Inside 9-11 by Der Spiegel

Author:Der Spiegel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2001-04-22T20:00:00+00:00

Berlin, Early October

That Hamburg should turn out to have been the nesting ground of the attack caught most German officials by surprise. For years the unstated policy regarding foreigners, however extreme their politics, was live and let live. In return it was expected that they would behave themselves while in Germany. What emerged from the investigation has been bitter medicine for German officials. Everyone knew that radicals were using Germany as a refuge, but there was an understanding that they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the arrangement. “Don’t spit on your own plate,” an Arab proverb has it.

Before September 11 there were signs that the proverb had begun to lose some of its authority. On Christmas Eve 2000, almost nine months earlier, a SWAT team stormed two apartments in Frankfurt and took five Algerian men into custody. They were a bomb-assembly team, and it was alleged that they had been planning an attack on a Christmas Fair in the French city of Strasbourg. This tragedy was prevented “at the last minute,” according to Interior Minister Otto Schily. The police confiscated an amateur video that showed tourists strolling along a street. An off-camera voice could be heard saying, “Here we see the enemies of God. You’re on your way to hell, God willing.”

Since then officials had been pushing for a reevaluation of the threat posed by Islamic terrorists. In the Office for the Protection of the Constitution—a special civilian agency established in postwar Germany to prevent subversive activities by extremists—a study group began devising ways agents might infiltrate radical circles. The danger had been recognized. Too late.

Ernst Uhrlau, director of secret services in the chancellor’s office, was hit hard by this realization. Before Chancellor Schröder appointed him to his position, Uhrlau had been chief of the Hamburg Police; before that he had been head of the Hamburg branch for the Protection of the Constitution. He is quick on the uptake but slow to use words.

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