The Secrets of Iran’s Links to 911: an Interview with Kenneth Timmerman

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant (October 2017)

Whatever, John McSweeney, 2017

 

The 17th anniversary of 9/11 brought fresh controversies of the possible links of Iran to this Al Qaeda jihadist attack on America perpetrated by 19 Muslim terrorists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. They hijacked four airliners—Flights 11 and 175 from Boston’s Logan Airport that were deliberately flown into and destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Flight 77 that originated from Dulles Airport in Virginia was flown into the Pentagon. Flight 93 that originated at Newark Airport in New Jersey, whose passengers overpowered the hijackers forcing the aircraft to crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania instead of intended targets, The US Capitol and White House in Washington, DC. 2, 977 were killed in these attacks. More than 6,000 were injured, including brave first responders, police and fire personnel.

 

To address the Iran connections to 9/11 Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant, co-hosts of Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix (INTR-BTM), held an interview with Kenneth Timmerman. Timmerman is a veteran Iran watcher, noted investigative journalist and author of both non-fiction and novels such as ISIS Begins. See our August 2018 interview with Timmerman.

 

Timmerman was the lead investigator for plaintiffs in the 2011 New York Southern District Federal Court landmark “9/11-Iran links” case: Fiona Havlish et al., v. Sheik Usamah bin-Muhammad bin-Laden et al. The case was brought on behalf of Ms. Havlish’s husband who was lost on the 101st floor of a World Trade Center tower on September 11, 2001. Other 9/11 victims’ surviving families and loved ones were included as co-plaintiffs.

 

Kenneth Timmerman evidentiary affidavits filed in Havlish et.al. New York Federal court trial and the Bin Laden files released in November 2017 by then CIA Director Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, attest to the extensive links between Tehran and the perpetrators of 9/11. Timmerman reveals in this interview that Iranian intelligence had advance information on the date of the actual 9/11 attack.

 

Timmerman conducted interviews with defectors from Iran’s intelligence service that revealed active participation of both Hezbollah’s terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force in training and transport of the 9/11 Sunni perpetrators. Timmerman also discusses how a joint US-Israeli Mossad operation took out Mughniyah in a bombing of his vehicle in Damascus in 2008. Mughniyeh was responsible for planning and executing the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1992 Buenos Aires Israeli Embassy bombing, the 1994 Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish Center bombing, the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and 1998 US East Africa Embassies bombings.

 

Timmerman indicated that much of the information is still classified and there should be an effort to have it declassified and released. He ascribes the failure to stop the fateful attack that brilliant late summer day in New York to the politicization within the Intelligence Community.

 

The New York Southern District Federal Court judge in the 9/11-Links case handed down upwards of $10 billion in two awards made to the certified class of 9/11 claimants in 2012 and 2015.

 

In May 2018, a default judgment was entered by the New York Federal Court Judge in the Havlish et. al. case under a 2016 Supreme Court ruling against Iran which was not contested. The total of court awards is more than $10 billion.

 

A day before the 17th commemoration, September 10, 2018, a Washington, DC federal court entered a default judgment against the government of Iran demanding payment of $104.7 million to the surviving families of US military personnel killed in the 1996 Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers truck bombing.

 

A possible source of 9/11 victims’ compensation are the holdings and assets of The Alavi Foundation, a sanctioned charity front for Iran in the US. The Foundation has extensive properties in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and California. These properties include a skyscraper at 650 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. They have yet to be seized and liquefied given stays on forfeiture made by the Second US Circuit of Appeals in November 2017.

 

Timmerman also discusses Ambassador John Bolton’s Plan for Iran, published prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser. The plan that included forcing Iran to make payments under the 9/11-Iran Links case awards as a condition for negotiations.

 

What follows is an excerpt from the interview with Timmerman.

 

Rod: You were an expert witness for the 9/11 Iran-Links trials. What did the trial record reveal about Hezbollah and Iran’s connection to the 9/11 perpetrators?

 

Ken: This story remains one of the biggest best kept secrets of the September 11th attacks. Very few people in America know that the Iranian regime played a direct material role in the conspiracy to hit America on 9/11. Even the United States government has been in denial over that for a number of years. They are coming around to changing their tune. You saw just the very briefest of mentions of Iran’s role in the 9/11 Commission Report, on pages 240, 241 and 242. They mentioned that a senior Hezbollah operative accompanied eight to ten of the ‘muscle’ hijackers on repeated trips to Iran before the attacks. The Commission Report said this subject requires further investigation by the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government never did that investigation. I did along with my partners for the Havlish, et.al. vs. the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

Jerry: What did the New York Federal Court Judge rule in the 9/11 Iran Links case in terms of awards to compensate the victims’ survivors?

 

 

Jerry: Did the Obama administration fail to seize these Iranian assets you just discussed to compensate the 9/11 plaintiff awards?

 

Jerry: Ken there were some interesting background stories about the 9/11 Iran-links case. Can you fill us in on them?

 

Ken: Our investigation started at the very tail end of the 9/11 Commission in 2004. I introduced the attorneys to a series of defectors from Iranian intelligence including two of them that warned the United States Government ahead of time about the 9/11 attacks. One of them walked into the U.S. Embassy in Baku, asked to meet with the CIA and told the CIA there was going to a massive attack on America involving commercial airliners. That while the Iranian regime was behind it there wouldn’t be a single Iranian fingerprint anywhere because Arabs would carry it out. Moreover, the attack would be carried out against Washington D.C. and New York. That it would take place on the 20th of the Persian calendar. The CIA interviewer looked through his conversion calendar to find that it was the 10th of September. The CIA blew him off by suggesting that he come back when he had more information. I remain convinced to this day that is the reason why the CIA in particular, even more so than the FBI, never wanted to lift the seal on its files about what it knew about 9/11 before the attacks took place. You see something would happen in the 9/11 Commission Report footnotes but they knew an awful lot. They knew that Imad Mughniyeh, at that time was the terrorist with the most American blood on his hands. He planned the bombing that killed two hundred and forty-two Marines in Beirut and the murder of the CIA Station chief in Lebanon. He was involved in the Embassy Bombings in Africa in 1998. Imad Mughniyeh was on our radar screen, perhaps one of the most tracked people in the world. The NSA discovered that he was on these planes picking up other tracked terrorists, known Al Qaeda members, taking them to Tehran and then bringing them back. However, as the 9/11 Commission concludes in that very brief highly edited passage all of this must have been just an extraordinary coincidence.

 

Jerry: Imad Mughniyeh was prior to the Bin Laden episode probably the most notorious terrorist on the FBI most wanted list. Who eventually took him out?

 

Rise and Kill First. The Americans didn’t want to engage in a targeted assassination so they allowed the Israelis to do that. However, the Israelis didn’t have the real time signal intelligence to be able to track Mughniyeh. The American’s tracked him to locate him in a place where they could kill him with a special car bomb placed in the back of his Mitsubishi Pajero SUV when nobody else was around. At one point they had him standing next to Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. The Americans said, “oh my gosh we can’t do that. You are going to have collateral damage”. They called off the assassination. So they waited until they had Mughniyeh all by himself in his Mitsubishi SUV after attending a celebration of the Iranian revolution at the Embassy in Damascus on February 12, 2008 and then puff on he met his maker.

 

Jerry: You are an expert on what was never revealed about the efforts on the part of Iran and others. What can you tell us?

 

Rod: Who was he afraid of?

 

Rod: John Bolton before he was appointed a President Trump’s National Security Advisor published a plan regarding these long delayed payments of the 9/11 Iran Links case awards. What did he propose?

 

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix interview with Kenneth Timmerman

 

 

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Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review and author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016. He is co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida.

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