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After 9/11 there was much discussion about how hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar were able to participate in an operation like 9/11, even though they were well known to US intelligence (see, for example, January 5-8, 2000, Early 2000-Summer 2001, and 9:53 p.m. September 11, 2001). FBI Theory - Based on conversations with FBI agents, author Lawrence Wright speculates on why the CIA withheld information it should have given the FBI: "Some… members of the [FBI's] I-49 squad would later come to believe that the [CIA] was shielding Almihdhar and Alhazmi because it hoped to recruit them.… [They] must have seemed like attractive opportunities; however, once they entered the United States they were the province of the FBI. The CIA has no legal authority to operate inside the country, although in fact, the bureau often caught the agency running backdoor operations in the United States.… It is also possible, as some FBI investigators suspect, the CIA was running a joint venture with Saudi intelligence in order to get around that restriction. Of course, it is also illegal for foreign intelligence services to operate in the United States, but they do so routinely." [Wright, 2006, pp. 312-313] Explanation of Acquired Visas - This theory offers a possible explanation, for example, of how Almihdhar and Alhazmi managed to move in and out of Saudi Arabia and obtain US visas there even though they were supposedly on the Saudi watch list (see 1997 and April 3-7, 1999), and why a Saudi agent in the US associated with them (see January 15-February 2000). Wright points out that "these are only theories" but still notes that "[h]alf the guys in the Bureau think CIA was trying to turn them to get inside al-Qaeda." [Wright, 2006, pp. 313; Media Channel, 9/5/2006] Participant Does Not Know - Doug Miller, an FBI agent loaned to the CIA who was part of a plot to withhold the information from the FBI (see 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000), will indicate he does not know why he was ordered to withhold the information, but that his superiors may have had a good reason for keeping it from the FBI. Another intelligence source will claim that the CIA withheld the information to keep the FBI away from a sensitive operation to penetrate al-Qaeda. [Congressional Quarterly, 10/1/2008] CIA Wanted to Keep FBI Off Case - Another unnamed FBI agent loaned to Alec Station before 9/11 will say: "They didn't want the bureau meddling in their business—that's why they didn't tell the FBI. Alec Station… purposely hid from the FBI, purposely refused to tell the bureau that they were following a man in Malaysia who had a visa to come to America. The thing was, they didn't want… the FBI running over their case." [Bamford, 2008, pp. 20] Similar Explanation - Wright is not the first to have made the suggestion that Alhazmi and Almihdhar were protected for recruitment purposes. Investigative journalist Joe Trento reported in 2003 that a former US intelligence official had told him that Alhazmi and Almihdhar were already Saudi Arabian intelligence agents when they entered the US (see August 6, 2003).
Entity Tags: Nawaf Alhazmi, Lawrence Wright, Doug Miller, Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Almihdhar, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, CIA Hiding Alhazmi & Almihdhar, Al-Qaeda Malaysia Summit, Yemen Hub, Other Possible Moles or Informants
Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence agent captured by the US after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (see June 2004), is quietly released. Al-Ani gained notoriety after 9/11 when Bush administration officials claimed he had a meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Prague, in the Czech Republic (see April 8, 2001). These allegations were eventually debunked (see September 18, 2001-April 2007). He had been secretly detained by the CIA at an unknown location since his capture. He will make the news again in mid-2007 when Czech officials reveal that he has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Czech government, charging that unfounded Czech intelligence reports resulted in his imprisonment by the CIA. [Washington Post, 10/27/2007]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links
Former CIA Director George Tenet will write in 2007, "It is my understanding that in 2006, new intelligence was obtained that proved beyond any doubt that the man seen meeting with [a] member of the Iraqi intelligence service in Prague in 2001 was not Mohamed Atta." [Tenet, 2007, pp. 355]
Entity Tags: Mohamed Atta, George J. Tenet
After 9/11 and, in particular, after the 7/7 bombings in London (see July 7, 2005), British security officials are asked about the wide latitude granted to radical Islamists in Britain in the 1990s and after (see Before 1998). Off-the-record statements by officials emphasize that they were wrong in their assessment of Islamist radicalism, and that they should have paid more attention. For example, in a 2006 book by authors Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, an anonymous official says: "The French would periodically bombard us with warnings and get very worked up and we decided they were over-exaggerating on Islamic extremists colonizing London. Fact is, they were right and we were wrong, and we have not stopped apologizing since. Frankly, we were not equipped to deal with this menace. For 30 years everything was geared to combating terrorists from Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries in Ireland. That danger was still with us when the French were screaming about Islamic terror cells. We did not know how to monitor these people or how to combat the threat of suicide attacks. We did not have the techniques. We missed our chance to deal with this a lot sooner than we did, but a lot of countries made the same mistake." [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 109-110] Most or all of the leading radicals worked with the British security services, were informers for them (see June 1996-February 1997, Early 1997, Spring 2005-Early 2007), and were also monitored by other informers (see Summer 1996-August 1998 and (November 11, 1998)). Several attacks in countries other than Britain were assisted by radicals based in London (see Early 1994-September 23, 1998, 1994, Summer 1998 and After, and November 13, 2001 or Shortly Before).
Category Tags: Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
John Maguire, former deputy chief of the Iraq Operations Group, says the Bush administration made a huge mistake alleging that Saddam Hussein's government had supported al-Qaeda. According to Maguire, US intelligence "never had anything that said that." He says that while there had been an occasional meeting between Iraqis and Osama bin Laden's organization, it was nothing significant because that's what intelligence agencies do. But "the way this was cast [by the White House] created a picture that was different than reality." [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 418]
Entity Tags: John Maguire
US intelligence is able to learn the last name of Osama bin Laden's trusted courier. The courier's real name is Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, but so far, US analysts have only known him by his alias "Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti." In late 2005, intelligence analysts concluded Ahmed was very likely working for bin Laden or some other high ranking al-Qaeda leader (see Late 2005). [MSNBC, 5/4/2011; Associated Press, 6/1/2011] Also in late 2005, dozens of new CIA operatives were sent to Pakistan as part of a new push to get bin Laden, called Operation Cannonball (see Late 2005). Although most of the new operatives are inexperienced, the effort does appear to have an impact. The New York Times will later report, "With more agents in the field, the CIA finally got the courier's family name"—Ahmed. [New York Times, 5/2/2011] Exactly how it gets the family name is unclear. But in 2007, US analysts will learn Ahmed's first name as well (see 2007).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
For "much of 2006," US intelligence has been tracking high-ranking al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (a.k.a. Sheik Saiid al-Masri) in the mountains of Pakistan. US commanders have been pressing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for an operation to capture al-Yazid. However, Rumsfeld is reluctant to approve the mission. He is reportedly worried about US military casualties and a popular backlash in Pakistan. Finally, in early November 2006, Rumsfeld approves a plan for Navy Seals and Delta Force commandos to capture al-Yazid in Pakistan. But several days later, on November 8, Rumsfeld resigns one day after Republican losses in the US congressional mid-term elections (see November 6-December 18, 2006). The operation is put on hold again. The New York Times will reveal this in 2008 but will not explain why the operation was not tried later, or why the US did not at least attempt to fire a missile from a Predator drone at al-Yazid. It is also not explained if, when, and/or how US intelligence ever loses track of him. [New York Times, 6/30/2008] Al-Yazid has been a member of al-Qaeda's shura (ruling council) since the group was formed in 1988. In May 2007, al-Qaeda will release a video naming him as the group's commander of operations in Afghanistan. He allegedly has played a major role in managing al-Qaeda's finances since at least the early 1990s, and continues to do so. [Washington Post, 9/9/2007]
Entity Tags: 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment--Delta, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, Donald Rumsfeld, Navy Seals
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Vice President Cheney mentioned NSA intercepts of the 9/11 hijackers' calls in a speech to the Heritage Foundation. [Source: David Bohrer / White House]Vice President Dick Cheney uses calls between the 9/11 hijackers in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen that were intercepted by the NSA (see Early 2000-Summer 2001) to justify the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program (see December 15, 2005). Cheney points out that, "There are no communications more important to the safety of the United States than those related to al-Qaeda that have one end in the United States," and says that if the NSA's warrantless program had been implemented before 9/11, "we might have been able to pick up on two hijackers [Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar] who subsequently flew a jet into the Pentagon." He adds: "They were in the United States, communicating with al-Qaeda associates overseas. But we did not know they were here plotting until it was too late." [White House, 1/4/2006] Other administration officials make similar claims about the calls by Almihdhar and Alhazmi in the years after the program is revealed by the New York Times (see December 17, 2005).
Entity Tags: Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline, Civil Liberties
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Yemen Hub
Radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri is put on trial in Britain. Before the jury was sworn in, the defense had tried to have the case dismissed on the grounds that Abu Hamza's notoriety was such that no jury could possibly approach the evidently impartially. However, these arguments were dismissed by the judge, Sir Anthony Hughes. Charges of Murder, Racial Incitement - The charges include nine counts of soliciting to murder; three for encouraging followers to murder Jews, and six for encouraging them to murder "a person or persons that did not believe in the Islamic faith." Four other counts are for using "threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior with intent to stir up racial hatred." These charges are based on videos confiscated from Abu Hamza in which, according to authors Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, he rages "against the decadent West, the treacherousness of Jews, the waywardness of women, the accursedness of homosexuals, the corruption of Muslim rulers, and the idleness of ordinary Muslims who had not yet gone to wage war for Allah." The other two charges deal with his possession of the tapes themselves, and of an 11-volume encyclopedia of jihad. Encyclopaedia of Jihad - The charge sheet describes the encyclopedia as "a document which contained information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism," and the prosecutor describes it as "a manual, a blueprint for terrorism.… It contains anything anyone would ever need to know if they wanted to make home-made bombs or explosives." Disapproval of Court - Abu Hamza demonstrates his disapproval of the court in two ways: when he takes the witness stand he swears a secular oath, refusing to use the Koran in an infidel court; and he also refuses to stand at the end of each day as the judge departs. Even if he were to be acquitted, he would probably not be released, as deportation proceedings to the US have only been suspended because of the trial. An acquittal would also lead to renewed attempts by the British government to strip him of his British citizenship. Koran Defense - Abu Hamza's defense is that he was merely interpreting certain verses from the Koran, which, according to his lawyer, contains "the language of blood and retribution." He alleges that simply reminding his listeners of these verses cannot be incitement to murder, and that his statements should be viewed against the context of events in the 1990s, when Muslim were under pressure in Kosovo, Kashmir, and Palestine. Hamza's Testimony - Abu Hamza himself is put on the witness stand for five days from January 19, but, according to authors Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, he treats it "as if it were a pulpit," reciting Koranic verses and trying to dictate the direction of the discussion. Some of the things he says are damaging to him, for example he thinks the Jews control the media and banks, as well as having a hold over Western political leaders. He admits running a newsletter for Algerian radicals and being in constant telephone contact with their leaders (see Before October 1997), but claims he never actually read the encyclopedia of jihad because he is not a military man. He also says he had no idea that tapes of his sermons were being sold around Britain, nor can he recall the places he has preached up and down the country. He was an informer for MI5 and Special Branch (see Early 1997) and told them about his preaching. They said it was okay, so he simply carried on with it. Hamza Convicted - He is convicted on 11 counts and acquitted on four, three of soliciting to murder, and one of inciting racial hatred. He gets seven years' imprisonment for each of the six counts of soliciting murder, 21 months each for the three charges of inciting racial hatred, three years for possessing the tapes, and three and a half years for possessing the encyclopaedia. However, these sentences will run concurrently, meaning he will only be in jail for seven years. US authorities say that after he is released they may request his extradition to the US for crimes he is wanted for there (see May 27, 2004). [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 168-169, 296-313]
Entity Tags: Daniel McGrory, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Anthony Hughes, Sean O'Neill
Category Tags: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
The US fires a missile from a Predator drone at a Pakistani village named Damadola, in the tribal region near the Afghanistan border. Apparently, al-Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is targeted but not killed. Thirteen civilians, including women and children, are killed. Pakistani officials say four al-Qaeda operatives may have been killed as well, including bomb maker Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri), who has a $5 million bountry on his head. After the attack, villagers insist no members of al-Qaeda were anywhere near the village when it was hit. [ABC News, 1/18/2006; Associated Press, 1/22/2006] US and Pakistani officials later say that no al-Qaeda leaders were killed in the strike, only local villagers. It appears that the intelligence tip that led to the strike was bad, and al-Zawahiri and the others were never there in the first place. [Washington Post, 9/9/2007] The attack leads to a surge in support for al-Qaeda in Pakistan, including many marches of support near the targeted area. [ABC News, 1/18/2006; Associated Press, 1/22/2006] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf condemns the attack as a violation of sovereignty and says it "was definitely not coordinated with [Pakistan]." [Washington Post, 1/31/2006] Al-Zawahiri appears in a video later in the month, taunting the US for failing to kill him in the raid. [BBC, 1/30/2006]
Entity Tags: Midhat Mursi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Pervez Musharraf
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Pakistan and the ISI, Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Drone Use in Pakistan / Afghanistan
It had been widely reported that the Saudi government began to crack down seriously on al-Qaeda and other radical militants after a 2003 al-Qaeda attack in Saudi Arabia (see May 12, 2003). However, the Los Angeles Times reports that US officials now claim that is not true. While Saudis have been very aggressive and cooperative in cracking down on militants within Saudi Arabia since that attack, they have done little outside the country. Millions of dollars continue to flow from wealthy Saudis through charity fronts to al-Qaeda and other suspected groups, and the Saudi government is doing next to nothing about it. In 2004, the Saudis promised to set up a government commission to police such groups, but they have yet to do so. The Saudi government has also done little to rein in influential radical religious leaders who openly encourage their followers to attack US interests in Iraq and elsewhere in the world. US officials claim that at least five organizations, including the Muslim World League (MWL), the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WML), "are headquartered in Saudi Arabia but continue to engage in highly suspect activity overseas." A senior US counterterrorism official says that some known terrorist financiers continue to "operate and live comfortably in Saudi Arabia" despite US objections. [Los Angeles Times, 1/15/2006]
Entity Tags: Saudi Arabia, International Islamic Relief Organization, Muslim World League, World Assembly of Muslim Youth
Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Financing
Dr. Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, claims he has seen evidence indicating that Osama bin Laden is either dead or seriously ill. The evidence was provided by an Indian colleague and indicated bin Laden died of massive organ failure in April 2005. "It does seem reasonably convincing based on the evidence that I've been provided with that he's certainly either severely incapacitated or dead at this stage," Williams comments, adding that bin Laden has not released a statement for some time. [Sydney Morning Herald, 1/16/2006] Bin Laden releases a new audio statement three days later (see January 19, 2006), but the origin of this tape will be questioned (see January 19, 2006). [Christian Science Monitor, 1/20/2006]
Entity Tags: Clive Williams, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
A Zogby poll conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies finds waning support among US troops in Iraq for the occupation. According to the survey, which polled 944 soldiers and had an error margin of 3.3 percent, 72 percent of US soldiers in Iraq think troops should be withdrawn from the country within the next twelve months. On the question of why the US invaded Iraq, 77 percent said it was "to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq." The poll also indicated that soldiers had different interpretations of the US military's current mission in Iraq. Of those polled, 85 percent said the mission is mainly "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks," (No official US statement has ever tied Saddam Hussein to 9/11) and 24 percent said they believe the mission is to establish "a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World." Others said they think the mission is to secure oil supplies (11 percent) or establish long-term military bases in the Middle East (6 percent). [Zogby, 2/28/2006]
Professor Bruce Lawrence. [Source: Duke University]Duke University professor Bruce Lawrence questions a tape reported to be from Osama bin Laden released on this day. In it, bin Laden comments on the progress of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and offers the US a truce (see January 19, 2006). The CIA says the voice on the tape is bin Laden's, but Lawrence, who edited a collection of bin Laden's speeches, is skeptical, saying that "[i]t was like a voice from the grave" and that the message is missing several key elements: "There's nothing in this from the Koran. He's, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim. He [usually] quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There's no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got." Lawrence also points out that, at 10 minutes, it is the shortest message ever issued by bin Laden. Lawrence questions when the tape was recorded, arguing that the timing of its release could be to divert attention from a recent strike in Pakistan during which civilians were killed (see January 13, 2006) and that bin Laden may actually be dead. [WTDV-TV, 1/19/2006; BBC, 1/20/2006]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Bruce Lawrence
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
A new audio tape reported to be from Osama bin Laden surfaces. In the tape, the US is offered a truce by al-Qaeda. The voice on the tape criticizes President Bush, and discusses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are said to be going badly for the US. The tape is also critical of the Pentagon's efforts to manage the war news, and references an alleged US plan to attack the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar. After comparing the US to Saddam Hussein and saying that US soldiers are raping women and taking them hostage, the voice says the US is torturing detainees, and that "Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources." The voice also threatens further attacks in the US, "Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished, God willing." The US is offered a truce: "We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect… In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the war." He also recommends the book Rogue State by William Blum. [BBC, 1/19/2006] The US rejects the proposed truce, and Vice President Dick Cheney calls it a "ploy". [BBC, 1/20/2006] However, a bin Laden expert is skeptical about the tape (see January 19, 2006).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former NSA Director Michael Hayden says that if the NSA's recently revealed warrantless wiretapping program (see December 15, 2005) had been in place before 9/11, "it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such." Hayden will later say the NSA would have detected calls between an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen and 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in San Diego (see May 18, 2006). Hayden adds: "You know, the 9/11 Commission criticized our ability to link things happening in the United States with things that were happening elsewhere. In that light, there are no communications more important to the safety of this country than those affiliated with al-Qaeda with one end in the United States." Before the attacks, the NSA intercepted a series of calls between two of the 9/11 hijackers and a known al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen (see Early 2000-Summer 2001), but failed to notify the FBI about them (see (Spring 2000)). [Press Club, 1/23/2006] Other administration officials make similar claims about the calls by Almihdhar and Alhazmi in the years after the NSA's warrantless program is revealed by the New York Times (see December 17, 2005).
Entity Tags: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Michael Hayden
President Bush at the National Security Agency. [Source: Eric Draper / White House]President George Bush uses calls between the 9/11 hijackers in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen that were intercepted by the NSA (see Early 2000-Summer 2001) to justify the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program (see December 15, 2005). Bush says: "We know that two of the hijackers who struck the Pentagon [Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar] were inside the United States communicating with al-Qaeda operatives overseas. But we didn't realize they were here plotting the attack until it was too late." Bush also quotes former NSA Director Michael Hayden, who previously said, "Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11… we would have detected some of the 9/11 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such" (see January 23, 2006). Bush and other administration officials make similar claims about the calls by Almihdhar and Alhazmi in the years after the program is revealed by the New York Times (see December 17, 2005). [White House, 1/25/2006] Bush made similar remarks at Kansas State University two days previously. [White House, 1/23/2006]
Entity Tags: Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, George W. Bush
A New York Times investigation along the Afghan-Pakistan border finds not-so-hidden evidence of continued Pakistani support for the growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Pakistan's intelligence agencies are said to be using a network of religious political parties to attract and then pressure young men into joining the jihad in Afghanistan or in Kashmir. The agencies are believed to be preparing for the day when NATO troops leave the country and hope to re-install a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul. [New York Times, 1/21/2006]
Entity Tags: Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, New York Times, Taliban
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Afghanistan
New York Times journalist James Risen writes in his new book, State of War: "[B]oth before and after 9/11, President Bush and his administration have displayed a remarkable lack of interest in aggressively examining the connections between Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Saudi power elite. Even as the Bush administration spent enormous time and energy trying in vain to prove connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in order to help justify the war in Iraq, the administration was ignoring the far more conclusive ties with Saudi Arabia. Those links are much stronger and far more troubling than has ever been previously disclosed, and until they are thoroughly investigated, the roots of al-Qaeda's power, and the full story of 9/11, will never be known." [Risen, 2006]
Entity Tags: James Risen, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Excerpts from a new video from a man thought to be al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri are aired on Al Jazeera television. The release follows a failed US attempt to kill al-Zawahiri with a missile two weeks ago (see January 13, 2006). The man said to be al-Zawahiri says that the airstrike killed innocent people and comments: "Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses." Analyst Jere Van Dyk says that releasing the video is al-Zawahiri's way of letting the Muslim world know: "I'm alive, you missed me! And I am still very strong." The man in the video also comments: "Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies." The speaker, who wears white robes and a white turban against a black background in the video, calls Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf a "traitor," and criticizes the US for rejecting an offer of a truce made by Osama bin Laden. [CBS News, 1/31/2006]
Entity Tags: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Jere Van Dyk
Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
Counterterrorism expert Micah Zenko will later claim that in February 2006, an unnamed senior civilian official serving at US Central Command tells him that he has been disappointed to learn the search for Osama bin Laden is being worked at a lower level than he would have suspected. Central Command, which covers the US military's operations in the Middle East and South Asia, has other issues that are deemed more important. [New York Times, 5/3/2011]
Entity Tags: US Central Command, Micah Zenko, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
In 2003, Afghan President Hamid Karzai presented Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with a list of Taliban leaders living openly in Pakistan, but Musharraf took no action in response (see April 22, 2003). In February 2006, Karzai and Musharraf meet again, in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Karzai again gives Musharraf a list of Taliban leaders living in Pakistan. Amrullah Saleh, head of Afghanistan's intelligence service, is also at the meeting, and will later say, "It was a target list—locations, training camps, telephone numbers, and everything." Musharraf responds by giving Karzai a report of the Indian government funding rebels in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan through Afghanistan. Western intelligence officials say India is funding these rebels, but not through Afghanistan. Musharraf again takes no action against the Taliban leaders living in his country. [PBS Frontline, 10/3/2006; Rashid, 2008, pp. 286]
Entity Tags: Hamid Karzai, Pervez Musharraf, Taliban, Amrullah Saleh
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI
Jaber Elbaneh. [Source: Yahya Arhab / EPA / Corbi]Twenty-three suspected al-Qaeda operatives break out of a high-security prison in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a. Escapees include Jamal al-Badawi, wanted for a role in the bombing of the USS Cole (see October 12, 2000), and Jaber Elbaneh, a US citizen believed to be linked to the alleged al-Qaeda sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York (see April-August 2001). The men allegedly tunnel their way from the prison to the bathroom of a neighboring mosque. However, the New York Times will later comment: "[T]hat account is viewed with great skepticism, both in the United States and in Yemen. Many in Yemen say the escape could not have taken place without assistance, whether from corrupt guards or through a higher-level plan." [New York Times, 3/1/2008] The prison is located in the basement of the Political Security Organization (PSO), Yemen's equivalent of the FBI. Several days later, a cable sent from the US embassy in Yemen notes "the lack of obvious security measures on the streets," and concludes, "One thing is certain: PSO insiders must have been involved." Newsweek comments: "[P]rivately, US officials say the plotters must have had serious—possibly high-level—help at the Political [Security Organization].…. [T]he head of the PSO, Ali Mutahar al-Qamish, is said to be under suspicion, according to two US officials." [Newsweek, 2/13/2006] Al-Badawi and nine others escaped a Yemeni prison in 2003 and then were recaptured one year later (see April 11, 2003-March 2004). Al-Badawi and Elbaneh turn themselves in to the Yemeni government in 2007 and then are freed (see October 17-29, 2007 and February 23, 2008).
Entity Tags: Jamal al-Badawi, Ali Mutahar al-Qamish, Jaber Elbaneh, Yemeni Political Security Organization
Category Tags: 2000 USS Cole Bombing, Yemeni Militant Collusion, "Lackawanna Six"
Zacarias Moussaoui meets FBI special agent James Fitzgerald in jail. Moussaoui tries to persuade Fitzgerald he is worth more to US intelligence alive than dead and offers information in return for being spared the death penalty. However, Fitzgerald demands full and complete co-operation, not only on what he knows about the plot in which he was involved, but also on everything he knows about al-Qaeda. They fail to reach an agreement. [Los Angeles Times, 3/29/2006]
Entity Tags: James Fitzgerald, Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
During a speech defending his campaign against al-Qaeda, President Bush describes a previously obscure al-Qaeda plot to crash an airplane into the Library Tower (since renamed the US Bank tower) in Los Angeles in 2002 (see October 2001-February 2002). It is the tallest building on the West Coast of the US. The plot was first briefly mentioned in a Bush speech in October 2005 (see October 6, 2005), but Bush and his aides now provide new details. The plot was allegedly masterminded by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, but was foiled when the four Asians recruited for the plot were arrested in Asia. Bush's speech on the plot comes on the same day as a Senate hearing into the NSA's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The Washington Post comments, "several US intelligence officials played down the relative importance of the alleged plot and attributed the timing of Bush's speech to politics. The officials… said there is deep disagreement within the intelligence community over the seriousness of the Library Tower scheme and whether it was ever much more than talk." One intelligence official "attributed the [speech on the plot] to the administration's desire to justify its efforts in the face of criticism of the domestic surveillance program, which has no connection to the incident." [Washington Post, 2/10/2006] The New York Times will similarly comment, "Bush's speech came as Republicans are intent on establishing their record on national security as the pre-eminent issue in the 2006 midterm elections, and when the president is facing questions from members of both parties about a secret eavesdropping program that he describes as pivotal to fighting terrorism." [New York Times, 2/10/2006]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Al-Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) says that he is in contact with people who are still able to do data mining on pre-9/11 data, and, in "those data runs that are now being done today, in spite of what DOD [Department of Defense] said, I have 13 hits on Mohamed Atta." He also says that additional Able Danger material continues to be found in Pentagon files, and that in early February, a general was present as Able Danger was recovered from filing cabinets. This came from the early 2000 version of Able Danger that supposedly had all of its data destroyed by Erik Kleinsmith. Weldon also claims, "At least one additional witness has come forward who just retired from one of the intelligence agencies, who will also testify under oath that he was well aware of and identified Mohamed Atta's both name and photo prior to 9/11 occurring." The Defense Department claims to have performed recent data mining on pre-9/11 data and failed to find Mohamed Atta's name. A Defense Department official also says one day after Weldon's claims: "It is true that in the course of this more recent review, we have indeed unearthed additional documents related to Able Danger. These documents were found, I must say, with some considerable effort, only because they were filed and misfiled and in a place where they weren't easily gotten to, not because they were being hidden." [Associated Press, 2/14/2006; CNS News, 2/15/2006; US Congress, 2/15/2006]
Entity Tags: Curt Weldon, Able Danger, Mohamed Atta
Category Tags: Able Danger
The US interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) maintains a watch list of 325,000 names of international terrorism suspects, a number that has more than quadrupled since the the list was created in 2003 by merging other watch lists together. NCTC officials estimate that, due to aliases, some 200,000 individuals are represented on the list. The main US watch list at the time of 9/11 had 60,000 names on it (see December 11, 1999). An administration official says, "The vast majority are non-US persons and do not live in the US." However, officials refuse to state how many on the list are US citizens and how many names on the list were obtained through the controversial wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency (NSA). Civil liberties and privacy advocates claim that the scale of the list heightens their concerns that watch lists include the names of large numbers of innocent people. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tells the Senate Judiciary Committee that he cannot discuss specifics but says, "Information is collected, information is retained, and information disseminated in a way to protect the privacy interests of all Americans." A September 2003 presidential directive instructs agencies to supply data for the list only about people who are "known or appropriately suspected to be… engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism." Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says the scope of the NCTC list highlights the "false positive" problem, in which innocent people have been stopped from flying because their names are wrongly included or are similar to suspects' names. "If there are that many people on the list, a lot of them probably shouldn't be there. But how are they ever going to get off?" [Washington Post, 2/15/2006] Numerous problems with the list will be found in 2006 (see March 2006).
Entity Tags: Alberto R. Gonzales, National Counterterrorism Center, Terror Screening Center, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Marc Rotenberg, National Security Agency
Category Tags: Internal US Security After 9/11
A second open Congressional hearing on Able Danger is held. Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone testifies that an extensive review of Able Danger under his direction failed to locate the chart with Mohamed Atta's picture and failed to find any other pre-9/11 references to Atta. Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) repeatedly spars with Cambone, and says that since 9/11, "There's been no investigation! There's been no analysis [of Able Danger] by the 9/11 commission or anyone else." Three members of the Able Danger team, Eric Kleinsmith, Anthony Shaffer, and James D. Smith, testify in public. All three of them say that the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented if law-enforcement agencies had acted on the information about al-Qaeda they discovered. The three of them had been prevented from testifying in the first public hearings on Able Danger in September 2005 (see September 21, 2005). [Sacramento Bee, 2/15/2006] Captain Scott Phillpott, the former head of Able Danger, apparently joins other former team members in closed testimony. [McClatchy News Service, 2/15/2006] The Congressional committee asked 9/11 Commission staff member Dietrich Snell to testify. But Snell's boss, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said that Snell would not be available. Weldon has said he wants to ask Snell under oath why Snell did not inform any of the 9/11 Commissioners what he had learned about Able Danger. [US Congress, 2/15/2006]
Entity Tags: Stephen A. Cambone, Scott Phillpott, James D. Smith, Eric Kleinsmith, Dietrich Snell, Able Danger, Anthony Shaffer, Curt Weldon
Several problems with the US international no-fly list, which is designed to prevent suspected terrorists from flying to the US, are found by investigative reporters Joe and Susan Trento. The list has grown rapidly since 2003 (see February 15, 2006), and was found to be inaccurate in 2005 (see June 14, 2005). The list contains the names of fourteen 9/11 hijackers, who are thought to be dead (see March 2006). The list deliberately omits the names of some known terrorists, apparently so that intelligence agencies can track them as they fly (see May 2006). The information on the list makes it difficult to distinguish between people with similar names. For example, FBI special agent John E. Lewis is often stopped, as a suspected terrorist has a similar name to his. Several people called Robert Johnson are stopped regularly. The list includes Francois Genoud, who had ties to both Islamic extremists and the Nazis and committed suicide in the mid-1990s at the age of 81. The list only includes two people involved in the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring; dozens of their associates are omitted. Numerous anti-Castro Cubans with records of suspicious and criminal activity are missing from the list. However, left-wing Bolivian president Evo Morales is on the list. A high-level official at United Airlines calls the list "a joke." A Transportation Security Administration official says: "No-fly doesn't protect anyone. It is every government agency's cover-your-ass list of names. Many of the really bad guys are never put on the list because the intelligence people think the airlines are not trustworthy. That makes the incomplete list we give the airlines next to worthless." [Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 188-221; CBS News, 6/10/2006] The list will be reported to have over half a million names by June 2007 (see June 13, 2007).
Entity Tags: Transportation Security Administration, Joseph Trento, Susan Trento
Agim Ceku is elected prime minister of Kosovo. Kosovo is still part of Serbia but is veering towards independence. Ceku was reportedly responsible for many atrocities while a Croatian general in 1993-1995 (see 1993-1995). He then became a top leader of the al-Qaeda-linked militant group, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Interpol removes Ceku from its list of wanted persons simply because of his new status as prime minister. [Associated Press, 3/24/2006]
Entity Tags: Agim Ceku
Timeline Tags: Kosovar Albanian Struggle
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Balkans
Ali Mohamed, the double agent caught in 1998, still has not been sentenced. In 2000, he pled guilty to involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings (see October 20, 2000) and his sentencing date had originally been set for July 2001 (see July 2001-December 2001). Linda Sanchez, Mohamed's wife, says in an interview at this time, "He's still not sentenced yet, and without him being sentenced I really can't say much. He can't talk to anybody. Nobody can get to him." The US government has "got Ali pretty secretive.… It's like he just kind of vanished [into] thin air." [Lance, 2006, pp. 23-24] There is no evidence he has been sentenced since.
Entity Tags: Ali Mohamed, Linda Sanchez
Category Tags: Ali Mohamed
When journalists Joe and Susan Trento obtain a copy of the US international no-fly list, which the Transportation Security Administration uses to prevent known terrorists from flying to the US and other countries, they find that 14 of the alleged 9/11 hijackers are still on it. They are: Satam Al Suqami, Waleed Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, Hamza Alghamdi, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, Ahmed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri, Majed Moqed, Hani Hanjour, Salem Alhazmi, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alnami, and Ahmed Alhaznawi. Shortly after 9/11, it was reported that some of the hijackers were still alive (see September 16-23, 2001) and this may be the reason for the apparent error, although the set of hijackers reported to be still alive and the set of 14 hijackers still on the no-fly list only partially overlap. [Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 189-192] The no-fly list also contains manifold problems and at least one other dead terrorist is on it (see March 2006).
Entity Tags: Salem Alhazmi, Satam Al Suqami, Wail Alshehri, Waleed Alshehri, Susan Trento, Mohand Alshehri, Saeed Alghamdi, Joseph Trento, Majed Moqed, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Abdulaziz Alomari, Ahmed Alnami, Hamza Alghamdi, Hani Hanjour, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, Ahmed Alghamdi
Category Tags: Internal US Security After 9/11, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
Sam Karmilowicz, a former security officer at the US embassy in Manila, suggests in an interview with CounterPunch magazine, that US intelligence may have failed to properly follow leads in a counterterrorism case because of a potential link to Pakistani intelligence. In September 1994, Karmilowicz allegedly received information that a Pakistani businessman with possible ties to the ISI was part of a plot to assassinate President Clinton during his November 1994 visit to Manila (see September 18-November 14, 1994). An interagency US security team that was tasked with investigating the tip ended its investigation after only a few weeks. "My experience in the Philippines shows the US government has compartmentalized information… in order to cover-up its gross incompetence or its complicity in illegal and questionable activities conducted by, or against, foreign powers," Karmilowicz says. [CounterPunch, 3/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Sam Karmilowicz, US intelligence
Category Tags: Drugs, 1995 Bojinka Plot, Drugs, 1995 Bojinka Plot, Pakistan and the ISI, Drugs, Philippine Militant Collusion, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia
Rayed Abdullah. [Source: Scoop]Rayed Abdullah, an associate of hijacker pilot Hani Hanjour (see October 1996-December 1997 and October 1996-Late April 1999), enters New Zealand despite being on the watch list there and takes further pilot training. The New Zealand government claims it only ascertains his real identity after he has been in the country several months. Abdullah is then arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia, even though he was traveling on a Yemeni passport. [Associated Press, 6/9/2006; New Zealand Herald, 6/10/2006] However, FBI agents and CIA officers later say that the US released Abdullah after 9/11 in an attempt to use him to spy on al-Qaeda for Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency. The CIA ensures he is allowed into New Zealand as a part of a joint operation. However, the New Zealanders get cold feet when Abdullah starts flight training again. A CIA official will say: "[W]e know if Rayed was part of the [9/11] plot, someone in al-Qaeda will reach out for him, and we have a chance of making that connection." An FBI official will comment: "The amazing thing is the CIA convinced itself that by getting [Abdullah] tossed out of New Zealand, he would then be trusted and acceptable to Saudi intelligence and useful in al-Qaeda operations. For this tiny chance of success they put passengers at risk to enter into a partnership with Saudi intelligence." [Stories that Matter, 10/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Rayed Abdullah
Category Tags: Hani Hanjour, Saudi Arabia, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Possible Hijacker Associates in US
During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006 and March 27, 2006), there will be some mentions of his time in London, where he was radicalized and linked up with other militants. However, numerous questions about his actions and associates there remain unanswered. Journalists Sean O'Niell and Daniel McGrory will later comment, "US intelligence knew Moussaoui was a product of Finsbury Park mosque, but during his nearly four months in court nobody asked him about his relationship with [extremist cleric and British informer] Abu Hamza, or about those who were at the mosque at the same time as him, and what became of them. Those secrets Moussaoui takes to his eight-by-five-foot cell." They add, "The publicity given to his spurious boast [that he wanted to hijack a fifth plane] meant that prosecutors paid little attention to other aspects of his testimony, particularly his measured account of how his time at Finsbury Park had shaped his beliefs and steered him and his 'brothers' towards al-Qaeda. Nobody asked who these 'brothers' were. Nor did they inquire who their leader in London was, and what role that person played in introducing them to al-Qaeda and its emerging network of training camps." [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 92, 223]
Entity Tags: Daniel McGrory, Zacarias Moussaoui, Sean O'Niell
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the US's top envoy to Iraq, tells the Los Angeles Times that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has opened a "Pandora's box." Iraq is currently embroiled in violence fueled by ethnic and sectarian tensions. Khalilzad says the "potential is there" for the situation to become a full-blown civil war. [Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2006] Four years earlier, Philip Gordon of the Brooking Institution had used the same exact words in warning about the potential for civil war if the US were to invade Iraq. In March 2002, he said, "Removing Saddam will be opening a Pandora's box, and there might not be any easy way to close it back up" (see Late March 2002).
Entity Tags: Brookings Institution, Philip Gordon, Zalmay M. Khalilzad
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism
Zacarias Moussaoui. [Source: WNBC / Jonathan Deinst]Zacarias Moussaoui becomes the first and only person charged in direct connection with the 9/11 attacks to stand trial in the US. [Associated Press, 3/17/2006] He was preparing to hijack an aircraft and fly it into a target when he was arrested 26 days before 9/11 (see August 16, 2001 and April 22, 2005). Although there has been disagreement whether Moussaoui was to take part in the actual attack of 9/11 or a follow-up plot (see January 30, 2003), the prosecution alleges that Moussaoui had information related to the attacks (see August 16, 2001) and facilitated them by lying and not disclosing everything he knew to the FBI. He is charged with six counts, including conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 12/11/2001 ] The trial receives much media coverage and the highlights include the playing of United 93's cockpit recorder (see April 12, 2006), a row over a government lawyer coaching witnesses (see March 13, 2006), and testimony by FBI agent Harry Samit (see March 9 and 20, 2006), former FBI assistant director Michael Rolince (see March 21, 2006), and Moussaoui himself (see March 27, 2006).
Moussaoui is forced to wear a stun belt, controlled by one of the marshalls, under his jumpsuit. The belt is to be used if Moussaoui lunges at a trial participant. [New York Times, 4/17/2006] He has already pleaded guilty (see April 22, 2005) and the trial is divided into two phases; in the first phase the jury decides that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, but in the second phase it fails to achieve unanimity on whether Moussaoui should be executed (see May 3, 2006). [Associated Press, 4/3/2006; New York Times, 4/17/2006]
Entity Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
FBI agent Harry Samit testifying at the Moussaoui trial. [Source: Agence France-Presse]FBI agent Harry Samit testifies at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006). Samit was one of the main agents involved in Moussaoui's arrest and bombarded his superiors with messages about the danger Moussaoui posed (see August 21, 2001 and August 21, 2001). Under direct examination he relates what happened in August 2001 (see August 22, 2001). The prosecutor asks Samit several times what he would have done if Moussaoui had told the truth, and Samit is usually allowed by the judge to say how it would have helped the investigation and made 9/11 less likely. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/9/2006] However, under cross examination Samit says he was not fooled by Moussaoui's lies and that he immediately suspected him of preparing to hijack an airplane, but the investigation was thwarted by FBI headquarters, and the Radical Fundamentalist Unit in particular. He admits that he told the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General that FBI headquarters was guilty of "obstructionism, criminal negligence, and careerism," and that its opposition blocked "a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks." [Associated Press, 3/20/2006] Samit says he warned his supervisors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was an al-Qaeda operative who might be plotting to hijack an airplane and fly it into a building, and that he was regularly thwarted by two superiors, David Frasca and Michael Maltbie. Reporting Samit's testimony, the London Times will conclude that "the FBI bungled the Moussaoui investigation." [London Times, 4/25/2006] Similar charges were made by one of Samit's colleagues, Coleen Rowley, after 9/11 (see May 21, 2002). The Los Angeles Times will comment, "His testimony appeared to undermine the prosecution's case for the death penalty." [Los Angeles Times, 3/20/2006]
Entity Tags: Michael Maltbie, Coleen Rowley, David Frasca, Harry Samit, Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui
Judge Leonie Brinkema halts the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006) after it is discovered that Transportation Security Administration lawyer Carla J. Martin violated a court order prohibiting witnesses from following the trial. Martin e-mailed transcripts to seven witnesses and coached them on their testimony. Brinkema calls it "the most egregious violation of the court's rules on witnesses [I have seen] in all the years I've been on the bench." Even the prosecution says, "We frankly cannot fathom why she engaged in such conduct." [Washington Post, 3/14/2006; Associated Press, 3/17/2006] Brinkema allows the prosecution to continue to seek the death penalty, but initially removes the aviation security portion of evidence from its case. However, after the prosecution complains this makes the proceedings pointless, she reinstates some of it, allowing the trial to continue. [Associated Press, 3/15/2006; CNN, 3/16/2006; Associated Press, 3/17/2006] As a result of her actions, Martin is placed on paid leave. Additionally, Pennsylvania's lawyer disciplinary board begins an investigation and federal prosecutors explore charges. [Washington Post, 7/10/2006] Martin's e-mails also reveal that she has been communicating with attorneys for United and American Airlines. This prompts seven victims' relatives, who are suing the airlines for being negligent on 9/11, to file a civil action against her alleging that she is trying to help the airline industry avoid civil liability. [CBS News, 4/7/2006; CNN, 4/26/2006]
Entity Tags: Leonie Brinkema, Carla Martin
Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) says that Osama bin Laden has died in Iran. According to Weldon, the information comes from a high-level Iranian exile source, who claims that bin Laden had been in hiding in Iran. Weldon, who last spoke to the source three weeks ago, says: "[The source has] told me that Osama bin Laden is dead. He died in Iran." Weldon has long alleged that bin Laden has been using Iran for sanctuary. For example, last June he said: "I'm confident that I know for sure that [bin Laden] has been in and out of Iran.… Two years ago, he was in the southern town of Ladis, 10 kilometers inside the Pakistan border. I also know that earlier this year, he had a meeting with [Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi in Tehran." [NewsMax, 3/17/2003] Despite this, a man thought to be bin Laden will continue to release statements to the media (see, for example, May 23, 2006).
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Curt Weldon, Osama bin Laden
Charlie Sheen [Source: Publicity photo]Well-known Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen reveals that he believes there is a massive US government coverup of what really occurred on 9/11. Appearing on the Alex Jones radio show, he says, "It seems to me like 19 amateurs with boxcutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions." [CBS 2 (Chicago), 3/23/2006] He says, "I saw the South Tower hit live, that famous wide shot where it disappears behind the building and then we see the tremendous fireball," and comments, "it didn't look like any commercial jetliner I've flown on any time in my life." He questions how a commercial plane could have performed the elaborate maneuvers necessary to hit the Pentagon, as Flight 77 reportedly did, and also says the collapses of the Twin Towers looked like a "controlled demolition." [CNN, 3/22/2006] In response, some newspaper columnists ridicule him, with the New York Post accusing him of joining the "9/11 gone-bonkers brigade," and a columnist with the London Guardian calling him "insane." [New York Post, 3/23/2006; Guardian, 3/25/2006] However, CNN's daily entertainment news show Showbiz Tonight gives him more sympathetic attention, and covers the story four shows in succession. Several celebrities defend Sheen's right to express his views. Bestselling author Erica Jong says he has "done his homework, and he's asking questions. He's speaking truth to power, which is a brave thing to do." [CNN, 3/22/2006; CNN, 3/23/2006; CNN, 3/24/2006; CNN, 3/27/2006]
Entity Tags: Erica Jong, Charlie Sheen
Category Tags: Media, US Government and 9/11 Criticism
Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology government investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center building, is asked about the collapse of WTC Building 7. Sunder says that he hopes to release something about that by the end of 2006. He adds, NIST did have some "preliminary hypotheses… We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors.… But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on building No. 7." [New York Magazine, 3/20/2006]
Entity Tags: Shyam Sunder, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Category Tags: WTC Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
The FBI has been slow in making use of computers and it is reported on this day that some New York FBI agents still lack e-mail accounts. The FBI's New York office has often been the lead office in dealing with al-Qaeda. An FBI official says, "As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts." An FBI spokesperson says the accounts will be given before the end of 2006. [CBS News, 3/21/2006]
Entity Tags: FBI New York Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Michael Rolince, who headed the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section when Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested, testifies at Moussaoui's trial (see March 6-May 4, 2006). He initially states that he was only informed of the Moussaoui case before 9/11 in two brief hallway conversations (see Late August 2001) and did not read a memo sent to him by the Minneapolis field office. However, under cross-examination he admits he also discussed a plan to deport Moussaoui to France, where his belongings could be searched (see (August 30-September 10, 2001)). [Associated Press, 3/21/2006; Associated Press, 3/21/2006] According to Newsday, Rolince appears "red-faced and flustered" at the end of the cross-examination and makes the court burst out laughing when he says he did not approve a briefing to FBI field offices about bin Laden threats in the US (see Before April 13, 2001), even though the briefing states he approved it. He says one of his subordinates may have approved it. [Associated Press, 3/21/2006; Newsday, 3/22/2006] Rolince is called by the prosecution, which wants him to give a list of steps the FBI would have taken if Moussaoui had confessed. However, Judge Brinkema states that, "Juries cannot decide cases on speculation… Nobody knows what would have happened." [Associated Press, 3/21/2006; Associated Press, 3/22/2006]
Entity Tags: Michael Rolince
There is a tumultuous trial of al-Qaeda operative Luai Sakra before he is finally convicted in early 2007. Sakra, considered a high-ranking leader, is on trial for co-masterminding a series of bombings in Istanbul, Turkey in 2003 (see November 15-20, 2003). There is also considerable evidence that he was an informant for the CIA, Turkey, and Syria (see 2000 and September 10, 2001). Having already confessed to assisting a number of attacks, including the 9/11 plot (see Early August 2005), Sakra makes additional claims during the trial. He says through his lawyer that shortly after being arrested in Turkey in 2005, he was visited in his Turkish prison cell by a group of English speaking foreigners. He claims that he was offered his freedom if he would falsely agree to testify that the Syrian government was involved in the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafiq Al-Hariri in 2005. He claims these people were aware that he had secretly met with the head of Syrian intelligence in the past, and that he turned down their offer. [BBC, 11/10/2005] At the start of the trial, Sakra appears quite different than he had when he was seen in public after being arrested seven months before, heavier and with a full beard. He claims to be a completely different person. The Washington Post will comment, "More than 20 journalists failed to recognize Sakra as he entered the court building," and even his own lawyer claims to doubt Sakra's identity. [Washington Post, 3/21/2006; BBC, 3/21/2006] Sakra's trial leaves many questions about him unanswered. The London Times will later say that his "often outrageous behavior, conflicting statements of identity, and the suspicion that he has undergone extensive plastic surgery, have helped to build up a wall of mystery around him." [London Times, 2/17/2007] Sakra's lawyer will claim that if Sakra revealed all that he knew, "a few states would collapse." [Washington Post, 3/21/2006] At the conclusion of the trial, Sakra and six others receive life in prison for their role in the 2003 Istanbul bombings. Forty-one people receive shorter sentences, and 26 people are acquitted. [BBC, 2/16/2007]
Entity Tags: Luai Sakra, Rafiq Al-Hariri
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Luai Sakra
During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see also March 6-May 4, 2006), the prosecution claims that if Zacarias Moussaoui had not lied when arrested and questioned (see August 16, 2001) and had provided information about the plot (see August 16, 2001), the FAA could have altered its security procedures to deal with the suicide hijacker threat. Prosecution witness Robert Cammaroto, an aviation security officer, says that security measures in effect before 9/11 were designed to cope with different types of threats, such as "the homesick Cuban," rather than suicide hijackings. He says that if the FAA had more information about Moussaoui, its three dozen air marshals could have been moved from international to domestic flights, security checkpoints could have been tightened to detect short knives like the ones Moussaoui had, and flight crews could have been instructed to resist rather than cooperate with hijackers. Most of these steps could have been implemented within a matter of hours. However, Cammarato admits that the FAA was aware before 9/11 that terrorists considered flying a plane into the Eiffel Tower and that al-Qaeda has performed suicide operations on land and sea. [Associated Press, 3/22/2006]
Entity Tags: Federal Aviation Administration, Robert Cammarato, Carla Martin, Zacarias Moussaoui
Ahmed Alnami's youth hosteling card found in the Flight 93 crash site. [Source: FBI]During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006), the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press publishes a significant portion of the exhibits used during the trial. [Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 12/4/2006] Previously, only a few items of the evidence linking the attacks to al-Qaeda were made public. For example, the 9/11 Commission's Terrorist Travel Monograph contained 18 documents of the alleged hijackers and their associates. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 171-195 ] The published exhibits include: Items belonging to the alleged hijackers that were recovered from the crash sites and Logan airport; Some details of the hijackers' movements in the US; Graphic photos of dead victims and body parts in the Pentagon and WTC ruins; Substitutions for testimony from some of the main plotters such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; The missing chapter from the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General's review of the FBI's performance before 9/11 (see June 9, 2005); and FBI and CIA documents. [Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 12/4/2006] At the end of July, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, publishes more of the exhibits used in the trial. The additionally published exhibits include, for example: Documents of the hijackers found at the crash sites and Logan airport, such as Satam Al Suqami's passport (see After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), Ahmed Alnami's youth hosteling card, and old correspondence between Mohamed Atta and the German authorities; Recordings of calls made by the passengers from the flights and recordings of the hijacker pilots talking to the passengers; Documents about the alleged hijackers prepared by the FBI such as a True Name Usage Chart for 2001 and chronologies for eleven of the hijackers from August 16-September 11, 2001; Documents from the hijackers' flight schools; A small sample of the hijackers' banking and phone records. However, some of the exhibits are not disclosed. For example, the cockpit voice recording from United 93 is sealed and only a transcript is made available. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 7/31/2006]
Entity Tags: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
Zacarias Moussaoui claimed that Richard Reid (above) was to have helped him hijack a fifth plane on 9/11. [Source: Mirrorpix(.com)]Against the will of his defense attorneys, Zacarias Moussaoui takes the stand at his trial (see March 6-May 4, 2006) and claims that he was supposed to fly a fifth plane on 9/11. He says the plane would have targeted the White House and one of the muscle hijackers would have been shoe-bomber Richard Reid (see December 22, 2001). However, he claims not to have known the details of the other hijackings, only that the WTC would be hit. He does not mention any other collaborators aside from Reid, who has already been sentenced to a long prison term. When the prosecution asks him whether he lied to FBI investigators so the plan could go forward he replies, "That's correct." An Associated Press expert calls this, "a stunning revelation that would help prosecutors rather than him." [Associated Press, 3/27/2006] In what the New York Times calls a "bizarre moment," the defense team, aware of the damage this admission could do, subject Moussaoui to tough questioning and the chief prosecutor objects that one of the defense attorneys is badgering his own client. [New York Times, 4/17/2006] Uncertainty over Fifth Jet - There is some dispute over whether Moussaoui was indeed to have flown a fifth plane (see January 30, 2003 and Before 2008). Following the testimony, the defense reads statements made by al-Qaeda leaders who are in custody, but are not permitted to testify at the trial (see May 14, 2003 and March 22, 2005). The statements say that Moussaoui was not part of 9/11, but a follow-up operation. [Associated Press, 3/28/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 7/31/2006 ] However, these statements were obtained using torture (see June 16, 2004). The government later concedes that there is no evidence linking Richard Reid to 9/11. [Associated Press, 4/20/2006] "Complete Fabrication" - Moussaoui had denied being part of 9/11 before the trial (see April 22, 2005). By the end of the trial he will do so again, calling the confession he makes on this day "a complete fabrication." [Associated Press, 5/8/2006]
Entity Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard C. Reid
Four statements based on the CIA inspector general's report on some aspects of the agency's performance before 9/11 are introduced as evidence at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui by the defense. The report was completed in 2004 (see June-November 2004), but rewritten and is still secret (see January 7, 2005). The four passages say: "Numerous" CIA officers accessed cables reporting that Khalid Almihdhar's passport contained a US visa and Nawaf Alhazmi had flown from Thailand to Los Angeles (see Mid-January-March 2000); [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria District, 3/28/2006 ] FBI Director Louis Freeh was briefed about Almihdhar in January 2000, but not told that Almihdhar had a US visa (see January 6-9, 2000); [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/28/2006 ] Nobody at Alec Station, the CIA's bin Laden unit, notified CIA personnel authorized to collect foreign intelligence in the US together with the FBI about Almihdhar's US visa (see 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000); [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/28/2006 ] The CIA was unaware of the Phoenix memo until after 9/11 (note: this may not actually be true—see (July 27, 2001)). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/28/2005 ] Two sections of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report are also introduced as evidence as substitutes for the CIA inspector general's report. They cover the use of aircraft as weapons and US knowledge of bin Laden's intentions to strike inside the US in the summer of 2001. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/28/2006 ; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/28/2006 ]
Entity Tags: Office of the Inspector General (CIA), Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, CIA OIG 9/11 Report, 9/11 Investigations
In an interview, Vice President Cheney says, "We had one report early on from another intelligence service that suggested that the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that reporting waxed and waned where the degree of confidence in it, and so forth, has been pretty well knocked down now at this stage, that that meeting ever took place. So we've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow [Saddam Hussein] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming. But there—that's a separate proposition from the question of whether or not there was some kind of a relationship between the Iraqi government, Iraqi intelligence services and the al-Qaeda organization." [White House, 3/29/2006] This is a reversal for Cheney, who strongly argued that the meeting took place, even after most experts concluded that it did not (see June 17, 2004).
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Conservative Party leader David Cameron. [Source: Public domain]Following the London bombings (see July 7, 2005), Britain passes a new Terrorism Act containing tougher laws, but they have little practical effect and many Islamic radicals carry on as before. The act introduces new offenses such as criminalizing the encouragement of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist publications, but the most controversial measure is an extension of the period for which suspects could be detained without trial. The government pushes for an extension from 14 days to 90 days, but parliament only allows 28 days. [Guardian, 11/9/2005; London Times, 11/9/2005; BBC, 11/9/2005; UK Parliament. House of Commons., 3/30/2006] In August 2006, Conservative Party leader David Cameron will criticize the government for failing to "follow-though when the headlines have moved on." He asks, "Why have so few, if any, preachers of hate been prosecuted or expelled?" and "why has so little been done to use the existing law to deal with the radicalization that is rife within our shores?" He also criticizes the government for funding conferences addressed by radical imam Yousuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi. [Conservative Party, 8/15/2006]
Entity Tags: David Cameron, Yousuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, Terrorism Act of 2006
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
The newly released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq says that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the 9/11 attacks. The NIE is compiled from information provided by the 16 American intelligence agencies, and written by the US government's National Intelligence Council. The NIE is released internally in April 2006, but portions are made public on September 24, 2006. It is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began. [New York Times, 9/24/2006] Robert Hutchings, the council's former chairman, says, "The war in Iraq has exasperated the global war on terror." [Toronto Daily News, 9/24/2006] The White House has issued its own reports touting its successes against Islamist terrorism and predicting that such activities will dwindle in the coming months. [New York Times, 9/24/2006] The NIE report says, "[T]he Iraq war has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists…and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives. …[T]he Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of al-Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea. Our study shows that the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third." Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the British secret service (MI5), agrees. She will say in early 2007, "Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation." [Independent, 3/1/2007] Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) says the report should "put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war." [ABC News, 9/25/2006]
Entity Tags: Robert Hutchings, National Intelligence Council, Eliza Manningham-Buller, Al-Qaeda, Edward M. ("Ted") Kennedy
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism
The US intelligence community completes a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), entitled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States." It concludes, "Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although still a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic distribution. If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide." It lists four factors "fueling the jihadist movement": "Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness." The Iraq war. "The Iraq conflict has become the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating support for the global jihadist movement." "The slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations." The "pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims." [Salon, 3/27/2008] It also concludes that al-Qaeda's operations have been disrupted and its leadership is "seriously damaged." This assessment will be reversed in the next NIE on terrorism, completed one year later (see July 18, 2007). [Washington Post, 7/18/2007]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, US intelligence
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
A leaked draft of the "narrative" of the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005) compiled by the Home Office in lieu of an official investigation concludes that there was no direct support from al-Qaeda for the 7/7 bombings. The Observer reports that the narrative concludes, "Far from being the work of an international terror network, as originally suspected, the attack was carried out by four men who had scoured terror sites on the Internet." It does acknowledge that two of the suicide bombers—Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer—traveled to Pakistan and met with known militants, but concludes that these trips were "ideological, rather than fact-finding." Even a video of Khan's last testament released by an al-Qaeda production company in Pakistan is dismissed as evidence of any al-Qaeda involvement in the attack (see September 1, 2005). Patrick Mercer, a spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, says an independent inquiry into 7/7 remains necessary, adding, "A series of reports such as this narrative simply does not answer questions such as the reduced terror alert before the attack, the apparent involvement of al-Qaeda, and links to earlier or later terrorist plots." [Observer, 4/9/2006] But within months, this assertion of no direct al-Qaeda invovlement will collapse as more information is made public about the bombers' links to al-Qaeda figures and training in al-Qaeda linked camps in Pakistan. On May 12, 2006, Home Secretary John Reid concludes for the first time that there is "considerable" circumstantial evidence of an al-Qaeda connection. [Guardian, 5/12/2006] By July 2006, Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police force's head of anti-terrorism, will concede, "Such information as we do have does suggest there is probably a link to al-Qaeda" (see July 6, 2006). [New York Times, 7/7/2006; Daily Telegraph, 7/8/2006] The BBC will report that same month: "British intelligence agencies believe some form of operational training is likely to have taken place while Khan and Tanweer were in Pakistan together and that it is likely they did have contact with al-Qaeda figures.… [T]he evidence pointing to a major role for al-Qaeda is mounting." [BBC, 7/6/2006] British counterterrorism expert Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed will argue that the government has deliberately downplayed evidence of al-Qaeda involvement in order to deflect questions about how a large network was able to operate in Britain for many years (see July 2, 2006).
Entity Tags: Mohammad Sidique Khan, Al-Qaeda, Home Office, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, John Reid, Peter Clarke, Patrick Mercer, Shehzad Tanweer
Category Tags: 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
The Washington Post reports that leaked documents show the US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to exaggerate the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to the Post, "The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the [Iraq] war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." According to Col. Derek Harvey, who has been a top advisor on Iraq intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although al-Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted some deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers…. Our own focus on al-Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will—made him more important than he really is, in some ways." Since at least 2004, the US military has manipulated the Iraq media's coverage of Zarqawi in an effort to turn Iraqis against the insurgency. But leaked documents also explicitly list the "US Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign. Additionally, sections of leaked military briefings show that the US media was directly used to influence view of al-Zarqawi. For instance, one document notes that a "selective leak" about al-Zarqawi was made to New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, which resulted in a 2004 front page story about a letter supposedly written by al-Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq (see February 9, 2004). [Washington Post, 4/10/2006] The Daily Telegraph reported in 2004 that "senior diplomats in Baghdad claim that the letter was almost certainly a hoax." The Telegraph also reported the US was buying extremely dubious intelligence that exaggerated al-Zarqawi's role and was treating it as fact, even in policy decisions (see October 4, 2004). [Daily Telegraph, 10/4/2004] One US military briefing from 2004 states, "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response" and lists three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite US military unit) and "PSYOP," meaning psychological operations and propaganda. One internal US military briefing concluded that the "al-Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date… primarily for the Iraqi audience but also with the international audience." It is supposedly US military policy not to aim psychological operations at Americans, but there appears to be no punishment for the violation of this policy in the wake of this media report. [Washington Post, 4/10/2006]
Entity Tags: Derek Harvey, Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Timeline Tags: US Military, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The Italian government says it will not ask for the extradition of 22 CIA officers sought by Italian prosecutors in connection with the kidnapping of radical imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar, see Noon February 17, 2003 and June 23, 2005 and After). Approving such a request is "usually a formality" according to the Washington Post, but the decision is delayed for months and then finally made by Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli immediately after the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi loses elections, but before it is replaced by a new government. The New York Times comments, "As minister of justice under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi—one of the Bush administration's most loyal supporters in Europe—Mr. Castelli's refusal to move forward with the extradition comes as no surprise." Prosecutor Armando Spataro says that the request will be resubmitted to the new Italian government, and the CIA officers may be tried in absentia. [Washington Post, 12/6/2005; New York Times, 4/12/2006] The request is resubmitted, but by the time the CIA officers are committed for trial in 2007, the new government will not have passed it on to the US (see February 11, 2007). [CNN, 2/16/2007]
Entity Tags: Roberto Castelli, Central Intelligence Agency, Armando Spataro, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Al-Qaeda in Italy
The cockpit voice recorder tape from United 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania (see (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001), is played at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006) just before the prosecution rests its case. Translations are displayed on a screen along with information taken from the plane's flight data recorder, such as speed, altitude, and steering yoke position. [Associated Press, 4/12/2006; London Times, 4/12/2006] The recording is sealed by the judge and a transcript is made available to the public. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] This is a big media event and it receives lots of coverage. CNN, for example, calls it "an absolutely spellbinding, unforgettable day in court." Many of the passages are unintelligible, but the recording seems to indicate that the hijackers murdered a flight attendant. [CNN, 4/12/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 ] Some of the victims' relatives previously heard the recording at a private meeting (see April 18, 2002).
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah. [Source: FBI]Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah, an Egyptian al-Qaeda operative, is killed in a remote village in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. There was a $5 million bountry for Atwah, who was wanted for involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). Witnesses describe a missile strike followed by a Pakistani helicopter gunship attack. The attack is said to have killed nine people, including two young children. [Associated Press, 4/13/2006; CNN, 10/24/2006]
Entity Tags: Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah
Category Tags: Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region
A new video thought to be from al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri praises the insurgency in Iraq. He describes militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a "beloved brother" and says, "I have lived with him up close and have seen nothing but good from him." However, the video was apparently made some time previously, in November 2005, and the man thought to be al-Zawahiri says it was made to mark the fourth anniversary of the battle of Tora Bora (see November 16, 2001). By November 2005, al-Zarqawi had had some sort of relationship with al-Qaeda for about a year (see October 17, 2004), but this relationship will end upon his death in mid-June (see June 8, 2006). [BBC, 4/13/2006]
Entity Tags: Ayman al-Zawahiri
Mohammad Daud. [Source: Dieter Nagl / AFP / Getty Images]Interior Minister for Counternarcotics Gen. Mohammad Daud is the top counter-narcotics official in the Afghan government, but it is reported on this day that there are allegations Daud is simultaneously a drug kingpin. One anonymous senior drug official from an unnamed country says, "He frustrates counternarcotics law enforcement when it suits him. He moves competent officials from their jobs, locks cases up and generally ensures that nobody he is associated with will get arrested for drug crimes." Daud denies the allegations. Additionally, there are allegations that some provincial governors, cabinet ministers, and even the president's own brother are involved in the drug trade. Although there are several dozen prominent major drug traffickers in the country, only two have been arrested and held since 9/11. [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/17/2006] Daud's name also appears on a classified document from a US military base listing known Afghan drug kingpins (see Early 2005).
Entity Tags: Mohammad Daud
Category Tags: Drugs, Afghanistan
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's non-partisan research arm, issues a report criticizing the government's sharing of counterterrorism information. Despite more than four years of legislation and executive orders, there has been little progress since 9/11 in sharing information among federal agencies and thousands of nonfederal partners. Deadlines set by both President Bush and Congress have repeatedly not been met. The responsibility for the task has also repeatedly shifted since 9/11—from the White House to the Office of Management and Budget, to the Department of Homeland Security, and to the Director of National Intelligence. In January 2006, the program manager in charge of improving information sharing between agencies resigned after complaining of inadequate budget and staffing. The GAO report notes that there is a lack of "government-wide policies and processes to help agencies integrate the myriad of ongoing efforts to improve the sharing of terrorism-related information…" For instance, there are at least 56 different secrecy classifications in use, with different agencies using different terms or sometimes the same terms with widely different meanings. State and local first responders claim they are often left in the dark or overwhelmed with identical information from multiple federal sources. [Washington Post, 4/19/2006]
Entity Tags: Office of Management and Budget, US Department of Homeland Security, George W. Bush, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Government Accountability Office, US Congress, White House
Category Tags: Internal US Security After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The State Department's latest annual Country Reports on Terrorism does not list the Taliban as a terrorist group. In fact, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Taliban have never been designated as a terrorist group by the US, Britain, European Union, or any other major Western powers. Governments the US accuses of being sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, are on the list, but the Taliban has never been listed despite its well-known connection to al-Qaeda. One Afghan analyst says that there is a political motive behind this double standard. The Afghan government has reached out to former members of the Taliban to broaden its support and, "You can't call them 'terrorists' and at the same time reconcile with them." [Christian Science Monitor, 5/2/2006]
Entity Tags: Taliban, US Department of State
Category Tags: Afghanistan
Christiane Amanpour narrated The Journalist and the Jihadi. [Source: CNN]HBO produces a documentary film entitled The Journalist and the Jihadi about Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and one of the extremists involved in his kidnap and murder, Saeed Sheikh. The film, directed and produced by Ahmed Jamal and Ramesh Sharma, and narrated by CNN's Christiane Amanpour, portrays the two men as "a passionate journalist and a shrewd terrorist" representing the best and worst of their respective cultures. The film climaxes with Pearl's kidnap and murder, while he was investigating the 9/11 money trail in Pakistan. It suggests that, had it not been for complicity between al-Qaeda and certain factions inside Pakistan's ISI, Pearl may have survived. [Salon, 4/28/2006; New York Times, 10/10/2006]
Entity Tags: Saeed Sheikh, Daniel Pearl, Christiane Amanpour, Ramesh Sharma, Ahmed Jamal
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, Pakistani ISI Links to 9/11
The Federal Emergency Management Agency posts a warning from the White House on its Web site about "dirty bombs" and radiological "suitcase bombs." The warning says that a terrorist's nuclear weapon would "probably be limited to a single smaller 'suitcase' weapon." It adds: "The strength of such a weapon would be in the range of the bombs used during World War II. The nature of the effects would be the same as a weapon delivered by an intercontinental missile, but the area and severity of the effects would be significantly more limited." [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/2006] In late 2007, a senior FBI agent will say that such "suitcase nukes" are unlikely to exist outside of fiction (see November 10, 2007).
Entity Tags: Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bush administration (43)
In May 2006, investigative reporters Joe and Susan Trento find that the CIA is continuing a pre-9/11 policy (see July 1990 and January 8, 2000) and deliberately keeping some suspected terrorists off the US international no-fly list, which is aimed at preventing terrorists from traveling to the US and other countries. In addition, it has an agreement with some airlines to allow suspected terrorists who are on the no-fly list to fly anyway. For example, it allows Rayed Abdullah, an associate of alleged 9/11 pilot Hani Hanjour, to fly to New Zealand, where he takes flying lessons (see February-May 30, 2006). The CIA, as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency, keeps some terrorists' names off the no-fly list because they are already intelligence assets, others are allowed to fly because the CIA hopes to recruit them, and more are allowed to travel just because the CIA wants to see where they are going and who they will meet. In addition, others are kept off the no-fly list at the request of US allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A former CIA officer says: "I cannot describe to you how reluctant our operational people were to turn over names. Many terrorists act as assets for our case officers. We do deal with bad guys, and, like cops protect snitches, we protect ours, too, and none of those guys is going to show up on the no-fly list anytime soon. So we made a deal. The CIA effectively has the ability to allow people to fly who are on the no-fly list if we deem it in the national interest—just not on domestic airlines." There are other problems with the no-fly list (see March 2006 and March 2006) and the CIA also penetrates the Federal Air Marshal Service to ensure that terrorists can fly openly without the marshals' knowledge (see Before 2006). [Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. xiii, 187, 192-3]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Joseph Trento, Susan Trento
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Internal US Security After 9/11
A simulation of waterboarding arranged by ABC News. [Source: ABC News]According to an ABC News report in September 2007, CIA Director Michael Hayden bans the use of waterboarding some time in 2006, with the approval of the White House. It is not known when exactly the technique is banned that year, but presumably it takes place after Hayden becomes CIA director (see May 5, 2006) and in response to the Supreme Court decision mandating that terror suspects must be given treatment consistent with the Geneva Conventions (see July 12, 2006). Waterboarding is a harsh interrogation technique that simulates drowning and is usually referred to as torture. Allegedly, the CIA last used waterboarding in 2003 on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and "It is believed that waterboarding was used on fewer than five 'high-value' terrorist subjects" (see May 2002-2003). John Sifton of Human Rights Watch later says the ban "a good thing, but the fact remains that the entire [CIA interrogation] program is illegal." [ABC News, 9/14/2007] Over a year before Hayden's decision, Justice Department official Daniel Levin had himself subjected to simulated waterboarding to help him determine if waterboarding was indeed torture (see Late 2004-Early 2005). Levin intended to issue a memo condemning the practice as beyond the bounds of the law, but was forced out of the Justice Department before he could make that ruling.
Entity Tags: Daniel Levin, US Supreme Court, US Department of Justice, White House, Central Intelligence Agency, John Sifton, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Michael Hayden, Geneva Conventions
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties
Category Tags: High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The Christian Science Monitor reports: "Taliban leaders strut openly around Quetta, Pakistan, where they are provided with offices and government-issued weapons authorization cards; Pakistani army officers are detailed to Taliban training camps; and Pakistani border guards constantly wave self-proclaimed Taliban through checkpoints into Afghanistan." A Monitor reporter who lives in Kandahar, Afghanistan, notes that the result is that people there "have reached an astonishing conclusion: The United States must be in league with the Taliban… In other words, in a stunning irony, much of this city, the Taliban's former stronghold, is disgusted with the Americans not because of their Western culture, but because of their apparent complicity with Islamist extremists." [Christian Science Monitor, 5/2/2006] CNN will similarly report in September 2006 that Taliban head Mullah Omar and most other top Taliban leaders are living in Quetta (see September 12, 2006).
Entity Tags: Christian Science Monitor, Taliban
Zacarias Moussaoui on his way to the Supermax prison. [Source: WNBC / Jonathan Deinst]Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks. A jury sentences him to six consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. A single juror votes against the death penalty for one of the three counts for which Moussaoui is eligible to receive the death sentence (see March 6-May 4, 2006). For the other two counts, the vote is 10-2. According to the foreman of the jury, the lone dissenter did not identify his or herself to the other jurors during deliberations and consequently they could not discuss the person's reasons for opposing the death penalty. "But there was no yelling. It was as if a heavy cloud of doom had fallen over the deliberation room, and many of us realized that all our beliefs and our conclusions were being vetoed by one person," the foreman explains to the Washington Post. "We tried to discuss the pros and cons. But I would have to say that most of the arguments we heard around the deliberation table were [in favor of the death penalty]… Our sense was this was a done deal for that person and whoever that person is, they were consistent from the first day and their point of view didn't change." [Washington Post, 5/12/2006] As a result of the vote, Moussaoui will not be executed and instead will serve six life sentences at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. A day after the sentencing, on May 5, Moussaoui files a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. He says that his March 27 testimony that he was supposed to have hijacked a fifth plane on September 11 and fly it into the White House "was a complete fabrication." At sentencing the judge told him, "You do not have a right to appeal your convictions, as was explained to you when you plead guilty. You waived that right." [Associated Press, 5/8/2006]
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Destruction of CIA Tapes, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Osama Awadallah, an alleged associate of two 9/11 hijackers in San Diego, is acquitted in a US trial. Awadallah, a Jordanian living in the US since 1999, was not accused of terrorist activity, but was merely charged with lying to a grand jury investigating the 9/11 attacks. Nine days after 9/11, he was interviewed by the FBI, and he admitted that he knew 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi. However, he denied knowing hijacker Khalid Almihdhar, who lived with Alhazmi in San Diego. Awadallah was detained as a material witness. After 9/11, his old phone number was found in a car used by some of the hijackers. Eleven jurors wanted to convict him, but one did not, so a mistrial was declared after jurors made clear they could not reach a unanimous verdict. Had he been convicted, he would have faced little to no jail time, and then deportation. Instead, he will continue his studies at San Diego State University. [Associated Press, 5/5/2006] It has been claimed that one day before the 9/11 attacks, Awadallah and others appeared to be celebrating the upcoming attacks (see Late August-September 10, 2001).
Entity Tags: Khalid Almihdhar, Osama Awadallah, Nawaf Alhazmi
Category Tags: Possible Hijacker Associates in US, 9/11 Investigations, 9/11 Related Criminal Proceedings, FBI 9/11 Investigation
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, former CIA senior analyst Paul Pillar says the Bush administration's prewar allegations concerning Iraq were part of an "organized campaign of manipulation." This was especially the case with the administration's claims that Iraq was working with al-Qaeda, he says. "It was this that most strongly affected public opinion in the United States, and which would keep alive the images of September 11, 2001. The administration's voracious appetite to obtain material about this non-existent alliance cost a great deal of time and work to senior intelligence staff and the most highly experienced analysts in the CIA." Pillars also tells the newspaper the decision to invade Iraq was made "for other reasons and did not depend on weapons of mass destruction or the results of United Nations inspections." [Agence France-Presse, 5/4/2006; El Pais, 5/4/2006]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Paul R. Pillar
CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigns "amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman." A senior law enforcement official says, "It's all about the Duke Cunningham scandal." Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty in late 2005 to taking millions of dollars in bribes. Goss is replaced by General Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA. [New York Daily News, 5/6/2006] The Bush administration gives no explanation for the resignation and even Goss publicly describes his own resignation as "just one of those mysteries." [CNN, 5/6/2006] It is later learned that Goss's resignation is spurred in part because of the controversy surrounding his chosen CIA Executive Director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. Foggo is being investigated for his connections to Cunningham. Both Foggo and Cunningham are being investigated by the office of US Attorney Carol Lam (see November 8, 2002). [Talking Points Memo, 2011] In 2007, former senior CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson will write: "Once John Negroponte became the de facto intelligence czar as director of national intelligence (DNI—see February 17, 2005)… Goss's effectiveness, prestige, and daily access to the president had been considerably diminished. This, in turn, further degraded and undermined the organization he led. During a time of driving massive change, which Goss and other senior intelligence managers were attempting to do at the agency, effective and clear communication with all levels of the organization is critical. Goss failed completely at this task and the cost was high.… [H]e had been a poor fit from the beginning. In an underperforming bureaucracy such as the CIA, a strong leader, respected by the rank and file, is essential to managing needed change and modernization. On a personal note, I was not sorry to see him go." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 247-248]
Entity Tags: Randall ("Duke") Cunningham, Porter J. Goss, Valerie Plame Wilson, Michael Hayden, John Negroponte, Bush administration (43), Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, Carol C. Lam
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
The British government releases two official reports into the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005). One report is from the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is not a House of Commons committee, but a Cabinet Office committee appointed by the prime minister in consultation with the leader of the opposition. It concludes that two of the 7/7 bombers had been under surveillance, but while there were "intelligence gaps," there was no evidence of an "intelligence failure that could have prevented the bombings." British intelligence was justified in not devoting more resources to monitor the 7/7 bombers. The second report is a "narrative of events" by the Home Office. It acknowledges that British foreign policy was an element in the radicalization of the bombers, but concludes that British involvement in the Iraq war was not a key contributory factor behind the bombings. It highlights the "home-grown" nature of the bombers. It acknowledges that the bombers were inspired by Osama bin Laden's ideology, but says that there is no evidence so far pointing to a direct al-Qaeda link or a mastermind in addition to the four suicide bombers. The Guardian editorial board criticizes the reports, and says that they are unlikely to quiet calls for an independent public inquiry. "The purpose of such reports is to draw lessons and point to ways of improving the public's safety. In this respect neither report is entirely satisfactory. Each report leaves important questions hanging in the air. Each report tells a story of serious official failure. The failures were particular and general. Two of the 7/7 gang, [Mohammad Sidique] Khan and [Shehzad] Tanweer, were known to the security services. Both had visited Pakistan for extended periods in the months before their suicide mission. Khan, in particular, was already of considerable interest to MI5. It is MI5's job to collate, to sift, to match and to interpret information of this kind. Patently, the service failed to do that in these cases. This seems not to have been purely a matter of inadequate resources. It was also an operational failure, and thus a failure for which management must take responsibility. The new home secretary, John Reid, gave no indication yesterday that this has happened." [Guardian, 5/11/2006; Guardian, 5/12/2006] Yet within days, it will be revealed that key evidence had been withheld from the Intelligence and Security Committee that directly contradicts its conclusion that British intelligence was justified in not monitoring the 7/7 bombers more closely (see May 13-14, 2006).
Entity Tags: Intelligence and Security Committee, Home Office, Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Al-Qaeda, UK Security Service (MI5)
On May 11, 2006, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which is composed of members of parliament appointed by the prime minister, issued a report about the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005) that largely exonerates British intelligence for not stopping the bombings (see May 11, 2006). However, two days later, The Guardian and then the Sunday Times report that the ISC was never told that the British intelligence agency MI5 monitored head 7/7 suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan discussing the building of a bomb and then his desire to leave Britain because there would be a lot of police activity. In early 2004, Khan was monitored talking to members of a fertilizer bomb plot (see February 2-March 23, 2004). Tapes show he had knowledge of the "late-stage discussions" of this plot, as well as discussions with them about making a bomb. He was also taped talking about his plans to wage jihad (holy war) and attend al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. Further details, such as exactly whom he was speaking to and when, have not been made public. Since the ISC was not aware of this material, it concluded that MI5 had no reason to suspect Khan of plotting bombings in Britain. A member of the ISC admits that the ISC did not see transcripts of MI5's recordings of Khan. Instead, it listened to senior security officials and accepted their claims that there was no reason to regard Khan as a serious threat. After being told what was on these transcripts, this ISC member says: "If that is the case, it amounts to a scandal. I would be outraged." Shadow home secretary David Davis of the Conservative Party tells Home Secretary John Reid in a private exchange at the House of Commons: "It seems that MI5 taped Mohammad Sidique Khan talking about his wish to fight in the jihad and saying his goodbyes to his family—a clear indication that he was intending a suicide mission… he was known to have attended late-stage discussions on planning another major terror attack. Again, I ask the home secretary whether that is true." Reid responds that the questions are "legitimate" but fails to answer them. [Guardian, 5/13/2006; Sunday Times (London), 5/14/2006] Additionally, the ISC was only shown one surveillance photo of Khan. But in 2007 it will be revealed that MI5 in fact had at least six photos of him (see Between April 10, 2004 and July 7, 2005). It will also come to light in 2007 that Khan was briefly investigated in early 2005, and that all information about this was kept from the ISC (see January 27-February 3, 2005).
Entity Tags: Mohammad Sidique Khan, David Davis, John Reid, UK Security Service (MI5), Intelligence and Security Committee
A frame from the video showing the attack on the Pentagon. [Source: US Department of Defense]For the first time, the US Department of Defense officially releases video footage of the Pentagon attack. Two security cameras outside the building recorded the footage on the morning of 9/11 (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [US Department of Defense, 9/11/2001; US Department of Defense, 9/11/2001; Associated Press, 5/17/2006; Washington Post, 5/17/2006] The digital cameras positioned north of the crash site had recently been installed and were still undergoing testing. They were part of a security system that enabled a guard in a booth to identify drivers heading toward the parking lot for the Pentagon Mall Entrance. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161] The Pentagon releases the two videos in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and related lawsuit by the public interest group Judicial Watch. It previously refused to do so because, it said, the tapes were "part of an ongoing investigation involving Zacarias Moussaoui." [Judicial Watch, 5/16/2006] Both tapes were played as evidence during Moussaoui's recent death penalty trial. [Washington Post, 5/17/2006] However, the footage is of poor quality and several still images from one of the tapes have in fact already been released unofficially (see March 7, 2002). [Associated Press, 5/17/2006] Furthermore, Judicial Watch had sought all recordings of the Pentagon attack, including those taken by cameras at the nearby Sheraton Hotel and Citgo gas station, and Virginia Department of Transportation traffic cameras (see (After 9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Judicial Watch, 5/16/2006] According to CNN's Jamie McIntyre: "[T]here are at least 80 other tapes that the government is holding onto. We're told that they don't really show much, but sources have told us that at least one of the tapes from a security camera at a nearby hotel may have captured the plane in the air." [CNN, 5/20/2006] So far, none of these tapes have been made public, though the FBI will release the footage from the Citgo gas station and video taken from the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington later this year (see September 13, 2006-Early December 2006). Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says he hopes the newly released Pentagon security camera footage "will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77." For example, some suggest a missile hit the Pentagon on 9/11. [BBC, 5/16/2006] However, it appears to have the opposite effect, causing Internet traffic to 9/11 conspiracy websites to soar. James Fetzer, co-chair of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth, says of the videos: "There is no new information here whatsoever… You can't tell what in the world is hitting the Pentagon." [CanWest News Service, 5/18/2006]
Entity Tags: Tom Fitton, Pentagon, US Department of Defense, James Fetzer, Judicial Watch
Category Tags: 9/11 Investigations, Other 9/11 Investigations
A poll released by Zogby International shows widespread skepticism towards the official 9/11 story. The nationwide telephone survey of 1,200 adults finds that 42 percent of respondents agreed that "the US government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks," and that "there has been a cover-up." Ten percent of respondents said they were unsure, while less than half said the government and 9/11 Commission were not covering up. Forty-five percent of respondents felt the 9/11 attacks should be reinvestigated. Forty-four percent believed that President Bush exploited the attacks to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The survey also found that 43 percent of respondents were unaware of the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11. [Zogby International, 5/24/2006; New York Times, 6/5/2006; Newsday, 9/1/2006] When Lee Hamilton, the former co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, is later questioned about this poll, he will say the figure of 42 percent of Americans believing there has been a cover up is "dispiriting, it's an unusually high number" (see August 21, 2006). [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/21/2006] A previous Zogby poll found 49 percent of New York City residents agreed that some leaders "knew in advance" of the 9/11 attacks and "consciously failed to act" (see August 30, 2004).
Entity Tags: Zogby International
Category Tags: US Government and 9/11 Criticism
Former NSA director and soon-to-be CIA director Michael Hayden says that a program in which the NSA listens in on calls between the US and other countries without obtaining warrants would have prevented 9/11, had it been in place then. Hayden tells a Senate hearing discussing his confirmation as CIA director, "Had this been in place prior to the attacks, the two hijackers who were in San Diego, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, almost certainly would have been identified as who they were, what they were, and most importantly, where they were." Hayden also says, "I can demonstrate in closed session how the physics and the math would work." [US Congress, 5/18/2006 ] However, the NSA actually intercepted the calls between Alhazmi and Almihdhar in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen (see Early 2000-Summer 2001), which it knew had been in contact with Osama bin Laden (see November 1996-Late August 1998) and was also involved in the East African embassy bombings (see August 4-25, 1998) and the attack on the USS Cole (see Mid-August 1998-October 2000). Before 9/11, the NSA was entitled to pass on information about the calls to the FBI, but did not do so, even though the FBI had specifically asked for information about calls between the communications hub in Yemen and the US (see Late 1998 and (Spring 2000)). Various explanations for this failure are offered after 9/11 (see Summer 2002-Summer 2004 and March 15, 2004 and After).
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Remote Surveillance, Yemen Hub
A new 5-minute audiotape is released by a person said to be Osama bin Laden. The voice on the tape says that Zacarias Moussaoui and the vast majority of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay had nothing to do with 9/11. The speaker says that Moussaoui "has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11th" and "his confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession which no intelligent person doubts is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years." The voice also says that, as Moussaoui has not named a support team, he cannot have been slated to pilot a hijacked airliner, and that, as he was learning to fly, he cannot have been intended to be the 20th hijacker. Further, if Moussaoui had known the 9/11 group, he would have called lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and told him to flee the country (note: jail house calls can be recorded, so this may not have been wise (see August 17, 2001)). There are various theories about Moussaoui's closeness to the 9/11 plot, but he was supported by some of the people who supported the hijackers (see January 30, 2003). The speaker also says that the detainees in Guantanamo Bay "have no connection whatsoever to the events of September 11th, and even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al-Qaeda in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al-Qaeda's methodology of calling for war with America." The apparent reason so many detainees are being held: "(I)t is necessary to create justifications for the massive spending of hundreds of billions on the Defense Department and other agencies in their war against the Mujaheddin." [MSNBC, 5/23/2006] One Guantanamo detainee, Mohamed al-Khatani, was allegedly supposed to meet lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the US, but was refused entry to the country, indicating that he was scheduled to be involved in 9/11 (see August 4, 2001 and July 2002).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Zacarias Moussaoui, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
The first oil pumped from Baku, by the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, arrives in Ceyhan, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, and is loaded onto a ship. The 1,770 km pipeline, which passes through the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, bypasses Russia and Iran for geopolitical reasons. The main shareholder is British Petroleum, and other significant shareholders include the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Statoil of Norway, and the US company Unocal, which has an 8.9% interest and became interested in the project no later than 1998. Unocal begins losing interest in a pipeline across Afghanistan around the same time (see December 5, 1998). Substantial amounts to finance the $3-4 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline were arranged by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The consortium members put up the remaining 30%. [US Congress, 2/12/1998; Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, 7/12/2002; Guardian, 12/1/2003; Guardian, 5/26/2005; Eurasia Daily Monitor, 5/31/2005; Turkish Weekly, 5/29/2006] Journalist Pepe Escobar comments: "In terms of no-holds-barred power politics and oil geopolitics, BTC is the real deal—a key component in the US's overall strategy of wrestling the Caucasus and Central Asia away from Russia—and bypassing Iranian oil and gas routes… BTC makes little sense in economic terms. Oil experts know that the most cost-effective routes from the Caspian would be south through Iran or north through Russia. But BTC is a designer masterpiece of power politics—from the point of view of Washington and its corporate allies. US Vice President Dick Cheney, already in his previous incarnation as Halliburton chief, has always been a huge cheerleader for the 'strategically significant' BTC." Escobar also mentions that the amount of Caspian oil was overestimated (see November 1, 2002), "the Caspian may hold only 32 billion barrels of oil—not much more than the reserves of Qatar, a small Gulf producer." [Asia Times, 5/26/2005] However, the Caspian area is still believed to hold considerable amounts of natural gas. The construction of this pipeline does not halt plans for the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean (see January 18, 2005).
Entity Tags: Pepe Escobar, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, British Petroleum, Statoil, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, Unocal
Category Tags: Pipeline Politics, US Dominance
Protesters in Kabul run from Afghan police gunshots. [Source: Associated Press / Rodrigo Abd]A US Army truck in a convoy careens out of control in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing at least three locals. Witnesses see the incident as symbolic of lack respect for the Afghan populace and rumors quickly swirl that it was intentional. Angry crowds form and begin pelting the rest of the convoy with rocks. US and/or Afghan soldiers open fire on the crowd and kill about six Afghans. This further enrages the populace, leading to rioting and looting all over Kabul for hours. Looters destroy businesses, Western non-profit offices, and even lay siege to the Interior Ministry for a time. NATO peacekeeping troops stay in their compounds and Afghan security forces are ineffectual. Officially, 17 are killed in the riots, but informed observers believe the death count is close to 100. Afghan member of parliament Dr. Ramazan Bashar Dost says that the people are angry at perceived price gouging by Western contractors and non-profits, and what is seen as poor results for all the billions of dollars spent. He says, "The problem is that the [non-profits] work within the system of corruption that plagues Afghanistan. They pay the bribes to the officials and even to Western contractors. So people see them as part of the same system as the corrupt government." [Salon, 6/14/2006; New York Times, 8/23/2006] Afghan President Hamid Karzai responds by appointing a new police chief and other top police officers known for their ties to organized crime. [New York Times, 8/23/2006]
Entity Tags: Ramazan Bashar Dost, Hamid Karzai
Around the summer of 2006, the CIA sends up to 50 additional case officers to Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of a renewed effort to find al-Qaeda's top leaders. This is said to be a dramatic increase in the number of CIA case officers permanently stationed in those countries. All of the newly arrived personnel are given the primary task of finding Osama bin Laden and his second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri. Some former CIA officials will say this new push comes after the White House pushed the CIA to step up the effort to find bin Laden. Mid-term US Congressional elections are being held in November 2006. However, the CIA will deny any pressure from the White House and say it was "driven solely by operational considerations." But the renewed effort results in no significant leads on the whereabouts of bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. US intelligence officials will largely blame this on the peace treaty signed between the Pakistani government and Islamist militants in North Waziristan in early September 2006 (see September 5, 2006). As part of the treaty, the Pakistani army withdraws ten of thousands of troops from Waziristan and other tribal border regions where the hunt for al-Qaeda leaders has been focused. A senior US intelligence official will later comment: "Everything was undermined by the so-called peace agreement in North Waziristan. Of all the things that work against us in the global war on terror, that's the most damaging development. The one thing al-Qaeda needs to plan an attack is a relatively safe place to operate." The Los Angeles Times will comment, "The pullback took significant pressure off al-Qaeda leaders and the tribal groups protecting them." [Los Angeles Times, 5/20/2007]
Entity Tags: White House, Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
Abdul Koyar and Abdul Kahar. [Source: Reuters]Acting on intelligence indicating the construction of a chemical device, police carry out an armed raid which leads to a shooting and two arrests in Forest Gate, east London. The shot suspect, Abdul Kahar, is taken to hospital while his brother, Abdul Koyar, is held at a local police station. Sources reveal that intelligence indicated the presence of a "viable" chemical weapon in the house that was capable of producing hundreds of casualties. Deputy Assistance Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terror unit, describes the intelligence as "specific." An air exclusion zone is established at an altitude of 2,500 feet above the site and police in bio-chemical suits and gas masks conduct the search. This search of the home fails to turn up any threat, as do searches of where the men work. [BBC, 6/3/2006] The raid, which cost more than $4 million, fails to find the suspected chemical bomb. Scotland Yard justifies the raid as necessary to determine the validity of the intelligence. The raid causes heavy tension between law enforcement and the Bangladeshi Muslim community of Forest Gate. Overtime pay for the more than 200 officers used in the raid amounts to $1.7 million and $.7 million is spent on "non-pay costs" such as catering and the erection of road barriers. The men are subsequently released without charge. [The Telegraph, 10/3/2006]
Entity Tags: Abdul Koyar, Peter Clarke, Abdul Kahar, Metropolitan Police Service
Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Terror Alerts
When asked why Osama bin Laden's wanted poster only mentions his alleged involvement in the East African embassy bombings, but not 9/11, Rex Tomb of the FBI's public affairs unit says, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11." [Milli Gazette, 6/11/2006] The Washington Post will later pick up this story and say that bin Laden's alleged involvement in the 9/11 operation is not mentioned on the poster because he has not been indicted for it (see August 28, 2006).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama bin Laden, Rex Tomb
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
The dead Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. [Source: US army]Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the supposed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is apparently killed in a US airstrike north of Baghdad. There are contradictory details of what exactly happened in the airstrike, and three days later the Washington Post will report that "circumstances surrounding the killing [remain] cloudy." [Washington Post, 6/10/2006] His killing is hailed by US and Iraqi officials as the most significant public triumph for US-allied forces since the 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein. For instance, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld calls him "the leading terrorist in Iraq and one of three senior al-Qaeda leaders worldwide." The Washington Post calls al-Zarqawi the "mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq." [Washington Post, 6/8/2006; Washington Post, 6/10/2006] These pronouncements and media reports ignore a revelation made two months earlier by the Washington Post that the US military has been engaged in a propaganda campaign to exaggerate al-Zarqawi's importance. The newspaper had reported that Zarqawi wasn't behind nearly as many attacks as commonly reported (see October 4, 2004 and April 10, 2006). Even a Washington Post article about the propaganda surrounding al-Zarqawi published two days after his death will fail to mention any of the details provided in the Post's original reporting on the campaign. [Washington Post, 6/10/2006] Later in the month, an audiotape surfaces in which bin Laden supposedly praises al-Zarqawi as a martyr (see June 30, 2006), calling him a "brave knight" and a "lion of jihad." US officials say the tape is genuine, however it should be noted that a letter from 2004 said to tie al-Zarqawi to al-Qaeda leadership is believed by many experts to be a US-government promoted hoax (see April 10, 2006). [Washington Post, 6/30/2006] Al-Zarqawi did pledge loyalty to bin Laden in 2004, but they don't appear to have been closely linked before then and there even are doubts about how close their relationship was after that time (see October 17, 2004).
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Ghaith Pharon's yacht, photographed in 2005. [Source: Yachtmati]The FBI and Italian paramilitary police raid a luxury yacht owned by Saudi multimillionaire Ghaith Pharaon, but do not find him. Since 1991, there has been an international arrest warrant for Pharaon due to his prominent role in the criminal BCCI bank. Shortly after 9/11, a French intelligence report linked him to Osama bin Laden (see October 10, 2001). Pharaon's yacht was raided off the coast of Sicily. The yacht was not seized. Despite being wanted for 15 years, Pharaon has managed to continue to run a large business empire. The FBI describes Pharaon as extremely wealthy with "numerous contacts within governments around the world." [ndependent, 8/16/2006] On August 10, 2006, the FBI puts out an all points bulletin for Pharaon. [ABC News, 8/10/2006] A Middle Eastern newspaper notes that, "In the past few years, Pharoan's super yacht—which he named Le Pharaon after himself—has repeatedly been seen moored alongside luxury yachts of the rich and famous." In June 2005, it was seen moored next to the personal yacht of Saudi King Abdullah in a Greek port. Two years earlier, it was seen parked next to another Saudi royal family super yacht near Beirut. [Khaleej Times, 6/13/2006] But there has been no reported word on him since, and the FBI has taken the webpage about him off their website.
Entity Tags: Ghaith Pharaon, Osama bin Laden, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bank of Credit and Commerce International
Category Tags: BCCI, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
The Miami Seven. Group leader Narseal Batiste is on the bottom right. [Source: BBC]Police arrest seven people during a raid on a warehouse in the Miami area. The men are alleged to be a "home-grown" terrorist cell plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI building in Miami, as well as possible other unspecified targets. They had allegedly conducted video surveillance of their targets. [CNN, 6/23/2006] The men are identified in the federal indictment as Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine. [FindLaw, 6/22/2006] Two are Haitians, five are US citizens, and two are US immigrants. [Democracy Now!, 6/26/2006] Vice President Dick Cheney describes them as a "a very real threat." [London Times, 6/25/2006] Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert who heads the Washington office of the Rand Corp., says that "amateur terrorists can kill as effectively as the professional kind." [Washington Post, 6/24/2006] However, officials concede that the group never had any contact with any other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. [BBC, 6/23/2006] Officials also admit that the men had not acquired any explosives or weapons. Chicago Police Superintendent Philip Cline says "there was never any danger to the Sears Tower or Chicago." Deputy FBI Director John Pistole says that the plot had not progressed beyond early planning stages and "was aspirational rather than operational." Hoffman says that it is "not clear is whether they had any real capabilities to pull [the plot] off." [Washington Post, 6/24/2006] An FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda operative had infiltrated the group for nearly six months and many conversations were recorded. [Washington Post, 9/2/2006] Batiste, the leader of the group, allegedly stated that he and his "soldiers" wanted to receive terrorist training in order to wage a "full ground war" against the US and to "kill all the devils we can." [BBC, 6/23/2006] He requested boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles, and $50,000 in cash from the informant. However, the men were only able to acquire military boots and a video camera. The indictment indicates that the men lacked any real resources; these organizational problems caused the plot to peter out by May. [Washington Post, 6/24/2006] Critics accuse the FBI of running a border-line entrapment operation in which a plot that was virtually a pipe-dream was kept alive by the involvement of the informant. Max Rameau of Miami CopWatch points out that the military gear and cameras had been supplied to the men by the government, via the informant. [Democracy Now!, 6/26/2006] Court records would later show that not only did the government provide materiel to the group, but the informant also suggested the Miami FBI office as the first target. The records show that the informant, known as CW2, played a key role in the advancement of the plot, such as administering the "al-Qaeda oaths" taken by the men. At a detention hearing, judge Ted E. Bandstra says that the allegations are "disturbing," but adds that "the plans appear to be beyond the present ability of these defendants." [Washington Post, 9/2/2006]
Entity Tags: Narseal Batiste, Naudimar Herrera, Patrick Abraham, Rotschild Augustine, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Max Rameau, Philip J. Cline, Lyglenson Lemorin, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joan Leonard, Al-Qaeda, John S. Pistole, Bruce Hoffman, CW2, Burson Augustin, Ted E. Bandstra, Stanley Grant Phanor
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Internal US Security After 9/11
Counterterrorism expert Charles Shoebridge, a former detective with the Metropolitan Police, discusses Mohammad Sidique Khan, the head suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005). In a radio interview with BBC Newshour, he says: "The fact that [information about Khan] has been so consistently overlooked it would appear by the [British] security service MI5, to me suggests really only one of two options. Either, a) we've got a level of incompetence that would be unusual even for the security services. But b) possibly, and this is a possibility, that this man Khan may even have been working as an informant for the security service. It is difficult otherwise to see how it can be that they've so covered his tracks in the interim." [BBC Newshour, 6/26/2006]
Entity Tags: Mohammad Sidique Khan, Charles Shoebridge
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
Kevin Barrett. [Source: Public domain]State lawmakers call for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor after he voices his opinion that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. Part-time lecturer Kevin Barrett appeared on a local radio show and claimed the alleged hijackers were "a bunch of losers who couldn't even fly planes," and that evidence indicated the WTC was destroyed by controlled demolition. Subsequently, State Representative Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater) issues a statement saying Barrett "needs to be fired" for using his position at the university to advance the idea "that September 11 was a creation of the government." [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/29/2006; Wisconsin State Journal, 6/30/2006] Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green also demands that Barrett be fired, and Governor Jim Doyle (a Democrat) questions whether Barrett is competent to teach. [Associated Press, 7/6/2006; Associated Press, 7/10/2006] Yet Barrett says that, for the Introduction to Islam course he is scheduled to teach, 14 of the 16 weeks will have nothing to do with politics. Only one week will cover different viewpoints on 9/11, including the theory that it was an "American operation." Following a 10-day review, UW-Madison announces it will keep Barrett on and let him teach the controversial theory about 9/11. [WKOW, 7/10/2006; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7/10/2006] Sixty-one of the state legislature's 133 members sign a letter to the university, urging it to fire Barrett. Stephen Nass states: "The leadership of the UW System operates at its own peril if it continues to ignore views of the taxpayers." [Associated Press, 7/20/2006; Los Angeles Times, 7/25/2006] Barrett tells the Associated Press he is pleased about the attention the controversy has brought to his cause. He says, "If these idiots had just kept their mouths shut, nobody would have ever heard of me. I've been trying to get publicity for years." [Associated Press, 7/6/2006]
Entity Tags: James E. ("Jim") Doyle, Kevin Barrett, Mark Andrew Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stephen Nass
Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri also mentioned the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video. [Source: As Sahab]A man said to be Osama bin Laden releases an audio message following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was said to be head of al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq (see June 8, 2006). The voice says that al-Zarqawi, who died following a US air strike, is "one of our greatest knights and one of our best emirs… We were very happy to find in him a symbol and role model for our future generations." The voice, which the CIA says is bin Laden's, also asks that al-Zarqawi's body be returned to Jordan, where he was born. The speaker also says: "We will continue, God willing, to fight you and your allies everywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, until we drain your money and kill your men and send you home defeated, God willing, as we defeated you before, thanks to God, in Somalia." The message lasts almost 20 minutes and is posted on a website associated with al-Qaeda. [CNN, 6/30/2006] Al-Zarqawi pledged loyalty to bin Laden in 2004 (see October 17, 2004).
Entity Tags: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Central Intelligence Agency, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
Salim Ahmed Hamdan in 1999. [Source: Pubic domain via the New York Times]In the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, the Supreme Court rules 5-3 to strike down the Bush administration's plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions. Ruling in favor of detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan (see November 8, 2004), the Court rules that the commissions are unauthorized by federal statutes and violate international law. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens says, "The executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction." The opinion throws out each of the administration's arguments in favor of the commissions, including its assertion that Congress had stripped the Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to decide the case. One of the major flaws in the commissions, the Court rules, is that President Bush unilaterally established them without the authorization of Congress. [New York Times, 6/30/2006] During the oral arguments three months before, Hamdan's lawyer, Neal Katyal, told the Court: "The whole point of this [proceeding] is to say we're challenging the lawfulness of the tribunal [the military commissions] itself. This isn't a challenge to some decision that a court makes. This is a challenge to the court itself, and that's why it's different than the ordinary criminal context that you're positing." [Savage, 2007, pp. 274-275] Major Defeat for Bush Administration - Civil libertarian and human rights organizations consider the ruling a shattering defeat for the administration, particularly in its assertions of expansive, unfettered presidential authority. Bush says in light of the decision, he will work with Congress to "find a way forward" to implement the commissions. "The ruling destroys one of the key pillars of the Guantanamo system," says Gerald Staberock, a director of the International Commission of Jurists. "Guantanamo was built on the idea that prisoners there have limited rights. There is no longer that legal black hole." The ruling also says that prisoners held as "enemy combatants" must be afforded rights under the Geneva Conventions, specifically those requiring humane treatment for detainees and the right to free and open trials in the US legal system. While some form of military trials may be permissible, the ruling states that defendants must be given basic rights such as the ability to attend the trial and the right to see and challenge evidence submitted by the prosecution. Stevens writes that the historical origin of military commissions was in their use as a "tribunal of necessity" under wartime conditions. "Exigency lent the commission its legitimacy, but did not further justify the wholesale jettisoning of procedural protections." [New York Times, 6/30/2006] In 2007, author and reporter Charlie Savage will write, "Five justices on the Supreme Court said Bush had broken the law." [Savage, 2007, pp. 275] Hardline Conservative Justices Dissent - Stevens is joined by Justices David Souter, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Anthony Kennedy issues a concurring opinion. Dissenting are Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Thomas, in a dissent signed by Scalia and Alito, calls the decision "untenable" and "dangerous." Chief Justice John Roberts recused himself from the case because of his participation in a federal appeals court that ruled in favor of the administration (see November 8, 2004). Not Charged for Three Years - Hamdan is a Guantanamo detainee from Yemen, captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Guantanamo in June 2002. He is accused of being a member of al-Qaeda, in his function as driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. He was not charged with a crime—conspiracy—until mid-2004. [New York Times, 6/30/2006]
Entity Tags: Samuel Alito, US Supreme Court, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John G. Roberts, Jr, Al-Qaeda, Antonin Scalia, Bush administration (43), Center for Constitutional Rights, Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, International Commission of Jurists, Gerald Staberock, Geneva Conventions, Clarence Thomas
Al-Qaeda leader Hassan Ghul is secretly transferred from US custody to Pakistani custody. The Pakistani government will later release him and he will apparently rejoin al-Qaeda. In early 2004, Ghul was captured in Iraq and put in the CIA's secret prison system (see January 23, 2004). He became a "ghost detainee" because the US refused to admit they even held him. In 2006, the Bush administration decides to close most of the CIA's secret prisons and transfer most of the important al-Qaeda prisoners to the Guantanamo prison. But Ghul is given to the Pakistani government instead, apparently as a goodwill gesture. According to a 2011 article by the Associated Press, "[T]he move frustrated and angered former CIA officers, who at the time believed Ghul should have been moved to Guantanamo along with 14 other high-value detainees" (See September 2-3, 2006). The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, promises that it will make sure Ghul is never released. But after only about a year, Pakistan will secretly let Ghul go and he apparently will return to working with al-Qaeda (see (Mid-2007)). [Associated Press, 6/15/2011] Ghul is given to Pakistan even though he is linked to a Pakistani militant group supported by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, and the ISI had a history of protecting him from arrest (see (2002-January 23, 2004)). Also, Ghul is released even though he told US interrogators key information about Osama bin Laden's courier that will eventually prove key to the discovery of bin Laden's location (see Shortly After January 23, 2004 and Late 2005).
Entity Tags: Hassan Ghul, Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
In July 2006, fighting breaks out in southern Lebanon between the Israeli military and Hezbollah. Western intelligence officials soon learn that Victor Bout, the world's biggest illegal arms dealer, has been spotted in a Hezbollah military building in Lebanon. Officials also discover that Richard Chichakli, Bout's longtime business partner, has recently moved from the US to Damascus, Syria. Israeli officials suspect that Bout arms Hezbollah with sophisticated Russian-made armor-piercing antitank missiles. [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 254] Bout's role is not confirmed at the time. But in 2008, journalist Douglas Farah, co-author of a 2007 book on Bout, will tell ABC News that recent intelligence indicates Bout did supply the armor-piercing missiles to Hezbollah. [ABC News, 3/6/2008] In 2006, Bout's network is also supplying the US military in Iraq (see Late April 2003-2007).
Entity Tags: Richard Chichakli, Hezbollah, Victor Bout
Category Tags: Victor Bout, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. [Source: Publicity photo]The Independent publishes an article questioning some aspects of the official account of the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005). The article notes that "There are some bewildering gaps in the [government's] account of 7/7…" It quotes counterterrorism expert Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, who has recently published a book questioning the government account of the bombings. Ahmed concludes that the government has deliberately downplayed the sophistication of the operation, the size of its support network, and evidence of al-Qaeda involvement, in order to deflect questions about how a large network was able to operate in Britain for many years. The Independent notes that "even the nature of the explosives used in the bombing is unclear." The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a group of MPs chosen by the prime minister, published a report on the 7/7 bombings in May 2006 (see May 11, 2006), but was vague about the explosives used. The Independent comments, "The report says only that 'it appears' they were home-made, although there is plenty of evidence that the bombs were powered by at least some commercial or military explosive." Ahmed says: "Forensic science… tends to produce unambiguous answers within a matter of hours and days. The idea that continuous examination over many months has failed to finish the job beggars belief." Ahmed also notes that the links between the 7/7 bombers such as Mohammad Sidique Khan and known al-Qaeda figures have been underplayed. For instance, the ISC report fails to mention Haroon Rashid Aswat at all, despite many articles suggesting that he may have been the mastermind of the bombings and may even have had a relationship with British intelligence (see Late June-July 7, 2005 and July 29, 2005). Ahmed says, "In systematically downplaying the undeniable role of al-Qaeda in the London bombings, the official account is attempting to draw public attention from the fact British authorities have tolerated the activities of an entrenched and burgeoning network of radical Islamists with terrorist connections for more than a decade." [Independent, 7/2/2006]
Entity Tags: Intelligence and Security Committee, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Al-Qaeda, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Haroon Rashid Aswat
Category Tags: 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Haroon Rashid Aswat
Shehzad Tanweer in his last testament video. [Source: Agence France-Presse]One day before the first anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), the Al Jazeera satellite network broadcasts video speeches from what appears to be Shehzad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 suicide bombers, and al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. A similar video apparently featuring 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan and al-Zawahiri was broadcast two months after the 7/7 bombings (see September 1, 2005). As with that video, the two speakers appear separately. The man resembling Tanweer says, "What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq and until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel." The man resembling al-Zawahiri seems to make al-Qaeda's first explicit claim to have directly masterminded the 7/7 bombings as he says that Khan and Tanweer had been trained "in the manufacture of explosives" at al-Qaeda training camp. The videotape also separately shows what seems to be a militant training camp, but there are no obvious clues where or when the speeches were recorded. British officials have generally tried to downplay any al-Qaeda link to the bombings. But after this video is broadcast, Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police force's head of anti-terrorism, says, "Such information as we do have does suggest there is probably a link to al-Qaeda." [New York Times, 7/7/2006; Daily Telegraph, 7/8/2006]
Entity Tags: Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Ayman al-Zawahiri
Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
A poll by Ohio University and Scripps Howard News Service finds that a significant minority of Americans believe there was US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Thirty-six percent of the 1,010 respondents say they believe that US government officials "either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East." Sixteen percent believe that secretly planted explosives brought down the Twin Towers, and 12 percent believe a military cruise missile, rather than a hijacked aircraft, hit the Pentagon. [Scripps Howard News Service, 8/3/2006; San Francisco Chronicle, 9/3/2006] An earlier poll had found that half of New York City residents believed government officials knew in advance of the attacks and consciously failed to act (see August 30, 2004).
Entity Tags: Ohio University, Scripps Howard News Service
The Daily Telegraph reports that an investigation in Pakistan has learned that an al-Qaeda recruiter known only by the alias Abdul Rehman introduced the 7/7 London bombers to al-Qaeda. Rehman is said to be of Afghan origin but holds a British passport and lived in Britain. He allegedly met head suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan in a British mosque and then later introduced him and Khan's friend and fellow suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer to al-Qaeda. Rehman is said to be in his fifties and wealthy. He fought against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recruited Muslims from Western countries to join that fight. He continued to recruit in the 1990s for the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. A Pakistani official says, "He is very rich and quite often arranged funds for the militant organizations, before and after 9/11." [Daily Telegraph, 7/8/2006]
Entity Tags: Abdul Rehman, Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Al-Qaeda
In June 2006, the US, NATO, and Afghanistan's intelligence agency compile a secret report on the Taliban. The report is discussed on July 9 at a private meeting of officials from Western countries and Afghanistan, chaired by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The report goes further than any previous report in describing the Pakistani government's involvement in supporting the Taliban. It states, "ISI operatives reportedly pay a significant number of Taliban living/ operating in both Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight.… A large number of those fighting are doing so under duress as a result of pressure from the ISI. The insurgency cannot survive without its sanctuary in Pakistan, which provides freedom of movement, communications for command and control, and a secure environment for collaboration with foreign extremist groups. The sanctuary of Pakistan provides a seemingly endless supply of potential new recruits for the insurgency." The report also states that at least four of the Taliban's top leaders are living in Pakistan. But despite the US involvement in creating the report, US diplomacy generally remains in denial about Pakistan's double dealing. President Bush not only fails to successfully pressure Pakistan on the issue, but even continues to praise Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The report is not leaked to the press at the time. [Rashid, 2008, pp. 367-368] In September 2006, when Pakistan announces a deal with militants in the tribal region of Waziristan, the heart of al-Qaeda's safe haven, Bush publicly supports the deal (see September 5, 2006 and September 7, 2006).
Entity Tags: US intelligence, George W. Bush, National Directorate of Security (Afghanistan), Pervez Musharraf, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Taliban, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Shamil Basayev. [Source: Agence France Presse / Getty Images]Russian government forces kill rebel Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. The
Russians had reportedly been tracking him, and blew up the truck he was traveling in while he was on an operation just outside of Chechnya. His supporters quickly acknowledge his death, but claim he died in an accident. A New York Times article about his death calls him "Russia's most wanted man" and the "elusive terrorist leader of the most vicious separatist faction in Chechnya." He is further described as "an airplane hijacker, a hostage taker, a guerrilla commander, and a war-scarred spokesman for terror who tried to justify mass killings of civilians, even school children, for political ends and revenge." Basayev was from Chechnya, but he linked up with foreign Islamists such as Ibn Khattab at an early stage in Chechnya's war against Russia (see February 1995-1996), and he led the Islamist faction of Chechen rebels until his death. Basayev's death comes just weeks after the killing of Abdul Khalim Saidullayev, the rebel president of Chechnya, dealing the rebel movement a devastating double blow. [New York Times, 7/10/2006; New York Times, 7/11/2006]
Entity Tags: Abdul Khalim Saidullayev, Shamil Basayev
Category Tags: Islamist Militancy in Chechnya, Key Captures and Deaths
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general releases a report criticizing terrorist targets listed in the federal antiterrorism database. This National Asset Database is used to determine how hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants will be divvied up each year. The report says, "The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data." For instance, Indiana, with nearly 9,000 potential terrorist targets, has 50 percent more listed targets than New York and more than twice as many as California, making it the most target-rich state in the US. Obscure targets on the list include Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, "Ice Cream Parlor," "Tackle Shop," "Donut Shop," and an unspecified "Beach at End of a Street." The list also apparently does not include many major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs. As a result, in May 2006 funding to New York City and Washington, DC, was cut by 40 percent while spending significantly increased to cities such as Louisville, Kentucky, and Omaha, Nebraska. The inspector general recommends that the Homeland Security department review the list and cut many "extremely insignificant" targets while providing better guidelines to prevent such future inclusions. [New York Times, 7/11/2006]
Entity Tags: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General (DHS)
Daniel Dell'Orto. [Source: US Department of Defense]Shortly after the Supreme Court rules that the Geneva Conventions apply to detainees suspected of terrorist affiliations (see June 30, 2006), the Bush administration publicly agrees to apply the Conventions to all terrorism suspects in US custody, and the Pentagon announces that it is now requiring all military officials to adhere to the Conventions in dealing with al-Qaeda detainees. The administration says that from now on, all prisoners in US custody will be treated humanely in accordance with the Conventions, a stipulation that would preclude torture and "harsh interrogation methods." Until the ruling, the administration has held that prisoners suspected of terrorist affiliations did not have the right to be granted Geneva protections (see February 7, 2002). Lawyer David Remes, who represents 17 Guantanamo detainees, says, "At a symbolic level, it is a huge moral triumph that the administration has acknowledged that it must, under the Supreme Court ruling, adhere to the Geneva Conventions. The legal architecture of the war on terror was built on a foundation of unlimited and unaccountable presidential power, including the power to decide unilaterally whether, when and to whom to apply the Geneva Conventions." But in the wake of the ruling the administration is pressuring Congress to introduce legislation that would strip detainees of some of the rights afforded them under the Conventions, including the right to free and open trials, even in a military setting. "The court-martial procedures are wholly inappropriate for the current circumstances and would be infeasible for the trial of these alien enemy combatants," says Steven Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Bradbury and Daniel Dell'Orto, the Defense Department's principal deputy attorney general, have repeatedly urged lawmakers to limit the rights of detainees captured in what the administration terms its war on terrorism. Dell'Orto says Congress should not require that enemy combatants be provided lawyers to challenge their imprisonment. Congressional Democrats have a different view. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) says, "I find it hard to fathom that this administration is so incompetent that it needs kangaroo-court procedures to convince a tribunal of United States military officers that the 'worst of the worst' imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay should be held accountable" for crimes. "We need to know why we're being asked to deviate from rules for courts-martial." [Washington Post, 7/12/2006]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, US Supreme Court, US Department of Defense, Patrick J. Leahy, Al-Qaeda, Daniel J. Dell'Orto, David Remes, Geneva Conventions, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Steven Bradbury
Using new legislation that outlaws the glorification of terrorism, the British government bans the British militant groups Al-Ghuraaba and the Saviour Sect (a.k.a. the Saved Sect). The two groups were formed in late 2004, when radical imam Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed disbanded his group Al-Muhajiroun (see October 2004). But Bakri continued to lead the two new groups and after sending a reporter uncover to infiltrate the groups, the Sunday Times concluded the two groups were "Al-Muhajiroun in all but name" (see July 9, 2005 and Shortly Afterwards). In announcing the banning of the two groups, Home Secretary John Reid says that he is "committed to ensuring that those organizations that change their name do not avoid the consequences of proscription." [London Times, 7/19/2006] However, just three months later, the Sunday Times will report that the two groups continue to operate after simply merging back together and changing their name yet again, this time to Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah. The group now mainly operates through the Internet, since Bakri has moved to Lebanon (see August 6, 2005). Anjem Choudary, another long-time leader of Al-Muhajiroun still living in Britain, apparently continues to run the group's operations there. [Sunday Times (London), 10/29/2006] Despite Reid's promise not to be deterred by a simple name change, as of 2008 the "new" group has yet to be banned.
Entity Tags: John Reid, Al-Ghuraaba, Anjem Choudary, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, Al-Muhajiroun, Saviour Sect
Category Tags: Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Omar Bakri & Al-Muhajiroun
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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