Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Islamaphobia-phobia helped contribute to Al Qaeda 911 Attack against the USA










































From an October 2001 NBC Today Show interview that seems to have gone down the memory hole. Matt Lauer is interviewing Shapiro Jeffrey who wrote an October 11, 2001 article that also went down the memory hole: “Boy Spoke of Attacks Before Sept. 11.” Below is the transcript. I added my editorial comments inside square brackets []


Lauer: Thanks, Chris, thank you very much. The FBI has received hundreds of thousands of leads since September 11 [2001] Included are rumors that word of the attacks circulated in Arab American communities before they happened.  Freelance writer, Jeffrey Shapiro, broke one of these stories at "The Journal News" at the Gannett Newspaper here in New York. Jeffrey, good morning to you.

Shapiro: Good morning.

Lauer: How did you find out about this?





Shapiro: We have an employee at the company who had a relative that overheard a parent whose son goes to the high school talking about it.  And they passed that tip onto us, and we immediately began to look into it.

Lauer: Try and, for people who didn't get a chance to read your article [and you apparently never will be able to read this article since the primary sources had been deleted from the web] try and take me through this. We're talking about a freshman in high school, in Brooklyn. What happened about a week before the [ September 11, 2001] attack [on the World Trade Center]?

Shapiro: Essentially what happened was this student who apparently recently immigrated here from Pakistan, was in an Arab bilingual class. And what that means is there were Arab American [I'm not so certain about the American part - sounds more like Arab students who just happen to live in the USA for the time being] students who were learning English.  He got into a heated political discussion with a teacher. And at one point in the conversation pointed out the third story of the high school to the World Trade Center towers and said, "These two buildings, they won't be there next week."

Lauer: What was the immediate reaction from the class? From the teacher? When this young man made this statement?

Shapiro: My understanding is that no one said anything. People were a little bit surprised but nobody really knew what to think of it.  Obviously, who would think anything of it at that point ? [ In 1993, during the Clinton administration, there already was a truck bomb attack from Islamic Supremacists meant to take down the World Trade Center, so people in New York in 2001 should have known about this and been concerned “1993 World Trade Center Bombing Fast Facts.” CNN, Cable News Network, 7 Mar. 2019, www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/us/1993-world-trade-center-bombing-fast-facts/index.html.]








Lauer: You did not identify the student in the article.

Shapiro: No

Lauer: Do we know anything about his background?  Or her background - was it a male?

Shapiro: It was a male.

Lauer: OK. Do we know anything about his background that would be someone with a history of trouble, or just an average student?

Shapiro: No, he's just new to the country. He has an older brother who also goes to the school.  And my understanding is that some new information came in last night that apparently his father was in Pakistan at the time that this happened.  When the September 11 [2001] attacks occurred.




Lauer: OK, a week before he makes the statement and points to the towers and says, "They won't be here next week." What happens on September 11 [2001] when, of course, the attack comes. What was the reaction of the school?

Shapiro:  A lot of people were frightened. My understanding is initially we thought that the teacher had immediately reported the incident but I'm learning new information that she was very intimidated at first and very concerned.  And they had school off on Wednesday, as you know, the day after [the attacks].  And apparently [....] reported it to a school safety officer....with the NYPD [New York Police Department]. And she was very terror stricken over this.  She was also concerned that her own student might be at risk because some of the other students might be upset about this [ 'this' meaning Muslims threatening to blow up American buildings]. Obviously, a lot of people have been feeling different things, especially about the Arab American community [except people from Pakistan aren't Arab ] and she [the teacher] was concerned  about her own student's safety.


Lauer: How seriously did the police take this and the FBI? When did the FBI finally get involved?


Shapiro: The FBI got involved immediately. The school safety officers reported it to a sergeant at the 52nd precinct in Brooklyn who immediately referred it to the detective division.  The detective division referred it to intelligence and intelligence turned it over to the FBI.   And my understanding is that day, about 10 NYPD police vans lined up in front of the school.  And detectives and federal agents stormed the school.

Lauer: Did they talk to the student?

Shapiro: Oh, yeah.

















Lauer: And they tried to talk to the student's parents or father?

Shapiro: Yes, eventually, they did get a chance to talk to the father, who, from my understanding, was very angry about this ['this' meaning the Pakistani immigrant was angry that the American police would interview his family after his son threatened to blow up an American building. Apparently the immigrant Pakistani was not upset that the American building was destroyed or that 3 thousand Americans were killed] he felt his children's rights had been violated [again, three thousand American citizens' rights had been violated on September 11 by being killed by Islamic Supremacists] since they had been spoken to without an authorization.



















Shapiro: But how did the father, how did the student explain the statement the week before the attacks?


Shapiro: My understanding, and this led to sort of a broader investigation, on my part, is simply that a lot of these rumors have flown around. We initially thought if this student heard about this, he must have heard about this from his father or his mother or someone, you know, older than him that he knows well, a relative, perhaps.   But I think what he probably said was that he heard it from a friend who said they heard it from a friend.   And little by little, the police and the FBI sort of realized that more people had heard rumors about this than they ever imagined [and the so called "moderate" Muslims who heard rumors about a homicidal plot to murder thousands of Americans didn't report said rumors to authorities or lift a finger to stop it because they are such patriotic Americans and you're an Islamaphobe for questioning their loyalty to this country].


















Lauer: These are stories going around and again, we have to be careful, because some are factual but some are what we like to call "urban legends." And I heard in Jersey City where someone of Middle Eastern descent told someone else, "Don't go downtown on September 11 [2001]" Again, you really have to do your homework to find out whether these are just things being told to you after the fact.

Shapiro: This is the hardest story I've ever done.  And I've worked on some tough ones.  This took me about three weeks to really nail down, I mean really nail down.  And my editors were really tough on it. They really pushed me on it. Every time I came to them and said, "I think I've got it now." They said, "Why don't you go back again."

Lauer: Let me go back to the father.  What I understood was that the father did go back to Pakistan after the attacks.  Is that true?


Shapiro: I'm trying to source some of that out right now [passport and travel data should be rather clear cut to verify] that was my initial understanding but uh I was talking with [leftwing pontificator] Jonathan Alter last night, who told me that he's starting to learn that the father was already in Pakistan at the time of the attacks. I'm trying to find out whether or not the father had left the country. 


Lauer: Because you'd have to assume that if the FBI allowed the father to leave the country, they would not hold him in suspicion [or else the FBI is just incompetent, because they allowed the 2001 attacks to occur in the first place, and the 1993 attacks before that]. 

Shapiro: It's a difficult situation because it's really hard to hold someone you know without probable cause.

crosstalk

Lauer: Unless he's in violation of immigration law

Shapiro: And I think what they're finding is that a lot of these people [Islamic Supremacists and their enablers] are simply saying they heard it from this person and that person said they heard it from that person. You can't get charged for hearing a rumor.

Lauer: Really quickly. Is the student still at that school?

Shapiro: My understanding is that he is. 

Lauer: Jeffrey Shapiro. Jeff, thanks so much.


Shapiro: My pleasure.
Posted by adagioforstrings at 7:19:00 PM
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