History likes irony and coincidences it seems. On this 6th anniversary of 9-11 Germany has nabbed someone who was in contact with the infamous Mohammed Atta in their hunt for 49 terrorists believed to be in their country attempting an attack on US interests there:

GERMAN police questioning “Fritz the Taliban”, a 28-year-old Munich-born terror suspect, revealed yesterday [AJStrata: Sept 8th] that they are hunting up to 49 Islamist plotters over a conspiracy to use truck bombs to blow up air-ports, bars and discos.

…

“Fritzi” was remembered by neighbours as a “little blond boy” from a “popular family”. His mother was a doctor and his father an engineer.

Gelowicz was drawn to a radical Islamic “multicultural” centre in Neu-Ulm, where he is believed to have met Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers. He attended a Taliban training camp on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan in March 2006, returning to Germany to study engineering.

August Hanning, Germany’s deputy interior minister, said that they had been liaising with London after “big parallels” had emerged with a failed plot to blow up British aircraft last summer. Hydrogen peroxide was said to have been the intended explosive in both cases.

Security sources believe the plotters were given a “clear task” while attending terrorist training camps in Pakistan.

…

The German investigation was boosted by an American intelligence intercept last year that detected suspicious communications between Pakistan and Stuttgart. “This group did not act alone. There is a network,” said Hanning.

For those paying attention, this plot was discovered partially by intercepts of communications by the NSA. This is THE big attack a liberal and ignorant judge almost let slip by when he decided the NSA needed a warrant to even monitor terrorists overseas. Clearly we have our eyes and ears on Pakistan, and we don’t need any idiot judges to try and put blinders on our people who are out there saving hundreds or thousands of lives every time they detect one of these terrorist cells.

Next time a liberal moans about the NSA, ask them if they thought it would be better if all those Germans and Americans actually died this fall, instead of the terrorist plot being foiled. Ask them which result is the better one morally and legally.

Update: Sadly, it seems a loud mouthed traffic cop alerted the terrorists they were being monitored, which caused them to move up their plans and possibly disperse. And in fact, there is now an alert up at a US base in Germany due to bomb threats. It could just be some idiot trying to make the US jump. I doubt a terrorist would call in a threat, but you never know. And the administration is confirming America’s eavesdropping role in foiling this plot:

The government’s ability to eavesdrop on potential terrorists helped the United States obtain information that led to the arrests last week of three Islamic militants accused of planning bomb attacks in Germany, the nation’s top spy official said today. This surveillance ability was temporarily restricted earlier this year by a special court, and then restored by Congress last month.

That ability to listen in on the plotters’ conversations “allowed us to see and understand all the connections” they had with a breakaway cell of a Central Asian terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad Union, operating in Germany, said the official, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.

“Because we could understand it, we could help our partners through a long process of monitoring and observation, realizing that the perpetrators had actually obtained explosive liquids, hydrogen peroxide, which they would condense, or try to condense to an explosive,” Mr. McConnell said.

So it was the NSA and US Intelligence that learned that the terrorists had their explosives. And this was during that critical time when a foolish US judge tried to tear down this monitoring. That judge should be thankful the administration is still fighting to win this war. It looks like the Democrats had a good reason not to fight Bush on FISA-NSA again. And this shows once more how suicidally ignorant the far left is when it comes to national security. They almost allowed a massive attack to get through in Germany – they should hang their heads in shame. Make sure to check out this post on the truth about NSA monitoring in the US, versus the mythology being spewed by the left.