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Abu Zubaida pictured shortly after he was captured in Pakistan. He appears to be bloodied and on some type of stretcher. [Source: ABC News]When al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is captured in Pakistan (see March 28, 2002), he is found to be carrying two bank cards, similar to US ATM cards. One is from a Kuwaiti bank and the other is from a Saudi bank. A US source involved in Zubaida's capture believes this is the only time an al-Qaeda leader was ever captured with direct evidence of using Western-styled bank accounts. Author James Risen later notes that the "cards had the potential to help investigators understand the financial structure behind al-Qaeda, and perhaps even the 9/11 plot itself. The cards… could unlock some of al-Qaeda's darkest secrets." One US source later tells Risen that the cards "could give us entrée right into who was funding al-Qaeda… You could track money right from the financiers to a top al-Qaeda figure." But Risen claims that two US sources familiar with the case believe no aggressive investigation into the cards is ever done and Zubaida is never even questioned about the cards. Risen says, "It is not clear whether an investigation of the cards simply fell through the cracks, or whether they were ignored because no one wanted to know the answers about connections between al-Qaeda and important figures in the Middle East—particularly in Saudi Arabia." Nevertheless, some US investigators eventually pursue the trail of the cards on their own time. Over a year later, they will learn that around the time of Zubaida's capture, Saudi intelligence officials seized all the financial records connected to the Saudi card and the records then disappeared. [Risen, 2006, pp. 173-177] In 2007, former CIA officer Robert Baer will similarly comment, "When Abu Zubaida was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, two ATM cards were found on him. One was issued by a bank in Saudi Arabia (a bank close to the Saudi royal family) and the other to a bank in Kuwait. As I understand it, neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia has been able to tell us who fed the accounts.… There's nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed." [Time, 12/7/2007] Zubaida otherwise proves resistant to interrogation until he is transferred to a secret CIA prison in Jordan and tortured there in May 2002 (see Mid-May 2002 and After).
Entity Tags: Robert Baer, Abu Zubaida
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Other 9/11 Investigations, Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida, 9/11 Investigations
With US troops already in many Central Asian countries, US Special Forces are now reportedly training Kazakhstan troops in a secret location. [London Times, 3/30/2002] An anonymous source in the Kazakh government previously stated, "It is clear that the continuing war in Afghanistan is no more than a veil for the US to establish political dominance in the region. The war on terrorism is only a pretext for extending influence over our energy resources."
[Observer, 1/20/2002]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Kazakhstan
Category Tags: US Dominance
FBI senior interrogator and al-Qaeda expert Ali Soufan, in conjunction with FBI agent Steve Gaudin, interrogate suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) using traditional non-coercive interrogation methods, while Zubaida is under guard in a secret CIA prison in Thailand. A CIA interrogation team is expected but has not yet arrived, so Soufan and Gaudin who have been nursing his wounds are initially leading his questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. "We kept him alive," Soufan will later recall. "It wasn't easy, he couldn't drink, he had a fever. I was holding ice to his lips." At the beginning, Zubaida denies even his identity, calling himself "Daoud;" Soufan, who has pored over the FBI's files on Zubaida, stuns him by calling him "Hani," the nickname his mother called him. Soufan and Gaudin, with CIA officials present, elicit what he will later call "important actionable intelligence" from Zubaida. To help get him to talk, the agents bring in a box of audiotapes and claim they contain recordings of his phone conversations. He begins to confess. Zubaida Reveals KSM Is 9/11 Mastermind - Zubaida tells Soufan that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and confirms that Mohammed's alias is "Mukhtar," a vital fact US intelligence discovered shortly before 9/11 (see August 28, 2001). Soufan shows Zubaida a sheaf of pictures of terror suspects; Zubaida points at Mohammed's photo and says, "That's Mukhtar… the one behind 9/11" (see April 2002). Zubaida also tells Soufan about American al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla (see March 2002 and Mid-April 2002). In 2009, Soufan will write of his interrogations of Zubaida (see April 22, 2009): "This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives." When the CIA begins subjecting Zubaida to "enhanced interrogation tactics" (see Mid-April 2002), Soufan will note that they learn nothing from using those tactics "that wasn't, or couldn't have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions… The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process." [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007; Mayer, 2008, pp. 155; New York Times, 4/22/2009; Newsweek, 4/25/2009] Standing Up to the CIA - The CIA interrogation team members, which includes several private contractors, want to begin using "harsh interrogation tactics" on Zubaida almost as soon as they arrive. The techniques they have in mind include nakedness, exposure to freezing temperatures, and loud music. Soufan objects. He yells at one contractor (whom other sources will later identify as psychologist James Mitchell—see Late 2001-Mid-March 2002, January 2002 and After and Between Mid-April and Mid-May 2002), telling him that what he is doing is wrong, ineffective, and an offense to American values. "I asked [the contractor] if he'd ever interrogated anyone, and he said no," Soufan will later say. But, Mitchell retorts that his inexperience does not matter. "Science is science," he says. "This is a behavioral issue." Instead, Mitchell says, Soufan is the inexperienced one. As Soufan will later recall, "He told me he's a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works." During the interrogation process, Soufan finds a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor has built for Zubaida. Soufan will later recall that it looked "like a coffin." (Other sources later say that Mitchell had the box constructed for a "mock burial.") An enraged Soufan calls Pasquale D'Amuro, the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouts, "I'm going to arrest these guys!" Soufan challenges one CIA official over the agency's legal authority to torture Zubaida, saying, "We're the United States of America, and we don't do that kind of thing." But the official counters with the assertion that the agency has received approval from the "highest levels" in Washington to use such techniques. The official even shows Soufan a document that the official claims was approved by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. It is unclear what document the official is referring to. Ordered Home - In Washington, D'Amuro is disturbed by Soufan's reports, and tells FBI director Robert Mueller, "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this." Mueller orders Soufan and then Gaudin to return to the US, and later forbids the FBI from taking part in CIA interrogations (see May 13, 2004). [New York Times, 9/10/2006; Newsweek, 4/25/2009] Disputed Claims of Effectiveness - The New York Times will later note that officials aligned with the FBI tend to think the FBI's techniques were effective while officials aligned with the CIA tend to think the CIA's techniques were more effective. [New York Times, 9/10/2006] In 2007, former CIA officer John Kiriakou will make the opposite claim, that FBI techniques were slow and ineffective and CIA techniques were immediately effective. However, Kiriakou led the team that captured Zubaida in Pakistan and does not appear to have traveled with him to Thailand (see December 10, 2007). [ABC News, 12/10/2007; ABC News, 12/10/2007 ] Press Investigation Finds that FBI Interrogations Effective - In 2007, Vanity Fair will conclude a 10 month investigation comprising 70 interviews, and conclude that the FBI techniques were effective. The writers will later note, "America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely." CIA Director George Tenet reportedly is infuriated that the FBI and not the CIA obtained the information and he demands that the CIA team get there immediately. But once the CIA team arrives, they immediately put a stop to the rapport building techniques and instead begin implementing a controversial "psychic demolition" using legally questionable interrogation techniques. Zubaida immediately stops cooperating (see Mid-April 2002). [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007]
Entity Tags: Steve Gaudin, Vanity Fair, Robert S. Mueller III, James Elmer Mitchell, Jose Padilla, Abu Zubaida, Ali Soufan, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, John Kiriakou, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pasquale D'Amuro
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives
Category Tags: Abu Zubaida
In a 2006 book, New York Times reporter James Risen will claim that shortly after al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is captured in March 2002, "According to a well-placed source with a proven track record of providing extremely reliable information to the author, [CIA Director] George Tenet soon learned that [President] George Bush was taking a very personal interest in the Zubaida case." Just days after Zubaida's arrest, Tenet goes to the White House to give his usual daily Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Bush asks Tenet about what the CIA is learning from Zubaida's interrogation. Tenet replies that nothing has been learned yet because Zubaida is heavily wounded and is too groggy from painkillers to talk coherently. Bush then allegedly asks Tenet, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" Risen will comment, "It is possible that this was just one more piece of jocular banter between the two plain-speaking men, according to the source who recounted this incident. Bush's phrasing was ambiguous. But it is also possible that the comment meant something more. Was [Bush] implicitly encouraging [Tenet] to order the harsh treatment of a prisoner?" Risen notes that some of Tenet's associates claim they have never heard of the incident and doubt that it is true. [Risen, 2006, pp. 22-23] Later, it appears Bush will be deliberately kept out of the loop regarding the treatment of Zubaida and other detainees in order to avoid culpability for the harsh interrogation methods used (see April 2002 and After).
Entity Tags: James Risen, Abu Zubaida, George W. Bush, George J. Tenet
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The assets of leading Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri are frozen by the Bank of England. This follows a designation by the United Nations that Abu Hamza is a person associated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. However, the freeze has little practical effect on Abu Hamza, who has been an informer for the British security services for some time (see Early 1997). Authors Sean O'Niell and Daniel McGrory will comment: "This grandiose announcement meant that the Bank of England ordered a freeze on any bank accounts held in his name, and all welfare benefits he was entitled to receive were stopped. The sanctions sounded severe, but in practical terms they made little difference to Abu Hamza. The five-bedroom house in Shepherd's Bush where he lived with his five youngest children was rented by Hammersmith and Fulham Council in the name of his wife Nagat, who obtained full British citizenship in 1997." This means that Abu Hamza is able to keep his house, which will be renovated at the council's expense in 2004. The British government also continues to meet his wife's rent and council tax payments. [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 73; Times (London), 10/12/2006]
Entity Tags: Sean O'Niell, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Daniel McGrory
Category Tags: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Terrorism Financing, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
In April 2002, German intelligence compile a report about militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; it suggests that al-Zarqawi is not a part of al-Qaeda (see March 28, 2002). At the end of March 2002, al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was captured and interrogated by US forces (see March 28, 2002). While few details of what Zubaida is said to say are known, some details must have been quickly passed to the Germans because this German intelligence report says, "Even in the interrogations of al-Qaeda leaders there are no indications of al-Zarqawi's membership in al-Qaeda. Thus, Abu Zubaida (an al-Qaeda recruiter), in one of his interrogations, speaks instead about the 'Group of al-Zarqawi." [Bergen, 2006, pp. 359, 422] (Note that information gained from such interrogations are of unknown reliability, especially when torture is used. Zubaida appears to be tortured around this time (see Mid-May 2002 and After)).
Entity Tags: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Zubaida
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida
Ramzi bin al-Shibh. [Source: FBI]It is originally reported that Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda interviews 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and 9/11 associate Ramzi Bin al-Shibh at a secret location in Karachi, Pakistan, in either June [London Times, 9/8/2002] or August. [Guardian, 9/9/2002] Details and audio footage of the interview come out between September 8 and 12, 2002. The video footage of the interview al-Qaeda promised to hand over is never given to Al Jazeera. [Associated Press, 9/8/2002] Both figures claim the 9/11 attacks were originally going to target nuclear reactors, but "decided against it for fear it would go out of control." Interviewer Fouda is struck that KSM and bin al-Shibh remember only the hijackers' code names, and have trouble remembering their real names. [Australian, 9/9/2002] KSM, who calls himself the head of al-Qaeda's military committee and refers to bin al-Shibh as the coordinator of the "Holy Tuesday" operation, reportedly acknowledges "[a]nd, yes, we did it." [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 38] These interviews "are the first full admission by senior figures from bin Laden's network that they carried out the September 11 attacks." [London Times, 9/8/2002] Some, however, call Fouda's claims into doubt. For example, the Financial Times states: "Analysts cited the crude editing of [Fouda's interview] tapes and the timing of the broadcasts as reasons to be suspicious about their authenticity. Dia Rashwan, an expert on Islamist movements at the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, said: 'I have very serious doubts [about the authenticity of this tape]. It could have been a script written by the FBI.'" [Financial Times, 9/11/2002] KSM is later variously reported to be arrested in June 2002, killed or arrested in September 2002, and then arrested in March 2003. After this last arrest report, for the first time Fouda claims this interview took place in April, placing it safely before the first reports of KSM's capture. [Guardian, 3/4/2003; CTV Television, 3/6/2003] Bin al-Shibh also gets captured several days after Fouda's interview is broadcast, and some reports say he is captured because this interview allows his voice to be identified. [Observer, 9/15/2002; CBS News, 10/9/2002] As a result, Fouda has been accused of betraying al-Qaeda, and now fears for his life. [Independent, 9/17/2002] As the Washington Post states, "Now Al Jazeera is also subject to rumors of a conspiracy." [Washington Post, 9/15/2002] Yet after being so reviled by al-Qaeda supporters, Fouda is later given a cassette said to be a bin Laden speech. [MSNBC, 11/18/2002] US officials believe the voice on that cassette is "almost certainly" bin Laden, but one of the world's leading voice-recognition institutes said it is 95 percent certain the tape is a forgery. [BBC, 11/18/2002; BBC, 11/29/2002] It will later be revealed that details of the interview were told to the CIA in mid-June 2002, which directly resulted in bin al-Shibh's arrest a few months later (see June 14, 2002 and Shortly After).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama bin Laden, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Al-Qaeda, Yosri Fouda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements, Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh
Around April 2002, most Predator drones are withdrawn from Afghanistan and apparently moved to the Persian Gulf region for missions over Iraq. Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) will later call the Predator "just about the perfect weapon in our hunt for Osama bin Laden." He will later comment that their removal is "a clear case of how the Bush administration's single-minded focus on Iraq undermined the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan." [Graham and Nussbaum, 2004, pp. 121; Washington Post, 10/22/2004; Rashid, 2008, pp. 134] Additionally, over the next years, all new Predators built are sent to Iraq and none to Afghanistan. A former Central Command official will say in 2007, "If we were not in Iraq, we would have double or triple the number of Predators across Afghanistan, looking for Taliban and peering into the tribal areas." [New York Times, 8/12/2007]
Entity Tags: Daniel Robert ("Bob") Graham, Osama bin Laden
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Afghanistan, Drone Use in Pakistan / Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
CIA Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt says of the hijackers: "The terror cells that we're going up against are typically small and all terrorist personnel… were carefully screened. The number of personnel who know vital information, targets, timing, the exact methods to be used had to be smaller still.… Against that degree of control, that kind of compartmentalization, that depth of discipline and fanaticism, I personally doubt—and I draw again upon my thirty years of experience in this business—that anything short of one of the knowledgeable inner-circle personnel or hijackers turning himself in to us would have given us sufficient foreknowledge to have prevented [9/11]." An FBI official calls this "the superman scenario."
[New Yorker, 5/27/2002] The media repeats this notion. For instance, later in the year, the Chicago Tribune will comment, "The operational discipline surrounding Sept. 11 was so professional, and impenetrable, that intercepted telephone conversations, or even well-placed spies, might not have made a difference."
[Chicago Tribune, 9/5/2002] But even in the same article that quotes Pavitt, a senior FBI official states that serious and potentially fatal errors were made by the hijackers. The article also notes that the hijackers did not maintain tight compartmentalization and discipline. [New Yorker, 5/27/2002] Eventually, more and more details will come out proving the "superman" notion false. The hijackers even told vital details of their plot to complete strangers (see April-May 2000; Late April-Mid-May 2000).
Entity Tags: James Pavitt
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, Warning Signs, 9/11 Investigations
The Charity Commission, which regulates the affairs of British charities, suspends leading radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri as an agent of the charity that runs London's Finsbury Park mosque. The suspension results from a four-year inquiry into Abu Hamza's mismanagement of the mosque (see 1998), and is apparently the first action the commission takes. However, it has no practical effect. Abu Hamza says he will appeal, but fails to file any documents for eight months. His lawyers then send a letter denouncing the commissioners for being Islamophobic. The commission will not succeed in removing Abu Hamza from his role with the charity until the next year, by which time the police have raided the mosque and closed it down (see January 20, 2003). [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 286-287]
Entity Tags: Abu Hamza al-Masri, Finsbury Park Mosque, Charity Commission
Category Tags: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
Shadi Abdellah. [Source: Associated Press]In April 2002, Shadi Abdellah, a militant connected to the al-Tawhid group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is arrested by German police. Abdellah also briefly worked as one of bin Laden's bodyguards (see Early 2001). He begins cooperating with German authorities. He reveals that al-Zarqawi is not a part of al-Qaeda but is actually the founder of al-Tawhid, which he says works "in opposition" to al-Qaeda (see 1989-Late 1999). The aim of the group is to kill Jews and install an Islamic regime in Jordan. The group is not really interested in the US, and this is the key ideological difference between it and al-Qaeda. Abdallah recounts one instance where al-Zarqawi vetoed a proposal to share charity funds collected in Germany with al-Qaeda. According to Abdallah, al-Zarqawi's organization had also "competed" with al-Qaeda for new recruits. He also reveals that al-Zarqawi's religious mentor is Abu Qatada, an imam openly living in Britain. [Independent, 2/6/2003; Newsweek, 6/25/2003; Bergen, 2006, pp. 356-358] A German intelligence report compiled in April 2002 based on Abdellah's confessions further states that "Al-Zarqawi mentioned to Abdellah that the possibility of a merger conflicted with the religious orientation of [Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid (a.k.a. Abu Hafs the Mauritanian)] who was responsible within al-Qaeda for religious or Islamic matters, which contradicted the teachings practices by al-Zarqawi." [Bergen, 2006, pp. 359-422] Newsweek will later report that "several US officials" claim "they were aware all along of the German information about al-Zarqawi." [Independent, 2/6/2003] Nonetheless, Bush will claim in a televised speech on October 7, 2002 (see October 7, 2002) that a "very senior al-Qaeda leader… received medical treatment in Baghdad this year," a reference to al-Zarqawi. And Colin Powell will similarly state on February 5, 2003 (see February 5, 2003) that "Iraq is harboring the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants." Both statements are made even though "US intelligence already had concluded that al-Zarqawi was not an al-Qaeda member…" [BBC, 2/5/2003; US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 6/22/2003 Sources: Unnamed US intelligence sources]
Entity Tags: Shadi Abdellah, Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Qatada, Al-Tawhid
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Abu Qatada
FBI agents are able to get prisoner Abu Zubaida to confess that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Zubaida, captured in Pakistan in March 2002 (see March 28, 2002), is considered a high-ranking prisoner, although there is controversy over just how important he was to al-Qaeda (see Shortly After March 28, 2002). FBI agents Ali Soufan and Steve Gaudin have been interrogating Zubaida using traditional non-coercive interrogation methods, while he is being held in a secret CIA prison in Thailand (see Late March through Early June, 2002). A CIA interrogation team is expected but has not yet arrived. Soufan shows Zubaida a sheaf of pictures of high priority suspects; Zubaida points at KSM's photo and says, "That's Mukhtar… the one behind 9/11." Shortly before 9/11, US intelligence had learned that the alias "Mukhtar" was frequently used by KSM (see August 28, 2001), but this is important confirmation. The more stunning revelation is that KSM is "the one behind 9/11." [Mayer, 2008, pp. 155; New York Times, 4/22/2009; Newsweek, 4/25/2009] Zubaida proceeds to lay out more details of the 9/11 plot, although exactly what and how much he says is unknown. [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007] It is unclear how much US intelligence knew about KSM's role in the 9/11 attacks prior to this, although at least some was known (see (December 2001)).
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaida, Ali Soufan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Steve Gaudin, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Abu Zubaida, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Attorneys from the CIA's Office of Legal Counsel meet with a legal adviser from the National Security Council (NSC) and with members of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The meeting concerns the CIA's proposed interrogation plan for newly captured alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002, March 28-August 1, 2002, and April - June 2002). The lawyers mull over the legal restrictions surrounding the proposed interrogations. CIA records will show that the NSC's legal counsel will brief National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Michael Chertoff, on the discussion. [Senate Intelligence Committee, 4/22/2009 ]
Entity Tags: John Ashcroft, Central Intelligence Agency, Alberto R. Gonzales, Abu Zubaida, Condoleezza Rice, Office of Legal Counsel (CIA), Stephen J. Hadley, Michael Chertoff, US Department of Justice, National Security Council
Category Tags: High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
CIA case officers stationed all over Europe attend a mandatory special conference in Rome. Officials from the CIA's Iraq Operations Group inform the case officers that Iraq has been on the administration's agenda from the very beginning. One officer who attends the conference later tells author James Risen: "They said this was on Bush's agenda when he got elected, and that 9/11 only delayed it. They implied that 9/11 was a distraction from Iraq. And they said Bush was committed to a change of leadership in Iraq, and that it would start with kinetic energy—meaning bombs. Meaning war." Officials in the Iraq Operations Group are openly supportive of the administration's goal. At the conference, they give presentations about the evils of Iraq, most of which is based on information from the public record. One attendee likens it to a "pep rally" aimed at building support within the agency for an invasion of Iraq. "We were supposed to go out and tell our liaison contacts how bad Saddam was," the officer later says. During the meeting, it is proposed that the CIA plant stories in the European media in support of a war with Iraq. [Risen, 2006, pp. 183-184]
Entity Tags: Iraq Operations Group
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links
Unidentified suspects being led out of the bookstore in April 2002. [Source: DPA]In April 2002, a group of men in Hamburg, Germany, is allegedly overheard pledging themselves to become martyrs for Islam. This is said to take place in an Islamic bookstore. Fearing the group could be planning a new attack, on July 3, 2002, German police detain eight men over the incident. The men are questioned and then are let go. One of the men is said to be Abdelghani Mzoudi, an alleged member of the al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg with three of the 9/11 hijackers. [Chicago Tribune, 10/11/2002] Another is Abderrasak Labied, who is Mzoudi's long-time roommate and is said to have been close to the group that included the hijackers. A police official will later say, "We wanted to give these individuals a signal that they were under police control, that they had no chance to continue with their development, that we were going to restrict their liberty, and that we were going to keep them under very close observation in the future." [Chicago Tribune, 10/11/2002] Mzoudi will be arrested in October 2002 for a role in the 9/11 plot (see October 10, 2002). He will be convicted but then later acquitted (see February 5, 2004-June 8, 2005). In early 2003, it will be claimed that the al-Qaeda cell may still exist in Hamburg (see January 30, 2003), and at least one member of the cell from before 9/11 will join a group of Hamburg men who go to the militant training camps in Afghanistan in 2009 (see March 5, 2009).
Entity Tags: Abderrasak Labied, Abdelghani Mzoudi
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany
After the capture of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), the US government is forced to review procedures on how Zubaida and future detainees should be treated. One CIA source will later say, "Abu Zubaida's capture triggered everything." The legal basis for harsh interrogations is murky at best, and the Justice Department will not give any legal guidelines to the CIA until August 2002, after Zubaida has already been tortured (see March 28-August 1, 2002 and August 1, 2002). Bush Kept out of Discussions - New York Times reporter James Risen will later claim in a 2006 book that after showing some initial interest in Zubaida's treatment (see Late March 2002), President Bush is mysteriously absent from any internal debates about the treatment of detainees. The CIA's Office of Inspector General later investigates evidence of the CIA's involvement in detainee abuse, and concludes in a secret report that Bush is never officially briefed on the interrogation tactics used. Earlier meetings are chaired by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and attended by, among others, Vice President Cheney's chief lawyer David Addington, Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, White House lawyer Timothy Flanigan, and Pentagon chief counsel William J. Haynes. Later, CIA Director George Tenet gives briefings on the tactics to a small group of top officials, including Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and future Attorney General Gonzales, but not Bush. CIA: 'No Presidential Approval' Needed for Torture - Risen will note that "Normally, such high-stakes—and very secret—CIA activities would be carefully vetted by the White House and legally authorized in writing by the president under what are known as presidential findings. Such directives are required by Congress when the CIA engages in covert action." But through a legal sleight-of-hand, the CIA determines the interrogations should be considered a normal part of "intelligence collection" and not a covert action, so no specific presidential approval is needed. Risen concludes: "Certainly, Cheney and senior White House officials knew that Bush was purposely not being briefed and that the CIA was not being given written presidential authorization for its tactics. It appears that there was a secret agreement among very senior administration officials to insulate Bush and to give him deniability, even as his vice president and senior lieutenants were meeting to discuss the harsh new interrogation methods. President Bush was following a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on the treatment of prisoners." Later, Flanigan will say of the meetings, "My overwheming impression is that everyone was focused on trying to avoid torture, staying within the line, while doing everything possible to save American lives." [Risen, 2006, pp. 23-27; Savage, 2007, pp. 154]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, John C. Yoo, William J. Haynes, Timothy E. Flanigan, John Ashcroft, David S. Addington, George W. Bush, Abu Zubaida, James Risen, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Alberto R. Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice
Early in April, two Istanbul policemen knock on the door of Sibel Edmonds' sister's neighbor inquiring about the sister's whereabouts. They say it concerns an "intelligence matter" and they leave a note, which reads, "For an important issue your deposition/interrogation is required. If you do not report to the station within 5 days, between 09:00 and 17:00, as is required by Turkish law CMK.132, you will be taken/arrested by force." [Vanity Fair, 9/2005]
Entity Tags: Turkey
Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds
Captured al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), after recovering somewhat from three gunshot wounds inflicted during his capture, is transferred to a secret CIA prison in Thailand, presumably the revamped Vietnam War-era base in Udorn. [Weiner, 2007, pp. 297; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] In late 2006, after being transferred to Guantanamo, Zubaida will tell representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross the story of his interrogation in Thailand (see October 6 - December 14, 2006). Zubaida becomes what CIA interrogator John Kiriakou will later call "a test case for an evolving new role… in which the agency was to act as jailer and interrogator of terrorism suspects" (see September 17, 2001). New Tactics To Be Used - Officials from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program are involved in Zubaida's interrogations. SERE officials have prepared a program of so-called "harsh interrogation methods," many of which are classified as torture under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture (see December 2001 and July 2002). A 2009 Senate report (see April 21, 2009) will find: "At some point in the first six months of 2002, JPRA [the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency] assisted with the preparation of a [redacted name], sent to interrogate a high-level al-Qaeda operative." Further investigation will prove that the person whose name will be redacted is, indeed, Zubaida. According to a June 20, 2002 memo, the SERE officials' participation in the Zubaida interrogation is "training." JPRA psychologist Bruce Jessen, one of the authors of the JPRA torture methodology (see January 2002 and After), suggests that "exploitation strategies" be used against Zubaida. Jessen's collaborator on the torture proposal, James Mitchell, is present for Zubaida's torture; Mitchell plays a central role in the decision to use what the CIA calls an "increased pressure phase" against Zubaida. [Washington Post, 4/22/2009] First Weeks Shackled and Sleep-Deprived - Zubaida will begin his narrative after his initial, and successful, interrogation by FBI agents (see Late March through Early June, 2002). He spends the first weeks of his captivity shackled to a chair, denied solid food, and kept awake. In Zubaida's words: "I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately [13 feet by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed. After some time, I think it was several days, but can't remember exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by [the] hands and feet for what I think was the next two to three weeks. During this time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair to go [to] the toilet, which consisted of a bucket. Water for cleaning myself was provided in a plastic bottle. I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks, while sitting on the chair. I was only given Ensure [a nutrient supplement] and water to drink. At first the Ensure made me vomit, but this became less with time. The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting type music was constantly playing. It kept repeating about every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise. The guards were American, but wore masks to conceal their faces. My interrogators did not wear masks. During this first two to three week period I was questioned for about one to two hours each day. American interrogators would come to the room and speak to me through the bars of the cell. During the questioning the music was switched off, but was then put back on again afterwards. I could not sleep at all for the first two to three weeks. If I started to fall asleep one of the guards would come and spray water in my face." In 2009, author Mark Danner will write: "One can translate these procedures into terms of art: 'Change of Scenery Down.' 'Removal of Clothing.' 'Use of Stress Positions.' 'Dietary Manipulation.' 'Environmental Manipulation.' 'Sleep Adjustment.' 'Isolation.' 'Sleep Deprivation.' 'Use of Noise to Induce Stress.' All these terms and many others can be found, for example, in documents associated with the debate about interrogation and 'counter-resistance' carried on by Pentagon and Justice Department officials beginning in 2002. Here, however, we find a different standard: the [proposed regulations say], for example, that 'Sleep Deprivation' is 'not to exceed four days in succession,' that 'Dietary Manipulation' should include 'no intended deprivation of food or water,' that 'removal of clothing," while 'creating a feeling of helplessness and dependence,' must be 'monitored to ensure the environmental conditions are such that this technique does not injure the detainee.' Here we are in a different place." CIA Team Moves In - The first weeks of Zubaida's captivity are maintained by a small team of FBI agents and interrogators, but soon a team from the CIA's Counterterrorism Center takes over. As Kiriakou will later recall: "We had these trained interrogators who were sent to his location to use the enhanced techniques as necessary to get him to open up, and to report some threat information.… These enhanced techniques included everything from what was called an attention shake, where you grab the person by their lapels and shake them, all the way up to the other end, which is waterboarding." After the initial period of captivity, Zubaida is allowed to sleep with less interruption, stretched out naked and shackled on the bare floor. He is also given solid food for the first time in weeks—rice. A female doctor examines him and asks why he is still naked; he is, he will recall, "provided with orange clothes to wear." The clothes only last a day, though: "[G]uards came into my cell," Zubaida will recall. "They told me to stand up and raise my arms above my head. They then cut the clothes off of me so that I was again naked and put me back on the chair for several days. I tried to sleep on the chair, but was again kept awake by the guards spraying water in my face." Alternating Harsh and Lenient Treatments - For the next few weeks, Zubaida's treatment veers from abusive to almost lenient. Mostly he is kept naked and confined to his cell, often suffering from intense cold in the frigid air-conditioned environment. One official later tells the ICRC that often he "seemed to turn blue." Clothing is provided, then taken away. Zubaida will tell ICRC officials: "When my interrogators had the impression that I was cooperating and providing the information they required, the clothes were given back to me. When they felt I was being less cooperative the clothes were again removed and I was again put back on the chair." For a time he is given a mattress to sleep on; sometimes he is "allowed some tissue paper to use when going to toilet on the bucket." A month goes by with no interrogations. He will recall: "My cell was still very cold and the loud music no longer played but there was a constant loud hissing or crackling noise, which played 24 hours a day. I tried to block out the noise by putting tissue in my ears." Then, "about two and half or three months after I arrived in this place, the interrogation began again, but with more intensity than before." Danner will write that he isn't sure if the wild swings in procedures are intentional, meant to keep Zubaida off-guard, or, as he will write, "resulted from disputes about strategy among the interrogators, who were relying on a hastily assembled 'alternative set of procedures' that had been improvised from various sources, including scientists and psychiatrists within the intelligence community, experts from other, 'friendly' governments, and consultants who had worked with the US military and now 'reverse-engineered' the resistance training taught to American elite forces to help them withstand interrogation after capture." Danner notes that some CIA documents going back to the 1960s advocate subjecting the captive to sensory deprivation and disorientation, and instilling feelings of guilt, shame, and helplessness. The old CIA documents say that captives should be kept in a state of "debility-dependence-dread." [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] Justice Department's 'Ticking Bomb' Scenario - The August 2002 "golden shield" memo from the Justice Department (see August 1, 2002) will use what is often called the "ticking bomg scenario"—the supposition that a terror attack is imminent and only torture can extract time-critical information from a terrorist detainee to give US officials a chance to stop the attack—to justify Zubaida's torture. According to CIA reports, Zubaida has information regarding "terrorist networks in the United States" and "plans to conduct attacks within the United States or against our interests overseas." But Brent Mickum, who later becomes one of Zubaida's attorneys, will say that he believes the Justice Department memo retroactively approved coercive tactics that had already been used. "If torture occurred before the memo was written, it's not worth the paper it's written on, and the writing of the memo is potentially criminal," Mickum will note. [Washington Post, 4/22/2009] Interrogations Continue in June - Sometime in June, Zubaida will once again be interrogated (see June 2002).
Entity Tags: Mark Danner, John Kiriakou, James Elmer Mitchell, Bruce Jessen, Al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaida, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, Convention Against Torture, George Brent Mickum, Geneva Conventions, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, International Committee of the Red Cross
The CIA videotapes interrogations of high-value al-Qaeda detainees. The interrogations of at least two detainees are taped. One of the detainees is Abu Zubaida, who helped run a training camp in Afghanistan (see March 28, 2002 and Mid-May 2002 and After). [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] Another is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, chief of al-Qaeda operations in the Arabian peninsula (see Early October 2002 and (November 2002)). [New York Times, 12/8/2007] The tapes run to a "couple hundred hours," and mostly show 24 hour a day coverage of Zubaida in his cell. However, some portions show aggressive interrogations, including waterboarding. According to one source, full transcripts are not made, although summaries are drafted and sent back to CIA headquarters. [Fox News, 12/13/2007; Washington Post, 12/18/2007] Another source says the opposite, "A detailed written transcript of the tapes' contents—apparently including references to interrogation techniques—was subsequently made by the CIA." [Newsweek, 12/11/2007] However, after tapes of Zubaida and al-Nashiri's interrogations are destroyed in 2005 (see November 2005), some tapes are still in existence (see September 19 and October 18, 2007), suggesting that either not all tapes of their interrogations are destroyed, or that one or more other detainees are videotaped. Another detainee whose interrogations may be taped is Ramzi bin al-Shibh, because he is the most important remaining al-Qaeda leader who is captured during this time period (see June 13-September 25, 2000 and September 11, 2002). In addition, at least one audio recording is also made. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 10/25/2007 ] According to a statement by CIA Director Michael Hayden, the interrogations are recorded because "new" procedures are used during the interrogations and the tapes are "meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages." The videotaping apparently ends in 2002. [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] Another reason for the videotaping is said to be Abu Zubaida's poor medical condition - he was shot several times during the operation to capture him. An intelligence official will later say, "There were concerns that there be a record of his medical treatment and condition in the event that he died." [CBS News, 12/13/2007] However, there are various allegations these detainees are tortured (see Mid-May 2002 and After, June 16, 2004, Shortly After September 6, 2006, and March 10-April 15, 2007). Some of the tapes are destroyed in 2005 (see November 2005) and there will be a media and political outcry when this is revealed in 2007 (see December 6, 2007).
Entity Tags: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Michael Hayden, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abu Zubaida, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany, Abu Zubaida, Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations are held overseas and not sent back to CIA headquarters from the time they are made (see Spring-Late 2002) until the time they are destroyed (see November 2005). They are stored in a safe at the CIA station in the country or countries where the interrogations are performed. Given that there is concern about keeping such highly classified material overseas, it is unclear why the tapes are not sent to the US for security reasons. [New York Times, 12/19/2007] However, portions of the tapes are transmitted to the US so they can be viewed by CIA managers (see Between April 2002 and November 2005).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Prince Ahmed bin Salman. [Source: Thoroughbred Corp.]Author Gerald Posner, controversial for his books dismissing JFK assassination and other conspiracy theories, will claim that a remarkable interrogation of al-Qaeda prisoner Abu Zubaida begins at this time. Zubaida, arrested three days earlier (see March 28, 2002), is flown to a US Special Forces compound outside of Kandahar, Afghanistan. There, he is tricked into thinking the US has handed him to the Saudis for a more brutal interrogation, but in fact "the Saudis" are still American agents. Zubaida expresses great relief at this and, under the influence of the "truth serum" sodium pentothal, tells his interrogators to call Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a nephew of the Saudi king. He provides telephone numbers from memory and says, "He will tell you what to do." He proceeds to give more information and phone numbers, claiming ties with higher-ups in both the Saudi and Pakistani governments. He also names: Pakistani Air Force chief Mushaf Ali Mir, who is said to be closely tied to the fundamentalists in the ISI. Saudi Intelligence Minister Prince Turki al-Faisal. Prince Sultan bin Faisal, another nephew of the Saudi King. Prince Fahd bin Turki, another member of the Saudi royalty. 9/11 'Rosetta Stone?' - According to Posner, Zubaida claims that all of these people were intermediaries he dealt with in the frequent transfer of money to al-Qaeda. The phone numbers and other details he provides are consistent with information already known by US intelligence. Zubaida then lays out many secrets about the 9/11 attacks. One unnamed investigator will later call them "the Rosetta Stone" of 9/11. According to Zubaida, he was present in a meeting in 1996 where the Pakistanis and the Saudis struck a deal with Osama bin Laden (see 1996), promising him protection, arms, and supplies in exchange for not being the targets of future terror attacks. He claims both governments were told the US would be attacked on 9/11, but not given the details of how the attack would work. Within months, all of the people named by Zubaida will die mysteriously except for Prince Turki, who is made an ambassador, giving him diplomatic immunity. [Posner, 2003, pp. 186-94] Zubaida Sent to Thailand - Shortly after his stint in Afghanistan, Zubaida is sent to a secret detention facility in Thailand, where he is subjected to extensive torture and abuse (see April - June 2002). Questionable Sourcing - Posner will say he learned of this story from two unnamed US government sources who gave similar, independent accounts. One is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official "inside the executive branch." [Salon, 10/18/2003] With the notable exception of a prominent Time magazine article [Time, 8/31/2003] , few news outlets will cover the story [MSNBC, 9/5/2003; Asia Times, 9/17/2003; Salon, 10/18/2003] , and some that cover it only do so in the form of book reviews. [Washington Post, 9/10/2003; New York Times, 10/12/2003; New York Times, 10/29/2003] Some experts will put forth the theory that the story could have been made up by neoconservatives interested in starting a war with Saudi Arabia. It is also possible Zubaida mixed facts with lies, as he will be found to have lied to interrogators on many other occasions. [Salon, 10/18/2003] There will also be speculation that the gist of the story may be true, but that Zubaida's Saudi and Pakistani contacts may have been pinned on dead men to protect the actual guilty parties. [Asia Times, 9/17/2003; Salon, 10/18/2003] Later Confirmation from US Government Officials - New York Times reporter James Risen will essentially repeat and confirm Posner's account in his 2006 book State of War. He will add, "In addition to the incidents described by Posner, a senior former American government official said that the United States has obtained other evidence that suggests connections between al-Qaeda operatives and telephone numbers associated with Saudi officials." Risen further points out, "There is no evidence that a thorough examination of [Zubaida's] claims of ties to powerful Saudis was ever conducted." [Risen, 2006, pp. 187] Also, in 2005, the New York Times will report that Michael Chertoff, who is currently a Justice Department official, advised the CIA about which interrogation techniques they could use on Abu Zubaida and others, and allowed the use of trickery to make the detainee believe "he was being questioned by a member of a security service from another country" (see 2002-2003).
Entity Tags: Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, Al-Qaeda, Mushaf Ali Mir, Turki al-Faisal, Abu Zubaida, Ahmed bin Salman, Sultan bin Faisal
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saudi Arabia, Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida, Pakistani ISI Links to 9/11
An Afghani farmer stands in his opium poppy fields. [Source: Shaul Schwarz/ Corbis]"American officials have quietly abandoned their hopes to reduce Afghanistan's opium production substantially this year and are now bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and opium markets with cheap drugs." They want to see the new Afghan government make at least a token effort to destroy some opium, but it appears that the new government is not doing even that. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai had announced a total ban on opium cultivation, processing, and trafficking, but it appears to be a total sham. The new harvest is so large that it could be "enough opium to stockpile for two or two and a half more years." [New York Times, 4/1/2002] Starting this month, Karzai's government offers farmers $500 for every acre of poppies they destroy, but farmers can earn as much as $6,400 per acre for the crop. The program is eventually cancelled when it runs out of money to pay farmers. [Associated Press, 3/27/2003]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Hamid Karzai
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs
President George Bush says in an interview on Britain's ITV television network, "I made up my mind that Saddam [Hussein] needs to go. That's about all I'm willing to share with you." [US President, 4/15/2002, pp. 573]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism
Myers making his comments at a press conference. [Source: Banded Artists Productions]Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers states, "The goal has never been to get bin Laden." He adds, "Obviously, that's desirable," but then he hints it won't be desirable to do so soon, saying, "I just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in these organizations. You may have more effect by going after the middlemen, because they're harder to replace. I don't know if that's true, or not, and clearly we would like to eventually get bin Laden." [Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields, 4/6/2002] In early 2005, the recently retired Executive Director of the CIA will explicitly state that it is better to let bin Laden remain free (see January 9, 2005).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Richard B. Myers
Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
Talat Othman. [Source: Hanania]In the wake of the Operation Greenquest raid on the SAAR network (see March 20, 2002), disgruntled Muslim-American leaders meet with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to complain about the raid. At the time, the Treasury Department had control over the Customs Department, which ran Greenquest. The meeting is arranged by prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist. About a dozen leaders are asked to attend the meeting. O'Neill pledges to look into concerns the leaders have about the raid. [Wall Street Journal, 4/18/2002; Harper's, 3/2004] Those who meet with O'Neill include: Khaled Saffuri. He is head of the Islamic Institute, a group he co-founded with Norquist to organize conservative Muslims (see 1998-September 2001). The institute accepted $20,000 in donations from the Safa Trust, which was targeted in the raid. The Safa Trust in turn has been funded by Youssef Nada, who had his assets frozen shortly after 9/11 on suspicion on funding al-Qaeda (see November 7, 2001). The institute also received donations from Abdurahman Alamoudi, another target of the raid who will later receive a long prison term (see October 15, 2004). [Wall Street Journal, 4/18/2002; Harper's, 3/2004] Talat Othman. The Wall Street Journal calls him "a longtime associate and supporter of President Bush's family who gave a benediction at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August 2000." He serves on the board of Amana Mutual Funds Trust, an investment firm founded by Yaqub Mirza, the director of most of the organizations targeted in the raid. Amana was not a target of the raid, but two other organization that were raided held large blocks of shares in Amana's mutual funds. Othman claims to know Mirza only slightly. Othman is also on the board of Saffuri's Islamic Institute. Further, Othman served on the board of Harken Energy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the same time that President Bush did. At the time, Othman represented Saudi businessman Abdullah Bakhsh on Harken Energy's board, and the investments through Bakhsh were considered essential in saving Harken from bankruptcy. Bakhsh has indirect connections to the notorious criminal bank BCCI (see July 5, 1991), and in 1996 reputedly attended a secret meeting with al-Qaeda representatives, where the attendees agreed to pay al-Qaeda many millions of dollars of protection money (see May 1996). [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/1991; Wall Street Journal, 4/18/2002] Bakhsh will head a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services company formerly run by Vice President Cheney. Othman reportedly remains a friend of Bush. [Harper's, 3/2004] Harper's magazine will note that "large sums of money from the suspect groups have moved through Amana, [yet] Greenquest agents chose not to raid the firm," and will hint that political influence from Othman and others may have saved Amana from being raided. [Harper's, 3/2004]
Entity Tags: Talat Othman, Grover Norquist, Khaled Saffuri, SAAR Foundation, Operation Greenquest, Islamic Institute, Paul O'Neill
Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, BCCI, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Saeed Sheikh surrounded by police.
[Source: unknown]The Pakistani trial of Saeed Sheikh and three others begins. [BBC, 7/5/2002] NBC reports that death sentences are expected for the four accused killers of Daniel Pearl, despite a lack of evidence. The case will be decided in top secret by handpicked judges in Pakistan's anti-terrorism courts. "Some in Pakistan's government also are very concerned about what [the defendant] Saeed might say in court. His organization and other militant groups here have ties to Pakistan's secret intelligence agency [the ISI]. There are concerns he could try to implicate that government agency in the Pearl case, or other questionable dealings that could be at the very least embarrassing, or worse."
[MSNBC, 4/5/2002] Later in the month the London Times says that the real truth about Saeed will not come out in the trial because, "Sheikh is no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan's military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization."
[London Times, 4/21/2002]
Entity Tags: Daniel Pearl, Osama bin Laden, Saeed Sheikh, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, Pakistani ISI Links to 9/11
The capture of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) is leaked to the press shortly after it occurs and on April 9, 2002, President Bush says in a speech: "The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaida. He's one of the top operatives planning death and destruction on the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore." In the weeks and months that follow, Bush and others in his administration will repeatedly tout the importance of capturing Zubaida. He is frequently described as "chief of operations" for all of al-Qaeda and the group's number three leader. Zubaida is the only significant al-Qaeda capture in the first year after 9/11, so there is pressure to hype his importance. However, at the time there is a raging debate among US intelligence analysts as to Zubaida's actual importance and even his mental sanity (see Shortly After March 28, 2002). According to journalist Ron Suskind, one day, when CIA Director George Tenet reminds Bush that Zubaida was not such a top leader after all, Bush reportedly says to him: "I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" Tenet replies, "No sir, Mr. President." Suskind will later comment: "In the wide, diffuse 'war on terror,' so much of it occurring in the shadows—with no transparency and only perfunctory oversight—the administration could say anything it wanted to say.… The administration could create whatever reality was convenient." [Suskind, 2006, pp. 99-100] But in 2006, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will issue a report containing the biographies of al-Qaeda detainees held at Guantanamo. In marked contrast to previous announcements, this biography downgrades the importance of Zubaida. It merely calls him a "leading extremist facilitator" and "one of al-Qaeda's senior travel facilitators," and says he is "not believed to be directly linked to the attacks on 11 September 2001." [Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 9/6/2006 ; Time, 9/6/2006; Dickey, 2009, pp. 77] In 2006, Bush will make new claims about Zubaida's capture that are at odds with the known facts (see September 6, 2006).
Entity Tags: Ron Suskind, George W. Bush, Bush administration (43), Abu Zubaida, George J. Tenet
Category Tags: Abu Zubaida, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
A truck bomb kills 19 people, mostly German tourists, at a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. It is later claimed that al-Qaeda is behind the attack, and that the suspected bomber speaks with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) by phone about three hours before the attack. [Associated Press, 8/24/2002] In June 2002, al-Qaeda spokesperson Suliman abu Ghaith will say that al-Qaeda was behind the bombing (see June 22, 2002).
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Suliman abu Ghaith
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks
Cynthia McKinney.
[Source: House of Representatives]US Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) calls for a thorough investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials may have been warned of the 9/11 attacks but did nothing to prevent them. She is the first national-level politician to do so. She states: "News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many different warnings were received by the administration.… I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9/11.… On the other hand, what is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, Dyn-Corp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this administration." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/12/2002] McKinney's comments are criticized and ridiculed by other politicians and the media. For instance, Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) states, "She has said some outrageous things but this has gone too far.… Maybe there should be an investigation as she suggests—but one focused on her." Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) says her comments were dangerous and irresponsible. [Washington Post, 4/12/2002] An editorial in her home state calls her the "most prominent nut" promoting 9/11 "conspiracy theories." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/15/2002] One columnist says she is possibly "a delusional paranoiac" or "a socialist rabble-rouser who despises her own country." [Orlando Sentinel, 4/21/2002] White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says McKinney "must be running for the hall of fame of the Grassy Knoll Society." [Washington Post, 4/12/2002] One month after McKinney's comments, the Bush administration comes under fire after reports reveal it had been warned five weeks before 9/11 about possible al-Qaeda plane hijackings, and McKinney claims vindication. She will lose reelection later in the year, but win her seat back in 2004. [Office of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, 5/16/2002]
Entity Tags: Mark Foley, Halliburton, Inc., Zell Miller, Cynthia McKinney, Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush, Bush administration (43), Carlyle Group
Category Tags: US Government and 9/11 Criticism
These two men were captured or killed during the raid to get Abu Zubaida. Their names are not known. [Source: ABC News]Omar Ghramesh had been captured in a house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, at the same time as al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). He is temporarily held in Pakistan and while there he is shown pictures of Zubaida looking battered and bruised. He is told, "If you don't talk, this is what will happen to you." It is not clear if he is in US or Pakistani custody at this time, as the arrest of Zubaida and his associates was a joint US-Pakistani operation. But Ghramesh does not talk, and on May 14, 2002, he and two others will be renditioned to a torture center in Syria called the Palestine Branch. There, Ghramesh will meet Abdullah Almalki, a dual Syrian and Canadian citizen who has also been renditioned to Syria to be tortured, and he will tell Almalki the account of being shown the pictures of Zubaida. [Grey, 2007, pp. 4, 54, 284] Almalki will later be found innocent of all terrorist ties and let go. [Grey, 2007, pp. 4, 54, 284] Then, in 2006, he will tell the account of the Zubaida photos to journalist Stephen Grey. There is no sign Ghramesh has been freed. [Grey, 2007, pp. 4, 54, 284] In late 2007, it will be reported that all videotapes of Zubaida's interrogation were destroyed (see November 2005), but Ghramesh's account suggests there may be surviving photos.
Entity Tags: Omar Ghramesh, Abdullah Almalki
Portions of videotapes of CIA detainee interrogations are transmitted from the foreign countries where the detainees are being held back to CIA headquarters in the US, where they are reviewed by "a small number of officials." One of the reasons the tapes are made is so that headquarters can check on the methods being used by the interrogators (see Spring-Late 2002 and Mid-May 2002 and After). These methods are said to include waterboarding and other questionable techniques (see Mid-March 2002). It is unclear what happens to these transmitted recordings when many of the videotapes of the interrogations are destroyed (see November 2005). However, in late 2007 an anonymous counterterrorism official will say there is "no reason" to believe the transmitted recordings still exist. [Newsweek, 12/11/2007] A 2003 book by Gerald Posner will also indicate that a team of CIA officials watch the interrogation of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida live on video from an adjacent room. Interrogators in the room wear earpieces so they can immediately act on suggestions from the team. [Posner, 2003, pp. 188-190]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Abu Zubaida
Around mid-April 2002, the CIA begins using aggressive interrogation techniques on al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. A new CIA team led by psychologist James Elmer Mitchell arrives and takes control of Zubaida's interrogation from the FBI (see Mid-April 2002). This team soon begins using techniques commonly described as torture, such as waterboarding (see April - June 2002, May 2002-2003 and Mid-May 2002 and After). Journalist James Risen will write in a 2006 book: "The assertions that the CIA's tactics stopped short of torture were undercut by the fact that the FBI decided that the tactics were so severe that the bureau wanted no part of them, and FBI agents were ordered to stay away from the CIA-run interrogations. FBI agents did briefly see Abu Zubaida in custody, and at least one agent came away convinced that Zubaida was being tortured, according to an FBI source." [Risen, 2006, pp. 32] Newsweek will similarly report in 2007 that Zubaida's interrogation "sparked an internal battle within the US intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaida was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute." [Newsweek, 12/12/2007] The FBI completely withdraws its personnel, wanting to avoid legal entanglements with the dubious methods. The CIA then is able to use even more aggressive methods on Zubaida (see Mid-May 2002 and After). [New York Times, 9/10/2006] The CIA torture of Zubaida produces a raft of almost useless information (see Mid-April 2002 and June 2002). Zubaida, already mentally unstable (see Shortly After March 28, 2002), says yes to every question asked of him: if al-Qaeda is planning on bombing shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, and water systems. After each "confession," the CIA cables Washington with the "intelligence," and much of it is given to President Bush. White House officials will use Zubaida's dubious admissions to issue many groundless terror warnings and alerts. [Savage, 2007, pp. 220]
Entity Tags: Abu Zubaida, Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Ahmed Alhaznawi in his martyr video. [Source: Al Jazeera]A martyr video of 9/11 hijacker Ahmed Alhaznawi is shown by the Al Jazeera television network. Alhaznawi does not mention details of the 9/11 plot, but he pledges to send a "bloodied message" to Americans. He says, "It is time to kill the Americans on their own ground among their families and soldiers… The time of humiliation and subjugation is over. It's time to kill Americans in their heartland.… Lord I regard myself as a martyr for you to accept me as such." A picture of the World Trade Center exploding appears behind him during his entire speech. It is believed that he recorded the video around March 2001, the same time most other 9/11 hijackers recorded similar videos (see (December 2000-March 2001)), and the background was added in digitally after 9/11. Al Jazeera says they received the video about a week earlier, along with videos from top al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, as part of a documentary prepared by al-Qaeda. The Guardian notes that "The al-Qaeda tapes broadcast by [Al Jazeera since 9/11] have gradually moved towards acknowledging the organization's role in the September 11 conspiracy," and "Alhaznawi's statement comes close to a full admission…" [Guardian, 4/16/2002]
Entity Tags: Ahmed Alhaznawi, Al Jazeera, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Hijackers, 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
Not long after being captured, al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida identifies Jose Padilla as an al-Qaeda operative to his FBI interrogators (see Late March through Early June, 2002). Padilla is a US citizen, and US intelligence has been monitoring him and some of his associates in Florida for nearly a decade already (see (October 1993-November 2001)). However, the New York Times will allege in 2006: "But Mr. Zubaida dismissed Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far-fetched. He told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material" (see Early 2002). [New York Times, 9/10/2006] The US arrests Padilla a short time later, when he returns to the US from an overseas trip on May 8 (see May 8, 2002). One month later, Attorney General John Ashcroft will reveal Padilla's arrest in a widely publicized announcement, and will further allege that Padilla was actively plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the US (see June 10, 2002). However, it appears Zubaida may have been correct that Padilla was wildly overhyped. The US will later drop charges that Padilla was making a "dirty bomb," planning any attack in the US, and was a member of al-Qaeda. [Knight Ridder, 11/23/2005] Journalist Ron Suskind will comment in 2006, "Padilla turned out to not be nearly as valuable as advertised at the start, though, and I think that's been shown in the ensuing years." [Salon, 9/7/2006]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jose Padilla, Abu Zubaida
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, Terror Alerts, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Abu Zubaida
The law offices of Mitchell, Jessen and Associates are in this American Legion Building in Spokane, Washington. [Source: Brian Plonka / Spokesman-Review]The FBI has been interrogating captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida at a secret CIA prison in Thailand and learning valuable intelligence information (see Late March through Early June, 2002). However, the prison is controlled by the CIA and the FBI is only in control until a team of CIA interrogators arrives, which apparently happens around mid-April 2002. The FBI has been using humane rapport-building techniques, but the new CIA team immediately abandons this approach. The team is lead by psychologist James Mitchell, who runs a consulting business in Washington State with psychologist Bruce Jessen (see January 2002 and After). Both worked in SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), a classified US military training program which trains soldiers to endure being tortured by the enemy. Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the techniques inflicted in the SERE training so they could be used on Zubaida and other detainees. [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007] SERE trainees are subjected to "waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to temperature extremes, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds, and religious and sexual humiliation." One European official knowledgeable about the SERE program will say of Mitchell and Jessen: "They were very arrogant, and pro-torture.… They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses." The use of these psychologists also helps to put a veneer of scientific respectability over the torture techniques favored by top officials. One former US intelligence community adviser will later say: "Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can't just say, 'We want to do what Egypt's doing.' When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, 'We have PhD's who have these theories.'" [New Yorker, 8/6/2007] But Mitchell and Jessen have no experience in conducting interrogations and have no proof that their techniques are effective. In fact, the SERE techniques are based on Communist interrogation techniques from the Korean War, designed not to get valuable intelligence but to generate propaganda by getting US prisoners to make statements denouncing the US (see December 2001). Air Force Reserve colonel Steve Kleinman, an expert in human intelligence operations, will later say he finds it astonishing the CIA "chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation… to do something that had never been proven in the real world." FBI official Michael Rolince calls their techniques "voodoo science." In 2006, a report by the best-known interrogation experts in the US will conclude that there is no evidence that reverse-engineered SERE tactics are effective in obtaining useful intelligence. But nonetheless, from this time forward Zubaida's interrogations will be based on these techniques. [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007]
Entity Tags: James Elmer Mitchell, Abu Zubaida, Steve Kleinman, Michael Rolince, Bruce Jessen, Central Intelligence Agency
President Bush explicitly likens US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan to the successful Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. At the Virginia Military Institute, where Gen. George Marshall trained a century ago, Bush calls the Marshall Plan "a beacon to light the path that we, too, must follow." He says that Afghans have felt abandoned before, including by the US at the end of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s, and says, "We're not going to repeat that mistake. We're tough, we're determined, we're relentless. We will stay until the mission is done." He vows to avoid the syndrome of "initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure." The New York Times will later note that that speech is little-noticed in the US but fuels expectations in Afghanistan and bolsters the stature of Hamid Karzai shortly before he is formally chosen to lead the Afghan government. But Bush's promise will fail to materialize. In the months following the speech, the Bush administration fails to make any detailed reconstruction plan. For the next few years, Afghanistan will end up getting less assistance per capita than post-conflict Bosnia and Kosovo, or even poverty-stricken Haiti. [New York Times, 8/12/2007]
Entity Tags: Hamid Karzai, George W. Bush
Category Tags: Afghanistan
R. Scott Shumate. [Source: American Psychological Association]Held in a secret CIA prison in Thailand, al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is interrogated by a new team of CIA interrogators led by James Elmer Mitchell and Dr. R. Scott Shumate. Mitchell is a psychologist contracted to the CIA, while Shumate is the chief operational psychologist for the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Mitchell wants to use torture techniques based on reverse-engineering SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), a class he has taught that trains US soldiers to resist torture by the enemy. But the techniques have never been tried before and studies will later determine they are not effective in obtaining good intelligence (see Mid-April 2002). Zubaida is resistant to Mitchell's new aggressive techniques and refuses to talk. Mitchell concludes Zubaida will only talk when he has been rendered completely helpless and dependent, so the CIA begins building a coffin to bury Zubaida alive in but not actually kill him. This creates an intense controversy over the legality of such a technique, and ultimately it appears the burying alive is never carried out. Both domestic and international law clearly prohibits death threats and simulated killings. However, a number of aggressive techniques have just been approved at the highest political level (see Mid-March 2002), so opponents to these techniques are mostly powerless. Shumate is so strongly opposed to these techniques that he leaves in disgust. He will later tell his associates that it was a mistake for the CIA to hire Mitchell. But with Shumate gone, Mitchell is now free to use more extreme methods, and the torture of Zubaida begins in earnest around the middle of May. [Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007] Around this time, the FBI also washes its hands of the controversial techniques and withdraws its personnel from the secret prison (see Mid-April-May 2002).
Entity Tags: R. Scott Shumate, Counterterrorist Center, Abu Zubaida, Central Intelligence Agency, James Elmer Mitchell
The Washington Post reports, "The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit US ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al-Qaeda," allowing bin Laden to escape. The newspaper claims that while the administration has failed to acknowledge the mistake publicly, "inside the government there is little controversy on the subject." [Washington Post, 4/17/2002] The next day, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denies this, and states he did not know at the time of the assault, "nor do I know today of any evidence that he was in Tora Bora at the time or that he left Tora Bora at the time or even where he is today." [USA Today, 4/18/2002] Apparently, Rumsfeld soon forces the removal of Cofer Black from his position of head of the CIA's counterterrorism division, because Rumsfeld thinks Black leaked information for this damning Washington Post article (see May 17, 2002).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Bush administration (43), Al-Qaeda, Cofer Black, Donald Rumsfeld
Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan
The FBI allows relatives of passengers on Flight 93 to listen to the 31-minutes of tape from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and see a written transcript of the recording. About 70 relatives do so. They are allowed to take notes, but not to make recordings because the tape might be used in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Guardian, 4/19/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] The San Francisco Chronicle responds: "Is there even a dollop of logic in that explanation? It's like saying we can't watch video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center because that video might be used in a trial." [San Francisco Chronicle, 6/3/2002] Much of the tape is reportedly unintelligible. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "the voices were muddled and the ambient noise of the wind rushing by the speeding plane often made it impossible to distinguish individuals, even when they were yelling." [Daily Telegraph, 4/20/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] New York Times reporter Jere Longman writes the book Among The Heroes based in part on interviews with relatives who hear the cockpit voice recording, along with several government officials and investigators. The recording reveals new details of the passengers' struggle on board Flight 93, but the government still has not officially stated if it believes they took over the plane or not. [Washington Post, 4/19/2002; MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 7/31/2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Zacarias Moussaoui, Jere Longman
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
FBI Director Mueller states: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot." He also claims that the attackers used "extraordinary secrecy" and "investigators have found no computers, laptops, hard drives or other storage media that may have been used by the hijackers, who hid their communications by using hundreds of pay phones and cell phones, coupled with hard-to-trace prepaid calling cards." [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002; Los Angeles Times, 4/22/2002] However, before 9/11, CIA Director Tenet told the Senate that al-Qaeda is "embracing the opportunities offered by recent leaps in information technology" [US Congress, 3/21/2000] ; the FBI broke the al-Qaeda computer encryption before February 2001 [United Press International, 2/13/2001] ; witnesses report seeing the hijackers use computers for e-mail at public libraries in Florida and Maine [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/2001; Boston Herald, 10/5/2001] ; in October 2001 there were many reports that hundreds of e-mails discussing the 9/11 plot had been found (see October 2001); Moussaoui's laptop was found to contain important information (see (Late July-Early August, 2002)), and so on.
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Robert S. Mueller III, Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Mohammed Zouaydi. [Source: Agence France-Presse]Spanish authorities arrest Syrian-born Spanish businessman Mohammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi, alleging that he is a key al-Qaeda financier. [Chicago Tribune, 5/6/2002] An accountant, Zouaydi is considered to be the "big financier" behind the al-Qaeda network in Europe, according to French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard. From 1996 to 2001, Zouaydi lived in Saudi Arabia and funneled money into a series of companies set up to accept donations. (The source of the donations is unknown.) Around $1 million was then forwarded to al-Qaeda agents throughout Europe, especially to Germany. Mohamed Atta's Hamburg apartment telephone number was saved in the cell phone memory of one of Zouaydi's associates. [Agence France-Presse, 9/20/2002] Zouaydi also allegedly sent money to Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian-born businessman who has admitted knowing Atta and others in the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell. Before 9/11, Spanish intelligence monitored Darkazanli several times as he traveled to Spain and met with Zouaydi and others (see August 1998-September 11, 2001). [Chicago Tribune, 5/6/2002] One of Zouaydi's employees in Spain visited the WTC in 1997. While there, he extensively videotaped the buildings. Perhaps only coincidentally, while in Saudi Arabia, Zouaydi "was an accountant for the al-Faisal branch of the Saudi royal family, including Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud and Prince Turki al-Faisal." [Agence France-Presse, 9/20/2002] Al-Faisal al-Saud also has a large financial stake in a Sudanese bank allegedly co-founded by and closely linked to Osama bin Laden (see September 24, 2001 and After).
Entity Tags: Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud, Germany, World Trade Center, Al-Qaeda, Turki al-Faisal, Mohamed Atta, Mohammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi, Syria
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany, Mamoun Darkazanli, Saudi Arabia, Key Captures and Deaths, Al-Qaeda in Spain
Prince Bandar and President Bush meet at Bush's ranch in August, 2002. [Source: Associated Press]Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is due to arrive in Houston, Texas, to meet with President Bush at his ranch in nearby Crawford, Texas. Abdullah's entourage is so large that it fills eight airplanes. As these planes land, US intelligence learns that one person on the flight manifests is wanted by US law enforcement, and two more are on a terrorist watch list. An informed source will later claim that the FBI is ready to "storm the plane and pull those guys off." However, the State Department fears an international incident. An interagency conflict erupts over what to do. The Wall Street Journal will report in 2003, "Details about what happened to the three men in the end are not entirely clear, and no one at [the State Department] was willing to provide any facts about the incident. What is clear, though, is that the three didn't get anywhere near Crawford, but were also spared the 'embarrassment' of arrest. And the House of Saud was spared an 'international incident.'" [Wall Street Journal, 10/13/2003] The next day, Osama Basnan, an alleged associate of 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, reports his passport stolen to Houston police. [Newsweek, 11/24/2002] This confirms that Basnan is in Houston on the same day that Crown Prince Abdullah, Prince Saud al-Faisal, and Saudi US Ambassador Prince Bandar meet with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Adviser Rice at Bush's Crawford ranch. [US-Saudi Arabian Business Council, 4/25/2002] While in Texas, it is believed that Basnan "met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States." [Newsweek, 11/24/2002; Guardian, 11/25/2002] The still-classified section of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry is said to discuss the possibility of Basnan meeting this figure at this time. [Associated Press, 8/2/2003] It is unknown if Basnan and/or the Saudi prince he allegedly meets have any connection to the three figures wanted by the FBI, or even if one or both of them could have been among the wanted figures. Basnan will be arrested in the US for visa fraud in August 2002, and then deported two months later (see August 22-November 2002).
Entity Tags: Osama Basnan, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Nawaf Alhazmi, Saud al-Faisal, US Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Condoleezza Rice, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Bandar bin Sultan, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, Khalid Almihdhar
Category Tags: Key Hijacker Events, Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, Saudi Arabia, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesperson states, "Given what we know about al-Qaeda's interest in the material [Iraq's supposed WMD], we have to have concerns about a possible marriage between those who wish to acquire it and those who have it." Immediately after the statement is made, Britain's own senior military officials refute the claim saying that there is no credible evidence to support the claim. A senior source tells the Independent of London, "We are not aware of evidence, intelligence or otherwise, that the Iraqi government or its agencies are passing on weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda. Nor have we seen any credible evidence linking the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks." [Independent, 3/26/2002]
Entity Tags: Tony Blair, Al-Qaeda
Ahmad Huber (left) with Jean Marie Le Pen (right), at Christian Cambuzat's spa in Switzerland. [Source: Blick]According to an article in a German newspaper, Ahmad Huber, one of the directors of the Al Taqwa Bank, regularly meets with important far right wing figures. The Al Taqwa Bank was banned after 9/11 for allegedly financing al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamic militant groups (see November 7, 2001). Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of a far right wing political party in France that has at times received around 10% of the popular vote, frequently attends a very exclusive spa in Switzerland to improve his health. This spa is run by Christian Cambuzat, a supporter of Le Pen and other far right figures. Huber confirms that he has met Le Pen at this spa, and a picture of Huber and Le Pen together accompany the article. Other politicians who meet at the spa include Franz Schanhuber, founder of an extreme right wing party in Germany and former SS member, and Gianfrano Fini, an Italian neo-fascist known for his admiration of Benito Mussolini. An unnamed extreme right wing politician from the US is also said to attend meetings at this spa. [Blick (Zurich), 4/26/2002]
Entity Tags: Gianfrano Fini, Christian Cambuzat, Jean Marie Le Pen, Ahmad Huber
Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, Al Taqwa Bank
US and Pakistani forces search for Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal region, but are unable to find him. A mosque owned by Haqqani is raided at night by about 200 Pakistani soldiers and 25 US Special Forces, who arrive by helicopter. Haqqani had been a CIA asset in the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets (see (1987)). While his link to the CIA apparently ended at some point, he has continued to be an asset of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency (see May 2008). He was a minister in the Taliban government in the 1990s. This apparently is the last time the US or Pakistan will target Haqqani for many years. In the years after this raid, he will build up his own semi-autonomous branch of the Taliban, known as the Haqqani network, and will launch many attacks against US forces in Afghanistan. [New York Times, 4/28/2002; New York Times, 6/17/2008]
Entity Tags: US Military, Haqqani Network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Pakistan Armed Forces, Taliban, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Newsweek reports that both US and Czech officials no longer believe the alleged April 2001 meeting between Mohamed Atta and the Iraqi officer, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, ever took place (see April 8, 2001). The magazine reports that FBI and CIA investigations show no record that Atta visited Prague during that time and instead place the 9/11 plotter in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Florida during that month. [Newsweek, 4/28/2002; Washington Post, 5/1/2002; BBC, 5/1/2002] But Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross maintains that the meeting did take place. A few days after the Newsweek report is published, he says, "Right now I do not have the slightest information that anything is wrong with the details I obtained from BIS counterintelligence. I trust the BIS more than journalists." [BBC, 5/1/2002; Prague Post, 5/8/2002]
Entity Tags: Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Stanislav Gross, Mohamed Atta
Camp X-Ray prisoners. Their detention cages can be seen on the right. Pictures like this provoked an outrage about their treatment. [Source: Shane T. McCoy/ Associated Press]In Guantanamo, the 300 detainees (see April 28, 2002) being held in at Camp X-Ray are transferred to Camp Delta. Although cells at Camp Delta are even smaller than at Camp X-Ray (8 ft x 6 ft, 8 inches compared to 8 ft x 8 ft), [American Forces Press Service, 1/14/2003] the cells are now equipped with a flush toilet, a sink with running water and a metal bed frame. "There is indoor plumbing, exercise areas are better controlled, and detainees are out of the sun more," Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, the commander of Military Police at Guantanamo says. [American Forces Press Service, 1/14/2003] The new facility also has the advantage of being more secure. "We've a much more secure facility to house them in Camp Delta. For instance, the guards don't have to escort them to the bathroom all the time and those types of things. That's a great improvement in terms of how the guards have to deal with them on a daily basis." [American Forces Press Service, 1/14/2003] Recreation time goes up from 5 minutes a day at Camp X-Ray to 15 minutes at Camp Delta. [Mirror, 3/12/2004] Use of Camp X-ray does not end. An undated Pentagon memo shows the camp is still used for isolation purposes between December 2002 and January 15, 2003. [US Department of Defense, 1/2003 ] Still, according to a Pentagon adviser, around the middle of 2002, some high-security prisoners will enjoy their recreation time strapped into heavy, straitjacket-like clothing, with their arms tied behind them, goggles over their eyes and their heads hooded. Describing what he was told by a Pentagon official, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes in the Guardian of London: "The restraints forced [these prisoners] to move, if he chose to move, on his knees, bent over at a 45-degree angle. Most prisoners just sat and suffered in the heat." [Guardian, 9/13/2004] The Camp Delta facility was built by Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, which was awarded the contract even though it was estimated military engineers could do the job for about half the price. [New York Times, 7/13/2002]
Entity Tags: Rick Baccus, Halliburton, Inc.
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
It is reported that the US military is drawing up a plan for a long term military "footprint" in Central Asia. The US says it plans no permanent bases, but the leaders of Central Asia speak of the US being there for decades, and the temporary structures that had been hastily constructed over the past several months are being replaced by permanent buildings. [Los Angeles Times, 4/4/2002; Associated Press, 4/30/2002; Washington Post, 8/27/2002] All of the countries are encumbered by corrupt dictatorships, and many experts say their serious social and economic problems are growing worse. Some experts wonder if the US is increasing Muslim resentment and the risk of terrorism by closely associating with such regimes. [Washington Post, 8/27/2002]
Entity Tags: United States
At some unknown time after US-allied forces conquer Afghanistan in late 2001, a US special operations team known as Task Force Orange slips into the tribal areas of Pakistan to plant listening devices on mountain peaks. These devices are used because US spy satellites reportedly do not have antennas sensitive enough to pick up cell phone or hand-held radio transmissions. These devices have reportedly helped in some cases to locate al-Qaeda operatives. [Newsweek, 8/28/2007]
Entity Tags: Task Force Orange
Category Tags: Remote Surveillance, Pakistan and the ISI, Afghanistan, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region
Jose Rodriguez. [Source: CIA]Jose Rodriguez, formerly chief of the CIA's Latin American division, is appointed head of its rapidly expanding Counterterrorist Center. The appointment surprises some, as Latin America is not at the heart of global counterterrorism efforts and Rodriguez, who cannot speak Arabic, has no experience in the Middle East. In addition, Rodriguez was removed from his position in 1997, after he tried to get the government of the Dominican Republic to drop charges against a person described as a "friend," and was criticized by the CIA Office of Inspector General for showing a "remarkable lack of judgment" over the affair. [International Herald Tribune, 12/8/2007] CIA officer Gary Berntsen, who served under Rodriguez as a station chief in an unnamed South American country, will be critical of him in a 2005 book. When Berntsen, an officer with a wealth of counterterrorism experience, took up his position in South America following the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, Rodriguez greeted him "by saying that he had heard about my successful record of conducting counterterrorism operations, but that would not, repeat not, be my primary mission as a Chief of Station in South America. He stated categorically that he wanted me to conduct normal foreign intelligence collection against traditional targets and no, repeat no, counterterrorism. I was stunned. Had this man been living in a cave the last two years?" Berntsen was also surprised when, after 9/11, he received a message from CIA headquarters asking for volunteers to fight terrorism, and then a message from Rodriguez ordering all Latin American station chiefs not to volunteer. Berntsen will comment: "I didn't understand… he was ordering me and other highly skilled officers in Latin America not to step forward? Had this guy taken leave of his senses? In a time of national tragedy was he still thinking of how to protect his Division?" [Berntsen and Pezzullo, 2005, pp. 69, 71] Rodriguez's identity is supposedly secret until the summer of 2007, shortly before he retires from the agency. [Associated Press, 8/8/2007] Rodriguez will be put in charge of the Directorate of Operations in 2004, but will become involved in a scandal over the destruction of videotapes of detainee interrogations (see November 2005 and December 6, 2007). [International Herald Tribune, 12/8/2007]
Entity Tags: Gary Berntsen, Central Intelligence Agency, Counterterrorist Center, Jose Rodriguez, Jr.
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
In a 2007 book, CIA Director George Tenet will say of the alleged meeting between hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague, "We devoted an extraordinary effort to the issue but could never find any convincing evidence that the visit had happened.… By May of 2002, FBI and CIA analysts voiced increasing skepticism that these meetings had taken place. The case for the meetings continued to weaken from that time forward." [Tenet, 2007] But Tenet will not publicly say the CIA is "increasingly skeptical" about the meeting until July 2004, long after the start of the Iraq war and after the 9/11 Commission publicly confirmed that the meeting did not take place (see April 28, 2002 and June 16, 2004).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency
Industrial Risk Insurers agrees to make a full payment under its $861 million policy for the loss of World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story office building which completely collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11. [Insurance Journal, 6/7/2002; Wall Street Journal, 7/10/2002; Newsday, 10/21/2003] WTC 7 was owned by Silverstein Properties, which also acquired the lease on the Twin Towers six weeks before 9/11. [International Council of Shopping Centers, 4/27/2001; Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, 7/24/2001] Larry Silverstein, the president of Silverstein Properties, intends to use $489 million of the insurance payment to cover an existing mortgage on WTC 7, and $65 million of it for other debts and costs. The remaining $307 million will go toward the construction costs of the new WTC 7. [Bloomberg, 1/14/2003; New York Daily News, 1/14/2003] He is currently in a dispute with the carriers of his insurance on the Twin Towers, over whether the 9/11 attack constituted one or two separate events, and this will not be settled until mid-2007 (see May 23, 2007). [Wall Street Journal, 9/11/2002; New York Times, 5/23/2007]
Entity Tags: Larry Silverstein, Silverstein Properties, Industrial Risk Insurers, World Trade Center
Category Tags: 9/11 Related Lawsuits
An RC-135 "Rivet Joint" spy plane. [Source: Defense Department]In May 2002, the US Air Force's only specially-equipped RC-135 "Rivet Joint" U spy planes—credited with having successfully intercepted the radio transmissions and cellphone calls of al-Qaeda's leaders—are pulled from Afghanistan to conduct surveillance over Iraq. In June 2003, some RC-135s will finally return to support operations in Afghanistan. Retired Air Force colonel Rick Francona will later comment, "It's not just the platform itself, it's the linguists that man the platform. They were being really overworked." He also says, "I don't think there is any question that the effort against al-Qaeda was degraded." [MSNBC, 7/29/2003; Guardian, 3/26/2004] NSA satellites are also "boreholed," (redirected) from Afghanistan to Iraq. [Atlantic Monthly, 10/2004]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Air Force, National Security Agency
Category Tags: Remote Surveillance, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Afghanistan
Indira Singh.
[Source: Michael Kane]In October 2001, Ptech insiders attempted to warn the FBI that suspected terrorist financier Yassin al-Qadi had funded Ptech (see Shortly After October 12, 2001). Then Indira Singh, an employee at JP Morgan Chase bank, develops her own suspicions about Ptech after her bank assigned her to investigate Ptech for a potential business deal. In May 2002, she speaks with the FBI about her concerns. Weeks later, she learns the FBI still has not told any other government agencies about the potential Ptech security threat. She later will recall, "the language, the kind of language law enforcement, counterterrorism, and the FBI agents themselves were using basically indicated to me that absolutely no investigation was going on, that it was totally at a standstill, at which point my hair stood on end." She contacts a Boston CBS television station, WBZ-TV, and a reporter for the station named Joe Bergantino begins investigating Ptech. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; National Public Radio, 12/8/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Around the same time, a former government official with contacts in the Bush administration tells officials at the National Security Council about the Ptech allegations. By late August, Operation Greenquest then opens its own Ptech investigation. The FBI then tries "to muscle its way back into the probe once it [becomes] clear that [Greenquest is] taking the case seriously."
[Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Beginning in late November, US agents begin calling Ptech officials and asking them if they have ties to money laundering, thus tipping them off. Ptech will also be notified when a December raid will be occurring before it happens.
[Associated Press, 1/3/2003] WBZ-TV prepared a story on Ptech, but withheld it from the public for more than three months after receiving "calls from federal law enforcement agencies, some at the highest levels." The station claims the government launched its Ptech probe in August 2002, after they "got wind of our investigation" and "asked us to hold the story so they could come out and do their raid and look like they're ahead of the game."
[Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
Entity Tags: Operation Greenquest, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ptech Inc., National Security Council, Indira Singh
Category Tags: BMI and Ptech, Terrorism Financing, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
This picture of US soldiers supervising the waterboarding of North Vietnamese prisoners was published in a US newspaper in 1968, resulting in an investigation and convictions. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]In 2007, it will be reported that the CIA used the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding on at least three detainees. The Associated Press will claim the detainees are: Abu Zubaida, who is captured in March 2002 and tortured around May 2002 (see March 28, 2002 and Mid-May 2002 and After). Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is captured in November 2002 (see Early October 2002 and (November 2002)). Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), who is allegedly captured in early 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003 and Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003). [Associated Press, 12/11/2007] NBC News will report a list of three that includes Hambali, who is captured in August 2003 (see August 12, 2003 and Shortly After August 12, 2003). NBC's list also mentions KSM and Zubaida, but does not mention al-Nashiri. [MSNBC, 9/13/2007] In a 2007 book, former CIA Director George Tenet will hint that slightly more than three may have been waterboarded, writing, "The most aggressive interrogation techniques conducted by CIA personnel were applied to only a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet, including people who had planned the 9/11 attacks…" [Tenet, 2007, pp. 242] ABC News will claim in September 2007, "It is believed that waterboarding was used on fewer than five 'high-value' terrorist subjects…" [ABC News, 9/14/2007] Prior to 2002, waterboarding was classified by the US government as a form of torture, and treated as a serious criminal offense. US soldiers were court-martialled for waterboarding captives as recently as the Vietnam War. The technique is said to simulate death by drowning. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007] In the 1600s, King James I of England wrote about the torture his government was using and stated that waterboarding was the most extreme form of torture used, worse than the rack and thumbscrews. [Harper's, 12/15/2007] In 2007, it will be revealed that at least some of the interrogations of Zubaida and al-Nashiri were videotaped, and it is suspected by some that their waterboarding may have been taped (see Spring-Late 2002). These tapes will later be destroyed under controversial circumstances (see November 2005). A government official will later claim that waterboarding is no longer used after 2003. The CIA and US military will prohibit the use of waterboarding in 2006. [Associated Press, 12/11/2007]
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hambali, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaida
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, "How ought security to evolve in [Afghanistan] depends on really two things; one is what the interim government decides they think ought to happen, [the other is] what the warlord forces in the country decide they think ought to happen, and the interaction between the two." Rumsfeld's suggestion that the warlords should share power with the government in Afghanistan outrages many leaders in the US and Afghanistan. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid will later comment that this "gave the Taliban just the propaganda excuse they needed to reorganize themselves. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai considered Rumsfeld's comment an insult to all Afghans, and from that time on, he saw [Rumsfeld] as being completely out of touch with reality." Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) says a few days later: "America has replaced the Taliban with the warlords. Warlords are still on the US payroll but that hasn't brought a cessation of violence. Not only is the US failing to reign in the warlords, we are actually making them the centerpiece of our strategy." [Rashid, 2008, pp. 134-135]
Entity Tags: Joseph Biden, Taliban, Donald Rumsfeld, Hamid Karzai
Czech President Vaclav Havel informs Washington that there is no evidence to substantiate claims that 9/11 plotter Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi diplomat Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague in April 2001 (see April 8, 2001). The information is relayed to the White House quietly to avoid embarrassing top Czech officials—presumably Interior Minister Stanislav Gross -who had publicly stated on more than one occasion that there was no evidence to suggest that the meeting did not take place. The New York Times will report in October 2002: "Mr. Havel… moved carefully behind the scenes in the months after the reports of the Prague meeting came to light to try to determine what really happened, officials said. He asked trusted advisers to investigate, and they quietly went through back channels to talk with Czech intelligence officers to get to the bottom of the story. The intelligence officers told them there was no evidence of a meeting." The New York Times also reports that analysts in the Czech intelligence service were furious that the Prime Minister stovepiped the information straight to Washington, before they had the opportunity to investigate further. [United Press International, 10/20/2002; New York Times, 10/21/2002 Sources: Unnamed CIA and FBI officials]
Entity Tags: Stanislav Gross, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Mohamed Atta, Vaclav Havel
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Mohamed Atta, Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links
During the White House daily press briefing, Ari Fleischer is peppered with questions about Bush's Iraq policy by Helen Thomas, a reporter for Hearst News Service. [White House, 5/1/2002; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 2-3] After the briefing, Fleischer meets with the president and recounts his exchange with Thomas. According to Adam Levine, a White House communications assistant who is present, the president's mood immediately changes. "Did you tell her I don't like motherf_ckers who gas their own people?," Bush asks. "Did you tell her I don't like assholes who lie to the world? Did you tell her I'm going to kick his sorry motherf_cking ass all over the Middle East?" Fleischer responds, "I told her half of that." [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 2-3 Sources: Adam Levine]
Entity Tags: Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush, Adam Levine
L. Britt Snider, ex-CIA official and the staff director of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, resigns. Apparently there were many conflicts between Snider and his own staff, as well as with Congress. It is later revealed the final straw occurred when Snider tried to hire a CIA employee who had failed an agency polygraph test as an inquiry staffer. The hearings were expected to start in late May, but the resignation is one reason why the first public hearings are delayed until September. [Los Angeles Times, 5/2/2002; Los Angeles Times, 10/19/2002] Snider is replaced by Eleanor Hill. She will be widely credited for turning around an inquiry "hampered by infighting, politics, leaks and dueling agendas." [Miami Herald, 7/14/2002; Washington Post, 9/25/2002]
Entity Tags: US Congress, Eleanor Hill, L. Britt Snider
Category Tags: 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/11 Investigations
FEMA's World Trade Center Building Performance Study. [Source: FEMA]FEMA releases its report of the WTC collapses. It concludes, "[W]ith the information and time available, the sequence of events leading to the collapse of each tower could not be definitively determined." On Building 7: "The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time." [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Category Tags: WTC Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
The Defense Department announces that all service members who were on active duty on or after 9/11 are eligible to wear the National Defense Service Medal. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz says, "The sacrifices and contributions made by the armed forces in direct response to the terrorism attacks on the United States and to the long-term resolution of terrorism merit special recognition." With a few exceptions, members of the National Guard and Reserve may also be awarded the medal. [US Department of Defense, 5/2/2002]
Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, US Department of Defense
Overview of aircraft's trajectory inside the Pentagon showing the points of entry (top right) and "exit" (bottom left). [Source: pentagonresearch (.com)] (click image to enlarge)A report about shoring used in the Pentagon submitted to the University of Maryland makes reference to a hole created in a wall inside the Pentagon on 9/11, near the end of the path of damage caused by the aircraft that hit the building. However, the assessment gives no specific explanation for what exactly caused the hole. The hole was on the ground level in a brick wall of the C Ring (the third of five concentric rings that form the Pentagon), on the A-E Drive, a service roadway that runs round the building between its C and B rings. The report says, "a nine foot diameter exit hole was created in the wall of C ring and the remainder of the debris from the impact ended up in the […] A-E Drive." [Titus, 5/3/2002, pp. 9 ] Similarly, other reports do not offer any conclusive explanation for what caused the hole. The American Society of Civil Engineers' Pentagon Building Performance Report, published in 2003 January 23, 2003, will show the hole's location in several diagrams, but explain only that "there was a hole in the east wall of Ring C, emerging into A-E Drive, between column lines 5 and 7 in Wedge 2. The wall failure was approximately 310 ft from where the fuselage of the aircraft entered the west wall of the building." [Mlakar et al., 1/2003, pp. 28 ] The Arlington County After-Action Report, published in 2002, contains a photo of the exit hole with the note "the damage extended all the way through the inner wall of the C Ring, a distance of approximately 285 feet." It offers no further explanation for what precisely caused the hole. [US Department of Health & Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A8] Various explanations of how the hole came about are advanced after 9/11 (see September 15, 2001 and After).
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, 9/11 Investigations
FBI agent Robert Wright, feeling that he had been gagged by FBI superiors (see September 11, 2001-October 2001), files a formal complaint in early 2002 with the Inspector General's Office (IGO) of the Justice Department. The IGO probes agency wrongdoing and mistakes. However, the IGO turns him away. On May 5, 2002, the IGO writes that "Mr. Wright raises serious charges concerning the FBI's handling of a criminal matter relating to suspected terrorists," but the IGO does "not have the resources to conduct an investigation of [the] anticipated size and scope." Instead, the IGO recommends Wright to refer his complaints to Congress. The IGO had previously conducted large-scale investigations, for instance looking into the FBI's alleged mishandling of evidence in the trial of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. David Schippers, one of Wright's lawyers, scoffs at the IGO's explanation: "The truth is, they don't want to investigate FBI dereliction of duty." The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry will interview Wright in late 2002. [LA Weekly, 8/9/2002] However, neither his name, nor Yassin al-Qadi's name, nor any details about the Vulgar Betrayal investigation will appear in the Inquiry's heavily censored 2003 final report. He will not be interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, and neither his name, nor Yassin al-Qadi's name, nor any details about the Vulgar Betrayal investigation will appear in the 9/11 Commission Final Report in 2004. Supposedly, the FBI "stalled Wright's appearance before the 9/11 Commission until it was too late for him to appear before its public hearings." [US Congress, 7/24/2003 ; US Congress, 7/24/2003; DebbieSchlussel (.com), 7/14/2004; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004]
Entity Tags: US Congress, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Inspector General (DOJ), David Schippers, Robert G. Wright, Jr.
Category Tags: Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal, Terrorism Financing
A Fox News report on the Oak Harbor truck incident. [Source: Fox News]A moving truck is pulled over for speeding in the middle of the night in Oak Harbor, Washington, near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. The base is the home of the advanced electronic warfare Prowler jets. A bomb-sniffing dog detects explosives on one of the men and inside the truck. High-tech equipment is then used to confirm the presence of TNT on the gearshift and RDX plastic explosive on the steering wheel. Both men turn out to be Israeli (one with an altered passport) and in the country illegally. [Fox News, 5/13/2002] However, the FBI later clears the two men, saying both the dog and the tests just detected false positives from "residue left by a cigarette lighter." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/14/2002; Jerusalem Post, 5/14/2002] The "art student spy ring" frequently uses moving vans as cover, and has been caught spying on the most top secret military bases. [Salon, 5/7/2002] In a possibly related story, the Seattle FBI office that handled this case will be broken into a few weeks later, and even a room containing evidence will be penetrated. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7/29/2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Oak Harbor Israelis"
Category Tags: Israel
Salon reports on the Israeli "art student spy ring." All the "students" claim to have come from either Bezalel Academy or the University of Jerusalem. An examination of the Bezalel database shows that not a single "art student" appears to have attended school there. There is no such thing as the University of Jerusalem. In fact, the article points out that the sheer sloppiness and brazenness of the spy operation appears to be a great mystery, especially since the Mossad is renowned as one of the best spy agencies in the world. One government source suggests a theory to Salon that the "art students" were actually a smoke screen. They were meant to be caught and connected to DEA surveillance so that a smaller number of spies also posing as art students could complete other missions. One such mission could have been the monitoring of al-Qaeda operatives. [Salon, 5/7/2002] Shortly afterwards, a major Israeli newspaper publishes a story about the spy ring, but does not come to any conclusions. [Ha'aretz, 5/14/2002]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, "Israeli art students", Drug Enforcement Administration, Israel Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad)
A bloody victim of the Sheraton Hotel bombing. [Source: Agence France-Presse]A car bomb blows up outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, Pakistan. A bus full of French engineers is targeted, killing seven of them as well as three Pakistanis. [Rashid, 2008, pp. 154] The attack is blamed on a new militant group, called Lashkar-e-Omar in tribute to Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is said to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks and the murder of reporter Daniel Pearl. This group is said to have been formed from factions of other Pakistani militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Al-Qaeda is also alleged to have been involved in the attack. [New York Times, 6/15/2002]
Entity Tags: Lashkar-e-Toiba, Saeed Sheikh, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Omar, Jaish-e-Mohammed
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks
FBI Director Robert Mueller states, "[T]here was nothing the agency could have done to anticipate and prevent the [9/11] attacks." [US Congress, 9/18/2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III
Category Tags: Warning Signs, 9/11 Denials
FBI Special Agent Robert Wright sues the FBI for violating his First Amendment rights, the regulation governing the FBI's prepublication review policies and procedures, and the Administrative Procedure Act, by failing to clear for publication his book manuscript, two complaints he'd submitted to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and his answers to questions posed by New York Times reporter Judy Miller. In October 2001, pursuant to the FBI's prepublication review policy and his employment agreement, Wright submitted to the FBI a 500-page single-spaced manuscript titled "Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission." Generally, agencies are required to complete review within 30 days, barring extenuating circumstances. In early January 2002, the FBI responded, stating that 18 percent of the manuscript contained "classified information; information containing sensitive investigative material and information protected by the Privacy Act." Wright edited his manuscript to address these concerns and resubmitted it with three binders documenting public sources for the many factual claims, including affidavits and other court documents from his investigations. On November 13, 2001, Wright submitted his two OIG complaints to the FBI's Office of Public and Congressional Affairs (OPCA) for prepublication review. OPCA responded on January 7, 2002, "taking issue with only 4 percent of the first document and 6 percent of the second." On January 18, 2002, Wright resubmitted his manuscript with edits. After not receiving clearance to publish or any further response from the FBI, Wright sues in federal court on May 9, 2002. [New York Times, 5/12/2002; Memorandum Opinion: Wright, v. FBI, 7/31/2006] In a May 30, 2002 press conference, Wright will say he began writing the book in August 1999, and adds: "The manuscript outlines the FBI's intentional, at times, failure, to pursue the terrorists and thereby prevent terrorist attacks. Ironically, I completed the text of the manuscript two days after the September 11th attack. On September 10th, I had all but the last three pages completed." He will also say that his motive for writing the book was to "[expose] the bureau's dereliction of duty in the terrorism arena," that he is "seeking a thorough review and complete 'house cleaning' to identify and fix the FBI's problems," and that "as a nation we must work together in seeking to regain the confidence level we once had in the FBI to achieve its vital mission of protecting the safety and welfare of its citizens at home and abroad." [Judicial Watch, 5/30/2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert G. Wright, Jr.
Ahmed al-Hada, an operative who ran an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen that was monitored by US intelligence, is said to be arrested by authorities in Yemen, though it is not known exactly when this happened. The hub was involved in the East African embassy bombings (see August 4-25, 1998), the attack on the USS Cole (see Mid-August 1998-October 2000) and 9/11 (see Early 2000-Summer 2001). His son, who helped run the hub, died while being pursued by security forces in February 2002 (see February 13, 2002). Details such as whether he is questioned by the US, whether he is charged, and the place he is being held are unknown. [Agence France Presse, 5/11/2002] According to author Lawrence Wright, he will still be in custody in 2006. [Wright, 2006, pp. 378] However, an undated MSNBC article apparently written around 2005 will list him as still being at large. [MSNBC, 5/2005]
Entity Tags: Ahmed al-Hada
Category Tags: Yemen Hub
The New York Post has a banner headline on May 16, 2002. [Source: New York Post]The Bush administration is embarrassed when the CBS Evening News reveals that President Bush had been warned about al-Qaeda domestic attacks in August 2001 (see August 6, 2001). [New York Times, 5/15/2002; Washington Post, 5/16/2002] CBS's David Martin reports: "The president's daily intelligence brief is delivered to the president each morning, often by the director of central intelligence himself. In the weeks before 9/11 it warned that an attack by Osama bin Laden could involve the hijacking of a US aircraft." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 113] Bush had repeatedly said that he had "no warning" of any kind. Press secretary Ari Fleischer states unequivocally that while Bush had been warned of possible hijackings, "[t]he president did not—not—receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." [New York Times, 5/15/2002; Washington Post, 5/16/2002] "Until the attack took place, I think it's fair to say that no one envisioned that as a possibility." [MSNBC, 9/18/2002] Fleischer claims the August memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the US," but the real title is soon found to end with "Strike in US" [Washington Post, 5/18/2002] The Guardian will state a few days later, "[T]he memo left little doubt that the hijacked airliners were intended for use as missiles and that intended targets were to be inside the US." It further states that, "now, as the columnist Joe Conason points out in the current edition of the New York Observer, 'conspiracy' begins to take over from 'incompetence' as a likely explanation for the failure to heed—and then inform the public about—warnings that might have averted the worst disaster in the nation's history." [Guardian, 5/19/2002] Current deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will point out in 2008: "The [CBS] report left much open to question. Was it suggesting that the president had received info that should have led him to act? Was it just a possible warning sign, like many others that may have gone unheeded? Or was it something else, possibly a nonspecific bit of intelligence from years earlier?" McClellan will write that the uncertainty "mattered little to Democratic leaders in Congress. They saw an opportunity to attack the president's strong suit—his leadership in the war on terrorism—and cut into his enormous popularity ahead of the midterm elections that coming November." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 113]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), David Martin, Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Scott McClellan, Ari Fleischer, Joe Conason
Category Tags: Warning Signs, Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, 9/11 Denials, Other 9/11 Investigations, 9/11 Investigations
A US filmmaker is able to penetrate al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in Pakistan. John Christopher Turner is a US citizen from Missouri, but he lived in Pashtun tribal areas and fought with the mujaheddin against the Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan in the 1980s, speaks fluent Pashto, converted to Islam, and has a long beard. As a result, traveling under the protection of a clan chief, he is able to penetrate the province of Baluchistan in the far west of Pakistan. Turner will later tell the Washington Post that Baluchistan "is where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are comfortably living right now. There's nobody trying to run them off. In fact, they're honored guests.… I probably went to ten hornets' nests, and there were always two or three al-Qaeda in supervisory positions—overseeing, I'd say; the last thing you can do is boss a Pashtun. But obviously they were conduits for money." He claims to have seen hundreds of Taliban living openly in Baluchistan, with a smaller number of al-Qaeda who are using posing as charity workers. He also runs into al-Qaeda operatives elsewhere. "There are madrassas [Islamic schools] right outside Karachi that are full of al-Qaeda. You go to any madrassa and the al-Qaeda are out there." He claims to have long philosophical discussions with al-Qaeda figures, and shoots extensive video footage of the militants he meets. US officials say they find Turner's account credible. ISI agents followed Turner to the vicinity of al-Qaeda safe houses in north Karachi. Turner is extensively interrogated by the FBI after returning from Baluchistan, and they also watch the video footage from his trip. He is put on a plane back to the US. The documentary Turner is planning about his Pakistan trip apparently is never made, as there are no subsequent references to it. [Washington Post, 8/4/2002]
Entity Tags: Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, John Christopher Turner
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region
Abu Zubaida. [Source: New York Times]The CIA begins interrogating captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), using some aggressive techniques that are commonly considered to be torture. Zubaida was initially interrogated by the FBI using traditional rapport-building techniques, and many believe the FBI was obtaining valuable information (see Late March through Early June, 2002). But he is being held at a secret CIA prison in Thailand (see March 2002), and soon a new CIA team comes in and takes over (see Mid-April 2002). This team, led by controversial psychologist James Elmer Mitchell, uses such extreme methods that the FBI completely withdraws its personnel (see Mid-April-May 2002), and even some CIA personnel leave in disgust (see Between Mid-April and Mid-May 2002). By mid-May, Mitchell's detractors are gone and the gunshot wounds Zubaida sustained during his capture have stabilized, so Mitchell begins applying even more aggressive interrogation techniques. [Posner, 2003, pp. 186, 191; Suskind, 2006, pp. 110-115] According to one psychologist involved in Zubaida's interrogation, Mitchell argues that Zubaida needs to be reduced to a state of "learned helplessness." Reserve Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman, an experienced interrogator very familiar with Mitchell, will later say that "learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.… It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners' ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the KGB model. But the KGB used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The KGB wasn't after intelligence." [New Yorker, 8/6/2007] Journalist Ron Suskind will later claim: "According to CIA sources, [Zubaida] was waterboarded, a technique in which a captive's face is covered with a towel as water is poured atop, creating the sensation of drowning. He was beaten, though not in a way to worsen his injuries. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights." [Suskind, 2006, pp. 115] The New York Times will later claim: "At times, Mr. Zubaida, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaida seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers." [New York Times, 9/10/2006] Zubaida will reportedly later tell the Red Cross that he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a "dog box," so small that he unable to stand. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007] The CIA will claim that these aggressive methods are very effective, and soon it will begin using them on many other detainees. But others will later suggest that Zubaida gave up far less valuable information under torture than he did with the FBI's rapport-building techniques (see June 2002). The legal authority to conduct these types of interrogations is unclear. The CIA is being advised by Michael Chertoff at the Justice Department, but there will be no formal legal opinion permitting the techniques until August 2002. [New York Times, 9/10/2006]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, James Elmer Mitchell, Abu Zubaida, Steve Kleinman
In 2007, former CIA official John Kiriakou will claim to have details about the interrogation of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. Kiriakou was involved in the capture and early detention of Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), but claims he was transferred to another task before harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were used on him (see Mid-May 2002 and After). [ABC News, 12/10/2007 ] Kiriakou will claim that the activities of the interrogators were closely directly by superiors at CIA Headquarters back in the US. "It wasn't up to individual interrogators to decide, 'Well, I'm gonna slap him.' Or, 'I'm going to shake him.' Or, 'I'm gonna make him stay up for 48 hours.' Each one of these steps, even though they're minor steps, like the intention shake, or the open-handed belly slap, each one of these had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations.… The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific. And the bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the [CIA] got after 9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard. So it was extremely deliberate." [ABC News, 12/10/2007] Kiriakou also will say, "This isn't something done willy-nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and the Justice Department" (see Mid-March 2002). [London Times, 12/12/2007] In 2005, ABC News reported, "When properly used, the [CIA interrogation] techniques appear to be closely monitored and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case, technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and former intelligence officers involved in the program." [ABC News, 11/18/2005] CIA Director George Tenet will similarly claim in a 2007 book that the interrogation of high-ranking prisoners like Zubaida "was conducted in a precisely monitored, measured way…" He will also say that "CIA officers came up with a series of interrogation techniques that would be carefully monitored at all times to ensure the safety of the prisoner. The [Bush] administration and the Department of Justice were fully briefed and approved the use of these tactics." [Tenet, 2007, pp. 242] Zubaida's interrogations are videotaped at the time (see Spring-Late 2002), and CIA Director Michael Hayden will later claim this was done "meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the [interrogation] program in its early stages." [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] The videotapes will later be destroyed under controversial circumstances (see November 2005).
Entity Tags: John Kiriakou, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Justice, George J. Tenet, White House
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice holds a press conference to respond to the public leak (see May 15, 2002) of the title of President Bush's August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief item entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (see August 6, 2001). Presidential Daily Brief - She asserts: "It was an analytic report that talked about [Osama bin Laden]'s methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically, in 1997, in 1998.… I want to reiterate, it was not a warning. There was no specific time, place, or method mentioned." [White House, 5/16/2002] In April 2004, Rice will testify under oath before the 9/11 Commission and repeatedly assert that it was "a historical memo… not threat reporting" (see April 8, 2004). Comment by Philip Shenon - Author Philip Shenon will later comment, "She failed to mention, as would later be clear, that the PDB focused entirely on the possibility that al-Qaeda intended to strike within the United States; it cited relatively recent FBI reports of possible terrorist surveillance of government buildings in New York." After rereading the transcript of the press conference, Shenon will call it a "remarkable document," because "To many of the Commission's staff, it offered proof of how, to Condoleezza Rice, everything is semantics. A threat is not a threat, a warning is not a warning, unless she says it is. The word historical appeared to have an especially broad definition to Rice. To her, a warning that was a few weeks or months old was of relatively little value because it was 'historical.'" Aircraft as Weapons - Rice also says, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon—that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." However, various government agencies were well aware of the concept of planes as missiles, including the FBI (see August 27, 2001), the Defense Department (see April 17-26, 2001), and the White House itself (see June 20, 2001). Shenon will point out that this news conference occurs eight months after the attacks, yet Rice is "suggesting that in all that time, no one had bothered to tell her [of these reports]." [Shenon, 2008, pp. 213, 237-239]
Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Condoleezza Rice
Category Tags: Warning Signs, Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, 9/11 Denials
US citizen Michael Meiring is suspected of being a CIA operative after injuring himself in an explosion in his own hotel room. Meiring claimed a grenade was thrown into his room, but a Philippine government investigation determined the center of the blast came from an assembled bomb kept in a metal box owned by Meiring. Hotel employees said Meiring told them for weeks not to touch the box while cleaning the room. Additionally, an ID card with his picture on it found in his room lists him as an officer in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Muslim rebel militant group. [KHOU-TV, 12/2/2004] One hour after the bombing in his room, a bomb explodes in a marketplace in the same region, injuring four people. [Agence France-Presse, 5/16/2002] In the two months prior to this explosion in his room, there were several other other explosions in the same region, killing 37 people and injuring 170 more. [Minda News, 5/30/2003] In 2003, a group of Philippine soldiers will mutiny, in part because they believe these bombings were done with the secret approval of the Philippine government, and not done by rebel groups as the government claims (see July 27-28, 2003). A number of Philippine officials speculate Meiring may have been a CIA agent. Those who knew him said that he referred to himself as a CIA agent, but said it stood for "Christ In Action." He had frequently visited the Philippines for at least ten years. [Minda News, 5/30/2003] He claimed to be a treasure hunter, and had a company called Parousia International Trading (in Christian theology, Parousia is a term for the second coming of Christ). He also had ties to right wing extremists in the US (see 1992-1993). He was said to be very well connected in the Philippines, being visited in his hotel room prior to the explosion by congressmen, a governor, and military officials. He was also connected to militants in the MNLF, Abu Sayyaf, and other groups. He was said to have met with top leaders of these militant groups starting in 1992 (see 1992-1993). One source who knew him said that earlier in the year he had predicted a series of bombings and that his predictions "always came true." [Minda News, 5/31/2003] Meiring was already a major suspect in the production and distribution of counterfeit US Treasury bills. Over the last few years, billions of dollars worth of fake US Treasury bills were confiscated in the region. [Time, 2/26/2001; BusinessWorld, 5/27/2002] Four days after the explosion, FBI agents take him out of the hospital where he was recovering from severe burns and amputations. According to the Philippine Immigration Deputy Commissioner, agents of the US National Security Council then take him to the capital of Manila. The Financial Times will later report that he returns to the US and is handed over to the CIA. [Manila Times, 5/30/2002; Financial Times, 7/12/2002; Guardian, 8/15/2003] The Guardian will later comment, "Local officials have demanded that Meiring return to face charges, to little effect. BusinessWorld, a leading Philippine newspaper, has published articles openly accusing Meiring of being a CIA agent involved in covert operations 'to justify the [recent] stationing of American troops and bases in Mindanao.' The Meiring affair has never been reported in the US press." [Guardian, 8/15/2003] In 2004, a Houston TV station will trace Meiring back to the US, where he still lives, despite the Philippine government wanting him to be extradited to face a variety of charges related to the explosion (see December 2, 2004).
Entity Tags: Moro National Liberation Front, National Security Council, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Abu Sayyaf, Michael Meiring
Timeline Tags: Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks
Category Tags: Philippine Militant Collusion, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia
National Security Adviser Rice tries to explain what Bush knew and when in her May 16, 2002 press conference. [Source: CNN]National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice states, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," adding that "even in retrospect" there was "nothing" to suggest that. [White House, 5/16/2002] Contradicting Rice's claims, former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon acknowledges that such a scenario has long been taken seriously by US intelligence: "If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane into a missile? [N]obody would have ruled that out." Rice also states, "The overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas." [MSNBC, 5/17/2002] Slate awards Rice the "Whopper of the Week" when the title of Bush's August 6 briefing is revealed: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." [Slate, 5/23/2002] Rice later will concede that "somebody did imagine it" but will say she did not know about such intelligence until well after this conference. [Associated Press, 9/21/2002]
Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, World Trade Center, John Gannon, Pentagon
Saud al-Rashid.
[Source: FBI]A CD-ROM containing a picture of a young Saudi man named Saud al-Rashid is seized in an al-Qaeda safe house in Karachi, Pakistan. The CD also contains the pictures of three 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Abdulaziz Alomari, placed in the same folder with the picture of al-Rashid. The pictures are all passport photos or pages of entry and exit stamps from the same passports. All the computer files of the pictures were saved in May 2001. A senior US official says that investigators "were able to take this piece of information and it showed clear signals or lines that [al-Rashid] was connected to 9/11." Media reports in 2002 say that the raid takes place on August 15, but an FBI report made public years later will show the raid took place on May 16 but the importance of the CD-ROM's contents was not discovered until August 15. [Associated Press, 8/21/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 526; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010] Al-Rashid Escapes Dragnet - On August 21, six days after the files on the CD-ROM are discovered, the US will issue a worldwide dragnet to find al-Rashid. [Associated Press, 8/21/2002] But they are unable to catch him because a few days later, he flees from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and turns himself in to the Saudi authorities. The Saudis apparently will not try him for any crime or allow the FBI to interview him. [CNN, 8/26/2002; CNN, 8/31/2002] Al-Rashid's Background - Al-Rashid was in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, where he met 9/11 hijacker Ahmed Alhaznawi "once or twice" in a guest house. [New York Times, 7/29/2003; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 526] Although detainees identify him as a candidate 9/11 hijacker, he claims not to have met Osama bin Laden or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), or even to have heard of al-Qaeda. Under interrogation, KSM will say al-Rashid was headstrong and immature and dropped out of the plot after returning to Saudi Arabia for a visa, either due to second thoughts or the influence of his family. However, doubts will be raised about the reliability of KSM's statements under interrogation (see August 6, 2007). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 526] Intriguingly, al-Rashid's father is Hamid al-Rashid, a Saudi government official who paid a salary to Omar al-Bayoumi, an associate of both Almihdhar and Alhazmi who is later suspected of being a Saudi agent. [New York Times, 7/29/2003] Passport Clue - Also intriguingly, the pictures from Saeed Alghamdi's and Khalid Almihdhar's passports show the passports were issued at "Holy Capital." This may be an indicator placed by the Saudi government to show that the passport holders are radicals. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010] Other Evidence? - Florida FBI agent Tom Yowell will later mention to the 9/11 Commission that he remembers some other 9/11-related evidence captured in a May 2002 Karachi raid, including mention of the address of a Virginia post office box (see February 19-20, 2001 and April 3-4, 2001 and around) and videos of the 9/11 hijackers. But which hijackers were videotaped, and where and when, is not mentioned. [9/11 Commission, 12/4/2003 ]
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, Omar al-Bayoumi, Tom Yowell, Hamid al-Rashid, Saud al-Rashid, Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Abdulaziz Alomari, Ahmed Alhaznawi
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Other 9/11 Hijackers, Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, Pakistan and the ISI, Saudi Arabia
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) says he is "gravely concerned" to learn that President Bush "received a warning in August about the threat of hijackers," referring to a CBS News report revealing that Bush had been warned about a possible hijacking over a month before the 9/11 attacks (see August 6, 2001). Daschle calls on the White House to provide the classified briefing to Congressional investigators. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) says, using the language of Watergate investigators, "I think what we have to do now is find out what the president, what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it, and, most importantly, what was done about it at the time." White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will later write that, as objectionable as the White House finds these statements, "the Democrat who most aroused the ire of the White House and Republicans was New York's Democratic senator, Hillary Clinton." Clinton takes the floor of the Senate and says, "We learn today something we might have learned at least eight months ago: that President Bush had been informed last year, before September 11, of a possible al-Qaeda plot to hijack a US airliner." She displays a New York Post headline that reads, "BUSH KNEW" (see May 15, 2002) and "9/11 BOMBSHELL." "The president knew what?" Clinton asks. McClellan will write that he and his White House colleagues are "incensed" at Clinton's rhetoric: "To us, such grandstanding appeared to be a return to the ugly partisan warfare that had come to define Washington and its culture during the 1990s. Politics as war, the innuendo of scandal, and the egregious implication that the president had deliberately neglected the country's safety—it was all in service of the November election results. All the familiar elements were there. The story and the partisan accusations that followed provided great controversy for the media to cover." (In this passage, McClellan fails to note that White House political guru Karl Rove had, months before, advised Bush and Republican candidates to use the war to attack Democrats in the November 2002 elections—see January 2002). McClellan will complain that Clinton "had not even bothered to call [the White House] to find out more about the facts behind the headlines before delivering her speech," and will note: "To us, the disingenuous way the leaders rushed to create a damning story line about the president and his administration crossed a line. Republicans objected vehemently and aggressively in a counteroffensive led by the White House," with Vice President Dick Cheney calling the Democrats' questions "incendiary" (see May 16, 2002) and Bush declaring, "Had we any inkling, whatsoever, that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America." Bush adds: "And I'm confident that President Clinton would have done the same thing (see September 7, 2003). Any president would have." McClellan will call Bush's statement "a gesture toward the rapidly vanishing spirit of bipartisanship." He will write that Democrats did not, by themselves, break the bipartisanship that had supposedly reigned before CBS broke the news of the August 6 briefing: "Democrats were responding in part to perceived efforts by Republicans seeking political advantage from the president's aggressive efforts to wage war against Islamist terrorists," and will note that in 1998, Republicans accused President Clinton of "wagging the dog"—launching military strikes against Iraq to distract the nation from the Monica Lewinsky scandal (see December 16-19, 1998). [McClellan, 2008, pp. 117-118]
Entity Tags: Hillary Clinton, Bush administration (43), George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, Scott McClellan, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Richard Gephardt, Karl C. Rove
Category Tags: Presidential Level Warnings, 9/11 Denials, US Government and 9/11 Criticism
In the wake of new information on what President Bush knew, Vice President Cheney states, "[M]y Democratic friends in Congress… need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions, as were made by some today, that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11." He calls such criticism "thoroughly irresponsible… in time of war" and states that any serious probe of 9/11 foreknowledge would be tantamount to giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy. [Washington Post, 5/17/2002] The days later, Cheney adds that he doesn't "have any problem with a legitimate debate over the performance of our intelligence agencies," but he has "a real problem with the suggestion that somehow my president had information and failed to act upon it to prevent the attack of Sept. 11." He calls this "beyond the pale." On May 21, the on-line newspaper Salon suggests that such pressure "appears to have worked. Democrats are largely chastened in their criticism of the [Bush] administration, and few have criticized attempts to silence them." [Salon, 5/21/2002]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, George W. Bush
President Bush says of 9/11 in a speech, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." [US President, 5/20/2002]
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer misstates the title of a key presidential daily brief item from August 2001 about al-Qaeda's intentions to attack the US (see August 6, 2001). Fleischer says: "The president was aware that bin Laden, of course, as previous administrations have well known, that bin Laden was determined to strike the United States. In fact, the label on the president's (presidential daily briefing) was 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States.'" [Fox News, 5/17/2002] Author Philip Shenon will later point out that "Fleischer had left out the title's all-important preposition—'in' the United States." [Shenon, 2008, pp. 214] The full title is "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 261] The Washington Post soon points out the misstatement: "White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday […] the headline on the document was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States.' But sources who have read the memo said the headline ended with the phrase 'in US.'" [Washington Post, 5/19/2008]
Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Ari Fleischer
Category Tags: Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 PDB
CBS anchorman Dan Rather tells the BBC that he and other journalists haven't been properly investigating since 9/11. He says, "There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions." [Guardian, 5/17/2002]
Entity Tags: Dan Rather
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, 9/11 Timeline, Domestic Propaganda
Category Tags: Media
It is announced that Cofer Black, head of the CIA's counterterrorism division for the last three years, has been assigned to another position. However, in 2004, six anonymous US intelligence officials will claim that, in fact, Black is removed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because Black publicly revealed details of the US military's failure to capture or kill bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001. Sources will call Black "very aggressive, very knowledgeable," in fighting al-Qaeda. According to these sources, after the Tora Bora battle ended, an intelligence analysis determined that bin Laden had been trapped in Tora Bora, and deemed his escape a "significant defeat" for the US. Rumsfeld, however, disagreed with the criticism, and said there was not enough "solid evidence" to come to that conclusion. Black then spoke on deep background to the Washington Post, and on April 17, 2002, the Post called the failure to capture bin Laden "the gravest error in the war against al-Qaeda."(see April 17, 2002) Rumsfeld learned about Black's role and used his influence to get him removed. [United Press International, 7/29/2004]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Cofer Black, Al-Qaeda, Donald Rumsfeld, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
On May 16, 2002, CBS News broke the story that President Bush was given a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) one month before 9/11 entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (see May 15, 2002). Some Democratic politicians immediately criticized Bush for not acting on this before 9/11. The next day, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett tells the Washington Post that such comments by Democrats "are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do." The news website Salon comments, "This is the most direct statement by an administration official to date suggesting that dissent aids the enemy." Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) similarly comments, "For us to be talking like our enemy is George W. Bush and not Osama bin Laden, that's not right." [Salon, 5/21/2002]
Entity Tags: Dan Bartlett, Trent Lott
Category Tags: Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The Bush administration issues a remarkable series of terror warnings that many believe are politically motivated. Vice President Cheney warns it is "not a matter of if, but when" al-Qaeda will next attack the US. [CNN, 5/20/2002] Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says the same thing. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says terrorists will "inevitably" obtain weapons of mass destruction (see May 21, 2002). FBI Director Mueller says more suicide bombings are "inevitable." [Washington Post, 5/22/2002] Authorities also issue separate warnings that al-Qaeda militants might target apartment buildings nationwide, banks, rail and transit systems, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. USA Today titles an article, "Some Question Motives Behind Series of Alerts." [USA Today, 5/24/2002] David Martin, CBS's national security correspondent, says, "Right now they're putting out all these warnings to change the subject from what was known prior to September 11 to what is known now." It had been revealed the week before that Bush received a briefing in August 2001 entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (see August 6, 2001). [Washington Post, 5/27/2002] Remarkably, even Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says the alerts were issued "as a result of all the controversy that took place last week." [Washington Times, 5/22/2002; Village Voice, 5/23/2002] A retired CIA official reveals that the administration "made a political decision" to make any threat public, even those deemed to be hoaxes. In response to the alleged threat to New York, the former head of the FBI bureau there states that "there really isn't any hard information." [Rolling Stone, 9/21/2006 ] Time notes, "Though uncorroborated and vague, the terror alerts were a political godsend for an administration trying to fend off a bruising bipartisan inquiry into its handling of the terrorist chatter last summer. After the wave of warnings, the Democratic clamor for an investigation into the government's mistakes subsided." [Time, 5/27/2002]
Entity Tags: Robert S. Mueller III, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge, Ari Fleischer, Al-Qaeda, David Martin
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline, Domestic Propaganda
Category Tags: Media, Terror Alerts, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Internal US Security After 9/11
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says that al-Qaeda operatives are in the US, and "they are very well-trained." He also says that "terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction, and… they inevitably are going to get their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one minute in using them. That's the world we live in." [Suskind, 2006, pp. 121] His comments are part of a wave of ominous warnings by the Bush administration (see May 20-24, 2002) that come just days after it is reported that President Bush was given a warning before 9/11 entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (see August 6, 2001).
Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld
Category Tags: Terror Alerts
Abdulla Noman, a former employee of the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers got their visas, says that he took money and gifts to provide fraudulent visas to foreigners. He pleads guilty and is convicted. About 50 to 100 visas were improperly issued by Noman from September 1996 until November 2001, when he was arrested. However, a former visa officer in Jeddah, Michael Springmann, has claimed in the past that the Jeddah office was notorious for purposefully giving visas to terrorists to train in the US (see September 1987-March 1989). [Associated Press, 5/21/2002]
Entity Tags: Abdulla Noman, US Consulate, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Office
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, 9/11 Investigations, Hijacker Visas and Immigration
Coleen Rowley.
[Source: Publicity photo]Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley, upset with what she considers lying from FBI Director Robert Mueller and others in the FBI about the handling of the Zacarias Moussaoui case, releases a long memo she wrote about the case two weeks before 9/11. [Time, 5/21/2002] Rowley also applies for whistleblower protection. Time magazine calls the memo a "colossal indictment of our chief law enforcement agency's neglect," and says it "raises serious doubts about whether the FBI is capable of protecting the public—and whether it still deserves the public's trust." [Time, 5/27/2002] Three days after 9/11, Mueller made statements such as, "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." Rowley and other Minnesota FBI agents had "immediately sought to reach [Mueller's] office through an assortment of higher-level FBI [headquarters] contacts, in order to quickly make [him] aware of the background of the Moussaoui investigation and forewarn [him] so that [his] public statements could be accordingly modified." Yet Mueller continued to make similar comments, including in a Senate hearing on May 8, 2002. [Time, 5/21/2002; New York Times, 5/31/2002] Finally, after Rowley's memo becomes public, Mueller states, "I cannot say for sure that there wasn't a possibility we could have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers." He also admits, "I have made mistakes occasionally in my public comments based on information or a lack of information that I subsequently got." [New York Times, 5/31/2002] Time magazine will later name Rowley as one of three "Persons of the Year" for 2002, along with fellow whistleblowers Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron. [Time, 12/22/2002; Time, 12/22/2002]
Entity Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI Minnesota field office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Coleen Rowley, Robert S. Mueller III
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui
Walid Arkeh. [Source: Orlando Sentinel / Bureau of Prisons]Walid Arkeh, a prisoner in Florida, is interviewed by a group of FBI agents in New York City. The agents seek information regarding the 1988 US embassy bombings and are there to interview him about information he learned from three al-Qaeda prisoners he had befriended. During the interview, Arkeh claims that, in August 2001, he told the FBI that al-Qaeda was likely to attack the WTC and other targets soon, but he was dismissed (see August 21, 2001). After 9/11, his warning still was not taken seriously by the local FBI. The New York FBI agents are stunned. One says to him: "Let me tell you something. If you know what happened in New York, we are all in deep sh_t. We are in deep trouble." Arkeh tells the agents that these prisoners hinted that the WTC would be attacked, and targets in Washington were mentioned as well. However, they did not tell him a date or that airplanes would be used. The New York FBI later will inform him that they find his information credible. [Orlando Sentinel, 10/30/2002] Arkeh is later deported to Jordan despite a Responsible Cooperators Program promising visas to those who provided important information to US-designated terrorist groups. (It is unclear whether any one ever has been given a reward through this program.) [Orlando Sentinel, 11/10/2002; Orlando Sentinel, 1/11/2003; Orlando Sentinel, 3/12/2003]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Walid Arkeh, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Warning Signs, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
A study indicates that at least half of the 48 Islamic radicals linked to terrorist plots in the US since 1993 manipulated or violated immigration laws to enter this country and then stay here. Even when the militants did little to hide violations of visa requirements or other laws, INS officials failed to enforce the laws or to deport the offenders. The militants used a variety of methods. At the time they committed their crimes, 12 of the 48 were illegal immigrants. At least five others had lived in the US illegally, and four others had committed significant immigration violations. Others were here legally but should have been rejected for visas because they fit US immigration profiles of people who are likely to overstay their visas. [USA Today, 5/22/2002] Experts later strongly suggest that the visa applications for all 15 of the Saudi Arabian 9/11 hijackers should have been rejected due to numerous irregularities.
Entity Tags: US Immigration and Naturalization Service
President Bush says he is opposed to establishing a special, independent commission to probe how the government dealt with terrorism warnings before 9/11. [CBS News, 5/23/2002] He will later change his stance in the face of overwhelming support for the idea (see September 20, 2002), and will then sabotage an agreement reached with Congress to establish a commission. Several years after leaving the White House, current Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will write that the president's reluctance to open an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks (see November 15, 2002) was part of a larger penchant for secrecy in the administration. McClellan will write: "Unfortunately, the initial response of the Bush White House to demands by partisan critics in Congress and elsewhere for an independent investigation fueled the firestorm of anger. It was an early indication that the Bush administration did not sufficiently accept the necessity for transparency in its management of the public business. The president and his senior advisers had little appetite for outside investigations. They resisted openness, and believed that investigations simply meant close scrutiny of things they would prefer to keep confidential. Not that anything they'd done had necessarily crossed a legal line; rather, some things done privately might not look so good if disclosed publicly, and might cause political embarrassment for the president.… The Bush administration lacked real accountability in large part because Bush himself did not embrace openness or government in the sunshine. His belief in secrecy and compartmentalization was activated when controversy began to stir." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 117-118]
Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Bush administration (43), 9/11 Commission, George W. Bush
Category Tags: 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Investigations
A blurry image of the chart Rep. Curt Weldon presented to the Heritage Foundation in 2002.
[Source: Heritage Foundation]During a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) unfurls a chart, which, his comments suggest, was produced by Able Danger. He says it is "the unclassified chart that was done by the Special Forces Command briefing center one year before 9/11. It is the complete architecture of al-Qaeda and pan-Islamic extremism. It gives all the linkages." However, he does not mention Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijackers during the speech. Video footage of the speech shows the chart, but the picture quality is too poor to determine whether Atta is on it. [NewsMax, 8/29/2005] Weldon later claims to have given up his only copy of the chart showing Atta's face in late 2001 (see September 25, 2001). [Time, 8/29/2005] In September 2005, Weldon will refer to the chart shown in this 2002 speech and suggest it may not have been the same chart that contained Atta's face. He also says he cannot find the chart used in the speech anymore. [Office of Congressman Curt Weldon, 9/17/2005]
Entity Tags: Curt Weldon, Special Operations Command, Able Danger, Al-Qaeda, Heritage Foundation
Category Tags: Able Danger
Journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker, "In a recent conversation, a senior FBI official acknowledged that there had been 'no breakthrough' inside the government, in terms of establishing how the September 11th suicide teams were organized and how they operated." The recent war in Afghanistan "has yet to produce significant information about the planning and execution of the attacks. US forces are known to have captured thousands of pages of documents and computer hard drives from al-Qaeda redoubts, but so far none of this material—which remains highly classified—has enabled the Justice Department to broaden its understanding of how the attack occurred, or even to bring an indictment of a conspirator." [New Yorker, 5/27/2002] It has never been made clear if, how, and/or when the FBI subsequently made a breakthrough in understanding the 9/11 plot.
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation
Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton, visits the National Archives to conduct a document review as Clinton's representative to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry. A junior staffer would usually perform such a document search, but the papers are so highly classified that Berger has to go himself. Berger is already worried that the archives may contain documents that can be used against him and the Clinton administration to attack it as having left the US vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Although he should use a secure reading room, where he would be monitored by a guard or camera, to review the documents, he is allowed to do so in the office of a senior archivist. He also keeps his cell phone, in breach of the rules. One of the boxes of documents he reviews contains files for former counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke, and Berger will later steal copies of one such document (see July 18, 2003). [Shenon, 2008, pp. 1-5]
Entity Tags: National Archives and Records Administration, Sandy Berger
A brief ceremony marks the official ending of the cleanup and recovery effort at Ground Zero, eight months and 19 days after 9/11. As part of the ceremony, attended by thousands of people, a flatbed truck carries the last steel beam from the World Trade Center away from the site. The cleanup has been completed three months sooner than predicted and at a cost of $750 million. More than 108,000 truckloads of debris, comprising 1.8 million tons of steel and concrete, have been removed from the site. The debris was taken to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Controversially, much of the steel was melted down or shipped out of the US for recycling (see September 12-October 2001). A small number of workers will remain at the site for a few more weeks, due to a delay by Deutsche Bank in letting firefighters search its high-rise at 130 Liberty Street. The final truckload of debris will be removed on June 24 and control of the site will be turned over to the New York Port Authority, which owns the land. Forensic investigators will continue sifting through debris at Fresh Kills, in the hope of finding and identifying more victims, until mid-July. [CBS News, 5/16/2002; CBS News, 5/30/2002; CNN, 5/30/2002; PBS, 5/30/2002; BBC, 7/15/2002; Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 316-318; Stout, Vitchers, and Gray, 2006, pp. 219 and 226-227]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center
Leaders sign the pipeline agreement. [Source: Associated Press]Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf meet in Islamabad and sign a memorandum of understanding on the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project. [Dawn (Karachi), 5/31/2002; Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections, 6/8/2002] Afghan leader Hamid Karzai (who formerly worked for Unocal) calls Unocal the "lead company" in building the pipeline. [BBC, 5/13/2002] The Los Angeles Times comments, "To some here, it looked like the fix was in for Unocal when President Bush named a former Unocal consultant, Zalmay Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan late last year ." [Los Angeles Times, 5/30/2002] Unocal claims that it has no interest in any Afghanistan pipeline after 9/11. However, Afghan officials say that Unocal will be the lead company in funding the pipeline. The Afghan deputy minister of mines comments on Unocal's claim of disinterest: "Business has its secrets and mysteries. Maybe… they don't want it to be disclosed in the media." [Toronto Star, 3/2/2003]
Entity Tags: Hamid Karzai, Saparmurat Niyazov, Unocal, Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush, Zalmay M. Khalilzad
Category Tags: Pipeline Politics, US Dominance
Robert Wright tears up as he apologizes to 9/11 victims' relatives in his 2002 press conference. [Source: Getty Images]FBI agent Robert Wright holds a press conference. He makes a statement that has been preapproved by the FBI. As one account puts it, "Robert Wright's story is difficult to piece together because he is on government orders to remain silent.… [T]his is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her. Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels" but has been frustrated by limitations on what he is allowed to say (see September 11, 2001-October 2001). "The best he could do [is a] press conference in Washington, D.C., where he [tells] curious reporters that he [has] a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could." Wright says that FBI bureaucrats "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted [his] attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists." He also claims, "FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the US." [Fox News, 5/30/2002; Federal News Service, 5/30/2002; LA Weekly, 8/2/2002] Larry Klayman, a lawyer representing Wright, says at the conference that he believes one reason Wright's investigations were blocked "is because these monies were going through some very powerful US banks with some very powerful interests in the United States. These banks knew or had reason to know that these monies were laundered by terrorists. And there are very significant potential conflicts of interests in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations—with the country primarily responsible for funding these charities, mainly Saudi Arabia. We have both Clinton and Bush, and in particular this Bush Administration, who is as tight with Saudi Arabia as you can get." He also says, "Corruption is knowing when something is not being done, knowing when the American people are being left unprotected and when you make a decision not to do something to protect the American people… And you effectively allow 9/11 to occur. That is the ultimate form of government corruption—dereliction of duty. That's subject in the military to prosecution, to court martial…. Frankly, if not treason." [Federal News Service, 5/30/2002]
Entity Tags: William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert G. Wright, Jr., Clinton administration, Bush administration (43), Larry Klayman, Coleen Rowley
In the wake of the defeat of al-Qaeda and the Taliban at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, many of them flee into the tribal region of Waziristan, just across the Pakistani border (see December 2001-Spring 2002). These tribal regions normally have no Pakistani military presence, and the Pakistani army left the border near Waziristan unguarded (see December 10, 2001). [Rashid, 2008, pp. 148, 268] In early May, the US begins applying pressure on Pakistan to act. On anonymous Defense Department official tells the Washington Post, "We know where there is a large concentration of al-Qaeda." He notes there are several hundred in one Waziristan border town alone. A senior US offical says, "We are trying to encourage, wheedle, coerce, urge the Pakistanis to move more aggressively" against the Waziristan safe haven, but have not been having much progress. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002] Pakistan finally moves army units into Waziristan in late May 2002, but even then the 8,000 troops remain in the administrative capital of Wana and do not attempt to seal the border with Afghanistan. [Rashid, 2008, pp. 148, 268]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Army
Jamil al-Banna. [Source: Public domain]Jamil al-Banna is friends with Bisher al-Rawi, who is working as an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5. Al-Rawi is mostly helping MI5 communicate with imam Abu Qatada, who also is an MI5 informant but is pretending to be in hiding (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Early December 2001). Al-Banna is aware of al-Rawi's work and begins to help him. Sometimes al-Banna also serves as a go-between for MI5 and Abu Qatada. Al-Rawi stops working for MI5 in the summer of 2002 (see Summer 2002), but al-Banna does not. For instance, when Abu Qatada is arrested in late October 2002 (see October 23, 2002), al-Banna takes his wife and child home at the request of the British officials on the scene. [Independent, 3/16/2006] But in early November 2002, al-Banna will go to Gambia with al-Rawi on business, and MI5 will turn the two of them over to the CIA to be interrogated (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002).
Entity Tags: UK Security Service (MI5), Abu Qatada, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna
Category Tags: Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Abu Qatada, Other Possible Moles or Informants
Bisher al-Rawi, an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5, begins to have doubts about his informant work. He is mostly helping MI5 communicate with imam Abu Qatada, another MI5 informant who is pretending to be hiding from the authorities (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002). Al-Rawi is concerned that he might incriminate himself by talking to people who have links to terrorism, and is also concerned that his role as an informant could be publicly exposed. He suggests holding a meeting between his MI5 handlers and a private attorney, and specifically suggests using human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce. However, his MI5 handlers refuse and instead have him meet with an MI5 lawyer known only by the alias "Simon." Simon assures him that MI5 would come to his aid if he is compromised or has other problems. Al-Rawi will later recall: "[Simon] gave me very solid assurances about confidentiality. He promised they would even protect me and my family if they had to. He said that, if I was ever arrested, I should cooperate with the police. If a matter got to court, he would come as a witness and tell the truth." Some agents are beginning to have doubts that he is carrying out all their orders, and he brings up the idea of ending the relationship. Then one day one of his MI5 handlers calls him and terminates his MI5 work. [Independent, 3/16/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] Several months later, MI5 will betray him and turn him over to the CIA to be interrogated in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo (see December 8, 2002-March 2003 and March 2003-November 18, 2007).
Entity Tags: UK Security Service (MI5), Abu Qatada, Bisher al-Rawi, "Simon"
Key Events
Day of 9/11
The Alleged 9/11 Hijackers
Alhazmi and Almihdhar: Specific Cases
Projects and Programs
Before 9/11
Counterterrorism before 9/11
Warning Signs: Specific Cases
The Post-9/11 World
Investigations: Specific Cases
Possible Al-Qaeda-Linked Moles or Informants
Other Al-Qaeda-Linked Figures
Al-Qaeda by Region
Specific Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks or Plots
Miscellaneous Al-Qaeda Issues
Geopolitics and Islamic Militancy
Pakistan / ISI: Specific Cases
Terrorism Financing: Specific Cases
'War on Terrorism' Outside Iraq
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