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and in the Congress PDF, 188 KB HTML, 116 KB 4.
Responses to Al Qaeda's Initial Assaults 4.1 Before the Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania 4.2 Crisis: August 1998 4.3 Diplomacy 4.4 Covert Action 4.5 Searching for Fresh Options PDF, 185 KB HTML, 113 KB 5.
Al Qaeda Aims at the American Homeland 5.1 Terrorist Entrepreneurs 5.2 The "Planes Operation" 5.3 The Hamburg Contingent 5.4 A Money Trail?
PDF, 312 KB HTML, 89 KB 6.
From Threat To Threat 6.1 The Millennium Crisis 6.2 Post-Crisis Reflection: Agenda for 2000 6.3 The Attack on the USS Cole 6.4 Change and Continuity 6.5 The New Administration's Approach PDF, 209 KB HTML, 129 KB 7.
The Attack Looms 7.1 First Arrivals in California 7.2 The 9/11 Pilots in the United States 7.3 Assembling the Teams 7.4 Final Strategies and Tactics PDF, 949 KB HTML, 119 KB 8.
"The System Was Blinking Red" 8.1 The Summer of Threat 8.2 Late Leads--Mihdhar, Moussaoui, and KSM PDF, 146 KB HTML, 76 KB 9.
Heroism and Horror 9.1 Preparedness as of September 11 9.2 September 11, 2001 9.3 Emergency Response at the Pentagon 9.4 Analysis PDF, 2.3 MB HTML, 130 KB 10.
Wartime 10.1 Immediate Responses at Home 10.2 Planning for War 10.3 "Phase Two" and the Question of Iraq PDF, 109 KB HTML, 45 KB 11.
Foresight--and Hindsight 11.1 Imagination 11.2 Policy 11.3 Capabilities 11.4 Management PDF, 133 KB HTML, 67 KB 12.
What To Do?
A Global Strategy 12.1 Reflecting on a Generational Challenge 12.2 Attack Terrorists and Their Organizations 12.3 Prevent the Continued Growth of Islamist Terrorism 12.4 Protect against and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks PDF, 184 KB HTML, 110 KB 13.
How To Do It?
A Different Way of Organizing the Government 13.1 Unity of Effort across the Foreign-Domestic Divide 13.2 Unity of Effort in the Intelligence Community 13.3 Unity of Effort in Sharing Information 13.4 Unity of Effort in the Congress 13.5 Organizing America's Defenses in the United States PDF, 158 KB HTML, 79 KB Appendices PDF, 109 KB HTML, 49 KB Notes PDF, 669 KB HTML, 681 KB PDF files can be viewed using the free Adobe Reader software.
Current News The Chair and Vice Chair have released a statement regarding the Commission's closing.
[more] The Commission closed August 21, 2004.
[more] Commission Members Commission Staff National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States The Commission closed on August 21, 2004.
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Incident Period: Sep 11, 2001 Declaration Date: Sep 11, 2001 Quick Links On This Page Local Resources Funding Obligations More About This Disaster Visit the News & Media page for events, fact sheets, press releases and other multimedia resources.
» New York Terrorist Attack Photographs» September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack Media Files Perhaps the most surprising part of Hamas’ devastating cross-border attack was its complexity.
Rarely in history has a terrorist organization been able to fight from the air, sea, and land.
Both al-Qaeda and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka had similar capabilities but even they were incapable of launching simultaneous, coordinated assaults utilizing all three.
Hamas, working alongside Palestine Islamic Jihad, and, per the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, supported and guided by Iran, the patron and financier of both, has now achieved an infamous notoriety.
The potential for this war to expand to three fronts, should Hizballah decide to attack Israel from the north — as it did when Israel and Hamas clashed over Gaza in 2006 — and for violence to erupt from Palestinians on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would gravely complicate an already complex and fraught situation.
Should Israel decide to strike Iran or Tehran decide to intervene more directly in the conflict, the consequences would be catastrophic for the region.
With terrorist groups as far afield as Afghanistan pledging to support Hamas, the introduction of a diverse array of foreign fighters cannot be discounted either.
For Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, the timing was propitious.
For months, Israel has been beset with internecine political fights.
These internal frictions were progressively sharpened by greater polarization, highly controversial proposed judicial reforms, political vituperation, sustained mass protests, and boycotts of military service by reservists.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government was nevertheless seeking normalization of relations with several countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds, with some success.
Terrorists are always studying their enemies and probing for opportunities to strike precisely when their opponents are distracted or preoccupied with other matters.
It was thus the perfect storm in Israel for Hamas, given the current government’s fractious coalition, its unpopularity with many Israelis, the prime minister’s ongoing legal travails, and the recent clashes both on the Temple Mount, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, and in the West Bank.
The surprise terrorist attacks that shattered Israel on Oct.
7 are without precedent.
And, this war, which will surely escalate and likely have wide-ranging and longstanding repercussions, will be a watershed moment in national, regional, and international security on par with the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks.
Much will depend on Israel’s next steps, with options likely ranging from a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to perhaps a more ambitious and consequential strike directly against Iran.
Either eventuality will reshape the Middle East for the foreseeable future — not least by likely derailing the Abraham Accords peace talks, as Hamas and Iran clearly intended.
A Barbaric Attack on Israel’s Civilians — and a Stunning Intelligence Failure The failure of Israeli intelligence — arguably among the most sophisticated in the world — to detect the preparations and logistical staging that were likely months in the planning will result in independent inquiries, systemic reforms, and a new mindset regarding security and homeland defense.
It is hard not to draw a parallel with the other epic intelligence failure in Israel’s history — the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
And, the fact that these attacks occurred nearly 50 years later to the day makes this comparison even more compelling.
But, with at least 700 killed, 2,000 wounded, and hundreds more missing and presumed being held captive in Gaza, the scope and magnitude of this weekend’s surprise attacks will almost certainly approach — if not surpass — the 2,656 killed and 9,000 wounded half a century ago.
Viewed from another perspective, Saturday’s casualty toll alone was already double the number of Israelis killed on the worst day of the Yom Kippur War: Oct.
7, 1973.
In terms of population proportions, this conflict will be much worse than the attacks suffered by the United States on 9/11.
Indeed, much like in 2001 when many Americans knew someone or someone who knew someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or on United Flight 93, Israelis will all be grieving the loss of relatives, friends, and neighbors.
In the first day alone, it is the equivalent of if 20,000 Americans had been killed on 9/11.
Even in the darkest days of the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian and Syrian armies never pierced the defensive ring around the country maintained by the Israel Defense Forces.
Civilians then were not hunted down in their own homes and murdered, sexually assaulted, and wantonly killed and kidnapped.
These recent events will forever change the security calculus of Israel in assuring the safety of its population.
Having once seemed practical and effective, Israel’s “mowing the grass” counterterrorism strategy now appears unforgivably short sighted and insufficient and will surely be replaced by a far harsher regime.
This situation arguably was foretold 35 years ago in Hamas’ covenant.
Just as Hitler’s genocidal intentions toward the Jews in his 1923 book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), were ignored or dismissed as bluster, so too have Hamas’ identical intentions.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” is how the document begins.
Article 7 then clearly states, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.
The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” And, Article 13 completely disdains negotiations or a peaceful resolution of Jewish and Palestinian territorial claims.
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question,” the covenant proclaims, “except through Jihad.
Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Nor are these words historical artifacts.
Every Hamas “military” communiqué since the attacks began has ended with the words, “It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.” Many commentators have rightly decried the attack as terrorism.
And, Hamas has long been designated by the U.S. Department of State, at least half a dozen other countries, and two international organizations as a terrorist organization.
But the reports of indiscriminate executions of civilians, sexual crimes, and the young, old, and disabled being dragged into captivity make even that pejorative label inadequate.
Instead, clearer language is needed when civilians are treated like this.
Pogroms, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and perhaps even crimes against humanity may thus be more accurate — particularly given that Oct.
7 likely now marks the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
War in the Middle East?
Saturday’s attacks should offer a stark reminder of terrorism’s unique ability to drive geopolitical agendas and completely upend status quos.
The timing of the attacks was likely a response to the normalization process in diplomatic relations between Israel and many Muslim countries in the Gulf and North Africa.
Since 2020, the Abraham Accords have produced the historic opening of formal ties between Israel and a succession of Middle Eastern and African countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
The possible conclusion of a U.S.-brokered establishment of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was widely seen as a game-changer in regional security alignments.
The attendant promised defense pact between Saudi Arabia and the United States was something Tehran was desperate to derail since it was obviously directed against Iran.
Throughout history, the absolute worst enemy of terrorists has always been moderates and peacemakers.
With Saturday’s surprise attacks, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and their Iranian government patrons may have achieved their goal of upending a peace process that was on the verge of a major breakthrough.
What is less clear is how Hamas hopes the next days will unfold.
Terrorism is, at its very core, strategic violence, selected by actors who no longer seek political solutions.
It is unclear what specific strategic result Hamas is seeking.
Perhaps Hamas is attempting to provoke an overwhelming response, as al-Qaeda did on Sept.
11, inspiring both Palestinians and their allies in Lebanon and beyond to attack Israel.
Or perhaps they are merely acting as spoilers of a newly invigorated peace process, just like the Jewish far-right extremists whose killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 stymied the Oslo Accords that he had worked so hard to achieve.
But this attack came at a time of unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause around the globe (and shortly after a controversial judicial reform proposal in Israel had shocked the democratic world).
And, it was broadcast on social media, showing genuinely horrendous imagery of innocent civilians being butchered in the streets and taken hostage.
It seems inevitable that the attacks will only set back the Palestinian cause, perhaps fatally.
This may yet prove, then, a stunning miscalculation — and perhaps one only possible among actors blinded by hate.
Or, actors with no care whatsoever for the humanity they are charged with presiding over.
Like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the 20-year war on terror, Hamas has seemingly demonstrated a disregard for the blood of those they purport to represent.
In launching their jihad, the leaders of the group and many of its rank-and-file will be mercilessly hunted by Israeli security forces.
But the path to their neutralization will be paved with the corpses of everyday Palestinian men, women, and children who want nothing but a more promising future.
Almost half of Palestinians across Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank view the Abraham Accords positively, a greater percentage than in the rest of the Arab world.
Hamas’ hijacking of that process will not lead to anything but more violence — and will do nothing to improve the lives of those genuinely suffering in the Gaza Strip.
Perhaps the greatest threat now comes from further miscalculations by state actors.
Indeed, as we write, the war is both far from over and will not be contained.
An Israeli ground operation to end once-and-for-all the threats from Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised, would almost certainly trigger an uprising on the West Bank and attacks in the north on Israel from Hizballah in Lebanon — Iran’s other regional terrorist minion.
Already, this past weekend, Hizballah fired rockets from Lebanon into the contested Shebaa Farms along the border with Israel.
And, on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces was warning Israelis living in the north about a suspected cross-border infiltration.
If accurate, it was precisely this kind of cross-border activity by Hizballah that triggered the 2006 Lebanon War.
Faced with a three-front war of almost existential dimensions and fueled by decades of frustrations over failed peace processes, continued occupation and repression, and land annexation, the Palestinians may embrace the situation as their only hope of altering a status quo that has dragged on for 56 years — since Israel’s lightning victory in the 1967 Six Day War.
Israel may thus feel driven to target the groups’ enablers in Iran rather than the individual terrorist movements directly attacking it from three directions.