Nelson Thall -- a talk-show host, media analyst and former Torstar Corp. director -- was surprised to find members of the Toronto police force prowling around his Forest Hill home. Then, they arrested him. . . .

64 charges were subsequently laid, largely weapons-related: unlawful possession, inappropriate storage. Mr. Thall, a serious gun collector -- he says he has never fired them -- insists that every weapon was stored behind triple locks, in cabinets containing full registration papers and documents of purchase. Two drug-related charges were also laid; Mr. Thall says he has a doctor's prescription for marijuana. . .

Thall, 51, was carried off to jail, booked and strip-searched. Opposing his bail application on grounds that he was a threat to society, the police kept him locked up for two days. That Mr. Thall, scion of a prominent Toronto family -- the Thalls are one of the five families that own the Toronto Star -- should have been accorded such treatment is considered unusual. Or, as Mr. Greenspan puts it: "There's a strong subtext here that I don't understand."

Mr. Thall himself believes that the affair has nothing to with his gun collection or marijuana, but with free speech. In democratic societies, he says, "free speech has a glass ceiling. You don't see it until you actually hit it. I hit it."

If Mr. Thall is right, he hit the ceiling with Cloak and Dagger, his late-night conspiracy talk-radio show. . . In February, it was axed. At the time, station managers blamed poor ratings, but the rationale made no sense: Among MOJO's target audience, Cloak and Dagger was the highest-rated program in its weekly time slot from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. . . .

On Cloak and Dagger, for example, you would hear that U.S. President George W. Bush and what the show called "the Bush crime family" knew about the events of 9/11 long before they occurred; that Canada's still-unelected prime minister, Paul Martin, used his personal fortune to help finance them; that no airplanes actually struck the World Trade Center on that day -- what witnesses saw was simply a high-tech hologram; that the buildings were brought down by explosives, prewired inside; that top-secret departments of the U.S. government manufactured the AIDS, SARS and other viruses as part of biological warfare research; and that a de facto civil war has broken out among those who control America's political oligarchy.

Fantastical though such material may seem, the show on occasion may have struck a nerve. Not long after it claimed that the Toronto police force was riddled with corruption, the force itself arrested a number of its drug-squad officers. And a few months before a Toronto-bound El Al plane was diverted to Hamilton after detecting a security threat, Cloak and Dagger reported that al-Qaeda agents had smuggled shoulder-fired missiles into Ontario intending to shoot one down. Mr. Thall believes that one such missile was actually fired at the Israeli jet. . . .

Mr. Thall has a BA Honours degree in arts from the University of Toronto, worked as an archivist for Marshall McLuhan, and was president of the Marshall McLuhan Centre on Global Communications, a private consulting firm. For a period in the 1970s, he also flew planes for the Ontario Provincial Police -- he owns a commercial pilot's licence -- and occasionally for the Metro Toronto undercover squad. . . .

LEHMAN: One last question. The Oklahoma City case – again, one of the criticisms has been that one of the problems of the case law approach to intelligence is that, once you focus on a convicting particular terrorists, that there has to be a hypothesis of the case and that's where all of the investigative resources are put in. In the case of Oklahoma City, the hypothesis was that there were two Americans and they acted alone. There's a new book out now, as you probably know, called The Third Terrorist, that has new information that begs for further investigation showing the links or purporting very significant links between Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines, and also links between the two perpetrators and Hussein al-Husseini, the Iraqi, perhaps, agent. Are you satisfied that you ran all of these potential Al Qaida links to ground with McVeigh and Nichols?

[former FBI Director Louis ] FREEH: Well, other than that book, which I haven't read, you know, I don't know any other credible source with respect to that kind of a link. No, I have not run those links myself. I certainly was not aware of them when I was FBI director. I know that there is a review going on with respect to some of the matters that have been raised by his attorney in connection with the state murder prosecution that's ongoing. I guess I don't want to say anything with respect to that case as it's being tried now by a judge and a jury. But I don't know of any connections, except the one you've just mentioned, between Ramzi Yousef and that terrorist act.

President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.

Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack," a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

[...]

The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.

Saddam's wife could not recognize her husband

Last week, American authorities arranged a meeting of the former Iraqi dictator with his wife.

She was the first of Hussein"s relatives to meet with the ex-leader of Iraq at a new place, at the American military base in Qatar. Accompanied by Sheikh Hamad Al-Tani, Sajida Heiralla Tuffah has arrived from Syria on his private jet in the end of March.

The outcome of their meeting turned out to be quite scandalous. Sajina claims that the person she encountered was not her husband, but his double.

[...]

Hussein's younger daughter Hala has also arrived at the base in Qatar along with Saddam Hussein's two grandsons and two sisters, total of eight people. They were all invited by Shekh"s wife Muza to stay in one of the palaces. Eldest daughters Ragad and Rada along with five Hussein"s grandchildren have recently arrived to Doha from Jordan.

"Elaf" newspaper writes that, most likely, the entire Hussein's family will stay in Qatar permanently.

CIA Director George Tenet met with President Bush at least eight times in the 42 days before the catastrophic terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a CIA spokesman said Thursday, correcting Tenet's testimony that he hadn't talked with the president during the entire month of August.

Bill Harlow, spokesman for the agency, said CIA records showed Tenet briefed the president on national security threats once during Bush's 27-day ranch vacation, on Aug. 17, and again at the White House on Aug. 31. He also met with the president at least six more times during the first eight days of September.

[...]

Tenet's testimony to the independent Sept. 11 commission on Wednesday that he had not spoken to Bush during the entire month of August raised eyebrows on the 10-member bipartisan panel

A report by the commission staff published last night said that the FBI tried to find out as much as possible about a French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested on August 16 as he was learning how to fly a jumbo jet on a flight simulator.

As Mr Moussaoui, now on trial for his involvement in the September 11 plot, had once lived in London, an FBI legal attaché in London "promptly prepared a written request of the British government for information concerning Moussaoui and hand delivered the request on August 21.

"The case, though handled expeditiously at the American end, was not handled by the British as a priority amid a large number of other terrorist-related inquiries," the report said.

It was only on September 13, two days after the attacks in New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000 people, that the British discovered Mr Moussaoui had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, the report said.

The federal government has launched a National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. The NSABB will be operating by this summer, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month. The NSABB will oversee "dual use" biological research—research that could be used by therapists to cure, but which also could be exploited by potential bioterrorists to kill.

The NSABB will exercise regulatory oversight over any biological experiment that would: make human or animal vaccines ineffective; grant resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents for humans, animals, or crops; increase the virulence of human, animal, or plant pathogens, or make nonpathogens virulent; make pathogens more easily transmissibility or alter their host range; help evade diagnostic or detection methods; or enable weaponization of biological agents or toxins.

human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants.

Cyberkinetics of Foxboro, Masschusetts, has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients.

If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act -- merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send.

BEN-VENISTE: OK. Let me talk about the issue of planes as weapons.

KEAN: The gentleman's time has expired.

(LAUGHTER)
[...]
KEAN: Go ahead and ask your question.

BEN-VENISTE: Let me just follow up on this one area, although I have several.

The G-8 planning -- which I think the G-8 occurred in July of 2001.

But even a couple of months before September 11th we know that there was a planning session by NORAD where military officials considered a scenario in which a hijacked foreign commercial airliner flew into the Pentagon -- months before.

And so, people clearly were thinking about this possibility. You had information in August that came from the FBI regarding an Islamic jihadist in the United States named Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been in a flight school in Minnesota and he had been trying to learn to fly a 747 despite the fact that he had absolutely no background in aviation.

He could not explain a bank account of $30,000-odd deposited in cash. He could not explain his presence in the United States. He could not explain why he was trying to learn to fly a 747.

Now, this information came to you via the FBI because the FBI could not -- in their interpretation -- use the information to get a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer, et cetera, under FISA, according to their thinking.

The FISA court protects against improper prosecution, violating laws with respect to the potential of prosecuting this man.

My question is this.

Given the threat level, given the knowledge about planes as weapons, given the fact of Moussaoui's arrest, why was it that you didn't put the question of prosecuting Moussaoui to the side and go after the information which may well have led to unraveling this plot?

TENET: [blah blah blah blah non-answer blah blah blah]

KEAN: Director Mueller, could you please give a brief description of the specific threat assessment that led Attorney General Ashcroft to lease a private plane?

MUELLER: That occurred before I began my tenure. What I know about it is after the fact.

I do believe that there was a security assessment that was done. It may well not have been a specific threat, but a security assessment that led to the recommendation that for official travel he utilize a bureau plane.

KEAN: Yes. And I'd like, I think, from the family's point of view, we'd like to follow that up.

MUELLER: I'd be happy to.

KEAN: Thank you very much.

The text of the PDB released by the White House is one and a half pages long. But, according to an article by intelligence expert Oliver Schröm, the original document was much longer:

"Crawford, August 6, 2001. George W. Bush is on vacation. He wanted to spend the whole month at his ranch in Texas. 'The Presidential Daily Brief' was part of his morning routine. In the PDB, as it's called in CIA jargon, a senior CIA official presents the President with a summary of the security situation. On this morning the CIA Director personally briefs the President. Instead of the usual two or three pages, today's briefing paper consists of eleven and a half printed pages and carries the title 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'"

Schröm's article, entitled "Deadly Mistakes," was published in Die Zeit, a respected German weekly, on October 2, 2002. The piece is structured like a chronology, recounting, in excruciatingly painful detail, the mishaps, bureaucratic hurdles, and squandered opportunities that stood in the way of foiling the 9/11 terror plot. Key dates are highlighted, and August 6 was significant in that, apparently for the first time, awareness of the threat posed by Al Qaeda had percolated up to the Oval Office:

"The CIA chief argued that Al Qaeda was now also attempting to carry out attacks inside the US, and there were probably already members of the terror organization located in the US for some time. It's not clear whether or not the CIA Director told the President about statements made by Al Qaeda members who were already in custody. According to their statements, the terror organization had long thought about hijacking airplanes in order to use them as missiles."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) released the following statement:

"Yesterday, a 1995 memo written by 9/11 Commission Member Jamie Gorelick, in her former role as the second in command at the Justice Department, revealed her actions in establishing the heightened 'wall' prohibiting the sharing of intelligence information and criminal information. Scrutiny of this policy lies at the heart of the Commission's work. Ms. Gorelick has an inherent conflict of interest as the author of this memo and as a government official at the center of the events in questions. Thus, I believe the Commission's work and independence will be fatally damaged by the continued participation of Ms. Gorelick as a Commissioner. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Gorelick should resign from this Commission.

[...]

Testifying before the Commission is Ms. Gorelick's proper role, not sitting as a member of this independent commission."

Failures of U.S. intelligence agencies to process information that each had on Osama bin Laden's network before Sept. 11, 2001 will be one focus of hearings this week by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

In particular, the hearings will examine intelligence from 1999 that dealt with two al-Qaida terrorists who ended up being on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Khalid Almihdhar, who piloted the plane that hit the Pentagon, and Nawaf Alhazmi, who was aboard with him, came to the attention of the National Security Agency in 1999.
[...]
When the NSA analyzed communications in 1999 from a Yemen site, it picked up conversations of men named Salem, Nawaf and Khalid, who appeared to NSA analysts to be "part of 'an operational cadre,'" according to a commission staff paper. The NSA analysts worried that "something nefarious might be afoot," the paper said.

Impending testimony in the Oklahoma state trial of accused and federally convicted Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols could blow the lid off . . .

Nichols defense witness David Paul Hammer, a convicted murderer who faces execution . . . has been saying for a long time that Timothy McVeigh told him—while the two were serving on death row together in federal prison prior to McVeigh’s execution—that there were others above and beyond McVeigh and Nichols involved in the Oklahoma bombing conspiracy.
[...]
Several years ago, Hammer contacted Michael Collins Piper, a correspondent for the now-defunct Spotlight newspaper, and provided Piper, in a handwritten letter, with inside information about the Oklahoma bombing affair relayed to Hammer by McVeigh.

At the time, Spotlight editors concluded that Hammer was acting as a conduit for McVeigh, who evidently filled Hammer in on many details, confirming much of what The Spotlight had reported on the affair.

McVeigh also sent a cryptic letter to Piper from death row, indirectly hinting that The Spotlight’s reportage was on the mark. Although McVeigh later publicly took sole claim for the crime, his story was full of holes and few with serious knowledge of the Oklahoma affair believed what he had to say.

Hammer told Piper that reputed federal undercover informant [and former German army intelligence officer, Andreas] Strassmeir was closely involved with McVeigh in events related to the bombing conspiracy, evidently manipulating McVeigh—a point that McVeigh himself only came to recognize after the bombing.

A Message from the Vice-President:
"“Thanks so much for paying your taxes. You couldn’t possibly imagine how much it means to me." —Dick

A copy of a previously unpublished manifest, obtained late Thursday night and dated September 15, 2001, provides evidence of a private Boeing-727 Saudi flight from Lexington, Kentucky to London. But the names on the manifest raise serious questions about FBI policies and procedures related to witness identification, criminal investigations and obstruction of justice.

Ahmad A. M. Alhazmi, 20, (Saudi passport no. B805019) is listed on the manifest with Prince Sultan bin Fahad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, 19, (Saudi passport no. 406 A), son of Saudi defense minister Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.

The name Alhazmi [has] ties to laundered Riggs Bank cashiers checks and [to] Nawaf Alhazmi, one of the terrorists identified as an alleged hijacker of American Airlines flight 77.

The White House had originally asserted that flights evacuating Saudis from the United States after 9/11 never existed, but author Craig Unger--who has written a book about clandestine Bush-Saudi relationships, "House of Bush, House of Saud" --obtained flight manifest lists which were drawn up by the Saudi embassy.