brief - Iran 911 Case

Ex. 5, Snell Affid. 17 (emphasis added). (Dietrich Snell was Senior Counsel to the 9/11Commission and its staff Team Leader investigating the al Qaeda conspiracy. He was aprincipal author and editor of Chapters 5 and 7 of the 9/11 REPORT. In the latter appearsthe section entitled ―Assistance from Hezbollah and Iran to al Qaeda.‖ Id., 7.)Indeed, the 9/11 Commission had information about significant pre-9/11 Iran-Hizballah-al Qaeda connections: ―while in Sudan, senior managers in al Qaedamaintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organizationHezbollah‖ and ―[a]l Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah.‖9/11 REPORT, p. 240. Information about these connections became more specific in late2000. The Commission found evidence showing that:[i]n October 2000, a senior operative of Hezbollah visited Saudi Arabia tocoordinate activities there. He also planned to assist individuals in SaudiArabia in traveling to Iran during November. A top Hezbollahcommander and Saudi Hezbollah contacts were involved.Id. The 9/11 Commission also detailed singular confluences in the travels – into Iranand Beirut 13 – of the 9/11 hijackers and ―a senior Hezbollah operative‖ and his―associate‖:Also in October 2000, two future muscle hijackers . . . flew fromIran to Kuwait. In November, [another muscle hijacker] apparently flewto Beirut, traveling – perhaps by coincidence – on the same flight as a13 Beirut is the capital of Lebanon and Lebanon‘s largest city. Beirut has a major international airport,which sits adjacent to the poor suburb of „Ayn-al-Dilbah, a Hizballah recruiting ground where ImadMughniyah grew up. The Bekaa Valley, located to the east of Beirut, and its principal city, Balabaak,are controlled by Hizballah and the IRGC, and they have terrorist training camps there. The Bekaawas the first area in Lebanon where the IRGC established a presence in the early 1980s. In November1982, the IRGC, using the Lebanese militant group Islamic Amal as a proxy, seized the SheikhAbdallah army barracks from the Lebanese government‘s police force at Balabakk in the BekaaValley, renaming it ―Camp Imam Ali.‖ This camp became the headquarters of Hizballah and theIRGC in Lebanon, and it would be the place where many kidnapped hostages were imprisoned,including CIA station chief William Buckley. Ex. 7, Bergman Affid. 28; Baer, See No Evil, pp. 73,100-02; Baer, The Devil We Know, pp. 59-64, 67-68, 78-79; Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid. 109, 151,162, 186-87, 255, 288, 293.15