hanging over the defendants’ heads.

The laptop discovery created turmoil in 2020 election

The revelation of the laptop’s existence in October 2020 injected a thorny storyline in the race between Trump, the Republican incumbent, and Biden’s father, Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic challenger who went on to win the race.

The laptop was publicized by the New York Post, which said it had obtained from Trump ally Rudy Giuliani a hard drive of a computer dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop about a year earlier.

The criminal complaint aims to build on longstanding congressional Republican complaints about the FBI’s handling of the laptop, including allegations that the bureau was not forthcoming to the public that the materials on it — including emails that showed discussions of the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings — were authentic and not the product of Russian disinformation.

The curious circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian involvement, particularly at a time when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community had assessed that Moscow that Russia was attempting to interfere in Trump’s favor in the election and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens. Dozens of former U.S. intelligence officials signed a letter saying that the laptop bore the “classic earmarks of an Russian information operation.”

But Trump’s then-director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said in a letter to Congress that there was no proof foreign actors had anything to do with the laptop. The FBI under then-Director Chris Wray subsequently endorsed that position.

Hunter Biden was charged with, and convicted of, gun and tax offenses during his father’s administration. Joe Biden pardoned him in his final weeks in office.

The case shines a light on an FBI task force on foreign intelligence

The complaint alleges that in their capacity as leaders of the Foreign Influence Task Force, Floris and Benavides were deeply engaged in the investigations into Hunter Biden, and that Biden was a recurring subject at FITF meetings.

Yet, the complaint says, both downplayed their firsthand knowledge of the laptop or involvement in investigations during 2023 testimony to lawmakers who were doing their own Biden investigation.

It accuses Benavides of making a false statement by saying he learned through Wikipedia that the FBI was in possession of the laptop, and says Floris falsely claimed to have had no knowledge of Hunter Biden having been the subject of discussions at FITF.

“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said.

The case brings renewed attention to the work of the task force, which was established in the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation. The task force became a magnet of congressional Republican criticism in part because of the Hunter Biden investigation and was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Justice Department has made other splashy moves

As FBI director, Patel has presided over widespread firings of agents who were involved in investigations of Trump or who are perceived as being against the Republican administration’s agenda.

He has also focused attention on years-old investigations like the Hunter Biden one that occurred before he became director and that have been the subject of grievances and complaints by Trump allies.

The Justice Department historically looks to avoid public and overt investigative acts in the direct lead-up to an election that involve candidates or that risk influencing a political outcome. But officials in the last two weeks have made a series of bold moves in cases with political undertones, including a search of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house in an immigration fraud investigation and a corruption indictment unsealed Thursday against powerful Democratic Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas.

Omar and Lucas are both Trump critics. Omar, who’s from Minnesota, has called the search of her Washington home an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” Lucas has said she won’t be intimidated or bullied by the federal government in its case against her and “will not back down.”

But in the tangled mess that is the war in Ukraine, all of those gestures benefit Russia most — leaving a ceasefire, let alone peace, a distant prospect for besieged Ukrainians, and the Trump administration and U.S. Republicans still grappling with high diesel and gasoline prices ahead of the midterm elections.

To win effusive praise from Witkoff and announce a resumption in negotiations, Russian President Vladimir Putin had to do very little: release Stephen Hubbard, a detainee of little value, and then overcome an obstacle of Russia’s own making: professed grievances over Ukraine’s stepped-up drone and missile strikes that coincided with Russia’s parliamentary elections in September.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not disguise his dismay — or his cynicism about the diplomatic developments — as he used the latest Russian strikes on Kyiv to throw shade at Witkoff for praising Putin as a “humanitarian.”

“Three waves of ballistic strikes were launched by Russian ‘humanitarians’ against Kyiv from the evening,” Zelensky said. “They used 21 missiles. Unfortunately, there is a significant number of hits and damages in the city: ordinary houses, energy facilities, infrastructure of one of the stations and the metro, shopping centers, and enterprises. Among the damaged objects is even a monastery.”

“Twelve of our regions were under Russian strikes this night,” he continued. “In Kyiv and the regions, 34 people were injured, including five children. As of now, two deaths are known.”

Zelensky added: “Essentially immediately after the latest negotiations, Russia delivered a demonstrative strike. This means that there are no real changes in its attitude towards everything that is happening. It is important to continue trying to find the right solutions to end this war.”

As Kyiv and Moscow maneuvered for Washington’s favor Wednesday, Zelensky reiterated his willingness to freeze the fighting along current battle lines — a proposal that Trump had made just over a year ago and that Russia rejected, insisting that Ukraine surrender the entirety of its eastern Donetsk region, including the so-called “fortress” cities that Russia has tried and failed to capture for years.

Following Witkoff’s visit to St. Petersburg on Wednesday, high-ranking Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the U.S. envoy’s points were so convincing that Moscow reconsidered its opposition to meeting a Ukrainian delegation and was willing to send delegates to Abu Dhabi in mid-November for technical talks, the first since February.

Ushakov said that Witkoff had informed Putin of the results of his talks with Zelensky in Oslo, adding there was little “substance” to the “new elements” of Ukrainian and European proposals. Ushakov said that he did not know how close the war was to ending but that “it is heading that way.”

Experts and analysts, especially in Ukraine, were less convinced.

“As experience shows, the mere fact that negotiations are taking place does not mean that a peace agreement is likely to be reached anytime soon,” Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko said in an interview. “It is more likely that the war will escalate at the same time, particularly the air war against Ukraine.”

“Russia’s attacks on Kyiv and Ukraine will be used as a tool to exert pressure on the negotiations,” he continued. “This is Putin’s preferred method. That is why I say that negotiations and an escalation of the war will take place simultaneously.”

Meanwhile, Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian member of parliament and chair of the committee on foreign policy and interparliamentary relations, described the talks as “a charade.”

“Russia is using the negotiations as a propaganda tool — that’s all — while we are trying to work with the Europeans and have some discussions and so on,” he said. “But there are no results anymore, and there won’t be any, unfortunately.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a political scientist and fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on X that while Witkoff’s readout generated little enthusiasm in Moscow, recent sanctions relief and Trump’s latest shift toward Russia “have given Putin sufficient grounds to agree to resume negotiations, particularly as doing so comes at little cost to Moscow.”

“It is prepared to engage in discussions for tactical gains, calculating that these, combined with the further deterioration of the Ukrainian state, may eventually produce a strategic shift in Russia’s favour,” Stanovaya wrote.

Other Russian officials have called the latest meeting with Trump’s envoys a sign that “Washington shares the assessment” about the lack of substance in what Kyiv and its European backers have proposed.

Russia has long sought Trump’s support for a negotiated end to the war that would deliver victory to Putin by allowing him to seize all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

“The talks … are undoubtedly a prelude to a potential diplomatic breakthrough,” Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said. “The latest meeting has, in effect, brought the issue of a settlement in Ukraine back onto the negotiating track.”

The talks are set to include military officers and Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister now known for his revisionist history books about Ukraine. Putin, meanwhile, will head to China, where he is working to set up a joint meeting with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

That’s a format that the Russian leader has long seemed to prefer, in which he can push to end the war on his terms while bypassing Ukraine and Europe.

The idea of such a big-power summit has alarmed Ukrainian officials, with Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha writing on X: “A trilateral ‌meeting between ⁠the leaders of Ukraine, the US, and Russia could help end the war sooner. A trilateral meeting between the leaders of Russia, China, and the US would do only the opposite: encourage Putin to continue this war.”

During his meeting with Putin, Witkoff hailed the diesel deal Trump struck with the Russian leader as “another example of what we can achieve by working together.”

The deal, which removes sanctions from Russia in a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy, is intended to lower fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.

Putin has claimed that it lowered global diesel prices by 5 percent to 6 percent, a figure energy experts dispute. The amount of diesel Russia is releasing is marginal compared with overall U.S. usage and hardly enough to address the global energy crisis set off by the U.S. war with Iran.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the first tanker with diesel bound for the U.S. was set to depart Thursday, even though the contract for the supplies has yet to be signed.

“This tanker will have a capacity of 40,000 tons,” Novak said. “And, certainly, further shipments will follow.”

To ship diesel to the U.S., Russia had to lift its own export embargo, imposed after systematic Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out some of the country’s largest oil refineries, creating shortages and price spikes for Russians.

Those strikes forced Russia to prioritize its domestic market, ration fuel at home and even temporarily permit the sale of lower-grade fuels to stabilize domestic availability.

Novak hinted that production limits were still in place and that the destination for diesel shipments will depend on “what volumes we can supply — over and above the needs of the United States.”

Details aside, the deal has given Putin a basis to push one of his mainstay talking points: that the West is hurting itself by imposing economic sanctions on Russia and ultimately won’t be able to meet its own needs without resuming purchases of Russian fossil fuels.

For Putin, who is also aware that Trump may flip positions again after the midterm elections, the current thaw with Washington creates an opportunity to improve ties with the U.S. while pushing ahead with a plan to make winter the most miserable yet for Ukraine in the nearly five-year-long invasion.

The Kremlin seems to hope that will break Ukraine’s resolve and European support for Kyiv will collapse.

But for Russia, there is also a risk of overplaying its hand, said Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist.

“The Putin regime will never have a more favorable opportunity to extricate itself from this war than it does right now,” Pastukhov said. “The frantic, restless way Putin is acting suggests he may, in part, grasp this. But hubris — the eternal nemesis of Russian emperors — stands in the way.”

Pastukhov said Trump appears to have moved away from a belief that freezing the fighting would be the best way to end the war quickly and is instead mulling a solution “in the manner of a gangland showdown.”

“In any case, I believe that this is no ordinary moment in the history of this war … but a true point of no return, a juncture where an intense struggle is underway over the terms of peace,” Pastukhov said.

“In all likelihood, this round of ping-pong will prove inconclusive; what happens next will depend on whether Trump is capable of moving from hints to action — that is, whether he will risk openly siding with Putin in this war, thereby forcing Europe — and, along with it, Zelensky — to capitulate.”

In Ukraine, trust in U.S. support has already evaporated.

After Trump cut off direct military and financial aid, the three key remaining areas of U.S. assistance — intelligence sharing, Starlink satellite internet service and arms sales — each proved vulnerable during the past week, as the White House seemed to pressure Kyiv.

Fesenko, the political scientist, cited “a crisis in bilateral relations.”

“This is evidenced by Trump’s very harsh, sometimes aggressive statements, including calls for a change of president in Ukraine,” he said. “The risks have therefore become apparent precisely in the remaining areas of cooperation.”

On Thursday, Ukrainian commanders were still reporting issues with Starshield, the military equivalent of Starlink, despite assertions by the Trump administration that service had been restored.

“Starshield continues to operate across all sectors of the front line, but with a speed limit of 160 km/h. This has created certain problems for us,” Andriy “Klima” Klymenko, commander of the 414th Unmanned Systems Brigade “Birds of Magyar,” told The Washington Post.

“The worst part is that nobody warned us that the restrictions were being introduced,” Klymenko said. “We found out about them in the middle of combat missions, when we started losing aircraft.”

“We have now adapted, but the problem has not gone away,” he added. “At lower speeds, our drones become easier targets for the enemy. This directly undermines the effectiveness of operations.”

Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report.

AI Mode Conversation: 9/11 attacks investigations: approaches and hypotheses