Washington

FBI says in U.S., only hijackers knew of 9-11 plot

The FBI has found no evidence that anyone in the United States other than the 19 hijackers knew of the Sept. 11 plot ahead of time, Director Robert S. Mueller III told the congressional inquiry into the attacks.

The public release of his comments Thursday came as top CIA and FBI counterterrorism officials defended their agencies to lawmakers.

After Sept. 11, authorities rounded up hundreds of people nationwide on suspicion of links to al-Qaida, terrorism or the attacks.

“To this day we have found no one in the United States except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot and we have found nothing they did while in the United States that triggered a specific response about them,” Mueller said in testimony given in secret in June.

While that might seem to indicate that Zacarias Moussaoui was unaware of the attacks, Mueller prefaced his statement with the caveat that none of his comments were meant to include Moussaoui. The French-Morrocan man was arrested in Minnesota a few weeks before Sept. 11 and is now charged with conspiracy in the attacks.

Pakistan

Taliban fugitives threaten attacks on U.S. soldiers

Taliban fugitives and Afghan fighters loyal to a former foe have allied and are getting arms and money from al-Qaida and Iran for planned suicide attacks on American troops in Afghanistan, one of their leaders says.

The new alliance is said to be based in eastern Afghanistan and involves men led by several former high Taliban officials and fighters of Hezb-e-Islami, a group headed by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Hekmatyar’s force was one of the U.S.-aided guerrilla armies that fought the Soviets in the 1980s. He fled to Iran in 1996 after his group was defeated by the Taliban, but he has recently been seeking to incite a “holy war” against American forces in Afghanistan.

The new alliance is known as Lashkar Fedayan-e-Islami, or the Islamic Martyrs Brigade, a Hekmatyar military commander, Salauddin Safi, told The Associated Press at a secret meeting Wednesday.

The threat comes against a backdrop of unsolved bombings in Afghan cities, and there already have been sporadic attacks on U.S. military posts as well as on American troops patrolling the countryside.

Georgia

School district allows instruction of creationism

The board of Georgia’s second-largest school district voted Thursday to give teachers permission to introduce students to varying views about the origin of life, including creationism.

The proposal, approved unanimously by the Cobb County school board, says the district believes “discussion of disputed views of academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education, including the study of the origin of species.”

Opponents said it was a back-door way to bring religion into the classroom.

The theory of evolution, accepted by nearly all scientists, says evidence shows life developed from earlier forms through slight variations over time and that natural selection determines which species survive. Creationism credits the origin of species to God.